[FairfieldLife] Walking dead and Toy Story
This is pretty good http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/undeniable-proof-that-the-walking-dead-and-toy-story-have-th#.ilb5YQaZg
[FairfieldLife] Walking vs. Elliptical Training
'Walking vs. Elliptical Training' New York Times: http://well.blogs.nytimes.comhttp://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/ask-well-elliptical-training/?_php=true_type=blogs_php=true_type=blogssmid=tw-nytimes_r=1; [image: Inline image 1]
[FairfieldLife] Walking to the edge of the universe
OK, this is officially one of the coolest and oddest things I've run across in quite some time: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/edge-of-minecraft_n_4676047.htm\ l http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/edge-of-minecraft_n_4676047.ht\ ml A guy named Kurt J. Mac has been doing a walk for charity for the last three years, and raising a shitload of money for a cool group called Child's Play in the process. And he's not just walking, he's *exploring*, traversing never-before-seen and uncharted territory, and blogging about it (complete with visuals) on a YouTube channel that now has over 300,000 subscribers. His goal is to walk to the edge of the known universe. So far he's only walked 700 kilometers, and math nerds have calculated that at his current pace, it'll take him 22 years to get to his destination, but this doesn't bother him because for him the journey is more important than the arriving. I can identify; the frontispiece for Road Trip Mind was this quote from Lao-tzu: A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving And the cool thing is that all of this is virtual. The end of the universe that Kurt is trying to reach is called the Far Lands, and it exists -- if, in fact it exists at all -- inside a computer game called Minecraft. Read the article. This man's journey is a virtual throwback to the days of intrepid adventurers walking the earth, like Caine in Kung-fu, only in cyberspace. Yes, it's folly. But it's controlled folly, in the Castanedan sense, and the payoff from his YouTube blog has enabled him to quit his day job and continue exploring full-time. Go figure. I mean, really...go figure. Le monde est fou, fou, fou...mais merveilleux.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Walking-Around Music
turq! How many ways can I love Despicable Me movies and everyone and everything about them?! Thank you thank you thank you for this wonderful bit and also the Minion's dictionary and you know, just telling me about DMe in the first place (-: From: turquoiseb no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 8:06 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Walking-Around Music Today I rectified a big failing with my Paris Image. Almost everyone I pass on the streets or ride with on the Metro is jacked in to their mobile phones, wearing ear buds or real over-the-ear headphones, boppin' along to their favorite music, their stride-and-strut matching the music that only they can hear. Me, I arrived in Paris with an iPhone containing mainly Bruce Cockburn or classical music. As much as I love classical, it's not really bop-down-the-street music, and neither are most of Bruce's songs. So today I set about downloading and installing on the iPhone some Walking-Around-Music, tunes that I can 'bop to. So, having watched Despicable Me again this morning with Maya, I settled on a number of songs from those movies' soundtracks. I've been walking around Leiden today, or sitting in cafes, trying them out, giving them the full Walking Around Music test -- are they 'bop-worthy or not? Do they put a smile on my face, and occasionally on the faces of passersby as they look at an old guy 'boppin' along groovin' to music only he can hear? The verdict is in. Here are a few excerpts of the tunes I'll be boppin' to in Paris next week, narrated by the guy who wrote them and one of the guys who made the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9XzdwycIio
[FairfieldLife] Walking-Around Music
Today I rectified a big failing with my Paris Image. Almost everyone I pass on the streets or ride with on the Metro is jacked in to their mobile phones, wearing ear buds or real over-the-ear headphones, boppin' along to their favorite music, their stride-and-strut matching the music that only they can hear. Me, I arrived in Paris with an iPhone containing mainly Bruce Cockburn or classical music. As much as I love classical, it's not really bop-down-the-street music, and neither are most of Bruce's songs. So today I set about downloading and installing on the iPhone some Walking-Around-Music, tunes that I can 'bop to. So, having watched Despicable Me again this morning with Maya, I settled on a number of songs from those movies' soundtracks. I've been walking around Leiden today, or sitting in cafes, trying them out, giving them the full Walking Around Music test -- are they 'bop-worthy or not? Do they put a smile on my face, and occasionally on the faces of passersby as they look at an old guy 'boppin' along groovin' to music only he can hear? The verdict is in. Here are a few excerpts of the tunes I'll be boppin' to in Paris next week, narrated by the guy who wrote them and one of the guys who made the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9XzdwycIio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9XzdwycIio
[FairfieldLife] Walking The Pattern*
