Wednesday, April 3, 2013

A prison without bars


Sister Klaus in an exclusive extract from The Confessional Comments:

The Master-Devotee relationship is basically sadomasochistic: the Master gets a kick out of the suffering of the slave and the slave rejoices in the suffering to please the Master. Both seem to be happy with that and so it’s a pretty harmless game as long it is confined to sex. But cover this with a slimy sauce of spiritual abracadabra and put in some words like devotion, Advaita and Self-realisation etc and then you have the game played by Radha Ma, Saradamma, Nithyananda, Mooji, Madhukar and Karl Renz, just to name a few of the worst. This is a game where the Master is always the winner and the devotee always the loser. The devotee is never able to see this because he is “locked up” inside the play that the Master directs. He also feels safe together with the other devotees and so is unable to see the catastrophe the Master has set up.

An experience of surrender is a magic key to multiple realms of experience. Those, in innocence, who have been a victim of abuse suddenly find refuge in another world in the midst of extreme pressure. This is a spontaneous opening, which can never be revisited or recreated. Yet the temptation is to try and find it, to claim it and make it permanent. Some choose a spiritual path to do this, complete with guru-teacher, while others become lost in deviant sexual practices. Both are calculated strategies: a surrogate mechanism for claiming that which cannot be claimed. Neither is morally superior. They are an expression of love gone wrong.

Everyone has had a taste of the nectar whether it has come by meditation or masturbation. In S&M, a control drama is used to recreate a psychological breaking point. In the spiritual search, sadhana, ritual and practices are used to approach the same place of existential meltdown. The core assumption is that through compliance, something beyond reach will be attained. Someone who feels powerless tries to be powerful. In so doing they give away their power, leading to their domination, which once again confirms their powerlessness. The character profile in both cases is exactly the same. Both are junkies seeking a fix to ease the pain of the world. Each simply uses their preferred technique to try and take them home ...

In the world of sadomasochism, punishment and penitence are the gold standard. A dominatrix in a torture chamber assumes the position of absolute power. She must be utterly obeyed - even if it means being ordered to eat dog food, excrement, or to jerk off in the corner. The key point is that the client never has sex with the dominatrix but she may have sex with them. The person of the dominatrix is inviolate: she cannot be touched. The slave may be buggered with a strap-on while restrained in a dental chair, their feet in stirrups, but this is completely at the will of the woman in charge. Here very powerful people (often judges, policeman, politicians; the people who rule our material destiny) are imprisoned in a cage of their own making. Driven by their own insatiable lust for power, only the opposite can turn them on. They have a secret desire to be utterly powerless. Locked into a relationship of dominance and submission, this is a drama of abuse and physical torture. It is not actually about sexual satisfaction. Pain and subjugation give a perverse type of self-gratification. The slave may masturbate or ejaculate in the midst of their ritual humiliation, but there is no mutual exchange. This is about creating the fantasy of complete release. The slave is fucking in their mind: all they can achieve is an orgasm of the imagination!

The realm of the guru-disciple relationship is little different. Powered by their thirst for enlightenment, the spiritual seeker enters into an agreement with an all-powerful master who can never be disobeyed. There is only the will of the guru who exercises complete control. Within a hierarchical system of belief and righteous conduct, the devotee must totally surrender and hand over their personal power to a higher authority in exchange for liberation. Here they are lost inside an enclosure and cannot see the walls. This is a prison without bars. The devotee may come and go but their devotion or self-enquiry takes place within a closed circuit completely divorced from reality. They operate within an inner world - or the hermetically sealed walls of the ashram - where the rules of everyday life no longer apply. This too is a rigged game where the devotee is always the loser. Only the grace of the guru can bestow Self realisation: the gulf between the ego and the Self can never be bridged. The seeker with their practices is stuck on a treadmill, forever going nowhere. We're back in the land of the medieval flagellant who cannot hope to appease their vengeful Creator God!

