One of the problems in transmitting FIML practice to others is no one has a paradigm for learning that includes a friend saying to them “I have something good to tell you, but it will take a fairly long time for you to understand what I mean and learn how to do it.”
People are used to getting small bits of information from friends, not large, wholly new ways of seeing themselves and the world around them.
This problem in FIML transmission is compounded by the need for FIML practitioners to speak to each other in a way that is taboo in almost all cultures and subcultures. FIML partners must be able to thread a communication needle, the eye of which lies very close to a common human flash point.
The flash point is our “identity” as it is actually functioning in a real-world conversation in real-time.
I don’t know of a single culture anywhere (except those of FIML partners) that allows real-time queries of the sort that form the basis of FIML practice. In all cultures that I know of, queries of that type are seen as rude, petty, carping, nasty, distracting, lacking proper decorum, weird, and most of all, threatening.
Culture supports identity and vice versa. This makes the culture-identity matrix a very difficult entity to analyze in real-time.
To touch on it or even near it is to touch that flash point that tells people they are being threatened, that they must defend themselves against a dangerous assault on their sense of who they are.
Of course, FIML does not actually assault or threaten anything, but as mentioned, very few of us have a listening/learning paradigm that will allow FIML to be given a proper hearing.
One day, I imagine, FIML will be taught in classes where students will have desks and chairs and white boards and where they will be given handouts and lessons will proceed gradually and logically from point to point until the whole is revealed to them with a nicely prepackaged smile.
That day has not come yet (and I hope I am doing something else when it does). For now, all we have (and all you need) is the raw idea, a willing partner, and a paradigm shift that allows you to undertake a new way of communicating.
American Buddhist Net 