This discussion is about a group called the Fellowship of Friends. Click on the Comments button to join in.
From Wikipedia:
Pro-Fellowship of Friends propaganda: The Fellowship of Friends is a spiritual school based on the Fourth Way tradition, founded in 1970 by Robert Earl Burton. It is a different form of a Fourth Way school than the one presented by George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky and Rodney Collin, and it currently incorporates other sources into its teaching. The organization’s stated task is to enable its members to awaken and develop a soul that can survive death and achieve immortality. This task includes preserving the highest forms of beauty, knowledge, and culture; and using this task as a vehicle for consciousness. As of 2007, the organization has approximately 2,000 members, about a third of which live around the organization’s property in Northern California. The rest of its members live in North and South America, Europe and Asia. The Fellowship of Friends is recognized by the state and federal governments as a non-profit religious organization.
Anti-Fellowship of Friends propaganda: In 1967 Robert Burton attended a meeting led by Alex Horn. Mr. Horn was a student of the Fourth Way and conducted a group based on the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky ideas. Burton devoted himself to studying the Fourth Way and to participating in Mr. Horn’s group. After eighteen months he parted from his teacher. In 1970, Robert Earl Burton founded the Fellowship of Friends. In 1971, the organization acquired 1,300 acres of land in Oregon House, California, in order to provide its members with a retreat where they could realize their principles of self-development.
Robert Burton, stating that he was receiving guidance from higher beings, is said to have predicted a world-wide depression in 1984, an earthquake which would destroy California in 1998, and a nuclear war in 2006.
Some former members have criticized Burton for alleged sexual abuse, excessive control, and brainwashing, and several of them have left the organization because of these concerns. A former member sued Robert Burton and the organization in 1996 for the same reasons. This case and another suit claiming sexual abuse were settled out of court. The Fellowship of Friends’ president stated in a newspaper article that one suit was dismissed and two others were settled by the organization’s insurance companies to save the costs of litigation.
It should be added that membership fees consist of 10% of income, two extra payments each year and payments for dinners, talks and presentations. The Fellowship of Friends is not a cheap business.
This discussion is in its 12th incarnation, previous incarnations can be found here (hosted by the FoF blog and Animam Recro):
For part 11 click here.
For part 10 click here.
For part 9 click here.
For part 8 click here.
For part 7 click here.
For part 6 click here.
For part 5 click here.
For part 4 click here.
For part 3 click here.
For part 2 click here.
For the article that I wrote so very long ago, and for the first and potentially most enlightening part of the discussion click here.
For sites in Russian and Italian, click http://fofway.narod.ru/ and http://laliberastrada.blogspot.com/ respectively.
Enjoy the discussion, be civil and polite, and above all have fun!
The joy of Renaissance! I remember it well. For me joining the Fellowship was magical. My perspective student meetings changed the direction of my life. Now I had purpose; I had met the people I was looking for. Wow! What a ride. And then moving to the property in ‘76 leaving everything behind. No matter. I was home and what was drawing me there was so special. I could connect with these people. My life thus far had been so confusing with many disappointments. Now I had direction. So off I went to California where I stayed, more or less, for 20 years.
For me living near and working on the property was exciting and fun. I never laughed so hard or had so many beautiful experiences with great people. I am so grateful for that. But I do want to make it very clear that I do not thank Robert. I am grateful for all the people who made Renaissance possible (we created it, not Robert). He was good at giving directions in those days and for that I commend him. Working hard all day, dinner under the stars for 5 bucks, a couple glasses of wine with friends, and ahh, all those wonderful concerts, activities, plays. Who could ask for a better lifestyle? And actually for what we were receiving it was a pretty good deal. I worked off all my special donations in the kitchen, which was great fun most of the time (unless you caught the chef having a bad day).
For all of those special moments thank you friends! I will be forever grateful for some wonderful times and life long friendships. Let’s not give Robert credit though. We created it ourselves. All Robert has done is try to spoil it and I think he’s doing a great job of it lately. Please don’t give him the credit. Give it to yourselves. Honor your lives and move forward.
Wake up!
Just read you’re back Sheik! Thanks. Now I realize how much work you have to do. At this point I think you’re making a difference in many people’s lives keeping the blog afloat and with your help it’ll stay alive and healthy. Thanks again!
No problem.
Thank you, Sheik, for clearing the last page (11) of Fellowship of Friends spam. It is good that you can see the IP addresses—you can catch the perpatrators at their work, and they can’t hide behind their masks of anonymity.
It was a good education to see the spam attack in real time, and to see those opposed to shedding light on the Fellowship for what they are. Hey guys, if there is nothing to fear, nothing to hide, let your righteousness be your armor. Why not put more trust in your version of C-Influence, you have exclusive rights to their help, don’t you?
Sheik, I send you deep appreciation for your work, it must take up a lot of your spare time…
With love to all, ‘in’ and ‘out’,
Ames
on 13 Jun 2007 at 6:08 am703
Wrong With This Picture wrote:
From a witness of the “fourth state”:
“In 1971, Teacher and a student were riding in a relatively new Dodge Dart along Hiway 1 near Carmel. Teacher was 32 years old at the time. They were listening to a baseball game on the car radio. As the odometer of the car hit the mileage number “1954?, they passed a mailbox which had the name Thompson on it. Teacher indicated that this was a shock, as in 1954, Bobby Thompson of the New York Giants had hit a famous home run in a playoff game (which Teacher had apparently heard on the radio). 44 miles later as the odometer hit 1998, the mailbox on the side of the road showed the number 41211. Teacher indicated that THIS was also a shock which meant that California was going to fall into the Pacific Ocean in 1998 on April 12th at 11 am.”
*Since Robert started the Fellowship in 1970, and some of his earliest students said he was then a man number 4 (he was quoted as saying he was “a budding man number 5″), within a year he was making predictions. Hmmmm. It seems highly unlikely that a man no4 would be capable of doing that, especially since making predictions is a notoriously uncertain activity.
on 13 Jun 2007 at 6:15 am725
Wrong With This Picture wrote:
Burton believed that the oil company that used the advertising logo “UNION ‘76? was a sign from C Influence that he, Burton, would “crystallize into a man number six” in 1976. There was an elaborate ‘crystallization party’ in honor of the event.
Actually Burton predicted the exact day that “lightening bolts” would crystallize him as a man number six, however, according to Burton he did not crystallize until three days later, so the party had to be postponed. Remembrances from a follower:
“I drove onto the property on the night of that third day, the stars were brighter than I had ever seen them. I knew then that the Teacher had crystallized.”
*So, just 6 years after starting the Fellowship, Robert declared himself to be a man number 6. According to himself he went from man no4 to man no6 in just 6 years. Hmmmm.
When did Robert claim to have crystallized as a man no5? Does anyone know? And did he ever describe that experience?
formerfofer
(1978-1992)
Hey Sheik:
Thanks for your efforts! All that pent up emotion can sure make us a rowdy bunch.
Listen, I’m unclear on the exact definition of ‘flaming’, and I realize it might mean more work on your part, nevertheless would it be possible to give a poster a public warning first and then block them on the second offense with a public announcement to that effect? Then we can learn by example instead of the poster just disappearing. I realize that profanity would be a clear violation, what else would constitute flaming…how about confronting a flawed argument? Or give us a hypothetical example? (Some Buddhist teachers keep a stick handy for those students nodding off meditation…)
As far as spammers, there is a special place in hell reserved for them…
Wake up Little Suzy #1
You’re welcome! Thanks for your appreciation and for your contribution in making Renaissance, for most part, a magical place. I felt a deep saddness to hear the vineyard was about 75% gone after all our efforts. Like parents requested to give up their children, much injustice can be fostered in the name of non-identification.
If you or your post is censored by Sheik and company go here:
http://fofgraduates.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/graduates-of-the-fellowship-of-friends/
This message as been posted on both blogs.
From the Sheik:
“I will also probably appoint two more moderators to help me with the work, I have already decided who to pick but we shall see how they feel about it.”
This means that people you may or may not know will be able to connect you and your post through your IP address. Your IP address is your computer’s DNA signature, usually it changes slightly with each new log-on, but is readily traceable by those with access to it back to your particular ISP.
8
And so…?
Whalerider: “Much injustice can be fostered in the name of non-identification”.
Who taught us to take the conscience out of non-identification?
The spoiler himself, RB.
Graduates: You are a funny one. First, no one has been appointed yet, I haven’t even asked anyone yet. Aren’t you overreacting a bit?
And to be absolutely honest, knowing your IP address means nothing at all – any website you visit (including google, wikipedia, your e-mail provider) will store and be aware of your IP address. Hmmm…
And yes, I will leave the link to your forum in here. Have fun with it and good luck.
Whalerider: I have only blacklisted those who committed the spam attack yesterday. An offence warranting a blacklisting would have to be of equal strength. I won’t be deleting swearing (Bruce), alternative views (everyone here), or anything of that kind. My only aim is to keep this discussion going, nothing more and nothing less.
Bruce 9
8
And so…?
————-
So what if the FOF offered them five grand to identify you and all your posts in order to build a civil case (libel, harassment,) against you? You are counting on the integrity of ex-cult members to keep your comments anonymous. Follow? Sure?
I would give Robert some credit. He pulled the group together and came up with a structure that allowed us to work together in a relatively harmonious way. He set some nice standards and many of us learned from that. He provided many useful exercises (not interrupting for example). I personally have no real regrets for my 30 years except that I was way too slow to see that there was benefit in taking responsibility for my own life and that this was only partially possible while remaining a student.
It is one thing to give Robert credit. It is another to believe that denying him is wrong. Robert has clearly been the mind behind much of what is good at Isis but this comes at a price. It is probable that there comes a time when as Joseph Granadas said, the price is too high for the benefits.
It is important to realize that the primary cost is giving someone else responsibility over how your time is spent. There is also a psychological cost that comes with supporting Robert’s lifestyle which may be in conflict with some of your personal ideals. It is suprising how good it feels to not be responsible for supporting Robert’s flaws.
There comes a time when we each need to take responsibility for how we spend our time. We need to develop our own principles and learn to live by them. The efforts of trying to be present, free from feminine dominance, and in good householder eventually lead one to see that supporting Robert’s ways is more denying force than 3rd force. How can we learn to take responsibility for what we think is right when we are putting so much time, effort and money into supporting that which is obviously in some ways jaded?
We can only learn so much by following a man that cannot differentiate between a shock from C influence and an ordinary coincidence. I believe the predictions and hundreds of other examples and statements from Robert show that he lives in and promotes an imaginary world. I remember when he said that smoke came out of his ears when he crystalized not to mention the many years of understanding C influence’s desires through license plates. There are so many examples and his relationship to the prehistoric cave drawings is really the same as using license plates to understand life.
But Robert does incessantly promote being present.
Although being present and doing exercises to hold presence is a large part of an ideal life, there is additionally the task of taking responsibility for our actions, for taking responsibility for our life and what we support in our life. If Robert’s lifestyle is what you want to support then I say stay in the Fellowship. If you have other principles, even if they are on a small scale, then you may gain more for your own evolution by supporting your own ideals. Then those principles become your own and all of your presence and physical efforts can go towards supporting your own idea of a beautiful life. Your life including your failures truly become your own and this accelerates the learning curve. When you set your own principles, you can include principles and ideas gained from the Fellowship while letting go of the lies and excesses that the Fellowship promotes. Leaving is not a crime but rather an effort that requires courage and independent thinking. If we find that we cannot live by our own principles, there is the option of returning. There is also the option of trying again.
I think it is appopriate to be grateful for what we have gained through the Fellowship. It is childish to blame everything on Robert and his problems. But it is also appropriate to understand that we don’t owe the Fellowship anything. We paid for what we gained. We paid exorbitantly. WhaleRider paid for us. Many paid in ways that far outweigh any financial contribution. There is no obligation to keep paying if you are ready to take responsibility for your own ideals.
It is a beautiful thing to set your own ideals, based on your own essence, and live by those ideals. It is beautiful and it will create states that are far deeper than those created by standing in a meeting, or sitting at a breakfast or dinner, listening to Asaf and Robert, expound an imaginary picture of the world which you are supposed to follow.
the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
Graduates: You are a funny one. First, no one has been appointed yet, I haven’t even asked anyone yet. Aren’t you overreacting a bit?
And to be absolutely honest, knowing your IP address means nothing at all – any website you visit (including google, wikipedia, your e-mail provider) will store and be aware of your IP address. Hmmm…
And yes, I will leave the link to your forum in here. Have fun with it and good luck.
Whalerider: I have only blacklisted those who committed the spam attack yesterday. An offence warranting a blacklisting would have to be of equal strength. I won’t be deleting swearing (Bruce), alternative views (everyone here), or anything of that kind. My only aim is to keep this discussion going, nothing more and nothing less.
_______________
I don’t like the fact that a number of messages that should not have been deleted from blog 11 were deleted:
http://fofgraduates.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/graduates-of-the-fellowship-of-friends/
You may have deleted them by mistake, or not?
Howard Carter/#564 wrote:
> Any discussion regarding the cult status of FoF ought to
> first address the organizations that list or designate
> cults – the advisories, watchdog agencies, etc. Who are
> these individuals and what are their qualifications,
> motives for getting into the cult watching “profession”?
……..
> To my knowledge there is no organization or board that
> certifies cult watchers. No license is required to open a
> cult advisory;
Awakening is an uncredentialed process.
Thanks Sheik-
It got ugly for a minute.
I know people who joined FOF and left before one year had elapsed. They must have had a bad experience. But I think those of us that stayed for 5, 10, or 30 years had a sincerely positive overall experience. No one who is a former member seems to have made any claims to the contrary.
What made me leave was the cummulative build up of what seemed to me to be contradictions, restrictions and a lack of understanding of what Robert was trying to teach. I’ve also only been interested in “relative awakening”. I’m not going to end my relationship with my family, which I was “photographed” as doing by another member, for the sake of waking up in this lifetime.
The thing that bothered me most, was recently, when members mentioned to Robert which work I’s they were using for the subject of the sequence (the 3rd and 5th steps) he advised against using many of their choices because he felt that as a subject, they were not going to allow for a completed sequence. I was so surprised that Robert would not have passed this info on previously. If he was already aware of which works I’s were most effective as subjects, why was he letting us practice this new technique in the wrong manner? That to me is not a good teacher. It may sound trite, but that’s how I view things. If I pay money for a good teacher, I want a good teacher. Add to the scenerio the fact that I felt it was unacceptable to question anything regarding Robert, especially if it might be judgement I’s.
Best to all.
I’d love to be brought to court for anything I’ve stated. As far as my story, what I stated is the truth as I know it. As far as my opinion, it’s my opinion. I doubt they would pay $5000.00 for something they could have for free if they ask me. And I sign all my posts.
And so…?
There once was a gifted woman called Ayn Rand who said “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot cliam to be defenders of minorities.”
As Josh Billings said ” as scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”
I am not! neither have i ever been! an anti semite whatever that actually means, as the following excerpt from a bona fide jew, Fredy Perlman who narrowly escaped the concentration camps in Germany points out in his book Anti Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom,” i learned that people like the ancient Hebrews, Akkadians, Arabs, Phoenicians and Ethiopians had all come from the land of Shem (the Arabian Peninsula) and had all spoken the language of Shem, which was what made them Shemites or Semites. I learned that the Jewish religion had originated among Semites in the ancient Levantine State Judah, the Christian religion among Semites in the ancient Levantine towns Nazareth and Jerusalem, the Mohammedan religion among Semites in the ancient Arabian towns Mecca and Medina, and that for the past 1300 years the region called Palestine had been a sacred place to the Islamic Semites who lived there and in surrounding regions.) So if what Freddy say is true, then we have not only jewish but also christian and Islamic semites. I AM however against ALL forms of extremism whether its Islamic, Catholic or Zionist and my primary concern are the Jesuits whose induction literatures validity no-one seems to refute and whose agenda is a one world religion which they will try to bring about by hook or by crook. As to the Jewish domination of the Media and hollywood, just put (jewish owned media) into the search line, click and choose from any one of the 1.260.000 results. Of the top ones, one says that six Jewish companies own 96% of the worlds media. Now if they dont have any agenda thats very good. Many of my Jewish friends are very much against the zionists, some of them go so far as to say that zionists are not even Jewish. They tell me that the zionists are descended from pagan hordes who pushed into russia early on and became proselytes of Judaism.They then created the Khazar Kingdom in 692AD then in 955 Russia conquered them, this is where the so called “Khazarian jews stem from”.
Anyway, i can feel that im very much in a minority here. Although i can guarantee i spend much more time around the synogogue questioning their wise men than any of the supposedly jewish friends posting here. Thomas jefferson pointed out “democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%” so i will not be taking part in any more discussion on the matter and will focus instead on the work. Just “abre los ochos.” By the way friends i very much enjoy hearing the quotes that you all post please keep sharing. Heres one in relation to R.E.B “If a man is not fit to govern himself. How can he be fit to govern someone else”. James Madison.
Also “what good fortune for governments that the people do not think. ” Adolf Hitler”.
And last but not least.
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of attrocities commited by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” George Orwell.
Graduates… it appears to me that your offer of less control is actually an attempt to increase “your” control. It also feels pretty King of Clubsey in a semi-offensive way. The Shiek has given you a forum to push your “thing” and you’re presenting this as an affront to the posters here. Many of the posts on your blog start with “This was deleted from the blog:” This has a creepy feeling to it.
17: “I AM however against ALL forms of extremism whether its Islamic, Catholic or Zionist and my primary concern are the Jesuits whose induction literatures validity no-one seems to refute and whose agenda is a one world religion which they will try to bring about by hook or by crook.”
You must realize that you are overlooking the one form of extremism that plays the most direct part in your own life. Your own.
Some memories
I went to my prospective student meetings in South Lake Tahoe in early 1976. I had seen a flyer at the local IHOP. I has just moved to town after graduating from college and I knew no one and didn’t have a job yet. Ram lead the meetings. I had met a couple in New Mexico the year before who had been in a Gurdieff-Ouspensky group in California and had been asked to get married. I had thought they were somewhat of a mismatch, so my main aim at the first meeting was to ascertain that this was not the same group. I did this with great difficulty because I was told not to use the word “I” in speaking and I had not been told about substituting the word “it” for “I”. I was assured that this was a “school of love” and such things did not happen. (Two years later it did happen to many couples). At one of the meetings a young pregnant woman left the meeting in tears because Ram insisted she follow the exercise of not crossing her legs. After I found a job I decided to join and went to the teaching apartment to make my first donation. Sharole Mannering met me at the door in curlers. I was quite relieved that there were normal people in the school. She told me that she was the center director and that Ram was gone. She had not been at my prospective student meetings because Ram had not told her about them and had also not told her that she was supposed to be co-directing the center with him. Sharole was a good friend for many years until she died. When we were all told we could only have pedigreed pets, she arranged for her parents to adopt my beloved cat. When her father turned out to be allergic, I quietly got my cat back.
I do not regret my years in the Fellowship. I did not join because of Robert. I did finally leave (after 17 years) because I could not in good conscience continue to support him and his lifestyle. When I could not bear to be in the same room as the person who was supposed to be my teacher, I knew that something was terriby wrong.
Love to all my old friends, in and out.
Christina
cmsabin@infostations.net
Bruce 18
Graduates… it appears to me that your offer of less control is actually an attempt to increase “your” control. It also feels pretty King of Clubsey in a semi-offensive way. The Shiek has given you a forum to push your “thing” and you’re presenting this as an affront to the posters here. Many of the posts on your blog start with “This was deleted from the blog:” This has a creepy feeling to it.
———-
Look, that’s a lot of material there (deleted from blog 11) and it is useful material, it took some time to find it and post it. It was deleted wholesale without even being examined (assuming), so maybe there is some annoyance and a little over reaction. It should not have been deleted because it is needed information and there is no way of knowing if the deletion was intentional or not. It did waste what took some time to collect and post.
Graduates #12
“So what if the FOF offered them five grand to identify you and all your posts in order to build a civil case (libel, harassment,) against you? You are counting on the integrity of ex-cult members to keep your comments anonymous.”
Wait a minute, aren’t you an ex-cult member, too? You don’t seem to have such a high regard for yourself then, which is suspect. That really seems like vanity attacking vanity, a telltale sign of the FOF.
If there is a price on my head, how do I know you are not a bounty hunter in disguise? You seem to have a lot of time on your hands monitoring this blog…and you are attempting to exploit a perceived weakness to get people to switch to your side…Hmmmm
Well, one thing for sure about most FOF’ers in or out, we are all opportunists in one way or another, for better or worse. Who taught you about exploitation anyway?
Me personally, I’m sticking with the sheik.
22…”which is suspect.”
I agree, it is very suspicious.
Cyclops, give the Jew thing a rest so we can try to find something useful in your words. You’re just making yourself a pariah.
9 bruce .spam amongst other things, oh king of belligerence!
25 Give me a break.
26. sure bruce arm or leg.!
Graduates, I think it would be fine to cut the Shiek some slack.
I don’t know if you saw the sheer tonnage of spam that appeared last night. I can easily see how a few legitimate posts could be mistakenly swept up in the clean-up process.
I’m grateful for the intervention.
Those who can send in an extra dollar to paypal. When this blog is gone-appreciate it now.
Various posts that got deleted from blog eleven:
I had a friend in S.F., an Israeli who went by the name of J. B. (can’t use his name) and one day he told me an interesting story: he had visited an Israeli friend who was working as a psychiatrist in Los Angeles and during his visit he told this old friend who shared an interest in various spiritual ideas that he was a student in a school with a conscious teacher. In point of fact J. B. went to meet with this old friend to “introduce him to the school.” The psychiatrist asked for the name of the conscious teacher and when J. B. said Robert Burton the psychiatrist said sorry but your teacher is not conscious. Being as superstitious and we all once were J. B. was of course rather taken aback. Gathering some composure he asked his friend why he would say such a thing. Without disclosing the name of the client, of course, the psychiatrist told J. B. a story of a young man (barely 20 or so) who was in the FoF for just a few months who was allegedly sexually put upon by Robert Burton during a lengthy encounter while visiting the FoF property. He then left the organization with severe psychological problems. J. B. reported this meeting to Miles Barth forthwith and Miles requested that the psychiatrist ask his client to meet with Miles and tell his story, which then took place. One month or so later Miles Barth left the school without informing the rest of us why he had done so. What if we had all known, I mean all of us, way back then?
Burton on Armageddon (from a circulated memo):
[Florence, Italy, Nov. 2, 1982]
“Revelations: “…the seventh angel…” After the seventh conscious being appears, Armageddon will come.” (Burton believes that his teaching will produce seven conscious men.)
[Nov. 3, 1982]
“C-Influence will ensure that all that is left of culture will be taken to Renaissance [the Fellowship compound] for posterity.”
“Florence, Venice, Siena will probably not be bombed. C-Influence has indicated to me that Naples (home of NATO), Rome, and Milan will be bombed. Neutron bombs may be used. (Neutron bombs destroy only humans.) ”
[Nov. 4, 1982]
“We are founding a new civilization.”
“Armageddon has wrung a school out of the gods.”
“The only error in Christ’s teaching was the statement “my yoke is mild.”
[Nov. 9, 1982]
“My role is to predict the fall of California and Armageddon.”
“People must come to us for souls.”
“Don’t put money into banks after Dec. 1983.”
“The depression will work to our advantage, we will go through it unscathed. We are very well prepared for the coming depression in 1984.”
“California is the artichoke capitol of the world…It means it will choke in 1998.”
“Haley’s Comet is going to ruin it all, this whole decade is not a good decade.”
[Nov. 11]
“We are a very high school on earth, Rembrandt and Goethe are in a higher school. There are angels at this table right now.”
“The 44th president of the US will be in office at the occurrence of Armageddon, 2006.”
[Nov. 14, 1982]
“After the year 2006, Genoa may be the port where art is taken by ship to the East Coast – from there by existing highways to Renaissance [now called Apollo].”
[Nov. 12]
“We are the greatest school since Christ’s.”
From Burton (recorded from early “teachings”):
“The formation that a human’s scale of vision sees as coral may be in reality the earth’s set of teeth. Coral is found near shorelines and what we see as waves is, alarmingly, the earth’s tongue rolling upon the shoreline. The shoreline, then, would somehow be the earth’s lips. As one observes this phenomenon one can easily visualize the waves as a tongue licking the earth’s shorey lips. Storms, which are a strong negative force, are created out of hunger by the earth. The variety of organic death they leave in their wake is washed back into the earth’s main bloodstream, the ocean.”
“As one awakens one sees the earth, humans and organic life on earth objectively, and finds one’s visual properties are of the scale of an electron microscope. What we take for trees and rivers are, surprisingly, the earth’s hair and blood veins. What appears to us as a cloud formation is most probably the earth perspiring. On hot summer days clouds form over mountains, and fog sometimes rolls onto the land masses. Similarly, on hot days beads of moisture emerge from our body or cosmos. We call this noteworthy event perspiration.”
From court records, considers himself a “goddess in a man’s body”:
“Burton explicitly told Troy that the “angels” wanted Troy to disrobe, and the “angels” wanted Troy to submit to Burton’s sexual advances because Burton himself was an “angel”, a goddess in a man’s body.”
Commentary:
Ex-boyfriends have threatened Burton’s life several times, he travels with an armed bodyguard. On one occasion, it was reported, a young man from Bakersfield showed up at the Fellowship dining lodge armed with a 22 rifle looking for Burton. He was tackled, disarmed and put on a bus. The police were not contacted. At one time guns were not allowed, but now almost every male member of the Fellowship living in Oregon House has a gun. There is an informal militia armed with shotguns, rifles and 44 magnum handguns in order to protect the ‘Teacher’ from the disgruntled ex-members who regret their sexual encounters with Burton.
This is a direct quote from Robert Earl Burton (from an internal memo):
“I am the Avatar, and I was born in 1939. I am not Christ, yet I am the Christ of the age…and I assume I prepare for him.
“I would like you to take the idea simply. It simply means that of all the humans on the planet, I suffer consciously the most.”
Girard Haven, “Creating A Soul”, page 62:
“However, some things can be verified only by adopting the attitude that they are true. For example, to verify that this is a real School, it is necessary to act as if that had been verified and then see if it produces the desired results. This means that we need to adopt attitudes at will without prior verification.”
From Girard Haven:
“Strangely, the shock which bridged this interval for me was the ‘non-depression’ of 1984. On the one hand, it was no longer possible to believe the predictions, for the depression obviously had not occurred as predicted. At the same time, Robert was still my Teacher and I had no doubt that he was conscious, so how could I believe anything else? In particular, I refused to allow myself to disbelieve him, that is, to believe that what he said would not come true. Not only would this have been a denial of my teacher, but it would also be one of the most mechanical responses possible, based as it is on both opposite thinking and feminine dominance in the form of the desire to minimize friction. Being thus unable either to believe or disbelieve, I was left in a state which could best be described as non- or suspended belief.”
From Girard Haven:
Page 576, “Creating A ‘Soul’”:
“In particular, if he [Robert Earl Burton] knows what he is doing and we don’t, we have no basis for judging or doubting him. Instead, we simply have to trust him, as a child trusts his parents, or dog trusts its master. If he asks us to do things which seem to have no connection to awakening–or even to be ‘wrong’–we have no choice but
to do them anyway.”
The paypal window is asking for an amount in British pounds. Does anyone know the current exchange rate?
bruce .sorry about 27 it was below me . ive just looked at the other blog and it seems harmless.There were some interesting posts from our friends which werent posted here . ps are you centred in an emotional part?
Nope, not in the emotional part of anything. Could be my racial heritage.
It’s not that I think the other blog is harmful, it’s the dynamic behind the drive that has me uncomfortable.
As one who had posts deleted last night I would wish to express this-
I was wondering to myself if I could care less. I have thought long and hard about this, if it would be possible to care less about those posts being deleted. I sat silently with myself for a period of time trying to clear my mind and come to that endless open space to see if maybe I could find an answer to this question posed to myself: “could I possibly care less?” The answer seemed to be that, yes, it is theoretically possible that I could care less. However, since this is the real world and it is best not to invest too much in theory I have come to the conclusion that if I could care less I would. So as of now I must conclude that I couldn’t care less.
( I did think the one about the “Simorghusbord” was pretty funny though)
Bruce 34
It’s not that I think the other blog is harmful, it’s the dynamic behind the drive that has me uncomfortable.
—————
When a mercury is in change of a blog then you need a second blog to keep the situation honest. There’s nothing devious about a back-up blog. It’s there because of the fact the “messenger of the gods” can’t help but put a little spin on the messages he carries from time to time. As an example, “There are no kings of clubs” This is the moderator of the blog interjecting his authority, his opinion, into the minds of the bloggers. And obviously he does not know what he is saying. Another example, the deletion of maybe eight posts from blog eleven that were not spam. How does that happen? They were all from the same IP address, is that just a random coincidence? Probably. So, sorry to agitate your “spider sense” but I think a second, backup blog (that most will never use) is needed.
xena: about 2x. 10 pounds equals $20.26
36…” but I think a second, backup blog (that most will never use) is needed.”
No problem with that.
“When a mercury is in change of a blog then you need a second blog to keep the situation honest.”
That, I have a problem with (sometimes).
“There’s nothing devious about a back-up blog.”
As I said, I have no objection to the blog, nor do I think it’s basically devious. I said the “dynamic” was getting a little icky. You know, “come here for unmoderated, unadulterated posts” kinda thing.
I think the Sheik has done a remarkable job considering what he’s dealing with.
#30 graduates, at the end: Page #576 creating a soul. Good grief Girard, what can you be thinking? Are you?
Bruce, other regular contributors…
Have you noticed something?
All these people that were energetically engaged here in the earlier days are suddenly mainly missing. There were people leaving the school talking to people that had already left and the emotional atmosphere was heady and intense. Now most of those are gone. Do you know why? Because the blog has moved into the ‘inner circle’ of selected participants. There is another blog or more than one where those that only want to talk to others of a certain and similar quality are busy trading tips on how to survive post FOF. One blog is full of people that say, “If Burton says to remember yourself then, by God, that’s the last thing I’m going to do!” and so on.
I’m certainly not invited to any of these parties and I’m used to that. Generally I externally consider my good friends by not showing up at their parties, even if they ask. Inevitably something valuable gets broken, people are injured, people what to protect their unmarried sisters and so on. You know how it goes. But what about the rest of you pouring your hearts out here for the cause? Have you been selected into the inner circle where they dare not cast pearls before swine?
On the other hand maybe everyone is just bored with this. That’s it right, isn’t it? They are just bored?
Sheik, is the blog text copyrighted?
Graduates,#40
You sound a bit paranoid to me. I don’t think there is any plot going on here. People post here when they feel they have something worthwhile to share and then they move on or not. I think your pride was hurt when the sheik told you he had not read your entire post to him (I’m sorry, I didn’t read your entire post either, there are only so many minutes in a day) so you immediately started your own blog. Perhaps this blog and the sheik are not perfect, but they are definitely providing an important service that was not available before.
Christina
xena 42
Graduates,#40
You sound a bit paranoid to me. I don’t think there is any plot going on here. People post here when they feel they have something worthwhile to share and then they move on or not. I think your pride was hurt when the sheik told you he had not read your entire post to him (I’m sorry, I didn’t read your entire post either, there are only so many minutes in a day) so you immediately started your own blog. Perhaps this blog and the sheik are not perfect, but they are definitely providing an important service that was not available before.
Christina
—————
I’ve got to run, but of course you and the Sheik read every word twice. You think I don’t know how desperately curious people are?
I did not write the words that are under the dotted lines in post 43. Who did that?
Christina
44 He was quoting you and then made his comment below the dotted lines. People do that.
Of course. He was just so fast I was caught by surprise.
Christina
688:
The King of Denmark? The last one died in 1972!
Opinions on two, it seems to me, extraneous themes.
Cyclops.
It didn’t seem to me that you were ever being anti-semetic. My impression was that you were relating stuff you had read about (similar to stuff I have seen) and had not investigated thoroughly(as if that stuff can ever be ferreted out acurrately. It is hard enough figuring out what is going on in front of my face). You seem to be an ok guy. Give it some slack.
Graduates (King of Clubs?),
I read every word of your stuff and thought it quite interesting. Maybe not as interesting as you think it is but valuable and even poetic. You created an alternative site and it is linked on this one and hopefully will continue to be.
Give it some slack.
Graduates #43. Thank you for keeping your response brief, I was able to read it about 10 times in less than a minute. Yes people are curious, I think that’s a good thing. I don’t know about the desparate part. Probably some are and some aren’t.
Christina
Re: Graduates/King of Clubs 12/40
Please read Sharon’s post on 11/687. “Though I love the real-time, at least under severe moderation it seemed as though folks thought about the quality and integrity of their posts more than lately. We didn’t have quite so much knee-jerk reaction. We read all the posts in response to a particular set of posts, and formulated our responses from a whole spectrum of angles. It’s starting to read like a bunch of chickens pecking and squawking at each other.”
Regarding “there is another blog somewhere full of people who say such-and-such”, “selected participants”, “inner circle of the blog”, “anti-semitism”, “FoF tag team”, “sheik is censoring you” and similar; maybe there could be a separate page somewhere on this blog for those who enjoy discussing conspiracy theories, so that this thread could focus on experiences in the Fellowship of Friends.
Once the blog went real-time, it took on many attributes of a chatroom. Effect: twice as many posts in the same amount of time, glib trading of insults, I’m left with the impression that most posts are not worth reading. Then you know how sometimes you throw away a whole bunch of junk mail and advertisements without realizing that there was a letter buried in all that which actually had some content.
It’s the New Moon. Remember three days before and three days after. Oh, for those of us fumbling around and dropping things in our ’sleep’.
“None are more hoplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free” Goethe. including me. cy.
In Reply to ‘Graduate’ ~
All your Posts, in general…
Hello ‘Graduate’ ~
It’s probably just my second cup of coffee kicking in, yet, somewhere there’s gotta be some love and wonderment to go around the adrenal activity, yes?
It’s is an interesting situation, so much of your approach is straight from the ‘form’ of The Fellowship of Friends, are you sure you’ve graduated?
It’s easy to say ’should, could, would’ after the fact, some even think that’s a sign of consciousness, i.e., claiming the ‘common sense wisdom’ of the obviousness of passing time’s unraveling of the lessons in living life’s assumptions, by default, into falling face first in the mud, as one’s own ‘wisdom’, one’s particular ‘destiny’,
so to say, when it sees someone else with mud on their face, ‘Hey, BTW, that’s one third decomposed granite and two thirds clay and decomposing live oak leaves”.
Gee wiz, don’t you think you’ve had enough of that from Robert Burton’s spinning of failed predictions as C-Influence’s will to make him more humble; yeah, well, failure to a spiritual egoist is to label it ‘more humble me’,
thus, eliciting more mechanical sympathy from the ‘motherly’ side of the King of Clubs; wouldn’t want to tell anyone that your coconut was just a little low on milk.
Were you even in that Jihad poo in ah jet propeller fling last night? I was and can tell you that after considering that the Sheik has read and mediated over 4500 posts, without a cerebral melt down, I trust him or her or it: sometimes I like to think of the Sheik as some form of AI, not to be confused with the AI of The Matrix, I hope.
I read all those posts; outside of being fine examples of the next possible stage of the Fellowship of Friends, i.e., 5th Way ‘Jihad’ extremism, I saw no value in them, yet, by no means is this a judgment or a license to remove them or even a ‘congrats’ to the Sheik for doing so, simply, that, for what its worth, I don’t miss them a bit and can get them anytime by Goggling Islamic extremist’s web sites.
Sure, it took time to find, highlight, copy and paste all that stuff, but hey, it also took allot of time to build the nuclear arsenal of the world, to bring all those slaves over from Africa, to kill off and corral the native American Indians, to pollute the oceans of the world and keep the feminine under toe for thousands of years… so, what is your point?
Since I doubt you were in that Jihad water gun fight last night, you did not get a chance to sense the seething desperateness, the raw hate, the ‘Hey, look, I have an AK-47 stuck in your belly, now, tell me, don’t you believe in Allah?
Yeah, rock on Robert Burton… I’m betting on the cotton market.
To me, deleting all the posts belonging to such a spirit is ’symbolic’, not judgemental, though that’s my take: leaving just one, considering the triad, would send a message that we doubt our principle a little bit; yet, one little lie is not such a big thing is it, or is it, the entire Fellowship of Friends was founded on a little lie, billions of terminal cancer cells begin as ‘one’.
Imagine, or not, a guy is screaming, shooting up a restaurant, at the end of it, he states to the coppers outside, ‘But I like Wendy’s’… Should Wendy’s then hire lawyers to support the claim that he was temporarily insane, thus acquitting him? That’s kinda where your going with your ‘momma knows best’ theory.
Believe me, I know it well, whenever the poo hit the fan in my household, particularly concerning my step mother, I would can my grandmother, my ‘backup blog site’… Well you know the rest of the story, no body messes with Grandma, particularly as a Mars Jovial Archtype…
damn, she was a smokin woman when she needed to be and I loved her through and through for her ability to seize a situation for what it was really worth, usually nothing, and put it in perspective, i.e., “shape up or ship out and BTW, I’m the ship, so don’t worry about your bags getting lost, I’ve got ya back home girl.”
Of course these are Earth-rules, relative and ‘right’ when put to certain triads, I don’t need a ‘backup blog’ anymore because I found my inner-smokin feminine a long time ago,
yet, its good to know you ‘guys’ are still in the earth’s atmosphere, flitting here and there, you are needed, just try not to identify, you are not the archetype, its in your blood without your permission.
Since you’re pretty gung-ho on the ‘Sheik conspiracy theory thing’, do you not think it odd that the very thing you’re worried about happening, deleting/not putting up posts that ‘you’ think are important, that he’s letting you post those very posts?
Hypocritical? I do not think so, I believe its just another case of a ‘play of features’ and given enough time there’s always going to be an opposite ‘I’ sprout up in the temple somewhere.
So, rather than advertise ‘the work to be done to post back to the blog what you think should not have been deleted’, well, go girl, walk the talk and let us reap the benefits of your humble and quiet endeavors; the Sheik seems game for it, you?
I remember once, a ’student’ asked me what kind of effort they could do to work on Vanity feature, I said,
“Take a trash bag and go pick up some trash. Do this somewhere relatively and ’safely’ remote and BTW, don’t ever tell anyone about having done it, not even me.”
Now, at first the student’s facial expression became wondrous and awe-like, sorta ‘aha-ish’, it was when I said, ‘Don’t tell anyone’ that the gray highlights set back in:
See, altruism is vanity in disguise, vanity loves the obvious proposals of opposites, supporting this or that version of the same thing, so long as it opposes some others suspected vanity feature, that is, ‘Hey, someone else will pick up my trash for me.’
True humility is never obvious or in the news paper.
___________________________
Love to you all.
_______________________________
Bored?
15,702 Hits
Looks to me that we’re swingin and hitting some home runs!
________________
l.t.y.a.
To all concerned with page 11 and the deleted posts:
One post from me
(another for me too but my memory got it!)
was deleted and I do not mind posting again its main content.
It was kind of addressed to Graduate, the promotor of the “other” blog, exclusively Ex-FOF ( the ex-Cult members he does not trust!).
Here it goes:
This blog AND any other are precious.
We should defend “dirty business free speach” no matter which form it takes!
The no moderation and reality time (we asked for)
gave “surprising” results on page 11.
So what?
Surprised by “reality”?
By the way, situations (inner or outer) are labelled
“surprise” when we like them
and
“problem” when we do not like them!
In work language, we unite: a shock is shock!
Just “rock and roll” on the posts you consider “insane”.
It is as simple as going down the page using a responsive little harrow pointing down till the “insane” is finished.
That’s about it!
About Graduate’s intention:
there is more loss in doubting him and much profit in putting under light a possible dangerous businees.
To Graduate: Is not Sheik fair enough to post your posts,
his he not?
Could it be that he knows something about gaining from uniting?
Last thought on ethymology:
Symbolo: unity
Diavolo: division
Gratitude
Mahatma Coat (12)672: “we’re all hoping we’ll awaken next lifetime, and we all believe the Teacher to be a conscious being who can do no wrong.”
Nope, not all of us. Absolutely not. A) you are lying because you can’t know that, and b) you seem plastic to me.
This is why people doubt your sincerity: your posts are too
unthinking and mono-dimensional to be real. Perhaps it is your use of English, or maybe you don’t realize what a wolves den you have wandered into on this blog.
The Teacher has admitted to mistakes several times in my hearing – before you were around, perhaps. He said that he felt it was a mistake to conduct all-night work octaves to the point of exhausting students; he said on one occasion that the 1998 prediction might have been a mistake; he has said that when he was a young teacher he made mistakes. Only a rock can make no mistakes.
To believe he can do no wrong is a childish presumption and needs to be questioned if you are going to make it on this path. And no, this is not my lower self attacking the higher. It’s the voice of my conscience challenging you to THINK. Aside from blind trust, it’s all you’ve got.
That is, if you are sincere, and not a shill.
This blog is moving at a furious pace, but what has lingered with me for a few days is reading the posts from Tornado (whoever you are) starting with #11/313. I must say how much I enjoyed reading them, and as others have said, felt a resonance.
In 11/390 Tornado writes: “A question to myself is: How to find the balance of contributing to the life of all these students in need and letting them have their own experience that at the end will empower them? It’s a fine line, isn’t it?”
This relates to my own enquiry into why I have posted. Originally it was part of just coming into being, and taking an authentic position. But more importantly to leave ‘clues’ to those who are receptive – that life continues, and grows, outside of ‘the compound’. While a committed student for 22 years I was focused on the life within the school, and oblivious to burgeoning of spirituality that has come as Eastern teachings have at last emerged in this era of the airplane, and the spontaneous eruptions of Truth that have emerged in the West. Moreover, I have found there is a holding and support to be found in Sangha and the local community whether it be seen as a localized support in Grass Valley/Nevada City – or seeing it as loving caring conscious universe that has nurtured you from birth and continues to provide.
I wonder about students caught in the ‘poverty trap’ of being on salary. Maybe this is history and does not apply any more – but I suspect not. The pattern being: an idealistic student comes to Isis to be near the teacher, goes ‘on salary’ (a subsistence allowance), becomes hooked, depletes savings, and now is stuck, The longer you stay, the more identified you become with your role and the necessity to retaining yoiur position on salary – no matter how menial it is. The longer you stay, the more your skills for ‘getting a regular job’ diminish and the more dependent you become on the occasional dispensations of largesse from Robert. (Those medical bills do need to be paid).
So I’ll go out on a limb here and muse about (or really propose) that we start a modest foundation (yet another non-profit) from donations, to help long term students who have been on salary and want to start a new life outside of FOF.
Money gets murky. Take it the wrong way, and a charitable impulse could be perceived as monetary inducements for people to leave – which is not the intention at all. We could get ripped off – so donations would have to be freely given without thought of really getting anything in return. One thought would be to structure payouts as short-term non-interest loans – help people get set up – then they pay back – then the money gets recycled for someone else. Actually, I don’t think we would get ripped off – students are good people.
Maybe this is a cure for a malaise which is imaginary. Maybe this is too narrowly focused on Isis – when the Fellowship spans the globe. I haven’t much of a clue how to proceed either. But I thought I would throw this out and see if there is any resonance.
David
Hello Sheik;
Nice to see a post from you.
Word correction for blog readers, (Sheik perhaps you could change it for the sake of Grandma-karmic-info.)
On ‘paragraph 12′ it should read “I would ((call)) my Grandmother, not ‘can’.
It must be the coconut milk, Freudian slip?… No way,
Grandma’s rule!
_________________________
l.t.y.a.
Related to my previous post:
When helpful:
From Symbolo, we get “symbol” (pretty obvious this one),
from Diavolo (diabolo), we get “devil”.
To Bruce:
I like you more and more.
To Cyclops:
Oh! When you apologise, you are as irresistable as a hieroglyph!
To Unoanimo:
Did you really read all the islamic stuff?
Gratitude.
“I was only three days off in the prediction of my crystallization, which over a period of ten years is quite good, and I consider that prediction accurate. If a depression occurs in 1984, if California falls in 1998, if Armageddon occurs in 2006, then I was correct. All of which means, I am correct regarding the other information I have been speaking about.”
“Actually, most of what I speak about is facts.”
Robert Burton – June 11, 1979
By the same logic, if those predictions don’t come to pass?
Hi guys, just a reminder:
If you wish to be included in ex-members Contact List – please send the info you wish to list to
malaec@optonline.net
I have received lots of e-mails already, and list is getting big. I am making it in a simple Excel file, and will soon e-mail it to all who are listed.
The intentions behind creating such a list: to help like-minded people stay connected, to locate friends, to arrange for a possible place to stay while travelling, to announce jobs, to ask for help, to invite people for dinners, concerts and other events, etc. Friendship and connections don’t have to dissappear once you quit FOF!
Most people include their name and e-mail address, also: phone, address, years in FOF, website – whatever you feel like listing.
In friendship,
Janna
malaec@optonline.net
on 12 Jun 2007 at 3:56 am564 Howard Carter
posted an extensive discussion on porn
What is the point
This only marginally escapes being spam and is pointless. It clearly requires time and effort that might be used more profitably to compile this information. It does remind me of Gerard’s plodding angles.
The real amazing thing is how Robert has perverted the FOF so that many will serve as his apologests. He has so succesfully isolated himself from any outside control that he is a law unto himself.
Tell me Siddiq when were you shown the Canon of the FOF and asked to sign them as a contract with the Church? When did you agree as an article of faith that the “Teacher” was a divine messenger who’s will was unquestionable?
AT what point were you informed of Robert’s divine status as a reincarneted Goddes in a mans Body who sucked young mens cocks as a source of higher hydrogens.
How many cocks have you sucked to verify the truth of this yourself or is it an item of faith? You would not justify something you have not verified would you?
To all those that try and justify Robert’s perversion of the FOF I challange you to find 20 to 30 young men who will volunteer to have their cocks sucked to assist you in your quest for higher consciousness. If you cannot do this perhaps because it disgusts you or because you find that the young men will not “volunteer” without some payment or coersion then try to get over denying the facts.
There is no voluntary positive sexual exchange occuring. There is no “private sex life” Robert manipulates poor niave youth’s into positions of weakness and preys apon them.There is merely an old faggot harvesting his crop of captive youth’s of what is more precious than there sperm their spirituality. This man has no shame-nor do his apologist’s. If you had any conscience you would be ashamed to justify this continued play of crime.
59
I’m not touchin that one.
Fellow Travelers,
Former Fofer asks: “When did Robert claim to have crystallized as a man no5? Does anyone know? And did he ever describe that experience?”
I have a story, probably from my entourage-time with Robert. He crystallized his higher emotional center in front of the fire on the deck at Nepenthe, Highway 1 in Big Sur. No date was given, but this was between the founding of the Fellowship and the crystallization of 1976. Think they were allowed to smoke pot then. Neat for me since I go to Esalen two or three times a year and always stop to commemorate. Esalen, BTW, was founded in the early sixties, also has a “lodge,” workers “on salary,” etc. The “system” wasn’t 4th Way but gestalt therapy and body work. Not sayin’ RB got the idea for Renaissance from Esalen, but it does pre-date the FOF.
Also, Esalen remained an open and free thinking refuge – as founder Michael Murphy relates, “no one captured the flag.” You can read more about it in Jeffrey Kripal’s “Esalen: The Religion of No Religion,” just published.
On the topic of crystallization, has anyone looked at Meditations on the Tarot, an anonymously penned work from a French cleric who was also an esotericist? Very interesting stuff on Gurdjieff, who the author admires, but he takes exception to the concept of “crystallization.” Believes the Gurdjieff work does give you a body that can survive death, but its just a ghost — rather one should embrace the complete freedom of the Holy Spirit, which never “crystallizes” but is always in flux.
Interesting stuff, I’ll pull some quotes out when I get it back from the Gaelic sorceress I lent it too….
walter.tanner@gmail.com
“Burton believed that the oil company that used the advertising logo “UNION ‘76? was a sign from C Influence that he, Burton, would “crystallize into a man number six” in 1976. There was an elaborate ‘crystallization party’ in honor of the event.
Actually Burton predicted the exact day that “lightening bolts” would crystallize him as a man number six, however, according to Burton he did not crystallize until three days later, so the party had to be postponed. Remembrances from a follower:”
I was with Robert in Phoenix on the day he had intially predected his crytillization. I think his entourage was Thomas Easely and Peter Bishop who had driven one of the Merceds roadsters ( the gold 4 seat) from renaissence there may have been a third Anthony Peace whose wife Susan had been sent to Pheonix. I had breakfast with the group at the Biltmore and took the opportunity to get hired as a waiter. I was with him at the end of the evening and walked with him to his room. I do not remember anything else. Only Thomas and Peter would know what occured in his room. It does lead me to specualte that The whole crystallization thing was just another lie. It was a great party though. I believe I drove with Mildred Smith and others from the Pheonix center to the occasion.
I also have many fond memories of Renaissance and although Robert did provide leadership on a larger scale he was always meddling in details. His dominance feature was then as now pretty uncontrolled. He of course presented everything as the “will of C influence”. He seemed to be under the illusion that “well it is the will of C influence” so we do not need building permits or building inspectors which I am sure created many headaches for Larry Kramer and Roger Cavanna.
Robert was furtunate in attracting a group of excellent people to begin the development of the FOF. I doubt many wouold have tolorated his currant misuse of young men.
Those who missed the spam attack do not understand that is was not based on content but volume. Posting sufficently large post’s to slow down the blog and if continued make it unuseable. This is in no way a tactic of using a reasoned arguement or even of presenting ones own opinions.
Re #59 A former student– Post 564 by Howard Carter was about cults, not porn. The post on porn was credited to Siddiq, but Siddiq claims it was not his.
All,
I was unpleasantly surprised by the way Mahatma Coat was treated on the previous page. Whether or not he (she?) was real, the views expressed were precisely those espoused by sincere FoF students, eg I will awaken next lifetime, RB is a conscious being who can do no wrong, etc. It would have been interesting to hear more from him, but he was immediately dumped on by Bruce and co and appears to have been scared off.
Bruce, Unanimo and others seem to be intent on creating a kind of alternative universe here where only views acceptable to themselves can be expressed. My impression is that these people left the FoF a while ago and have developed a warped imaginary picture of it. Don’t get me wrong – I agree that the teaching is absurd and RB is dangerous – but it seems that bloggers like myself who left the FoF recently and are still in close touch with many current FoFers don’t post here much any more because many of the posts don’t seem to have much relationship to the actual FoF as we see it.
It would be easier to have a more balanced discussion if you guys would lighten up a bit, and maybe wait a few hours before lashing out. Are you really so sure of your own opinions that you are unable to accept that a young, naive spiritual seeker might still be taken in by the FoF teaching and that he or she might not necessarily be a complete moron?
yrs, RN
11/183 Old FOF
At one point Robert Burton indicated that he had only three friends: Peter Bish_p, Miles and JoelF.
Of course, Peter has passed. Miles departed the “Fellowship of Friends.” And JoelF is bloggersville.
This sounds like fantasy, or coming from someone other than Burton. Peter was a longtime victim of Burton’s, and Miles and I were similarly used by him as good fronts and proficient prostelytizers for his project. But “friends”? No.
11/687 Sharon
Joel, Bruce, Exlax, LOL, many others both pro and anti FoF… you guys are doing that Ad Hominem stuff again – it’s the lazy man’s way to argue.
Point taken, thanks. Civility is rarely a bad choice. But I don’t really think asking someone to reveal their identity is in itself an ad hominem attack.
11/715 Sheik
Thanks for stepping in, without the moderation the blog would probably go down from attacks such as the page 11 fiasco.
My 2 cents: Ask Ames Gilbert to help if he’s willing.
11/564 “Howard Carter”
This was an excellent opportunity to see in just how many directions a “captive mind” can spin simultaneously. While errrors and misjudgments are rife throughout this post, consider two things.
While friend “Carter” expends much energy pointing out the lack of “credentials” of those in the anti-cult party, he never makes the next logical step, to ask what “credentials” are needed to start a “new religion/cult”.
And how about this:
FoF: in a much longer time of existence and with a much greater pool of members and much more scrutiny placed on the organization there is no indication of any violence, past, present or future.
How anyone, even a Fof mind-slave, can have read the posts on this blog, seen the men who have been damaged by Burton, the non-stop coercion of young men into a kind of spiritual prostitution going back to the 1970s, the breaking up of families, the bankrupting of the gullible, can make this statement is just mind boggling to me. Violence has many forms, and I view the FoF as inherently, intrinsically, and spiritually violent, from day 1. Sad.
11/563 “Siddiq”
I try to write when I believe I have something worthwhile to say, even if it is obvious from some (not all) reactions that it seems to irritate people like yourself.
I actually feel sad about people such as “Siddiq” and “Howard Carter.” These are obviously intelligent, thoughtful people caught up in something they have yet to comprehend. It’s painful sometimes to remember what that felt like when I was in a similar situation, and fear played such a large role in my thought process. It’s also interesting that if these people were to actually post under their own names, the group they so fervently defend would probably toss them out within minutes. Go figure, but you have to have compassion for these people—they are me.
Thanks for reading
JoelF
If you see how many posts Mahatma Coat made you’ll see he wasn’t dissuaded in the least, until he was asked to identify himself (or herself) to show he wasn’t just a plant (and I mean that in both ways). It seems when BS is called out the bullshitter usually disappears for a while and reappears either with the same or different name. Nobody’s chased away, as far as I can see, until they make that choice themselves. I assume Mahatma’s a grown up. He (or she) didn’t seem that fragile. In fact Mahatma seemed impenetrable to the point that I, personally, don’t think they’re who they purport to be. I think they were a shill, and I still feel that way.
If you feel the need to protect any poster from unfairness, be at it. But don’t expect everyone to agree with your criteria.
60 Bruce
You musta been thinkin what I was thinkin.
68
Stop puttin that stuff in my head..leave me alone. The voices……….
Walter Tanner wrote:
“I have a story, probably from my entourage-time with Robert. He crystallized his higher emotional center in front of the fire on the deck at Nepenthe, Highway 1 in Big Sur. No date was given, but this was between the founding of the Fellowship and the crystallization of 1976.”
Thanks Walter. Anyone have any more details? Did he discuss it in more detail with anyone?
A former student wrote:
“Actually Burton predicted the exact day that “lightening bolts” would crystallize him as a man number six, however, according to Burton he did not crystallize until three days later …”
I wonder where he got the idea that “lightening bolts” would be part of the man no6 crystallization process?
Did another man no6 advise him of that? If so, who was it? If no-one advised him, how did he know what to expect?
formerfofer
(1978-1992)
Re: Rhino Neal #65 “I agree that the teaching is absurd and RB is dangerous – but it seems that bloggers like myself who left the FoF recently and are still in close touch with many current FoFers don’t post here much any more because many of the posts don’t seem to have much relationship to the actual FoF as we see it.”
_____
If most of the posts don’t seem to have much relationship to the current, then you guys should be posting more not less.
I’m glad you haven’t been scared off. Please continue posting. We (or at least I) are truly interested in how you and others see the current situation. Don’t let Bruce scare you off. I think he truly doubted the sincerity of Mahatma Coat’s post. I also doubted it, but if you think it was possibly for real, I will give it the benefit of the doubt.
Posts 67/68/69 – a few more building bricks for your imaginary blogworld: smug, self-congratulatory, dismissive of anyone who steps out of line. A bit like the FoF?
When did the rumors start that “Our Teacher” robert burton had a sexual fondness for males? Prior 1977?
When did the artificiality of manners begin? Prior 1977?
I remember a NASA metalurgist contemplated divorcing his wife to follow an affected homosexual lover of children.
Thank you “C” influence for my ‘play’ of less than two years.
What a horror story I’ve heard so far.
I didnt read that Arabic jihad many I’s, but it would be a great idea for FOF to practice inner jihad that I noticed while trying to flee the madness.
For those who like stories: This is not FOF connected except indirectly.
I once knew a young guy who had an amazing work ethic, and was exceptionally able. High school drop-out I found out decades later.
He worked part-time at a very busy night club. He wasnt a bar-tender, manager, door man or barback. When I saw him he would be working the lights, adjusting and repairing.
I knew him socially for a short while.
During that time a local married politican who had a fondness for young girls would have the young guy set him up at table with some underagers who somehow got in.
The nightclub finally closed and young man went to work for the politican as an administrative assistant. He was a good worker and very able. Later he became Director of the county beaches.
The young man now old ran as a Republican for county supervision and lost.
One day while reading the newspaper I found myself shocked. The same way when I found out in the blog about “our Teacher” robert burton.
It seems this young man whom I hadnt seen in decades but held him in high regard as I did the FOF for two decades, was caught.
A mother of a young girl was checking on her daughter’s chatting on the internet and became worried about a certain chatter. So she answered for her daughter.
The chatterer made arragements for a meet. That he would be driving a certain kind of truck and that he would be wearing these kinds of clothes.
She “hung-up” and called the cops. The F.B.I joined in the fray too. He was arrested. The pulled all the computers from his Director of Beach Services and his home. They found lots of child porn. His first response when the F.B.I. knocked on his door and explaned themselves, “I knew you were coming”
He went to court, found guilty, and sent to prison for 17 years in a federal jail. Two years later he died of pneumonia. The article in the newspaper reporting his death said that while in jail he helped the jail ministerial office and library where it was noted that he had a good work ethic and exceptionally able.
I bet lots of young males at FOF are exceptional in their work ethic and quite able.
Oh, I remember my old friend giving a public apology, but I’ve forgotten the words.
Hi Rhino Neal,
Going back to some of the first pages of the blog, a few people I’ve spoken with have expressed concerns that the blog was becoming too polarized or too negative, etc. — and that it would frighten away more reasoned and moderate points of view. And others, such as yourself, have expressed the same concern right here in the blog.
The fact that you left the Fellowship more recently is interesting to me, because one thing I’ve noticed is that many former students — as time goes on — slowly lose some of the thinking patterns that were part of the Fellowship experience. When you spend most of your life thinking (for example) that any expression of sarcasm (i.e., Bruce, Joel, me, anyone) MUST be a form of sleep, then it takes time to slowly change that idea and see it differently.
Maybe, for example, Bruce is using sarcasm because he believes it’s one of the few ways that his message can penetrate? Or maybe he’s just being himself, having some fun, and letting it rip? In other words, “being himself” instead of living his life constantly being aware of what is acceptable use of the language, and adjusting his words to suit that, as we all have done to a greater or lesser extent in the FOF.
As I’m reading the blog, and speaking with many former and current fof members who are on the fence, I’m amazed at how steadily my thinking is changing — i.e, the thinking habits that I was tought in the Fellowship. Words have this odd way of shaping our thinking. Using different words can open up news ways of thinking.
But, egads, now even the term “Fellowship member” has an entirely different meaning to me. Thanks a LOT, whoever told that story about Robert’s use of the word.
I’m not going to ask you to be less sensitive to humor and sarcasm and biting one-liners, but just a thought — Maybe your sensitivity to these posts is partly a result of several years in the Fellowship?
Honestly, I don’t know what the answer for you might be… But for me, the answer has been “definitely yes” on several occasions. I’m surprised at much my thinking was shaped by the group — and mostly not for the better.
2B
Curious. Does anyone have information from the tenets of different diciplines such as buddhism, islam, hinduism, taoism christianity, scientology, tollelology, masonology, the elks, moose or lions club on this phenomenon so freely tossed about – “crystallization”.
I have some vague recollection of somebody turning into a pillar of salt in the bible. It didn’t seem to be such a good thing and had something to do with living in the past?
72 Come on Rhino, I can see the steam building.
74 2b
“Words have this odd way of shaping our thinking. Using different words can open up our thinking.”
You think?
No Person sayds: How can you be absent?
you can be absent when you are in imagination.
imagining that you are awake.
To say the simple truth is not an insult or an expression of negative emotions.
sorry if yo were hurted by the simple truth.
PBS recently televised a documentary about the Mormons. A woman scholar who was excommunicated from the church after arguing for parity in the role of women in the church talked about the experience of being excommunicated. She indicated that all the men on the court which excommunicated her after her hearing came up to her afterwards, shook her hands and said how much they admired her. She spoke disparagingly of their veneer of niceness while they were doing what she considered an inherently violent act, excommunicating her from her religion, community, family and way of life:
“Excommunication is an inherently violent act.”
Yesri baba
74 2b
“Words have this odd way of shaping our thinking. Using different words can open up our thinking.”
You think?
—–
Hey, give me a break!!! (kidding)
2b (74) and Bruce (76)
Point taken. cheers, RN
78 Simple Truth: “you can be absent when you are in imagination.”
Depends what you mean by “you”. Your mind can drift off elsewhere, for sure. But maybe you’re not your mind. Maybe you’re precisely that which isn’t absent when “you” are “in imagination”.
Veronicapoe,
Great quote from the Mormon documentary.
By the way, you can view the documentary online at pbs.org.
Speaking of “moderate”, my impression of the program was that it was way too moderate — especially for a joint project by Frontline and American Experience, both of which tend to present fairly critical commentaries. They did interview some unhappy former members, as Veronicapoe mentions, but at times I thought I was watching a PR film. Hmm. Might have something to do with lots of money? You think?
78 Simple Truth: “you can be absent when you are in imagination.”
Rhino Neal 82 said it perfectly.
What are you? A mind image? A thought?
What you ARE – is right here, always. Watching, aware, life itself. Mind drifts, memory blinks, thoughts and feelings come and go, imagination occur – in present awareness.
YOU cannot be absent, ever. It would mean that there is no you at all when there is imagination! But imagination has no independent nature – it has occur to somebody, in something, right? Somebody or something must be there first to even have imagination!
According to you there is no you most of the time, since imagination occurs very often, according to some 99 percent of time.. So you must be pretty much nonexistant, absent, not live. Just imagination floats in the air, by itself. But it can’t be so, simply because you so undeniably ARE, here, alive.
Imagination is occuring because of you, as one of the experiences, and YOU are what is experiencing imagination (and all else for that mater.) You are not imagination, not the mind, not an imaginary image of yourself.
Following from Foolofit, (11/526) good comment.
To those that would ask “where’s the evidence?” …
If I undertook to find such evidence, you might also point out that to initiate that line of inquiry is to elicit gossip, lies, and slander from fellow members, to involve oneself in ‘a play of crime’, to listen to the ‘lower self’, to evoke lies and misinformation from ex-members (who ungratefully speak from their ‘king of clubs’), ad nauseam. Finally if the evidence is put in plain view, habitual dissociative mechanisms will bring one back to ‘the moment’.
To speak to that phenomena which allows so many older students who are conditioned in this way, to ‘focus only on one’s own work’ – while underwriting Robert’s activity – is an entirely different and much more lengthy subject. Any takers?
The school has got to a point where ‘being in the moment’ necessarily includes a whole range of dissociative behavior, sometimes pathological in nature. The present is surely something much bigger than we have learned in Robert’s
new religion.
Here is another story on the Man #5 question (12/5):
The first time I met RB was in Hawaii in January 1973. My first impression of him — head bowed, hands-folded, wearing a loose fitting, short-sleeved, large print shirt, khaki pants and those funny brown soft-leathered tie shoes he used to wear, and carrying a brown brief case by the handle– confounded me.
Here was the great ‘the teacher’ whom Bonita (his first student and leader of new HI center) revered, and he looked to me like a door-to-door insurance salesman. An oddly apt metaphor, I think now, considering what he does.
Anyway, at the break of the meeting he came over to me and said he wanted to show me something private. In a hushed, conspiratorial voice, he showed me his driver’s license. He told me that he only weighed 140 (or something like that) pounds in the picture, that it was taken shortly after he had been in a car accident, requiring 144 stitches. The picture was rather grim.
He did not mind the terrible suffering though, he said, because the accident had awakened him to becoming a Man #5. He went on, in that gravely serious way he sometimes adopted about how C influence uses difficult methods to awaken us, and so forth…
He proceeded to rub ‘the third eye’ spot on my forehead, and I recall him telling me I would soon enough learn about “their methods” because I was “definitely on the way.” I had been in the FoF only about one month at the time. I left that night (at the ripe old age of 24) both flattered and weirded out by the entire episode.
TRAVELER: Please add ‘on the way’ to your hilarious 11/555 devil’s dictionary post. Reading it was the best laugh I have had in a long time.
I especially liked: King of Clubs = Common Sense
Here’s a post-FoF story.
A couple of years after I left in 1984, I read a book titled “Messages From Michael.” It was supposedly channeled. It presented a spiritual system based on the idea that each person comes into a lifetime with a set of “overleaves,” that overlay essence in order to have certain types of experiences, lessons, etc.
