Nice, Xeno.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" wrote:
>
>
>
> Buck, I think you have misinterpreted this discussion badly, though you have
> a decent intent. I think what Barry wrote in response to Michael Jackson was
> point on. In this discussion Barry was being helpful to MJ. MJ seems to me to
> be in a kind of negative space. I went through one of these. You can be
> pissed off at a spiritual movement for some time, especially if it seems to
> 'not be working'.
>
> Except for a few very clear souls, enlightenment is not a clean break to
> wisdom, it is a messy affair, with a lot of misunderstandings, grief, and
> rough experience. My own experience with the movement was I tended to forget
> why I was doing what I was doing. The intellectual environment did not
> encourage genuine curiosity and inquiry. Blasphemy, Buck, is a population
> control device from a more ignorant age, and unfortunately it still persists,
> even in the TMO, and you. Everyone is in the natural state all the time, but
> obstacles prevent its recognition.
>
> I was traveling, south to be exact, out of my home state (NY), and I had the
> opportunity, rather rare in my case, to visit a TM centre and see a portion
> of the January 12th celebrations. Tony Nader talked a bit about the natural
> state and that the only reason we do not experience it because of obstacles,
> and once removed the natural state is experienced. He was in good form, seems
> coming along well, and shows few of the peculiarities that infect Bevan, or
> Hagelin. He was charming, innocent and playful. I think Maharishi made a good
> choice, considering what he had to pick from.
>
> The path is a fiction, but you cannot know that for sure until awakening,
> particularly in a movement that glorifies the path, traditions, and
> significant characters associated with that path. Whatever you do before
> awakening is a dream, and the dream can persist partially, sometimes getting
> the upper hand, for some time after awakening too. If you takes MMY's TC CC
> GC UC BC benchmarks, these do not always apply to everyone, they are just an
> average - for example Krishnamurti just seemed to pop into UC early in life,
> as did Ekhart Tolle. Adyashanti on the other hand went through a lot of hell,
> basically failed at everything he tried, and then he woke up, and then went
> through more hell until he had a more complete awakening. The teachers that
> know the pitfalls one can go through have a tendency to be better guides. I
> think Maharishi's 'sweet speech', candy-coated, expurgated vision of reality
> was a big mistake, but it works well with the dreamers, but it is hard to
> overcome getting caught up in a religious coma. As a result, if an individual
> so numbed actually awakens, and it has happened, they may doubt their sanity,
> because an awakening is never what you expect.
>
> Everything before the UC is a complete and utter dream, but starting with UC
> the dream starts to unravel. MMY said GC takes on the flavour of what a
> person believes, so its characteristics take on the parameters of your own
> personal delusions and misunderstandings about the nature of reality. The
> real nature of awakening is just that ordinary experience is all there is.
> The whole shebang is on the surface, in full view, all the time. There is no
> deep profound knowledge beyond what is going on now. Everything is connected,
> there is no inner and outer, just one field of experience. Any ideas you have
> about this just fall flat, because you know they are pretense. Telling people
> this flat out typically does not work as Barry mentioned. You have to give
> them a story, you have to trick them 'into a path' and hope that at some
> point they will see through the deception. This is what is so hard to grasp
> about enlightenment before awakening, that the path is part of the deception,
> is part of Maya, is an aspect of the illusion you are trying to get rid of.
>
> The path does not lead you anywhere. What a path really is, is something that
> pares away misunderstandings, something that destroys false reasoning and
> allows you to see your opinions about life were hokum. The danger is always
> that the hokum of the path will take root as a replacement for your previous
> hokum, and in fact this almost always happens. Me, Barry, Michael Jackson,
> virtually everyone here, including you, got sucked into to one or more
> 'paths'.
>
> Imagine that enlightenment was just an empty space. And you were born as a
> tree in that space. Now the space is filled with a lot of dense wood called
> 'Buck'. The original unbounded space is still there but it has taken a form.
