Distractions during meditation practice

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Swayam

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Distractions during meditation practice

Post03 Jan 2017

Hello everyone,

I have been trying to do meditation for last 6-7 years but not became successful because of many reasons like health, stress, lack of concentration, sitting arrangement, back pain, etc.

Now I have my personal room and no health issue. Only one thing that is becoming obstacle is my own thoughts or unwillingnes to keep concentrating, or say willingness to stop meditating and start thinking something else.

I start meditation and after three to five minutes I feel urge to stop it and do something else.

How can I change this habit? What did you do to make habit of continuously concentrating only on the point of light?
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ex-l

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post03 Jan 2017

Swayam wrote:How can I change this habit?

Simple ... by not acting on it.

Are you talking about BK meditation for 6 or 7 years, or other forms of meditation?
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post03 Jan 2017

    When you are hungry, its good to eat.
    no one else can eat FOR you
    When you are tired, its good to rest.
    When you are sleepy, its good to sleep.
    no one else can sleep FOR you.

    If you wish to socialise, go and socialise.
    no one else can socialise FOR you.
    If you want to sit in your room, sit there.
    no one can sit in your room FOR you
    If you don't want to sit anymore, don’t. Go do whatever else you want to do.
    no one else can enjoy doing what you want to do FOR you
You are an adult (I presume). Do what you want and don’t waste your time chasing what others tell you is a better way.

Are you trying to trick yourself into practicing someone else’s meditation?

Deciding that you wish to concentrate on a particular thing but find you can’t indicates it is not what you want to do mentally at the time. Meditation starts by noticing what is going on in your mental processes without getting caught up in them.

An old ch’an Buddhist saying for meditation is that you should sit and watch your mental processes the way an old man sitting on a bench will watch children play. Another one is that you, the meditator, are the host, and mental images and ideas are guests that come and go .

The point form is a visualisation aid, not an end in itself. It serves some people and not others. You will find many BK Sisters will tell you they prefer to visualise ”Brahma Baba” and it is an emotional meditation that they do. More intellectually oriented BKs like the point form, an abstract that gets them beyond the mundane.

Beyond that, BK meditation is really just a ”dream factory”. BK meditation technique, which I used to teach when I was a BK, is an abstract idealist set of affirmations. Useful up to a point (pardon the pun) for some people. But insidiously, like a cheap advertising campaign, the teaching has you believe that it is an indispensable ”product" you must have and use regularly, and if it doesn't work for you, you must be doing it wrong.

Affirmations, I have come to realise, are counter-productive, e.g. A person who is happy in life, or content, does not need to sit to say to themselves, ”I am a happy soul, I am a content soul”. To need to say it means you are not, and for people who are innately honest with themselves, that makes them ”fidgety” edgy, uncomfortable. A person who is unhappy, or more deeply discontented for whatever reason, knows at some level they are lying to themselves if they sit and say "I am happy/content. No, really I am. I insist I am” .

If you are, for example, enjoying listening to a piece of music, then someone interrupts you and asks, ”how much are you enjoying this music? You could be enjoying it more you know, I can show you how” - you would be justified to say ”Well, I was, but no thanks to you for interrupting” . But we are socialised to be polite and revere those who are said to be ”spiritually more advanced”. So instead of remembering how you were enjoying the music, you doubt yourself and think " maybe there is a better way to enjoy it?” ... but now, having set a goal to enjoy the music ”more spiritually” you find you aren’t enjoy it at all.

To use the old saying, you are looking for two birds in the bush and not appreciating the bird in hand.

Swayam

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post04 Jan 2017

ex-l wrote:Are you talking about BK meditation for 6 or 7 years, or other forms of meditation?

Yes, about BK meditation. I try to become a point of light.

Swayam

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post04 Jan 2017

Pink Panther wrote:Deciding that you wish to concentrate on a particular thing but find you can’t indicates it is not what you want to do mentally at the time. Meditation starts by noticing what is going on in your mental processes without getting caught up.

Yes, may be I do not want to do that mentally ... or better say, unconsciously. But I really want to be able to concentrate continuously.

If I keep concentrating for more than 10 minutes, then I find that I feel myself enjoying concentration practice. But I feel tired when I keep concentrating and then I want to stop doing meditation and start doing something else.

I remember once when I learned meditation first time I did meditation seriously and became point of light in my first attempt. I had decided that I have to anyhow become 100% focused only on point of light. And whenever any thought of feeling tried to distract me from point of light, I distracted myself from that thing. I did not decide to notice those distracting thoughts or feelings, insteed I concentrated myself more strongly only on point of light so that those thoughts or feelings should disappear from my awareness. And it worked and I was able to feel myself as a real point of light and I started flying up.

