At the level of the practitioner it can all feel too much like going in to an interview with a McCarthy committee or the old East German police as someone starts an application for a Dome meditation badge.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : That is funny. Taping Rick's thesis to the doors? In these times it would be scotch taping a thesis to the glass Dome doors or pinning them on the walls nearby the doors where people read announcements as they come and go in to the Domes. " ..the historicity of the hammer blows of Wittenberg. In fact, the door of the Castle Church did serve as the official university bulletin board and was regularly used for exactly the kind of announcement Luther made when he called for a public disputation on indulgences. But whether the event happened at two o'clock in the afternoon--or at all--is not the point. Copies of Luther's theses were soon distributed by humanist scholars all over Europe. Within just a few weeks, an obscure Augustinian monk in a backwater university town had become a household name and was the subject of chatter from Lisbon to Lithuania." ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <olliesed...@yahoo.com> wrote : Someone could nail Rick's old message to the University door.:-) Reformation Day: Did Martin Luther really nail 95 theses on the castle door? http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/10/reformation_day_did_martin_lut.html http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/10/reformation_day_did_martin_lut.html Reformation Day: Did Martin Luther really nail 95 theses... http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/10/reformation_day_did_martin_lut.html Millions of Christians still celebrate Oct. 31 as the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation. View on www.al.com http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/10/reformation_day_did_martin_lut.html Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Are the three Drs. at the top of TM 15 years too late? 15 years ago as FairfieldLife at Yahoo-groups was born as a sounding board for the larger meditating community it was said then: Rick Archer wrote then on Sept 14, 2001: I’ve love to see a public announcement like the following from the Department of the Development of Consciousness (the people who give out the badges): Dear Fairfield Sidhas and Governors, First, we would like to publicly apologize for ever having excluded from the domes anyone who wanted to practice Maharishi’s program there. We would like to welcome everyone back on the condition that if you are in the dome, you promise to practice what you have learned from Maharishi – no more, no less. In turn, we promise to never again judge or exclude anyone for what they may choose to do with their private life. We possess neither the wisdom nor the right to do this. Let us all come together again in a spirit of love and acceptance, and begin once more to radiate the harmony and coherence for which the domes were built. Jai Guru Dev, The Department of the Development of Consciousness .....numbers flying in the domes would double overnight. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/7 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/7 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : It is really a large stain on the community how the admin have let it go and alienated so many meditators from the official movement and meditation. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : A lot of meditators can’t or won’t go to the Domes now. There is quite a lot of communal hurt here around going to the Domes. A lot of time [years] has flowed under the bridge, over the dam and down stream with all this. The three Drs. at the top of the organization are going to have to get their collective heads together and change the guidelines they have been enforcing on the community and come up with some thing much more encompassing to remediate the situation they have caused with the community Dome meditation. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : The whole community has story of knowing someone who was poorly handled or judged. The interview that starts, “We have some questions we want to ask you?” “..Are you now or have you ever been?” A result is that fear marinates the Domes as possibility of personally being found out and found in error of the guidelines. Fear has become the first sutra of the meditating community now in the Domes for many who would like to be involved with the group meditation. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Any recourse for changing the guidelines or their enforcement for any of this is obscure at best. Redress happens at a pay level way above all of ours and is hidden there. But pretty clearly all of this rests now with the three Drs., Morris, Hagelin, and Nader. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Good observation on how it can go. Yes, there is a working document like this that is logical and based on specifics now that is being passed around that has recommendations in it. It is based on metrics and it is a comprehensive way of thinking about a series of troubles the University and Movement have. The document’s creation as a proposal has spurred sub-groups of trustees and groups of faculty and groups of staff to become motivated in drawing up specific strategic changes in the University and the larger movement. There is a lot in play right now. Is to be seen if the upper admin of the status quo movement (the three Drs.) can themselves lead on this together and will facilitate the sea change that is going on underneath or will try to sit on it. olliesedwuz writes: Is there still the ability to place this back in the realm of logic, where those who are creating an obstruction can be presented with a concrete list of necessary changes? Apologies if I missed it, but has that been tried? Assembling a grounded list of changes to existing policies, and then working through each item via discussion is the only way to broach this. And if those in opposition to change refuse to listen, then they must be allowed to see the further consequences of what have set in place. