Certainly, as SimonD demonstrated, you can either surrender or you can try to guide the experience. The shamans all say surrender, and that would be my inclination as well. After all, asking the plant spirit for aid and then arguing with it seems rather churlish.

So do you think controversy will draw viewers and commentators to SN, Lokesh? Talking about spiritual scams will not make people happier or more enlightened.

Maybe we need some articles like the one about the Chilean candle maker on OshoNews, something creative and crafty. I really enjoyed that series of articles.

MOD:
NP, Lokesh was reporting what someone else, Shantam Prem, an Indian thoroughly disillusioned with Sannyas, had recently sent him. If you haven’t come across him SP was an extremely prolific contributor here, certainly a ‘character’, although I’m pretty sure that describing him as “illustrious” was in a spirit of friendly irony.

So you feel better, Lokesh, if SN will be finished?

Tell me, then I don’t need to think about donating!

I just received an email from an illustrious ex-long-time SN commentator who also noted that the subject matter and comments are at a particularly lack-lustre point. And I quote, “I think SN needs some sharp chilli stuff, something like…
‘To love one does not need marriage, but to love and meditate you need a certificate of Name Change.
Spiritual Scam of 20th Century.’

You can win a big cash prize if you guess correctly who said that. Here is a clue. He wears an orange turban.

SD is once more looking for donations to keep the good ship SN afloat. You can also win a cash prize by guessing correctly why SD believes SN is a worthwhile endeavour.

Certainly Lokesh is the most ordinary of all of us.

Fact is that there are two kinds of “ordinary”:

One is meant comparatively, the other is just ordinary.

I saw that South Africa won the Rugby World Cup; there is heroism in sport, but where is your chance to catch the eye as being just ordinary?

Everywhere I look, I see only extraordinary human beings…

“Enlightenment is nothing special. It is the most ordinary, natural phenomenon.”
(Osho)

Personally I always saw myself as vaguely heroic, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons when younger and that was always a game about letting your inner hero come to the fore.

But in reality I was never particularly heroic, I just lived my life in a very ordinary way. Heroism is actually a bit of a disease, it means you’re caught up in an illusion.

Does this mean you are not heroic, because you have not become realized?