Torah, Kohelet - Ecclesiastes 1:18 King James Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:18 Lately I feel exactly as it is said in these quotes. I am not sad all the time, but I might have some awareness, which makes me think, how sad it is to be aware of this. This is not bad news or secrets at all, or any warnings of future disasters. Mostly it is some small things, may be I talk to somebody and they tell me about something, but I already know what they are saying, or may be I can add even more to it. It can be too overwhelming at the times, and I can share it with nobody, if I share I get wrong reaction. How interesting, how did you learn this skill, can you tell me about such and such? It comes and goes by itself, without any effort on my part. This is not so much about accuracy of this awareness, but presence of an awareness itself.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

You have us to share it with Lena.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Thank you Bette.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Lena,

I can relate to this as well. With data collection the more aware one becomes of what may be, there is a sense of loss almost. Trading one thought form for another that better reflects the truth. It is worth it of course, but interactions are not the same way as before. The context and meaning are different. That being said, even this perspective will change as awareness grows. Not everyone is as willing to do this.

I feebly attempt to share with enthusiasm what I am beginning to understand with my closest friends. Few share my enthusiasm and quickly return conversation back to PMR matters. I know what they are going to say at times, so I blurt it out, other times I help them choose their words when they speak. Later I feel like an ass for doing so. I am careful about what thoughts I am focusing on because others can and do perceive even if they do not understand entirely. I can't say that I do either. It humbles me greatly.

As one grows, responsibilities increase. My sadness comes with not being able to share this understanding with certain people. I accept that this is how it must be. We're all in this together, yet each doing their part.

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-Binary Digital Data Transmission-
01000010011001010010000001001100011011110111011001100101

I have the same problem when I tell my friends about my NPMR activities. They think I am a little crazy and very eccentric. That's OK though. I hope it may spark some awareness in them sometime.

Hi Lena,

Sometimes when I find myself in a state such as it sounds like you are describing, an easy solution for me is to dive into some work of fiction which is written in a world view that is some distance from my own, and it seems to be a medicine of sorts..... I am trying to think of one that might suit but ... well, one you just MIGHT like is an old American Classic, Gone With The Wind. (The movie is only remotely like it.) It is a great novel for a number of reasons. The primary theme is the forced collapse of a world view. It is also a wonderfully earthy exposition on various human characters, and the insights about people come from a good strong matriarchal point of view.

Sainsy,

Being thought of as a little weird and extremely eccentric is maybe not such a bad thing... people are much less inclined to take you for granted that way .

-Montana

PS... that was something I just read in a book somewheres once. Of course, *I* wouldn't know myself!~

<{;-D

Thank you all for your input and support. :))

SLiVeR,

'there is a sense of loss almost'. This is exactly my feelings. It is good to know, that each of us taking own path, but we share the same feelings and emotions. Thanks to them, we can relate our experience to each other, and it makes a task of learning much easy.

Linda,

yes, of course, as soon as I touch on a MBT subject, I feel loneliness. I have a couple of friends who are interested in metaphysic, or psychology, but I feel, like I am teaching them, and this is and awkward position to me. I am not insisting on anything, at least I see it this way. Sometimes it drains me though, because I feel, that expectations may be too high, and I see many things from a different perspective. For one, those friends are younger, than I am, about my son's age. Please don't get me wrong, I am very happy to see, that we are growing together, each of us at our own pace and direction. Looks, like I started bragging here, but I don't. ;))

Montana,

yes, refocusing is a good tool. I don't read fiction anymore, but I watch children cartoons, British comedy, Are you being served or Keeping up Appearances, love stories, Pride and Prejudice, or an old movie, where a happy end is 100% guaranteed. This morning I started Viktor Frankl book on a logotherapy. His books are always helpful to me. I was thinking about Henry Miller, Big Sur too.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Here Lena,

You might like this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMwGqfnA19A

-Montana

Thank you Montana. It brought tears to my eyes.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Ahhhh, niiiiice Leon-link.

I'm a long time fan - so I'm biased :-)

Wow...there is so much good stuff here...I recall Tom referring to a sadness in one of his videos that tempers the overall joy of living associated with Quality of Consciousness - need a search feature on video transcripts! (or someone with photographic memory)

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Pride and Prejudice - In the States, you have several options for legit online film downloading/direct viewing, most of which are very user friendly, that involve buying a little box for $100-300 at Best Buy, that provide an interface between your TV and the internet. The newer televisions have this built in.

The illegitimate forms of this are many, but more technical. In Canada, I am sometimes forced to use the latter as virtually all of the legit services are blocked. I have Canadian Netflix, which remains a very good deal, but the selection is really limited.