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Thanks, Ollie. Yours is really a well grounded enlightened response. A problem in the middle of TM is that the guidelines for participation are unknown to most except the people who do the interrogation of applicants and the staff handlers. It has been that way a long time. I have been able to read the guidelines on several occasions over the years. There is not much good reason why the guidelines need to be held secret from everyone. It is not necessarily that the staff who enforce the guidelines over people are bad people but it is that the guidelines themselves which they enforce are bad. There is a vindictiveness in them which has been long crippling to the community. Actually some of the people who have been staff there enforcing the guidelines strictly have been very good at that enforcement, if that is the objective. The problem is the guidelines themselves are bad and unresponsive to time. The staff and their handlers can’t do anything about that except possibly not enforce things at times, which can then become arbitrary. The whole situation is looking for remediation. It will take the urging of the three Drs. (Morris, Hagelin and Nader) at the head of the whole organization to put their heads together and come out with some better leadership on all this. It is said that 'change comes from within'. In the case of the TM movement change that would remediate this communal problem has to come at the level of the three Drs. over all this. That is a cultural problem now that is corporate. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <olliesedwuz@...> wrote : Is there still the ability to place this back in the realm of logic, where those who are creating an obstruction can be presented with a concrete list of necessary changes? Apologies if I missed it, but has that been tried? Assembling a grounded list of changes to existing policies, and then working through each item via discussion is the only way to broach this. And if those in opposition to change refuse to listen, then they must be allowed to see the further consequences of what have set in place. There was only one Maharishi and he is gone, so any decisions must now be made on the basis of logic and goal-orientation. No more Maharishi would have said. Much messier now, a situation calling for someone who can transcend the hurt feelings and sense of righteousness, that sound pervasive from your description. The other thing to consider is what others have mentioned. What is the downside to it all going away, except the process to continue the marketing and teaching of TM and the TM Siddhis programs? Maharishi designed his programs for householders, without an external support mechanisms needed. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : There’s a lot of judgement of ‘sinning’ in TM going on and there is a lot of personal judgement of people going on in TM. We have some strict Preservationists who judge the practitioners and then we have the practitioners who as a community judge the preservationists. It is judgement to some standard and where capricious the judgement becomes personal and vendetta that is self indulgent, selfish, relentlessly indulged. TM. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : We’ve got a terrible Catch-22 in the middle of TM right now with the movement’s TM Dome group meditation participation guidelines. On the one hand Strict preservation originalist religious ideologues within the middle at the top of TM feel that the older meditator community and old TM teachers have “sinned” against original policy and guideline and should necessarily be disciplined, while on the other hand the old and young meditating community finds the TM leadership itself has in any number of ways ‘sinned’ as leaders of the community. This is all really bad for and works against the Dome meditation numbers right now. It would take some extraordinary leadership to reconcile. A Great Mediator. Could a forgiveness be found somewhere on either side? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : It would be good if all of us could participate in group program ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : It would be good, If practitioners can get approval. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : The situation is dire. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Om! The situation could use a great ‘mediator’ to reconcile some forgiveness from both sides, the strict preservationists and the practitioners, to save its communal group meditation. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : FW: Secondly, many hundreds, if not thousands, of Sidhas and Governors all over the country are convinced that 'the worst', more glaring (and most damaging) example of violation of the excellent and true principles .. is the so-called 'monitoring' system of the IAA Grant. Statistics .. carefully kept (with the help of MUM and other statistical experts) show that it was this 'monitoring' system that mainly (not only) stopped 14 consecutive months (year-on-year) of higher Super Radiance participation dead in its tracks in the month of August, 2012, and has resulted in 40 consecutive lower months since it went in ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : It seems an upper leadership is incredibly isolated. It’s no wonder the leaders and the larger movement community have moved away from each other and it has gone the way it has. Is pitiable really, given the science and spirituality at stake. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : They have a cultural problem built in to the guidelines that they use to judge meditators. We have long been losing numbers of meditators faster than they can manufacture them. It is going to take a revolutionary culture change inside the leadership to right this. Can it happen fast enough? Can culture change happen in the movement at the top fast enough to save itself and us? upfronter writes: Perhaps one reason why there is not 100% attendance is because a lot of people do not actually believe that what they are being told in such a matter-of-fact way is accurate and factual. A meditator continues to meditate because they have a clear and subjectively recognisable benefit from doing so. It is true in some number of cases that as some people are meditators they are are not necessarily interested in doing the 'long' program much anymore. Meditators yes, but not doing the TM-sidhis. But when it moves into the arena of expanded applied Vedic philosophies, as nice as these are in creating interests and spawning various communities, it appears to some, now with hindsight due to early pioneers, that this is just guesswork, wishful thinking or ideological fervour. emptybill writes: Fairfield is now the Damascus of Iowa. All those duplicitous yajña-s are scams that the devata-s easily see. Why would they want to come and abide there? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote :