This is the twentieth-first rebirth of the Fellowship of Friends Discussion. Enjoy your stay here and try to be at least vaguely civil and polite. And as always, have fun.
For previous parts of the discussion click on home and scroll away to find parts 10 – 20. For the oldest part of the discussion check out Animam Recro.
A great way to start off a new page. I laughed so hard I almost pee’d myself.
Vena(585) and Elena 570, 578
Well, the thing about contemporary art being insane, whilst seated intentionally in an ark awaiting 44 Hiroshima’s, then everyone, (self-remembering) coming out of the bunker, after much intentional dining and wine-imbibing to tiptoe through the baby-bones and mummy and daddy bones, brother and sister bones… to collect only the very best Madonna’s with the big boobies and pert-bottomed St Sebastians.
Such grotesque conceit is enough to castrate anybody. Along with the justification – ‘Oh well, its just/was just a prophecy’.
Isn’t that bad taste? I realized some time ago that there was alchemy, but there is also such a thing as taste, which, I think, is higher than alchemy. Because taste is a MORAL – learnt emotional quality; therefore, the men and women, in order to play their student roles, needed to castrate themselves emotionally, to censor themselves of their pasts and their ‘baser passions’ on the cultural octave – sayeth burton. He made an observation about Chinese art – that it lacked sufficient emotionality because of the emotional suppression inherent in that society, I think, commending Mozart as an example of ‘just-rightness’.
Oddly enough, then, where you have people quoting much of the best of 4000 years or more of western civilization, educated and refined to the highest level about some of the greatest art and music of the past; there is also the most grotesque tastelessness and ignorance – so much so it would make any sensible person gag with disgust before forcing their hands down their throat – if only some angel could come down from heaven and remove those difficult kunst-a-buffers. Like the blind developing greater powers of hearing, so the fellowship students experience of more meaning, more presence, but all connected to more fellowship, robert burton, and so on – is a blind alley.
‘Students struggle to become present but deny the divine in front of them.’
Elena 570
4. The Minister’s indoctrination – from the sketchbook
‘But instead we decided to use the work against ourselves. Any decent emotion has to be “transformed”, not lived. Any questionable attitude has to be euthanized. Any genuine feeling has to be stifled. Any sense of wonder has to be squeezed to death. All this is “transformation”.’
And on, and on, and on: this blog must resound with hundreds of similar quotes and reflections. The irony is that for all the senses you cut out, the more other senses come to sensitivity. Which is like a monks cell, like burtons world. How can you awaken under the conditions of a given ignorance and blindness?
If you castrate yourself of your conscience, your intuition and your undifferentiated heart, you are nothing but a homunculus in a rather fishy old test-tube.
Coming into the fellowship and wanting immediately to adopt and experiment with/experience that culture, embracing its concept of culture and all that had to offer, leads to a kind of modification in ones personality before self-observation. Ouspensky’s injunction is to observe oneself and change nothing, (to begin with) and I wonder what kind of self-remembering can occur when one has not accepted and integrated ones past and cultural experience. Before healing. Can you self-remember successfully when you haven’t accepted yourself fully? Or does it happen that by this cultural package, which is splendid and gorgeous to begin with, becomes a kind of symbol of oneself in which one is imprisoned, building up a ‘burton personality’ and moments of presence and delight that cannot find significance anywhere else but through the rarefied and generally pre-WW1 ideal of art, music and culture embodied in the fellowship.
Its new, to me, to be able to say these things out loud, but truth cannot be stated enough, given that the current situation is one of spiritual corruption and mutation.
I realized, having posted something about the karmic possibilities inherent with being a student and leaving as ex-student from the writings of Meher Baba, that this applies to myself also, and it is a process I am still ‘engaged with’. My conceit blinded me to the reality of my own situation, but also, that might be due to the fact that I’ve only recently found all the blog posts on this site.
Innernaught
That was fucking funny.
there are many such august contributions on the following site – ie, salad fingers.
http://www.fat-pie.com/salad.htm
626 previous page
My understanding is that as a non-profit, all assets revert to the State of California.
Sorry for more of this but I thought this fit in here – please don’t take it too personally
THE NIGHTMARES OF ROBERT BURTON
http://www.fat-pie.com/salad4.htm
609 unoanimo
Hello ‘Daily Card’ ~
Yes, your wonderment is a legitimate concern, I hope we both can keep those mirrors held up to one another and not be afraid (when the time is right) to run towards one another and shatter our reflections, so to meet on one looking-level, not two opinionated ones.
Your quoting of Miguel De Unamuno seemed a bit ’sly’; at first I thought you had spelled my blog-name wrong, then realized that the initial assumption that you might be quoting me, something I wrote, was ‘off’…
I read the quote; wow, if I ever make it to such a level of ‘bathwater ooze’ you’ll be the first I call to set my aging, old and warm-cozy body out in the arctic sub zero weather (like the Eskimos do for their suffering elders) so to get an attitude adjustment.
BTW, that observation on Post five-ninety-eight to you was for me too, I am finished with making fun of evil, there’s another level, I am sure of it; evil does not gamble with cynicism and satire, it thrives on it’s smoke screen, it anticipates it’s creation and slinks ever so deeper behind the laughter, sinking under one’s shinny lotus blossom, depositing little wormy things in its seeds; similar to the mini-squids wiggling down Robert Burton’s throat, showing up inside his no-womb-mucus’d-stomach, to be digested as proteins, not love, not selfless experiences.
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Hello Joseph G ~ 603 ~
You wrote ~
“My guess is that Burton, based on advice from his attorneys, is at the edge of legality but doesn’t cross the line. But you never know. After all, he’s been doing whatever it is he does for what, thirty-seven years? And so far there has been only a couple of lawsuits that were settled for cash, right?”
__________________________________________
Yes, it’s certainly in the “guess” category my friend, yet, it’s not the entire truth of the matter. For instance, based on the stories published on this blog (and available for anyone in the world to read at any time of the day or night)… Robert Burton has changed his ‘method of madness’ in dealing with the naiveté belonging to the psyches his erection preys upon;
as of about a month ago, all ‘new boys on the block’ are ‘prepared’, i.e., told what is going to occur before they go into the ‘war room’, so as to not be able to say “I did not know” or “I was coerced into something I could not have known was going to occur.”
Kinda gives a whole new flavor to “Prospective Newer Student Meeting” doesn’t it?
__________________________________
Love to you all.
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Hey Laura,
Beautiful post on the Back 20, could you re-post it here?
Onwards!
Laura
Thank you for your beautiful letter to the bloggers on blog therapy! I also find fascinating how strongly we affect each other. Can you imagine what it would have been like if we had been able to share like this for thirty five years on other issues if we’ve gone this far in only nine, ten months? Not to dwell on the past but to take a look at the potential of community on the individual, and the individual on community.
BRUCE, it was surprising to see that the attitude that most characterizes the Fellowship was the Islam. It’s a great way to see the degree of extremism that is being shaped by idolatry to Robert. I
Islam
If shit happens, it is the holy will of Allah the Unique, the Almighty, the Merciful – al Abdullillah !
Robert, if shit happens it’s influence C.
Also interesting that Girard’s indoctrinated response to the shit happening is:
Stoicism
This shit is not bad for me.
What characterized Girard’s attitude and what he indoctrinated everyone to act by was precisely that stoicism that in his case meant he himself gave up the pursuit of any kind of personal pleasure (with one exception) to the point of giving up the protection of any personal well being. This is what is relevant here. He took it to such an extreme that it did not stop in just giving up pleasure it extended itself to giving up a simple standard of well being by denying himself and those around him of simple joys. Time for rest was misinterpreted as time for leisure and leisure was looked down upon. No rest but work, work, work is one of the greatest ingredients of Fellowship indoctrination in which even every beautiful event was taken to the extreme of overly decorated alchemy. So much pretense that the simple joy was raped away.
The justification for this was “intentionality, effort, more effort,” but Robert and Girard robbed the students from the gift of life by convincing them and themselves that only one’s own self is responsible for everything that happens, only self remembering is worth the effort. It self centered students so selfishly that the possibility of reciprocation with the outside world became stagnant and the power of life itself to give of it’s own innate beauty was lost. They built a world of bonsais and forgot about the real trees.
The psychological attitude that was implanted in us was similar to that of a gardener who thought that the only value of planting was his own work and forgot the harvest. The magic of the harvest is cannot happen without the Earth and we forgot the Earth. In the Fellowship the power of life to process the work of men and give of its own harvest was ignored. The sacred process was ignored, unrecognized, unfettered, and the individual was raised to a Godlike position without a heaven to plant in, making us fall in the hell of our individualism. We made a king of Robert and became his psychological slaves.
One of the expressions of this individualistic behavior is in the attitude towards time. It is also an aspect of what I now understand as psycopathic behavior. This people, (of which I came very close to becoming one, working endlessly night and day for the past four years), cannot deal with “free” time. Something must be done all the time, something “usefull,” otherwise, time is being wasted. It is relevant to observe the connection between having to “do” all the time and not being able to ever harvest what was done. Not ever being able to sit and eat of the crop and be grateful to the world for the harvest. This is the worst expression of our illness. As I mentioned in a previous letter, Girard and I took one day off for ourselves after four years while we were at Isis. The other two or three weeks we might have taken off during those four years, were only in relation to a travellig teaching trip or some other fellowship work.
I do not know how Robert lives but it would not surprise me if this pattern with time were very similar. Not granting any one more than a few minutes of his attention; using even the sex exchange as something that had to be pursued within a certain limit of time and as an “objective” service to the conscious being rather than an interchange between human beings; travelling to Egypt and all places as teaching events rather than the great joy of appreciating human culture in all its magnificence and for its own sake without using it to boost up his teaching.
It is very similar to what happens to drug addicts. In drugs, the pursuit of high states slowly takes away the magic from life when one is not stoned; Life is perceived as “boring” and there is a powerful sense of the materiality without the magic in it. The “magic” is what one’s own state brings but when the energy of the “self” is consistently drained by drugged states, the self is much withdrawn when one is not stoned. Hence the feeling of depression. Depression is a withdrawn I and it is not surprising that Girard and so many other students suffered from severe depression. The blog helps us because it brings us down to earth and reminds us of our connections to life. Physical activity also helps in reestablishing those connections. Practicing Art, not just appreciating it and anything else that brings joy for its own sake can be healing. While I have now verified many of these things in theory, I am only beginning to be able to practice them.
Something precious about the blog is the dialogue between us that was lost in the Fellowship. The dialogue in an open space without hierarchy, a pubic and public dialogue in which what we are saying is not determined by our predetermined position like in the fellowship or any other institution. The dialogue between human beings.
Thank you for sharing
2 rain
You make many good points. I too was very confused and a bit suspicious when I realized I was supposed to instantly become a different person when I joined the Fellowship of Friends. When I asked about it, I got some quote by Robert saying ‘C Influence doesn’t wait for those who can’t keep up,’ or some such crap. Also, there was so much vanity invested in being an ‘older student’ that it was hard not to want to play that part.
It’s funny to think about now, because when I joined the FOF it was barely over 10 years old (1981), so anyone who was in 5 or so years seemed like an impossibly older student. By the time I was in 5 years it seemed absurd that anyone would think of me as an “older student,” but there you have it.
I’m glad you liked the you tube video. That Salad Fingers stuff was seriously deranged.
WHY I DON”T FEEL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FOF
I was a member for 27 years. I joined in London, quickly moved into the teaching house, did everything I could to enable myself to move to the U.S. Married an FoF student. Moved to Apollo/Isis after a few years. Built a large house there, designed by a FoF architect. At different times I was a center director, council member, traveling teacher, led prospective student meetings at which people joined the FoF. In other words, the whole disaster including the postage.
I was never involved in Burton’s inner circle and had only a sketchy knowledge of what went on there. I read Troy Busbee’s letter and heard some strange rumours, but I was reassured by people I respected that it was all OK, the rumours were exaggerated, everything was consensual, there was a lot of love involved, and I believed what I was told, and in turn reassured others.
I was very committed to awakening. I sincerely believed that Burton was a conscious being. I did pretty much everything that was suggested (couldn’t give up rock music though!). I tried very hard to remember myself year after year. When I was leading meetings I tried to be honest and only describe what I’d actually experienced, or make it clear if I was speaking theoretically.
I admired the FoF leaders very much: Peter B, Girard, Collin, they all seemed wonderful, spiritually advanced people. In fact pretty much everyone I met was sincere, thoughtful, kind, admirable.
After Peter’s death and Girard’s stroke a new set of leaders took over, much more harsh and intolerant, people for whom I had little respect. I began to withdraw. Around the same time Alison became influential and the emphasis on collecting money, money, ever more money became overwhelming. Burton’s teaching became more and more bizarre. The Fourth Way was abandoned. Nothing of any substance took its place.
Eventually I left, principally because it became clear to me that Burton is not a conscious being, in fact he’s no different from you or me, and his teaching is a sham. I didn’t leave because of his private life, though the stories became increasingly disturbing and believable.
So am I a bad person because I supported the FoF for so long? Personally I don’t think so. I did the best I could. I was mistaken about Burton but it was a genuine mistake. I learned a lot in the FoF and I’ve moved on. It’s happening to hundreds of us now. Personally I don’t think we have any reason to look back and wring our hands.
6 Elena
I feel a deep connection with what you wrote in #6. Particularly the part about being unable to enjoy free time, and feeling compelled to work, work, work. This was really a big part of why I left.
There was one of Girard’s ‘Fellowship Forum’ issues that brought this home for me. In it, he published Linda’s recipe for Jewish chicken soup to eat when you have a cold — she recommended making it and getting into bed to get better. Girard couldn’t help but place a comment after it. He said that for him, he would see getting into bed with a cold as a terrible defeat, that instead he would force his body to continue making ‘efforts, efforts, more efforts,’ or something like that.
This really disturbed me deeply, because it touched on a core problem I was having with the Fellowship. I was feeling compelled to make constant efforts, but it came from guilt, not the desire to make efforts. I had seen this before, and it wasn’t just in Fellowship people — it’s called workaholism, where you feel guilty if you ever take it easy. There’s nothing conscious about it — it’s just a mechanical weakness like any other. The problem is, it “looks good” in the school setting.
When I read that thing of Girard’s, another piece of understanding fell into place — that for many people, DOING LESS was the correct effort, not doing more. But there was no place for that approach in the FOF.
So I left, and started learning how to have fun again. I highly recommend it.
589 Vena (previous page):
……………………………………………………..
quoting from #584:
“We are well past the point of describing the FOF as a “benign” organization that does no harm. The Fellowship of Friends does harm, both to its members and to society at large. And beyond simply leaving the cult, I often ask myself what I have done to oppose it. Honestly, almost nothing. Even if the FOF simply fades into the night, barely a footnote in anyone’s memory 100 years from now, my question is whether or not each of holds some responsibility in this. To answer my own question: Yes, we do hold responsibility — each of us — as long as we stay, as long as we say nothing, as long as we continue to deny.”
This is a very alive question for many of us, but I for one, have not come to an understanding for myself of what I might do. What kind of action are you suggesting?
……………………………………………………..
Charles T. (about #8)
So am I a bad person because I supported the FoF for so long? Personally I don’t think so. I did the best I could. I was mistaken about Burton but it was a genuine mistake. I learned a lot in the FoF and I’ve moved on. It’s happening to hundreds of us now. Personally I don’t think we have any reason to look back and wring our hands.
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Vena, Charles, I agree with what both of you have written, and I think we are each doing what we can. I’m with both of you on this. I certainly don’t feel primarily responsible for the actions of Robert Burton or his closest enablers. But as a long-time member of the organization, I rarely if ever asked serious questions. I rarely if ever delved into the details. I rarely applied skepticism or critical thinking — which are two essentials if you really want pertinent information. So maybe my posts are primarily directed toward those who are still in the organization.
Not entirely, though. What I find interesting in relation to the “Aum” passage that I posted on the previous page is the similarity in attitudes between the Aum followers and the Fellowship followers, and between former members of both groups. We think we’re different. But are we? Were we?
In previous posts, and in some discussions that I’ve had, a few people have expressed their objections to the word “cult” because they believed it was an inflammatory or exaggerated term.
But I haven’t seen anything to indicate otherwise. The word fits. The Fellowship of Friends is a cult. My suggestion is that as former members we can more accurately point to the truth of this organization by using this word to describe it as much as possible, by not side-stepping it, by not being afraid of it.
The use of certain words, and the avoidance of certain other words, is very important. It’s a cult. We were members of it. And by joining the cult and remaining a member of the cult, we made a serious mistake.
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From “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche” by Haruki Murakami:
“More or less all of us want answers to the reasons why we’re living on this earth, and why we die and disappear. We shouldn’t criticize a sincere attempt to find answers. Still, this is precisely the point where a kind of fatal mistake can be made. The layers of reality begin to be distorted. The place that was promised, you suddenly realize, has changed into something different from what you’re looking for.”
10: Bistro: “The layers of reality begin to be distorted. The place that was promised, you suddenly realize, has changed into something different from what you’re looking for.”
Yes, that certainly happened to me. When I look back now I find it very surprising that I believed what I did when in the FoF. Some kind of hypnotism took place and reality indeed became distorted.
Bistro Fundraiser (around) 10
From “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche” by Haruki Murakami:
“The layers of reality begin to be distorted. The place that was promised, you suddenly realize, has changed into something different from what you’re looking for.”
************
Bruce, I have the T-shirt (short guide to comparative religions, post #20-622). I have often wanted to make another with the FoF added to the list. How about…
Fellowship of Friends: It is the wrong work of the King of Clubs when you think that gold–plated shit still tastes like shit.
That’s great advice not to look back wringing your hands.
I could see Robert was no more conscious than me from when I first met him, and don’t hesitate to ask the difficult questions at the risk of looking bad, and haven’t put on any student acts for anyone, and didn’t stop having fun by any means! None of those are mandatory requirements for being a member. The whole point for me is to be myself (to this above all else be true) and try to be present (and have fun), and I only stay in while the school is useful for these.
Each of these things probably makes me seem a bad person in different people’s eyes, but people are subjective, so I have to run my own race.
First post on any web site ever. Found this FOF discussion group recently and have read through many of the more recent posts.
Former FOF student – circa 1982 to 1987. Was member of North American center far from Renaissance (as it was then called). Have had no contact with FOF or any of its members since that time.
Glad to be able to make contact with fellow fourth way seekers. My sympathy goes out to all of you that have suffered in one way or another owing to your connection with the FOF. Posters appear to be in various psychological “places” owing to their individual experiences with the FOF (some of these being dreadful).
For myself, I was spared any significant suffering owing to my involvement with FOF. Owing to the satellite nature of the Center that I belonged to, the “goings on” at Renaissance had little impact on me. It is disheartening to read about what the FOF has become – the great depths it appears to have fallen to. In order to balance the picture somewhat though, I give here my own account of my experience with the FOF.
The FOF, for me, was the Center that I belonged to and the people who were members of that group during the time I was there. As a whole, the members of the Center were ordinary people with ordinary problems who differed from most “life” people only by the fact that they were seeking something “miraculous” that most life people do not believe exists. They were good people, sincere students of the fourth way each trying to work on themselves to the best of their ability and ready to lend assistance to anyone else who had the same goal.
I visited Renaissance one summer during this time and it appeared to be, for the most part, what it was made out to be – a great place for sincere seekers to work on themselves. I worked in the construction of the winery, dined at the fancy eating place (I forget what it was called then), served as a waiter there, met many nice, ordinary people who shared the same desire to follow the “work” as I did. Had dinner with Robert at the main house there – my only contact with him ever. It was an exciting, exhilarating, at times strange evening but I did not leave the dinner that night with anything approaching a “verification” that I had met a conscious being.
I promised myself not to make a long post and may not have succeeded so that’s all from me for now. My best wishes for all of you that are continuing with the struggle.
14 Vinnie the Fish
“I could see Robert was no more conscious than me from when I first met him,”
So you joined because…?
” and haven’t put on any student acts for anyone, and didn’t stop having fun by any means!”
That IS your student act.
“The whole point for me is to be myself (to this above all else be true) and try to be present (and have fun), and I only stay in while the school is useful for these.”
And doing this in an extremely artificial environment rather than “real life”is useful to your awakening because…………?
To Bruce#15
Regarding your response to Vinnie:
You are amazing Bruce. Nothing gets past you. You are a great reality check.
From Huffington Post:
“Igniting The Modern Mystic” Stacey Lawson
“…Lest this sound trite, let me add that the mystic’s love is not blind to the complication and suffering in the world. It is all-embracing, using the full human experience as fuel for the raging fire of awakening. Our modern lives are difficult. We face social injustices, environmental crises, war, economic imbalances, poverty, hunger, a vast array of suffering across our planet.
By comparison, it would seem rather easy to check into a monastery or convent and pursue a peaceful life of contemplative practice. In my quiet moments I’ve considered this path, but know it will never be. The hour is late and the crises of our world too great. We have a profound responsibility to awaken from our slumber and re-ignite our creative energies in service to a more sustainable (and ecstatic) human existence. We can do this through the substance of our everyday lives – in our work, in our relationships, in our politics, in our homes — if we are awake…”
“This column is about the necessary commitment to conscious awakening and the resulting possibility of collectively re-imagining and repairing our world. It is a sacred journey born in the mystical fire of our modern lives – families, children, careers, health, relationships, finances – where our uncensored experiences are the fuel for the transformation…”
“…How we can at once surrender to the greatness of the flow of life and find our power there, navigating the grand paradoxes – those that would have us believe we need to struggle, fight, and effort our way forward, when in fact our most powerful purpose emerges when we lay down that effort. How we can reside in the moment, being fully present with the creative currents that arise right now, and follow them without a plan for where they might take us.”
610 Peter
You wrote: “I wonder if it is wise to attack any community. Communities need enemies to unite and to feel real. Even Adolf Hitler said in ‘Mein Kampf’ “if you don’t have an enemy you got to create one.”
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I may be misinterpreting, but most people who are trying to expose or unravel the truth about the fof are not attacking — they’re stating their concern about the ignorance and the hypocrisy within the fof, and the destructive path that RB is taking. Those who are “in” are not enemies to those who are “out.” We’ve been there. We sympathize, and we do understand.
Up to a point, anyway.
You also wrote: “The Fellowship of Friends is just a dream of the people in it, an illusion. Once you are out and dream other dreams it looks ridiculous.”
I agree with that. But I think many people are replacing the fof dream with something that’s much closer to being very “real.” I’m convinced the possibilities “out here” are vastly superior — and much less delusional.
Robert has “Escape” plan.
Love Rolex
Robert went to Europe to look for little place,
to hide from angry members who paid for his events.
His wisdom simple:
“When wolf is on your tail,act quickly,put property For Sale”
19 Rolex- I know your heart is in the right place, but you don’t have Malcolm’s knack for humorous poetry.
18 Bistro: “many people are replacing the fof dream with something that’s much closer to being very ‘real’. I’m convinced the possibilities ‘out here’ are vastly superior — and much less delusional.”
This is true for sure.
18 Bistro and 22 Charles T
I would be interested in hearing about any such possibilities.
Hello Bloggers,
We have returned to the issue of our complicity in the pathology of the Fellowship, and, it would seem, many of us are in essential agreement that we brought our own several pathologies to our cult membership, and sustained and strengthened the rot and corruption during the years we remained within the bubble of delusion. It follows that many of us are not in such marvelous shape now, even though we have left and are struggling to heal.
I would like, again, to thank you all for your postings, both those in direct response to my questions and all the others—the wacky, the scurrilous, the obscene, as well as the more sober and logical attempts to define and confront the issues we face. I thought, quite seriously, that something had died in me, that I had lost something irrevocable and would never again feel a simple joy in greeting an ordinary morning. I now know that this is not the case, and I credit this discussion, all you bloggers, as being a very important part of a process that I now trust. Life returns despite decades of rejecting it, denigrating it, despising it. What a small, foul, and totally inconsequential thing this and probably all other cults are after all.
Nonetheless I am all for activism. Presumably it has been letters to the INS that have galvanized that agency into fairly effective action. Letters to various organizations—to the IRS to challenge the tax exemptions granted to churches for example—might also be effective. It is fairly certain that the press would be glad to mix in, but they need events and people to quote. If there were to be an organized demonstration in front of the Pyle, there would be all the press coverage anyone could hope for. Suggestions for such a demonstration have thus far been viewed as somewhat off the wall, but I think an organized protest could be quite effective.
The preparations would of course require researching what the legal requirements are, setting a date, and having someone in charge of clearing slogans to be used on signs and banners. The only question is not one of feasibility but of will. Are enough of us interested in taking action? Or not? I am, and would gladly make the necessary trip to participate.
Dear R.P.,
the gift of your departure from the Fellowship of Friends is an atom bomb to the bowels of Robert Burton’s Cult of The Mirror Mirror on The Wall…
My friend, may your extraordinary love of being seen carry your soul into the clearnesses available now, not later; may your deep love of being here not waiver, rather, wonder amongst all of us, like incense, new moss upon a kingdom undone, not by earthquake, war or disease… by one trumpet, one trumpet…
I think you are right in what you are saying.
Abigail,
I agree with you that action must continue and yet picketing the pyle seems worth it if I could tell them how much I love them. How much the dream is still there just as strong. How sorry I am that we couldn’t manage it together.
I guess I’m done with screaming. I don’t even feel angry any more and then I was only angry at Robert, a few women at the head of the Fellowship and my husband who was unable to stand up for us. As for the rest of students I feel great longing. So many opportunities to be together were thrown down the drain and yet we are still touching each other in the silence of our memories. I might still call you in my dreams.
We might not have walked hand in hand but we saw each other stand like sheep in line for the sacrifice holding our ambition to the unforgiving lord who literally sucked it out from the most tender ones.
Our love is still in our innocence, only our ambition has been lost. We at least were planted in the dream, the youth who treds our path is growing in the nightmare. Their pace is merciless. They’ll be biting at each other like sharks, terrified of their own dreams and when they’ve done enough harm they’ll look at the elders for answers that they cannot give. They keep beating a lame horse walking in a desert, but they’ll run out of water even before the horse dies.
Hey All,
Yesterday I posted information about a website, the Council on Spiritual Practices. As it was the end of that discussion, so some of you may have missed it? Anyway, there is an article on that site “A Question of Balance: Health and Pathology in new Religious Movements” by Dr. Francis Vaughan. Here is the link to the full article which is scholarly but quite informative. http://www.csp.org/communities/docs/vaughan-balance.html
For those who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, here are some extracts that pertain particularly to the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Burton:
CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING SPIRITUAL GROUPS…
“The manner in which the group or its leader handles the loyalty or disloyalty of members if often very revealing of group pathology. Some leaders overtly threaten potential defectors with physical violence; others threaten ideological or eternal damnation. Others simply withhold love, approval, and recognition. Although we may judge some methods as more reprehensible than others, the effects seem similar. When loyalty is coerced, the person’s integrity and sense of worth are undermined. Only when participation in group activities is clearly the result of free choice can it be expected to contribute to healthy self-esteem and development.
MASTERS AND MASTER…
“Practicing consciousness disciplines that aim at control of the mind can also contribute to the development of psychic powers, those powers of the mind commonly called “extra sensory.” These tend to become available at transpersonal levels of development. However, the attainment of psychic powers does not ensure either ethics or spiritual understanding, and such powers may be abused by someone who has not yet transcended egoic identification. In many spiritual disciplines extra-sensory powers are considered by-products of spiritual work and are traditionally eschewed as traps that can lead a spiritual aspirant to ego entanglements in the domain of occult energies, or subtle realm. While healthy transpersonal development demands eventual transcendence of ego, the actual process of growth to higher, more subtle and complex levels of development does not necessarily ensure immediate transcendence of lower levels. In attempting to assess levels of mastery, then, the display of psychic powers by one who has mastered them should not be considered an indication of spiritual mastery. On the contrary, the use of such abilities in the service of ego goals, such as attracting or intimidating followers, should automatically be suspect. A spiritual master who has truly transcended ego could be expected to disdain the use of special powers for purposes of manipulation and control.
CHOOSING A TEACHER…
“In addition to questions pertaining to self-awareness, anyone who is considering joining a group might be advised to consider the following: Does the group keep secrets about its organization and the leader? How do members of the group respond to embarrassing questions? (For example, does the leader have a Swiss bank account or indulge in sexual relations with group members? Do members display stereotypic behavior that emulates the leader? Does the group have a party line that does not permit members to express how they really feel? Do members see themselves as having found the only true way? Are members free to leave? Are members asked to violate personal ethics to prove their loyalty? Does the group’s public image misrepresent its true nature? Are humor and irreverence permitted?
CONCLUSION…
“Despite these limitations, we must somehow learn to discriminate between genuine and counterfeit spiritual teachers. In doing so we can bear in mind that transpersonal development beyond the conventional ego-identity is never a justification for the violation of basic human rights or individual dignity. In genuine transcendence the intrinsic value of individuality is affirmed and integrated in a larger context.
In the final analysis, efforts at evaluation might best be guided by the words of Buddha: “Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many; do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe conjectures; do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observations and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Love,
Bass
Some idle random speculation.
A good demonstration would be to host an event on a holiday weekend when Robert is in attendance. Maybe rent that hall and have a BBQ. Sure signs and stuff . The best demonstrations is simply a lot of people being together and by the way Crossing the road, walking on the road, even having conversations on the public road a lot.
Those who live around Oregon house would know when and how to close down access to Isis and make it inconvenient.
Wireless phones open up many possibilities for co ordinating different groups so that if one group is confronted by the sheriff they simply get out of the way and another out of sight moves onto the road. Yuba county will not be happy if a significant part of their limited resources are tied up in Oregon House.
There needs to be a committee who are familiar with “civil disobedience” A small number of individuals who actually know the laws who can guide others in how to avoid being caught in a violation and also , Ahem, arrange for reliable “witnesses” to any infraction by either FOF “goons” or others.
In San Francisco there is a once a month event called ” critical mass”. Bicyclists gather in a large group and cycle across the city. The numbers are so massive that it stops traffic and causes chaos. How many cyclists would it take to block the road?
Another thought, when I was much younger , just for the hell of it I and some friends would go to LAX on a Saturday night and in the middle of the traffic circle , right in front of a busy terminal we would stop the car, get out and open the hood and looked baffled.
The main difficulty is making an effort and sustaining it long enough to have an impact. 10 people for an hour would be significant but of only passing interest. several 100 people over the course of thanksgivings weekend would have a larger impact.
A large number of people a few with camcorders, notebook computers and a high speed Internet connection and you could broadcast live world wide or if there is no high speed wireless up link hopefully a high speed connection at some nearby residence ( is there high speed Internet in Oregon House?)
So that is one thought, organize a greater Fellowship event near Isis and plan a demonstration especially if there is some way to catch Robert or Fellowship leaders on camera and broadcast it on the Internet, first finding a way to set up an anonymous account to prevent any Fellowship legal action and asking as many as possible to download and repost the video on My space or something.
Bruce:
“So you joined because…?”
Strange question that seems to assume I joined because I thought Robert was ‘conscious’! Did you?
I went to prospective meetings, like you I guess, and joined without meeting Robert, like you also? Did you join with the assumption that Robert was ‘conscious’ without even meeting him?!
Reality check indeed. Thinking needs to map to real events.
‘Conscious being’ is just a fantasy anyway, we probably all know by now that consciousness comes and goes.
” and haven’t put on any student acts for anyone, and didn’t stop having fun by any means!”
“That IS your student act.”
If it is, it is what I choose to do, so I can have no regrets about selling out.. it is what I am and want to be.. unaffected.
“The whole point for me is to be myself (to this above all else be true) and try to be present (and have fun), and I only stay in while the school is useful for these.”
And doing this in an extremely artificial environment rather than “real life”is useful to your awakening because…………?
You must have also known the answer to this yourself once… it is an environment, twice a week, that stimulates and strengthens that desire to awaken and be present – gives energy to that aim which would otherwise atrophy.
The environment for meditation is usually ‘artificial’ too, but that doesn’t stop it being useful.
#22 Abigail
It is kind of funny you should make that suggestion. I was fantasizing about that just yesterday. It was just me and Elena outside the guard shack with picket signs and I was wondering what the hell I was doing there.
What the heck is a Pyle? Did you mean to say Pile?
It seems to me some of you alls are a little too close to the hurt to think objectively about the Pile. I could give a shit about the idiots still paying their money and living a lying fantasy trying to find the “present”.
Gawd, anyone from the outside looking at this idiocy has got to be splitting a gut!
My thinking about the picketing was trying to figure out (based on Joseph’s inquiries) how to drum up some fresh press coverage. It would seem to me it would be best to do it in Sacramento at the Capital or somewhere where it would be noticed by somewhat less brainwashed zombies.
This would probably require a fairly large number of people.
Vinnie the Fish 27
Hi Vinnie,
I am not going to discuss all your reasons for staying in the FoF. As you said, you have to run your own race, and only time will tell for how long your motivations will hold in place. I want to focus on something you wrote, which I consider a really big assumption on your side:
“You must have also known the answer to this yourself once… it is an environment, twice a week, that stimulates and strengthens that desire to awaken and be present – gives energy to that aim which would otherwise atrophy.”
Your fear of atrophy is simply unfounded, and if you have read the blog carefully you can plainly see that amongst the many posts denouncing Robert and the anomalies of his self-proclaimed school of awakening, there are many testimonials of the ever present aim, efforts and discoveries of ex-students as they continue in their spiritual journeys. No one has discarded the present, and I think all of us have discovered that the “twice a week” routine is just a poor substitute for the real work of digesting and transforming the all and everything, fully engaging in life as is with all its powerful challenges and contradictions. The FoF is not a stimulating environment in that sense, since most of its members are too self-obsessed, belief-driven and repressed to be able to experience and express the full range of human emotions and healthy behavior.
Your own self-esteem does seem to run pretty low, since it leads you to think that your aim’s strength depends on your participation in a group of misguided people under the influence of a delusional man who thinks himself a teacher but in fact has very little useful knowledge to offer. Do you really have all that time, money and energy to waste?
I suggest that at least you allow yourself to try different approaches, as you will most likely encounter more precise and effective tools to use towards your aim. In fact, you may discover that the kind of mental work people do in the FoF actually leads down a psychological path that has very little to do with real awakening. But this is something that only you can verify for yourself.
All I can say is, we students have settled for crumbs instead of asking for cake, and the realization of how little good soul food is actually available in the FoF environment is a sobering one. You will be able see that once you step beyond the scarcity mentality that holds you back, and which is a by-product of your mind being steeped in fellowship programming. You may think yourself a free thinker immune from cult brainwashing, but to seriously verify that you’ll have to dare to actually challenge your current claims and assumptions. I wish you good luck and the gift of unclouded vision.
with love,
Laura
Well-written Laura.
Of course I try different approaches, why not, the world is my oyster and I’m free that way.
For me it’s not much money, time or energy, so maybe you had some assumptions there?
I don’t think I have any claims or assumptions, only that I find it useful for me, but that’s not really an assumption is it?
I have found that if I don’t feed the flame inside that wants to evolve or awaken or however you want to put it, and spend time with people interested in working in that direction, and helping each other see the obstacles that obstruct it, then the desire is submerged under the pyles :-) of daily worries.
This is an important question, whether you need other people to evolve spiritually. Is ’spiritual evolution’ an OK term to use, or is that whole idea totally uncool once you leave?
What do you do now Laura, is this blog your contact with like minded people on the path? Or maybe some Buddhist group, or just reading?
Yesri baba picketing… ‘I was wondering what the hell I was doing there’
Yes it could be good to look at your motives.
‘I could give a shit about the idiots still paying..’
So you want to destroy the FOF but you don’t give a shit about the idiots still in it.
Why then? Just revenge?
To get rid of those ‘victim’ feelings?
PS. isn’t it ‘couldn’t give a shit’? Why do Americans always say ‘could give a shit’? doesn’t make sense.
Hey Vinnie (and Laura),
Nice dialogue forming here. Your assumption is that you need a School in order to awaken, to keep your inner fire stoked (and Laura’s fine rebuttal). Then your response that being with other like minded Friends helps one to strengthen the resolve to evolve. (or in so many words)
Well, yep. That is my experience, too, sort of. I’ve spent the last x# of years trying to use the School part of the Fellowship for the Presence that we reflect back to one another and ignore the rest. My recent visit to Isis was primarily that Joy. Even now, the energy of it still fills my heart. But if I were to leave the Fellowship, will those Friends still wish to reflect Presence back towards me? A few good ones, near to my heart, yes, I do not question, but the others? I doubt it. I would have to realize that our connection is based upon a common belief that Robert Burton is a Conscious Being. I belief I no longer hold.
On this trip, I went to a few RB meetings. This, after having spent the last six months or so reading Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, and the Bhavaghad Gita. It was clear to me that Robert did not understand even the Consciousness part of the quotations he was using for the meeting. Hmmmm…. His comments were simplistic and just in terms of the Sequence. Hmmm… Using images to wiseacre about possible obtuse “School” connections. Hmmm…
You mention your experience is of the School twice a week? So many that means you are in a center and not at Isis? That also is a big difference in how one experiences the School. Centers have more flexibility, there is less domination from RB.
Your donations are not so high? Well surely you do not exist in the School in America, unless you’ve got some kind of special “deal” worked out at Isis…
To think that one cannot evolve without others may be true, however one gets further, faster if one does not surround oneself with others who decieve themselves, too – even if they do so unknowingly. You have the chance to wake up from THAT dream. Strange to say that that is what has become of our School of Awakening, but it has. It is up to you to verify that. Maybe reading some of the authors I just mentioned may help you?
Cheers,
Bass
Dear Vinnie,
#This is an important question, whether you need other people to evolve spiritually. Is ’spiritual evolution’ an OK term to use, or is that whole idea totally uncool once you leave?#
If your desire is to be what you are and if we listen to our inner voice ( conscience ) we will attract people who will be spiritual friends and we get what we long for.
“Needing other people”, first be your own best friend and be aware of dependency. Many of us were looking for somebody else, to tell us what to do….when you really see what this has brought you, you will have many revelations and hurt. Unpleasant? yes….unavoidable….grow up, become what you are. NOW
For the physical it is scary “to be on your own”.
For the non physical it is …”it is: you are on your own”.
Robert made of the physical, the instinctive center. This is a misconception and has brought a lot of suffering.
The non physical needs the physical to be in this world. Things will be taken care of in one or the other way.
Maybe go to you tube and see Tony Parson. This will be mind boggling. He has an interesting one what teacher stand for in our psychology.
Vinnie one more thing: What about your conscience…all the lies we have been given. Is it not time to stand up and go above the lies?
Or are you one of those who is saying, “other students are trying to make the fellowship of friends look bad”?
Good luck with your self.
Hi Bass and vinnie,
“I’ve spent the last x# of years trying to use the School part of the Fellowship for the Presence that we reflect back to one another and ignore the rest.”
Aren’t you CURIOUS about what it might be like to grow up spiritually? To let go of the Queen’s hand and cross the street by yourself? Letting go, would you find your people – your second line? Wouldn’t it be truly fascinating to find out if you are man or woman enough to attract that on your own? If you let go of a rather superficial control over your spiritual life will it crumble? Does your spiritual self look like an insect – with the structure and strength all on the outside like a hard shell, or can it evolve to an interior bone structure where you can be soft on the outside – and strong too – and walk upright? Wouldn’t you like to find out? Wouldn’t it be a grand, terrifying, hopeful, imperfect, perfect adventure of your very soul?
Awesome, KA.
Vinnie
There are as many processes going on in the fellowship as there are people and many, many students have their own process to live through before they can call it a lifetime.
When things get worse, for they will inevitably, the blog will be an accepted reference for any one who complains of not knowing and continued to support the damages done to people. They will use it against each other’s claim for innocence.
If the Fellowship stopped today it would allow the young people to recover their dream and life with less naivete and the older people to recover their life without having done any further harm. Time is a factor and to watch another generation go under the spell of the Fellowship without doing anything about it is unacceptable. The old people in the Fellowship are crystallized enough to hardly stand a chance but the young people are in danger of ruining their lives. They do not see this and think they can do it better than the older ones but they will be left a lot more corrupted and ruined in the middle of their adulthood. They are already very corrupted. People count. Try to consider this when you think about whether it is alright for you to be in the Fellowship or not. How old are you? You are probably in late adulthood and are much afraid of being out on your own but your own is what you’ve been looking for all these years. To carry yourself where ever you go.
Bass, yes I’m in a centre.. I only heard yesterday that the US payments are 1000 a month… so that would be a different story for me.
Yes I agree, I try to experience and reflect the presence and ignore the rest, especially the misinterpretations of great quotes.
But that hasn’t changed much, ignoring prediction nonsense was the previous effort. I never had any ‘belief’ that Robert was conscious. I try not to have any beliefs in fact.
It’s easy, I know what I know and don’t know the rest. :-)
Another Name, my conscience tells me what to do or not do, and not to judge other strugglers along the path, including Girard and Robert. What lies have you been given?
“I try to experience and reflect the presence and ignore the rest.”
Whoever you are, it’s odd that you use the word “ignore” as though it’s a strength — even thought it’s the root of the word “ignorance.”
So your goal is to NOT BE AWARE? Is this a change in the form of the school? A change in the “teaching”?
Or is the goal now to construct a mindset where you’re thinking, “Yes, things are fucked up in the Fellowship, and RB is full of –it, but I’m not leaving because I’ve convinced myself — and I’m trying to convince others — that it’s useful for me to stay, and useful for them to stay. And it’s a positive trait and strength for me to persevere despite all of the temptations to leave — temptations from numerous revelations of the inconvenient truth. How strong I am to not take these things seriously. Anyone who points out the serious problems here is simply judging us.”
From “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche” by Haruki Murakami:
“More or less all of us want answers to the reasons why we’re living on this earth, and why we die and disappear. We shouldn’t criticize a sincere attempt to find answers. Still, this is precisely the point where a kind of fatal mistake can be made. The layers of reality begin to be distorted. The place that was promised, you suddenly realize, has changed into something different from what you’re looking for.”
38 Bistro Fundraiser
Yes, “head-in-the-sand syndrome”. One needs to have it to justify one’s presence in the FOF at this point. Sound like sleep and intentional blindness posing as effort.
To Elena #36
A moving post. You make a very good point here. I only hope some can hear. Many older members are heavily crystallized and have tragically become the opposite of what they were working toward. There is still hope for some younger members if they can only be reached. Unfortunately, many are refusing to read the blog and don’t want to know the truth. For many, many members the social and emotional aspects of the Fellowship become more important that the truth about the spiritual possibilities in the Fellowship. They just don’t want to know the ugly, dark side because for the first time in their lives they belong to a group that makes them feel safe and even important and special.
Vinnie the Fish (around) 37
I never had any ‘belief’ that Robert was conscious.
************
And you are right not to believe that your teacher is conscious because he is not. He is a gifted psychopath, a lunatic that has enjoyed success manipulating people with esoteric ideas. You are not in a school, because that would require a conscious man, you are in a criminal enterprise owned and operated by liars, cheats and at the heart a controlling, manipulative sexual predator. The Fellowship of Friends is a school of the dead. Try to enjoy what you imagine is ‘consciousness’ while milling about among that collection of potentially spiritual dead men, but what you are experiencing is in fact a state of lunatic. There is no consciousness in a false school such as the FoF, there is self-delusion and an exaggerated state of self-importance. Stick around in that environment long enough and you will sleep with the fishes permanently. You are flopping around on the outskirts of Hell while telling yourself that it is not all that hot. Ask yourself why there is this tendency in you to be attracted toward the realm of Robert Burton, history’s current embodiment of the second death.
40 Bruce
Yes, “head-in-the-sand syndrome”. One needs to have it to justify one’s presence in the FOF at this point. Sound like sleep and intentional blindness posing as effort.
…………………………………………..
By the way, saw a documentary recently about the rise and fall of Enron Corporation called “The Smartest Guys in the Room.” Available on Netflix.
For those of you negatively affected by Enron in any way, it may evoke some anger. But I recommend the film for the uncanny parallels to cult mentality. The “ends justify the means” thinking. Head-in-the-sand syndrome. etc.
Many parallels between the FOF and Enron.
The Fellowship of Friends is a school of the dead.
I periodically come back to the blog for any “news” (thanks for the INS stuff) and to guage the current “tone” of the discussion. I now read the latest post first and work my way up. Interesting to read the responses first, and then see what inspired them. Seems that the content is becoming more “thoughtful”. Encouraging.
Thank You All.
BTW: Membership in the Greater Fellowship is now 538.
44 Graduates
The Fellowship of Friends is a school of the dead.
……………………………………
You are cordially invited to attend a dinner at the Academy. Reception begins promptly at 7:00 p.m. Black tie optional. $375.
Bistro Fundraiser 36
44 Graduates
The Fellowship of Friends is a school of the dead.
……………………………………
You are cordially invited to attend a dinner at the Academy. Reception begins promptly at 7:00 p.m. Black tie optional. $375.
**************
I wouldn’t show up for less than 5k. If they want to know what I have to tell them they will have to pay, as is the custom there.
Vinnie,
I get the feeling there are things in the fof school you really like and are feeding you plus you are having fun at the same time.
Nothing wrong with enjoying yourself while evolving, but I wonder if you are looking a little further than that.
I am not trying to criticize you, just pointing to the fact that you do not seem to be concerned about the other members who are not having fun at all and are getting further damaged by RB and the whole system in there.
Is this not bothering you?
I am not applying feminine dominance here, if this is what you may think; it is just a question: what do you do with the information that RB is hurting people in so many ways…
Perhaps you are far removed from Isis and you may be fine and doing your work with some other students…but I think it is important to look at the whole fof organization and its core.
Thank you for reading.
Hi Vera,
not sure how to respond, you seem nice… but how’s this: if you live in the US and hear that GW Bush is responsible for destroying a country and sending soldiers there to kill innocent families, and it was all to get at some oil, would you leave the US, if the country is useful to you, and you find it a lovely place to be.
It’s important to live according to your own experience, not slam others for 3rd hand stories. Every person joined the fof of their own free will. I did and have no regrets so far, it’s been excellent. So your Mum didn’t warn you about satyriasis? It’s not MY problem. Bill Clinton was a good president, AND he enjoyed head. Cool, I forgive him. On another planet, or in another era, it could be considered normal. Subjective morality is just that, conscience is the only yardstick.
Speaking of ignore… it’s necessary to ignore some people’s useless words.
How did you people handle all the predictions, were you true believers? I was not. How is the current subject matter any different? I live by my own truth, and secretly despise all the false smiles and fake niceness, I think it destroys and covers up the real essence inside.
Now people like Bruce jump on the latest bandwagon, they were probably the ‘Our Beloved Teacher’ types before, accusing non-believers of being untrue.
From the above… “It’s important to live according to your own experience, not slam others for 3rd hand stories. Every person joined the fof of their own free will. I did and have no regrets so far, it’s been excellent.”
…………….
The following excerpt is from the book by Haruki Murakami titled: “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”…
…………….
They still believe that they are at a higher spiritual level than “ordinary people” and have a sense of being specially chosen… “If only he [Shoko Asahara] hadn’t gone over the edge we would have been able to pursue our religious goals peacefully and correctly, without bothering anyone.” In other words, “The results were bad, and we regret them. However, the basic aims of Aum Shinrikyo are not flawed, and we don’t feel there’s any need to reject them outright.”
This unwavering conviction in the “correctness of aims” is something I found not only in the Aum followers I interviewed, but even among those who have left and are now openly critical of the Aum organization. To all of them, I posed the same question, that is, whether they regretted having joined Aum. Almost everyone answered: “No, I have no regrets. I don’t think those years were wasted.” Why is that? The answer is simple — because in Aum they found a purity of purpose they could not find in ordinary society. Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.
…………….
#47 Truth
How does one get invited to become a member of the Greater Fellowship?
Hey Sheik,
My posts (#15, etc.) seem to be stuck in moderation purgatory. Is there a reason for that?
Hi Vinnie,
I think you should stay a devotee of RB and a member of the fof. You seem well suited. You sound like you need it and could not remember yourself without an occasional ‘meeting’. Your inner life does not seem very vibrant – even rather callous -, so the fof is a good place for you to continue on indefinitely. Nice and easy – and it won’t cost you too much it sounds like. And it is good you don’t “slam” others because you don’t seem to have a good discriminating faculty, so you should just keep it formatory.
There is no need to replace what is positive and beautiful about any belief. It seems the question here with Vinnie is that he, like many others, is willing to allow for people to be harmed psychologically and economically because he thinks he is not directly involved in the procedures. He is happy to settle for not being totally involved in his community or his country. A bad teacher, that’s fine, a bad president? would you even vote for another one?
Would you say Vinnie that what you’re expressing is the negative emotion of indifference? Not judging Girard or Robert means continuing to support them even if they are much deranged?
Does it matter to you where your money goes? You’re also saying, really nothing matters to me except my own well being. You are certainly one of Robert’s best students for he also cares only about his own well being and Girard gave himself up to polish his role day after day for a whole of a lifetime. You think I married him to watch him drown in his ambition to dominate?
You sure you really want that for yourself?
What do you care about? I bet you’re not married, think that’s too much to respond for. Would you care if your children were in Robert’s path? Does it make a difference really whether it is your children or somebody else’s? Are they not human enough if they are not your children for you to care?
The problem is not that there is much corruption in the world as much as that there are people who feel too helpless to deal with it. The helplessness you are expressing Vinnie in the attitude of laissez faire that you expose shows the degree to which you’ve lost a dignified sense of your self and others.
Dignity is a positive emotion that has never even been mentioned in the Fellowship of Friends. It is a beautiful sense of being that does not allow for one’s self or others to be diminished.
Hello ‘Vinnie the Fish’ ~
Laura wrote to you ~
“You may think yourself a free thinker immune from cult brainwashing…”
____________________________________________
Well, there’s the rub Vinnie; if one has to ‘think’ one’s a ‘free thinker’ one most certainly is not; this is not to say that you’re thinking that you are, simply something to keep an eye on, if you know what I mean.
To me, there’s plenty of ‘fish’ in the same pond as yourself; BTW, as a young boy I would discover ponds way in the middle of remote forests (with fish), I wondered how they got there, for these ponds were fed by underground springs flowing up from deep fissures, etc. (?)
Some of these ponds looked like the rest of the forest floor when covered with autumn leaves, eventually these leaves would gain just enough ‘weight’ so to be turned under the pond’s surface, eventually giving way to the clear reflection again: sometimes I wondered if young deer spooked by some night foraging skunk or porcupine might have jumped straight into it, ‘thinking’ it was a firm surface in the light of the full moon (?)
Many of my wonderments never came to fruition, though deep down in my heart I feel that I sorta ‘made up for these vacancies’ by creating some of those ‘new ponds’ myself, later in life, assertions and assignments that led me to scoop out in between a shallow mountain stream, some surprisingly dive-worthy belly buttons in the earth’s surface;
what kind of ‘mother’ is your umbilical cord connected to?
See, my friend, IMO, it will happen to you eventually; you’ll wonder in your head so much until one day your legs will finally feel the leaves brushing up against their ‘in the water a bit too long’ sensitivities, your feet will send agonizing signals to your heart, a sort of morris code that pauses heart beats, sculpts hummingbird tongues, and in the middle of a five thousand dollar meal, brings the tongue to a bland madness, as one begins to feel the blackness behind ones closed eyelids always swirl when its initiated by a conscience that simply cannot look at it anymore, whatever ‘it’ is for you, the belief-symbols rather than the sensually secret and loving deeds of Conscious Being.
It’s not so much what keeps you in such revealed places (as the blog has uncovered entirely for all to see) as the Fellowship of Friends,
the mind activity that’s prerequisite to believing you have a complete spiritual octave/triad occurring;
it’s the quality of that SPACE, that SILENCE, where (more than you may currently know or have verified and forgotten about when ‘open’ as some children are) ‘things’ and ‘its’ go skirting around,
painting mirrors in mud puddles,
keeping the alcohol content in their bottles,
sparking life fire-flies in a cancer patients ability to wait fifteen more minutes for it’s child to make it’s last hello to room #44,
lifting an old woman off her chair to place her on the front porch, to see the traffic one more time,
to give circumstance the pattern of coincidence;
no matter those who claim the ‘rabbit and hat’, these ‘movers’ and ’shakers’ do their work unmoved by trespassing, plagiarism and con artist’s:
see, all disruption or corruption takes care of itself, the ‘I don’t’ will eventually have to repay the ‘I will’ for it’s existence, its proximity; have you begun to pay, do you notice the price innate of the silence, the blush of your conscience?
It’s not the thoughts…
it’s what one often, softly and a bit too quickly says, then brushes under the daily routine, the daily image-prompting of oneself and those static objects there-around, like, ‘Could give a shit.’ or ‘I am here for C-Influence, not Robert Burton’… the mind-affirmations that feed Belief, not Being…
Yet, the “sly man’s pill” is missing from this picture,
which is no surprise,
for it is in the said “not” or the “don’t” or the “isn’t” that the SPACE and SILENCE resides its cause and effects, it’s inescapable prices, revelations and tests;
it is here that the conscious ‘personal real’ unfolds (and molds),
in the nearly gone peripheral vision,
in the corners of our eyes,
in that space where fifty feet ago one was determined to give the homeless person a dollar, until upon closer inspection you realize it’s someone who knows you or you them,
then you make up something,
perhaps the need for quarters to make a phone call,
or put a thought in between yourself and them saying ‘They’ll just buy drugs with it, etc.’
It is this ‘void’ that is not accounted for in your School of Relative Awakening,
It is the air that Krishna exhales;
you’re still caught up in dissecting his lungs,
this is OK (sorta),
it has it’s place too,
yet, please do not ‘believe’ you’re anywhere beyond the smells of full bloom roses,
whose brave openings have now set the clock ticking to their disappearances and dropping of petals for Robert Burton to grin towards,
while he ‘thinks’ it’s a carpet for him to walk upon,
a carpet of celebration and reward,
a carpet made by the meticulously removed eyelids of thousands of his victims…
I like my eyelids, they keep by eyeballs moist, it tells love-panthers that I am still alive, not yet dead meat:
fish have no eyelids, I do not wonder why, the water that surrounds them does it for them, yet, the how is for you, it is all yours. For a time, fish can survive in numerous kinds of liquids other than water, even urine.
__________________________________
Love to you all.
“Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.”
—Murakami
This strikes me as one of the saddest sentences I’ve read on this blog.
#34 KA
Very nice!
55 Kid Shelleen
“Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.”
—Murakami
This strikes me as one of the saddest sentences I’ve read on this blog.
______________________________
This is sad to me as well, although I think it describes the thoughts and feelings that allow someone to remain in the fof more than it depicts those who leave. As Elena suggested above, it’s an illusion that we need to “replace” anything we found in the FOF. Anything we found there of any substance whatsover, we found within ourselves — not through membership.
I used to think Sai Baba and Muktananda might be good alternatives, but they say they are or were rapacious sexual predators too. And Gurdjieff was probably pretty rampant.. I wonder if there are any who are not that way inclined?
Maybe it’s a requirement for a spiritual teacher.
Vinnie the Fish wrote:
“I used to think Sai Baba and Muktananda might be good alternatives, but they say they are or were rapacious sexual predators too. And Gurdjieff was probably pretty rampant.. I wonder if there are any who are not that way inclined?
Maybe it’s a requirement for a spiritual teacher.”
Let the games begin!
Re: 58, Vinnie the fish
Ouspensky was a decent person.
Nicoll was a decent person.
Collin was a decent person.
Pogson was a decent person.
Solange Claustres is a decent person.
Wim van Dullemen is a decent person.
Krishnamurti was a decent person.
As for Gurdjieff, I do not feel able to defend him as he deserves, but here is what Mme Solange Claustres has to say about him:
“My meeting with G.I. Gurdjieff surpassed all my expectations. I want to bear witness in my writing to my profound gratitude to this man who nourished me in such a substantial way.
He alone gave me a deep feeling of security and trust, which no one else ever gave me. Through his quality of listening, I could be myself, and express myself. He summoned up and aroused my abilities, put them to the test, making me conscious of them, and enabling me to trust them; which is what I most needed.
He both confirmed and guided my searching, my feelings and my intuition. My life took on a more precise meaning in a path that I was already following but only groping aorund in the fog, reading everything, questioning, wanting to know and understand everything.
This relationship did not involve any sentimentality or mysticism. Even in feeling as if I was close to my father, there was never a gesture or attitude of fondness, neither on his part, nor mine. I never felt him to be in any way manipulative, dogmatic, paternalistic or egotistic.
He was an honest and unpretentious man, profoundly good, with respect for all, full of knowledge, and good everyday common sense.
He was a good, strict teacher, never unjust, whose ever wakeful attention never missed anything that was happening.
There was no solemnity in his manner of being and speaking. He was always very simple, direct, going for the essential, without idle talk: his words were concise and precise. …”
(Becoming conscious with G.I.Gurdjieff, p. 17)
Bistro Fundraiser wrote:
“Anything we found there of any substance whatsover, we found within ourselves — not through membership.”
I will whole-heartedly second this emotion.
“Maybe it’s a requirement for a spiritual teacher.”
Vinnie, you are in the right cult for you. Way to go.
There is no one out there in the future that can bring you to the now. No one can remember for you, only you can remember yourself. Life is not before or after because it is always right now, there is no one that can give you self-consciousness or take it away. Men take the possibility of consciousness away from themselves by not realizing that non-identification is the only thing that will satisfy their constant need for something more. Try to remember yourself. If you can’t discover what that means then you will always be begging others for something they will never be able to give you. There is no guru that can wake you up, you have to wake yourself.
Funny, but true:
Went to the Nick Lowe/Ron Sexsmith show last night and what is the guy in front of me in line reading: A Herald Of The Coming Good. I struck up a conversation with the guy and told him I thought Gurdjieff was the L. Ron Hubbard of his time. He’s a psychology professor and, of course, corrected me by saying, “No, Ouspensky holds that distinction.” He felt that Ouspensky took Gurdjieff too seriously(!?). Gurdjieff, to his mind, needed to be read like, and I’m not making this up, the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, “You know, with a sense of humor!” I laughed and changed the subject… “So, where did you say you teach?”
I think he was right, you need some sense of humour to read All and Everything!
Alice E, thanks that’s a nice quote, I don’t know that book.
Of course you’d find people who would praise Robert similarly, and others who would slander G.
Would be interesting to see the books around in 30 years or so, how Robert and others stand in posterity. Maybe not at all.
KA did you used to write ads for Journey Forth By Day ;-) :
“Aren’t you CURIOUS about what it might be like to grow up spiritually? To let go of the Queen’s hand and cross the street by yourself? Letting go, would you find your people – your second line? Wouldn’t it be truly fascinating to find out if you are man or woman enough to attract that on your own? If you let go of a rather superficial control over your spiritual life will it crumble? Does your spiritual self look like an insect – with the structure and strength all on the outside like a hard shell, or can it evolve to an interior bone structure where you can be soft on the outside – and strong too – and walk upright? Wouldn’t you like to find out? Wouldn’t it be a grand, terrifying, hopeful, imperfect, perfect adventure of your very soul?”
hehe
Well-written Laura._Of course I try different approaches, why not, the world is my oyster and I’m free that way._For me it’s not much money, time or energy, so maybe you had some assumptions there?_I don’t think I have any claims or assumptions, only that I find it useful for me, but that’s not really an assumption is it?_I have found that if I don’t feed the flame inside that wants to evolve or awaken or however you want to put it, and spend time with people interested in working in that direction, and helping each other see the obstacles that obstruct it, then the desire is submerged under the pyles :-) of daily worries.
This is an important question, whether you need other people to evolve spiritually. Is ’spiritual evolution’ an OK term to use, or is that whole idea totally uncool once you leave?
What do you do now Laura, is this blog your contact with like minded people on the path? Or maybe some Buddhist group, or just reading?
Dear Vinnie,
I think I can relate to your situation. Since I was the unwealthy mother of three small children, during my final period in the fellowship my teaching payments simply consisted in doing calligraphy work, and I was also mostly living my own life and having fun. In the end my departure was due to a number of big issues that became clear over time and that are clearly reflected in the writings of this blog.
The vital question is: have you really verified that there are no better ways to invest your limited energy (time and money are just an aspect of that) in the sacred pursuit of something as precious as awakening? The assumption I was referring to was the idea that without the FoF environment your aim to awaken would atrophy. I dare say there is no reason to fear such a thing. The path is yours, the flame is yours, if your aim is true you will always find ways to nourish it. The FoF mentality feeds the most fearful aspects of our minds, and it creates an imaginary divide between the help we can get within its form and the possibilities outside.
What if you discovered that this same mentality adds to the pyle by creating a depressive and stifled environment subtly permeated by feelings of guilt and shame, actually adding to your daily worries and weakening your inner potential? It isn’t that easy to see this as long as you’re in, and I remember clearly my panicky reaction when, even as I was in the process of leaving, a couple of friends told me how their spiritual life had blossomed since leaving the fellowship. It was hard to believe. I felt a subtle, deep, sharp pain, the dawning of a most inconvenient truth. Not only my School was not perfect or even ok, I MYSELF had been wasting a lot of my precious time following a sterile path. We can reason from here to eternity, but the proof is in the pudding, and I can smell no pudding in this oven. It’s all good if in the end you do come to your senses, but the humbling, oh the humbling hurts! As many here can testify, the feelings of remorse and regret can be a heavy burden to transform. I knew I had for too long betrayed my own dream and subjected to the burden of someone else’s fanciful nightmare.
As to my own subsequent experience, I left feeling I had to find another group ASAP. After twelve years that event looks highly unlikely. For a few years I was indeed somewhat active in the local Mahayana Buddhist community, and am still at heart philosophically a Buddhist, although my understanding of its core teachings is continuously changing. But my deepest breakthroughs occurred during my experiences in holotropic breathwork. With the simple means of a few hours of music, controlled breathing, eyes closed, an empathic environment and a lot of trust I experienced some states, realizations, resurfacing of memories and energetical shifts that had very serious impact on my subsequent life. Naturally this experiences brought about some major changes in my perspective on the transformative process.
I still believe that we need people to evolve, since they are our constant mirrors. But their help can take many forms. Maybe you need people who conscientiously follow one system of thought and who can gift you with impersonal photographs and a lot of good will (as long as you’re one of them). Or maybe you need a perfect stranger who is willing to hold your sweaty hand, give you water when you are thirsty and not judge you for dancing, crying and screaming your lungs out. Or maybe you need people to dance tribal dances with, or sing mantras in unison, or take magic mushrooms with, or stare at a wall together. You are the only one to know.
Even without wanting to look at the big picture, one has to ask oneself why the FoF idea of work on oneself is so narrow and judgemental, why the constant indoctrination on being the one and only right way. That should be enough to scare away any serious seeker of the truth.
But in the end, whether they are incited by words from someone’s lips, writings on a page or any other form of external stimulus, your awakenings can only come about as a result of facing your own inner self, can you see? You are ultimately the judge of truth, you are the one who can choose right from wrong, all the time you are the one in charge. Your daily worries are your own creation, and only by empowering yourself can you rise to find satisfying answers for the very unique dilemma that is your life.
Whatever lovely feelings the school provides for you right now, one day you’ll likely come to understand that they are simply a reflection of the students’ inner beauty trying to make the best of a very sick situation. I give you credit for having the ability of projecting such powers on these shady impressions. But here is my present understanding: Robert and his teachings do hold tight grip on its subjects but their inner core is empty. Robert is so void of essential truth that he is the perfect receptacle of everyone’s fantasies. Where is the real man behind those cold blue eyes? Interestingly, real consciousness has no choice but to follow conscience. Instead, people like him, so good at toying with people’s minds, playing the angel and the villain, are the most unconscious and unconscionable amongst us. They are so disconnected from the life process that they live in self-serving alternate realities born of their imagination and entice others to believe in them. They are like dark holes, provided of immense centripetal force in proportion to their absolute lack of qualities. We provide the qualities for them. And what do we get in return, if not our own cheapened distorted reflection? I am convinced that all students would be gaining in health and energy if they continued their work away from Robert’s sphere of influence. Their issues would become clearer, their methods more effective, their ideas more intelligent.
There is powerful image at the end of the Chinese movie “Curse of the Golden Flower”, that symbolically shows how when the core of the empire is poisoned, the whole empire heavily suffers. But I see I am getting carried away here, I hope I have made my point clear, and once again best wishes in following your path. As Ka so beautifully put it, let’s hope it to be “ a grand, terrifying, hopeful, imperfect, perfect adventure of your very soul”.
Laura
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=RZenwBHCvvE
Thanks Laura, nicely written again… and thanks for your concern… “The FoF mentality feeds the most fearful aspects of our minds”.. but I really don’t have a fof mentality, you can trust me on that one! For me the influence of such beauty (was truly striking at Isis at the recent events), and lovely people like you has opened me more to life and other people, and anyone who knows me would agree. You make it sound so dramatic, about the empire… for me it’s no big deal.. if it’s poisoned and dies so be it, I will continue to grow, the school is not my whole life. My grandmother often said ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, so I have never excluded ‘life’ friends.. a crucial mistake of many of these ex-students I think, so they leave and have no-one to turn to.
Common sense is a basic necessity.
I’m curious, do people who leave go back to their previous way of talking and acting? Drop the soft voice and mild manner, the fake kindness and hint of a smile, the Dear Friends and In friendship from their emails?
Am I the only one who found that utterly false?
Now you’ve left you probably find it false but while you were in you probably complied.
Friend is not a word I would use lightly, especially on someone who wouldn’t lend me $10 or talk to me if I left, like Bass complained about.
But that doesn’t detract from the usefulness of other students.
It’s all in the attitudes and expectations.
I would like to answer this one too from #67 Vinnie the Fish: ‘do people who leave go back to their previous way of talking and acting?’
There is no going back because being in the Fellowship changes you. My experiences being in the Fellowship and the people I met there were all part of my ‘life’. Being in the Fellowship changes you as any life experience changes you. And being in the Fellowship is part of your life.
So when you leave the Fellowship you are someone who has had a Fellowship experience and are now having another experience. But being ‘anywhere’ for 20+ years will have an effect on how you act, maybe how you talk, and definitely how you think, no matter where you are.
I would say for myself upon leaving I tried to keep as much of the good and leave as much of the ‘false’ behind as my level of understanding realized at the time.
Being in the Fellowship is not as special as you think. Life experiences are occurring whether you are in or out of the Fellowship. Welcome to Planet Earth.
Whalerider ~
I have some Whale-Jumper Cables if you need them, let me know; otherwise, what about Burning Man? Did you burn those trousers or what?
:.)