> How do you discover the original space, which now imagines itself to be a
> tree? Well, you cut that sucker down. Now there are various ways to recover
> that empty space. You could try to polish the leaves on the tree to make it
> look nicer. Doesn't work (that is one of M's ideas illustrating that cosmetic
> changes in lifestyle do not work). You could hire a tree surgeon to prune
> some of the branches. This helps a bit by removing some of the intrusion in
> the original space. The most efficient way is a chainsaw massacre. Just rip
> it to shreds. But this is usually too intense for most people; most want a
> bit more comfort. But if you are too comfortable, you don't get anywhere.
> Most people have to go through some discomfort to get to the point where
> awakening, a spontaneous event, happens. The TM movement, in my opinion,
> tends to be too comfortable. If you are associated with the movement in some
> way, you need to spike what you are doing with something that stirs the pot a
> bit more.
>
> Before awakening you can understand it as having been caused by something.
> After awakening, this is impossible because the path, and all your opinions
> about it which you told yourself were 'knowledge' are seen through as a
> delusion. You now begin to experience life without intellectually
> categorising everything you see. You just experience what is going on, and if
> you have to think, your thinking becomes more tool-like and practical, and
> you do not have to explain to yourself what and why things are happening the
> way they are. You just experience it and then its gone, and then the next
> experience is happening.
>
> I feel (opinion here as everywhere else) that Barry has taken a compassionate
> view of what Micheal Jackson is experiencing. These downer experiences are
> just the same kind of thing you are experiencing Buck, except yours are ultra
> positive, but it is the same kind of interpretation the mind makes of what we
> experience. I was really negative for years, but eventually it just becomes
> water under the bridge and passes. Everybody gets hung up somewhere, but that
> can be the nexus where transformation of experience becomes possible. Being
> critical in a constructive way is not negative. Getting a person to awakening
> is a difficult task because as human beings we are such idiots. The
> difficulty is the mind is filled with beliefs that are difficult to dislodge.
> And if some are disloged, we tend to fill it back up with something else just
> as insideous. The task of a teacher is to empty the mind, and to do that, at
> first, the teacher has to add something to what is already there, in the hope
> it will bump some of the crap out. But if that mind is too rigid, it will
> just take that new stuff and believe it like the old. Enlightenment is not a
> process of learning something new, but of discarding what we already think we
> know. The way we are built tends to make that very difficult to do.
>
> While Michael Jackson might be unhappy with his situation, Barry certainly is
> not, you are not seeing clearly what is going on in this exchange, perhaps
> because Barry's writing here is rather atypical of how he 'publishes' here. I
> do not think he is putting Michael on. He seems to know what Michael is going
> through. Your words here seem like a composite of movement philosophy mingled
> with midwestern Christian ethic. It is very strange, from my point of view.
> Maybe you should switch to Calvinism. Be part of the elect and damn the rest
> of humanity to hell. Barry is providing good material here. And he is
> 'correct' that without some kind of genuine awakening experience, you simply
> cannot grasp certain things that are said about enlightenment. You have heard
> that before 'knowledge is different in different states of consciousness'.
> Awakening is different in that you do not arrive at a new state. Instead you
> realise you just woke up from a dream, and what you dreamed was unreal, but
> nothing changed. It is an ultimate paradox if you attempt to understand it.
> So you live the paradox, and make up stuff about it, if you choose to talk
> about it.
>
> Anybody who has had some kind of substantial awakening will understand all
> these sayings below:
>
> ---------------
>
> When an ordinary man gains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage gains
> understanding, he is an ordinary man.
>
> Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they
> sought.
>
> Even a good thing isn't as good as nothing.
>
> Sitting peacefully doing nothing, Spring comes and the grass grows all by
> itself.
>
> Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small
> awakening, no doubt, no awakening.
>
> The instant you speak about a thing, you miss the mark.
>
> Everything comes to zero (that's Maharishi by the way).
>
> All dharmas are empty.
>
> ---------------
>
> Buck, thank you for your attention for my work of fiction here.
