Why don’t I use testimonials?

Am I the only one who thinks testimonials are as bogus as a three-dollar bill?

Corny as a Kansas field?

Phony as a mummified mermaid?

If you use the search term “testimonial” on one popular Website alone, there are almost 5,000 people offering to “write a great testimonial for your product or service.”

We’re floating in an immense ocean of advertising hype, fluff, and doublespeak these days, and it just makes me want to … pandiculate.

G.I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) said …

“Education makes a mask. When you see people, you believe in this mask. After a while the mask falls and you see that they are the same merde as yourself. No matter whom you see, he represents a mask. If you look at him longer, with impartiality and attention, you see that he is not always able to keep his mask; at the same moment, the merde will show through, it is the same which is in you. He is nothing, as you are nothing, even if he is a colonel, senator or millionaire. It’s only the combinations of life that are there. His grandfather was like that, his father was like this, and he profits from it. But he himself represents only nothingness.”

Gurdjieff continued …

“Only he is not a nothing who has understood his nothingness and has worked on himself to change it. That man is another quality of merde: with ‘roses.’ It is still merde but it has not the same odor.”

Someone asked Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) who he was.

“I am nothing but a figment in the imagination of Paramahansa Yogananda,” he replied..

Another time, Adano was asked, “Who are you REALLY???”

“I am the face you see in the mirror,” he replied.

“I might be the wallpaper,” he added.

Adano told one of his initiates to write the following in capital letters and post it on his refrigerator …

TO BE IN THE WORLD AS IT IS IS INVOLVEMENT.

TO BE WITH YOURSELF AS YOU ARE IS ISOLATION.

ANYTHING ELSE IS FRUSTRATION.

WORK: FOR OTHERS AND FOR YOURSELF.

– SWAMI NITTY-GRITTY

Yes, in case you wondered, Adano told him to write “Swami Nitty-Gritty” in capital letters too.

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