Originally Posted by
shadowofwind
Sivason,
My discomfort about accepting your offer to help with yoga had little to do with you sounding like you think you're superior. It was mostly a matter of reluctance to engage in that degree of intimacy with a stranger whom I didn't feel a sufficient degree of familiarity and comfort with. I was quite clear about this, and can drag up the old messages and show you if you want.
Here's a major part of why I think you do not like talking about yourself, why you hate this conversation: Although you do have something rare of value, you are also in some regards far less developed than you believe yourself to be or wish for yourself to be. At times you try to apply yourself inappropriately in relation to other people, then you take it as an affront to your presumed esteem when someone pushes back on that.
I realize I'm being far more direct here than most people are comfortable with, and more critical than would be helpful with most people. But whether I am right or wrong in my perception, you who would teach yoga and who undersells yourself should be able to handle it. Respond if you will to the actual arguments I made about sleep paralysis. Or if you doubt that the arguments I'm making are the real ones in my mind and heart, then speculate what they really are, and we can go there too. But this will only work if you can stay with it. If you make an argument, then I make what I think is a sound counterargument or clarification, then you move on to something else without acknowledging it one way or another....maybe I shouldn't try to explain how that looks. Though granted its hard to follow up on every point because it takes way too much time.
If you're not comfortable talking about you, we can talk about me instead if you want. I can handle it. Or we can go to private messages if you prefer, rather than airing this publicly. Or we can just forget it. But it seems a waste to me, that no would-be yogi can stomach being challenged by any perspective from outside of the path that they have built themselves on. I would actually like to learn more from you if possible. But there's not much you can do for me unless you can engage at the level that I'm speaking to you on. You seem to have ignored most of the substance of what I said.
Sageous clearly doesn't want to fight with you here. But if he thought I was full of nonsense I don't think he would have complimented my posts the way he did. Since you're both on the same side, maybe he can explain it to you better privately, if you care to ask and he cares to do that. I'm about 80% in agreement with your criticism of sleep paralysis, which is why I started off defending it. But the effort I made to acknowledge what I see as legitimate in Shalashaska's view doesn't seem to have gone over too well.