Fellowship Of Friends Discussion, Part 50 September 15, 2008
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Fellowship of Friends - Living Presence Discussion 
301 Opus
“If someone has it from one or more of the female members involved in the events that their play with M…i and D…n had all the same strings of abuse of power that REB applied to the male members that have testified here, I will happily recognize that I have it all wrong.”
First, “same strings of abuse” is straw man. It has has nothing to do with the original point. No one is disputing “technique” or subtleties of exploitation. Second: Do you suppose, after reading here all that you have, with it taking years for some victims to metabolize their debauchery, do you suppose that the women you refer to are going to come forward and confess their sins so you can change your view? That’s a pretty pompous and irrelevant pronouncement. The fact that there were willing participants…does that change RB’s role in his gig? And it doesn’t change the role of our little Caligulas. To paraphrase Christ, the whores will always be with us (m & f).
To clarify : “the whores will always be with us (m & f).”
We’ve all been whores at times and to different extents with different motivating factors…sex, attention, money, bright shiny objects. But again, scale and degree of misogyny is a crucial demarcation between stupid or naive and the other end where self serving malignancy reigns.
Bruce
Fair enough.
You may know that, but those guys who are kept in REB entourage often have no means of maintaining steady relationships (REB likes nothing better than destroying them) or pursuing activities other than the mindless maintenance of the Prince’s wishes and fantasies. I was told that after REB was informed that D…n wanted to go the University to undertake/finish studies, he stated that he would have to leave the school first. I have not independently verified that this particular rumor is true, but I have a sense that it is in fact true.
So here the question for you. You are pretty harsh on those guys, calling them whores and little Caligulas. Is is that you refuse to see any aspect of victimhood in their story, at least to the same degree you found in the stories of those in the FOF 20 or 25 years ago? Those young men joined the the FOF at a very young age and have been cajoled by Burton for their own spiritual good (sounds familiar?). REB has not gotten any easier recently, and he has become more ruthless and brazen in his ways. Parenthetically, it was interesting to me observing that some of the more violent internal critics of the “incident” were folks who were losing (old) power to them.
I see victimization of many of the people. The problem is grouping them with people who are born manipulators, sociopaths, takers and exploiters, who, for all intents and purposes didn’t gain this “bent” in the school. They came with it. One doesn’t become a sociopath in a small number of years. It’s a long, ugly continuum. Of course one may accelerate and refine their perverse gifts by coming in touch with, and exploiting access around a master scum bag. Though it was on a whole different level 20 years ago, there were still a few who saw the potential to exploit “proximity and access” to RB for sex, drugs and the Canon in D. Many have left, and after all these years, they’re still scum bags, often using the new manipulations they found in the FOF “system”.
For the “victims”, for me, it’s not hard to feel heart pain when I place myself in their shoes…I wore them. And I know how hard it’s going to be to process it when it finally smacks them in the head. I feel deeply for them. So I’m not willing to let the pricks come under the same umbrella.
HI Bruce, As always I appreciate your point of view even if not agreeing with the whole of its impetus.
At this point it is important for me to realize that victims or victimizers, most members were victims of the conditions. What one tends to become within a gold alchemy concentration camp where they don’t kill people but people pay to voluntarily get ripped off and raped because of the conviction of the legitimacy of the place, matters a great deal in our approach to each other once we are out.
Mihai and any other member who has just left is in an extremely delicate position and I hope the rejection from many here will not drive him right back to another Cult or to beg Robert for re-entrance.
The gossip I heard about this incident can be understood in various ways. I think those young women were having sex with these guys anyway and getting the vouchers was an addition to the little the guys could offer them. I heard of only one married woman, who one of the guys was probably interested in, who actually got a call and was offered the deal. Strange way to want to seduce someone but after submitting to Robert’s tactics for years what can be expected of these guys?
Now that I’m out I’m not about to become a victimizer after having been the victim while I was in. We each have to come to grips with what happened to us and it is even more difficult to come to terms with having become a victimizer than having become a victim but if we understand the pressure under which we were all in, we can deal with it. What matters is not avoiding reality so that we don’t spend the rest of our lives hiding from what we cannot or are not willing to accept like the multitude of inner circle people that are still in denial about what is going on inside. It is not easy to say I was a whore or a pimp but most of us were both convinced we were struggling to become conscious and making extreme sacrifices to make it work.
The fact that Mihai is still saying that he didn’t leave but that he was thrown out is revealing of his state today. When I started writing on the blog wasn’t I hoping all the ex-members would join and reform the Fellowship? It has taken me a year and a half to come to terms with the fact that I was simply Mr. Haven’s private whore and it happened only last week when someone confronted me again with the issue. We are all in different forms of denial. That is, at least all of us who have left recently.
Our play is a tragedy, one that we were simply unable to avoid. It is no accident that I played Mr. Haven’s whore but that was not Mr. Haven’s intention. If he had the being, the consciousness, the humanity to understand it, he would not have allowed it. If I had had the being, the consciousness, the humanity and self appreciation I needed to have from the beginning I would not have allowed myself to play that role. The Fellowship reduced our psychological self defenses to the point to which everyone just played out the best they could under extremely humiliating conditions. Those with inclinations for power allowed Robert to use them and used it, those of us for inclinations to serve, allowed the Fellowship to abuse us.
If we had all had the social and human consciousness that we are gradually coming to relate to, not one of us would have allowed Robert to use any of the boys the way he used them, not one of us would have accepted being humiliated event after event or a bunch of sickos going around poking our pockets to see how much more money they could squeeze out of them.
All those things happened because we didn’t have what we were looking for: consciousness, integrity or dignity. We had too much naive trust.
When you were one of the boys, the Fellowship’s social patterns were very different and Robert was younger, less corrupt and with less power. By the time Mihai was there, Robert was extremely dependent on those boys to get more boys and to keep away the old generation who were nevertheless slightly threatening to him. He had absolute power. The older generation was blindly committed and most, thoroughly dependent both economically and emotionally. They needed a bigger share in the pie and Robert wasn’t willing to give it to them because he needed it for his new generation of pimps. They just got the boot from each other or Robert himself who, by turning the power over to the women, finally disabled the males.
In a nest of snakes everyone gets poisoned. Is it Mihai’s, Asaf’s or Dorian’s fault that they were as brainwashed by us as we were by others? No one inside thought they were being intentionally criminal although at some point it did surprise me that K. spoke to me about how the boys from Russia saw Robert as though they understood that he was just a sick man and hence were obviously taking advantage of the situation.
I would not condemn any one of these young men without detailed proof of it. We were all under a pressure that may seem light to many when dressed in gold alchemy roses but we’d been in the bubble for too long, we had no sense of ourselves, reality, common sense or the rest of the world. The Fellowship for those of us that didn’t even go out to work outside of it acquired a particular kind of sickness.
These men are young. The fact that they were a little talented and Robert immediately put them to his use does not mean they are absolutely responsible. Robert needed to get Girard out of the way and the whole older generation and gave these boys a huge amount of power very quickly hoping he could get away with it. The mistakes they made, when seen under the light that they were already having sex with these women and could deal vouchers out like candy is not far from the systematic pimpering that the whole of the Fellowship has condoned for Robert. This one case in which a wife was asked if she would play the game and she totally refused and exposed the whole scam, speaks wonders of at least one woman in the Fellowship cult.
I guess Bruce that life is already too hard for me to condemn Greg or Mihai. What matters is not the tragedy we are leaving behind but the life we are willing to embrace. I would walk into the Fellowship and stop it right now if I could but I would not harm or condemn anyone for anything that they did inside after that. Every single member needs intense treatment and HELP. We are all responsible for brainwashing each other’s soul. I gave it as much credibility as anybody else. I believed in Girard, Collin, Meredith, Steven and a hundred others and the Mihai’s believed in us too. Can we take that into consideration before we call each other whores and pimps once we are out?
Personal responsibility cannot be separated from social conditions and THAT is what needs to be understood by this experience. Then we’ll be clearer about the need for healthy communities. The sickness of the Fellowship is rooted in a mentality in which each individual must fend for him or herself without any social responsibility for the consequences. What we need to understand is that it was precisely that mentality what made the individuals so corrupt. Cells exist within the body, the well being of the body is what determines the condition of the cells. The balance between the individual and the community determines the well being of the whole. Where there is no human consciousness, individuals corrupt and the organism develops cancer. That is as true of Capitalism as of Communism, the issue is not in the money, not in the Instinctive Center. The Instinctive Center is the baby of the Universe. We are transitioning from a world in which authoritarian structures give over the rule of society to individual consciousness. This is America. The individual must consciously return his understanding to the well being of the whole if he is to develop himself within it. All heroes are willing to die for this. No one can do it alone, because no one IS alone but each must be willing to carry the complete responsibility for the whole. Each must be a whole man in himself which is what being human means.
One day when a child looks into a man or a woman, s/he will see the whole universe. We are beautiful beings. We are God bonsais! When we start looking at each other with the dignity we each deserve, we’ll allow each other to become who we really are.
Elena,
Happy B-Day!
The blog turned 50 pages as well…
Hope you are having an amazing celebration!
: )
Bruce: “So I’m not willing to let the pricks come under the same umbrella.”
If they are more sick than the rest, it means they need more help than the rest, but I’m very glad we have such an expert at detecting the pricks.
I know very little about Mihai personally so it is not for me to point it out to such detail. He at least acknowledged me in the Fellowship while non of the others ever did.
6 elena
“The fact that Mihai is still saying that he didn’t leave but that he was thrown out is revealing of his state today.”
It is revealing of nothing other than the fact he was thrown out.
“I hope the rejection from many here will not drive him right back to another Cult or to beg Robert for re-entrance.”
Please, come on.
“Is it Mihai’s, Asaf’s or Dorian’s fault that they were as brainwashed by us as we were by others? ”
You’re joking right? This makes no sense in light of their actions.
“These men are young. The fact that they were a little talented and Robert immediately put them to his use does not mean they are absolutely responsible.”
They are responsible for their actions and decision making.
“This one case in which a wife was asked if she would play the game and she totally refused and exposed the whole scam, speaks wonders of at least one woman in the Fellowship cult.”
I agree with that completely.
“I guess Bruce that life is already too hard for me to condemn Greg or Mihai.”
That’s fine, for you. But remember this is basically what the Jews said about the Reich when things were starting to look a bit scary for the surrounding countries. I know that’s not a completely accurate analogy but the point of saying life’s too hard for one to condemn misogyny is just to weak a cop out.
“Every single member needs intense treatment and HELP.”
This, of course is simply your opinion, not a fact that you can know.
“I believed in Girard, Collin, Meredith, Steven and a hundred others and the Mihai’s believed in us too. Can we take that into consideration before we call each other whores and pimps once we are out?”
You can, of course, but don’t ask me to, simply based on what you believe.
“Personal responsibility cannot be separated from social conditions and THAT is what needs to be understood by this experience.”
It sure as shit can.
“Cells exist within the body, the well being of the body is what determines the condition of the cells.”
I don’t think so. I think, more likely, that it’s the condition of the cells that determine the health of the body. That’s exactly one of my points.
“The Instinctive Center is the baby of the Universe.”
Again, please, give me a break.
“The individual must consciously return his understanding to the well being of the whole if he is to develop himself within it.”
I agree to a large extent, but not completely.
“One day when a child looks into a man or a woman, s/he will see the whole universe. We are beautiful beings. We are God bonsais! When we start looking at each other with the dignity we each deserve, we’ll allow each other to become who we really are.”
Agreed, but not everyone deserves it, except in a metaphorical or rhetorical way. There are some, unfortunately, who don’t deserve shit.
6 elena
Of course if you ask the sociopaths, the narcissists, the exploiters…they’ll agree with you 100%, and say “yes, we’re just like you.”
Well Bruce, it is a pleasure to disagree and not have the slightest need to convince you otherwise nor feel the need to bring myself up to your conviction.
We disagree, isn’t that fun? I doubt you’ll look for me to shoot me down and in the meantime we can continue to look at each other’s world from a distance.
Perhaps what I’m talking about cannot happen in America and you’ll continue to think that people can get busted day after day because they are not smart enough to do anything else for themselves. I wouldn’t be so pretensious as to think I can change that.
The instinctive center is the baby of the universe. I doubt you have a clue what I’m talking about but what really matters is that you don’t give a dam and that is O.K.
Bruce: “There are some, unfortunately, who don’t deserve shit.”
We disagree. Everyone deserves a chance. Being in jail and getting treatment is still a chance. No one is too evil to not get help. I just don’t believe that but does it matter?
Of course if you ask the sociopaths, the narcissists, the exploiters…they’ll agree with you 100%, and say “yes, we’re just like you.”
So I’m a sociopath, narcissistic, exploiter too? Thanks Bruce, you get more and more refined as time passes. We belong to different worlds. You think you can just stand up and say NO, NO, NO, and not deepen my understanding of your position closing doors. Let them close. I will not force them.
Maybe you know Greg and Mihai better than I do and have reasons to close the door on them but you think Greg’s mysoginy in those writings was enough for me to cancel him out? That I would take such pathetic and childish behavior going after the moderator moaning like a spoiled brat for a criminal who has to be banned out of this world? I guess I’ve seen too many people been banned out of this world to take such pathetism seriously. We actually found people lying in the street with a bullet in their head when I was younger so I can’t take Greg or Mihai to those extremes without knowing more about them or the positin of anyone willing to do such things to people without a fair trial.
But I also think our misunderstanding is just of form. It is not that I would not use force to stop people from abusing their position or power, it is more that I do not believe in evil per se. That is the real difference between us. I have never seen evil in myself, why would I believe it exists?
As for Robert, he seems evil to me but even his evilness in my HO could be stopped. But that is just me and I tried as much as I could given the particular conditions of your laws.
I will not try to change your laws or convince you of mine. I will simply continue developing the ones I believe in and let them take their own course.
We are all rivers on our way to each others Ocean.
Here is an email I recieved today… I am wondering who is controlling the switch.
Dear Students,
In view of recent events, and with the cash flow being a little tighter than usual, the Teacher would like to send this message of comfort and reassurance to all of us:
” My dears, due to lack of funds, and in order to consolidate resources, the light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily switched off.”
Love, Robert
Thank you all,
” The darker it gets, the more the light at the end of the tunnel seems bright; believing in it only increases the illusion.”
Hao- Darkarwi
comfort and reassurance
???????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many ways to look at that!
11. elena
Not in any way did I try to group you with the people I was discussing. Don’t get me wrong. I may not agree with many things you say, but you still have my love. It is for that reason I feel I can tell you how I feel and think. You are not them, and they are not you. You may think you are part of them, and I respect that, but I don’t see you that way.
ltu.
Please, no NAMES, Please use M-r-d-th or St-v-n etc.
Dear Elena,
The below judgement makes me question your integrity. And I am wondering, who is the child and is the child sick?
Is there any projection in the following?
Are we not part of what we see in others?
“That I would take such pathetic and childish behavior going after the moderator moaning like a spoiled brat for a criminal who has to be banned out of this world?”
Some things are better left unsaid…correction, many things are better left unsaid.
Words can hurt…..
Thank you to everyone who responded to my post. I think that we must keep trying to help each other understand the hug mess we have gotton ourselves into.
285. waskathleenw – September 15, 2008
amazingly fucking simple practicle advice.
By the way, everyone coming out needs our help and support. We all made mistakes. We all escaped.
thanks
t
“The light at the end of the tunnel is in the end you’re looking from”
Ay-Yamoli
What’s this ‘play’ shit?
Is it off Broadway?
What’s it called Pimps and Hos?
It is simple to be who you are. The complete fuck-up that you always were.
Love is nice when it’s understood. (Jimi hendrix___ Electric Ladyland)
Let others purge their pain, I am swallowing mine.
I was Lucifer for the Cult Leader’s Beast, and he fed upon me, and I sinned by eating fellow cult members’ Souls and by astrally stimulating their clittorises.
We have to make the best of it.
Juli-en
Ames – 49-204:
“Thank you for your well–researched lecture on conscience; that is a lot of material you have collected.
Firstly I have to point out, yet again, your leader’s stated belief,
“Conscience is just a collection of ‘I’s; anyone accumulating too much material there should leave the school”.
Do you agree with this statement, made by Burton on 12th November, 1994, or not? Please explain your reasons, either way.”
First of all, I‘ve not read or heard this statement before so it’s hard to comment on it in the context of Robert saying it. Maybe you heard him say it firsthand, maybe someone repeated it to you, but I have not encountered it. I can only take it at face value and give my understanding of it.
Otherwise, to repeat what I posted earlier, conscience is an “instrument” that allows us to distinguish right from wrong, as it relates to us. I say “as it relates to us”’ because in most cases right and wrong are universal values but there are times when what is right action for one person may not be correct for another.
The mind is not conscience but the mind can dictate to us, or overrule conscience, and if there is nothing stronger in us than the mind we will not obey conscience. Conscience and “the mind” have different agendas.
So, I would say conscience is not a collection of I’s but conscience can be ruled by a collection of I’s. And if “too much material” is accumulated in the mind posing as conscience it could very well cause someone to leave.
Milton said “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.
If conscience sends us a message that we ignore, or a direction to go and we take the other way, what is left for us than to justify our ultimate decision? We can not co-exist side by side with the contradiction so we find a way to justify our choices.
We justify our choices without even realizing it. We say we are following conscience when it fact we are following anything but conscience. This was the main focus of the post on conscience; that we have it and it works, but the lower mind routinely overrules it. And the mind can give us very sound reasons for doing just that; it can make “heaven of hell.” I would not say we never obey conscience, but the mind is clever enough to follow it when it’s easy to do so and not follow it when it’s more difficult.
Consciousness is endowed with an awareness that knows when we are disobeying conscience and has the will to rectify the situation. Consciousness can and does assist conscience and without consciousness conscience is virtually useless to have and it remains for the most part a potentiality, not a reality.
It’s very easy to say “my conscience did not allow me to do this or that.” How can this statement be tested? The lower mind can say this regarding anything it does not want to do. So it’s up to the individual to be “awake” enough to determine the voice of conscience from that of ordinary mind.
Do banks lend you money on a handshake? Would you pay someone cash to replace your roof before they did the work? The business world has known for millennia that conscience for the average man is not a reality.
If you think about all the disputes between people; all the crooked business deals, personal betrayals, all the instances where there was a transgression by one person towards another; all this points to people not being able to conduct themselves in accordance with the dictates of conscience. Contracts bind people to their word because conscience is unable to.
I don’t think we can even comprehend a world where conscience rules as it is so foreign to the world we know.
Ames – “I don’t know the sources of your massive collection of theories, they are uniformly unattributed, but they are theories, at least to you. How do I know? Because there is nothing personal in them. The only times you personalize your statements is when you say, “I believe this statement…”, and, “I also believe that conscience…” in the first and second paragraphs, and obviously they are not claims about your personal experience. I’m sorry, but (for me) this makes your whole effort is valueless. You’ve just collected a bunch of opinions from who knows where, and downloaded the lot on us in the form of a lecture. I would strongly suspect that you have not actually ‘worked’ on any of this, have not tried to see if any of your statements are true or false (to the limit of your power).”
Actually the entire writing is based on my understandings and experiences. I am not parroting anyone or any source. I couldn’t have uncovered the law of Feminine Dominance myself, but once I knew about it and saw it at work first hand I could study it and make the connections I made in post 196.
Ames – “But, if I am wrong, please tell me how and why—and give examples of how you have experienced the truth of anything you say, or better still, whether and how you personally have experienced conscience, and how you were able to tell it from surrounding morality, including the Fellowship local morality. After all, the 4th Way claims that conscience develops in parallel with consciousness, and you have at least experienced some states of higher consciousness—haven’t you?”
It is only through higher states that one can sort out any part of your question. One can only see the lower from the higher. Examples inevitably fall short because it is the state that confirms the truth, not any kind of reasoning. Reason can take people to the doorstep of higher truths, but it’s the state that allows one entrance. It would be wonderful if higher understandings could be transferred from one person to another.
So I can’t give examples, and if I attempted to you could brush any example aside with a logic or reason that fits your present beliefs; especially if you are intent on sustaining those beliefs. This is how esoteric truths protect themselves – they can only be understood from where they originate, that is to say, a higher realm. They require us to raise our state to some degree in order to understand them.
And we don’t raise our state by reading or conversing with someone; we do it through specific efforts. Often those efforts are subtractive, not additive. It often means not doing something one usually does rather than doing new things or more of something old.
Ames – “Moreover, you first say that “one gets a real sense that conscience in ordinary men is indeed a myth”, then state that “Our conscience, which never goes off duty…”. Which is it?”
Both are true; I did address this in detail in the “lecture.”
Another point being made in 49-196 is that conscience, even with its sporadic appearances, works well for everyday life. The world is what it is. In terms of how conscience operates it has not changed appreciably in recorded history and likely will not change. If a person decides to pursue a spiritual existence and all that implies he will find himself in a dilemma when he comes up against the laws of common morality vs. a higher morality, which are often at odds with each other. This dilemma intensifies when he is forced to make a choice.
Below are some thoughts from Rodney Collin that are related:
From The Theory of Conscious Harmony
Letter of Rodney Collin, November 25, 1950
“All that Ouspensky said and did at that time seemed to me to have exactly this purpose and effect – to sort out the people who could respond to the miraculous from those who could not, and also to sort out in these people themselves the small part which could respond from the large part which was unable to do so.
It was very clear that if a man in a higher state of consciousness acts directly from the perceptions of that state, without bothering to consider the fashions and weaknesses of ordinary life, he will seem mad to men in ordinary life.
Evidently great teachers have to soften their truth to the understanding of the hearers, to be ‘gentle’ with them – but for a short time their work may exactly consist in not compromising with ordinary life at all. This will be the real test of those who have studied with them, and will show whether they have really understood, or have heard only words.
…And evidently there comes a time when a real teacher has to create conditions which are unbearable for the old personality of those about him. He does this by acting, without compromise from his higher understanding without any concessions to the ways of the world. This is literally unbearable to what is artificial in his followers – either they must go away or something must die in them.”
20 is newly moderated
Daily Cardiac…
Interested in your views on Conscience.
The original Latin root of this word was Con-Scio (“I know with…”). I was recently fortunate to have an experience, which was very concrete, of what I felt could be called Conscience. There was a definite sense that the centres of the body were in consultation, and that there was a system of checks and balances in place which could only regulate my behaviour in the outside world at that time. I did not feel I could ‘know with’ only one centre operating in me, or even two. All three needed to be functioning at the same time.
So in answer to your statement that “So, I would say conscience is not a collection of I’s but conscience can be ruled by a collection of I’s.” – they cannot exist at the same time in the same body!
“Consciousness can and does assist conscience and without consciousness conscience is virtually useless to have and it remains for the most part a potentiality, not a reality.” – As indicated in the quote about Conscience and Consciousness evolving together, in fact they cannot evolve independently. It is impossible. What you seem to be referring to here is that the lower centres may have a memory of an experience of Conscience… This is certainly not useless as it does indeed point the way home internally, the memory is better than nothing at all.
“It is only through higher states that one can sort out any part of your question. One can only see the lower from the higher. Examples inevitably fall short because it is the state that confirms the truth, not any kind of reasoning. Reason can take people to the doorstep of higher truths, but it’s the state that allows one entrance. It would be wonderful if higher understandings could be transferred from one person to another.
So I can’t give examples, and if I attempted to you could brush any example aside with a logic or reason that fits your present beliefs; especially if you are intent on sustaining those beliefs. This is how esoteric truths protect themselves – they can only be understood from where they originate, that is to say, a higher realm. They require us to raise our state to some degree in order to understand them.”
– It feels like we are getting to the crux of the issue here. What the Work tries to do is build a bridge whereby the truths experienced at more illuminated moments can be transferred into what you call the ‘lower self’ and allowed to work there. This may come down as ‘morality’ or as a way of behaving in ordinary life… Your mood in these two paragraphs suggest that you don’t see this bridge or even its necessity!
Higher understandings can be transferred to another person indirectly, after they have been filtered through a simple, willing, co-operative ‘lower self’… Otherwise there would be no teaching and no teachers! Likewise ‘reasoning’ changes with any experience that is experienced as higher, it’s just a question of how much material has been allowed to pass over without too much interference (commentary, judgments etc)…
The effects (positive or negative) of higher experiences really depend on the efficiency of the bridge you have been building between higher and lower selves. If you haven’t building one, or feel that in some way the ‘lower self’ does not deserve that channel of communication, then you are creating a tragic situation, which does seem to be the case – through many of the painful testimonies on this Blog and elsewhere – with Fellowship students…
Higher experiences mean nothing if they can’t be translated by a whole person, one who has the willingness and stability on God’s good Earth, to go out into ordinary life and use the gifts he/she has been given.
“And we don’t raise our state by reading or conversing with someone; we do it through specific efforts”. – The effort can exist anywhere and at any time, when reading or conversing with someone or gardening or feeding the dog… And we don’t ‘raise our state’ at all, we simply invite influences to reach us in a set of circumstances, waht you call ‘the effort’ just changes shape according to the situation!
Just as a final thought, Rodney Collin is not considered a teacher by those who actually knew him in teaching groups, or by those who knew Gurdjieff. Only by Robert.
So, Robert Burton is sucking “dicks” without compromise? Then it would be better for that ‘dick’s” soul to go away or die.
Of all the “esoteric” teachings in the world, which “sucks dicks” without compromising their consciousness’s conscience?
A pirate for life
Tina #143 pg 49
I think it is important to recognize that leaving the Fellowship is and can be different for different people. In my opinion, it seems to depend principally upon how many lies or buffers a person may have constructed over the years regarding RB, and how those lies were used to buffer their own individual actions or inactions – whatever they may have been or not been. And how deeply they as individual members believed in the borders and the shunning.
Other factors include how identified a person was/is with the group energy, and/or with their investment in the community, what “self-remembering” as a practice meant to them, and in general how balanced they are in their four (lower) centers. Of course, there can be other factors, too. But these are the few that I can see.
For my husband and I it was different. He left and that was that – at least on the surface. I know he feels a deep loss both for what was and what could have been. But it is not a topic of our daily conversation. Nevertheless, most (but not all) of our deep, true, long term Fellowship friendships have remained unchanged.
For myself, I felt let down and depressed rather immediately. I think I was more identified with the “collective ego” side of the Fellowship experience, so it took me awhile (emotionally) to sort through that. I am still sorting, and regard it as a process for which I must be patient and gentle perhaps for the rest of my life?
But contrary to many of the other replies to your question, I can only suggest, if you still have the heart for it, to actively look around and investigate what other teachers and teachings are saying. Because it is not a question of running after some new guru, but more an issue of understanding what is right and good in what you already know and conversely what can immediately be tossed without a second thought. As I mentioned a few pages ago, I had experiences with four different teachers within 9 months of leaving the Fellowship. Such experiences helped me to establish my own personal scale rather immediately. It was and is very empowering in the highest sense of the word to have your own spiritual intuitions and experiences confirmed from twenty different directions. (OK, not twenty, but you get the drift.)
And I say this because as a long time member, I had the thrust to leave the Fellowship on a few occassions in the past when the dirt was almost literally, almost daily rubbed in my face. But I chose to stay, and at that time I was also by no means oblivious to the cultish aspects of the group, either. So what was it? Some voices here on the Blog would simply write me off as yet another idealistic, brainwashed (now ex-) member. And I’d be foolish to deny it, ’cause I am that, yet, yet, yet, there was also something on a different level that was touched and fed by my FoF experience and I’d be even more foolish to deny That.
Because, I Am That.
So, Tina, good luck to you.
‘Cause you are That, too.
DC
“We justify our choices without even realizing it. … This was the main focus of the post on conscience; that we have it and it works, but the lower mind routinely overrules it. And the mind can give us very sound reasons for doing just that; it can make “heaven of hell.”
If you could only listen to yourself… your own wise words could help you out of your predicament
there’s malice in wonderland
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Srn0xkXTSgs
Point of order Mr. fofblogmoderator:
I thought that “unmasking” was frowned upon, not naming names.
I find names very useful since I am mostly familiar with the older cast of characters and not the current crop-o-nuts.
For myself I get much more respect as a cartoon than I do in real life.
Hmmmm, I wonder if “Mick Danger” can be marketed as a
More-Tolerable Action Figure/Idol/Image?
# 12 TINA
Dear Students,
In view of recent events, and with the cash flow being a little tighter than usual, the Teacher would like to send this message of comfort and reassurance to all of us:
” My dears, due to lack of funds, and in order to consolidate resources, the light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily switched off.”
Love, Robert
——————
Is this a joke? it’s sounds like one.
Daily Cardiac,
You seem to live in the world of intellect using words and concepts to construct your reality.
What do you think about gut feelings?