Some of the overleaves were body type, center of gravity, chief feature and several other categories not used by the Fellowship that, in some ways, made it a more complete system. The overleaves were seen as tools with a purpose rather than flaws, though tools that need to be seen for what they are (subjective).
The book was based on information that came from a small group of people in the East Bay (No. Calif.) that got together on a regular basis and supposedly channeled Michael. I was told later that at least one person in that group had a connection with the Fellowship.
A few years later, two people who studied the material, J.P. Van Hulle and Aaron Christensen, began teaching, channeling and writing books on the subject and attracted a group of people who came to meetings, read the books, learned about their overleaves and hung out socially. Aaron had been in the Fellowship a few years earlier. (This is reasonably public information.) It presented an interesting spin on the FoF material, and I liked the people, so I hung out with them for a year or two.
It was not a school, there were no rules or “suggestions” about behavior, no conscious beings, no teacher, no pressure to attend events or any of that. There were no fees except for private channeling sessions, and a small donation at the meetings to cover hall rental. It was all very loose. Self-remembering and presence weren’t really part of the package. It was more about self-understanding.
I rarely heard anyone question whether the material actually came from Michael. It was just accepted and believed for the most part. Clearly the FoF stuff had been expanded into a larger system, and it seems unlikely that all of it came whole cloth from Michael, even assuming there is anything to channeling or that there is a Michael.
Maybe it didn’t matter. If people grew and gained something from the experience of seeing themselves in a new way, then it was of some value. People weren’t being exploited, controlled or expected to support anything unethical. Discovering that you believed some pretty outrageous things can be enlightening in itself.
86 Rhino Neal
Maybe you’re precisely that which isn’t absent when “you” are “in imagination”.
and . . .
90 Was KathleenW
Discovering that you believed some pretty outrageous things can be enlightening in itself.
Thank you both, truly.
JoelF
Was KathleenW #90
Thank you for your post. You sparked a post-FOF memory that I’d like to share.
When Miles left the FOF he attempted to start his own group. I remember that when he gave his first open meeting in the bay area, hoards of people from Renaissance drove to it, including yours truely.
Amazingly, many of us drove in Renaissance vehicles using FOF gas to get there and back! Nobody tried to stop us from going or made a list of who went. I seriously doubt this would occur in today’s FOF, but I could be wrong.
During the emotionally charged meeting he spoke of leaving the FOF because of his conscience. He thought that too many people were being permitted to join the school whom he felt did not have enough being to seriously under take the work. He felt these people were only being allowed to join to fill the FOF coffers with cash. He was going to be more selective in who joins his group. He charged five bucks a head for the meeting that night. I remember our group drove all the way back in silence without discussing a word of what he had said.
Anyway, after I left the FOF later that year, I contacted Miles to inquire about his group. I learned that he was experimenting with the Michael channeling stuff. I was quite surprised that Miles had broadened his views of the fourth way in this direction. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I was left with the impression that Miles had diminished himself by relying on a ’spiritual medium’ to do the ‘channeling’ of higher knowledge (or whatever) instead of coming from his own being. So I didn’t join his group and went another direction. Miles’ group later dwindled. So he eventually closed it down and went to college to study counseling.
BTW, this is the story I was told on how ‘c-influence’ indicated to Robert that Miles was going to become a man number five. When Robert first saw him, Miles was wearing a V-neck sweater, with the V in gold trim, signifying the number 5 as the Roman numeral V. Later the prediction was correlated I believe in Shakespeare’s sonnet #44 with the line … “miles when thou are gone”. This is a another good example of Robert’s ‘ideas of reference’, like ‘Union 76′. Also the high tech spy plane ‘SR-71′ which flew from an airforce base near Renaissance was ’self-remembering 1971′ or when self-remembering came to the area in 1971.
Whalerider, thanks for your story, you sparked a memory here, too…
I was working at the Autoshop on the day Miles left, I was alone when Miles came in, we greeted each other, and talked for a few moments. I tried very hard to remember myself and I can still to this day see in my mind’s eye all the wrenches I used to work on a Mercedes I was dismantling…
The impression made on me that day by Miles in the Autoshop has remained in my memory forever. At one of the meetings Miles lead, he suggested to pick a day in the following week where one would do everything to live it as if never before–to be only and fully focused on self remembering. These suggestions, and the sincerity which he gave them with were so strong, for me, that it much helped my work–then seeing Miles was a reminder to make these efforts…
Anyway, Miles proceeded to check and fill up his Mercedes with gas and oil, and then there was an article from the Sacramento Bee on Abraham Lincoln on the bulletin board, on the wall….it related the story of how a young girl in the South personally saw Abraham Lincoln a few days after the war (Civil War) ended and how he (A. Lincoln) stood in front of her window walking down the streets of Richmond (enemy territory a few days ago–but unafraid), paused and looked at her…the sorrow of this man was the memory that created the most special moment of her life, for her on the same level as meeting her husband and having children. (I still have this article and can post it if anyone wishes to read it).
Anyway, Miles read it the entire article slowly, standing motionless for a very long time, intentionally, and then stood in front of me, paused, and we said good bey, very intentionally–I realized something very significant was occurring to him, that he could not talk to me about. And that was it.
Later coming home to the Academy I learned he had left and had said goodbey to Robert. A strange quiet sadness filled Renaissance for some time, as I experienced it.
I did not go to the Bay Area meeting. As much as I valued Miles, I felt my place was here. After his meeting, where many students went, you returned home, and life moved on.
Reply to Post #60/12, #65/12 and #69/12
You wrote ~ (Post #60/12)
“To Unoanimo:
Did you really read all the islamic stuff?
Gratitude.”
________________________________
Certainly: to me its only ‘right’ to give attention to where attention is not being given out… I try to use this blog ’sight’, not as some form of TV entertainment, rather, as a study, so reading all the ‘propeller poo’ was necessary to sense what exactly it was, that was in front of me in the moment,
I try to use everything, regardless of its obvious external form,
there’s always a child hiding out in all that over sized semantic-wardrobe and I enjoy finding his or her feet sticking out from behind the curtain,
I do not disturb the curtain, let the child ‘think’ I do not see them hiding…
it’s a personal thing for everyone’s essence to hide, through anger, extreme joy,
a multitude of forms hide us from seeing that its the space between us that holds most of the love we are desiring, thinking too much, asking allot of questions usually in order to give our answers, usually blows out the match before that space can be ignited.
There’s an old mafia saying,
“Your true friends are your enemies.”
Gurdjieff knew this, particularly after one of his teachers told him.
____________________________
Post #65/12
Hello Walter:
Thank you for the ’spark’ ~
Yet,
unfortunately, such books are written under the auspices of ‘theoretical, wanna be gurus’ (that’s my opinion BTW).
You wrote ~
“Believes the Gurdjieff work does give you a body that can survive death, but its just a ghost — rather one should embrace the complete freedom of the Holy Spirit, which never “crystallizes” but is always in flux.”
To me, again, its one of those ‘vanity feature against an imaginary ‘other’,
surely Rumi fans know about the line,
“Someday I will even drop these, my angel wings.”
To me, regardless of what you call the astral body, if its formation and arrival is built through conscious will and intentional suffering then it cannot share the triad of ‘ghosts’,
you can read about ‘ghosts’ in Rodney Collin’s book, “The Theory of Celestial Influence.” Which is far from Gurdjieff’s idea of an astral body… So comparing the two is wholly ‘wrong work of all centers, including the higher’.
To me, it is part of this blog’s role, again, as I see it, to balance out formatory points of view, such as this one quoted from your post above;
the spirit within man’s (and woman’s) yearning has lived far too long under the prescription of ‘this and that’, without any direct experience of the space in between extremes, or for that matter, of even what they are speaking about.
Most of the spiritual world is at the stage of ‘aspiration’ right now, there’s still, I estimate, about 16 trillion tons of ‘wishful thinking’ to recycle…
so, we’ve gotta start somewhere or at least continue, since, after all, it would be wishful thinking on my part to assume we’re starting anything for the first time.
Whenever I see the word ’should’, I simply close the book;
I must move on, beyond the willfulness and those who have no direct experience with such worlds as they claim to be delegates ‘of’ or even ‘from’; what foolishness we buzz, when caught in our own webs… (that saying is not for you).
It’s an emotional subject for me ~
Anyone who has ever even vaguely been present to the inner beingness of a ghost would only have an absolute and holy wish for their continued possibilities at becoming themselves, without accounts, crystallized attitudes, identifications with physical proximities and ‘what’ history has made them by the passing of physical time, not always of their own intentional ‘doing’; to not hold so tightly their reoccurring wishes, sentimental desires, the traumas and ultra-insane-blacker than black hatred they carry in themselves for the circumstances surrounding their physical deaths, etc…
These beings do not need the vibratory negatives of ’should’, they need direct, conscious, intelligent consideration, simple, non-intellectual attention, when called for that is. Not all ghosts are negative BTW.
And on the subject of ghost vs holy spirit; this cannot exist, they are one and two of the same three, separating the two from the (for lack of a better word) sequence of evolution, would be like removing a part of the brain so to ’structurally, in the moment’ discount the primordial ‘root’ of man’s brain so to spite his contemporary ‘divide’.
I love it! To sit down with these kinds of people is usually a hoot, particularly the really stoic ones, usually centered in the King of Clubs or Diamonds, not that I am labeling, yet it assists to know the difference between ‘armoring’ and ‘presence’, thinking hard and hardly being what thinking only wishes for in the end, to be that which is bent and persuaded to settle for the alphabet as its fingerprints, its record of movement through this world of vocal cords and cerebellums.
Be careful Walter, your a healthy solar type who most surely enjoys a good dose of ‘I wanna believe’, just dig deeper, get as much information on all fronts, even if you have to travel to India and meet with high level Masts, who deal with these ‘worlds’ every day or at least read books that are ’straight from the horses mouth’, not the guy whose feeding them.
Remember, the word ‘poo’ is just one ‘l’ away from being something people enjoy swimming around in on hot summer days.
____________________________
Reply to Post #69/12
Hello Rhino Neal ~
You wrote ~
“Bruce, Unanimo and others seem to be intent on creating a kind of alternative universe here where only views acceptable to themselves can be expressed. My impression is that these people left the FoF a while ago and have developed a warped imaginary picture of it.”
_____________________________
Well, Rhino Neal, this is an “alternative universe”, its called cyberspace… So, that’s pretty moot and none of our doing.
And yes, I must admit (with tongue in cheek) that I do only express views acceptable to myself, otherwise such an advanced degree of schizophrenia would leave me sitting in some corner tearing the daily newspaper into little, itty- bitty bits, reading E.E. Cummings. An aim far too early, I suspect, for my age and physical condition, yet, you never know what bolt is going to rattle loose next.
I recall the beautiful wife of L. Diaz, one day I met her at the post office, smiling, absolutely radiant, like a fruit tree after a rainstorm, just beautiful, the next day she’s having lunch and dies right there, on the now, of a brain clot:
do we have the greatest level of scale and relativity possible when going by ‘my impression’? I do not wonder that we do not.
This blog site is not ‘Vanity Fair’, but, hey, if the price is right I can spin something for you and put your name on it, something that would bring back fond memories for some Fellowship of Friends authors and editors, just be sure to drop the fee into the Sheik’s Paypal account, he’ll let me know how much to spin and which way to scratch the rap.
Yes, it is certainly your ‘impression’;
whoever said I left,
whoever said I was in or out,
or in, but not out, for certain ‘Ninja reasons’?
Was not ‘verify’ in your first perspective meeting? Where have the good ole days gone, when a bolt of fabric was worth more than one suit that fits Robert Burton?
Just to settle your suspicions, I am as up to date with the Fellowship of Friends as the editors of “Letters from The Teacher”…
Do you really think I would crawl way out here on this kind of limb without having fallen enough times to learn to hang out in shorter trees?
I prefer stealthy bonsai myself.
So, my friend, next time you go buying Belgium chocolate in the only little country store that carries such in a 500 mile radius, just remember, I’ve got yo back bro,
I’ll be that inconspicuous one with the samurai sword in near the far-right-back of the pet food section, you know the spot, in between the ice maker and the unisex bathroom. Just chillin, if you know what I mean.
And, yes, I love you regardless of your ongoing addiction to ‘your impressions’.
____________________________
P.S. Bruce, thanks for not touching my Grandmother.
____________________________
Love to you all.
Hello friends,
I would just like to share my recent reading with you:
“What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions : the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal.”
Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Aline
Hello Comrades.
58 David. sounds like a good idea.
88 No person. Think of it as a cup. Its not allways got fluid in it.
91 Was Kathleen W. The Michael Teachings about types are taken much further than in the Fellowship, the fellowship teaches a watered down version. I am inteested to know where this teaching originates if it isnt channneled as they purport, which ive always been a little sceptical about despite having strange personal experiences on the death of friends and family and reading Budaliget 1943-4 which i recommend to anyone.
As we know the Fellowship has their own channeler Pythoness.
95. Unoanimo. Thanks for sharing. no kidding. The story of L Diaz’s wife sticks strongly. But enjoyed it all.
96 Aline. Synchronicity. before starting to read today the “I” to share another “I” by either mr G or mr O, which is that ” buffers are a means by which a man can overcome contradictions in himself ” or ” buffers are a means by which a man can always be in the right” were strongly with me, your Quote is inspiring thanks.
I leave you all with another quote. There have been many quotes expressed but none have the mass of this quote which comes from the summit of scale. ” Im pink, therefore im spam” or ” i link therefore im spam”.
best wishes think good thoughts Cyclops.
Roommate #94: I would like to read that story about A. Lincoln and the little girl.
I remember Miles Barth a little bit. He photograph me as being centered in the Jack of Clubs.
Another time is a little vague, but I was riding in a two seat convertible. All I remember to this day clearly is he asked me something personal . Part of my answer to him was that it was “squishy”. I was about two days out of the hospital recovering from an anual fistula. At discharge the hospital told me to not to walk. My expected ride did not show so I walked about four miles. After that I was determined not to walk again no matter what heavenly being was knocking at my door. I think Miles came as a result of that need for a ride.
Now and then I use to tell myself that “C” influence gave me that anual fistula because I was a complete ass-hole. A photograph of myself.
Hello Comrades.
58 David. sounds like a good idea.
88 No person. Think of it as a cup. Its not allways got fluid in it.
91 Was Kathleen W. The Michael Teachings about types are taken much further than in the Fellowship, the fellowship teaches a watered down version. I am inteested to know where this teaching originates if it isnt channneled as they purport, which ive always been a little sceptical about despite having strange personal experiences on the death of friends and family and reading Budaliget 1943-4 which i recommend to anyone.
As we know the Fellowship has their own channeler Pythoness.
95. Unoanimo. Thanks for sharing. no kidding. The story of L Diaz’s wife sticks strongly. But enjoyed it all.
96 Aline. Synchronicity. before starting to read today the “I” to share another “I” by either mr G or mr O, which is that ” buffers are a means by which a man can overcome contradictions in himself ” or ” buffers are a means by which a man can always be in the right” were strongly with me, your Quote is inspiring thanks.
I leave you all with another quote. There have been many quotes expressed but none have the mass of this quote which comes from the summit of scale. ” Im pink, therefore im spam” or ” i link therefore im spam”.
best wishes think good thoughts Cyclops.
“To me, regardless of what you call the astral body, if its formation and arrival is built through conscious will and intentional suffering then it cannot share the triad of ‘ghosts’”
This to me is straight from the FOF thinking. Even children have out of body experiences. And most people that have meditated have them too. It doesn’t take intentional suffering or conscious will. It just happens when nothing else is happening and the mind quiets itself long enough to take off. No need to pay for this.
Sorry, that last comment was in reference to #95 unoanimo
“In particular, if he [Robert Earl Burton] knows what he is doing and we don’t, we have no basis for judging or doubting him. Instead, we simply have to trust him, as a child trusts his parents, or dog trusts its master. If he asks us to do things which seem to have no connection to awakening–or even to be ‘wrong’–we have no choice but
to do them anyway.”
Girard Haven, Page 576, Creating A “Soul”:
“Loyalty not only in deed, but in character is demanded of you. Loyalty of character often demands no less heroic virtue than does loyalty in deed. Loyalty in character is unbreakable loyalty, a loyalty that knows no ifs or buts, that knows no weakening, Loyalty in character means absolute obedience that does not question the results of the order nor its reasons, but rather obeys for the sake of obedience itself. Such obedience is an expression of heroic character when following the order leads to personal disadvantage or seems even to contradict one’s personal convictions.
Rudolf Hess, The Oath to Adolf Hitler – 2/25/34
Years ago a friend of mine suggested the FOF ideas were very similar to what he had read in Mein Kampf and it upset him that we were involved in such a thing. Hmmm.
TO: Cyclops, wasKathleenW
RE: Messages from Michael
After Yorgos left the FOF in 1972 or 73, during the “first play of crime”, several splinter groups formed. One of them became the “Messages from Michael” group. I know this for fact, because these folks — including many FOFers, and others never associated with FOF — often met at my parents’ home. Over several years, I attended three “sessions” — via ouiji board.
Sarah, the party pythonness — channeler — was highly educated, with a Ph.D. in classical studies. She worked as the empressaria for the (now defunct) Oakland Symphony, and was a former FOF member. I had grave doubts about Sarah’s honesty. She later confessed (under pressure from another self-appointed 4th-way guru) that the sentences she wrote on the ouiji board came first through her head.
Anyway, at my first session, Sarah suggested I ask silent questions, to which I got generalized answers. She then recommended I ask myself a question and channel the answer (without the board). I had good advice for myself.
We are legion.
– KathrynF
Here’s a nice quote from Esther Hicks:
“Resistance is about believing that you are vulnerable or susceptible to something not wanted and holding a stance of protection, which only holds you in a place of not letting in the well being that would be there otherwise.”
Unoanimo: “Just to settle your suspicions, I am as up to date with the Fellowship of Friends as the editors of “Letters from The Teacher”…
OK, point taken, and I’ll look out for a samurai next time I’m in the OH store. But the main point I was trying to make is that I don’t understand why you felt that Mahatma Coat, regardless of his/her reality, was not a accurate representation of some of the more fervent, naive current FoFers. They’re not all moronic devil-worshippers.
Wake up little Suzy
Your post reminds me of saying from ‘ole Ben Franklin, “God heals, the doctor takes the fee.”
Unanimo #95
“To me, it is part of this blog’s role, again, as I see it, to balance out formatory points of view, such as this one quoted from your post above”
Aren’t you really saying that you’d best serve the blog (us) by casting your role as offering angles ‘in the interest of balance’ as you have gratefully offered to me? It’s nice to see your feet showing below the curtain, my friend! Christ apparently showed us that the highest we can do for each other is to anoint and sooth each other’s tired feet with oil…but did he keep his mouth shut or throw in a few ‘angles’ during the process to soften the effect yet create lasting memory?
BTW you take the cake! Duh! I finally got that the reason that some of your posts irked me so much was that you are the master of (intentional) non-formatory writing! I find myself having to ‘defocus’ my intellect to grasp your meaning, not unlike those ‘magic eye’ pictures that look like a bunch of squiggly lines until you look at them that certain ‘way’ and they become 3-D and jump out at you. Those things are hit or miss for me. Sometimes I can see the picture, sometimes not. Such is life.
When you sit down to design a road, of which the purpose is to travel upon to get from here to there and hither and yon. Do you plot it a straight line from point A to B to save time and resources, or do you plot it as a curvy line to give the traveler more time to digest the surroundings on the drive? I guess it just depends on the aim.
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You know, with all the recent talk about imagination, I’d like to make a pitch for ‘creative imagination’ as intentional use of the imagination or even right work of the sex center. There is no imagination center, right? Imagination is a process. Energy overflows from the sex center as the source of our creation and creativity. The sex center is great for generating an excess amount of energy, it bubbles over each springtime thankfully, otherwise how could life on this planet survive?
For those of you who have read the entire blog, (made the payment, that is) remember the poster many moons ago who was an artist and commented that they depended upon theirs to make a living? Imagination can be harnessed, focused and used as a tool.
Woe to the person who attempts to remain ‘present’ 24/7 and not ever use their imagination! You run the risk of being subjected to and manipulated by the perverted imagination of others.
Personally, I use mine to imagine positive outcomes of my actions, and guess what, it helps. Using your imagination in this way helps rally the ‘lower centers’ to the cause…everyone watching the same movie, so to speak. If you think you think you are not a ‘visual’ person, you can learn to be one. You do it each night in your dreams.
wake up little suzy wake up 102
Years ago a friend of mine suggested the FOF ideas were very similar to what he had read in Mein Kampf and it upset him that we were involved in such a thing. Hmmm.
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When current FOF students read things like the above statement on this blog, the extreme product of one-sided thinking, it will convince them that if you “leave the school” you will be forced to lose your mind. Aimless, exaggerating reassurances that what we once loved and now hate was in fact as bad as Nazism are counter-productive to any useful outcome on any scale relative to what this effort is hoping to accomplish. No one thinking about leaving a run-of-the-mill dictatorial cult where the supreme leader of a few thousand mildly distorted citizens satisfies his every selfish whim is going to come to the conclusion that they are hip deep in a genocidal movement and such a suggestion is going to convince them that compared to things that happen in “life” where they are now is not all that hard to put up with. Remember back when we were there, to most of us it was always happening to someone else and was not our business. The majority that pay the bills for the FOF have no real direct contact with Burton’s maniacal command over people and do not believe or understand how some of their Fellows are suffering. When someone compares a midlevel spiritual criminal and his distortion of the Fourth Way to a real headliner monster it dilutes any realistic perception of corruption those in the FOF might come to understand.
Avoid unnecessary talk, speak realistically to the aim.
Veronicapoe, thanks for your post!
“If he asks us to do things which seem to have no connection to awakening–or even to be ‘wrong’–we have no choice but
to do them anyway.”
But when you get physically, emotionally or financially hurt by these things – it’s your problem, not your teacher’s. You’re on your own and he doesn’t care about your problems.
Most things he asks students are NOT connected to anyone’s awakening – they are connected to Robert’s personal greed and power.
Girard said it – just obey. I also heard quite a few devotees say pretty much the same. Don’t think, don’t question – just do what he asked from you, just follow the Teacher.
With this obedience mentality – when do you stop? When do you start actually THINKING for yourself? When do you open your eyes?
In Jonestown they trusted their leader till the very end. He finally ordered them to commit suicide and they did. And it was a very, very bad end for devotees.
I wonder if Girard and Co would take his life (or lives of others) if that’s what his Teacher wants?…
“we have no choice but to do it anyway.”
106 Graduates
I have never read Mein Kampf. I just relayed an experience I had. That was all. Maybe there are things in there that are similar. Have you read it?
I was associating my thought from the previous post by Veronicapoe about a quote that was similar to Girards.
Sounds like you are the one doing the resisting not me. Please see my previous post on resistance.
C. Mortal You said:
“I wonder about students caught in the ‘poverty trap’ of being on salary. Maybe this is history and does not apply any more – but I suspect not. The pattern being: an idealistic student comes to Isis to be near the teacher, goes ‘on salary’ (a subsistence allowance), becomes hooked, depletes savings, and now is stuck, The longer you stay, the more identified you become with your role and the necessity to retaining your position on salary – no matter how menial it is. The longer you stay, the more your skills for ‘getting a regular job’ diminish and the more dependent you become on the occasional dispensations of largesse from Robert. (Those medical bills do need to be paid).”
Hi C. Mortal,
the above used to be so true in my times. (15 years ago or so)
Many people salaried people used to live in pretty bad places as well and wonder if RB had any idea what kind of sacrifices his students were making.
With the meager salary, renting a place and paying the bills,the money went all there hardly covering basic expenses. We were often forced to look at a second job, hauling brushes for richer property owners or whatever we could do at the time.
I suffered constant anxiety and cannot believe I was so frozen in place and did not move on sooner.
I had spouse and child and was also in training with hope I would eventually make some regular money, this very fact kept me there I think.
My huge efforts came to a halt with a serious health crisis.
My body with profound illness gave me a new direction.
I felt that being in the fof would make me deteriorate fast, I saw people who passed away before me having been elevated to hero or heroine status.
I did not like at all that kind of play and started looking at alternatives…
Illness became my guide and teacher…I did not want to become a glorified dead person!
Obviously I had no health insurance, who could afford such thing…this very fact shaped my future, in order to have medical assistance from the county or the state you have to be under the poverty level and god forbid when your medical bills are bigger than your income, it is best to stay under the poverty limit so that one can continue “enjoy” the benefits. Better than nothing anyway!
This happened a long time ago and I can tell it took forever to be able to stand on my own feet financially.
Last night I was joking with my spouse the FOF should refund members for every year they were on salary!
Greetings, I am an artist (posted a while back) and just thought I’d tell you about a painting I am working on today. I started it yesterday and it will have an area of wall that is actually a mess of words – blog words. So I went thru most pages of this blog and tried to get snippets of the bloggers here. No real names, no direct mention of the fof, no sex accusations – just fragments. If WE were to stare at the wall in the painting, it would all come back to us…”entourage” is a loaded word here, but without the blog experience it is less provocative. There are many “love to you all”s and “Thanks to the noble Sheik” “hello my dear friend” “P.S. the moon is made of green cheese” and the inventive blog names. “Good luck to all on this 10th page!” “Hey, Sparky, sounds like you’ve been hitting the juice yourself” “Who gave you permission to post?” “you don’t know WTF you are talking about” “I think that it’s necessary to keep posts like that undeleted.“ “ You were counting with formatory mind – dummy!” “A fascinating idea occurred to me while reading the blog today. It seems this site has, in a sense, become a macrocosm of the human mind with its’ complexity GOOD LUCK.”
I’ll title the painting “Jungle”. The words fight and love and dissolve into a texture – hardly noticeable. There will be a wall (blog wall) which opens onto a landscape – other elements too. I think creative imagination connects.
Thanks to all! Kat
SandraC wrote:
“Here is another story on the Man #5 question (12/5):
The first time I met RB was in Hawaii in January 1973 …
Anyway, at the break of the meeting he came over to me and said he wanted to show me something private. In a hushed, conspiratorial voice, he showed me his driver’s license. He told me that he only weighed 140 (or something like that) pounds in the picture, that it was taken shortly after he had been in a car accident, requiring 144 stitches. The picture was rather grim.
He did not mind the terrible suffering though, he said, because the accident had awakened him to becoming a Man #5.”
If he had such a serious accident after he started the FoF, I would imagine some of the earliest students would remember that and perhaps recall visiting him in hospital or helping him with his recovery.
Bonita (1st student) who wrote her history of the Fof from Jan 1 1970 to Dec 1973 never mentioned it, so when did this accident happen I wonder? Can anyone shed any further light on this?
formerfofer
(1978-1992)
For those interested, “Fellowship of Friends Timeline, January 1970 – January 1974″ is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_608
Visit Veronicapoe’s bookmarks:
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/Veronicapoe
Grads 106,
To me, the comparison to Nazi Germany is mostly about the use of the language, the control of information, and the group-think of the populace. No one is suggesting that Robert will be invading Poland any time soon or embarking on a campaign of genocide — uh, to my knowledge.
Any chance your negative response to such comparisons is a result of the same group think? i.e., Thou shalt keep your views “moderate” (using my definition of the word “moderate” of course.)
Really, think about it. This is what keeps the status quo in the Fellowship — the discouragement of such comparisons. The discouragement of what are called “extreme” opinions. It’s deemed negativity, false personality, and so on.
This is true whether it’s a comparison to G. W. Bush or a comparison to Goebel. Really, pause for a moment and tell me honestly… Are these comparisons really that far-fetched?
111 2b
Thanks! That’s probably what my friend was referring to. I appreciate continuation of the discussion. I am not that well versed in these things.
#112 One more last thought on my last post: At the time my friend referred to Mein Kampf, I was in the Fellowship and not about to ask him what he meant by that. I thought he was over-reacting. Hmm.
The dynamics of “group think” are the same whether it’s a mini-cult (FOF) or a maxi-cult (nazi regime). It’s just a different scale. The ultimate outcome/ result of the group think is one factor that differentiates the scale of the crime.
2b
Grads 106,
To me, the comparison to Nazi Germany is mostly about the use of the language, the control of information, and the group-think of the populace. No one is suggesting that Robert will be invading Poland any time soon or embarking on a campaign of genocide — uh, to my knowledge.
Any chance your negative response to such comparisons is a result of the same group think? i.e., Thou shalt keep your views “moderate” (using my definition of the word “moderate” of course.)
Really, think about it. This is what keeps the status quo in the Fellowship — the discouragement of such comparisons. The discouragement of what are called “extreme” opinions. It’s deemed negativity, false personality, and so on.
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Make whatever comparisons you like, enjoy your freedom, take it to the extreme: “Uh, once my friend looked at my book for ten minutes and said that the Fourth Way was something like Hitler (pregnant silence),” indulge yourself to the ninth-degree, but don’t expect that a single wavering Fellowship member will listen to a word you say. By all means deprogram yourself by going all the way into the far-side-of-opposites, but forget about the aim to communicate intelligence to those still caught in the cult. I’m assuming that there is a better aim behind all this talk than just venting pent up frustration for having believed the unbelievable.
The freedom to speak does not guarantee the liberty to think.
In my perception of what is what, for what it might be worth to anyone, many of the ex-members are no more enlightened than the remaining members, they have simply walked over to the other side of their mind. If you really imagine that there is no group-think going on here, on the magically liberated outside of the FOF, then you are still a cult member.
Wake up little suzy wake up #103: The quote by Hicks isnt that describing the horror a Lunar goes through?
Vera.Mente #109: “I suffered constant anxiety and cannot believe I was so frozen in place and did not move on sooner”
Sounds Lunar also. It’s a horror while you are going through it.
I was told in Pacific Palisades not to go to San Francisco because of the employment situation. Jobs were hard to get.
And, the people giving me the advise were on to me.
While in San Francisco I would arise with the best of them, catch a bus to Market and Powell and stay. And stay and stay.
I was enthralled by that intersection. Now and then but not often I would go to a restaurant and look for a job in the San Francisco Chronical. Then back to that intersection.
One day I was sitting on a bench near-by when a homeless man (my future) stopped and sat down. His clothes were oily, his bare feet were bleeding and he seemed tired.
He asked me what I was up to. Most of the time I wore a suit looking for work. I told him I was supposed to be looking for a job but was afraid to talk to people. He said, “well, you’re talking to me”.
In another city Richard Fazio was alone in a teaching center ironing his clothes when I came in after “looking for job” . He inquired and I said,” no luck”. He then suggested that I walk around the neighborhood asking to clean windows. My excuse was that I had nothing to clean with.
He propped up his iron walk away and in a few minutes came back with a bucket, rags, window cleaners and a squee-gee.
He said, “all you need is water”. Yes, indeed, frozen in my tracks.
I guess I wasnt FOF material but I sure did like what I saw. And Vera.Mente , I too have experience with not being able to pay the doctors. It’s a horrible feeling. A clerk told me once after I confessed about my ’shame’ that it was ok because the federal government gives them money so that she can receive her paycheck. It still wasnt too much relief but I accepted it.
115
“By all means deprogram yourself by going all the way into the far-side-of-opposites, but forget about the aim to communicate intelligence to those still caught in the cult.”
That’s called a “straw man” argument.
“The freedom to speak does not guarantee the liberty to think.”
That’s just absurd, and again, a straw man.
“If you really imagine that there is no group-think going on here, on the magically liberated outside of the FOF, then you are still a cult member.”
Are we reading the same blog. I find a remarkably diverse spectrum of opinions and being. Did you find that to exist in the FOF?
Bruce 117
Point one: “Strawman”
Are we reading the same blog. I find a remarkably diverse spectrum of opinions and being. Did you find that to exist in the FOF?
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On point one: cut the logic-babble. Your mind games don’t work on me, Jeti. To use the word “strawman” as a point of argument is a “strawman.” The fallacy in trying to out-reason an emotional perception with an intellectual construct is that the emotions exist in an entirely higher dimension than the feeble reasoning of the intellectual calculator.
Next:
Well, let’s see, now that I think about it, no…yes, everyone in the Fellowship had the same opinion and always spoke the same words. They were all exactly the same, like, uh, the people at work. Everyone always pretended to have the same opinion and same positive attitude toward the ideas of the boss just like at any corporate business. I was so bored for all those years because talking to you was the same as talking to me.
Is your memory really so pathetically one-dimensional that it seemed to you that everyone was of a single mind in the Fellowship? You lie even to yourself. Everyone I met was entirely different than everyone else and many of them were highly critical of the Fellowship. There were some dumb church-like lackluster people, but more were bright as hell and about as under-the-thumb as gypsies.