Temporary relief can be permanently painful. Whether it's the S&M torture chamber or the guru-devotee relationship, both fuel a self-destruction where the law of diminishing returns is king. This is love within the confines of an insane vision where you wake up in a complete madhouse. Ever more bizarre storylines are needed to fill the chasm-like emotional void. In this prison of the ego, real love can never been found. The one who is superior quite literally forbids mortal physical love and so the search takes the most extreme forms. The dominatrix conjures up more and more stimulating games to reinvent what is only, a staged release. Meanwhile the guru delivers harder and harder tests. Yet any spiritual attainment is never real. This is because it emerges out of extraordinary suffering, all within an imaginary paradigm. It is totally contrived. The ever soaring heights of religious ecstasy make it seem as though the final goal is coming closer, but this is part of a simulation more akin to self-abuse. In reality the devotee is going off the deep end. It's an endless descent into oblivion ...

These themes are exquisitely explored in the 1970s' cult classic, The Night Porter, which examines the psychological condition known as Stockholm syndrome. Thirteen years after the Second World War, a Nazi SS officer named Aldorfer and a woman called Lucia reconvene their sadomasochistic love affair, which first began in a concentration camp. Crippled by the shame of his past, Aldorfer is afraid of the light and so works as a night porter. He is part of a Nazi sleeper cell, which in the political malaise of postwar Europe, continues to believe in the supremacy of the Third Reich. The cell members do their utmost to protect themselves by conducting Nuremberg-like trials on each other to discover any Holocaust survivors who might potentially expose them. Aldorfer is in love with Lucia ("light") and fearing that his fellow Nazis will murder her, he tries to hide the fact that he has met her again. It is in this context that the pair compulsively repeat their past relationship to even greater extremes. Because their emotionality is linked to fear, real love between Aldorfer and Lucia is impossible. Their sex is confined to a violent autoeroticism absent of actual physical penetration. Then the sleeper cell finds out about Lucia. Aldorfer refuses to surrender her to them, leaves his job and barricades them in his flat together. The cell's response is to cut off their means of survival, reducing the two to living without electricity and food. Starving to death, delirious, and helped by no one, while attempting to flee the couple are finally executed in the dark on a bridge, miles from home.

In this scenario the aggressor eternally dominates and the victim is perpetually hamstrung in ever more disturbing cycles of abuse. This pattern also characterises Advaita. The small self is divorced from the totality named the Self, thus it is declared flawed and inherently evil due to the presence of inborn negative tendencies known as vasanas. This denies man's interrelatedness with the universe and sets up an artificial division between the two, confining the spiritual seeker to an impoverished vision of a deviant self infinitely in need of moral correction. The devotee is always innately "wrong" in just the same way that the Christian suffers from the stain of original sin. They are now enslaved by a life of sadhana essential for their deliverance. It's a cruel and vicious trap where the self-delusion only deepens. The more the devotee does their practice, the greater their desire for liberation. The pain of separation only increases. Spurred on by their suffering and intoxicated by the virtue of their devotion/self-enquiry, the seeker starts to believe they are morally superior and on the right path. Sadhana is the opposite of what it seems. It is the gateway drug to full-blown, spiritual addiction ...

This may come as a surprise to the earnest spiritual seeker who believes that by practice and correct moral conduct, they will eventually gain personal salvation. By seeking heaven, the aspirant is actually putting themselves in hell. This is because within the Advaitic vision, powerlessness is written in from the very beginning. Given the static entities of an underself and an overself, we have a small self which must bend the knee in order to be annihilated by a big Self. Placed in opposition with an all-powerful ultimate reality, the devotee has no personal autonomy. The small self has no value: in this equation it has no worth. There is no room for an individual with its own way of being: a self that is distinct yet simultaneously indivisible from all of life. If this was the case, love would be freely available and expressed in all its forms. The perfection of the small self would be obvious and it would never require liberation since it was never truly separate. The Advaitic search is hardly non-dual. It is rooted in dualism and stems from a lack of self-love!