But I could never achieve that strong determination to be 100% focused though I want to.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post04 Jan 2017

But i really want to be able to concentrate continuously.

We naturally concentrate on things we are interested in or enjoy. if you enjoy it, the question does not arise.

We naturally drift off to other thoughts if we are not interested. Any child knows that and does that - unless they have serious mental conditions.

Of course to learn any secondary (learned) skill require regular practice, even on days we are not as interested, we'll discipline ourselves to practice just a little bit because our longer term interest makes us discipline ourselves to override the immediate mood. But ask yourself:

Q. Why do we meditate, or rather, why do we want to meditate ( or to concentrate - which is kind of the same thing but not quite)?

For me, it is to enhance life generally. if it doesn’t enhance life, why do it? Isn’t the object of concentration more important? Again, we could say 'what is important' is what we are interested in and we then concentrate naturally.

When you learn music, do you practice scales so you can play scales well? No, scales are formalised exercises and patterns that can enable us to play freely. Trainers of sportspeople tell their their charges to do more of one exercise and less of others to develop the appropriate ”facility” for that sport. We meditate (speaking generally) to raise our consciousness (pardon the jargon) during all activities, presuming that a ”raised” consciousness is one that suffers less, appreciates life more, sees through difficulties. (Words are tricky metaphors, sometimes we might say we want to deepen our consciousness !! ;-) )

Q. What is a ”raised consciousness”?

For me, it seeing clearly, being aware of reality as clearly and with as few ‘filters' as possible.

Not all students find the same approach to learning equally interesting or engaging, so a good teacher has to find the way to make the student engage. It may be they need more play time and less task orientation, or excursions so that when they return to a classroom, they are refreshed and can now relate the abstract to the reality. And it changes over time. In meditation, we are our own teachers.

In the case of your experience of meditation, where you earlier found it easier to be "fascinated" by the point form as an object of meditation but now struggle, another person might develop that later, even years later but earlier on be more into experiencing ”feelings” of letting go and calming ... (What good is a meditation if it makes you ‘uptight'?)

We are humans beings first and foremost, being a meditator or a yogi is secondary, so what we do as meditators or yogis is to serve our human being-ness. If we can gain the benefit of meditation in two minutes why spend two hours? If I can satisfy my desire from that state in 5 minutes then want to move on to something else, then move on. Why force yourself to keep at something you have lost interest in and is becoming counterproductive - go to whatever you want to do next and meditate on that, ven if it is sleeping, or chewing a nice mango.

If formal meditation is distracting you from life, from being human, let it go. Take up whatever enhances those things.
If you can enjoy life, have a raised consciousness etc without meditation, or without meditating in a concentrated way on an abstract point form that requires you to imbue it with projected values to keep ”it” alive, why do it?
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ex-l

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post05 Jan 2017

I have come to believe that those early peak experiences were not ones which we did or achieved by ourselves, but were done to us by the BK spooks.

In short, one cannot repeat it, because one did not do it in the first place.

I base this on the number of individuals, in some cases *really* unlikely cases ... everything from kids to non-BKs priest with no Knowledge™ ... who had such experiences without any effort - but never did so again, and generally never came back nor followed up on the practise.

It just "happened" to them and left them mystified.

This was also my own experience, although not immediately. I had one such peak experience by accident in an unlikely setting after a few weeks/months of struggle, but I was never again able to equally it.

I am left with the impression that they were psychically induced, artifical experiences, given to encourage us into BKism. I think the idea is that we are left chasing it, like some drug high, and consequently are enculturated to serve them.

Something our ego quickly graps onto (Oh, amn't I a great yogi!) and then destroys.

More than often, one would have the strongest experiences during teaching the practise, I suppose acting as a 'transmitter' or spiritualistic channel between the BK god spirit/s and the recipient?

I am confident to say I was not giving those experiences either as I have not a clue to how to do so. I was just sitting there.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post05 Jan 2017

My experience was very different to yours ex-l and maybe why I am not into the ”spook” theory. I had ”experiences” before doing BK meditation, practicing tibetan third eye meditation that I had read a little about, and the experience was replicated when I went to the BK centre.

