[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, Jim, this is most interesting! I had just finished reading in Swami Vishnu Devananda's Meditation and Mantras (which also includes a nice translation of Patanjali's YS) that each of the paths had its specific strengths and weaknesses. If I remember correctly he said the bhaktas suffered a lot along the way, as their faith was constantly being tested to the limits, whereas the jnanas' weakness tended to be an overemphasis on the intellectual sheath, despite their assertions of unity with Brahman. If Brian Teitzman's revised version of Ed Tarabilda's system is correct I'm actually a Surya (Solar path of synthesis, a little of each, which feels right), so I'd guess I have some of the flaws of all ... along with a good dollop of Solar pride (perhaps masked by false modesty) just for good measure, I imagine :-) Hi Rory- Thanks for this- it is always helpful to get some independent validation of one's experiences and I appreciate you sharing this. I had written what I did regarding a bhakti-ish path also because I wanted to dispel the image of someone chanting to God with finger cymbals on (!) and a lot of mood-making, and indicate that the path is every bit as rigorous, and rewarding, as any other way to liberation. My use of the term 'bhakti-ish' also indicates that there is a dose of jnani thrown in as well, though I tend to keep any intellectual understanding to a bare minimum, lest I get caught up in it. I track just enough so that I know where I am at all times. Two more things: First, similar to your comments regarding not having to *do* anything about the 27 (28) Nakshatras, and the way of liberation feeling 'right', we don't choose our way of liberation, whether bhakti or jnani. It just comes naturally. Second, regarding all the suffering of the bhakti, once liberation is reached, there is not only no longer any suffering, but the relationship with God is so intimate, so friendly, so normal, that going forward becomes like the experience of a kid in a candy store, or like just going about one's daily business with our favorite Saint, Master, God or Goddess at our side, ready for any kind of interaction. it is really an amazing experience, yet completely normal. Maharishi has said that all paths find their fulfillment in liberation anyway, so regardless of the bus we boarded to get here, here we are! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Rory- Thanks for this- it is always helpful to get some independent validation of one's experiences and I appreciate you sharing this. I had written what I did regarding a bhakti-ish path also because I wanted to dispel the image of someone chanting to God with finger cymbals on (!) and a lot of mood-making, and indicate that the path is every bit as rigorous, and rewarding, as any other way to liberation. My use of the term 'bhakti-ish' also indicates that there is a dose of jnani thrown in as well, though I tend to keep any intellectual understanding to a bare minimum, lest I get caught up in it. I track just enough so that I know where I am at all times. Yes, yours is definitely a Path with Heart :-) Two more things: First, similar to your comments regarding not having to *do* anything about the 27 (28) Nakshatras, *lol* Just 27. I was making a joking reference to Akasha/New Morning's joke about them and the secret 28th (or words to that effect). and the way of liberation feeling 'right', we don't choose our way of liberation, whether bhakti or jnani. It just comes naturally. Absolutely -- again, more of a description than a prescription! Second, regarding all the suffering of the bhakti, once liberation is reached, there is not only no longer any suffering, but the relationship with God is so intimate, so friendly, so normal, that going forward becomes like the experience of a kid in a candy store, or like just going about one's daily business with our favorite Saint, Master, God or Goddess at our side, ready for any kind of interaction. it is really an amazing experience, yet completely normal. Yes, I love that ordinary extraordinariness! Maharishi has said that all paths find their fulfillment in liberation anyway, so regardless of the bus we boarded to get here, here we are! *lol* Yes -- no matter where we go... :-) 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I don't know of any cult counselors who live in conditions that could be manipulated by cult techniques. For the most part they live in hotels on location trying to help families without a lot of emotional support from peers. It is a pretty tough job. As far as them being afraid of their experiences goes, I can only talk about the people who came out of TM and do this work. None of them expressed this feeling. The guys I knew had the normal experiences in TM but came to view the meaning of those experiences differently. The people I met who do this work have high levels of compassion and self awareness. They believe they are restoring choice to people who have lost the ability to view their participation in a group and it's effects on their lives clearly. It has a lot in common with a spiritual breakthrough when it is successful in my opinion, very liberating. I see that most people involved in spirituality on this group have the same aversion to cult tactics as cult counselors. In this case knowledge is power. Being against cult manipulation is not an indictment of spirituality, but the abuse of people in the name of spirituality. Many cult counselors still value spirituality in their own lives. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? It's certainly been fascinating for me to see the number of *former* seekers and practitioners of meditation who, soon after abandoning their path, get into some form of heavy addiction, whether it be smoking ciga- rettes or smoking dope or drinking. Some of it is a I denied myself all these things for years and so now I have the right to indulge thang, but on another level it might be related to a subconscious desire to keep enlightenment away. Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I understand, and I applaud your good luck. :-) I don't know of any cult counselors who live in conditions that could be manipulated by cult techniques. For the most part they live in hotels on location trying to help families without a lot of emotional support from peers. It is a pretty tough job. And in the past, a very lucrative one. I am *not* disputing your experience, or the counselors who do what they do in good faith. However, that is *not* how it's always been. During my time with the Rama trip, because Fred himself was so flamboyant, his students' parents became targets for the *for-profit* exit counselors. I personally know three people who were literally kidnapped during that period, kept tied up in dingy motel rooms, threatened with beatings and/or rape, and generally subjected to coercion that was *far* worse than that which they were supposedly being saved from. All for $25,000 a pop, paid by the parents to the deprogrammers. Since the demise of CAN and since a few of these slimes got convicted, this practice has probably been curtailed or ended. But it really *was* how things were done in the exit counselling biz for a while. Those of us who have friends who are *still*, decades later, trying to get over the post-traumatic stress of being kidnapped by people paid by their own parents have to balance our feelings about that period of exit counselling with more benign stories such as the ones you mention. As far as them being afraid of their experiences goes, I can only talk about the people who came out of TM and do this work. None of them expressed this feeling. Again, our experiences were different. I found such stories on several anti-cult websites, related by the counsellors themselves, pretty much as I related them here. I think a lot of the difference might also be that you knew people whose previous experience had been TM and not some heavier technique which can produce *very* strong experiences, strong enough that practitioners might have been scared by them. If you're not prepared for it, the period of time spent after a strong experience of total transcendence can be a little unsettled. You keep looking for something to hang on to as your self, and you can't find anything. For some people, that can be equivalent to dying. The guys I knew had the normal experiences in TM but came to view the meaning of those experiences differently. The people I met who do this work have high levels of compassion and self awareness. They believe they are restoring choice to people who have lost the ability to view their participation in a group and it's effects on their lives clearly. It has a lot in common with a spiritual breakthrough when it is successful in my opinion, very liberating. You were fortunate. The two guys I testified against (because I witnessed the kidnapping) were ex-cons who had gotten into the business because at the time there was little likelihood of serving time for doing this kind of stuff, and it paid $25K a pop. I see that most people involved in spirituality on this group have the same aversion to cult tactics as cult counselors. In this case knowledge is power. Being against cult manipulation is not an indictment of spirituality, but the abuse of people in the name of spirituality. Many cult counselors still value spirituality in their own lives. Pleased to hear it. I'm only filling you in on a period of time in which the anti-cult movement wasn't quite the way you portray it now. 