[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Fairfield, Iowa: The Peace Engine that Could. "A big part of life in Fairfield — in order to understand why everyone moved there and what the vision was — was that Maharishi had a theory that large groups of people practicing his trademarked form of meditation and his advanced form of meditation, which he called "Yogic Flying," would create world peace. He had a scientific formula that he had come up with where it was to be precise, the square root of one percent of the population — if that amount of people were meditating it would radiate this sort of peace engine that would change the world. So the people that moved there, moved there to meditate together. And in the late '70s, early '80s, they built these two gigantic, golden dome-shaped buildings. There was a women's dome and a men's dome, and twice a day, people would go and meditate together. In the '80s and into the '90s it was thousands of people and they would meditate for about an hour and a half to two hours each session. So it would be an hour and a half to two hours, twice a day, so three to four hours." -Greetings From Utopia Park https://www.npr.org/2016/06/13/481845003/a-childhood-of-transcendental-meditation-spent-in-the-shadow-of-a-guru https://www.npr.org/2016/06/13/481845003/a-childhood-of-transcendental-meditation-spent-in-the-shadow-of-a-guru ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote : Transcendentalism I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the universe, I am totality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the un... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 http://www.TM.org I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the universe, I am totality 1. Dr. Hagelin: Maharishi mentioned Vedic health care. The qu... View on www.youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 Preview by Yahoo “We are a group of people who have come together and created a community for a transcendentally important common purpose, which of course is to practice the Transcendental Meditation program and the TM-Sidhi program together as a group, for the sake of bringing coherence to national and world consciousness based on balancing labor and leisure to meditate while working together for the benefit of the community. Our Super-Radiance meditating community includes families of TM-Meditators and TM-Sidhas in the Fairfield, Vedic City and Jefferson County area.” ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote : Fairfield Meditating: Living nice, cheap, and spiritual having some style and a good time, like on the Farm. http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 Erin McCarley: What would you say were the founding principles of The Farm? Stephen Gaskin: We had all been spiritual students of one kind or another. We still are. I used to say, “If you took all religions, like on IBM punch cards, some of the holes would go clear through the stack.” And that’s what we’re interested in. We agreed that if you felt like we were all one, we could live collectively in a way in which everybody could have some of what was happening. For Lurkers looking in, for a perspective on how we live as the Fairfield, Iowa meditating community see the recent post/link to the organizational flow charts as to how we are as a living community here. The pundit thing is a small part of the Fairfield Iowa meditator experience. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 Om well, to anybody who is *new* to this, looking in on Fairfield, Iowa from the outside, you should know also for relative perspective that the pundit thing is an outpost of all that is the TM meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa. Most Fairfield meditators don't have anything to do with it and there was never a lot of buy in to it for common Fairfield rank and file meditators. The pundit program is a pretty exclusive thing that is run by a few super-ru's. -Buck awoelflebater writes: feste37 writes: "feste37" wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper [below] for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Transcendentalism I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the universe, I am totality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the un... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 http://www.TM.org I am the Self, I am the body, I am the Veda, I am the universe, I am totality 1. Dr. Hagelin: Maharishi mentioned Vedic health care. The qu... View on www.youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCDXALGej84 Preview by Yahoo “We are a group of people who have come together and created a community for a transcendentally important common purpose, which of course is to practice the Transcendental Meditation program and the TM-Sidhi program together as a group, for the sake of bringing coherence to national and world consciousness based on balancing labor and leisure to meditate while working together for the benefit of the community. Our Super-Radiance meditating community includes families of TM-Meditators and TM-Sidhas in the Fairfield, Vedic City and Jefferson County area.” ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,wrote : Fairfield Meditating: Living nice, cheap, and spiritual having some style and a good time, like on the Farm. http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 Erin McCarley: What would you say were the founding principles of The Farm? Stephen Gaskin: We had all been spiritual students of one kind or another. We still are. I used to say, “If you took all religions, like on IBM punch cards, some of the holes would go clear through the stack.” And that’s what we’re interested in. We agreed that if you felt like we were all one, we could live collectively in a way in which everybody could have some of what was happening. For Lurkers looking in, for a perspective on how we live as the Fairfield, Iowa meditating community see the recent post/link to the organizational flow charts as to how we are as a living community here. The pundit thing is a small part of the Fairfield Iowa meditator experience. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 Om well, to anybody who is *new* to this, looking in on Fairfield, Iowa from the outside, you should know also for relative perspective that the pundit thing is an outpost of all that is the TM meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa. Most Fairfield meditators don't have anything to do with it and there was never a lot of buy in to it for common Fairfield rank and file meditators. The pundit program is a pretty exclusive thing that is run by a few super-ru's. -Buck awoelflebater writes: feste37 writes: "feste37" wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper [below] for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? Communal studies: Yesterday in Fairfield I met a couple of young people visiting Fairfield from a commune in Missouri. They had heard about Fairfield and came up from southern Missouri to visit. They had their back-packs with bed-rolls and were on the square downtown. I stopped and asked them what they were about. They were from a communal group different from Dancing Rabbit located much further south than the communes near Dancing Rabbit. Missouri hosts quite a number of communal groups. Sandhill being another Missouri self=sustaining commune that is older and better known. The group these young men were from is part of the 12 tribes movement, a shared=goods group sort of like the Hutterites. They live communally but different from the Hutterites the Tribes live in common dwelling houses. Twelve tribes came out of the Jesus movement of the anti-war years of the 70's but is very anti-established institutional doctrinaire Christianity. These were real nice idealistic young people a lot like we are as bringing a better place to the world. Millennialists like us, just a different language. They pray a lot like we meditate a lot. -Buck, on the Streets of Fairfield Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage | Building Sustainable Community http://www.dancingrabbit.org/ At the scholarly meeting were
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Fairfield Meditating: Living nice, cheap, and spiritual having some style and a good time, like on the Farm. http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 http://www.nationofchange.org/remembering-stephen-gaskin-conversation-man-behind-original-grid-farm-1406990309 Erin McCarley: What would you say were the founding principles of The Farm? Stephen Gaskin: We had all been spiritual students of one kind or another. We still are. I used to say, “If you took all religions, like on IBM punch cards, some of the holes would go clear through the stack.” And that’s what we’re interested in. We agreed that if you felt like we were all one, we could live collectively in a way in which everybody could have some of what was happening. For Lurkers looking in, for a perspective on how we live as the Fairfield, Iowa meditating community see the recent post/link to the organizational flow charts as to how we are as a living community here. The pundit thing is a small part of the Fairfield Iowa meditator experience. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/375646 Om well, to anybody who is *new* to this looking in on Fairfield, Iowa from the outside you should know also for relative perspective that the pundit thing is an outpost of all that is the TM meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa. Most Fairfield meditators don't have anything to do with it and there was never a lot of buy in to it for common Fairfield rank and file meditators. The pundit program is a pretty exclusive thing that is run by a few super-ru's. -Buck “We are a group of people who have come together and created a community for a transcendentally important common purpose, which of course is to practice the Transcendental Meditation program and the TM-Sidhi program together as a group, for the sake of bringing coherence to national and world consciousness based on balancing labor and leisure to meditate while working together for the benefit of the community. Our Super-Radiance meditating community includes families of TM-Meditators and TM-Sidhas in the Fairfield, Vedic City and Jefferson County area.” awoelflebater writes: feste37 writes: feste37 wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? Yesterday in Fairfield I met a couple of young people visiting Fairfield from a commune in Missouri. They had heard about Fairfield and came up from southern Missouri to visit. They had their back-packs with bed-rolls and were on the square downtown. I stopped and asked them what they were about. They were from a communal group different from Dancing Rabbit located much further south than the communes near Dancing Rabbit. Missouri hosts quite a number of communal groups. Sandhill being another Missouri self=sustaining commune that is older and better known. The group these young men were from is part of the 12 tribes movement, a shared=goods group sort of like the Hutterites. They live communally but different from the Hutterites the Tribes live in common dwelling houses. Twelve tribes came out of the Jesus movement