Hey Robin,

I read this all, and enjoyed it.


--- In [email protected], maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In [email protected], turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote:
>
> Robin: Just for fun Barry, especially since I did read every word of
the following rant, and can therefore almost certainly tell you what it
means and what motivated it.
>
> Barry: Just for fun, Steve, especially because I didn't read aword of
the rant that you're referring to, but can almostcertainly tell you what
it said, and what motivated it.
>
> --- In [email protected], "seventhray1" steve.sundur@
wrote:
> >
> > --- In [email protected], maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote:
> > >
> > > For instance, I feel it would be cruel of me to ask you
> > > to read my last long post to Barry. And why is this?
> > > Because the extent to which it was successfully exposing
> > > Barry's weakness, is precisely the extent to which you
> > > would not like it. And in fact, you *couldn't* continue
> > > to read it—for this very...
> >
> Steve: I read about a third of it. And you are right, I *couldn't*
> > read anymore.
>
> Barry: That's because you're sane, Steve. :-)
>
> Robin: Knockdown argument here manifested. Saneness made visible
>
> Barry: I didn't read any of it, but I can tell you all about it.
>
> Robin: You read it, liar.
>
> Barry: First, it was long, at least a couple of thousand words,
> the result of easily half an hour or an hour's worth of
> ranting.
>
> Robin: Your hatred is the result of easily 40 years worth of ranting.
>
> Barry: Second, it went through my post point by point
> and tried to turn each point into a condemnation of me,
> "pointing out my weaknesses."
>
> Robin: It succeeded perfectly, or almost perfectly, in this aim.
>
> Barry: Third, it was so badly
> written that only someone with abysmally low standards
> (like an avid Dan Brown reader) would be able to make
> their way through it.
>
> Robin: There will be readers on FFL who will dispute this. In fact if
you compare Barry's Amsterdam Manifesto on Boring and Uninteresting with
my critique of same, there can be no question about it: Robin's putdown
of Barry, interesting; Barry's manifesto, pretty goddamn boring. You
should read it again, Barry. This would be the unanimous verdict of
anyone who was outside of FFL and knew neither one of us. Happy to have
this hypothesis tested. Although you are doing better in your more
venomous rant here.
>
> Barry: And fourth, it was so obviously an"attack on Barry" that no one
other than a person who
> already had a grudge against him would *want* to read it.
>
> Robin: Not an attack upon you at all, Barry. Just making you
accountable, and demonstrating how silly and worthless was your long
boring and uninteresting manifesto.
>
> Barry: Also, it was "cruel" to ask you to read it, but it wasn't
> cruel of him to write it, or to demand that I read it.
>
> Robin: Not sure what you mean here, Barry Boy. I think, according to
what you set out to do here, that it was in fact cruel of me to write
it. But I didn't have to demand that you read it, Barry. You did that on
your own. No one in their right mind who was sane would ever spend a
thousand words commenting on an analysis they didn't read. It would be
too chancy. For all you know, I might have been burying the hatchet.
>
> As it turns out, however, I *was* burying the hatchet. [Reader
supplies own punchline here.]
>
> Barry: How'd I do? :-)
>
> Robin: You're doing fine, Barry. Go on now.
>
> Barry: The reason I'm bothering to comment is to point out some-
> thing that has been pointed out before by Vaj and to some
> extent by Curtis -- the fact that Robin's act *has not
> changed in the least since he was a faux spiritual teacher
> in Fairfield*. It's the same old same old. He's an abuser.
>
> Robin: A bipolar mindset, manic, drama queen, mentally ill abuser,
attention vampire. And it all shine forth in my posts—especially the
ones to Barry.
>
> But an abuser? Do you feel you have been abused, Barry? Well, then, I
have succeeded, although my intent was not to abuse, but to challenge
and refute you.
>
> The sensation of abuse comes in when its hurts, I suppose. Yeah, you
got abused, Barry. Why don't I abuse more persons on this forum, though.
I need some more victims.
>
> To satisfy my craving.
