--- In [email protected], Sal Sunshine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Nov 5, 2006, at 12:19 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: > > > --- In [email protected], "sparaig" <sparaig@> wrote: > >> > >> The question REALLY is: why do they continue on MD if > >> they obviously are not happy with it? Isn't that just > >> mood-making at its finest? > > > > With all due respect, you really *haven't* spent > > much time with women in a tight, hierarchical group, > > have you? > > Well, personally I think Spare's hit the nail on the head-- > I've spent a lot of time with women in hierarchical situations, > and I don't get it either. I would say either they (the > unhappy ones) are *real* good moodmakers, or just aren't too > bright and can't imagine any other life at this point, or > they're masochists, or all 3. There's really very few other > explanations for remaining in an unhappy situation, much less > desperately unhappy, when one, at least theoretically, doesn't > have to.
I have to bow to your experience as a woman within the TM movement. My impressions are based on being a man who has been in a number of spiritual groups, and who tended to form my strongest friendships with the strong women in those groups. So I've watched, and heard about, some of the things they go through. One of those things involves (IMO, and that of my friends) the deep-seated desire/compulsion to seek attention. Most of the strong women I've known in spiritual contexts -- the ones you noticed within seconds of entering a room they were in -- were *also* pretty skilled with having the same effect in rooms outside of a spiritual context. They took your breath away, and had spent most of their lifetimes being *used* to taking a roomful of people's breath away, any time they wanted to. Then they found themselves in a spiritual organ- ization, and if it was a fairly happening organ- ization, one in which people had regular epiphanies and felt as if they were making strong, steady spiritual experience, they found that it wasn't quite as easy to capture people's attention as it had been. Some of these women dealt with that transition well, and stopped trying. Others tried to scope out who *was* getting the attention in the group, and then set about becoming one of those people. In some groups, it was the ones who wore saris and did the best bhaktidance towards the teacher. In others, it was the ones who had the biggest set of balls, and made the most money consulting in a man's world. In some groups, it was the ones who spent the most time with the teacher. In others it was the ones who spent the most...uh...quality time with the teacher; that is, the ones who shared his bed. Different strokes for different traditions and groups. But the one thing that remained constant in my experience was that if there was an "attention hierarchy" to be climbed, some women were driven to climb it, even if doing so made them miserable on a day-to-day basis, and cut them off from cordial company with the other women. Have you ever been stuck in a relationship that, for all intents and purposes, was over, deceased, a dead parrot? And have you ever, in such a situation, stayed in the relationship because you hoped that it could regain the magic it once held for you? That, in my opinion, is why women stay in a very visible position that requires them to be models of blissninnydom, when they're feeling not the least blissy. Same thing for the men who persist in paths that make them less than happy. Most of them, in my opinion, are just pushing the rela- tionship past its time. But one never realizes that one is doing that until one does, whether it's a spiritual relationship or an amatory one. People do weird shit. There's really no figuring it out sometimes... 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/
