Howard Carter, Siddiq, and company.
I have used lots of intellectual arguments in my posts so far.
Far simpler to put it this way: If becoming “conscious” means becoming like Robert Burton—screw that, I willingly join the damned!
If “higher forces” are external and behave as Burton claims they do (“humiliating him by requiring him to have sex with ‘his’ students” and so on—fuck them all!
If the price of “immortality”, is to squash my conscience—I’d rather roast!
And if the supposed advancement to the “higher possibilities in the next lifetime” is to behave like a shit in this one—up yours…
To all those who imagine that the ends, however noble, justify the means, however ignoble—I invite the lighting bolts from the petty gods you have created for yourselves.
I too am getting mighty tired of listening to the intellectual crap that continually justifies anything Robert does as some kind of holy deed that simple folks like myself cannot understand.
My advice to these people would be to go sit under a tree, smell the roses and listen to your heart for awhile. There is no justification under the sun for what Robert has done and continues to do to naive, young men and women who come with their hearts and minds open trying to find their truths.
Charles R. Good to have you back! THANK YOU for your fine post quoting Jung. It bears repeating since the last thread became to large and unwieldy to navigate.
From Jung:
“When therefore a prophet appears at a moment’s notice, we would be better advised to contemplate a possible psychic disequilibrium.”
This is precisely what compels a person afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder to be driven by the need to compensate the disequilibrium with multiple sex partners, travel, constant supply of fine impressions and the vicious expunging of any dissent. These are called narcissistic tools or objects, which are de-humanizing to those caught in the afflicted person’s vortex.
The following quote from Jung was so exquisite in its portrayal of those still caught in the FOF matrix, that I reprinted it as a platform for the next thread.
“But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple. This, for the vast majority of people, is an altogether ideal technique. Its advantages are: the odium dignitatis, the superhuman responsibility of the prophet, turns into the so much sweeter otium indignatis. The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi divine being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all responsibility is laid at the Master’s door. Through his deification of the Master, the disciple, apparently without noticing it, waxes in stature; more over, does he not possess the great truth – not from his own discovery, of course, but received straight from the Master’s hands? Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.”
Howard, read it and weep. Your ‘celestial morality’ is a delusion of grandeur.
I whole-heartedly agree with you about Jung. I speak as one who has been working over the past six years with a Jungian therapist. I would highly recommend Eddinger’s Ego and Archetype as a guide to a post-fellowship understanding of one’s psychological journey. Out of our own individual needs, we projected the Self onto Bob and now it’s time to recollect those projections.
You wouldn’t remember me, but we spent a pleasant afternoon walking around the National Gallery in D.C. I remember that at lunch you caused a raised eyebrow when you ordered a beer. You said something to the effect that we are in the business of changing our states and right now a beer will change my state.
Ames #1:
I think this is the same conclusion a lot of us have reached. Thanks for stating it.
Sheik posted his initial observations Sunday April 16, 2006
First comment on these observations: June 24, 2006
Part 1—First 300 comments, ending March 1, 2007
Part 2—Next 338 comments, ending March 11, total 668
Part 3—Next 333 comments, ending March 22, total 1007
Part 4—Next 312 comments, ending March 29, total 1313
Part 5—Next 391 comments, ending April 8, total 1704
Part 6—Next 408 comments, ending April 20, total 2112
Part 7—Next 397 comments, ending April 28, total 2509
Part 8—Next 453 comments, ending May 11, total 2962
Part 9—Next 452 comments, ending May 22, total 3414
Part 10—Next 534 comments, ending June 5 , total 3948
(change of format occurred here…
Part 11—Next 715, comments, ending June 13th, total 4663. Note: no moderation, numbering screws up, FoF spam attacks repelled!
Part 12—Next 647 comments, ending June 21st, total 5310
Part 13—Next 829 comments, ending July 3, total 6139
Thanks, appreciation and love to you all from Ames!
Special thanks to you, O Sheik, for all your hard work.
P.S. Since it looks like we contributed to the Sheik’s laptop giving up the ghost last weekend, remember to give something back. One way is the PayPal button!
Haven’t been on for a while, so much living to do.
This TRUE story is for those who are still very attached and hang on to the idea of Robert Burton being a unique and conscious being. Here is the story that actually happened and was the final understanding and closure for me.
There we were, the two of us sitting in a charming little coffee shop in the Bay area about 6 months ago. Both of us had exited the FoF, just 5 months earlier after serving a 20+ year term. It was chilly outside, people bundled up, coming and going. The atmosphere was warm and friendly inside, the tables were full, and the constant hum of voices put a smile on my face – life expressing itself all around me. We were sitting at the entrance door (the only table available) watching the comings and goings.
I was halfway through a sentence when I noticed that my partner’s attention had straying in a fixed kind of way to a new arrival that was just entering. A finely dressed, handsome, youngish gentleman (Asaf type, with a broad smile) opened the door –and who should enter, but A LOOK-A-LIKE , a DUPLICATE TO ROBERT BURTON. We both became fixated! The older gentleman was finely turned out, with an overcoat that was of the finest imported cashmere, a pair of Italian shoes that probably ran into the multiple hundreds, an ebony cane with a finely carved ivory handle, an exquisitely trimmed white beard, a broad smile , and a posture that had a slight stoop that said ‘this is what humility looks like’.
The young man moved ahead to secure a chair for the RB Look-a-like, pulled it out for him, seated him and then moved back and forth between the order counter and him with espressos, and croissants. The two remained in the coffee shop for about 15 minutes. During that time the older gentleman would look around the room from time to time with ‘attention’, smile, and lean over to his younger acolyte and point out something of interest or to teach him something of great importance.
Then it was time for them to leave. As the older gentleman approached the door which was slightly ajar, he used his cane to gently but ‘intentionally’ push it closed (after all it was an incomplete octave, and someone had strayed out without realizing that folly of their ways). This in itself was even stranger, as the two where about to exit from the same door. My partner could no longer contain himself. He had to speak!
For purposes of this dialogue, we will call my Partner ‘K’ and myself ‘C’ and the older gentleman, the look-alike to Robert Burton as RB ².
K: “ That looks like a useful tool. Beautiful cane!’
RB ²: “ Thank you, yes it comes in handy’
K: “ If you don’t mind me asking – you remind me of an old acquaintance- where are you from?”
RB ²: “ From the ABSOLUTE”
K: “ Nice to meet you, and I am B.
C: “ Nice to meet you , I am C. What is your name?
RB ²: “ I am MANOUSH ” ( said with a long soft extended sound , more like Maaannnooossshhh., and accompanied by a broad smile).
K. “ Are you a teacher?’
RB ²: “ Yes I am” (he beamed , with a humble tilt of the head)
K. “ What do you teach”?
RB ²: Turns to his well dressed , handsome acolyte and says “ DEAR, please give them a card ”.
Acolyte fumbles in his wallet, and produces a card. Immediately under the name of the ‘school/institution !!!’ a statement in bright parentheses says
‘ the divine art of being present’.
Hands were extended in goodbye. Manoush clasps his hands together in ‘that humble, I respect you fashion accompanied by a slight dip of the head and shoulders,’. The acolyte leaps forward to hold the door open for his ‘ TEACHER – MANOUSH ’.
If anyone wants to switch, we have the card . It is duplicating universe, isn’t it ?
And a final quote from RB himself (daily card), August 11, 2006
“ When you wake up from imagination, you realize that you have been wasting your time” Love RB
By way of contribution: there has been a huge amount of scholarly research on the enneagram since Ichazo started teaching it in the late 60’s. It is one example of why IMO Gurdjieff’s concept of “esotericism” is obsolete. Two such researchers are Hudson and Riso; in their book “Personality Types” they have a lineage diagram. The origins are labelled Unknown, Babylon or the MiddleEast, cir. 2500BC. The next step is Pythagoras and the Neo-Platonists, Greece, 500-100 BC.
I don’t know what you mean by a “huge amount of scholarly research” because my attempts to discover anything about the nature of the enneagram indicate that those who work with the ideas presented by Ichazio and marketed as an “enneagram” of personality are meaningless in terms of the use of the enneagram.
A more likely source of further information is through the Gurdjieff tradition. Those who study Beelzebub and Bennet. Etc.
“If becoming “conscious” means becoming like Robert Burton—screw that, I willingly join the damned!”
Your role was especially written just for you; you couldn’t “become like Robert” if you dedicated your entire life to it.
And you couldn’t become “not like Ames” if you dedicated your entire life to it. But you can look “through” Ames’ eyes, and not with them. Better yet you could close your two eyes and see with the third one, to paraphrase Rumi.
And look without judgment, rage, not indignantly but with compassion, forgivness, humility. Knowing it is all written by Beings infinitely superior in intelligence and authority than any human being including REB.
When you rage against REB you are raging against them.
But don’t expect to be struck by lightning – that’s not their style. If you chose to value this life over the next one they will give you what you want – a good earthly life, nothing more, nothing less.
As far as stating “I willingly join the damned” everyone says that until the actual moment of joining.
“those who work with the ideas presented by Ichazio and marketed as an “enneagram” of personality are meaningless in terms of the use of the enneagram.”
As I exchange messages and browse through the member pages in the Greater Fellowship Ning website, I am struck every day by the huge volume of exuberant, affirmative, loving energy fountaining out across the world via that website. So many old friends, new friends, lost but now found friends. All supportive, affirming each other’s essence and spiritual growth. It as as if all that loving energy that was somehow frozen inside while we were “in” is now breaking out in huge fountaining jets of warmth.
And I now see, this energy is the School. REB started something, but the real School is comprised of all the sincere, honest, loving friends that somehow flowed in and out of the Fellowship of Friends. It long ago ceased to have anything to do with RB’s teaching. The frauds, the con jobs, the scandals, the wounded essenses, the broken trust, the FoF Mafia, the Sequence, all the weird babble – all connected with a very psychically frail, wounded man.
WE are a School. In or Out, makes no difference. The dream was real, the utopia is there – it’s just not physically located anywhere, especially not in the property in Oregon House. Nor is it bound by the frailties, inconsistencies, weaknesses of any one person. And it is not even limited to those who actually ever joined the FoF.
It gives me great hope.
We smilingly refer to the GF site as “Son of Blog” (but without the negativity for now) – so thanks Sheik for being Dad here.
There’s some Viking energy ah sail still!
_________________________________
Hello Sheik ~ (Whalerider, Vera.mente, A Former Student)
Hello Sheik ~ A note: maybe it was your down time and broken computer; my Post #793 and #795 are duplicates.
Also, something ‘weird’ occurred in that I sent those posts ((after)) the ones that it is now ((before)) (?) Strange.
To Whalerider, Vera.mente and A Former Student ~
I replied to you, though based upon the Twilight Zone sequence of how my post appeared before the posts that it nornally would appear after, you may have missed it.
It is to be found on (1)3 ~ #793 or #795 (take your pick, they’re simese twins).
____________________________
Hello Ames ~ (Post 792)
You wrote ~
“No wonder the great caliph Haroun al-Raschid had to slip out from time to time, disguised, into the city to get first–hand information about the condition of the citizens—and the state. Even his most trusted advisors and viziers, chosen from the best, serving without selfish motives, could not transmit information up or vision down without distortion, even acting from the best of motives. He had to go and obtain direct experiences himself..”
_____________________
Beautiful demonstration of real being in action; never stop dancing my friend and keep that wooden leg oiled and loaded, if you know what I mean.
_____________________
Joel ~ (Post 797)
Hello Joel,
It seems to me that your letter to Benjamin and the si-do that you revealed here on the blog by inviting others to ‘let out’ their little black books on your past are connected.
I have often found it incredibly ‘amazing’ how clear one’s inner world requisites lay themselves out to ‘really be’ one’s standards and principles when another being attempts to damage essence or has willy nilly transferred some corruption of their own into my ‘solar’ pysche…
It happens less these days; I’ve trained myself to see the flip side of the ‘white surrender flag’ facing me and the ‘he’s over here, pointing arrow and bull’s eye’ on the other side;
so many possess this ‘flag’ in their pain body quest for adventure and addiction to the struggling self mind.
True friends…. Hummmm. My truest friends have been those who need themselves more than I, who give to me because ‘we’ ‘asked’ through silent intuitive ways, by sheer proximity and ‘spontaneous combustion’;
so much of the ‘kind’ of friendship of the Fellowship of Friends is based on derives from the automatic four lower center conundrum of ‘drama formatory family values’ and still is…
No member of a ‘school’, whose nucleus itself does not teach 360 degree trust and integrity can be trusted with un-guarded, raw, still getting its ‘bark’ essence, (among about another 60-70 classifications of inner world order ingredients);
for it is they who, subconsciously and often semi-consciously, imitate the criminal in charge of their developing psyches, i.e., the mirror reflects the silver, not the glass.
In that moment of ‘telling on you’, which even to children (it was felt that way in my childhood) is a kind of ‘crime’, Benjamin ‘was’ Robert Burton, acting out a kind of psychic possession, possessed with another’s entity’s dominance, i.e., the psychology of ‘good boy’…
Freud is all over the place at Isis; they have not even made it to Jung and Campbell yet… Let alone the understandings of the soul ‘mind’.
So, when Benjamin ‘did that to you’, try and see that it too was being done to him ’24 hours a day’ by the form of the Fellowship of Friends; it was his sub-conscious ‘cry for help’…
Yet, strangely enough, in a School of Relative Awakening, 9 out of 10 students will deny this interpretation and buffer, saying (with two tongues in cheek), “No, I trust Robert Burton, that’s why I cannot be trusted, I must do the teacher’s will, I have no will, I cannot do.” (Yet they affirm nonetheless that they can do the teacher’s will…?)
Benjamin (like Siddiq and HC) are not completely lost; otherwise their names would not be on this blog, deep down this material we’re cranking out will stick and the grace of the end of earth-form will fall upon them, sooner or later (to whatever large or tiny degree, nonetheless, better a pin-hole of light than a coal miner’s curse), this is a fact (for me),
that nothing is lost, even in the face of cold hearted silliness, something gets through, where is goes, how it grows remains a mystery to me, yet, somehow I do sense the seeds are there; this is not in any way meant to lessen their self-responsible performance now, it simply helps me keep a owl’s peripheral on ‘things’, not as they think they are, rather, how time treats us to the immensity of change and circumstances we’d never dream occurring the way they do.
There are certain self-evident laws that are unwinding them, though they do not show it (may not even be awake that its happening without their permission, like someone starring into the sun going blind or drinking grain alcohol ‘pickling’ their liver or a tug on one’s ear that says (from the inside, something they’d never admit from the outside) like “Oh, yes, I believe that but cannot tell you I do.”
The very ‘fact’ that they (at least 2 of them) are ‘tossing love notes attached to bricks’ over to us in here is something not to be underestimated.
Yet, for me, blowing kisses in the wind while others are pissing in it too has got to stop, so, let the aluminum foil dances begin…
Ames post #1 above is a pretty traditional way to start the warring months of July and August; I’ve filled my shells with ‘rock salt’, just for taste, not mortal wounding, so to speak; even these days, those two sided flags keep on coming.
It is my sense that HC believes nothing he’s writing, and is playing the role of ‘third force antagonist’ in here; yet, as we know, this, strangely enough, is the collective voice of a School of Relative Awakening, where the opiate of their language and thoughts overly secrete more cerebral duty, cerebral lip smacking, more cerebral self calming, very little being that’s not connected to mental structures of affirming oneself over and over that “I am this way of applying my thoughts (which are acually not my thoughts), therefore I am.”
I still cannot conceive the utter ‘tasting of soil for a new vineyard at a nuclear fallout area’ that’s occurring in the Fellowship of Friends around the acquisition by some of the most infra-sexed crazed of Robert Burton’s boy’s of the Fellowship of Friends student’s daughters; in their hands they are being placed by the parents, no doubt HC is in there with his pom poms doing cart wheels and boucing about his grapefruits…
This travesty of the Fellowship of Friends upon their own children touches something deep in my heart, I cannot get a grip on it just yet, it feels like a tornado, a hurricane and Jupiter’s eye, all rolled up in one…or maybe its just July.
It’s a beautiful day and the finch do not care who I am and I love them deeply for this kind of treatment.
_________________________________
9 Laura – thanks for sending me back to I Don’t Care 13-737
Current members of the Fellowship of Friends – doesn’t this post send a chill up your spine?
“Did any of you think that I would be dissuaded by this silly blog? The more you say, the more resolute I become.
“The more you write, the less I will read. The more convincing you make your arguments, the more convinced I am to stay. The more serious your arguments, the less I take them seriously. Reason and logic mean nothing to me. I must keep to my aim.
“Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care. When you draw comparisons to other cults, I will ignore it. When you point to the abuse of power by the leader, I will ignore it. When you show concern for the sexual behavior of the leader, I will laugh. If you point to the wisdom and spirituality that can be found outside the confines of this group, I will call it fake. When you emphasize the presence of group think, I will call that group think. When you say we are not thinking for ourselves, I will be puzzled by what you mean. When you say open dialogue is discouraged and punished, I will change the subject.
“Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care. I will wait you out. You will move on to your lives, but I shall remain here because this is my life.
“But eventually I will also leave.
“Like you, I will wonder why I stayed, why I was not dissuaded, why I remained resolute, why I was convinced to stay, why logic and reason meant nothing to me, why I kept to my supposed aim, why your appeals meant nothing to my conscience, why I didn’t care about children being hurt, why I ignored comparisons to other cults, why I ignored the abuse of power by the leader, why I laughed off the leader’s sexual behavior, why I ignored the wisdom and spirituality found outside the group, why I didn’t recognize that I didn’t think for myself, why I changed the subject when someone pointed out the lack of open dialogue. So you see, I will be the same as many of you.
“I will leave.
“But right now, I will stay. Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care…”
“Benjamin (like Siddiq and HC) are not completely lost; otherwise their names would not be on this blog, deep down this material we’re cranking out will stick and the grace of the end of earth-form will fall upon them”
“There are certain self-evident laws that are unwinding them, though they do not show it”
“The very ‘fact’ that they (at least 2 of them) are ‘tossing love notes attached to bricks’ over to us in here is something not to be underestimated.”
“It is my sense that HC believes nothing he’s writing, and is playing the role of ‘third force antagonist’ in here”
In relation to Siddiq…maybe, maybe not. Benjamin…I don’t know anything about his trip.
However, with HC, you are sadly naive, even after all these years, and you are wasting and misdirecting your precious “hope” He is a “severely damaged machine”, as we used to say. Possibly to the same degree as when he entered. I would even venture strongly that this is a criminal personality, possibly sociopathic. One needs to be able to discriminate to protect one’s “self”. Isn’t that one of the points of being here?
“A sociopath is a person who has antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is no longer used to describe this disorder. The sociopath is now described as someone with antisocial personality disorder.
The main characteristic of a sociopath is a disregard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big part of the sociopath’s personality. This pattern usually comes into evidence around the age of 15. If it is not treated, it can develop into adulthood.
Visible symptoms include physical aggression and the inability to hold down a steady job. The sociopath also finds it hard to sustain relationships and shows a lack of regret in his or her actions. A major personality behavior trait is the violation of the rights of others. This can appear as a disregard for the physical or sexual wellbeing of another.”
hc (19), I once believed that you were getting paid or supported in some way to articulate the party line and somehow support the cause, whatever that might be — possibly trying to divert people’s attention from the criminal and unethical acts of Robert Burton.
Now I wonder. You are definitely not supporting that cause with your increasingly bizarre posts.
Please read, “We Were There” (16). Does cause even a tiny bit of doubt in you?
I’m guessing Bruce will say, “Uh, uh.” And I’m beginning to think the same.
Thanks for your post: I’m keeping my (what you call “hope”, very abstract): please, re-read my post and see if the ‘naive-shoe’ still fits, it’s certainly not what I wished to share with you… As I stated, it’s a seed; disorders and severely damaged machines can be seen in many different ways.
I wonder when you draw such closed-ended visions or opinions of “damaged machines” whether or not you’ve ever ‘been inside one’ yourself?
I have experienced this possession of insanity and rigorous raw hate from others flowing through me, it having stayed and embedded itself throughout nearly every corner of my psyche through my teenage years and onwards; the transformation of the dense pain body connected to me has been one of my deepest tasks and I must admit to you, from personal experience, that no matter how insane a person looks, sounds, writes or pontificates, other forces still work very hard to keep ‘pin-holes’ occurring and one’s inner self, by some miraculous process called ‘becoming’ does sprout, if one is trying:
while, how one is trying and another is not, how trying to one is mimicking and insincere, while for the other it takes his or her spouses death or long agonizing death of themselves to shake them towards themselves, all this is mystery;
HC is stuck and as I said before, I really do not believe that he believes, so, it is very probable that he’s not even a damaged machine, just another Fellowship movie-star that’s feeding the blog and pushing buttons so to feed its pain body’s negative-reaction hungry, flip side of the darker side of the king of hearts vanity feature;
I sense he’s a smoke screen for Robert Burton, if not perhaps he’s Robert Burton himself… For the sake of true affirmative boomerang-ness, if anyone wants to address HC, I would suggest writing it thus ~
Dear Robert Burton, HC
(like a degree title, I’ll let you be creative with what the initials might stand for.)
Bruce, surely you do not think that we’re (by now) letting HC off the blog-hook, no my friend, its just another cast, in another spot, with the same worm that’s been curiously enduring multiple quick tosses here and there for thousands of ‘possible snags’, reeling in, casting out…
I am not so sure Bruce that we’ve got a ‘big one’, I’ve met ‘real’ damaged machines in my life, people that would put their boot heel across one’s pearly whites in a heart beat, drug dealers, motor cycle gang members, convicts of all sorts, dark dark people, HC does not qualify (to me) as one in the category of ‘past the point of no return’, yet, who knows, perhaps something else will ‘snap’ or ‘nibble’ the other way, yes, there are incarnations down here that I would consider ‘past the point of no return’ so far as ‘this’ incarnation is concerned; maybe its just a big tractor tire caught by the under toe, maybe not, I would let out the line a bit, let it dance and roar down the rapids… there’s a lagoon at the end of all this blogging that no one can see, who knows what odd and beautiful skull caps will pop up once all this is transcended.
22 2B Now I wonder. You are definitely not supporting that cause with your increasingly bizarre posts.
Of course, the really twisted paranoid assessment of HC is that he/she/it is a former member posting here specifically to elicit all the intelligent responses we’ve had to the robotic mentations of the FoF.
“A sociopath is a person who has antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is no longer used to describe this disorder. The sociopath is now described as someone with antisocial personality disorder.
The main characteristic of a sociopath is a disregard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big part of the sociopath’s personality. This pattern usually comes into evidence around the age of 15. If it is not treated, it can develop into adulthood.
Visible symptoms include physical aggression and the inability to hold down a steady job. The sociopath also finds it hard to sustain relationships and shows a lack of regret in his or her actions. A major personality behavior trait is the violation of the rights of others. This can appear as a disregard for the physical or sexual wellbeing of another.”
Translation: I live a different reality from Bruce’s.
Howard,
Your worldview expressed in 14-11 demands the following (and much more) to be true:
• there are many lifetimes
• higher forces designed my role in ‘a play written in advance’ (yet you grant me the power of choosing to value this life over the next, and that higher forces will ‘give me what I want’!)
• persons ‘raging’ against Burton are raging against higher forces
• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining
• that you know the ‘style’ of higher forces.
In a minor key:
• I am in a rage, or indignant, or looking without judgment, compassion, forgiveness or humility.
None of this is verifiable by you.
By all means continue to thrash around in Burton’s fantasy.
I prefer to try to live the one and only life I have verified as fully and as deeply as I can.
Charles, thanks for this terrific post. I also ran across this thread, on lightgate.net, under the Ken Wilber forums, as a topic thread called The charismatic narcissistic cult leader and his apologists. This also addresses the difficulty of speaking to people like Howard Carter, Siddiq, et.al. The post is by someone named Jim. (Disclosure: I deleted a few paragraphs and changed the word “existential” to “higher” for the sake of the audience.) Here’s more:
[begin quote]
Why do people fall under the spell of charismatic narcissistic cult leaders?
I’m posing this question without specifying any individuals, but my question is specific: I am not asking why people fall under the sway of beliefs and ideas. I am asking why people fall under the spell of charismatic narcissistic cult leaders.
It goes without saying, or should, that we would not even be able to address specific cases unless we first agreed that the charismatic cult leader in question was in fact narcissistic.
So let’s define these terms.
Charizesthai is Greek for favor or gift of divine origin, or charismata, “spiritual gifts.” Webster’s defines charisma as: “a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.”
Max Weber defined charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers…[that] are regarded as of divine origin.”
Weber spoke of the “extraordinary” emotions of the charismatic, the ability to reach intense emotional depths and heights of ecstasy and euphoria, and a belief in his or her “calling” that arouses similar feelings in others, who become followers. The greater the intensity of the charismatic leader or teacher, the greater the intensity of his or her following. The greater the passion of the leader, the greater the passion of the followers.
Heinz Kohut analyzed and defined the narcissistic personality in great detail, but I will just mention a few of his key observations.
Two characteristics of the narcissistic personality that Kohut observed were grandiose self-confidence and an extraordinary lack of self-doubt.
People with narcissistic personalities typically have a need to define reality in their terms so as to be always right, and they typically refuse to accept criticisms or appear vulnerable.
People with narcissistic personalities can rarely admit to a gap in their knowledge.
Psychologist Len Oakes, whose focus is on the psychology of religion and issues related with new religious movements, comments on the adult narcissist:
By always being a little bit inside yet a little bit outside the world, he is well placed to diagnose its problems and devise solutions. His insights well seem to be profound truths to those who share his values and background. The talents he has developed in order to survive with his narcissistic worldview intact now give him an uncanny resonance with his times and with those who will become his followers. … Perhaps this really does give the prophet a “truth” that others lack.
Eventually the successful adult narcissist stands ready for the call to leadership. He fits in well with those who seek a new life or are in crisis. In return for their love and devotion, he leads them to the promised land, and in so doing he re-creates the ego-reflecting universe he knew as a child. The followers appreciate his vision and wisdom because he keeps his head about him in a crisis; he is above the fray (which is why narcissistic patients are so hard to treat – they can’t be reached).
Kohut says that the narcissist reacts to injuries to his worldview with “narcissistic rage.”
“Hence,” says Oakes, “he is fondest of the true believers who enthusiastically mirror his ego; those who don’t are resented.”
Many psychologists, including integral and/or transpersonal psychologists, believe that some cult leaders are both charismatic and narcissistic, and they believe that people who are particularly susceptible to such cult leaders are susceptible for particular psychopathological reasons.
As Oakes says, narcissists “can’t be reached,” and thus we find that apologists for charismatic narcissistic cult leaders often have an extraordinary lack of self-doubt, a need to define reality in their terms so as to be always right, can rarely admit to a gap in their knowledge, and are therefore beyond reach.
Personally, I think that it’s a more worthy effort to help people move beyond conventional levels into (a higher) level than it is to support charismatic movements at all. A charismatic teacher whose appeal is his charisma by definition appeals to people at conventional levels of development and not to people who are at the (higher) level. A charismatic teacher whose appeal is his charisma cannot help people move from the conventional level to the (higher) level. Someone who helps people break out of the conventional mindset that is prone to falling under the spell of charisma does far more for people than does someone who implicitly or explicitly encourages people to flock to charismatic cult leaders for spiritual guidance.
[end quote]
I think Vera-mente and I would like to be added to the CLASS-ACTION civil lawsuit. I dont’ know about Vera-mente but I would also like to see a criminal law suit against Benjamin the lawyer for FOF, Mr. Goldfinger, is it?
In or out we all have to deal with the same things.
We have to deal with our own features. We have to deal with making a living and supporting ourselves. We have to deal with our laziness in certain areas.
We have to deal with the opportunities to experience what it means to be alive. We have to deal with the emptiness that presents itself from time to time.
When it comes down to the moment, the fence is imaginary. You are in and you have some nice moments. You also have moments of worry, moments where it is hard to do what you feel is right, moments where you judge others or become impatient. Moments where you doubt your own abilities. Moments of sadness. Moments of joy.
My life is not so different. I also have nice states, states that can not be taken from me, states independent of my position, my family, my friends and certainly from the Fellowship. States where I am glad to be alive in this very strange adventure.
In some ways, your life is not much different from mine. We both strive to have the best life we can, knowing that a good life is not only about doing and receiving but also about being and giving. We both have friends. We both have fine emotions.
So the fence is largely imaginary. Life is life. But as I see it here is the difference:
I thought while I was in that I was independent, that I was free, that I was honest. I now see clearly that I was not as free or independent or honest as I thought.
Now that I am out, I am no longer a child, supporting a man that misuses the resources allocated to him (his students and the efforts of his students). I no longer am bound by his principles but am establishing my own based on my judgment which I sincerely believe is better than his. (His judgment is clearly misguided).
Since I am no longer supporting Robert and his strange habits and ideas of right and wrong, I am much lighter. Since I am no longer trying to be a person that I am not, I am starting to learn what I really am. I feel much more free to be myself and I don’t have to twist my mind to try to justify my support of Robert. This has a more positive effect than you can imagine. What an incredible relief! We have carried a tremendous and unnecessary weight without knowing it.
I am thankful for what I learned but now it is time to refine my own relationship to what it means to be alive. I don’t think life is about meetings, receptions, working long hours to support a king and his harem – nor is about the self absorption that the sequence produces.
From my experience, higher states are more loving than that and actually more easily available than that. Identification is identification regardless of the nobility of the subject and dividing every moment into work or non-work, effort or non-effort, higher self or lower self, leads to identification. Robert’s teaching brings some enjoyable moments but on the whole often leads to self-deprecation and identification. In some cases it even leads to depression. I am not saying that this is always the case, but I think it is more often the case than any of us were willing to admit.
Life is more about being honest and simple. This frees up the higher centers. Supporting Robert and his odd ways is neither honest nor simple.
Life is about discovering what I am and letting go of the king of hearts facade. It is about developing a loving family. It is about learning to love, not only my friends but also myself and this amazing place and existence in which we find ourselves. It is difficult to do this while supporting a man that does not like most of life, and who teaches through his actions and exercises the value of self absorption.
I thought I needed the FOF to keep me away from my lower self. I was wrong. The Fellowship weight was causing me to retreat into my lower self and it was heavy. I am glad that I had the opportunity to learn this lesson before I was too old to appreciate it.
I am more free and this freedom provides energy to grow, freedom to experiment, freedom to love, freedom to fail and freedom to be. It provides emotional energy which frees me from an instinctive life.
So Howard, you can continue to be afraid, afraid of what might happen to you without all the third force, without Robert’s guidance and the guidance of what you imagine to be C influence. That is fine if that is what you want. But I would suggest that it might be time to experiment. Time to see if you are really so weak that you cannot do it for yourself. I suspect you and many other students are really quite strong individuals but you have allowed yourself to be demoralized, weakened and frightened. You have allowed yourself to need a father figure to tell you what to do and how to live.
You see, you cannot understand the weight you carry and its harmful effects until it is lifted, until you are free from it. I know. I was there and my only regret was that it took me so long to find my courage.
Luckily the Fellowship allows students to return if they find they really need the third force so it is possible to experiment. Interesting that of the 10,000 or so that have left, I guess less than 100 have returned.
“They must find it difficult.
Those who have taken authority as the truth,
Rather than truth as the authority.”
G. Massey. Egyptologist.
many wonderfull posts folks. Cy.
does your Fellowship membership better equip you to come to terms with that unfortunate event, which all can agree would be a major life changing event for anyone?
As has been remarked on prior pages, Mr. Highland’s driving has been noted as aggressive and irresponsible prior to the “accident” by other members at the time. Of course he was aware “in the moment” that any other action would have crushed him with the cement he was carrying, because we know he is such a fast and deep thinker.
That line about “fill the cups of justice” reminds me of a euphemism RB used to use in reference to the “gift” he received from his male students. He used to call it “drinking from their cup”.
Folks, just for your information, Howard C is not the student who was involved in a tragic accident, and I will add, this was apparently the type of accident that could have happened to anyone.
The Benjamin Y bashing is also completely inappropriate.
Both these students, as we all are, are not perfect, but are good and decent human beings.
Of course all of this is besides the point, nothing in these smallminded personal attacks reflect anything about the Fellowship or what it stands for. We are all still human beings I think.
Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present, but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?
I don’t think it is very twisted or paranoid. Almost every time I read one of his posts I think this is too much of a characature to be real. It is if some genius is taking all the false “esoteric” drivvel we have left behind like that black oily pool of hate and negativity left by the dying planet’s inhabitants in the old ‘Star Trek , The Next Generation’ episode.
IF that is true, my apologies to Daniel, but at this point there is little I would trust from you Siddiq. I lately find your statements and apologetics completely untrustworthy and in the similar vein to HC’s , just not as insane (yet).
Rodney Collin said that planet Earth is an infinitesimal point within a point. So how come the ego fills up the rest of starry space?
Oh, somebody was asking about the enneagram. I found for me a new book. While I was looking around the Nisagadatta website I found this, “The Tao of Chaos: Essence and the Enneagram (quantum consciousness, volumn 3, by Stephen H. Wolinsky, Ph.d.
Hey, no one needs to apologize; I am surely not doing so, not for my own posts, not for the FOF nor for RB. Bruce, I am not looking for you to trust me either. I am just stating my point of view to give a little balance to the blog. ( I do not know if for example Daniel and Benjamin are reading the blog, so they may not be there to put the matter straight).
You are right that I am going insane…slowly but surely!
Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present…
How can you know that? You’re lying to yourself to make yourself feel superior.
…but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?
How about a good night’s sleep?
Seriously, I’d like to reply to your question. First, you are assuming that a manipulative technique like the Sequence can actually produce and prolong “presence.” Maybe so, maybe not; it’s still a technique, a form of control, something the mind is doing. As long as the mind has some practice, some technique it feels it can master (saying a mantra, watching the breath, etc.), it’s happy. But that isn’t spiritual awakening. That’s mind activity.
From Adyashanti’s book True Meditation:
“In True Meditation, we start from the foundation of letting everything be as it is. We are not moving toward the natural state [presence], or trying to create the natural state, we actually start at the natural state from the very beginning. This is what I discovered all those years ago when I started to let go of the meditator, the controller, when I sat down and simply allowed everything to be as it was. What I realized very quickly was that the peace and stillness I was trying to attain were already there. All I had to do was stop trying to attain them. All I had to do was sit down and allow my experience to be exactly as it was.”
….
“We cannot come upon the truth of our nature through manipulation. We cannot move beyond what I call the false identity, the egoic identity, by trying to change. We can only start to allow consciousness to wake up from its identification with thought and feeling, with body and mind and personality, by allowing ourselves to rest in the natural state from the very beginning.”
So while the Sequence (or any similar concentration technique) may have some temporary value in bringing your attention to the present, the technique too easily becomes an end in itself. A dead end.
Ah, the enigma Howard Carter! The fundamentalist we all love to hate or hate to love as the case may be. He is pure party line leading all the way to the top. His style of fixed and rigid thinking is why people kill each other over religious beliefs. There is virtually no other way to ‘get’ to people like them. They are THAT dedicated. They have crossed the line, sold their souls for the cause, and for them, there is no turning back.
Howard’s silence to my posts speaks volumes to me. Am I more of a ‘lost cause’ than Bruce or Cyclops, my esteemed brethren? Here’s what I think he is doing. He is baiting those who call him names to incite negativity from others in an effort to turn FOF members away from the truth. FOF members are VERY sensitive to negativity, are they not? What a perfect ploy to make FOF members weary of the blog! Notice how he backs off when bloggers go after each other!
Please, I beg you, don’t play into his insanity! If anyone here has an interest in actually helping others reading this blog still stuck in the FOF matrix to think for themselves, I recommend avoiding the emotional outbursts to his fundamentalism.
If you have an emotional response, go throw your pillow against the wall a few times instead. You will feel much better. That would be more appropriate. I am quite serious. Otherwise he will transform your negativity into more fundamentalisms, ad nauseam. Trust me there will be no end to it. Can’t you tell?
Look at his response to Ames post #1. “As far as stating “I willingly join the damned” everyone says that until the actual moment of joining.”
Does he speak from experience? Hell no, he speaks from fundamentalism! There is no argument there, only fear. Fear of the unknown is something we all share, and he uses it to reinforce the status quo.
I know it seems pointless, but confronting his warped thinking with reasonable responses is the best we can do, not to change him, that is impossible, but for the others sitting on the fence. Take the Gandhi approach, and you will expose his tyranny.
Gandhi said, “Eye for an eye makes two people blind!”
Here’s another one from Siddiq:
“About the negative press about the Sequence. Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present, but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?”
Actually, Siddiq, first state is done better without presence if you want to get some rest. A good night’s rest is the best antidepressant I know.
And ‘trying’ to be present will only lead to failure. As Yoda said, “There is no ‘try’, there is only doing or not doing!” But that’s what keeps members stuck in the FOF matrix, too much ‘trying’ and not enough doing. That’s why you need the silly sequence.
“Instead of wine, the truck was carrying five tons of concrete curbing, which would have crushed Highland if he had slammed on the brakes, said Goldman.”
_______________________________
A fitting metaphor for the Fellowship of Friends and all that it is doing to keep students from slamming on their brakes to avoid having a head on collision with Robert Burton: hence, you must kill the third state to avoid it.
________________________________
No mention of the negligence of carrying five tons of inappropriate materials, the physics of such a load compared to what the truck is designed for, etc.; though you can be sure that it played a part in the settlement ~
Can’t wiseacre out of that one David, facts are facts, concrete is not wine (at least in the real world where there are no Christ’s turning wine into concrete so to save on the costs of building the Theatron)
~ no matter, yet another chapter in the Fellowship of Friends teaching payments going towards “Why be formatory?” Compliments of Robert Burton and Friends.
What, you say that the RVW will pay for the suit? Ha; certainly the dinosaurs know by now that Robert Burton gets proceeds from the winery sales as well, filtered and triple sifted through a myriad of credit cards and personal bank account, then given as cash ‘gifts’ (donations)…
Therefore, less money from the winery sales profits = more money from the students to pay for what RVW cannot be leeched of…
Yes, Bruce, the stomachs are turning and there’s only the pepto bismol background colors of the Galleria murals to assist them… Then again, there’s also little bottles sold at 600% mark up costs at Oregon House Grocery; students should be accustomed to that sort of math by now.
Hey David, way to go with that ‘short notice’ thing… You’re ranking up there with Mary R. these days… I still love you as a friend though, no matter how silly your cerebral mercurial-contusion proves to be. Just, please try to remember this, that ignorance of the law is not the law, it is a state of essence, an innocent state, which I dare say your actions (while official) may prove to be spiritually damaging: everything is recorded, we unfold everything we’ve taken great lunatic care in folding, stashing away…
this ‘Away’ always finds us, it outlines our shadows, the produces the sound of our steps, it is the steam of our breath in December, it is the smoke at the end of a cigarette, it is the tear before and after a laughing fit, it is everything you’ve not yet asked the mirror and everything its been telling you since you’ve had ears to hear, though too busy to remember… pause my friend and remember what Buddha said ~
The principle representatives of the FoF on this blog are Siddiq and HC. Joel suggests HC is an invention by ex-students to stimulate debate, but he’s not – he’s a real, breathing person and he means what he says. For his honesty and sincerity I admire his approach more than Siddiq’s. Sure he’s two apples short of a picnic, but at least he’s passionate about what he believes.
Siddiq, on the other hand, is more like I was in the years before I left: confused and ambivalent, buffering intensely and pontificating in a phony manner about issues in which in reality he no longer believes.
If there really are 1500 people hitting on this blog every day, I assume many of them are confused students. So here’s my point: the only truthful way to remain in the FoF is to be like HC, believing everything you’re told and willing to fight for it to the death. The Siddiqs will be out before long. So if you’re a fence-sitter and you’re reading this, please try to be truthful with yourself – acknowledge that the main reason you stay is fear of the unknown, the Great Outside. It’s not too far from there to realising that there’s really nothing to be afraid of.
Howard.
Yes, you did write “ultimate authority” as opposed to “absolute authority”. What is the difference in your world?
Teaching is not about having “ultimate authority” over any student. That is simple egoism. It is not teaching. It is commanding.
“Ultimately” any good teacher wishes for students to surpass his or her knowledge, encourages them to do so and assists them in finding the way with a tireless drive, patience and enormous generosity.
Your teacher is quite clear that you will never acquire an iota of his knowledge ever and spends most of his time alienated from you while spending your money.
I knew you’d be angry that I would deign to suggest that my own life and teaching experience could be spoken in the same breath with your teacher’s.
What you don’t understand is that I know (have verified) that he is no better than me and knows no more than I do about this mysterious life in any way shape or form. I don’t worship him or anyone and he demands that. My teaching & life experience is just as valid or invalid as his.
He is, however, a fellow educator, and I do find it fascinating to observe his incredibly unethical and poor pedagogical efforts.
I am a professor and have been attempting to learn to do this well for 15 years, continue that quest and have some success. Every day it is a challenge to discover the most effective way to offer my bit of knowledge so that my students can thrive.
I do know what does not work. Most certainly it is highly ineffective to tell students that they will never accomplish their goals no matter how much effort they expend. That is manipulative and extremely selfish and egoistical and clearly signifies that they believe they own knowledge that no one else is qualified to learn.
I have deep compassion for you. If I remember correctly, you have been a member of the school for 20 or 30 years. I can only imagine the fearful confusion our words here must engender.
Still, I know you can’t hear.
Perhaps that is your sentiment about any number of us here on this discussion board. The difference is that we’ve been where you are, but you’ve never been where we are. (Yes, yes…moon food.) We’ve all been in the position of being unable to hear the truth from “inferior” human beings when we were in the school.
Bravely read “The Guru Papers” or “Cults in our Midst”, to see if you can recognize the extraordinarily typical cult situation in which you are entangled. The Fellowship is a text book example of a cult in every way and you typify its product.
Thank you for your post. You have uncovered yet another layer of the deception. Robert calls himself the ‘teacher’. Yet, as you can tell from your being, he is no teacher. You are quite right; the highest wish of a true teacher such as you is for the student to surpass them. Only then will the teacher have done their job well. Robert’s narcissism will not allow that.
But the institutional manipulation (or group hypnosis) that we become subjected to in the FOF is that Robert wishes to be addressed as ‘the teacher’ and we obey, as we were taught to respectfully obey our teachers since grade school. We were set up due to our socially conditioned response to the word, ‘teacher’.
I am quite sure your university has strict rules and a code of ethics regarding teachers sleeping with students, do they not? So in fact, you cannot compare yourself to him, because he is not a teacher at all, nor a fellow educator. You are a qualified teacher with an ethos. He is a self-appointed spiritual dictator. You allow for creativity and individuality in your students, and even encourage it, he does not. You expect your students to grow and become independent; he expects dependency, revealing his co-dependency.
So it is even a misnomer to call those in his group, ‘students’. They are followers, and they will always be followers. The only thing he teaches is mindless obedience. That takes about five minutes to learn. The rest is servitude to his perverted desires and whims.
48, Give us proof.
B is after women, personal information.
Ask the LCS how close he was to children of students.
Read the letters from Kiran and Paola and ask his ex wife about his trip to Germany.
Ask Asaaf about the stop of the Bible keys.
Dear Siddiq, it is easy to say that facts are not true but please do some research before you speak. In the fellowship it is considered lying if you do not “verify” your reactions and observations.
Keeping observing…open your ears and eyes… , forgive yourself and others.
Thanks for this blog and for the birth of the son of the blog.
Sorry Siddiq, B IS READING THE BLOG, early am
The above information is verified. And I will not tell you how I know, as I do not jeopardize students identity. Siddiq take a good night sleep.
About D is HC I do not know…could be. Killing 3 people will be something investigated deeply. If Unanimo info is correct…silence will be my answer.
HC and S, here there are the same dozen girls repeating the same stuff again and again: why don’t try letting them by themselves for a week (or a month) and observe what happens?
(please you two no need to answer this.)
Having never experienced pregnancy, I cannot say that I know what it is like. However, the process that I experience in writing to this Blog feels somewhat similar. For days, even years, there are “I’s” or understandings that float around in what some psychologists might call the subconscious, then suddenly they pop out and demand to take form.
Here is one such birth:
Approximately 20+ years ago, when Miles left the School, I, along with many others, was unexpectedly exposed to information which I was not prepared to digest. To put it briefly, Miles called Robert criminal, Robert called Miles criminal, and both were true! Personally, I was in an untenable position, seemingly forced to make a spiritual choice that I was unable to make. The psychological tension of that particular play went on for the good part of a year or longer. During that time, certain states and understandings became possible that were clearly not accessible in my normal, second state life. Essentially, living on the edge of a nervous breakdown helped me to choose Self-Remembering in what I perceived to be a School. Robert’s criminality towards individual students might be bad, but Miles’ departure from the vehicle of Self Remembering (the School) and his dissolution encouragement towards so many others seemed worse.
At that time, we would often speak of the baby and the bathwater analogy, i.e. “don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”. Thus, I simply felt that Miles threw out the baby (Self Remembering) with the bathwater, whereas Robert, just made the bathwater a little dirty from time to time, but it was all transformable, wasn’t it? And for me, even at that time, somehow it was.
I can remember one particular experience from this that period. I had the luck (it was the play) to be singing with the Renaissance Chorus and Orchestra in a performance of the Messiah (which had always been a dear love of mine) at the Town Hall. It was one of the most remarkable experiences I think I have ever had. Opening my mouth up to sing released and transformed all that pent up nervous energy, such that I became the words that I was singing. Song after song, I sang the language of the Soul. And I knew it and I understood it. And it was Me, but a Me that included everyone else. And it was Truth. And it was All and Everything. Words now cannot even come close to describing that experience. But somehow I equally knew that everything I currently understood would not be available to me tomorrow or even in a few hours time, the memory, yes, but not it’s contents. The understanding was only available in the Present and when I myself was purely transparently existing in it. Afterwards, in the car, while parking to go up to the Lodge, I was still sizzling with so much Hydrogen 12, I can remembering making love to a male student towards whom I was not so attracted to in the first place. Wow. The baby was alive and well!
But now, 20+ years on, as a School environment for encouraging Self Remembering, what do we have? To my perception we have a Teacher who continually pollutes the bathwater to such an extent that the babies are growing up sick and deformed. The sex, the money, the power, are mere smoke screens that hide the true poverty of the situation. Witness the current nature of Robert’s teaching, a barren second state Sequence, promising so much more, if only one can do it often enough, and/or intensively enough. And maybe some of us can (push the Sequence that far), such that they find themselves suddenly existing in a world far more alive than they had ever supposed, as I did on the Town Hall stage so many years ago. Yet, as a Teacher himself, who is supposedly inhabiting these higher realms of Consciousness, there is no fresh inspiration coming from his own Being. There is creative wiseacring, to be sure, but true Conscious inspiration? I don’t hear it. His need to rely on the words of others keeps him from being able to react freshly to his Students in the Moment that he tells us he occupies so fully, with a Conscious Love towards us that he tells us he feels. It just may not be true.
Long term students who are still healthy, look around and consider that it may be time to get out of the bath. Younger students are too healty to notice the dirty bathwater. A few other vibrant individuals have found ways to keep their own bathwater relatively clean. Most hard and front liners however have become fixed and formatory in their need to protect the Grand Polluter, as stunted in their own spiritual growth as that of their Teacher. Would that it were not so, yet is.
Witness again the transformation of understanding that is occurring on this Blog about the true nature of Self Remembering itself, an understanding transformed through Advaita non duality. So that we finally understand that Self Rembering is not an end in itself, but rather a stage along the way towards Self Realization. Does Robert understand this? Do we have a Teacher that can speak of such regions? Thereby encouraging us to get past him in order to leap up to such places in ourselves? I don’t see it, I don’t hear it, would that I did.
When I first heard about the famous 44 a student told me there were more.
I’m not sure of the quote but it goes something like this, ” a pygmy sees further standing on the shoulders of a giant”.
“All the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals”.
what a lovely idea. You guys should really be spending more time on all the important things in your life and let us rot here by ourselves for a while.
I was starting to wonder, why are you still hanging around this blog, reading so many worthless ‘I’s’? You are so right, we just keep repeating ourselves, we get super negative, and we don’t make any efforts to be less mechanical.
We are really just a dozen bad girls gossiping and looking for trouble…
Maybe not the right hydrogen to feed your evolution and evoke Divine Presence.
Much better to work wth the sequence!
It is very cold and lonely out here, but we’ll try to survive until you come back.
Of course, we will miss your pearls of wisdom, but we’ll try to keep each other entertained with our own wiseacreings.
See you in a month, Dear Golb, and may the schwartz be with you too!
73 Yesri baba …and we will be back to “As the World Turns” after these messages. (or is it “General Hospital”?)
Yes, definitely a bit like a soap opera all of this. While we get a peak into RB’s bedroom, or wherever it is he does what he does, we’re also getting glimpses into the alleged habits of some of his followers — alleged porno addictions, group sex, promiscuity, alleged reckless driving habits, serious drinking problems, and so on.
Maybe not shocking. But I do have a question: Could it be that RB’s “behaviors” actually are soothing for all of us who remain in the Fellowship? In other words, if he does “this” all of the time, and he’s also conscious and a Man No. 7 and the conduit to Higher Forces, and “The Teacher”…
… then maybe — just maybe — my alcohol problems, my spousal abuse, my promiscuity, my destructive behavior — are not that bad?
Is this one of many reasons that we’ve had so much trouble listening to any criticism of this guy? Because if we did, we’d need to start facing our own mess? Our own flaws?
Anyway, happy 36th Anniversary everyone. To some of my friends there who undoubtedly are having a bbq to celebrate. May our time at Via Del Sol, Mt. Carmel, Renaissance, Apollo, Isis, truly not be wasted years.
“July 7, 2005: At the start of the July 4th dinner celebrating the 34th anniversary of the founding of Apollo, our Teacher gave a toast announcing that we are changing the name of Apollo to Isis. He had been considering a change for some time, but was unclear which of two names to use. Wayne and Corinne Mott told Robert that on their recent travel to Los Angeles to see the King Tut exhibit they passed a street named “Apollo” and right afterwards they came upon another street called “Isis”. This was sufficient for Robert to recognize this is indeed the name to use to best express the new being and direction of our School.
“Isis represents the nine of hearts, a forerunner of Mary mother of Christ (Steward) and also Work ‘I’ #1: Be Present. In the photograph below, she is shown on the left, whereas her sister, Nephthys, who represents Work ‘I’ #2: Prolong Presence, is shown on the right. Between the two female figures is that of Osiris-Re, who represents the Steward. The figure of Osiris-Re stands upon an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol that means “Truth”. Truth represents the Thirty Work ‘I’s. The hands of Isis and Nephthys are positioned alongside Osiris-Re, supporting the Steward in the effort to assert and prolong presence.”
Thanks for your heartfelt post to Howard. We are simpatico, my friend. When two similar waves traveling from two different directions meet, no matter what their age, they merge in resonance and become greater. I am sustained and empowered as I know others newly freed are from reading about your path at the crossroad of this blog.
First of all, thanks for the great posts and happy Independence Day to everyone.
Since some of you mentioned enjoying the “Headless Way” website, I’d like to inform you that I found through a link on “Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service,” which contains a very long list of gurus, dead and alive, divided into cathegories and complete with short descriptions and links.
Of course, one can totally disagree with Sarlo’s opinions and ratings, but it’s fun to see Gurdjieff, Nisargadatta, Adyashanti, Eckart Tolle and Krishnamurti all up there at the top (together with many others, including Osho; now, I’m not sure how I feel about Osho, but he sure had a wicked sense of humor, and you’ve got to love that space-age look).
Anyway, if you are in the mood for guru shopping, or just looking for some relativity, go check it out.
Laura
PS I almost forgot, you can find Robert too, unrated, under “Miscellaneous”. The info and links need some updating.
Gee, when you posted your post about the sequence the garbage truck arrived just outside my home on the right side of the street symbolizing the garbage that Robert spews out about the sequence being right work of centers and somehow connected to Egypt, reminding me that in Cairo there are no garbage trucks, but a whole class of people who collect garbage and sell it to others, because the stewards of that city don’t have the compassion to spend their funds for the good of those living there, like at Isis where there is no health insurance, they spend money protecting their cash flow from the spectators who come to see the artifacts stolen from the graves of the Pharaohs who undoubtedly would be pissed at how their sacred names and symbols are commercialized and used by others not even remotely on their divine level to prostitute something that already exists any known as presence..
WhaleRider (82): Yes, as I was reading that old email (79), I was trying to find at least one coherent idea in it… something, anything, that might make sense, that would be inspiring or enlightening and helpful, and that would help all of us strengthen our understanding. But nothing. Just words patched together — words that sounded like they signified something, but that signified nothing.
The question is, what’ll be the next name change, the next change in direction? What new art form? Will it be a new focus on the ancient esoteric knowledge of Central America, and the subsequent abandonment of all things Egypt? Or will it be a focus on the esoteric meanings of the Zodiac (actually someone sent out an email some time ago asking followers to help with research on the Zodiac, but nothing more was said about that to my knowledge).
Of course, this means I am “identified with the form of the school.” Ah, another very effective method of thought control. Any questions regarding the use of funds are “identification.”
One of the more ironic twists to the last couple of years in the fof was the “abandonment of Shakespeare.” As far as I know, he wasn’t removed from the list of 44 conscious beings, but Robert gave a decree that Shakespeare plays would be discontinued. All that after building a huge outdoor amphitheatre that presumably would be perfect for a play now and then. But I sense that RB thought that “the theater” might get out of his control. A good facility and many willing participants, and suddenly you have something that overshadows RB.
Meanwhile, high up on the hill, the statue of Karl Werner stands on a crumbling platform. Weeds are growing out of the cracks in the cement. Most of the wine tanks are removed. Disrepair. Abandonment.
Not what people imagined. But remember, that’s identification. Back to the Sequence please. Back to fundraising.
Hey, guys. There is another one of those retroactive posts that slipped through a small crack. Some of you might have missed it?
Check out Baby in the Bathwater #[74].
Nice post, Baby. Thanks
Comrade, I felt that same sadness when I heard that the beautiful vineyard is a shadow of its former self. And now the image of the crumbling ‘platform’ of Karl Werner…it is painful…soon the weeds growing out of the cement will allow the Earth to reclaim the land with new life. I highly recommend a trip to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon to recharge your spirit. The Earth in her infinite beauty will never shun you; your body is part of her, and she is your true divine Mother. All you need to do is place yourself there at Her breast, and She will nurture you back to life. She is is inexhaustible.
The theater was out of Robert’s control because the plays empowered the actors to express negativity without being identified. That’s dangerous to his flock! It demonstrates that people don’t ‘lose’ their work when they express those hydrogens, but are in fact cleansed and exalted. By repressing negative feelings, it puts a person on edge, and then they can be manipulated more easily. That’s how the military works. Aggression and hostility are cultivated in the underlings by the ‘insulated’ leaders of higher rank and then directed toward the ‘enemy’.
Walt Whitman had a vision of the “City of Friends”. The Fellowship of Friends tried to appeal to this vision. We responded with mighty efforts, so where did it go wrong? The answer to me is that the same vision can be manifested in different ways, here are two…
In patriarchal–hierarchical organizations/societies (those stifling the counter-stream) we find polarities; the teacher, unable to think, who takes pleasure in crippling or limiting the minds of his students; the mediocrity who takes pleasure in demolishing greatness; the eunuch who takes pleasure in the castration of all pleasure; the stagnant who takes pleasure in chaining the abilities of competitors; the neurotic who takes pleasure in diminishing the self-esteem of others; the incompetent who takes pleasure in defeating achievement; the whining sneak who takes pleasure in his own sense of importance by bearing tales to those he sees as important. In this society, each person avoids the eye of his neighbor; despises himself by despising those around him (especially those outside his own group), thinks in terms of dualities. He has friends only to reinforce his weaknesses and bear his complaints.
In creative organizations/societies (those practicing reciprocal maintenance) we find: the teacher who glories in the achievement of his students—whose greatest achievement is the student who surpasses him; the true individual who esteems, encourages, and prizes individuality above all else in others; the mystic who sees others only at their fullest potential—the God within them; the leader whose chief ambition is to replace himself with two others like himself; the businessman who hires the best, even if it means those better or more talented than he; the worker who does his job using all the energy, ability and gifts that he has—ambitious to progress. In this society, each person looks his neighbor in the eye, exchanging looks of vitality, joy for life, sense of common adventure, encouragement and self–worth. He thinks in terms of commonalities and connectedness. He has friends who bring out the best in him and who expect likewise.
Thanks, WhaleRider. Probably my words conveyed more sadness than I had intended, but there is a sadness to things when you think back on what we believed many years ago compared to the reality of the fof both then and now. And I’m sure that’s what you detected in me.
It’s embarassing for Robert if people think back on what the Fellowship “was about” for many years. This is one of the reasons that wikipedia editors have done everything they can to delete all references to the predictions of the earthquake in 1984, nuclear war in 2006, and the ark. The history of the group is partly what reveals the insanity of it.
Great idea about Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Thanks again WR. And thanks to everyone for so many outstanding posts.
74 baby in the bathwater: “Witness again the transformation of understanding that is occurring on this Blog about the true nature of Self Remembering itself, an understanding transformed through Advaita non duality. So that we finally understand that Self Rembering is not an end in itself, but rather a stage along the way towards Self Realization. Does Robert understand this? Do we have a Teacher that can speak of such regions? Thereby encouraging us to get past him in order to leap up to such places in ourselves? I don’t see it, I don’t hear it, would that I did.”
Remember that CD that was circulating a while ago, in which some FoF students asked Adyashanti about self-remembering, teachers and schools? He replied with complete coherence and honesty, and very credibly. It would be interesting if Robert Burton could be asked his opinions about Advaita – what he thinks about the ideas that we don’t exist, that we are awareness, that we are already awake, and so on. I mean he’s supposed to be a spiritual teacher, right? So why is this so inconceivable? His world is now so utterly closed that he can’t conceive of any reality other than his own.
78 Comrade: excellent point. Helps to explain why FoF marriages are often such a mess.
86 Whalerider: Another reason for the abandonment of Shakespeare was simply that Robert didn’t like his plays, probably partly because he’s too thick to understand them. He started encouraging students to write plays based upon “conscious” themes, eg an embarrassingly awful version of the Conference of the Birds. Shakespeare’s works are the exact opposite of the current FoF; they burst forth full of life, joy, creativity, inclusiveness, pretty much everything!
It is a crime for a human beeng to place himself in a position of a God and have another human beeng to be his subject. It is not a liberation, it is enslavement.
This puts all of of his “students”(subjects) in an enferior position (self-pity) out of which it is imposible to get out as long as one remains in this relationship of Student-Master.
It is very obvious after all these years many of us have experienced in the School that the Robert has no interest in our freedom. He is more interested in all the benefits he gets: sexual slaves, power, luxury, comfort, etc..
It is very easy to see the negative results of this corruption: the lack of common human
external consideration. A lot of students have given so much to Robert that they have no provided for they own basic needs.
Robert has no concern for this, however his personal desires and sick fantasies are fulfilled to extreme levels.
It’s a bit dry here to let off fireworks, could catch the whole place ablaze like 1997, which might reinforce another predictions forthcoming, so, in here, in this mighty and beautiful amazon jungle (where they’re not logging) I set off a few full sky showers of falling stars, orange, red, blue, white…. Independence day is every day you’re not pretending to be an orphan in the Fellowship of Friends orphanage.
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Hello Rhino Neal ~
You wrote ~
“For his honesty and sincerity I admire his approach more than Siddiq’s. Sure he’s two apples short of a picnic, but at least he’s passionate about what he believes.
Siddiq, on the other hand, is more like I was in the years before I left: confused and ambivalent, buffering intensely and pontificating in a phony manner about issues in which in reality he no longer believes.”
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Rhino, I would say that the one who’s closer to leaving (according to you) the Fellowship of Friends is the one whose ‘approach’ is more ‘honest and sincere’ (to me)…
What would you really want to hold true to your heart as “honest and sincere”, a crystallized mind-form as yourself based upon another’s ‘higher’ ‘lump of milk-crystal’ or the state of experiencing the unknown, of being insincere due to a real state (whether the participant acknowledges it in writing or not) of confusion and personal make-believe.
To me, the sandbox was never a place to stay too long, once there was more than two in there, things got a little bit, lets say, accidental. Perhaps there are bigger sandboxes; the ones I remember were about 4 feet by 4 feet.
So, as far as I have seen it in the Fellowship of Friends, there’s definitely a 3 foot by 3 foot one; meaning that such people like S & H have just enough room for themselves and one other (if they’re really careful),
this other is a friend; the trouble starts when Robert Burton wants to play too… here is the tough part.
I would say that 80% of the remaining students stay in because of this second person, not the third (second line becomes a kind of make believe third line)…
Many are staying for these ‘friends’ only and will do so or leave, as the mathematics start to sway in which ever fence-sides favor is current, due to the proximity of their friends position at the fence.
In their hearts, many rarely connect Robert Burton to their deeds and efforts, this has been a kind of inner ritual of wiseacring for 35+ years,
all along missing the corner of their own room, where avoiding Robert’s issues is a mirror of that which they allow to stay in that same corner, something that’s from themselves that is synonymous with Robert Burton…
They ‘baby’ his wounds by meticulously pecking away at the scab, selling the little bit’s as heirlooms and jewelry settings and keep it fresh and shinny, with a dash of salt from time to time to get a little ‘jolt’ to jump start their drone-ship.
It’s difficult to realize that there’s a sky other than the one in the house where your fishbowl sits; and once outside, still, there’s one above earth’s ground, i.e., the sky belonging to the planet itself, not us, so to speak.
After several rather ‘intense’ encounters this week with ‘still in students’ it occurred to me that The Fellowship of Friends is not a family, it is an orphanage;
many ‘things’ sorta ‘tied themselves off and unraveled at the same time’ when this metaphor applied itself to Robert Burton’s ‘school’…
In orphanages, there’s always a chance of someone being asked to leave, being adopted by another ‘family’, to go to another orphanage, abused by the headmaster or simply killing themselves for lack of a certain ‘automatic family tolerance’ (although some ‘real’ family’s do not have this either)…
Without going too far into the literal side of the metaphor, I simply sensed that its ‘general form’ fit the Fellowship of Friends much more than a family, where there is a certain ‘sisterhood’ and ‘brotherhood’ working;
yet, every man is an island at Isis, except on Sundays and when students rally together while Robert Burton is the ‘third force’ (his actual crippled First Force & First Line), to buffer their ‘in the moment needs’ with his;
those in a school of relative awakening need to be needed, yet, the Holy Reconciling is missing: are there not those who love to be loved yet do not love the lover loving them? This is the story of Robert and Friends.
Rhino, I find it a bit odd that you can “admire” someone who at the same time you feel is “two apples short of a picnic”… I sense there’s a buffer holding these two unresolved impressions together as one…
HC’s posts are truly ‘everything else’ than that which is to be admired; just take a look a at few facts (particularly the one that Whalerider points out) ~
That HC constantly skirts around the ‘point blank’ questions that cannot be answered without a connection with his more ‘personal’ conscious conscience; he chooses only to reply to certain generalities in a language that’s about as passionate as a ballerina with a compound fracture…
get a grip on that huge battering ram of a horn that’s stationed on top of your snout; only an essence still in the sway of Robert Burton’s vulcan mind grip would see HC’s language and ‘surgery for money’ tee-shirt as something to admire…
What I admire is that the Sheik has not barred his ‘act’ from the blog, nor have we; unlike some we know would if HC’s wiseacring was suddenly reversed in ‘you know whose’ direction.
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Hello Cake please ~
You wrote ~
“to M (S?)
13/794 unoanimo
Say it ain’t so, Mari. Say it ain’t so.
dismayed
Cake”
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Oh, but it is my friend; M has some issues still with needing satellites, particularly girls who need to be satellites; these girls provide the perfect Archetypal role for M. and her ‘wanna be Robert’s sister’ dreamworld.
See, M. has an incredible freedom within her spontaneous spirit, she’s a bit wild (which if not doused with ‘dirty baby water’ would thrive and probably grow into one of those mythological awesome feminine characters like Athena or Isis (that’s ironic),
yet, at Isis, she’s always been on the fringes with Robert Burton, to me, mainly because she represents the consciously-free-to-choose-and-move-with-that-choice-woman, the wild, essence-open feminine,
something which makes Robert’s feminine-account-driven-pain body very nervous and out of a role; leaving him starring at his real work…
Many like her have found iron-clad ways of buffering this spontaneous impulse within themselves by digging their hole to China even more furiously, i.e., lunatic-identification with their roles…
Not to worry my friend, M’s little debut for Robert Burton will be short lived like the hundreds of others; it’s strange, yet there are those in between men and women who show up from time to time to do a little dance for Robert Burton and Friends, then disappear for another 3-4 months; yes, there are personal smoke screens at Isis as well as institutional ones.
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Hello ~ Baby in the bathwater
You wrote ~
“And maybe some of us can (push the Sequence that far), such that they find themselves suddenly existing in a world far more alive than they had ever supposed, as I did on the Town Hall stage so many years ago. Yet, as a Teacher himself, who is supposedly inhabiting these higher realms of Consciousness, there is no fresh inspiration coming from his own Being.”
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Wow…now there’s some ‘scale & relativity’… thank you for sharing your observations. Imagine that (so to speak), someone who inhabits higher realms, though has no fresh inspiration for those who he or she does not directly ‘touch’ or ‘call upon’ (to seem inspirational by igniting their features, not higher centers) to redirect their focus from themselves to his or herself.
I would say you’re spot on here, particularly with your writings ‘allude to-ness’ and ‘implications’…
And if you were to “push the Sequence that far..” you may end up like Janna, who, when telling Kevin B. (who apparently had yet to push it that far or admitted it), that she no longer needs ‘form’ to define herself, that she feels ‘awake’, needing nothing, no sequence, etc. ~
She was asked to leave the school;
in a real school she would be asked to teach, to share her experience, particularly with those like Mari R., who came into the Fellowship of Friends with certain ‘Daddy’s girl’ inclinations and have been exploited for it ever since.
Robert Burton plays peoples features and pain body receptors, he does not invest in their Higher Centers, nor does he have a backup plan for those who do ‘make it’…
He simply calls certain people’s mystical experiences, change in level of being, from form to formlessness, ‘the king of clubs’ or ‘imagination’…
Perhaps Robert Burton’s excuses for his ‘students’ true level of being showing itself as something mechanical to himself and to be perceived so by others, including their friends, rather than individual consciousness becoming, is his own self-reflective-echo coming from within him, his own silliness titling others ‘silly’.
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Hello Comrade ~
You wrote ~
“… then maybe — just maybe — my alcohol problems, my spousal abuse, my promiscuity, my destructive behavior — are not that bad?
Is this one of many reasons that we’ve had so much trouble listening to any criticism of this guy? Because if we did, we’d need to start facing our own mess? Our own flaws?”
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Thank you for your post and clean honesty…
Yes, its hard to see the crystal ball image belonging to the Fellowship of Friends due to all the sticky fingerprints upon its curved surface. It’s even tough for professional soothsayers in there, let alone the ‘wanna be’s’.
Your post explicitly shows the situation within every footprint follower of Robert Burton; it’s ok if he’s walking in a circle so long as the circle is big enough that their peripheral-conscience doesn’t get a glimpse of his equator-routine.
What I quoted from you above could serve as a real ‘cannon’ for real work, in a real school; to blow a hole in the facade of the Titanic, letting it fall as the one dimensional Goliath it is; a movie set construction for a school of relative awakening.
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You also wrote ~
“But I sense that RB thought that “the theater” might get out of his control. A good facility and many willing participants, and suddenly you have something that overshadows RB.”
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Yes, something that gets too close to resembling his farce is a bit too obvious and may conjure ‘footnote taking’;
for the most part Robert Burton never attended the theater productions, neither those of the Apollo Arts or the Lewis Carrol School, whose director is/was Mary R. BTW.
This was always ‘felt’ in the guts of the students as Robert Burton’s little reminder that ‘theater’ is beneath him and their aim to awaken; we won’t take into consideration that he did go to operas with the boys while traveling and theatrical ballet performances; nor will we take into consideration that it was originally invented by a conscious school as a tool; of which ballet was never, nope, only short ‘be’ for the Fellowships aim to awaken, not the now, now.
Yes, the theater octave, being ‘naturally’ very saturnine, left him out totally (thank you god),
not that Robert Burton doesn’t know anything about Narcissus Theater, yet this is a different kind of sandbox (12 inches by 12 inches) where one just stands and plays with different patterns of one’s own footprints in the sand and on the ‘mechanical’ butts of others, coming and going at Isis.
Robert Burton did attend a few in the Theatron, though very often would leave at intermission; just a little reminder that ‘even in the Theatron’, whatever ‘play’ that does not celebrate his ‘reflection’ is beneath him:
too bad Brian and Genia didn’t have the ‘i’ to put up a 30 foot by 80 foot portrait of Robert Burton as the backdrop for those performances, perhaps intermission would have been canceled altogether; otherwise, its the perfect backdoor for Robert and clan.
Yes, at ‘Apollo’ for Isis is simply too ‘humble’ now; theater was the ultimate symbol of a bigger picture than a ‘one-man-band’, later to be replaced with theme less ballet performances and ballet circus acts;
not to mention Robert Burton’s late night (up till 2am) after performance parties for the dancers and the fellowship elite, where he would be fawned over by the very overly compensated ballet dancers (Russians) and have his ‘Russian boys’ try and get them to join the school.
Christ! Robert, can’t you keep your hands to yourself?
“Well, no dear, see they’re not my hands, their actually 44+ pairs of hands here, what’s a guy to do?”
Ever corner of said ‘freedom’ at Isis has Robert Burton’s phone number on its wall.
Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal? At least you know where you stand with them. I had lunch accidentally with HC shortly before I left. The conversation was mostly about the fact that hydrogen warfare had not occurred in the previous week, despite RB’s prediction: whether the date might be revised and so on. This was definitely more entertaining than the usual chit-chat about the sequence and/or recent amazing discoveries in Egypt. It takes courage to write the nonsense HC writes here, and it’s useful for current FoFers to be reminded about what “good students” are supposed to believe. Long may he contribute!
“Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal?”
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Ah, no, Rhino, I have yet to entertain the virus ‘wiseacring’ to party that hard upon the disco dance floor of my heart to be strobe-lighted enough to make a distinguishable ‘pair’ from what to me is one and the same.
Is ‘unselfconscious’ any different than ‘pretending to be normal’… I really don’t see the dividing line here(?)
I mean, yes, opossums and kangaroos are both marsupials, yet, just because you don’t see kangaroos hanging from tree limbs by their tails doesn’t make them any less ‘marsupial’ or am I missing something here?
__________________________________
Isis update (sorta) ~
Public announcement ~
“Dear Friends,
Over the weekend, we received a shock when a student’s home was broken into and valuable items were stolen.
Robert reminds us to lock our homes and our cars. He requests that we also try to be present to any unusual activity at other students’ homes. As he said, ‘we need to look out for each other’.
Love,
Helaine
For Isis Center Directors
“Eternal friendships are part of the greatness of schools.”
Love, Robert
Aelred of Rievaux: “This is true and eternal friendship, which begins in this life and is perfected in the next.””
____________________________________________
Unoanimo (99): I haven’t got a clue what you’re trying to say. Any chance you could put it in simple English? I get the impression it might be interesting. yrs, RN
To Howard Carter,
Christ said “if you want to be perfect, give up everything you own and follow me”.
This proves that Christ had a wicked sense of humor and that you do not.
Love,
Ryan.
Hi guys,
A reminder about the Contact list.
If you wish to be included in the contact list AND get an invitation for Greater Fellowship community – please submit your info to malaec@optonline.net
I am hoping to mail out the list as soon as I return from our Cape Cod vacations!
Most people provided their name, e-mail, phones, years in FOF. You can also list address, website, occupation if you wish. The list is made in Excel – simple spreadsheet.
Greater Fellowship online community is just too much fun! Over 300 members in about 3 weeks, and growing every day. Pictures, stories, videos, music, openness, discussion groups. No propaganda, no complaints, no anger – just our friendship, our desire to stay connected and find good old friends.
Works by invitation only and protected by password.
Anonymity is not encouraged – it is very open, positive site where hiding doesn’t seem to work.
So please send your info if you wish to participate in any of this to
Howard Carter, Can you envision Jesus Christ getting his diciples to piss in his mouth and ram their fists up his anus as well as sucking there cocks every day ? Please answer the question directly.
“Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal?”
“Unoanimo (99): I haven’t got a clue what you’re trying to say. Any chance you could put it in simple English? I get the impression it might be interesting. yrs, RN”
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For me there’s no difference between someone who expresses themselves “unselfconsciously” and what you also term as “crazy people who pretend to be normal.”
Howard #101, that’s what the disciples of Jim Jones did, they were indoctrinated to surrender everything they own including their bodies…they too didn’t ‘own’ their bodies either, Christ did. As an act of the same level of obedience and surrender that is frothing out of your mouth, the followers of Jim Jones staged a heinous play. Robert chooses to star in his own gay porno film.
Beware of the dark side, Howard. May the schwartz be with you.
I appreciate your postings. I like how you are keeping your line consistently and “in the kings”. I would sleep better if you were right and not the “rest of the blog”. All these “negative people”… But any time I think that for 38 years (and right now and will continue) RB is screwing the guys, my friends, damaging their essences, causing this never ending craze, FEAR. How he confuses them by lying to them, manipulating them, uses them and throws away – I can’t sleep anymore. I have a child and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I don’t want him to know about what is going on in this organization, were his mom belongs. I can hear the question of the child: “Why is Robert having sex with all these men?”
So, WHY? They don’t want it. They hate it. But they do it. Tonight is someone’s “visit time” after the dinner. And tomorrow. Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???
Viewer Beware: the contents of this video may result in instant cosmic awareness of the totality of the now, resulting in a possible shift of mental structure-ness and FoF fizzle.
Unoanimo #97 Thanks for your discourse about the demise of the theater octave. It jogged some memories. It reminded me that Alex Horn wrote plays and “his students both acted in them and were forced to sell tickets or he’d close his school”, is the way I heard it verbatim from one of Horn’s group. So stage plays might just have a certain ‘negative nostalgia’ for old Bob. The theater octave was ill-fated from the start.
Plus, stage plays require directors, who are usually good at directing people, and that would start to symbolize (or even become) a school within a school, a sun orbiting a sun, if you know what I mean. And that’s against the law. Since Robert enjoys ballets, eh? Maybe he sees himself more as choreographer of bodies and body parts… I hear he has become quite the choreographer behind the scenes.
Anyway, I have a copy of Alex Horn’s book of plays, “Theater of All Possibilities”, for anyone inclined to read it or ‘own’ it. The plays are not that good. There’s a Kennedy-conspiracy one, I recall. Gee, no photos of Robert acting in the plays, though. He was busy chasing boys backstage, I guess.
If anyone wants my copy of “Theater of All Possibilities”, let me know, and we’ll figure out a way for me to send it to you anonymously. Gratis.
It’s another step in my personal divestment plan of separating RB from The Fourth Way, as he already had long ago.
“Howard,
Your worldview expressed in 14-11 demands the following (and much more) to be true:
• there are many lifetimes”
It is written about in every major spiritual tradition, by all the major sages/prophets of those traditions.
“• higher forces designed my role in ‘a play written in advance’(yet you grant me the power of choosing to value this life over the next, and that higher forces will ‘give me what I want’!)
This is a difficult concept to grasp but one that is also found in every major tradition; Fate, Destiny, Karma, recurrence, reincarnation, etc. All these are held in balance by the concept of “Free Will”. It is an enigma; we are not meant to understand these things in their entirety. We can intuit them.
“• persons ‘raging’against Burton are raging against higher forces”
He is their creation.
“• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining”
This is verifiable on many levels in life; people say they’ll do something willingly until it’s time to do it and then they change their tune.
“• that you know the ‘style’ of higher forces.”
Recent meeting quote – We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah.
“In a minor key:
• I am in a rage, or indignant, or looking without judgment, compassion, forgiveness or humility.
None of this is verifiable by you.”
I verify it simply by reading your posts.
(I said with judgment)
“By all means continue to thrash around in Burton’s fantasy.
I prefer to try to live the one and only life I have verified as fully and as deeply as I can.”
Knowing or believing “multiple lifetimes” does not hinder one in any way from living this life to its fullest.
“The only defense needed is knowledge. Knowledge defends you against every possible form of harm in existence.
The more knowledge you have, the less fear you have, the less pain you have, the less stress you feel, the less anguish you feel, and the less danger you experience of any form or sort.
Think of this very carefully now for this is very important: Where is there any limitation in the concept behind the word “knowledge”? Being that there is no limitation, what is the value of that word? Infinite. Can you conceive of how that one concept, that one meaning frees you from all limitation?
Use your sixth sense to conceive of how the word, the term, the meaning of knowledge can provide you with all that you could possibly ever need. If you think carefully you will begin to see glimpses of how this is true in its greatest possible form.”
Q: There are an awful lot of people who are being open and trusting and having faith who are getting zapped and knocked on their rears.
A: No. That is simply your perception. What you are failing to perceive is that these people are not really gathering knowledge. These people are stuck at some point in their pathway to progress and they are undergoing a hidden manifestation of what is referred to in your terms as obsession. Obsession is not knowledge, obsession is stagnation.
So, when one becomes obsessed, one actually closes off the absorption and the growth and the progress of soul development which comes with the gaining of true knowledge.
For when one becomes obsessed one deteriorates the protection, therefore one is open to problems, to tragedies, to all sorts of difficulties. Therefore one experiences same.
WHEN THE PROPHECY FAILS (former student and bla bla)
For religious groups there can be no greater disappointment than that which occurs after the failure of a major prophecy to materialize. The historical literature is replete with examples of groups who have predicted the end of the world and their reactions to failed prophecy. Stark (1996:137) asserts:
Other things being equal, failed prophecies are harmful for religious movements. Although prophesies may arouse a great deal of excitement and attract many new followers beforehand, the subsequent disappointment usually more than offsets these benefits.
His argument is that in some instances members may leave the group and the group finally disintegrates. In other cases, members can withstand this catastrophic event and the group continues. However, he qualifies this statement by asserting that new religious movements are likely to succeed to the extent that their doctrines are non-empirical. Religious movements need not deliver on their promises in this world — their most valuable rewards are obtained in a reality beyond inspection.
The standard paradigm for understanding failed prophecy is based on cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, Reiken and Schachter 1956). Following their research on a flying saucer movement, Festinger and his colleagues argued that failure of prophecy resulted in intensification of belief and more enthusiastic proselytising by sect members. Proselytization, the attempt to convince outsiders of a belief system, was regarded as reducing cognitive dissonance. If more people adopt this belief it must after all be true. According to Festinger et al. (1956:3):
Man’s resourcefulness goes simply beyond protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, but he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: What will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
Festinger argued that for such a process to occur there must be firm conviction; there must be public commitment to this conviction; the conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation; such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur; and lastly, social support must be available to the believer subsequent to the disconfirmation. To reduce psychological dissonance, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance predicts that the dissonance produced by disconfirming information will be reduced by adding new cognitions consonant with the set of cognitions most resistant to change.
This theory, however, has come under some criticism by scholars of religion, on both methodological and theoretical grounds. The validity of their original research has been questioned (Melton 1985; Van Fossen 1988; Bainbridge 1997). Van Fossen (1988) refers to Festinger as a “radically deficient guide” to studying the effects of failed prophecy, whose work is tainted by subjectivity and bias. Although concerns have been raised in relation to the possible stimulating effect on the group by Festinger’s researchers, there is no evidence that this in fact occurred (Batson and Ventis 1982).
Stone (2000) argues that studies on failed prophecy post-Festinger indicate that active proselytization is an uncommon occurrence. In most of the case studies discussed in his book Expecting Armageddon: Essential readings in failed prophecy, proselytization did not occur (Hardyck and Braden 1962; Balch, Farnsworth and Wilkins 1983). Similarly, Dawson (1999) argues that Festinger’s approach is too narrow and that increased proselytization is only one way of reducing dissonance and is by no means the most common response. Bader (1999:120) states quite categorically, “Nevertheless, no case study of a failed prophecy, his current research included, has provided support for the cognitive dissonance hypothesis.”
I have been in the 4th Way for over a decade and in FoF for a year 2004-2005. I left because I was bored or simply couldn’t feel the uniqueness so bestowed upon REB’s gullible, yet willing, students. REB’s physical body is his impediment. He’s not been able, lo these years, to comprehend–incoporate?–the physical presence into 4th Way teachings.
How, I often wonder, could anyone remain in his Scripted Fantasy for so long?
Thank you for the wonderful Archive. I appreciate your surprises, and steady, sharing hand in this Blog. It is what it is, and that will be our history, supported by your efforts, and others.
I hope you will again be in my life, old friend.
Amanda
Former Student, Veronicapoe, Unoanimo, thank you for your thoughts regarding Class Action Lawsuit.
It does not seem easy to build…but if someone is willing and able to start it I will probably join it . Arthur is interested as well!
On the other hand there are plenty of crimes that could be brought to the attention of various authorities…
Sometimes I feel the desperation from some people here who beg to stop the insanity going on at Isis…
I too feel impatience, even though I have been removed from the direct influence of the fof and rb for a long time now.
I want a change! and hope all this writing here on this blog, the stories etc., will cause a change! The end of the fof under RB!
One scenario: organized revolution: the students rebel the King, file complaints , kings gets his long awaited modern “crucifixion” = a kick in the ass!
To Howard (and all others like you)—
Almost every statement you make (#14-115) shows that indeed you have not verified, for yourself, any of the points I made. That is fine, it has been obvious from your first post that the foundations of your worldview are imaginary, that is, based on faith (things unverifiable). To jabber on about what you believe the ‘major spiritual traditions’ to be expressing proves that you have not verified these subjects personally.
Howard, each of these traditions has a commonality. They postulate that one must have interpreters and interceders between you and God (or higher forces), in other words, a priest class (yes, even Buddhism has an authoritarian structure; note their devotion to lineage). Each of them demands faith. That is fine, but has nothing to do with the Fourth Way, which demands that you verify everything for yourself. You yourself have abandoned the Fourth Way and taken up the way of religion, which requires faith in the priest class. Good for you, but don’t pretend otherwise. In your Church of Robert Burton, the high priest has explicitly claimed that he is vital to your future spiritual welfare, and that any progress is due to his intercession. And it is noticeable that the self–appointed intermediaries do quite well for themselves in this lifetime, accumulating power, authority and often (and especially in the case of Burton) wealth. Why not, it’s a good gig, if you’re into that.
I have not verified that there are future lifetimes, so to put any energy at all into that idea, to alter my present life one jot to accommodate such a possibility, especially as some kind of spiritual ‘insurance policy’, as you and your co-religionists do, is completely wrong work for me, not to mention a waste of my time, the only capital I truly have. I studied the Fourth Way precisely because I could not make all the ‘leaps of faith’ required by the ordinary religions. You did not; from the beginning you must have mistaken the Fourth Way for some kind of new religion, because otherwise a simple comparison with your aims when you joined and the aims you have now would show you that you have deviated so much that you are now traveling in exactly the opposite direction. That’s fine too, but you have to be honest with yourself.
As for you being able to judge my state from the tone of my posts, it may interest you to know that more than three-quarters of the posts I have made so far are actually material that I wrote between seventeen and fourteen years ago. I post them because I believe they still make sense in the present context, and I think they might be useful to some who are at the same stage as I was then. That, by the way, includes the first post on this page. So much for your observations or your intuition.
You say that knowing or believing in future lifetimes doesn’t hinder you from living this life to the fullest. That may be true from a narrow perspective, but is sure as heck alters the tone of this life, right down to the bedrock. For example, you must deem yourself unworthy in some way in this life if you believe some theoretical perfection is to be found in the next lifetime (or the one after that, or whatever). That colors your whole present life, my friend. If you decide as a matter of faith that because Burton has said some achievement is impossible in this lifetime, you are affecting your whole present life, and have cut yourself off from a range of possibilities. And so on.
Burton is restricting your freedom in every direction; you may be happy with that, you may enjoy having your life managed, but the extra will you imagined might be possible (in a previous post) will remain out of reach, and also all the territory beyond the fence Burton has created for you. Above all, it places you in the peculiar situation where you simultaneously work very hard, yet are easily satisfied. You work in areas determined important by Burton, at things determined by Burton, for as long as Burton wants. At the same time, because whatever efforts you make are never enough in this lifetime (Burton says you’ll need the next lifetime or more to achieve your aims), you remain satisfied that the direction and amount of your efforts are enough to get you to the next lifetime, and even, and this is important, Howard, that these “efforts” are necessary at all.
Howard, I got off your brand of treadmill because I did see that under Burton’s tutelage my aims had changed, were becoming Burton’s aims, and thus were becoming the opposite of those I had when I joined. I have also come to see not only is it a case that I can choose another treadmill—they are all similar, Burton’s is just another model, though built crookedly, but that treadmills are not necessary. I don’t expect to convince you, how could I, you have not traveled my road. But I can point out that you are not in the same institution you thought you were when you joined, not going along the path the guide you hired promised you, and that maybe one day you’ll come to see that, and why it is important.
So, may good luck attend you in all your endeavors,
Ames
“Recent meeting quote – We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah”.
It’s interesting that the FOF seems to be dabbling in various spiritual traditions and conceptual frameworks. They seem to be trying to lure any and all religious believers into the fold. I guess Muslims are being courted now.
Rourke M. was a longtime member of the Fellowship of Friends when he passed away in 1993.
Rourke joined the group at a young age, traveled to Europe, studied art and literature, asked sincere questions, attended meetings, sat with friends at dinner, reflected on the concepts presented to him, and sought understanding. He immersed himself in the ideas of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He listened intently. He contemplated the contradictions that he found within the Fellowship, struggled to make sense of what he was experiencing, and — like all of us — examined his own weaknesses and possibilities. He loved watching sports, enjoyed a good game of pool at the bar, and despised any type of pretense. He was fun-loving, passionate, and spoke his mind out loud with his closest friends.
Rourke grew up in the Bay Area, studied English at Cal-Berkeley, and used his writing skills to land a career in high tech. In 1983, in his late 20s, he kept a journal and stored it hard-copy on a computer printout. He left us 10 years later — on the eve of the Internet revolution, and a few years before the word “blog” would become a household word.
The following are a few excerpts from his journal:
…………………………………………………………………………..
July 7, 1983 from a letter to Miles B…
You seemed to suggest last Wednesday that people would gain by reconsidering why they are trying to “work on themselves” or are in the school, and if what they are doing is something they could do outside the school, and maybe better. That is a very honest question.
I’ve never had any real doubts that the school is a conscious teaching; it was self-evident almost from the outset and has continued to be so. At the same time, at different times and at varying degrees, I’ve felt disjointed from the school, and unable to know where I fit in or what I could contribute.
…………………………………………………………………………
The past 12 months have been fairly disappointing in that I simply have not been able to determine what I want, and I’ve always connected this with what I understand higher forces want of me. Before this time, I was able to see how working on personal weaknesses strengthened my connections with other students, the school, and higher forces, and was therefore encouraged to do so. But that understanding is no longer as prevalent, and lately I’ve wondered if references to higher forces are presumptuous, or impractical, or just wrong.
…………………………………………………………………………
It seems like conscience must be connected with personal aim, and I’ve wondered if it may not be that I am experiencing this aimlessness primarily because I have not done things which my conscience has suggested, and have therefore quieted or deadened it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 5, 1983
My state improved during the walk. I reached the point where I realized I didn’t need to be negative. I began to remember the way I felt in Portland and Carmel, when I was more sure of myself. That gave me some comfort. Then I thought about a recent statement from Robert — that we would basically need to try to keep breathing for the next three years, that we wouldn’t experience fine states [possibly in reference to the predicted depression of 1984 – 1987]. Remembering that caused my state to drop. It made me think why I follow Robert. Obviously he knows more than me. I can see that from his angles in the recent journal and other things he has said. On the other hand, he says some things which I cannot follow without becoming identified and losing hope. This is a problem, because I feel like I am going against him if I disagree with him. Furthermore, I feel like I am doing something wrong if I exist for myself rather than for him.
I want more to exist for what I know is right, rather than for a man. But that possibility is not a guarantee. I want to serve higher forces, to be sure, but it cannot always be on the basis of what someone else has told me. This sounds childish as I write it, but it will become large in the coming years. Eventually I have to exist on my own understanding of right and wrong.
I can see the effect of not doing so. It is eating me up, literally. If I compare my state now with the one I experienced before I inner-considered Robert, it is obvious that it is much worse now. Interesting that I wrote inner-considering so lightly. That is exactly what it was.
Is it right to look up to someone? I am beginning to think not. I think a person should only look up to God and not to any other man. Certainly it is not incorrect to admire greatness, but how so? It is very harmful to believe someone simply because he says something.
What do higher forces want from me is the question. And what do I want from myself. What I want from myself is to not live any lies — of any kind. I appreciate everything Robert has done, but somehow I feel he wants something from me — like he wants me to like, respect, or adore him. Rather, my ‘I’s want me to place him above me, to limit myself somehow. They want to exist for him, rather than for myself.
It must return to this my friend. You are born to this planet. You live among people. You try your hardest to determine what is right. You cannot know what is true about another person. It is blatantly obvious that the school is a real school, blatantly. This much you can know.
But you must pose this question to yourself. Can you expect to evolve and hold on to inner-considering, or, in other words, can you evolve if you compromise yourself based on what you experience being the reality that other people experience. You must live in the reality that you feel is closest to reality, even if this means not being understood.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 11, 1983
Consider what it would be to be around someone who did not judge, was not constantly trying to prove that he was better than you.
But this is what occurs. And, to survive, one must either become adept at the same thing or learn how not to believe other people’s lies and remain true to oneself. Being true to oneself is the beginning of sanity.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 18, 1983
People are liars, constant liars. T. and R. lied through their teeth during the prospective student meeting, and the worst thing is that they had no conception that they lied. This is true with everyone.
If it happens that everyone continues to lie in this way, we are lost. Someone must tell the truth. Somehow I must regain my original will and clean things up. This is possible. But how to do it.
I can feel your anguish as I am sure you can feel mine regarding the seemingly unrestricted and endless practice of Robert Burton’s ‘activities’ along with the immunity that his followers grant him.
The question arises, is there a way to stop him? (I am a parent, too.) Are we done whining and ready to give this deep thought or better yet, take action?
I believe our collective efforts on this blog revealing Robert’s true nature will succeed in ‘poisoning the pool’ of future potential victims and restrict his access to using young, naïve, new followers as his sexual playthings or narcissistic objects and tools. This will in the very least, limit the damage he may cause to others. The blog is a brilliant first step as long as it can be kept up and running, so everyone please use the Paypal button and donate at least once, if not regularly. I have already.
IMO, a lawsuit would feasible and possible only after some sort of sustained public action was taken to display our power as a group. These techniques are not rocket science, and precedents for grassroots uprisings like this are well established. This posting is the best I can do to further that aim.
The next step will be to establish a group of dedicated individuals, preferably in Oregon House, to secretly meet and focus thought on taking public action, in other words, form a focus group. The thoughts and strategies of this group must NOT be posted on this blog, or the FOF will be take counter measures. Another means of communication must be established.
The focus group must be able to track and make public Robert’s movements. This surveillance will create more internal pressure on the FOF and contribute to a less than favorable atmosphere for the entrenched and financially dependent followers to remain in denial.
The focus group must then determine what the threshold number of members are that would effectively create a negative cash flow, and work to diminish the FOF’s membership to that number, causing Robert to use his accumulated personal wealth to keep the FOF afloat. If the property were foreclosed on, that would be excellent. Ex-members, if interested, could possibly form a non-profit foundation dedicated to healing the wounds inflicted on us all and make the Vineyard open to others damaged by cults as a retreat.
Once public action is taken, this will empower others to step forward. Remember that our strength is in our numbers. There are 11,000 of us and apparently only 1,500 left of them. That public action must be on an international level as well. If Robert’s movements abroad were restricted, that would further the aim of limiting the damage he causes.
Once our public protest and outrage becomes intense and consistent enough to hit mainstream, then we will attract the necessary means and support to take legal action.
And that will be the end of the Fellowship of Friends.
I don’t think fof even pretends to be a 4th way school anymore, doesn’t value personal verification….. and besides, awakening in some vague future ‘life’ is such an easy/comfortable way out of having to awaken now.
Is is clear the chances of some type of revolt are nil.
Whalerider “There are 11,000 of us and apparently only 1,500 left of them.” You are wrong of course. There are a few hundred upset former members (not all upset about the same thing, most not even posting, only a handful posting under their own name), there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated current students.
Between the 11,000 I am sure that the total dedication (paypal donations) did not add up to 1% of the money donated to the FOF since this blog took off.
Compare hundreds of events to one single greater Fellowship meeting organized by Ames.
Dear All,
Just an observation. All the daily cards from Robert are extracted from quotes of other eminent men. What Robert seem to do, is taking out a word and associate that word with a quote he invents. Is n’ t that associate thinking/ jack of diamonds?
For example today’s :
Thursday, July 5, 2007
‘Be’ restores order.
Daniel 9:25 – Restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah comes.
I know some parts of us might say yes but however dirty the bath water may be, consider the following:
1) The Fellowship has some good points. It attracts interesting, intelligent people and provides a network of friends that covers many parts of the world, and provides a means for being together in a beautiful environment.
2) Many people that would never have had the means to travel have been able to see the world and stay in homes of friends along the way.
3) Many with little exposure to classical art have been educated in this area.
4) There are still some very healthy organizations within the Fellowship (e.g. The Walt Whitman Sailing Society).
6) The Fellowship provides access to nice gardens and social events that are on the whole uplifting.
7) The new (not 4th way) approach may not lead to consciousness but probably on the whole is no worse than fundamental religion except that it asks extreme dedication and presents itself as something else.
There are problems that are difficult or impossible to address as long as Robert is in charge:
1) Honest interchange between students and with former students is limited because of the paranoia that is generated due to Robert’s life style requirements.
2) The Fellowship is deceptive. It speaks of connections to higher forces that based on history in all probability do not exist. It speaks of methods that have limited effectiveness (no one is awakening). It undermines creativity and self confidence by crediting the lack of success to lack of effort in the individuals. It provides a false sense of superiority.
3) Robert’s lifestyle is corrupting, hurtful, and uses resources and efforts inappropriately. Over time it hurts most students.
4) The Fellowship encourages people to have similar tastes and lifestyles to Robert and discourages the development of individual creativity except within the boundaries of Robert’s interests.
5) Supporting Robert’s lifestyle is a huge financial burden and it keeps students from taking propper care of their own needs.
But destroying the Fellowship will:
1) Provide financial hardship for many that are invested in houses, businesses and land in the area.
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
So I would ask the question – Is there a way to make the following happen?
1) Take away Robert’s abuses and lifestyle. Take away his funding. The FOF is a non profit organization and the founder and teacher does not have more rights than the members. The Fellowship would truly thrive if Robert’s ways were not continually undermining its success.
2) Work to make the organization more honest with regard to what it offers and what can be expected. Broaden the Fellowship to allow other approaches to presence.
3) Allow open communication between current and former members. We have heard talk that this is happening and it seems to me that there is a great deal more openness in this area than even 6 months ago.
Just a thought – Maybe it makes sense to formally have 2 different types of students. The division already exists but is not formalized:
Group 1) Devotees that accept the FOF as religion, Robert as an angel and conduit of C influence, and agree upfront with appropriate and honest counseling to support him with all of his habits.
Group 2) Students that have full access to life, former students, pay minimal teaching payments (which do not support Robert in any way) and which seek a more “fourth way, in life” approach. These students would have access to the property and events but would not be encouraged to be involved with Robert. The teaching could incorporate Robert’s current viewpoint as one approach, not the approach.
Ideally Robert would have some minimal input into the activities of group 2 but he would not be over sold to them. He would not be able to solicit funds from Group 2. Neither group would be presented as superior but rather as alternative paths (Religious vs Psychological). Both groups would help to develop the property as they see fit.
0x0=0, Is often described as our original nature, our soul, our spirit.
I have been thinking a lot about Siddiq, nice how unanimo, describes the person and is sure that it is a “HE”, Passionate, has a family at Isis…?
From one angle, it does not matter, who it is.
For Siddiq, if you are troubled, if your consciences is not sitting well with you, you will start to get sleepless nights, not able to shake of these “I”s of what is happening and am I blind…Many emotions will go through you and I advise you, to just look at them completely acknowledge them see them 360 degrees. Behind those emotions are many “plays” and observations. All the answers are there and the emotions like denial, anger, fear, hurt, pain, sadness are all voices to lead you to your conscience and to the part of you that is not physical. Your true nature, your soul, your spirit…call it as you will 0X0=0. Wods are form thi world not from the spiritual world. Yes, if you are willing to view it all, it is a personal, spiritual journey. You and yourself, completely independent of any authority. Be aware, at this phase many people experience physical reactions, illnesses, temporarily. Do not worry, and face it completely. Part of your inner, private journey. Take some extra vitamins and some extra to boost up your immune system, like a massage. Be quiet for a while and do what you feel is good for your physical body. Spoil yourself. Do not get stuck in a strange illness or back pain ( holding too much toxins) or knee pain because it is hard to bend with the current of life. Or when you vomit the old toxins out do not worry, just watch. It is like dying, dying before your physical body dies… If you get worried see a doctor and get consoled. Clever doctors tell you to do more exercise and express your self….. (Building in the good old American disclaimer here).
Be careful not to go home with anti depressant or sleeping pills, and get hooked on to a new authority figure.
Watch your inner world and observe. What you see externally, see where it is internally…watch.
Then try to have no thoughts and be still. Your personal answers will come and will help you to live your life now, you, yourself has all teh answers.
Give up your wish of taking 80% in a conversation. Go around, asking fellow friends questions and help them to heal so you can get healed. Love yourself. If you can not love your self just start repeating to yourself 10-20 or more times, “I love myself”. Watch and go back to silence maybe 15 minutes or more a day, as you feel. It is confrontational, nothing to loose, do you? Maybe some air, some false personality. It will be very intense…this is a way to become more independent and free…..Hard for many of us who need a person to tell us that we are good and that everything is O.K. as long as…fill in the blanks. Go back to Travelers email and see in which phase you got stuck. Very enlightening to see where you got stuck. Bring light to this area and heal and become morefree. Become who you really are and enjoy your own company.
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
******************
These are higher men, men number four, and the product of a Fourth Way school run by a man number seven?
We’ve had this conversation before; was it in a previous life, or a page or two ago?
I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB.
If an afterlife exists, so must a pre-life, at least that’s my deduction. And if a pre-existing life can be placed into a vessel once, why not more than once? It makes perfect sense to me that it takes a soul more than one lifetime to “get it right”; that’s why I rejected the world religion of Christanity.
The Fourth Way rejects “blind faith”, not real faith, which is vital and necessary to any spiritual journey. How else does one follow an entity that one cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell, without some form of faith?
The “Fourth Way” is a term Gurjieff invented. The Fellowship at this time has gone beyond Gurjieff to the sources of his system, esoteric knowledge from all the major traditions. This information is readily available to anyone in 2007 who has a computer and knows about google.
However, its taken hundreds of researchers and the teacher several years to compile and structure/classify this information, and most importantly to “Key it”. To my understanding it all points to an afterlife/ multiple lives.
Part of verifying is based on previous information; there are many things said in all the major traditions that can be verified. When one finds a source that agrees with one’s own verifications one tends to accept the things it says that one cannot fully verify. This is real faith, faith based on verifying.
Are you saying that every being must start from scratch in their search for truth, and disregard the existence of God, Paradise as a beginning basis until they fully verify it?
Adjusting one’s “only” life to the belief that there is an afterlife where one will be “held accountable” can only be a third force to lead a better, more civilized life, not hinder this life.
Cathie – 125
Part of this answer addresses your statment. We are not recruiting muslims, we are going back to many sources, including Islam, for the sake of instructing existing members.
You took enough time to contemplate the motivation of the FoF to use this quote and then respond to it in writing; I also wonder if you took some time to contemplate the meaning of the quote.
Grow up, why stay dependent…when you will die you will have to do it yourself. When you were born it was you alone….maybe some energy around you but no teacher, and no instructor and fellow students.
Share your live and help yourself and others to heal. Use your sense and see the hurt. Many people are hurting now and questioning and lost.
The people who can not leave the fellowship of friends.
Many people who have invested so much emotional.
Many people who have similar characteristics as Robert and therefore feel they can not judge Robert.
Many people who are co dependant
Many people who have addictions.
Many people who have fear.
Many people who belief blindly.
Many peope who have power and love there positions.
Many people who have no jobs
Many people who think they are important researchers and therefore indispensable.
Many people who are healing now their dream as been chattered
Just be present, listen instead of talking too much (sorry to be more exact not more then 50 % of the conversation.) Ask questions, listen, make your self invisible.
Please listen to what is now reality. Do not dictate your viewpoint on your surroundings…listen to the people on salary, call the ones who do not show up at the Apollo d’Oro ask them why and if there is anything you can do for them Visit the sick and the elderly ask if there is something you can do for them. Use your senses instead of being so self assured and invincible. A wise (ex) student said. If you think you are right an alarm bell needs to sound…
Good luck HC, you really need all the help you can get and you will say you have it. I do hope so for you….
(So far you have not responded to any of my post, no expectations here).
hc, siddiq, I’m glad you’re both posting here, and certainly defend your right to do so, as it also protects my own right to do so. But there you both go again… and again… and again… and again…
… admitting not a single problem, not a single fault, not a single ounce of dysfunction or destruction in the fof, and ignoring all of the arguments, issues, and facts placed before you. Do you feel anything? Do you think anything that’s new?
on 05 Jul 2007 at 6:50 am
115 Howard Carter
Dear Howard it is so painful to see you struggling so helplessly with your intellectual center.
Here is a typical example of what I kindly call “dumber than a rock”.
• there are many lifetimes”
“It is written about in every major spiritual tradition, by all the major sages/prophets of those traditions.”
You are not knowledgeable of every major spiritual tradition. Those that are I.E. who are accredited by the Religions or who have studied to the level of receiving a degree in comparative religions might disagree. Your premise is based on the unspoken assumption that since Robert Burton has said this it is correct. Many who participate on the blog would question this.
I have had experiences in which I have “seen” the reality of reoccurrence. In my experience this penetration into a higher dimension does not produce answers but questions. That is when there is right work of centers.
you write In relation to “C Influence” and the idea of a play.
This is a difficult concept to grasp but one that is also found in every major tradition; Fate, Destiny, Karma, recurrence, reincarnation, etc. All these are held in balance by the concept of “Free Will”. It is an enigma; we are not meant to understand these things in their entirety. We can intuit them.
Again you take Robert Burton teaching as true in an attempt to prove that Robert Burtons teaching is true. There is a word for this Howard the Duck. Fuckin’ stupid. “Dumber than a rock”. This is a difficult concept to grasp but the way and the work of the 4th way begin at a higher level than life. If your ability to reason and argue your position is so immature, so undeveloped it reflects the lack of development of the intellectual center in general so you are below the level of life. First it is not order vs. chaos, free will vs. predestination but there are three laws. Fate, accident and cause and effect.. There is no higher intelligence creating all activities on Earth rather there are Laws and even higher beings must conform to Law.
This is a difficult concept to grasp but even if there was a play Robert Burton would not know the script. This is an absolute fact that he has proven himself over and over. You Hoard the Duck ( kinda cute rhymes with Suck) are a classic case of ones imagination blinding them to reality. Don’t you get it.? Knock knock anybody home? This is logic dealing with a proven “fact” Robert has been wrong thus Robert can be wrong thus Robert will be wrong again. This is a fact. This leaves you with having to evaluate Robert’s bullshit pronouncements from the proven perspective of whether he is right . If you should ever desire to experience reality as Gurdjieff worked so hard to make available to you must learn to think and verify for yourself.
“• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining”
This is verifiable on many levels in life; people say they’ll do something willingly until it’s time to do it and then they change their tune.”
what or who are the dammed? Those who having been given the gift of a magnetic center who trade the potential for eternal life for belief in a false prophet. This is a fact Duck boy. Robert’s prophecies were wrong this is without question the definition of a false prophet. Don’t you fit the definition of “the dammed” someone who agreed to the terms and conditions of the 4th way yet exchanged this for a second rate cult of the divine cocksucking goddess in a man’s body.
If there is any vestige of reality left in your little duck brain answer this. If cocksucking is so good for you why doesn’t Robert encourage this divine draining of the sacred cup by his students.
There have been real schools that taught the use of physical sex in spiritual development. The Fellowship of Friends is not one. Robert Burton is not only addicted to the physical act of sexually violating read Raping his students but the negative emotional energy and shame that accompanies such an activity. Robert knows little about healthy sex and this which should be at the core of a real teaching is proof of his failure to achieve the consciousness he claims.
Howard, regarding (#14-138), thank you for making yourself quite, quite clear. I was having this conversation with the illusion that we at least agreed on what the concept of verification is. I’m wrong, obviously.
So, you are in a new religion that espouses relative awakening (awakening within limits set up by your priest/intermediary) using an appropriate new tool, “partial verification”. Work with “partial verification” means than whenever you run out of steam, or into an inconvenient obstacle to your understanding, you can just drag out “faith” or “whatever Burton says” to fill in the gaps. What was confusing to me is that this is not verification—in my language.
I’ll try to answer one of your few personal questions to me, “Are you saying that every being must start from scratch in their search for truth, and disregard the existence of God, Paradise as a beginning basis until they fully verify it?”
In one word, yes.
I’ve tried to re-examine all my presumptions from scratch. This, for me, is particularly important when I try to analyze the mechanisms that mould us in our culture, and to any person serious about self–examination, examining religion in all its forms must be included. That’s a lot of work, to be sure, but I cheerfully undertook it when I was at a similar stage to you, but not so lazy. It happens that later, I found out that there was a short cut around this nearly impossible mountain. Burton didn’t try to hide this from me, because he simply didn’t know; he is not nearly the high being he claims he is, or that you believe/have faith in. But that is another story.
You might want to study the law of three a little more deeply. The concept in your last paragraph to me, “Adjusting one’s “only” life to the belief that there is an afterlife where one will be “held accountable” can only be a third force to lead a better, more civilized life, not hinder this life.”—leads directly to such civilizing influences as, “The Crusades”, “The Holy Inquisition”, “Let’s introduce democracy at the point of the gun”, and such. This is the wrong third force for internal work. The fact that you don’t understand this explains the content of many of your posts, and why you are stuck. The fact that Burton doesn’t understand this explains why he is not fit to teach, and why he is stuck.
HC #125 or so: “You took enough time to contemplate the motivation of the FoF to use this quote and then respond to it in writing; I also wonder if you took some time to contemplate the meaning of the quote.”
Yes.
The quote was:
“We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah.”
We = you, me and everybody else on the planet can
Know = apprehend, experience, have thoughts about (BIG can of worms here!)
Allah = The Absolute, God, that which goes by many names but is un-nameable. Ultimate Reality, Truth, etc.
through = by being one with Allah; by Allah’s grace? Meaning here is ambiguous, thus open to much wiseacring or as you would say, “keying.” Could be synonymous with “know” (see above). In which case, we have a meaningless circular statement:
“We can know Allah by knowing Allah” ?
Maybe so, maybe not.
OK, the next part is a little dicier:
We can know = (see above)
what’s other = what is not Allah. But how can there be anything that is NOT Allah?? Allah is all and everything, the absolute, Allah contains all. Therefore, the notion of “not Allah” is a product of dualistic mind activity.
by the light of Allah = Allah is light. Allah is also dark, since Allah transcends duality. Therefore Allah contains both light and dark. Light and dark are relative terms, dependent on human perceptual mechanisms.
In summary, the quote appears to assert that the human mind can “know” Ultimate Reality. This is a matter of belief.
Beliefs and mind activity are not awakening.
Reminds me of the Sufi story about Mullah Nasrudin looking for his keys under the lamp post.
Don’t keep looking there just because the place is conveniently lit. The keys you are looking for are elsewhere.
Cathie (#14-136), you are leaving all sorts of clues in plain sight…
Sure, Howard is looking for the keys under the lamp post, but he’s too busy to notice that behind him, the sunrise has already lit the whole street!
Random thoughts: I have verified very little. I kinda hope there is nothing to “recurrence” I dont want to go through all this again.
I think I read where some philosophers like Socrates or maybe somebody following believed or verified for themselves “life before life”. And then, maybe I’m thinking of Marcus Aurelius.
And, I think I read where Ouspensky got the idea of “recurrence” from Nietzsche.
Anyway, back to real life. WhaleRider I have two questions for you. What is Schwartz?
And, I went to that link provided by Laura #81. Robert Burton at the place I found him was akin to a empty closet in the basement. But, I noticed that a lot of non-Indian gurus have taken on an Indian name. Is there an explanation?
Finally, and I’m speaking without permission for Vera-Mente.
In the Bible and I really dont remember page, number or context. But, a vineyard Overlord was paying his field hands.
The first were handsomely paid (those that were in the FOF for a good while) then as they reached the end Arthur and Vera-Mente were paid as much. Of course, there was a dispute.
Arthur and Vera-Mente claimed that the FOF vineyard belong to all the field hands as equals.
Graduates 137 – “These are higher men, men number four, and the product of a Fourth Way school run by a man number seven?
I guess your point is that if the above were true, these people would easily be able to take care of themselves and we need not worry about them. But since it is likely not true, there are still those that are left in a bad situation.
Perhaps I both over and under estimate some of these people. Many are, I am sure quite capable. But there are those that have dedicated their whole life to the FOF and they are older now and not really prepared to be successful outside of the Fellowship. Probably they could be successful but they do not know that.
Anyway, the point is that some will be hurt if the FOF dissolves and we may want to consider them. Not that it is our problem but there are readers that have a stake in what happens.
“I appreciate your postings. I like how you are keeping your line consistently and “in the kings”. I would sleep better if you were right and not the “rest of the blog”. All these “negative people”… But any time I think that for 38 years (and right now and will continue) RB is screwing the guys, my friends, damaging their essences, causing this never ending craze, FEAR. How he confuses them by lying to them, manipulating them, uses them and throws away – I can’t sleep anymore. I have a child and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I don’t want him to know about what is going on in this organization, were his mom belongs. I can hear the question of the child: “Why is Robert having sex with all these men?”
So, WHY? They don’t want it. They hate it. But they do it. Tonight is someone’s “visit time” after the dinner. And tomorrow. Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???”
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Yes, its odd that there are people on this blog who ‘appreciate’ postings of those who support Robert Burton; at the end of their postings of said “appreciation” ask ~ “Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???”
Well, ‘confused’, you can start by not stroking and picking the fleas off the devil’s belly.
Get thee self to your District Attorney’s Office.
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Hello ~ 111 More history needed?
You asked ~
“Can somebody inform us what happened with M.R, (who payed Rabia) and a performance for Robert with girls like A, S,R ?
Thanks for you time and energy”
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Call her up. She’s on Page 55 of the 2007 AT & T phone book in this area or get on the Greater Fellowship’s website and ask around. Or call 411 and ask for a Mari R on Concord Trail in Oregon House, California.
She’s doing fine BTW… outside of being freaked concerning the break-ins near her house… Yet, what do you expect when you live one mile from the Methamphetamine capital of California (?)
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Hello ~ 123 vera.mente
You wrote ~
“Former Student, Veronicapoe, Unoanimo, thank you for your thoughts regarding Class Action Lawsuit.
It does not seem easy to build…but if someone is willing and able to start it I will probably join it . Arthur is interested as well!
On the other hand there are plenty of crimes that could be brought to the attention of various authorities…
Sometimes I feel the desperation from some people here who beg to stop the insanity going on at Isis…
I too feel impatience, even though I have been removed from the direct influence of the fof and rb for a long time now.
I want a change! and hope all this writing here on this blog, the stories etc., will cause a change! The end of the fof under RB!”
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Hello vera.mente ~
The key denying force is to be found in your very words “it seems”… This is an illusion; remember, every millimeter of struggle and tension sensed, in starting this process, is your own ‘baptismal in the waters of your being’…
You were breathing artificial embryonic fluids in the Fellowship of Friends… Now, get past “seems” and get going; forget about ‘difficult’, think ‘birth’, birth is difficult, though that’s not really what it’s about, is it?
Love your pressure and tension, its your birth!
No, it won’t be easy to bring the Fellowship of Friends into objective perspective, yet, what is? You are not alone, there are many who will join you; as Whalerider suggested, you need to allocate duties, ‘parts’ of the one body to many different people, video conferencing will also assist and a multi-national law suit may also be necessary, since, after all, many other countries and embassies are involved in these procurement of visas, religious and work papers, etc, for a phony ‘church’.
To me, its not really on the scale of ‘grass roots’, the grass roots thing has already established its ‘lawn’ in previous law suits, although, Whalerider is right nonetheless, that getting the local community involved, if it’s just letter writing to the Governor, a petition, both, that will get things rolling; if this was a new complaint-thing it would be very difficult to establish ‘a means’,
though the ‘house of cards’ has already been built, 37 years ago, multiple law suits, paid off and hidden away abuses and situations, dropped cases, a long history of buffered objective justice for the sake of subjective self calming;
and the card-house is considerably large and unsteady;
there is so much ‘garbage’ piled behind the food refrigerators belonging to Isis that I sense that one little yellow canary alighting on top will pull it down…
Do you have the will to not only follow your heart and gut, but also say “yes, that’s my heart” in case a policeman charges you both with jay walking?
The only tough part will be going up against the mirror image within yourself pointing to the issues at hand; this will be a great spiritual exercise for many, because the pressure and denying force felt in situations like this effort to be made, desired by you and so many others, is that of your own pain bodies struggling to stay in the struggling-self si-do habit world, where unfinished things seem more immortal than finished,
where unfinished feelings and gut sensations seem more supportive for tomorrow;
one of the greatest reasons people don’t like to
go through the ‘court thing’ is not the money, you can borrow money to make money and some lawyers do not charge unless they win, so,
all in all, the reason is that, in court the pain body must (though many buffer this) face the objectivity of its ‘little world’ put into perspective with the bigger world of ‘pain bodies’ where its identification is erased and placed into a category of personal responsibility to society (king of hearts) and the world (hints of higher emotional)…
It’s tough because the painbody needs the ongoing drama to continue, hence the si-do need: going to court, taking all this silliness all the way will change your inner world, no doubt, it must, since you’re still on the Path, yes?
Prison & Execution is the Temple of Si-do for the painbody.
Real desires are our teachers; so much of Robert Burton’s idea of C-Influence has been given to him by default, osmosis from common sense religious piety;
I met C-Influence when I was 8 or 9 years old and never for one minute felt them leave or wiseacred that they had abandoned me; sure there’s been middle fingers held towards the heavens, though, so what, sometimes I see cloud shapes giving it back to me.
So, get out there and love the pressure, smile and give birth to Buddha.
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Hello ~ 130 Rhino Neal
You wrote ~
“Unoanimo, on a different topic, can you tell us why you remain in the FoF? Your postings indicate you’re not very impressed by it. thanks, RN”
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Whose us, you and HC? Lol.
Another cigarette lighter in the dark?
The only person in this blog who has made this claim (that I am a member of the FoF or ever was) is HC, who, as Ames stated, could just be an intellectual in Berkeley writing and pushing buttons or an ex student who is getting kicks on Route 666.
Rhino, go back and re-read what I wrote to Whalerider concerning this ‘wonder’ of yours; he had it too and ‘did the right thing’ and seemed to have found the appropriate higher emotional answer to this question for himself, perhaps the same will occur for you, my friend…
I have been observing the phenomenon of the Fellowship of Friends for a very, very long time; not one student knows anything concerning my past (or for that matter, my present, this includes Grand poo-ra HC)…
It’s the way it must be, considering the nature of the triad, here, elsewhere, and will remain so, even after my anonymous-ness is revealed by me;
there’s a larger picture at play here than just the Fellowship of Friends, it’s about supporting certain standards, while simultaneously observing those who are walking backwards, assisting in jump starting channels of objective, conscious common sense and supporting a certain kind of becoming.
This has been one of my (and many on this blog site) tasks, one that has been flowing through me before my teens; so I am pretty at home with all this stuff and the Fellowship of Friends is only the tip of the iceberg that sunk the titanic, a very little bathtub of a ship in the bigger scheme of ‘things’.
So, go deeper, and if you believe one phrase or sentence that HC writes, I mean ‘really’, then certainly, you’ve got no real reason or place to put an answer from me to begin with;
I trust you’ll figure, as Whalerider did, that our hearts are connected in ways that the brain just can’t fathom, nor can the 10 of diamonds wiseacre itself beyond its own little world selfishness (seeming like Higher Intellectual), no way,
Higher Intellectual has no resemblance whatsoever to the 10 of diamonds, Ouspensky found this out the hard way, yet, after all, the real fourth way is difficult (though not the king of clubs difficult Robert Burton self calms himself from), for it is based on this lifetime and this one only, to the hilt, with absolutely no excuses,
the theory of lifetimes is a ‘pretty boys’ plaything, it is another tool of self calming and from a school of relative awakening, which, at best creates magnetic centers, which, even if essence is damaged, may result is something remaining after death.
Yet, its not the magnetic center by default, which is the issue here, its the psychic damage and treatment of the lot of time on this planet and our relationship to these impressions as they unfold, i.e., what they do with us automatically and what we do with them consciously;
yes, we have will and can move within the chess pieces, no matter the hand of god, god cannot move me as I can, otherwise there would be no reason to be down here…
I like to sense that I am more than a Duracell battery on some god’s shoulder.
If you see a pyramid in the distance, it may just be your own horn, so be careful what you assume from the assuming.
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Dear ~ 135 Old Fish In The Sea
You wrote ~
“Do we really want to destroy the FOF?….”
Just for scale and relativity I am going to use a little artistic license here and tie-off some loose ends I sense you’ve left for us to deal with in your equation of what could be left, (calling a ‘slice’ a whole pizza?) ~
What you wrote, I will put in ” ” marks…
“I know some parts of us might say yes but however dirty the bath water may be, consider the following:”
“1) The Fellowship has some good points. It attracts interesting, intelligent people and provides a network of friends that covers many parts of the world, and provides a means for being together in a beautiful environment”,
which supports spiritual crime, damages essence, teaches methods of self calming, prolongs hierarchal structured psychosis and religious piety that contradicts the entire premise of the fourth way. Joining a ‘regular church’ with ‘normal people’ and reading B-influence books simultaneously will produce similar, if not, healthier essences and clearer ‘baby water’.
“2) Many people that would never have had the means to travel have been able to see the world and stay in homes of friends along the way.”
Nor would they have had the chance to be led to Isis for the exploitation of their wallets and what’s beneath their wallet’s pocket and sent back to where they came from, if they wish this exploitation be otherwise, other than against their conscience and self worth hearts; nor would they have been able to spend months in foreign jails for having had fake passports made by the request of The Teacher so to insure that his ‘fresh meat’ did not spoil, waiting in line at the consulate’s will and discretion.
“3) Many with little exposure to classical art have been educated in this area.”
Nor have they been proportionately educated in the area of acquiring million dollar paintings (the largest one in the Galleria to the left) that have been proven by the Italian government to have been illegally sold and smuggled out of the country to Oregon House, nor have they been educated in how to horde expensive artworks, jewelry, cars, clothes and apartments in Europe at the expense of said ‘contributors of such luxuries’ poverty, no health care, under the thumb of The Teacher, to be asked, against their will and oftentimes ‘real fairness’ to leave, at any time, for any silly reason, (like not accepting a sport coat gift), thanking them not, nor dividends in any investments, for anything they’ve done to support that which they themselves could never singularly have had, nor consciously asked of others prior to those ‘others’ welfare was first taken into consideration (although I must footnote here, that by now, there are a few who would do this sort of thing, particularly the hermaphrodites.)
“4) There are still some very healthy organizations within the Fellowship (e.g. The Walt Whitman Sailing Society).”
Who sail away from Isis as far as they can, whose experiences and near death experiences on the open sea has deepened their convictions that there might just be something to all this blog stuff, albeit not the mainland, its kinda floating in space similar to a boat at sea, with no shore in sight. There are also other ‘healthy organizations’ within the legal status ‘church’ called the Fellowship of Friends, who are conveniently ‘birthed’ at City Hall for the main goal of funneling monies back to Robert Burton and Friends by way of charitable donations and teaching payments to pay for more self calming and religious, conscience-less, psychosis piety.
“6) The Fellowship provides access to nice gardens and social events that are on the whole uplifting.”
They also provide access to your imaginary picture that this life is ‘just not the one Robert Burton wiseacres it has to be for you to awaken in’ thus creating a ‘dope garden’ to self-calm you from the news (and plenty of porn and wine justifications) and daily reminders that Robert Burton is the ‘only one in your life worth supporting, for you cannot do, you cannot awaken, C-Influence does not need your love, you can’t hold the Sequence long enough, you don’t remember yourself enough, you’re a walking subtle-replica of the enemy that he preaches against every Sunday’; yes, gardens, not unlike those of the high French Aristocrats had, prior to the French revolution. Not to mention the parallel ‘uplifting’ erection drugs used by Robert Burton and Company to maintain ‘astuteness’ beyond the pangs of conscience and self loathing; assisting in the wiseacre thought that ~ Hey, if you’ve got an erection, you must be in love, right, you must want it?
“7) The new (not 4th way) approach may not lead to consciousness but probably on the whole is no worse than fundamental religion except that it asks extreme dedication and presents itself as something else.”
Nor is it “no worse” than the rape and molestation charges now draining the catholic church of billions of dollars and followers. Nor is it “no worse” than a church that calls itself a church, yet, in all world-wide terms is a cult, not a traditional-church, where members can usurp the pastor if he proves to be corrupt and have him replaced by another, for their welfare, not his; unlike a cult, where the pastor usurps the ‘church goers’ and keeps the status of ‘church’ so that his of hers monies can be stretched to the furthest self calming limits without paying too much back to where it came from, i.e., tax exempt status, whose ‘loss’ of 8 or 9 members by the visit of certain ‘officials’ can often lead to the murder of 9 people and the mass suicide & murder of 900+ men, women, children and infants.
“There are problems that are difficult or impossible to address as long as Robert is in charge:
1) Honest interchange between students and with former students is limited because of the paranoia that is generated due to Robert’s life style requirements.
2) The Fellowship is deceptive. It speaks of connections to higher forces that based on history in all probability do not exist. It speaks of methods that have limited effectiveness (no one is awakening). It undermines creativity and self confidence by crediting the lack of success to lack of effort in the individuals. It provides a false sense of superiority.
3) Robert’s lifestyle is corrupting, hurtful, and uses resources and efforts inappropriately. Over time it hurts most students.
4) The Fellowship encourages people to have similar tastes and lifestyles to Robert and discourages the development of individual creativity except within the boundaries of Robert’s interests.
5) Supporting Robert’s lifestyle is a huge financial burden and it keeps students from taking propper care of their own needs.”
Take the elephant’s ivory and leave it dead, calling it still an elephant? Hummmm… would this kind of King of Hearts nit-picking really lead to spiritual vitality and change of level of being, or is it simply worshiping the crucification while postulating that such a heinous crime could never happen again; albeit, if it didn’t happen our painbodies wouldn’t have anything to worship?
“But destroying the Fellowship will:
1) Provide financial hardship for many that are invested in houses, businesses and land in the area.
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
So I would ask the question – Is there a way to make the following happen?
1) Take away Robert’s abuses and lifestyle. Take away his funding. The FOF is a non profit organization and the founder and teacher does not have more rights than the members. The Fellowship would truly thrive if Robert’s ways were not continually undermining its success.
2) Work to make the organization more honest with regard to what it offers and what can be expected. Broaden the Fellowship to allow other approaches to presence.
3) Allow open communication between current and former members. We have heard talk that this is happening and it seems to me that there is a great deal more openness in this area than even 6 months ago.
Just a thought – Maybe it makes sense to formally have 2 different types of students. The division already exists but is not formalized:
Group 1) Devotees that accept the FOF as religion, Robert as an angel and conduit of C influence, and agree upfront with appropriate and honest counseling to support him with all of his habits.
Group 2) Students that have full access to life, former students, pay minimal teaching payments (which do not support Robert in any way) and which seek a more “fourth way, in life” approach. These students would have access to the property and events but would not be encouraged to be involved with Robert. The teaching could incorporate Robert’s current viewpoint as one approach, not the approach.
Ideally Robert would have some minimal input into the activities of group 2 but he would not be over sold to them. He would not be able to solicit funds from Group 2. Neither group would be presented as superior but rather as alternative paths (Religious vs Psychological). Both groups would help to develop the property as they see fit.”
Ideally?
My friend, you’re fooling around with a triad not unlike America’s model of Democracy and the Roman Empire.
Yes, there’s such a thing as a cover-crop and tiling it under for the real crop, yet, this will not happen in Oregon House; the spiritual cancer at Isis is too deep and those who have unknowingly fed it their blood will be paid first; after this first ‘reconciling act’ nothing will be left and students will continue as they will anyway once any teacher’s role ends, they will have to roll with the punches from the Absolute, all those before us did, we are not privileged for knowing what we know from this blog, actually, we, who have truly digested this material here, will have to pay for it dearly, by slowly not being it, not becoming what it warns of.
I am deeply touched by your wish to save the ‘good parts’, all your ideas and attempts to recycle and transform, though, this is not the direction Robert Burton has initiated: the Fellowship of Friends started with a lie and will end with its lie, no more, no less; although this does not rule out the possibility of a ‘family of friends’, the Greater Fellowship seems headed in that direction.
An entity as Robert Burton would never settle for second best, a lateral position; he does not tell the truth because the whole ‘form’ is a lie; you cannot pull the foundation out from underneath a house and save the plumbing…
Such an ‘order of things’ would undoubtedly prove that Robert Burton is a liar, a fake and that the Fellowship of Friends has always been for him a means of self calming and earthly identification gymnastics… Do you really believe he would ‘fuss up’ to all that?
As always; the Fellowship of Friends motto “Silence is Golden”, will be his style, he’ll relocate or stay here and relocate the form of the school, seeming this and that…
Saturns are experts at silence and ulterior motives.
More games, no one truly on the path has time for…
curiosity certainly does kill the cat, for investment into another lifetime is the ultimate ‘promise of cat food’ while the real cat, the now-cat, starves and convulses to death.
Thank you though, for your incredible desire to assist those who need your love; try to do small things for now, like emailing this blog’s address to others around the world and contacting the California Governor’s office; certainly your love can be applied to more probable segments of the one now, than a kind of ‘wish’ for the future:
remember, alongside those who wiseacre doomsday, there are those who also wiseacre the coming of heaven: neither will happen on earth, this is an internal ‘arrival’: if the earth ever does call itself a ‘heaven’ it will be by default, by proximity to its inhabitants having already built ‘heaven’ within…
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Hello ~ 136 Another Name
You wrote ~
“Dear Siddiq and others,
0×0=0, Is often described as our original nature, our soul, our spirit.
I have been thinking a lot about Siddiq, nice how unanimo, describes the person and is sure that it is a “HE”, Passionate, has a family at Isis…?
From one angle, it does not matter, who it is.”
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I know Siddiq and he knows me (sorta). So, well, that’s that.
Yes, there are those who would suffer, especially those who have grown old in the mis-directed “service” of the FoF. They have made choices that were perhaps foolish, but they were their choices, and they must deal with the consequences of their choices, just as you and I must. Many of them are living in an environment (art, music, gardens, events) that pleases them. They have been willing to ignore the deceit, the crime, the suffering of others in order to continue living in this environment.
Among other issues, for these “old hands” to continue as such with clearer consciences, FoF would need to become financially self supporting, i.e. not run on the donations of those who have been bringing in the money all these years. Not on the fake money-grubbing “events” of RB. Let Apollo Arts become self sufficient. Let Apollo Olive Oil, the orchard, the reduced vineyard, yes, the gardens, the stupid palm trees, the nurseries, let them all bring in sufficient money to pay the salaries and the retirement and the health insurance. Take all the money away from RB, from law suits, from legal insurance, from relocating a fountain 2 feet to the south or changing the color scheme of RB’s study. Bring in real management. It sure is no School as it is, so it might as well become efficient, no more excuse for “intentional friction”.
It is not going to happen.
And you know what? Even if we depose RB (which is very unlikely) – the corruption will still be there, because those who will have the power after he’s gone (his “inner circle”) have become equally corrupt themselves. Oh, they may not seek the same sexual gratification, they may not be quite so greedy, but their corruption will have it’s own outlet. And they may not have the charisma, so less money will be pulled in. But the rottenness at the root will kill the tree. They have traded their power, their green cards, their jobs, their place in the hierarchy – for their consciences and their sincerity. Will they suffer? You bet. Are there innocents in there, who really didn’t “know what was going on”? Umm, maybe. We had pretty big earplugs and blinders for a long time.
There but for fortune, go you and I – oh, yes, and we will suffer too, we may lose our property, some money at least. That’s the breaks, the payment we make for converting naivete to experience.
But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court.
Better to let it all collapse on it’s own weaknesses.
Put our loving energy towards all those Friends out there.
Another thought for those friends still “in”, who have pinned their lives and old age on the FoF, well, I would take them in, help them survive. Wouldn’t you?
So here’s a message to my friends who might be trapped – I have room, I love you, you are welcome to my help. You can find me on the Greater Fellowship website – send your request to Janna 14;104.
“But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court.”
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Tell Troy Buzbee that; he got nearly 1 million dollars ((after)) the lawyers were paid.
I truly do not believe that a “going through” has to be filled with anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling ‘had’:
I mean geez, you can get all that by rejoining the Fellowship of Friends, better yet, stay in: too you can get that by saying ‘no’ to the Grand Yes Goddess (oooo, a rap, I wanna, it’s brewing).
Comeon Cathie, get off the Formatory Emotional Choo Choo Train and live a little;
I took a certain ‘dealership’ to court as a young teenager: I lost, yet I won, though I didn’t get my money back, because a certain ‘second party purchaser could not make it’, all the hoopla got them out of town and revealed to other possible ‘lollipops’; the class action lawsuit won’t have that kind of denying force, nor is it about money, its about those still in their (you know (yes I said it), it would be Rambo like), and particularly those to come, so to speak.
Yes, its July and its pretty easy to be skeptical and dismayed; yet, what if it were, say, November, rainy days ahead, nothing to do but to sue, sue, sue… Pretend its November, put on your mittens, ski jacket, woolly pants, socks and hat and get on the slope or would you rather have your conscience smokin post humorous Burton dope?
The anger can be replaced with separation and by carrying and taking a look from time to time at a few pictures of Lewis Carol little boys, who, if Troy Buzbee is any proof, will be attending prospective student meetings in 8-10 years, when some other narcissus brother is on the front cover of ‘Oregon House Pimp Daddy Froth Way Lover’.
What ‘self justification’? It’s not about ‘the self’, at least the real self, its about the ‘little elf’, the naive ones coming and staying and those who (believe it or not) still don’t know. It’s about essence growing and well, yes, history; educating essence and putting up some objective milestones and payment markers.
“Revenge and feeling ‘had'” (?) ~ Wow, Cathie, you could wiseacre those emotions about anything that’s controversial on this planet, plastic cups for instance, I mean, plastic bags are already banned in San Francisco, the Terminator is our Governor and George Bush is president:
anyone who’s not doing the ‘Rilke thing’ and transforming all this hay fever ‘pollen’ into the invisible could be considered ‘had’, particularly at the end of one’s ‘play’, if you’re one of the those who ‘sees it coming’, some do not even have the ‘time slot’ to feel those kind of depressions, the switch is simply clicked OFF, while they’re feeling good.
To me, all the emotions you speak of (in their extremes) just get essence H12 running into momma and daddy’s arms; you can do better than that.
These emotions occur every day and are automatically applied to even the difference in price of produce at Oregon House Grocery and Food For Less in Yuba City, your spouse, your naiveté, a bad movie based on a bogus reviewers spin, a shirt bought at an Isis auction that was $200 and cost (since they were bought in bulk) $25 each.
Actually, there’s not much room in the court house for the Queen of Heart’s, you just have to stick to the facts and there are plenty. Writing a ‘Bill of Particulars’ and presenting it to the judge is a great way to start.
The only reason Eve started running out of Eden is because Adam took the snake off her shoulders and put it on his and said “Catch me if you can”, she, running after him, whirling an arm load of apples near his head.
_________________________
P.S. And, no, Cathie, you are not a descendant of Robert Burton’s rib and do not owe him what he himself does not show back.
“”Let Apollo Arts become self sufficient. Let Apollo Olive Oil, the orchard, the reduced vineyard….””
Hi Sharon and all,
Actually these are private enterprises. The olive oil and organic cherry orchards are very successful– I would guess because the products are *wonderful* and are smartly marketed. I think a lease is paid to the fof for the space to grow/make the products. (Has everyone tasted the olive oil? I am in awe. Finally, a good product from that landscape that has a taste that reflects the good parts.)
Current members are not dummies. Some of us (current and former) have never fit in completely, but that does not mean that we can’t find a niche. That is what California was invented for. (well, maybe the whole west coast…)
Guys, I think FOF will collapse all by itself and probably sooner than we think… Teacher will teach only if he gets cash. The way things are going there is less and less of cash coming in.
Please keep shedding light, keep exposing the lies, keep telling your stories. Truth doesn’t need to be defended it just needs to be seen. FOF is so corrupted and commercialized but doesn’t show this ugly side to new seekers. The teaching became so clearly absurd and insane so all we have to do is simply post it without adding anything. It speaks (screams) for itself!
I’ll continue to post the original stuff from FOF as it is – unaltered, and let it speak for itself. I encourage others to do the same. Let buyer beware. Hopefully those students who are still in doubt will make up their minds. Let us see the brainwashing, shameless money sqeezing, and purely delusional interpretations of various images being sold to students as “Sacred Teaching”. Let us see it for what it is and be honest with ourselves.
_________________________________________
Dear Friends,
The Video Distribution Octave is undergoing further refinement. Our Teacher underlines the importance for each of us to be as closely connected to this sacred Teaching as possible. He has listed as one of our highest priorities
the viewing of the Teaching Events on DVD.
The School is moving at lightening speed. C Influence continually reveals new knowledge. The level of Robert’s Teaching becomes ever more distilled and objective.Each student will now be able to go to propylaia and access the list of the Teaching videos. You will find the list of videos under the Link “From the Teacher”.
___________________________________
Dear Friends,
Robert has pointed out that the task of our school is to gather all the expressions of the system historically, and that we have now come to the earliest expressions of the system in prehistoric times, before Egypt. He requested that the following message with accompanying images and quotations be sent to the School:
Although the prehistoric school did not use written language to transmit their knowledge, we can understand their images with the help of the writings of other traditions. In particular, our understanding of the Egyptian School is now serving as a bridge to help us understand the Prehistoric Tradition, as pre-dynastic Egypt is essentially the end of the Prehistoric Tradition. Below are three examples of Prehistoric images with accompanying quotes that help explain their keys:
1) The first image is the The Head of a Woman with Cross-hatched Hair. It is from France, dated 25,000 BP (Before the Present). It is carved from mammoth ivory and is about 4 cm tall.
Hair is a key for the many ‘I’s, the ten thousand. Hair put into order represents the many ‘I’s, the passions, under control with the sequence (as opposed to chaos, imagination). This passage from Going Forth by Day refers to the steward coming out of imagination with Short Be.
The neatly arranged cross-hatched hair of the woman shows the order brought to the steward/ the nine of hearts with the sequence.
2) The next image, The Hunting Scene, is a rock painting from a cave in Lascaux, France, dated approximately 15,000 BP.
It shows a mammoth with a falling man, and to the left, a rhinoceros with excrement in six small dots passing from him.
What I detest is excretion and I will not eat it…I will not be satisfied with filth.
Coffin Texts
This passage from the Egyptian Coffin Texts (Late Old Kingdom to Middle Kingdom texts found on coffins) describes the steward who does not want to be in imagination; he is not satisfied having ‘I’s unrelated to promoting presence, here called filth and excrement.
This verse explains the image of the rhinoceros, keyed as the lower self, who is excreting the sequence. The lower self is in control of the sequence at this point and the steward is falling back, failing to act. It is a failed sequence mouthed too weakly, without heart, and it cannot engage presence with it.
3) The third image is a Flute, from France, dated 34,000 BP. It is made from vulture bone.
The vulture is known for its ability to fly at high altitudes for long periods of time, and it became a symbol of Long BE in the Egyptian School. Tutankhamun had a cobra head and a vulture head on his golden mask, Short Be and Long BE.
The flute made of vulture bone has four holes—after Long BE, sustain the four wordless breaths.
Robert called it the Magic Flute.
Another exampe of “fishing” for sacred teaching, or Sacred Teaching in the making.
Let’s collect all your random I’s, then have Robert and Asaf regurgitate them, then stage a meeting and make sure it’s filmed and then printed as “Thoughts from the Teacher”- and here’s our new “sacred teaching” for sale!
How can anyone in their sane mind take this “teaching” seriously…
“Dear Friends,
We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the Zodiac. Our aim is to understand how it relates to the sequence of six work ‘I’s-the essence of the system-rather than life’s psychological interpretations of the signs.
A few initial observations: There are twelve signs in the zodiac, roughly corresponding to the twelve months in a year. This suggests that they occur in time, in sequence, where one follows another. At this point, however, we do not know why twelve and not six. Another instance we see a sequence of twelve is in the Egyptian teaching, in the twelve hours of the Amduat, where the night bark travels through the twelve hours of the night before emerging into the daylight hours. Note that there are also twelve hours of daylight, suggesting long BE lasts as long as the steps it took to reach it-although at this point we are only presuming this and are not certain whether or not this is the right interpretation.
In a school, it is enough that one student make a connection for the whole to benefit, as has been the case several times since we began working with the keys. We would therefore like to invite any suggestions and insights you have that can shed more light into the esoteric meaning of the Zodiac. Keep in mind that ultimately the answers are simple and obvious once revealed.
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
In the first part of your post I thought we were experiencing history in the making; a former member addressing a current member without being condescending, obscene, insulting, mocking, attacking one’s mental health, preaching, or any number of lapses in decorum. But even with the faltering conclusion your post arrives at it still makes my top ten for civility coming from your camp to mine.
Former members like to use the term “group think” (FoF think); well there is such a thing as blog think. It is characterized, amoung other things, by the unrelenting notion that if the FoF did not work for them (former students) it does not work for anyone. If they ultimately did not find it to be real it is not real. And that the only thing seperating former members from current members is that with current members the “fog of devotion” has not lifted yet, and once it does they too will add the prefix “former” to their FoF designation.
What can be the basis for that thinking? Could it be a feature that starts with the letter V? Or just an extreme desire to get back at the person/organization that “damned” them with their leaving ?
Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing. No matter what we say regarding the school working for us they counter with “you only think like this because you are flawed, lying or lagging behind. I didn’t experience this when I was there so you can’t have either.”
This is very different from what Siddiq writes or what I write (GOlb can at times get a little more “in your face,”
God bless him).
We basically are saying that the school works for us, and often we try our best to articulate why it works in a reasonable, even toned manner. We do not insult or mock those we respond to. We are relating our experiences, not trying to dictate to former students what they ought to be experiencing. There is a very big difference in the two approaches.
Here is my question to you: can you, as a former member, live with the possibility that “maybe I missed something about the experience, maybe an attitude prevented me from seeing another side of everything?”
If one really valued the truth above all else one could live with and embrace many possibilities, even things one doesn’t want to be true. I exist with the possibility of living without the school. So far it has not come to pass.
Do you really think that the FoF could exist for 38 years and be thriving as I write if it were only what its harshest critics say it is? It’s the only organization I know of that lays claim to be a conscious school of awakening in the tradition of all the ancient schools (it’s the only organization to name those other schools) and people here say it’s the very opposite of this, an evil cult.
Can it survive this long and thrive being so purely everything it claims not to be and nothing it claims to be? If this is so it’s “lottery” odds or better for it to have survived this long. If it’s true that “God can forgive anything but hypocrisy” how could a higher power allow its name to be taken in vain for so long and to hurt so many?
Can an auto shop remain in business for long if it does not fix the problem of the cars put in its care, and the owners even find new problems when they pick up the car?
One of the biggest obstacles to presence is that we simply do not remember to do it; hours go by without even having the ‘I’ to engage presence. On the other hand being present is what Robert relentlessly speaks about, day in and day out, by the minute.
Are we to seriously believe it’s possible for him to always remember to speak about being present but not to be actually doing it? What’s being said on this blog by former students is impressive for its sheer unlikelyhood.
Regarding the last part of your post; it fails because you then start telling me what my reality is, what I’M experiencing. This is where you lose all credibility.
I am not afraid in the sense you allude to. I am afraid of a life spent in the second state; that is why I stay in the FoF. That is why I do feel free. There are no fetters on me so there are none to remove. I don’t get depressed. I don’t suffer from insomnia. “A clear conscience does not fear midnight”.
The only limits placed on my ability to be present are those that come from within. The school does not confine me in any manner. It frees me in every manner. It works for me; why should I leave it. I want more of it. I want it to be more of what it is and I want myself to be able to experience it more deeply.
Please be informed that despite the years of your tireless dedication to the Fellowship of Friends you are and have been supporting a corrupt and licentious organization with your money, time, and labor. As with everyone else on the planet, there are consequences to your actions for which as adults you are responsible. Pleading ignorance is not a defense, it is simply a buffer. Please consider that if the Fellowship of Friends were to become financially stressed or insolvent, you may lose your employment, if you are employed by this organization. Please be advised that it may be in your interest to secure other means of employment as soon as possible and to plan for your financial independence. If you are in this country on a religious visa, it may also be in your interest to prepare for the eventuality that your visa be revoked.
To those followers in legitimate business for themselves on the property owned bt the FOF, please be advised that there may be unforeseen financial consequences for doing business with the FOF that as a business owner you may wish to consider and plan for.
To Those Willing to Dedicate Their Time and Effort:
Here’s what I propose as a possible course of action:
Commit time and energy to showing up at the perspective ‘student’ meetings in your home town and hand-out flyers with this blog address and pertinent information to provide a balance to what is presented in the meetings so the public can make a more informed choice whether or not to join. This effort would need to be both a national and an international effort to be effective, since apparently most of the new ‘membership’ is coming from abroad.
If the vineyard in still owned and operated by the FOF, the stores that sell the wine as well as the buyers of that wine can be informed of its origin and the circumstances of its production to be able to make a more informed choice about whether or not to buy those products.
All suppliers of material goods, foodstuffs, or any other support items, including financial instruments such as loans or credit lines for the FOF can be informed of the nature of this organization and its practices. This will allow them to make informed choices as to whether they wish to continue doing business with the FOF.
As Ben Franklin said, “Small strokes fell great oaks.”
Let your conscience be your guide. That’s what ‘C’-influence is really all about.
Howard, in #14-163, you say:
“Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing.”
And in #14-138 you told me, “I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB”.
“We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers. Our aim is to understand how they relate to the sequence of six work I’s the essence of the system rather than life’s anatomical interpretations.
Counting from left to right there are ten, five on each hand roughly corresponding to the ten toes. Each follows the other in a sequence suggesting they exist in time. At this point however we do not understand why ten and not six.
We would therefore like to invite any suggestions and insights you have that can shed more light into the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers. Keep in mind that ultimately the answers are simple and obvious once revealed.
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
Thank you, Asaf.”
Hello Howard, thank you for articulating so well the frequent hypocrisy of this Blog-think.
Thanks for being here.
As you write, sometimes hours go by without a single thought of presence…what many bloggers do not grasp is that because of this we are all so much more alike (out in the fog) than our lower self likes to accept. The only difference is which direction do we want to go?
‘It’s the only organisation I know of that lays claim to be a concious school of awakening in the tradition of all the ancient schools.( it’s the only organisation to name those schools ) and people here say it’s the very opposite of this,an evil cult.’
The very notion of the ‘tradition of ancient schools’ is a product of Burton and the FOF so no wonder they would be the ‘only organisation to name those schools’
The reason you are here HC presenting the same flawed ludicrous ideas over and over is for the same reason Peter I. tirelessly works on updating the FOF entry on wikipedia, even to the extent of knowingly lying through his teeth.( his revisionist interpretation of the the failed prophecys of Burton ) .The FOF is starting to unravel before your eyes,people are leaving in large numbers and you are desperate to try and push the old phony ‘King of Hearts’ FOF spiel through all of this in the hope that some gullible and needy person will fall for it and join.( very few are joining anymore).After all.it worked in past and it’s the only song you can sing.
Whalerider–“To Those Willing to Dedicate Their Time and Effort”–there are no such people Whalerider, is that not obvious?
This blog is made up of people who either woke up some 10-20-30 years to find out about a little sex or whose favorite weapon is the keyboard–give me a break!
Mole, once again you are wrong, just check the membership numbers before posting your lies. Membership is around 2 thousand, just as it was 6 months ago.
“All suppliers of material goods, foodstuffs, or any other support items, including financial instruments such as loans or credit lines for the FOF can be informed of the nature of this organization and its practices. This will allow them to make informed choices as to whether they wish to continue doing business with the FOF.”
So deranged cult members should not be allowed to eat, drink and have a credit card?
Siddiq, – Great example of FOF think. Defend madness at all costs and belittle anyone who sees it for what it is.
By the way you sound increasingly desperate.
Siddiq, in #14-132 you say:
“…there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated current students”
and in #14-170 you say, “Membership is around 2 thousand…”
Now I know that both can be true, but the implication of the first quote is that the numbers are rather closer to 1,000 than 2,000, wouldn’t you agree? No wonder we are confused!
Just teasing!
Regards to you, I appreciate your doggedness for its own sake, and Howard’s too. Tell them you deserve a raise!
Ames
P.S. Are you sure (I mean really ‘sure’) s/he’s not a ‘former student’ providing a foil for us?
(Still teasing!)
Howie,
Your organisation is not thriving, it is in the first throes of a lingering but inevitable demise. Neither do you or Siddiq any longer represent the voice of the majority of its members. You are merely the voice of the tumor which will kill it.
“Could a higher power allow its name to be taken in vain for so long and to hurt so many?”
Finally and obviously the answer is, NO!
Siddiq,
I got it at last! Sorry, I’m slow, its past my bedtime. Maybe you meant that there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated students out of a total of 2,000. That is, nearly a thousand are not dedicated, maybe wavering, maybe ready to move on July 15th? Is that what you meant?
(still teasing!)
Good night, I hope you rest well and arise tomorrow refreshed and ready for the fray!
Ames
And tell the Ouspensky office I mean it about the raise!
Although you may not be conscious of your utter arrogance in your posts, it is always present. You point to Golb as someone who is in one’s face, but you have consistently met and exceeded his attitude.
You’ve suddenly shifted into a “poor us” attitude that is highly unlike any of your previous posts.
You are participating on a discussion board in which former members are talking about their true experience with the Fellowship of Friends and its leader, Robert Burton. That is your choice.
If you wish to discuss your ideas with Fellowship members, it is probably a good idea to start a discussion board for them.
You will find compassion and attempts at understanding here because we’ve all been where you are, but you will not find any who agree that your school is a positive oasis.
It seems that suddenly and mysteriously that is your desire.
The responses you receive here are filled with good will. Mostly, the ex-members are polite and understanding, although I admit that some use expletives and sarcasm which is really not effective (me included). Still, your comments are so filled with logical lapses that it is very easy to desire to slap you silly with your own brand of communication.
In example, who knows if we are reincarnated. I hope so much that we are, although I question why I have that desire. It’s a very fun notion. Still, there is no possible way of knowing if that is true or not. That is one of the most fundamental human enigmas. We simply don’t know and wish we did.
No human being on earth, regardless of religious faith, knows, for sure, that this is an indisputable truth.
It is true that I want so much for that magical thinking to be true. I want it! I’d love to come back as…as…what? I’m not sure, but I like butterflies and jelly fish. But I’m a human being and no human being knows absolutely that they will arrive anew on this planet in a different form. (A flower? Well manicured socialite?)
Unfortunately, the only time I will happily be able to know that I am about to start life anew as a nascent being on this planet is when someone says to me after I’m dead, “You’re in luck. You did great last time. This time you’re going to be an octopus.” Or, perhaps, “Wow, you were in that great school and you left. You’re definitely going to suffer for that! You’re going with the other billions straight into a bilious hellfire. You had your chance, you wanton tart, and gave it up.”
Until then, I just need to explore endlessly in whatever form I’m given. Wanton tart and all.
“Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing.”
And in #14-138 you told me, “I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB”.
Notice anything?”
I didn’t say I don’t have opinions. How can anyone write a word without taking a stand of some sort? What I’m speaking about in 163 is a far cry from what you cite. I think you know that.
Uno – don’t blame Cathie – that’s me, Sharon.
__________________________
Yes, I caught that one Sharon; I had Cathie’s name in my coconut juice prior to reading your post, things got swished around; sorry for the mix up… The sheik canned my response to you I think because I mentioned where you live. How are you and the ‘big family’ doing?
As far as I can recall I didn’t blame you for anything; just attempting to be an old friend, anonymously, yet still a friend, particularly in July and August, these months will be particularly strong during 2007: this first week of July have already proven to be one coconut shy of Apocalypse Now.
Thanks for your answers Howard. You made a number of points and I cannot deal with them all tonight so I will chose two of the most important.
You said:
Here is my question to you: can you, as a former member, live with the possibility that “maybe I missed something about the experience, maybe an attitude prevented me from seeing another side of everything?
Howard my experience in the Fellowship was pretty good. I don’t think I missed a lot, but what do I know.
I do not and cannot know what you, Robert or others experience, or what I might have missed. I can only guess based on what I see. I have to weigh the evidence available to me, and what goes on inside you and others can only be determined from what I can observe about you, filtered by my own features and experience.
Could I have missed something? Yes, but I think I weighed the evidence available to me pretty carefully. Simply put, Robert’s values did not synchronize with mine. Was it an attitude that limited my vision? Perhaps. I like to think that it was not an attitude but the wind. The wind said it was time for me. The wind blew in new perceptions. I did not leave because I did not like the Fellowship but more to experience something new. It was time for a new world view, a whole new set of experiences and states – a world view, where I was no longer a follower. I wanted a world without walls.
I did not see myself as conscious, but after over 30 years I wanted to try to see myself in a whole new way. I had given and received what I could, and my life was running out. If I was going to perceive the world differently I needed to get started.
I was ready to gamble. I was ready to try trusting myself to find my own values. I felt that this was the only way to move forward. I was stuck and I was curious to see what I would come to value and I was not identified with any result in particular.
Once I reached this state I could not support Robert any more. I think my other posts and the one about the Baby in the bath water explain my feelings on that.
Could I have missed something? Of course. but I turned over every rock that I could for a long time. I did receive something but at some point I wanted something new. Would another 30 years have changed that. Who can know but I sincerely doubt it.
You said, “I am afraid of a life spent in the second state; that is why I stay in the FoF.”
This is exactly what I meant when I said you were afraid. I took a guess based on my own experience. This is exactly what every student fears. My experience so far indicates that this fear leads to a subtle identification which blocks higher centers. It also allows you to continue to support some pretty shady dealings.
Best wishes Howard,
We each have chosen our path and will pay in our own way. Maybe someday the wind will actually change for you and blow you out or perhaps it will blow me back in. Somehow I doubt either will occur but I meant what I said earlier – the fence is imaginary. In the moment, we all have to deal with the same things. But we each must go with our conscience or we will not move forward. Do not let fear, even fear of the 2nd state dictate your conscience. There is nothing to fear.
I turned to a page in Rumi’s book of poems the today, saying first, “What would you like to say to the Fellowship of Friends”… Honest Abe, cross my heart, this is the page I turned to… (the whole prose continues onto the next page for those wiseacres who are thinking that I might have chosen the one page of two that suits the blogs spirit best.)
From Rumi (pages 318-319, The Soul of Rumi)
To: The Fellowship of Friends
“The thief unties the turban as he runs, and rag pieces fall on the road. He stands holding
a single tatter. “You’ve cheated me.” “Yes, but at the same time I warned you of the fraud.”
This is how the world speaks to us. It delights in spring blossoms, even as they fall.
“Come tast me,” say the senses, and the next sentence is,
“Leave. This is nothing much.”
The young prince of the morning, the pride of everyone with his glistening body, fumbles along
at evening, laughed at, unable to remember his name. Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. “What happened to you?”
Your dung will answer,
“My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you.”
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they’re made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman’s craft diminshes. Listen
The double music of existence; Bu Masaylim’s false claims
to the song of the flower and the song of the thorn blending. “Buy this!”
“Keep away!” “I’m ready now!” “Beloved, we are gathered here today… ” If you can’t hear
this double music, it’s difficult to recognize what’s real.
With people you can look at
their teachers. Who do they follow? Each foal has a mare that feeds it. What nourishes
humans comes from higher. Donkeys drink from underneath. Magicians can be confusing, but
when Moses arrives and throws down the rod that becomes a dragon, how do the trick bowls
look then? When something that alive comes, illusory matters fade. They quit bragging!
A body’s death, even, is beautiful to those who see with the soul’s eye. Every genuine
form of money has a counterfeit counterpart. Bu Masaylim, who always added wrong
elements to any situation, said, “I am the guide of souls, beyond religion.” Reply
to such claims, “Don’t act like you know things to get money and power.” Follow a true
sheikh’s candle. The full moon shows the traveler where to go. When it’s night, take
a lantern, so you can tell a falcon from a crow. Crows sometimes learn to mimic the
language of falcons, as a human being can make the hoopoe’s call, but without Solomon’s
secret within the sound. Distinguish a natural cry from an artificial. Shameless people
memorize the words of gnostics and dervishes. This is the was every great civilization
falls apart, by ignoring the difference between sandalwood and pine. Discernment! Everyone has
discernment, but greed obscures the subtlety. Physical blindness brings God’s mercy.
Blindness from wanting, nothing. Christ’s crucifixion is one thing. The self-crucifixion of jealousy, something else. Fish, don’t keep staring at the hook. Remember where appetites
lead. Notice every set of eyes – the ox, the one-eyed man leading his donkey, the true
human being – …
______________________________
No one owns the favors of the gods, no one…
After turning to these pages, I am in awe, particularly in reference to the Sheik… utter wordlessness now, a deep thank you to Rumi for yet another lighning bolt within this storm.
#166
Ryan O’Poo
“We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers………….
At this point however we do not understand why ten and not six…………………
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
Thank you, Asaf.”
To Howard Carter (#14-163)
Some points about your post. You may actually be quite fortunate; you are having some experiences out of the cocoon, and you are getting plenty of ‘photographs’ for free. If you don’t value them because they are free, press the PayPal button and make a donation! The ‘standard’ of decorum is only your standard, so try ‘separating’ from the attachment. Of course there is a commonality of experience of those who have left; to one degree or another, we have all ‘been there and done that’. And of course, you are completely correct, your religion may be right (whatever that means), down to the last particular.
So much depends on viewpoint, doesn’t it? I like your analogy of the autoshop, and you put it well. But—my viewpoint is precisely the opposite of yours; that the autoshop has been fronted by a slick salesman, that it has in fact not succeeded in making a single honest repair (“…but we’ll fix that in the next lifetime, meanwhile, park the car in the back lot permanently to make room for new marks”) and that customers, having left, rarely return for a tuneup. Now you are complaining because we have reported the shop to the Better Business Bureau, and are spreading the word? Because we are picketing the building and trying to warn potential customers that the mechanics aren’t qualified, that in fact the customers have to get down in the pit without an instruction manual and try to make repairs themselves in the dark?
I’m taking the liberty of speaking for the rest of your critics here. My guess is that the majority believe that your organization has existed for 38 years and ‘thrived’ because of the secrecy surrounding so many of its actions. Now more light is being shed on the dark parts, I doubt it will last another 38 years. But, we are a pitiful few, as Siddiq has noted, and arrayed against us are the mighty gods (hope you haven’t pissed off the original 44 by abandoning them!). It is really a David and Goliath situation, and we really can have no hope, if you and your leader are right. So cheer up, in another 38 years you’ll have been proven right, and we backsliders will all be sizzling nicely (is that the new paradigm, or is it still that we’ll be rocks on the moon?)
Howard, I do appreciate your efforts, I truly believe they have served us, and you, well, they have helped clarify the thinking of the readers on both ‘sides’ (whatever that means). You, too, should get a raise in pay.
So, thank you very much for playing your part so well!
Ames
“The very notion of the ‘tradition of ancient schools’ is a product of Burton and the FOF so no wonder they would be the ‘only organisation to name those schools”
Fool, you underestimate the power of the pen. Now it’s the keyboard, the prime weapon of choice.
“…give me a break!”
That’s exactly what we intend…to give you, HC, and the other ‘followers’ a break from your delusions of grandeur, your manacles of gold. Your organization and leader have harmed and swindled enough people. You have been warned. The writing is on the wall.
Rumi has spoken.
Why else you have been newly ‘directed’ to study him?
Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.
One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.
His bed was next to the room ‘ s only window.
The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
The men talked for hours on end.
They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.
Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.
The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.
The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.
Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.
As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.
One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.
Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind ‘ s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.
Days, weeks and months passed.
One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.
She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.
Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.
He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.
It faced a blank wall.
The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.
The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.
She said, “Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.”
Epilogue:
There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations.
Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.
If you want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can ‘ t buy.
“Today is a gift, that is why it is called The Present.”
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).
Sharon 154: “So here’s a message to my friends who might be trapped – I have room, I love you, you are welcome to my help. You can find me on the Greater Fellowship website – send your request to Janna 14;104.”
Excellent message. The Greater Fellowship website keeps growing. Anyone who leaves won’t lose contact with friends, in fact many from the past are now popping up. The worldwide network of connections is being reconstructed outside the FoF.
Regardsing the FoF’s demise: maybe yes, maybe no. For sure it’s very vulnerable right now – a small push could collapse the whole pack of cards. Personally, like Sharon, I wouldn’t want to be involved in a lawsuit, but it’s certainly possible that someone might feel strongly enough to initiate one. Perhaps more likely is financial collapse. FoF finances were always a mess, even in the best of times, because of RB’s insatiability.
Howie 162: Nice post. Though I disagree with you about almost everything, you do put a coherent case for those who choose a path like yours. One thing I do agree with you about is that the obnoxious attacks on your postings are childish and unnecessary.
Siddiq 167: “As you write, sometimes hours go by without a single thought of presence…what many bloggers do not grasp is that because of this we are all so much more alike (out in the fog) than our lower self likes to accept.”
This problem arises for you because you believe you need to have a “thought of presence”. You don’t. You’re only in the fog because you think you are – it’s all in your mind.
Siddiq 170: “Membership is around 2 thousand, just as it was 6 months ago.”
Not for long. More and more are leaving, and many more are considering it. Many are hanging on for a while because they’ve been told they can pay either no or very low donations.
Somebody (#14-190), if Howard is Nick Sp—-ding, then he seems to have lost the sense of humor I thought I observed all those years ago. Maybe the weight of buffers erected since then squashed it? The posts are notable for lack of humor and indeed much passion. But, the rest does fit…
Unoanimo and Bruce, what lovely quotes. Words do carry energy! I also enjoyed the story that retroactively appeared at post 14-10, I mention it because some of you might have missed it.
Since there has been recent mention of ancient teachings, I’d like to contribute to the discussion with these excerpts from “The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects” by Alexandra David-Neel:
“The Buddha insisted strongly on the necessity of examining the propositions put forward by Him, and of understanding them personally before accepting them as true.
The ancient texts leave no doubt on this point:
“Do not believe on the strenght of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or priests. After investigation, believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others.” (Kalama Sutta)
And from the same book, on the subject of death and reincarnation:
“The answer to those that imagine that Buddhist salvation consists in the annihilation of the ‘ego’, at the death of the ‘person’, is that, as Buddhism denies the existence of an ‘ego’ or a soul, whatever be the name given to it, there cannot be any question of the annihilation of that which is held to be non-existent.”
“In reality there is annihilation but it is that of false views, of ignorance, and more exactly of the belief in the existence of an ‘ego’ which is independent, homogeneous and permanent, a belief which deforms our understanding of the world in deforming our mental vision.”…
“…The well-informed dreamer may cease taking pleasure in dreaming. He may stop imitating those dreamers who, enjoying the phantasmagoria which they watch and in which they play a part, persist in wishing to remain asleep. In truth, why do the dreamers fear awakening, why do they imagine in advance other dreams of hells and heavens which await them after death? It is because they fear that with the disappearance of the ‘images seen in dreams’, the illusory ‘Ego’ which is an integral part of them will disappear. They have not yet perceived that the real face of this chimerical ‘Ego’ is the face of Death. As long as the idea of this impermanent Ego lasts, this simple mass of elements which various causes have brought together and which other causes will separate, death also subsists. The Dhammapada alludes to the disappearance of this phantom from the field of our mental activity when it refers to whom ‘death does not see’, that is, he for whom death does not exist.
“The awakening is liberation, salvation. The Secret Teachings propose no other object than this to their pupils. “To wake up…The Buddhas have done nothing else than this, and it is this awakening which has made them become Buddhas.”
Also, in case he is still looking for examples of a sequence of twelve, maybe someone could suggest to Asaf to check the Buddhist theory of the “Interdependent originations”, also known as the doctrine of the twelve causes, which is known to contain exoteric and esoteric layers of meaning.
“I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).”
_________________________________
You must be a Russian female (?) Italian?
It’s a little humorous because as soon as I read “especially if you are a woman”… the name everyone is a buzz with just popped in my mind, without any mental-ing at all on my part…funny how the brain is just that kinda little intuitive coconut.
BTW… Nick doesn’t have a drop of Power, unless he’s borrowed it’s outward form in some ‘act’… I know him well, the V and F are spot on; usually Solar-Mars-Jovials don’t have much room for the earth hugging Power feature, there are exceptions I am sure; Patricia S. for instance.
Welp. If that is who HC is, then this explains allot; not that we need to much more to understand where HC is getting his coconut milk from.
BTW…since I am on the subject of HC007, after re-reading some of Siddiq’s postings, I was wrong, I really thought I knew who ‘he’ was, even that I had met him because of certain references in our conversation to ‘certain’ blog key-phrases and subjects… little hint-y playing between the two of us concerning identities, etc. Though now that Siddiq has reached stage Orange in his bottom of the barrel clawing, I do not recognize those nails across the blackboard… So, no, I can’t say I know Siddiq; yet, I must in some way.
Well Nick, if that is you, I can certainly understand your clinging now (not that it does not reflect all the dinosaurs clinging to the edge of the tar pits); I say this because I know your initial essence, and how Robert Burton has deeply exploited both your vanity feature and your self-pity, simultaneously, probably having convinced you that you’re working on yourself by fine turning your ‘daddy boy’ complex; only a rogue spirit-ego entity could do such a thing, while juggling your manhood eggs thirdly…
Yes, I am going out on a limb a bit here, I vowed to not write to HC, yet, I am writing to Nickolas actually; particularly if HC is not Nick… so I feel alright about this little excursion to the hummingbird nest… LOL, do you recall, when the hummingbird flew into the galleria during a sunday meeting and Robert Burton ‘keyed it’… LOL, then hummingbirds were the rave at ‘Apollo’, hummingbirds everywhere, even diamond studded hummingbirds…
Yep, its seems fitting though, the hummingbird as the mascot of the Fellowship of Friends, after all, its the only bird that can fly backwards to avoid the ‘dangerous’ unknown.
Wow, well, not to forget, I said it before, my love goes out to you, yet, it’s gonna be a bit of the ‘tough love’ thing; in many ways the Fellowship of Friends has asked for all this, I just turned the valves horizontal this morning on the Nitrous oxide and methane mixture for the stealth locomotive, who does not smoke, checked the railroad running through the Fellowship property, everything looks good, no explosives, no sign of railroad spikes missing, no stigmata on the tracks…
A request. Would it be possible to “announce” posts that have been released after moderation?
e.g. “14-10 has been released from moderation”
Those of us using the time-saving “Control+Down” function to automatically go to the latest entry, are likely to miss those posts that are inserted far back in the discussion.
It’s unfortunate, because the moderated posts often represent new voices, or those we’ve missed for a while.
Hey Ames, thanks, you are quite the teaser, but I just picked the number 1,000 because there are at least that much seriously dedicated students, this leaves room for some to to join or leave, and then there are newer students.
I have directly checked the membership numbers and it is what I said it was, still almost 2000–note that Mole refuses to say what the number is, just the comments are that “massive amounts are leaving”-type vague. It is simply not the case.
So then I asked for that raise…they told me to collect directly from you, Unanimo and Bruce. So how about a little “Penpal” donation to me old buddy?
Unanimo, do you know if I know that you know, if I know that Uno Animo, etc etc.? If you are who I think I am–we are in wonderful company! Good luck to us–dont forget to use the Penpal donation to keep me in business and I will do the same…
RN This problem arises for you because you believe you need to have a “thought of presence”. You don’t. You’re only in the fog because you think you are – it’s all in your mind.
I thought you have to have the initial impulse, otherwise we stay in our imagination, identification, etc., what do you think?
“usually Solar-Mars-Jovials don’t have much room for the earth hugging Power feature, there are exceptions I am sure; Patricia S. for instance.”
Solar-Mars-Jovials…Patricia, sorry, I don’t think so. I love Patricia, have known her for a LONG time, and have a very different opinion. She’s one of the members I wish only the best for, bless her. Unless there a two Patricia S.’s.
Sorry Bruce, but I have to ask you again to make a PenPal donation immediately. Make it worth my while, I may just leave this blog at this rate of pay. You all would be very sorry if only Howard is left to take shots at.
Siddiq, I regularly press the PenPal button. The machinery delivers mixed results, like the ‘New’ new math. If the Ouspensky office can’t afford a raise, you’ll have to go directly to Burton; he can certainly afford it. And when you do, specify cash, otherwise you’ll just get blue pills—and a request for a donation.
Siddiq, the current number of FOF is 1700 as I STATED IN A POST ON THE PREVIOUS THREAD.NOTHING VAGUE ABOUT IT.I ALSO GAVE MY SOURCE….LINDA T.
Seems like you are to ‘busy being present’ to take in whats in front of your face.Like words on a screen for instance.
And yes, I like to see your ass kicked here because you represent everything pnony about the FOF.You started off with your ‘King of hearts ‘ love- everyone -Mr Reasonable act but it’s falling apart now as witnessed by your last flurry of reactions.
I can guarantee Siddiq is not Collin. I’m not even sure Collin is Collin; he’s definitely not the person you describe, at least not now.
Also, yes, there are two Patricia’s with last names starting with S. I agree with your comment about your friend Patricia. From what I know about her, the other Patricia does not deserve to be slandered either. She just has a power feature, like a lot us do.
Another name inaccuracy I noted earlier was someone described as Allison, whose real name happens to be Alisanne. This one needs to be accurate, for posterity!
All these hidden identities are really weird. I for one would like to know who I’m listening to. If any of you masked people know me and trust me to give you respect and keep your confidence (including Siddiq and Howard Carter), please feel free to write to me privately. I might like to communicate something better not shared with +/-2000 of our closest friends. (Worth a try.)
Wouldn’t you think these people would have the balls to put a face to their names? Especially if they are so willing to defend their paths. I wonder what they’re afraid of, hmmmmmmmmm?
Do you mean that Collin is a completely different person now, internally? That would be wonderful. He was a very talented person, but to my way of thinking, he had some pretty fucked up priorities.
#190 Somebody:
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic.
He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue
with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a
woman).
ALL TRUE except I am NOT Howard Carter…..and I am sure
this is good news for Howard….however he/she is……
and…good news for Un_anim_ because he has not broken
his vow.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The “magic” on this page of the drama is that, before I read my name on the blog, I WAS formulating a post:
To ask Howard Carter
Siddiq…and
GOlb (if they are truly
current students)
to discontinue posting to the blog.
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
Dear Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb:
Please consider not participating in the blog….
Paraphrased:
Rodney Collin said that giving knowledge and attention
to issues esoteric, when someone is not asking for them,
violates the principles of esoteric transmission.
Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to “leave their space clean.”
Robert has also asked that we avoid “unnecessary”
association with friends who have chosen to leave.
So, if you would consider that no one has been officially
asked to participate on the blog except probably the
legal people, and that considerable energy has gone
from you, into the blog that is confrontational and
provocative, maybe…. could you find it beneficial
to stand down?
Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway
to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering
that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their
process, not yours. Give them their space. Generally,
people consult with those they trust before
making big decisions. If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
Also……Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb,
If you feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse,
you may be naive…..
in addition to offering a doorway to peace and healing, it also
seems to offer another doorway to a “War Room” where
sincere and heartfelt plans for action are being made.
It’s interesting that the Greater Fellowship site are always advertising their’s as the more, let’s say, Democratic, and we’re the Bush war mongers… LOL;
the little flurry of activity between Siddiq and Bruce happens all the time at Isis, in students homes and when Robert Burton thinks he’s gonna be late to get those cuff links or anything else that seems almost off his fingertips…
Those in the Fellowship of Friends who ‘think’ their beloved teacher does not express negativity or that the members of the beloved Greater Fellowship site do not express these dramas and negativity (whether its off or online) are very mistaken:
I like it in here, its honest and the material is not hiding behind a two way mirror;
do you guys remember those 1970’s mirrored glasses that were all the rave? They still give me the willies. BTW, Goethe had a real pet ‘peeve’ about the arrival of sunglasses; he detested them and would not speak to a person until they took their sunglasses off…
So, try hard, members of the Greater Fellowship site to not wear Ray Bans and please don’t hide behind the “…and we’ve not got the negativity thing’.
Of course you do, otherwise your vanity feature and good student syndrome would not still be stealing energy from your sex center to wiseacre such comparisons that no one with a hectare of human experience would ever take as sincere and a balanced picture of an evolving soul.
Shivapuri Baba said that meditation was for mad men; to try and make one’s meditation room away from every day environments, etc. Yes self remembering brews up all sorts of stuff: how do you think it is that Ouspensky said that “It gets worse before it gets better?” (I think the Fellowship of Friends has had that one covered for 35+ years).
Every soul has and will continue to wade through these ups and downs (inside and outside themselves); its where you land and what all this break dancing is about, where it goes in the moment, this to me is worthy of attention; actually everything is.
To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach; it sounds very familiar, yes?
At least their aims are different; I simply see all this as a great opportunity to be conscious friends, not formator-ily conscientious.
Until you wade through the swamp of yourself, you’ll never
harvest lotus seeds. This is something the Fellowship of Friends has missed in a very big way so far as taking the next step to graduation; too caught up in Robert Burton’s report card to consider their own as legitimate.
A whole school could be founded on Rumi’s works alone;
he knew about graduation, particularly after Sham’s death.
I don’t see the Greater Fellowship network as “us and them” at all. It’s very inclusive. Many people both in and out. It’s like the positive half of this blog. Both are needed.
Yes, I agree with you, we all have features, can’t get rid of our organs to spite our weight, can we?
You’re a pretty easing going spirit Joseph, take it easy, it’s July, no body is slandering anyone; unless you’re saying that pointing out one’s mechanics to assist oneself in understanding certain manifestations that need a little ‘work’ is something ‘personal’ enough to call ‘slander’…
Can anyone slander your presence?
Certainly feelings of essence can be slandered, though I believe anyone working on themselves, after a bit of introspection, would be hard pressed to be hurt over the color of their replacement luggage, so long as the airport
put back all the good stuff you got while out of town.
Do you not agree?
I do not believe its possible to hurt the feelings of essence with objective knowledge, so long as one is loving the traveler, otherwise you get what is most practiced in the Fellowship of Friends, negative photographs, whew!
It is very rare; I would say 1 out of 20 photographs given are ‘real’; usually they’re the King of Clubs saying, “Get out of the way, I see you already.” or the King of Hearts saying, “Come my way, I have not seen you lately.”
And then there’s the feature-play, moaning and groaning through the flute of true personality spittle…
Wow, what a ride!
It’s good to see you again; I thought you had left us, so to speak…
_________________________
to respond to 123 vera.mente
The will be no class action lawsuit as it requires dedicated attorneys. They must either believe there is a strong enough case and sufficient assets to make big money or have someone pay them. This is why I have repeatedly stated that it is the recently departed Fellowship members and currant students who have the power to cause a change. If a sufficient number complain to the government agencies like the office of the state attorney general or the United States atone for the Northern Ca. region then there can be a criminal investigation. If there is sufficient cause for an indictment and a trail then that material becomes available for a civil suit.
What grounds. Fraud, making false representations, violations of immigration laws, soliciting prostitution, embezzlement of funds, Falsifying financial records, conspiracy to defraud, make the whole board of directors libel.
The Fellowship is even a school of relative awakening. Robert Burton if he crystallized at all is a hasnamuss individual. The Fellowship still has devoted “students” whose whole life is centered on the belief in the divine consciousness of Robert Burton. Isis will be his shrine. I would not be surprised if there are already plans for his Mausoleum. Who knows what great miracles he will be attributed with. once he is dead.
Robert Burton is a clever criminal he has protected himself well. he is not immune though. Interesting what protects him the most is the lack of conscience and consciousness of Fellowship members past and present. Rather than wishing. Someone has to begin by filing complaints. I can’t do it the statute of limitations Is long past. Someone who left within the last years or who is a currant member.
220 Sam.1
Thanks for maybe putting my mind at rest. Id hate to think Nick had deteriorated so much. From discussions a long time ago he gave me the impression of knowing that things were far from ideal but being kind of stuck having burned his bridges. Mind you the slow insidious brain washing over the intervening years might corrupt anyone. I wonder what would have become of me if I hadnt become Burtons ” man of the moment” which ironically was what helped me to see the light.
I might be worse than the worst pro fofers, out using any spare time to bookmark.
As someone reminded us a little earlier “there but for fortune stand you or I” in this case I count myself fortunate for having escaped that fate.
Thank you Lord!
love to ALL Cy.
If Robert found a quote/ image in the schools of the past pointing to pre-life or after-life, he would point out that it refers to the stage before starting the sequence.
And key the after-life as prolonged presence..
“I can’t do it the statute of limitations Is long past. Someone who left within the last years or who is a currant member.”
_________________________________
Just a bit of info for all you X-men who ‘think’ you’re past the ‘statute of limitations’…
The year and a day rule does not apply to writing letters to reveal the fraud and criminal aspects of the Fellowship of Friends; after all, they are still sentencing people for crimes that occurred 30 to 40 years ago; so, Whalerider, you’ve got some room to move a few objective tidal wave splashes too… particularly if it’s not for money, your individuality would be precious to ‘the class’ itself.
Nothing is over till it’s over; again, its not the money, its the exposure and cessation of more of the same, this is to me worth energy and conscience towards…
And there is a bankroll ‘a former student’… There’s no less than 40 million dollars worth of assets floating around in there; all paid by former students, which, BTW, their investments are still reaping profit (dividends), particularly in regards to the vineyard and RVW.
Federal procedure has several guidelines for maintaining a class action lawsuit, they are ~
1. the class must be so large that individual suits would be impracticable. (11,000 or less will do)
2. there must be legal or factual questions common to the class. (church members who are under Robert Burton’s thumb, treated as and milked like cult members.)
3. the claims or defenses of the representative parties must be typical of those of the class, and
(any non profit organization whose even been defrauded)
4. the representative parties must adequately protect the interests of the class. (non profit organizations or churches)
And get used to the phrase ‘de facto’…
BTW, Bruce, I was very innocently using Patricia S. as an example of a solar-mars-jovial who has ‘power’ in their luggage, unlike the majority; to me, all of us are walking Rembrandt paintings with eye holes cut out for us to see out of.
______________________________
BTW #2 ~ Although there may be certain limitations in a class action suit for very, very X-men, this does not mean there’s no incentive to participate; any assets liquidated to settle such a class action suit could be agreed by more current X-men to be shared or given as ‘gifts’ to their ‘elder’ X-men.
_________________
Bruce 213: “I’m beginning to think you might be Collin. You’re very reminiscent of that snide, shit eating little jerk.”
Joseph 221: “I can guarantee Siddiq is not Collin. I’m not even sure Collin is Collin; he’s definitely not the person you describe, at least not now…..From what I know about her, the other Patricia does not deserve to be slandered either.
Unoanimo 231: “no body is slandering anyone; unless you’re saying that pointing out one’s mechanics to assist oneself in understanding certain manifestations that need a little ‘work’ is something ‘personal’ enough to call ’slander’… Can anyone slander your presence? Certainly feelings of essence can be slandered, though I believe anyone working on themselves, after a bit of introspection, would be hard pressed to be hurt over the color of their replacement luggage, so long as the airport put back all the good stuff you got while out of town. Do you not agree?”
Uno, what on earth are you talking about? Bruce slandered Collin (to slander someone means to say something negative and untrue about them). Joseph called him on it. It’s simple really.
Regarding lawsuits…
It would seem pertinent to get some facts to help make an informed decision. Does the FoF still have insurance against malfeasance of officers any more? It seems that the insurance companies would have run out of patience (read, raise their rates sky–high or refuse coverage altogether) now they know that the lawsuits indicate a pattern, not an accident. What is happening financially? What is the cash flow now, and what is projected for the future under what scenarios? What will be the consequences if the students who are ‘behind in their payments’ and whose membership will expire July 15th actually fail to pony up? How long can stragglers be induced to stay with reduced payments, and how long can the organization afford that? When are land and property taxes due? (Yes, the million-dollar paintings are real property, and taxable, Virginia—if the county and state knows about them). How about payments on back taxes owed? When are the loan repayments due? Are there any other lawsuits or judgments pending? Do any readers—who know any of these answers for an absolute fact—care to share?
Next, is it a good idea at all to initiate a lawsuit? As far as timing, the Fellowship may not have ever been weaker, less able to defend itself. Still, don’t ever underestimate a cornered beast or a cornered combination of Burton/Goldman. Or the power Burton has to raise big money in an emergency. Anyway, just speaking to possible monetary compensation, it doesn’t seem worth it if there is no insurance, who’s going to pay if you win? (and, don’t forget, who’s going to pay if you lose?) An organization smothered in debt, mortgaged to banks and Abraham Goldman to the max? (ask, how did Abraham acquire his present property on the northwest side of the Shakespeare Meadow? Not by ‘pro bono’ work, for sure). And, there is a statute of limitations, though (I know, from bitter experience) that can be set aside.
How about the effect on your internal world? What is your motivation? Are you doing it to protect the innocents in future, as Unoanimo suggests? To get revenge for being made a patsy, or getting reamed, or in memory of Brian S. or others? The forces and their order in a triad make all the difference to the outcome. When one acts, one is responsible for the consequences, intended or otherwise.
Speaking for myself, I will not join a lawsuit, though I would help one in any way I am able—if I agreed with the aims. That is the way I have worked it out for myself with the knowledge I have, and the being I possess. Additional knowledge might change that viewpoint. I’d advise anyone thinking of a lawsuit to deeply study the external and internal ramifications. Unoanimo’s and A Former Student’s suggestions of getting a government agency to enter as the active force is certainly another, more indirect way; there might be more, and different types of, unforeseen consequences, though.
Hopefully one of us who is a lawyer could enter the conversation to add perspective and experience.
And the results and ramifications? Some have been stated before. Others suggest themselves: What would be the effects of the ‘martyrdom’ of Burton on the followers? That might produce the opposite of what some hoped for. What of those who have stated they would die or kill for Burton? What about the Suzanne and Michael Ad—s, or the Dorothy Bs of the FoF, what happens to them?
What a can of worms! It’s beyond me; I’m one of those who’s put salt instead of sugar on his cereal more than once!
Hi Unoanimo #229 – I just wondered where you got this impression about GFOF site: “To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach”.
Sounds to me like something you’re imagining. (Well, you must be imagining, because to my knowledge you’re not even on this site).
Greater Fellowship site has other purpose than verbal fighting – it’s for connecting and reconnecting of friends. Like a big virtual party! You don’t go to a friendly party with intention to hit some faces, do you?
It is not for “us” or “them” – it’s for all, no boundaries between members and non-members and that’s what’s so cool about it! And yes, so far it’s been positive, friendly and just fun – like any good party should be, until someone gets really drunk and start fighting, screaming and breaking stuff…
Even the name (Greater Fellowship) seems rather INCLUSIVE to me, not an opposition. It’s rather like a big inclusive embrace, not a competition in size…
It’s not that someone is claiming or pretending to have “no negativity” – it’s just not expressed on GFOF site, simply because there has been no need for it there. Not because of some kind of control or set rules. People just feel friendly, glad to see each other – that’s it.
There is time to fight, and there is time to hug too. It’s all good.
I am sorry you’re missing out on it, but – as I told you in my e-mail – it’s not about anonymity or fear there.
E-mail me when you’re ready to show your face and I’ll invite you, with great pleasure!
“Uno, what on earth are you talking about? Bruce slandered Collin (to slander someone means to say something negative and untrue about them). Joseph called him on it. It’s simple really.”
____________________________
“No body is slandering anyone” meaning no one in (my post) concerning Patricia, i.e., me, myself and I ‘and’ the guy who has my shadow under his feet.
_______________
Rhino, are you just being silly because it’s T.G.I.F.?
_______________
Wow, we are the July opportunist aren’t we: scale my friend, scale; have you not heard anyone refer to themselves as “no body here is…” in the past participle, referring to one’s self as a solo participant with another in the present, who has a ‘beef’ or a ‘bone to pick’ concerning their actions?
Bruce 240: thanks! These things are indeed subjective.
Uno 243: I still haven’t a clue what you’re trying to say (your writing style is so opaque), but I probably never will and we’re wasting space so let’s call it a day on this one.
In my #221 “slander” was probably too strong a word. I regret using it, and was not taking aim at Bruce.
I don’t have any issues with Bruce or the what he says. It’s just that people who stopped being FOF members many years ago may not always know what current members are like today. This works both ways. I have cringed at some posts describing wonderful, life-enhancing individuals of 20 years ago who have by now hardened into stuffed inner-circle shirts. This is not Collin’s situation. There has been some very bad shit that has happened in the Fellowship of Friends, and at the same time there are also many fine people who have passed through, or who have somehow remained members…so far. In a momentum of understandable righteous indignation — indignation I frequently share — regarding the psychic harm perpetrated knowingly or unknowingly by Robert Burton and his blindest devotees, it is also possible to hit out at people who simply are innocent.
That said, slander is not a word that applies to the many blatantly unconscionable actions that have come to light through this blog, and I think it is a very healthy thing that people like Bruce, WhaleRider and others express their feelings without restraint. Otherwise remaining members can’t have a sense of what it really felt like to be on the losing end of RB’s mythic society. These honestly expressed feelings speak louder than facts alone.
I also think that no one is innocent anymore when they know the facts but do nothing about it.
#160 Thanks Bruce that gave me a good laugh….I know…I know I’m behind on this Blog….I’ve go to catch up…boy…you go away for a few days and the whole Blog changes
“This network came to life through the desire to exchange experiences and connect current and former members of the Fellowship of Friends and related 4th way schools…..so good to see you here…”
What us and them?? So far I have found the site sweet, fascinating, refreshing.
Thanks, though I already have several invitations.
Where did I get the impression?
From segments like this ~
“Greater Fellowship site has other purpose than verbal fighting – it’s for connecting and reconnecting of friends. Like a big virtual party! You don’t go to a friendly party with intention to hit some faces, do you?”
______________________
I think you’ve answered your own question.
_______________________
It’s good to know that you visit here from time to time; I will visit you too, though I have yet to do so, based, not on fear, rather, ‘necessity’.
I guess we all have to go with our feelings; for now I need to focus here, no matter how ‘dark’ or ‘fisty cuffs’ it gets;
sometimes in order to get two suns one has to go fishing in black holes; I like the spontaneity here and as I wrote to you before, I sense this is my environment,
something is happening in here that feels ‘transformative’ and stretches my being a little bit more than a prescribed environment (so far as my sense of ‘prescribed’) goes…
It was not meant to seem ‘harsh’ Janna, I know you’re a rather sensitive spirit and so am I, hopefully all of us are… I simply do not see this blog site as a ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ place, nor is it negative:
to me, it’s what pushes one’s buttons and freezes presence, turning it into static identification, this is perhaps in the minus realm:
is it not ironic that it is usually the person who has a negative response to what they see as negativity that gives the photograph? That so often a Fellowship of Friends photograph contains two snap shots, one of the photographed and the fingerprints on the camera.
I am pretty much finished with the idea of perceiving the obvious ‘obviously’, I simply cannot except that the ‘buck stops here’ when someone expresses negativity… then trot over ‘there’ where the buck hasn’t sharpened it’s horns (yet)…
For too long I have witnessed essence in deep freeze because of negative emotion neglect and shyness; and those who do this are certainly not the kind of spiritual beings that I could say have even stepped above that which they slide aside and pigeon hole with an extreme, i.e., hyper King of Hearts self calming and Sunday morning soft-man-of-war techniques (not so soft before and after meetings though)…
its a trap, to get on any fence, let alone find oneself buying white paint to give it a new coat before winter…
They’re beautiful people everywhere Janna, even those who are ready to stand self-revealed and express ‘negativity’ or ‘yearning’ without the ‘fig leaf’ of ‘modesty’, which is simply uneducated essence, whose acting, hoping the ‘act’ will somehow stick as their ‘role’… Does anyone really have a role? How can this be when nothing ends?
__________________________________
H.L. Mencken, wrote this passage about the U.S. early last century. I substituted the words “Robert Burton’s” for the word “governmental”.
This is how I see one aspect of this blog!
“And here, more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly—the unending procession of Robert Burton’s extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.”
The FOF is a church, and if it dissolves, all of its property goes to the State. And, it doesn’t go to the plaintiff in a class action, either, unless there’s a default on the judgement. Problem with that is you are behind a long line of creditors, the first in line being the mortgage holder. And, enforcing a judgment is tricky.
Otherwise, you would have to have the standing to lien property, and then you would have to prevail. It it highly unlikely.
Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated.
Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising it’s head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right?
The voices of reason here, like Sharon and Ames, are important. Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.
#227
“It’s interesting that the Greater Fellowship site are always advertising their’s as the more, let’s say, Democratic, and we’re the Bush war mongers… LOL;”
Hey, where do you see all the “advertising”? “always”??
Unoanimo, you are so active today! Do you have AC? :)
I know who you are. Actually I never read your messages before I found out who you were – they are too long. But today I read them all and found it fascinating. Keep writing!
Good god Uno, you are owlish and prickly recently – the heat getting to you? Maybe I can see your window from here. Can you see the buzzards – out in force today – circling over the valley looking for prey overcome by the heat?
So, what’s with the attack on the GF. It’s a networking tool for crying out loud! Ever heard of LinkedIn or Zoominfo or Oldfriends networks? These are the equivalent networking tools for professionals, business, & schools & colleges: same common technology & concept.
Members are encouraged to join the GF; this networking tool helps integrate past & present FOFers – a merely convenient apolitical initiative to connect old friends. This tool transcends the “them & us” polarization.
Don’t waste your energy on it. So what if some people begin critical or “negative” discussion threads on their own pages or the forum. L&LL, I reckon. Each one of us has our own road out of the FOF.
Hey Uno, I tune in many times a day looking for your posts. Don’t bristle over this one.
LTY
“He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).”
“If Robert found a quote/ image in the schools of the past pointing to pre-life or after-life, he would point out that it refers to the stage before starting the sequence.
And key the after-life as prolonged presence..”
no kidding – he is the only One that only Focus on Presence….. I’m after Him!
The aggregate of some posts has a subtly moralizing tone: not accepting what IS happening for people – the great diversity of reactions to the FOF experience; instead stating what “Should & Shouldn’t Be”!
…”should be over the FOF experience…should be moving on…, shouldn’t be anonymous on the blog and GF…, shouldn’t express negativity about the experience…, shouldn’t spend too much time on the blog…, shouldn’t contribute multiple posts in a day…”
That burdensome “Should” mentality is an outgrowth of the FOF culture – one feels its limitations in time. L&LL.
Was it Gurdjieff or Ouspensky who said humanity is in prison and needs to escape and that only a few could because too many would draw the attention of the devil……..
Posts #’s 202, 203 and 208 used the word PENPAL. Which is what convicts desire.
This blog is full of PENPALS. Well, I’m not to sure of the PALS.
.
Saw Asaf in YC… Got me thinking…
What does that nice, talented & sincere young man tell his mother and father about his life? What a quantity of deception must be necessary. Asaf is not much older than my own son. What a terrible grief I would feel if Asaf’s play were his, and I lost my son to Robert, in the way that Asaf’s family must have lost him. What indescribably rage I would feel towards Robert, if my son were used as Asaf is used by Robert. Involvement with Robert necessarily separates parents and child: the need for lies and disconnection is absolute. Robert deliberately usurps the parental role, explicitly denigrates familial relations, engages his “boys” in a corrupting lifestyle that burdens them with the need for secrecy and falseness, effectively separating them from all, excepting those in the same predicament. What a f**king sad mad pathetic tragedy is going on here, embodied for me in the sight of that nice young man, Asaf.
I feel outraged now for all the parents that are “bereaved” of their sons…every boy that Robert consumes is somebody’s dear son — subject to debasement, emasculation, degradation, and other subtler psychic damage.
Those young men believe they do not need help – reminiscent of the syndrome in which victims eventually willingly collude with and protect their abusers – but their resistance only increases the pathos.
I wish I had known more, earlier. Would have left much earlier had the “school” maintained the proper transparency. Perhaps – like so many – I am guilty of intentional ignorance.
Robert is a poor damaged specimen of a mother’s son, that we all molded and brought into being by our needs of the moment and our beliefs that needed an object. Without us, Robert could not exist. We created his role – he was merely sucked into the vacuum created by our spiritual yearnings. Then we groomed him to play the part perfectly – in precisely the form we expected and needed. Robert has done nothing but serve as the personification of our spiritual longing. Robert reflects only what we are and what we wanted.
All the effort was made by us: every material result and created thing in the FOF was achieved by one of us, fueled by our own personal inner desire for enlightenment – however we defined it.
Our so called “states”, “moments of presence”, concept of “self-remembering, and all perceived inner changes are subjectively experienced, and are the product of our biology, conditioning, imagination – unique and personal to each – not the consistent results of a method or “Way”.
Firstly, Robert served the purposes we defined but had few attributes other than those we subliminally ascribed and to which he subtly responded. Later in this drama, he began to perform the role more independently and he began to modify his own role according to his own ambitions.
This law-conformable & divine process creates every teacher/guru on the planet, so I believe – although, sometimes has good outcome. This process evolves each guru according to the requirements of the energies personalized in the form of a specific group.
I do not believe that there was ever anything great or mystical here.
Please be advised that Greater Fellowship has a forum (“group”) called Rude Argument.
It is not all sweetness and light over there.
Sure, it’s not easy to pull off a real-time shootout volley like it is here. Paths meander and branch, intersect and intertwine, double back on themselves, and leave you talking to the flowers.
Here, you have to run twice as fast just to stay in the same place. Your head can get chopped off in the blink of an eye. Grinning cats appear and vanish with disconcerting regularity.
I wanted to weigh in on the Greater Fellowship versus Blog controversy. From what I can see they’re mutually complementary. This one allows for anonymity if you want it and allows for more real time back and forth. The GF seems to be more about connecting with friends and establishing a support network for people who have left or are thinking about leaving the FOF. I didn’t quite understand what Unoanimo was referring to. I haven’t seen anything on the GF site forbidding anyone to ‘get negative’ or whatever , it just doesn’t seem to lend itself to that. I’m glad to have access to both – lots of really great, smart, funny people who have shared a common experience just talking together and learning from each other.
Janna:
You are providing a valuable service with your site, promoting a nurturing, self-affirming, and positive force in people’s lives. Hey, any chance you can share some of the gems posted on ‘the son of the blog’ with us warriors ‘over here’? Show us what we are missing ‘over there’, if you are willing…
I long for the day when the lesser Fellowship is closed down, and I can openly join the greater Fellowship. But for right now I feel like a surgeon wearing a protective face mask and gloves hard at work peeling back layers upon layers of diseased, smelly, infected, gangrenous tissue…I need the mask and gloves for my own protection.
*******************
To Whom It May Concern:
I think we can agree that there is an enormous amount of energy generated by having a conscience. Conscience allows us to experience indignant repulsion and righteous anger. But anger can be addictive. An appropriate use of anger is to use it as a motivator for change, for fuel to take action; otherwise it can deplete your energy, hijack your thinking, and turn your creativity into negative imagination. And unresolved anger turned inward causes depression and physical illness.
So if you are willing to channel your energy toward making a big change in how Mr. Burton does business let’s put our heads and keyboards together. We have keyboards, we have time, we have a pool of people online, and we have the law on our side. Thank God for Goggle! Putting pressure on Howard and Siddiq is getting us no place. We must focus our pressure on the body corporeal of the Fellowship of Friends, Inc. if we want our presence to make a difference.
Like Ames, I do not wish to be part of a lawsuit at the moment. Lawyers usually want retainer fees upfront, and the judicial system is slow. I am not looking for any kind of financial settlement.
However…
We can begin a legal public awareness email campaign for free right now.
All we need is for someone to post a sample email informing anyone who does business with the Fellowship of Friends about the true nature of the group and some email addresses.
Who do they do business with?
Where do they sell the wine?
Who insures them?
Where do they do their banking?
Who is the mortgage company?
Who is the elected congress person for that district?
And if you see a poster in your hometown advertising a perspective student meeting, just show up and give out a few flyers with this blog address.
Don’t let your righteous anger eat at you, transform it into action! Taking action will raise your level of being. This blog will be an archive for us to show our children that we didn’t just sit around…we collectively did something to rid the planet of this corrupt organization and depose its sicko leader.
All you have to do is believe that change is possible and be brave enough to stand up to Goliath.
I’ve been thinking, and feeling, about the depth of psychological rehabilitation that may be required for some who wish or plan to leave the Fellowship, or for those who have already left.
There may well be some very personal long-term conflict or damage that cannot be easily repaired by Greater Fellowship parties and offers of emotionality, although these venues are certainly needed, positive and most welcome!
A while back, I investigated a re-hab center in Arizona as a way for me to exit into a “healthy new life,” but their five-day evaluation costs $8,400. I don’t even want to think of the cost of a full “treatment ” schedule!
So, this is just a question to put ‘out there’ for folks to consider:
Could interested parties create a psychologically neutral counseling service with one or two professionals, working pro bono, who could assist those who wish to move on, but who are hindered in some way from doing so — instinctively, emotionally, or otherwise?
I think that pooling resources to make professional counseling available to these persons would be much more constructive than investing in trying to organize expensive lawsuits as a form of retribution.
Revenge and lingering bitterness is not condusive to a healing process. Ideally, we want to help one soul at a time to garner strength and find their new evolutionary path!
This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There has been almost nothing but total disdain to anyone who has honestly voiced some support for the FOF and Robert. Any positivity is bombarded with unrestrained negative reactions.
This blog is absolutely not doing anything, nothing any child will proudly read. Whalerider, you are in big time imagination still–sad.
Whalerider, I do mean no offense personally, I enjoy your emotional nature and postings, but when you come storming in some 20 years later and try to get others to take action–you remain anonymous–honestly where are you going with this?
presence, if reached is a kind of preparation for the fourth state, but Robert never talked about the fourth state.
It seems to me, that he does he not know very much about that state??
This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There has been almost nothing but total disdain to anyone who has honestly voiced some support for the FOF and Robert. Any positivity is bombarded with unrestrained negative reactions.
This blog is absolutely not doing anything, nothing any child will proudly read. Whalerider, you are in big time imagination still–sad.
**********************
(Siggiq please do not read this, I want you to remain in the FoF as long as possible. This is for others.)
Just because you have a positive attitude toward what you assume is representative of a state of non-identification does not mean that you are any less identified, any less asleep, than those that are negative toward it. This is the catch-22. All these protesters out here were every bit as positively identified with Robert Burton, with the FoF and its interpretation of the Fourth Way as you are now, even more so. They all eventually flipped and so will you. The key is to put your confidence and your objectivity into yourself rather than into your school, rather than into your teacher or anything else. Rather than struggling to belong to this group of believers, struggle to belong entirely to yourself. If you disappoint yourself under such conditions then you’ve no one to blame but yourself and as human nature goes you will forgive yourself even before you discover any fault with yourself. You believe that you are now doing something that we never did enough of, remembering yourself, practicing presence, but you are wrong. In fact you are not actually remembering yourself when you indulge in obedient, unconditional belief and faith in the organization that you imagine you belong to. Some of your I’s are strongly attracted, strongly positive, but these are not the result of self-remembering, these are the result of a magnetic center that will one day wear out. If you were truly unidentified, meaning that if you were actually awake, it wouldn’t matter to you if you were in the school, or out of the school, or never heard of the school. There is no more consciousness accumulated within your school, there is no more non-identification available within your school, than there is outside your school. This is what we understand and have verified that you have yet to understand. There is hardly anyone on the planet more identified than your teacher. This is what the protesters have realized, that while selling non-identification as an elusive product the salesman is as identified with the proceeds as is humanly possible. You will see this for yourself at some point, much sooner if you ever actually get near the salesman himself. Right now you are defending an imaginary ideal that doesn’t actually exist except as a carefully constructed illusion of words and artificial mannerisms. We’ve all been there long before you and have looked behind the closed doors where the A influence is tallied up, we all know that the idealism is a clever form of identification that creates the illusion of non-identification. You are not “present” you are only using the propaganda to stop the negative halves of your centers from working because that is how Robert Burton controls his sheep, he teaches them to stop thinking and feeling. He misdirects their attention toward the blinding sun while he picks their pockets and unzips their pants. This is what he calls presence and because neither he nor his students know the difference everyone remains more or less in the same blinding trance. We’ve been in that trance and come out of it. If you want increased emotionality wait until you realize that all this devotional excitement is a waste of your time, now that’s emotional.
Siddiq, how can you verify that you are not the one in imagination about what is going on? I mean, really?
And what do you mean by positivity?
Please take the time to answer these honest and serious questions.
Take care,
Laura
From my experience with the public health system in this country, there is a lot of available for people with no property and low income. It’s the middle income people who seem to be out of luck. When I left the FOF I lost my job (they were interconnected). So I went to the county and was denied help because I had a small piece of land and therefore I didn’t qualify for assistance of any kind, even though there was nothing on the land.
I would suggest something called ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’. This addresses ‘in the moment’ behavior and does not dabble too much into personal history. I think most of us understand enough to realize what’s bothering us but this technique gives tools to change behavior or negative patterns of thinking.
I was able to get this for my son at minimal cost to me. My son suffers from a child of a former member of the Fellowship depression. Growing up in the Fellowship and then leaving the Fellowship had a tremendous effect on the children there. Much confusion and fear.
I found that by calling and inquiring, the health department and certain clinics will offer services at a discounted rate for low income people. No need to spend thousands when this is available for many.
It doesn’t have to cost a lot. What it does require is professionals who have experience with the problems and needs of people who have been in cults. The International Cultic Studies Association (formerly the American Family Foundation) is a network of such professionals.
If you would like to correspond privately on the subject, feel free to write me at veronicapoe@gmail.com.
Sidiq:276 This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There is some truth to what you say, but I know you are a reasonable person so please consider this:
None of us really know the truth – you don’t and I don’t. It is also possible, even perhaps likely, based on the detructive nature of some of his actions, that Robert doesn’t. None of us know. None of us know.
For years, while in the Fellowship we guarded our thoughts. This produced a rebound, a sincere need, a need to be able to unleash free thought on the subject of Robert Burton. Within this rebound there are many emotions that have found expression. The result is not always beautiful or objective. But it is an expression of a need – a need that was supressed.
External consideration requires understanding that people, like you and me have needs. It means understanding that having needs is not neccessarily weakness. It means understanding that we all do not have the same needs. We are externally considerate when we allow others to fullfill their needs and to live their lives, and in so doing to grow to a more objecitve being. Some will not grow much. Others will thrive on freedom.
You are very externally considerate of Robert’s needs even though they hurt the Fellowship (economically) beyond measure. They appear to me to hurt the Fellowship in many ways.
My guess is that the moral indignation and resulting venom that bothers you is proportional to the hurt. Not that it is objective but that it is a result. It is a result of pain that could not be transformed. 4000 blogs of pain.
You and Howard represent a supporter of the hurt and the walls that guarded free thought. I think most of us on the Blog appreciate your position, your williness to participate, and your sincerity. Please do not take it personally that you are the recipient of some of the venom that is a result of the accumulation of suffering in silence.
We all appreciated the Fellowship. Some, like you and Howard still do. Most would admit to good things in the Fellowship and almost all agree that the Fellowship has attracted an amazing group of people. I read this (between the lines) in almost every blog. You are one of those amazing people.
But the Fellowship is controversial. It is difficult to understand. There is beauty and there is hurt. There are many lies. 4000 posts are a result of the need to understand it. To understand decades of devotion and extreme efforts, love and pain, deception and lies.
Almost everyone has a different relationship to the Fellowship because we all had different experiences both within and without.
But the blog is more than just this rebound. It is also a place for sincere students and former students to consider their most objective position in relation to these subjects. There are many jewels hidden in the mud and the mud is also a jewel. It is a reminder of the value and limitations of personal freedom.
My children, when they were young, were pretty good from my perspective. They often did what I said. They were (sometimes but not always) a representation of me and what I had leaned. Now they are not children. They are experimenting with their own position, their own principles, free from my worldview which had its limitations based on my limitations. Sometimes the result is pretty sometimes it is not, but there is beauty in their learning, beauty in the freedom that I give thim to do as they see fit. There is also risk.
Please do not take the attacks on you personally. You can be more than that. Bring back the love and compassion. Bring back the understanding that you too are not all knowing. Externally consider our need to be able to express our views without the rules and regulations. Understand where this comes from. Help us to understand even if it opens you to attacks. We all want to understand the hurt, the inefficiencies, the lust, the lies, the superiority complex along side the beauty. Help us to understand how the hurt and possible abuses of power are neccessary. Help us to transform our accounts. Understand that many think Robert went way too far and that they may, just may be right. Understand their indignation towards anyone that supports Robert and the status quo. Understand that it is not simple and that since we all have been there, we are not really open to the angles that many of us gave and have come to regret.
Consider the possibility, even if it is a bit threatening, that the blog is here because the Fellowship needs to change drastically to survive and that this change, if it is going to happen, requires open thought with love and compassion that is more objective than the hurt and venom. It may mean relating better to the outside world and acknowleging and respecting the morality of those that are not devotees. That if this change is going to occur, it means that you and others must support the change and help others to see the need.
So please keep blogging. Show us your love, compassion and understanding. Show us your objectivity. Show us how all this hurt can be transformed. Guide us to mature.
#190 Somebody:
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic.
He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue
with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a
woman).
ALL TRUE except I am NOT Howard Carter…..and I am sure
this is good news for Howard….whowever he/she is……
and…good news for Un_anim_ because he has not broken
his vow.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The “magic” on this page of the drama is that, before I read my name on the blog, I WAS formulating a post:
To ask HOWARD CARTER
SIDDIQ…and
GOLB (if they are truly
current students)
to discontinue posting to the blog.
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
DEAR HOWARD,SIDDIQ, & GOlb:
Please consider not participating in the blog….
Paraphrased:
Rodney Collin said that giving knowledge and attention
to issues esoteric, when someone is not asking for them,
violates the principles of esoteric transmission.
Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to “leave their space clean.”
Robert has also asked that we avoid “unnecessary”
association with friends who have chosen to leave.
So, if you would consider that no one has been officially
asked to participate on the blog except probably the
legal people, and that considerable energy has gone
from you, into the blog that is confrontational and
provocative, maybe…. could you find it beneficial
to stand down?
Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway
to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering
that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their
process, not yours. Give them their space. Generally,
people consult with those they trust before
making big decisions. If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
ALSO……Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb,
If you feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse,
you may be naive…..
in addition to offering a doorway to peace and healing, it also
seems to offer another doorway to a “War Room” where
sincere and heartfelt plans for action are being made.
Siddiq, sounds like you are (as we used to say) “losing your work”, or a bit on the panicky side. If it is a real school you should have nothing to fear, and nothing to defend. They don’t burn at the stake anymore.
I think it’s clear Siddiq, HC, Golb are here to feed us bullshit on many levels. It’s not the first time this has been pointed out.
Siddiq is obviously having a different part of his “being” evoked by the threat of an outside force disrupting the superstructure he or she has come to depend on for his or her “value” in the FOF.
It’s also been pointed out countless times that these FOF defenders, as one purpose, are here to monitor any possible threat to their community.
After these thousands of posts, Ni_k comes with, what I feel, is an extraordinary post, identifies himself, does what he came to do, and moves on. As opposed to the dishonest, cowardly anonymous manipulations of the Siddiq’s, HC’s, LOL’s, GOlb’s etc.
It’s clear they learned well from the master scammer, but I don’t really think they’re worth shit to a tree.
I was reading a bit through the blog and is interesting to read the HC postings, I was the same. A follower without any questions, for everything which might have been not right action from the FOF, the teacher and the students there was a good buffer not to see it.
I am not bitter about my time in the FOF, because man I did have some good times there, and I think it was the right thing for me at that time (by the way I believe in destiny)
but it is funny for me today, see how I was, I think I was a fundamentalist, and when I see my real me, is a thinking person, with is not willing to follow a leader, but in that time I was not me, just somebody.
In the name of God or whatever, it was okay to hurt each other, and not just RB took money out of our pockets, other students too, over priced housing etc.
And what should one say if the arguments are so good, dont be identified, is just your instinctive center bla, bla, bla
how can a marriage work, if one uses too much of this terms and one can not say what one feels or think, how can a friendship work if one can not say what one feels or think
and it has nothing to do with not being present, it is a buffer to not get confronted with once actions, with once feelings etc.
And is it not a form of expression of negativity when one associates C-Influence just with suffering and friction, and never with the beauty of the sunshine, with finding once soul mate – sure than one is identified again.
Man do I love it – being identified, coming back to the moment and do not have a bad conscience or self deprecation. Feels good being me, loving me and just be happy
I verified there is more life after the FOF and if I go to the moon – do I care, actually I would prefer Venus is warmer
greetings to all of you Helene
Hey Nick: I was just formulating an angle in the shower and then I read yours, which seems to connect in a certain way.
What I have found after 14 years out, being in the Fellowship disallows complete feelings on both sides of the human emotional experience; that is, you don’t feel strongly either way. And you would retort that you’re Queen of Hearts has been replaced by your King of Hearts. What a big lie that is!
Since I left the Fellowship I feel strongly about all kinds of things, good and bad. And feeling very good or feeling very bad is something that is discouraged in the Fellowship. The fallout from this is that it allows a person to accept all sorts of bad behavior on the part of Robert, a lack of empathy for others, and all kinds of emotional bad habits start to set in. And by example students are learning how to become a sociopaths.
Please spare us the work angles. I believe it is useless to try to talk a person out of leaving the Fellowship. The only way to ‘verify’ that your life becomes whole again is to leave. Otherwise, you are stuck in a quagmire with many others who are living incomplete lives.
In cased you missed them, there are two excellent posts that showed up late due to being moderated. They are #268 from Parent and #269 from Morgan Le Fay. Check them out.
Ni*k Spa*ldi*g-, Man do I miss you! You were one of my best friends. I don’t want to argue with you, but have you verified those words of Rodney Collin you quoted? And have you noticed how many bloggers really don’t want to start a class action suit. They want people to have a life outside of the Fof so they can see that you can “work on yourself” and “self-remember” without having to pay so much money and without having to live 25 miles from the nearest traffic light.
If you come to Los Angeles please call. You can consider it necessary.
Did everyone notice the tiny “smiley face” at the bottom of the screen?
Personally, I found Ni_k’s post fairly neutral and magnanimous. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I respect where he’s coming from. I didn’t find it all that judgmental. I didn’t feel any defensiveness being evoked in me by reading it.
N_ck: “Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to ‘leave their space clean.’ “
Well, what this actually does is prevent the obvious outgrowth of such discussions — the questions about why people have left, and comments about how many former members are living happy, productive, rewarding, and spiritually enriched lives. Additionally, the discussion inevitably touches upon Robert’s actions, the people who have been hurt by his actions, the cost of remaining in the school, and the idea that maybe — just maybe — they are doing the right thing by leaving the school.
Two of the most uncomfortable topics in the Fellowship are lying and former students.
I don’t know whether we will hear from you again following N_ik’s request. I apprecaite the way N_ik phrased his request (very open) but I personally hope that we do continue to hear from you.