>
> By the way: I have never 'abused' Curtis. Not the way I have abused
you. So I can demonstrate some discrimination in applying my 35 year-old
Unity Consciousness schtick: which *did* violate the personal space of
other human beings. I have stopped doing that, Barry—some 25 years
ago; but if someone acts the part of the liar and abuser here on FFL,
then why should I not, like everyone else, exercise my prerogative to
answer them? You abused obbajeeba. Judy called you on it. I called you
on it. You were so humiliated by that that you wrote your Amsterdam
Manifesto on Boring and Uninteresting, which I replied to with much brio
and delight. You sought to use your manifesto as a means of protecting
you against the charge of having exhibited a very refined form of sadism
with obbajeeba—who I am sure has forgiven you (but she shouldn't).
No, you are the abuser of all abusers here on FFL, Barry. I am a gentle
florist compared to you.
>
> Barry: Back in the Bad Old Days, RWC would drag his followers up
> on stage and yell at them (and possibly even strike them),
> "pointing out their weaknesses" and telling them exactly
> what kinds of demons were possessing them.
>
> Robin: This is a crude and misinformed and inaccurate description of
what went on between 1976 and 1986. I never once struck someone on
stage. If you read Rory's account from his autobiography you get the
very essence of metaphysical theatre that I acted out under my
enlightenment. Although not nearly the whole picture. Someone who has a
mature and unbiased perspective—who was there—will eventually
speak out on this forum I hope, and then we can hear the other side,
which will be critical, but will not resemble in the least the
description given here. There are persons out there who know all about
what happened. And I have already interrogated myself over this very
serious matter these past 25 years. And I haven't seen any demons for a
few decades, Barry :-)—but perhaps now my streak will be broken. You
don't ever grasp a hold of reality when you argue like this, Barry. You
systematically avoid contact with reality. And it shows. Not to Steve,
but to a few others I would think. (I mean besides the horrible woman
Judy—now talk about abuse: did you read some of her recent posts to
me, Barry? Now *that's* what I call abuse.)
>
> Barry: Now think about the post you're talking about, or his many
> posts to Curtis or Vaj. Does the pattern sound familiar?
>
> Robin: The pattern is one of love, discrimination, sensitivity,
sincerity, honesty and probably a fair measure of ignorance,
misperception, wrongheadedness, and misinterpretation. The final letter
to Ravi Chivukula entirely refutes you, Barry. Where does the pattern
show up there? And as for my dialogue with Curtis, we had our good days,
and they lasted even now much longer than the days of our estrangement.
The pattern there was bright and vigorous and jubilant argument, as my
offline correspondence with your faithful friend will attest to. So,
this is a false generalization, Barry, in no way representative of the
truth. Right? Wow! Glad to see your eyes on this, Barry. But: I thought
you said you didn't read my posts? And here you are—oops (Reader:
Barry just averted his eyes).
>
> Barry: That's exactly what he has tried to do since Day One on
> FFL to Curtis and to anyone else who doesn't treat him as
> "special" or authoritative, and allow him to preach at them.
>
> Robin: No, no, Barry. I never in those good times with Curtis ever
"preach[ed] at [him]". It was essentially a love fest. Were you not
there? And I have formal proof of this—even beyond the posts
themselves—in the form of personal emails from Curtis. He did not
fake this, Barry. Your characterization is a lie. Want the proof? Ask
Curtis. I have the emails. They are emails of friendship, respect, even
real affection. No, neither Curtis nor I—before we started having
our problems—ever preached at one another. Not a good sign,
falsifying history, Barry. Shows you are not sincere. A liar. Or at the
very least, not above reshaping reality in order to get reality to
conform itself to your animus. No, my correspondence with Curtis was
communication ex animo.
>
> Barry: So *of course* that's what he would have done with me in
> the post you're referring to.
>
> Robin: Not in the least, Barry. You had submitted a very bad painting.
I was merely offering criticism of it. Or rather you were using this
manifesto as a cover-up for your nasty deed regarding obbajeeba, and I
objectified this by my tearing apart the absurdity and triteness of your
own rant. Now Curtis has taken me to task for my posts to you, asking me
to show some regret for having hurt you—and Vaj ( although I am not
in the mood to get after Vaj, because he accidentally or not,
transcended his usual role with me and was straight—and in one
instance, especially, very clever). Were you ever hurt by a post of mine
addressed to you, Barry? Because if you were then this contradicts your
estimate of me as being boring and uninteresting and manic and mentally
ill. And besides, doesn't Curtis make you out to be a liar? You insist
you don't read my posts, so you should have assured Curtis when he wrote
in this way that, hey, Curtis: no problem: I don't read Robin's posts
anyway, so for Christ sake don't make me look bad by implying that I do.
