************************************************************************ The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers, which is available to all those who subscribe to the printed magazine, International Viewpoints. ************************************************************************ WhySettle For Less? by Phil Spickler 10 Dec 1999 Yes, I've been asking myselves this question lately: why settle for less? Why settle for mere spiritual beinghood, when for just a little extra you could move up to first class and start saying "I am The Supreme Being!" or "I am A Supreme Being!" which is lightyears bigger and better than simply being a spiritual being. Why heck, the A or The Supreme Being cranks out spiritual beings (and everything else) by the carload -- no big deal. And with some of the daffy-nitions I've been hearing about just what a spiritual being is, I'd have to say, and happily so, that we've moved, consciously or otherwise, into the practice of that branch of philosophy known as solipsism. And if you want to know more about that, you'll have to look it up, 'cause I'm short of electrons, according to the electron-counter on my Mark XXVI Super-Cybernetic Laptop Coffeemaker and Computer. In order to push forward this idea and get some folks declaring themselves to be A Supreme Being, or even The Supreme Being, I'm making a one-time Christmas offer in which, for $2.98 United States currency, I'll provide anyone that so desires with a lovely certificate bearing their name which certifies that they are A (or The) Supreme Being, whichever you request -- allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. This will be suitable for framing and is something you can easily dazzle your friends and relatives with. Hopefully none of them will have you certified, which is to say declared legally insane in England or committed in good old U.S. of A. I'm sure you'll agree that these make lovely Christmas gifts, even if somewhat belated, and for a dollar less we also have a certificate for just $1.98 that certifies that you ARE a spiritual being. Both these certificates can be copied as many times as you wish and sent to anyone you care to send them to as a final and confirming proof that you are what you say you are. I myself recently had my application for admission to the Society for the Preservation and Protection of Spiritual Beings (that's the SPPSB) refused for having made irreverent remarks about this lovely idea, as well as suggesting that there's many other states of being that can provide very interesting viewpoints and wonderful experiences that could be just as good as if not better than the one called "state of being a spiritual being." The SPPSB and the few members of that organization that I know remind me a lot of an organization here in the United States called the DAR, which is short for the Daughters of the American Revolution, in which the women in this group can trace their biological lineage back to the 18th Ccentury and the war between the colonies and England. Well, you never saw a more snobbish group of people in your life, just because they would go around saying "I AM a Daughter of the American Revolution!" They went around making people who weren't like that feel inferior, if you can believe it; and in a very childish but vicious way practiced a very virulent form of racial bigotry and religious intolerance. So I'm extra-happy now that I'm NOT going to be a member of the Society for the Preservation and Protection of Spiritual Beings. It looks like just one more way to substitute a counterfeit beingness for one's real self, which as I've said in the past is something indefinable with words. Since this posting is somewhat of an advertisement, I'd also like to say that I've started up something called the Soul Shop, and here's a few of the things that can be obtained from the Shop for modest prices (you can get our catalog upon request). But anyway, for people who are short of thetans, we've got a tremendous supply hanging around here, and they range from extra-fine mint condition all the way to ones that absolutely and positively insist that they are the most degraded broken-down thetans that you could find anyplace, anytime. We're also having a special for folks who are sweetness-and-light types who've never been able to find in their entity collections or on their time tracks anything that was bad, gruesome, or evil, and so to help this possibiliby along we have packages of entities that are so evil or suppressive that you could hardly believe it; and they range all the way from that level down to packages that contain entities whose greatest crime when going to visit someone's home for dinner was to see if they could find a piece of silverware that had a smudge on it and gossip about that the next day. As you can see, we have something for everyone, this being just a small sample of what is available at the Soul Shop. One of the amusing things that was quite noticeable in whole-track engram running was that human males never seemed to encounter lifetimes where they had been women. It just wasn't the macho thing to do; kind of too embarrassing to be able to have a bi-sexual viewpoint. Whereas women running whole-track, with a few exceptions, often had little difficulty in finding themselves being men. It's sort of like women don't mind wearing pants, but how many men do you know that would find it easy to go around wearing a skirt or a dress? Well anyway, to remedy this problem, we have vast sections of time track which you can purchase and install just like any piece of software that will provide you with many, many, many lifetimes of experience and viewpoint as a member of the opposite sex. This is highly to be encouraged if you want to be a well-rounded person with lots of extra understanding. As you can see from this, the Soul Shop can provide you with just about anything up to and including a complete and total new case, which once installed should offer you many hours of working like the devil to get this new monkey off your shoulder, not to speak of affording you the opportunity to realize that having a case is at least as important as not having one, and provides you with all the excuses for failure that you could ever hope to devise along the eight dynamics. And believe you me, if you don't have any excuses for failure, you have ceased to exist in any reality that's to be found and communicated in any of the three universes (or 300, if you will). So don't forget to write in soon and get your certificates, depending on what you'd like to be. Remember, they're handsome and suitable for framing. And also let us know how we might serve you and your requirements here at the Soul Shop And as the old saying goes, where case is concerned, maybe it is better to give than receive! All the very best, A (or The) Supreme Being for as long as it takes to put the period to this sentence -- Flipper Phil.