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]
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I've never read anything from exit counselors or anticult movement leaders to this effect either. I *have* seen something like this from a few former meditators who had become fundamentalist Christians, warning against what they called empty-mind meditation on the grounds that an empty mind attracted evil forces to possess the meditator. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? snip I'd agree with this. I think in some senses it's actually the reverse. The addiction aspect is secondary; what's important is the self-medication aspect, whether with substances or with a particular type of activity. One may or may not become addicted to either. I suspect just about everybody has a very dim, inchoate sense of the Self and of what it would be like to be nonattached, to not be overshadowed by the struggles of daily life, and find that certain behaviors (different ones for different people) tend to help lessen the feeling of being overshadowed while one is engaging in them. The temporary feeling of relief is usually an illusion, of course, and it may lead to even greater attachment if the behavior does become addictive, even if the behavior is healthy, like running or playing a musical instrument. (Even meditation is sometimes said to be an addiction.) But the drive, the motivation, to engage in the behavior is, it seems to me, *away* from the self and *toward* the Self, whether or not it's understood as such. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think in some senses it's actually the reverse. The addiction aspect is secondary; what's important is the self-medication aspect, whether with substances or with a particular type of activity. One may or may not become addicted to either. I suspect just about everybody has a very dim, inchoate sense of the Self and of what it would be like to be nonattached, to not be overshadowed by the struggles of daily life, and find that certain behaviors (different ones for different people) tend to help lessen the feeling of being overshadowed while one is engaging in them. The temporary feeling of relief is usually an illusion, of course, and it may lead to even greater attachment if the behavior does become addictive, even if the behavior is healthy, like running or playing a musical instrument. (Even meditation is sometimes said to be an addiction.) But the drive, the motivation, to engage in the behavior is, it seems to me, *away* from the self and *toward* the Self, whether or not it's understood as such. Yes! On the one hand, the addictive behavior-pattern is actually a denied particle clamoring for sattvic love/attention from Wholeness (rather than the tamasic denial or rajasic indulgence it usually gets), and on the other, the attachment-to-other qualities of addiction actually do, when lovingly attended to, bring those so- called not-Self identifications into a yet-more-inclusive Self. Either way, we win ... in the long run :-) 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
Christians, warning against what they called empty-mind meditation on the grounds that an empty mind attracted evil forces to possess the meditator. I have always hoped this was true. I thought it might improve my guitar playing of Robert Johnson! --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I've never read anything from exit counselors or anticult movement leaders to this effect either. I *have* seen something like this from a few former meditators who had become fundamentalist Christians, warning against what they called empty-mind meditation on the grounds that an empty mind attracted evil forces to possess the meditator. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
Pleased to hear it. I'm only filling you in on a period of time in which the anti-cult movement wasn't quite the way you portray it now. My understanding of how the first deprogrammers operated matches your description. They operated in an abusive way to break down the person. Creepy, and illegal with the kidnapping. When I was involved it was after it had become a voluntary educational process to restore choice. Based on rapport instead of thugishness. The person was free to leave at any point so the exit counselors had to keep them interested in the information. I think some of those dudes did some well deserved time in da joint. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I understand, and I applaud your good luck. :-) I don't know of any cult counselors who live in conditions that could be manipulated by cult techniques. For the most part they live in hotels on location trying to help families without a lot of emotional support from peers. It is a pretty tough job. And in the past, a very lucrative one. I am *not* disputing your experience, or the counselors who do what they do in good faith. However, that is *not* how it's always been. During my time with the Rama trip, because Fred himself was so flamboyant, his students' parents became targets for the *for-profit* exit counselors. I personally know three people who were literally kidnapped during that period, kept tied up in dingy motel rooms, threatened with beatings and/or rape, and generally subjected to coercion that was *far* worse than that which they were supposedly being saved from. All for $25,000 a pop, paid by the parents to the deprogrammers. Since the demise of CAN and since a few of these slimes got convicted, this practice has probably been curtailed or ended. But it really *was* how things were done in the exit counselling biz for a while. Those of us who have friends who are *still*, decades later, trying to get over the post-traumatic stress of being kidnapped by people paid by their own parents have to balance our feelings about that period of exit counselling with more benign stories such as the ones you mention. As far as them being afraid of their experiences goes, I can only talk about the people who came out of TM and do this work. None of them expressed this feeling. Again, our experiences were different. I found such stories on several anti-cult websites, related by the counsellors themselves, pretty much as I related them here. I think a lot of the difference might also be that you knew people whose previous experience had been TM and not some heavier technique which can produce *very* strong experiences, strong enough that practitioners might have been scared by them. If you're not prepared for it, the period of time spent after a strong experience of total transcendence can be a little unsettled. You keep looking for something to hang on to as your self, and you can't find anything. For some people, that can be equivalent to dying. The guys I knew had the normal experiences in TM but came to view the meaning of those experiences differently. The people I met who do this work have high levels of compassion and self awareness. They believe they are restoring choice to people who have lost the ability to view their participation in a group and it's effects on their lives clearly. It has a lot in common with a spiritual breakthrough when it is successful in my opinion, very liberating. You were fortunate. The two guys I testified against (because I witnessed the kidnapping) were ex-cons who had gotten into the business because at the time there was little likelihood of serving time for doing this kind of stuff, and it paid $25K a pop. I see that most people involved in spirituality on this group have the same aversion to cult tactics as cult counselors. In this case knowledge is power. Being against cult manipulation is not an indictment of spirituality, but the abuse of people in the name of