>
> Barry: My crime? I think he's a total ego-dork, and don't find
> him interesting enough to bother with.
>
> Robin: "ego dork"—well, have you ever met someone who was
enlightened, or said they were enlightened, who then de-enlightened
themselves, or at least said they did this to themselves? We are, the
majority of us Ex-Unity types, somewhat prone to ego-dorkness. But like
me, I know my fellow and sister ex-enlightened types all seek to redeem
themselves, and overcome this unattractive trait. That's one of the
hazards of making yourself into a guru. You have to leave with the
remains of your ignorance (supply Sanskrit words here:—phonetically
leshavidia). Only in this case it's the remains of enlightenment :-)
>
> Barry: The crime of the
> people back in Fairfield? Who knows. But we DO know one
> thing -- in both cases 1) he felt that it was his RIGHT
> to abuse someone by "pointing out their weaknesses" or
> their demons, and 2) he felt that it was almost the DUTY
> of the person being abused to not only stand there and
> take it, but be somehow grateful for it. That's classic
> abuser mentality.
>
> Robin: You have failed to convey the truth of one of those seminars,
Barry. There was no RIGHT entailed here; there was a context which
seemed to be opened up by my enlightenment, and that context had its own
laws and principles which, like physics, we merely followed and which we
found ourselves inevitably obedient to. It was as natural and mechanical
in a sense as TM. And I only executed this process better than anyone
else. Once I was not there, the persons who had discovered this universe
of meaning and purpose, this metaphysical theatre for the soul, quite
spontaneously lived out their lives in full accordance with these laws
and principles. It was the physics of interpersonal relationships
conceived and experienced as possessing cosmic meaning. But of course I
have rejected the entire thing. There was no DUTY whatsoever. Anyone
could come off the street and be a participant inside the seminar. What
happened—much like Rory described—was dramatic, inspired,
inexorable, and powerful beyond anything I have known in my life. But I
have determined in my sanity that it was wrong. You are once again
talking about something, defining something not only incorrectly, and
falsely, but are without the requisite first person, or even third
person knowledge. You arre attempting to make of these seminars that
which would serve your purposes here in your conversation with the
unsuspecting Steve.
>
> Barry: What a load of ego-crap. What insanity.
>
> Robin: No, it was never this, Barry. It was a stupendous thing,
something truly cosmic, and it took the measure of all of us. Not one
person who attended a seminar or sat at the dining room table (before
seminars began) would ever accept this description of what happened. We
were, to a one, convinced we had found the Holy Grail of Western
Civilization as it benefited from Eastern Wisdom. No one was happier, no
one was more engaged; no one felt there could possibly be more magic and
beauty and hilarity and gravity and terror, yes—it was the greatest
adventure ever—except when it started to come apart. And then
finally when the whole thing was smashed up by reality. It's a big
story, Barry, but you have no fucking idea of what was entailed in that
story. There are perhaps 300 persons who were there; one of them should
speak to you. That would help. A measure of the seriousness of this
spell we were all under is the fact that not one person has come onto
FFL to give testimony—except Rory—of those days. It was a very
serious and searing reality. Not spoken about lightly or flippantly. Not
to say falsely.
>
> Bary: *Especially* in a followup to a post originally (I assume)
> criticizing me for telling Obbajeeba that I wasn't at all
> impressed by her whiny pleas for more of my attention. I
> got the feeling from Message View that both he and the
> Judester thought it was BAD of me to suggest to her that
> she might be better served by getting a life of her own
> than by obsessing on the lives of others on this forum.
>
> Robin: This is a vicious and shameful misconstruing of that post that
you wrote to obbajeeba. I challenged anyone to refute my interpretation
of your post, Barry, and, until you piped up here, no one did. That is
significant. And I sense the desperate redefining and reshaping of that
post here in what you say. The subtext of that post was contempt and a
desire to inflict pain on obbajeeba, which you did. Now you are
sugar-coating the whole obsceneness of the act. Instead of—you are
incapable of this—admitting to your lust for shocking obbajeeba, and
traumatizing her. You should have defended yourself before now,
Barry—it shows bad faith that you did not immediately upon reading
Judy's post and then right afterwards, my own, come to your defense. But
you couldn't because you knew the charge was true. As it still is. And
if obbajeebba ever speaks up, I hope she will not ignore and suppress
her most immediate experience of reading that post. This is you
ferociously treading water, Barry, but you are going under. You let
something escape in that post to obbajeeba, something that had never
quite issued in such a pure and unadulterated form.