>
> ===========================
>
> BUCK WROTE (IN RESPONSE TO THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN MICHAEL JACKSON AND
> TURQUOISEB BELOW):
> Oh you fellows just assume no paths lead toward an awakening for people nor
> continue on and that it is not self evident along the ways of a path. That is
> your experience and what poor experience. It is blasphemous rattle and argue
> what you are saying the way you contend it and having to denigrate the
> awakened you see as your opponents as you go. Yours is a sad commentary here
> on your selves.
>
> However, every day we are learning more about the benefits of meditation:
> physical and mental well-being, compassion, patience, calming, a more
> flexible mind, strengthened immune system, sharper memory-it;'s extraordinary.
>
> Yes, well we know their outlook,and the view of life they mention, and which
> they think is the result of their own mental efforts, is the one held by the
> majority of people, and is the invariable fruit of pride, indolence, and
> ignorance. Forgive me but if I had not known it I should not have addressed
> this here. Their view of life is a regrettable delusion.
>
> Yes, no one attains to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with
> the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefathers
> to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling
> place of the Great God the Unified Field.
>
> Yes, of course theses two fellows publishing here do not 'know' It as they
> wish, one cannot 'know' It. They do not 'know' It and that is why they are
> unhappy.
>
> It is pitiable, they 'know' It not and such they are very unhappy. They do
> not know It, but It is here, It is in me, It is in my words, It is in thee,
> and even in those blasphemous words they have just published!
>
> Who art thou? They dreamest that they art wise because they could publish
> their blasphemous words, and are more foolish and unreasonable than a little
> child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares to say
> that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in the master
> who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to
> our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far
> from our aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and
> It's greatness.
>
> It exists, but to understand It is hard. If it were a man whose existence
> they doubt I could bring him to them, could take him by the hand and show him
> to them. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show Its omnipotence, Its
> infinity, and all Its mercy to them who are blind, or who shut their eyes
> that they may not see or understand It and may not see or understand their
> own vileness and sinfulness?
>
> -------------------------------
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> Thought I would offer this for purposes of discussion. These are my own
> beliefs at this time: From the teachings or musings if you will of people
> like Eckhart Tolle and Anita Moorjani, Adyashanti one has to believe that the
> whole thing about enlightenment and the whole schtick that goes with it is
> complete made up bullshit.
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> Not necessarily. There are other explanations for the concept of a "path to
> enlightenment" that don't require us to think ill of those who proposed one.
>
> If for no other reason, humans have a tendency to need "explanations" or
> "reasons" for things that Just Happen. So *something* happens -- something
> unknown, and probably unknowable -- and someone pops into the state of
> attention that they have previously been told is enlightenment, or at the
> very least enlightenment-like.
>
> As for *HOW* it happened, or *WHY*, the most human tendency is to think,
> "What was I doing before it happened? That must have had something to do with
> it happening. If I figure out what that was, I can tell others about this
> thing that I did and they can do it, too, and experience what I am
> experiencing."
>
> The trouble with this, of course, is that no "thing" they did had anything to
> do with them realizing their always- already-present enlightenment. But if
> they associate it with meditating just before they realized it, they might
> create a "path" based on meditation. If they flashed out shortly after
> thinking fondly of their teacher, they might come up with a "path" based on
> bhakti and devotion. If they realized their enlightenment while having sex,
> they might even come up with a "path" based on sex.
>
> The trouble is that there was never any "path" for them, and so anything they
> come up with won't really work for anyone else, either.
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> Some meditation teachers like to teach that enlightenment is something that
> is achievable in this lifetime, but in truth it is already here, covered over
> by egoic perception. Maharishi was particularly prone to promulgate this idea
> that enlightenment was something to precious and rare that needed to be
> pursued, to be chased, and he and teachers like him do that to be able to get
> more people to buy their nosturms.
