[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread enlightened_dawn11
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:


 I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of 
 people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers.
 The TM movement was not long on compassion. It
 never taught its followers that a person could be
 partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was 
 always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and 
 the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints
 scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no 
 middle ground. So if a person is characterized as 
 black, they are ALL black. 
 
 As a result IMO, many people who have come out of 
 such an environment are easy prey for those who use 
 thought stoppers as a tool of debate. And the people 
 who *rely* on thought stoppers know this, and use 
 the thought stoppers as often as they possibly can. 
 They know that the audience they are talking to
 has been taught to *despise* shades of gray and
 the possibility of feeling compassion for someone
 who has been accused of being bad. They know that
 many people coming out of a TM environment will 
 automatically consider George W. Bush ALL bad 
 simply because Maharishi once characterized him
 as bad. Therefore they can springboard off of
 that and suggest that because someone *else* they
 want to demonize, like the Dalai Lama, once said
 something positive about Bush, he might be ALL 
 bad, too. 
 
 I think that the use of thought stoppers like this
 is the sign of a lazy intellect. The person who
 uses them frequently is demonstrating that they
 are incapable of thinking *past* a thought stopper,
 and that *their* thought processes stop at the first
 convenient label. And they want you to be just like 
 them.

yes, i agree many on this board use thought stoppers, not very effectively 
though. seems by your own example, you have some baggage left over from your 
cult days:

You're just a cunt.- Barry Wright, October 14th, 2008 



[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread authfriend
This is Barry's funniest post yet. And it will go
right over the heads of most here.

His *entire post* is one sweeping thought-stopper.

He has achieved 100 percent self-reference.

You are to dismiss immediately any point of view,
Barry is telling you, that appears to conflict in
any way with the views of the TM critics, because
such points of view are obviously intended as
thought-stoppers.

Any evidence, for example, demonstrating that the
Dalai Lama does not have perfect judgment is
designed to make you stop having any thoughts that
there is any good whatsoever to be found in the
Dalai Lama. If he has any less than 100 percent
perfect judgment, you are supposed to think that
must mean he is All Bad.

Any demonstration that anybody has a negative
opinion of Meera Nanda's work is designed to lead
you to believe that she is Completely Wrong About
Everything.

When you encounter such scurrilous thought-stoppers,
therefore, you must Stop Thinking about them. You
cannot allow any negative thoughts to enter your
mind and pollute your positive views. And of
course you must think of those who attempt to
introduce such negative thoughts into your mind as
people who themselves Do Not Think and don't want
you to think either.

There is no such thing as ambiguity or ambivalence
or nuance in Barry's World, so anyone who attempts
to suggest that all is not black or white is
obviously No Good At All.



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to 
 a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone
 she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a 
 Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai 
 Lama had some positive things to say about former 
 president George W. Bush.
 
 IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to 
 interject a thought stopper into the conversation.
 The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something
 good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad,
 then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either.
 
 This just days after doing exactly the same thing 
 when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying
 that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness
 nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person 
 posted what was clearly intended to be another thought
 stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of
 the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds
 were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the
 author, and think negatively about her.
 
 Add to this a long history of this poster and other
 posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers 
 to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a
 liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to
 stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos-
 sibly having any positive qualities and instead
 think of them as something less than human. Call 
 someone a predator and again the readers are sup-
 posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused
 person off.
 
 In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who
 use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more
 than anything else, how quickly their own thought
 processes stop working.
 
 They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They
 cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush
 and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush
 is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible
 positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual-
 ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and
 if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what
 they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone
 like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find
 something in him to praise -- anything -- then *he*
 must be linked to the bad Bush and be bad 
 himself. 
 
 Same with calling someone a liar. Science tells
 us that human beings tell on the average 25 lies 
 a day. A self-honest person can look at themselves
 and realize that they tell lies, too, if only to
 themselves. Only an idiot would claim, I never 
 lie. But some idiots not only claim this, they
 attempt to use the epithet Liar! as a thought
 stopper. Again, the implication is that by calling
 someone a liar, you can make people think of the
 person you are attempting to demonize as ALL liar. 
 If they're a liar, the rationale of the thought-
 stopper-hurler goes, they are *complete* liars. 
 They cannot possibly have any other qualities or 
 attributes. *Stop thinking* of this person as 
 human; only think of them as a 'liar.'
 