Since DC brought up the subject… more food for thought (hard to digest, I know)
World’s Jailers
The jails race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative Gulag program. Under Lenin, and later under Stalin, millions of people were herded into labor camps to provide slave labor for massive construction projects such as the Belomor Canal, which links the Baltic to the North Sea. Over the years, the inmate population was comprised not only of criminals, who were always plentiful, but also of aristocrats associated with the ancient régime who were not fleet enough to emigrate to a new career of driving taxicabs in Berlin, Paris or New York. The inmates also included ethnic minorities such as the Chechens (who found themselves in disfavor after they welcomed the Nazi invaders), soldiers who had surrendered to the enemy instead of dying heroically (surrender was considered a form of desertion), priests and nuns (to rid the country of unscientific “religious superstitions”) and plenty of innocent bystanders, who were swept up by a well-oiled judiciary machine. The arrests often happened in the middle of the night and those arrested simply vanished from society. Their disappearance was studiously ignored and the families of the disappeared were shunned by society. Society was afraid, but since any admission of fear could be misinterpreted as an admission of guilt (of suspecting that the system itself was criminal), even the fear had to remain hidden.
After Stalin’s death, a gradual liberalization took place. Many of those falsely accused and imprisoned were rehabilitated, often posthumously. Thereafter, the ranks of the political prisoners shrank steadily. The appearance of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago became a watershed event, lifting the veil on a secret parallel universe, with its own language and customs, yet one that was very recognizably Soviet. It could operate in the shadows, but once thrust into the broad light of day it immediately became obvious for what it was: a world-class abomination, on par with the Nazi holocaust.
A popular movement developed, devoted to keeping track of prisoners of conscience and communicating their names to foreign news sources. The resulting external pressure on the Soviet government made it difficult for the judiciary meat grinder to operate normally. The monsters running this system generally did not crave parading their monstrousness before a world audience, and this gradually starved the system of new blood. Near the end, under General Secretary Andropov, there was an attempt to stem the tide by rounding up a few dissidents, who by this time had grown quite bold in their opposition, but it was futile and died along with Andropov when he, as it were, dropped off. And so the Soviet Union gradually fell behind in the jails race. By the time the Soviet Union fell apart, its worst atrocities had started to recede into history. There were no widespread calls for reprisals against those who had committed them, who were by then either retired or dead.
In the end the jails race has been won by the Americans, who are currently holding the world record for the percentage of population held in jail. Here, the judiciary meat grinder relies less on secrecy than on obscurity, gorging itself on the poor and the defenseless, while being careful around the moneyed and the privileged. To mask its naked aggression against its citizens, the United States has traditionally used the fig leafs of constitutional rights and due process. But the ill winds now blowing across the country have wilted this decorative flora, and not a week seems to go by without some new reports of abuses or atrocities.
The American justice system favors the educated, the corporations and the rich, and takes unfair advantage of the uneducated, the private citizen and the poor. It would seem that almost any legal entanglement can be resolved through the judicious application of money, while almost any tussle with the law can result in financial penalties and even imprisonment for those who are forced to rely on public defenders. In essence, any sufficiently complex system of laws is inherently unjust, favoring those few who have the resources to grapple with its extreme complexity. This is clearly the case in the United States where, in civil disputes, those with more money can almost always prevail over those with less, simply by threatening to sue.
Many people believe that a criminal is someone who commits a criminal act. This is not true, at least not in the American system of justice. Here, a criminal is someone who has been accused of committing a criminal act, tried for it and found guilty. Whether or not that person has in fact committed the act is immaterial: witnesses may lie, evidence can be fabricated, juries can be manipulated. On the other hand, a person who has committed a criminal act but has not been tried for it, or has been tried and exonerated, is not a criminal, and for anyone to call him a criminal is libelous.
It therefore follows that, within the American justice system, committing a crime and getting away with it is substantially identical to not committing a crime at all. Wealthy clients have lawyers who are constantly testing and, whenever possible, expanding the bounds of legality. Corporations have entire armies of lawyers and can almost always win against individuals. Furthermore, corporations use their political influence to promote the use of binding arbitration, which favors them, as the way to resolve disputes.
The US is by no means unique in jailing or executing innocents and in neglecting to punish the guilty. But while in other countries such injustices can be put down to corruption, oppression or other problems with the justice system, in the US they are designed into the justice system itself. This state of affairs makes it hopelessly naive for anyone to confuse legality with morality, ethics or justice. You should always behave in a legal manner, but this will not necessarily save you from going to jail. In what manner you choose to behave legally is between you and your conscience, God or lawyer, if you happen to have one, and may or may not have anything to do with obeying laws. Legality is a property of the justice system, while justice is an ancient virtue. This distinction is lost on very few people: most people possess a sense of justice and, separate from it, an understanding of what is legal and what they can get away with.
The US legal system, as it stands, offers a fine luxury model, but its budget model is manifestly unsafe. It is good for those who can afford it and bad for those who cannot. In recent years, appalling numbers of those awaiting execution have been exonerated as a result of DNA testing. This amounts to an attempted murder rate high enough to condemn the entire criminal justice system that is responsible for it and, at the very least, ban everyone involved in it from further public service. But nothing of the sort is likely to happen, since most of the victims are poor and are therefore of no consequence to the larger system.
As ever-increasing numbers of people find themselves lapsing into poverty, they will also find that they cannot pay what it takes to secure a good legal outcome for themselves. They will start to see the system not as one of justice but as a tool of oppression, and will learn to avoid it rather than look to it for help. As oppression becomes the norm, at some point the pretense to be serving justice will be dispensed with in favor of a much simpler, efficient, streamlined system of social control, perhaps one based on martial law. To some extent, this shift has already occurred. America now has secret jails, indefinite detention, secret tribunals, Soviet-style show trials, torture of prisoners, family detention for those who happen to cross US-controlled territory without the proper papers, and psychiatric imprisonment for both adults and children, where they are subjected to regimens of experimental anti-psychotic drugs.
Those who bemoan the out-of-control American criminal justice system would like to find ways to make it more effective. But perhaps the real problem is that it is too effective, and needs to become much less so. It is obvious that the jails race serves the purposes of the law enforcement class, providing them with employment, status and ample funds. But it bears pointing out that it serves the interests of the criminal class even better. The prison system offers many services to criminals: it allows them to congregate, network and hold seminars on the finer points of criminal technique and new ways to commit bigger and better crimes without getting caught. Furthermore, it gives criminals a periodic sabbatical, making room for two million more criminals than the victim population could otherwise sustain, ensuring that whenever there arises a fruit ful opportunity to commit a crime, an ample supply of well-rested and highly trained specialists is available to make use of it.
The rationale for imprisoning over two million people in the United States, the world’s highest rate of incarceration, is that it deters crime. Sociologists slice and dice crime statistics looking for a correlation between increased rates of incarceration and decreased crime rates. The best they seem to be able to find is a correlation of about 0.25 between an increased rate of incarceration and a decrease in the crime rate. That is, the measurable effect of incarceration levels on crime levels is not significant enough to state that an increase in the former causes a decrease in the latter. More evidence would be needed to declare that the mass incarceration program is in any sense functional. It is sometimes possible to find a stronger correlation between, say, rain dances and rainfall amounts.
While the criminal justice system seems like an effective way to promote crime, it may be even more effective in serving the atavistic desire of the population to see punishment doled out, which in more barbaric times brought crowds to gaze up at the sacrificial altar atop a pyramid, or the scaffold, the stake or the guillotine, and which even today brings a strange glint to the eye of American elected leaders when the subject of capital punishment comes up during political debates. It is in the nature of powerless people to vicariously enjoy the exercise of arbitrary power by others.
Whereas the Nazis had to tattoo identification numbers on their concentration camp victims, Americans now have access to more modern technology, such as implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, biometric and face recognition systems, satellite surveillance, ubiquitous surveillance cameras and globally networked databases. These can theoretically enable the United States to turn much of the planet into a single large Gulag, or at least to overextend itself and collapse while trying.
When this system finally collapses (as they all do), its surviving victims, who have no experience of anything better, will likely perpetuate this culture of abuse at an ever lower and more miserable level. At this point, there is really very little to be done about the American culture of crime, except suffer from it, reaping what has already been sown. The long-term effect of perpetuating an unequal and unjust social order, amplified by a program of mass imprisonment, is to create a vast society of victims.
from
http://www.realitysandwich.com/reinventing_collapse
“My dears, due to lack of funds, and in order to consolidate resources, the light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily switched off.”
Now the tunnel is too dark to see the writing on the wall.
Somebody has to call a spade a shovel, otherwise how will you dig yourself out?
#17 Tina
“By the way, everyone coming out needs our help and support. We all made mistakes. We all escaped.”
Hello Tina,
I do not recognize myself in the “WE”.
I surely have done some mistakes and I try to be responsible for mine.
That is may be one thing to change in the language regarding cult, just to speak for oneself.
I will anyway give my help to the one ……asking for it.
Thanks for giving us news from the tunnel. It seems like a joke.
The Fellowship of Friends cult has lived off a false dichotomy for almost 38 years. It’s a fallacy that’s discouraged any criticism of Robert Burton, and that has made it more difficult for people to leave:
The false dichotomy takes the following forms:
* If you see weaknesses outside of yourself, you are not seeing the weaknesses within yourself.
* If you mention that others are responsible for an injustice, then you are not taking responsibility for the results of your own actions.
* You cannot criticize the FOF or Burton and still “work on yourself” or “be present.”
* If you see an injustice and describe its effects on your own life or the lives around you, you are revealing your “victim mentality” (although the FOF generally called this “self pity” or “negativity”).
Whenever we criticized Burton’s actions, or even when we questioned them, someone would invariably say, “I’m not hearing you direct these observations toward yourself. What about you?”
Whatever the issue, whatever the topic of conversation, propagating this false dichotomy was a great way to discourage conversations about Burton’s actions and agenda, discourage dissent, and discourage critical thinking. If you point out something wrong outside of yourself, someone would suggest there is something wrong with you for pointing it out.
Spirituality, “work on oneself”, self-study, reflection, contemplation, meditation, psychology, and philosophy do not run counter to seeing the flaws in the world around you — or in describing dysfunction and criminal behavior. In fact, it’s just the opposite, and — frankly — it’s absurd that anyone would even think otherwise: When we “see ourselves,” we see the world around us more clearly. When we find our way to a state of love, we can see the errors around us, and we can help others find their way out of the labyrinth.
Nothing too complicated really. But we tend to complicate it.
The irony is that the Fellowship of Friends cult professes to be an organization that promotes “awakening,” and yet it promotes nothing but sleep. It promotes the closing of eyes.
It’s not a school of the “Fourth Way.”
It’s a school of “Looking the Other Way.”
Hi everyone
Due in a big part to Across the river and everyone else who has contributed effort and hard cash.
We are now ready with the petition and some selected examples of accompanying letters.
In order to be democratic it will be put up on the site which receives the most votes from those who give a damn.
Suggestions are petitiononline.com gopetition.com and Ipetition.com.
Of course if another site which has not been mentioned receives more votes then it will be that one.
Once it is installed and has collected a sufficient amount of signatures there will still be help required in sending it out via ordinary mail and e-mail to the addresses suggested by x-ray and others.
you can vote for a site on my e-mail address which is at the bottom of the wiki at the top of the page.
all the best to all and everyone.
jack.
32. aline
I’m with you. We tend to get flourishy with these sweeping, magnanimous and benevolent pronouncements and we forget to use discrimination, focus. experience to make our use of ourselves something that actually helps people who want it rather than “they all deserve our help because we’ve all suffered”. I’m not part of the We either.
Bruce,
My propensity is to take people at face value. My experience has taught me to value he discrimination, focus, and the protection of of not just trusting what I see. It’s really easy for me to ignore what I see and think everybody has good intentions. But if we just do it automatically we diminish the real value and true joy of trust.
People must be held accountable for the benefit of everyone. The first mechanism is disapproval, then shunning, then civil torts, then criminal law, then war. Unfortunately, because it feels good to some of us to skip the first 3, we suffer the extremes.
Your sensitivity for the character of people is remarkable, yet I think it is the more useful if I use it to look for myself rather than just accept it.
I used to believe that the sociopath was redeemable, hard lessons have tempered that thinking. I respect the sociopath the way I respect a wounded Grizzly, I’ll stay the hell away from them.
Dear Another Name and Bruce,
Please forgive the fact that as much as I respect your priorities I cannot submit to them. I will continue to use first names, Meredith, Steven, Girard, Elena, etc because I believe we can still at least try to live up to our name. I understand that full names can attract consequences for appearing on the internet and I’ve not used them often but even then I am willing to take the consequences. We all need to be who we are, that is the role we’re playing and hiding one’s name or others under the carpet in the hope that our lives are just a play on the internet, does not seem like a buffer I am willing to bet myself or the people around me on.
You are welcome to question my integrity for calling Greg a spoiled brat full of shit who does not even merit the title of a serious criminal if you think that has less integrity than calling Greg a hopeless criminal who should be banned from every society on the planet. In the activity of checking each other out, relativity is an issue. Not checking each other out does not interest me, which is why I thank you for doing so. Do you remember Rumi’s story about the Sheppard that Moses beat the snake out of? If we are not willing to take each other on, snake and all, we’ll never have a community. That was the real problem with the Fellowship. Robert thought that if he could stop people from letting out their poison, there wouldn’t be any snakes but snakes can only grow feathers from dealing with their own poison. The fact that he disempowered his inner circle to take him on, impeded him from dealing with his own conscious, I mean, poison. One is the other side of the coin of the other.
To understand someone, we have to be willing and wanting to read between the lines and seriously listen to their soul. When we do that we’ll be able to come to each other’s humanity and realize that the worst amongst us, simply need a little more help. Are we willing to provide it?
I understand that your methods are kinder than mine and while more kindness is always more welcome, I am not afraid of the stick when I see it more necessary. The beatings I’ve been given here have been of a hell of a lot of help even when they’ve been given with unkindness. The problem is that very few people can take anything with unkindness but a lack of firmness will develop spoiled brats faster than unkindness.
I am very sure Greg understands me better than you and knows that when I point out that he is a stupid dumb brat who went out after the moderator until the moderator got fed up of him, it is worth considering why he would spill his gasoline down the toilet instead of fuelling up his car to get where he was trying to go. We are all trying to come closer to each other.
I thank you for your caring and participation here. I value the things you have to say. Maybe if I listen to them enough I will be able to change what I presently understand.
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for clarifying that. I thought overnight about the issue of evil and would like to share some of the findings.
I said in that post that I had not seen evil in myself and that Robert’s I thought could be stopped but that is not really the idea. I’ve seen enough evil or to use a much kinder word, mechanical action in myself to jump out the window!!!
At this point in time, the impression I have is that forces run through our being and we play creepers who eat the whole tree up until we suffocate it or we play the tree. Those people like Robert whose power has become more than their will can handle are suffocating the whole forest but most of us or at least I, am simply having to trim the creeper almost all of the time.
We really do seem to have an imaginary picture that our lives are the light side of the fairy tale and I swear to heart that I was convinced I would find a blue prince and dance with him for ever and ever but the blue princes have turned purple and tasting their flesh has been a very human experience. The conviction that I was the white princess was just as powerful and realizing that no amount of naiveté can buy Cinderella’s shoe was no less of a shock. Decency cannot be bought. One can only become decent after supra-human efforts of will.
It is actually very funny and humbling now to realize that for me it was a supra-human effort even to learn to be decent to my own children and I am no different to most other parents. I’m also still far from being decent enough, even to them. The reason people are so hard with their children is because we are also so harsh with our selves. Our sense of priorities and things of value is out there in the imaginary famous, important people of the world and we make efforts to be decent when we think we are in front of them but treat those closest to us with perfect cruelty.
It is interesting that most people don’t perceive their own cruelty with both others and themselves but it is not so surprising when one realizes that that happens because we also don’t perceive our own dignity. Dignity is in one’s own presence. Compassion for one’s lack of dignity comes from dignity itself. Dignity is the love? Respect, integrity with which one treats one’s self and others.
So going back to our petty criminals, one can see Robert as
1. A black magician who is consciously deploying evil over his victims
2. A sociopath whose life experiences have led him to a state in which the real trouble is that he can no longer control the damages that the momentum in which the Fellowship has gotten into, can lead to.
3. An extremely sick human being begging to be loved by those around him, going into extreme efforts to get enough money to support them, buy them clothes, satisfy them sexually, making them feel good about themselves in that strange way of his in which he is willing to let everyone fly as long as it is in his cage. That’s not quite true, but he’ll let them walk around with their wings cut off, even in his cage.
4. A victim of his own lack of will, in which the same forces that give weeds on planet earth, give way to people’s ability to abuse if they cannot check each other. At a simple glance one could observe that Nature is much better than humans at checking weeds than people to control each other’s abuses.
Our programming is like a current, an influence. The will has the potential to move out of that current and bring from within one’s self a different current. When an individual connects with the current within himself, then s/he can place the current of the outside world in perspective. From one angle, there is no evil as one would not say the last step in the ladder is evil, specially if you wish to be on the ground but from another angle, if you’re not going up you’re going down and density is a hard thing to bear. Swimming, walking and climbing are metaphors of that striving and what would have been of mankind without the possibility to walk? Our arms and legs are no accident, no coincidence: movement is the poetry of form. Perhaps Steiner said that and I’m stealing it from him. If he didn’t say it, I’m sure he meant it or at least that is how I interpreted it. This is important for us recent leavers, because the Fellowship fossilized our centres and reconnecting them is a huge aspect of healing.
We are not far from agreeing Bruce: At certain stage of development of evil it actually adopts a form. It is a terrifying vision but people can only see it when there is enough beauty in them selves to bear with it. Then it can be embraced with infinite compassion. Evil is a construct, like false personality. It does not have a source. It does not belong to reality. In us people, it is the result of our response to the programming we’ve been endowed with, and it connects with our karma as the obstacles we are to deal with, both for our own self and humanity. Karma is not a bad thing as the bundle that a donkey has to carry up the hill is not a detriment. We are made in such a way that we are meant to carry the whole world on our shoulders, with joy and delight. We just don’t know our own strength or beauty.
Thank you for sharing.
Ever heard of the “Tavistock Institute”.
I used to pass it when living in London.
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/nwotavistockbestkeptsecret.shtml
This is a little sample from the above site for those who dont have the time to go there.
“In a Lewinite brainwashing group, a number of individuals from varying backgrounds and personalities, are manipulated by a “group leader” to form a “consensus” of opinion, achieving a new “group identity.” The key to the process is the creation of a controlled environment, in which stress is introduced (sometimes called dissonance) to crack an individual’s belief structure. Using the peer pressure of other group members, the individual is “cracked,” and a new personality emerges with new values. The degrading experience causes the person to deny that any change has taken place. In that way, an individual is brainwashed without the victim knowing what has taken place.”
Sound familiar?
Jx
For the sake of clarity, “we will never have a community” is fine with me too. I wouldn’t cut anybody’s fangs to have to come close to them either. I just trust that one can develop enough of one’s own that one doesn’t have to hide under the table to have a conversation with the person standing on top of it, both terrified of each other.
I’m sorry to those I offend for using we. I just don’t think we are all that different from each other but I’m neither counting votes nor paying for followers and obviously, not following either. I listen though and one day, I might only say I. I hope not.
23 is newly moderated.
Regarding the use of first or last names in comments, the parameters as set up by Pavel indicate that the deliberate attempt to unmask someone’s identity who is TAKING PART in this discussion will not be tolerated. The people that Elena has mentioned are not taking part in this discussion.
37. paulshabram
“…yet I think it is the more useful if I use it to look for myself rather than just accept it.”
Yes, of course.
38. elena
“Please forgive the fact that as much as I respect your priorities I cannot submit to them.”
You must have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t think I’ve ever made a comment about this.
“You are welcome to question my integrity for calling Greg a spoiled brat full of shit who does not even merit the title of a serious criminal if you think that has less integrity than calling Greg a hopeless criminal who should be banned from every society on the planet.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about here. If you point me to something I said that indicates I meant the above, please do. I’m at a loss. Direct quote would be helpful.
“To understand someone, we have to be willing and wanting to read between the lines and seriously listen to their soul. When we do that we’ll be able to come to each other’s humanity and realize that the worst amongst us, simply need a little more help.”
And hopefully we will also see the rare occurrence of someone’s inhumanity (not momentary, but as a lifestyle).
“Decency cannot be bought. One can only become decent after supra-human efforts of will.”
I think some people, or most people have a “propensity” to be decent, and develop it to a greater or lesser extent. And there are some who have the propensity for misogyny, harm and pathology, and are on an entirely different track. I don’t think it takes any super effort to be decent.
Your last paragraph…well, I’m ok with that being your vision, but it’s not my vision of evil, compassion and karma.
Lacuna Piñata, you’re ignoring me! I’m your brother! I’m your flesh and blood! See what I mean, people, when I say, “everything bounces off”? It’s like I don’t exist. How can someone do that to their brother? It’s like we’re cut off. Though I have read that in some families people use cutoff as a way to manage anxiety.
Jomo Piñata makes Lacuna Piñata anxious. He pretends otherwise, but that’s what’s going on. He lacks the personal strength to manage his own anxiety in dialogue with me. That blithe exterior he puts on? That’s just a mask. We know Lacuna Piñata has big ears. They were put there so he can hear but he just uses them for elastic bands to hold his mask on.
38. elena
“When we do that we’ll be able to come to each other’s humanity and realize that the worst amongst us, simply need a little more help.””
For me this is an over simplification, and not true in too many cases.
44. Jomo Piñata
Poor Jomo, I feel for you. You must realize that under the excuse of “not enough time” your brother only addresses questions that don’t strain his kepela (yiddish). All other questions don’t exist, and have never been asked, or are non-questions. You address a machine that has not been thoroughly programmed, so your entreaties “do not compute”.
Tank you, Cussin’ Brucie. There is probably a Yiddish proverb for everyone.
For Cussin’ Brucie:
Ain mol a saichel, dos tsvaiteh mol chain, dem dritten mol git men in di tsain.
The first time it’s smart; the second time it’s cute; the third time you get a sock in the teeth.
For Cranky Paul da Silva (yours is in Russian, but it’s still a Yiddish proverb):
Люби своего соседа, даже если он играет на тромбоне.
Love your neighbor, even if he plays the trombone.
And, finally, two for Lacuna Piñata, both of which he should really think about:
Oif vemens vogen me zitst, zingt men dem lied.
People always sing the tune that pleases their benefactor.
A halber emes iz a gantse lign.
A half-truth is a whole lie.
Take the time to go back and read Crouching Tiger’s newly moderated #23! I feel that the following exerpt beautifully and succinctly states the heart of the problem with DC’s version of “conscience”.
“The effects (positive or negative) of higher experiences really depend on the efficiency of the bridge you have been building between higher and lower selves. If you haven’t building one, or feel that in some way the ‘lower self’ does not deserve that channel of communication, then you are creating a tragic situation, which does seem to be the case – through many of the painful testimonies on this Blog and elsewhere – with Fellowship students…
Higher experiences mean nothing if they can’t be translated by a whole person, one who has the willingness and stability on God’s good Earth, to go out into ordinary life and use the gifts he/she has been given.”
47 Jomo
for your brother:
Zolst farlirn ale tseyner akhuts eynem, un der zol dir vey ton
You should lose all your teeth except one, and that one should ache!
way to go, guys!
man, this blog has more lifetimes than a Fellowhip student
“The effects (positive or negative) of higher experiences really depend on the efficiency of the bridge you have been building between higher and lower selves.”
That must be that bridge to nowhere I’ve been hearing so much about .
Lacuna Piñata sed,
“And we don’t raise our state by reading or conversing with someone; we do it through specific efforts”.
This is so, so, so, so, wrong. Conversing with someone is where the real action is! But Lacuna Piñata always liked to think that he was better than everyone else. That’s why he and the Fellowship have such a good fit.
Jomo
As me trinkt alleh mol esik, vais men nit az es iz do a zisereh zach.
When one always drinks vinegar, he doesn’t know that anything sweeter exists.
Another for my brother Lacuna:
A ligner glaibt kainmol nit.
A liar never believes anyone else.
Bruce,
All our lives are a bit like this: I wrote both your name and Another Names on the top of the page to include you both but you answered what I’d written answering Another Name and not you.
You post: Elena “When we do that we’ll be able to come to each other’s humanity and realize that the worst amongst us, simply need a little more help.”
For me this is an over simplification, and not true in too many cases.
33. aline – September 16, 2008
#17 Tina
“By the way, everyone coming out needs our help and support. We all made mistakes. We all escaped.”
Hello Tina,
I do not recognize myself in the “WE”.
I surely have done some mistakes and I try to be responsible for mine.
That is may be one thing to change in the language regarding cult, just to speak for oneself.
I will anyway give my help to the one ……asking for it.
Thanks for giving us news from the tunnel. It seems like a joke.
36. brucelevy – September 16, 2008
32. aline
I’m with you. We tend to get flourishy with these sweeping, magnanimous and benevolent pronouncements and we forget to use discrimination, focus. experience to make our use of ourselves something that actually helps people who want it rather than “they all deserve our help because we’ve all suffered”. I’m not part of the We either.
I guess for me both your and Aline’s answer to Tina is also an over simplification that says more about you than about Tina.
It was in the Fellowship itself where we were told not to use the word we because it generalized but also because Robert might have known in his secretely evil mind that WE would have given us a greater sense of community than he ever wanted to develop. I refuse to keep using Robert brainwashing doctrine.
Here is someone sincerely asking for help and all she gets is the attitude that we are not we, I’m responsibe for my own mistakes, you deal with yours and I’ll help those who ask for it, totally disacknowledging the fact that she is actually asking for help. I mean no offense with this Aline, absolutely no offense, I just want to put it to your consideration independent of what I’ve written to Bruce to whom I mean no offense either.
And from you Bruce: “sweeping, magnanimous and benevolent pronouncements and we forget to use discrimination, focus. experience to make our use of ourselves something that actually helps people who want it rather than “they all deserve our help because we’ve all suffered”. I’m not part of the We either.”
I don’t think you’re talking to Tina but to me because I don’t see Tina having any magnanimous pronouncements, she’s hardly even written more than three posts on this blog. She just made the mistake of agreeing that people leaving need help.
I suppose you think you help more by brushing with a no almost everything than by attempting to offer the things that have helped you like I do in my “magnanimous pronouncements” but you are convinced that this is more shallow than that. Can we take a look?
9. brucelevy – September 16, 2008
6 elena
“The fact that Mihai is still saying that he didn’t leave but that he was thrown out is revealing of his state today.”
Bruce: It is revealing of nothing other than the fact he was thrown out.
Would you consider the possibility that you cannot perceive anything else? That you left eons ago and do not know what it is like any more no matter how many of us have been telling you here that it is not easy? That maybe you do not consider the possibility that he is still trying to come to grips with the fact that he was on his way out, maybe trying to play in two worlds, hadn’t made up his mind and yes, was thrown out? I suppose the fact that he’d been trying to work with other possibilities that Robert didn’t offer convinced that he was working for the well being of the Fellowship, cannot be taken into account?
“I hope the rejection from many here will not drive him right back to another Cult or to beg Robert for re-entrance.”
Bruce: Please, come on.
Come on what Bruce. I have no idea how many years Mihai was in the Fellowship but the Fellowship was all many of us had, I was terrified when I left, what makes you think that someone who was in there in the position that Mihai was, for the length of time that he was, doesn’t need a little help from his enemies? Because with friends like these who needs enemies?
“Is it Mihai’s, Asaf’s or Dorian’s fault that they were as brainwashed by us as we were by others? ”
Bruce: You’re joking right? This makes no sense in light of their actions.
I’m not joking, why would I be? What makes you think all of a sudden that we were not ALL in a highly controlled environment and that the fact that some people landed in Robert’s inner circle makes them any less brainwashed than those of us who landed in the outer circle? Even if we married Girard? Isn’t the highly controlled environment what we’ve been talking about here for two years? What makes you think that people have to respond for their actions inside in the same way they would have to respond for them outside? Are we trying to understand the phenomenon or are we just trying to hit each other in the head, judge each other and disable each other because we made the mistake of trusting Robert way too much? Are we trying to understand the fact that people, human beings have the propensity to fall into this kind of pattern and submit to an authority or are we just trying to stand out here and shoot at the guys who come out without compassion because they played too well by Robert’s rules? If you are that serious why aren’t you standing in the gatehouse with me confronting the older students like Girard, Guinever, Steven and Oh so many who have done a thousand times worse things than Mihai, Dorian or any one of them has had the time to do? These people are still young, why can’t that be taken into account so that they still have at least the chance to make something decent for themselves that will never be as easy for the older ones who helped each other seriously ruin each other’s life?
“These men are young. The fact that they were a little talented and Robert immediately put them to his use does not mean they are absolutely responsible.”
Bruce: They are responsible for their actions and decision making.
Yes, I suppose you would line up every German and shoot his brains out of his head because he or she cheered at Hitler when he walked by? That you have taken the time to hate every sociopath you’ve come across without the slightest chance of redemption because it has never crossed your attention to actually study in detail what a man is willing to do when he is trying to do the best he can for the people around him? I suppose the fact that every single German soldier stated that he was serving his nation and obeying orders cannot be taken into account to spare the life of a few of them who did not commit or indulge in atrocities?
