Fellowship of Friends Discussion, part 34 May 1, 2008
Posted by Pavel in Uncategorized.Tags: cult, Fellowship of Friends, Fourth Way, guru, Robert Burton, spiritual cult
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Welcome to the new addition to the Fellowship of Friends Discussion. I hope you like the new venue as much as I do, it is still in the very first stages of development so there may be some changes.
For previous parts of the discussion please visit the Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog, or AnimamRecro for the very beginning. For a more organized reading check out The Fellowship of Friends WikiSpace.
The largest meeting point for former and current members of the Fellowship of Friends is the Greater Fellowship, you can sign up for the Greater Fellowship website and connect with mostly former members of the Fellowship of Friends, as well as: some current members, family members of former/current members, and others interested in the Fourth Way here.
For sites in Russian and Italian, click http://fofway.narod.ru/ and http://laliberastrada.blogspot.com/ respectively.
For more information check Rick Ross and Steven Hassan.
This is where you can find the website of the Fellowship of Friends.
If you decide to interact as well as digest, this is where you can start.
And as always (and above else), enjoy and have fun.
Excessive abuse, personal attacks, as well as deliberate attempts to unmask people taking part in the discussion will result in a warning followed by a ban from the discussion.
Comments
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Fellowship of Friends - Living Presence Discussion 
So here it is, as promised. Could you please tell me of any issues or problems you may encounter here and I will see what I can do. Also, if the majority of you do not like this particular design, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be changed.
Those who were banned previously are still banned.
Before I forget, this is a new blog so everyone will have to get one moderated comment before they can post freely. It should be done in the space of two days I hope, I will be checking as many times daily as I can.
Nice design. Thanks….again.
Tina’s story is a classic example of Robert Burton’s
possessiveness and jealousy.
JH belongs to RB. Period!
Tina is a threat. JH gets punished, for a few weeks or so,
Tina is out. Pushing her buttons was a clever manipulative move.
Remember Mara J? Annie McC? Paola? Barbara B?
All these women had to leave Rb’s playing field.
If you want what visible reality
can give, you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
Rumi
Rear View Mirror: thanks for a great “red flags” list. I would also add: when your gut tells you to be afraid of this group or guru, or when you have even a tiny taste in your mouth of charismatic persuasion from the speaker. No need to intellectualize it or find any logical reasons – your intuition is enough. Personally, in the posters I’ve seen and in the video posted here about Byron Katie (even in her lack of using her last name…!)I had a pretty strong intuition of (and reaction against) that charismatic persuasion that has no real interest in the other person, only in her own force.
Sheik,
The blue is pretty, but I’d like a larger font size, if possible. These old eyes ain’t what they use to be. Thanks for your dedication and curiousity to something that only tangentialy touched your life.
371 Rear View Mirror
According to Burton, we’re supposed to be the salmon swimming up stream, going against the ray of creation, and escaping the brutal fate that awaits those who go with the flow and do not struggle. And this is a great “hook” for the Fellowship (no pun intended here), because now we can explain away ANY sort of doubts or questions we have about Burton’s actions as just being part of that noble struggle to see ourselves and work on ourselves.
Ironically, there’s some truth to that. Because a lot of the “effort” and “struggle” of being in the fof was learning to “remember ourselves,” to remember that part of “ourselves” that was lost and forgotten, and gradually became more lost and more forgotten, as we remained in the fof.
_______
I appreciate your post. This exactly what holds people in FOF. The believe that they need support for their struggle and effort. I talked to a student recently and he said that even though he always knew about RB’s life style it does not bother him, he still can evolve in the school and he needs it. He could not make efforts on his own.
I will appreciate any comments on that.
Tina made the point that the blog has helped her and that it is read by at least some members, may be more than we think. That is one more reason to stay focussed and stray from internecine battles.
One aspect of the blog that helps me most is the elements it provides to solidify my (recent) decision to leave the FOF, to digest what is common in our past experience thereby identifying those areas of vulnerability in myself, and reconcile myself with… myself. I can now focus on what the rest of my life has to offer (if not assuredly time, lots of everything else).
Everyday, I look forward to coming here, reading the few posts, laugh, get irritated and wonder.
Yes indeed, I like this new look!! Thanks Shiek.
“I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.”
Roberto Rossellini
Sheikh;
The blue may be a bit dreamy and lengthen some of the posts even more… I like the picture at the top (is this the coast of England?). The number of accumulated posts is no longer there and I found that information practical (before I scrolled down), although not critical.
Thank you.
Still Lurking.
thank you sheik
wingsspread,
So true! I find it interesting that I left that one out, because I’m still un-learning what I learned in the fof. Trusting our intuition is huge. We can save a lot of time and heartache if we allow it to help us.
So it’s not surprising that, in the fof, we’ve been taught not to trust that part of ourselves, and even to fear it. It’s a very simple “switch”: Cult gurus such as Robert Burton deceive us by suggesting we deceive ourselves.
And if we buy into that, it allows everything else to happen.
We’re taught not to listen to our gut feelings. We’re taught that our intuition is the enemy. It’s the lower self, the king of clubs, feminine dominance, the many ‘I’s, or the mechanical parts of centers. Trusting in our intuition, we’re told, is weak and mechanical. Trusting in others is noble and wise. It’s either one or the other. And it’s this black-and-white thinking that leads us to a false dichotomy. Either you trust me, or you trust you. Don’t be that foolish guy who trusts himself.
Well, partly what lures us into this world is the following… Sometimes it actually is noble and wise to trust in others and to follow their lead, and to listen to them — up to a certain point.
But there’s no wisdom in trusting others when our gut feelings tell us to run very far in the other direction, and as fast as we can.
The blog posts are not numbered so it is more difficult to refer to a prior post. And, previously the post number was a link that aided in specifically finding a particular post. At least that is the way I am getting this new page format.
Thanks for you continued support and help, Sheik.
So, I changed the template again, this one has numbered comments but the background colour is difficult and the font is still too small. Will see what I can do.
What do you think about the top picture? I am not too sure about it, if there is anything more FoF specific, better yet, FoF discussion specific that we could put there then please inform me.
8 Somebody
“He could not make efforts on his own.”
Gee, I wonder who keeps pounding that idea into their heads?
Count me in.
Sheik – I don’t know why, but my brain finds it irritating that the comments are now not centered on the page – I keep feeling the need to shift over to the right to read. Also, along with the small font, the color is bit faint. But, thanks very much for running this thing!
Dear Sheik,
thank you for the change of looks here. One thing could be perhaps improved is the column where the posts are shown, it seems a bit narrow and the space on both sides is way big (left side especially).
Not that this is very important, and I am sure I’ll get used to it, plus I have reading glasses!
PS: last night I dreamed you changed your avatar in a shamanic looking like mask.
Maybe I should choose a new one for myself…
Good work Sheik.
Signing in, signing up.
I like the new look. The only thing I’d change is to restore the response numbers. This may already be among the changes you mentioned.
As always, thank you for your work on this.
Sheik, were you aware that the previous visual was a spot-on image of one of the most beautiful places on the property at Apollo/Isis/Apollo? The pond by the Town Hall/Prytaneion? Curious. And, yes, thanks for everything.
For anyone wishing to write a letter in support of the petition:
Susan Zannos
2520 Madera Circle, #106
Port Hueneme, CA 93041
(805) 984-7975
zannoss at yahoo.com
Totaly refreshed!
Test Avatar and Thanks to the Sheik!
Nice work Sheik – thank you for the efforts – feels fresh
“He could not make efforts on his own.”
As Bruce points out, this is standard-issue FOF programming, and its also common to any cult. Granted, it was not invented by RB out of whole cloth–he just found it in Ouspensky and then used it as a key support for his cult.
But neither Gurdjieff nor Ouspensky ever said a person can never make efforts on his own, regardless of how long he’s been working; like much of what they said in their books, the concept was directed at people beginning their work. Obviously, Ouspensky believed he could work on his own after a certain point. And obviously, so did Gurdjieff. Not every teacher will hand you a diploma and announce you’re ready to leave.
And what does “on one’s own” really mean? In the FOF it means “without the gods,” which reduces to “without making teaching payments.” Let’s face it–the drivel Burton offers now as “teaching” is of no practical value. The idea that if we stop giving money to the FOF, or stop hanging around with other people who do, we will find ourselves sapped of all ability to work is imagination based on fear, encouraged by people who fear the loss of members. People everywhere are constantly surrounded by situations that support a desire to work–I haven’t been able to escape from them even if I try. What the FOF offers is an opportunity to pay for the right to tell oneself one is working, whether or not one really is.
Those who haven’t left the FOF are in no position to assess their ability to work without it. Also, I’m amazed at the number of people in the FOF who still imagine it’s the One and Only Way. Setting aside whether it’s any sort of a way, there are so many organized groups that teach and actually assist members to practice the same basic principles (or at least the principles that are of value) that to suppose the FOF is unique, or even unusual, in any way that really matters displays a profound ignorance of what’s available. This may not have been true in Gurdjieff’s day, at least in the West, or even in 1970 when Burton was looking for a way to move out of his mommy’s house or his van (I forget which it was at that point), but these days anyone who wants to practice “being present” or anything else has a great deal to choose from.
Of course, then there’s the question of whether it’s even possible to work in the FOF. Many members tell themselves they don’t mind the “form of the school,” and that it’s either a “third force” or irrelevant. Membership inevitably erodes a person’s conscience and ability to see the truth, because it requires the person to ignore things that no mature person can, or should, ignore. Only after the person leaves does he realize how the “efforts” he was making were actually efforts to avoid making real, productive efforts.
On my computer I can increase the font size by pressing the command key ( i think that’s what it’s called, on my MacBook it’s the one with the apple on it) and then the key that has the plus sign and the equal sign on it (next to the delete key).
Sheik, thank you indeed. Yes, the fonts are small and the range of page seems to go only about less than half of the screen which will make the posts look even longer. If anything can be done to that it would be much appreciated, if not, it is still much appreciated. Centering may also be welcome.
Thanks again.
Oh and the picture at the top, the other one was so much more beautiful it consistently surprised me with your good taste!
(8 somebody)
I was in the FOF for 11 years, all the while learning and honing my precious metal craft, which really is in my Essence, since I come from Celtic roots on both sides of my family. My fault in the FOF was never making enough money for donations and eventually ending up $32,000 in debt to various factions, so I was really an outsider, not making ‘permanent’ friends in the FOF and being forced to work outrageous hours even to make whatever money I could. I liked what you wrote. We have what we always had – OURSELVES – and that comes with us when we have left the FOF.
(Esoteric Sheik – nice ‘breezy’ format!)
Hello Sheik ~
Thank you for everything…
Did you invite us to critique the new venue?
Yes, I agree with Kid, the type is small and the long sentences is a bit weirdy; I liked it centered or at least the format size
of a regular book’s page… Maybe its just me but I feel like
hitting the return shift lever on my head as my eye’s follow reading way over there.
(?)
Here’s a repost as a test:
Anna and All,
It is not M and D. A rose by any other name would be. . . S and M, as in sadistic and masochistic. This process of initiation introduces a person into the criminal enterprise that is the Fellowship of Friends as has been designed by Robert Burton and his pain body. It is one where, once initiated to that absurd world, there is no escape (or, you would be insane to want to escape) – much in the same manner of a black hole where there is immense gravity so that light cannot even escape. It ushers one into a parallel universe where most values are the opposite of the world that most people live in – the Theatre of the Absurd. It is truly macabre. Once you have become accustomed to accept the absurd, then anything is possible. It is not about becoming conscious or awakening. It is about killing conscience and destroying the soul. Once again, beware the event horizon; the boundary of the black hole where matter (including light), as you may know it, completely disappears from the known universe. On the other hand, you could get swallowed by a worm hole and reappear at some ghastly remote place in the known universe. I think that latter situation could be called a deep throat experience.
Join FOF Now!
The slow but expensive surefire Way of Enlightenment.
To Our Dear Friends Everywhere,
This year, the wind is sweeping away old i’s.
Can you feel it?
A gentle breeze is bringing fresh ideas and sweet inspirations.
Breathe deeply. Again. And yet again.
Let go of imagination.
Behold!
There is friendship and Love in the air.
The doors of Apollo are open wide.
The wind is whispering to you…listen.
Come to the heart of the School.
Come to where the Teacher awaits you.
This July, Journey Forth.
Journey Forth to your Apollo.
Come in presence,
Be welcomed with Love.
Anne, Helaine, Mary, Matthias, Richard, & Salvatore
Your 2008 Journey Forth Team
“Journey forth to YOUR apollo”. Ok! Will do.
This one espepcially gives me creeps:
“Come to the heart of the School.
Come to where the Teacher awaits you.”
RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! RUN!!!
Somebody says:
This one especially gives me creeps:
“Come to the heart of the School.
Come to where the Teacher awaits you.”
RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! RUN!!!
It creeps me out to!
SELLING SNAKE OIL
Come to the heart of the school, gives us your money.
your time and energy, your body ( boys only)
and we will putt a spell on you, you think you are in heaven,
smiling gentle people, beautiful impressions, and a promise of evolution.
We top it off with a teaching straight from C Influence.
We make sure you swallow it whole.
Then, we’ll take the money and run.
Well, RB and the boys will run. Travel to exotic destinations
where they will linger in luxury while laughing all the way to the bank.
Regarding post #22;
“To Our Dear Friends Everywhere,
This year, the wind is sweeping away old i’s.
Can you feel it?”
Well the answer is NO, I don’t feel the wind sweeping away old I’s. This is typical of how things were worded in the FOF cult.
“Be welcomed with Love,” and “To Our Dear Friends Everywhere.”
That’s interesting. “Everywhere” suggests a very large group of people. Is there a change of policy that I’m unaware of? And former members are now welcome there? (Imagine THAT meeting.)
Anyway, here’s something very basic and somewhat mind-blowing about the entire experience called the Fellowship of Friends.
It’s very simple…
You leave, and you are no longer my friend.
Speaking of intuition, if you didn’t know one other single detail about this cult, and never read a single word in this blog and never talked to one former member, that would be enough to tell you everything.
I agree with the critique, this one won’t do either but we’ll get there eventually. There must be a perfect template!
Zannos: How very odd, I didn’t choose the picture myself, it came with the template (which I chose). I loved it too, I might go back to it if this is the case.
Veramente: That’s very interesting, new looks all around?
RE: 38. steve lang
How does the wording really make a difference?
Are saying do use words like the I’s?
So, this is the cleanest and easiest to use template that I could find, it has numbered posts and the comments section is more or less in the center.
I’ll see what I can do about the font size and width of the comments section, no promises.
Most of you are already here now, any newly moderated comments will be reported.
Re font size: I went to Page and Zoom and chose 125% and get a size now of about 12 pt. Choosing large fonts under text size got a HUGE type size. I’m running IE on Vista – pretty sure you can set viewing font size in xp also.
Uno – I liked your description of wanting to press the carriage return way over there on the right…..odd feeling, wasn’t it?
43. Higher Zenter: “RE: 38. How does the wording really make a difference? Are saying do use words like the I’s?”
Yes, words do make a difference. See this old post from The Original Blog:
A poster who called himself “George Orwell” wrote the following:
“…But please, all of you, read, learn, and inwardly digest my essay, ‘Politics and the English Language.’ Believe me, your disease is well advanced. You have lost the ability to grapple with a simple fact. Some of you can communicate only in quotations, and some of you can no longer think at all.
“P.S. From my [Orwell’s] essay…
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Anyone know what the Journey Forth business is about?
Somebody,
You asked a question on sexuality some time ago relating to it not being defined enough in males that accept Robert although they consider themselves heterosexuals.This is an area of exploration for all of us but here are my first two cents on the subject.
I would call this, our thirty fourth page, the genitals and not the annals of the Fellowship of Friends. I never liked annals too much although that is not a phase that I have thoroughly overcome!
So here are some tapes and some verifications. Most of the tapes have been taken from W. Reich but hopefully I can speak from the verifications more than from the tapes.
It seems that most humansexuality develops through oral, anal and genital porcesses and each phase has its own characteristics. A “healthy” adult sexuality would be considered mostly a genital sexuality in which orgasms, or the ability to let go of one’s mind and allow for the body to flow as one in rhythmic contractions of mutual surrender for both participants, is a very rare occurrence at least in our time. This “contractions” or “orgasm” is characterized by INVOLUNTARY rhythmic movements of the whole body, meaning one does not move at will but lets go of the will and mind and the body, together with the other person’s body, redeems each other into their own rhythmic freedom, experiencing a cosmic universal integration. I have personally only experienced this once in my life with a male partner, but it was worth a lifetime.
Since I am very close to what could be considered a bisexual human being I would like to explore your question together so that we simply start looking into such a beautiful subject that was never addressed in the Fellowship of Friends or Robert Burton’s personal rape factory, as Whalerider calls it. (I would also settle for our most expensive “Brothel” or Robert`s beehive brothel!)
I do not wish to make these ones long and have little time now so I’ll go gently but I would like to introduce the idea that our different centres are like cooking pots in which different things are cooked throughout their history and the sex centre is the pressure cooker! I personally very much doubt that we are born homosexuals, no matter how gay I still am. Another way to look at it would be like a watch’s circles only that they expand and contract and certain contractions of the emotional, instinctive and intellectual centres, conditioned by our life’s experiences result in a more homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual inclination. I do not think these are fixed.
Have to go.
Love to you all.
Hi Sheik,
The blue background color is pretty, and the same one I’m using on the old pool house! But I find that the print is quite small, and the page needs resizing to extend across the page for us old folks with old eyes! Both items are on your check list…
About the top photo. Congratulations! This really does look a lot like RB standing off in the sunset at “The Farm”, or whatever name the property currently uses… and it’s a bit much for me. A little PTSD impression! Tee Hee! I’d rather see a picture that brings a feeling of joy and a positive future topping each discussion. Although, one could argue, “Sunset for RB” is quite a happy prospect, the picture is rather a dismal shadow of memory for some reading this wonderful blog…
Thank you for all of your hard work for us ! PS I love the – say it! !!!Warmly, AR
Hey Higher Zenter-
The “wording” I was referring to was; “Can you feel it?” This is the wording I found typical of the group-think that FOF members tried to perpetuate. The idea that the entire “student body” (1700 individuals) could share an emotional experience simultaneously I find to be contrary to common sense (preposterous). I find it closely related to the idea that was introduced to me soon after joining the FOF in 1995- you must give up your will to the teacher’s (will). In other words, forget what you think or what you want to do. It’s all about what Robert Burton wants you to think and wants you to do.
I’ve said it before, many times at the Sunday morning gatherings Robert would declare what state we were all feeling as a whole, he would direct us to believe we all had a common understanding of the “teaching” that he was putting forth, when in reality there were many unanswered questions, questions that weren’t even allowed because it would show a lack of unity in this group of people that thrives on an imagined idea of a common collective higher experience.
How do I get a picture in the little box on the side? Computer people? I also can ask the “kids”.. I’m glad so many are alive and well, since worries about the “trails end”…and a “natural demise” of the Blog …No Worries… “We” out here sometimes only have time to read, every few days for now, and trust you “regular writers” carry our common ideas into print, share memories, and try help to others find their way OUT. Often, I find someone else has already printed my thoughts on an issue. No, this Blog is not winding down, Thanks to You ! Amanda
Good grief! Would someone help me out with a reality check here?
Am I going around the bend or does the present visual look like it’s taken from behind Carl Werner’s stature on the winery roof at sunset?
Am I hallucinating these similarities between images on the blog and actual vistas on the property? For that matter, is it possible to “hallucinate” a similarity?
Message 51 zannos
Using Robert Burton think, since the silhouette looks like Burton, and it has the name Robert Burton next to it, and since the sun is emerging from the master’s pants, and since no finger are present, then yes it’s a picture of the property.
Fellowship of Friends idea of working on one self has a lot to do with the appearances of things and people. For instance, working on one’s self means that you have to wear a tie and jacket, a suit, a tuxedo, or other dressed-up attire, at the appropriate occasion, whether you like it or not; if you are male. For females, it means wearing a dress, almost all of the time, and evening attire or ball gowns, at the appropriate occasion, whether you like it or not.
Now that is certainly an aspect of refinement; which might be good and useful some of the time, especially in the rough rural environment that is Oregon House. But it does not necessarily indicate that a person is ‘working on themselves.’
And, if you do not comply, Robert Burton, himself, may reprimand you (often through an intermediary) with punishments possibly as severe as expulsion from the cult, monetary fine, or disciplinary action that deprives a member from full participation in the school (read: social and/or religious practice).
Possibly, of course, if you promise to have sex with Robert Burton, against your desires or not, – or make a ‘special donation’ by attending a high priced event -, a tuxedo will be found for you to wear, if you do not have one.
So, I ask you, does that indicate work on your self to the others that are reading this?
Dear Sheik,
I am sure you now have your ears full about comments on the blog new looks. I believe you are still trying to change the font size, but I have a further comment on the picture/view on top of the page, it reminds me too much of the Fellowship of Friends property from a higher ground. The guy standing on the right looks to me like a Robert Burton shadow image… could be my phobia….other bloggers may give some feedback.
Thank you for all you do! : )
50 Zannos
Susan , am I hallucinating as well? I am seeing an RB shape with that arm bent in a kind of contemplation/dominance look…although not as tall, but his legs are cut off.
No, the picture is definitely the statue of Karl Werner at the winery, looking at the sun setting on the FOF property.
Hello folks. I don’t know what image(s) you are talking about. I don’t get any images on this page as far as a theme goes. I am getting the avatars. Then there is this
happy face that appears at the center of the very bottom of the page:
If the next picture is of two guys blowing each other in the Galleria I’m outa here!
47, 49, 52 and 54 are newly moderated.
It’s not a picture of Robert Burton, it’s a picture that was sent to me by one of you. I am astounded by the strong reactions (are you not?), but hey, you don’t like it, let’s put something else there.
But think about it, it’s only a picture, such strong reactions. This is a discussion about the Fellowship of Friends, Apollo and Robert Burton, right? Remember the numerous stories about his private life, the intricate details of what happened to many people there? And now that you see a picture that is vaguely linked to the Fellowship of Friends? Wow.
And even if it was Robert Burton (which it isn’t), do you think that when talking about the Second World War, we should delete all pictures of Adolf Hitler?
Is the butterfly going to upset anyone?
In the near future I hope to find a picture that has some message to tell, either in relation to the discussion, or to the FoF in general, hopefully it will come to that soon.
Sheik,
I liked the coastal village picture and the butterfly one. If the last one was of the Wine Master or a maybe Robert Burton, perhaps you could add flames flickering around it.
Thanks for the photo change, Sheik, love the butterfly…! Yep, I guess a lot of folks get a creepy feeling from the “Shadow” guy. I’m not surprised at all…
C us here:
OR
Never without you.
Love,
A Hundred Thousand Angels
.
.
.
the forest is beautiful, thank you Sheik!
I am sure we can find an evocative image that is not also “loaded.” But I agree, it’s amazing just how “loaded” an image can be.
“I talked to a student recently and he said that even though he always knew about RB’s life style it does not bother him, he still can evolve in the school and he needs it. He could not make efforts on his own.”
____________________________
Hello Somebody ~
Thank you for the invitation: since being back in California I have visited with many students (current F.O.F.) and can say that what you’re saying is indeed the case, in one way or another, for everyone in the F.O.F. today, i.e., ‘not able to make efforts alone’, though, either way, Time and physical facts will eventually force Conscience, Will and Presence together into some sort of synthesis: I am trying to build mine rather than be built willy-nilly by ‘it’ Itself, because, no matter, even if you do not ‘own’ a ‘hammer and bag of nails’, there’s a workshop going on under your soul’s chin that’s building it for you, with and without you…
To me, Time is not on anyone’s side, and only seems so because we’re often dwelling (spirit-based) in the past looking at a present set of circumstances (happening for or to someone else usually) as something (an emotional context) we want to take back with us in a Time Machine so to fix a supposed broken wing… Some predators play dead so to attract their meals…
It’s not always the house that’s ‘broken’, it’s the hammer with no head and the ‘chosen bag of nails’, that keep getting stuck in the wooden handle hammering, because they’re without heads too.
Many students do not realize that this ‘ability’ to not do by themselves is only in context to a ‘school’ that cannot graduate them or itself away from the ego-identity of Struggling and Not Trusting the One and Only Moment’s Results…
I think we’ll all admit that there’s a huge Black Sea between what we feel we ought to do and what we go ahead and do anyway… In that in between space is all sorts of wild places where the soul goes to experience, experiment and be experimented upon so to be born into god’s bloodstream and graduate from being a flea on a tick.
It’s not a food-chain, it’s a circular, more like a shackle with no beginning and no end: with chains you can either go from its start or finish and work on either to free yourself, though with such places as the (F.O.F. within), eventual severance, IMO, is the only way to get beyond the habit of ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ about those very selective painful thoughts, in order to maintain distrust with the present moment, which is never good enough for the Black Sea…
Every day something within us moves in the direction of relief from something that really does not need relieving…
Your quoting of the student reminds me of conversations with myself and others concerning what messages our Conscience gives and what we do in order to ‘wait till tomorrow’. The Sufi were pretty adamant concerning the sense that there is no ‘next day’, to me, this is a sign of a conscious teaching habit being felt and pressed to integrate into the inner god’s jungle; a sort of machete.
These conversations would normally begin and end with deep exhaling, we might as well have been smoking cigarettes during these sessions; breathing changes as Painbody’s exchange ‘psychic fluids’, while the depression begins (a few sips and when no one is looking, ‘gulps’ of red wine: “Should I open another bottle?”) to set the stage for very improbable solving in the moment of self loathing juxtapositions between what was not gotten yesterday and what we feel that we won’t entirely be able to do or get tomorrow: while all along both these thinking symptoms derive from the single situation of floating in the Black Sea, not being able to drink the water or fish in it either…
This ‘floating’ will eventually leech out from our souls the story we’re in and there we’ll be, standing in the center of a meteorite pit looking up at the new walls that will someday be known as the shores of the ‘Black Sea’… After all, you’re the meteorite whose incarnation caused the impact’s circumstance in the first place.
There’s a mountain somewhere near the Black Sea: with a wheelbarrow equipped with a tubeless tire and an all titanium shovel and some good techno music, you should be able to fill up that crater in no less than Right Now.
___________________
L.t.y.a.
Sheik, What did the person who is one of us who sent you the photo say the photo was? I think the fact that it came from one of us would definitely increase the chances of it being the statue of Karl at the winery.
65 and 67 are newly moderated.
Xeena: Hi Sheik,
This picture is a silhouette of Karl Werner, one of the first FOF members/affiliates who was a wine professional and instrumental in the Fellowship developing a vineyard. The statue is located outside the Winery building on the Fellowship property, and would be a familiar sight to the many who either lived at Oregon House, worked on the property full-time for much below minimum wage, or who pilgrimaged every year from around the world to be part of the “harvest” experience. I also like the symbolism of the man who helped begin it all now looking at the sun setting on the whole thing.
The picture has a clean and simple design that I think would fit well for the top of the page. Please let me know if you decide to use it and feel there is any way it can be improved.
I liked the picture, it was ominous and ‘loaded’ (perhaps there is some past experience or understanding which changed the effect of the picture on all of you ex-FoFers), which is exactly how these topics make me feel. Cults are a very ominous and ‘loaded’ topic, the things we have been talking about are not from a fairytale.
I can’t help but ask – How did that picture make you feel? None of you expressed the reason for your immediate and very strong reaction, it was just the emotion, pure and unmasked. It was a simple case of ‘no!’, in Yesri’s case even a threat (don’t do this to me or I’ll leave). It was very peculiar.
Is there something I should know which makes the picture unacceptable?
Why are we all arguing about the ‘form’ of the visuals on this blog-site? Surely, the whole point is to contribute to the healing and betterment of life of those who have left the FOF and wish to rebuild their sense of Identity (in the correct sense of the word, as Whitman used it).
70 Sheik
…I can’t help but ask – How did that picture make you feel? None of you expressed the reason for your immediate and very strong reaction, it was just the emotion, pure and unmasked. It was a simple case of ‘no!’, in Yesri’s case even a threat (don’t do this to me or I’ll leave). It was very peculiar.
Is there something I should know which makes the picture unacceptable?
————————————————
I guess when I log on I’d rather not see an image reminding me so much of a place where I put a lot of effort into it, it’s almost like a love-hate relationship. I was in love once upon a time, and now I despise the object of my love.
Sour grapes.
Sheik, I think many viewers were were just spooked out a bit because it appeared that you just happened to choose a picture that looked like something very familiar to us. If you had just come out and said what it was in the beginning then I think we would have felt better about it.
71. nigel
Why are we all arguing about the ‘form’ of the visuals on this blog-site?
——————–
I thought the Sheik asked our opinion on the new design and now he is asking why are some of us repelled by a picture when in fact in this blog we shared so many repelling and true facts about Robert Burton and the Fellowship of Friends.
A picture must have a faster impact somehow, it’s like seeing the face of your abuser and all the murky feelings coming back. At least for me. (another explanation for you Sheik)
But I coul also not notice it in a matter of time, and it is not an issue now.
The forest is nice.
I will explain my response. I talked with someone who mentioned that the picture from the previous pages looked similar to a landscape around the cult. I said it looked to me like it was from England. They then told me the current picture was taken from behind a statue of Karl Werner looking out at a sunset over the cult and I told her she was crazy and hallucinating. Then I went to the site and sho nuff…
Here come the ‘shadow memes’….
This whole blog project is coordinated by some mysterious ‘Higher Power’
The ‘Sheik’ is a plant and this is all some ploy by the FOF to expose how bitter ex-cult members are.
Then came one final absurd, preposterous, totally beyond belief, unimaginably brilliant and transcendant thought-
Somebody sent the ‘Sheik’ a picture from behind the Karl Werner statue and the other picture kind of looked like a pond near the cult.
COWABUNGA!!!!
This lucid realization created a conscious shock releasing millions and millions (probably gazillions) of teanny tiny Hydrogen 12s into my machine making me chuckle so I made a funny.
But if my exalted, Divine state is still present and not a merely dinn-like shadow dream of previous magnificence, I perceive it to be received not as intended.
A friend came over for a visit recently who just retuned from a solo trip to Thailand and Cambodia. He was never a part of the FOF, I met him in college after I left. He’s an excellent photographer and videographer. The pictures he took of the temples in and around Angkor Watt were phenomenal. He’s not a very attractive fellow; he’s balding and from time to time he suffers from really bad acne. He’s not married, but lives with his girlfriend and they have one child together with another on the way. At one point to put himself through college my friend ran the lighting booth at a local strip club.
Now some might describe him as a sex tourist. Paid sex is inexpensive and more socially accepted in that part of the world, and my friend claimed that during his three week trip, he’d had sex with about a dozen different women. He’d taken pictures of some of the girls he’d been with fully clothed because Thai women, even prostitutes, are very modest. The only picture he’d taken of a nude woman was of one of the women who had returned with him to his hotel room, taken her clothes off and promptly fell asleep. Most of the girls work very long hours, sometimes in twelve hour shifts he said! Needless to say, it wasn’t a very flattering or enticing pose, and I can honestly say it didn’t arouse me at all. In fact, the photo made me somewhat sad.
Having a great interest in the human condition myself, I gently inquired about his emotional experiences with so many women, taking great care to be non-judgmental or put him on the defensive. He said it was his feeling that often men go to prostitutes even in foreign countries seeking love, only to return home feeling disappointed and empty. I could feel that indirectly he was talking about himself.
Finally he admitted to me that “one can always pay for sex, but one cannot pay for great sex.”
Sure, Robert Burton gave the best blowjobs I have ever experienced to this day. But looking back on my experience twenty some years later I can say this, it was definitely not great sex. I have to admit, I am not gay, either. But all my buffers and excuses about how I might have benefited from my experiences being close to Robert dissolved after reading on this blog how depraved he has become.
At one point after he finished “rimming” me and then kissed me with his fecal coated lips, I felt disgusted, abused, and deeply ashamed. Although it was never spoken about among others living with him like myself, I could tell that I was not the only one servicing Robert. I left the FOF not too long afterward to be on my own, without the need to seek a new guru.
Yes, he paid me for my service with trips to Europe and LA to view great art, gifts like an antique book (which I sold) and a gold watch (which later fell apart), and at one point $1500 in cash (paid indirectly to me by another follower as a “gift from Robert”). In a sense I had to pay him, too, in teaching payments and hard labor to be a part of the FOF. In retrospect, this added insult to injury.
I am still paying for Robert’s ‘teaching’ in the shame that I carry about prostituting my body, allowing myself to be subtly manipulated into his bedroom in the middle of the night, and in fact, by being raped by him, both physically and spiritually.
These wounds take a long time to heal and have been buried for good reason: self-preservation of my mental state. The same is true of people who survived the horrible death camps during WW II. Sometimes survivors never speak about what happened to them for the rest of their days in order to rebuild their lives and remain stable. That process takes hard work and many years, and is not a reflection of a person’s level of being or lack of social responsibility. It is simply how the mind works to naturally protect itself from deep pain.
In order to help others heal, one must first heal ones self, no matter how long it takes.
So anyone who attempts to use guilt to manipulate me into feeling responsible for Robert’s crimes or for their own ignorance after I left the FOF I say this: Fuck you and kiss my ass. You don’t understand. If you think for one second that I am the kind of person who would laugh at someone in a wheelchair…you may have met me, but you don’t know me.
I admit: I am sensitive (and maybe overly so) to any hint of being made to feel guilty about taking care of myself first and rebuilding my life over these many years before taking care of others. That kind of guilt tripping only causes more pain and suffering and is on par with suggesting that if a person is raped, it is their own fault. It’s Robert’s pimps and ‘fully informed’ supporters who lack conscience.
I didn’t say anything then, I am now, to the best of my ability.
Thanks Sheik, for your work keeping this going. BTW, how does a person get a link back to blog history or even back to the previous page?
yesri 60 — you so funny…
re: 75 — “the shadow knows…”
“For example, deep within the idea of perfectionism, so well known in the complex of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I found historically the image of shepherding, grounded in Christianity’s notion of the good shepherd commandment. I searched the background context of this imaginal notion, and I discovered Greek mythic images of monstrous and rapacious shepherds, e.g., Polyphemos. Following upon the death of the pastoral tradition in literature and art, which carried this image from Hellenistic times to the 16th and 17th centuries, I found in the modern poetry of, say, Robinson Jeffers, a critique of the image and its concomitant perfectionism. As this California poet put it in a letter to a friend, the savior/shepherd complex is “the most insidious and seductive syndrome to attack people of good will” (Alberts, 1933, pp. 56–57). Kierkegaard (1975), the Christian, said: “Christendom is the invention of Satan,” calculated to make human beings unhappy (p. 494). And G. K. Chesterton (1909), another Christian, observed: “When a religious scheme is shattered [as Christianity was in his view shattered during the Reformation], it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad” (p. 1). Nietzsche (1974) once wrote: “After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave—a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of his people, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. . . . We still have to vanquish his shadow” (p. 108). “Looking for what went wrong is often looking in the wrong place” (p. 23). Looking at the shadow of what went “right” may be a more important work psychologically. As Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig (1995) put it, the psychological work involves not only the good of evil, but also the evil of good (Vom guten des Bösenis the title of his book translated as From the Wrong Side). Or as Rainer Maria Rilke (1942) wrote: Von den Göttern ein Schatten fällt, “a shadow falls from the gods” (pp. 28–29).” Excerpts from Holy and Not So Holy Ghosts! david miller
About the impact of visuals: Veramente nailed it with the analogy of strong emotions felt toward the object of a love affair gone wrong, at least if you increase the voltage exponentially. Cults work, obviously, because they deeply involve the emotions. We hardly stayed in the Fellowship for most of our adult (putatively) lives on the basis of keen intellectual development. And the Fellowship is a cult that uses visual impressions with astonishingly effective results. Ergo, a familiar visual can slam us back into the emotional state that was the motivating force behind the entire experience. Talk about cognitive dissonance…
And I thought Yesri was already “outa here,” or was that somebody else’s fond farewell?
So that was a photo at the blog header of the mini-Karl memorial statue in Oregon House.
Here’s my 2¢:
The blog is better without any visuals directly linked to the FOF property or reminders of someone like Karl W.
Karl lived like a little feudal lord during his years at Oregon House and was never very kind to me, partly because I was not one of his vineyard/winery serfs. I guess an image of his tiny bronze monument gave me a similar emotion that a resident of the former Soviet empire might have upon seeing an image of a heroic statue of Josef Stalin.
I will give Karl some credit. He was not shy about expressing his thoughts & opinions to Burton and was not an ass-kisser. I guess a bottle of vodka a day will give one that type of fortitude.
The design and typography of the new blog looks great. Thanks for all the effort, Sheik.
ton 76
Yeah, that’s what I meant to say.
Zannos
Now I’m inna here. Pass the grapes.
Hello Sheik ~
If you really want answers to your curiosity about that picture of Carl’s Hand on the Hip Archetype, then put it back up for a whole month and see what Willie-snaggles (crystal clear parasitic mites inhabiting the perfect hair-do of Conscience) come buzzing around your double screen mesh window inserts.
That hand on the hip thingy… Whew! What a Rooster our inner chickens weave.
My first first reaction to the reactions about the KW photo was pretty intense and ended something like “Get a McLife”, but I did not throw that Molotov cocktail at y’all. After gulping down a handful of darvons and buying some more fake Louis XIV furniture, I now feel better, (oh…am I channeling again…), so I will just say some reactions seemed a bit extreme. The picture of the forest is nice, but what has it to do with the topic at hand? Are we really so shell-shocked that a photo of a statue of someone that died 20 years ago and of whom most of you never even met causes alarm? The photo was quite appropriate. A photo of the galleria entrance ceiling showing Mr. Burton’s elevated taste in art would be appropriate also. Two guys blowing Bobby might be over the top, though, I agree with Yesri there.
Transcript of a phone conversation after leaving:
“Robert sends his love, and asks that you remember your verifications. Robert also reminds you that students who leave the school fall to the back of the line.”
[short pause]
“Uh, you do know, don’t you, that no line ever existed? And if a line did exist, I certainly wouldn’t stand in it. It’s a deception — it’s a lie. Anyway, food for thought. I have to go.”
[another short pause]
“Did you hear the ‘uh’?”
77/zannos
Bingo.
80/Rear View Mirror
Classic.
Somebody 8 “I talked to a student recently and he said that even though he always knew about RB’s life style it does not bother him, he still can evolve in the school and he needs it. He could not make efforts on his own.”
Haven’t most of us been there? When students say they know about Robert’s lifestyle they mean they know he is gay and that is O.K. with them but what they don’t know and don’t want to know or think about is that he is in fact tremendously sick, not just gay and is using the Fellowship structure and everyone in it to guarantee an unconditional supply of males.
The idea that they can still “evolve” in the “Cult” and need it, is the expression of a personality that has become so dependent to the lifestyle that it is very afraid of facing the world outside of it. Many of these have managed to make a living, no matter how meager and are instinctively dependent. Others are wealthy and don’t need the Fellowship Cult economically but have become addicted to their role in it. It is no longer evolving what they care about, it is holding on to a community that values them what they do not wish to let go of. They do not want to let go of their imaginary picture.
While it is a perfectly legitimate longing in essence to belong to a community, having to hold on to a cult for fear of having become too naked to know what one is if one were to walk outside into the real world, is a painful condition and the most indoctrinated participants of the Fellowship of Friends, that is, those who are still holding on to it for dear life, are precisely those who radically severed their ties with “life” and have what they feel, “no where to go.” Haven’t most of us been there? There are those and also many young people who still think they can carry the dream to port but want to do it on vanity rather than common sense.
For those in such a condition who might still read the blog, recovering from the Fellowship of Friends is like a drug addict recovering from addiction. Each center has been programed in particular ways and allowing one’s self to experience them again through the light shining between one’s self and the world around one is like the Sun claiming it’s portion of Earth at dawn. There is much joy, beauty and gratitude in reclaiming one’s self and the tools we were given to experience our world, life, that is, the miraculous within it. Science has done more for the Fourth Way, than any Cult.
All we had in the Fellowship was pretense and being free of such pretense is magical. A pretense in which we sacrificed our centers so that our pockets could be ransacked without us complaining. Had we kept any common sense we would not have allowed it. It is not the pocket what hurts but the stupidity. It is difficult to trust one’s self after too much stupidity has run its course.
I was recently with a student who felt upset by my statement that we have been hurt, damaged. We have been violently damaged but we are like Rumi’s man who has gotten so used to eating mud that he goes mad when someone tries to keep him from it. I mean damaged in the sense that our centers have been reprogrammed for Robert’s particular interests and not one, not one single of those interests is about our evolution. On the contrary, the reprogramming into a life without conscience is a step backward in our evolution.
That we can make up for it because we now understand many aspects of work on one’s self, no matter how wrong it was, depends on how each one of us confronts his/her situation. This dialogue helps for sure, but trusting your self more than any body else, looking into your own self and letting it grow without desperately trying to fit into another cult or clan or group but allowing one’s aloneness to guide one, will allow each one of us to open his own beautiful road to each other and the world around us.
(I think I’ve made a mistake, this post might appear twice)
For me I had the same thought, his could be the winery with Karl Werner statue…that was all no positive or negative feelings. Just that.
Either picture is fine with me as I am here to quickly check in see what is going on. Some writings inspires me….
I feel connected to this blog. Through out the last year I have gained a lot from this blog. Now I am figuring out why Byron Katie does not respond with me. Something alarms me although I also feels that she has a lot to give. I am more in sharing at this point then following an “authorian”. She seems to like to be an authorian. Somebody I do not want to follow at this time in my life. Her 4 questions though are very valid and can work as a helpful tool.
Enjoy your day
Sheik,
Something funny is happening, is it not recognizing this particular computer? I move so often if it could just be open to tablut or ludoteka that would help.
Thanks.
wow Sheik! Thank you for the avatar squares motifs.
Some are even tribal looking…
Fun!
Hi Sheik,
The site is looking good, thank you for all your efforts man!
But the letters are to small, hard to read.
Thanks, all, for your explanations of reaction to ‘statue-visual’. Personally, I was neutral about it, but probably could not understand the logic behind using it. Perhaps, in a sense, it is the agitant for vigorous debate that we all should feed on in this blog-site….nigel.
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THE CONSTANT NEURAL DISQUIET
For as long as man has been sufficiently conscious to leave written notes, there are those who’ve been intrigued by activities of consciousness that were outside collective concerns. This interest has been labeled variously as magic, the occult, the mystical, the spiritual, the struggle-to-Awaken, the search-for-Enlightenment, or simply, The Knowledge. The bottom line is, some people have always sought to function in a manner not inherent; it still goes on today, but few of them ever pursue the matter deeply enough to get to the bottom of it. Instead they are satisfied to be students of magic, the occult, awakening and enlightenment, rather than understanding the reality behind such words. There is nothing wrong with this any more than there is anything wrong with preferring to listen to music as opposed to making music. But there is an obvious distinction between being a listener and being an artist, and no purpose is served by denying the difference. Likewise, if you really want to discover and then create your own nonstandard running of consciousness, you need to face the facts about your interest in this affair and not pretend to fool yourself, as is natural for routine consciousness.
To be conscious is to be dissatisfied; this constant neural disquiet is a survival technique: at the non-conscious level, everyone silently accepts this and gives it no particular note; but a few do make note of it–a few always have. There is a sequence of stages that underpins these peoples’ history in this matter: At first, they do not like the way life is; if they progress, they move to a stage of not liking themselves; should they move past that point, they reach a third stage where they dislike the way they think about life and themselves. Few venture beyond that third stage, but beyond that is where the whole thing begins.
Every ordinary sane person thinks that the world outside of them (or, outside of their mind, actually) is insane; this is neither true or not true–it is simply one of an infinite number of objectively meaningless concepts natural to consciousness. All you need do to get stuck in this stage is be alive. To a lesser degree, every ordinary sane person also thinks of him or herself as being short of satisfactory, but this notion is entertained in consciousness only for brief moments and under nonroutine conditions. A few sane nonordinary people find their attention regularly focused on their own consciousness, and think of its operations as ill-becoming them individually. Their overall thinking accords sufficiently with the human herd’s for them to function adequately therein, but in the privacy of their own head–they don’t like it. People at this stage are the ones who become seriously involved in organized activities devoted to discovering another way that consciousness can run. As befits the mind, the activity will have a particular method of achieving the goal, and the participant will become a student of the method. But to go from busy, monkey consciousness to dead-still, snake consciousness, you must move beyond the study of a method to the study of a goal.
The mind must have a map in hand to ever believe that it has started a journey toward the goal. But consciousness will quickly accept a periodic glancing at the map as actual travel. When you start, you cannot SEE the goal; all that you can see is the map–the method you have chosen to use as a vehicle TO the goal. This is how it works for everyone, but you must eventually recognize that no method, discipline, map or teaching is your goal; the reality of the other state of consciousness, and all ideas and talk about it, are two different things: so different, in fact, as to be beyond the widest definition of “different.” They are from two different realities.
One method is as good as another; if it initially seems good to you then it is good for you. You have to have somewhere to start, but the words and ideas that consciousness can entertain are never the same thing as the goal itself; they hide the goal; they walk around on it while talking about it so that you cannot see it; they excitedly point off in one direction or another where they say the goal lies, while it lies right under their feet.
There is no “way” to discover this other way in which your consciousness can operate. There is no right way, there is no wrong way. There IS no way–but you must use one.
You cannot think an “enlightened thought” until you think SOMEthing, but nothing you can think has any real significance regarding this goal. Anything you think about the goal is actually you thinking about a method or a map; you cannot think about the goal, there is nothing you can think about it; whenever you are thinking about the goal your thoughts are mulling about on top of it, hiding it from your view.
You can think that life is not right; you can think that you are not right; you can think that what you think about life and yourself is not right; but if you really want your consciousness to run in a way that affords you an entirely different way of thinking, what you need focus on is the neural floor in your head on which your thinking is taking place. Ignore what your thoughts think about life, you, or even themselves, and look, instead, beneath their feet: look at what they are standing on. There is that longed-for, other level of consciousness. It is ultimately just that simple. You just LOOK and there it is.
I grant you, it can seem to take a lifetime of convoluted efforts to ever get to the stage where it is that simple to see, but you may as well know now that ultimately–it is–just that simple and obvious.
link to current Disquiet
homepage
(84 Yesri Baba)
That was both beautiful and impelling to keep on working – with or without FORM i.e. in or out of the FOF and trusting one’s own and not imitated efforts. Please YB – keep on posting!………………Nigel.
76, 79, 82, 85, 86, 87 and 89 are newly moderated
Elena: It should be fine now.
When you take the final exhalation of the
fourth wordless breath, you are your own man
number eight.
Love, Robert
There can be something more ridiculous than this?
Princess Bobby be bad, but Board of Directors be badder.
Scorn, ridicule & shame upon these co-conspirator pimps & racketeers.
Shiek, will you make the realitive time of posts appear again? (e.g. 15 hrs ago) Also, post count in header is useful.
Join Non-Participants for Global Action now!
I’m an expert at mis-reading or misunderstanding ideas (thoughts).
But, it seems to me that I read in the Fourth Way reading material (Ouspensky, Collin, Gurdjieff, Nicoll, etal) that when one commits adultry spiritual matter mixes from the two partners. I cannot verify this and I’m not trying to imply anything.
But, the thought scared me enough that post Fellowship of Friends is a whole lot different than the past roaming night life.
So, maybe the picture of two receiving and giving “blow jobs” would be in essence of this blog’s intent. To expose what needs exposing?
Hello Whalerider ~
Thank you for your posting: it’s interesting to me that the same or similar posts that began the blog nearly a year ago to this day ‘began’ it again after the period of ‘notations’ by others ‘that it feels that the Blog’s winding down’-point: curious, yes?
Do you ever get the feeling that ‘visiting friends’ or people who you meet daily or that approach you first, ARE familiars, subtle teachers so long as you can maintain the subtleness while with them?
In some cultures it was customary to treat all strangers with respect (not superstitious worship) and care because it might be a god in disguise.
When I came back from Europe I went to get a deep tissue massage therapist: on the wall of the room where I was stationed, there were two dolphins painted sorta nearly intertwined, facing/swimming upwards, as though they were together heading for the surface of the water…
The depths are what they are, filled with nothing, yet the weight of everything: please come to the surface with me today and lets watch the sun exchange places with us as it sets… One of the precious things for me these days is the trying to be able to trust another with the exact amount of the same I have for myself; it’s tough, though worth it, eventually if you break enough mirrors Bad Luck just starts laughing and says, ‘Ok, ok, I get it: now let’s just stop this crazy shit… I think we’re up to seven million years of bad-luck-rain-checks and god’s secretary’s getting pissed; so let’s just get on with this quicksilver love-diving thing.’
I will dance for you tonight: for all the men whose Father’s secrets are laying dormant and slithering throughout their pelvis and navel.
Splash!
Correction ~
Sentence strangeness ~ Should be ‘I went to a deep tissue massage therapist’…
Nothing like a Freudian slip to get the blog started off right, again!
#86 Another Name. Yes, I too have had a similar experience with people I have read, seen, and experienced great connections with in that I’ve stayed awhile to digest what I needed to learn and then moved on. I truly believe this is the way it’s supposed to be. For me it’s really important to stay open and not shut down to the many possibilities life offers, once we leave the Fellowship. And now post Fellowship we get to choose to either stay and learn some more from someone or choose to move on. It’s our choice, as it should be. Well said. Thanks.
76. whalerider
“Sure, Robert Burton gave the best blowjobs I have ever experienced to this day.”
“At one point after he finished “rimming” me and then kissed me with his fecal coated lips, I felt disgusted, abused, and deeply ashamed.”
Do you ever stop to think that these bizarre admissions are not only distastefully inappropriate, but actually counter-productive? These uninhibited testimonials from a self-aggrandizing “victim-hero” actually make the skin crawl and rather than eliciting admiration for courageous honesty you portray yourself as someone out of touch with what any sane person would understand could be a deterrent to sexual serfdom in the FOF. You seem to take a certain satisfaction in revealing your own humiliation, which is repulsive. I doubt there is really much “healing” occurring in regard to what you experienced, these many sexually explicit posts on the subject do not seem healthy, but rather sick.
Here is another view of what happened, one closer to the reality:
Birds of a feather flop together.
