There are many chain letters circulating around the Internet. Some are the ones that promise people lots of money; most people know to ignore those ones now.
There are others, though, that contain several wise thoughts or blessings, but which someone has prepended a curse to. It seems that even in distributing blessings or peace thoughts, people sometimes feel the need to put a threat of force on the thoughts to propagate them around the world.
An example of this is the "Lotus Totus" chain letter. It has several wonderful pieces of advice, purportedly from the Anthony Robbins Foundation, such as
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These are all wonderful thoughts to send off to friends or acquaintances, if they aren't annoyed by chain letters to begin with. However, the letter begins with the following threat:
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Do not keep this message. The Lotus Totus must leave your hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very unpleasant surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious, agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired. |
To me, sending threats like this out to other people defeats the spiritual
purpose of philosophies like the list contains. I have to wonder if the
person who stuck that threat on in the first place really read the part in the
list about "Respect for others" and "Responsibility for all your actions".
If you get a mailing with a curse… consider deleting the curse before forwarding it on. The world has enough curses and hatred as it is. Respect yourself and others — read forwards before sending them on, and if there's anything in them that you would not say, or that you would not wish on the recipient(s), delete that part. That way, you're saying what your Authentic Self truly agrees with — and who knows, with that personal touch, maybe more people will read your forwards!
-Rev. John