Point one:
To take something that’s vaguely connected to the main point and extend that to an absurd conclusion is a straw man.
point two:
No, not everyone was of the same mind, but most kept to the party line externally (like the rank and file German citizenry who stodd by with their mouths closed) eg: group think (or maybe group act is more accurate). Those who chose to express other than the party line, well we know what occurred in many cases.
Your “emotional perception” is exactly that. The same that brought you into the FOF. and the same that has you doing your quasi-ex-student-defender of the common man bull shit.
Bruce 119
“…common man bull shit.”
This is an emotional appeal, though a rather ineffective primitive one.
Arthur: From my observation of resistance it goes on most of the time for everyone, whether they are aware of it or not, and takes many forms.
Graduates seems to be doing a lot of resisting today.
Maybe I was referring to the extreme form on the verge of lunacy.
Thank you and I appreciate your response.
wake up little suzy wake up 122
Graduates seems to be doing a lot of resisting today.
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Honey, I resist from the minute I open my eyes all day, everyday.
I’m not going to get into a semantic argument. People arrive at their own conclusions.
“Honey”?
Suzy, I’m sure he couldn’t have meant that in a patronizing way, because that might mean he’s a schmuck, and we all know he’s an honorable man.
A little more on resistance: From my personal observation, resistance keeps me out of touch with my intuitive brain, or my nature, which knows what to do and how to act in most situations.
Re: post 115 by Graduates
“…don’t expect that a single wavering Fellowship member will listen to a word you say. By all means deprogram yourself by going all the way into the far-side-of-opposites, but forget about the aim to communicate intelligence to those still caught in the cult.”
I’ve been here from close to the beginning (though not recently), and I’ve never thought of de-programming as the aim of this blog. Maybe we can shed some light in a few dark corners, provide the cautionary tale, but I don’t believe we can change any minds. Leaving the fellowship of friends after fifteen years happened from the inside out for me, not the other way ’round. I suspect it works that way for others more often than not.
I think back to a 105 degree day in August of ‘96 or ‘97. I was still a member and my wife (lifeperson!!) and I were staying at the Mountain Seasons B&B. An ex-member, Max, and his fiance were also staying there. They were in town for an exfof get together. We struck up a conversation at breakfast and then spent the next four hours discussing the fellowship. He presented me with all of the logical, considered arguments presented here. Did I hear any of them? Were all my rationalizations firmly in place?
Anything I’ve posted here has been purely to tell my story; because in the end I think that’s all we are – our own individual stories. There’s no objective truth. There’s no consciousness yardstick by which to measure our few precious moments on this planet.
I guess you could say I’ve walked over to the other side of my mind and found the view to be just fine.
In relation to post # 58 Chortle Mortal
What you describe is called a Credit Union and any group is able to form one. It is like having ones own bank. If the FOF and Robert was not so geared to takingthe FOF would have had one as well as medical coverage for both employee’s and students who wished to participate. These are services that many groups and Churches offer members.
It is not an accident that Robert chose the legal form of a religion. He could have chosen to have the FOF as a co-op but then the members would have been owners and he could not take anything he wanted and force out those who had invested years in working for the school with less than nothing (Like Stella and others).
If there is a conscious plan in Robert’s actions in forming the FOF it is to form a pyramid scheme in which as a legal religion he is isolated from prosecution. The idea of a doomsday cult is certainly not New. One weakness apparent in his scheme is that if the Canon’s are real and accurate and were not shown to and approved by each member but kept as a secret of the operating group than the FOF presentation of the group as a school is fraud. Their own web site is proof as there is no disclosure of the goup as an actual religion in which the divinity of Robert Burton is accepted as a condition for membership and it is not stated that failure to accept or question this is cause to remove a member. That is why a membert could sue and get their payments back.
Fraud is also a crime and Jerry Brown is now state attorney general, He might be interested because for him this is a win-win, it cost’s him nothing and he might get good press.
. This means it may be possible to have the government take Robert to court. I personally would very much like to see him address a Jury of normal citizens and explain the sacred ritual required to maintain his godly status I.E.. Oral sex with numbers of young men.
Dear Old Fish in the Sea, re post 2/13,
The maturity and simple wisdom of your post was so refreshing! Thank you. One of the few posts here without a tinge of hysteria – maybe your gentle words will reach through to guide one of those fence-sitters.
Dear Bruce,
Your posts are hands down the funniest from the peanut gallery and it’s a nice break to LOL – thanks for your running commentaries!
Appreciating you all…..
Dear Arthur
I spent many hours sitting at the Bart station at Powell and Market in 1978-79. Not because I did not have a job but because I did. I worked as a waiter and I could not go home to the Kensignton house between lunch and dinner because it took too long.
I had tried going to a Turkish Bath and the YMCA but they were unpleasant for me due to the abundant of aggressive Homosexual activity. As a former ranch employee I had little except clothes when I arrived in the Bay Area. I married a student named Jeanna Black who had moved from Hawaii. It was very important for me to work at a Union restaurant when she became pregnant because they had health insurance.
It does not seem likely that we were there at the same time as I knew most Bay Area student at least by sight.
To Wow and Question
If you are out there. Sorry for lashing out the other night. I must have nibbled a bit too much from the shrinky side of the ’shroom.
We are all brothers and sisters in this hell family, at least it seems that way sometimes. I was naughty and got a spanking.
lovers.
All truth passes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Second it is violentlly opposed.
Third it is accepted as being self evident.
Shopenhauer.
First they ignore you.
Then they ridicule you.
then they fight you.
Then you win.
Maha Atma Gandhi.
Maha as im sure you know means Great as in Maha Bharata.
Atma or Atman means soul.
Great minds think alike.
Bismila al rahman al rahim. Cyclops.
Regarding “group think” and what was going on psychologically in Nazi Germany, and on a minor scale the Fellowship…..
One of the defining works on this topic in my estimation is Erich Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom” first published in 1941. I read it before meeting the school and reread many years later when I was going through the long process of leaving the Fellowship. Fromm describes the group think phemomenum that occurs when security and safety are threatened. His book is about the people of Germany published at the start of the war. Fromm was born in Germany in 1900 and emigrated in 1932. His insight is worth the read.
In the psychological terms of his day he pretty well describes the roll of “feminine dominance” and the strength of the “instictive center” in the decision making process. In a nutshell he says that buying into a vision of security and certainty comes at a pretty high price.
I put this book along side of the “Guru Papers” and Anthony Storr’s “Feet of Clay” when it comes to getting a grip on cults and group think.
Ralph H
Reply to Posts #94, #99, #104, 107, 109/12
I’ll keep this bonsai.
Dear ‘Roommate’ ~ (Post #92/12)
Yes, any direct historical observations of Lincoln that will take us outside the box of his ‘role’ would be great! A description of a picture is also worth a thousand words. Thank you for the offering, its the gestures, yes?
________________________
Dear Vera.mente ~ (Post #109/12)
Thank you for that post; it reminds me so much of the incredible ‘dark subtle-ness’ of the movie “The Taming of the Shrew”, where the inner child is momentarily transformed in order to actualize the winning of a bet worth one dollar.
I have walked beside many single women who had been ‘left behind’, pregnant, by the ‘gotta be free’ escapades of Robert’s boys, (not saying that was your play) yet, this is automatic masculine nature as well, its certainly not an aspect of a cult or of a ‘harem psychology’,
yet, regardless of our desires not to expect anything other than the probabilities of the moment, common sense seems to have turned subjective in these times in regards to certain ‘expectation-detectors & measuring devices’,
coming from a sorta pithy background of study concerning spiritual people, teachers, schools, etc., the ‘enlightened code of ethics’ was/is not to be found in the Fellowship of Friends:
if its not on the most rock bottom level, infant child care for instance, ‘reliable, insured & professional’ daycare services and good householder for the aging enlightened, then it does not exist higher up:
first, take care of what is occurring without your conscious permission, second, well, all the other stuff…
(All this would be considered ‘feminine dominance’ yes? Of course, from the vantage point of being a 65 year old teenager whose got it and more ‘in tha bank’.)
The Fellowship of Friends will learn (and this is not a prediction, its about having intuition paralleling the passing of good ole trusty Time) that it has automatically adopted Robert Burton’s lifestyle out of spiritual non-existence,
not from the standpoint of real-time good householder, which, interestingly ‘Catch-22 enough’ is the pre-requisite to conscious individuality: so congrads Graduates, now, throw those caps, jump and get a real job, your conscience!
Out of the millions upon millions of dollars spent on palm trees, gold gilded statues, roses, armani suits, ties, cuff links, shoes, hats, moving one palm tree three feet back by renting a $1000 dollar a day crane, remodeling the Lincoln Lodge (Apollo D’Oro) four to five times (and its still the same size!), etc. And?
Yes, the list goes on, hey, don’t forget those insurance premiums and annual payments to Troy Buzbee’s retirement fund.
What is there for the students on salary so far as dividends, retirement fund? Nothing, no way,
unless of course they do succeed in making the machine immortal and you can keep working for $10 dollars a day forever?
Rock on ‘I Robot – ert’!
Some will argue this as a King of Clubs concern, yet, wait till you’re 60 or less, you’ll start wondering whether investing all those millions and millions into something more ‘nest like’ is perhaps advisable for the next ‘group aim’.
Yet, you’re supposed to learn how to do that for yourself, right?
Though has anyone ever stepped back to take a peripheral look at the triad at the Fellowship of Friends ’should, could, would’ temple of ~
‘How’s the Householder Going?, Ours is doing fine, Troy’s pretty happy, Robert got those matching alligator shoes & gloves for Dorian, the Viagra subscription paid up, so to speak, for the lifetime of the School, oh, BTW, thanks for the check?’
Is it truly a probability that ‘right work of centers’ will occur within such a hierarchical ‘pyramid’, particularly in the cleverly crafted & orchestrated ‘rotation wheel’ of people on and off salary?
Well, as we know about the shape of ‘real’ pyramids, once whoever up there is stationed firmly on the capstone, everything else slides off the sides, back upon the ground;
BTW, you can’t play ‘King of the Mountain’ with a pyramid.
I believe the Fellowship of Friends has not only dug a grave for the ongoing development of the ‘inner man’, too, it has provided a practical one for its aging fakirs,
that’s not good news, yet, hey, its news, it happens…
for instance ~
the pathetic play on the part of the Fellowship of Friends and Dorothy’s ‘role’, is, as Robert Burton would say concerning Helen Keller’s blindness, “everyone’s story”.
Advice: Don’t go buying the Footnote Edition for this one.
Vera.mente ~ Please, more sharing of real time prose, I enjoyed walking with you within this blog’s offerings.
Great post.
__________________________________________
Dear ‘No Person’ (Post #107/12)
A little note concerning Jonestown:
Not only did Jim Jones ask/order people to commit suicide, he also commanded the intentional murder of hundreds of children and infants, too young to wiseacre deep enough to kill themselves: the murder of adults also took place, hundreds and hundreds of syringes were being stabbed and pushed into people…
_______________________________
Hello ‘wake up little suzy wake up’ ~ (Post #99/12)
Believe me ‘Suzy’ this is not a subject I am going to argue with you on, for argument is simply two unverified cerebellums on ‘book dope’. I only wish to clarify my take on this subject, no more.
You wrote ~
“This to me is straight from the FOF thinking. Even children have out of body experiences. And most people that have meditated have them too. It doesn’t take intentional suffering or conscious will. It just happens when nothing else is happening and the mind quiets itself long enough to take off. No need to pay for this.”
____________________________
Although you do not know it, we are speaking about two totally different ‘bodies’ and ‘processes’.
I’ll try my best to be brief so that we can simply look at the core of our apples and not the 500 pound python couple who picked them for us.
Yes, you are right when you state “It just happens..” and “children (have) them.”
What you’re speaking of is the ‘magnetic body’, not ‘the astral body’, did you know that these are totally different in constitution and ability?
BTW, leaving one’s body after a long day’s work, after a few beers, swinging in between REM and The Price is Right is not an objective phenomenon, i.e., not all mediators experience this.
Can you name any one person that can leave their body at will, anytime, any day, during any set of circumstances?
I can only name one ~ Meher Baba.
I believe Gurdjieff got hold of the reigns to his, although I have yet to find much material on his direct ‘galloping’.
So, please, for the sake of respecting one another’s sincere wish to talk about what he or she know as verifiable fact and not simply Opposite I’s or The Hobby of Contradicting Mr. Tennis Ball, please do your homework.
Having an astral projection is not ‘being’ it: seeing a ghost is not ‘meeting’ it, embracing it. Holding a dying person in your arms is not the same as burying one, all sealed up and invisible…
The words I use on this blog are only used for ‘convenience sake’, since most of you do understand that the Work Language is not the property of the Fellowship of Friends, I use it freely, yet only amongst you because I can flow through a myriad of spontaneous communication by using words that mean far more than their literal definitions, yet this does not mean its easy to use them, we all know how flagrant true personality can be:
if enough bloggers request that I not use work language to serve certain aims of this blog ‘tool’, then I can change in a snap of a finger, Joseph Campbell comes to mind as having plenty of Thesaurus-istical loafs to carve from.
King of Clubs can be ‘Knot so lucky Clover’, King of Hearts ‘In tha round Sugar Daddy’, King of Diamonds ‘Brain Drop from above’ and Queen of Hearts ‘Off with their heads!’ Relative awakening ‘Lost in Space’, Man #7 ‘Smokin my tires so you can’t see me.’
If you ‘think’ you don’t have to pay for your Astral Body, then whatever you get for free will be worth just that much:
to me, tomatoes that I have taking care of, carefully picked off and migrated the tomato horn worms from, composted and shaded during really hot days, somehow taste different than those that I can ‘freely sample’, willy nilly like at the farmer’s market…
So please, have fun, forget the Fellowship of Friends and remember something else, if you know what I mean.
______________________________
Hey Rhino Neal ~
Can you find the quote where I speak of Mahatma Coat?
A photograph is not a judgment or is it that the Fellowship of Friends no longer draws a distinction between a Negative Photograph and a Conscious Photograph?
Certainly the Fellowship of Friends has had plenty of party time to wiseacre up such a ‘logical’ justification to ‘merge the two distinctions into something ’shorter’, ’sequence like’, since, after all, there is this thing called ‘transformation of negativity’ and if we spin this enough one could say,
“Hey, yes it’s a negative photograph, but transform it and leave me out of it, I just build the cameras, what do I care how the photo is given, so long as it has a movie stars autograph on it, its tha play, its your ‘role of film’, develop it dude, be tha fixative…
Rhinos happen to be one of my favorite ‘beings’, second to Hippopotamuses, I love the way Hippos have those membranes in their nostrils, that close when they dive under water: can you imagine such a odd physics-structure diving, swimming around underwater? Wow, they are similar to bumble bees, who, according to ‘logical physics’ cannot fly, yet, they do, similar to this blog.
________________________________
P.S. Whalerider,
No thanks my friend, I do not wish to have a blog assigned role name tagged to my naked breast.
_________________________________
Love to you all.
133
Sort of like (actually exactly like) what’s happening in this country now.
105 WhaleRider
“defocus my intellect to grasp your meaning”. I have often remembered Gurdjieff’s enigmatic statement “imagination takes the place of a real function” in relation to this. It is kind of wierd, like trying to grab on to one of those squishy toys that squirt out of your hands as you try to grasp it. Then when you get it you don’t know what you got. A squishy toy, I imagine.
Deleted – posting names of people without their permission — ES
Unoanimo, would you be willing to share with us what you know about the astral body from direct, first-hand experience?
Not what you’ve been taught, but what you know from your own experience.
Many thanks.
In post # 88 No person writes
“What you ARE – is right here, always. Watching, aware, life itself. Mind drifts, memory blinks, thoughts and feelings come and go, imagination occur – in present awareness.
YOU cannot be absent, ever”
I think I have pointed this out previouslym to no person. Apparantly they have little experience in writing as such I provide a link
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
This presents the elements of logic.
I quote
“Circulus in demonstrando
This fallacy occurs if you assume as a premise the conclusion which you wish to reach. Often, the proposition is rephrased so that the fallacy appears to be a valid argument.
For example:
“Homosexuals must not be allowed to hold government office. Hence any government official who is revealed to be a homosexual will lose his job. Therefore homosexuals will do anything to hide their secret, and will be open to blackmail. Therefore homosexuals cannot be allowed to hold government office.”
Note that the argument is entirely circular; the premise is the same as the conclusion. An argument like the above has actually been cited as the reason for the British Secret Services’ official ban on homosexual employees.
Circular arguments are surprisingly common, unfortunately. If you’ve already reached a particular conclusion once, it’s easy to accidentally make it an assertion when explaining your reasoning to someone else.”
This clearly describes the lack of reasoning in your presentation. If you used the first person as in ” I think”, “I feel”, “In My Experience” then it would be a reasonable statement. To have a belief or experience does not mean you are stating it as a law for others. It does not even assume that one is right. Presenting yourself as another “Teacher” of revealed truth on this particular forum shows an almost total lack of external consideration in the sense of taking others into account. What that means is you are chosing a tough audience to announce your self as a new messenger of revealed truth. At least from my perspective I don’t see a group of present or former FOF members as being open to another who speaks as an anointed Messiah.
This actually conflicts with my own desire to be open to hearing other veiws and encourage change. When you speak in a challanging “Voice” (Tense- if there was a “One who knows tense” you would be using it”) It raises my hackles. There are more profitable ways of sharing what you believe is your understanding than repeating it over and over in such an aggressive and simultaniously defensive voice. Speaking in general I doubt many would deny you the right to your own understanding if you get to where you can allow the same right to others.
Wake up little suzy wake up #127
I walk in to my office, the light is shining. All is great. It’s time for dinner. However I glance at my cpu screen and read Arthur #116. I am puzzled. That had been such a clear simple quote. I decide to try to see it his way, from his possible perspective. A half hour layet, my dinner is cold and still there is only confusion. Of course being a good bit of a lunar as well I do understand that there is a passive and a negative element involved in the quote, but that doesn’t make anything a lunar horror. I give up. I apply resistance to the flowing electrical energy by flipping the light switch and off I go. All the while there were these negative “I”s nudging me like “Must be a lunar himself!” with a vibration of judgement and/or arogance and/or vanity in the intellectual center. Fortunately I notice that my mood is not as joyous as it was just before. “All is well!” Yeah! “All is really well, now, now!”
Thank you, Carmen, that was one hell of a drunk, my first weekend at Renaissance, when you half falling over advised me to “Remember yourself, now! Now! NOw! NOW! NNow! NOwwwwwww!
A question for Bruce.
Does your experience at the Blake cottage pre date Robert’s claim of crystillization in 1976?
Cyclops, please try to abide by the rules – ie. don’t post people’s names without their prior permission. I had to delete your post.
An explanation on the new system of moderation. People will be identified by their name, e-mail and IP address. Their first comment has to be moderated in order to appear on the blog (won’t be in real time), their subsequent posts will appear real time. For this reason there are some new comments in between those that appeared real-time. Re-reading the last 70 comments or so could be a good idea. Changing your name or e-mail address will mean that your first post will once again have to be moderated. No one has been blacklisted in the past two days, YAY!!!
Sorry Sheik i wasnt aware of the no name thing ill bear it in mind. all the best to you. In Blairitain.
146
If I remember correctly (and I might not) I think it was a bit after the supposed blessed event. I was living in a tent before that (or under a table at the lodge).
104 Kathryn F .thank you and yes….we are. good vibes to you .Cy
#134 Unoanimo
Some people have smoke-ray glasses.
112 KA
I hope you’ll post a link to it when you’re finished.
B
Re: Former Student #144 and No Person #88,
Forgive me for being a little dense, but I would like to wade through this a little more carefully.
As I understand the premise of Advaita (and from what I have read these ideas are at the base of all other esoteric traditions — I find them in buddhism, zen, chirstianity, Lao Tzu, the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, Walt Whitman….) our conception of ‘I’ is simply a bad habit. We consider mind activity to be integral to our being and identity, whereas they insist that identity cannot be something that comes and goes. So, any i, any manifestation, any thing that we could point to as being ‘me’, if it is ephemeral, it cannot be me. Yet I cannot say that I do not exist. Somebody or something has to be there in order for all this to occur. So what is in your (my) direct experience that is unchanging and ever present? Whatever that is, must be what I truly am. Anything else is changeable and impermanent.
To: ‘A Former Student’: do you see this approach as I’ve phrased it to be fatally flawed? Is there circular reasoning in the above? I am curious.
#135 A Former Student: I was only in FOF about two years.
Mostly out of California. The city where I joined it’s teaching house and students disbanded. Everybody went to different parts of California. The rumor at the time was that Robert decided there were not enough magnetic centers in the city.
I went to San Francisco it seems more than once. One time I was sent to a small city across the Oakland Bay bridge. I think it was called El Cerrito. I was there less than a week or two.
I’m trying to remember the sequence but cannot. I went by car, by train and by Grey Hound bus. Back and forth. Less than $200.00 would not go far in California even back then.
My time in San Francisco was not long weeks at the most.
I stayed at two different places. Lake street and 10th.
But, I sure did enjoy the corner of Market and Powell” “My kind of people ” maybe?
Renald #145: “Must be a lunar himself” . Judgement, arrogance and vanity. Exposed again. What about a little fear in essence? Chief feature? Fear or vanity?
In reply to #113:
My impression from RB’s story about his ‘accident’ was that it took place well before he met Bonita and ’started the school.’
Sheik –
Does the new moderation mean that anytime a new ip address posts, that comment will be buried somewhere behind the most currently read comments? How will we know to go back and find them?
Could it be possible to tell the new poster that they might want to re-submit their comment after moderation is finished, so that it will appear real-time?
Thanks! For everything!
Unoanimo
#95 “I’ll be that inconspicuous one with the samurai sword in near the far-right-back of the pet food section, you know the spot, in between the ice maker and the unisex bathroom. Just chillin, if you know what I mean.”
#134 “No thanks my friend, I do not wish to have a blog assigned role name tagged to my naked breast.”
You mean other than the role you pin to your own naked breast. Ever hear of a Sun dance? It’s not done for fun. It’s a choice we make for ourselves. But you are kinda squishy to hold…
Sometimes, I experience my higher centers on the sidelines of my mind like the understated beauty sitting against the wall at the dance all by herself because she will only join in if asked by a brave soul.
From Graduates:
“If you really imagine that there is no group-think going on here, on the magically liberated outside of the FOF, then you are still a cult member.”
“On the other hand maybe everyone is just bored with this. That’s it right, isn’t it? They are just bored?”
“Avoid unnecessary talk, speak realistically to the aim.”
***
Graduates, we are ALL part of a cult – the human cult.
“Group think”? Is this something unusual? Would you not expect to find it everywhere in society? Do you believe any one of us is exempt?
From your tone, I suspect you’re not helping promote that back-up blog. The fears you express create doubt that you would maintain a forum that is, as you describe: “uncensored (as long as on topic and not too offensive), no personality from the moderator, all sides of the issue are welcome, unmoderated…”
You clearly have an idea of how things SHOULD be, how our opinions SHOULD be presented to Fellowship of Friends members who are “on the fence” (as if they are the “target audience” here), and of what is appropriate or inappropriate.
Readers will simply vote with their keyboards.
By the way, what pseudonym did you previously post under? (It’s difficult to keep up with this cast of characters. Good thing we don’t go around “in life” changing our names alll the time. Oh, wait…we did.)
139 Unoanimo:
“Can you name any one person that can leave their body at will, anytime, any day, during any set of circumstances?
I can only name one ~ Meher Baba.”
Unoanimo, how the hell do you know what Meher Baba can do?
Many of your posts have a ‘know it all’ quality to them. And yes, I did know someone who ’said’ they could do this, but that would not be something I would quote, because it was just something I heard.
Reply to A former student (144):
No Person isn’t setting herself up as a teacher. She’s just describing what she sees. The subtle shift in perception that enables this kind of seeing has been described above a number of times. There’s nothing to it really. It doesn’t make you special in any way, or even different from how you were before. But you know certain truths to be real.
It’s shame that this kind of certainty “raises your hackles”, although it’s understandable after what we went through in the FoF. Many ex-FoFers want to have nothing to do with spirituality after leaving. Others continue on a spiritual path. Some find the answers they are looking for quite quickly. That’s what happened to No Person. Why should she pretend otherwise?
#157 WhaleRider
“Sometimes, I experience my higher centers on the sidelines of my mind like the understated beauty sitting against the wall at the dance all by herself because she will only join if asked by a brave soul.”
Pretty.
Tim Campion 158
“Graduates, we are ALL part of a cult – the human cult.”
*****************
Wrong.
“Psychology refers to people, to men, to human beings. What psychology (he emphasized the word) can there be in relation to machines? Mechanics, not psychology, is necessary for the study of machines. That is why we begin with mechanics. It is a very long way yet to psychology.” –G. I. Gurdjieff
*
There is no universal human cult because there is no universal human psychology. The so-called human cult (the collective social order of organized religious, commercial and military cooperation) consists of sleeping humans, it would not be correct to call it a cult anymore than it would be correct to call a beehive a cult.
*
“Take for instance the being of a mineral and of a plant. It is a different being. The being of a plant and of an animal is again a different being. The being of an animal and of a man is a different being. But the being of two people can differ from one another more than the being of a mineral and of an animal. This is exactly what people do not understand.” -Gurdjieff
Leaving the mainstream of the inaccurately described “cult” of involuntary human busywork requires a development that is not generally natural or inherent, it requires the development of something capable of recognizing itself outside of the stimulus-response activity of imitating the surrounding population. There are small groups of human creatures that imagine that they have done such a thing, that they have removed themselves from the influence of the human beehive, when in fact they simply reduce the field of their involuntary imitation down to the level of a smaller organization. The problem with groups of people leaving the mainstream to promote their own sense of reality is that such a movement almost always self-selects as the participants those that are substandard and dysfunctional when it comes to normal mainstream functioning in the first place, so that this new beehive is an even more distorted entity than the mainstream. If the larger organism is motivated by imaginary incentives (happiness in life and after death) then these pocketsize cult motivations tend to be even more extreme in their invention of meanings behind their actions.
But this is just a surface beginning to explain how shallow, rambling and thoughtless your apparent sense of reality is, your “argument” (against the tone of my various thoughts) is really little more than a statement cloaked in scattered associative language that declares: “I don’t like you. You are bothering me.” Next time just say so and leave the “rational analysis” of cause-and-effect to the rational.
wake up little suzy wake up #159
What are you using for bait? Woms?
I tried dem a few days ago, and I caught me a whopper!
I leave my body every night. It’s always been there when I got back, thank the good lord. Well almost always. One night I got me one hell of a shock when I went to the wrong room and slipped into my mother-in-law’s body.
Lucky for me was gone! Thank the good lord! My, my, that there ‘preciation feels great!
Speakin’ o’ shocks, was jes reasin’ about RB havin’ an accident and couldn’t for the life of me remember no accident, then the penny dropped. Oh! THAT RB!
Since the Michael material is being discussed, I thought to mention that I also found it helpful back a decade or so ago.
Especially in the early years of leaving FoF I was alert to explanations for what had happened to me there, which as we can see from the outpouring here , cries to be understood and integrated.
I am again grateful to have this forum. It reminds me of how a certain work of art or author sometimes captures my attention — a light comes on through that medium. The window generally is time limited, so I want to make the most of it while it lasts. I look, I read, I listen, all rather voraciously. Same here with the blog. ( Although I must say I am glad to have a quasi-moderator back, the tone without ES was turning repellent to me).
I realized I wanted to make a list of ‘things I need to clear,’ to get out of my system, to integrate more fully, related to FoF days. As many have said so well, this virtual community is providing an atmosphere of potent support, a support that is needed in order to be seen, acknowledged, held in understanding. The intensity, the presence simply, of those involved with this exchange seems to promote a kind of alchemy, a missing and apparently necessary ingredient for some of us to complete the ‘digestion’ of the huge experience of our involvement in this closed, high-intensity, high-demand group — one of the great love affairs of our lives for some of us.
Here are a few organizing ideas I found helpful — most requiring a suspension of my disbelief in the irrational and psychic worlds:
From the Michael material, there is the concept of needing to spend a lifetime ’serving a corrupt master’ to master the lessons learned in such an environment. I appreciate the lifting out of blame & judgement such a perspective offers.
Then, the idea that ‘Old Kings’ appeared on earth in their next to last lifetime to gather their past subjects around them so that all could work out their mutual karma. Some light on the importance of community felt by so many.
From there I thought — okay, service to a corrupt old king, what are the lessons learned there from? Plenty.
An idea from Aurobindo: Put forth as one of the perils of the spiritual path for advanced practitioners: the peril of getting stuck in the “Intermediate Realm” (not quite enlightened). I do not have the reference at hand, but the description of the behavior described seemed to fit RB. He definitely had a great magnetism going for him — some access to “higher spiritual worlds.” However, the problems of inflation and shadow (my poor paraphrasing) tend toward misuse of these finer energies and also being prey to being used by dark astral entities (not sure I would subscribe to that these days, a while back, it helped).
The idea of the ‘Black Magician’, perhaps mentioned here in the blog, I cannot recall, also resonated as a plausible explanation for the combination of light and dark, apparent good and evil mixed up with RB and in the FoF atmosphere.
____________________
On another note, I am unhappy about attacks not only on other former Fofers, but on some people still in FoF that I remember and consider friends. Linda T, in particular seems to be a great irritant to a number posting here. I think of Linda as a quirky, brilliant, dear friend and it pains me to hear her maligned.
There are many others I believe are still involved with Fof with whom I also feel a close bond — Anthony & Patricia G, Ethan, Phillipe & Judith, Hans H. come immediately to mind. And when I hear of the NY students — Benjamin, Kevin, Helaine have been mentioned here — my heart melts a little. I can feel a deep desire for their well-being.
As I have stated before, I don’t understand why someone needs to remain in an environment that came to be oppressive to me, from which I was grateful to escape.
If anything, I feel compassion for their predicament and pray that their inner guidance knows what they most need and will guide them appropriately.
I do appreciate that the record of the blog exists for anyone currently in FoF who feels called to reach in this direction for insight or perspective on their situation. For those who are not looking, I am not aware of any desire to sway them. To me that is a fruitless enterprise. They do, however, deserve, I believe respect for what they are going through.
Thank you for reading,
Sandra
Thanks Sandra.
To nobody in particular but continuing with Renald’s response to mine:
I do have a lot of experience with being out of my body but I don’t mention it much to other people, because those are my experiences.
I am however grateful for them because they have taught me not to fear death and to verify that something does exist apart from the body, and that there is no real death, just a transition of some kind. It’s hard to explain. I don’t have names for it. I just know for myself it’s true.
I also believe that for each person it’s a really different experience. Trying to share experiences in this realm just makes it more confusing. I guess we create what we want in and out of our bodies and whatever your creation is, is yours alone. It’s truly hard to share something like that and have someone else understand what you have experienced.
I hope this makes sense. Words are not really my thing. For a long time I just read this blog and didn’t participate much but lately I thought it might be fun to become a little bit more active.
I think everyone has something worth saying, including me.
And if I think it can help someone understand something I will share it. Otherwise, I’m not much for arguing. I get enough of that with my teenage son! NO FUN!
Graduates # 106
I would appreciate if you could please explain why comparisons with nazi thought bother you so much. For me they work quite well, because Nazism is one of the most obvious examples of how normal people can be manipulated into completely giving up the their personal conscience in exchange for a servitude to someone perceived as “higher”. One of the most important books on the subject of nazi group thinking is “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, by Hannah Arendt. I am quoting Wikipedia:
Arendt takes Eichmann’s court testimony and the historical evidence available, and makes several compelling observations about Eichmann:
- Eichmann stated himself in court that he had always tried to abide by Kant’s categorical imperative (as discussed directly on pp. 135-137). She argues that Eichmann had essentially taken the wrong lesson from Kant: Eichmann had not recognized the “Golden Rule” and principle of reciprocity implicit in the categorical imperative, but had only understood the concept of one man’s actions coinciding with general law. Eichmann attempted to follow the spirit of the laws he carried out, as if the legislator himself would approve. In Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative, the legislator is the moral self, and all men are legislators; in Eichmann’s formulation, the legislator was Adolf Hitler. Eichmann claimed this changed when he was charged with carrying out the Final Solution, at which point Arendt claims “he had ceased to live according to Kantian principles, that he had known it, and that he had consoled himself with the thoughts that he no longer ‘was master of his own deeds,’ that he was unable ‘to change anything’ (p. 136)….