49 Vinnie
“Now people like Bruce jump on the latest bandwagon, they were probably the ‘Our Beloved Teacher’ types before, accusing non-believers of being untrue.”
Yup, you got me pegged alright, I was the ideal student, everyone looked up to me, and came to me for advice. I was the quintessential supporter for RB.
It’s amazing that someone who’s so selfless as you are can so accurately apprehend the depth and breadth of someone you never met. Simply amazing. And your humility and humanity, it’s fucking astounding.
As others have said, you are where you should be. Few deserve it more.
Hi Vinnie,
Re your #49: “Now people like Bruce jump on the latest bandwagon, they were probably the ‘Our Beloved Teacher’ types before, accusing non-believers of being untrue.”
When I met Bruce in 1976 very few people in the FOF were “Our Beloved Teacher” types, especially compared to today. On a more personal level I don’t think Bruce himself is capable of being a devotee…to anyone. He was certainly always the “bad boy” of RB’s entourage back in the 70’s, and would probably have puked just trying to say the word “beloved.”
Funny thing is, from reading your posts I’m pretty sure you would have liked him, then or now.
Which leads me to your comment in #67 that “Friend is not a word I would use lightly…”
Actually you use the word “friend” lightly everytime you refer to the cult you belong to as the “Fellowship of Friends.” Friendship is not a core value within Robert Burton’s philosophy today, and seems to be viewed as essentially a distraction from more worthwhile aims (e.g. mumbling the sequence to oneself, or giving as much money as possible to the FOF organization rather than using it to enjoy time with friends and family). These days friendship in the FOF is mostly considered a necessary evil. Something that comes from the lower self and, like eating, is best kept in moderation. Of course people like you who ignore the actual substance of Robert Burton’s teaching may not notice such things; but take care with the ones who do.
Wishing you well wherever you are, or want to go, and however you think you can get there,
Joseph G
Bruce:
I wrote my post before seeing your #70.
It’s really funny to imagine you that way. Maybe some of your earlier, more pious writings gave Vinnie the wrong impression.
Hello Vinnie,
As an aside, from one fish to another, there is no IN and OUT. There is no line. Robert invented an imaginary line, a circle around us, but it is truly just a line in the sand. Yes it does place some infintessimal limits on what part of the ocean we can swim in, or how many resources we have avaialble to our own discretion, but in fact we can both go almost anywhere – the ocean is huge and the FOF is very small. It is like an old sunken boat where several hundred tiny fish swim.
It might be more correct to say that there are phases. You are in the IN phase. At some point, pehaps next month, perhaps in 10 years, perhaps when you are an old spent being, you will be ready for the next phase. Once you are there, you will either be repulsed by Robert or some aspect of the FOF form, or you will be excited about something on the outside that is difficult to attain while in. Or maybe you will be thrown out because you are growing something that others cannot understand. These are the signs of change. The result is that over a period of years you will distance yourself from FOF influence and you will begin to shed the dream. It is a little like when you discover the 3rd state and the 2nd state seems very two dimensional. As you see the dream more clearly, you will be amazed that you thought it was real. You will remember all the times you shut of the alarms and went back into the dream. You will be even more amazed that you thought you were free from it while you slept in the dream. You may experience some anger at Robert, others or yourself for over-sleeping. You will feel a desire to wake up your friends. You will be astounded that they want to keep the dream alive.
You will see that the dream (the imaginary circle that Robert has drawn) limits the love that you can hold. It limits the excitement of the day. It limits your ability to express your essence and your creative possibilities. In short, it holds you in a lower state. This is fine as long as you are a little fish, but as you get larger, you want more – you want to experience more of the huge ocean. As nice as it is, you will have experienced everything you can swimming arround the little sunken boat. At some point you will have to venture out, even though you know you may be eaten. At some point there is little to lose.
Some stay way to long. The result can be depression or alcholism or other addictions. In some cases, they stay past their blooming time.
So now you are in the IN phase. Enjoy it and use it and continue to work to be separate from nonsense. Learn what you can from others and take in the beauty when you can find it. Ride the Fence, the imaginary line or climb right into the inner circle – do what feels right to you. But when you start to metamorph, do not be afraid of it.
One morning, you will venture out swimming further away than you have ever swum before. Your eyes will be wide with anticipation. You will look back at the little sunken boat and see your old friends swimming around it. You may call to them or you may just keep swimming. You will know for sure that you can never again be limited.
Old Fish
It appears that Vinnie and Bass each have a tremendous need to hold onto what saves them from the loneliness they fear without the constructed FOF community. Surely many of us can remember our own passage through that phase of disengagement from the FOF. Whether it’s expressed with the romanticism of Bass or the cockiness of Vinnie, it’s the same flaw.
Comfort may be the primary goal of those who still hang on as members of the FOF – it doesn’t matter how they present their reasons.
Besides the question of conscience for those who continue to support Robert’s group, what about the wrong-headed idea that a spiritual aim can be pursued with a psychology bound and tied by fear of one’s own suffering? Attachment to the feel-good comfort of a group is not a spiritual aim. Facing oneself without buffers can surely be suffering, but where else would we expect to find our own spiritual work? It’s very personal. It may at times be a lonely road. There’s no way around this, fellas! Very sincerely, do you actually have a spiritual aim or are you play-acting behind the relative comfort of the FOF?
You will find that “life” is indeed your teacher, not Robert Burton. If you’re paying attention, you’ll ask the key question of why you really remained so long under the nature of Robert’s influence. You’ll also recognize that influence as a red herring in the real spiritual work always waiting for you.
P.S. Speaking of comfort, much gratitude for this rich ‘blog’ community built upon the heartfelt postings and the tireless efforts of our host, the Sheik. Thank you all.
Let’s show gratitude to the Sheik by using the PayPal button. it’s up near the top on the right.
Dear Vinnie,
If I have to tell you the lies that are circulating in the fellowship of friends….
A few: Robert is celibate
Robert is so special that he needs special energy: semen.
Asaaf is in Italy to take care of going fort by day ….”yes and he can not come back into the country see previous post for more details.
In 1995 a few students left the FOF …lie it was 200. Small difference
Now it is over 350…Nobody admits it from the fellowship of friends…..Holding you tongue is of course not lying.
Dorian and Mihai have been send to not see students for 3 months (except the teacher at night).
Nisagradatta states: You can fulfill your desires as long as you do not hurt other people…..
All the young men who have had sexual contact with Robert Burton have been HURT. I spoke with several.
HAVE YOU????
HAVE YOU???
Do you know the reason behind the skirt exercise?
You think it was Influence C….Right. No it was Robert inviting a young “(wo)men in pants in the galleria. Oops it was a women. Yes we all believed in Influence C….
Ask the B, the W, the Russians, ask the ladies who got herpes….(and men).
Dear Vinnie, do what you like to do…And believe, listen to your mind activities. I enjoy listen to my inner silence.
I once was an innie like you and believed….when I think of that it hurts so much……It might all be a matter of time.
Good luck to you
We have a beautiful inner circle and no shortage of dicks.
Love Rolex
When Artemis exposed her breasts Achilles was already stroking his hard long be.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the FoF has changed dramatically for the worse in recent years. There were some wonderful places and times in the past. For example, the London Centre in the ’80s was a vibrant, exciting, spiritually stimulating environment, and it was by no means the only such place in the FoF. In some weird way, Burton, despite his own hopeless corruption and negligible ability as a spiritual teacher, attracted wonderful, sincere people who created a school that really worked in the Fourth Way sense, at least for a while. In retrospect and paradoxically it seems that the further away from Burton you were, the more likely you were to receive something positive from the FoF.
These days Burton’s corruption and spiritual bankruptcy are apparent to all but the most hypnotised. Anyone sincerely interested in spiritual awakening or with a functioning conscience has either left or is in the process of leaving. Those who remain are the old and crystallised, as Laura pointed out, or the younger and more superficial, epitomised by Vinnie, or those restained by practical considerations such as finances or visas.
It’s sad, but also perfect in that if Burton had not been revealed to be the sham he is many of us might still be hanging around in the FoF imagining that we were still achieving something.
Vinnie, If you’re in a European center, it sounds like RB may be spending more time in your neck of the woods. If you have a nice lean body then you might have the chance to find out first hand what all (or at least some) of the fuss is about.
haha xena I’m not that way inclined thanks anyway!
I’ll save my hard lean body and copious fluids for someone sexier. Post your pic you could get lucky. :P
London is still pretty good, maybe not as fun as before but still OK. Joseph you’re right I probably know Bruce and like him – actually I’ve liked deeply or loved nearly all the people I’ve met in the school. That’s the great thing about it.
How did you people get along before without ‘ignoring the substance’ of Robert’s teachings? Like when Charles was a ‘beloved teacher’ type (and he WAS very recently)? There was no substance then either, so how shallow was that? What has actually changed in the last 20 years, except the meetings became all quotes since a Russian stood up in a meeting asking difficult questions?
Another Name.. those lies don’t sound too horrific. Yes I heard the celibate claim, ages ago, but Robert’s sex life has been common knowledge since I joined. Dorian and Mihai banned from seeing students except Robert? Well he’s not one.
“I once was an innie like you and believed”
By the way, I don’t believe anything. That’s what makes me different I think, you are all former believers turned non-believer. You believed all your silly thoughts and extreme feelings then, and do now too! :-)
I have not lived a lie since I joined, like many of you did, I put on no false pretences.. I’ve had my eyes wide open and still find it useful for me. Not toooo much has changed lately, except the meeting format and a ‘few’ departures. ;-)
Would it bother you all too much if I stay a while longer? If that’s OK with each of you?
Vinnie the Fish (around) 80
I have not lived a lie since I joined, like many of you did, I put on no false pretences.. I’ve had my eyes wide open…
*********
A Curse on Vinnie
You are a paying member of a cult of sodomy, a resident of a spiritual criminal’s network of psychologically dead enablers and yet you have your eyes wide open? You are a member of a sect that is founded on a lie, that Burton is a conscious teacher of the Fourth Way, and yet you are not living a lie? You are nothing but a false pretence, mercurial and vain. You are sleeping below the level of ordinary life.
Something unexpected will soon come your way from Circumstantial Influences and wipe some of the smugness off your face is my prediction. Besides resisting the influence of lies, being unswayed by falseness and living wide awake, you’re not superstitious are you?
There’s something coming, probably an illness. You’re not a hypochondriac are you?
Dear Vinnie,
If I have to tell you the lies that are circulating in the fellowship of friends….
A few: Robert is celibate
Robert is so special that he needs special energy: semen.
Asaaf is in Italy to take care of going fort by day ….”yes and he can not come back into the country” see previous post for more details.
In 1995 a few students left the FOF …lie, it was 200. Small difference
Now it is over 350…Nobody admits it from the fellowship of friends…..Holding you tongue is of course not lying.
Dorian and Mihai have been send to not see students for 3 months (except the teacher at night).
Nisagradatta states: You can fulfill your desires as long as you do not hurt other people…..
So many young men who have had sexual contact with Robert Burton have been HURT. I spoke with several.
HAVE YOU????
HAVE YOU???
Do you know the reason behind the skirt exercise?
You think it was Influence C….keep dreaming. No, it was Robert inviting a young “(wo)men in pants in the galleria. Oops it was a women. Yes we all believed in Influence C….
Ask the B’s the C’s and D’s, the Russians, ask the ladies who got herpes….(and men).
Dear Vinnie, do what you like to do…And believe, listen to your mind activities. I enjoy listen to my inner silence.
I once was an innie like you and believed….when I think of that it hurts so much……It might all be a matter of time, for many of us.
Good luck to you
Dear Vinnie.
Quote of a student:
I can not remember who said this, but it was somebody at the Grand Bazaar in August when the going Forth by Day was happening.
“The London Center is very much a social club these days.”
So when Robert will come to London he probably wants some extra cash to spend. Some men, to spent time with and confirm that you are all depended on him…..and that payment is a principle.
Read Nisagardatta and see Tony Parson to start learning about dependency from Robert, father figure, Gods and other authorities.
These aspect created so much freedom for me.
Good luck to you.
Vinnie, Dear, as I’ve said before you should stay in the fellowship of RB as a devotee for a very very -very- long time. You sound quite crystallized. Go forth into the sequence leaving the 4th way behind and key some poop and long be there for RB who actually prefers guys like you who are not ‘inclined’ ‘that way’. Hey, you might ‘get lucky’!
this time The Sequence with Happy Music…(and, check it out – you can eat a banana while doing it!)
58 Vinnie the Fish
You are a complete fool to think so.
One has to overcome all desire to go beyond the existential world to go home into the unknown.
For now goodbye
#78 Charles T
Thanks Charles.
Aline
A Few More Lies and Some Truth
Lie: Students are being told that everything on the Blog is a lie- don’t read it because none of it is true (just negativity)
Lie: Students are being told that Asaf is in Milan to help the Europeans understand the sequence and to create a ‘ European Go Forth by Day”. Oh, and he is also working on some minor inconvenience to resolve his not being able to get back into the USA.
Truth: The R-1 visa holders are being told to return to their country of origin before the INS issues subpeonas and has them deported (after end of September).
Truth: Some students are being given air fare to get them out of the country quickly (those who know too much or could create problems if interviewed by the INS).
Truth: Br__n Car_ll_n is being paid a salary by the FOF to be the ‘official’ bouncer at meetings, dinners, breakfasts etc. His job is to escort anyone out, who ask uncomfortable or challenging questions during meeting, dinners , breakfasts etc.. So if you are seeing Br__n around more often – its not because he can’t get enough of the events – its his job to make sure everyone is kept in line. How’s that for paranoid?
Lie: With the departure of approximately 70 R-1 visas, word is that some octaves on the property are being slightly inconvenienced. But it’s business as usual. Stay tuned to the next events coming up. Interesting, isn’t it? That 70 peoples lives are being significantly disrupted, but hey- that’s how influence “C” works isn’t it? Really nothing to do with the fraudulent basis that the ’slave’ labor has been brought into this country.
Truth: Abe G and David L are making good money advising those leaving what their options are. I guess they have to make a living, don’t they.
That’s it for now. Any more lies/truths out there?
Graduates (81) ~
That’s odd; I was thinking of a suitable shaman ‘zap’ for Robert Burton this morning (really), still looking for a real zinger.
In the meantime while Robert Burton is ‘out of town’ maybe someone in the galleria can do this ~
Take a large bowl of salt and sprinkle a pinch or two over the exterior doorways and windowsills of your Galleria. Make certain you get each and every one, including the downstairs ‘boys rooms’ and ‘wine cellar’.
Choose the room that has the strongest negative feel to it.
(That won’t be too difficult.) Light the white candle. In a large fire proof bowl combine the following:
1 tablespoon powdered garlic
1 tablespoon peppermint
1 tablespoon ground clove
1 tablespoon dried/powdered thistle
Handful or two sweetgrass, sage, or dried oak leaves
Carefully light the mixture so that it smolders, giving of a aromatic smoke. Leaving the candle lit, carry the bowl into each room and repeat the following saying:
In the name of the Eternal Lady and Lord
I bid thee part.
I consecrate and clear this space.
Let nothing but joy linger here.
When you have done each room return to the first and set the bowl beside the candle and wait for the remaining mixture to burn out. Take the ash outside and sprinkle it over the grass/flowerbed/etc. thereby returning it the the Mother.
‘From somewhere on the Net’
_____________________________________________
BTW, Don’t forget to sprinkle a little on RB’s bed too.
:.)
Gurdjieff was big joker!
In “All and Everything” he tells story of guy who visits brothels all the time but never catch disease because he wash himself good with COLD WATER.
This blog is cold water for poor souls still in fof. Wash yourself good so you don’t catch bad disease!
My You Tube has stopped working. I have now officially discovered that I am an addict.
BTW watch out for the heat Vinnie, I am afraid you’ll get burned and soon become past history for this blog like other bold students before you. Take care.
Another Name, I’ve seen a coupla Utube Tony Parsons videos, he’s OK but pretty uninspiring isn’t he? Looks like the guy behind the post office counter. Nisagradatta seems good. Who else?
KA you just prove that it’s necessary to ignore some people’s useless words.
“85 Peter
58 Vinnie the Fish
You are a complete fool to think so.
One has to overcome all desire to go beyond the existential world to go home into the unknown.
For now goodbye”
What was that all about? Who’s Peter? What’s his beef? I was a fool to think what?! :-)
He’s right though, I’m a kind of fool, with no pretences, expectations, or fears… except death, but that’s reasonable…
speaking of curse of the golden flower, I hope you like this video
http://www.novestudio.com/KP/chrys.htm
Dear Vinnie,
“KA you just prove that it’s necessary to ignore some people’s useless words.”
I used to have alot of patience for ‘fat boys’ like you. I’m getting “Brucier”.
I’m sorry, truly…. I thought you would like my last post. Isn’t that how you perform the sequence?? When I was in the fof the thing was –self remembering– and we didn’t have the divine sequence. You asked what was different about the fof ?– you have a much more upgraded teaching than I had. We didn’t have ‘quote’ meetings and ‘keys’ and ‘the numbered work Is’. You are very lucky to get to hear RB’s interpretations of cave paintings and bring that into your life – would you care to share your love of the current teaching?
Oh dear! I think I’m in love with Vinnie. What a peculiar development. Anyway, Vinnie, try John Sherman:
http://www.riverganga.or/VideoSatsang/rope.shtml (John, clearly, would think it fine to be in the Fellowship or not or any other damn thing you happen to feel like doing or not doing)
REVENGE?
The topic of attempting to close down the FoF appears here fairly frequently. Why would we want this to happen?
Because we realise Burton’s teaching is a sham? Yes, this seems obvious now, but for many years the FoF was a reasonably functional Fourth Way School – much could be learned. So, no hard feelings.
Because we believe we’ve been conned into parting with large sums of money? Personally I don’t feel bad about this – it was my own choice to make the payments and at least until a few years ago it seemed well worth it.
Because we were persuaded to believe, or at least to pretend to believe, crazy ideas like the fall of California? Surely we are responsible for our own credulity.
Because of Burton’s private life? I have great sympathy with those who were personally part of this and suffered as a result. But we’ve read here that it was always (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) at least borderline consensual. (Admittedly I wasn’t there so I can’t really know.)
Because something that once seemed so pure and wonderful has been revealed to have an empty, corrupt heart? Yes, that’s very sad.
But is the continuation of the FoF such a terrible thing? The current members (ahem) are getting something out of it, or they wouldn’t remain. That’s their decision, not ours. In any case, these days dialogue occurs naturally between students and ex-students. It’s easy for students to find someone to talk to if they start to have doubts.
Perhaps we could take responsibilty for our own sadness and anger, and move on.
“Which is best: Bill And Ben or The Woodentops? Or are they the same?” Hairy Mart
95 Charles T
“But we’ve read here that it was always (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) at least borderline consensual.
You’re wrong. Period.
If “borderline consensual” means no one physically held you down or put a gun to your head, and you accept that as your criteria, then I won’t even bother correcting you beyond this. Our spectrum of our conscience is far too different.
96 Bruce.
I would hope our consciences are fairly similar. I defer to you and others who were there on this topic.
97 Charles T
“I would hope our consciences are fairly similar.”
To make the above assumption (95), even in ignorance ,shows that it isn’t.
Why the fuck would 200, or 500 or 2000 straight males agree to have sex with that vile, repulsive queen if there wasn’t some significant degree of unusual coercion going on. I don’t think one has to be a genius to see that it was frequently non-consensual. Unless you have, in your mind, blocked out all that has been said and written and shown to be true for quite a few years, it should be very obvious. Unless one’s self also has some sociopathic tendencies, or a lunatic feature, or an excessively high image of themselves, all of which would keep one from seeing beyond oneself and be able to empathize with victims of what is so clearly crime on a level that supersedes the “law”.
95 Charles T ~
Hummmm… You sound allot like Rhino Neal, are you impersonating Charles T or the other way around. I believe Charles T., that unless you’ve been face to face, or zipper to zipper with this Creature from The Black Lagoon (Robert Burton) then your voice on this matter is at the high watermark and at best a sort of hobby and nothing to be taken as the fine art of conscience… in other words, you’re in imagination and I am on the verge of spinning out a third deaf-rhyme, don’t make me do it; stay in the present and close to your karma, not others, unless they ask and know who they are asking, that’s my opinion BTW, nothing objective.
On a silly rating, Charles T., you get a 9… the 10’s are reserved for those who have actually bent over and still do thinking it’s gets them closer to the essence of rhinoceros poo poo.
It’s not about “revenge”, it’s about returning the demons from whence they came and getting them to agree to do so through understanding and change in level of being; there’s no better apartment for a demon than inside a confussed architect’s plans.
_______________________________
Love to you all.
95 Charles T
Thank you Charles.
Certainly revenge does not help anyone, especially those that feel revengeful, and I believe that it closes the door to communication to those that are within.
There are many fine people that choose to stay. Some stay because they feel that they need the pressure to continue to work. They want the constant reminders that life is about more than A influence. They want to be with others that also seek that pressure and they appreciate the intentionality that results. Finally, they want to be challenged to see the world in new ways, which the Fellowship can do.
Unfortunately some of these fine people compromise their potential be accepting unhealthy behavior in Robert and the Fellowship.
I believe there is danger and harm when students stay too long. Many are afraid to leave, or think they need pressure that at some point ceases to be useful and instead holds them in an unchanging relationship to life. They are examples of the Rodney Collin story of the student that works so hard that he walks right place his destination.
Perhaps we can help these people to see when that time comes, that there is life on this side of the line. Displaying anger and revenge will not give them hope since they do not want to become an angry old man or woman.
We also have the opportunity to help students differentiate between that which is healthy and that which is a bit sick.
I don’t think sex can be consensual between a teacher and a pupil, a doctor and his patient, an adult and a child, etc. There are good reasons why this is considered to be immoral. I believe that breaching this has the very obvioius potential to destroy the teacher pupil relationship and the likely outcome of hurt, anger and a lack of trust.
Robert decided to risk the trust that we had in him and as anyone might have predicted, the trust was diminished, even destroyed, and there is anger and hurt.
>
> Dear Charles,
>
> Perhaps we can take responsibility for our own sadness and anger and continue moving on to questioning the Fellowship down to the ground. I don’t think we’ve even started yet.
>
> While a few of us have been screaming our pain we haven’t even addressed the teaching. The teaching is no less untouchable than the practice. If we look a little further, we might learn something after all about what it is that we didn’t develop and why. We might not have developed a conscious
> school but we developed enough unconsciousness for it to be worth a great look.
>
> The mechanisms of the fellowship are nothing but the reflexion of our beings put together and I do question anyone wishing not to look when there’s so much to see. What is it that those that question the questioning don’t want to see?
>
> While I much empathize with your tone and congratulate you for taking so much responsibility for your self I do not follow your feelings. I was in Oregon House last week and there was a feeling of sadness that the Fellowship is being badly shocked. Yes, the process of destruction is not easy to look at. And yet, while I respect any one’s right to do what
> ever they want with their money and time, I equally claim my right to question a School that promised consciousness and raped our trust. The fact that it did it with a bouquet of flowers does not alter the issue. The bouquet was part of the indoctrination so that we would have shame to question it. Those are its sweet techniques.
>
> I have seen the mechanisms with which the Fellowship of Friends works too closely to not take it apart piece by piece.
> Revenge? You could also call it love. It depends how we wish to understand it. For some, love is letting things be. For me that is tramp. Like Vinnie who never got really involved in being inside and can’t really get involved in being outside and cares less as long as he can keep paying to be in some kind of place that fits his feature. Indeed it fit our features and that is what I find worth questioning because I have not given up the quest for consciousness. If all I get from this experiment is the understanding of what consciousness is not, I will be much closer to what consciousness is.
We’ve shown the worst of our selves. Maybe we can still show the best. That was not possible in the Fellowship. A few in the ranks allowed for another few to talk and participate if they liked them enough but there was never an open public square like this one in which to express our selves regardless of the rank or somebody’s sympathy. Those subjective sympathies, mechanical sympathies that make the world go around tied to the hierarchy without ever allowing people to participate because they are people. People. Common human beings that don’t have to keep proving themselves to anyone or anything to be.
Dear Charles, I have seen a man crawl on his feet everyday of his being trying to hold the Fellowship together at the cost of his life. It is his life but don’t tell me I have to keep quiet so that another fifty men follow his path and a thousand like us pay for it.
No, call me the courts that followed the nazis, call me the memory that will not forget, call it revenge if you will but if you look deeply enough you can also call it love. This is not a witch hunt to see how we hang Robert and Girard from the balls, it is much more a search for letting them hang off their balls. Some think they are doing people a favor letting them crucify themselves and others, I will destroy that cross if I can and let them build it again if they have the balls. Hopefully they’ll be too old to continue fucking themselves up.
You might forgive me the language, but I’m done with King of hearts mediocrity. It was too much softness for too many years what allowed them to dress in silk ties and give us motherly sermons while in private they banged their heads against the wall and their penises against their consciousness.
When the blog began, I thought almost every letter defending the Fellowship was from Girard. I recognised what I had been hearing everyday for four years. We are each one of us indoctrinated with the same mind. A few were wise enough to hold themselves far away from it but there are hundreds inside learning to live with a frame of mind that is sick. There is no life, no beauty, no love in it, just the madness of a man that chose to crawl and not walk, beg and not work, and undermine himself in adoration for another man just as sick who chose to live on the sweat of those who trusted him.
I will take as much responsibility for my love and trust in Robert, Girard and the Fellowship as for my distrust of Robert, Girard and the Fellowship. I will not walk the middle path as you propose. If the Fellowship of Friends stops today, those who are hurt will have time to heal, and no more people will be hurt. Nothing of any real value will be lost. There is no integrity in the Fellowship of Friends. It is an institution of convenience, a rather sick one for that. All those who innocently think that the Fellowship is helping them, have not even began to question the human cost of that integrity that they are not willing to look into.
It is not the money, nor the suffering or the past, it is that the human cost has been too great to disregard and there is no legitimate reason for it to continue.
Tell me, what is there of any value still in the Fellowship? You talk as if brainwashing wasn’t harmful. As if paying for a conscious teacher that teaches one to undermine one’s self day after day, to loose trust in one’s beliefs, to become self conscious and not conscious, to accept that men be treated like dirt and women be used as pimps were of no consequence.
Do forgive me Charles, but you and all like minded people have not even began to look at what it is that we’ve been doing inside.
True, we did not kill people physically, thank God, but thousands were ignored psychologically. Ignored to the point that they came and left after fifteen, twenty, thirty years, without having ever had the chance to say, I am part of this community for the sake of my own being and not just because I pay.
I suggest you read the blog again, read lady b’s letter and keep reading. Every letter is the reflexion of hundreds of students behind it, many of whom don’t even know that the blog exists and are still trying to figure out what it is that happened to them in the Fellowship.
You have my full respect to your integrity, I am only questioning your thoughts and feelings. In relation to Robert, Girard and everyone else in the Fellowship I continue to question their actions besides their thoughts and feelings. Questions and dialogues in the hope that we’ll not let our lives pass unexamined.
>
>
>
Dear Charles (95)
You acknowledge that RB’s teaching “is a sham” and I certainly agree with you there. However, your assertion that “for many years the FoF was a reasonably functional Fourth Way School – much could be learned” – I’m not so sure about that.
Yes, much could be learned there. Much can be learned anywhere if one has the right attitude. As I’ve said before in this blog, I think that most of whatever real learning occurred in the FOF was in spite of Robert rather than because of him.
Sure, I learned things while I was there. I learned about art, and poetry, and beauty from Rembrandt, Whitman, DaVinci, Bach, Hafiz, and many others. Not really from RB though. He just co-opted these imminent beings and lied about having some special connection to them. And even they were cast aside, or at least diminished in importance, once Robert got into the sequence and all that.
The same thing could be said in regard to learning about the Fourth Way. There again, RB co-opted the teaching of others and falsely claimed to have a connection. Of course, I learned about and practiced the Fourth Way to some extent while I was in the FOF. But Burton’s version of the Fourth Way teaching is, at best, incomplete. And, of course, he taught all kinds of other crazy shit having nothing to do with the Fourth Way all down through the years, not just in the last couple.
As I’m sure you know, his teacher, Alex Horn, had no legitimate connection to the authentic tradition of the Gurdjieff work. Horn was bizarre, abusive, and distorted the teaching to satisfy his own selfish ends. And as we all know, Robert has emulated, and even surpassed him in this regard.
What I really learned about the Fourth Way while I was in the FOF was either from reading the books, or from working with other sincere students. But there was no need to pay RB the exorbitant sums to do that. There were, and are, a considerable number of sincere and legitimate Fourth Way students and organizations out there. RB totally lied when he claimed that the FOF is the only real school.
In regard to the money, you say “it was my own choice to make the payments and at least until a few years ago it seemed well worth it.” I don’t think it was at all “well worth it”. Yes I learned some things while I was there, and it’s difficult to attach a price tag to those things. I probably spent at least 50k while I was there. I’m know you spent much more. But what did you learn during all those many years that you couldn’t have learned elsewhere with much less expense?
I guess we could look at it as our inevitable fate or something and that makes it a little easier to accept. I sure learned to be more skeptical about people claiming to be teachers – and that’s worth alot. But I really regret that our donations helped to make possible all of Robert’s profligate spending and pederastic escapades. Don’t you have a problem with any of that?
You say “surely we are responsible for our own credulity”. I know where you’re coming from on this, we are responsible to an extent. But there is a responsiblilty on the part of the one who claims to be the teacher, as well. Teachers who deceive and defraud should be exposed and brought to justice, not just left alone to do their thing, as you seem to be suggesting. So when you say ‘we are responsible for our own credulity’ I think it’s kinda like blaming a rape victim for wearing revealing clothing or walking alone at night.
You say “But is the continuation of the FoF such a terrible thing? The current members (ahem) are getting something out of it, or they wouldn’t remain.” Well I think it is a terrible thing and I think the current members are both deceiving themselves and being deceived about what they’re getting, just as we did and were. I would like to see that stopped. Not out of revenge but out of justice. Perhaps some divine justice will one day be meted out. I hope so, but I wouldn’t necessarily count on it. I prefer not to wait for that, and will do what I can now to persuade others to avoid RB and the FOF like the plague.
Best to you, Charles (and everybody)
99 Uno: “unless you’ve been face to face, or zipper to zipper with this Creature from The Black Lagoon (Robert Burton) then your voice on this matter is at the high watermark and at best a sort of hobby and nothing to be taken as the fine art of conscience… in other words, you’re in imagination”
True. My (tentative) statement was a long shot based on zero experience. I hope it doesn’t detract from the main point of accepting and moving on.
100 Old Fish: “Robert decided to risk the trust that we had in him and as anyone might have predicted, the trust was diminished, even destroyed, and there is anger and hurt.”
Yes. In fact you’re putting it mildly.
101 Elena. Thanks. Your posting brought tears to my eyes. I agree with almost everything you say. I admire you for taking a strong, confrontational stance. But please allow me not to be so strong.
102 David B. I didn’t learn much from RB himself either, and for sure his version of the Fourth Way was feeble and incomplete. But still, I have no regrets. Call me Vinnie if you like. You and I had some wonderful times, right? “I prefer not to wait for that, and will do what I can now to persuade others to avoid RB and the FOF like the plague.” If current students ask me what I think about the FoF I tell them what I think, which is just what you say. It’s strange being here in OH, however, and meeting current students who still unquestioningly believe. It’s extaordinary to say this, but despite everything some students still are achieving something. What that means, I don’t know, it’s just the way it is (and always was).
FREEDOM is feeling your pain.
FREEDOM is being the pain.
FREEDOM is seeing people leaving their dreams, their homes, the fellowship of friends.
FREEDOM is knowing that you do not know.
Words are in the way, dear Charles and Vinnie and others.
All mind activity, are you in you rwon way?
I have heard all the words in the world.
Proud of my tears and what is now, amen,
Proud of being, simple where I am.
Open to what is
And feel, feel, feel what is bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, which is called “me” in this life.
FREEDOM, simply driving in the rainy night in California.
Alone, Free, no words,
Just me, myself and I.
Sleep softly.
“…but despite everything some students still are achieving something.”
_______________________________________________
Well, not “everything” Charles T.,…
_____________________________
Questioner to Russian Student ~ “What was it like having sex with Robert Burton?”
Russian Student ~ “It was like getting raped.”
_____________________________________
Charles T.,
I would advice you to take some deep breaths and find your center; I have always sorta loved you in a quizzical way, I like your shear ‘being your self-ness’ in the face of certain ‘odd forces’, yet, when one becomes for a time that ‘odd force’, methinks it’s time to interview a few rape victims and say to them ~
‘but despite everything some whom have not been raped yet still are achieving something. What that means, I don’t know, it’s just the way it is (and always was).’
And see what happens: everyone has two sets of eyelids, I pray that both of yours are not shut to change, indeed, you do not know and do not know what it means, yet, who amongst us is so full of unholy indifference to say “it’s just the way it is (and always was)” and still admit that they have no idea what premise is theirs to say such?
That’s just plain weird, though not a 10… As I said before, the Fellowship of Friends will fall in two years time, the coo coo clock is ticking and Robert Burton’s balls are the counter weights; go figure.
the coo coo clock is ticking and Robert Burton’s balls are the counter weights
***********
Cuckoo clock. Other than that the prediction is brilliant.
