SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COUNSELING

spiritualpc.net / 2024 Volume: 9 Number: 2

Research Article

Why Self-Care Is Not Enough: The Nature of

True Well-Being
1
Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Institute of Traditional Psychology

1
Mental Health Therapist, Writer, and Researcher. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
The notion of self-care—like its precursor, self-help—has emerged
due to a spiritual vacuum in the contemporary world. The burgeoning
Corresponding author: mental health crisis that is prevalent today appears inseparable from
Samuel Bendeck Sotillos the broader existential predicament facing humanity. Mainstream
E-mail: [email protected] psychology and its therapies have not been able to address these
challenges, in response to which we have seen the inevitable rise
of self-care remedies. Across humanity’s diverse spiritual cultures,
eISSN: 2458-9675
these have always been available, yet they were invariably grounded
in a religious tradition and its sacred psychology. The more we are
Received: 08.01.2024 marginalized from such roots, the more self-care is required—our
Revision: 27.01.2024 current obsession with which is the unacknowledged search for
Accepted: 28.01.2024 wholeness due to modern people having lost their sense of the sacred.
Keywords:
©Copyright 2024 by Author(s) Self-Care • Self-Help • Psychology • Mental health • Religion

Citation: Bendeck Sotilllos, S. (2024). Why self-care is not enough: The nature of true well-being.
Spiritual Psychology and Counseling, 9(2), 133–144. http://doi.org/10.37898/spiritualpc.1416662
Bendeck Sotillos / Why Self-Care Is Not Enough: The Nature of True Well-Being

Introduction
Talk of “self-care” is heard everywhere today. It has become a buzzword that
has entered every facet of mainstream society, becoming a secular mantra of the
“therapeutic” ethos that has been absorbed into today’s dominant culture, where we
are continually called to practice self-care. We are usually not told exactly what this
entails but are simply urged to undertake whatever works for us. Indeed, we are told
that we can never do this enough.

Self-care is a nebulous term, and rarely is it asked: What is the self that we are
trying to look after? Self-care is no longer limited to mindfulness, walks in nature,
meditative apps, yoga, or even journaling for that matter; now anything is pretty much
considered self-care: healthy or self-indulgent eating, being alone or socializing,
exercising or resting (“me-time”), shopping or simplifying—everything finds a place
under this all-encompassing rubric.

It is not difficult to identify certain resemblances between earlier forms of the New
Age movement and self-help. The current obsession with self-care, appears to be a
crafty rebranding of the older term which seemed to indicate a deficiency. “Self-care,”
by contrast, gives the impression that everything is already fine just the way it is. This
stance is evidenced by an inordinate focus on the self, and a complete reliance on its
capacity to help realize our human potential, as though this was the true meaning of
our existence. Yet, to rely fully on the self is to forget that such potential is “on loan,”
so to speak, in that it belongs not to us but to the Divine. An essential distinction thus
needs to be made between true self-care and its spurious modern replacements.

In the absence of a sacred orientation in people’s lives, self-care has become a

secular substitute for traditional forms of spiritual practice. Instead of practicing
traditional virtues that help us conform to Divine reality, we are taught techniques—
both arbitrary and individualistic—to manage our responses to the increasingly
chaotic conditions of modern life. This inversion of traditional norms has contributed
to the rise of “therapeutic” culture and to human beings in modernity being defined
exclusively in “psychological” terms—these are signs, in themselves, of the decline
that has brought on the current spiritual crisis in our midst.

No one will dispute that caring for ourselves is essential, but this cannot be done
properly unless we focus on the whole self—comprising Spirit, soul, and body—
and reconnect with our spiritual dimension. Any attempt to improve ourselves will
fall short if we neglect our transcendent needs. Some distinctions have to be made
between true self-care and self-indulgence, the former being that which supports
our well-being, in contrast to simply surrendering to one’s desires without regard
to consequences. Central to this exploration is the need to recognize how selfhood
is understood across the world’s religions. While the Abrahamic monotheisms of

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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam embrace a very different notion from what we find
in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, metaphysical reflection can help us to discern a
unity that pervades them nevertheless.

