On May 7, 2009, at 1:38 PM, Richard M wrote:
That sounds marvelous of course. Jolly good luck to them.
But seriously, who would want to run such courses in today's
climate of
fear? With everyone suing at the drop of a hat and a "blame culture"
that serves to turn everyone into "victims"?
Look at Mr "I learnt to meditate but all I got from TM is a twitch"
Knapp (cf. your post earlier). Do you seriously think that your
estimable Alan can guarantee NO side-effects to Michelle and her
students, given your own startling list of what they might expect
gleaned from your Vajra Esssence text? Do the course leaders have a
good legal team?
For my part I think the presumption should be "buyer beware!". If I
read a story about some Michelle who came away with a twitch after
attending a retreat that involved hours and hours of meditation, I
would not immediately sympathasise with her as "victim". For me it
would make no difference whether the story involved Buddhist,
Christian, TM or whatever meditation either.
Honestly, the only place I've seen people come away with unresolvable
twitching and other Tourrette's like symptoms is with TM. In
Muktananda's people, many people would get movements, but they would
resolve, typically through spontaneous mudras or asanas.
But for you Vaj? Be honest - if the story referenced TM meditation,
wouldn't you start getting that familiar twitch in your mousing
fingers? Just gotta scratch that posting itch?
Kind of an unfair question R. because I'm already intimately familiar
with the range of experiences that go along with TM and the TMSP and
how people tend to parse that lingo on their own and how they also
give coached or nudged responses. I am also tend to be clued into
discriminating the differences between allocentric meditation with
it's results and egocentric meditation and it's results. Perhaps
because I have some experience with both, I'm more attuned to their
descriptions and what they mean. It's something that is typically
(although not always) obvious to me.
