Welcome to the Fellowship of Friends Discussion.
For previous parts of the discussion please visit AnimamRecro or the Main page of this blog.
For sites in Russian and Italian, click http://fofway.narod.ru/ and http://laliberastrada.blogspot.com/ respectively.
If you decide to interact as well as digest, feel free to start here.
And as always, enjoy and have fun.
Might be nice to start the new page with a repost of the poem that Skeptical Optimist posted a couple of days ago…..
—-Thanks again Joel——-
love after love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
- Derek Walcott
Reposted for convenience:
Re: superficiality of friendships within FOF
Has anyone else out there explored the concept of “twinship transference”?
almost physical antigen/antibody lock that attracted and kept one in the dysfamily
Right on the money, Old FOF. In my opinion there is a highly specific relationship between the exact form of the narcissistic vulnerability exhibited by the recruit and the particular narcissism of the organization-as-founder-writ-large. My working hypothesis is that particular cults attract, I would even say “target,” people with very specific psychological abilities and vulnerabilities
Take the “extended handshake refused” recruitment device. Its ideological purpose was to “deliver a shock to the false personality of the prospective student.” Its practical purpose was to unnerve and cause social discomfort. If the seed of the ideology implanted by prior reading led the recruit to recognize the situation as an emotional test, rather than just offensive social behavior, the recruit was exploitable because he or she had the internal resources to rationalize bad behavior utilizing ideology. The organization wants people who are adept at this. It also screens out people who are so dependent on others’ validation that they became basket cases and fled for the door when their handshakes were refused.
RE-PETITION.
————————————————————————–
Am I to assume that those who care enought to comment are satisfied with Across the Rivers latest version, around 475 on previous page?
And if so shall I go ahead and put it up on the gopetition web site ready for e-signatures?
Across the river you mentioned another possible web site, what was it?
Once its up and we have collected some e-signatures I can begin sending e-versions of it around.
We can also download and print a hard copy on paper to send to some designated destinations.
We dont need thousands of signatures to begin with as its seemingly common to send them out as a work in progress. ie. we say that we are still collecting.
But a few hundred might be a reasonable amount to include to start with.
All the best to all. jack.
2 veronicapoe
Glad you reposted that. I have been thinking about it.
I have no idea how ‘intentional’ the “targeting” that you spoke of was, but I do remember doing almost exactly as you described at the bottom.
” he or she had the internal resources to rationalize bad behavior utilizing ideology.”
I am not sure if I thought of things being ‘bad behavior’. but I certainly took them as a ‘test’, and justified them accordingly. We can think we are acting from ‘higher’ parts of ourselves while being duped because of programs we already had running on an unconscious level.
3 jack
Final product looked fine to me.
Just to make sure – if I already emailed my name to you, there is nothing else need be done for now? Yes?
Re: intentional targeting of suitable potential members
I have posted this story months ago, but am reminded of it again. As a new student, I was talking with an older student who was saying that we are driving people away by telling them that humanity is asleep and mechanical, and only a few can wake up.
I responded by saying that, when I heard that at my prospective student meeting, I immediately identified with “us in here” rather than the hopeless masses “out there”, and I joined. I surmised that everything is just perfect because the school attracts the right people.
I wonder if there was much intention and conscious choice behind all what we now recognize as manipulative techniques. I dare say that it was “mechanical” :) Action and reaction, complementary psychologies spotting each other from miles away, subconsciously acting and reacting in the only way possible for them. If this play was ever observed and perceived, it was automatically marveled at as an example of the mysterious and esoteric inner workings of a divinely guided school. And then it could be developed further, because it had already been explained as being “in line with the aims of Influence C”.
Deleted. — ES
551 Brucelevy
Hi Bruce. Great story about your phone message. Kind of incredible that the person thought he could suddenly reach out and be your friend after so many years of being Burton’s #1 henchman. From what I heard, several other “dear friends” no longer in FOF received similar calls. Also, as you and I both noted, the same FOF member piled up a couple of hundred “friends” on the GF site within a week or 2 of joining. Hmmmm???
The story I heard from some recently liberated friends seems to explain the bizarre series of calls made by this fellow.
While not technically employed by FOF, this member has a business that contracts with FOF basically doing projects of personal interest to Robert Burton (sort of a Halliburton or Blackwater kind of deal). It was called to Burton’s attention how much was being paid by FOF to this fellow’s business and he was notified that the gravy train was going to be cut off. Apparently the thought of this income disappearing caused panic to set in and a series of calls to old “dear friends” ensued.
From what I heard, the “problem” was fixed, the trough was restored and said person is still a FOF member feeding comfortably once again. Very sad, really.
Do I sound a little harsh in my judgment of old C.? Well, I have to agree with Bruce on this one. He is probably not to be trusted, as least as long his is still a card-carrying member of the Fellowship of Friends.
2 Veronicapoe
My working hypothesis is that particular cults attract, I would even say “target,” people with very specific psychological abilities and vulnerabilities
This is related to the “family of origin” thread and the Object Relations ideas that were mentioned on the previous page. In fact, I believe this is perhaps the most powerful topic we, as former participants, can engage in regarding the FoF. Even trying to understand these issues can shed considerable light on our psychology and give much insight even beyond joining the cult.
Having been there from early on, having “recruited” a few hundred people and watching RB over the years I would have to agree with the assessment of Margaret Singer, that being a cult leader is pretty much a “folk art” that these people learn, largely by imitation and trial-and-error along the way. Obviously, RB has no particular psychological insight (and barely understood the moribund, pre-modern “psychology” of Gurdjieff).
My sense is that most of us “self-selected” ourselves for membership, (see Traveler #6 above) and the reasons why we might have done so are heavily influenced by the playing out of dynamics from early childhood.
Keep in mind also that the initial “recruitment” usually conforms to pretty standard cult dynamics: people unsure of their direction, or having suffered a personal shock or setback, or in the midst of an “identity” crisis, are ripe for the picking. Even Margaret Singer told me that she did not consider herself immune to recruitment.
In addition to other resources already mentioned, I’ve found a lot of material for helping to understand (and address) my own personal problems around these issues in the enneagram study because it addresses the original “strategies” we adopt in very early childhood to ensure that we survive, and that we hope will bring us love.
JoelF
Hi james
thanks for starting the page with a poem.
Correct, if you have allready sent me your info then I will add it for you.
But if others can wait untill its up on the web site shortly it would save me a little effort.
Veramente,
even when it is put up on the web site then it wont be carved in stone, and if there is something that someone is burning to add then we can.
For me personally as long as it contains the most cogent points then its all good.
Thanks for going ahead and making alterations rather than just suggesting them.
It seems that it is generally acceptable to most, if the lack of complaint is anything to go by, or maybe people are just too busy on a wednesday….
I’ll let it brew overnight and put whatever is left tomorrow evening onto the web site.
the best to all, jack.
re: petition, well done. just need to correct the spellings of “Buddha” (not “ah”) and “fraudulent” (ends with “ent” instead of an “ant”).
also, there’s a “been been” in the final paragraph.
26/564 Joseph G
Thanks for your thoughtful post. Certainly kindness and generosity don’t go out of style. Maybe I should have mentioned that this scrap of dialogue came at the end of a conversation that had gone on for over an hour and during which I tried to offer as much help as seemed prudent, and continued to offer that help in a subsequent conversation.
Bruce is dead on target when he pegged this individual’s locutions as particularly creepy, but it didn’t bother me much, knowing some of the history.
At the moment it took place, following the whole conversation that had gone before, I actually felt this response was the kindest I had available. Maybe some people coming out of the group after all this time need help, surely, but they might not profit in any way from me continuing to promote the spectacular phoniness that took place in the group.
Sitting here “smiling and nodding”,
JoelF
2 Veronicapoe
Interesting.
My family background was pretty normal by UK standards, in other words supportive but not very emotionally demonstrative. I was deeply impressed by what appeared to be the emotional warmth and openness of Fellowship students when I joined. After a while the London centre started to feel like my real family.
Initially there were a number of those “emotional tests” to get through. I learned to -
look people sincerely in the eyes
embrace (and kiss!) both men and women
offer only positive comments to fellow students (a big contrast to the humorously abusive swearing and mockery I was used to!)
receive compliments without responding in a self-deprecatory way
listen without interrupting
and so on…
Also very attractive was the mysteriousness and exclusivity of the teaching at that time.
Like Traveller and Joel, I’m of the opinion that these very effective recruiting and brainwashing techniques were not consciously thought out by anyone in a sinister, intentional way. It just kinda happened and it just kinda worked. Burton was certainly not sophisticated enough to think this through, although he seems to have had an intuitive knack for it.
Number 8 is newly moderated.
8 Richard M.
The “resolution” makes it doubly sad.
enabling on parade
Skeptical Optimist,
Thanks. That’s more or less what I suspected.
Right or wrong, I have tried to offer a perspective that’s closer to how people might feel who are leaving today. Otherwise the discussion tends to be mostly about a group that existed in the 70s, 80s and 90s but no longer really exists today. If being open about my own thoughts and attitudes reveals something that is still a bit distorted (i.e. cult-think) in myself, all the better. And I trust that you and others on the blog will not hesitate to help me in this regard when and if I need it.
Best, Joseph G
8 Richard M.
At a certain time I was still living at the boy cottage. I was making arrangements to either find another place or move back into a tent. When RB returned to the “raunch” I would go to the lodge, have a couple shots of tequila, find a spot under a table and disappear for the night.
The last thing of note I remember this person saying to me was “If you’re going to stay at the Blake cottage you owe it to your teacher to be there when he was.
This doesn’t need translation.
Jack,
It’s Christmas and the petition is bad news anywhere in no matter what rapping. Do you really think now is a good time to send it when people are trying to finish the year’s octaves or maybe wait till mid January when they are more receptive to a years commitment?
Boundaries.
………. and fled for the door when their handshakes were refused.
That must be what is happening on the blog too but after all this is the public square and there are no doors to fly across so one might as well stick around and hide one’s hand in one’s pocket and pretend one wasn’t trying to shake any body’s hand!
Instead one can take out one’s Fellowship of Friends manual and open the page “On the mutilation of the King of Hearts and the whole center while you’re at it” and act like a super human above the emotions of the lower self or the student’s addendum on the infrahuman ability to extirpate your emotions.
Maybe those are too advanced and all you need is the hierarchical manual that says you can run over any boundary as long as you belong to the elite and no matter how many connections you try to establish they will be mutilated by the elite on matter what excuse: It’s just that your hair is too red, or your shoes too yellow, anything will do to ban what you’re saying because you’re saying it, although they’ll pick it up around the corner and model it out to the other’s applause.
But definitely don’t take the manual of communities in essence in which you don’t have to prove you have anything to prove because they are healthy enough to consider you worthwhile even if you’ve nothing more worthwhile than your self.
You can always go and get some sweet popcorn and wait till everybody is gone to stand in the podium and talk to the stars. Relish at the cold air and remember that you’ve still got a warm jacket of your own. If loneliness is the price you’ve got to pay to be, then welcome loneliness and be. No one has yet bought the public square and put a private sign, “keep out of these boundaries”.
9/JoelF
My sense is that most of us “self-selected” ourselves for membership, (see Traveler #6 above) and the reasons why we might have done so are heavily influenced by the playing out of dynamics from early childhood.
I am trying to understand the relationship between the experience of parentally inflicted shame/humiliation, which one fled, and the submission to the experience of shame/humiliation in the Fellowship, which one ostensibly bore “willingly,” for ideological reasons.
For example, sassing back at the infliction of humiliating parental “observations,” vs. “passively” “accepting photographs” and “being present” to the “negative emotions” of the shame/humiliation variety.
Or being “defined,” humiliatingly so, by parental pigeonholing, against which one rebelled, vs. being categorized by “centre of gravity,” “body type,” chief feature,” “alchemy,” etc., all in the context of trying to find apposite self-definition.
Jack, Elena
I did not wait when it was time for me to leave the Fellowship of Friends (losing my job in the process, just before Christmas) What are we waiting for?!!; send the petition now!
20 wildz – (Jack, Elena)
I agree with wildz. There may be reasons and forces beyond our understanding that have caused the petition to come into being at this particular time; along with, of course, a lot of effort by a few of those who have written and refined it and researched what to do with it.
I say send it!
I agree. The best time is now. The window is now open but may be closed later. Go for it!
wulswu
MOO!
WILDZ:
Yes, please let’s get moving with the petition, printing it and sending to the IRS, media, etc. Thanks, Jack, for making this effort to focus on a specific and possibly effective action. And again, thanks.
Re: “friendship” and “the sea of shallow emotionality”
Perhaps something to look at would be the difference between the concepts of “friendship” and “comradeship”. I believe in the FoF we often used the terms “friend” and “friendship” for that which would normally be described as “comrade” and “comradeship”.
Two or more people are comrades when they are joined by a common aim or common enemy, which obliterates any differences between them, or rather renders these differences insignificant and irrelevant in the face of the greater purpose. Comradeship is a feeling of affinity for those with whom we are “in it together”, we feel as a single entity, a part of a greater whole, and it gives our life some meaning. We share the same mannerisms, same phrases, we can fall back on “emitting familiar tapes” which guarantee positive reception and a feeling of connection.
Two people are friends when they honor each other’s individuality and uniqueness. Friends share an intellectual and emotional affinity, they respect each other, know about each other, feel trust and warmth for one another. They rely on each other for help and support, are able to be honest with each other. They are affectionate with each other in a non-formulaic way. They care what happens to the other, and feel inspired to share their lives with one another.
While friendships take commitment, time and energy to cultivate and nurture, comradeship is more easily in our reach. It is common to totalitarian regimes going back millennia to perceive real friendship as threat, as competition, because friends have a strength to remain loyal to each other rather than to the state/regime/ideology. Instead, totalitarian societies encourage comradeship. And Robert Burton says, “Eternal friendships are part of the greatness of schools.”
No wonder that we, thrown off of the merry-go-round of the Fellowship of Friends, come spinning into the real world in various degrees of confusion about what friendship means. As the common aim recedes, comrades return to being strangers who lack friendship and have little in common. No wonder that some, after 30 years of being comrades, and under the threat of losing the binding structure, desperately start grasping to maintain a shallow sea of warm yet noble-sounding fuzziness, possibly the only emotional connection they have known, with the only means familiar to them. They may not be aware of possibilities lying outside of this uniform primordial soup, because it is the model they had absorbed for so long. We have been emotionally deprived with 2,000 of our closest “friends”.
There is awkwardness, and second-guessing – what do people who barely knew you “inside” mean when they call you “friend” and suddenly want to spend time with you? How quickly can you consider someone a friend? Are you going to be hugging all these people like you used to? Am I feeling genuine affection and respect for someone, or am I just grasping once again for anyone who shows themselves willing to be my friend? Where are my boundaries?
You cannot go from being a comrade to being a friend overnight. As a comrade, you are one of the pack, the flock, the hive – but to be a friend, you have to be someone first. An individual. Who are you, when no longer required to conform to anything? You are left to yourself to discover what is real.
Traveler: It’s pretty complicated what happens emotionally to one in the Fellowship and you have shed some light on another huge area of weakness within the organization. Thank you!
Send it NOW!
FBI
https://tips.fbi.gov/
IRS
http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=106778,00.html
INS
http://www.uscitizenship.info/uscitizenship-contact.htm
NAR (National Alert Registry)
http://www.nationalalertregistry.com/contact.html
Yuba City Police Department
http://www.ycpd.org
Marysville Police Department
http://www.marysville.ca.us/police.asp?did=4
Sacramento Police Department
http://www.sacpd.org/crime_prev/rape_prev.asp
Department of Industrial Relations
http://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/MinimumWageHistory.htm
Appeal Democrat
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/sections/contact_us/
Chico News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/home/
The Orion
http://www.theorion.com/contactus/
KHSL Chico-redding
http://www.khsltv.com/
KNVN Chico-redding
http://www.tellusmore.net/index.php?change=1
Capitol Weekly
http://www.capitolweekly.net/contact/
Sacramento News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/ViewPage?oid=39080
KCRA 3
http://www.kcra.com/index.html
FOX40 News
http://fox40.trb.com/about/site/feedback/?track=topnav
ABC7 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=stationinfo&id=3288796
NBC11 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://www.nbc11.com/index.html
KABC-TV Los Angeles
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/front
Congressman
Tom Lantos
http://www.lantos.house.gov/
United States Senator from California
Barbara Boxer
http://boxer.senate.gov
Dianne Feinstein
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public
The White House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Criminal Law Center
1,000,000 lawyers in your area
http://criminal.findlaw.com
re: petition
We should probably give ourselves some time to collect signatures before we send it out. Let’s have it online through the holidays and send it out at the first of the year. When we see friends and family at Christmas we can encourage them to sign on.
I thought the petition will be also on line so we can sign it anytime and forward to anyone. With this format even people who were never in the fof but understand the issue could sign it as well.
Maybe this petition is very different from what I am imagining, I am sure Jack will let us know.
I do not see why we have to delay. Once it starts it can take a momentum of its own. Maybe I am underestimating the Holidays, but would like to go forward.
If the Fellowship of Friends is like an organism and has some of the same attributes that the humans have that make up the organization, for instance, the need, and/or benefit, of ‘photography.’ Then delivering a ‘photography’ to the Fellowship of Friends could be considered a most precious gift. And, what better and more valuable gift can one think/feel of giving to an entity in need at this most appropriate time of year? Also, based on the Fellowship of Friends ideology: a photograph is a gift, friction is a gift and Influence C is a gift. The blog has been such a device. The petition will also be.
As with delivering a photograph, it is best delivered from a third force, neutral, place, without any particular expectation as to the result that will ensue. Just place it out there and put the rest in to the doings of Higher Forces.
Holidays shmolidays. Let’s roll.
Fire Horses
To wait for what? For more abuse and suffering?
Thanks Jack for your work.
Send it NOW.
“One can use the past to change the future” R.Burton
Concerning what help we can be to others: The correct triad, if you still use that idea, is for the person needing help to ask for it. Then it is best to act from a third force, if you still use that idea, place. Do not believe any false humility in the requester; proceed with caution.
Nevertheless, I humbly submit this for consideration:
…all mankind is of one author,
and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated;
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated
by age,
some by sickness,
some by war,
some by justice;
but God’s hand is in every translation,
and His hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book
shall lie open to one another…
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor
of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am
involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
Possibly relating to the petition, that same Donne passage also contains this:
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness
if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none
coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.
Also, there is this old time favourite in the Fellowship:
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly,
and because there are few who can endure frank criticism
without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us
perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake
to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
Michel de Montaigne
I don’t necessarily suggest you believe any of these words or meanings, but perhaps there those that might like to ‘try to be the words,’ and see what happens.
Thanks for reading.
And, thanks to the Sheik for his steadfast efforts in maintaining our venue here.
Deleted. — ES
Elena.
Its my Christmas gift! to all of my friends. ps can you think of an anagram for Santa?
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Veronicapoe.
Self selection… yes I also think the stipulation of men having to wear jacket and tie and women skirt or dress was a pretty effective method of filtering the susceptible people.
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Re friendship . at times its like when you have to take care of a child or a pet, in that sometimes you have to take action to prevent them from hurting themselves by for example chasing a ball out onto the road.
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Xeeena. 28
Seems like a good idea. But once its up people can sign it at anytime.
…………………………………………………………………………………
Veramente.
Yes it will be online and anyone can sign it at anytime there may be complete strangers who decide to, as i did when visiting the petitiononline site and saw some interesting causes. good you incorporated joseph’s refinements.
————————————————————————–Across the River. the following is exerpted from the gopetition faq page.
“Can I edit my petition?
Yes. However, it’s important that the actual petition text does not change substantially (for legal reasons). Your edit request will be reviewed so that it complies with our terms and conditions. Note there are also many options on your petition that can be changed at any time during your campaign using your control panel. If you own a petition and want to edit your petition, some of your petition settings, or you want to close your petition, please login by clicking the login button in the top right hand corner of this page, then enter your email address and chosen password to access your petition control panel.” end quote.
In relation to it staying in place until there is sufficient mass…Its a choice we take, we either send it once it has collected a symbolic amount such as a few hundred letting the recipients know that its just started and then resend it when it becomes a more significant amount, or wait til there are many before sending.
Yes signatures can be gathered worldwide and there are many other possibilities of linking to other sites. Gopetition also has some interesting offers of advertising the petition on highly visited sites etc.
I think the last should be first ….not in any esoteric way …on the petition, the last statement should be first as an introduction or prefaratory statement about who we are and why we are petitioning. so it would start “We sign this statement…..” or words to that effect.
Can I make you a deal? if you wont be afraid then I wont.
The idea of prosecution does not frighten me because there are no lies involved in it. Another reason is that one cant get blood from a stone …I am the stone in this case.
I do however have reservations about some of the ” Terms” of the gopetition web site such as them being able to make edits, close the petition etc . I can just imagine the Fellowship trying to scare them off.
Try to take a look at their terms if you get time, perhaps we need a lawyer to look at those.
All the best to all.
later Jack.
Jack,
It’s a question of timing, I won’t stop signing because you chose this time and will be as exited to get it going as any one of you. It just won’t surprise me if it has to be repeated next year to have any effect. Or if the person receiving the petition thinks: “if two hundred of you haven’t been able to get it together to sue this monster out of his shoes, what do you expect me to do on the 12th of december? Get a headache for next year?”
Isn’t there one of those that says, “Timing is everything”?
Jack, for Santa we could say: “Would you solve for us what we can’t solve for ourselves just like daddy Burton taught us?”
Newly moderated comment: 28.
People with specific knowledge of specific criminal activities or specific instances of private inurement of tax-exempt funds should report their knowledge to the appropriate law enforcement authority or investigative agency.
It is appropriate for law enforcement authorities to ignore petitions based on generalized allegations of wrongdoing. It is appropriate for law enforcement authorities to investigate first-hand information of illegal activities.
19 Veronicapoe. I am trying to understand the relationship between the experience of parentally inflicted shame/humiliation, which one fled, and the submission to the experience of shame/humiliation in the Fellowship, which one ostensibly bore “willingly,” for ideological reasons.
The repetition of patterns of authority established in the family, school, military and government are established in the child through the authority figure of the father and the mother’s image which in accepting the submissive role, teaches the children to imitate and reproduce it. Throughout life this submission is reinforced through the Teacher in Schools, the Captain and General, in the military and the Government in society.
Having understood some of this before joining the Fellowship of Friends, what attracted me to Robert Burton’s teaching was the idea of self remembering. I thought it would strengthen the individuals to the point that we would be able to assume responsibility for our community and our inner development directly as mature individuals instead of expecting or allowing an authority figure to have to take responsibility for our selves.
The apparent lack of established external and obvious hierarchy within the Fellowship of Friends seemed to point to a community without specified boundaries in terms of role which invited to an open participation. In the long run it proved more hierarchical and totalitarian than any other community I’ve known. The lack of uniforms to define the roles and secure them promoted those in the inner circle to make tight and invisible connections in which only they participated, always using Robert Burton as the excuse they were trying to protect and emulate.
In regular society the role of the inner circle in the Fellowship of Friends is assumed more strongly by the middle class who best adapts to the authoritarian structure. The upper class doesn’t need the uniform and the lower class doesn’t have access to it and the human demands of its condition don’t allow it to live on pose so it tends to develop more authentically human relationships.
In as much as Robert Burton’s teaching was directed towards a mature individual willing to assume responsibility for himself and his community it filled very many of my expectations or search for development. All that is presented in theory and probably still holds a great many people who have not been able to understand exactly how the Fellowship of Friends not only fails to meet this aims but deeply reinforces the patterns of unquestioned submission to authority in which the individual becomes weaker and weaker and gives up his will to idolatry.
The question of: At what point does an individual working on himself develop enough trust in his own truth and understanding of the world, to hold it at no matter what personal cost above that of any other authority? Or: At what point does an individual succumb to idolatry and gives up his/her search for understanding and trust of his/her own truth for the truth of a figure of authority?
The mastery of Robert Burton’s teaching and Girard Haven’s support to it, is that it artfully presented the first option as the aim of each individual in the THEORY but even more masterfully conditioned the students to practice the second option by taking away all the functions of responsibility from students and rooting them in Robert Burton’s unlimited authority. The God, the divine man number eight, the unquestionable, replaced not only any human reference to reason but imposed a divine will that was not to be tackled with.
All this can only be understood in as much as one is willing to enhance the life of an individual in connection to the life of the community or society. Like any totalitarian society, in theory, the Fellowship of Friends functioned under the aim of the development of an Arc for the good of humanity in which the individual was to sacrifice himself for the good of the many. In practice, the Fellowship of Friends functioned for the benefit of Robert Burton’s life-style. The level of social negligence that the students of the Fellowship of Friends have reached is not far from the lack of human values in any other totalitarian society.
Veronicapoe, in terms of your question, the structures are there in all of us to repeat, but we also have the option of developing enough inner freedom to not go with the current and continue to bend the human will.
Traveller 26
Great post. Thanks!
“As the common aim recedes, comrades return to being strangers who lack friendship and have little in common.”
This is a genuinely perturbing process, but definitely necessary. There is a movement from having hundreds of comrades to having a small number of friends.
“You cannot go from being a comrade to being a friend overnight. As a comrade, you are one of the pack, the flock, the hive – but to be a friend, you have to be someone first.”
This means rediscovering who you are outside of the context of the Fellowship. From the highest angle I would say that I am nothing. But from a more earthbound perspective “I” genuinely enjoy life in its many wonderful aspects – life just as it is without any particular belief system. Slowly some old friendships redefine themselves with no reference to the Fellowship, and new ones develop.
Well, well, well, I thought the wall between church and state was higher in the old U.S. of A. Appears some Senate-critters are investigating the “salaries and perks” of high-paid Christian ministers.
Money quote: “IRS rules that bar excessive personal gain through tax-exempt work”
Maybe you all have a case.
AP Newsbreak: 2nd preacher spurns Senate
AP Newsbreak: Hinn Is 2nd Preacher Refusing to Answer Questions in Senate Investigation
ERIC GORSKI and RACHEL ZOLL
AP News
Dec 06, 2007 09:41 EST
A second Christian ministry is refusing to meet a Thursday deadline for a Senate investigation into preachers’ salaries, perks and travel, The Associated Press has learned.
Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church Inc. and Benny Hinn Ministries of Grapevine, Texas, said in a statement to the AP on Thursday that he will not respond to the inquiry until next year.
A lawyer for preacher Creflo Dollar of World Changers Church International in suburban Atlanta had said Wednesday that the investigation should be referred to the IRS or the Senate panel should get a subpoena for the documents.
Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent lengthy questionnaires a month ago to six ministries so he could review whether pastors were complying with IRS rules that bar excessive personal gain through tax-exempt work.
Only Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo., has provided the detailed financial and board oversight information sought by Grassley.
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a Wednesday conference call with reporters that he “can’t be impressed” by the argument from some of the preachers that the IRS already monitors them, because his past inquiries have unearthed information that the IRS never knew.
All the ministries preach a form of Word of Faith theology, known as prosperity gospel, which teaches that God wants believers to reap material rewards for their faith.
Grassley has insisted his investigation “has nothing to do with church doctrine” and is strictly concerned with making sure nonprofit groups are following the law.
