---In [email protected], <anartaxius@...> wrote :
Ann, I have been away for a few days and so did not finish my reply to your comments on my post, but I finally finished it, while the FFL forum has gone on to whatever else it has gone on to. Comments in the text. I almost missed your post because it was in the folder with Richard's oeuvre — difficult finding stuff in that folder — but someone responded to your post who was in one of the folders I am more likely to read. Thanks for taking time to write some responses that are not brainless one liners. Am I reading the most current version here? What folder has the Final Final? From: "awoelflebater@... [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2014 2:06 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts ---In [email protected], <anartaxius@...> wrote : From: "awoelflebater@... [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2014 2:58 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts >>>Wow Xeno, for a guy who has seen a few years, transcended a time or two and >>>who ploddingly, dryly picks apart most subjects you certainly seem to miss >>>the proverbial boat a lot. Do you ever break out of a shamble? Does red >>>blood pump around in blue veins? Do you get angry, excited, passionate >>>about anything? Bawee and MJ do NOT bring to light anyone's "samskaras" >>>except what might exist as their own. These two are not catalysts for >>>bringing to light anything but their own hanging on to past injury and >>>perceived injustices which have resulted in anger and disappointment >>>disguised as righteous desire to shake people up. Whatever they are doing >>>simply pinpoints their own hanging on and resentment and for you to >>>encourage or congratulate them is to illustrate your own limitations. Check >>>the fluff box now. >Thanks for the reply Xeno but I must beg to differ on some viewpoints here >(or are they opinions born of samskaras?) >>The 'fluff' box is where your messages presently reside. Samskaras are the >>main reason people act with passion, indignation. >Maybe in some cases but to characterize every act of passion or indignation >to be the result of a samskara is religious hoodoo. This assertion does not >sound or feel like it comes from anything but either book learning or a >Xeno-type analytic idea of something. Passion and indignation are something I >value in others because they come from a deeper place of giving a shit or, at >least, not dwelling in a mental space of apathy or surrender. If what you say >is true then dispassion and emotional passivity are the result of freedom >from samskaras. You know which one I'd choose. Of Course I know which one you would choose. Predictability is one result of samskaras and conditioned responsed >>I have them too, I just do not have as many as I used to and some are more >>attenuated than formerly. If you push someone enough, you should be able to >>activate some of them and get a response. >If you push someone enough it may result in response - red-blooded human >response that has all the attributes of being sensitive and alive. You make >it sound as if to be stimulated is a weakness. It is not. What I was implying was, say someone is extremely passive, a spiritual type, and you really bore down on him with taunts and insults etc., that person may just suddenly explode at you because you have triggered some normally well hidden response, maybe even the fight or flight response. It is not necessarily a weakness unless you consider an act out of character with a peaceful demeanor a weakness. >>We humans, as bodies, are stimulus-response machines, the gunk in the >>machine determines the output from a given input. A conditioned response. >Of course some people are more conditioned than others, the "gunk in the >machine" can be lack of objectivity or lack of self awareness where knee jerk >responses just come flowing out. FFL is full of that. FFL is a microcosm of >the larger sampling of humanity residing on this planet. There is not a soul >here who doesn't occasionally show their instinctual side which is to bond >with those with whom they agree and slot all others into fluff boxes or into >the 'do not read' category. While I am sorting people into approximate categories to reduce the amount I have to read on this forum, there is a tendency to go with people you tend to agree with. Now I think probably I would disagree with you more than many here, but here also you are actually responding with more than one-liner taunts or put-downs so there is material here that can be discussed. The mind does not get much exercise if it is faced with agreement all the time. This can be a technique, such as listening to political views that are opposed to your own. In the United States, if you were a Democrat, then a technique would be to listen to Fox News. >>My seemingly dispassionate responses are my conditioned responses, your >>passionate ones are yours, Barry's and Michael's are theirs. >I disagree. Conditioned responses imply no self awareness and I think much of >what I choose to respond to and how I choose to respond is based on a lot >more than just conditioning. I think it is the same for the others too. For >you to identify it as "conditioning" is far too simplistic. How do you >compare "conditioning" to "samskaras" and how do they relate or not relate to >each other? Conditioning sounds like learned behaviour in this lifetime while >samskaras surely imply something far older and deeper that resides at >virtually the molecular level of people. Or? Conditioning is a wider net than samskaras, as some is hard wired, and samskaras generally result from overloads on the nervous system as opposed to gentler conditioning. Responding when someone calls your name is conditioning, and that results from the habit developed by your parents giving you a name and repeating it in your presence along with other behavioural cues. If you look at the laws of physics, aside from the principle of quantum indeterminacy, everything is deterministic, which means