You wish to offload the feelings you have in response to what someone says to 
you, about you, about others, to that someone for blame or revenge? In my 
experience, whether or not a person is nice or abusive, that person always 
distorts another person's values and ideas because no two minds are exactly 
alike. There can be superficial agreement, but if you dig deep enough, 
understandings, feelings etc., do not line up between two people. You are 
letting Barry get to you, he tried it with me too, and I took a step back and 
tried to analyse my response.  

 As Barry does not seem to go about shooting others with firearms or stabbing 
them with knives, or attempting to ruin others nefariously by financial 
manipulation it seems possible to come to some accommodation. I found it was 
possible. I was never able to come to an accommodation with Judy Stein for 
example, although when I first came on here, she was friendly and Barry was 

 There are certain affinities but they may be entirely superficial. He likes 
certain kinds of music. So do I, but we have different tastes. I pursued 
spirituality from basically an atheist point of view because I knew it was 
possible, and Barry seems to be in a non-religious space as well. Barry appears 
to like Curtis, and so do I. This thread, started by Barry, is wonderful for 
the kind of discussion that it can dredge up because it relates to ultimate 
questions about what we can know and tends to illuminate responses that give us 
an inkling of how other view the world. There is a terrible lack of humour in 
the religious world. 

 The main affinity here is that all ideas are open to discussion here, and no 
ideas are sacrosanct. Barry would not give me a free ride were he to disagree 
with me about something. I have never met Barry (and logically therefore he has 
never met me); we live thousands of miles apart. I have seen a single rather 
grungy photo of him, apparently shot in Paris, one version in colour and the 
other in black and white on his linkedin page (you really should get a better 
shot Barry if you read this).

 If you really want to see repetitive button pushing behaviour and response you 
should watch the Jerry Springer show on TV. Marvellous primate studies of human 
mating behaviour. You cannot get much lower than this. At least here people 
think from time to time.

 Now if you think Barry is abusive, bitter, negative, and we suppose this were 
true, how much space would you allow him to vent his frustrations and give him 
the opportunity to grow?

 My first spiritual experiences came at the hands of one John Rosenberg (AKA 
Werner Erhard). I had no inkling that I was going to have a spiritual 
experience. He began his course by calling everyone in the room a bunch of god 
damn ass holes. The purpose was to elicit conditioned responses, and some took 
the bait. But the idea behind the method was to eventually within the course 
structure to get people to realise in their own experience how these 
conditioned responses situate themselves within and how they arise, and how to 
begin to deal with them. So what Barry does does not bother me, I have been 
dealing with my own conditioned responses going on half a century so I just do 
not care that you are seemingly upset. Being enlightened, you should know 
enough by now to deal with that yourself.



 I wasn't sure before, but you have clarified for me, that you are an enabler, 
of Barry's abusive behavior. There is nothing remotely helpful, or hinting, at 
cursing and insulting someone else, distorting their values and ideas.  

 You really need to step back, and do a reality check. Barry is an abusive, 
bitter, and negative individual. Simply because he has learned to manipulate 
people for a predictably outraged response, does not mean this is positive, 
educational, or socially appropriate behavior. Where did you grow up, anyway?

---In, <anartaxius@...> wrote :

 No, people become insulted. A person saying x might be interpreted by y as an 
insult, but interpreted by z as a helpful hint. Being insulted is a response. 
What to some might seem a pox on their cherished tradition others might see as 
a reasonable evaluation of idiotic beliefs, or even championing truth. You can 
swear at an anvil, and what does it do in response — nothing. You can berate 
someone in a language they do not speak, and while they might notice you are 
agitated, in not understanding the words, they will not responds as if it were 
an insult. So it is all in the interpretation. 

 I have never said what Barry says is wisdom. It is what Barry says, that is 
all. People respond in different ways. He clearly knows enough about certain 
aspects of human nature to elicit the responses he gets on FFL. If I lived 
where he lived and saw him every day, I probably would have a better idea what 
he is like, but I tend not to draw conclusions so readily based on what he 
writes. Wisdom does not come from others, if you want to be wise, you have to 
mine for it yourself.


 "Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are activated."

 Wrong, Taxius. Barry is insulting people. Barry is cursing people's beliefs. 
Barry is denigrating people, distorting who they are, and treating them with 
incredible disrespect. We are not his guinea pigs. He, rather, has become quite 
a specimen of craziness and abuse, under the scrutiny, of those he 
inadvertently attracts, through his antisocial behavior. You are a fool for 
taking his emotionally unbalanced state, for some sort of wisdom. Grow up, and 
smell the reality.