True Self-Care
In light of the escalating mental health crisis today, we see the reduction of human
reality to psychological phenomena alone, and an excessive pathologizing that
views symptoms as signs of disorder. Not every dilemma needs to be diagnosed as a
psychological disorder, and not all issues require mental health interventions. With
the growing focus on personal strengths as opposed to pathology-driven ones, we can
see that self-care options are a way of safeguarding ourselves from the trappings of a
world that is preoccupied with illness and has lost its equilibrium.

Without spiritual discernment, we become readily prone to confusion and

incapable of making proper distinctions. Secular approaches to self-care (akin to
secular psychotherapy) can certainly have benefits such as setting boundaries in
interpersonal relationships, being aware of our emotional life, engaging in meaningful
activities, and regular exercise, for example. There is nothing wrong with addressing
such matters in themselves, yet without knowing what it truly means to be human,
everything that is intended for our good on the surface can be spiritually harmful and,
therefore, serve to undermine our self-care in the end.

“Self-care” is often described as the cultivation of compassion for oneself. However,

we can only become truly compassionate when we cleave to the Divine through our
adherence to one of the world’s great religions, for the true source of love and compassion
is the highest reality itself. The secular world tries to convince us that we alone are able
to provide for our own self-care; however, without grace nothing is possible, and it is
through divine working that grace becomes active. Otherwise, we are apt to confuse
immanence with transcendence. We are first called to see that “My kingdom is not of this
world” (John 18:36) before we are able to acknowledge “The kingdom of God is within
you” (Luke 17:21), “I am the Self … seated in the heart of all beings” (Bhagavad Gītā
10:20), or “We are nearer to him than the jugular vein” (Qur’ān 50:16).

A regard for all sentient beings, including ourselves and all the created order,
is central to every spiritual tradition. In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, it is
envisaged as benevolence or loving-kindness (Pāli: mettā; Sanskrit: maitrī) and,
within Mahāyāna Buddhism, it is simply called compassion (Sanskrit: karuṇā). In
the Christian tradition, it is said that “God is love” (1 John 4:16) and, in Islam, Love
(Arabic: ‘ishq) is an attribute of the Divine, as Rūmī (1207–1273) points out: “Love’s
creed is separate from all religions: The creed and denomination of lovers is God”
(Chittick, 1983, p. 213). Although self-care rightly affirms the need for compassion

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towards ourselves, its genesis lies solely in the Divine. We often hear today of the
need to love ourselves, yet what we really need is to love not our egoic self, but the
Divine within us and all beings, which is the true source of abiding felicity during our
brief human sojourn, and beyond.

The growth of a global marketplace of self-care for mass consumption suggests

that it is not for the betterment of the human condition, but rather a means of
capitalizing on our distress instead of improving our well-being. To be sure, self-care
is a big business, comprising a billion-dollar industry that has become a hallmark
of corporate wellness programs around the globe. This problematic phenomenon is,
perhaps, better known today by what Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa
(1939–1987) has termed spiritual materialism. He writes: “The problem is that ego
can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality” (2002, p. 13).

This is not to say, of course, that all mental health problems can be reduced to
spiritual problems. The American clinical psychologist John Welwood (1943–2019)
coined the term spiritual bypassing to describe a common tendency to adopt spiritual
ideas and practices so as to avoid dealing with the “unfinished business” of our lives.
He admits that it is “tempting to use spirituality as a way of trying to rise above this
shaky ground. In this way, spirituality becomes just another way of rejecting one’s
experience” (2000, p. 207). It goes without saying that true spirituality has nothing to
do with bypassing mental health issues, but is rather about encountering oneself fully
in one’s depths with a view to purifying the human psyche.