* In Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber books, The Pattern is an inscribed labyrinth which gives the multiverse its order. You walk -- or attempt to walk -- along the energy lines of the labyrinth to gain power and to access alternate realities. My first glimpse of Amsterdam in this life is engraved in my memory. It's shining there like the afterimage of a thangka or yantra I've been meditating on, long after I close my eyes. I was flying in, early in the morning local time, and the KLM jet dropped out of the clouds, banked, and there before me was Amsterdam. The sun was rising directly behind it, and shining off of its network of canals so brightly that they looked as if they were glowing, pulsating with energy. My first thought was, OMG, I'm looking at a computer chip. That's what it looked like. The red-yellow morning sunlight was being reflected off of the canals in a way that rendered them alive with energy. They weren't just lines, seen from the air; they were like undulating rivers of energy. My second thought, being the confirmed Power Place junkie I am, was, I simply cannot WAIT to walk around that energy nexus, and feel the shifting energies as I walk along the canals. And that's how it turned out. I had gone there, after all, on a kind of walkabout or spiritual journey. I was there to teach people how to meditate, for free, representing the spiritual teacher who had taken me dozens of times out into the desert or to the tops of volcanoes to teach me about Places Of Power. Each of them is different, and has its own set of energy flows. If you learn to appreciate them, you can become a bit of a connoisseur of Places Of Power, tasting their energies and savoring them the way a wine freak would savor vintages from different regions. Not content with teaching us how to surf the waves of energy in Places Of Power that most people would consider Places Of Power -- places like Carrizo Gorge, Canyon de Chelly, Joshua Tree, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, the top of Haleakala, and the Grand Canyon -- he then proceeded to teach us how to surf the waves of energy in another kind of Place Of Power. We moved to New York City. And we practiced the same As you walk around, become more aware of the energies and how they shift from neighborhood to neighborhood, and even from block to block...learn to identify them, and learn how to access their energies and turn them to your advantage techniques we did in the desert. In Amsterdam I got to do the same thing. Walking around it was, for me, *exactly* what my first impression of it had been seeing it from the air, all lit up by the morning sun. It was like walking a labyrinth of light and energy, becoming an electron flowing around the circuits of an enormous computer chip. I enjoyed it a lot, and consider the Centrum of Amsterdam one of the most...uh...powerful Places Of Power I've ever been in my life. Right up there with all of the ones mentioned above. To my surprise, walking the labyrinth that is my new town this morning, I realized that it's even more powerful energetically than Amsterdam was. Consider me a happy camper. I'm going to be walking here a lot. No destination needed. No goal in mind. Just walking, open to whatever happens, and wherever the energies take me. A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving - Lao-tzu
Re: [FairfieldLife] Walking The Pattern*
On 07/21/2012 04:58 AM, turquoiseb wrote: * In Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber books, The Pattern is an inscribed labyrinth which gives the multiverse its order. You walk -- or attempt to walk -- along the energy lines of the labyrinth to gain power and to access alternate realities. My first glimpse of Amsterdam in this life is engraved in my memory. It's shining there like the afterimage of a thangka or yantra I've been meditating on, long after I close my eyes. I was flying in, early in the morning local time, and the KLM jet dropped out of the clouds, banked, and there before me was Amsterdam. The sun was rising directly behind it, and shining off of its network of canals so brightly that they looked as if they were glowing, pulsating with energy. My first thought was, OMG, I'm looking at a computer chip. That's what it looked like. The red-yellow morning sunlight was being reflected off of the canals in a way that rendered them alive with energy. They weren't just lines, seen from the air; they were like undulating rivers of energy. My second thought, being the confirmed Power Place junkie I am, was, I simply cannot WAIT to walk around that energy nexus, and feel the shifting energies as I walk along the canals. And that's how it turned out. I had gone there, after all, on a kind of walkabout or spiritual journey. I was there to teach people how to meditate, for free, representing the spiritual teacher who had taken me dozens of times out into the desert or to the tops of volcanoes to teach me about Places Of Power. Each of them is different, and has its own set of energy flows. If you learn to appreciate them, you can become a bit of a connoisseur of Places Of Power, tasting their energies and savoring them the way a wine freak would savor vintages from different regions. Not content with teaching us how to surf the waves of energy in Places Of Power that most people would consider Places Of Power -- places like Carrizo Gorge, Canyon de Chelly, Joshua Tree, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, the top of Haleakala, and the Grand Canyon -- he then proceeded to teach us how to surf the waves of energy in another kind of Place Of Power. We moved to New York City. And we practiced the same As you walk around, become more aware of the energies and how they shift from neighborhood to neighborhood, and even from block to block...learn to identify them, and learn how to access their energies and turn them to your advantage techniques we did in the desert. In Amsterdam I got to do the same thing. Walking around it was, for me, *exactly* what my first impression of it had been seeing it from the air, all lit up by the morning sun. It was like walking a labyrinth of light and energy, becoming an electron flowing around the circuits of an enormous computer chip. I enjoyed it a lot, and consider the Centrum of Amsterdam one of the most...uh...powerful Places Of Power I've ever been in my life. Right up there with all of the ones mentioned above. To my surprise, walking the labyrinth that is my new town this morning, I realized that it's even more powerful energetically than Amsterdam was. Consider me a happy camper. I'm going to be walking here a lot. No destination needed. No goal in mind. Just walking, open to whatever happens, and wherever the energies take me. A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving - Lao-tzu Being an electronics hobbyist since I was a kid I would always tell people that the skyscrapers looked liked selenium rectifiers on a printed circuit board. So I can appreciate your analogy. And we all know that skyscrapers are often if not always monuments to narcissism.
