--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > <snip> > > > > Marek's recent question, and brilliant and insightful > > and respectful posts every so often from others here > > that are just brimful of light and the joy of living > > -- *however* one has chosen to live, and along *what- > > ever* path -- still make this forum worth skimming > > through to find them. But man! it's taking a lot of > > skimming these days *to* find them. > > Of course I answered to Marek's post in like kind to > Alex's fun nerdish answer (about people who don't use > Bcc) with a similar rant on thread hijacking on FFL. :)
Which is cool, and of interest who read discussion boards threaded. I can imagine that Yahoo's weird take on threads and people's unfamiliarity with how to work with them can be quite confusing if you are actually trying to follow a thread here. I gave up on it years ago. I like to fol- low discussions in "real time," as people post, in the order they post, and do the "threading" in my head. It's more fun for me that way because the board becomes one big thread. > My serious answer would have been to deprogram people > of the matrix they are stuck in. IOW, every preconceived > notion, belief or psychological construct they've ever > had. Show them how by and large morals were invented > by kings to keep their subjects under control. Leave > them crying "I know have nothing to cling to!" That's > the idea, get rid of the teddy bears and grow up. It > is the first step to moksha. All those concepts and > notions are just excess baggage. While I don't disagree, the question of "How?" does arise. I'm not convinced that a conscious, intel- lectual approach can ever do this. One tends to just replace the old constructs with new constructs. "God has a plan for all of This" becomes "There is no plan, just interactions." As concepts go, the latter is no less binding and no more accurate from all POVs than the former IMO. So for me it's not coming to an intellectual understanding that my beliefs are constructs, but coming to feel or know on a this-is-really- how-it-all-seems-to-work-at-every-moment prag- matic level. And for me the only thing that has ever done that is to be blown out of my socks by shakti or an intense meditation experience. The exper- ience came *first*, and the constructs fell away on their own. They couldn't "stand the heat." I don't know how one would approach the dissolution of one's constructs the other way around. > > Is the psychic shit hitting the fan or something in > > America? What is going *on* that all these long- > > time spiritual seekers are in such *pain*? > > Yup, it's push come to shove. Sure feels that way from over here. > It was nice to cocoon in beliefs but that won't work > anymore. On the ego thread I never jumped in on my > experience is that I don't exist. That is until > someone needs me to exist. The bill collector, a > customer, a relative, a list member, my body, etc. > needs me to exist. So you've got a Schroedinger's Cat kinda ego. Until someone looks in the box, it is neither alive nor dead, but both, in a virtual state. :-) Just joking, because I kinda identify. I like to think of them as egos, plural. Multiple selves, playing upon the surface of Self. > This is probably what confuses folks about enlightenment. > Experientially there is no ego until it is required but > that doesn't mean that enlightenment is lost. Not at all. Yup. I've never understood all this "ego death" stuff, especially from folks who've heard all the 200% of life lectures from Maharishi. If one can have thoughts and perform actions while being 100% aware of Self or Being or whatever you want to call it, why can't there be a 100% ego, on an "as needed" basis, *also* appearing simultaneous with the realization of Being? > I think MMY confused the issue and I have a notion that > TM can't deliver unity. Not to beat the drum of my > tantric guru but his general purpose yogic meditation > technique tossed the experience of duality that I had > had for years out the door and replaced it with unity, > all was one, plain and simple. But he teaches nothing > different than many other yogic meditation teachers but > its not the same technique as TM. In fact I was at > first disappointed because the technique was something > I had seen for years in books (but never tried). Then > I experienced how well it worked. Same with plain old vanilla concentration and focus for me. After decades of hearing them pooh-poohed and put down by Maharishi, I had a natural resistance to them. But as soon as I got past that, they were doorways to trans- cendence just as effortlessness had been. > And it worked for others just as well. Whatever works. I'm not convinced that there is a panacea tech- nique or approach that works for everyone, the Model T Ford of meditation. Maharishi certainly tried to paint TM that way, but look at all of the casualties along the way. I've known people who twitched uncontrollably for *years* doing TM, and then out of desperation tried another technique, and the twitching just went away overnight, never to reappear. What *did* appear, for them, was clear samadhi...transcendence. TM just wasn't a good match for *them*. Some- thing *individual* within them didn't resonate properly with the TM approach. And, of course, I've seen the opposite be true, someone who first gets into concentration techniques and has no success (or perception of success) with them, and then switches to a more effortless approach, and it's gangbusters. Maybe it's just the contrast...I don't know. All I know is -- as Garcia sang so sweetly -- what a long, strange trip it's been. May it continue to be, and may it get even stranger.