I believe the blog involves us all (in or out). Yes it is healing for those of us that have left, but in a strange way it may be healing in a different way for those that are in also. I personally believe that I have seen some positive changes in the Fellowship as a result of the blog. It is more open. Many of my friends that are still in feel that they have gained in perspective and that the Fellowship has changed a little.
I think many of us underestimate the courage and independence required to continue to post here as a current student. You offer what is dear to you up for dissection and spitting on while going against the pressures from within the Fellowship to remain silent. You do provide balance.
Whther you continue or not, my hat is off to you for displaying such courage.
He was basically quoting the RB line. For me, that’s fine. I don’t think any person on a true “path” is going to allow (except temporarily) someone, regardless who, tell them what their right path on the continuum of life is. Eventually, those who continue to think and ask questions of themselves are going to see what they’re supposed to see.
Listen, I imagine that a LARGE number of members are reading this blog. L A R G E. The hierarchy is getting VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. Fuck em. Really, don’t believe ANY of the shit were getting from “you know who”. We still all have a occasional fling with the same non-discriminatory mindset we had when we were “in” and we were “good students”. There is no one from the group of assholes who is here for any other reason than to control and disrupt.
You can’t get indignant about people who won’t think for themselves. Those that do will continue to make the right decision. Including ignoring RB’s ridiculous “rules and suggestions” when they see something new out there and in themselves. I couldn’t give a fuck about the structure of the “school”.
The real shock when one leaves, after a short mourning period, is regaining a whole part of yourself that has been suppressed, abused, controlled and demeaned. One forgot the things they love, and the person they are. It really shakes one up. It’s like: “Holy fuck, I love doing this. I used to love doing this. This is me, and a part of me. Where the fuck has it been? Holy shit, Bruce…hello”.
What were providing here has never been seen on this scale in the school. If anyone tries to convince us that the members have much better things to do, either they are bad liars, or very fuckin stupid, but probably both.
Your leading message is “be present”. Surely this is what all spiritual disciplines say and have said: “Be here now,” “Live in the moment,” “Forget the past and future.” What is so unique about your approach?
The methods used for developing presence were perfected and established thousands of years ago, but in modern times they have lost their practical dimension. The Fellowship provides this practical dimension. Practical work begins where aspiration leaves off, showing us how and in what direction to make efforts against sleep and towards awakening in our daily life.
There is nothing to say against any other description of the experience of being present. “Be here now” or “Live in the moment” are good words of advice. The real question is whether or not one actually is present, and whether one is making the proper efforts to be present consistently.
The Fellowship seems to have softened its judgment regarding other paths to awakening. Many on this blog might dispute the “practical dimension” of other methods has been lost.
So all other groups are wrong or mistaken?
We are not making a statement against any other way or group. At the same time, a real spiritual school of awakening must be rare; for a person to relate rightly to the idea of awakening, he or she must consider it a rare phenomenon. Only in this way can he or she value awakening properly and make the necessary efforts to attain it. So rather than say that all other groups are wrong, we would say that, out of the vast number of groups available in our time, those that are real must be few in number.
If indeed “a real spiritual school of awakening must be rare”, who knows how rare they must be? Surely, in the vast sea of humanity, those who pursue “enlightenment” or “awakening” through any means are already a rare phenomena.
The simplest way, of course, to determine whether a group or discipline is giving you something is to measure the results. Are there any results? What are they? Am I achieving what I had aspired to? Many members have tried other methods before meeting the Fellowship. This is not uncommon.
Quite a while back, I asked “Howard” this “simple” question – how do you measure your results? S/He said they would get back to me on it.
“Measure the results.” The “simplest way”? What a great question for those who have spent 5, 10, 20 or 30 years in the Fellowship. Are you remembering yourself more now than you did years ago? (How do you measure this? How do you gauge “progress”?)
And if you cannot honestly answer “yes”, then how do you prove to yourself that having the perpetual “third force” of a school is actually necessary? Could you have not achieved similar results on your own (once you have verified your “sleep”, that is)?
Are you “achieving what (you) had aspired to?” (If you had aspired to awakening in this lifetime, then your hopes must have been dashed once the “truth” was revealed by Robert.)
I would like to hear how current members address such questions. (I have no intention of attacking your responses, as to this day I live with these questions.)
I wish this blog had existed when I was a member. Not only to be exposed to the revolting facts of the “teacher” but also to hear the current members interact with others. First it was threats, then ridicule, always dismissal. It has been very strange to see it written down and documented.
(btw, i finished a painting which has a wall collaged with snippets from this blog – hidden right in plain view because only blog readers would get it)
I have not posted at anyone’s request, just thought that the blog could use some balance, so that members, former members and future members do not think that the lack of response from current members is because they all agree with the statements made here.
Not pretending to speak for any number of current students at all, just my own opinions were given, I also believe very firmly that the more vocal former members here are not speaking for the majority of former students either. This is what has made this blog what it is–quite colorful.
With that said, I will get back into OUR cave. But as the Terminator said: “I’ll be back”
Many here have commented on and questioned the current members about their participation here relative to your exact thoughts.
We all know that contact with ex-members is cultishly considered to be poisonous and have wondered why they bother. (Howard claimed he’d been given an exploratory mission by the Fellowship. Siddiq claimed he was attempting to provide balance for any prospective member reading the board.)
Most of them have displayed rude, arrogant behavior and have, consistently, offered extremely insane representations. The elitist attitudes are abhorrent. The twisted thought processes are illustrative of cult behavior. They’ve displayed extreme negativity and, in that, confirmed the cult’s corruption.
Further, you have now confirmed that the elitist attitudes do exist and that members who have posted here are breaking cult rules and, of course, making y’all look pretty bad.
If there are prospective followers browsing this board, your post will be highly enlightening because it clearly illustrates the fact that the fellowship is a cult which requires members to censor themselves in order to obey a very strange pedophile.
Robert’s motive in creating rules that isolate members from contact with the world are efforts to further manipulate them in order to protect his financial interests by ensuring that no one is thinking or participating outside of his incredibly tiny box.
Your motive is to ensure that these strange members don’t continue to make the fellowship look as bad as it is, which they’ve been accomplishing with superb tenacity and great facility.
To Siddiq
You are very obedient. Perhaps they will also order you to consistently read the solicitations for money rather than block them. Anticipate it because they’ve found you here!
“If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
___________________
It’s very emotional for me to have started reading your first few paragraphs, then a profound shock at the end; I want to share this ‘shock’ with you, because I think it will be useful, similar to my ‘Rumi post’ some days ago.
The Hafiz quote you quoted ~
That is the very exact quote Robert Burton used on a young man after he said ‘no’ to Robert’s wish to sodomize him.
He said, “Feelings? No, those are not yours; Hafiz said, ”
step aside (let me sodomize you)..It’s you Hafiz who are in the way.”
We are all saints and beggars in our disclosure of words.
286 Nick.S.
Oh Nick You have become the right arm of the fof law.
How could you?
You are bigger than that!
I have sat in your silver bullet with you and I respected you as a man.
On the strength of that alone I will attempt to do the impossible with you and ask you to do something very simple, next time you see “The Teacher” remember yourself intensely and just look at him very carefully.
I and many others would still be there if not for him.
Cant you see that its about one of his main weaknesses, keeping current students away from former ones, is dominance and his fear that his greed will be compromised in future.
Keep the sheep in the pen until slaughter, keep them away from people like me, dont let them bite of the poison apple of knowledge.
I know you once respected me, but then before you knew it I was gone through my own choice, to live a life that I could also respect myself in living because If I had stayed it would have been at the cost of my self respect and thats too high a price for any man to pay.
Dont pay it Nick!
You are unlucky in that you have never been the “object” of your “teachers” lust because If you had you would know what I know, undeniably.
There are friends in the neighbourhood who would embrace you If you left, do you believe that they have cut themselves of from all possibilities?
I know that you have burned your bridges in your past life and invested all where you are but is it worth selling your soul for?
Why have I bothered to post this?
Simply because despite your foibles I liked you you old fool. C y.
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
As I am going to be moderated, I thought I would invite Walt Whitman to join me in the process.
Probably like everyone who is contributing to, or reading this blog – student or ex-student, this opening verse to “Song of the Open Road”, has at one time been an inspiration for our work – our life. Why? Because it is pregnant with latent possibility. Just reciting it can send a tingle of anticipation down your spine.
Yet when I think how far we have travelled in the intervening years, what a minefield that open road has proven to be.
Like this blog which winds its way through each day like an open road – vulnerable in its pristine state until it is impressed upon by a footprint or many.
And that is the beauty of this path – this blog. It is neutral – a tabula rasa. It is free for anyone to stamp their impression, in which ever way one chooses. There are those who will tell you not to – you yourself may hesitate out of fear of what might emerge from within you, but once you decide to step forth and take to the open road, you are the master of your destiny, wherever the brown path leads.
Many are travelling it now – some cover themselves for protection, others have thrown back their hoods to feel the warmth of the sun…
If you feel a need, you will. Enjoy it while it lasts!
******
Finally, I vowed if I were to re-contribute to this blog I would do so under my real name. So I throw back my hood.
My apologies to Nick. As I remember, you had more of a sense of humor than HC anyway, whomever HC is.
Siddiq #277:
If you truly understood and believed in the concept of multiple lifetimes and that each person is responsible for all their actions during this lifetime, “20 years later” means nothing. Your post lacks scale.
Where am I going with this? Where do you think? Robert enslaves his followers! That’s what it is like for me viewing the FOF 22 years later…sans the sentimentality that keeps you and others enslaved. I am not talking about shooting a horse with a broken leg here…it’s much bigger than that. It’s the whole kingdom.
No offense…you come across as one of the head slaves, who has had to crawl through shit to work your way to the top of the heap…and with conviction and sincerity you are advocating for his institution of spiritual slavery because you have the most to lose…Why should I listen to you, then? You are not the voice of balance. Where are the pro-FOF voices that are new in the school?
I am working from ethical principles and as my conscience dictates. You appear to be working from self-interest and as Robert dictates.
Old Fish in the Sea #285
“Guide us to mature.” ???
With all due respect, my friend, we would be better served discovering and nurturing our own inner guides than to seek or expect any mature guidance from a Fellowship of Fundamentalists.
“Hi Unoanimo #229 – I just wondered where you got this impression about GFOF site: “To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach”.
Cathie, you wrote ~
“Please be advised that Greater Fellowship has a forum (”group”) called Rude Argument.
unoanimo, hello, you addressed me in post ~309 and uttered the following:
“Hummmmm.”
Is that the best you can do?
Your communication style is odd. Sometimes you seem to just enjoy the sound of your own words and clever phrases, and don’t care if anyone understands what you’re trying to express or not.
Then occasionally you just hum mysteriously.
Spit it out man, what is your point?
You don’t by any chance have a “dominance feature” do you?
Hello Ni_k Spa_ldi_g,
Thanks for your surprise entrance. I’m glad you read the blog. Is this an official task, or your own idea? Whatever, I hope you are open to feedback.
I have a few thoughts that you, Siddiq, Howard, GOlb, and others may find useful. I have put a “ quote “ sign to show where your statements begin, and a “ ∞ “ sign to show where my thoughts begin. And please grant me that these are thoughtful responses, not an automatic list of “opposite I’s”.
—————————————————————
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed, using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
∞ Why are you making these many efforts, Nick? What business is it of yours? Or, is it your official business? Either way, what are you afraid of? C–Influence needs some little helpers?
My thoughts are these:
DEAR HOWARD, SIDDIQ, & GOlb:
Please consider not participating in the blog….
Paraphrased: Rodney Collin said that giving knowledge and attention to issues esoteric, when someone is not asking for them, violates the principles of esoteric transmission.
∞ But we are asking for them! If that has never been made clear enough in 5600 posts, I’ll put it formally now. I seek esoteric transmissions and understanding from all sources, including from past and PRESENT members of the Fellowship of Friends. Just because Burton says we are damned, lost, unworthy, or whatever—does not make it so (that’s just another unverifiable angle designed to inculcate fear in the followers). So, please consider continuing your participation. This includes you, Nick, we want your input!
Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst ourselves, about students who have left…This helps to “leave their space clean.”
∞ Let him ask away. But obeying him merely strengthens your buffers; it turns off the light and restores darkness. A sort of institutional lying and willful self-deception blatantly promoted by the leadership. Ask yourself, does this help me find out the truth, or hinder it?
Robert has also asked that we avoid “unnecessary” association with friends who have chosen to leave.
∞ Why not take a tiny step, and decide for yourself what is “unnecessary”. Burton’s generalized observations, requests and tasks help to turn the function of a true school (whose purpose is to encourage individuation and graduation of the students—based on personal transmission/instruction/initiation) on it’s head.
So, if you would consider that no one has been officially asked to participate on the blog except probably the legal people, and that considerable energy has gone from you, into the blog that is confrontational and provocative, maybe…. could you find it beneficial to stand down?
∞ By all means, consider this advice. But, also consider that firstly, how do you know that “no one has been officially asked…” is true, and secondly, it may be beneficial for you to keep on. For that matter, how do you know the post is actually from Nick Sp___ding? What authority does he have, if it is indeed him, and where does he get it from? Does he have any of his own, from his being, intrinsically? And why would it supercede what your conscience tells you?
Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their process, not yours. Give them their space.
∞ True, and thank you for that emotional perception, but it is not the whole truth; there is space for both their process and yours to occur, and at the same time.
Generally, people consult with those they trust before making big decisions. If there were any confusions, misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step aside…It is you who are in the way.”
∞ Sounds nice. But when I asked hard questions of “older students”, I was lied to by commission or omission, judged, reported to Burton, or given yet another ‘official angle’ that discouraged valid exploration and encouraged alignment with the institution—that is, sleep. This is useless or actively harmful for a genuine truth–seeker. Like KA, I wish I’d had something like this blog to consult.
The Hafiz quote is out of context. The FoF appears to specialize in quotes taken out of their original context, and put in a new context to suit official purposes; and, almost all are taken from dead authors who are not around to protest their misuse. In #14-306, Unoanimo gives a truly hideous example of this. The best interpretation I can put on this subject is that deliberate misuse is tantamount to a lie, and in Unianimo’s example, is high crime.
ALSO……Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb, If you feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse, you may be naive…..
in addition to offering a doorway to peace and healing, it also seems to offer another doorway to a “War Room” where sincere and heartfelt plans for action are being made.
∞ If you meant, just (and only) neutral, the posters might be naïve. But, this blog can and has served as active, passive, and neutral force in a variety of triads. Find out and explore each for yourselves, and invite your friends. Have you learned anything, for yourself? If yes, then stay open that you may learn more! If, after all this effort on your parts, you can genuinely say you have learned nothing at all, then Nick may have a point.
This “War Room” stuff. Nick, whatever Abe may be promulgating about “conspiracies” and “cabals” (I’ll have to post some of the letters he sent around the time I left, one of these days), what you see on this blog is it. Just talk at this time.
I’d bet, and I’d appreciate your take on this, is that Burton and Abe, the Board and the “power possessors” are burning a lot more midnight oil than ‘we’ are on preparations for any ‘war’. But hey, ask around, if you don’t already know, and keep us informed! (Now I grant you, this blog is the ground for a “Battle of Belief Systems”—and the weapons are ideas, against which there is no defense.)
This truly being my first and last post……
∞ But, not so! Just a few minutes later, you posted a last word that you thought too important to forego. Think of it as another shock. Rather, open yourself to this idea—you have much to contribute; instead of lurking, join in whenever you feel you can serve others or your self, now and in the future. We’d appreciate having you here.
Love to all who wish…
∞ And much love to you, dear Nick!
P.S. The layout is an experiment. I thought I’d try some html code in here. If it turns out an unreadable disaster, forgive me, and I’ll post it again in ‘clear’. Ames
Yes, you are right. We have been guided enough. I must have had a momentary relapse. I don’t won’t them to guide me – but I don’t mind them trying.
But as thankful as I am that I left, I don’t like the us versus them attitude. I don’t like it when it comes from within the Fellowship and I also don’t like it when it comes from those of us that have left. We all were students. We all worked together. We all allowed ourselves to be deceived together. We all supported it for a while. Odds are I was recently friends with one or both of them. I am happy to encourage them to share their experience and to try to be as open and honest as they can be.
Siddiq, Howard and GOlb are not fundamentalist. Remember Be Careful or LOL. They had no hearts. Howard and Siddiq have hearts.
Oddly, I am even thankful to “Be Careful”. Were it not for those repulsive posts I might not have been motivated to post to the blog and I might not have left. Now I see that the Fellowship is always telling students to be careful and I am glad to be a bit more free from that. Howard and Siddiq have the courage to post and I appreciate that.
For me, although it’s a stretch, I would say that it’s not Nick; that’s it’s either HC or Siddiq’s conscience (or both) that has ‘nearly swallowed their tongues’ and seen the light, that posted that ‘blog beware’ sign, to give themselves a back door.
If it is ‘Nick’, then he has simply (so to speak) given us yet another example of cult-shackle rattling; and, personally, whenever I hear a ‘rattle’, I have three things in hand, a shovel for rattlesnakes, ‘baby food’, and ‘my hand in a glove’ in case it’s both.
There’s allot of Freud (not Buddha) going on in the Fellowship of Friends; its no coincidence that Robert Burton’s first ‘my-law abiding- trust me’ lie was built on the subject and constitutional aspect of chastity, which, being a lie, simply shows his deepest area of pain body identification and automatic-pain-propagation (making his ‘school’ one of relative awakening, where transforming what the teacher puts forth is religious-duty, identification with ‘role’ as ‘I see you Robert, do you see me seeing you?’
This is beyond the inner-man, who the forefathers of ‘The Way’ (and mothers) point to; not to forget that it was a being in a female body that awakened Meher Baba; the Fellowship of Friends has little room for the ‘quiet sister’;
although, I have noticed that Robert Burton’s name is not being printed on event brochures as usual;
is this blog making/giving suggestive, better camouflage techniques for Burton and friends by stating the ‘not so obvious’? Reverse psychology? Seeming to pay more attention to the slaves than their first-force-master?
No, Robert, it will not work, whoever is reading this I am writing (or anyone on this blog, whose attempting to be sincere and balanced, past profundities and ‘higher instinctive center’ looks from you) will ‘pass it on’ (the grape vine is getting shorter and shorter by the day), take a look at the vineyard BTW. Your humilty-invisibility has been seen too many times and means nothing; particularly after witnessing ‘Nick’s’ soul-tumor-result, compliments of Robert Burton (and Nick).
Written above, “shows his deepest pain body identification and propagation;” marks, for me, that Robert Burton is ‘still’ (and yes, I am using numbers for the sake of ‘certain scales reading this’) a man #4.
A man #5 glows a “certain something”, (and I don’t mean to sound ‘New Age’ here), this ‘glow’ is a kind of intentional suffering that when looked at by the yearning of another seeker (a seeker whose ‘doing the same’) can be felt;
I have looked at Robert Burton, face to face, many, many times: I see an opportunist, this is all… he’s surfing a wave that some other third force created, a third force that he does not ‘pay for’; if it seems he does, it is by the projected energy of his so called ‘students’ individual payments being artificially attributed to his proximity, again, an opportunist.
__________________
Ames, you quoted from ‘Nick’ ~
“Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their process, not yours. Give them their space.”
Another example of the defense of a School of Relative Awakening; yet, do you ‘Nick’, see that by posting here, that HC, Siddic and Golb are looking for a doorway to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering that Robert Burton cannot keep to his own first line, that he has artificially made into ‘second line’ and ‘third line’ for thousands; sounds like dominance, vanity, and greed to me.
Second to the aim of this blog; I want its radiations to fall upon its ‘first force’ and sink in; truly, Robert Burton, I pray for your soul, I pray for your letting go of all this that has defined you as ‘thou’ and ‘tho’…
_____________________________
Many fine posts lately, thanks to all for the good reading.
279 Graduates
In a word, brilliantly articulated (all right, 2 words). Thanks.
286 Ni_k Spa_ldi_g
Hey Ni_k, how are you? Long time no yak. Ni_k, I have very fond memories of our times together. (Even though you made me sleep on the floor in Old Westbury! haha) I always thought you had more talent as a standup comedian than for the 4way, but what do I know? I know we sometimes rubbed “sore spots” together, but I always admired your way of shaking it off with a smile. Hope you are well and always welcome contact.
It would be great if more FoF people would post here, not fewer, in my opinion. The blog is useful to many.
On FoF Website:
Should we call it the Fellowship of Divine Presence now? Nice history eradication project on the FoDP website, a little like the revisionist history texts of the Soviet era, nyet? Don’t like your history? Just wipe it out—bingo, a new church is born.
312 Ames
I dunno Ames, can you make the quote marks a little smaller? Like 1/2 the size???
Oh, Ni_k, I was curious about the “abandoning Shakespeare” rumor. Is it true? Curious about the reason for it, whether people are still “permitted” to read S. on their own, just really puzzled me and I thought you might know. Thanks.
Old Fish in the Sea:
Thanks for your post. Your voice is important here. Sure, I’m all for more open-minded discourse with anyone ‘out’ or still financially supporting the FOF, the trouble is, it’s not a trickle up kind of organization…it’s the other way. So in this case, even if we magically converted siddiq or ‘HC” to see the light, so to speak, it wouldn’t really matter to their spiritual master. I have issue that there are no viable checks and balances in this corrupt organization. Legally corporations, especially non-profit ones, are chartered to have checks and balances. The FOF is run as a dictatorship, that’s different. Dictatorship is not a stable form. They usually don’t end well and have a hard time carrying on unless the dictator has a son…
Nick, Ames and unoanimo:
Thanks for that. Who knows what would Hafiz say?
The intentional misuse of b-influence quotes to further one’s perversions…high crime as you say, Ames….sure feels like a ‘spiritual crime’ to me…yup, offending the spirit(s) of the quote…using it to abuse and manipulate someone in such a vulnerable state, your young ‘student’ follower (for goodness sake!) is a total desecration of the intent behind the poem!
By supporting the organization of the Fellowship of Friends, members are complicit in this play of crime. You pay, you play. There’s no middle ground, I am sorry to say.
You guys…its kinda like paying for an insane insurance policy that’s on acid…and the twisted nightmare is that you end up in servitude to freakin’ insurance agent…even having to pay to see or talk with him after you’ve signed your whole damn life off to him…and the trip just gets weirder and weirder…and you keep working harder and harder and paying more and more in hopes of building up some kind of credit in the ‘afterlife’ each time the light bulb of presence goes off in your head??? Which you realize way into it that it is a great deal for Robert, because he doesn’t have to pay out your policy until after you are dead…when you presumably…hook up with him or something?…in some other ‘limbo’ plane to get your credits?…or maybe he’s going to be there to vouch for you or something…but that’s starting to seem a little suspect since c-influence doesn’t appear to have a very high regard for him…cuz they kept showing him all those wrong ‘signs’ about everything…and you are really not sure one way or the other what’s going to happen in the end until it happens…
Well, sounds fishy to me…still does after 22 years.
…and you really don’t have anything in writing, either…?
Hi Unoanimo,
If inventing ‘Nick’ was HC’s or Siddiq’s escape route, then it would be fear, not conscience, that led them to that action…. a completely different triad.
That’s the way I see it, at least!
It’s hard to ignore your post and not see it as a confirmation, coming as it did on 7-7-07 – “octave complete?”
I actually came to this point for most of the same reasons you stated and stopped posting for a month or so earlier. I looked at coming back in the sense that it had a set time involved and it now appears to have played out. I think GOlb also sensed something a few days ago.
P.S. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to you in the humour department; who wouldn’t. But for the record I did bite my lip and let several good ones go by due to the wit exercise. Such is life.
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
DEAR HOWARD,SIDDIQ, & GOlb:
******************************
Translation of jack-of-hearts, soft-peddled cult-speak:
“Robert has had enough of this, I have been sent to inform you that we are actively trying to find out who you are. Stop posting now or you will be out of the school when we do figure it out.”
It’s hard to ignore your post and not see it as a confirmation, coming as it did on 7-7-07 – “octave complete?”
I actually came to this point for most of the same reasons you stated and stopped posting for a month or so earlier. I looked at coming back in the sense that it had a set time involved and it now appears to have played out. I think GOlb also sensed something a few days ago.
P.S. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to you in the humour department; who wouldn’t. But for the record I did bite my lip and let several good ones go by due to the wit exercise. Such is life.
There’s still one or two to address shortly.
HC
**************************
Your constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment right to speak your mind publicly has been revoked by the Fellowship of Friends because you are too incompetent to speak about and defend the ideals of your school. You have been told to shut up because, though you have enough drive-of-vanity, you do not possess the intellectual capacity not to make a fool out of yourself and thus reflect poorly on the general intelligence of your cult. Accept the photograph and relinquish this futile obsession to distinguish yourself as a man of higher reason and relativity.
Clue: “humour” spelled in the Canadian, British, Australian or even Indian variant. Not an American.
There should be established a formal organization with religious/church legal status, with officers/ministers, with the aim to unify the informal friendships developed through similar experiences into a coherent aim. Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. There could be a monthly single fee of $25 or so used to secure offices, property, legal counsel and all the necessary accessories of a church, located in the town of Oregon House. Let’s get organized and decide on an aim. There are people like Charles R., James B., Joel F., Carl M., Ames G. (and more) and any number of highly competent women to direct unified efforts toward a genuine purpose.
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Hi everybody,
I feel a bit spaced out today, not much intellectual juice flowing, but still wanted to say:
I love this blog, I love the confrontations, the discomfort, the surprises, the freedom, the openness, the confusion, the mysteries and disclosures…
thanks everyone for bringing extra turmoil in my life, you are fuel for my fire.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
Graduates #324: …..”you do not possess the intellectual capacity not to make a fool out of youself and thus reflect poorly on the general intelligence of your cult. Accept the photograph and relinquish this futile obession to distinguish yourself as a man of higher reason and relativity”.
This was directed to somebody and I dont know exactly who. But, if they dont accept the photograph, I’ll accept it for myself.
Rodney Collin said the 4th way ideas must be passed on even poorly. I try to always apologize first. As in, “I’m not the best example of what I’m trying to explain”. That’s when I did try. A long time ago.
You propose “…Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. ”
I agree with Veronicapoe, it’s never going to happen. Who would pay to join a “vaguely spiritual” group whose ulterior motive was to undermine the FOF? Sorry, life’s too short.
I think what really makes the Inner Circle nervous is talk (like Whalerider’s proposal) of letter-writing to key players in the FOF’s shell game: the insurers, the suppliers, the state and federal agencies whose goodwill and tolerance they depend on. That might have an impact.
Probably the strongest appeal to public outrage would be thoughts like #268 Parent posted here recently…that children are being brought up in an environment where the leader’s sexual excesses are (tacitly or not) condoned and paid for by the followers.
Unoanimo:
Thanks for the love, my cup runneth over. Maybe you really do have a point:
Regarding #14-326 from Graduates, and #14-255 from Not an Attorney…
I am also very much not an attorney! Yet, I seem to remember from previous research (13 years ago) that in a weird way, both possibilities are true. That is, if the FoF collapsed or were dissolved, the state would take it over. BUT, if there is another non-profit around that “has a similar charter” (aims), then the state can hand over the assets to that organization. Whether it is actually obliged to do so is another matter. I would guess that it would free up state resources the quicker, if the judge/receiver/special master/arbitrator decided to do that, and so save the state some grief. But consider, is it actually worth it? Just in the material realm, the state gets ‘remaining assets’, sure, but after all the primary creditors (banks, Abraham Goldman, note holders) ahead have been paid off. We already know that Burton is one of the most inefficient, wasteful ‘managers’ of assets in recent history. That’s just the part in public view; we don’t know what has been covered up. We don’t know what the state and IRS would do if they discover the “immensely creative and increasingly desperate book-keeping” that has inevitably been going on as a result of the “C-influence wants…” style of management/undisciplined dictatorship; I’d bet they’ll blow a few gaskets!
For myself, I don’t think “bringing down the FoF” as a primary aim is valid under these circumstances; but, pointing out to anyone interested that the structure is built on sand, and how, is quite another matter.
Incidentally, but not entirely unconnected…
I believe, from observing myself, that one of the aspects some of those ‘out’ miss quite a bit is the community. I’ve explored joining many intentional communities myself, including visiting some, to see if I can legitimately satisfy that longing without giving too much to someone else’s vision. So far, no luck. I can see, for myself, the process of wanting to belong to a tribe, to be valued, to contribute something worthwhile corresponding to my essence and gifts, right here on the blog; and I believe I can see this happening with others. And why not, our genetic code demands, and our culture supports, social networks; it is part of being human, and I think Elena Haven is spot on when she says that bringing consciousness to community cannot be separated from raising our individual consciousness.
With love to you all, ‘in’ and ‘out,
Ames
P.S., Siddiq and Howard, I wrote #14-314 with mostly you in mind…
So, don’t go back to the cave, please!
Uh, am I the only one, or does it seem at the moment that the intellectualizations of “Howard Carter” and “Siddiq” over the past couple of months are a lot less impressive now compared to their being run off the blog with nary a whimper by a single post from Ni_k Spa_ldi_g????????!
Interesting parallels with the ‘spirit of the times’:
”
Rosa Brooks writes in her Los Angeles Times opinion column: “Like freed hostages who gradually cease to identify with their captors, mainstream media outlets seem to have been seized by a new spirit of liberation in their coverage of the Bush administration. Lately, we’ve seen a rash of astonished, outraged stories and editorials relating to the administration’s recently discovered malfeasance. . . .
“[I]f the media have finally noticed that the emperor has no clothes, it’s all to the good. Still, I’m troubled by the suggestion that all of us were somehow ‘tricked’ by administration subterfuge into accepting its nefarious policies. . . .
“Someday, historians will ponder our strange collective passivity in the face of Bush-Cheney madness. Why did the editorial boards of our major newspapers either parrot the administration line or raise only muted criticism on so many issues, and for so long? Where were the tough journalistic questions? Why didn’t more members of Congress protest the administration’s blatantly unjustified policies and transparent constitutional outrages? . . .
“It’s hard not to conclude that collectively, we were all too cowardly, slothful or puffed up with our own self-importance to ask the right questions and stand up for principle. The administration didn’t trick us; we tricked ourselves.”
“
Regarding 14/326 – a new organization staffed by the old staff – that’s never going to happen.
*****************
If something like this were to happen these are the guys that would have my unconditional confidence, they have paid their dues and know the FoF/RB better than most of us. They are mensches and the majority would feel confidence in them.
You propose “…Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. ”
I agree with Veronicapoe, it’s never going to happen. Who would pay to join a “vaguely spiritual” group whose ulterior motive was to undermine the FOF? Sorry, life’s too short.
******************
See, you’re not being coerced into sexual activity while stuck without alternatives in a cult of sodomy so naturally you have better things to do than worry about it.
The spiritual aims of such a church could be something like: the promotion of self-consciousness, conscience and human decency.
================================
Ames Gilbert
For myself, I don’t think “bringing down the FoF” as a primary aim is valid under these circumstances; but, pointing out to anyone interested that the structure is built on sand, and how, is quite another matter.
******************
A legally established organization could provide a “half-way house” type of accommodation to those trying to escape from Burton’s cult of sodomy, maybe provide a plane ticket back to Guatemala or such places. The usefulness of such an endeavor must be instantly recognizable, along with the development of a community of kindred spirits hoping to inspire and nurture one another.
There should be some more intelligent action than complaining and criticizing on the internet and socializing, it is somewhat clear that the blog is losing some of its momentum and there should be a next step.
No, I had the same impression. I still feel their presence was to control and disrupt. But their posts DID illustrate what one becomes when you abandon discrimination. And they were annoying, anonymous little putzes. But you know they’ll be back… like a bad penny.
““It’s hard not to conclude that collectively, we were all too cowardly, slothful or puffed up with our own self-importance to ask the right questions and stand up for principle. The FOF didn’t trick us; we tricked ourselves.”
My own opinion is that one needs to assimilate, transpose, digest and own one’s experience with the FOF when one leaves. It might be different for everyone else, but I would never have considered going to a “group” to process my experience in the FOF. And I certainly would never join a “group” now, beyond this blog and the wonderful GF network. But for me it’s more of a social thing than a necessity. If it were all to disappear, I would continue to live my life as I have before and during. But it is pretty nice. But as for a “formal group”….I don’t play well with others.
Even though I realize my weaknesses, vices, short-sighted opinions etc, I think I got what I needed to be able to answer any spiritual question that I might manufacture internally. The problem, of course, is whether one can accept and act on the answers we can produce ourselves from our higher parts. I haven’t been able, the past few years, to come up with a question that I couldn’t answer myself, according to the cosmology I’ve developed by my experiences.
I’ve always felt that the “perpetual seeker” is more of a perpetual avoider. Just my opinion.
Not to denigrate always expanding one’s knowledge of “important things” and other system’s views. They can always expand one’s understandings.
At #1-131 there is a reference to a Nick S. I found it while back pedaling. Whether it’s the same Ni-k Spa-ldi-g that everyone loves I cannot tell. Nor, did I check the posts above 1-131. But, post 1-131 also seems to love a Nick S.
You recognize the integrity of the people you mention, which is a fine thing. But I suspect that many xFoFs, including those to whom you toss flowers, no longer see the so-called fourth way as anything vital. “Hierarchy now hiring for the following positions: naive idealist (many positions available, must contribute money and labor in exchange for illusions and/or bitter wisdom); guru (sociopathy a plus). No benefits.”
“If inventing ‘Nick’ was HC’s or Siddiq’s escape route, then it would be fear, not conscience, that led them to that action…. a completely different triad.
That’s the way I see it, at least!”
____________________________
Maybe this will be clearer ~
They “fear” their “conscience”… So, see, we’re still both paddling the same boat.
___________________
You also wrote (concerning the IRS finding out about the Fellowship of Friends ‘shade tree farm’) ~
“I’d bet they’ll blow a few gaskets!”
________________________________
Yes, and throw a couple rods out the engine block as well.
________________________________
Hello ~ Graduates
You wrote ~
“There should be some more intelligent action than complaining and criticizing on the internet and socializing, it is somewhat clear that the blog is losing some of its momentum and there should be a next step.”
________________________
Oh, BTW, that “next step” started about 6 weeks ago; I mean, after all, a train can’t just go rolling through Oregon House like a ‘sausage-link shaped tank’; the tracks had to be laid and a big bumper-stop at the end of the track installed so ‘it’ knows where to cease ‘rolling’.
BTW, Does not your “should” create the introduction to yet another bout of the very “complaining and criticizing” that you’re concerned about being protracted?
Just curious.
_____________________
Hello Cathie ~ (Post 331)
Wow! Beautiful YouTube link… thank you.
Now, that’s my kind of esoteric stuff; far beyond any material the FoF is keying these days, far too objective by itself, prior to the wiseacre magnifying glass. To me, love is found in self evident impressions and compositions, if you have to explain your love, you’re not in love, if you have to ‘key-it-out’, then your door is locked.
It’s interesting that all the town and ‘members’ lost their points, though the little one kept his… profound: very.
And I mean that… His revelation to the King was perfect, then the transformation, his ‘point birth’, the loss of ‘point affirmations’ externally! Woooooo….
“Uh, am I the only one, or does it seem at the moment that the intellectualizations of “Howard Carter” and “Siddiq” over the past couple of months are a lot less impressive now compared to their being run off the blog with nary a whimper by a single post from Ni_k Spa_ldi_g????????!
Or am I nuts?”
_____________________________
Well, sorta; let’s dive a bit deeper into ‘cult psychology’ shall we; there’s some funky spelunking down there.
Concerning HC and Siddiq’s ‘one-knee-kneel approach’ or ‘praying with one hand, while the other is crossing it’s fingers’ (or, in the Fellowship of Friends case, tied); there are healthy ‘martyrs’, as well as dead.
To me, it’s just another ‘affirmative gesture’ showing ‘true form’ (externally here on the blog, where everyone can see them on their chosen crosses, velcroed and shrink wrapped that is.)
Another ‘sign’ of their knighthood; yet, we know it’s false personality, due to Siddiq’s “I’ll be back” tongue in cheek quote and HC’s continued willful posts; just to let us know that he’s leaving based on his terms of Nick’s terms…LOL.
What a farce of puppet strings and yet, as Whalerider suggested, this is the operating room, where Pinocchio does’nt just ‘turn into a boy’, he is built, cell by cell.
So, actually Joel, it does not surprise me at all; though I must admit, initially my coconut milk got a little skin on its surface after reading their response to Old Saint Nick, shaking that off (Laura seems to share this state today), I ‘twice blinked’; (what was that X-File episode where the guy blinked his eyelids while the others stayed open?) Wow! That was pretty original…I like things like that.
I love Nick though, he’s got some miles on his spirit, I can feel it in his presence; he’s stuck too, yet, this really means very little when considering his truer inner world order; I would say that 70% of the Fellowship of Friends are stuck and actually know it; one can live a ‘relatively ‘happy’ life’ stuck; who knows when the knock will occur for the giraffe who has hit ‘rock bottom’, neck high in quicksand?
All a friend can do is not be pushy and not be possessed by the other’s plight, to give out love however it flows or feels ‘right’… some have allot of ‘thought based affirmations’, particularly in the realm of ‘what should be and what didn’t have to be’… Too, there’s allot of ‘purple heart showing’ going on these days too in the FoF ~
Rilke said, …”enduring is everything.” Yet, that was a Lunar ‘I’… for he would later go beyond even ‘enduring’, into being beyond that which ‘thinks’ that there are two opposite sides to endure the non-reconciliatory plight of the two, that simply will not agree to turn inwards upon themselves and experiment in ceasing the contradiction-affirmation-game.
Exactly where we are is where we will be at any given segment of the one and only moment; HC and Siddiq’s actions provide no wisdom for our hearts, nor their’s, though it certainly adds a few extra inches to Robert Burton’s cape (ah, BTW, that would be the ‘red carpet’ all you current members are standing on; waiting for Robert to come around the corner.)
This is not to say that their actions will not ‘turn around’, they will; then, there’s the material for another future blog site or their more ’rounded’ self re-induction into this one.
________________________
Nicholas,
The only “war room” is 14 inches beyond the Galleria library; to the far right, first entrance way as you enter the front door (after the ‘coat & cash room’), for all you new students or ‘new boys’.
Look up, on the ceiling of the vestibule, that’s your essence on Viagra, porn mythology, greed and key-dope.
Breath it in guys; what began with the vineyard (from lush to weeds) is getting closer and closer with each heart beats breath.
___________________
It’s interesting that all those who are somewhat critical of any mention of law suit or kindred ‘legal’ environments, has taken the traditional ‘mood’ set upon lawyers and such, i.e., one of loathing and a tinge of negative imagination as to the intentions, the aims, the buffering that ‘the suit’ might be standing for, the anger, the blaming and explaining and the like…
Yet, all throughout esoteric lore, such ‘tough love’ has always turned out (like in Rumi’s stories) to be from the ‘god within’, not Gurdjieff’s ‘evil-god’ he so often spoke of in referencing the ‘automatic self’;
who is it that interprets altruistic aims? Does altruism have to only come from the forms of the Shriners and Masonic Lodges?
Can altruism take ‘any form’ when lead by an aim who possesses no hatred, no identification, no inner state dependent on outcome or result; but rather having done one’s best, based upon a steady sense of self and all the stuff that goes along with being yourself?
Could there be an altruism that’s not in any way connected to winning or loosing, rather, one’s serving of one’s place in a set of circumstances that calls one’s conscience to bat (or does one let the ball hit the thigh and walk the bases)?
A class action lawsuit is a ‘symbol’ for me; it’s already happening right here in this blog and its occurring in the spiritual dimension as well; (unbeknown to Robert Burton’s king of clubs sexual psychology) feelings are very powerful travelers, they knock on doors that don’t even have earth hinges; that’s my feeling.
And a class action lawsuit is also possibly in the physical dimension as well; I do not see any ‘real’ reason to distinguish ‘the symbol’ based on what dimension it’s in during the now or not in yet as an ‘obvious’;
we identify with the third dimension because it’s the easiest to call names, predict and attach ‘our third dimension (the body) to as well (imaginative affirmations?);
to me we’re already there, doing it, if it manifests into an actual court case, it won’t be anything surprising, nor will it be anything anyone didn’t see coming… Let’s not get down about the ‘looks’ of the ‘train of thought’, there’s plenty of room for ‘graffiti’, love and being right there, shoveling coal , having a beer and telling jokes.
Do you really think David didn’t go have a beer after Goliath or is it that we have been conditioned to ‘think’ he ran to the church to thank god…LOL…
I don’t have the time or patience for a symbolic law suit. You know the time span of a lawsuits, just above that of the mineral world. If one REALLY wants to impact the FOF in the short run, for what ever reasons, good or bad) the quickest would be to bring to the attention of the various governmental agencies (Federal and State) all the info that’s been gleaned here. If you have the time, impetus and reasons, that would clearly be the fastest, though still not more immediate than having the blog and GF available for those who need to make a decision. In real time it looks like we’re not doing much, but one is usually blind in real time, like a BAD marriage, or boiling a frog.
I think this gathering here is having a growing impact within the FOF. I don’t see how it cannot when the structure of the school has become so extreme and ridiculous.
I agree, my friend, I don’t have time for symbolic law suits either, yet, in a way, it’s happening without us; perhaps my use of artistic license ‘up there’ needs some pruning (?) Though I felt I made myself pretty clear about the “6 weeks ago” note to ‘Graduates’… did you get that line?
Nearly 6 weeks ago, what you speak of “bring to the attention to” has begun in so many ways; everyone has their version of ‘real time’, yes?
Take care and thank you for the ‘no nonsense’… I can roll with that.
BTW… The way things are brewing, I do not sense the effect will be for the ‘short run’, it’s a small world up here (2000 ft above sea level) and out there in spiritual circles; I believe we’re rolling in the direction of long term and beyond…
I liked your story about the two men in the hospital; did you write that? I do not recall that you quoted anyone.
Tell me about the “boiling a frog”… that’s a new one for me.
“Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated.”
Hey, I resemble that remark! (almost) “Thinking about the downstream effect” is imagination one way or another, positive or negative. On the scale of large institutional change, the wise man understands the result is always a combination of both positive and negative. Should fear stop the march of freedom? It’s our ethics and conscience at stake. My concern is about who might be getting hurt tonight and if their rights (and bodies) are being violated by a spiritual despot. How unenlightened or self-centered is that?
“Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising its head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right? “
I think the majority of posters ‘in or out’ feel the FOF is a church based ‘loosely’ upon fourth way ideas. Those ‘in’ have to make the church argument to preserve the IRS non-profit status. Churches are for religions, are they not? Those who resent the direction that the FOF has taken over the years also claim it is now a religion, not a fourth way school, based on the definitions of the fourth way authors. So nobody is “deciding” anything here.
The issue is: there are no viable checks and balances in the FOF organization for Robert’s ‘activities’ because of fear of being excommunicated. Robert believes his ‘celestial’ morality trumps civilized society’s mundane morality; that is unethical, and in the case of sex with minors, unlawful. I don’t believe Robert is entitled to make such a distinction using the buffer (and lie) ‘‘the lower cannot see the higher’, no matter how exalted he claims to be.
“Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.”
Life is about change, and change is good. Cooler heads reinforce the staus quo. If there wasn’t a French Revolution, they wouldn’t have invested in our American one, and we’d all be paying internet tax to the British right now. Nobody is talking armed insurrection here. Even childbirth can be viewed as a bloody mess, yet without it there would be no life. For a more appropriate primer on human nature gone awry, I suggest you reread “Lord of the Flies”.
The frog: they say if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it up he won’t discern his predicament and try to escape until it’s too late and he’s boiled. Real time doesn’t often give one perspective because one is too enmeshed to see forward and backward, or an overview.
In studying this phenomena, credit must be given to Leon Festinger for his cognitive dissonance theory, as developed in his book When Prophecy Fails, originally published in 1956 and co-authored by Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter. The authors comprised a research team who conducted a study of a small cult-following of a Mrs. Marian Keech, a housewife who claimed to receive messages from aliens via automatic writing. The message of the aliens was one of a coming world cataclysm, but with the hope of surviving for the elect who listened to them through Keech and selected other mediums. What Festinger and his associates demonstrated in the end was that the failure of prophecy often has the opposite effect of what the average person might expect; the cult following often gets stronger and the members even more convinced of the truth of their actions and beliefs! This unique paradox is the focus of attention in this article, and will be later applied specifically to the Jehovah’s Witness movement.
Festinger observes:
“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. “We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks. “But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view. ”
When Prophecy Fails focuses on the failure of prophecies to come true, termed disconfirmation by Festinger, and the accompanied renewal of energy and faith in their source of divine guidance. His theory presupposes the cult having certain identifying features, such as: (a) belief held with deep conviction along with respective actions taken, (b) the belief or prediction must be specific enough to be disconfirmed (i.e., it didn’t happen), (c) the believer is a member of a group of like-minded believers who support one another and even proselytize. All of these characteristics were present in the saucer cult.
Of particular interest in Festinger’s book is how the followers of Mrs. Keech reacted to each disconfirmation (failed date). Little attempt was made to deny the failure. The strength to continue in the movement was derived, not largely from the rationalizations , but from the very energy of the group itself and its dedication to the cause. This explains why proselytizing wasso successful later in reinforcing the group’s sagging belief system. Festinger relates:
“But whatever explanation is made it is still by itself not sufficient. The dissonance is too important and though they may try to hide it, even from themselves, the believers still know that the prediction was false and all their preparations were in vain. The dissonance cannot be eliminated completely by denying or rationalizing the disconfirmation. But there is a way in which the remaining dissonance can be reduced. If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct. Consider the extreme case: if everyone in the whole world believed something there would be no question at all as to the validity of this belief. It is for this reason that we observe the increase in proselytizing following disconfirmation. If the proselytizing proves successful, then by gathering more adherents and effectively surrounding himself with supporters, the believer reduces dissonance to the point where he can live with it.”
In the end, the members of the flying saucer cult did not give up their faith in the Guardians from outer space with their promises of a new world. Despite numerous prophecies and the resultant disappointment accentuated by many personal sacrifices, the group remained strong
“But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court. ”
This is a false statement full of imagination and formatory thinking. We are fortunate to live in a nation that has one of the better legal systems in History, certainly not perfect but better than most. “Only Lawyers profit from lawsuits “. That is simply repeating a formatory statement….. Only the lawyers profited by challanging segragation? from fighting for womans right to contraception? from suing the catholic church for abuse? Only lawyers profit from fighting for tenants rights? for envioremental laws and enforcement?
This sounds like something you would get paid for by the Fellowship? It may not be easy but I will tell you rather than feeling bad, taking action against an injustice feels great. Its can be hard, take time and commitment and can leave you open to reprisals but not acting is worse. The best action those who are displeased with Robert Burtons corruption, venality and arrogant abuse of his position is to take legal action. This does not need to be a lawsuit but can be in the form of complaints to the state and federal attorney’s as well as the IRS.
-Robert Burton is a criminal and those who support him are part of a criminal conspiracy to defraud. It might be possible for a federal prosecuter to use legistlation designed for organized crime to investigate and prosecute an interstate conspiracy to defraud. If the Fellowship has not informed all prospective and present students of the Canons it is fraud. Advertising as a 4th way school and operating as a religion is fraud. Not revealing the true cost of membership is also fraud. Members should be able to make the minimium donations and have full rights other wise it is extortion. Members should be able to vote on the board members and major decisions. There should be a yearly report with a full and accurate accounting of all funds donated to the fellowship. There should be no seperate funds available to Robert Burton. This is illegal.
To not seek legal action for the reasons you state is wrong. It indicates a lack of character a lack of conscience. These are characteristic of a Fellowship member. It is a form of institutionalization. Obviously leaving the Fellowship is not sufficent to free oneself from the programming.
“The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process ”
Why is this ugly? where is this coming from? the need to buffer the reality of being in a cult? There is nothing negative in experiencing these feelings these are healthy and honest reactions to the abuse of its members done by the Fellowship. Try and get it ,these are right work of centers. It is about time some of the members got angry and exhibited some appropriate negativity. Is it a challange to take action and not be identified with results certainly. More so than to buffer ones own conscience. Isn’t it about time for real efforts and a stop to justifying and buffering?
As for the older students who may be hurt. Who cares? Do you worry about the homeless? The mentally ill wandering the streets? The childen in Iraq? What about all the male students who have been raped? What about the suffering of female students relegated to a second class status whioe having their men raped? What about The 1000’s of former members who helped support and build the school? Should we care less about those with sufficent consciousness, conscience and will to leave the cult then those trapped in the emotional quiksand? The are 1000’s and 10’s of 1000’s of humans dying every day in horrible ways from starvation, aids, and wars. The Fellowship of Friends, Robert Burton and the members of the Fellowship of Friends have been happy to do nothing for anyone and indulge themselves with their imaginary superiority.
Fellowship people are not nice people. That is imagination. They tend towards being first class self centered hypocrites who don’t have the sense to leave a cult when it becomes ever more depraved and abusive. Robert feeds vanity and reaps the rewards. We’re talking about a group of people who collected art, enjoyed formal dining and had parties waiting for Armegedon and the end of civilization.
It is incredibly narrow minded and self centered to include the possible loss of propert values in considering what is moral and helps to develop and nurture conscience. Conscience needs to be more than feeling what’s right it needs to grow to include being willing to pay the price. Payment is a principle. There can be no further growth of consciousness,unity and will if we fail to follow our conscience.
Study Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple and you’ll find that initially he was a more effective leader with better programs for helping people than Robert ever had. Yet look where it lead. Why? Because he became corrupted and started to believe he was a prophet and demand complete obedience. Robert’s nuts, mentally incompetent, unable to make reasoned decicions.
Howard Carter was arrogant enough to invoke all great religions and spirtual paths as references. I challange him or anyone to find one that claims the neccessity for sucking large quantities of young cock for maintaining higher consciousness. If Robert trully needed cum for some reason I would think that many married couples would be glad to save their used condoms for him so as to not force him to humilitate himself and students with his cock sucking.
What is his formula for making decisions. It is advertised as being touch with the Gods. Guiding the school towards a conscious future. Yet in reality everything he does is for his own physical comfort. He is crystallized allright in the King of Clubs.
If anyone really loved their Teacher they would have the courage to face him and say that his behavior is not acceptable.
#128 From Rourke’s Journal
Thanks to whoever posted the excerpts from Rourke’s diary. I remember him. Don’t forget, there are many current students reading this blog. Keep posting.
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#135 Hey, Old Fish
Important to really ask oneself, what do we want to save? What do we want to experience?
The “A” Influence part?
The lands and businesses surrounding the FOF will continue to survive in some form. The people who have been a part of the FOF previous and current will also surely continue to survive. Some will thrive. Some will get by. The community understands the idea of External Consideration.
The “B” Influence part? The “C” Influence part?
Funny, ex-students, if they are lucky and have persevered, may consider the FOF now to be “B” Influence, while current students consider themselves to have “C”. So, if we speak of something continuing, it depends on who speaks and for what. Most likely “if” there is an external crash of some sort, whatever survives will be “B” Influence for some and “C” for others. Hmmmm…… A very individual process beckons.
Finally, my guess is that we need to see what the play has in store for the FOF, Robert Burton and the School (if it was, is, or ever will be one). Call it Influence C, call it the Play, but things are happening now that are beyond any one individual’s ability to orchestrate. I suggest we all keep our hearts, minds and eyes open with our inner seat belts fastened. One way to define being Present?
OK guys. Com’on now. Hold the phone a minute!
I’ve been catching up here on page 14 and this whole HC/ Nick Sp-l-ding thing. For the last month or so I thought HC was probably Nick, so it was nice to see it all come out on the blog.
First off, I’d like to say that I don’t know Nick all that well BUT he did introduce me to the fof. Yes it’s true, he brought me to all three prospective student meetings.
Now, I’m sure that if I’d have offered him the opportunity to either A) bring me to the meetings, or B) boff me, he would most likely have chosen to boff me. but since he’s not writing on the bolg any more I guess we’ll never know!
A or B, either way I was going to get f…ed, wasn’t I. Hence the lesson to always follow C influence.
…..
But I say, who gives a hoot about who HC is. Especially if he IS Nick Spal-ding!!! I mean I WANNA know who Unoanimo is! Ladies, is he not our Cyrano? …I mean Uno amore, the only thing that would make me happier than finding out who you are is finding out that you are really a woman.
Anyway… Unoanimo my heart continues to be warmed by radiance of your words.
and Bruce, I’m in love with you too! You’re Zorro with that f…in keyboard!
If someone is after you to do physical harm something inside you becomes alarmed. Normally you would walk around looking down or straight ahead. Now you look inside trees, in the bushes, shadows come alive, a fluttering bird or leaf becomes danger and you can almost hear a worm poop on a flat rock 50 yards away.
I think Robert & gang are nervous about all the legal action/reporting to the government talk. I’m thinking hiding places, long vacations off shore, doing magic with the money supply, cleaning up the enviroment, holding ears to the ground and reading this blog for hints.
352 Shelley M.
“Boff” you or study fourthway?
Phew thats an incredibly hard call!
That would be a hell of a situation to be put in.
In relation to Uno, yes Ive also thought Uno was a lunar, or jovial lunar woman until Uno said one thing. Not saying that women cant be more knowledgeable than men about engines, but its got me wondering.
In relation to the soldier ants of I’s I’s , Isnt it funny how this humble blog which “hardly anyone in the fof reads or cares about” has suddenly become a cause for concern, even to the extent of a personal descent of the “archangel I’s Balding.”
I get the feeling they are frantically shredding some receipts and having Russian mafia connections forge others as we speak.
Perhaps we should have been more covert, as fore-warned is fore-armed. Now I have a picture of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers frantically trying to put the hotel in order for the health inspector while Manuels pet rat is running loose!
LTYA Cy.
Almost 30 years ago, I had the chance to attend a retrospective of the work of Pablo Picasso in New York at the MMA. It was packed. Tickets had to be purchased well in advance. The work was arranged chronologically, beginning with his drawings and paintings from around the age of 16? The Blue period. I remember well feeling the beauty of his work. His sense of line, form and color, already so marvellously evident. The exhibition was massive and filled four floors, moving from the early work to the mature cubism, to the later prints and finally the paintings done at the end of his life. Though I was naturally fatigued by the time I reached the fourth floor, the impression of his final works remains to this day unmistakably strong. It was ugly. Plain and simple, Ugly. Clear, to anyone who had eyes of course, but that was what we all went there for, our eyes, wasn’t it?
For me, it was one of the many experiences that drove me to a School. Life, even at it’s best, a genius like Picasso, was a decending octave. And it was really clear so long as one could forget all the proclamations of the World and look out of one’s own eyes, and see for one’s self. I’ve told that story to a few students over the years, and we have all nodded, gently smiling, understanding sleep, the imagination of Life.
How odd it is to find myself in the Fellowship 20+ years on only to discover that my Teacher may be a decending octave, too. Maybe has been for a long time? Now before Ames, Whale Rider, et al, start sharpening their knives to say, “I told you so, you blind, brainwashed cult member.” Give me a break, give us all a break, please. The crux of the issue that keeps the Fellowship functioning as it currently does is the assumption that Robert Burton is a Conscious Being. I think it is important to deeply examine why so many current students think he is, despite evidence to the contrary. Forget, if you can, all the statistics about Cults, Brainwashing, etc.. and try to look at the situation from a hopefully healthy insider’s viewpoint?
Self Remembering is some powerful magic. We have all felt it. A School environment in which to practice it, magnifies the potentcy by the numbers. Having a Teacher who focuses on it relentlessly exemplifies what each of us find ourselves unable to achieve. I have personally felt remarkable energy in his presence. Various times, while trying to be present, to remember myself, he happened to walk into the room, and I felt my inner world suddenly flushed with Hydrogen 12, like an orgasm, but of the whole body. Wow. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? Who wouldn’t be ready to forgive him for behaviour that seemed, well, somewhat unusual? I have had him hold my hand at dinner, and especially when I made an even more intense effort to remember myself, felt the electricity from his hand coursing through mine. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? I have had wonderful states of clear presence from attending both meetings and dinners when he was teaching a bit more spontaneously than now. States that lasted well into the next hours. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? He speaks of Worlds beyond this one that have made Conscious sense to me, words that have helped me at times to get to a similar place. Who wouldn’t think the man was Conscious?
So, if one has had similar experiences to mine but also the play to fully embrace his sick, perverted behaviour, then what are the options? Buffer like mad. Recover. Explain. Avoid. Buffer some more. Finally try to understand, and/or Leave. I guess I am using this blog as a public forum for my attempts to understand, so here are a few thoughts.
Given the kind of Hydrogens that I have sometimes experienced in his presence, my guess is that Robert Burton must have crystallized higher energies in some fashion. One naturally assumes that means he has become Conscious but it just may not be the case. Consider this: suppose Robert has crystallized incompletely, still retaining the Personality of his lower centers? We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts. Suppose he has crystallized in his center of gravity? Such a theory would explain both the higher hydrogens we feel in his presence, the understandings he is often able to offer us, yet also why his lower self is so prominent.
If Robert were a King of Spades or Jack of Hearts, the error would have been more obvious more quickly but since he plays the role of a Teacher of a Fourth Way School, and since the King of Hearts is the doorway to Higher Centers, we miss the ruse. Robert has been able to consistently inspire us in exactly that place, making him more of a black magician than an evil hasnamus, though both definitions are well worth reading for those who are also trying to understand.
Here is what Gurdjieff has to say about black magic:
“Black magic may be quite altruistic, may strive after the good of humanity or after the salvation of humanity from real or imaginary evils. But what can be called black magic has always one definite characteristic. This characteristic is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear. ”
Here is what Gurdjieff has to say about a Hasnamus:
“One of the first things about a ‘Hasnamuss’ is that he never hesitates to sacrifice people or to create an enormous amount of suffering, just for his own personal ambitions. How a ‘Hasnamuss’ is created is another question. It begins with formatory thinking, with being a tramp and a lunatic at the same time. Another definition of a ‘Hasnamuss’ is that he is crystallized in the wrong hydrogens.”
The final step in understanding is to attempt to grasp what a Conscious being really is like or should be like. How do they manifest? And each one will be a different creative expression of Consciousness. How to recognize a true Guru and not be misled by a False one? Tricky business, but from all I can currently understand, the road to discovering one’s own inner Guru is through Conscience. So a real Guru will encourage you to discover your own Conscience and will never estrange you from it. If you are trying to understand, check out recognized 20th century spiritual masters like Nisargadatta, Sri Ramana Maharshi or Shunryu Suzuki. Of course, Gurdjieff also had some very interesting things to say on the subject too, if only one had the ears to hear it….
Love,
Bass
P.S. I read [227] Ni_k Spa_ldi_g. His arguments hold true only if one respects Robert Burton and assumes him to be a Conscious Being. However, since that is what many current students are trying to use this blog to understand, posting here may yet have its uses.
The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”
Milgram summarised the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
Thanks for your sincere post. Speaking for myself the feeling of “I told you so”, is not one that I am cultivating here. If one were to derive pleasure from that kind of immature feeling, it would last only about 10 seconds. Give us a little more credit, please.
I’d like you to consider that a person would have the same heightened physical and emotional reaction if John F. Kennedy or the Pope walked into the room or held your hand at dinner…or you met face to face ANYONE whom you idolized. This is human nature. We project our own magnificence onto others because of our own lack of self-esteem. Faith healing actually works, you know, for the same reasons. The more time you spend around your idol, witnessing how other people act around them, the more human the idol becomes, and the more you understand how people are willing to give away their power and abdicate their self-responsibility to someone else. Bill Clinton certainly played his role to his sexual advantage. There are those who understand this human weakness and make their living off of it.
Robert has to have sex with people and tell them he’s an angel at that moment to crystallize the thought in them. Then the victim is faced with a choice: believe that Robert is an angel or face the stark reality that they have been manipulated as a dehumanized object into fulfilling Robert’s perversions and satyriasis. Which would you chose?
So from one idiot to another…this is what I would have wanted someone to tell me back when I was lined up at Robert’s door.
Thank you for your post! Truly well written and to the point.
Thank you Unoanimo and Whalerider, Ames, for your thoughts as well on the subject of law suits and legal actions.
Let us keep exploring this subject.
In the meantime this blog is sure a magical place, a virtual class action law suit is happening here for sure (thanks Uno)
PS: do not agree with Sharon or not an attorney’s posts.
You read revenge, shortsightdedness, and lawyers being always like lawyers, it is like saying that all doctors are in the business of healing to make payments on their second or third home not really to help people…I do not believe it.
I believe RB is breaking the law and harming people, that is all.
How do we stop him, how do we make him accountable? (if you can make a mentally ill person accountable) karma is real sooner or later….
And for us who are witnessing the ongoing crime, are we not made a little responsible perhaps? just a “little” question…
A superb post; I would say, PhD material! Commencement exercise! Graduation!
The quotes from Gurdjieff show why Robert’s been steering the Fellowship of Friends away from G’s teachings, eh?
Thought on Picasso: maybe not so much that he as an artist was on a descending octave, but that the zeitgeist was, and his work reflected that.
Thought on “Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.” You may find yourself coming to a different opinion someday. This is the official storyline and you may have believed it for a long time, so it’s hard to see it any other way.
My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. His instinctive appetites are legendary and clearly observable. It’s these appetites that lie behind the Kh facade.
In any case, it matters little. The point is that he is not a Man #7, not a Conscious Being, not the exclusive mouthpiece of C-Ïnfluence on this planet, nor any other mythic exalted personage. He’s a guy who’s run a great scam for 30+ years.
The real school, as has been said before, consists of the thousands of sincere students over the years who’ve given their hearts and minds to Being the words.
Sorry if I pointed to you in a formatory way.
I didn’t mean to be offensive, especially if you saw it so.
No one can replace what you have offered to us on this blog. It is invaluable. For what you have experienced and transformed, I love you.
At times I feel a frustration with the blog posts becoming too polarized. I’m sorry to have singled you out. The former students can be on a crusade (perhaps it is best not to mention names?); the current students respond with the party line. Nothing can happen in that polarity. Leastways transform the Fellowship into a real School, if that is at all possible.
To be scientifically methodically clear, the events I mention occurred years after I wrote a letter to Robert challenging his behaviour, and almost leaving the School over the same issues. So, I have not approached him with glazed eyes or emotions for a very, very long time. I’ve simply tried to approach him with Self Remembering. I do really think he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos which makes it difficult for naieve seekers to figure out what Consciousness really is.
Re: 354 a former student: “As for the older students who may be hurt. Who cares? Do you worry about the homeless? The mentally ill wandering the streets? The childen in Iraq? What about all the male students who have been raped? What about the suffering of female students relegated to a second class status whioe having their men raped? What about The 1000’s of former members who helped support and build the school? Should we care less about those with sufficent consciousness, conscience and will to leave the cult then those trapped in the emotional quiksand? The are 1000’s and 10’s of 1000’s of humans dying every day in horrible ways from starvation, aids, and wars. The Fellowship of Friends, Robert Burton and the members of the Fellowship of Friends have been happy to do nothing for anyone and indulge themselves with their imaginary superiority.
Fellowship people are not nice people. That is imagination. They tend towards being first class self centered hypocrites who don’t have the sense to leave a cult when it becomes ever more depraved and abusive. Robert feeds vanity and reaps the rewards. We’re talking about a group of people who collected art, enjoyed formal dining and had parties waiting for Armegedon and the end of civilization.”
Powerfully and well said, thank you. Not the whole picture, but a side that is not as popular nor easy to look at.
The disconnect between how RB was justifying his lifestyle and the cultivation of (read shopping for) “fine impressions” and the actual preparations for a life after the end of the world was painfully obvious if only looked at it for a minute. I remember having an earnest conversation once about the practical aspects of post-annihilation cave-dwelling and being shocked that some student I’d admired laughed and said we didn’t even have a clue about how to make soap or toilet paper.
Go back and actually read what I wrote. Perhaps it was unclear; it seemed clear to me at the time; when I go back and read it myself, I suppose that I can see how you might misinterpret it.
Your use of “formatory” as an insult reminds me so much of Fellowshippy speak – “I disagree with you: you’re formatory – nyahh, nyahh”.
However, to clarify: my post was a rebuttal of parts of Old Fish’s post, and my actual point was: 1) most (all?) of any who would suffer as a result of a downfall of the FoF (current “top dogs” in the hierarchy) chose their path and it is their own fault if they have to pay for it. 2) any property loss of any of us is tough beans for us and should not be considered as an issue.
The paragraph about not wanting to join in a lawsuit was “in spite of the above”. “But” is a short word, however it does imply a change in direction there.
I do stand by the feeling that those who sue suffer in their own internal world. I worked for a lawyer in the FoF – the emotional ugliness around that office made me physically ill.
Do you have experience in this yourself – are you a former civil rights fighter, feminist, revolutionary, environmentalist worker? I notice that you don’t have the courage to use your name in your post – I assume there is a reason for that? If you think that we should be so courageous as to go legal and public, why are you not standing up and shouting in your own true name? You think you will hide in the anonymity of “class action”? a former student, were you personally raped? Were you personally defrauded of property? If so, you should lodge a criminal complaint, within the statute of limitations. No one else can do that for you.
In any case, I don’t think it just takes courage; it also requires fervent, blind, arrogant faith in the justness, the rightness, of your cause. I, for one, do not have that.
Personally, I think that I am responsible for my own stupid choices, and my own buffering and unwillingness to act on my own thoughts. I joined that group – nobody forced me. At the time, it was an experiment. I chose to stay. I never in all my wildest, deepest times in the FoF, thought that RB was “conscious” – I stopped believing in the dream of anybody’s “permanent consciousness” long, long ago. I stayed for emotional and instinctive bonds, just as did many others. I didn’t join for a guru; I didn’t leave because of the guru (though he certainly helped!) – I left because my life in the FoF stifled me to the point of withering away to almost nothing, and my own hypocrisy in my silence about my perceptions of RB finally became too painful. Do I think the group or the guru did that to me? Well, maybe – did I allow it? Yes. Is that my fault, could I do otherwise? No, it’s just the way it is.
I don’t want the rest of my life to be spent in frustrating, painful, mud-slinging fighting. I want to bloom again, to grow full again, to become a river, not a desert. I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.
Sharon
ps vera – do I think we were responsible for RB’s behavior by standing by and allowing it? Yes. That’s one reason why I think it is now hypocritical for us to sue. But you are probably right, not all lawyers are self serving.
Fragments of Burton’s ‘Sacred Teaching’. This e-mail was sent to the entire school in March 2007. I am not changing anything -not even a word. This is exactly what believers Like HC, Siddiq etc are protecting as their most sacred knowledge which “works” for them. It simply speaks for itself.
I’ll post more original material and encourage others to do so as well. Let’s expose what’s being taught here so that anyone who ever wants to follow this mad ‘teaching’ gets an idea what exactly they will be studying. Official FOF website doesn’t present things as (insane) as they are.
Now ask yourself how can anyone in their sane mind take this crap as an ‘objective knowledge’ and take it seriously? This is obviously a stream of crooked imagination poring out of a delusional old man… But HC obviously believes it, so do many other followers.
This kind of stuff accompanied by images is ‘taught’ 2 times a week at RB-Asaf meetings, and pretty much twice daily at dinners or breakfasts or teas. Each teaching session costs from 100 dollars for a meeting to 1000 dollars for a Special holiday dinner. You hear the same crap again and again, bascally “it’s all means Sequence, Steward fights the Devil, Long Be-Short Be and we are the Greatest school on Earth”.
Did somebody say ‘madness’?
Enjoy.
Dear Friends,
Robert has pointed out that the task of our school is to gather all the expressions of the system historically, and that we have now come to the earliest expressions of the system in prehistoric times, before Egypt. He requested that the following message with accompanying images and quotations be sent to the School:
Although the prehistoric school did not use written language to transmit their knowledge, we can understand their images with the help of the writings of other traditions. In particular, our understanding of the Egyptian School is now serving as a bridge to help us understand the Prehistoric Tradition, as pre-dynastic Egypt is essentially the end of the Prehistoric Tradition. Below are three examples of Prehistoric images with accompanying quotes that help explain their keys:
1) The first image is the The Head of a Woman with Cross-hatched Hair. It is from France, dated 25,000 BP (Before the Present). It is carved from mammoth ivory and is about 4 cm tall.
O you who are invincible, you found me when I had disarranged
the hair of my face and my scalp was disordered.
Going Forth By Day, Papyrus of Ani
Hair is a key for the many ‘I’s, the ten thousand. Hair put into order represents the many ‘I’s, the passions, under control with the sequence (as opposed to chaos, imagination). This passage from Going Forth by Day refers to the steward coming out of imagination with Short Be.
The neatly arranged cross-hatched hair of the woman shows the order brought to the steward/ the nine of hearts with the sequence.
2) The next image, The Hunting Scene, is a rock painting from a cave in Lascaux, France, dated approximately 15,000 BP.
It shows a mammoth with a falling man, and to the left, a rhinoceros with excrement in six small dots passing from him.
What I detest is excretion and I will not eat it…I will not be satisfied with filth.
Coffin Texts
This passage from the Egyptian Coffin Texts (Late Old Kingdom to Middle Kingdom texts found on coffins) describes the steward who does not want to be in imagination; he is not satisfied having ‘I’s unrelated to promoting presence, here called filth and excrement.
This verse explains the image of the rhinoceros, keyed as the lower self, who is excreting the sequence. The lower self is in control of the sequence at this point and the steward is falling back, failing to act. It is a failed sequence mouthed too weakly, without heart, and it cannot engage presence with it.
3) The third image is a Flute, from France, dated 34,000 BP. It is made from vulture bone.
The vulture is known for its ability to fly at high altitudes for long periods of time, and it became a symbol of Long BE in the Egyptian School. Tutankhamun had a cobra head and a vulture head on his golden mask, Short Be and Long BE.
Like vultures gliding freely through the sky,
Happy is it to practice Yoga without hindrances.
Milarepa
This quote from Milarepa explains how happy (a key for presence), it is to practice Yoga (the sequence) without hindrances (reaching Long BE) and compares it to a vulture gliding freely (in prolonged presence).
The flute made of vulture bone has four holes—after Long BE, sustain the four wordless breaths.
To Bass Ackwards (#14-359),
I have no urge to get out the knives, I assure you! In fact I have nothing but admiration and appreciation for your ‘long thought’. There is a world of difference in value between a personal story and another variant on an “official angle” that is basically unchanged from my time!
I think you have put your finger on one of the important nubs. I stayed for extra years because I could not resolve these very difficulties, and it seemed the only sane (and safe) course was to give the situation, full of dichotomies as it was, the benefit of the doubt. All these years later, I still have no satisfactory account of the various energies Burton manifests; I felt them myself, and they created a number of indelible memories. Because I believe that I know more about the nature of consciousness now, I don’t believe that my experiences with him were in fact moments of consciousness, but were hyper-awareness of his energy, and the corresponding energy elicited in my machinery. Like Cathie, I have come to believe that the source is instinctive. And if you wanted a cute theory to go along with it, I’d say that the accumulated power of what Gurdjieff called “haverno” is usually re-radiated through the instinctive center; that is what I have observed when I meet charismatic people (almost all business leaders, so far). And just like two magnets coming closer together, it evokes something corresponding in myself. Burton is just the most extreme example I have met.
The one other spiritual charismatic I have observed was the leader of the Ananda organization, Donald Waters. Rather less exclusive than Burton, he used to go to events in the local (Nevada City/Grass Valley) community, so I was able to observe the swirl of followers around him, and witness the energy of adulation (varying in degree from person to person) directed towards him. I have to say, his adherents seemed a good bit more restrained and less sappy, but maybe it was because it was a public situation. It must be very difficult to deal with the energy and expectations of uncritical followers in a mature way, and I can have an inkling of the strength of Gurdjieff’s character and adherence to his aims when he made himself slough off his followers at regular intervals, for their own good and his.
In the end, I had to make an end run around the whole swamp of conflict, and try to develop my conscience. This was pretty difficult in an environment that supported, totally, Burton’s theory that “conscience is just a collection of I’s. If a student collects too many, he should leave the school”. This claim is very, very wrong in general, but in a strange way—used as a correct third force for my individual progress—very, very helpful. By this I mean, I could no longer rely on “older students”, “official angles”, or any friends still aligned to Burton’s belief systems, I had to do the explorations and thinking on my own, and attracted necessary help through grace.
Here is the rub. After long work on trying to distinguish the voice of conscience from that of morality, the imperative became to act on it, or it would start to fade or be buried under deeper layers than before. In other words, getting to know about my conscience meant that I had to start acting on it at the same time. The state of not knowing was safe enough, there was no danger, but knowing bought the requirement to act. Heavy stuff!
I think you have it exactly right; a real Guru will encourage you to discover your own Conscience and will never estrange you from it.
Love and blessings to you, and good luck on your journey,
Ames
P.S. You might find my “farewell letter” (#7-38) useful if you haven’t run across it yet.
My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. His instinctive appetites are legendary and clearly observable. It’s these appetites that lie behind the Kh facade.
******************
He is too fat (at times) to be a king of clubs.
Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him much less hundreds of them. The emotional center is more perceptive than the instinctive center and is never going to become engrossed and infatuated by the king of clubs, especially one that is trying to behave convincingly deceptive. The inherent negative nature would be impossible to disguise and always inherently repulsive. What you are perceiving is a dead psychology that is running on the automatic self-interests of purely materialistic motivations (the queen of clubs), if he wasn’t centered in the nine of hearts and therefore mechanically convincing when he speaks of spiritual ideas then no one would believe a word he says.
I’ve been thinking about your questions. I thought the following information is a bit lenghy, but interesting.
From Wikipedia
The word charisma (from the Greek word (kharisma), “gift” or “divine favor,” from kharizesthai, “to favor,” from kharis, “favor”: see also charism) refers to a rare trait found in certain human personalities usually including extreme charm and a ‘magnetic’ quality of personality and/or appearance along with innate and powerfully sophisticated personal communicability and persuasiveness.
Though very difficult or even impossible to define accurately (due to a lack of widely accepted criteria in regard to the trait), charisma is often used to describe an (elusive, even undefinable) personality trait that often includes the seemingly ‘supernatural’ or uncanny ability to lead, charm, persuade, inspire, and/or influence people. It refers especially to a quality in certain people who easily draw the attention and admiration (or even hatred if the charisma is negative) of others due to a ‘magnetic’ quality of personality and/or appearance.
Similar terms/phrases related to charisma include: grace, exuberance, equanimity, mystique, positive energy, joie de vivre, extreme charm, personal magnetism, personal appeal, “electricity,” and allure, among many others. Usually many of these specific qualities must be present within a single individual for the person to be considered highly charismatic by the public and their peers.
Despite the strong emotions they so often induce in others, charismatic individuals generally project unusual calmness, confidence, assertiveness, dominance, authenticity, and focus, and almost always possess superb communication and/or oratorical skills. Although the etymology of the word (“divine gift”) might suggest that charisma can’t be acquired, and despite the persistent inability to accurately define or even fully understand the concept, it is believed that charisma can be taught and/or learned.
Others disagree with this assertion and maintain that it is an inborn trait and that it cannot be learned, taught, or ‘gained.’
The psychology of charisma
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly usage by German sociologist Max Weber. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus:
a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is “set apart” from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.
The study, recognition, and development of charisma in individuals is of particular interest to sociologists/psychologists, popular (usually national) politicians, public speakers, actors, movie-stars/movie-producers, casting directors, pop-music stars, trainers/coaches targeting the upper-echelons of the business community (CEOs), and academics or others involved in leadership studies or leadership development, among others.
In some cases highly-extroverted and brutally controlling charismatic leaders have used their personal charisma in extremely destructive and damaging ways throughout human history, for example, Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones.
Pierre Bourdieu did not have a very different position from that of Weber’s, but he stressed that a leader has charisma only if other people accept that s/he has it. Bourdieu argued that charisma usually depends on an “inaugural act” such as a decisive battle or moving speech after which the charismatic person will be regarded as such.
Theories of charisma
Charisma has also been studied as a set of behaviors/traits; for example, a modern psychological approach posits that charisma is basically aggregative, a conglomeration of distinct personality traits that meld well in certain individuals to form the broad quality known as charisma or “personal magnetism.”
Theatrically, charisma can sometimes be “performed” on-stage and in films, and is encapsulated in both verbal and non-verbal communication.
Professor Richard Wiseman says that a charismatic person has three attributes:
they feel emotions themselves quite strongly;
they induce them in others;
and they are impervious to the influences of other charismatic people.
The following are Professor Wiseman’s general tips on how to be more charismatic:
1. General: Open body posture, hands away from face when talking, stand up straight, relax, hands apart with palms forwards or upwards
2. To an individual: Let people know they matter and you enjoy being around them, develop a genuine smile, nod when they talk, briefly touch them on the upper arm, and maintain eye contact
3. To a group: Be comfortable as leader, move around to appear enthusiastic, lean slightly forward and look at all parts of the group
4. Message: Move beyond status quo and make a difference, be controversial, new, simple to understand, counter-intuitive
5. Speech: Be clear, fluent, forceful and articulate, evoke imagery, use an upbeat tempo, occasionally slow for tension or emphasis.
Other uses
Charisma is also commonly referred to in role-playing games, being one of the abilities of a character. Charismatic ability modifies dice rolls concerning communication, persuasion, lying, inspiring trust in others, etc. A particular example is in the game The Sims, in which charisma is a skill that can be built by practicing speeches in mirrors, and it is used to get promotions in jobs, particularly in those of political fields.
I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.
Sharon
ps vera – do I think we were responsible for RB’s behavior by standing by and allowing it? Yes.
*****************
You are not going to save the planet, only the planet can save the planet. We are like disorganized ants trying to save a burning building. All the money in the world wouldn’t save the homeless because they can’t or refuse to help themselves. With enough money (R. Reagan cut the funding that warehoused the mentally ill and no president has tried to restore that funding) the broken people of the streets could be rounded up and put in housing, but the result would be a massive increase in those seeking free shelter instead of trying to work to marginally survive. The children of Iraq would more readily accept a pledge to dedicate their lives to destroying your country than accept what they would consider your condescending compassion. It is amazing how little understanding the rational people of the west have for the irrational mentality of the east.
If a few hundred ex-Fellowship members organized and focused their emotional energy into action (and it would not need to become a fulltime occupation) we could do something about the FoF/RB, we could counter the influence and the resources of the FoF by offering an alternative and drawing off some the power a monopoly always enjoys. But like those disorganized ants trying to save a burning building…
The Fellowship is organized, unified under the command of RB, while those that in many cases bitterly oppose what is happening in the FoF are divided individually into their own subjective sense of reality that precludes the possibility of making any practical efforts to take responsibility for their convictions. Having dinner parties does not diminish the criminal activity of the FoF. Talking and complaining does not hurt the FoF, the marginal members might be drained off at first but then the hardcore Burton followers will become even more resolute and even more active at increasing their numbers through the seduction of new recruits from all over the world. They have a sense of mission, we are simply angry and frustrated, or bemused and satisfied that there is finally at least a voice speaking against the Dark Thing. Those most frustrated, of course, are those that were actually molested (allegedly) by RB. The FoF members are having long meetings with expensive lawyers strategizing about what to do about these annoying “opinions” being expressed on the internet, while we naively imagine that our expressed displeasure, in some cases little more than popularly encouraged purely lunatic associations, is tearing the will of those dedicated fanatics to pieces. Meanwhile, one post from a long-time FoF member and the productive denying force of those FoF members that were posting here is removed without any hesitation. Divided we (those supposedly opposing these crimes) are conquered (rendered ineffective) and the force for that division is ourselves.
373 Graduates. I hate to quibble but try reading this with your intellectual centre actually connected.
“The children of Iraq would more readily accept a pledge to dedicate their lives to destroying your country than accept what they would consider your condescending compassion. It is amazing how little understanding the rational people of the west have for the irrational mentality of the east.”
Notice anything?
Cy
Bass: We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.
How odd! Just this morning I was getting a preview of an edgy installation and also a very edgy contemporary art exhibit and it popped into my head that RB is not in the least centered in the intellectual part of emotions. He is most surely a jack. Jack of hearts.
Modern art is, like Cathie said, often a reflection of the spirit of the times which are conflicted and reflect rapid change. To only want to view or listen to art and music which makes one feel lovely and happy is a jack. It is nostalgia. I’m not saying ‘classical’ is bad in any way, and it can be appreciated with KofH but does RB listen to Zachir Hussein (classical Indian musician) for example? Or how about any of the incredible pouring forth of amazing music from the present times? My father was like that (till I got a hold of him) in that he dismissed any art created after he was born in the 20’s. The king would wrestle with challenging art and be able to get an understanding/insight from the contact. “I like it” or “it is beautiful” is always there, the familiar-nostalgic-comfort and plays an OK part, but it is not a king part and it is the king motion to hold to the difficult and be present in an unfamiliar place.
All this is just an aside tho, I thought your post was fascinating from start to finish! And as for getting that wonderful zap when in the presence of RB, fame plus charisma…. Look at the Beatles. John was a god, Ringo….
Sharon 368 (and others)
Thank you for the heartfelt post. I find your stance highly respectable. I can also appreciate other people’s more active desire for justice.
As for me, while I was reading your posts, it became clear that my most fervent dream would be to see the Fellowship implode from the inside, like in the good old days of the Berlin wall, in a process fueled by individual acts of defiance.
I have much love and admiration for all the valiant heroes of the blog (Shelley, I agree, real men are hot, even if one can’t see them, even if they may turn out to be a woman). Still, I’d love it if the real heroes turned out to be some humble current students of no consequence, like we used to be. To my best knowledge, most of us, except very few, have left the school in good order. I, for one, may have left on some the impression that I had just been vaporized by magic.
Is it possible, in this present contingency, for some students to do the unthinkable, and, before taking off, as the emperor walks by, simply point out to others his nakedness?
It’s hard, isn’t it? Almost impossible, and I guess that’s why we didn’t do it, it takes a real hero to act in the moment following conscience. We are generally so well trained in delayed reaction. In the face of authority we just go blank, only to wake up a few hours, a few days or maybe a few years later, while the emperor has moved to far away lands in his beautiful white carriage.
And yet, for everything there comes a time.
Could some form of nonviolent, empowering action occur inside the fellowhip?
Could it be feasible, as a consequence of the momentum building, that at least meetings be held like the one in 1994, with the participation of the organization’s higher hierarchy?
Is it possible at all to ask Robert to make himself available for open questions?
Is anyone ready to break through the wall of fear and secrecy and to start to openly question authority? That would be true external considering, the gift of a real photograph to work with.
And I don’t think one needs to point out the potential benefits of such actions for the conscience of the individuals taking part in the process (please help me here, is this regeneration?).
The other day I received a phone call from an old friend, current fof member, who had just met another student at the lodge and was surprised to be plainly told, in the middle of the busy mezzanine, that he had just read on the Italian blog that I was looking for him.
I was both disturbed and relieved by this story. On one side, I realized once again the utter lack of expressive freedom in that environment, on the other, maybe a small sign of the beginning of the end for the age of fear. There is probably a lot more going on at Isis right now, unfortunately from the outside it’s very opaque, and I can only gather what is expressed in the blog and GF site.
This may be wishful thinking, but often my life has been positively affected by such thoughts, so I guess I’ll keep on thinking and wishing for the best.
Love
“One can only conclude that hero-worship under the guise of the guru-devotee relationship is just as often spiritually deadening for both sides as it is spiritually enlightening”.
“My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. ”
Agreed. This “act” is also a characteristic of sociopaths who must learn how to act human, as it does not come naturally to them.
When I decided “enough talk” and came to my final judgment (13-739), there was one unexpressed caveat in the back of my mind:
The only way Robert Burton might partially redeem himself would be to appear before an open forum of current and former members, and, for whatever time duration it required, answer all questions and accusations, and if necessary, apologize publicly for transgressions.
“I suggest we all keep our hearts, minds and eyes open with our inner seat belts fastened. One way to define being Present?”
____________________
LOL… too late (now you tell me) I accelerated off the cliff years ago; the clutch, brake, gas pedal mix up thingy…
____________
You also wrote ~
359
“The crux of the issue that keeps the Fellowship functioning as it currently does is the assumption that Robert Burton is a Conscious Being. I think it is important to deeply examine why so many current students think he is, despite evidence to the contrary. Forget, if you can, all the statistics about Cults, Brainwashing, etc.. and try to look at the situation from a hopefully healthy insider’s viewpoint?”
____________________
Nice posts ‘Bass’; I sense that the words you wrote, being , “students think”, pretty much explains it all…
In a school of relative awakening, ‘the teacher’ does not grade the tests, he just keeps giving them, till the students are addicted to not getting grades, thus, talking to the teacher after class becomes more important than understanding the phenomenon of talking to oneself, which is actually pretty bizarre.
_____________________
You also worte ~
“I do really think he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos which makes it difficult for naieve seekers to figure out what Consciousness really is.”
_____________________
There’s that word ‘think’ again, interesting, yes? Please try not to take this too tough, though, perhaps my response to this last quote of yours will assist in some way (as a friend) to walk with you a bit deeper into ‘verification’ (or not)…
When you say “I do really think”, what does this really mean to your higher emotional and intellectual senses?
You state ~ “he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos”; have you?
And, Bass, what exactly does that really mean anyway, to you, or is it that you are simply using work language to say that Robert Burton is/was the ‘perfect paternal role, alpha male’ for you?
I would suggest that you ‘break it down’, go from the cryptic true personality (fused) with the diamond card and make it into ‘blue collar talk’ something you could explain to an auto mechanic while he’s ‘under there working’…
Everything is “difficult” for naive followers; I sense that’s kinda redundant and does not get you further from ‘naive-ness’, i.e., to put the word ‘difficult’ next to ‘naive’ …
Whatever ‘esoteric’ title you wish to give to Robert Burton’s effect upon you and others, I would ask all former and current students of the Fellowship of Friends to try and use phrases that are more symmetrical to the ‘results’ of Robert Burton’s ‘energies’, symmetrical to what he uses them for and the ‘end result’ (so to speak).
Attaching ‘higher’ work language, like ‘H12’ & ‘cosmos’, to such an entity as Robert Burton, shows itself (now) to be and to have been, by doing such, in founding the Fellowship of Friends, to be an inappropriate ‘compliment’ or unintentional contradiction of ‘words’ and their corresponding implications;
words are powerful and I have even witnessed students of Robert Burton’s ‘school’ using high work language to describe his lower center information and automatic manifestations,
this is an intellectual buffer; this is the FoF icing that has no cake underneath it (no offense ‘Cake’).
Please, be careful with yourself; I would ascribe the words used to define hypnotists, faith healers, bible thumpers and movie stars effect upon crowds… because, not that they all end up where Robert Burton, the ‘good, conscience-less students’ and the boys are, yet, the lifestyle, the manipulation, the conscience-lessness, all these are more in that realm, than the one where such words as ‘H12’ and ‘cosmos’ belong to a group of ‘beings’ that are not about what Robert Burton buys, sells back, and buys again.
Again, beautiful posts…
Key yourself and burn the holy books: after all, your soul wrote them all anyways.
__________________________________
Hello ~ 368 Sharon
You wrote ~
“I do stand by the feeling that those who sue suffer in their own internal world. I worked for a lawyer in the FoF – the emotional ugliness around that office made me physically ill.”
________________
Good grief Sharon, get a grip; the office of Abe G., is due to the lawyer himself, not ‘the law’; I’ve been in numerous law offices and can say that everything is connected to its nucleus (like the Fellowship of Friends to Robert Burton’s ‘aims’);
whether the office people know it or not, they are sharing ‘collectively’ in the personal, subjective aims of the lawyer, sometimes it’s greed, other times lunatic, other times tramp:
Abe has tramp, and the “emotional ugliness” is simply others imitating that ‘ball of wax’ that has a wick (unnaturally) inserted in it.
Suing someone is no more strain on the inner world than harboring the account and not suing; both extremes lead people to ‘chase their tails and tales’…
so, choosing an extreme, action or inaction, really has no real consequence in the being realm; we harbor what we harbor, whether its tied to the dock or at the bottom of the sea, it’s still a boat.
____________________________________
You also wrote ~
“I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.”
________________
Is not everything connected? Is not the Fellowship of Friends simply “another brick in the wall” of all that is in your quote above?
To me, the FoF is a certain type of reflection, albeit a house of mirrors, it’s still a reflection and the nature of the mirror does not change;
perhaps you’re stuck on something that’s too close to you or there’s some unfinished business as to your time in the FoF…
After all, Sharon, in the Fellowship of Friends, are there not the ~ homeless, mentally ill, children of a certain kind of ‘war’?
To me, whatever is ‘criminal’ within the Fellowship of Friends, comes from it’s members (those who know the inner circle’s propagations and self calming reinforcements),
whereas, Robert Burton’s ‘first lie’ also lives on, within many of the ‘members’ as their ‘daily lie’, that is, for those who choose the ‘buffer it’; as I said before, I met a ‘student’ recently, who said to me, “Oh, yes, I know, and I buffer it all day long.”
So, to me, we often support forms of resistance or contradiction that are safely away from our actual tactile perception (not to say that’s what you are doing) simply,
that things are not as they seem;
for some, it’s easier to give a thousand dollars to Robert Burton, than a dollar to some guy on the corner of Colusa and Plumas in Yuba City;
or to ‘whatever fund’, without knowing its board members or those who it supports personally.
To me, it could be that the Fellowship of Friends situation is ‘close to you’ (still); this could be an opportunity to look deeper into the ‘how’ it is that you would rather support some other ‘form of denial’s redemption’, so to speak, further from you ‘personally’.
Take care, you’re sensitive to ‘personal distance’, try not to let it dictate how close you can get to the bathroom mirror.
______________________________
Hello ~ 371 Graduates
You wrote ~
“Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him much less hundreds of them.”
_____________________
Take a look at Jim Jones, Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson and the thousands of click-cults that are built around dead and alive psychopaths and their king of club ‘visions’…
Not to mention the supporting ‘buffer’ of ‘believing Robert Burton’, i.e., the wine, rich food, things, infra sex and covert sex, etc., all devout-ness in the King of Clubs;
yes, the King of Clubs is clever, it will even blow up a rubber doll that looks like the King of Hearts (minus one’s conscience) in order to give attention to ‘this’ in order to get ‘that’, i.e., a week of pretense deserves a Sunday of abomination and hope for the future.
Heaven or Hell (paradise & the moon) has nothing to do with redemption; it all gets done right here and now.
____________________________
Hello ~ 364 Vera.mente
You wrote ~
“PS: do not agree with Sharon or not an attorney’s posts.
You read revenge, shortsightdedness, and lawyers being always like lawyers, it is like saying that all doctors are in the business of healing to make payments on their second or third home not really to help people…I do not believe it.
I believe RB is breaking the law and harming people, that is all. How do we stop him, how do we make him accountable? (if you can make a mentally ill person accountable) karma is real sooner or later….”
______________________
Your first paragraph (quote) reminds me of a time I went to the hospital to have a ‘procedure for an injury’, they were going to charge me $900 dollars for a 10 minute task;
(I didn’t believe it) and asked them (afterwards) to reconsider, saying that I knew this or that person, who told me otherwise, they charged me (with 5 seconds of conscience-time), $80 dollars.
As Asaf will find out some day; it’s not what you know, it’s who you have been while knowing it; there’s the rub…
______________________
As to the second paragraph ~ Not just Robert Burton will be held accountable; the boys too, particularly ‘the birds of prey’ who both eat and don’t eat what they catch. The egg-layers, the cooks and the farmer’s daughter… The drag-net thing, there’s no butterfly nets; think ocean sea boat net size.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 357 arthur
You wrote ~
“and you can almost hear a worm poop on a flat rock 50 yards away.”
___________________
So that’s what those hundreds of little ‘poof’ sounds are!
Wow, thanks for ‘the rest of the story’… now I know.
_____________________
Hello ~ 358 cyclops
You wrote ~
“Perhaps we should have been more covert, as fore-warned is fore-armed. Now I have a picture of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers frantically trying to put the hotel in order for the health inspector while Manuels pet rat is running loose!”
________________
As some of the younger ‘Generation X’ say, “It’s all good.”
The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is frozen solid; no amount of paper shredding is going to change the figures the IRS and FBI already have; do not forget, they have had their ‘I’ on the FoF for a long time…
Do you really think that such an international organization situated so close to Beale Airforce base and one of the three most powerful receptors structures (looks like an eight story mushroom) for spy satellite info., would not be ‘house-holdered’… Let them shred; it’s never too late for the now.
Your effort to work out your contradictions as to how to proceed in life is invigorating, and you seem to be on the right track.
It may be that part of the help you need will come as you continue to free yourself from the mental confines of the FoF thought processes. This closed-loop logical system will not help you because it always leads to the same conclusions. It’s in that spirit you might look at some of the problems inherent in your post (and maybe in your thought process—you be the judge of that).
The exercise is 1) to realize the following statements are unverifiable assumptions and are, therefore, unfit to base any of your reasoning on and, 2) try to find a different way to communicate your understandings, without using any of the FoF concepts:
— Life, even at it’s best, a genius like Picasso, was a decending octave.
— I felt my inner world suddenly flushed with Hydrogen 12
— (I) felt the electricity from his hand coursing through mine.
— Burton must have crystallized higher energies in some fashion.
— We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.
— the King of Hearts is the doorway to Higher Centers
— each (“conscious being”) will be a different creative expression of Consciousness.
You also said: I read [227] Ni_k Spa_ldi_g. His arguments hold true only if one respects Robert Burton and assumes him to be a Conscious Being.
I might agree if Ni_k actually made any “arguments” but looking over his post again, what I find is a brief quote from Collin, 2 instances of “Robert has asked…”, the statement that the blog is “confrontational,” and a veiled threat by quoting Hafiz to “stay out of the way.” Not much of an argument, but then it doesn’t have to be. Any member knows what this—an intimidation pure and simple. And that’s why these 2 have disappeared, because the message was unambiguous.
Bass, I sincerely hope you continue to pursue your process, it can only lead you to better things. Be well.
372 Graduates writes
“He is too fat (at times) to be a king of clubs.
Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him ”
How would you know? You speak as if you have observed and verified these things but that’s imagination isn’t it? Are you saying you are the true conscious being here? Not only conscious of yourself but able to observe and identify the workings of different functions in others. IE objective consciousness. Get over yourself. Before you post about things that neither you nor others can really know learn the difference between theory, paractice and being.
“Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated. ”
Sure that’s one way to defend the Fellowship’s Criminal activities this apologist turns the tables so that victims who speak up become perpetarters on the poor innocents who might suffer. There are no innocents in the Fellowship. Get over that idea. All this about our dear sweet wonderful friends is bullshit. These are people who believe they are the chosen few, Gods select.who make no effort to serve the humanity they look down on. These are the ones who turn their backs on the departing members.
This appeals to inertia “think how much better to do nothing”. the reality is that change is occuring in the Fellowship, positive change, because of the blog. Not because of the happy to not disturb the status que, the ones who lie to themselves and buffer the crime inherent in Robert’s activities. It is not because of the true believers demanding change but because of the pissed off ones who will not “go quite into that dark night” of hypocrisy and lies.
“Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising it’s head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right? ”
I’m right, whenever I raise my voice to challange an injustice I’m right. Its being part of the process that’s right. I don’t need to imagine I’m the final authority just one voice. Yes , I can judge the Fellowship of Friends. It is my place. You must be a Fellowship member. What I judge with is called consciousness and conscience something those in the school both physicaly and mentaly cannot grasp. There is no conscience in a play of crime. All who support the criminal Burton are criminals. All those who earn a living off the Fellowship are vampires sucking the life force out of genuine seekers. The real crime of the Fellowship is the harvesting and abuse of magnetic centers.
“The voices of reason here, like Sharon and Ames, are important. Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.”
This shows what seems to be a typical fellowship lack of intellectual development. A lack of what is called critical thinking skills. Sharon and Ames clearly articulate their personal positions making it clear that that is precisly a personal statement. This is unquestionable. False or not ones own opinions and feelings are facts. You want to use this as a guide to a universal principal. This is a poorly thought out arguement. The correctness of their own position for them is in no way a guide for anyone else and certainly not a rule for all humanity. You change scales as if the very concept of scale does not exist another example of the poverty of real devolpment in the Fellowship. Conscience is specific. Of course one point brought out in this blog is that those in the Fellowship lack conscience and cannot see it in others. Using examples of great revolutions is an inappropriate comparisns. A more appropriate example is Roe vs. Wade. or the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. These while having difficult results overall have advanced civilization.
“Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him ”
How would you know?
********************
True and I do apologize. From now on, like most of the other contributors, I will substantiate my opinions with accredited research papers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association or the Journal of Applied Psychology. Good catch though, it is essential to have an objective sergeant-at arms ever ready to call out those unintentional liars that inevitably ruin a vigorous exchange of ideas with their ill-considered deceptive hallucinations that they would have passed along as facts. You are owned a debt of gratitude that will likely never be justly compensated.
I keep two volumes of the most enlightened manuals on my desk and would like to quote from them. They are “Deep Thoughts” and “Deeper Thoughts” by Jack Handey.
“To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can’t remember, all rolled into one big “thing.” This is truth, to me. ”
” Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And, also, you’re drunk. “
You are wasting your time.
There is so much unnecesary talk,
There is a lot of Identification,
Thera are many negative emotions,
Maybe for all these reasons, Our King of Clubs loves to waste our time buffering the present moment.
Do not think that you know all tricks of your own king of clubs, because is precisely our king of clubs that has the control, and you are its slave whitout knowing.
another simple truth from “Deeper Thoughts” Jack Handy:
“As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way. “
Hello.
Thank you all for your valuable participation on this discussion board.
Unoanimo, I took the time this evening to read your posts here more closely. I am amazed, totally inspired and grateful for your participation.
I also read several other posts with more thoughtfulness, and was similarly moved. There are too many to mention.
In essence, I am happy to have had a luxurious bit of time to read all these thoughts more thoroughly.
I recommend it!
See “The Cult of the Suicide Bomber” (came out this year). It includes entirely fascinating information about the evolution of this mode of terrorism. It began as a form of weaponry within a war situation and has become an extreme form of terrorism that blackmails the citizens of the entire planet.
There is a great emphasis on observing the believers’ (i.e., parents of suicide bombers) language, which defines the act as, “martyrdom”. That is in deep contrast to the term “suicide”.
This film explores the potency of religious language and fervor which disdains and excludes entire societies. It does this by illustrating that the hateful effects of elitism and that the creation and ownership of extremist spiritual jargon has an irrevocable effect on the earth and its inhabitants.
Gurdjieff on the First Initiation (and the real principle of payment):
You will see that in life you get back exactly what you put in. Your life is the mirror of what you are, it is your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without ever feeling indebted. Your attitude towards the world and towards life is the attitude of one who has the right to demand and take. Of one who doesn’t need to pay or gain. You believe that all things are due to you, only because it’s you! All your blindness is there. It doesn’t catch your attention. It is however what, in you, separates one world from another.
You have no measure to measure yourself with. You live only between ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’. Which means that you have appreciation only for yourself. You do not allow for anything above you – theoretically or logically maybe, but not in reality. This is why you are demanding and keep on thinking that everything should be cheap, and you can afford to pay for anything you want. You don’t recognize anything above yourself, or outside yourself or inside yourself. This is why, I repeat, you have no measure and live only to satisfy your whims.
Yes, your ‘self appreciation’ makes you blind! It is the biggest obstacle to a new life. One has to be able to pass this obstacle, this threshold, before one can go further. It is the test that separates the ‘chaff’ from the ‘wheat’ in people. No matter how intelligent, how endowed, how brilliant a man is, if he doesn’t change his opinion about himself, he will be lost for inner development, for the work based on self-knowledge, for a real evolution. He will stay as he is all his life.
The first demand, the first condition, the first test for he who wants to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He cannot just imagine, or simply believe or think, but actually see things in himself that he did not see before, really see them. Never will his opinion about himself change as long as he will not see inside himself. And in order to see, he has to learn to see: it is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.
Before anything else, he has to know what to look for. Once he knows it, he has to make efforts, focus his attention, look constantly, with tenacity. By maintaining his attention on it, by not forgetting about looking, one day he may see. If he sees once, he can see a second time, and if this is repeated he cannot ignore seeing. This is the state to look for in our observation; it is from this that the true desire, the desire to evolve, will be born; from cold we’re becoming hot, vibrating; we will be deeply touched by our reality.
Today we have only the illusion of what we are. We overestimate ourselves. We do not respect ourselves. To respect myself, I have to have recognized in me a part which is higher than the other parts, and to which I show respect by the attitude I have towards it. In this way I will respect myself. And my relationships with others will be ruled by the same respect.
We have to understand that all other measuring units, talent, erudition, culture, genius, are changing units, units of detail. The only true measure, never changing, objective, the only real one, it is the measure of inner vision. ‘I’ see – ‘I’ see myself – and you have measured. With a higher, real part, you have measured a lower one, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the respective roles of each part, will bring you to self-respect. But you will find it is not easy. And it is not a bargain. One has to pay a lot. For the bad payers, the lazy, the losers, no chance. One must pay, pay a lot, pay immediately and pay in advance. Pay from oneself. With sincere efforts, wholeheartedly, without expectations.
The more you will be willing to pay without reticence, without cheating, without falsity, the more you will receive. And from then on, you will meet your true nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesty it goes to in order to avoid paying cash. Because you have to pay with all the gratuitous theories, all the deeply rooted convictions, all the prejudice, all conventions, all ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’. Without bargaining, honestly, not just make believe; trying to see while using fake money.
Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you think you are, that you overestimate yourself, therefore that you lie to yourself. That you lie to yourself always, every moment, all day long, your whole life. That the lie rules you to the extent that you cannot control it anymore. You are its victim. You lie everywhere. Your relationships with others, lies. The education you’ re giving, your petty conventions, lies. Your learning, lies. Your theories, your art, lies. Your social life, your family life, all lies. And what you think of yourself, lies too.
But you don’t stop from what you’re doing or from what you’re saying, because you believe in you. You have to stop inside and observe. Observe without prejudice. While accepting for a time this idea of lies. And if you observe in this manner, paying of yourself, without self-pity, by giving all your false riches for one moment of reality, maybe someday you’ll see all of a sudden something you have never seen in you before.
You will see you are someone else from what you thought you were. You will see that you are two. One that is not, but takes the place and plays the other’s role. And the one that is, but so weak, so inconsistent, that just brought forth it disappears immediately. It cannot stand the lies. The smallest lie kills it. It doesn’t fight, it does not resist, it is vanquished in advance.
Learn to look until you have observed the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the impostor in you. When you can see your two natures, that day, in you, the truth will be born.
Intro to a meeting from September, 1941: Premiere Initiation, par G.I. Gurdjieff Question de Gurdjieff (no 50) ed. Albin Michel, 1989, p.34-35,/i>
Many of us inside the Fellowship of Friends are wondering these days, “What can I do?” There’s plenty we can do. The following is a long list (although not a comprehensive list) of the numerous ways we can protest what’s happening in the Fellowship of Friends:
• When Robert Burton asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Express your thoughts out loud.
• Believe the ‘I’s.
• Express doubts about the Fellowship’s ideas.
• Express doubts about the Fellowship of Friends.
• Express doubts about Robert Burton.
• Tell people that leaving the Fellowship does not invalidate everything about their time in the Fellowship.
• Tell people that you’ve heard there is a beautiful, spiritual, rewarding existence after you leave the Fellowship of Friends.
• Tell people that the Gods still work with them when they leave the Fellowship of Friends.
• Tell people that the Gods worked with them before they joined the Fellowship, during their time in the Fellowship, and after they leave the Fellowship.
• Tell people that the Gods work with people outside of the Fellowship (blasphemy, isn’t it?)
• Tell people that Robert Burton is merely a pawn of the Gods.
• Help people protect themselves from Robert Burton and the negative consequences of remaining in the Fellowship.
• Criticize Robert Burton.
• Sneak into the Theatron for Journey Forth by Day. Don’t pay.
• Carry a bottle of wine into the theatron and enjoy it.
• Leave the Fellowship.
• Before you leave, encourage a friend to leave the Fellowship.
• Dismiss any notion that protesting is “the wrong triad.”
• Dismiss any notion that encouraging someone to leave is “the wrong triad.”
• “Photograph” people for Fellowship-ese.
• “Photograph” people for using the word “photograph.”