essentially that anything you do, you really do not do as a free agent, the only freedom is a certain randomness, not will. One of the results of spiritual practice is to remain aware when conditioned behaviour is in progress. That is you can be aware and at the same time not be able to do anything about it. It is that awareness that can help wear down the conditioning effect of certain kinds of conditioning such as the ones we are labelling 'samskaras'. The experience that the TM movement calls 'CC' (but can have other descriptions in other spiritual traditions) is kind of a prerequisite for this kind of observation of to take place, but it is difficult or impossible to do much about it as the mind is still locked into the meaning and reality of thought that imposes itself on experiences, but it is a start. >>Now to my mind, Barry seems to have more awareness of his samskaras, his >>engrams, than most here even if he does not think of his behaviour in those >>terms. I have never felt Barry's so-called anger is real, whereas I have >>always felt that Judy's and yours is. Correct me if I am wrong about my >>surmise about you. The samskaras we need to worry about are the one's that >>cripple our ability function in the world and to form clear interpretations >>of what is going on in the world. PTSD is an example of samskaras that can >>cripple. >Of course, for any of this to make sense to me I have to first believe in >such a thing as samskaras. I am not sure that I do. When I appear to be angry >then I probably am. I don't play games in terms of representing my feelings >in a way which are true to me, apparent for others to see and feel. You speak >as if anger is always a bad thing. You speak as if the lack of "reality" or >truthfulness behind a person's emotion is a good thing. I can't agree with >you. If you are talking about bawee and anger then you need to look closer. >The fact that he continually dismisses, refuses to interact with those here >who disagree with his world view is a pretty good indication of not only his >fragile ego but of his continual tendency to hold grudges and remain furious >with others. But enough of bawee - he is a bore. Anger can be OK. I get angry sometimes, but I have always had a tendency to not be. I find anger is non-reflective, meaning when it flares up, there is no sense of choice to simply cut it off. So in that sense it is a conditioned response. If I bump my head on an open overhead cabinet door, I generally have a conditioned response — I'll swear at the damned thing, even though the door exhibited no intention toward me, it was just hanging there on its hinges doing nothing. I would say the biggest change in my experience generally with regard to things such as this is I no longer see individuals as intentional agents but rather as puppets of the laws of physics. I may still get angry when they do something that impinges on my conditioning, but I know there is a larger framework of activity in this universe functioning that results in their acting that way. Barry still interacts with me on occasion, but I think he believes or feels he knows he acts from free will, while I do not think this. I do think he feels many here are basically trapped in a cult mindset, and one way to deal with such a person is to continually disagree with a cult viewpoint. A cult viewpoint develops when a spiritual system does not clearly delineate that the spiritual framework is a temporary delusion introduced to give the mind 'a vision of possibilities' to use a common phrase. That one should not invest too heavily in in the system or terminology, because at some point it is going to be seen through. In regard to Barry, I do not experience he has grudges and anger or think he remains furious at others. That my response and your response differ substantially seems to indicate the reality of these things lies with us and not with him. Now, my interpretation of Michael's writing here is that he seems angry to me when concerned with certain subjects, such as that old fraud. But, and I do not know why I feel this, I have not really had that reaction with Barry, even when he told me to suck on eggs. I also feel that when you seem perturbed in your writing, you are perturbed. At some point, practising a meditation or other technique, a certain kind of 'space' develops around these kinds of experiences, and one becomes less reactive to them. >>I am not really interested in people as psyches, personalities. I am >>interested in experience, and in ideas about experience, and in how the >>world works, or seems to work (we may never really know how it works). The >>soap opera of personal interaction does not interest me, though I do enjoy >>person interactions, but really personal interactions are not possible when >>many functioning samskaras are running their routine because the essence of >>the person is not there, just the overly reactive conditioned responses. >Phew! How do you break out, separate "experience" from human interaction? You >are lumping human interaction into a fluff box of the soap opera. This makes >me wonder about your life and what you have experienced within the personal >and intimate interaction with others. It makes me think you have been >disappointed by them - hurt. It makes me think you have withdrawn away from >emotion and the follies and frivolities that seem to characterize the human >race for you. Perhaps I should clarify. I have a friend who is always complaining about how miserably her life is going. Nothing goes the way it 'should'. She always has a predictable reaction to everything. Like a soap opera on TV where everything is basically social interaction not going smoothly or happily. She is not prone to deep reflection on things. On the other hand I have a relative who has a serious mental illness, but is very bright, and who does reflect on things, but who cannot do so for more than short stretches of time, before he becomes fatigued or starts having 'strange thoughts'. But then there have been times when being with someone