If you ended up with a sociopath’s dinger up your bum and he didn’t beat you unconscious to get it there then it’s because you’re a sociopath too. I mean, this doesn’t happen to every second person that comes along because most people have the good sense to say no to the suggestion that they huff and puff in the company of a sociopath. Those that went for it and said yes took off their own pants and they submitted to all the exertions and secretions. In most cases they did this time and again. They did it until they were dismissed and only then did they turn sour on the activity. This is a sociopathic signature, as long as you were getting the attention of the overbearing sociopath you were just fine, but when he moved on to greener underpants only then did many if not most of these submissive types cry foul.
Anyone not a homosexual that submitted to Burton for “spiritual reasons” or any other reason is a sociopath. There is no other explanation. Psychologically healthy people that are not homosexual do not willingly submit to sodomy from the opposite sex under any circumstances, particularly when it is under the color of authority. Especially they do not do so from a particularly instinctively obnoxious character like Burton. Those with so little self-regard that they allowed themselves to be exploited in such an insidious manner are sociopathic in the sense that there is no emotional sense of self there, no conscience.
Is it possible to make the avatars a little larger? They seem to be smaller than they use to be.
From Unoanimo to Whalerider and etal,
“Do you ever get the feeling that ‘visiting friends’………ARE familiars?
Yes I do and it’s odd. All of mine ARE rogues or the children of rogues.
This thought might be completely wrong but here goes. One child speaking to another child said, “I told you, you would have fun over here”. A complete stranger child approached me and said, “can my friend and I camp over night here”. Another said, “I like your house, it’s neat”. I live in a shack soon to be tar-papered.
All of my visitors from year’s past including yesterday’s extreme alcoholic and meth head have said the same thing. “I like it over here, it feels so comfortable”.
It must something “esoteric” going on because it aint me. I cuss at them sometimes and they keep coming back like glutton’s for punishment.
I must amend. “It must (BE) something “esoteric” going on because it aint me”. And, maybe when I cuss at them there is no judgement?
Oh, the meth head fixed my weed-eater using the tubing of a ball point pen. He said it just came to him. And, that’s the way they are.
Sheik,
It’s still not taking them real time. This final version is looking very fresh. Thank you again.
I deeply understand that most of you don’t have the time or desire to read long posts and that is fine. Please don’t. I don’t know whether I will have the time or desire to share these things later in my life so I am happy to get them out of my system now. Better things I hope, will come later.
Hi Whalerider,
You really are funny. Although you don’t make me laugh!
Your post is beautiful, thank you. The wheel chair thingy was about Hardtruth, not Robert. The fact that anyone could have done anything to warn others twenty years ago is a fact. It didn’t happen, too bad, it is fortunately happening now. But I wouldn’t keep wipping myself about it if I were you, you might actually find someone to fuck you and kiss your ass but I can assure you that it won’t be me. You don’t have to avoid calling my name when you’re talking to me love! In that tone, even I can understand you!
About your friend’s story of looking for sex rather than making love to the woman he is actually with, it is the characteristic of the men of our time to fall into such a pattern with different degrees of variation. It is the pattern of authoritarian patriarchal society deeply ingrained in both male and female psychology after centuries of being practiced. Most of us cannot conceive of a different structure but in those regions where matriarchy is still alive the patterns are very different. I personally would not wish matriarchy or patriarchy and think a more balanced option is possible. Most of us still grew up with a family structure in which the father was above the mother although he hardly did anything for the family except bring some money in. Still that “superior authority” gets implanted and reinforced in the authority of teachers in schools and universities, then the military structure and finally the government. Authority is the one great quality of being that most human beings are denied of in the patriarchal structure of society. Everyone is supposed to be subservient of another in the family, institutions and society itself. “We are all beggars” was already in our system when Robert Burton started proffiting from it. He used beggars so that we would behave humbly but he really proffited from our being slaves: people without the slightest authority serving at his feet: “You don’t want to serve, you can leave.” I definitely agree with you that the Fellowship of Friends was a rape factory to you. Since my serving it was not sexual to Robert but financial, it was a beehive brothel to me. I payed for you to get raped. This is in fact why I am so outraged love, where do you think we are disagreeing if not in personaility?
Our mothers accepted being second hand citizens in most of our families, that is, they already accepted that the real power was in the father and even if she was not happy or felt thoroughly loved most of them accepted that in silence and taught their children to live with it in silence. This pattern is actually widely spread by women themselves but there is nothing natural about it as people like to think. Work on one’s self, consciousness, is finding solutions to these deeply ingrained patterns that condition our lives to misery.
The real horror we are in is that neither men nor women are fulfilling themselves with what we are practicing. In your post and your being, I perceive a longing for something right. I think we all know what it is and what it is not intuitively but getting our being to actually practice what we know is better is what we are having very little success with specially after being thrown into a Male Homosexual Mysoginist structure for quite a few years of our life. This mysoginist structure has done more damage than any authoritarian patriarchal structure managed to accomplish. In it, even men, young men (Robert’s females) are treated like whores and totally dismissed as they get older just like women are treated by extreme macho men. But there are students still thinking that they are not being damaged! They may be innocent but ignorance is what allows people to get damaged and do so much damage to others. An ignorance that doesn’t want to know better because “it is too intellectual” to read about it and they are ‘trying to be present” extinguishing their poor already brainwashed brain.
The real horror is that we are in the beginning of a process and still very young at it but if we can understand that, we might at least be able to look at it without judgement. We are all suffering; both men and women. The family has been destroyed, communities have been destroyed and we are living the life of very independent individuals in totally disconnected societies working for somebody else’s well being economically but equally fucked up lives as the rest of us. The Fellowship of Friends is the saddest pantomime of our times. People with money are no better off than people without money. If we deeply understand third line, then we understand the world we happen to live in and can call on the hero within each one of us i to transform it, that is, the individual willing to overcome his own conditioning and return to society with solutions.
I think I’ll leave this here for now. As a last thought Whalerider, please be clear that I have no animosity against you or anyone else on this blog. I would enjoy talking because I simply enjoy sharing but there is no need to feel attacked for I have not attacked you, rather defended myself from you. I have not been the first force in any one argument I have had here except those directed against the Fellowship of Friends Cult. I would also appreciate it if you stop attacking me with these issues, we are not close enough for that personality to be of any real importance and it takes away our possibility of sharing or affirming our desire to simply communicate. If that doesn’t fit you, if you don’t agree, then let’s keep what we have, hopefully I’ll learn to ignore it. Ludotekaatsucceed.net is my e-mail.
I hope you are all having lots of fun!
Friday, May 2, 2008
When you take the final exhalation of the fourth wordless breath, you are your own man number eight.
Love, Robert
re “John Hobbes” 98
Oh, for heaven’s sake – Greg’s back yet again. This is almost word for word what he wrote on the GF site recently.
98: In fact, just went back to verify, it is not “almost” word for word – it is completely word for word out of Greg’s forum “Universal Ignorance” May 1 on the GF site. Talk about sociopathy (not to mention ignorance).
98 John Hobbes,
No, I do not agree with you unless you wish to include everyone in the world in your list of sociopaths. Your attacks on Whalerider are way up there in an extremely conservative context. The fact that Robert’s blowjobs are good does not take any credit away from Whalerider’s accounts or the fact that Robert is raping these men with the help of all of the Fellowship of Friend’s Cult structure.
It is the whole structure what is sociopathic and in that context you are right, we were all sociopaths, we were all damaged, this is what I’ve been screaming here for a year but what is the point of attacking people individually because they are willing to admit that the blowjob itself wasn’t too bad! In a world in which all centers, emotional, intellectual, instinctive have been disconnected to the self or an I that can respond for what happens to them, it is not surprising that people can recognize sex for sex, thought for thought, and emotions for emotions. When we turn this to our advantage, we’ll be way ahead on the work that is needed.
Whoops, sorry Sheik – I just read the above ” deliberate attempts to unmask people taking part in the discussion ” – I won’t do it again…
Awesome, awesome, awesome beginning, y’all
whalerider, I am so with you, keep on breathing.
uno, you made me cry.
John Hobbes, you may kiss my ass. So now that you have neatly labelled half of the male membership of the FOF sociopaths, you find that your own petty conscience sleeps better?
ton, great quote. Last night I had a beautiful talk with a new acquaintance, a lovely elderly lady from Carmel. She was telling me of her priest friend, a man who helps drug addicts and who has been himself a junkie and jail convict. He is convinced that Christianity has turned into the opposite of what it really should be, and that our most precious, conscience-transforming teachings are contained in our mundane life experiences of suffering and “sin”. Just what the Church teachings want you to avoid. Sounds like another cult follower waking up.
Yesri, I am so glad to see you!
arthur, you are the neighborhood sadhu. I’d be hanging around your house too…
anna, please keep on writing. Your writings are like pearls on a thread.
wingsspreead
OMG I had the same thought but didn’t dare go through with it
Sheik,
‘John Hobbes’ Is Greggy Goodwin.
a nice vid on the use of language to desensitize conscience – much like JH’s recent move
wow, the pace of this place! these little chess games are getting shorter and shorter
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=167330&title=grand-theft-semantics
“One particularly corrupt aspect of the Fellowship culture of delusional self-sacrifice is the widespread and long established practice of ratting your fellow spiritual followers out to the authorities. In the Fellowship version of morality the willingness to report any and every sign of personal failing in others to the authority figures demonstrates that the informant has an advanced understanding of psychological principles. In the Fellowship of Friends this is one of the unimpeachable aspects of higher evolution, the reporting of all manner of indiscretions so that the “real being” of the offender can be generally established and through constant reporting and repeating of the reporting anyone’s particular reputation can be determined so that his specific chances of advancing up the chain of command over others will be limited. To such ends eavesdropping on private telephone calls over extension phones, sending spies to and agreeing to spy at parties and report “non-intentional” activities and even husbands and wives informing on the private peccadilloes of their spouses are all vigorously encouraged. Of course among the Fellowship little people, where there is little other means of gaining attention, the practice of informing on the other nobodies is epidemic.”
94, 99, 101, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111 and 113 are newly moderated.
Elena: Tough days at work, very little time. Monday evening is the earliest I can have a look into it.
All the other queries I will look into at the same time.
Wingsspread: On the contrary, feel free to join us all in a game of ‘where is Greg’, it’s going to be very popular it seems.
John Hobbes is banned.
Greg, in this case we aren’t ratting you out to the authorities for the sake of praise – some of us we really don’t want your particular brand of aggression in our faces all the time. Others, and I am among them, don’t like and wouldn’t vote for censorship and/or ostracism, but have seen and taken enough crap from you that they have given up on trying to tolerate you. And you might apply your “In the Fellowship version of morality the willingness to report any and every sign of personal failing in others to the authority figures demonstrates that the informant has an advanced understanding of phsychological principles.” to yourself, subsituting “the crowd” for “the authorities”. But then, reading from Wikipedia below, that seems unlikely in the extreme.
from Wikipedia:
ICD-10 Criteria for Dissocial Personality Disorder
Specifically, the dissocial personality disorder is described by the World Health Organization by the following criteria:
Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
Marked proneness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.
Persistent irritability.
Treatment
In practice, mental health professionals rarely treat dissocial personality disorders as they are considered untreatable and no interventions have proven to be effective. In England and Wales the diagnosis is grounds for detention in secure psychiatric hospitals under the Mental Health Act if individuals with that diagnosis have committed serious crimes, but since such individuals are disruptive for other patients and not responsive to treatment this alternative to prison is not often used.
It is good to be out
Lauralupa as Ronald Reagan would say, “there you go again”.
I didnt know what sadhu meant so I looked it up. It was kind of scary.
A little over two years ago I was rushed to ICU for a stay. Before that I lived sort of like a Sadhu. The VA doctor asked, “were you a hippy”? Not really, I just shucked it all.
After the hospital stay, the thought occured to me that I should do something before I died. So, I ran for city council completely unprepared and shooting my mouth off the cuff. Whereas all the other candidates were well prepared and sounding like they knew their stuff. Well, they did.
A sadhu gives up (enjoyment). No movies, no malls, no parades with fireworks, no television, no radio. I did feel kind of depressed because the “teacher” suggested not to read newspapers and I never gave that up. I guess the computer is my link outside my neighborhood and I have got to thank you for the directing links.
A Sadhu gives up (practical objectives) and dharma (duty). I guess I am a Fringe Dweller.
You hit the nail on the head. A neighborhood Sadhu for the Rogues and their children.
Oh, I have a dog that likes a game where I throw a small river rock and she chases, grabs and sets in a pile. I call her my ‘rock hound’. The other day a first grader came over and she played the game while I watched. We laughed and giggled. Isnt that what life is about?
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Cemeteries, alas, are filled with people who had no thought of presence.
Love, Robert
118. Bares Reposting
Unbelievable.
Hello Elena ~
BTW ~ I found your book (again) and have it with me; the next time you’re above 1800 feet, call me…
_____________ (Where’s the solid lines?)
You write ~
“I have not attacked you, rather defended myself from you.”
______________
Elena, is there really a difference between the two? Can you defend without attacking something else simultaneously?
_______________________________________________
Hello John Hobbes ~
You write ~
“To such ends eavesdropping on private telephone calls over extension phones, sending spies to and agreeing to spy at parties and report “non-intentional”…”
________________________________
Well, if anyone would know about these tactics it would be yourself… Those Internet Cafes are to die for aren’t they?
_________________
L.t.y.a. (Even to those Elephant avatars who look like mice.)
Sheik, no pressure is good, when it is possible that will be fine. Thank you.
Uno, there is a huge difference but you are old enough to not need an explanation. We understand what we want to understand and if you don’t, no explanation would be sufficient.
I will definitely call you and I want a big hug and smile no matter what else you give me!
REB’s vanity painting:
http://api.ning.com/files/nRHxG6e0JDOYvjBVIKI8wLUV8Qnh9tr0oJjhgs-8qKa10ZkdNZ3njnESn9Y0annI0zQQ4W2C9j2wD-fWNYTF8lWjpAI5IGPr/RBdog.jpg?width=450&height=600
Naked aroused member painting on ceiling of Galleria foyer:
http://api.ning.com/files/nRHxG6e0JDPyysXF49gMV8egWuExosb3kEWD-4GbR6JAT1FypjAyWvQyRSUpSHPY8iVSGLJAux6320zQeKLT4qw7I-YBTxYi/c_paint.jpg?width=450&height=600
122 BARES Reposting
Gives a whole new meaning to a member of the Fellowship ;o
“Cemeteries, alas, are filled with people who had no thought of presence.”
They are also filled with people who had thoughts of presence. If I am not mistaken that covers just about everybody in cemeteries.
Guess he didn’t think that one through.
Dear Sheik
How do you ‘set-up’ an Avatar image?…..Nigel.
Bares Reposting 121
How nouveau riche!
What’s the phallic statuette he is holding in his hands? It looks a bit like an Oscar…
And I guess the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel are still the Chosen Dogs of the Ark! I love all sorts of canids, but I remembr being instantly repulsed by these precious bulgy eyed lapdogs when they started showing up around the property… but then again, I was already in my “love affair gone sour” phase. Anyway, I bet that most of the appeal of this breed to Robert comes from its long history as dogs of the Royal families of Europe.
One can see in the painting what a pathetic poser the man is, superficially modeling himself after refined aesthetes like Bernard Berenson. Too bad he is not really interested in art and culture. I wonder if he ever reads books at all, or if, like everything else, they’re just for show…
117 and 122 are newly moderated.
Nigel: Go to the WordPress website and register. Consequently you should not run the risk of your postings being moderated, you will also be able to set up an avatar. You will not need to reveal any information in order to register (not even a name).
123. Bares Reposting – REB’s vanity painting:
——————————————
JEE-SUS!!!
105. Bares Reposting
When you take the final exhalation of the fourth wordless breath, you are your own man number eight.
Love, Robert
—-
and dead.
Laura 128: There is a story about the origin of the King Charles Spaniels that I always liked to propagate with willful disregard and unconcern for whether it is true or not. That is, that Robert chose them as the official dog breed for the FoF because they were the 44th stupidest dog on an international dog intelligence list. For a “good student” like me, this factoid was an outlet for sarcasm under the guise of just passing on information with a straight face.
Which reminds me, how many times did we hear “the School takes away symbols of identity and gives you identity itself”, and then, having been merely verbally reassured of that, found ways to buffer overwhelming evidence to the contrary, whole sets of identity-building “suggested” badges of correctness? Such as “Robert says the Pachelbel Cannon is the School anthem”, “Women in the new civilization will become more female and so Robert has strongly suggested that we phase out pants (you still own pants?)”, “We’ve observed we are no longer able to listen to anything other than classical music (said with a certain amount of pride)”, etc. A pervasive sense that there was an “our” way of doing things as opposed to the rest of ignorant “lifers”.
Gregorian Chant
Join W.G.W.D. Now. (Use code breaker previously supplied).
Wish Greg Were Dead.
My apologies if this offends anyone other than the intended.
Over the top? Who cares? It’s legal.
Wishes are free, Dreams cost, Fulfillment is priceless.
Same portrait adjusted to take out the el-greco-vision
http://greaterfellowship.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=799715%3APhoto%3A100070
When I first saw this portrait, my response was a mixture of revulsion and embarrassment. But like so many other signals of sanity, I managed to “transform” it.
My “pet” theory about the King Charles Spaniels is that he chose them because they look like him. Every time I saw those big brown eyes, equally imperious and moronic, I was reminded of Mr. Burton.
Really not kidding.
134 Joe Average
Can you make an adjustment to the other picture too? It’s kinda making me feel ‘less than’.
Hi Whalerider,
Heard you were going to be visiting San Francisco for a few days and thought we could get together here if you e-mail me. It might be a poor solution but can’t think of a better one. Face to face, life is real!
Mick Danger,
You can wish what ever you like but I find your wish terribly offensive and more violent than anything Greg ever expressed here.
Please forgive me Greg, for being in a blog in which this things are expressed about anyone. If they continue you can count me out.
The poverty with which this issue is dealt is attracting the impossibility to deal with it in a more sensible way.
Hello Elena ~
Thank you for the explanation: if there’s nothing in the trunk to talk about when asked a sincere ‘What’s in the trunk?’ we hand the key to the Lover and say ~’Look for yourself: it’s just my spare tire.’
Then there’s the tossing of the key into the lake and saying to the Lover ~ ‘Look for yourself: it’s just at the bottom of my 1000 acre lake.’
Onwards though: it’s been my experience that when I defend myself from another person, the radio voices, a movie, a circumstance or simply a menu I do not care for, I am constricting…
In the medical world ‘Stricture’ can be caused by scar tissue or a tumor…
IMO, in the spiritual world it’s caused by the Ego and Traumas echoing arguments amongst themselves, miscommunication on an organ/glandular level, ignorance between consciousness and conscience, etc. and oftentimes a really pissed off liver…
Elena,
If you like to read, take a peek at Mantak Chia’s ‘Fusion of the Five Elements’…
My best to you
134. Joe Average
The poor man’s Oscar Wilde, without any talent, conscience or fucking clue.
137. brucelevy – May 5, 2008
134. Joe Average
The poor man’s Oscar Wilde, without any talent, conscience or fucking clue.
______
And yet here you are walking around with the ghost of his dick up your ass for the rest of your life, so what’s that make you?
138 Peter
Care 2 tell us more, “Peter”?
Speaking of hardtruth, that is kind of intense, Mick Danger 133. Not sure if this is what he hoped for, or what he is scared of — the bully who goes too far.
I found this very funny, John Hobbs 100: “Psychologically healthy people that are not homosexual do not willingly submit to sodomy from the opposite sex under any circumstances”
That someone who has been banned over and over would come back yet again to lecture on psychological health. Now that is funny.
138. Peter
Greg, you never get the fucking clue do you?
Peter, as in “just left the FOF”, as in Greg. You need to get a life.
117. peter – May 4, 2008
“It is good to be out”…
of your mind.
Blind
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y3_UAVtq6cw
This is interesting. Here we have a person (Bruce) that not only joined a cult, but actually fell into sexual serfdom under the domination of the sociopathic cult leader…and yet in every word he writes there is the underlying attitude that he somehow understands what is better or worse, what is good or bad, what is normal and what is abnormal. Not only that, but there is also the underlying attitude behind his words that somehow he understands and lives on a superior moral foundation than those he routinely harshly judges. There is some seriously deranged buffering going there.
In Bruce’s world no one “has a fucking clue” but himself and those that reaffirm his delusions (Bruce, you are awesome dude!), and this is one of Burton’s old butt-boys. Meanwhile the moderator here goes to a good deal of trouble making sure that Bruce’s buffers are securely protected even though everyone else understands what a hypocrite he is. No wonder the blog posting population is more or less down to the truly dumb and the thoroughly airheaded.
133 Mick Danger (third eye)
Sign me up.
Uno, you wrote:
“Pissed off liver…”
That’s an accurate one!
Had to laugh (instead of…)
Thanks!
Where does the smily comes from???????
Meaning, not voluntary…
And where is my new “fresh” avatar????
Peter:
My take on why Bruce can say F… (or similar normalities) and get away with it, is that there is something simply “kind” and “charming” in his “presence”. Words do their best to be all, yet…
It is “energetic”.
But you know that!
147. You-me-us-they – May 5, 2008
And where is my new “fresh” avatar????
Peter:
My take on why Bruce can say F… (or similar normalities) and get away with it, is that there is something simply “kind” and “charming” in his “presence”. Words do their best to be all, yet…
It is “energetic”.
But you know that!
______
Exactly and this is the signature of a sociopath, someone that can be nasty and abusive while giving the impression that he being nice, kind and charming. Of course Bruce learned this skill on his knees in front of the short-BE of his master, Bob Burton.
Ignorance and therefore corruption is universal, everyone lives in some kind of cult where an opposing opinion is considered the worst crime possible.
Ignorance and corruption are variations of or the result of fear. Fear that your reality isn’t reality. Fear that someone will accidentally say something that will cause you to either have to reassess some of what you stubbornly insist you already know as infallible facts or cause you to pretend that the uncertainly never really occurred because the person that caused the uncertainty by expressing an opposing opinion is not legitimate. Is fear bad? Ultimately It makes people hate, so yes it is bad.
Back on point, in general it is apparently the case that people are afraid that their reality isn’t actually reality and in protection of that defensive sense of reality we seek others that more or less share our particular reality. In many cases we violently oppose those that contradict that reality. People are more interested in protecting their defensive sense of reality than they are interested in actually discovering a larger more objective reality. Censorship in most cases is based exactly on this corrupt frame of mind that slumbering intellects wallow in.
Here is a certain reality:
Sex in the Cult
(Overall principle)
Birds of a feather flop together.
It’s a simple reality: if you ended up with a sociopath’s dinger up your bum and he didn’t beat you unconscious to get it there then it’s because you’re a sociopath too. I mean, this doesn’t happen to every second person that comes along because most people have the good sense to say no to the suggestion that they huff and puff in the company of a sociopath. Those that went for it and said yes took off their own pants and they submitted to all the exertions and secretions. In most cases they did this time and again. They did it until they were dismissed and only then did they turn sour on the activity. This is a sociopathic signature, as long as you were getting the attention of the overbearing sociopath you were just fine, but when he moved on to greener underpants only then did many if not most of these submissive types cry foul.
The impulse to censor for no better reason than the opposing opinion is a painful contradiction to your own reality is simply an ignorant instinct to hide from the fact that your version of the truth is a lie. To actually censor the opposing opinion is intrinsically morally corrupt, an act that carries the everlasting penalty of condemning the censor to unreality.
Burton once waved me over to have lunch with him. I looked the young men sitting around his table, each of them with a clearly unnatural and psychologically subjected demeanor, and I simply walked away. I could sense something wrong with the entire aura of the scene.
Anyone not a homosexual that submitted to Burton for “spiritual reasons” or any other reason is a sociopath. There is no other explanation. Psychologically healthy people that are not homosexual do not willingly submit to sodomy from the same sex under any circumstances, particularly when it is under the color of authority. Especially they do not do so from a particularly instinctively obnoxious character like Burton. Those with so little self-regard that they allowed themselves to be exploited in such an insidious manner are sociopathic in the sense that there is no emotional sense of self there, no conscience.
Just finding yourself in that cult and staying there for a good long time is symptomatic of some kind of psychological disability in itself.
Openly elucidating the underlying complications and often dark realities behind most situations is always an affront to the collective idealism because their cheerfulness is based on the fraudulent superficiality of the simulated conviction that they borrow one from the other.
Name an intelligent society or two that tolerates real diversity of expression. Seemingly ours, the countries of the West, not only tolerate but guarantee free expression and yet that spirit of free expression is routinely thwarted as a practical matter in the million micro-societies that comprise the larger body.
Are you trying to imply that it is not the usual case that even when “enlightened and educated” people hear ideas that do not conform to the particular reality-set existent in the various factions of the population that each individual of a particular faction is not pressured to openly reject those expressing the dissonant opinions? Take as an example Obama and his pastor. In order to continue to have a quantity of democrats vote for him he has to make it absolutely clear that he does not believe that the U. S. government created AIDS in order to perpetrate biological warfare against African-Americans as his pastor suggests in his sermons. No rational person would adopt such a belief without absolute proof and most would find the idea so unlikely that they would not waste time investigating such nonsense and yet Obama is obliged to publicly and vigorously denounce his pastor and mentor or lose viability as a candidate. Everyone knows he doesn’t subscribe to the idea and yet he is forced to make a public show of his rejection. There is a mandate of outrage that he is compelled to cater to or be rejected. There is no general tolerance for “greater diversity” and no room for graciously entertaining the absurd.