However, several religious liberty watchdogs have said the scope of the inquiry is too broad and warned that it could be unconstitutional.
Ronn Torossian, a spokesman for Hinn, said in a statement that the preacher “plans to facilitate a response to Senator Grassley’s inquiry by Jan. 30th, and likewise notified the senator’s office of this intent on Nov. 20th.” Torossian said Hinn is “in full compliance with government agencies duly authorized to oversee churches and charitable organizations.”
Torossian would not elaborate.
The other televangelists have been noncommittal in their public comments, but some have voiced strong objections that echo Dollar’s.
The other ministries targeted in the inquiry are Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries of Lithonia, Ga.; Randy and Paula White of Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries of Tampa, Fla.; and Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Texas.
Refusals to turn over the information could lead to a court fight, giving a judge the authority to decide whether the committee is entitled to all the information it requested.
“Hopefully these organizations will work with us,” said Grassley, who has been investigating nonprofit compliance with IRS rules for years. “I don’t think I’ve had to issue a single subpoena in the five years that I’ve been trying to get cooperation from organizations.”
Source: AP News
Elena 39
Im sure someone will get the santa anagram, its just a joke.
Other sayings are “theres no time like the present”, and “dont put off till tomorrow what you can do today,” Also it will just be on the web site collecting signatures for a while anyway.
—————————————————————————–
41 Veronicapoe.
oooh your so Mr spock-like sometimes!
But its true and therefore I am led to wonder if there is any means whereby we can inform some of the receiving parties of the willingness of particular people (perhaps designated by including their full address and a statement to that effect) to be contacted for the purpose of obtaining further information.
jeez what a can of worms….
all the best to all. jack.
The $200 are still offered but I don’t think the cult attorney is a good choice. For him it would be a conflict of interest and even if he would review it,I wouldn’t like to see the petition 10 times circumcised.
As far as I know,he still “in” and most of his clients are current members. He worked with AG for many years and we don’t know for sure what is the deal between them now.
There are thousands of lawyers who would love to take $200 for 30 minutes work.
#46 X-Ray:
I believe the “cult” lawyer that jack referred to is Ford Greene. He is not a student and never was. His address has been given several times. He is in the bay area and would probably be a very good choice to review the petition.
42 Elena
“The level of social negligence that the students of the Fellowship of Friends have reached is not far from the lack of human values in any other totalitarian society.”
————————————————–
so many good things are written in this blog. The above quote is right on!
It’s been many many months since I took a look at the blog. But hearing that more and more people are leaving FOF I thought I’d look again to see if any more friends have emerged. Now I read about law suits and petitions and various forms of assault on FOF.
You damage yourselves dear friends. YOU DAMAGE ONLY YOURSELVES.
How about a day of silence on this BLOG where we regroup , rethink and stop whipping one another’s self righteous tops?
Many of you left upwards of 2 decades ago….don’t you have other ways to spend your time now?? That seems somehow really, really sad.
Goodbye … Move on….
Veronica Poe, Joel, Traveller and others.
I have pondered about me and others getting into a cult and if it was part of a “deficient” up bringing. I am not familiar with this transference theory at all. So forgive me.
I have a few questions:
Where we looking for a cult?
Is not life a cult?
Especially watching TV we are influenced all the time?
Who had an ideal upbringing?
Yes many of the fof and exers where not so self assured? So what?
Where we not all looking for love? A community, a sense for existence?
Is not that a path which is?
I just saw the movie : Gods grew tired of us. This movie was such an incredible understanding that there is nothing wrong with having friends a family a social network. This is part what seems to me of being a human being. HUMAN BEING.
Still living the question…..
#49 Another Name: When I answered back there somewhere about this idea, I certainly wasn’t thinking my upbringing was ‘deficient’. However, there was a certain breakdown of ideals that happened over time that led me to question my parents and in turn myself.
I think the questions you have are quite valid and I agree with you. However, I think that there was a combination of idealism and naivete that many students who joined the Fellowship had allowing them to ignore the inconsistencies and/or red flags that were there all the time. I remember questioning some students’ attitudes and actions right from the start but put that out of my mind so I could remain in the Fellowship. And those red flags and inconsistencies remained or became even bigger over time.
When I left those inconsistencies and red flags were huge. So when I left in 1994, I was ready. It had been building all those years. Leaving the Fellowship is like leaving your family behind, but that is the illusion. You don’t leave anythihg behind and you don’t go anywhere. All part of the mind bending we create in ourselves to stay in the Fellowship.
Much love to all, in and out,
Little Suzie trying to Wake up
Hello Everyone!
I have been reading your blogs to educate myself on the FOF. I recently learned that a friend of mine has been a member for a very long time, which is such a tragedy. I am contemplating what to do.
My thoughts on blowing the whistle on Burton- DO IT! The truth will set you free! The more you expose him, his criminal activity, his ill gotten gain etc., the closer you are to (1) Healing yourselves (2) Protecting other wonderful and intelligent people from falling into his hellhole (3) Becoming resposible to your community (4) Just doing the right thing.
Burton needs to be pushed off his little throne. Let me know if I can be of any help.
Re: friendship
Dear Another Name,
I thought your question (27/49) was interesting and would like to try to answer it.
> there is nothing wrong with having friends a family a social network.
> This is part what seems to me of being a human being. HUMAN BEING.
Absolutely. I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that.
Let me speak only for myself, then, to make sure I’m not lying. After leaving FoF, I found myself confused and naive about friendship, never really having had a healthy model to observe. It’s a bit like having to learn to speak a foreign language in adulthood. I grew up in a less than emotionally healthy family in which members had little respect for each other, cooperation was virtually unknown, and there was little permeability towards the outside world. As an adult, I once had the good fortune of staying with another family for a short time. I remember the delight I experienced when one of their friends simply came over one afternoon, sat down at the table, they chatted for a while about nothing in particular, and when she felt it was time to go, she said good bye and left. It was a novel experience for me. No ceremony, no drama. It was clear they just liked each other, and enjoyed each other’s company. Their friendship was not predicated on submitting to a higher will or cause together, on being obligated or feeling allegiance, did not depend on working together to solve some great problem of immense and universal importance.
They just appreciated each other, as human beings, like you say.
About my friends from the FoF. I had 2,000 acquaintances. Or even better, comrades (my post 27/26). I longed to have deeper connections but was also afraid of them. So, having much surface area and little depth felt secure most of the time. I was closer with some of the acquaintances than others, but from my new perspective, it is hard to say that we were really friends. We tried to be friends, but the connection was generally tenuous and easily replaceable. I always felt the cause looming over us and defining our relationship, never being completely honest and open with each other, never discussing certain things because they were unnecessary talk or not in line with “our” aims. After leaving and opening doors to free communication, I can say I became friends with maybe two or three people who had been ‘friends’ inside, who I now feel I still care about on a personal level. But much of what was ‘friendship’ inside has receded into silence. Interestingly, the closest personal connections were made with ex-members who I never knew while we were both ‘inside’.
Here’s what I think happened when everybody started to leave the Fellowship:
Before, in the FoF, we were used to being comrades and spending time with people “who shared our aim to awaken” to make ourselves collectively stronger. We were used to “instant friendships” and easy alliances. Comradeship is made of common causes and common enemies. So suddenly we were out of the FoF, and poised to walk down that very same road again, to develop a new comradeship with recent “escapees” and gain “strength in numbers”. We were suddenly friends (read: comrades) with everyone who had shared our traumatic experience.
This is not to say that I think we should not associate. I certainly believe that friendship can grow among ex-members, we just have to be more intelligent about it than the first time. Go and discover inside ourselves what it is we want, and where our needs are coming from. Not approach people with expectations, not try to win their allegiance in emotional bartering. Not feel an obligation to be everybody’s friend. So, I’m still very much discovering what ‘friendship’ means. Sometimes I feel I’m ripe to go straight back to class Self-Help 101 :)
Another Name:
> Were we looking for a cult?
> Is not life a cult?
> Especially watching TV we are influenced all the time?
> Who had an ideal upbringing?
> Yes many of the fof and exers were not so self assured? So what?
There’s a saying: “90% of families are dysfunctional. The rest are in denial.”
Of course there is no such thing as ideal upbringing. None of this is about blaming our upbringing. It is something that happened, our parents did the best they knew how to do. Actually there are people who have posited that families are similar to cults. But you know, relativity and all that, some families are just more thoroughly messed up than others.
One theory that I like is that society as a whole is becoming more intelligent – through all of us as individuals who learn better from our own traumatic experiences in what were considered fairly “normal families” of the past decades.
There’s nothing wrong with anything. This is just the way things are. At one point in humanity’s history, slavery was pervasive and normal. Nowadays many people’s mentalities are subject to “cult” influences in the form of religion, politics, brands, gangs, any other exclusionary massive allegiances. So what? It’s up to individuals if we want to learn from past mistakes and grow up through our own realizations. Or not.
All,
Thank you for the current discussion line. Of course, when I joined the fof I didn’t see it as a cult(although many of my ‘life’ friends at the time certainly did!).
I do remember thinking at the time of joining that the ideology of being segregated from the ’sleeping mass of humanity’ was attractive to me and somehow gave me a feeling of importance, a feeling that I liked.
RB used to refer to life as ‘biological existence’, and I can often remember him using this designation to point out some observed absurdity or other phenomenon.
After awhile, I began to wonder who exactly was ‘asleep’,
and why was I any different than any of those ‘life’ acquaintances I had.
Since becoming an ‘ex’, I’ve been exploring for myself what attracted me to the fof initially. This questioning process isn’t easy, however, I’ve found that when the answers come they point to what seems to be some definite indicators of who and what I am.
On another note, where do I sign!
Veramente,
Your voice is much clearer lately, it is a pleasure to see you expressing your self. I much enjoyed your longer post before this one also.
Hi Traveller,
Thank you for your paused tone and thoughtful angles.
I think the question for me is not so much about friendship which is a different note of its own but of citizenship. It is about being able to go and get a cup of coffee in a restaurant and being served well because the person serving not only knows how to do his job but knows how to serve decently. That is love not in the sense of friendship although there is always the potential for that, but in the sense that the server is considerate enough to be there for the person he is serving. This is very common in the essence expression of almost all cultures and it is becoming more and more rare in most of them. Becoming “professional” means that you attend people with certain severity so that they don’t waste your time but very professionally so that they have nothing to complain about. This “professional emotionality” was what the Fellowship of Friends made “masters” of its students.
I don’t think the idea is that people become friends out of magic but that they develop enough respect for each other to listen and discuss without easily discarding each other because of their own imaginary limitations. If they can do that I don’t see how they could not develop friendship, for friendship grows out of decent interchanges between people, who in the end care much more for each other than they ever even suspected.
I have never seen that happen amongst “educated” people. I thought it was possible in the Fellowship of Friends but it became very clear why and how it wasn’t. Educated people have grown so much false personality that they relate only to specific paradigms and have not been able to overcome the “programming” or “indoctrination” to relate to each other simply as human beings, simply as divine beings. This I think happens individually through work on one’s self but I also think it can happen socially in life if we understand the difficulty. That is what I understand by the Fourth Way. People in essence seem to treat each other beautifully because they have not lost integrity within themselves. They have not been educated to look at each other through the lens of class, nationality or education. “Educated” people seem to need to recognize the divine within them before they can go forward into an “upgraded” understanding of their “humanity”.
The difficulty with cults like the Fellowship of Friends, is that they seem to have fallen into the void of the “divinity without life” deepening the misunderstanding of the human and decorating life with presumptuous rituals without meaning. Alchemy in the Fellowship of Friends is the utmost expression of its superficiality. It fills life with insignificancies.
Finding meaning in everyday life, in each interaction with another person and letting go of anything that keeps one from appreciating that person as a human being is the meaning that social hierarchies have stolen from one’s sense of integrity. There can be no integrity when one has to put all sorts of conditions to be able to appreciate another human being.
Re: Veronicapoe 27/19 – parentally inflicted vs. FoF inflicted shame/humiliation
I am trying to understand the relationship between the experience of parentally inflicted shame/humiliation, which one fled, and the submission to the experience of shame/humiliation in the Fellowship, which one ostensibly bore “willingly,” for ideological reasons.
Well, it seems to me that we were just unaware of the depth and nature of the problem. We fled parental humiliation as one particular instance of humiliation that was oppressive, but we did not realize that we were continuing to refer back to our parents’ treatment of us to derive a self-image. So we would continue to seek authorities to tell us who we are and regard us as inferior human beings. Behavior that does not necessarily stop when people leave the FoF.
A few words on the issue of friendship and whether it can continue or rather, resume after one leaves the Fellowship of Friends. This is connected to the stories related by Skeptical O. and Bruce L, and commented on by Richard M.
Friend was certainly a term abused in the Fellowship and many members have little clue what it means to experience it. I sense that long-term members are often times looking more for forgiveness than immediate friendship, at least under the more usual terms.
Long-term members get “blamed” for having blinded their eyes and plugged their ears for so long, for far too long. Either they are dumb or they are real weasels, or both. In fact many of them were victims too. Victims of too much trust, too much reloading on trust, forever increasing the dissonance/contradictions. It is a mystery why it takes some just a quick look to recognize the smell and walk away and give us a humoristic account of the encounter (the Sheikh forever famous first post), and why it takes others 30 years to come around and out, dazed. If it were just smarts or ethics, it would be simple, and easy to judge people on their length of stay. One hour: very smart; five years: no so smart; 15 years: plain dumb and a bit of a weasel; 30 years: forget it and please, do not come close to me.
Very few come completely clean from such an experience. It is fine to wish to bring down the Fellowship of Friends and its leader, Robert Burton. It is even better to help rehabilitate its members. And no, you do not to be friends for that, just forgiving.
53 Elena
“Finding meaning in everyday life, in each interaction with another person and letting go of anything that keeps one from appreciating that person as a human being……..”
*********
Beautifully stated Elena. I hope you do not mind I cut your sentence off. While I agree that social hierarchies and the conditions that they create can and do keep one from appreciating others and help to sustain the separation of people from each other, I think it is something even more essential in the nature of our ego that is the true villain. Just wanted to tell you that I appreciate the way you bring things back to “Finding meaning in everyday life”.
ps – an anagram is the resorting of letters in a word to make a new word. Re: that post from Jack about “Santa”. Reshuffle the letters a few times and see what you come up with. It was just something Jack threw in for fun.
Opus 111- Re: #56
Do you believe that there is no hope for someone who has been in FOF for 30 years or more? Forgive me, but I don’t know. I am trying to comprehend all of this. Thanks
47 Vena
#46 X-Ray:
I believe the “cult” lawyer that jack referred to is Ford Greene. He is not a student and never was. His address has been given several times. He is in the bay area and would probably be a very good choice to review the petition.
Sounds good Vena.
Let’s talk to him.
Sounds better now:
http://www.cultnews.com/archives/000596.html
This shark will love the pinky salmon
http://www.rickross.com/advisory.html#greene
Thanks James, I was hoping no one would notice I did not know what anagram meant! Ha, ha!
Santa, hum, satan isn’t a good one, Santana, might be better if one can repeat the letters and dance to Black Magic Woman! God, I still haven’t gone dancing here and there are some great salsa discothekes.
What I do recommend as a gift they can give themselves for Christmas to those who still feel their soul is scattered around the Galleria gardens without finding a proper rose to land in, is to look for their childhood environment so that they can get their essence back into shape.
Medellin, the city where I grew up, has been planted with mango and guava trees in many areas and it is so wonderfully fresh. I walk the street taking pictures of birds and nativity scenes that people put out in their gardens, in parking lots, shops and parks. Little people invade the city.
54/Traveler
Your response is thoughtful and I am thinking about it even as I write.
but we did not realize that we were continuing to refer back to our parents’ treatment of us to derive a self-image.
I think this is true, and a profound insight. Hold that thought because I think we can illuminate it, make it glow, by adding other things to the model.
One piece I want to add to this model when looking at this insight comes from Bowen Family Systems Theory (“BFST”). Anybody out there studied it? It looks at the family as the unit of study. One of the ideas in BFST is something called “emotional cutoff” which refers to a process by which the younger generation individuates out of the family. There is a continuum of emotional cutoff ranging from “growing away” to “tearing away” to “cutoff,” and these terms refer to degrees of ability to be a self in the presence of the parents. Enmeshment of the family unit predicts “cutoff” in the children. ”
There are degrees of cutoff. There is overt cutoff, people who break off contact with family of origin. There is covert cutoff, people who maintain superficial contact but hide who they really are.
Now, back to your thought.
but we did not realize that we were continuing to refer back to our parents’ treatment of us to derive a self-image.
I think the context for this is, at least to some degree, cutoff. In the context of a more gradual differentiation of self, we would have realized it. It is where tearing away or cutoff removes the actors from daily life, leaving intact the psychic structures derived from that particular family, that the vulnerability of unwittingly replacing those parental actors emerges.
Elena –
You spoke of childhood and essence.
Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke
It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely –and why?
We’re still reminded–: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.
And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.
Traveler:
Thanks for your recent very insightful posts about friendship and family.
I know really nothing about this issue but it seems important when I read the peitition. The best attorney to look over the petition and your other concerns, IMHO, is Graham Berry of Santa Monica. He has many years of experience in this arena of cults, has great credibility, is gracious and is not at all expensive. You can locate his contact information on the internet.
41
veronicapoe
38/45
jack
So, maybe the petition can be considered a starting point and it’s enough that it only discloses ‘generalized allegations of wrong-doings’. It serves the purpose of gaining a collective response. It won’t go to authorities until enough signatures give it merit. In the meantime, documentation efforts can be made by those willing/able to provide ‘first-hand information’, and it can be arranged that both pieces are sent together when the time is right. It IS a can of worms but so what? That’s why it’s so encouraging to work together ;-)
jack, I would think the only reason the FOF could manage to get the petition removed is if it included libel. Another good reason to run it by an attorney. It looks like Ford Greene is currently running for office in Marin county, but I have a number and address for his legal practice. I can initiate the contact if he’s still practicing law and see where $200 gets us.
There are a few more changes to the final (?) draft including your suggestion, jack. I can post it anytime here and to you as a word document.
Hope we’re almost there!
Thanks to all for your latest posts on friendship.
I sent an e-mail to Ford Greene a few months ago to explore the possibility of his assistance. I received no reply. Maybe someone else will have better luck.
64 Across the River
“I can initiate the contact ”
Thank you Across the River
I have recently been quite busy, but followed with interest the current discussion. I’m in the process of writing a more lenghty and personal post, but in the meanwhile I’d like to share this little poem I found:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore -from Gitanjali, Offering of Songs
see you soon!
RE-Petition.
Veronicapoe, Across the River.
I came up with the idea that it might be possible for those who are prepared to be contacted in relation to specific “crimes”, to give a contact address or phone number and the specific “crime” they have information about and for those who dont wish to be contacted to just give their E-signature, ie, their name and e-mail address. Those who are, could perhaps preface their e-signature with the words ( prepared to give evidence.) I could set it up in such a fashion in the signing instructions.
How soon can it be run by a lawyer?
It would only take a lawyer as long as it takes to read it to say whether it is libelous, if it was faxed to one they could reply over the phone.
Doesnt any one have a lawyer friend.
=====================================
Across the River.
can you post what you have now so that anyone who is able to can copy it and show it to a lawyer?
Then I can stick it onto the website and the fun can begin.
Just wanted to say that there has been a very encouraging response from other world wide sources about it, which would enhance the number of people signing over a longer term.
Full steam ahead oops watch those rocks there……
====================================
60 Elena
Yep it was Satan, Saint Niklaus, or old Nick.
Some people just dont want to see that as a possible solution, so they cant come up with anything. Christmas was stolen from the earlier pagan and druidic traditions who knew that it was a good idea to have a big party at that time of year. Because of their great astronomical knowledge they were aware that people needed to let of steam. One of the ways they used to do this was to ingest large quantities of the Fly Agaric or Amanita muscaria mushroom ( you know the one that looks like santa when its uprooted, it has black boots white trousers with a little skirt and a red spotted jacket) or to drink the urine of Reindeer who had eaten it, and then the party would begin. The tribe would shake off the effects of all the meteor showers and Equinoxial re-allignments, symbolically die and be reborn………..
Ha ha ha, all the best to all jack
Ps. yo ho ho.
Again, I would suggest that you run it by Graham Berry. Ford Greene does get very busy and does not always respond. Graham Berry has better time managment skills. His e-mail addy is: grahamberry@ca.rr.com.
Hi James,
Thank you for Rilke’s lovely poem. The following stuck with me and I was wondering whether you wanted to expand on it?
“I think it is something even more essential in the nature of our ego that is the true villain”.
For myself, false personality, I mean, the strong ego of false personality, seems essential enough but fortunately it is just a makeup that we can eventually do without.
This is very clear in the system and in any true teaching or psychology but it is very significant that the Fellowship of Friends never even mentioned it and condemned its students to nine lifetimes of horror without a chance of getting rid of the worm inside and told everyone that they were in their fifth to eighth lifetime if they were lucky. With this kind of indoctrination, people lose hope and with the loss of hope, vision. They forget where they are going.
The System is actually a very optimistic, positive practice but the Fellowship of Friends like the Catholic Church made it into the acceptance of martyrdom.
It is very delicate to believe that the worm, or what you call the “true villain,” is true or essential. Being clear that it is false gives one a better grounding to know that sooner or later one can work it out of one’s being because it doesn’t have any real foundations. It is made up of things that have been processed in this lifetime even if they come from other lifetimes and can be worked with, using things that are in this life. Easier to know than to do it, but I keep trying! It would be easier for all of us if we gave each other a chance to be.
JACK!
Are you serious? That’s a great story, I had never made the connection with Santa and the Amanitas who has been a good friend of mine. It taught me to stop smoking when I was about sixteen through flies that could not walk over the bridge of my nose because I did not know how to breath! When I finally breathed as they wanted me to, it was heavenly like!
They also taught me to take mushrooms and drugs seriously, their spirit came through very clear. I tried them only about three times but where ever they grow it is clear to me that that land has a particular sacredness that others don’t have. Thank you for the information, this blog is good for all things!
LAURALUPE,
That was one of your best selections yet, what a beauty!
Thank you for sticking around in this Public Square, it is a sunny but cool day!
jack:
The mushrooms appeal to me. I am going to pass on the reindeer urine.
Just wished to say you should be applauded for all your work. You too, Across the River and x-ray, and anyone else who is doing the actual work on this.
69 Elena
Elena, that is an excellent point that this thing we call ego is neither ‘true’, and maybe only remains a ‘villain’ for as long as we allow it to be one. That in fact those attributes are perhaps exactly what it is not. Thank you for reminding me that it is a delicate situation whenever we speak about what appear to be illusions. Perhaps if we are not careful and trying to be awake when we speak and write, we can give them a ‘life’ and substance they do not deserve. Thanks, -and “sunny but cool” sounds like the makings of a beautiful day.
James. They make a lot of people sick and vomit for the whole trip. They need a cleansing and the whole red top cannot be eaten for it is poisonous.
Off for the weekend to the land of the woman that brought me up with fourteen of her family. Hey! Maybe I can let you be if I find another family to talk to! Good luck to you all. Maybe Unoanimo will be back by next week! I’ll pray for that!
One more thing. On the fifteenth of december I’ll be going to Rio Cedro, the Caribbean Coast. I have room for two more persons if anyone would like to come.
Get a ticket to Cartagena and from Cartagena to Monteria on the same day. I’ll pick you up in the Monteria airport any time on the fifteenth and we’ll go to the Ocean from there.
Bring a thousand dollars, that should be enough if you wish to stay for a month. Let me know by monday if you’re interested at tablut@une.net.co
My daughter Elisa will also be with us.
Deleted. — ES
Just posted the most final draft of the petition but it includes 2 website addresses so is stuck in moderation right now.
Also left a message for Ford Greene this morning re who, what and why and now wait for a response.
When the entire draft clears moderation, anyone else willing and able ;-) can also scare up an attorney to look it over.
Cheers!
Hello,
For anyone who has true valuation for inner work and has a genuine feeling for Divine Presence, I enclose the following link to “Notes on the Decision to Work” from the book “Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution” by Peter Ouspensky.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Du_2SOMox9YJ:www.kesdjan.com/exercises/notes.html+%22notes+on+the+decision+to+work%22+%2B+%22you+must%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
This paragraph was written in the 40’s of the 20th Century. Though Peter Ouspensky was a conscious being he did not have a School and never conducted School work.
The Fellowship of Friends is a conscious School led by Robert Burton. Robert Burton, a conscious being, has deepened and perfected Peter Ouspensky’s teaching and brought it to a place where once can truly reach Divine Presence. Reaching Divine Presence requires great sincerity and persistent practice and it is within one’s reach.
Here is the link to the Fellowship of Friends web site: http://www.beingpresent.org
Elena 69
Thanks Elena. I had wanted to ask you what your life in Colombia was like, and loved your description of December days in Medellin. Florence is very cold and damp right now, but luckily we’ve got a fireplace to cozy up to. Hopefully you’ve got a good internet connection there so you too can enjoy this little video…
“Better Way”
I’m a living sunset
Lightning in my bones
Push me to the edge
But my will is stone
Fools will be fools
And wise will be wise
But I will look this world
Straight in the eyes
What good is a man
Who won’t take a stand
What good is a cynic
With no better plan
Reality is sharp
It cuts at me like a knife
Everyone i know
Is in the fight of their life
Take your face out of your hands
And clear your eyes
You have a right to your dreams
And don’t be denied
I believe in a better way
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TILzJ-_4urk&feature=related
Dear jack, all the best to you! As soon as the petition is ready I have been asked to translate it into Italian…
To all,
A second thought on moderation, and the Shiek’s continuing efforts to keep this venue open, and the possibilities those efforts have afforded us here —– has me remembering the PayPal button!
======================================================
66 Xray
70 James
Thanks.
Regarding attorney review of the petition and libel–the law of defamation has fine points, such as that “public figures,” which Burton may or may not be, have a harder time suing for libel. But in simplest terms, I think any lawyer will say that there are statements in the petition that are potentially libelous (like “Mr. Burton is a sexual predator who has abused his role as a spiritual teacher to prey upon young men for sex,”) but also that truth is a defense to libel. So those promoting the petition should consider whether they believe that evidence (documents, testimony from witnesses, etc.) establishing that the statements in the petition are true can be made available if push comes to shove.
77 Just Another Voice Out Here
Why don’t we just wait until a lawyer or two reads it and skip the suppositions.
78
This is basic defamation law, Bruce. And also, I am a lawyer.
I’d still like to hear a second and/or third opinion. Especially from someone who has specific experience in the cult gig. No offense to you meant, you might be 100% right.. Ford and Ross have experience with exactly this type of thing. They know what cannot be said, and how to say the same thing without liability.
Or should we take your word and throw the fucker out? I would also like to know who you are before you’re given any credence. It seems like common sense. You could be AG for all I know.
I am one who can furnish first hand knowledge of the sexual aspect, as I’m sure there are many others willing to come forward.
80
By all means, second and third opinions are always nice. I think it’d be great to have someone like Ford Greene on board, although the only issue I was addressing was whether the petition might expose someone to liability for libel, which has nothing to do with cults. But I’ll gladly butt out.
No, don’t butt out. We can use all the help and angles we can get to be efficient and get the job done. Several people viewing the same thing can add a wider spectrum in the overview. As the petition itself has shown.
