--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Susan" <wayback71@...> wrote: > > I have had some experiences where what I was thinking or > expecting actually happened in a woo woo ish way. And > times when it felt scarily as if I could control situations > with my quiet thoughts (not mentally ill). But what I think > was going on was that my own thoughts had aligned with what > was to be, with Nature. It was not that Nature aligned with > my intentions and wishes. The experience was that the only > thoughts that arose were those that on some very quiet level > were really just a reflection of the flow of events already > set in motion. I had tuned in to That.
I can appreciate your careful phrasing here, Susan, and the thought you've given to this. I identify more with the idea of "supporting nature" (both in small case letters) than I do the "support of Nature." I do not conceive of (and have never conceived of) "Nature" as a sentient entity, capable of having its own intent or "plan" for anything, or even deserving the capital letter. Thus I don't easily think of nature controlling anything in any way, or having the ability to do so, or even having the consciousness to do so. nature just is. It is literally What Is, whatever is. What I can identify with is feeling from time to time "in tune" with What Is, with nature just doing its thing. But even as a TB TMer I never believed in "Support of Nature," as Maharishi used the phrase. If I felt myself "in the flow," and that things seemed to be going more smoothly today than other days, in my view (both then and now), nature had nothing to do with that. If anything, I had just succeeded in quieting my mind to the point where it didn't throw up any internal roadblocks to things going smoothly, and as a result it seemed that things *were* going more smoothly. In reality, as I saw it then and now, *I* was going more smoothly. Nature hadn't done a damned thing, and wasn't paying any attention. It couldn't; it didn't *have the ability* to pay attention, not being sentient and all. I always managed to get by in the TMO while carrying around this somewhat heretical belief. :-) I carefully avoided giving any advanced lectures that ever mentioned the concept of "support of nature" as Maharishi gave voice to it, and was spared anyone ever asking a question about it, because if they had I would have told them what MMY had said on the subject, but then would have had to explain that I disagreed with it completely. > It kind of felt as if I was moving things, but I seriously > doubt it, since there were not many thoughts and they did > not have the usual feel that I was controlling them. The > thoughts just were there. Did you notice how effortlessly they came? Something good is happening. :-) > I think when most fo the time things happen that we feel > are good luck or suport of Nature, it is just a nice > intersection of events that would happen anyway coinciding > with our own patterns. That sounds like a great way to think of things, but I'm not even convinced of the "that would happen anyway" part of it. I don't believe that anything is "supposed to happen" or inevitably "will happen." I think that the universe is eternally in flux, with no fixed plan or future, and that the direction or outcome or future path of this constant flow-flux can be changed at any moment. We *DO* influence the world around us, and occasionally can keep things from happening that would otherwise most likely happened. The day I happened to be sitting there when a neighborhood cat decided to take a flying fuck at a floating swan and found himself in a canal he couldn't climb out of strikes me as one of those occasions. There was no one else around. If I had done nothing, the cat would most likely have drowned, as so many do every year when they fall into the canals. But I was there, and I pulled the cat out. Now, is it more Occam's Razor likely that I just happened to be there, and the cat just happened to benefit from that, or that there was some Grand Plan somewhere that shaped all of the events of my life (and the cat's) such that I was somehow "led" there at that time and place to earn my cat-saving merit badge? Personally, even if there is sentience behind the What Is of nature, I pretty seriously don't believe that I am important enough in the general scheme of things for it to feel the need to micromanage my life to that extent. I have similar doubts about whether it was necessary to micromanage the cat's life to that extent. I randomly found myself to that bench, watched a random cat try to bag a swan ten times larger than it was, laughed (I admit it), but then realized that the cat was in trouble, so I fished him out. Cat was lucky I was there, and I was lucky to be there, because even though the cat scratched the hell out of my arm to thank me, I felt good about the whole thing anyway. If nature is really Nature, and sentient, and went to all that trouble to give me that good feeling, I think that's just swell of it. But I don't need to believe that's true to make the good feeling any gooder. :-)