I left BKs (consciously dis-identified with them) in the mid-1990s, and didn’t meditate for a while for reasons you’ve described elsewhere - of associations with BK stuff. Then when I started again - usually after doing some Yoga stretches and asanas, I made a conscious effort to break all ”jargon”, all BK and cult associations/implications and meditate in a more primal (universal? ) way - silence, observation, calm. I don't do it it to any clock or schedule, sometimes go for weeks without doing any. When I do I never set a time, I sit for anything from 2 minutes to 20 minutes. I never feel like longer. I just do it for as long as I feel I want to.

The ”power” of the ”transmission” you talk about - that happens in other ways too when you are with people. There are posts on this site describing the different effects that looking directly at other people has on us, and that’s without any other goal or thought in mind. Then there’s the auto-suggestion aspect, the dim lighting ... and so on. It is all glitter and light-shows, theatre in a way.

True meditation is not about fireworks or manfacturing idealogical castles in the air - and I was good at both. It is actually so close to ‘normal’ that most people fall into the trap of "trying too hard”.
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ex-l

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post05 Jan 2017

I understand and agree that "experience", however weird and wonderful, can most certainly be caused by non "spooky" causes, and that "spooky" causes are not even caused by spooks.

However, I still think BKism proper is best understood *not* in the model of "Yoga", "spirituality", even "meditation" ... but as a spiritualist tradition. The point of the meditation is to be fixed, silent and connected in order that BapDada comes through you. It is a tradition based on the channelling and mediumship of spirits.

This is actually what the teachings claim, although not in such blunt language ... e.g. they claim you will be possessed and overshadowed by their god spirit or deceased leaders who will use your body and mind to do stuff for their reasons.

I only mention because it may be a part of Swayam is feeling that, is uncomfortable with that, and is instinctively wanting to.

Perhaps the "Scientific" work around would be to go and do some non-BK meditation and see how he reacts to that.

Swayam, by using the word "spook", I am referring to concept of the exist of non-physical entities be they ghosts, demons, angels, deceased Brahma Kumaris, or "gods".

As Pink will argue, they may or may not even be individual personalities. They may just be other effects we don't fully understand yet.

During exploring traditional non-BK spiritualism ... and India has its own tradition of mediums, spirits and frauds ... I saw such strange occurrences happen, many similar to in BKism (e.g. when the BK Seniors claim to be possessed by the spirit of Krishna etc, but far more convincing). Absolute changes in personalities as even skeptic individuals were "possessed" beyond their will.

They also have practises to "channel the energy" of those other beings or consciousnesses.

Therefore, I think we need to understand and account for that element of it.

In BKism, I think it's the willing, or the anticipation of being used, of being given an experience by some external being, of projecting into that external being rather than self that opens the door to weird experiences.

I would agree in other kinds of experiences trigger by efforts in BKism.

The bottomline is, you don't have to be having someone else's experience ... you can have your own experiences suitable for your mind and body, e.g. like Sri Chimnoy who went running instead or, if you are very physical, take up martial arts and incorporate their practises!

I am very critical of "one size fits all" spiritual paths. It just cannot be ... what's right for an 80 year old, uneducated lady, cannot be right for an educated 20 year old young man etc.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post06 Jan 2017

ex-l wrote:However, I still think BKism proper is best understood *not* in the model of "Yoga", "spirituality", even "meditation" ... but as a spiritualist tradition. The point of the meditation is to be fixed, silent and connected in order that BapDada comes through you. It is a tradition based on the channelling and mediumship of spirits.
I don't disagree with this. Many things need to be looked at in two different ways, firstly in the terms by which they operate and judged as to how much they are what they say they are, then secondly by a more detached framework, anthropologically, sociologically etc.
Absolute changes in personalities as even skeptic individuals were "possessed" beyond their will.
I have never heard of a real skeptic being possessed, do you have any references or links. ?
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Mr Green

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post07 Jan 2017

That's very interesting, ex-l, about the experiences being given by something/someone else, especially during teaching or Yoga. I saw people being blown away given the 7 Day Course, totally head spun by The Knowledge sometimes, but they would be a certain type of person. It was the meditation at the end that got them. Considering the BKs don't really teach a solid meditation technique.

We would just stick a tape on, the old Jayanti one was the best. Tell them to just listen and follow the commentary, then as their eyes closed we would subversively blast them with drishti or just sometimes go completely beyond ourselves. If there were more than one BK in the room, the atmosphere could become especially powerful.

I remember giving drishti in Om Shanti Bhavan in Murli class with wave upon wave of blissfull light pouring from my being and blowing me away. I remember looking at the ones falling asleep and completely waking them up.

Dadi Kumarka came in to read the Murli and sat with me and the one on the other side for a minute and at the end I really could hardly see!