I agree with Just Another Voice Out Here.
81 brucelevy
“I am one who can furnish first hand knowledge of the sexual aspect”
Bruce,
I appreciate your courage and your help.
Thank you.
55 Opus111
“Very few come completely clean from such an experience. It is fine to wish to bring down the Fellowship of Friends and its leader, Robert Burton. It is even better to help rehabilitate its members. And no, you do not to be friends for that, just forgiving.”
For me friendship, understanding and hope IS what I feel I can offer a long-time member who has recently left FOF. The goal to “rehabilitate” another seems to me a hopeless proposition. There really is no going back to how it was before being part of FOF for 20+ years. It’s left to each person to move forward and try come to terms with one’s past when possible. Reading and contributing to this blog is can be useful as well as reconnecting with long-gone, but not forgotten friends. However, don’t have high expectations as to the amount of true friends you still have outside FOF.
Of course, the first step would be to LEAVE FOF ASAP. From my experience, anyone who has been moderately close to Robert Burton during the last 25 years has to have been very aware of his universal lack of conscience and his ruthless treatment of students who don’t “bend over”. I left over 10 years ago and I had been painfully aware for at least 15 years. I have no excuses as to why it took me so long to remove myself from the support system of this man. But I left before thing really got weird. Hearing stories of how totally warped RB and his teaching and life style have become since I left, leaves me incredulous that anyone would support the man in any form, financially or otherwise.
At some point one’s active or even passive support of corruption can become unforgivable.
There is a photograph made by Henri Cartier-Bresson in defeated Nazi Germany, 1945, where a Gestapo informer is recognized at a checkpoint by a woman she had denounced. It’s a powerful image and sends a strong message. Don’t wait until the corrupt regime you have supported and fed from collapses around you and then think you can blend in with the true innocents and victims. You will be recognized.
86
http://www.merlinsilk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/cartier-bresson-small.jpg
Deleted. — ES
Uno posted some useful info on slander and defamation on Res Ipsa Loquitur. Of particular interest is the part near the end that states what should be done if threatened with a defamation suit.
It’s the latest post.
88 Across the River
It might be useful, if Ford finds some problems with the petition, to ask if we can pay him to re-write the petition for us (if necessary) in a legal manner, with minimum exposure for liability, including the facts as we presented them in the draft that we send him.
88 Across the River
And be sure he knows that there are first hand and personal accounts that can be counted on.
Great news Across the River!
Thank you.
As Bruce suggested, if Ford re-writes the petition and he will ask for more, I could do another hundred, unless some one will help me out here.
Please specify the P.O.BOX or any other place to send the offered $200 now.
theodor.amsel@yahoo.com
#93 X-ray
I imagine there will be a number of people who can kick in a bit of money. You need not commit to more than you have already.
I could go without my Ben and Jerrys for a week. There’s 50 bucks right there.
Yesri my boy, how much ice cream do you eat?
Anyway, I understand the Ben and Jerrys addiction.
We have great gelato in Italy but seriously, I have been missing Cherry Garcia and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, so deliciously sinful…
Across the River
Please go ahead and send it to Ford.
I have a minor suggestion, it is about “minor child” one of them is redundant although it hammers the point harder, a minor is a child so perhaps it would be better with one or the other.
But It is looking very good! Well done.
I look forward to seeing what is left after Ford.
—————————————————————————–lauralupa.
Rocky road was my addiction until I met, Death by chocolate mnmnmnm.
————————————————————————–
Hi Elena
the amanita is not poisonous, well not to the extent that it can kill, its a bit like ayahuasca in that respect, it can make you sick in the same way, but if you build up tolerance its possible to eat the whole thing without problems. It’s being deadly poisonous is a lie spread by the church who wanted to restrict its use to the priesthood,( its the original sacramental bread). I mean we cant have free ethneogens just growing in the ground, that give you a direct experience of something higher without having to pay the church or listen to their bullshit can we.
So the “savage heathens” were told that it was the forbidden fruit.
Its funny how these things pass into folk knowledge and become “facts”.
The guy below proves it to be untrue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NulcJReAHIU&feature=related
————————————————————————–
all the beast rahrg.
jack
ps spelling intentional.
Another pearl from Robert Burton, today’s DAILY CARD:
If you are using the sequence and the telephone
rings, you may drop the sequence, but by no means
drop presence.
Love, Robert
I don’t think Robert has thought this one through, or it could be that all the information has not been received yet. You see it makes a difference if the phone ringing is a landline or a cell phone. In either case the sequence need not be dropped. Most landline phones have a number of holes in both receiving and sending parts of the handset. These holes can be counted and the sequence will still be kept intact. I need not tell you that the number of holes in the phone is no accident. Now, if it is a cell phone that is being answered there is probably only one small orifice each for the receiver and the sending apparatus. These are, of course, the long and short BE.
97 Pensate un attimo
If you are using the sequence and the telephone
rings, you may drop the sequence, but by no means
drop presence, because it’s probably me asking for more money.
Love, Robert
I thought the correct sequence was ” Drop trou(sers), Goodness “.
88 Across the River
Just Another Voice Out Here, what has taken you so long to speak up?
————————————————————————–
Haven’t seen the need, until someone asked about libel. This is a petition, which can have legal implications, but it’s not the kind of thing lawyers are typically asked to draft or review. It’s a request from the public for help and attention from the authorities. If Ford Greene is interested, I suspect he’d be interested in representing one or more clients in a lawsuit; there isn’t too far someone like him can go with a petition.
People should think twice before discussing on this site what they want to ask Ford Greene, and how he responds. If people want to hire Ford, someone should be his client, and that person can have confidential discussions with him. The client should be someone who has personally suffered harm that Ford believes can be addressed in a lawsuit. I don’t know how the results of those discussions can effectively be communicated to others who are curious, but it shouldn’t be here. Do you really want to broadcast to AG what documents should be shredded?
100 Just Another Voice Out Here
“Do you really want to broadcast to AG what documents should be shredded?”
I would guess he’d know on his own. If anything gets shredded, in the end I hope his ass is part of the shredding.
100 Just another voice out here.
I find myself doubting that you are a lawyer!
Because if you are and are just a little bit involved, it seems like you would have shared the benefit of your experience quite a while back.
Also it seems that you haven’t been paying attention to detail or following very closely.
Mind you perhaps that’s a lawyer thing.
…………………………………………………………………………………Unbelievable statements by lawyers
These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts of America, and are things attorneys actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters, who had to suffer from the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
The last one is the best ..
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practising law.
All the best. jack
Newly moderated comments: 49, 52, 59, 67, 73, 79, 81, 107.
Let’s wait and see what Ford has to say about that and then we’ll take it farther.
94 Yesri
Thank you. I appreciate your contribution.
49 Move On
“You damage yourselves dear friends. YOU DAMAGE ONLY YOURSELVES.”
“How about a day of silence on this BLOG where we regroup , rethink and stop whipping one another’s self righteous tops?”
“Many of you left upwards of 2 decades ago….don’t you have other ways to spend your time now?? That seems somehow really, really sad.
Goodbye … Move on….”
You have to be kidding.
“How about a day of silence on this BLOG”
How about a day where you go fuck yourself?
59 zoecan1
There’s certainly hope, and more, for most of them. But not all, IMO.
81 Psychic
Good grief. It hasn’t been a month yet. Can’t you keep aim?
81 Psychic
Oh, sorry, I remember you said once each page.
49 Move On
“dear friends”
It’s obvious where you’re coming from.
49 Move On
You rigth, we damaged and we sad.
Move On, Move Now and Move Back.
52 zoecan1
72 Pamela Lichtenwalner
Good team always need good players.
Thanks
81 Psychic
You haven’t changed much but still you awesome.
Keep posting!
81 Psychic
“I enclose the following link to “Notes”
Why wouldn’t you enclose some thoughts
from your pathetic conscious putz?
81 Psychic
Interesting how you have highlighted all the “you must” phrases on that page of Ouspensky’s book.
“you must not delay too long”
“you must hurry”
“If you are offered a task you must answer at once”
“you must accept the task at once”
“you must pay for it”
“you must really do as you are told.”
It is precisely these sort of directives and the innocent people trying to follow them and be good students that might work if there is a real teacher and a real school. Unfortunately in Robert Burton’s Fellowship of Friends these directives and the innocent people trying to follow them is what sadly leads those same innocent people into being trapped in the double-bind dead end of a cult. Once in, there is no appropriate response that can be made to the contradictions that are foisted upon one. It is a no win deal. Everything wrong is only wrong because the students failed and did not do all those “YOU MUSTS” correctly.
YOU MUST VERIFY FOR YOURSELF.
Wow, Psychic, quite sincerely – that was clever! Using the search function to get old Pyotr to come out of the grave and wag his finger menacingly and authoritatively at any poor naive sap who wants “to work”.
I think Bobby owes you a bonus for that. Ah…but there is no money. Damn, the injustice…maybe he can sell his circus tent to the investigators and auditors that will be relocating to Oregon House in the coming months. They gotta crash somewhere and he can reprise his Lord Pentland joke by giving them pillows.
#110 Jack
That last lawyer must have been representing Unoanimo:)
#81 Psychsick
YOU MUST go fuck yourself.
104
Pensate un attimo
I don’t know…you might check with akOakaOka. That sounds pretty Jack Handey to me.
102 Lauralupa
Reminded me of the last Q&A from “I AM THAT”
Q: What is sin?
M: All that binds you.
Nisgaradatta
( He later said that Ben and Jerrys was ok. He also ended the dispute over which was the best flavor. Napolean Dynamite, because it has Cherry Garcia and that chocolate brownie one together and that this was the correct use of duality)
Notes on reading “Notes on the Decision to Work”
This warning from a turn of the century (last century) man is certainly valid for someone considering entering into the jungle of self enquiry. It can be quite a can of worms unraveling the ball of illusions we have about ourselves and the world. Many of the old eastern traditions (from which the 4th way was derived) provide this warning. It is not some profound and eternal boogie-boogie. Simply speaking, your world is going to be turned upside down for a while. Hopefully the person who is giving you the ‘you musts’ isn’t a greedy psychopathic butt fucker calling himself an angel in a mans body. If it is you’re fucked.
In any case it is a warning to the uninitiated. Like all things if taken too far it turns into its own opposite. If, after a period of time you are not able to see some basic shit about yourself and begin to think and act from this understanding you come to that turning point, the opposite.
The Fellowship of Friends is that opposite. You may find yourself babbling about bison poop and wandering around muttering short be, hold, long be ,bla, bla, bla in pursuit of ‘divine presence’
Remember why you came. Was it to find ‘divine presence’? Or was it to unravel that ball of illusions and confusion wrapped around you?
Either way, it is a tough game but it is the only game in town. If you want to free yourself from illusions it probably best not to add more stuff that binds you. The ‘idea’ of ‘divine presence’ does just that.
Yesri
Right on, right on
On this gloomy rainy morning, illuminated by an incongruous sunny mood, gratitude to all, and especially Bruce, for making me laugh so hard that my man looked at me like I was weird…
Me? Weird?
“Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
do dodododododo do do do dodododo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=f1jL11a3r3g
Beating a dead horse…
?
As a public service, I propose we start a fund to pay for the “psychological treatment” Robert Burton so richly deserves…
written with “tongue-in-cheek.”
“The best-established measure of psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), developed by University of British Columbia psychologist Robert D. Hare, requires a standardized interview with subjects and an examination of their file records, such as their criminal and educational histories. Analyses of the PCL-R reveal that it comprises at least three overlapping, but separable, constellations of traits: interpersonal deficits (such as grandiosity, arrogance and deceitfulness), affective deficits (lack of guilt and empathy, for instance), and impulsive and criminal behaviors, (including sexual promiscuity and stealing).
Although psychopaths are often unmotivated to seek treatment, research by psychologist Jennifer Skeem of the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues suggests that psychopaths may benefit as much as nonpsychopaths from psychological treatment. Even if the core personality traits of psychopaths are exceedingly difficult to change, their criminal behaviors may prove more amenable to treatment.”
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-psychopath-means&page=1
129 ‘ton
re- the link
‘ton – I am a pretty much a non-violent man, but you just have to kind of appreciate the Inuits approach to a ‘kunlangeta’, which appears to be their term for a psychopath.
“When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”
James 130,
Thanks for the reference from an indigenous culture, I’m cherokee on my mother’s side and have always felt strongly about “native causes” and their wisdom teachings… if you are interested in such things, TRUDELL is a movie worth checking… the links at this website are worth investigation… another movie called “The Corporation” is linked through this site and it’s worth checking out…
http://www.trudellthemovie.com/
And just to follow the thread from your Inuit reference…
“Apparently, cultural influences play a very important role in the development (or not) of sociopathy in any given population. Few people would disagree that, from the Wild West of the past to the corporate outlaws of the present, American society seems to allow and even encourage me-first attitudes devoted to the pursuit of domination. Robert Hare writes that he believes “our society is moving in the direction of permitting, reinforcing, and in some instances actually valuing some of the traits listed in the Psychopathy Checklist—traits such as impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of remorse.”
131 ‘ton
“some of the traits listed in the Psychopathy Checklist—traits such as impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of remorse.”
**********
That ‘lack of remorse’, besides being an approved manner of doing business in our culture, also reminds me that some of the most chilling posts that I read, as I still go back and read the older sections of this blog, are the ones from people who had been much closer to Robert Burton than I ever was. The people who saw him up close, and had glimpses, and reported seeing, or hearing that cold ‘lack of remorse’.
Thanks for the other suggestions and links
zoecan1
Hello Everyone!
I have been reading your blogs to educate myself on the FOF. I recently learned that a friend of mine has been a member for a very long time, which is such a tragedy. I am contemplating what to do.
My thoughts on blowing the whistle on Burton- DO IT! The truth will set you free! The more you expose him, his criminal activity, his ill gotten gain etc., the closer you are to (1) Healing yourselves (2) Protecting other wonderful and intelligent people from falling into his hellhole (3) Becoming resposible to your community (4) Just doing the right thing.
Burton needs to be pushed off his little throne. Let me know if I can be of any help.
——————————————————————–
Thank you zoecan!
It’s good to have someone who has not been in the Fellowship of Friends give an unbiased comment.
One of the ways I think you can help with is to sign our petition once it is ready to go. We are still finalizing it and Jack will let us know when it’s ready.
If you know of other people who are aware of this modern or not so modern disease of damaging cults and criminal gurus forward them the petition in the future.
We do a social service to bring these kinds of abuse into the light and under public awareness. We are helping naive seeker who may be presently looking to join this organization to hopefully shy away.
We also hope that some government agency will listen to us and take proper measures to stop the insanity.
If you have any other ideas in how to speed this whole process, let us know!
…and can you tell us more about your friend? Without mentioning any names how does she/he seem to be when is around you?
49 Move On
It’s been many many months since I took a look at the blog. But hearing that more and more people are leaving FOF I thought I’d look again to see if any more friends have emerged. Now I read about law suits and petitions and various forms of assault on FOF.
You damage yourselves dear friends. YOU DAMAGE ONLY YOURSELVES.
How about a day of silence on this BLOG where we regroup , rethink and stop whipping one another’s self righteous tops?
Many of you left upwards of 2 decades ago….don’t you have other ways to spend your time now?? That seems somehow really, really sad.
Goodbye … Move on….
———————————————————————–
Serious question Move On: how are we DAMAGING OURSELVES? please give me some more details!
81 Psychic
Hello,
For anyone who has true valuation for inner work and has a genuine feeling for Divine Presence, I enclose the following link to “Notes on the Decision to Work” from the book “Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution” by Peter Ouspensky.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Du_2SOMox9YJ:www.kesdjan.com/exercises/notes.html+%22notes+on+the+decision+to+work%22+%2B+%22you+must%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
This paragraph was written in the 40’s of the 20th Century. Though Peter Ouspensky was a conscious being he did not have a School and never conducted School work.
The Fellowship of Friends is a conscious School led by Robert Burton. Robert Burton, a conscious being, has deepened and perfected Peter Ouspensky’s teaching and brought it to a place where once can truly reach Divine Presence. Reaching Divine Presence requires great sincerity and persistent practice and it is within one’s reach.
Here is the link to the Fellowship of Friends web site: http://www.beingpresent.org
—————————————————————————
Hello Psychic,
I remember at one point in time I was a bit like you. Quite unreasonable actually. But I was a little more innocent than you because I really did not know the extent of the damage Robert Burton inflicted on the lives of so many of his students.
How do you deal with such knowledge? What’s your excuse? please challenge me.
I think your motto along with Ouspensky decisions to work are: I do not see, I do not hear, I do not speak.
#133 Veramente
Thank you so much for your response. I appreciate it. I would be more than happy to sign the petition and encourage others to sign it too.
I am bursting at the seams to tell you about my friend and my story, but I fear the unknown for my friend. His voice sounds like he is in first gear continuously. Please e-mail me at zoecan1@gmail.com
Well, guess what? I did take a peek to see if my contribution had been picked upon or not and thank you Veramente for your question.
One wise man put this most succinctly when he said:
“those who pick up hot coals to throw at another only burn their own hands.”
This anger, desire for revenge and invective against FOF and one another is probably not from the highest, deepest part of ourselves. The reason many of us joined FOF was to discover who we really are. Yes, we all experience it – negativity that is – as we used to call it – but we’re creating circumstances all the time which will reverberate back to us. This is not meant as a fear thing but as a basic truth. We don’t get away with nothing – in the vernacular. (This is not to mention that a petition is probably not going to be in the slightest bit effective – and yes, my call for silence was a ridiculous joke, although a few buttons got pushed I guess. If the shoe fits….)
There is also a great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something. Pot kettle/kettle pot.
I was concerned for those dear friends who are just now emerging from FOF and looking around. Suddenly they find a blog where what they may still be involved in is under attack. I’d go straight back to a dinner or reception in that lovely cozy world of FOF. I’d dismiss this blog as ranting and raving and negative.
So, what do we want? if we really want to help our friends let’s ask for their questions, give sincere answers and any support they need when they do leave. At the same time this blog has also served many people to vent, process, examine, come to terms with and share their experiences, so it has had a function. I did feel the blog was becoming a bully pulpit of the bitter, boring and blind. (Don’t you love alliteration) A surprise really because when I last read it it had some wonderfully insightful postings.
So dear friends …who may be teetering on the edge…. we’re not all bitter, boring, bullying or blind with hate. Many of us have accepted that FOF was a stage.. a stage in many senses of the word and we’re moving right along.
Move On #49
“Many of you left upwards of 2 decades ago….don’t you have other ways to spend your time now??”
I’m glad you brought this up Move On. Actually I don’t have any other ways to spend my time. I’ve tried ping-pong and white water rafting, bungee jumping, knitting, long walks, tupperware parties, making jam, scrabble, whittling with a penknife, yodeling, talking to strangers, riding on trains, rescuing cats from trees and whipping my self-righteous top. To tell you the truth I only really enjoy whipping my self-righteous top and especially having it whipped by others. Everything else is sort of – well boring actually. I think it’s the whipping I enjoy most and the margarine. Frankly I’m a little concerned where this may ultimately lead.
Do you know whether margarine is dangerous?
Let me know.
leonhardon.
Hey Psychic,
Where did they bury the margarine?
leonhardon
It appears that margarine is bad for you and you’re much better off with butter.
http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/8/margarine_heart_attacks.htm
Xeeena,
Dang!
Ah well, back to KY I s’pose? Rotten on toast though.
Thanks,
leonlardon
136 zoecan1
I am bursting at the seams to tell you about my friend and my story, but I fear the unknown for my friend. His voice sounds like he is in first gear continuously. Please e-mail me at zoecan1@gmail.com
————————————————————————-
I am sorry zoecan1,
but I prefer to remain anonymous.
You can try to be creative in telling us the story of your friend.
I do not want his personal details. I wanted to know your observations in how being part of a cult seems to modify your friend’s behavior, your perspective.
I also do not understand how his voice seems to be like he is in first gear continuously, sorry, it may be the language.
130
James McLemore
“… I am a pretty much a non-violent man, but you just have to kind of appreciate the Inuits approach to a ‘kunlangeta’, which appears to be their term for a psychopath.
“When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.” ”
====================================================
Honestly, at first I laughed at the simplicity of this solution but then it seemed pretty chilling (no reference to the water here).
My understanding of Robert is that he took a wrong turn like the rest of us and we all stewed about in a mutually exclusive community of our own making.
My response to Robert is deep pity, and after whatever efforts can be made to stop the damage to others continuing under this magical thinking, I would protect him. It might even be a third consideration after reparations to those who seek them. IMHO if those who could would “retire” Robert, all would be right with the world!
And yes, in choosing my own response I do presume, or at least bring all of myself to understand, what really IS best for those “others”. And of course there’s the good possibility that I am not really “choosing” anything at all……………………………..
From an eternal idealist, which is at least ONE known thing.
;-) ;-) ;-)
141 Across the River
re: my own post at 130 -
I agree with you completely. I copied that from the link ‘ton gave about psychopaths for it struck me as humorous in its simplicity. It was certainly not written to incite or condone any sort of violence. I have said before that I believe Robert Burton has hidden somewhere inside of himself the same Child of God that we all truly are. I hope I am not being presumtious in thinking that I may understand and agree with what you mean when you speak about ‘the possibility that you are not really “choosing” anything at all’. I suspect that in the end (and I do not just mean the drama of the fof and RB) it is a form of Forgiveness, and finally Grace that frees us all.
Thank you for the thoughtful post and for helping me to be more careful in what I write here.
#140 Veramente
I understand and can respect your wish to remain anonymous.
By first gear ( like driving a car), I mean slow and monotonous. I have only spoke with him. I am hoping to meet with him soon. My friend’s involvement in this cult has also been life changing for me. Bear with me. I have a few issues to resolve and then will be able to share more.
Leonhardon
You should try coconut oil.
http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/CoconutOil.html
142: “it is a form of Forgiveness and finally Grace that frees us all.”
And the freedom we receive from experiencing forgiveness and grace actually connects us in a stronger way to one another.
Yesri Baba 127:
I bet if you’d make a little effort you could pack a few more metaphors into your explanations. You’re not really trying.
141
“My response to Robert is deep pity, and after whatever efforts can be made to stop the damage to others continuing under this magical thinking, I would protect him.”
That’s called enabling. As in codependent.
141
Or Stockholm syndrome.
Bruce -
What is Stockholm syndrome?
149 James McLemore
That’s when people who are kidnapped eventually identify and protect the very people who have committed the crime against them. Like Patty Hearst.
149 James McLemore
http://sniggle.net/stock.php
Just another level of the same thing.
Bruce -
Thanks – Interesting and interesting site.
Yeah I wouldn’t want to sign up for any of that. I don’t think that was what Across the River was doing with what they posted, but I cannot speak for them. I just wanted to make it clear that I didn’t really want the Inuits to push him off the ice.
152 James McLemore
No, I like the ice idea.
But unless I read it wrong,didn’t across the river say that among his list of what he or she felt should be done (stopping the damage etc.) was protect RB? Did I miss something, or did I have too many kamikazes?
Bruce –
I figured you might like the ice idea.
And yes, that was what was said, regardless of how many kamikazes you have downed. I guess since it was in response to my Inuit and ice joke, I thought they perhaps just meant they did not wish a lynching or drowning.
test
154 James McLemore
I’ll assume you’re right. The alternative would be enabling a criminal. He can’t be rehabilitated until he sees his crime. And thats not going to happen. He can say the words, but a sociopath does not have a moral compass. The word “protect” made me cringe a bit.
155 brucelevy
I think I understand the ‘cringe’. As I replied a bit earlier, again to something ‘ton had posted.
“That ‘lack of remorse’, besides being an approved manner of doing business in our culture, also reminds me that some of the most chilling posts that I read, as I still go back and read the older sections of this blog, are the ones from people who had been much closer to Robert Burton than I ever was. The people who saw him up close, and had glimpses, and reported seeing, or hearing that cold ‘lack of remorse’.”
I agree that rehabilitation does not appear to be something that could happen.
Yesri baba ~127
Concerning:
‘Notes on the Decision to Work’
That is like a 19th century style disclaimer to attempt protection to all parties and their involvement; especially to protect Ouspensky. People have been warned as to what could happen no matter which way things may go.
Additionally, here is a little story in commentary to your post:
According to Buddha:
A system, The Work, The Way, or whatever you want to call it, is like a thorn you use to get the thorn of life out of your side.
If you are not careful in its use in removing the first thorn, you just might get a second thorn caught in your side.
This was related to me by a unnamed long time (30+ years) member of the Fellowship of Friends that is neither a member any longer nor on the planet any longer. May their soul rest in peace.
Based on the hierarchical and paternalistic model, under which Robert Earl Burton and the Fellowship of Friends operate, the below may be found useful as remedy for those somewhat antiquated modes of organisational structure.
True Leader Tales…
The Authority Problem 5:57
Getting people to speak truth to power:
http://www.youtube.com/v/uoYlztWjBqw
‘The higher up an organisation you go the less likely you are to hear the truth.’
If you are not getting what you pay for then stop paying. Stop the cash flow. Stop the efforts that do not produce the results
you desire. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them;’ Matthew 7:20. Speak Truth to power.
The pursuit of spiritual development may not be what you once imagined it to be, where, for instance, you may have longed to believe along these lines:
‘Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.’ From the Star Trek television series and films. – That was imagination.
If you want your kitchen remodeled, you ask the artisan, ‘Have you done this work before? Can you show me before and after photos of your work? Can I go see the finished product? Were you on target with the budget? If so, can I see the documentation? Can I meet your prior customers; both satisfied and not-so-satisfied? What is your ratio of satisfied to not-so-satisfied customers? Show me the results!?’ Why are these same type of questions not being asked in relation to work on yourself in the Fellowship of Friends and with work with Robert Earl Burton?
Maybe they are being asked and you are satisfied with what you have been shown as the ‘finished man’ or ‘conscious being’ that it produces.
#157 Associated Press
Hey, I like that thorn metaphor. Can I use it next time I want to send Abigail into a hissy fit over my crappy writing?
Based on the hierarchical and paternalistic model, under which Robert Earl Burton and the Fellowship of Friends operate, the below may be found useful as remedy for those somewhat antiquated modes of organisational structure.
True Leader Tales…
Acts of Leadership 4:39
‘The most powerful institutions will endure and thrive, not through the acts of any charismatic leader at the top, but through constant acts of leadership throughout the system.’
http://www.youtube.com/v/DnUO_BW99_I
‘One area that leaders need to develop to become great leaders is conscience – subordinating yourself. This takes great strength. Both Hitler and Gandhi were people of vision, discipline and passion. The difference was conscience.’
Stephen Covey
147, 148, 151, 153, 155
Bruce
152, 154, 156
James
Re 141
;-)
Yes, protect, as in he’s a pitiable, deeply sick man and pushing him off the ice would be uncivilized, bad karma, primitive (got that), presumptuous, impulsive, lacking in compassion and arrogant.
James, “…the good possibility that I am not really choosing anything at all” was an existential reference in that post, but usually my point of reference is closer to the one you expressed. BTW I hope you won’t be over concerned with being PC here. Look inside just this one post to see some of your audience!