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? I never met anyone who did exit counseling who fits this pattern. I understand, and I applaud your good luck. :-) I don't know of any cult counselors who live in conditions that could be manipulated by cult techniques. For the most part they live in hotels on location trying to help families without a lot of emotional support from peers. It is a pretty tough job. And in the past, a very lucrative one. I am *not* disputing your experience, or the counselors who do what they do in good faith. However, that is *not* how it's always been. During my time with the Rama trip, because Fred himself was so flamboyant, his students' parents became targets for the *for-profit* exit counselors. I personally know three people who were literally kidnapped during that period, kept tied up in dingy motel rooms, threatened with beatings and/or rape, and generally subjected to coercion that was *far* worse than that which they were supposedly being saved from. All for $25,000 a pop, paid by the parents to the deprogrammers. Since the demise of CAN and since a few of these slimes got convicted, this practice has probably been curtailed or ended. But it really *was* how things were done in the exit counselling biz for a while. Those of us who have friends who are *still*, decades later, trying to get over the post-traumatic stress of being kidnapped by people paid by their own parents have to balance our feelings about that period of exit counselling with more benign stories such as the ones you mention. As far as them being afraid of their experiences goes, I can only talk about the people who came out of TM and do this work. None of them expressed this feeling. Again, our experiences were different. I found such stories on several anti-cult websites, related by the counsellors themselves, pretty much as I related them here. I think a lot of the difference might also be that you knew people whose previous experience had been TM and not some heavier technique which can produce *very* strong experiences, strong enough that practitioners might have been scared by them. If you're not prepared for it, the period of time spent after a strong experience of total transcendence can be a little unsettled. You keep looking for something to hang on to as your self, and you can't find anything. For some people, that can be equivalent to dying. The guys I knew had the normal experiences in TM but came to view the meaning of those experiences differently. The people I met who do this work have high levels of compassion and self awareness. They believe they are restoring choice to people who have lost the ability to view their participation in a group and it's effects on their lives clearly. It has a lot in common with a spiritual breakthrough when it is successful in my opinion, very liberating. You were fortunate. The two guys I testified against (because I witnessed the kidnapping) were ex-cons who had gotten into the business because at the time there was little likelihood of serving time for doing this kind of stuff, and it paid $25K a pop. I see that most people involved in spirituality on this group have the same aversion to cult tactics as cult counselors. In this case knowledge is power. Being against cult manipulation is not an indictment of spirituality, but the abuse of people in the name of spirituality. Many cult counselors still value spirituality in their own lives. Pleased to hear it. I'm only filling you in on a period of time in which the anti-cult movement wasn't quite the way you portray it now. A friend of mine on Purusha, a heir to a nice fortune, was abducted from Vlodrop, drugged and underwent so-called deprogramming from agents hired by his family. After a week in a logcabin he managed to escape. His brother later told him that the operation set the family back with 150.000 $ This is obviously a big business. My Buddy just shrugged at the event calling them fools. And no, they where not americans :-)
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff rorygoff@ wrote: snipmore and more sobriety which paradoxically also includes the identification with the particle's utter abandon and intoxicated devotional surrender to the Whole. I have been finding this whole-hearted surrender is automatic *after* the mechanics of the collapse (Incarnation) of the Whole into the particle, and the exalting/humiliating Unity of both, are pretty fully comprehended. But then, I had not been a bhakti... snip My way has always been more bhakti-ish, and I just wanted to comment that prior to Incarnation of the Whole as stated above, being bhakti- ish was pretty hell-ish(!), it sucked big time, like being in a constant tug of war with God, being forced to surrender, and yet being very fearful of the consequences. Facing death 24x7. Like walking a minefield blindfolded, or constantly cliff jumping (which is more what it felt like in my mind and body). Of course all of the fear and drama were not due to my surrender to God, but rather due to not having yet collapsed into an Incarnation of Wholeness; Awakening. And so I just had this peephole of my bound perception to look out from while undertaking this complete surrender, this series of cliff- jumping exercises. Scary stuff yet very, very powerful, and absolutely real- straight through the Fire. Existing as a naked thought within the Mind of God. Since all of the fear was built on illusion, I came to realize, Afterwards (Ha-Ha!), that not only was I always safe in my boundary breaking endeavors (being precisely attuned to the Supreme Being always includes a safety net- It Is Divine Law), but once the collapse or release into Wholeness occurred, my relationship with the Lord deepened immeasurably into an unanticipated depth of fulfillment, the rewards and extent of which continue to overwhelm me with gratitude and love. The complete joy of surrender is that for what little I am able to give, I receive a hundred times in return. Its pretty cool! Real freedom in total surrender, complete intimacy. Jai Guru Dev Om Shiva 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
Thanks, Jim, this is most interesting! I had just finished reading in Swami Vishnu Devananda's Meditation and Mantras (which also includes a nice translation of Patanjali's YS) that each of the paths had its specific strengths and weaknesses. If I remember correctly he said the bhaktas suffered a lot along the way, as their faith was constantly being tested to the limits, whereas the jnanas' weakness tended to be an overemphasis on the intellectual sheath, despite their assertions of unity with Brahman. If Brian Teitzman's revised version of Ed Tarabilda's system is correct I'm actually a Surya (Solar path of synthesis, a little of each, which feels right), so I'd guess I have some of the flaws of all ... along with a good dollop of Solar pride (perhaps masked by false modesty) just for good measure, I imagine :-) --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My way has always been more bhakti-ish, and I just wanted to comment that prior to Incarnation of the Whole as stated above, being bhakti- ish was pretty hell-ish(!), it sucked big time, like being in a constant tug of war with God, being forced to surrender, and yet being very fearful of the consequences. Facing death 24x7. Like walking a minefield blindfolded, or constantly cliff jumping (which is more what it felt like in my mind and body). Of course all of the fear and drama were not due to my surrender to God, but rather due to not having yet collapsed into an Incarnation of Wholeness; Awakening. And so I just had this peephole of my bound perception to look out from while undertaking this complete surrender, this series of cliff- jumping exercises. Scary stuff yet very, very powerful, and