--- In [email protected], "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote: > > On Behalf Of nablusoss1008 > > > > > --- shempmcgurk wrote: > > > > > > No, because I still want to remain anonymous here on FFL. > > > > I know the identities of many anonymous people here and > > am good at keeping them secret. > > > > Is that so ? At least your "friend", > > He is my friend. > > > > the fellow with earpieces looking very gay > > you have a problem with that? > > > and drugged-out > > he doesn't take drugs. > > > from the pictures the Turq posted here, Alex Stanley is > > doing what he can to proove you wrong. > > Where have you been, did you not read what that fool > > posted here a couple of days ago? > > I believe I did. He said, correctly, that you can tell > where a person is, roughly, by their IP address, which > you can see in the header info of their post. It has > always been that way. What's your point?
Rick, It occurred to me this morning, as I brewed myself a coffee and settled in to read FFL, that there is an analogy that seems to fairly accurately describe folks here who are either 1) overly paranoid about concealing their identity, or 2) overly compulsive about trying to control or "spin" their image -- what other people think of them. That analogy is that they're like people who are deathly afraid of shadows, but who live in a room full of light bulbs. One of those light bulbs goes on, casts a shadow of *them* onto the wall, and they react in terror. They scream in fear and yell and blame the light for their own fear of their own shadow. In the case of people trying to protect their anonymity, as I've said before, there are good reasons to do so. One could be concerned about reprisals from the TM movement, or be concerned that being known as a TMer might hurt their business. There are also bad reasons for anonymity, such as a *continued* history of abuse of others, including actual reprisals and threats of actual violence against them, performed from under the cover of an ever-changing series of screen names. What these people (and there are very few of them on FFL, and all obviously not quite "all there" mentally) don't seem to realize is that according to the Patriot Act, in America threatening some- one physically over the Internet gets them classed as a terrorist, and in the Bush era could have guaranteed them a one-way ticket to Guantanamo. Now, under Obama, such threats would probably only land them in a local jail. As for the compulsion to "spin" one's projected image, and to repetitively react to any perception of them that doesn't match their projected image, well that's a more interesting phenomenon IMO. On a spiritual level, it is clearly attachment to self. The self is what "casts a shadow." The light is what *creates* the shadow, attempting to pass through it as the selflessness that light knows it really is, but finding "substance" -- samskaras, ego, beliefs, attachments. All of these things cast a shadow. And the self doesn't *LIKE* the shadow- selves that light projects of them, so it reacts with fear and anger and a compulsion to 1) demonize the light, and 2) claim that "That shadow isn't me. Only *I* -- the way *I* present myself -- am me." The fascinating thing is that none of the ways that these selves-attached-to-their-selves present them- selves are "them," either. Only Self is really "them," and Self doesn't cast a shadow. I'm all for anonymity on this forum unless it is used to hide abuse. I'm less for the compulsive "spinning" of one's shadow to pretend it isn't one's own. We're all "light bulbs" on this forum, and we all cast our own light. And we all cast our own shadows. If we're wise, we *learn* from those shadows...we don't fear them and curse the light that projected them.