Based on the hierarchical and paternalistic model, under which Robert Earl Burton and the Fellowship of Friends operate, the below may be found useful as remedy for those somewhat antiquated modes of organisational structure.
Leading Mistakes…
Limiting the Damage 5:00
http://www.youtube.com/v/BtAHBouaNSw
‘Now, the third, and probably the most powerful thing you can do in terms of creating a culture that strangely welcomes
mistakes, and this will still seem strange to you at the moment, I’m sure, is to admit them yourself. Leadership usually comes with a myth attached to it, and that myth is the infallability of the leader. But, in my experience, most effective leaders are those who will quick put up their hands and admit that they have made a mistake because by doing so you give other people permission to do the same thing. Now, the one thing you need to do after that is to share the learning from the mistakes and that’s where most organisations fall down.’
161 Across the River
In my world pity and protect are two different things. I don’t see the cosmic connection.
On the other hand, if and when the FOF folds, he can move in with you and you can protect him.
Or, a best case scenario, after and/or during the time he pays for his crimes he can be treated. But as many previous citations have shown narcissism and sociopathy are all but impossible to treat with “change’ as the goal.
Pity is fine for RB, but until then, why not “protect” the victims rather than the perpetrator.
I think your sentiments are vastly misplaced.
161
“Look inside just this one post to see some of your audience!”
I’m a little dense, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Yesri baba ~159:
#157 Associated Press
Hey, I like that thorn metaphor. Can I use it next time I want to send Abigail into a hissy fit over my crappy writing?
—— —-
Have at it! It’s in the public domain.
______ ____
Across the River ~161:
147, 148, 151, 153, 155
Bruce
152, 154, 156
James
Re 141
;-)
Yes, protect, as in he’s a pitiable, deeply sick man and pushing him off the ice would be uncivilized, bad karma, primitive (got that), presumptuous, impulsive, lacking in compassion and arrogant.
—— —-
Agreed! But let’s do it any way. The ‘key’ here is: How do you deal with a psychopath? Answer: With psychopathic action. [In a measured, intentional and purposeful manner - full knowing that it is the exception to conscientious action, which is the norm.]
Hey Know It All,
(I mean: Wouldnt You Like To Know),
Here’s one for your leadership posts thread:
A leader is best
When people
barely know that he exists,
Not so good
when people
obey and acclaim him,
Worst
when they despise him.
‘Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you;’
But of a good leader,
who talks little,
When his work is done,
his aim fulfilled,
They will all say,
‘We did this ourselves.’
#17
The Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu
Hi Bruce,
It might be that you and I won’t agree on this now or ever, or maybe we’re just not understanding the words. My understanding of Robert is that every weakness and wound in the man was fed to excess and the result we see is a sick, damaged, mad, pathetic human being. To me he is a tragic figure, without a doubt.
I can agree that you might find my compassion for him wrongly placed in the scheme of things as you see them, but in my own understanding of this story, compassion is what I feel, and deeply. It is something beyond judgement, but I have plenty of judgement, too, and outrage.
My post 141 was a reach for that compassion, because I found that after I laughed at the simplicity of “someone would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was watching”, there was another check-in required. There’s not much I like more than to laugh these days, but that one wasn’t a go.
If you’ll read the post one more time, you will see that protecting Robert was not put above protecting others first.
And I don’t want him moving in with me.
Re the SECOND offense, I was encouraging James to not hold back expression on this blog and referring to you, yes, as an example of one who gives free reign to expression without care to being PC, and since I fully appreciate you for that, you can be sure there was no insult or sarcasm intended.
Found it weird to be talked about in the 3rd person
Friends?
167 Across the River
Sure.
Across the River
I guess I went to bed too early. I am on east coast time.
Anyway, “Friends?” – Yes, of course.
I am still a little confused however, about what I said or the way in which I said something that leads you to think I may be trying too hard to be PC. Was it my thanking you for helping me to be more careful in what I say?
I am also still a little confused about the ‘looking inside the post for my audience’. Expand on these a bit if you have time.
Across the River
Just realized that “Friends?” was a question for Bruce, not for me, but I guess it is ok if I answered also, huh?
Newly moderated comments: 135, 137.
137 Move On
…” we’re not all bitter, boring, bullying or blind with hate.”
True, some are stupid, callous, self-serving, narcissistic,deaf,dumb and blind to harm done on a large scale, in order to assuage the damage that some have helped perpetrate.
“Many of us have accepted that FOF was a stage.. a stage in many senses of the word and we’re moving right along.”
Stepping over the damaged, mangled and disregarded spirts and bodies that serve as stepping stones for one’s own self aggrandizement, imaginary puffery, and false sense of direction and superiority to those not gifted with a 1st class seat on the ark.
137 Move On
This is exactly the self perpetuating bull shit that continues to allow these crimes to occur.
172,173
James
Re the PC comment, yes, I was referring to the last sentence in your post 144. Re “your audience” in post 164 , I was referring to Bruce as being part of it, and being one who demonstrates free expression here on the blog. It was late when I posted! Yes, surely okay to answer yes to friendship (unless you make me mad). Uh-oh……….to be very clear, that’s..a..joke!
======================================================
137
Move On
I thought your post made some good points. Many people, myself included, are genuinely worried about the depth of psychological dependency of good people, many that we know very well, probably all deviated unaware over time from their aim of joining a “real school”, and to see this travesty for what it is requires something more than mere observation in some. I think the “personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something” is also a valid consideration, but my take is that this position has been paid for through personal experience and work on understanding, and it’s having been where the others are now that gives authority to that position. A lot of assumptions here on behalf of others, of course, but not blind assumptions.
Truly, I believe on measure there is much more genuine effort to reach out and help than to throw hot coals at these people. I won’t speak for others here, but the anger in me is in the fact of the matter rather than the people themselves.
I don’t think it’s so simple, as your post merrily suggests, but that’s the blog for you and glad you posted. I know I continue my best to understand and it all helps.
177 Across the River
“Truly, I believe on measure there is much more genuine effort to reach out and help than to throw hot coals at these people. I won’t speak for others here, but the anger in me is in the fact of the matter rather than the people themselves.”
I agree, I also feel that way. But I think one would be naive to take all “members” on the same level. I don’t see the flying monkeys in the same light that I see the majority of the present members who joined, in most cases, for the right reasons, with worthwhile personal aims. There is a substantial coterie of enablers and climbers that make up the often shifting hierarchy.Many of these “dear friends” are shits, plain and simple. I feel very strongly for the people who are trapped, to a greater or lesser extent, but at this point in time there are others who depend on the status quo for their livelihood and prestige. It’s a very separate group.
177 Across the River
Thanks for the responses.
My ending statement in the one post was sincere. I do wish to be careful in what I say, not for what people may think of me, but more that I wish to be responsible for what I say and the effect it may have; and I truly did not want anyone to think I was promoting violence as a remedy for anything.
It’s funny, I talked to my daughter today. She is studying music at a fairly edgy arts college in Calif. (very un PC). She herself is, unfortutately sometimes for me, ruthlessly honest. I told her about being accused of possibly trying too hard to be PC. She laughed and told me that while I had “some real issues” and could be accused of a lot things,that probably was not one of them. Now having said that, I will admit while in the school (25-30 years ago), I was photographed for ‘mechanical goodness’ and ‘wishing to be liked’ and all that passive sort of stuff. Maybe you are on to something. So I will try to keep an eye on not being overly cautious, while at the same time, of course, trying my best not to piss you off.
—-In friendship – JMc
# 137
Move On,
You touched many subjects in your post and will just pick one thing.
I think you are not reading me/us correctly here when you say:
“This anger, desire for revenge and invective against FOF and one another is probably not from the highest, deepest part of ourselves.”
Personally I am not consumed by anger and cannot say my motivation to even pursue a petition is fueled by revenge in particular, but more from a sense of justice.
Having been part of the Fellowship of Friends cult and having sustained personal damage I feel it is my responsibility when the opportunity arises to try do something to stop it. Stop Robert Burton and even his supporters at this point.
This is simple common sense, a wish to be involved in changing something in this world, and this can be very tangible, stopping the abuse of power and further damage to other naive people. At least on this scale I believe we can do something!
Even though I left a long time ago I do have now a sense of urgency. The time is RIPE for action. You may not believe it, but I do.
The petition is already changing something, it’s a step into the right direction.
PS:
I still do not get the danger we may be incurring here, in your words:
“…great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something. Pot kettle/kettle pot.”…
???
180 veramente
“I still do not get the danger we may be incurring here, in your words:
“…great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something. Pot kettle/kettle pot.”…
It smells to me like the usual “cast into hell” bull shit that’s part of the fear mongering dynamic of the cult…
Woe to he who finds a school and then abandons it. Better he were thrown into hell.
Woe to he who scoffs at RB’s connection to influence C.
Yea, they already show that they are cast into hell. Oh woe, woe is them. If they only knew the evil they do. Father forgive them.
Veronicapoe 64
Having read our post and having heard but a small part of an audio book called “The Four Agreements”, I am sure you would be impressed in this presentation. It can maybe be found at http://www.miguelruiz.com/fouragreements.html
This is as much as I can offer at this moment as my personal cpu has been munched by a virus and I am using someone else’s. Cheers
100
X-ray
101
Yesri baba
Well, it’s time now to call in your pledges as the parts come into place. Thank you for putting this part on the table.
Ford Greene has a copy of the petition and $250.00 buys one hour of his time to review and edit it against libel. I’ve explained my wish for anonymity at this point and yours, as well.
Ford Greene
HUB Law Offices
711 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.
San Anselmo, CA
94960
415-258-0360
====================================================
178
bruce
Yes, and we know who they are, and IMO if we’re looking for evil-doers they trump all as Robert’s calculating enablers. (If you disagree, just keep it to yourself ;-)
====================================================
179
James
OK, I’ll withdraw the PC comment. Words really do have power and I’d also say we can see how difficult communication can be and should count on not always being understood! After much ado, I found the Inuit story a great piece to share.
Yesri 162
I like the thorn, too. Put the thorn into the can where the worms are busy with their unraveling–it might be useful for them.
183 Across the River
I will send him $250 tomorrow.
Yesri
I appreciate your contribution but let’s keep your help for future needs.
Hi Laura,
It is amazing how easily a few words can warm up the whole environment like flames from a fireplace in a cold night and you do seem to have a talent to make it easier to sit around.
Maybe we could go to a coffee shop in one of the sides of the Public Square and talk about things that are not about the Fellowship of Friends as we know it but about the Fellowship of Friends as we would have worked for it to become.
I did go on the trip to Caicedo, one of the most violent regions of Antioquia with fourteen adults and six children and found a people I would like to be with. Three of them sang all afternoon while the children played and took turns on riding the one horse and the women cooked while I took pictures and videod expressions. They’ve all experienced much violence in their communities but they kiss and hug to break your bones with the strength of their love. Whatever they lack in decorative alchemy they replace with a gaiety that does not require the color of flowers. We had an amazingly generous Saturday and somewhat of a hangover on Sunday that was compensated by the trip back over the Andes mountains.
The Andes of this part of the world are something in between the Alps and the hills of England with the majesty of Yosemite’s rocks but with a combination of greens particular of Colombia’s sunny clouds. The mountains are laid out like women’s thighs, one to nine, twelve, huge series of mountains one after another, each majestic in itself but without the vanity of being unique for the uniqueness is in the amount of them as they lay out their attributes of planted tapestries in the afternoon sun. Some are so steep that they tell without shyness the effort that must have gone into painting them with golden corn or weaving them with dark emerald coffee. The plantain is like a huge flower of golden green leaves and the bunches of many platanos hung tightly to each other.
The older the women, the more beautiful they become. The men talk loosely about sex and women work like mad and some fall sleep on their horses when they come back from drinking in town on a Sunday afternoon. The horses know their way home and walk gently.
One day, we must travel to each other’s home. Not as tourists who stand outside each other’s world but as guests. Not to hotels but to people’s homes where you can feel the rhythm of another life. After an experience like that of the Fellowship of Friends at Isis, the need to go back to the basics is mandatory. One doesn’t know how much damage has been done until one tastes the sweetness.
As I sat in the midst of such beautiful land and people, I experienced the level of horror that I’ve been throwing out on this blog for the past seven months with great shame.
I thank you all for bearing with more than you deserved specially when very many of you weren’t even in the Fellowship and most of my rage was directed at them still there, who continue to ignore us or maybe just some of us.
Too much history is written in ignorance and sleep.
Unoanimo, I am very sorry you too were target of my frustration. I hope you are well and have time to share a little more of your self with us, one of this sunnier days. I did do something that you could call prayer, and forgave myself.
Jack, you obviously know about these Santas more than I do and yet I understand the only poisonous part is in the white dots on top of the red peal. We would just take the whole red peal off and eat the rest of the petals, not the stem. Like most things, you don’t have to taste the dark side of the moon when it is willing to offer you its lighter side. It takes a great deal of love to peal off the poisonous parts of each other and continue to recognize the stuff we are made of.
Sorry I only get here rarely – I have many responsibities, third line work, as they used to say. (Work language is still referential, no matter its ethical or truth status)
One of the reasons I rarely post here is because of the responses. And I’ve noticed that some of those who respond remain behind an anonymous alias speak most freely.
This is of course how it always is: it is easy to speak (or type), very hard to back it up. I don’t speak out of vanity or legerdemain: I’ve always left my personal email for anyone who is seriously interested in engaging conversation, whether here of with me personally.
walter.tanner@gmail.com
Walter, I appreciate that you express your perspective here frankly, whether or not I tend to agree with it. Your comment about “repressed transsexual” was thought provoking and I am still evaluating it; it both fits and does not fit. The lack of fit has to do with the fact that it seems dissonant to me with the longstanding misogyny. I differentiate the circumstance of the misogynist repressed transsexual, I cannot say why, from the closeted gay homophobe; one doesn’t seem to map metaphorically onto the other, at least intuitively. But I am glad you spoke your mind, it made me think.
Renald, I appreciate your “four agreements” recommendation, but I do not find any connection to my earlier post. Perhaps there is a connection and I do not see it. Your explanation is welcome, when your computer gets up and running….
137 Move On
“There is also a great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something. Pot kettle/kettle pot.:”
This seems to me to be an overly dramatic statement and pretty far-fetched. After all, this is just a public blog that allows most anyone to participate and express whatever they damn well want to say. Most participants who are former FOF members do seem to have moved on and have full lives outside the time spent with this blog—even the ones that post so frequently.
“Personality (read Cult)”
?? Please explain how there is any similarity between a small group of people exercising their civic and moral responsibility with a petition and a life-consuming cult like the Fellowship of Friends?
“I was concerned for those dear friends who are just now emerging from FOF and looking around.”
To my knowledge, this blog does not provide a real-world alternative to remaining in FOF. Except for a few contributors, the voices on this blog come and go, and express all kinds of words originating from a huge range of experiences and intellectual, emotional and psychological conditions. I don’t think the blog makes a very good support group for recently departed members. The blog can be of great value to any individual in many ways and trying to shape the scope of it’s content into a positive, nice, appealing refuge for those considering leaving simply sounds like more FOF style group-think .
My advice to anyone just leaving FOF is to look around at all the people, places, points of view, cultures and art that you have shunned because of the repressive and narrow culture of the Fellowship of Friends. Try your family and any real friends you have left before hoping that a bunch of opinionated former members writing on a blog are your best alternative to the “cozy world of FOF”. Cozy?? What octaves did you work on?
“So dear friends …who may be teetering on the edge…. we’re not all bitter, boring, bullying or blind with hate. Many of us have accepted that FOF was a stage.. a stage in many senses of the word and we’re moving right along.”
I don’t know who you are, Move On, but is sounds to me like you have not yet moved on from whatever your imaginary role within the FOF was. You say FOF was a stage. Yes it was, with many petty little fantasies played out by big egos who enjoyed the starring roles. As actors and performers know, it can be very deflating to one’s sense of self when one no longer has a great stage and adoring audience. Personally, I believe there is great freedom in accepting the fact that one is just part of the crowd.
All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.
With love,
RM
189 Richard M.
You da man.
184 Abigail
It might be useful if you kiss my butt.
185 xray44
Ok. I’ll set it aside for a rainy day.
What is that avatar? An x-ray of an alien?
Yeah, Move On… what he said.
What is MoveOn™?
The MoveOn family of organizations brings real Americans back into the political process. With over 3.3 million members across America – from carpenters to stay-at-home moms to business leaders – we work together to realize the progressive promise of our country. MoveOn is a service – a way for busy but concerned citizens to find their political voice in a system dominated by big money and big media.
The MoveOn family of organizations is made up of a couple of different pieces. MoveOn.org Civic Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, formerly known just as MoveOn.org, primarily focuses on education and advocacy on important national issues. MoveOn.org Political Action, a federal PAC, formerly known as MoveOn PAC, mobilizes people across the country to fight important battles in Congress and help elect candidates who reflect our values. Both organizations are entirely funded by individuals.
Every member has a voice in choosing the direction for both MoveOn.org Political Action and MoveOn.org Civic Action. Using our ActionForum software, you can propose priorities and strategies. Both organizations also take the initiative to organize quick action on other timely issues that our members care about.
A short history
MoveOn.org Civic Action was started by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Although neither had experience in politics, they shared deep frustration with the partisan warfare in Washington D.C. and the ridiculous waste of our nation’s focus at the time of the impeachment mess. On September 18th 1998, they launched an online petition to “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation.” Within days they had hundreds of thousands of individuals signed up, and began looking for ways these voices could be heard…
More at:
http://www.moveon.org/about.html
______ ____
Move On ~137
‘Well, guess what? I did take a peek to see if my contribution had been picked upon or not and thank you…’
Move On, I suggest you read the above moveon.org material many times. Then visit the website that the link takes you to. Then consider what you would like to convey with your moronic meaning ‘Move On’ moniker ‘(Don’t you love alliteration)’ as to its congruity with the MoveOn™ movement concept. Then, you can just move on, too! (Take the lead from Psychic and come back and visit us with one post per page – kind of like the ‘one-angle-per-meeting, dear’ Task regularly given out by Robert Earl Burton to persons he felt were taking up too much space at meetings by giving too long an angle, or too many angles, or were bringing up subjects he wanted to silence (like his amoral sex life or abuse of position); at least that was once upon a time, when anyone might be able to speak up at a meeting, if they could be called upon by raising their hand first – like they were in grade school again. (Now I understand that there are sergeants-at-arms that silence people and usher them out of meetings – please correct me if I’m wrong on that one. – We would love to see you again.) Ooops, this angle was too long. It will have to be redacted.
But, then again, this blog is the marketplace for free expression of ideas and any idea can be called into question; sort of like the Socratic Method – don’t you think? (They certainly silenced Socrates, didn’t they?)
Move On or Moran?
Sorry, that wasn’t very nice. I beleive you are in denial. The fact that you felt you had to justify why you were in here leads me to believe that you haven’t moved on. You check back because FOF stills owns a part of you. The part may be small, but nonetheless, they own that part. Ignoring that will not make it go away. I do believe you will return here and when you do I hope you will be welcomed to share. If, in fact, you have moved on, please use this space to help others with how you accomplished that feat.
Hi folks.
I have been informed by Across the River that it may take up to a week before we receive Fords reviewed version of the petition.
That gives some time to do some other things.
I would just like to say here that it will be put up in my name after all as some of the major contributors to re-shaping it would prefer to remain anonymous which is understandable, but I wont have to experience any annoyance in person as they might and anyway as the immortal bard said
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove. ”
Personally I was never worried about being sued for libel as it would be a wonderfull opportunity to direcly address some touchy issues in court.
No, my concern was that the fellowship might attempt to close the petition down which would be a waste of everyones time and effort.
My own web site has a cult warning on it about the Fellowship of Friends Cult and its Trouser snake happy teacher Robert Earl Burton and has done for about six weeks now.
So enjoy the festive season until things can go forward with the petition.
And because laughter is the best medicine………….
“Shirley’s Makeover
A woman named Shirley was from Beverly Hills. One day, she had a heart attack and was taken to Cedars Sinai hospital. While on the operating table, she had a near-death experience. She saw God and asked, “Is this it?” God said, “No, Shirley you have another 30 to 40 years to live.” Upon her recovery, she decided to stay in the hospital and have collagen shots, cheek implants, a face lift, liposuction and breast augmentation. She even had someone dye her hair.
She figured since she had another 30 to 40 years, she might as well make the most of it.
She walked out of Cedars Sinai lobby after the last operation and was killed by an ambulance speeding up to the hospital. She arrived in front of God and said, “I thought you said I had another 30 to 40 years?”
God replied, “Jesus is that you Shirley! I didn’t recognize you!”
————————————————————————–
Elena
Sorry but the spots are another old wives tale.
As our friendly shaman below demonstrates yet again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar2VfSUWUmw&feature=related
Ps. why do you think the Church made such a big deal of getting rid of all of the “witches” who maintained the knowledge of where to find and how to prepare the different kinds of naturally occuring entheogens.
Witchhunts were so ironic, they would hold them under water for long enough that they should drown and if they didnt then they were a witch and were burned. Catcha twenty two.
wishing you all tidings of comfort and joy.
jack.
181 Bruce
….Oh woe, woe is them. If they only knew the evil they do. Father forgive them.
__________________________________________________________
thank you Bruce for the laughter! Don’t you love the fear of God….
197 veramente
181 Bruce
Cannot remember who posted this the first time, (God bless them), but perhaps it is appropriate to ‘loving that fear of God’.
youtube.com/watch?v=cA-pWKRyyG8&feature=related
137 Move On
Thanks Bruce for your answers to this post. This is just an echo of yours.
Move On, You make it sound as though it is just a bad ride worth getting off from and not worrying to look back but that’s as easy a position as one would expect from Linda, Girard or Robert Burton.
“….but we’re creating circumstances all the time which will reverberate back to us.”This is not meant as a fear thing but as a basic truth. We don’t get away with nothing – in the vernacular.”
We’re creating the circumstances for the Fellowship of Friends to continue untouched and ruin the life of many more people for long periods of time or the circumstances for people to never have to come into contact with a few people’s very corrupt way of making money and using others for their pleasure.
M.O. “There is also a great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality (read Cult) around being in opposition to something. Pot kettle/kettle pot.”
There is also a great personal esoteric danger in creating a personality, (read Cult) around letting everything continue without moving a hand to stop it because one can’t really be bothered.
M.O. “I was concerned for those dear friends who are just now emerging from FOF and looking around. Suddenly they find a blog where what they may still be involved in is under attack. I’d go straight back to a dinner or reception in that lovely cozy world of FOF. I’d dismiss this blog as ranting and raving and negative.”
We are not healthy beautiful people after being in the Fellowship of Friends for decades. Ranting, raving and negative is part of the effects that we should be looking at straight in the eye so that we try to avoid other people having to go through the same process.
M.O. “So dear friends …who may be teetering on the edge…. we’re not all bitter, boring, bullying or blind with hate. Many of us have accepted that FOF was a stage.. a stage in many senses of the word and we’re moving right along.”
So long to you, have a great trip. While I might move along inwardly and process the suffering I might have experienced and actually started to feel there is enough sanity to recover joy for this world, I certainly have no intention of pretending nothing wrong is going on because I feel better myself.
You’re right, the blog is not kind, it has never been more than now, and now is actually a lot kinder than five months ago. We just came out of the Fellowship of Friends, what kindness can you expect from people who have not received any in decades?
Innocent people continue to pay considerable amounts of money, convinced that they are in a conscious School. Innocent young men, lend themselves to sexual abuse, because a whole community says Robert Burton is a conscious divine being. Innoncent women allow to be treated like second and third class citizens because of Robert Burton’s misoginy. Innocent children continue to grow up in a perfectly fake environment in which they are perceiving all these things going on as something legitimate. Move on to what? Move on to the King of Hearts and leave the Fellowship of Friends BE? Wouldn’t that be just dandy.
It is right work of the King of Hearts to hate, feel bitter and outraged at any form of abuse. These are not things to be shamed by. If I ever stop feeling angry about these things, please shake me thoroughly until I come back to my senses. Feeling these things does not stop one from being equally open to real beauty. It simply defines the boundaries that one is no longer willing to stand by and allow to continue unquestioned. It places one against the current and defines one’s destiny, like a blade cutting through the tangent of a wave in which a man is defined human.
$250 has been sent today
Just like all the martyrs,Robert ’s been persecuted by bad people.
Exactly like he predicted:”When the 44 president of the USA takes office I’ll be incarcerated”.
Shame on you bloggers.
Why don’t you stop this petition right now e mind your own souls?I’m sure lots of you loved shagging him,didn’t ya?
DON’T BE FOOD FOR THE MOON.
moooooo!
ommmmm!
199 Elena
Wow! I can actually feel your words, Elena. You are a voice for many. Part of me wants to rock you in my arms and tell you that everything Will be alright. It will take time. The other part of me is so enraged! I look forward to seeing an end to the madness. You should attach #199 to the petition.
202 wakeuplittlesuzywakeup
moooooo!
ommmmm!
—————————–
very good little suzy!!! :)
200
xray44
Thanks, x. I’ll email him that information.
Dear Elena,
Keep healing
Shedding your tears, a skin
See the sun, the stars
See your light and your shadows.
All you
Keep loving yourself
snorer 201
Please tell me you are kidding.
Things are a bit slow here right now, so how about a song and a couple of poems?
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before–”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
Now I Become Myself – May Sarton
Elena, this one I especially dedicate to you, may the unexplainable beauty of this world continue to inspire and heal us.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F-EI4fKY5YM
And when they finally fall
These wailing walls and burdened crosses
God’s twilights and all
How I’ll feel like a beautiful child
Such a beautiful child again….
After sending the previous post, I stumbled upon an article which seems to beautifully fit in with what I posted, and more in general with the way I feel these days… hope you enjoy it too!
http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/785
To you and specially my husband, like everything else I’ve written on this blog.
How sincerely we fail to honor our selves self, blinded by the impulse to be, at all cost,
convinced that if only we make all the effort,
everything should flow.
In the race of being, we come to surrender our selves when we touch upon the boundaries of our own effort and finally observe the world’s being. It IS, with or without our effort.
The road begins when the whole of one’s struggle brings one to the dead end of one’s ambition. The ambition to be without considering the rest is the dead end of any struggle.
This is as true of Individuals as of Communities. There is only one community. Not a drop of rain falls in one side of the world without dampening the whole. Only our unconsciousness neglects to perceive it.
How sincerely you moved the world around hoping you could mold it to fit your picture, to have it crush the half of you that you sacrificed: essence.
The tenacity with which individuals build their imaginary picture can compare with the arduous construction of cities by communities. But both the city and the imaginary picture are nothing but the hell in which we burn when we forget to respect our divine nature.
Essence is to individuals, what nature is to mankind.
That is why totalitarian societies destroy both essence and nature and what you find in their bosom is denaturalized creatures, disguised in silk costumes.
How sincerely ignorance walks towards its own doom. Had we remembered to remember, we could have only re-membered ourselves into one.
How sincerely the moth circles the light forgetful of its own nature. But it was not for moths that humans were made to circle the light. Only in Cults.
One cannot remain for ever in the first step and circle around one’s own work indefinitely. When we do that, it is the labyrinth of our unresolved boundaries what we are trapped in.
All individual effort should lead to the second step or the recognition of others. The re-membrance of others. And all of the second step should lead to the recognition of all. All is One. Individual, community, humanity. There are no real boundaries between them. Only connections.
