It is no different; it's simply the last of the old-growth cultural
patterns threatened by the materialist gyppo loggers.
Gary Lawrence Murphy said,
> ...sad though it is, this may be a neccessary part of spiritual
growth, finding the dark so as to better appreciate the light.
The risk - despite claims of theft and despoilation - is that those
who do appreciate are conned out of their right to their own beliefs,
whether they have come by heritage or by assimilation or by discovery
(if that's not too loaded a word here!).
> There is, to my view and my personal experience, a great danger
in the advice to simply "be yourself" as this is too open to
megalomaniacal interpretation,
...
> there is value in teaching, in relaying how to see from
teacher to pupil.
There is danger in throwing the baby out with the bathwater, whatever
the circumstances; I think the confusion between being yourself and
"looking out for yourself" is unwarranted. Certainly there is value in
teaching - but who is "legit" if not those who "are themselves"
Teachers? and what is the point in teaching those who are not
themselves Chelas?
The value of community in this context is that one cannot tell
who oneself really is without it. This is, I think, the plight of
the (not so stereotypical) Westerner: materialism is a pitifully poor
basis for community, and folks are beginning to realize they're
missing something. The best we can do is, as glm says, Witness:
demonstrate the power of community to define Being. The rest -
including the charlatanry - is cosmic trickery.
|{hm kerry miller <ASTINGSH@KSUVM.KSU.EDU> fido 1:/14/680