Like Buddhas down at a gas pump talking about enlightenment.. You are the light of the world. You cannot hide a city that has been built upon a mountain. -Matthew
Fleetwood_macncheese writes: Thanks - yes, I know that many people aren't comfortable discussing this stuff. I think it is the Science Of Being/Art of Living, MMY makes reference to people being embarrassed to even speak about God and religion. I am always coming up with new ways to express myself artistically, so it is easy to see spirituality and enlightenment, not in terms of singular pursuits, but one of the things we do, along with everything else. I have led an incredibly rich and diverse life, and stopped looking at a solely Eastern (or Western) perspective for spirituality, quite a long time ago. All the formal stuff is partial maps, anyway. What I discuss with David is the experiential, vs. recited or written, sequence, of the unfolding of consciousness, and noticeable events along the way. It has been really helpful for me, and pretty amazing, since we have not met one another, that our experiences, though abstract and subtle, can be shared and understood. 7Ray writes: well, for those inclined to discuss their experiences, great. But I think there is a natural predisposition to keep to oneself about experiences. Of course, that is just me. It's been brought up several times that the yogic flyers have been encouraged to discuss their "A" experiences. I don't think that would appeal to me, possibly because I don't have much in the way of "flash", and also I've stepped away from the Eastern way of evaluating experiences to some extent. I've read your comments and those of David on Batgap. I find them interesting, and pretty genuine. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : Yeah, I find that as more and more people gain enlightenment, there are many perspectives and comparisons to be made. It is like uncovering a long lost language, or experience. Many of the old texts that talk about this state of natural freedom are not useful for modern times, and householders, so it is a fun time, now, to see the truth or otherwise, of these early texts on enlightenment. Equally satisfying is being able to quickly put the lie to those who would keep enlightenment shadowy and vague, so as to exploit others for their desire for it. Or pointing out those making a mountain of their puny experiences, as a few have here, on FFL - ex-TM teachers, anyone?? In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : A few years ago as I was first developing this Cartesian way of looking at mysticism and spiritual movements I drew it out on the back of an envelope and showed it then to an eminent scholar PhD in our field. He looked at it and laughed out saying, “Oh, I understand that! My wife is a PhD in mathematics.” It worked. -Buck. Yup, like in the recent thread here categorizing the BATGAP.COM spiritually awakened interviewees around describing a range in typology of mystical illumination. Those interviews then come as another good place for the Cartesian graph as help in getting a handle on de-mystifying the spiritual in the discussion. Charting using the Cartesian axis can become a great aid. With enough data-points one then could even start to do a calculus looking at relative rates of spiritual-change in individuals or groups in time. I find that I place them all by typology in to a scaled Cartesian coordinate graph with abiding-awakening running from the awakened-quietist up to awakened-pietist on the vertical axis as type by transformation, and then on the horizontal axis, the modality and/or a scale of organization or satsang around them. -Buck https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/386298 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/386298 386298Re: [FairfieldLife] Graphing the Illumined Batgap interviewees by types Last year I was at a conference and one paper that I thought really stood out for our purposes here was a completely objective paper on altruistic communalism which had absolutely no consideration of spirituality. The paper only considered relative organization and the value of doing or being in groups to people. In the end of the session it opened for questions. I had sat next to a white board listening to the paper so as a prelude to asking a question I quick drew on the white board an x-y axis and labeled the vertical as relative spiritual evolution from a low of narcissism to a high of illumination. On the horizontal axis using the paper's terms I put the relative altruistic evolutionary structure of organizations. And then made my point that his was a great analysis of altruistic aspect of organizations but by example I come from a community where we also look at it a little differently to include the spiritual component in communal groupings as a variable. The reaction in the group listening ranged from appreciation to the quite explosive, “you can't evaluate people that way!”