>
> Barry: So what does Mr. Formerly Enlightened do? He obsesses on
> me, and runs his standard abuse number again. I presume
> that, as he did with Curtis, he inserted all sorts of
> comments as needy and whiny as Obba's, suggesting again
> that it was almost my DUTY to reply to him and debate
> with him, and what an awful person I was if I didn't.
>
> Robin: You are an awful person, Barry, at least in the context of your
attacks on other persons on this forum, and then in your pointless and
ineffectual justification of those posts. You get a failing grade for
telling the truth, of being sincere, of showing any kind of moral
maturity, in being simply a decent human being. F's, Barry: all the way.
>
> Barry: Well, I didn't. And I won't. He's just not worth my time.
> Guess that makes me an awful person.
>
> Robin: Where are you going here, Barry? This is definitely worth your
time trying to explain yourself. The problem is you are lying, or at the
very least not seeking to find what the truth is here. If obbajeeba is
honest to her initial experience of reading your post to her, she will
declare you a prevaricator—at the very least. No, Barry, you lined
up on obbajeeba's vulnerability, as a woman, as someone who was seeking
to bring you around in the most playful and sweetly intelligent and
mischievous way, and you put the knife into her. And there was blood on
that knife after you did this. "Guess that makes me an awful person".
Not necessarily, Barry: you are acting presumably from your own level of
consciousness, and from the first person ontology that is represented
there in your experience of being you after all these years of living.
You can't help it, then; but we must still act as if you have free will.
Because you do. Or at least you do for purposes of this forum.
>
> Barry: But, if you think about *time*, and the efficient use of
> it, I would have to say that I think I'm winning. I don't
> bother to read ANY of his silly ego-rants, because by now
> I know what they'll all say without bothering to read them.
> Same with the other people on my Don't Bother With list.
>
> Robin: A stupid and mindless and unconvincing assertion—which not
even you believe, Barry Baby. Hi. You there? I thought so.
>
> Someone who does not read posts as you claim not to, what business
does that person have in responding to posts they don't read.
>
> And No, Barry, my posts are usually quite different one from another.
Your just mouthing your own party line here
>
> Barry: But *THEY* are so obsessed with me that *they read every
> word of every one of my posts*. They probably read them
> multiple times, trying to work up enough faux outrage and
> hatred to fuel a stinging reply.
>
> Robin: This is just a fantasy and made-up and sheer bluster. Yeah.
that's what it is all right, Barry. "Faux outrage": You accusing me of
making it all up then, Barry?
>
> Ask obbajeeba whether your post as she experienced it conforms to the
description you have given it in this post.
>
> The "stinging reply", well, I can go along with that, Barry. But "faux
outrage" usually cannot deliver up "stinging reply".
>
> Barry: Seems to me that obsession is its own reward. They're
> trapped in a samskaric cycle that they cannot escape from.
> They're in EXACTLY the position they want *me* to be in,
> but which they cannot achieve. They have to sit there and
> read every word I write, whether about them, or about
> anything else.
>
> Robin: I dread your posts, Barry. I try NOT to read them—unless
they are an attack upon someone, especially myself :-) The experience is
not usually a pleasant one, although your movie and television reviews
are interesting in a sort of blandly charming way. I was very
disappointed that you ignored Bob Price's in-depth analysis of Ridley
Scott's direction. Of course Bob Price was there attempting to throw
into relief the somewhat superficial grasp you had of the technical as
well as the performance side of movies. I was looking forward to your
response, because it was in your wheel house professionally. But alas,
nothing, and for those who remember this post of Bob's it was a tour de
force. And had I been Barry's mother I would have winced.
>
> Barry: As Ravi might say, they're my bitches. :-)
>
> Robin: Good old Ravi, eh, Barry? An innocent, a lamb among wolves.
>
> Barry: And they will continue to be as long as they continue
> obsessing on me...
>
> Robin: Obsessing? No. You are like a poisonous snake beneath one's
feet as one walks in the grass. I am obsessed with making sure I can
build up an immunity to its venom, and that sometimes means swallowing
that venom in order to this finally insure that the snake is rendered
harmless. And this is gradually happening, Barry.
>


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