 Same with the epithet predator. It conjures up
 images of child molesters and worse. And it is
 *supposed* to. Hurling the term predator at some-
 one you don't like is designed to get people to
 *stop thinking* about that person as human. They
 are supposed to think of them the way YOU do, as
 one-dimensional, as ONLY a predator.
 
 Same with invoking Kali Yuga as a catch-all
 excuse for why things suck. The idea is that one
 can throw that term out and people will stop think-
 ing that there is anything they 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread authfriend
P.S.: The additional irony of Barry complaining
that any alternative view to that of the TM critics
is by definition a thought-stopper and therefore
Evil and Duplicitous and To Be Ignored is that the TM
critics here are *by far* the most frequent users of
thought-stoppers (Vaj being the champeen). The TMers
are far more likely to suggest nuance and ambiguity
and shades of gray; they typically attempt to inject
*balance* into the discussion (not always, granted,
just as not all criticism of TM necessarily involves
thought-stoppers).

My posts on the Dalai Lama and on Meera Nanda were
both attempts to inject a bit of balance into what
otherwise would be unrelievedly positive and
uncritical evaluations by their fans.

The Dalai Lama may be a great guy generally speaking,
but to claim that George Bush is honest and
straightforward suggests at the very least that the
DL has not been following the ins and outs of U.S.
politics and foreign relations all that closely.

Meera Nanda may have some excellent points to make
about Hindutva and its promotion of Vedic Science,
but it may be that not all her insights are slam-
dunks or all her research 100 percent accurate.

Etc., etc., etc.


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 This is Barry's funniest post yet. And it will go
 right over the heads of most here.
 
 His *entire post* is one sweeping thought-stopper.
 
 He has achieved 100 percent self-reference.
 
 You are to dismiss immediately any point of view,
 Barry is telling you, that appears to conflict in
 any way with the views of the TM critics, because
 such points of view are obviously intended as
 thought-stoppers.
 
 Any evidence, for example, demonstrating that the
 Dalai Lama does not have perfect judgment is
 designed to make you stop having any thoughts that
 there is any good whatsoever to be found in the
 Dalai Lama. If he has any less than 100 percent
 perfect judgment, you are supposed to think that
 must mean he is All Bad.
 
 Any demonstration that anybody has a negative
 opinion of Meera Nanda's work is designed to lead
 you to believe that she is Completely Wrong About
 Everything.
 
 When you encounter such scurrilous thought-stoppers,
 therefore, you must Stop Thinking about them. You
 cannot allow any negative thoughts to enter your
 mind and pollute your positive views. And of
 course you must think of those who attempt to
 introduce such negative thoughts into your mind as
 people who themselves Do Not Think and don't want
 you to think either.
 
 There is no such thing as ambiguity or ambivalence
 or nuance in Barry's World, so anyone who attempts
 to suggest that all is not black or white is
 obviously No Good At All.
 
 
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
 
  Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to 
  a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone
  she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a 
  Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai 
  Lama had some positive things to say about former 
  president George W. Bush.
  
  IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to 
  interject a thought stopper into the conversation.
  The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something
  good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad,
  then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either.
  
  This just days after doing exactly the same thing 
  when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying
  that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness
  nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person 
  posted what was clearly intended to be another thought
  stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of
  the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds
  were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the
  author, and think negatively about her.
  
  Add to this a long history of this poster and other
  posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers 
  to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a
  liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to
  stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos-
  sibly having any positive qualities and instead
  think of them as something less than human. Call 
  someone a predator and again the readers are sup-
  posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused
  person off.
  
  In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who
  use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more
  than anything else, how quickly their own thought
  processes stop working.
  
  They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They
  cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush
  and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush
  is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible
  positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual-
  ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and
  if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what
  they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone
  like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find
  something in him 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread grate . swan
I thought stopping thought was a good thing. or at a minimum a step towards a 
good thing. So you are complaining that some have developed a mahavakaya that 
can instantly stop thoughts? Wouldn't that actually be a good thing? :) 


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to 
 a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone
 she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a 
 Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai 
 Lama had some positive things to say about former 
 president George W. Bush.
 
 IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to 
 interject a thought stopper into the conversation.
 The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something
 good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad,
 then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either.
 
 This just days after doing exactly the same thing 
 when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying
 that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness
 nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person 
 posted what was clearly intended to be another thought
 stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of
 the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds
 were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the
 author, and think negatively about her.
 
 Add to this a long history of this poster and other
 posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers 
 to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a
 liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to
 stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos-
 sibly having any positive qualities and instead
 think of them as something less than human. Call 
 someone a predator and again the readers are sup-
 posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused
 person off.
 
 In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who
 use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more
 than anything else, how quickly their own thought
 processes stop working.
 
 They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They
 cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush
 and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush
 is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible
 positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual-
 ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and
 if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what
 they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone
 like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find
 something in him to praise -- anything -- then *he*
 must be linked to the bad Bush and be bad 
 himself. 
 
 Same with calling someone a liar. Science tells
 us that human beings tell on the average 25 lies 
 a day. A self-honest person can look at themselves
 and realize that they tell lies, too, if only to
 themselves. Only an idiot would claim, I never 
 lie. But some idiots not only claim this, they
 attempt to use the epithet Liar! as a thought
 stopper. Again, the implication is that by calling
 someone a liar, you can make people think of the
 person you are attempting to demonize as ALL liar. 
 If they're a liar, the rationale of the thought-
 stopper-hurler goes, they are *complete* liars. 
 They cannot possibly have any other qualities or 
 attributes. *Stop thinking* of this person as 
 human; only think of them as a 'liar.'
 
 Same with the epithet predator. It conjures up
 images of child molesters and worse. And it is
 *supposed* to. Hurling the term predator at some-
 one you don't like is designed to get people to
 *stop thinking* about that person as human. They
 are supposed to think of them the way YOU do, as
 one-dimensional, as ONLY a predator.
 
 Same with invoking Kali Yuga as a catch-all
 excuse for why things suck. The idea is that one
 can throw that term out and people will stop think-
 ing that there is anything they can possibly *do*
 to *change* how things suck. You *can't* really
 change it, goes the thought stopper rationale,
 because it's Kali Yuga. Things *always* suck in
 Kali Yuga.
 
 I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of 
 people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers.
 The TM movement was not long on compassion. It
 never taught its followers that a person could be
 partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was 
 always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and 
 the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints
 scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no 
 middle ground. So if a person is characterized as 
 black, they are ALL black. 
 
 As a result IMO, many people who have come out of 
 such an environment are easy prey for those who use 
 thought stoppers as a tool of debate. And the people 
 who *rely* on thought stoppers know this, and use 
 the thought stoppers as often as they possibly can. 
 They know that the audience they are talking to
 has been taught to *despise* shades of gray and
 the possibility of feeling compassion for someone
 who has been accused of being bad. They know that
 many people coming out of a TM environment will 
 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread sparaig
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On May 6, 2009, at 3:04 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
 
 
  I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of
  people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers.
  The TM movement was not long on compassion. It
  never taught its followers that a person could be
  partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was
  always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and
  the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints
  scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no
  middle ground. So if a person is characterized as
  black, they are ALL black.
 
 
 You're missing one of the biggest TM org thought stoppers:
 
 Pure Consciousness.
 
 We were supposed to think wow, what could be better that PURE  
 consciousness? I don't need to look and farther or look into this  
 any more, if it's pure (and the experience they're telling me I will  
 have is Pure Consciousness), then I need look no further.
 
 But what's happening is other meditation researchers are seeing  
 through this screen of re-definition. the Cambridge Handbook of  
 Consciousness, the standard textbook in neurological and  
 consciousness research pointed this out several years ago. Before  
 that neurologist and Zen master James Austin pointed out how the word  
 was being used in a misleading kind of way, without any profound  
 proof for this profoundly named experience. 'The phrase ��pure  
 consciousness�� continues to sow confusion more than a
 decade after Forman pointed to its semantic pitfalls. When someone  
 employs the term today, it remains unclear whether its usage  
 describes an early moment, an intermediate step, or some ultimate  
 stage among the several optional varieties of consciousness. He then  
 goes on to describe in detail how the word is being used by TM  
 researchers to claim an exalted state, when in fact they're actual  
 attaching the thought-stopper (pun intended;-)) to a very rudimentary  
 state.
 