You have in essence an attitude that is no less extreme than extremist attitudes. These pitiful Barbie puppets that Robert made of Mihai, Dorian and Asaf does not amount to anything more than that and calling any one of them out to make them experience more shame for having succumbed to the bribes is as degrading a behavior than the one Robert exposed them to. They are not more than five percent responsible for the whole mass of a stupidity that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. 95% of the responsibility belongs to the Girards, Rowenas and all the little people of the Fellowship that saw it happening and bet their soul on it too sick by then to know the difference between themselves and the devil.
These are young people. They made mistakes that no young person could have avoided given the circumstances. They were not too different to a child that is put into her father’s bed by her own mummy. The whole community of the Fellowship put them in that position, trained them, taught them, induced them and paid them to get there and now you ex-members are going to tell me you are going to judge them as if they had had any other options?
“This one case in which a wife was asked if she would play the game and she totally refused and exposed the whole scam, speaks wonders of at least one woman in the Fellowship cult.”
I agree with that completely.
“I guess Bruce that life is already too hard for me to condemn Greg or Mihai.”
Bruce: That’s fine, for you. But remember this is basically what the Jews said about the Reich when things were starting to look a bit scary for the surrounding countries. I know that’s not a completely accurate analogy but the point of saying life’s too hard for one to condemn misogyny is just to weak a cop out.
You think I’ve not been standing against precisely misogyny for this whole year to cop out on it? But misogyny was just one of the aspects of the Fellowship and the fact that some men caught on it so willingly does not mean that they cannot be given as much consideration as the rest.
“Every single member needs intense treatment and HELP.”
Bruce: This, of course is simply your opinion, not a fact that you can know.
I suppose you would know better although you left over fifteen years ago? I suppose we just have to take your word for it because you are Bruce and you’ll tell me to fuck myself in your next post or in every single post after that one if I dare oppose and question you? But you’re not a misogynist? Just someone who can dismiss and reject, neglect to give argument with the same coolness of a few quickly swept up words in which you’re willing to condemn the Fellowship post after post but at the same time state that I cannot know that every single person who has been in an intensely controlled Cult needs help, It is just my opinion! Is it just my opinion? Or a reality that we know for a fact that you are willing to override, over simplify when it is convenient so that you can jump on top of those you consider worthy of your wrath?
“I believed in Girard, Collin, Meredith, Steven and a hundred others and the Mihai’s believed in us too. Can we take that into consideration before we call each other whores and pimps once we are out?”
Bruce: You can, of course, but don’t ask me to, simply based on what you believe.
Yes, why would I? You went in to the Fellowship and became Robert’s boy like everybody else because you enjoyed the position? Nothing ever helped you to submit? You just thought it was an O.K. thing to do for a little while? Is that what I am supposed to believe after everything you are saying? All of the boys are just whores who submitted willingly? Or is it just Mihai? And if it is just Mihai because you know so much more about him than I do, is one exception worth making the generalization and reduce what I am saying to my personal, subjective opinion unworthy of your consideration?
“Personal responsibility cannot be separated from social conditions and THAT is what needs to be understood by this experience.”
Bruce: It sure as shit can.
Because you’re not even willing to consider the other or because you can dismiss anyone that easily and get away with it just like Robert would nod his head and let anyone know that it was enough of her? What’s the difference?
“Cells exist within the body, the well being of the body is what determines the condition of the cells.”
Bruce: I don’t think so. I think, more likely, that it’s the condition of the cells that determine the health of the body. That’s exactly one of my points.
If you actually care, you can read my post and you’ll notice I am saying the same thing as you two lines after the one you quoted. But you’re careless in your reading because you already have an attitude.
“The Instinctive Center is the baby of the Universe.”
Bruce: Again, please, give me a break.
For how long do you want it?
“The individual must consciously return his understanding to the well being of the whole if he is to develop himself within it.”
Bruce: I agree to a large extent, but not completely.
Shall I wait until next year for you to deign to tell me what the “not completely” is about? Or shall I just stick with the feeling that you can’t be bothered to expand because I am not worthy of your effort?
“One day when a child looks into a man or a woman, s/he will see the whole universe. We are beautiful beings. We are God bonsais! When we start looking at each other with the dignity we each deserve, we’ll allow each other to become who we really are.”
Bruce: Agreed, but not everyone deserves it, except in a metaphorical or rhetorical way. There are some, unfortunately, who don’t deserve shit.
And here we have who telling us this? Oh, I’m sorry, I should say: And here I have Bruce telling me this because you don’t like the WE. “Some people don’t deserve shit.” Tell me Bruce, how far are you really willing to take that statement? Do you see its real potential? Is it any less extreme than …….. ?
No. It is just as extreme and it is extreme because you are willing to get there. You are willing to override and diminish the things I am saying although it is absolutely clear in every single one of my posts and actions that I would put Robert Burton in jail or in an asylum if I could and anyone else that deserved it but still not consider them any less worthy of help than you. But you don’t wish to understand that, understand or agree, agree or consider. You have to diminish it with your short sentences without really addressing it because you don’t want to address it, you can’t even tell me directly that you think my grandiose pronouncements make you sick because you don’t want to look at why they make you sick. You have to justify your own willingness to dismiss and hurt others by stating that others are worth that treatment. Wouldn’t it be much more simple if you just said: I’m not in a condition to help anyone Tina, Elena or whoever because I don’t have that inclination right now.
But you’re not willing to do that, you have to put Tina or Elena down to justify the fact that you won’t even consider them.
Bruce: Of course if you ask the sociopaths, the narcissists, the exploiters…they’ll agree with you 100%, and say “yes, we’re just like you.”
Just like me and just like you Bruce. We all have a little of the sociopath as long as we are willing to condemn people as a principle. When you give up that principle, then you can help others as a principle, then the human within each one of us becomes the principle we are not willing to override no matter the circumstances.
And if people think that helping them is becoming part of the club that is willing to condemn others as a principle, I better get out of this Cult too.
And for my brother Lacuna, the reposte to his Milton quote, one meant for him specifically, this one from Dante Alighieri, in Italian, not Yiddish:
I posti più caldi nell’inferno sono riservati a coloro che in tempo di grandi crisi morali mantengono la propria neutralità”
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”
55. elena
“Here is someone sincerely asking for help and all she gets is the attitude that we are not we, I’m responsibe for my own mistakes, you deal with yours and I’ll help those who ask for it, totally disacknowledging the fact that she is actually asking for help.”
Let me stop you right there. You are completely off, or not following. Nothing I said was in any way aimed at Tina and her presence here. I think she’s a joy and am honored to have her here. And she typifies in my mind people who deserve all the help we can give. I was talking about the other end of the spectrum, some of the more harmful “boys”. You really need to take a chill pill. And I don’t have the energy to read the rest of your post as it’s obvious it’s based on false premise in relation to me.
To Sharon & Crouching Tiger:
Sharon – “Take the time to go back and read Crouching Tiger’s newly moderated #23! I feel that the following exerpt beautifully and succinctly states the heart of the problem with DC’s version of “conscience”.
C T – “The effects (positive or negative) of higher experiences really depend on the efficiency of the bridge you have been building between higher and lower selves…”
Consciousness is a bridge from illusion to reality.
Daily Cardiac (#50-21 or thereabouts),
Thanks for your reply. I’m happy to make it clear that the quote from Robert was not first-hand. When James Bat_agl_a, one of a group of six people (and myself) expelled from the FoF in November 1994, was told the news by Peter B., during the ensuing conversation, in which ‘conscience’ featured largely, James asked him, “What is the purpose of conscience? When my conscience tells me to do something, what am I supposed to do?” Peter said that he would ask Burton those questions, and then call back. He did, and quoted Burton, “Conscience is just a collection of ‘I’s; anyone accumulating too much material there should leave the school”.
How do I know this? James called me immediately afterwards, and then came round with the notes he had made of both conversations, which I copied. I called Peter, and asked him to confirm the words. He did without any prompts from me, and was able to do so verbatim, because he had also written them down. I have a tape of that conversation. In a later face–to–face meeting with Peter two weeks later, I again asked him to confirm, and he did so. There were two others present at this latter conversation, Alan C_yl_ (out of the FoF) and James K_e_h_y (still in, as far as I know). I’ve told of James B.’s final exchanges with Burton before on this blog (#9-339), which will put his questions in context. That is as far as I could go in verifying the quote, since Burton did not take my calls. Why don’t you ask him, and report back to us?
Daily Cardiac, you have not convinced me that you have experienced your conscience; why not give me some examples, you have absolutely nothing to lose! So what if I don’t react the way you’d like, that doesn’t reduce the value of your experiences one iota. I’ve re-read your original post (#49-196) and #21 above, and between them still do not get the impression you are very clear about the differences between morality (Feminine Dominance) and conscience. And, I don’t believe you take into account the local morality, that of the FoF, or that you struggle to observe and understand that, either. You say that all your words in #196 come from your personal verifications. I don’t see how that is possible, they contain so many internal contradictions and misunderstandings. But, I’m not here to argue with you point by point, but to get you on record, and you have obliged. Thank you.
Now I’m looking at your quotes from Rodney Collin (who, according to Burton is somewhere in the lineage between him and Gurdjieff, and hence necessarily achieved enlightenment—is that your belief as well?).
Those highly selective quotes from Collin perfectly justify any behavior. You simply use them to justify Burton’s behavior because your premise is that he is ‘in a higher state of consciousness’, or that he is a ‘great teacher’; this is coupled to another premise, which is that because Burton is supposedly conscious, that he knows that Collin was conscious. All I can say is that in my opinion, Collin was genuinely thoughtful and creative in ways that Burton is unlikely to ever attain. The fact that Collin retreated from 4th Way verification to 2nd Way religious faith towards the end of his life speaks for itself.
Daily Cardiac, Burton has been having sex with his students for the entire history of the Fellowship (less the few days between the start and the episode with Bonita), and has been spouting what I choose to call ‘unverifiable nonsense’ nearly as long*; that is, almost the whole history of the FoF and most of Burton’s adult life. Are we to supposed to understand ‘short’ (as in Collins’ “…but for a short time their work…”), in terms of the scale of Burton’s claim of being a “900 million year old goddess manifesting in a man’s body”? (That one, I heard with my own ears at a dinner with him!).
*(for example, Via Del Sol Journal, September 28, 1971 (Volume 1 Number 1), Burton is explaining the Laughing Exercise and gives us this gem, “Remember that Christ never laughed”.)
58. Daily Cardiac: “Consciousness is a bridge from illusion to reality.”
What everyone is after, is not fine-sounding statements that go well at meetings, but concrete, useful knowledge that can be applied in and through everyday life… Jesus shared his time with those who were considered the ‘lowest on the street’.
If all you want to do is impress within the magic circle of meetings, then you have indeed made the world you want to live in. It is limited but that is your choice!
51. “That must be that bridge to nowhere I’ve been hearing so much about .”
Bridge to nowhere… Yes! This is actually quite accurate! Thanks.
#55 Elena,
It was in the Fellowship itself where we were told not to use the word we because it generalized…..
Elena,
I think the FOF was using a lot the “we”:
“WE are not better but luckier” …..and so on
For myself , I swallowed many things from the FOF because I had to bend to this kind of “we”.
When Tina said :”we all made mistakes”, that’s true but not the same ones from everybody.
As Bruce said post “57”, this was said in a certain context and about certain personns.
I confirm that I am not responsible of the behaviour of all in the FOF.
When I say that I don’t recognize myself in the “WE”, I mean that if you really want to solve a question, you have to be specific with the formulation of this question and to deal with parameters under your control.
The term “WE” can be very vague and out of control.
Nothing against Tina there and I consider that what I have said could be taken as a help.
I am not offended by your post and I do hope that it says more about me than about Tina.
Ames, #59
Thanks for the fuller explanation from 1994. Now it is 2008 and blog-time. Have things changed? When M. and S. B. left in 1985, the main thrust was conscience then, too.
And at that time, possibly like Daily Cardiac, I read and read and read about it and tried to understand and balance it with my understanding of “Feminine Dominance”, but I had not spoken with the people they had spoken with, had not seen the things they had seen, had not been responsible for the things they had been responsible for. It took me 20+ more years (and this blog) to do all that.
Conscience when it does occur is entirely individual, it is never collective – again, except perhaps on this blog. It is about your life – your actions – and your inactions. Your choices. What you chose to see and what you chose not to see. It’s about seeing through the holes in your buffers and explanations. It’s about seeing your best intentions used to a contrary purpose. It’s about seeing the people you have loved and the people you have shunned as one and the same, and at the same time. And yes, it is heart-breaking, heart shattering, really. But better to do it now, than on your deathbed.
So, yes, the Fellowship produces conscience, but by default, not intent. And graduation means no congrats from the Big Kahuna, no hand shake, no back slap. But more often, a kick in the butt and then silence…..
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From Ouspensky:
“Self-remembering cannot produce wrong results provided the connection is kept between it and other ideas of the system, but if one omits one thing and takes another thing from the system — for instance, if one seriously works on self-remembering without knowing about the idea of division of ‘I’s, so that one takes oneself as one (as a unity), from the beginning — then self-remembering will give wrong results and may even produce wrong crystallization and make development impossible. There are schools for instance or systems which, although they do not formulate it in this way, are actually based on false personality and on struggle against conscience. Such work must certainly produce wrong results. First it will create a kind of strength, but it will make the development of higher consciousness an impossibility. False personality either destroys or distorts memory.”
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Shunryu Suzuki on the use of mind:
“As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.”
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/o/odyssey/
Odyssey Study Group
Group Leaders
Sharon Gans, Robert Klein
Group Founders
Alex Horn and Sharon Gans-Horn
Other Names of the Group:
OSG
The Work
The School
Fourth Way School
The Theatre of All Possibilities
Description of the Group:
This is a very secretive and elusive group. They claim to be a Fourth Way school with connections to other esoteric schools in history (especially during the Renaissance) and claim to be possessing knowledge for personal development through Fourth Way ideas. However, the group originally founded by Alex Horn and Sharon Gans in California in the 70s, now operating in New York and Boston, has no link to any legitimate Fourth Way school, branching from Gurdjieff or Ouspensky. The Boston group is lead by Robert Klein. Sharon Gans leads the New York group and has the ultimate control over all the groups and activities.
There is a monthly fee (called “tuition”) that is adjusted for each member (ranging from $250 to $400 per month depending on member’s personal income – some members pay three months in advance), members are required to pay for everything outside of the tuition (i.e. books, meals, items purchased for events, etc.) and also there is “acting” class offered once a month (on Sundays for 6 hours) with a $150 monthly fee (all members are encouraged to take this class).
OSG’s outer group named “younger class” is a pro-social group. It is often encouraged that members should socialize and do things that they feel passionate about within 5-week aims that they state. The amount of time available for leisure and entertainment decreases as students remain in the group for longer periods of time as the demands on their time to complete group recommended /directed activities increases with time leaving less time available for personally directed choices.
It is required to attend all classes and be on time. It is also strongly suggested that members take vacations that coincide with “School” vacation schedule. However, this rule is not heavily enforced. Several times a year members are asked to spend a significant amount of time (20-40 hours a week for a period of 4-6 consecutive weeks) organizing and implementing outside events including “class outside of class” and “Christmas Party”.
There are many rules that all members must abide by. They are primarily around protecting OSG’s existence:
* Members are not allowed to discuss OSG’s indoctrination with anyone
* Members are not allowed to tell anyone that they are in OSG (including family, friends and spouses, etc.)
* Members are not allowed to socialize with other members neither in class or outside of class
* Members are not allowed to even recognize other members outside aside from a look (even smiling is not permitted) Regarded as being “invisible” to each other in life.
* Members must fulfill all assigned tasks and given “help”
* Members are required to keep an hour of silence after each class
* Members are not allowed to reveal any personal information about themselves to other members (e.g. phone numbers, address, place of employment, etc.)
* Members are strongly encouraged to share issues/problems with their sustainer related to class and their lives (Students are lead to believe that these conversations are confidential. However, in actuality sustainers share information with teachers)
* Members are not allowed to talk to former members
* Members are required to maintain the standards set by the school for class attendance and participation (e.g. attending all classes, arriving for class ten minutes early, arriving prepared for class discussions, etc.)
* Members are not allowed to complete any assignments using the internet
* Members are not allowed to share with each other anything in writing without approval from teachers
* Members are required to participate in clean up activities related to refreshments provided during class according to a schedule set by a designated member of the class
* Member are required to pay tuition – three months at a time in advance and the tuition amount is set by the teacher for each individual member
* Members are required to pay a monthly maintenance fee of $25
* Members are not allowed to share their tuition amount with other members
* Members are not allowed to reveal to select students (e.g. newest members) that members have participated in specific events (e.g. Christmas party) and have read specific books as part of the curriculum.
All members must abide all the rules and “teachers”. Failing to do so is regarded as deficiency in member’s being and attributed to his or her weakness. Not abiding by the rules may result in expulsion.
Members depend on teachers to communicate the sources of material for “esoteric knowledge”. Particularly because members are discouraged to use the internet, television and other media which might be used to discover these sources on their own.
OSG uses profound ideas from many teachings along with ideas that sound profound to keep members in control and they constantly infuse self-doubt, need for purification and need for higher levels (meaning teachers and the school) to help them/show them a new way of thinking about their lives.
OSG uses sophisticated methods to recruit new members. The process is presented to the recruiters (select current members) by teachers as a privilege to help the school and an opportunity to work on themselves while serving a higher purpose (meaning the school). The process involves “making friends” with strangers through a series of meetings initially with the recruiter and then if recruits meet the OSG criteria then further meetings will involve an “older student” to extract more personal information from recruits and determine whether the potential recruit is ready to meet a teacher (in this case, Robert Klein). If the promising recruit is accepted by the teacher (if he or she had made it this far to meet with Robert Klein, they will be asked to join) start as an “experiment” for a month (about 8 classes) to see whether they would like it and want to continue. At that point the newly joined member will be told the tuition amount by Robert Klein and begin paying it( tuition amount changes from person to person depending on how much they make. It ranges from $250 – $400 per month and some members pay three months in advance).
During this process recruiters are not to share any information about themselves with people that they’re recruiting. Each recruit will have a voice mailbox that they will give out as their phone number, use only their first name, has weekly aims to talk to certain number of people or has certain number of meetings, is conditioned to be in recruitment-mode all the time and is encouraged to lie, distort truth about themselves and the school (this is presented by teachers as being “cleverly insincere” and since recruiters are doing this for a higher purpose, it is justified).
The promising recruits are constantly lied to about the nature of the group:
* They are told that the group does not have a name
* What they say to their “sustainer” will be kept between them and will not be reported to the teachers (every member is assigned a “sustainer” whom has been with the school many years and he/she can talk to this person (“sustainer”) about class experiences and anything else in their life. They are encouraged to do so.).
* They are told that like-minded people come together on a regular basis to discuss and study ideas that are important to them.
Gays, journalists and/or anyone with a close connection to law enforcement, the military or intelligence services are immediately dropped from the recruiters list. Trusted teachers offer elaborate esoteric explanations for these restrictions.
OSG recruitment criteria:
* Personal income $60K or higher
* Be in a transition
* Dissatisfied/disappointed with his/her life
* Spiritual in nature
* Not in therapy
* Not taking drugs/medications on ongoing basis.
* Not in a relationship with someone who will demand/ pressure for full disclosure of activities. If married, must be willing to keep secrets from spouse.
* Willing to follow rules (discussed as willingness to place yourself under a higher influence and be obedient to that influence even when it is unpleasant. Parallels are drawn to King Arthur’s Knights of the round table)
* Willing to keep secrets from friends and family (discussed as valuing privacy and keeping certain higher things sacred)
I saw words like: WHORE, WE WERE ALL…..
Why do you degrade yourself in this way?
I can understand your efforts for understanding M……l et al.
An admirable attitude to deepen your thougts, to empathize with others.
All your talents, all your good will towards man and beast, cannot shine for us all if you don’t reach your personal frontier, your saving harbour.
For me it is necesarry to know my limitations. This is the precondition for my development.
If I cross the border, it is my own decision and responsibility.
Afterwards it’s time to recover and to think about it in my harbour:
Was this acceptable, good, healthy, useful …. for me?
R.E.B. places a “deceptive packing” somewhere and if you accept it, he will be the magician (black, white, coulored, bright, whatever you imagine), who shows you the “lucky bag”.
But the crux of the matter is:
You will take the responsibility for him, for R.E.B.!!!
This is brilliant. This is his “special effect”.
PLEASE, don’t degrade yourself!
R.E.B. is the source of a perverted branch of the 4. Way.
Not his followers!
The democratic systems of law all around the world are far away from the state of perfection.
You ca find corruption, abuse of power, injustice of judgement….
It is just as “banal” as in the FoF.
But it is “just as banal as in the FoF”, just to a certain degree!
Our systems of law allow us to fight for our conviction, to loge an objection, we have the freedom of speech, arbitrariness will be followed……
Don’t be afraid of RFID TAGS, if you refuse them, demand your democratic rights…
Did you read: In Italy the people of the ROMA should give their fingerprints. Not all Italians, only the people of the ROMA.
This is a shame for the EU.
Stand up and do, what you think you can do in the case of R.E.B.(examine your conscience)!
63. Draco
http://www.esotericfreedom.com/index.html
the same, and the views of Ex-Followers of the OSG!
Just a joke, but:
Draco, could it be: FoF and OSG the secret money-laundering for another “top secret” institution staying in the background?
In order to advance Dear Tina, one must simultaneously listen to Brother Bruce and not listen to Brother Bruce.
When you have mastered this technique you can play at the dirty end of the field.
# 61 Aline:
#55 Elena,
It was in the Fellowship itself where we were told not to use the word we because it generalized…..
Elena,
I think the FOF was using a lot the “we”:
“WE are not better but luckier” …..and so on
For myself , I swallowed many things from the FOF because I had to bend to this kind of “we”.
When Tina said :”we all made mistakes”, that’s true but not the same ones from everybody.
As Bruce said post “57”, this was said in a certain context and about certain personns.
I confirm that I am not responsible of the behaviour of all in the FOF.
———————–
Aline, thank you !
Lacuna Piñata wrote:
So, I would say conscience is not a collection of I’s but conscience can be ruled by a collection of I’s. And if “too much material” is accumulated in the mind posing as conscience it could very well cause someone to leave.
Now what Ames wrote was:
“Conscience is just a collection of ‘I’s; anyone accumulating too much material there should leave the school”.
Do you agree with this statement, made by Burton on 12th November, 1994, or not? Please explain your reasons, either way.”
Notice how Lacuna Piñata has cleverly reformulated Ames’ question in his answer, and by doing so has avoided it. The implication is clear that, in Lacuna Piñata’s view, Ames must have misunderstood Robot Button, and then he covers for him. It reminds me of this painting:
http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen_ing/coleccion/ficha349.htm
Anyone remember this painting?
Daily Cardiac:
“Consciousness is a bridge from illusion to reality.”
The language of cult dogma is a bridge from reality to illusion.
68. Jomo Piñata
Of course. That’s the painting on the galleria ceiling of the boys coming to ff RB.
12. Tina – September 16, 2008
Here is an email I recieved today… I am wondering who is controlling the switch.
Dear Students,
In view of recent events, and with the cash flow being a little tighter than usual, the Teacher would like to send this message of comfort and reassurance to all of us:
” My dears, due to lack of funds, and in order to consolidate resources, the light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily switched off.”
Love, Robert
Thank you all,
” The darker it gets, the more the light at the end of the tunnel seems bright; believing in it only increases the illusion.”
Hao- Darkarwi
My guess is that the light is now switched on at RB’s
Mexican villa and the one being build in Egypt
Happy Birthday A.
May each day of the rest of your life be more intensely penetrated by the beauty of this world and the worlds that support it.
Dragon,
Is my name so terrifying that you cannot even mention it and my writings so worthless that Bruce won’t even read them? I guess my time here is counted.
You think I degrade myself because I’m not willing to take a hair out of the Fellowship experience? because I am willing to accept myself as Girard Haven’s whore and Robert’s pimp? I’m afraid the insult does not question me but Girard and Robert who had to diminish everyone to manage to submit us. As long as people don’t understand that that is the only way Cults can function, they are not even close to understanding what happened to them.
On the contrary, it has had the effect of finally allowing me to accept the facts and understand that I could not help it no matter how much I tried. The areas that I could make different for myself I did make different and many of them are the ones I’ve been sharing here. Neither the Fellowship nor Girard can touch those and it is for you to make the difference if you care to make the effort when you look at both sides of the coin.
You’ve touched on the core of the problem because for me it is precisely the desire to buffer the experience what stops you from taking serious action against the Fellowship. Everyone accepts that the Fellowship made whores of the men, third class citizens of the women and pimps of everyone in it but if one is going out to picket and tell the world about it, most of you run and hide and insult and want nothing to do with it. You’d rather deny it than confront it and that is the core of the problem, you are still hiding from the public eye hoping that if it doesn’t come to light, it didn’t happen. You’re trying to avoid taking full responsibility for it. You think that if you can blame Robert and a few inside rather than take responsibility for it, you can free your selves from it, but you’re so hooked on it that after twenty years of leaving you’re still dancing around it trying to resolve it. You will never resolve it unless you take full responsibility. That is the only thing that will bring you back your dignity.
There is no personal frontier in trying to avoid it, just a buffering separation, a dark area that you don’t wish to look at. A harbour is not a place to hide, but to arrive with the whole of your self. If you can’t embrace the whole of the darkness, it’ll keep stealing light away from you.
There’s nothing surprising about this attitude: if Bruce and a hundred other students who left twenty years ago had been willing to expose the Fellowship or at least stand at the gate and tell the rest of us what they thought about it at least once every six months, I would have never had the luck to play Robert Burton’s pimp and Girard Haven’s whore and the baby Italians and Russians wouldn’t have had to strip themselves down the walls of the Galleria. We can continue to sing in chorus about it on the internet and let the Fellowship find thousands more students so that they too can find their own borders and personal responsability after they’ve gone through the Consciouss torture that both members and ex-members think they should go through; the first because “they need to develop themselves” and the second because “they should have known better, only they are responsible for themselves”
Hey Bruce, what’s the difference between your not reading and answering the post and Daily Cardiac?
Have you all come to the point of agreeing the dark areas that you are not going to touch like in the Fellowship?
It must be time for us to part.
72. elena
Have you thought about trying to be less of a drama queen?
Elena
Is my name so terrifying that you cannot even mention it and my writings so worthless that Bruce won’t even read them? I guess my time here is counted.
It would help if you did not often behave like a spoiled child, or a diva. No malice intended.
for the queen of hearts moments…
Dear All,
If I read J-l–n’s comment, I feel the shivers….
What a confession? Is it a confession, a sharing of a realization?
A sharing of a deep pain?
If so, I respect and sit with you…..and my heart weeps.
Also it give me an understanding of the “poison” what Robert Burton spread and how many of us got infected with. (Elena, there are simple ways to avoid writing “we”…for example with ” many of us”. Feels so much better to me…more clear, honest and less confusing.)
Also when somebody says “we” without checking first if I think so too I feel dominated and not respected
Back to J-l–n
Thanks for your expression J-l–n and I wish you healing, time , love and wish you, to be who you really are and sharing this with the ones you love.
Hope time and love and friends will support you….
Hello to all of you ,
today is my birthday, so I share with all of you a part of vitual cake.
thanks to everyone here who contribute.
aline
sorry “virtual cake”
Dear Aline,
What is in an R, any way?
Happy Birthday. .
#72 thank you Elena
77. aline
Happy Birthday A.
Neither Bruce nor Opus 111 address the issues, just like Daily Cardiac, you fall back on personal impediments to avoid them, you demeanor the person to avoid the questions at hand and Another Name, you think that WE is the real issue? Or do you just add your voice to feel stronger?
I might be spoiled, a drama queen, etc, etc and you’re still avoiding the issues.
#76 and # 79 another name
thank you ,
Yes it could have beeb “vital cake” too instead of virtual cake.
thanks for your post #76 about J…n.
#76 and # 79 another name
thank you ,
Yes it could have bee “vital cake” too instead of virtual cake.
thanks for your post #76 about J…n.
#81
Thank you Bruce
A few Buddha quotes:
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
The mind is everything. What we think we become.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
He is able who thinks he is able.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
=============
86 Rear View Mirror
Thank you for the Buddha quotes. It was a Buddhist book I first started reading when ‘released’ from the FOF. And I do believe in the old quote “It’s all in the mind”…..Nigel.
Aline, a birthday present, happy birthday!
9 out of 10 doctors agree —
once in a while it’s healthy to take a break from your head, get off yer ass and shake it…
get ready to funk:
Nigel, I’m glad you liked the quotes. The word “released” is an interesting choice of words with unintended meaning in the FOF — because people are released from captivity.
But unlike a real prison, we have the power to release ourselves.
By the way, it’s no mystery that I rarely — if ever — heard or read a Buddha quote as a member of the FOF:
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
86. first of all: more Buddha quotes!!
aline: thanks for the virtual cake, very tasty and Happy B.!