The Global Mental Health Crisis and its Ravages

Due to the burgeoning mental health epidemic and the inability of its practitioners
to manage this crisis effectively, self-care has been proposed as a possible solution,
especially as a way for mental health professionals to avoid burnout and compassion
fatigue. Given the unprecedented number of suffering individuals, many have been
encouraged to take responsibility for themselves, having fallen under the spell of
self-care therapies as some kind of panacea. To get to the root of this phenomenon
requires dispelling the myths and confusion that plague modern psychology.

Although the self-care movement urges us to engage in healthy socialization,

and acknowledges the importance of human connection, it does so on purely
individualistic terms, paradoxically leaving us to manage our inner lives in isolation
from others, which runs counter to the advice we find among the spiritual traditions of
the world. Today, the truth that “No man is an island” (Donne, 1923, p. 98), and that
all of existence is interconnected, is often ignored. However, the human psyche is an
integral part of the web of life and its underlying cosmic order. Given the heightened
levels of alienation that we experience today, it is difficult to discern any apparent

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wholeness. Isolated and disconnected, the human psyche remains fractured, unable
to find psychological health and well-being.

Human beings are not altogether self-governing, despite the views of prominent
thinkers like Michel Foucault (1926–1984), who defined man as being “destined to
care for himself” (1986, p. 47). Yet, no amount of self-care or prescribed “me-time”
will bring us to the realization of who we truly are and what we ultimately need, as
these concerns cannot be addressed outside of a sacred context. Otherwise, the person
that needs help is none other than the one who is expected to provide this very same
care, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle. The transpersonal Self is not in need of care,
for it alone can fulfill all our deeper needs. We are thus called to surrender and take
refuge exclusively in the Divine, for this is the ultimate source of our well-being and
wholeness. As we read in the Bhagavad Gītā: “Abandoning all dharmas, come to Me
alone for shelter” (18:66).

In the midst all of this, a “culture of narcissism” is starting to emerge, as the

prominent American historian and social critic Christopher Lasch (1932–1994)
observed:
Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the
“psychological man” of the twentieth century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement
nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate
against it…. [I]n the struggle for composure; he [has] … hope[s] of achieving the modern
equivalent of salvation, “mental health”…. (1978, p. 13)

There is no escaping the fact that, as a civilization, we have lost a sense of the
sacred and that dehumanization is rampant in the modern world. Our preoccupation
with self-care would not prevail in a society that is rooted in the sacred and, thus,
spiritually healthy. It needs to be asked: how is self-care possible in a desacralized
ambiance? Each day passes with increasing speed, placing greater responsibilities
and burdens on people, leaving very little time to do much of anything, let alone
contemplate the deeper truths of existence. To do so appears to many as a luxury—
something that only the affluent can afford—but this is not the case. In fact, all
spiritual traditions offer teachings and practices that can be adopted wherever we
may find ourselves and in whatever circumstances.

Spiritually Informed Approaches

Prayer allows for a direct relationship to the Divine. When surveying the world’s
diverse religions, and their mystical dimensions, it becomes apparent that prayer
defines the centrality of the human condition and holds an eschatological relevance.
This is because human beings cannot go beyond themselves by personal effort alone;
they need the support of that which transcends the empirical ego.

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The prescription for all our earthly malaise has, traditionally, been the medicine of
Divine Remembrance; in other words, prayer is the means by which we may become
integrated into our transpersonal essence (see Laude, 2006). Within the Christian
tradition, we find the Jesus Prayer that is supported by the injunction “Pray without
ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This remembrance of God (dhikr Allāh) in the Islamic
tradition is considered therapeutic: “Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts
find rest” (Qur’ān 13:28). In the Hindu tradition, the repetition (japa) of the Divine
Names is a spiritual method available to all regardless of social status or spiritual
aptitude. According to the 68th Jagadguru of Kanchi (1894–1994), this remembrance
is always available: “He may think of god even on the bus or the train as he goes to
his office or any other place” (2008, p. 5). Within the Buddhist tradition, there is the
practice of nembutsu or invoking the name of Amida Buddha. This practice is also to
be found within the religion of the First Peoples as indicated by the Lakota wicasa
wakan or holy man Black Elk (1863–1950): “[W]e Indians know the One true God,
and … we pray to Him continually” (1989, p. xx).

