--- In [email protected], Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My experience over the years is that as my consciousness rises > if I spend any amount of time at all around non-meditators the > majority of them start to seem like wild animals. I guess this > is because they are at the mercy of superficial influences which > are like "lines drawn on water or lines drawn on air" for many > of us. I'm not saying that all non-meditators are like that as > there are some people who just come into life at a higher level > of evolution than others. Nor am I positing some superiority > thing. It's just that if you spend any time with them beyond > some casual contact they seem to go completely blindly off on > tangents that I evolved out of years ago as so can be a little < annoying (especially if they are trying to drag you along with > them).
My experience has been both similar and dissimilar. Yes, there is something about having trod a spiritual path (and a Tantric path in particular) that lightens one up, if one's predilection is to allow lightening up. If it's not, the spiritual path can render one's ass tighter than a garden hose with a knot tied in it. And yes, many who have *not* had that experience take some things that I take lightly with a great deal of seriousness. ( Especially because I live in France, and the French tend to take almost *everything* too seriously. :-) That said, I often find my French non-meditating neighbors very grounding, in the best sense of that word. In my opinion they have many of their priorities in life right. They value family, and love, and good food and good wine and laughter and taking vacations and stuff like that. Unlike Americans, they do *not* value status and making money and slaving away at one's job terribly much. I would venture to guess that "making more money" would not make most French people's Top Ten List of their priorities in life. That is very refreshing -- and grounding -- to me, because I feel the same way. So there is some possibility that what you feel is an *American* phenomenon, as opposed to a mediator-vs-non- meditator phenomenon. > My relatives who out of all of them only my oldest nephew > learned meditation are always "so busy" and I think "no > you just aren't able to handle life so well any more > being blown about by an increasing amount of chaotic > influences in our noisier world." We as meditators tend > to have a stable base of consciousness and the chaos of > the world has less and less influence as our consciousness > evolves. And yet you, as a meditator, occasionally find that their chaos gets to you. Sounds like an opportunity to me, not a problem. > I would like to hear other's *experience* on this and not > theory. Good topic. I guess my reply is, Yes, at times they do seem a bit more primitive and ruled by emotion than do many of my long-term meditator friends. No, that's not a problem for me. I kinda enjoy it. I spent too many years in the study of self realization distancing myself from my emotions to want to have much to do with that these days. I am *not* one of those "Life is suffering" Buddhists. I suspect that the Buddha was misquoted, and that his real message was in the Third Noble Truth, not the First. Life is a seemingly-endless dance of delight for me, and some of its most delightful dancers have never *heard* of meditation.