- Eichmann’s inability to think for himself was exemplified by his consistent use of “stock phrases and self-invented clichés.” This “officialese” (Amtssprache) demonstrated his unrealistic worldview and crippling lack of communication skills.
- Eichmann, in his peripheral role at the Wannsee Conference (so Arendt argued), witnessed the rank-and-file of the German civil service heartily endorse Reinhardt Heydrich’s program for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe. Upon seeing members of “respectable society” endorsing Hitler’s most reprehensible crime, and enthusiastically participating in the planning of the solution, Eichmann felt that his moral responsibility was relaxed, as if he were “Pontius Pilate”.
- During his imprisonment before his trial, the Israeli government sent no less than six psychologists to examine Eichmann. Not only did these doctors find no trace of mental illness, but they also found no evidence of abnormal personality whatsoever. One doctor remarked that his overall attitude towards other people, especially his family and friends, was “highly desirable,” while another remarked that the only unusual trait Eichmann displayed was being more “normal” in his habits and speech than the average person.
I think that very similar “compelling observations” could be made when looking at Girard and other students’ thinking and behaviour. And I say this not with the intent to diminish them, but to try convey what I now, like many others, have come to perceive. I am not saying that they necessarily would go as far as locking “life people” inside cattle trains and send them to extermination, but it is possible that they may not actually lift a finger to help them, if it ever comes to that…
We are so used to look at nazi Germany as the ultimate incarnation of evil that we fail to grasp the main point of this cautionary tale: those same thought mechanisms are potentially at work in every human being, and these processes constantly take place, on various scales, throughout history and throughout the world. And they are definitely at work inside the FOF, regardless of how “good” and “normal” the people involved may be. I used to picture myself as good and normal, but now I am more cautious with my own self image. Actually I try not to have one, which makes it easier to spot the bad and the weird sides when they show up.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”, as you American friends well know.
I think the following is something everyone owes it to themselves to be informed about.
With love and hope
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2103350,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
then try to apply it to your own lives!
Sandra C: Thanks for the heart message.
18,258 hits in 7 days!
Laura 167
Graduates # 106
I would appreciate if you could please explain why comparisons with nazi thought bother you so much.
**************
It is not realistic and rather than promote some useful understanding about the FOF cult and the experience of being in it such statements further distort an outlook that was already distorted when those that were participants believed they were in heaven. You want to trade a belief that you were in heaven for a belief that you were in something equivalent to the Nazis. You want to remain extremely important. You were in a crappy little cult that will dry up and fade away, this is how you spent some years of your life. Hard to accept, but that is the fact. People that were part of the murderous Nazis were at least a significant part of history, we are barely a footnote.
Sandra (#164),
What a beautiful post, thanks for getting out what I couldn’t. Damn it, I still admire that rascal Robert for what he gets away with.
Got to say I was a little surprised and uncomfortable with you naming names, even first names…then I saw my fear was stupid.
So to the people you mention, I’ll add Michael and Nicholas, they were both dear friends of mine and I think of them often. They both helped me and let me see things. I use their ‘I’s, when appropriate. Wish them the best.
Also going to start my spiritual autobiography. I won’t post it here but will leave links.
Thanks again Sandra,
walter.tanner@gmail.com
164
Made me start to think about the people I love who are still in. Sort of gives one a painful pang.
For those interested, “Fellowship of Friends Timeline, January 1970 – January 1974″ is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_608
Visit Veronicapoe’s bookmarks:
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/Veronicapoe
Dear former student (#144) – you seem to be picking at my english skills. It’s not my native language, which is Russian. I do the best I can to express what I feel and observe. I actually can write very nicely in Russian! It’s not tension you see – it’s mostly foreign language… Can you express yourself fluently and beautifully in other language, have you ever tried?
I said many times before that what I try to express is honest EXPERIENCE, not some intellectual point of view. May be I don’t mention this in every post.
Unfortunately you are taking something completely IMPERSONAl very personally, but I can’t convince you otherwise. If we would meet face to face you may have a different opinion. On the blog all one sees is printed words, and then imagination does the rest.
I have no intention to teach, or lead, in fact half of my statements denounce the whole elevated position of teaching and teacher-student hierarchy! I think what Robert is doing by putting himself above others is criminal. All it does is create a cult of a person. He must be doing this out of misunderstanding and ignorance, otherwise it wouldn’t happen.
I am trying to say that we are completely, totally EQUAL in what we really are in our nature – conscious awareness. All it took for me to realize this was an honest inquiry with the help of John Wheeler’s pointers. It was a shift in perception, not an “achievement” through efforts. Ever since life has completely changed internally – to the best! I keep sharing this, because it is simplicity itself, and it liberates tremendously, and it’s not “mine” or “anyone’s”. It totally frees you from this imaginary concept of yourself, that each of us has and carries around, thinking this is who we are. This concept causes so much suffering! And it’s all in the head.
This message is the absolute best message I can ever offer to friends and I love sharing this. I think the only way it sinks is by ” repeating it over and over”! Because we have such a developed thick imaginary picture of who we are, and couple brief notes wouldn’t do it, they’ll bounce right off. But one day you may just sit quietly and look within: “Who the heck am I after all? Am I really this little “me” in the mind?”
This message does resonate with people, not with everyone but with quite a few, I know it for a fact. And more people these days (for some unknown cosmic reasons) seem to come to this stunning and simple realization – that we are not this imaginary guy in the head who suffers and complains, but what we are is so infinitely more, so alive, so free, so full of love, ever-present and nameless awareness itself.
No one can teach you this – because you already have it inside, just like I do, like anyone does. We all are born like this, and then – forget when mind takes over. Just look at babies! They are pure being with no imaginary suffering. Our mind then creates an identity around our name and sex and we start believing that we are this limited poor person with problems. I see now that we are not! It’s all been in the head – the whole life of “me”! And there is so much joy in seeing what we truly are and sharing this.
This message is not mine. It is so impersonal. I don’t even sign my name under it – not out of fear! And these words are like a pointing finger. Don’t focus on it, try to see what the words are saying. It may suddenly create a shift in perception, very liberating shift. You’ll laugh. But so far you just been blaming the delivery – sorry I express it the best I can with my limited language resources. Spare the messenger…
Warm hug.
David, 153, you said it so well. It’s exactly that – there is simple “feeling” of being no matter what occurs on the surface. It’s not really a “thing” to observe, it’s more like observ-ing.
“Yet I cannot say that I do not exist. Somebody or something has to be there in order for all this to occur.” – Exactly.
It is this subtle backround of awareness, being there, looking out. Like a canvas that holds all the paints of the painting. Undeniable. And ON it occur other changing things like thoughts (including self-centered thoughts) , feelings, states, objects, landscapes, people… It’s like a broth in the soup – holds all the pieces that add all the color and flavor, yet is transparent and neutral itself.
The background of awareness is so close and so habitual… It’s really what doesn’t go away. You can admit it right now, get a feeling of it, acknowledge that there is awareness, aliveness, sense of being, consciousness. It’s subtle, simple. It’s always there, just like heartbeat or breathing. We simply OVER-LOOK it.
Sandra 164
What a wonderful and healing message, thanks. Got me to think about the people still “in.”
Laura 167
I really enjoyed this post and respected the thought that went into it. The decades of trying to deny the “shadow” or “dark” quality that seems instrinsic leads to all sorts of mischief, so naming it is revelatory.
JoelF
Thanks Bruce
I get confused about dates. The first time I lived at The Farm it was called Mt. Carmel. I ended that octave when the large expansion occured in 1976 and I moved to Phoenix. The first 6 months I lived at the Farm I was on unemploynent sleeping on the Lincoln Lodge floor. Then I fell ill and was put on salary and assigned to be M’Aitre’D. I lived in a tent with John Graham. I think the communitee center was built about this time. After about a year and a half in Phoenix and Newport Beach I returned to renaissance. So that would be about 1977 or 78, I was on salary and lived in the smallest and oldest silver egg. I had a roomate whose name I can’t remember who was young blond good looking and appeared eager to be friends with Robert and spend time at the Cottage.
I believe it was at this time the addition to the Blake Cottage was completed and the print shop built. As I said before in retrospect I find it odd that it simply never occured to me to tell Robert I knew how to set type.
This is when the Renaissance Journal was printed.
Please pardon the use of names Sheik if this is moderated OK. This blog has caused memories to surface. I wonder what happened to Ken and Susan Hale. They were early students. Ken was a martial. He owned the FOF’s first tracktor a Case Backhoe which I learned to use. Also John Graham
178
Ken and Shannon are good buds. They are well with two magnificent daughters. Just had dinner with them two days ago, and Susan was there as well. What great people. Shannon used to be Aline for awhile.
I know the scenario you are describing. Pretty interesting. Ah yes, Mt. Carmel.
love ya man.
Incidentally, if you want to fall in love with someone from the wrong side of the tracks: the new Amy Winehouse cd.
Sometimes one just needs a diversion.
#167 Laura, I really appreciate your view point … especially as a german in america (where most don’t realize how close to fashism they are).
Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in germany, I and my generation spent a lot of time to assure no old fascism was able to pop up again.
And I know most of you will put aside any comparison between Nazi germany and the fof. And yes its a different scale, but thats not the point.
Take it on a smaller scale, how does my story reflect my grand uncles story? One grand uncle was in the SS and became the major of Baden-Baden in the 40’s and the other had a higher level Waffen SS job as well.
I had nothing but pity for them until i was in my 30s and in the fellowship, and one of them published a book about his experience in Nazi Germany.
And then I noticed the paralells. We both didn’t quite know what to do with this one precious life and he asked his god and I asked my god for an answer. He found the Nazis, which he describes as a community to awaken the world, I found the fellowship, presence and awakening. He says he didn’t know there where bad things happening ( only rumors ) well I said the same. When it ended , they lost everything, friends, jobs and believes.
And we both were lucky, having learned enough practical skills in our cults to succeed in the world. But he, this 80+year old man, was still digesting this one experience, this few years in his twenties.
thats what we are doing here i guess , so I don’t have to write a book later on.
I hope I didn’t offend anyone. For those looking for a more conservative diversion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qooPczldqMo&mode=related&search=
Dear no person
post #175 was very eloquent and I apologize if I was harsh in my statement.
Still your statements do not resonate with me. If it is your truth that is all well and good .
“I know it for a fact. And more people these days (for some unknown cosmic reasons) seem to come to this stunning and simple realization – that we are not this imaginary guy in the head who suffers and complains, but what we are is so infinitely more, so alive, so free, so full of love, ever-present and nameless awareness itself.”
This means nothing at all to me so. I mean it sounds wonderful and if it is your experience wonderful. My truth is process. This is what I know and what my experience indicates. I have had very intense spiritual or psychological experiences. I have experienced what I believe are higher centers. These experiences have left both intense memories and imagination. The lower cannot contain the higher. These experiences have contributed to my growth and understanding but I do not accept all my visions as fact. One time I had an intense experience in which over a period of days and weeks I came to an emotional crescendo of realization that we are the Angels. That In each of us is that spark of divine life. For a brief moment I experienced the reality of the emanation of the creative force and the struggle to return. This is all fine and good. These states were also accompanied with other thoughts I know were magical thinking. or If they had any real basis I could not absorb them.
If these were indeed experiences of being awake then what I have gained is that I now know more deeply than exer that I am asleep. Over time I shed layers and each time I arrive at myself contradictory, peevish, negative just struggling along. Nothing has taken the place of time and effort at developing being. No matter that I may think I’ve learned a lesson I have to learn it again.
The one single weakest aspect I have observed of what otherwise are positive experiences is a form of higher imagination which is what I believe Robert suffered from and is very common in the contemporary spiritualityu community. In this form of imagination one imagines that because one did genuinely experience awakening one is awake. That Robert never spoke of this causes me to question if he ever did become man #5. he may have done what so many others of the spiritual community have done. Having had real experiences They See these spiritual experiences as a way to make money. So they write books, give work shops and lecture or start a 4th way school ( do you know there is a so called 4th way school called The Way Fourth founded by a divine teacher named Robert)
I think we need to re evaluate what the level of being of a man #4 is. One aspect is that there is a broader spectrum of possibility in man # 4 than the other degree’s. Man # 4 begins with mechanical man with the possibility of development and ends with a conscious man. What does this mean. How often do higher centers need to function to be officially conscious? I ask this sincerely what do others think. Is one hour a day enough? two hours? Three hours? at what point does the experience accumulate enough that their is a change in being?
Is the experience of higher centers a normal result of efforts to self remember. I believe so. I further believe that Robert failed to be real clear on the qualities of the seven degree’s of self remembering because he never knew them. This should be basic information that a man number 4 can give a man #4. What are the degree of self remembering? What are the notes of the octave in developing deputy steward and steward? I only rememberRobert giving generalities when questioned on these areas. Did I miss something? Did later members get more clear indications?
So far I question the quality of some aspects of the teaching after I left. Of course 25 vyears is a long time but I think the time I spent in the FOF is the defining experience is my life.I have been clear ,I hope, in my attitude about Robert’s claims of being a divine being forced by the God’s to have Oral sex with a myriad of youthful partners. Some aspects of the growth of the FOF seem wonderful other questionable. I was fortunate to spend time with Robert and many of the first generation of students. Then as now I am finding that although what attracted me to the FOF was the System and information what was truly valuable was the people I met
.This is as true of this blog and those who take the time to write. For me this blog has a transforming power.
I was as naive devotee to MY Teacher and his divinity as anyone.
Does anyone ever recall the line From either Gurdjieff or Ouspensky on seeking a teacher. It was similar to ” the lower the being of the student the higher they demand their teacher be until they expect Jesus Christ themselves to be their teacher”
Thank you all.
Just one more then I’ll shut up. Recorded in my town, Nevada City. Some of my buds are playing in this. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qclI7Uex5RI
rock and roll.
In reply to David post #153
This agree’s with my understanding so it may well be semantics as no name explained they are not native English speakers. It is an inherent limitation of the internet that what we are able to communicate it limited by whatever writing skills we have. I am sensitive to certain uses of language. One is the use of the plural for what must be a personal experience.
In my early days as a member probably in 1974 Stella Wirk once explained observing I to me . As best I can recall she said that the part that could observe the intellectual center, the moving center , the instinctive center that I could imagine it as a hole in the back of my head and peeking in.
So, yes to me it is and has beem for many years obvious that if I can observe 4 functions there must be something that is not of any of the functions.
A sonnet William Shakespeare
VIII.
Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,
Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: ‘thou single wilt prove none.’
Cyclops 99
Budaliget 1943 = http://www.TalkingWithAngels.com
#182 Michael
“(where most don’t realize how close to fashism they are)”
Close?!
Old Fish In The Sea 13
“The efforts of trying to be present, free from feminine dominance, and in good householder eventually lead one to see that supporting Robert’s ways is more denying force than 3rd force.”
Ralph H 138
“In the psychological terms of his day he pretty well describes the roll of “feminine dominance” and the strength of the “instictive center” in the decision making process.”
unoanimo 139
“All this would be considered ‘feminine dominance’ yes?”
*********************
Feminine Dominance:
http://www.geocities.com/gwgoodwin/four2002.html
#184 A former student
Here is a suggestion (if I can be so arrogant. Hey, it never stopped me before) of something I tried with interesting results.
For a month or so stop any effort to self-remember or divide attention or “take in impressions” or not express negative emotions or anything like that. Instead, whenever you can think of it just return to a sensing of your common presence. No matter what particular “state” you might be experiencing, howerver contracted or expanded.
Of course, it is obvious I am making a bunch of assumptions here. This is what came to my mind while reading your posts.
I have to say that I am really glad with the way that the blog is shaping out.
Whalerider (157) and Bruce (168): Am I right to believe that you know a bit more about me than I thought?
Since your IP address changes with each new connection to the internet a change in IP address will not mean that your comment will be moderated. A change in name and/or e-mail will. The only use that the IP address has for me is that I am able to blacklist people if they force me to by spamming or disrupting the discussion.
#171 wake up little suzy wake up
18258 hits in 7 days!
That’s not so much. Remember 14,000 of them were Bruce.
188.Shelley. M. Thanks for the Ref, it’ll be fun looking over that again after so many years. good luck Cy.
wake up little suzy wake up #166:
I knew an elderly woman who has sinced past on and into a hole in the ground.
She was born in 1901 in the country. I think she said she went to the 7th grade.
She was a simple woman. And, she had a Mother Theresa
quality about people. She treated everybody with respect.
Before I became interested in all the “new age’ phenomena, I happened to ask her a question about a subject that I had seen in a magazine.
She said, “That happened to me once. It seemed like I floated up to this place. (she described the setting) And a woman and man were there to meet me. The man never spoke, but the woman talked with me”
I cannot remember all the little details, but she remembered her experience clearly. This woman was not fluent in English her father’s language nor Spanish her mother’s language.
But, It came to a point in her story that she said, “they spoke to me in Hebrew”. I asked, “how do you know it was Hebrew?
“Have you heard Hebrew before”?
She said, ” no but I understood what they were telling me and it was in Hebrew”.
To Joe Average: [#14] Part 1
(Also Former Student [#184] Part 2 is pretty good)
Thanks for your posts and the good points you have raised.
Fundamentally, how can one expect to learn what Consciousness really is from a Teacher who has avoided developing his own Conscience? A man whose crystallization of Higher Bodies in himself may not necessarily include realization of the (Universal) Self: a realization which demands negation of all other personalities and desires, even the desire to have a “Teacher personality”. Can this be true? How to look? How to understand? How to determine?
Thus, in this blog we deviate from the crux of the problem if we digress into the sometimes lurid details of Robert Burton’s sex life, dominance, greed or vanity, which are but mere signposts of that lack of realization. This big tedious discussion is great for providing evidence of those signposts, but by now, we seem to have better things to do with our time here. Maybe this discussion can go further as we dig deeper into our own Selves? Thus our questions need to revolve more around what may be the spiritual signposts of Robert Burton’s lack of Conscious development? A subtle spiritual question, difficult to attempt to answer. But can’t we try?
For starters, and to cover the main objections as far as I can see them, let’s say that for any student I know (or my own “I’s”) we may wish to counter the whole “validity of the Fellowship of Friends as a Conscious School” discussion with such responses as: “ah, but, I have experienced higher states in his presence”, or “in the presence of other students”, or also “through what I felt to be a C Influence play”. Fair enough and true enough. That is precisely what keeps this merry-go-round spinning: the real work that does occur in and between sincere students trying to be present to their own life, the joy of our companionship, the years of payment and shared commitment, the real Presence created by 50, 100, or 200 of us gathered in one room focussed on being Present – yet guided by a man who may have crystallized in such a way that it allows his Nine of Hearts to pump out esoteric truth, mixed with poetry, images, and wiseacreaing, entertaining and inspiring to us all. A man who has hypnotized himself – and us – into believing that all he does, he does for our own spiritual good, as it is an expression in him of Influence C. In addition, the real effort in each student, when faced with it (because not all are), to transform the behavioural contradictions which regularly occur here; inherent in the fabric of Robert Burton’s expression of the Fourth Way. This is the true sustenance of our Fellowship. A School atmosphere, containing three lines of work, possessed of such fine and rarified hydrogens that one would indeed need to be a rather dull being to not have some of that lovely stuff rub off inside.
So, how to cut through all of these “states” to arrive at some semblance of spiritual truth? Remember first, the states, the higher understandings you have experienced here are real, they belong to You, to who You really are, no one can take them away from You, no one can talk You out of them, as they exist outside of space and time, thus also, they exist outside of the boundaries of the Fellowship of Friends, boundaries that are certainly no firmer than that of the physical body’s upon it’s death dissolution. It may even be possible to say, that if so many readers respond with “yes”, the states that have been produced here are real, then also the Fellowship of Friends may be a real School of Consciousness, yet guided by a man who is simply not as Conscious as he and we have imagined him to be. Can we separate the School from the Teacher? It seems that we must. Thus the issue then devolves to the “validity of Robert Burton as a (not so) fully realized Conscious Being.” Can we try?
To my mind, the place to observe our own School’s (and thus our Teacher’s) spiritual immaturity is in our “myths”, myths that come from Robert Burton’s interpretation of the Fourth Way. They surface here and there on this blog, but I’ll try to consolidate them now:
• We, as members of this School, are the only ones on the planet who are gifted to know about Self-Remembering
• The 80 billion other people on the planet are sleeping machines, doomed, without Self-Remembering, to a double death
• Former students have thrown away their one chance in this lifetime to do something “conscious” with their life
• Empathizing with the suffering of others can be Feminine Dominance, and is to be avoided
• Influence C consists, among other things, of 44 angels who are dedicated to working with individual students to insure their “awakening” over the course of 9 lifetimes
• The Lower Self is actively against Self-Remembering, and to be avoided as best as one can
• All critical observations of the School or Teacher can be seen as examples of the Lower Self gaining precedence over one’s Work
• Awakening occurs when an individual has accumulated enough Hydrogen 12 to become saturated, thereby enabling crystallization of Higher Centers
• The Sequence has the power to awaken us if only we can do it passionately and often enough
Could it be that the formatory understanding and application of these same “myths” has lead to our current spiritual malaise? Each point, needs to be understood with relativity to appreciate it’s own merit or de-. Thus, the contemplation of these same precepts from other recognized spiritual Masters may be able to reveal the depth of the misunderstanding guiding our School. It is not my aim now to counter each point with quotations from others. Let someone else do that? But let’s do it? Here, or on your own. Dig. Probe. Question. BE. Here is the challenge, as a School, can we grow up? Can we use the knowledge from other Schools to correct the course of our own?
Arthur I said:
#109: “I suffered constant anxiety and cannot believe I was so frozen in place and did not move on sooner”
You said :
Sounds Lunar also. It’s a horror while you are going through it.
Interesting you are saying this is lunar, and not having a shred of it (well maybe just 5%), I think it had to do with my inability to speak up for myself and to tell truth aloud even if it meant to step on someone toes! But in the fof there was a reason for every suffering, everything was processed with the fof brain!
About the medical bills dear Arthur, one time my sister in law told me I should not worry if my bills were paid by the state or county.
She said is the tax money being used, that’s money from god to you. Do not feel bad!
I believed her!
You also told us a nice story about Richard Fazio giving you a bucket with squeegee to wash windows, was he the hairdresser? (Focazio?)
Unoanimo:
thank you for your post in response to mine.
I can feel your support and warmth.
But I have to be honest with you, I do not understand everything you say, but your words felt good.
I am not from this country originally, that is why I do not catch on everything you say. I have also lost my ability to write fluently in my native language and am not as a good writer as I would like to be.
In fact many times I read here and I just feel emotions!
I sit down and try to reply: and nothing comes out easy and that makes sense.
Also true that sometimes I feel I have to watch over my shoulder here as I write, there are some pretty quick and fierce bloggers here…
But I come here everyday, this is a great opportunity to digest the big fof meal…
A lot of memories are coming back…and this is so beautiful: I am remembering my life!
Vera-mente #197: The Richard I knew worked at an up-scale hair salon and also waited tables. I dont know where he came from but I believe he went back to California. I wanted to say he was Venus/Mercury, but I’ll just say he was active.
That day he was ironing his clothes he was preparing for his waiter’s job.
And dont feel bad about language abilities. Most of the time I dont have a clue what anybody is saying. I just read and let the one word or one phrase or one paragraph and even a whole post instruct me.
My philosophy is rather simple. Education begins at you first breath and ends in this life with your last. We cant learn everything nor do we need to.
I believe a Fourth Way theory states that we are here to remember what we have forgotten.
A Former Student # 187
“Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: ‘thou single wilt prove none.’ ”
Beautiful!
I of course should have listed Shakespeare with the other teachers of non-duality.
Many thanks.
Re: #118 Graduates:
“Is your memory really so pathetically one-dimensional that it seemed to you that everyone was of a single mind in the Fellowship? You lie even to yourself. Everyone I met was entirely different than everyone else and many of them were highly critical of the Fellowship. There were some dumb church-like lackluster people, but more were bright as hell and about as under-the-thumb as gypsies.”
You must have been in a different Fellowship than I was. I have never been with a group of people who were such conformists. Most Fellowship students are like parrots.
In my previous post #118 should be #122.
the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion 193
Since your IP address changes with each new connection to the internet a change in IP address will not mean that your comment will be moderated. A change in name and/or e-mail will. The only use that the IP address has for me is that I am able to blacklist people if they force me to by spamming or disrupting the discussion.
****************
The problem with this plan is that in some cases people are going to be using the same ISP and their IP address is going to begin with same numbers, so that if you ban one then you will ban the others using that same provider.
Graduates 172
Thank you for your answer. I am under the impression, though, that you misinterpreted my post. In the hope of creating better communication, I am going to reformulate my point in a more personal way.
I never thought I was in heaven while in the FOF, actually I was always aware of the weirdness of some of its beliefs. I was raised by atheist parents, who instilled me with a strong suspicion of all religions, superstitions, predictions and unverifiabe claims. What attracted me, like so many others, to the 4th way, is its emphasis on practical work and personal verification.
When I joined the FOF I was 22, and so happy to have found a group of similarly minded people to work with. In the center where I had joined, meetings dealt with the practical aspects of the work, and students would talk about their daily observations and struggles. This sharing process was very useful to me at the time, and I still can remember and appreciate many of the insights I gained through it.
When I moved to Renaissance, two years later, I was surprised by how seriously some older students talked (or should I say wiseacred?) about the fall of California (remember the “peak of the pain?”), or the fact that angels were going magically protect the property from Armageddon (I remember something about the winery being used as a nuclear shelter), or about Gorbachev’s birthmark on his forehead signifying the URSS was going to be the first to be hit by nuclear bombs, and many other strange ideas most of you are very familiar with. I could never really get into all that. Still, I loved the work, the place and many of the people in it, so I kept going for another eight years, during which I tried to keep my mind open and separate the wheat from the chaff.
When you say, “you were in a crappy little cult that will dry up and fade away, this is how you spent some years of your life”, and “we are barely a footnote”, I couldn’t agree with you more. I am actually very thankful for having being spared (so far) the opportunity to participate in big scale carnage of historic proportions.
Still, it seems to me realistic to point out how any human who has given up personal responsibility for his own beliefs and actions, and surrendered his/her will to a powerful authoritarian figure, can end up committing mistakes which he/she later may come to deeply regret, when one is finally able to reconnect with one’s personal conscience.
The “obedient and compliant” attitude of the majority of the people is what ultimately allows any form of authoritarian control (religious or political to me it’s the same), to create such distruction. Obedience and compliance are taking place in Isis as we speak. People trusting their leader instead of their own inner voice. People renouncing to apply critical thinking and willing to believe any old nonsense. People holding on to a sense of belonging while at the same time creating fictitious enemies. People putting labels on other humans to avoid looking at them as equals. People leading secret lives for fear of being rejected. People trying to conform to a mold and being encouraged to avoid self expression. It does not matter if the external manifestations are not on the level of mass murder, the point being: inner corruption is a way of life in the FOF, and the ability to see this process and reverse it is crucial for everyone involved.
You can definitely utilize less dramatic examples of this process, it’s up to you. For me, the Nazi Germany comparisons hit close to home. Being Italian, I have always wondered what attracted my fellow countrymen to Mussolini. Now I can say I have some firsthand experience of what it means to just “trust the big man” who is supposedly going to rid us of all our troubles. Not such a good idea, after all.
Thanks again for all the great posts, people. I have to say I really dig unoanimo’s posts. I love taking a ride on his scratchy back while he freely roams across the snowy peaks and secret valleys of our common language. When I manage to hold on during the bumpy ride, there’s quite a landscape to be seen.
Vera.mente 197, I agree with you: it’s beautiful to feel a new connection with one’s past, memories resurface, new insights are gained, we come to look at our past history in the light of our present understanding. That this is happening to us collectively is truly a gift.
Laura 202
I have zero argument with what you say, you put it perfectly. One point though:
“The “obedient and compliant” attitude of the majority of the people is what ultimately allows any form of authoritarian control (religious or political to me it’s the same), to create such distruction. Obedience and compliance are taking place in Isis as we speak. People trusting their leader instead of their own inner voice. People renouncing to apply critical thinking and willing to believe any old nonsense. People holding on to a sense of belonging while at the same time creating fictitious enemies. People putting labels on other humans to avoid looking at them as equals. People leading secret lives for fear of being rejected. People trying to conform to a mold and being encouraged to avoid self expression. It does not matter if the external manifestations are not on the level of mass murder, the point being: inner corruption is a way of life in the FOF, and the ability to see this process and reverse it is crucial for everyone involved.”
*******************
You could apply what you are saying to almost any workplace environment, people twist themselves in order to be seen as cooperative and they are motivated by personal ambition. For the sake of some recognition people are willing to accept any degree of corruption or distortion of “reality.”
203 Graduates
Well said, graduates. I see our friendship is making progress. In fact lately I have found myself unable to work for long periods of time in any workplace environment, as I have become increasingly and unpleasantly allergic to sheepish behaviour. Now I am trying to make it on my own. When I realized that it was becoming ever harder for me to obey and comply, I had no choice but to remove myself from living in such conditions. You may say I could have separated from all the unpleasantness, but for me it is a matter of health. Everyone else out there, I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.
Hi guys, just a reminder (again):
If you wish to be included in ex-members Contact List – please send the info you wish to list to
malaec@optonline.net
I have received lots of e-mails already, and list is getting big. I am making it in a simple Excel file, and will soon e-mail it to all who are listed.
(I can’t believe so many people have left just in 2007! Wow.)
The intentions behind creating such a list: to help like-minded people stay connected, to locate friends, to arrange for a possible place to stay while travelling, to announce jobs, to ask for help, to invite people for dinners, concerts and other events, etc. Friendship and connections don’t have to dissappear once you quit FOF!
Most people include their name and e-mail address, also: phone, address, years in FOF, website – whatever you feel like listing.
We are also now testing a new website “Greater Fellowship” that was started by Michael J. where we all can have a virtual community and stay connected. There is an opportunity to post pictures, videos, jobs, stories etc. This site works by invitation only, so it’s pretty secure – you only invite your friends. I’ll keep you posted how it develops.
“One of the great things in the Fellowship of Friends was the network of friends throughout the world. We still have the friends, just need the network and I hope this contributes to it.” Michael J.
With love,
Janna
Send your thoughts and/or info to:
malaec@optonline.net
Graduates 118: “Everyone I met was entirely different than everyone else and many of them were highly critical of the Fellowship. There were some dumb church-like lackluster people, but more were bright as hell and about as under-the-thumb as gypsies.”
I agree with this.
I’m not sure if this is still true, but for a long time, there was a fraternity of irreverent members who enjoyed making negative remarks about Robert’s behavior, or about the predictions, or about the ark, or who enjoyed making fun of “good student acts”, and so on. For example, one guy would make the sign of the cross (with a little smile on his face) whenever someone mentioned Higher Forces. Of course, the sarcasm was limited to small, private gatherings or to one-on-one conversations. Usually not in mixed company.
So, keeping in mind that the members of this fraternity are long-time fof students, and that they are STILL fof students, my question is…
What are they thinking?
Well, one thought is that “being critical” shows how serious they are about their inner work. It shows that they aren’t deterred by all of the problems in the Fellowship. Sure, many students are being fooled by all of this, but THEY aren’t. They know what’s going on. They are nobody’s fool. Despite all of the nonsense, they are strong, and they hold steadfast to their work. The denying force of the “school’s weirdness” does not stop them from pursuing their aim to awaken. They have passed the test.
So I think that’s part of it… Part of the criticism is sincere. They’re confused; they’re concerned about the problems like all of us are. They know that something is seriously wrong. But an occasional critical comment presents a facade. And it creates the illusion that free speech is allowed. Or at least maybe that’s part of it.
But so far, they remain in the group. So there’s a certain line they haven’t been unwilling to cross. In a way, that’s the ultimate criticism of the group — leaving.
———————————————————–
Graduates 203: “You could apply what you are saying to almost any workplace environment, people twist themselves in order to be seen as cooperative and they are motivated by personal ambition. For the sake of some recognition people are willing to accept any degree of corruption or distortion of ‘reality.’ ”
I also agree. Similar to the above, there are many of us who will say negative things about the company we work for, but only in private, and never in front of the boss or the boss’s boss. And the same type of fraternity that I describe above exists in a lot of companies. Of course, members of that fraternity generally leave the company, or get fired.
SandraC wrote:
“My impression from RB’s story about his ‘accident’ was that it took place well before he met Bonita and ’started the school.’”
