No, people become insulted. A person saying x might be interpreted by y as an insult, but interpreted by z as a helpful hint. Being insulted is a response. What to some might seem a pox on their cherished tradition others might see as a reasonable evaluation of idiotic beliefs, or even championing truth. You can swear at an anvil, and what does it do in response — nothing. You can berate someone in a language they do not speak, and while they might notice you are agitated, in not understanding the words, they will not responds as if it were an insult. So it is all in the interpretation.
I have never said what Barry says is wisdom. It is what Barry says, that is all. People respond in different ways. He clearly knows enough about certain aspects of human nature to elicit the responses he gets on FFL. If I lived where he lived and saw him every day, I probably would have a better idea what he is like, but I tend not to draw conclusions so readily based on what he writes. Wisdom does not come from others, if you want to be wise, you have to mine for it yourself. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : "Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are activated." Wrong, Taxius. Barry is insulting people. Barry is cursing people's beliefs. Barry is denigrating people, distorting who they are, and treating them with incredible disrespect. We are not his guinea pigs. He, rather, has become quite a specimen of craziness and abuse, under the scrutiny, of those he inadvertently attracts, through his antisocial behavior. You are a fool for taking his emotionally unbalanced state, for some sort of wisdom. Grow up, and smell the reality. "The TMO memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the nature of reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not have the capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be using delusional thinking to evaluate ideas such as transcendence, states of consciousness and so forth, so our following this system of thought about reality would essentially be an act of insanity, that is, mental illness." Yep, absolutely correct. That is why we practice TM, to clear past impressions, so that we can one day see reality, as it is, not as we think it should be. Otherwise, we would remain impaired, as you say - in a state of ignorance. There is no way to follow the knowledge associated with TM, without doing TM. It makes little sense, like reading automobile service manuals, without owning or driving a car. I do not think you understood what I said here. What I said here was in a state of ignorance, you are incapable of knowing whether the TM program, in total, is a scam or not, based on its own philosophy, so saying that it clears past impressions and so forth, is a complete unknown, for in a state of delusion, you cannot come to a correct evaluation of whether the program has any valid reason for being followed. You cannot use the philosophy of the program to determine if what it says is true, that is circular reasoning. You cannot even evaluate the practices, at least initially. Lots of people have been practising TM for 50 years and still seem to be in the dark as to what it is all about. So the fact you found value might just be a random quirk. I myself found value in the program, but I also am aware of many limitations it has, and it has been useful for some, a stepping stone to other things for some, just so-so for others, and a nightmare for a few. There is nothing about enlightenment that is not experienced before starting a spiritual path. If enlightenment seems different from the way you were before engaging spirituality, then the process is not complete. Enlightenment does not add anything to life, it removes a misunderstanding about what has always been happening, what has been the case. During the unpacking of misconceptions, experiences may seem quite unlike what one had previously known. Witnessing 24/7 is an example of this. This is a dualistic conception of experience that arises because the mind is becoming familiar with the nature awareness. Unchanging awareness has been there from day one, but just unfamiliar because one did not know how to look at the situation. Once one knows how to appreciate the situation, you know it was always there, you just trained the mind to notice it better. So awareness 24/7 is not a special state. I have awareness this way, what is the big deal? It is not the cause of anything other than it enables you to experience, which is what you have always done. Consciousness has been present all one's life. You do not get any more, you just get to notice how it plays out better if you train the mind to appreciate, which is what meditation does. All an effective spiritual practice does is remove some clutter from the ol' mind. Most such practices seem to do the reverse, adding additional clutter to the mind. It should be a relief to remove a misunderstanding. Congratulating oneself for having discovered that one was an idiot is not cause for celebration. After all if one was an idiot in the past, perhaps one is still misconstruing the state one is in now. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Logical arguments about ultimates always contain a flaw. You can reverse the form of the argument to support atheism and if you do not see the flaw, it will seem equally valid, that is, that atheism is true. Now there are some atheists who definitely believe there is no god and they can be as fanatical as a fundamentalist religionist. Probably they would have no sense of humour about their condition. But a real atheist simply lacks a particular kind of belief because that belief seems neither reasonable or likely. They basically just do not care. Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are activated. We all have memes which are basically little snippets of mental routines our minds use. We trade them with each other, but for the most part these mental stances are just our opinions about the world around us and we tend to be be rather uncritical as to how well they really represent what is real, while at the same time taking them as reality itself. Take the TMO memes. On FFL, meditators and former meditators all at one time believed certain things about experience were at least possible, for example, that if you practice TM, which is not a religion, you will find God. The TMO memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the nature of reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not have the capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be using delusional thinking to evaluate ideas such as transcendence, states of consciousness and so forth, so our following this system of thought about reality would essentially be an act of insanity, that is, mental illness. The system defines us as in some way incapacitated in knowing what is real, and then expects us to just jump in, and accept what the system says is real. A discussion of the Kalam argument: Cosmological Kalamity http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Cosmological Kalamity http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Home » Library » Modern » Dan Barker » Cosmological Kalamity Dan Barker "Daddy, if God made everything, who made God?" my daughter Kristi asked me, when she was five years old. View on infidels.org http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Barry, Have you ever thought that atheism is also a belief-- and an unreasonable one at that? The Kalam Cosmological Argument should dispel any of your doubts.
