In the developing world of meditation, there is NO method that has any
superiority.
99% of Americans can't name much more than 2 forms of meditation, while there
are infinite techniques of meditation including 'living in a meditative
state'.
Arhata
--- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, "curtisdeltablues"
<curtisdeltablues@ ...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, "Rick Archer" <rick@> wrote:
>
> > Although no group of three meditators is representative
> > of the whole bunch. I know plenty of sweet, non-judgmental
> > ones.
>
> Which comes back to my theory of meditaton, that it
> doesn't really improve people in any way that matters
> to people around them.
Now this is worth examining.
First, I think that it's wise to remember that,
unless I am misinterpreting what you are saying,
that both of you are equating "meditation" in
this discussion with "Transcendental Meditation."
I do not. My experience is that some other forms
of meditation and spiritual practice do NOT lead
to the types of abherrent behavior we see in Nabby,
Off, Judy.
In these other traditions if this type of behavior
was present before, and the three of them struggled
to hang on to that behavior as desperately as these
three do, it would NOT have been allowed. Other
techniques and/or counseling would have been provided
to keep the abherrent behavior from going as far
and becoming as entrenched as it seems to have
become in them.
Compare and contrast to the TM community as we knew
it, where these three DON'T EVEN STAND OUT.
There are so MANY like them that my experience leads
me to believe that there IS something in particular
*wrong* with the TM approach if it allows behavior
like this to not only go on for decades, but to be
officially praised as being "On The Program."
> It is an internal choice of a mental state that is
> important only to the person who prefers it.
Curtis, I think that different *forms* of meditation
have different effects, and that some of those effects
seem to be more positive in the long run than others.
Also, in many other spiritual traditions, they don't
have the TM "panacea" belief that meditation ALONE
will "fix" everything, and is "all you need." They
believe, in fact, just the opposite, that meditation
alone will NOT "fix" everything, and that MANY other
techniques of spiritual development are necessary.
So I'm not sure I can agree with your thesis unless
we are talking ONLY about TM, and its "one size fits
all / meditation is all you need" mentality. It has
not been my experience in some other spiritual com-
munities that 30+ years of following *their( disci-
plines results in a human being who seems to have
learned nothing in all of those years.
Yes, any group is composed of individuals, and there
is variance between those individuals. But in any
group there is also a "sameness," a kind of psychic
"trademark" of that spiritual tradition or practice.
And I'm not alone in the larger world of spiritual
seekers to have noticed that the TM tradition seems
to produce more of these bent and broken people
than other traditions do.
I don't personally know WHY, but I do know that it
seems to be the case.
