another 'air sign', with coffee...ok, here goes: I had a slightly different experience with the movement, in that I was always very open about my experiences- with Guru Dev and other stuff, like the time a Gita study class was going on, everyone in a circle and I saw tendrils of energy or smoke moving from everyone's crown area joining up to a point in the center of the circle and some figure sitting at that point. Whatever, flashy, hoo-hah!
The point being that I waited until after the class and matter of factly related what I had seen to the teacher, John Black. He was ok with it and didn't give me any canned speech to dissuade me. So during that time and many others, I found everyone including the teachers pretty open and accepting of these experiences-- even if they were baffled by them, no one ever put me down for talking about them. The thing is though, no one else talked about stuff like that. It was always more of the 'one day we will reach the promised land, massuh...' type of stuff. It got boring. Really boring. Haven't been back. --- In [email protected], Peter Sutphen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In my early days in the TMO from '72 to '78 there always was some structured activity for people to share and talk about their experiences. This was not discouraged in the least. But starting with the big Amherst course in '79 this pretty much stopped. It does seem rather ironic that a spiritual movement who's primary goal is enlightenment does not encourage its members to talk about their experiences regarding this goal. I've always seen this as a political decision. I believe Bevan et al wanted to hold on to the interpretive power or the sanctioned narrative of enlightenment. This then assured them of the "purity of the teaching" and sole control over the meaning of enlightenment. God forbid there could be people out there in the TMO in higher states of consciousness who disagreed with MMY or the TMO. These people had to be marginalized. And they were by not allowing personal talk of enlightenment. Enlightenment was only discussed as an inspiration to continue with some program or > to adhere to some organizational rule. So now the TMO discourse of enlightenment is filled with meaningless buzz words used to control rather than to deepen understanding. This seems to happen to all spiritual organizations when those in power have no experiences that gave rise to the spiritual movement in the first place. Then the picture frame becomes more important than the picture. > To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
