--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], nablusoss1008 <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > Now, and for the rest of his life he will denounce the > > only Master he ever physically met. > > Denounce? What are you in Glee or something Nabbie? Lay > off the drama pills, they don't suit you.
Au contraire, Pierre. Nabby's outraged drama queen antics provide one of the most enduring and enter- taining soap operas on this forum. :-) For some of us, who find the eternally-repeating discussions of the Same Old Shit here boring, the drama queen antics provide us with some laughs, and the occasional opportunity to practice the ancient martial art of TBT (True Believer Taunting). Caveat: I know that you don't do this as much as you used to, Curtis, preferring a kinder, gentler, "Let's see if there is any there there in some of these people to find a resonance with" approach, and I respect that. It's just that I'm WAY past that point with some of the TBs here, and have lost any hope that there will *ever* be any there there to interact with. So I occasionally have fun with them in other ways. For example, yesterday I was replying to a post of yours and got to a sloppily-written, ill-conceived sentence by one such TB. In that sentence, the TB hinted at "having been in the audience" when MMY made certain statements. I knew that this had never happened, and in fact despite her act as "authori- tative about things Maharishi" on this forum she had never been in the same room with him, and was arguably the *least* authoritative person on the forum, and was outrageously sensitive about having this fact pointed out. It is possible that she is, in fact, the person who has seen the *fewest* tapes of MMY of anyone on this forum, yet she consistently presents herself as the most knowledgeable about "What MMY taught." This is a key facet of the self image she tries to project here. So I decided to have a little fun with the badly-written sentence, and see if I could get her to "post out" with only one sentence, the first I had directed to her all week. It worked like a charm. I wrote one short sentence taking (as Curtis said) the least charitable view of what she had written possible. I figured that since she had already spent almost half of her posts this week trying to "get" someone who was ignoring her completely (moi), she deserved a little "poking at." And she reacted *exactly* as I thought she would. Now she's gone for the rest of the week, while I still have 20 posts to play with. Do less, accomplish more. :-) The thing is, I have explained what I do with this TBT strategy many times, trying to clue in the folks I do it to as to what's being done to them, and They Just Don't Get It. My theory is that if one feels that someone on an Internet forum personifies the *worst* traits of a spiritual tradition while con- sistently positioning themselves as a "defender of the faith" for that spiritual tradition, you don't try to *say* what you think about their lower traits; you just push their buttons and then sit back and wait for them to overreact, and thus demonstrate them. It is my contention that one of the worst traits one finds in spirituality is Religious Fanatic Syndrome, in which the TB can be easily taunted into revealing how thin-skinned and predictable they are. With the TB in question, her laughable attempts to portray herself as Ms. I Never Lie over the years are the tip-off as to what most pushes her buttons. She is SO attached to her carefully-crafted image that she flies into an ill-concealed rage every time that image is challenged. So I challenged it, and then sat back and waited for her to go ballistic and "post out" in one day. She did not disappoint. :-) But we see the same thin-skinned "I can be provoked into lashing out by the simplest shit" even in those who claim on this forum to be "enlightened" or "self realized." Push their buttons, and *they* oblige by demonstrating how attached they are to *their* self image as well. Jimbo couldn't resist yesterday, either, and jumped into the fray wearing his "I'm so enlightened and free from attachment I'm going to demonstrate it by spending several posts reacting angrily and trying to insult those who have poked fun at the teachers and ideas I'm attached to" T-shirt. I'm writing this just to see whether either of them, or Nabby, who is arguably not as smart as either ( and that's really saying something when dealing with the Turgid Turnip :-) can recognize that they were Owned yesterday by someone who had simply figured out their attachments, and taken advantage of them. My bet is no. Their egos (which, after all, are what a button-pusher takes advantage of when practicing TBT) cannot allow them to admit that they were Owned. But they were. One of them went so ballistic that she has to sit out the rest of the week on the I Couldn't Control Myself bench. The other may join her there soon after reading this post. :-) Yes, it's a perverse way of having fun, but IMO it beats interacting with these people, and thus giving them the impression that someone is taking them as seriously as they take themselves. Of the three, Nabby's the most fun because he's incredibly clueless, but at the same time he has occasionally displayed a sense of humor in the past; the other two have really never achieved that high-water mark. So one more time, just for the record, here's what I do for fun on this forum, laid out for those I do it to. My theory is that the *least* spiritual trait or characteristic is attachment -- to one's ideas or concepts or chosen dogma, to one's teacher or spiritual tradition, and most of all to one's self image. So when I notice someone who consistently wears "Push Me" attachment buttons on their sleeve, I push them. The pushees *almost always* react by going bat-shit crazy and *demonstrating* their level of attachment. Most of the time I ignore these self-importance TBs as the uninteresting dweebs they are, and will do so in the future. But every so often, just for the fun of it, I'll push a button and then sit back and allow them to demonstrate who and what they really are. If they were half as smart as they think they are, they'd have figured out by now what was being done to them and developed a little self-control. Especially because I've *told* them several times now what I do and why I do it. But their egos -- and their attach- ments -- won't allow them to hear it, so they'll just keep falling for the same old gag over and over and over and over. Think I'm wrong about this? Just watch. You'll see how one of them reacts to this post the rest of this week, and you'll see how the other "hits the ground still overreacting" to it Friday night. And the funny thing is, both will be convinced that they're some- how "winning" when they do what I'm setting them up to do. Now *that* is bat-shit crazy.