All this to say that by expanding your decision space in this regard permits one to dramatically increase the quality of TV viewing...for those not yet at the level of spending their evenings meditating or reading philosophy or MBTOE! Anyways, some "couch duty" is part of a healthy marriage, even for the very-low-entropy show-offs ; - )

Pride and Prejudice, which I think has several versions out there, of course, represents an entire film genre based on 19th and early 20th century literature which taps into a world view, largely lost in modern Culture, which mostly is very limited in violence and have strong morality themes...are generally studies of bad decision making (intent), consequences (feedback) and recovery (self modification). Tom has mentioned that violent and evil themes can do yourself damage.

What I do is get on Wikipedia or other sources which has various pages devoted to film genres, and you build a list lets say of all films done by "Merchant Ivory" (if you don't know what this is, you are in for a treat), or all films with Maggie Smith, Jeremy Irons (use their bio pages), and so on. Then you get on Vuze or hopefully a legit service and download or stream them.

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There are communities where you can talk about NPMR. In order of openness

TMI city groups
Spiritualism Churches and Temples (latter being non-religious)
Edgar Cayce Groups
Eckankar (Astral Projection Cult)
American style Buddhism (Shambala)
American-style Kabbalah
Unitarianism (looks like a church, smells like a church, but is not "religious")
(Swedenborg)The New Church (religious lite, but Edgar Cayce-esque)
Sufism
Quaker

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One idea for an MBTOE non-religion (local meeting groups) that I floated by Tom in NC and with which he was decisively neutral (not for or against - the key message was "there are no restrictions in this regard"), is local MBTOE "book clubs".

There are several advantages to this model
- it is secular and not religious in form

- it is a modern social phenomena that the target population would find familiar

- it could be a powerful "recruiting" tool (free community ads in local/neighbourhood/spiritually-oriented newspapers)

- it focuses on the books, given that MBTOE is very "trilogy- centric"

- if we act now, the principles and form of gathering would be established by "Forum" consensus under Ted and Tom's guidance and authority, rather than by outsiders (the latter which is already beginning!).

- it enables individual initiative and is easily scalable...one person acting alone can begin by simple following the conventional process for starting and promoting a book club in your area.

- group meditation (binuaral and otherwise) and healing could be incorporated, however, this crosses a significant line into operating as a "quasi-religion" or "spiritual meeting". It could be kept separate (done before or after "book club") to avoid freaking newcomers out (In spiritualism, healing is normally done before the formal meeting, for example).

- there could also be a technical research committee that performs experiments such as measuring healing results, remote viewing and OBE training etc. MENSA operates on this model of several separate interest sub-groups within the overall local club umbrella.


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I think a TOEist education is incomplete without at least some exposure to the key psychological schools: Jung, Frankl, and the lesser known Karen Horney.

for those not aware of Frankl...Like when you take a trained physicist and blast them through NPMR, you get a very valuable result, imagine what you get when you put a trained psychologist through the Nazi death camp experience - what fell out of that was Frankls logotherapy (finding "meaning" within pain, loss and discomfort...which ties to Tom's statements regarding life not fundamentally being about having a "good time"...but rather, finding meaning [QoC growth] within our struggles and challenges)

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Just a couple quick notes...

When films are made based on books, the book is almost always better than the movie. (I am not widely film exposed, that said, the only exception to the rule that I know of is "The world according to Garp")

There is already an extended and diverse MBTish-TMIish etc etc-ish group that meets in NPMR. It is always there. It is there right now. Just reach out, feel out with your being-level awareness. It is always just right there.

-Montana

yeah, I figured as much

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

It is funny you should write that. I have talked to a few Toe-heads about that very thing. I often have dreams about MBT meetings and sometimes just as I am coming out of a meditation my PMR consciousness will catch the last few lines of an conversation that seems to be in an MBT meeting.

I wonder what Tom would say about this.

Not too long ago, I had a dream with Tom, myself, and some other folks that I knew, but could not place (some were "MBT people" and a few others seemed more like "family"). We were all sitting at a dinner table talking. In my waking life, I was in a bit of a low. In the dream, I was expressing to Tom what a difficult time I was having getting through this life. I was going on about how I felt trapped in my PMR body, etc. I felt a deep sadness and broke down crying. It was amazing. Tom and the others there were listening very intently and fully understood. Tom said something supportive though I can't remember exactly what it was. Anyway, it was quit refreshing and helpful. I of course have no clue if it was "real" or just a little TLC from the LCS. No difference I suppose.

I have been told that some TMI folks explore NPMR in groups (from 27 to 43? I forget the TMI levels... something like that). I don't know much about it, but it sounds like fun. I'm still working on getting out of my bedroom half the time :)

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-"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find... you get what you need"