• While driving, do everything you can to look for something interesting in the present WITHOUT thinking about the so-called lower-self, the sequence, bible keys, or anything remotely connected to Robert Burton. Try to find something interesting in the present because it is as natural as breathing to look for something interesting in the present, and because it is what you want to do, and because it makes you feel good, and because it brings you in touch with your inner nature, and with God.
• If someone you barely know tries kissing you square on the lips, don’t let them.
• Damn it, think for yourself.
• Express negativity, argue with one another, and don’t apologize.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Go on a 5-day fast.
• Examine your conscience without feeling guilty that you are having “morality ‘I’s.”
• Ask yourself, “What in heaven’s name am I doing here?” Ask it out loud, but with a smile, and ask it so that many people can hear you.
• Question authority.
• Listen to someone who is “expressing negativity” about Robert Burton. Listen to them closely.
• When you are at the table, please DO “share funny stories that are true, such as humorous incidents that have actually happened.” (In case you didn’t know, we’ve been asked not to.)
• Talk with your hands.
• Smile so that your teeth show. (In case you didn’t know, we’ve been asked not to.)
• When someone describes a “confirmation from Influence C of the significance of the Thirty Imperishable Work ‘I’s,” please dismiss it with a hearty laugh.
• Drive 5 mph over the speed limit on the property, and laugh at people who scold you.
• Park in the wrong place.
• When someone asks you for money at a Potage brunch, smile and say “no” so that people sitting at the nearby tables can hear you.
• Sign up for a trip to Egypt, but don’t pay for it.
• Open your windows and play a rock song full-blast on your car stereo.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Pull prospective students aside and ask them if they are insane.
• Don’t eat European style (even if you’re European).
• Sit on the Ming furniture, if you can find any that hasn’t already been sold at a loss.
• Grab a plate of food for your wife or girlfriend at a reception.
• Hold hands with your girlfriend or boyfriend while walking down from the road from Apollo D’oro.
• Smooch with your girlfriend in broad daylight.
• Smooch with your boyfriend in broad daylight.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Don’t wear a tie to a meeting or reception.
• Wear a very short skirt, or wear pants.
• If you see anyone in Robert Burton’s entourage, talk to them about it.
• Create an anonymous hotmail.com account, and send your thoughts to the young men in Robert Burton’s entourage.
• Create an anonymous hotmail.com account, and send your thoughts to several people on the FOF distribution list.
• Talk openly about books that discuss uncomfortable and unwelcome topics.
• Talk openly on topics that are not welcome.
• Make people feel uncomfortable.
• Want people around you to feel good.
• Don’t believe anyone who tells you there’s something wrong with feeling good.
• Use the word, “yeah.”
• Use the word, “nope.”
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “Nope.”
• Recognize that being honest and true to yourself is not “negativity.”
• See that “negativity” can have positive results for yourself and others if you don’t inner consider it.
• “Photograph” others for using the work language way too often. Ask them to express their ideas in their own words.
• Direct a performance of a Shakespeare play at your home in Oregon House.
• Invite Robert and Asaf to it. And Ni_k. And G_r_rd.
• Laugh at the sequence.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Express compassion for anyone who is having a hard time with all of this. Don’t photograph them for self-pity.
• Don’t dismiss depression as a sign of weakness — see it as a sign of being alive and stuck in a dysfunctional group called the Fellowship of Friends.
• See anger and resentment as a sign of being alive and in the Fellowship. When someone expresses it, ask them what’s wrong. Ask them what you can do to help.
• Tell people that the Fellowship is dysfunctional.
• Tell people sincerely that Robert Burton has a serious mental illness, and that he’s delusional.
• Tell people that you were delusional when you trusted Robert Burton.
• Do any or all of the above, but invent some of your own protests.
• When Robert Burton asks you to have sex, say “No.”
More Truth, more laughs. Please enjoy and don’t forget to do the sequence!
More Sacred images and sacred de-codings taught by Beloved Teacher these days. Don’t you just envy Howard Carter and his friends? See what you’re missing?
OSTRICH EGG
A rock carving depicting an ostrich egg, found in Libya, dates to 8,000-6,000 BP. Inside the egg are six baby ostriches, representing the sequence. The three ostriches whose bodies are completely visible represent the three Be’s— the first coming, the middle coming, and the second coming. (Similarly, an Egyptian wall painting depicts a man—representing the steward—holding a basket—representing the nine of hearts—containing six ostrich eggs, on the top of which sits the feather of truth with thirty divisions.) Rumi said, “You have flown beyond the egg of this world”—you have flown beyond the sequence—Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE—and now you have the four wordless breaths of divine presence, with their inhalation and exhalation. The egg is a womb for the bird.
MATING SCENE
A prehistoric rock painting depicts a mating couple. What makes this image more than merely erotic art is the headband of ten divisions worn by the woman—the nine of hearts—which represents the ten thousand passions under control. Prehistoric symbolism rarely went this far. The man is in long BE form. The man and woman both have two arms, but while the woman has two legs, the man has only one leg, his three limbs representing the three Be’s—the first coming, the middle coming, and the second coming. The woman is kneeling, which means that the sequence is actually working, and the man is penetrating her, which means that Be is engaging presence. They are in love—the sequence is acting.
The steward and the nine of hearts are copulating, engaging divine presence. Although they each have two arms, and the woman has two breasts and two legs, the man stands upon a single leg, which we take as long BE. The man represents the three Be’s—his two arms are short Be and middle Be, and his leg is long BE. The woman is in the long BE position, and marvelously, has a headband with ten divisions on her head. This means that the nine of hearts is in control of the ten thousand ‘I’s. She has engaged divine presence and is kneeling before the state we are in—the third eye. Her two breasts probably represent Be and Hold. This demonstrates that there is far more information in these images than people would suspect. In Going Forth by Day, it is written, “I have not had intercourse with a married woman”—with the nine of clubs, who is married to the ten thousand ‘I’s. “I have not wrongly copulated”—the steward has not listened to ‘I’s unrelated to the sequence. Hafiz called them the “ten thousand idiots,” because they think they are the state we are in. The painting of the mating couple conveys the same message as the Egyptian figures kneeling to engage the divine presence of Ra. The headband of the mating woman, the cave painting with five left hands and one right hand, and the carving of Sekhmet are irrefutable evidence that the prehistoric people had the system. In fact, they not only had the system, but they were its originators four cycles before Egypt.
I don’t know why you post that stuff. You are certainly free to do so.
Unoanimo wrote: ” Key yourself and burn the holy books: after all, your soul wrote them all anyways.”
When you read that does it mean anything to you? Do you think you are writing to a bunch of pre-schoolers?
Of course, these are only “I’s”. All that G. wrote were only “I’s”. What is so irritating is that after all these years this stuff has been twisted and used against you. You are being manipulated by it rather than it liberating.
The “I” that sees myself is the “I” that sees yourself. Get it?
You don’t get to “have” a real “I” but if you think if you can buy one keep paying.
Note : i.e., some of the most advanced wiseacring on the planet; second only to George Bush’s war policies and Martha Stewart’s prison diary (that may or may not have been published yet).
“O you who are invincible, you found me when I had disarranged the hair of my face and my scalp was disordered.”
_______________________________
Possible Blog Keying ~
Oh, superman, how could you barge in at a time like this, before I have combed out the braiding of my beard past time and put on my toupee?
You are wasting your time.
There is so much unnecesary talk,
There is a lot of Identification,
Thera are many negative emotions,
Maybe for all these reasons, Our King of Clubs loves to waste our time buffering the present moment.
Do not think that you know all tricks of your own king of clubs, because is precisely our king of clubs that has the control, and you are its slave whitout knowing.”
______________________________
Nothing like verifying what the author is pointing towards than by noticing that his or her ‘left hand’ (that does not know what its right hand is doing while typing such hypocrisy) is pointing back towards themselves the whole while.
Wow… Are you trying to be ironic; or is it ‘normal’ for a person to demonstrate what he or she is complaining about by first demonstrating the target of complaint by wearing a bullseye-shirt themselves?
It’s July; but hey, we’re not that low on coconut milk.
BTW… doesn’t your little ‘Submit Comment Box’ have automatic spell check? Words underlined in ‘red’ usually mean ‘stop, consider again’; or is yours ‘green’?
_______________________________
*
Trut(h) in Dutch means ‘stupid bitch’…
**
I like your remarks like I like a cartoon.
At the same time I feel sad for you.
I hope that one day you will know why.
***
There is so little respect for others in your
‘statements’, so little understanding how
people have to recover and heal from discovering
the sinister truth behind the FoF.
****
You judge others peoples activities always so
easy from your anonymous shelther
*****
– tell me something about yourself.
******
Are you a true believer in Robert Burton?
Do you believe you need him for spiritual purposes?
*******
Do you make money and support the FoF or are you
A part of the ‘inner circle’ – that is to say the sales-
Team who’s instinctive center depends an the contributions of
Others. Or are you just an simple underpaid salary slave with
nowhere to go?
********
“The first demand, the first condition, the first test for he who wants to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He cannot just imagine, or simply believe or think, but actually see things in himself that he did not see before, really see them. Never will his opinion about himself change as long as he will not see inside himself. And in order to see, he has to learn to see: it is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.”
____________________________________
One may look at the ‘teacher’s’ (Robert Burton) first lie as a ‘do’ as to his “appreciation of himself”, his essential contradictions and “two selves”;
yet, to me, he stepped outside this image, as it is natural for all Saturns to do, to create wondrous rings for thousands to skate upon, rather than one wedding ring towards the inner self and the intent to suffer the consequences of being an automatic conduit for hypocricy, as we all ‘automatically are’,
yet, unbeknown to the Fellowship of Friends, The Work allows ‘choice and will’ to undue these clock tower tick tocks, to free ourselves from the burden of time, not standing still by it’s own ‘catching of breath’, rather, by our will to stop it, love it, be in between the tick and the tock, to sense that we are participating in life and simultaneously witnessing the growth of our physical deaths;
Robert Burton took up the career of satellites and forgot himself, his own ‘what goes around comes around’ laws,
he decided to feed upon the concepts of love, not the percepts, (after all, the lower cannot see the higher)…
again, this is a buffer from his pain body: in being-reality, Robert Burton is about 10 years old in his essence,
something diabolical happened to this man and he has not transformed it, rather, the experience has crystallized into a ‘lifestyle’, a recording,
playing like a record for those who are brought to listen to its hypnotic effect; sometimes it’s like a dog-whistle, other times, like a 2000 lb bull breathing down your neck, daring you to show any red, any unmanly bravery for the self, essence-shaming.
We live in change and Change lives in us; we are always preganant with something, children are our pathways to becoming less selfish and in the King of Clubs;
Robert Burton says, “They are to be seen, not heard.” (A very popular American attitude BTW.) Yet, is not Robert Burton’s attitude towards children synonymous with that of his unreconciled self, his damaged essence?
It’s easy to point to faults and not suggest further than the obvious photograph; yet, I would like to suggest that Robert Burton start all over again, drop the Fellowship of Friends, camp out near his mother’s grave for 6 months, fast, breath, write letters to his mother and this blog, explain yourself by the vehicles of higher centers (and that’s not a contradiction BTW), stop teaching the way of the perpetual si-do; Robert, have you not kept it long enough?
Robert Burton,
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or is it that you are still ‘two’, doing unto others, your boys, what was done to your ‘not self’? Where is that portion that “…cannot stand the lies.” (?)
Is it not obvious enough that the ‘then as lie’ is the ‘now as lie’, that the ingredient of ‘lie’ freezes one’s being and distances the favors of the muses and ‘real’ time passing into ‘outside of time-being’?
Cannot you, Robert Burton, see that you are daily re-living an unreconciled instance of your painbody’s birth, of efforting towards more drama-shopping, more pain-hunger, and ‘finalizing’ of an account upon its external ‘seems so’ ‘mother of that birth’?
All your “next lifetime”, to me, only points to ‘I have not yet-ness…’ We can keep it simple, yes?
And what of it’s results, your lifestyle, your asking others to be ‘you’ in the hands of an abusive ‘mother’ or ‘goddess in a man’s body’ for the sake of ‘awakening’, awakening to what, another day of being trapped in your parents house, not being able to go when you really need to?
Many of us have had these circumstances, yet, somewhere ‘choice’ arose, will, an an invisible third party; has it not in you, if not, what form will it take, does physical age really mean anything when considering ‘crystallization’?
Perhaps you are the only student in ‘your school’, you cannot cheat when you’re the only one in the room; can you take the test that you yourself have expected of your ‘students’ and not graduated anyone from? Can you take their test?
For some, aging reveals conscience, perhaps this has something to do with your attempts to glorify doomsday; to celestialize the destruction of millions; yet, are these not simply your own unconscious reactions to the number of cells in your physical body, the roaring waves of blood that will someday cease flowing through your heart?
Some become more cynical in old age, others bitter for they cannot reconcile the damage done by others and that which they have reciprocated back; it’s all grey, they cannot distinguish what they think others deserved because they struck first and what others did not deserve, having not stuck first after being first struck.
This blog is your opportunity to see or to hide.
Your lifestyle’s consequences, you cannot pay for them, so, hence the overwhelming greed and affirmative dream-scape of Isis;
yet, Isis is not your mother, the feminine outside your dominance feature and automatic muse-making which refers only back to you yourself, Isis is you, the goddess in a man’s body (or is it your mother’s untransformed wrath, of which you were both victums of your “two selves”, which is possessing you and your ‘boys’ as a way to Paradise or is it just a movie, with the same effect all movies have, the desire for sequels and better movies than ‘that last one’?)
Evolution can be conscious or it can be a habit of having hobbies inbetween extremes.
Everything is ‘To be Continued’, yet, this gives no one who has met self remembering, ‘real license’… no one; Robert Burton, you are driving on a ‘Learner’s Permit’ with no one in the passenger seat… “Why be formatory?” You say.
Yes, Robert Burton, you say and never do anything to stay your hypocrisies; so, what are you doing? When will you bury the gods and sprout yourself?
Yes, I belong to the people who love this blog, and even more I must tell you honestly, that in half a year of wasting time in reading this blog, i have gained more than in the last ten years hearing Robert´s teaching. And I know there are a lot of current members thinking the same way!
Thanks a lot to all the contributors to the blog, especially to WhaleRider, Ames and unoanimo.
Hey Ames, thanks for your post. I did go back and read your exit letter from discussion #7. I missed that originally.
Very powerful description and interesting thoughts regarding who or what RB really is. Seems like we see have seen similar things?
Sorry to single you and WR out. In retrospect it feels like one of those Moon “I’s” you later regret expressing. Had to ineptly apologize to him too. [#366]
It all came from a place of frustration with the polarity that often surfaces on this blog. Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because at least they are Committed-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.
Funny, there is not any answer in words that can be said here. Conscience is about individual Truth. So we each have to find our own way there.
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Unanoanimo
I used to hate your stream of consciousness blogs.
“What garbage is this?”, I thought.
But there is a method to the madness.
Thanks for your inpolite insanity.
Yesri baba 405
Dear Yesri, why are you so hard on Truth is Where You Find It?
I personally think that the G quote is an excellent one, and am grateful for the find since I was not familiar with it.
Maybe you are under the impression that TIWYFI plays for Dr. No’s team, but that’s not the case (see his/her other posts).
By the way, since you dig the Arcade Fire, did you check my video link at post 332?
Great music+spaghetti western+cold blue-eyed saturnine villain defeated by lone avenger … I don’t know, it just makes me feel real good inside …
LOL
#404 Keep ‘em coming Purchasing Awakening! You are my hero!
“…irrefutable evidence that the prehistoric people had the system…”
This is irrefutable evidence that RB is off his rocker. Let’s do some reality testing here. Maslow points out that fulfilling the highest need, self actualization, can only occur when all the lesser needs of basic survival have been mastered. In the prehistoric age, that would have lasted only about five minutes after your last meal. Hardly enough time to develop a ‘system’. I am sure they had other worries on their mind, like how survive the next winter or next childbirth.
Gee, it begs the question, why aren’t there any cave paintings of giving multiple divine blow jobs? Hey, now there’s a theme for some new murals in the Galleria for future magnetic centers to ponder!!! Or maybe it’s already there, you just have to have the right keys to see it…
I am beginning to sense that RB has developed an extreme obsession with fabricating evidence to support his ‘sequence’ and will go to great lengths to insure that his ‘guru’ legacy survives him. The ‘sequence’ appears so crucial for his narcissism that in the same breath that he offers ‘evidence’, he has to include a warning for any dissent with the following quote:
“…the steward has not listened to ‘I’s unrelated to the sequence. ”
Again, Thought Reform 101. Indirectly imbedded in the ‘evidence’ is the instruction to deny all evidence to the contrary that RB is delusional or you are not included. This is a good example of fear-based reasoning, spirituality with a gun to your head.
“Hafiz called them the “ten thousand idiots,” because they think they are (in) the state we are in.”
I personally know I am not in the state I think FOFers are in…it is called the state of DENIAL. Of course, they would deny that…so would I.
“[T]he true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.”
Brilliant! Despite the first line, I realize it is possible that it is written by someone who has already left. Next thought was it really doesn’t matter. It was a wonderfully written, painfully funny, piece. I would add:
Yes I did see the video and enjoyed it. I have always liked those Spag. westerns and thought it was a good choice for the song. Still listen to the David Bowie one. Great “anthem”.
I also had not seen that from G. and enjoyed it. Every word of it seems true. I would rather not see any stuff like that. I was reacting to my reaction to it. How could it be otherwise?
All that stuff is poison now. It is up-side down and dragged way around. It was an introductory meeting from 1941. Jeezy chreezy. We’ve been flogging ourselves with that crap for 30 yrs.
Man was created in God’s image not vice/versa. Fundamentalist thinking always wants to turn it around. A shift in perspective does not mean “dividing attention” left to right instead of front to back. I guess you just got to “get it” somehow and it does have to be paid for but cooooome ooooon how long do you have to beat a dead horse till it starts drinking.
I wish I had Unoanimo’s genius ( I do by-the-way just not the craft) or Ames or Joe Average or Arthur or yours or this man or woman’s scope and that woman or man’s reason. All those “measuring units” G. mentioned. Yeah, way back when we over valued ourselves in FP. Now we under value ourselves from clenching the harmonica too tight in our teeth. I guess we thought we could delay the inevitable. It wasn’t our fault. We just need to let it fall.
It’s “working”. Someone in a post a ways back said they learned more from this blog than 10 yrs. in the fof. Then there was “Grassroots” and more and more people are being affected (or should I say infected) by Unoanimo’s “conscious intellectual art”. It is quite amazing, I must say.
I will keep playing a little tune working for rifts of brilliant harmony even if it is only from a harmonica.
Truth Is Where You Find It and you can find a whole bunch of truth in stuff made false. It’s nothing personal.
“Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because they are Commited-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.”
Yes, ironic, no? We have all been infected with the most moronic thought ever to flicker through millennia of grey matter: I am more awake.
Part of my waking up and leaving the Fellowship was due to the palm octave. I recognized, not long after Robert had begun collecting palms, that I was noticing palms everywhere – Yuba City, Grass Valley – and they obviously had always been there, I just hadn’t seen them.
Having my attention managed by my guru made me notice something I had never seen before. Sitting atop a Chicago skyscraper as Apollo burned, I decided, through an appropriate ritual of liberation, to manage my own attention and direct it towards my own aims.
Startling what one can see, when one takes responsibility for one’s own attention. I began to see how much of Robert’s “charisma” was under my own power. The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.
Of course he willingly accepted it, and took more if he could. Normal primate behavior, whether a priest, crook, or politician.
Yesri (425): “Yes, ironic, no? We have all been infected with the most moronic thought ever to flicker through millennia of grey matter: I am more awake.”
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It goes even a step further into moronity: “I win, you lose. I’m more awake. Ha… Ha…”
If we believe that it actually is a “brutal universe,” which are the words that Robert Burton has used, then our view of the world tends to separate us from others, separate us from Nature, and separate us from everything and everyone.
If our goal is to separate ourselves from everything and everyone, then one of the best ways to do that is to claim that we have the best religion, the best country, the best ideas, the strongest will, and that we are more awake.
But do we really want to “be separate”? Is consciousness something we must compete for? Sounds absurd, but that’s the unspoken attitude. I win, you lose. I’m more awake.
By the way, Robert Burton is extremely competitive. Extremely. No one can ever show him up. I’d be curious to hear stories of how he reacts when he loses on the golf course, or on the tennis court. I’m sure he’s had his moments of being gracious, but I’m also sure the guy or gal who defeats him eventually bears the brunt of it, directly or indirectly. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon there will be “consequences.”
More Effort! More Effort! More Money! More Madness!
From our Beloved Teacher:
VASE AND SPIRALS
The spirals painted upon a pre-dynastic vase, now in the British Museum, represent a series of successful sequences; the vase itself represents the nine of hearts. The message of the vase is hidden behind simplicity, while the message on the tomb is hidden behind complexity. We can see how close the pre-dynastic school of Egypt is to the prehistoric school.
TWO GIRAFFES
A rock painting from Nigeria, dating from 7,000-5,000 BP “before present”), depicts two giraffes. Interestingly, the smaller giraffe, representing short Be, has the back legs of a rhinoceros—the lower self—while the taller giraffe, representing long BE—has giraffe’s legs. This means that the sequence is rising from imagination—the Hanged Man card in the Tarot—to short Be. Both short Be and long BE are tethered, which means that the passions are under control. Marvelously, the tall giraffe has four divisions on his tail, while the smaller giraffe has five divisions on his tail, totaling nine divisions, and representing the control of the passions.
…two giraffes in short Be and long BE form, with the four wordless breaths—the four inhalations and exhalations—at the top. Interestingly, the giraffe representing short Be has the legs of a rhinoceros. This is a clever way to say that short Be is coming out of imagination.
NEFERTITI
A painted limestone statue from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin depicts Nefertiti. We can see that her slender neck, which represents the sequence flowing freely, is not choked by the lower self. Mohammed said, “There are people who recite the Koran but it does not go beyond their collarbones.” They intone Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE, without engaging presence; it stops at their “collarbones.” This is why Nefertiti has a slender neck.
The bust of Nefertiti represents the nine of hearts in “reverent devotion.” She is wearing a blue crown, which means that the nine of hearts has established the prolonged divine presence of the third eye.
Her slender, elegant neck represents the sequence moving freely, failing to be strangled by the lower self.
ARABIC LETTER
Here, we see the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, Baa. (BTW, it’s a lie, the first letter is Alef, Baa is second. Or well, it’s not the first lie and who cares, right? -P.A.)
Interestingly, it has a similar configuration to the boat of Ra—a vertical front or back, and a curved ending or beginning. We can think of it as the ark engaging divine presence. The point below, which has four sides, is work ‘I’ number six, the top of the pyramid. … In the Roman alphabet, the lower-case letter ‘i’ has a small dot on top, reflecting the humility of work ‘I’ number six, unlike the uppercase letter ‘I,’ which has no dot.
WT: The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.
Yes. On the other hand, it’s been much more common for all of us to avoid the notion that Robert is a criminal. And we also tend to avoid criticizing him in any way. That’s what we were taught in the Fellowship, and many of us (myself included) carried that into our time away from the Fellowship… “He’s really not that bad. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” and so on. Any criticisms of the School or Robert were almost always met with disapproval unless they were expressed in private settings.
Now, that’s a buffer.
However, I still really like your comment… It focuses the attention to something within our control — i.e., our own reactions. So, in this case, we obviously don’t have control over Robert’s behavior, but if we put more energy into our own response, something healthy can grow out of this.
Hey, I love my king of clubs, it’s very precious to me! One of the irritating myths of the FoF is the demonisation of the instinctive center. I don’t consider it any “lower” than the K of Hearts in any way, including it’s attraction to evolution. It helps me to recognize something rotten (even if getting out of it takes 20 years….), it protects me from people like RB, and from all the other predatory folks out there, especially those K of C saturnine guys (apologies to all you noble, self-effacing K of C saturnine guys out there, don’t jump on me, please……).
Walter ———
I don’t equate RB being instinctively centered with him being criminal. Though he may be both, and in fact I’ve often had the perception that he is extremely instinctive. I’m sure he would prefer to think he is emotional, but, that’s not what I see. But I don’t consider it “maligning” him to call him instinctively centered.
KA—–
You are also right that his taste in art, clothing, and certainly music, is very Jack of Hearts. Very irritating.
Uno—–
I don’t have a spell check on my Submit Comment box – do you? If I want to spell check, I copy into Word, check, then copy back. Usually I simply use my eyes.
Laura ———-
What wonderful posts lately! I especially appreciated:
“Still, I’d love it if the real heroes turned out to be some humble current students of no consequence, like we used to be. To my best knowledge, most of us, except very few, have left the school in good order. I, for one, may have left on some the impression that I had just been vaporized by magic.
Is it possible, in this present contingency, for some students to do the unthinkable, and, before taking off, as the emperor walks by, simply point out to others his nakedness?
It’s hard, isn’t it? Almost impossible, and I guess that’s why we didn’t do it, it takes a real hero to act in the moment following conscience. We are generally so well trained in delayed reaction. In the face of authority we just go blank, only to wake up a few hours, a few days or maybe a few years later, while the emperor has moved to far away lands in his beautiful white carriage.”
428 has been newly moderated. Sorry, Purchasing Awakening, the amount of links you throw in keeps on alerting my spam filter. No worries though, I have a bit more time now.
Startling what one can see, when one takes responsibility for one’s own attention. I began to see how much of Robert’s “charisma” was under my own power. The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.”
I posted the wikipedia analysis of “charisma” here on this board (373). It includes that one researcher, “…stressed that a leader has charisma only if other people accept that s/he has it.”
“Unanoanimo
I used to hate your stream of consciousness blogs.
“What garbage is this?”, I thought.
But there is a method to the madness.
Thanks for your inpolite insanity.”
_________________________________
“Stream of Consciousness”? Hummmm… nope, this is stream of consciousness (be glad this is not what we’re writing, at least as of yet) >
Slower flesh than the mushrooms push neither he or she worried freedom nutrients and flowing pirates scampering down the sides of lake meadows frogs caught through back doorway openings sausage, grandmother, hearing me there outside having run away thistles backwards games that we did Crayola baskets and zoo paintings between her love and his demon seesaw green violets and a kiss goodnight, Buddha rests geode summons farmers to the barrel bricks onslaught paving roads of roses bristling with quartz flags.
Bass, truly I ‘hope’ with all my heart that no one posting on this blog has a ‘method’ of any sort; even ‘madness’ becomes mundane after awhile; though the love for your continuance does not.
___________________________
Hey ~ 415 Laura ~
You wrote ~
“Great music+spaghetti western+cold blue-eyed saturnine villain defeated by lone avenger … I don’t know, it just makes me feel real good inside …”
____________________________
Charles Bronson rocks! I especially like his voice; he’s a natural, I wonder what ever happened to him (?)
Shelley, Bruce, do you know what happened to Charlie?
____________________________
Hello ~ 418 Whalerider
You wrote ~
“Gee, it begs the question, why aren’t there any cave paintings of giving multiple divine blow jobs? Hey, now there’s a theme for some new murals in the Galleria for future magnetic centers to ponder!!! Or maybe it’s already there, you just have to have the right keys to see it…”
____________________________
Right, the key to Robert’s TV Room where the new comers (so to speak) and ‘purple hearts’ alike, view pornography, prior to the “You know what Robert wants tonight.” – talk, downstairs in the Slave Pen.
Oh, BTW, there are several paintings of naked little boys in the Galleria;
one to the right, before entering the Library and a few in the kitchen dining room…
just for ‘scale & relativity’ for those who, not only have not eyes to see (yet), but are also not worried a bit, because Robert’s boy’s are all grown up now and are responsible for themselves,
particularly when being exploited and confused by an entity who claims to have ‘one self’ though ‘loves’ those who have two or more selves, they’re easier to persuade that “Hafiz, you’re the problem, move aside; let me sodomize your real self awhile, you don’t have to do me though, I’m just dandy being me, me and me…”
not to mention that those paintings, the ‘naked 6-10 year old little boys’ do not (key) as what he’s eating for breakfast and seizes upon, no, they’re just reminders of the innocence of essence,
taking it through the ‘Knowledge room of the Fellowship of Friends’ into the demoralizing factory of ‘the bedroom’;
yet, there are those who ‘love’ to be demoralized, we cannot forget that Robert Burton feeds both sides of the candle, the ultra-positive and the ultra-painful and many ‘types’ in between…
And yes, the painbody pays allot to keep the princess asleep and the dwarfs busy with their ‘types’ and ‘keys’.
___________________________________
Hello ~ 421 ‘If memory serves’ ~
You asked ~
“WTF is a potage brunch?”
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It’s a direct descendant of ‘The Brady Bunch’, where a certain sort of ‘buzz’ is often mistaken for ‘The Work’,
while all along it’s simply a big family trying to get everyone to dinner on time, without having forgotten to ‘zip’ and place pillow under alpha-male’s ‘gig’.
It’s also a Sunday (after the meeting) lunch and breakfast, where several hundred ‘student’s’ sit around and eat at little round tables spread out all over the place;
except of course the area between the Galleria main room and Robert’s bedroom, that’s for those returning books and checking out books + various other ‘projects’ in the making.
____________________________
Hello ~ 425 ‘Yesri Baba’ ~
You quoted ~
“Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because they are Commited-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.”
__________________________
More spiritual ego, yes? If all the Fellowship of Friends affirmations would disappear today; I hardly doubt you could tell the difference between the ‘Us and They’ participants of ex and current FoF (maybe just a little);
the ‘form’ they or even ex-students adopt for a time (negative and positive affirmations), defines the ‘I am this or that’,
it’s all thought-talk;
yet, if we were to take a one month camping trip into the Brazilian jungle, I sense that the real parts of all of us (no matter where the spiritual seeker is or was) would not be missed or undervalued;
to me it’s all context, and those today, like Siddiq and HC, who are getting a tough time for being in and talking furr ball language, do still have a place in my heart for jungle camping trips;
sure would bring HC into some lower center balance and get Siddiq out of the clouds and into some jungle cooking of edible spiders and centipedes.
Sounds kinda prehistoric doesn’t it? LOL.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 2b Post 427 ~
You wrote ~
“By the way, Robert Burton is extremely competitive. Extremely. No one can ever show him up. I’d be curious to hear stories of how he reacts when he loses on the golf course, or on the tennis court. I’m sure he’s had his moments of being gracious, but I’m also sure the guy or gal who defeats him eventually bears the brunt of it, directly or indirectly. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon there will be “consequences.”
_______________________________________
Well, tennis and golf is sorta out these days; the bedroom court is still open though and yes, anyone who says ‘no’ to Robert Burton does get the “brunt”, though its a very subtle ‘conscious’ brunt and as cold as ‘The March of the Penguins.’
After hearing ‘no’ there’s lot’s of wiseacring from Robert Burton about loosing the possibility to have a relationship with a conscious being (not that 44 isn’t enough all ready),
statistical mish-mash concerning the mechanical-ness of being a heterosexual (ah, all homosexuals have real will and can do?),
lot’s of maternal (“Oh, is it a woman you’re with?!) disdain,
reminders of what you’ll be missing, i.e., complimentary galleria meetings, events, trinkets, etc.,
reminders of your non-existent (futile) feelings,
intonations of self-justifying “You don’t have to do me, you know.” talk…
He’s a real Man #4 when he hears ‘no’ and (for lack of a better word or maybe not) smears the student with it, then calls for his ’emergency backups’ from the Slave Pit, to take the ‘No’s’ place as a ‘Yes’ ace…
Key that!
BTW… Since we’re kinda gambling a little on who HC and Siddiq are, I swished my coconut milk and came up with my two candidates ~ Peter _n_le and Thomas _i_n… Yep, that’s my two pennies…
__________________________________
Hello ~ Sharon 433 ~
You asked ~
“Uno—–
I don’t have a spell check on my Submit Comment box – do you? If I want to spell check, I copy into Word, check, then copy back. Usually I simply use my eyes.”
___________________
Yes, I do; I wonder how it is that you do not?
When I misspell a word it automatically ‘earns’ a red underline… And at times, for me, is like popping the clutch on a 1200 horsepower muscle car.
Uno –
Nope, no red underlines for me. Must be something you have in your browser or some other computer esoteric thing. Oh well, toil away, Sharon, at least my brain knows the difference between lose and loose (spellcheck does not…).
From Another Name:
……. this is also one of the areas in the fellowship of friends that has been subdued, by the fact of not expressing negative emotions.
Not being able to express yourself is not healthy. In the fellowship of friends this has been out of balance and many friends/ students with the result of diminished health physical and psychological”.
Dear Another Name and friends,
The issue of negative emotions in the fellowship is one that merits looking into carefully and I think much relates to Sharon’s “being too darned polite”.
It is easy to become “too darned polite” if the indoctrinating “form” is to not express discontent faced with the abuse and the consistent control inside the fellowship. Not expressing negative emotions has been artfully used by Robert to do whatever he wants without being questioned.
Presently I don’t think there’s any need to express negative emotions no matter how often I fail to do that, but that does not mean that one has to stop feeling horrified by what is abominable. Expressing that horror is not a negative emotion but an affirmation of what one wishes to live by.
“There’s no justice in the world” may be in the system but it is interpreted and used in the fellowship against students when they question anything abusive. It may be true that one cannot understand a great deal of injustice unless one connects it to karmic conditionings but to use such an idea to justify the abuses in the fellowship, is abhorrent.
One of the difficulties in the fellowship is that for many years it sunk, into at least me, that everything negative that I felt should be transformed and when unable to do that there was guilt or self discontent. This is also an aspect of indoctrination and idolatry. It weakens people by turning the difficulty they are observing against themselves and not the object of discontent, be it a person or situation.
Wishing to live by anything different to Robert’s forms in the fellowship is questioned by thoughts such as, “what makes you think you are right and not the many of us that wish things to be just as Robert puts them?”
The more we look, the clearer the different forms of indoctrination become.
I have lived near Oregon House for many years, and I recently met a former member of FoF. Through a couple of brief conversations with that person, I became interested in learning more about the organization–and stumbled onto this blog. I have been reading entries by all of you for about two weeks trying to understand from your comments what life was like for you in FoF. I can tell you are mostly all so intelligent, committed, energetic, and talented in many ways. And yet, it appears that many of you had serious doubts about what was happening within the organization for many years. Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally? I can tell this was an amazing group of people, very intellectual and obviously outspoken, and yet some of the description of FoF is, at times, pathetic and even ludicrous sounding to an outsider. What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness? Most of you sound like amazingly bright, earnest, passionate, dedicated people.
I also admit that I found Unoamino’s lengthy posts too daunting to read in detail. Well, I’m completely over that and am now fully amazed by the passion & humor. The honesty is inspiring.
Gladly, that has also opened me up to reading all the posts with more care and I am equally moved by everyone’s comments.
I also realized that the presence of Howard, Siddiq & Golb, among others, was distracting and that I felt compelled to concentrate on that negative energy, which was, as seen in hindsight, detrimental to my paying more attention to posts with real merit.
That makes me realize that I was focusing negatively in some sort of gossipy get-up and was ridiculously and ineffectually responding to false provocateurs who were unconsciously and desperately aching for true answers.
Most importantly, however, I realize that in responding to them, I was focusing on and addressing the false provocateur in myself who was allured by and lured into the fellowship. I know she is me and wish to understand her vulnerability, gullibility, arrogance and desires.
This discussion is assisting me to discover the possibility that I should loathe her less and discover a way to understand her motives and justifications. (Sorry to use second person in referring to myself. It served the purpose.)
> Most importantly, however, I realize that in responding
> to them, I was focusing on and addressing the false
> provocateur in myself who was allured by and lured into
> the fellowship. I know she is me and wish to understand
> her vulnerability, gullibility, arrogance and desires.
> This discussion is assisting me to discover the possibility
> that I should loathe her less and discover a way to
> understand her motives and justifications.
Beautifully put.
Somewhere in the cultic studies literature I have read something which resonated for me, about the relationship between the particular narcissism of the particular cult leader (narcissism is the rule, BTW) and the narcissistic vulnerability of the specific person whom he or his organization (the leader writ large) hooks. It’s like lock and key or peanut butter and jelly.
Which is an abstract way of saying: we fell for the particular constellation of narcissistic illusions springing out of Robert Burton because our psychic wounds correspond in some essential way to his.
Which leads–the way I see it– to the notion that by studying narcissism generally, as well as his particular brand of narcissism, we can gain some essential insight into our own narcissistic wounds, and how we can heal ourselves.
Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!
“Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!”
Brilliant and life-affirming music can be found almost anywhere. Get out to a pub, club, coffee shop or park for a taste of the local music scene. You may find a young artist struggling to discover their true voice. It’s wonderful to share in the experience. Be open and uncritical (i.e. open yourself to the moment.) Enjoy.
I still love to listen to “St. Matthew’s Passion” or Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, but on special occasions.
I recently found myself being sued for about $10,000 unexpectedly. It was a betrayal by someone my wife and I had considered to be a friend, and the substance of the suit is 99% fabricated. Over a security deposit, unbelievably. Very scary, and ongoing as I write this. It made me think tonight about the idea of blood-sucking lawyers in a slightly different way. It was a lawyer who decided to attack us, but it is also a lawyer who has now decided to help defend us, gratis, simply out of friendship to one of our friends and disgust at the unfairness at the heart of this attack. Who are we to judge what is right or wrong in relation to using litigation against the FOF? Perhaps those who are truly victims will find themselves suddenly needing to act out of an urgent need to defend themselves, not from mere vindictiveness or the desire for revenge. If you have something happen to you like I am experiencing now, you will be grateful to have a lawyer nearby to help you. Our so-called conscience may not taste this degree of urgency as we watch others being harmed, while we ourselves and our own families feel safe. Then it’s easier to wait and hope for the “implosion” of the FOF while we joke about its latest foolishness on this blog; meanwhile, we are very careful, aren’t we, to keep our own sons and daughters as far away as possible from Mr. Burton and his cult.
And Siddiq and Howard Carter and Nicholas, if you’re still out there reading, how do you sleep at night? Sedated with your C Influence? Or simply writing me off as a typical negative ex-student? Maybe your sleep is about to end. That’s what you wanted after all…
(Hey, like I said in an earlier post, if I went back to school, I would study rhetoric.)
NEFERTITI
“A painted limestone statue from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin depicts Nefertiti. We can see that her slender neck, which represents the sequence flowing freely, is not choked by the lower self.”
The esoteric interpretation of this misinterpretation: in reality the FOF views the ‘sequence’ as a mind activity, projected on the bust (not the whole body) of a woman. True presence engages all centers simultaneously, including the lower centers!
Interesting the use of the words “not choked by the lower self”…the Nefertiti bust, with her long, extended, unprotected neck is in very vulnerable position, and the writer’s instinctive center (bet you $100 it’s a male) has to think of ‘not choking’ her and letting her life continue to flow…why not use the words ‘unrestricted’ or ‘unhampered’ or ‘unrestrained’ by the lower self”? Another example of fear based spirituality, targeted specifically at women, whom are told will not awaken in the FOF. (Ladies can you back me up here?)
“Mohammed said, “There are people who recite the Koran but it does not go beyond their collarbones.” They intone Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE, without engaging presence; it stops at their “collarbones.” This is why Nefertiti has a slender neck.”
Of course, the bust of Nefertiti (circa 1341BC) predates Mohammed (died 632AD) by almost two thousand years, so the two are completely unrelated, although Egypt is predominately Moslem now, it obviously (to me anyway) wasn’t when the bust was made, and as a religion Islam is VERY paternalistic. Why mention the two together here? Hmmm…do I detect some method to this madness?
Also, and more importantly, if you take a tube and stretch it, the inside diameter of the tube opening becomes smaller, so a ‘slender neck’ would in fact make anything ‘flowing’ through it more difficult, not more freely.
“The bust of Nefertiti represents the nine of hearts in “reverent devotion.” She is wearing a blue crown, which means that the nine of hearts has established the prolonged divine presence of the third eye.”
In fact, according to wikipedia, ‘During Akhenaten’s reign (and perhaps after) Nefertiti enjoyed unprecedented power, and was perhaps the most powerful woman on earth. Some time during the reign she was made co-regent: the pharaoh’s equal. She was depicted on temple walls the same size as the king, signifying her importance…”
So she probably was not depicted by the bust in “reverent devotion” to anyone as the misogynist writer suggests, but in divine exaltation, ‘extending’ her influence beyond her predecessors as a both a ruler and an equal to a man.
“Her slender, elegant neck represents the sequence moving freely, failing to be strangled by the lower self.”
Again the fear based imagery of ‘not’ strangling a woman. (Try ‘not’ to think of a pink elephant!) One might ask why on earth would ‘not’ being strangled be viewed as a failure of the lower self? One would think that not strangling someone would be considered right work of all centers, not a “failure” of anything. Very insidious and creepy use of language, if you ask me.
Of course geese don’t get asked their opinion in the making of fois gras. They are just force-feed down their long, slender, elegant necks…
Veronica, you’ve done it again. This really took me back. The “Body Types Journal” was the first big publishing project I worked on with Burton. It would have been 1973.
I was recruited in December 1972. When Burton found out I was a writer, from New York, and knew graphic arts, I got love-bombed. Of course, I was already blissed out just from meeting these people, all of whom seemed to actually like me, that the love bombing was almost superfluous.
The first thing I got to work on was the Via Del Sol Journal, which Don Birrell had started. I got calls at work from Burton hisself, inviting me to lunch.
“Hello, Joel?”
“Yes?”
“Dear, what are you on?” he would say. My friend and I sometimes showed up pretty high to the meetings the first few weeks.
“I’m not on anything, Robert.”
“Well, we’re at Denny’s so why don’t you come and have lunch with me?”
(This continued daily, by the way, until I figured out the joke, and one day got up my courage and replied, “I’m on the way!” After which, he stopped asking me.)
Needless to say, I was powerless. Stella would have me over to her house, put me between her and Harold, and pin me there for hours, lovingly. They were delightful.
Within a few weeks I had moved into Rosemary MacD’s teaching house and working with Burton on his various projects, trying to understand why he had such a poor command of English, why he needed so much help, but being way too blissed to really worry about it.
The Body Types Journal, by the way, was typeset on an IBM composer, sort of a rigged-up typewriter, but it did the job. I always hated the display face he picked, but there wasn’t much question who’s aesthetic was going to rule.
Not a great movie but a phenomenal perfomance by Forrest Whittaker of brutal despot Edi Amin who was president of Uganda. I recommend it for the brilliant portrayal of a pathological being with a thin veneer of charm and charisma, turned on and off by psychic quick perception, covering a chasm of paranoia, cruelty and rage. Watching the dynamics of how people orbited him and how they were chosen to key positions seemed hauntingly familiar.
It is a brutal movie in places. Not for the faint hearted.
“Which leads–the way I see it– to the notion that by studying narcissism generally, as well as his particular brand of narcissism, we can gain some essential insight into our own narcissistic wounds, and how we can heal ourselves.”
_______________________________
Another way of seeing narcissism is a fixation on results, not the basic essence self (certainly in children there is a self during its positive expectation of the progression of the now and another self after the facts have played themselves out, i.e., third ice cream scoop on ground with cigarette butt embedded therein;
a kind of ceasing of the flow of now, with a very strong ‘self reflective’ in-burst or outburst.
I am not too sure about narcissistic wounds;
for me, I sense that Narcissism is the celebration of wounds and in of itself cannot be wounded, other than by self destruction, which is actually not done by the same force which supported the narcissism to begin with;
it’s amazing how all the features can spin outcomes of situations into confusion and intellectual busy-body-ness:
a certain plain kind of honesty is missing in the deep, habitual buffers of contemplating denying force;
oftentimes, for me, it’s just so simple as getting off my Lazyboy and making an effort that no one inch of ‘me’ wishes to do,
yet, the knowing, the spark to be quiet and Work, is enough, it dispels confusion
and the effort itself takes so much energy that oftentimes giving any to the mind activity of ‘should, could and would’ almost seems embarrassing or a kind of sacrilege.
Concerning Narcissus, there may be such a phenomenon as “narcissistic wounds”, though I sense this would be something subconscious, beneath the buffers and wiseacring to stay away from simple answers and efforts, the subtle pangs of conscience, i.e., feelings and really paying for one’s desire to be the kind of spirit you get chill bumps reading about in fairy tales.
Perhaps ‘Narcissistic wounding’… this would be a bit closer, for me, particularly with the legend ‘in mind’;
the ‘wound’ Narcissus ‘gets’ are ‘all of a sudden upon him’, in a flash, he could either surrender to his utter nothingness ‘in the head’ and move to his ‘little heart’,
or kill it, to achieve a release from the pressure of the crossroads, from the enormous ‘aha’ of his sub-conscious hypocrisies coming to the forefront of ‘right here and now, not going to leave any time soon-ness, no mater what your other self does to sidestep it’:
It’s a high mystery how this crossroads can either tear men and women apart, often leading to the destruction of the physical body (or abuse of it and others, in the name of god or gods) or lead a person to ‘struggle with the angel’ till something ‘snaps’ and one moves to another place, away from getting stuck near pond sides,
out amongst the world, to not hide, due to predictions that threaten the lower centers and precious conscious interpretation of tool-knowledge and tool-artworks,
rather, into the heaven & hell of this planet, to live a little deeper, to add onto oneself a ‘certain something’ that only exchange with others and one’s conscience while doing so can produce;
you can be sure Asaf doesn’t carry that smile out into life, nor do the ‘good students’ look anything like ‘good’ when you see them shopping in Walmart:
So much of the Fourth Way is about being ‘normally’ yourself; why add 30 additional feathers to a perfect male turkey’s strut? To get another males attention?
Asaf’s upward frown; he’s learned it from the master of perpetual upward frowning himself, RB:
I recall one of Robert Burton’s students once told me that he walked into the Galleria one afternoon to find Robert standing in front of a large mirror, frowning, then smiling, frowning, looking plain, then smiling…
He asked ‘the teacher’, “What are you doing Robert?” Robert replied, “I am teaching myself how to smile.”
Hummmm… right work of centers?
When I think of the traditional depiction of Narcissus staring into the pond ~
A quote ~
“For hours he sat enraptured by the spring, at last recognizing himself but tortured by the realization that he could never possess the object of his infatuation. Narcissus was tormented, much as he had tormented all those who in the past had been unlucky enough to fall in love with him. (Sound familiar?)
Finally unable to stand the agony Narcissus plunged a dagger in his heart and died, calling out a last goodbye to his reflected image. Where his blood soaked the earth sprung up the white narcissus flower with its red corollary.”
________________
Not to forget the plight of Echo (repeating the Sequence without Conscience).
The image Narcissus kills himself over; having got stuck with seeing himself ‘down there’ ~
I see the Fellowship of Friends ‘Struggling Self’, looking down into the lower centers and saying “I don’t remember myself enough” or “Damn, oh well, next lifetime I guess (that is if Robert Burton doesn’t bump it up a few lifetime years due to some sudden revelation of Benjamin Franklin and company).
There are certainly more than one voice within all of us; this phenomenon is hardly given any attention at Isis (cults cannot afford to delve into Gurdjieff’s ‘Holy Reconciling’, (counter productive)
particularly when it’s ‘conscious being’ celebrates his duality constantly: more relative awakening, more School of the Si-do, more pain body greed ~
“Look at me, up here-me, on this cross-me, made by me-me, me-drug by me, nailed on me, me-dying for you need me to die as me instead of you seeing you in me, me, me, me…
Even the crucifixion has become a distraction,
not to mention poo depicted on a cave wall… good grief.
It’s interesting; I saw a movie about Buddha once where he too saw/met with his reflection and said “You are only a reflection of me; you are nothing.” (something like this, not the exact quote.)
To me, this is the next stage after the suicide of Narcissus; (for Narcissus) ~ So much the Fellowship of Friends is tarting out these days (prunes, wheat grass, flak seed, raisins and chewing on coffee beans) is due to its constipation, it cannot sacrifice the king to achieve conscious, now-autonomy.
The constant celebration of the struggle will leave a tremendous ‘something’ upon people’s psyche;
yet this is somewhat an epic condition of the human situation: perhaps it’s simply part of the stew that keeps people curious and moving forwards; there’s too many combinations to make up any one rule of thumb, unless of course you have 10 thumbs…
I can see it,
years and years of ‘words’ and ‘importances’, ‘I wanna be your student affirmations and fear of the gods wrath, if one does leave their ‘mortal temple’ (?) And all of Robert Burton’s interpretations of their wishes and inclinations:
although for nearly 37 years Robert Burton has been taking about “Angels in the room”, not once has one showed up to confirm so sort of symbolic ‘Yo, homey, thanks for the publicity.’ gesture… No, Angels are too humble for that kind of thing, though not too humble to have you sit in jail for a couple months due to Robert’s impatience for ‘fresh meat’. And certainly we cannot forget the not too humble manipulations of essence-trust and magnetic center curiosity and naive thirst for experimentation…
Sure, nearly anyone like’s a good barbecue; though diving into a volcano after having 44 raw steaks sown to your body is a bit odd.
No reconciling, no movement beyond the Burton-lin Wall:
I will say this, that Robert Burton has ‘done’ (a happening by default due to his proximity on earth to other earthlings) one big positive thing,
he’s given thousands of spiritual seekers a photograph of himself, something to go by, so as not to make the same mistake twice, particularly with the ‘Robert Burton’ within themselves:
the ‘play’ of the Fellowship of Friends is nearly over, the internet and word of mouth will achieve this;
Asaf will carry nothing on, he’s Echo, not another Narcissus;
(Girard?)… No way; people will have to go through the
‘Baptismal of Fire’ alone and another ‘filler’ will simply not fit at the si-do of this silly mess:
maybe at the mi-fa, though that’s not where Isis is;
there’s not going to be any rebirths when all the conscious ladies are men…
It is a great sacrifice not to see things we are accustomed to see. We are accustomed to think that we live in a more or less comfortable world; certainly there are unpleasant things like [sexual abuse, greed, and corruption] but on the whole it is a comfortable [School], [and] a well-meaning [Teacher]. It is most difficult to get rid of the idea of a well-meaning [Teacher]. And then, certainly, we must understand that we don’t see things at all; we see as in Plato’s allegory of the cave – we see only the reflections of things which take place behind our back; and the things we see have lost reality. It is parallel to the cave; so very often we are controlled not by the things themselves, but by our idea of the things, our view of things, our picture of things.
* Peter Ouspensky*
Asaf: Robert, you said about dying, you reviewed many thoughts, and at a certain point you said that to die well is to do our best to keep self-remembering in place (so long as it’s in the Fellowship of Friends), no bold resolve (Dear, you don’t have to do me, you know? Yes, yes, do what I said, we have to get those cuff links!), no pretension (We’re going to paradise, but if you leave, you’re going “in Hell” or Reference ‘The Hell Letter’; it’s somewhere in this haystack of 5000+ postings.)
Robert: Yes. Do it without talking about it (and don’t go saying ‘no’.)
M____l Ma___y: Buddha wrote: “Your life has come to an end, and you are in the presence of death. There is no place to rest on this journey, and you are so unprepared. Light the lamp within; strive hard to attain wisdom. Become pure and innocent, and you will be free from birth and death.”
Robert to Asaf (not MM) ~ Did he say ‘you are unprepared?’
Asaf ~ Yes, (No, Asaf, he didn’t say “Hey Asaf, you’re unprepared.” Silly boy, cults are for kids.) “…and you are so unprepared.”
Robert ~ This is not our story; this is not your story (Well, you got part of it right RB, it’s Buddha’s teaching-story. I guess your story is better since yours is not Buddha’s story either…) He did not have a school. A school – it prepares you for death (or suicide).
Asaf ~ And you also (geez Asaf, you’re great with those ‘and you said’ one liners, break dancing in a puddle of super glue as you do) said that we have Influence C until our last breath (or last paycheck, whichever comes first).
Robert ~ This is meeting number?
__________________________
Did someone say something about a meeting or a preaching?
The Robert,s game is a victory-victory game, that,s the trick.
The game of the blog is a victory-defeat game.
You only could win Robert in a victory-victory game.
Robert is playing now.You are playing now.The game isn,t good. Which is a good game?
How do you distinguish our ‘game’ and Robert’s ‘game’ as separate from one another? I mean, after all, a tennis match does not have two nets, nor does a basketball court have a third basket for those members who don’t really care whether they win or loose: do you have a third net?
It’s interesting that the word ‘trick’ just popped up at the end of your description of Robert’s game; Freudian slip?
No one, even the ‘real’ students of themselves who are still in the Fellowship of Friends is trying to win with Robert; that’s part of the whole silly business that started this blog, that Robert Burton ‘thinks’ that conscious souls in lower center machines can be ‘games’ he plays in his one-man-band.
I have yet to see anyone in all the 5000+ postings that wanted to ‘win’ with Robert Burton.
“Which is a good game?”
Your being pretty silly ‘eva’… There is no ‘good game’; certainly there is some sort of ‘playing’ occurring down here, though I must say to you that I am finished with games, very finished and have (again) (excepting the good students in here that often play football with armadillos) not seen that sort of ‘tongue in cheek’ aiming occuring in here…
Good luck ‘eva’…
There is no ‘victory’, there is no ‘defeat’, everything that has seems to have lost will gain, all that seems to have gained will loose it… this is perhaps the real ‘game’, that Birth and Death are not seen by most as one of the same, but rather, dualistic, contradictory and enemies; yet, I guess you’ll have to deal with the Catch 22 thing when you realize that without ‘the lover’, there is no ‘beloved’.
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There is much in unoanimo’s post warranting response. Here I respond only to this fragment:
> I recall one of Robert Burton’s students once told me that
> he walked into the Galleria one afternoon to find Robert
> standing in front of a large mirror, frowning, then smiling,
> frowning, looking plain, then smiling…
> He asked ‘the teacher’, “What are you doing Robert?”
> Robert replied, “I am teaching myself how to smile.”
I receive a steady stream of e-mails asking where to find documents the links to which I have posted on this blog. Usually the complaint is that the link is buried somewhere in the mountain of posts.
To cut this Gordian knot I have bookmarked each of these documents on the http://www.archive.org website at
Periodically I post the link to veronicapoe’s bookmarks here to help people find these documents. Please do not mistake such posts for spam and moderate them out of existence.
“Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!”
Two songs that helped me before I was a fofer and, now that I’m long gone, mean so much more to me: “Box of Rain” and “Ripple” by Grateful Dead. Check out the lyrics; it seems Robert Hunter was channeling Rumi.
And from my current perch, everything juan needs to know about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is contained within Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
Also, try on the Finn Brothers’ “Everyone Is Here.”
From the email about the Tuesday meeting led by Peter Ingle “Peter explains the topic as follows: “The sequence comes to us as the objective science of awakening from schools of the past. Using it in the present, however, is a conscious art that must become deeply personal and practical.”
It is amazing to hear students talk about sequence as “the objective science from the past schools”.
3 meetings earlier Carlos Ca _ _ncho gave a following angle: “I asked Robert, why is that Asaf made up a sequence and we all have to do it? Robert replied: “You love me too much to blame ME for it?”
I have observed narcissistic personality traits in people whom lacked a parent (or two). When a child is not provided with a parent due to death, abandonment, or neglect, especially when the ‘missing’ parent is of the same sex as the child, the child imagines one to compensate. That imaginary parent is then idealized and perfect, but not real, as in narcissus’s reflection in the pool. The child and then later the adult cannot possibly live up to that perfection or the idealized traits of the imaginary parent, and thus is preoccupied with themselves “acting’ perfect, but deep down feeling flawed, inadequate, and imperfect. So they compensate with temporary ‘things’ that make them feel better. (They would never settle for a generic product, but want the ‘brand name’ product because it makes them feel superior. And the ‘thing’ or object always has to be new, bright or polished so they can ‘see’ themselves in it.)
The narcissistic wound is a wound the child inflicts upon themselves, derived from the child blaming themselves for the parent’s death or departure. Children are SO dependent upon their parents for survival, that they cannot ‘see’ (or acknowledge) defects in the parent, but blame themselves for their parent’s lacking out of extreme fear of abandonment. Once the unconscious mind accepts the belief that they are to blame for the lack of a parent, they live their lives with the deeply held belief that they are not worthy of success.
This is what I have been alluding to when I suggest that the FOF keeps one out of balance, forever doubting oneself, and never able to attain complete consciousness or higher centers (that which is already there anyway). One is kept striving for the unobtainable. That’s the narcissism that the FOF attracts in its followers. The level of ‘conscience’ that is ‘cult-ivated’ in the FOF follower is a foreboding feeling that one is inadequate, is not present enough and Robert always is. Robert just provides the unobtainable goals. Hence, one can only succeed in the ‘next lifetime’
Eva (#14-454) How nice you see Burton’s game as a “victory-victory game, that’s the trick”.
There is a set of “victory-victory” games (usually called ‘win-win’, FYI) and they all, obviously, are based on co-operation. A co-operative mode requires energies flowing in two directions equally (between participants), and a common goal.
In a co-operative situation we have a teacher who also learns from the student; a teacher who understands that no matter how much knowledge and being he has, there is always something new to learn, even (and maybe especially) from the rawest student. And we have a student who makes the lesson part of his being by teaching others in turn, completing the ‘si-do’ of internalizing the lesson. In other words, no permanent hierarchy, since anyone can be a teacher to others at any time, and a moment later, an eager student. This is a good game, Eva.
I spent many years observing that Burton learns nothing from his students, except in a low, cunning way, how to control them or fleece them the better. You can tell this for yourself by following the “conversation” (read, “monotonous disjointed dialog”) at one of his dinners, or by studying the form of his pronouncements in publications such as “Thoughts from the Teacher”, or by his tens of thousands of arbitrary decisions made in order to control the lives of his followers in the minutest detail. Every one of these decisions is made to close down possibilities, to reduce his surroundings to always simpler terms that he can better monitor and control for deviance, and to satisfy his untrammeled desires.
See him raise the license plate in a meeting, purposing to draw admiration from the audience or transmit fear to it. See the members of the audience trying hard to get just the right sappy look on their faces, and at the same time memorizing gems like, “We are playing the master game, and C-Influence has chosen us all here in this room to be winners”. That is the source of your wiseacring, Eva, not your experience, not your being. How can I tell? Because there is nothing personal in your post, nothing to indicate the angle is yours, or how you made it so, or that you live it.
In a ‘win-win’ or co-operative situation, a teacher lights a fuse, and is delighted when the explosion of new possibilities in the student lights up the sky, including his own (the teacher’s) spiritual firmament. In contrast, the only movement allowed by Burton in the FoF is if it supports, glorifies, or magnifies his own position. Look at Girard, declared the sole fruit of 38 years of unremitting work by ‘44 conscious beings’ plus Burton himself, allowed to be a ‘man #5’ under the condition he stays the eternal student of Burton, subservient and obedient to the last, all his accomplishments and work dedicated to the glory of Burton, his whole being twisted to be merely a reflector of Burton’s supposed superhumanity. Burton has literally eaten him, negated all his potential (and that of many others)—a new Caligula. Look, I mean really look, at the rest of the high muckety-mucks; paler, bloodless versions of the same. This is your idea of a good game, Eva?
Trick indeed, he is the trickster and you are the tricked; he is the joker and the joke is on you.
MANY THANKS to veronicapoe #456 for your link to the piece about psychopathic behavior. It is awesome reading! I highly recommend it.
Here’s an excerpt:
“One very interesting aspect of the psychopath is his “hidden life” that is sometimes not too well hidden. It seems that the psychopath has a regular need to take a “vacation into filth and degradation” the same way normal people may take a vacation to a resort where they enjoy beautiful surroundings and culture…”
Sounds like an all night “Russian Romp” at the Galleria!
P.S. Eva, the game we play on this blog is the co-operative one. There is no hierarchy, and we all learn from each other. We take turns, teachers to our best ability one moment, students the next. No one can drown out another using charisma, dominance or power, or any other tool of false personality, we all have a turn and a space for our views. You’ll get (in my opinion) much more openness and honesty than in any FoF meeting.
Observer 440
What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness?
Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.
1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.
You wrote: “Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally?”
The reason most people join the FOF is because they are interested in the Fourth Way ideas of Gurdjieff / Ouspensky. The FOF claims (or at least did until recently) to teach these ideas. Robert used the prestige of the Fourth Way to lure unsuspecting people and create his own cult. He claimed to be a highly evolved master of this way. It’s not so easy to prove or disprove that claim, especially when you might not even see him for a few years until after you join and all your information about him is filtered through center directors, etc. In the mean time, you’re meeting with other people – most of them quite intelligent and well-meaning, and you’re studying these ideas together and sharing your experiences with them. That part was usually okay. For myself, there was always an issue of differentiating between the teachings of Gurdjieff /Ouspensky, which, for me at least, were quite substantial and legitimate, and Robert’s own stuff, which was flaky and weird. Eventually most people reach the conclusion that there is something wrong with Robert and leave.
Why do people stay? Of course the vast majority don’t, but it takes a while to verify that Robert is fraudulent, especially if you don’t live close to him where you are privy to some of the weirdest of the weird stuff. Furthermore, any kind of scrutiny of Robert is totally frowned upon. If you persist in doubting and probing into the truth about Robert you will be alienated by the others and maybe even kicked out. In the meantime there are lots of interesting distractions, people you become involved with, ballets, operas, plays, etc. and you tend to buffer your doubts about Robert because of those other things. And you’re told things like: ‘those are just ‘I’s, don’t be identified, that’s negativity, etc.’. Basically distorting Work ideas to create an uncritical atmosphere.
But the good news is that, by means of this blog, Robert’s deceitful ways are coming to light and hopefully there will be fewer and fewer new members.
Making Robert the villain distracts us from our own psychological weaknesses and foibles, whether by making him “instinctively centered” or a “criminal.” Both these are blatantly false and in no way connected, as one reader inferred from my post. They are two separate psychological strategies (“buffers”) for putting the fault on the guru, not the chela.
Some posters have made the catastrophic error of mixing up the “sex center,” “sexual energies,” “libido,” or whatever you want to call it, with one’s center of gravity. The center of gravity is the way you are in the world, and what’s important to you, over and beyond sex. I mean, we are horny, or “desiring intimacy,” so please don’t confuse Robert’s sexual appetite with his center of gravity. And as one who’s experienced it, Robert’s sexual persona is a submissive groveling woman, easily hurt by words, not some craven Casanova.
And now the criminal thing: Besides Busby, who got paid off quite handsomely, what exactly is criminal about Robert’s activity? Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the concatenation of the three forces that Rodney Collin calls “crime,” I’m talking about breaking U.S. or California law. Since Busby, Robert has stayed purely legal, carefully checking ages of the immigrant students. Again, what I hear is a psychological wound crying “criminal” in order to feel better.
So why do I focus more on the students than the teacher? I’m currently indebted to the work of Robert Altemeyer, a Canadian sociologist who’s been studying what he calls the authoritarian personality type. His focus is mostly in the political realm, but I think any student or former student who looks at his work will see that it can equally well apply in the spiritual realm — that we just want someone to tell us what is right.
I highly suggest this webpage, where you can read his whole book and see his research:
“Presently I don’t think there’s any need to express negative emotions no matter how often I fail to do that, but that does not mean that one has to stop feeling horrified by what is abominable. Expressing that horror is not a negative emotion but an affirmation of what one wishes to live by.” Elena
Oh, good, hi Elena, I hope you will be back more! And I agree, there are simply some negative truths that cannot be addressed with ‘happy talk’. Truth trumps ‘negative’. It is lack of boundaries and very deep sleep of the inner eye that denies this. It can become criminal when covering up crime. The fof is not separate from humanity like some strangled head (ahem…). All people are connected in very deep ways.
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Whalerider…VERY interesting your comments on Nefertiti! Please keep those coming.
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Joel, I loved reading about the publishing of ‘body types’. I’m about to read a book on Jungian body types.
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Music, there is so much today! I still love Dvorak Requiem, but also love Zakir Hussein to Transglobal Underground. I just ordered the Prokofiev you recommended, #444. Nina Simone did a killer “Sinnerman” – really amazing.
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“Not to forget the plight of Echo” (uno…)
Echo was a nymph who happened upon Narcissus as he gazed into the water and she fell in love with him. He was very beautiful but did not return her love and didn’t pay any attention to her. She sat by the bank gazing at him. After he passed into flower form she wandered the earth and finally wasted away so that all she could do was repeat the last bit of what she hears.
Walter (#14-326), in my opinion, almost every post on the subject of Burtons “criminality” means it in a psychological way, using 4th Way language—the triad of crime; I certainly do, and have pointed out the difference in my posts about Burton’s use of psychological power to overwhelm the resistance of his prospective sexual partners, quite separate from the purely legal definition (fiction?) of the age of responsibility.
I and others have also frequently pointed out that it “takes two to tango”, that he could not do what he does without our consent and uncritical support. We are willing accomplices while we are his followers, and thus equally culpable in the harmful results of his actions. I believe that one of the aspects of this blog has been to explore and embrace that truth, and another aspect is to help heal ourselves and regenerate the situation. But this does not let Burton off, and we must discuss that as well, and maybe serve as a warning to others.
I appreciate your reference and link to Altermeyer’s book. He wrote a longer one on the same subject (his expertise), called “The Authoritarian Specter”; maybe “The Authoritarians” is an updated synopsis? I’ll read it with interest when it downloads.
Thanks Ames, I think most other folks on this blog mean “crime” in the psychological sense as you define it — and its good that you flagged this piece of jargon since some non-FOFers do read this blog, and they may think RB is some sort of Mafia Godfather.
And you’re right, I’m not wanting to get Robert off the hook, he deserves all the criticism received.
I didn’t know about Altermeyer’s earlier book – I really like the downloadable one because it not only lays out his thesis but also shows how a principled researcher can weed out errors, lying, exaggerating and other things that can be statistically manipulated.
Arthur/467 – regarding R.’s “teaching himself to smile” – flinty spark in the dark:
“What seems to be missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of an appropriate affective response to the knowledge gained from putting himself in another persons shoes, in the way that this happens in the normal person. This essential missing aspect of empathy in the severe psychopath is not in my experience easily seen and one does not often get a second glimpse of it if one has been treated to a first one by mistake.”
“A rather crude example might suffice for I am sure many of you have had similar experiences. A young psychopath who had inflicted multiple stab wounds on an elderly woman, and was charged with attempted murder, appeared subdued and appropriately sad about the offence during the early stages of a first interview. His eyes were moist as he accurately described how the woman must have felt during and after the attack. But later in the same interview, after a rather jocular rapport had been established, this boy blurted out, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The old bag only had a dozen scratches”. To my knowledge, in all his subsequent years at mental hospital, he stuck to all the right lines of remorse which he quickly learned were more appropriate and useful. The bright psychopath, the experienced psychopath, doesn’t stumble like that every often. Although with luck and the right question at the right time in the right place about how the other person’s feelings affected him, will produce a pause, or a puzzled look, or even rarely the question ‘how am I supposed to feel about it.'”
The idea is, he’s teaching himself how to smile so he can *appear* to have appropriate affective responses–making it apparent that he has to *teach* himself this, because it is not an ordinary feature of his human being.
Thanx for the link, it goes straight into favorites.
“The psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life”
IMO this should be a major focus of thinking for everyone in American culture. Our leaders are increasingly becoming this type. It is this culture’s god.
“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”
W.S. “Hamlet”
Sam Vakin’s website, which, as many know, is devoted entirely to the exploration of narcissism, describes that narcissists often practice various expressions in the mirror.
His explanation is that they are practicing to look like a human.
(Sorry, I couldn’t find the exact quote, but the site is easily accessible.)
Others might remember that in the early 1970s Burton often had a drawn, painful, or distorted look on his face during meetings. It was really quite disconcerting. Obviously, people mentioned this to him, and he worked as I recall for about 2 years to try to eliminate this manifestation. He eventually ended up with what I thought of as the “drawn blank” look. Didn’t quite know what to make of this at the time, but might be apropros of this discussion.
One day in psychology 101 they were talking about the different degrees of mental retardation. As I listened I became convinced I had been found out. “So, that’s what’s wrong with me, I’m mentally retarded”. I had alot of defining characteristics.
Then one day I read where beginning student doctors convinced themselves they had all the signs and symptoms of the diseases they were studying.
I’m the suggestible type as Gurdjieff would say. Not long ago on this blog somebody was talking about sociopathy. The only thing that “saved” me was how ‘regret’ entered into the relationship.
Now we are studying narcissistic psychopathy and I’m beginning to wonder again. When I was younger I spent a little time looking in the mirror to make sure about the arrangements. As I began to grow older the time spent looking in the mirror became less.
Around my teenager years I developed a dislike for taking photographs (painbody) as someone would say. Today I seldom look in a mirror. I think this is also narcissistic.
Off topic: Yesterday I visited the greater fellowship website and I was struck by the beauty of all the women. Handsome men too.
I saw that woman who used the word “BOFF” in one of her sentences. I agree 100%.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t smile very easily. I had braces as a teenager, and I became very self-conscious about showing my teeth. I’ve stood in front of the mirror practicing my smile on occasion. Should I be concerned? I think not.
By itself, I don’t think Robert practicing how to smile is a sign of sociopathy or neurosis. But, as many have observed, there are plenty of other indications.
Somehow related to this topic is the “not showing teeth” exercise. Is this really a current FOF exercise? It would certainly get Robert off the hook as far as needing to cultivate a warm, sincere smile!
——
I just noticed the little red spellcheck underlines in my comment box. I’m using Mozilla Firefox today; usually I use IE and they don’t show up.
Observer 440
What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness?
Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.
1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.
Have a nice day
************************
C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.
I remember the first time we were given the “cover your mouth” exercise when we smiled or laughed. Many of us then ran around with the giggling little girl essence act with our hands covering our mouths. What an affecting load of horse shit that was, must still be. I would tell them again, Jesus, look at yourselves, aren’t you embarrassed?
I heard the next exercise to be present will be to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time when giving angles, and reverse directions when receiving angles, then courtesy and walk away- just for the men.
“Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school. 1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.”
The question that Observer 440 asked was “what kept you so loyal and involved”, not “what made you leave?”
Darn that capricious, petty, vengeful C-influence anyway, eh? They gave you the play of answering the wrong question! What did you do to deserve that humiliation? Were you…reading the BLOG, perhaps? Could it be…Saaaatan? (voice of Dana Carvey as Church Lady intoning here).
It seems to me that pathological states are amplified and fixed ordinary conditions we all experience to one degree or another. It gets horrible in my opinion when they begin to be celebrated.
There have been studies done in recent yrs. showing college students with greater narcissism than the “baby boomer” generation. Talk about pouring from the full into the flood.
The frog is belly-up bobbing in the bubbling broth.
But then I am more of the glass is half empty kind of guy rather than a Hey, who took half my water! guy.
I try not to have judgement when I read entries on the blog. Having judgement “I’s” is something that occurs quite a bit for me.
When I read post 465 from Take It Easy and saw the quote; “Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.”,
I thought to myself, wow, there’s that style of Robert’s. So penetrating and effective. I probably should have never left.
Then suddenly I thought, hold on, what is a “true student”? Someone who will blindly give up there identity and money for a cause they will never comprehend or understand.
When Robert first mentioned how HE uses the sequence, I was very confused. Everyone I knew in the school talked about when Robert crystalized there was a bolt of lightning at the Academy or some such nonsence (whenever I hear stories like that I usually shut down right away. It does not compute) and I assumed that this guy was on such a different level- he was ALWAYS conscious. No need for no stinkin’ sequence. I mean how is it, that for 37 years everything BUT the sequence was the way to awakening. It wan’t that long ago that he had us counting how many times a day we “remembered ourselves”. Students all over the place were running around with those “clickers” that they use to count patrons as they enter a concert and keeping tabs on the number of times they remembered themselves. The goal was 100 times a day. Suddenly, one day the exercise disappeared.
Somebody give me a buzz when they move from the sequence. I’ll be curious to know what the new method is.
In the meantime I’ll be a student from the outside.
“Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.”
The greater question is: Is this a true school?
This once Fourth Way school, that said “religion was the sleep of the masses” is a now a center for “esoteric Christianity” .
And why, is the IRS/INS breathing so hotly on the Galleria, that Hallelujah we’ve all found religion?
The spinners keep spinning. Reinventing, rewriting with every succession to the pretender’s throne. Changing direction more times than a weather vane.
Extreme makeover indeed.
And why keep using the Fellowship of Friends? Why not be “true” The Fellowship of the Pretty, Full Pocketed and Those Still Able to do a Full Turn at the Plow.
Fellowship of Friends indeed.
Banishes its own when they become an unpleasant impression. Raises $62,000 for a garden expansion and leaves true students to raise money for medical treatment through private appeal.
And as far as C-influence goes, it seems far more beneficent, less vindictive that we were ever lead to believe.
When you walk out those gates every divine verification you every had walks right out with you.
May the C be with your (in lieu of the schwartz)
Cake
“Everyone I knew in the school talked about when Robert crystalized there was a bolt of lightning at the Academy or some such nonsence (whenever I hear stories like that I usually shut down right away. It does not compute)”
Good call on your part. The Academy wasn’t even built until the early 1980s. His “crystallization” supposedly occurred sometime in the seventies. Unless he “crystallized” more than once.
Hey, Take it Easy (# 14-465), are you competing to be the laziest and most self–satisfied boot–licker in the entire Fellowship? I hope you have already been promoted to Official Angle Giver, you are fully qualified; you have provided one of the best examples of circular ‘reasoning’ yet found on the blog. Because your contribution was moderated, and folks may have missed it, I’ll repeat the whole thing:
Robert said: The school never has lost a true student. It’s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine (sic) verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school. 1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.
I personally want to thank you for contributions to the blog (including your many previous incarnations here,Cry baby,LOL etc )
You,along with ‘what observe ‘ ‘simple truth’ ‘Golb’ and others like them have done more than you realise. You have greatly contributed to a final and clearer understanding of what the FOf is really about by making your inner thoughts and attitudes available to the readers here. And hastened the proccess of escape for many who are now finally waking up and leaving.
465: Here is this “Us and Them” thing again… Superior Us and inferior Them… This is the teachings of the true School of Love -very embracing and loving indeed.
How can you not see this, friend? What make you feel so superior – based on what IMAGINARY concept of yourself? What blind vanity…
How different is this hateful condescendent view from any extremist and separatist religious views? “We are better than Them, We are chosen by God, and they are going to hell”…
Historically it causes only grief and suffering.
Besides, do you know what puts you among the “chosen” in this case? No, not C-influence. It’s your monthly teaching payments, dude. Skip a month – and there goes your imaginary sureriority and unconditional love of your teacher.
What we are – you and me, and all, everyone – are the SAME in our essence which is Consciousness looking through us. No higher or lower beings – it’s all imaginary ideas in one’s head. (I know, it sucks for one’s Ego that wants so badly to be “above” others.)
By the way, when this “school” will lose you, (and it inevitably will sooner or later I asure you) please drop me a line or something.
We’ll have a laugh together.
More Sacred mad teachings by the most Beloved Teacher ever!
The funniest of them all by far!
Excerpts from few teaching events:
6 POOPS
A cave painting from Lascaux, dating from 15,000-13,000 BP, depicts a rhinoceros hunt. It represents the sequence being intoned in imagination by the rhinoceros—the lower self. The steward is lying on his back, and rather than having five fingers on each hand, he has only four fingers. This means that he is taking the four wordless breaths in imagination. The six stools represent the sequence in imagination. Everything is in imagination. “You will see fantasies rather than the truth.”
The rhinoceros, which is defecating, represents the sequence in imagination.
A cave painting in Lascaux, dating to 15,000-13,000 BP, depicts a rhinoceros defecating. The six stools represent the sequence in imagination. The steward has been thrown down, and has four fingers in place of five, signifying that the four wordless breaths are not in prolonged presence, but in prolonged imagination. He has attempted to slay the bison—another symbol of the lower self—but rather than piercing him in the heart, he has pierced him in the intestines, which are coming out. Nevertheless, the lower self still had the strength to overthrow the steward and to destroy the sequence.
“A person is more easily made into a mythical figure if the outlines of his personality are blurred. Myths are largely constructed from our own projections; and the imagination cannot flourish where the exact facts are known.”
Veronicapoe 496,
Great point – thanks. Obviously the blog serves to crack the mirror. Hard to project one’s highest aspirations onto a man who pays students to whizz in his mouth.
I hope it was not lost on all, that HC actually was N—O–S S–l—G and possibly Siddiq too. The timing of his appearance after initial speculation and the subsequent retirement of HC was a little too tidy for me.
Someone wrote recently asking what can we do? I would suggest the following;
Only pay by check for any Fellowship event. If you don’t yet have the stomach for walking away or more obvious dissent, just be sure you pay for everything by check. Cash is syphoned off and used to support RB’s delusional debauchery. If you don’t have a bank account have someone else write a check for you. This way you’ll be doing something, not much but something.
“3 meetings earlier Carlos Ca _ _ncho gave a following angle: “I asked Robert, why is that Asaf made up a sequence and we all have to do it? Robert replied: “You love me too much to blame ME for it?” Isn’t it strange?”
_______________________
Yes, ‘Somebody’; it is strange, that anyone would consider a person who ‘could’ “blame ME for it” (or even produce such a closed ended accusation/blame energy) as something simultaneously worthy of producing a love for oneself as well…
Yet Robert Burton, after creating and teaching in a School of Relative Awakening, must by now be used to falling in ‘love’ with contradictions and hypocrites;
he’s certainly not in love with Carlos C., giving him such a ladder made of rock candy that no one would ever ‘really us it’; so much effect and no effectiveness… So much ‘tongue in cheek’, it’s a wonder he hasn’t worn a hole straight through to the outside of his face.
_____________________________
Hello ~ 462 Ames Gilbert ~
You wrote ~
‘…there is always something new to learn, even (and maybe especially) from the rawest student. And we have a student who makes the lesson part of his being by teaching others in turn, completing the ‘si-do’ of internalizing the lesson.’
_______________________
Yes; though, that’s a ‘commandment’ for a real teacher to follow, right? Robert Burton throws out students who graduate; worried about his shaky tenure position I guess;
since, after all, it’s being paid by a group of ‘Robert convinced appetites’, not a neutral, outside the box, group of world renown gurus or spiritual guides…
Is it not odd that the only qualifying ‘rank’ that Robert Burton has achieved in the hearts and minds of other ‘gurus’ of the spiritual path (real and wiseacred) is absolutely nothing… I mean ‘really’… Word!
All his ‘worldwide fame’ is self-produced, self-justified and absolutely self-centered;
that he is not recognized by any other than his students is not what I would consider to be the tradition here on earth;
I have seen pictures of groups of gurus together, it’s an amazing impression, no fear, no doubt, no Freudian games, no alpha-male canines (or bending over); simply time being experienced by one another’s existence and aims (and no aim, if you know what I mean).
______________________________________
Hello ~ Observer’s post (440):
You wrote:
“Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally?”
__________________________
I sense that this question is more applicable for those still in the Fellowship of Friends (a few do fall off the Greyhound bus every once in a while in here, having caught a ride on its bumper, having forgotten about the potholes);
although, it’s a good reminder of where many have been, to keep the peripheral fresh and practiced for look-alike re-occurrences in the present, particularly within one’s self;
I believe for many, the “how did you silence them mentally”
could be easily answered by giving examples of having ‘suggested’ to oneself that ~
it’s none of one’s business,
that one does not know the whole story,
that one is only responsible for one’s own bed,
they could just leave, etc.
See, all this sort of inner conversation is ‘one stage’, and the only stage that Robert Burton ‘feeds’ and ‘milks’…
There is another stage where something wakes up, a certain ‘feeling’, “A certain something”,
where one does not really ‘think’ it, one is it,
an inner-fact-state, that all is connected,
that segregating another (whom your money and efforts laterally support, like a family (George Bush is another triad) like Robert Burton to ‘JUST HIS BUSINESS’ is inner-crime;
it is a movement from the automatic and sympathetic emotions of essence and the lower center moralities (mainly based on Fear & Want and third dimensional results, hopes, complaints and compliments),
towards something much more consciously responsible, for both one’s actions and those actions and emotions in others that your spiritual and physical proximity supports, regardless of the ‘form’ the formatory center wiseacres that the support takes… (silent or loud; subtle or obvious, it all flows down and within the same stream of effect, particularly when it’s drowning one’s conscience in its own birth fluids)
Some students living overseas ‘think’ that their relationship to Isis is different because of an instinctive quantitative measure of time and space between themselves and Robert Burton’s actions (physically)…
Yet, again, this is lower center, School of Relative Awakening programming;
for all of our hearts are linked, all conscience:
and the physical distance is simply a buffer symbol, it means nothing in the spiritual realm; support for Isis is support, regardless of physical distance…
A man and woman came from somewhere, and it was not from another man and woman, otherwise there could be no ‘beginning’, as the triad seems to suggest when only looking at the physical world…
physical distance is nothing; a man spends 4 months climbing a mountain and still sees the same hand on his left wrist as he did prior to ascent.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 467 Walter tanner
You wrote ~
“And now the criminal thing: Besides Busby, who got paid off quite handsomely, what exactly is criminal about Robert’s activity? Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the concatenation of the three forces that Rodney Collin calls “crime,” I’m talking about breaking U.S. or California law. Since Busby, Robert has stayed purely legal, carefully checking ages of the immigrant students. Again, what I hear is a psychological wound crying “criminal” in order to feel better.”
______________________
Walter, has someone replaced your coconut milk with white lead paint?
Thanks for reminding me that being solar is very tricky business; I have a fair share myself, it helps to be present to ones thoughts alongside one’s conscience too
(and while writing within a little box that has the phrase “Submit Comment” means that you’re also writing to another scale and relativity than yourself;
though HC and Siddiq had yet to get around to learning that talking to others can actually be different than speaking to oneself)
maybe you just left the Fellowship of Friends last night, so, we’ll just pump your stomach, give you three gallons of organic cow’s milk and call it a night.
______________________________
Hello ~ 481 Graduates
You wrote ~
“C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.”
__________________________
Hummm… Maybe Robert Burton has an offspring after all (?)
Graduates! Don’t move, and keep your chin above your stomach while at a horizontal position with legs pointing down, I have another stomach pump in the root cellar and I think Betsy is prime for another 3 gallons…
__________________________
“This way you’ll be doing something, not much but something.”
__________________________
Wow, more Fellowship of Friends logic: they can cash those checks and many are left blank or large salary checks given to key ‘members’, then gotten back in the form of ‘tax deductible’ cash donations…
If you’re out of the Fellowship of Friends, Ryan, do your higher centers well and get thee to your homework and mercurial-section of the Body Types book.
“C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.”
__________________________
Hummm… Maybe Robert Burton has an offspring after all (?)
Graduates! Don’t move, and keep your chin above your stomach while at a horizontal position with legs pointing down, I have another stomach pump in the root cellar and I think Betsy is prime for another 3 gallons…
*******************
I’m not sure what the fuck you’re talking about, but just in case it is a lunatic’s version of a put-down, live with this:
Please keep in mind the main reason you so carefully hide your identity out of shame, even to the extent of not joining the GF except under the condition of being disguised. You were the one that got pumped, not me. I keep wondering why you feel so cheerfully glib, come on out and let’s see if you are still playfully creative under your actual identity.
Dear Purchasing awakening, keep them coming, please! I appreciate these updates, pearls all. Thank you for revealing the madness in glorious Technicolor…
Can you tell us more about this octave? How many people work to find ‘significant’ cave paintings, works of art, and so on to be “keyed”? Do you know what the criteria are, what alerts the searcher that s/he has found a juicy one? Is it a magic number from the Sequence, like four, six, ten or thirty of something in particular? Anything? What happens next, are the images sent on to the ‘keyers’? How many are entrusted with the interpretations? Can you reveal names—Linda? Asaf? Does Burton himself do anything at this stage, or is it all pre-digested and given to him to dribble out to best effect? Are there ‘spontaneous’ keyings by anyone, Asaf, Burton, whoever, or is it all tightly scripted? I know a recent e-mail called on the followers to contribute—is that usual? And finally, how is this stuff distributed and shown?
That’s a lot of questions, but inquiring minds want to know!
And in the meantime, I send you warm regards!
Ames
P.S. Uno, I was definitely not talking about Burton when I was putting forward the co-operative ‘win-win’ model of teaching!
Dear Purchasing awakening,
This is a P.S.
Could you also tell us how many of these images are “Photoshopped”? I’m kind of suspicious, being quite good at Photoshopping myself! And while I’m in ‘suspicious mode’, what about that license plate in the meeting where Burton held it up and read deep significance into it? Did some follower unscrew it from the victim’s car, and bring it back as a trophy? It looked in darn good condition, in fact—brand new. Could it have been ‘special ordered’ from the state? Not wishing to cast nasturtiums, but maybe by a follower? Or is it an exact duplicate of a real one, hand-forged (pun intended) by a Department of Artful Reproduction or some such?
Yours in fun and a belly–full of laughter (no simpering giggles here),
Ames
You pissed off? I sure as hell am. I just can’t stand it when my own stupidity jumps up and bites me in the ass. You and I have tangled before. I thought you were being opportunistic and exploiting this blog’s weakness by starting your own blog. Now maybe you were and maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were just helping us to be more honest. And hey, you know what, I think it worked…there’s not the level of moderation now and the hardcore fundamentalists seemed to have backed off. So you did good, dude. I almost took you for a FOF spy, imagine that?
Here’s the thing, c-influence, that’s you and me…not the boogey man, not angels, not ghosts wafting in the breeze, and certainly not Robert the madman. Whenever we dig deep and get real with each other, I mean really reach out to each other without selling fear, and communicate what we perceive with our own consciousness, that’s c-influence. It may not come out the way you expect it, but it comes from people in the here and now. It lingers for a little while, it only lasts for a short time, and then changes and becomes b-influence. Sometimes it’s raw and hits you in the gut-sometimes it gives you the tingles. Now people who start today reading this blog from the beginning, they are already reading b-influence. Then by the time they post, they are participating in c-influence, the conscious influence we can have on each other. So, the only one directing your fingers on your keyboard is you. The only one directing my fingers on my keyboard is me.
You know, while I have been reaching out to you, and just after I wrote that last line, my higher centers kicked in gave me an insight about that stupid fucking interpretation of the Lascaux cave paintings…that’s been going on in the back of my mind while I have been thinking of you, buddy, and transforming the negativity of your last post to the unobomber about your idea of ‘c-influence’ directing us ex-fofers and all.
#494 “The steward has been thrown down, and has four fingers in place of five, signifying that the four wordless breaths are not in prolonged presence, but in prolonged imagination.”
Here’s how you can tell the writer of that piece of shit was in imagination, (or even prolonged imagination as the case may be), NOBODY HAS FIVE FINGERS! We all have only four fingers on each hand and a thumb. So the ‘imagined’ student with five fingers in prolonged presence is a myth, he does not exist, which is part of Robert’s narcissism and deception, ‘the prolonged presence of five fingers’ cannot be achieved, which keeps his followers following, and following, and following like sheep asleep.
So, thanks for your post. I ate it, and that’s what came out.
Thank you for your responses to the Gurdjieff quotation. I myself had not run across it until just recently. What I found particularly revealing is that Gurdjieff, right at the outset, tells us what should be the basis of our work, the use of our inner vision to create our own standards, and not those imposed on us from outside:
“The only true measure, never changing, objective, the only real one, is the measure of inner vision. ‘I’ see – ‘I’ see myself – and you have measured.”
Where would each of us be had we heard that right at the beginning and made it the foundation of our work, instead of following the “Pied Piper”?
But since most of us are “veterans” of the FoF, the following should sound familiar:
“When there is a socially imposed mandate to “think nice thoughts” and view the world in a positive light, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, people find it necessary to become highly attuned to the approval or disapproval of the “social norms.” As a result, they are motivated to learn how to think in social norms, and do not examine their own, honest experiences. As victims of Societal Stockholm Syndrome, we are encouraged to develop psychological characteristics pleasing to the system. These include: dependency, lack of initiative, inability to act, decide, think; strategies for staying alive, including denial, attentiveness to the system’s demands, wants, and expressions of approval of the system itself. We are taught to develop fondness for the system accompanied by fear of interference by anyone who challenges the system’s perspective. Most of all, we are conditioned to be overwhelmingly grateful to the system for giving us life. We focus on the system’s kindnesses, not its acts of brutality.
Denial of terror and anger [masquerading as non-expression of negativity], and the perception of the system as omnipotent keep us psychologically attached to the … Control system. High anxiety functions to keep us from seeing available options.
Psychophysical stress responses develop.” Adventures with Cassiopaea, Chapter 20
To apply RBs quote to the right people, “We are not better than anyone else, just luckier.”
While reading that post your higher centers kicked in in me and told you to tell me to stop laying claim to them.
(sorry, you couldn’t resist telling me…. I mean I couldn’t resist you telling you….. ohmigod! what is happening to us?)
Oops, I was wrong. They were mine. Back into the shop they go.
Here is an idea for all of you former students (and maybe current?) who are in the area of Oregon House AND who have been investigating Advaita.
Why not start a weekly Fourth-Way-into-Advaita study group at the Oregon House Community Center? Costs only to cover the rental. Meeting leaders to moderate but not to be “Teachers”. Meeting format similar to our old FOF Meetings, a reading, a topic, question and angles. Maybe a closing 10 minute meditation? Or a final reading? Or both? Advertise posters at the OH Grocery Store and Post Office?
I think it is very important to emphasize that it is not a format for discussion of the FOF or RB. There are other places for that (like this blog). It is for people who spiritually wish to go on with their lives, diving deeper into Self Remembering through understanding Advaita.
506 Cake please.
Sing in your best Niel Young voice. “Dont let it get you down its only castles burning”.
Spend some time with some of the friends who have been out for a while and consider yourself lucky as many of us didnt have that option. Congratulations and good luck/love to you. Cy.
VEROnica Kapow. Ive said it before “Im gonna say it again”, you are a one woman army. The hell letter alone should be enough for the most rabid fof supporter to get a glimpse of the truth. Also those photos at the top of the page…. Now I can understand why it would practice smiling! that thing is clearly Alien. Well done V . Ltya. Cy
I really liked the dialogue in 467, 470, 471… Two people expressing their opinions directly, and two really intelligent and civil responses, despite their different points of view. But I like all of this… something to learn from every post. Keep ’em coming everyone. And if you’re thinking about posting and wondering if any of us might care…
We will care.
In the late 80s and early 90s, there was a 7-year drought in California. During the first few months of 1993, the drought ended. Streams and rivers overflowed, waterfalls roared, and the valley flooded. Nature was unleashed.
We, with our measly words, can’t produce anything close to that. But the outpouring of feelings and ideas on this blog reminds me of that year — the year when the drought ended, and rain finally nourished the land.
Just lay it on me, soulbrother. Tell me like it is. (I guess that dates me…) Am I pushing your buttons speaking about my higher centers?
I write about my higher centers because in the FOF it is a taboo subject. To me it’s the big white elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. Of course, I realize I run the risk of losing all creditability as a fully realized, self-levitating, conscious being number 11…because we all know that the Tao of wise guys is that they don’t’ talk about being wise, they just are. But screw it, that’s a gamble I’m willing to take to help you guys humanize the narcissistic trait of spiritual self-deprecation. You have higher centers, I have higher centers, we all have higher centers! But what you won’t hear in the FOF is that guess what, they have been there all along. We just fail to use them or notice them unless pushed or we have the aim to use them for ourselves. The FOF teaches its followers to mistrust themelves.
Remember the quote from Jung:
“But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple. This, for the vast majority of people, is an altogether ideal technique. Its advantages are: the odium dignitatis, the superhuman responsibility of the prophet, turns into the so much sweeter otium indignatis. The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi divine being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all responsibility is laid at the Master’s door.”
IMO, people exposed to the FOF get stuck in feeling that they cannot possibly live up to the level they imagine that Robert is and the instutitional manipulation of what they don’t talk about reinforces being mired in the beginning stages of work, which is the realization that most of the time we lack the will to believe in ourselves. By abdicating our higher centers to Robert, we get to be included in his group, and bask in the non-existence of ‘otium indignatis’.
At some point, hopefully you wake up (or grow up) to the fact that you have higher centers too, (whether you use the sequence or not), and you begin to see the truth of the situation in stark contrast to the backdrop of all the insanity that is being spewed out of the FOF these days.
IMO spiritual evolution is not about higher vs. lower; it’s about integration and wholeness. IMO the FOF is leading people away from integration and toward separation and compartmentalization within its followers in order to put up with Robert’s crap, and it’s not healthy. We have Robert as a prime example of the result of inner compartmentalization, and his cowering, spineless followers are partly to blame for his illness.
Unoanimo (498) and Graduate (500): Keep up the good work. It’s been fun reading.
It’s hilarious that Abe and Co. called the blog a “mudfest” or some such thing way back on Page 2 or 3. I think the idea was that we’d all turn our noses up and stop reading if there was any “negativity.” Maybe labeling the blog a mudfest would discredit it and make it seem irrational, etc.
Of course, the thinking there is that there’s absolutely nothing irrational in the thinking of Robert Burton. And Robert Burton would never express negativity, right? Very wrong. He does. We all do.
Uno, thanks for describing the potage lunch. I couldn’t help picturing, the many times I came across this unfamiliar term, more of a dotage lunch.
And a more general thank you to all the excellent writers out there who are pouring out their thoughts in such heartfelt ways. This blog is like a spark of electricity for me, and arc or bridge back more than 20 years, illuminating sealed off parts of myself that have accompanied and influenced my life’s journey but were hitherto not examined in the light of my current understandings.
Cake Please 506:
Congratulations! The next months will most likely be very vivid with many new possibilities. For many of us, leaving the FoF was (and continues to be) a time when an unusual amount of transformative energy was/is available – amazing things can happen!
Good luck and love from Rhino
I just remembered a funny idea I had years ago which still intrigues some little part of my mind to this day.
I was reading a lot of Rodney Collin when this came to me, so be forewarned. Collin stated that being fully awake in the present allowed one the opportunity to repair and/or help oneself in the past. If this were true, I reasoned, and if there was indeed an awake “Me” in the future somewhere, than I may be sending help back through time to the me sitting in this chair; hence, I am C influence. I am my own Guardian Angel. That thought catapulted me into an extremely strange state for about a month.
I also remember the meeting where I finally got up the nerve to ask about this idea. My recollection is that there was a prolonged, stunned silence after the question, but that it opened the door to a frank discussion (which was hard to come by at the time) of our understanding of what C influence really was.
“I do not know or wish to know what results will be formed in your mentation on learning about the strange convergence of life circumstances I will now describe, but for my mentation, this coincidence provided material for reinforcing my belief that all the events that occurred in my life, far from being simply the results of chance, were created intentionally by certain extraneous forces.”
-G. I. Gurdjieff
*****************
I’m not interested in your opinion of my verifications, because I already have my verifications and they are not so superficial as to be negotiated with or bargained over by personality’s puny accommodation with the demand that reality be maintained within the range of a comfortable sense of logic.
I am going to go out on a limb here. What you described is how I make my living. I ‘escort’ people into the past to repair their ‘pain bodies’, update their understandings, and then into their future to help create the life they want for themselves. And it works! But you don’t need me to do that. You are indeed your own Guardian Angel, your own c-influence! With enough accumulated self-awareness and belief in yourself you have the ability to send your consciousness along the length of your fourth dimensional time-body to heal yourself and set yourself up for success in your future. That’s self-remembering. That’s virtuosity. I urge to explore more in this direction. It’s the deeper level of work to ‘know thyself’.
I recently called, out of the blue, an old friend still ‘in’. We hadn’t spoken for, hmmm, close to 20 years. She was a friend who I really deeply loved, altho no one could annoy me more, but still she was a real soul friend. I won’t ‘out’ her here, but we spoke and it was just as you say, Cake, we were still after all these years soul friends. Like no time had passed. It was a great blessing for me.
Like having nasturtiums cast at my feet and roast (cut up pieces of) chicken fly into my mouth.
Now , with real friends , (not those do not tilt their head, with a beatific smile and give you some ‘bull’ about, ‘the sequence reallllly works for me’,) you can go forward, you have moved on.
The past is just that, wonderful/not so wonderful memories that roll around in the chambers of your mind. They are part of you, and not part of you. They are the past. Just that.
THIS IS IT! Nothing more, nothing less. Living, life, your dog, your cat, your grandchild, your kids, the phone call, the leak in the roof, the not so feeling great today, the feeling great today, the sorrow, the joy, laughter with friends, more laughter with friends, and then laughing with the world. The joke has been revealed. The Buddha laughs out loud!
Love you my friend
You know me, I am you, you are me.
Is that your translation beneath the what Gurdjieff wrote? Please, in the future (or present), write such things in Japanese so I can better understand it.
I suspect that as a parent, you would be sick to your stomach if you found out that your handsome young son of 21 was called by Robert and was drawn into his perverted circle of young ment. Like “Parent” you would probably want to kill the SOB.
Soooo, I have to ask the question. What about the parents that have gorgeous young daughters ages18-25 that are getting into relationships and marriage with some of Roberts closests ‘consorts ‘ or ‘prostitutes’? Young girls, niave, who only want attention and love from ‘big daddy’ or because their boyfriends are in the ‘inner harem circle’. And that gives them some kind of ‘status’ from the onlookers. Doesn’t that make you twitch? Aren’t you worried that they may come down with HIV because of the dozens going through the portals of Roberts bedroom? Aren’t you concerned that their lives are getting screwed up before they even begin? That these young girls have been conditioned to believe that sharing their boyfriends/husbands with Robert Burton at any time of day or night is NORMAL?
As a parent, if you think this is normal and fine, well, all I can ask is ” what ever has happened to your conscience and your common sense of parenting’?
Oh, if you could only know how much I agree with what you wrote in that post. (except for the next to the last paragraph assuming “you” was specific rather than generic). I can’t remember how many times I tried to express that earlier on in the blog. I think it is the biggest distortion/lie/crime of the fof to turn souls into carrots hanging on cosmic strings.
The only button your post pushed was the “rhetoric” button.
What prompted my little goof was how language shapes how we see things. I wouldn’t use the concept “higher centers”. I think those words are meaningless for this crowd now. I probably would have said ‘my wonderfulness kicked in’ and don’t you just love those possessive pronouns?
The “c-influence” stuff you wrote in that post was right on in my opinion. It is wierd how since reading this blog I can see what my concepts of this crap were, way back when. They ain’t that now. I remember a ways back on the blog getting into it with “ex-lax” (hey, where are you buddy?) after I wrote that there was no invisible influence behind the material world directing or controlling it. It would have been just as true to say there is nothing but invisible influence.
One concept I can relate to is soul brother. Keep doing what you do. (I know you will)
The keying, which is not to be related to “The Key-Master” in the second Matrix series, is a sort of kidney shaped round table (or other anatomical parts, depends on the month) of about twenty people; ‘the boys’ help too…
Robert Burton has assigned certain time periods and or civilizations to ‘certain someones’; they mail findings to Asaf, etc. I think Allen G., has the Aztec & Mayan wiseacre-flints, one of the ‘Russian boys’ has Egypt, a few ‘over-sea-eers’ have their ‘homelands’, etc.
See? It’s just like the good ole days of Rome-planning; but with monopoly money, so to speak…
The keying is a feverish octave; people looking for anything that fits into Robert Burton’s mother-goose kaleidoscope: not that they ever reference Joseph Campbell; no, he would be ‘too heavy’ a foot on the tail of the Alpha Male.
For the most part it’s a affirmative-paternal thing; more hobbies for The Family of Relative Awakening; and an interesting ‘effect’ of the ’cause’ stemming from Robert Burton’s lack of personal aura-ship from his own intentional suffering being and uninhibited by ‘chief feature’ first line;
not to suggest that everyone’s ‘first line’ does not experience some ‘feature denying force’, though, traditionally, one does not express one’s so called ‘higher centers’ through the octave appetites of chief feature…
The license plate octave is a Robert Burton signature thing: amazingly effective in a Jack of Hearts country like America, particularly amongst the ‘really young spirits’… I sense that cereal and old school lunch boxes are next; who knows maybe action figures and comic book characters (?)
I mean just think what they could do with Scooby Doo!
School Be Do (?)
The license plates are not photos of actual real time plates (very rarely they are); they come from a graphics program, either through Photoshop or the DMV website where you can preview what your license plate will look like…
It’s a weird one Ames, yes? Robert Burton (already an affirmation guru by default) affirming a license plate affirmation to back up his personal and ‘school’ affirmations… Not much room for the transformation of negativity there.
It’s interesting that the Fellowship of Friends has a very, let’s say, primordial idea of negativity, they ‘think’ it means something ‘instinctively felt as negative’ or ’emotionally touchy’, something that either scrunches up the face or one’s small intestines;
yet, to me, negativity is anything that negates one’s freedom to consciously experiment with the actions and reactions taking place within oneself as one is perceiving and being perceived by the ‘cosmos’ immersed in (presently), within and throughout.
This can come in the form of conscience, imagination (daydreaming), first state dreams, arguments, feature-plays, movies, coincidences, ‘accidents’, crossroads, automatic inner dialog, hypnosis, a relationship, a task or aim unfolding, intensional suffering, helping others for the sake of love, not personal ‘I did it-ness’, dropping a cup of hit tea on one’s lap, etc.
I must say though, going back into history (similar to what Gurdjieff often did in order to locate conscious impressions and gather a sort of emotional ‘signal’) is a very first line octave, albeit a possible ‘second line’,
though mainly by coincidence and networking one’s particular essence towards the possibility to attract like or kindred spirits to share in one’s ‘beloved’…
So far as a third line octave, unless your school is building a conscious work of art, like a pyramid or Chartres Cathedral (been there done that) out of pure celebration of primarily and simultaneously building an astral body; then it’s soap-stone-dope and out of the traditional and conscious triad of conscious art creation…
I am sure you know about this ‘triad’, being a “Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson” reader to the end.
What conscious work of art has Robert Burton and Company contributed to Heaven and Earth?
Bronze copy-statues?
Limestone copy-ampitheatres?
Mature palm trees uprooted from somewhere else and transplanted at Isis; to give the ‘illustion’ of having been there for ages?
A wine vineyard that served mainly in the school as an endless source of inexpensive, though high hydrogen self-calming nectar, unregulated by a ‘teacher’ with an unstoppable (up till recently) greed feature and self-calming example?
His students, in and out? Well, no, for he has proven to not be the sort of ‘teacher’ who can walk along with a conscious individual whose contributed to ‘his school’; rather, he walks himself, round and round the Poseidon Fountain gathering, chained to his contempt for any sort of creative critique or ‘other than Robert Burton form’ ‘form’; particularly when it comes in the form of a good looking man who can say ‘no’ from the heart, not Robert Burton’s version of the Lower self Hafiz. If a teacher is not big enough to continue being a soul’s ‘teacher’ regardless of that student’s actions or opinions; then he is no teacher, such prerequisite, strong-armed conditions are for ‘leaders’, not teachers.
So far as the keying thing ~
Take a look at certain colonies of insects; now there’s a humble subject of reality to ‘key’ (unlock)…
Though not Fellowship of Friends style, where you start off the ‘do’ with wiseacring (calling it ‘my key’ and photo-shopping the images) rather, with the object of attention’s ‘attention’, its ‘with or without you’ objectivity.
The Fellowship of Friends loves to see their fingerprints on mirrors; to such a degree that there’s simply no mirror’s mirroring left.
_______________________
‘Graduates 500’,
I still love you, no matter how nasty you get; no matter how more nasty you get by wiseacring as to my personal life experiences; if you ‘think’ that a person is better ‘known’ or ‘honestly perceived’ once you are given a ‘real name’ to match to the already ‘static’ image/framework within the mind belonging to that person’s ‘then-portrait’, you are missing out on a very large and incredible conscious fact, i.e.,
that we are always changing and growing, if we are truly working on ourselves, we are never the same, we are not long or short orgasms followed by an opinion and a cigarette or ‘to the rim glass of wine’ or a teaching video, edited to suit the ‘after meeting viewers’; we are not truly being that are designed to respond truthfully to opinions or attitudes, these are spiritual viruses, no different than those the physical body has and gives.