absolutely real- straight through the Fire. Existing as a naked thought within the Mind of God. Since all of the fear was built on illusion, I came to realize, Afterwards (Ha-Ha!), that not only was I always safe in my boundary breaking endeavors (being precisely attuned to the Supreme Being always includes a safety net- It Is Divine Law), but once the collapse or release into Wholeness occurred, my relationship with the Lord deepened immeasurably into an unanticipated depth of fulfillment, the rewards and extent of which continue to overwhelm me with gratitude and love. The complete joy of surrender is that for what little I am able to give, I receive a hundred times in return. Its pretty cool! Real freedom in total surrender, complete intimacy. Jai Guru Dev Om Shiva 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. Nice self-analysis. It takes a lot of courage to step up and offer such a deep and critical analysis of oneself. Especially before a group that can be a bit cutting at times. Particularly when you have fueled such by regular and at times massive goading. This is good. Part of the healing process perhaps. Your being the 4th most prodigious poster on FFL over the past months, its great that you are taking steps to understand what may be driving this. Even when you are scared by the approaching nothingness. Also poignant is facing up to your internal sadness and chagrin when, most of the time, no one replies to your posts. That again shows courage to face up to it. I thought I would send a friendly gesture of support by reponding to something you wrote -- since most people don't care to. And of course, what you say not only applies to you, but all of us. Good concepts to consider -- as many of us seem to get into FFL jags of posts at times. And I applaud your optimism. Seeing the nothingness perhaps close for everyone. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. Nice self-analysis. It takes a lot of courage to step up and offer such a deep and critical analysis of oneself. Especially before a group that can be a bit cutting at times. Particularly when you have fueled such by regular and at times massive goading. This is good. Part of the healing process perhaps. LOL. You *really* don't like to be ignored, do you? :-) Better get used to it. Pissants is as pissants does. :-) 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? It's certainly been fascinating for me to see the number of *former* seekers and practitioners of meditation who, soon after abandoning their path, get into some form of heavy addiction, whether it be smoking ciga- rettes or smoking dope or drinking. Some of it is a I denied myself all these things for years and so now I have the right to indulge thang, but on another level it might be related to a subconscious desire to keep enlightenment away. Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? Just thoughts on a rainy afternoon. Not trying to sell them to anyone... 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. Nice self-analysis. It takes a lot of courage to step up and offer such a deep and critical analysis of oneself. Especially before a group that can be a bit cutting at times. Particularly when you have fueled such by regular and at times massive goading. This is good. Part of the healing process perhaps. LOL. You *really* don't like to be ignored, do you? :-) Better get used to it. Pissants is as pissants does. :-) I'll let someone else handle the above fantastic gem of projection. I like to share. But please Barry, ignore me. (10 francs says you can't) I will post continue to post about things that I find deliciously ironic and/or filled with cognitive/logical errors -- and other topics that make me laugh. No response needed. Unless you care to join in the laughter. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. I feel a stirring in the Force... What is it? Oh, Nothing. No Force, no stirring 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TorquiseB writes: Snipped When you come into contact with the teacher's aura, the part of you that *already* has access to these different states of mind *recognizes* them in the teacher's aura. Seeing these states of mind in another wakes up the same states of mind in the seeker. It's as if the seeker had forgotten that such levels of being awake were available to him, but now that he's run into them, living and breathing and laughing in front of him in the form of the teacher, he realizes that the *same* states of mind are within him, and available if he just chooses to access them. Agreed -- and the real kicker comes when we realize that that OneMind of the Teacher *is* literally our own mind; that our particular I *is* a thought emerging from the OneMind of God/Guru/OurSelf...HA! LLL 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? snip I'd agree with this. The Dark Night's hell appears to be the pain of the withdrawal from particular identification with and addiction to spacetime and the relative, as one moves from identifying with an effect (the particle) through Nothingness to identifying with the emptiful, simple, ordinary, innocent Cause (OneMind, the Heart of All in the perfect Now). I think it was Anne Wilson Schaef's Escape from Intimacy: Untangling the 'Love' Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships, which struck me in how clearly her description of sobriety resonated with my own Dark Night and first Self-recognition of/as Brahman. This is not to say that that first dawning eradicated all addictive tendencies forever, as there have since then been subtler and subtler threads-to-other coming to awareness to reintegrate and subsume into the Self -- more and more sobriety which paradoxically also includes the identification with the particle's utter abandon and intoxicated devotional surrender to the Whole. I have been finding this whole-hearted surrender is automatic *after* the mechanics of the collapse (Incarnation) of the Whole into the particle, and the exalting/humiliating Unity of both, are pretty fully comprehended. But then, I had not been a bhakti... *L*L*L* 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlis tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlist@ wrote: TorquiseB writes: Snipped When you come into contact with the teacher's aura, the part of you that *already* has access to these different states of mind *recognizes* them in the teacher's aura. Seeing these states of mind in another wakes up the same states of mind in the seeker. It's as if the seeker had forgotten that such levels of being awake were available to him, but now that he's run into them, living and breathing and laughing in front of him in the form of the teacher, he realizes that the *same* states of mind are within him, and available if he just chooses to access them. Agreed -- and the real kicker comes when we realize that that OneMind of the Teacher *is* literally our own mind; that our particular I *is* a thought emerging from the OneMind of God/Guru/OurSelf...HA! LLL Its an equally delightfully odd phenomenon that even as we recognize that the OneMind of the Teacher is literally our own mind, we feel compelled to overwhelmingly surrender to a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or Brahmananda Saraswati- hardwired reaction, even though we are in fact surrendering and devoting ourselves to our own divine nature personified in another aspect of ourselves! Pretty trippy stuff... 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? snip I'd agree with this. The Dark Night's hell appears to be the pain of the withdrawal from particular identification with and addiction to spacetime and the relative, as one moves from identifying with an effect (the particle) through Nothingness to identifying with the emptiful, simple, ordinary, innocent Cause (OneMind, the Heart of All in the perfect Now). I think it was Anne Wilson Schaef's Escape from Intimacy: Untangling the 'Love' Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships, which struck me in how clearly her description of sobriety resonated with my own Dark Night and first Self-recognition of/as Brahman. This is not to say that that first dawning eradicated all addictive tendencies forever, as there have since then been subtler and subtler threads-to-other coming to awareness to reintegrate and subsume into the Self -- more and more sobriety which paradoxically also includes the identification with the particle's utter abandon and intoxicated devotional surrender to the Whole. I have been finding this whole-hearted surrender is automatic *after* the mechanics of the collapse (Incarnation) of the Whole into the particle, and the exalting/humiliating Unity of both, are pretty fully comprehended. But then, I had not been a bhakti... *L*L*L* PS Your reflections are unusually easy for me to riff off of, Rory (Ha-Ha!)