who I found often annoying turned into a moment of deep reflective silence and connexion, just being there if you will. It is when people are mindlessly dealing with the difficulties in their life, and that the only reality is their opinion on how it should be that I find tedious. >>You know that quote by Eleanore Roosevelt 'great minds discuss ideas, >>average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people', and while I do >>not have a particularly great mind, I do like ideas over events and people. >>It's the proportion that counts, as it is impossible to go through a day >>without encountering events or people and what they are like. A tremendous >>amount of time is spent on FFL discussing people's behaviour; it's gossipy >>and shallow. It even happens with me, I am not immune. >A tremendous amount of time at FFL is spent unearthing the nature of human >beings. You don't have to be talking about spiritual realms of deep learning >to see all there is to see, in fact you often see more when people are het >up, hot under the collar, bickering. It is fascinating and no more or less >revealing and interesting and profound than talking about states of >consciousness or what Yogi or path of teaching someone studied for years. Yeah, that means the teaching hasn't worked yet. And if there are no examples of it having worked, you can conclude that perhaps, it will never work. This is what I would call conditioning as we discussed above. It means the spiritual framework has ossified, turned to stone and become a dogma instead of a strategy for release. You have to develop a discrimination though, between whether or not an attack is a genuine attack or one being used as a tool. I went through courses where no belief system was safe from attack and belittlement, but it was in a context where some awareness of this process of getting angry at having one's cherished shit trampled on was allowed to develop, getting some 'space', some awareness of the process of conditioned response going, so one could see how mechanical the mind was in dealing with certain situations. >>I enjoy Barry's and Michael's posts because they dredge up conditioned >>responses. >So now you do like human observation and all of the soap opera -y stuff you >just said you disliked. But let me let you in to a secret here. Very few of >the objections to bawee or MJ's continual harping on about the TM movement >are based in passion or anger. Most here aren't upset by these two on this >subject, they are bored or amused. You need to figure out the difference. And >again, your observation that people here are showing their "conditioned" >responses is to miss so much of what human interaction and the impulse to >respond is about. Just voyeurism, but if it brings up something to discuss it can become interesting. I do find Michael's incessant negativity about TM rather tedious, but when he is discussing his actual experience, I find it rather interesting, compared to his persistent dissatisfaction. >>This happens even if I am not interested or even know what their intent was >>in making the post. That is private in them. For example, I initially on >>coming to FLL had some of my samskaras activated by Barry, and I tried to >>figure him out. That turned out to be mostly a waste of time, figuring him >>out. >Definitely gotta agree with you on that one. Mac's got it figured though. >>What turned out to be more valuable was figuring 'me' out, figuring out why >>I would react a certain way to what he said. Same with Judy. Now maybe Barry >>does the same thing, but that is for him to say. How often do you analyse >>your reactions to what life presents? >All the time. Every moment. I find this contradictory. Real anger I find is not very reflective, it is a visceral response — let me just kill the bastard! — it demolishes and unsteadies the mind. Afterwards, reflection might occur, but not in the heat of the moment unless you have a well developed sense of calm in turbulent situations. Somehow the image of people living it up in the moment, in the grit of life, being self-reflective (introspective) and analytical does not seem correct, it doesn't seem likely regarding that last paragraph of yours below. >>When we can consciously do this we can undermine our conditioned responses >>and experience a bit more freedom. When we are not aware, the world entraps >>us, conditions us. It is ironic that organisations, such as the TMO, >>verbally dedicated to liberation, freedom, always end up entrapping us by >>the creation of systems designed to condition our minds to a herd mentality. >>Quite a few here, Barry, Michael, and even you are aware of this. Don't >>sleep too much; you are going after the wrong prey, by looking outside for >>the source of your discontent. >I only have the "inside" to live, to deal with, Xeno. But I am not afraid to >let my inside travel outside. I am not worried that my passion, my joy, my >anger is the result of some crippling "samskara". I don't live by definitions >of words and concepts. I rejoice and revel in all of the tremblings, the >shatterings, the foibles that are me and I don't relegate these things into >boxes. I suppose this is where we differ. My sense of inside and outside is really dilute. There are obvious situations it is wise to avoid if you have foreknowledge, but generally I do not think people think ahead that much, life just comes at us. The difference between having a separate individual self, and a 'self' that is basically everything is not that you have any more control, but just that the separation, the sense of distance between inside and outside is gone. So whatever your emotional profile, life is more intimate. If you are not afraid to let your inside travel outside, it should not be difficult to have the inside disappear in the sense that it gets combined with the outside, and the dividing line fades away. The world is not any difference than before, and the body and mind are not really that different either, it is just a different operating perspective.