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> This part I agree with. Once having bought into the "path" presented to them
> -- probably by *their* teacher -- they continue to sell it. When the selling
> starts to make them money, and puff up their egos, they sell it even harder,
> to perpetuate the attention feed. And to sell a "path," one pretty much has
> to glorify the supposed "goal" or end point of the supposed path.
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> But evidently what we have called "enlightenment" is our natural state must
> by virtue of being, just by being. You don't have to go anywhere or do
> anything to become this "state"? of awareness or being, but just be.
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> While this is true, if someone had told it to you, would that have WORKED for
> you, to get you to realize this "state" yourself? I doubt that it would.
> Whatever was preventing you from realizing it before (*NOT* MMY''s idea of
> "stress," which I think is bullshit) is still in place, and until you drop
> that you can't realize the always- already-present nature of yourself.
>
> But does that make "paths" BAD? I don't think so. They give people *something
> to do*, something that they believe is leading them in a better direction.
> The fact that these things they're doing that they consider "sadhana" will
> probably not have much effect on their own realization may *be* a fact, but
> it keeps people off the streets. :-)
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> It must mean that meditation and seeking will never lead to the experience of
> enlightenment, and when most people talk about their enlightenment they are
> referring to a fluctuating experience of consciousness.
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> I wouldn't go so far as to say that meditation and seeking will "never" lead
> to them experiencing enlightenment. It might. On a deeper level, these things
> won't have "caused" the enlightenment, but at the same time they kept the
> person busy, and gave them something to pursue.
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> This to me also means that the old Hindu stuff about having to spend
> countless lifetimes as plants, bugs, animals and so forth until you "merit" a
> human body is also complete made up bullshit. Why would the Infinite
> Magnificence, the Unlimited Love that we are choose to do that? I can't think
> of a reason.
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> It's just made-up explanations that people come up with to convince
> themselves they know what's happening, and How The Universe Works. It's just
> what humans DO.
>
> MICHAEL JACKSON WROTE:
> Any thoughts folks?
>
> TURQUOISEB WROTE:
> Mine are above. I'll add to them that, while based on my own personal
> experience I tend to agree with the no-path,
> enlightenment-is-always-already-present thang, I *wouldn't* have believed
> that if I hadn't had a few realization experiences of my own. It wouldn't
> have made any sense whatsoever to hear that, because on the basis of *my own
> experience* before having realization experiences, this "always already
> present" stuff was clearly not true. I *wasn't* experiencing enlightenment.
>
> But then suddenly I was. And guess what -- the second thought upon finding
> myself in something that pretty closely resembled MMY's CC (the first thought
> being, "Wow...this is weird!") was "Shit. This is not new. This has been here
> all along."
>
> It's *at that point* -- having had such an experience oneself -- that the
> Tolle/Ramana Maharshi/Adyashanti stuff starts to "ring true." But *before*
> that point...no way. They could have talked, talked, talked all day about how
> already- enlightened I was, and I wouldn't have believed it because, from my
> POV, I clearly *wasn't*.
>
> So it's a Catch-22. I *agree* with you, based on my own experience, that the
> always already present model is more accurate, and describes the
> realization/enlightenment experience better than the seeking model. But I
> also know that I wouldn't feel that if I hadn't experienced what I have
> experienced.
>
> So it seems to me that when it comes to spiritual trips, there are different
> "paths" because people are in different stages of development. These "stages"
> have nothing whatsoever to do with "better/best" or "higher/lower" or any of
> those things that egos glom onto, it's just Where They Are At. So some
> approaches resonate for those who are At one kind of inner place, and other
> approaches resonate for those who are in a different kind of inner place. No
> harm, no foul.
>
> It's when the "path" becomes something that is sold heavily, or that starts
> to take people out of the Here And Now because they're always focused on some
> "goal" that is always "just one more course away" that I think that it's Bad
> News.
>
> Anyway, thanks for starting the topic, and for talking about something other
> than petty grudges and ego-battles. :-) That seems to be de rigeur here, and
> it's nice to be able to talk about ideas for a change...
>