of the anti-war years of the 70's but is very anti-established institutional doctrinaire Christianity. These were real nice idealistic young people a lot like we are as bringing a better place to the world. Millennialists like us, just a different language. They pray a lot like we meditate a lot. -Buck, on the Streets of Fairfield Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage | Building Sustainable Community http://www.dancingrabbit.org/ At the meeting were specialists in different communal groups and aspects of different groups. Oneida, Harmonists, Amana, Shakers, Icarians, Mormons, Synanon, new religions and contemporary religious and secular communities, Camphill, the Twelve Tribes, City of David, Kibitz, and some other particular contemporary cloistered groups had papers delivered about them. There was a paper given considering quantitative measurement of the notion of sustainability in communal groups using a contemporary 'intentional community' group that is just to our south over the border in Missouri, the intentional community of Dancing Rabbit. The conference had papers on many different aspects of utopian community.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Xeno, I feel at the least by the science we should all vouch-safe the human experience of the transcendent Unified Field for all humankind and that is a proper role for all government. In your posting this ingersoll piece to this longer FFL thread describing the spirituality experiment implicit of the Fairfield, Iowa Meditating Community, is that what you were thinking too? -Buck in the Dome Anartaxius writes: It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God. --- Robert Ingersoll (1879) (You can substitute other related concepts for Bible, God, and can substitute Christian, or Hindu, or Quaker, Islamist, etc., for Jewish. [This quotation is from a work that focuses on Moses]) .
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God. --- Robert Ingersoll (1879) (You can substitute other related concepts for Bible, God, and can substitute Christian, or Hindu, or Quaker, Islamist, etc., for Jewish. [This quotation is from a work that focuses on Moses])
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
On 3/21/2014 10:08 PM, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote: Way too many triggers that run counter to all our essential transcendent spiritual grain as Americans, the pundit thing has been positioned is so fundamentally wrong as Americans would look at it. The more we learn of it the more it plays fool with all our feelings about “inalienable” rights as human beings as we understand them. Not just that the pundit compound is planted out in the fields looking like a Stalin work camp it all is too much like someone is actually trying to tweak us; it sits right in the middle of so much of what we have been wrangling for and about as Americans. It is way too loaded as it has been executed. An R-1 is a foreign national who is coming to the United States temporarily to be employed at least part time (average of at least 20 hours per week) by a non-profit religious organization to work as a minister or in a religious vocation or occupation. The whole idea, Buck, is to promote religious diversity. The United State has a long history of supporting religious immigrants and non-immigrnt religious workers, teachers and ministers. Maharishi himself visited the U.S. on an R-1 visa. Go figure. Expelled from Massachusetts in the dead of winter in 1636, former Puritan leader Roger Williams (1603-1683) issued an impassioned plea for freedom of conscience. He wrote: God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be inacted and inforced in any civill state; which inforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civill Warre, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls. Williams later founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious freedom. He welcomed people of every shade of religious belief, even some regarded as dangerously misguided, for nothing could change his view that forced worship stinks in God's nostrils. 'The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace' by Roger Williams 1644
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 7:58 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield this pundit thing is going to wind up being a lot bigger than you think I agree. I suspect that this is the beginning of the end of the pundit project in America. I further suspect that if the larger TM organization clings to it and tries to support Girish Varma's scam out of misplaced loyalty to Maharishi, it will be the beginning of the end of the TM movement as well.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
what is girlish varma's scam.?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Assuming you're trying to ask about my use of the phrase, it is my suspicion that he was the one who thought up the whole pundit boy idea and supplying them to the TM movement as a way to get more donations from TM practitioners that would find their way into his pockets, as I explained in the second part of this post: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/376220 From: karuna54...@yahoo.com karuna54...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 9:53 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield what is girlish varma's scam.?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