There is never a moment when the Divine is absent; rather, it is we who are absent—
this is our greatest obstacle. The obsession with self-care is, in fact, linked to the spiritual
crisis facing humanity. When properly understood, true self-care becomes impossible
for one who accepts the modern worldview regarding who we are. An excessive focus
on the profane self is the problem, because, relying on its own resources, it cannot
support psychological well-being or the quest for our true Self.

The assumption behind obsessive self-care is that we are able to fully care for
ourselves, but the notion that we have ultimate agency over our lives is illusory.
While personal effort and perseverance are certainly necessary, taking refuge in the
Divine ought to be our primary focus. We are told that true respite from the difficulties
of daily life may only be found in spiritual refuge:
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28–30)

Likewise, the antidote to anxiety is faith and trust in the highest reality:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with
thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)

It becomes apparent that before we can even discuss self-care, it is critical to

establish what is meant by the very self whose care is being urged.

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Paths Beyond Ego

Modern psychology for the most part is confined to a horizontal understanding of
human identity, and is unable to recognize the vertical dimension that pertains to our
primordial nature. The founder of the “talking cure,” Sigmund Freud (1856–1939),
writes: “The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense” (1989b,
p. 19) and, likewise, “there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling
of our self, of our own ego” (1989a, p. 12). At the same time, even he expresses its
shortcomings: “the Ego is not master in its own house” (1955, p. 143).

To equate the self with the ego is a betrayal of the Spirit, which it seeks to
replace. Therefore, whatever thwarts our remembrance of the Divine needs to be
resisted. Many traditions assert the existence of both a lower self and one that is
“transpersonal”—that is, grounded in a universal reality. Accordingly, it is a mistake
to identify the lower self as the source of all our potential. Yet, it must be said that the
lower self does determine our actions when the ego is enclosed in itself. The need to
make effort on the human plane does not preclude the influence of divine reality in
determining our will when we allow it to do so.

According to the Hindu tradition, it is the confused or deluded person who asserts
“I am the doer” (Bhagavad Gītā 3:27), as in most cases it is the Divine alone who is
the doer. Our identification with the “doer” is the problem, as Swami Ramdas (1884–
1963) observed: “The ego is the cause of soul’s bondage and misery” (as cited in
Weeraperuma, 2005, p. 1). In the Taoist tradition, there is the notion of “non-action”
(Chinese: wu wei), but this does not signify inertia, but rather stems from the very
source of all action in the Tao, which is not the product of individual initiative. Shin
Buddhism makes the distinction between “Other-Power” (tariki) and “self-power”
(jiriki), which is to say the distinction between reliance on the Primal Vow of Amida
Buddha, as opposed to our own efforts, to attain Nirvana. The Christian tradition
teaches us to turn away from our self-preoccupation in an act of self-naughting; we
must deny ourselves (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23) so as to make room
in our hearts for something other than the human ego. This common theme among
spiritual traditions shows that an exaggerated notion of our own agency can only lead
to inadequate self-care.

If we ask ourselves who is the doer that practices self-care, we will get closer to
resolving this question; however; this will not make sense in the absence of an
appropriate metaphysical framework. This is made evident when St. Augustine (354–
430) affirms: “For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest
in Thee” (1959, p. 3). All attempts to seek wholeness in anything other than the Divine
are bound to fail. As Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–c. 1416) rightly discerned: “Our soul
may never have rest in anything which is beneath itself” (1978, p. 313). Mainstream

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psychology and the field of mental health only know of a self that is separate—not one
that transcends the psycho-physical order. The lower levels of our being are unable
to grasp that which is higher, seeing as the latter transcend (yet include) the former.
Through abiding in the Divine, we may gain access to our core identity.