What was that, visible in a way and so head blowing. I don't know.
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ex-l

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post08 Jan 2017

I was always tough with my students. Ha, I almost wrote a Freudian slip there too and said, "my stupids". I would make them do the open-eyed, eye to eye meditation from day one and "blast them with dhristi" as you say.

I was terrible. A real maniac looking back on it. Once or two I felt really bad about because the person coming in was really just looking for "Peace of Mind" and I was ready to pump them full of 5,000 Years and Destruction, and turn them into Brahmins. Some of them were clearly very nervous or neurotic and should have been going to therapy or something instead. They generally did not come back.

Interesting though, at least one was a Christian and have a vision of a Mary-like character during meditation, although to a BK, I suppose it could have been Mama or something. Really, I had not a clue what was going on and would say anything.. It was very irresponsible.

You relate some very interesting experiences. Do you think you could still do them now? (Don't try!). Do you think you knew how to do them? Or was your part in it just to sit there, quieten down and allow it to happen through you? That is what they call "overshadowing" ... in theory some other being/s entering into your aura and using you.

I remember one specific meditation, a long bhatti, when I was guiding it and it really felt like someone was moving my head, "clicking" onto whoever I was supposed to be giving dhristi, and then moving on to the next one when I should quite forcefully. I remember sort of resisting and feeling an increase in pressure to do so.

Of course, I could be wrong/projecting but other traditions all over the world theorise about the same thing; Tibetan schools, Benjamin Creme, spiritist mediums, Sufi and tribal dancers, Brazilian vodun and so on.

Could it feel/be "powerful" in BKism? Most certainly. Is it ultimately benign and enlightening? The jury is out on that ... and that is the problem.

People are so seduced by the "power" and "light", and don't question the latter and the ulterior motives ... which appear to be to kill off humanity.

I suppose that's decider. If you think it's a good idea, then BKism is for you. Just surrender your mind and body and let their spirit army possess you and use you like their dolly ... a BK Barbie or a BK Action Man.

I am just about to quickly read over an old book called, 'The Varieties Of Religious Experience (1902)' by William James, an American psychologist, philosopher, and physiologist who wrote a number of works on psychology, theology, ethics and metaphysics. It looks dry and hard work.

However, writing about mystical states, he notes four qualities which are usually found. The last being ...
Passivity.- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.

He seems to suggest he thinks it is just a "sort of [our own] consciousness" that we are prone to. But, as he says, they are also ineffable. Suggesting that he had not experienced them.
The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post08 Jan 2017

Whether it is some external entity or coming from another level of self, or in the case of group meditations, added with the collective energy of those present, the thing we are sure of is that it is a state that is ”manufactured” by doing something other than what we’d normally do, with different expectations to what we’d normally expect.

It is a state partly going beyond the regular consciousness - giving over most of our conscious activity to the process, making ourselves physically still and making sure only certain thoughts are given our attention, let to ‘live’ while we let unwanted ones ‘die'. Fom which it follows the experience would be something other than what we normally experience.

Whether the practice opens the door to an ”other” or to another part of ourselves, it is the result and the desirability of that result which need to be judged. For me, they were not bad experiences at all, often fantastic - in both senses of the word. But I developed a strong need for truth and reality, for correlation of experience with belief and believability .

Breaking the nexus between myself and the BKs is breaking the nexus between the experience and the causes/origins of the experience. It is not the devil, it is not god, it is not BK or TM. It is not permanent. It is not important unless you think it is.
It’s an experience which can transform your life if you decide it is a reason to transform your life.
It is an experience that will have no bearing on the rest of your life if you decide it has no bearing on the rest of your life.

its no different to those who 'see' the figure of a bearded man in a molten cheese on toast or in the shadows of a mountain on mars and say its Jesus, - some will say ”Its a sign” and others say ”oh yeah, i can see how you might see that. nice illusion. But if we shift the angle of the light....”

Its what you want it to be, like a Rorschach inkblot. Cue for a joke.
A man goes to psychologist. As part of the therapy, the psychologist pulls out a set of Rorscharch’s inkblot cards.
He asks - What do you see?
The man replies -A man and woman having sex
What about this one?
Another man and woman having sex.
And this one?
The same but the woman is on top.
This one?
They’re doing it doggy style.
The psychologist puts the cards away and says - it seems you have a fixation about sex.
The man says - Look who’s talking, you’re the one with the dirty pictures!
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ex-l

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post08 Jan 2017

Pink Panther wrote:It's no different to those who 'see' the figure of a bearded man in a molten cheese on toast or in the shadows of a mountain on mars and say its Jesus ...

