Overview of Comment Interface

Here's an introduction to the new comment system's interface.

Below is a shot of what you should see the first time you make a comment.



Going clockwise from the upper left:

Login: This is optional. If you have established a profile,you can click here to login. Your screen name, email address (if you choose to make it public), and your picture (avatar, if you choose to make it public), and a link to your profile will appear automatically. If you have not established a profile, you will be offered the chance to establish one. You do not have to login to post a comment.

Follow this discussion: This is optional. If you click on this, a menu will drop down. If you are registered with a news feed service, such as FeedBurner, you can choose to receive email notices when your comment thread receives new replies. If you are not registered with a service, just ignore this option.

Be the First One!: You can safely ignore this. If you want to post a comment, just enter text in the appropriate spot.

Post a New Comment: Just enter text. You can use simple HTML commands such as <i>, <b>, etc.

Name: This is required. If you want to post your real name or a screen name, enter it here. Enter "anonymous," if you'd like.

Email: This is optional. If you enter a valid email address, you will receive email updates when new comments on this thread are posted.

Claim Your Comments: Optional. If you check this box, all your comments on this blog will be available to all other users of Intense Debate comments across the Internet. If you click on Why, a little text box will pop up explaining the benefits to you if you do claim your comments. In order to claim your comments, you must be logged in to the Intense Debate system. If you are not registered with a profile, you will be offered a chance to register. Remember, this is all optional.

Or post using OpenID: Optional. OpenID is a system, that relatively few use, that allows you to enter your profile information once. After that any web page or blog that uses this system will automatically log you in, in the future. I don't use this system. I don't know anyone who does.

Submit Comment: Optional. Click and your comment will be submitted. I don't believe you can edit the comment after it is submitted.

intensedebate button: Optional. This is a link to the system that hosts our comments. It's a shameless commercial plug for IntenseDebate. You can ignore it or not as you choose.

Get Better Comments for Your Blog: Optional. Another link to Intense Debate. Another shameless commercial plug.

Links to this post: Optional. If anyone has chosen to link to this post on another website, you can check them out by clicking here.

Create a Link: Optional. If you want to create a permanent link to the post you are commenting on, click here and you will receive the code to do so.

Okay, that's it for that window.

If you are logged in with Intense Debate, you should see a window like this:



It is similar, with these new differences:

Dashboard: Optional. This link takes you to a control panel where you can manage your profile, check out your Intense Debate comments on any web site on the Internet, and so forth.

Edit Your Profile: Optional. Takes you to a control panel where you can update, add to, or change your Intense Debate profile information.

Logout: Optional. Click here to log out of the Intense Debate system. You might choose to do this if you wanted to post anonymously. Remember, you don't have to be logged in to post.

Okay, just one window to go!

Finally, if you are replying to a theard that has already begun, you should see a window like this:



Most of this should be familiar by now, but there are a couple of new wrinkles.

Sort by Date Rating Last Activity: Optional. You can choose to sort all the comments to the post. You can see them in date order, ascending or descending. You can choose to look at the highest or lowest rated comments first (more on this in a second). Finally, you can choose to look at the most recent comment, regardless of where it appears in the threaded system. This is very similar to forum systems you may have encountered.

Profile (picture and name): You should see the name that the commenter chose to comment under. If the commenter has chosen to upload a picture to his profile, you will see a little thumbnail of him or her there. If you hover your cursor over the picture, you can choose to go to the commenter's profile, follow the commenters public actions within the Intense Debate system all over the web, or see all comments made by this commenter across the web. If you click on the screen name, you will be take to the commenter's profile. If you're a fan of a particular commenter, these options are for you.

8 p: This is a reliability rating calculated by Intense Debate. The higher the better. The system figures in the number of posts a person makes as well as the number of positive and negative ratings his or her comments got from readers. See below.

+1 "thumbs up" "thumbs down": The new commenting system allows comment readers to rate the value of the post to them. The + or - number gives you the current rating of the comment, taking both negative and positive ratings into account. The "thumbs up" icon allow you to vote a positive recommendation for the comment. The "thumbs down" is a negative vote. I believe you can only vote once on each comment and you cannot change your vote once you've made it.

The only other wrinkle I can think to comment on is the "Last Comments" box in the right hand sidebar. You can see the 5 most recent comments. If you see something you are interested in, you are supposed to be able to click on "Jump To" and go directly to that comment -- and the associated post. So no more wondering which post a comment is responding to!

The problem is, this feature doesn't seem to be working for everyone. So don't be surprised if you go to the post and are offered a chance to post a comment, but you may not see the other comments to the post. This is a glitch and shouldn't be happening.

I am working with Technical Support to resolve this and other issues.

Hope this helps! Don't hesitate to write me with further questions at jmknapp53@gmail.com .

J.

You're Not Crazy -- Comments Aren't Working -- Yet

Hi, everyone,

An update. I've received two sets of complaints to the new comment system.

1) Specific problems with Internet Explorer not showing the "Comments" Link at the bottom of the post.

2) The interface is too complex.

I'm not ready to scrap the system yet. Technical support assures me they can fix these problems. Unfortunately they don't work on weekends. So I have to wait at least until Monday to know whether they can deliver.

Any new system will have problems we don't anticipate.

The ability to search comments and authors, to see comments threaded, and have them connected to the post that engenders them seem overwhelmingly in the favor of a new comment system. I'd like to make it work.

