--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "geezerfreak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Oh it does, your highness. I've even changed my mantra > to cuntanada. > The bliss is overflowing! Tomorrow I'll change it to > Sri Sri Cuntanada Namah Namah! > Unity is mine at last!!!!!!
Now you've done it, and given away the secret of how to create TM "advanced technique" mantras. :-) Following up on the general theme of cults ( and hopefully not the personal spat...remember what I said only a couple of days ago about a certain someone having to have an 'enemy' at all times, and who the most likely candidates for that enemyship might be? :-), one of the traits I've noticed about cults that I haven't ever seen in the books that discuss them is that they promote *attachment to a fixed notion of the self*. Just look at the way the cultists react when one suggests that the group they belong to is a cult. They act as if they personally have been *attacked*. Isn't that odd, when you think about it? They *haven't* been attacked. All that's happened is that someone has introduced a different point of view about the group that they belong to, a point of view that is different than theirs. But they react as if you'd slapped them in the face. Go figure. It's the SAME reaction you see when you're inter- facing with one of these people directly and introduce a different way of seeing THEM. They react as if they've been attacked, as if they've been slapped. Then they follow up by claiming that the person who has referred to them from a different point of view than the way they see themselves as liars, or ill-intentioned people doing some kind of "hit" on them. It's as if in their minds there can be only ONE valid way of looking at or describing their selves, the way that they themselves look at themselves. Anything else is by definition NOT TRUTH, and therefore must be some kind of attack. Such individuals are serious ATTACHED to their definitions of self. Well, take that mindset and now extrapolate it to how they feel about the group that *taught* them these narrow definitions of self. They react *exactly* the same way -- any criticism is perceived as an attack, any critic an attacker. Cult, schmult. I think the larger issue is attach- ment to the self. In my experience across a wide range of spiritual practice, the only seekers who get that attached to one tiny definition of self are those who have not transcended the self regularly enough, or clearly enough, to understand that they have no fixed self. If they had, they wouldn't be *able* to get uptight when someone suggests a different way of looking at their selves, or those selves' behavior. They'd say, "Oh, that's interesting. There may be some truth in that. There is *also* truth in the way I've been seeing myself and prefer to see myself, but there is some truth in this new way of seeing myself as well. How inter- esting." But the cultist never reacts this way. To the cultist, any suggestion that they are not *exactly* the way they perceive themselves is an attack. Any suggestion that the group that has *taught* them to perceive themselves that way is not exactly what it perceives itself to be is an attack. Such people are always under attack because they believe they actually have something to *defend*. Those who have easily allowed self to slip away, over and over and over and over for years, tend not to react that way. They're not particularly attached to one way of looking at their selves, because they know that those selves don't even exist. One of the quotes I've been trying to remember lately when I encounter someone who is heavily attached to one particular way of seeing their self is, "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours." It's just so SAD that some people spend so much energy "defending" something that doesn't even exist, their own fantasy about who they are. There is so much joy they're missing out on in life if they just focused on the reality of that life instead of the fantasy they've developed of their self. 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/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> 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/