"The TMO memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the 
nature of reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not 
have the capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be 
using delusional thinking to evaluate ideas such as transcendence, states of 
consciousness and so forth, so our following this system of thought about 
reality would essentially be an act of insanity, that is, mental illness." 

 Yep, absolutely correct. That is why we practice TM, to clear past 
impressions, so that we can one day see reality, as it is, not as we think it 
should be. Otherwise, we would remain impaired, as you say - in a state of 
ignorance. There is no way to follow the knowledge associated with TM, without 
doing TM. It makes little sense, like reading automobile service manuals, 
without owning or driving a car.


 I do not think you understood what I said here. What I said here was in a 
state of ignorance, you are incapable of knowing whether the TM program, in 
total, is a scam or not, based on its own philosophy, so saying that it clears 
past impressions and so forth, is a complete unknown, for in a state of 
delusion, you cannot come to a correct evaluation of whether the program has 
any valid reason for being followed. You cannot use the philosophy of the 
program to determine if what it says is true, that is circular reasoning. You 
cannot even evaluate the practices, at least initially. Lots of people have 
been practising TM for 50 years and still seem to be in the dark as to what it 
is all about. So the fact you found value might just be a random quirk. I 
myself found value in the program, but I also am aware of many limitations it 
has, and it has been useful for some, a stepping stone to other things for 
some, just so-so for others, and a nightmare for a few.


 There is nothing about enlightenment that is not experienced before starting a 
spiritual path. If enlightenment seems different from the way you were before 
engaging spirituality, then the process is not complete. Enlightenment does not 
add anything to life, it removes a misunderstanding about what has always been 
happening, what has been the case. During the unpacking of misconceptions, 
experiences may seem quite unlike what one had previously known. 

 Witnessing 24/7 is an example of this. This is a dualistic conception of 
experience that arises because the mind is becoming familiar with the nature 
awareness. Unchanging awareness has been there from day one, but just 
unfamiliar because one did not know how to look at the situation. Once one 
knows how to appreciate the situation, you know it was always there, you just 
trained the mind to notice it better. So awareness 24/7 is not a special state. 
I have awareness this way, what is the big deal? It is not the cause of 
anything other than it enables you to experience, which is what you have always 
done. Consciousness has been present all one's life. You do not get any more, 
you just get to notice how it plays out better if you train the mind to 
appreciate, which is what meditation does. All an effective spiritual practice 
does is remove some clutter from the ol' mind. Most such practices seem to do 
the reverse, adding additional clutter to the mind. It should be a relief to 
remove a misunderstanding. Congratulating oneself for having discovered that 
one was an idiot is not cause for celebration.

 After all if one was an idiot in the past, perhaps one is still misconstruing 
the state one is in now.




 Logical arguments about ultimates always contain a flaw. You can reverse the 
form of the argument to support atheism and if you do not see the flaw, it will 
seem equally valid, that is, that atheism is true. Now there are some atheists 
who definitely believe there is no god and they can be as fanatical as a 
fundamentalist religionist. Probably they would have no sense of humour about 
their condition. But a real atheist simply lacks a particular kind of belief 
because that belief seems neither reasonable or likely. They basically just do 
not care. Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are 
activated. We all have memes which are basically little snippets of mental 
routines our minds use. We trade them with each other, but for the most part 
these mental stances are just our opinions about the world around us and we 
tend to be be rather uncritical as to how well they really represent what is 
real, while at the same time taking them as reality itself. 

 Take the TMO memes. On FFL, meditators and former meditators all at one time 
believed certain things about experience were at least possible, for example, 
that if you practice TM, which is not a religion, you will find God. The TMO 
memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the nature of 
reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not have the 
capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be using 
delusional thinking to evaluate ideas such as transcendence, states of 
reality would essentially be an act of insanity, that is, mental illness. The 
system defines us as in some way incapacitated in knowing what is real, and 
then expects us to just jump in, and accept what the system says is real. 

 A discussion of the Kalam argument:

 Cosmological Kalamity 
 Cosmological Kalamity Home » Library » 
Modern » Dan Barker »   Cosmological Kalamity Dan Barker "Daddy, if God made 
everything, who made God?" my daughter Kristi asked me, when she was five years 

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---In, <jr_esq@...> wrote :


 Have you ever thought that atheism is also a belief-- and an unreasonable one 
at that?  The Kalam Cosmological Argument should dispel any of your doubts.


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