On 3/13/2014 4:14 PM, TurquoiseBee wrote: it is my suspicion that he was the one who thought up the whole pundit boy idea and supplying them to the TM movement as a way to get more donations from TM practitioners that would find their way into his pockets Yes, I think that's the idea - to get donations to support the school pundit program in India. That's what the director of a school does. Go figure.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
On 3/13/2014 2:05 PM, TurquoiseBee wrote: I suspect that this is the beginning of the end of the pundit project in America. Apparently this TB is not aware of the fact that in many parts of the world and in parts of India itself, the word pundit means Hindu: Chanter of the Vedic Sacrifice (yajna). So, I seriously doubt that a single instance of child vandalism up in Iowa is going to be the end of Hinduism in America. If anything, it might inspire thousands of other poor children in India to get their parents to sign them up on the program - it sounds like a pretty good job for a young Hindu boy from India.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: Michael Jackson mjackson74@... To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 7:58 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield this pundit thing is going to wind up being a lot bigger than you think I agree. I suspect that this is the beginning of the end of the pundit project in America. I further suspect that if the larger TM organization clings to it and tries to support Girish Varma's scam out of misplaced loyalty to Maharishi, it will be the beginning of the end of the TM movement as well. I can't remember when I have seen grown men so excited about anything this insignificant. Bawwy is positively beside himself gossiping and postulating all over the place. It really is quite comical. I guess he doesn't actually get out much, too busy hoping he might end up in some TV series equivalence of real life and when some minor blip on FF's radar screen shows itself he wants to be part of the show. Man, I'm actually finding this funny. Can he sleep he's so excited I wonder. He's probably getting up hourly to check the Fairfield Ledger for pandit updates.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Share: ...amazing to me that you've been dialoguing for over 10 years with Ma and Pa of FFL and have kept your sense of humor about it all. As far as I can go and figure, that's what it's ultimately all about. What exactly, was Judy's beef with you? I forgot. That you're dishonest, a liar, and an idiot? Do you see any patterns here? LoL! It's enough if I see how you constantly bug and patronize Share for nothing, and now you want to draw me into this stupid argument you are having with her? Share Long: I think when certain posters don't drink enough water, their pitta gets vitiated and they can't help but argue with lots of people. It's not complicated - some people just feel better when they have someone to talk to. When you don't have a car and you can't get around, it's only natural to turn to a discussion group to vent their frustrations. Kind of ironic. Yes, I've been dialoging with Judy and Barry for over ten years now and they both seem to just get worse with time. At least I've got them to the point that they won't even correspond with me anymore. LoL! I think I got rid of one troll - that guy John Manning - the one that trolled to my place of employ and tried to get me fired from my janitor job at the community college. Apparently he only posts to that Mormon religious group anymore. Go figure. It's been more difficult to get back at that weird Barry character - the guy that tried to publish my real name on the internet a few years ago over on Usenet. What's ironic is that Barry won't even admit he's guilty and Judy, who makes claims of being so ethical, never even spoke up about any of these incidents. Ironic.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
punditster sir, amazing to me that you've been dialoguing for over 10 years with Ma and Pa of FFL and have kept your sense of humor about it all. As far as I can go and figure, that's what it's ultimately all about. From: punditster no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 11:40 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield It's enough if I see how you constantly bug and patronize Share for nothing, and now you want to draw me into this stupid argument you are having with her? Share Long: I think when certain posters don't drink enough water, their pitta gets vitiated and they can't help but argue with lots of people. It's not complicated - some people just feel better when they have someone to talk to. When you don't have a car and you can't get around, it's only natural to turn to a discussion group to vent their frustrations. Kind of ironic. Yes, I've been dialoging with Judy and Barry for over ten years now and they both seem to just get worse with time. At least I've got them to the point that they won't even correspond with me anymore. LoL! I think I got rid of one troll - that guy John Manning - the one that trolled to my place of employ and tried to get me fired from my janitor job at the community college. Apparently he only posts to that Mormon religious group anymore. Go figure. It's been more difficult to get back at that weird Barry character - the guy that tried to publish my real name on the internet a few years ago over on Usenet. What's ironic is that Barry won't even admit he's guilty and Judy, who makes claims of being so ethical, never even spoke up about any of these incidents. Ironic.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Maybe it's time to review some more FFL Protocols for posting: 1. Compose the first line of your message so that it can be easily read in Message View. 2. Don't copy and paste the quoted text for the first line of text of your own message. 3. Try to avoid redundancy in the Message View. 4. Reserve blue text for hyper text links. 5. Indicate quoted text with a right angle bracket or other indicator. 6. Try to format your text for easy reading and replying. Redundancy Example: 357475 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms. 357476 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Iranitea wrote: Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
