Thanks for everyone who responded to my question about our relationship to dead people like Jesus. As I had hoped I was able to read some fascinating perspectives. Some really took the ball and ran into some complex worldview shifting perspectives, Turq, Marek, and Edg (special mention goes to Edg for the pantsless puja story which had me laughing. Perhaps the follow up string can be "Can Guru Dev see your weiner?"), Sal came through with funny, appropriate song lyrics as usual ( I would like to have my way with your CD collection baby!)
The amazing thing to me is how mainstream the concept is of Jesus loving you from beyond the grave. Presidents can drop it into speeches with no notice made. Interestingly, if they declared that Poseidon loved them, or that they loved Poseidon, the S.... would hit the fan. It is an interesting litmus test for world views, although some of you raised the bar pretty high above my pedestrian concerns. (they are my boundaries and I love them more than Jesus!) Then Tom and Cindy dropped a bomb that had me off and running again... >From the feeback to my original reaction I see how this post also is a good one to ferret out our worldviews. Rick gave a completely different perspective on the incident. I assume that for Rick the value of an "awakening" is high, and as a momentary lapse in breakfast serving followed by self-reported good parenting, my comments were not on the mark. Judy commented that I was exaggerating this incident's effect on the kids and I agree. It may be why these practices are traditionally practiced with such intensity in the contexts of groups of single people. The clash of values comes up if the awakening adjustment takes longer than a few odd questions to your kid. If the mom had gone all Ananda Moyi Ma, who famously was unable to attend to her own bodily functions for long periods (that's butt wiping folks) then we are talking about a different level of problem. Judy also mentioned the need to talk straight with the kids to avoid the weirdness factor, although "mommy is a multi-dimensional being" may need some translation. I am inclined to believe in such experiences, although the payoff in "specialness" is so high that if someone was embellishing a bit it wouldn't surprise me either. It might be the kind of story that gets a little nudge in the telling from "mommy was a little spaced out after program for a moment", to "all the details of the past lives and identities which came as a thought in the spacey hyper imaginative state after meditation so it seemed very compelling". I'll never know. But I do think these experiences are possible even though I don't take it as a given that they are a positive thing. I am still on the "By their fruits ye shall know them" side of the fence on inner experiences, since I can't be inside someone else's head to distinguish awakening from mental breakdown, depersonalization. (plus it allows me to use the word "Ye" which I almost never get to do) Sal's post, coming from a parent with multiple kids, got me thinking again. Are such mind bending practices really appropriate for caregivers? My eyes are already up at my browline (thankfully still not that far up) on the concept of mommy unavailable to supervise kids for hours at a time day after day. This may meet the letter of the law that an adult is in the house with kids under the age of 10, but not having an adult consciously present for hungry kids sounds like a Lifetime channel made for TV movie "Mommy is hitting the bottle kids, leave mommy alone" or its A of E version "Mommy is getting enlightened kids, leave mommy alone". Here we switch from a single incident to a pattern of behavior and the effect is cumulative. People absorbed in hobbies are not completely unavailable, even though they might be distracted. If the story can be taken at face value, we have kids trained to not disturb mommy during meditation so powerfully that they overcame their own hunger for hours. I've been around kids enough to know that mealtime is something they howl about naturally and they escalate till they get some grub. A kid trained to go for hours without pulling mommy out of meditation is a kid who has been re-programmed by something worse than hunger. (I am speculating of course but getting a kid off their feed is no joke) Parents who are depressed are also emotionally and physically unavailable. So perhaps this is the inevitable result of a community that is practicing mind altering techniques for years, and if you accept the perspective that they are experiencing a valuable new state of consciousness, it is all worth it. If you take my perspective (and I think Sal's) meditating parents need to re-focus on her job of raising these kids and spend less time with their attention on their own self. (capitalizing the "S" doesn't get them off the hook) Put down the crack pipe people, your kids are being trained that their needs don't matter and they don't understand that you believe you are creating world peace. Kids need a little help developing their sense of self and you need to be there or pay someone who can be. Since this is a real person that I don't even know, but whose life I am judging from afar based on one story, I need to mention that I haven't raised kids, although through my dating life I have been around them a lot. I have no high horse to stand on in raising kids, just a bunch of opinions. But even from my low horse I can see that the question "where's my Maypo" (a nod to us baby boomers!) needs to be answered "Right here darling", even if it is flavored with carob and stevia herb sweetener. --- In [email protected], Sal Sunshine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Apr 16, 2007, at 8:58 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote: > > > This is human tragedy dressed up as spirituality IMO. It really upsets > > me to think of kids being subjected to this. > > You're not kidding. The kind of faux spirituality that says it's ok to > neglect your kids (which basically the TMO appears to approve of > heartily) is sick. > > Sal >