[FairfieldLife] Walking on water
What my world looks like these days. It's very much like a Breughel painting, with skaters on every canal, including the one outside my house. Neat. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/10/amsterdam-canals-freeze-solid-turning-city-into-impromptu-ice-rink_n_1267695.html?ref=mostpopular
[FairfieldLife] Walking?
Walking? [ Thich Nhat Hanh: The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. Gnostic Tom. ] Nearly ten years ago now somebody on a yahoo group asked me what the most wondrous mystical experience EVER was. I told them that it was to sit under a tree in the sunshine, with not a care in the world, and to watch the world around you and listen to the kids laughing. They said Dick, that is not a mystical experience, you are nuts. I told them it was and I was banned from the group. There is nothing anywhere (known to me) more amazing, wondrous, impossible, than being right here and now. They do not seem to know that all mystical and transcendent experience does a circle and comes back here again - GROUNDED. I could not agree with you more on that one. rwr
[FairfieldLife] Walking Away (was Re: 'Jagger with the Stones~ Angie!'...)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: By the way, I have never heard the Stones' song mentioned at the beginning of this post. I looked up the lyrics though, and guess what, I can kind of see why Barry likes it. It is not my cup of tea. If he can see spiritual development stages in it, fine. I do not. No problem. What I saw in the song was my subjective experience. I wasn't trying to sell it to anyone. But I will explain it a little, because that gives me the opportunity to bring up a neat topic: Walking Away. Having run into a forum of former Rama students, some of whom walked away from him and others who hung in there until the end, and had him walk away from them, I've been reading some of their Walking Away stories lately. The moments in which the long strange trip that was studying with Rama ended for them. Angie struck me as an appropriate soundtrack for many of these heartfelt stories. There is a bittersweet quality about the moment of Walking Away. Such moments have that quality whether you are walking away from a long-time lover or walking away from a long-time spiritual teacher. I think that Jagger and Richards did an admirable job of capturing the poignancy of such mutual walking away moments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkFjYRWM4M Oh, I am s not special. I flunked the test. Take pity upon my wretched mundane soul*. Don't be such a drama queen. No such putdown was ever intended, nor do I think it even existed. Some hear a rock song and it has no meaning or emotional loading for them; some hear it and it clicks a circuit on in their brains and unlocks a set of memories and emotions for them. No harm, no foul either way IMO. I mean, there are probably people on this forum who cannot comprehend why I don't get all choked up and emotional and bhaktified when I hear Paul McCartney's Cosmically Conscious. They can hear something special in the song, something that makes it meaningful to them. I cannot. So even if the putdown you imagined were true, in this case I'm the person who is not special. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz8ZNtoCHrI Then again, Cosmically Conscious has gotten 44,144 hits on YouTube. The two versions of Angie on YouTube have gotten 15,293,646. Which of those numbers in your opinion indicates specialness and which does not? See? Does not compute. It's not quantifiable. You either groove with a song or you don't. Being special has nothing to do with it.
