Study groups

There are many groups of people, here and there, studying the "great works" associated with such things as "conscious evolution", "waking up", "enlightenment", even "non-dual philosophy" of all things, and with the advent and worldwide popularization of the Internet, including Usenet and email lists, especially Yahoo and Google, large numbers of people find it incredibly easy to communicate with many other people, from all walks of life, and many different ages and levels of experience, all talking about their presumably "favorite" form of mental masturbation, oops I meant, intellectual time-wasting, er, I meant spiritual discussion.

These groups, while previously only possible in physical locations, and usually only once or twice a week, and then with only a small number of participants - except on the "really big weekend gatherings" where a bunch more would show up, and blah, blah, blah...- are now easy to get involved with, by simply rolling out of bed over to the pc, and logging into the favorite (in our case) Yahoo Group, and experience forms of mind tingles they ordinarily can't produce for themselves.

It's a lot, and I do mean a LOT like taking drugs. Think about it. Would you really take drugs (alcohol, pot, or your favorite drug-of-choice), if you could effect the desired changes in your brain, on your own? Hell no, besides, they cost money (for one thing), and you have to have a supplier (for another thing), each of which are often out of your control, not to mention the legal issues involved.

Extrapolating, would you really join, read, and occasionally participate in these spiritually-based lists, if you could effect the *desired* changes in your own brain? The keyword being, of course, *desired*. There is a desired change, in all who join physical groups, and in all who join email lists, and everybody realizes this to some degree, though they often can't discuss it. At best, most people say "I enjoy it", or "I need it", but have no clue why they enjoy or need anything, let alone getting involved with other people and talking about spiritual stuff and other nonsense.

As inevitably happens, there are the pleasant folks and the unpleasant folks, and the two always meet - there seems no other choice. Just as there are the smart folks and the stupid folks, and the passive folks and the aggressive folks, and etc., etc. The reason for all such gatherings, first and foremost - whether they realize it or not - is the brain changes that result. NO ONE will continue with anything, when the changes therein become either unpleasant or boring or dangerous or any of a number of other adjectives. People remain because the brain changes they can personally experience for themselves are (usually) pleasurable, and when we're talking - as we now are quite specifically - about the conscious part of the brain that can talk, those changes are quite specific, and usually come down to something like, "being interested" and/or "excited", even "passionate!" in the subjects and the manner in which those subjects are discussed.

Quite often, personalities start battling it out publically: either physically, though usually much subdued and amount to little more than "funny looks", and "cold shoulders", and other emotionally-tinged behaviors; or mentally, as on email lists, where the speech often becomes quite abusive. People can always "get away" with a helluva lot more meanness and sarcasm and criticism and agressiveness on an email list, than they would EVER allow themselves in a physical setting - else they would likely get their face bashed in, or worse.

Anywho... to make a too-long story, a little shorter (though probably still too long, eh?)...

If it wasn't for internet email lists (such as this and many others) many people would not have such a vibrant intellectual life at all - which is not a bad thing; au contraire, it is a good thing. For that, is just about the only way those many people can discern any movement at all, up there, in there.

In general, that movement is either outer-directed, or inner-directed, other-directed, or self-directed, and all four - which are really just two, with a color-shift, or a phase-shift - are but mirror-images of each other, and circular. Start well, End well, but go Nowhere. A whole lot of much ado, about a whole lot of nothing.

What is really needed - and the promise of internet email lists, MAY be one of the only possible ways for many people to perceive this - is for there to be a kind of "turning the corner", a right-angled movement distinct from the natural opposing tendencies you might have, which in the area of intellectual energy flows, seems to ping-pong back and forth ONLY between agreement and disagreement ("truth", and "falsehood").

It's the "itch to tell", turned upon itself, instead of reacted to.

What the hell is the "itch to tell?" You know, you already know, and so does everybody else. It's what drags people to movies, concerts, study-groups, email lists, and all the rest of the gatherings of human brains parading around as something else. People don't attend these gatherings to "find out" anything at all. They attend them, to be able to "tell themselves" (and others) what they want to hear, because that experience is a "drug" in the brain, that everybody has instant access to in great quantities, and when accessed it gets you reliably high, and it's oh, so, pleasurable - and cheap, and legal.

The "itch to tell" gets everybody out of the bed, and it gets them fed and fucked when necessary, so that there is enough free time to feed their own brains, with either physical hard-to-get drugs, or for the few, neural peptides and similar chemicals that are easy-to-get once you know how - and where. (Just another of those heretofore mentioned "skills and powers" that the great unwashed (by those same wonderful chemicals) have no understanding about, and even less interest - they'd rather study books and talk about them, blah, blah, blah, and then die.)