The point is that there exist many highly charged beliefs within various groups of people and if those beliefs are threatened by contrary opinion or actual evidence then they react defensively and censor and ostracize those that offend the sanctity of their reality. In my mind the fact that there is so much irrational emotion, so much intolerance, involved around the particular agreed upon reality proves that in the back of the minds of the believers there is significant doubt and fear that their psychological structure of belief can be destroyed by mere words. They become hostile and indignant at logic itself at some point.
There is also a particular type that is far more aggressive and intolerant of any heretical expressions than the average member of the group, they tend to feel themselves well established within the ranks of the agreeing faction and lead the charge when anyone expresses a dissenting opinion. These types seem to assume that they always have the backing of their particular majority and they assume that they understand the guiding ideology to such a degree that they feel no doubt about their correctness when they confront a non-conformist. These particularly forceful guardians of the reality-set are always proficient at rousing the indignation of the crowd against those arguing against their view of how the world is arranged. These intensely hostile defenders are usually those least interested in and most antagonistic toward concentrated intellectual evaluation of ideas or examination of facts in order to find new and deeper understandings. They simply rally the basest instincts of their friends in order to shout such expressions down and banish the innovatively intelligent from their ranks.
It is nearly always the case that it is the group itself that is sociopathic, it is rare that there are individuals that aren’t corrupted by the need to belong and agree, to pander to the lowest common denominator in the pursuit of approval above all other considerations.
peter (or is it halftruth?) in 138 you wrote: “And yet here you are walking around with the ghost of his dick up your ass for the rest of your life, so what’s that make you?”
Ummm… the “catcher?” I thought Robert Burton always played catcher? Maybe you know something I don’t (?) I joke, I kid, but seriously dude, the thought-pictures you’ve painted in 138 and 148 are the products of your imagination and have nothing to do with reality, IMO you’re expressing “latent” and therefore frustrated homosexual tendencies manifesting in “passive-aggression.” In 117 you said “It is good to be out” maybe you meant “the closet.”
You need to check that, or at least have it looked at by someone.
One way or another, anybody and everyone who was or is a “member” of the cult has been SCREWED by “conscious bob” –some of us realize that while others…
150. ton – May 5, 2008
Ummm… the “catcher?” I thought Robert Burton always played catcher? Maybe you know something I don’t (?) I joke, I kid, but seriously dude, the thought-pictures you’ve painted in 138 and 148 are the products of your imagination and have nothing to do with reality, IMO you’re expressing “latent” and therefore frustrated homosexual tendencies manifesting in “passive-aggression.” In 117 you said “It is good to be out” maybe you meant “the closet.”
_________
Yes, yes we all know that it is the fantasy of every fag that everyone else is secretly a fag.
151
“Yes, yes we all know that it is the fantasy of every fag that everyone else is secretly a fag.”
do tell us more…
152. tom – May 5, 2008
151
“Yes, yes we all know that it is the fantasy of every fag that everyone else is secretly a fag.”
do tell us more…
_____
Good comeback, but slightly docile and effeminate.
I see our outspoken crusader Fearless Bruce has disappeared until the moderator gets around to removing anyone capable of shutting him up. You’re quite the man there Bruce.
153
“Good comeback, but slightly docile and effeminate.”
halftruth, have you seen this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_a_Glass_Darkly_(film)
“Truly dumb”, that’s me!!
Wasnt it Peter of the Bible who cut off the soldier’s EAR? And,to whom Jesus said, “get behind me Satan”. And, who later after he came to his Understanding became the builder’s stone of the Christian Church?
Birds of a feather flock together.
Apparently the school of Oral Robert’s is suffering a decline in enrollments due to spending scandals caused by the life style of son Dick sending the school into a massive 50 million dollar debt.
Now where did I hear this story before?
Not only that but the surname of the spokesperson for the school is Burton. I know, I know, but still.
156. arthur – May 6, 2008
“Truly dumb”, that’s me!!
Wasnt it Peter of the Bible who cut off the soldier’s EAR? And,to whom Jesus said, “get behind me Satan”. And, who later after he came to his Understanding became the builder’s stone of the Christian Church?
_______
You are certainly among the few exceptions. There is wisdom veiled within your inadequacy.
136, 137 and 141 are newly moderated.
Elena: Try to register at wordpress if you are not already, it should allow you to post in real-time.
Peter is banned. Greg reminds me quite strongly of Agent Smith in Matrix 2 and 3, in a short while it’s going to be all Greg and no one else, maybe that’s what he wants, maybe then his ego will be satiated. Good to have you back, man.
arthur – I think maybe Greg has been reading Orson Scott Card too much lately – in the Ender series, his ruthless brother Peter is turned down for Battle School because he lacks empathy. He grows up to become an internet politic diatriber (forcing his overly empathetic sister Valentine to assist him) under the pseudonym of Locke (a social philosopher), while Valentine is Diogenes (or is it the other way around?). Peter Wiggin is portrayed in Ender’s Game as quite psychopathic and vain, if brilliant.
So here we have the shallow, somewhat intelligent Greg, banned from the blog for his lack of empathy, using the pseudonyms of Hobbes (another social philosopher) and Peter. Too bad Greg appears to identify with Peter Wiggin (who becomes the Hegemon) instead of Ender, who has a very effective blend of empathy, intelligence, and competence, which actually helps him to heal an entire society. My memory is old, read these books decades ago, sorry for any errors. Also, Card has rewritten them a couple of times and in yet another series…..
All of the above, books targeted for teens, written by a Mormon science fiction author. A bit sophomoric?
O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
We are only falsehood,
duplicity, contradiction;
we both conceal and disguise
ourselves from ourselves.
Blaise Pascal
(1623 – 1662)
I agree with wakeuplittlesuzy that we need to learn to just feed where there is food. To trust our own intuition and intention to be able to recognize what is edible and what is not. There was a saying I remember hearing in the fof all those years ago, that ‘real school is invisible’. I believe this to be correct and yet suspect that Robert Burton does not understand what that means and has never experienced it. And that is because it is everywhere at every moment. It is in that world that the fof calls ‘life’, as in ‘life people’. It is in every situation that one finds oneself in. It is always going on just beyond our egoic mind and our small ‘s’ self. The people that come to us come to bring us every thing we need to hear and to learn. It is in the dolphins that unoanimo saw in that picture. It is the rogues that come to Arthur’s house and for the rogues it is Arthur. It is the blog itself and all of its characters. One of the most apparent things that is wrong with the fof, is the idea that only there can you contact C influence, and that only there can you work on yourself. It is not in the nature of what is sacred to be confined to one place, and there is nothing elitist about it. It is not secret information available to only a few. Anyone or any school or church that has that idea of being the ‘only game in town’, is obviously mistaken. It just could not be that way. It is taking something sacred (which is everything and every moment) and trying to play a fearful and childish game of ‘specialness’ with it.
——-
Yesri baba – Good to hear your voice and thank you for:
“but if you really want your consciousness to run in a way that affords you an entirely different way of thinking, what you need focus on is the neural floor in your head on which your thinking is taking place. Ignore what your thoughts think about life, you, or even themselves, and look, instead, beneath their feet: look at what they are standing on.”
——–
ps – Oh, and thank you Lauralupa for the statement, “John Hobbes, you may kiss my ass”.
I don’t know why but I really liked the simplicity of that.
You know I have a part of ‘hardtruth’ and ‘Graduates’ and ‘wild idea’ and ‘John Hobbs’ and ‘Peter’ right inside of me. It is that part that comes as judges and critics to find me ignorant and naive and stupid and childish, and most of all, GUILTY. They are probably a result of what Veronicapoe calls my ‘family of origin’. They don’t have the effect they once did. I just try to gently let them go and not get sucked into their game. And now I suppose I may try to laughingly tell them, “you may kiss my ass”.
—
Thank you Bruce for 165
166. James McLemore
…..Anyone or any school or church that has that idea of being the ‘only game in town’, is obviously mistaken. It just could not be that way. It is taking something sacred (which is everything and every moment) and trying to play a fearful and childish game of ’specialness’ with it…..
BEAUTIFUL
You know I have a part of ‘hardtruth’ and ‘Graduates’ and ‘wild idea’ and ‘John Hobbs’ and ‘Peter’ right inside of me. It is that part that comes as judges and critics to find me ignorant and naive and stupid and childish, and most of all, GUILTY. They are probably a result of what Veronicapoe calls my ‘family of origin’. They don’t have the effect they once did. I just try to gently let them go and not get sucked into their game.
….AND BEAUTIFUL
Hello,
Just got a note from Apollo that the April telephone directory lists 1589 members; many of these are in the not paying stage.
All the best
Hi Sheik
Tried doing what you suggested to get an Avatar image but became confused (I am not a blogging wizard!). Any chance that I can take an image from My Pictures in Windows and paste it into an Avatar image of my own making?…..Nigel.
Following the New Testament theme, 1 Corinthians 13 has probably been overused (very common at weddings, and I forget, but wasn’t it also a Fellowship favorite?) Still, with its radical message, it is one of my favorite Bible quotes.
Sometimes we get so confused by words of love, like when Robert keeps bragging how much he loves his students, that we fail to verify if the intent behind the words is actually a loving one. Paul gives a description of love that we can use to discern if someone is being the words or just saying them.
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
In the case of RB, really, “what’s love gotta do with it?”
“In the case of RB, really, “what’s love gotta do with it?”
Sounds like a Tina Turner fan. Kind of Thunderdome around here.
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretchlike me…
I once was lost but now am found,
was blind, but now, I see.
* * * *
T’was Grace that taught….
My heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear…
The hour I first believed.
* * * *
Through many dangers, toils and snares..
We have already come.
T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far….
And grace will lead us home.
* * * *
The Lord has promised good to me…
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be…
As long as life endures.
* * * *
When we’ve been here ten thousand years….
Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise…
Then when we first begun.
* * * *
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
was blind, but now, I see”.
Thanks Greg for being kind to my bag of inadequacies.
This should follow the last two blogs (169, 170) nicely. I had unearthed it from my little library (part of which I inherited from my maternal grandfather). Maybe I have also been handed down his love of literature impelling ‘right thought and deed’…………..
From Ruskin “Frondes Agrestes”…………………..
‘Had it been ordained by the Almighty that the highest pleasures of sight should be those of the most difficult attainment, and to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces, tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and the inherent desires of every individual. But no such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which, leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like any other, and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour,- leaves it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves susceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always, harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and eternal’.
I meant to add “I hope Elena gets a chance to read 171″…..Nigel.
166 and 169 are newly moderated.
One more reminder that any attempts at unmasking participants who do not wish to have any information revealed on them is not allowed. That includes names, addresses, acquaintances,… Greg, being the special boy that he is, can be named if anyone suspects a poster (with sufficient proof) from being another one of Greg’s toys.
Nigel: Keep on trying, there is only one way to learn something new, don’t be discouraged. If I remember correctly you can upload any picture from your computer as your avatar – register, go into settings (Your profile and personal options) and there is a field on the right which says ‘my picture’. Click the browse button and find the picture on your computer.
172 is newly moderated.
As to the queries on format change:
– this template doesn’t allow me a lot of freedom in changing the format
– it can’t show the time of comments apart from the date (which, to be absolutely truthful does not pose much of a problem)
– I can’t increase the font size for comments but you can increase it yourself in your internet browser, in Mozilla Firefox (by far the safest and easiest to use web browser) click on ‘View’, ‘Text Size’, ‘Increase’
– so far Elena seems to be the only one who my spam filter frequently doesn’t allow to post, if registration doesn’t work, the filter should learn with time (it remembers which posts were marked as spam and which weren’t, it learns from past decisions and should allow you to post freely soon enough)
If there are any more queries, throw them in.
Dear Hearts, Gentle People & those among you who hate quotations:
“Even if you only have the sense that God Gave a Goose” – Unknown
“Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” – Rod Stewart
“Vainglorious, Victorious, One keg of beer for the 4 of Us”
(New card in the deck) UC Drinking Song.
“Stupid, Wimpy, Democratic Butterfly-in-the-Woods”
– Homer Simpson
lauralupa 171: “Sometimes we get so confused by words of love, like when Robert keeps bragging how much he loves his students, that we fail to verify if the intent behind the words is actually a loving one. Paul gives a description of love that we can use to discern if someone is being the words or just saying them.”
Lauralupa, thanks for your beautiful quotation from Paul.
I’ll go a step further about your comments regarding Robert Burton, and suggest that his use of the word “love” even expresses thw word’s opposite. His view of love is exclusive and conditional to those who provide him with the pleasures he seeks. Those who do not provide him with these pleasures, he does not love.
I recently viewed some documentaries about World War II, and recall another man who would throw around the word “love” without really thinking about what he was saying. He was the man who brought the world into the war:
“There are three words which many use without a thought which for us are no catch-phrases: Love, Faith, and Hope. We National Socialists wish to love our Fatherland, we wish to learn to love it, to learn to love it jealously, to love it alone and to suffer no other idol to stand by its side. We know only one interest and that is the interest of our people.
“We are fanatical in our love for our people, and we are anxious that so-called ‘national governments’ should be conscious of that fact. We can go as loyally as a dog with those who share our sincerity, but we will pursue with fanatical hatred the man who believes that he can play tricks with this love of ours. We cannot go with governments who look two ways at once, who squint both towards the Right and towards the Left. We are straightforward: it must be either love or hate.”
—————
And some additional quotes by the same man:
• By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
• It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
• Great liars are also great magicians.
• There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland.
• Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.
• What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
By the way, Mick Danger (133,179, etc.), you seem to be having a lot of fun with all of this. You wrote some extremely hateful words about Greg further up the page (133) — much more hateful than anything else I’ve seen here — and then the conversation went “south” in a hurry. You suggested that people might be offended, but that “it’s legal” to say what you said.
I think what concerns me is that — no matter what any of us feel about Greg’s comments — I’m guessing that almost no one on the blog shares the emotion that you conveyed. Not offended, but definitely concerned that someone would step into the fray and say something like that.
Are you just “here” to stir things up? Or do you have some insights to share with all of us? Just curious.
Thanks Rear View Mirror for expressing something about this.
Nigel love, do you think one has love only if one bends enough to get Robert up one’s behind? Well, he did. That is what love has been for so many years. Don’t blame me if when I smell anything close to that I cut it short. Or blame me if you wish. That is O.K. too. At some point the river keeps running beyond the stones.
This is a test. I think I messed up subscribing and am now ludoteka instead of Elena. That’s good enough! I have no idea how to change it again or get to the settings and avatar. Not very important.
173 arthur
“Thanks Greg for being kind to my bag of inadequacies.”
Careful arthur, this is the abuser coming back bearing flowers.
152 Peter
It is blindingly obvious to everyone except him that his arguments are just a long attempt to justify his own antisocial behavior. He tries to make it sound very objective and philosophical but is only trying to convince us that his hate is no different from the others who use offensive language. Of course this is nonsense and any normal person can see the difference. But he can’t see the difference and it drives him crazy, thinks he is being discriminated against. So he gives a long winded talk about censorship and the evils of people who dont recognize the great contribution of someone like him, who isnt afreaid to tell it like it is. He really cant see how twisted he comes off — he is too deep down the rabbit hole to see.
Good example;
“Openly elucidating the underlying complications and often dark realities behind most situations is always an affront to the collective idealism because their cheerfulness is based on the fraudulent superficiality of the simulated conviction that they borrow one from the other.”
This is his buffer that lets him act like an asshole and imagine he’s doing something good for people, only if they werent so stupid they could see it. He cant seem to be nice to people, he thinks its a weakness, so instead of seeing a psychiatrist for help, he blames everyone for being superficial. He needs help. Once you go down this road, it is hard to come back. It is a sign of severe mental illness. I have seen it before, including in Robert Burton.
These two lunatics are an example of what Ouspensky spoke of when he warned of the dangers of working on yourself while leaving out parts of the System — not working on false personality, negative emotions and external considering for example. Not inner considering doesn’t mean treating others like crap. Maintaining ordinary social relationships is part of good householder — inability to do this normal thing means something has gone wrong, some combination of lunatic and tramp. Robert Burton distorted the idea of tramp to mean living like you have OCD, never leaving a mess. This is BS and a way to support his own mental illness about messes. Tramp is really about valuing things in their right proportions, and ordinary, decent relations between people is one of them. People who lack this ability will run in circles trying to convince everyone how this doesn’t matter, but ordinary good householders and decent people will just find their arguments confusing and a little crazy.
This quote from Hitler could have been written by Peter, sadly:
“We can go as loyally as a dog with those who share our sincerity, but we will pursue with fanatical hatred the man who believes that he can play tricks with this love of ours. We cannot go with governments who look two ways at once, who squint both towards the Right and towards the Left. We are straightforward: it must be either love or hate.”
Substitute ‘governments’ with ‘people who believe in both the 4th Way and nonduality’ and it is more clear.
Maybe that beautiful passage by Paul (lauralupa 171) can penetrate Peter’s hard shell, I hope. I don’t know if Peter is a true sociopath or just in a very, very bad place, but either way i hope he gets help.
Whichever, I am sure we will be hearing from him soon under a new name. Why he so desperately wants to participate in a group he constantly claims to despise is a mystery.
Once again, my apologies, I kinda got carried away there.
It was meant to be hurtful, not hateful – When a simple expletive just isn’t enough.
Anyway, I’ve increased the medication and they tell me I can and should go back to being unobtrusive.
It’s all on account I ain’t had a normal life.
Thank you for your support.
Hey MD: Apology accepted. I hope you keep posting. And about your style, maybe taking this less seriously is not a bad thing.
On another topic, sort of, I like the word you introduced here: “obtrusive.” I can tell you’re just being facetious, but being obtrusive is not inherently a bad thing imo. Being non-obtrusive and passive is encouraged in the fof, because being obtrusive and active encourages thoughtful discussions and awkward questions. It encourages critical thinking. It encourages doubt and reflection — both self reflection, and group reflection.
I liked your idea (from the previous page) of people just stopping their payments, and letting six months go by before someone asks them to leave (because there’s a relaxed standard in the fof these days on what it takes to remain a paying member).
But if anyone does that, I hope they also make a point of asking awkward questions — and at awkward occasions, in awkward company. Why not, if they’re leaving anyway?
What the people in the fof need are more awkward moments — many more awkward moments — at dinners, at meetings, during walks along the road, when couples sit together for coffee in the morning, or whenever.
From Wikipedia:
“Viruses do not grow through cell division, because they are acellular; instead, they use the machinery and metabolism of a host cell to produce multiple copies of themselves. Because viruses use the machinery of a host cell to reproduce and reside within them, they are difficult to eliminate without killing the host cell. The body’s first line of defense against viruses is the innate immune system. This means that the cells of the innate system recognize, and respond to, pathogens in a generic way, but unlike the adaptive immune system, it does not confer long-lasting or protective immunity to the host.
Viruses have different mechanisms by which they produce disease in an organism, which largely depends on the species. Mechanisms at the cellular level primarily include cell lysis, the breaking open and subsequent death of the cell. In multicellular organisms, if enough cells die the whole organism will start to suffer the effects. Although viruses cause disruption of healthy homeostasis, resulting in disease, they may exist relatively harmlessly within an organism. An example would include the ability of the herpes simplex virus, which cause cold sores, to remain in a dormant state within the human body.”
After the FOF I had a girlfriend for a time who had the herpes virus, which was another bullet I managed to dodge. (In a bizarre twist of fate her name was L. Carroll.) Whenever she got upset or angry her immune systen would be compromised, and she’d have a major viral breakout.
Re: Love. I’m reminded we were told a few years ago that we should not use the word “love”, as a man number four cannot know the true meaning of the word.
This kind of labeling thwarts all clues into the nature of love that one might directly perceive, because you tell yourself that whatever you are experiencing is something unreal, something to be rejected and ashamed of, because it is only the inferior insight of a “man number four”. Only once you magically reach the exalted title of “man number seven”, somehow, somewhere, maybe in another lifetime, you can know anything about love. Until then, shut up.
As far as I’m concerned, even love with identification is a pointer to a deeper reality.
Ralphbarcode 182,
You have great insight into the situation but hopefully you are not closing doors which is what people who think they are sane end up doing.
Your description is very accurate but it is very different from Robert to the Gregs of this world, including myself. Robert turned against the people who loved him, I see Greg in a defensive attack mode and sometimes attack mode, period.
Why he so desperately wants to participate may be a mystery to you but that is the mystery that matters. To participate is what we all want without getting kicked out by more active, more talented, more educated, more white, more rich etc, etc, etc. and more aggressive too. Yes he is over aggressive and I agree with you that he needs someone to listen to him for a few years without interrupting him. In our times we have to pay for these things or go on the internet with a fake name which counts just about half.
I disagree with you that Greg’s comments are as extreme as Hitler’s but if you chose to pick on those you can make it look like that. It is our inability to pick the ones that are more benign that allows for the negative halves to be stimulated rather than the positive halves. We are all experts in putting our finger on the wound. It is false personalities greatest talent. This is not an attack to you but a fact. I am as good at it as you. It was also Robert’s great talent to see where people were weak so that he could make them feel he was superior to them and teaching them something. We bent our head humbly because we accepted him as the teacher but he wasn’t doing anything better than pinpointing our weaknesses, just as everybody else does. Do you not find it amazing that he never, ever had anything truly wonderful to say about anybody else? It means that he never really managed to get beyond his ego and therefor had to keep undermining others to float above them.
Beyond the ego or false personality is love Nigel. I do not claim to be a conscious being or to have walked far beyond the ego but I also do not diminish my understandings.
Ralph: “Maintaining ordinary social relationships is part of good householder — inability to do this normal thing means something has gone wrong, some combination of lunatic and tramp.”
Ordinary good householders have ordinary social relationships mostly determined by ideological frames of acceptance. Status. I have never, ever, been anywhere where everyone is not identified with their status. Rich people are kind to rich people, people in power to people in power, everyone is kind to whom they think it is convenient to them and as long as this is so, the instinctive centre is involved in the process. There is no real freedom or love. Neither Jesus nor thousands of other great men had ordinary social relationships and many of them were burnt or crucified. So being accepted by a crowd is not the real issue either. Wasn’t that what we all did in the Fellowship of Friends so that we could belong there? Diminish our negative halves to below zero and not question Robert? I complete agree with your statement but take a look at the other side of the coin so that we can look at the whole picture.
Real love, real freedom, will come when we respect the human being inside Greg and Robert beyond their maladies and when we are able to treat their maladies because we value the human being within them enough to bother investing in their healing.
Saying “lunatics” “criminals” “sick” is not enough and the terms themselves are not kind, they are one of the worst kinds of discrimination in our times.
Hopefully in fifty years mental illnesses will be regarded no better and no worse that physical disabilities that humans of a certain kind imposed on humans of another kind because of their own inability to assume responsibility for each other. Our families are the result of our societies and we are the result of both. It is for the individual to overcome his time and stand above it but it’ll be a while before most individuals are mature enough to understand that they are also heroes and act by their own consciousness and not by or against social or family programming. When we can embrace the shortcomings our time has imposed on our parents and peers then we’ll be able to deal with their and our suffering and not repeat the same cycle with our children which is in fact just as rampant.
Elena
P.S. to Anna’s 169 ~ Concerning the F.O.F. Directory
This directory also lists people who left the F.O.F. one year (and more) ago. To me (since I am still in the directory and left the F.O.F. back when the blog started) this is yet another ‘symbol’ of the spiritual-ego-game that’s being wound out in Oregon House: there’s a point where if you let the fish run with your line enough, there’s no way it will be retrievable through all the rocks and underwater tree limbs that the fish has flicked and flipped through; so, the fisherman, knowing the game he or she started by leaving the spool in neutral to begin with, simply cuts the line and transfers to the fish a very difficult time of first getting uncaught from the twine that has no fisherman at its end and then there’s the 100 yards of transparent stuff that its gotten entangled in… When a student looks at the current directory and sees people they suspected or heard of having left, still listed… Here is that stage: I wish you all well with this and also to C.L. and J.H., who have moved on; may your journey never end at entering yourselves nearly brand new today.
____________
L.t.y.a.
182 and 188 are newly moderated.
Elena/Ludoteka: I have no idea why it won’t let you post in real-time.
Elena, I have said it before, I know. But, you ought to teach a college class in “humanities’. And, if you end up pulling your hair out by the roots, well, it will be a memorable moment lasting a life time.
Ditto for Unoanimo, Lauralupa, Greg and a whole bunch of others that have the “right stuff”.
188. ludoteka
“Real love, real freedom, will come when we respect the human being inside Greg and Robert beyond their maladies and when we are able to treat their maladies because we value the human being within them enough to bother investing in their healing.
Saying “lunatics” “criminals” “sick” is not enough and the terms themselves are not kind, they are one of the worst kinds of discrimination in our times. ”
—————————————
You certainly have the right to look at “Real love” that way, but I don’t, personally (also what the fuck do we know about what is “real love, and we speak like we know…though we can experience what one might call relative love). Without discrimination one is apt to squander one’s most important potential asset (the ability to love) on that which will only repeatedly debase, defile and diminish one’s highest energies. Indiscriminate “love” is only another spot on the spectrum of love defiled and psychosis, or at least neurosis.