72. elena
Dear Elena, torch, ray of sunshine!!!
Don’t leave this blog!
You gave a very impressive description of your healing process to me.
I hope in future you can (“we can” means Obama) speak about your FoF experiences without a necessity to escape from this blog.
I hope you will be able to handle this “dark area that you/I don’t wish to look at, in a way:
Yes it happened to me, it is still there, I can look at it everytime because I have the key to this dark room…..
But today it is the PAST!
I am here and maybe I will go on with picketing, maybe….
I am not alone (A___s et al. are with you; in a spirit of camaraderie me too)!
My (=Elena’s) posts on this blog are helpful and valuable for ALL READERS (the rest of the world)
———————————————————
Please, spit R.E.B.’s poison out!
I caused these flashbacks (dark room..), please forgive me.
Elena, I didn’t follow everything that’s happening above, but I hope you don’t let things get you down too much. My take: Typing words into a blog is an awkward and imperfect way to communicate — as if talking face-to-face weren’t hard enough — and I think it’s sometimes hard for people to truly understand what someone else is trying to say here. Check out any blog out there, and many of them are a complete mess. This one isn’t half bad by comparison. But people here (me included) are often more interested in entering their own thoughts rather than listen others. Pretty typical. Lots of misunderstandings and mis-communications. And then you have the DC’s and the RC’s who — in my opinion — are/were just here to disrupt things a bit because they didn’t like the direction of the conversation. I just want to say, speaking for myself, that I’ve really appreciated your contribution here whenever I’ve had time to read it. I don’t understand and agree with all of it, but I very VERY much appreciate your sincerity and your passion. “Obsession” in my opinion is driving past that gatehouse day after day without a clue, and without a plan for escape. Your words are not obsession, but passion and love. Thanks for that.
(By the way, just to clarify, no one accused Elena of “obsession,” but I recall someone’s comment that the blog was simply a bunch of obsessive ex-students, blah, blah, and that it would not serve to help people see the truth about the FOF. Well, in my opinion, if they open their eyes they’ll see love, and they’ll see passion. If that doesn’t help them to see the truth about the FOF, nothing will.)
Everybody (members, ex-members, readers) on this blog has his own way to break free from R.E.B’s world, that’s my opinion!
I agree, fire breather!
One of the problems is that while Daily Cardiac tries to buffer the reality of the Fellowship or the fact that people are willing to do each other in with no matter what excuse, on the blog we want to buffer that same fact: That no matter the excuse, it is O.K. to do some people in if the others feel they can get away with it.
One of the problems with people like me is that when we look at something we see the whole of it and at the same time we become fixed in the detail. When you ban Greg or Mihai from existence, I see there is no difference in that than when some people decide to clean the streets of the city and you start finding corpses with a bullet in their head and their hands tied up in their back. The same potential is there. And from there a whole race can be washed out.
We talk about humanity or being more human but we can’t even address each other by their name or take them on at face value but pick on the hat or the shoes. Does it really surprise you if I’m ready to quit? Quitting is a way of loosing but it is also a way of stating that one is not willing to play under those conditions. I’ve done this many times in the past and when I come around I see that everything went on as if nothing had happened, people got on with their lives and managed, one way or another, to make the most of them, simply doing what they could as they could. I joined the Fellowship. Perhaps I could have stayed and helped in my own way, smiled a little more often and made a few friends that made it more tolerable but I’m glad I didn’t. Some of us are destined to say No for the whole of our lives or at least that is what people hear even when we are doing nothing but affirming. It is like a catapult that gets pulled back for the whole of a lifetime and is shot in the moment the person dies.
The good thing about having a wretched life is that one learns to overcome the wretchedness more quickly each time and stops taking it personally. For a long time I blamed my family, my friends, my schools but I’ve finally come to understand that I’m not willing to have it any other way.
A drop of reality is worth this nightmare.
When I die, please put that in my grave.
You can add the Drama Queen in the papers Bruce but don’t waste the good rock with such truths!
Had read up to 89 when I wrote this last post. Thanks for those, Dragon and RVM, they would have taken away the possibility of being more of a Drama Queen! Good thing I didn’t read them! I needed to come to terms with myself on that.
Aline:
Happy, happy birthday in a hot bath
To those nice, nice nights.
I remember always, always
I got such a fright!
Seeing them in my
Dark cupboard with
My great big cake.
If they were me
If they were me
And I was you
And I was you
If they were me
If they were me
And I was you
And I was you
If they were me and I was you
Would you’ve liked the present, too?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=40K2S0-5Xo0
Altered Images…the New Wave. (I couldn’t resist the symbolism.)
Dear Elena
“Another Name, you think that WE is the real issue? Or do you just add your voice to feel stronger?”
No….I do not think so…..
I just need clarity and honesty….every time somebody says we….I get uncomfortable….especially after the fellowship of friends. We was a lie and we in our conversations can be so easy a lie…
I appreciate when people do not use we when they have not checked if I agree with them.
Hope this is clear to you and might it help you.
Elena:
OK, that’s twice on the same page you mentioned corpses with a bullet to the brain, which when witnessed at no matter what age would be dramatic and make an unforgettable impression. How horrible, really.
Would you care to tell us the story about what happened, get it off your chest, so to speak? Please understand, I mean no disrespect to you. Have a glass of wine and tell us about it. Just what happened?
Did you see this with your own eyes or were told about it? How old were you when this happened? Were you alone when you saw this? Did it happen more than once? Did you talk about it with anyone? Were the police called or were they part of the crime? Were the people killed anyone you knew? Were they men, women or children, of all of the above?
There was a period in Medellin in which the police decided to clean up the city from men they thought were of no value so they’d put them in a taxi, drive them out to the outskirts and shoot them in the head. I was eigthteen at the time and one morning on my way to work there was one of this men lying on the pavement. Just a regular young looking man. Many were found like that during that period. They used a taxi so that if something went wrong no one would connect them to the police but it was known that it was the police. Mine is a very violent nation within itself, “ours” is a very violent one without it.
Another Name, I appreciate your clarification and I’m sorry about my tone. It was not kind. It just seems that some more relevant things are going on here to pick on wether we are saying we or I to make a big issue out of that. I will nevertheless keep it in mind if I can survive my tendency to get out of the picture when the Diva in me thinks you ought to be looking at the show instead of the curtains. Any artist would much rather the public said boooooh or clap than express how much they enjoyed the curtain.
But I suppose not many artists would follow you to your car and strip you naked if you booohed so I guess I’ll have to learn some patience before I put on another show! At least I know not to charge for it or the whole neighbourhood would go broke!
Back to basics:
Isn’t Robert’s message rather strange? No light at the end of the tunnel? What the hell does he mean by that? How many people have been fired that he’s justifying it? Can anyone inside tell more of what things feel like at the moment? Doesn’t everything still look just dandy?
Aline:
Joyeux Anniversaire
As they say over’ saire
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co2Bht83Ll8”
Whalerider,Ton, Dragon, Opus111,
Thanks to you all.
For those who meditate-
“Do not sit to become the Buddha. Realize you are the Buddha sitting.”
One more Buddha quote-
“Damn my ass hurts.”
Aline,
Happy Birthday, yesterday!
So, un peu de gateaux?
Elena,
Happy Birthday last week!!!!
Your life experiences as you share them with us here are absolutely amazing. Your mother, the man in the street, growing up in a police state it is not something many of here can imagine – and we wouldn’t want to try.
I like your quotation, A drop of reality is worth this nightmare, ’cause after all, I think it’s true. And maybe someone like Etty Hillesum would have agreed with you, too?
about “the light at the end of the tunnel” at #12: can please someone clarify if this was truly a message from RB? It sounds like a spoof to me…
thanks whalerider for asking about the corpses and thanks Elena for your answer. I had noticed the recurring imagery and had been wondering about it too. Sometimes I am afraid of asking intimate questions on the blog, but it’s always enlightening when people share their personal stories. We come from very different backgrounds, and this often shows through the language and symbols we choose, doesn’t it?
One sad thing about writers like RC or DC is that they hardly ever speak of themselves, prefering to hide behind quotes, generalizations and dogmatic statements. It was nice when Greg briefly came out of the shell in his interaction with whalerider, and for a moment I saw the man behind the mask. DC’s mask is still pulled on very tight. and even when repeatedly asked for examples of personal verifications, he/she has remained incredibly vague. It’s very hard to feel the human being behind the robotic answers.
Poor Jomo, you are not getting any brotherly love!
BTW, I am also not fond of the general use of “we”. Once again it may seem like a minor detail, but I am convinced that it is possible to convey one’s messages much more effectively through a careful use of words.
As an example, Elena, when I read at #38:
“Our sense of priorities and things of value is out there in the imaginary famous, important people of the world and we make efforts to be decent when we think we are in front of them but treat those closest to us with perfect cruelty.”
the use of “we” bothered me, since I feel that what you describe doesn’t represent me or most of the people I know. Who are you speaking about? Is this a general statement about humanity, people trapped in cults, fellowship members? I want to make it clear that I enjoy the show, just IMO for most readers the form of what you write is more than curtains, it’s definitely part of the performance. And I think it’s a positive thing that some (many?) here pay attention to both the message and the details, as whalerider’s concerned question clearly shows.
Let’s keep getting to know each other, by honoring our diverse. uniquely flawed, uniquely beautiful individualities…
The passage of time
Is flicking dimly up on the screen
I can’t see the lines
I used to think I could read between
Perhaps my brains have turned to sand
Oh me oh my
I think it’s been an eternity
You’d be surprised
At my degree of uncertainty
How can moments go so slow.
Several times
I’ve seen the evening slide away
Watching the signs
Taking over from the fading day
Perhaps my brains are old and scrambled.
Several times
I’ve seen the evening slide away
Watching the signs
Taking over from the fading day
Changing water into wine.
Several times
I’ve seen the evening slide away
Watching the signs
Taking over from the fading day
Putting the grapes back on the vine.
Who would believe what a poor set of eyes can show you
Who would believe what an innocent voice could do
Never a silence always a face at the door.
Who would believe what a poor set of ears can tell you
Who would believe what a weak pair of hands can do
Never a silence always a foot in the door.
Ames – 59:
Thank you for supplying the source of the quote regarding conscience. I can only take your word for the accuracy of the events you recounted. But if true and Robert said that, it doesn’t change much on my end.
I gave my understanding of the role of conscience as it relates to “a collection of I’s” and I have no reason to change anything I stated. I would venture to guess that Robert said many things in1994 that if he went on record today his words would be very different. Maybe this is one of those subjects, maybe not. I’m not likely to ask him about it because the nature of conscience is not a burning question for me. Posts 49-196 and 50-21 shows I’ve thought about that area and come to my own understandings and conclusions. (You may not think they are my own, but that’s neither here nor there)
Ames – “Daily Cardiac, you have not convinced me that you have experienced your conscience; why not give me some examples, you have absolutely nothing to lose! So what if I don’t react the way you’d like, that doesn’t reduce the value of your experiences one iota. I’ve re-read your original post (#49-196) and #21 above, and between them still do not get the impression you are very clear about the differences between morality (Feminine Dominance) and conscience.”
I don’t know what else to add. Feminine Dominance allows the average person to access or experience conscience in a partial way; something like riding a bicycle with training wheels. They don’t necessarily want to obey but feel compelled to because of the pull of this cosmic law. The main purpose of F D, as far I can see, is to encourage people to conform to an acceptable behavior dictated by a larger group of peers.(civilizations, governments, tribes, etc) It’s a voice that says “you should do this, shouldn’t do that.” It could be a parent’s voice, a teacher’s, a sibling, a TV hero, any influence from our formative years.
For someone not on the spiritual path it’s all that’s necessary to lead a normal life. Real conscience is interested in pursuing a course of action simply because it is the correct action, the truthful action. It wants this even if it runs counter to the pull of F D. In fact at times conscience will dictate a course of action for no other reason but to go against F D.
Areas related to real conscience (including verification) all depend on the individual accessing a higher state or having a higher level of being, or both. Giving examples of higher states can be an exercise in futility (basically using words to describe a state beyond words, a state where words are irrelevant).
Personally, I feel Ames must have had some higher state experiences. I say this even though you now distance yourself from what I call “C Influence”, or from principles like “the play is written.” When I am in a higher state I experience being “one” with higher worlds, higher beings. The lower my states the more separate and isolated I feel.
Higher worlds are within me and also a reflection of worlds outside of my cosmos.
If they were only inside then men would be creators of themselves and there would be no need for suffering on the earth. If they were only outside of us then religion would suffice for everyone; in fact religion would be the only thing possible for everyone.
To explain higher states to someone who has not experienced them would be like someone with normal eyesight trying to describe a rainbow to someone who was born blind. How do you explain the difference between the colors red and blue? How do you explain how all the colors seamlessly merge together yet retain their own individuality? How do you explain the colors’ transparency, their airiness? I’m sure there are experts who can explain things to blind people, but the description, however wonderful, is not the real experience of seeing. One would be explaining a sensory perception to someone who does not and never did have the corresponding sense.
So, I will assume you have had higher states. One example I could give was from about 20 years ago. I and two other students were in a “heated” discussion about how a FoF octave should be developed. Suddenly I felt my whole demeanor change; I was both in and out of the discussion. I became silent and simply watched the other two go at it.
Almost instantly I understood that there was no problem or solution more important for me than to be present and I was doing just that, so everything was fine. The circumstance, the situation, was merely a pretext to bring me to the moment. I seemingly made no effort to get “there” yet I understood all my past efforts made it possible to get there.
The other two people did not notice any change in me even though I had become mostly silent. These 20 seconds or so probably approached a state of objective knowledge, and have been with me ever since, even though today I could not tell you one detail of the conversation, what the “problem” was, or the solution arrived at.
But ever since that event I could not enter into any argumentative moment without some memory from this experience prodding me. This doesn’t mean I am not brought to the edge on occasions; it just means I don’t get completely lost in these events any more; nothing to me is more important than presence.
Does this retelling of a “state” fit you request? If I had to guess I would say I doubt it. Did the experience being retold involve conscience becoming activated and engaged? Perhaps; I have a suspicion that conscience engaged consciousness or vice versa.
Ames – “And, I don’t believe you take into account the local morality, that of the FoF, or that you struggle to observe and understand that, either. You say that all your words in #196 come from your personal verifications. I don’t see how that is possible; they contain so many internal contradictions and misunderstandings. But, I’m not here to argue with you point by point, but to get you on record, and you have obliged. Thank you.”
I do take into account FoF morality; it is no different than morality outside of the FoF. I should remind you that about 85 out of every 100 people to join the FoF do not stay, so one can say with some accuracy that a good portion of those who make up FOF morality at any given time are now part of your camp.
Ames – “Now I’m looking at your quotes from Rodney Collin (who, according to Burton is somewhere in the lineage between him and Gurdjieff, and hence necessarily achieved enlightenment—is that your belief as well?).”
From what I have experienced of Rodney Collin’s writings I would say he is an enlightened being.
Ames – “Those highly selective quotes from Collin perfectly justify any behavior. You simply use them to justify Burton’s behavior because your premise is that he is ‘in a higher state of consciousness’, or that he is a ‘great teacher’; this is coupled to another premise, which is that because Burton is supposedly conscious, that he knows that Collin was conscious.”
I can’t see how the writing from Collin that I included “perfectly justifies any behavior”, as you stated.
I think he was talking about something very specific and he expressed it quite succinctly. The same conditions that applied to Ouspensky’s students now applies to FoF students in the same way. This suggests that certain conditions pertinent to a disciple/teacher relationship are not a matter of fashion; they remain constant.
Regarding whether I’m putting forward “premises” or not; I don’t see how you can know for certain. You might be projecting this designation on me by confusing the fact that they are premises to you. This doesn’t mean they are premises to everyone else.
“All I can say is that in my opinion, Collin was genuinely thoughtful and creative in ways that Burton is unlikely to ever attain. The fact that Collin retreated from 4th Way verification to 2nd Way religious faith towards the end of his life speaks for itself.”
I think you are mistaken in that assumption (Collin’s retreating from the 4th way).
In actuality there is no such thing as the “Fourth Way.” This is a term that Gurdjieff coined around the turn of the last century. Prior to that period the term did not exist. Yet the system behind the term is very old, ancient, possibly pre-historic. “The Fourth Way” is nothing more than a label. Take the label off of a shirt and sew on another label and the shirt remains the same.
Rodney Collin may have been drawn to the possibility of applying the system he mastered with Ouspensky to a previous form, such as Christianity. I doubt that he was abandoning the system or moving on from it. After all, Christianity began as an esoteric system. The various forms are personalized to the times they exist.
Several recently departed members of FoF believe Robert has abandoned the Fourth Way. But he, also, has opened the door to a new form, one that is superior to the form of your time in the FoF. And ultimately this change comes from Influence C, as did Rodney Collin’s new direction.
Ames – “Daily Cardiac, Burton has been having sex with his students for the entire history of the Fellowship (less the few days between the start and the episode with Bonita), and has been spouting what I choose to call ‘unverifiable nonsense’ nearly as long*; that is, almost the whole history of the FoF and most of Burton’s adult life. Are we to suppose to understand ‘short’ (as in Collins’ “…but for a short time their work…”), in terms of the scale of Burton’s claim of being a “900 million year old goddess manifesting in a man’s body”? (That one, I heard with my own ears at a dinner with him!).”
Regarding Robert having sex with certain members; 38 years would be a “short” time on the scale of a school. (Using Collin’s theories)
Related to this area; I have not found one shred of evidence, in the entire canon of sacred teachings that would suggest having sex with disciples would disqualify or preclude a teacher from being enlightened.
No one, I would reason, has ever been kept out of Paradise for having sex. And no one has ever gained entrance into Paradise because they abstained from sex. Sex, or abstinence from sex, is wholly irrelevant to spiritual evolution.
If a teacher forcibly had sex with someone it’s a different story; in that case I would reason that that individual was not a real teacher.
If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.
100. Elena thank you for your openness!
I would like to take a teapot (japanese Bancha) with you,
as long as the ass hurts. The best kind of meditation out here……….
and now:
Another possibility to explain the success of the FOF R.E.B. Ltd.:
We all agree that the free flow of ideas is essential to creativity (many creative people are attracted by the FoF) and we like to believe that in our modern, technological world, information is more freely available and flows faster than ever before.
But some people (creative and intelligent) know: There is no free flow, only a few have the access to the deepest knowledge (natural-scientific, technical knowledge as below in The Crime of reason et al.)
I think this is a strong reason to become curious, wether R.E.B. sells Top SECRET esoteric knowledge.
And this is also a strong reason to pay money for it:
If I stay another year, I can get it and with this knowledge I can also get unusual mental powers. This knowledge is so extraordinary, that I must show: I am worthy to receive this knowledge.I have to work, I have to avoid a certain behavioural pattern, I have to show, that I can stand humiliation
For stormy autumn nights:
The book below, nothing but reality
The Crime of Reason
And the Closing of the Scientific Mind
by Robert B. Laughlin (Author)
Synopsis:
The Nobel prize-winning author of “A Different Universe” argues that ours is an age of disinformation and ignorance, in which access to knowledge is becoming increasingly restricted and even criminalized. We like to believe that in our modern, technologically advanced world, information is more freely available and flows faster than ever before, and that this free flow of ideas is behind our remarkable creativity. The second part is right: the free flow of ideas is indeed essential to creativity. But according to Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin, many forces in the modern world conspire to make acquiring information a danger or even a crime. More and more of the really valuable information is private property or a state secret, with the result being that it is now easy for a flash of insight, entirely innocently, to infringe a patent or threaten national security.Within the past ten years it has become illegal to circumvent anti-piracy measures (i.e. to understand encrypted communication) or to distribute code-cracking devices; it is now legal for corporations to monopolize certain forms of communication; and it is possible to patent sales techniques, hiring strategies, and gene sequences.
Broad areas of two sciences, physics and biology, are now off limits to public discourse because they are national security risks. Our society is sequestering knowledge more rapidly and thoroughly than any before it.Thus we find ourselves dealing more and more with the bizarre concept of the Crime of Reason, the antisocial and sometimes outright illegal nature of certain intellectual activities. The increasing restrictions on such fertile scientific and technological fields as cryptography, biotechnology, and computer software design are creating a new Dark Age: a time characterized not by light and truth but by disinformation and ignorance. This short, passionately argued book, by a Nobel laureate in physics, offers a stern warning and protest against our apparent collective decision to relinquish our intellectual rights.
107. Daily Cardiac
“If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
Oh, ok, I gotcha. RB is only thinking of the students spiritual progress. The hundreds of heterosexual students who were coerced into sex with RB were given this gift because RB saw that this was a primary area of difficulty for them…all of them. I see. How altruistic and enlightened. It was all for them.
How is he going to help you remove your head from your ass? By replacing it with something else?
” 25. Ellen – September 16, 2008
Tina #143 pg 49
I think it is important to recognize that leaving the Fellowship is and can be different for different people. In my opinion, it seems to depend principally upon how many lies or buffers a person may have constructed over the years regarding RB.”
Yes I agree with this, if someone (like me) never had any illusions about RB or other students, leaving would be not such a big deal, especially if you have friends outside the FOF, which would be only normal if you trusted your conscience more than what BS you are told.
A lot, like Tina and Anna, entertained grandiose illusions about RB being godlike, and that lie was central to their life for decades, so it came crashing down. But they’re tough and sweet enough to survive!
As for this Bruce character, what a creepy misogynist! Hasn’t known anyone in the FOF for 30 years but blindly judges them all based on 4th hand stories, like a little Hitler. Does his last name start with S?
110. Vinnie the fish
Very deep. Thank you.
110. Vinnie the fish
Oh, I get it…”Slevy”. You got me.
???
Small minds just love the “Hitler Card”. Especially when applying it to a Jew. Very cute.
113. Jomo Piñata
Exactly.
So you play the Jew card on me, great, I can’t trump that, all sympathy to you.
Another Jew! wad is it wid you people? There’s 13 million jews in the world and most of them have been thru the FOF!
What’s a slevy anyway, a term of endearment like a schlock or schmuck?
And what’s your little picture anyway BSlevy, looks like gay porn?
Moderator!
117. Vinnie the fish
Right, gay porn. Got me again.
Woke up on the greasy side of the bed this morning?
Let me see if I have this right. Since you first appeared here many moons and pages ago you have had the recurrent memes as follows:
You, unlike most if not all in the FOF, don’t believe the BS you’re fed by RB and the FOF.
You, unlike most in the FOF, actually have your shit pretty much together.
You, unlike ex-members who have experienced RB’s blessings first hand, don’t really buy in to all the accusations…they’re exaggerations.
You, unlike most members and ex-members know exactly what to believe and what not to believe.
You really do love yourself, in fact you may actually be in love with yourself.
You have many friends both in and out.
We’re all whiners and bs artists.
Yet, you’re still in, and your still a major asshole. How do you reconcile this?
around 100 Elena ……..”what the hell does he mean…….” why even bother trying to undrstand when there are so many useful sources of knowledge……………..he has shown time and time again he is at least one sandwich short of a picnic.
Lauralupe,
Me: “Our sense of priorities and things of value is out there in the imaginary famous, important people of the world and we make efforts to be decent when we think we are in front of them but treat those closest to us with perfect cruelty.”
Thank you for not letting me fall out of the picture, I need you all (I think I have a crush on the blog!) and want to be here specially when I stop needing you but this mechanism that my mother geared us into, in which we jump out of the picture when we can’t bear the dissonance is still so powerful in me. Isn’t that precisely the Diva mechanism? For a long time I’ve been working and recognizing my father in me with some practical success and although I’ve made true peace with my mother this Diva thing is the first time I can make a practical connection as it happens. It is both an honor and a frightening adventure to carry one’s parent’s agendas. It is a huge break through for me to see this. Thanks Opus 111 and Bruce for pointing it out. I know this has happened repeatedly and will continue to happen but I will try to catch it quicker.
I was also sincerely hoping I could give you a rest for a couple of days and take some for myself but your question is so much fun I must write it down and then there is Daily Cardiac who’s proving to be as needy and as intense and I’m finding so much fun in this nest of lunatics. Fun and pain like a proper thermometer should be when one has not been able to transform into a balance!
“Our sense of priorities and things of value is out there in the imaginary famous” At some point when I was around eleven the imaginary famous began to appear. They were the so called popular people in no matter what social group I happened to be in. Some of the girls in the School, the rich, the talented, the “In” people. Then there were those who I fell in love with and that was even worse! Have you ever noticed how beautiful people act towards the person they love and how miserable they can behave towards others who get in their way? I was particularly extreme in this sense in my youth and carpeting the dirt roads for my lover justified taking any thread away from anybody else. But what we are talking about here is the identifications people get into that make us work diligently to accomplish an agenda at no matter what or who’s cost. I recognize it mathematically in myself but also in others. Have you noticed how men run blindly identified trying to conquer society without seriously noticing their wives or children? And how women run blindly identified with the men trying to tie them down to themselves or the children without recognizing society? What is so surprising about the statement that we are all so cruel when we can’t help blindly relate to each other while trying to accomplish our personal agenda? The one that conforms to each of our imaginary pictures?
Have you noticed the hell of most families in which negativity is a set pattern in which the discharge of energy becomes fixed and must come out no matter how every single day? Usually with the same insignificant excuse? It took me about three months to manage to stop myself from becoming negative every time I combed my daughters’ hair. Three months of supra-human effort to just comb their hair with love. With the patience to let her move and be uncomfortable and try hard to not pull the little hairs that hurt so badly around the neck no matter how late we were for school. When that was accomplished I observed the discharge of energy looked for other situations to express itself. We actually managed to overcome a lot of that and began to live a normal life, a loving life for at least some time.
I really don’t thin this is particular of me or my culture Lauralupe. There are “decent” people on the planet who’ve been relatively good householders with their family but I’ve not yet found people with integrity in all areas of their life and I see no reason for us to not want that when it is possible. Here in the States I’ve found wonderfully decent individuals who work hard for themselves and even their family but old people and children in general are in a terrible position of disadvantage, they are simply not valued because they are not economically productive any more and the society has gotten into an acceptance of that condition tolerating and promoting the most cruel and inhuman abuses and this mentality is becoming common all around the world.
Have you ever been in a hospital with an old person? Did you see the video of that woman who died in the emergency waiting room of a hospital a few weeks ago in New York? She waited twenty four hours for attention, fell on the ground and no one, no one sitting close to her or attending the hospital helped her. She died from something that could have been cured if looked into on time. These are not coincidences. Nor are they coincidences when a student takes a machine gun and kills the other kids in the School or a man kills the people in his office. Killing or committing suicide is not just a crazy person’s uncontrolled rage against him self, it is the open wound of a society that has forgotten to remember itself. It is as if an individual washed only his head for many years thinking only his head matters and were much surprised when the rest of his body started rotting from the bacteria. No matter how decent and proper and good-householders some people are within the second line of life, that is, their marriages and immediate surroundings, they too will drown in the general decadence of the whole of society. Consciousness of only one’s self, is not consciousness. In fact one cannot become conscious unless one can take the whole into account. The balance between one’s self and the rest of the world is a sine qua non condition of the state.
If we look at the Fellowship we can see clearly how the rotting activities at the Galleria had to rot the whole of the institution into blind idolatry. We are very lucky to have experienced the extremes that such imbalances can take a group of “decent” people.
This is only one aspect of this question but this is already so long. Thank you for sharing.
Fish 110
“A lot, like Tina and Anna, entertained grandiose illusions about RB being godlike…”
You don’t have to entertain grandiose illusions… if you’re listening Burton will tell you so himself repeatedly – that’s what he wants you to believe. As do all ego inflated leaders (which translates as fuhrer in German).
Several recently departed members of FoF believe Robert has abandoned the Fourth Way. But he, also, has opened the door to a new form, one that is superior to the form of your time in the FoF. And ultimately this change comes from Influence C, as did Rodney Collin’s new direction.
Hahahahahahhaahhahahahhahahiahaihihihihihiihihihih………..
That has to be one of the funniest thing DC has written and, as we all know, he/she is not a natural when it comes to being funny.
So, Ames in case you missed it, the new form includes having to pay $100 to go to a meeting (more if you want to be closer to the Master, as in first and second row). You can lie about a medical condition though, and sit at the back for $50. Then you have to look at the Great Priest utter his hyperbolic breathless nonsense about numbers and sequence. At least when you were there, you could go to a meeting for free and listen to somewhat coherent rumblings from somewhat sincere folks. At times, it even got exciting, like the last meeting you attended. Another change is that if you have the money, you can be with the boss a lot, I mean a lot: breakfast, lunch, tea, dinners, receptions. You don’t have to do anything: do not eat, look at the master and pretend you love it, and you will be painlessly separated from your money.
Another major changes to the form I have hear about is that now the master is breaking all kinds of obscure records when it comes to sex: number of participants, one at a time (personal enlightenment) , many at a time (group enlightenment), repetitions, sequences, positions, you name it, it is all there. I have been told you do not have to pay in cash to participate, in fact you may earn money on occasion, at the very least perks are on the way.
