Bronte writes:
As we are ALL channels for our God, Curtis. In my view, we each have a higher
self, our own personal God, or you could say, our ego in its most pure
individualized state. Our human bodies and personalities are channels for that
being, as well as for God in the universal sense.
You took it out of context to make me look megalamanic -- I wrote "in spite
of many faults which I still intend to correct, I am a fairly clear channel for
my God." And I am. God gets through my wires successfully a darn good portion
of the time. It's a sad world if we have to be ashamed to say that.
Why I objected to her anonymous holiness the other day was not because she
felt connected with God, but because she spoke of herself as superior to the
people around her, people she described as beggars after her dharshan. I find
that appalling. As I said, if you ever find me thinking or talking like that,
drag me home by the toenails and hold me down in a bathtub of icewater. But to
say "I am God" is everyone's human right, including my own. I won't be ashamed
of admitting my birthright, or the fact that I lay claim to it. As everybody
can. That wonderful equality was the whole point of my "it's free to all of us"
post.
- Bronte
curtisdeltablues <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"I'm a fairly clear channel for my God"
Double uh oh.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bronte Baxter
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> do.rflx wrote:
> I look at the quantity of people like myself in that seemingly
> 'unique' and 'special' time frame who were 'lost' in the darker side
> of the hippie daze [days], or just plain 'lost' - and because of TM
> became positive and hopeful for probably the first time in many of
> their lives. The life-saving transformation that happened to me must
> also have been evident in hundreds of thousands of others in those days.
>
> Bronte writes:
>
> You guys make a point that needs to be considered: the fact that
TM did save a lot (most?) of us drugged-out hippies from a nose-diving
lifestyle. I, too, had that experience. The first time I transcended,
the tears rolled down my cheeks for 20 minutes. I had felt so isolated
for so many years, believing in nothing beyond the world of the
senses. In that 20-minute session, I knew beyond a doubt there was a
God. I felt a sense of presence I hadn't known since I was a little
girl. All the noise in my mind had turned to stillness.
>
> And TM quickly also changed my life, in ways much like other
people's stories already told here. So if the TMO, or New Age in
general, is -- as has been alleged -- manipulating people into
becoming mindless zombies, or nice-guys-turned-possessed (Hitler: a
worst-case example) -- how can that possibly be, when TM brought so
much good into our lives? I've thought about this a good deal, and I
think it is a very important question.
>
> What I come up with is this. TM did deliver experience of the
stillest states of awareness, that most of us had been too
outward-directed ever to have noticed before. It pointed us toward
home. That was fantastic. But just as a bad product offer can include
a really good freebie giveaway, TM attached a pretty big pricetag to
the good that it gave us. That pricetag wasn't noticed until we'd been
meditating a long time, until we'd bought the philosophy hook line and
sinker. Kind of like those credit card deals that start out with zero
interest then slowly build interest until you're amazed to find
yourself swimming in debt.
>
> The pricetag was, you pay a toll to the gods to ride the road to
transcendence. You get to pure consciousness using a toll road
highway. At first you're asked for only a tiny toll, no pinch at all.
You're informed this is the only way to the ocean -- taking the
freeway is far too dangerous. So the aspirant flies down the toll
road, thrilled to be using it, paying 35 cents at a tollbooth now and
then. But as the years go by, the toll charge rises -- he gets an
advanced technique, he starts reading Vedas to the gods every day,
listening to chants -- his mantra gets "namah" added to it. Bowing,
bowing down. Delivering soma to the gods.
>
> Longer and longer hours are spent meditating, and he's told this
is good for him. But his health is getting weaker now, he feels
irritability where he used to only feel peace. He has little time for
personal pursuits because the movement requires his fulltime service.
(I'm not saying everyone who meditates experiences weak health after a
while, but a lot of people do.)
>
> But the aspirant rarely complains because he's told he's getting
so much good from all this. He probably hasn't noticed a lot of
progress in a long time. But he believes -- why? Because of those
first great initiatory experiences! Back when the toll was 35 cents.
Back when he visited his inner Source and came back again, infused
with its values, dynamic into activity. But now his energy is going to
Indra and Kali, Shiva and Saraswati. Pictures of gods line the walls
of his house. An alter is in his bedroom. And because he's not happy,
perhaps he starts to visit other gurus, hoping for renewal of those
early days of purity and joy. But instead he just accumulates more
teachers, who teach the very same things only rearranged a little.
They give him a new mantra or a special name. Maybe they give him a
hug. He has so much invested already -- all these years of his life!
So he hangs on yet stronger, dedicating even more of himself to
spiritual advancement.
>
> And he is taught to how to handle the frustration, that feeling he
used to get that his life was supposed to be more. That is just
egoistic desire, he is told. So he surrenders his personal needs. When
his mind starts questioning, he also has been taught the solution to
that: know that the wise embrace paradox -- nothing is real, no thing
is true. Everything but the Absolute is illusion.