This is the problem: an evil madman, a truly maliciously inclined lunatic, hell-bent on self-satisfaction at the cost of everyone else, is surround by, is buffered from direct observation by, what appears to be decent and sincere people. Their effect is that of ignorantly malevolent dupes, they are passively floating wooden decoys with carved smiles, enticing more innocent victims out of the skies and their only motivation for occupying such a position in life is a crumb of approval and recognition from a phony self-declared conscious being. Remember how self-righteous we felt when we talked one of our friends into the cult? It is only now that we fully understand how infectious and destructive the cult atmosphere of self-certain self-importance is. We wax apologetic and agonize with understanding about people still there, but just think back a few minutes to when we were there, remember how important and cosmically significant we felt? The degree of self-worship was truly disgusting and it is just that, the psychotic high of being a follower of the one and only prophet, that keeps the rest of the cult zombies glaring into the vacuum of one another’s eyes while recycling the hypnotic sequence through their abandoned brains. Admittedly we all enjoyed how exclusive that once felt, performing the particular phase of diversionary exercises Burton had devised to render the flock mindless, because we were so desperately empty of anything resembling integrity that we were willing to engage any madness if only we felt like we belonged to something important. The only thing that has changed for those of us no longer under the ugly influence of Burton’s poisonous version of polluted beauty and hideous heaven is that we now have the possibility of actually discovering something meaningful in this journey through existence. They are there because they believe they have been chosen to follow what they imagine is a prophet and that makes them criminals because their false prophet is a criminal.
Yes it must have been very unpleasant having sex with him. I know a few guys who just said ‘no’ though and that was the end of it. They didn’t get to hang in his group, but no big deal.
KA, Robert’s words never had much substance, (it sounds sily to call it ‘teaching’ to me) except for the useful exercises like not interrupting, being intentional etc (there are endless examples) – it has been the excellent students who make it worthwhile, and that remains the case. But one’s intelligence can filter the wheat from the chaff.
Robert just happens to be the one that keeps it together. Simple as that, and I have to give him credit for keeping such a fine bunch together for so long.
Dear Charles T
I agree with you that each of us must personally be responsible for working through our own regrets-hurt-sadness and actually it’s probably part of a necessary weaning process from the collective, so to speak – maybe an aspect of “graduation”.
You suggest revenge as the motive behind various efforts to close down the FOF. To whatever extent that’s true, I’m very sorry for those twisting about in that turmoil. Although I’m not involved in the efforts along legal lines, revenge isn’t the motive I’ve read into these actions, but rather an earnest advocacy in action to stop a corrupted entity that preys upon naivety and feeds upon attachment.
My impression is that this advocacy is altruistic in its aim, even though it is a harsh disruption of the status quo. Of course current members are there by choice but I think we all understand what holds them. I don’t suppose you imagine they are actually better for being there. There’s some of the “reformer” archtype in action these days, it’s true, but I think revenge is a wrong understanding. At least I hope so.
Q. Why should self-remembrance bring one to self-realization?
M. Because they are but two aspects of the same state. Self-remembrance is in the mind, self-realization is beyond the mind. The image in the mirror is of the face beyond the mirror.
Nisargadatta “I Am That”
6, 16, 30, 55 and 56 are newly moderated.
Still Trying: Each and every one of the people who write here have to have at least one post moderated before they can write in real time. This is so as to minimalize the number of people who would try to disrupt the discussion.
Graduates – “Remember how self-righteous we felt when we talked one of our friends into the cult?”
Says a lot that quote.. I would never talk anyone into joining, I know it’s not for everyone so have never even discussed it with an outsider in over 10 years. What different worlds we live in.
I was thinking of making a list of all the benefits I’ve had from the school, and it would be a long one:
understanding more what consciousness and mechanicality are; understanding and experiencing love, and opening the emotional part that is so closed off in fear in most people; appreciation of painting, classical music, art, literature; using small aims and intentionality to be more present and aware; learning to value beauty and focus on it ahead of other impressions to feed the essence; learning to value things related to the spirit ahead of bodily needs; good and intelligent acquaintances in so many countries, enabling interesting travel all over the world; speaking and being myself in front of groups of people.
How is it after you leave? When you toast, do you avoid eye contact?
Vinnie: “Robert just happens to be the one that keeps it together. Simple as that, and I have to give him credit for keeping such a fine bunch together for so long.”
The Greater Fellowship reunion: People said several times; The only good thing that Robert has done is to bring a nice bunch of people together. There were more then 150 people there and 8 “innies” or fencers…..
The price was big, Vinnie and I have said before and I feel this in my heart: If I knew what was really going on with the sex and money “disappearings” I would have left the fellowship of friends within a month. “Thanks center directors”
Obvious you can not go to the place were the hurt is…the pain of 70 people who now have to move back.
Of many men and women who have been hurt, physically, emotionally.
Women who had to give up children, had abortions, had to take anti depressants and are still taking them.
The real “innies” look at them, something is off, they can not realate in a two way conversation simple sharing, compassionate without some judging. They are “teaching” !.
Yes, I move on as this is what has to be and yes, I have kicked myself why it took me so long. Part of the process and I am proud of it.
But Vinnie, you in your London Social Club on your throne has no clue of the hurt in Oregon House and you would not be able. You think your mind is producing states….are you in for a joke as was I. Boy did this hurt and I am carrying this hurt and transcendent it with proud. No denial for me.
You find Tony Parson not inspiring. I perceive him as clear as water, NO NONSENSE. Hurray, after so many years of mind clutter for me.
The part about teachers is brilliant for me. Says it all.
http://www.maharajnisargadatta.com/ Nisaragadatta with info as clear as water.
Hicks : The DVD the secret behind the secret. As clear as water. With a practical showing of world 3……Wooooooh.
Maybe Eckhart Tolle who has a strong intellectual element but he will tell you that enlightment is not achieved by doing.
ARE YOU READY?…..all in due time.
And you are paying teaching payments? Yes I did too for a looooong time. DEPENDANCY IT IS CALLED. DEPENDANCY.
Now Freedom, for you too I wish and all who are reading.
Enjoy
Vinnie, nice list. I had a similar one. Aren’t you curious about what you are? Now that you’ve had the dependent/learning stage, aren’t you curious about doing all that list without the stifled (and corrupt) structure of the fof? I found that my list just grew and evolved. It was just a beginning. Don’t worry you can still make eye contact with friends and you will not forget how to read literature and your ears will still be able to listen to Beethoven.
I know the easy part is so alluring and even addicting. Its all just so convenient to have houses available for travel with predictable nice people. Nice and easy. That started to bother me and it felt manipulative on an emotional level. I wanted something more real and more alive. None of your list is tied to the fof except for the convenience of travel. But get a job at a university and that will change too. You don’t need to close up and be afraid.
VINNIE….IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU.
What Vinnie learned in the fellowship of friends, despite the price he his paying. He can not see the bill yet! Is he in denial?
Vinnie Says: I learned in the fellowship of friends: understanding more what consciousness and mechanicality are; understanding and experiencing love, and opening the emotional part that is so closed off in fear in most people; appreciation of painting, classical music, art, literature; using small aims and intentionality to be more present and aware; learning to value beauty and focus on it ahead of other impressions to feed the essence; learning to value things related to the spirit ahead of bodily needs; good and intelligent acquaintances in so many countries, enabling interesting travel all over the world; speaking and being myself in front of groups of people.
VINNIE….IT IS ALL ABOUT YOUOUOU.
55 Still trying
#47 Truth
How does one get invited to become a member of the Greater Fellowship?
____________________________
Still trying, watch for a post here from Janna or one of the others who are willing to post their email address. When you’ve made direct email contact with someone who is a GF member, you’ll receive an invitation from them.
Janna may see this or you may need to wait for her occasional general invitation post.
114 Across The River: “Although I’m not involved in the efforts along legal lines, revenge isn’t the motive I’ve read into these actions, but rather an earnest advocacy in action to stop a corrupted entity that preys upon naivety and feeds upon attachment.”
Yes, that makes sense. But I’ve for sure heard some ex-FoFers talking about their desire for revenge. I’ve also felt it in myself, sorry to say, which is partly why I raised the topic.
115 Yesri.
Brilliant quote. Thanks!
117 Vinnie.
We all experienced your list of benefits and I’m grateful for that. Most of them remain post-FoF. We still even make eye contact when toasting – it’s a nice habit. Why throw out the baby with the bathwater? The difference is that everything is so much more free and alive out here.
112 Graduates
Great post, thanks.
113 Vinnie the Fish
“Yes it must have been very unpleasant having sex with
him. I know a few guys who just said ‘no’ though and that was the end of it. They didn’t get to hang in his group, but no big deal.
“- it has been the excellent students who make it worthwhile, and that remains the case. But one’s intelligence can filter the wheat from the chaff.
Robert just happens to be the one that keeps it together. Simple as that, and I have to give him credit for keeping such a fine bunch together for so long.”
Vinnie, you are a self-satisfied, narcissistic little creep. The FOF was made just for YOU.
117 Vinnie the Fish
“How is it after you leave? When you toast, do you avoid eye contact?”
Personally, I’ve come to understand that every “spiritual” event doesn’t have to involve alcohol to get through it.
Evolution in motion
2
Vinnie the Fish (around) 117
I was thinking of making a list of all the benefits I’ve had from the school, and it would be a long one:
1) understanding more what consciousness and mechanicality are;
***
That’s rich. Does anyone out here in the real world imagine for a second that this primping, self-satisfied idiot understands anything about mechanicality?
2) understanding and experiencing love,
***
Your prophet makes guys that feel like they have no choice because they are in a foreign country under a religious visa have sex with him, according to reliable reports he makes them do it when they tell him that they do not want to and you talk about understanding love while wearing that obnoxious smirk on your face.
3) and opening the emotional part that is so closed off in fear in most people;
***
All your emotional opening does is explain how clever and wise you are while enjoying yourself in a sodomy cult.
4) appreciation of painting, classical music, art, literature;
***
Yeah, that’s worth the price of admission to a cult that damages and distorts anyone that gets close to the lead lunatic.
5) using small aims and intentionality to be more present and aware;
***
You are about as present and aware as a common pimp. There is no consciousness without conscience.
6) learning to value beauty and focus on it ahead of other impressions to feed the essence;
***
All this FoF crap does is feed narcissism. The guy teaching you how to imitate the upper classes is the son of an Arkansas butcher. You are getting culture filtered through the ignorant tastes of a faggot character out of the movie “Deliverance”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUcUfHkdYk
7) learning to value things related to the spirit ahead of bodily needs;
***
Here’s how your teacher reportedly does that:
Inner circle facts Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Are you ready for some brutal facts?
Who would like to know how its really happening in his bad room? OK folks,fasten your sit belts,the Kansas going Bye Bye…
Did you know that usual orgies are formed from 4 to 6 student?.Usually two of them are SIMULTANEOUSLY entering Burton’s anus.Third person is laying on his back while Mr.Burton is providing him an oral sex while two from both sides are subject to the masturbation by MR.Burton with his two hands.
Some time there is one more student who’s role is to hold Burton’s testicles in his mouth during the whole time.Prior to all, by Burton’s request Viagra pills are shared and swallowed between all members of the orgy which are constantly provided by Mr.G.
Some time you can hear Burton’s words during the sexual activities “How incredible! We are getting closer,aren’t we?”
Some of them are asked to suck his nipples and his toes.All sperm gets swallowed by Mr.Burton at the end of the act.But that is not all yet.
There are two students who had the most terrifying and most humiliating role to play (in my opinion).They have to enter with their hands by their elbows into the Burton’s anus.(Looking for Consciousness perhaps)..both students are Russians.One of them had left the school and the other has been “shipped” back to Russia for disobedience.
And now get this:
Beside those depraved scenes there is another one which going to shake you all:
There is another act that Burton is preforming with a specific student of his own “inner circle”.This act of Humiliation is performed in his bath room while Burton is laying down and 3 students are urinating right on him!
And on the next morning,like nothing happened Mr.Burton is leading the meeting on Love?
8) good and intelligent acquaintances in so many countries, enabling interesting travel all over the world;
***
Good and intelligent acquaintances found in a cult of sodomy operated by a criminal predator…somehow I doubt that’s possible.
9) speaking and being myself in front of groups of people.
***
Well, that is useful. You can stand in front of a 10,000 ex-members of a sodomy cult and explain to us the benefits you’ve derived from such an association.
10) How is it after you leave? When you toast, do you avoid eye contact?
***
How do you sleep at night? I’ll tell you how, you’ve got no fucking conscience you self-involved piece of crap.
**************
Now we know what little it takes to keep self-congratulating sociopaths in a psychologically destructive cult of sodomy.
Comment to Vinnie:
http://fofgraduates.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/graduates-of-the-fellowship-of-friends/
Bottom of the page.
To all of you truly sincere posters,
This forum seems to have become ted by a focus on tearing down and ultimately destroying the FOF and/or its leadership (however deservedly). In furtherance of this end, there seems to be a strong desire among many posters to silence the voice of anyone who is not in sync with this aim (Vinnie and others).
To be clear, I don’t support the FOF and don’t think anyone should join it. Enough has already been said in this forum to give any current member of the FOF serious cause to reconsider their situation – but each of them has ultimately got to find his or her own answers.
My own “wiseacring” speculation on the school is that the FOF started out on the right track, founded by mostly good people with good intentions, but somewhere along the line (fairly early on perhaps) an interval was not bridged, the FOF lost its aim and is now descending into perhaps the opposite of what it started out to be. In light of this view, I can’t dismiss the FOF as having been utterly wicked from the beginning and I can’t ignore the fact that there were many positives to take away from the FOF (as listed by Vinnie and others). As mentioned by one poster, I can’t see throwing out the baby no matter how muddied the bath water has become (at the same time, its hard to understand why anyone with a properly functioning conscience would continue to submerge themselves in such foul water).
When I found this discussion group I was hoping it would serve me (and others in a similarly isolated situation) as a source of much needed second line work. I certainly get the impression that most of the posters here have not given up the quest. My hope is that we can move forward as a group and shift the tone and content of this forum to something more positive, more conducive to “man’s possible evolution”.
124 Graduates
Yup.
125 Still trying
Don’t be misled. Many here are continually seeking their right answers. Occasionally a schmuck will espouse seriously absurd pro-FOF crap, and that’s when they’re jumped on. Don’t judge the occasional spanking for the ultimate aim. You’d just be kidding yourself and showing your own tunnel vision.
Hi Vinnie, just a few questions for you since you seem so eager to stand up for your self and the Fellowship. Congratulations, please don’t let us down, show us what to look back to with joy.
understanding more what consciousness and mechanicality are;
Do you think they are independent expressions of each other?
understanding and experiencing love,
What love did you experience? With your partner? Still good? With your friends? Will you loose them if you were to leave? With your teacher? I don’t believe you. With your self? Do you feel any more self sattisfied than you felt before joining?
and opening the emotional part that is so closed off in fear in most people;
Are you open and unafraid to speak in public to Robert?
If he even allowed it? Why don’t you answer some of the questions that have been asked to you if you’re not that afraid?
appreciation of painting, classical music, art, literature;
Do you think “life” people don’t or do you realize we are able to appreciate them because “life” people have protected them?
using small aims and intentionality to be more present and aware;
To what are you more present and aware? I am sincerely asking you, I would love to know what you became more present and aware to.
These are very easy sentences to say but can you fill them with meaning?
learning to value beauty and focus on it ahead of other impressions to feed the essence;
Beauty in the clothes, the flowers, the decorations or beauty in the way Robert treated you, respected you, appreciated you as a human being? Or do you not expect that from a man number eight? Is he too high for you to question why he treats you like shit? Or if he ever treated you with anything but indifference please share the good news with me. Did he ask how your children were once in seventeen years so that you thought he cared about you?
learning to value things related to the spirit ahead of bodily needs;
Do you think Robert’s or Girard’s sexual behavior is ahead of the spirit? Is yours similar to theirs that you feel comfortable with it?
good and intelligent acquaintances in so many countries, enabling interesting travel all over the world;
Interesting travel? Do you just use students all over the world or do you actually care for people?
speaking and being myself in front of groups of people.
Since when haven’t you been able to give an angle in a public square? Or is public to unelitist for you? You like the flare of being different to others, more priviledged, luckier? And you still think that is consciousness?
You’ve answered most people but you’ve not answered me yet and I doubt you’ll answer this ones. Take the easy one’s and let your tramp take care of the rest?
There are so many students like you in the Fellowship but those like you will not hold it in place. You’ll go looking for the show and become depressed when the show is nothing but a bunch of old students crystallized in holding the icing together but without the money or the glitter left. Then your tramp will tell you it’s time to move on and you’ll keep looking for the easy way, not the fourth way.
You were in fact never a student and probably won’t manage to learn that in this turn. But you certainly were one of those who filled up the space and affirmed that you liked it fine, just as it was even if it crystallized from the beginning or as you say, never changed.
Re: 125,
Still trying, you might like to take a look at “What is the Work?”
http://whatisthework.ning.com/
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now theres a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the Steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend, You martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the Steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper,
You prisoner, and shine!
Still Trying,
Confrontation here on the internet in an open forum is inevitable and healthy, although not always pleasant. For example, I’m guessing the word “cult” makes many people cringe when the see it here, but to really understand the truth about the fof, the word “cult” must be used, or we’re simply “buffering” — one of those Fourth Way terms that I think applies all too well.
The discussion here has led to a clearer picture of the truth — which is not to assume that everyone here is conveying the truth, or seeking it.
But you rarely — if ever — experience such disagreement within the Fellowship, because the FOF discourages such discourse. And of course the fof discourages it, because this kind of discussion leads to uncomfortable truths that compel its followers to question the wisdom of remaining there. Not to mention, it’s a huge PR problem for Robert Burton and his closest enablers.
I’ll take this forum any day to the staid and pretentiously “neutral” comments (or “angles”) that we were so accustomed to in the fof. Anyone straying too far from the party line was kicked out. Surprise, surprise.
When I see a similar open forum within the fof that allows people to post their thoughts anonymously (i.e., without fear of reprisals or of being expelled from the group), then I’ll be a bit more open to the possibility that something of value remains there. The lack of open discussion and the close-mindedness to outside ideas is one of the main characteristics of any cult, and the fof is no exception.
Hi Still trying
“at the same time, its hard to understand why anyone with a properly functioning conscience would continue to submerge themselves in such foul water” Isn’t that the main point?
I don’t think most are attempting to get Vinnie (and other Provocateurs who simply repeat the fof talking points without any deeper interaction) to not have a voice. But he can’t just say his stuff without others being able to react. Just because he is called to test his words that’s not a call to not participate. He doesn’t need to be babied. Others, like Bass, Charles T (many, actually) give the sense of intensely, deeply questioning! This is a blog – we are come to talk the difficult issues, actively yet safely pose difficult questions and watch YouTube.
(have you tried the GF?)
Bruce, Alice, Bistro,
Thanks for your posts.
Bruce (#127):
In your fervour to deal out the “spankings” , be careful not to fall into the trap of becoming judge, jury and er.
Alice (#128):
Thanks, I am a new member!
Bistro (#130):
I don’t agree that confrontation is always necessary or healthy – at least not when the confrontation assumes the form of personal insults and/or crude language. I think that kind of discourse is coming from the wrong place (false personality). It seems to me that insults and diatribes passed off as open, self-expression share much in common with the repressed and censored expression of the FOF .
I am not put off by using the word “cult” in connection with the FOF. However, I disagree with the pejorative sense that is commonly assumed when using the word. In other words, people (especially “life” people, for lack of a better word) associate the word automatically with something evil. While its true that the vast majority of cults may be evil, I would venture to guess that most of the great conscious schools of the past were “cults” in the more positive sense of the word.
Regards to all.
125/Still Trying
> My own “wiseacring” speculation on the school is that the
> FOF started out on the right track, founded by mostly
> good people with good intentions, but somewhere along
> the line (fairly early on perhaps) an interval was not
> bridged, the FOF lost its aim and is now descending into
> perhaps the opposite of what it started out to be.
This is the collective myth. It is an attractive belief but it is not evidence based. I investigated the collective myth and found it to be untrue. There was intentional deception and pathological narcissism and unconscionable manipulation going on from the very beginning of the Fellowship of Friends.
132 Still trying
“I don’t agree that confrontation is always necessary or healthy – at least not when the confrontation assumes the form of personal insults and/or crude language. I think that kind of discourse is coming from the wrong place (false personality). It seems to me that insults and diatribes passed off as open, self-expression share much in common with the repressed and censored expression of the FOF .”
We’ve been through this numerous times on this blog. People have voiced their opinions. You can either read back and see where it previously went, or you can just take off. It’s not going to change here, for YOU.
If you want to be intellectually isolated and protected, then stay where you are and leave us to the mode of communication that we’ve evolved into on our own. I personally don’t need, or accept your advice on how to post.
I get the impresion that those bloggers who consistently trash current FoF-members, describing them as conscienceless morons and the like, haven’t actually had a conversation with a real live FoF member for many years. The lack of personal emotional contact can produce a hardened one dimensional image.
I meet current FoFers frequently. They are not morons, nor are they conscience-free. Most of them have questions these days about the path the FoF is taking. Fully grasping the levels of hynotism and deception in the FoF takes time.
And then there are indeed a few who won’t even look at me, let alone talk to me. That’s sad.
But generally speaking the situation is not so black and white as is often implied on the blog.
Still trying (around) 132
While its true that the vast majority of cults may be evil, I would venture to guess that most of the great conscious schools of the past were “cults” in the more positive sense of the word.
************
You are a little out of touch with reality. We are not talking about great conscious schools of the past or the true meaning of the word ‘cult’, or how “life people” might react to the word; we are talking about a sodomy cult where the leader coerces straight men into homosexual acts. Do you see how that is far from a “great conscious school of the past?” You are not trying hard enough to get free from the brainwashing restrictions of the FoF that demand that you not “express negativity” by criticizing the cult or the cult leader. Snap out of it.
134 Charles T
“But generally speaking the situation is not so black and white as is often implied on the blog.”
“who consistently trash current FoF-members, describing them as conscienceless morons and the like”
You know Charles, you’re pulling the exact same shit you did a few posts above. You’re taking specific instances, out of context, and broadly brushing the blog and the posters with a wider sweep than is warranted. Do you think we’re idiots? I’m well aware of the existence of wonderful people who are “in”. I’m also aware that there are people doing “work” whether in or out. Don’t talk to us, or at least me, like we’re children, or I’ll be on your ass every time.
#125 stilltrying
“the forum” – this group – IS something positive… a recent post (laura 20#615) mentions the therapeutic effect of the interaction that occurs here, i concur and agree and will add that therapy often involves a degree of discomfort. in this context that discomfort can manifest as…. many things, personal attacks for instance… i am still working out what this “bloggy thing” is about… for me. i can say presently that it’s partly a self-exploration into questions of culpability, complicity, responsibility, morals, ethics and mental health.
i buried my fof experience many years ago… for a long time i had recurring dreams about the fof, always with similar themes, several years ago the dreams stopped and so the fof became for me as if “a previous lifetime.” i got an invitation to the site this past summer after visiting an ex fof friend… it has ’stirred things up’ and caused me to re-examine my fof experience in a new light. i’ve blogged on some of the circumstances of my leaving the fof and the fact that for me, there was no support for any sort of a sane transition back into “life.” the site can serve as a support network for individuals trying to transition away from the fof as well as for those still “recovering” — or, as in my case, “uncovering” a buried trauma in a new context of support and community. the blog IS a form of “second line of work” as you put it.
as for “man’s possible evolution” what about the other half of the human race and the planet in general? it might sound like i’m being trite or flippant but my point is that all the focus on “my evolution” is another aspect of the ‘i-me-mine’ mentality, it’s selfish. the evolution of “man” — in the broader sense (humanity and planet) — is well served by the patient efforts of those who seek to dissolve an “evil” or a damaging or an unjust situation. truth is a healer.
as for vinnie and the likes… i for one welcome him here, he’s like an enzyme in the culture and that’s a good thing… what happened to fat boy ?
“…the notion of mental illness has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had and that it now functions merely as a· convenient myth. As such, it is a true heir to religious myths in general, and to the belief in witchcraft in particular; the role of all these belief-systems was to act as social tranquilizers, thus encouraging the hope that mastery of certain specific problems may be achieved by means of substitutive (symbolic-magical) operations. The notion of mental illness thus serves mainly to obscure the everyday fact that life for most people is a continuous struggle, not for biological survival, but for a “place in the sun,” “peace of mind,” or some other human value. For man aware of himself and of the world about him, once the needs for preserving the body (and perhaps the race) are more or less satisfied, the problem arises as to what he should do with himself. Sustained adherence to the myth of mental illness allows people to avoid facing this problem, believing that mental health, conceived as the absence of mental illness, automatically insures the making of right and safe choices in one’s conduct of life. But the facts are all the other way. It is the making of good choices in life that others regard, retrospectively, as good mental health! Our adversaries are not demons, witches, fate, or mental illness. We have no enemy whom we can fight, exorcise, or dispel by “cure.” What we do have are problems in living — whether these be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological…” t. szasz
132, Still Trying:
The best way to use the blog is to communicate on your own terms. If some seem overly abusive or obnoxious, ignore them. There will likely be some who respond more or less in the tone you hope for. Keep in mind, though, that the majority here are not pro-fof, so you will get an overwhelming response to your posts, and a lot of that response will smell pretty foul and will be personal, to boot! (If anybody felt the need for attention, this is a good place to park. :) )
Once again: you don’t have to read or respond to anything here. You can very selectively respond only to those you feel like ‘talking’ to. I tend more towards the civil side of the fence, and hope folks like you stick around.
Charles T (around) 134
I meet current FoFers frequently. They are not morons, nor are they conscience-free.
*********
No? They are paying Burton money so that he can fly to Italy and fuck As-if in the ass. Where’s the conscience in that?
“All we can do is to pass the time in the train differently–do something useful or spend it quite uselessly.” –last suggestion, The Fourth Way
136:
“I’ll be on your ass every time”
Taking a page from rb’s book? Hehe.
125 Still trying
Check out the diverse forums on the Greater Fellowship and also “what is the work” on Ning
140 David
Try not to diminish my sentiment :)
Still Trying wrote: “In other words, people (especially “life” people, for lack of a better word) associate the word [cult] automatically with something evil. While its true that the vast majority of cults may be evil, I would venture to guess that most of the great conscious schools of the past were “cults” in the more positive sense of the word.”
………………………………………………………………………….
When you say “life people” and “for lack of a better word”, You’re not serious are you? Good grief, there are dozens of better words. In fact, that one term underscores as much as anything else just how deep the cult mentality goes in the Fellowship.
First step:Let’s find a better word for “life people.”
How about “people who don’t subscribe to our peculiar set of beliefs”? Or simply… “people”.
About the word “evil”, which you also seem very uncomfortable with…. Let’s start trying that word on for size, too.
Earlier in the blog, someone posted some comments that were reportedly written by Miles B. several years ago. He used the expression “evil man” to describe Robert Burton, and he called his own time in the Fellowship “wasted years.”
Wow, on both accounts, I was thinking at the time, “Well, that’s probably a little farther than I’m willing to go.” It’s a much more comfortable idea that I spent my years wisely following a good man who had my best interests at heart. Instead, what Miles was suggesting is that I really fucked up, that I was extremely naive and foolish to join the organization.
Naive. Foolish. Evil. Cult. Robert Burton. Evil. Fellowship of Friends. Pretentious. Vain. Cult.
Second step: Let’s try all of these words on for size, and start stringing them together in the same sentences, and in the same paragraphs.
I find it increasingly ironic that during all of your years in the fof, we were constantly reminded of the so-called illusions and foolishness of “life people” — people who did not spend their time wisely, and who were completely unaware and ignorant of the true nature of their existence. Completely unaware of how they were being manipulated by invisible forces. Completely unaware that they were asleep to cold, harsh realities.
Thanks for all of your posts whether we agree or not.
For the sake of clarity, allow me to repeat that I am not an FOF supporter. I am, however, an adherent of the fourth way ideas as promulgated by Gurdjierff, et. al. (including much of what was focused on in the FOF of the early to mid 80’s). One thing is very clear to me and that is that there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions. Anyone who justifies the expression of negative emotions for any reason whatsoever (including the vile behaviour of Robert B.) has lost his way.
Former Student (#141):
I understand that admittance to the Greater Fellowship is by invitation only. How does one get invited?
Thanks.
“One thing is very clear to me and that is that there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions. Anyone who justifies the expression of negative emotions for any reason whatsoever (including the vile behavior of Robert B.) has lost his way.”
And your proof for such a definitive sweeping statement is?…
I trust you fully verified that this is true for everyone, either “in” or “out, because if you haven’t (and you can’t) than you’re not only a liar and kool-aid drinker, but you’re a fool.
Still Trying:
I don’t know where Janna is re The Blog these days, but if you want to receive an invitation to the Greater Fellowship site, you can send me an email: smheinz at comcast dot com.
I suppose I would appreciate it if you would identify yourself in your email…
i see fat boy is back, welcome.
another “cultural moment” (hey the word cult is a ‘prefix in “culture”)… courtesy of utube and my irish soul… the weekend is almost here.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBLqp-s__o
This wonderful note that broke my heart, apeared on the greater fellowship….from a student at that time early 20….
For you Vinnie, sleep well tonight.
I left the fof 3 years after I returned from rennaisance. It took a while to sort out my strange experiences with robert, wich left me very mutch confused. But then it became clear to me that Robert was, contrary to what he pretends, persuing his own ‘worldly’ personal / sexual goals. An he tried to do that in a way wich was harmfull to me. In the end I even considered staying in the fof for the people at the Amsterdam Centre. But i could not bear the idea of supporting robert any longer. Leaving the fof and all my friends behind was difficult but I’m glad I can say that I never left the 4th way.
This young man I remember, asked robert for his birthday party. (1992)
Robert answered, I do not do birthday parties, but you can come and swim with me……
At that time I thought this was so touching, now, i know so much better….
He left and I stayed….o my God if I had known….
I do not and can not want to reason this pain away as this is what IS, NOW.
Still Trying,
Part of the adherence that you mention to “the fourth way ideas as promulgated by Gurdjierff, et. al.” is having your eyes open to how outside forces affect your inner world. Included in that is how the use of some words — and the avoidance of others — can affect our thinking about the world. We’re asleep to that. It’s how GW gets elected president. It’s how RB once convinced you and me that we should join the fof and remain in it.
I realize that your comments about negative emotions are sincere, and I do agree with you on that to an extent, but to others your opinion about negative emotions is just more of the same dogma that we experienced within the fof.
Think about how perfect it is… If the expression of “negativity” is disallowed or discouraged, what type of opposition can anyone present to the “vile behaviour” that you mention above? Almost none as long as you remain a follower within the group.
There are many, many different spiritual ideas being discussed on this blog, and not all of these ideas subscribe to your theory that we should avoid all negative emotions. And not all of them are Fourth Way ideas. It’s a vast, beautiful rich world with many possibilities. Some of those possibilities may include the ideas that we learned from the Fourth Way. But there’s more. Much more.
My best to you.
Still trying (around) 144
One thing is very clear to me and that is that there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions. Anyone who justifies the expression of negative emotions for any reason whatsoever (including the vile behaviour of Robert B.) has lost his way.
***********
Famous story:
Gurdjieff, Bennett said, had “ruthless methods of getting rid of those he did not want. He seemed to invite and yet to detest a kind of stupid adoration…One lady was particularly foolish about him, and he played a cruel trick on her that showed me how seriously we should take his warning to trust nothing and no one, and especially not himself.” At a formal tea one afternoon, Gurdjieff informed this particularly adoring follower that the best way to enjoy ice cream was with mustard. When she dutifully returned with the mustard pot he shouted “You see what is round idiot. She all the time idiot. Why you here?” The poor woman burst into tears, packed her bags and left.
How’s that for a bit of negativity? You are naïve.
‘ton around #137
dreams and synchronicities. read my post when it shows up.
Bruce (#145):
Whether or not I have made that verification is not important to the discussion.
The non-expression of negative emotions is a fundamental tenet of the Fourth Way teaching no matter which author (Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll, et. al.) you choose to read. If you don’t accept that part of the teaching than you can’t say you are an adherent of the Fourth Way. One can’t “pick and choose” among the fundamental ideas of the Fourth Way system.
It may be that you no longer consider the Fourth Way to be a legitimate path to personal evolution?
Regards.
152 Still trying
You’re a sheep. And you’re in the right pen.
152
“Whether or not I have made that verification is not important to the discussion.”
When you espouse that shit it’s VERY important to the conversation. And who the fuck are you?
Graduates (#150):
That’s a great story but I don’t accept that Gurdjieff was giving vent to negative emotions in this example.
Gurdjieff has been characterized by those who knew him best as someone who consistently acted intentionally, with external consideration, to those around him no matter what kind of objective “idiot” they may have been. I prefer to believe that in this story Gurdjieff was meting out a little “tough love” and was acting with the intent of giving the wayward thinking lady (and perhaps others in attendance) a much needed lesson about the dangers of guru worship.
Some reflections on conscience
In reading posts by some former members there are certain forms of imagination that seem characteristic of the FOF. Some seem to fail to grasp that being in the Fellowship does indicate a lack of conscience and some basic reasoning skills. This is not cured by leaving the group. The idea of the “higher intelligence” of students fails to explain the gullibility of Fellowship members. Whatever intelligence Fellowship members have is distorted and one dimensional. This idea of the “higher intelligence” of Fellowship members has become one of the lies propagated in and by the FOF to make its members feel “better than” and “self satisfied” in the cult. They may not be morons but they also lack a lot in the development of critical thinking skills.