So you see, it is pretty obvious that this new form is indeed superior to the old one. I am not sure about the coming-from-Influence-c part, however.
“121. Opus111 – September 18, 2008
Another major changes to the form I have hear about is that now the master is breaking all kinds of obscure records when it comes to sex: number of participants, one at a time (personal enlightenment) , many at a time (group enlightenment), repetitions, sequences, positions”
More information please, to what precisely are you referring, my good dude? And whom pray tell is your source?
Elena, I don’t like you calling yourself Haven’s Whore, it looked like a genuine relationship to me at the time, so don’t degrade yourself.
I still love you, even if you and Girard don’t.
“118. brucelevy – September 18, 2008
117. Vinnie the fish
Right, gay porn. Got me again.
…greasy side…
blah blah”
Hah I had a good laugh, greasy side of the bed. 🙂 funny guy.
Yes you’re spot on for once with most of that Slevy, without being obnoxious (well done!), got most shit together etc, don’t swallow any BS or creamy substances. If you did, but I don’t hold that against u.
Yep I know what to believe, nothing, and how to take things usefully.
Nope I don’t think they’re exaggerations about RB, could be WORSE, maybe Mihai will spill the beans on the inside story.
Will be gripping reading.
“A Gallon A Day… The Inside Story of A Fourth Gay Cult”.
Or maybe he’s infiltrating the Greater Fellowship.
Stew on that one.
“You really do love yourself, in fact you may actually be in love with yourself.”
No you can’t be ‘in love’ with yourself, ‘in love’ only happens with other people you don’t know well (haven’t you noticed?), but I try to love my self, life and other people.
“You have many friends both in and out.”
Nah just a few.
We’re all whiners and bs artists.
No, most of you are people I have experienced love with, and I don’t want that love to die in a swarm of words.
“Yet, you’re still in, and your still a major asshole. How do you reconcile this?”
Still in, nothing to reconcile.
Opus 111-121
My reaction exactly. To all his posts. I said it before and I’ll say it again, he is the funniest person on the blog. I laugh all the way through all of his posts. Such convoluted bullshit and he calls it reason! Pure ‘party line’ fantasy. Why the fuck does anyone respond to him? What a retard. I don’t even think he is a real person. It must be a group or someone hired to push the party line for some reason or another.
No, really, he is brain damaged mutant dork cult spaz. Give it up.
—————-
Vinnie- Eat shit and die.
Dear Vinnie the fish,
too much camomile tea with a pinch of ayahuasca.
I am familiar with this……………..
To mention in passing, you will survive!
PS Yesri Baba thinks: aspirin and you will fly (not e_t s__t a_d d_e)
–> it was his cat on the keyboard, believe me…
DC
“If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
vinnie
“No, most of you are people I have experienced love with, and I don’t want that love to die in a swarm of words.”
please guys, you’re killing me! what a duo of comedians!
I am beyond astonished!
paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
what a couple of pathetic wankers
I think what you guys really need is some interpersonal form of sex life
bruce, yesri, you are my heroes. Come around for my birthday, I’ll gladly blow you.
Must be all that gay porn, made me horny.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_wf8VV2eENI
Hey, Bruce, how about one ‘from me own ‘ed’? The Celts are the two lost tribes of Israel! Think about it – why cry mummy or daddy, when there is Ultimate Goodness all around?……!!!!!!!!!…..Nigel.
hi all
WE all made mistakes. WE all escaped. WTF. WE did. If you don’t see yourself in the WE then perhaps you should try to. You may not have actually partipated but your very belonging and paying and supporting (even peripherally) condoned it. Hence WE.
Also in response to
“like Tina and Anna, entertained grandiose illusions about RB being godlike…”
Uh hm. i dont think so…
But certainly (I shall use the word “I” here rather than we) I was very engulfed in the game forever trying to make it make sense and making up all kinds of excuses for the stuff I couldnt make sense of. The problem is where to begin explaining it now. I cant. really I cant. When I start to try it sounds like the rantings of a lunatic. (19 years in the making). I am so fucking relieved to be out of it.
t
128. tina
“WE all made mistakes. WE all escaped. WTF. WE did.”
Yes “we” did.
But there’s a loose “we” and there’s a “royal we”. “We” moved in a direction away from something towards something else (different for us all).. But the “we” that says who we are and what we think and how we feel and what we believe is a vastly different “we”.
126. lauralupa
Eat your heart out Vinnie.
Vinnie 122
More information please, to what precisely are you referring, my good dude? And whom pray tell is your source?
I was referring to “sexual activities” between Burton and his male followers, FOF members. I am sorry you did not know about that. I am sure it comes as a shock. Try to “transform it”. Details are available from participants. Since you are still inside, you should have no trouble finding out.
Here you go, dude.
My opinion is that those posing as fof members posting here are doing so only as PR spinners for the placation of cult members who may be reading the blog. One is posting the mind numbingly retarded party line and for the benefit of those not completely lobotomized there is the happy go lucky- ‘I see through it all but,hey, this is still a real cool place with nice people’- guy. The seemingly personal responses are just a smoke screen. They couldn’t care less what you have to say.
Except for the small, still part of them that’s still alive, and that bothers them in their beds in the wee hours, or in their dreams.
126 Lauralupa
My birthday is Monday. Can I have two? How selfish of me, maybe I could…..
Oops, better not say that. I don’t want anyone coughing up any ‘furballs’.
126
Come to think of it you better give me three. Then Bruce and I will be even.
Hilarious posts on this page. Some of the comments by the shills remind me of McCain’s opinion that the economy is “fundamentally strong.” (Great timing, John. whoops.) I mean, just saying something is “so” doesn’t make it so. “Robert is conscious, so there, you negative ex-students.”
People, there is not even an argument here. This is one weird, weird organization. There is no doubt that Burton is mentally ill and perhaps could be diagnose with multiple disorders — very serious ones. And you’re right, RC, he’s been very successful at dragging many of us down with him. And some of us — including me — are still working hard at accepting responsibility for being foolish enough to buy into it. And finding constructive ways to heal and move on with strength and a sense of humor about all of this shite.
———————–
132 Yesri. … Public relations has one set of goals: to make abnormal policies seem normal, unhealthy products seem healthy, malevolent intentions seem benevolent, and wickedness seem wise.
I completely agree about “happy go lucky guy.” He’s here to make abnormal things seem normal. The “retarded party line” guy is here to make an unhealthy product seem healthy. Both of them together are trying to tell us that a malevolent and diseased man is actually benevolent and wise.
Imagine having access to very large amounts of money, and imagine having no qualms about spending it. Imagine if someone became a threat to your finances, your sex life, your travel itinerary to exotic locales, and your well-crafted reputation amongst your followers. And imagine having no qualms about who gets run over along the way…
Wouldn’t you hire someone to disrupt the proceedings here a bit?
Going way back to HC and others, I have no doubt that these people are getting paid in some form… either through cash, or throw an occasional front row seat to watch Robert eat breakfast, or play pretend guru, in front of many pretend stoics, reciting pretend ideas.
We’re lucky for our good health, we’re lucky for our friends, we’re lucky to have shelter and food, we’re lucky to have access to music and art and all sorts of fun times, and we’re lucky for our hearts and minds to contemplate. We were particularly lucky when we met someone who helped us see the truth about Burton.
Lucky to be in the Fellowship of Friends? That’s about a thousand times more absurd than saying the economy is “fundamentally strong.” McCain sounds almost presidential by comparison.
Vinnie, the relationship was sincere and still the facts are facts. It was the same with Dorothy, no one was trying to kill her but they drugged her to a point that she could hardly survive.
There’s no fun in the mutual insults.
Tina 128. I agree with you. We can trip all over ourselves going back and forth between the semantics of “I” and “we.”
We all have one thing in common, imo… It was a bad idea and we believed that idea to a greater or lesser extent.
We supported it to a greater or lesser extent, too, and we were affected by it to a greater or lesser extent.
Anyway, I haven’t read all of your posts, so not sure how closely we’re aligned on this, but I sense you and I are probably close to the same stage of healing and moving-on-ness. Amen to what you wrote: “I am so fucking relieved to be out of it.”
A few posts back someone mentioned the possibility of Mihai telling his story. If you are reading Mihai, there are many who would appreciate hearing about your experiences and especially the understanding that you now have.
Daily Cardiac (#50-107 or thereabouts),
Thank you for reading my posts and taking the trouble to make your positions so clear. As I’ve said before, I don’t aim to ‘change your mind’. I’ve been where you are on many of your positions at some time or other. You can’t imagine so much internal change, so many fresh discoveries, that you would have to leave the FoF. At one time, I couldn’t either—yet I did.
So I’ll leave our conversation as it is, on record for anyone to ponder if they wish, and also leave open the possibility that you will ‘change your own mind’ in the light of new connections and personal understandings to come. Thank you for engaging.
From the Daily Cardiac post referenced by Ames above: “If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
~ Buddha
119 is newly moderated
It has been argued that Robert’s sex life is a way of teaching his students how to differentiate FD from conscience. I could see this as a short lesson but it has been going on since day two and with few breaks between. This indicates to me that there is more to the story.
If Robert uses sex to teach, why did he keep his activities secret for so many years? Why did he speak so much in the early days about learning to control sexual energy. Why did he forbid sex outside of marriage up until 1998. Why did he throw out my good friend for making a somewhat innocent pass at a woman. Why did he encourage meetings every spring on sex which were interesting but had the overall effect of getting us all to control our “most precious” sex energy. Why did he say that the Roman empire fell not because of drink but because of sex.
The obvious answer is that Robert was afraid that sex could ruin what we had. How right he was. He knew he had difficulty controlling his sexual inclinations and he knew that in his position he needed to be in control. He had seen sincere students leave in the middle of the night. He had seen the hurt and anger from TE and others that once had been his pride. He KNEW he had to learn to control his sexual desires.
But he could not control his desires and this hurt him and the Fellowship. To think that he uses it as a teaching tool goes against reason. It also is contradictory to what I have heard from those that gave him what he wanted. The ones I have spoken to did not find it a teaching experience.
His sexual habbits, whether you like them or not, are probably not primarily a teaching tool but rather a result of his inability to do otherwise. They are the cause of his shame and paranoia which has resulted in his separation from life and prevented the FOF, despite a wealth of talent and good will, from becoming successful outside of the cocoon.
Interestingly, I don’t think even Robert has ever claimed that his sexual life was part of his teaching – at least I don’t think he has said that pubicly. It is his students which are struggling with trying to understand and justify him, that create these myths. These are the myths that minimize the dissonance and allow the sincere to put off for another day, making an effort to be independent.
But then we can all probably understand the difficulty in controlling sex. I just wish Robert would be up front about it all, talk about his failings and apologize for the hurt to others – and I hope that all of us, in our out, can work to minimize the hurt to others that are naive. Unless things have changed, there is always an influx of those wishing to be conscious, and therefore wishing to be close to the teacher. Can we help them to understand the nagative side of over-trusting and the possible long-term effects. I think it must be very confusing to the young men and I can’t see justifying that it is teaching for their own good.
DC you might consider the possible harm that might be caused by your statements, which imply that Robert is using sex to teach. What if you are wrong? What if the obvious is in fact true? Do you want to be one of the enablers?
Old Fish in the Sea: I appreciate your sincerity in wishing to reason with this person. Ames’s too. And I realize that you and Ames are not really writing for him or to him, but for anyone who may be reading here.
But one thing I’ve sensed about the “work language” is that it cues something in our brains. We hear the words and the typical sentence patterns, and we begin thinking, “There must be something of value in this sentence, because the work language is being used.”
Not true for many who’ve been out of the cult for quite a while, but I do think that many people who’ve left are still experiencing the after-effects to a greater or lesser extent.
People sometimes suggest here that the use of the term “brainwashing” is pejorative — i.e., an exaggeration that tends to belittle someone’s point of view, or that it goes too far in describing the FOF, or that it gives Burton way too much credit. I agree with that last part, but I do think that intentionally or unintentionally the so-called work language leads to a form of brainwashing, and that many of us are still recovering.
For example, in just one paragraph above, DC uses the following typical and often used “FOF words”, many of them used repeatedly over the years by Burton himself and copied by all of us:
– revealed
– teacher
– weaknesses
– attitudes
– disciple
– engage
– impeding
– evolution
– required
– method
– evolution
That’s just one paragraph for pete’s sake. You could quadruple the size of this list easily by reading the rest of his post (at about #107). We’ve been conditioned by the above words, so that we can read Daily Cardiac’s post and barely notice how completely out of bounds it is — how insane it is. Again, it reminds me of one poster who is fond of the so-called fourth way, abd who — out of the blue — decided it would be “useful” for our discussion to mention Charles Manson as an example of a leader who is not guided by morals — clearly implying some sort of justification of the psychopath’s behavior based on that premise. Holy shit. Shouldn’t something like that set off the alarms?
And the same could be said of Daily Cardiac’s completely insane pronouncement that Burton is justified in engaging in sex with his followers because it’s probably good for their evolution, and by golly, if they don’t see it that way, and if they leave the fof, then spiritual awakening must not be their priority, hey?
Let’s get a grip! When alarms don’t immediately go off after reading something like this, and when it’s not completely incompatible with common sense and conscience, THAT is brainwashing. THAT is a cult. Not pejorative words, but accurate words.
The final paragraph in DC’s post:
“If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
#129, Tina
I had the same thoughts yesterday about some of the posters rejecting the “WE” relative to their involvement in the Fellowship. I think someone who finally, thoroughly and deeply wakes up to the terror of the situation, also needs to understand their own culpability for it. So, let’s be clear, Robert would not have had any power if we did not give it to him, through our membership, efforts, rationalizations and donations, which “WE” did. And yeah, seeing through it hurts, big time.
The Fellowship as a hasnamussian mutant of the Fourth Way, turned around and marched in its exactly opposite direction, using the knowledge to rationalize spiritually and morally criminal ends. And each of us, each in our own way, sought to justify the reality in front of our noses with the knowledge in our books, using the presence in our hearts, and perverting both. Just witness the posts here from Daily Cardiac, who even to this day remains clueless. It is such an incredibly good example of human sleep, and on a large enough scale, so as to light the fire under anyone’s butt who is still interested in awakening. But that is another story. And the one is not a buffer to the other.
Because I also agree with Bruce: what people do with their understanding once the curtain has fallen, can vary immensely, so sweeping statements about what we feel or what we think are just inaccurate generalizations, exhibiting and leading to only more imagination.
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“I shouted out, ‘who killed the Kennedys’, when after all it was you and me.”
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#147Ellen, #129Tina
Not recognizing myself in the “we” does not mean rejecting responsibilities about MY involvement or about MY mistakes in the FOF.
What a strange conclusion!
Ellen, except this clarification, I agree with all the rest of your post.
I would not have expected such a long debate on that topic.
love to both.
Rear View Mirror,
Thanks for your recent posts, particularly 146.
I like the Buddha quotes, too.
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Ames, 141.
I agree. My heart gave out awhile ago on DC. He is a closed wall who will rationalize anything to his own ends, imagining himself to be awakening. Well, we can only wish him good luck…..
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#20 Julien.
I hear you.
Keep your eyes, ears, heart and mind open. Do simple things that you have always enjoyed. Breathe deeply, maybe some pranayama, some yoga? It can help the body to relax its hold on the tensions of heart and mind.
Climb mountains, swim rivers, scream into the unfathomable night, dive into the deepest sea: it can absorb and hold you, surrender to it?
some people might find this interesting:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
Regarding the Rodney Collin quotation: the process of selecting those quotations from scripture that justify your beliefs is known as prooftexting. Prooftexting has a long history in the Fellowship, from Robert’s decontextualised daily card quotations from eminent men to the current “keying” of ancient religious and spiritual literature. The principle involves beginning with a particular belief and then finding quotations which appear to support the belief. So, Daily Cardiac believes that there can never been any valid reason to leave the FOF; yet many people are leaving the FOF; therefore RC’s quote about Ouspensky’s last months is applied to the current situation in the FOF. But of course there are many other examples of pupils leaving teachers that could be used. How about Ouspensky leaving Gurdjieff? Ouspensky claimed that Gurdjieff had changed, that he no longer understood Gurdjieff, that if he continued to follow Gurdjieff, that he had attributed many things to Gurdjieff mistakenly. Perhaps Gurdjieff was manifesting directly from a higher level of being and Ouspensky left because he couldn’t see that.
Or perhaps RC’s statement should be applied to Osho. At various times in Osho’s career large numbers of his disciples left. Surely this was because Osho was manifesting at a higher level and the disciples couldn’t see the true reasons behind his sexual exploitation, valium addiction, etc. Probably C Influence arranged for Osho to have so many Rolls Royces to sort out those who were serious about awakening from those who weren’t.
Or perhaps the situation in the Fellowship resembles more the situation in Osho’s groups than it does Rodney Collin’s idealised view of Ouspensky…
Daily Cardiac, when I heard about Fellowship members’ sexual experiences with Robert I came out with similar justifications as you, though not quite as bombastic. Yet I was left with a deeply uneasy feeling about it all. That feeling was my conscience, and my explaining away of Robert’s effect on his “boys” were buffers intended to anaesthetize the discomfort produced by seeing the gulf between Robert’s claim to be a conscious teacher and the effect that he had on his students.
I hope that you still feel this unease from time to time. It is your conscience, not some deep form of feminine dominance. You have put yourself into a situation where it is impossible for you to acknowledge that Robert does harm to his students. Anyone who is upset at Robert is “negative”. Anyone who leaves the Fellowship has simply failed the test. No one who is concerned about his sexual involvement with Robert is likely to confide in you because you are obviously an insensitive person and you will obviously come out with the sort of self-calming homilies that you reiterate in this forum.
Well, your blindness is your own business, but your evasion of any awkward information and your sneaky pseudo-logic are intended to persuade readers that Robert does not have a disastrous influence on his students and this needs to be refuted.
Julien,
Perhaps you might clarify for Daily Cardiac’s benefit whether Robert’s sexual activity had any adverse effect on his students. Could you give some specific examples without naming names? Perhaps you could outline Robert’s daily and weekly sexual routine. Be explicit.
Of the thousands of “students” that were kicked out or who left on their own, how many I wonder, committed suicide, were committed to a “ward” for the mentally/emotionally unbalanced, left with a sexual disease, or wandered alone in life’s “desert highways” as a direct result of their experience with the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Earl Burton?
Maybe the Fellowship of Friends ought to be more honest and advertise itself as a church for homosexuals, that homosexuals can become “enlightened” under Burton’s spell, that homosexuals need “church” as well as anybody, that sitting next to Burton after coughing up a few dollars will make them gay, happy and pleased.
And, about consciousness and conscience. How about all the center directors, “head” waiters, special friends of Burton’s, the “inner thigh group”, social climbers, next in line to be numbered (5,6,7). Speak to us about their involvement as “cult” leaders in terms of “their” conscience in regard to the first question.
oops!!!
I pirate for life.
We are not amused at the indiscriminate use of the word “we”.
Ellen wrote:
I had the same thoughts yesterday about some of the posters rejecting the “WE” relative to their involvement in the Fellowship. I think someone who finally, thoroughly and deeply wakes up to the terror of the situation, also needs to understand their own culpability for it.
Ellen, may I gently suggest that this proposition needs to be examined. The first thing I notice is that it seems to assume that involvement = culpability. I don’t think this is necessarily true. Let me explain why.
Picture the circumstance of a new recruitee, full of enthusiasm for the so-called work ideas. She has found a bookmark and has come to the prospective student meetings. Note that the bookmark is deceptive in that it falsely implies some kind of connection with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and that it has legitimately been placed in the book. In fact there is no connection and no legitimacy. The recruitee’s engagement with the book–a powerful thing–has been illegitimately diverted to lead the recruitee into a particular environment–the prospective student meeting.
I think anyone looking at the prospective student meeting will agree that it is a circumstance of behavioral control. There are definite rules. There is a period of silence at the beginning. There are rules about the way the meeting is conducted. There are rules about how people speak. There (may be) “word exercises.” There is an order of presentation. There is a whole culture of behavioral control. The rules about the behavioral control emanate from the people running the show.
And the expectation communicated is that the recruitee is to bear the yoke of this behavioral control, to conform to it, to obey it.
A substantial body of social psychology research supports the proposition that if a group can control your behavior, it can influence what you believe and how you feel without your knowledge and consent. See, for example, Aronson, E. and J. Mills 1959 “The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59:177~181.
The main point is this: Once we’ve got you obeying, little by little we are influencing not only your behavior, but your attitudes and your beliefs, in a way that occurs entirely outside of awareness. You make choices, and they seem to be yours, because the strictures on your ability to choose are invisible to you, or have been imposed on you without your awareness. In many cases, they are not your choices, they are choices imposed on you which you have been manipulated into obeying.
The demand that someone “take responsibility for complicity” in his or her cult involvement, while noble-sounding, is based on a fallacy, i.e., that the individual’s choice played a significant role in the cult involvement. In my opinion, individual complicity is much less an issue in the context of thought reform than people think. In fact, the demand that someone step forward and “take responsibility for complicity” is reminiscent of the “cult of confession” and the “demand for purity” that are frequently found in thought-reform environments. See Lifton, Robert J., Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961).
All of which is to say, don’t be too quick to own up to complicity. Complicity which is the product of thoroughgoing deception and manipulation is not so much complicity as it is victimhood, albeit victimhood of a different kind.
“Several recently departed members of FoF believe Robert has abandoned the Fourth Way. But he, also, has opened the door to a new form, one that is superior to the form of your time in the FoF. And ultimately this change comes from Influence C, as did Rodney Collin’s new direction.”
DC this is quite inaccurate. Speaking as one of those members, it is now plain to me that Robert Burton never knew or mastered the 4th Way. He just gathered together a few crumbs from the table like his ‘master’ Alex Horn and tried to make a cake of it all. So the ‘new form’ never had any solid foundations to start with.
Robert particular contribution to the 4th Way is his demonization of the instinctive-moving centre, and it is nothing more than an expression of his own mechanics, sadly. In any real Gurdjieff teaching, learning to speak the language of the instinctive-moving centre sympathetically is central to further progress… Gurdjieff saw it as the foundation-stone of the Work.
You can pursue higher states all you want, but they will do nothing but damage if you (and your instinctive centre) aren’t prepared the gift. You’ll just be pouring fuel on the fire of the Fellowship’s chief feature, Vanity.
Try to take a look at Robert’s mechanics, say connected with sex and instinctive life, without all your explanations running in the background to stifle the evidence. What do you see? Do you see a balanced man acting in harmony with all his centres? Do you see a man able to choose freely in relation to sex? Do you see a man who could live happily on his own, even for a short period of time? Do you see a man in control of his passions?
If the answer to any of these questions gives you pause for thought, even for a moment, before it’s overwhelmed by the host of justifying I’s, then there’s still some hope. Try to be honest about what you feel.
137. Rear View Mirror
“Imagine having access to very large amounts of money, and imagine having no qualms about spending it. Imagine if someone became a threat to your finances, your sex life, your travel itinerary to exotic locales, and your well-crafted reputation amongst your followers. And imagine having no qualms about who gets run over along the way…
Wouldn’t you hire someone to disrupt the proceedings here a bit?”
———————————————————
OH YES I would hire someone!
They(RB and parts of the inner circle) may hope:
If we (Brucelevy’s “royal we”) are discussing here on the blog then we are busy………..
Nice “Manoeuvre” to gain time (for RB…..)
145. Old Fish in the Sea and
146. Rear View Mirror
very instructive!
Completely agree about not being too quick to owning up to complicity, which is a strong word.
It’s a matter of degrees. I think one of the problems “we” are having here is discussing this in terms of absolute involvement vs. absolute victimization. It might help to see the gray area inbetween, and then Tina’s and Ellen’s views may make more sense to you. Some of us were more the victims, vulnerable to cult mentality due to our own egos and foolishness. Some of us were more on the complicity side of things, or outright involvement (I think this is a much, much smaller group of people).
Jomo, 157, nice post, and as usual packed with a lot of interesting reference materials. (Are you writing a book? You should be if you’re not.) I do understand why someone would object to grouping us all together, but I think the “we” makes sense from the standpoint that we were both victimized and the victimizers to greater or lesser degrees. Some of us were less the victims (had a lot of fun in the FOF, believe we got what we came for, etc.), and some of us were less the perpetrators (had only a vague idea what the fuck was going on).
I think it’s useful to 1) see that there’s a very big difference between the two extremes, but 2) also see that we’re in denial if we don’t see our own level of involvement. What we don’t say and what we don’t do are sometimes as powerful as what we say and do. At the same time, assigning equal responsibility for this madness (I don’t believe this is what Ellen and Tina are saying) tends to dilute the notion of accountability for the “real” perpetrators — Burton, Haven, and so on.
Draco 151-152. nice posts. clear arguments…
“Well, your blindness is your own business, but your evasion of any awkward information and your sneaky pseudo-logic are intended to persuade readers that Robert does not have a disastrous influence on his students and this needs to be refuted.”
RVM, you can write me. veronicapoe@gmail.com
Daily Cardiac:
I was thinking about what you said earlier. Why not take your work to the next level and follow the example of your spiritual leader?
Go ahead and lead your life…”acting, without compromise from your higher understanding without any concessions to the ways of the world.”
That’s exactly what I did.
See where your higher understanding leads you…or does it keep you exactly where you are?
If your higher understanding keeps you spinning your wheels in a cult, I would argue that it is not higher undertanding at all but dogma, nor is it your understanding but the cult’s indocrination.
For myself, I refused to compromise my dignity any longer for the sake of Burton’s sex addiction. Dignity is not to be confused with “false personality”, BTW. You are therefore suggesting in your post that personal dignity is artificial. What kind of spirituality is that?
You are therefore suggesting in your post that personal dignity is artificial. What kind of spirituality is that?
Plainly one which tolerates, or even elevates as desirable, the experience of humiliation, on the pretext that enduring humiliation somehow promotes spiritual evolution. One may so endure for a time on this pretext, especially if a sense of personal authority to resist it has been undermined either situationally (“I feel worthless because of other stuff that’s happened to me, and hope to find self-worth by surviving this”) or intentionally (“You must decide: Do you want to work or not?”). Fortunately, the psyche will ultimately rebel by virtue of its inherent dignity, its intentions to the contrary notwithstanding. In my humble opinion.
Old Fish
I just wish Robert would be up front about it all, talk about his failings and apologize for the hurt to others – and I hope that all of us, in our out, can work to minimize the hurt to others that are naive.
I find the first part of your sentence generous (bailouts are ‘in’), perhaps even honorable. However, several have already indicated that this wish is misguided given the evidence that individuals with such psychological disorders are not inclined to reform and apologies.
Still the blog exposure of REB true nature is, has been very valuable. We all knew about his clothes, we now know what he is truly like when he strips off. Now the current members have access to the same information we do, can reflect on it and act, leave or deny.
The blog other very valuable impact is that it serves as a colossal warning to those naive souls ot there. Those sincere seekers are in one of the most vulnerable stages of their life and ripe for the plucking by the unscrupulous. Some of “WE” are here to help.
Thanks Ellen for the hand and Dragon, tea is just fine! Laura, was cruelty so convincing it left you wordless? Silence too is an answer so let me take it again if you wish.
Arthur: And, about consciousness and conscience. How about all the center directors, “head” waiters, special friends of Burton’s, the “inner thigh group”, social climbers, next in line to be numbered (5,6,7). Speak to us about their involvement as “cult” leaders in terms of “their” conscience in regard to the first question.
Arthur, you’ve been so kind to me, you would not bring to pieces any of these people if they took a long time to understand and accept them selves and their involvement? When I walked off with Girard his few personal friends thought that I was just a Latin social climber who’d sold my sex to become the Queen: A whore. What normal woman would marry half a man with a stroke, a porn addiction and extremely depressed if it wasn’t because of the power she thought she could get from it? But I only understood all these things after many years. At the time, I was very interested in becoming the Queen, convinced that in the midst of all that mess, I could straighten it out if I at least could help Girard. When I got to the Fellowship Girard had an immense amount of unconditional support. It seemed clear to me that he missed a great deal to be deserving of that support but in good faith I thought that if that was the general standard of things I might as well play along with it and help with what was given. I was convinced everyone was acting on good faith and that although many knew of Girard’s weaknesses since Cynthia had made sure she told many about them including Robert, everyone was committed to helping him and also continuing to support “our Conscious Teacher in his amazing quest for Consciousness, Gold Alchemy and The Work”. I sincerely thought
Robert was trying to help Girard and it wasn’t until it was clear he wanted to get rid of him too that I began to understand Robert. But that too was a very slow process. He is a master, unfortunately a black one. The only thing I thought was missing in the Fellowship was love and I was convinced I could carpet Girard’s life with enough love that he would then be able to spread it out. To be frank, I thought Robert was a hell of a lot more “loving” than Girard, at least he had it in the jacks to say my darlings and thank people, bow with false humility and the rest of the act. I’m very glad I was so ambitious because otherwise I would still be in there paying and sending money from where ever to support it. I needed to look closely at Girard and Robert to understand. The Fellowship has masterfully designed its mechanisms of submission. If it had been a true School, it would have needed a third of the money and no suffering but effort instead of effort to suffer. It is a little like the richest nation on the planet for the old people to die like pigs. Money? What the hell for? In other countries anyone can die like a pig but at least they have the excuse that they don’t have the money to make it any better, here, they think they don’t have the time because they only have time to make more money! Well, at least you guys have got time to blog!