>
> The aspirant surrenders mind and desire. He offers them on the
alter of his meditation, of his devotion. He sings more hymns to the
gods. "Oh, Mother, relieve me from this suffering." She does. The
goddess does. The aspirant feels better after meditation and chanting.
His depression miraculously disappears. It comes back, but it goes
away when he meditates. He knows the gracious gods are taking his pain
away. Relieved of so much of what once made him a person, he feels
much less pain. Life seems to flow these days, quite easily. Almost
like he has to do nothing. He feels one with the universe much of the
time. The rest of the time he's irritable or depressed. Sometimes he
rages at people. He doesn't know why he's discontent sometimes. But
his teachers have an answer: surrender your ego completely. All this
is just selfish, limited ego. The wise man knows he is not the
personality, not the one who desires, not the one who does or the one
who thinks. The wise man knows all
> that is but ignorance. You suffer because you wallow still in
illusion. Eschew the ego. Surrender to the Self -- by way of our
mantras, chants and hymns to the gods. Then you will be free of the
last vestiges of human suffering.
>
> So the aspirant does this. He pays the ultimate toll. He allows
his personhood to be fully consumed. And who does he pay it to, the
Absolute? No, to the gods themselves. They it is who eat the fruit of
the sacrifice. They it is he bows down to every day, and now every
moment, replacing his very thoughts with the name of his assigned deity.
>
> The Absolute didn't want him to surrender. It didn't mind his
thoughts and desires. It could have given him the wonderful things he
once wanted. It waits with open arms for anyone who comes to it, and
is ready to grant every wish. But the poor man on the toll road, who
knew no other way, gave all he had to the gods and his guru for the
privilege of knowing the Transcendent. Yes, he gets to have it in the
end. But the price has been his personhood. The price to the
Transcendent has been the destruction of the soul of one of its
precious children. Only a zombie remains -- an empty shell through
which the gods can work their deeds and talk their talk, snaring new
seekers and "selling" the Transcendent to others.
>
> But the ocean was never really up for sale. God never had a price
tag. Heaven was never intended to turn into a racket. The Infinite
weeps for what is being done on earth in its name. And all the while
it sits there, free, for anyone who will look.
>
> So when Angela asks, what is really happening? I listen with both
ears. I'm looking beyond the appearances. I'm asking the tough
questions. Am I scared of what I'll find? Don't I have cherished
assumptions, a world view that could crash? That has already happened,
and guess what, I'm still here. Because when my world view crashed, it
left but one thing behind. It left my Isness. I found that I'm
immortal, that I'm always joined with God. Nothing can ever sever me
unless I give it permission.
>
> No one can take my personhood or my knowledge. I'm filled with
dynamic energy and original ways of seeing. In spite of many still
remaining flaws, which I'll work out because I've committed to that,
I'm a fairly clear channel for my God. Not god with a small g, but God
the Infinite. God, as in the magnificent power and love that created
this world in hopes of making something joyous and beautiful. The God
who saw that dream lost by the ignorance of its children, then
railroaded by a few who started to remember and told the still-asleep
that they were gods.
>
> TM gave us something. But that was the thing that was always free
to us anyway, had we only known where to look. It's something that
still waits for us, never demanding we pay a toll. It's there for the
experiencing, without gods or mantras, bajans or ego-suicide. It's
just what we Are, and it just Is.
>
>
>
>
> "do.rflex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer"
<rick@> wrote:
> >
> > From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > On Behalf Of do.rflex
> > Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 10:51 AM
> > To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Mahesh and Hitler
> >
> >
> >
> > Absolutely. My case wasn't as extreme but Transcendental Meditation
> > got me to stop drug use and to get my act together. My ultra
> > conservative Irish Catholic father whom I'd considered an asshole,
> > became one of my best supporters. After I'd practiced TM for about a
> > year he told me, "That meditation saved your life, boy." And after I
> > became a TM teacher my father asked me to initiate him. Now THAT'S a
> > miracle! And if you had known my father, you'd agree.
> >
> > I had similar experiences with my parents. My dad was an alcoholic
> and my
> > mom was in a mental hospital. TM helped them both tremendously. My mom
> > actually spent 9 months in Switzerland with MMY and came back quite
> > transformed. I'm grateful to him for allowing her to come. It was a
> gift to
> > me, as he knew very well she wouldn't accomplish much there.
>
> I look at the quantity of people like myself in that seemingly
> 'unique' and 'special' time frame who were 'lost' in the darker side
> of the hippie daze [days], or just plain 'lost' - and because of TM
> became positive and hopeful for probably the first time in many of
> their lives. The life-saving transformation that happened to me must
> also have been evident in hundreds of thousands of others in those days.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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