--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "dhamiltony2k5" <dhamiltony...@...> wrote: > > Om, that's cool. A meditating status does help puts a > useful context to some of the criticism that often goes > on here. Provides an insight of context. Current meditator, > has-been meditator, and non-meditator. Status helps put a > different scope on it when someone writes some critical or > even hating meditation stuff. Is nice to be able to separate > the meditators here from the non-meditators at the git-go. > Who is who here.
Doug, It's often difficult to tell when you're doing one of your put-ons and when you're serious and when you think you're doing one of your put-ons but are serious. I'm going to assume that this latest thing is one of the latter. I honestly don't believe that "meditator vs. non-meditator" proves anything except an elitist bias in the person who might believe it proves something. It's as silly a black/white, either/or set of boxes as any I've ever heard of. Have you ever seen any evidence that long-term meditators are consistently any different than anyone else? I haven't. However, if creating little boxes and putting people in them is your schtick, I think you might do better with boxes *within* the community of TM meditators. I can think of several. I leave it to you to, after you've identified all the meditators, scan the list of them and put each one in the box most suited to them in my scheme of things. I know who my nominees for each box are, but I figure it will be more fun if everyone gets to populate them themselves. It'll be even more fun seeing who gets all uptight for being placed in one of the boxes by me, when I didn't put them there. They did, by getting uptight about it. :-) The Intellect-Challenged. This box is filled with individuals who have demon- strated not only a shocking lack of knowledge about spirituality as a whole but also about TM spirituality. One of the qualities of people in this box is that not only do they rarely read or try to learn new things, they look down on learning new things. They honestly feel that either what they know now is suf- ficient and will be "enough" for the rest of their lives, or that anything they don't know now will just "come to them" as a kind of "seeing." The fact *that* they "see" it makes it true. The Intellect-Trapped. This box contains those who are...uh...trapped in their own intellects. Not only that, they are *proud* of being trapped in their intel- lects, and go on and on making excuses for it. You can usually tell these people by 1) a need to "defend" anything that their intellect believes, 2) a need to defend the intellect itself as good, and 3) an even stronger need to "prove" that anyone who believes something different than their intellect believes has something wrong with them. Interestingly, whereas The Intellectually-Challenged sometimes display real emotion, The Intellect- Trapped rarely do. It's as if the only emotion they can feel is the kind they "jumpstart" themselves with an injection of faux bhakti or manufactured outrage. Also, interestingly enough, IMO The Intellectually-Challenged are probably more likely to eventually realize enlight- enment because they're not smart enough to do anything other than what they were told to do. Whereas The Intellect-Trapped constantly invent ways to block the enlightenment process because they're so afraid that it would mean loss of ego and thus loss of intellect. The Intellect- Trapped like to "win;" if there is no debate or argument going on, they'll provoke one and claim to have won it. The Fearless. The folks in this box aren't really in a box. They got fed up with boxes a while ago and don't have much to do with them any more. They're pretty nice people, and don't see meditation as the center of their lives; instead, they see meditation as merely one of the things they do that helps to center their lives, along with love, family, having fun, and above all being themselves. They almost never argue because unlike the two previous groups they've got nothing to "prove." So far, the folks in this group are the only ones you'd want to have a drink with. The Lasher-Outers. The folks in this box look down on and resent anyone who is "off the program" or, worse, appears to be having fun. The people in the first two boxes do this, too, but what makes this box unique is that the majority of folks in it are lurkers who rarely post *except* to lash out. That's *their* idea of fun. And being "on the program." So, I've reacted to Doug's attempt to divide the world into the "meditator box" and the "non-meditator box" by creating my own "meditator sub-boxes." Now you can file your favorite FFL posters in them. Or invent your own. I'm sure there are many more such "meditator sub-boxes," but I'm already bored with the subject. :-) Or you could just lash out. But you know what box that'll put you in... :-)
