--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], Vaj <vajranatha@> wrote: > > > > What a wonderful story, thanks for sharing it! It speaks > > volumes to your integrity that you have not cordoned off > > parts of your past but bring them so nicely into the > > present. Very open minded and whole. > > Kind of like having no fences, as opposed to surrounding > oneself with barbed wire and the expectation that anyone > who approaches it is an enemy. Can you imagine a couple > of the TM apologists here actually having a good time at > a party of people who are no longer part of the TMO? > They'd be on their guard every moment, waiting for the > offhand remark they could interpret as an attack.
There is "meat" in this for analyzing many things, including the Middle East crisis. When you've set up things in your mind to create a "them vs. us" scenario with your neighbors, after a few years of this even peace overtures are viewed as just a concealed attack. Similarly, in spiritual groups that cultivate this sense of "them vs. us," the perceptions of those who buy into it become warped over time, with the result being a kind of *lack* of openness, a tendency to "read" any interpretation of dogma other than their own as a challenge and any response other than "Of course you're 100% right" as an attack. When your self-description becomes "defender of the faith," whether in secular life or spiritual, weird things happen. The consistent overreaction of some people here to comments that most people would see nothing wrong with reminds me often of a scenario from the Sixties in Davis, CA. A guy of draft age got his draft notice and went out drinking and commisserating with some friends. During the course of the evening, the fellow borrowed a lipstick from one of the girls and wrote across his draft notice, "Johnson's war in Asia makes America puke," put it in an envelope, and mailed it to the White House. He forgot about it until, a couple of nights later, he was awakened by the sound of his door hitting the floor, as agents from the local police, state police, FBI, and Secret Service came storming into his house, waving guns and pointing them at him. His neighbor happened to be a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, and came over to see what was going on, and so happened to be there and able to report on the Secret Service agent in charge's reply when the fellow asked, "WHY are you here? What do you think that I did." The SS agent said, "Well, you threatened the life of the President?" The poor college kid explained exactly what he had done and asked, "How could that possibly be inter- preted as threatening the life of the President?" The Secret Service agent said, "Well, if everyone puked on the President, he'd die." The story was all over the California press the next morning, and the Secret Service had a lot of Lucy-like 'splaining to do. But the real culprit was their self-description. Their *job*, as they saw it, was to be alert to danger *everywhere*. And the more they looked for it, the more of it they saw. "That which you focus on grows stronger in your life." The problem with the "them vs. us" mentality is that it becomes a kind of perpetual motion machine. The more isolated the "us" folks get, the longer they consider themselves superior to "them," the more *likely* it is that they will find something in *anything* that one of "them" says to go ballistic over. Their very self description paints them as defenders of the faith, a "job description" that would be meaningless if there were no "attacks" on that faith. Therefore, they see attacks everywhere, and spring into action to "defend" against each attack that they imagine. This reinforces their sense of self importance and gives them an adrenaline rush, so they get addicted to the process, so when the current "attack" is dealt with, they find themselves longing for another. And, of course, once you've set yourself up to think this way, there is *always* another. It's a sad cycle in my opinion, one that can be broken only by the person *within* the barbed wire fence. The people "outside" the fence -- the "them" to their "us" -- cannot ever really stop the cycle. The "them" folks could be playing with their kids next to the barbed wire, collecting wildflowers for the dinner table back home, and the "us" folks watching from inside the barbed wire prision they built around themselves will be convinced that they're planting land mines. So it goes in the Middle East, so it goes here on FFL. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
