Inadvertently, you have hit on a very interesting point. It goes like this: the core formulations of what can be generally called the 'Genius Forum Doctrines' was established by Kevin. It is a sort of 'system' of thinking and of approaching life and reality but one with rather huge blind spots which are invisible to those who internalize the system. One neat little trick of the System itself, when it is installed in some persons, is that any resistance to the core ideas of the System on the part of others (criticism, alternate suggestions and possibilities) is taken as evidence of being on the right track. It seeks out opposition and this opposition becomes the 'fuel' it needs to keep running. It is functional dysfunction and, naturally, it invites those who 'suffer' from the same or similar level of dysfunction to participate in it. I have at various times referred to it as a 'boy's club' or a 'group of agreements' based in deluded 'absolutes' with an obsessive emphasis on 'reason'. On closer examination all its certainties and self-declarations fall to pieces...except for the True Believers of them who, again, interpret opposition as evidence of being in the right, etc. etc. It is a rather marvelous perpetual motion machine. To study it is to see how the mind is capable of tricking itself and of course it allows one a view into our own thinking systems. I think one of the lessons of observing 'rational madness' is to cause each one of us who are capable of self-awareness to remain a little humble and to try to avoid similar traps.John AKA Seeker wrote:Dan I'm glad to see you don't participate in the same over the top antics as solway. I swear you can't go 5 minutes reading anything from that guy without a personal reference to himself as a zen master or the greatest writer alive.
Be that as it may...Kevin recruited David and inculcated the basics of the System in him. David more or less ran with the ball and has turned a post-Solway philosophy into his 'life work'. I am not exactly sure when or where Dan was recruited but indeed he was. Genius One taught Genius Two and then Genius Three. Other Geniuses have been prepared for Life Works but unfortunately in those cases it didn't quite work out. Some Geniuses have 'self-chosen' the arduous and demanding path such as our beloved Fourth Genius, Sri Diebert.
The System is doomed to extinction, unfortunately. The reason is, I think, because there are a group of fundamental errors that are part-and-parcel of it but which are so fundamental to the structure of the persons who carry the System and, unfortunately, will not be and cannot be modified, and so they become Tragic Flaws*: a personality flaw that is invisible to the Holder which 'tempts fate' as it were.
You, John, from what one is able to tell (according to my opinion of course), share the core flaw or perhaps one should say 'a core flaw' which attracts you to the narcissistic notion of your 'enlightenment' which you cannot and will not relinquish. But curiously you are able to note the 'egotism' in Mahatma Kevin and it doesn't sit well with you. I personally have concluded that the whole notion of 'Genius' and 'Reasoning' (as it is used here) and also the peculiar way in which 'Masculinity' is privileged (which denies the Feminine as a part of the creative principal in each of us)---oh and of course the utterly deluded idea of 'Enlightenment'---is as addictive a drug as was ever invented to capture and to hold persons of a certain inner structure. Once they get stuck on that fly paper it may take YEARS to get free of it, if ever they do.
But if you actually say that to people here you win there unalloyed contempt.
The Forum will close before any one of the founding members would ever be capable of change or growth. If such growth had taken place, if evidence of desire to grow and expand had been shown, it is possible that the Forum would have grown and expanded. But people are not as stupid as they seem. I think they come up to the glass and look in and *feel* a basic dysfunction and choose simply not to participate in it. For me though it has been an invaluable---truly invaluable!---experience of about six years. To come face to face with this rigid structure and to be forced to deal with it on inner levels has enabled an expansion in my intellectual and spiritual life. It is this essential and indomitable inner rigidity which, so unfortunately, can see the outward surface of beauty but can never become 'beautiful' as with:
However, the Really and Truly Wise who have bothered to read any of the above know that every part of what I wrote is pure, deluded nonsense and the very definition of 'Samsara': wandering in a space from which one is unable to exit. That is of course why I have been allowed to stay: to provide evidence of how 'Samsara' functions!"We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did—and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,—perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us! That we have to become estranged is the law above us: by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other! And thus the memory of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies."
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*Hamartia