Believe me, if the problems can't be fixed, I'll yank the new system out. With apologies all around.

As to the complexity of the interface: I've heard this a few times. It's my understanding that Intense Debate is redesigning their interface to simplify it.

In the meantime, I'm basically ignoring most of the bells and whistles. If you are getting a comments posting window reliably, and I believe most readers are, it's really clear where to post the comments. Just ignore the other stuff until I have time to explain some of it to you.

Right now, most of my spare time is involved in trying to stamp out technical forest fires, so I ask you to wait for the explanation a little longer.

There are very few reported problems with Intense Debate, so it's my belief there are some non-standard things about our blog's coding that are causing the problems that people are having.

If you are experiencing problems, please, please email me at jmnapp53@gmail.com, and include your browser version and operating system.

My apologies for problems our community is encountering!

J.

Donovan Blames the Beatle Victim

Donovan states in interview that John Lennon became disillusioned with the Maharishi due to John's own "private life" — not any problem with the Maharishi.

Known as "blaming the victim" — or "doctrine over person" in some circles — Donovan perpetuates the myth that the "master" and the "teaching" were perfect. If you had problems, there must be something wrong with you.

J.

P.S. Still working on comments.

Does Feeling Powerless Lead to Buying TM Courses?

Just a little tidbit to tide everyone over until the comments are working:

An interesting article reports on research that people who feel powerless are more likely to spend money than people who feel powerful. Even if they don't have the money to spend.

Many people I've worked with from Transcendental Meditation reported feeling powerless while in the Org. Some critics propose that cults foster feelings of powerlessness in members to promote dependence on the leader and group.

I wonder if buying ever more expensive TM courses had anything to do with feelings of powerlessness?

John M. Knapp, LMSW
KnappFamilyCounseling.com

Just a Testing Space -- Ignore

test

Comments Down for System Install

Hi, guys,

The comments will be down for less than an hour, while I install the new, experimental comment system.

No comments will be lost during this transition.

J.

UPDATE (6:12 PM EDT): Well, despite the transition working smoothly on my test site, when I scaled it up to TM-Free, I've run into trouble. I have some technical support gurus at Intense Debate working on the problem.

Comments will be back as soon as possible.

Please note that you can continue to comment using the old system by clicking on "comments" on older posts. "Recent Comments" in the right-hand sidebar are not showing, however.

the second sutra of the yoga sutras

yogaś citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ

The difficult word, of course, is vṛtti. Yoga is the cessation of the vṛtti of the citta, mind.

The ways in which this has been explained have mounted up like dunes in a great desert. Do any of the explanations work (help us produce useful results)? Patañjali himself offers explanation in the following sutras, but just why his explanations seem to go unnoticed or unexplored remains a mystery to me. Many people seem to think he is saying that yoga is stopping the mind! Yet, it is perfectly clear that he is saying that yoga is stopping the vṛtti OF the mind.

One way to understand vṛtti is through a simple example: suppose you are looking through a kaleidescope. You can stop the light/citta/mind easily enough. But then what do you have? Nothing. It’s very difficult to make do with nothing.

Or, you can take the kaleidescope away and you are left with light/citta/mind. This is much more useful, especially in the dark. Yoga is taking away, removing, just dropping like something useless the distractions to the light.

All well and good. You don’t stop thought, you stop the distractions that obscure the thought. What is thought? For me, Mahesh has been woefully inadequate in clarifying this. We all, of course, say we experience thought. No mystery there. However, what are we experiencing and what are we calling “thought”?

If we remove the kaleidescope/vṛtti then what remains? We can make vague references to consciousness, but what is that? What is it that tells us about what we see when we look through the kaleidescope? Awareness, I think, is something relatively uncomplicated here. How do I know I am aware? Obviously, I only need to ask myself what I am aware OF.

When I take away the thing I am aware OF, then there is just awareness. When I let the vṛtti subside, then what is left? Awareness.

Yoga is letting the kaleidescope of the mind simply fall away, yoga is abandoning the obscurations to awareness. “Letting” is an important word here. We are not “trying” to do anything, to make something happen or cease happening. That is built-in, automatic and something even Mahesh had to recognize in his checking procedure.

We notice quiet and silence. It is just there. It always has been.

We do not have to add any more steps by adding some new distraction, some “better” kaleidescope. Some name of a god, as if that somehow greased the wheels of some mechanism or some meaningless word, which itself seems kind of meaningless when you think it through.

What we really and truly need, we have always had.

We only have to rest in the awareness of our own awareness. No big deal, yet a very big deal, indeed. Almost all of life’s activity is based upon what we are aware OF as opposed to awareness itself. Yes, we have unknowingly let awareness itself become obscured, like dust gathering on a surface as opposed to awareness itself unobscured being the primary mover in the processes of living our lives.

Cultivating yoga, then is a really good thing. We were born with awareness. We don’t need Mahesh’s more and more obscuring it. We only need to be aware of it, just as it is.

There is no other purpose in writing this than to demonstrate how simple Patañjali’s teaching is and how unnecessary the sand dunes of Maheshism are. Paul has beautifully demonstrated his understanding of Patañjali and Hugo has confirmed that he does not find it unrewarding.

The real secret is that there is no secret. You have always known the secret, you just didn't know you knew! Now, you do.