This contradiction is cleverly resolved at the end of the Mahabharata. Here we find that the key to Yudishthira's entry into heaven lies in honouring his wife, Draupadi (a metaphor for the self). The story goes like this ... Burdened by the weight of their past misdemeanours (i.e. the belief in original sin) Draupadi and Yudishthira's brothers, the Pandavas, fall to their deaths while making their final ascent of the Himalayan peaks. They descend into Naraka (hell) where Yudishthira himself is sent, because before entering heaven, he refuses to abandon his dog who has shown him unflinching loyalty. Yudishthira's dog is in fact his father Dharma (the correct way of seeing, and acting in, the world) and Yudishthira decides to remain with his family in hell. There he discovers it is preferable to live where the good people are - rather than in heaven - which he finds is full of his mortal enemies. (Joined by Yudishthira whose dharma is impeccable, the 'bad' self plagued by original sin is now 'good'). Suddenly Indra and Krishna appear telling Yudishthira that this has been a final test. By deciding to stay in hell with Draupadi, he has atoned for sacrificing her honour during the infamous dice game. (Duryodhana loaded the dice against Yudishthira who lost all his wealth and his entire kingdom. As a result he had no choice but to sell his wife and brothers into servitude). Yudishthira has penetrated the final illusion and now he can wake up. Indra and Krishna tell him that Draupadi and the Pandavas are already in heaven ... The self is always without flaw!

Here it is revealed that both awakening and enlightenment are illusory objects attained within an inverted framework of hierarchical power. Escape from suffering - be it temporary (awakening) or permanent (enlightenment) - is born out of suffering. Freedom is rooted in bondage. Each is its own mirror image. Meanwhile the notion of a mutually exclusive, powerless self stays intact. The event of enlightenment is therefore an egoic psychodrama without substance; completely devoid of any reality. There is no such thing as enlightenment and the self has never "not" been free!

In conclusion, we echo the words of that infamous 18th century libertine and free thinker, Giacomo Cassanova: "Man is free, but he is only free if he believes himself to be … The only system I have had ... is that of letting myself go where the blowing wind took me."



33 comments:

  1. Kevji, at the conclusion of this rambling and tortured rant you state: "there is no such thing as enlightenment." Karl Renz who is at least your equal states: "enlightenment is a myth" ... Now, being 2 peas in a pod which one of you is the sadist and who is the masochist? Maybe it's time to rehabilitate Karl, who will then be in accord with your view of real love.

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  2. Karl is obviously the submissive type. And if I get any more lip from your direction you'll get a taste of Sister K's new double-headed Lucifer strap-on!

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  3. Dear Anon
    Fortunately for you there have been a few last minute cancellations, so if you wish to apply for a special session at my palace of rectal correction, now is your chance! Of course a substantial and exorbitant donation is required to secure entry. One word of advice: you may find the Lucifer a little difficult to swallow, so I think it's best to start off with the Lady Gaga. All enquiries to sister.klaus@gmail.com

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  4. UG also said that you cannot become a sage through sadhana. In fact he said a sage cannot have disciples or devotees because there is no experience to share. Anyone who tries to tell you or explains, remains in the sphere of duality. The sage meanwhile is in a state of undivided consciousness. The guru deals in enlightenment experiences. Whatever they have experienced, however profound, is always the result of their consciousness. The master is just a secondhand man who experiences what he has heard the sages talk about.

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  5. "there is no such thing as enlightenment." ... this is a true statement for the 'unsouled' that roam the worlds. The Buddha states you have always been 'enlightened' so does any one in their 'right or left brain' believe what these wanna-be gurus/philosophers have to say about anything. I personally do not build my house on what anyone says but Jesus stated when your 'eye' (I) becomes single you will be filled with Light. I can testify to the truth of this revelation both in the 3D dualistic world as well as in higher dimensions. Empathy for all you who have not experienced "SOURCE".