It is necessary to go through a process to undo the damage of being in a cult and to restore or develop both right thinking and right emotional function. The blog now offers one forum as serves as part of this process. There are any number of bloggers who posts illustrate this.
One part of conscience is to see ones own part in situations. This may mean to stop being a victim and make changes but this also includes accepting responsibility for harming others. Every center director and Fellowship officer has a part in the play of crime. Everyone who put on a “good student” or “older student” act and helped delude others has a responsibility for this. This may be a small role or a large one.
The most common buffer is ” I didn’t hurt anyone”. Bullshit, Ignorant bullshit, as obviously anyone who believes such crap failed to learn anything about buffers in however many years they spent in their delusional state. Of course propagating a cult hurts people.
The fact that one is able to come out of it emotionally and financially “intact” is not necessarily a good sign. At least from a spiritual perspective that is from the stand point of inner development.
What if it is those who were the most superficial, the ones who most easily accepted and propagated the lies and distortions,who became part of the organization, the ones who existed comfortably for years and decades without any twinges of conscience that were the least personally effected. In other words those whose false personality found the FOF a comfortable environment.
It is the “true believers” who gave up everything, family, career, jobs, and educational opportunities believing they were following the will of a conscious teacher in a conscious school who find their lives shattered. It is quite possible to reason that the potential damage is in direct proportion to the emotional importance of ones inner “work”.
That one can comfortably leaves the FOF experience behind and “move on” without making amends is not a good sign. It is rather just one more aspect of a lack of conscience and any real inner development.
For those who have not given up on the possibility of development and accepted a life of A influence conscience is a critical factor. Conscience is what would make a person want to make amends and also the understanding that emotional development stops right there at the point where I cannot see my part in the play of the Fellowship. Certainly not all owe amends. It is somewhat of a catch 22
It is probably those who believe they are just fine and never hurt anyone who need to find a way to make amends.
Those with a conscience know what to do.
155 Still trying
You don’t have the slightest inkling as to why and how G. used that particular method with his particular group at that specific time. You have no idea of his thought processes, or how they were influenced by time and place. However, we DO know why RB uses it…to keep you fuckers quiet, asleep and pliant. You’re extrapolating your conclusions by pulling your quasi-verified facts out of your ass, as most blind adherents do. You’re preaching to the wrong choir here. If you were more “awake” you’d see that. But you’re not.
Still trying (around) 155
Graduates (#150):
That’s a great story but I don’t accept that Gurdjieff was giving vent to negative emotions in this example.
**********
You are naive and therefore at present a waste of time. Naiveté is a worse form of false personality than expressing negativity, it is a far more dangerous form of sleep.
A machine trained to appear unperturbed is doubly false. The legitimate work is genuine transformation, never masking or suppression. A man in personality hiding his identification is even more obviously in wrong work than a man in essence indulging his identifications.
“Gurdjieff was meting out a little “tough love” and was acting with the intent of giving the wayward thinking lady… a much needed lesson about the dangers of guru worship.”
Bingo.
But that doesn’t remind you at all of Bruce and Graduates and Uno and many others?
And if you say, “No,” because, hey, Bruce and Graduates and Uno are no Gurdjieff…… that in itself is a form of guru worship, where no form of wisdom can be found outside the realm of the Accepted One.
Gosh, this blog is packed with wisdom, with truth, with the potential to understand what-it-was-that-hit-us when we joined the fof, remained in the fof, and left the fof. There’s healing here, and growth, and there are lessons for those with an open mind. To hear that other people thought the same way as you did all along, that the cult known as the Fellowship of Friends was an insane journey, there’s much power in that no matter what form that it takes. And yet you’re unhappy with it?
I find it interesting that you 1) Come on here to criticize the FOF (much like Vinnie), and 2) try to discredit the blog (much like Vinnie). Probably just me, but it seems odd.
159
“I find it interesting that you 1) Come on here to criticize the FOF (much like Vinnie), and 2) try to discredit the blog (much like Vinnie). Probably just me, but it seems odd.”
Much like the “assholes” who have been here from the beginning, ya think?
Bruce wrote: “Much like the “assholes” who have been here from the beginning, ya think?”
Yep… It seems like they’re using a different approach, but the goal is always the same: “This blog is so negative. These people have lost the way. Everyone should ignore them. Move along. Nothing to see here.”
I think one thing they’re discovering (“they” being the people responsible for PR efforts to counteract the blog and to “cleanse” the fof wikipedia article) is that the Howard Carter types — who completely deny any wrongdoing or weirdness about the Fellowship — simply don’t work. If the denial is too strong, then they lose all credibility. So the current approach is to say, “Yes, the fof is bad, but the blog is bad too. Don’t read it.”
David (#138):
Thanks for your civil reply and the good advice on how to use this blog.
still trying:
the “non expression of negative emotion” as implemented in the fof is a very basic and effect means of mind / emotion and body control. transformation of the “brainwashing” takes time. speaking for myself, “mind control” is what got me interested in the 4th way… i thought of the 4th way i read about before joining the fof as a type of “western raja yoga.”
then i found a book mark…
“may the road rise with you…”
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=jPj-8_wOZcA
158 Graduates
Interesting point. Are you saying that naivete is conditioned? (an aspect of personality) If so, would you say that it is unconscious,- a sort of intentional ignorance? Or maybe a conditioning (personality/ego formation function) that was for some reason left out. Perhaps it was left out also for one or both of the parents, or even culturally and therefor passed on to the personality. I’m not sure I agree with you that all naivete is conditioned, but do think that intentional ignorance is pernicious. It is just so hard to deal with – since we do it as an ego preservation strategy. And sometimes we do it just out of habit. I guess that is where the School Of Blog comes in. Good to get kicked out of our habits.
posting this seperately attempting to avoid the spam filter…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=SpGPdYeDuYg
Still Trying:
Did you miss my offer to invite you to the GR site, #146? Or does the need to identify yourself create a problem? I find it odd that you would ask about it, then ignore the offer.
one more from the other side of the brain…
science, religion…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=38QK7pe_dOQ
Whhops – its smheinz at comcast dot net
not dot com
sorry
Here’s a short excerpt from a longer post by A Former Student (about 156): “One part of conscience is to see ones own part in situations. This may mean to stop being a victim and make changes but this also includes accepting responsibility for harming others. Every center director and Fellowship officer has a part in the play of crime. Everyone who put on a “good student” or “older student” act and helped delude others has a responsibility for this. This may be a small role or a large one.”
I mentioned earlier the movie, “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” which follows the rise and fall of Enron Corporation.
Speaking of drinking the Kool-Aid.
This 2005 movie (which is based upon the book of the same title) indirectly conveys numerous similarities to the Fellowship of Friends and other cults — both in the way the leadership justified its actions and controlled any embarrassing information from “getting out”, but also in the way the company’s employees followed like sheep without asking any questions. One might be inclined to think that most Enron employees had no responsibility for the widespread suffering caused by this corporation, but it’s very clear that numerous employees looked the other way as the ship was sinking.
I was one of those employees at one time — only it was a different “CEO,” and a different “company,” and a different form of suffering caused by the “company.”
2
KA (around) 164
158 Graduates
Interesting point. Are you saying that naivete is conditioned? (an aspect of personality) If so, would you say that it is unconscious,- a sort of intentional ignorance? Or maybe a conditioning (personality/ego formation function) that was for some reason left out. Perhaps it was left out also for one or both of the parents, or even culturally and therefor passed on to the personality. I’m not sure I agree with you that all naivete is conditioned, but do think that intentional ignorance is pernicious. It is just so hard to deal with – since we do it as an ego preservation strategy. And sometimes we do it just out of habit. I guess that is where the School Of Blog comes in. Good to get kicked out of our habits.
*****************
Where it comes from is academic, what it does seems a predictable fact.
Notes from about ten years ago:
The chief feature of naiveté *believes*. Taking the world only at face value is certainly a way to miss many hidden psychological and even little known metaphysical aspects of our possible reality, but naiveté sees possibilities where they do not exist. An element of the chief feature of naiveté is imagination, believing and even pretending that things exist that in fact do not exist. Those with the chief feature of naiveté seem enveloped in an innocent, almost simple-minded aura. The feature has a willingness to accept almost anything without judgment or discrimination. Those with this feature are underdeveloped in their negative halves of centers, those suspicious nerve fibers that direct our attention to possible elements of danger are anemic in those with naiveté. They lack the skepticism that the rest of us rely on too heavily. Most people possess for the better or worse a native, if not pessimism, then at least a running sense of doubtfulness about the possibility of all kinds of minor miracles that might be possible to relieve the hardheaded dog-eat-dog conditions of life. Naiveté not only believes in these miracles, but almost lives for the sake of these impossibilities. The feature of naiveté shrinks in the face of the usual no-nonsense attitude that governs modern existence, particularly when it comes to money, naiveté is a definite disability. Because of this lack of critical guardedness, naiveté has an almost childlike receptivity to suggestions. Like non-existence it is highly suggestible. This chief feature seems to lack what we call common sense. The feature does not see from a practical point of view what is possible and what is not possible. It is possible to sell naiveté the Brooklyn bridge, so goes the old cliché. Naiveté has difficulty connecting experience with practice, those with this feature seldom learn from their bad experiences and mistakes.
Naiveté has little sense of when it may be in harm’s way, yet it will be terrified of fanciful, imaginary menaces. The feature is easily manipulated into crime while being repelled by those who have well advised, although harsh advice. Naiveté does not know who to trust and can fall pray to the worst influences. It is easily manipulated and conned. Naiveté typically falls prey to those who sell “spiritualism.” All kinds of ‘phenomena’ from new age “channeling” to evangelic “faith healing” are commonly used by criminals to steal money from the gullible, from those with the chief feature of naiveté. Naiveté cannot understand that we really do not have any “psychic friends” waiting for us on the telephone. Those with this chief feature will rush in where the wise fear to tread. What seems too good to be true to the rest of us will seem just perfect to those who are naïve. Naiveté simply has little logical sense of reality, those with this chief feature need to train their logical half, their “left brain,” to be more active in the decision making. Oddly enough, naiveté needs to be at times more narrow minded. It is necessary to have a generally ‘positive attitude’ because a habitually negative attitude will certainly drive away many opportunities in one’s life, but the chief feature of naiveté is mechanically positive about situations that really have only a superficial veneer of optimism. Behind the smile-faced front of what naiveté is excited about is usually a human wolf hungrily feeding off innocent lambs. Most notably the many wrong and often criminal groups and schools claiming to be organizations of psychological development use those with the chief feature of naiveté to often perpetrate horrendous crimes. There is something about the seeming strength of a man crystallized in the condition of no conscience that particularly attracts naiveté, the feature mistakes the density of such characters. It believes those enormous lies that the rest of us simply laugh at.
To resist the sleep of naiveté is difficult, how can an under developed child stop being childish? How can someone unable to assimilate experience into wisdom become “worldly?” There has to be experienced unpleasant episodes that awaken the weak, slumbering nerve endings that until now refuse to function. The developed connection between the upper reaches of the instinctive center and the upper reaches of the emotional center can always correctly see, hear and smell a lie or an ulterior motive issuing from a scoundrel. The development of this upper level connection of human functions usually involves a process of experiencing real suffering, quite often in the lives of the naive there arises times of suffering when it becomes obvious that one was used and manipulated. If the automatic buffers that support naiveté can be avoided, if one can look at what happened without excuses or the usual fairy tale moralizing, then perhaps it would be possible to eventually wise-up.
Secondary Feature, Naiveté: Two characteristics of naiveté in the context of human relations are gullibility and immaturity. When naiveté is the supporting feature to the chief feature of vanity much of the social cunning and intuitive guile are removed from the personality. Rather than the continuous need to prove its worth and superiority to others, with the influence of naiveté the personality somehow assumes that others naturally sense the presence of an inherently important being. The inflated assumptions of vanity become a certainty under the influence of naiveté, a certainty that naiveté imagines is recognized and understood by the surrounding populace. Naiveté imagines that others somehow perceive the radiated light of quality that this unique entity illuminates the environment with and subsequently everyone is positively disposed toward it. Naiveté projects an optimistic, affirmative stupor over the feature of vanity, a condition of mind that creates a vulnerable blind spot when it comes to the predatory negativity that covertly operates the affairs of men. Vanity imagines that its inflated estimation of its importance in the world is an indisputable fact, with naiveté this minor insanity is then complicated when a further mistake is made in assuming that everyone will naturally agree with the self-estimation of someone so potentially important. The trouble is that somehow these two features together have almost unlimited patience when it comes to dismissing those who dismiss them. Regardless how meticulously, how accurately, how completely it is explained and pointed out that the individual with the two features is just a waitress in a coffee shop and not yet a waitress in a coffee shop who has been discovered by a famous Hollywood producer and therefore is just days away from fame and fortune, the features will resiliently ignore the “expression of negativity” from such an unimaginative critic. In the mind of vanity supported by naiveté not only do all endeavors naturally rise to complete fruition, but even the slightest daydream can and will become a brilliant reality. Naysayers are simply dismissed as people who have ruined, evil minds. These two features insist on a world of unlimited potential, a world where all the forces that would dissuade and inhibit are simply imagined by darkened people who for some unknown reason don’t want all goodness to triumph. In the mind of these features it is almost as if one had only to wish a desire and soon it will come to pass. Because of this unrealistic positive outlook, it seems nothing even so much as annoys these features. The features seem to go through life happy, enchanted and thrilled by all the successful creativity presented to the world simply for the sake of entertainment. If and when something unpleasant intrudes unavoidably, un-ignorable, into these feature’s lives, all that is evident of the misfortune is a few days of darkened emotional bruising around the eyes, and a slight relaxing of the perpetual smile. Naturally people with this combination of features are never taken seriously by those with real wealth and power, except to use them for sex and various exploitative schemes, but the stubborn positive programming of the two features never learns from these unfortunate episodes. Somehow the features always turn events around, rearrange them in the mind so that somehow the exploited party was the one who gained the most. Never does this combination of features, vanity and naiveté, come to the realistic conclusion that they are nowhere near as significant as they imagine themselves to be.
Tertiary Feature, Naiveté: As a supporting feature to vanity the passive feature of naiveté will add a gullible influence. Vanity prides itself on its worldliness, no one puts one over on vanity. Vanity is shrewd, vigilant, sophisticated and on guard. Vanity familiarizes itself with all the tricks, all the scams, all the schemes and in general anything that creates a situation where it could be taken advantage of, no one gets anything for free from vanity. If it is suggested to naiveté that all that is required to achieve ‘higher consciousness’, ‘immortality’ and direct communion with saints is to completely submit to the greatest and only real guru currently alive on the planet, if this is presented within a social collective with serious enough pretensions, naiveté will probably become a willing, eager and enthusiastic slave. After the sexual, emotional and monetary exploitation is over and the feature is dumped in a ditch on the side of the road, it will get up, dust itself off and declare in an innocent optimistic fashion, “I sure learned from that!” But the truth is that it didn’t learn, it will be cautious of that one person, those particular circumstances, but add some creative variation and it is possible to pull the same swindle on the same feature again, and again. As the third feature to vanity, naiveté lowers vanity’s defensive postures, the hardened emotional indifference that vanity carefully cultivates under the gaze of strangers is rendered transparent and ineffective by naiveté. Suddenly the internal protective calculations of vanity become an open book to read and become manipulated by scoundrels.
Reply to KA (around) 164:
http://fofgraduates.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/graduates-of-the-fellowship-of-friends/
bottom of the page.
re: # 163
i meant to write “transformation of brainwashing into understanding takes time…” leaving it at “transformation” makes it sound too mysterious… what type of “hydrogen” is it? etc… but we can understand “understanding” is a process.
Graduates wrote: “A machine trained to appear unperturbed is doubly false. The legitimate work is genuine transformation, never masking or suppression. A man in personality hiding his identification is even more obviously in wrong work than a man in essence indulging his identifications.”
Some people have pointed back to the (supposed) good-old-days of the Fellowship when people were (supposedly) doing real work and Robert Burton was (supposedly) doing real teaching. Yes, things are definitely sliding these days. But what Graduates describes here is something that’s been endemic in the Fellowship since Day 1… the Pretense of Being Awake.
What we’ve been trained in the Fellowship is largely about how to appear wise and strong to others.
IMO, this is really a key point… We join the FOF, and then we learn the behaviors that make us appear to be awake for others. But somewhere along the way, our spiritual existence (however you might define it) must go beyond this need for approval and praise by others — whether we practice the Fourth Way, or don’t practice the Fourth Way.
We walk into Apollo D’Oro for dinner… The commotion is all around us. Robert Burton walks in with his entourage and sits down. The crowd admires and adores. You, meanwhile… You sit quietly with your friends laughing or sharing a bottle of wine, or not sharing one. Or you’re sitting there in the corner all by yourself… unimpressive to all. Just you — beyond the words, beyond the show, and quite often, completely invisible.
Dear Charles,
The tone of the blog is surely difficult and would almost impossible with present students most particularly because any still student and not so far gone is still trying to keep the king of hearts ideal that has become part of the organic indoctrination and anything outside that tone is rejected without it being considered. I think it is precisely that status quo what allowed Robert to get away with his far from human behavior and not have anyone question him. Present students are in a similar situation. They do not wish anything to disrupt their style of life that has become addictive. It is understandable because it takes a long time to adjust to living without that many buffers. That is all they are. That behavior and a hundred percent of the Fellowship alchemy is nothing but a buffer to bear with the underlying lifestyle Robert is leading. It is not about people being morons, it is about people being indoctrinated.
Hello Vinnie,
The attitude that you are expressing is so revealing of a certain aspect of the Fellowship. It is what Americans would call a healthy man, a sly man. It is not surprising that Abigail would be attracted to you. With all respect to both of you, let me observe that it also reveals the deep indoctrination of the Fellowship that believes any man has a right to do whatever he wants with his life and he is the sole responsible for it. It is so individualistic that it cannot conceive of individuals being influenced by their surroundings and in that it is apallingly limited in what it encompassses. That attitude is what made me initially respect Robert’s private life as something I was not entitled to question. The private, the personal, has become engrained in the western world in a realm in which the individual thinks he is totally disconnected from the rest.
Human beings have never been as lonely as today. It is not surprising that we have developed into such individuals because the communities we grew up in life tended to be communities that did not embrace its individuals any more than the fellowship did. The Fellowship is a poor replica of mankind today. The saddest one. The greatest aims with the poorest practice. I sincerely do not think that Robert, Girard or even you Vinnie, consciously chose what happened to us. The more I live, the more it seems that we humans are like currents of forces spreading out and manifesting in the only possible way we managed to express them. It is not the consciousness of Robert’s malignity what is being questioned, it is the unconsciousness of Robert’s practice what has proved unacceptable.
The voice you’re speaking with has that flavor of an individual who simply says, I am free to choose, so is he. But neither you nor he is that free. The Fellowship is under human laws and not under your particular laws. Robert’s excesses will be checked and everyone who condones them together with him. You are under his shadow, you chose that.
Vinnie, just a few questions for you since you seem so eager to stand up for your self and the Fellowship. Congratulations, please don’t let us down, show us what to look back to with joy. You say:
“understanding more what consciousness and mechanicality are;”
Do you think they are independent expressions of each other? Please share what your understanding of those are.
“understanding and experiencing love”,
What love did you experience? With your partner? Still good? With your friends? Will you loose them if you were to leave? With your teacher? I don’t believe you. With your self?
“and opening the emotional part that is so closed off in fear in most people;”
Are you open and unafraid to speak in public to Robert?
If he even allowed it? Why don’t you answer some of the questions that have been asked to you if you’re not that afraid?
“appreciation of painting, classical music, art, literature;”
Do you think “life” people don’t or do you realize we are able to appreciate them because “life” people have protected them?
using small aims and intentionality to be more present and aware;
To what are you more present and aware? I am sincerely asking you, I would love to know what you became more present and aware to.
These are very easy sentences to say but can you fill them with meaning?
learning to value beauty and focus on it ahead of other impressions to feed the essence;
Beauty in the clothes, the flowers, the decorations or beauty in the way Robert treated you, respected you, appreciated you as a human being? Or do you not expect that from a man number eight? Is he too high for you to question why he treats you like shit? Or if he ever treated you with anything but indifference please share the good news with me. Did he ask how your children were once in seventeen years so that you thought he cared about you?
learning to value things related to the spirit ahead of bodily needs;
Do you think Robert’s or Girard’s sexual behavior is ahead of the spirit?
Is yours similar to theirs that you feel comfortable with it?
good and intelligent acquaintances in so many countries, enabling interesting travel all over the world;
Interesting travel? Do you just use students all over the world or do you actually care for people?
speaking and being myself in front of groups of people.
Since when have there not been open meetings in which people talk anything but the indoctrinated keys or quotations from other more conscious beings?
You’ve answered most people but you’ve not answered me yet and I doubt you’ll answer this ones. Take the easy one’s and let your tramp take care of the rest?
There are so many students like you in the Fellowship but those like you will not hold it in place. You’ll go looking for the show and become depressed when the show is nothing but a bunch of old students crystallized in holding the icing together but without the money or the glitter left. Then your tramp will tell you it’s time to move on and you’ll keep looking for the easy way, not the fourth way.
You certainly were one of those who filled up the space and affirmed that you liked it fine, just as it was even if it crystallized from the beginning or as you say, never changed.
It’s like going out into the woods on December 26th and seeing Santa Claus deer hunting… WTF!?
:.{
“The lack of open discussion and the close-mindedness to outside ideas is one of the main characteristics of any cult, and the fof is no exception.”
I’ve forgotten which post this came from but it is so true. I tried to speak with a current member recently and her position was that there is nothing wrong with the Fellowship. She believes the problem is just negative former members trying to bring the school down and that God has punished them by taking away understanding. She thinks the blog is just negativity and sarcasm. As I tried to ask some questions and encourage discussion she became very defensive and said that she did not want to talk and that she was choosing to observe the exercise not to discuss things with former members.
I did mention kindly (not sarcastically) that it sppears to former members that it is current members who have lost understanding. I wished her well and just suggested that she at least try and keep an open mind. She seemed very closed and somewhat brittle.
We have all seen this so many times and even in ourselves in the past. All we can do is to keep trying to share and communicate. Those who are ready may eventually hear and even begin to help others to see.
“Successive rudeness leans on a wilderness panorama”
from Knob Off by William Bloke
It is very poor trade to sacrifice honesty for the mere appearance of decency.
Gods send us shocks such as shortage of money and loss of students.
Love Rolex
When Hercules fell asleep, his wife overtaken by jealousy towards her
sister, wanted to castrate him. But then she suddenly remembered that she
just got pregnant from Hercules and therefore can get his inheritance. So
she calmed down, and only cut off his hair.
125 Still Trying
… the FOF started out on the right track, founded by mostly good people with good intentions, but somewhere along the line (fairly early on perhaps) an interval was not bridged, the FOF lost its aim and is now descending into perhaps the opposite of what it started out to be. In light of this view, I can’t dismiss the FOF as having been utterly wicked from the beginning …
84 Charles T
…Burton … attracted wonderful, sincere people who created a school that really worked in the Fourth Way sense, at least for a while.
101 Charles T
… but for many years the FoF was a reasonably functional Fourth Way School – much could be learned.
Ohmigod. It’s a kind of zombie myth—no matter how many times you stab it in the heart, the f_cker just keeps coming back at you.
Read the blog, everything is there. Bob meets someone crazy enough to actually listen to him (“my first student”). He promptly f_ucks her and then asks for a lot of money. She lends him credibility and the game is on.
More suckers are quickly roped in. Remember people, the victims (“students”) are not the same as Bob—they are sincere, aspirational, longing for a commitment. Bob is none of those things, it’s so easy to give them what they want! He’s already learned how to do it from the wacko Horns.
We bought it. Hey, our bad. But it was nothing but corrupt from day one.
If you still think the Fellowship of Frauds is special, unique, that Bob is “different”, please go sit quietly in a corner with a pen and paper and make a list of all the people you can think of who combine “evil” and “charismatic”. Your list will not be short, if you’ve been paying attention. What’s so special?
There was never a “school”. The FoF never had anything to do with “The Fourth Way.” Bob never had any understanding of any depth of “The Fourth Way.” It was just a tool, people. You think he knows or cares about “6 processes” or “organ kundabuffer”? Are you kidding?
The FoF has nothing to do with spirituality, religion, self-realization, or even understanding yourself and your motivations in the simplest possible way. It is about one thing and one thing only: the self-aggrandizement of Bob.
Instead of cult, call it a highly controlled, high intensity, closed group. What we got that seemed magical was a result of that very artificial (and not very healty) environment and our interaction with the other inmates. That emotional space was made possible by our agreement to “bend over and grab our ankles.” We all got f_cked by this guy, most of us only once.
Our payoff was to be eternal dependents (please see “Girard Haven”), infantalized and emasculated, incapable of approaching life as any semblance of an adult, responsible, aware human being.
“When the shit gets too deep, you’ve just gotta grab a shovel.”—old Jewish saying
156 A former student
It is necessary to go through a process to undo the damage of being in a cult and to restore or develop both right thinking and right emotional function.
Amen.
Thanks for reading
JoelF
155 Still Trying
“I am, however, an adherent of the fourth way ideas as promulgated by Gurdjierff, et. al. (including much of what was focused on in the FOF of the early to mid 80’s). One thing is very clear to me and that is that there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions. Anyone who justifies the expression of negative emotions for any reason whatsoever (including the vile behaviour of Robert B.) has lost his way.”
The non-expression of negative emotions is one of the fourth way ideas that did not get the sort of deep and subtle treatment in the FoF that it needs to be a good tool. There are some real truths buried in this seemingly simple idea – but if you just take it at its surface value you miss the point.
The way I understand it, the non-expression of negative emotions is in no way a moral imperative. Nor is it true that avoiding all negative expression is either necessary or even useful. In fact simply putting a lid on the negative feelings we have in the wrong way is one of the things that will build a neurosis. So I think that when you say “there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions”, you are simply mistaken. It is true, however, that in the fourth way as ‘taught’ in the FoF, “there is no room whatsoever in the fourth way teaching for the expression of negative emotions”.
This is much too big a subject to go into in detail right here – but I will just say that the shallow and unsatisfactory handling of ideas like this was one of the many things that caused me to leave the FoF more than 20 years ago.
My idea of a conscious school was that it would be a place where someone with a far more subtle understanding than my own could provide guidance by showing very clearly how ideas were being misunderstood, so as to create a proper understanding. Of course, what I saw happening instead was the creation of mass sleep through misunderstandings and very poorly applied techniques.
How can it be, I thought, that a conscious teacher could introduce an exercise and leave it in place long after it had become a simple moral imperative that people used to catch others ‘being bad’? Of course, it took me a while to believe my own mind about this, since there was an awful lot of social support for this stuff, and I was just a slightly confused kid in my 20s. But the more directly I looked, the less of value I saw coming from Robert. I don’t mean this in a pejorative way – but he simply does not have a first rate mind.
It is true that the Fellowship was full of very high-quality people – people that in many cases I still feel honored to consider my friends, but in the end that is not enough reason to stay. There are many more high-quality people outside the Fellowship than there are within, and you can and will find them if you want to.
Best to you, Still Trying.
R.
179 Skeptical Optimist.
Thanks for laying it all out so clearly. No one wants to admit they’ve been thoroughly duped.
Regarding Skeptical Optimist’s comments above… the following letter that was addressed to Robert Burton way back in 1982:
http://ia350605.us.archive.org/3/items/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_523/January1982LetterToRobert.pdf
(link provided by our friend Vernonicapoe.)
Apart from the fact that it documents RB’s shenanigans going back at least 25 years, what quickly grabs your attention is how tentative the wording was. It presented a criticism, but the tone went back and forth between trying not to offend and trying to express their serious concerns.
And yet at the time, I’m sure they felt like they were going way out on a limb, and risking expulsion as well as an uncertain fate in the real world, where people — we were told — would routinely descend into illusion and sleep upon leaving the fof, and would later fly to the moon upon their deaths. But even with that tremendous fear, they somehow worked up the courage to speak — maybe not to all of us, but at least they spoke up to RB. Must’ve been quite a set of negative events that precipitated their decision.
We’ve been in denial. But what’s most important to me… Not you, not anyone else… It’s me…
I have been in denial.
Whom does the grail serve?
http://www.menweb.org/woundedmasc.htm
178 Rolex
When Hercules fell asleep, his wife overtaken by jealousy towards her sister, wanted to castrate him. But then she suddenly remembered that she just got pregnant from Hercules and therefore can get his inheritance. So she calmed down, and only cut off his hair.
—————————————————————————–
Could you please explain what this story has to do with anything here. I seem to be missing something. Oh, and by the way, I believe the strong man who got the haircut was Samson, not Hercules.
Bruce: “Vinnie, you are a self-satisfied, narcissistic little creep. The FOF was made just for YOU.”
Wrong on all 5 counts. Sounds like a grumpy old man’s ‘projections’.
Still Trying, you’re right, ignoring some people is best, and Bruce qualifies admirably, having nothing interesting or useful to say. Where’s his Ig button?
Any moron can be destructive and negative, but it sounds a great idea to try to use this forum in a positive and useful way, like the Foflist was, to intelligently discuss the subject that brought us all together in the first place.
One thing I realised today as I toured an exotic European city, wondering what motivates me to bother writing here, was that I’m partly writing on behalf of your own selves.
A lot of you spent decades and thousands of $ in the FOF, and at the time you must surely have appreciated the value to some extent. Don’t just write off those years as ‘wasted’, that’s ridiculous, you’ll never get them back. Whatever happens I won’t do that. A death or failed marriage is not a failure, it’s a learning curve. Accept that you used your own discrimination – a vital ingredient on the spiritual path – as best you could, and gained from the time. All time can be viewed as useful and well-spent, and the past is now written in stone so you may as well view it positively.
I have had a wonderful life in the fof, travelling the world and being intimate in a very special way with numerous sincere and good people including many of you, while learning the true meaning of practical spirituality, which is not sitting on a mountain top meditating until I get light glowing out of my head as I might have imagined when I read Siddartha as a kid, it’s simply being present as deeply and completely as possible, and making aims for that.
Instead of this life I could have been a regular Joe with 2.3 kids stuck in a boring life in the suburbs. Granted the leader is not the model of saintliness or intelligence, but maybe it can only work the way it has.. as someone once told me it would not work at all if he was hetero because a jealous boyfriend would do him in.
Maybe you can learn that you have a tendency to be gullible if you believed things then, and don’t believe them now. That’s useful, helps to not trust the thoughts and feelings too much in general.
It’s easy to feel hurt and hard done by, but better to accept the past as useful lessons, and look forward to a better future built on that foundation. Just overcoming and transcending the current hurt must be a great work for some.
People I know in the fof are very sincere and earnest, and Robert and Girard are thrown into their unfortunate roles without malice or forethought.
I’ve used my discrimination all the time in the fof, haven’t swallowed or repeated one word of bullshit, or put on any false fronts, have bared my soul and sometimes adhered to exercises I deem useful for awakening and ignored the rest, and I’ve gained immeasurably in my humble view. Maybe I’m just lucky, or maybe my conscience makes me lucky. If someone of the wrong gender put the hard word on me for a BJ, my conscience would prevail with swift precision. But I was even squeamish kissing my grandmother.
Joel, long ago I bought your Body Types book. I suppose I should throw away that load of crap from your FOF days?
Are you still writing short shelf-life stuff or is it really real now, but from the other side of your imaginary fence?
“Never trust an Arab” ~ old Jewish expression.
“Never trust a Jew” ~ old Arabic expression.
Charles T (#101) wrote
REVENGE?
The topic of attempting to close down the FoF appears here fairly frequently. Why would we want this to happen?
….Perhaps we could take responsibilty for our own sadness and anger, and move on.
Hi Charles T,
Yes, I want to close down the Fellowship, and am not ashamed to have my motives ascribed to revenge.
This desire may well change, but for now it is honest and honesty has value. A fucking fantastic concept: honesty!
Revenge does not need to be unlawful.
Repeat: revenge does not need to be unlawful.
This blog is revenge for years of lies, intimidation and extortion (i.e. the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority). In our sixties-derived morality perhaps sexual perogative and the act of sex generally lost a great deal of value. What’s your own take on sex? Consider this: it may be fucking difficult for some unluckier, less enlightened creatures than oneself to fully appreciate the joy and beauty of sex once they’ve been raped.
Wikipedia says about the history of revenge:
“Interestingly, psychologists have found that the thwarted psychological expectation of revenge may lead to issues of victimhood.”
Isn’t this precisely how one might best “take responsibilty for our own sadness and anger, and move on”…?
Let me go on record: I am for revenge. Lawfully. Powerfully. Emphatically. Finally. If this means I may not be invited to somebody’s tea down the road, I am fully prepared to live with this fate. Why in the world would anyone not in handcuffs want to go to OH/Dobbins anyway?
During the civil rights movement Dr. King’s words and actions seemed distasteful to most Americans. Do you want to look back on your life twenty years from now and realize you were the equivalent of a mild mannered southern bigotry-enabler while others showed conviction? Is this the true meaning of Advaita? Seriously, I don’t think so.
Let me repeat:
Yes, I want to close down the Fellowship, and am not ashamed to have my motives ascribed to revenge.