Each human being is a living connection to the whole of humanity. Each life is a message seeking to connect us. The spiritual light for human beings is in the recognition of the community of Mankind. Mankind is our inner Sun. When we lose the integrity of that connection, we stumble in shadows.
We live the everyday of that light in our interactions. Losing the threads with our indifference and ignorance or threading the light with our willingness to embrace. Our willingness to pull down the castles of your imaginary solitude. Each Act renews that light.
How sincerely your back held on to that castle of aloneness in which you never allowed anyone to help you, convinced that your willingness to carry the fake Sun of a Reborn Burden, just changing a T for a D and shuffling the letters at your pleasure, would make the whole of Nature turn its course and bend at your feet.
Fifteen thousand of us have bent willingly for much too long to not grant you the credit of your misleading effort. But fifteen thousand souls and thirty five years of lifetimes are but a blink in the eye of our magnitude.
We will learn to re-establish the broken connections of our integrity and crush every boundary of your corrupted soul, until you too unwind and rewind yourselves into the whole.
on 209 Elena ~209: Dec 12, 2007 at 2:55 pm:
Well expressed dear lady. I recommend several rereadings of this post to full enjoy its depths.
‘the imaginary picture are nothing but the hell in which we burn when we forget to respect our divine nature.’
Elena:
Ditto on Bares Reposting @ 210
Very powerful Elena.
One part in particular was good for me to read this morning.
“One cannot remain for ever in the first step and circle around one’s own work indefinitely. When we do that, it is the labyrinth of our unresolved boundaries what we are trapped in.”
For me, there are many levels to that one, and which I have to return to again and again.
Thanks
Bravo, Elena!
Awesome post.
Thanks.
Snorer!
“Shame on you bloggers.” Why? Makes no sense.
All we do here is sincerely play along with His own Holy Prediction, dude! So it may happen just “Exactly like he predicted:”When the 44 president of the USA takes office I’ll be incarcerated”.
He predicted it himself, didn’t he?
We are just playing along to make him look like a real prophet…
Just like we sincerely played along and prepared for his bullshit Earthquakes… However they didn’t happen.
But this time he may be actually right on with his prediction.
Besides it may be good for him to quietly contemplate in solitude… May be he’ll start feeling the true magnitude of pain he inflicted on others. May be he will feel genuine remorse, sorry, compassion and love to all of 15,000 honest students of his, whom he selfishly scammed out of money, hurt, deceived, sexually and emotionally abused during last 35 years…
SIT…THINK…FEEL…CRY…LOVE…HEAL
208 lauralupa
————————-
thank you Lauralupa for the link, I ordered Ecoshamanism from the Library.
Reading the article started my thinking in the direction on the subject of shamanism.
It was never explored in the FOF group, or in my times at least.
Nature was considered purely “mechanical” down to the personal like in the case of the birth of a baby. I do not know about you and how you felt in having children while living at Renaissance at the time, but I wonder if you felt a split between your natural woman self and the other cult personality within you?
I can only talk for myself, but I did have this internal split and even some degrees of shame, I could not quite integrate the natural/instinctive parts with the spiritual(fof) within me.
Some students were quite snobby around children, fortunately that seemed a minority, but enough for me to feel their vibes.
I admit I was very vulnerable to being shaped by the cult and the only real thing was left for me was my anger and my inner rage pointing to my own truth. What a mess then, I am happy to say I have healed.
213 Purchasing awakening
Remembering Snorer’s previous wonderful posts, I would venture he was being completely sarcastic. I’m sure he or she will correct me if I’m wrong. Unless someone else took the name.
214 veramente
“Some students were quite snobby around children, fortunately that seemed a minority, but enough for me to feel their vibes.”
I’m obviously not a shrink, but I’ve observed over the years, (people both “in” and “out”), that frequently people with very well fed and developed vanity tend to keep children at a distance simply because they draw attention to themselves, and away from people who wish the attention focused on them. Even some who have children (Mommy Dearest) one can see this at work. Narcissists see children as objects and not much more (RB).
It’s difficult to develop the capacity to give to children when one requires all the energy to be “one way” (in).
If people remember the “dog octave”…There were people who got dogs (pedigree of course) for obviously the same reason some people drew children into their lives. An accessory, a current fad, sticking one’s nose even further up RB’s ass. I think the number (though always a minority thank God) in the FOF is inordinately high compared to the general population because one of the subgroups the Fellowship of Friends tends to attract are narcissists and budding sociopaths. One doesn’t need a large number of these people to have them make a large impact on the general population. Just look at how fucked up the government is with just a handful of crackpots and demi-gods.
Veramente,
Just to expand a little on your and Laura’s posts regarding the Fellowship and its attitude toward nature / ecology:
As I remember it, very few people in the Fellowship were concerned about the well-being of our planet because, after all, when ‘Armageddon’ came in 2006 it would all be sort of a moot point. And of course mighty C influence had it all under control and so forth. So there was no need to worry about greenhouse gases, global warming or any of that. Instead, everybody just pursued his/her own selfish ways and their only real concern was to make their teaching payments so they could stay connected to C influence and wouldn’t be doomed to hell.
And by the way, the same irresponsibility was rampant in the Fellowship in regard to accumulating debt, often with the same justification.
P.S. Thank you so much X-Ray for your generosity in volunteering to pay the $250 for the legal fees. If we ever need to raise some money for any future action, hopefully some of the rest of us will kick it in.
Just saw that the link to this blog from wikipedia has been removed . Not familiar with the workings of wikipedia , but think it’s important to try to have the link back up to continue having a balance of information regarding the fellowship of friends . Thanks for all the great thoughts and inspiration provided here on this blog . And while I’m at it I’d like to here at least one honest explanation from psychic or any other current member of the FOF regarding Robert’s apparently unstillable sexual appetite and numerous account of abusive behaviour as posted here by former students . I simply don’t understand that kind of behaviour from a suposably conscious being .
217 David B.
Re: your P.S.
Have been thinking about the same thing
Thank you X-ray for your generosity
Across the River & X-ray & Jack :
If it happens that 1 hour is not enough for Mr. Greene to do what needs to be done, perhaps one of you could open a pay pal account. If a number of us kicked in a little each, we should be able to cover what is needed for now. Anyway, put me down along with Yesri and David if more is required.
214 Veramente: “I wonder if you felt a split between your natural woman self and the other cult personality within you? I can only talk for myself, but I did have this internal split and even some degrees of shame, I could not quite integrate the natural/instinctive parts with the spiritual (fof) within me.”
This was true for men too – the split between the natural man and the cult personality.
Of course the natural person is different in different individuals, but it’s damaging for almost anyone to be repressing negative emotions for years, pretending to be positive and calm all the time, grinning at hundreds of people you barely know, let alone keeping exercises against sex, laughing, gesticulating, rock music etc etc etc.
I’ve been out for a year now and am just starting to become aware of deeply repressed parts of my psychological makeup that are starting to reemerge and hopefully recombine in a healthy way.
An aspect of this is that Fellowship students, having cut off large parts of their true being, become neurotic, shallow, prone to illness, superficial, uncaring, emasculated, and blind.
I speak from experience.
I should perhaps add that the experience of leaving was for me almost deliriously positive. It’s only now, a year later, that I’m starting to see how messed up those Fellowship years made me. But it’s still a positive process.
I’ve been rumbled.
Nature was considered purely “mechanical” down to the personal like in the case of the birth of a baby.
Some years ago I was reviewing the Via Del Sol Journals, which were published from August of 1971 until 1974. In early 1972, the Marshalls had a baby. (I recall the name Brian Marshall, but I do not recall Mrs. Marshall’s name, and she was the one who did the difficult part.) The birth of the Marshall’s child was commemorated in an issue of the Via Del Sol Journal as emblematic or symbolic of a process going on in the School.
Now, how fucked up is that? The birth of a particular child is not “emblematic” or “symbolic” of something else “more important” going on in somebody’s organization. It does not “represent” something else. It is totally amazing by itself and dwarfs everything else in its amazingness. He who misses something as obvious as the amazingness of the birth of a child has a serious perceptual deficit.
Nancy Marshall.
207
lauralupa
The wild geese…..thank you for the image!
======================================================
209
Elena
“All individual effort should lead to the second step or the recognition of others. The re-membrance of others. And all of the second step should lead to the recognition of all. All is One. Individual, community, humanity. There are no real boundaries between them. Only connections.”
Dear Elena, what I’m beginning to find is that the first efforts must be tender remembrance of ourselves. This means a willingness to not judge or dismiss what we feel and to simply agree with what we see. In many ways I’ve felt that I know myself, but begin to learn now that while compassion has been always available for others, it has never been offered internally.
It seems this experience is not mine alone. It becomes more and more clear to me that this is the new awakening after leaving the FOF. We have been so desperately wrong in our efforts. It’s almost surreal these days when meeting students to experience the difference in this open, loving, living place and the fixed position of those who are so sure they’ve already figured it all out.
I’m glad to hear you well and full of enjoyment, and thanks for sharing the beauty of your travels.
======================================================
218
James
Look here for the call, if needed. Thanks.
….the aims of Robert? serve the School?
Something from this morning:
Dear Directors,
In our continuing efforts to support the aims of Robert and serve the School, please remember to work with the six week teaching payment exercise. Those students who find themselves six weeks or more behind in their Teaching payments are asked to refrain from participation in all Center events until they are able to bring themselves to within this time-frame.
It is always a delicate triad with regard to finances, and a wonderful opportunity for compassionate second line. Accordingly, please remind students to speak with you regarding their situation especially if they foresee financial denying forces. With due preparation and sincere valuation, solutions can always be found. You are most welcome to share your concerns with your regional coordinator and/or Council representative.
Thank you for your loving efforts,
Thomas and Daniele
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
……come on, this is not Rumi!!!!
Veronicapoe – your thoughts about “emblematic” and symbolic” events reminded me of a little story from long ago.
When I joined the Fellowship, I got along with most students of our small center, but there was one guy that seriously grated on my nerves. He had the act of the “perfect student”, always diligent, committed, super-positive, apparently in love with Robert, the School and the hierarchy. He was also formatory and vain, and I felt that behind a veneer of apparent friendliness he was actually quite cold and aloof. That later became apparent, when he blew the whistle on another student who had confided to him her trouble with keeping the no-smoking exercise.
Anyway, one day he arrived at the meeting with a newspaper carrying an headline concerning someone who was killed by a line #44 bus (or something along these lines, I can’t exactly remember the news’ details except that a person was dead). As he proudly recounted the high state and memory created by the 44 shock, courtesy of c influence, he commented on how grand and amazing it was that the angels had arranged such incident just so that he could use it to be transported into the moment. He seemed to relish the idea that the gods would go as far as to kill innocent life people in order to create shocks for our conscious school.
Memory was created for me too, as the episode really creeped me out. Still, I did not comment, as I very rarely commented when students said all sorts of weird stuff, and I totally failed to see that the issue was not just about a self-aggrandizing minor character, but the whole group-think that Robert encouraged. It took me eight more years to be able to see how deeply I had also bought into this game. Robert’s magical idea that life on the planet is a worthless endeavour and the Fellowship is the only thing worth a damn is definitely one of the main ingredients that feed shallow and uncaring attitudes in students, as pointed out by nuthead.
I didn’t go as far as thinking that people could die for the sake of my personal evolution, but surely I was all the time consciously and unconsciously looking for signs confirming my special place in the order of things. If you did not receive enough shocks it could mean that you were a loser, a life person in disguise! But luckily for Robert, there has never been a shortage of signs and omens. Everything in his world is always symbolic of something else. People dying and being born, accidents and disasters, world events, coincidences and synchronicities, numbers and word play, artworks and quotations, anything really, is thrown in the boiling cauldron of Robert’s imagination and transformed so that it can be abused to create new meanings and calls of destiny.
What really bugs me is that acutally I was never a true believer in all that Robert said, but was nevertheless willing to turn a blind eye for so long because of my desperate neediness for meaning, community and spiritual camaraderie. And coming from a dysfunctional family, entering a dysfunctional community was seemingly the next logical step for me. Just like one gets involved in one dysfunctional relationship after another, until one begins to “unravel that ball of illusions and confusion wrapped around one” that Yesri was talking about. Facing the painful truths about ourselves will at least bring us to a place of humility where real psychological work may take place, and our capacity for empathy and connectedness to humanity be restored.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pCBotbZTw-U
Newly moderated: 218.
Pensate un attimo 226
“continuing efforts”, “support the aims”, “serve the School”, “delicate triad”, “wonderful opportunity”, “compassionate second line”, “financial denying forces”, “sincere valuation”, “loving efforts” …
I am reaching for some alka seltzer to help my stomach in the delicate triad of trying to digest this latest load of Burtonian braincrippling hypnotalk marketing soul junk food.
Lauralupa,
yes..it seems written by a robot! I ‘ll go for an alka seltzer too!!
228 lauralupa
“What really bugs me is that acutally I was never a true believer in all that Robert said, but was nevertheless willing to turn a blind eye for so long because of my desperate neediness for meaning, community and spiritual camaraderie.”
************
That was very much my experience also. There was a part of me that did not trust Robert almost from the beginning. And then the things he said created even more confusion and mistrust. Yet I let those almost instinctive gut feelings go. The idea that we should not feel any connection or emotion about anyone outside of the school, and that they were only good for shocks for us ’special people’, pained me. And yet still I stayed. It is said the devil does his best work when he weaves his story in right next to truth. There is truth in the idea that there are parts of us amongst the ‘many I’s’ that we should learn not to trust. There is truth that life in general, and for the most part, is spiritually asleep. It is no wonder that we were ripe for being mistaken and misled about the fof. We came from dysfunctional families that existed within a dysfunctional culture, and then willingly threw away what little critical thinking and feeling we had left. About all you can say, when you remember back to some of the lovely people we met there, and when we look around the blog at the people here and the remarkable things they have to share, is that I suppose we got fooled, at least for the most part, in pretty good company.
BR 210, James and PA 212, With much love, thank you.
Across the River: … “ what I’m beginning to find is that the first efforts must be tender remembrance of ourselves. This means a willingness to not judge or dismiss what we feel and to simply agree with what we see. In many ways I’ve felt that I know myself, but begin to learn now that while compassion has been always available for others, it has never been offered internally.”
I agree with you, judgement is the buffer that does not allow one to even see there is a need for compassion, whether for one’s self or others.
In my case, while I thought I had compassion for others, it wasn’t until I was thoroughly defeated mostly by my own self, that I realized I only cared for the people I was identified with. With those, every effort of compassion, love, care was exaggerated. (Just as we all exaggerate our care for Robert Burton because we were identified with the picture that he was a divine being, better than our selves. Some have gone as far as totally sacrificing their lives for him thinking that that will take them to heaven but the proportion or their compassion for him is equal to the disproportionate lack of compassion for themselves and others. That is another of the aspects that I find so tragic about the Fellowship of Friends). It wasn’t until that understanding sank through that I realized that was not real compassion but self interest.
Today it would make sense to say that that kind of self interest is related to the karma one comes to resolve in a lifetime because no matter how much effort and good will one puts into it, it consistently leads to a dead end.
The vision of those worthless efforts totally impregnated by personal interest and the suffering that was experienced by never being able to take them to a healthy arrival, was what brought immense compassion for my self. It may seem ironic that we fall so low with what seems initially to be good will but it seems we can only take real steps from different degrees of good will. Love based in self interest is still love and until one realizes that loving a few and neglecting others is not real love, one cannot take the necessary step that opens up the heart initially with great compassion for one’s own previous miserable efforts. I do not expect this to be the rule for anyone else, but that is how it has happened to me. The irony is that I experienced all those things just before joining the Fellowship of Friends and once I joined I was prepared to make every sacrifice that was needed to not judge the School no matter how absurd almost everything seemed. Internally I worked on my not judgement but externally I think I could not control my disapproval and walked by without a smile for so many years that I almost crystallized in bitterness, and at the same time worked like mad trying to find solutions to the areas where I thought there was more suffering. There is great frustration in the love that did not find a healthy place to land in but the issue is no longer my suffering but the tremendous suffering of the many who have deviated their efforts to such a pathological love for Robert that they are willing to hurt others while they are at it. Helping these people free themselves from such pathological deviation, continues to be an act of compassion , even if it is done through legal action. Law is a legitimate tool against crime and these people don’t realize that it is crime what they have fallen into.
From Across the River:
“It’s almost surreal these days when meeting students to experience the difference in this open, loving, living place and the fixed position of those who are so sure they’ve already figured it all out.”
_______________________________________________
Yes, this contrast continues to amaze me. We have all observed the rigid and closed demeanor in most current members when we encounter them at the store or the post office. They are carrying a tension that is palpable. It feels like a fierce and desperate denial. Among this hardcore group even the occasional attempt to appear friendly comes across as insincere.
Perhaps if we try not to be put off by this behavior and continue to remain clear and open in the face of it we may help some to see the trap they are in.
And just to be fair, there are a few current members who are open and tolerant but they are generally in the beginning of the process that will allow them to eventually leave.
227
That is a new one from Rumi. He was talking about the Fellowship of Friends.
He meant that if you delay payment a corrupt, brainwashing cult will disappear.
Thank you Lauralupa for pointing out these “burtonian” expressions and for your description of the “perfect student act”
“He had the act of the “perfect student”, always diligent, committed, super-positive, apparently in love with Robert, the School and the hierarchy. He was also formatory and vain, and I felt that behind a veneer of apparent friendliness he was actually quite cold and aloof.”
I also find that “a desperate neediness for meaning, community and spiritual camaraderie” is something I can deeply relate to.
I am still trying to digest and understand how it works. Why do we get sucked into this world of fake emotions and artificial sugar? Is it a desire to refine oneself and inner insecurity of being a slob? Is it a wish to be beautiful? To be accepted by the swans as an Ugly Ducklin in Andersons’ fairy tale? I noticed that it is very hard to be simple and natural around people who are acting fake and “super-positive” with sugar coated – I almost always catch the bug and start acting the same… Unfortunately.
227 Pensate un attimo
Now they’re just making this shit up. No shame.
227 Pensate un attimo & 235 Yesri baba
Yeah I don’t know about that one being Rumi,
But here are a couple of lines that are Rumi, that might be more appropriate.
“Arise, O son! burst thy bonds and be free!
How long wilt thou be captive to silver and gold?”
or maybe this:
“So vile hypocrites steal the language of Darveshes,
In order to beguile the simple with their trickery.
The works of the righteous are light and heat,
The works of the evil treachery and shamelessness.
They make stuffed lions to scare the simple,
They give the title of Muhammad to false Musailima.”
228 Laura Lupa
“He seemed to relish the idea that the gods would go as far as to kill innocent life people in order to create shocks for our conscious school.”
Worse than that.
I have heard a student not long ago who almost died, saying after that, about her own life:
“ C Influence can dispose of your life to awaken others”.
I don’t know how to interprate that ?
Summit of vanity to consider that you are the one chosen by C inflence or completly brainwashed and a total giving up of your own personal evolution and life?
Probably both.
Aline – or incredible superstitious fear holding us/them in our place.
227 Pensate un Attimo
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————————————–
Rumi?
I do not think so, this is just to make someone fearful to loose something no one else can give.
Robert Burton is really acting like the old time Pope figure.
This is truly regression.
In my times I knew first hand the pressure of paying teaching payments when I had nothing and was pretty sick.
F. T. was in charge then, she looked and seemed very sweet, but when she was in charge of the teaching payment octave, forget the sweetness and bang your head against a wall (her head). No room for any excuses.
Of course when I was late with payments I would meet her at every corner when I wanted avoid her at all costs. I used my credit cards (stupid) to pay at one point, the pressure to pay felt very close to extortion, without much compassion.
It is extortion actually, clothed in esoteric principles!
Current students, if you do not see this, what’s up with your common sense? I understand, I was there. Stop giving your life away. Money is energy and time. Really take a hard look at what you are really getting back. Illusions, nothing, spiritual bankruptcy.
I just had a flashback of another fragment of the madness that constituted my last few years in the Fellowship.
I would sometimes catch myself “sinfully” speculating about how soon from now Robert might die, so that THEN I could finally be free of the FOF.
It seems shocking and ridiculous looking back at it now. But that was how much I needed to delegate responsibility for my life to an external power (speaking of dysfunctional families…) That was how much I was afraid to stand on my own.
Did anyone have similar thoughts while they were in?
This is what I wish someone had told me back then: Don’t wait for Robert to die and for the Fellowship to disintegrate from natural causes. It is okay to make your own choices about your life. It will upset your set patterns, and it will hurt, but just do what needs to be done. Have some human integrity.
Traveler 241
I had those thoughts, almost exactly as you describe. It was very freeing to just leave.
Not just freeing, but it began to re-establish my healthy self esteem. I really did feel quite guilty about imagining Robert’s death, and at the same time quite dispassionate – a bit frightening at the time. I am very glad to have found trust in my integrity.
#241 Traveller
Did anyone have similar thoughts while they were in?
Yes. Exactly the same.
Thanks for bringing this back to the surface.
241 Traveler
I didn’t have this experience, but I don’t find it odd that you would dream, in your slavery, of the death of your captor. Why not? It is a deep wish from the most real part of yourself, longing for freedom, and it is likely universal.
232 James McLemore
There is truth in the idea that there are parts of us amongst the ‘many I’s’ that we should learn not to trust. There is truth that life in general, and for the most part, is spiritually asleep.
James, I beg to differ. Can you really know that is true?
226 Pensate un attimo
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
FoF members, what is present now is your own (believe-it-or-don’t) captivity. Delay payment! It will disappear! (Warning: there may be a 6-week waiting period before the desired result. Be patient.)
221 Nuthead
It’s only now, a year later, that I’m starting to see how messed up those Fellowship years made me.
Nuthead, good for you. Hang in there, the ride is going to get even more scary and challenging and terrifying and grand.
JoelF
Lauralupa (228)
You wrote “What really bugs me is that acutally I was never a true believer in all that Robert said, but was nevertheless willing to turn a blind eye for so long because of my desperate neediness for meaning, community and spiritual camaraderie.”
———————————————
Well said. This was very much how it was for me also. I totally doubted Robert the whole time I was in, but I liked many of the people and I was interested in the 4th way ideas, so I stayed anyway. Looking back, I guess that I HOPED that he was for real, but my common sense always told me he was bullshit. It was, of course, very dicey to speak with others about one’s doubts about Robert without being alienated.
Traveler (241) wrote:
“I would sometimes catch myself “sinfully” speculating about how soon from now Robert might die, so that THEN I could finally be free of the FOF.”
———————————————–
I felt this way also, but without really feeling ’sinful’ about it. And I spoke with a few others while I was in the Fellowship who also said that they wished that Robert would just die (or that someone would kill him, even). Afterall, it was Robert who brought all the weirdness, opression, abuse, and onerous demands for money.
My close friends and I managed to have some fun while I was there, but to do so usually involved breaking the ‘exercises’ and so forth, or at least going against the accepted normal way of being in ‘the school’. We envisioned how it might be a pretty cool little community without Robert there to kill everybody’s buzz all the time. Of course the people that felt that way, and were honest enought to admit it, were in the ‘outer circle’ and are no longer in the school today, I’m sure.
No payment is ever enough, and the questions that won’t cease are quieted by the reminder of how easy it is to lose a real school.
Meanwhile, the years go by.
Talk about many I’s! SOMETHING is occurring here, and in case the school IS real, we want to protect our connection to it from another part of ourself that might take action too hastily. Meanwhile, most of the time our abstract observer watches and then there’s the analyst, too, looking out for us to catch little signs of pure manipulation. Finally, finally, the weight of this suspended impasse becomes too much and a response is required.
Of course, this is EXACTLY “the way one loses a real school”, at least if it’s the Fellowship of Friends.
For most of the others, though, I wonder what will happen to them and just keep a little internal vigil going on. I truly wonder and fear how far they will continue to pay.
Dear all,
I have a friend who said in Dec 2006: I will stay in the Fellowship of friends till Robert dies….I want to see where it goes.
My answer was: you could stay another 20 years…or soooo?
He said he did not think it would take that long……..!!!!!!
Joy and forgiveness to all of us
232 James McLemore
“There is truth in the idea that there are parts of us amongst the ‘many I’s’ that we should learn not to trust. There is truth that life in general, and for the most part, is spiritually asleep.”
James ( I beg to agree.)
I know this in the same way as I know I have a body and that it breathes.
I work sometimes in a place where it is very obvious.
Does this world and the prevailing conditions in it appear to be the result of billions of spiritually awake people?
all the best. jack.
Ps when I hear Shit like that out of context Rumi quote applied to tithing, it strengthens my resolve to do everything in my power to assist the demise of the cult, its an obvious and overt manipulation by the inducement of fear for our spiritual well being….. its blackmail.
J x
James/Jack
“There is truth that life in general, and for the most part, is spiritually asleep.”
There’s some truth in almost any statement, but the problem with this particular statement is that it implies that YOU are more spiritually awake than the average person – not a useful position to take.
RobertC: Thank you. I wonder if she would like to be part of this dialogue….
Newly moderated comment: 238.
test
246 Skeptical Optimist
227 Pensate un Attimo
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
This is actually a quote from “Rummy”, the bartender at the Willow Glen bar, just down the road from “Isis”.
I think it had something to do with a FOF member’s bar tab and the bottle of Rye he was looking at.
255 was an oops!
246 Skeptical Optimist
I wonder if your begging to differ is possibly just to do with semantics. Is it the use of that old work language which I think you dislike using? I do not use it myself anymore in my thinking or speaking and have not for twenty years. I used it there because of thinking about the past, and speaking about the school, and some of the reasons we may have been misled, and misled ourselves.
Now before I begin, I would say in response to ‘can you really know that it is true?’, that I never know for sure if anything is true. I guess we just take our best shot. Just like we took our best shot in deciding that the FoF was not where we wanted to be. So we may not ‘really know’, but we can be pretty damn sure.
Part 1 – There is truth in the idea that there are parts of us amongst the ‘many I’s that we should learn not to trust -
I simply meant that there are parts of ourselves, our thinking, our ego or whatever one may wish to call it that are products of a type of thinking that produces what could be called attachment or identification, and that increases our false sense of self and separation from each other and from, our own higher nature. We have a number of issues that we carry within us, that do not further, and in fact can be obstacles to any sort of process of self-discovery/examination.
Part 2 – There is truth that life in general, and for the most part, is spiritually asleep.
I do think, and believe that I have seen in myself, which appears to be the only place we can truly learn anything, that there is a part of myself that does not know of the possibilities of consciousness, or of spiritual development, or of truly having compassion for other beings on the planet, and of having a higher self or nature. There was a time in my life that I gave no thought to these things. I now believe it is not only possible, but is actually our inherent nature and who we truly are.
Now- that this spiritual thinking, or leaning, or development, or sense of a higher nature is not common in the world as a whole, seems obvious from newspapers, t.v.,or observing the actions of any form of government anywhere in the world. Even within religion, be it radical fundamentalists or even non-radical fundamentalists of any religion or sect, it does not look like what Jesus and The Buddha and other great men have spoken of. Awakening seems to be a process, and I suspect it is a process that will eventually involve everyone. I certainly do not feel that I am above anyone, or that I am in some select group of people. In fact the more I learn, the less I seem to know, and the less I feel different or separate from anyone. But it would seem to me that if life in general, including me, was not for the most part spiritually asleep, this same world, both environmentally and politically, and spiritually would not be on, what appears to be, the possible brink of self-annihilation.