-- I've been noticing something that may be related, having to do with noticing subtle fears and their subsequent resolution even 'within' in a permanent state of Self Realization, as we rediscover the world in its Divine state. When you wrote your recent equations having to do with greater and greater fullnesses sensed in BC--KC--SC, taking as a starting point all fears and associated emotions being caused by fear of the unknown, might there be subtle fearful tendencies that occur when we are enlightened as to our Brahman Universe, but not yet ripened into our Krishna Multiverses, then similarly not yet ripened into our Shiva Infiniverses? Because that aspect of our complete silence and its corresponding infinity of being is yet unknown to us? I don't know the answer yet, but it is a fun cosmic toy I have discovered! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Its an equally delightfully odd phenomenon that even as we recognize that the OneMind of the Teacher is literally our own mind, we feel compelled to overwhelmingly surrender to a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or Brahmananda Saraswati- hardwired reaction, even though we are in fact surrendering and devoting ourselves to our own divine nature personified in another aspect of ourselves! Pretty trippy stuff... Yes, very well put! That's exactly it -- *because* He is We, We surrender wholeheartedly to Him ... without that fullness of Unity there, we could not fully surrender OurSelf to HimSelf! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS Your reflections are unusually easy for me to riff off of, Rory (Ha-Ha!)-- I've been noticing something that may be related, having to do with noticing subtle fears and their subsequent resolution even 'within' in a permanent state of Self Realization, as we rediscover the world in its Divine state. When you wrote your recent equations having to do with greater and greater fullnesses sensed in BC--KC--SC, taking as a starting point all fears and associated emotions being caused by fear of the unknown, might there be subtle fearful tendencies that occur when we are enlightened as to our Brahman Universe, but not yet ripened into our Krishna Multiverses, then similarly not yet ripened into our Shiva Infiniverses? Because that aspect of our complete silence and its corresponding infinity of being is yet unknown to us? I don't know the answer yet, but it is a fun cosmic toy I have discovered! Yes, this BC/KC/SC progression (or series of progressions) really feels like a recapitulation and more profound harmonic of the mechanics of CC/GC/UC *from Wholeness* -- as the subtle fears (appearances of not-Self) inherent in that first pre-Brahman progression are now much more fully Understood. Hence, the automatic *whole-hearted* surrender -- not fully (to me at least) available or even suspected as a possibility in the G.C. to U.C. progression (i.e., while identifying primarily as a particle having these experiences instead of also as the Wholeness very innocently causing these experiences) -- is now much more fully available as the rest of the self/other equation is newly comprehended on deeper and deeper levels to be also simply oneSelf. :-) 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/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
On Oct 18, 2006, at 7:05 PM, Rory Goff wrote:--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jim_flanegin" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Its an equally delightfully odd phenomenon that even as we recognize that the OneMind of the Teacher is literally our own mind, we feel compelled to overwhelmingly surrender to a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or Brahmananda Saraswati- hardwired reaction, even though we are in fact surrendering and devoting ourselves to our own divine nature personified in another aspect of ourselves! Pretty trippy stuff... Yes, very well put! That's exactly it -- *because* He is We, We surrender wholeheartedly to Him ... without that fullness of Unity there, we could not fully surrender OurSelf to HimSelf! When I take refuge, I always take refuge in the Unification of All My Masters. How could it be any other way? __._,_.___ To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: PS Your reflections are unusually easy for me to riff off of, Rory (Ha-Ha!)-- I've been noticing something that may be related, having to do with noticing subtle fears and their subsequent resolution even 'within' in a permanent state of Self Realization, as we rediscover the world in its Divine state. When you wrote your recent equations having to do with greater and greater fullnesses sensed in BC--KC--SC, taking as a starting point all fears and associated emotions being caused by fear of the unknown, might there be subtle fearful tendencies that occur when we are enlightened as to our Brahman Universe, but not yet ripened into our Krishna Multiverses, then similarly not yet ripened into our Shiva Infiniverses? Because that aspect of our complete silence and its corresponding infinity of being is yet unknown to us? I don't know the answer yet, but it is a fun cosmic toy I have discovered! Yes, this BC/KC/SC progression (or series of progressions) really feels like a recapitulation and more profound harmonic of the mechanics of CC/GC/UC *from Wholeness* -- as the subtle fears (appearances of not-Self) inherent in that first pre-Brahman progression are now much more fully Understood. Hence, the automatic *whole-hearted* surrender -- not fully (to me at least) available or even suspected as a possibility in the G.C. to U.C. progression (i.e., while identifying primarily as a particle having these experiences instead of also as the Wholeness very innocently causing these experiences) -- is now much more fully available as the rest of the self/other equation is newly comprehended on deeper and deeper levels to be also simply oneSelf. :-) Tes, I never in a million years would've imagined this *other side* of Enlightenment, rediscovering boundaries within Wholeness, composed of Wholeness itself, Infinity rediscovering Itself to be yet more Infinite. The continual expansion of immovable Silence within Itself...though somewhere in my little peanut brain I recall Maharishi speaking about silence moving within itself-- which I understood at the time to be the mechanics of creation on an abstract level, but didn't realize it could actually be experienced real time-- Now where's that cheeseburger? 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Its an equally delightfully odd phenomenon that even as we recognize that the OneMind of the Teacher is literally our own mind, we feel compelled to overwhelmingly surrender to a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or Brahmananda Saraswati- hardwired reaction, even though we are in fact surrendering and devoting ourselves to our own divine nature personified in another aspect of ourselves! Pretty trippy stuff... Yes, very well put! That's exactly it -- *because* He is We, We surrender wholeheartedly to Him ... without that fullness of Unity there, we could not fully surrender OurSelf to HimSelf! Yep- the very act of surrender furthers our Unity while simultaneously destroying our concepts of bound self- a very powerful and efficient activity! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. Nice self-analysis. It takes a lot of courage to step up and offer such a deep and critical analysis of oneself. Especially before a group that can be a bit cutting at times. Particularly when you have fueled such by regular and at times massive goading. This is good. Part of the healing process perhaps. Your being the 4th most prodigious poster on FFL over the past months, its great that you are taking steps to understand what may be driving this. Even when you are scared by the approaching nothingness. Also poignant is facing up to your internal sadness and chagrin when, most of the time, no one replies to your posts. That again shows courage to face up to it. I thought I would send a friendly gesture of support by reponding to something you wrote -- since most people don't care to. And of course, what you say not only applies to you, but all of us. Good concepts to consider -- as many of us seem to get into FFL jags of posts at times. And I applaud your optimism. Seeing the nothingness perhaps close for everyone. Unbelievable - with a steady drift, anything and nothing can be turned into a bash. JohnY 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I take refuge, I always take refuge in the Unification of All My Masters. How could it be any other way? Thanks! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. I know this was a couple of days ago, but today I found myself wondering whether the same looking away could help to explain those with an Internet addiction. They intuit that they're close to the experience of nothingness, and that scares them, so they post a lot and/or post stuff calculated to get a response (positive or negative doesn't matter, just as long as it's a response), all so that the self can preserve the illusion of itself. As long as the self is busy dealing with one-on- one interactions, the looking away succeeds, the illusion of self's existence is preserved, and the person never has to deal with the nothingness they can feel just over the horizon. For that matter, could *all* forms of addiction be a way to preserve the illusion of self, and keep selflessness at bay? It's certainly been fascinating for me to see the number of *former* seekers and practitioners of meditation who, soon after abandoning their path, get into some form of heavy addiction, whether it be smoking ciga- rettes or smoking dope or drinking. Some of it is a I denied myself all these things for years and so now I have the right to indulge thang, but on another level it might be related to a subconscious desire to keep enlightenment away. Another form of addiciton that lends itself to this interpretation is the anti-cult cult. In my experience, *most* of the leaders of this anti- movement movement, when they tell their personal stories, come to a pivotal moment for them that goes something like this: In meditation I got to a point where I lost all sense of who I was. This scared me so much that I never wanted that to happen again, so I quit meditating, and now I work to warn others that they might get to a similar place. What if the work they do as an anti-cult counselor is their way of not only avoiding full transcendence/loss of self, but a way to prevent others from going further than they dared to go? Just thoughts on a rainy afternoon. Not trying to sell them to anyone... For some of those folks, even if they stop it's too late, and they still get 'hit by the bus'. 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Tes, I never in a million years would've imagined this *other side* of Enlightenment, rediscovering boundaries within Wholeness, composed of Wholeness itself, Infinity rediscovering Itself to be yet more Infinite. The continual expansion of immovable Silence within Itself...though somewhere in my little peanut brain I recall Maharishi speaking about silence moving within itself-- which I understood at the time to be the mechanics of creation on an abstract level, but didn't realize it could actually be experienced real time-- Now where's that cheeseburger? Already eaten -- i.e., somewhere inside the Self, I suspect :-) 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rory Goff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Tes, I never in a million years would've imagined this *other side* of Enlightenment, rediscovering boundaries within Wholeness, composed of Wholeness itself, Infinity rediscovering Itself to be yet more Infinite. The continual expansion of immovable Silence within Itself...though somewhere in my little peanut brain I recall Maharishi speaking about silence moving within itself-- which I understood at the time to be the mechanics of creation on an abstract level, but didn't realize it could actually be experienced real time-- Now where's that cheeseburger? Already eaten -- i.e., somewhere inside the Self, I suspect :-) Ha-Ha! Good one!! Thanks! 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's the nice thing about the yoga-nidra state--you can access anything, including answers to many questions. I remember on my first dark retreat--I expected it to take several days before sensory deprivation kicked in (boy was I wrong) instead I was almost torn apart by kundalini completely awake at the third eye from the deceptively simple practice I'd been given. Eventually after I left the luminosity ground, I went through several bodies, eventually separating from the physical, but eventually rearrived in my physical room of complete darkness and silence--and the first thing that welled up was an unprocessed event from being trapped in a cave during college. It eventually subsided, but apparently all events with major juice in them boil off very quickly when you begin touching the Base. I've had similar experiences, although not on retreat, and mainly in the dream plane. Encountering some bad- asses who obviously mean to do me harm, and who have had that intent for some time now. And remembering that in the past every time I avoided them things just got worse, so I'd settle into the transcendent during the dream, and then stand up to them and fight them in the dream. Voila...instantaneous liberation from that particular samskaric pattern...they never showed up again. 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/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
On Oct 16, 2006, at 10:12 PM, jyouells2000 wrote:luminosity ground = "a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness" ? The union of luminosity-and-emptiness--of course as soon as you move even slightly out of that union, luminosity dawns. __._,_.___ To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Oct 16, 2006, at 10:12 PM, jyouells2000 wrote: luminosity ground = a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness ? The union of luminosity-and-emptiness--of course as soon as you move even slightly out of that union, luminosity dawns. Ah, 'Let there be Light!' Thankyou... 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits Gangaji)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Re darshan: Why I prefer my recognition theory is because it puts the responsibility and the impetus for self realization where it belongs, in the lap of the *seeker*, not the teacher. Did you ever consider the possibility that the reason [MMY] keeps himself aloof is that he has no darshan to give? The further away he keeps people, the longer it takes them to figure it out. The closer he keeps them (the skinboys, for example), the sooner they figure it out and beat feet. --Barry, post #118682 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits Gangaji)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: snip Re darshan: Why I prefer my recognition theory is because it puts the responsibility and the impetus for self realization where it belongs, in the lap of the *seeker*, not the teacher. Did you ever consider the possibility that the reason [MMY] keeps himself aloof is that he has no darshan to give? The further away he keeps people, the longer it takes them to figure it out. The closer he keeps them (the skinboys, for example), the sooner they figure it out and beat feet. --Barry, post #118682 You must feel that there is an inconsistency here. I don't. In that post, I was using the term darshan because it was already being used in the thread, if I remember correctly. The *subjective* experience is the same whether one believes that the teacher is giving darshan or whether one believes that the effect one feels is due to recognition. In either case, in my experience, Maharishi ain't got what it takes. So the closer one works with him over a long period of time, the sooner one might figure that out. The further away one stays, the longer one can believe in *either* darshan *or* him being someone with whom one could benefit from recognition. I have no *problem* with inconsistency, as you are the first to point out. But I wasn't being inconsistent here. Try again. And if you can't find an actual example, you can always call me a phony again. :-) 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