One thing is probably common to all those who joined the school: lack of self-confidence.
If you do not have self-confidence, then the very idea of obeying seems a possibility to long for.
For my part after 23 years of school, only two people gave me this photograph: the first one, I think, did not realized the impact of what he told me, and the second, Robert Burton, who has understood my psychology, used it for it personal purpose.
In this regard, I have to thank him because it has helped me, in spite of him, to see and fight against this tendency against all odds.
Today, I thought about obedience.
From one point of view it has always been a weight for me, because I do not like to bend and obey to the rule.
Obedience is probably useful when you’re a child and that everything is new and has to be learned, but for adults: can we accept to erase and rub ourselves and think that the other may know better than us?
It appeared to me that obedience is the oddest thing .
Obedience:
one speaks of obedience when a person adopts a different behavior because another individual, seen as a source of authority, so requests.
The individual dominated recognizes a person or a government with a certain value.
When this recognition is made, the individual then passes a tacit agreement, a consent with the higher he recognized; He exchange his freedom for the general will to be secured.
Hello Bruce ~
Is it possible to hold a position on “relative” love (which can be just about anything and nothing at all and still be indisputable, because, IMO, ‘relative’ is just a way of saying ‘I do not trust anything outside myself because…?.’ while simultaneously holding a second position of believing there’s such a thing as “discrimination and indiscriminate” (?) Aren’t the subject or phenomenon of discrimination and indiscrimination “relative”? It feels like to me that the two positions sorta conveniently cancel each other out without the participation of the beholder, keeping him or her ‘safely’ distrustful, defensive and damned angry at something on the mirrored surface of the armor and not necessarily underneath it (?)
If so, then you’re possibly stuck in a conundrum of emotional ‘Merry-go-roundness’: I am certainly inspecting my brightly colored, let’s follow the dance of the planet-fake horses these days…
IMO, whenever we make the external world a prerequisite force as to how we primarily support and react to it, then, we’re a bit lost or at least on an adventure worth staying not so found as to be easy meat for panthers, giant anacondas and army ant swarms; this happens to us from the outside in, no matter what conscious form we apply to ourselves, which, ironically usually comes from an outside source and rightly so… We’re born into the external world as it seems also born into us at the same time; rarely are children or adults taught anything about what this implies…
I think your ‘fuck’ is a breaker switch that blows at a certain amperage; I wonder what I would be like if I could take out the fuse and replace it with my ‘Mother’s Finger’ attitude of ‘Teacher Knows Best’ (?)
Maybe, by concentrating in an imbalanced way in the F.O.F. ‘school’ on the struggle and not administering a form to dance our Being’s ‘being’ emanating from the various graduation-stages having occurred from the labor; it’s odd, though it could be that our features have become more conscious than our souls; well, at least they’re more obvious that way, that is, so long as you do not ‘think’ you’re conscious.
Arthur ~
Maybe you should teach humanities (?) It takes on to know one, right?
__________
L.t.y.a.
Elena
I appreciate your comments. i should have been clearer, because I didnt intend to compare Peter/hardtruth to Hitler. But I was struck by the similar tone and intent of the quote. Like consciousness, mental illness has degrees. It is more a warning or a caution to see when one is veering in that direction. Also I was using ‘lunatic’ in the 4th Way meaning, not just meaning a crazy person.
But I must agree with Bruce too. Because enough people have reached out to hardtruth only to have their fingers bitten. I have followed that progression on the blog. Sometimes, it’s not so smart to keep putting your hand near the snapping dog.
The 66 year old leader of the apocalyptic church, “Lord Our Righteousness Church” was arrested tuesday on sex charges with minors. (New Mexico).
He claims to be the Messiah and predicted the end of the world last October 31st.
He claims to have sex with followers including his daughter-in-law and lying naked in bed with virgins. He said the virgins asked for sex but he refused.
I contacted a Fellowship of Friends bookmarking student in late 1976 or early 1977. Which was followed by the three prospective student meetings. Had I known that Robert Earl Burton Messiah of the fellowship of friends church was sucking virgins, I would have turned around and gone back home. He owes me a refund bigtime for FRAUD.
October 17, 1948 Evidently at a certain point, in order to find one’s way, it is absolutely essential to find CONSCIENCE. No amount of GUIDANCE, no amount of OBEDIENCE, can take its place. And strangely, GUIDANCE, taken in the wroing way, can even prevent CONSCIENCE waking up.
August 27, 1948 ……Without this, all other efforts are wasted, and esoteric work in the end can only turn to CRIME.
November 2, 1955 As CONSCIOUS grows, self-importance dies.
From the work of Rodney Collin, “CONSCIOUS HARMONY a Fourth Way student.
Robert Earl Burton and his inner circle really out to be ashamed??????????
193. unoanimo
“IMO, ‘relative’ is just a way of saying ‘I do not trust anything outside myself because…?”
For me “relative” means something different. It means to the best of my present ability, understanding, knowledge, conscience etc. Realizing at the same time that at a slightly different level of being everything could change as far as one’s own understanding. We are all able to “love” at some level,as good or bad as it might be. So to talk of love in concrete terms is a cop out to trying to see where on the continuum one presently lies in relation to love, or anything else.
Trust… I trust my present understanding of love, but at the same time I know that a year from now I may have a different understanding. And both can be true for the level it originally applied to. Relatively speaking.
Thanks Arthur, maybe you could just write me out a degree so that they’ll consider me in the college down the blog! I mean the block. Then I could find a job for more than seven dollars an hour!
Bruce, I’m happy to agree to disagree and still love each other? What I really love about you is that you are direct and talk your mind, then one can have a conversation because there is someone there enough to dialogue with.
What do we know about real love? What don’t we know about it? A bit of common sense allows me to trust myself enough to know when whatever is addressing me or lacking to address me is with or without love.
Let’s get clear about something here. My last post is not necessarily about having Greg be included in this discussion. I agree that he often lacks control of his emotional outbursts and is more hurtful than I would want anyone sharing this space but from there to being Hitler or a totally useless lunatic is a huge gap.
I don’t think many hear realize how damaging such extreme statements can be to already hurt people. A few years later they actually end up taking a gun and shooting a few and everyone is happy? Then they confirm that he was a criminal? No, they confirm that they made a deep criminal of him or her or whoever it was. Some go out and shoot others and some shoot themselves and the world that surrounded them and never moved a hand of real help says, they were crazy, nothing we could do about it.
I realize that this is common since when I treated a young woman who had committed suicide, her own mother would not take her into her house to live with and she was supposed to get out of hospital, start working immediately and live with a friend somewhere in town.
I don’t think you, no matter how much I respect you, or many here realize how easy it is to love. How little it takes to extend out a hand for a few months while an individual is able to recover a bit of trust in the world and continue moving on his or her own without having to hurt every body else. Life is really very simple and we can love each other with little more than a lunch or a breakfast served with care, a bunch of flowers and a great deal of uncorrupted firmness. It is not about being stupid or neurotic as you imply, it is about understanding the suffering and dealing with it, not just putting it out on the street with a label of madness.
Greg and Robert are no more damaged than trillions other people on this planet and I personally consider myself just slightly less damaged than they are. At least I don’t go around hurting my self or others any more but as Ghandi said, there is not one valid reason to kill but a million to die for. Most people just want to be comfortable and disregard what is worth living, struggling for. They just want to go around with their little neurosis, doing their little jobs, getting their little salary and minding their own business with a bitter face to the world saying that everybody else is not good enough. I’d be surprised if you were one of those.
My apology: It should have read, “as CONSCIENCE grows, self-importance dies”.
well, I suppose if CONSCIOUS grows, self-importance dies too.
And, Robert Earl Burton and his inner circle OUGHT to be ashamed?????????????????????
Ralph, people have reached out to Hardtruth? I am sorry but this is not quite what I’ve seen here. He has been made fun of, insulted, ridiculed and called all kinds of derogatory names. That he did some of this first? I don’t remember I would have to look, but it would not surprise me. I would still make a deal with him many more times and since he seems to be working his way out here and the internet is not as capable of closing doors as people, we might consider honoring him with such a chance because it looks like we are not going to beat him anyway. Miracles can happen and this is not even so bad to require being called a miracle!
Love to you, thanks for the rest of your post.
Off to other landmarks for a while.
I just remembered. I joined the Fellowship of Friends in February 1977. Either that year or the following year I was CONNED out of $600.00 “farm payment” (pressured donation).
I am asking those “boys” who have access to Robert Earl Burton’s personal belongings and living quarters to check something for me.
Check the toilet, check under the plunger, check in and behind the medicine cabinet, check behind the baseboards, check the hamper and under for a false floor, check the ceiling for secret openings, check all over, and when he is sleeping check his clothing and mouth for gold teeth.
Look for hard cash, jewerly, gold bars and send them to me and I”ll find a hiding place for you.
Hello Bruce ~
Thank you.
You said, “I trust my present understanding of love, but at the same time I know that a year from now I may have a different understanding.”
_________________
Well, ding dang it, that’s what I’m talking ’bout… This way of being with my daily mind is enough to make me ‘think’ I am in charge of the future and that the Unknown future is in charge of me; though it isn’t, really…
As soon as I hear “but at the same time I know”, I have to ask myself, how do I know that I know, especially concerning a tomorrow that is not guaranteed to me, ever? I have nearly died enough times to have pretty much nailed that ‘fact’ down, sorta; I mean, it has nailed my cap to the billboard and said, ‘Hey, your cap is right here and not in a Cybernet Hat Store that’s still under construction.’
So, I think that what you said is a perfect example of this Roundabout Thingy that I sense we get into by using the imagined future as a disclaimer for the present conscious fact of whatever degree of love you can issue inwards and outwards right now; this is it, this is all, because god can trip over your lamp cord at any millisecond…
At the same time, if you want to use the imaginary “year from now” you could also say that the level of love-being you think you’re at right now could be decreased by its being put to the test in an awkward circumstance that you’ve always imagined you could handle until it’s at your doorstep…
For me, this prompts (for me) the state of subtle (a relative term here) utter holy inner shame/self-story-empathy, a kind of spooky ‘aha’ connection with the quietness of Conscience, like that of an old woman knitting, (and while you ‘think’ you’re sneaking up on her and say ‘Boo!’, to scare her out of her wits), she gently turns her head and looking up, winks that wink we all know too well, that we’re the stuff she’s knitting her lap blanket out of…
One emotion I’ve learned about these days is that the degree I can love is oftentimes only proportionate to the degree of relief I wish I could be given from the pain, hate and anger within: so, to love is oftentimes also to have allot of wishful ‘thinking’ orbiting the heart’s purer signaling… ‘Loving’ is often a wound making love to a band aid…
If you ‘trust’ your (present) understanding, then isn’t looking into the future adding a bit of distrust since it says ‘I know’, when you really do not know?
____________
L.t.y.a.
Dear Elena as Ludoteka
Good to see you are strong in your ongoing healing as you express it on the ‘blog-site’. I agree with you, even when you feel you are ‘putting me straight’. As I mentioned in a previous ‘blog’, I was not involved too much with the core of the FOF, but worked like a maniac to (a) save up enough money to get to California and (b) continue in California, meanwhile piling up debt as my trade does not pay the vast sums of money that (1) computer people, (2) corporate headhunters and (3) medical professionals, attract. Did not Gurdjieff mention in ‘Search’ that “Work must begin with Essence”. I had, I think, four meals with REB during my 11 years in the FOF and he made no sexual advances on me (I’m an ugly Martial-Son-of-a-Bitch – couldn’t play Romeo if I tried!). The time I spent on the FOF property was taken up by metalwork ‘octaves’ or the occasional ‘general octave’. But I, like you, wish to see the whole FOF thing dismantled and REB brought to justice (ASAP). There is an old Samurai saying: “Fight as one already dead”. Yours……….. Nigel.
193, 198 and 200 are newly moderated.
October 9, 2002, a conversation between Robert Burton (RB) and AB about the beginning of the end of the School:
AB raised the subject of PB’s shock [terminal cancer; PB died on March 21, 2003], and quoted the following angle that RB has been giving recently at teaching events: “P’s shock contains in it the germ of the beginning of the end of the School.” AB continued, “There have been repeated requests by students for clarification of this angle. Some students seem to have misunderstood it, or have perhaps taken it on the wrong scale. Do you think we should address it in any way?”
RB replied, “P has worked in the School for thirty years, and is in the heart of the inner circle. Additionally, he is a long-time personal friend of mine. The School has reached the age (with myself working with the Gods for thirty years) where students are beginning to experience their whole life-cycle, with myself as their Teacher. P was a young man of twenty-five when I first met him, and is turning fifty-five this month. For myself, as I live to be an older teacher, I will bury many of my students—some in their forties, some in their fifties, and some in their sixties. I will continue, and may live to be one hundred. However, P is the first student who I met in his youth, and who I now see complete his task. It is something I knew I would experience if I lived to be an old Teacher (…).
“All Schools reach their conclusion, after which they become life. So long as I live, our School will remain in its golden age (…). The completion of P’s role contains the seed of the beginning of the end of the School, not of the civilization (…).
“From another angle, the completion of P’s role is the beginning of the end of the inner circle. But the inner circle will continue to exist after my role is complete, although it, too, will eventually become life. Schools can have a short ministry, or a long ministry, but all eventually crescendo into a civilization. Christ’s ministry, for example, lasted only three years, yet developed into a civilization that lasted for two thousand years. People may have difficulty understanding this idea because they do not see the larger picture, which is on the scale of the whole School and is larger than one’s personal play. Our School will have an enormous influence on the next civilization.
“Furthermore, whereas Christ’s ministry lasted three years, we are already into our fourth decade. Many students will complete their roles after having studied with me for thirty years, and they will have received what they needed. My old, familiar inner circle will have completed its task, and I will be working with a regenerated inner circle. That is the nature of becoming an old teacher (…).
“The completion of P’s role contains the germ of the beginning of the end of the School. (…) It is a very big loss for the inner circle (…).”
***
Wow! Good news, one more cult leader is arrested…. Michael Travesser, whom I saw in the documentary ‘Inside the cult’ 2 weeks ago… Who is next???
Sex Charges for Leader of Doomsday Sect
Self-Described Messiah Arrested After State Removed Three Teens From N.M. Compound
By DAVID SCHOETZ
May 6, 2008—
A self-described Messiah was arrested on sex charges involving minors two weeks after state officials took three teenagers from his New Mexico compound amid allegations of sexual abuse, authorities in New Mexico confirmed to ABC News today.
“State police and criminal agents are interviewing Wayne Bent right now,” Peter Olsen told ABC News.
Olsen had few details beyond Bent’s initial arrest, which happened without incident sometime this morning at Strong City, Bent’s compound in New Mexico’s rural northeastern corner.
Chief Scott Julian of the Clayton Police Department confirmed that Bent was charged with three counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He is being held at the Clayton-Union County Consolidated Detention Facility, Strong confirmed to ABC News.
Bent, who in his writings also goes by the name of Michael Travesser, is leader of a doomsday sect called Lord of Our Righteousness Church.
Three teens, a 16-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl, were taken into custody by state officials during a three-day period starting April 22.
Romaine Serna, a spokeswoman for the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department, told ABC News last week that the state is looking into the best options for the children. Serna declined to comment on today’s arrest, citing a judge’s gag order in the case.
Child welfare officials were working with the district attorney in Union County, N.M. “We’re conducting a thorough assessment,” Serna said at the time. “We did receive information alleging inappropriate contact with minors on the compound.”
Serna would not say who provided her department with the tip, but said it came from a “very reliable source.”
By his own admission, sex with his followers is an aspect of Bent’s church. He wrote in a Sept. 11, 2007, Web site post that he had sex with three women, including his son’s wife, at God’s prompting. He also wrote about virgins visiting him in his bed but claims he declined their requests for sex.
Bent’s group is featured in the National Geographic program “Inside a Cult,” scheduled to air this week. In the program, he acknowledged lying naked with virgin followers and describes nakedness as “another symbol of our relationship to God.”
Prudence Welch spent 15 years as a member of Bent’s group. She fled in December 2005. She said that she did not believe Bent had sex with virgins but that he did exert mental abuse and he did take the wives of other men as his own. “Pretty much all marriages were somewhat on hold,” Welch told “Good Morning America” last week.
John Sayer, another former Bent follower, told The Associated Press that Bent “was supposed to sleep” with his two teen daughters. He took his family and left, but one of the girls returned on her own and is among the three teens taken into custody last week, he said.
The recent string of visits by authorities is not the first time that law enforcement has descended on Strong City. The FBI, state police, local law enforcement and social workers went to the compound in 2002 when rumors circulated that the group was planning a mass suicide. No suicides took place, no arrests were made and no children were taken into custody, according to state police and child protective services.
Bent broke from the Seven Day Adventist church in 1987 to form his Lord of Our Righteousness Church. On the group’s Web site, the 66-year-old described being anointed the Messiah by God in 2000, shortly after moving to the New Mexico property.
Bent, who wears a beard and, in some photographs, flowing robes, has not granted interviews but, along with his followers, has used his Web site to criticize efforts by authorities to investigate the sect.
In one post, he referred to the media’s “witches brew” in a posting alongside a video showing one of the teens as she is taken into custody.
“There was never any child molestation, or adult molestation by anyone, including myself,” he wrote in another post. “There has never been ‘sex with minors’ or anything remotely approaching that, and I was never the initiator in any of the events.”
Bent identified the teens who were taken from the compound and provided what he claimed are writings from them that show their confusion about why the state would take them into custody. “She’s very clear about the direction she’s going in in her life,” a narrator said over video footage of one of the teens being taken away, “much clearer than many adults.”
The group claimed that the teenagers taken by the state have family members living among Bent’s followers and consent from parents who do not live on the compound.
Jeff Bent, identified as Bent’s son, appealed to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in a rambling letter in which he claimed to be a former police officer. “I am incensed at the hypocrisy of your world, that you can accuse us of the very crimes your cult is guilty of,” Bent wrote.
The group’s Web site features a slew of postings, both written and on video, by church members professing various doctrines tied to the church. An April 10, 2008, posting is titled “The Apocalypse Is Come,” and there are many references to an Oct. 31, 2007, doomsday. A recent post points to the crumbling American economy as evidence that the eternal end is near. “Never in earth’s history has the prophecy of final things come so clearly.”
The case has eerie echoes of last month’s police raid of a remote Texas ranch that is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sect. Texas cops took away more than 400 children because they believe the kids were sexually abused or in danger of being sexually abused.
Since the children were admitted to the state’s foster care system, Texas officials said about 60 percent of the girls under the age of 17 were either pregnant or already mothers, that many of the children had past evidence of broken bones and that writings in confiscated journals indicated some of the boys had also been sexually abused.
The sect’s leaders, who include imprisoned sect “prophet” Warren Jeffs, deny any sexual or physical abuse of their children.
The group broke away from the Mormon church when the church outlawed polygamy. But arranged marriages and pioneer-style, floor-length dresses remain staples of the community.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
202. unoanimo
“If you ‘trust’ your (present) understanding, then isn’t looking into the future adding a bit of distrust since it says ‘I know’, when you really do not know”?
I can only speak for me. I observe constant change in my life and beliefs. I have for many years. I can’t conceive that it would stop at any point short of death, and I don’t know what happens after that.
I can look back six months and see very subtle changes. I can look back two years and see more significant changes. Looking back 20 years…well, fuck.
I’m not sure of much, especially specifics, but I’m sure change, for me will continue. Little ups and downs, moods, love partners…they all happen. Those changes for me are of one type. More significant inner changes are of a different order, and include that I am today a conglomeration of all that came before, leaving out nothing of note as insignificant. My understanding of “love” is far different than it was 20 years ago. My capacity to control the “play”…not so much. But that’s two different, though overlapping, things.
So, I’m sure of change. That seems little, but for me it’s very big. And I’m grateful for that personal understanding. But I can’t speak about anyone else’s stuff with any authority.
200 ludoteka
“Ralph, people have reached out to Hardtruth? I am sorry but this is not quite what I’ve seen here. He has been made fun of, insulted, ridiculed and called all kinds of derogatory names.”
_______________________________________________________________
Elena, I respect your attempt at compassion, and if you believe in seeking someone out so he can slap your cheek, and then you can turn the other one to be slapped also, and you feel solid within yourself that you don’t have lingering abuse issues, you go girl. But if you go back and look at Hardtruth, Graduates, Wild Idea, and Greg on the GF site, I promise you, you will find that people have many times tried to be friendly and many times been trashed for their efforts.
**********************************************************
198 ludoteka
“Greg and Robert are no more damaged than trillions other people ”
_____________________________________________________________
I don’t know about trillions, but I agree there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of deeply disturbed people–screwed up enough to do very nasty things. That’s a very low standard. But if you spend some time among some of those people you may come to some different conclusions about the possibility of helping them by befriending them and opening yourself up to them. Do you believe that, if Burton were given just a little more understanding, he’d turn over a new leaf? There is such a thing as naivite, and it can have devastating consequences. But if you really feel strongly about establishing a relationship with Greg, why don’t you just do it on GF, and when he’s been tamed and is interested in discussing things like an adult, bring him back to the blog for all to enjoy?
Hello Bruce,
Thank you again for your reply ~
“But I can’t speak about anyone else’s stuff with any authority.”
_______
I have one word to state concerning this point of view ~
Hallelujah, amen. (two words)
I can’t believe it though, that you still managed to get out a ‘fuck’ in that reply: that word’s pretty creative with you, yes? Well, I use WTF? from time to time, so, there you have it…
Thank you much for your warmth, I need it today…
206
“But if you really feel strongly about establishing a relationship with Greg, why don’t you just do it on GF, and when he’s been tamed and is interested in discussing things like an adult, bring him back to the blog for all to enjoy”?
Yeah. I love you Elena, but talk is cheap.
P.S.
Hello ‘Just Another Voice Out Here’ ~
(IF) Robert was to be given a cup of iboga, whether he really wished to drink it or not in regards to his conscience, (I am not advocating forced sippage) he’d be a changed man overnight and not worse for it…
Though it seems right now that (that) would not conform to ‘the direction’, since then it would be meeting C-Influence on their terms and not his own, IMO.
Warning: This is an idea and not a rule or belief.
Another Voice, Bruce,
You wish to miss the point and then what is the point? Do you wish to pay me to treat Greg? Then why don’t you go treat him? I am in fact hardly talking about Greg but if you wish to reduce what I say to levels in which the dissonance makes you comfortable, you are free to do so. I won’t ask for you to be thrown out of the blog, in fact, I don’t really care. If you think I write here to convince you of anything you are wrong, I write here to look at myself with great joy. We share our different lives. That is good enough.
brucelevy:
‘though we can experience what one might call relative love. . .’
Problem is/was: In FoF, love meant treating people like relative love; like in Arkansas Bob love, where you have sex with your relatives as your best expression of love (read: relative love = incestuous love).
aline. c:
‘because another individual, seen as a source of authority. . .’
Problem is/was: taking authority for truth rather than taking Truth for authority.
Elena/ludoteka:
Problem is/was: You just gotta learn how to ‘let go’ and give up your attachments.
205 is newly moderated.
205. Ollie
…..Furthermore, whereas Christ’s ministry lasted three years, we are already into our fourth decade. Many students will complete their roles after having studied with me for thirty years, and they will have received what they needed. My old, familiar inner circle will have completed its task, and I will be working with a regenerated inner circle. That is the nature of becoming an old teacher (…).
“The completion of P’s role contains the germ of the beginning of the end of the School. (…) It is a very big loss for the inner circle (…).”
—————————————-
Another “fine” example of a lunatic.
I wonder where the “teacher” is going to regenerate the “inner circle”, in Switzerland or South America with a fat bank account and bankrupted land in Oregon House.
Code Breaker II
By the way “It’s legal.” was a way obtuse back-hand reference to what Princess Bobby & the Bobbettes are getting away with.
And the line “Wish you were Dead” is a straight rip-off from a Nick Nolte movie (Nick, the cop, says it to the D.A.).
And “Every Picture Tells a Story” was a reference to that vainglorius portrait.
193 Aline
One thing is probably common to all those who joined the school: lack of self-confidence.
If you do not have self-confidence, then the very idea of obeying seems a possibility to long for.
——————-
Just thinking in general here, it seems that we humans need to find something to obey so that indirectly we feel in control of our lives.
Dear Sheik,
About the new page, for the briefest amount of time I saw cool square motifs in the avatar squares for the bloggers without personal avatar and for inconsistent appearing avatars like mine.
I am seeing all of this from my pc., and wonder maybe you were playing with different looks when by chance I got to see one.
Thank you, love your work here and your attitude.
Aline, thanks for your fresh post. I would agree, not just not enough self confidence, the little we had he stripped it away and with it, the chances of development or self remembering. And students still think it is not doing them harm!
Bares Reposting, are you sure you are BR or RB? Robert Burton? You certainly have the style man, giving out this one line sentences without argument “Just let go of your identifications Dear?” Too bad I already had a teacher like that and won’t buy it again! A little brain does no one any harm. I mean discussion, not just final sentences from the ego; then at least one knows you might have given it a thought and are not just reacting from an uncomfortable dissonance to your imaginary picture.
