I actually think it was brave and masculine of Orenholt to admit that she was nearly offended. Just pretending she was not nearly offended and dismissing it in order to appear wiser than she really is to you guys would have been a feminine act, a dressing up for sake of argument. Instead, she comes out and reveals herself, and I don't think the point was to obsess over her near offense, or apologize to you guys for her offense to get back on your good sides. Rather, I think she is actually trying to understand the psychology of why she became nearly offended, so that she can overcome it. You cannot overcome something by simply stopping all thinking of it -- that is not transcendence or growth or maturity, but simple blocking out or ignorance or unconsciousness.
Anyway, Orenholt, why would it matter if the ego attachment to WOMAN was particularly this or that, particularly love or hate, or what ever? I think they are trying to tell you to not get lost in some petty and trivial and inane argument over whether the ego attachment to WOMAN is love, or hate, or any particular thing. Rather, that you should see it for what it still is regardless: an emotional attachment. I could be wrong, but it would seem to me that they are not attacking you, Orenholt, but that they are helping you, by showing you that you have inconsistencies in your thoughts, which, of course, is just the result of unconsciousness. As Sue said:
You wrote in your first post on this thread that you hoped outing yourself as being female "doesn't taint your view of me as thinking something negative about me or not taking me seriously". You shouldn’t be concerned about being female tainting you, for it’s your mind that is doing the tainting. Look, if you are truly concerned about being mistaken as a female of the ‘unconscious’ type, do your best to make all females conscious – then you’ll not have to go about apologizing to all and sundry.
She's saying: just do your best to become as conscious as possible and to help other females become as conscious as possible. That's all you CAN do. You can't keep worrying about whether others think you are unconscious. It is like you are a new basketball player, and who knows, you could have great potential and become one of the best basketball players in history, but instead of just getting out there and playing the game and practicing and not caring if others make fun of you for being so new and bad at basketball, you stop practicing or at least pause it or hesitate to do it, and instead go to the other players and say to them, "hey all, I hope you don't think I'm bad at basketball, I admit that I make a lot of errors and have a lot of practice to do, but I hope you don't treat me differently because of this".
It just proves that you are not there to get better at basketball, regardless of what others think of you, but that you are there to make others notice you, to make them notice that you are getting better. Even though it might not initially seem like it to you, they can immediately sense that you are very sensitive to what others think of you, and so, if they are mean persons, they will exploit that weakness and bully you, and if they are nice persons, they will point to that weakness and show you that it's precisely that which keeps you from becoming a better basketball player. That it's not merely the case that you need to practice your dribbling and fake outs more, but that the first thing you need to practice is not caring what others think of you, since only you know you. Your reputation does not matter, only your character does.
By you apologizing for your newness and badness at the game, you are not improving your game, you are simply trying to improve your relationship to the other players of the game, you are trying to score points with them, you are trying to gain their acceptance and approval. Again, it is precisely your insecurity that others might think you are intrinsically a bad player, that others might think that just because you are new that you have no potential to be good, that discourages you and prevents you from becoming good. It literally sucks the energy and drive out of you, or rather, redirects it into worrying about how you appear to others, and not how you actually are.
Likewise, don't worry about people treating you differently here simply by the fact that you are a female. By worrying about that, you are, first, making an unwarranted assumption that they will treat you differently, that their view of you will become tainted, and second, that even if this were to really happen, that it would matter at all. It would not matter because, who cares if others think you are dumb and stupid? Also, they are saying that it is not you being female that is making them see your contradictions in your thoughts. It is simply that they can see the contradictions in your thoughts! You could be a male and they would still treat you the same: pointing out your contradictions, helping you become more conscious and logical.