punditster sir, what is, from another of your posts that hasn't yet arrived in my inbox, DHMO? From: punditster no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 6:59 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Maybe it's time to review some more FFL Protocols for posting: 1. Compose the first line of your message so that it can be easily read in Message View. 2. Don't copy and paste the quoted text for the first line of text of your own message. 3. Try to avoid redundancy in the Message View. 4. Reserve blue text for hyper text links. 5. Indicate quoted text with a right angle bracket or other indicator. 6. Try to format your text for easy reading and replying. Redundancy Example: 357475 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms. 357476 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Iranitea wrote: Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
FFL Protocols? From: punditster no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 4:59 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Maybe it's time to review some more FFL Protocols for posting: 1. Compose the first line of your message so that it can be easily read in Message View. 2. Don't copy and paste the quoted text for the first line of text of your own message. 3. Try to avoid redundancy in the Message View. 4. Reserve blue text for hyper text links. 5. Indicate quoted text with a right angle bracket or other indicator. 6. Try to format your text for easy reading and replying. Redundancy Example: 357475 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms. 357476 Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield Iranitea wrote: Judy sez: Nothing wrong with iranitea's observations and information on their own terms.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
It's enough if I see how you constantly bug and patronize Share for nothing, and now you want to draw me into this stupid argument you are having with her? Share Long: I think when certain posters don't drink enough water, their pitta gets vitiated and they can't help but argue with lots of people. It's not complicated - some people just feel better when they have someone to talk to. When you don't have a car and you can't get around, it's only natural to turn to a discussion group to vent their frustrations. Kind of ironic. Yes, I've been dialoging with Judy and Barry for over ten years now and they both seem to just get worse with time. At least I've got them to the point that they won't even correspond with me anymore. LoL! I think I got rid of one troll - that guy John Manning - the one that trolled to my place of employ and tried to get me fired from my janitor job at the community college. Apparently he only posts to that Mormon religious group anymore. Go figure. It's been more difficult to get back at that weird Barry character - the guy that tried to publish my real name on the internet a few years ago over on Usenet. What's ironic is that Barry won't even admit he's guilty and Judy, who makes claims of being so ethical, never even spoke up about any of these incidents. Ironic.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
If you even attempt to answer the question, then I become reasonably confident that I no longer need to pay attention to you in this context. s3raphita: That's a classic double-bind. Lawson has posed a riddle, somewhat like a zen koan. There is no correct answer to a koan - the answer is in the thinking, not in the description of the question or in the answer. There is an old zen saying: Don't mistake the pointing finger for the moon itself. - Huineng So, TM is NOT the cause of enlightenment. Go figure. This was confirmed by SBS who said that the Brahman was Light and needs no other illumination. According to MMY, TM is based on thinking - simply thinking things over. The riddle in TM is that 'TM' doesn't actually DO anything - it just allows you to BE without striving. It's this simple - you are only going to get as much enlightenment as you are going to get. The moving finger having writ, moves on. - Omar So, 'TM' isn't really a 'technique' at all. A technique is used for activity and for energized enthusiasm. And by definition, you don't 'use' the mantra during TM - because it has been transcended. So, when you start meditating the mantra is present as a thought, but then drops off. Everyone meditates and based on this definition, because we all think - even without a 'technique'! You don't need a technique to think because it's a natural tendency of the mind. The mantra just provides the correct angle for the effortless transcending. Meditation techniques are like rafts, so we can cross over to the other side. Once crossed over you will see that there's no other side and no crossing over. When you have crossed over, you have no further need for a raft - you would look silly carrying around a raft on your head. The map is not the territory. - Ven Sochu Buddha's Parable of the Raft: http://www.thebuddhistsociety.org/ http://www.thebuddhistsociety.org/resources/previous_stories/Map.htm
[FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
Communism anyone?