Your negativity passes straight through me and returns to you in the form of a greater love for your possibilities at not being such a being who hunts with boomerangs for the sake of physics and fun…
This ‘raw material’ you possess is exactly what has kept the Fellowship of Friends a school of relative awakening for 37 years; it can be transformed and given back to you in such a triad as a school or friendship (or by certain forms of being alone), though not by such enterprises as the Fellowship of Friends, who, is not a School of Love, it is a School of Drinking Blood, that is pretty much the gist of it…
People will get something from the FoF, that is for sure, though it will not be what it claims to give; the ‘love octave’ is an affirmation for the FoF, this can be quickly discerned by the fact of Robert Burton’s brutal discrimination of the beautifully faced male bodies and the blue collar faced male bodies, his extreme impatience of not getting what his self calming wants RIGHT NOW and the students inability to absorb point blank photographs without wiseacring some excuse that points to their ever refined belief in the holiness of having more than one self.
I wish (more than wish) you well; the observation I gave you was for ‘you’, that that other ‘thing’.
___________________________
P.S. Ames,
You wrote ~ ” P.S. Uno, I was definitely not talking about Burton when I was putting forward the co-operative ‘win-win’ model of teaching!”
_________
Yes, I can see where my first sentence might be mistaken as a question to you yourself; though it was more of a group-blog-think phenomenon appearing in my mind as a sort of blog-self-evident ‘fact’… Hope that clears ‘that’ up.
Here is something in relation to your question.
After my time in the FOF I got in contact with other Gurdjieff groups. Usually I would avoid advertising myself as an Ex-FOF, since the FOF has a very bad reputation in these circles. But one day we talked about it and one person said to me, he heard so many horrible stories about the FOF, but each time he meets somebody who has been in there, he is positively surprised and finds them rather OK. And he didn’t even know have of the real dark side of it.
So if one reads this stuff about the drippings and droppings from the cave walls, one would think all these people are complete lunatics. Even I tend to think, oh my god, I am glad it was not that bad during my time. But was it that different? We were talking about the arch, the reason for the existence of the school, building a new civilasation and so on. By now we were supposed to fly to all the museums in Europe and take the precious art back to Renaissance. All imagination, complete fantasies of a sick mind, projections. It is the same with the stuff I read here about ancient art. All complete trash and I believe people in the FOF know it. One can feel it in ones heart that this is neither truth nor wisdom. It is fabricated nonsense. As long as one is in, one plays a game as if one would not notice, to avoid too much trouble. But when you start to believe in yourself again, it all falls off like an old coat. The need of playing these kind of social games disappears and one becomes normal again.
There is only one person that will not be able to experience that freedom, because he is the only one that can not step out of this yezidi circle. I also believe that most members know in there heart that RB is far from what he imagines to be. It just takes time to admit it and love yourself enough to stop following wrong idols. Part of the problem is that good and wrong ideas are mixed together. Also good and bad experiences are part of the FOF. So one believes by leaving the bad and wrong one would also loose the good. But that is not the case. Lies and wrong ideas, and fantasies will disappear. The history of the FOF is an example of that. The only problem is, new lies are invented again and again.
Love and Friendship will prevail, the GreaterFellowship is showing us this truth.
“I wish (more than wish) you well; the observation I gave you was for ‘you’, (not) that other ‘thing’; well sorta for that too, though secondly, by serendipity.
Tim,
Help me make it past the first 5 minutes of this movie. If it is two unrelenting hours of this, I’ll be in bed for a week. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending, just give me some indication where it’s going with these gut-ripping images. In fact, Tim, based on my friendship for you, if you say, trust me, you need to see this, I will.
When I pushed the play button on that movie link’s window, the word/phrase “buffering” appeared at the top left hand corner… somehow, for me, this is not a coincidence…
This kind of propaganda is just the flip side of what Robert Burton and friends produce to cover up the ‘similar images’ from his War Room experiments, choking a young student with his penis, having to be pulled away from the young man before he suffocated in Robert Burton’s insane appetite for ‘sensation’ and ‘sensationalism’…
These death and destruction images certainly can show something, yet, …. well, good grief Tim, isn’t it enough that it’s July and August already, no need to rub it in bro…
(SNIP, as in slam the floodgates on this constant stream of narcissistic, effeminate narration)
***********************
You can’t imagine my relief.
Still, a bit of advice: get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend, depending on your orientation, because spending every drop of creative material your body generates from day to day on this relatively insignificant imaginary backdoor to the attention of Robert Burton is a waste of your spirit.
Yesterday (Wednesday), between the hours of 1:30 – 3:30 CA time, guess who showed up on the Greater Fellowship.
Abraham Goldman, legal council to the FOF.
Yup, he was on for about 30 minutes. No friends, no phone number, no other information. Just the silouette and his name.
He disappeared about 30 – 45 minutes later .
Guess he was looking around to see what scuttlebutt he could find. Maybe see if there were any lawsuits being organized . Probably hugely dissappointed, or greatly relieved – because all he would see are about 400 smiling faces.
Wonder how he got in – the Greater FOF it is by invitation only?
Or did he have someone hack in for him (not really above his tactics). Oh well, your guess is as good as mine.
More insights into the Psychological Control System, which parallels the FoF, PERFECTLY:
“The Control System does not inculcate belief by lying – at least not all the time. The lies, the subtle twists on the truth, are generally buried deeply in a soft cushion of warm and tender concern for their “chosen ones.” The Control System proceeds by the method of imitation. It APES the expression of the positive, and all the more carefully when it wishes to be mistaken altogether for truly benevolent intentions.
The strategy of the Control System is to begin its work by adhering so closely to the letter of the positive as to be virtually indistinguishable to all but the most perspicacious individuals. It instills belief through a sort of rhythmic lull of entrainment, which then permits acceptance of all that is said when it finally diverges slightly or greatly from the set pattern and pulls the mind of the believer along with it.”
A member of the GF invited a current student. The current student passed the invitation on to Abraham’s office, presumably for investigation. It sat on Abraham’s desk and he decided to take a look. He showed up on the Greater Fellowship as mentioned in the post above.
I noticed that he had joined right away and sent him a message explaining that I did not want to interfere with anyone’s GF experience, but since he showed no friends or invitation, I needed some information regarding his intentions. I asked him to please contact me and explain his purpose.
I gave him some time and when he did not contact me, I sent him another note explaining that I needed to ban him but to please contact me to discuss his purpose. I explained that if his intentions were appropriate that I would personally invite him back. I then banned him and he disappeared from the site.
He wrote me a beautiful letter asking about my family, offering his love and love from Susan, and explaining that he personally very much enjoyed the site. He enjoyed seeing old friends that he had not seen for so long and never knew what had happened with them. He said it made him happy to see such a healthy, non-negative site. He said it was an uncomfortable mirror to see some faces that had grown older. He also mentioned that he does not read the blog anymore (since the 4th itteration) because it was too negative for him.
He said he would enjoy being able to get on from time to time as a pleasant way to spend time on his breaks at work.
I wrote back and explained that I was sure that he understood that due to his unfortunate role, many were frightened by him. I asked him if he had any ideas regarding how to deal with that. I told him that after some thought, I needed to speak to others before forwarding him an inviation.
Flying Free (535): Your post is a nice example of the perspicaciousness.
——————————-
Had to use that word after reading Truth is Where You Find It (536): “The strategy of the Control System is to begin its work by adhering so closely to the letter of the positive as to be virtually indistinguishable to all but the most perspicacious individuals.”
One more hint that we were (and are) just your run-of-the-mill cult. Nothing special, nothing unusual.
He entered, was noticed, communicated with, and banned for now. He emailed back that he enjoyed the site, appreciated its lack of negativity, and enjoyed seeing pictures of old friends. He indicated that he would like to be a member of the site as a “pleasant way to take a break from the daily routine at the office.”
He entered, was noticed, communicated with, and banned for now. He emailed back that he enjoyed the site, appreciated its lack of negativity, and enjoyed seeing pictures of old friends. He indicated that he would like to be a member of the site as a “pleasant way to take a break from the daily routine at the office.”
Well, unless there’s a brewing revolt, and we’re thinking about storming the gatehouse and taking over the Academy, the winery, and Apollo D’Oro, and planting a huge GF flag on the top of the mountain. (Because if that’s the case, we should keep things quiet for now and not allow Abe on the site so we can talk in private. We’d need to maintain the element of surprise.)
All kidding aside, I can understand the impulse to ban him, but on the other hand I would suspect he’s had access to the site through other GF subscribers anyway.
This is so bizarre, this entire thing — what ever happened to the friendships we believed we had such a long time ago?
Well, maybe some of them weren’t friendships after all.
I can feel that naive impulse that says, “Maybe all of this will be a bad dream, and the ‘higher angels of our nature’ will prevail. And people like Abe, and Ni_k, and others, will one day soon say to themselves with brutal honesty and sincerity, “WTF am I doing here?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, guys, can you please direct the discussion to William? Don’t make any assumptions, please! You don’t know anything about “the impulse to ban him”, our friendships, the circumstances of his appearance, or anything, and it may not be appropriate to be public about it here.
“Let him back on. Let’s not decide based on arbitrary judgment who should join us and who should get kicked off – lest we become our own enemy.”
“Still, a bit of advice: get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend, depending on your orientation, because spending every drop of creative material your body generates from day to day on this relatively insignificant imaginary backdoor to the attention of Robert Burton is a waste of your spirit.”
___________________________
Hummmm. Did you say “arbitrary judgement”?
___________________________
Forever yours,
Unoanimo
Not your Romeo, not your Juliet, not your teacher’s pet, just a Beyond Thunderdome place set, waiting and kinda not waiting for your chardonnay let’s be honest without tha witchy wild stuff, Us and They arm wrestling bet.
Regarding Abe Goldman’s purported visit to ‘the blog’…
A few weeks ago, I saw from a distance dear Abe strolling through downtown Grass Valley. He was alone, carrying a large leather satchel, and appreared to be a bit lost. Perhaps he was looking for an address? Anyway, he was a quite ‘soft’ impression and I felt a bit sorry for him, wondering what he might not be hearing of the sounds that surrounded him.
IMHO, Abraham has gotten bad press, and bad vibes, from this blog, and I just wanted to offer the possibility that his particular play is deep and complex enough to make it, and him, rather difficult to understand (and criticize), objectively speaking.
In my experience, Abe is a gentle, sincere, and intelligent fellow. If he has had to show his professional teeth over the years as an attorney in defense of the FoF, well — that’s his job in his chosen context.
A host of you fellow bloggers were once very good at the jobs you did! Digging holes, planting palm trees, cooking Italian dinners, planning events, acting, dancing, and so on and on.
So, please do consider the possibility that Abraham may just need to delve into this dark world of ‘the blog’, for himself! Give him a break. Welcome him to participate.
I wish I had a bookmark I could place between posts. Lots of reading left. But, I’ve got to go to (first state).
Yesri Baba #436 thank you for your thoughts to me. You are appreciated.
Veronicapoe #49(5)? The Hell letter. WhaleRider wrote a soulful letter some time back that shocked alot of people. This Hell Letter to me was almost as strong.
Me: “Robert, can you come over”? “My doctor said I only have a few hours to live and I want you as my spiritual guide to hold my hand”.
Robert: “yes dear, I’ll spring right over”.
Me: “Oh, thank you Robert this means life to me”
Robert: “Dont fret dear, I’m coming”.
Robert comes over and sits by my death bed:>
Me: “Robert could you hold my hand and prepare me for my
death like our breathen the holy and ancient Egyptains”?
Robert: “Hold on dear, whats up with this hospital gown”?
Me: “No, Robert. Hold my hand, hold my hand. What are you doing? Hold my hand why are you suc__……”.
Abraham is welcome here in the dark world of the blog. In fact I believe he has visited here at least once. It was the the light world of theGreater Fellowship site he was banned from.
Actually it was the Greater Fellowship space, not this blog, that he was “banned” from. As far as I know, almost no one has been banned from this blog. Maybe AG reads it daily, and he may even post here for all I know. Who cares?
The GF site is a little more selective about who they allow to join. I guess they’re worried about “spying” or some such (to me) silliness.
What a sad, sordid little fear-based world these followers of Mr Burton have created for themselves! The good news is that in time, as the trance is broken, they can reclaim a different way of being.
2b:
Very good! “WTF AM I DOING HERE?” should be printed on t-shirts and sold at the OH store!
yes, let AG join. Thank you for not leading with fear but with compassion and friendship.
The Greater fellowship site is a very good thing to happen for so many people. We are actually all connected, in more and deeper ways than is conveniently apparent.
Markus L: ~ Menander said: “Carelessly we live, thinking death will never come.”
Robert: This is why one by one we each must take out turn at death, to make us more serious, and to make the school more serious, it is a method Influence C uses; they keep us completing our roles one by one and remind us not to be this way: not to be careless about the time we have left.
______________________
nor the present now Robert Burton;
there is no tomorrow.
What is the “Greater Fellowship” thingy. I missed something.
Also, I’m always curious about posts that use the school language to describe thoughts and feelings. There are several different contexts in which it is used. Some seem to still validate it by using it seriously to describe thoughts or feelings. Some seem to still believe in the language.
I understand that school language is something we all share and which can be understood. I often don’t understand when an ex-student still uses it to describe their current experiences as though he or she was still in the school.
I am not being negative. I’m simply curious.
Also, I am not stating that others do this, but that I do not.
#532 if memory serves & #533 Unoanimo re: #528 Zeitgeit – The Movie:
It’s a nearly-two-hour film (so you have to get beyond the “buffering” stage U. to get the message.) The prologue is unnecessarily violent. You can skip it.
The film examines the myths behind Christianity, the War on Terror & the Global Economy. It attempts to debunk some of the accepted views, perhaps attempting to create its own myths.
Similar to the FOF-Robert Burton controversy, somewhere between myths and debunking of myths, there are opportunities to engage critical thinking. We must arrive at our own truths. But first we must discover our own myths.
You wrote, “I’m always curious about posts that use the school language to describe thoughts and feelings… I understand that school language is something we all share and which can be understood. I often don’t understand when an ex-student still uses it to describe their current experiences as though he or she was still in the school.”
Very good question. Here’s my answer…
Our work language gives us the precision we need to reach higher centres. Using intentionality as one speaks is a tool that’s useful for one’s work. One must not waste time with the language of life. They are not ready to embrace the task we’ve been given from Higher Forces. As you do the will of your Teacher, you will have everything you need to reach Paradise. Do not inner consider your good fortune.
Yes, I’m kidding.
But not entirely kidding…. because (hopefully) everyone can see from that paragraph just how easy it is to spew out supposed profundities with the so-called work language — even little ole me. But can’t you imagine almost anyone in the Fellowship, including Robert, saying something very similar to the above? Pre-digested, nothing original.
Going back to page 3 of this blog, here’s a post by “George Orwell” :
As far as using the “school language,” I think it is a combination of things. Part of it could be that many people posting on the blog have recently left the fof, and that it’s still a habit to use those same old terms. But “from one angle” (argh, there I go again — an old Fellowshipism), the “work language” does sometimes describe certain concepts more concisely and more accurately.
And you also suggested that. But you bring up a great point. Even while in the FOF, I know some people who tried to find new and different ways to talk about “the ideas,” partly because many terms and phrases began to lose their meaning as people over-used them. If it was worthwhile trying that within the fof, it’s definitely worth a try outside.
Orwell’s essay is worth checking out again. The use of the language is a key point in everything we’re discussing here on the blog. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important topics.
Here’s how they ended their post…
P.S. From my essay, since it’s not clear many of you still read books:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Don’t know if it was Manocher Movlai. He introduced himself as ‘Manoush’, and the card he had his acolyte give us did not bear his name, but the name of the institute he was affiliated with, (which I do not want to post here- since it really has no bearing on the story).
The point is, that there are thousands of spiritual predators that want to draw you in to their webs- much like Robert Burton had. And there are many that want to follow.
It is an ‘old tale, full of sound and fury signifying nothing’.
You make a very interesting point, and one that I think is worthy of further consideration.
As a student who is in ‘the process’ of leaving the Fellowship, I find myself in an in-between world vis-a-vis the ‘Work language’ and, of course, many other things.
On the one hand, I am starting to jettison old and unwanted concepts and terminologies. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to suddenly depart from the language that has become an integral part of my emotional, intellectual and neural ‘circuitry’ after a few decades of complete immersion.
It feels artificial to forceably stop using the ‘Work language.’ On the other hand, I admit that it might actually help my personal process to just let this language go and try to find a new one to use to express my thoughts and feelings.
Just not there yet, and don’t want to adopt another artificial language-a-la-mode.
Perhaps the intentional use of language is a key to our successful re-orientation in the world? Just witness the linguistic diversity we are witnessing on this blog!
David B. 466
take it easy 465
I am the local (mostly disinterested) Observer who asked the question about what kept you all so involved for so many years in the face of such strange silliness when it is obvious to an outsider that you are obviously such intelligent, spiritually motivated people. One of the things I find mostly puzzling is the not-so-subtly-veiled “us vs. them” feeling within FoF, which the contrast between two of the posters who answered my initial questions, so clearly points out. When you first heard a nonesensical response, as given to my respectful, honest questions, (as in post 465) how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way? How did you make it okay to shun people who had been committed friends and co-followers just months earlier? How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds? Did the camaraderie make it all okay? Were the operas and art that distracting? It is obvious how intelligent most of you are, but many of you spent ten or more years in the Fellowship. How did you silence your disbelief and irritation and pay good money year after year and make that investment feel worthwhile in your heart, mind, and spirit? An early respondent suggested I read up about cults, and I have done so. But I wanted to take advantage of this forum to ask some real people who experienced all of this–what they were thinking “then”, and what gradually or suddenly changed their minds to “now”.
Again, these questions are asked very respectfully and I am very open to your answers and thoughts.
Thank you.
I’ve been out of the Fellowship for 23 years, and I still use some of the language, in a limited way, with other former students. It’s a form of precise shorthand, and we know exactly what we are talking about.
Maybe it’s laziness, but why reinvent the wheel when familiar terminology continues to describe some things really well?
Leaving the Fellowship doesn’t have to mean abandoning the things that still work.
I highly doubt that you are a real person, however your questions are real enough to deserve an answer. What keeps us all making intense efforts despite evidence to the contrary? Is it just Brainwashing? Is it just Sleep?
The true, positive thread that keeps the Fellowship of Friends running is Self Remembering and the inner states that can be achieved by doing such a practice continually, or at least regularly, particularly in the company of like-minded Friends. That the Fellowship as an organization has some “myths” attached to it’s base, is it’s own unfortunate spiritual Achilles Heel, finally creating a travesty out of the word “School”.
Over the years, many healthy individuals, disbelieved a few of the myths but instead tried to use them and the School atmosphere to transform their personal lives. Some have maintained a level of respectful distance from the Enigma-of-Robert-Burton, knowing that he did a number of strange things in his private life, but in public inspired us all to be Present, the Golden Apple. Thus, in between Self-Remembering and all the strange predictions, proclamations and sordidity (sp?) lies a land called the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt.
In it’s early and initial stages, the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt means the land of No-“I’s”, a wonderful space for Self Remembering. One learns to react to Robert in the space of having no “I’s”, simply trying to transform the inherent contradictions. In it’s later stages, the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt, digresses to the land of No-Eyes, an unwillingness to accept the reality that is in front of one’s face. The death of Conscience. This blog pulls the curtain away from behind the man who is behind the Wizard, revealing him in his sad and full, lack-of-glory. We can dismantle the myths. We can see through the Enigma. We can try to understand how far the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt may have distorted our own perception of reality.
In the end, we may come to realize that the aim of the Fourth Way system is indeed to bring a man through Self Remembering to Conscience as both Gurdjieff , Ouspensky and Miles Barth stated. And the Fellowship does indeed do just that, by default, but not by intention. Graduates, one and all, I salute you. May the force be with you…
Highly recommend Zietgeist the movie 2007.
528 Tim Campion. Dear Tim. Thank you for going out on a limb and posting Zietgeist the movie 2007. Thereby solving a problem I had. there were a whole host of other movies with parts of the information in them which would take up too much time and people would be unlikely to watch. I even considered trying to edit them into one. No need! someone already did it. I hope you arent ostracised for posting it as I know where the urge to post it comes from.
It should come as no surprise that the covert aspects of government have been utilising principles of mind control to “govern” the choices of the people it all started with Freuds nephew Bernays. One of the questions the film doesnt answer is what they have been doing with all of the money? and the answer to this is pretty terrifying!
Americans take care your country and constitution are under attack in the manner that great men such as Lincoln and Kennedy warned about and you know what happened to them for having the guts to go public. You have been hypnotised on a much bigger scale than by Rb.
And to those discussing the use of work language.
Of course if you are discussing with someone who doesnt know it then you have to get creative and find common reference points, which can be much more difficult and time consuming than sharing observations with someone who does where you can point with surgical precision to a specific thing. It can save very much time that can then be used for other things.
Its also a good idea sometimes to make the effort anyway to be creative as it escapes the danger of parrot fashioned formatory understanding.
To use an analogy; If you were talking with someone who understood Spanish but didnt understand any of the other languages you spoke and you also spoke Spanish then it would make sense for you to speak Spanish together rather than both trying to speak Mandarin.
MLTYA Cy.
Well, no I can’t attend a dinner with Robert, I am leaving. I say. Shocked at the resolve in my voice.
And in a second, a thousand silent spark fly back and forth between you and I. Arcing through decades, through countries, through time and space.
You with your stomping six year old charmer,
Me just orbited into the meaning of life, clinging to my newborn.
No work language for those bonds,
Transparent we were, one to the other.
So, today, taken a back, you were. Didn’t really want to do that to you. But there we were amid a flurry of emotional affirmations about the depth of our friendship.
My heart and door always open, I say, feeling it is a platitude not worthy of you, my friend.
Well, you say, my heart yes, my door no.
Words follow, respect the exercise, I would understand, of course. Me biting my tongue. Deep breath. Good Luck. Adieu, Adieu.
Respect you. I do. With every breathe, you are all and everything this school could hope for. More than it deserves. Good student with a capital G. And I do mean capital.
But understand, not at all. Barbaric tradition. Best I can say.
But sad, not at all. Because as sure as you are in my pocket, I am in yours.
Dogma-proof, the heart.
A la prochaine,
Cake
p.s. Cy, your words not lost here. Truly, these are glory days for those taking flight. I know, it was not always like this, many suffered for our days in the sun.
Thank you for participating in this forum! You help us to “see” ourselves more clearly.
You say, “One of the things I find mostly puzzling is the not-so-subtly-veiled “us vs. them” feeling within FoF…how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way?”
Boundaries define us. They are inherent in our psychology. You live on one side of an imaginary line drawn on the earth, I live on the other. Elections are polarizing, sports are polarizing, so are religions. Patriotism is polarizing, too. Bush said to the world, “You are either with us or against us”. Nobody agrees one day to talk that way, we always have.
“How did you make it okay to shun people who had been committed friends and co-followers just months earlier?”
The followers of the FOF didn’t make it okay, the leader established the practice of shunning as a rule. The Mormon Church does this too. In my experience, most people ignored the rule. And as with unjust laws to which nobody adheres, the rule was recently abolished.
“How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds?”
Without change, life gets boring and stale. We accepted the changing landscape as part of keeping our lives new and fresh. Change forces us to ‘think on our feet’.
“How did you silence your disbelief and irritation and pay good money year after year and make that investment feel worthwhile in your heart, mind, and spirit?”
People who join groups are unsatisfied with the way their lives are going. In order to make changes, most of us substituted the group as our new family. We were encouraged to distance ourselves from our former lives by moving away and changing our names. As with dysfunctional families or even a dysfunctional workplace, you do what you need to do in order to stay. You either learn to suck it up, (so to speak) or you leave. The fear of abandonment runs deep in everyone, and fear is a powerful motivator. Have you checked the “Terror Threat Level” lately on Fox News?
May be it would be nice to publish again the letter you wrote long ago to A. Goldman regarding his conscience and his position towards the FOF.
Or at least if you can give again the reference of your post.
Flying Free, I asked about “Manoush” because, if it is the individual whose acquaintance I made, I might be able to add something to the point of your story. I took a number of bodywork classes from this individual of Afghan origin in Oakland, where his institute was located….
I have been thinking of your question…a lot.
As Martin clearly pointed out…we gave him the benefit of the doubt. Many of us came from abroad and had to catch up with the culture, the way of living in USA, simply surviving. Many of us are immigrants which had much better jobs in our home countries…
Many of my fellow students I trusted and I counseled with from time to time and i thought I knew less. I remember the moment that I told a friend: “Robert Burton is like the emperor without clothes, the story of Christiaan Hans Anderson.
Many things I do not understand yet and it will take time. I have gone in the darkest of my darkness in myself and have looked for clues…
I learned a lot and one is to be good friends with myself and not depend on a authortian figure like a Robert Burton.
I gave too much, I was not very self assured and was amazed by what people could express….I should have looked at their actions too. And I did after many years…a couple of years ago when I really saw the coldness in Robert how he could let people go so easily if they did not “bow for him” or supported his vainity or kissed his…
I had wonderful moments but the demands slowly increased and I got used to it…this is what life was supposed to be…An after life seems our rewards. Yes it was kind of silly but this is what was. Now our sunglasses hvae dropped and we see very different. Dear Observer if you are real and I think you are. Please inform new people you meet from different countries about the blog or give them a card with the website in their hands.
I wish I had know when I joined and I feel so sorry for the center directors in different parts of the world, thinking they are recruiting searching souls instead they are recruiting, money, sex and a nice bunch of people to work their …off.
I am healing, digesting, leaving a great bunch of people.
Love to you and your conscience.
P.S. to come bak to your remark: about avoiding non members.
My position of working in a nearby town, I was not able to make much of a discrimination between fellowship or non. Although my limited time made sure that I had not much time to socialize with non members. The time I have socialized with non members was very enjoyable.
Cake,
I read your post to Lucie, too, and found myself speechless, yet filled with emotion. Glad Veronicapoe was able to find some words. I couldn’t, but am with you both.
Love,
Bass
Dear Aline, here is the letter you asked for (from post #13-670):
______________________________________________
When Abraham Goldman subpoenaed me in 1996 to get documents relating to the Troy Buzbee case, I enclosed this letter with the material he requested.
21 October 1996
Abraham,
One final appeal to your conscience. As the person best equipped in the Fellowship to bring the reign of madness of Burton to an end, you must act to do so. You are the only one with complete access to the information, to all the evidence accumulated through the years, and you have been Burton’s confidante for all these many years.
Please think back to when you joined the Fellowship. Surely, if you had by a miracle been given the knowledge of knowing then what you know now, you would have turned away. It cannot have been your ambition to end up catering to a charlatan and a pervert, covering for his mistakes and predations, wearying yourself to the bone with lies to cover his omissions and commissions? Surely you imagined a life of openness, not lies? Surely you imagined a life among true friends into whose eyes you could look with joy and honesty, knowing they could see the same in yours? Surely you did not imagine a life where your final defense against your own conscience would be, “I was only following orders”? Please, wake up and follow your conscience. Do not be afraid. There is so much love and help and forgiveness—if you wish. Face up to your responsibility. You could help so many people by telling the truth, now. You could save so many people so much heartache in the future. But, best of all, you could be helping yourself. You must have lain awake many nights struggling with the latest revelations of the day about Burton, and your heart must have ached to be in a place where none of this had anything to do with you. Such a place exists, both psychologically and physically. Look within. Act and forgive yourself, as all others with a good heart already have. Nothing can take away your responsibility for your past actions; you must face up to them yourself, but there is all the help you need if you ask for it.
You can make your life exactly as you wish it. You have done so until now, and will do so in the future. It is your gift from God, to do with as you please. If you wish to continue as you have done—thy will be done. If you wish to break away from this mess—thy will be done. It is up to you.
Know, that even if I personally am sometimes angry about the situation, I am not angry with you. You have your lessons to learn, and you have chosen your path. But, know that I believe you are strong enough to create joyful changes, if you wish. I send you loving wishes and encouragement.
565. Cake .
Hi Cake I just want to make sure that you are aware of the Greater Fellowship Web Site, as
“assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.”
If not just reply with an E mail address and I would be happy to invite you. Love to you . Cy.
Bass Ackwards (563) and Whalerider (566) have already addressed your questions somewhat but I will add a bit more here to try to clarify.
Referring to a post by a current FOF member (465) who said ‘C influence takes away their (former students’) understanding and causes them to forget their divine verifications’) you wrote:
“how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way?”
Well, you have to understand that this is just the kind of stuff that FOF members say to each other to convince themselves that they are right for staying and the people who leave are making a mistake. While I was in the FOF, I often doubted the truth of such statements but would only say so to a few close friends who I knew I could trust and who probably shared my doubts. If you were to express doubt or criticism of these kinds of statements publicly you would risk becoming a pariah. Although I’m sure many students have doubts about Robert and his teachings, very few have the courage to give voice to those doubts and risk being ostracized, especially when they have severed all their ties to the outside world and have nowhere else to go. I remember in the days right before I left the FOF, I wanted to confront the other members at a meeting (that was back when they still had meetings) and stand up and challenge them all on some of these things. I thought it would be good to stir things up and at least get people talking, and what did I have to lose, right? I had already made up my mind to leave. But somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was just too uncomfortable and, perhaps even frightening, being only one person against all the others. I suppose I was just still too close to it all and wasn’t sure enough about it. I certainly hope that those who are currently poised to leave will consider not going quietly. You will be amazed how many others are also having doubts about the emperor’s clothes.
You also asked:
“How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds? Did the camaraderie make it all okay? Were the operas and art that distracting?”
The camaraderie was a big part of it for me. I wanted to be in a community of people who were dedicated to working on themselves and I was willing to tolerate a lot of Robert’s weird crap in order to have that. I remember wishing that Robert would just die or something so we could get rid of the weirdness and have a ‘normal fourth way school’. I have spoken with others who shared those sentiments. Of course that was naive and knowing what I know now I would never rejoin the FOF even if Robert were no longer there.
One other thing. In your post you refer to the “intelligent, spiritually motivated people” in the Fellowship. I think that is attributable to the quality of the fourth way teaching, not so much Robert. Probably most of the truly sincere and intelligent ones are there in spite of Robert, not because of him, and they will eventually leave when they figure it out.
So anyway, Observer, I hope that helps you. Since you were never in the FOF, I’m sure it seems really bizarre and incomprehensible, but I’m glad you’re making the effort.
#440 observer, you said “I can tell you are mostly all so intelligent, committed, energetic, and talented in many ways……. I can tell this was an amazing group of people, very intellectual and obviously outspoken, ……. Most of you sound like amazingly bright, earnest, passionate, dedicated people.”
Well, yes we ARE all so very intelligent and amazingly bright. Flattery will get you everywhere observer!
Since I completely doubt you are just who you say you are I’ll just address this to everyone who reads this blog. The folks in and post fof are, from my experience, a sort of unusual group. Not as in ‘really special’ but more in the misfit way. When one has interests that are a bit out of the norm then to find an actual community of other misfits where one can interact is an overwhelmingly positive thing. Lots of people are into enlightenment and when someone who needs community finds one that fits them they too become devoted.
There were/are many facets to the fof experience and this is just one – from my point of view. –I think community is a basic human need.
When I lived at Renaissance I went with two friends one day and hiked out some gorgeous park, sat by a fresh stream and read out loud from Lewis Carol – each taking a part that oddly fit us. It was a strange and wonderful afternoon – odd in a way that was comfortable to each of us. Hi to both of you (Griffin and Turtle) if you are here!
I’ve discovered that those kinds of magical experiences do not end post fof, but the community affected me greatly and I still am attracted to the community. I’m here on this blog and so are you.
Yes, the card did have a body work institute name on it. ‘Manoush’ might be same guy. Don’t know. Just my story – one sunny, winters day in a coffee shop. It happened right after I left the Fellowship of Friends, so it kind of magnified the ‘lies’ that I bought into”. I smiled all the way home.
‘ no more systems, no more hooks, no more teachers lying looks’.
Here’s the reply I sent William when he emailed about the question of whether to allow AGoldman onto the GF site:
William,
I don’t envy you this decision.
It’s also obvious that if AG, in his capacity as the FoF lawyer, wants to know what’s going on at GF, it wouldn’t be very difficult to find out.
I did react strongly to the idea that someone would be “banned” from the GF site, since we’re all adults now and excluding people just goes against the grain for me.
I’m not sure I would be rushing to add AG to my “friends” list but so what? If the GF really is to open to all past/present members, I see no reason to exclude him, and I say that as someone who has been on the wrong end of his legal activities. Maybe membership in the GF will bring some additional humanity to AG and his work?
So I guess my vote is to let him in. There are certainly other past/present members I don’t care for, but I would fight for their right to be part of GF. Why pick AG out of all others? Just doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Good luck.
I recall a former Fellowship student reading him the riot act for intellectual dishonesty about twenty years ago during a presentation at his institute. This individual expressed anger at him, indicating that she felt he presented Gurdjieff’s ideas as part of his talk without identifying their source. He admitted that he was influenced by Gurdjieff’s writings. He exuded charisma, I have to say. He showed up when the talk was underway and left before it was over, so that no one could mix with him casually.
Beautiful post; encased in a large sheet of amber that one is.
_____________________
Hello ‘Tim’ (557) ~
You wrote ~
“The film examines the myths behind Christianity, the War on Terror & the Global Economy. It attempts to debunk some of the accepted views, perhaps attempting to create its own myths.
Similar to the FOF-Robert Burton controversy, somewhere between myths and debunking of myths, there are opportunities to engage critical thinking. We must arrive at our own truths. But first we must discover our own myths.”
______________________________
Hello Tim,
When I write to someone in this blog I really start off as if they are the only one’s who are going to read my response to whatever they have written me or my reply to something they have simply ‘put out here’; of course this is not the ‘real case’, that’s alright with me, yet that ‘fact’ does not keep me from writing only to you and not really expecting others to read my mail…
I mean, think about this scenario ~
Your lover is gone to Australia for a month to study the various style of kangaroo jumping distances and you are writing here or him a letter, a love letter… You place it in the mail box at around 9PM that evening; you get a call at 3AM from someone ‘in the neighborhood’ saying,
“How could you be such a sap; don’t you understand that they are having a great time without you? Get a life, go to Australia, live a little and you spelled ‘relinquishment’ wrong.”
_____________
It’s like that in here sometimes: it’s all good though.
To me (and please understand that my ‘feeling’ does not reflect my opinion of you or anyone else, so try not to judge me for having one) the ‘do’ of the film said it all and still says it all, to me…
After reading your post about the premise of the film, I can see that my intuition has not failed me (again). Intuition is a tricky little thing, sometimes it’s a quick exhale to get rid of a mosquito, other times its an unknown intake of a gnat down your throat and yes, there are times that its connected to ones conscience and being, like a sort of ‘passion’ to leave things as they are, to walk away, not lonely or against the world, simply see it as not one’s business:
an example ~ One day I saw two dogs, one had escaped having gotten its chain tangled in another dog’s chain, which was still ‘tied up’ (really, this is true and not a metaphorical scene)… I was very young, about 9 or 10; I saw that the ‘escaped dog’ had its teeth showing, growling, really pissed off, while the other dog was truly ‘out to lunch’ about it all; being a very large dog, though passive and very emotional, yet, it still needed to protect it’s interests…
Well, I thought I would just prance in and untangle the two, I took a hatchet from my grandmother’s steps where I used to sit and crack walnuts, just in case the other dog got ‘touchy’ with me…
I reached in to untangle the chains and the big passive, emotional dog (the dog that I had known pretty much all my childhood life) sunk it’s teeth into my wrist all the way to the bone…
I stepped back and whirled the hatchet through the air missing my Uncle’s dog’s skull by about three inches; I was truly freaking out, blood, saliva, pain, having just seen a rabies commercial on TV the day before and hearing about the 60 shots in the stomach one would get, etc. Not to mention the ‘shock’, the utter contradiction of my altruistic ‘wish’ and the very objective ‘result’.
I learned that day that we live in many different objective worlds, whose relationship to one another is subjective; oftentimes I sense that the only objectiveness concerning the multitudes of life forms on the planet earth is the fact that they are all ‘on and in’ the same planet… that’s about it.
___________
Without going too far into how the film is not for me; it’s just not something I am attracted to untangle. Critical thinking, truth and Myth, for me, their beginnings and truer reason for existing within me as impulses, cannot be found in applying them to external affirmations or even internal affirmations; our ‘personal myth’ is highly irreconcilable, partly due to the fact that we do not end, that we grow, change, shed numerous skins and profoundly change in ways we could never unfold in a solo way… So, ‘personal’ is a pretty shaky subject for me these days.
Critical thinking; what’s that? It’s easy to be critical when you’re a negative type or a king: it is also a very ‘self evident’ (effect) of a circumstantial (cause)… For the most part, as I see it, ‘critical thinking’ on the planet earth is 95% buffer and 5% conscious conscience knowing that it’s ‘critical thinking’ is going in the direction of deeper love, not better missiles and law books. It also educates Essence, though its a rough and tumble ride, because ‘being’ critical and not staying that way throughout, not making it a habit or turning it into a pair of sunglasses, is a tricky seance.
And ‘truth’… well, go figure; it’s all unfolding… a never ending origami hobby. Certainly as a being phenomenon, in your heart and gut, in your presence, in this now, its applicable, though I would beware of connecting it’s sensations and thought provoking hydrogens to being critically or mythologically successful.
________________________
Thank you Tim for your reply; hope to meet you all some day (or night).
________________________
Hello Observer (561) ~
Try and find a similar situation where you have done something in your life that its outcome would elicit the same questions to yourself as you are asking people on this blog…
Whatever your answers are to yourself concerning this ‘similar situation’ (like a friendship, a love affair, a marriage, an ‘real’ friendship which suddenly shows itself as mostly affirmations and circular; an appliance warranty that says ‘Limited Lifetime Warranty’)… those ‘kinds’ of answers are the one’s you’re really looking for.
579 Uno animo.
hi Uno.
The time you took explaining why you didnt continue watching zeitgeist after your early interval would have been better spent watching the rest.
Not to disparage the almost mythical status you have here on the blog…. really you are a wonderful contributor.
But in this instance I think a combination of bad publicity and faulty intuition has prevented you so far, from recieving something which I for one consider to be really worthwhile.
It gets much better about fifteen minutes in!
But if you are as I suspect Solar Jovial, Lunar then I guess trying to convince you to watch the rest will have the opposite effect.
Which is a shame for me personaly as I would like to have heard your opinion of it.
LOFLTY- Cy.
the ‘greaterfellowship’ is not a completely open site. It is a private network where one has to have an invitation to come on the site. AG violated that rule. It creeps me out. He knew he was violating the network rules. He did not have an invitation. He did not email anyone on the site to see if it was OK. Many here who actually WERE invited don’t want him. I don’t hear anyone saying “Oh, I really WANT to send Abe an invitation because he is so social and warm and would just so much enjoy reconnecting and making new connections”
Unwanted entry thru a back door… how typical. a pattern with the fof!
Howard Carter, Siddiq, and company.
I have used lots of intellectual arguments in my posts so far.
Far simpler to put it this way: If becoming “conscious” means becoming like Robert Burton—screw that, I willingly join the damned!
If “higher forces” are external and behave as Burton claims they do (“humiliating him by requiring him to have sex with ‘his’ students” and so on—fuck them all!
If the price of “immortality”, is to squash my conscience—I’d rather roast!
And if the supposed advancement to the “higher possibilities in the next lifetime” is to behave like a shit in this one—up yours…
To all those who imagine that the ends, however noble, justify the means, however ignoble—I invite the lighting bolts from the petty gods you have created for yourselves.
Eloquently said Ames.
1 Ames Gilbert.
Again someone has put my thoughts into words for me.
Perhaps Rb is on Caligulas ladder. Cy.
Great ending to the last page (Charles R.), and great beginning to the next (Ames).
Wow Ames!
I too am getting mighty tired of listening to the intellectual crap that continually justifies anything Robert does as some kind of holy deed that simple folks like myself cannot understand.
My advice to these people would be to go sit under a tree, smell the roses and listen to your heart for awhile. There is no justification under the sun for what Robert has done and continues to do to naive, young men and women who come with their hearts and minds open trying to find their truths.
Charles R. Good to have you back! THANK YOU for your fine post quoting Jung. It bears repeating since the last thread became to large and unwieldy to navigate.
From Jung:
“When therefore a prophet appears at a moment’s notice, we would be better advised to contemplate a possible psychic disequilibrium.”
This is precisely what compels a person afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder to be driven by the need to compensate the disequilibrium with multiple sex partners, travel, constant supply of fine impressions and the vicious expunging of any dissent. These are called narcissistic tools or objects, which are de-humanizing to those caught in the afflicted person’s vortex.
The following quote from Jung was so exquisite in its portrayal of those still caught in the FOF matrix, that I reprinted it as a platform for the next thread.
“But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple. This, for the vast majority of people, is an altogether ideal technique. Its advantages are: the odium dignitatis, the superhuman responsibility of the prophet, turns into the so much sweeter otium indignatis. The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi divine being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all responsibility is laid at the Master’s door. Through his deification of the Master, the disciple, apparently without noticing it, waxes in stature; more over, does he not possess the great truth – not from his own discovery, of course, but received straight from the Master’s hands? Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.”
Howard, read it and weep. Your ‘celestial morality’ is a delusion of grandeur.
Charles R,
I whole-heartedly agree with you about Jung. I speak as one who has been working over the past six years with a Jungian therapist. I would highly recommend Eddinger’s Ego and Archetype as a guide to a post-fellowship understanding of one’s psychological journey. Out of our own individual needs, we projected the Self onto Bob and now it’s time to recollect those projections.
You wouldn’t remember me, but we spent a pleasant afternoon walking around the National Gallery in D.C. I remember that at lunch you caused a raised eyebrow when you ordered a beer. You said something to the effect that we are in the business of changing our states and right now a beer will change my state.
Ames #1:
I think this is the same conclusion a lot of us have reached. Thanks for stating it.
Sheik posted his initial observations Sunday April 16, 2006
First comment on these observations: June 24, 2006
Part 1—First 300 comments, ending March 1, 2007
Part 2—Next 338 comments, ending March 11, total 668
Part 3—Next 333 comments, ending March 22, total 1007
Part 4—Next 312 comments, ending March 29, total 1313
Part 5—Next 391 comments, ending April 8, total 1704
Part 6—Next 408 comments, ending April 20, total 2112
Part 7—Next 397 comments, ending April 28, total 2509
Part 8—Next 453 comments, ending May 11, total 2962
Part 9—Next 452 comments, ending May 22, total 3414
Part 10—Next 534 comments, ending June 5 , total 3948
(change of format occurred here…
Part 11—Next 715, comments, ending June 13th, total 4663. Note: no moderation, numbering screws up, FoF spam attacks repelled!
Part 12—Next 647 comments, ending June 21st, total 5310
Part 13—Next 829 comments, ending July 3, total 6139
Thanks, appreciation and love to you all from Ames!
Special thanks to you, O Sheik, for all your hard work.
P.S. Since it looks like we contributed to the Sheik’s laptop giving up the ghost last weekend, remember to give something back. One way is the PayPal button!
I Don’t Care 13-737
Very well said
Charles R. 13-828
What more can one say?
Ames 14-1
Great Ames, from the heart
Haven’t been on for a while, so much living to do.
This TRUE story is for those who are still very attached and hang on to the idea of Robert Burton being a unique and conscious being. Here is the story that actually happened and was the final understanding and closure for me.
There we were, the two of us sitting in a charming little coffee shop in the Bay area about 6 months ago. Both of us had exited the FoF, just 5 months earlier after serving a 20+ year term. It was chilly outside, people bundled up, coming and going. The atmosphere was warm and friendly inside, the tables were full, and the constant hum of voices put a smile on my face – life expressing itself all around me. We were sitting at the entrance door (the only table available) watching the comings and goings.
I was halfway through a sentence when I noticed that my partner’s attention had straying in a fixed kind of way to a new arrival that was just entering. A finely dressed, handsome, youngish gentleman (Asaf type, with a broad smile) opened the door –and who should enter, but A LOOK-A-LIKE , a DUPLICATE TO ROBERT BURTON. We both became fixated! The older gentleman was finely turned out, with an overcoat that was of the finest imported cashmere, a pair of Italian shoes that probably ran into the multiple hundreds, an ebony cane with a finely carved ivory handle, an exquisitely trimmed white beard, a broad smile , and a posture that had a slight stoop that said ‘this is what humility looks like’.
The young man moved ahead to secure a chair for the RB Look-a-like, pulled it out for him, seated him and then moved back and forth between the order counter and him with espressos, and croissants. The two remained in the coffee shop for about 15 minutes. During that time the older gentleman would look around the room from time to time with ‘attention’, smile, and lean over to his younger acolyte and point out something of interest or to teach him something of great importance.
Then it was time for them to leave. As the older gentleman approached the door which was slightly ajar, he used his cane to gently but ‘intentionally’ push it closed (after all it was an incomplete octave, and someone had strayed out without realizing that folly of their ways). This in itself was even stranger, as the two where about to exit from the same door. My partner could no longer contain himself. He had to speak!
For purposes of this dialogue, we will call my Partner ‘K’ and myself ‘C’ and the older gentleman, the look-alike to Robert Burton as RB ².
K: “ That looks like a useful tool. Beautiful cane!’
RB ²: “ Thank you, yes it comes in handy’
K: “ If you don’t mind me asking – you remind me of an old acquaintance- where are you from?”
RB ²: “ From the ABSOLUTE”
K: “ Nice to meet you, and I am B.
C: “ Nice to meet you , I am C. What is your name?
RB ²: “ I am MANOUSH ” ( said with a long soft extended sound , more like Maaannnooossshhh., and accompanied by a broad smile).
K. “ Are you a teacher?’
RB ²: “ Yes I am” (he beamed , with a humble tilt of the head)
K. “ What do you teach”?
RB ²: Turns to his well dressed , handsome acolyte and says “ DEAR, please give them a card ”.
Acolyte fumbles in his wallet, and produces a card. Immediately under the name of the ‘school/institution !!!’ a statement in bright parentheses says
‘ the divine art of being present’.
Hands were extended in goodbye. Manoush clasps his hands together in ‘that humble, I respect you fashion accompanied by a slight dip of the head and shoulders,’. The acolyte leaps forward to hold the door open for his ‘ TEACHER – MANOUSH ’.
If anyone wants to switch, we have the card . It is duplicating universe, isn’t it ?
And a final quote from RB himself (daily card), August 11, 2006
“ When you wake up from imagination, you realize that you have been wasting your time” Love RB
By way of contribution: there has been a huge amount of scholarly research on the enneagram since Ichazo started teaching it in the late 60’s. It is one example of why IMO Gurdjieff’s concept of “esotericism” is obsolete. Two such researchers are Hudson and Riso; in their book “Personality Types” they have a lineage diagram. The origins are labelled Unknown, Babylon or the MiddleEast, cir. 2500BC. The next step is Pythagoras and the Neo-Platonists, Greece, 500-100 BC.
I don’t know what you mean by a “huge amount of scholarly research” because my attempts to discover anything about the nature of the enneagram indicate that those who work with the ideas presented by Ichazio and marketed as an “enneagram” of personality are meaningless in terms of the use of the enneagram.
A more likely source of further information is through the Gurdjieff tradition. Those who study Beelzebub and Bennet. Etc.
To Ames – 14-1
“If becoming “conscious” means becoming like Robert Burton—screw that, I willingly join the damned!”
Your role was especially written just for you; you couldn’t “become like Robert” if you dedicated your entire life to it.
And you couldn’t become “not like Ames” if you dedicated your entire life to it. But you can look “through” Ames’ eyes, and not with them. Better yet you could close your two eyes and see with the third one, to paraphrase Rumi.
And look without judgment, rage, not indignantly but with compassion, forgivness, humility. Knowing it is all written by Beings infinitely superior in intelligence and authority than any human being including REB.
When you rage against REB you are raging against them.
But don’t expect to be struck by lightning – that’s not their style. If you chose to value this life over the next one they will give you what you want – a good earthly life, nothing more, nothing less.
As far as stating “I willingly join the damned” everyone says that until the actual moment of joining.
“those who work with the ideas presented by Ichazio and marketed as an “enneagram” of personality are meaningless in terms of the use of the enneagram.”
I’m with you.
As I exchange messages and browse through the member pages in the Greater Fellowship Ning website, I am struck every day by the huge volume of exuberant, affirmative, loving energy fountaining out across the world via that website. So many old friends, new friends, lost but now found friends. All supportive, affirming each other’s essence and spiritual growth. It as as if all that loving energy that was somehow frozen inside while we were “in” is now breaking out in huge fountaining jets of warmth.
And I now see, this energy is the School. REB started something, but the real School is comprised of all the sincere, honest, loving friends that somehow flowed in and out of the Fellowship of Friends. It long ago ceased to have anything to do with RB’s teaching. The frauds, the con jobs, the scandals, the wounded essenses, the broken trust, the FoF Mafia, the Sequence, all the weird babble – all connected with a very psychically frail, wounded man.
WE are a School. In or Out, makes no difference. The dream was real, the utopia is there – it’s just not physically located anywhere, especially not in the property in Oregon House. Nor is it bound by the frailties, inconsistencies, weaknesses of any one person. And it is not even limited to those who actually ever joined the FoF.
It gives me great hope.
We smilingly refer to the GF site as “Son of Blog” (but without the negativity for now) – so thanks Sheik for being Dad here.
Wooooo What a ‘do’ !
There’s some Viking energy ah sail still!
_________________________________
Hello Sheik ~ (Whalerider, Vera.mente, A Former Student)
Hello Sheik ~ A note: maybe it was your down time and broken computer; my Post #793 and #795 are duplicates.
Also, something ‘weird’ occurred in that I sent those posts ((after)) the ones that it is now ((before)) (?) Strange.
To Whalerider, Vera.mente and A Former Student ~
I replied to you, though based upon the Twilight Zone sequence of how my post appeared before the posts that it nornally would appear after, you may have missed it.
It is to be found on (1)3 ~ #793 or #795 (take your pick, they’re simese twins).
____________________________
Hello Ames ~ (Post 792)
You wrote ~
“No wonder the great caliph Haroun al-Raschid had to slip out from time to time, disguised, into the city to get first–hand information about the condition of the citizens—and the state. Even his most trusted advisors and viziers, chosen from the best, serving without selfish motives, could not transmit information up or vision down without distortion, even acting from the best of motives. He had to go and obtain direct experiences himself..”
_____________________
Beautiful demonstration of real being in action; never stop dancing my friend and keep that wooden leg oiled and loaded, if you know what I mean.
_____________________
Joel ~ (Post 797)
Hello Joel,
It seems to me that your letter to Benjamin and the si-do that you revealed here on the blog by inviting others to ‘let out’ their little black books on your past are connected.
I have often found it incredibly ‘amazing’ how clear one’s inner world requisites lay themselves out to ‘really be’ one’s standards and principles when another being attempts to damage essence or has willy nilly transferred some corruption of their own into my ‘solar’ pysche…
It happens less these days; I’ve trained myself to see the flip side of the ‘white surrender flag’ facing me and the ‘he’s over here, pointing arrow and bull’s eye’ on the other side;
so many possess this ‘flag’ in their pain body quest for adventure and addiction to the struggling self mind.
True friends…. Hummmm. My truest friends have been those who need themselves more than I, who give to me because ‘we’ ‘asked’ through silent intuitive ways, by sheer proximity and ‘spontaneous combustion’;
so much of the ‘kind’ of friendship of the Fellowship of Friends is based on derives from the automatic four lower center conundrum of ‘drama formatory family values’ and still is…
No member of a ‘school’, whose nucleus itself does not teach 360 degree trust and integrity can be trusted with un-guarded, raw, still getting its ‘bark’ essence, (among about another 60-70 classifications of inner world order ingredients);
for it is they who, subconsciously and often semi-consciously, imitate the criminal in charge of their developing psyches, i.e., the mirror reflects the silver, not the glass.
In that moment of ‘telling on you’, which even to children (it was felt that way in my childhood) is a kind of ‘crime’, Benjamin ‘was’ Robert Burton, acting out a kind of psychic possession, possessed with another’s entity’s dominance, i.e., the psychology of ‘good boy’…
Freud is all over the place at Isis; they have not even made it to Jung and Campbell yet… Let alone the understandings of the soul ‘mind’.
So, when Benjamin ‘did that to you’, try and see that it too was being done to him ’24 hours a day’ by the form of the Fellowship of Friends; it was his sub-conscious ‘cry for help’…
Yet, strangely enough, in a School of Relative Awakening, 9 out of 10 students will deny this interpretation and buffer, saying (with two tongues in cheek), “No, I trust Robert Burton, that’s why I cannot be trusted, I must do the teacher’s will, I have no will, I cannot do.” (Yet they affirm nonetheless that they can do the teacher’s will…?)
Benjamin (like Siddiq and HC) are not completely lost; otherwise their names would not be on this blog, deep down this material we’re cranking out will stick and the grace of the end of earth-form will fall upon them, sooner or later (to whatever large or tiny degree, nonetheless, better a pin-hole of light than a coal miner’s curse), this is a fact (for me),
that nothing is lost, even in the face of cold hearted silliness, something gets through, where is goes, how it grows remains a mystery to me, yet, somehow I do sense the seeds are there; this is not in any way meant to lessen their self-responsible performance now, it simply helps me keep a owl’s peripheral on ‘things’, not as they think they are, rather, how time treats us to the immensity of change and circumstances we’d never dream occurring the way they do.
There are certain self-evident laws that are unwinding them, though they do not show it (may not even be awake that its happening without their permission, like someone starring into the sun going blind or drinking grain alcohol ‘pickling’ their liver or a tug on one’s ear that says (from the inside, something they’d never admit from the outside) like “Oh, yes, I believe that but cannot tell you I do.”
The very ‘fact’ that they (at least 2 of them) are ‘tossing love notes attached to bricks’ over to us in here is something not to be underestimated.
Yet, for me, blowing kisses in the wind while others are pissing in it too has got to stop, so, let the aluminum foil dances begin…
Ames post #1 above is a pretty traditional way to start the warring months of July and August; I’ve filled my shells with ‘rock salt’, just for taste, not mortal wounding, so to speak; even these days, those two sided flags keep on coming.
It is my sense that HC believes nothing he’s writing, and is playing the role of ‘third force antagonist’ in here; yet, as we know, this, strangely enough, is the collective voice of a School of Relative Awakening, where the opiate of their language and thoughts overly secrete more cerebral duty, cerebral lip smacking, more cerebral self calming, very little being that’s not connected to mental structures of affirming oneself over and over that “I am this way of applying my thoughts (which are acually not my thoughts), therefore I am.”
I still cannot conceive the utter ‘tasting of soil for a new vineyard at a nuclear fallout area’ that’s occurring in the Fellowship of Friends around the acquisition by some of the most infra-sexed crazed of Robert Burton’s boy’s of the Fellowship of Friends student’s daughters; in their hands they are being placed by the parents, no doubt HC is in there with his pom poms doing cart wheels and boucing about his grapefruits…
This travesty of the Fellowship of Friends upon their own children touches something deep in my heart, I cannot get a grip on it just yet, it feels like a tornado, a hurricane and Jupiter’s eye, all rolled up in one…or maybe its just July.
It’s a beautiful day and the finch do not care who I am and I love them deeply for this kind of treatment.
_________________________________
Love to you all.
11
HC you’re a fucking moron.
9 Laura – thanks for sending me back to I Don’t Care 13-737
Current members of the Fellowship of Friends – doesn’t this post send a chill up your spine?
“Did any of you think that I would be dissuaded by this silly blog? The more you say, the more resolute I become.
“The more you write, the less I will read. The more convincing you make your arguments, the more convinced I am to stay. The more serious your arguments, the less I take them seriously. Reason and logic mean nothing to me. I must keep to my aim.
“Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care. When you draw comparisons to other cults, I will ignore it. When you point to the abuse of power by the leader, I will ignore it. When you show concern for the sexual behavior of the leader, I will laugh. If you point to the wisdom and spirituality that can be found outside the confines of this group, I will call it fake. When you emphasize the presence of group think, I will call that group think. When you say we are not thinking for ourselves, I will be puzzled by what you mean. When you say open dialogue is discouraged and punished, I will change the subject.
“Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care. I will wait you out. You will move on to your lives, but I shall remain here because this is my life.
“But eventually I will also leave.
“Like you, I will wonder why I stayed, why I was not dissuaded, why I remained resolute, why I was convinced to stay, why logic and reason meant nothing to me, why I kept to my supposed aim, why your appeals meant nothing to my conscience, why I didn’t care about children being hurt, why I ignored comparisons to other cults, why I ignored the abuse of power by the leader, why I laughed off the leader’s sexual behavior, why I ignored the wisdom and spirituality found outside the group, why I didn’t recognize that I didn’t think for myself, why I changed the subject when someone pointed out the lack of open dialogue. So you see, I will be the same as many of you.
“I will leave.
“But right now, I will stay. Your appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears. It is your conscience, not mine. When members are hurt, I do not care. When children of members are hurt and confused, I do not care…”
13 Sharon,
Well felt and well said!
And big time thanks again, Sheik, for the part you play so well.
14
“Benjamin (like Siddiq and HC) are not completely lost; otherwise their names would not be on this blog, deep down this material we’re cranking out will stick and the grace of the end of earth-form will fall upon them”
“There are certain self-evident laws that are unwinding them, though they do not show it”
“The very ‘fact’ that they (at least 2 of them) are ‘tossing love notes attached to bricks’ over to us in here is something not to be underestimated.”
“It is my sense that HC believes nothing he’s writing, and is playing the role of ‘third force antagonist’ in here”
In relation to Siddiq…maybe, maybe not. Benjamin…I don’t know anything about his trip.
However, with HC, you are sadly naive, even after all these years, and you are wasting and misdirecting your precious “hope” He is a “severely damaged machine”, as we used to say. Possibly to the same degree as when he entered. I would even venture strongly that this is a criminal personality, possibly sociopathic. One needs to be able to discriminate to protect one’s “self”. Isn’t that one of the points of being here?
Bruce – 15
“11
HC you’re a fucking moron.”
Translation: Howard, stop making sense!
19
Sociopath and criminal.
“A sociopath is a person who has antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is no longer used to describe this disorder. The sociopath is now described as someone with antisocial personality disorder.
The main characteristic of a sociopath is a disregard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big part of the sociopath’s personality. This pattern usually comes into evidence around the age of 15. If it is not treated, it can develop into adulthood.
Visible symptoms include physical aggression and the inability to hold down a steady job. The sociopath also finds it hard to sustain relationships and shows a lack of regret in his or her actions. A major personality behavior trait is the violation of the rights of others. This can appear as a disregard for the physical or sexual wellbeing of another.”
hc (19), I once believed that you were getting paid or supported in some way to articulate the party line and somehow support the cause, whatever that might be — possibly trying to divert people’s attention from the criminal and unethical acts of Robert Burton.
Now I wonder. You are definitely not supporting that cause with your increasingly bizarre posts.
Please read, “We Were There” (16). Does cause even a tiny bit of doubt in you?
I’m guessing Bruce will say, “Uh, uh.” And I’m beginning to think the same.
Uh, uh.
See, I knew it.
I’m sorry, but “conversing” with “Howard Carter” is like talking to that “Magic 8 Ball”.
(I do however give “Howard” credit : he has many more “angles” hidden in his inky fluid.)
#15 Bruce
Man, you crack me up. I don’t know how many times I wanted to say those exact words but didn’t have the balls.
Hey Bruce ~
Thanks for your post: I’m keeping my (what you call “hope”, very abstract): please, re-read my post and see if the ‘naive-shoe’ still fits, it’s certainly not what I wished to share with you… As I stated, it’s a seed; disorders and severely damaged machines can be seen in many different ways.
I wonder when you draw such closed-ended visions or opinions of “damaged machines” whether or not you’ve ever ‘been inside one’ yourself?
I have experienced this possession of insanity and rigorous raw hate from others flowing through me, it having stayed and embedded itself throughout nearly every corner of my psyche through my teenage years and onwards; the transformation of the dense pain body connected to me has been one of my deepest tasks and I must admit to you, from personal experience, that no matter how insane a person looks, sounds, writes or pontificates, other forces still work very hard to keep ‘pin-holes’ occurring and one’s inner self, by some miraculous process called ‘becoming’ does sprout, if one is trying:
while, how one is trying and another is not, how trying to one is mimicking and insincere, while for the other it takes his or her spouses death or long agonizing death of themselves to shake them towards themselves, all this is mystery;
HC is stuck and as I said before, I really do not believe that he believes, so, it is very probable that he’s not even a damaged machine, just another Fellowship movie-star that’s feeding the blog and pushing buttons so to feed its pain body’s negative-reaction hungry, flip side of the darker side of the king of hearts vanity feature;
I sense he’s a smoke screen for Robert Burton, if not perhaps he’s Robert Burton himself… For the sake of true affirmative boomerang-ness, if anyone wants to address HC, I would suggest writing it thus ~
Dear Robert Burton, HC
(like a degree title, I’ll let you be creative with what the initials might stand for.)
Bruce, surely you do not think that we’re (by now) letting HC off the blog-hook, no my friend, its just another cast, in another spot, with the same worm that’s been curiously enduring multiple quick tosses here and there for thousands of ‘possible snags’, reeling in, casting out…
I am not so sure Bruce that we’ve got a ‘big one’, I’ve met ‘real’ damaged machines in my life, people that would put their boot heel across one’s pearly whites in a heart beat, drug dealers, motor cycle gang members, convicts of all sorts, dark dark people, HC does not qualify (to me) as one in the category of ‘past the point of no return’, yet, who knows, perhaps something else will ‘snap’ or ‘nibble’ the other way, yes, there are incarnations down here that I would consider ‘past the point of no return’ so far as ‘this’ incarnation is concerned; maybe its just a big tractor tire caught by the under toe, maybe not, I would let out the line a bit, let it dance and roar down the rapids… there’s a lagoon at the end of all this blogging that no one can see, who knows what odd and beautiful skull caps will pop up once all this is transcended.
_________________________
Love to you all.
27
To each his own. Go for it.
22 2B
Now I wonder. You are definitely not supporting that cause with your increasingly bizarre posts.
Of course, the really twisted paranoid assessment of HC is that he/she/it is a former member posting here specifically to elicit all the intelligent responses we’ve had to the robotic mentations of the FoF.
JoelF
29
I suppose in the realm of all possibilities, that specific superimposition is possible somewhere/time in the multi-verse, quantum-physically speaking.
Bruce – 21
“A sociopath is a person who has antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is no longer used to describe this disorder. The sociopath is now described as someone with antisocial personality disorder.
The main characteristic of a sociopath is a disregard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big part of the sociopath’s personality. This pattern usually comes into evidence around the age of 15. If it is not treated, it can develop into adulthood.
Visible symptoms include physical aggression and the inability to hold down a steady job. The sociopath also finds it hard to sustain relationships and shows a lack of regret in his or her actions. A major personality behavior trait is the violation of the rights of others. This can appear as a disregard for the physical or sexual wellbeing of another.”
Translation: I live a different reality from Bruce’s.
Maybe bizzarro earth.
31 we agree on that one.
Howard,
Your worldview expressed in 14-11 demands the following (and much more) to be true:
• there are many lifetimes
• higher forces designed my role in ‘a play written in advance’ (yet you grant me the power of choosing to value this life over the next, and that higher forces will ‘give me what I want’!)
• persons ‘raging’ against Burton are raging against higher forces
• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining
• that you know the ‘style’ of higher forces.
In a minor key:
• I am in a rage, or indignant, or looking without judgment, compassion, forgiveness or humility.
None of this is verifiable by you.
By all means continue to thrash around in Burton’s fantasy.
I prefer to try to live the one and only life I have verified as fully and as deeply as I can.
13/828 Charles R.
Charles, thanks for this terrific post. I also ran across this thread, on lightgate.net, under the Ken Wilber forums, as a topic thread called The charismatic narcissistic cult leader and his apologists. This also addresses the difficulty of speaking to people like Howard Carter, Siddiq, et.al. The post is by someone named Jim. (Disclosure: I deleted a few paragraphs and changed the word “existential” to “higher” for the sake of the audience.) Here’s more:
[begin quote]
Why do people fall under the spell of charismatic narcissistic cult leaders?
I’m posing this question without specifying any individuals, but my question is specific: I am not asking why people fall under the sway of beliefs and ideas. I am asking why people fall under the spell of charismatic narcissistic cult leaders.
It goes without saying, or should, that we would not even be able to address specific cases unless we first agreed that the charismatic cult leader in question was in fact narcissistic.
So let’s define these terms.
Charizesthai is Greek for favor or gift of divine origin, or charismata, “spiritual gifts.” Webster’s defines charisma as: “a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.”
Max Weber defined charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers…[that] are regarded as of divine origin.”
Weber spoke of the “extraordinary” emotions of the charismatic, the ability to reach intense emotional depths and heights of ecstasy and euphoria, and a belief in his or her “calling” that arouses similar feelings in others, who become followers. The greater the intensity of the charismatic leader or teacher, the greater the intensity of his or her following. The greater the passion of the leader, the greater the passion of the followers.
Heinz Kohut analyzed and defined the narcissistic personality in great detail, but I will just mention a few of his key observations.
Two characteristics of the narcissistic personality that Kohut observed were grandiose self-confidence and an extraordinary lack of self-doubt.
People with narcissistic personalities typically have a need to define reality in their terms so as to be always right, and they typically refuse to accept criticisms or appear vulnerable.
People with narcissistic personalities can rarely admit to a gap in their knowledge.
Psychologist Len Oakes, whose focus is on the psychology of religion and issues related with new religious movements, comments on the adult narcissist:
By always being a little bit inside yet a little bit outside the world, he is well placed to diagnose its problems and devise solutions. His insights well seem to be profound truths to those who share his values and background. The talents he has developed in order to survive with his narcissistic worldview intact now give him an uncanny resonance with his times and with those who will become his followers. … Perhaps this really does give the prophet a “truth” that others lack.
Eventually the successful adult narcissist stands ready for the call to leadership. He fits in well with those who seek a new life or are in crisis. In return for their love and devotion, he leads them to the promised land, and in so doing he re-creates the ego-reflecting universe he knew as a child. The followers appreciate his vision and wisdom because he keeps his head about him in a crisis; he is above the fray (which is why narcissistic patients are so hard to treat – they can’t be reached).
Kohut says that the narcissist reacts to injuries to his worldview with “narcissistic rage.”
“Hence,” says Oakes, “he is fondest of the true believers who enthusiastically mirror his ego; those who don’t are resented.”
Many psychologists, including integral and/or transpersonal psychologists, believe that some cult leaders are both charismatic and narcissistic, and they believe that people who are particularly susceptible to such cult leaders are susceptible for particular psychopathological reasons.
As Oakes says, narcissists “can’t be reached,” and thus we find that apologists for charismatic narcissistic cult leaders often have an extraordinary lack of self-doubt, a need to define reality in their terms so as to be always right, can rarely admit to a gap in their knowledge, and are therefore beyond reach.
Personally, I think that it’s a more worthy effort to help people move beyond conventional levels into (a higher) level than it is to support charismatic movements at all. A charismatic teacher whose appeal is his charisma by definition appeals to people at conventional levels of development and not to people who are at the (higher) level. A charismatic teacher whose appeal is his charisma cannot help people move from the conventional level to the (higher) level. Someone who helps people break out of the conventional mindset that is prone to falling under the spell of charisma does far more for people than does someone who implicitly or explicitly encourages people to flock to charismatic cult leaders for spiritual guidance.
[end quote]
JoelF
Thanks Joel. Good one.
I think Vera-mente and I would like to be added to the CLASS-ACTION civil lawsuit. I dont’ know about Vera-mente but I would also like to see a criminal law suit against Benjamin the lawyer for FOF, Mr. Goldfinger, is it?
Hmmm… narcissistic personality… hmmm… remind you of any one(mind)?
Dear Howard,
In or out we all have to deal with the same things.
We have to deal with our own features. We have to deal with making a living and supporting ourselves. We have to deal with our laziness in certain areas.
We have to deal with the opportunities to experience what it means to be alive. We have to deal with the emptiness that presents itself from time to time.
When it comes down to the moment, the fence is imaginary. You are in and you have some nice moments. You also have moments of worry, moments where it is hard to do what you feel is right, moments where you judge others or become impatient. Moments where you doubt your own abilities. Moments of sadness. Moments of joy.
My life is not so different. I also have nice states, states that can not be taken from me, states independent of my position, my family, my friends and certainly from the Fellowship. States where I am glad to be alive in this very strange adventure.
In some ways, your life is not much different from mine. We both strive to have the best life we can, knowing that a good life is not only about doing and receiving but also about being and giving. We both have friends. We both have fine emotions.
So the fence is largely imaginary. Life is life. But as I see it here is the difference:
I thought while I was in that I was independent, that I was free, that I was honest. I now see clearly that I was not as free or independent or honest as I thought.
Now that I am out, I am no longer a child, supporting a man that misuses the resources allocated to him (his students and the efforts of his students). I no longer am bound by his principles but am establishing my own based on my judgment which I sincerely believe is better than his. (His judgment is clearly misguided).
Since I am no longer supporting Robert and his strange habits and ideas of right and wrong, I am much lighter. Since I am no longer trying to be a person that I am not, I am starting to learn what I really am. I feel much more free to be myself and I don’t have to twist my mind to try to justify my support of Robert. This has a more positive effect than you can imagine. What an incredible relief! We have carried a tremendous and unnecessary weight without knowing it.
I am thankful for what I learned but now it is time to refine my own relationship to what it means to be alive. I don’t think life is about meetings, receptions, working long hours to support a king and his harem – nor is about the self absorption that the sequence produces.
From my experience, higher states are more loving than that and actually more easily available than that. Identification is identification regardless of the nobility of the subject and dividing every moment into work or non-work, effort or non-effort, higher self or lower self, leads to identification. Robert’s teaching brings some enjoyable moments but on the whole often leads to self-deprecation and identification. In some cases it even leads to depression. I am not saying that this is always the case, but I think it is more often the case than any of us were willing to admit.
Life is more about being honest and simple. This frees up the higher centers. Supporting Robert and his odd ways is neither honest nor simple.
Life is about discovering what I am and letting go of the king of hearts facade. It is about developing a loving family. It is about learning to love, not only my friends but also myself and this amazing place and existence in which we find ourselves. It is difficult to do this while supporting a man that does not like most of life, and who teaches through his actions and exercises the value of self absorption.
I thought I needed the FOF to keep me away from my lower self. I was wrong. The Fellowship weight was causing me to retreat into my lower self and it was heavy. I am glad that I had the opportunity to learn this lesson before I was too old to appreciate it.
I am more free and this freedom provides energy to grow, freedom to experiment, freedom to love, freedom to fail and freedom to be. It provides emotional energy which frees me from an instinctive life.
So Howard, you can continue to be afraid, afraid of what might happen to you without all the third force, without Robert’s guidance and the guidance of what you imagine to be C influence. That is fine if that is what you want. But I would suggest that it might be time to experiment. Time to see if you are really so weak that you cannot do it for yourself. I suspect you and many other students are really quite strong individuals but you have allowed yourself to be demoralized, weakened and frightened. You have allowed yourself to need a father figure to tell you what to do and how to live.
You see, you cannot understand the weight you carry and its harmful effects until it is lifted, until you are free from it. I know. I was there and my only regret was that it took me so long to find my courage.
Luckily the Fellowship allows students to return if they find they really need the third force so it is possible to experiment. Interesting that of the 10,000 or so that have left, I guess less than 100 have returned.
“They must find it difficult.
Those who have taken authority as the truth,
Rather than truth as the authority.”
G. Massey. Egyptologist.
many wonderfull posts folks. Cy.
16/We were there
Awesome.
37/Arthur
>>Class action civil lawsuit
It’s a fantasy. An agreeable fantasy perhaps, but still a fantasy.
For Howard Carter, a genuine question:
Assuming you are the person referred to in the following linked news article, which is a big assumption, but one I am making here,
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/onset?id=6791&template=article.html ]
does your Fellowship membership better equip you to come to terms with that unfortunate event, which all can agree would be a major life changing event for anyone?
Of course with Abraham as the lawyer we can trust the explanation was true, right?
As has been remarked on prior pages, Mr. Highland’s driving has been noted as aggressive and irresponsible prior to the “accident” by other members at the time. Of course he was aware “in the moment” that any other action would have crushed him with the cement he was carrying, because we know he is such a fast and deep thinker.
Happy 4th.
http://www.kidskonnect.com/FourthofJuly/LadyLiberty/liberty_dl.htm
“Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, has done “whatever it can to fill the cups of justice” for families of the victims.
No family members of the victims attended the plea hearing and sentencing, which was scheduled on short notice. ”
Turns my stomach.
One more and I’m outta here:
That line about “fill the cups of justice” reminds me of a euphemism RB used to use in reference to the “gift” he received from his male students. He used to call it “drinking from their cup”.
The mental and psychic “load of cement” the man is carrying IS crushing him, I dare say.
Folks, just for your information, Howard C is not the student who was involved in a tragic accident, and I will add, this was apparently the type of accident that could have happened to anyone.
The Benjamin Y bashing is also completely inappropriate.
Both these students, as we all are, are not perfect, but are good and decent human beings.
Of course all of this is besides the point, nothing in these smallminded personal attacks reflect anything about the Fellowship or what it stands for. We are all still human beings I think.
Siddiq
About the negative press about the Sequence.
Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present, but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?
“this was apparently the type of accident that could have happened to anyone.”
Yes, we saw that, verbatim, in the press release. What a coincidence.
29 Skeptical Optimist
I don’t think it is very twisted or paranoid. Almost every time I read one of his posts I think this is too much of a characature to be real. It is if some genius is taking all the false “esoteric” drivvel we have left behind like that black oily pool of hate and negativity left by the dying planet’s inhabitants in the old ‘Star Trek , The Next Generation’ episode.
IF that is true, my apologies to Daniel, but at this point there is little I would trust from you Siddiq. I lately find your statements and apologetics completely untrustworthy and in the similar vein to HC’s , just not as insane (yet).
51
If only!
Rodney Collin said that planet Earth is an infinitesimal point within a point. So how come the ego fills up the rest of starry space?
Oh, somebody was asking about the enneagram. I found for me a new book. While I was looking around the Nisagadatta website I found this, “The Tao of Chaos: Essence and the Enneagram (quantum consciousness, volumn 3, by Stephen H. Wolinsky, Ph.d.
He is a direct disciple of Nisargadatta.
Hey, no one needs to apologize; I am surely not doing so, not for my own posts, not for the FOF nor for RB. Bruce, I am not looking for you to trust me either. I am just stating my point of view to give a little balance to the blog. ( I do not know if for example Daniel and Benjamin are reading the blog, so they may not be there to put the matter straight).
You are right that I am going insane…slowly but surely!
“You are right that I am going insane…slowly but surely!”
Then maybe there’s hope for you.
Siddiq (49):
About the negative press about the Sequence.
Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present…
How can you know that? You’re lying to yourself to make yourself feel superior.
…but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?
How about a good night’s sleep?
Seriously, I’d like to reply to your question. First, you are assuming that a manipulative technique like the Sequence can actually produce and prolong “presence.” Maybe so, maybe not; it’s still a technique, a form of control, something the mind is doing. As long as the mind has some practice, some technique it feels it can master (saying a mantra, watching the breath, etc.), it’s happy. But that isn’t spiritual awakening. That’s mind activity.
From Adyashanti’s book True Meditation:
“In True Meditation, we start from the foundation of letting everything be as it is. We are not moving toward the natural state [presence], or trying to create the natural state, we actually start at the natural state from the very beginning. This is what I discovered all those years ago when I started to let go of the meditator, the controller, when I sat down and simply allowed everything to be as it was. What I realized very quickly was that the peace and stillness I was trying to attain were already there. All I had to do was stop trying to attain them. All I had to do was sit down and allow my experience to be exactly as it was.”
….
“We cannot come upon the truth of our nature through manipulation. We cannot move beyond what I call the false identity, the egoic identity, by trying to change. We can only start to allow consciousness to wake up from its identification with thought and feeling, with body and mind and personality, by allowing ourselves to rest in the natural state from the very beginning.”
So while the Sequence (or any similar concentration technique) may have some temporary value in bringing your attention to the present, the technique too easily becomes an end in itself. A dead end.
Ah, the enigma Howard Carter! The fundamentalist we all love to hate or hate to love as the case may be. He is pure party line leading all the way to the top. His style of fixed and rigid thinking is why people kill each other over religious beliefs. There is virtually no other way to ‘get’ to people like them. They are THAT dedicated. They have crossed the line, sold their souls for the cause, and for them, there is no turning back.
Howard’s silence to my posts speaks volumes to me. Am I more of a ‘lost cause’ than Bruce or Cyclops, my esteemed brethren? Here’s what I think he is doing. He is baiting those who call him names to incite negativity from others in an effort to turn FOF members away from the truth. FOF members are VERY sensitive to negativity, are they not? What a perfect ploy to make FOF members weary of the blog! Notice how he backs off when bloggers go after each other!
Please, I beg you, don’t play into his insanity! If anyone here has an interest in actually helping others reading this blog still stuck in the FOF matrix to think for themselves, I recommend avoiding the emotional outbursts to his fundamentalism.
If you have an emotional response, go throw your pillow against the wall a few times instead. You will feel much better. That would be more appropriate. I am quite serious. Otherwise he will transform your negativity into more fundamentalisms, ad nauseam. Trust me there will be no end to it. Can’t you tell?
Look at his response to Ames post #1. “As far as stating “I willingly join the damned” everyone says that until the actual moment of joining.”
Does he speak from experience? Hell no, he speaks from fundamentalism! There is no argument there, only fear. Fear of the unknown is something we all share, and he uses it to reinforce the status quo.
I know it seems pointless, but confronting his warped thinking with reasonable responses is the best we can do, not to change him, that is impossible, but for the others sitting on the fence. Take the Gandhi approach, and you will expose his tyranny.
Gandhi said, “Eye for an eye makes two people blind!”
Here’s another one from Siddiq:
“About the negative press about the Sequence. Of course it mostly comes from people who are not even trying to be present, but consider this: is there any activity that can be done better without presence?”
Actually, Siddiq, first state is done better without presence if you want to get some rest. A good night’s rest is the best antidepressant I know.
And ‘trying’ to be present will only lead to failure. As Yoda said, “There is no ‘try’, there is only doing or not doing!” But that’s what keeps members stuck in the FOF matrix, too much ‘trying’ and not enough doing. That’s why you need the silly sequence.
“Instead of wine, the truck was carrying five tons of concrete curbing, which would have crushed Highland if he had slammed on the brakes, said Goldman.”
_______________________________
A fitting metaphor for the Fellowship of Friends and all that it is doing to keep students from slamming on their brakes to avoid having a head on collision with Robert Burton: hence, you must kill the third state to avoid it.
________________________________
No mention of the negligence of carrying five tons of inappropriate materials, the physics of such a load compared to what the truck is designed for, etc.; though you can be sure that it played a part in the settlement ~
Can’t wiseacre out of that one David, facts are facts, concrete is not wine (at least in the real world where there are no Christ’s turning wine into concrete so to save on the costs of building the Theatron)
~ no matter, yet another chapter in the Fellowship of Friends teaching payments going towards “Why be formatory?” Compliments of Robert Burton and Friends.
What, you say that the RVW will pay for the suit? Ha; certainly the dinosaurs know by now that Robert Burton gets proceeds from the winery sales as well, filtered and triple sifted through a myriad of credit cards and personal bank account, then given as cash ‘gifts’ (donations)…
Therefore, less money from the winery sales profits = more money from the students to pay for what RVW cannot be leeched of…
Yes, Bruce, the stomachs are turning and there’s only the pepto bismol background colors of the Galleria murals to assist them… Then again, there’s also little bottles sold at 600% mark up costs at Oregon House Grocery; students should be accustomed to that sort of math by now.
Hey David, way to go with that ‘short notice’ thing… You’re ranking up there with Mary R. these days… I still love you as a friend though, no matter how silly your cerebral mercurial-contusion proves to be. Just, please try to remember this, that ignorance of the law is not the law, it is a state of essence, an innocent state, which I dare say your actions (while official) may prove to be spiritually damaging: everything is recorded, we unfold everything we’ve taken great lunatic care in folding, stashing away…
this ‘Away’ always finds us, it outlines our shadows, the produces the sound of our steps, it is the steam of our breath in December, it is the smoke at the end of a cigarette, it is the tear before and after a laughing fit, it is everything you’ve not yet asked the mirror and everything its been telling you since you’ve had ears to hear, though too busy to remember… pause my friend and remember what Buddha said ~
“The problem is, you think you have time.”
Time has you David; you, nor I can have it, ever…
Mercurials are not excluded from this Law.
________________________________
Love to you all.
May the schwartz be with you WhaleRider.
The principle representatives of the FoF on this blog are Siddiq and HC. Joel suggests HC is an invention by ex-students to stimulate debate, but he’s not – he’s a real, breathing person and he means what he says. For his honesty and sincerity I admire his approach more than Siddiq’s. Sure he’s two apples short of a picnic, but at least he’s passionate about what he believes.
Siddiq, on the other hand, is more like I was in the years before I left: confused and ambivalent, buffering intensely and pontificating in a phony manner about issues in which in reality he no longer believes.
If there really are 1500 people hitting on this blog every day, I assume many of them are confused students. So here’s my point: the only truthful way to remain in the FoF is to be like HC, believing everything you’re told and willing to fight for it to the death. The Siddiqs will be out before long. So if you’re a fence-sitter and you’re reading this, please try to be truthful with yourself – acknowledge that the main reason you stay is fear of the unknown, the Great Outside. It’s not too far from there to realising that there’s really nothing to be afraid of.
Bruce, my man, you said it all.
“…the danger is that very many people lack the necessary humour…” C. Jung
I’d rather have schwartz any day of the week.
Howard.
Yes, you did write “ultimate authority” as opposed to “absolute authority”. What is the difference in your world?
Teaching is not about having “ultimate authority” over any student. That is simple egoism. It is not teaching. It is commanding.
“Ultimately” any good teacher wishes for students to surpass his or her knowledge, encourages them to do so and assists them in finding the way with a tireless drive, patience and enormous generosity.
Your teacher is quite clear that you will never acquire an iota of his knowledge ever and spends most of his time alienated from you while spending your money.
I knew you’d be angry that I would deign to suggest that my own life and teaching experience could be spoken in the same breath with your teacher’s.
What you don’t understand is that I know (have verified) that he is no better than me and knows no more than I do about this mysterious life in any way shape or form. I don’t worship him or anyone and he demands that. My teaching & life experience is just as valid or invalid as his.
He is, however, a fellow educator, and I do find it fascinating to observe his incredibly unethical and poor pedagogical efforts.
I am a professor and have been attempting to learn to do this well for 15 years, continue that quest and have some success. Every day it is a challenge to discover the most effective way to offer my bit of knowledge so that my students can thrive.
I do know what does not work. Most certainly it is highly ineffective to tell students that they will never accomplish their goals no matter how much effort they expend. That is manipulative and extremely selfish and egoistical and clearly signifies that they believe they own knowledge that no one else is qualified to learn.
I have deep compassion for you. If I remember correctly, you have been a member of the school for 20 or 30 years. I can only imagine the fearful confusion our words here must engender.
Still, I know you can’t hear.
Perhaps that is your sentiment about any number of us here on this discussion board. The difference is that we’ve been where you are, but you’ve never been where we are. (Yes, yes…moon food.) We’ve all been in the position of being unable to hear the truth from “inferior” human beings when we were in the school.
Bravely read “The Guru Papers” or “Cults in our Midst”, to see if you can recognize the extraordinarily typical cult situation in which you are entangled. The Fellowship is a text book example of a cult in every way and you typify its product.
LL
to M (S?)
13/794 unoanimo
Say it ain’t so, Mari. Say it ain’t so.
dismayed
Cake
Laughing Love:
Thank you for your post. You have uncovered yet another layer of the deception. Robert calls himself the ‘teacher’. Yet, as you can tell from your being, he is no teacher. You are quite right; the highest wish of a true teacher such as you is for the student to surpass them. Only then will the teacher have done their job well. Robert’s narcissism will not allow that.
But the institutional manipulation (or group hypnosis) that we become subjected to in the FOF is that Robert wishes to be addressed as ‘the teacher’ and we obey, as we were taught to respectfully obey our teachers since grade school. We were set up due to our socially conditioned response to the word, ‘teacher’.
I am quite sure your university has strict rules and a code of ethics regarding teachers sleeping with students, do they not? So in fact, you cannot compare yourself to him, because he is not a teacher at all, nor a fellow educator. You are a qualified teacher with an ethos. He is a self-appointed spiritual dictator. You allow for creativity and individuality in your students, and even encourage it, he does not. You expect your students to grow and become independent; he expects dependency, revealing his co-dependency.
So it is even a misnomer to call those in his group, ‘students’. They are followers, and they will always be followers. The only thing he teaches is mindless obedience. That takes about five minutes to learn. The rest is servitude to his perverted desires and whims.
65 WhaleRider
” … it is even a misnomer to call those in his group, ‘students’. They are followers, and they will always be followers.”
_________________________
Followers. Precisely.
I was very sorry to learn of the accident. My heart goes out to Daniel – and to all of the others affected by this tragedy.
The others affected by the “tragedy” are dead.
63…very wonderful post. and all of the others. Thank you- everyone.
btw, does anyone know how I could contact a current fof member? I want to send a personal message to an old friend.
Dear Siddiq,
48, Give us proof.
B is after women, personal information.
Ask the LCS how close he was to children of students.
Read the letters from Kiran and Paola and ask his ex wife about his trip to Germany.
Ask Asaaf about the stop of the Bible keys.
Dear Siddiq, it is easy to say that facts are not true but please do some research before you speak. In the fellowship it is considered lying if you do not “verify” your reactions and observations.
Keeping observing…open your ears and eyes… , forgive yourself and others.
Thanks for this blog and for the birth of the son of the blog.
Dear Siddiq,
Sorry Siddiq, B IS READING THE BLOG, early am
The above information is verified. And I will not tell you how I know, as I do not jeopardize students identity. Siddiq take a good night sleep.
About D is HC I do not know…could be. Killing 3 people will be something investigated deeply. If Unanimo info is correct…silence will be my answer.
HC and S, here there are the same dozen girls repeating the same stuff again and again: why don’t try letting them by themselves for a week (or a month) and observe what happens?
(please you two no need to answer this.)
GOlb
Remember, Silence is an Answer….
Having never experienced pregnancy, I cannot say that I know what it is like. However, the process that I experience in writing to this Blog feels somewhat similar. For days, even years, there are “I’s” or understandings that float around in what some psychologists might call the subconscious, then suddenly they pop out and demand to take form.
Here is one such birth:
Approximately 20+ years ago, when Miles left the School, I, along with many others, was unexpectedly exposed to information which I was not prepared to digest. To put it briefly, Miles called Robert criminal, Robert called Miles criminal, and both were true! Personally, I was in an untenable position, seemingly forced to make a spiritual choice that I was unable to make. The psychological tension of that particular play went on for the good part of a year or longer. During that time, certain states and understandings became possible that were clearly not accessible in my normal, second state life. Essentially, living on the edge of a nervous breakdown helped me to choose Self-Remembering in what I perceived to be a School. Robert’s criminality towards individual students might be bad, but Miles’ departure from the vehicle of Self Remembering (the School) and his dissolution encouragement towards so many others seemed worse.
At that time, we would often speak of the baby and the bathwater analogy, i.e. “don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”. Thus, I simply felt that Miles threw out the baby (Self Remembering) with the bathwater, whereas Robert, just made the bathwater a little dirty from time to time, but it was all transformable, wasn’t it? And for me, even at that time, somehow it was.
I can remember one particular experience from this that period. I had the luck (it was the play) to be singing with the Renaissance Chorus and Orchestra in a performance of the Messiah (which had always been a dear love of mine) at the Town Hall. It was one of the most remarkable experiences I think I have ever had. Opening my mouth up to sing released and transformed all that pent up nervous energy, such that I became the words that I was singing. Song after song, I sang the language of the Soul. And I knew it and I understood it. And it was Me, but a Me that included everyone else. And it was Truth. And it was All and Everything. Words now cannot even come close to describing that experience. But somehow I equally knew that everything I currently understood would not be available to me tomorrow or even in a few hours time, the memory, yes, but not it’s contents. The understanding was only available in the Present and when I myself was purely transparently existing in it. Afterwards, in the car, while parking to go up to the Lodge, I was still sizzling with so much Hydrogen 12, I can remembering making love to a male student towards whom I was not so attracted to in the first place. Wow. The baby was alive and well!
But now, 20+ years on, as a School environment for encouraging Self Remembering, what do we have? To my perception we have a Teacher who continually pollutes the bathwater to such an extent that the babies are growing up sick and deformed. The sex, the money, the power, are mere smoke screens that hide the true poverty of the situation. Witness the current nature of Robert’s teaching, a barren second state Sequence, promising so much more, if only one can do it often enough, and/or intensively enough. And maybe some of us can (push the Sequence that far), such that they find themselves suddenly existing in a world far more alive than they had ever supposed, as I did on the Town Hall stage so many years ago. Yet, as a Teacher himself, who is supposedly inhabiting these higher realms of Consciousness, there is no fresh inspiration coming from his own Being. There is creative wiseacring, to be sure, but true Conscious inspiration? I don’t hear it. His need to rely on the words of others keeps him from being able to react freshly to his Students in the Moment that he tells us he occupies so fully, with a Conscious Love towards us that he tells us he feels. It just may not be true.
Long term students who are still healthy, look around and consider that it may be time to get out of the bath. Younger students are too healty to notice the dirty bathwater. A few other vibrant individuals have found ways to keep their own bathwater relatively clean. Most hard and front liners however have become fixed and formatory in their need to protect the Grand Polluter, as stunted in their own spiritual growth as that of their Teacher. Would that it were not so, yet is.
Witness again the transformation of understanding that is occurring on this Blog about the true nature of Self Remembering itself, an understanding transformed through Advaita non duality. So that we finally understand that Self Rembering is not an end in itself, but rather a stage along the way towards Self Realization. Does Robert understand this? Do we have a Teacher that can speak of such regions? Thereby encouraging us to get past him in order to leap up to such places in ourselves? I don’t see it, I don’t hear it, would that I did.
Love,
Healthy Baby
…. and we will be back to “As the World Turns” after these messages. (or is it “General Hospital”?)
When I first heard about the famous 44 a student told me there were more.
I’m not sure of the quote but it goes something like this, ” a pygmy sees further standing on the shoulders of a giant”.
“All the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals”.
Albert Einstein
Is Robert Earl Burton the pygmy or the giant?
Dear Golb,
what a lovely idea. You guys should really be spending more time on all the important things in your life and let us rot here by ourselves for a while.
I was starting to wonder, why are you still hanging around this blog, reading so many worthless ‘I’s’? You are so right, we just keep repeating ourselves, we get super negative, and we don’t make any efforts to be less mechanical.
We are really just a dozen bad girls gossiping and looking for trouble…
Maybe not the right hydrogen to feed your evolution and evoke Divine Presence.
Much better to work wth the sequence!
It is very cold and lonely out here, but we’ll try to survive until you come back.
Of course, we will miss your pearls of wisdom, but we’ll try to keep each other entertained with our own wiseacreings.
See you in a month, Dear Golb, and may the schwartz be with you too!
73 Yesri baba
…and we will be back to “As the World Turns” after these messages. (or is it “General Hospital”?)
Yes, definitely a bit like a soap opera all of this. While we get a peak into RB’s bedroom, or wherever it is he does what he does, we’re also getting glimpses into the alleged habits of some of his followers — alleged porno addictions, group sex, promiscuity, alleged reckless driving habits, serious drinking problems, and so on.
Maybe not shocking. But I do have a question: Could it be that RB’s “behaviors” actually are soothing for all of us who remain in the Fellowship? In other words, if he does “this” all of the time, and he’s also conscious and a Man No. 7 and the conduit to Higher Forces, and “The Teacher”…
… then maybe — just maybe — my alcohol problems, my spousal abuse, my promiscuity, my destructive behavior — are not that bad?
Is this one of many reasons that we’ve had so much trouble listening to any criticism of this guy? Because if we did, we’d need to start facing our own mess? Our own flaws?
Anyway, happy 36th Anniversary everyone. To some of my friends there who undoubtedly are having a bbq to celebrate. May our time at Via Del Sol, Mt. Carmel, Renaissance, Apollo, Isis, truly not be wasted years.
From an old email…
“July 7, 2005: At the start of the July 4th dinner celebrating the 34th anniversary of the founding of Apollo, our Teacher gave a toast announcing that we are changing the name of Apollo to Isis. He had been considering a change for some time, but was unclear which of two names to use. Wayne and Corinne Mott told Robert that on their recent travel to Los Angeles to see the King Tut exhibit they passed a street named “Apollo” and right afterwards they came upon another street called “Isis”. This was sufficient for Robert to recognize this is indeed the name to use to best express the new being and direction of our School.
“Isis represents the nine of hearts, a forerunner of Mary mother of Christ (Steward) and also Work ‘I’ #1: Be Present. In the photograph below, she is shown on the left, whereas her sister, Nephthys, who represents Work ‘I’ #2: Prolong Presence, is shown on the right. Between the two female figures is that of Osiris-Re, who represents the Steward. The figure of Osiris-Re stands upon an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol that means “Truth”. Truth represents the Thirty Work ‘I’s. The hands of Isis and Nephthys are positioned alongside Osiris-Re, supporting the Steward in the effort to assert and prolong presence.”
Old Fish In The Sea:
Thanks for your heartfelt post to Howard. We are simpatico, my friend. When two similar waves traveling from two different directions meet, no matter what their age, they merge in resonance and become greater. I am sustained and empowered as I know others newly freed are from reading about your path at the crossroad of this blog.
Happy Independence Day!
First of all, thanks for the great posts and happy Independence Day to everyone.
Since some of you mentioned enjoying the “Headless Way” website, I’d like to inform you that I found through a link on “Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service,” which contains a very long list of gurus, dead and alive, divided into cathegories and complete with short descriptions and links.
http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm
Of course, one can totally disagree with Sarlo’s opinions and ratings, but it’s fun to see Gurdjieff, Nisargadatta, Adyashanti, Eckart Tolle and Krishnamurti all up there at the top (together with many others, including Osho; now, I’m not sure how I feel about Osho, but he sure had a wicked sense of humor, and you’ve got to love that space-age look).
Anyway, if you are in the mood for guru shopping, or just looking for some relativity, go check it out.
Laura
PS I almost forgot, you can find Robert too, unrated, under “Miscellaneous”. The info and links need some updating.
Comrade #77
Gee, when you posted your post about the sequence the garbage truck arrived just outside my home on the right side of the street symbolizing the garbage that Robert spews out about the sequence being right work of centers and somehow connected to Egypt, reminding me that in Cairo there are no garbage trucks, but a whole class of people who collect garbage and sell it to others, because the stewards of that city don’t have the compassion to spend their funds for the good of those living there, like at Isis where there is no health insurance, they spend money protecting their cash flow from the spectators who come to see the artifacts stolen from the graves of the Pharaohs who undoubtedly would be pissed at how their sacred names and symbols are commercialized and used by others not even remotely on their divine level to prostitute something that already exists any known as presence..
74
Thanks Baby.
WhaleRider (82): Yes, as I was reading that old email (79), I was trying to find at least one coherent idea in it… something, anything, that might make sense, that would be inspiring or enlightening and helpful, and that would help all of us strengthen our understanding. But nothing. Just words patched together — words that sounded like they signified something, but that signified nothing.
The question is, what’ll be the next name change, the next change in direction? What new art form? Will it be a new focus on the ancient esoteric knowledge of Central America, and the subsequent abandonment of all things Egypt? Or will it be a focus on the esoteric meanings of the Zodiac (actually someone sent out an email some time ago asking followers to help with research on the Zodiac, but nothing more was said about that to my knowledge).
Of course, this means I am “identified with the form of the school.” Ah, another very effective method of thought control. Any questions regarding the use of funds are “identification.”
One of the more ironic twists to the last couple of years in the fof was the “abandonment of Shakespeare.” As far as I know, he wasn’t removed from the list of 44 conscious beings, but Robert gave a decree that Shakespeare plays would be discontinued. All that after building a huge outdoor amphitheatre that presumably would be perfect for a play now and then. But I sense that RB thought that “the theater” might get out of his control. A good facility and many willing participants, and suddenly you have something that overshadows RB.
Meanwhile, high up on the hill, the statue of Karl Werner stands on a crumbling platform. Weeds are growing out of the cracks in the cement. Most of the wine tanks are removed. Disrepair. Abandonment.
Not what people imagined. But remember, that’s identification. Back to the Sequence please. Back to fundraising.
Hey, guys. There is another one of those retroactive posts that slipped through a small crack. Some of you might have missed it?
Check out Baby in the Bathwater #[74].
Nice post, Baby. Thanks
Comrade, I felt that same sadness when I heard that the beautiful vineyard is a shadow of its former self. And now the image of the crumbling ‘platform’ of Karl Werner…it is painful…soon the weeds growing out of the cement will allow the Earth to reclaim the land with new life. I highly recommend a trip to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon to recharge your spirit. The Earth in her infinite beauty will never shun you; your body is part of her, and she is your true divine Mother. All you need to do is place yourself there at Her breast, and She will nurture you back to life. She is is inexhaustible.
The theater was out of Robert’s control because the plays empowered the actors to express negativity without being identified. That’s dangerous to his flock! It demonstrates that people don’t ‘lose’ their work when they express those hydrogens, but are in fact cleansed and exalted. By repressing negative feelings, it puts a person on edge, and then they can be manipulated more easily. That’s how the military works. Aggression and hostility are cultivated in the underlings by the ‘insulated’ leaders of higher rank and then directed toward the ‘enemy’.
I wrote this fourteen years ago.
Walt Whitman had a vision of the “City of Friends”. The Fellowship of Friends tried to appeal to this vision. We responded with mighty efforts, so where did it go wrong? The answer to me is that the same vision can be manifested in different ways, here are two…
In patriarchal–hierarchical organizations/societies (those stifling the counter-stream) we find polarities; the teacher, unable to think, who takes pleasure in crippling or limiting the minds of his students; the mediocrity who takes pleasure in demolishing greatness; the eunuch who takes pleasure in the castration of all pleasure; the stagnant who takes pleasure in chaining the abilities of competitors; the neurotic who takes pleasure in diminishing the self-esteem of others; the incompetent who takes pleasure in defeating achievement; the whining sneak who takes pleasure in his own sense of importance by bearing tales to those he sees as important. In this society, each person avoids the eye of his neighbor; despises himself by despising those around him (especially those outside his own group), thinks in terms of dualities. He has friends only to reinforce his weaknesses and bear his complaints.
In creative organizations/societies (those practicing reciprocal maintenance) we find: the teacher who glories in the achievement of his students—whose greatest achievement is the student who surpasses him; the true individual who esteems, encourages, and prizes individuality above all else in others; the mystic who sees others only at their fullest potential—the God within them; the leader whose chief ambition is to replace himself with two others like himself; the businessman who hires the best, even if it means those better or more talented than he; the worker who does his job using all the energy, ability and gifts that he has—ambitious to progress. In this society, each person looks his neighbor in the eye, exchanging looks of vitality, joy for life, sense of common adventure, encouragement and self–worth. He thinks in terms of commonalities and connectedness. He has friends who bring out the best in him and who expect likewise.
(Thanks to Ayn Rand for the inspiration)
With love to all, ‘in’ and ‘out’,
Ames
The truth is pure, plain and simple. Like Austin Powers said, “I get it! I have bad teeth!”
For those interested, a moving visual representation of the Sequence is now online:
Thanks, WhaleRider. Probably my words conveyed more sadness than I had intended, but there is a sadness to things when you think back on what we believed many years ago compared to the reality of the fof both then and now. And I’m sure that’s what you detected in me.
It’s embarassing for Robert if people think back on what the Fellowship “was about” for many years. This is one of the reasons that wikipedia editors have done everything they can to delete all references to the predictions of the earthquake in 1984, nuclear war in 2006, and the ark. The history of the group is partly what reveals the insanity of it.
Great idea about Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Thanks again WR. And thanks to everyone for so many outstanding posts.
Veronicapoe: I love that! Thanks!
74 baby in the bathwater: “Witness again the transformation of understanding that is occurring on this Blog about the true nature of Self Remembering itself, an understanding transformed through Advaita non duality. So that we finally understand that Self Rembering is not an end in itself, but rather a stage along the way towards Self Realization. Does Robert understand this? Do we have a Teacher that can speak of such regions? Thereby encouraging us to get past him in order to leap up to such places in ourselves? I don’t see it, I don’t hear it, would that I did.”
Remember that CD that was circulating a while ago, in which some FoF students asked Adyashanti about self-remembering, teachers and schools? He replied with complete coherence and honesty, and very credibly. It would be interesting if Robert Burton could be asked his opinions about Advaita – what he thinks about the ideas that we don’t exist, that we are awareness, that we are already awake, and so on. I mean he’s supposed to be a spiritual teacher, right? So why is this so inconceivable? His world is now so utterly closed that he can’t conceive of any reality other than his own.
78 Comrade: excellent point. Helps to explain why FoF marriages are often such a mess.
86 Whalerider: Another reason for the abandonment of Shakespeare was simply that Robert didn’t like his plays, probably partly because he’s too thick to understand them. He started encouraging students to write plays based upon “conscious” themes, eg an embarrassingly awful version of the Conference of the Birds. Shakespeare’s works are the exact opposite of the current FoF; they burst forth full of life, joy, creativity, inclusiveness, pretty much everything!
“He started encouraging students to write plays based upon “conscious” themes”
No doubt with dialog that is more accessible to the teacher, like “See Robert spend… spend, spend spend”.
Perhaps:
“The play ‘s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. Hamlet
It is a crime for a human beeng to place himself in a position of a God and have another human beeng to be his subject. It is not a liberation, it is enslavement.
This puts all of of his “students”(subjects) in an enferior position (self-pity) out of which it is imposible to get out as long as one remains in this relationship of Student-Master.
It is very obvious after all these years many of us have experienced in the School that the Robert has no interest in our freedom. He is more interested in all the benefits he gets: sexual slaves, power, luxury, comfort, etc..
It is very easy to see the negative results of this corruption: the lack of common human
external consideration. A lot of students have given so much to Robert that they have no provided for they own basic needs.
Robert has no concern for this, however his personal desires and sick fantasies are fulfilled to extreme levels.
Best regards
To Ames Gilbert:
Thank you Ames
These were exactly my thoughts as well
It’s a bit dry here to let off fireworks, could catch the whole place ablaze like 1997, which might reinforce another predictions forthcoming, so, in here, in this mighty and beautiful amazon jungle (where they’re not logging) I set off a few full sky showers of falling stars, orange, red, blue, white…. Independence day is every day you’re not pretending to be an orphan in the Fellowship of Friends orphanage.
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Hello Rhino Neal ~
You wrote ~
“For his honesty and sincerity I admire his approach more than Siddiq’s. Sure he’s two apples short of a picnic, but at least he’s passionate about what he believes.
Siddiq, on the other hand, is more like I was in the years before I left: confused and ambivalent, buffering intensely and pontificating in a phony manner about issues in which in reality he no longer believes.”
_______________________
Rhino, I would say that the one who’s closer to leaving (according to you) the Fellowship of Friends is the one whose ‘approach’ is more ‘honest and sincere’ (to me)…
What would you really want to hold true to your heart as “honest and sincere”, a crystallized mind-form as yourself based upon another’s ‘higher’ ‘lump of milk-crystal’ or the state of experiencing the unknown, of being insincere due to a real state (whether the participant acknowledges it in writing or not) of confusion and personal make-believe.
To me, the sandbox was never a place to stay too long, once there was more than two in there, things got a little bit, lets say, accidental. Perhaps there are bigger sandboxes; the ones I remember were about 4 feet by 4 feet.
So, as far as I have seen it in the Fellowship of Friends, there’s definitely a 3 foot by 3 foot one; meaning that such people like S & H have just enough room for themselves and one other (if they’re really careful),
this other is a friend; the trouble starts when Robert Burton wants to play too… here is the tough part.
I would say that 80% of the remaining students stay in because of this second person, not the third (second line becomes a kind of make believe third line)…
Many are staying for these ‘friends’ only and will do so or leave, as the mathematics start to sway in which ever fence-sides favor is current, due to the proximity of their friends position at the fence.