[FairfieldLife] Walking Away (was Re: 'Jagger with the Stones~ Angie!'...)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: snip Oh, I am s not special. I flunked the test. Take pity upon my wretched mundane soul*. Don't be such a drama queen. No such putdown was ever intended, nor do I think it even existed. Some hear a rock song and it has no meaning or emotional loading for them; some hear it and it clicks a circuit on in their brains and unlocks a set of memories and emotions for them. No harm, no foul either way IMO. I mean, there are probably people on this forum who cannot comprehend why I don't get all choked up and emotional and bhaktified when I hear Paul McCartney's Cosmically Conscious. They can hear something special in the song, something that makes it meaningful to them. I cannot. So even if the putdown you imagined were true, in this case I'm the person who is not special. :-) Um, no. With regard to Cosmically Conscious, Barry is special because he *doesn't* like it. And not just because he doesn't find it meaningful, but because he thinks it's a horrendously bad song and has made it crystal clear he believes anyone who disagrees has terrible taste. He uses the song as a counterexample in this post because he knows Xeno wasn't on FFL at the time he was busy making himself special for excoriating it and those who liked it (I don't recall anyone here who did, though, as it happens). Just for fun, let's recall what Barry said about the Stones' song: Great video, Robert. One of my favorite Stones songs, and a lovely version of it. To some, it might remind them of various stages of the spiritual development process. Others may hear only a rock song. Note that he couldn't just say, It reminds me of various stages of the spiritual development process. He had to contrast himself with those poor un-special people who are not so reminded. *Of course* it was a putdown. That's how Barry thinks, always in terms of comparing himself--his opinions, his behavior, his likes and dislikes--with others. It's simply not acceptable in his mind for him to be on the same level as everyone else. If he isn't special, he's nothing.
[FairfieldLife] Walking Meditation, or Mindful Truckin'
I'm back in Sitges now. Only I'm not. One of the things I love the most about Road Trips is that if you spend enough of your time while on the Road Trip in mindful states of attention, when you return home you don't return home. Someone else does, someone newer, less prone to patterns, less likely to take things for granted. I spent a little time last night walking my dogs around Sitges. Only -- seemingly for the dogs as well as for me -- it wasn't the same old same old Sitges. I found myself seeing it anew, as if I were a tourist visiting the place. This, after all, is how I walked my dogs in Amsterdam, and in Provence. They sniffed every Sitges tree as if it were as new and as potentially interesting to them as the trees they had sniffed in those other places. Maybe they do this every day, and I never noticed. :-) Anyway, I noticed it in my dogs last night. I also noticed it in myself. I seem to have brought home a little of that Road Trip Mindful Truckin' mindset with me, too. Whenever I'm in a place that is foreign to me, I walk a lot. Walking is, in fact, my primary source of amusement and pleasure when I'm on a Road Trip. I tend to eat like a pig but come home ten pounds lighter because of all the walking. As I walk, more often than not I find myself perform- ing a kind of made-up meditation. If I were to try to analyze it, the only goal of my made-up meditation method is to walk in as much of a beginner's mind or tourist mind state of attention as possible. I *never* walk around looking at my feet or with that 3-meter-stare that doesn't really see anything. I'm a *tourist* ferchrissakes; I want to see everything that crosses my path, and be as aware as possible when they cross my path. It's not a conscious thing; it's just what I find myself doing, walking with heightened awareness. As I walk, I watch the thoughts running through my head. Left on its own, my mind is mostly free of thoughts. When I do find myself thinking as I walk, often I find that I'm picking up the majority of those thoughts from the people I walk past, because they're thoughts that have no relationship to my life at all. The one thing I never seem to think about while on a Road Trip is myself. I'm totally immersed in the scenery, in the smells emanating from bakeries, in the grace of a passing beauty's walk. It's like there is no room for myself, or for thoughts of what something like a self might be. There is only walking silently through the world, open to what it has to show me. I like it. Hopefully I can retain this Mindful Truckin' mindstate now that I'm back here in Sitges. It *is*, after all, a tourist town. Maybe that will remind me to be more of a tourist myself, and not slip into the rut of thinking I've got the place all figured out, and that it has nothing new to show me.
[FairfieldLife] Walking the walk is irrelevant - talking the talk rules!
