You are right. In the early days of my TM junkie phase, I tried and tried to
get my best friend from high school to do TM. He refused over and over. His
reason? "Jackson, I don't need it. I'm already happy." He went on to have a
career in textile manufacturing and eventually became a purchaser for the
Komatsu Corporation. Got married, raised to great kids and is still happy
today. I couldn't argue with his reasoning them and I thank God today I was not
able to convince him to join the "Marshy sez" cult.
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 4/18/14, TurquoiseBee <turquoi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Why does TM seem to focus on losers?
To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Friday, April 18, 2014, 8:32 AM
One of the things I've noticed over the years is
how many long-term TMers say things like, "I'd be
dead if it weren't for TM," or "TM saved my
life," or "TM cured me of my
depression/anxiety/suicidal thoughts/mental
illness/whatever."
I've always found these claims difficult to
relate to, because I didn't have anything to
"cure" or "get over" when I first
started TM. I had already left drugs behind me, having
discovered them back when LSD was still legal and came in a
bottle with Sandoz on the label. I did my time with them,
enjoyed them *not* because they were an "escape from my
problems" but because they enhanced an
already-enjoyable life. But then I got tired of them, and
even more tired of the scene surrounding them, and left them
behind. I'm probably one of the only people here who
didn't have to wait 15 days before starting TM.
:-) I was also neither depressed nor suicidal. In
fact, I was a pretty happy frood, and merely one who was
looking for ways to become even happier.
And for a time, TM presented what I was looking for,
something to enhance a good life and help me to appreciate
it even more. But then it became as boring and as stagnant
as drugs had been, and with an even more stifling social
scene, so I moved on again to other forms of meditation that
worked better.
But there seem to be any
number of long-term TMers who don't look back on their
TM experience this way. They seem to focus on what it
enabled them to "get over" or "cure" or
"get beyond," almost as if
(almost) before TM they had been "broken" and TM
had "fixed" them.
This gets me
to thinking about tent revival meetings in the South (which,
of course, you can't help but attend a few of if you
grow up in the South), in which the most fervent
"believers" and most fundamentalist Bible-thumpers
were ALL those who formerly were drunks or whores or thieves
or something BAD. It's as if they don't feel they
can adequately shout "I've been SAVED!" unless
they feel they had a lot to be saved FROM.
And *this* gets me
to thinking about whether Maharishi always pitched TM to
losers and people with problems and low self esteem because
they become the best disciples. And *disciples* is what he
was looking for.
Think about it.
Does the TMO really spend any energy trying to market TM to
"regular
people," who have few problems in life and are just
looking to enjoy it more? They do not. They focus on People
With Problems.
Kids doing badly in
school. Criminals locked away in prisons. Veterans with
PTSD.
Can't this be seen as a
continuation of a long-standing trend to look for
prospective new students among populations who are more
likely to be easy to convert into True Believers and thus
become disciples?
It's just an idea.
YMMV.
