I've read with some fascination the discussions about Yahoo and whether it handles threads properly or doesn't, but for me the whole thing isn't really an issue. I understand that many people are busy, and would like to be able to focus on only the threads and subjects that interest them,
For me, however, reading FFL is recreation, something I do for my own enjoyment, and reading the posts sequentially, on the Yahoo website, actually adds to my enjoyment. I can even come up with a pseudo-intellectual reason why. :-) When I was studying with the Rama guy, there was a lot of emphasis on career as part of one's spiritual sadhana. And he pointed a number of us in the direction of a particular field of computer science, relational database. His reason for this (besides the fact that it paid well) was that in his view working with relational databases was very much like the Tibetan practices we used to perform in previous incarnations. In those practices, a teacher would hold up a thangka painting of an elaborate, incredibly intricate mandala. The student would get to gaze at it for only a minute or so. And then the student was sent away to visualize the mandala until he could see it in his mind *exactly* as it appeared in the painting. To some extent, working with relational database is like that. There are all these tables, sometimes thousands of them. In a big, distributed database, sometimes tens of thousands of them. Each table contains data elements, which are related to each other and to other data elements in other tables in num- erous ways. And to be able to work effectively with such a database, you really have to be able to construct a mental picture of the entire database in your mind, visualize it. That, to some extent, is why I like to read FFL unthreaded. I just read each post in the order in which it arrived at the Yahoo server. It's all a big jumble of data, written by different people about different subjects and from completely different points of view. And the task of "threading" it, or making sense of it all and determining what the relationships are between these different posts becomes your *own* task, not the task of the software. It works for me, because I like this place and I like the people here and I like putting things together in my own way. Some people may not see a relationship between a post dealing with computer technology and another post dealing with the best way to prepare and eat the Buddha when you meet him on the road and another post that seems to have originated from one of the Ascended Masters. There probably *is* no real relationship between these different subjects, and between the people who wrote about them, but I always manage to find one. The bottom line for me is that real life isn't "threaded." You have to deal with things as they arise and organize them in your mind as best you can. For me, Fairfield Life is better appreciated the same way. Your mileage may vary... Unc 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/