A significant burden on people living in a desacralized world is that they are

engaged in work that is not in conformity with their true vocation. They are simply
compelled to do so by the need to secure an income, which undoubtedly contributes to
widespread discontent in our era. Therefore, there is a need today for clear boundaries
between one’s professional and personal life, where we often find a divide between
what we do for a living and what nourishes our spirit.

Now that misconceived notions of self-care have been addressed, we will consider
the correct understanding of how traditional cosmology and psychology view the
human body as a reflection of the cosmos. Throughout the sacred scriptures, we are
reminded that our “bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19) and, in
the Qur’ān’s account of the creation of man, God says “I blew into him of My spirit”
(Qur’ān 15:29, 38:72). This is why we are instructed to care for the human body, but
we must not do so according to our own individualistic notions, for we are given clear
guidance by humanity’s sapiential traditions.

Human beings are not limited to their corporeal reality; rather, we consist of a
tripartite nature—Spirit, soul, and body. It is the transpersonal dimension that
animates both soul and body, thus rendering them whole; without the soul, the body
cannot come alive; without the body, the soul would be bereft of a suitable dwelling;
and, without the Spirit, neither would exist. Therefore, any discussion of self-care
must be mindful of both the science of nature, as well as that of the human soul.

Discerning the True Self

The more we seek the source of self-care in our lower selves, the more fleeting it
becomes. The act of self-care requires doing something in order to stay well or keep
going, which implies constant maintenance. Again, it is never asked who the “doer”
is; only that its activity continues. Any fixation can take us in the opposite direction
to what we originally intended. In the often-cited words of Dōgen (1200–1253): “To
learn the Buddha Way is to learn one’s self. To learn one’s self is to forget one’s self”
(1972, p. 134). This is reminiscent of the spiritual advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola
(1491–1556), the Spanish Catholic theologian: “For each one must realize that he
will make progress in all spiritual matters in proportion to his flight from self-love,
self-will, and self-interest” (1964, p. 87). Neither happiness nor fulfillment can be
procured outside of the sacred. To be fully human is to recognize our fundamental
relationship with the Absolute, which is to say that our true identity in the Divine

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is the primordial nature (fiṭrah), the “image of God” (imago Dei), Buddha-nature
(Buddha-dhātu), or the Self (Ātmā).

The Old Testament upholds the belief that human beings are a composite of Spirit,
soul, and body. We see this, for example, in Genesis: “And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul” (2:7). While this triadic division of the self is found within
Judaism and Christianity, it also exists in the Islamic tradition (as Rūḥ/‘Aql, nafs,
and jism). The Arabic term ‘aql is used to denote both reason and intellect, although
the relationship between them (the first being horizontal and the second vertical)
is always recognized. Rūḥ and ‘Aql are found to be synonymous with spirit and
Intellect. The nafs (soul, self, or ego) is often conflated with Rūḥ or Spirit, as is
evidenced by these terms being used interchangeably; however, they represent two
markedly different ways of viewing the self ontologically.

Similarly, Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of the self, while divergent on one
level, can be reconciled to form a unity in a broader metaphysical context. The highly
influential Abhidharmakośa by Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century) states: “It is a
mistake ... to consider as a self that which is not the self; but [nowhere does the Buddha
say that] it is a mistake to consider as a self that which is the self” (as cited in Conze,
1983, p. 129). The Buddha does not take issue with the Hindu understanding of the
Self (Ātman) as neti, neti (“not this, not this”) which, by means of a double negation,
conveys an apophatic understanding that eliminates all determinate conceptions,
leaving in its place only the consciousness of that which is, the Self alone; all that
is not this is non-Self (anattā). This position is summarized in the Buddha’s words,
“What is not self, that is not my self.” (as cited in Horner, 1973, p. 32).