Love to you and yours, (as you well know),
Joseph G
jog1954@gmail.com
Hi Vinnie the Fish.
Enjoy your side of the Atlantic, with its teensy tiny little teaching payments (for now). Obviously you’re getting your money’s worth. Oh, and keep writing. Then we can all see how long your shelf life is.
“Never trust a twit.” ~ old Knitter’s expression.
Vinnie the Fish
“Vinnie” is a member of the London center presently traveling in Europe, if you know who he is then let us know.
I have had a wonderful life in the fof, travelling the world and being intimate in a very special way with numerous sincere and good people including many of you, while learning the true meaning of practical spirituality…
*********
Inner circle facts Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Are you ready for some brutal facts?
Who would like to know how its really happening in his bad room? OK folks,fasten your sit belts,the Kansas going Bye Bye…
Did you know that usual orgies are formed from 4 to 6 student?.Usually two of them are SIMULTANEOUSLY entering Burton’s anus.Third person is laying on his back while Mr.Burton is providing him an oral sex while two from both sides are subject to the masturbation by MR.Burton with his two hands.
Some time there is one more student who’s role is to hold Burton’s testicles in his mouth during the whole time.Prior to all, by Burton’s request Viagra pills are shared and swallowed between all members of the orgy which are constantly provided by Mr.G.
Some time you can hear Burton’s words during the sexual activities “How incredible! We are getting closer,aren’t we?”
Some of them are asked to suck his nipples and his toes.All sperm gets swallowed by Mr.Burton at the end of the act.But that is not all yet.
There are two students who had the most terrifying and most humiliating role to play (in my opinion).They have to enter with their hands by their elbows into the Burton’s anus.(Looking for Consciousness perhaps)..both students are Russians.One of them had left the school and the other has been “shipped” back to Russia for disobedience.
And now get this:
Beside those depraved scenes there is another one which going to shake you all:
There is another act that Burton is preforming with a specific student of his own “inner circle”.This act of Humiliation is performed in his bath room while Burton is laying down and 3 students are urinating right on him!
And on the next morning,like nothing happened Mr.Burton is leading the meeting on Love?
[This is a repost due to image hosting expire.]
Grand Bizarre Incident Detector
[Or, was it just Influence C?]
Is Asaf in prison yet?
Is REB in prison yet?
How can one not deceive oneself?
In the second state one is deceiving oneself, because one is not present.
What I notice is that as the shock is
persisting, and as the time is advancing, we have to keep reaffirming
not-resenting. …I remember that now
it is our turn to undergo friction.
Other students each have their own turn,
and at times it is the teacher’s turn.
Influence C have artificially applied them [shocks] into their and our roles to transform. One always has to take Influence C on their own terms, and that is how they will get us to Paradise. We are very lucky Influence C take the time to help us escape; who are we that they would take the time to help us? And why we of all others? One area you all have to watch is the group of ‘I’s that is concerned about myself in such situations. Remember that I will be doing my work.
The machine judges by external achievements.
Robert Burton
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 9:28 AM
Subject: From Asaf: Our San Francisco Experience
Dear Friends,
Asaf’s computer has been stolen upon their arrival to London and with it his address book.
He asked me to send this email, regarding their experience in San Francisco Airport, to you all.
Please note that there is a picture attached:
http://hidebehind.com/img/6E/6E8335.jpg
[Prior image hosting link expired. Link is to image where image is of Asaf and REB in upper class cabin on airplane.]
With Love,
Yoad
yoadr….r@yahoo.com
‘These people are walking carelessly towards their gate. They do not suspect there is a challenge even to this moment–to be present to it.’
We were making our way from the security check-point to the gate, and in this hall Robert called our attention to the dozens of passengers carelessly hurrying to their flights. We were a group of six travelers altogether; Robert, Carlos, Dorian, Mihai, Dmitry S and myself. Robert now being a senior citizen, he and I advanced to the head of the cue and pre-boarded. Our seats were almost at the back of the aircraft. The plane was scheduled to take off at 16:30, that is, in half and hour, and after working on some notes the fatigue caught up with us and we decided to rest for a while. I woke up suddenly, hearing my name being announced in the loudspeaker alongside the rest of our traveling group. We were asked to advance to the entrance of the aircraft. Dorian went first to check what the misunderstanding might be, and upon seeing that he did not return, as well as having heard our names called again, we all advanced to the front. There, we were greeted by the head stewardess, and politely asked to disembark the aircraft. We were lead to the same hallway through which we passed while boarding, but the atmosphere now swiftly changed, as we soon noticed that we were surrounded by police officers. After having been left in this peculiar position for a minute or so, the stewardess approached us and explained, ‘Our crew has discussed your group, and together we all agreed that we are unwilling to include you in our flight. Your behavior has been suspicious from the beginning, and we cannot risk flying you. We now turn you over to the police, and they will take charge of your case from this point onwards.’ ‘Miss, I understand your concern’ began Robert after stepping forward, ‘but there must be some misunderstanding. We take this flight four times a year, often using your airline. We are a religious organization based here in California, and in fact we have tickets for the Bolshoi ballet this evening in the Covent Gardens Theater.’ This last comment on Robert’s part seemed to surprise the stewardess, although to my perception she was already fixed in her decision, and events having developed to such an extreme point, it was clear that it would take a considerable effort of explanation on our part in order to clear this abrupt suspicion that had developed around us. The stewardess dismissed herself and we were now left by ourselves, surrounded by a dozen or so police officers. After five minutes had elapsed in this state of uncertainty, Robert turned towards us and said, ‘If Influence C took the time to give us this shock, we must take the time to transform it. At this point, the key is not to resent this shock.’ We gradually learned the causes of suspicion against us. First, Dorian had intentionally checked into the flight early and asked for six adjacent seats. Second, we were, indeed, a diverse group of varying nationalities and ages. Third (and this is where the hand of Influence C became more and more apparent) we unexpectedly met another student, Stepan K., who was on the same flight, although destined to continue from London to Athens. He approached us while we were on board, and this aroused the suspicion on behalf of the crew members even more. Additionally (and again, the hand of Influence C could be sensed) the upper luggage bins above our seat were broken, damaged by us (claimed the crew) while loading them with suspicious items. Finally, another two suspicious Middle-eastern looking men were detected on the plane, which naturally added to the crews paranoia. We would also learn (later) that this particular day happened to be one of a heightened terrorism alert, the flight crews nationwide having been specifically asked not to leave any stone unturned.
After perhaps fifteen minutes still standing in the hallway, we noticed that the crew was now leading all the rest of the passengers off board. Quietly we stood there, as the passengers walked by us one by one, each inquisitively looking at us and probably asking himself what exactly it was that we might have been plotting against him.
Within about half an [h]our into this play, we were lead to a nearby large room and were seated individually (each about ten meters apart from the other). We were asked to wait patiently until the inspectors would arrive. Fortunately I was allowed to stay seated next to Robert; perhaps his being a senior aroused some kind of understanding on their part. However, I had left my notes on the plane, and did not have what to share with him as far as knowledge goes. We recalled where we had left off before all this began. Robert had posed the interesting question ‘How can one not deceive oneself?’ ‘In the second state one is deceiving oneself,’ continued Robert, answering his own earlier question ‘because one is not present. The best thing is to be present, and if that is not occurring, the second best thing is to have intellectual parts promoting presence; the most undesirable position is to be in the jacks and the queens. In the queens one does not have any option. The queens are full of doubt, not suspecting that they are the problem.’ I recalled a thought of Albert Einstein which had always been practical for me (although Einstein obviously would have been referring to something else). ‘Regarding rising from the queens to the kings’ I said ‘Einstein said that the solution is never on the same level as the problem.’ ‘Yes that is very good,’ responded Robert ‘I have heard it before, but now I understand it better. The solution is also not to be found in words, the problem is in words.’
Thus we spent three and a half hours seated in an abandoned room in the San Francisco airport, during which we were briefly investigated by the FBI, although mostly left to ourselves.
At a certain moment we recalled a story of Gurdjieff being arrested by the French police. Foreign pupils of Gurdjieff’s, especially Americans, coming over to see him after World War II would bring him gifts of money, sometimes a thousand dollars or more. By law, however, these should have been exchanged at once for francs. But Gurdjieff liked to keep the foreign bank notes. Thus, one day he was warned that the police intended to raid his flat, and he was implored to make sure that he had nothing suspicious. He replied, ‘They can never find anything in my apartment.’ The same day the police came, looked under his mattress, and found a variety of foreign currency notes. He was taken to the police station and locked up with petty criminals.
When brought before the magistrate, Gurdjieff skillfully played the part of a poor old man who understood nothing about foreign money, and could scarcely speak French. He was, on this account, eventually discharged.
‘This is also part of having outside help–these kinds of things too’ Robert explained. ‘What I notice is that as the shock is persisting, and as the time is advancing, we have to keep reaffirming not-resenting. It is the queens that are resenting. Also, in these kind of situations I remember that now it is our turn to undergo friction. Other students each have their own turn, and at times it is the teacher’s turn. As a school, we are getting farther and farther away from the queens, and this is another opportunity to practice this. Becoming old is by no means a hedge against receiving friction, neither was I expecting it to be so.’ One of the chief police officers entered the room at 22:30 and announced that they had finished their investigation and we had proved innocent. They had searched through our luggage (both carry-on as well as check-in) and had also visited our website. The site aroused respect on their part, and the FBI officer apologized for the inconvenience caused.
‘I also read your site’ said one of the minor officers. ‘This incident will only increase your faith in your faith’ he said, in a fairly proud tone of voice.
‘Strange play’ remarked Robert on our way to a nearby hotel. ‘This shock was all planned even before we arrived at the airport. I marvel the Absolute scripted it for us. Compared to what he has seen, it is very little. We all stayed away from our machine’s imaginary picture of what should have happened. It is good we recently read of Gurdjieff’s arrest. He would have been in his eighties when that occurred–and I trust his shock was more difficult to handle than this one. It helped me work with this situation.’ ‘We are very lucky that it was an artificial shock rather than some kind of brutal handling which past schools have indeed experienced. During the shock I had the ‘I’ that C. Frew (who is also receiving artificially applied friction from Influence C, although in his case it is terminal) would have been grateful to undergo this if it were all that was asked of him. These are all artificial shocks–Girard’s stroke, Peter Bishop’s untimely death, and even Genevieve from one angle–Influence C have artificially applied them into their and our roles to transform. One always has to take Influence C on their own terms, and that is how they will get us to Paradise. We are very lucky Influence C take the time to help us escape; who are we that they would take the time to help us? And why we of all others?’ ‘One area you all have to watch is the group of ‘I’s that is concerned about myself in such situations. Remember that I will be doing my work. The seven of hearts can work through these concern ‘I’s.’ We received complementary rooms in a nearby hotel and spent the night there. Since our flight was not to leave until 16:30, we decided to have lunch in San Francisco the following day. As we arrived in Union Square, Robert remarked, ‘The machine considers yesterday as time lost. But it was not time lost because there was a lot of presence and third state to it all. The machine judges by external achievements.’ Soon, we were back in the airport undergoing exactly the same check-in procedure as in the previous day. After passing the security area, and as we were advancing towards our gate once again, I recalled Robert’s comment of how no one was suspecting there was a challenge to that moment, and pondered how curious it was that as Robert made that remark the previous day, none of us suspected that we were about to encounter a challenge that would last until 22:30! Dorian insisted that Robert and I be upgraded to upper class. Schools always make a profit, and thus our story ends happily with Robert and myself enjoying a pleasant dinner sitting across from each other. We toasted to bearing the slings and arrows of our outrageous good-fortune.
Scene we’d like to see: Asaf and REB in matching orange prison jumpsuits at upper class digs, Federal Penal Institution, Folsom, California, USA.
Santa hunting deer?
More like a pack of carnivorous reindeer munching on Santa’s rotting corpse.
“..and I’ve gained immeasurably in my humble view.”
You surely have you moronic flounder.
O Vinnie,
Congatulations with your wonderful life.
No you could not do a boring life in the suburbs and dealing with 2.3 children……BEING PRESENT IS: WHAT IS.
When you meet a women do you talk 80% of the time?
Good luck I am done with you. And feel sorry for you. So self absorbed and uncompassionate.
Have a happy life and call me when you are closser to the end of your life and let me know if you still have no regrets.
You would be one of a very few.
The ones who went THROUGH their regrets are really beautiful to watch.
And about Nisagradatta….boy you must have been reading another book then me. Obvious we are from a different planet as you think Tony Parson is UNINSPIRING.
So, got it out…can let you go. FREEDOM, FREEDOM FREEEDOM. YEAH.
Thanks Joel and Vena and Joseph.
Real emotions expressed, touching my heart.
Maybe the way Vinnie and Charles are responding is very mind/ English words?
At this time in my live that does not do it for me.
Partially when I hear somebody going of in many words and their actions are incogruent I take another road.
After so many years of the fellowship of friends talk and see what the actions were and yes “Vinnie” that does not sit well with me.
It still hurts that I did not see it earlier and that it has caused so much pain and disruption to many people.
No I can not easily move and travel and go ….I am stuck in OH for the time being. And guess what :
I love what is and make the best of my situation.
Stuck in the suburbs in OH with 2.3 children and a mortgage….ha, ha ,ha.
Vinnie
Yes I can feel others people pain and joy. You VINNIE seem to be only interested in YOUR experiences and WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS for your own interest.
Not my kind of friends I am looking for. The fellowship has soo many of those already. Look how good I am and I have a special role and I can travel and I have gold alchemy, I am so busy.and on and on and on.
Bruce keep writing, this is second line of work at its best, well besssssssst!
You are sharp, Bruce and what a perception abilities, here on the blog.
“Yes how long is your shelf life”, Vinnie
You can not see that you hurt people huh,
You are probably one of those guys when meeting women talks 80% of the time and really feel goooood about himself.
Probably issues too with commitments, huh.
God, Vinnie this is great for you, the blog, saving money on your shrink!
Good morning to you
O Vinnie one more thing,
This is getting better as I go along. What a fun.
And if you do not understand all this wonderful photopraphs, do not worry, remember:
Understanding comes a year later. So do not hesitate to read the above free information, over and over again.
Lets evaluate Sept 21 2008
Love the one your with.
Vinnie (I love myself soooo much) the fish,
You have now taken 1st place as the greasiest, creepiest MF in the FOF that has infected the blog. It fortunate for you that your self-love is enormous enough to replace the distaste that those around you must feel in your presence.
Traveling all over beautiful Europe? No one deserves taking it up the ass more than you buddy.
179 Skeptical Optimist.
Yes, it’s now clear that Burton was corrupt from day one. I wasn’t saying anything different from that. But the people who joined were not corrupt (mostly) and in the early years, particularly in the centres, where Burton was less in evidence, environments were created where Fourth Way work was possible. This was partly because noone had a clue what RB was really like. Of course this is not possible these days now that the truth is out in the open.
Maybe you didn’t have any understanding about the Fourth Way, Joel, but there were many students who did. I don’t include Burton in that category.
For you Vinnie
185 Joseph G.
Thanks for the reply. I totally understand and respect where you’re coming from. I have those feelings too. Part of me would take great pleasure in seeing the FoF shut down. I guess I don’t have a unified position on this and am still trying to see where the truth lies for me emotionally. Post 101 was a tentative attempt to lay out a stance that hasn’t been taken much on the blog, partly to see what reactions it evoked, to see if it would hold water.
We really should get together and talk this through.
love to you and family,
Charles
Charles T. wrote: “But the people who joined were not corrupt (mostly) and in the early years, particularly in the centres, where Burton was less in evidence, environments were created where Fourth Way work was possible… Maybe you didn’t have any understanding about the Fourth Way, Joel, but there were many students who did.”
Charles T. and others,
Please take a closer look at this if you haven’t read it already. Note the similarities. This is just one example of another cult where thinking of former and current followers is very similar to ours. I include myself in this group think. We believe we’re different. The followers in Aum Shinrikyo also believe they are different.
………………………………………..
The following excerpt is from the book by Haruki Murakami titled: “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”
This is apparent when they are asked in court to clarify details of Aum doctrine and they quite often say something like, “Well, this may be difficult for ordinary people to comprehend, but…” They still believe that they are at a higher spiritual level than “ordinary people” and have a sense of being specially chosen… “If only he [Shoko Asahara] hadn’t gone over the edge we would have been able to pursue our religious goals peacefully and correctly, without bothering anyone.” In other words, “The results were bad, and we regret them. However, the basic aims of Aum Shinrikyo are not flawed, and we don’t feel there’s any need to reject them outright.”
This unwavering conviction in the “correctness of aims” is something I found not only in the Aum followers I interviewed, but even among those who have left and are now openly critical of the Aum organization. To all of them, I posed the same question, that is, whether they regretted having joined Aum. Almost everyone answered: “No, I have no regrets. I don’t think those years were wasted.” Why is that? The answer is simple — because in Aum they found a purity of purpose they could not find in ordinary society. Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.
………………………………………..
“I have had a wonderful life in the fof, traveling the world…
Instead of this life I could have been a regular Joe with 2.3 kids stuck in a boring life in the suburbs….”
I am a regular Joe with 2.3 kids stuck in a boring life in the suburbs. I have always wondered – where the students get so much money to travel and to attend all the events. Forget teaching payments – it is a small amount in comparison to all else. Just as Journey Forth by Day ended (how much was a passport this year? plus the airline tickets) we invited to Italy! $1200 for the tickets( plus 110 euros between the cities) 4 cities with 2 events a day each between 150 to 1200 euros. I believe after that we can plan trip to Egypt or Mexico… Where are the money come from, folks!?
#179 Skeptimal Optimist:
Thanks Joel for the plain truth – for the cold water in the face. It does take most of us a long time to finally see this. Initially we prefer to think, and even really believe, that it was a real school that just got deviated but as time goes on and illusions fall away it becomes clear that Robert Burton was never conscious and that the FOF never was a school and had little to do with the real Fourth Way. I think this understanding comes slowly because it would just be too painful and overwhelming to grasp all at once.
It was one big, pathetic sham and we were pathetic for buying it for so long. It took me many years to get it.
Vinnie (183) ~
You wrote ~
“If someone of the wrong gender put the hard word on me for a BJ, my conscience would prevail with swift precision.”
_________________________________________________
Vinnie, there’s nothing wrong with being a parent of Howard Carter’s, so please, look it straight in the face, rather than taking it out on us here on the Blog; nor is a BJ that big of a deal, people have been asking for Blue Jellybeans from one another for a long, long time.
:.{
Dear All,
On a roll…
Enjoying this process
Fully, here on the blog.
Yes I have regrets
And I am proud to have them
To admit them
Had I know how Burton started the do of this octave
I would not have joined
His thrist for his desires.
Yes I learned a lot of the fourth way
Yes I learned a lot of nice people
Yes I gave up my self will
…This still hurts
Did things which did not feel right
ouchy, ouchy
Much poorer, much more deliusioned
Knowing that what I needed to learned could be done in a few years. took me many more years.
Yes I have regrets and I am happy to share this
Feeeels good.
Loving what is and making the best out of every situation.
thanks, Innernaut
I’m having a think, now.
I may be some time…
197 Bistro.
Just to be clear, I certainly don’t think I’m “at a higher spiritual level than ordinary people” nor do I have a sense of being “specially chosen”, honest. Nor is it true that “the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.”
Life is much better in every way since I left the FoF.
199 Vena: “Initially we prefer to think, and even really believe, that it was a real school that just got deviated but as time goes on and illusions fall away it becomes clear that Robert Burton was never conscious and that the FOF never was a school and had little to do with the real Fourth Way.”
I guess you’re probably referring to me here. I agree that Burton was never conscious and that the FoF was never a school. But my experience was that real Fourth Way work did occur in my early years in the FoF and was supported by the students around me. There’s really nothing so mysterious about the Fourth Way, is there? You make efforts to remember yourself/divide attention/be present. Most of us had quite a bit of success with that. We understood the difference between second and third states and actually achieved the third state fairly frequently. Was that in same way unreal, in your opinion?
respectfully, Charles
204
“We understood the difference between second and third states and actually achieved the third state fairly frequently.”
Do you pull this shit out of the air? Oh, sorry, you mean when we stood near RB and replaced our manhood (or womanhood) with that airy fairy essence act and subjugated our conscience to his smarmy, sleazy, salacious agenda. Oh yeah, I remember. Are you sure you’re not mistaking 3rd state for glazed-over, sycophantic and vain imagination? Are you REALLY REALLY sure.
And please, in the future, try not to use “we”, because, well, you don’t no shit beyond your own experience, and you’re coming off like a real self-involved putz.
Hi Uno, I am reposting (I hope this is the one you meant). At the end I added a later post which seems to have disappeared in moderation.
I am just now realizing how much this “bloggy thing” is really affecting me. Allow me to project my personal experience for a moment, as I am convinced I am not alone in this process. As some of you have mentioned, what we have here is very interesting, very new. When trying to explain what I’m going through to my life partner, I say it’s like intensive group therapy, although I’ve never done intensive group therapy, so I really wouldn’t know. Maybe we could call it blog-therapy.
Whatever its name, it does affect my moods, my thoughts, my daily schedule. It finally occurred that I’m slowly opening up to a new realm of interactions and introspections and photographs, a whole world of second line opportunities and very human inner catastrophies. And this changes and challenges my thought process in a way that could have never happened in solitude.
For the past twelve years, most of my work has been solo. I’ve gone around, seen people, done stuff, but even with my closest friends I haven’t been able to share most of my deepest existential ecstasies and dilemmas. Solitude can be a way of life in the midst of humanity. Mind you, I love humanity very much, it’s just that sometimes I feel like I’m still desperately looking for “my tribe”, the people that can give me a great piece of advice when I need it, people that have been through some heavy psychological stuff and have somehow come down to something real, people who feel ill at ease with both naive idealism and worldly cynicism. Wounded but alive.
So here we meet again. The womb this time is a web: no smiling faces, no pretty dresses, no classical background. Every image fading, what remains of our friendship? Buddhists and atheists, fourth way die-harders and wannabe poets, beauties and ogres, how are we affecting each other? Every day it’s a surprise, often something completely unexpected. Do I know so little of myself? Is this the effect I have on people when I really try to communicate? I mean, they actually dig me? And why do they get so pissed sometimes? Whow, I didn’t know that, now that’s amazing! And on and on…
A very amazing feature is that it’s being recorded, so we can look at old snapshots of our collective states and thoughts, and maybe in two years time or less we will be shocked to look at the person we once were. It’s my dream come true! How many times, during arguments with my man, I had wished for a tape recorder, something to help my memory build a clearer picture of how we got stuck into that same old conversation again, the same old BS. How did we ever end up there again? And my life has changed for sure everytime I have been able to see the mechanism clearly, the glitch, waves of fear and rejection flooding the body, the stomach tightening, the locked jaw, the old wound reopening. Learning from the emotions, gaining from the pain, feeding from joy.
Now I can hit replay any time I want, and get instant reaction. Do I want love? read this! Do I want laughs? read this! Do I want pain? read this! It all evokes an aliveness of feeling and thought that’s very refreshing and at times emotionally addictive. We push each other buttons in a desperate effort to cut through the mask, to get to the core of each other. Stripping to the bare bones, testing our ability to feel, to integrate. It’s a process, and it is not and should not become a form. Its beauty for me lies in its unpredictable, organic unraveling, in the fact that I go to bed with the idea for a post in my mind and the morning after it is already obsolete. This medium moves with the exciting rhythm of the present.
Things are going quite fast, I feel. Sometimes we say some pretty silly things, we get lost, we freak out. Other times I amazed at the beauty of things people write. We are influencing each other, for better or for worse, and for the majority of us there is no going back to arrested development. It’s time to move on (or keep moving on), challenge our minds, open up some more, engage in understanding, go for broke, collapse and recover. It’s free, and it’s healthy.
When I read the stuff I wrote a week ago I am puzzled to see that such interesting thoughts had never crossed my mind before, never so clearly, never so completely. I was blind. I did not realize the extent of the damage, the width of my foolishness, the depth of my mechanical goodness. I could have never seen these things without you, you are showing me my past and carrying me into the future. Gratitude for you, for myself to have made it here, for us all to be ready for something new.
We have been working indeed, at times just to stay alive, and here we are, outies and innies, bags of bones with beautiful and horrifying stories to tell. But we are calling for flesh, and flesh we are given, and soon we’ll be swimming in the limitless sea. With some bread and some blood, and a crown of desire, and a net full of fish._Love to you all
Laura
You blogpeople are eloquent! Thanks thanks thanks
Vinnie, I think that you and all the other lurking little souls out there are some lucky bastards. I was stuck with my own incomplete understanding for years, growing so slowly and lonely out of my shell-shocked unawareness. The other night I told a friend the recurring FoF dream I had for years. I was on the property, incognito, afraid of someone spotting me, someone who knew I was behind with my payments, who would tell me I didn’t belong there. One night the dream was slightly different, because this time it was ok, no more fear of being sent away. I woke up feeling extraordinarily good. That was my last fellowship dream.
It’s all a process, me, you, everyone, we are all in it, living the stages. What is being transmitted here is a seed, a lasting impression, and like everything in the universe it brings results in time. One of the buddhists concepts that has most transformed my worldly view is that there is no such thing as a stream of consciousness that is just my own; the only existing “thing” is the one single current in which what we call “my mind” is immersed, and that can be defined as “the sum of all mental activity at work without any cognizable beginning”. It is a powerful idea, and it takes a while to sink in, at least I am still digesting it mighty slowly.
The realizations that Another Name and others are so movingly striving to express, lovingly fertilizing your as of now thick skull, are due to bear fruit one day, and that will just be the beginning of an incredible process. But something is already happening, you are at present immersed in these tiny specks of light, particles of truth, emanating from our hearts and through these screens, incredibly pure, flying across the ether, aiming at you, reaching your senses, sinking into your body. Mind is slow, but something in you remembers. One day you’ll reap, and then it will be time for you to sow. And you’ll be able to see the subtle irony of this, paying for a fake teaching and receiving a real one absolutely free.
Love is all around
Exotic Vinnie,
I have a book for you. Each page will fit in between Sequences and it will be at your level. It will be light enough for you to carry it while you trip all over happy land. It is called “Deep Thoughts” by Jack Handey and it is special. Here’s an excerpt:
“Instead of having “answers” on a math test, they should just call them “impressions” and if you got a different “impression,”so what, can’t we all be brothers?”
Joel and others,
Remember the Kurt Vonnegut notion about –what was it?– ‘karass’ ? Not sure of the word. It was a recognition of one’s people, one’s clan. Clan is like family – deeply and invisibly connected, but often argumentative and annoying. (Like families at Holidays when a political subject is raised!)
We are involved with the calling forth of a spiritual criminal. We deal with RB and fof individually, and now collectively. Are we responsible, in the sense of blame? who knows. Are we responsible in how we react and handle our awakening to spiritual crime and degeneration? For the most part, up till now, we have dealt with this individually. But not thru anything planned and intended, we have found a collective voice.
Vinnie Part 2~
You wrote ~
(64)
“I used to think Sai Baba and Muktananda might be good alternatives, but they say they are or were rapacious sexual predators too. And Gurdjieff was probably pretty rampant.. I wonder if there are any who are not that way inclined?
Maybe it’s a requirement for a spiritual teacher.”
(184)
“But I was even squeamish kissing my grandmother.”
(117)
“How is it after you leave? When you toast, do you avoid eye contact?”
_____________________________________________
Vinnie,
Clinically speaking, some would have the person re-visit this Grandmother kissing-trauma; hey, if you can’t trust the whereabouts and intent of your grandmother’s lips than who can you trust, certainly not your own (?) So, therefore, the irreconcilable subconscious pressure is ’self calmed’ by an idealistic projection-ism towards Robert Burton as the Grandmother Goddess one never had, no mention or thought to where his lips have been, that would be too risky for one’s personal mythology…
____________
And about the toast thing. Yes, I do avoid eye contact when toasting, particularly if the toaster is prone to pop up unexpectedly just as I am peeking in to see how brown the sides have gotten.
____________
l.t.y.a.
203 Charles T
197 Bistro.
Just to be clear, I certainly don’t think I’m “at a higher spiritual level than ordinary people” nor do I have a sense of being “specially chosen”, honest. Nor is it true that “the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can easily replace it.”
Life is much better in every way since I left the FoF.
…………………………………………………………….
Hi Charles,
I’m glad about that, and thanks, I feel the same. And I’m glad you’re here conributing to the discussion.
Bistro
p.s. Has anyone read the account of Barbara Bruno Lancaster in the book “Cults & Consequences”? The section is titled, “Barbara Bruno Lancaster, Former Cult Member”. Unless someone beats me to it, I’ll post a link and/or post some excerpts within the next few days. I actually can’t recall where I found it, although I’m guessing Veronicapoe posted it as a pdf file on the Internet Archives site.
If we could somehow get a copy to every fof’er. ah yes, if, if, if…
Vinnie,
In re-reading your posts, including you grandmother thing, I can’t help but think how close you are to a sociopathic personality- self-referential, no conscience, no humanity. Then it became clear why you are so comfortable where you are. Like attracts like. Now, all you have to overcome is that teeny, tiny, insignificant narcissism and you can start your own school. Your logo can be that Dore engraving of Ruggiero gnawing on the head of whats-his-name in the Inferno. Or maybe Goya’s Saturn consuming his children. It would soften your image.
Ah Vinnie, you really do us a favor posting here, you are a perfect sample of Fellowship dogma. You’re indirectly trying to answer my questions but ever so superficially I’ll pose another few.
“Bruce: “Vinnie, you are a self-satisfied, narcissistic little creep. The FOF was made just for YOU.”
Wrong on all 5 counts. Sounds like a grumpy old man’s ‘projections’.
“Old man’s projections” Fellowship programming
But I was even squeamish kissing my grandmother.” Life programming
“Still Trying, you’re right, ignoring some people is best, and Bruce qualifies admirably, having nothing interesting or useful to say. Where’s his Ig button?”
“Ig button” Life programming Fellowship adaptation to undermine others
“Any moron can be destructive and negative, but it sounds a great idea to try to use this forum in a positive and useful way, like the Foflist was, to intelligently discuss the subject that brought us all together in the first place.”
You’re avoiding the issues posted on this blog.
“One thing I realised today as I toured an exotic European city, wondering what motivates me to bother writing here, was that I’m partly writing on behalf of your own selves.”
You’re trying to save the side of you that has stuck in the Fellowship without doing any serious work, adapted to the form and lived a shallow life. It is wonderful you are here because it is actually the other side of you what is pushing you to serve yourself as meat for fish and consider another possibility. You’re not nearly as crystallized or convinced as you want to pretend. Your tramp is intelligent enough to throw baits and see what we do with them.
“A lot of you spent decades and thousands of $ in the FOF, and at the time you must surely have appreciated the value to some extent. Don’t just write off those years as ‘wasted’, that’s ridiculous, you’ll never get them back. Whatever happens I won’t do that. A death or failed marriage is not a failure, it’s a learning curve. Accept that you used your own discrimination – a vital ingredient on the spiritual path – as best you could, and gained from the time. All time can be viewed as useful and well-spent, and the past is now written in stone so you may as well view it positively.”
This is what you’re trying to save for yourself. There is a half truth in what you’re saying and yes, don’t worry, like in a marriage we grew immensely. It was all worth it like marriages are, so don’t be afraid of investing the last opportunity you have in growing with a woman and children in a suburb, and not just roam the world for impressions without giving your inner life a chance.
“I have had a wonderful life in the fof, travelling the world and being intimate in a very special way with numerous sincere and good people including many of you, while learning the true meaning of practical spirituality, which is not sitting on a mountain top meditating until I get light glowing out of my head as I might have imagined when I read Siddartha as a kid, it’s simply being present as deeply and completely as possible, and making aims for that.”
it’s simply being present as deeply and completely as possible, and making aims for that.
My dear Vinnie, there are no other aims in presence. Aiming is a continued state of unrest. Presence is a state of appreciation in which gratitude is constantly fulfilled. Human lives matter in as much as they can process these hydrogens from their life experiences. It is good for you to travel and continually appreciate the wonder of human creations, they are our heritage, but don’t miss out on your intimate life. If you think a woman and three kids are too heavy to carry, do you just jump from brothel to brothel for a little more fun?
“Instead of this life I could have been a regular Joe with 2.3 kids stuck in a boring life in the suburbs. Granted the leader is not the model of saintliness or intelligence, but maybe it can only work the way it has.. as someone once told me it would not work at all if he was hetero because a jealous boyfriend would do him in’
Is it because of your jealousy that you’re afraid of committing to a woman? You’re afraid she’ll leave with someone else?
“Maybe you can learn that you have a tendency to be gullible if you believed things then, and don’t believe them now. That’s useful, helps to not trust the thoughts and feelings too much in general.
It’s easy to feel hurt and hard done by, but better to accept the past as useful lessons, and look forward to a better future built on that foundation. Just overcoming and transcending the current hurt must be a great work for some.”
Couldn’t agree more with you, and when you’ve transformed all the hurts, you might be ready for an intimate rich life.
“People I know in the fof are very sincere and earnest, and Robert and Girard are thrown into their unfortunate roles without malice or forethought.”
True, they are kept in their unfortunate roles by people like you who really could give a damm what it is that is happening to them as long as you can keep your imaginary world together, paying them endlessly to sacrifice their integrity so that your own corruption looks decent.