. The most supportive came from a professor who while teaching full time at a university here in the US goes annually to India to study communal ashram living. That guy quoted and cited scholarship by example as he spoke about what I was saying. They guy who authored and presented the paper in that session in reaction acquiesced in the end by saying he did not know about spirituality and that it was not his area. -Buck fleetwood_macncheese writes: A great start. I enjoy building models, too, mostly for business development and planning, and find the greatest fun in identifying and quantifying all of the different values, so that the model accurately represents real-world conditions. Yep, thanks for noticing and appreciating this. I have been working at developing this Cartesian graphing of mysticism as a thesis for a while as an aid in helping those people who are reserved or even flat out skeptical about spirituality to be better able to place mysticism and mystics within the histories of different spiritual/religious movements. -Buck fleetwood_macncheese writes: "horsing around" - lol Yes, agreed. A very grounded approach to your reading methodology - I really loved reading the description, and the way it was so cleanly put together - brilliant, really. I am a total engineering freak, with a perennial billboard in my head, reading, "How does it work?!" - for anything -- from personal interaction, lasers, growth of consciousness, internal combustion engines, tides and surf, microwave ovens, music, dog food bag fill machines, all of it. Buck writing: More inclusively, I feel we would be nothing here on FFL without some of the lower scaled of illumination by example of some of these writers posting here. Theirs is also an important dissonance to the higher plane of spiritual discussion that can go on here. I always appreciate reading Turqb and that ignorant guy from South Carolina that way too. I find in Parsing the different writers posting on FFL as a practicality towards figuring out who to read and what to spend time on reading I tend to use the tool of a paired Cartesian graph to place people on and then read according to my time and interests as people are placed on the graph. For instance, on the vertical axis I quickly scale a writer based on their posting history from a low of aggravated narcissistic disorderliness, to just the generally narcissistic, to the middle ground of the ignorant and more common psychology of the ordinary waking state, to the spiritually awakened or illumined, to the more saintly in capacity of spiritual transformation. That is on the vertical axis, low to high. On a horizontal I tend to then use a scale of relative altruistic communalism of someone[someone's use of or participation in groups] from zero or individualistic to large organizational participation. That sets people relatively nicely apart in a useful way as to where they are coming from. It provides an efficiency to sorting the list. There tend to be some people who I read all the time and some who I do not read hardly at all. Parsing using this tool becomes fun and useful for sussing writers out and placing them in to pigeon holes. In Love, -Buck, out Standing in his Field horsing around today.. https://sites.google.com/site/buckbrannamanhorseridingnotes/ https://sites.google.com/site/buckbrannamanhorseridingnotes/ Fleetwood Writes: It has been rather fun, over the last couple of days, noticing that Barry seized upon my request to go away, and having fun with him, since. Unfortunately, at his expense. I say "unfortunately", because Barry does something that many with a weak mind, indulge in. If Barry disagrees with someone, all logic flies out the window, and his primary reaction, as someone attached to his actions (aka waking state), is emotional. He repeats insults, cherry-picks ways to discredit, and now, as we have humorously seen, even falls for my satire. Nothing in reserve. No data to back up anything, except the same crusty anecdotes that he has been trotting out, for the past 20 years. He just barfs it all out there, and thinks, "well I bloody well showed them!". As you can see, with the emotionally charged, blunderbuss approach, he misses the target, more often than not. So, having made himself look the fool, he then keeps doubling down, looking more and more ridiculous. My playful request for him to, "Please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, go away", is much more for his benefit, than mine. I'd personally like to see him retain a shred of dignity, and take a few months off. Awoelflebater writes: The internet and TV are his life, Mac. He has nowhere else to go. Because his life is a desert he must try and make sure everyone else suffers along with him. Not that what he rants about, whether it be some insanely off-the-mark theory about Judy and Robin's private life or your enlightenment, bears any resemblance to truth or reality but he likes to believe it does. And it is true, he needs to go away simply to save himself from himself but there is no shred left of dignity or credibility for him here anyway at this point and because he has no other life he will remain until this place is no more. His exposure is complete. They is nothing else of bawee to know about. His crude and telling remarks about Judy and Robin couldn't possibly have made anyone reading them feel anything but embarrassed for bawee. He's pretty much a freak show.
