"To Avoid Enlightenment" (adapted from post to the newsgroup - alt.consciousness.4th-way) If you want to avoid enlightenment, find yourself a good, by-the-book method and stick to it like Elmer's best white casein. If anybody in your vicinity, virtual or otherwise, even hints at deviating from that method, that all-important system, then you tell 'em off good, you assert flippin' control by any means necessary -- you warn 'em, you do your level best to ridicule 'em, you toast that blasphemer, because without that method, that system, you are less than nothing, a hurt little man sucking his thumb like it was a wet nurse. Follow this advice, my friend, and I can pretty much guarantee there'll be tree stumps and scrap iron that'll get enlightened before you do. You'll be utterly safe from that big, bad, unknown, everlovin' universe, all curled up with your books, your picture of whatever Great Man[tm] you chose to follow, and your hard feelings toward anyone who takes any genuine, exuberant joy in good old "beans & weiners" life and in the indescribable, eternal gratitude that is the essence of the truly sacred. Whatever you do, don't "kiss God," you might get some major {I mean, we're talkin' omnipotent) "kooties." Have a nice day!