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drew it to his lips, but with one bite his mouth filled with ashes.
At times he felt himself kneeling against silks and satins, soft and cooling to his feverish body. Image after image of luxury, ease, and self-indulgence passed before his mind's eye.
But something in him whispered, “You are to practice penance. You are cleansing and purifying yourself.”
Suddenly he asserted his will, gained control of his imagination, and called a halt to fantasies of the senses. Somehow he came to grips with the power of the imagination, realizing how it could, if left to run wild, enslave the mind. Once it was tamed and guided by the Higher Self, imagemaking could be used as a beautiful tool to uplift and inspire a person to reach a state of exultation and self-appreciation.
Next it was the intellect's turn to tempt him with greeds of a different nature, of a non-sensual quality. An attraction for power, a pride in scholarly knowledge and intellectual thought, a temptation to cling to concepts, words, and ideations presented their deceptive aspects before his consciousness. He saw their shallowness, their bias. He faced each and every one of them, loosening their grip and evicting them, like uninvited guests, out of the door of his mind.
The power of his inner life revealed itself with each challenge. Though Rup was not aware on a waking conscious level of what he was undergoing, from a deep inner space he surrendered to the process of watching, recognizing, and erasing. One by one, he dissipated all the subtle negativities, resentments, and desires which arose from his subconscious.
Memory joined forces with ego. Scenes he had dismissed as events of minor importance in his life gushed forth from the long-forgotten past. Even fragments of incidents casually imprinted on his subconscious reappeared magnified, with threedimensional clarity, and in color, like a movie slowed down to a series of successive stills.
He acknowledged each event, learned its lesson, then let it go.
In the lonely cell of Rup's heart he felt utterly deserted. In the midst of this night he longed for some companionship. It was denied. Though a rebellious lad and a brave fighter who
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