215 Veramente
“I wonder where the “teacher” is going to regenerate the “inner circle”, in Switzerland or South America with a fat bank account and bankrupted land in Oregon House.”
Vera, Robert started to displace the inner circle of that time around Peter’s death. The older students started getting cut off and replaced by the younger generation of Asafs, Dorians, etc. This was a perfect move from an imperfect master. He replaced students with tremendous personal deficiencies but still a scent of integrity in important roles by newly committed young, ambitious and finely corrupt followers who did not only not question his sexuality, were ready to supply him with an unconditional amount of it. This is what they had already learnt and assimilated from the previous inner circle so it was a much better deal for Robert. With this, he filled the Fellowship of Friends with yound blood and credibility for potential new students, rid himself of older and old people which he only tolerates if they can cover themselves with huge amounts of money and took away any possibility of serious questioning by the inner circle who had served him for thirty years.
Everyone was treasoned by Robert. All those males of the first inner circle who still had a hint of their selves were replaced by the women who had already accepted being second hand citizens for thirty years and had therefor no credibility but unconditional obedience and by the young ambitious men. They took care of displacing the older men even further, have them taken off salary and other cute little things like that. Robert would have them “photograph” the older students until he completely took any self confidence away from them about their role in the Fellowship.
It is good that some of us were also watching him even if suffering him.
Elena
Veramente: Thank you for reminding me.
hi ludoteka,
Not sure about this, but I think “Bares Reposting” mentioned “attachment” in reference to the need to help someone. Wanting to help someone is generally a strength (at least I hope people see it that way), but sometimes it turns to worry and attachment and even outright annoyance (or worse) with the person we’re trying to help. It starts with compassion and sincerity, and then occasionally becomes its opposite. I see that in myself sometimes, so I’m not pointing the finger at you or anyone else. Sometimes my attitude i that if I just say the right thing that it’ll make a difference for someone, help them heal, or help them avoid hurt, or whatever. But the main thing is to just say the words, then let them go, and hope that someone understands them.
Sort of similar to what you and I and everyone is doing here. We hope that someone in the fof is listening, and then we let the words go, and hope that someone understands them. What more can we do?
So, if we can’t let them go, that’s “attachment.” It’s ok, though. It happens. That’s one reason that I liked Mick D.’s statement that the blog is not real. I think it helped me to just let “it” go, and just “let go” — period.
Hello All,
I just heard today that there are former students who are experiencing a profound sence of ‘loss’ since leaving. It’s not that they regret leaving and are actually very happy with their decision. But nevertheless there is loss- grieving.
One such student said that they didn’t dare pose this question to the blog “for fear of being eaten alive” …
But I will ask it anyway… it seems to be a very real question and there are many of you who may have journeyed through this particular sadness.
Thank you
222. Anna
Personally I can’t imagine there is anyone who doesn’t have a part in themselves that experiences loss at leaving, to some extent. Where that part is, and what it’s attached to is the question, one that’s different for each of us. Unless the FOF didn’t actually penetrate one’s life, then I can see it not making much of an impact (good, bad or neutral). For me, that would be a bad sign.
ludoteka 219 May 7, 2008 wrote:
‘Bares Reposting, are you sure you are BR or RB? Robert Burton? You certainly have the style man, giving out this one line sentences without argument “Just let go of your identifications Dear?” Too bad I already had a teacher like that and won’t buy it again! A little brain does no one any harm. I mean discussion, not just final sentences from the ego; then at least one knows you might have given it a thought and are not just reacting from an uncomfortable dissonance to your imaginary picture.’
——————————
Hello Elena,
People here on the blog practice much thought and emotional empathy about your postings and your plight. Just because they do not engage you in heated discussion does not mean that they do not feel for you and feel the same way about many of these things.
That being said, perhaps you might ponder just how long you stick with, and how much energy you put into, subjects, issues, and causes whose time has passed?
Here is a little story that might illustrate:
‘Two Buddhist Monks were on a journey, one was a senior monk, the other a junior monk. During their journey they approached a raging river and on the river bank stood a young lady. She was clearly concerned about how she would get to the other side of the river without drowning.
The junior monk walked straight past her without giving it a thought and he crossed the river. The senior monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river. He placed her down, they parted ways with the woman and on they went with the journey.
As the journey went on, the senior monk could see some concern on the junior monk’s mind, he asked what was wrong. The junior monk replied, “How could you carry her like that? You know we can’t touch women, it’s against our way of life.” The senior monk answered, “I left the woman at the rivers edge a long way back, why are you still carrying her?”
The moral of that Buddhist monk story: The senior monk had broken rules but for good reason. Once the purpose was fulfilled he put her down and continued on. He never gave it a further thought. The junior monk however did not touch the woman but he had brought up the actions of the senior monk when it was an action of the past. Therefore the junior monk was carrying the burden of what the senior monk had done as emotional baggage.
We have little use for the past except for the purpose of learning from our experiences, good and bad. Just like in the Buddhist monk story, we need to let go of any burden the past may place on us. It’s happened, it’s over, it cannot be changed, we can only move forward and create a compelling future.’
The above are not my words. I just pass it along.
I hope you enjoy that I have responded with more than one sentence. I am not, however, interested in becoming more attached to this subject and untransformed angst; mine or anybody’s. I hope life, post FoF, can be joyful for you and everyone else who has moved on.
To the friends fearing ~
“for fear of being eaten alive” …
_________
Hello Anna ~
To me, it is this fear (possibly a result of actually having been eaten alive by the F.O.F. stage of ‘Soul Growth By Being Spiritually Digested’) that’s making them stop and stare at the ‘loss’… IMO, the grieving has always been there, that’s what brought many souls subconsciously to the F.O.F. in the first place, i.e., some form of insatiable grief-valve due to a ‘void’ of some kind needing to be filled, not necessarily sensed as Soul-embryo-space: the F.O.F. used this faucet turned on high and broken off to fill its pockets, like many ‘services’ automatically do down here on Earth by lack of understanding and conscience for those looking outside themselves to possibly get inside themselves.
Find the well and disconnect the pump, pull that dang thing out and dive into the underground river that’s supplying everyone’s wells (including ‘The Others’ (life-people) and their pets (horses are nice people too)…
The “loss-grieving” is a return to their original state of essence before entering the F.O.F., it’s the matrix that supports allot of magnetic center stuffs or the ‘asteroid belt’ left over from exploding it by entering into your Real Life, IMO. The ‘void’ or ‘space’ between the ‘Us and Them’ does not have to be defined as ‘loss’, what losses anyway: what does a person have that is never lost or derives it’s sense of self by that which cannot be lost? I thought that’s what you guys were doing in the F.O.F. in the first place, trying to develop the un-loss-able?
Maybe it’s not loss… Could it be a ‘birth’-emotion, like that of an infant (earth or moon) having its umbilical cord cut and being at a distance suddenly from its mother-father/father-mother (sun)?
Non-violent discussion groups (labeled as such) can also be a ‘intentional’, well mannered, wine sipping-thick blanket over a mountain of traumatic dust, having been created by the Wishing Upon a Star having Exploded.
So, I try and check these days WHAT IT IS that draws such distinctions between violent and non-violence and not the obviousness-nesses of the two forces themselves (particularly in the relative horse shoe pits of the Blog vs Non Violence: hardly a traditional battle field where quarter pound lead balls are whirling by the higher pitched whining of your hearing aid):
Could it be that the part of me that takes that silent Space between two ‘thought of’ opposites and creates a ‘Label’ to further their distance from one another and distinguish (refine) what side I am on is ‘fearing’ THE SOMETHING that’s defining the in between, like that self standing there looking left and right instead of within for a reconciliation?
To me, the “loss grieving” is ‘normal’, similar to what Bruce said, that to not feel it would seem odd… Though, I feel that it’s the only place to begin from… Gurdjieff called it “The Genuine Being Duty”…
Whatever it meant to him personally, I sense that these days it means for me to not fill the white hot grief felt, when you step back into the ‘Suit belonging to your Immortal Dying Incarnation’, with your black shadow of ‘I and They’…
Get rid of the AND, listen to some Bob Marley; be yourself relaxing, you might even hang your left elbow out of the bus or car window from time to time (?)
I grieved this morning for the 100,000 people (or more) taken by the Cyclone Elemental… Though, IMO, it’s white magic, it’s nonetheless a reminder of where our ability to produce such empathy ‘could’ be directed into loving the dead rather than fearing and belittling the living for being fearful of death.
_________
L.t.y.a.
Ollie 205
What a bunch of grandiose BS.
On the other hand…..
Let’s go to the ‘Way Forward Machine”
Nov. 7, 2000 aab. president elect Goobertron McCain has won the election 13 to 13. (45 people left the safety of cowering in the corners of their hovels to brave the vote. 9 were picked off by Blackwater SS snipers). In his decision, Adolph Scalia ( 20th generation grandson of ‘If you think about it, technically, torture isn’t punishment so carry on, Scalia) said “Hey, why mess up a good thing”. In his dissenting oppinion he said: “There’s no dissent I make the rules here.”
The McCain Dynasty began in 2008 bab after the ‘July Surprise’. Gearge Bush (the greatest leader in world history after Our Glorious Spiritual Father Robert Burton) invaded ten middle eastern countries saying “Stay the Course my ass it’s Whole Hog Including the Postage”.
Many pundits say Goobertron won because he only drooled out of one side of his mouth during the debate and when he picked his nose he didn’t eat the booger. Others point to the promise of “Butt plugs for every man, woman and child”, the campaign slogan he borrowed from his favorite philosopher, Robert Burton.
It is a new day. 2001aab is going to be bright. WW 43 is almost over and everyone feels the next one is going to be ‘special’. The energy crises is finally over. After extracting every ounce of fossil fuel from the planet Cheney Corp. subsidiary Soylent Green Industries has developed a renewable source of energy called ‘Baby Juice’. It’s formula is a trade secret and some people are a bit worried about the moral implications of using this new fuel in their SDSUV’s (super duper). We in the media say, remember SG’s award winning ad campaign: “Trust Us We’re Green”.
In other news today:
Israel and China have agreed to stop building settlements in each others country.
The UN will be voting for the 56th time on a resoultion to condemn Israel’s use of Palistinian slaves in building settlements inside China’s borders.
The UN will also be voting to allow the 4th world country of America back into the UN. The seven permanent members, Venezuela, Bolivia, Sweden, Norway, Sudan, France and Burtonland say if Goobertron figures out that it wasn’t his great-great grandson that built the wall around America they would consider allowing re-entry.
There is also a motion to rename America- Gregland -after the influential philosopher Greg Goodwin, winner of the 2012 ‘Legend in His Own Mind’ award of 2012bab
At 222 Anna wrote:
“I just heard today that there are former students who are experiencing a profound sence of ‘loss’ since leaving. It’s not that they regret leaving and are actually very happy with their decision. But nevertheless there is loss- grieving.
One such student said that they didn’t dare pose this question to the blog “for fear of being eaten alive” …
But I will ask it anyway… it seems to be a very real question and there are many of you who may have journeyed through this particular sadness.”
Anna,
Please tell anyone who wishes to ask that question to post it here in their own words. No one will “eat them alive.” New blood is always welcome and a sincerely asked question seems to be the way forward for so many of us. I, personally, do not believe in answers, just questions. As Cake Please posted here not too long ago, “The pages in my answer book are all blank.”
Grieving is the proper word, I think. Consider for a moment that everything you’ve based your life on for the past X number of years has turned out to be a lie. Maybe not an absolute and total lie, but a lie nonetheless. There’s no place to stand, there’s no place to run to, there’s no place to hide. Maybe you had some inklings along the way and maybe you thought you were prepared for this turn in your life, but now it is really, really, really, real. What now? There are people that you thought were your friends that are no longer your friends. What were they? The structure to your life is gone. What was it? How could you not be sad or freaked-out or empty or depressed?
When I left, I was very lucky, in the sense that I had never “put my life into the school; I had put the school into my life.” We all remember that quote, right? I was at a dinner with Bob one night when someone asked how to tell if one was making progress and Number One with a Bullet on Bob’s hit parade was, “Put your life in the school, not the school in your life.” I thought, “I guess I’m not waking up because I’m never going to do that.” I spent a great deal of time feeling guilty about it.
Anyway, I had a life outside of the Fellowship of Friends, but that life was still guided mostly by FoF principles. I had a wife who was not a member. I was in a center where that was almost the norm, and where I knew the shunning rule was not well regarded. I had a career, of sorts. I had family that I had not disconnected from. I had friends that I grew up with that I had not abandoned for the FoF. So when I left, my life did not collapse. I had a safety net that, I’m sure, many did not.
Even with all of that, I still felt a great emptyness after leaving. Here it is, almost ten years since I left, and I’m still processing that fifteen years of my life. I’m sad about it on certain days. I’m angry about it on other days. Sometimes, I don’t think about it at all. And sometimes, I grieve for those years of my life that are forever gone, lost to young man’s mistake.
But, hell, I’m a dreamer and a romantic. I’m sure someone here will paint you a different picture.
Unoanimo Wrote:
“…IMO, the grieving has always been there, that’s what brought many souls subconsciously to the F.O.F. in the first place, i.e., some form of insatiable grief-valve due to a ‘void’ of some kind needing to be filled…”
Uno,
I have found this to be true for myself.
Dear Sheik
I quite like the red-and-white abstract avatar designated to me – England’s rugby colours – a red rose on a white background – won’t try to go on WordPress – too fiddley. Thanks if you chose it for me.
Nigel.
It came down from the Teacher of the Fellowship of Friends Robert Earl Burton that the “School” of HIS would be a good hiding place for Homosexuals.
It came down from Robert Earl Burton that Homosexuals are not capable of reaching the Schools final goal (whatever that was).
It came down from Robert Earl Burton that he was CHASTE. All this was back in the late 1970’s.
Can a crooked stick ever be made straight?
Bares Reposting, Rear View mirror, thanks.
Kid Shelleen, what a beautiful way to put it, thank you and Uno too.
Anna,
There’s little to add to that in the sense of grieving but in a different direction I think people leaving need to replenish their centers.
When I left someone suggested I go to a bar, drink a beer and play rock and roll and I thought him stupid. My gold alchemy frigidity thought THAT was quite unnecessary but after a year, doing that has been one of the most healing things I’ve done together with going back to the places I grew up in, begin to play guitar, read things I like, talk to people, wear jeans, do a lot of exercise and rest. Rest has been tremendously healing and exercise too. Oh and screaming has been wonderful! Letting it all out, the anger, the frustration, the pain. Different people have different ways of doing that but grieving is one aspect and anger is another. Recovering the long brainwashed function of legitimately saying NO, NO MORE, NOT FOR A SINGLE FUCKING SECOND is a great life enhancer after leaving! I recommend that to anyone wishing to stay in the subdued king of hearts mode. You’ll recover your own real sense of beauty when you’ve taken the fake behaviour off. People’s spontaneity is a gift that is so badly lost in the Cult environment.
Being ‘damaged’ by the Fellowship means having allowed an already frail personality to be replaced by a strong personality doing things for Robert, the Fellowship and not one’s self. It is a personality acting against one’s own well being. Going back to where I grew up literally felt like pieces of a puzzle were being put back in its place and I could relate to myself more easily again, remember myself, my essence, the people, the places, the life I was given to explore.
It is a painful but beautiful process because after a while I realized that I had not only not lost anything by leaving but also recovered much more than when I joined. The world will never be the same; it will be better and the Fellowship experience is much to our advantage in understanding how some things work. A huge amount of unnecessary suffering dies by leaving the Fellowship of Friends Cult and the little amount of real suffering is worth paying for so that one doesn’t prolong the state of unending unnecessary suffering for most students to please Robert’s sick mentality.
Unoanimo Wrote:
“…IMO, the grieving has always been there. . . ‘
Think of grief this way: For those people who live where there are deciduous trees, the ones that have leaves that change to beautiful colours in autumn, know that those colours are always there in the leaves and covered over with the green of the chlorophyll of robust life for photosynthesis, which allows those beings to obtain energy from light. Grief is there behind or within life and there is no escaping it. It is a matter of what you do with it that seems valuable. As they used to say back in the 1960’s, ‘Wow, what colours!’ I hope everyone is using their robust life to obtain energy from light. Eventually the leaves just fall away and are non-attached – they become recycled.
ANNA. Sense of LOSS
YEAH! Like when your marriage ends,
your dad dies, your house burns down,
immensely sad, all gone…. forever!
Same with the FOF, such investments,
years and years, time, money, friendships
all gone
Time does heals though,
and life goes on.
When I get these LOSS feelings I verify once again that
I followed a false prophet. That I had became a shadow of my SELF,
rigidly strapped in an emotional straight jacket.
That I escaped a cult ruled by a dominant, perverse,
selfish, greedy, vain, corrupt, abusive, manipulative,
sexual pervert who has lost his marbles.
Whew! Better SAD then DEAD
and dear friend LOTS OF LOVE, to YOU
231 is newly moderated.
22 sense of loss
___________________________________________________________
I agree with what others have said, and I also feel that people should carefully examine that feeling of “loss” or “grieving.” No one leaving the Fellowship has lost anything except his own delusions–nothing that was ever real can ever be lost. I don’t see it as realizing that the Fellowship was a lie, but as realizing that we have been something other than what we imagined–we have been naive, we have been vain, we have been seeking the comforts of the ego over the truth, we have needed X years in a cult to see ourselves a little more objectively. The grief, and the joy, is in letting go of the imaginary picture of ourself as More Highly Evolved Than Thou, or Dedicated Seeker of Truth, or One Who Is Willing To Make Great Sacrifices To Awaken, or some similar hokum, in favor of the ordinary, simple reality.
Grieving may have its roots in experiences far more remote in time than the events which trigger it.
As I see it, the psyche requires us, sooner or later, to integrate experiences we have been unable to integrate at the time we passed through them.
When we grieve disproportionately to the gravity of the events which trigger the emotions of grieving or loss, it may be that the psyche is grappling at reenacting some earlier, more primal experience of loss incompletely grieved at the time the loss was suffered.
While it may have been adaptive to postpone grieving at the time, sooner or later the need to integrate loss and experience it fully impinges upon our emotional lives, and the earlier loss insists on being experienced conciously, in its own name, as the earlier loss and not as the triggering event.
If the earlier loss is not so experienced, it does not go away. Rather, it gathers more power to distort emotional life and healthy functioning.
Grieving – it’s like leaving a marriage or a serious relationship; even when the relationship was abusive or quite unhealthy, in addition to the relief that it is finally “over”, there is a huge feeling of loss or emptiness, that it didn’t work out, that one’s hopes are erased, or even that one was such a fool (the loss of self image that JAVOH mentioned). I remember when I left a long-term abusive relationship, I felt such sorrow at the fact that I couldn’t love the other enough to overcome the abuse (yes! thank God I couldn’t do that to myself). We are very strange creatures.
#222 Anna:
I have posted my feelings on the blog somewhere down/up? there regarding this subject but at this point have no idea which chapter or where it is. Anyway, reiterating what I have already said, leaving the Fellowship was definitely one of the larger events in my life. I felt grief, yes, but also empowerment at the same time. It was a strange time in my life because I wasn’t sure what to do next since most of my thoughts about the future had the Fellowship and its members as part of it.
Now I had been given another chance to recreate my life which felt pretty good because I got to let go of all the excess baggage I’d been carrying around regarding things in the Fellowship that I felt were just ‘not right’. All that got unloaded immediately. Wow! That felt pretty good!
Many people liken the loss to leaving a long marriage or relationship. I think that’s probably how I felt. In other words, your heart is broken for awhile. I think any serious person on their path would have a reaction like this, so it is definitely part of the process. There is the empowerment part however that is in many ways exhilarating; like the sense of freedom to do, feel, or say what you want and the realization that you had given that up all those years is shocking.
Now I feel the process of leaving the Fellowship was one of the greater gifts in my life because I learned lessons I may have never learned had I not gone through the experience, no matter how long it took me. I think most of us who have left feel we are better people for it.
Sally Black
.
“God closes one door, then opens a box of girlscout cookies.”
~Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”
(My female side loves this book!)
“To be eaten alive…”
This shows how deeply rooted is the belief that it is the “other”
who makes the place safe, dangerous or even mortal…
And how easily we give our forces (legacy/responsibilities) away.
Simone Weil, (Grace and Gravity) observes that as soon as “compensative imagination” is stopped from working, “void” appears.
Further more, here is what works for me as an inspiring quote:
“It is not the place that enables you but you the place.”
Francesco Petrarca.
Anna #222
Just back from a visit to Oregon House. Strange to be there and to experience the land, sky, vegetation, morning and evening fragrances, unfathomable night sky – and all were still the same – but “the thrill was gone”. I was somehow no longer singing The Street Where You Live in my heart. But all those background elements are no less dear to me, just that extra spark of externalizing my own sex energy and my own earnestness was gone, swallowed up in its own tail. Strange. And sad, but only uoon comparison. It was the Present on its own terms with less imagination.
And yes, the grief is still there. But what do I grieve? For many here it is likened to a marriage, but for many also it went far deeper than that because (sometimes/often) the marriages did not last but the connection to the “School” did.
Intellectually, I understand it as the greater “We-thingy”. Call it the Collective Ego, the transpersonal, the ethno-centric, there are many names for it. We each felt the need to expand beyond our personal ego and we DID into this greater whole. That’s one big reason why it felt so good and hurts so bad. It is a kind of substitute for the real and true spiritual thrust which can only be within. It cannot be legislated, dominated, or regulated by thought, word and deed. And when it comes it is more like a sunami from within where resistance is useless. Not always pretty and doesn’t always feel good.
Graduating from the Fellowship is a little like that. It is more about acceptance than it is about decision-making.
And the personal sorrow now is more mixed with a deeper understanding of the immense spiritual ignorance of humanity which the Fellowship represents to me but does not own.
Ellen T. aka Bass Ackwards
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never have to lose it again…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry25U2gaQio
sea of love
no esoteric backwash
no rising tide of philosophy
just want to dive into
that turquoise water
that keeps on calling me
not going to ask if I deserve it
or if it was meant to be
no, no, just going to jump in
feet first, belly flop, cannon ball
big splash, yes, that will be me
if energetic, may do the backstroke
but my main plan, my game plan
is to let my heart and soul float free
float free
of restriction and constriction
of all these self imposed definitions
of what this was meant to be
do you remember?
blue below, blue above
all the forces of nature
holding you up, doing their best
to keep you from sinking
to let you be, just be
each wave, each lap whispering
remember
you were perfect when you started
nothing has been taken
there is nothing to be added,
just jump in and float free
perfect
dog paddler
Cake
Anna 222 May 7, 2008 posted:
‘One such student said that they didn’t dare pose this question to the blog “for fear of being eaten alive” …’
Hello Anna and others. A lot of the people reading and posting to this blog have been students of the Fourth Way for a long time. Let’s just say that there are 100 of such persons with an average length of study, whether in FoF, in/out of FoF, or otherwise, of about 20 years each, conservatively. That is the equivalent group intelligence of 2000 years. This is a group intelligence that is unfettered by the constraints that the Fellowship of Friends has, is, and will be imposing on those who were/are/will be in that organization. They are not forced to conformity by what is the social norm nor by the dictates of some particular individual, or individuals, whose purposes are dubious at best.
This group intelligence has demonstrated in over 15,000+ posts since Sunday, 16April, 2006, when the blog began, the ability to recognize sincerity and truth, amongst other things, in a rather astonishing manner. Sure, some people may ruffle feathers a bit at getting at this truth and sincerity – the worlds more delicate and subtle than false personality and true personality, etc. That may be part of the process of testing the participant. But the genuine questions get recognised most of the time and get addressed; just like this grief/loss one. Certainly there is better treatment, in the long run, than was really possible almost all the time at the Fellowship of Friends official meetings – regardless of the scale, whether with a few to the meetings with hundreds. The reason being, that people can speak the truth, as they see it from their perspective, without the possibility of consequences – like expulsion, reprimand, disciple, fines, exile, reputation ruin, etc., to name a few. That degree of freedom has been suppressed now for some time in FoF. [At one time the FoF had a discussion list but the questions and subject matter became too difficult to handle and was ended. It was moderated by the Fellowship Council. Perhaps those circumstances demonstrated the true level of being of those managing that resource.]
So, I do not see why “for fear of being eaten alive” is something the sincere and truthful enquirer would need to be put off by. I do not usually say ‘we’ here, but here we go: We are not going to be eating people for breakfast. We might be eating personality when it becomes obstructive. [Let’s leave the eating people alive to you-know-who.]
And, also, a question can be asked anonymously at any time. That’s pretty low risk.
Thanks again Sheik, and everybody, for making this possible. You have helped create additional degrees of freedom to escape that goes beyond what the Fellowship of Friends has attempted and achieved as best as I can tell. And, after all, I’m ‘I’ll Never Tell.’
.
.
.
“To be eaten alive” is FEAR. To eat is also FEAR.
241 and 243 are newly moderated.
About the Me-thingy and the We-thingy from Eckhardt Tolle:
THE COLLECTIVE EGO
How hard is it to live with yourself? One of the ways in which the ego attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal selfhood is to enlarge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group—a nation, political party, corporation, institution, sect, club, gang, football team.