TorquiseB writes: Snipped When you come into contact with the teacher's aura, the part of you that *already* has access to these different states of mind *recognizes* them in the teacher's aura. Seeing these states of mind in another wakes up the same states of mind in the seeker. It's as if the seeker had forgotten that such levels of being awake were available to him, but now that he's run into them, living and breathing and laughing in front of him in the form of the teacher, he realizes that the *same* states of mind are within him, and available if he just chooses to access them. This is how I honestly think it works. I no longer believe in the darshan theory of empowerment. I think that that view, that the teacher does something to cause the awakening in the student, is completely understandable. That's how it *feels*, after all. You see the teacher and you get high. Therefore they must have done something to you. Why I prefer my recognition theory is because it puts the responsibility and the impetus for self realization where it belongs, in the lap of the *seeker*, not the teacher. It *allows* for there being a benefit in seeing saints and realized masters, but not in the sense that one goes to them hoping that they'll zap you somehow with woo-woo rays and provide a hit of enlightenment. If one operates under the assumption that the recog- nition theory adequately describes the mechanics of what happens when you sit satsang with or otherwise interact with a powerful teacher, you are less likely to fall into the cult ruts, projecting onto the teacher magical abilities to zap you into enlightenment. Or their negative counterpart, projecting onto them some ability to hypnotize large groups of people at will. Tom T: According to a friend who has a phd in cognitive learning the above has some validity. Those who have been on the path for some time and have done long times in meditation sooner or later bump up against the NOTHINGESS. Many just get scared and boogy others hang in and try to avoid the nothingness but kind of dance around it. If they hang in or through some other coaccident they eventually cognize this as the everything that IS. According to my friend, humans are put together so that they can only recognize something they have previously known before. Well nothingness is something most of us were not prepared for. Those who hang in sometimes just get it out of pure stubborness. Others get it from a teacher who is a living embodiment of the everythingess. Eventualy one can sometimes see that your experience is your understanding if you are willing to to just be OK with the nothingness. One time I heard Gangaji say, on a video, just be willing to be Nothing. That little mahavakya stuck in a loop that just kept going round and round for a day. All of a sudden I realized I didn't have to be willing to be nothing, I was nothing. Cool. Tom T 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TorquiseB writes: Snipped When you come into contact with the teacher's aura, the part of you that *already* has access to these different states of mind *recognizes* them in the teacher's aura. Seeing these states of mind in another wakes up the same states of mind in the seeker. It's as if the seeker had forgotten that such levels of being awake were available to him, but now that he's run into them, living and breathing and laughing in front of him in the form of the teacher, he realizes that the *same* states of mind are within him, and available if he just chooses to access them. This is how I honestly think it works. I no longer believe in the darshan theory of empowerment. I think that that view, that the teacher does something to cause the awakening in the student, is completely understandable. That's how it *feels*, after all. You see the teacher and you get high. Therefore they must have done something to you. Why I prefer my recognition theory is because it puts the responsibility and the impetus for self realization where it belongs, in the lap of the *seeker*, not the teacher. It *allows* for there being a benefit in seeing saints and realized masters, but not in the sense that one goes to them hoping that they'll zap you somehow with woo-woo rays and provide a hit of enlightenment. If one operates under the assumption that the recog- nition theory adequately describes the mechanics of what happens when you sit satsang with or otherwise interact with a powerful teacher, you are less likely to fall into the cult ruts, projecting onto the teacher magical abilities to zap you into enlightenment. Or their negative counterpart, projecting onto them some ability to hypnotize large groups of people at will. Tom T: According to a friend who has a phd in cognitive learning the above has some validity. Those who have been on the path for some time and have done long times in meditation sooner or later bump up against the NOTHINGESS. Many just get scared and boogy others hang in and try to avoid the nothingness but kind of dance around it. If they hang in or through some other coaccident they eventually cognize this as the everything that IS. According to my friend, humans are put together so that they can only recognize something they have previously known before. Well nothingness is something most of us were not prepared for. Those who hang in sometimes just get it out of pure stubborness. Others get it from a teacher who is a living embodiment of the everythingess. Eventualy one can sometimes see that your experience is your understanding if you are willing to to just be OK with the nothingness. One time I heard Gangaji say, on a video, just be willing to be Nothing. That little mahavakya stuck in a loop that just kept going round and round for a day. All of a sudden I realized I didn't have to be willing to be nothing, I was nothing. Cool. Tom T My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. JohnY 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. JohnY It is funny actually to think that the 'bound' self springs from the unbounded Self's curiousity about its Self, and so it creates another, which them denies its genesis. Like looking in the mirror and having your reflection deny it is just that, and then walk away from you laughing. 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/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. JohnY Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. 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 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. JohnY Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. Around the age of 10 I started to have a lucid 'dream' where I had the subjective sensation of the my head expanding and expanding until all that was left was a tiny dot of bright light about to disapear in a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness. Then I would wake up terrified and shaking and calling for mom... maybe times a week for a couple of years. Years later while sitting and listening to sama veda floating on that ocean the memories all came rolling back . JohnY 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/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:58 PM, jyouells2000 wrote:--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- jyouells2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:snip My experience is that the 'bound' self is built uponthe unwillingnessto be nothing, the fear ofthat... Sort of a continuous looking away.JohnY Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is alsoa continuous looking for a subjective "feeling" ofself that affirms (falsely) that "I exist." The minddoes this every few seconds in waking state. It's avery subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CCbecause the mind turns to find something to affirmitself and nothing, literally, is found instead. Thereis no longer a felt-sense of "I" to affirmindividuality. There is, again, literally, nothingthere to find but pure consciousness and pureconsciousness is something that the mind can notcomprehend. Around the age of 10 I started to have a lucid 'dream'where I had the subjective sensation of the my head expandingand expanding until all that was left was a tiny dot of bright lightaboutto disapear in a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness.Then I would wake up terrified and shaking and calling for mom...maybe times a week for a couple of years.Years later while sitting and listening to sama veda floating on thatocean the memories all came rolling back . That's the nice thing about the yoga-nidra state--you can access anything, including answers to many questions. I remember on my first dark retreat--I expected it to take several days before sensory deprivation kicked in (boy was I wrong) instead I was almost torn apart by kundalini completely awake at the third eye from the deceptively "simple" practice I'd been given. Eventually after I left the luminosity ground, I went through several bodies, eventually separating from the physical, but eventually rearrived in my physical room of complete darkness and silence--and the first thing that welled up was an unprocessed event from being trapped in a cave during college. It eventually subsided, but apparently all events with major juice in them boil off very quickly when you begin touching the Base. __._,_.