Also Veronicapoe’s Fellowship timeline (post 155) makes no mention of an accident after Robert started the school in 1970, neither is there any such sugggestion of it from Bonita or Stella accounts of those early years. So it’s fairly safe to assume that his accident occurred prior to Jan 1970.
So the question remains: why did he tell Stella and Harold, who joined his group in July 1970 that he was a “budding man no5″ yet make a point of showing SandraC his driving licence in 1973 and telling her that his accident had awakened him as a man no5, an accident which occurred sometime prior to 1970?
Stella’s RB quote would seem to be corroborated by Walter Tanner’ recollection (message 65) that “He crystallized his higher emotional center in front of the fire on the deck at Nepenthe, Highway 1 in Big Sur. No date was given, but this was between the founding of the Fellowship and the crystallization of 1976.” I assume Nepenthe is a restaurant? Hotel? Anyway, according to Veronicapoe’s timeline, a trip was made to Big Sur 21/22nd October 1970.
Does anyone have any further information about Robert’s claim to have become a Man no5? I wonder, were there any descriptions of that experience in the early journals or perhaps someone made a written record of those very early meetings?
formerfofer
(1978-1992)
2b, 206
“I’m not sure if this is still true, but for a long time, there was a fraternity of irreverent members . . .”
———————————-
Another reason for this might be that it provides a release valve. I went through a period of having dinner in someone’s “caravan” rather than at the lodge. We would listen to non-approved music and skirt the edge of naughtiness with commentary about various things. In a way, it helped make some things bearable for awhile longer.
It was also probably the beginning of the end. Actually, the beginning of the beginning.
Retrospectively, I think the true beginning of the end was the night I sang “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life” by Bobby Bear, in the kitchen as a formal center dinner was underway in the dining room. It was sung quietly from around a corner though, and I doubt anyone but the kitchen staff heard.
It’s Harold Wirk’s timeline, not Veronicapoe’s.
To Sheik:
Appreciative of the work done here even if I had a great itme with the no moderation real time, perhaps even “because” of the strange happening, former page 11.
It is cleaner now, sor sure!
To us all:
I am interestingly challenged by the non-dual/advaita thing.
Being in the present as a “condition”.
No way out of the present!
Where is the challenge, where is the interest?
Little “me”,
so often called “observer”,
with its taste for effort, struggle and denial ready to “party”,
is at the door…
“The moon
Covers her face with both hands
And can’t bear
To look.”
Hafiz
Gratitude.
208 Was KathleenW
That’s probably a better explanation than mine.
Re: Bob-a-reno’s accident.
I think it was Stan the Man who told me that the accident happened while Bob was with A-horn. He said that Bob told him that the stitches in his head formed a peace sign. A little C-influence joke. And if I recall correctly, when the injury was shown to A-horn he patted Bob on the head and made some sort of condescending “so there’s your little wound” type remark.
Of course, that story could be totally mythological.
Bruce, #168
I’m still trying to figure out the significance of the squirrel gone nuts story. Am I missing something or is this just a product of your sometimes obscure sense of humour?
Christina
re Laura # 204.
precisely my experience. I was willing to submit but my health appeared to be heading back to my fof history, sick.
It seems that the amount of guts required to leave is proportional to the amount it takes to join. On the other hand if one has nothing to lose, as we were told, but in reality, joining or leaving both are easier.
Re. this popular quote, does anyone know who the conscious being who uttered it was or is?
” A hard head makes a soft behind.”
In appreciation, Renald
Kid Shelleen said,
> I think it was Stan the Man who told me that the accident
> happened while Bob was with A-horn. He said that Bob
> told him that the stitches in his head formed a peace
> sign. A little C-influence joke.
Starting a cult is one of the traditionally recognized sequelae of traumatic brain injury, as I recall.
This is pure fantasy but I would like to be in a small porch with four bottles of white lighting.
One bottle for Robert Burton, one bottle for me, one bottle for for George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and one bottle for somebody on this blog.
Xena 213
I think the punchline is in that last sentence.
213 Christina…
the latter, as you guessed.
The browning of the fields came early this year, be ready my friends, it’s gonna be a hot one this summer. Also, watch where you’re stepping, the rattlesnakes are everywhere, its the baby ones that are the most dangerous, they do not give out a portion of their venom, based on their size and hence, vulnerability, they give it all to you at once…
And if you find a spider’s web that, to the touch, feels ten times stronger than most, that’s a black widow’s silk, fascinating to touch, to feel its almost unbelievable tenacity, yet, home to she who holds Time’s unforgiving ruby hour glass…
Yes, humilty even works with snakes and spiders.
__________________________
Hello Post #133/A former student ~
Yes, let’s make ‘Jerry Brown’ a mantra of sorts…
I wonder if Anthony Storrs’s book “Feet of Clay”, is what RB was referencing when he told his first student “I know someone who does not have feet of clay.” (?)
Is it not ironic that Cult Books are actually used as ‘How to be a better cult leader’ manuals?
_______________________________
Hello Post #141/Yesri baba ~
“squishy toy” and “Smoke ray glasses”
Hummm… You shop at Toy’s R Us too?
If you’ve never seen a ‘greased pig contest’, if there’s a county fair in your area, check it out or host one, its gotta be one of the greatest underdeveloped sports on this planet!
________________________________
Hello Post #143/Kathleen W
Thank you for your general question; though these days
I would rather ask you to please, be more specific, I need to keep a string of focus, particularly when giving out records of these sorts.
Kathleen, I want you to know that everything I speak about concerning that subject is from my experience, it is not theoretical or wishful or aspirational: to me I would rather map out how to get a snowball in hell from one side to the other, than to discuss people’s lifetimes to come and previous lifetimes.
I recall that I once met a couple, they told me that they were reincarnated pyramid builders, that they had found one another in this lifetime ’sorta by intuition’… I looked at them both, kinda like cows must see things, binocular-ly, and said ‘And, so what?’…
All hell breaks loose when we love the beings within, in behind the Armani billboard, there’s a real man with a bucket of glue, a beautifully made sandwich and a big 32oz Budweiser, wearing Dock Martin boots, dressed in brown coveralls and in love with the expectation of walking with his girlfriend after work on the beach…
I love the one behind the billboard and must.
________________________________
Hello Post #159/ Wake up little suzy wake up
Dear Suzy,
Fortunately for me I do not believe that Whalerider actually found the toaster that he assigned me to find:
it is my general belief that all kitchen appliances have a fourth dimensional twin, a sort of surrogate buddy, some people call this a ‘guardian angel’, I call it a backup toaster…
So, it should not surprise you that I must add your name to the Howard Carter’s famed reputation-list, a list that I have developed to intentionally create more time to search for ’said toaster’ than to play ‘Hello Mr. Tennis Ball, feel my Racket’ …
I believe you’ll find this list comfortably ‘hammock like’, not too far from the tennis court, so don’t worry, there’s plenty of back hands on this blog site to play with… I’ve got to find that toaster!
P.S. You wrote ~
“Unoanimo, how the hell do you know what Meher Baba can do?”
__________
“… can do?” ‘Can do’ indeed my friend, can do, never ‘did do’, not for Meher Baba, the lighthouse for lighthouses.
I feel your energy Suzy, it flows through me like a thousand moths on crack cocaine and I am grateful for being such a silly porch light at times, but hey, someone has to show the drunken lovers stumbling in late at night the door’s landing, the door, the knob… Yet, you have to find the key, I cannot see under the flower pot.
Love to you and your anger.
_______________________
Hello Posts #162,203/Graduates
Hello Graduates ~
Is that you Elena ?
I hope, if it is you, that your new residence near the ocean is giving you the objective solace the ocean can do.
It is an interesting vision to see that when a blogger, like ‘Laura’ for instance symbolically says ~
“I agree with your pain, you have my permission to be painful for I too have such permissiveness within my lifestyle towards external ‘things’ that deny me to define myself as a reactionary being, defined by contradiction and looking for trouble, doubt, weaknesses and areas to improve upon, so let’s be friends, we can justify one another’s sense of independence by the certainties of our primordial sensitivities, which is actually just the maternal wishing the paternal to be more like it…
yet, what is a ‘real’ friend, but someone who does not entirely settle for the friendship’s successes, but rather edges closer to that area of love which cannot show itself through obvious agreements and coincidental likenesses; takes it into the meadow of perhaps a disagreement that is only settled when you can drop it, so to experience that space between yourselves, after all, without that space, you would be One, yes?
____________________________
Hello Post #188/Shelley M.
Hello Shelley,
Can you post a link to any video recording of “Talking With Angels”? Do they exist, do you not wish to offer them up to YouTube?
Steven S., is a blessing upon you, Love is indeed a third person, beyond our sparkling palaces it swims in pure oceans of molten twenty four karat gold.
_________________________
Hello Post #179/Former student ~
Hello,
You asked about John G.,
He’s doing pretty well; we’re all aging and Time does no favors unto its own roundabout demises.
He’s beautiful, getting more and more so with every day passing,
deep down, I sense, by having made many current eye to eye contacts with him, that he is no Ole Fool, he’s here in Oregon House because Here is here, that is all…
He is one Being that Robert Burton cannot flatter with obvious approval of what has already occurred without Robert himself having proposed it,
yet, as you know, planets can wiseacre so deep as to think that satellites would not exist without their gravitational gravitas.
For he himself, John G., has paid a deep price to approve of himself, far beyond the wiseacring of The Usurpers of The Young at Heart and Coconut milk.
That’s my take, BTW.
_____________________________
Hello Post #185/ A former student
Gurdjieff had more than one teacher. There is a book describing all those known, yet, it is my sense he had at many more:
see, he was a genuine ‘teacher-seeker’ he did not follow the one-god-law, he collected himself through many who were correspondingly willing to give to him as he was willing to get, there is an entire book that could be written on
‘Corresponding spiritual acknowledgment, the trials and freedoms of silent recognition that You is I.’
The Fellowship of Friends still know nothing about this: turn a pyramid upside down in the sand and it does the ‘right thing’ according to its ‘form’,
it hides its Beginning.
________________________
To Posts #172, 173, 206.
You wrote ~
“People that were part of the murderous Nazis were at least a significant part of history, we are barely a footnote.”
“Damn it, I still admire that rascal Robert for what he gets away with.”
“The denying force of the “school’s weirdness” does not stop them from pursuing their aim to awaken. They have passed the test.”
____________________
Are you all smokin the same draperies?
If so, I can only hope they belong to the ones in Robert Burton’s bedroom, so that people might catch a glimpse of their ‘dividends’, while they’re going to a rose garden aria have sung their conscience deeper under the re-circulatory fountain waters of The Fellowship of Friends.
Gee wiz you guys,
Captain Kangaroo is dead BTW.
Personally I thought Mr. Greenjeans waz tha dude!
__________________________
Hello Post #157/Whalerider
Hello Whalerider ~
I sense a bit of poking lately from you, waz up?
Perhaps your heart wishes to meet me, could that be it?
Who knows, I do sense that,
often, when, what we ‘think’ we love does not respond to our thought, we make it the enemy, yet, too, it often goes unnoticed that we never really spoke to that person directly, never fully revealed our imaginary picture beside the real Now-probability,
there’s something within everyone which would rather think about heaven than to verify its application and true, real-time occurring prerequisites.
You wrote ~
“#95 “I’ll be that inconspicuous one with the samurai sword in near the far-right-back of the pet food section, you know the spot, in between the ice maker and the unisex bathroom. Just chillin, if you know what I mean.”
#134 “No thanks my friend, I do not wish to have a blog assigned role name tagged to my naked breast.”
You mean other than the role you pin to your own naked breast. Ever hear of a Sun dance? It’s not done for fun. It’s a choice we make for ourselves. But you are kinda squishy to hold…”
______________________
Surely my anonymous friend, you don’t really, with any deep, personal sincerity, believe that the role I have assigned myself is that of a ninja hiding in the shadows of the Oregon House Grocery, do you?
I think your really stretching the rubber band here Whalerider… All that ninja stuff is called ‘prose exhaust’, it assists me in keeping all this real time literature alive, vivid alive, like an almost smiling infant’s face,
in other words, when hospitals have on hire full time real-clowns, people will start getting better; yet, hey, do the hospitals want people to get better?
I wonder, I also wonder if Robert Burton wants to graduate anyone or is it that he cannot since he himself has no unfurl-able degree of conscience to see himself in others, not in the mirror of their hypnotized eye-twinkle?
If I’m “squishy” then? Use your scroll bar my friend, that’s what conscious ‘doing’ is all about.
Meher Baba once said ~ “Many problems are solved by avoiding them.”
If your a butcher, its probably best not to take the lion’s route on your way home at night.
Take a shower, change your clothes, call a taxi.
To me, to love means to hold everything as if it was meant to be in my hands by my own doing, even if its roadkill.
___________________________________
Love to you all.
No, no punchline, just a nonsequitur diversion (that apparently wasn’t that humorous).
#210 you-me-us-they
“where is the challenge, where is the interest?”
Inside the present (you)
One wishful thought.
Maybe we can solve this separation in an amicable manner.
Each one of us gets one small memento from the golden age: a Meissen cup, a pair of pruning shears, a Ming chair, a piece of Tupperware. Also, a compilation of oldies but goldies from our Beloved Leader.
Robert gets a condo in Vegas where he spends the last strech of his career, Sunset Boulevard style, performing as a Casino impersonator.
David Lynch gets to do the movie.
Sufjan Stevens will hopefully write a song about it.
And most definitely someone will write the book.
Love
It’s pretty simple really. Kind of obvious looking back on it now, from a bird’s eye perspective. There was this youngling, misfit, who had always felt different from other people, freshly arrived to the big city and living independently for the first time. Many people’s story. I’d always been ashamed of my spiritual interests, which I’d been attracted to since age 12 and maybe in some form before that. My parents were comfortable in their formal religion, they did not feel pressed to investigate it further, merely to conform. It seemed to me that no one my age could relate to spirituality, that all they cared about were parties, drugs and drinking. I had tried to get integrated into the youth culture, but then, with almost no social skills, I decided I didn’t want it anyway. It was too painful, false and unnecessary. So I felt very special and above it all. Yeah, I was better than all of “them”.
I’d been in contact with several spiritual groups, not too many. It was very exciting to come to the city and find out that there are people here who actually use words like ‘karma’ in their everyday conversation and seem to share the same spiritual orientation as me. I was desperate for approval. Once I saw a poster for an open meeting of Gurdjieff-Ouspensky centers, that was it. I hardly knew anything about Gurdjieff or Ouspensky, but I had seen their bookmarks in books that I liked, and so I thought it must be something really good. “Now accepting students”, it said, creating the impression of a short window of opportunity. In retrospect I was very proud of myself for noticing such a small inconspicuous black-and-white poster among all the flashy advertisements. I felt I must have been fated to see it. But I was a perfect match, looking for something secret and quiet, existing alongside the current of humanity unnoticed. Like me. I remember feeling that, whatever happens, I have to go to this meeting, because it would change my life.
Everything they said instantly made sense. People react mechanically; identification is loss of identity, negative emotions are not necessary, obstacles to being awake, don’t believe but verify. I was quite self-conscious about how mechanical I must appear to these refined beings. I knew I was joining, I knew that I had been fearing all my life and that for once I needed to trust. I bought the appropriate attire and with 20% of my total income showed up for the first meeting. 15 minutes early.
I was a pretty scared little creature back then. Thinking back, it must have been scary to be around me, nervous as I was. I guess I just needed a mother. And the center directors and older students adopted me, encouraged me, hugged me, sustained eye contact without judgment or expectation. I was loved. And I was soaking it like a sun-dried sponge. For the first time in my life, I belonged. These people were my family. Heh, I can’t believe it, I still want to cry as I write this. I suppose it’s obvious that I didn’t have a very good relationship with my own parents. From a young age I had been told that God only knows where I came from, because I was nothing like them. So I quite identified with being weird and deviant and isolated. I was tough on the outside, but boy, was I squishy on the inside. I just melted when these people accepted me in their little circle. They did not respond to my false and vain acts that I had built up over the years to facilitate some sort of limping interaction with people, and that was a mountain off my shoulders. I knew I didn’t have to pretend any more. I was home.
In that first year, several striking shifts in perception happened where I knew that I was “seeing myself objectively” for a few seconds. I had been taught that this was the third state of consciousness, and it reaffirmed for me that the whole system we are learning must be correct and that the school must be right. In later years, I wondered why that didn’t happen any more if I was progressing in the work, why is everyone talking about third states that they’re having all the time, if I know I had them and they are extremely rare. It could not be that I was not making any headway, so I eventually and grudgingly came to accept the explanation that my overall state must by now be so close to the third state that when third state happens, I don’t perceive it as such a huge leap any more.
I noted after several months that I had been able to accept myself, that I was now quite happy with who I was, and that the meetings which used to be so full of revelations were now a place where I could sleep and snore, listening to the same points of view over and over. I had come to the realization that to stay in the school, I must change my aim. Must find a better aim. I’m not sure if I clearly defined it but I think it had something to do with serving the school.
It was a small center and within months I was made bookkeeper and given another important “third line octave”. One or two traveling teachers praised “my work” and “my essence”. I was beginning to lead meetings. The oldest student in the center, bless her heart, mentioned that she felt if anyone was going to become conscious, it was going to be me. My vanity and self-importance flourished.
The first time I accidentally discovered the money and sex situation of the Fellowship was after 8 or 9 months in the school. My world started spinning. What I believed to be the ultimate good, what had given me so much and had proven so true, was staring me in the face as corrupt at its core. I was not able to view the positive and negative aspects of the Fellowship as separate. I wanted to defend it all, and yet I was afraid I was supporting the wrong thing.
I felt I needed to take the matter up with the older student who I was closest to at the time. He gave me no real answers but rather expressed dismay at why I was asking those questions. I went home and wrote all the I’s out on paper. Then I slept on it. And in a couple of days, I was able to revisit these I’s and see them all as “just negativity”, “only I’s”, “judgment”, “identification”, all these things I was taught not to have. It was a relief, I didn’t have to do anything. I concluded that if I had such an extreme reaction, it must be because there is some material there for me to work on myself, some identification to transform. External reality was to be neglected, internal reality was all that mattered. Especially because there were all these good people around me who knew all the same things, even joked about them, and yet they found it valuable to stay in the school. If they can, so can I. After all, where was I going to go to, back to life where people were strangers that I couldn’t relate to?
When the next new student came along saying that she had “friction” with what people say about our school and about Robert, I found myself defending my choice as reasonable, by claiming how she can plainly see that all those people who have left the school and are complaining, are just negative and identified, and have lost the basic principles of the work. And she has found it useful to this day to resort to that attitude, and so we all proceeded to tacitly conspire that we would perform self-calming for years to come.
I must have bought into this “conscious being” thing at some point. I remember first meeting the teacher after 2 years, being invited to a dinner with him – this was back when you still got invited and didn’t have to pay 200 dollars to attend. The whole charade with evening gowns and tuxedos and concert before the dinner and expensive china embarrassed me, it was not an environment I knew how to behave in. I spent the evening mostly ashamed that I could be so mechanical and instinctive to actually want to eat the nice food while the others were enjoying the teaching to the extent that food was irrelevant, all being in a higher state except me. Oh boy. I don’t remember anything that Robert said, but I remember trying to not have “mechanical reactions” to his I’s, and trying to stop thoughts and be awake. When I got back I was asked if I had verified that he was conscious, and I responded – “Is that a joke?” Though I did have my fears how, when he kissed my forehead, he would be able to see with his all-mighty God-like perception all the bad judgment I had about him. But mostly I felt guilty that I was not impressed by meeting Robert. So I spent the following years going to his events and hoping that one day I would get it, one day I would see how great and brilliant he was, thinking that it was just me and my sleep preventing me from seeing the truth and experiencing the wonderful states that everybody enters when they are around him. I actually envied those students who were able to say that they verified Robert was their teacher and what a high being he was and so forth. It made their life so much easier.
I had, let’s say, some “authority issues” when meeting Robert. Still have them to some extent. Anyway, as “struggle” is built into the system and “going against the machine” is fundamental to the fourth way, I persevered in order to become free from my subjectivity. I made myself believe that we were a conscious school, and at those times I felt good. As soon as there were any true experiences of deeper understanding and love, I hastened to ascribe them to the influence of the Fellowship and the great fortune of being in a school, to reassure myself that it was worth it, to repeat what everyone else was saying about how beautiful Apollo is and how we are evolving. The teacher had some crazy ideas, but it was better not to think about them too much and focus on what’s relevant for your work. In any event the Fellowship provided a fairly safe environment where I could experiment with being human and entering relationships with a variety of other humans who were not supposed to hurt me, an experience that I would not have had in my regular lonely life before the school.
Early on my center director once asked me what my biggest problem in life was. After some thought, I had formulated it as “I don’t know what I want”, and that has been a recurring theme in my Fellowship career. To get down to the core of it, I did not trust myself, so I always needed other people to tell me what was good for me, what I should want and do. “They” always knew better. “They” even knew what my feelings were and told me what I was experiencing, and I totally believed it. With no direct experience of reality to compare against, how will you know what’s true?
Eventually I landed in the role of center director (as I believe Shelley likes to say, at the ripe old age of 24, wise beyond my years), and I got to tell other people what they should and should not do. Being the voice of the School for everybody, expressing opinions I did not hold, deep down, and delivering requests that made me cringe, but that was not important, I had to serve the school and fulfill my role. “They” knew better, and I was just an instrument. The best way to lie is to make yourself believe that you’re telling the truth. So I applied a thick paint of coat over my conscience and convinced myself that it was good. Here we were, all trying to make the best of the situation, to be creative within the framework of the material that was given to us. We needed to make the center come together and produce work. We had some good times and sharing, as long as we kept focusing on all that was positive about the school. And fortunately we were fairly relaxed as a center.
I asked myself many times over the last few years what was keeping me in the school and always came to the conclusion that it was habit and fear of being alone. I knew it was not healthy. But I didn’t have the courage to turn my life upside down. I kept trying to find reasons why the Fellowship is useful, and hanging on to those. But the contradiction was making me sick. And it was making me depressed. I’m not surprised to hear how many people take anti-depressants in the Fellowship; depression happens when you freeze yourself from experiencing feelings and thoughts that you think you shouldn’t be having. Not wanting to look deeply at what’s wrong but continuing to pretend that everything is fine.
I honestly tried to apply Robert’s dualistic good-and-evil teaching in an attempt to make it fit and find value in it. It’s hard when you force your own insights onto another man’s scaffolding, especially if he’s coming from a completely different place psychologically, and you don’t realize it. For a while I had my own work I’s that helped inspire me, based on what I knew about myself. I dropped them because I was told that Robert’s 30 work I’s are objective knowledge applicable to everyone. And then I struggled and kept believing in the 4th way maxim that struggle is good.
This blog was the last stone pulled out of the dam that released the flood. We can all stop pretending now. The emperor is naked, and what a relief. No, you don’t have to be impressed by Robert, and no, you don’t have to believe that what he’s saying is objective knowledge. Yes, you can finally trust yourself. You’ve grown up and you have the authority to allow yourself to put away childish dependence on a divine leader. No need to keep looking over your shoulder when he will catch up with you. When the optical illusion reveals itself and you can see both the vase and the faces at one time, there is no going back.
Still digesting and integrating the experience, as you can see, but meanwhile I’m packing my bags. Well, thanks for reading, if you did.
Good luck
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road. …
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial. …
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. …
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. …
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,…
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.”
W.W.
I was reviewing past post’s and found
#1 wake up little suzy wake up
Yes very true, my times at Renaissance were full of wonder, friendship and essence.
#18 by Cyclops. He challenged others to research his claim that 6 Jewish Family’s controlled the media. So I did the search he suggested. Guess what the number one site was “Jew Watch”. Yes indeed likely to be an unbiased site. So what are the six families? Actually the claim is that it is 6 mega -corporations dominate the world media. Then it is claimed that these corporations are Jewish owned.
http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml
About the ownership of corporations. Few corporations are as simple as those owned by first generation developers like Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.
Many years ago I read a paper entitled “Stock ownership and the control of corporations” published by the University of Chicago Press. I suggest this as a useful reading. In the United States because of tax laws and laws which attempt to restrict the creation of a hereditary wealthy class ownership is often hidden. For example a Family like the Dupont’s has trust’s for many family members, what is common is for the oldest family members to immediately begin transferring asset’s to the youngest while retaining control of the asset’s. This avoids inheritance tax’s as it is taxed at a lower gift tax. It also avoids inheritance taxes for as many as three generations. These families control foundations and investments in Banks, Insurance Companies and other financial entities all of which own stock but the ownership is reported separately from individual asset’s.. Often one family member such as David Rockerfeller in the case of the Rockerfellers serves as the family head of finance. In the case of the Duponts they effectively control General Motors without a clear ownership of a majority of stock.. If this does not make sense it is all the more reason to study economics and ownership of capital in general.This is of value because it would require someone with a PHD. level understanding of economics and research skills to detail the ownership and controll of these six mega media corporations. It is niave to credit them with some individual will.
Why go back and rehash what has passed? One reason is that Cyclops does not seem unreasonable Yet using a site called “Jew Watch ” as a research resource indicates both a lack of research skills and naiveté. We live in an amazing age in which more information is available then at any time. The challenge today is in finding and filtering the information.
Here is an example I found in checking that I was correct in saying that David Rockerfeller is head of the family ( since 1992 his son also David has been taking over) The Rockerfellers are the controlling interest in The Chase Manhattan bank and are of German Protestant heritage not Jewish.
A quote from the senior David Rockerfeller at a meeting of the world affairs counsel ( funny the link is now gone)
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years……..It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational
sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
Why bother with this? What does it have to do with the FOF. When I was a member of the FOF I believed that incorporating it as a religion was a convenient fiction. After reviewing the Canon’s and reading various stories of how “challenges” to Robert’s authority are dealth with it seems to me that Robert knew in advance of his intent to defraud the membership by posing as a celebrate spiritual Teacher. A general naiveté about Financial affairs also seems to be an aspect of the FOF.
In an earlier post I questioned as to why the form of a co-op would not be more appropriate. If there are currant members reading this then this is a question for you. Why not a Co-op? Why not let members share in the ownership of what they build. Is it fair that anyone who is offended at Robert’s sexuality and makes it known be able to be forced to leave for questioning his divinity? In fact does the legal status of Robert as an unquestionable divine guide fit in with the ideas of the 4th way at all? How many of you members past and present understood that this was a contract that they were agreeing to when they joined. Have any of you seen a copy of the Canon’s that is a legal and binding contract with each member?
Does anyone have any opinion on this?
Thank you very much Veronicapoe for your posting of important facts on the FOF leadership.
to #219 unoanimo
Thank You for the information on John Graham. He was the director of the San Diego center when I joined also I lived in a tent on a hill above the lodge with him for a while probably around 1976..
Personal e-mail
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4th way discussion group
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Photo’s and artwork
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224 A former student.
Are you kidding of course they are biased!
I have left any racial discussion behind.
The link below is not about race its about Media Ownership.
http://www.wikiprotest.com/index.php?title=Media_Ownership_in_America
My take on the financial structure of the pseudo school is to suggest to students to try to make it as you suggest a co-op, But we all know how unlikely this is.
Are you familiar with the “work” idea of accounts?
Plato said “They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth”
I wish you well and am not being ironic.
Cy.
cyclops:
Your link gives us this:
“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
These are the words of the journalist, John Swinton, spoken at a dinner given in his honor in 1880. John Swinton had been the editor of the New York Times during the civil war, and was one of the most esteemed journalists of his day. (For a discussion that carefully validates the essential accuracy of these remarks see Rense.com at )
How little some things change! Well over a century later our journalists still “fawn at the feet of mammon.” Swinton’s manner of speaking is no longer in fashion. It strikes us as quaint. But his indictment of the press is as applicable today as it was when these words were originally spoken.”
And in relation to this I refer you to this:
http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
“I got email from Jay Salter, one of my readers, who had come across the http://www.snowcrest.net/zepp/Other_Voices/Swinton.htm John Swinton vignette in my “Other Voices” section. He forwarded it to a journalist’s discussion area, asking for feedback.
One journalist there, Jeff McMahon, made this response to Jay:
“Yeah, I’ll take that bait.
“The last time I saw that phony quote Swinton was identified as the “chief of staff” of the New York SUN, the date was 1853, and where it now says “I am paid weekly,” it then said “I am paid $150 a week.” Which is, actually, about how much I made in journalism. Then some liar realized that newspapers don’t have chiefs of staff, at least the editorial departments don’t, and if you’re going to lie you might as well do it big, so they made him the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the New York TIMES in NINETEEN 53. Unfortunately, the editor of the New York Times in 1953 was Turner Catledge.
So, the quote itself betrays a need for journalists because otherwise people who spread such propaganda might go unchecked. ”
As to the above reference to “mammon” in the linked material, I advise the curious to do a google search of “mammon jew)”. You’ll be enlightened by the various Aryan and white supremicist sites that equate Jews and mammon as one.
Still trying to slip in that horse shit aren’t you cyclops?
Are all the posts being moderated again?
Or just responses to cyclops?
Bruce 227
Are all the posts being moderated again?
&&&&&&&&&&
Trouble posting? Try:
http://fofgraduates.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/graduates-of-the-fellowship-of-friends/
I have posted my response to cyclops on the other blog, as it, so far, has not appeared here.
Hi Sheik,
Am I correctly assuming that you have incorporated some new moderators, and that you haven’t had time to give them the standard orientation lecture about being over zealous with their “moderation”?
to 191 Yersi Baba writes
“For a month or so stop any effort to self-remember or divide attention or “take in impressions” or not express negative emotions or anything like that. Instead, whenever you can think of it just return to a sensing of your common presence.”
OK having done this for at least 10 years then returned to the system what next?
I am not being flippant. I have severe difficulties at this point in being open to anything other than others experience. Call it willfullness, I do, call it a negative attitude, it is. I am sensitve to anything other than the first person. As until you or anyone else can get in here and operate the controls all I am interested in is what works for you.
223 Traveler
Thank you for this heartfelt and honest post. Thank You for taking the time to write this out so clearly.
to post #204 Laura
It has been many years since I left the FOF if there are two things I feel I’ve gained that are the most value they are
One- The ability to smile and nod at someone while internally not believing or registering anything they say.
Two- The ability to sit and act attentive and listen.
Both are still difficult so I doubt I was that good at it while a student.
I have become better at expressing negativity The way the FOF teaches this was not particularly profitable for me. As a Solar type I have little automatic “:NO” when I don’t like something it is very hard for me to say so. I lack certain social skills as sometimes it feels like I have to shift into another group of I’s or personality to say “NO” and this is a violent personality that is very fear based.
206 2b writes
“but for a long time, there was a fraternity of irreverent members who enjoyed making negative remarks about Robert’s behavior, or about the predictions, or about the ark, or who enjoyed making fun of “good student acts”, and so on.”
while I was student in the 1970’s there was a barn that had multiple uses. It was not unusual for those engaged in outdoor octaves to sometimes drink a little alcohol and speak of “Uncle Bob” and his pals at the Blake cottage. ( although some of the people were one and the same) As well as such jokes as Linda Kaplan, almost anything one could say about her was a joke. But a few people hanging out at the barn is not the same as the freedom to express individuality and the freedom to speak. It is Robert’s control of the FOF at his Dinners, at meetings, in having an approved dogma , of control of the traveling teachers and teaching that marks it as in no way being a school of the 4th way.
It is a shame that later members missed Stella’s teaching. In the mid 1970’s She was the Carmel center director and an early member of the school ( #3?). When she would come to Mt. Carmel we would use the upstairs dining as a coffee shop and she would speak with students until dawn. Students did not hesitate to express themselves honestly with her and honesty and humor were an integral part of her method. All Robert’s chosen like Miles, Gerard and yes even Joel were much more rigid and dogmatic ( although Joel was the best he never lost his humor or wit -probably was not an intellectual type)
A story of my own .
Once when I was a waiter in the Gold Room at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel circa 1977 Robert came in with a group of 10 or so for breakfast. He had Corned Beef hash and Eggs. In one of his best “Moses on the mount” poses he explained to students that “fine hotels like this make everything from scratch.” He sent me to ask the chef for the recipe. I did and was told it was Nestles food service in a can. So I came back and told Robert in front of the group. He buffered and changed the subject. He later told me I should have told him privately and “externally consider my teacher”. What I wondered about my not inner considering at having been put in this position?
Personal e-mail
Scottduncan@frys.com
4th way discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StillPoint/
Photo’s and artwork
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Dear Bruce I have a question on the musicans in Nevada City. Can you e-mail me privatly?