“I’ve used my discrimination all the time in the fof, haven’t swallowed or repeated one word of bullshit,”
really?
or put on any false fronts,
really?
have bared my soul and sometimes
When? Which?
adhered to exercises I deem useful for awakening and ignored the rest, and I’ve gained immeasurably in my humble view.
humble?
Maybe I’m just lucky, or maybe my conscience makes me lucky.
Lucky: “We are not better than life, just luckier” Robert Burton.
Yes, Vinnie, you swallowed the teaching word by word and have become the luckiest man on the planet. You and influence C working with you so that you can go around the world appreciating the beauty without having any commitments to others but feeling good about paying 15% of the tip and 10% of your income to keep your imaginary picture intact. No, you don’t spend your money in the quickly descending starving children of Angola on a direct flight to the moon, that is for the decadent mother Teresa’s of the world, because you belong to a conscious elite that spends its money on museums and Egyptian pyramids on a disinfected bus that will not bring them close to the third world egyptians = organic life on planet Earth feeding the moon.
If someone of the wrong gender put the hard word on me for a BJ, my conscience would prevail with swift precision.
So what do you do for sex, love? Do you find masturbation enough?
But I was even squeamish kissing my grandmother.
Indeed, your family already had the ingredients with you, they did not touch each other or help you feel their hands around you, you could not come close to your old grandmother, too much feminine dominance for you to bear with even today? Nothing human enough like a grandmother’s warm, old and wrinckled hands around your shiny boys face. It makes you squeam to think of that? A perfect product of our times in which old people and children are unwanted because they don’t produce anything but work on those beautiful men like you that are happy to go about life living a conscious life without commitments. A perfect Fellowship student.
You remind me of Robert who asked Gl—-oria Cambridge to never go to dining events with him again because she ate one too many cookies in one of the teas we were attending. She was told that she was too instinctive. And Lucas and the rest of us were unable to stand up for a student who has been in the Fellowship for over thirty? years and has the greatest soul, conviction and love for Robert and the Fellowship. We just sat there and allowed for old people looking a little old to be extinguished out of Robert’s impressions because he cannot take anything but his imaginary conscious world in which only barbies model in and out. I puke for having ever allowed it.
You remind me of so many in the Fellowship who called Dorothy a “shell” to be disposed off and didn’t give her a bath in a year because the uncle hadn’t had one in two. When she came to live in my house, her very long nails had not been cut for years and were black in dirt and after a year of not having a bath and wearing the same coat her hair smelled as if it was going to fall off. She screamed like mad when I gave her the first bath and then didn’t stop thanking me for half an hour after she got out into warm towels under the sun.
Thank you for sharing Vinnie, hang in there love, we are all just perfectly damaged but we’ll get out of this one, and hold our immense shame with humility.
My familiarity will surely annoy you, who am I to touch your hand? But start getting used to it love, you’ll never taste anything better than human contact.
DEAR LAURA,
Thanks for your beautiful letter. Stroke a cord with me.
What an opportunity to share.
Thanks.
Dear Charles T
Yes we learned the difference between state number 1, 2, an 3. For you it took 25 years and for me a little less. Great.
We paid for something that is FREE, easily accesible, FREE.
In the meantime we all supported a LIE, from early on, Read Marlan Dasman book…it was all there this was between 1974-1979 as I recall. He was playing a trick om us to benefit himself as he still does.
Come on show your emotions,
I want to see you upset, angry
Empowered, live
Take your space in the world
You are worth it.
Come on show your emotions.
And especially for you and all the others here:… is Cecile Dion
I’ve tried my best for so long
To break down these walls
But you build them strong
So I stand here waiting, wondering why
Oh why
Why you don’t give a little bit
Break down and give a little bit
Show, show some emotion
Open, open your heart, ooh
Set free an ocean
Only a feeling can save us now
You say you’ve been hurt
Well you’re not alone
As you race through this life what you
Keep to yourself
Can turn you to stone
All it would take is one kind word
To be heard
Come on and give a little bit
Try to forgive a little bit
Show some emotion
Open, open your heart
Set free an ocean
Only a feeling can save us now
[Solo]
Show some emotion
Open, open your heart
Set free an ocean
Only a feeling can save us now
Show some emotion
Open, open your heart
Set free an ocean
Only a feeling can save us now
Bruce 205
I’m sorry, I think you are way off on this one. There was a time in England when we were more or less on our own: RB was not “teaching” and very few had any contact with him in the centers. My memories are that we did, in fact, help and support each other and that we did experience higher states. For me, once the stupid distraction of the 1984 time had passed, this was a golden time in the school. You were not there, you have no means to measure your disdain for it.
Your own experience in the FoF was all around RB, the great thief of efforts and corrupter of innocence. We didn’t all “stand near RB and replaced our manhood (or womanhood) with that airy fairy essence act and subjugated our conscience to his smarmy, sleazy, salacious agenda.” Those who did not experience RB, who did not know about his corruption, and who made sincere efforts should not have to have those experiences and attainments denigrated. And while I have to say that I had trouble from the beginning believing in RB’s consciousness, even as a center director in Germany (when we did have dinners with him a couple of times per year) he was quite good at hiding his essential rottenness of soul, at least from the naive.
The personal issue that I still have is when we realized what RB is, how long did it take to get out? Charles was ahead of me there, but still, I do think we both took about 10 years too long. Still, I think Charles’ main point re revenge is valid. And at the same time, Joseph’s answer is also valid. I go back and forth between the two several times a day. Mostly, though, I beat myself for being so damn stupid.
I think I would weigh in on the side of feeling that I really did get something from the fof. I spent most of my time in ‘far off’ centers, and was lucky to have fun, sincere, wacky, irreverent shipmates. I learned a lot about the ideas espoused by G&O, most of it, as I now think back, was the result of individual effort and work by me and my friends, referencing the workbooks. Robert’s influence was not direct, and anything we heard was dim rumour and didn’t impact much our lives. I don’t feel those times are anything I need to apologize for or defend — they are what they are.
I had dinner recently with an old friend from those times. We see things very differently now — she says it all works for her, in spite of the ‘problems’ (which she says she is not blind to). Well, I think one really can’t do anything but keep an open heart and do what seems right.
144 Bistro Fundraiser
Earlier in the blog, someone posted some comments that were reportedly written by Miles B. several years ago. He used the expression “evil man” to describe Robert Burton, and he called his own time in the Fellowship “wasted years.”
——————
Does anyone remember which page of the blog this appeared on?
This is exactly it. We have these wonderful times and call them golden years and refer to our collective inner world as “higher states” that “we” had.
But how do you actually know that “we” had “higher states”?
This highlights one of the more common attitudes that all of us were indoctrinated with within the Fellowship — that 1) we could know someone else’s psychological state simply by being in their presence and 2) that the higher states that we’re supposedly having are rarely experienced by anyone else on the earth.
I’ve never quite thought of the FOF has having Golden Years. What we experienced was a beautiful country club atmosphere with wonderful music and culture (at times) and friends (at times), but was/is that so unusual? The mass of people on this earth may not have read the books of G. and O. and/or practiced the ideas of the Fourth Way, but the world is filled with substantial and genuine spiritual knowledge — and understanding and being. What many “others” understand about their spiritual existence on this earth has nothing to do with the Fourth Way concepts that we supposedly learned, and nothing to do with the collective worldview that everyone learns in the fof. When we spend a good portion of our lives being sure that WE are the chosen ones, doing something that’s “one up” on everyone else in the world, it’s not surprising that it’s very hard for us realize this.
When I read what Joel and Bruce wrote above, I’m thinking, “YES!”
Their words are unpleasant, and full of daggers. They both are opening up a HUGE WINDOW to let a gust of wind into the Town Hall (or whatever it is they call it these days). Sharon, Uno, Whale Rider, Innernaut, and a several others on this blog are letting the air into the building.
But the truth is unpleasant, and often full of daggers. All of you are speaking a truth that is very hard to hear — for me included — because I believed so much that we had found something very special.
Graduates (112) ~
Oh, about that coo coo clock spelling; according to my top left corner Google bar, it can be spelled both ways… thanks for the close eye though, it’s not every day that I get to look that one up and I guess that’s sorta lucky in a way, then again…
_____________
BTW, ‘Another Name’, you wrote ~ “Stroke a cord with me.”
I think you may have meant ’struck’, then again…
________________________________________
:.)
215 sharon
Point taken, except for Charles’ royal “we”. I personally don’t accept anyone else’s generalizations based on their own personal limited experiences. And, of course, states were created, though “frequently”, for me, diminishes the actual experience with non-relativity. Higher states include a myriad spectrum of scale.
As for revenge, I’ve never personally wanted that. My play has been exactly what it’s supposed to be, and I’m happy with it. At the same time, the other shit is still shit.
I cannot say whether Robert was corrupt from the beginning. It does seem in retrospect that he always had some “closet issues” to deal with and that he did (intentionally or not) deceive and mislead himself and us. Perhaps you are right Joel. Perhaps you are right Vena that we were duped all along and that we tend to buffer this painful realization.
But right or wrong, here is my current take on it. Robert tried to teach us about presence by creating environments that were conducive to it. I am convinced he also tried to be an example of presence when he was teaching us. Perhaps he was not conscious and on the inside a very odd and sick machine. Perhaps he was motivated by corruption. Perhaps he had some destructive identifications and wrong attitudes, but I believe there was also a sincere seeker inside.
There was in the Fellowship, the hypnotic effect of group energies but this for me was more a connection with emotional and sex energies – it was not really a higher state. Very pleasant in itself, and certainly worthwhile from some points of view, but somewhat distant from the state where we know our infinitesimal relationship to all, and the raw energy of finding ourselves alive – immersed in a cosmos teaming with life energies.
Despite the many angles from Robert and others, we were largely left on our own to try to work out what presence was and how to get there. The angles gave us ideas but we had to experiment on our own to see what worked for us. The struggle to find presence was a personal journey. Perhaps this is why we each have our own individual relationship to what it means or meant to be a student in the Fellowship.
Yes there were exercises but for me they didn’t really take me to the states that I knew existed prior to joining. They did help to refine me a bit I suppose and they did serve as reminders. Unfortunately these reminders also served to fortify a “worker” personality: (an identification with being something special).
I believe the exercises and eventually the sequence caused us to focus too much on state, too much on doing, and that for many of us it developed into a morality and an identification that distorted the state of presence. It made presence a duty and not a love.
My journey to find real presence continues in its own meandering way. I am finding that it is tricky. The journey has to be private (in or out) and there comes a point when teaching or being taught is a distraction.
It is difficult to truthfully formulate work but here are some questions that I am considering. I would appreciate any related ideas or comments.
How to let go of learned and false concepts of what I should be, while balancing that with sincere motives to try to be a better human. How to look out and see the world as it truly is without all of the filters of fear and worldview interpretations. How to be present without the work personality conditioning the effort. How to learn to love, and let my love motivate all kinds of earnest activities. How to be unafraid to step out, expose myself, be honest and take a stand. How to develop my own principles for living independent from Robert and independent from the conventions that surround me. How to see my true relation to life, and based on this realization, take my own opinions less seriously.
Still Trying,
A not uncommon part of processing the FoF experience is to convince ourselves that it was mostly good, served its purpose, done now. I say this from personal experience.
It took me many, many years to admit that I stayed too long and could have gotten the pearls of good stuff in much less time. I had to get some distance, perspective and more honest knowledge of myself before I could admit that.
Admitting that required acknowledging that my own mechanics were thriving in the FoF rather than being worked on. I was a good student because that’s what I was mechanically good at. My greatest weaknesses weren’t photographed — they were encouraged by the culture and the form, and I couldn’t see that until much later.
It took me a long time to accept, understand and admit to this.
Perhaps nothing like this is true for you, but I offer it as a piece to consider. If something like this might be true for you, perhaps participation here will be the thing that blows your cover for you. It hurts, but it’s worth it.
There have been a lot of simply amazing insights on the blog today. I just wanted to capture these two that particularly struck me:
158 Graduates
“A machine trained to appear unperturbed is doubly false. The legitimate work is genuine transformation, never masking or suppression. A man in personality hiding his identification is even more obviously in wrong work than a man in essence indulging his identifications.”
206 Laura
“And you’ll be able to see the subtle irony of this, paying for a fake teaching and receiving a real one absolutely free.”
219 Old Fish in the Sea
“but I believe there was also a sincere seeker inside.”
I agree with much of what you said, but not the above. The energy that existed at times could definitely be beneficial, and some real work was done by some, but RB had his agenda from the start. How cognizant of this he was at different times is up for debate. Or even if he delved inside himself to ask questions about it (and as a sociopath I doubt he ever questioned his motives-for him that option just doesn’t exist).
I think whatever real work took place was in spite of RB, not because of him, and depended more on one’s personal apprehension of G and O’s ideas, which for many is precisely what drew us together in the first place. And now, not even that is there.
“And now, not even that is there.”
Meaning the sequence supplanting G & O.
While we (ex-members) agonize over the past (our time in the FoF) many of those in the Fellowship are experiencing what Vinnie is experiencing, this moment in what they believe is a higher school. It almost does not matter that it is a thoroughly rotten psychological hellhole at its very core, because those on the outer fringes are experiencing good emotional moments in their ignorance. They prefer to preserve their emotionality rather than face the truth about the organization that they believe is helping to produce the emotional states. They do this because there is no alternative place where they can feel as though they are doing the Fourth Way work.
If there were an alternative organization many if not most of the current Fellowship membership would likely abandon the obviously insane and corrupt Burton and join in the new experiment. Why should we ex-members demand integrity from current members, demand they leave the emotional atmosphere ongoing on the outskirts of Burton’s influence in protest of the selfish corruption, when we do not have the organizational ability to provide an alternative organization to work with ideas of the Fourth Way?
At some point we will have to put up or shut up.
Rather than a single individual as an inspiration point it might be possible to have the actual work ideas as the inspiration point that could develop the high emotional level necessary for a school. This is what Burton sells and has always sold: emotion. That is why the people there ignore his personal weaknesses and stay in place. Here we are insisting that they abandon that for an internet experience. It is not a reasonable request. Moral to the story: sustained positive emotion trumps any sense of decency. An unacceptable fact perhaps, but life is built on unacceptable realities.
223 Graduates
“Moral to the story: sustained positive emotion trumps any sense of decency. An unacceptable fact perhaps, but life is built on unacceptable realities.”
Very true. Thanks.
Another school? Not so much.
Dear Elena you make me feel
(like a natural woman)
I had saved this song for a special occasion. I was there that night, by far the best town hall meeting I have ever been to (just my personal taste).
Thanks to you all for making me feel like I am talking with angels.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=KC66wUcjqiA
Vinnie: “A lot of you spent decades and thousands of $ in the FOF, and at the time you must surely have appreciated the value to some extent. Don’t just write off those years as ‘wasted’, that’s ridiculous, you’ll never get them back… is not a failure, it’s a learning curve.
Joel, Bruce: ‘complete waste’ (paraphrase)
I’m with Sharon, Old Fish, David, others– I got a number of things worthwhile: experience of intense (higher?) states, some cultural appreciation and a much better understanding of some of my personal psychological makeup.
Most of that personal psychological understanding came AFTER I left the fellowship.
If I was smarter and had a better understanding of my foibles: moderate self worth, desire to please, accepting authority and wanting to improve myself I might have been able to leave after a couple of years, instead of staying seven.
Twenty years+ ago when I left, I –finally– understood Just Plain-Bob’s organization is a ’school’ using psychological blunt-trauma lessons for those who needed that kind of school. That’s why the FOF is not for the Sly man, but the Way of the Slow Man.
226
“Joel, Bruce: ‘complete waste’ (paraphrase)”
I think if you go back to the first page of the blog and peruse all my posts up to now you will not find, anywhere, me expressing that sentiment. Many other sentiments, but not that one. I have repeatedly stated that I got what I came for, and things were, for me, the way they were supposed to be.
Pretty slow, slow man.
On 21 Sep 2007 at 4:52 pm204 Charles T
199 Vena: “Initially we prefer to think, and even really believe, that it was a real school that just got deviated but as time goes on and illusions fall away it becomes clear that Robert Burton was never conscious and that the FOF never was a school and had little to do with the real Fourth Way.”
I guess you’re probably referring to me here. I agree that Burton was never conscious and that the FoF was never a school. But my experience was that real Fourth Way work did occur in my early years in the FoF and was supported by the students around me. There’s really nothing so mysterious about the Fourth Way, is there? You make efforts to remember yourself/divide attention/be present. Most of us had quite a bit of success with that. We understood the difference between second and third states and actually achieved the third state fairly frequently. Was that in same way unreal, in your opinion?
respectfully, Charles
Dear Sweet Charles,
I wasn’t referring to you at all. I don’t mean to negate the suggestions you have made either, it’s just that for myself I have understood that the process of leaving is a continuum and from where I am now it is clear to me that the whole thing was/is a sham. That does not mean that the sincere efforts that we made did not produce results and understanding but it was more in spite of Robert Burton than because of him. I can see that someone might take the position that if I/we gained understanding in spite of RB why should we try and take that possibility from others. I currently don’t feel that way because I see the FFellowship and Robert Burton as criminal but I can accept that as a point of view without agreeing.
So, yes, I did come to understand the difference between the second and third states and experience the third often enough to know how to get there. We have a better understanding now through Advaita of its accessibility but I concur with your description of the results of efforts made while in the Fellowship.
I truly respect and value your opinions and feel alot of affection for you. I just want to make it clear that my post was more a confirmation of Joel’s and not a negation of yours.
Much love to you. Vena
p.s. Different paths towards the same understanding or even different points on the same path can look contradictory at times. So, in the spirit of sharing and not to illustrate any particular point I am including some interesting thoughts from “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts.
In chapter four he mentions that …”there exists both gradual and sudden ways of awakening, the former by purification of the tainted outflows or projections of the mind (this was probably our approach in the FOF and accounts for the turgid, plodding type of effort) and the latter by an instantaneous “turning about” within the depths of consciousness whereby dualistic views are cast off.”
“…in Zen there is always the feeling that awakening is something quite natural, something startlingly obvious, which may occur at any moment.”
“There is , too, a clear connection berween the idea of immediate awakening and the teaching of the “Diamond Cutter Sutra”, on the fact that to attain awakening is not to attain anything. In other words, if nirvana is actually here and now so that to seek it is to lose it, a realization through progressive stages is hardly appropriate. “
I really dislike when someone tries to put words in my mouth, especially when they clearly don’t have the depth to understand what I’m saying.
BTW, Vinnie, hold on to your Vivaldi
I will walk down to the ocean
After waking from the nightmare
No moon, no pale reflection
Black mirror, black mirror
Shot by a security camera
You can watch your own image
And also look yourself in the eye
Black mirror, black mirror, black mirror
I know when the time is coming
All the words will lose their meaning
Please show me something that isn’t mind
But mind is the only kind that I relate to
I never guessed how the mirror could ever break you
Black mirror, black mirror, black mirror
Black mirror knows no reflection, knows not pride or vanity
Cares not about your dreams, cares not for your pyramid schemes
Their names are never spoken
The curse is never broken, the curse is never broken
Un, duex, trois, dit miroir noir
Black mirror
Un, duex, trois, dit miroir noir
Black mirror
Black mirror, black mirror
Their names are never spoken, the curse is never broken,
Their names are never spoken, the curse is never broken,
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, show me where them bombs will fall
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, show me where them bombs will fall
Black mirror, black mirror, black mirror, black mirror, black mirror, black mirror, black mirror
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=ejZ0on9Qeps
Sigh. I really am in love with Vinnie, which may be a good thing, since I am Vinnie. And somehow I have to come to terms with that. Reading his postings have had an effect like a drug flashback. I spent 30 years being Vinnie, really. These last few days–thanks, Vinnie darling–I have been revisiting experiences during which I saw vividly, understood accurately, knew beyond any doubt that what I was witnessing and participating in was flat out wrong. Make it stronger than that. Flat out evil. And I can testify that it would take sometimes as long as a day and a half for me to marshall all the work angles necessary to talk myself out of what I knew for sure was the truth–because with the knowledge of what was good and true and beautiful would come the necessity of leaving the Fellowship. Boy, it was touch and go a whole lot. And I by God or the Devil was not about to relinquish the feelgood, magicstate, fairytaleprincess, liferejecting bubble of delusion. No way. I miss you, Vinnie.
205 Bruce: “Are you sure you’re not mistaking 3rd state for glazed-over, sycophantic and vain imagination? Are you REALLY REALLY sure.”
Yes I’m sure.
But you’re right, I shouldn’t have used the “we” word, to be pedantically accurate.
217 Bistro.
Yes I agree. The Fourth Way is essentially ego-orientated and doesn’t really lead anywhere, particularly in the Burton version. Nevertheless, I feel it was useful to go through it. Most of it seems irrelevent these days, though it’s true that thoughts are not real and that everything just happens. Certainly there’s no need for the crazy FoF additions, particularly exclusivity.
221 Bruce. Seems right
228 Vena. Thanks for clarifying. I guess I was being a bit over sensitive! x Chas
Charles T (around) 233
217 Bistro.
Yes I agree. The Fourth Way is essentially ego-orientated and doesn’t really lead anywhere…
**********
Do you always adopt the opinions of the last person that made an impression on you or do you ever try to think for yourself? You seem to change your view of reality a little too easily and a little too often.
You were just explaining how much you got from Burton’s Fourth Way school, the third state and what not, now about a minute later you are explaining that how the Fourth Way leads nowhere.
Stop.
227 Bruce
Apologies on 226.
I mis-construed your 205, your scorn for the FOF and apologizers as scorn for all your experience in FOF.
My bad.
Joseph, there is a man behind each one of your posts but redemption is a much better word than revenge. Words like redemption and compassion are much tied to Christian hipocrisy but they are words worth redeeming. I do not seek revenge and do not wish to carry that word in my being even when it shows up at times like in Charles. Revenge will pull us down with the fall. No. Not revenge. The things that have happened in the Fellowship are terrible but they are human enough to be transformed. That is actually what I’ve been working for all these years. No harm to Robert’s or Girard’s or any student’s being, just the chipping of what is not part of our selves. We will separate the best from the worst at some point, like in any natural and miraculous process.
The process of dismantling the Fellowship can be as painful and damaging as its construction. Any violence will crystallize the damage. Students need to meet every other day and talk with each other gradually and walk out of the nightmare with wide open eyes. We are not against each other. We are against our actions. Actions against actions even if they are legal actions but don’t let anything as dark as revenge come close to us.
On a different matter and more connected with the latest posts, I do not agree with those who think that Robert does not have a considerable amount of work worth looking at.
If I were to stand up for Robert after everything negative I’ve said about him, he would still be no less than a human being like any one of us. One must be able to see the beauty as much as the horror in every human being. Not one of our horrors is more than a scratch in the dimension of our compassion. We have loved what we have loved and those who were in the School without considering Robert’s teaching have their own opportunism to look into. No blame, no shame, just a fact. Robert incarnated a symbol and destroying the man because he did not live up to the symbol does not make us any better than him, who destroyed us in justification of the symbol. Or at least totally disacknowledged us. The question is not one of humiliation or demeanoring anyone with revenge or flagelating ourselves for what we loved. Our integrity is not integrity if we cannot bring Robert and the whole of the Fellowship within our being and place it in its appropriate context.
It wasn’t all good nor is it all bad. That is what we are here to patiently look at while at the same time we simply sit in each other’s company and enjoy the silence in between. Patience too is a positive emotion.
Charles T wrote: “Nevertheless, I feel it was useful to go through it.”
Yes, I don’t think “complete” waste was true for me. I’m sure I also gained something from the experience despite all of the time wasted and the mistake that I made in staying for so long. Maybe there was a reason for it, a lesson in the mistake.
As far as gaining something spiritually from the experience, I think the distinction is that we gained something “in spite of” the fof — as opposed to “because of”.
What credit I gave to RB many years ago, I’m now realizing was totally and utterly my own imagination. And his imagination as well.
Don’t worry Abbie I’m still here… did you say 30 years? hmm ok don’t bother posting your pics… but there’s a lot of bitter and twisted haters on this blog I can’t help notice.. they don’t like to hear another viewpoint than their own. So I hope you can all get over it and get on with your lives. It seems to be true what Gurdjieff said, that you can lose everything you gained – all idea of higher states and the possibility of immortality and enlightenment is buried in the mire of identification.
Good to be in Rome.
Graduates (234)
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I meant that I learned a lot about the Fourth Way in the FoF and that at the time there were some limited results, eg increased ability to be present, occasional higher states, etc. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t enough and that nothing more would happen. I looked around for other teachings, and found Advaita to be 100% effective. Nevertheless, for me the FoF Fourth Way experiences were very useful as a preparation for what came next.
But don’t get me wrong, I respect your continued involvement with the Fourth Way and agree that Burton’s version was not the real thing.
I was just describing my own experience.
BTW 223 was a good one.
238
Oh God,… if I repent will C influence give me one more chance?
Come on Vinnie (238), do you really think “the possibility of immortality and enlightenment” exist in the FoF? Be honest now!
Vinnie, you sound very negative and horribly degenerate. I hope you can get into your life but in a more healthy way. Believe me, you could have a deep and fascinating life. I’m sorry that you choose your degenerate silly cultishness, with trampy muddled brains and sorry heart. The real world is actually a truly amazing place! The depth of emotion and intellect and states of mind that are available is greater than you imagine.
irst, a moment to breath…
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=BgIm0×4mgIc
“peas, luv and eternal cosmic wisdom…”
the florescent leech — or was it eddy?
vinnie, your recent post brought to mind something i read a while back concerning “the toxic nature of ideology.” in my reseach i didn’t come up with the exact quote but this instead… i hope you like to read… here’s to levity.
“We can laugh about these things — we do laugh, we should laugh. It’s just too bad that some people off themselves in the process of struggling to try and figure out what’s going on. After the Heaven’s Gate thing, they were interviewing people on NPR, and people were saying, “Oh, I just can’t understand how these people could have worked themselves into believing such a bizarre group of ideas!” So then they buttoned that up and they said, “Well, now what’s happening with the White House Easter Egg Hunt?” [laughter] Yes. It turns out, you know, a lot of people are carrying a lot of peculiar intellectual baggage. I mean, I don’t have any problem with people having religious ideas, but I think they should be clearly labeled as “IRRATIONAL”, and those people should voluntarily recuse themselves from debates about the nature of reality. The spectrum of philosophical differentiation between the Resurrection, the Easter Bunny, and Heaven’s Gate is only a matter of taste and aesthetics. [laughter] Hey, it’s a hard truth, but something to consider….
I think the idea that I’m coming to is that culture, in all of its offerings and splendor and artifactria, and especially in the form of ideologies, is not the friend of the life-prolonged, postmodern individual. Culture is not your friend. This is the vaguely-smelling-of-political-incorrectness message that continued drug use and philosophical abuse has brought to me. Generally the way the intellectual life is presented is that there are good ideologies and bad ideologies, and by a mixture of intuition, logic, education, master of the tools of the culture, we make choices between good and bad ideologies. But you can’t help but notice, at a certain point of alienation, maturation, boundary dissolution — it doesn’t matter what the vocabulary is you use — you can’t help but notice that culture is some kind of con game. It’s a scam. It’s a manipulation. It’s for the na√Øve. They can only work this limited set of tricks upon you three times, four times, six times, before you get it. You figure it out, you know? How many art openings, how many Next Great Novels by the geniuses among us, how many filimic triumphs, Nobel Prizes, Booker fiction awards, and on and on and on, can we tolerate in the illusion that we are moving into the truly new and exciting? It works for awhile, is the idea….
The Heaven’s Gate thing — to me, all of this stuff is an intelligence test. Those people failed it. But my point in my main lecture was that they are not as bizarre as they are made out to be, in the sense that lots of people are running around with extremely bizarre ideas, that we have simply gotten used to because they are socially sanctioned. When Pliny the Younger first wrote his report to the Roman Emperor on Christianity (I was recently reading a book called The Christians as the Romans Saw Them) he said, “This is a cult. It’s a cult of Christ. Religions deal with the great issues of cosmic origins and final endings. This doesn’t deal with that; it’s a cult of Christ.” So we have built a culture around that cult, and yet the rantings of a Southern preacher suitably liquored up on Jim Beam and syphilis was convincing, I think, that these are the rantings of a diseased mind. So what I think people should do is learn to trust their intuition and develop their crap detectors to a little higher state of subtlety. Because as we approach — whatever this thing is — the narrow neck of happenstance that is constricting the end-of-the-century phenomena, there are going to be more and more claims upon our attention and our imagination, “wonder workers” moving among the people and on the networks. Do your mental calisthenics early, so that when they come knocking on your door, you will have the strength to tell them to keep on moving….
Imagine if you were actually a free and responsible individual! Play with this idea; it has implications for you, I think. And it may not have been true in the past. As I look back to how I was raised and the people who raised me, everybody was living inside a cartoon, a sitcom of some sort. We’ve blown the whistle on that. That was what the work of the deconstruction that modernism performed on the bourgeois sensibility was all about, to tell you you’re more complicated than that, deeper than that, more dynamic, more self-surprising than that…”
t. mckenna
“brain police” are you still lurking?
vinnie
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=uHOUJPtWVYM
Could someone please post the telephone number of the London’s teaching house?
I appreciate.
laura, thanks for arcade fire
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=mOAqfmxfpUE&mode=related&search=
this might be clearer,
towards clarity….
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ZokV22xgA&mode=related&search=
for readers:
The king’s taken back the throne
The useless seed is sown
When they say they’re cutting off the phone
I’ll tell ‘em you’re not home
No place to hide
You were fighting as a soldier on their side
You’re still a soldier in your mind
Though nothing’s on the line
You say it’s money that we need
As if we’re only mouths to feed
I know no matter what you say
There are some debts you’ll never pay
Working for the church
While your family dies
You take what they give you
And you keep it inside
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the solider groan, “We’ll cry alone”
I can taste the fear
It’s gonna lift me up and take me out of here
Don’t wanna fight, don’t wanna die
Just wanna hear you cry
Who’s gonna throw the very first stone?
Oh! Who’s gonna reset the bone?
Walking with your head in a sling
Wanna hear the soldier sing
Working for the Church
While my family dies
Your little baby sister’s
Gonna lose her mind
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan “We’ll go at it alone”
I can taste your fear
It’s gonna lift you up and take you out of here
And the bone shall never heal
I care not if you kneel
We can’t find you now
But they’re gonna get the money back somehow
And when you finally disappear
We’ll just say you were never here
Been working for the church
While your life falls apart.
Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart
Every spark of friendship and love
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan, “We’ll go at it alone”
Hear the soldier groan, “We’ll go at it alone”
yesri, in case yor luking,
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_0iZQ-TuA
Gods want us to swallow
Love Rolex
As soon as Cleopatra realized that her slavery is inevitable, she opened her
sacred basket, grabbed a vibrator with batteries duracell, took 4 deep
wordless breaths, lay down and began the sequence “Move, Hold, Back, Move,
Stay, More”
yesri,
re: picketing the place, (the pile or pyle?)… it has to have a different exposure. the “zombies” or “sheep” will view a public (or pubic) demonstration with the same sort of derision that used to be directed toward darota sp? whatever happened to her? she courageously held out there for so long… is she still around?
we could rent a small plane and drop leaflets on it and alert the news media to the event, get the story out that way…. whatever the case, any “pubic” demonstration should have media coverage. something could be arranged with interested media… joseph’s contact ?
The idea that the experience of being a member of the Fellowship of Friends is/was all good or all bad is equally formatory and equally impossible. Like anything else there is a spectrum of possibilities, a scale . If there is such a thing as a conscious school I would think that its nature would prohibit it from being defined in formatory terms.
Each of our experiences fall along a line that represents a statistical distribution. There are some who had an entirely A influence experience. More than one person joined and stayed because of a relationship and finances. On the other extreme are There may be some who were drawn by the experience of and pursuit of consciousness. If there is any objective truth about the FOF it is not something belonging to anyone of us but rather something which imcludes all of our experiences. Our perception of and understanding of the experience are equally subjective. Time is a factor. My perception of my experience in the time I was a member has changed over time and as I am exposed to different viewpoints on the blog.
I experienced much that was positive in my time as a member. I also experienced and was subject to much that was didtorted and damaging. I still find value in the ideas of the system. I still experience profit from making the effort to be present, divide attention and remember myself. It has become my first response to any shock. In fact my understanding of, definition of and understanding of self remembering has broaden and become more inclusive over time. I also don’t care that much whether this is true for anyone else.
My own single greatest proof of the value of the ideas on a practical scale is in having survived many difficult life experiences and being able to go back to school and learn. To find that I still have the ability to learn, change, develop and grow.
Part of self remembering in the context of this discussion is to remember how I felt, thought and experienced events in the past. To remember what degree of suffering and pressure it has required to learn certain things and to change attitudes. This helps put others experiences and currant understanding in perspective.
I really have no idea what the future might bring. I accept that I am not done yet and there are new levels to explore in the future. I am able to act on my beliefs and opinions as if I believed them knowing full well they are just “I’s” and they are totally subjective.
Whatever the faults of Robert and the Fellowship and whether because of or in spite of the experience one thing I took from this time was a permanent aim to awaken and to remember myself. It has takin a long time to overcome my own self doubt and be able to accept self remembering as a simple personal experience that it is not something you are recognized for from the outside, like being an “older student” or receiving a pension, degree or any other form of recognition. The 4th way is defined as a way of development done in life. It is further described as having no fixed form. I cannot say why the play of Robert Burton and the Fellowship of Friends is the way it is. I barely have any opinions let along beliefs. on the subject.
