--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], Vaj <vajranatha@> wrote:
> >
> > On Mar 5, 2007, at 10:31 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
> >
> > > > So do you and Barry have the guts to deviate from
> > > > your "TMers are just mindlessly repeating the dogma
> > > > they've been taught" tape loop and incorporate the
> > > > possibility that they're telling you what their
> > > > personal experience is?
> > > >
> > > > One of Barry's maxims is "Trust your own experience."
> > > > But somehow that's never extended to "Trust someone
> > > > else when they tell you what their experience is"
> > > > if that someone else happens to be a TMer.
> > >
> > > Well, having been a TM teacher, I do have a
> > > few problems sometimes believing what people
> > > WHO HAVE BEEN TOLD IN ADVANCE WHAT
> > > THEIR EXPERIENCE WOULD BE tell me of
> > > what their experience was.
> >
> > New buzz phrase: "experience coaching".
>
> The fascinating thing to me is how people who
> *have* had their experience coached develop the
> tendency to try to coach *others*, to *make* them
> believe the things that they've been taught to
> believe. It's almost as if part of them (probably
> an unconscious part) feels that if they can convince
> *others* that what they've been coached into believing
> is true, well then maybe it really will be true.
>
> Haven't you ever noticed how many people who
> never became TM teachers but who succumbed to the
> heavy "experience coaching" and "belief coaching"
> of the TMO try to *act* like TM teachers when they
> talk here and on other TM-related forums?
>
> They seem to want to be heard as *authoritative*,
> the same way they considered *their* TM teachers
> authoritative. And what gets them the most upset is
> when people *don't* automatically believe everything
> they say, the way *they* automatically believed
> everything that was told to them.
>
> And one of the MOST fascinating aspects of this
> whole scene to me is how the people who do this
> often begin to imagine that they actually have a
> receptive *audience* lurking out there somewhere in
> cyberspace, hanging breathlessly off of every word
> of their "teaching."
>
> The more self-important the wannabe teacher, the
> larger their imagined lurker "audience" becomes. And
> the more that the people they actually talk *to*
> on the forums on which they hang out laugh at them
> and *don't* take them seriously (much less authori-
> tatively), the larger their imaginary lurker "audience"
> becomes.
>
> And then *this* becomes self-reinforcing, in that the
> larger the imaginary lurker "audience" becomes, the
> more important and "needed" the wannabe teacher feels.
> They begin to feel that it's their DUTY to keep preach-
> ing to the converted in this imaginary lurker "audience,"
> and that it's their DUTY to correct any Off The Program
> ideas that may arise so that these imaginary lurkers whom
> they are "responsible for" in their minds won't become
> infected by any Incorrect Ideas.
>
> When you think about it, it's really one of the most
> fascinating scenes going down in all of modern spirit-
> uality, isn't it?
>
even more fascinating, to me at least, is someone like you who
hasn't taught or practiced TM in decades and who still considers
himself an authority on the subject. Is it coffee, or full blown
delusion speaking fer ya? Where do you get off on calling others on
their supposed trips when you are so out of it?