In their hearts, many rarely connect Robert Burton to their deeds and efforts, this has been a kind of inner ritual of wiseacring for 35+ years,
all along missing the corner of their own room, where avoiding Robert’s issues is a mirror of that which they allow to stay in that same corner, something that’s from themselves that is synonymous with Robert Burton…
They ‘baby’ his wounds by meticulously pecking away at the scab, selling the little bit’s as heirlooms and jewelry settings and keep it fresh and shinny, with a dash of salt from time to time to get a little ‘jolt’ to jump start their drone-ship.
It’s difficult to realize that there’s a sky other than the one in the house where your fishbowl sits; and once outside, still, there’s one above earth’s ground, i.e., the sky belonging to the planet itself, not us, so to speak.
After several rather ‘intense’ encounters this week with ‘still in students’ it occurred to me that The Fellowship of Friends is not a family, it is an orphanage;
many ‘things’ sorta ‘tied themselves off and unraveled at the same time’ when this metaphor applied itself to Robert Burton’s ‘school’…
In orphanages, there’s always a chance of someone being asked to leave, being adopted by another ‘family’, to go to another orphanage, abused by the headmaster or simply killing themselves for lack of a certain ‘automatic family tolerance’ (although some ‘real’ family’s do not have this either)…
Without going too far into the literal side of the metaphor, I simply sensed that its ‘general form’ fit the Fellowship of Friends much more than a family, where there is a certain ‘sisterhood’ and ‘brotherhood’ working;
yet, every man is an island at Isis, except on Sundays and when students rally together while Robert Burton is the ‘third force’ (his actual crippled First Force & First Line), to buffer their ‘in the moment needs’ with his;
those in a school of relative awakening need to be needed, yet, the Holy Reconciling is missing: are there not those who love to be loved yet do not love the lover loving them? This is the story of Robert and Friends.
Rhino, I find it a bit odd that you can “admire” someone who at the same time you feel is “two apples short of a picnic”… I sense there’s a buffer holding these two unresolved impressions together as one…
HC’s posts are truly ‘everything else’ than that which is to be admired; just take a look a at few facts (particularly the one that Whalerider points out) ~
That HC constantly skirts around the ‘point blank’ questions that cannot be answered without a connection with his more ‘personal’ conscious conscience; he chooses only to reply to certain generalities in a language that’s about as passionate as a ballerina with a compound fracture…
get a grip on that huge battering ram of a horn that’s stationed on top of your snout; only an essence still in the sway of Robert Burton’s vulcan mind grip would see HC’s language and ‘surgery for money’ tee-shirt as something to admire…
What I admire is that the Sheik has not barred his ‘act’ from the blog, nor have we; unlike some we know would if HC’s wiseacring was suddenly reversed in ‘you know whose’ direction.
______________________________
Hello Cake please ~
You wrote ~
“to M (S?)
13/794 unoanimo
Say it ain’t so, Mari. Say it ain’t so.
dismayed
Cake”
____________________
Oh, but it is my friend; M has some issues still with needing satellites, particularly girls who need to be satellites; these girls provide the perfect Archetypal role for M. and her ‘wanna be Robert’s sister’ dreamworld.
See, M. has an incredible freedom within her spontaneous spirit, she’s a bit wild (which if not doused with ‘dirty baby water’ would thrive and probably grow into one of those mythological awesome feminine characters like Athena or Isis (that’s ironic),
yet, at Isis, she’s always been on the fringes with Robert Burton, to me, mainly because she represents the consciously-free-to-choose-and-move-with-that-choice-woman, the wild, essence-open feminine,
something which makes Robert’s feminine-account-driven-pain body very nervous and out of a role; leaving him starring at his real work…
Many like her have found iron-clad ways of buffering this spontaneous impulse within themselves by digging their hole to China even more furiously, i.e., lunatic-identification with their roles…
Not to worry my friend, M’s little debut for Robert Burton will be short lived like the hundreds of others; it’s strange, yet there are those in between men and women who show up from time to time to do a little dance for Robert Burton and Friends, then disappear for another 3-4 months; yes, there are personal smoke screens at Isis as well as institutional ones.
___________________________
Hello ~ Baby in the bathwater
You wrote ~
“And maybe some of us can (push the Sequence that far), such that they find themselves suddenly existing in a world far more alive than they had ever supposed, as I did on the Town Hall stage so many years ago. Yet, as a Teacher himself, who is supposedly inhabiting these higher realms of Consciousness, there is no fresh inspiration coming from his own Being.”
________________________
Wow…now there’s some ‘scale & relativity’… thank you for sharing your observations. Imagine that (so to speak), someone who inhabits higher realms, though has no fresh inspiration for those who he or she does not directly ‘touch’ or ‘call upon’ (to seem inspirational by igniting their features, not higher centers) to redirect their focus from themselves to his or herself.
I would say you’re spot on here, particularly with your writings ‘allude to-ness’ and ‘implications’…
And if you were to “push the Sequence that far..” you may end up like Janna, who, when telling Kevin B. (who apparently had yet to push it that far or admitted it), that she no longer needs ‘form’ to define herself, that she feels ‘awake’, needing nothing, no sequence, etc. ~
She was asked to leave the school;
in a real school she would be asked to teach, to share her experience, particularly with those like Mari R., who came into the Fellowship of Friends with certain ‘Daddy’s girl’ inclinations and have been exploited for it ever since.
Robert Burton plays peoples features and pain body receptors, he does not invest in their Higher Centers, nor does he have a backup plan for those who do ‘make it’…
He simply calls certain people’s mystical experiences, change in level of being, from form to formlessness, ‘the king of clubs’ or ‘imagination’…
Perhaps Robert Burton’s excuses for his ‘students’ true level of being showing itself as something mechanical to himself and to be perceived so by others, including their friends, rather than individual consciousness becoming, is his own self-reflective-echo coming from within him, his own silliness titling others ‘silly’.
____________________________
Hello Comrade ~
You wrote ~
“… then maybe — just maybe — my alcohol problems, my spousal abuse, my promiscuity, my destructive behavior — are not that bad?
Is this one of many reasons that we’ve had so much trouble listening to any criticism of this guy? Because if we did, we’d need to start facing our own mess? Our own flaws?”
_______________________
Thank you for your post and clean honesty…
Yes, its hard to see the crystal ball image belonging to the Fellowship of Friends due to all the sticky fingerprints upon its curved surface. It’s even tough for professional soothsayers in there, let alone the ‘wanna be’s’.
Your post explicitly shows the situation within every footprint follower of Robert Burton; it’s ok if he’s walking in a circle so long as the circle is big enough that their peripheral-conscience doesn’t get a glimpse of his equator-routine.
What I quoted from you above could serve as a real ‘cannon’ for real work, in a real school; to blow a hole in the facade of the Titanic, letting it fall as the one dimensional Goliath it is; a movie set construction for a school of relative awakening.
____________________________
You also wrote ~
“But I sense that RB thought that “the theater” might get out of his control. A good facility and many willing participants, and suddenly you have something that overshadows RB.”
_______________________
Yes, something that gets too close to resembling his farce is a bit too obvious and may conjure ‘footnote taking’;
for the most part Robert Burton never attended the theater productions, neither those of the Apollo Arts or the Lewis Carrol School, whose director is/was Mary R. BTW.
This was always ‘felt’ in the guts of the students as Robert Burton’s little reminder that ‘theater’ is beneath him and their aim to awaken; we won’t take into consideration that he did go to operas with the boys while traveling and theatrical ballet performances; nor will we take into consideration that it was originally invented by a conscious school as a tool; of which ballet was never, nope, only short ‘be’ for the Fellowships aim to awaken, not the now, now.
Yes, the theater octave, being ‘naturally’ very saturnine, left him out totally (thank you god),
not that Robert Burton doesn’t know anything about Narcissus Theater, yet this is a different kind of sandbox (12 inches by 12 inches) where one just stands and plays with different patterns of one’s own footprints in the sand and on the ‘mechanical’ butts of others, coming and going at Isis.
Robert Burton did attend a few in the Theatron, though very often would leave at intermission; just a little reminder that ‘even in the Theatron’, whatever ‘play’ that does not celebrate his ‘reflection’ is beneath him:
too bad Brian and Genia didn’t have the ‘i’ to put up a 30 foot by 80 foot portrait of Robert Burton as the backdrop for those performances, perhaps intermission would have been canceled altogether; otherwise, its the perfect backdoor for Robert and clan.
Yes, at ‘Apollo’ for Isis is simply too ‘humble’ now; theater was the ultimate symbol of a bigger picture than a ‘one-man-band’, later to be replaced with theme less ballet performances and ballet circus acts;
not to mention Robert Burton’s late night (up till 2am) after performance parties for the dancers and the fellowship elite, where he would be fawned over by the very overly compensated ballet dancers (Russians) and have his ‘Russian boys’ try and get them to join the school.
Christ! Robert, can’t you keep your hands to yourself?
“Well, no dear, see they’re not my hands, their actually 44+ pairs of hands here, what’s a guy to do?”
Ever corner of said ‘freedom’ at Isis has Robert Burton’s phone number on its wall.
Don’t forget to dial 911 as its prefix…
________________________
Love to you all.
Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal? At least you know where you stand with them. I had lunch accidentally with HC shortly before I left. The conversation was mostly about the fact that hydrogen warfare had not occurred in the previous week, despite RB’s prediction: whether the date might be revised and so on. This was definitely more entertaining than the usual chit-chat about the sequence and/or recent amazing discoveries in Egypt. It takes courage to write the nonsense HC writes here, and it’s useful for current FoFers to be reminded about what “good students” are supposed to believe. Long may he contribute!
Hello Rhino Neal ~
You asked me ~
“Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal?”
_________________
Ah, no, Rhino, I have yet to entertain the virus ‘wiseacring’ to party that hard upon the disco dance floor of my heart to be strobe-lighted enough to make a distinguishable ‘pair’ from what to me is one and the same.
Is ‘unselfconscious’ any different than ‘pretending to be normal’… I really don’t see the dividing line here(?)
I mean, yes, opossums and kangaroos are both marsupials, yet, just because you don’t see kangaroos hanging from tree limbs by their tails doesn’t make them any less ‘marsupial’ or am I missing something here?
__________________________________
Isis update (sorta) ~
Public announcement ~
“Dear Friends,
Over the weekend, we received a shock when a student’s home was broken into and valuable items were stolen.
Robert reminds us to lock our homes and our cars. He requests that we also try to be present to any unusual activity at other students’ homes. As he said, ‘we need to look out for each other’.
Love,
Helaine
For Isis Center Directors
“Eternal friendships are part of the greatness of schools.”
Love, Robert
Aelred of Rievaux: “This is true and eternal friendship, which begins in this life and is perfected in the next.””
____________________________________________
This speaks for itself.
____________________________
Love to you all.
Unoanimo (99): I haven’t got a clue what you’re trying to say. Any chance you could put it in simple English? I get the impression it might be interesting. yrs, RN
To Laughing Love – 64
Christ said “if you want to be perfect, give up everything you own and follow me”.
This is the “ultimate” surrender.
To Howard Carter,
Christ said “if you want to be perfect, give up everything you own and follow me”.
This proves that Christ had a wicked sense of humor and that you do not.
Love,
Ryan.
Howard Carter. post 101.
So, are you saying the cocksucking Burton is like Christ for Chrissakes ?
Hi guys,
A reminder about the Contact list.
If you wish to be included in the contact list AND get an invitation for Greater Fellowship community – please submit your info to
malaec@optonline.net
I am hoping to mail out the list as soon as I return from our Cape Cod vacations!
Most people provided their name, e-mail, phones, years in FOF. You can also list address, website, occupation if you wish. The list is made in Excel – simple spreadsheet.
Greater Fellowship online community is just too much fun! Over 300 members in about 3 weeks, and growing every day. Pictures, stories, videos, music, openness, discussion groups. No propaganda, no complaints, no anger – just our friendship, our desire to stay connected and find good old friends.
Works by invitation only and protected by password.
Anonymity is not encouraged – it is very open, positive site where hiding doesn’t seem to work.
So please send your info if you wish to participate in any of this to
Janna Makaeva
malaec@optonline.net
“… Spring comes and the grass grows by itself…”
Zenin Kushu
Howard Carter, Can you envision Jesus Christ getting his diciples to piss in his mouth and ram their fists up his anus as well as sucking there cocks every day ? Please answer the question directly.
Thankyou
Hey Rhino ~
You wrote ~
“Unoanimo (97), haven’t you noticed that crazy people who express themselves unselfconsciously are often more interesting than crazy people who pretend to be normal?”
“Unoanimo (99): I haven’t got a clue what you’re trying to say. Any chance you could put it in simple English? I get the impression it might be interesting. yrs, RN”
_________________________________
For me there’s no difference between someone who expresses themselves “unselfconsciously” and what you also term as “crazy people who pretend to be normal.”
What’s “normal” BTW?
____________________
l.t.y.a.
Howard #101, that’s what the disciples of Jim Jones did, they were indoctrinated to surrender everything they own including their bodies…they too didn’t ‘own’ their bodies either, Christ did. As an act of the same level of obedience and surrender that is frothing out of your mouth, the followers of Jim Jones staged a heinous play. Robert chooses to star in his own gay porno film.
Beware of the dark side, Howard. May the schwartz be with you.
Dear Howard Carter
I appreciate your postings. I like how you are keeping your line consistently and “in the kings”. I would sleep better if you were right and not the “rest of the blog”. All these “negative people”… But any time I think that for 38 years (and right now and will continue) RB is screwing the guys, my friends, damaging their essences, causing this never ending craze, FEAR. How he confuses them by lying to them, manipulating them, uses them and throws away – I can’t sleep anymore. I have a child and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I don’t want him to know about what is going on in this organization, were his mom belongs. I can hear the question of the child: “Why is Robert having sex with all these men?”
So, WHY? They don’t want it. They hate it. But they do it. Tonight is someone’s “visit time” after the dinner. And tomorrow. Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???
Fellowship of Friends C-Influence Update:
Viewer Beware: the contents of this video may result in instant cosmic awareness of the totality of the now, resulting in a possible shift of mental structure-ness and FoF fizzle.
Unoanimo #97 Thanks for your discourse about the demise of the theater octave. It jogged some memories. It reminded me that Alex Horn wrote plays and “his students both acted in them and were forced to sell tickets or he’d close his school”, is the way I heard it verbatim from one of Horn’s group. So stage plays might just have a certain ‘negative nostalgia’ for old Bob. The theater octave was ill-fated from the start.
Plus, stage plays require directors, who are usually good at directing people, and that would start to symbolize (or even become) a school within a school, a sun orbiting a sun, if you know what I mean. And that’s against the law. Since Robert enjoys ballets, eh? Maybe he sees himself more as choreographer of bodies and body parts… I hear he has become quite the choreographer behind the scenes.
Anyway, I have a copy of Alex Horn’s book of plays, “Theater of All Possibilities”, for anyone inclined to read it or ‘own’ it. The plays are not that good. There’s a Kennedy-conspiracy one, I recall. Gee, no photos of Robert acting in the plays, though. He was busy chasing boys backstage, I guess.
If anyone wants my copy of “Theater of All Possibilities”, let me know, and we’ll figure out a way for me to send it to you anonymously. Gratis.
It’s another step in my personal divestment plan of separating RB from The Fourth Way, as he already had long ago.
Can somebody inform us what happened with M.R, (who payed Rabia) and a performance for Robert with girls like A, S,R ?
Thanks for you time and energy
Dear 97 Unanimo
Woooh, woooh, wooh and thanks to all of you, who are still here. Many are not here and seemed to move on like Charley and others…understandable…
Thanks for the blog
Mole – 105
Yes.
Howard Carter.
Thanks.
To: Ames – 35
“Howard,
Your worldview expressed in 14-11 demands the following (and much more) to be true:
• there are many lifetimes”
It is written about in every major spiritual tradition, by all the major sages/prophets of those traditions.
“• higher forces designed my role in ‘a play written in advance’(yet you grant me the power of choosing to value this life over the next, and that higher forces will ‘give me what I want’!)
This is a difficult concept to grasp but one that is also found in every major tradition; Fate, Destiny, Karma, recurrence, reincarnation, etc. All these are held in balance by the concept of “Free Will”. It is an enigma; we are not meant to understand these things in their entirety. We can intuit them.
“• persons ‘raging’against Burton are raging against higher forces”
He is their creation.
“• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining”
This is verifiable on many levels in life; people say they’ll do something willingly until it’s time to do it and then they change their tune.
“• that you know the ‘style’ of higher forces.”
Recent meeting quote – We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah.
“In a minor key:
• I am in a rage, or indignant, or looking without judgment, compassion, forgiveness or humility.
None of this is verifiable by you.”
I verify it simply by reading your posts.
(I said with judgment)
“By all means continue to thrash around in Burton’s fantasy.
I prefer to try to live the one and only life I have verified as fully and as deeply as I can.”
Knowing or believing “multiple lifetimes” does not hinder one in any way from living this life to its fullest.
“The only defense needed is knowledge. Knowledge defends you against every possible form of harm in existence.
The more knowledge you have, the less fear you have, the less pain you have, the less stress you feel, the less anguish you feel, and the less danger you experience of any form or sort.
Think of this very carefully now for this is very important: Where is there any limitation in the concept behind the word “knowledge”? Being that there is no limitation, what is the value of that word? Infinite. Can you conceive of how that one concept, that one meaning frees you from all limitation?
Use your sixth sense to conceive of how the word, the term, the meaning of knowledge can provide you with all that you could possibly ever need. If you think carefully you will begin to see glimpses of how this is true in its greatest possible form.”
Cassiopaean Transcripts October 22, 1994
Q: There are an awful lot of people who are being open and trusting and having faith who are getting zapped and knocked on their rears.
A: No. That is simply your perception. What you are failing to perceive is that these people are not really gathering knowledge. These people are stuck at some point in their pathway to progress and they are undergoing a hidden manifestation of what is referred to in your terms as obsession. Obsession is not knowledge, obsession is stagnation.
So, when one becomes obsessed, one actually closes off the absorption and the growth and the progress of soul development which comes with the gaining of true knowledge.
For when one becomes obsessed one deteriorates the protection, therefore one is open to problems, to tragedies, to all sorts of difficulties. Therefore one experiences same.
Cassiopaean Transcripts October 22, 1994
WHEN THE PROPHECY FAILS (former student and bla bla)
For religious groups there can be no greater disappointment than that which occurs after the failure of a major prophecy to materialize. The historical literature is replete with examples of groups who have predicted the end of the world and their reactions to failed prophecy. Stark (1996:137) asserts:
Other things being equal, failed prophecies are harmful for religious movements. Although prophesies may arouse a great deal of excitement and attract many new followers beforehand, the subsequent disappointment usually more than offsets these benefits.
His argument is that in some instances members may leave the group and the group finally disintegrates. In other cases, members can withstand this catastrophic event and the group continues. However, he qualifies this statement by asserting that new religious movements are likely to succeed to the extent that their doctrines are non-empirical. Religious movements need not deliver on their promises in this world — their most valuable rewards are obtained in a reality beyond inspection.
The standard paradigm for understanding failed prophecy is based on cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, Reiken and Schachter 1956). Following their research on a flying saucer movement, Festinger and his colleagues argued that failure of prophecy resulted in intensification of belief and more enthusiastic proselytising by sect members. Proselytization, the attempt to convince outsiders of a belief system, was regarded as reducing cognitive dissonance. If more people adopt this belief it must after all be true. According to Festinger et al. (1956:3):
Man’s resourcefulness goes simply beyond protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, but he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: What will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
Festinger argued that for such a process to occur there must be firm conviction; there must be public commitment to this conviction; the conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation; such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur; and lastly, social support must be available to the believer subsequent to the disconfirmation. To reduce psychological dissonance, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance predicts that the dissonance produced by disconfirming information will be reduced by adding new cognitions consonant with the set of cognitions most resistant to change.
This theory, however, has come under some criticism by scholars of religion, on both methodological and theoretical grounds. The validity of their original research has been questioned (Melton 1985; Van Fossen 1988; Bainbridge 1997). Van Fossen (1988) refers to Festinger as a “radically deficient guide” to studying the effects of failed prophecy, whose work is tainted by subjectivity and bias. Although concerns have been raised in relation to the possible stimulating effect on the group by Festinger’s researchers, there is no evidence that this in fact occurred (Batson and Ventis 1982).
Stone (2000) argues that studies on failed prophecy post-Festinger indicate that active proselytization is an uncommon occurrence. In most of the case studies discussed in his book Expecting Armageddon: Essential readings in failed prophecy, proselytization did not occur (Hardyck and Braden 1962; Balch, Farnsworth and Wilkins 1983). Similarly, Dawson (1999) argues that Festinger’s approach is too narrow and that increased proselytization is only one way of reducing dissonance and is by no means the most common response. Bader (1999:120) states quite categorically, “Nevertheless, no case study of a failed prophecy, his current research included, has provided support for the cognitive dissonance hypothesis.”
Thanks.
I have been in the 4th Way for over a decade and in FoF for a year 2004-2005. I left because I was bored or simply couldn’t feel the uniqueness so bestowed upon REB’s gullible, yet willing, students. REB’s physical body is his impediment. He’s not been able, lo these years, to comprehend–incoporate?–the physical presence into 4th Way teachings.
How, I often wonder, could anyone remain in his Scripted Fantasy for so long?
Veronicapoe,
Thank you for the wonderful Archive. I appreciate your surprises, and steady, sharing hand in this Blog. It is what it is, and that will be our history, supported by your efforts, and others.
I hope you will again be in my life, old friend.
Amanda
Howard, what’s up with firing off the ‘bullets’ in your last post?
That’s not a good sign…I warned you, Howard, beware of the dark side!
Well, thinking again … Veronicapoe, you ARE in my life again!
Hugs!
Former Student, Veronicapoe, Unoanimo, thank you for your thoughts regarding Class Action Lawsuit.
It does not seem easy to build…but if someone is willing and able to start it I will probably join it . Arthur is interested as well!
On the other hand there are plenty of crimes that could be brought to the attention of various authorities…
Sometimes I feel the desperation from some people here who beg to stop the insanity going on at Isis…
I too feel impatience, even though I have been removed from the direct influence of the fof and rb for a long time now.
I want a change! and hope all this writing here on this blog, the stories etc., will cause a change! The end of the fof under RB!
One scenario: organized revolution: the students rebel the King, file complaints , kings gets his long awaited modern “crucifixion” = a kick in the ass!
vera.mente:
Giving Robert “a kick in the ass!”…
With all the ‘fisting’ going on, your foot might get stuck!
(And that may not seem like a punishment either, he appears to enjoy that sort of thing.)
Solitary confinement would be the safest bet.
To WhaleRider – 119
“Howard, what’s up with firing off the ‘bullets’ in your last post?
That’s not a good sign…I warned you, Howard, beware of the dark side!”
The bullets are an Ames original, I was just ducking.
To Howard (and all others like you)—
Almost every statement you make (#14-115) shows that indeed you have not verified, for yourself, any of the points I made. That is fine, it has been obvious from your first post that the foundations of your worldview are imaginary, that is, based on faith (things unverifiable). To jabber on about what you believe the ‘major spiritual traditions’ to be expressing proves that you have not verified these subjects personally.
Howard, each of these traditions has a commonality. They postulate that one must have interpreters and interceders between you and God (or higher forces), in other words, a priest class (yes, even Buddhism has an authoritarian structure; note their devotion to lineage). Each of them demands faith. That is fine, but has nothing to do with the Fourth Way, which demands that you verify everything for yourself. You yourself have abandoned the Fourth Way and taken up the way of religion, which requires faith in the priest class. Good for you, but don’t pretend otherwise. In your Church of Robert Burton, the high priest has explicitly claimed that he is vital to your future spiritual welfare, and that any progress is due to his intercession. And it is noticeable that the self–appointed intermediaries do quite well for themselves in this lifetime, accumulating power, authority and often (and especially in the case of Burton) wealth. Why not, it’s a good gig, if you’re into that.
I have not verified that there are future lifetimes, so to put any energy at all into that idea, to alter my present life one jot to accommodate such a possibility, especially as some kind of spiritual ‘insurance policy’, as you and your co-religionists do, is completely wrong work for me, not to mention a waste of my time, the only capital I truly have. I studied the Fourth Way precisely because I could not make all the ‘leaps of faith’ required by the ordinary religions. You did not; from the beginning you must have mistaken the Fourth Way for some kind of new religion, because otherwise a simple comparison with your aims when you joined and the aims you have now would show you that you have deviated so much that you are now traveling in exactly the opposite direction. That’s fine too, but you have to be honest with yourself.
As for you being able to judge my state from the tone of my posts, it may interest you to know that more than three-quarters of the posts I have made so far are actually material that I wrote between seventeen and fourteen years ago. I post them because I believe they still make sense in the present context, and I think they might be useful to some who are at the same stage as I was then. That, by the way, includes the first post on this page. So much for your observations or your intuition.
You say that knowing or believing in future lifetimes doesn’t hinder you from living this life to the fullest. That may be true from a narrow perspective, but is sure as heck alters the tone of this life, right down to the bedrock. For example, you must deem yourself unworthy in some way in this life if you believe some theoretical perfection is to be found in the next lifetime (or the one after that, or whatever). That colors your whole present life, my friend. If you decide as a matter of faith that because Burton has said some achievement is impossible in this lifetime, you are affecting your whole present life, and have cut yourself off from a range of possibilities. And so on.
Burton is restricting your freedom in every direction; you may be happy with that, you may enjoy having your life managed, but the extra will you imagined might be possible (in a previous post) will remain out of reach, and also all the territory beyond the fence Burton has created for you. Above all, it places you in the peculiar situation where you simultaneously work very hard, yet are easily satisfied. You work in areas determined important by Burton, at things determined by Burton, for as long as Burton wants. At the same time, because whatever efforts you make are never enough in this lifetime (Burton says you’ll need the next lifetime or more to achieve your aims), you remain satisfied that the direction and amount of your efforts are enough to get you to the next lifetime, and even, and this is important, Howard, that these “efforts” are necessary at all.
Howard, I got off your brand of treadmill because I did see that under Burton’s tutelage my aims had changed, were becoming Burton’s aims, and thus were becoming the opposite of those I had when I joined. I have also come to see not only is it a case that I can choose another treadmill—they are all similar, Burton’s is just another model, though built crookedly, but that treadmills are not necessary. I don’t expect to convince you, how could I, you have not traveled my road. But I can point out that you are not in the same institution you thought you were when you joined, not going along the path the guide you hired promised you, and that maybe one day you’ll come to see that, and why it is important.
So, may good luck attend you in all your endeavors,
Ames
#115 Howard Carter
“Recent meeting quote – We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah”.
It’s interesting that the FOF seems to be dabbling in various spiritual traditions and conceptual frameworks. They seem to be trying to lure any and all religious believers into the fold. I guess Muslims are being courted now.
Rourke M. was a longtime member of the Fellowship of Friends when he passed away in 1993.
Rourke joined the group at a young age, traveled to Europe, studied art and literature, asked sincere questions, attended meetings, sat with friends at dinner, reflected on the concepts presented to him, and sought understanding. He immersed himself in the ideas of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He listened intently. He contemplated the contradictions that he found within the Fellowship, struggled to make sense of what he was experiencing, and — like all of us — examined his own weaknesses and possibilities. He loved watching sports, enjoyed a good game of pool at the bar, and despised any type of pretense. He was fun-loving, passionate, and spoke his mind out loud with his closest friends.
Rourke grew up in the Bay Area, studied English at Cal-Berkeley, and used his writing skills to land a career in high tech. In 1983, in his late 20s, he kept a journal and stored it hard-copy on a computer printout. He left us 10 years later — on the eve of the Internet revolution, and a few years before the word “blog” would become a household word.
The following are a few excerpts from his journal:
…………………………………………………………………………..
July 7, 1983
from a letter to Miles B…
You seemed to suggest last Wednesday that people would gain by reconsidering why they are trying to “work on themselves” or are in the school, and if what they are doing is something they could do outside the school, and maybe better. That is a very honest question.
I’ve never had any real doubts that the school is a conscious teaching; it was self-evident almost from the outset and has continued to be so. At the same time, at different times and at varying degrees, I’ve felt disjointed from the school, and unable to know where I fit in or what I could contribute.
…………………………………………………………………………
The past 12 months have been fairly disappointing in that I simply have not been able to determine what I want, and I’ve always connected this with what I understand higher forces want of me. Before this time, I was able to see how working on personal weaknesses strengthened my connections with other students, the school, and higher forces, and was therefore encouraged to do so. But that understanding is no longer as prevalent, and lately I’ve wondered if references to higher forces are presumptuous, or impractical, or just wrong.
…………………………………………………………………………
It seems like conscience must be connected with personal aim, and I’ve wondered if it may not be that I am experiencing this aimlessness primarily because I have not done things which my conscience has suggested, and have therefore quieted or deadened it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 5, 1983
My state improved during the walk. I reached the point where I realized I didn’t need to be negative. I began to remember the way I felt in Portland and Carmel, when I was more sure of myself. That gave me some comfort. Then I thought about a recent statement from Robert — that we would basically need to try to keep breathing for the next three years, that we wouldn’t experience fine states [possibly in reference to the predicted depression of 1984 – 1987]. Remembering that caused my state to drop. It made me think why I follow Robert. Obviously he knows more than me. I can see that from his angles in the recent journal and other things he has said. On the other hand, he says some things which I cannot follow without becoming identified and losing hope. This is a problem, because I feel like I am going against him if I disagree with him. Furthermore, I feel like I am doing something wrong if I exist for myself rather than for him.
I want more to exist for what I know is right, rather than for a man. But that possibility is not a guarantee. I want to serve higher forces, to be sure, but it cannot always be on the basis of what someone else has told me. This sounds childish as I write it, but it will become large in the coming years. Eventually I have to exist on my own understanding of right and wrong.
I can see the effect of not doing so. It is eating me up, literally. If I compare my state now with the one I experienced before I inner-considered Robert, it is obvious that it is much worse now. Interesting that I wrote inner-considering so lightly. That is exactly what it was.
Is it right to look up to someone? I am beginning to think not. I think a person should only look up to God and not to any other man. Certainly it is not incorrect to admire greatness, but how so? It is very harmful to believe someone simply because he says something.
What do higher forces want from me is the question. And what do I want from myself. What I want from myself is to not live any lies — of any kind. I appreciate everything Robert has done, but somehow I feel he wants something from me — like he wants me to like, respect, or adore him. Rather, my ‘I’s want me to place him above me, to limit myself somehow. They want to exist for him, rather than for myself.
It must return to this my friend. You are born to this planet. You live among people. You try your hardest to determine what is right. You cannot know what is true about another person. It is blatantly obvious that the school is a real school, blatantly. This much you can know.
But you must pose this question to yourself. Can you expect to evolve and hold on to inner-considering, or, in other words, can you evolve if you compromise yourself based on what you experience being the reality that other people experience. You must live in the reality that you feel is closest to reality, even if this means not being understood.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 11, 1983
Consider what it would be to be around someone who did not judge, was not constantly trying to prove that he was better than you.
But this is what occurs. And, to survive, one must either become adept at the same thing or learn how not to believe other people’s lies and remain true to oneself. Being true to oneself is the beginning of sanity.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 18, 1983
People are liars, constant liars. T. and R. lied through their teeth during the prospective student meeting, and the worst thing is that they had no conception that they lied. This is true with everyone.
If it happens that everyone continues to lie in this way, we are lost. Someone must tell the truth. Somehow I must regain my original will and clean things up. This is possible. But how to do it.
To Whom It May Concern:
I can feel your anguish as I am sure you can feel mine regarding the seemingly unrestricted and endless practice of Robert Burton’s ‘activities’ along with the immunity that his followers grant him.
The question arises, is there a way to stop him? (I am a parent, too.) Are we done whining and ready to give this deep thought or better yet, take action?
I believe our collective efforts on this blog revealing Robert’s true nature will succeed in ‘poisoning the pool’ of future potential victims and restrict his access to using young, naïve, new followers as his sexual playthings or narcissistic objects and tools. This will in the very least, limit the damage he may cause to others. The blog is a brilliant first step as long as it can be kept up and running, so everyone please use the Paypal button and donate at least once, if not regularly. I have already.
IMO, a lawsuit would feasible and possible only after some sort of sustained public action was taken to display our power as a group. These techniques are not rocket science, and precedents for grassroots uprisings like this are well established. This posting is the best I can do to further that aim.
The next step will be to establish a group of dedicated individuals, preferably in Oregon House, to secretly meet and focus thought on taking public action, in other words, form a focus group. The thoughts and strategies of this group must NOT be posted on this blog, or the FOF will be take counter measures. Another means of communication must be established.
The focus group must be able to track and make public Robert’s movements. This surveillance will create more internal pressure on the FOF and contribute to a less than favorable atmosphere for the entrenched and financially dependent followers to remain in denial.
The focus group must then determine what the threshold number of members are that would effectively create a negative cash flow, and work to diminish the FOF’s membership to that number, causing Robert to use his accumulated personal wealth to keep the FOF afloat. If the property were foreclosed on, that would be excellent. Ex-members, if interested, could possibly form a non-profit foundation dedicated to healing the wounds inflicted on us all and make the Vineyard open to others damaged by cults as a retreat.
Once public action is taken, this will empower others to step forward. Remember that our strength is in our numbers. There are 11,000 of us and apparently only 1,500 left of them. That public action must be on an international level as well. If Robert’s movements abroad were restricted, that would further the aim of limiting the damage he causes.
Once our public protest and outrage becomes intense and consistent enough to hit mainstream, then we will attract the necessary means and support to take legal action.
And that will be the end of the Fellowship of Friends.
Unoanimo, on a different topic, can you tell us why you remain in the FoF? Your postings indicate you’re not very impressed by it. thanks, RN
#124 Ames
I don’t think fof even pretends to be a 4th way school anymore, doesn’t value personal verification….. and besides, awakening in some vague future ‘life’ is such an easy/comfortable way out of having to awaken now.
btw, good post! well thought out.
Is is clear the chances of some type of revolt are nil.
Whalerider “There are 11,000 of us and apparently only 1,500 left of them.” You are wrong of course. There are a few hundred upset former members (not all upset about the same thing, most not even posting, only a handful posting under their own name), there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated current students.
Between the 11,000 I am sure that the total dedication (paypal donations) did not add up to 1% of the money donated to the FOF since this blog took off.
Compare hundreds of events to one single greater Fellowship meeting organized by Ames.
as some one said 0+0=0 (Still true)
132 Sid. RE The Whaleriders post.. from this mustard seed shall spring forth a mighty tree!
Cy
Could it be that the drop in Fellowship of Friends numbers is greater than some think?
Else why wouldn’t Siddiq say there are in excess of 1.500 dedicated current students?
Why would Siddiq say in excess of 1,000?
Curious.
Dear All,
Just an observation. All the daily cards from Robert are extracted from quotes of other eminent men. What Robert seem to do, is taking out a word and associate that word with a quote he invents. Is n’ t that associate thinking/ jack of diamonds?
For example today’s :
Thursday, July 5, 2007
‘Be’ restores order.
Daniel 9:25 – Restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah comes.
Do we really want to destroy the FOF?
I know some parts of us might say yes but however dirty the bath water may be, consider the following:
1) The Fellowship has some good points. It attracts interesting, intelligent people and provides a network of friends that covers many parts of the world, and provides a means for being together in a beautiful environment.
2) Many people that would never have had the means to travel have been able to see the world and stay in homes of friends along the way.
3) Many with little exposure to classical art have been educated in this area.
4) There are still some very healthy organizations within the Fellowship (e.g. The Walt Whitman Sailing Society).
6) The Fellowship provides access to nice gardens and social events that are on the whole uplifting.
7) The new (not 4th way) approach may not lead to consciousness but probably on the whole is no worse than fundamental religion except that it asks extreme dedication and presents itself as something else.
There are problems that are difficult or impossible to address as long as Robert is in charge:
1) Honest interchange between students and with former students is limited because of the paranoia that is generated due to Robert’s life style requirements.
2) The Fellowship is deceptive. It speaks of connections to higher forces that based on history in all probability do not exist. It speaks of methods that have limited effectiveness (no one is awakening). It undermines creativity and self confidence by crediting the lack of success to lack of effort in the individuals. It provides a false sense of superiority.
3) Robert’s lifestyle is corrupting, hurtful, and uses resources and efforts inappropriately. Over time it hurts most students.
4) The Fellowship encourages people to have similar tastes and lifestyles to Robert and discourages the development of individual creativity except within the boundaries of Robert’s interests.
5) Supporting Robert’s lifestyle is a huge financial burden and it keeps students from taking propper care of their own needs.
But destroying the Fellowship will:
1) Provide financial hardship for many that are invested in houses, businesses and land in the area.
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
So I would ask the question – Is there a way to make the following happen?
1) Take away Robert’s abuses and lifestyle. Take away his funding. The FOF is a non profit organization and the founder and teacher does not have more rights than the members. The Fellowship would truly thrive if Robert’s ways were not continually undermining its success.
2) Work to make the organization more honest with regard to what it offers and what can be expected. Broaden the Fellowship to allow other approaches to presence.
3) Allow open communication between current and former members. We have heard talk that this is happening and it seems to me that there is a great deal more openness in this area than even 6 months ago.
Just a thought – Maybe it makes sense to formally have 2 different types of students. The division already exists but is not formalized:
Group 1) Devotees that accept the FOF as religion, Robert as an angel and conduit of C influence, and agree upfront with appropriate and honest counseling to support him with all of his habits.
Group 2) Students that have full access to life, former students, pay minimal teaching payments (which do not support Robert in any way) and which seek a more “fourth way, in life” approach. These students would have access to the property and events but would not be encouraged to be involved with Robert. The teaching could incorporate Robert’s current viewpoint as one approach, not the approach.
Ideally Robert would have some minimal input into the activities of group 2 but he would not be over sold to them. He would not be able to solicit funds from Group 2. Neither group would be presented as superior but rather as alternative paths (Religious vs Psychological). Both groups would help to develop the property as they see fit.
Dear Siddiq and others,
0x0=0, Is often described as our original nature, our soul, our spirit.
I have been thinking a lot about Siddiq, nice how unanimo, describes the person and is sure that it is a “HE”, Passionate, has a family at Isis…?
From one angle, it does not matter, who it is.
For Siddiq, if you are troubled, if your consciences is not sitting well with you, you will start to get sleepless nights, not able to shake of these “I”s of what is happening and am I blind…Many emotions will go through you and I advise you, to just look at them completely acknowledge them see them 360 degrees. Behind those emotions are many “plays” and observations. All the answers are there and the emotions like denial, anger, fear, hurt, pain, sadness are all voices to lead you to your conscience and to the part of you that is not physical. Your true nature, your soul, your spirit…call it as you will 0X0=0. Wods are form thi world not from the spiritual world. Yes, if you are willing to view it all, it is a personal, spiritual journey. You and yourself, completely independent of any authority. Be aware, at this phase many people experience physical reactions, illnesses, temporarily. Do not worry, and face it completely. Part of your inner, private journey. Take some extra vitamins and some extra to boost up your immune system, like a massage. Be quiet for a while and do what you feel is good for your physical body. Spoil yourself. Do not get stuck in a strange illness or back pain ( holding too much toxins) or knee pain because it is hard to bend with the current of life. Or when you vomit the old toxins out do not worry, just watch. It is like dying, dying before your physical body dies… If you get worried see a doctor and get consoled. Clever doctors tell you to do more exercise and express your self….. (Building in the good old American disclaimer here).
Be careful not to go home with anti depressant or sleeping pills, and get hooked on to a new authority figure.
Watch your inner world and observe. What you see externally, see where it is internally…watch.
Then try to have no thoughts and be still. Your personal answers will come and will help you to live your life now, you, yourself has all teh answers.
Give up your wish of taking 80% in a conversation. Go around, asking fellow friends questions and help them to heal so you can get healed. Love yourself. If you can not love your self just start repeating to yourself 10-20 or more times, “I love myself”. Watch and go back to silence maybe 15 minutes or more a day, as you feel. It is confrontational, nothing to loose, do you? Maybe some air, some false personality. It will be very intense…this is a way to become more independent and free…..Hard for many of us who need a person to tell us that we are good and that everything is O.K. as long as…fill in the blanks. Go back to Travelers email and see in which phase you got stuck. Very enlightening to see where you got stuck. Bring light to this area and heal and become morefree. Become who you really are and enjoy your own company.
It is getting time, you are worth it.
Old Fish In The Sea 135
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
******************
These are higher men, men number four, and the product of a Fourth Way school run by a man number seven?
To Ames – 124
We’ve had this conversation before; was it in a previous life, or a page or two ago?
I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB.
If an afterlife exists, so must a pre-life, at least that’s my deduction. And if a pre-existing life can be placed into a vessel once, why not more than once? It makes perfect sense to me that it takes a soul more than one lifetime to “get it right”; that’s why I rejected the world religion of Christanity.
The Fourth Way rejects “blind faith”, not real faith, which is vital and necessary to any spiritual journey. How else does one follow an entity that one cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell, without some form of faith?
The “Fourth Way” is a term Gurjieff invented. The Fellowship at this time has gone beyond Gurjieff to the sources of his system, esoteric knowledge from all the major traditions. This information is readily available to anyone in 2007 who has a computer and knows about google.
However, its taken hundreds of researchers and the teacher several years to compile and structure/classify this information, and most importantly to “Key it”. To my understanding it all points to an afterlife/ multiple lives.
Part of verifying is based on previous information; there are many things said in all the major traditions that can be verified. When one finds a source that agrees with one’s own verifications one tends to accept the things it says that one cannot fully verify. This is real faith, faith based on verifying.
Are you saying that every being must start from scratch in their search for truth, and disregard the existence of God, Paradise as a beginning basis until they fully verify it?
Adjusting one’s “only” life to the belief that there is an afterlife where one will be “held accountable” can only be a third force to lead a better, more civilized life, not hinder this life.
Cathie – 125
Part of this answer addresses your statment. We are not recruiting muslims, we are going back to many sources, including Islam, for the sake of instructing existing members.
You took enough time to contemplate the motivation of the FoF to use this quote and then respond to it in writing; I also wonder if you took some time to contemplate the meaning of the quote.
Dear HC
Grow up, why stay dependent…when you will die you will have to do it yourself. When you were born it was you alone….maybe some energy around you but no teacher, and no instructor and fellow students.
Share your live and help yourself and others to heal. Use your sense and see the hurt. Many people are hurting now and questioning and lost.
The people who can not leave the fellowship of friends.
Many people who have invested so much emotional.
Many people who have similar characteristics as Robert and therefore feel they can not judge Robert.
Many people who are co dependant
Many people who have addictions.
Many people who have fear.
Many people who belief blindly.
Many peope who have power and love there positions.
Many people who have no jobs
Many people who think they are important researchers and therefore indispensable.
Many people who are healing now their dream as been chattered
Just be present, listen instead of talking too much (sorry to be more exact not more then 50 % of the conversation.) Ask questions, listen, make your self invisible.
Please listen to what is now reality. Do not dictate your viewpoint on your surroundings…listen to the people on salary, call the ones who do not show up at the Apollo d’Oro ask them why and if there is anything you can do for them Visit the sick and the elderly ask if there is something you can do for them. Use your senses instead of being so self assured and invincible. A wise (ex) student said. If you think you are right an alarm bell needs to sound…
Good luck HC, you really need all the help you can get and you will say you have it. I do hope so for you….
(So far you have not responded to any of my post, no expectations here).
hc, siddiq, I’m glad you’re both posting here, and certainly defend your right to do so, as it also protects my own right to do so. But there you both go again… and again… and again… and again…
… admitting not a single problem, not a single fault, not a single ounce of dysfunction or destruction in the fof, and ignoring all of the arguments, issues, and facts placed before you. Do you feel anything? Do you think anything that’s new?
Siddiq, HC, you can always sneak away in a burqua and high heels like the pakastani cleric tried to do yesterday.
Howard:
You say:
“It makes perfect sense to me that it takes a soul more than one lifetime to “get it right”; that’s why I rejected the world religion of Christanity.”
Yet the only response you could offer me was to quote Jesus Christ.
Naturally, that response, in any context was completely ineffective and very off-topic.
I don’t believe that your teacher has any aspirations toward Christ-like behavior.
In addition, I remember his attitude about Mother Theresa, which was disdainful at best.
LL
on 05 Jul 2007 at 6:50 am
115 Howard Carter
Dear Howard it is so painful to see you struggling so helplessly with your intellectual center.
Here is a typical example of what I kindly call “dumber than a rock”.
• there are many lifetimes”
“It is written about in every major spiritual tradition, by all the major sages/prophets of those traditions.”
You are not knowledgeable of every major spiritual tradition. Those that are I.E. who are accredited by the Religions or who have studied to the level of receiving a degree in comparative religions might disagree. Your premise is based on the unspoken assumption that since Robert Burton has said this it is correct. Many who participate on the blog would question this.
I have had experiences in which I have “seen” the reality of reoccurrence. In my experience this penetration into a higher dimension does not produce answers but questions. That is when there is right work of centers.
you write In relation to “C Influence” and the idea of a play.
This is a difficult concept to grasp but one that is also found in every major tradition; Fate, Destiny, Karma, recurrence, reincarnation, etc. All these are held in balance by the concept of “Free Will”. It is an enigma; we are not meant to understand these things in their entirety. We can intuit them.
Again you take Robert Burton teaching as true in an attempt to prove that Robert Burtons teaching is true. There is a word for this Howard the Duck. Fuckin’ stupid. “Dumber than a rock”. This is a difficult concept to grasp but the way and the work of the 4th way begin at a higher level than life. If your ability to reason and argue your position is so immature, so undeveloped it reflects the lack of development of the intellectual center in general so you are below the level of life. First it is not order vs. chaos, free will vs. predestination but there are three laws. Fate, accident and cause and effect.. There is no higher intelligence creating all activities on Earth rather there are Laws and even higher beings must conform to Law.
This is a difficult concept to grasp but even if there was a play Robert Burton would not know the script. This is an absolute fact that he has proven himself over and over. You Hoard the Duck ( kinda cute rhymes with Suck) are a classic case of ones imagination blinding them to reality. Don’t you get it.? Knock knock anybody home? This is logic dealing with a proven “fact” Robert has been wrong thus Robert can be wrong thus Robert will be wrong again. This is a fact. This leaves you with having to evaluate Robert’s bullshit pronouncements from the proven perspective of whether he is right . If you should ever desire to experience reality as Gurdjieff worked so hard to make available to you must learn to think and verify for yourself.
“• everyone who says, “I willingly join the damned” says that until the actual moment of joining”
This is verifiable on many levels in life; people say they’ll do something willingly until it’s time to do it and then they change their tune.”
what or who are the dammed? Those who having been given the gift of a magnetic center who trade the potential for eternal life for belief in a false prophet. This is a fact Duck boy. Robert’s prophecies were wrong this is without question the definition of a false prophet. Don’t you fit the definition of “the dammed” someone who agreed to the terms and conditions of the 4th way yet exchanged this for a second rate cult of the divine cocksucking goddess in a man’s body.
If there is any vestige of reality left in your little duck brain answer this. If cocksucking is so good for you why doesn’t Robert encourage this divine draining of the sacred cup by his students.
There have been real schools that taught the use of physical sex in spiritual development. The Fellowship of Friends is not one. Robert Burton is not only addicted to the physical act of sexually violating read Raping his students but the negative emotional energy and shame that accompanies such an activity. Robert knows little about healthy sex and this which should be at the core of a real teaching is proof of his failure to achieve the consciousness he claims.
Howard, regarding (#14-138), thank you for making yourself quite, quite clear. I was having this conversation with the illusion that we at least agreed on what the concept of verification is. I’m wrong, obviously.
So, you are in a new religion that espouses relative awakening (awakening within limits set up by your priest/intermediary) using an appropriate new tool, “partial verification”. Work with “partial verification” means than whenever you run out of steam, or into an inconvenient obstacle to your understanding, you can just drag out “faith” or “whatever Burton says” to fill in the gaps. What was confusing to me is that this is not verification—in my language.
I’ll try to answer one of your few personal questions to me, “Are you saying that every being must start from scratch in their search for truth, and disregard the existence of God, Paradise as a beginning basis until they fully verify it?”
In one word, yes.
I’ve tried to re-examine all my presumptions from scratch. This, for me, is particularly important when I try to analyze the mechanisms that mould us in our culture, and to any person serious about self–examination, examining religion in all its forms must be included. That’s a lot of work, to be sure, but I cheerfully undertook it when I was at a similar stage to you, but not so lazy. It happens that later, I found out that there was a short cut around this nearly impossible mountain. Burton didn’t try to hide this from me, because he simply didn’t know; he is not nearly the high being he claims he is, or that you believe/have faith in. But that is another story.
You might want to study the law of three a little more deeply. The concept in your last paragraph to me, “Adjusting one’s “only” life to the belief that there is an afterlife where one will be “held accountable” can only be a third force to lead a better, more civilized life, not hinder this life.”—leads directly to such civilizing influences as, “The Crusades”, “The Holy Inquisition”, “Let’s introduce democracy at the point of the gun”, and such. This is the wrong third force for internal work. The fact that you don’t understand this explains the content of many of your posts, and why you are stuck. The fact that Burton doesn’t understand this explains why he is not fit to teach, and why he is stuck.
I wish you the best,
Ames
Howie,
Do yourself a favor. Follow this link and download the free talk
“Enlightenment straight up” and listen with as open a mind as you can muster.
http://www.adyashanti.org/cafedharma/index.php?file=audio
Love,
Ryan.
p.s. recommended to all.
HC #125 or so: “You took enough time to contemplate the motivation of the FoF to use this quote and then respond to it in writing; I also wonder if you took some time to contemplate the meaning of the quote.”
Yes.
The quote was:
“We can know Allah through Allah. We can know what’s other than Allah by the light of Allah.”
We = you, me and everybody else on the planet can
Know = apprehend, experience, have thoughts about (BIG can of worms here!)
Allah = The Absolute, God, that which goes by many names but is un-nameable. Ultimate Reality, Truth, etc.
through = by being one with Allah; by Allah’s grace? Meaning here is ambiguous, thus open to much wiseacring or as you would say, “keying.” Could be synonymous with “know” (see above). In which case, we have a meaningless circular statement:
“We can know Allah by knowing Allah” ?
Maybe so, maybe not.
OK, the next part is a little dicier:
We can know = (see above)
what’s other = what is not Allah. But how can there be anything that is NOT Allah?? Allah is all and everything, the absolute, Allah contains all. Therefore, the notion of “not Allah” is a product of dualistic mind activity.
by the light of Allah = Allah is light. Allah is also dark, since Allah transcends duality. Therefore Allah contains both light and dark. Light and dark are relative terms, dependent on human perceptual mechanisms.
In summary, the quote appears to assert that the human mind can “know” Ultimate Reality. This is a matter of belief.
Beliefs and mind activity are not awakening.
Reminds me of the Sufi story about Mullah Nasrudin looking for his keys under the lamp post.
Don’t keep looking there just because the place is conveniently lit. The keys you are looking for are elsewhere.
Or just possibly, the door was never locked.
Cathie (#14-136), you are leaving all sorts of clues in plain sight…
Sure, Howard is looking for the keys under the lamp post, but he’s too busy to notice that behind him, the sunrise has already lit the whole street!
Love to you and to all who read this,
Ames
Random thoughts: I have verified very little. I kinda hope there is nothing to “recurrence” I dont want to go through all this again.
I think I read where some philosophers like Socrates or maybe somebody following believed or verified for themselves “life before life”. And then, maybe I’m thinking of Marcus Aurelius.
And, I think I read where Ouspensky got the idea of “recurrence” from Nietzsche.
Anyway, back to real life. WhaleRider I have two questions for you. What is Schwartz?
And, I went to that link provided by Laura #81. Robert Burton at the place I found him was akin to a empty closet in the basement. But, I noticed that a lot of non-Indian gurus have taken on an Indian name. Is there an explanation?
Finally, and I’m speaking without permission for Vera-Mente.
In the Bible and I really dont remember page, number or context. But, a vineyard Overlord was paying his field hands.
The first were handsomely paid (those that were in the FOF for a good while) then as they reached the end Arthur and Vera-Mente were paid as much. Of course, there was a dispute.
Arthur and Vera-Mente claimed that the FOF vineyard belong to all the field hands as equals.
We want our share!!!!
Arthur,
“May the schwartz be with you”. From the epic film on enlightenment,,, “Space Balls”. A quote from the guru Yogurt.
Re: 132 – Siddiq
“there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated current students.”
Perhaps there is a greater number of students leaving than previously conjectured. Why would Siddiq use the number 1,000? Why not use 1,500? Or 2,000?
Curious. Inquiring minds would like to know.
Old Fish In The Sea 135
Graduates 137 – “These are higher men, men number four, and the product of a Fourth Way school run by a man number seven?
I guess your point is that if the above were true, these people would easily be able to take care of themselves and we need not worry about them. But since it is likely not true, there are still those that are left in a bad situation.
Perhaps I both over and under estimate some of these people. Many are, I am sure quite capable. But there are those that have dedicated their whole life to the FOF and they are older now and not really prepared to be successful outside of the Fellowship. Probably they could be successful but they do not know that.
Anyway, the point is that some will be hurt if the FOF dissolves and we may want to consider them. Not that it is our problem but there are readers that have a stake in what happens.
mifis (150): Good question. And you didn’t even ask about the term “dedicated” and how that’s defined.
Anyway, they say numbers don’t lie — unless they’re statistics.
Hello ~ 108 confused
You wrote to H.C. ~
“I appreciate your postings. I like how you are keeping your line consistently and “in the kings”. I would sleep better if you were right and not the “rest of the blog”. All these “negative people”… But any time I think that for 38 years (and right now and will continue) RB is screwing the guys, my friends, damaging their essences, causing this never ending craze, FEAR. How he confuses them by lying to them, manipulating them, uses them and throws away – I can’t sleep anymore. I have a child and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I don’t want him to know about what is going on in this organization, were his mom belongs. I can hear the question of the child: “Why is Robert having sex with all these men?”
So, WHY? They don’t want it. They hate it. But they do it. Tonight is someone’s “visit time” after the dinner. And tomorrow. Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???”
_____________________________________
Yes, its odd that there are people on this blog who ‘appreciate’ postings of those who support Robert Burton; at the end of their postings of said “appreciation” ask ~ “Can anyone, anything STOP THIS CRIME???”
Well, ‘confused’, you can start by not stroking and picking the fleas off the devil’s belly.
Get thee self to your District Attorney’s Office.
____________________________________________
Hello ~ 111 More history needed?
You asked ~
“Can somebody inform us what happened with M.R, (who payed Rabia) and a performance for Robert with girls like A, S,R ?
Thanks for you time and energy”
_______________________________
Call her up. She’s on Page 55 of the 2007 AT & T phone book in this area or get on the Greater Fellowship’s website and ask around. Or call 411 and ask for a Mari R on Concord Trail in Oregon House, California.
She’s doing fine BTW… outside of being freaked concerning the break-ins near her house… Yet, what do you expect when you live one mile from the Methamphetamine capital of California (?)
______________________________________
Hello ~ 123 vera.mente
You wrote ~
“Former Student, Veronicapoe, Unoanimo, thank you for your thoughts regarding Class Action Lawsuit.
It does not seem easy to build…but if someone is willing and able to start it I will probably join it . Arthur is interested as well!
On the other hand there are plenty of crimes that could be brought to the attention of various authorities…
Sometimes I feel the desperation from some people here who beg to stop the insanity going on at Isis…
I too feel impatience, even though I have been removed from the direct influence of the fof and rb for a long time now.
I want a change! and hope all this writing here on this blog, the stories etc., will cause a change! The end of the fof under RB!”
______________________________
Hello vera.mente ~
The key denying force is to be found in your very words “it seems”… This is an illusion; remember, every millimeter of struggle and tension sensed, in starting this process, is your own ‘baptismal in the waters of your being’…
You were breathing artificial embryonic fluids in the Fellowship of Friends… Now, get past “seems” and get going; forget about ‘difficult’, think ‘birth’, birth is difficult, though that’s not really what it’s about, is it?
Love your pressure and tension, its your birth!
No, it won’t be easy to bring the Fellowship of Friends into objective perspective, yet, what is? You are not alone, there are many who will join you; as Whalerider suggested, you need to allocate duties, ‘parts’ of the one body to many different people, video conferencing will also assist and a multi-national law suit may also be necessary, since, after all, many other countries and embassies are involved in these procurement of visas, religious and work papers, etc, for a phony ‘church’.
To me, its not really on the scale of ‘grass roots’, the grass roots thing has already established its ‘lawn’ in previous law suits, although, Whalerider is right nonetheless, that getting the local community involved, if it’s just letter writing to the Governor, a petition, both, that will get things rolling; if this was a new complaint-thing it would be very difficult to establish ‘a means’,
though the ‘house of cards’ has already been built, 37 years ago, multiple law suits, paid off and hidden away abuses and situations, dropped cases, a long history of buffered objective justice for the sake of subjective self calming;
and the card-house is considerably large and unsteady;
there is so much ‘garbage’ piled behind the food refrigerators belonging to Isis that I sense that one little yellow canary alighting on top will pull it down…
Do you have the will to not only follow your heart and gut, but also say “yes, that’s my heart” in case a policeman charges you both with jay walking?
The only tough part will be going up against the mirror image within yourself pointing to the issues at hand; this will be a great spiritual exercise for many, because the pressure and denying force felt in situations like this effort to be made, desired by you and so many others, is that of your own pain bodies struggling to stay in the struggling-self si-do habit world, where unfinished things seem more immortal than finished,
where unfinished feelings and gut sensations seem more supportive for tomorrow;
one of the greatest reasons people don’t like to
go through the ‘court thing’ is not the money, you can borrow money to make money and some lawyers do not charge unless they win, so,
all in all, the reason is that, in court the pain body must (though many buffer this) face the objectivity of its ‘little world’ put into perspective with the bigger world of ‘pain bodies’ where its identification is erased and placed into a category of personal responsibility to society (king of hearts) and the world (hints of higher emotional)…
It’s tough because the painbody needs the ongoing drama to continue, hence the si-do need: going to court, taking all this silliness all the way will change your inner world, no doubt, it must, since you’re still on the Path, yes?
Prison & Execution is the Temple of Si-do for the painbody.
Real desires are our teachers; so much of Robert Burton’s idea of C-Influence has been given to him by default, osmosis from common sense religious piety;
I met C-Influence when I was 8 or 9 years old and never for one minute felt them leave or wiseacred that they had abandoned me; sure there’s been middle fingers held towards the heavens, though, so what, sometimes I see cloud shapes giving it back to me.
So, get out there and love the pressure, smile and give birth to Buddha.
______________________________________
Hello ~ 130 Rhino Neal
You wrote ~
“Unoanimo, on a different topic, can you tell us why you remain in the FoF? Your postings indicate you’re not very impressed by it. thanks, RN”
________________________________
Whose us, you and HC? Lol.
Another cigarette lighter in the dark?
The only person in this blog who has made this claim (that I am a member of the FoF or ever was) is HC, who, as Ames stated, could just be an intellectual in Berkeley writing and pushing buttons or an ex student who is getting kicks on Route 666.
Rhino, go back and re-read what I wrote to Whalerider concerning this ‘wonder’ of yours; he had it too and ‘did the right thing’ and seemed to have found the appropriate higher emotional answer to this question for himself, perhaps the same will occur for you, my friend…
I have been observing the phenomenon of the Fellowship of Friends for a very, very long time; not one student knows anything concerning my past (or for that matter, my present, this includes Grand poo-ra HC)…
It’s the way it must be, considering the nature of the triad, here, elsewhere, and will remain so, even after my anonymous-ness is revealed by me;
there’s a larger picture at play here than just the Fellowship of Friends, it’s about supporting certain standards, while simultaneously observing those who are walking backwards, assisting in jump starting channels of objective, conscious common sense and supporting a certain kind of becoming.
This has been one of my (and many on this blog site) tasks, one that has been flowing through me before my teens; so I am pretty at home with all this stuff and the Fellowship of Friends is only the tip of the iceberg that sunk the titanic, a very little bathtub of a ship in the bigger scheme of ‘things’.
So, go deeper, and if you believe one phrase or sentence that HC writes, I mean ‘really’, then certainly, you’ve got no real reason or place to put an answer from me to begin with;
I trust you’ll figure, as Whalerider did, that our hearts are connected in ways that the brain just can’t fathom, nor can the 10 of diamonds wiseacre itself beyond its own little world selfishness (seeming like Higher Intellectual), no way,
Higher Intellectual has no resemblance whatsoever to the 10 of diamonds, Ouspensky found this out the hard way, yet, after all, the real fourth way is difficult (though not the king of clubs difficult Robert Burton self calms himself from), for it is based on this lifetime and this one only, to the hilt, with absolutely no excuses,
the theory of lifetimes is a ‘pretty boys’ plaything, it is another tool of self calming and from a school of relative awakening, which, at best creates magnetic centers, which, even if essence is damaged, may result is something remaining after death.
Yet, its not the magnetic center by default, which is the issue here, its the psychic damage and treatment of the lot of time on this planet and our relationship to these impressions as they unfold, i.e., what they do with us automatically and what we do with them consciously;
yes, we have will and can move within the chess pieces, no matter the hand of god, god cannot move me as I can, otherwise there would be no reason to be down here…
I like to sense that I am more than a Duracell battery on some god’s shoulder.
If you see a pyramid in the distance, it may just be your own horn, so be careful what you assume from the assuming.
______________________________________
Dear ~ 135 Old Fish In The Sea
You wrote ~
“Do we really want to destroy the FOF?….”
Just for scale and relativity I am going to use a little artistic license here and tie-off some loose ends I sense you’ve left for us to deal with in your equation of what could be left, (calling a ‘slice’ a whole pizza?) ~
What you wrote, I will put in ” ” marks…
“I know some parts of us might say yes but however dirty the bath water may be, consider the following:”
“1) The Fellowship has some good points. It attracts interesting, intelligent people and provides a network of friends that covers many parts of the world, and provides a means for being together in a beautiful environment”,
which supports spiritual crime, damages essence, teaches methods of self calming, prolongs hierarchal structured psychosis and religious piety that contradicts the entire premise of the fourth way. Joining a ‘regular church’ with ‘normal people’ and reading B-influence books simultaneously will produce similar, if not, healthier essences and clearer ‘baby water’.
“2) Many people that would never have had the means to travel have been able to see the world and stay in homes of friends along the way.”
Nor would they have had the chance to be led to Isis for the exploitation of their wallets and what’s beneath their wallet’s pocket and sent back to where they came from, if they wish this exploitation be otherwise, other than against their conscience and self worth hearts; nor would they have been able to spend months in foreign jails for having had fake passports made by the request of The Teacher so to insure that his ‘fresh meat’ did not spoil, waiting in line at the consulate’s will and discretion.
“3) Many with little exposure to classical art have been educated in this area.”
Nor have they been proportionately educated in the area of acquiring million dollar paintings (the largest one in the Galleria to the left) that have been proven by the Italian government to have been illegally sold and smuggled out of the country to Oregon House, nor have they been educated in how to horde expensive artworks, jewelry, cars, clothes and apartments in Europe at the expense of said ‘contributors of such luxuries’ poverty, no health care, under the thumb of The Teacher, to be asked, against their will and oftentimes ‘real fairness’ to leave, at any time, for any silly reason, (like not accepting a sport coat gift), thanking them not, nor dividends in any investments, for anything they’ve done to support that which they themselves could never singularly have had, nor consciously asked of others prior to those ‘others’ welfare was first taken into consideration (although I must footnote here, that by now, there are a few who would do this sort of thing, particularly the hermaphrodites.)
“4) There are still some very healthy organizations within the Fellowship (e.g. The Walt Whitman Sailing Society).”
Who sail away from Isis as far as they can, whose experiences and near death experiences on the open sea has deepened their convictions that there might just be something to all this blog stuff, albeit not the mainland, its kinda floating in space similar to a boat at sea, with no shore in sight. There are also other ‘healthy organizations’ within the legal status ‘church’ called the Fellowship of Friends, who are conveniently ‘birthed’ at City Hall for the main goal of funneling monies back to Robert Burton and Friends by way of charitable donations and teaching payments to pay for more self calming and religious, conscience-less, psychosis piety.
“6) The Fellowship provides access to nice gardens and social events that are on the whole uplifting.”
They also provide access to your imaginary picture that this life is ‘just not the one Robert Burton wiseacres it has to be for you to awaken in’ thus creating a ‘dope garden’ to self-calm you from the news (and plenty of porn and wine justifications) and daily reminders that Robert Burton is the ‘only one in your life worth supporting, for you cannot do, you cannot awaken, C-Influence does not need your love, you can’t hold the Sequence long enough, you don’t remember yourself enough, you’re a walking subtle-replica of the enemy that he preaches against every Sunday’; yes, gardens, not unlike those of the high French Aristocrats had, prior to the French revolution. Not to mention the parallel ‘uplifting’ erection drugs used by Robert Burton and Company to maintain ‘astuteness’ beyond the pangs of conscience and self loathing; assisting in the wiseacre thought that ~ Hey, if you’ve got an erection, you must be in love, right, you must want it?
“7) The new (not 4th way) approach may not lead to consciousness but probably on the whole is no worse than fundamental religion except that it asks extreme dedication and presents itself as something else.”
Nor is it “no worse” than the rape and molestation charges now draining the catholic church of billions of dollars and followers. Nor is it “no worse” than a church that calls itself a church, yet, in all world-wide terms is a cult, not a traditional-church, where members can usurp the pastor if he proves to be corrupt and have him replaced by another, for their welfare, not his; unlike a cult, where the pastor usurps the ‘church goers’ and keeps the status of ‘church’ so that his of hers monies can be stretched to the furthest self calming limits without paying too much back to where it came from, i.e., tax exempt status, whose ‘loss’ of 8 or 9 members by the visit of certain ‘officials’ can often lead to the murder of 9 people and the mass suicide & murder of 900+ men, women, children and infants.
“There are problems that are difficult or impossible to address as long as Robert is in charge:
1) Honest interchange between students and with former students is limited because of the paranoia that is generated due to Robert’s life style requirements.
2) The Fellowship is deceptive. It speaks of connections to higher forces that based on history in all probability do not exist. It speaks of methods that have limited effectiveness (no one is awakening). It undermines creativity and self confidence by crediting the lack of success to lack of effort in the individuals. It provides a false sense of superiority.
3) Robert’s lifestyle is corrupting, hurtful, and uses resources and efforts inappropriately. Over time it hurts most students.
4) The Fellowship encourages people to have similar tastes and lifestyles to Robert and discourages the development of individual creativity except within the boundaries of Robert’s interests.
5) Supporting Robert’s lifestyle is a huge financial burden and it keeps students from taking propper care of their own needs.”
Take the elephant’s ivory and leave it dead, calling it still an elephant? Hummmm… would this kind of King of Hearts nit-picking really lead to spiritual vitality and change of level of being, or is it simply worshiping the crucification while postulating that such a heinous crime could never happen again; albeit, if it didn’t happen our painbodies wouldn’t have anything to worship?
“But destroying the Fellowship will:
1) Provide financial hardship for many that are invested in houses, businesses and land in the area.
2)Hurt some good people that are on salary, have dedicated their life to the Fellowship and don’t appear to have many alternatives. Many of these people are kind, simple, loving people and they would not thrive if the FOF were taken away.
So I would ask the question – Is there a way to make the following happen?
1) Take away Robert’s abuses and lifestyle. Take away his funding. The FOF is a non profit organization and the founder and teacher does not have more rights than the members. The Fellowship would truly thrive if Robert’s ways were not continually undermining its success.
2) Work to make the organization more honest with regard to what it offers and what can be expected. Broaden the Fellowship to allow other approaches to presence.
3) Allow open communication between current and former members. We have heard talk that this is happening and it seems to me that there is a great deal more openness in this area than even 6 months ago.
Just a thought – Maybe it makes sense to formally have 2 different types of students. The division already exists but is not formalized:
Group 1) Devotees that accept the FOF as religion, Robert as an angel and conduit of C influence, and agree upfront with appropriate and honest counseling to support him with all of his habits.
Group 2) Students that have full access to life, former students, pay minimal teaching payments (which do not support Robert in any way) and which seek a more “fourth way, in life” approach. These students would have access to the property and events but would not be encouraged to be involved with Robert. The teaching could incorporate Robert’s current viewpoint as one approach, not the approach.
Ideally Robert would have some minimal input into the activities of group 2 but he would not be over sold to them. He would not be able to solicit funds from Group 2. Neither group would be presented as superior but rather as alternative paths (Religious vs Psychological). Both groups would help to develop the property as they see fit.”
Ideally?
My friend, you’re fooling around with a triad not unlike America’s model of Democracy and the Roman Empire.
Yes, there’s such a thing as a cover-crop and tiling it under for the real crop, yet, this will not happen in Oregon House; the spiritual cancer at Isis is too deep and those who have unknowingly fed it their blood will be paid first; after this first ‘reconciling act’ nothing will be left and students will continue as they will anyway once any teacher’s role ends, they will have to roll with the punches from the Absolute, all those before us did, we are not privileged for knowing what we know from this blog, actually, we, who have truly digested this material here, will have to pay for it dearly, by slowly not being it, not becoming what it warns of.
I am deeply touched by your wish to save the ‘good parts’, all your ideas and attempts to recycle and transform, though, this is not the direction Robert Burton has initiated: the Fellowship of Friends started with a lie and will end with its lie, no more, no less; although this does not rule out the possibility of a ‘family of friends’, the Greater Fellowship seems headed in that direction.
An entity as Robert Burton would never settle for second best, a lateral position; he does not tell the truth because the whole ‘form’ is a lie; you cannot pull the foundation out from underneath a house and save the plumbing…
Such an ‘order of things’ would undoubtedly prove that Robert Burton is a liar, a fake and that the Fellowship of Friends has always been for him a means of self calming and earthly identification gymnastics… Do you really believe he would ‘fuss up’ to all that?
As always; the Fellowship of Friends motto “Silence is Golden”, will be his style, he’ll relocate or stay here and relocate the form of the school, seeming this and that…
Saturns are experts at silence and ulterior motives.
More games, no one truly on the path has time for…
curiosity certainly does kill the cat, for investment into another lifetime is the ultimate ‘promise of cat food’ while the real cat, the now-cat, starves and convulses to death.
Thank you though, for your incredible desire to assist those who need your love; try to do small things for now, like emailing this blog’s address to others around the world and contacting the California Governor’s office; certainly your love can be applied to more probable segments of the one now, than a kind of ‘wish’ for the future:
remember, alongside those who wiseacre doomsday, there are those who also wiseacre the coming of heaven: neither will happen on earth, this is an internal ‘arrival’: if the earth ever does call itself a ‘heaven’ it will be by default, by proximity to its inhabitants having already built ‘heaven’ within…
_____________________________________
Hello ~ 136 Another Name
You wrote ~
“Dear Siddiq and others,
0×0=0, Is often described as our original nature, our soul, our spirit.
I have been thinking a lot about Siddiq, nice how unanimo, describes the person and is sure that it is a “HE”, Passionate, has a family at Isis…?
From one angle, it does not matter, who it is.”
_____________________________
I know Siddiq and he knows me (sorta). So, well, that’s that.
_____________________________
Love to you all.
Old Fish in the Sea 135:
Yes, there are those who would suffer, especially those who have grown old in the mis-directed “service” of the FoF. They have made choices that were perhaps foolish, but they were their choices, and they must deal with the consequences of their choices, just as you and I must. Many of them are living in an environment (art, music, gardens, events) that pleases them. They have been willing to ignore the deceit, the crime, the suffering of others in order to continue living in this environment.
Among other issues, for these “old hands” to continue as such with clearer consciences, FoF would need to become financially self supporting, i.e. not run on the donations of those who have been bringing in the money all these years. Not on the fake money-grubbing “events” of RB. Let Apollo Arts become self sufficient. Let Apollo Olive Oil, the orchard, the reduced vineyard, yes, the gardens, the stupid palm trees, the nurseries, let them all bring in sufficient money to pay the salaries and the retirement and the health insurance. Take all the money away from RB, from law suits, from legal insurance, from relocating a fountain 2 feet to the south or changing the color scheme of RB’s study. Bring in real management. It sure is no School as it is, so it might as well become efficient, no more excuse for “intentional friction”.
It is not going to happen.
And you know what? Even if we depose RB (which is very unlikely) – the corruption will still be there, because those who will have the power after he’s gone (his “inner circle”) have become equally corrupt themselves. Oh, they may not seek the same sexual gratification, they may not be quite so greedy, but their corruption will have it’s own outlet. And they may not have the charisma, so less money will be pulled in. But the rottenness at the root will kill the tree. They have traded their power, their green cards, their jobs, their place in the hierarchy – for their consciences and their sincerity. Will they suffer? You bet. Are there innocents in there, who really didn’t “know what was going on”? Umm, maybe. We had pretty big earplugs and blinders for a long time.
There but for fortune, go you and I – oh, yes, and we will suffer too, we may lose our property, some money at least. That’s the breaks, the payment we make for converting naivete to experience.
But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court.
Better to let it all collapse on it’s own weaknesses.
Put our loving energy towards all those Friends out there.
“Better to let it all collapse on it’s own weaknesses.
Put our loving energy towards all those Friends out there.”
I agree.
Old Fish continued…
Another thought for those friends still “in”, who have pinned their lives and old age on the FoF, well, I would take them in, help them survive. Wouldn’t you?
So here’s a message to my friends who might be trapped – I have room, I love you, you are welcome to my help. You can find me on the Greater Fellowship website – send your request to Janna 14;104.
Sharon H.
Hello Cathie ~
You wrote ~
“But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court.”
_________________________
Tell Troy Buzbee that; he got nearly 1 million dollars ((after)) the lawyers were paid.
I truly do not believe that a “going through” has to be filled with anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling ‘had’:
I mean geez, you can get all that by rejoining the Fellowship of Friends, better yet, stay in: too you can get that by saying ‘no’ to the Grand Yes Goddess (oooo, a rap, I wanna, it’s brewing).
Comeon Cathie, get off the Formatory Emotional Choo Choo Train and live a little;
I took a certain ‘dealership’ to court as a young teenager: I lost, yet I won, though I didn’t get my money back, because a certain ‘second party purchaser could not make it’, all the hoopla got them out of town and revealed to other possible ‘lollipops’; the class action lawsuit won’t have that kind of denying force, nor is it about money, its about those still in their (you know (yes I said it), it would be Rambo like), and particularly those to come, so to speak.
Yes, its July and its pretty easy to be skeptical and dismayed; yet, what if it were, say, November, rainy days ahead, nothing to do but to sue, sue, sue… Pretend its November, put on your mittens, ski jacket, woolly pants, socks and hat and get on the slope or would you rather have your conscience smokin post humorous Burton dope?
The anger can be replaced with separation and by carrying and taking a look from time to time at a few pictures of Lewis Carol little boys, who, if Troy Buzbee is any proof, will be attending prospective student meetings in 8-10 years, when some other narcissus brother is on the front cover of ‘Oregon House Pimp Daddy Froth Way Lover’.
What ‘self justification’? It’s not about ‘the self’, at least the real self, its about the ‘little elf’, the naive ones coming and staying and those who (believe it or not) still don’t know. It’s about essence growing and well, yes, history; educating essence and putting up some objective milestones and payment markers.
“Revenge and feeling ‘had'” (?) ~ Wow, Cathie, you could wiseacre those emotions about anything that’s controversial on this planet, plastic cups for instance, I mean, plastic bags are already banned in San Francisco, the Terminator is our Governor and George Bush is president:
anyone who’s not doing the ‘Rilke thing’ and transforming all this hay fever ‘pollen’ into the invisible could be considered ‘had’, particularly at the end of one’s ‘play’, if you’re one of the those who ‘sees it coming’, some do not even have the ‘time slot’ to feel those kind of depressions, the switch is simply clicked OFF, while they’re feeling good.
To me, all the emotions you speak of (in their extremes) just get essence H12 running into momma and daddy’s arms; you can do better than that.
These emotions occur every day and are automatically applied to even the difference in price of produce at Oregon House Grocery and Food For Less in Yuba City, your spouse, your naiveté, a bad movie based on a bogus reviewers spin, a shirt bought at an Isis auction that was $200 and cost (since they were bought in bulk) $25 each.
Actually, there’s not much room in the court house for the Queen of Heart’s, you just have to stick to the facts and there are plenty. Writing a ‘Bill of Particulars’ and presenting it to the judge is a great way to start.
The only reason Eve started running out of Eden is because Adam took the snake off her shoulders and put it on his and said “Catch me if you can”, she, running after him, whirling an arm load of apples near his head.
_________________________
P.S. And, no, Cathie, you are not a descendant of Robert Burton’s rib and do not owe him what he himself does not show back.
Love to you all.
Name correction; sorry Sharon, I called you Cathie in post #157…
How are things in Grass Valley?
l.t.y.a.
Uno – don’t blame Cathie – that’s me, Sharon.
“”Let Apollo Arts become self sufficient. Let Apollo Olive Oil, the orchard, the reduced vineyard….””
Hi Sharon and all,
Actually these are private enterprises. The olive oil and organic cherry orchards are very successful– I would guess because the products are *wonderful* and are smartly marketed. I think a lease is paid to the fof for the space to grow/make the products. (Has everyone tasted the olive oil? I am in awe. Finally, a good product from that landscape that has a taste that reflects the good parts.)
Current members are not dummies. Some of us (current and former) have never fit in completely, but that does not mean that we can’t find a niche. That is what California was invented for. (well, maybe the whole west coast…)
”Let Apollo Arts become self sufficient.”
It’s too bad for the FOF mural painters that Saddam isn’t around. He loved vain-glorious high kitsch.
Guys, I think FOF will collapse all by itself and probably sooner than we think… Teacher will teach only if he gets cash. The way things are going there is less and less of cash coming in.
Please keep shedding light, keep exposing the lies, keep telling your stories. Truth doesn’t need to be defended it just needs to be seen. FOF is so corrupted and commercialized but doesn’t show this ugly side to new seekers. The teaching became so clearly absurd and insane so all we have to do is simply post it without adding anything. It speaks (screams) for itself!
I’ll continue to post the original stuff from FOF as it is – unaltered, and let it speak for itself. I encourage others to do the same. Let buyer beware. Hopefully those students who are still in doubt will make up their minds. Let us see the brainwashing, shameless money sqeezing, and purely delusional interpretations of various images being sold to students as “Sacred Teaching”. Let us see it for what it is and be honest with ourselves.
_________________________________________
Dear Friends,
The Video Distribution Octave is undergoing further refinement. Our Teacher underlines the importance for each of us to be as closely connected to this sacred Teaching as possible. He has listed as one of our highest priorities
the viewing of the Teaching Events on DVD.
The School is moving at lightening speed. C Influence continually reveals new knowledge. The level of Robert’s Teaching becomes ever more distilled and objective.Each student will now be able to go to propylaia and access the list of the Teaching videos. You will find the list of videos under the Link “From the Teacher”.
___________________________________
Dear Friends,
Robert has pointed out that the task of our school is to gather all the expressions of the system historically, and that we have now come to the earliest expressions of the system in prehistoric times, before Egypt. He requested that the following message with accompanying images and quotations be sent to the School:
Although the prehistoric school did not use written language to transmit their knowledge, we can understand their images with the help of the writings of other traditions. In particular, our understanding of the Egyptian School is now serving as a bridge to help us understand the Prehistoric Tradition, as pre-dynastic Egypt is essentially the end of the Prehistoric Tradition. Below are three examples of Prehistoric images with accompanying quotes that help explain their keys:
1) The first image is the The Head of a Woman with Cross-hatched Hair. It is from France, dated 25,000 BP (Before the Present). It is carved from mammoth ivory and is about 4 cm tall.
Hair is a key for the many ‘I’s, the ten thousand. Hair put into order represents the many ‘I’s, the passions, under control with the sequence (as opposed to chaos, imagination). This passage from Going Forth by Day refers to the steward coming out of imagination with Short Be.
The neatly arranged cross-hatched hair of the woman shows the order brought to the steward/ the nine of hearts with the sequence.
2) The next image, The Hunting Scene, is a rock painting from a cave in Lascaux, France, dated approximately 15,000 BP.
It shows a mammoth with a falling man, and to the left, a rhinoceros with excrement in six small dots passing from him.
What I detest is excretion and I will not eat it…I will not be satisfied with filth.
Coffin Texts
This passage from the Egyptian Coffin Texts (Late Old Kingdom to Middle Kingdom texts found on coffins) describes the steward who does not want to be in imagination; he is not satisfied having ‘I’s unrelated to promoting presence, here called filth and excrement.
This verse explains the image of the rhinoceros, keyed as the lower self, who is excreting the sequence. The lower self is in control of the sequence at this point and the steward is falling back, failing to act. It is a failed sequence mouthed too weakly, without heart, and it cannot engage presence with it.
3) The third image is a Flute, from France, dated 34,000 BP. It is made from vulture bone.
The vulture is known for its ability to fly at high altitudes for long periods of time, and it became a symbol of Long BE in the Egyptian School. Tutankhamun had a cobra head and a vulture head on his golden mask, Short Be and Long BE.
The flute made of vulture bone has four holes—after Long BE, sustain the four wordless breaths.
Robert called it the Magic Flute.
By self sufficient, I am including the paying of a living wage, health insurance and retirement for employees/owners.
Bruce, I don’t think Apollo Arts was involved in the murals at Galleria. I could be wrong.
Another exampe of “fishing” for sacred teaching, or Sacred Teaching in the making.
Let’s collect all your random I’s, then have Robert and Asaf regurgitate them, then stage a meeting and make sure it’s filmed and then printed as “Thoughts from the Teacher”- and here’s our new “sacred teaching” for sale!
How can anyone in their sane mind take this “teaching” seriously…
“Dear Friends,
We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the Zodiac. Our aim is to understand how it relates to the sequence of six work ‘I’s-the essence of the system-rather than life’s psychological interpretations of the signs.
A few initial observations: There are twelve signs in the zodiac, roughly corresponding to the twelve months in a year. This suggests that they occur in time, in sequence, where one follows another. At this point, however, we do not know why twelve and not six. Another instance we see a sequence of twelve is in the Egyptian teaching, in the twelve hours of the Amduat, where the night bark travels through the twelve hours of the night before emerging into the daylight hours. Note that there are also twelve hours of daylight, suggesting long BE lasts as long as the steps it took to reach it-although at this point we are only presuming this and are not certain whether or not this is the right interpretation.
In a school, it is enough that one student make a connection for the whole to benefit, as has been the case several times since we began working with the keys. We would therefore like to invite any suggestions and insights you have that can shed more light into the esoteric meaning of the Zodiac. Keep in mind that ultimately the answers are simple and obvious once revealed.
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
Thank you,
Asaf.”
To Old Fish In The Sea – 14/39
In the first part of your post I thought we were experiencing history in the making; a former member addressing a current member without being condescending, obscene, insulting, mocking, attacking one’s mental health, preaching, or any number of lapses in decorum. But even with the faltering conclusion your post arrives at it still makes my top ten for civility coming from your camp to mine.
Former members like to use the term “group think” (FoF think); well there is such a thing as blog think. It is characterized, amoung other things, by the unrelenting notion that if the FoF did not work for them (former students) it does not work for anyone. If they ultimately did not find it to be real it is not real. And that the only thing seperating former members from current members is that with current members the “fog of devotion” has not lifted yet, and once it does they too will add the prefix “former” to their FoF designation.
What can be the basis for that thinking? Could it be a feature that starts with the letter V? Or just an extreme desire to get back at the person/organization that “damned” them with their leaving ?
Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing. No matter what we say regarding the school working for us they counter with “you only think like this because you are flawed, lying or lagging behind. I didn’t experience this when I was there so you can’t have either.”
This is very different from what Siddiq writes or what I write (GOlb can at times get a little more “in your face,”
God bless him).
We basically are saying that the school works for us, and often we try our best to articulate why it works in a reasonable, even toned manner. We do not insult or mock those we respond to. We are relating our experiences, not trying to dictate to former students what they ought to be experiencing. There is a very big difference in the two approaches.
Here is my question to you: can you, as a former member, live with the possibility that “maybe I missed something about the experience, maybe an attitude prevented me from seeing another side of everything?”
If one really valued the truth above all else one could live with and embrace many possibilities, even things one doesn’t want to be true. I exist with the possibility of living without the school. So far it has not come to pass.
Do you really think that the FoF could exist for 38 years and be thriving as I write if it were only what its harshest critics say it is? It’s the only organization I know of that lays claim to be a conscious school of awakening in the tradition of all the ancient schools (it’s the only organization to name those other schools) and people here say it’s the very opposite of this, an evil cult.
Can it survive this long and thrive being so purely everything it claims not to be and nothing it claims to be? If this is so it’s “lottery” odds or better for it to have survived this long. If it’s true that “God can forgive anything but hypocrisy” how could a higher power allow its name to be taken in vain for so long and to hurt so many?
Can an auto shop remain in business for long if it does not fix the problem of the cars put in its care, and the owners even find new problems when they pick up the car?
One of the biggest obstacles to presence is that we simply do not remember to do it; hours go by without even having the ‘I’ to engage presence. On the other hand being present is what Robert relentlessly speaks about, day in and day out, by the minute.
Are we to seriously believe it’s possible for him to always remember to speak about being present but not to be actually doing it? What’s being said on this blog by former students is impressive for its sheer unlikelyhood.
Regarding the last part of your post; it fails because you then start telling me what my reality is, what I’M experiencing. This is where you lose all credibility.
I am not afraid in the sense you allude to. I am afraid of a life spent in the second state; that is why I stay in the FoF. That is why I do feel free. There are no fetters on me so there are none to remove. I don’t get depressed. I don’t suffer from insomnia. “A clear conscience does not fear midnight”.
The only limits placed on my ability to be present are those that come from within. The school does not confine me in any manner. It frees me in every manner. It works for me; why should I leave it. I want more of it. I want it to be more of what it is and I want myself to be able to experience it more deeply.
To The Followers Whom It May Concern:
Please be informed that despite the years of your tireless dedication to the Fellowship of Friends you are and have been supporting a corrupt and licentious organization with your money, time, and labor. As with everyone else on the planet, there are consequences to your actions for which as adults you are responsible. Pleading ignorance is not a defense, it is simply a buffer. Please consider that if the Fellowship of Friends were to become financially stressed or insolvent, you may lose your employment, if you are employed by this organization. Please be advised that it may be in your interest to secure other means of employment as soon as possible and to plan for your financial independence. If you are in this country on a religious visa, it may also be in your interest to prepare for the eventuality that your visa be revoked.
To those followers in legitimate business for themselves on the property owned bt the FOF, please be advised that there may be unforeseen financial consequences for doing business with the FOF that as a business owner you may wish to consider and plan for.
To Those Willing to Dedicate Their Time and Effort:
Here’s what I propose as a possible course of action:
Commit time and energy to showing up at the perspective ‘student’ meetings in your home town and hand-out flyers with this blog address and pertinent information to provide a balance to what is presented in the meetings so the public can make a more informed choice whether or not to join. This effort would need to be both a national and an international effort to be effective, since apparently most of the new ‘membership’ is coming from abroad.
If the vineyard in still owned and operated by the FOF, the stores that sell the wine as well as the buyers of that wine can be informed of its origin and the circumstances of its production to be able to make a more informed choice about whether or not to buy those products.
All suppliers of material goods, foodstuffs, or any other support items, including financial instruments such as loans or credit lines for the FOF can be informed of the nature of this organization and its practices. This will allow them to make informed choices as to whether they wish to continue doing business with the FOF.
As Ben Franklin said, “Small strokes fell great oaks.”
Let your conscience be your guide. That’s what ‘C’-influence is really all about.
Howard, in #14-163, you say:
“Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing.”
And in #14-138 you told me, “I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB”.
Notice anything?
“We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers. Our aim is to understand how they relate to the sequence of six work I’s the essence of the system rather than life’s anatomical interpretations.
Counting from left to right there are ten, five on each hand roughly corresponding to the ten toes. Each follows the other in a sequence suggesting they exist in time. At this point however we do not understand why ten and not six.
We would therefore like to invite any suggestions and insights you have that can shed more light into the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers. Keep in mind that ultimately the answers are simple and obvious once revealed.
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
Thank you, Asaf.”
Hello Howard, thank you for articulating so well the frequent hypocrisy of this Blog-think.
Thanks for being here.
As you write, sometimes hours go by without a single thought of presence…what many bloggers do not grasp is that because of this we are all so much more alike (out in the fog) than our lower self likes to accept. The only difference is which direction do we want to go?
Siddiq
Howard Carter post 163 said about the FOF.
‘It’s the only organisation I know of that lays claim to be a concious school of awakening in the tradition of all the ancient schools.( it’s the only organisation to name those schools ) and people here say it’s the very opposite of this,an evil cult.’
The very notion of the ‘tradition of ancient schools’ is a product of Burton and the FOF so no wonder they would be the ‘only organisation to name those schools’
The reason you are here HC presenting the same flawed ludicrous ideas over and over is for the same reason Peter I. tirelessly works on updating the FOF entry on wikipedia, even to the extent of knowingly lying through his teeth.( his revisionist interpretation of the the failed prophecys of Burton ) .The FOF is starting to unravel before your eyes,people are leaving in large numbers and you are desperate to try and push the old phony ‘King of Hearts’ FOF spiel through all of this in the hope that some gullible and needy person will fall for it and join.( very few are joining anymore).After all.it worked in past and it’s the only song you can sing.
Whalerider–“To Those Willing to Dedicate Their Time and Effort”–there are no such people Whalerider, is that not obvious?
This blog is made up of people who either woke up some 10-20-30 years to find out about a little sex or whose favorite weapon is the keyboard–give me a break!
Mole, once again you are wrong, just check the membership numbers before posting your lies. Membership is around 2 thousand, just as it was 6 months ago.
“All suppliers of material goods, foodstuffs, or any other support items, including financial instruments such as loans or credit lines for the FOF can be informed of the nature of this organization and its practices. This will allow them to make informed choices as to whether they wish to continue doing business with the FOF.”
So deranged cult members should not be allowed to eat, drink and have a credit card?
Get real folks!
To Laughing Love
“Howard:
You say:
“It makes perfect sense to me that it takes a soul more than one lifetime to “get it right”; that’s why I rejected the world religion of Christanity.”
Yet the only response you could offer me was to quote Jesus Christ.”
Chirst has nothing to do with Christianity; I assumed that was a given.
Ryan–great example of “blog-think”–belittle everything your little mind cannot grasp. then pretend to be funny and clever.
Siddiq, – Great example of FOF think. Defend madness at all costs and belittle anyone who sees it for what it is.
By the way you sound increasingly desperate.
Siddiq, in #14-132 you say:
“…there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated current students”
and in #14-170 you say, “Membership is around 2 thousand…”
Now I know that both can be true, but the implication of the first quote is that the numbers are rather closer to 1,000 than 2,000, wouldn’t you agree? No wonder we are confused!
Just teasing!
Regards to you, I appreciate your doggedness for its own sake, and Howard’s too. Tell them you deserve a raise!
Ames
P.S. Are you sure (I mean really ‘sure’) s/he’s not a ‘former student’ providing a foil for us?
(Still teasing!)
Howie,
Your organisation is not thriving, it is in the first throes of a lingering but inevitable demise. Neither do you or Siddiq any longer represent the voice of the majority of its members. You are merely the voice of the tumor which will kill it.
“Could a higher power allow its name to be taken in vain for so long and to hurt so many?”
Finally and obviously the answer is, NO!
Thank Goodness,
Ryan.
Siddiq,
I got it at last! Sorry, I’m slow, its past my bedtime. Maybe you meant that there are in excess of 1,000 dedicated students out of a total of 2,000. That is, nearly a thousand are not dedicated, maybe wavering, maybe ready to move on July 15th? Is that what you meant?
(still teasing!)
Good night, I hope you rest well and arise tomorrow refreshed and ready for the fray!
Ames
And tell the Ouspensky office I mean it about the raise!
Howard (163)
Although you may not be conscious of your utter arrogance in your posts, it is always present. You point to Golb as someone who is in one’s face, but you have consistently met and exceeded his attitude.
You’ve suddenly shifted into a “poor us” attitude that is highly unlike any of your previous posts.
You are participating on a discussion board in which former members are talking about their true experience with the Fellowship of Friends and its leader, Robert Burton. That is your choice.
If you wish to discuss your ideas with Fellowship members, it is probably a good idea to start a discussion board for them.
You will find compassion and attempts at understanding here because we’ve all been where you are, but you will not find any who agree that your school is a positive oasis.
It seems that suddenly and mysteriously that is your desire.
The responses you receive here are filled with good will. Mostly, the ex-members are polite and understanding, although I admit that some use expletives and sarcasm which is really not effective (me included). Still, your comments are so filled with logical lapses that it is very easy to desire to slap you silly with your own brand of communication.
In example, who knows if we are reincarnated. I hope so much that we are, although I question why I have that desire. It’s a very fun notion. Still, there is no possible way of knowing if that is true or not. That is one of the most fundamental human enigmas. We simply don’t know and wish we did.
No human being on earth, regardless of religious faith, knows, for sure, that this is an indisputable truth.
It is true that I want so much for that magical thinking to be true. I want it! I’d love to come back as…as…what? I’m not sure, but I like butterflies and jelly fish. But I’m a human being and no human being knows absolutely that they will arrive anew on this planet in a different form. (A flower? Well manicured socialite?)
Unfortunately, the only time I will happily be able to know that I am about to start life anew as a nascent being on this planet is when someone says to me after I’m dead, “You’re in luck. You did great last time. This time you’re going to be an octopus.” Or, perhaps, “Wow, you were in that great school and you left. You’re definitely going to suffer for that! You’re going with the other billions straight into a bilious hellfire. You had your chance, you wanton tart, and gave it up.”
Until then, I just need to explore endlessly in whatever form I’m given. Wanton tart and all.
It’s all so Catholic!
Peace,
LL
Howard (172)
Ah, this one needs an immediate response.
Howard says:
“Christ has nothing to do with Christianity; I assumed that was a given.”
Christianity: “Christ ianity”.
Oh my goodness. I’m suddenly realizing that this is an idiot I’m responding to seriously.
Wow. I’m done.
LL
To Ames – 165
“Howard, in #14-163, you say:
“Here is the most dubious aspect of blog think. Former students are telling people like myself, Siddiq and GOlb (the only three supporters who have posted in the last month or so) what WE are experiencing.”
And in #14-138 you told me, “I don’t really believe that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You are just distancing yourself from FoF/REB”.
Notice anything?”
I didn’t say I don’t have opinions. How can anyone write a word without taking a stand of some sort? What I’m speaking about in 163 is a far cry from what you cite. I think you know that.
Hello ~ 158 Sharon
Uno – don’t blame Cathie – that’s me, Sharon.
__________________________
Yes, I caught that one Sharon; I had Cathie’s name in my coconut juice prior to reading your post, things got swished around; sorry for the mix up… The sheik canned my response to you I think because I mentioned where you live. How are you and the ‘big family’ doing?
As far as I can recall I didn’t blame you for anything; just attempting to be an old friend, anonymously, yet still a friend, particularly in July and August, these months will be particularly strong during 2007: this first week of July have already proven to be one coconut shy of Apocalypse Now.
Take care.
_____________________
Love to you all.
Thanks for your answers Howard. You made a number of points and I cannot deal with them all tonight so I will chose two of the most important.
You said:
Here is my question to you: can you, as a former member, live with the possibility that “maybe I missed something about the experience, maybe an attitude prevented me from seeing another side of everything?
Howard my experience in the Fellowship was pretty good. I don’t think I missed a lot, but what do I know.
I do not and cannot know what you, Robert or others experience, or what I might have missed. I can only guess based on what I see. I have to weigh the evidence available to me, and what goes on inside you and others can only be determined from what I can observe about you, filtered by my own features and experience.
Could I have missed something? Yes, but I think I weighed the evidence available to me pretty carefully. Simply put, Robert’s values did not synchronize with mine. Was it an attitude that limited my vision? Perhaps. I like to think that it was not an attitude but the wind. The wind said it was time for me. The wind blew in new perceptions. I did not leave because I did not like the Fellowship but more to experience something new. It was time for a new world view, a whole new set of experiences and states – a world view, where I was no longer a follower. I wanted a world without walls.
I did not see myself as conscious, but after over 30 years I wanted to try to see myself in a whole new way. I had given and received what I could, and my life was running out. If I was going to perceive the world differently I needed to get started.
I was ready to gamble. I was ready to try trusting myself to find my own values. I felt that this was the only way to move forward. I was stuck and I was curious to see what I would come to value and I was not identified with any result in particular.
Once I reached this state I could not support Robert any more. I think my other posts and the one about the Baby in the bath water explain my feelings on that.
Could I have missed something? Of course. but I turned over every rock that I could for a long time. I did receive something but at some point I wanted something new. Would another 30 years have changed that. Who can know but I sincerely doubt it.
You said,
“I am afraid of a life spent in the second state; that is why I stay in the FoF.”
This is exactly what I meant when I said you were afraid. I took a guess based on my own experience. This is exactly what every student fears. My experience so far indicates that this fear leads to a subtle identification which blocks higher centers. It also allows you to continue to support some pretty shady dealings.
Best wishes Howard,
We each have chosen our path and will pay in our own way. Maybe someday the wind will actually change for you and blow you out or perhaps it will blow me back in. Somehow I doubt either will occur but I meant what I said earlier – the fence is imaginary. In the moment, we all have to deal with the same things. But we each must go with our conscience or we will not move forward. Do not let fear, even fear of the 2nd state dictate your conscience. There is nothing to fear.
I turned to a page in Rumi’s book of poems the today, saying first, “What would you like to say to the Fellowship of Friends”… Honest Abe, cross my heart, this is the page I turned to… (the whole prose continues onto the next page for those wiseacres who are thinking that I might have chosen the one page of two that suits the blogs spirit best.)
From Rumi (pages 318-319, The Soul of Rumi)
To: The Fellowship of Friends
“The thief unties the turban as he runs, and rag pieces fall on the road. He stands holding
a single tatter. “You’ve cheated me.” “Yes, but at the same time I warned you of the fraud.”
This is how the world speaks to us. It delights in spring blossoms, even as they fall.
“Come tast me,” say the senses, and the next sentence is,
“Leave. This is nothing much.”
The young prince of the morning, the pride of everyone with his glistening body, fumbles along
at evening, laughed at, unable to remember his name. Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. “What happened to you?”
Your dung will answer,
“My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you.”
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they’re made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman’s craft diminshes. Listen
The double music of existence; Bu Masaylim’s false claims
to the song of the flower and the song of the thorn blending. “Buy this!”
“Keep away!” “I’m ready now!” “Beloved, we are gathered here today… ” If you can’t hear
this double music, it’s difficult to recognize what’s real.
With people you can look at
their teachers. Who do they follow? Each foal has a mare that feeds it. What nourishes
humans comes from higher. Donkeys drink from underneath. Magicians can be confusing, but
when Moses arrives and throws down the rod that becomes a dragon, how do the trick bowls
look then? When something that alive comes, illusory matters fade. They quit bragging!
A body’s death, even, is beautiful to those who see with the soul’s eye. Every genuine
form of money has a counterfeit counterpart. Bu Masaylim, who always added wrong
elements to any situation, said, “I am the guide of souls, beyond religion.” Reply
to such claims, “Don’t act like you know things to get money and power.” Follow a true
sheikh’s candle. The full moon shows the traveler where to go. When it’s night, take
a lantern, so you can tell a falcon from a crow. Crows sometimes learn to mimic the
language of falcons, as a human being can make the hoopoe’s call, but without Solomon’s
secret within the sound. Distinguish a natural cry from an artificial. Shameless people
memorize the words of gnostics and dervishes. This is the was every great civilization
falls apart, by ignoring the difference between sandalwood and pine. Discernment! Everyone has
discernment, but greed obscures the subtlety. Physical blindness brings God’s mercy.
Blindness from wanting, nothing. Christ’s crucifixion is one thing. The self-crucifixion of jealousy, something else. Fish, don’t keep staring at the hook. Remember where appetites
lead. Notice every set of eyes – the ox, the one-eyed man leading his donkey, the true
human being – …
______________________________
No one owns the favors of the gods, no one…
After turning to these pages, I am in awe, particularly in reference to the Sheik… utter wordlessness now, a deep thank you to Rumi for yet another lighning bolt within this storm.
_________________________________
Love to you all.
#166
Ryan O’Poo
“We are attempting to understand the esoteric meaning of the ten fingers………….
At this point however we do not understand why ten and not six…………………
If you have any relevant thoughts on this subject, please send them to xxx…
Thank you, Asaf.”
To Asaf,
Just chop off the extra four fingers.
Aline
To Howard Carter (#14-163)
Some points about your post. You may actually be quite fortunate; you are having some experiences out of the cocoon, and you are getting plenty of ‘photographs’ for free. If you don’t value them because they are free, press the PayPal button and make a donation! The ‘standard’ of decorum is only your standard, so try ‘separating’ from the attachment. Of course there is a commonality of experience of those who have left; to one degree or another, we have all ‘been there and done that’. And of course, you are completely correct, your religion may be right (whatever that means), down to the last particular.
So much depends on viewpoint, doesn’t it? I like your analogy of the autoshop, and you put it well. But—my viewpoint is precisely the opposite of yours; that the autoshop has been fronted by a slick salesman, that it has in fact not succeeded in making a single honest repair (“…but we’ll fix that in the next lifetime, meanwhile, park the car in the back lot permanently to make room for new marks”) and that customers, having left, rarely return for a tuneup. Now you are complaining because we have reported the shop to the Better Business Bureau, and are spreading the word? Because we are picketing the building and trying to warn potential customers that the mechanics aren’t qualified, that in fact the customers have to get down in the pit without an instruction manual and try to make repairs themselves in the dark?
I’m taking the liberty of speaking for the rest of your critics here. My guess is that the majority believe that your organization has existed for 38 years and ‘thrived’ because of the secrecy surrounding so many of its actions. Now more light is being shed on the dark parts, I doubt it will last another 38 years. But, we are a pitiful few, as Siddiq has noted, and arrayed against us are the mighty gods (hope you haven’t pissed off the original 44 by abandoning them!). It is really a David and Goliath situation, and we really can have no hope, if you and your leader are right. So cheer up, in another 38 years you’ll have been proven right, and we backsliders will all be sizzling nicely (is that the new paradigm, or is it still that we’ll be rocks on the moon?)
Howard, I do appreciate your efforts, I truly believe they have served us, and you, well, they have helped clarify the thinking of the readers on both ‘sides’ (whatever that means). You, too, should get a raise in pay.
So, thank you very much for playing your part so well!
Ames
To Mole – 168
“The very notion of the ‘tradition of ancient schools’ is a product of Burton and the FOF so no wonder they would be the ‘only organisation to name those schools”
The Fourth Way was founded on this “notion.”
Siddiq #170
I have checked the membership numbers…….you are the one that is either lying or misinformed.
Siddiq:
“…a little sex…”
You’re kidding, right?
“…whose favorite weapon is the keyboard”
Fool, you underestimate the power of the pen. Now it’s the keyboard, the prime weapon of choice.
“…give me a break!”
That’s exactly what we intend…to give you, HC, and the other ‘followers’ a break from your delusions of grandeur, your manacles of gold. Your organization and leader have harmed and swindled enough people. You have been warned. The writing is on the wall.
Rumi has spoken.
Why else you have been newly ‘directed’ to study him?
Allah is my witness!
Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.
One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.
His bed was next to the room ‘ s only window.
The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
The men talked for hours on end.
They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.
Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.
The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.
The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.
Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.
As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.
One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.
Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind ‘ s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.
Days, weeks and months passed.
One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.
She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.
Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.
He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.
It faced a blank wall.
The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.
The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.
She said, “Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.”
Epilogue:
There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations.
Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.
If you want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can ‘ t buy.
“Today is a gift, that is why it is called The Present.”
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).
Vanity, power and fear…oh my.
We’re not in Kansas anymore toto.
Tell me its not old Nick! Cy
unoanimo,
Mysterious are the workings of the soul, eh? Every once in a while I find myself in the path of one of those lightning bolts too.
“When something that alive comes, illusory matters fade. ”
Thanks.