Thanks Joel – You always did make me think, and I suspect the perspective you have in mind may still be different from the above. I look forward to hearing it.
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————–
When Sequence Sickens you to death
and when alone with cancer
you will be laying in your bad,
Beloved Teacher won’t forget
to drop his Presence and to call you,
to ask to make your teaching payment
before you are completly dead.
You think it is a poem but you wrong,
This true event was hidden for quite long.
Shakespeare
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————–
Whether payment is made or not, what is present now will certainly disappear.
And this, too, shall pass.
#250 Jack
“Does this world and the prevaling conditions in it appear to be the result of billions of spiritually awake people?”
No. It appears to be the result of billions of people who think that they and their kind are more ’spiritually’ ‘awake’ than the next guy and his group.
This may sound funny coming from the metaphor king but maybe we should drop the symbols ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’ to free our minds a bit to think differently about the whole ball of wax.
If that kind of distinction is being made it is part of the problem.
We have been trained to think that it is something added (‘awakeness’) that creates more value. That was also promoted in the spiritual materialism of the Fellowship of Friends.
Presence is an absence. Certainly, it is the absence of making those kind of distinctions.
251 Nuthead.
Oi nuthead, I believe its possible to take any position with or without humility.
Not usefull for what?
Recently four guys where I work sometimes beat a guy to death with baseball bats….now, I know! I am more spiritually evolved than them, or my dog for that matter…but I know also, that I am a beggar and one of the least in the “spiritual” world.
————————————————————————–
260 Yesri Baba.
Personally I find making distinctions without adding judgement to them very usefull as an orientation in life. Its a process which takes micro-seconds.
I didnt judge the fifteen or so crackheads of all different ages and nationalities who chased me with large knives in the port authority bus station in New york but if I had confused them with “spiritually awakened” people I might not be here today. But its ok with me that people have different opinions on this as james says its probably only semantics.
And only identification with one or the other standpoint can create wars, so identification is perhaps the real enemy.
all the best to all. Jack.
228 Laura, I really enjoyed that post, for me it says so much. I happened upon a blog run by some spiritualist/psychic. I’m not really into the Tarot and people speaking to the departed however when reading some of the stuff this guy was posting I really saw a parallel with Roberts’s ramblings. This chap basically would place the Tarot cards on a table and in relation to some question would construct a story around the cards, which somehow or other would address the question. It reminded me very much of Robert living his life as you described. He constructs meaning (fantasy) from the things that are happening around him. I remember one example of visiting various restaurants and continually seeing the name of a dear friend of mine, who had just left the Fellowship, on empty bottles of wine. After a few days of this he announced that I had been on this student’s ladder and that he was payment for my arrival. Jack, he obviously had an eye for the Scots!
As we all know he is a very poor predictor of the future and should probably spend more time observing himself than observing others and events. Can you imagine the shame he would feel if he was actually present to even a small number of the self-indulgent acts that are Robert Burton.
I was watching a program on Wednesday evening on UK TV called “The End of the world cult”. This cult was relatively harmless by Robert’s standards but what horrific parallels. To see how the leader of this cult abused and predicted and then shamelessly lied and justified. I remember when I was visiting Renaissance for the first time. I think it was very close to the time of the WACO event with David Koresh. I remember thinking to myself, how awful that people could be fooled by such a fanatical twat. And then in the same instance persuading myself that what I was in was far from the Koresh cult. I was NOT in a cult!
Happy days!
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/cult.html
256/Richard M.
Good one.
Allan S wrote:
“He constructs meaning (fantasy) from the things that are happening around him.”
Yes, but to one degree or another, this is what all of us do. As a person with a particularly Carl Jung/Joseph Campbell-type worldview, I feel that creating that meaning, fantasy or not, is a necessary part of being alive. After years of trying to believe that I am not the machine, I now believe I am the machine. If it is true that I have a divine spark within me that is somehow connected with some eternal other, cool daddy-o. But this spark is experiencing the world as “me” from where I sit. Why fight it?
Of course, the difference between my view and Robert’s is that I don’t actually believe my story to be THE TRUTH. My life is a string of experiences that are open to many different interpretations. The story I weave out them can be different from day to day, sometimes, moment to moment. (Did that sentence make your 4th way nerve tingle? Good.) I, also, use to think that was a habit of thought that needed to be eradicated. Now, it is what it is and I try to relax in the pleasure of being me.
Kid wrote:
“I feel that creating that meaning, fantasy or not, is a necessary part of being alive. After years of trying to believe that I am not the machine, I now believe I am the machine.”
Right on Kid, I agree!
“The story I weave out them can be different from day to day, sometimes, moment to moment. (Did that sentence make your 4th way nerve tingle?…)”
Eh…no.
“Now, it is what it is and I try to relax in the pleasure of being me.”
I really like what you say here, although a bit unsure about the pleasure bit. It is what it is certainly, but for me some of it is quite unpalatable. One can still try to relax however.
Allan 262
“After a few days of this he announced that I had been on this student’s ladder and that he was payment for my arrival.”
Being a lover of oddities, I have come to somehow appreciate Robert’s inventiveness in putting his own wacky spin on the Fourth Way teachings he never really seems to have cared for or understood. He is quite good at playing the magical trick of replacing useful spiritual concepts and practical tools of self observation with his personal collection of unverifiable theories and abstruse exercises.
One example that comes to my mind is the emphasis placed on the study of body types and centers of gravity, instead of working with (for example) the far more useful ideas of balancing centers and seriously studying the enneagram. Then there is the subdivision of centers into parts, so that people can spend time having interesting conversations such as “I think you might be centered in the nine of spades” “well actually, I am working with the eight of hearts”.
Long before the infamous Sequence, in the quote you offered we have two precious examples of Burton’s own original theories, namely that people can be on each other’s ladders and that one can be payment for someone else. If we stop to analize them for a moment, can we find any practical use and psychological purpose for them other than the manipulation of members and promotion of the teacher’s position of superiority?
Is this the way “the way” really works, one fall from a ladder and one suddenly becomes “payment”? Or maybe it’s just Robert’s way of saying “I am the only one to know your place in the scheme of things, and you only have value in relation to your closeness to me. Of course if you leave, dear, you will also become payment and your value will be transferred onto the next available sucker.”
So, what will be the next trick he pulls out, now that the game becomes increasingly risky and the odds are turning against him? Judging from recent daily cards, he is still playing the Martyr card and the Fear factor. Will this be enough to keep his flock indefinitely captive?
261 Jack
Yep. I was expressing one point of view that was going on in my pea brain related to the thread that was going on at the time. Spontaneous distinctions occuring all the time are not the judgements I was talking about.
——————————————————————-
264 Kid Shelleen
Once again, eye to eye to eye.
I enjoy a current tone of the discussion. It is thoughtful. One subject which is bothering me lately is the subject of lying and being false. It has been said earlier that FOF doesn’t work with Lying. One of the reasons I needed the School was that I could not find the way out of the complicated world of false personality. Discovering the essence, trying different roles to gain self-knowledge and loosen up my imaginary picture was a significant part of my experience at Apollo.
But now it seems to me that FOF is not helpful for this aim, but rather the opposed.
I am not sure what I developed more – my essence or the act of “a king of hearts with a gold alchemy”. I am not even sure if I lost my way and deviated, or it was just impossible to arrive to the essence because the School does not support essence. It supports vanity and naivete only. Does anyone has thoughts on that?
Dear Somebody
A recent posting from Nuthead
really hit home.
He/she said how he learned to
open up emotionally, hugging,
looking people in the eye, accepting positive compliments
without self deprecation, becoming less of a cynic,
becoming more his own person, more true to himself.
I think that happened to me also, and made me stay that long
I was pretty dysfunctional, naive, insecure, never hugged
because I never was hugged, etc.
I guess a shrink will do the same, FOF was a lifestyle
a practical application of seeing and dealing
with all the stuff that was messed up in me.
Art, beauty, are great healers.
But this was then, at one point the real me emerged,
and with open eyes I saw the good and the bad.
The bad outweighed the good and I left.
Somebody, trust your instincts,
only you know right from wrong
what feeds your soul and what will put
a big messy cloud over it.
268 Somebody
I doubt if we can call things 100% this or that. A major element of FOF culture that has now backfired is that everything was ‘perfect’. We were not allowed to have any open critisism of the school or Robert, it was all just our ‘I’s and Robert was an absolute and ‘good’ authority.
Now that the flood gates have opened, it is easy to sweep everything away without recognising that there were better and worse things in the FOF. Being able to be in a ’state of essence’ with trusted friends in a ’safe haven’ environment was one of the better things about the FOF experience for me. Of course it lulled us into a naive state where we could be taken advantage of.
Something that attracted me strongly to the 4th way was Ouspensky’s description of man as a lying animal and psychology as the study of lying. Part of the process of rescuing your concience from the FOF is being able to see the FOF as a lying organisation. This is on many levels, the mythology of influence C, Robert’s higher authority, the heirachy of students, the prophesies, the ark, being different from life, belonging to a sacred elite, work on yourself being to sacrifice everything for a hypnotic state, that Robert is serving us and many more examples.
For me the honeymoon period of joining the FOF was an incredible time, but so has the honeymoon period of having my world opened up again on leaving. Many of the ‘truths’ that we accepted on joining the FOF were destructive, like the idea of many ‘I’s, personality & essence etc. These ideas shook up your previous picture of the world and showed that your values were based on imitation and lies. I found that the FOF exit experience is similar and you find new tools to understand the school, Robert and his teaching. Again, it is initially a destructive experience and you are shaking up your world view again. Good luck
268 Somebody:
One of the best things Robert Burton did for me was tell me I had a copper alchemy. He only told 3 other women they were at that time that I am aware of. So I never felt better than anyone else; sometimes I felt the opposite. Nor did I get caught up in trying to be better than others. I was actually repulsed by people who were attempting to become something other than what they were in essence.
It’s all a silly game in the Fellowship and who you really are would never fall for it. Being who you are does not require changing, it just is.
OMMMMMMMMMM
I was watching Smallville last night, which my teenage son really judges me for because he thinks it’s ’so dumb’. Lex Luther’s secret project is called “Isis” and there is mention of some kind of a Sequence. Please don’t tell me the origin of the sequence came from Smallville!!!!
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————–
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come senators, congressmen,
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
© Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan –
The Times They Are A Changin’ (Unreleased 1976) 4:40
from Hard Rain Show
22 April 1976
http://www.youtube.com/v/lZ_XwLSN45I
Thank you Uncle Bob, and by that, I don’t mean Robert Burton.
271 wakeuplittlesuzywakeup
Aloha.
brucelevy: Aloha to you. Maholo! OMMMMMMMM
That’s Mahalo, no Maholo! means thanks
Perhaps this would be a contender for a gatehouse quote?
Now close your eyes and you will see
A land of dreams for you and me
So close your eyes and follow us
If you want to come you must be fast asleep.
Nick Jnr Bedtime song (chorus).
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————–
If you delay payment, what is present now, will no longer be the present you thought it was.
at last, einstein wades in.
Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Albert Einstein
No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Albert Einstein
Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.
Albert Einstein
The most precious things in life are not those one gets for money.
Albert Einstein
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
279 rain
Great quotes – Thanks
201 Snorer
“Just like all the martyrs,Robert ’s been persecuted by bad people.
Exactly like he predicted:”When the 44 president of the USA takes office I’ll be incarcerated”.
Were you a Catholic in another life … “martyrs”, “bad people”… (relics… the wrath of God). I don’t believe what I’ve just read.
You don’t need to be concerned … how many of RBs predictions have come true.
Optimistically there’s always a first time.
Gabrielle
Whilst it has to be said that Robert is crap when it comes to making predictions, there is one cycle that he always used to point out, that I used myself to some effect towards the end of this September. It works like this. Every odd year (more or less) either in September or October, something fairly catastrophic happens in California. Over recent years, in fact since he pointed it out to me, it has always been some kind of sweeping wild Fires. After a few social beers, I announced to my colleagues that there would be wild fires in California within the next 4 weeks. Indeed, it came to pass. Always good for a party trick, but on the downside my colleagues now think of me as a freak of nature.
Sorry to anyone who suffered at all during the fires.
If you delay payment, what is present now, will disappear.
Rumi
———————————————–
Being in the moment is a gift. That’s why it is called the present. And, like Walt Whitman said, ‘The gift is to the giver, it brings back most to him.’ Usually, the giver determins what the gift is that they are giving. Some people would like to dictate to the giver what the gift should be. That is not the present.
Hello Allan S,
I’m not sure if observing and acknowledging natural cyclic events is the same as a “prediction” …
Used to be labeled a willful lunar in another life.
Are you Allen Sheriffs from Scotland.
Have we met? I joined the London Centre in 1989 and left FOF in 1998.
G
Hello Gabrielle
You know we may have met as I was certainly in the Fellowship around the same time and did spend time in London.
With regards to cycles and predictions, I think if memory serves me right, the whole idea of cycles as presented by Rodney Collins was based on a book “Cycles and the science of prediction”. I guess I use prediction in this sense, although I’m sure there are more esoteric forms of prediction that I have no experience of whatsoever.
Good to meet you again Gabrielle.
Allan.
Thanks unoanimo
I enjoyed the “Wanna’ buy a ghost?”
284 Gabrielle
Hello Allan S (re fires in California),
I’m not sure if observing and acknowledging natural cyclic events is the same as a “prediction” …
——————
Most of California gets little-to-no rain from May until the following October. Things get tinder dry over the summer, and people are still out camping, BBQ-ing, playing with matches, etc. Then, along come the hot, dry winds of autumn.
I’m not sure I’d even describe this as a “cycle.” It’s just what happens when you mix normal weather conditions with human mischief, carelessness and the occasional, rare thunderstorm.
I wonder how many predictions are just observations of what’s there for anyone to see.
Native Californian
Allan,
“Cycles and the science of prediction” sounds like an interesting read. Is the idea also covered in “The Theory of Celestial Influence”?
… I can’t imagine there’s anything more … my understanding is the esoteric is hidden by it’s simplicity. (However that’s another subject). Observe Cycles make Predictions +.
I guess a certain amout of presence and self awareness is required to observe the outer and listen to the inner in a meaningful way.
Thanks for this exchange…
Good to have met you again too.
Gabreielle
287 waskathleenw
“I wonder how many predictions are just observations of what’s there for anyone to see.”
Yep… I guess the esoteric sits on our noses
269 Dreamcatcher: “A recent posting from Nuthead
really hit home. He/she said how he learned to open up emotionally, hugging, looking people in the eye, accepting positive compliments without self deprecation, becoming less of a cynic, becoming more his own person, more true to himself.”
You’ve rather changed this by adding the bit starting with “becoming”. I certainly didn’t become more true to myself in the long run, I just developed a totally phony “true personality” based upon hugging etc. What is now called the “lower self” was pushed aside and rejected, leaving a typically superficial Fellowship “good student”.
270 I see said the blind man, thank you for a very interesting and deep posting.
It made me think who is actually my “trusted friends” in the FOF. Not many… most of them left by now. But as time goes by some of my friends I once trusted turn into someone else. This “true personality” bug seems to be contagious. There were times when students were more “humans”, especially during the harvest times, one can actually experience what it means to be in essence. Now when you meet during the pottage or the reception, you only hear things like: “Let’s toast to our beloved teacher” “Oh, isn’t it lovely?” “How nice…” etc. or some other “noble topics”. People who are truly in essence try to not show up at the events… but still hang around for some reason.
I believe that a “product of the school” is not consciousness, or even essence, but most likely fear, vanity and naivete.
270 ‘I see’ said the blind man
Ditto. Reflects my experience too. Thank you.
Totalitarian states destroy both essence and nature because they are unable to mold themselves into the community and instead impose themselves over it. Both, the community of people and the balance of nature.
One of the problems is that we are faced with a man that was perfectly legitimate within the boundaries of his programming but perfectly illegitimate within the boundaries of human values.
We all allowed for Robert’s sexuality to express itself to the full extent of its manifestation because given the programming of our time, we chose to respect it and give it space. It was our sincere response to his individuality but the conflict of the individual freedom and the community finally broke out.
The deep question, and one that will take the whole of this century to respond to, is the question of sexuality. There are definite conditionings to a heterosexual, lesbian or male gay sexuality. They each carry an specific form and outcome.
Equally determining is the factor of pornography. A wild horse is not less beautiful than a tamed one, but it cannot be ridden by children. There is a whole civilization, not just a lifetime, between pornography and eroticism in the best sense of the word.
We will not be able to asses the magnitude of the situation until we are able to grant Robert Burton full legitimacy within the context of his environment. He was as genuine as he could be. It simply never dawned on him, just as it hasn’t dawned on the fifteen hundred individuals still in the Fellowship of Friends, that his personal life would determine the entire color of his teaching and keep him from taking both himself and his School beyond the boundaries of the first line of work, resulting in a boomerang that turned against itself. Itself, that is, each one of us, including Robert Burton.
The power of our experience, lies in the clear understanding of the objectivity of our lives. One cannot touch, look or move, without the action both expanding and contracting out into the whole of life, and into the whole of one’s being. Objectivity in terms of realizing that no matter how subjective we may be, the result of our actions, becomes objective in its manifestation and people, as much as nature are hurt or healed. In as much as we become conscious of that fact we will no longer move, touch or look with the same inconsiderateness for the outcome.
It is profitable for us to realize this because there is no use in taking credits away from Robert that he does posses. The possibility for compassion comes with the understanding that no one is consciously evil. Evil acts are the result of the life people lead and we are all responsible. Assuming responsibility means helping the evil doer stop and finding solutions for his healing. We are all responsible for everything. There lies our misery as much as our greatness. No one wants to know that he is responsible for every starving child on the planet but that is a much greater crime than Robert Burton has ever done and we chose to disregard it with the same indifference that we eat our food. Knowing one’s responsibility does not mean heating one’s chest with guilt but clearing the direction of one’s presence within the context of one’s possibilities. It is not about blaming but about responding.
The other great difficulty that we seem to be facing is the one related to the fact that these men have divided into two very specific personalities. To be able to asses the extent to which Robert Burton sincerely worked on himself and reached what he reached; to realize that everything he has processed in detail is legitimate in the process if not in the result, matters because in a much greater scale than we can see today, Robert Burton is a Teacher and also a petty sexual abuser and thief but fortunately for all of us, there are no major crimes that we are connected to. Understanding this is crucial for our recognition of both the legitimacy and the extreme poverty of the Fellowship of Friends.
To be able to address the petty crimes and stop them legally or any other way that can bring them to an end is finally the intrusion of the second line into Robert’s first line. It is the presence of Students before the Teacher and the actualization of the Fourth Way as a Way of Life and not a closed cult. The one he has tried to perpetuate unconsciously, so that he could continue to live out his sexuality as he perceived it within the context of his own programming but without reference to the legitimately human and thousands of students have supported it having no clarity about our own sexuality when faced with the current practices of our time.
Petty crimes, when looked at in the greater scale but not so petty when looked at right in the face. The problem is not only how they will continue to progress left untouched and how many more teachers like Robert Burton will come from the bosom of the Fellowship of Friends. Hundreds, thousands, have learned the trade of ripping sincere people off disguised in a Gold Alchemy suit. These cult cancers will continue to repeat themselves in series until they are minutiously dealt with.
293
Hi Elena,
I certainly no longer hold Robert without responsibility for “the inconsiderateness of the outcome” from his actions although I gave him that “benefit” for many years.
My dream like yours would be that those remaining as his students would see his madness (they say divine?), understand their own part in it, intervene and redirect the processes occurring there. Knowing how totally absurd this sounds somehow underscores the hopelessness of the situation.
Recently I found an old notebook (1991!) with this quote from Bernard Berenson:
“A reflection upon hearing the youth of Fascist Italy singing of their joy in youth . . . How odd . . . Furthermore, real manliness, vigor, energy, creativeness have on the one hand no such self-awareness, and on the other hand no such leisure as to make much of themselves in word rather than deed. Still less is a healthy community interested in celebrating its health and boasting of all it means to do, and the expected rewards. That is more characteristic of used-up, of comsumptive, of senile societies.”
That’s just one suggestion of why we can recognize the need for corrective action from out here but that community cannot unfortunately respond to its own descent.
Across the River,
Interesting perspective to consider. Thanks.
I was a little too generous with Robert. He is not a Teacher but a petty teacher as much as a petty sexual abuser and thief and the pettiness that he teaches is so pervasive that students are willing to ruin their lives in it without a glimpse of its inherent dementia.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE FOF AND RB
…………………………………………
Pardon my expression,but for me the problem with the fof was that it was ruled by ‘cunts’.
People go on about the great friends they made through the fof at it’s meetings and diners.Yeah,all right…
Being terribly honest with myself I couldn’t say that in the 5 years the I loafed about in the fof I’d made any real long standing friendly relationship with anyone,even the ones that I occasionally exchange Emails with.Sad but true.
Being a bit of a slob I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to make into the inner circle any time soon,meaning that I would be destined to forever be told by cunts (you know who they are-The Robots)how to refine my ‘alchemy’,brush my teeth and have a shower everyday and other bollocks.
For some reason someone would always feel ofended if someone sunbathed with no shirts on…in the garden…
I could never understand that,they woud say :’It’s rude…’(Yes but it’s equally rude to ask someone to put their shirts on in the hot summer )
As you all can see the nature of my grievance with the fof and RB is pretty petty and banal.
Mind you,that was in London were people are naturally funny about they relationship with nature(no racism implied)For me,having originally come from Brazil it is the most natural thing in the world,but obviously the Brit-fofers don’t do natural or sporty.Funny cos RB is supposed to be a Intergalactic Tennis champion(in a body of a goddess whore).
Well, not soon enough, it became apparent that I would be the bitch for those joyless ‘Centre Directors’ (the funniest act that one can perform at the fof,they start all smiles but soon turn into little Hitlers,hiring and firing,anointing and blessing)until I died and when the teaching payments got irremediably late the other part of me(not the guilty one)found some pleasure in the idea of kissing goodbye to some of those fuckers.
……………………………………………..
Funnily enough, this week it has come to my knowledge
that the one person that I felt most connected with(and is directly responsible for me coming to live in the UK even though we haven’t spoke in about 3 years)is now a ‘centre director’ at the London centre.That person is a fantastic person but now I’m sure it has turned into a cunt.Sad but probably true.
I’ve been thinking about ringing her,maybe to invite for a chat over a coffee so I can try and slag RB a bit in hope that she will see the funny side of realizing the one has been conned and leave that shit .
I don’t know what to do…Probably wont waste my time tough…Charity can become a full time job.
296 snorer
I would suggest not wasting your time on the “old friend”. One of the unstated requirements when one is sucked up into the upper crust of the FOF is to be “awake” enough to leave all humanity behind. I remember being stunned several times at the hideous changes that took place with “friends” when they were promoted to Flying Monkey. With some exceptions, eventually one becomes either a slave or a prick. Not much of a choice.
270 ‘I see’ said the blind man (again)
“Part of the process of rescuing your conscience from the FOF is being able to see the FOF as a lying organisation.”
In my view, this is so true that it deserves highlighting yet again.
Also, it ties into a recurring thought in me – that the ridiculousness of the “predictions” that has morphed into the ridiculousness of the “interpretations” may be part of the intuitive test/lure of the sociopath toward his satellites.
If you believe or tolerate (as a test?) the big lie, you’re perhaps the person who will accept the “mere” corruptions of sexual predation, financial preying, and disastrous consequence related to guidance of the vulnerable (Brian Sisler, Kevin Kelly, dozens of others).
The Fellowship of Friends, over the years comprised of mostly sincere seekers, is predicated on lies from top to bottom. It is “a lying organisation” that literally could not exist without the lie.
298 Old FOF
“Also, it ties into a recurring thought in me – that the ridiculousness of the “predictions” that has morphed into the ridiculousness of the “interpretations” may be part of the intuitive test/lure of the sociopath toward his satellites.”
————–
Thanks -
Made me think about that ‘test/lure’ thing in relation to my wondering of late of just what it was that led me to so quickly give up and not trust my own critical faculties. There was/is the idea that ‘one must verify everything for oneself’ as being one of the main tenets of the system of ideas that many of us were originally attracted to. I remember a very strong pull toward the idea that blind faith did play a part in the system but that you had to see and verify everything for yourself. Then after barely walking in the door we were all unspokenly asked to put that idea aside immediately. There was the idea that this man was a conscious being, along with all the stuff about Union 76 gas stations, and his cyrstillization, along with 44 angels, the only school of this age, body type, centers of gravity (down to particular cards), level of alchemy, ladders, what lifetime one was in, the predictions, etc. All of this incredible, unverifiable stuff that we were asked to not only accept, but there was even that unspoken element that we should feel so lucky that we could be given all this magical information.
Many have said they had doubts about Robert and all this stuff, and yet, of course, there was no place to voice these doubts, as it would have constituted an ‘unuseful’ conversation and might have injured another student’s work.
So it seems we took that bait and swallowed that ‘lure’, and passed the ‘test’ and fell in the trap. What do you think it is Old FOF, that caused us to ‘believe or tolerate’ that ‘big lie’?
Was it just the innocence of a youthful sincere seeker?
#299 James McLemore
One way I have thought about it is this.
Our unconscious or subtle nature communicates to us through symbols and myths. Imagination is incredibly powerful part of our nature. Synchronisities are very real projections of our psyches.
Charlatans like Robert Burton take this knowledge and externalize it and sell it back as the ‘esoteric’.
298 Old FOF and 270 ‘I see’ said the blind man
“the FOF as a lying organisation”
——————
In the late 1970s Robert Burton began to say that he was no longer leading meetings or working with individual students because ‘C Influence is now working with Fellowship of Friends students directly.’
I was alarmed because I knew I needed help – help that I was not receiving from ‘higher forces’ – and now I couldn’t expect it from Robert Burton either. That is not to say that I did not feel the presence of a higher world on occasion, but that the practical, personalized help required of a Teacher in the 4th Way tradition was being ‘outsourced’ to an unverifiable realm.
Over time ‘Belief’ increasingly was required and ‘Verification’ became passé and those most accomplished at ‘speaking of things which one does not know and cannot know as if one does know’ were leading the meetings and explaining what C Influence wanted, how ‘they’ were directing our every moment, etc.
30 years later, after hundreds of ‘children’ have cried ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes!’ (and continue to do so on this blog), this real life version of Hans Christian Andersen’s’ tale goes on…
299 James McLemore
What do you think it is Old FOF, that caused us to ‘believe or tolerate’ that ‘big lie’?
———————
Robert Burton’s greatest strength was his absolute certitude.
300 Yesri baba
“Synchronisities are very real projections of our psyches.”
and verce visa.
“Charlatans like Robert Burton take this knowledge and externalize it and sell it back as the ‘esoteric’.”
Good point. Quintessential snake oil salesman.
300 Yesri baba
Thanks Yesri baba for those ideas.
and thanks Bruce –
I hate it when I find out I’ve bought ’snake oil’.
301 We Were There
“Robert Burton’s greatest strength was his absolute certitude”
———-
Thanks for the response.
