[continued from previous message]

You've attacked him viciously and absurdly several times too.

I wouldn't say absurdly. Actually, I wouldn't say viciously either.

I would, and did say both. As for absurd, you'll attack people over
almost anything, from merely being on Facebook to getting a little
bit into baseball. Absurd is pretty accurate. :)

But the world needs a little tweaking now and then (heckamighty, that
sounds a bit ... grandiose). In your case, if you go on the attack
(passive aggressive notwithstanding), expect to be attacked (perhaps a
little more overtly).

I'm starting to wonder if you even understand what passive-aggressive means.

He gave as good as he got and that too, for both "sides", was
ultimately positive.

He doesn't hold grudges. Nor do I. I don't think I can say that for
you.

See, I don't think you can say *anything* "for me". Nothing could be
more arrogant or less respectful of others' lives than believing you
can 'speak for them'. And no one else here attempts to do that nearly
as often as you do.

I can only read what you type and that says a lot about you. I'm not speaking for you, I wouldn't dream - I'm addressing you directly and
trying to point out just how condescending and ridiculously self
aggrandizing you are, sometimes, in fact, a lot of the time. You have
what we call in Australia "tickets on yourself".

When you realise this, you will be on the way to a new and improved
Dave.

What I see is that any views you adopt of me are distorted and
rooted in your incessant combativeness, which clearly has little
to do with me, since that same tendency has been displayed with
every other person I've ever seen you talk with here.

Here's a book I've just uploaded for you - a nice amalgam of Buddhism >> >> and psychoanalysis to fill that nasty empty void we all have. The
writer is a psychiatrist who is also an accomplished Buddhist...

https://ufile.io/rjlo6

Excerpt:

"In the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, those moments of unknowing when >> >> the mind is naturally loosed from its moorings are said to be special >> >> opportunities for realization. During orgasm, at the moment of death, >> >> or while falling asleep or ending a dream are times when the veils of >> >> knowing are spontaneously lifted and the underlying luminosity of the >> >> mind shines through. But we have a powerful resistance to experiencing >> >> this mind in all of its brilliance. We are afraid to let ourselves go >> >> all the way. To set ourselves adrift requires a trust that for most of >> >> us was lost in childhood."

Yeah, Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Like I've never read any Buddhism.
Like it's still the dark ages and all we need is yet another cult. :)
I experience this "mind adrift" all the time. Like... yesterday most
recently. I don't need a guide. And if I did, it's sure as hell not you. >>

See you took that little gesture as an attack on your self as well.
For someone as well travelled along those esoteric paths you still
have a very fragile ego.

Another one of your presumptions. Actually, I'm well-traveled and
well-read enough on 'esoteric paths' by now that my knowledge of
that stuff is borderline encyclopedic, and for that very reason
such material is the LAST thing anyone should ever recommend to me.

Try it, you might like it. It's much better than anything *you've*
ever uploaded here for the common good. Oh that's right, you haven't.

Most of the stuff I've uploaded has been on topic.

Are you so damn tired of life and the world that you think there's
nothing new left to experience? Or it's not worth re-experiencing old
things to see if you can look at them in a different way?

LOL. Those attacks are idiotic.

You really
think, grandiosely, that you have a "borderline encylopedic" knowledge
of all things esoteric when that's patently untrue, a complete lie?1

These thoughts are symptomatic. You have serious issues.

Your thoughts are symptomatic of being a serious asshole. :)
It's not grandiose if it's true. I spent decades studying all mannner
of esoteric materials.

I have personal friends today who have not only already recommended
(and gifted me with) numerous similar books, and personal friends
who even *practice* similar strategies. :) You do not know me nearly
well enough to make any suitable recommendations of that nature.

How do you know it's "similar" if you haven't even read the preface? Ridiculous and illogical. And I don't know if it *is* suitable for
someone like you with the delusions of grandeur you experience,
however there's only one way to find out.

For someone like you however, even if you grudgingly did obtain some
benefit from it, you would almost certainly not acknowledge same. That
would expose yourself and that's not to be permitted. That would also demonstrate your incompleteness as a human.

You admit below that you haven't even read this book yourself.

You obviously don't even know the basics of Castaneda,
even as you badger all these people posting to a CC newsgroup. :)

No I don't. I've said before I'm only here because my father got
sucked in by this cretinous grifter. I haven't even read one of his
books from cover to cover.