 It looks like the tom-foolery has been exposed.
 
 Beyond the thought-stopper is the further tendency 'if you repeat a  
 lie enough times, people will begin to believe it.' Despite being  
 caught at their act, I'm certain TM researchers, teachers and  
 professors will still continue to use Pure Consciousness as a  
 description. The fact is, at this point in the game, if they were  
 forced to abandon their use of this word, as applies to TM and it's  
 results, they'd have to rewrite websites and revise the entire  
 literature of TM, Maharishi Vedic Science--virtually ALL of the MUM  
 curriculum! It's all based on this (LOL) thought-stopper!



You're assuming that Austin has evidence of the more exhalted states,
did you notice? And who decides which laternate state is exhalted
in the first place?


Lawson



Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?

2009-05-06 Thread Vaj

On May 6, 2009, at 6:16 PM, sparaig wrote:

 You're missing one of the biggest TM org thought stoppers:

 Pure Consciousness.

 We were supposed to think wow, what could be better that PURE
 consciousness? I don't need to look and farther or look into this
 any more, if it's pure (and the experience they're telling me I will
 have is Pure Consciousness), then I need look no further.

 But what's happening is other meditation researchers are seeing
 through this screen of re-definition. the Cambridge Handbook of
 Consciousness, the standard textbook in neurological and
 consciousness research pointed this out several years ago. Before
 that neurologist and Zen master James Austin pointed out how the word
 was being used in a misleading kind of way, without any profound
 proof for this profoundly named experience. 'The phrase ��pure
 consciousness�� continues to sow confusion more than a
 decade after Forman pointed to its semantic pitfalls. When someone
 employs the term today, it remains unclear whether its usage
 describes an early moment, an intermediate step, or some ultimate
 stage among the several optional varieties of consciousness. He then
 goes on to describe in detail how the word is being used by TM
 researchers to claim an exalted state, when in fact they're actual
 attaching the thought-stopper (pun intended;-)) to a very rudimentary
 state.

 It looks like the tom-foolery has been exposed.

 Beyond the thought-stopper is the further tendency 'if you repeat a
 lie enough times, people will begin to believe it.' Despite being
 caught at their act, I'm certain TM researchers, teachers and
 professors will still continue to use Pure Consciousness as a
 description. The fact is, at this point in the game, if they were
 forced to abandon their use of this word, as applies to TM and it's
 results, they'd have to rewrite websites and revise the entire
 literature of TM, Maharishi Vedic Science--virtually ALL of the MUM
 curriculum! It's all based on this (LOL) thought-stopper!



 You're assuming that Austin has evidence of the more exhalted  
 states,
 did you notice?

Well, I'm taking his own extensive experience of higher states of  
consciousness as valuable. I personally found his accounts very  
believable, incredibly detail and insightful.

 And who decides which laternate state is exhalted
 in the first place?

Well I don't believe that is specifically Austin's observation on PC.  
Austin's observation seems to me to be one common for people familiar  
with staged forms of meditation experientially who then encounter a  
single-stage meditation techniques which claim the ability to access  
very high stages: they experientially know and recognize the folly.

His written comments, where he criticizes the ambiguous use of TM  
buzzwords like pure consciousness and cosmic consciousness are  
based both on his own direct experience of thought-free states back in  
the early part of his meditative retreat experience and how further  
higher more unitive states follow thereafter. He feels, as do many  
other experienced meditators, that the words used and research claims  
are not congruent with the actual experiences that are traditionally  
known to belong to them. Instead the states being described by TM  
researchers are shallow preludes of higher states of consciousness.  
This is hardly surprising since both TM/TMSPers and TM teachers are  
never really given any further stages of meditation beyond the most  
rudimentary (although one could say the original night technique is an  
exception).