___ To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:58 PM, jyouells2000 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter drpetersutphen@ wrote: --- jyouells2000 jyouells@ wrote: snip My experience is that the 'bound' self is built upon the unwillingness to be nothing, the fear of that... Sort of a continuous looking away. JohnY Brilliant(IMHO)!! The continuous looking away is also a continuous looking for a subjective feeling of self that affirms (falsely) that I exist. The mind does this every few seconds in waking state. It's a very subtle egoic habit. You can see this habit in CC because the mind turns to find something to affirm itself and nothing, literally, is found instead. There is no longer a felt-sense of I to affirm individuality. There is, again, literally, nothing there to find but pure consciousness and pure consciousness is something that the mind can not comprehend. Around the age of 10 I started to have a lucid 'dream' where I had the subjective sensation of the my head expanding and expanding until all that was left was a tiny dot of bright light about to disapear in a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness. Then I would wake up terrified and shaking and calling for mom... maybe times a week for a couple of years. Years later while sitting and listening to sama veda floating on that ocean the memories all came rolling back . That's the nice thing about the yoga-nidra state--you can access anything, including answers to many questions. I remember on my first dark retreat--I expected it to take several days before sensory deprivation kicked in (boy was I wrong) instead I was almost torn apart by kundalini completely awake at the third eye from the deceptively simple practice I'd been given. Eventually after I left the luminosity ground, I went through several bodies, eventually separating from the physical, but eventually rearrived in my physical room of complete darkness and silence--and the first thing that welled up was an unprocessed event from being trapped in a cave during college. It eventually subsided, but apparently all events with major juice in them boil off very quickly when you begin touching the Base. luminosity ground = a boundless ocean of shimmering light/darkness ? JohnY 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/
[FairfieldLife] Recognition Is Liberation (was Re: Scandal hits Gangaji)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, abutilon108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Thanks for your impressions. The language form she uses is clearly meant to shift states of awareness. It would work better in a room where you didn't have other entertainment options pulling at you, I suspect. It is deadly on TV with a remote in my hand. But is does seem to utilize some good hypnotic therapy techniques, so it doesn't surprise me that people find it has value. Some of her sessions seem like watching someone in therapy going through a process. Thank you so much for this observation, Curtis. I was very involved with Gangaji for several years, and still find myself processing the experience from time to time, just as I do my many years of involvement with the TMO. This is very insightful. I had been quite captivated by her for some time, but finally came to feel that she had a way of producing experiences in people which they took for awakening. Of course, everyone has a different idea of what awakening is, and I do also wonder what Rick meant when he said people had awakened with her (and also what evidence there is for that awakening.) In any case, it seemed what Gangaji had experienced was transitory - like any experience that comes and goes. It seems to me that awakening, to be a truly meaningful shift, would entail a transition that is permanent. Gangaji always emphasized the need for vigilance -- that a person would have an awakening that they would then need to sustain through a process of vigilance. In other words, this awakening could occur and then be lost without effort to maintain it. The description of Gangaji's interactions as being hypnotic really seems to zero in on something. She speaks in a rather hynotic way and can be very charming (to some) and poetic. I think a lot of people become infatuated with her image. Well -- there's lots more percolating thanks to your remarks. Thanks! Thanks for your remarks as well. I was in Paris working last week, and thus unable to comment on this thread as I might have liked to. I had only one short interaction with Gangaji, in two day-long satsangs, but I spent a number of years with someone who was equally able to enable his students to *radically* shift their states of attention when in his presence. So I might propose an alternative view of the situation to Curtis' hypnosis theory. My suggestion is that you ponder whether the subjective experiences you felt in her presence could have been created entirely from *your* side, as the result of *recognition*. Here's my theory, which is mine. :-) Someone who is realized or close to it is in a very real way firing on more cylinders than the normal seeker who runs into them. The teacher has access to and lives in a greater number of the ten thousand states of mind than the seeker does. This is reflected in the teacher's aura. When you come into contact with the teacher's aura, the part of you that *already* has access to these different states of mind *recognizes* them in the teacher's aura. Seeing these states of mind in another wakes up the same states of mind in the seeker. It's as if the seeker had forgotten that such levels of being awake were available to him, but now that he's run into them, living and breathing and laughing in front of him in the form of the teacher, he realizes that the *same* states of mind are within him, and available if he just chooses to access them. This is how I honestly think it works. I no longer believe in the darshan theory of empowerment. I think that that view, that the teacher does something to cause the awakening in the student, is completely understandable. That's how it *feels*, after all. You see the teacher and you get high. Therefore they must have done something to you. Why I prefer my recognition theory is because it puts the responsibility and the impetus for self realization where it belongs, in the lap of the *seeker*, not the teacher. It *allows* for there being a benefit in seeing saints and realized masters, but not in the sense that one goes to them hoping that they'll zap you somehow with woo-woo rays and provide a hit of enlightenment. If one operates under the assumption that the recog- nition theory adequately describes the mechanics of what happens when you sit satsang with or otherwise interact with a powerful teacher, you are less likely to fall into the cult ruts, projecting onto the teacher magical abilities to zap you into enlightenment. Or their negative counterpart, projecting onto them some ability to hypnotize large groups of people at will. Just my opinion. Good luck in figuring out your time with Gangaji. I spent only a couple of days around her, and this is the best I've been able to come up with. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