Sharon 154: “So here’s a message to my friends who might be trapped – I have room, I love you, you are welcome to my help. You can find me on the Greater Fellowship website – send your request to Janna 14;104.”
Excellent message. The Greater Fellowship website keeps growing. Anyone who leaves won’t lose contact with friends, in fact many from the past are now popping up. The worldwide network of connections is being reconstructed outside the FoF.
Regardsing the FoF’s demise: maybe yes, maybe no. For sure it’s very vulnerable right now – a small push could collapse the whole pack of cards. Personally, like Sharon, I wouldn’t want to be involved in a lawsuit, but it’s certainly possible that someone might feel strongly enough to initiate one. Perhaps more likely is financial collapse. FoF finances were always a mess, even in the best of times, because of RB’s insatiability.
Howie 162: Nice post. Though I disagree with you about almost everything, you do put a coherent case for those who choose a path like yours. One thing I do agree with you about is that the obnoxious attacks on your postings are childish and unnecessary.
Siddiq 167: “As you write, sometimes hours go by without a single thought of presence…what many bloggers do not grasp is that because of this we are all so much more alike (out in the fog) than our lower self likes to accept.”
This problem arises for you because you believe you need to have a “thought of presence”. You don’t. You’re only in the fog because you think you are – it’s all in your mind.
Siddiq 170: “Membership is around 2 thousand, just as it was 6 months ago.”
Not for long. More and more are leaving, and many more are considering it. Many are hanging on for a while because they’ve been told they can pay either no or very low donations.
Somebody (#14-190), if Howard is Nick Sp—-ding, then he seems to have lost the sense of humor I thought I observed all those years ago. Maybe the weight of buffers erected since then squashed it? The posts are notable for lack of humor and indeed much passion. But, the rest does fit…
Nick S…the little man behind the curtian. Shame on you!…scaring everyone like that. You are a bad, bad man!
Behold! The broom of the wicked witch of the west!
The Water of knowledge melts the witch of fear.
Followers of Oz! You already have everything you need inside you…your intellect, your heart, and your courage.
You have suffered long enough! You can leave any time you wish. The ruby slippers already on your feet are your walking shoes.
And there is no place like the present.
Good morning Mole ~
You wrote ~
“187 Mole.
Siddiq #170
I have checked the membership numbers…….you are the one that is either lying or misinformed.”
______________________________
LOL… after such a ‘checkmate’ usually something on the board falls, like the current membership number itself (?)
___________________
l.t.y.a.
Unoanimo and Bruce, what lovely quotes. Words do carry energy! I also enjoyed the story that retroactively appeared at post 14-10, I mention it because some of you might have missed it.
Since there has been recent mention of ancient teachings, I’d like to contribute to the discussion with these excerpts from “The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects” by Alexandra David-Neel:
“The Buddha insisted strongly on the necessity of examining the propositions put forward by Him, and of understanding them personally before accepting them as true.
The ancient texts leave no doubt on this point:
“Do not believe on the strenght of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or priests. After investigation, believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others.” (Kalama Sutta)
And from the same book, on the subject of death and reincarnation:
“The answer to those that imagine that Buddhist salvation consists in the annihilation of the ‘ego’, at the death of the ‘person’, is that, as Buddhism denies the existence of an ‘ego’ or a soul, whatever be the name given to it, there cannot be any question of the annihilation of that which is held to be non-existent.”
“In reality there is annihilation but it is that of false views, of ignorance, and more exactly of the belief in the existence of an ‘ego’ which is independent, homogeneous and permanent, a belief which deforms our understanding of the world in deforming our mental vision.”…
“…The well-informed dreamer may cease taking pleasure in dreaming. He may stop imitating those dreamers who, enjoying the phantasmagoria which they watch and in which they play a part, persist in wishing to remain asleep. In truth, why do the dreamers fear awakening, why do they imagine in advance other dreams of hells and heavens which await them after death? It is because they fear that with the disappearance of the ‘images seen in dreams’, the illusory ‘Ego’ which is an integral part of them will disappear. They have not yet perceived that the real face of this chimerical ‘Ego’ is the face of Death. As long as the idea of this impermanent Ego lasts, this simple mass of elements which various causes have brought together and which other causes will separate, death also subsists. The Dhammapada alludes to the disappearance of this phantom from the field of our mental activity when it refers to whom ‘death does not see’, that is, he for whom death does not exist.
“The awakening is liberation, salvation. The Secret Teachings propose no other object than this to their pupils. “To wake up…The Buddhas have done nothing else than this, and it is this awakening which has made them become Buddhas.”
Also, in case he is still looking for examples of a sequence of twelve, maybe someone could suggest to Asaf to check the Buddhist theory of the “Interdependent originations”, also known as the doctrine of the twelve causes, which is known to contain exoteric and esoteric layers of meaning.
Love and good luck to all!
Thank you Laura.
Tha Blog Buzz Part 1
Hello ~ 190 somebody
“I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).”
_________________________________
You must be a Russian female (?) Italian?
It’s a little humorous because as soon as I read “especially if you are a woman”… the name everyone is a buzz with just popped in my mind, without any mental-ing at all on my part…funny how the brain is just that kinda little intuitive coconut.
BTW… Nick doesn’t have a drop of Power, unless he’s borrowed it’s outward form in some ‘act’… I know him well, the V and F are spot on; usually Solar-Mars-Jovials don’t have much room for the earth hugging Power feature, there are exceptions I am sure; Patricia S. for instance.
Welp. If that is who HC is, then this explains allot; not that we need to much more to understand where HC is getting his coconut milk from.
BTW…since I am on the subject of HC007, after re-reading some of Siddiq’s postings, I was wrong, I really thought I knew who ‘he’ was, even that I had met him because of certain references in our conversation to ‘certain’ blog key-phrases and subjects… little hint-y playing between the two of us concerning identities, etc. Though now that Siddiq has reached stage Orange in his bottom of the barrel clawing, I do not recognize those nails across the blackboard… So, no, I can’t say I know Siddiq; yet, I must in some way.
Well Nick, if that is you, I can certainly understand your clinging now (not that it does not reflect all the dinosaurs clinging to the edge of the tar pits); I say this because I know your initial essence, and how Robert Burton has deeply exploited both your vanity feature and your self-pity, simultaneously, probably having convinced you that you’re working on yourself by fine turning your ‘daddy boy’ complex; only a rogue spirit-ego entity could do such a thing, while juggling your manhood eggs thirdly…
Yes, I am going out on a limb a bit here, I vowed to not write to HC, yet, I am writing to Nickolas actually; particularly if HC is not Nick… so I feel alright about this little excursion to the hummingbird nest… LOL, do you recall, when the hummingbird flew into the galleria during a sunday meeting and Robert Burton ‘keyed it’… LOL, then hummingbirds were the rave at ‘Apollo’, hummingbirds everywhere, even diamond studded hummingbirds…
Yep, its seems fitting though, the hummingbird as the mascot of the Fellowship of Friends, after all, its the only bird that can fly backwards to avoid the ‘dangerous’ unknown.
Wow, well, not to forget, I said it before, my love goes out to you, yet, it’s gonna be a bit of the ‘tough love’ thing; in many ways the Fellowship of Friends has asked for all this, I just turned the valves horizontal this morning on the Nitrous oxide and methane mixture for the stealth locomotive, who does not smoke, checked the railroad running through the Fellowship property, everything looks good, no explosives, no sign of railroad spikes missing, no stigmata on the tracks…
Choo choo
___________________________
Love to you all.
Sheik:
A request. Would it be possible to “announce” posts that have been released after moderation?
e.g. “14-10 has been released from moderation”
Those of us using the time-saving “Control+Down” function to automatically go to the latest entry, are likely to miss those posts that are inserted far back in the discussion.
It’s unfortunate, because the moderated posts often represent new voices, or those we’ve missed for a while.
Thanks for your support.
Laura:
Thanks for bringing 14-10 to our attention!
Hey Ames, thanks, you are quite the teaser, but I just picked the number 1,000 because there are at least that much seriously dedicated students, this leaves room for some to to join or leave, and then there are newer students.
I have directly checked the membership numbers and it is what I said it was, still almost 2000–note that Mole refuses to say what the number is, just the comments are that “massive amounts are leaving”-type vague. It is simply not the case.
So then I asked for that raise…they told me to collect directly from you, Unanimo and Bruce. So how about a little “Penpal” donation to me old buddy?
Siddiq
Unanimo, do you know if I know that you know, if I know that Uno Animo, etc etc.? If you are who I think I am–we are in wonderful company! Good luck to us–dont forget to use the Penpal donation to keep me in business and I will do the same…
RN This problem arises for you because you believe you need to have a “thought of presence”. You don’t. You’re only in the fog because you think you are – it’s all in your mind.
I thought you have to have the initial impulse, otherwise we stay in our imagination, identification, etc., what do you think?
S.
Post 203 ~ Thanks for helping us to verify your stage ORANGE.
200
“usually Solar-Mars-Jovials don’t have much room for the earth hugging Power feature, there are exceptions I am sure; Patricia S. for instance.”
Solar-Mars-Jovials…Patricia, sorry, I don’t think so. I love Patricia, have known her for a LONG time, and have a very different opinion. She’s one of the members I wish only the best for, bless her. Unless there a two Patricia S.’s.
202
Don’t include me. I don’t think you should be paid at all.
Sorry Bruce, but I have to ask you again to make a PenPal donation immediately. Make it worth my while, I may just leave this blog at this rate of pay. You all would be very sorry if only Howard is left to take shots at.
and Bruce don’t give me that Blog-think snappy “eat shit” reaction this time, will you?
“You all would be very sorry if only Howard is left to take shots at.”
You’re just chock full of wrong assumptions today my friend. I’ve made my donation, and stipulated that it not go for either war or siddiq.
Unanimo–Orange? how do you know my favorite color? yes, I am glad to see you!
eat shit.
209 I’m beginning to think you might be Collin. You’re very reminiscent of that snide, shit eating little jerk.
Bruce, you are once again describing what is inside of you.
Very glib, clever and inventive siddiq.
“Siddiq” seems to have a new persona.
Why not “I know you are but what am I”? And then take your ball and go home.
Siddiq, I regularly press the PenPal button. The machinery delivers mixed results, like the ‘New’ new math. If the Ouspensky office can’t afford a raise, you’ll have to go directly to Burton; he can certainly afford it. And when you do, specify cash, otherwise you’ll just get blue pills—and a request for a donation.
Siddiq, the current number of FOF is 1700 as I STATED IN A POST ON THE PREVIOUS THREAD.NOTHING VAGUE ABOUT IT.I ALSO GAVE MY SOURCE….LINDA T.
Seems like you are to ‘busy being present’ to take in whats in front of your face.Like words on a screen for instance.
And yes, I like to see your ass kicked here because you represent everything pnony about the FOF.You started off with your ‘King of hearts ‘ love- everyone -Mr Reasonable act but it’s falling apart now as witnessed by your last flurry of reactions.
Re: 192 cyclops
Tell me its not old Nick! Cy
Sources from inside the Pyle say HC is really
Henry K, aka Henry Ruth…..d.
Nick has a different mission, so they say.
Bruce,
I can guarantee Siddiq is not Collin. I’m not even sure Collin is Collin; he’s definitely not the person you describe, at least not now.
Also, yes, there are two Patricia’s with last names starting with S. I agree with your comment about your friend Patricia. From what I know about her, the other Patricia does not deserve to be slandered either. She just has a power feature, like a lot us do.
Another name inaccuracy I noted earlier was someone described as Allison, whose real name happens to be Alisanne. This one needs to be accurate, for posterity!
All these hidden identities are really weird. I for one would like to know who I’m listening to. If any of you masked people know me and trust me to give you respect and keep your confidence (including Siddiq and Howard Carter), please feel free to write to me privately. I might like to communicate something better not shared with +/-2000 of our closest friends. (Worth a try.)
With love to all both in and out,
joseph.granados@gmail.com
220
Pyle…is that like hemorrhoid?
Henry R………! I love Henry R……..d!
Is he still married to Grace?
221
Wouldn’t you think these people would have the balls to put a face to their names? Especially if they are so willing to defend their paths. I wonder what they’re afraid of, hmmmmmmmmm?
Do you mean that Collin is a completely different person now, internally? That would be wonderful. He was a very talented person, but to my way of thinking, he had some pretty fucked up priorities.
It’s TRUE, it’s all true…..well, ALMOST all true:
#190 Somebody:
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic.
He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue
with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a
woman).
ALL TRUE except I am NOT Howard Carter…..and I am sure
this is good news for Howard….however he/she is……
and…good news for Un_anim_ because he has not broken
his vow.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The “magic” on this page of the drama is that, before I read my name on the blog, I WAS formulating a post:
To ask Howard Carter
Siddiq…and
GOlb (if they are truly
current students)
to discontinue posting to the blog.
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
Dear Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb:
Please consider not participating in the blog….
Paraphrased:
Rodney Collin said that giving knowledge and attention
to issues esoteric, when someone is not asking for them,
violates the principles of esoteric transmission.
Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to “leave their space clean.”
Robert has also asked that we avoid “unnecessary”
association with friends who have chosen to leave.
So, if you would consider that no one has been officially
asked to participate on the blog except probably the
legal people, and that considerable energy has gone
from you, into the blog that is confrontational and
provocative, maybe…. could you find it beneficial
to stand down?
Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway
to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering
that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their
process, not yours. Give them their space. Generally,
people consult with those they trust before
making big decisions. If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
Also……Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb,
If you feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse,
you may be naive…..
in addition to offering a doorway to peace and healing, it also
seems to offer another doorway to a “War Room” where
sincere and heartfelt plans for action are being made.
This truly being my first and last post……
Love to all who wish……
Ni_k
Personally, I no longer believe any of the anonymous identifications (or rather obfuscations). They just hide in their caves and spew shit.
It’s interesting that the Greater Fellowship site are always advertising their’s as the more, let’s say, Democratic, and we’re the Bush war mongers… LOL;
the little flurry of activity between Siddiq and Bruce happens all the time at Isis, in students homes and when Robert Burton thinks he’s gonna be late to get those cuff links or anything else that seems almost off his fingertips…
Those in the Fellowship of Friends who ‘think’ their beloved teacher does not express negativity or that the members of the beloved Greater Fellowship site do not express these dramas and negativity (whether its off or online) are very mistaken:
I like it in here, its honest and the material is not hiding behind a two way mirror;
do you guys remember those 1970’s mirrored glasses that were all the rave? They still give me the willies. BTW, Goethe had a real pet ‘peeve’ about the arrival of sunglasses; he detested them and would not speak to a person until they took their sunglasses off…
So, try hard, members of the Greater Fellowship site to not wear Ray Bans and please don’t hide behind the “…and we’ve not got the negativity thing’.
Of course you do, otherwise your vanity feature and good student syndrome would not still be stealing energy from your sex center to wiseacre such comparisons that no one with a hectare of human experience would ever take as sincere and a balanced picture of an evolving soul.
Shivapuri Baba said that meditation was for mad men; to try and make one’s meditation room away from every day environments, etc. Yes self remembering brews up all sorts of stuff: how do you think it is that Ouspensky said that “It gets worse before it gets better?” (I think the Fellowship of Friends has had that one covered for 35+ years).
Every soul has and will continue to wade through these ups and downs (inside and outside themselves); its where you land and what all this break dancing is about, where it goes in the moment, this to me is worthy of attention; actually everything is.
To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach; it sounds very familiar, yes?
At least their aims are different; I simply see all this as a great opportunity to be conscious friends, not formator-ily conscientious.
Until you wade through the swamp of yourself, you’ll never
harvest lotus seeds. This is something the Fellowship of Friends has missed in a very big way so far as taking the next step to graduation; too caught up in Robert Burton’s report card to consider their own as legitimate.
A whole school could be founded on Rumi’s works alone;
he knew about graduation, particularly after Sham’s death.
______________________
Love to you all.
OK OK I will crawl back into my cave and do some drawing.
Perhaps it is time for some more “purchasing awakening”–facts… or…
I don’t see the Greater Fellowship network as “us and them” at all. It’s very inclusive. Many people both in and out. It’s like the positive half of this blog. Both are needed.
Maybe the blog is the “shadow” of the GF network. Both are worth study.
Whitman:
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Hello Joseph G. ~
slander?
Yes, I agree with you, we all have features, can’t get rid of our organs to spite our weight, can we?
You’re a pretty easing going spirit Joseph, take it easy, it’s July, no body is slandering anyone; unless you’re saying that pointing out one’s mechanics to assist oneself in understanding certain manifestations that need a little ‘work’ is something ‘personal’ enough to call ‘slander’…
Can anyone slander your presence?
Certainly feelings of essence can be slandered, though I believe anyone working on themselves, after a bit of introspection, would be hard pressed to be hurt over the color of their replacement luggage, so long as the airport
put back all the good stuff you got while out of town.
Do you not agree?
I do not believe its possible to hurt the feelings of essence with objective knowledge, so long as one is loving the traveler, otherwise you get what is most practiced in the Fellowship of Friends, negative photographs, whew!
It is very rare; I would say 1 out of 20 photographs given are ‘real’; usually they’re the King of Clubs saying, “Get out of the way, I see you already.” or the King of Hearts saying, “Come my way, I have not seen you lately.”
And then there’s the feature-play, moaning and groaning through the flute of true personality spittle…
Wow, what a ride!
It’s good to see you again; I thought you had left us, so to speak…
_________________________
l.t.y.a.
to respond to 123 vera.mente
The will be no class action lawsuit as it requires dedicated attorneys. They must either believe there is a strong enough case and sufficient assets to make big money or have someone pay them. This is why I have repeatedly stated that it is the recently departed Fellowship members and currant students who have the power to cause a change. If a sufficient number complain to the government agencies like the office of the state attorney general or the United States atone for the Northern Ca. region then there can be a criminal investigation. If there is sufficient cause for an indictment and a trail then that material becomes available for a civil suit.
What grounds. Fraud, making false representations, violations of immigration laws, soliciting prostitution, embezzlement of funds, Falsifying financial records, conspiracy to defraud, make the whole board of directors libel.
The Fellowship is even a school of relative awakening. Robert Burton if he crystallized at all is a hasnamuss individual. The Fellowship still has devoted “students” whose whole life is centered on the belief in the divine consciousness of Robert Burton. Isis will be his shrine. I would not be surprised if there are already plans for his Mausoleum. Who knows what great miracles he will be attributed with. once he is dead.
Robert Burton is a clever criminal he has protected himself well. he is not immune though. Interesting what protects him the most is the lack of conscience and consciousness of Fellowship members past and present. Rather than wishing. Someone has to begin by filing complaints. I can’t do it the statute of limitations Is long past. Someone who left within the last years or who is a currant member.
220 Sam.1
Thanks for maybe putting my mind at rest. Id hate to think Nick had deteriorated so much. From discussions a long time ago he gave me the impression of knowing that things were far from ideal but being kind of stuck having burned his bridges. Mind you the slow insidious brain washing over the intervening years might corrupt anyone. I wonder what would have become of me if I hadnt become Burtons ” man of the moment” which ironically was what helped me to see the light.
I might be worse than the worst pro fofers, out using any spare time to bookmark.
As someone reminded us a little earlier “there but for fortune stand you or I” in this case I count myself fortunate for having escaped that fate.
Thank you Lord!
love to ALL Cy.
Dear Howard
Still thinking about your post number 138(?).
If Robert found a quote/ image in the schools of the past pointing to pre-life or after-life, he would point out that it refers to the stage before starting the sequence.
And key the after-life as prolonged presence..
Love
Dear ‘a former student’ ~
You wrote ~
“I can’t do it the statute of limitations Is long past. Someone who left within the last years or who is a currant member.”
_________________________________
Just a bit of info for all you X-men who ‘think’ you’re past the ‘statute of limitations’…
The year and a day rule does not apply to writing letters to reveal the fraud and criminal aspects of the Fellowship of Friends; after all, they are still sentencing people for crimes that occurred 30 to 40 years ago; so, Whalerider, you’ve got some room to move a few objective tidal wave splashes too… particularly if it’s not for money, your individuality would be precious to ‘the class’ itself.
Nothing is over till it’s over; again, its not the money, its the exposure and cessation of more of the same, this is to me worth energy and conscience towards…
And there is a bankroll ‘a former student’… There’s no less than 40 million dollars worth of assets floating around in there; all paid by former students, which, BTW, their investments are still reaping profit (dividends), particularly in regards to the vineyard and RVW.
Federal procedure has several guidelines for maintaining a class action lawsuit, they are ~
1. the class must be so large that individual suits would be impracticable. (11,000 or less will do)
2. there must be legal or factual questions common to the class. (church members who are under Robert Burton’s thumb, treated as and milked like cult members.)
3. the claims or defenses of the representative parties must be typical of those of the class, and
(any non profit organization whose even been defrauded)
4. the representative parties must adequately protect the interests of the class. (non profit organizations or churches)
And get used to the phrase ‘de facto’…
BTW, Bruce, I was very innocently using Patricia S. as an example of a solar-mars-jovial who has ‘power’ in their luggage, unlike the majority; to me, all of us are walking Rembrandt paintings with eye holes cut out for us to see out of.
______________________________
BTW #2 ~ Although there may be certain limitations in a class action suit for very, very X-men, this does not mean there’s no incentive to participate; any assets liquidated to settle such a class action suit could be agreed by more current X-men to be shared or given as ‘gifts’ to their ‘elder’ X-men.
_________________
Love to you all.
Ryan, let me update you..
After the 6 of the sequence where you make efforts
(the 30 work I’s comprise the whole system)
comes the 4 breaths (prolonged presence).
That makes 10!
Then you can start again..
Bruce 213: “I’m beginning to think you might be Collin. You’re very reminiscent of that snide, shit eating little jerk.”
Joseph 221: “I can guarantee Siddiq is not Collin. I’m not even sure Collin is Collin; he’s definitely not the person you describe, at least not now…..From what I know about her, the other Patricia does not deserve to be slandered either.
Unoanimo 231: “no body is slandering anyone; unless you’re saying that pointing out one’s mechanics to assist oneself in understanding certain manifestations that need a little ‘work’ is something ‘personal’ enough to call ’slander’… Can anyone slander your presence? Certainly feelings of essence can be slandered, though I believe anyone working on themselves, after a bit of introspection, would be hard pressed to be hurt over the color of their replacement luggage, so long as the airport put back all the good stuff you got while out of town. Do you not agree?”
Uno, what on earth are you talking about? Bruce slandered Collin (to slander someone means to say something negative and untrue about them). Joseph called him on it. It’s simple really.
Siddiq 204: “I thought you have to have the initial impulse, otherwise we stay in our imagination, identification, etc., what do you think?”
That’s one way to look at it. An alternative is that you are not the “I” that thinks it’s in imagination, etc.
235
If it’s the Patrica S I’m thinking of, she’s nowhere near solar-mars-jovial. That was one of my points.
237 RN
Point taken, half way. It was negative. Untrue…that’s debatable. I lived with him. Of course it is subjective.
Regarding lawsuits…
It would seem pertinent to get some facts to help make an informed decision. Does the FoF still have insurance against malfeasance of officers any more? It seems that the insurance companies would have run out of patience (read, raise their rates sky–high or refuse coverage altogether) now they know that the lawsuits indicate a pattern, not an accident. What is happening financially? What is the cash flow now, and what is projected for the future under what scenarios? What will be the consequences if the students who are ‘behind in their payments’ and whose membership will expire July 15th actually fail to pony up? How long can stragglers be induced to stay with reduced payments, and how long can the organization afford that? When are land and property taxes due? (Yes, the million-dollar paintings are real property, and taxable, Virginia—if the county and state knows about them). How about payments on back taxes owed? When are the loan repayments due? Are there any other lawsuits or judgments pending? Do any readers—who know any of these answers for an absolute fact—care to share?
Next, is it a good idea at all to initiate a lawsuit? As far as timing, the Fellowship may not have ever been weaker, less able to defend itself. Still, don’t ever underestimate a cornered beast or a cornered combination of Burton/Goldman. Or the power Burton has to raise big money in an emergency. Anyway, just speaking to possible monetary compensation, it doesn’t seem worth it if there is no insurance, who’s going to pay if you win? (and, don’t forget, who’s going to pay if you lose?) An organization smothered in debt, mortgaged to banks and Abraham Goldman to the max? (ask, how did Abraham acquire his present property on the northwest side of the Shakespeare Meadow? Not by ‘pro bono’ work, for sure). And, there is a statute of limitations, though (I know, from bitter experience) that can be set aside.
How about the effect on your internal world? What is your motivation? Are you doing it to protect the innocents in future, as Unoanimo suggests? To get revenge for being made a patsy, or getting reamed, or in memory of Brian S. or others? The forces and their order in a triad make all the difference to the outcome. When one acts, one is responsible for the consequences, intended or otherwise.
Speaking for myself, I will not join a lawsuit, though I would help one in any way I am able—if I agreed with the aims. That is the way I have worked it out for myself with the knowledge I have, and the being I possess. Additional knowledge might change that viewpoint. I’d advise anyone thinking of a lawsuit to deeply study the external and internal ramifications. Unoanimo’s and A Former Student’s suggestions of getting a government agency to enter as the active force is certainly another, more indirect way; there might be more, and different types of, unforeseen consequences, though.
Hopefully one of us who is a lawyer could enter the conversation to add perspective and experience.
And the results and ramifications? Some have been stated before. Others suggest themselves: What would be the effects of the ‘martyrdom’ of Burton on the followers? That might produce the opposite of what some hoped for. What of those who have stated they would die or kill for Burton? What about the Suzanne and Michael Ad—s, or the Dorothy Bs of the FoF, what happens to them?
What a can of worms! It’s beyond me; I’m one of those who’s put salt instead of sugar on his cereal more than once!
Hi Unoanimo #229 – I just wondered where you got this impression about GFOF site: “To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach”.
Sounds to me like something you’re imagining. (Well, you must be imagining, because to my knowledge you’re not even on this site).
Greater Fellowship site has other purpose than verbal fighting – it’s for connecting and reconnecting of friends. Like a big virtual party! You don’t go to a friendly party with intention to hit some faces, do you?
It is not for “us” or “them” – it’s for all, no boundaries between members and non-members and that’s what’s so cool about it! And yes, so far it’s been positive, friendly and just fun – like any good party should be, until someone gets really drunk and start fighting, screaming and breaking stuff…
Even the name (Greater Fellowship) seems rather INCLUSIVE to me, not an opposition. It’s rather like a big inclusive embrace, not a competition in size…
It’s not that someone is claiming or pretending to have “no negativity” – it’s just not expressed on GFOF site, simply because there has been no need for it there. Not because of some kind of control or set rules. People just feel friendly, glad to see each other – that’s it.
There is time to fight, and there is time to hug too. It’s all good.
I am sorry you’re missing out on it, but – as I told you in my e-mail – it’s not about anonymity or fear there.
E-mail me when you’re ready to show your face and I’ll invite you, with great pleasure!
Hey Rhino ~
Are you American?
You wrote to me ~
“Uno, what on earth are you talking about? Bruce slandered Collin (to slander someone means to say something negative and untrue about them). Joseph called him on it. It’s simple really.”
____________________________
“No body is slandering anyone” meaning no one in (my post) concerning Patricia, i.e., me, myself and I ‘and’ the guy who has my shadow under his feet.
_______________
Rhino, are you just being silly because it’s T.G.I.F.?
_______________
Wow, we are the July opportunist aren’t we: scale my friend, scale; have you not heard anyone refer to themselves as “no body here is…” in the past participle, referring to one’s self as a solo participant with another in the present, who has a ‘beef’ or a ‘bone to pick’ concerning their actions?
_____________________
l.t.y.a.
Bruce 240: thanks! These things are indeed subjective.
Uno 243: I still haven’t a clue what you’re trying to say (your writing style is so opaque), but I probably never will and we’re wasting space so let’s call it a day on this one.
In my #221 “slander” was probably too strong a word. I regret using it, and was not taking aim at Bruce.
I don’t have any issues with Bruce or the what he says. It’s just that people who stopped being FOF members many years ago may not always know what current members are like today. This works both ways. I have cringed at some posts describing wonderful, life-enhancing individuals of 20 years ago who have by now hardened into stuffed inner-circle shirts. This is not Collin’s situation. There has been some very bad shit that has happened in the Fellowship of Friends, and at the same time there are also many fine people who have passed through, or who have somehow remained members…so far. In a momentum of understandable righteous indignation — indignation I frequently share — regarding the psychic harm perpetrated knowingly or unknowingly by Robert Burton and his blindest devotees, it is also possible to hit out at people who simply are innocent.
That said, slander is not a word that applies to the many blatantly unconscionable actions that have come to light through this blog, and I think it is a very healthy thing that people like Bruce, WhaleRider and others express their feelings without restraint. Otherwise remaining members can’t have a sense of what it really felt like to be on the losing end of RB’s mythic society. These honestly expressed feelings speak louder than facts alone.
I also think that no one is innocent anymore when they know the facts but do nothing about it.
Still easy-going enough for you uno?
Joseph G.
#160 Thanks Bruce that gave me a good laugh….I know…I know I’m behind on this Blog….I’ve go to catch up…boy…you go away for a few days and the whole Blog changes
Love you Joseph.
Uno..
“This network came to life through the desire to exchange experiences and connect current and former members of the Fellowship of Friends and related 4th way schools…..so good to see you here…”
What us and them?? So far I have found the site sweet, fascinating, refreshing.
Hey Janna ~
Thanks, though I already have several invitations.
Where did I get the impression?
From segments like this ~
“Greater Fellowship site has other purpose than verbal fighting – it’s for connecting and reconnecting of friends. Like a big virtual party! You don’t go to a friendly party with intention to hit some faces, do you?”
______________________
I think you’ve answered your own question.
_______________________
It’s good to know that you visit here from time to time; I will visit you too, though I have yet to do so, based, not on fear, rather, ‘necessity’.
I guess we all have to go with our feelings; for now I need to focus here, no matter how ‘dark’ or ‘fisty cuffs’ it gets;
sometimes in order to get two suns one has to go fishing in black holes; I like the spontaneity here and as I wrote to you before, I sense this is my environment,
something is happening in here that feels ‘transformative’ and stretches my being a little bit more than a prescribed environment (so far as my sense of ‘prescribed’) goes…
It was not meant to seem ‘harsh’ Janna, I know you’re a rather sensitive spirit and so am I, hopefully all of us are… I simply do not see this blog site as a ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ place, nor is it negative:
to me, it’s what pushes one’s buttons and freezes presence, turning it into static identification, this is perhaps in the minus realm:
is it not ironic that it is usually the person who has a negative response to what they see as negativity that gives the photograph? That so often a Fellowship of Friends photograph contains two snap shots, one of the photographed and the fingerprints on the camera.
I am pretty much finished with the idea of perceiving the obvious ‘obviously’, I simply cannot except that the ‘buck stops here’ when someone expresses negativity… then trot over ‘there’ where the buck hasn’t sharpened it’s horns (yet)…
For too long I have witnessed essence in deep freeze because of negative emotion neglect and shyness; and those who do this are certainly not the kind of spiritual beings that I could say have even stepped above that which they slide aside and pigeon hole with an extreme, i.e., hyper King of Hearts self calming and Sunday morning soft-man-of-war techniques (not so soft before and after meetings though)…
its a trap, to get on any fence, let alone find oneself buying white paint to give it a new coat before winter…
They’re beautiful people everywhere Janna, even those who are ready to stand self-revealed and express ‘negativity’ or ‘yearning’ without the ‘fig leaf’ of ‘modesty’, which is simply uneducated essence, whose acting, hoping the ‘act’ will somehow stick as their ‘role’… Does anyone really have a role? How can this be when nothing ends?
__________________________________
Love to you all.
Hey (again) Rhino:
‘no body is ….’ was referring to me.
_______________
:)
Joseph, your smile was (is) one of my most favorite smiles I have yet to meet.
Yes.
H.L. Mencken, wrote this passage about the U.S. early last century. I substituted the words “Robert Burton’s” for the word “governmental”.
This is how I see one aspect of this blog!
“And here, more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly—the unending procession of Robert Burton’s extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.”
With love to all, ‘in’ and ‘out’,
Ames
The FOF is a church, and if it dissolves, all of its property goes to the State. And, it doesn’t go to the plaintiff in a class action, either, unless there’s a default on the judgement. Problem with that is you are behind a long line of creditors, the first in line being the mortgage holder. And, enforcing a judgment is tricky.
Otherwise, you would have to have the standing to lien property, and then you would have to prevail. It it highly unlikely.
Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated.
Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising it’s head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right?
The voices of reason here, like Sharon and Ames, are important. Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.
#227
“It’s interesting that the Greater Fellowship site are always advertising their’s as the more, let’s say, Democratic, and we’re the Bush war mongers… LOL;”
Hey, where do you see all the “advertising”? “always”??
on 06 Jul 2007 at 8:34 pm228 Siddiq
OK OK I will crawl back into my cave and do some drawing.
Our Cave!!!
Unoanimo, you are so active today! Do you have AC? :)
I know who you are. Actually I never read your messages before I found out who you were – they are too long. But today I read them all and found it fascinating. Keep writing!
Good god Uno, you are owlish and prickly recently – the heat getting to you? Maybe I can see your window from here. Can you see the buzzards – out in force today – circling over the valley looking for prey overcome by the heat?
So, what’s with the attack on the GF. It’s a networking tool for crying out loud! Ever heard of LinkedIn or Zoominfo or Oldfriends networks? These are the equivalent networking tools for professionals, business, & schools & colleges: same common technology & concept.
Members are encouraged to join the GF; this networking tool helps integrate past & present FOFers – a merely convenient apolitical initiative to connect old friends. This tool transcends the “them & us” polarization.
Don’t waste your energy on it. So what if some people begin critical or “negative” discussion threads on their own pages or the forum. L&LL, I reckon. Each one of us has our own road out of the FOF.
Hey Uno, I tune in many times a day looking for your posts. Don’t bristle over this one.
LTY
” You all would be very sorry if only Howard is left to take shots at.”
Howard only??? never….
NASB: “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.” (NASB ©1995)
GWT: Where two or three have come together in my name, I am there among them.”(GOD’S WORD®)
KJV: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
ASV: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
BBE: For where two or three are come together in my name, there am I among them.
DBY: For where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them.
ERV: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
WEY: For where there are two or three assembled in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
WBS: For where two or three are assembled in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
WEB: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
YLT: for where there are two or three gathered together — to my name, there am I in the midst of them.’
GOdl
“He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic. He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a woman).”
Hey, that sounds like…..ehm…..me?
GOdl
Hello ‘somebody’ ~
No, I have a little fan that’s always looking left and right.
LOL… You mean my non-anonymous revelation got you to read what the ‘too long anonymous posts’ steered you away from?
LOL…
Then, Ames, on that Post #251, I will have to say,
Ditto
and
Word!
__________________
Steve … hey :)
__________________
l.t.y.a.
“If Robert found a quote/ image in the schools of the past pointing to pre-life or after-life, he would point out that it refers to the stage before starting the sequence.
And key the after-life as prolonged presence..”
no kidding – he is the only One that only Focus on Presence….. I’m after Him!
Whitman:
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
WoW, me too!!!!
GOdl
The aggregate of some posts has a subtly moralizing tone: not accepting what IS happening for people – the great diversity of reactions to the FOF experience; instead stating what “Should & Shouldn’t Be”!
…”should be over the FOF experience…should be moving on…, shouldn’t be anonymous on the blog and GF…, shouldn’t express negativity about the experience…, shouldn’t spend too much time on the blog…, shouldn’t contribute multiple posts in a day…”
That burdensome “Should” mentality is an outgrowth of the FOF culture – one feels its limitations in time. L&LL.
Hey Harpie ~
Hallelujah… may God’s toenail clippings be my bow and arrows!
:)
Was it Gurdjieff or Ouspensky who said humanity is in prison and needs to escape and that only a few could because too many would draw the attention of the devil……..
Posts #’s 202, 203 and 208 used the word PENPAL. Which is what convicts desire.
This blog is full of PENPALS. Well, I’m not to sure of the PALS.
.
Saw Asaf in YC… Got me thinking…
What does that nice, talented & sincere young man tell his mother and father about his life? What a quantity of deception must be necessary. Asaf is not much older than my own son. What a terrible grief I would feel if Asaf’s play were his, and I lost my son to Robert, in the way that Asaf’s family must have lost him. What indescribably rage I would feel towards Robert, if my son were used as Asaf is used by Robert. Involvement with Robert necessarily separates parents and child: the need for lies and disconnection is absolute. Robert deliberately usurps the parental role, explicitly denigrates familial relations, engages his “boys” in a corrupting lifestyle that burdens them with the need for secrecy and falseness, effectively separating them from all, excepting those in the same predicament. What a f**king sad mad pathetic tragedy is going on here, embodied for me in the sight of that nice young man, Asaf.
I feel outraged now for all the parents that are “bereaved” of their sons…every boy that Robert consumes is somebody’s dear son — subject to debasement, emasculation, degradation, and other subtler psychic damage.
Those young men believe they do not need help – reminiscent of the syndrome in which victims eventually willingly collude with and protect their abusers – but their resistance only increases the pathos.
I wish I had known more, earlier. Would have left much earlier had the “school” maintained the proper transparency. Perhaps – like so many – I am guilty of intentional ignorance.
Robert is a poor damaged specimen of a mother’s son, that we all molded and brought into being by our needs of the moment and our beliefs that needed an object. Without us, Robert could not exist. We created his role – he was merely sucked into the vacuum created by our spiritual yearnings. Then we groomed him to play the part perfectly – in precisely the form we expected and needed. Robert has done nothing but serve as the personification of our spiritual longing. Robert reflects only what we are and what we wanted.
All the effort was made by us: every material result and created thing in the FOF was achieved by one of us, fueled by our own personal inner desire for enlightenment – however we defined it.
Our so called “states”, “moments of presence”, concept of “self-remembering, and all perceived inner changes are subjectively experienced, and are the product of our biology, conditioning, imagination – unique and personal to each – not the consistent results of a method or “Way”.
Firstly, Robert served the purposes we defined but had few attributes other than those we subliminally ascribed and to which he subtly responded. Later in this drama, he began to perform the role more independently and he began to modify his own role according to his own ambitions.
This law-conformable & divine process creates every teacher/guru on the planet, so I believe – although, sometimes has good outcome. This process evolves each guru according to the requirements of the energies personalized in the form of a specific group.
I do not believe that there was ever anything great or mystical here.
Hey bloggers,
19:25
There’s a fire on the east side of Oregon Peak out by Bullards bar. See the smoke? So far, too far away to be a threat
Through the Looking Glass
Please be advised that Greater Fellowship has a forum (“group”) called Rude Argument.
It is not all sweetness and light over there.
Sure, it’s not easy to pull off a real-time shootout volley like it is here. Paths meander and branch, intersect and intertwine, double back on themselves, and leave you talking to the flowers.
Here, you have to run twice as fast just to stay in the same place. Your head can get chopped off in the blink of an eye. Grinning cats appear and vanish with disconcerting regularity.
/\–/\
* *—-~~~~
uu uu
Harpie
No seeum smoke signal over here in G.V. No bomber planes in sky. (Live in flight path.)
Hope false alarm.
Channeling coot, miss him.
I wanted to weigh in on the Greater Fellowship versus Blog controversy. From what I can see they’re mutually complementary. This one allows for anonymity if you want it and allows for more real time back and forth. The GF seems to be more about connecting with friends and establishing a support network for people who have left or are thinking about leaving the FOF. I didn’t quite understand what Unoanimo was referring to. I haven’t seen anything on the GF site forbidding anyone to ‘get negative’ or whatever , it just doesn’t seem to lend itself to that. I’m glad to have access to both – lots of really great, smart, funny people who have shared a common experience just talking together and learning from each other.
Janna:
You are providing a valuable service with your site, promoting a nurturing, self-affirming, and positive force in people’s lives. Hey, any chance you can share some of the gems posted on ‘the son of the blog’ with us warriors ‘over here’? Show us what we are missing ‘over there’, if you are willing…
I long for the day when the lesser Fellowship is closed down, and I can openly join the greater Fellowship. But for right now I feel like a surgeon wearing a protective face mask and gloves hard at work peeling back layers upon layers of diseased, smelly, infected, gangrenous tissue…I need the mask and gloves for my own protection.
*******************
To Whom It May Concern:
I think we can agree that there is an enormous amount of energy generated by having a conscience. Conscience allows us to experience indignant repulsion and righteous anger. But anger can be addictive. An appropriate use of anger is to use it as a motivator for change, for fuel to take action; otherwise it can deplete your energy, hijack your thinking, and turn your creativity into negative imagination. And unresolved anger turned inward causes depression and physical illness.
So if you are willing to channel your energy toward making a big change in how Mr. Burton does business let’s put our heads and keyboards together. We have keyboards, we have time, we have a pool of people online, and we have the law on our side. Thank God for Goggle! Putting pressure on Howard and Siddiq is getting us no place. We must focus our pressure on the body corporeal of the Fellowship of Friends, Inc. if we want our presence to make a difference.
Like Ames, I do not wish to be part of a lawsuit at the moment. Lawyers usually want retainer fees upfront, and the judicial system is slow. I am not looking for any kind of financial settlement.
However…
We can begin a legal public awareness email campaign for free right now.
All we need is for someone to post a sample email informing anyone who does business with the Fellowship of Friends about the true nature of the group and some email addresses.
Who do they do business with?
Where do they sell the wine?
Who insures them?
Where do they do their banking?
Who is the mortgage company?
Who is the elected congress person for that district?
And if you see a poster in your hometown advertising a perspective student meeting, just show up and give out a few flyers with this blog address.
Don’t let your righteous anger eat at you, transform it into action! Taking action will raise your level of being. This blog will be an archive for us to show our children that we didn’t just sit around…we collectively did something to rid the planet of this corrupt organization and depose its sicko leader.
All you have to do is believe that change is possible and be brave enough to stand up to Goliath.
I’ve been thinking, and feeling, about the depth of psychological rehabilitation that may be required for some who wish or plan to leave the Fellowship, or for those who have already left.
There may well be some very personal long-term conflict or damage that cannot be easily repaired by Greater Fellowship parties and offers of emotionality, although these venues are certainly needed, positive and most welcome!
A while back, I investigated a re-hab center in Arizona as a way for me to exit into a “healthy new life,” but their five-day evaluation costs $8,400. I don’t even want to think of the cost of a full “treatment ” schedule!
So, this is just a question to put ‘out there’ for folks to consider:
Could interested parties create a psychologically neutral counseling service with one or two professionals, working pro bono, who could assist those who wish to move on, but who are hindered in some way from doing so — instinctively, emotionally, or otherwise?
I think that pooling resources to make professional counseling available to these persons would be much more constructive than investing in trying to organize expensive lawsuits as a form of retribution.
Revenge and lingering bitterness is not condusive to a healing process. Ideally, we want to help one soul at a time to garner strength and find their new evolutionary path!
This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There has been almost nothing but total disdain to anyone who has honestly voiced some support for the FOF and Robert. Any positivity is bombarded with unrestrained negative reactions.
This blog is absolutely not doing anything, nothing any child will proudly read. Whalerider, you are in big time imagination still–sad.
Whalerider, I do mean no offense personally, I enjoy your emotional nature and postings, but when you come storming in some 20 years later and try to get others to take action–you remain anonymous–honestly where are you going with this?
goib 259
presence, if reached is a kind of preparation for the fourth state, but Robert never talked about the fourth state.
It seems to me, that he does he not know very much about that state??
Siddiq 269
This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There has been almost nothing but total disdain to anyone who has honestly voiced some support for the FOF and Robert. Any positivity is bombarded with unrestrained negative reactions.
This blog is absolutely not doing anything, nothing any child will proudly read. Whalerider, you are in big time imagination still–sad.
**********************
(Siggiq please do not read this, I want you to remain in the FoF as long as possible. This is for others.)
Just because you have a positive attitude toward what you assume is representative of a state of non-identification does not mean that you are any less identified, any less asleep, than those that are negative toward it. This is the catch-22. All these protesters out here were every bit as positively identified with Robert Burton, with the FoF and its interpretation of the Fourth Way as you are now, even more so. They all eventually flipped and so will you. The key is to put your confidence and your objectivity into yourself rather than into your school, rather than into your teacher or anything else. Rather than struggling to belong to this group of believers, struggle to belong entirely to yourself. If you disappoint yourself under such conditions then you’ve no one to blame but yourself and as human nature goes you will forgive yourself even before you discover any fault with yourself. You believe that you are now doing something that we never did enough of, remembering yourself, practicing presence, but you are wrong. In fact you are not actually remembering yourself when you indulge in obedient, unconditional belief and faith in the organization that you imagine you belong to. Some of your I’s are strongly attracted, strongly positive, but these are not the result of self-remembering, these are the result of a magnetic center that will one day wear out. If you were truly unidentified, meaning that if you were actually awake, it wouldn’t matter to you if you were in the school, or out of the school, or never heard of the school. There is no more consciousness accumulated within your school, there is no more non-identification available within your school, than there is outside your school. This is what we understand and have verified that you have yet to understand. There is hardly anyone on the planet more identified than your teacher. This is what the protesters have realized, that while selling non-identification as an elusive product the salesman is as identified with the proceeds as is humanly possible. You will see this for yourself at some point, much sooner if you ever actually get near the salesman himself. Right now you are defending an imaginary ideal that doesn’t actually exist except as a carefully constructed illusion of words and artificial mannerisms. We’ve all been there long before you and have looked behind the closed doors where the A influence is tallied up, we all know that the idealism is a clever form of identification that creates the illusion of non-identification. You are not “present” you are only using the propaganda to stop the negative halves of your centers from working because that is how Robert Burton controls his sheep, he teaches them to stop thinking and feeling. He misdirects their attention toward the blinding sun while he picks their pockets and unzips their pants. This is what he calls presence and because neither he nor his students know the difference everyone remains more or less in the same blinding trance. We’ve been in that trance and come out of it. If you want increased emotionality wait until you realize that all this devotional excitement is a waste of your time, now that’s emotional.
Siddiq, how can you verify that you are not the one in imagination about what is going on? I mean, really?
And what do you mean by positivity?
Please take the time to answer these honest and serious questions.
Take care,
Laura
my2bits #275: Strange, I was thinking the same thing a couple of posts before yours.
Can you imagine what an on-looker unfamiliar with the words being used must think.
Imagine going to a psychotherapist and trying to explain words. He/she has to be taught to unravel your FOF/DNA.
“Lower centers”, King of Clubs, nine of hearts, robert burton, old friends, new friends, the blog, my mind, my soul, my money.
The psychotheraptist would need a psychotheraptist.
From my experience with the public health system in this country, there is a lot of available for people with no property and low income. It’s the middle income people who seem to be out of luck. When I left the FOF I lost my job (they were interconnected). So I went to the county and was denied help because I had a small piece of land and therefore I didn’t qualify for assistance of any kind, even though there was nothing on the land.
I would suggest something called ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’. This addresses ‘in the moment’ behavior and does not dabble too much into personal history. I think most of us understand enough to realize what’s bothering us but this technique gives tools to change behavior or negative patterns of thinking.
I was able to get this for my son at minimal cost to me. My son suffers from a child of a former member of the Fellowship depression. Growing up in the Fellowship and then leaving the Fellowship had a tremendous effect on the children there. Much confusion and fear.
I found that by calling and inquiring, the health department and certain clinics will offer services at a discounted rate for low income people. No need to spend thousands when this is available for many.
Whalerider,
We know each other and I think highly of you. Drop me a line at veronicapoe@gmail.com.
my2bits/275,
It doesn’t have to cost a lot. What it does require is professionals who have experience with the problems and needs of people who have been in cults. The International Cultic Studies Association (formerly the American Family Foundation) is a network of such professionals.
If you would like to correspond privately on the subject, feel free to write me at veronicapoe@gmail.com.
Sidiq:276 This blog will be nothing but an archive of the many pathetic excuses we make for ourselves to NOT work on ourselves, but judge others. Besides gossip, old accounts, and enormous moral indignation, there is nothing here.
There is some truth to what you say, but I know you are a reasonable person so please consider this:
None of us really know the truth – you don’t and I don’t. It is also possible, even perhaps likely, based on the detructive nature of some of his actions, that Robert doesn’t. None of us know. None of us know.
For years, while in the Fellowship we guarded our thoughts. This produced a rebound, a sincere need, a need to be able to unleash free thought on the subject of Robert Burton. Within this rebound there are many emotions that have found expression. The result is not always beautiful or objective. But it is an expression of a need – a need that was supressed.
External consideration requires understanding that people, like you and me have needs. It means understanding that having needs is not neccessarily weakness. It means understanding that we all do not have the same needs. We are externally considerate when we allow others to fullfill their needs and to live their lives, and in so doing to grow to a more objecitve being. Some will not grow much. Others will thrive on freedom.
You are very externally considerate of Robert’s needs even though they hurt the Fellowship (economically) beyond measure. They appear to me to hurt the Fellowship in many ways.
My guess is that the moral indignation and resulting venom that bothers you is proportional to the hurt. Not that it is objective but that it is a result. It is a result of pain that could not be transformed. 4000 blogs of pain.
You and Howard represent a supporter of the hurt and the walls that guarded free thought. I think most of us on the Blog appreciate your position, your williness to participate, and your sincerity. Please do not take it personally that you are the recipient of some of the venom that is a result of the accumulation of suffering in silence.
We all appreciated the Fellowship. Some, like you and Howard still do. Most would admit to good things in the Fellowship and almost all agree that the Fellowship has attracted an amazing group of people. I read this (between the lines) in almost every blog. You are one of those amazing people.
But the Fellowship is controversial. It is difficult to understand. There is beauty and there is hurt. There are many lies. 4000 posts are a result of the need to understand it. To understand decades of devotion and extreme efforts, love and pain, deception and lies.
Almost everyone has a different relationship to the Fellowship because we all had different experiences both within and without.
But the blog is more than just this rebound. It is also a place for sincere students and former students to consider their most objective position in relation to these subjects. There are many jewels hidden in the mud and the mud is also a jewel. It is a reminder of the value and limitations of personal freedom.
My children, when they were young, were pretty good from my perspective. They often did what I said. They were (sometimes but not always) a representation of me and what I had leaned. Now they are not children. They are experimenting with their own position, their own principles, free from my worldview which had its limitations based on my limitations. Sometimes the result is pretty sometimes it is not, but there is beauty in their learning, beauty in the freedom that I give thim to do as they see fit. There is also risk.
Please do not take the attacks on you personally. You can be more than that. Bring back the love and compassion. Bring back the understanding that you too are not all knowing. Externally consider our need to be able to express our views without the rules and regulations. Understand where this comes from. Help us to understand even if it opens you to attacks. We all want to understand the hurt, the inefficiencies, the lust, the lies, the superiority complex along side the beauty. Help us to understand how the hurt and possible abuses of power are neccessary. Help us to transform our accounts. Understand that many think Robert went way too far and that they may, just may be right. Understand their indignation towards anyone that supports Robert and the status quo. Understand that it is not simple and that since we all have been there, we are not really open to the angles that many of us gave and have come to regret.
Consider the possibility, even if it is a bit threatening, that the blog is here because the Fellowship needs to change drastically to survive and that this change, if it is going to happen, requires open thought with love and compassion that is more objective than the hurt and venom. It may mean relating better to the outside world and acknowleging and respecting the morality of those that are not devotees. That if this change is going to occur, it means that you and others must support the change and help others to see the need.
So please keep blogging. Show us your love, compassion and understanding. Show us your objectivity. Show us how all this hurt can be transformed. Guide us to mature.
It’s TRUE, it’s all true…..well, ALMOST all true:
#190 Somebody:
I know Howard Carter.
He has Vanity, Power and Fear features. Mars-Jovial.
He also has a great sense of humor and believes in magic.
He sees Magic everywhere he goes. And if you don’t argue
with him he will be your best friend (especially if you are a
woman).
ALL TRUE except I am NOT Howard Carter…..and I am sure
this is good news for Howard….whowever he/she is……
and…good news for Un_anim_ because he has not broken
his vow.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The “magic” on this page of the drama is that, before I read my name on the blog, I WAS formulating a post:
To ask HOWARD CARTER
SIDDIQ…and
GOLB (if they are truly
current students)
to discontinue posting to the blog.
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
DEAR HOWARD,SIDDIQ, & GOlb:
Please consider not participating in the blog….
Paraphrased:
Rodney Collin said that giving knowledge and attention
to issues esoteric, when someone is not asking for them,
violates the principles of esoteric transmission.
Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to “leave their space clean.”
Robert has also asked that we avoid “unnecessary”
association with friends who have chosen to leave.
So, if you would consider that no one has been officially
asked to participate on the blog except probably the
legal people, and that considerable energy has gone
from you, into the blog that is confrontational and
provocative, maybe…. could you find it beneficial
to stand down?
Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway
to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering
that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their
process, not yours. Give them their space. Generally,
people consult with those they trust before
making big decisions. If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
ALSO……Howard, Siddiq, and GOlb,
If you feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse,
you may be naive…..
in addition to offering a doorway to peace and healing, it also
seems to offer another doorway to a “War Room” where
sincere and heartfelt plans for action are being made.
This truly being my first and last post……
Love to all who wish……
Ni_k
Reference to my nam_ goes to
(14) posts # 196, # 197
Love to those who wish…..
286
Thanks Ni_k. A thoughtful. valuable post.
Siddiq, sounds like you are (as we used to say) “losing your work”, or a bit on the panicky side. If it is a real school you should have nothing to fear, and nothing to defend. They don’t burn at the stake anymore.
I think it’s clear Siddiq, HC, Golb are here to feed us bullshit on many levels. It’s not the first time this has been pointed out.
Siddiq is obviously having a different part of his “being” evoked by the threat of an outside force disrupting the superstructure he or she has come to depend on for his or her “value” in the FOF.
It’s also been pointed out countless times that these FOF defenders, as one purpose, are here to monitor any possible threat to their community.
After these thousands of posts, Ni_k comes with, what I feel, is an extraordinary post, identifies himself, does what he came to do, and moves on. As opposed to the dishonest, cowardly anonymous manipulations of the Siddiq’s, HC’s, LOL’s, GOlb’s etc.
It’s clear they learned well from the master scammer, but I don’t really think they’re worth shit to a tree.
thank you Ni_k.
I was reading a bit through the blog and is interesting to read the HC postings, I was the same. A follower without any questions, for everything which might have been not right action from the FOF, the teacher and the students there was a good buffer not to see it.
I am not bitter about my time in the FOF, because man I did have some good times there, and I think it was the right thing for me at that time (by the way I believe in destiny)
but it is funny for me today, see how I was, I think I was a fundamentalist, and when I see my real me, is a thinking person, with is not willing to follow a leader, but in that time I was not me, just somebody.
In the name of God or whatever, it was okay to hurt each other, and not just RB took money out of our pockets, other students too, over priced housing etc.
And what should one say if the arguments are so good, dont be identified, is just your instinctive center bla, bla, bla
how can a marriage work, if one uses too much of this terms and one can not say what one feels or think, how can a friendship work if one can not say what one feels or think
and it has nothing to do with not being present, it is a buffer to not get confronted with once actions, with once feelings etc.
And is it not a form of expression of negativity when one associates C-Influence just with suffering and friction, and never with the beauty of the sunshine, with finding once soul mate – sure than one is identified again.
Man do I love it – being identified, coming back to the moment and do not have a bad conscience or self deprecation. Feels good being me, loving me and just be happy
I verified there is more life after the FOF and if I go to the moon – do I care, actually I would prefer Venus is warmer
greetings to all of you Helene
Bruce – shit is worth quite a lot to a tree.
Hey Nick: I was just formulating an angle in the shower and then I read yours, which seems to connect in a certain way.
What I have found after 14 years out, being in the Fellowship disallows complete feelings on both sides of the human emotional experience; that is, you don’t feel strongly either way. And you would retort that you’re Queen of Hearts has been replaced by your King of Hearts. What a big lie that is!
Since I left the Fellowship I feel strongly about all kinds of things, good and bad. And feeling very good or feeling very bad is something that is discouraged in the Fellowship. The fallout from this is that it allows a person to accept all sorts of bad behavior on the part of Robert, a lack of empathy for others, and all kinds of emotional bad habits start to set in. And by example students are learning how to become a sociopaths.
Please spare us the work angles. I believe it is useless to try to talk a person out of leaving the Fellowship. The only way to ‘verify’ that your life becomes whole again is to leave. Otherwise, you are stuck in a quagmire with many others who are living incomplete lives.
Hey Everybody-
In cased you missed them, there are two excellent posts that showed up late due to being moderated. They are #268 from Parent and #269 from Morgan Le Fay. Check them out.
Ni*k Spa*ldi*g-, Man do I miss you! You were one of my best friends. I don’t want to argue with you, but have you verified those words of Rodney Collin you quoted? And have you noticed how many bloggers really don’t want to start a class action suit. They want people to have a life outside of the Fof so they can see that you can “work on yourself” and “self-remember” without having to pay so much money and without having to live 25 miles from the nearest traffic light.
If you come to Los Angeles please call. You can consider it necessary.
Did everyone notice the tiny “smiley face” at the bottom of the screen?
289
Yes, but not according to the Jefferson Airplane.
Jefferson Airplane must not have ever grown a tree….
Oh, wow, a line drawn in the sand by Ni-k Spa-lding. This ought to bring out some interesting comments from Howard Carter, Siddiq and GOLb.
Personally, I found Ni_k’s post fairly neutral and magnanimous. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I respect where he’s coming from. I didn’t find it all that judgmental. I didn’t feel any defensiveness being evoked in me by reading it.
N_ck: “Robert has asked not to have discussion amongst
ourselves, about students who have left…This helps
to ‘leave their space clean.’ “
Well, what this actually does is prevent the obvious outgrowth of such discussions — the questions about why people have left, and comments about how many former members are living happy, productive, rewarding, and spiritually enriched lives. Additionally, the discussion inevitably touches upon Robert’s actions, the people who have been hurt by his actions, the cost of remaining in the school, and the idea that maybe — just maybe — they are doing the right thing by leaving the school.
Two of the most uncomfortable topics in the Fellowship are lying and former students.
Oops, ‘you’re’ should be ‘your’ on my last post. didn’t check my work.
Hello Siddiq, Howard and GOlb,
I don’t know whether we will hear from you again following N_ik’s request. I apprecaite the way N_ik phrased his request (very open) but I personally hope that we do continue to hear from you.
I believe the blog involves us all (in or out). Yes it is healing for those of us that have left, but in a strange way it may be healing in a different way for those that are in also. I personally believe that I have seen some positive changes in the Fellowship as a result of the blog. It is more open. Many of my friends that are still in feel that they have gained in perspective and that the Fellowship has changed a little.
I think many of us underestimate the courage and independence required to continue to post here as a current student. You offer what is dear to you up for dissection and spitting on while going against the pressures from within the Fellowship to remain silent. You do provide balance.
Whther you continue or not, my hat is off to you for displaying such courage.
He was basically quoting the RB line. For me, that’s fine. I don’t think any person on a true “path” is going to allow (except temporarily) someone, regardless who, tell them what their right path on the continuum of life is. Eventually, those who continue to think and ask questions of themselves are going to see what they’re supposed to see.
Listen, I imagine that a LARGE number of members are reading this blog. L A R G E. The hierarchy is getting VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. Fuck em. Really, don’t believe ANY of the shit were getting from “you know who”. We still all have a occasional fling with the same non-discriminatory mindset we had when we were “in” and we were “good students”. There is no one from the group of assholes who is here for any other reason than to control and disrupt.
Fuck em and the horses they rode in on.
Suzy
You can’t get indignant about people who won’t think for themselves. Those that do will continue to make the right decision. Including ignoring RB’s ridiculous “rules and suggestions” when they see something new out there and in themselves. I couldn’t give a fuck about the structure of the “school”.
The real shock when one leaves, after a short mourning period, is regaining a whole part of yourself that has been suppressed, abused, controlled and demeaned. One forgot the things they love, and the person they are. It really shakes one up. It’s like: “Holy fuck, I love doing this. I used to love doing this. This is me, and a part of me. Where the fuck has it been? Holy shit, Bruce…hello”.
What were providing here has never been seen on this scale in the school. If anyone tries to convince us that the members have much better things to do, either they are bad liars, or very fuckin stupid, but probably both.
From the Fellowship of Friends website, “Frequently Asked Questions” (http://www.beingpresent.org/index.php?toc=FAQ):
The Fellowship seems to have softened its judgment regarding other paths to awakening. Many on this blog might dispute the “practical dimension” of other methods has been lost.
If indeed “a real spiritual school of awakening must be rare”, who knows how rare they must be? Surely, in the vast sea of humanity, those who pursue “enlightenment” or “awakening” through any means are already a rare phenomena.
Quite a while back, I asked “Howard” this “simple” question – how do you measure your results? S/He said they would get back to me on it.
“Measure the results.” The “simplest way”? What a great question for those who have spent 5, 10, 20 or 30 years in the Fellowship. Are you remembering yourself more now than you did years ago? (How do you measure this? How do you gauge “progress”?)
And if you cannot honestly answer “yes”, then how do you prove to yourself that having the perpetual “third force” of a school is actually necessary? Could you have not achieved similar results on your own (once you have verified your “sleep”, that is)?
Are you “achieving what (you) had aspired to?” (If you had aspired to awakening in this lifetime, then your hopes must have been dashed once the “truth” was revealed by Robert.)
I would like to hear how current members address such questions. (I have no intention of attacking your responses, as to this day I live with these questions.)
I wish this blog had existed when I was a member. Not only to be exposed to the revolting facts of the “teacher” but also to hear the current members interact with others. First it was threats, then ridicule, always dismissal. It has been very strange to see it written down and documented.
(btw, i finished a painting which has a wall collaged with snippets from this blog – hidden right in plain view because only blog readers would get it)
Good luck to us all !
oh, oops, not all the current members have been that way…just the more persistent ones.
Well then, I’ll give that a try Nick.
I have not posted at anyone’s request, just thought that the blog could use some balance, so that members, former members and future members do not think that the lack of response from current members is because they all agree with the statements made here.
Not pretending to speak for any number of current students at all, just my own opinions were given, I also believe very firmly that the more vocal former members here are not speaking for the majority of former students either. This is what has made this blog what it is–quite colorful.
With that said, I will get back into OUR cave. But as the Terminator said: “I’ll be back”
Siddiq
To Ni_k Spa_ldi_g
Many here have commented on and questioned the current members about their participation here relative to your exact thoughts.
We all know that contact with ex-members is cultishly considered to be poisonous and have wondered why they bother. (Howard claimed he’d been given an exploratory mission by the Fellowship. Siddiq claimed he was attempting to provide balance for any prospective member reading the board.)
Most of them have displayed rude, arrogant behavior and have, consistently, offered extremely insane representations. The elitist attitudes are abhorrent. The twisted thought processes are illustrative of cult behavior. They’ve displayed extreme negativity and, in that, confirmed the cult’s corruption.
Further, you have now confirmed that the elitist attitudes do exist and that members who have posted here are breaking cult rules and, of course, making y’all look pretty bad.
If there are prospective followers browsing this board, your post will be highly enlightening because it clearly illustrates the fact that the fellowship is a cult which requires members to censor themselves in order to obey a very strange pedophile.
Robert’s motive in creating rules that isolate members from contact with the world are efforts to further manipulate them in order to protect his financial interests by ensuring that no one is thinking or participating outside of his incredibly tiny box.
Your motive is to ensure that these strange members don’t continue to make the fellowship look as bad as it is, which they’ve been accomplishing with superb tenacity and great facility.
To Siddiq
You are very obedient. Perhaps they will also order you to consistently read the solicitations for money rather than block them. Anticipate it because they’ve found you here!
Hello Nicholas ~
You wrote ~
“If there were any confusions,
misgivings, or questions….they usually ask before
making choices……please consider “Hafiz, step
aside…It is you who are in the way.”
___________________
It’s very emotional for me to have started reading your first few paragraphs, then a profound shock at the end; I want to share this ‘shock’ with you, because I think it will be useful, similar to my ‘Rumi post’ some days ago.
The Hafiz quote you quoted ~
That is the very exact quote Robert Burton used on a young man after he said ‘no’ to Robert’s wish to sodomize him.
He said, “Feelings? No, those are not yours; Hafiz said, ”
step aside (let me sodomize you)..It’s you Hafiz who are in the way.”
We are all saints and beggars in our disclosure of words.
_________________________
l.t.y.a.
286 Nick.S.
Oh Nick You have become the right arm of the fof law.
How could you?
You are bigger than that!
I have sat in your silver bullet with you and I respected you as a man.
On the strength of that alone I will attempt to do the impossible with you and ask you to do something very simple, next time you see “The Teacher” remember yourself intensely and just look at him very carefully.
I and many others would still be there if not for him.
Cant you see that its about one of his main weaknesses, keeping current students away from former ones, is dominance and his fear that his greed will be compromised in future.
Keep the sheep in the pen until slaughter, keep them away from people like me, dont let them bite of the poison apple of knowledge.
I know you once respected me, but then before you knew it I was gone through my own choice, to live a life that I could also respect myself in living because If I had stayed it would have been at the cost of my self respect and thats too high a price for any man to pay.
Dont pay it Nick!
You are unlucky in that you have never been the “object” of your “teachers” lust because If you had you would know what I know, undeniably.
There are friends in the neighbourhood who would embrace you If you left, do you believe that they have cut themselves of from all possibilities?
I know that you have burned your bridges in your past life and invested all where you are but is it worth selling your soul for?
Why have I bothered to post this?
Simply because despite your foibles I liked you you old fool. C y.
As I am going to be moderated, I thought I would invite Walt Whitman to join me in the process.
Probably like everyone who is contributing to, or reading this blog – student or ex-student, this opening verse to “Song of the Open Road”, has at one time been an inspiration for our work – our life. Why? Because it is pregnant with latent possibility. Just reciting it can send a tingle of anticipation down your spine.
Yet when I think how far we have travelled in the intervening years, what a minefield that open road has proven to be.
Like this blog which winds its way through each day like an open road – vulnerable in its pristine state until it is impressed upon by a footprint or many.
And that is the beauty of this path – this blog. It is neutral – a tabula rasa. It is free for anyone to stamp their impression, in which ever way one chooses. There are those who will tell you not to – you yourself may hesitate out of fear of what might emerge from within you, but once you decide to step forth and take to the open road, you are the master of your destiny, wherever the brown path leads.
Many are travelling it now – some cover themselves for protection, others have thrown back their hoods to feel the warmth of the sun…
If you feel a need, you will. Enjoy it while it lasts!
******
Finally, I vowed if I were to re-contribute to this blog I would do so under my real name. So I throw back my hood.
My greeting to friends past and present.
Steven A
My apologies to Nick. As I remember, you had more of a sense of humor than HC anyway, whomever HC is.
Siddiq #277:
If you truly understood and believed in the concept of multiple lifetimes and that each person is responsible for all their actions during this lifetime, “20 years later” means nothing. Your post lacks scale.
Where am I going with this? Where do you think? Robert enslaves his followers! That’s what it is like for me viewing the FOF 22 years later…sans the sentimentality that keeps you and others enslaved. I am not talking about shooting a horse with a broken leg here…it’s much bigger than that. It’s the whole kingdom.
No offense…you come across as one of the head slaves, who has had to crawl through shit to work your way to the top of the heap…and with conviction and sincerity you are advocating for his institution of spiritual slavery because you have the most to lose…Why should I listen to you, then? You are not the voice of balance. Where are the pro-FOF voices that are new in the school?
I am working from ethical principles and as my conscience dictates. You appear to be working from self-interest and as Robert dictates.
Old Fish in the Sea #285
“Guide us to mature.” ???
With all due respect, my friend, we would be better served discovering and nurturing our own inner guides than to seek or expect any mature guidance from a Fellowship of Fundamentalists.
1,082 hits in 24 hours (-37 for entries)
Hummm…
________________
Hello Cathie ~
Janna wrote ~
“Hi Unoanimo #229 – I just wondered where you got this impression about GFOF site: “To me, the Greater Fellowship website needs to rethink their ‘Us and Them’ approach”.
Cathie, you wrote ~
“Please be advised that Greater Fellowship has a forum (”group”) called Rude Argument.
_____________________
Hummmmm (again)
_________________
l.t.y.a.
309
It’ll be a real milestone when we get more hits per day than the FOF sends out solicitation emails per day.
I think.
unoanimo, hello, you addressed me in post ~309 and uttered the following:
“Hummmmm.”
Is that the best you can do?
Your communication style is odd. Sometimes you seem to just enjoy the sound of your own words and clever phrases, and don’t care if anyone understands what you’re trying to express or not.
Then occasionally you just hum mysteriously.
Spit it out man, what is your point?
You don’t by any chance have a “dominance feature” do you?
Hello Ni_k Spa_ldi_g,
Thanks for your surprise entrance. I’m glad you read the blog. Is this an official task, or your own idea? Whatever, I hope you are open to feedback.
I have a few thoughts that you, Siddiq, Howard, GOlb, and others may find useful. I have put a “ quote “ sign to show where your statements begin, and a “ ∞ “ sign to show where my thoughts begin. And please grant me that these are thoughtful responses, not an automatic list of “opposite I’s”.
—————————————————————
∞ Why are you making these many efforts, Nick? What business is it of yours? Or, is it your official business? Either way, what are you afraid of? C–Influence needs some little helpers?
∞ But we are asking for them! If that has never been made clear enough in 5600 posts, I’ll put it formally now. I seek esoteric transmissions and understanding from all sources, including from past and PRESENT members of the Fellowship of Friends. Just because Burton says we are damned, lost, unworthy, or whatever—does not make it so (that’s just another unverifiable angle designed to inculcate fear in the followers). So, please consider continuing your participation. This includes you, Nick, we want your input!
∞ Let him ask away. But obeying him merely strengthens your buffers; it turns off the light and restores darkness. A sort of institutional lying and willful self-deception blatantly promoted by the leadership. Ask yourself, does this help me find out the truth, or hinder it?
∞ Why not take a tiny step, and decide for yourself what is “unnecessary”. Burton’s generalized observations, requests and tasks help to turn the function of a true school (whose purpose is to encourage individuation and graduation of the students—based on personal transmission/instruction/initiation) on it’s head.
∞ By all means, consider this advice. But, also consider that firstly, how do you know that “no one has been officially asked…” is true, and secondly, it may be beneficial for you to keep on. For that matter, how do you know the post is actually from Nick Sp___ding? What authority does he have, if it is indeed him, and where does he get it from? Does he have any of his own, from his being, intrinsically? And why would it supercede what your conscience tells you?
∞ True, and thank you for that emotional perception, but it is not the whole truth; there is space for both their process and yours to occur, and at the same time.
∞ Sounds nice. But when I asked hard questions of “older students”, I was lied to by commission or omission, judged, reported to Burton, or given yet another ‘official angle’ that discouraged valid exploration and encouraged alignment with the institution—that is, sleep. This is useless or actively harmful for a genuine truth–seeker. Like KA, I wish I’d had something like this blog to consult.
The Hafiz quote is out of context. The FoF appears to specialize in quotes taken out of their original context, and put in a new context to suit official purposes; and, almost all are taken from dead authors who are not around to protest their misuse. In #14-306, Unoanimo gives a truly hideous example of this. The best interpretation I can put on this subject is that deliberate misuse is tantamount to a lie, and in Unianimo’s example, is high crime.
∞ If you meant, just (and only) neutral, the posters might be naïve. But, this blog can and has served as active, passive, and neutral force in a variety of triads. Find out and explore each for yourselves, and invite your friends. Have you learned anything, for yourself? If yes, then stay open that you may learn more! If, after all this effort on your parts, you can genuinely say you have learned nothing at all, then Nick may have a point.
This “War Room” stuff. Nick, whatever Abe may be promulgating about “conspiracies” and “cabals” (I’ll have to post some of the letters he sent around the time I left, one of these days), what you see on this blog is it. Just talk at this time.
I’d bet, and I’d appreciate your take on this, is that Burton and Abe, the Board and the “power possessors” are burning a lot more midnight oil than ‘we’ are on preparations for any ‘war’. But hey, ask around, if you don’t already know, and keep us informed! (Now I grant you, this blog is the ground for a “Battle of Belief Systems”—and the weapons are ideas, against which there is no defense.)
∞ But, not so! Just a few minutes later, you posted a last word that you thought too important to forego. Think of it as another shock. Rather, open yourself to this idea—you have much to contribute; instead of lurking, join in whenever you feel you can serve others or your self, now and in the future. We’d appreciate having you here.
∞ And much love to you, dear Nick!
P.S. The layout is an experiment. I thought I’d try some html code in here. If it turns out an unreadable disaster, forgive me, and I’ll post it again in ‘clear’. Ames
Hey Cathie:
Nope, I don’t have a ‘dominance feature’; although I can burn a copy of Harrison Ford’s ‘Blade Runner’ if you want it…
:)
I love you too.
_______________
l.t.y.a.
WhaleRider #308 on Old Fish in the Sea #285
“Guide us to mature.” ???
Yes, you are right. We have been guided enough. I must have had a momentary relapse. I don’t won’t them to guide me – but I don’t mind them trying.
But as thankful as I am that I left, I don’t like the us versus them attitude. I don’t like it when it comes from within the Fellowship and I also don’t like it when it comes from those of us that have left. We all were students. We all worked together. We all allowed ourselves to be deceived together. We all supported it for a while. Odds are I was recently friends with one or both of them. I am happy to encourage them to share their experience and to try to be as open and honest as they can be.
Siddiq, Howard and GOlb are not fundamentalist. Remember Be Careful or LOL. They had no hearts. Howard and Siddiq have hearts.
Oddly, I am even thankful to “Be Careful”. Were it not for those repulsive posts I might not have been motivated to post to the blog and I might not have left. Now I see that the Fellowship is always telling students to be careful and I am glad to be a bit more free from that. Howard and Siddiq have the courage to post and I appreciate that.
Hello Ames;
For me, although it’s a stretch, I would say that it’s not Nick; that’s it’s either HC or Siddiq’s conscience (or both) that has ‘nearly swallowed their tongues’ and seen the light, that posted that ‘blog beware’ sign, to give themselves a back door.
If it is ‘Nick’, then he has simply (so to speak) given us yet another example of cult-shackle rattling; and, personally, whenever I hear a ‘rattle’, I have three things in hand, a shovel for rattlesnakes, ‘baby food’, and ‘my hand in a glove’ in case it’s both.
There’s allot of Freud (not Buddha) going on in the Fellowship of Friends; its no coincidence that Robert Burton’s first ‘my-law abiding- trust me’ lie was built on the subject and constitutional aspect of chastity, which, being a lie, simply shows his deepest area of pain body identification and automatic-pain-propagation (making his ‘school’ one of relative awakening, where transforming what the teacher puts forth is religious-duty, identification with ‘role’ as ‘I see you Robert, do you see me seeing you?’
This is beyond the inner-man, who the forefathers of ‘The Way’ (and mothers) point to; not to forget that it was a being in a female body that awakened Meher Baba; the Fellowship of Friends has little room for the ‘quiet sister’;
although, I have noticed that Robert Burton’s name is not being printed on event brochures as usual;
is this blog making/giving suggestive, better camouflage techniques for Burton and friends by stating the ‘not so obvious’? Reverse psychology? Seeming to pay more attention to the slaves than their first-force-master?
No, Robert, it will not work, whoever is reading this I am writing (or anyone on this blog, whose attempting to be sincere and balanced, past profundities and ‘higher instinctive center’ looks from you) will ‘pass it on’ (the grape vine is getting shorter and shorter by the day), take a look at the vineyard BTW. Your humilty-invisibility has been seen too many times and means nothing; particularly after witnessing ‘Nick’s’ soul-tumor-result, compliments of Robert Burton (and Nick).
Written above, “shows his deepest pain body identification and propagation;” marks, for me, that Robert Burton is ‘still’ (and yes, I am using numbers for the sake of ‘certain scales reading this’) a man #4.
A man #5 glows a “certain something”, (and I don’t mean to sound ‘New Age’ here), this ‘glow’ is a kind of intentional suffering that when looked at by the yearning of another seeker (a seeker whose ‘doing the same’) can be felt;
I have looked at Robert Burton, face to face, many, many times: I see an opportunist, this is all… he’s surfing a wave that some other third force created, a third force that he does not ‘pay for’; if it seems he does, it is by the projected energy of his so called ‘students’ individual payments being artificially attributed to his proximity, again, an opportunist.
__________________
Ames, you quoted from ‘Nick’ ~
“Also, from the view that the blog may offer a doorway to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering that you may consider real or imaginary, this is their process, not yours. Give them their space.”
Another example of the defense of a School of Relative Awakening; yet, do you ‘Nick’, see that by posting here, that HC, Siddic and Golb are looking for a doorway to a place of peace and healing for pain and suffering that Robert Burton cannot keep to his own first line, that he has artificially made into ‘second line’ and ‘third line’ for thousands; sounds like dominance, vanity, and greed to me.
Second to the aim of this blog; I want its radiations to fall upon its ‘first force’ and sink in; truly, Robert Burton, I pray for your soul, I pray for your letting go of all this that has defined you as ‘thou’ and ‘tho’…
_____________________________
Love to you all.
Many fine posts lately, thanks to all for the good reading.
279 Graduates
In a word, brilliantly articulated (all right, 2 words). Thanks.
286 Ni_k Spa_ldi_g
Hey Ni_k, how are you? Long time no yak. Ni_k, I have very fond memories of our times together. (Even though you made me sleep on the floor in Old Westbury! haha) I always thought you had more talent as a standup comedian than for the 4way, but what do I know? I know we sometimes rubbed “sore spots” together, but I always admired your way of shaking it off with a smile. Hope you are well and always welcome contact.
It would be great if more FoF people would post here, not fewer, in my opinion. The blog is useful to many.
On FoF Website:
Should we call it the Fellowship of Divine Presence now? Nice history eradication project on the FoDP website, a little like the revisionist history texts of the Soviet era, nyet? Don’t like your history? Just wipe it out—bingo, a new church is born.
312 Ames
I dunno Ames, can you make the quote marks a little smaller? Like 1/2 the size???
JoelF
286 Ni_k Spa_ldi_g
Oh, Ni_k, I was curious about the “abandoning Shakespeare” rumor. Is it true? Curious about the reason for it, whether people are still “permitted” to read S. on their own, just really puzzled me and I thought you might know. Thanks.
Jo_l Fri_dl_nd_er
Old Fish in the Sea:
Thanks for your post. Your voice is important here. Sure, I’m all for more open-minded discourse with anyone ‘out’ or still financially supporting the FOF, the trouble is, it’s not a trickle up kind of organization…it’s the other way. So in this case, even if we magically converted siddiq or ‘HC” to see the light, so to speak, it wouldn’t really matter to their spiritual master. I have issue that there are no viable checks and balances in this corrupt organization. Legally corporations, especially non-profit ones, are chartered to have checks and balances. The FOF is run as a dictatorship, that’s different. Dictatorship is not a stable form. They usually don’t end well and have a hard time carrying on unless the dictator has a son…
Nick, Ames and unoanimo:
Thanks for that. Who knows what would Hafiz say?
The intentional misuse of b-influence quotes to further one’s perversions…high crime as you say, Ames….sure feels like a ‘spiritual crime’ to me…yup, offending the spirit(s) of the quote…using it to abuse and manipulate someone in such a vulnerable state, your young ‘student’ follower (for goodness sake!) is a total desecration of the intent behind the poem!
By supporting the organization of the Fellowship of Friends, members are complicit in this play of crime. You pay, you play. There’s no middle ground, I am sorry to say.
You guys…its kinda like paying for an insane insurance policy that’s on acid…and the twisted nightmare is that you end up in servitude to freakin’ insurance agent…even having to pay to see or talk with him after you’ve signed your whole damn life off to him…and the trip just gets weirder and weirder…and you keep working harder and harder and paying more and more in hopes of building up some kind of credit in the ‘afterlife’ each time the light bulb of presence goes off in your head??? Which you realize way into it that it is a great deal for Robert, because he doesn’t have to pay out your policy until after you are dead…when you presumably…hook up with him or something?…in some other ‘limbo’ plane to get your credits?…or maybe he’s going to be there to vouch for you or something…but that’s starting to seem a little suspect since c-influence doesn’t appear to have a very high regard for him…cuz they kept showing him all those wrong ‘signs’ about everything…and you are really not sure one way or the other what’s going to happen in the end until it happens…
Well, sounds fishy to me…still does after 22 years.
…and you really don’t have anything in writing, either…?
Hi Unoanimo,
If inventing ‘Nick’ was HC’s or Siddiq’s escape route, then it would be fear, not conscience, that led them to that action…. a completely different triad.
That’s the way I see it, at least!
Time for bed…
Love to you,
Ames
To N.S. – 14-185
It’s hard to ignore your post and not see it as a confirmation, coming as it did on 7-7-07 – “octave complete?”
I actually came to this point for most of the same reasons you stated and stopped posting for a month or so earlier. I looked at coming back in the sense that it had a set time involved and it now appears to have played out. I think GOlb also sensed something a few days ago.
P.S. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to you in the humour department; who wouldn’t. But for the record I did bite my lip and let several good ones go by due to the wit exercise. Such is life.
There’s still one or two to address shortly.
HC
Ni_k Spa_ldi_g 286 (number subject to change)
Since my many efforts to find who they were had failed,
using the Shiek as a private go-between off the blog
itself, was the next step…….until seeing my nam_ today….
My thoughts are these:
DEAR HOWARD,SIDDIQ, & GOlb:
******************************
Translation of jack-of-hearts, soft-peddled cult-speak:
“Robert has had enough of this, I have been sent to inform you that we are actively trying to find out who you are. Stop posting now or you will be out of the school when we do figure it out.”
Howard Carter 321 (number may change)
To N.S. – 14-185
It’s hard to ignore your post and not see it as a confirmation, coming as it did on 7-7-07 – “octave complete?”
I actually came to this point for most of the same reasons you stated and stopped posting for a month or so earlier. I looked at coming back in the sense that it had a set time involved and it now appears to have played out. I think GOlb also sensed something a few days ago.
P.S. I don’t mind playing second fiddle to you in the humour department; who wouldn’t. But for the record I did bite my lip and let several good ones go by due to the wit exercise. Such is life.
There’s still one or two to address shortly.
HC
**************************
Your constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment right to speak your mind publicly has been revoked by the Fellowship of Friends because you are too incompetent to speak about and defend the ideals of your school. You have been told to shut up because, though you have enough drive-of-vanity, you do not possess the intellectual capacity not to make a fool out of yourself and thus reflect poorly on the general intelligence of your cult. Accept the photograph and relinquish this futile obsession to distinguish yourself as a man of higher reason and relativity.
Clue: “humour” spelled in the Canadian, British, Australian or even Indian variant. Not an American.
N_ckS, If you feel that we feel that the blog is a neutral space for discourse,
YOU may be naive…..
Anyway your I’s are appreciated as a third force and I’ll start the experiment already proposed on July 4th.
BTW siddip may be more on the side of acting intentionally but many elements tell me exactly who HC actually is: …a good friend!
GOlb
The Greater Fellowship
There should be established a formal organization with religious/church legal status, with officers/ministers, with the aim to unify the informal friendships developed through similar experiences into a coherent aim. Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. There could be a monthly single fee of $25 or so used to secure offices, property, legal counsel and all the necessary accessories of a church, located in the town of Oregon House. Let’s get organized and decide on an aim. There are people like Charles R., James B., Joel F., Carl M., Ames G. (and more) and any number of highly competent women to direct unified efforts toward a genuine purpose.
Hallo,
Tim: Sure thing, I’ll inform you guys of any newly moderated posts from now on.
Graduates,
I agree that 14/279 is beautifully articulated.
Regarding 14/326 – a new organization staffed by the old staff – that’s never going to happen.
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Hi everybody,
I feel a bit spaced out today, not much intellectual juice flowing, but still wanted to say:
I love this blog, I love the confrontations, the discomfort, the surprises, the freedom, the openness, the confusion, the mysteries and disclosures…
thanks everyone for bringing extra turmoil in my life, you are fuel for my fire.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyp34v6Lmcc&mode=related&search=
Graduates #324: …..”you do not possess the intellectual capacity not to make a fool out of youself and thus reflect poorly on the general intelligence of your cult. Accept the photograph and relinquish this futile obession to distinguish yourself as a man of higher reason and relativity”.
This was directed to somebody and I dont know exactly who. But, if they dont accept the photograph, I’ll accept it for myself.
Rodney Collin said the 4th way ideas must be passed on even poorly. I try to always apologize first. As in, “I’m not the best example of what I’m trying to explain”. That’s when I did try. A long time ago.
Graduates:
You propose “…Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. ”
I agree with Veronicapoe, it’s never going to happen. Who would pay to join a “vaguely spiritual” group whose ulterior motive was to undermine the FOF? Sorry, life’s too short.
I think what really makes the Inner Circle nervous is talk (like Whalerider’s proposal) of letter-writing to key players in the FOF’s shell game: the insurers, the suppliers, the state and federal agencies whose goodwill and tolerance they depend on. That might have an impact.
Probably the strongest appeal to public outrage would be thoughts like #268 Parent posted here recently…that children are being brought up in an environment where the leader’s sexual excesses are (tacitly or not) condoned and paid for by the followers.
Unoanimo:
Thanks for the love, my cup runneth over. Maybe you really do have a point:
Regarding #14-326 from Graduates, and #14-255 from Not an Attorney…
I am also very much not an attorney! Yet, I seem to remember from previous research (13 years ago) that in a weird way, both possibilities are true. That is, if the FoF collapsed or were dissolved, the state would take it over. BUT, if there is another non-profit around that “has a similar charter” (aims), then the state can hand over the assets to that organization. Whether it is actually obliged to do so is another matter. I would guess that it would free up state resources the quicker, if the judge/receiver/special master/arbitrator decided to do that, and so save the state some grief. But consider, is it actually worth it? Just in the material realm, the state gets ‘remaining assets’, sure, but after all the primary creditors (banks, Abraham Goldman, note holders) ahead have been paid off. We already know that Burton is one of the most inefficient, wasteful ‘managers’ of assets in recent history. That’s just the part in public view; we don’t know what has been covered up. We don’t know what the state and IRS would do if they discover the “immensely creative and increasingly desperate book-keeping” that has inevitably been going on as a result of the “C-influence wants…” style of management/undisciplined dictatorship; I’d bet they’ll blow a few gaskets!
For myself, I don’t think “bringing down the FoF” as a primary aim is valid under these circumstances; but, pointing out to anyone interested that the structure is built on sand, and how, is quite another matter.
Incidentally, but not entirely unconnected…
I believe, from observing myself, that one of the aspects some of those ‘out’ miss quite a bit is the community. I’ve explored joining many intentional communities myself, including visiting some, to see if I can legitimately satisfy that longing without giving too much to someone else’s vision. So far, no luck. I can see, for myself, the process of wanting to belong to a tribe, to be valued, to contribute something worthwhile corresponding to my essence and gifts, right here on the blog; and I believe I can see this happening with others. And why not, our genetic code demands, and our culture supports, social networks; it is part of being human, and I think Elena Haven is spot on when she says that bringing consciousness to community cannot be separated from raising our individual consciousness.
With love to you all, ‘in’ and ‘out,
Ames
P.S., Siddiq and Howard, I wrote #14-314 with mostly you in mind…
So, don’t go back to the cave, please!
Uh, am I the only one, or does it seem at the moment that the intellectualizations of “Howard Carter” and “Siddiq” over the past couple of months are a lot less impressive now compared to their being run off the blog with nary a whimper by a single post from Ni_k Spa_ldi_g????????!
Or am I nuts?
JoelF
Interesting parallels with the ‘spirit of the times’:
”
Rosa Brooks writes in her Los Angeles Times opinion column: “Like freed hostages who gradually cease to identify with their captors, mainstream media outlets seem to have been seized by a new spirit of liberation in their coverage of the Bush administration. Lately, we’ve seen a rash of astonished, outraged stories and editorials relating to the administration’s recently discovered malfeasance. . . .
“[I]f the media have finally noticed that the emperor has no clothes, it’s all to the good. Still, I’m troubled by the suggestion that all of us were somehow ‘tricked’ by administration subterfuge into accepting its nefarious policies. . . .
“Someday, historians will ponder our strange collective passivity in the face of Bush-Cheney madness. Why did the editorial boards of our major newspapers either parrot the administration line or raise only muted criticism on so many issues, and for so long? Where were the tough journalistic questions? Why didn’t more members of Congress protest the administration’s blatantly unjustified policies and transparent constitutional outrages? . . .
“It’s hard not to conclude that collectively, we were all too cowardly, slothful or puffed up with our own self-importance to ask the right questions and stand up for principle. The administration didn’t trick us; we tricked ourselves.”
“
Veronicapoe
Graduates,
Regarding 14/326 – a new organization staffed by the old staff – that’s never going to happen.
*****************
If something like this were to happen these are the guys that would have my unconditional confidence, they have paid their dues and know the FoF/RB better than most of us. They are mensches and the majority would feel confidence in them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch
=============================
Cathie
Graduates:
You propose “…Something with a vaguely spiritual purpose, but mainly established to counter the FoF’s influences and resources. ”
I agree with Veronicapoe, it’s never going to happen. Who would pay to join a “vaguely spiritual” group whose ulterior motive was to undermine the FOF? Sorry, life’s too short.
******************
See, you’re not being coerced into sexual activity while stuck without alternatives in a cult of sodomy so naturally you have better things to do than worry about it.
The spiritual aims of such a church could be something like: the promotion of self-consciousness, conscience and human decency.
================================
Ames Gilbert
For myself, I don’t think “bringing down the FoF” as a primary aim is valid under these circumstances; but, pointing out to anyone interested that the structure is built on sand, and how, is quite another matter.
******************
A legally established organization could provide a “half-way house” type of accommodation to those trying to escape from Burton’s cult of sodomy, maybe provide a plane ticket back to Guatemala or such places. The usefulness of such an endeavor must be instantly recognizable, along with the development of a community of kindred spirits hoping to inspire and nurture one another.
There should be some more intelligent action than complaining and criticizing on the internet and socializing, it is somewhat clear that the blog is losing some of its momentum and there should be a next step.
333 Joel
Both are true. Just kidding.
No, I had the same impression. I still feel their presence was to control and disrupt. But their posts DID illustrate what one becomes when you abandon discrimination. And they were annoying, anonymous little putzes. But you know they’ll be back… like a bad penny.
““It’s hard not to conclude that collectively, we were all too cowardly, slothful or puffed up with our own self-importance to ask the right questions and stand up for principle. The FOF didn’t trick us; we tricked ourselves.”
Yup.
335
My own opinion is that one needs to assimilate, transpose, digest and own one’s experience with the FOF when one leaves. It might be different for everyone else, but I would never have considered going to a “group” to process my experience in the FOF. And I certainly would never join a “group” now, beyond this blog and the wonderful GF network. But for me it’s more of a social thing than a necessity. If it were all to disappear, I would continue to live my life as I have before and during. But it is pretty nice. But as for a “formal group”….I don’t play well with others.
Even though I realize my weaknesses, vices, short-sighted opinions etc, I think I got what I needed to be able to answer any spiritual question that I might manufacture internally. The problem, of course, is whether one can accept and act on the answers we can produce ourselves from our higher parts. I haven’t been able, the past few years, to come up with a question that I couldn’t answer myself, according to the cosmology I’ve developed by my experiences.
I’ve always felt that the “perpetual seeker” is more of a perpetual avoider. Just my opinion.
Not to denigrate always expanding one’s knowledge of “important things” and other system’s views. They can always expand one’s understandings.
At #1-131 there is a reference to a Nick S. I found it while back pedaling. Whether it’s the same Ni-k Spa-ldi-g that everyone loves I cannot tell. Nor, did I check the posts above 1-131. But, post 1-131 also seems to love a Nick S.
332/Ames:
> BUT, if there is another non-profit around that “has a
> similar charter” (aims), then the state can hand over the
> assets to that organization.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_pres_doctrine
335/Graduates:
You recognize the integrity of the people you mention, which is a fine thing. But I suspect that many xFoFs, including those to whom you toss flowers, no longer see the so-called fourth way as anything vital. “Hierarchy now hiring for the following positions: naive idealist (many positions available, must contribute money and labor in exchange for illusions and/or bitter wisdom); guru (sociopathy a plus). No benefits.”
#338 Bruce
I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective.
And I too “realize your weaknesses, vices, short-sighted opinions etc.” (Just kidding. Love you man.)
Love you too Tim, ya putz.
Hello ~ 321 Ames Gilbert
You wrote ~
“If inventing ‘Nick’ was HC’s or Siddiq’s escape route, then it would be fear, not conscience, that led them to that action…. a completely different triad.
That’s the way I see it, at least!”
____________________________
Maybe this will be clearer ~
They “fear” their “conscience”… So, see, we’re still both paddling the same boat.
___________________
You also wrote (concerning the IRS finding out about the Fellowship of Friends ‘shade tree farm’) ~
“I’d bet they’ll blow a few gaskets!”
________________________________
Yes, and throw a couple rods out the engine block as well.
________________________________
Hello ~ Graduates
You wrote ~
“There should be some more intelligent action than complaining and criticizing on the internet and socializing, it is somewhat clear that the blog is losing some of its momentum and there should be a next step.”
________________________
Oh, BTW, that “next step” started about 6 weeks ago; I mean, after all, a train can’t just go rolling through Oregon House like a ‘sausage-link shaped tank’; the tracks had to be laid and a big bumper-stop at the end of the track installed so ‘it’ knows where to cease ‘rolling’.
BTW, Does not your “should” create the introduction to yet another bout of the very “complaining and criticizing” that you’re concerned about being protracted?
Just curious.
_____________________
Hello Cathie ~ (Post 331)
Wow! Beautiful YouTube link… thank you.
Now, that’s my kind of esoteric stuff; far beyond any material the FoF is keying these days, far too objective by itself, prior to the wiseacre magnifying glass. To me, love is found in self evident impressions and compositions, if you have to explain your love, you’re not in love, if you have to ‘key-it-out’, then your door is locked.
It’s interesting that all the town and ‘members’ lost their points, though the little one kept his… profound: very.
And I mean that… His revelation to the King was perfect, then the transformation, his ‘point birth’, the loss of ‘point affirmations’ externally! Woooooo….
Go girl ! Word !
______________________
l.t.y.a.
Hello Joel ~ 333 Skeptical Optimist
You wrote ~
“Uh, am I the only one, or does it seem at the moment that the intellectualizations of “Howard Carter” and “Siddiq” over the past couple of months are a lot less impressive now compared to their being run off the blog with nary a whimper by a single post from Ni_k Spa_ldi_g????????!
Or am I nuts?”
_____________________________
Well, sorta; let’s dive a bit deeper into ‘cult psychology’ shall we; there’s some funky spelunking down there.
Concerning HC and Siddiq’s ‘one-knee-kneel approach’ or ‘praying with one hand, while the other is crossing it’s fingers’ (or, in the Fellowship of Friends case, tied); there are healthy ‘martyrs’, as well as dead.
To me, it’s just another ‘affirmative gesture’ showing ‘true form’ (externally here on the blog, where everyone can see them on their chosen crosses, velcroed and shrink wrapped that is.)
Another ‘sign’ of their knighthood; yet, we know it’s false personality, due to Siddiq’s “I’ll be back” tongue in cheek quote and HC’s continued willful posts; just to let us know that he’s leaving based on his terms of Nick’s terms…LOL.
What a farce of puppet strings and yet, as Whalerider suggested, this is the operating room, where Pinocchio does’nt just ‘turn into a boy’, he is built, cell by cell.
So, actually Joel, it does not surprise me at all; though I must admit, initially my coconut milk got a little skin on its surface after reading their response to Old Saint Nick, shaking that off (Laura seems to share this state today), I ‘twice blinked’; (what was that X-File episode where the guy blinked his eyelids while the others stayed open?) Wow! That was pretty original…I like things like that.
I love Nick though, he’s got some miles on his spirit, I can feel it in his presence; he’s stuck too, yet, this really means very little when considering his truer inner world order; I would say that 70% of the Fellowship of Friends are stuck and actually know it; one can live a ‘relatively ‘happy’ life’ stuck; who knows when the knock will occur for the giraffe who has hit ‘rock bottom’, neck high in quicksand?
All a friend can do is not be pushy and not be possessed by the other’s plight, to give out love however it flows or feels ‘right’… some have allot of ‘thought based affirmations’, particularly in the realm of ‘what should be and what didn’t have to be’… Too, there’s allot of ‘purple heart showing’ going on these days too in the FoF ~
Rilke said, …”enduring is everything.” Yet, that was a Lunar ‘I’… for he would later go beyond even ‘enduring’, into being beyond that which ‘thinks’ that there are two opposite sides to endure the non-reconciliatory plight of the two, that simply will not agree to turn inwards upon themselves and experiment in ceasing the contradiction-affirmation-game.
Exactly where we are is where we will be at any given segment of the one and only moment; HC and Siddiq’s actions provide no wisdom for our hearts, nor their’s, though it certainly adds a few extra inches to Robert Burton’s cape (ah, BTW, that would be the ‘red carpet’ all you current members are standing on; waiting for Robert to come around the corner.)
This is not to say that their actions will not ‘turn around’, they will; then, there’s the material for another future blog site or their more ’rounded’ self re-induction into this one.
________________________
Nicholas,
The only “war room” is 14 inches beyond the Galleria library; to the far right, first entrance way as you enter the front door (after the ‘coat & cash room’), for all you new students or ‘new boys’.
Look up, on the ceiling of the vestibule, that’s your essence on Viagra, porn mythology, greed and key-dope.
Breath it in guys; what began with the vineyard (from lush to weeds) is getting closer and closer with each heart beats breath.
___________________
It’s interesting that all those who are somewhat critical of any mention of law suit or kindred ‘legal’ environments, has taken the traditional ‘mood’ set upon lawyers and such, i.e., one of loathing and a tinge of negative imagination as to the intentions, the aims, the buffering that ‘the suit’ might be standing for, the anger, the blaming and explaining and the like…
Yet, all throughout esoteric lore, such ‘tough love’ has always turned out (like in Rumi’s stories) to be from the ‘god within’, not Gurdjieff’s ‘evil-god’ he so often spoke of in referencing the ‘automatic self’;
who is it that interprets altruistic aims? Does altruism have to only come from the forms of the Shriners and Masonic Lodges?
Can altruism take ‘any form’ when lead by an aim who possesses no hatred, no identification, no inner state dependent on outcome or result; but rather having done one’s best, based upon a steady sense of self and all the stuff that goes along with being yourself?
Could there be an altruism that’s not in any way connected to winning or loosing, rather, one’s serving of one’s place in a set of circumstances that calls one’s conscience to bat (or does one let the ball hit the thigh and walk the bases)?
A class action lawsuit is a ‘symbol’ for me; it’s already happening right here in this blog and its occurring in the spiritual dimension as well; (unbeknown to Robert Burton’s king of clubs sexual psychology) feelings are very powerful travelers, they knock on doors that don’t even have earth hinges; that’s my feeling.
And a class action lawsuit is also possibly in the physical dimension as well; I do not see any ‘real’ reason to distinguish ‘the symbol’ based on what dimension it’s in during the now or not in yet as an ‘obvious’;
we identify with the third dimension because it’s the easiest to call names, predict and attach ‘our third dimension (the body) to as well (imaginative affirmations?);
to me we’re already there, doing it, if it manifests into an actual court case, it won’t be anything surprising, nor will it be anything anyone didn’t see coming… Let’s not get down about the ‘looks’ of the ‘train of thought’, there’s plenty of room for ‘graffiti’, love and being right there, shoveling coal , having a beer and telling jokes.
Do you really think David didn’t go have a beer after Goliath or is it that we have been conditioned to ‘think’ he ran to the church to thank god…LOL…
David’s List
_____________
Sling shot stones
Goliath
Aim
Beer
Thank god
Next… ?
_______________________________
Love to you all.
344 unoanimo
I don’t have the time or patience for a symbolic law suit. You know the time span of a lawsuits, just above that of the mineral world. If one REALLY wants to impact the FOF in the short run, for what ever reasons, good or bad) the quickest would be to bring to the attention of the various governmental agencies (Federal and State) all the info that’s been gleaned here. If you have the time, impetus and reasons, that would clearly be the fastest, though still not more immediate than having the blog and GF available for those who need to make a decision. In real time it looks like we’re not doing much, but one is usually blind in real time, like a BAD marriage, or boiling a frog.
I think this gathering here is having a growing impact within the FOF. I don’t see how it cannot when the structure of the school has become so extreme and ridiculous.
I trust that everyone is moving towards their destiny.
Eventually RB might be sweeping floors in a retirement home with only ugly old men around him.
Hello Bruce;
I agree, my friend, I don’t have time for symbolic law suits either, yet, in a way, it’s happening without us; perhaps my use of artistic license ‘up there’ needs some pruning (?) Though I felt I made myself pretty clear about the “6 weeks ago” note to ‘Graduates’… did you get that line?
Nearly 6 weeks ago, what you speak of “bring to the attention to” has begun in so many ways; everyone has their version of ‘real time’, yes?
Take care and thank you for the ‘no nonsense’… I can roll with that.
BTW… The way things are brewing, I do not sense the effect will be for the ‘short run’, it’s a small world up here (2000 ft above sea level) and out there in spiritual circles; I believe we’re rolling in the direction of long term and beyond…
I liked your story about the two men in the hospital; did you write that? I do not recall that you quoted anyone.
Tell me about the “boiling a frog”… that’s a new one for me.
_______________________
l.t.y.a.
not an attorney #255
“Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated.”
Hey, I resemble that remark! (almost) “Thinking about the downstream effect” is imagination one way or another, positive or negative. On the scale of large institutional change, the wise man understands the result is always a combination of both positive and negative. Should fear stop the march of freedom? It’s our ethics and conscience at stake. My concern is about who might be getting hurt tonight and if their rights (and bodies) are being violated by a spiritual despot. How unenlightened or self-centered is that?
“Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising its head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right? “
I think the majority of posters ‘in or out’ feel the FOF is a church based ‘loosely’ upon fourth way ideas. Those ‘in’ have to make the church argument to preserve the IRS non-profit status. Churches are for religions, are they not? Those who resent the direction that the FOF has taken over the years also claim it is now a religion, not a fourth way school, based on the definitions of the fourth way authors. So nobody is “deciding” anything here.
The issue is: there are no viable checks and balances in the FOF organization for Robert’s ‘activities’ because of fear of being excommunicated. Robert believes his ‘celestial’ morality trumps civilized society’s mundane morality; that is unethical, and in the case of sex with minors, unlawful. I don’t believe Robert is entitled to make such a distinction using the buffer (and lie) ‘‘the lower cannot see the higher’, no matter how exalted he claims to be.
“Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.”
Life is about change, and change is good. Cooler heads reinforce the staus quo. If there wasn’t a French Revolution, they wouldn’t have invested in our American one, and we’d all be paying internet tax to the British right now. Nobody is talking armed insurrection here. Even childbirth can be viewed as a bloody mess, yet without it there would be no life. For a more appropriate primer on human nature gone awry, I suggest you reread “Lord of the Flies”.
347 A dear friend sent that story to me.
The frog: they say if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it up he won’t discern his predicament and try to escape until it’s too late and he’s boiled. Real time doesn’t often give one perspective because one is too enmeshed to see forward and backward, or an overview.
WHY ROBERT GIVE US PROPHECIES???
Leon Festinger’s Theory
In studying this phenomena, credit must be given to Leon Festinger for his cognitive dissonance theory, as developed in his book When Prophecy Fails, originally published in 1956 and co-authored by Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter. The authors comprised a research team who conducted a study of a small cult-following of a Mrs. Marian Keech, a housewife who claimed to receive messages from aliens via automatic writing. The message of the aliens was one of a coming world cataclysm, but with the hope of surviving for the elect who listened to them through Keech and selected other mediums. What Festinger and his associates demonstrated in the end was that the failure of prophecy often has the opposite effect of what the average person might expect; the cult following often gets stronger and the members even more convinced of the truth of their actions and beliefs! This unique paradox is the focus of attention in this article, and will be later applied specifically to the Jehovah’s Witness movement.