Personal e-mail
Scottduncan@frys.com
4th way discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StillPoint/
Photo’s and artwork
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Bruce,
Just checked the other blog and your post has not appeared there yet either.
Christina
Bruce
I have posted my response to cyclops on the other blog, as it, so far, has not appeared here.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
It didn’t show up on the other blog either. You are using an illegal character such as a “less than” sign, a left pointing arrow.
This is not great but is cathartic to post
I read everything; Thanks to you all
Myself, anguished & hungering
Was captured spellbound by a promise
Armored by self-deceit, entranced & trancelike I lived
My sense distorted by subtle madness
Making good into bad & bad into good
Applying hopes to fear & fears to hope
Distracted & wretched, persuading myself blessed
What hubris is this?
I can claim this consolation:
That truth is after lies made truer
And good is by worse made better
Myself, renewed, made wiser
So chastened, I recover my peace
And through loss, recover more than was lost
(Inspired by a sonnet by WS)
That’s odd, because when I go to your site I see the post entry in full.
Also, here, it says “awaiting moderation”.
I’ll try it here again.
It still says awaiting moderation.
Nope, still comes up like that. Sorry folks.
“It’s Harold Wirk’s timeline, not Veronicapoe’s.”
Thanks for clarifying.
Message 185 A former student wrote:
“Man # 4 begins with mechanical man with the possibility of development and ends with a conscious man. What does this mean. How often do higher centers need to function to be officially conscious? I ask this sincerely what do others think. Is one hour a day enough? two hours? Three hours? at what point does the experience accumulate enough that their is a change in being?”
Having had experiences of both the third and fourth states of consciousness, I would suggest that higher centers are rarely experienced by man nos. 1,2,3 or 4.
The 4th state occurred approximately 10 years prior to joining the FoF. I’d been reading “In Search of the Miraculous” and had been working to be present and not express negativity.
One day, when feeling extremely negative, I lay on my bed and tried, time and again, to pull myself out of the negativity and back into the present. This effort resulted in a sudden rush of energy into my solar plexus, a loss of awareness of my physical body and the experience of an ecstatic state, all of which I now consider to have been an experience of objective conscious – the fourth state.
The experience of the third state of self-consciousness occurred in 1986 and resulted from approximately 6 weeks of intensive efforts to divide attention throughout each day.
In answer to the question “Is the experience of higher centers a normal result of efforts to self-remember” I would say that the experience of higher emotional center (self-consciousness) is the result of several years of consistent efforts to divide attention and transform negative emotions, culminating in a final, prolonged and intensive effort which, if successful, results in an experience of the third state. The memory of that state remains and it changes understanding such that isn’t possible to view life in the old way again, but the state isn’t permanent.
“What are the degree of self remembering?”
The first is simple presence, then the state experienced when dividing attention, followed by the third state of self-consciousness, and ultimately the fourth state.
formerfofer
(1978-1992)
I think my response is up on the other blog now, for those interested.
Stay off the blog I i told myself. As my Fellowship clock clicks down: go to a place of neutrality, balance, get clear, gain focus.
And in the end, can’t do it. Miss you all too much. After so many years of rigidity and numbness, oh how i want to feel. Be tossed against the wall Made to see what is. Feel alive once again.
Thank you all for the slice and dice. Making me think, making me feel.
Cake
You can have your Cake, and be it too.
Arther 154
The small city El Cerrito was actually Kensington where I lived at 17 Arlington Ave. My daughter was born while I lived there. This was known as “The Kensignton House” I have gone past the house once in a while in the last few years as my wifes mother lives in Kensignton as does an Aunt.
Co incidently I was a Market and Powell yesterday.
I play guitar and a keyboard player I had worked with previously kept calling and asking me to play out on the street. Since I have a set up for this I agreed and went by Bart to Powell and Market. I arrived at 4:45 and although he never met me I set up and played until about 7 when a policeman on a bike chased me away. I believe I will stick to Berkeley.
Although it was not particularly profitable it is an interesting experience to just set up my gear ( I have backing tracks) and play guitar
was Kathleen
I wonder if you are the same person that was responsible for making the calander of events. I used to do Calligraphy and for a while I would do a monthly calander. This was probably 1979-1980.
to Old Fish In The Sea Thank you for a very well written and clearly structered presentation. Although I left the FOF some 27 years ago I completely agree.
My only cravet is take the time to read the Canon’s. Were you ever asked to agree to them? I personally wonder if Robert did not plan just the kind of situation that has developed in which a member no matter for how long and at what cost has no ownership in the FOF and no defense against being asked to leave if they challange the morality of Robert’s sexuality or use of funds.
My post popped back up at it’s original location (#229). Sorry for all the fuss.
#223 Traveler
“When the optical illusion reveals itself and you can see both the vace and the faces at one time, there is no going back.”
Nice, weird huh?
The first three or four paragraphs I thought hey, who stole my story. It made me tear up.
What we get is so much more wonderful than what we imagined. Go figure.
Graduates solved the problem. It appears that if their are two hyper links in a post it triggers moderation. Who’da thunk.
For those interested, “Overview of Fellowship Exercises, July 26, 1980″ is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_362
—
Visit Veronicapoe’s bookmarks:
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/Veronicapoe
For those interested, “Three Photographs of Robert Burton from the 1960s” is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_738
For those interested, “Overview of Fellowship Exercises, July 26, 1980″ is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_362
For those interested, “Photograph: Gathered Around The Campfire, 1971″ is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_832
248, a former student
“I wonder if you are the same person that was responsible for making the calander of events. I used to do Calligraphy and for a while I would do a monthly calander. This was probably 1979-1980.”
———————————
No, I was in the short-lived La Jolla center at that time. I was typesetting for a living though. Probably not the kind you were doing — phototypesetting.
However, we may have crossed paths. Jeanna and I joined through the same series of prospective student meetings in Hawaii, and when DH and I moved from Hawaii to San Francisco in 1977, we stayed at the Kensington House for a couple of nights. Shortly after that, Jeanna adopted our cat, Lucy, who was being terrorized by another cat in the teaching house we moved into.
254 Veronicapoe
“For those interested, “Overview of Fellowship Exercises, July 26, 1980″ is now online:”
————————————–
The “Do Not Speak About Spouse” exercise is interesting in retrospect. My recollection (quite possibly faulty) is that the reason given was that to speak about one’s spouse is mechanical and possibly gossip. I’m sure it also helped keep certain things quiet.
Hey Bruce,
Your Posts #229, 230, 231, 233, 234,
240, 241, 242,243,245,247,250,252,…
I guess a call for moderation has its karmic boomerangs.
:)
It do.
A former student #248: Another reason I left El Cerrito. I wanted to go apply for a job at an army fort (station) cant remember the name but it was back across the bridge and I had no money. All I thought about was getting back to downtown San Francisco.
Market and Powell : One day I stood next to a nearby newspaper kiosk. I was taking in everything, the energy of the people, the sights and sounds. I was enthralled.
This particular day I was wearing a suit and just looking important. The vendor said, “what are you up to” or something like that. I said, “looking for a job”. He said, “no you are not. I know exactly what you are doing standing here looking at everything”.
Then he spent the next several minutes trying to convince me that I was part of some kind of security detail for the governor of California who happened to be in the area.
Here’s some late night music for some local musicians to sooth your souls:
Dear Traveler,
Just want to say how much I enjoyed your post #224. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Veronicapoe, I have some pictures and other things I don’t mind sharing, since you’re archiving things. The stuff I have is more recent and may be more… funny.
Write me at malaec@yahoo.com
After Katrina ,Nevada City put together a very fast all night benefit for the victims. This is my bud Lorraine Gervais doing Hendrix’s Angel. Please excuse the quality.
It is painful reading through this blog… so much anger.. so much hostility… it truly is exhausting. What surprises me the most is that so many of the people who post on this site still believe the ideas upon which the FOF was founded. For years, I did too.. I used to say, “I have never found any of those ideas to be untrue”. Now I can’t say that at all. I remember that many times, a discussion emerged among students about what Ouspensky really meant when he said (near the end of his life), “Abandon the system” I do not ever remember ANYONE presenting the theory that he meant, “Abandon the system!” Isn’t that just amazing? Over the years, and especially during the past 5 years, I have learned that ANY system that is supposedly related to enlightenment is by its very nature the ANTEDOTE for awakening. Words themselves create boundaries. How can one put boundaries around that which is literally EVERYTHING? The only value of words or (to a lesser degree) concepts is that of the words POINTING to truth. Words can never actually BE truth. The Zen Buddhists use the analogy of mistaking the finger pointing to the moon as the moon itself. When we follow ANY system, or even start quoting any teacher, we are beginning to worship that finger.
Awakening is such a simple thing. It is not hard… Here is an analogy that is helpful to me. Consider being asleep, dreaming… and in that dream, lucidity appears. Most of us have had lucid dreams and some of us have even practiced them. The lucidity can see the dream clearly. The main character (played by someone always known by the name of “me”) is running away from a scary monster, or towards a sexy one… and then the lucidity sees how unreal it all is. It is obvious that there is no monster… and not even that “me” character. None of it is really happening at all, when viewed from the lucidity. Who we are IS THAT LUCIDITY. Notice when you are daydreaming… of course, you are not being present… in FOF terms, you are not dividing your attention.. but what is noticing that you are daydreaming? Something IS NOTICING IT! Something is seeing everything, and that “something” cannot be seen.. and also that “something” has no opinions about what is happening.. no judgment. I just sees.. it is Awareness that sees… Consciousness… the Oneandonlyself…. There is no true personality and false personality.. there is no lower self and higher self… all of that is just the ego putting on different masks.. and the truth is that there really is no ego at all! Truly, all that exists is Consciousness, The One, playing the part of each of us… Almost all of the talk on this blog (and all around us, to be honest) is about separateness. This veil that keeps us from the truth of existence is itself totally transparent, but we can’t see this when we are focused on this dream. Awakening is merely a shift in perception… but this is not something the mind can do…
There is something calling to each of us… This is what in the FOF was called “The Magnetic Center” It is something unseen, but felt by every human… a longing for something. Our society teaches us to take action, to go after that for which we long… (or else to AVOID that for which we long, which of course is the same coin) So we feel that if we find the right job, or the right new car, or the right mate, THEN I will be happy! It is this quest that we have all felt.. We enobled it when we began our spiritual pursuits, but it is that same longing that leads to ALL addictions.. feeling that there is something we NEED, and we will do whatever we can to satisfy that need.. Of course, we thought we were higher than the heroin addicts or Type-A career addicts when we found spirituality, but it is the same inner pull that we have felt… The FOF, and all other systems have told us that we have to do something in order to reach that final prize, awakening… we have to meditate.. or divide our attention… or transform negativity… that is all bullshit, and we have all bought it… (I won’t even get started in talking about “The Secret”!!!) This pull is calling to us, inviting us home.. We do NOT need to take any action.. in fact, and action that we take effectively pushes it away! We need to surrender.. to totally let go.. and there is NO WAY THAT ANYONE CAN TELL YOU HOW TO LET GO! Because to try to let go is efforting.. is trying to do something.. It is true that we cannot DO, but not as most of us have understood it. There is one phrase that is helpful to me, and that is, “Thy Will, not my will, be done”. Okay, now I have to bring up “The Secret” This film, which does state a lot of things that are true with apparently little understanding of them, is all about “My Will, not Thy Will be done”. See the difference? It is about figuring out how to get what we want.. and that is exactly what keep awakening away. The Secret is really the path towards a deeper and more pleasant form of illusion… sorry to offend its fans.. and there are many…
One last thing. Do you really want to awaken? Ask yourself this question, and be honest? Are you willing to give up everything? No, you don’t have to quit your job, leave your relationship and give your money to your guru.. that has been tried!!! but you have to give up all your beliefs… as beliefs always include fear.. the fear that it might not be true, among other fears. One has to give up even the pleasant ones.. the idea of being in a blissful state 24/7… Are you willing to give up everything that you presently call real? Are you willing to give up all your fears? To give them up, you must really face them.. and especially, you must come face to face with the most primal fear, that of utter annihilation.. the fact that who you think you are doesn’t even exist. It never did. The word, “ego” is Latin for “I”. If you really want this awakening, there will be total resistance from this imaginary one… What happens here is a literal inability to breathe when deep awakenings happen. That is absolutely terrifying. Are you willing to face this terror? Face it without flinching? Face it even if it means your utter destruction? If so, have at it… I have seen the scaley beast, and I keep heading back into its den. Can’t think of anything better to do… or to not do, as the case might be…
One last thing.. I don’t know this at all.. but it is my opinion that RB did have a genuine awakening back in the late 60’s, but that he never completed the process. Awakening IS a process.. One awakens in a flash of Grace, and then there is a process that generally takes many years to complete the awakening. Robert didn’t go past that first big internal explosion.. you see, he took it personally.. and awakening is not personal… it is the end of the personal..
I would love to receive comments, if you would like to write. My email is enhance44@earthlink.net.
Many blessings to you,
Spencer
Last one. Alela Diane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiA2Ufldxd8
enjoy
Reply to Posts #211, #217, #224, #235 & #244
Hello Arthur/ Post #217
Forget the fourth bottle for a blog member, save the fourth
one for you, you’ll need another.
__________________________
Hello Traveler/ Post #224
Thank you for that post: beautiful.
_________________
Hello A former student/ Post #235
You wrote ~
“I did and was told it was Nestles food service in a can. So I came back and told Robert in front of the group. He buffered and changed the subject. He later told me I should have told him privately and “externally consider my teacher”. What I wondered about my not inner considering at having been put in this position?”
___________________
Well, there you have it, again… “should have”.
Oh, I get it Robert Burton, its in a can….
now let me rap it out of my cerebellum to get this crazy sheet straight,
like two and two equals four straight jackets, not made from scratch, rather yellow and green silk viagra sachets and linen robe belts, seat belts not made from felt, click clack I don’t have yo back, back to back, in and out of tha Galleria stash, flashing those denims out from tha wash, Isabelle were is yo clock, seeing those new spring squash, holding their own, breathing, can you feel their earnestness dripping down the sink drain, reigning these birds, thirty in all, who got the Koran’s signature?
flying through the sky of pain, movement grooving through these times of day and night candy canes, sawing those lumber planks to hold cold coffee to stay, don’t forget to unplug the cappuccino machine, hell’s fire is always one step past At Bay, weather gone astray, mining caps ah swaying in the coal dust as our wives and daughters criss cross, Sunday prey, that we’ll come home, recognizable as the prodigal son was when standing over his blind father’s grave, you and me bro, stamping down the thoroughfare of San Francisco, prehistoric like, you with tha traffic, me wondering off in the static, listening to tha white noise grove, a little too much, cool, I’m back in tha touch, I can see the moments donut hole, we’re looking for those piles of change, given back to the toll payers, dropped, discarded, not wanted, for facts are too factual to be yo facts, conscience slayers, loose change equals too much weight, we’re on the other side of tha gate, yo can’t compromise the extra heaviness of taking change for price, gotta throw around yo real scale numbers, even if they’re edited by someone in ah slumber, gotta roll those dice, yet they loaded homey, what momma don’t know daddy got it in the tool shed cabinet down below, illing the five finger discount with tha picture phony, dumping out tha lice, shaving our heads, we’re children again, on the mend, not thinking of booty, looty, duty or woody, just looking for that first promise of yo man number seven, yet moody, promised at the end of that one, their rainbows rail road’n cross yours, pots of gold, penicillin pores on an old loaf of bread, cold sores, forlorn minuscule and gone Lincoln rounds, look over there homeboy, its someone’s wallet on the double line, you going for it, will it be mine, its nighttime, make your move long legs cause I’m cartwheeling already, grooving near ya, almost steady like, bright shinning raccoon eyes peering at yo first sight, I just might, is it leather, alligator, croc, rhino or made in China, fine though, so long as its cash and not in escrow, boiling, Yellowstone park is rising, dividing my attention between here and yo plus equals minus, bring tha crater to life again, gaseous vapors melting this dimension thin, closing on ya, yo conscience can be born, erase tha porn! Give it all up, bringing tha gods down closer, so they can touch and be touched by the stealth wealth, not yo conservative inquisitive monolithic imperial nonoperative, stoking a chimney that ain’t got no house, no mouse, no spouse,
I’m voting, let’s all love and let go these guns smokin, choking, destabilizing the sunshine, rest awhile in a bag of salt in the river Rhine, my fine sign of love is not rolled in a glove, shizzam! Whose that, who said ‘I can, I am tha man, yo man is my man, give him up or be damned, yo just ho’s in my way, the world is mechanical cause man marries other than another man’, back to me, I’m just yo conscience rapping, whose singing so love will guide us all outside the sheets of cling free, dethroned, stoned, moaned and back to tha source where’s there’s no divorce, clock remorse, ming, rings, porcelain reflections to get ya down, thinking about it all, staring into tha wondering if you’re for hire or just prolonging what’s already expired, who isn’t god’s homey, boom, the thunder sounds, clowns swarm the earth, birth stops, immortal dirt, take it in yo hand, feel its texture, remember me, remember them and way back then Them, at that first lie, dribble, shout, tha baby’s too shy to ask for pie and so you shielded yo self from looking it in the eye, too close to home, gotta find a distraction, traction, faction, relaxation station, fixation, food stamp exchange relation, where you couldn’t see yo footprints the FoF carried yo butt, strutting down Rice’s Crossing Road, not thinking of Jesus or how grain might have landed in his bowl or gut, gotta strut tha stuff regardless of tha fluff, they couldn’t drop ya, thought they might loose their souls or worse, the perfected non-debit FoF strut, damn homey, break it smooth for once, let out all the pent up daemons out into tha rose garden fo a breath of fresh air, I know their names, I ain’t got no hair fo god to count, give them to me, nothing to loose, I’m not looking for a new grove to sooth, I got tha pesticide, not suicide, not genocide, not side by side, not yo regular or politicized, licensed, no green card voodoo to size, get on up, those onyx spirits, not deliberates, they are the only true sink drain theme, scream, cough out those Leviathans, grins, sins, gins, lens, skins of spirit men on lend fo the sake of recollection and I did it scoff, cross Richard’s ranch let them dance, allowing them to finally have croissants ‘in’ France, don’t hesitate with this date, we not waitin for so slow pokes, but leaving a trail called tha blog, loader than a million frog and with this rhyme I summon a billion empty flasks of dried up wine, promises, predictions, suspicions, gossip, man number four, damn that’s sore, spinning them all at once, the worlds largest twirl tha bottle truth or dare, its dizzying isn’t it, whether its gonna land here or there? Break it! You say, but its no ordinary bottle, throttle, model of tha universe, its real, in this moment without a red riding hood bonnet, Shakespeare sonnet, damn, get up on it, rock on out with your solo Gucci, that’s what we are here fo anyway, not to sway, get paid, get laid, get weighed at Weight Watcher’s hall of fame, who’s who don’t know our names, as far as they are concerned no we ain’t no more than I Love Lucy or Got Porn? and damn, Lucy’s Ricky died before the fellowship could get him.
_____________________________
Breakin it on out to ya,
Love to you all.
265 unoanimo
Got a wee bit of the Dublin bard in ya lad.
Bard it on up Bruce, we ain’t covering that we’re not afraid to loose.
Dear All.
Can we count how many people left since November 2006 per center. Would you all be so kind to let us know?
Why? In 1995 200 people left. I never was informed of these figures. We heard, that it was only a few “negative people” who left. If I had know it was 200 I might have done some more investigation???
Now it is still hard to get numbers. Maybe students from each center can write with a header London center count, Paris center count, Madrid center count etc.
Would you, could you?
Thanks.
Bruce #264:
Sweet song and video. Thanks.
#268 More history needed?
It might be an interesting exercise, but I would ask “if only one person left, or 500 left” what does that mean to YOU?
Do you really need more information? Thousands have left over the years. Yet many still remain. Only you can answer “should I stay or should I go?”
That’s why we have talked so much of conscience here.
Hello Tim Campion! Out of the blue, one year for Christmas my brother who doesn’t know you, gave me your book of “Waves”. I still have it. It makes me smile to see your name here. Do any more surfing? Or do us old farts just surf the internet instead these days?
Hello Unoanimo #220:
“I sense a bit of poking lately from you, waz up? Perhaps your heart wishes to meet me, could that be it? Who knows, I do sense that, often, when, what we ‘think’ we love does not respond to our thought, we make it the enemy, yet, too, it often goes unnoticed that we never really spoke to that person directly, never fully revealed our imaginary picture…”
If your lovely neighbor pokes you, do you really think it is because they want to make you their ‘enemy’ when they live so close by, right next door? Or are they just being polite?
Have you EVER spoken to me directly in your posts…or have you just reacted to what I have written in my posts to others in the ‘interest of balance’? Frankly, the latter seems the case from my side of the LCD, which is fine, I need the eggs, but you don’t seem to. You are aleady ‘there’.
Yes, my heart does want to meet yours…as equals, not unlike everyone else here including Little Suzy, Yesri Baba and some of our non-native friends who have been poking you, too. We are all in the same sandbox. And we are used to direct eye to eye contact. It cuts through the pretense. I sense only your profile in your responses to me instead, not your direct gaze, your word-images only aimed in my general vicinity. We deserve better than that, you and I, don’t we, after all we’ve been through?
I’m a purest, mate, I’d rather breathe the fresh clean air between us than your ‘prose exhaust’ as you do a fly by overhead! Sure, I could consciously use the scroll bar, my ‘anonymous friend’, or even the page down button, as it were in your case, to sweep you completely under the rug. Yet despite my FOF training, my mama taught me better than that.
“Conscious doing’ is not about ‘scrolling on by’ in avoidance, but stopping and smelling the roses. And this blog is a garden of delights! Traveler’s #224 delightful sharing is case in point. I read it twice. I could empathize…been there myself.
Are you really in this for balance? Balance means equal. You seem to be holding your finger on your side of the scale.
I’d like to greet you in that wordless, keyboard-less place, without the roadkill, lions, snakes or spiders, where I don’t feel the need to wash my hands of anything or anyone. Where we can dangle our feet into the same lake from the same dock on a hot summer day and watch the catfish jump. Maybe do some fishing, maybe just stretch out.
PS. I didn’t find the toaster, it found me. I just got up the nerve and made the call.
PSS #265 Cough, cough, cough. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
To More history needed: on the list that I am making it’s over 50 people who confirmed that they left in 2006-2007. And this list is far from being completed and not everyone listed their years in the school. I personally know many more people who just recently left but are not included in the list.
FOF will not disclose the real numbers – it would be just bad marketing for them. They stopped updating them on Propylaia a while ago – guess why. Besides it’s not over – people are still leaving.
Didn’t RB “predicted” that it will be no more than 30 people this time? If he did, well, he is wrong – again!
Contact list for ex-members:
malaec@optonline.net
Dear Lucy
For some reason after Jeanna and I parted I had to take the cat with me. We lived in a tiny apartment in the tenderloin. I was certainly alone and isolated. I moved into a house out by the Zoo with some others to strat a band and Lucy ran away. I think she was harrassed by my roommates cat.
That’s the last I ever saw her.
#235 A former student
I am not going to call it anything.
Like I said I was making a bunch of assumptions. It was just a thought that occured to me while reading your posts to No person and I threw it out there. I don’t know what anyone else needs to do but myself, and thats pretty iffy.
A former student
I like your Cosmic Consciousness print. Do you have a studio in Berkley? I don’t live that far away and would like to see them in real life, if possible, sometime.
#271 Whalerider:
Hello! The old fart who wrote the Book of Waves is my brother Drew. And yes, he still surfs. I’m afraid of waves.
He’s out there, lurking. But don’t be surprised if you see a new poster who “sounds” suspiciously like Bob Dylan; it’ll probably be Drew.
To More history needed
Milan center count: 9
(as far as I know, until March 2007)
#268 More history needed
Paris center count:
2 left since November (the center had before 25 students)
Aline
#268 More history needed
Amsterdam center count:
3 left since November
Some posts set me off.
It is a line of children holding each others shirt tails down the trail into now. It is in the story and between the lines or one line or one phrase. Aha, yes, yes it is me and they are writing. A price was paid and it was not for naught (it was for naught but what naught?). “Dark knowing” (Sandra C.), like in a dream or high when one sees the meaning of everything and writes it down so it won’t be forgotten. The next day the note says: The world is round and there are stars in the sky. What the..? Again a dream, must be more careful. Later: The world is round and there are stars in the sky.
We must not be afraid to acknowledge our greatness for the rest of the world will surely remind us that we are not. And we must acknowledge the greatness of that co-worker and the woman at the cash register and the old woman walking with a walker diagonally across the street because they may not be doing it for themselves.
The world is round and there are stars in the sky.
I have it from a good source that Drew once asked Robert if Bob Dylan was a semi-conscious being. Surf’s up.
Amsterdam at least 2 people left (last couple of months), London at least 2 people (last couple of months).
ah bruce!
in posts too numerous to refer to!
Now i bet that you were completely unidentified the whole time. I checked out one of the addresses you refer to and im reminded of the fact that if one compiles selective excerpts from a piece then one can “spin” it to mean almost anything one wants.
I went to your link,
http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
and if you look at the bottom of that page, it corroborates the veracity of the original clip but not the circumstances.
I had no idea that it had any connection with what you found in it but thats probably because of the glasses i am wearing.
Take it easy in your “defender of the faith role” or your likely to pop a blood vessel. Or even better, try to play the other sides role for a while as an experiment to view attachment.
By the way didnt you say i was a fool and that you were done with me, then be done.
253 Veronicapoe. Maybe we should change your name from the gothic horror ending which is very appropriate to the current situation, to Kapow, as your knockout blows have the golem reeling. Thank you for each and every one.
HI SHEIK. In reading other posts im seeing some full names and wondering if there is a reason for them being excepted. Is it ok, as ive seen in other posts, to use first name and first initial.
Quentin Crisp, who was one of the first gays said.
“Its no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, “Really , I was meant to be a Ballet dancer.” By then, pigs will be your style.”
ps how do you catch a monkey?
love Cy.
Hi
you may take a look at this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7oBJ6sTKAg
where Robert Burton offers an example of how c influence communicate with him.
enjoy
#224 Traveller
Thank you for your testimony which pushes to me to write this post.
This once more raises the question to know “why people remain such a long time in the school”?
This question often was reccurent, in a sarcastic way, in various posts.
I spent myself more than 22 years in the school,although I had lost my naivety about it at least 10 years before departing.
For a long time I had the feeling to be alone (except for some rare friends) with my interrogations and the contradictions provided by the school.
Each time I exposed my points of view to others in the school, they did not accept them and returned them to me, photographing me to make more efforts, to have less personal points of view, “to do my work”….
That led me finally to not expose my point of view anymore while feeling guilty not to make the efforts in the direction required by the school.
R.Collins says that the greatest suffering of a man is not to be understood by others.
Because of that, one can wait for years hoping to be understood and gratified by others.
Another reason is that people remain in the school sometimes because they are depressed. This was not my case, but the case of several people around me. It is not even the fact of being depressed, but the fact of not realizing it, which prevents them from having the minimum of energy to decide to leave.
As Traveller explained in its post #224 “depression happens when you freeze yourself from experiencing feelings and thoughts that you think you shouldn’ t be having.”
An other point evoked by Traveller “The best way to lie is to make yourself believe that you’ re telling the truth.” is also one of the points which can prevent someone to leave: by implicating someone personally to confirm publicly unverified things or unacceptable facts.
I personally refused 3 times the role of centre’s director because I understood that nobody was ready to listen to I had to say.
Aline
in reply to more history needed post 268
All students who left are removed from propylaia after some time. The current number is 2002 and these numbers are updated regularily and available within the FOF. There has been no attemp to hide this. The general changes in the FOF seem to have a larger impact on membership numbers than the blog (although it might have helped students to make up their mind), since most students joined primarily because of the teaching and not because of the teacher. This development is considered a nessecary step in the transition to a new teaching. There are some posters here like graduate and others who kind of reconcile the extreme postions and acknowledge a relative value of the FOF for it’s members. I highly appreciate this
#282 student: ‘the transition to a new teaching’ there is no new teaching to teach; just more ’stuff’ to make you think you are being taught and kept busy by more mind games.
sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Traveler 224, Aline 281
Thanks for sharing. Your stories resonated deeply inside my heart. It’s to amazing to finally find out you’re not alone after all.
The Whitman poem is a wonderful finale.
Bruce 261
I woke up this morning with a Joanna Newsom song in my head and the strong urge to post one of her videos. Man, you’re efficient! She is one incredibly talented woman. Have you seen her perform live?
I reciprocate with another pearl for you music lovers out there.
All is full of love
284 Laura
I have. She used to perform here relatively frequently. Since she took off, not so much. She grew up around the same circle of friends as my kids.
Great music, quirky voice that stays with one.
You know, looking back at my post, I had a reaction to student. And it wasn’t so much the words used but the tone.
When student said, “This development is considered a nessecary (sp) step in the transition to a new teaching” (I guess ‘this development’ means students leaving the Fellowship.
Sounds about as emotional as picking weeds out of a garden. Maybe student is mistaking the flowers for weeds.
student 282
in reply to more history needed post 268
All students who left are removed from propylaia after some time. The current number is 2002 and these numbers are updated regularily and available within the FOF. There has been no attemp to hide this. The general changes in the FOF seem to have a larger impact on membership numbers than the blog (although it might have helped students to make up their mind), since most students joined primarily because of the teaching and not because of the teacher. This development is considered a nessecary step in the transition to a new teaching. There are some posters here like graduate and others who kind of reconcile the extreme postions and acknowledge a relative value of the FOF for it’s members. I highly appreciate this
**********
Think about this, your teacher is irresponsible and selfish and that is his fatal failing. It is the reason he has crystallized in the wrong hydrogens, turn the school into a wrong school and it is the reason C influence set him up and showed that he is in imagination about his importance. From day one he insisted that the school was there because of the end of the world and that was a lie. That was 36 years of being asleep in imagination. Now he has receive a “shock” from the number of shit piles trailing a cartoon on a rock, again this is C influence sending a message to the population of the school to wake up and get out because it has long ago all turned into imagination. It is perfectly clear: the new teaching is shit. Read the artifacts on the wall.
Burton succumbed to the queens of centers, to the voracious appetites of mouths that can never be satisfied, and in doing so betrayed himself, the school, higher forces and any of those remaining are enablers for a destructive hunger that will suck its way to Hell.
Folks
About 250 people left between December and now. (This number may be off by 10% in either direction). Of particular note is that an ever-greater percentage of the leavers are over 10 years as members, many over 20. The month of May saw a large spike in the normal monthly average of leavers.
You’d be surprised at the impact of seeing the disappearance of hundred famliar, respected names. As one long-term member ruefully stated to a ex-member ‘my school is leaving the school’. No wonder fomenting talk about ‘who’ and ‘how many’ is considered an undesirable ‘deviation’ of student’s energy.
Traveller #224 great posting, reflects a lot of our stories I suspect, and very well articulated.
Today I met someone who had been in the Madame de Saltzman group, I think she said it was the Gurdjieff Foundation, but not sure about that. Anyway she impressed me with her compassion, energy, vibrancy and understanding and made an interesting comment, not sure how ‘4th way’ it is but it kind of reinforced my sense of things. I have never felt any great regret for being in the Fellowship, I met lots of people like Traveller, lusting for the spiritual, and we learnt much from each other, as well as having many interesting experiences that got me to where I am now. She commented that our souls ‘choose the womb’ we are born into, and none of our experiences are wasted, as the soul’s work is to ‘experience’. Same with all our experiences…we never ‘make mistakes’, but attract different things that help our souls to grow. Becoming bitter and resentful, having an axe to grind is just getting stuck and prevents us moving on. She talked about really listening to ourselves (conscience), so that we can be our own guides.
Oh, she also said that no one in their group claimed to be a ‘higher man’, but they did a lot of physical work and discussed with each other their observations and understandings on an equal footing. She made the point too, that Gurdjieff’s life situation was constantly changing; he made money, lost it all, tried doing different things all the time, and it re-inforced the sense I have that a lot of people don’t leave the Fellowship (or take many life-changing risks) for fear of losing some warped perception of ’security’.
So I guess if we do ‘choose the womb we are born into’, we also chose the group we were in, and stayed in it as long as we needed to….