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  6. Would you please show me where the Buddha says you have always been enlightened? The Buddha said there was nothing prior, ultimate, inherent or innate. This was his teaching of "no permanent self."

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  7. "The system always operates through parents. And those who proclaim themselves to be wise teachers. They will come up with new teachings, thereby engendering a whole new system. And it does not take much investigation to see clearly that they are motivated by the age-old ambition to separate you from God. To come between you and make both you and God try to live and work only for them. This is the core of any system ... You must look around you. Try to make sense of things through your heart alone." ANASTASIA

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  8. Come on, Kevji, this is really stretching things beyond the pale....your take on Advaita -- whew! such crap! why do you waste your time on tortuous mental acrobatics instead of diving into gnosis and finding out what really floats the cosmic boat????

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  9. And by that I take it you mean joining the legions of 50/60 somethings, who talk endlessly about self-enquiry but only succeed in getting more neurotic by the day. Rocking the cosmic boat does not mean becoming a sexually repressed zombie!

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  10. Most people are doing self-enquiry because they think there is something wrong with themselves and with the world. They basically need therapy to rediscover their self-esteem. They are attracted to religion because it reinforces their deep belief that they are morally flawed. Usually abuse victims, they are replaying their original trauma but don't know they are doing it. It can take years of deprogramming before they can see that they have been handing over their personal power to someone else and/or a method to make them happy; placing happiness in the future; and believing that some people are more spiritually evolved than others.

    In many ways Advaita is more dangerous than Jim Jones, Waco, & the Japanese Aum Doomsday cult. Ramana had all the hallmarks of a saint. He spoke to animals. He never refused visitors. He just sat in Silence and answered people's questions. He wasn't killing or dominating anyone. So self enquiry is surely some quiet, harmless practice that makes you feel better and so contributes to a better world - what could be wrong with that?

    Looks can be very deceiving. Could you cope if you never did self enquiry, ever, again? Do you criticise or look down on others who don't do self enquiry? Do you feel the majority of those in Tiru are not here for the right purpose? Do you think the real purpose of life is spiritual practice and self-purification? Do you believe deep down that others just don't get it? - If only they would look at themselves and return to inner practice rather than getting lost in the world?

    These are all the hallmarks of an extreme psychotic state. You are playing God and think you have all the answers. This is an advanced superiority complex where you yourself are the victim.

    As a psychologist, I can say that many of the people attached to Ramana Ashram are confused, emotionally stunted, human beings who need an external system to tell them that they are good. But feeling good can never come from the outside. You have to start from that feeling. If you are without it, you can never find it, however hard you try. Self-enquiry will not help you. But dropping it will. When you let go of this artificial instrument for conjuring up an artificial state of perfection, you will just be yourself with all your perfections and imperfections. You'll be just like all the rest of us - battered, bruised, a great survivor and a wonderful human being despite it all - and able to feel some love again.

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  11. "Sexually repressed zombie" Ahh thats the sticking point! So you don't intend to deny yourself life's little pleasures for even a moment!

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  12. So abstinence and sexual repression are the answer? You seem to think you are better than me because you are denying yourself "life's little pleasures." This is exactly the same kind of moral superiority complex that we highlight in the post. The whole point of what we are saying is that formula and prescription are useless whatever form they may take. If self-denial and control were the keys to heaven, the whole of the Christian world would be illumined. But look around you, it just ain't so! In the case of India, sexual abstinence and repression has been nothing but a recipe for sanctioned rape and wife-beating. Celibacy is not a decision: it doesn't need to be imposed. If it occurs naturally, organically and requires no effort, then so be it! But denial always creates an equal and opposite counterforce. The examples are endless: just look at the Catholic church and their endless paedophile scandals!

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  13. Firstly, I can’t believe you take that crap written by that sexually twisted bullshit artist Sister Klaus seriously. She is fucked in the head and yet you devote a whole post to her distorted mind! I don’t deny that there is a lot of fishy, kinky stuff going on between Guru and devotee. Much of it is probably of an S&M nature, but to apply that to all Guru-devotee relationships is too easy and looks like cheap sensationalism. Also you only get this abuse and power when both the Master and devotee are actively looking for one another.