In some cases the personal ego seems to dissolve completely as someone dedicates his or her life to working selflessly for the greater good of the collective without demanding personal rewards, recognition, or aggrandizement. What a relief to be freed of the dreadful burden of personal self. The members of the collective feel happy and fulfilled, no matter how hard they work, how many sacrifices they make. They appear to have gone beyond ego. The question is: Have they truly become free, or has the ego simply shifted from the personal to the collective?
A collective ego manifests the same characteristics as the personal ego, such as the need for conflict and enemies, the need for more, the need to be right against others who are wrong, and so on. Sooner or later, the collective will come into conflict with other collectives, because it unconsciously seeks conflict and it needs opposition to define its boundary and thus its identity. Its members will then experience the suffering that inevitably comes in the wake of any ego-motivated action. At that point, they may wake up and realize that their collective has a strong element of insanity.
It can be painful at first to suddenly wake up and realize that the collective you had identified with and worked for is actually insane. Some people at that point become cynical or bitter and henceforth deny all values, all worth. This means that they quickly adopted another belief system when the previous one was recognized as illusory and therefore collapsed. They didn’t face the death of their ego but ran way and reincarnated into a new one.
The Blog does not eat people alive.
Blog likes people.
When prepared properly they’re delicious.
219 Ludoteka
…Everyone was treasoned by Robert….
———————
thank you Elena for your post on the dissolution of Robert Burton’s old “inner circle” to the more dissolute new one.
I despise the man for using people like this, I hope that instead of crushing their hearts he makes them leave in search of their own truth. Love, Robert, has been the stupidest mantra I heard for years.
Glad I am out.
Grieving is always hardest when it’s freshest. “Time heals all wounds” sounds true. When the scab is scratched all one finds is fresh skin ready to accept grieving again.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5MQSiwrUdUU&feature=related
(my sweet daughter Morgan’s good buddy)
(MMMM…girl scout cookies, how yummy! Thanks, God.)
Oceanic Eyes
I awoke this fine bright morning
alone, on your side of the bed
feeling like a beached pearl
lying next to a now peaceful sea
washed ashore after a stormy night
my mind was still swimming
with mermaid whispers,
dreamy dolphin calls,
and the sounds of whales
moaning in the blue deep
Cotton soft waves were sheets
smoothly washing over me
gently caressing my skin
intimately coaxing me
and lapping me back to life
I thought I had drowned
but I was only asleep
oh no, I am more than alive
able-bodied and ready to dive
back into your oceanic eyes
the next time we meet.
Hi Ellen, Thank you for your posts. They are timely.
It seems optimal to try to understand the context in which “Authors” such as Eckhardt Tolle are writing so that there is little confusion about what the Fourth Way possibility also offers.
In your post 247 Tolle describes beautifully the process of replacing my personal ego for the collective Fellowship of Friends ego or our personal ego for the collective Fellowship of Friends ego which is a similar process in fascism or most other collective institutions of our time. It certainly helps to understand an aspect of what students grieve for when they leave. But that is not all. Not everything is simply false personality being false, no matter how absurd the practice may look.
It is a lot like negative emotions. People suffer and make a tragedy of their suffering and reject, abuse and mistreat other people who of course judge them and reject them even more. But when someone is able to look deep into the suffering then the real cause can flourish. Love is always the deeper cause. Our lives are about the struggle of infinite love to actualize itself. We are its honorable puppets. Life is the theater in which we can actualize it. Being healthy means being able to heal more easily from the obstacles life presents us with. People who have been psychologically and emotionally hurt in their childhood have a lot more difficulty in healing themselves without help. Love is the only real healer, no matter where it comes from. There is an infinite source of it in self remembering but it is a black whole incorporating everything to its self when externally considering. Balck holes are widely misunderstood by our science, they are in fact whole not hole.
Tolle’s piece is refering to an specific phenomenon in a moment in time in which both the personal and collective ego are tied to the ego, not to the moment in which the personal ego dies. And in his analogy if the personal ego dies, we should be able to infer that the collective ego can also die.
The idea that the personal ego dies can be conceived of as a turning point in which the whole spectrum of one’s existence turns around a hundred and eighty degrees upwards, downwards or sideways, as you wish. In fact the whole world turns upside down and forward or backwards, as you wish. Just as we can turn a shirt inside out, our whole being turns outside in or inside out but what that really means is that we shift from looking at the world with our instinctive centre to looking at it from the king of hearts.
Do forgive me for having to use my corrupt teacher’s favorite brainwashing dialect but it’ll be easier for us to understand each other. Let us at least not throw away the little we gained from being in the Fellowship Cult.
Both the personal and collective ego described by Tolle in this text refer to the condition of human beings functioning through the instinctive centre. Human beings, just as most cultures, have overcome the instinctive centre over and over again all throughout history and each civilization is a testimony of such beauty.
One of the most dangerous aspects of Fellowship of Friends indoctrination is the one that made us believe that there is, was, or will be anything of value in humanity. This attitude, idea or belief so current in our time in which all cultures have to depress a little to allow for a greater fusion is an aspect of the depression of our times. There is no hope, no search, no curiosity, no joy, no capacity for discovery and surprise in the dogma that states that humanity is or has been at a loss for ever. It is the blindness of dogmatic cult indoctrination what sees the world from this perspective so that it can avoid having people weigh the cult doctrine with enough relativity to not swallow it whole.
Everything Tolle states in this piece is of great value when related to the authoritarian phenomenon in dictarships of all kinds. It is refering to the ego, personal and collective, not to the I, personal and collective. Feeling more German than human, more American than human, more Arab than human is an aspect of that collective ego, but that is an individual phenomenon that in no way diminishes the greatness of the German I or culture, the greatness of the American I or culture or the greatness of the Arab I or culture. Nations, like human beings, each have their particular characteristics and respecting, appreciating and learning from each other is the possibility of actualizing love in its most practical and miraculous expression. Properly understood each nation carries and reveals our different expressions as human beings and they are all, ALL, so amazingly beautiful. That was another of Robert’s great thefts to our integrity. And still students think they were not damaged.
All these aspects of life were placed in the Fellowship of Friends Cult as a potential that never developed and that is one of the reasons many of us stayed for so long thinking, hoping they would. Sadly Robert used them against his students, the System and himself. He is the saddest man on our planet. He too needs help.
Elena
Ellen: Thanks for the Eckardt Tolle message on the collective ego. I really enjoy Eckardt in that he writes in a way that makes it simple for most people to get it. What a gift for humanity right now.
whoops spelled his name wrong. oh well!
I remember when a few kindly mentors met me for breakfast before I was to go “travelling” with REB for the first time. Both straight-talking New York mercuries, they wanted to make sure I knew REB was, in their immortal words, a “bone smoker.”
I said: “Gay? I figured, Judith told me about the dogs.”
We then disputated on free will and the ability for the machine to say “no.” It was a weird conversation for me at the time, I had assumed anyone making the commitment to work on themselves must have the self-possession–or at least basic caution–to not get abused. Sly man and the devil, etc. I “travelled” with the Man on at least three or four occasions and slept soundly in my hotel room, door locked and bolted. When I lived at Apollo I was Robert’s “friend,” that is someone who goes to lunch and dinner when the Man’s in town.
The time eventually came, however, to remain behind at the end of a New Year’s dinner (1997 I think) and enter the bedchamber. There, standing above Robert Burton looking at his thinning grey hair and pathetic eyes, I surpassed my teacher. He was embarrassed, I tried to console him, but there could be none of that (he went from “I’m a submissive woman inside” to uber-guru instantly). I stopped paying teaching payments and never got called on it, even after (or because?) REB “promoted” me to East Coast Regional Coordinator. I took the gig for the perks (anyone remember the NY teaching house from those times?) and was able to front for a few months before the Center Director, a large man largely unable to form any of his own thoughts, decided I was a threat to all things Fellowshipy and armed with an edict from REB threw me out of the teaching house.
I still have an open invitation to re-join, though.
walter.tanner on gmail!
253 is newly moderated.
Alexander Lowen, a reichian psychiatrist, wrote the book called JOY which talks a lot about the path through greif and despair toward joy. Slater in his book EARTHWALK comments on Lowen’s work which would seem to apply to the Fellowship experience and aftermath:
“This is of primary importance to individual mental health and flourishing — it has to do with recognition of the causal relation between despair and human illusions, resulting in their elimination that leads to joy. Despair is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality—it is a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it. People get trapped in despair when this despair is incomplete—when some thread of illusory hope is still retained.”
253 ludoteka
“The idea that the personal ego dies can be conceived of” etc.
It cannot be conceived of. When it is conceived of, we create all kinds of imagination, like “if the personal ego dies, we should be able to infer that the collective ego can also die,” and “black holes are widely misunderstood by our science, they are in fact whole not hole,” and the “greatness of the German I.”
#243
Quite a little gem! Thank you. More Cake, please!
222 Loss
The stages of grief responses as described by E. Kubler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) may not all happen in the predicted sequence and indeed often overlap, but they seem to be so universal as to indicate a natural, deep-seated reaction, akin to an immune response. A vaccine has yet to be developed.
Lots of love, nature, and yes more cake, please!
….258 Ton
…”Despair is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality—it is a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it. People get trapped in despair when this despair is incomplete—when some thread of illusory hope is still retained.”
————————————–
I never thought about despair in this way. I like this point of view.
But I wonder how does one come to terms with having spent a long time in the FOF, like 30 years for example, it’s quite a chunk of one’s life.
Hard to integrate that amount of time as a learning experience;
I wonder if the old but true followers of Robert Burton are betting their lives on their membership.Too late to let go and find a new meaning for themselves.
Angeles Arrien wrote about the loss of meaning as one of the biggest challenges for the human heart/mind.
256. Walter Tanner
“The time eventually came, however, to remain behind at the end of a New Year’s dinner (1997 I think) and enter the bedchamber. There, standing above Robert Burton looking at his thinning grey hair and pathetic eyes, I surpassed my teacher. He was embarrassed, I tried to console him, but there could be none of that (he went from “I’m a submissive woman inside” to uber-guru instantly).”
***
Thank you, Walter, for your story. Can you describe what happened in the bedchamber more clear? I didn’t get it.
veramente 260
I was trapped in the the Fellowship of Friends for “only” 6 years and although it seems like a lifetime ago, for a long time after leaving, those six years seemed like an eternity and a substantial chunk of my youth… the point you make in the example of those who’ve spent 30 years is well taken…. when you devote that much time to a “cause” it must be near impossible to change streams and it takes a monumental effort for those courageous souls to make the leap when they are that far down the road of life. The loss of meaning, (in “shamanic” terms — “loss of soul” — thank you for the Arrien link) is a huge obstacle to making the transition from the cult (which is all-and-everything to followers) and reintegrating into “life.” I was relatively young, energetic and hopeful when I left at 27 years of age… I still think leaving was the single most difficult thing I have ever done but apparently I had a spark of hope and the necessary support to get through it. I think at any age and regardless of the duration of one’s “tenure” in the Fellowship of Friends, HOPE and SUPPORT are essential.
Dear All,
Enjoy several posts aout grieving
Grieved a lot and one of the pearls iabout grieving is:
There is a huge feeling of loss or emptiness…..as Wingspread said.
Unbearable and so real…
I try to sit with it when it is there….
Net coems angryness, pain, hurt…
Tears
Revenge
All mixed
Several times saw Angriness to God, to Life itself, I also was angry at myself….
Next step was forgiveness…
Still want the lies, the hurt, the exploitation to be stopped.
The lies being an esoteric school that directs its energy to one men who has this bizarre sex life and a lust for so many material things and so much fear and no compassion….
It is all still in me….
Enjoy your day and be good to yourself.
BETRAYAL TRAUMA: A NEW MODEL FOR CULT ABUSE?
by John Knapp
I have been reflecting lately on both the extreme denial that active cult members exhibit and the extreme reaction former members experience after leaving their cult. Margaret Singer, PhD, believed former cult member’s reactions were largely grief based. More recently, Colleen Russell, LMFT has developed phases of loss and grief that cult members experience.
I think these models capture only part of the truth, because like most current academic models of cult involvement, they are based on the thought reform or “brainwashing” model. While I can readily see the characteristics of thought reform present in most cults, I’ve come to believe it doesn’t capture the intensity of cult experience fully. Robert J. Lifton developed the model after his work with American veterans “brainwashed” in North Korea. But unlike brainwashed soldiers who knew who their enemy was and fought being brainwashed, we as cult members eagerly sought the “knowledge” or “truth” our cults dished out. We invited them into our minds, made them comfortable, and begged for more. The co-option of our rational thought processes was therefore all the more swift and complete than brainwashed soldiers.
Lately I have been exploring the concept of “betrayal trauma,” a concept introduced by Jennifer J. Freyd, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, in 1991. Psychological trauma is severe and enduring damage to the mind and brain that occurs due to a traumatic event, traditionally defined as an experienced or witnessed threat to life or sexual integrity. Most of us have heard of trauma in relation to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, experienced by war veterans or rape victims. Since the ’90s, the definition of trauma has been expanded to include betrayal trauma. Betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions we depend on for survival, such as parents or churches, violate us in some way. Examples of betrayal trauma are childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
It was Carl Jung who long ago postulated the concept of God as a personified parent-figure. It’s my hypothesis that the guru, cult leader, or cult organization functions as a parent-figure for deeply involved members. If this is true, when we come to suspect that the guru has betrayed us — whether rightly or wrongly — we may come to experience betrayal trauma as if abused by a parent. The primary initial effect of this betrayal may be denial — in which we are faced with facts too painful to accept, so we reject them violently, insisting they are false even despite overwhelming evidence. When cult members do come to accept they have been betrayed, the results may be overwhelming grief and rage — and dissociative phenomena such as amnesia, “spacing out,” depersonalization, and pseudo-personality (similar to multiple personality).
Betrayal trauma theory posits that there is a social utility in remaining unaware of abuse when the perpetrator is a caregiver (Freyd, 1994, 1996). The theory draws on studies of social contracts … to explain why and how humans are excellent at detecting betrayals; however, Freyd argues that under some circumstances detecting betrayals may be counter-productive to survival. Specifically, in cases where a victim is dependent on a caregiver, survival may require that she/he remain unaware of the betrayal. In the case of childhood sexual abuse, a child who is aware that her/his parent is being abusive may withdraw from the relationship (e.g., emotionally or in terms of proximity). For a child who depends on a caregiver for basic survival, withdrawing may actually be at odds with ultimate survival goals, particularly when the caregiver responds to withdrawal by further reducing caregiving or increasing violence. In such cases, the child’s survival would be better ensured by being blind to the betrayal and isolating the knowledge of the event, thus remaining engaged with the caregiver. Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
I suspect that both the denial of those who remain cult members and those who come to believe they were betrayed by the guru are examples of betrayal trauma — even though they may occur well outside of childhood. Particularly suggestive are the symptoms of dissociation that both sufferers of betrayal trauma and cult veterans experience.
In my experience, many, if not most, psychotherapists not experienced with cults don’t get cult abuse trauma and brush it aside. My clients may have felt judged, ridiculed, or ignored by the conventional therapists they approached for help in the past.
Psychotherapists at first resisted the PTSD concept because their training led them to believe primary trauma could only come from childhood. This is one reason that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder took some while to be accepted by the mental health community — adults were not supposed to experience trauma. Eventually they came around to the idea that a “life-threatening” or sexual attack could cause lasting trauma — lasting for decades — much like childhood trauma. (Note that many survivors of cults did in fact endure physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that causes PTSD.) But mental health professionals have remained conservative about accepting cult abuse trauma. I think this is a mistake. Many of my clients report that their cult years were much more formative than the family or religion they were brought up in.
More from John Knapp relevant to grieving the loss of a cult
FAQ ABOUT RECOVERING FROM CULTS
Why do people leave? How do people leave?
Members typically:
walkaway (“walkaways”),
are thrown out (“castaways”),
lose their leader to death or their group to dissolution,
or are counseled out —
in roughly that numerical order.
Walkaways may leave gradually because of love for family or friends or what is called “cognitive dissonance” — a growing realization that the ideals of the group are at odds with their actions. They may float into new groups or eventually return to their original group. Frequently they do not face the damage that they have endured, and they experience reduced functionality for many, many years.
Castaways are tossed out by their leaders or groups for real or imagined offenses — or to keep other members in line. This group may experience the most traumatic reentrance into mainstream society. They usually have not rejected the beliefs or leader of their group and have the added guilt and shame of having been rejected.
Someone involved in the disbandment of their group may experience an ego-strengthening sense of power and control. If the group disbanded against their wishes or their leader died, they may experience a depth of despair similar to a castaway.
Those who are counseled out, through therapy, exit counseling, in-residence programs, or the like, usually experience the smoothest and quickest recovery.
What should a recovering cult member expect?
I’m not usually like this. I pride myself on being organized, and punctual, getting done what I say I will get done. Before “therapy” I set up a business of my own…. After the “therapy” I was just barely able to stay out of bed more then three days a week. That has gotten better and I rarely stay in bed and may nap once in a great while, as I am extremely tired all the time. I wonder if that is ever going to go away.
Don’t make any commitments for awhile. Take it easy. Think of yourself as recovering from a heart attack or a stroke. Set some time aside in your mind for recovery — at least a few months.
Many people experience “triggering.” You may find that anything associated with your group or any of its practices will cause sudden, unexpected discomfort — even panic. Honor it! It’s like the Vietnam vet being triggered by backfiring cars or other load noises. It’s a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s real. Others have gone through it. And recovered.
Sometimes you may be triggered for no discernible reason whatsoever. After time educating yourself about your group, you may find those triggers and how these suggestions work to keep you from thinking and growing emotionally.
The trick is to keep in mind that you can and will recover. Don’t allow yourself to identify with being a victim or abused. You have survived some of the worst life will ever dish out to you. Like a hero returning from a concentration camp during war, you are one tough SOB.
Another analogy: Some people after a heart attack go back to work too soon. They never really recover. Some people slide into depression or don’t work toward recovery. They never really recover. Some people acknowledge that they’ve taken a serious blow and work toward recovery — setting aside a reasonable amount of time to recover their faculties. These people do more than survive — they can be stronger after the heart attack than before.
I believe that recovery from high-control groups and trance abuse are very similar.
As hard as it may be for you to trust a therapist or doctor, it would be very wise to work with a “dispensing psychiatrist” and therapist familiar with cult survivors, battered spouses, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Tobias and Lalich’s Take Back Your Life has a thorough list of questions you should ask your potential therapist before deciding to work with him or her.
The pain of recovery comes and goes. It gets better over time. You must have heard about Kubler-Ross’s steps of grief recovery? Shock, denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance?
As a cult veteran, you are in a grief process for the time, money, love, and life that was stolen from you. You can’t skip any of the tasks of the grieving process. If a parent or loved one died, you’d give yourself a year to recover wouldn’t you?
Part of you has died. Give yourself the same respect you would if you had lost your most intimate loved one.
Some therapists insist that you can have a full recovery from cult trauma. But I suspect this isn’t exactly true.
Cult veterans have had an enormous life-changing experience. One that is shared by relatively few people in the world. Many of us feel that we have been changed forever by time in the cults.
Like all things in life, there is good and bad about this. Our lives may never be the same, nor even similar to what we once envisioned, but we can experience joy, fulfilling work, and deep, satisfying relationships again. We can have great lives.
We are stronger emotionally for what happened. Only a strong person survives a cult. We’ve been to Hell and back. We lived and our lives are fuller and richer for it. We may still have much healing to do. But we’re on our way up and getting on with our lives.
I have a lot of problems sleeping.
Yes, it gets better. It may last a few months.
Many cult veterans continue to tire easily — some for a few years — sometimes because of dissociation, sometimes depression. But we’ve found many ways to deal with it.
At the first sign of trouble focusing, try taking a short nap or walk. Aversion therapy, snapping a rubber band on your wrist when you notice you’re fading, works for some people.
Sleeping too much may induce, prolong, or intensify depression. Some psychiatric research indicates that people prone to depression should sleep no more than 7 hours a day. The trick is to relearn allowing your mind/body to tell you when it is really tired without sliding into depression. Try setting your alarm for 20 or 30 minutes and taking a nap every time you start fogging over.
Some people find some medications or a sleep clinic are helpful, too, under a doctor’s direction.
Many of us who went through high-control situations react with extreme aversion against order, scheduling, working, and so forth. It’s quite natural. You’ve been “brainwashed.” Allow yourself to be pissed off! And know that you may not feel like dancing to anyone else’s tune for awhile.
But if at all possible, try to maintain regular sleep times: when you go to bed, when you get up, and a set number of hours a day. Cult veterans appear to be at great risk for depression and other mood disturbances.
If you have trouble getting to bed at a fixed time, try setting an alarm clock to wake you at the same time every morning. You’ll naturally tend to get drowsy at the same time every night.
Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer suspects that many, many former cult members suffer from sleep disturbances and sleep deprivation. One common-sense way to test for these conditions is to take an over-the-counter sleep aid, such as Sominex or Excedrin PM. If after 3 days you have begun to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, in all likelihood you do not have a serious sleep disturbance and can cease taking the sleep aid. If, however, you notice a surprising new depth to the quality of your sleep, continue needing naps during the day, and begin to have trouble falling asleep without sleeping aids, you may be well advised to explore this situation with your doctor.
Is every cult member severely damaged for life?
Definitely, not.
Many things can affect the aftereffects you experience: your physical and psychological constitution before entering, the severity of your group’s practices, and most importantly the length of time you were involved.
Conway and Siegelman’s research indicates that the number of months meditating, for instance, correspond directly to the number and severity of the side effects cult veterans experience.
And one last offering from Knapp:
FAIRY-TALE THINKING THAT HARMS FORMER CULT MEMBERS
I have found many former cult members continue to be influenced by beliefs and mores of their group — even years after they have left. This is certainly true for me, even though I underwent exit counseling in 1995. Whether it’s fear of nonmeditators’ “impurity,” fear that I will age more quickly if I don’t meditate, or the belief that enlightenment brings human perfection, I have stumbled on dozens of concepts and behaviors strewn throughout my consciousness like “alien artifacts” from my decades in the Eastern Meditation Group I belonged to.
Today, as a psychotherapist, I have found cognitive therapy useful to help my clients discover and rid themselves of unwanted, unproductive beliefs. The theory behind CT is simple: How we think about ourselves, our world, and our future affects our feelings and actions. The method consists of noticing uncomfortable feelings, examining the thoughts we had just before the onset of the feelings, and consciously undertaking “cognitive restructuring” — replacing the dysfunctional belief or thought with a balanced, rational understanding. People are taught a formal process of journaling, known as “thought records,” that makes cognitive restructuring a habit fairly quickly — usually in 12 to 20 sessions.
In the 1960s Aaron T. Beck developed cognitive therapy — one of the most thoroughly researched forms of psychotherapy to date. Cognitive therapy has been found to be effective for many problems including depression, anxiety, panic, substance abuse, and personality disorders. Researchers today are studying its value for treating schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, inpatient depression, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and relationship problems, among others. I am extending its use to the aftereffects of cult-induced trauma.
A key concept of CT is “cognitive distortion.” These are “fairy tale” ways of thinking that contain some logic, but they are not rational ways of looking at the world. They distort our understanding of the world — and cause us pain.
Below are ten common distortions, explained in Beck’s words, with examples I’ve added, paraphrased from former members that I have counseled. (These examples are based on Eastern Meditation Group members. You can read examples more useful for the general population here.) You can rate yourself by giving yourself a point for each distortion that you use, with one being low and ten being high. Then you might ask yourself if you can stop using the distortions and think in a different way.
ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your, or someone else’s, performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself or others as total failures. Examples: I worked with one group member who saw any concept different than the his leader’s “perfect teaching” as wrong, or at least less than perfect. He explained he left the religion he was brought up in because “they believe life is suffering.” Another example: Many former members go through a period after they leave the group where they now believe everything the leader teaches is “bad,” where once they believed everything was “good.”
OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. Phrases like “You always…” or “You never…” exemplify overgeneralization. Example: One former member told me that nothing had gone right for her since she ceased meditating. “I just know that all my bad karma is coming home to roost.”
MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and obsess on it so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors an entire glass of water. Example: A former meditation teacher, who had left the group 6 years previously, told me, “I just can’t get used to working with nonmeditators. They’re just not refined. I mean some of them smoke! How can you work with people so stressed out?”
DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. Often this manifests as making excuses or minimizing when somebody pays you a compliment. Example: A very successful businessman once told me that he couldn’t take pleasure in his accomplishments. “I feel like my success is due to my time in my group. I can’t shake the feeling that if I hadn’t put worked full-time for the group [earning “good karma”], I just wouldn’t be successful today.”
JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion — often a “wait and see” attitude is called for in these situations. Example: A elementary school teacher, who had belonged to a meditation group, explained to me, “I’m very intuitive. Maybe it was the advanced meditation or something. I can ‘read’ people. I know what they are thinking before they say it.”
MIND READING: You arbitrarily conclude (usually by personalizing their behavior) that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. She went on to tell me that she “knew” many people in her school were “against” her — although she could provide no proof that this was the case.
THE FORTUNETELLER ERROR: You often anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. A former advanced meditator explained, “I can tell when it’s going to be a tough day at work. There’s just something in the air that I can detect when I walk through the door. Maybe my leader wasn’t so wrong when he talked about stress in the atmosphere.”
MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your achievements or someone else’s goof up), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own character defects or other people’s acceptable behavior). This is also called the “binocular trick.” Example: I corresponded with a meditation teacher who left the group and married a nonmeditator. “Sometimes I feel like the only reason my wife is doing so well with her business is because we’re together. I mean all those months of long meditations, I figure she’s getting the benefit because she’s near me all the time.”
EMOTIONAL REASONING: You allow your negative emotions to color how you see the world with an “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” Example: A long-term meditator who had left the TM Org some 3 years earlier confided in me, “I still feel like I can tell when I’m “purifying.” When I feel rocky, the people around me are so negative!”
SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself or others with “should” and “shouldn’t,” as if needing to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequences are guilt. When you direct “should” statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment — as do they! Example: “I still follow the old ayurvedic diet [Indian alternative medical diet],” one woman told me. “I feel it’s something I should do for myself. Who can trust doctors? There all tied into the drug companies. They’re just in it for the money. When I slip up and eat junk food, I feel terrible, I mean more than usual. I think ayurveda made my physiology more refined. I really feel I must keep to the diet or I pay for it.”
LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a dumb jerk!” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded — and generally not factually descriptive. Example: Talking about nonmeditators, one former meditation teacher told me, “They’re all so gross! They’re so negative! Everyone is so stressed out.”
PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for. Example: A friend from my meditation teacher training course told me, “I just know that the trouble in the Middle East right now is because I haven’t been regular in my meditation program lately.”
JAVOH 264 great post!
onward and upward toward freedom… excuse the ‘old style’ lingo:
“Do What Thou Wilt; because people that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same people, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of humans to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.”
Rabelais
Hi Elena/Ludoteka
I have seen you moving from “I hurt” on the blog-site, to real Expression of Helpfulness. I think it is great to see. Please call me by telephone if you wish to or get me to call you back – I have a ‘friends and family’ code – 011 44 1392 462103. I will be discrete…..Nigel.
259 Just Another Voice out here. Are you trying to say something?
“It cannot be conceived of” Really? Doesn’t that sound a bit dictatorial my friend? What do you know about what I can conceive of? Is it because you cannot conceive of it that it cannot be conceived? Or is it because you are just not willing to conceive of it because it shocks the soul out of you? It isn’t too difficult if you try so why don’t you try and tell me about it again. Can you conceive it theoretically at least?
As for the great German culture, Yes, one of the greatest cultures of the Western world by far. Or does the music, the literature, the philosophy, the science and the technology mean nothing to you?
As for black holes, what do you know about black holes? Can you in any way relate them to self remembering? Or maybe chapter one of Belzebub’s tales? I truly enjoy playing with these analogies but you can be sure that I ain’t got one for you to look at if you can’t conceive of it!
I sincerely thank you for your questioning me.
Dear Friends,
Robert was asked recently questions regarding presenting the school knowledge to newer students. Here are the questions and his answers.
Student: Do you have any guidance in terms of presenting previous knowledge, such as false personality and states of consciousness, to newer students?
Robert: Everything that we have now is based upon the experience we gathered in the past. Of course, one has to use relativity, because some ideas may not be useful anymore. For example, the ideas of essence and false personality are still very much valid. We now know much better how the lower self controls false personality and our imaginary picture. True personality is essentially the sequence. The idea of the different states of consciousness is central in our work. We can now see much better that the sequence helps us make the transition from the second to the third state. All these are ideas that new students should verify in order to create a foundation for their work.
Student: What about the idea of the four lower centers and body types?
Robert: They still hold up very well, although there might also be an inner meaning. For example, there are six basic body types, and a seventh one–the Solar type. We now know that behind the idea of men number one, two, three, four, and so on, there is also an inner meaning, all progressing to man number eight, the highest achievement possible for man–completing the four wordless breaths.
Student: What about the law of octaves and the three forces?
Robert: They are correct. A certain teacher may come from among us who will focus and build on them. Generally, the first teacher in any tradition is very essential, and those who follow elaborate further. Everything that we learned before the keys is the foundation for, and leads to the sequence, which is the pinnacle of knowledge for man.
The questions and answers are published in the “Weekly Notes”.
With Love
Ulrich
This knowledge is the king of all knowledge, the most secret, very sacred, conforms to Dharma, very easy to practice, and is imperishable.
JAVOH – thank you very much for 3 very helpful posts. Some of it brought me close to tears – especially “As a cult veteran, you are in a grief process for the time, money, love, and life that was stolen from you.” I do think that the worst aspect for me is the feeling that somehow the FoF taught me to consider myself a “failure”, and I can’t seem to get over that. I’m currently in my second year of “recovery”, and still experiencing some of these symptoms – but it is getting much, much better!
somebody #270 – my brain keeps sliding away from reading these quotes from RB….. my eyes went over the words at least 3 or 4 times before I could concentrate on them enough to see any meaning in them at all.
261/somebody
Walter said no.
269 Elena
Is it because you cannot conceive of it that it cannot be conceived? Or is it because you are just not willing to conceive of it because it shocks the soul out of you? It isn’t too difficult if you try so why don’t you try and tell me about it again. Can you conceive it theoretically at least?
___________________________________________________________________
It has nothing to do with “shocking the soul out of me.” I believe it is an experience that is beyond mental conception, and that the more people try to conceive of it, the farther from it they get. Some things are worth thinking and talking about, and some things, maybe not. We obviously disagree on what those things are.
As for German culture, I have no comment on its value (although I note that, for all of its value, it not only didn’t stop, but seemed to have helped, millions of people to carry out some of the most horrifyingly inhumane actions ever seen on this earth). But my point was just that I believe your concept of “a German I” (or an American I or an Arab I), as opposed to German, American, or Arab culture as we usually think of it, is imaginary. I believe any culture, whether great culture or petty culture, is fundamentally different from anything that can be called “I”. And I also think most of what RB implied about the relationship between “refined” culture and awakening is crap.
As for black holes, I’ll happily accept that you have more expertise than I do in cosmology, string theory, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and so on. My mistake.
CASTAWAYS::::”are tossed out by their leaders or groups for real or imagined offences–or to keep others in line. This group may experience the most traumatic reentrance into the mainstream society. They usually have not rejected the beliefs or leaders of their group and have the added guilt and shame of having been rejected”.
I dont think I can add or subtract anything to this. Pretty much hits the nail on the head. The only thing left out is personal experience.
This week one of my visitors has been coming over every evening and both of us are getting very drunk. She has been evicted with her 10 year old daughter from their apartment they’ve occupied for ten years. She is state certified Bi-polar and alcoholic. She is a queen of hearts under much stress. She avoids her apartment until after dark because of shame.
The shame of eviction. Tonight for the first time she said, “I feel tranquility over here”.
I have a friend with PSTD. He owns his own home but lives in jungle like back yard. He goes to psychotherapy every thursday and receives a disability check. Why isnt he happy?
He’s mentioned from time to time of having suicidial/homocidial thoughts. I never respond. This morning he came over and told me that at 3 am he grabbed a bayonnet and went down the street looking for a neighbor who he believes poisoned his fish and water plants. This is just the gist of it. The so-called poisoning happened last year.
I think it was Socrates who said that if everybody would throw their troubles in a pile and walk by and grab something, they would refuse prefering their own troubles.
Thanks SHIEK for starting this blog. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see”.
unoanimo;
BTW thanks for post #97. That was straight from the heart, and I appreciate that. Let’s meet someday and exchange a few wordless breaths.
“Do you ever get the feeling that ‘visiting friends’ or people who you meet daily or that approach you first, ARE familiars, subtle teachers so long as you can maintain the subtleness while with them?”
It is part and parcel of being a virtuoso mystic. I dance for you tonight.
Just another voice out there:
The most important part of quantum mechanics to remember is that that the basis of matter is not particles, but relationships.
276 WhaleRider
I hear you.
Late Night Tea Leaf Love-Gazing
__________________________
Just Another Voice Out Here wrote ~
“…but seemed to have helped, millions of people to carry out some of the most horrifyingly inhumane actions ever seen on this earth).”
Arthur wrote ~
“…at 3 am he grabbed a bayonet and went down the street looking for a neighbor who he believes poisoned his fish and water plants.”
_____________________________
It seems that some ‘wars’ never end, really…
For me, it does not help to label who or what costume the god Mars decides to wear to a rave party; it’s ‘where’ and ‘how’ IT does what it does and its implications or ‘feeling-predicament’… Maybe the potential for war is in everyone in some relative way and the ‘doing’ is happenstance (?)
Jung; when he was looking at many of the German’s dreams before Hitler showed up said that from what he could see in the ‘collective whole’, that there was a dark figure on the horizon; almost as if the German people’s unconscious was summoning it somehow or that it was beginning to move its war drums onto that portion of the Earth (?) …
Perhaps someday our world governments will be closer to ‘The Council’ in the Matrix movie… This would be closer to dealing with Mar’s at ‘his’ hobby-desk, rather than on its horse, fully armored, mind made up and welded to his horse’s steel saddle too…
Sometimes I wonder (when a person chooses a particular people or issue around the subject or specific war) whether or not they’re really revealing something ancient about themselves, some subconscious need to clarify or get through ‘that particular’ soul-period/era, to deal with some stuck-trauma IN IT and not about it (?) There’s been thousands of wars, billions of human beings laid to rest by its ‘grinding wheel’…
After awhile, IMO, the number of people killed in a single war does not mean much outside the male preoccupation with quantities, size, cost and comparison…
In a Maternal point of view, maybe one person being killed in a war is enough to make the Earth stop and stare at the blazing sun and wonder WTF?
Only one, because this one would BE ALL TO HER, since it was her son or daughter, a part of her, him and that Third Party, the ‘wish’ to have a child, a family idea embraced by the methods of love and embraced again by the opposite end of a too mysterious (IMO) spectrum of mobius-living on the planet Earth
(or it’s just me feeling as if I’m sitting inside a big pile of human leafs, wondering at the irony of the fact that when the ‘tree’s’ leafs die it simultaneously gives its life too, (to) the same ground that receives its deaths, its acorn seeds: then there’s that darn squirrel scurrying down my spine for winter food stocks and nest building materials…)
Yes, Whalerider, “relationships” for sure, not numbers and personal details that really only we remember more than those others we’re worrying won’t forget about them. So glad you’re dancing these days, so glad for you, very…
________________________________
L.t.y.a.
Smiley Face Test
:.) :.) :.) :.) …)
Anna 222 May 7, 2008 grief and loss subject:
Here is another story relating to grief and loss:
During the time of Buddha, there was a elderly woman, a widow and a mother, whose only child, her son, died suddenly and left her alone in the world with no source of joy and support. She decided to seek audience with the Buddha in order to have some advice about her dilemma. This process took several days as there were many waiting to see Buddha. She was very patient and when her time came, she could hardly speak for the grief was so consuming. But, others knew her situation and informed Buddha. When she recollected herself and could speak and listen, Buddha gave her this advice: ‘Go to yonder town and seek for me a mustard seed from a dwelling where no one has died.’ And then she was sent on her way.
The woman did as instructed and went to the town and from home to home explaining her task of seeking a mustard seed from a dwelling where no one had died. Many had compassion for her and extended her hospitality. However, everywhere she went she could not find a mustard seed from a dwelling where no one had died. In the process she was told story after story of many loved ones that passed away and what the people did with the experiences. Eventually, and after a long, long time, the woman gave up with frustration and failure at the task.
The woman decided to return for audience with Buddha to report what became of her. She again was very patient and after a few days she was received by Buddha. On this visit she was much less emotionally consumed with her grief and could communicate with Buddha, directly, that she could not find a mustard seed from a dwelling where no one had died and that she was sorry to have failed. At this point, Buddha said, ‘Thou art the dwelling where no one has died wherein resides that mustard seed.’
If those reading this do not get a message from the story or do not understand what this ‘mustard seed’ in them is about, please post here for further discussion.
“Menashe Kadishman’s contribution to the Jewish Museum Berlin is the installation titled Shalechet (Fallen Leaves) in the Memory Void, one of the empty spaces of the Libeskind Building. Over 10,000 open-mouthed faces coarsely cut from heavy, circular iron plates cover the floor.”
I too walked through this installation last summer… very artfully created, it evoked powerful emotions… a somber meditation on violence and death, and a resounding expression of grief
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8Smw-3f8dcU&feature=related
Sorrow is also an aspect of finally getting in touch with the world and ourselves, seeing the truth of suffering without the overimposed impermeable screen of separation… allowing ourselves to empathize, to feel, to explore the depths of pain, the frailty of our existence…
Being in a cult like the Fellowship numbed our sensitivity, as personal feelings were not well regarded or encouraged… painful experiences were buffered, rationalized and explained away as “will of the gods” and “part of the play”. After leaving I had to face a lot of unfinished emotional business, and one of the most difficult aspects was the loss of that conceptual framework that, although seriously flawed, had helped me for so long to create positive meaning on top of negative events. The magical, fairy-tale thinking that for some reason I was under different laws than the rest of humanity, and possessed a clear “destiny” and “destination”…
from coping.org:
Why it is important to be in touch with your feelings
When you are in touch with your own feelings you:
Become a more real and authentic person.
Become more honest with yourself about who you are, where you have come from, and where you are going.
Begin to be more willing to take risks and become more vulnerable and intimate in interpersonal relationships.
Cease being in denial about what is really happening in your life.
No longer pull in and hide so that you become invisible to yourself and others.
Take the risk of no longer disassociating or becoming numb when things are going on in your life which are negative or overwhelming.
Make yourself stay conscious to the reality of your life so that you are able to recall or remember it in the future rather than to have no memory of it.
Push yourself to have a broadened or enriched emotional vocabulary to describe the experiences of your life.
Cease viewing life from a black or white perspective and become more willing to take the gray into account.
Open yourself up to grieve the losses in your life so that you no longer use denial, repression, suppression, or delusion to describe your life the way you wanted it to be but rather describe your life the way it really was.
Allow yourself to become a congruent healthy human being who uses rational, reality-based thinking to assist your feelings to become rational and reality-based so that the actions and behaviors which follow are also rational and reality-based.
Are open to the spirit of your inner child in your soul who allows you to enjoy your life to the fullest without the constraints or restrictions of how you “should” think, feel or act.
Live life moment to moment, day to day, and become reasonably happy realizing that feelings are a natural, human process.
Begin to accept that feeling all feelings is OK and that there is no right or wrong feeling.
Become open to experience the full continuum of emotions from the most painfully negative to the most exhilaratingly positive.
Grow in the ability to listen, understand, and be empathetic to others’ verbal and nonverbal expressions of feelings and emotions.
260 is newly moderated.
Lauralupa wrote:
“After leaving I had to face a lot of unfinished emotional business, and one of the most difficult aspects was the loss of that conceptual framework that, although seriously flawed, had helped me for so long to create positive meaning on top of negative events. The magical, fairy-tale thinking that for some reason I was under different laws than the rest of humanity, and possessed a clear “destiny” and “destination”…”
This is my experience also. Leaving takes the “imaginary sheen” off of life and it is disconcerting and, at times, overwhelming to try to re-orient yourself in a world seemingly indifferent to your “specialness.”
A friend of mine once joked, “Better imaginary emotional connections than no connections at all.”
Disillusionment is a good thing, right?
Oh, and JAVOH, thanks for the John Knapp segments. I found quite a bit of myself in there.
266. Just Another Voice Out Here
Thank you for a useful information.
I did a little research on Janja Lalich, Ph.D after seeing “Inside the Cult” movie, I really like her. I wonder if anybody ever contacted her, she seems to be a very helpful person.
Lalich wrote:
Repairing the Soul
When a person finally breaks from a cultic relationship, it is the soul, then, that is most in need of repair. When you discover one day that your guru is a fraud, that the ” miraclesî are no more than magic tricks, that the group’s victories and accomplishments are fabrications of an internal public relations system, that your holy teacher is breaking his avowed celibacy with every young disciple, that the group’s connections to people of import are nonexistent when awarenesses such as these come upon you, you are faced with what many have called a “spiritual rape.î Whether your cultic experience was religious or secular, the realization of such enormous loss and betrayal tends to cause considerable pain. As a result, afterwards, many people are prone to reject all forms of belief. In some cases, it may take years to overcome the disillusionment, and learn not only to trust in your inner self but also to believe in something again.
There is also a related difficulty: that persistent nagging feeling that you have made a mistake in leaving the groups perhaps the teachings are true and the leader is right; perhaps it is you who failed. Because cults are so clever at manipulating certain emotions and events in particular, wonder, awe, transcendence, and mystery (this is sometimes called “mystical manipulation”) and because of the human desire to believe, a former cult member may grasp at some way to go on believing even after leaving the group. For this reason, many people today go from one cult to another, or go in and out of the same cultic group or relationship (known as “cult hopping”). Since every person needs something to believe in a philosophy of life, a way of being, an organized religion, a political commitment, or a combination thereof sorting out these matters of belief tends to be a major area of adjustment after a cultic experience.
242/lauralupa
I prefer women’s voices, but I like what men have to say.
Hank Williams still sings to us all:
“Why can’t I free your doubtful mind?
And break your cold-cold heart?”
“The cookies are made from real girl scouts.”
– Don “No Soul” Simmons
Q: What is the difference between an enlightened being and an unenlightened being?
A: There is no difference, only one knows it and the other does not.
” prefer women’s voices, but I like what men have to say.
Hank Williams still sings to us all:
“Why can’t I free your doubtful mind?”
Hey Mick,
Norah Jones has a pretty slick version of this on her first cd, “Come Away With Me.”
265 Just Another Voice
“Betrayal trauma theory posits that there is a social utility in remaining unaware of abuse when the perpetrator is a caregiver (Freyd, 1994, 1996). The theory draws on studies of social contracts … to explain why and how humans are excellent at detecting betrayals; however, Freyd argues that under some circumstances detecting betrayals may be counter-productive to survival. Specifically, in cases where a victim is dependent on a caregiver, survival may require that she/he remain unaware of the betrayal.”
Thanks for all three excerpts, they synthesize so much of what we have been struggling on the blog with. This particular fragment can give us an insight into the situation of economic dependence many of the older students are facing. It is not convenient for their instinctive survival to acknowledge the fact that they have been betrayed, used, manipulated because they do not have any other income to back them up if they were to leave the Fellowship. These are seriously holding on to it not just because they are interested in awakening but needing to survive and not only economically but intellectually and emotionally. The small community of ex-students functioning still in Oregon House helps but a larger environment with not only Fellowship ex-members would be necessary. Jobs are needed for these people. Is it not interesting that solving the instinctive plight is actually the foundation to solving the intellectual and emotional plight? Robert works it backwards: Let go of your instinctive common sense, give me all your money and by so doing you allow me to brainwash you emotionally and intellectually, even your moving centre gets limited.
To realize that every center is necessary, unique, and great and the balanced flow between them is health is another huge step to recovering the overdose of neglect that the different centers suffer in the cult environment.
On the German I or ego we would need to go back to Tolle’s piece. He’s making an analogy of individual and collective ego and I am pushing it into individual and collective I. The same concepts we applied in the System to individual behavior can easily apply to Nations and Institutions. There is a Fellowship of Friends false personality, true personality, essence etc. and there are movements within this community of people that are not subject only to those who are inside as students today. We are bound together not by the name but by the connection. Words are not easy but they are directions to explore. Nations, like individuals, function from more or less instinctive impulses, hold true and false personalities and are more or less human in different situations. How human? is the question that matters today for both individuals and nations. Not just hitting each other back for previous attacks.
Lauralupa: ‘Being in a cult like the Fellowship numbed our sensitivity, as personal feelings were not well regarded or encouraged’.
I have to acknowledge that this experience alone caused me so much pain and extreme sorrow upon leaving the Fellowship. And rightly so. Before I left the area of OH I would run into students still in the Fellowship and it was obvious that their hearts had been ripped out of them and they were walking around living and breathing but ’emotionally numb’. I felt frustration and sadness that I couldn’t ‘connect’ with them because they were not allowing me in.
I believe this is one of the more extreme ‘curses’ of being in the Fellowship and why when a person leaves there is so much anger or sorrow in recognizing what they have allowed themselves to do after so many years. I am not excluding myself in this and also think these sociopathic tendencies have varying degrees, depending on each person.
Elena
“To realize that every center is necessary, unique, and great and the balanced flow between them is health is another huge step to recovering the overdose of neglect that the different centers suffer in the cult environment.”
well said!
bruce, thanks for the Thao Nguyen video
Mick, here is a female voice I listen to quite a bit these days.
Sweet and sorrowful, with a ray of hope
Teitur (the guy) is nice too
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xF92Q884ezE
wake up little suzy wake up:
“I would run into students still in the Fellowship and it was obvious that their hearts had been ripped out of them and they were walking around living and breathing but ‘emotionally numb’. I felt frustration and sadness that I couldn’t ‘connect’ with them because they were not allowing me in.”
That’s because they are not “students” of higher learning, open to change and excited by new ideas, they are indoctrinated followers of a cult leader who calls himself a “teacher”. Believe me, I hear what you are saying about the frustration you feel; for me I feel frustrated at the intellectual numbness, too.
Please don’t take this as a personal attack (just parsley stuck in your teeth), and I am not introducing the idea of ‘framing” as a new word exercise here. This is reality testing, AKA deprogramming from the language of cult indoctrination. It’s us letting go of embedded illusions about how we think about ourselves and others.
If you wish to inspire cult members to change the way they think of themselves, you must identify them for what they are: followers….deeply asleep sheep piled in heap and reaped by a creep in a jeep.
I mean, do any of us ex-cult members still describe Robert as a man number 7.2? It’s pretty obvious he is so full of crap that he reads into it on cave walls, and the whole concept of man number anything is just bullshit designed to make one feel inadequate, keeping one on the cult treadmill and footing the bill…like when a female FOF follower dies she is supposed to become a “man” number eight??? IMO, that language is demeaning to women.
(This is why I feel Greg is heading in an unhealthy direction, too. He apparently is hell bent in making others feel inadequate and insignificant in the shadow of the Great Fourth Way Ivory Tower of Dogma he has built around himself, which feels to me like he is attempting to attract followers as many have done before him. Although admittedly, Greg, I do share the contempt you feel toward Robert for corrupting the four way ideas to serve his own lower self.)
Namaste, Suzy, the word “students” just popped out of you, right? Not many people even stop to think about it, but the term conveys deeper meaning, pulls up an unconscious frame, and reinforces the illusion that Robert is a bone fide “teacher”. As an ex-cult member, you wouldn’t say that you “would run into these men number four still in the Fellowship”…that’s clearly the language of cult indoctrination…they are people, first and foremost. (although you could rightly say that you would run into these poor souls in the Fellowship still on all fours…arf, arf)
It’s what Knapp refers to as Labeling and Mislabeling.
Thanks, just another voice out there for your fine post.
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
– Alexander Pope , Essay on Man, Epistle II
#291 Whalerider; Okay then I would go back and use the find and replace feature. Find ‘students’ and replace with ‘current members’ Namaste back.
Does anybody know more about this person who is trying to get more Russian students to join?
His name is Maxim Veselov and the website is http://nuomo.ru/
I would imagine that in Russian they would call him Pimpski.
Or Maximum Vaselinski.
or Ivan Tosukadikski
296. Just Another Voice Out Here
There’s a circle in hell for us two.
“More history needed?” is right. I really don’t get it. What more does anyone need to know?
Think.
Elena 288 wrote:
‘It is not convenient for their instinctive survival to acknowledge the fact that they have been betrayed, used, manipulated because they do not have any other income to back them up if they were to leave the Fellowship.’
Thank you for this observation. But it is, as you say later, larger than that. People are not just instinctively at risk. They are sexually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, etc., at risk of betrayal, being used, and manipulated by the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Earl Burton, in particular. The 30+ years of FoF history speaks volumes of it and it is part of the FoF cult-ure. And, Robert Earl Burton would call the sexual, instinctive, emotional, psychological, spiritual, etc., concerns the lower self concerns and he is counting on using that as the most effective leverage to disarm and expose those aspects of oneself to his corrupting influences.
– – – – – –
lauralupa in 292, you left out this most excellent part that comes before the quotation you generously provided:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
The first 2 lines appeared on a Daily Card way back in the early days before all these ‘Love, Robert’ type Daily Cards started. In typical FoF sound bite style, only the first two lines were used. With that and little else of this work from Alexander Pope, you can suspect an impetus for why conscience went out the window and on to the rubbish heap. There was/would be no other barometer of moral character (read: conscience) than REB himself; he da-Man, he da-Man!
After your quote it goes on:
Go, wond’rous creature! mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his follow’rs trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the Sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule –
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
That last line, for Burton purposes, could read:
Then drop your pants, and let me have your tool!
And these two lines are good:
Or tread the mazy round his follow’rs trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
I can just see REB wandering through the maze of garden paths at the Academy he has created with his entourage (follow’rs) imploring them to suppress their lower self (common sense) and call it imitating him, God.
.
.
.
Thank you Sheik!
Hey, Sheik, time to turn the other cheek. In other words, 300 did arrive, it’s time to turn the page to 35.
Gladis Sukinoff
Leo Holestoy
Peter Upendski
Guess you best make that a table for three Bruce.
Moving on:
NEW DISCUSSION