[FairfieldLife] RE: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
.. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, : Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more exclusively out in an adjacent new town area called Maharishi Vedic City to the northwest of Fairfield proper. The university community lives more on their campus in Fairfield. The larger meditating community lives through out Fairfield and the County area either disperse singly or in meditator households in neighborhoods. Maharishi Vedic City and the university community each function with obvious communal aspect with people living together, working for their community together, housing close together, educating their kids together, socializing together, sharing resources etc. The larger surrounding meditating community also functions that way. The common thing to these Shaker-like 'families' of meditators in the Fairfield area like the Shakers is that they moved to Fairfield as meditators to be practicing meditators in something larger. In starting, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a proponent of Transcendental Meditation for 60 years in the West and there has been a meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa for about 40 years. The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement purchased a bankrupt college campus in Fairfield, Iowa and moved a university there in 1974. The university was teaching a wide liberal arts curricula where the students and faculty were also practicing meditators. That functioned as a unit in Fairfield for about a half decade when at a large gathering of meditators meeting with Maharishi it was suggested that folks as meditators move to the Fairfield community to be able to meditate regularly in large group meditations. That was the start of the Fairfield meditating community where meditators moved to Fairfield, Iowa generally. Through the later 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and even up to present time thousands of meditators have lived in Fairfield. Like happened with the Shakers there are now lots of projects that go along with meditating that start to be defining otherwise but still the formative communal reason here is more essentially about the spiritual practice of meditating. Hopefully this is useful as a way of looking at it. I am providing here below some source links to
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@ wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? At the meeting were specialists in different communal groups and aspects of different groups. Oneida, Harmonists, Amana, Shakers, Icarians, Mormons, Synanon, new religions and contemporary religious and secular communities, Camphill, the Twelve Tribes, City of David, Kibitz, and some other particular contemporary cloistered groups had papers delivered about them. There was a paper given considering quantitative measurement of the notion of sustainability in communal groups using a contemporary 'intentional community' group that is just to our south over the border in Missouri, the intentional community of Dancing Rabbit. The conference had papers on many different aspects of utopian community. Sociologists, anthropologists, ethno-musicologists, economists, religious studies, and historians. The meeting was all extremely interesting as a communal comparison for our own group. It's a meeting of an old scholarly association and the meeting was very professionally and well done. This was the second year I've attended as someone coming from (meditating) Fairfield. -Buck Thanks. I'm very curious about Dancing Rabbit. Who are they? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, paste: Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@ wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? http://www.dancingrabbit.org/ At the meeting were specialists in different communal groups and aspects of different groups. Oneida, Harmonists, Amana, Shakers, Icarians, Mormons, Synanon, new religions and contemporary religious and secular communities, Camphill, the Twelve Tribes, City of David, Kibitz, and some other particular contemporary cloistered groups had papers delivered about them. There was a paper given considering quantitative measurement of the notion of sustainability in communal groups using a contemporary 'intentional community' group that is just to our south over the border in Missouri, the intentional community of Dancing Rabbit. The conference had papers on many different aspects of utopian community. Sociologists, anthropologists, ethno-musicologists, economists, religious studies, and historians. The meeting was all extremely interesting as a communal comparison for our own group. It's a meeting of an old scholarly association and the meeting was very professionally and well done. This was the second year I've attended as someone coming from (meditating) Fairfield. -Buck Thanks. I'm very curious about Dancing Rabbit. Who are they? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, paste: Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