In a sidebar conversation with Curtis yesterday, I tried to sum up the situation with regard to Ravi and Daniel and the fact that many people seem to have considered them enlightened or at the very least in the midst of some powerful and *positive* awakening as follows: I think the elephant in the room that no one is talking about is that the 'criterion for selection' is the same for 'casting' the videos as it is for making any other determination of a person's enlight- enment -- 'They said they were, and I believe them.' Once that belief is formed, inertia sets in. It becomes easier to continue to accept it as true and defend it as true than to go back to the original decision, or even remember that you made one. My point is that accepting what someone says about their state of consciousness at face value is IMO an unwarranted acceptance of someone's (anyone's) subjec- tive experience as the thing that defines reality. And I do not think this is an accident. This 'tude has been carefully cultivated by Maharishi and the TM organization for decades, to the point where now almost no one even *questions* it. Look at the official process within the TM organi- zation for achieving its stated goal -- the realization of enlightenment. There isn't one. There is no mechanism, and has *never* been one, for determining whether some- one's reports of good experiences are good enough to qualify as enlightened. The entire *history* of the tradition from which MMY comes is based on someone *saying* that they are enlight- ened and having everyone around them agree with them, for *no other reason than that they said it*. I am suggesting that they have preserved this tradition and passed it along to new generations of students completely lacking in the discrimination that the tradition's founder (Shankara) was so (unjustly IMO) famous for touting. Think of a story told on FFL of someone's purported enlightenment or realization. *Other than* the person in question's *claims* about their subjective experience, what led you to believe that they were really enlight- ened? Now extend this to teachers you have never met personally, but consider enlightened. On what basis did you make that decision? I would suggest that you made it based on what *they* said about their subjective exper- iences, and/or what others said about them. Keep the siddhis and miracle BS out of this for the moment. Some seem to feel that the ability to perform siddhis is the big final exam of enlightenment. I have been there, done that with siddhis, and I don't think they have *any* relationship to enlightenment whatsoever. I have seen siddhis performed by people who were not only not enlight- ened but didn't *believe* in enlightenment, and I have seen those who claimed enlightenment not be able to per- form them. Apples and oranges. Hell, *I* have been able to perform minor siddhis, especially those having to do with seeing the future. Does anyone here think *I* am enlightened? I certainly hope not, and I've certainly never claimed it. But if I *had*, my point is that you would really have had mainly my word about my own subjective experiences on which to base your decision. Mainly. There is something *else* that you could have used to make your determination about my purported enlightenment or lack thereof -- your own common sense. I'm suggesting that people in the TM community seem to have given up on the use of that particular measure, and have seemingly gone completely over to the Dark Side of He said it... therefore it must be true. I tend to believe that subjective experience does *NOT* define reality, and that sometimes it's at odds with reality. There is a *value* to listening critically, and asking someone to walk the walk of their talk. In the reports of the TM community and how they handle themselves, especially lately, I don't see any value being placed on walking the walk, only on talking the talk.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Walking On Water: It's not just for Jesus any more!
Hahaha From: TurquoiseB no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thu, 13 May, 2010 1:55:16 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Walking On Water: It's not just for Jesus any more! OK, here is what Edg has been waiting for...real video footage of real siddhis being performed. Kinda. There is no question about it. These guys (South African, I would guess, based on their names and accents) really are walking on water. Running, actually. Pretty neat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ry2aG9QES0
[FairfieldLife] Walking On Water: It's not just for Jesus any more!
OK, here is what Edg has been waiting for...real video footage of real siddhis being performed. Kinda. There is no question about it. These guys (South African, I would guess, based on their names and accents) really are walking on water. Running, actually. Pretty neat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ry2aG9QES0
[FairfieldLife] Walking on Water as a Siddhi
To All: Siddhis are not restricted to the vedic literature. We find similar feats in the gospels and stories of Christian saints. These siddhis can be considered as samadhi which is a byproduct of meditation. The Christian gospels do not talk so much of meditation as the vedic literature does. But the gospels do talk much about faith in one's teacher or beliefs. This faith is equivalent to meditation, a practice that attempts to transcend thoughts and reason. What did it mean for someone to walk on water? At the very least, the gospel writers were saying that the person had control of the elements of water and the air. In other words, the person had control over his appetite and sexual urges. In can interpreted that water represents the sense of taste, and air represents the sense of touch or sexual urge. At best, the writers were saying that the person actually did the seemingly impossible by hovering over the water. Thus, we read that St. Peter was able to walk on water as he approached Jesus, but started to sink when he doubted his faith. JR
[FairfieldLife] Walking Away