Our true Self cannot be understood through the myopic lens of modern science,
which has proven incapable of delivering itself from its erroneous theoretical
foundations. The same applies to the radically limited scope of modern psychology,
and its mental health treatments, which are devoid of a transpersonal dimension. As
René Guénon (1886–1951) explains:
As for modern Western psychology, it deals only with a quite restricted portion of the human
individuality, where the mental faculty is in direct relationship with the corporeal modality,
and, given the methods it employs, it is incapable of going any further. In any case, the very
objective which it sets before itself and which is exclusively the study of mental phenomena
[the empirical ego], limits it strictly to the realm of the individuality, so that the state which
we are now discussing [the Self (Ātmā)] necessarily eludes its investigations. (2004, p. 96)

In a sense, all true spiritual practices sanctioned by revealed traditions aid us in

returning to ourselves. Even within the realm of mental health, there is often the self-
care prescription of breathing slowly and deeply in order to be mindful of our breath.

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It is worth recalling that the term Spirit derives from the Latin word spiritus, meaning
“spirit” or “breath,” which stems from the verb spirare, “to breathe.” It appears to be
so simple to breathe, yet, in our fast-paced digital age, we forget to be aware of even
this vital process. It is thus evident that human beings are inherently connected to the
sacred and made for the Absolute.

When the separate self is given prominence and its maintenance is supported above
all else, it becomes an obstacle to the unfolding of the true Self. Many mistaken ideas
are prevalent in the current zeitgeist, one of them being that this existence owes us
something, or that we are free to pursue whatever we desire. Nothing could be further
from the truth. We are entitled to nothing and are only given the blessing of this
life—with all of its trials and tribulations—for the sole purpose of encountering the
Divine in ourselves, in others, and in the world around us. The universal and timeless
wisdom found throughout the diverse cultures of the world teaches an essential truth:
“Your natural state is one of happiness” (Ramana, 1996, p. 284).

Conclusion
Prioritizing our personal welfare, though understandable in light of our biological
needs, often leads to a host of problems. A complete human being is selfless rather
than selfish, and we can attenuate the demands of our egoic self when purged of all
that does not truly belong to us, which means to overcome ourselves. Self-care, in
the truest sense, is to rest, at all times, in an awareness of the Absolute—the more
we surrender to it, the less importance we place on ourselves. To remember the
“one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) is to cease being a spiritual “doer” so that we can
awaken to our true Self. It cannot be forgotten that no matter how much so-called
self-care we practice, we are unknowingly always searching to transcend ourselves
because we can never find satisfaction within the confines of our limited lives, lived
“horizontally” in a world that is similarly constricted.

Paradoxical as it may appear at first, it could be said that self-care has inadvertently
become infused with the true meaning of religion. We recall that the etymological root
of the English word “religion” is the Latin religare, meaning to “to re-bind” or “to bind
back,” by implication to the Divine or a transcendent reality. Recovering our primordial
nature, a task thwarted by our desacralized world, is the path toward true self-care.

The entirety of our existence may be described as a journey from the wilderness
of our fragmented self to the true home that is our transpersonal Self. It goes without
saying that were it not for the chaotic conditions of modern life—and for humanity
having lost its moorings in the venerable spiritual paths of humanity—there would be
no need to discuss self-care. It is only when self-care practices are restored to what
they were understood to have been across religious traditions over millennia, that

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they will be able to provide the lasting efficacy that we seek from them. We would do
well to recall the words of the great Bard: “This above all: to thine own self be true”
(Shakespeare, 1899, p. 33).

Acknowledgement. The author thanks Funding. The author received no

the editors and the reviewers for their financial support for the research,
useful suggestions. authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Ethical approval. No ethics
committee permission is required as Disclosure statement. The author
it is a review article. declares that there is no conflict of
interest regarding the article.
Peer-review. Externally peer-reviewed.

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