Jomo Pinata: “All of which is to say, don’t be too quick to own up to complicity. Complicity which is the product of thoroughgoing deception and manipulation is not so much complicity as it is victimhood, albeit victimhood of a different kind.”
I couldn’t agree with you more, what a delight it is to have your input in this Forum, and yet again, where do we go from here? We can be clear that Girard as much as Daily Cardiac and a hundred others are victims but as victimizers they also become responsible. I certainly feel responsible for not having had the being to stand up for myself or others and allow humiliation after humiliation to run over us. Responsible for the boys that I personally saw being sucked into a world they could not possibly avoid. And hugely responsible for doing everything I can to make it stop so that others don’t get sucked in. Of course there was complicity in as much as I believed in it and understanding that I was a victim does not make me any less responsible for stopping it. If I don’t understand that, I continue to be its accomplice. What is truly disturbing to me is that the laws are in complicity with these atrocities: the studies are there, the cases of abuse are numerous and still all the lawyers say is that there is nothing that can be done about it, deal with your being an idiot, there are no social guarantees in this world dear. I don’t believe that, that is part of the same Cult mentality that is willing to make people feel helpless and submit to the corruption of what has become an invisible authority, the same invisible authority we accepted in the Fellowship but out in our lives. If our lives cannot empower us to act by what our experience has taught us, future generations will have to keep trying to solve what we neglected to face up to. Childless people might be comfortable with such position but future generations matter where culture matters and where culture doesn’t matter, people don’t matter either. We can all run and say, “I” am not “we”, I run on my own and that is only a symptom of what WE were not willing to live up to. Decadence is contagious but so is courage. This is not directed at you Bruce, tempting as it is, I am clear about your willingness to fight the Fellowship, what we haven’t agreed on is “embracing” it at the same time.
“Atrocities” is a word that people generally use when severe physical violence of some kind is involved. I call the Fellowship an atrocity because it is not just one rape, or one rip off, or one third class citizen, it is thousands of people for over thirty five years. That is an atrocity and some people still think we don’t have to do anything about it, “it’ll fall on its own”. It is not falling on its own, it is falling because we are pushing it over even if some don’t want to move a finger to do it.
164: Opus 111
Yes the wish for Robert to be open and communicate regarding his habbits based on history is absurd and what does it say about the health of the FOF when a normal healthy wish stands out as rediculous naivite..
158 is newly moderated
elena, I am not trying to ignore you, I just didn’t have the time to write a well thought out answer to your post. Give me a little time, and I will oblige.
Daily Cardiac: “The other two people did not notice any change in me even though I had become mostly silent. These 20 seconds or so probably approached a state of objective knowledge, and have been with me ever since, even though today I could not tell you one detail of the conversation, what the “problem” was, or the solution arrived at.”
As Ouspensky said, you can make a sheep conscious but you can’t make a conscious sheep.
DC: “Feminine Dominance allows the average person to access or experience conscience in a partial way; something like riding a bicycle with training wheels.”
It is the Fellowship’s Feminine Dominance or rather Robert Burton’s gay dominance what has used the System to submit its members to supporting his lifestyle at the cost of every aspect of the member’s well being. Like riding a bicycle on a track. People think they are moving but they are going around in circles. A conscious being cannot hurt others and Robert Burton hurts many, many people. You justify it because you don’t have any conscience or consciousness, just blind idolatry and dog-ma. Since you’ve been experiencing higher states for so many years, could you share your understandings or are we to take your word for it. What you’ve offered repeatedly is average fellowhip dogma, have you come to anything more original than that?
I’ve been thinking about complicity, responsibility, conscience, denial etc. I’ve mentioned several times before that I take full responsibility for my own stupidity, vanity and naivety in relation to my decision making with RB and the exploitation I experienced.
Over the years I noticed some things that may or may not be relevant. Not in all cases, but in most cases when a person left because of the eventual realization about what physically happened between them and RB, they usually were still in some state of shock, and shame. I was angry also, but I left quietly, as most of us did. It was between ourselves and RB and whatever we came to understand. We left quietly.
Then there was a group of people who left comparatively noisily (letters, meetings etc.) Of that group (and not all, but most) these were made up of student teachers (some with significant satellites around them most of the time) , lawyers, enablers and those who fed deeply at the trough. Because of their position it was only a matter of time before the truth was fairly often rubbed in their faces. Almost all of them spent an inordinate amount of times saying “I don’t believe it” or “I don’t want to hear it” or “I just can’t take RB on the same level as ordinary people, he’s a god” etc. These are some of the enablers who amazingly and coincidently made so much of the noise about “I can’t stand by and watch this anymore” bs, and some went ahead and filed suit and actually received money (I’m not talking about Bu**y) or some other remuneration. I’m friends with some on both sides of the equation. But let’s call a spade a fucking spade. Self serving hypocrisy is one of the major sins, in my mind, that many of the noisemakers need to address. It is almost invariable that the people who are most indignant, verbally, were the people who were victimized the least, except financially. Which of course is the big “How dare they “lie” to me” bull shit while people are walking around in a state of fucking shock.
So my guess would be that if DC or Vinnie or any other of the flying monkeys reach that point, we’re going to see some big, loud self-serving hypocritical indignation at having been lied to. So let me be the first to issue an advanced and sincere “Fuck You”.
Bruce: “So my guess would be that if DC or Vinnie or any other of the flying monkeys reach that point, we’re going to see some big, loud self-serving hypocritical indignation at having been lied to. So let me be the first to issue an advanced and sincere “Fuck You”.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve really liked the discussion that’s grown out of the use of just one word: “we”
One of the reasons for thought control and group think in the FOF is that we used words without really thinking about their true meanings. Sure, we had pretended meanings for words, but we rarely talked about their “actual” meanings.
Awakening? You thought that meant wisdom, spiritual growth, and inner strength? HA, what a fool. It actually means complete obedience, ignorance, and a malignant disdain for everyone outside the FOF.
So Bruce, that could be one reason THEY don’t use their real names. (People have many reasons here.) Something in them knows they too will be “ex-students” one day. And part of them is well aware of the impending “loud self-serving hypocritical indignation” that you describe, and that may not be far on the horizon for them. And they know how absurd the indignation will sound given the nonsense they’ve posted here.
Elena
“No matter how decent and proper and good-householders some people are within the second line of life, that is, their marriages and immediate surroundings, they too will drown in the general decadence of the whole of society.”
Yesri Baba
“The light at the end of the tunnel is in the end you’re looking from”
Don’t take me wrong, I clearly see the cruelty, the carelesness, the ugliness of this society. Just watching the news for one minute is a somber reminder of how unpleasant and unjust life among humans can be. But all through my life I have also been exposed to much beauty and kindness, I have experienced friendship, solidarity and love, I have constantly cared for and been cared for. I also believe I am a very average person, so I assume that like me, most people have the ability to experience positive and meaningful human interactions on a regular basis.
When you say “they too will drown” Elena, what do you mean exactly?
I personally believe that even in the widespread decadence and darkness of these times, even in difficult and seemingly hopeless situations, we can still shine our little lights, just like Etty Hillesum did in the harrowing scenario she found herself in. And I will not wait for the world to be perfect to accept and be grateful for my moments of love and joy. I don’t believe that my unhappiness, guilt trip or martyrdom would help in any way to solve the problems of this world, quite the contrary. I’d rather follow my bliss and try to spread it around to the best of my ability.
Also, the simple fact that Robert and the FoF’s deep corruption did not manage to drown the fundamental decency of the vast majority of the people who were exposed to it, is IMO a clear testimonial of the fundamental dignity of “our” psyche, as Jomo just reminded us.
Elena, I hope this clarifies my general view. I generally value and respect your opinions, but do not agree with some of the sweeping statements you routinely make about human beings, nations, society and life on planet earth.
And that is fine too, isn’t it?
A few quotes from Etty Hillesum:
“I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves”.
“The main thing is that even as we die a terrible death we are able to feel right up to the very last moment that life has meaning and beauty, that we have realised our potential and lived a good life”.
“Yes, we carry everything within us, God and Heaven and Hell and Earth and Life and Death and all of history. The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us. And we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good, which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the bad. But we must know what motives inspire our struggle and we must begin with ourselves, every day anew”.
“One moment it is Hitler, the next it is Ivan the Terrible; one moment it is resignation and the next war, pestilence, earthquake or famine. Ultimately what matters, most is to bear the pain, to cope with it and to keep a small corner of one’s soul unsullied, come what may”.
“If all this suffering does not help us to broaden our horizon, to attain a greater humanity by shedding all trifling and irrelevant issues, then it will all have been for nothing”.
“Oh God, times are too hard for frail people like myself. I know that a new and kinder day will come. I would so much like to live on, if only to express all the love I carry within me. And there is only one way of preparing the new age, by living it even now in our hearts. Somewhere in me I feel so light, without the least bitterness and so full of strength and love. I would so much like to help prepare the new age”.
(from the Westerburk, the Concentration Camp in Holland, before the Nazis killed her) “Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time. The two are in balance, everywhere and always. I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things, everything is fine just as it is. Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself and contains the good as well as the bad”.
Much love to you
172. Rear View Mirror
Good point. So let’s add the “advance self serving calculation” factor to the hypocrisy equation. Which only makes it a much longer, possibly never ending equation. Like pi to the bs factor.
173. lauralupa
I agree. When someone describes the “nightmare” of one’s life…I can see how it can be one for some, or many people. But it’s not a nightmare for me. There are certainly some nightmarish scenarios one experiences on one’s path. But I’m enjoying the shit out of my life, and I have since I left, and before I joined, and even occasionaly when I was “in” (not as many though). I move on and live life as passionately and positively as I can. I fail, I succeed, I try to enjoy. Except when there’s a reason, like sharing info on this blog, I don’t live in the past pain. It would, for me, be an “unreal” nightmare if I did. I try to metabolize what came before and try to change it into something different. The alchemy of turning shit into gold.
On the otherhand, I’ll decry the bullshit that I see on the way, and share my experience of being objectified by a sociopath primarily to war others to know what to expect, and decide accordingly.
107. Daily Cardiac
“If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT FUCKING ASSHOLE DAILY CARDIAC.
Lauralupe, Bruce,
It would’ve been better if you had ignored me for you do anyway. You pick on the few things and deny to acknowledge the rest because you’d rather suit your selves. You are not willing to take into account the conditions and changes in time. Too bad. Life, our times, are a nightmare; nothing will change that and piercing it with reality is worth my lifetime. You take a sentence like “A drop of reality is worth this nightmare” and only look at the nightmare and not at the drop of reality. Suit your selves, you are part of the same obstacles I am so used to coming across, I still stand for a different reality that you are simply not willing to acknowledge. I’m very glad to have understood the lesson. Pick on what you like if that feeds you, one should know people for what they eat.
When I say they too will drown I mean a hell of a lot of things but I can’t be bothered to explain any more. If you haven’t seen what is beautiful after a year I doubt you’ll see it now. No one is more deaf than s/he who doesn’t want to hear and I’ve paid enough tribute here to ask you to understand. I’ll settle for your misunderstanding.
Bruce (175) I have a name. You avoided answering my post like Daily Cardiac some posts back and then you trickle little bits of your answers. If you are going to take me on take me on whole don’t just take me little by little, have some respect for your self if not for me, you are beginning to act like Another Vocie out here who loved adding his voice when someone questioned me but didn’t dare to do it on his own. After drama queen you’ll surely have another fast solution like that to quickly drop and move out of the way, you’re so good at that, why waste your talent on actually seeing beyond it?
It’s been a pleasure conversing with you both. Have a great day.
X-Ray and RVM
DC: If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
I agree with you both, that should be enough to explode a nation but if anyone explodes enough they are spreading their “unhappiness, guilt trip or martyrdom” around. No wonder no one had really exploded before and prefered to take money from the Fellowship.
Lauralupe,
Robert also used beauty to undermine reality.
Cussin’ Broocie:
Which of course is the big “How dare they “lie” to me” bull shit while people are walking around in a state of fucking shock.
I hear you as describing different classes of victims, and observing that most of those who suffered serious, sexual victimization were quiet, while others who experienced the less grave betrayal of “being had” benefited from the scheme before discovering it was a scam. Fair restatement of what you wrote?
I sympathize with your being one of the class of those more seriously victimized. No doubt your soul howls about it just like whalerider’s, but you howl privately. However, do not dismiss with a “fuck you” the very different suffering of the other class of victims. They experienced a suffering which is also genuine, and I don’t mean just financial suffering. Opportunity cost aches. Our lives got misappropriated. Sure, it’s a different ache than yours, and yours is worse for sure, but it aches just the same.
179. Jomo Piñata
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m not minimizing other’s victimizations. I’m more referring to the people who fed deeply at the trough and enabled the status quo and then used “I’m not going to stand for this anymore” as their exit excuse. They were hardly victims compared to the rank and file.
177. elena
I’m not going to get into it with you.
179. Jomo Piñata
If A G left saying “I can’t support these terrible things that are going on” would you have me see him as a victim, or a parasite?
Vinnie
Next time could you ask bruce what is picture is instead of ASSUMING?
Assuming is very silly, takes up a lot of space and most often, you did not come close to the target.
Ask him?
183. Another Name
It’s a detail of a larger b&w photograph called The Kiss. If Vinnie joins the GF he’ll be able to see the full shot on my page if it’s really eating him up.
Silly Bruce
I know this picture and i know what it is, you are answering so fast. I had hoped that Vinnie would question himself and I hope he sees how he ruins his own life with assuming and “painting”, coloring his pictures with his on fantasies….assumptions.
The discussion about M-h—is very interesting to me. As far as I know there is a big difference between M-h—and D-r—n . M-h—quite having sex with Robert few months ago (this is probably one of the reasons that he got send away.) As Robert will put men further away who do not follow his will. (Sorry, Daily Cardiac, must be a big shock for you)
D-r–n lied to me 7 years again and I confronted him and through somebody else Robert. Over all these years I watched Dorian and could not understand that D-r–n became so “important” to Robert. (Well, now I know). The day D-r—n was send on a leave of absence was the day he married –d—th. I confronted him too, if he married her for the greencard or not and he told me how serious he was and respected and cared for the women. When I asked him if he would leave her after he got the green card and would betray her, inhis words he answered, that was not his intention. A year later he had on orgy at her house and not much later left her for his lover.
In my opinion, why not confront M-h—and talk to him and ask him if he has sorrow and loss. How he feels, and if his words are congruent with his actions at this point and time. If M-h—tells me that “nothing has happened and that everything is alright”, I will have my antennas up and will be uneasy. I might decide not to have too many interactions with him. I have a need to express myself freely and a need to be open and direct and as honestly as possible can be with people. To know with what kind of “meat” I am dealing with. I do not want to be deceived and be lied too. It is that simple.
To my understanding it I is important, useful to see “what is”, acknowledge and , grief and accept. This will help to bring into AWARENESS where your / men’s action came/ come from .. this is a basis for mutual understanding and to go for a situation that both parties will benefit. Unlike my years in the fellowship of friends.
I believe in community, as I have several one’s….they might not be perfect, neither am I.
I love them for what they are and so myself. (Trying the latter, more and more..)
185. Another Name
Oh, ok, I gottcha.
brucelevy 181
Ditto
“Cut yourself some slack: 100 years from now-all new people.”
a lovely quote from:
http://www.realitysandwich.com/divine_pratfalls
have a great day, everyone!
Lauralupa (189),
After reading the article, “cut yourself some slack: 100 years from now-all new people” made a whole lot of sense. The first thing that came to my mind was for right now, “dont worry, be happy” (Bob Marley?).
A pirate for life
Dear Arthur, Lauralupa
What an expression: Yes, in 100 years their will be a whole new group of people. Reminds me of …..In your next life time or later when you grow up. It evokes anger in me ….my old hurt with the fellowship of friends is triggered. ( Still not digested I guess?)
I live now and appreciate a nice life. I have a need for reassurance that I can live a life now that is mine and meant to be. That is for filling and worth living, now ….
When I read this in 100 years .. ….i get so mad. I have a comfort. If it gets to much here, there are ways to get out of here.
Get me out of here
Get me out of here
Hola Senor Piñata #157,
OK, culpable might have been a little too specific, too literal, for what I was trying to convey. Responsibility had been my first word, but I had edited it yesterday to find something deeper because I was feeling that way at the time. In a literal sense, there are only a handful of people who are/were truly “culpable”. And even for them, there were/are many levels operating, making it both confusing and clear, depending on how you look at it.
But in a collective sense, the human sleep of the Fellowship is a suffering to which every member contributed, some more, some less – and IMHO it is not to be buffered. The sleep was/is not so much about the sex, power or money plays per se (which were harmful to specific individuals), but more about the collective lies and buffers we each had to manufacture in order to continue to accept such circumstances.
For myself, book in hand, I f__ked and unf__k my own mind a few times. Do I now claim to be a victim? No, not really. And given my own circumstances, the third or fourth hand gossip from an inflamed source was easily discredited by first hand affirmations. And did I want to believe in the fundamental goodness of “School on Earth”? Yep. That it was somehow stronger and better than even RB’s imperfections? You bet. And why? Friendships. Third and fourth states. Presence. The people. An ideology I was not yet ready to relinquish. Fear? Dogma. Karma(?) One answer would be yet another lie. As there are numerous reasons, on numerous levels, and for each of us.
But at a certain point, a person has to become responsible for the world he/she lives in. And that’s it. It may be lonely, it may be faulted, it may be imperfect, but if it is corrupt in the center of it, then it is time to make a fresh start.
#173, Lauralupa
Thank you for the Etty Hillesum quotes.
She is so inspiring and refreshing.
And offers a sense of scale too in transforming both physical pain and human imposed suffering.
190. arthur
Bobby McFerrin
192. Ellen
But at a certain point, a person has to become responsible for the world he/she lives in. And that’s it. It may be lonely, it may be faulted, it may be imperfect, but if it is corrupt in the center of it, then it is time to make a fresh start.
———————————————————
wonderful sentence!
And it is all the time only the small world surrounding this person.
It is never the whole world. We are all fragile (also R.B. M…i, D____n, V____e et al.) and have only a limited influence over our surrounding.
But every human being is able to go through this surrounding with open eyes, with open heart, with open mind… with good humour..
I can try to laugh at myself……….
And seldom if never are Etty Hillesum’s in this world……
Stardust for our souls.
189. Dear lauralupa, thank you for the link!
You have already Bruce, no matter how much you try to ignore it, but what matters is not whether you ignore me but what you are trying to ignore about what I say. Isn’t it wonderful to separate the two? I kept thinking it was about me!
If Abe G. left today and said I’m sick of it, it would make me extremely happy. Many others probably never will especially knowing that attitudes like yours await for them out here. Of course I do not know much of the dirt because those who do know the dirt won’t tell it so that they too can cover themselves up but I’ll continue to be glad to never stop seeing the human in no matter what individual even if it were someone who deserved to be on death row and many do but I doubt they are on our lad which is why the absolute extremes seem so unnecessary. It’s so interesting that there are laws here that make people sign papers after they leave a job so that they cannot denounce the dirt. How do you manage to live with those laws?
Thank you Another Name for revealing more sides of Mihai before he continues being lynched.
Laura, is there a special technique in which to avoid the personal the “cool social” is brought forth? I think I already belonged for seventeen years in a club like that in which as long as you did not express any dissent, everything was just dandy. How many years did it take you to learn such sophisticated techniques? You don’t have to answer that, another reality sandwich card from one of the 444 will suffice.
Have great fun in your dandelion world! I don’t think I need it anymore, there”s still a Public Square just a blog down the road.
Pardon me, I meant dandylion world instead of dandelion.
brucelevy (194,
Thanks “cussin brucie”!!
Elena, what the fuck is your problem?
What is it exactly that you want from me?
Have I offended you in some mysterious way?
I already gave you an answer expressing my personal opinions.
I respect yours, so can you please make an effort to respect mine instead of jumping all over me for not agreeing with your views?
If someone here has a problem with dissent, it seems to be you.
Anyway, suit yourself, I respect your right to play your endless mind games and wallow in your misery as long as you need or desire to.
I just wish you could love yourself a little more.
And for a repeat performance by Daily Cardiac:
“If a teacher, through sex, revealed certain weaknesses or attitudes in a disciple that were impeding his or her spiritual evolution then the teacher would be correct to engage in sex, if that were the required method, and the teacher would be irresponsible not to do so. If a disciple left a teacher because of sex related issues it would only prove that spiritual evolution was not first on the disciple’s list of priorities.”
X-Ray replied: “YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT FUCKING ASSHOLE DAILY CARDIAC.”
———————
X-Ray,
I think the true nature of Robert Burton and the FOF slipped through unintentionally in the above paragraph — a whoops moment for Daily Cardiac. He hasn’t written anything since.. Someone must have pulled him aside.
“Uh, _____, we wanted you to support our beloved teacher and our precious school, and of course obfuscate and distract people. We never asked you to reveal the truth about us, for god’s sake. Dude, what were you thinking? Be careful what you say. People read this stuff! You’re making us look like a bunch of cult fanatics. And worse yet… Some of our fellow members are reading this and thinking, “Ohhhhh- myyyyy – gaaaaahd.” So look man, don’t say everything on your mind. Show some self control. Take a break from the blog. Get your focus back. You really screwed up here.”
——
163 whalerider and 165 Opus 111. Liked your posts. Some good reading on this page.
196. Dear Elena,
what you need is perhaps an: ANAM ĊARA (Gaelic: anam=soul and cara=friend) in the literal sense of John O’Donohue an Irish philosopher, poet, mystic who passed away unexpectedly in early 2008.
Do you know a Celt?
The BLOG is worth flowing and it is “words in flow” Flowing words…………..
Don’t forget his intention, please!
Don’t leave us and your old friends here on the blog.
Only a few words for You this evening but “cordialement”:
It’s all I have to bring today-
This, and my heart beside-
This, and my heart , and all the fields-
And all the meadows wide-
Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell-
This, and my heart and all the Bees
Which in the clover dwell.
Emily Dickinson
c. 1858
I’m loving myself just fine Laura, at least this time it didn’t get me as upset as you did so the wallowing must have redirected itself.
It’s always rather telling when we break into such explosions isn’t it? And I’m so glad you can still get there and not just buffer it like so many other friends I have.
Dragon, you truly are a sweetheart. The Public Square is always open, it’s the clubs what I detest.
By the way Laura, the problem is not in disagreeing but in what and how we disagree.
As I said before, have great fun in your dandylion world. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, your music is still beautiful and that is not just the music you put on.
“All my life, I’ve wondered about existence. What is it all about? Now, having explored many things but feeling no smarter, I start over. What I ask myself, can I know for sure? For me, it’s the enormity of the cosmos. It stops my breath. Everyone knows that the universe is huge, but no one could have imagined how staggeringly immense the universe or multiple universes may actually be.”
-Robert Lawrence Kuhn
—-
Kuhn, a brain scientist, has launched a new series called “Closer to Truth” that explores philosophy, consciousness, the mind, religion, and other mysteries of the cosmos. It’s shown on PBS, but full episodes also are available on-demand at:
http://www.closertotruth.com
Seems like a thoughtful program. In the episode called, “Why Is Consciousness So Mysterious?” Kuhn interviews several philosophers, scientists, a Buddhist nun, psychologists, and others, to explore the mysteries of the soul, the mind, and why people join cults.
Kidding about that last part. Best wishes all.
So Elena, since you seem to indicate that this is no time for restraint on this blog, I take the opportunity to express what I really feel: your constant focus on general dramas and the ills of this world is too often a distraction from the impending work of facing the deeper issues you carry, the open wounds, the feelings of unworthiness that led you into making some very unfortunate choice. I know we haven’t personally met, but ofte while I read your passionate posts I have the thought: this woman married Girard Haven, for God’s sake? It can’t be something positive, it must be a case of misery loves company, because I can’t imagine a more mistmachtched couple. You and your deep desire for acceptance and love stuck with one of the more aloof, stuffed, out of touch sentient beings one could choose to fall in love with in the whole known universe. So, have you asked yourself why? Why staying for seventeen years in a wretched cult, why are you bringing all this unnecessary suffering upon yourself? I have personally asked mself these same questions because I have made the same mistakesfor many years, before, during and after the Fellowship, and only now I feel am coming out of my own victim mentality and personal choice guilt trips and martyrdoms. So what you interpreted as an insult is actually more of a personal declaration of intent, yes I too have been a martyr on the altar of my parents, and God I am sick of it.
This blog is a huge mind game, essentially, and you are right, we all play by our own rules. I realize that the writings and links I post may seem jumping all over the place, but I defend my own quirky way of expression just as you so passionately stand by yours. So your snide remarks about my youtubes or RS links doesn’t do much good in the way of our friendship. If you don’t like them , just skip them. I have gifted you with many thoughts, this past long year, have received yours. I have gone through loops and have seen you go through many dramatic loops.
I didn’t imagine that I would ever have the guts to say this, but here goes my humble suggestion: I have noticed that in your posts you often express a healthy, vital, profound desire to purge (as in all your references to vomiting). I think that this is a strong indication that you could most benefit from a shamanic healing of the sort unoanimo was suggesting months ago… remember, right before the time he went off-blog? Ayahuasca would be most excellent for you, IMO there’s nothing that could help you more than letting yourself go into the arms of Loving Mother Nature and feel nurtured and cared for while coming face to face with your favorite demons and angels. Anyway, I really wish for some sort of profound healing to take place in your life, from the bottom of my heart. Doing some deep inside cleaning work is a good practice if like you one wants to try to make a dent in this world. Otherwise you’ll keep wasting your precious energy ranting over trifles and misunderstanding and blowing everything out of proportion.
Isn’t what we deal with here hard enough, do we really need to make it feel just a little heavier for everyone? You spend half the time accusing people of unfeeling they are, but you also are one of the most brutal of attackers, can you see the irony? You want people to listen but you also seem a bit hard of hearing, or at least you don’t really seem to have a very good ear to people’s intent. So everybody ends up screaming and it turns into an italian sunday dinner with mamma e papà arguing at the sides of the table.
Of course, since were are not if the Fellowship of Friends, we are also free to be enemies, and you can return the unwanted photographs and suggestion to sender, and keep on lecturing me from your side, as I have often done here on this blog with a number of people. I take no offense, since you are not my pupil nor I am yours. I find it strange when you try to force on me your ideas of how I should feel or live, or assume that universally more angst equals more consciousness. What do you know about the challenges i face in my life, who are you in my life for judging if my personal share of consciousness and suffering is up to some holy standards you established?
I didn’t volunteer for your army, and I write here only because like you i after all I am addicted to the game. But I would rather be the Switzerland here than some little dictator. The totalitarian meme is something I am done with for the rest of my life, hopefully. Of course, I am not perfect, i get pissed off, i loose my cool, I insult people. But I don’t have any secret agenda, and I am not looking for any followers, I just enjoy this. You could possibly try to appreciate that for what it is.
So take my joy if you like, take my pain if you prefer, just please get off my case.
I want to see you get on with your life and turn into the beautiful person you truly are, not that you are not beautiful, but you frown too much, I would love to see those muscles relax in a smile.
I truly hope that one day you’ll recover your sense of humor.
With love, if you can believe it.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Sw4z8YXmg
September 2008
Seventeen year sago before…..the light at the end of the tunnel
June 1991
My dear friend, if the goal seems far away it is because you are near.
RB
But at a certain point, a person has to become responsible for the world he/she lives in. And that’s it. It may be lonely, it may be faulted, it may be imperfect, but if it is corrupt in the center of it, then it is time to make a fresh start.
You go girl!
182/Cussin’ Broocie
If A G left saying “I can’t support these terrible things that are going on” would you have me see him as a victim, or a parasite?
The truth is, I don’t know what he’s done. So the first answer is, I don’t have enough information to answer the question.
From what I’ve heard, I suspect that he’s a “true believer” with less than good judgment who repeatedly fails to disbelieve the lies his client tells him. If that’s the case, that’s cluelessness. Who’s responsible for that? Hard to say. Responsibility for individual cluelessness is diffuse: partly his, partly not. And if he takes his duty of zealous representation seriously, as he apparently does and as most lawyers do, he becomes a guy who does as much of his client’s will as he is able to do.
So, to answer your question, If I thought he was a knowing and cynical exploiter of the circumstance who knew the truth and was just in it for the gravy, I’d answer like you might expect. But under the scenario I outlined above (which might be true, I dunno), is he a victim? In my estimation, YES.
208. Jomo Piñata
Yes, different experiences yield different criteria.
