Healthy skepticism

One day I will go there, I know it. It’s just a matter of time.
I crave for a spiritual journey that will include Tibet and Nepal, as a must, with other destinations as optional.

Swayambhunath is among the oldest religious sites in Nepal and one of the holiest Buddhist places. According to the legend, Swayambhunath was founded by the King Vrsadeva, at the beginning of the 5th century CE.
Although the site is considered Buddhist, the place is revered by both Buddhists and Hindus. Numerous Hindu kings are known to have paid their homage to the temple including the most powerful king of Kantipur- Pratap Malla.

Monkey Temple

Photo courtesy of April

On each of the four sides of the main stupa there are a pair of big eyes which represent Wisdom and Compassion. Above each pair of eyes is another eye, the third eye. Saying goes that when Buddha preaches, cosmic rays emanate from the third eye which acts as message to heavenly beings, so that those interested can come down to earth to listen to the Buddha. The hellish beings and beings below the human realm cannot come to earth to listen to the Buddha’s teaching, however, the cosmic ray relieves their suffering when Buddha preaches.
Source: wiki

How can you not be impressed with these eyes?

Photo courtesy of April

Prayer Wheel
According to Buddhism, spinning the wheel is as efficient as reciting the mantra embossed on the metal cylinder.
The most popular mantra is Om Mani Padme Hum considered a very powerful one because it contains the essence of Buddhism teachings.

Photo courtesy of April

Apparently there are lots of monkeys around, hence the name of the temple, pretty aggressive with tourists and probably very nasty considering their sacred status.
The tradition asks that in the morning, before dawn, to start climbing the 365 steps that led up the hill. Once there, pilgrims will start circling clockwise the stupa.

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It’s not that I have expected to be approved because I guessed I was persona non grata for Google.
I decided to give it another try just to have a closure to the whole unpleasant AdSense experience.

Months ago when I thought that there was an easy way to monetize your rumblings without putting too much effort other than writing and adding links and pictures, I came across information on how easy it is to make money with AdSense.

One of the tips offered by pros, was to have a blog on Blogspot. Allegedly that would be sufficient to put you on the fast track.
And indeed it worked.
I created a blog on Blogspot and left Wordpress just because of the pragmatic point of view.
After blogging for about two weeks, I filled out the request to get my blog evaluated for AdSense.
I got the answer pretty fast: in 2 days I got approved and I was given the precious code.
But from there it went down the hill and finally I got my account suspended.

From my short experience (almost three months) using AdSense I can tell you that you CAN’T make money with it.
Maybe you could in the past, not anymore.
Never mind the money making issue, having the account suspended made me try again because defeat was not in my books.
At that moment I became aware that it’s not an easy way to make money with AdSense, that more people fail than succeed, that you can get sucked into buying AdWords to make things work and end up losing money rather than making.
On the other hand, I wanted to prove myself that Google is not an insensitive machine run by algorithms and that there is not such a thing like blacklist.

The reality is that Google is run by algorithms and if somebody makes money it’s mostly Google and maybe a small group of gurus specialized in Internet Marketing.
And if you make a mistake and you have your account suspended, you are going to be blacklisted. No second chances. No warnings prior to suspension.

Why did I say that your home address is blacklisted?
Because I created a blog on my husband’s name, with topics that could have use advertising- please note that I mentioned topics, not categories, because Blogspot’s platform does not offer categories to organize your posts- using his name and our home address.
The common denominator was the home address.
If your guess is that it was rejected, you guessed right.

Second step: I used by self-hosted blog and applied for AdSense.
This time it took over a month to get rejected. That verifies the tip regarding having a blog with Blogspot.

Now I am at peace with myself. I have tried everything and you know what? I don’t have regrets.
It was an experience that cost me basically only the time spent writing interesting posts.
I can make more money right now working with different affiliates than I have ever made with Google.
From my perspective AdSense can be dead, vanished without a trace, burning in Hell, I could not care less anymore.

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