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: no one does that, especially not from a position in which they are respected and perform well. seems he left out many crucial conversations with his bosses at the time.:) Sure they do, a lot of us did. That was one of the things that made leaving for me so poignant. I couldn't deny what I had concluded about Maharishi's teaching, but I was enjoying the fruits of 15 years of dedication to to his programs: more face time with Maharishi, teaching big groups when I wanted. And I loved teaching TM, so my decision was not easy. It would have been much easier to have been kicked out, believe me. I'll chime in here, because on another group the issue of Walking Away from a long-time relationship with a spiritual teacher or a spiritual group is being discussed, and the topic is on my mind. Personally, I would think that a *lot* of the people here who have Walked Away have done so quietly and with no fanfare. It was the rare person who Walked Away from TM with fanfare. Chopra did, because he was so visible, but me and Curtis? We were just small cogs in a big machine. In all likelihood no one noticed I was gone. he was definitely kicked out of the TMO, and will spend the rest of his life trying to make that someone else's fault. I don't think so but I didn't know him then. But I will say that when I left many stories like this went around about me and they couldn't have been further from the truth. The movement line is that you MUST have been disgruntled and that something must be wrong with you if you leave. You can't say I don't believe this teaching is true and just leave with dignity. You can't be *allowed* to say I don't believe this teaching is true and just leave. You have committed heresy and must be made to PAY, even if only in the form of negative thoughts and wishes aimed at you by your former friends. That's one of the reasons I Walked Away quietly, and made no fuss about it. The only TMers I ever talked to, other than at the occasional party, had *also* Walked Away. I think it took six months or more before the people I'd previously worked with noticed that I never came to the Center any more but still lived in L.A. and put two and two together and real- ized that I'd become a heretic and they couldn't be seen with me any more. To be honest, there was *much* more demonization of me when I Walked Away from the Rama trip. TMers are real lightweights when it comes to demonizing a former friend turned heretic. The demonization of people leaving groups is one of the creepy qualities of these groups. The creepiest. I know you don't dig Turq but I have never seen any evidence here from people who know him personally that he left the movement for any other reason than his own decisions for his personal growth. That, and I could not stand to be around the TM movement any more. It had gone places and done things I could no longer allow myself to be associated with. I went to where people were nicer and more ethical, the real world. And in retrospect I think it was one of the best things I ever did in my whole life, spiritually. I'm of the opinion that Walking Away from a heavy spiritual path is one of the most transforming things that a seeker can do ON a spiritual path. Yeah, there is a value to sticking to it, no matter what, the way some people stick to a bad marriage for years, but IMO there is a possibly greater value in realizing when the marriage has jumped the shark. When I realized that my marriage to the TMO had jumped the shark, I quietly ended the TV series. Most of the people I've met who Walked Away from the TM movement did the same thing, and left quietly. Think about it...if you're Walking Away from a smelly old dead shark, do you really want to call a lot of people's attention to it? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Walking The Walk vs. Talking The Talk
[ I'm going to assume that this is my last post of the week. The Post Count says I've only made 44 posts so far, but my personal count says that this is #49, and I don't want to go over the limit. As some have mentioned, something may in fact be rotten in the Denmark of the FFL PostCount mechanism. -) ] One of the things that makes Fairfield Life interesting for me, and keeps me around, is that I get an intuitive feeling that quite a few people here have walked the walk of their spiritual talk. That is, they've paid their dues, and that's what makes their POV inter- esting to me. For example, there probably couldn't be two more dif- ferent POVs than Curtis' and Nabby's. But when I read what they write, I get an intuitive feeling that both have paid their dues walking their talk. Curtis has definitely spent some time working full-time for the TMO, and it feels to me that Nabby has, too. The fact that they have, over the years, come to very different conclusions about the TMO and about the worth of what they did for it is, in a way, irrelevant. The impor- tant part for me is that they were there, on the front lines, putting their spiritual beliefs to the test. So when they talk about what it is like to be a TM teacher, I respect their POV. Similarly, when some on this forum speak about enlight- enment, I get a subjective intuitive feeling about whether they are talking about something they have personally experienced (even if only for a while, or not fully) or whether they are only repeating some- thing they have read or something they have been told. I tend to respect the POVs of those who seem to be speaking from personal experience more than I do those who are not. When others write, especially when they write as if they know the truth about enlightenment or some nit- picky detail of TM philosophy, I don't get the feel- ing that they've ever really *experienced* what they're talking about. It's more like they are just repeating something they've been told or something they've read somewhere. What seems to be missing for me is that feeling that they've walked the walk. This intuitive feeling is what I was talking about yesterday when I lit into enlightened_dawn11. I have nothing against her personally, but when I saw her project onto Vaj the *exact* same thing I've been feeling from *her* posts, I thought it would be fun to say that, and see how she reacted. She reacted as if my intuitive feeling was right on, and that she really never *has* walked the walk of all the talk she spouts here. I might be wrong about this, and if so I apologize to her. But I don't think I am, and I don't think I'm alone in perceiving this lack of having paid her dues underlying the things she writes here. Is my tendency to respect those who have walked the walk more than those who only talk the talk a failing and a samskara on my part? Damn straight it is, but there you jolly well are, aren't you. In general, the standards are so low in spiritual communities and in the Newage (rhymes with sewage) community that a *lot* of people get away with talking the talk of things they've never walked the walk of, for years, or decades. Whole spiritual traditions have probably been founded on the talk of someone who never walked the walk of it. And if the ability to talk convincingly is enough for you to respect what a person says, cool. It isn't enough for me. I'm looking for that underlying feeling that indi- cates that the person has actually experienced the things he or she is talking about. If that's elitist, shoot me.