I wonder if it works kind of like ‘trickle down economics’, in that I was personally not impressed with Robert and felt an initial distrust, but was quite impressed with many of the students that I met when I first joined. I think I figured if ‘they’ were accepting of Robert, they probably knew something I did not. Now, I do not mean to put the responsibility of my own errors onto others, but I think it probably worked this way for many students. After I was ‘in’ for a while I probably influenced others in the same way I was influenced.
299 James McLemore
Correction
“the idea that blind faith did play a part in the system”
was supposed to read “did NOT play a part”
304. James Mclemore.
I had it the same way, in that if all of these people whom I respected were accepting of and valued him then he must be worthwhile.
301. We were there.
The same sort of idea is expressed in the Bible ie that Christ talked as one who knew.
The mental homes of the world are full of people who talk with certainty, and there are many Christs amongst them.
————————————————————————–What does everyone think of this parallel, its a lady therapist who used to be a Jehovahs witness discussing how cults operate…..its not very long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vISWAgy_emg
glad tidings, jack.
299 James McLemore
301 We Were There
I remember that Robert Burton used to tell students not to worship him, that he was just a “finger pointing the way.”
At a similar time that you reference in maybe late 70s WeWereThere, the then young lady that I was with came home from a brunch and related that Robert had told the group to “adore your teacher.” I remember being shocked by this comment at the time — of course this got much worse over the years.
Don’t know about youse guys but I was out there “looking for a school.” The pleasant, interesting energetic and very “certitude” students that I met in the prospective student meetings – were just the ticket. Also, the task of not being able to NOT say “Oh, I, really, get, and very” was alluring and a bit shocking. The meetings worked.
Later I became one of the certitudes and still later per Leonard Cohen:
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will
I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I’m listed with the enemies of love
306 jack
Good clip. Thanks.
306 jack
Yes, interesting clip. I actually stayed at the site and listened to a bunch of other clips on the JW’s. It is interesting to me personally because, many years ago (but after the fof) and much to my dismay, my ex-wife became a JW a few years before we separated. They worked hard on me for a year or so before they gave up and decided I was not their sort of material. I studied them intensely for a while on the internet to try to understand exactly where they had come up with all their odd material, and how they had produced such a hold on my wife (and for a short time, my daughter). They do not like to talk about the history of their organization, and how crazy Mr Russell and Mr Rutherford were. Much like the fellowship, they have an answer for everything. There are many interesting parallels with the JW’s and the Fellowship of Friends. It is odd. I have more compassion for them (the JW members) now, after re-analyzing my own little stint in a cult, than I did at the time they tried so hard to recruit me.
300 Yesri baba – Could you expand a bit on this? I have heard many descriptions/ theories etc. about the “subtle realm”, but most descriptions seemed rather fantastic and do not correspond even remotely to anything in my experience. The only Bardo I ever experienced was films of Brigitte. Heavenly, but not spiritual. The possible exceptions being certain events and “synchronicities” that still, try as I might, I simply cannot ascribe to chance and which overpowered my aim of years to not simply believe in “C-Influence”. Most, for sure, can be written off, but a few went beyond rational explanation.
Someone once told me they had verified that the king of clubs can manufacture shocks – could literally mold external events and create them. The fact that he was a friend prevented me from laughing out loud at the time, but nowadays I am less sure about this. Sidestepping the knee-jerk reactions to terms like “verify” and “king of clubs”, this seems to be similar to what you were saying. That there mind-thingy just won’t let it go without an explanation.
Hey Bruce. Love your new Avatar! Mooo!
Over heard conversation.
A: I calculated on the fellowship propylaia 1825 students who are listed.
B: Must be less I know at least two people who are still on the propylaia and have not paid since more then 4 months.
A: This month, more then 50 will leave because of the extra donations. Not many are joining. If 40 people a month will leave, in 2 years the fellowship of friends will be under 1000 people.
B: Robert can not travel more then 3 days because of the finances…I wonder when he will have to quite traveling?
Happy Sunday.
The last time Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up at my door a few years ago, I tried to engage them in a conversations about cults. I told them they were in a cult and that I used to be in a cult. They firmly denied they were in a cult and then hightailed it down my driveway and never came back. I’ve also heard that another good way to get them to leave quickly is to tell them you’re a Catholic.
#310 joeyaverage
’subtle realm’ hmmmm. How about contents and qualities of mind that we are not ordinarily aware of i.e. the unconscious. I see it as what binds people together. How organizations such as corporations, groups, cults become entities of their own. The collective unconscious, group mind, a wide spectrum of forces.
In dreams scenarios are played out which communicate an idea to the rational mind (or verse visa) upon awakening. Of course we are the only one there so we must have been playing all the parts. What we miss in waking life is that we are still playing all the parts.
I was not suggesting that the ‘king of clubs’ or anything else ‘manufactures’ a synchronous event. I am suggesting that the axis of a synchronous event is us and that there is more to us than meets the ‘eye’.
If a synchronous event falls in the forest and you are not there to see it is it still fortuitous?
Or from a ‘quantum’ perspective we could say there are no external events without us and that they are changed by our awareness.
I don’t think we experience the ’subtle realm’ as much as it is why we experience what we experience.
Just want to wish a good day to everybody!
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous!
Ramana Maharshi
Hi Joey Average (27/310),
The possible exceptions being certain events and “synchronicities” that still, try as I might, I simply cannot ascribe to chance and which overpowered my aim of years to not simply believe in “C-Influence”. Most, for sure, can be written off, but a few went beyond rational explanation.
Just how, exactly, do you determine that an event is too unlikely to have ever happened in the natural course of cause and effect? Because it is too meaningful to you personally?
How do you judge that a ’shock’ is beyond rational explanation? Did you ever witness any laws of nature being suspended?
And if something happens that is very unexpected, and it jolts your brain into remembering something, it means – what? That there is a higher power guiding and directing what happens in your life (perhaps for the benefit of your evolution)? Do you see any logical fallacy in that reasoning?
Meanwhile, I still subscribe to the explanation from the Devil’s Dictionary: ’shocks: events of one’s life as seen from an egocentric perspective’.
Hey Traveler (yes folks, a little silly, but we can do a pas de deux on stage I guess)
“Did you ever witness any laws of nature being suspended?” Yes. And if I had intended on describing it, I already would have.
The idea of taking random, sometimes unlikely, but not impossible events personally is clear enough and that is not what I am talking about. People have wide varieties of experience – as I wrote, the kind of wild descriptions people give of “the subtle realm” do not correspond to anything in my experience, but that does not require me to assume they are just having an entheogen flashback, are psychotic or simply deluding themselves for the enjoyment of personal drama.
Assuming that my prior interpretation of such events is the same now is also just an assumption.
I don’t know why these things happened or what they mean, but it would be cowardly for me to simply brush them aside because they were once conflated with an orchestrated manipulation of “belief” in the FOF as divinely guided.
Joey Average: Well, okay. You say neither what exactly you experienced that you believe was beyond the laws of nature, nor what conclusions you draw from it. So, that does not leave much to discuss. My point was that having to add a “higher meaning” to our events and experiences is just one possible course of action.
To me, that sometimes means simply delighting in the mystery of events that I cannot understand, rather than needing to figure them out (WHY did that happen to me, it must mean something).
317 joeyaverage
“I don’t know why these things happened or what they mean, but it would be cowardly for me to simply brush them aside because they were once conflated with an orchestrated manipulation of “belief” in the FOF as divinely guided”
———————–
Interesting subject – In Yesri baba’s post at 300 he spoke of symbols and myths……..
This is from an interview with Joseph Cambell. Interestingly, Cambell studied Jung extensively yet said at one point that he did not believe in synchronicity.
BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of
invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has
been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can
see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss
and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
“Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other
people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts — but
if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.”
************
I wonder sometimes that even with all the esoteric sorts of things we have all studied, that we still tend to experience the results of a certain type of thinking that we may have inherited by the culture we were raised in. The rational, scientific approach that many of us were influenced by, has some shortcomings. We can mistakenly think that if our logical mind can embrace things by naming and categorizing them, it will mean we understand them.
I think when we try to speak of some sorts of things, we may need to remember that we are, of course, left with words to do it with. Theories will never adequately describe things that may be occurring of have their inception on a non-verbal level. I think that perhaps one of the hidden agendas of that old style scientific thinking was the attempt to wash the world clean of magic in order that we could rationally explain everything so as not to be afraid of it.
P.S. to 320
And as traveler so nicely put it,
“simply delighting in the mystery of events”
Snorer 296: “I’ve been thinking about ringing her, maybe to invite for a chat over a coffee so I can try and slag RB a bit in hope that she will see the funny side of realizing the one has been conned and leave that shit.”
Do it mate. I know the lady in question and it’s just possible you might get through, especially with your strong personal connection.
PS enjoyed your observations on the London Centre.
#317 joeyaverage
Yeah, really weird shit happens sometimes. Maybe the ‘laws of nature’ are just really, really, really, really strong suggestions. Personally, I am more comfortable when things are following the suggestions.
Just checked in and I see that the use of the word ‘cunt’ is now OK. I must admit I don’t have much practical experience with using the word ‘cunt’ in my everyday life and would like to see how it is used in approved sentences. It appears acceptable to call a woman who ‘we’ don’t like a cunt? Are there more approved ways to use the word?
324 ak0aka0ka
My understanding (I could be wrong) is that men in the UK would use the word on each other rather than the US meaning which makes most people cringe.
“It appears acceptable to call a woman who ‘we’ don’t like a cunt? Are there more approved ways to use the word?”
How about using it in any way EXCEPT to describe “a woman we don’t like”? Maybe only men should use it against other men. And women can call each other pricks.
This is a question that has followed humanity through the eons, not.
Fresh offerings from the Teacher (copyright, of course, 2007 Fellowship of Friends) – bon appétit:
“The first thought I had after I crystallized in 1976 was: ‘It worked!’ It worked for me because Leonardo was behind it, and it is going to work for all of you.”
“Even though I appreciate the refinement of the arts, I value much more the message they contain.”
“Now we have not so much to find more keys as to find unusual expressions of them.”
“Like or dislike will always be determined by the presence of good ‘I’ or evil ‘I’.”
“Our life could not be any different than it is. Not one thing could be different – and it will eventually lead us to the present.”
“Controlling unnecessary talk makes room for sequential presence.”
[Regarding a license plate saying "599 RAT":] “This refers to failing to reach work ‘I’ number six – forgetting to say ‘the perfect ceremony of love’s rite.’”
“Position in a real church is determined by presence, and the amount of presence produced by one’s sequence is what counts.”
“We have been given the ultimate truth, and the school has reached its zenith.”
“Sometimes it takes all one has not to become negative.”
And maybe also this one (from Nov 25, 2007)…
“The Egyptian obelisk later became the Islamic minaret. In the East, the obelisk became chopsticks. A Zen Master said, ‘Thank you. I am satisfied; I have laid down my chopsticks’ – short Be and long BE.”
Thanks Ollie, That was the best laugh of my day. I especially liked “it will eventually lead us to the present”.
I do not know much about the background or objectives of this petition, except what I have read here, but if this is a petition to the legislature, courts, law enforcement, etc., for the redress of grievances (e.g., a police complaint [because there are children involved] or congressional petition or court complaint/document/affidavit) then it enjoys the absolute protection of the litigation privilege set forth in California’s Civil Code Section 47 (2) or is it 47 (b) [?]. You can go to the California courts website or the Findlaw.com website to see the code and section.
If the Petition is going on the web only, then one possibility might be to submit an initial petition to the FBI/cops/congressional representatives with as many signatures you can initially round u(before it goes on-line), put it on-line noting that it has been submitted and will be re-submitted with additional signatures and then re-submit the petition with the additional signatures to the appropriate audience you have chosen. The petition would get read with some immediate interest, IMHO.
“c” word? NOT okay. Anywhere. Again, IMHO.
Pamela, After doing a little google search, it appears you have quite a reputation. What is your interest in the FOF and in this blog? I see you are an ex-scientology member. Would you care to share any personal stories? Do you personally know anyone in the Fellowship of Friends?
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=pamela+lichtenwalner&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
331 xeeena
Holy shit.
Ollie (27/326,327) – please tell me you’re making this up? Chopsticks? ROTFL On the other hand, it’s too bizarre to be made up. What a case study in boiling a frog. It’s not even funny to make fun of the guy any more, he is so beyond the pale.
327 Ollie is no “Snorer”, it is a real quote. In light of Baba Burton’s alleged Darvon addiction, today’s daily card is also good-
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The sequence is a painkiller.
324 ako.
The ‘c’ word – an emanation of the lower self? Deplorable!
327 Ollie.
We’ll be using that one in our Xmas party. Fabulous!
334 joeyaverage
And that one!
329 Pamela Lichtenwalner.
Thank you for that information. It sounds precious. And for caring to stop in and try to help.
It would be interesting to hear your story if you’d care to share some more. Seems like you’ve had a long history in this.
“How about using it in any way EXCEPT to describe “a woman we don’t like”? Maybe only men should use it against other men. And women can call each other pricks.”
Ha! I’m all for that. But you missed the “we” was ‘we’. Part of the point is to mention that we take that bad words as fine if the group agrees and not fine if the group disagrees. The use of “cunt” evoked outrage in previous posts, but not now…now its all OK. ??
Affiliation with the religion of the fellowship of friends does not define if a person is good or bad – a cunt or not, or a prick or not. I don’t know the woman in question but I don’t like just going along and saying “yeah, dude, she is sure a cunt – you said that right. Now, off with your shirt!”
I’ll stick up for my fof friends in this regard. I’ll also stick up for friends who are in other very unacceptable organizations, like the US military and government, large corporations, the catholic church, and other members of my family. (and please let me remember that as we head into the holiday season and I am exposed to them all and have to eat my words over and over)
268 Somebody
“I am not sure what I developed more – my essence or the act of “a king of hearts with a gold alchemy”. I am not even sure if I lost my way and deviated, or it was just impossible to arrive to the essence because the School does not support essence. It supports vanity and naivete only. Does anyone has thoughts on that.”
The Systems sustains that we develop the spirit by growing from essence, if I remember correctly or at least that was my interpretation. It is impossible to develop essence in an environment that shuns everyone and promotes a few within the hierarchy who play along in the game because it feeds their vanity or a great false ego, a false personality that develops so deeply that individuals actually separate into two personalities and another group of submissive students who develop an equally false personality who end up justifying the fact that they are not a part of the “life” of the School by demeanoring themselves with a tremendous lack of self trust. Essence is shunned so pervasively in the Fellowship of Friends that students end up severing their ties with their family, friends and the “folk” of their nation or their essence connections to their nation. Students are indoctrinated to perform a rigid expression of the “king of hearts” and “uniform” themselves. We did not wear a material uniform but even the “quality” of how we dressed was determined. Students are indoctrinated with an invisible uniform of controlled behavior.
Those in the “inner circle” who play roles of leadership in any form, become addicted to the energy, the power, the prestige, the good luck fallen on them by the divine being or the rest in the inner circle who supports them. And yet, the second line of work in the Fellowship of Friends is so decadent that they are not even friends, they are accomplices in crime. They support each other to hold the Club together but will sacrifice anyone who steps out of its status quo. They do not kill physically yet, but they kill people psychologically by not allowing them to participate or by throwing them out of the School, sooner than later. They do not kill people physically, but they will allow students who have been in the Fellowship of Friends for over thirty years to die without giving them the slightest help. They resent having to give anyone help because they are one dead end street sucking everyone’s soul. They lost essence so many years ago, that they can no longer recognize it no matter where they see it.
331 xeeena
Very impressive Pamela.
You very courageous woman!
Would you recommend more places to send the Petition to?
FBI
https://tips.fbi.gov/
IRS
http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=106778,00.html
INS
http://www.uscitizenship.info/uscitizenship-contact.htm
NAR (National Alert Registry)
http://www.nationalalertregistry.com/contact.html
Yuba City Police Department
http://www.ycpd.org
Marysville Police Department
http://www.marysville.ca.us/police.asp?did=4
Sacramento Police Department
http://www.sacpd.org/crime_prev/rape_prev.asp
Department of Industrial Relations
http://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/MinimumWageHistory.htm
Appeal Democrat
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/sections/contact_us/
Chico News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/home/
The Orion
http://www.theorion.com/contactus/
KHSL Chico-redding
http://www.khsltv.com/
KNVN Chico-redding
http://www.tellusmore.net/index.php?change=1
Capitol Weekly
http://www.capitolweekly.net/contact/
Sacramento News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/ViewPage?oid=39080
KCRA 3
http://www.kcra.com/index.html
FOX40 News
http://fox40.trb.com/about/site/feedback/?track=topnav
ABC7 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=stationinfo&id=3288796
NBC11 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://www.nbc11.com/index.html
KABC-TV Los Angeles
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/front
Congressman
Tom Lantos
http://www.lantos.house.gov/
United States Senator from California
Barbara Boxer
http://boxer.senate.gov
Dianne Feinstein
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public
The White House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Hey, Pamela Lichtenwalner. Welcome. I’m all for the joining in this conversation of people who’ve had their lives hijacked by exploitative persuasion in other contexts.
Did you know that smutzy investigator Eugene Ingram, well known to $cientology watchers, was knocking on doors and talking to ex-FoFers in Oregon House during the mid-1990s–one knockee told me so and showed me Ingram’s card.
I guess since both $cientology and FOF utilized the name “Apollo,” (Bobby Earl for his fancy farm and El Ron for his yacht), one might figure they were allies united in the “fair game” game (fair game being the $cienos’ word for no-holds-barred character assassination of vocal con-game critics).
sign on, please and thank you
http://www.wexlerwants hearings.com
again, sign on, please and thank you
http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com
I don’t believe in e-petitions, but if I did, I’d sign that one.
I am not and never have been a Scientologist. Nor ever will be. I am rather quiet and shy and very seldom put my name “out there” but the plight of the children (or teen-agers… I am not sure) that you described in your petition concerns me.
Scientology took an interest in me when I started requesting an evaluation of their Narconon Drug Education program, starting in Fall 2002. Please see SF Chronicle, archives section, punch in “Narconon” for all 12 articles from June 9, 2004 to March, 2005. After a thorough evaluation by the CA. Dept. of Ed (please go to that web-site and punch in Narconon for the 17-page evaluation), the finding Feb. 23, 2005 was that the program was not in alignment with state standards for science nor for the listed best practices in drug education. And that was it. Why they took such an interest in trying to embarrass me …. I do not really know.
My focus is around public education curriculum (and somewhat special education practices and law) and when the state standards came in around public education at the turn of the millenium, many programs were no longer appropriate, and many courses and texts were re-written all around the nation. No big deal for the 99.9999% of those who had to change their curriculum in order to stay in public education. Obviously a big deal for Scientology.
I have met some wonderful people in this part of my life and that is why I recommended attorney Graham Berry to you when Ford did not respond to one of you in a timely manner.
I am still concerned about the children/teen-agers there at Oregon House.
As far as I know, I do not know anyone from FofF. But many people feel reserved about sharing their past when they leave a coercive high-demand group and I may know someone who has been in and yet not know about their previous life.
You all have taken on a big challenge with this petition and if you need support and help, it will be there for you. Sociology professor Dr. Janja Lalich is at CSUChico, has written several books and would be pleased to talk with anyone, I am sure. And there are others. Me, too.
Thank you Pamela for the response and the clarification. My condolences for your having been at the receiving end of Scientology wrath.
346 Pamela Lichtenwalner
Thank you again, we need every help we can find. Can I contact you? My e-mail is tablut@une.net.co or ludoteka@succeed.net
Regarding Pamela Lichtenwalner, the following links are interesting:
http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/pamela-lichtenwalner-warning.htm
http://www.friendsofsananselmo.org/weblog/archives/00000017.html
Note: Friends of San Anselmo is an organization cooked up by Scientology to annoy Ford Greene (although it probably only amuses him).
340 Xray 44
Very thorough and professional. My one suggestion would be to contact the Child Protective Services hot-line in Marysville, Yuba County. Immediately. They are concerned about children from birth to 18. (I know teen-agers do not like to be called children but……)
“The Egyptian obelisk later became the Islamic minaret. In the East, the obelisk became chopsticks. A Zen Master said, ‘Thank you. I am satisfied; I have laid down my chopsticks’ – short Be and long BE. In the West the Obelisk became a knife and fork. An Anglican Bishop said, “Thanks, I’m really full up now, I have put my plate and flatware in the sink and will do the washing up later”. Short Be and Long Be, our beautiful Rose Garden, Turkish Delight, a blow job, I’m bonkers. Thank you my darlings.”
They do not kill students physically yet in the Fellowship of Friends , but they kill people psychologically by not allowing them to participate or by throwing them out of the School sooner than later.
I’ve been thinking about this and I can declare without the slightest doubt that when Janet C. contacted me to take Dorothy three or so months after I had offer to do so, she was terrified that Dorothy could be killed over the weekend if she was left where she was staying. She was so convinced that she was dying anyway from the drugs Dorothy was being given that when she dropped her at my door half dead all she said to me was: “Call me when she dies” She came back a few times during the three years that Dorothy lived and sincerely tried to help but there was nothing she could do faced with the Fellowship of Friends.
The seriously difficult aspect of this story is that the consensus was all around that Dorothy Fielding was a “shell” not worthy of living. Girard Haven called her this himself. Of the six students that were volunteering to look after her in that home, in which Dorothy had not been bathed for a year, smelt badly and had half inch long black nails in dirt, Meredith D. and Rosemary amongst them, not one offered to continue volunteering after she moved, and Rosemary said to me when she next met me that it was time for Dorothy to go to a home. The bottomline is that they not only thought she should die, they were willing to let her die in extremely difficult conditions. During that period in that house, Dorothy began having seizures and I confirmed that these seizures came from malnutrition when I left her with a lady that unfortunately thought she was doing her a favor by feeding her mostly with sugar, a very emotional Italian lady. She never had seizures for any other reason during those three years.
The difficulty with situations like this one is that it is very easy to find someone to carry the load of the blame with some personal issue involved, but the truly abhorrent issue is that the mentality behind these facts permeated the whole of the Fellowship of Friends with counted exceptions. If a community is willing to hurt a totally defenseless eighty five year old student with alzheimer’s’s who’s been in the Fellowship of Friends for over thirty years, what is a community like this willing to do to less defenseless students if they get in their way?
Joseph Monteleone died on his own overnight after making some calls and giving up the idea of receiving help because there was no one to help him in the Fellowship of Friends. He did not have enough money to go to a hospital. He was in fact offering to marry a visitor in the hope of getting some money. The Fellowship of Friends never offered a line of help to anyone but Robert Burton’s bank account. The consensus again was that Joseph Monteleone was a man not worth the trouble, his death was barely mentioned. He passed ignored, as a man that did not fit the Gold Alchemy outfit that the Fellowship of Friends demands from its selected students.
Eileen C. came to Oregon House, found a job, dressed as beautifully as she could conceive, begged for help from a community in which her father had been for ever since she’d known him, for a person who was trying to change her life after being badly involved with alcohol and drugs and found the doors so tightly shut that she wandered to San Francisco and back until she committed suicide a month ago in Oregon House?
Tell me again that the Fellowship of Friends is not willing to let people die and I’ll wash your eyes with soap another a hundred times. Tell me to “move on” because you’ve accepted the Fellowship of Friends as a passing stage of your development and I’ll continue to puke on your desktop.
You sick students, you should all go to jail for a lifetime. While you kept and keep your eyes shut like an ostrich hoping the dung won’t touch you, people are deeply fucked up in your community of Barbie faggots and all you can think of is wearing the last silk dressed you acquired so that you can prove that you are one of the chosen ones.
You are so sick and dumb and blind you don’t even have a decent man or woman to defend you from these statements. You hide under the bed and beg the shells will go over your contaminated souls. Cowards, the whole lot of you are big, cheap cowards. Sissys.
Come on Mr. Haven and Mr. Burton, where are you hiding your tongue after thirty five years of excercising it so lavishly? Is it a tongue worth using only amongst your pitifully indoctrinated sheep? Are you so afraid the six billion dead might cut it short when you start explaining your actions?
Justice Mr. Burton, exists.
“The picture shows the world’s largest fork, the Obelisk, Long Be. The four tines represent the four wordless breaths, remember your first bite, short Be. There are six panes in the windows representing the sequence, divine presence, our Rose Garden. There are thirty panes in all representing the thirty improbable work “I”s, seventh heaven, my Mercedes, thank you my dears.”
http://spluch.blogspot.com/2007/10/this-is-worlds-largest-fork.html
I’m not sure if it’s a prediction or merely part of a cycle but my guess is that Senator Larry Craig will make a late run at the office ofPresident. Would that make him the 44th? If so I have another prediction.
#351 Elena
Eileen C. committed suicide? I, and may others were not aware of that. I thought she died in a car accident a few weeks ago, if that is the same person you are talking about. Can you clarify?
Opus 111
That is why I left it as a question mark. It was a one way car accident against an obstacle, not another car. When someone cannot find anywhere to land no matter how much she looks, it does not surprise me when they then have a fatal accident that who ever prefers not to call it a suicide, can be more comfortable with.
She was probably told that she had nowhere to stay in Oregon House as it happened many times before and unfortunately I could not be there to help her.
349 Pamela
If you are talking about the young men in Robert’s entourage, I believe that since the Busbee case in the mid-90s, RB has been careful to stay away from the underaged. Does anyone more in the know have different information?
Thank you Pamela,
Stay with us!
FBI
https://tips.fbi.gov/
IRS
http://www.irs.gov/compliance/enforcement/article/0,,id=106778,00.html
INS
http://www.uscitizenship.info/uscitizenship-contact.htm
NAR (National Alert Registry)
http://www.nationalalertregistry.com/contact.html
Yuba City Police Department
http://www.ycpd.org
Yuba County Child Support Services
http://www.co.yuba.ca.us/Departments/DCSS/
Marysville Police Department
http://www.marysville.ca.us/police.asp?did=4
Sutter County Child Support Services
http://www.co.sutter.ca.us/doc/government/depts/css/css_home
Sacramento Police Department
http://www.sacpd.org/crime_prev/rape_prev.asp
Department of Industrial Relations
http://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/MinimumWageHistory.htm
Appeal Democrat
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/sections/contact_us/
Chico News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/home/
The Orion
http://www.theorion.com/contactus/
KHSL Chico-redding
http://www.khsltv.com/
KNVN Chico-redding
http://www.tellusmore.net/index.php?change=1
Capitol Weekly
http://www.capitolweekly.net/contact/
Sacramento News & Review
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/ViewPage?oid=39080
KCRA 3
http://www.kcra.com/index.html
FOX40 News
http://fox40.trb.com/about/site/feedback/?track=topnav
ABC7 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=stationinfo&id=3288796
NBC11 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
http://www.nbc11.com/index.html
KABC-TV Los Angeles
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/front
Congressman
Tom Lantos
http://www.lantos.house.gov/
United States Senator from California
Barbara Boxer
http://boxer.senate.gov
Dianne Feinstein
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public
The White House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
If there is abuse of the under aged or the young in the Fellowship of Friends community, it is likely indirect and mostly due to neglect. Remember, a person must be 18, or older, to be a member of the Fellowship of Friends.
