--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > One thing's very obvious from hearing Orme-Johnson's comments: > someone affiliated with the TMO is listening to FFL and > probably the TMFree blog...it just shows the power a forum > of free speech like FFL, etc. can have. They're forced to > respond (with rather lame answers) because the banter here > is also hitting the search engines along with their marketing > spiel. And so the disinformation campaign that is OJ's website.
Vaj, I understand some of the zeal with which you approach your "mission" of "informer" here, but I have a different view of what FFL is. While I do not doubt that the movers and shakers of the TMO are as paranoid as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and "keep an eye" on things said here and on TM-Free, I'm not sure that that's a useful thing to bear in mind when reading or posting here. It strikes me as too self-important, too much like evangelism, and with a bit too much of the "preaching to the invisible imaginary audience" syndrome we've seen in some posters. At any given point, a little more than 4% of FFL members ever post. I would imagine that the per- centage who even read the posts is not over 10%. 119 people, most of whom "made up their minds" about TM and Maharishi long ago, and are as little influenced by what is said here as they were about who to vote for in the last election. (I would guess that there is not a *single* person reading this forum whose vote was swayed one way or another by anything they read here.) So if it feels good for you to keep chipping away at the veneer of the TMO, go for it. But I tend to see the place differently. I think that Curtis may have been the most eloquent so far in expressing what FFL is to him. To para- phrase him (and please correct me Curtis if I'm getting it wrong), he approaches FFL as a kind of "sounding board" for ideas, a place to "bounce them off of" the minds of other seekers who, like him, have paid their dues in the seeking process, and learn from *both* trying to express his own ideas the best he can, and learn from what other seekers say in response to his ideas. That's sorta my view of the place, too, except that I view it more as the refrigerator in a kitchen in cyberspace. I like hanging out here because it gives me a place to put some of my ideas into words and throw them out to see if they're "done" yet. Sorta the way you fish a strand of spaghetti out of the pot and throw it against the refrigerator to see if it sticks. If it sticks, it's done. *Most* of the strands of mind-spaghetti I throw out most not be done, because *most* of my posts never get much of a response at all. Or maybe it's that people here aren't that much into pasta (don't like thinking about or talking about the things I like thinking about and talking about). Whatever. I'm still going to keep throwing out strands of mind- spaghetti. Trying to put my ideas into words is my idea of fun. But I really don't think that in doing so I'm "changing" or "converting" anyone here to my way of seeing things. I certainly don't think that any- thing I've ever said has changed or will ever change the TMO. I would imagine that not one thing I've said here has *ever* gotten anyone to change the way they see things. And that's just FINE with me, because I'm not really trying to "change" them or "convert" them to anything. I'm just having fun with ideas. And I don't know about you, but *my* ideas are not necessarily "right." In my life, almost everything I've ever believed in has been proven over time to be wrong, and I am completely comfortable with that. I fully expect most of the things I choose to believe in for the rest of my life to be wrong, too. Or at the very least, only partially "right." So it's not as if I feel much of a compulsion to "sell" them to anyone or "convert" anyone to my way of seeing. And I'm *certainly* not going to waste my time "defending" any of these strands of mind-spaghetti. YMMV. But I wouldn't get too deep into the mindset you seem to be espousing above. I don't think that anything you have ever posted here has ever changed anyone's mind about anything, either. To believe that it has, or might in the future, kinda puts you into the RD category of poster. Do you honestly think that even *one* person here changed their mind about Hillary Clinton as a result of her posts? Similarly, I suspect no one is ever going to change their view of TM, the TMO, and Maharishi as a result of anything you say, or as a result of what the compulsive "defenders" say in response to them. Then again, as I said above, I've been wrong about almost everything in my life. So never mind. Carry on. :-)