    I am a devotee of the mountain, Arunachala - and its devotee, the one named Ramana. I don’t see Arunachala as a benign, punishing or forgiving God (as some idiotic commentators suggest) and I don’t see Ramana as the Guru who knows what is best for me. Actually I don’t know anything about the connection I have with them, it's just undeniably so. I am not hoping to get something out of it nor do I have anything to give. All I can say is that I am a devotee of a Mystery called Arunachala Ramana and that’s enough for me. It makes me a happy person and that’s why I live here and call it my home. To quote a rather silly song, “All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.” Is that not enough?!

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  14. Yes Firefly “All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.” I have been telling the 'goddess' this all my life...and she loves it.
    Just image for a moment if your 'attention' and 'devotion' was directed to your God-Self(one's I AM Presence) instead of the mountain/Ramana what you might outpicture-experience as your rewards?
    Just because the sister has some issues does not mean some of the information is not correct. Did you forget this is an 'entertainment' site not a spiritual rehabilitation center.
    Kevji can only have so many 'bowel movements' per month so he has to aquire some extra 'shit' from some place.

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  15. "The examples are endless: just look at the Catholic church and their endless paedophile scandals"
    Yes it's true the church has a lot to answer for! Criminologists stats also show that married men with children are often the greatest perpetrators of child sex abuse. Often gravitating towards jobs as teachers, swimming instructors, scout masters etc ... So celibacy as such, has very little to do with it.

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  16. one of the greatest freedoms, is freedom from spirituality

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  17. Once a PWD inspector asked Sri Bhagvavan: 'How can we live a pure life in this world?' and He replied, 'You know the nattan-kal (a standing stone fixed at a road junction) we have in our villages (in the Madurai district). See how many uses it has: villagers place their head loads on it when they take rest, cows use it as a scratching post, betel chewers wipe their surplus chunnambu (lime paste) on it and others spit on it.
    We must live in this world like those nattan-kals'

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  18. Is there any discipline -- any discipline at all -- whose most nourishing aspect does not boil down to:

    Get over yourself?

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  19. Dear Sirs,

    One must try and keep an open mind on the question about which things work and which do not work for a given person. As Flann O'Brien has mentioned in The Third Policeman, “Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”

    I am sure for someone such as Firefly the rude stones and secret places of meditation which he has found on top of Arunachala constitute such higher places.

    As ever,

    Yours faithfully,

    Myles O'Blarney

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  20. The Moral MajorityApril 6, 2013 at 4:21 AM

    "This is what should be done
    By one who is skilled in goodness,
    And who knows the path of peace:
    Let them be able and upright,
    Straightforward and gentle in speech
    Humble and not conceited,
    Contented and easily satisfied ..."

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  21. Aghori
    There is no difference between Arunachala-Ramana and the God-Self (one’s I AM Presence) ... as long you don’t see that and you are still looking for a reward, you are still captured in dualistic mind-fuck states. There is also no difference between a spiritual rehabilitation centre and satirical entertainment, as you can clearly see if you stroll around in the Ramanashram area.

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  22. Hey Firefly if you think a pile of rocks is the same as your God-Self so be it. Personally I AM not 'seeking'!.... any rewards since I AM IS the gestalt. Yes you are correct about the 'circus' here.

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  23. Once again, Sri Kevinji Master Sir, a plea for a bowdlerized version of your undoubtedly very intelligent and erudite post, which causes us simpletons such unbearable splitting headaches. Please have pity on us, don’t deny us your wisdom. We may be silly and stupid, but we are also human (I guess).