That was fun, I actually laughed with the video. So who do you want to play? Me? Or You?
First I is: It’s all true but it’s only half the truth, why can’t you look at the other half?
I’ve been trying to get off your case for a day and you keep talking to me, like now!. Since I was “very well educated” I have to respond and I love a good dialogue!
Your youtubes and your music and everything about you is wonderful, it’s how you use them that I’m questioning and the fact that you consistently deny the half of me that I am also offering in no honorable a manner.
Thanks for the Ayahuasca suggestion but you would have been much closer if you’d said I just needed a good
Laura: “What do you know about the challenges i face in my life, who are you in my life for judging if my personal share of consciousness and suffering is up to some holy standards you established?”
I only know what you offer here but don’t you think we’ve been persistent enough, wouldn’t you give us credit for at least that?. “The holy standards I establish?” Goodness was that so difficult to say? I thought you hadn’t noticed them! Do you really think they are holy? I am laughing you know! Not that it might amuse you no matter how much humor you would like me to have. The thing is, I give a dam if you tell me you don’t agree and you have different values but when people get on my case personally because they don’t like my holy standards and mess around criticizing small aspects of my personality because they are not willing to admit to themselves that my holy standards are not theirs and that that is O.K. then I’m as happy as they are to get on their case, as you and I are doing here but I don’t do it in small circles, with little insinuations on other people’s posts, I do it directly with you because there is no honor in the other way of doing it.
You ask why I chose Girard although I’ve told it amply at least three times already. I am sure many are exhausted of hearing my explanations on the subject so I’ll say it very short: I believed Robert was a conscious being, we were in a conscious school helping each other, Girard was going to be a conscious being and he just needed help. Love. He seemed to have the machinery to get there, I just thought he lacked love. And believe it or not, I had enough for both of us. In fact, for all of us. But this is what you’re not willing to acknowledge. You think that if I don’t have it with the same coolness that you have, then I can’t have it. You think that if I don’t play the winner and fit into at least one of your paradigms, it is impossible for me to be worthy of the honor. For you, I’d have to qualify somewhere in your world for you to even acknowledge the whole of me. For you I have neither the nationality, nor the class nor the education, you think that somewhere there has to be something missing and avidly look for it but for me you’re simply human…..or not.
My husband or rather, ex-husband is a prototype of our time. The things he suffers, a whole nation suffers and the whole of the Western world is tainted with it. When I joined the Fellowship, or Fellowhip as you so smartly called it, I was convinced that consciousness was about working with what I was given. That is why I stayed in there for so long. It wasn’t that I didn’t see a lot of the horror about people individually, I did and worked for years on not judging them. You judge me for exposing the world and being crude about it but you’re not willing to look at the fact that I cannot condemn it even if I sanctioned its going to jail. It took me seventeen years to understand that the only thing that mattered was how human can we be, not to a few but to all, all the time. It’s what I want no matter how much I still fail. I was human enough in there, too stupidly human to carry more than I could and I’m no longer willing to be stupidly human to belong to any club.
I might not look happy to you but my soul is clean. Why can’t you see it? How much happier do you think it can get? Do you think I could have stood up here this long if it wasn’t clear? When I get on your case, it delights me that you cry and ask me what the fuck is the matter with me. You’re still alive and I’ve seen many fighting violently to stay dead. It makes me very happy to fight. Much more than to sit comfortable with each other and share our happiness when we meet for tea a la Rober, merci, pretending our lives are just dandy. Isn’t the Fellowship just an extreme caricature of that lifestyle? Aren’t you sick of pretending it’s all that well? If we could only look at the bull straight in the eyes and know he is there and coming at us and that we are YES, ready to lift the red cloth that invites him and skip him at the same time, then we’d be so much better of. Your cultures judge the bullfights like mine judge the barbies and there’s got to be somewhere in between where we are willing to meet.
I’ve been trying to fit into those worlds that you mention for fifty years and would you allow me to not try any more without taking a hair off my dignity because I don’t laugh as loosely as you do? Life is truly its own master and why it designs things the way it does for each one of us takes too long to understand. Perhaps it imposes harsher conditions on some of us because it knows we can carry them through, and sweeter conditions on others because it knows they too can take them to port. I do not envy you or your life no matter how much humor and joy and beauty you bring here, I admire and appreciate it as I have often expressed but there is nothing wrong enough with mine for me to want to change it, which doesn’t mean I am not doing my best to heal.
Laura: “….your deep desire for acceptance and love stuck with one of the more aloof, stuffed, out of touch sentient beings one could choose to fall in love with in the whole known universe. So, have you asked yourself why?”
Me and my deep desire for acceptance and love stuck with Girard and the whole lot of you, have I asked myself why? If you’ve noticed it so clearly, tell me Laura, what has kept you from simply accepting what I offer, acknowledge it and move on? Others have without serving or belittling themselves. When I’ve offered you my holy standard, what kept you from saying, hey, that sounds rather holy, it ain’t a holy shit of what I’m looking for but why did you ever take that road? The problem is that you are not clear about yourself as I often may not be and we question each other. When the questioning is uncomfortable we go around in circles to undermine each other. The shoes, the hat, the clothes of the person instead of the whole person and her or his situation and with that, we demeanor them and undermine them. And if you don’t like me to use we, then let me just say, that is what a few of you have been doing here for a while. The other tactic is my husband’s and the Fellowship’s tactics of simply saying, I will not go there with you, that Bruce has decided to take on unfortunately. He will not go there but he tries to undermine me in little indirect ways which is what I am not willing to play with. It has no honor.
If we can disagree with each other without disrespecting each other, then we become more human but if we are just going to hide and throw big pebbles at each other, let me out. The real issue for me about what it is that we’ve been doing here for a year and a half, is to understand that we don’t have the being or have had the being to acknowledge other people first and then deal with what they offer. We lack essential respect. We have been so programmed that if someone doesn’t fit the paradigms or “frame”, we won’t allow them in the community. We keep constructing clubs and fuck the clubs.
As for myself, I’ve been identified all the time with what I am saying and being valued by it. I was placing my self worth in my values. What has happened is that I can now somewhat clearly distinguish that even if you don’t value my values, I value them and if you try to diminish me with the superficialities of “we” or “I” or talking to others while really addressing me, if you can’t even be honest enough about it, there is no point in my being here. I’ve separated from you. You no longer hold the key to my self worth and I still find you worthy of your space. Rather than force my self on the blog I prefer to leave because the conditions that we only half play, that we only half talk about some things and not others, that we pick on each other’s little pieces without willing to honor the whole or that we can discard anyone with a “you’re a drama queen” and not bother to dialogue with the same sense of superiority with which Robert would ignore us so that he always had the upper hand against our being is a game I am not willing to play no matter how much you flatter or blow each other or pretend to tell me about love or joy or transformation with Etty Hilesum’s writings turning everything around. Who are you trying to convince?
Having said all that, I deeply appreciate your willingness to dialogue, I hope we can all walk out of here as solid friends, that is, as true human beings.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmAUODVaLY
loving this YouTube!
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
‘Cause I see you
I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty you are
But if you don’t let me be your eyes
A hand to your darkness, so you won’t be afraid
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
‘Cause I see you
I’ll be your mirror…
(sang by beutiful Nico, Velvet Underground)
Lauralupa, (#50-205 or thereabouts),
The better part of me longs for more friends like you! What a wonderful gift…
In the interests of complete disclosure and esoteric transparency, I should, should mention that my previous post was wriden under the influenze of 12 fluid ounces of cooking sherry, while this post is written under the additional influenze of a bynt, make that pint, of hobe made ice cream. So there!
Laura 205.
I am not a regular visitor here but your post really made me sit up and take notice!
It is very rare in my experience – both inside and outside this Blog – to find someone able to utter some very blunt truths about another and yet still totally convince that you have their very best interests at heart…
Incidentally, it is an eloquent answer also to DC’s statement that it is impossible to find the elevation we want in conversation.
If I had been given the gift of such observations as yours, I would like to think I could just sit still and take them for the generous gifts they are, without arguing further.
I take off my hat virtual hat to you.
Lauralupa:
Now aren’t you glad you hung around a little longer?
I hold your virtual hand in mine.
In bars where shrimpers and bikers hang-out it’s dangerous standing too close to a cat-fight.
A pirate for life
I knew someone was gonna mention cat fights…
you wish!
instead, I’d rather invite all bar patrons to dance with us
# 205 Laura,
“Radiguet was too free, and it is him who taught me to rely on nothing”
Cocteau. – The difficulty to be
Lauralupa,
I just left Greater Fellowship and a non-joiner like myself joined a group.
I must confess that I’ve only been to My Page once when GF first started, then only when somebody sent me a message.
Your advice to Elena about drinking a cup of “jungle tea” is this group.
Would come over and help my decaying brain cells? I would appreciate it very much.
Thanks to Pavel I found Erowid and thanks to you I found Reality Sandwich. Now thanks to GF I found this group.
Would you come over?
“I must confess that I’ve only been to My Page…………….’. I know your page is toward the back somewhere. Anyway, I’m using this “blog” to contact you.
A pirate forever.
Yessssssss, Lauralupa, if a computer can hug back,
mine is doing that right now!
Something about tiredness – it stops you reaching out and connecting with the Reality in Others. For me there is also a certain anger connecting with my disorder. Sorry – I need some help here….
Nigel.
218 is newly moderated
Dear Nigel
Mashall Rosenberg states: Anger is an expression of an unmet need.
Cn this be helpful? To see what need(s) you have, unaware or in your awareness,… have not been met?
217. arthur
not two cats!
Jaguar and Wolf, Wolf and Jaguar!
Dancing synapses without any substances like Yaheeeeeeeeee
135. Yesri Baba
I saw it in the smoke screen:
Monday comes:
Happy furballs for You!
And later:
Take aspirine and fly………….
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=jR14wpolfGA
Dear Laura,
I have many things I would like to share…..Do not know where to start….
Let me fist ask you some questions. Why do you want Elena to agree? Do you need confirmation? An Acknowledgement? So what would that be, what is it you mostly wish….at this time and place ?
I enjoy writing the above as I feel these questions are beneficial to ask for myself, love to share them with you.
I am proud to hear your expression, something touched you and it mattered to you Laura, to you, you, you.
I try to understand from Elena….why? She uses so many words; yes she took care of Dorothy, very admirable. She lived with Girard…
She for example has more love to give for many people….. easy words to express…do i feel it?
Elena is defensive and uses so many expressions/ statements without checking if this is what the person means/ feels. When people/ Elena makes statements and do not ask if the statements correlates with my needs or feelings….I run, to be honest. (Laura, do you see what you brought up?) I run and do not want to be with this person because of a fear to be hurt..,o Laura, so painful to me, to be hurt, so painful and yet…this is what is.
Why this deep need for connection and why getting hurt?
Laura this is what you evoked and I am grateful for it and give you a virtual hug.
Thanks for allowing me to express myself, I am living questions and do not have answeres….
I hope it does something to somebody what your writing did for me Laura/ your energy Laura. Thanks
Dear Laura and others,
Your letter, blog entree does not want to get out of my head, and heart….
Many similar correspondence or interactions with my friends or loved ones seem to remind me of sibling rivalry and the need for unconditional love. In daily reality much of my interactions probably look more like conditional love…….
What a paradox?
My need is so much more for acceptation, unconditional love…for have a space here on this planet, allowing for being what I am…
And I need others (mirrors) thanks veronica for this song, great for this phenomena…for being accepted and for acknowledging of being who I am?
Why can I just not get it all out of myself?
I wonder
I ponder
I am living the question
My question?
Am I running away agai?
From myself?
I do not know
i am living the question….
When I got up this morning I was very happy about what I’d written to Laura yesterday and thought you’d be equally pleased but then I remembered the myriad times this has happened and prepared for the worst. So I was very prepared by the time I got here.
This episode began when I questioned Bruce’s attitude towards Mihai, like Greg’s, and stated that no one ought to be lynched without trial which is what it reminded me of. Because I do it strongly I am the dictator? Good, I’ll be happy to stand up for such dictatorship.
You think I am trying to make a dent in this world? I thought I was trying to understand who I was while running away from the Fellowship.
Cats? I thought we were just getting to know each other!
Another Name: ” I try to understand from Elena….why? She uses so many words; yes she took care of Dorothy, very admirable. She lived with Girard…
She for example has more love to give for many people….. easy words to express…do i feel it?
Elena is defensive and uses so many expressions/ statements without checking if this is what the person means/ feels. When people/ Elena makes statements and do not ask if the statements correlates with my needs or feelings….I run, to be honest. (Laura, do you see what you brought up?) I run and do not want to be with this person because of a fear to be hurt..,o Laura, so painful to me, to be hurt, so painful and yet…this is what is.
Why this deep need for connection and why getting hurt?”
I’d rather burn in the stake than try to prove to you what you cannot see in yourself. “Dorothy? Admirable? Girard?” is that what you’ve managed to reduce me to? You really are talented. I’m impressed.
It’s been a great lesson, I thank you all.
Dear Elena,
You realy help me a lot. I think I start to learn to see what a defensive personality is…….it is amazing.
Martha Beck was mentioned earlier on in the blog and her informtion took a while to sink in……
Thanks for your appreciation.
It is better to not use more words now….
I wish you well and myself too and will do H’onoponno for you. Laura, myself and many others.
Another Name, Keep labeling people and you’ll soon get to heaven where you can H’onoponno throughout eternity. Does that help you fit more comfortably in your skin or is it just some of your daily exercise to keep in touch with your self?
Please leave me out of the H”onoponnoing, I’m not that advanced yet but there are plenty who’ll be happy to join you. I too thank you for your consideration and hope this helps you as much as the last one.
Better to not use more words now?…….. Does that make dominance happy? Or do you think its just you who’ll feel more comfortable.
It’s at the stake instead of in the stake right? Good, the stake please or is it the steak?
Hello Another name,
You wrote: Mashall Rosenberg states: Anger is an expression of an unmet need.
So very true!
I would add any negative emotion is an indication/expression of that.
Your inner vision (dreams, ideals) is ahead, far ahead.
A gap to bridge?
It’s all about that!
And one leads to another… a never ending story because You continue to evlove and progress.
I use, for myself, with great benefit this “formula”
Be solution(s) and answer(s) orientated (instead of…?)
So, once I got the message,I hang up the phone as soon as possible and practice that!.
Dearest Elena,
so now it’s time to chop Another Name’s head off?
In spite of your often stated desire for self-immolation, a lot of your aggressive energy is often directed outwards to anyone offering some form of feedback that you could actually instead use for self-examination. And since you perceive yourself as “the” victim, you seem to feel totally justified in your aggressive and demeaning attitude towards those of us who dare to question your ways or criticize your views, and who often are just trying to help.
Think about it for a moment: unoanimo, whalerider, bruce, JAVOH, Across the River, Another Name, me, ect,, are you really convinced that all of our comments and “photographs” were offered with an intent to hurt and belittle you?
And in case you are convinced of that, how does that make you feel about participating here? Do you feel you have amongst friends, do you feel safe and accepted, or alone and in danger?
And how much of what you feel is the result of our own words or your own projections? Maybe, like all, you also tend to pick exemplar statements while being unable to look at the human behind it and the “big picture”.
And what is the big picture, what do you think we are really trying to weave on this wondrous web?
I surely don’t claim to know, but I have a clue that “letting go” is a common thread keeping together this tapestry.
Most of us here are in the process of letting go: of pain, of past mistakes, of programming, of fears, of illusions, of beliefs, of dependence, of hurtful attitudes, of anger, of resentment…
can you consider the possibility that sometimes “we” are also trying to help you see and let go of some parts of your personality that too often stand in the way of real communication, intimacy and friendship?
Thanks to those who answered my question about anger. I should have guessed that there was, at the root of the problem, the tiredness-incapacity-anger trio. I awoke, this morning, more refreshed than the past few days and more willing to meet the daily chores (basic good householder) as well as the ongoing ‘more creative’ tasks that my life-work requires. I think impatience with myself is one of my features…..and thanks, all, for YOUR patience.
…..Nigel.
Another name and all who wrote, a big hug to you too…
no, make that a big hug to all unconditionally
but this one is for you yesri
Happy Birthday!
IMO what Elena/Laura/Laura/Elena (everybody) really needs is a human being that is capable of true listening.
Listening nothing else!
Whenever there are intense emotions (many, many words in flow…) involved, shouldn’t we all together try to create space for the following possibility:
A debate takes place in the rock pool of our current life experience, emotions, joyful occurences, fears but what is about leaving the rock pool and walk on the earth and what is about learning how to fly (perhaps)…to develop: first to become an aqautic bird, second maybe an hummingbird………
IMO jaguar and wolf, wolf and jaguar (two unbelievable beautiful beings both showered with the “elixier of life”) were in a kind of mystical combat (representative for us all).
235. lauralupa – September 22, 2008
You haven’t answered my previous post, why won’t you hear it? Are you feeling very strong with the massive support from people that have not even dared to address me in a year? Good for you I too celebrate you.
“so now it’s time to chop Another Name’s head off?”
I had to pick mine up from the floor, what makes you think that I shouldn”t?
“In spite of your often stated desire for self-immolation, a lot of your aggressive energy is often directed outwards to anyone offering some form of feedback that you could actually instead use for self-examination. And since you perceive yourself as “the” victim, you seem to feel totally justified in your aggressive and demeaning attitude towards those of us who dare to question your ways or criticize your views, and who often are just trying to help.”
Trying to help?
You are not trying to help me, not you or Another Name, you’re trying to keep me from flying because that is what really scares you. You cannot face my flying because you’ve never allowed your selves to fall or let go, truly let go for no matter what reason.
I have nothing to thank any of you who have tried to cut my wings off aiming at minor things to belittle what I’ve been trying to present. I’ve been kind to those who have been kind and rough to those who have been directly or indirectly rough.
“Think about it for a moment: unoanimo, whalerider, bruce, JAVOH, Across the River, Another Name, me, ect,, are you really convinced that all of our comments and “photographs” were offered with an intent to hurt and belittle you?”
Each one of these people have their own story with me, each can respond for it. And so can you. If the mass adherence gives you strength use it but don’t expect me to feel afraid of it. All your comments and photographs are biting on the sides. You give out without love and you receive without love but if you are given with love you don’t notice it either.
“And in case you are convinced of that, how does that make you feel about participating here? Do you feel you have amongst friends, do you feel safe and accepted, or alone and in danger?”
I am alone. Have been alone for a long time. I have something to give and will give it with or without your consent, with our without your approval because I have it, to give it. Like picketing. You cannot stop me no matter how much you try or how threatened you feel by it. I know that what I have to give comes from love even if you diminish it and make a pile of shit out of it. The more we are here the more clear I am about the difference. I’m finding out, I have nothing planned, I just came out from a Cult where I could not speak for years and you expect me to act as if I could trust everybody and celebrate all things. You and those who feel most threatened by me, left years ago. You have no idea what you allowed me to go through. I am not celebrating but don’t mind if you do and have in fact celebrated you and others a hundred or a thousand times but you only look at the dark side to belittle the lighter one.
“And how much of what you feel is the result of our own words or your own projections? Maybe, like all, you also tend to pick exemplar statements while being unable to look at the human behind it and the “big picture”.’
The big picture is pretty clear for me, that is where I fly and that is where you want to shoot me down. You cannot shoot it down no matter how much you hurt me. It just gets stronger. The immediate picture between us is more harmed, I have difficulties, I distrust, I am not celebrating. I am exposing our selves and that threatens you all, men and women, because I attack both men and women and myriad aspects of our lives. Not you personally but aspects of us that you don’t wish to look at. I am looking at these things without meaning to criticize you or hurt you but you become identified and think that it is against you and hurt me. Then I hurt you back, I keep forgetting it is not personal but I will learn.
These things that I am looking at I think are worth seeing. Seeing is not judging. I am convinced we’ll be much better prepared to live the rest of our lives if we look at these things and explore them together than if we continue to avoid them. You don’t agree, that is fine, don’t agree and don’t join me in this exploration but if you attack me because you’re afraid and try to belittle me as you do consistently, I will fight back and show you more deeply how your fears manifest.
You do hurt and I will hurt back. I’ve been trying to leave because I’ve understood you don’t want to hear these things. Yes I will leave if that is what you really want or perhaps we can just separate and you stay in your club with your many supporters and I continue in the Public Square where I wish to remain. I will not address you or try to question your statements. Who knows if more things will come but the public square is always inspiring so I do not wish to close that door for myself.
“And what is the big picture, what do you think we are really trying to weave on this wondrous web?
I surely don’t claim to know, but I have a clue that “letting go” is a common thread keeping together this tapestry.”
“Letting go”? You want me to let go of my flying and I want you to let go of your groundness. I will not let go of my flying even if you make me stop flying here. You don’t have to let go of your dandylion world and I won’t bother it as long as you don’t try to cut my wings off with your disdain. We agree to disagree and move on.
I’ll offer you one more thing: trust your self, get off your books or the internet, look at it from your self and not from what others are telling you no matter how much authority they seem to have. Don’t worry about me. Don’t hide behind people you think are better than you. You are as great as anybody else. This is what I’ve been trying to share with you and with you all, no matter how much I’ve strayed from doing so and no matter how much you’ve corrupted it in your interpretation.
“Most of us here are in the process of letting go: of pain, of past mistakes, of programming, of fears, of illusions, of beliefs, of dependence, of hurtful attitudes, of anger, of resentment…
can you consider the possibility that sometimes “we” are also trying to help you see and let go of some parts of your personality that too often stand in the way of real communication, intimacy and friendship?”
You’ve had the opportunity to offer friendship for a year and a half and as I said before, you’re neither here nor there, you cannot bring yourself to give unconditionally because you worry too much about what others will think even if you know deep down how beautiful the world I am offering you is. That is, my world and myself because I have not kept anything from you and that is also what scares you. Too much and you haven’t a clue what to do with it other than try to minimize it and destroy it in the hope that it will stand where you stand. The things I expose do not threaten me nearly as much as they threaten you. Because I’ve been able to look at them I am trying to share them but you think they are meant to attack you.
The parts of my personality that you don’t like are there and I cannot change them at the cost of not flying. You want me to not blow up the difficulties I see that make you uneasy and to not blow up the beauty I see that puts you in competition with me. You want me to be normal. I am not normal, I have not had a normal life and I’m willing to work with the madness I happen to have. Perhaps some day tenderness and tranquility will surface from me in relation to all the obstacles I find but I am not there today, today I am a at war. I only have a short time left to fight, you will not get in my way and stand no matter how many times you make me fall.
Our friendships cannot be conditioned by allowing for each other to cut our wings off like Robert did. I am not looking for friends but warriors. Friends expect one to compromise with their values to give one their friendship. I cannot make compromises, I’d rather continue on my own, get burnt at the stake or cut as many other mentalities off as I find in my way.
What we are fighting for here is real. We are not superb warriors, neither one of us is, we’ve already been much diminished by the poverty of our time and the Fellowship experience but it is still worth to try to do our best now that it is our time. This too will slip out of our hands in a flash.
I am not happy in the sense that you are happy, but happiness is part of my self.
When you stop competing with me, we can be friends. I am not competing with you because I know that you cannot take away what I have nor do I want what is yours. It is always a struggle to remember so many of these things but they are already in me. The more we friction each other, the more they will surface. I thank you for the friction.
Here’s one for Arkansas Bob.
The nut does not fall far from the tree.
– – – – – –
Children interviewed after raid on Arkansas compound
Sep 22, 2008
By JON GAMBRELL
FOUKE, Ark. (AP) – State and federal authorities are investigating the possible sexual abuse of minors at a 15-acre evangelical compound run by a convicted tax evader who critics describe as a cult leader.
The Tony Alamo Christian Ministries complex in southwestern Arkansas was raided Saturday by more than 100 federal and state police, and six children have been placed in temporary state custody and are being interviewed.
No one was arrested, but U.S. Attorney Bob Balfe said prior to the raid that he expects a warrant to be issued for Alamo, 74, who has a long history of tangling with law enforcement.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said that if the children in state care need to be held long-term, the matter would have to go before a judge.
The raid, the culmination of a two-year investigation into child-abuse and pornography allegations, was moved up on the calendar after an e-mail about plans for an October raid was inadvertently sent to media late last week.
Alamo told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday that no child pornography was generated at the ministry but that “consent is puberty” when it comes to sex. Alamo, who said he was in the Los Angeles area, said the government is trying to harass him.
Alamo was convicted of tax-related charges in 1994 after the IRS said he owed the government $7.9 million. He served four years in prison. Prosecutors in the tax case argued before sentencing that Alamo was a flight risk and a polygamist who preyed on married women and girls in his congregation.
In 1991, Alamo and his followers disappeared when U.S. marshals stormed his complex near Alma in western Arkansas – taking with them the remains of Alamo’s late wife Susan, who had died in 1982 and from whom Alamo anticipated a resurrection. As a condition of his release from his four-year sentence from the tax convictions, Alamo had to turn over his wife’s corpse to her family.
A number of people who claimed to have past ties with the Alamo group appeared outside the compound as law officers searched the grounds.
Anthony Justin Lane, 34, said he’d been kicked out for asking too many questions and hoped he could get his three children back. He said they remained with the group and his former girlfriend after he was expelled.
“I see pictures of those kids and I feel robbed – robbed of being a father,” Lane told reporters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the activities of extremist groups in the U.S., describes Alamo’s ministry as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Roman Catholicism and the government.
During the raid, Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis said he was concerned about the reputation of the town of 800 residents, saying he didn’t want the community to be associated with Alamo. But he said four members of Alamo’s organization are running for city council on the fall ballot.
On Sunday, services were held at the compound but outsiders weren’t allowed to attend. A van ferried members from the Alamo compound to the church facility.
Dear Elena, your are welcome.
Would it be ok if I stopped competing right now?
I feel I have taken enough space in this public forum fighting this battle of wills.
Maybe, as dragon suggests, we could view it as a mystical combat, not just a waste of time and energy but a real challenge and opportunity to grow in wisdom and strenght for both of us. With some blood shedding but no deadly wounds inflicted on either side.
And no winners and no losers.
I would love to think so, and hope we can agree at least on this.
Allow me one last pet peeve: I find your labeling of my world as “dandylion” most annoying, so I respectfully ask you to please stop using it, Unless your purpose in doing so is indeed to annoy me, in which case, be informed that you are being quite succesfull at it!
keep on flying dear warrior
Dragon (226),
Jaguar and Wolf I like that.
I forgotten which author said it, I think Nicoll in his Commentaries, where he spoke about words and meanings.
I think he used a courtroom as analogy. In court the lawyers don’t really care what you meant, but what you said.
For instance, “In bars where shrimpers and bikers hang out, it’s dangerous standing too close to a cat-fight”. I meant it as a hint. As in don’t cheer for one or the other, dont join sides, because there is nothing worse than to be “sucked” in and punched. Maybe I meant “sucker punched”?
Oh, on occasion “we” or some of us have talked about “plants” of a certain kind. And, some of you stated interest in those plants. I think James McLemore was one. If not then excuse me.
On the Greater Fellowship a new group started regarding these plants, for those who are interested.
Thanks Wolf-woman.
“[Meher] Baba then asked each in turn to say something.
Malcom quoted one of the songs of Kabir, which ran, ‘Where is the need for words when Love has made drunken the heart?’
John Bass said, ‘I readly don’t know what to say. My mind is a blank.’
‘To be blank is an excellent thing’, Baba replied.
Lud Dimpfl said something about being tongue-tied, ending with
‘And we sit here like a bundle of sticks!’
Baba smiled, and replied, ‘Say “I”, not “we” ‘. Lud thought Baba was displeased with him; he said something to that effect, and appeared greatly distressed. Baba reassured him. ‘I love you, and I will never be displeased. Speak from your heart. If you hide what you feel, you will not be honest. I love you for being honest. I really love you. Say whatever you feel, but say always, “I” not “we”.
Do you feel happy?’ Lud said he did, and Baba asked, what else was necessary?
#243 Mick Danger
Nice story,
thanks.
The wolf
This wolf has been fighting for dignity and the wolf has won a nice piece of bloody red meat. The wolf was the first student (yes she was still a student in the early days of the blog) to sign her name on a blog entry that exposed “the king and his dubious court”. She signed her name before anyone (still in) felt safe. In some ways this was the beginning -the beginning of the blog as we know it.
The wolf was the first to picket the FOF. She faced the FOF lawyer. She distributed flyers in Marysville. She has fought hard and she has won a little piece of bloody red meat. She guards her dignity, her heart, the piece of bloody meet because she has lost it to love too many times. She is suspicious of the pretentious love that takes away dignity.
The heart. She guards the steak with vigilance, because in the past, she has offered her love but it was love that took her steak. She has learned that love can take as it can give. Love can smother life when it does not understand. A photograph offered with love and caring can be more condescending than a vicious battle, especially if the loving photograph is not a completely accurate picture – a picture that shows the oversized nose and does not show the fiery eyes, a picture that has some element of self interest. Perhaps all photographs are a bit this way, because our lens is not wide enough. Love can conquer freedom and dignity. (And I say this with deep respect for the artful photographs offered by LauraLupa).