[FairfieldLife] 'Walking on Thin Ice' by Yoko Ono (Dec.'80)
Walking on thin ice, Im paying the price For throwing the dice in the air. Why must we learn it the hard way And play the game of life with your heart? I gave you my knife, You gave me my life Like a gush of wind in my hair. Why do we forget whats been said And play the game of life with our hearts? I may cry some day, But the tears will dry whichever way. And when our hearts return to ashes, Itll be just a story, Itll be just a story. Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai... Ooh-ahooh... I knew a girl who tried to walk across the lake, course it was winter when all this was ice. Thats a hell of a thing to do, you know. They say the lake is as big as the ocean. I wonder if she knew about it? Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai... GA_googleFillSlot(lyricsfreak-300x50-btf); GA_googleFillSlot(lyricsfreak-300x250-btf); __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
[FairfieldLife] Walking the path alone
Actually, the guru is only a guide and it has been stated here that one must walk the path alone ultimately. This is no way means that while one is with the Guru, the evolution is not in full force until one is walking the path on their own but just the opposite. From that well known verse- Be still and know that I am God Genuine gurus guide the disciple for none other than this and not in some distant far off time but now. A guru is the same as the disciple except the maya is no longer there. The Guru guides one to remove this maya, but leaves the disciple to live thier life, make their own choices and then reap the consequences of these choices. Hridaya
[FairfieldLife] 'Walking the Faith Line with Eboo Patel'
uthors Walking the Faith Line with Eboo Patel Talk of the Nation, July 19, 2007 · Author Eboo Patel talks about the hate and rejection he sees in many young religious extremists, and why ignoring the faith line that divides us comes at a huge price. Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and founder of Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago Excerpt: Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel Introduction: The Faith Line Someone who doesn't make flowers makes thorns. If you're not building rooms where wisdom can be openly spoken, you're building a prison. Shams of Tabriz Eric Rudolph is in court pleading guilty. But he is not sorry. Not for the radio-controlled nail bomb that he detonated at New Woman All Women Health Care in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed an off-duty police officer and left a nurse hobbled and half-blind. Not for the bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta that killed one, injured dozens, and sent shock waves of fear through the global community. Not for his hate-spitting letter stating, We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legislative bureaucratic lackeys in Washington, signed the Army of God. Not for defiling the Holy Bible by writing bomb in the margin of his copy. In fact, Rudolph is proud and defiant. He lectures the judge on the righteousness of his actions. He gloats as he recalls federal agents passing within steps of his hiding place. He unabashedly states that abortion, homosexuality, and all hints of global socialism still need to be ruthlessly opposed. He does this in the name of Christianity, quoting from the New Testament: I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Felicia Sanderson lost her husband, Robert, a police officer, to Rudolph's Birmingham bomb. During the sentencing hearing, she played a tape of speeches made at her husband's funeral. People remembered him keeping candy for children in his patrol car and raising money to replace Christmas gifts for a family whose home had been robbed. Felicia Sanderson pointed to Rudolph and told the court, He has been responsible for every tear my sons have shed. Judge C. Lynwood Smith sentenced Rudolph to two life terms, compared him to the Nazis, and said that he was shocked at Rudolph's lack of remorse. But many others felt a twitch of pride. Eric Rudolph might have been a loner, but he did not act alone. He was produced by a movement and encouraged by a culture. In the woods of western North Carolina, where Rudolph evaded federal agents for five years, people cheered him on, helped him hide, made T-shirts that said RUN RUDOLPH RUN. The day he was finally caught, a woman from the area was quoted as saying, Rudolph's a Christian and I'm a Christian . . . Those are our values. These are our woods. Of all the information published about Rudolph, one sentence in particular stood out to me: Rudolph wrote an essay denying the Holocaust when he was in high school. How does a teenager come to hold such a view? The answer is simple: people taught him. Eric Rudolph had always had trouble in school fights, truancy. He never quite fit in. His father died when he was young. His mother met and followed a series of dangerous iconoclasts who preached a theology of hate. The first was Tom Branham, who encouraged the Rudolph family to move next door to him in Topton, North Carolina. Eric was soon drawing Nazi symbols in his schoolbooks at nearby Nantahala High School. Next, Eric's mother moved the family to Schell City, Missouri, to be near Dan Gayman, a leading figure in the extremist Christian Identity movement. Gayman had been a high school principal and knew how to make his mark on young people. He assumed a fatherly relationship with Eric, enrolled him in Christian Identity youth programs, and made sure he read the literature of the movement. Gayman taught Eric that the Bible was the history of Aryan whites and that Jews were the spawn of Satan and part of a tribe called the the mud people. The world was nearing a final struggle between God's people and Satan's servants, and it was up to the conscious Aryans to ensure victory for the right race. Eric took to calling the television the Electric Jew. He carved swastikas into his mother's living room furniture. His library included virulently anti-Semitic publications such as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,