What I have learned and believe is that we each have exactly what we need , know what we need to do, and are exactly were we need to be. To believe that it is possible or in any way useful to believe otherwise is ” pouring from the empty into the void.”
Oh, If you don’t know what you need to do it may mean you need to learn how to ask for help. Learning to ask for help can be difficult for our imaginary idea of ourselves but it is critical. Without it there is little possibility of future development.
my most valuable lessons from the fof – i’m still learning – thanks former student….
to trust intuition and develop a crap detector.
Even though I was only a member for a short time of six months. I have to be totally honest with all of you. Of all the members I met in Isis there was only one I did not TRUST.
Now comparing that to real life people who lie most of time, I have a harder time trying to work on my work at catching a second or two aday of being in the present.
more nostalgia… i hope this isn’t too ‘twee’ or “gay” —
blame it on “the times.”
i’m, going to bed…
sweet dreams bloggers and lurkers alike.
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=urW5lfAcaM8
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, Worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, Going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, No expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, No tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
These dreams in which i’m dying, Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very….
Mad World, Mad World
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And they feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, Sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, No one knew me
Hello teacher tell me whats my lesson
Look right through me, Look right through me
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
These dreams in which i’m dying, Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very….
Mad World, Mad World
Enlargen your world
Laura,
The computer I’m borrowing is too slow for you tubes but I’ll look at it when I can. Thanks for the “special occasion” What meeting are you talking about?
And where are you? Could we e-mail? Mine is ludoteka@succeed.net
I need some friends, someone to have a beer with and laugh. Bruce where are you? Maybe you’re not so far since you were in the exstudents meeting if I remember correctly.
I’m on my way out of the states and would like to celebrate with a few friends.
Charles T (around) 239
…Advaita to be 100% effective.
************
It is 100% effective as a buffer.
Hello Graduates ~
You wrote ~
“Why should we ex-members demand integrity from current members, demand they leave the emotional atmosphere ongoing on the outskirts of Burton’s influence in protest of the selfish corruption, when we do not have the organizational ability to provide an alternative organization to work with ideas of the Fourth Way?”
______________________
IMO, I have yet to think of the word “demand” in regards to the ‘leaning on’ or ’sitting under a sun lamp with some loose duct tape on’ that takes place during the blog;
anyone demanding anything is usually the one who does not have it and needs it the most…
If someone were to ask me how it is that I try to attempt to deepen the ‘tan’ of others, I would say this ~
that the fourth way was born, somewhere for whatever reason, imprinted in all of us to some degree young, middle aged, old and perhaps even a bit futuristic and ancient; yet, all that romance aside,
the fact remains that once the tools are gotten and you learn things like ~ Not to hold the saw by it’s teeth when cutting and that most power tools that have cords are not cordless, building and conscious living and giving can be done from the nucleus of alone-ship, solo (not Monk-style though)…
“Now there’s the rub” (I like that phrase, thanks Will) ~
how much will a person ‘pay’ for the tiny, tender sprout of their conscience to reach a practical horizontal line of reality and present now practice and mastery (relatively speaking; I do not ‘believe’ in this ‘I am a Master’ stuff), of sunrise and sunset, rather than staying in between the seed kernels?
Once one really looks at what one wishes/believes and what one actually supports/does doing so concerning the Fellowship of Friends (if the criminal facts are known about and verified) a choice lawfully becomes present,
yet, what is it that compromises this ‘present choice’, perhaps the part of us that prompts feelings of ‘no choice’, of ‘no where to go’, of ‘no one loves me’, of ‘no one will take care of me’?
(Is this Big I? Can one live presently and ‘be’ a fearful hypocrite/a conscious contradiction simultaneously?)
Is it not these very questions and all their ‘children’ surrounding us every day that “demand” from us what is not the fourth way, is not our truer spiritual wills, deeper love manifestations, truer revelations of our evolving feelings and hammering out of the atrophied muscles of our conscience?
Does not the Fellowship of Friends “demand” the very opposite or at ‘best’ the repetition of the si-do interval belonging to a School of Relative Awakening, that milling-practice of being a Whisper-hypocrite and Believer and not a Doer with that which Belief points to;
affirmations were always meant to be used as sign posts not new and improved crucifixions to adore and trust that someone else has ‘already done it enough’ and by doing so, some Christ-sweat may fly off him in the vacuum of the rapture, land thereon one’s dry cheek and be mistook at the Pearly Gates as a real ‘heaven-tear’, thus allowing one some ‘party time’ in heaven till you’re figured out as not a ‘real worker bee’, but rather a spirit who says ‘BE’ so much that in the dark you’re pretty close to seeming like one?
Would I give up all my friends, my security, my home, my cars, my ‘good name’ (LOL), my family, my citizenship, to continue loving my friends (internally) because I felt so strongly that if I continued supporting an ‘IT’ who corrupts their essences and hurts them in the name of their most cherished hopes and beliefs, I could not love them by doing this, by supporting that which does not love?
YES and I am doing it; it’s all falling apart and I am smiling in the face of a tornado and a hurricane making love while heading straight for me, ‘I’, most likely will become one of their cigarettes after all is said and done, so be it, better held in the hands of The Elementals love-wrecking aftermath, than that smoke who clings to the dark corners of Fear’s quivering, held lungs, like a thief’s hands round the jail cells bars, who loves prison-food and knows that to continuously have a home with the least amount of effort, he must rob those of others and even ‘kill’ his own deep smiles in doing so.
Is not this ‘going’, this ‘real moving’ from ‘belief-idea’ to real ‘I’ what people came for when joining the Fellowship of Friends; how is it then that your ‘little i’ is held behind three grades every year, while your ‘Big I’ has been duped into (BELIEVING) that this is not it, not this lifetime?
Schools are made to be left behind, not necessarily destroyed or abandoned by one’s individual version of conscious love, any preschool kid could tell you that;
no conscious being or true spiritual seeker growing and becoming a conscious individual ever stayed in the same level of being school with a teacher who has not changed in 37 years; if there are those who have done so, it is not these spirits that I write for anyways, so, there’s no question (or answers);
a true conscious teacher does not reject the experimentations of his or her students conscious applications towards their feelings being ‘let out’, by imprisoning them in a ego-maze made of his or her own inner rejection of what is ‘right’ and ‘true’ to the form of conscience and real individual progression…
Robert Burton has broken no earthly swords, only sharpened.
Perhaps the questions are for the playful-insincere, those who are simply where they are for other reasons than wholly themselves; I do not “demand” they be otherwise, yet, I will not dust my tracks for fear of being followed by demons, who, are most likely my own;
for it is our own ancient footsteps that will lead us back into the arms of ourselves.
______________________
Love to you all.
Hello Elena ~
Your ‘Daughter of Fire’ book is in. Where are you?
:.)
I have verified that by wiring a king sized down pillow to my cars front grill, this is a 100% effective buffer against 65mph gnats, mosquitoes, birds and at various weekly intervals, a stray Sunday newspaper.
:.]
179 Skeptical Optimist,
Thank you for that ‘wake-up’.I think this is one of the most difficult things to admit, that I continually looked the other way in the face of RB’s agenda.
From the ‘early years’ it was obvious to many of us that he had his own aims,many of which included the debasement of his students,or at least some of his students.
Yet, when questioning his obvious lies,I was frequently answered with the ‘trump card’-”this is higher forces wishes”.
As if this was to make everything ok!
What is the price of ‘evolution’? I have come this far in my search for the truth, to this blog(thank you all !).
Where do we go from here????
There is that moment,
when everyone has gone to sleep,
the house is quiet,
and you are tired after a full day.
And you think of all the love you have been given and felt.
And you are happy, quiet, present.
In this moment, there are no arguments, no disagreements, no mistakes, no tasks to be done, no fault, no philosophy, just the soft sound of the computer fan and the up and down of your chest.
The past, with all its hurt, adventure, love and loss is done and cannot change. It remains a beautifully tragic painting in time – the foundation for new days with unknown potential, unknowable love, and experiences that we cannot guess.
Our love lives on, existed before, connects us, and will outlive the Fellowship as we know it.
Best wishes to all,
And a warm good night,
With love,
Old Fish
GRADUATES
I think you are scared by the “advaita message” because it really is the death of ‘you’.
Or probably you didn’t read well what it is said, or probably you have 100% buffer (always out of scare). Relax, take it easy, if you can…..It doesn’t not matter anyway….
kisses
Hi Elena,
About revenge, my primary reference and interest is around the emotions this word reveals. They are frightening, but they are natural and exist in all of us. To pretend otherwise is just that: pretending. The Fellowship of Friends leadership hopes for and counts on the continuing likelihood of no one acting out their true feelings, because the FOF spent years teaching us to repress and mistrust our own feelings in exchange for a phony badge of sainthood. Think of the noble heroes in tales from ancient times. Did they question themselves when an intrinsically evil and harmful situation needed to be disarmed and destroyed? Did they second-guess their true motivations? Maybe I should think twice about killing that fire breathing dragon who is consuming the village page boys, since it might really be my own weakness that tempts me to follow through with what every muscle in my being wishes to do, and thus risk the emergence of rage or some similarly uncontrollable and dark emotion that may disrupt my life and tarnish my image around the castle. Better let the villagers be consumed. It’s just their fate after all. Isn’t the higher right really a question of working on my own attitudes, rather than fooling myself that my actions could make a difference on this material plane? Those suffering page boys are in fact just a test of whether I can control the lower self. (And then the hero walks away. No Darth Vader he, but not such an inspiring story either.)
So what is the nature of this FOF dragon that no one yet has slain? The Fellowship of Friends means many different things depending on the context and one’s own point of reference, e.g.:
1. Group of mostly well intentioned people trying to lead a more spiritual lifestyle, most of whom are harmless, and many of whom were or are personal friends
2. Conscious school, with a conscious teacher (not!)
3. Robert Burton’s personal cult of naïve, brainwashed weaklings
4. Corrupt and criminal organization run be a harmful sociopath and his trusted and trusting enablers, that continues to prey on members to satisfy its leader’s carnal appetites
5. Place where one enjoyed some rich experiences, as well as some painful ones, and from which on balance one came away intact, grateful to leave but also grateful for what one learned and who one loved
My own interest in revenge applies only to #4 above. Obviously #2 does not have much credence here, but some readers may still believe this so it’s important to acknowledge it. Other more benign forms or remnants of the FOF will survive anyway. Already the GF may be serving as a receptacle or possibly even a rebirth for #1 and #5. Of course, there are probably hundreds of other thumbnail descriptions for the FOF, as diverse as its entire ex-membership.
Most of the more active bloggers here seem to be virulently repulsed by the FOF as the criminal organization described in #4. It is no coincidence that their posts on the blog have done great harm to the FOF, simply by exposing the truth. Is this not satisfying? My sense — it cannot be called an idea or plan at this stage, and may never come to be one — is that more truth, revealed in a louder and more visible form to people with the power to act upon it, could be an interesting and almost poetic way to take revenge against the Fellowship of Friends as a criminal organization and cult. This is my revenge. A revenge that uses truth as a weapon. Simple. Elegant. Deadly.
What is so terrible about this idea after all? That one may receive some personal satisfaction in the process? That it’s not noble? If we think it’s not noble, by whose standards are we judging? By the judgments of those who used to say “all the worse for you if you are right”…? The Scribes and the Pharisees?
To tell the truth it was WhaleRider who pushed me over the edge, and I thank him for waking up my conscience, though only after I had already left the FOF for other reasons. His story made me very angry. Was I the only one? And I not only knew it was true, but I also knew it was just the tip of the iceberg. So many essences, so many beautiful friends damaged by this malicious and criminal organization and mind-control cult. How much emotional and spiritual damage has been catalogued here on the blog? More scary still, how much has not yet been mentioned? Rarely a week goes by that I do not hear of some fresh atrocity, both news to me and recent in its occurrence.
Dear Elena, your concern for me is touching, if I can presume to call it concern. I am sincerely grateful to feel your warmth and hear your sisterly voice. But the cautious voice you are using now does not ring as true in my ears as some other voices you have assumed in the past. There is a time and place for resolve, for action without hesitation; not blindly or stupidly, but as well, never again with the immense self-doubt that was systematically imbued in us over many years by a corrupt organization and a manipulative man.
It is also true that I am probably no poster child for Advaita, and never was a paragon of Robert’s limp-wristed brand of spiritualism. That said, I am the only one who can know whether I have a robust spiritual life going on under the surface and between the ripples of my superficially active and materialistic being. No validation from outside is required or welcome with regard to what’s happening behind my eyeballs, or beyond my heart.
And maybe there is room for a more pragmatic and businesslike approach as to a level of action only possible outside the blog. Bringing down the FOF is nothing more nor less than a business proposition: imminently achievable if the ingredients and resources are in place. The old truism was never truer than now: revenge is a dish best served cold.
Does this give you a better perspective of my notions on revenge, Elena? BTW, in closing, we live in Napa Valley and welcome friends to visit. Please do write or call anytime you like. We’re even known to speak Español on occasion.
With love, Joseph G
jog1954@gmail.com
WhaleRider Says:
May 5, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Reading this blog has been a very visceral and emotional experience for me, which I am grateful to transform into presence, for I live the work every day of my existence. When reading it I perspire heavily. In the past week since I was informed of it and dived in, I have had many instances of energy shooting down my sides, and I am moved to tears several times a day when I reflect upon what I experienced in the FOF. Yet the sheer energy contained in this blog, both raw and refined is quite impressive as I am sure the venerable sheik and knight will agree, and I cannot stop reading it. I find myself hoping of recognize my story, only to realize that it is not there because I have not told it.
I want to be clear that I do not wish to be part of any lawsuit against RB or the FOF. I am not motivated by any hope of financial gain, nor am I willing to join a crusade to end the FOF. It will undoubtedly collapse under its own excesses, or not, I could care less. Each person, in or out, must choose for themselves, which I believe is one of the reasons this blog is so valuable. I have built a comfortable, happy life and successful business post-FOF for myself and my family which I wish to protect. I ask anyone whom may recognize my identity to please respect my privacy and keep my name anonymous. Although current FOF members may wish to argue that in divulging my story I have violated the personal privacy of RB, that his public life is distinctly separate from his private life. My response is this: when a teacher brings his student into his private life and uses “work” language in his seduction, that distinction is gone. For each of us, no matter how long we have contact with the FOF; it is and will be a deeply moving and personal experience, not because of the man, but of the possibilites of growth within each of us.
To Golb:
Now that your tail is out of your mouth, you glibly strike at this blog-my air, at the children, and at me? You have no idea who I am and what I have been through, Golb, whatever the heck that name is supposed to mean. I am WhaleRider. I have ridden the BIG FISH into the deepest, darkest, coldest depths until my lungs have screamed for air, my soul choking in my throat, and I have survived. I let myself be swallowed whole, have kept myself intact, had my semen drained nightly by a sex maniac who gave the most wondrous, intentional, conscious blowjobs, had my essence gouged open as I lay resting on the Goethe Academy floor as a human shield for the precious artwork, the lights left on the LeBrun all night to keep my exhausted body in first-state deprivation, my king of clubs bound and gagged, unable to protect me from this terrible angel who would rouse me and lead me secretly, stealthily into the dark of his gilded bed-chamber to service his need for the good of us all, in this school of “shut up and be present”, this silk-lined labyrinth of luxury complete with the matching salt and pepper shakers, where I puke out his semen in the imported porcelain toilet along with the fine wine and pepper steak from the teaching dinner earlier that night and wipe my face on the Egyptian cotton towel just before I’d retire until dawn cracks open another day and he slumbers peacefully until lunch dreaming of sugar plums because they remind him of testicles…while the rest of us toiled in the searing hot sun the next day still weary from our lunatic efforts the day and night before…not once was I told that I was loved in this school of love, but he loved when I returned the favor-only to have to excrete myself one year later, quietly leaving in a gentleman-like fashion, not making a splash, barely a ripple, so as not to disturb anyone else who might be sleeping…to remain alive, and carry out my prophesized soul death sentence as a life-person-oh yeah, that’s right, there was no gun to my head…but thankfully his predictions don’t come true either, do they?
And Howard, Girard, Golden Fleecer, the brave-new-man and miscellaneous moon angels…with your eloquent tongues and trite, text-book explanations for our suffering…I have seen 50 like you dis-“membered” by the insatiable Minotaur at the center of this perpetual labyrinth you call haven, home, Isis… do you have the balls to hear the truth?…the graphic truth?… the painful truth? The truth I paid for with my own hydrogen 12? Do know why he calls himself a goddess? You think an angel told him. Did you know the prostrate gland is the male G-spot? He would orgasm from anal sex without any penal stimulus, and think he had awakened his female side, just as a woman does during anal sex without ever touching the clitoris… He taught me that, he’s such an elevated and exalted teacher! Look it up on the internet, or better yet, try it for yourself sometime…
And can you even FATHOM the nauseating, soul imploding disgust I felt the night he did “rimming” on me, without my consent, and then brought his fecal coated lips to mine and kissed me? Try separating from that. The Darvons he used to hand out were not enough to quench the pain, for this pain is exquisite and it leaves no visible marks! Think of me the next time he kisses your forehead…once those lips had been planted firmly on my asshole and probably countless others from all corners of the planet. And that’s the ultimate of all ironies; he kisses your third eye with those lips, coating the seat of your very soul with fecal matter from the seat of his inner circle. Please, by all means, stay in the Fellowship as long as you like! Stand by him! Support him! Bring him fresh new, exotic meat, he’s HUNGRY! Or if you like, have a look down the escape hatch he had installed in his closet just in case C-influence happened to be on vacation and he read the tea leaves wrong. Then you will know the darkness that resides under that silk suit. You might want to have your own plan B just in case the Earl has run out of man number five party hats that you have been so patiently waiting for him to bestow upon you…
WhaleRider
1979-1985
Dear Joseph,
I remember going with you and Sheila Grunwald (the elder) to San Francisco. Robert wanted to buy you a new cashmere jacket and had assigned the task of picking out a particularly nice one to Sheila.
At the time I was happy for you, completely naivie to what you must have been going through. I trusted Robert’s judgement. I thought he must have seen some great potential in you as a student, and as a good leader, he wished to reward your efforts. We were so young. I remember that I was disappointed that he did not see such potential in me.
What if he had come on to me? In those early years I was so completely devoted, so sure that the so-called-school was as special and pure as we all thought it was. So sure that Robert was exactly what everyone claimed he was.
But as much as the idea of sex with him repulses me, I cannot say for sure what I would have done. I hate to think that I might have been frozen by the utter incomprehensibility of the situation. I am almost certain that I would have been unable to speak, so completely shocked. I think it is impossible to describe how naive we were then Joseph. So young and trusting and with so much promise. I am sure that it would have taken me a long while to even comprehend what was happening. It would have been so impossible and completely incongruent with my concept of Robert.
We each have our individual experiences and it helps to condition how we react to Robert and the Fellowship.
But when I think about this and about you as a young man, and about how completely naive we were about him, life, and the school, I understand the need to stop Robert. I am sure I will never feel it as you and so many others do, but I feel it nevertheless. It is dispicable to take advantage of children and at heart we truly were children back then. I guess many of the young men today are not all that different from how we were.
Joseph G. 261
I second that emotion. When I was writing post 20-25 at one point I envisioned myself as Michael Palin in that scene from A fish called Wanda where he is driving the big steamroller towards Kevin Kline stuck in cement and yelling “Revenge !”
Such good fun…
And I agree, thank you WhaleRider, you have really made an impact here and we miss you.
Love, Laura
#238 Vinnie the fish
HaHaHaHaHa!
You don’t have a clue do you?
Dear Joseph,
I remember being moved by the tempered tone of your first posts because I recognized in them something similar to my own initial posts, before the words on this blog day by day moved me to a much less tolerant position regarding the the FOF. I have no doubts about the need to expose and stop the crime of Robert’s activities, and there’s justice if taking action to this end serves best those who have suffered most.
IMO we should allow our feelings, without censure, regardless of what they are. They can surprise us, be instructive, humiliating, etc, etc. They just arrive and I think it’s important to let them be. Many people, including myself, have been a little retarded in this area and have had to learn this on our own, but that’s another topic!
The point I’d like to make is that the feeling of revenge is one thing and taking action from that feeling is something else.
To take action for the purpose of revenge seems wrong in spirit, to me. It seems retro in terms of where we might hope humankind to eventually progress, one man’s efforts at a time. Look at what revenge reaps in our world today. There is no consciousness in revenge. You might feel revenge, but I believe acting from revenge is beneath you.
I appreciate your reference to the noblity of the knights and I truly understand the glory of righteousness and the power in that response, to slay the dragon and triumph over evil. I think that’s something entirely different from revenge, though. You certainly don’t have to excuse or doubt your call to action! I believe the spirit in which it is done is most important and in the end will empower you or diminish you.
My heart is with you.
#248 ‘ton
It’s all auto-pilot from here on in, baby.
Dear Ton, 254
It is in the eye of the beholder.
if I can face the world and think every body is liveless and depressed.
If I take a few minutes and concentrate on positive aspect in people the world is a must happier place…..
Verified this thousand times at least.
How?
When you go to work. Take a minute and think that the day and the people around you will be negative (or positive take your pick). And observe and verify……i did and still do this for years.
It does not dissolve all the crab ( yet ).
Ha, ha, ha that is my next visualization to evaporate all the crab. Yahoo!
256 I know you graduates, you talk 80 % of the time and are a bad listener. Get real and try. Advaita 100 % might be to much. BUT
Listen to fish in the see that is advaita right in your face.
If you do not get it. SIT WITH IT FOR A WHILE AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. Go insde and let your inner silence talk.
Nisargadatta says: You want your mind at peace. There will be no end to it. MIND MEANS DISTURBANCE, RESTLESSNESS ITSELF IS MIND.
Sit with this for a while. And be quiet.
O after months
Of anguish
I lnow, love this blog
The best therapist so far.
I am so angry that I believed WORDS
For so many years
And now , now Graduate Advaita
Or however you call it,
What is in a name ( word)
Ha, ha, ha
If my little detector goes of
When I hear (crab) words
I act and it feels soooo good.
Thanks for this to happen.
Joy to the world
Wooh it is not even Christmas
yes , Yes, yes Joseph. So well said.
I knew so much before i joined, and i gave it up …and i gave it up. Because it was self will. What a lie…..and i ate it for years…..what a karma and yes that hurts….and I do not wish that away, because it IS, NOW
“They are frightening, but they are natural and exist in all of us. To pretend otherwise is just that: pretending. The Fellowship of Friends leadership hopes for and counts on the continuing likelihood of no one acting out their true feelings, because the FOF spent years teaching us to repress and mistrust our own feelings in exchange for a phony badge of sainthood. Think of the noble heroes in tales from ancient times. Did they question themselves when an intrinsically evil and harmful situation needed to be disarmed and destroyed? Did they second-guess their true motivations?”
And I agree, thank you WhaleRider, you have really made an impact here and we miss you.
Thanks Old fish in the see that is so wellput and so probably true…still happening , now as we speak…..
Love to all and inner stillness
Dear Old Fish,
Thank you for reminding me of that time and our friendship then as (much) younger men.
I agree with your thoughts about revenge, though my own words have arrived at a different conclusion. Let’s just call it “active response” instead of “revenge” and there will be less argument. I have only wanted to point out that our choice of words to describe our motivations and natural reactions to the ongoing damage done by Robert Burton and the Fellowship of Friends should not be allowed to prevent us from acting to stop it if we can.
About the nature and scope of the crimes that motivate me personally, by now they go far beyond what happened to WhaleRider or, to a much greater extent, to myself. (My own experience was less psychologically damaging than his). The corruption and essential criminality that allowed these things to happen to so many young men has by now extended its influence across the FOF community in ways too numerous and repugnant to list again here. Stories like that of WhaleRider tend to be a focal point for why this crime should be stopped. If one is in a position to do so, or to contribute to such an effort, I believe one’s past culpability is beside the point. We are morally responsible regardless…which is why I referred to Dr. King in an earlier post.
This is my position, and I am grateful that you have given it deeper attention in a way that shows your integrity and the valuation you hold for our friendship.
With love,
Joseph G
Re #263 (or thereabouts)
Actually he did not buy me a cashmere jacket. He bought the jacket for a more favored boy, but it did not fit him. Someone then had the idea it might fit me, so Sheila was commissioned to pick out some pants and a tie to match. I can’t remember the other fellow’s name. William something…I think I was so homophobic at the time that he’d get frustrated with me. How lucky in hindsight since my experiences in the bedroom were very limited as a result, as were my “perks” outside the bedroom.
Elena
I’m in Nevada City.
Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Charles: “Come on Vinnie (238), do you really think “the possibility of immortality and enlightenment” exist in the FoF? Be honest now!”
Not a question that indicates accurate thinking: the 2 ideas exist, not as objects in an organization. But they could possibly be understood more while being a member of the FOF. If enlightenment can be understood as a higher (more conscious) state in the moment. Immortality is a bit more theoretical of course…
But my point was that it seemed to me that for a lot of posters here the whole idea of spiritual evolution (which has at its core enlightenment and immortality doesn’t it, or else what’s the point, temporary pleasure?) has become buried in the morass of identifications about Robert’s behaviour, which would be understandable but a shame. I was probably wrong though, I just skim the posts.. I see there are a lot of more useful things said than just expressions of anger, loathing and partisanship. For example I agree with Brute and often photograph people who blithely use the word ‘we’, when I can only really know my own experience and states.
When you think of the basic ideas of identification and separation, mechanicality and intentionality, 1st, 2nd 3rd states, the functions of the human machine, divided attention.. surely these are basic distinctions that we learned in the school regardless of who ran it and what he does, so it would be a pity to lose those understandings.. but up to the individual of course.
Hello Winnie,
if you have time read all the posts of ” no person” especially those in the first pages of the blog.
May be you will find them interesting.
Regards
Dear Winnie,
Your 1nd and 2nd and 3th are not it….
All mind activity, keep you busy, this whole live.
Where there is no mind activity…………..
Joseph Friend,
I am closer to you than I ever was in seventeen years in the Fellowship and we’ve been talking for only six months. I left the Fellowship on March 22, exactly six months ago. We know more than we ever knew about ours elves and our cult, school, kindergarden and prison for the soul.
I have followed every word you’ve expressed as if it were my own and have been grateful for your standing high against the dragon.
When I was in the rain forest in Colombia I heard the story of a shaman’s wife who had recently been bitten by a snake surprised where she washed the dishes. It was said that although the Shaman had cured many such bites, he had been unable to cure his wife because she had killed the snake with anger. She died.
Haven’t I expressed so much anger that you could recognise the taste of revenge in my posts? And yet more than revenge and anger I have had frustration and pain. They are very different. Anger is a buffer and revenge is the sword of the buffer. You cannot kill a dragon with a buffer sword.
The question has already been clearly presented by Across the River and to echo the water, while the action might look the same in the quest to kill the dragon, the hero is in the intent. One cannot carry revenge in one’s first line and not harm the second and third line. We have not left the work and our actions against people or humanity at large are equally subject to the laws we were unable to practice in the Fellowship, with our mouths and hands muffled by the form.
Then there is another issue. The world has been built by people who held on to forms and continues to be created by people that can let go of them. We will separate naturally and miraculously and anger and revenge are expression of unfulfilled love. Tthe frustration of knowing that you cannot pull people out from the mud without their will. You can kill them but you cannot force their will. There are many instances in which death is the answer but not in this one. Close the fellowship with whatever action is necessary and I will stand next to you on any lawsuit against the institution but I will not extend my hand against any one of the people inside. We have enough knowledge and there are enough of us to sue the Fellowship but we need to understand the value of legal action as an expression of our legitimate will against Robert’s actions but not against Robert’s being. This is what self remembering has taught me. This is what Robert Burton has taught me. The consequences for Robert and others are not in our hands, the courts decide that and allowing for a different force than one’s own to enter the play is what allows the play to unfold objectively.
The level of our maturity is not in the insults we can scream out at the students but in the objectivity with which we can close down the institution. Sometimes it is necessary to go a level above to catch the dragons throat. What happened to us was allowed by the California laws. Does that not make you wonder whether there is a bigger dragon to kill than the Fellowship and that both are aspects of the same one? That we are players in a bigger scheme in a land where cults are a norm and people are pushing to understand themselves and the horror of cults is that they are being treated with the same laws that private property is treated and people like Robert can steal souls without having to account for it? Do you see how the mixture of gay and cult are connected in California and the Fellowship? Do you realize that the way that goes will determine the attitude towards private property as well?
Once one is clear the work follows. You cannot kill the dragon by avoiding his blows or running away from his flame. You have to stand with the whole of your being affirming what you know is true and let the battle decide for itself. You can be a martyr or a hero. The level of being of mankind decides that and learns from both, you just have to be willing to play the role without worrying about the consequences.
We do not have much time to legally act against the Fellowship Institution and that at some point is what we need to look at now that we are clear about what the damages are. Maybe Whalerider and others like you more deeply touched by the hands of the dragon can reconsider your stand on not suing the Fellowship. It is clear to me that that stand has meant not wanting to go after the money but if we are too easy on ourselves by not wishing to suffer the consequences of legal action, the cost, the time, the energy, who are we
to question why we allowed ourselves to be abused for so many years?
The issue with legal action for me is that one can talk reason to students and teachers but when students and teachers will not listen to reason then they must reason with laws.
Doesn’t any one know a decent enough lawyer with whom we could at least talk? I don’t think Mr. Ford is the man even if he successfully sued the moonies and of course, a few of us, as many as possible, would have to sit down and talk. This dragon is a little too big for one soul.
Just sharing this quote from Girard Haven, which I think is a little too far fetch?
Knowledge is hidden to preserve it until it is found. If I want that
knowledge, and I know how to look, I am the one for whom it was hidden.
Another Name 279
Yes, how wise, of course I am also the one who did the hiding in the first place and then forgot where I put it.
“I want that knowledge! Cautious, my precious! More haste less speed. We musstn’t rissk our neck, musst we, precious?”
Vinnie 275: “When you think of the basic ideas of identification and separation, mechanicality and intentionality, 1st, 2nd 3rd states, the functions of the human machine, divided attention.. surely these are basic distinctions that we learned in the school regardless of who ran it and what he does, so it would be a pity to lose those understandings.”
True. We learnt some useful bits and pieces about the way our bodies and minds work. We had some higher states. But everything was temporary. I’m as sure as I can be about such things that nothing I achieved in the FoF will survive the death of my body. There are, however, much more advanced and effective teachings available outside the FoF.
Anomimou-Unoanimo, can we e-mail? I’m close. ludoteka@succeed.net
And Bruce too? I woul very much enjoy meeting you for a beer and a laugh. Tomorrow I’ll be close to Nevada.
Correction: Anonimou-Unoanimo
Elena what do you mean by this?
Can you explain Please.
Thanks
That we are players in a bigger scheme in a land where cults are a norm and people are pushing to understand themselves and the horror of cults is that they are being treated with the same laws that private property is treated and people like Robert can steal souls without having to account for it? Do you see how the mixture of gay and cult are connected in California and the Fellowship? Do you realize that the way that goes will determine the attitude towards private property as well?
Drop the formalities. Ritualized activity in the pursuit of reality settles into a hypocritical self-righteousness in less than a day. It is insufferably ostentatious, the airs of butchers and schoolteachers listening to Mozart. Everyone at the opera is a lunatic, singers, players and spectators. No sane man would make it a point to celebrate melodrama, regardless how well it is performed. Men pretending to be refined do not in fact gradually become refined. Instead they become rehearsed, pretentious and increasingly artificial. There is hardly a more gratifying position of moral decline. Those idlers who spend their hours making up poetry by no means ever discover reality, instead they discover the hypnosis of self-flattery. Decent men hunt for the truth, they do not try to lure it closer with elegant niceties or effeminate paraphernalia. The walls littered with portraits and the halls scattered with statuary follows the blueprint of a mortuary conceived of for the interment of the vain. Basic human companionship, worthwhile deeds and solitary reflection lead to that world of the truly living. To disguise the simplicity of life with a grandiose, theatrical scenerama pays far too much tribute to the sociopaths’ self-indulgence. Imagine Christ in a gold embroidered Pope’s mitre. The awake always oppose cultural elaborations. They never indulge in them. To defeat sleep requires simple unadorned living, never ornamentation. There is nothing but charades enacted in the mock amphitheater, a circus of rotten pederasts. Little wonder they hide from the scrutiny of the courts. A man walks the streets, visits shops and strides among the pedestrians while entering his soul. The soul celebrates itself among the chaos of human folly. The soul does not celebrate the folly of self-congratulating, self-inflated misfits insulating themselves from honest judgment.
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“Those idlers who spend their hours making up poetry by no means ever discover reality, instead they discover the hypnosis of self-flattery.”
idlers, yes, but there are others. There’s poetry and there’s Poetry. Song of Solomon, Blake, and a few others not written by idlers (also only my opinion). But for the most part yes, exceptions only prove the rule. But absolutes only further muddy the already stagnant pool.
We abuse and use the filter of our center of gravity at the same time.
Second ‘Submit Comment’ Attempt
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Hello Graduates ~
You wrote ~
“Why should we ex-members demand integrity from current members, demand they leave the emotional atmosphere ongoing on the outskirts of Burton’s influence in protest of the selfish corruption, when we do not have the organizational ability to provide an alternative organization to work with ideas of the F