There is more likely abuse of the elderly, the weak, the vulnerable, the ill and the infirm, as they can be members, and be deprived of their human rights and dignity. This seems to happen habitually in the power structure of the Fellowship of Friends, right from the man at the top (read: Robert Burton) and as a trickle down from the top type behaviour imitated by others. Just read the postings of Elena for example. It is not always the case, though.
You would wonder why that might happen? One possible theory is: because they can get away with it – who’s going to stop them? Certainly not their consciences.
After all, they are just machines or empty shells ready to be discarded or marginalized in the Fellowship of Friends community – no longer of any value or use. (I am so sorry to say, but, evidently near the truth some of the time.)
However tempting, some of the points in recent posts worry me a little as they may be overly broad, overstate the case or be based on conjecture.
The abuses of the Fellowship of Friends and specifically Robert Burton are real and definite. They do not need overstating – as this may only serve to dilute their effect for existing members.
Light is powerful; calling things by their right name is powerful.
If truth is shined on the lie for sufficient time – most members will know in their marrow the truth and leave as they can. And prospective others ~ because of this blog and other resources ~ will sense the corruption and not join.
I’d be very surprised if the current centralized (read: Oregon House based) form of the Fellowship of Friends will substantively exist in two years.
The conclusion I have drawn from my, admittedly, limited reading around coercive groups and law cases is that there must be clear demonstrable violations of civil and criminal law, with the victims willing to come forward with evidence that can be presented and defended in court, for there to be successful criminal and civil prosecution by either the District Attorney’s office and/or private attorneys. There is freedom of association and freedom of religion in America and we all make our choices, for better or for worse.
IF there is serious abuse and/or neglect of minors, especially sexual or if there is physical abuse to the point of requiring medical care, then the authorities can and do take a very active role. OR if there is serious fraud and financial abuse of elders (and/or the other types of abuse I have just mentioned), then again the authorities can take a very active role. Please familiarize yourselves with the applicable civil and criminal laws. There are time-limits for prosecution for almost all of them.
The petition will bring the matter to the attention of former members and serve as a warning to potential and/or current members about the consequences of staying within the group, positive (for a few) and negative (for many), from what you are reporting in this forum.
I hope this helps.
357 Associated Press
I must admit, it is such a pleasure when some of you manage to say the same thing without screaming. It feels as though someone has actually heard and that makes such a difference.
Neglect is definitely the key word to most of what happens in the Fellowship of Friends while at the same time everyone pretends they are so busy that they cannot take care of anything else. Busy polishing Robert’s ego.
Parents neglect their children because they have to be at events at Isis, doing third line. Students neglect each other because they are only willing to put any attention on Robert Burton. They excel in whatever they are doing so that they get the approval from the divine being who never gives them more than half of it if at all. And older people are neglected like everybody else but most particularly if they start demanding money. Nothing personal, it is just that the insatiable greed of Robert Burton’s lifestyle cannot have such leaks.
If you insist that this people be cared for, you are told you are under feminine dominance and that is like showing a cross to the devil.
In the meantime the mob of students search their pockets for another cent for the show thinking that third line of work is filling Robert’s pockets so that he can continue to lead the Arc.
An Arc that does not need to go anywhere, because it is already in hell.
Laura, would you play some of your music?
Pamela and Others,
359 Pamela Lichtenwalner.
“The conclusion I have drawn from my, admittedly, limited reading around coercive groups and law cases is that there must be clear demonstrable violations of civil and criminal law, with the victims willing to come forward with evidence that can be presented and defended in court, for there to be successful criminal and civil prosecution by either the District Attorney’s office and/or private attorneys.”
Unfortunately I do believe we have a relatively weak case in terms of “demonstrable violations of civil and criminal law” in as much as the Fellowship of Friends and its leaders have been in the trade long enough to know what boundaries they cannot step over. Nevertheless I cannot believe that the psychological abuses, the brainwashing, the aborted children and abandoned children, the damages done to students by theories such as the “biological families” so that students deviate their income into the Fellowship instead of their families, or such an antisocial brainwashing as the one conceived in the theory of the “six billion dead” or “sleeping machines” on the planet willing to put students into great debts with banks and other institutions because they will not have to pay them, is legal and decent and unquestionable and not antisocial behavior in the United States. Also Robert Burton’s uncontrolled personal spending seems illegal enough.
While individual cases may look weak, the class action by many students together can have a better effect because many women stating that they were discriminated as women has a very different effect to one woman trying to prove exactly how she was discriminated. And one over eighteen young male cannot convey how the whole of a community induced him into making a whore of himself.
We may all be responsible and we are all victims but that doesn’t mean that the show can go on for ever, or that it is legal, or that there are not deeply serious harms. We may not individually get a cent out of this action but if we close the Fellowship of Friends down for good, we will not wake up every morning thinking about the potential students that are still joining the Gold alchemy fraud.
Another problem is that almost every student in the Fellowship of Friends was treated “en masse”. This phenomenon allowed us all to think there was nothing special about one’s self to deserve a different treatment and allowed the Fellowship of Friends to treat everyone equally demeanoring directing all the energy and income into Robert Burton. The fact that The Fellowship of Friends disempowers every individual to the point that he no longer knows what is right or wrong makes it more dangerous than a poisonous snake in one’s bed.
There is an enormous abuse of authority in the Fellowship of Friends. Tell me if you must, that everything that happens in the Fellowship of Friends is protected by the American Constitution and that nothing that we have lived or seen there can be legally questioned, judged and stopped and I will turn my back on the subject and make sandcastles in another beach. I will try to never look back at what has already turned into salt. Or I won’t believe you and continue the only way I know.
Maybe there are other people organizing themselves to sue the Fellowship of Friends but since they also seem to be the chosen ones who can ban anyone at will, it seems necessary to continue finding solutions.
Hey JoeyAverage & Traveler,
Do you remember the Goethe quote that someone posted here awhile back? It might pertain to the discussion that was going on around #310-319.
Here is the part I think (feel) addresses the discussion;
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occured. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would ever come his way…..”
Elena,
I have not visited the blog for a while, but having recently caught up a bit, it seems you are still ranting and raving and getting yourself in a right state! Although a lot of ex members will probably need to go through some kind of grieving process, there is a danger that some become stuck in bitterness, and are unable to move on. Yes, I think you need to move on, see things from a slightly different perspective. There is a lot of shit around, society as a whole has a tendency to abuse the weaker, not value old people, especially those who have dementia, abuse positions of power etc. etc. I am not saying accept it, but for goodness sake, find a way to work within your ’sphere of influence’ to right the wrongs by understanding that this comes from ‘malignant social psychology’ (Tom Kitwood). Actions which stem from malignant social psychology are ultimately based on fear, how to acknowledge, accept and let go of that fear in ourselves is a way of allowing others to let it dissipate. Your angry rantings can only provoke defensiveness in those you rail against, resulting in strengthening their beliefs. Old FOF (358), seems to have the right kind of approach. From the TA perspective; let go of the ranting child, the judgmental parent and become an adult about it before you get totally stuck in the role of hellish h’elena!
360 & 361 Elena
360- I guess it depends on who is reading your blogs, but I personally am motivated by your “screaming.” When a small child runs toward the traffic you tell them to “Come here.” They don’t “hear” you because they are preoccupied with their little world. Sometimes you must “SCREAM” to save their lives.
361- Remember OJ Simpson. He got away with murder, but lost the civil lawsuit against him. Write down everything you can possibly remember with as many dates, times, names of people etc. Let an attorney decide whether these items have weight in any type of case. Brainwashing may be difficult to prove, but did members sign legal documents, “under duress”? Each situation should be analyzed.
361 Elena
I think the main legal exposure of the Fellowship is in the financial area, related to its status as a Religious organization, with the associated violations of tax and immigration law, and possibly fraud.
Thank you lust for life, Zoecan and Robert C.
I think I’ll take Zoecan’s advice and let the lawyer decide.
Lust for life, I am not ashamed of ranting and raving against a bunch of equally sick people. It’s I’m afraid, somewhat orgasmic to throw up when one feels so very sick. For some very repressed people, this might be very shameful but maybe it could change if you’ve enough lust for life. And many have already stopped reading my posts, you are welcome to do so too.
I doubt that I can rest until I see the Fellowship of Friends closed or seriously changed.
366 Elena
“I am not ashamed of ranting and raving against a bunch of equally sick people.”
Dear Elena,
In this you risk driving away the very people (I think) we are trying to reach – Fellowship of Friends members who desperately want to find an outside alternative to the madness within.
We have to help ourselves in order to be able to help others.
Offered in friendship.
367
Do you mean that Elena should behave more like current members so as not to drive them away?
368 zoecan1
“behave more like current members”
I don’t think that is what WeWereThere is advocating. But maybe more a measured response that as much as possible accurately reflects the events that people in the cult know or will know to be true.
Even if members appear reject it at this point – for many – the magic pill has likely already been swallowed and the throws of the future delayed cure will include replaying back and re-evaluating many things that now seem to be rejected.
If you move outside the discipline of this precision too far, then you risk not getting through the cult-think shield that members have.
How do I know this? My alternate name ought to be “I Was There Too.”
I was as culty as most any of the current members — and an attack on the group seemed like an attack on me back then. So just based on my subjective experience (might I say “our?”) when you do attack the Fellowship of Friends – to be most effective – I think it pays to take special care to be accurate.
That said, I’d like to speak in defense of the RANT.
I personally went through this period for don’t know maybe 18 months in the process of leaving the Fellowship of Friends where I would just rant on out loud in my house. It was apparently not necessary for the persons that I was living with to be there, as it often occurred even when alone.
These rants were often loud and lasted sometime minutes sometimes much much longer. It was akin to purging I guess. Humiliating connections were made — and humiliating memories (or more accurately memories that were now humiliating) came back to me.
There was an element of talking back. And in retrospect, maybe a trying to regain some inner territory and sense of power and personal agency.
The rants even scared me some – I had never been there before. Wonder if others had these experiences? I just assumed so – but never have known.
In any case, after while the rants just slowed down and eventually stopped. I guess when you’re in a very powerful psychological experience for a long time – weird and heavy stuff happens. I guess. At least that’s sort of what happened to me.
So maybe doing the right thing is not necessarily doing the correct thing – and especially may not come close to the inner ferocity of the obligatory thing.
So imho, rant away.
RobertC (365)
“I think the main legal exposure of the Fellowship is in the financial area, related to its status as a Religious organization, with the associated violations of tax and immigration law, and possibly fraud.”
——————————————-
I agree with you on this. While there has been widespread sexual impropriety on Robert’s part, I think it would be difficult to prove charges of rape or sexual assault. No district attorney is even going to indict him unless there is some substantial evidence to prove that he is guilty. Remember, in a criminal case, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. Perhaps if there was evidence that Robert threatened to excommunicate someone if they didn’t have sex with him, or something along those lines, then you might at least have the beginnings of a decent civil suit.
Under normal circumstances, if a minister abuses his position and coerces members of his church into sexual activity, the congregation would act swiftly to at least remove him from his position of authority. Of course, we’re not dealing with a normal situation here and the current membership chooses to allow, at least implicitly, Robert’s behavior. That is the really fucked up part.
The First Amendment of the Constitution provides broad protections for religious practices and organizations. But there are limitations, and certainly the Fellowship has committed fraud in regard to the financial and immigration issues. But to even get an indictment, let alone prove it in court, would take some solid evidence. Something beyond hearsay. Is there anybody out there among us ex-members, who had access to records or inside decisions, who could come forth with first-hand incriminating evidence? If you’re out there, by all means, make yourself known.
Dear We were there,
People look at what they want. If in my posts they only wish to see the ranting and raving they do so, if they wish to see something else they do so. I don’t only rant and rave but when that comes after remembering horrible things I will not repress it.
Some here might have become crystallized in the King of Hearts act and think it is not legitimate for someone to throw up when they are sick but I am so filled with poison I find it perfectly legitimate to scream: “the Fellowship of Friends is poisoning people, you are all sick, don’t eat that crap or you’ll be throwing up like me.”
I’ve been attacked for anything and everything I’ve done on this blog, the mild voices today are not offensive. The few voices that have supported the posts I’ve written in different times, they are worth every other attack. At this point it is clear that we are in different positions and that is fine. Whoever wishes to continue participating can do so. Those who need to leave and make their own club can do so. The blog too is an image of our selves. And it is consistently morphing, that is what is so attractive about it.
You say we are helping those from the inside but good lord, We are there, we are still in as much need for help as they are. There’s as little compassion on this blog as there was in the Fellowship of Friends. The tendency to behave like any other club is as strong. I don’t care if those who need a club get out of here. This is the Public Square. We talk.
But we have divided and that division is the most interesting thing that has occurred yet. Zoecan’s voice standing up for me is a pure voice, not because he is standing up for me, but because he is willing to do something no one else had yet done here, that is, stand up for himself or herself on an issue that the whole blog was against. He or she, is willing to be. I certainly thank Bruce and others who have kissed me at times, embraced me and yet most watched behind the blinds before I was being lynched. I do not resent your behavior at this point. It is obviously part of a learning in which I am to understand that it is fine to stand alone on one’s principles.
You might have noticed that what really attracts me about the whole Fellowship of Friends phenomena is the mass behavior. It is a strange thing to watch masses of people seeing each other suffering in indifferent silence. Everyone disguised their suffering in the Fellowship of Friends and continued to walk with a smile and a silk dress. They allowed the Fellowship to lynch each one of us and we were the mob lighting the fire. It is actually very promising to observe that we have moved into a different silence and that an individual dares to talk his word.
What are you offended by? That I call Fellowship of Friends student’s cowards? Or that I ask my Teacher or my husband to speak up when I ask them: “what the fuck do you have to say to these accusations that I am making against you? You crippled souls, you do not even honor yourselves with an answer because you know you don’t have any. You hide like rats caught in the kitchen, trusting that you’ve covered the legal holes and it will not be easy to get you, but your will is not greater than mine, your impunity is not secured against me or whoever else knows in the marrow of their bones that you are sick people that must be stopped”
Do you think that if the Fellowship of Friends had answers to what we are saying here it would not be defending itself? It did so until it run out of any about five months ago. They exposed all their petty indoctrination and run out of ideas. They realized they better hide because what they said was more pitiful each time. The more they talked they more students they lost, now the less they talk the more students they’ll lose.
It bothers you that I dare speak directly to Mr. Burton, my teacher who I supported for seventeen years, dug students out of the deep ocean for his school, inspired and convinced with my love for him more than one soul and payed as much as I could pay to support A Fellowship of Friends that turned out to be his own private brothel and I his pimp? Does it bother you to respect the privacy with which I scream at my husband that he is the greatest pimp in the Fellowship of Friends?
You might have kept your boundaries in your relationship with the Fellowship of Friends, with Robert Burton, Girard Haven and other students but I spent every bit of my soul on it and I will not take my bet out and run with it now that I know they’ve been cheating all along. I’ll treat cheats like cheats.
Many of you knew who Mr. Haven was but no body ever said anything to the whole of the Fellowship of Friends. Everyone played along while he travelled to third world countries indoctrinating new adepts. The next conscious being on the planet. Tell me, how did you not play along? And do you expect me to believe that after all this blog, there are still any decent people in the Fellowship of Friends? Is decency, neglecting to read what has happened to hundreds of students inside so that you can claim your right to be a blind pimp?
I don’t know about you, but when you’re dealing with pimps I think it is fair to scream: You fucking cowards, how many more innocent people are you going to find to keep your salary position or your imaginary picture that is afraid of not having a place to model your silk suits and dresses if you leave. For how much longer do you intend to prepare your way out dear, you might just not have the guts to take that step if you’ve not yet dared to see the obvious.
You were not there with me, We were all alone. Some of you frequented each other and were indifferent to the rest. I gave what I had to give in meetings where we were supposed to be together. I continue to do that in the Public Square but I no longer give you only my purest understanding, I also give my rage and frustration and undisciplined emotions. Seventeen years of Fellowship of Friends discipline almost managed to make me totally frigid, don’t ask me to pretend that I am a perfectly coherent ex-student with the same King of Hearts act. I am only beginning to feel what it is like to be me without poison after throwing up for eight months.
I do not know what is necessary to close down the Fellowship of Friends but it is necessary, what ever it takes.
If you could understand as I do, that students like Girard Haven have crystallized beyond reasoning, you would understand why I know that we have to force the closure of the Fellowship of Friends because no kindness will do it for them. They will continue to play the conscious pimps to the conscious whore. Too bad for them but there are people that can be stopped from joining. If I scream loud enough those people will hear me. They’ll say, “that lunatic belongs to the Fellowship of Friends, it makes people mad, a nuisance”, and they’ll never come close but I’ll be delighted of having served them. All the devotion did not serve you, hopefully the madness, the screaming, the orgasmic throwing up, will serve them if not this sadness.
Hi
Hi everybody.
In relation to the petition we are still waiting on word from Ford and as soon as It comes I will install it on the web site and let you know.
wishing you all “tidings of comfort and joy” and the reality of a better world.
jack.
P s I am with you Elena….seemingly when one works with some kinds of autistics they respond better to being shouted at, as its the only thing which penetrates their cocoon.
While to lay people it appears cruel, it is in fact kindness.
Much love to you and yours.
Zoecan,
Butterflies open up with gratitude to celebrate your unexpected voice.
Much joy to you and to every one of us here.
Elena
I agree that rape or assault is probably not going to fly, but what about sexual harrassment? You don’t have to be female to be sexually harrassed, nor underage. I believe that more accurately describes what has been happening. Again, you have a statute of limitations, so it would have to be fairly current.
Are the board meetings of all 501c3 non-profits open to public? Are the meeting times open to the public?
374 Elena
Thank you, Elena. I wish I could put you in my pocket and take you everywhere. You write eloquently and there is never a doubt as to where you stand.
Zoe / Female :)
Hi Vinnie
Workplace sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when (1) submission to the conduct is an explicit or implicit term or condition of employment, (2) submission to or rejection of the conduct is used as the basis for an employment decision or (3) the conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating and intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.
I am not sure though if this law is applying to the religious organizations…
No, Kat.
Elena,
I think you help many of us with your clear overview of the situation in the Fellowship.
“Care about people approval and you will be their prisoners” Lao Tsu
Heart of Lightness.
I’m back from my journey to Egypt and East Africa. Here’s what happened.
I discovered in a temple in Luxor why Robert is so obsessed about Egypt. On the walls of the inner sanctum building known as the Holiest of Holies at the main ruins in Luxor, which was reserved only for high priests and pharaohs to visit, are several pictograms of males with erect penises ejaculating. The most prominent is of Alexander the Great, depicted as an Egyptian Pharaoh, receiving and offering of semen on a ceremonial spoon (of sorts) from a well-known virile male missing an arm and a leg. This penis and the penises of other males depicted on the temple walls were darkly smudged, according to our Egyptologist guide named Mohammad, from years of infertile women touching the penises in order to become fertile and successfully give birth.
At that moment, it became clear to me why Robert would lead tours to Egypt, especially Luxor, to view these images in order to justify his aberrant sexual practices as derived from a ‘higher school’, just as Hitler, another despot of a more sinister character, researched and manipulated history to justify his ethnic cleansing of Jews from the pure Aryan race. What’s next…the sacrificing of Nubian slaves (‘life people’) as the Egyptians also did?
Onto the Kenyan Serengeti where I witnessed the exquisitely choreographed taking down of a water buffalo by three lionesses. The next day we came upon four lions with a fresh kill of a mother impala. The eldest lioness was keeping and eye on the nearby impala calf that, as our Tanzanian guide told us, would also be dinner later that night. Nature can seem very cruel.
Upon crossing a small bridge over the Mara River into Tanzania, we were stopped by a gruesome sight. I was appalled by the literally THOUSANDS of dead wildebeest carcasses rotting on the river banks as far as the eye could see. Our guide said global warming caused a bad drought this year and hordes of wildebeests died of thirst and being trampled to death getting to the crocodiles infested water of the Mara River for a drink.
That night it rained and the river rose by four feet. I became concerned about the villagers downstream who take their water from the river. The game warden assured me that they know to boil the river water…but he was on the Kenyan side of the river and the villagers were on the other side of the border with no TV or radios…and that’s the way things go in Africa…life is cheap and shit always flows downhill.
Then I climbed up towering Mt. Kilimanjaro which at 19,344 ft. became an exercise in controlling my breathing. By the time I reached the summit, it was ten steps, stop, take thirty deep breaths, and then repeat. At bedtime I would overcome the altitude headache by lying still in my tent and practicing taking long intentional breaths well into the night.
The actual grueling six hour hike to the summit commenced at midnight. It was literally a super effort hiking and breathing through the stupor of sleep and oxygen deprivation to summit by dawn.
Once at the top, out of the blue the thought came: if I can haul my broken heart up this high and it still keeps beating, then I can survive my wife divorcing me. After such an enormous effort that particular sunrise at the top of that mountain was etched into my brain as the dawn of a new day for me. I hope to make it so.
Two days later I was volunteering at a children’s orphanage in Nairobi (whose parents had died of AIDS), serving food and washing dishes, which came naturally for me from my Lincoln Lodge experience.
The horrific conditions in which these children live, 250 of them, all imprisoned in a small, cramped three story building located in a bad neighborhood with the kitchen on the roof complete with open bags of garbage and swarming flies was overwhelming and very humbling. Their smiles through their pain were also etched deep into my memory, and I missed my kids deeply.
My breakthrough came as a result of some reading I was doing during the trip from the writings of Pema Chodron, a disciple of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Chogyam Trungpa, in a book entitled “Comfortable with Uncertainty”, which a very dear ex-fofer friend gave me recently.
Chodron writes about a technique of transforming negative emotions called, ‘tonglen’, whereby instead of resisting our pain and feeling isolated in our suffering, we breathe in our emotional pain as a way to empathize with all sentient beings that experience pain, we detach from the storyline that causes the pain and feel the energizing sensations in our body, and then we exhale only the joy and compassion we would wish for ourselves and all sentient beings to experience instead.
Upon my return, it came together for me…with the emphasis on breathing so consciously at high altitude…and all the emotional pain from my personal life I have been going through…I began practicing tonglen as a way to manage that pain in order to create more compassion toward myself and soon to be ex-wife, those in dire need like the AIDS orphans of Kenya, our ailing planet, the wildebeests, the villagers, and even the chrocodiles and lions of the Serengeti, who have no choice but to prey upon the sick and weak. (One would think that true conscious men do have a choice whether to prey or not… )
This was a journey into the heart of lightness…a journey to having a compassionate heart. It feels good. That is what I brought back from Africa and share with you.
Whalerider.
Good to have you back! and thank you for sharing.
the best to you jack.
Whalerider:
Thank you for what you brought back with you.
Your post brought tears to my eyes.
Godspeed upon your New Day.
Hi Whalerider, Brilliant post! Those Buddhist breathing exercises are indeed wonderful. x Nuthead
Had a vision the other night during a storm in OH. It concerned, oddly enough, that diagram in ISOM showing how “deviating octaves” eventually go in the opposite direction.
It went approximately like this:
The Fellowship when it began was actually moving in a positive direction at least if one believed in the Fourth Way. This despite the fact that Robert Burton was deeply flawed from the beginning, so the organisation contained the seeds of its own destruction. Anyway, when I joined in 1980 it was on the way up. By about 1995 it had deviated enough to be going sideways, then it stated going down. This accelerated when Burton started teaching again, when the reasonable PB died and was replaced by the fanatical LT, when AF facilitated the ever increasing obsession with extracting cash from students, when M&D became dominant.
Now it is careering downwards at an ever increasing pace. I thought the rhino poo quote could never be surpassed for absurdity but now we have the totally mad chopsticks interpretation. What follows will no doubt be astonishing.
Part of this is the realisation that I actually became insane myself during my time in the FoF, and that those who remain become by necessity ever more deeply psychotic.
Newly moderated comments: 349, 358.
Thank you, WhaleRider.
Thank you WhaleRider ~384
‘(One would think that true conscious men do have a choice whether to prey or not… )’
and they do that by:
One would think that true conscious men do have a choice whether to pray or not…
If they choose not to pray then they are not conscious men.
If they choose to prey then they are not conscious men.
The true conscious being prays and does not prey.
Does that make sense?
Welcome back Whalerider! So nice to “see” you again…
thanks for sharing.
Your impressions of the Serengeti reminded me of this video I saw a few months ago. I like it because… well, I guess you better watch it to see why
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Elena, glad to oblige. May we all keep filling our lives with love.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o5rhhQbyYV0
#392 Lauralupa
Hello Laura,
Incredible video.
392 lauralupa
That video was fantastic! I watched it and saw the lions (FOF) crouching, preying on the buffalo (Ex-FOF and other innocent people). The buffalo retreated, regrouped and went back to save just one of their own. Did you see the strong charging one fling the lion into the air and away from the small victim? You know who that is. There is power in numbers, but sometimes it only takes one. Great video!
#392 Lauralupa
You should have dedicated this video to Elena.
There is a justice.
Pamela, After reading the letter by Ford Greene about you, I can’t help but think that your presence here is directly connected with your obsession with him. No game playing here please. You’ve been very nice so far. Don’t get weird on us.
I do not think I have seen the letter from Ford that you are citing but I feel comfortable sharing the following: I have no obsession with Ford. I have not seen Ford, except for one or two large social and/or political events here in Marin County (and once when I was driving on the main drag here in Marin in Nov. 2007 and he was walking in his driveway) since the late Margaret Singer’s, Ph.D., wake in Nov. 2003. He did not come to the Singer-family-invite-only Mass in late Jan. 2004, for reasons I do not know.
After many months of reasonable friendship and learning with him in 2002-Jan. 2003, he became distant. Dr. Singer liked our friendship (she had known him for many years, had introduced us and supported our friendship) and hoped to heal it but that did not happen.
We live in the same small county, are close in age, have common friends (one close to both of us suicided in June 2004 and Ford rejected, harshly, our out-reach to him at that time) and acquaintances and of course we each assist people who are having difficulties with coercive groups but from different aspects …. I am an educator and he is an attorney.
I have heard that Ford has stated that I “stalk” him but I do not, of course. Ford accusing people of stalking him began in 1999-2000-2001, after he was arrested in Palo Alto, CA, May 1999 for stalking his girl-friend Vikki Anning and finally pleaded ‘nolo contendre’ and received probation, Case No. SM3000335A, case closed in 2001. I hope he has grown from that experience.
I learned of your difficulties from a colleague who is as concerned as I am about children and minors around coercive groups. I learned of Ford’s involvement only after she shared with me for a few weeks about “FofF.” And I came on to recommend Graham when someone posted that they had not heard from Ford.
BTW, I have never used Ford as an attorney: the one time Margaret asked him to assist me around a legal matter (and encouraged me to ask him), he replied, accurately, that I could not afford him and refused to help. She contacted a friend, an excellent local attorney, for me and we won, handily, on a summary judgement April 2003. (Margaret and I really celebrated that win, even with her still healing from a broken hip !) The following year I needed help with a coercive group matter and I contacted Graham Berry down in Santa Monica who knew a Marin County attorney who was helpful and we won, easily.
But the most reasonable and effective attorney in terms of advice for me around coercive group matters, of course, is Graham Berry, Esq. I have communicated with him since the summer of 2004 (3.5 years, and counting, under all kinds of stressful situations) and I can heartily recommend him. He is