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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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A midsummer night's dream
03 Sept 1998
by Phil Spickler

Dear Friends,

I must sadly report that as of this date, not a single dollar, pound,
deutschmark, franc, kroner, peso, ruble, or shekel has been received to
sponsor the wonderful idea I left you with in my last communication,
namely, the gold-lined marble cave which I felt sure you would want me to
have after my noble attempt to free you from the frightful addiction known
as "awareness junkie", even though you have my solemn promise that all
donors will have limited visitation rights to the marble cave.

Perhaps the idea that one can get addicted to the never-ending quest for
bigger and better spiritual highs does not indicate to everyone -- well,
I'm sure it doesn't.  I think it is necessary, in order for that
information to really be meaningful, to examine one's collection of
personalities, identities, valences, or various and sundry other names that
have been assigned to hidden influences and see if that idea is true for
anyone or any group.  If it does prove to be the case, you can happily
relieve them of this rather intense addiction through clever auditing and
acknowledgment, thus freeing the everyone-else that we'll call "you" to
other less addictive pursuits along the eight dynamics, and put your
hard-earned (whatever your currency might be) to better uses, such as my
suggestion for the marble cave, which I know you all know was just kidding,
tongue in cheek.

Now if you've done much auditing and you've worked on rehabilitating people
and entities from the throes of drug addiction, you must know that
addictive personalities constitute one of the Seven Special Resistive
Cases, and to call addictive personalities "resistive" is an
understatement.  Therefore, if you do run into some areas or people who are
awareness junkies or addicted to spiritual enlightenment, you're going to
have quite a battle on your hands to handle such cases.

And furthermore, when you try to get someone who is addicted to anything
off of that which they are addicted to, you run into a thing called
"withdrawal symptoms."  And if you've ever witnessed the tortures that
people who are simply addicted to cigarettes go through, let alone some of
the more sophisticated drugs, up to and including what I have come to call
the awareness junkie,  you'll know that the withdrawal can be extremely
painful and difficult to accomplish, but once done yields quite a great
freedom to the recipient.

To some degree here on earth (or whatever its correct name should be), it
seems as though those who make and market things for human and spiritual
consumption have, as the happiest outcome of their advertising, marketing,
and delivery, the hope of hooking (possibly an American term) or addicting,
to one degree or another, the consumer.  In other words, getting them to
the point where they don't feel right unless they're owning or having or
experiencing the thing in some way -- best ever, of course, is when they
absolutely HAVE to have it and will go to any lengths to get it.  This in
our human world is considered "good business."  Why, I'd venture to say
that there are beings at the very moment I'm writing this who are so
addicted to the Internet that they will probably end up reading the drivel
that I'm now enscribing into this electronic formulary.       There's
probably some truth to the idea that to be human is to be addicted.  The
list of things that it takes to be human and to survive as one that are all
mandatory is considerable.  However, the other options, such as the Void or
total emptiness or Native State or Nothingness or absence of everything
probably aren't nearly as appealing as what we're currently doing.  This
includes even endless becoming, which I'm not absolutely opposed to;
however, it's fun to take a good laugh at that area too, occasionally, even
though it's bad for business, n'est-ce pas?

In a modest effort to regain my popularity, lest my pen has poisoned my
appreciative audience, I should like to say to my fellow travelers who
accompany me through the eternities that the journey IS the thing, not the
end, and thus we restore the game.  After all, the game's the thing, and
the play along the way, and happily these are not the closing moments.


And so bon voyage; keep those letters and donations coming.  I remain, your
most obedient gadfly, Philip of the Caves