That's a good summary. But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, paste: Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more exclusively out in an adjacent new town area called Maharishi Vedic City to the northwest of Fairfield proper. The university community lives more on their campus in Fairfield. The larger meditating community lives through out Fairfield and the County area either disperse singly or in meditator households in neighborhoods. Maharishi Vedic City and the university community each function with obvious communal aspect with people living together, working for their community together, housing close together, educating their kids together, socializing together, sharing resources etc. The larger surrounding meditating community also functions that way. The common thing to these Shaker-like 'families' of meditators in the Fairfield area like the Shakers is that they moved to Fairfield as meditators to be practicing meditators in something larger. In starting, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a proponent of Transcendental Meditation for 60 years in the West and there has been a meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa for about 40 years. The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement purchased a bankrupt college campus in Fairfield, Iowa and moved a university there in 1974. The university was teaching a wide liberal arts curricula where the students and faculty were also practicing meditators. That functioned as a unit in Fairfield for about a half decade when at a large gathering of meditators meeting with Maharishi it was suggested that folks as meditators move to the Fairfield community to be able to meditate regularly in large group meditations. That was the start of the Fairfield meditating community where meditators moved to Fairfield, Iowa generally. Through the later 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and even up to present time thousands of meditators have lived in Fairfield. Like happened with the Shakers there are now lots
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@... wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, paste: Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more exclusively out in an adjacent new town area called Maharishi Vedic City to the northwest of Fairfield proper. The university community lives more on their campus in Fairfield. The larger meditating community lives through out Fairfield and the County area either disperse singly or in meditator households in neighborhoods. Maharishi Vedic City and the university community each function with obvious communal aspect with people living together, working for their community together, housing close together, educating their kids together, socializing together, sharing resources etc. The larger surrounding meditating community also functions that way. The common thing to these Shaker-like 'families' of meditators in the Fairfield area like the Shakers is that they moved to Fairfield as meditators to be practicing meditators in something larger. In starting, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a proponent of Transcendental Meditation for 60 years in the West and there has been a meditating community in Fairfield, Iowa for about 40 years. The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement purchased a bankrupt college campus in Fairfield, Iowa and moved a university there in 1974. The university was teaching a wide liberal arts curricula where the students and faculty were also practicing meditators. That functioned as a unit in Fairfield for about a half decade when at a large gathering of meditators
[FairfieldLife] Re: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@ wrote: That's a good summary. Thanks. It is interesting that you responded first to this. I actually was thinking of asking you to help me edit this particular paper for this particular scholarly audience. I pushed ahead anyway and they seem quite pleased with this as an entry in to the subject of TM and Fairfield for discussion. -Buck But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they? At the meeting were specialists in different communal groups and aspects of different groups. Oneida, Harmonists, Amana, Shakers, Icarians, Mormons, Synanon, new religions and contemporary religious and secular communities, Camphill, the Twelve Tribes, City of David, Kibitz, and some other particular contemporary cloistered groups had papers delivered about them. There was a paper given considering quantitative measurement of the notion of sustainability in communal groups using a contemporary 'intentional community' group that is just to our south over the border in Missouri, the intentional community of Dancing Rabbit. The conference had papers on many different aspects of utopian community. Sociologists, anthropologists, ethno-musicologists, economists, religious studies, and historians. The meeting was all extremely interesting as a communal comparison for our own group. It's a meeting of an old scholarly association and the meeting was very professionally and well done. This was the second year I've attended as someone coming from (meditating) Fairfield. -Buck --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison and I think you'll appreciate the links. Best Regards from Iowa, paste: Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look at. Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community? -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a community -Some kind of shared living space -Some shared resources -Critical mass For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more exclusively out in an adjacent new town area called Maharishi Vedic City to the northwest of Fairfield proper. The university community lives more on their campus in Fairfield. The larger meditating community lives through out