Lust for Life 289
Anyway she impressed me with her compassion, energy, vibrancy and understanding and made an interesting comment, not sure how ‘4th way’ it is but it kind of reinforced my sense of things. I have never felt any great regret for being in the Fellowship, I met lots of people like Traveller, lusting for the spiritual, and we learnt much from each other, as well as having many interesting experiences that got me to where I am now. She commented that our souls ‘choose the womb’ we are born into, and none of our experiences are wasted, as the soul’s work is to ‘experience’. Same with all our experiences…we never ‘make mistakes’, but attract different things that help our souls to grow. Becoming bitter and resentful, having an axe to grind is just getting stuck and prevents us moving on. She talked about really listening to ourselves (conscience), so that we can be our own guides.
****************
She sweet talked you. You may not understand what I am going to tell you but here goes, these people are ruled by “feminine dominance” it is an organization that worships feminine dominance. This is what they mean when they say “conscience.” It is also a physical man number one cult. They believe that you can wake up through the sensations of the body, which is a deviation of the Fourth Way. Their cult is simply a less flamboyant FOF.
Graduates, your pose made me laugh, you said it so precisely: new teaching is shit.
I recall once talking to an old student a while ago being concerned about “new teaching”. I approached it carefully: “Some of it sound so bizzarre, it seems to me almost like bullshit..” He interrupted: “No, dear, this IS bullshit! Complete and total bullshit! Your perception is correct.”
It’s so funny to see people like Student seriously talking about “new teaching”. I wish I saw your, Student, serious self-remembering face when you were shown at the meeting those marvelous poop images and people screwing from behind… Long and Short Be as penises and breasts… Great New Teaching! What did you learn from this? How do you use it in your everyday life? When you take a crap, you count it? When you see penis you think : Long (short) Be? When you make love you think of it as completing the Sequence on your knees? You walk aroung seing pyramid shapes, and counting things, breaths, and repeating the silly sequence… Trying not to laugh, don’t ever show teeth while smiling – it’s the Devil… Imagining that because of this you’re “more present”. Nice way to live your life, Student! Keep studying, I guess. Keep counting.
Robert painfully wants to be important. His vanity screams! He desperately wants to contribute something of “his own” to the 4th way teaching, to be recognized. But he simply doesn’t have good enough intellectual center to come up with reasonable ideas. He failed as a Prophet, failed as an Ark Builder, so now he poses as an “Ancient School teaching gatherer and preserver” and tells you that this is the real Aim of the School… What happened to the previous “Aims”? Oops…
And now he says: “This is what’s on this image. His penis means Long Be. Woman’s breasts are Be and Hold. This is the ulimate truth. That’s what cavemen and egyptians really had in mind. We are so incredibly lucky, aren’t we. Now, repeat after me”.
Give me a break. “New teaching.” When are you going to finally see that your vain and greedy Teacher simply lost his mind?
Graduates #290 – I guess you are still a member!
She did not use the word ‘conscience’, that was my interpretation….it is sometimes difficult to express clearly ones understanding in this format. I was not particularly interested in her groups interpretation of the ’system’, having personally abandoned it, and all systems, religions etc. some years ago when I left. The point I was trying to make was to those asking how we, who have understood that the FOF is truly a cult, could have been such fools to stay in so long, and also to those who feel that time has been wasted.
My point was that we attract what we need to evolve spiritually, and no experience is wasted unless we get caught up with regret, bitterness and blame. I also agree with what she said; that we do need to listen to ourselves, something within us which is fundamentally the same, that manifests I suppose through physical sensations, the heart, just having a sense of what is right, following that which inspires and gives us energy…I call it conscience…listening to those ‘negative emotions’ that say “wait a minute, this does not feel right to me” or “something about this is deeply troubling” or whatever. To me they are warning signs and this is what I experienced hearing about RB’s escapades, knowing he lied to people to get their money, seeing that he lives like a king while his ‘disciples’ get fleeced, and justifying his actions by wrapping it all up in the name of ‘the work’ and claiming to be a higher being.
I also feel that we stay in the Fellowship the amount of time we need to and I guess that is what you are doing…so good luck and may your soul learn the lessons it needs. Just, if you do find yourself leaving, please move on and continue to grow, don’t get stuck in resentment and blame, as some people seem to have.
Lots of love and lust to you, and all current members.
#289 Lust For Life: I think it was Rodney Collin in “The Theory of Celestial Influence” who mentions how we choose our womb. It had something to do with the vibrations sent out by the quivering vagina.
I spent a few years fooling around in the dark alleys of lost souls, and my most urgent need was not security but stability.
An oasis with a cup of coffee.
I think yesri baba said it best for me in regard to Traveller.
The first three or four paragraphs said it all.
I also think those who are recent arrivals need to contact Janna. She is offering a helping hand.
To Unoanimo-
Your rap (post #265 was quite good). Do you need some beats? Will you come to my studio and record the vocal?
I posted on page 11 of the blog a request for anyone who might remember which book it was where Gurdjieff spoke about a technique to induce first state by concentrating on the sensation of coolness on your forehead. I thought you might know. Please respond if you do.
Hey, have we ever met face to face?
Wishing all a fruitful Saturday…..
293
“recent arrivals” I like that.
Inspired by Robert check out wiki before it changes again
I interprett Beauty in the Sonnets as refering to self remembering and Rose as Higher centers.A sonnet of W. Shakespeare
XCV.
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
O, what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
Where is Elena (former Haven)?
She is not posting lately.
Veronica, thank you for all your archiving work. Despite living his whole life in a country where people’s lives are well documented, Sri Burton has managed to have a quite vague biographical outline. Whoever ends up writing “My Childhood with Robert” needs our help in gathering the data. Stories are helpful, but solid documentation and photos are perhaps even more necessary.
BTW-The “3 photos from the 60’s” link has some problem – tried it in Firefox and IE and the material “is not found”.
As far as stories go:
The one about the head injury was one that RB loved to tell. In his version of it, the valiant young Horn student came to his meeting right from the hospital, causing his teacher, who was “in unnecessary suffering” to be shamed by the scale of Robert’s suffering and dedication. Yesterday’s daily card echoes this delusion of grandeur; “As a distant echo, man’s suffering mirrors that of the Absolute”.
Another story I heard was that someone who was with Horn at the same time as Burton later joined the FOF, but left after a while, ostensibly because he just couldn’t accept “that tennis teacher”, as he knew him from Horn’s group, as a conscious being. Jonathan P was also in Horn’s group, though not at the same time as Burton.
In reference to prior postings about guns at the FOF property, in case no-one addressed this in the interim: This is total horseshit, obviously designed to freak out the locals.
Burton received some death threats in the mid-90’s that he took seriously. At that time, the guards at his pleasure palace began carrying firearms and the gatehouse (now Pyle, named after Gomer) kept a rifle. This fell away after a few years. I am not aware of anyone routinely “packing” at Isis, unless they are doing it on their own accord and secretly. A few members, primarily out of basic subsistence needs, have/had rifles and occasionally hunt/ed to put food on the table. Otherwise, the idea that gun ownership among students is widespread is nonsense. Isis is closer in spirit to a hybrid of the Nike-clad geeks of Heaven’s Gate and the Worcestershire Ladies’ Gardening Society than the survivalist militia types at Waco. No intent to impugn your adrenal output guys – it is just that FOFers, in general, are simply not physically aggressive types.
265 Unoanimo – dat shit’s da dope. Saul Williams riding an Allen Ginsberg T-bird with George Clinton spinnaz. When u gwan testify at The Berkeley Slam?
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by group-think, starving hysterical sodomized naked, dragging themselves through the Rose Garden at dawn looking for a pliant damsel; angel-headed, tiny-fisted hucksters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynasty”
Bruce: There are no other moderators, not at the moment. I thought I’d need them if there was more material to be moderated but that never happened. I am glad that you solved your problem at the end – you are right, more than two links will automatically flick your comment to be moderated as it is a common feature of spam.
I am sorry if I forced some of you people into a state of mild paranoia, there is no dodgy stuff going on, very little moderation, no changes in posts, roughly one post deletion every two days and no blacklisting. There has been no need. Pretty much all posts are going real time.
I am prepared in case I am needed but I keep my slimy paws off the discussion.
One day….
somebody asked me…
“Why do you paint so many self-portraits?”
my first answer…..
“I paint ‘only’ self-portraits.”
…yes, whatever you paint or write is actually a self-portrait….
Thou sayest it…..
One of my young esoteric pupils was asked by a student….
“Can you read other people minds?”
He said…..
“Even if I could I for sure would prefer to read Shakespeare.”
Sure this pupil of mine will not read this…..
how do you call it?
…..He who have hears….
Thanks Sheik, no prob.
Burton received some death threats in the mid-90’s that he took seriously. At that time, the guards at his pleasure palace began carrying firearms and the gatehouse (now Pyle, named after Gomer) kept a rifle. This fell away after a few years. I am not aware of anyone routinely “packing” at Isis, unless they are doing it on their own accord and secretly. A few members, primarily out of basic subsistence needs, have/had rifles and occasionally hunt/ed to put food on the table. Otherwise, the idea that gun ownership among students is widespread is nonsense. Isis is closer in spirit to a hybrid of the Nike-clad geeks of Heaven’s Gate and the Worcestershire Ladies’ Gardening Society than the survivalist militia types at Waco. No intent to impugn your adrenal output guys – it is just that FOFers, in general, are simply not physically aggressive types.
*******************
In the mid-80’s I personally stood in a field behind the “Gurdjieff Cottage” practicing target shooting with a 44 magnum pistol, almost everyone had a gun.
That must have been when Mr. Hocking was selling them to us.
Well, not everyone. Many of the men, and a few of the women (nice little ladies 38’s, I think called S&W Diamond Backs).
Is anyone else having trouble viewing the archived material? I can see the photos and other images but anything that is text (such as the Canons and the timeline) I can’t find anything to click on to download or open it up. Is the problem my old iMac?
Christina
Question your assumptions about the ‘observer’:
how do you catch a monkey?
RB did tell me in the mid-90’s that there would come a time when everyone in the FOF would be armed. Of course, as we all know, he has said many things that have never come to pass.
#314 Lust for Life
Question your assumptions about other’s assumptions about the ‘observer’.
#314 Lust for Life
Krishnamurti is great! Thanx for the link.
One of the ways I see what Traveller was saying about seeing the “two faces” and the “vace” in the optical illusion at the same time is what Krishnamurti was trying to express.
Correction to #316:
“…everyone in the FOF would be armed” should read ” everyone at Renaissance will be armed.”
I actually heard this from another student many moons ago…you catch a monkey by devising a trap whereby he reaches into a hole to grab hold of something he really wants. Once he has it, he will never let go of it…so if the object is too big to come back through the hole you have your monkey. All you need is a sack. And this is a metaphor for…
Answer to Post #304
Hello Vera.mente:
She’s at tha beach, cooling her feet, on a straight sheet,
cause Oregon House waz too small to hold her,
straight debate, no curls, no furls, just a girl with a twirl,
makin tha boys too dizzy, so back to Columbia, where tha real coffee is not so luke like and funny.
Word.
The Fellowship of Friends Cling-Free Deaf Jam,
remixed, more Fat, more of dat,
this marmalade jam is dedicated to whale riders everywhere.
I quote ~
You wrote ~
“I did and was told it was Nestles food service in a can. So I came back and told Robert in front of the group. He buffered and changed the subject. He later told me I should have told him privately and “externally consider my teacher”. What I wondered about my not inner considering at having been put in this position?”
___________________
Well, there you have it, again… “should have”.
Oh, I got it, Robert Burton, it’s in a can, I can hear it rumbling like medieval gout,
Without a doubt, sauerkraut is not an Egyptian wish-dish to wish for the sake of fish…
Now, let me rap this ancient rhyme mood, out from between of my cerebellum split, not to spit, to get this crazy sheet straight, for once, not dunce, not too late, to un-procrastinate, join up yo forces betwixt this big ole blog, log, don’t flog, be real, take tha Neo pill ~
like four and four equals eight straight jackets, not made from scratch, rather many ah yellow and green Viagra silk sachet and linen robe belts, seat belts, not made from felt,
click clack I don’t have yo back, no, I am not a jack, a king, a queen, ah life person with a back to back floodgate to yo wolf pack, in and out of tha Galleria stash, wondering whetha tha bottle that’s got the most dust is ‘tha must’, flashing those denims out from tha wash, Isabelle, where is yo bell, where is yo clock, knocked off tha Amazon dock, fish it out before those cannibals learn to tell time, outside of the mind, feline, turbine, nerve gas inside yo spine, volunteering to work, signing tha ‘wanna be a movie star in a jar’, before you can rest and dine,
down with tha dope gravity thing, home girls from England, Britain, Wales or Yale, how can you keep up this cannon ball riddled sale, garage sale, your males?
Seeing those new spring squash, damn Greylin, waz up my southern brotha, you don’t have to keep driving fo tha same house servant lovas, holding their own, breathing, can you feel their earnestness oozing down the sink drain, reign those birds in, thirty in all, who got the Holy Koran to scribble, enthralled, its signature riddle, picture, before 35 millimeter was tha strip, not to be missed, you jist, your interpretations are the bullet holes in tha Buddha statue, the Taliban did not miss,
Mohammed is pissed, you would be too if you had died and missed this, insidious procrastinations, perjury, insinuation, recreation, abomination, borrowing from those brains who are not yo’s to undo, see through, paint red, white and blue, for all sorts of personal combinations, work stations, transitory relations,
combing yo hair in tha gleaming gold minaret to project, protect, prorate, irate, Tibet, inlet, yo guys cracker jacks never had so many wiglets,
tha muezzin is begging yo people to stop with this ‘tha yo get this fo that’ Rob-mop, this fifties flop drop has gotta stop bopping down tha highway to hell, AC DC, sees through ya, it has fooled ya, into thinking that yo secrets are opaque, wiseacre pilgrimage to no where but tha back gate and its locked, blocked, out of thoroughfare fo yo grove fair,
flying through the sky of pain, movement grooving through these times of day and night candy canes, sawing those lumber planks to hold cold coffee to stay, to play docta, I gotcha, I watcha, erasing all that this wide world can give to us to cut tha key yo won’t turn, return, assist the FoF to un-yearn,
there’s no drama that’s not connected to yo momma, how yo treated her on her death bed, playing dead before Death could get any rest or say so in yo mother’s true test, yo’s pharaoh crossing arms, was fo tha crooked test, to show that you are different than tha best, than thee, than we, but for free, you got yo tee shirt that reads,
‘My momma died, I said nothing to tha ho, she’s the Mary of the Feminine Dominance Foe, I took the advice of a license plate, to be late, to not go, to her funeral wake.’
The FoF anti-Christ is his momma, but where’s daddy, its takes two to tango-golf with a fire and brimstone caddy,
don’t forget to unplug the cappuccino machine, hell’s fire is always one step past at bay to go to burn stage, weather gone astray, mining caps ah swaying in the coal dust as our wives and daughters criss cross their breasts, Sunday prey, that we’ll come home (to stay, our way, not yo nighttime scheduled nest-vests) recognizable to their feminine as the prodigal son waz while standing over his blind father’s grave, adrenaline, ready to pay, though not tha day, tha way, tha month of May waz six feet under his wonder, blunda, tundra, in his hand he held his face, disgraced, out of pace, lace, tho not a waste, god took him, tho not without a grin, some do win, some do everything to win at loosing tha acceptance that they have deluded tha already polluted.
You and me bro, stamping loud, causing ripples in tha pot hole, down the thoroughfare of San Francisco, prehistoric like, not on trikes, tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, reptilian cactus eaters smorgasbordus, you with tha traffic, me wondering off in the static, listening to tha white noise grove, a little too much, coola, I’m back in tha touch, I can see the moments donut hole, you’re looking for those piles of copper change, moon dust, given back to tha toll payers in pain,
dropped, discarded, not wanted, cause yo lover’s ‘one cent’ is not enough ‘down on it’, for facts are too factual to be yo facts, conscience slayers, hypnotized payers, desperate soothsayers, never had enough to buy a real crystal ball, yo ya’ll, its looks good from a distance, particularly when its transatlantic resistance, missed opportunistic, wavy gravy and at least yo don’t have to worry bout no bread coming from Rob and tha lady,
loose pennies equals too much weight, in tha blog, we’re on the other side of tha gate, yo can’t compromise the extra heaviness, tha steadiness, tha readiness, tha truthfulness of taking change for price, gotta throw around yo real scale numbers, even if they’re edited by someone in ah slumber, a frowning back is its turned towards ya,
the stage you, believed to be you, even if its not true, the FoF is better at making you than you, so go figure it, dog tick, throw tha stick, get tha whip, unconditional rehabilitative ship,
yo, I cannot congratulate anyone, fo holding out what’s beyond yo zipper, as a wand.
Gotta roll those dice, yet, they’re loaded homey, what momma don’t know daddy’s got it in the cellar den below, on hold, wrapped in tha fool’s gold baloney, illing the five finger discount from between tha legs with tha picture phony,
funny, not so homey, reaching for tha four leaf clover, its all over ya, like ah prison tattoo, whose You, am I through? gotta stroll a bit longer, stronga, for those found souls beyond ya,
dumping out tha lice, shaving our heads, we’re children again, on the mend, not thinking of booty, looty, duty, could he, would he or woody, just looking for that first promise of yo man number seven, yet moody,
promised at the end of ‘that one’, their double rainbows rail road’n cross yo’s proclivity, divinity, serenity, I wanna win her him or she’s he, pots of gold inabilities, penicillin spores on an old loaf of bread, cold sores, forlorn minuscule and gone Lincoln rounds, going out of town, around, during July and August, too hot for ya?
Look over there, homeboy Rob, its someone’s wallet on the double line, you going for it, will it be mine, its nighttime, make your move long legs cause I’m cartwheeling already, grooving near ya, almost steady like, bright shinning raccoon eyes peering at yo first sight, I just might, is it leather, alligator, croc, rhino or made in China, fine though, so long as its cash and not in escrow,
Boiling, churlin, sirens are whirling, high noon, tha moon, too soon, yo head feels like ah balloon, baboon, for swoon, wounds can be heard administering themselves in tha sound of a flag flapping at half mass, no, you can’t have that Isis pass, you’re last, out of gas, a not has, robot, forget me not, a knot, forgot, a past FoF ingot,
tha bucking stops here, for the FoF will smear, your fear, your tears, your gear, your near mirror seer, out and about, makin makeup juju, for you, so not to recognize you when you see you in you for you all you, through!
Remember she who played tha bassoon, she’s didn’t woo tha moon, but she’s done with this jist, this mist, these forty-four toll stations on tha edge of cliffs.
Yellowstone park is rising, dividing my attention between here and yo plus equals minus, bring tha crater to life again, gaseous vapors melting this dimension thin, closing on ya, yo conscience can be born, erase tha porn!
Give it all up, bringing tha gods down closer, so they can touch and be touched by the stealth wealth, not yo conservative inquisitive monolithic imperial nonoperative cooperative, stoking a chimney that ain’t got no house, no mouse, no spouse, no spare change to be found in tha cushions of yo couch,
yo not my prisoner, I’m not Kissinger, what does ‘K’ have to do with jail? Yo FoF don’t need no facts to grove down perspiration lane that this Subway combo is smooth, rhyming like a dope male, in tha pale trail, out of free rail, free will, but suffering what’s he’s got to do to improve, not to sue or be sued,
don’t forget, here is where heaven started it,
I’m voting, let’s all love and let go these guns smokin, choking, destabilizing the sunshine, rest awhile in a bag of salt in the river Rhine, my fine sign of love is not rolled in a glove, Shizzam! Whose that, who said, ‘I can, I am tha man, yo man is my man, give him up or be damned, yo just ho’s in my way, the world is mechanical cause man marries other than another man’. (?)
Homeboy hears tha door lock click close, day turns to night, fright, trembling, stuttering, hands in tha pockets, fear of inopportune dockets, loud gossip rockets, eyes inside their sockets, tearing up to try and slide out, no so, this room is for real men, not doubt, not them, who brought to this earth his men, his wine, his time, his muscle, hustle and bustle,
No, you take take tha ticket sales, I’ll have yo males,
where is yo third state now, in a cow, a fruit, a tulip, a palm tree’s uprooted, in tha fourth state of mess, in someone else’s ‘best at tha all-nighter-contest’, in tow, in thyself know, can’t grow, roots are upside down, out of town, Russia’s too far away today, out of time, decision is not yo’s, it’s out of mind, you’re tha sheep, tha heap, not tha teach, coffee grinds, egg shells in tha wishing well of ‘Swell, thank you dear for this year, for your fear, for tha intentional space between ear to ear, that’s tha most a teacher preacher kinda feature can no doubt be quick to tote on his boat, larger than an ark and for a start, bring me more just like that rhapsodized tart.
Back to me, I’m just yo conscience rapping, whose singing so love will guide us all outside the sheets of cling free suffocation, molestation, Life is a toilet station,
Dethroned, stoned, moaned and back to tha source where’s there’s no divorce, clock remorse, ming, rings, porcelain reflections to get ya down, thinking about it all, like when ya cleaned out yo own fireplace, one grace, one face, one race, one embrace, in pace with tha real ace, yo own conscience, without tha Trojans, tha theologians, tha Gilligan’s Island ‘I told ya’s’ “to drop the ‘anchor’, not yo ‘anger’”,
that FoF quick to make all doubt ah stranger,
staring into tha wondering, if you’re for still for hire or just prolonging what’s already expired, who isn’t god’s homey,
boom, the thunder sounds, clowns swarm the earth, birth stops, immortal dirt, take it in yo hand, feel its texture, remember me, remember them and the way back then Them, at that first lie, dribble, shout, tha baby’s too shy to ask for pie and so you shielded yo self from looking it in the eye, too close to home, gotta find a distraction, traction, faction, relaxation station, fixation, food stamp exchange relation,
gotta ease yo self with someone else, who will believe that ‘yo that’ is ‘the that’, not tha rat who ate tha cat, gotta reverse that contradiction into fiction, fairy tale and censorship of mail,
Where you couldn’t see yo footprints the FoF carried yo butt, strutting down Rice’s Crossing Road, though not thinking of Jesus or how grain might have landed in his bowl or gut, gotta strut tha stuff, regardless of tha fluff, what’s really tuff, to hold yo breath while puffing tha fluff,
They couldn’t drop ya, not cause tha weight waz equal to the relate, thought they might loose their souls cause of some third party source or worse, their perfected non-debit FoF strut chanting ‘but, but, but…’
Damn homey, break it smooth for once, sandpaper valentine, no, no body wants that kind of thine,
let out all the pent up daemons, out into tha rose garden fo a breath of fresh air, squeeze from yo lungs all that lard and gin, poached eggs, Tazo tea and upchucked pelican fins,
I know their names begin, I ain’t got no hair fo god to count, give them to me, nothing to loose, I’m not looking for a new grove to sooth or a new sin to wake Moses to decipher them,
I got tha pesticide, not suicide, not genocide, not side by side, not yo regular or politicized, no green card voodoo to size, get on up, those onyx spirits, not deliberates, they are the only true sink drain theme, scream, cough out those Leviathans, bins, sins, wins, lens, skins of spirit men on lend fo the sake of a ‘I can do!’ scoff, mosquitoes on the downstairs bedroom window, seems so to tha boys, in tha dark, spraying the insecticide in tha faces of someone whispering ‘Hey homey, this ark, let’s get off.’
Yo aim is a bit side stepped, without regret, you’ve bombed the ole folks home, burning rubble, moans, groans, auto loans, cell phones, Barney Rubble, trouble, dinosaurs with friends like yo’s don’t need no tar pit sequence to bring to an end all this dear-fence,
just like that, the end will be tha end, without tha margarita bend, no tried friends, no sand box to play in, nothing, just yo selves and destruction, quotations and flotations, for all Titanic romantics to sooth themselves at night, as Conscience flies yo body like a kite,
through the live oaks, tha clearing of throats, off tha deep end, tha deamons dive,
cross Richard’s ranch let them dance, allowing them to finally have croissants ‘in’ France, don’t hesitate with this date, we’re not waitin for no slow pokes, but leaving a trail called tha blog, louder than a million frog and with this rhyme I summon a billion empty flasks of dried up wine, promises, predictions, suspicions, gossip, man number four, damn that’s sore, spinning them all at once, the worlds largest twirl tha bottle truth or dare, its dizzying isn’t it, whether its gonna land here or there, taking out eighty percent of the grape orchard, sparks could scorch it, yo wine is gonna be worth more for it?
Like a meteorite, not out of spite, from Heaven’s Gate to Stargate, don’t be late and forget about bringing yo date, you’re never married enough to give shine to rust, marble bust, a must, a lust, a trust fund in Switzerland, yo tha man Rob, when there are no other men to trust, alone with tha pizza crust, to unwind your rewind, they must, they don’t see it,
Yo, you say, ‘I’m being it, I’m repeating it, so you can hear it again and keep the same wound festering, even after its imagined, its on tha mend, conscious pestering, it works don’t it, then?
that’s why I’m on replay all day, in tha way, looking forwards to creating that immortal desire in you to awaken, forget tha taking, tha booty shakin, I’ve got that one covered, hovered, smothered, Captain Crunch’s mother is no doubt my brother,
And no, you can’t have that pillow, its for my seat, my treat, my heat, my beat and from my tower, my one story flower keep, so stay off tha lawn, you’re my pawn, my fawn, my sugar daddy thong, what?, you say “something’s wrong”, it’s you, abused by believing you’re abused, set to tha music of evil muse, of believing that all news is on my level of news, I create, I debate, I am my own date, I am tha he who silently befuddles, not yo spectator, watching you juggle my balls, in these halls, off these walls,
my ways, pitching a curve ball through yo family values window haze, you gotta pay for these stacks of hay, with no needle to be found to smile about or meow, its on tha cork board, pay today, tomorrow and yesterday, it never ends, I am salt’s twin, hear me humbly roar,
for this tiger’s got no better than your adding yo pick to its hoes quick rip, of tha temples weed, for my need, to have a clean lawn, before dawn, before someone thinks something is going on, tha plant,
its growing, showing signs of being a lotus transplant, to close to us, gotta spray it, unrelated it, berate it, get it out of the will before the lawyers call it not my will, but the will, of tha people, tha steeple, tha those who said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to my ‘you knows, its got to go, cause it said ‘yes’ at dinner, but meant ‘no’ when things got thinner. Throw, blow, back to driving yo used, bald tires, rattling Renaissance Renault,
and yes, there’s a back door, in tha floor, which is custom fit to meet my get up and get’s grip, so don’t think it, it ain’t not as easy as buying me a 20,000 dolla trinket, its finger print activated, modulated, programilated and if your thinking of holding my hand, swiping a print or two, think twice, thrice, fo there is no backup dice fo this, my vice,
my squad has got me covered twice, with way too much fourth way hiss, for yo mongoose to ever do anything but miss, so spin all yo wont in Oregon House, doubt capital of tha world, cause I’m already in tha plane and tha train, two places at once, I’ve got my own back, heading for Maine, launching from there to set up shop near tha Red Square and Spain.’
‘Break it!’ you say. But its no ordinary bottle, throttle, model of tha universe in an uptown purse, or worse, ah curse, that you suppose superstition will reverse, know its real Rob, its our job, to get back to god, not Rob, not bush, not push, not would, could, should aggravations that just push, push, push tha FoF into tha ice age of no heart, all apart, cyber love in a latex drug glove,
be warned, this is cancer in tha form of candy corn and everyday is Halloween in yo in between,
this ain’t no ‘many moments’, there’s only one, right here, no lasers, no dry ice smoke, no toke, no joke, no erection dope, its only this moment, without a red riding hood bonnet, Shakespeare sonnet, damn, get up on it, rock on out with your solo Gucci, that’s what we are here fo anyway,
not to sway, get paid, get laid, get weighed at Weight Watcher’s hall of fame, Who’s Who don’t know yo FoF names, asunder yo inner man is torn, as far as they are concerned yo ain’t no more than ‘I Love Lucy’ or ‘Got Porn?’
and damn, Lucy’s Ricky died before the fellowship could get him.
Yeah, I wrote it, FoF didn’t know it, imagined it couldn’t be spun by a man number whatever, wearing tha ninja Hermes harem sweater for tha better, yeah boy, though this ain’t no toy, you bloogers felt it coming, tha silk painting wonda
and when you listen to Bach, know that he’s rocking through this def damn wid me, off tha clock, with dual locks, just in case tha door comes swinging against its hinges ‘one way’, today, tonight, do not fright,
we are all here, tha mirror is tha seer, look deep, be present to what you’ll have forever, you, you and you, without tha boo!, poo, “I know better you, than you do.”
Startling isn’t it, that the FoF play could bring about such a deaf jam beat, without tha sacrificial meat, without tha wax last supper feast, tha repeats of the number of tha beast…
This is your test, forget tha rest, tha best, tha family crest, you’ll die holding this rhyme in yo soul divine, sticking to tha roof of your pineal gland like peanut butter and marmalade jam, I can betcha a million dolla, you’ll be humming this crazy sheet straight till eternity’s summon,
Word!
___________________________________
Love to you all.
Thank you Sunny day # 287 for this video.
It was interesting to look at Robert Burton speaking,
Specially to lock the image with to ‘pause’ button.
I Asked myself the question: is this a good or a bad person?
I did the same thing with Krisnamurti:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZlydbNKFi8
(Who was the leader of a big ‘spiritual’ organization but
did had the courage to stop the whole thing, when he
understood that no organization can lead a man to the
truth)
If you do this experiment the facts will speak for themselves.
(and always keep an critical mind towards people who make
a living selling you something, whether it be material, ideas
or feelings – this is something every business man knows)
Dear Vera!
Thank you for asking. Thank you Gabriella F.
It seems I’ve said much of what I needed to say and I’m more eager to listen now. Thank you Unoanimo for guessing! I’m not graduates but am honored by the comparison of those paragraphs.
Still close to Oregon House but packed and ready.
Going home where the sun hits the earth into greens even so deep beneath, into the emeralds.
The soul roams lost and disoriented,
no where to set the eyes but the I.
What next?
Where?
How many times do we need to be born in one lifetime?
There we stand, like sieves of truths and lies.
The hand stretches out but can find nowhere to touch.
Objects fall out of one’s hands like sporadic rain but people cling to the heart and need to be talked out:”Please leave, for your presence is no less painful than your absence”.
And yet it is barely the first or the last time that everything disappears. The heart closed at five, at nine, at 12, at 18, at 22, at 27, at thirty, then you thought it could open for the Fellowship. Year after year it delivered itself, having nothing else to deliver.
But the world is not the little pond of words. Consciousness is in the hands and feet. In the way you touch and step on the ground. If you cannot see it, it is not there no matter how well you’ve learnt to imagine it.
Robert’s discourse is a monster that eats up the will of the people around him. Sucks up their vitality. They dry up like flowers without water and crystallize like plastic flowers.
They no longer need any water once they’ve reached that point.
Not once have I desired to reenter the gates. The whole place tastes of plastic. Only the people still linger. If you would only leave I could leave you alone. All of your faces and bodies are here with me. From Susan to Robert. I will honor each one of you with a special ritual and ask you to take your selves peacefully away.
How many dead can you count in your list that you never made a ritual for? Is that why you are so lifeless? or just, living pain?
or do you really think “buffering it all” does not show?
324
Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
(C) Bob Dylan
In reply to 266 Spencer St Clair
Hello Spencer, so very good to know you are alive and well.
I was M’Aitre ‘D at the lodge right after you in the mid seventies.
I have just started reading your post and
I agree with what you are saying.
I question the logical form of your presentation
(“The chief concern of logic is how the truth of some propositions is connected with the truth of another”) in that you are writing as if you are presenting an argument rather than personal experience.
You argue that words can never be what they describe-
so we need to go past words
to the reality of the experience and give up the words.
This is very true but the argument is futile.
Once you have successfully argued that words are meaningless
it should be the end of the topic. Right?
It is always a poor argument to use words to argue against words.
By its nature this medium is only words.
There is no other way to use the blog.
The better one is at the use of words,
the closer each individual can come to clearly stating
their own experience, their present reality and own that reality,
the more value what we share has as a communication.
I have gained so much from the heartfelt post’s of people I have never met.
Individuals who through the Fellowship Of Friends share with me the profound desire to awaken.
What we share on the blog is our experience, individual understanding and unique being..
The more one avoids theories and the closer to being honest about ourselves
and how we have gotten to this point in our journeys
the more value we have for each other.
No one of us has the truth we all see a part.
Yet we each need to hold to their own truth this is consciousness and will.
The reality of the school is that it is
the efforts and consciousness of all who have been touched by the school
that is the soul of the school.
There is no other th