So yes, Elena is defensive. Dignity is fragile, more for some of us than for others. But Elena must keep her dignity. She has a few hard won battle scars because she has that John Paul Jones attitude, “I have just begun to fight” at the point where most would jump in the sea. She has jumped in the sea before, and she does not want to ever do that again.
I am not supporting making life hard when it does not need to be, and I do not claim to understand the wolf, but I do understand that we each have our own experience and that there is much to be learned from everyone, especially Elena.
Here is to dignity, that little piece of self respect, that we each have, which allows us to do what we alone think is right. Which allows us to go against the tide, against the current, and which can be a spark of life – and here is to defending our dignity when we feel we have to.
Could Elena get more heart, more dignity, more steak, if she picked her fights more carefully? I guess she is the only one that can answer that question. It is possible that she might lose her wolf nature and only she can say whether this would be right for her at this point in her life. Sometimes external consideration becomes a burden.
So here is my appreciation to all – LauraLupa, Bruce, AnotherName and Elena, and all the rest of us and to the dignity that we each carry and bring to the table. Sometimes we have the opportunity to apply our own pain so as to love other person’s struggle.
Thanks, Mick 243 and Old Fish, 245
I was a wee bit depressed today. Not sure how to neutralize this little blow up. Thought maybe it is best for people to speak privately if they have something intensely personal to say to each other. But then if that were true, it would not have given the opportunity that it did to the others here to offer up their little jewels, like these two posts.
I have a friend who keeps insisting that we are all really are One, that the person we think we are just reinforces that sense of separation, which keeps us looking for love, out there. He says, it is one big sea, with the waves rolling and crashing against one another, but in the depths, silent, dark and still. One way to find out, drop a pebble in the water and just watch the rings expand…
Apologies LauraLupa if I was confusing when I identified Elena as the wolf. I forgot that Lupa is a female wolf.
238 is newly moderated
” 127. lauralupa – September 18, 2008
vinnie
I think what you guys really need is some interpersonal form of sex life … Come around for my birthday, I’ll gladly blow you.
Must be all that gay porn, made me horny.”
Oh Laura, hitting on me again, you did this once before I recall. Sorry, I’ve been away to my homeland, but thanks for your invitation, I’m tempted, but only if… do you swallow, my dear? If so I’ll give you the best birthday present you’ll ever get! Are you cute?
Old Fish 248
no apologies needed. I think Elena makes a great she-wolf too, and sometimes I can be a bit of a jaguar (or even a lot). Interestingly, just a couple of days before our intense exchange I had a vivid dream of a lioness, beautiful and frightening, and I knew that this kind of energy was about to manifest into my life…
BTW, although I don’t want to get into personal details right now, it is just fair to admit that for me this relates especially to other personal areas and relationships, so the noticeable intensity of what I wrote is definitely a reflection of that.
I apologise to you Elena if I may have seemed condescending or if I have been too confrontational. Like you and many others here, I am going through a time of sea change, and I feel a compelling need to stand by my own ideas and rights of expression and to demand to be treated with respect. Even if it means getting into a lot of trouble.
Right now I can’t bear to be slighted or diminished, and neither can you, so there you have it.
Once again, mirrors are involved.
vinnie, please crawl back into your hole and die
…oooops, I did it again
Only if you keep your promise to give me that head job, Loopy Lusty-Licking Lascivious Laura, and I’ll give you luscious lashings of
lukewarm luminiscent Lovelava from my lollypop.
Sure is a lot sea talk lately. Maybe somebody needs to be cut up and used for shark bait.
A pirate for life.
haha. Not if Laura gets to me first with her sharp little teeth. What’s the pirate for life business anyway? I feel a little embarrassed reading that every time you post.
😛
I am totally grossed out. vinnie, you are one sick motherfucker
256. lauralupa
Especially in light of Vinnie’s past descriptions of himself. Ahh, the efficacy of being a FOF member. Morons on parade.
You’re right, he is a sick, and probably very young motherfucker. Pssst (But don’t point out to him that the invitation wasn’t addressed to him.)
Haha you had to add that Bruce, OK OK her offer was for you and Yesri, the King and Queen Assholes… yes I admit I was jealous, how could Laura make such a vile offer, to blow the 2 of you at once over her birthday cake!
OK I concede, you can have Laura. I must confess I’m still very stimulated by El_n_’s slightly lower (anatomically speaking) fetish, aren’t you?
258. Vinnie the Fish
You’re a slimy little shit.
That’s fish, Schlevy, f-i-s-h.
vinnie,
seriously dude, you really need to get a life…
just a quick suggestion to anyone rightly feeling difficulties over the present stage of the blog:
breathe in
breath out
breathe in pain
breathe out joy
stay with your love
true love never fails you
sweating is good
vomiting is good
it’s all part of the process
to come out clean at the other side
there’s light at the end of the tunnel
I can see it I can feel it
I reserve the right to blow 47 guys on my birthday, vinnie, and you are definitely not going to be one of them
and you know what? you should interpret that as a sure sign that I have finally become an ascended master, beyond good and evil and all lower notions of morality
so stay with your own chosen queen, if you prefer, I am sorry you are going to miss out on the fun
47 bring candles changing into smoke in the sky, now think for a moment what a beautiful sight, all flying up to heaven in a cloud of delight, singing a chanticle tender and light, up where the view is wide, gentle and bright
free at last I fly high and wide
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq6M4PWKvq4
thank you take care of each other
At last!!!!!!!!
thanks to the efforts of many of us and particularly the person posting as Across the River, the PETITION IS ONLINE.
to sign it go to http://WWW.PetitionOnline.com and look for The Fellowship of Friends Investigation.
Please excuse any inadequacies.
we may get a direct link at the top of the page soon.
It will also be linked to a number of Sites run by ex members.
I would like to congratulate everyone who contributed in any way.
Although it has to be in my name and was my idea to instigate, the finished version is a result of teamwork.
All the best
Jack
Ps. tell your family and friends.
PPs.
Unfuck you Vinnie.
258 Fish
Getting a little excited are we? Trouble with being a fish – wet most of the time. So hang out and dry a little – for all our sakes.
Fellow bloggers: If you catch him, just throw him back where he belongs – or you’ll be swallowing a lot of sharp bones.
264 Jack, I can’t find any FOF petition there, send the exact link!
PPS. thank you for the kind words. (I trust ‘unfuck’ is kind. 🙂
266. Vinnie, my Dear
there is a delay………………sibirian proxy server stories……..
no computing science in our little farm kitchen?………….
what’s all the hurry?……
Oh yes try.
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/djindjin/petition.html
sorry about the glitch.
jx
You should fix those quotes in the petition too Jack, they mess it up – maybe with a backslash: \’
You could experiment with global substitutes.
243. Dear Arthur
Thanks for your post!
I took your hint as a word painting and I tried to paint as well……….
Plants: – some people try to improve their creativity by using mind-expanding substances.
Every plant hides quite a number of active substances, secondary substances….
Therefore scientific research tries to isolate these agents. It is a broad spectrum e.g. Ayahuasca/MAO inhibitors…..
Research is going on, discussion is going on, different opinions exist….
Short introduction:
http://www.ayahuasca.com/?p=44 A review of past and current research
http://www.ayahuasca-info.com/news/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca
Greetings
Pirate, man, woman, in between, whatever, wherever we I’s are
lauralupa and elena,
Well, that was interesting. I hope you’re both the better for it and glad you were somewhat prepared lauralupa.
*******************
192/247
Ellen and all,
I spoke at length yesterday with my one friend who remains in the Fellowship. He knows about Robert’s abusive activities yet says he still personally experiences what he’s there for – says he feels he still gets what he pays for.
He told me it might be different for him if he were one of the boys seduced by Robert.
I listened carefully then replied, “But you are the boy seduced by Robert. This is the point of understanding”.
By the long silence that followed, I know it was a bullseye.
Old Fish 145
“It has been argued that Robert’s sex life is a way of teaching his students how to differentiate FD from conscience. I could see this as a short lesson but it has been going on since day two and with few breaks between. This indicates to me that there is more to the story.”
I also think there is more to the story. It’s been said that there are only about 5 dramatic plots and all novels, movies, plays, probably from the time of the original Greek playwrights, are all variations of these 5 or so main plots.
I remember some time ago in the FoF it was common knowledge, presumably from Robert, that for men and women there are 4 major groups of identification: Money, Food, Sex and Family. And all identifications stem for one of these four areas.
In the FOF these 4 groupings have been a constant source of friction over the years. People left in droves when the no smoking exercise was implemented. (I would say smoking, drugs and alcohol all come under the “food” category)
That ex-members were discontented with the high amount of teaching payments and event costs (Money) is well documented on the blog.
Family was a big issue in the past and continues to be. In the early days some women were given the task of separating from their children in order to participate fully in the school. If a spouse leaves the school the couple often separates, or the other one will eventually follow suit and leave because the family bond proves to outweigh the connection to the FoF.
The various sex exercises all played a part in revealing some individuals major identifications in that area. So, in that sense I don’t think it’s at all unusual that sex issues would remain a major source of friction over the years or that it would be still a part of the form Robert works with.
Old Fish – “If Robert uses sex to teach, why did he keep his activities secret for so many years? Why did he speak so much in the early days about learning to control sexual energy. Why did he forbid sex outside of marriage up until 1998. Why did he throw out my good friend for making a somewhat innocent pass at a woman. Why did he encourage meetings every spring on sex which were interesting but had the overall effect of getting us all to control our “most precious” sex energy. Why did he say that the Roman empire fell not because of drink but because of sex.”
I don’t know if Robert’s sex life or sexual orientation were ever a secret. Obviously any sex partners would know what’s going on. Robert is not naive to people’s ways and would have realized that people were going to gossip, or reveal this information.
The Spring meetings on sex were not intended to intimidate people so they would bottle up their sexual energies, but were meant to instruct us of the many and varied ways our sex energy leaks out from us; taking the very energy needed for Self-Remembering.
As far as your good friend being sent away for making an innocent pass at a female; this seems rather odd to me. If this were the case I, as well as hundreds, possibly thousands of other males, would have been asked to leave.
Many of the people who were asked to leave had already displayed certain patterns and the action which caused the leaving was only the deciding factor, but not the entire reason. A conscious teacher would be able to see behavioral patterns in someone that would escape the awareness of most students.
From my experience a conscious teacher would not be under the same laws as students. He would be able to see what exercises are necessary for his or her students, when to employ them and when to remove them. I think all the sex related exercises, like no sex outside of marriage, were extremely useful for many people to see themselves in ways they would not otherwise be able to see.
Old Fish – “The obvious answer is that Robert was afraid that sex could ruin what we had. How right he was. He knew he had difficulty controlling his sexual inclinations and he knew that in his position he needed to be in control. He had seen sincere students leave in the middle of the night. He had seen the hurt and anger from T.E. and others that once had been his pride. He KNEW he had to learn to control his sexual desires. But he could not control his desires and this hurt him and the Fellowship. To think that he uses it as a teaching tool goes against reason. It also is contradictory to what I have heard from those that gave him what he wanted. The ones I have spoken to did not find it a teaching experience.”
Whether one takes your position and sees things as you describe greatly depends on whether one sees Robert as a conscious being or someone who is pretending to be one. Again we come back to verification and psychological thinking. If Robert is conscious then for obvious reasons it’s not a question of lack of control. Consciousness is control; consciousness is about making the correct choices, being true to oneself, being able to guide others. As far as people like T E, the sex forced his hand and he made his choice. I’m quite sure those events created suffering in Robert, but he had the will to hold to his understandings.
So, if Robert is conscious then one needs to look elsewhere as to his intentions and motives rather than putting it on a lack of control. If he is not conscious you are probably on the right track; a charlatan would not have a clue about what a disciple needed in a spiritual sense and would only have his/her own needs in the forefront.
But you won’t find the answer in the actions themselves. If Robert was forcibly causing people to submit you would have all the evidence necessary to believe what you believe.
My personal understanding is that Robert gives everyone a choice. Some people have profited spiritually from agreeing, some people have profited from saying no if they felt they had to. Some others probably regret their decision whatever it was; some that they agreed to, some that they refused.
I also don’t see the “abuse of power” some ex-members have claimed. The kind of abuse or coercion some have indicated requires that specific conditions exist which don’t apply to Robert’s actions.
Old Fish – “His sexual habits, whether you like them or not, are probably not primarily a teaching tool but rather a result of his inability to do otherwise. They are the cause of his shame and paranoia which has resulted in his separation from life and prevented the FOF, despite a wealth of talent and good will, from becoming successful outside of the cocoon.”
Regardless of what you think about Robert you’ve acquired enough knowledge in the FoF to understand the principle that schools by nature are required to develop separate from ordinary life. The School is in life, but not of life. Schools offer people a way out of ordinary life. This is an elemental condition of schools and one that is made clear in the beginning.
Old Fish – “Interestingly, I don’t think even Robert has ever claimed that his sexual life was part of his teaching – at least I don’t think he has said that publicly.”
You are correct. Many things are left for people to figure out for themselves, as it should be. It’s not very satisfying to read a novel if the author tells you the answers to all the twists and turns and does not let the reader “figure it out” for themselves. This is no different. It forces the student to think for themselves and it actually induces confusion which in turn will cause someone to pursue verification or perhaps lose the thread.
Old Fish – “DC you might consider the possible harm that might be caused by your statements, which imply that Robert is using sex to teach. What if you are wrong? What if the obvious is in fact true? Do you want to be one of the enablers?”
This question comes closest of all to the crux of the matter. For my part, I would not be making these statements if I had not in fact verified what I speak about. It is the verifications which enable me to present my side of the matter, nothing more.
Of course my answer is only half of the issue. I could turn the question around and ask you what if you are wrong? What are the implications for you and others if that is the case?
As a rule ex members do not consider being wrong about the FoF; I don’t think it even crosses their minds. It appears they are “absolutely” sure of their conclusions regarding the FoF or they have walled off any other possibility than what they want to be true.
From what I can see there is no middle ground on this blog. So if someone offers a positive viewpoint on FoF or if someone suggests that their life as a current member is substantially different than what ex-members portray then there is no place for ex members to put that information, as being mistaken has ceased being an option.
If you take what is written at face value you will conclude that ex-members have somehow arrived at an “objective” understanding of Robert and the FoF which supersedes the understanding of current members..
A note about the petition:
I tried to find the petition by going to the PetitionOnline website without the link provided by Jack in post 268 but couldn’t find it. After exploring a little, I found that it takes 10 signatures before it will added alphabetically to the list. Then we can more easily refer friends and family to the site for signing, without needing the exact link address.
“As far as your good friend being sent away for making an innocent pass at a female; this seems rather odd to me. If this were the case I, as well as hundreds, possibly thousands of other males, would have been asked to leave.
Many of the people who were asked to leave had already displayed certain patterns and the action which caused the leaving was only the deciding factor, but not the entire reason. A conscious teacher would be able to see behavioral patterns in someone that would escape the awareness of most students.”
————————–
I was going to bring this up when “Old Fish” mentioned it, but let it pass. Indeed, there was another infraction of the Almighty Shithead’s ‘Rules for the Retards’ which I committed (I am assuming ‘Old Fish’ is refering to me, could be wrong). I punched someone. Both of these actions I regret. The pass at a married woman because it was stupid and wrong and a violation of trust. The punch because, even though the person egged me on by repeating “I bet you want to punch me” about 5 times, I did not know the kind of things he was experiencing at those times that was causing him to be such a prick, like being abused by someone posing as a ‘teacher’.
I like to think I have matured a bit over the years. I think after about 15 more years of fits and starts I am able to treat women with a bit more respect. There have been a couple of drunken bar fights over the years (I am 1 and 1) but I am not a very violent guy, contrary to the propoganda spewed by Unca Jellylips. However, from the posts of the two supposed current members (read tools) it would seem a couple of ass kickings would be a good ‘wake up’ call. Just sayin’.
FYI DC there is someone posting that says they were given their life back (kicked out) for the sole reason of a woman making a pass at him. Just going by his word. I am sure you will be able to fit that into your little ‘view of how things are’ you titantically monumental putz.
#271, Across the River,
Bull’s eye! Your little story brought tears to my eyes.
If only we could realize that abuse harms the abuser far more than the abused. It is one thing to be harmed by another, as it is a condition of ignorance, yet it is another thing entirely to bring harm, as it is a condition of even deeper ignorance. Both conditions solidify boundaries, rather than dissolve them. Seeing through the need to perpetuate our sense of separation from each other frees us from many illusory boundaries – among them those of the Fellowship.
And that is what awakening is really about.
272. Daily Cardiac
“As a rule ex members do not consider being wrong about the FoF; I don’t think it even crosses their minds. It appears they are “absolutely” sure of their conclusions regarding the FoF or they have walled off any other possibility than what they want to be true.”
**
Actually, when I left in 1979, before I knew what I now know, I had deep doubts, and wondered if I had made a serious mistake in leaving. Even after seeing a few things in the newspapers and a couple of things on-line, I still was not sure. But when I found and read this blog and the stories that it contains and could feel the integrity and hear the intelligence of a very large percentage of the people that posted and still post here; well, since then you are correct. It no longer crosses my mind that I could be mistaken, and there are no doubts left. I do definitely feel absolutely sure of my conclusion that Burton is sick and the fellowship of friends a cult. I suspect any intelligent person that open-mindedly reads this blog and the ‘petition’ will come to the same conclusion. The obviousness of your brainwashed state, made evident by what you post, only confirms it. It does not however have anything to do with what anyone wants to be true. I don’t think anyone would ever wish anything this ugly and corrupt to be true, unfortunately for all of us, it is true.
**
DC “If you take what is written at face value you will conclude that ex-members have somehow arrived at an “objective” understanding of Robert and the FoF which supersedes the understanding of current members..”
**
Yes, I think you are correct again. Although I would probably not use the word ‘objective’, the people posting here have seen it from the inside and from the outside, which gives a bit more perspective; and if you think that just a little ‘sour grapes’ would have produced what is now 50 pages of blog plus a petition, I would have to assume that in addition to being brainwashed, you are an idiot.
275
Ellen, would you kindly say this in another way? Your meaning isn’t clear to me.
“As a rule ex members do not consider being wrong about the FoF; I don’t think it even crosses their minds. It appears they are “absolutely” sure of their conclusions regarding the FoF or they have walled off any other possibility than what they want to be true.
From what I can see there is no middle ground on this blog. So if someone offers a positive viewpoint on FoF or if someone suggests that their life as a current member is substantially different than what ex-members portray then there is no place for ex members to put that information, as being mistaken has ceased being an option.
If you take what is written at face value you will conclude that ex-members have somehow arrived at an “objective” understanding of Robert and the FoF which supersedes the understanding of current members..” Daily Cardiac
This is really very funny. It certainly gave me a good laugh over my weetabix this morning. All the terms you use, criticising ex-members for being ‘absolutely sure’, with ‘no middle ground’, ‘they have walled off any other possibility than what they want to be true.’ etc etc, are a perfect description of current members like yourself.
Objectivity, in the that sneaky use of the word ‘verification’, is exactly what YOU think you have as a current student. Is it not the Fellowship that draws an iron dividing line between Life and the School, or current and ex-members. Was the Greater Fellowship founded by a current member, or an ex-member? Hasn’t being mistaken about Robert Burton ceased being an option for you?
Your post seems marvellouly unaware that the Fellowship has created the Blog, its intensity, its pig-headedness, its unwillingness to give an inch. The reaction is only in proportion to, and the direct result of Robert Burton and the Fellowship…
All the dark material of people’s experiences in the school had to find a voice somewhere, and they found it in the Blog. But ultimately it is nothing more than what the Fellowship threw out, what it couldn’t digest. The Fellowship and the Blog taken together are a perfect model of what Robert has created, the school’s split personality. The Blog belongs to the school in a very real way and it will never be shaken off.
So it’s rather naive of you to expect a middle ground and a neat compromise given the relationship between the two. If you substitute the Fellowship as the subject of your comments in those paragraphs, you’ll find they ring absolutely true. Just reverse ‘members’ and ‘ex-members’ and try it!
Look in the mirror first.
#272, Daily Cardiac,
I just read your lengthy refutation to Old Fish. It inspired me to describe a recent understanding about self remembering, which is this.
Robert has always described SR as our golden thread, connecting us to heaven. I agree, absolutely. But of what does the thread consist? Seriously. To my current understanding, two strands: one attention, the other connection. Attentive self remembering leads to awareness, awareness leads to being, being dissolves in the absolute, the absolute arises from the source of the unmanifest, etc… – it’s all about unity and the realization of it.
If you persue one strand without the other, or even at the expense of the other, you end up with something less than what is intended and certainly spiritually possible on God’s good earth.
You can arge and refute here forever about Robert, his actions, intentions and motivations. But what has the Fellowship truly produced? A big bag of polarity, where peole like you blame “former students” for not cutting the mustard and former members blame people like you for not connecting the dots. So we have disgruntled former members and a bunch of mutant, disconnected “conscious” beings.
As for the attention strand of the Fellowship, I ain’t agin’ it. It was/is fantastic. But the strand of connection was/is severely limited by unnecessary and unnatural boundaries, self imposed by a perverted idea of what a School is and even what consciousness is.
That’s all. And you can write voluminous posts refuting these thoughts, but open your eyes, grasshopper. Look around you.
I haven’t seen the word ‘satyriasis’ mentioned on this blog.
It’s not such a rare condition, and should satisfactorily explain certain events and tendencies, so you can all merrily move on.
Excerpt from Wiki:
Q: What is it like to have Satyriasis?
A: Well, I know someone with Satyriasis; a gay male friend, 17, very femme looking Japanese boy. He’s had it bad since 14. Since he’s attractive, more people are willing to oblidge him, so he’s developed a sence of shamelessness & tends to litterally throw himself at every guy he sees. He’s ALWAYS horny, none of his boyfriends could cope with his incessant carnal needs, & when he’s desperate, he’s not against flirting with his own brother. When desperate in public, he tends to break into a sweat & starts breathing heavily, often excusing himself to the bathroom & has difficulty sleeping.
DC
With regard to Robert and sex I am afraid you are deluded but then again I suspect you have not verified this with regard to Robert. When you move through an experience and truly feel, a certain something is added to the mix. You cannot explain away Roberts’s actions with logic, the way you have. I asked you a while ago “from where do you trust?” You can expound volumes on higher centres this higher centres that but ultimately all this does is show, that your head is well and truly stuck up your ass. The truth is that you cannot answer this question from the same place that you are answering all the questions put to you.
When I was a child I remember an incident when a number of friends were going to play football. One of the lads had forgotten his boots and needed to run home to collect them. You could tell he was really excited, as we all were and ran off determined to get back as soon as he could. When he left a number of us started gossiping about him in a rather nasty way. At that moment I experienced an overwhelming feeling of remorse, a feeling that resurges as I recount this story. From where did that feeling arise? You can intellectualise all you want but you will not even approximate an answer.
Many of us here on this blog have had direct experience of Robert with regard to sex and more. We can similarly intellectualise all we want regarding where we place him, conscious or not conscious. My feeling from direct experience is that he is not conscious.
Let’s explore the sex thing a little further, because in your eyes with regard to teaching this is really quite an important and legitimate method for Robert. In what way do you imagine Robert guides a student through this process? I mean, he is a teacher right? So how does he teach a student how to process this? How about something like “Okay dear, I know this is going to be a difficult experience for you (God knows it is for me), but I would like you to observe the instinctive repulsion you are about to sense”. Or, having ejaculated and expressed his loving joy, “Dear, what are you feeling and how do you think this may connect to the tension you are experiencing in the upper part of your spine?” I can tell you from experience that there is no teaching in this method or am I simply blind that I cannot see?
Moments of experience like this do in fact direct some of us toward ourselves in a quite unexpected way. It is sometimes not a question of ‘do I stay or do I go’, but a feeling pretty much like the one I experienced as a child, that directs me toward what is right and what is wrong. In reality it is a coming together of more than just one aspect.
For you DC I hope that you are guided by something that is more than just an IF THEN ELSE, hope or faith…and so, form where do you trust?
Allan.
I saw a license plate the other day:
RB 44 ff VTF
I’m sure it means something.
# 277, Across the River
You asked for a little clarification?
I said: “If only we could realize that abuse harms the abuser far more than the abused. It is one thing to be harmed by another, as it is a condition of ignorance, yet it is another thing entirely to bring harm, as it is a condition of even deeper ignorance. Both conditions solidify boundaries, rather than dissolve them. Seeing through the need to perpetuate our sense of separation from each other frees us from many illusory boundaries – among them those of the Fellowship. And that is what awakening is really about.”
*******************************************************************
Well, I’ll try. To my current understanding, awakening is really and truly about the realization of non-duality. That means, in a totally radical, practical way, there is no “me here and you out there”, there is only One, and I Am That. It is possible to experience this, to see this, to realize this by fully relinquishing our ego-based fears (and desires too, but particularly fears).
So, a person who is a perpetrator of injury to another is really and truly only injuring himself. It’s easy enough to see that only deep sleep (ignorance) would cause a person to bring essential harm to himself, as it is a form of suicide/fratricide, most likely engendering big karma. Though we know wars, crime and all other levels of human suffering occur, it’s also possible to intuitively see that such things happen because people are basically ignorant of their deep essential connection to one another as manifestations of pure being-consciousness-bliss. And I’m not talking about everyone gathering in a big circle now and holding hands (I still find that stuff kinda creepy, though it is getting better), I’m talking about something that can be fully realized, mostly through releasing fear.
ATR, Does that clarify things? If not, let me know more precisely what you don’t understand?
Lacuna Piñata wrote:
It’s been said that there are only about 5 dramatic plots and all novels, movies, plays, probably from the time of the original Greek playwrights, are all variations of these 5 or so main plots.
I remember some time ago in the FoF it was common knowledge, presumably from Robert, that for men and women there are 4 major groups of identification: Money, Food, Sex and Family. And all identifications stem for one of these four areas.
Lacuna, brother, you never respond to my posts. You’re ignoring me! You used to pour milk on my cereal for me and help me tie my shoe. Can it be that you have become hard hearted?
Your argument goes like this: Dramatic plots fall into five themes. (They are: Man v. Man, Man v. God, Man v. Nature, Man v. Himself, and Man v. Society). Identifications fall into four groups. Ergo, conscious teacher’s actions can be seen as helping us struggle with each of these four areas.
First of all, this is an example par excellence of a self-sealing doctrine. The premise is wrong. Applying the wrong premise to the facts is not thinking. You are not able to question the premise. You base your non-questioning of the premise on something you call your “verifications.” Your verifications have another name: fundamentalism. They are no different than Christian evangelical fundamentalism or radical Islamic fundamentalism in the way they operate to restrict thinking to unchallengeable premises. You simply cannot examine the premise. You APPLY the premise but you cannot examine it. You simply assume it to be true and begin your argument there.
This is why most argument with ideologues seems futile. An ideology is a value judgment in the guise of a statement of fact. In the ideologue’s view the value judgment is simply a fact. Of course there are some value judgments that even the fundamentalist is ambivalent about, so he tries to assert them as facts but never quite believes them. They remain “aspirational” facts to him. So sometimes that’s the place where dialogue can begin, if the ideologue has within him the vestige of candor with himself. Even you, Lacuna.
DC
“For my part, I would not be making these statements if I had not in fact verified what I speak about. It is the verifications which enable me to present my side of the matter, nothing more.”
Really, douche bag? You mean, of course, that you’ve been a fucker and fuckee for RB, right? You’ve had your arm thrust up his twitching asshole, right? Because if you haven’t, you don’t have one fucking thing to say about it. I think it’s more likely that you, in your own mind, are playing the role of pimp and enabler. You have delusions of grandeur and most likely are ignored by RB, if, for no other reason,because you are so unbearably obnoxious and full of intellectual shit. If I was a member, personally, I’d find it very difficult to NOT pound the shit out of you. Of course it would be a teaching technique. And I would be remiss for NOT doing it.
But since I’m not, you’ll just have to go fuck yourself.
DC
Your daily fight with irrelevance in the FOF must be weighty for you to have to spew your excrement here.
Can you believe this? That spiny-faced Globefish signed the petition.
287. arthur
Really. If that little prick doesn’t have the balls to sign a real name it needs to be shit-canned. As he should be too.
oops, I forgot to embareass IT.
A pirate for life.
I thought there was a minimum age requirement to be a FOF member. They obviously let in 6 year olds. I sure a hell hope they’re grooming him for the Big Fuck.
‘The Big Fuck’
LOL, Bruce you crack me up!
Happy B’day Yesri!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FWbRuUE5E9M
Diving deeper, I suddenly saw the wreck of a ship.
Inside I found licence plates with links for “enlightened” “fishes”:
It means something I’m sure:
Last night I dreamt of RB and he lamented:
WTF was sooooooooooo fast but he wasn’t the first pet.
292. whalerider
from me too
MOVING ON