For me, Phoenix, what is beyond is something fresh, certainly not the same gate…

As to others,,, well, they have different speeds, different futures. Either they never passed through the gate at all, or they did, only to find themselves caught up in a Gate Trademark Forum on the far side… Enjoy!
But i am not going there.

May be I drop my addiction, after crusade. it is a kind of fun to think of removing the regime operating in the name of that master, who was poking finger into every other religion´ ass.
In a way, it is a meditation to put the hands in the sewerage and clean the blockage!

I have myself thought many times to finish all business( ? ) here on SN , only to realize this business is beyond any business !

Anyway it has left me wondering , to see your & the Open letter from IC have the exact same timing , you sure have chosen an amazing name for yourself !

Just sharing , I decided not to be involved in anyway to IC / anyone’s business , I am too preoccupied with my own .

You certainly have a point, it is a bit prejudiced of me,even arrogant…. And I have struggled for an answer….

First some history which you may not know.
On the former SN chatboard, I was the second most prolific contributor, both via my own threads and those of others.
One particular thread which I started ran for almost 3 years. I changed the title several times, but the original title was: What happens after sannyas?

As you can see from that title, I had already decided to leave.

I kept the thread going so long, partly for the sheer hell of it, but also for a more serious purpose. Sannyas had been the biggest, sometimes almost the only, thing in my life, and if I was leaving, I wanted to leave totally, which meant that I wanted to root out ALL unfinished business, confusions, open questions… And complete them al… after 25 years a big task!

And in the end I did something like that, in fact with Parmartha’s help, as he pulled the plug on the chatboard, and showed me the way out fast.

I never came to the new board before now except once. I have often dipped in here to read with interest, but always suppressed potential comments, and I realise now that I did so to support that decision of mine: if I am out, then totally out!

What I suddenly realise at this point is that I need to modify that quote above. Yes, sannyas was a love affair, but like all the other big love affairs in my life, I managed to turn it into a bit of an addiction.

It took me about five attempts to stop smoking, and the last time I realised that it wasn’t just about stopping, what I needed to do was stop AND MAKE A TOTAL RESOLVE TO FOREVER REFUSE TOBACCO THEREAFTER. (That happened very wonderfully at a party I attended at a place in California, where I went after the First World Celebration in Oregon, a place called Last Chance Valley.)

Osho used to annoy me totally by telling me that sex would drop at 42. I now think he may have meant the ADDICTION TO sex should stop…. not necessarily sex itself. And that is not a bad thing.

If the addiction is over, there is maybe less need for this kind of portentous statement of mine: ‘You may be seeing me for the last time here’.

I note that I came back here last week with a platform spanning two gurus, and therefore addicted to none, it was a new platform quite of my own.

Let’s see…

in any case , it has / you have , been a good read & all the best incase you don’t happen to write here

This is the opening line of an article written by Phoenix Thompson on his facebook wall..
I feel like appreciating this truthful expression, My former master!

Phoenix, after the former, do you have some recent master or still single?

I was never sure, but then I was always sceptical about most claims about the master made by sannyasins and by himself, starting with ‘enlightenment’…. In 25 years of sannyas, I almost never used the word. And that wasn’t a problem. I didn’t sign up to orange and the mala to get enlightened. As Osho told me, sannyas was a love affair… and about that I had no scepticism, simply because in the high realm of love, scepticism finds no foothold.

But to get back to that last discourse. Even though I was sceptical, I had to admit my friends had a point, after all, Osho’s last (?) sentence started: ‘The last words of the buddha were…’

I am reminded of that by the fact that Dominic’s last words above are ‘Don’t answer that’, surely a fitting coda for an online thread. Those words get me thinking that this particular initiative of mine may (soon) have run its course.

In case that is so, let me say Thankyou for the way it has gone, having extended way beyond my original pitch, without losing cohesion… and having been funny without drowning in flippancy. I have found old friends, even if one may not know who I am (ask Parmartha, he should tell you I used to be called Satgit, now just the name for the Indian restaurant at my beach resort), I have met new friends.

As I say, I am an ex-sannyasin, so I am grateful too to even be allowed on sannyasnews!

There is now no master-buddha that I acknowledge (except within), and no dharma and no sangha less than the cosmos (except facebook).

(I always loved Camus’ question: How to be a saint without god?)

For that ex-ness reason, please do not think me egotistical if I now, having cultivated my own thread here and enjoyed the feedback, do not come back to post on others’ threads. I may do so, but most of what I have seen here centres round identities and statuses and internal politics which are no longer current for me… I may read the threads with interest, but I will not write.

As I said: except facebook.

I will therefore revert, if I write again on themes like this, to my facebook page, even though there I count myself lucky to get even 5 responses.

You are all welcome to befriend me or follow me or just snoop on me there, via:

http://www.facebook.com/phoenixrisingaccra.