[FairfieldLife] Walking through solid walls..Witnessed by hundreds
Life History of H.H. Sri Swamiji 161 Life History of H.H. Sri Swamiji 161 sgslh_raosyama Offline Send Email Seeing the tail is like seeing the tiger is a saying. Some people who believe in statements like that, spread the news that the entire city of Mysore was blacked out. Swamy was angry at this exaggeration of facts and said, I do not touch any wires at all. The elder residents of the colony heaved a sigh of relief on hearing it from Swamy. They were frightened that their stupidity in testing Swamy would lead them to be prosecuted by the officials of the electricity board. Swamy had already said that it was his duty to save them. These events did upset Swamy a lot. He increased his tour programmes of visiting other places. Some days he spent his time in the prayer room of Nagappa's house. When he wanted to spend more time on meditation without being disturbed, he preferred to come to Nagappa's house. Nagappa and his wife Jayamma were always ready to receive Swamy at their house. Jayamma actually looked upon and treated Swamy as her own grandson. Swamy on his part walked around like their child in that house. He addressed Jayamma as Amma, Amma. Nagappa's car was the disposal of Swamy and met all his travel needs. One or two other cars belonging to the other devotees were also available for the use of Swamy if needed. Nagappa's driver served Swamy with love and devotion. Sometimes Dwaraka would go in the middle of the night on his bike to Nagappa's house to get the car. The driver happily would get up and come to the ashrama and take Swamy wherever he wanted to go. One day there was a violin concert by the famous A.S.Shivarudrappa at Nagappa's house. Shivarudrappa was a great violinist, a scholar and had received honours at the place. He used to attract a number of fans at his concerts. He enjoyed playing for Swamy. That day both Swamy and Shivarudrappa was deeply immersed in the music. Few people sitting near the homa commented, Who cares for these powers? It is only for the benefit of the rich. These are guises of cheats. (Meaning that the guises are to attract the money from the rich). Swamy walked towards them angrily, and like a small child rolling his cheeks and lips made a funny noise and spat out a number of loose coins from his mouth. As they had considered Swamy as Ashadabhootis, Swamy had decided to materialise only loose coins for them. The critics sat quiet and did not even apologise. Swamy went back to his seat. At the end of the homa the devotees came forward to receive the blessing of Swamy. The turn came for the critics to receive the blessings. Swamy stopped them and said, Why do you want to fall at the feet of Ashadabhootis? Those critics were sorry and fell at the feet of Swamy and begged to be excused. In view of the demand, the city transport authority had organised special bus services to the ashrama. On the days of sankeertanas, the programme would go late into the evening and the bus drivers waited patiently till the last of the passenger got on to the bus. There was no worry for the devotees about missing the last bus. The final stop of the bus to the ashrama came to be known as the Swamy's ashrama stop.] An unusual event happened one Thursday. The bhajans finished at about 10pm. Swamy went inside to take rest. Prasadam was being distributed to the devotees. Some youngsters from the colony started a scuffle. The youngsters were complaining that the functions at the ashrama were disturbing this sleep. some devotees tried to object to the criticism by the lads and that ended up in the scuffle that night. Not wanting to see any harm come to Swamy, some of the devotees locked his room from outside. All the houses at the colony were of a stereotype; they did not have a backdoor. There was only one way in and out of the houses. The youngsters started shouting that Swamy was frightened of them and has decided to hide inside. Holding on to their batons and other tools, they started shouting and asking for Swamy to come out and face them. Swamy shouted and asked his devotees to open the door and let him out to face the youngsters. No one took notice of Swamy's request. Suddenly Swamy came out through the solid walls of the room shouting, Who is the fool that is asking for me? Hundreds of devotees witnessed this miracle. The youngsters got frightened and some even wet their trousers. Dropping their tools they ran away. Some of them asked Swamy for his forgiveness. The elders in the colony also asked forgiveness for the acts committed by the youngsters. Srikantiah begged Swamy to calm down and took him inside. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sacredlifeofswamiji/ This Yahoo group contains the complete story from the beginning . Satyam, or Satyanarayana referred to here was Sri Swamiji's name as a child. Later references to Swamy are to Him as well. It describes in detail Sri Swamiji's