    My devotion is totally for the Missus. Even after all these years together she is still my hero, my sweetheart, my duck, the eternal beloved. Even if she calls me a brainless Frankfurter and a spineless snail, a bloody fucking idiot, an impotent fatso and a totally useless scumbag couch-potato: I still adore her tainted beauty, her sagging boobies, her croaking voice, her bulbous arse and her unsurpassed art of continuously talking bullshit and bullying me.

    Isn’t that REAL devotion Chi-Ting Master? Or do you think I completely missed the essence of your post?

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  24. Dear Blubberguts
    As I recently remarked to my great chum Sean (known in these parts as the Retarded One!): "Do not fret, the Church of Chi-Ting is a broad congregation, a veritable haven for the maladjusted of mind and body. Even our beloved Sister Klaus is hardly the Archbishopess of Normal!" So please continually repeat your sacred Chi-Ting mantra - "Karl Renz is a complete c##t!" - and all will be well.

    Yours Sri Sri SRI Kevinandaji

    P.S. For your wonky wiener, I recommend a Russian concoction known as Stalin's Lurv Juice (trademarked as ACD). The Missus won't know what has hit her as you will be transformed into a monstrous tantric sex god! Good luck and give her a right going over: your devotion will instantly quadruple and both of you will ascend to the 5th dimension in an orgiastic climax!

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  25. Aghori
    I don’t think anything, but I trust these words…

    Arjuna: "How can I put into practice what you are demanding of me? The mind is capricious, unstable; it’s evasive, feverish, turbulent, tenacious. It’s harder to subdue than taming the wind."
    Krishna: "You must learn to see with the same eye; a mound of earth and a heap of gold, a cow, a sage, a dog and a man who eats the dog. There is another intelligence, beyond the mind."

    And…
    "Allahu al Wahid, wa al Ahad!"

    Et bien soit!

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  26. Tis, but I cannot name it, tis the sense
    of majesty, and beauty, and repose
    A blended holiness of earth and sky,
    Something that makes this individual spot
    This small abiding place of many men,
    A termination, and a last retreat,
    A center, come from whatsoever you will
    A whole without dependence or defect,
    Made for itself and happy in itself,
    Perfect contentment, Unity entire.

    William Wordsworth

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  27. Respected Chi-Ting Master
    I am really very disappointed with your reply. You don’t answer my question about my level of devotion. Instead you trample on our already damaged souls by making fun of our lamentable and deplorable state. I thought you were a wise man, but you are just as mean as the rest of the world. The Missus wasn’t pleased either with your offensive words. She called you a "nasty son of a bitch" ... And about my wonky wiener: there is nothing wrong there. He did his duty very well and is now in the state of happy retirement. No longer pining for the fjords or looking for greener pastures. After passing over he reached the realm of the blissful ex-wieners. So keep your bloody AC/DC (and the non-existent 5th dimension) and be careful not to choke on it. With mixed feelings,

    Yours OF

    P.S. How the fuck am I supposed to recite the word c##t or do you mean by any chance "cunt"? Why the sudden shyness?

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  28. OK Fatso, if all else fails why not try the Soylent Green solution? You get to listen to some great classical music before your corporeal remains get turned into green doggie biscuits. It's also an eco-efficient way of ending it all. And with all that blubber that you and the Missus have, we also get the chance to make some high quality soap, just like that scene from Fight Club!

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  29. Richard Clarke (Living in the Embrace of Arunachala) is dumber than a box of rocks! How could someone be so commercial and mask it in spiritual claptrap; as thick as a brick!

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  30. OF, if your dreams are getting rusty and your meditation sucks, and your realization of the unity of all things is falling apart, then why not visit the movie house to see something that can cheer you up?

    Perhaps something like Titanic 2 in 4K-3D?

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  31. Ding dong the witch is dead. But fear not, the compassionate Sister Klaus is just as capable of inflicting pain. Verily, her tough love is most therapeutic!

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  32. The Archangel GabrielMay 16, 2013 at 6:34 AM

    Dear Kev,
    Your S&M essay is excellent. Actually brilliant analogy between the advaitic Me and I. Praise the Lord!

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