Then I'd say you really did miss something. Castaneda wasn't called
godfather of the new age for nothing. I consider understanding
Castaneda to be one of the most important aspects of my lifelong
study of esoteric subjects, because Castaneda's was a genuinely
magical and artful body of work, albeit largely untrue.
I'd still say Castaneda's work is among the most seductive and
artful of them all.

Yes, it's bullshit, but if you don't know Castaneda, then you've
missed one of the real all-time jewels of the world's bs esoterica.

I have far too much respect for the
brevity of my remaining time on this bluegreen orb (in other words, it
would be a fucking waste of time - a shame you didn't realise that
before you went and wasted all that time).

Yes. But reading Castaneda isn't totally a waste of time.
If you can come to fully understand the illusions he created,
and the complexity of what really happened surrounding him,
then you gain the ability to see through almost anything.

Merely knowing it was partially a scam is seeing only skin-deep.

If you think Mr. Buddha/Psychoanalyst is so wise then YOU go let
him practice on YOUR head awhile, then come back and tell us all
what you believe you have learned. And good luck... :)

All I'm doing is reading the book. I'm not salivating, just reading,
along with perhaps a dozen other books I'm simulataneously reading,
both paper and digital.

Don't be so angry.

All I'm doing is not reading the book. :)

I didn't mean this as some sort of subtle
contempt or cynical attack on you in any way, the book is very
interesting and I thought you might gain from it. I am.

I recognize that you were being sincere. But it didn't matter,
not only because of what I just said above, but also since you
have already made *so many* presumptuous, contemptuous, and cynical
attacks on people here that you probably won't ever be trusted.

It's innate in humans to lack trust. It's part of our genetic
treasure we carry and have carried to make us fit to survive.
So what?

Well, it is very clear that it would be a mistake to trust you,
in particular. That knowledge wasn't "innate". I had to learn it. :)

For all your amateur accusations re: narcissism, you don't seem
to get how after you've unloaded on people 10 times in toxic and
obnoxious ways, you aren't about to then gain their future trust.
At least, not with people who are mostly sane. :)

Read above. So what?

So... I just told you how it is, that's all. So... argue and attack
all you like. So what?

This guy is a practising psychiatrist who is also an accredited
psychoanalyst - he's a medical doctor with a specialty and a lot of
study and practice in eastern religious thought. It's not a "cult".
You're taking the "once bitten twice shy" thing way too far.

I don't think I am. First, I've already read other similar books.
This isn't the first professional or philosopher to get sucked into >Buddhism. Don't forget, Castaneda was a Ph.D. Anthropologist.
Everyone touts credentials.

What is there about buddhism to be sucked into? It's not even a
religion. It's as subtle and passive as you can get - you discover
it, it doesn't discover you, and you find things in it which are as
suitable to our 21st century as they were before Christ.

There are hundreds of sects of Buddhism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_of_Buddhism

Thus, also hundreds of different ways to lose your gott-damn mind. :)

I have a neighbour up the road who is a Ph.D. physics. He gave me a
book to read on this statistically improbably cosmos. I found an
error in the calculation of the difference of masses of the two matter
quarks and he came around a few weeks later saying to me "You were
right" with an astonished look on his face. So what?

So you're a physics savant now? Nothing grandiose about that, eh? :)
What do you keep trying to impress me for?

Buddha's only credential was he was a prince. So what?

Did you hear that? So what?

So... are you sure Buddha was a prince? Or was that a myth?
I suppose you think Jesus was born in a manger too?

Do you think medical doctors never get fooled by religious and >cult-like-thinking? One of my good friends here in LA is "a medical
doctor with a specialty" who also happens to be a member of
Alcoholics Anonymous, which seems like another borderline cult to me.
That same fellow's brother is a well-known Ph.D. psychologist and >best-selling author whose theories I've read and discarded.

Read the preface and the book if you have time. See what you think.
And AA works. I know people who have been rescued from alcoholic dissolution. If you don't, you haven't been around much. AA is not a
cult. Good lord.

