(Part of our weekly Sufi Wisdom series. T.L. James is moving, so I'm taking this on again for the next few weeks.)
From Idries Shah's "Knowing How to Know" comes a more straightforward Sufi lesson that has a lot of direct applications here in the West:
"You think I am being foolhardy when I say: "You will never be able to profit from what I am communicating."
Here is the explanation: I am, on the contrary, being extremely careful. I am making sure that you will not become a 'follower' of mine, for I can see that you are a person who can lose himself in discipleship. Such a development, far from being a profit to anyone, would mean a loss of a human being - because obsession, by whatever name, is a disaster.
But my initial 'violence' in its effect upon you will never be erased. So you will not now be so prone to indoctrination.
Our relationship, yours and mine, may not be that of teacher and disciple. But neither will it be that of supplier and consumer.
How refreshing!"
It may seem to be trivializing the point here, but the Church of the Subgenius has a similar tenet...albeit taken to the extreme of dark humor. The sacrament (or commandment) of "killing 'Bob'" serves a similar purpose to that of the lesson described above, purging the would-be follower of his fixation with the man delivering the message.