No, it's very different ... and you're just belittling the conversion and distracting from the original subject.

Those are just the individual interpreting what is seen. What we are talking about is an interaction with another sentient, willful, intent being that is unseen. In BK meditation one is opening oneself to another/other persons/personalities with their own unspoken agendas.

No wonder people struggle with doing so.

It's like having your computer hacked, and a backdoor opened, so a third party (or parties) ... the hacker, in this case, being the channelled entities ... can enter anytime they want, and can influence or operate your mind/body how they want.

BK meditation is not meditation pure and simple, like mindfulness. It's just a means to an end, setting you up to become a instrument, a mindless, unquestioning channel. A puppet for their god spirit or spirits. Your "computer" - your soul - is infected by another computer - a BK soul - during the initiation processes. A "network connection" is created between the student and the BK, or the student and the senior BK, and the soul infection passed on.

Once you have been opened up, the other spirit being/s are free to enter to influence if or whenever they want and literally change your mind. The lifestyle is just there to keep you in a state of mind to make it easier for them, hence the emphasis on unquestioning passivity, surrender, and sensitivity to "touches" intuitions.

I cannot remember if you have but if you have not, you ought to make a direct, experiential study of similar practises. No books but actually going to see and explore the spiritualist realm and see how similar it is.

It is, in their own language, precisely what the BKs say they are doing. They are specific about it happening.

I think it's unethical. Someone like the original poster comes along and want to learn meditation for peace of mind and concentration, and the BKs initiate them into a relationship with their spook masters and open the non-BK's back door so they can possess or at least influence their minds.

I think we have to take it as face value until proven otherwise.

No one individuals with strength reject the process.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Distractions during meditation practice

Post09 Jan 2017

ex-l wrote:No, it's very different ... and you're just belittling the conversion and distracting from the original subject.

I had said two posts ago that such things need to be looked at both in the way they present as claimed by the claimant, in this case, a spiritualistic-like possession, and from a disinterested angle too. My saying it's how the image is seen was not to say this was some optical illusion, I was meaning that it is intangible therefore it will be open to interpretation according to a person's preconceptions and biases, what they want to believe.

I remember certain newbies who were Christians seeing it as spirit possession. In fact, you’ll remember Jim Ryan who had actually channelled spirits himself asa medium and was very involved in the spiritualist movement. He saw it as spiritualist activity but of a higher order (i.e. that was probably the angle that he allowed himself to be convinced by). A number of the early London BKs came through Jayanti’s presentations at The Spiritualist Association of Great Britain which she used to do, if I remember correctly, every Friday evening.

My experience was never that I was inhabited by any being but that I connected to an ”other” (believing it to be god) by tuning in, like a radio, with a certain pattern of mental activity, then when I achieved it, I passed that on like a relay station, visualisations and imaginations of laser beams and pulsating rays. That’s the meditation/Yoga as practiced by BKs.

The possession thing was only a supposed BapDada entity taking over in Gulzar or with supposed trance Sister ”radios” - their ”going into trance” episodes seemed increasingly artificial to me as i saw more of them, i.e. contrived ... and I’d watched heaps over many years in London and India of a number of them, Jayanti, Vedanti, Gulzar, NY Mohini, beachball Mohini, Dadi Ratan Mohini (i think thats her name) etc etc ...

All the metaphors are simplistic however, and misleading. Rather than project our theories on the intangibles we just need to describe what is happening as observed. Strip away all the ‘commentary” and you have a bunch of people sitting (often in poor postures) looking at one person and that person rolls their eyes up and gives a jerk then comes back and pronounces in a tone of voice reminiscent of someone reading out of a bed-time story with in-house characters and jargon, using language and sentences that makes no sense to a non-initiate, and often little sense or significance even to initiates, being as they were full of puerile and asinine pleasantries and Indian girly symbolism - an equivalent of ponies, pink and purple fairy dust angels, and dear old grandad in heaven says hullo and be good, do good.

TBH, I hated trance messages, never heard one that did anything for me. They were a waste of time which kept us from breakfast on Thursday mornings!

But I can fully understand how the whole thing can be described in the way you do ex-l, it fits neatly. If viewed that way, the question becomes whether the process is benevolent or malevolent, and as I stated earlier, it comes down to ”... the result and the desirability of that result which need to be judged”. And for me, as I also stated, there was an ever growing gap between the experience and the "truth” surrounding it, an increasing gap with plausibility and relevance.
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