Lots of cults include thousands of people who find it all "works".
I never try to talk my friend out of being in AA. I respect his belief
that it works. But my opinion is that a lot of it is total bullshit,
just like in any cult. :)

Are we still friends even though I think AA is bs and his brother's
books are mediocre? Yep. Those are just two places where we agree
to disagree. It's too late in the game that I will ever cater to bs
just to be 'nice' to anyone.

How do you know what he really thinks of you? He may think you're a
pompous arse but he's too civilised to tell you. That would make you not-friends, realistically.

Hmm. Believing you may know more than I do about what my friend thinks.
That seems grandiose too. :)

Well gee, he came out to dinner last time I asked. And yesterday
he "loved" some of my Facebook photos. How the fuck would I know
what he or anyone else "thinks"? Could you maybe stop wasting
my time with combative nonsense?

You do not know who you're dealing with, and I'm sure as hell not
changing to suit you. You haven't been down even half of the
weird roads I've navigated.

Yeah sure. My father in law fought the Russians in WW2 with the
German army and then after Mussolin was unseated he was taken prisoner
by the Germans and put to work making airfields in the Baltic states
out of cut ice. He was 17 and an artillery man who said to me once,
in his broken english, "When they die, all men cry for their mother".
He also fought the Greeks when Mussolini made his ill fated attack on
Greece and he was in a half track when an old woman poured a cauldron
of boiling oil and water over it from a rooftop, killing his young
friends who sat in the back of the halftrack. He told me he ran up to
the top of the roof, threw a granate and then, "All fire". When the
Russians liberated him from the workcamp, the first German he saw he
killed with a shove and took his bootsl. Then, he walked home to
northern Italy. My mother in law, she was only about 16 in wartime
Italy, had considered him dead - until he walked down the dusty main
track of the little village my wife was born in, in the Alps.

That, my friend, is a "weird road" you will never navigate. The world
is full of them and people have walked many. Most don't like or don't
feel the need to talk about it. Most don't suffer grandiosity.

We're all people. Got it. Still not changing to suit you.

I was talking about metaphysical esoterica, religions, cults,
oddball philosophies and the like (including Buddhism).
You seem to think that all of a sudden changing the subject
to something we weren't even talking about is a good way to
make an cogent argument. I've never been to war, and didn't
claim to know much about it.

Read the damn thing, it's very good. And I'm just referring it to
you, I'm not making you read it or trying to guide you to read it.

Your anger is ridiculous. Cool down and have a chop at the book.

I'm not that 'angry' - just feeling imposed upon in ludicrous ways
and tired of it. I really don't need to read yet another modern
author cherry-picking his favorite aspects of Buddhism.

You don't know. Read it.

You read it. :)

It's fine if you find value in it. Rather than proselytizing
and trying to get others to read it, why don't you tell us exactly
what you find profound and valuable about it? Remember, I've only had
about a hundred different people try to sell me 'profound metaphysical

concepts', and precious few stand up to serious critical thought.

Too damn bad if you don't like my views. Put in a way you'll get: >https://www.dropbox.com/s/5jmi8i2hwgq5kzj/approval.jpg?dl=0

Truthfully though, I don't exactly hold that attitude, since
"I am what I am" - a truism - is too "static" thus inadequately
reflects how I perpetually change, every day.

I'm not proselytising. I haven't read the book yet but I'm slowly
doing so.

What I have read I like. You might be surprised.

You might be surprised too. You might think it is bunk
by the time you finish. You don't know.

But since you're recommending a book you haven't read then I get
to recommend a books I'm currently reading and yet to finish.
I could even suggest you read my book instead of yours. :)
Actually, I'm pretty sure your book is pretty good as far as those
kind of books go. It's rated 4.3 in 154 reviews on Amazon.

The book I'm reading (one of them) is:
NeuroTribes - The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
by Steve Silberman, Foreword by Oliver Sacks

It's rated 4.6 in 425 reviews on Amazon, so it wins. :)

It includes maybe 20 pages referencing different issues with DSM and
how the authors struggled over the years trying to define different
categories of autism. I may start quoting it.

For now, I merely invite you to consider two general ideas and how
they might interact/conflict:

1) creating a 'diagnosis' for anything out of the ordinary and
feeding people meds if they try to step outside any accepted paths.

2) The concept of 'neurodiversity' and the possibility that there
might actually be a very wide range of valid ways to be 'human'.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)