Festinger observes:
“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. “We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks. “But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view. ”
When Prophecy Fails focuses on the failure of prophecies to come true, termed disconfirmation by Festinger, and the accompanied renewal of energy and faith in their source of divine guidance. His theory presupposes the cult having certain identifying features, such as: (a) belief held with deep conviction along with respective actions taken, (b) the belief or prediction must be specific enough to be disconfirmed (i.e., it didn’t happen), (c) the believer is a member of a group of like-minded believers who support one another and even proselytize. All of these characteristics were present in the saucer cult.
Of particular interest in Festinger’s book is how the followers of Mrs. Keech reacted to each disconfirmation (failed date). Little attempt was made to deny the failure. The strength to continue in the movement was derived, not largely from the rationalizations , but from the very energy of the group itself and its dedication to the cause. This explains why proselytizing wasso successful later in reinforcing the group’s sagging belief system. Festinger relates:
“But whatever explanation is made it is still by itself not sufficient. The dissonance is too important and though they may try to hide it, even from themselves, the believers still know that the prediction was false and all their preparations were in vain. The dissonance cannot be eliminated completely by denying or rationalizing the disconfirmation. But there is a way in which the remaining dissonance can be reduced. If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct. Consider the extreme case: if everyone in the whole world believed something there would be no question at all as to the validity of this belief. It is for this reason that we observe the increase in proselytizing following disconfirmation. If the proselytizing proves successful, then by gathering more adherents and effectively surrounding himself with supporters, the believer reduces dissonance to the point where he can live with it.”
In the end, the members of the flying saucer cult did not give up their faith in the Guardians from outer space with their promises of a new world. Despite numerous prophecies and the resultant disappointment accentuated by many personal sacrifices, the group remained strong
on 06 Jul 2007 at 12:54 am
154 Sharon
“But, as for a lawsuit. The only ones who gain from lawsuits are lawyers. The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process – there might be more reasons than being paid off that the previous suers settled out of court. ”
This is a false statement full of imagination and formatory thinking. We are fortunate to live in a nation that has one of the better legal systems in History, certainly not perfect but better than most. “Only Lawyers profit from lawsuits “. That is simply repeating a formatory statement….. Only the lawyers profited by challanging segragation? from fighting for womans right to contraception? from suing the catholic church for abuse? Only lawyers profit from fighting for tenants rights? for envioremental laws and enforcement?
This sounds like something you would get paid for by the Fellowship? It may not be easy but I will tell you rather than feeling bad, taking action against an injustice feels great. Its can be hard, take time and commitment and can leave you open to reprisals but not acting is worse. The best action those who are displeased with Robert Burtons corruption, venality and arrogant abuse of his position is to take legal action. This does not need to be a lawsuit but can be in the form of complaints to the state and federal attorney’s as well as the IRS.
-Robert Burton is a criminal and those who support him are part of a criminal conspiracy to defraud. It might be possible for a federal prosecuter to use legistlation designed for organized crime to investigate and prosecute an interstate conspiracy to defraud. If the Fellowship has not informed all prospective and present students of the Canons it is fraud. Advertising as a 4th way school and operating as a religion is fraud. Not revealing the true cost of membership is also fraud. Members should be able to make the minimium donations and have full rights other wise it is extortion. Members should be able to vote on the board members and major decisions. There should be a yearly report with a full and accurate accounting of all funds donated to the fellowship. There should be no seperate funds available to Robert Burton. This is illegal.
To not seek legal action for the reasons you state is wrong. It indicates a lack of character a lack of conscience. These are characteristic of a Fellowship member. It is a form of institutionalization. Obviously leaving the Fellowship is not sufficent to free oneself from the programming.
“The ones who lose are those who go through all that anger, rage, self justification, revenge, feeling “had”, putting it all out there in public – it’s a truly ugly process ”
Why is this ugly? where is this coming from? the need to buffer the reality of being in a cult? There is nothing negative in experiencing these feelings these are healthy and honest reactions to the abuse of its members done by the Fellowship. Try and get it ,these are right work of centers. It is about time some of the members got angry and exhibited some appropriate negativity. Is it a challange to take action and not be identified with results certainly. More so than to buffer ones own conscience. Isn’t it about time for real efforts and a stop to justifying and buffering?
As for the older students who may be hurt. Who cares? Do you worry about the homeless? The mentally ill wandering the streets? The childen in Iraq? What about all the male students who have been raped? What about the suffering of female students relegated to a second class status whioe having their men raped? What about The 1000’s of former members who helped support and build the school? Should we care less about those with sufficent consciousness, conscience and will to leave the cult then those trapped in the emotional quiksand? The are 1000’s and 10’s of 1000’s of humans dying every day in horrible ways from starvation, aids, and wars. The Fellowship of Friends, Robert Burton and the members of the Fellowship of Friends have been happy to do nothing for anyone and indulge themselves with their imaginary superiority.
Fellowship people are not nice people. That is imagination. They tend towards being first class self centered hypocrites who don’t have the sense to leave a cult when it becomes ever more depraved and abusive. Robert feeds vanity and reaps the rewards. We’re talking about a group of people who collected art, enjoyed formal dining and had parties waiting for Armegedon and the end of civilization.
It is incredibly narrow minded and self centered to include the possible loss of propert values in considering what is moral and helps to develop and nurture conscience. Conscience needs to be more than feeling what’s right it needs to grow to include being willing to pay the price. Payment is a principle. There can be no further growth of consciousness,unity and will if we fail to follow our conscience.
Study Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple and you’ll find that initially he was a more effective leader with better programs for helping people than Robert ever had. Yet look where it lead. Why? Because he became corrupted and started to believe he was a prophet and demand complete obedience. Robert’s nuts, mentally incompetent, unable to make reasoned decicions.
Howard Carter was arrogant enough to invoke all great religions and spirtual paths as references. I challange him or anyone to find one that claims the neccessity for sucking large quantities of young cock for maintaining higher consciousness. If Robert trully needed cum for some reason I would think that many married couples would be glad to save their used condoms for him so as to not force him to humilitate himself and students with his cock sucking.
What is his formula for making decisions. It is advertised as being touch with the Gods. Guiding the school towards a conscious future. Yet in reality everything he does is for his own physical comfort. He is crystallized allright in the King of Clubs.
If anyone really loved their Teacher they would have the courage to face him and say that his behavior is not acceptable.
#128 From Rourke’s Journal
Thanks to whoever posted the excerpts from Rourke’s diary. I remember him. Don’t forget, there are many current students reading this blog. Keep posting.
—————————————————————————-
#135 Hey, Old Fish
Important to really ask oneself, what do we want to save? What do we want to experience?
The “A” Influence part?
The lands and businesses surrounding the FOF will continue to survive in some form. The people who have been a part of the FOF previous and current will also surely continue to survive. Some will thrive. Some will get by. The community understands the idea of External Consideration.
The “B” Influence part? The “C” Influence part?
Funny, ex-students, if they are lucky and have persevered, may consider the FOF now to be “B” Influence, while current students consider themselves to have “C”. So, if we speak of something continuing, it depends on who speaks and for what. Most likely “if” there is an external crash of some sort, whatever survives will be “B” Influence for some and “C” for others. Hmmmm…… A very individual process beckons.
Finally, my guess is that we need to see what the play has in store for the FOF, Robert Burton and the School (if it was, is, or ever will be one). Call it Influence C, call it the Play, but things are happening now that are beyond any one individual’s ability to orchestrate. I suggest we all keep our hearts, minds and eyes open with our inner seat belts fastened. One way to define being Present?
Good Luck to all!
Bass
OK guys. Com’on now. Hold the phone a minute!
I’ve been catching up here on page 14 and this whole HC/ Nick Sp-l-ding thing. For the last month or so I thought HC was probably Nick, so it was nice to see it all come out on the blog.
First off, I’d like to say that I don’t know Nick all that well BUT he did introduce me to the fof. Yes it’s true, he brought me to all three prospective student meetings.
Now, I’m sure that if I’d have offered him the opportunity to either A) bring me to the meetings, or B) boff me, he would most likely have chosen to boff me. but since he’s not writing on the bolg any more I guess we’ll never know!
A or B, either way I was going to get f…ed, wasn’t I. Hence the lesson to always follow C influence.
…..
But I say, who gives a hoot about who HC is. Especially if he IS Nick Spal-ding!!! I mean I WANNA know who Unoanimo is! Ladies, is he not our Cyrano? …I mean Uno amore, the only thing that would make me happier than finding out who you are is finding out that you are really a woman.
Anyway… Unoanimo my heart continues to be warmed by radiance of your words.
and Bruce, I’m in love with you too! You’re Zorro with that f…in keyboard!
love,
Shelley
If someone is after you to do physical harm something inside you becomes alarmed. Normally you would walk around looking down or straight ahead. Now you look inside trees, in the bushes, shadows come alive, a fluttering bird or leaf becomes danger and you can almost hear a worm poop on a flat rock 50 yards away.
I think Robert & gang are nervous about all the legal action/reporting to the government talk. I’m thinking hiding places, long vacations off shore, doing magic with the money supply, cleaning up the enviroment, holding ears to the ground and reading this blog for hints.
352 Shelley M.
“Boff” you or study fourthway?
Phew thats an incredibly hard call!
That would be a hell of a situation to be put in.
In relation to Uno, yes Ive also thought Uno was a lunar, or jovial lunar woman until Uno said one thing. Not saying that women cant be more knowledgeable than men about engines, but its got me wondering.
In relation to the soldier ants of I’s I’s , Isnt it funny how this humble blog which “hardly anyone in the fof reads or cares about” has suddenly become a cause for concern, even to the extent of a personal descent of the “archangel I’s Balding.”
I get the feeling they are frantically shredding some receipts and having Russian mafia connections forge others as we speak.
Perhaps we should have been more covert, as fore-warned is fore-armed. Now I have a picture of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers frantically trying to put the hotel in order for the health inspector while Manuels pet rat is running loose!
LTYA Cy.
Almost 30 years ago, I had the chance to attend a retrospective of the work of Pablo Picasso in New York at the MMA. It was packed. Tickets had to be purchased well in advance. The work was arranged chronologically, beginning with his drawings and paintings from around the age of 16? The Blue period. I remember well feeling the beauty of his work. His sense of line, form and color, already so marvellously evident. The exhibition was massive and filled four floors, moving from the early work to the mature cubism, to the later prints and finally the paintings done at the end of his life. Though I was naturally fatigued by the time I reached the fourth floor, the impression of his final works remains to this day unmistakably strong. It was ugly. Plain and simple, Ugly. Clear, to anyone who had eyes of course, but that was what we all went there for, our eyes, wasn’t it?
For me, it was one of the many experiences that drove me to a School. Life, even at it’s best, a genius like Picasso, was a decending octave. And it was really clear so long as one could forget all the proclamations of the World and look out of one’s own eyes, and see for one’s self. I’ve told that story to a few students over the years, and we have all nodded, gently smiling, understanding sleep, the imagination of Life.
How odd it is to find myself in the Fellowship 20+ years on only to discover that my Teacher may be a decending octave, too. Maybe has been for a long time? Now before Ames, Whale Rider, et al, start sharpening their knives to say, “I told you so, you blind, brainwashed cult member.” Give me a break, give us all a break, please. The crux of the issue that keeps the Fellowship functioning as it currently does is the assumption that Robert Burton is a Conscious Being. I think it is important to deeply examine why so many current students think he is, despite evidence to the contrary. Forget, if you can, all the statistics about Cults, Brainwashing, etc.. and try to look at the situation from a hopefully healthy insider’s viewpoint?
Self Remembering is some powerful magic. We have all felt it. A School environment in which to practice it, magnifies the potentcy by the numbers. Having a Teacher who focuses on it relentlessly exemplifies what each of us find ourselves unable to achieve. I have personally felt remarkable energy in his presence. Various times, while trying to be present, to remember myself, he happened to walk into the room, and I felt my inner world suddenly flushed with Hydrogen 12, like an orgasm, but of the whole body. Wow. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? Who wouldn’t be ready to forgive him for behaviour that seemed, well, somewhat unusual? I have had him hold my hand at dinner, and especially when I made an even more intense effort to remember myself, felt the electricity from his hand coursing through mine. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? I have had wonderful states of clear presence from attending both meetings and dinners when he was teaching a bit more spontaneously than now. States that lasted well into the next hours. Who wouldn’t think that that meant the man was Conscious? He speaks of Worlds beyond this one that have made Conscious sense to me, words that have helped me at times to get to a similar place. Who wouldn’t think the man was Conscious?
So, if one has had similar experiences to mine but also the play to fully embrace his sick, perverted behaviour, then what are the options? Buffer like mad. Recover. Explain. Avoid. Buffer some more. Finally try to understand, and/or Leave. I guess I am using this blog as a public forum for my attempts to understand, so here are a few thoughts.
Given the kind of Hydrogens that I have sometimes experienced in his presence, my guess is that Robert Burton must have crystallized higher energies in some fashion. One naturally assumes that means he has become Conscious but it just may not be the case. Consider this: suppose Robert has crystallized incompletely, still retaining the Personality of his lower centers? We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts. Suppose he has crystallized in his center of gravity? Such a theory would explain both the higher hydrogens we feel in his presence, the understandings he is often able to offer us, yet also why his lower self is so prominent.
If Robert were a King of Spades or Jack of Hearts, the error would have been more obvious more quickly but since he plays the role of a Teacher of a Fourth Way School, and since the King of Hearts is the doorway to Higher Centers, we miss the ruse. Robert has been able to consistently inspire us in exactly that place, making him more of a black magician than an evil hasnamus, though both definitions are well worth reading for those who are also trying to understand.
Here is what Gurdjieff has to say about black magic:
“Black magic may be quite altruistic, may strive after the good of humanity or after the salvation of humanity from real or imaginary evils. But what can be called black magic has always one definite characteristic. This characteristic is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear. ”
Here is what Gurdjieff has to say about a Hasnamus:
“One of the first things about a ‘Hasnamuss’ is that he never hesitates to sacrifice people or to create an enormous amount of suffering, just for his own personal ambitions. How a ‘Hasnamuss’ is created is another question. It begins with formatory thinking, with being a tramp and a lunatic at the same time. Another definition of a ‘Hasnamuss’ is that he is crystallized in the wrong hydrogens.”
The final step in understanding is to attempt to grasp what a Conscious being really is like or should be like. How do they manifest? And each one will be a different creative expression of Consciousness. How to recognize a true Guru and not be misled by a False one? Tricky business, but from all I can currently understand, the road to discovering one’s own inner Guru is through Conscience. So a real Guru will encourage you to discover your own Conscience and will never estrange you from it. If you are trying to understand, check out recognized 20th century spiritual masters like Nisargadatta, Sri Ramana Maharshi or Shunryu Suzuki. Of course, Gurdjieff also had some very interesting things to say on the subject too, if only one had the ears to hear it….
Love,
Bass
P.S. I read [227] Ni_k Spa_ldi_g. His arguments hold true only if one respects Robert Burton and assumes him to be a Conscious Being. However, since that is what many current students are trying to use this blog to understand, posting here may yet have its uses.
I think the Fourth Way readings say, “avoid boredom at all costs” and crystallization. Maybe Robert E. Burton became bored first.
#359 ‘So a real guru will encourage you to discover your own Conscience and will never estrange you from it.’
I have repeated it here because I think it is the key to understanding what is missing in the Fellowship under the direction of Mr. Burton, et al.
and WHY THE PEOPLE SAYS “YES” TO ROBERT?
The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”
Milgram summarised the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
Bass Ackwards:
Thanks for your sincere post. Speaking for myself the feeling of “I told you so”, is not one that I am cultivating here. If one were to derive pleasure from that kind of immature feeling, it would last only about 10 seconds. Give us a little more credit, please.
I’d like you to consider that a person would have the same heightened physical and emotional reaction if John F. Kennedy or the Pope walked into the room or held your hand at dinner…or you met face to face ANYONE whom you idolized. This is human nature. We project our own magnificence onto others because of our own lack of self-esteem. Faith healing actually works, you know, for the same reasons. The more time you spend around your idol, witnessing how other people act around them, the more human the idol becomes, and the more you understand how people are willing to give away their power and abdicate their self-responsibility to someone else. Bill Clinton certainly played his role to his sexual advantage. There are those who understand this human weakness and make their living off of it.
Robert has to have sex with people and tell them he’s an angel at that moment to crystallize the thought in them. Then the victim is faced with a choice: believe that Robert is an angel or face the stark reality that they have been manipulated as a dehumanized object into fulfilling Robert’s perversions and satyriasis. Which would you chose?
So from one idiot to another…this is what I would have wanted someone to tell me back when I was lined up at Robert’s door.
to : a former student # 350
Thank you for your post! Truly well written and to the point.
Thank you Unoanimo and Whalerider, Ames, for your thoughts as well on the subject of law suits and legal actions.
Let us keep exploring this subject.
In the meantime this blog is sure a magical place, a virtual class action law suit is happening here for sure (thanks Uno)
PS: do not agree with Sharon or not an attorney’s posts.
You read revenge, shortsightdedness, and lawyers being always like lawyers, it is like saying that all doctors are in the business of healing to make payments on their second or third home not really to help people…I do not believe it.
I believe RB is breaking the law and harming people, that is all.
How do we stop him, how do we make him accountable? (if you can make a mentally ill person accountable) karma is real sooner or later….
And for us who are witnessing the ongoing crime, are we not made a little responsible perhaps? just a “little” question…
Hello Bass Ackwards,
A superb post; I would say, PhD material! Commencement exercise! Graduation!
The quotes from Gurdjieff show why Robert’s been steering the Fellowship of Friends away from G’s teachings, eh?
Thought on Picasso: maybe not so much that he as an artist was on a descending octave, but that the zeitgeist was, and his work reflected that.
Thought on “Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.” You may find yourself coming to a different opinion someday. This is the official storyline and you may have believed it for a long time, so it’s hard to see it any other way.
My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. His instinctive appetites are legendary and clearly observable. It’s these appetites that lie behind the Kh facade.
In any case, it matters little. The point is that he is not a Man #7, not a Conscious Being, not the exclusive mouthpiece of C-Ïnfluence on this planet, nor any other mythic exalted personage. He’s a guy who’s run a great scam for 30+ years.
The real school, as has been said before, consists of the thousands of sincere students over the years who’ve given their hearts and minds to Being the words.
363 WhaleRider:
Sorry if I pointed to you in a formatory way.
I didn’t mean to be offensive, especially if you saw it so.
No one can replace what you have offered to us on this blog. It is invaluable. For what you have experienced and transformed, I love you.
At times I feel a frustration with the blog posts becoming too polarized. I’m sorry to have singled you out. The former students can be on a crusade (perhaps it is best not to mention names?); the current students respond with the party line. Nothing can happen in that polarity. Leastways transform the Fellowship into a real School, if that is at all possible.
To be scientifically methodically clear, the events I mention occurred years after I wrote a letter to Robert challenging his behaviour, and almost leaving the School over the same issues. So, I have not approached him with glazed eyes or emotions for a very, very long time. I’ve simply tried to approach him with Self Remembering. I do really think he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos which makes it difficult for naieve seekers to figure out what Consciousness really is.
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365 Cathie:
Thanks Cathie.
Points well taken. Time will tell.
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Love,
Bass
Re: 354 a former student: “As for the older students who may be hurt. Who cares? Do you worry about the homeless? The mentally ill wandering the streets? The childen in Iraq? What about all the male students who have been raped? What about the suffering of female students relegated to a second class status whioe having their men raped? What about The 1000’s of former members who helped support and build the school? Should we care less about those with sufficent consciousness, conscience and will to leave the cult then those trapped in the emotional quiksand? The are 1000’s and 10’s of 1000’s of humans dying every day in horrible ways from starvation, aids, and wars. The Fellowship of Friends, Robert Burton and the members of the Fellowship of Friends have been happy to do nothing for anyone and indulge themselves with their imaginary superiority.
Fellowship people are not nice people. That is imagination. They tend towards being first class self centered hypocrites who don’t have the sense to leave a cult when it becomes ever more depraved and abusive. Robert feeds vanity and reaps the rewards. We’re talking about a group of people who collected art, enjoyed formal dining and had parties waiting for Armegedon and the end of civilization.”
Powerfully and well said, thank you. Not the whole picture, but a side that is not as popular nor easy to look at.
The disconnect between how RB was justifying his lifestyle and the cultivation of (read shopping for) “fine impressions” and the actual preparations for a life after the end of the world was painfully obvious if only looked at it for a minute. I remember having an earnest conversation once about the practical aspects of post-annihilation cave-dwelling and being shocked that some student I’d admired laughed and said we didn’t even have a clue about how to make soap or toilet paper.
A Former Student 354
Go back and actually read what I wrote. Perhaps it was unclear; it seemed clear to me at the time; when I go back and read it myself, I suppose that I can see how you might misinterpret it.
Your use of “formatory” as an insult reminds me so much of Fellowshippy speak – “I disagree with you: you’re formatory – nyahh, nyahh”.
However, to clarify: my post was a rebuttal of parts of Old Fish’s post, and my actual point was: 1) most (all?) of any who would suffer as a result of a downfall of the FoF (current “top dogs” in the hierarchy) chose their path and it is their own fault if they have to pay for it. 2) any property loss of any of us is tough beans for us and should not be considered as an issue.
The paragraph about not wanting to join in a lawsuit was “in spite of the above”. “But” is a short word, however it does imply a change in direction there.
I do stand by the feeling that those who sue suffer in their own internal world. I worked for a lawyer in the FoF – the emotional ugliness around that office made me physically ill.
Do you have experience in this yourself – are you a former civil rights fighter, feminist, revolutionary, environmentalist worker? I notice that you don’t have the courage to use your name in your post – I assume there is a reason for that? If you think that we should be so courageous as to go legal and public, why are you not standing up and shouting in your own true name? You think you will hide in the anonymity of “class action”? a former student, were you personally raped? Were you personally defrauded of property? If so, you should lodge a criminal complaint, within the statute of limitations. No one else can do that for you.
In any case, I don’t think it just takes courage; it also requires fervent, blind, arrogant faith in the justness, the rightness, of your cause. I, for one, do not have that.
Personally, I think that I am responsible for my own stupid choices, and my own buffering and unwillingness to act on my own thoughts. I joined that group – nobody forced me. At the time, it was an experiment. I chose to stay. I never in all my wildest, deepest times in the FoF, thought that RB was “conscious” – I stopped believing in the dream of anybody’s “permanent consciousness” long, long ago. I stayed for emotional and instinctive bonds, just as did many others. I didn’t join for a guru; I didn’t leave because of the guru (though he certainly helped!) – I left because my life in the FoF stifled me to the point of withering away to almost nothing, and my own hypocrisy in my silence about my perceptions of RB finally became too painful. Do I think the group or the guru did that to me? Well, maybe – did I allow it? Yes. Is that my fault, could I do otherwise? No, it’s just the way it is.
I don’t want the rest of my life to be spent in frustrating, painful, mud-slinging fighting. I want to bloom again, to grow full again, to become a river, not a desert. I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.
Sharon
ps vera – do I think we were responsible for RB’s behavior by standing by and allowing it? Yes. That’s one reason why I think it is now hypocritical for us to sue. But you are probably right, not all lawyers are self serving.
Fragments of Burton’s ‘Sacred Teaching’. This e-mail was sent to the entire school in March 2007. I am not changing anything -not even a word. This is exactly what believers Like HC, Siddiq etc are protecting as their most sacred knowledge which “works” for them. It simply speaks for itself.
I’ll post more original material and encourage others to do so as well. Let’s expose what’s being taught here so that anyone who ever wants to follow this mad ‘teaching’ gets an idea what exactly they will be studying. Official FOF website doesn’t present things as (insane) as they are.
Now ask yourself how can anyone in their sane mind take this crap as an ‘objective knowledge’ and take it seriously? This is obviously a stream of crooked imagination poring out of a delusional old man… But HC obviously believes it, so do many other followers.
This kind of stuff accompanied by images is ‘taught’ 2 times a week at RB-Asaf meetings, and pretty much twice daily at dinners or breakfasts or teas. Each teaching session costs from 100 dollars for a meeting to 1000 dollars for a Special holiday dinner. You hear the same crap again and again, bascally “it’s all means Sequence, Steward fights the Devil, Long Be-Short Be and we are the Greatest school on Earth”.
Did somebody say ‘madness’?
Enjoy.
Dear Friends,
Robert has pointed out that the task of our school is to gather all the expressions of the system historically, and that we have now come to the earliest expressions of the system in prehistoric times, before Egypt. He requested that the following message with accompanying images and quotations be sent to the School:
Although the prehistoric school did not use written language to transmit their knowledge, we can understand their images with the help of the writings of other traditions. In particular, our understanding of the Egyptian School is now serving as a bridge to help us understand the Prehistoric Tradition, as pre-dynastic Egypt is essentially the end of the Prehistoric Tradition. Below are three examples of Prehistoric images with accompanying quotes that help explain their keys:
1) The first image is the The Head of a Woman with Cross-hatched Hair. It is from France, dated 25,000 BP (Before the Present). It is carved from mammoth ivory and is about 4 cm tall.
O you who are invincible, you found me when I had disarranged
the hair of my face and my scalp was disordered.
Going Forth By Day, Papyrus of Ani
Hair is a key for the many ‘I’s, the ten thousand. Hair put into order represents the many ‘I’s, the passions, under control with the sequence (as opposed to chaos, imagination). This passage from Going Forth by Day refers to the steward coming out of imagination with Short Be.
The neatly arranged cross-hatched hair of the woman shows the order brought to the steward/ the nine of hearts with the sequence.
2) The next image, The Hunting Scene, is a rock painting from a cave in Lascaux, France, dated approximately 15,000 BP.
It shows a mammoth with a falling man, and to the left, a rhinoceros with excrement in six small dots passing from him.
What I detest is excretion and I will not eat it…I will not be satisfied with filth.
Coffin Texts
This passage from the Egyptian Coffin Texts (Late Old Kingdom to Middle Kingdom texts found on coffins) describes the steward who does not want to be in imagination; he is not satisfied having ‘I’s unrelated to promoting presence, here called filth and excrement.
This verse explains the image of the rhinoceros, keyed as the lower self, who is excreting the sequence. The lower self is in control of the sequence at this point and the steward is falling back, failing to act. It is a failed sequence mouthed too weakly, without heart, and it cannot engage presence with it.
3) The third image is a Flute, from France, dated 34,000 BP. It is made from vulture bone.
The vulture is known for its ability to fly at high altitudes for long periods of time, and it became a symbol of Long BE in the Egyptian School. Tutankhamun had a cobra head and a vulture head on his golden mask, Short Be and Long BE.
Like vultures gliding freely through the sky,
Happy is it to practice Yoga without hindrances.
Milarepa
This quote from Milarepa explains how happy (a key for presence), it is to practice Yoga (the sequence) without hindrances (reaching Long BE) and compares it to a vulture gliding freely (in prolonged presence).
The flute made of vulture bone has four holes—after Long BE, sustain the four wordless breaths.
Robert called it the Magic Flute.
With Love,
Sarah E
367 If memory serves: I agree wholeheartedly.
To Bass Ackwards (#14-359),
I have no urge to get out the knives, I assure you! In fact I have nothing but admiration and appreciation for your ‘long thought’. There is a world of difference in value between a personal story and another variant on an “official angle” that is basically unchanged from my time!
I think you have put your finger on one of the important nubs. I stayed for extra years because I could not resolve these very difficulties, and it seemed the only sane (and safe) course was to give the situation, full of dichotomies as it was, the benefit of the doubt. All these years later, I still have no satisfactory account of the various energies Burton manifests; I felt them myself, and they created a number of indelible memories. Because I believe that I know more about the nature of consciousness now, I don’t believe that my experiences with him were in fact moments of consciousness, but were hyper-awareness of his energy, and the corresponding energy elicited in my machinery. Like Cathie, I have come to believe that the source is instinctive. And if you wanted a cute theory to go along with it, I’d say that the accumulated power of what Gurdjieff called “haverno” is usually re-radiated through the instinctive center; that is what I have observed when I meet charismatic people (almost all business leaders, so far). And just like two magnets coming closer together, it evokes something corresponding in myself. Burton is just the most extreme example I have met.
The one other spiritual charismatic I have observed was the leader of the Ananda organization, Donald Waters. Rather less exclusive than Burton, he used to go to events in the local (Nevada City/Grass Valley) community, so I was able to observe the swirl of followers around him, and witness the energy of adulation (varying in degree from person to person) directed towards him. I have to say, his adherents seemed a good bit more restrained and less sappy, but maybe it was because it was a public situation. It must be very difficult to deal with the energy and expectations of uncritical followers in a mature way, and I can have an inkling of the strength of Gurdjieff’s character and adherence to his aims when he made himself slough off his followers at regular intervals, for their own good and his.
In the end, I had to make an end run around the whole swamp of conflict, and try to develop my conscience. This was pretty difficult in an environment that supported, totally, Burton’s theory that “conscience is just a collection of I’s. If a student collects too many, he should leave the school”. This claim is very, very wrong in general, but in a strange way—used as a correct third force for my individual progress—very, very helpful. By this I mean, I could no longer rely on “older students”, “official angles”, or any friends still aligned to Burton’s belief systems, I had to do the explorations and thinking on my own, and attracted necessary help through grace.
Here is the rub. After long work on trying to distinguish the voice of conscience from that of morality, the imperative became to act on it, or it would start to fade or be buried under deeper layers than before. In other words, getting to know about my conscience meant that I had to start acting on it at the same time. The state of not knowing was safe enough, there was no danger, but knowing bought the requirement to act. Heavy stuff!
I think you have it exactly right; a real Guru will encourage you to discover your own Conscience and will never estrange you from it.
Love and blessings to you, and good luck on your journey,
Ames
P.S. You might find my “farewell letter” (#7-38) useful if you haven’t run across it yet.
Cathie 365
My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. His instinctive appetites are legendary and clearly observable. It’s these appetites that lie behind the Kh facade.
******************
He is too fat (at times) to be a king of clubs.
Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him much less hundreds of them. The emotional center is more perceptive than the instinctive center and is never going to become engrossed and infatuated by the king of clubs, especially one that is trying to behave convincingly deceptive. The inherent negative nature would be impossible to disguise and always inherently repulsive. What you are perceiving is a dead psychology that is running on the automatic self-interests of purely materialistic motivations (the queen of clubs), if he wasn’t centered in the nine of hearts and therefore mechanically convincing when he speaks of spiritual ideas then no one would believe a word he says.
To Bass Ackwards (359)
I’ve been thinking about your questions. I thought the following information is a bit lenghy, but interesting.
From Wikipedia
The word charisma (from the Greek word (kharisma), “gift” or “divine favor,” from kharizesthai, “to favor,” from kharis, “favor”: see also charism) refers to a rare trait found in certain human personalities usually including extreme charm and a ‘magnetic’ quality of personality and/or appearance along with innate and powerfully sophisticated personal communicability and persuasiveness.
Though very difficult or even impossible to define accurately (due to a lack of widely accepted criteria in regard to the trait), charisma is often used to describe an (elusive, even undefinable) personality trait that often includes the seemingly ‘supernatural’ or uncanny ability to lead, charm, persuade, inspire, and/or influence people. It refers especially to a quality in certain people who easily draw the attention and admiration (or even hatred if the charisma is negative) of others due to a ‘magnetic’ quality of personality and/or appearance.
Similar terms/phrases related to charisma include: grace, exuberance, equanimity, mystique, positive energy, joie de vivre, extreme charm, personal magnetism, personal appeal, “electricity,” and allure, among many others. Usually many of these specific qualities must be present within a single individual for the person to be considered highly charismatic by the public and their peers.
Despite the strong emotions they so often induce in others, charismatic individuals generally project unusual calmness, confidence, assertiveness, dominance, authenticity, and focus, and almost always possess superb communication and/or oratorical skills. Although the etymology of the word (“divine gift”) might suggest that charisma can’t be acquired, and despite the persistent inability to accurately define or even fully understand the concept, it is believed that charisma can be taught and/or learned.
Others disagree with this assertion and maintain that it is an inborn trait and that it cannot be learned, taught, or ‘gained.’
The psychology of charisma
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly usage by German sociologist Max Weber. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus:
a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is “set apart” from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.
The study, recognition, and development of charisma in individuals is of particular interest to sociologists/psychologists, popular (usually national) politicians, public speakers, actors, movie-stars/movie-producers, casting directors, pop-music stars, trainers/coaches targeting the upper-echelons of the business community (CEOs), and academics or others involved in leadership studies or leadership development, among others.
In some cases highly-extroverted and brutally controlling charismatic leaders have used their personal charisma in extremely destructive and damaging ways throughout human history, for example, Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones.
Pierre Bourdieu did not have a very different position from that of Weber’s, but he stressed that a leader has charisma only if other people accept that s/he has it. Bourdieu argued that charisma usually depends on an “inaugural act” such as a decisive battle or moving speech after which the charismatic person will be regarded as such.
Theories of charisma
Charisma has also been studied as a set of behaviors/traits; for example, a modern psychological approach posits that charisma is basically aggregative, a conglomeration of distinct personality traits that meld well in certain individuals to form the broad quality known as charisma or “personal magnetism.”
Theatrically, charisma can sometimes be “performed” on-stage and in films, and is encapsulated in both verbal and non-verbal communication.
Professor Richard Wiseman says that a charismatic person has three attributes:
they feel emotions themselves quite strongly;
they induce them in others;
and they are impervious to the influences of other charismatic people.
The following are Professor Wiseman’s general tips on how to be more charismatic:
1. General: Open body posture, hands away from face when talking, stand up straight, relax, hands apart with palms forwards or upwards
2. To an individual: Let people know they matter and you enjoy being around them, develop a genuine smile, nod when they talk, briefly touch them on the upper arm, and maintain eye contact
3. To a group: Be comfortable as leader, move around to appear enthusiastic, lean slightly forward and look at all parts of the group
4. Message: Move beyond status quo and make a difference, be controversial, new, simple to understand, counter-intuitive
5. Speech: Be clear, fluent, forceful and articulate, evoke imagery, use an upbeat tempo, occasionally slow for tension or emphasis.
Other uses
Charisma is also commonly referred to in role-playing games, being one of the abilities of a character. Charismatic ability modifies dice rolls concerning communication, persuasion, lying, inspiring trust in others, etc. A particular example is in the game The Sims, in which charisma is a skill that can be built by practicing speeches in mirrors, and it is used to get promotions in jobs, particularly in those of political fields.
Sharon 368
I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.
Sharon
ps vera – do I think we were responsible for RB’s behavior by standing by and allowing it? Yes.
*****************
You are not going to save the planet, only the planet can save the planet. We are like disorganized ants trying to save a burning building. All the money in the world wouldn’t save the homeless because they can’t or refuse to help themselves. With enough money (R. Reagan cut the funding that warehoused the mentally ill and no president has tried to restore that funding) the broken people of the streets could be rounded up and put in housing, but the result would be a massive increase in those seeking free shelter instead of trying to work to marginally survive. The children of Iraq would more readily accept a pledge to dedicate their lives to destroying your country than accept what they would consider your condescending compassion. It is amazing how little understanding the rational people of the west have for the irrational mentality of the east.
If a few hundred ex-Fellowship members organized and focused their emotional energy into action (and it would not need to become a fulltime occupation) we could do something about the FoF/RB, we could counter the influence and the resources of the FoF by offering an alternative and drawing off some the power a monopoly always enjoys. But like those disorganized ants trying to save a burning building…
The Fellowship is organized, unified under the command of RB, while those that in many cases bitterly oppose what is happening in the FoF are divided individually into their own subjective sense of reality that precludes the possibility of making any practical efforts to take responsibility for their convictions. Having dinner parties does not diminish the criminal activity of the FoF. Talking and complaining does not hurt the FoF, the marginal members might be drained off at first but then the hardcore Burton followers will become even more resolute and even more active at increasing their numbers through the seduction of new recruits from all over the world. They have a sense of mission, we are simply angry and frustrated, or bemused and satisfied that there is finally at least a voice speaking against the Dark Thing. Those most frustrated, of course, are those that were actually molested (allegedly) by RB. The FoF members are having long meetings with expensive lawyers strategizing about what to do about these annoying “opinions” being expressed on the internet, while we naively imagine that our expressed displeasure, in some cases little more than popularly encouraged purely lunatic associations, is tearing the will of those dedicated fanatics to pieces. Meanwhile, one post from a long-time FoF member and the productive denying force of those FoF members that were posting here is removed without any hesitation. Divided we (those supposedly opposing these crimes) are conquered (rendered ineffective) and the force for that division is ourselves.
I think the collapse of the FOF will be from within.
373 Graduates. I hate to quibble but try reading this with your intellectual centre actually connected.
“The children of Iraq would more readily accept a pledge to dedicate their lives to destroying your country than accept what they would consider your condescending compassion. It is amazing how little understanding the rational people of the west have for the irrational mentality of the east.”
Notice anything?
Cy
Bass: We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.
How odd! Just this morning I was getting a preview of an edgy installation and also a very edgy contemporary art exhibit and it popped into my head that RB is not in the least centered in the intellectual part of emotions. He is most surely a jack. Jack of hearts.
Modern art is, like Cathie said, often a reflection of the spirit of the times which are conflicted and reflect rapid change. To only want to view or listen to art and music which makes one feel lovely and happy is a jack. It is nostalgia. I’m not saying ‘classical’ is bad in any way, and it can be appreciated with KofH but does RB listen to Zachir Hussein (classical Indian musician) for example? Or how about any of the incredible pouring forth of amazing music from the present times? My father was like that (till I got a hold of him) in that he dismissed any art created after he was born in the 20’s. The king would wrestle with challenging art and be able to get an understanding/insight from the contact. “I like it” or “it is beautiful” is always there, the familiar-nostalgic-comfort and plays an OK part, but it is not a king part and it is the king motion to hold to the difficult and be present in an unfamiliar place.
All this is just an aside tho, I thought your post was fascinating from start to finish! And as for getting that wonderful zap when in the presence of RB, fame plus charisma…. Look at the Beatles. John was a god, Ringo….
Sharon 368 (and others)
Thank you for the heartfelt post. I find your stance highly respectable. I can also appreciate other people’s more active desire for justice.
As for me, while I was reading your posts, it became clear that my most fervent dream would be to see the Fellowship implode from the inside, like in the good old days of the Berlin wall, in a process fueled by individual acts of defiance.
I have much love and admiration for all the valiant heroes of the blog (Shelley, I agree, real men are hot, even if one can’t see them, even if they may turn out to be a woman). Still, I’d love it if the real heroes turned out to be some humble current students of no consequence, like we used to be. To my best knowledge, most of us, except very few, have left the school in good order. I, for one, may have left on some the impression that I had just been vaporized by magic.
Is it possible, in this present contingency, for some students to do the unthinkable, and, before taking off, as the emperor walks by, simply point out to others his nakedness?
It’s hard, isn’t it? Almost impossible, and I guess that’s why we didn’t do it, it takes a real hero to act in the moment following conscience. We are generally so well trained in delayed reaction. In the face of authority we just go blank, only to wake up a few hours, a few days or maybe a few years later, while the emperor has moved to far away lands in his beautiful white carriage.
And yet, for everything there comes a time.
Could some form of nonviolent, empowering action occur inside the fellowhip?
Could it be feasible, as a consequence of the momentum building, that at least meetings be held like the one in 1994, with the participation of the organization’s higher hierarchy?
Is it possible at all to ask Robert to make himself available for open questions?
Is anyone ready to break through the wall of fear and secrecy and to start to openly question authority? That would be true external considering, the gift of a real photograph to work with.
And I don’t think one needs to point out the potential benefits of such actions for the conscience of the individuals taking part in the process (please help me here, is this regeneration?).
The other day I received a phone call from an old friend, current fof member, who had just met another student at the lodge and was surprised to be plainly told, in the middle of the busy mezzanine, that he had just read on the Italian blog that I was looking for him.
I was both disturbed and relieved by this story. On one side, I realized once again the utter lack of expressive freedom in that environment, on the other, maybe a small sign of the beginning of the end for the age of fear. There is probably a lot more going on at Isis right now, unfortunately from the outside it’s very opaque, and I can only gather what is expressed in the blog and GF site.
This may be wishful thinking, but often my life has been positively affected by such thoughts, so I guess I’ll keep on thinking and wishing for the best.
Love
“One can only conclude that hero-worship under the guise of the guru-devotee relationship is just as often spiritually deadening for both sides as it is spiritually enlightening”.
Marie Seton, secretary for P.D. Ouspensky
hey, Bruce, when I posted my thoughts I hadn’t read yours. this is so much fun!
379 Laura
Great minds think alike.
Or so they say.
Cathie in post 365 wrote:
“My opinion FWIW is that he’s King of Clubs. Kc is a very clever shapeshifter, and can disguise itself as any other “card.” His 9h manifestations are a carefully cultivated act. ”
Agreed. This “act” is also a characteristic of sociopaths who must learn how to act human, as it does not come naturally to them.
381
“This “act” is also a characteristic of sociopaths who must learn how to act human, as it does not come naturally to them.”
Yup.
#377 Laura:
When I decided “enough talk” and came to my final judgment (13-739), there was one unexpressed caveat in the back of my mind:
The only way Robert Burton might partially redeem himself would be to appear before an open forum of current and former members, and, for whatever time duration it required, answer all questions and accusations, and if necessary, apologize publicly for transgressions.
369 is a new moderated comment.
Hello ~ 355 Bass Akwards
You wrote ~
“I suggest we all keep our hearts, minds and eyes open with our inner seat belts fastened. One way to define being Present?”
____________________
LOL… too late (now you tell me) I accelerated off the cliff years ago; the clutch, brake, gas pedal mix up thingy…
____________
You also wrote ~
359
“The crux of the issue that keeps the Fellowship functioning as it currently does is the assumption that Robert Burton is a Conscious Being. I think it is important to deeply examine why so many current students think he is, despite evidence to the contrary. Forget, if you can, all the statistics about Cults, Brainwashing, etc.. and try to look at the situation from a hopefully healthy insider’s viewpoint?”
____________________
Nice posts ‘Bass’; I sense that the words you wrote, being , “students think”, pretty much explains it all…
In a school of relative awakening, ‘the teacher’ does not grade the tests, he just keeps giving them, till the students are addicted to not getting grades, thus, talking to the teacher after class becomes more important than understanding the phenomenon of talking to oneself, which is actually pretty bizarre.
_____________________
You also worte ~
“I do really think he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos which makes it difficult for naieve seekers to figure out what Consciousness really is.”
_____________________
There’s that word ‘think’ again, interesting, yes? Please try not to take this too tough, though, perhaps my response to this last quote of yours will assist in some way (as a friend) to walk with you a bit deeper into ‘verification’ (or not)…
When you say “I do really think”, what does this really mean to your higher emotional and intellectual senses?
You state ~ “he has crystallized some H12 in his physical cosmos”; have you?
And, Bass, what exactly does that really mean anyway, to you, or is it that you are simply using work language to say that Robert Burton is/was the ‘perfect paternal role, alpha male’ for you?
I would suggest that you ‘break it down’, go from the cryptic true personality (fused) with the diamond card and make it into ‘blue collar talk’ something you could explain to an auto mechanic while he’s ‘under there working’…
Everything is “difficult” for naive followers; I sense that’s kinda redundant and does not get you further from ‘naive-ness’, i.e., to put the word ‘difficult’ next to ‘naive’ …
Whatever ‘esoteric’ title you wish to give to Robert Burton’s effect upon you and others, I would ask all former and current students of the Fellowship of Friends to try and use phrases that are more symmetrical to the ‘results’ of Robert Burton’s ‘energies’, symmetrical to what he uses them for and the ‘end result’ (so to speak).
Attaching ‘higher’ work language, like ‘H12’ & ‘cosmos’, to such an entity as Robert Burton, shows itself (now) to be and to have been, by doing such, in founding the Fellowship of Friends, to be an inappropriate ‘compliment’ or unintentional contradiction of ‘words’ and their corresponding implications;
words are powerful and I have even witnessed students of Robert Burton’s ‘school’ using high work language to describe his lower center information and automatic manifestations,
this is an intellectual buffer; this is the FoF icing that has no cake underneath it (no offense ‘Cake’).
Please, be careful with yourself; I would ascribe the words used to define hypnotists, faith healers, bible thumpers and movie stars effect upon crowds… because, not that they all end up where Robert Burton, the ‘good, conscience-less students’ and the boys are, yet, the lifestyle, the manipulation, the conscience-lessness, all these are more in that realm, than the one where such words as ‘H12’ and ‘cosmos’ belong to a group of ‘beings’ that are not about what Robert Burton buys, sells back, and buys again.
Again, beautiful posts…
Key yourself and burn the holy books: after all, your soul wrote them all anyways.
__________________________________
Hello ~ 368 Sharon
You wrote ~
“I do stand by the feeling that those who sue suffer in their own internal world. I worked for a lawyer in the FoF – the emotional ugliness around that office made me physically ill.”
________________
Good grief Sharon, get a grip; the office of Abe G., is due to the lawyer himself, not ‘the law’; I’ve been in numerous law offices and can say that everything is connected to its nucleus (like the Fellowship of Friends to Robert Burton’s ‘aims’);
whether the office people know it or not, they are sharing ‘collectively’ in the personal, subjective aims of the lawyer, sometimes it’s greed, other times lunatic, other times tramp:
Abe has tramp, and the “emotional ugliness” is simply others imitating that ‘ball of wax’ that has a wick (unnaturally) inserted in it.
Suing someone is no more strain on the inner world than harboring the account and not suing; both extremes lead people to ‘chase their tails and tales’…
so, choosing an extreme, action or inaction, really has no real consequence in the being realm; we harbor what we harbor, whether its tied to the dock or at the bottom of the sea, it’s still a boat.
____________________________________
You also wrote ~
“I’d rather spend any “just cause” energy that I have left on the fight to save the oceans, the rivers, the air, the earth which is dying. And I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq (and everywhere else around the world…), than in G’s group to “counter the FoF’s influences and resources”.”
________________
Is not everything connected? Is not the Fellowship of Friends simply “another brick in the wall” of all that is in your quote above?
To me, the FoF is a certain type of reflection, albeit a house of mirrors, it’s still a reflection and the nature of the mirror does not change;
perhaps you’re stuck on something that’s too close to you or there’s some unfinished business as to your time in the FoF…
After all, Sharon, in the Fellowship of Friends, are there not the ~ homeless, mentally ill, children of a certain kind of ‘war’?
To me, whatever is ‘criminal’ within the Fellowship of Friends, comes from it’s members (those who know the inner circle’s propagations and self calming reinforcements),
whereas, Robert Burton’s ‘first lie’ also lives on, within many of the ‘members’ as their ‘daily lie’, that is, for those who choose the ‘buffer it’; as I said before, I met a ‘student’ recently, who said to me, “Oh, yes, I know, and I buffer it all day long.”
So, to me, we often support forms of resistance or contradiction that are safely away from our actual tactile perception (not to say that’s what you are doing) simply,
that things are not as they seem;
for some, it’s easier to give a thousand dollars to Robert Burton, than a dollar to some guy on the corner of Colusa and Plumas in Yuba City;
or to ‘whatever fund’, without knowing its board members or those who it supports personally.
To me, it could be that the Fellowship of Friends situation is ‘close to you’ (still); this could be an opportunity to look deeper into the ‘how’ it is that you would rather support some other ‘form of denial’s redemption’, so to speak, further from you ‘personally’.
Take care, you’re sensitive to ‘personal distance’, try not to let it dictate how close you can get to the bathroom mirror.
______________________________
Hello ~ 371 Graduates
You wrote ~
“Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him much less hundreds of them.”
_____________________
Take a look at Jim Jones, Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson and the thousands of click-cults that are built around dead and alive psychopaths and their king of club ‘visions’…
Not to mention the supporting ‘buffer’ of ‘believing Robert Burton’, i.e., the wine, rich food, things, infra sex and covert sex, etc., all devout-ness in the King of Clubs;
yes, the King of Clubs is clever, it will even blow up a rubber doll that looks like the King of Hearts (minus one’s conscience) in order to give attention to ‘this’ in order to get ‘that’, i.e., a week of pretense deserves a Sunday of abomination and hope for the future.
Heaven or Hell (paradise & the moon) has nothing to do with redemption; it all gets done right here and now.
____________________________
Hello ~ 364 Vera.mente
You wrote ~
“PS: do not agree with Sharon or not an attorney’s posts.
You read revenge, shortsightdedness, and lawyers being always like lawyers, it is like saying that all doctors are in the business of healing to make payments on their second or third home not really to help people…I do not believe it.
I believe RB is breaking the law and harming people, that is all. How do we stop him, how do we make him accountable? (if you can make a mentally ill person accountable) karma is real sooner or later….”
______________________
Your first paragraph (quote) reminds me of a time I went to the hospital to have a ‘procedure for an injury’, they were going to charge me $900 dollars for a 10 minute task;
(I didn’t believe it) and asked them (afterwards) to reconsider, saying that I knew this or that person, who told me otherwise, they charged me (with 5 seconds of conscience-time), $80 dollars.
As Asaf will find out some day; it’s not what you know, it’s who you have been while knowing it; there’s the rub…
______________________
As to the second paragraph ~ Not just Robert Burton will be held accountable; the boys too, particularly ‘the birds of prey’ who both eat and don’t eat what they catch. The egg-layers, the cooks and the farmer’s daughter… The drag-net thing, there’s no butterfly nets; think ocean sea boat net size.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 357 arthur
You wrote ~
“and you can almost hear a worm poop on a flat rock 50 yards away.”
___________________
So that’s what those hundreds of little ‘poof’ sounds are!
Wow, thanks for ‘the rest of the story’… now I know.
_____________________
Hello ~ 358 cyclops
You wrote ~
“Perhaps we should have been more covert, as fore-warned is fore-armed. Now I have a picture of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers frantically trying to put the hotel in order for the health inspector while Manuels pet rat is running loose!”
________________
As some of the younger ‘Generation X’ say, “It’s all good.”
The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is frozen solid; no amount of paper shredding is going to change the figures the IRS and FBI already have; do not forget, they have had their ‘I’ on the FoF for a long time…
Do you really think that such an international organization situated so close to Beale Airforce base and one of the three most powerful receptors structures (looks like an eight story mushroom) for spy satellite info., would not be ‘house-holdered’… Let them shred; it’s never too late for the now.
_________________________
Hey Shelley :)
_________________________
Love to you all.
Thanks, Sheik for this added “service”!
359 Bass Ackwards
Your effort to work out your contradictions as to how to proceed in life is invigorating, and you seem to be on the right track.
It may be that part of the help you need will come as you continue to free yourself from the mental confines of the FoF thought processes. This closed-loop logical system will not help you because it always leads to the same conclusions. It’s in that spirit you might look at some of the problems inherent in your post (and maybe in your thought process—you be the judge of that).
The exercise is 1) to realize the following statements are unverifiable assumptions and are, therefore, unfit to base any of your reasoning on and, 2) try to find a different way to communicate your understandings, without using any of the FoF concepts:
— Life, even at it’s best, a genius like Picasso, was a decending octave.
— I felt my inner world suddenly flushed with Hydrogen 12
— (I) felt the electricity from his hand coursing through mine.
— Burton must have crystallized higher energies in some fashion.
— We know Robert is centered in the 9 of Hearts.
— the King of Hearts is the doorway to Higher Centers
— each (“conscious being”) will be a different creative expression of Consciousness.
You also said:
I read [227] Ni_k Spa_ldi_g. His arguments hold true only if one respects Robert Burton and assumes him to be a Conscious Being.
I might agree if Ni_k actually made any “arguments” but looking over his post again, what I find is a brief quote from Collin, 2 instances of “Robert has asked…”, the statement that the blog is “confrontational,” and a veiled threat by quoting Hafiz to “stay out of the way.” Not much of an argument, but then it doesn’t have to be. Any member knows what this—an intimidation pure and simple. And that’s why these 2 have disappeared, because the message was unambiguous.
Bass, I sincerely hope you continue to pursue your process, it can only lead you to better things. Be well.
JoelF
#369 is a real gem…insanity in its most divine decoration. Thanks, Sheik for the heads up.
“…he is not satisfied having ‘I’s unrelated to promoting presence…”
Thought Reform 101
If the FOF has abandoned the fourth way, why still use the concept of ‘I’s…other than to promote distrust of oneself.
372 Graduates writes
“He is too fat (at times) to be a king of clubs.
Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him ”
How would you know? You speak as if you have observed and verified these things but that’s imagination isn’t it? Are you saying you are the true conscious being here? Not only conscious of yourself but able to observe and identify the workings of different functions in others. IE objective consciousness. Get over yourself. Before you post about things that neither you nor others can really know learn the difference between theory, paractice and being.
in post # 257 not an attorney wrote
“Furthermore, as you who are banging the drums out of your personal need for revenge and your short-sighted, unenlightened and uncharitable self-centeredness, think about the downstream effects of your actions. Think about the many others who would be hurt, possibly more and in more ways than you ever were, just so you can feel vindicated. ”
Sure that’s one way to defend the Fellowship’s Criminal activities this apologist turns the tables so that victims who speak up become perpetarters on the poor innocents who might suffer. There are no innocents in the Fellowship. Get over that idea. All this about our dear sweet wonderful friends is bullshit. These are people who believe they are the chosen few, Gods select.who make no effort to serve the humanity they look down on. These are the ones who turn their backs on the departing members.
This appeals to inertia “think how much better to do nothing”. the reality is that change is occuring in the Fellowship, positive change, because of the blog. Not because of the happy to not disturb the status que, the ones who lie to themselves and buffer the crime inherent in Robert’s activities. It is not because of the true believers demanding change but because of the pissed off ones who will not “go quite into that dark night” of hypocrisy and lies.
“Also, it’s not your place to decide that the FOF is not a “religion” on behalf of the rest of humanity. You are not the “deciders”. There’s that old First Amendment thing raising it’s head again. You speak, I speak, who’s right? ”
I’m right, whenever I raise my voice to challange an injustice I’m right. Its being part of the process that’s right. I don’t need to imagine I’m the final authority just one voice. Yes , I can judge the Fellowship of Friends. It is my place. You must be a Fellowship member. What I judge with is called consciousness and conscience something those in the school both physicaly and mentaly cannot grasp. There is no conscience in a play of crime. All who support the criminal Burton are criminals. All those who earn a living off the Fellowship are vampires sucking the life force out of genuine seekers. The real crime of the Fellowship is the harvesting and abuse of magnetic centers.
“The voices of reason here, like Sharon and Ames, are important. Let cooler heads prevail. Think about just how wonderful the French revolution was. Reread Animal Farm.”
This shows what seems to be a typical fellowship lack of intellectual development. A lack of what is called critical thinking skills. Sharon and Ames clearly articulate their personal positions making it clear that that is precisly a personal statement. This is unquestionable. False or not ones own opinions and feelings are facts. You want to use this as a guide to a universal principal. This is a poorly thought out arguement. The correctness of their own position for them is in no way a guide for anyone else and certainly not a rule for all humanity. You change scales as if the very concept of scale does not exist another example of the poverty of real devolpment in the Fellowship. Conscience is specific. Of course one point brought out in this blog is that those in the Fellowship lack conscience and cannot see it in others. Using examples of great revolutions is an inappropriate comparisns. A more appropriate example is Roe vs. Wade. or the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. These while having difficult results overall have advanced civilization.
“I’d much rather put my money toward the homeless, the mentally ill wandering the streets, the children in Iraq”
I was quoting a former student. Don’t take me so literally.
a former student 389
372 Graduates writes
“He is too fat (at times) to be a king of clubs.”
“Even the cleverest of king of clubs centered machines couldn’t convince even a tiny group of emotionally centered types to put their wholehearted faith in him ”
How would you know?
********************
True and I do apologize. From now on, like most of the other contributors, I will substantiate my opinions with accredited research papers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association or the Journal of Applied Psychology. Good catch though, it is essential to have an objective sergeant-at arms ever ready to call out those unintentional liars that inevitably ruin a vigorous exchange of ideas with their ill-considered deceptive hallucinations that they would have passed along as facts. You are owned a debt of gratitude that will likely never be justly compensated.
I keep two volumes of the most enlightened manuals on my desk and would like to quote from them. They are “Deep Thoughts” and “Deeper Thoughts” by Jack Handey.
“To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can’t remember, all rolled into one big “thing.” This is truth, to me. ”
” Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And, also, you’re drunk. “
For the people who loves this blog:
You are wasting your time.
There is so much unnecesary talk,
There is a lot of Identification,
Thera are many negative emotions,
Maybe for all these reasons, Our King of Clubs loves to waste our time buffering the present moment.
Do not think that you know all tricks of your own king of clubs, because is precisely our king of clubs that has the control, and you are its slave whitout knowing.
another simple truth from “Deeper Thoughts” Jack Handy:
“As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way. “
Hello.
Thank you all for your valuable participation on this discussion board.
Unoanimo, I took the time this evening to read your posts here more closely. I am amazed, totally inspired and grateful for your participation.
I also read several other posts with more thoughtfulness, and was similarly moved. There are too many to mention.
In essence, I am happy to have had a luxurious bit of time to read all these thoughts more thoroughly.
I recommend it!
See “The Cult of the Suicide Bomber” (came out this year). It includes entirely fascinating information about the evolution of this mode of terrorism. It began as a form of weaponry within a war situation and has become an extreme form of terrorism that blackmails the citizens of the entire planet.
There is a great emphasis on observing the believers’ (i.e., parents of suicide bombers) language, which defines the act as, “martyrdom”. That is in deep contrast to the term “suicide”.
This film explores the potency of religious language and fervor which disdains and excludes entire societies. It does this by illustrating that the hateful effects of elitism and that the creation and ownership of extremist spiritual jargon has an irrevocable effect on the earth and its inhabitants.
LL
To KA.
Thanks for the humor.
It’s essential.
LL
395 Simple Truth
To quote 398, thanks for the humor.
You’re the horses ass.
389 WhaleRider
“#369 is a real gem…insanity in its most divine decoration.”
#369 is a-mazing… Joseph Smith – as in Book of Mormon – comes to mind.
#396 KA:
Perfect. I take it Jack is your new guru.
Gurdjieff on the First Initiation (and the real principle of payment):
You will see that in life you get back exactly what you put in. Your life is the mirror of what you are, it is your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without ever feeling indebted. Your attitude towards the world and towards life is the attitude of one who has the right to demand and take. Of one who doesn’t need to pay or gain. You believe that all things are due to you, only because it’s you! All your blindness is there. It doesn’t catch your attention. It is however what, in you, separates one world from another.
You have no measure to measure yourself with. You live only between ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’. Which means that you have appreciation only for yourself. You do not allow for anything above you – theoretically or logically maybe, but not in reality. This is why you are demanding and keep on thinking that everything should be cheap, and you can afford to pay for anything you want. You don’t recognize anything above yourself, or outside yourself or inside yourself. This is why, I repeat, you have no measure and live only to satisfy your whims.
Yes, your ‘self appreciation’ makes you blind! It is the biggest obstacle to a new life. One has to be able to pass this obstacle, this threshold, before one can go further. It is the test that separates the ‘chaff’ from the ‘wheat’ in people. No matter how intelligent, how endowed, how brilliant a man is, if he doesn’t change his opinion about himself, he will be lost for inner development, for the work based on self-knowledge, for a real evolution. He will stay as he is all his life.
The first demand, the first condition, the first test for he who wants to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He cannot just imagine, or simply believe or think, but actually see things in himself that he did not see before, really see them. Never will his opinion about himself change as long as he will not see inside himself. And in order to see, he has to learn to see: it is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.
Before anything else, he has to know what to look for. Once he knows it, he has to make efforts, focus his attention, look constantly, with tenacity. By maintaining his attention on it, by not forgetting about looking, one day he may see. If he sees once, he can see a second time, and if this is repeated he cannot ignore seeing. This is the state to look for in our observation; it is from this that the true desire, the desire to evolve, will be born; from cold we’re becoming hot, vibrating; we will be deeply touched by our reality.
Today we have only the illusion of what we are. We overestimate ourselves. We do not respect ourselves. To respect myself, I have to have recognized in me a part which is higher than the other parts, and to which I show respect by the attitude I have towards it. In this way I will respect myself. And my relationships with others will be ruled by the same respect.
We have to understand that all other measuring units, talent, erudition, culture, genius, are changing units, units of detail. The only true measure, never changing, objective, the only real one, it is the measure of inner vision. ‘I’ see – ‘I’ see myself – and you have measured. With a higher, real part, you have measured a lower one, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the respective roles of each part, will bring you to self-respect. But you will find it is not easy. And it is not a bargain. One has to pay a lot. For the bad payers, the lazy, the losers, no chance. One must pay, pay a lot, pay immediately and pay in advance. Pay from oneself. With sincere efforts, wholeheartedly, without expectations.
The more you will be willing to pay without reticence, without cheating, without falsity, the more you will receive. And from then on, you will meet your true nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesty it goes to in order to avoid paying cash. Because you have to pay with all the gratuitous theories, all the deeply rooted convictions, all the prejudice, all conventions, all ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’. Without bargaining, honestly, not just make believe; trying to see while using fake money.
Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you think you are, that you overestimate yourself, therefore that you lie to yourself. That you lie to yourself always, every moment, all day long, your whole life. That the lie rules you to the extent that you cannot control it anymore. You are its victim. You lie everywhere. Your relationships with others, lies. The education you’ re giving, your petty conventions, lies. Your learning, lies. Your theories, your art, lies. Your social life, your family life, all lies. And what you think of yourself, lies too.
But you don’t stop from what you’re doing or from what you’re saying, because you believe in you. You have to stop inside and observe. Observe without prejudice. While accepting for a time this idea of lies. And if you observe in this manner, paying of yourself, without self-pity, by giving all your false riches for one moment of reality, maybe someday you’ll see all of a sudden something you have never seen in you before.
You will see you are someone else from what you thought you were. You will see that you are two. One that is not, but takes the place and plays the other’s role. And the one that is, but so weak, so inconsistent, that just brought forth it disappears immediately. It cannot stand the lies. The smallest lie kills it. It doesn’t fight, it does not resist, it is vanquished in advance.
Learn to look until you have observed the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the impostor in you. When you can see your two natures, that day, in you, the truth will be born.
Intro to a meeting from September, 1941: Premiere Initiation, par G.I. Gurdjieff Question de Gurdjieff (no 50) ed. Albin Michel, 1989, p.34-35,/i>
Many of us inside the Fellowship of Friends are wondering these days, “What can I do?” There’s plenty we can do. The following is a long list (although not a comprehensive list) of the numerous ways we can protest what’s happening in the Fellowship of Friends:
• When Robert Burton asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Express your thoughts out loud.
• Believe the ‘I’s.
• Express doubts about the Fellowship’s ideas.
• Express doubts about the Fellowship of Friends.
• Express doubts about Robert Burton.
• Tell people that leaving the Fellowship does not invalidate everything about their time in the Fellowship.
• Tell people that you’ve heard there is a beautiful, spiritual, rewarding existence after you leave the Fellowship of Friends.
• Tell people that the Gods still work with them when they leave the Fellowship of Friends.
• Tell people that the Gods worked with them before they joined the Fellowship, during their time in the Fellowship, and after they leave the Fellowship.
• Tell people that the Gods work with people outside of the Fellowship (blasphemy, isn’t it?)
• Tell people that Robert Burton is merely a pawn of the Gods.
• Help people protect themselves from Robert Burton and the negative consequences of remaining in the Fellowship.
• Criticize Robert Burton.
• Sneak into the Theatron for Journey Forth by Day. Don’t pay.
• Carry a bottle of wine into the theatron and enjoy it.
• Leave the Fellowship.
• Before you leave, encourage a friend to leave the Fellowship.
• Dismiss any notion that protesting is “the wrong triad.”
• Dismiss any notion that encouraging someone to leave is “the wrong triad.”
• “Photograph” people for Fellowship-ese.
• “Photograph” people for using the word “photograph.”
• While driving, do everything you can to look for something interesting in the present WITHOUT thinking about the so-called lower-self, the sequence, bible keys, or anything remotely connected to Robert Burton. Try to find something interesting in the present because it is as natural as breathing to look for something interesting in the present, and because it is what you want to do, and because it makes you feel good, and because it brings you in touch with your inner nature, and with God.
• If someone you barely know tries kissing you square on the lips, don’t let them.
• Damn it, think for yourself.
• Express negativity, argue with one another, and don’t apologize.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Go on a 5-day fast.
• Examine your conscience without feeling guilty that you are having “morality ‘I’s.”
• Ask yourself, “What in heaven’s name am I doing here?” Ask it out loud, but with a smile, and ask it so that many people can hear you.
• Question authority.
• Listen to someone who is “expressing negativity” about Robert Burton. Listen to them closely.
• When you are at the table, please DO “share funny stories that are true, such as humorous incidents that have actually happened.” (In case you didn’t know, we’ve been asked not to.)
• Talk with your hands.
• Smile so that your teeth show. (In case you didn’t know, we’ve been asked not to.)
• When someone describes a “confirmation from Influence C of the significance of the Thirty Imperishable Work ‘I’s,” please dismiss it with a hearty laugh.
• Drive 5 mph over the speed limit on the property, and laugh at people who scold you.
• Park in the wrong place.
• When someone asks you for money at a Potage brunch, smile and say “no” so that people sitting at the nearby tables can hear you.
• Sign up for a trip to Egypt, but don’t pay for it.
• Open your windows and play a rock song full-blast on your car stereo.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Pull prospective students aside and ask them if they are insane.
• Don’t eat European style (even if you’re European).
• Sit on the Ming furniture, if you can find any that hasn’t already been sold at a loss.
• Grab a plate of food for your wife or girlfriend at a reception.
• Hold hands with your girlfriend or boyfriend while walking down from the road from Apollo D’oro.
• Smooch with your girlfriend in broad daylight.
• Smooch with your boyfriend in broad daylight.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Don’t wear a tie to a meeting or reception.
• Wear a very short skirt, or wear pants.
• If you see anyone in Robert Burton’s entourage, talk to them about it.
• Create an anonymous hotmail.com account, and send your thoughts to the young men in Robert Burton’s entourage.
• Create an anonymous hotmail.com account, and send your thoughts to several people on the FOF distribution list.
• Talk openly about books that discuss uncomfortable and unwelcome topics.
• Talk openly on topics that are not welcome.
• Make people feel uncomfortable.
• Want people around you to feel good.
• Don’t believe anyone who tells you there’s something wrong with feeling good.
• Use the word, “yeah.”
• Use the word, “nope.”
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “Nope.”
• Recognize that being honest and true to yourself is not “negativity.”
• See that “negativity” can have positive results for yourself and others if you don’t inner consider it.
• “Photograph” others for using the work language way too often. Ask them to express their ideas in their own words.
• Direct a performance of a Shakespeare play at your home in Oregon House.
• Invite Robert and Asaf to it. And Ni_k. And G_r_rd.
• Laugh at the sequence.
• When Robert asks you to have sex, say “No.”
• Express compassion for anyone who is having a hard time with all of this. Don’t photograph them for self-pity.
• Don’t dismiss depression as a sign of weakness — see it as a sign of being alive and stuck in a dysfunctional group called the Fellowship of Friends.
• See anger and resentment as a sign of being alive and in the Fellowship. When someone expresses it, ask them what’s wrong. Ask them what you can do to help.
• Tell people that the Fellowship is dysfunctional.
• Tell people sincerely that Robert Burton has a serious mental illness, and that he’s delusional.
• Tell people that you were delusional when you trusted Robert Burton.
• Do any or all of the above, but invent some of your own protests.
• When Robert Burton asks you to have sex, say “No.”
More Truth, more laughs. Please enjoy and don’t forget to do the sequence!
More Sacred images and sacred de-codings taught by Beloved Teacher these days. Don’t you just envy Howard Carter and his friends? See what you’re missing?
OSTRICH EGG
A rock carving depicting an ostrich egg, found in Libya, dates to 8,000-6,000 BP. Inside the egg are six baby ostriches, representing the sequence. The three ostriches whose bodies are completely visible represent the three Be’s— the first coming, the middle coming, and the second coming. (Similarly, an Egyptian wall painting depicts a man—representing the steward—holding a basket—representing the nine of hearts—containing six ostrich eggs, on the top of which sits the feather of truth with thirty divisions.) Rumi said, “You have flown beyond the egg of this world”—you have flown beyond the sequence—Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE—and now you have the four wordless breaths of divine presence, with their inhalation and exhalation. The egg is a womb for the bird.
MATING SCENE
A prehistoric rock painting depicts a mating couple. What makes this image more than merely erotic art is the headband of ten divisions worn by the woman—the nine of hearts—which represents the ten thousand passions under control. Prehistoric symbolism rarely went this far. The man is in long BE form. The man and woman both have two arms, but while the woman has two legs, the man has only one leg, his three limbs representing the three Be’s—the first coming, the middle coming, and the second coming. The woman is kneeling, which means that the sequence is actually working, and the man is penetrating her, which means that Be is engaging presence. They are in love—the sequence is acting.
The steward and the nine of hearts are copulating, engaging divine presence. Although they each have two arms, and the woman has two breasts and two legs, the man stands upon a single leg, which we take as long BE. The man represents the three Be’s—his two arms are short Be and middle Be, and his leg is long BE. The woman is in the long BE position, and marvelously, has a headband with ten divisions on her head. This means that the nine of hearts is in control of the ten thousand ‘I’s. She has engaged divine presence and is kneeling before the state we are in—the third eye. Her two breasts probably represent Be and Hold. This demonstrates that there is far more information in these images than people would suspect. In Going Forth by Day, it is written, “I have not had intercourse with a married woman”—with the nine of clubs, who is married to the ten thousand ‘I’s. “I have not wrongly copulated”—the steward has not listened to ‘I’s unrelated to the sequence. Hafiz called them the “ten thousand idiots,” because they think they are the state we are in. The painting of the mating couple conveys the same message as the Egyptian figures kneeling to engage the divine presence of Ra. The headband of the mating woman, the cave painting with five left hands and one right hand, and the carving of Sekhmet are irrefutable evidence that the prehistoric people had the system. In fact, they not only had the system, but they were its originators four cycles before Egypt.
402 Truth and how you distort it
I don’t know why you post that stuff. You are certainly free to do so.
Unoanimo wrote: ” Key yourself and burn the holy books: after all, your soul wrote them all anyways.”
When you read that does it mean anything to you? Do you think you are writing to a bunch of pre-schoolers?
Of course, these are only “I’s”. All that G. wrote were only “I’s”. What is so irritating is that after all these years this stuff has been twisted and used against you. You are being manipulated by it rather than it liberating.
The “I” that sees myself is the “I” that sees yourself. Get it?
You don’t get to “have” a real “I” but if you think if you can buy one keep paying.
From Post #369
Note : i.e., some of the most advanced wiseacring on the planet; second only to George Bush’s war policies and Martha Stewart’s prison diary (that may or may not have been published yet).
“O you who are invincible, you found me when I had disarranged the hair of my face and my scalp was disordered.”
_______________________________
Possible Blog Keying ~
Oh, superman, how could you barge in at a time like this, before I have combed out the braiding of my beard past time and put on my toupee?
________________________________
Waz up RB?
Word!
Hello, and good morning ~ 395 Simple truth
You wrote ~
“For the people who loves this blog:
You are wasting your time.
There is so much unnecesary talk,
There is a lot of Identification,
Thera are many negative emotions,
Maybe for all these reasons, Our King of Clubs loves to waste our time buffering the present moment.
Do not think that you know all tricks of your own king of clubs, because is precisely our king of clubs that has the control, and you are its slave whitout knowing.”
______________________________
Nothing like verifying what the author is pointing towards than by noticing that his or her ‘left hand’ (that does not know what its right hand is doing while typing such hypocrisy) is pointing back towards themselves the whole while.
Wow… Are you trying to be ironic; or is it ‘normal’ for a person to demonstrate what he or she is complaining about by first demonstrating the target of complaint by wearing a bullseye-shirt themselves?
It’s July; but hey, we’re not that low on coconut milk.
BTW… doesn’t your little ‘Submit Comment Box’ have automatic spell check? Words underlined in ‘red’ usually mean ‘stop, consider again’; or is yours ‘green’?
_______________________________
Love to you all.
395 the simple truth
*
Trut(h) in Dutch means ‘stupid bitch’…
**
I like your remarks like I like a cartoon.
At the same time I feel sad for you.
I hope that one day you will know why.
***
There is so little respect for others in your
‘statements’, so little understanding how
people have to recover and heal from discovering
the sinister truth behind the FoF.
****
You judge others peoples activities always so
easy from your anonymous shelther
*****
– tell me something about yourself.
******
Are you a true believer in Robert Burton?
Do you believe you need him for spiritual purposes?
*******
Do you make money and support the FoF or are you
A part of the ‘inner circle’ – that is to say the sales-
Team who’s instinctive center depends an the contributions of
Others. Or are you just an simple underpaid salary slave with
nowhere to go?
********
Good morning ‘Truth is where you find it’ ~
You quoted Gurdjieff ~
“The first demand, the first condition, the first test for he who wants to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He cannot just imagine, or simply believe or think, but actually see things in himself that he did not see before, really see them. Never will his opinion about himself change as long as he will not see inside himself. And in order to see, he has to learn to see: it is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.”
____________________________________
One may look at the ‘teacher’s’ (Robert Burton) first lie as a ‘do’ as to his “appreciation of himself”, his essential contradictions and “two selves”;
yet, to me, he stepped outside this image, as it is natural for all Saturns to do, to create wondrous rings for thousands to skate upon, rather than one wedding ring towards the inner self and the intent to suffer the consequences of being an automatic conduit for hypocricy, as we all ‘automatically are’,
yet, unbeknown to the Fellowship of Friends, The Work allows ‘choice and will’ to undue these clock tower tick tocks, to free ourselves from the burden of time, not standing still by it’s own ‘catching of breath’, rather, by our will to stop it, love it, be in between the tick and the tock, to sense that we are participating in life and simultaneously witnessing the growth of our physical deaths;
Robert Burton took up the career of satellites and forgot himself, his own ‘what goes around comes around’ laws,
he decided to feed upon the concepts of love, not the percepts, (after all, the lower cannot see the higher)…
again, this is a buffer from his pain body: in being-reality, Robert Burton is about 10 years old in his essence,
something diabolical happened to this man and he has not transformed it, rather, the experience has crystallized into a ‘lifestyle’, a recording,
playing like a record for those who are brought to listen to its hypnotic effect; sometimes it’s like a dog-whistle, other times, like a 2000 lb bull breathing down your neck, daring you to show any red, any unmanly bravery for the self, essence-shaming.
We live in change and Change lives in us; we are always preganant with something, children are our pathways to becoming less selfish and in the King of Clubs;
Robert Burton says, “They are to be seen, not heard.” (A very popular American attitude BTW.) Yet, is not Robert Burton’s attitude towards children synonymous with that of his unreconciled self, his damaged essence?
It’s easy to point to faults and not suggest further than the obvious photograph; yet, I would like to suggest that Robert Burton start all over again, drop the Fellowship of Friends, camp out near his mother’s grave for 6 months, fast, breath, write letters to his mother and this blog, explain yourself by the vehicles of higher centers (and that’s not a contradiction BTW), stop teaching the way of the perpetual si-do; Robert, have you not kept it long enough?
Robert Burton,
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or is it that you are still ‘two’, doing unto others, your boys, what was done to your ‘not self’? Where is that portion that “…cannot stand the lies.” (?)
Is it not obvious enough that the ‘then as lie’ is the ‘now as lie’, that the ingredient of ‘lie’ freezes one’s being and distances the favors of the muses and ‘real’ time passing into ‘outside of time-being’?
Cannot you, Robert Burton, see that you are daily re-living an unreconciled instance of your painbody’s birth, of efforting towards more drama-shopping, more pain-hunger, and ‘finalizing’ of an account upon its external ‘seems so’ ‘mother of that birth’?
All your “next lifetime”, to me, only points to ‘I have not yet-ness…’ We can keep it simple, yes?
And what of it’s results, your lifestyle, your asking others to be ‘you’ in the hands of an abusive ‘mother’ or ‘goddess in a man’s body’ for the sake of ‘awakening’, awakening to what, another day of being trapped in your parents house, not being able to go when you really need to?
Many of us have had these circumstances, yet, somewhere ‘choice’ arose, will, an an invisible third party; has it not in you, if not, what form will it take, does physical age really mean anything when considering ‘crystallization’?
Perhaps you are the only student in ‘your school’, you cannot cheat when you’re the only one in the room; can you take the test that you yourself have expected of your ‘students’ and not graduated anyone from? Can you take their test?
For some, aging reveals conscience, perhaps this has something to do with your attempts to glorify doomsday; to celestialize the destruction of millions; yet, are these not simply your own unconscious reactions to the number of cells in your physical body, the roaring waves of blood that will someday cease flowing through your heart?
Some become more cynical in old age, others bitter for they cannot reconcile the damage done by others and that which they have reciprocated back; it’s all grey, they cannot distinguish what they think others deserved because they struck first and what others did not deserve, having not stuck first after being first struck.
This blog is your opportunity to see or to hide.
Your lifestyle’s consequences, you cannot pay for them, so, hence the overwhelming greed and affirmative dream-scape of Isis;
yet, Isis is not your mother, the feminine outside your dominance feature and automatic muse-making which refers only back to you yourself, Isis is you, the goddess in a man’s body (or is it your mother’s untransformed wrath, of which you were both victums of your “two selves”, which is possessing you and your ‘boys’ as a way to Paradise or is it just a movie, with the same effect all movies have, the desire for sequels and better movies than ‘that last one’?)
Evolution can be conscious or it can be a habit of having hobbies inbetween extremes.
Everything is ‘To be Continued’, yet, this gives no one who has met self remembering, ‘real license’… no one; Robert Burton, you are driving on a ‘Learner’s Permit’ with no one in the passenger seat… “Why be formatory?” You say.
Yes, Robert Burton, you say and never do anything to stay your hypocrisies; so, what are you doing? When will you bury the gods and sprout yourself?
_________________________________
Love to you all.
Dear
Mr. or Mrs. “truly a simple” 395
Yes, I belong to the people who love this blog, and even more I must tell you honestly, that in half a year of wasting time in reading this blog, i have gained more than in the last ten years hearing Robert´s teaching. And I know there are a lot of current members thinking the same way!
Thanks a lot to all the contributors to the blog, especially to WhaleRider, Ames and unoanimo.
Love is the highest gift of all
403, 404 and 408 are newly moderated comments.
Grassroots Protest #403
• If someone you barely know tries kissing you square on the lips, don’t let them.
Ha-ha that’s a good one, thanks!
403/Grassroots Protester
Great job, thank you. Especially hilarious was
> • Pull prospective students aside and ask them if they are insane.
371 Ames Gilbert
Hey Ames, thanks for your post. I did go back and read your exit letter from discussion #7. I missed that originally.
Very powerful description and interesting thoughts regarding who or what RB really is. Seems like we see have seen similar things?
Sorry to single you and WR out. In retrospect it feels like one of those Moon “I’s” you later regret expressing. Had to ineptly apologize to him too. [#366]
It all came from a place of frustration with the polarity that often surfaces on this blog. Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because at least they are Committed-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.
Funny, there is not any answer in words that can be said here. Conscience is about individual Truth. So we each have to find our own way there.
—————————————————————————-
Unanoanimo
I used to hate your stream of consciousness blogs.
“What garbage is this?”, I thought.
But there is a method to the madness.
Thanks for your inpolite insanity.
Cheers,
Bass
Yesri baba 405
Dear Yesri, why are you so hard on Truth is Where You Find It?
I personally think that the G quote is an excellent one, and am grateful for the find since I was not familiar with it.
Maybe you are under the impression that TIWYFI plays for Dr. No’s team, but that’s not the case (see his/her other posts).
By the way, since you dig the Arcade Fire, did you check my video link at post 332?
Great music+spaghetti western+cold blue-eyed saturnine villain defeated by lone avenger … I don’t know, it just makes me feel real good inside …
LOL
Grass Roots Protester (403)
How wonderfully brilliant!
Is there some rule about kissing strangers on the lips?
LL
unoanimo 409
Awe.
High, deep, and everywhere in between.
L. t. y.
#404 Keep ‘em coming Purchasing Awakening! You are my hero!
“…irrefutable evidence that the prehistoric people had the system…”
This is irrefutable evidence that RB is off his rocker. Let’s do some reality testing here. Maslow points out that fulfilling the highest need, self actualization, can only occur when all the lesser needs of basic survival have been mastered. In the prehistoric age, that would have lasted only about five minutes after your last meal. Hardly enough time to develop a ‘system’. I am sure they had other worries on their mind, like how survive the next winter or next childbirth.
Gee, it begs the question, why aren’t there any cave paintings of giving multiple divine blow jobs? Hey, now there’s a theme for some new murals in the Galleria for future magnetic centers to ponder!!! Or maybe it’s already there, you just have to have the right keys to see it…
I am beginning to sense that RB has developed an extreme obsession with fabricating evidence to support his ‘sequence’ and will go to great lengths to insure that his ‘guru’ legacy survives him. The ‘sequence’ appears so crucial for his narcissism that in the same breath that he offers ‘evidence’, he has to include a warning for any dissent with the following quote:
“…the steward has not listened to ‘I’s unrelated to the sequence. ”
Again, Thought Reform 101. Indirectly imbedded in the ‘evidence’ is the instruction to deny all evidence to the contrary that RB is delusional or you are not included. This is a good example of fear-based reasoning, spirituality with a gun to your head.
“Hafiz called them the “ten thousand idiots,” because they think they are (in) the state we are in.”
I personally know I am not in the state I think FOFers are in…it is called the state of DENIAL. Of course, they would deny that…so would I.
403 Grassroots Protester
When I read that it reminded me of a little blade of grass I saw breaking up through concrete. Ain’t that just like love?
“[T]he true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.”
Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives
Re: #403 Grassroots Protester.
Brilliant! Despite the first line, I realize it is possible that it is written by someone who has already left. Next thought was it really doesn’t matter. It was a wonderfully written, painfully funny, piece. I would add:
Express doubts about the existence of the gods.
WTF is a potage brunch?
Grassroots Protester #403: Did you mean to say that when the Whore of Babylonia ….. just say, nyet?
#415 Laura
Yes I did see the video and enjoyed it. I have always liked those Spag. westerns and thought it was a good choice for the song. Still listen to the David Bowie one. Great “anthem”.
I also had not seen that from G. and enjoyed it. Every word of it seems true. I would rather not see any stuff like that. I was reacting to my reaction to it. How could it be otherwise?
All that stuff is poison now. It is up-side down and dragged way around. It was an introductory meeting from 1941. Jeezy chreezy. We’ve been flogging ourselves with that crap for 30 yrs.
Man was created in God’s image not vice/versa. Fundamentalist thinking always wants to turn it around. A shift in perspective does not mean “dividing attention” left to right instead of front to back. I guess you just got to “get it” somehow and it does have to be paid for but cooooome ooooon how long do you have to beat a dead horse till it starts drinking.
I wish I had Unoanimo’s genius ( I do by-the-way just not the craft) or Ames or Joe Average or Arthur or yours or this man or woman’s scope and that woman or man’s reason. All those “measuring units” G. mentioned. Yeah, way back when we over valued ourselves in FP. Now we under value ourselves from clenching the harmonica too tight in our teeth. I guess we thought we could delay the inevitable. It wasn’t our fault. We just need to let it fall.
It’s “working”. Someone in a post a ways back said they learned more from this blog than 10 yrs. in the fof. Then there was “Grassroots” and more and more people are being affected (or should I say infected) by Unoanimo’s “conscious intellectual art”. It is quite amazing, I must say.
I will keep playing a little tune working for rifts of brilliant harmony even if it is only from a harmonica.
Truth Is Where You Find It and you can find a whole bunch of truth in stuff made false. It’s nothing personal.
For those interested, “Body Types Publication” is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_46
414 Bass Ackwards
“Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because they are Commited-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.”
Yes, ironic, no? We have all been infected with the most moronic thought ever to flicker through millennia of grey matter: I am more awake.
Part of my waking up and leaving the Fellowship was due to the palm octave. I recognized, not long after Robert had begun collecting palms, that I was noticing palms everywhere – Yuba City, Grass Valley – and they obviously had always been there, I just hadn’t seen them.
Having my attention managed by my guru made me notice something I had never seen before. Sitting atop a Chicago skyscraper as Apollo burned, I decided, through an appropriate ritual of liberation, to manage my own attention and direct it towards my own aims.
Startling what one can see, when one takes responsibility for one’s own attention. I began to see how much of Robert’s “charisma” was under my own power. The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.
Of course he willingly accepted it, and took more if he could. Normal primate behavior, whether a priest, crook, or politician.
walter.tanner@gmail.com
Yesri (425): “Yes, ironic, no? We have all been infected with the most moronic thought ever to flicker through millennia of grey matter: I am more awake.”
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It goes even a step further into moronity: “I win, you lose. I’m more awake. Ha… Ha…”
If we believe that it actually is a “brutal universe,” which are the words that Robert Burton has used, then our view of the world tends to separate us from others, separate us from Nature, and separate us from everything and everyone.
If our goal is to separate ourselves from everything and everyone, then one of the best ways to do that is to claim that we have the best religion, the best country, the best ideas, the strongest will, and that we are more awake.
But do we really want to “be separate”? Is consciousness something we must compete for? Sounds absurd, but that’s the unspoken attitude. I win, you lose. I’m more awake.
By the way, Robert Burton is extremely competitive. Extremely. No one can ever show him up. I’d be curious to hear stories of how he reacts when he loses on the golf course, or on the tennis court. I’m sure he’s had his moments of being gracious, but I’m also sure the guy or gal who defeats him eventually bears the brunt of it, directly or indirectly. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon there will be “consequences.”
More Effort! More Effort! More Money! More Madness!
From our Beloved Teacher:
VASE AND SPIRALS
The spirals painted upon a pre-dynastic vase, now in the British Museum, represent a series of successful sequences; the vase itself represents the nine of hearts. The message of the vase is hidden behind simplicity, while the message on the tomb is hidden behind complexity. We can see how close the pre-dynastic school of Egypt is to the prehistoric school.
TWO GIRAFFES
A rock painting from Nigeria, dating from 7,000-5,000 BP “before present”), depicts two giraffes. Interestingly, the smaller giraffe, representing short Be, has the back legs of a rhinoceros—the lower self—while the taller giraffe, representing long BE—has giraffe’s legs. This means that the sequence is rising from imagination—the Hanged Man card in the Tarot—to short Be. Both short Be and long BE are tethered, which means that the passions are under control. Marvelously, the tall giraffe has four divisions on his tail, while the smaller giraffe has five divisions on his tail, totaling nine divisions, and representing the control of the passions.
…two giraffes in short Be and long BE form, with the four wordless breaths—the four inhalations and exhalations—at the top. Interestingly, the giraffe representing short Be has the legs of a rhinoceros. This is a clever way to say that short Be is coming out of imagination.
NEFERTITI
A painted limestone statue from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin depicts Nefertiti. We can see that her slender neck, which represents the sequence flowing freely, is not choked by the lower self. Mohammed said, “There are people who recite the Koran but it does not go beyond their collarbones.” They intone Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE, without engaging presence; it stops at their “collarbones.” This is why Nefertiti has a slender neck.
The bust of Nefertiti represents the nine of hearts in “reverent devotion.” She is wearing a blue crown, which means that the nine of hearts has established the prolonged divine presence of the third eye.
Her slender, elegant neck represents the sequence moving freely, failing to be strangled by the lower self.
ARABIC LETTER
Here, we see the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, Baa. (BTW, it’s a lie, the first letter is Alef, Baa is second. Or well, it’s not the first lie and who cares, right? -P.A.)
Interestingly, it has a similar configuration to the boat of Ra—a vertical front or back, and a curved ending or beginning. We can think of it as the ark engaging divine presence. The point below, which has four sides, is work ‘I’ number six, the top of the pyramid. … In the Roman alphabet, the lower-case letter ‘i’ has a small dot on top, reflecting the humility of work ‘I’ number six, unlike the uppercase letter ‘I,’ which has no dot.
WT: The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.
Yes. On the other hand, it’s been much more common for all of us to avoid the notion that Robert is a criminal. And we also tend to avoid criticizing him in any way. That’s what we were taught in the Fellowship, and many of us (myself included) carried that into our time away from the Fellowship… “He’s really not that bad. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” and so on. Any criticisms of the School or Robert were almost always met with disapproval unless they were expressed in private settings.
Now, that’s a buffer.
However, I still really like your comment… It focuses the attention to something within our control — i.e., our own reactions. So, in this case, we obviously don’t have control over Robert’s behavior, but if we put more energy into our own response, something healthy can grow out of this.
403 Grassroots Protester
And when you see Robert sending kisses in the air to the guy next to you and you see this guy blushing and glowing – what do we do then?
429
You say: “Hey fool, drop the “essence/child act” and take a good fuckin look at yourself.”
That should do it.
Simple Truth ——–
Hey, I love my king of clubs, it’s very precious to me! One of the irritating myths of the FoF is the demonisation of the instinctive center. I don’t consider it any “lower” than the K of Hearts in any way, including it’s attraction to evolution. It helps me to recognize something rotten (even if getting out of it takes 20 years….), it protects me from people like RB, and from all the other predatory folks out there, especially those K of C saturnine guys (apologies to all you noble, self-effacing K of C saturnine guys out there, don’t jump on me, please……).
Walter ———
I don’t equate RB being instinctively centered with him being criminal. Though he may be both, and in fact I’ve often had the perception that he is extremely instinctive. I’m sure he would prefer to think he is emotional, but, that’s not what I see. But I don’t consider it “maligning” him to call him instinctively centered.
KA—–
You are also right that his taste in art, clothing, and certainly music, is very Jack of Hearts. Very irritating.
Uno—–
I don’t have a spell check on my Submit Comment box – do you? If I want to spell check, I copy into Word, check, then copy back. Usually I simply use my eyes.
Laura ———-
What wonderful posts lately! I especially appreciated:
“Still, I’d love it if the real heroes turned out to be some humble current students of no consequence, like we used to be. To my best knowledge, most of us, except very few, have left the school in good order. I, for one, may have left on some the impression that I had just been vaporized by magic.
Is it possible, in this present contingency, for some students to do the unthinkable, and, before taking off, as the emperor walks by, simply point out to others his nakedness?
It’s hard, isn’t it? Almost impossible, and I guess that’s why we didn’t do it, it takes a real hero to act in the moment following conscience. We are generally so well trained in delayed reaction. In the face of authority we just go blank, only to wake up a few hours, a few days or maybe a few years later, while the emperor has moved to far away lands in his beautiful white carriage.”
Yes, we are so darned polite, aren’t we?
428 has been newly moderated. Sorry, Purchasing Awakening, the amount of links you throw in keeps on alerting my spam filter. No worries though, I have a bit more time now.
Hello Walter (426).
Walter says:
Startling what one can see, when one takes responsibility for one’s own attention. I began to see how much of Robert’s “charisma” was under my own power. The recent maligning of Robert as instinctively centered or as a criminal is a buffer to the realization that we, each of his “students”, were/are the ones providing the energy for his consciousness, charisma and power.”
I posted the wikipedia analysis of “charisma” here on this board (373). It includes that one researcher, “…stressed that a leader has charisma only if other people accept that s/he has it.”
LL
For those interested, Veronicapoe’s bookmarks, also called “The Esoteric History Archive,” can be found at
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/Veronicapoe
More to come. Stay tuned.
Hello Bass ~
You wrote ~
“Unanoanimo
I used to hate your stream of consciousness blogs.
“What garbage is this?”, I thought.
But there is a method to the madness.
Thanks for your inpolite insanity.”
_________________________________
“Stream of Consciousness”? Hummmm… nope, this is stream of consciousness (be glad this is not what we’re writing, at least as of yet) >
Slower flesh than the mushrooms push neither he or she worried freedom nutrients and flowing pirates scampering down the sides of lake meadows frogs caught through back doorway openings sausage, grandmother, hearing me there outside having run away thistles backwards games that we did Crayola baskets and zoo paintings between her love and his demon seesaw green violets and a kiss goodnight, Buddha rests geode summons farmers to the barrel bricks onslaught paving roads of roses bristling with quartz flags.
Bass, truly I ‘hope’ with all my heart that no one posting on this blog has a ‘method’ of any sort; even ‘madness’ becomes mundane after awhile; though the love for your continuance does not.
___________________________
Hey ~ 415 Laura ~
You wrote ~
“Great music+spaghetti western+cold blue-eyed saturnine villain defeated by lone avenger … I don’t know, it just makes me feel real good inside …”
____________________________
Charles Bronson rocks! I especially like his voice; he’s a natural, I wonder what ever happened to him (?)
Shelley, Bruce, do you know what happened to Charlie?
____________________________
Hello ~ 418 Whalerider
You wrote ~
“Gee, it begs the question, why aren’t there any cave paintings of giving multiple divine blow jobs? Hey, now there’s a theme for some new murals in the Galleria for future magnetic centers to ponder!!! Or maybe it’s already there, you just have to have the right keys to see it…”
____________________________
Right, the key to Robert’s TV Room where the new comers (so to speak) and ‘purple hearts’ alike, view pornography, prior to the “You know what Robert wants tonight.” – talk, downstairs in the Slave Pen.
Oh, BTW, there are several paintings of naked little boys in the Galleria;
one to the right, before entering the Library and a few in the kitchen dining room…
just for ‘scale & relativity’ for those who, not only have not eyes to see (yet), but are also not worried a bit, because Robert’s boy’s are all grown up now and are responsible for themselves,
particularly when being exploited and confused by an entity who claims to have ‘one self’ though ‘loves’ those who have two or more selves, they’re easier to persuade that “Hafiz, you’re the problem, move aside; let me sodomize your real self awhile, you don’t have to do me though, I’m just dandy being me, me and me…”
not to mention that those paintings, the ‘naked 6-10 year old little boys’ do not (key) as what he’s eating for breakfast and seizes upon, no, they’re just reminders of the innocence of essence,
taking it through the ‘Knowledge room of the Fellowship of Friends’ into the demoralizing factory of ‘the bedroom’;
yet, there are those who ‘love’ to be demoralized, we cannot forget that Robert Burton feeds both sides of the candle, the ultra-positive and the ultra-painful and many ‘types’ in between…
And yes, the painbody pays allot to keep the princess asleep and the dwarfs busy with their ‘types’ and ‘keys’.
___________________________________
Hello ~ 421 ‘If memory serves’ ~
You asked ~
“WTF is a potage brunch?”
_______________________
It’s a direct descendant of ‘The Brady Bunch’, where a certain sort of ‘buzz’ is often mistaken for ‘The Work’,
while all along it’s simply a big family trying to get everyone to dinner on time, without having forgotten to ‘zip’ and place pillow under alpha-male’s ‘gig’.
It’s also a Sunday (after the meeting) lunch and breakfast, where several hundred ‘student’s’ sit around and eat at little round tables spread out all over the place;
except of course the area between the Galleria main room and Robert’s bedroom, that’s for those returning books and checking out books + various other ‘projects’ in the making.
____________________________
Hello ~ 425 ‘Yesri Baba’ ~
You quoted ~
“Outsiders consider themselves more awake, after freeing themselves from the “illusions” of the FOF. Insiders naturally assume they are more awake because they are Commited-To-Awakening by bearing all the bullshit.”
__________________________
More spiritual ego, yes? If all the Fellowship of Friends affirmations would disappear today; I hardly doubt you could tell the difference between the ‘Us and They’ participants of ex and current FoF (maybe just a little);
the ‘form’ they or even ex-students adopt for a time (negative and positive affirmations), defines the ‘I am this or that’,
it’s all thought-talk;
yet, if we were to take a one month camping trip into the Brazilian jungle, I sense that the real parts of all of us (no matter where the spiritual seeker is or was) would not be missed or undervalued;
to me it’s all context, and those today, like Siddiq and HC, who are getting a tough time for being in and talking furr ball language, do still have a place in my heart for jungle camping trips;
sure would bring HC into some lower center balance and get Siddiq out of the clouds and into some jungle cooking of edible spiders and centipedes.
Sounds kinda prehistoric doesn’t it? LOL.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 2b Post 427 ~
You wrote ~
“By the way, Robert Burton is extremely competitive. Extremely. No one can ever show him up. I’d be curious to hear stories of how he reacts when he loses on the golf course, or on the tennis court. I’m sure he’s had his moments of being gracious, but I’m also sure the guy or gal who defeats him eventually bears the brunt of it, directly or indirectly. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon there will be “consequences.”
_______________________________________
Well, tennis and golf is sorta out these days; the bedroom court is still open though and yes, anyone who says ‘no’ to Robert Burton does get the “brunt”, though its a very subtle ‘conscious’ brunt and as cold as ‘The March of the Penguins.’
After hearing ‘no’ there’s lot’s of wiseacring from Robert Burton about loosing the possibility to have a relationship with a conscious being (not that 44 isn’t enough all ready),
statistical mish-mash concerning the mechanical-ness of being a heterosexual (ah, all homosexuals have real will and can do?),
lot’s of maternal (“Oh, is it a woman you’re with?!) disdain,
reminders of what you’ll be missing, i.e., complimentary galleria meetings, events, trinkets, etc.,
reminders of your non-existent (futile) feelings,
intonations of self-justifying “You don’t have to do me, you know.” talk…
He’s a real Man #4 when he hears ‘no’ and (for lack of a better word or maybe not) smears the student with it, then calls for his ’emergency backups’ from the Slave Pit, to take the ‘No’s’ place as a ‘Yes’ ace…
Key that!
BTW… Since we’re kinda gambling a little on who HC and Siddiq are, I swished my coconut milk and came up with my two candidates ~ Peter _n_le and Thomas _i_n… Yep, that’s my two pennies…
__________________________________
Hello ~ Sharon 433 ~
You asked ~
“Uno—–
I don’t have a spell check on my Submit Comment box – do you? If I want to spell check, I copy into Word, check, then copy back. Usually I simply use my eyes.”
___________________
Yes, I do; I wonder how it is that you do not?
When I misspell a word it automatically ‘earns’ a red underline… And at times, for me, is like popping the clutch on a 1200 horsepower muscle car.
______________________
Love to you all.
Uno –
Nope, no red underlines for me. Must be something you have in your browser or some other computer esoteric thing. Oh well, toil away, Sharon, at least my brain knows the difference between lose and loose (spellcheck does not…).
From Another Name:
……. this is also one of the areas in the fellowship of friends that has been subdued, by the fact of not expressing negative emotions.
Not being able to express yourself is not healthy. In the fellowship of friends this has been out of balance and many friends/ students with the result of diminished health physical and psychological”.
Dear Another Name and friends,
The issue of negative emotions in the fellowship is one that merits looking into carefully and I think much relates to Sharon’s “being too darned polite”.
It is easy to become “too darned polite” if the indoctrinating “form” is to not express discontent faced with the abuse and the consistent control inside the fellowship. Not expressing negative emotions has been artfully used by Robert to do whatever he wants without being questioned.
Presently I don’t think there’s any need to express negative emotions no matter how often I fail to do that, but that does not mean that one has to stop feeling horrified by what is abominable. Expressing that horror is not a negative emotion but an affirmation of what one wishes to live by.
“There’s no justice in the world” may be in the system but it is interpreted and used in the fellowship against students when they question anything abusive. It may be true that one cannot understand a great deal of injustice unless one connects it to karmic conditionings but to use such an idea to justify the abuses in the fellowship, is abhorrent.
One of the difficulties in the fellowship is that for many years it sunk, into at least me, that everything negative that I felt should be transformed and when unable to do that there was guilt or self discontent. This is also an aspect of indoctrination and idolatry. It weakens people by turning the difficulty they are observing against themselves and not the object of discontent, be it a person or situation.
Wishing to live by anything different to Robert’s forms in the fellowship is questioned by thoughts such as, “what makes you think you are right and not the many of us that wish things to be just as Robert puts them?”
The more we look, the clearer the different forms of indoctrination become.
Elena
I have lived near Oregon House for many years, and I recently met a former member of FoF. Through a couple of brief conversations with that person, I became interested in learning more about the organization–and stumbled onto this blog. I have been reading entries by all of you for about two weeks trying to understand from your comments what life was like for you in FoF. I can tell you are mostly all so intelligent, committed, energetic, and talented in many ways. And yet, it appears that many of you had serious doubts about what was happening within the organization for many years. Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally? I can tell this was an amazing group of people, very intellectual and obviously outspoken, and yet some of the description of FoF is, at times, pathetic and even ludicrous sounding to an outsider. What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness? Most of you sound like amazingly bright, earnest, passionate, dedicated people.
Hello All.
I also admit that I found Unoamino’s lengthy posts too daunting to read in detail. Well, I’m completely over that and am now fully amazed by the passion & humor. The honesty is inspiring.
Gladly, that has also opened me up to reading all the posts with more care and I am equally moved by everyone’s comments.
I also realized that the presence of Howard, Siddiq & Golb, among others, was distracting and that I felt compelled to concentrate on that negative energy, which was, as seen in hindsight, detrimental to my paying more attention to posts with real merit.
That makes me realize that I was focusing negatively in some sort of gossipy get-up and was ridiculously and ineffectually responding to false provocateurs who were unconsciously and desperately aching for true answers.
Most importantly, however, I realize that in responding to them, I was focusing on and addressing the false provocateur in myself who was allured by and lured into the fellowship. I know she is me and wish to understand her vulnerability, gullibility, arrogance and desires.
This discussion is assisting me to discover the possibility that I should loathe her less and discover a way to understand her motives and justifications. (Sorry to use second person in referring to myself. It served the purpose.)
With great appreciation,
LL
#428 Purchasing Awakening:
Really, really sad.
> Most importantly, however, I realize that in responding
> to them, I was focusing on and addressing the false
> provocateur in myself who was allured by and lured into
> the fellowship. I know she is me and wish to understand
> her vulnerability, gullibility, arrogance and desires.
> This discussion is assisting me to discover the possibility
> that I should loathe her less and discover a way to
> understand her motives and justifications.
Beautifully put.
Somewhere in the cultic studies literature I have read something which resonated for me, about the relationship between the particular narcissism of the particular cult leader (narcissism is the rule, BTW) and the narcissistic vulnerability of the specific person whom he or his organization (the leader writ large) hooks. It’s like lock and key or peanut butter and jelly.
Which is an abstract way of saying: we fell for the particular constellation of narcissistic illusions springing out of Robert Burton because our psychic wounds correspond in some essential way to his.
Which leads–the way I see it– to the notion that by studying narcissism generally, as well as his particular brand of narcissism, we can gain some essential insight into our own narcissistic wounds, and how we can heal ourselves.
Dear Music Lovers,
For those who use music for emotional support and healing, I would thoroughly recommend the following:
Prokofiev’s ‘Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra.’
It’s long and not for the faint-of-heart. Find the very best recording you can, and sit back!!
Here is a web-link to a convenient source for one very good recording:
http://www.amazon.com/Prokofiev-Concertante-TchaIkovsky-Variations-Cantabile/dp/B0000027ZW
Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!
Great idea, my2bits. One comes to mind… Ralph Vaughan Williams: “Fantastia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.”
There’s also WR’s idea of a trip to Yosemite.
#440 my2bits:
“Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!”
Brilliant and life-affirming music can be found almost anywhere. Get out to a pub, club, coffee shop or park for a taste of the local music scene. You may find a young artist struggling to discover their true voice. It’s wonderful to share in the experience. Be open and uncritical (i.e. open yourself to the moment.) Enjoy.
I still love to listen to “St. Matthew’s Passion” or Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, but on special occasions.
I recently found myself being sued for about $10,000 unexpectedly. It was a betrayal by someone my wife and I had considered to be a friend, and the substance of the suit is 99% fabricated. Over a security deposit, unbelievably. Very scary, and ongoing as I write this. It made me think tonight about the idea of blood-sucking lawyers in a slightly different way. It was a lawyer who decided to attack us, but it is also a lawyer who has now decided to help defend us, gratis, simply out of friendship to one of our friends and disgust at the unfairness at the heart of this attack. Who are we to judge what is right or wrong in relation to using litigation against the FOF? Perhaps those who are truly victims will find themselves suddenly needing to act out of an urgent need to defend themselves, not from mere vindictiveness or the desire for revenge. If you have something happen to you like I am experiencing now, you will be grateful to have a lawyer nearby to help you. Our so-called conscience may not taste this degree of urgency as we watch others being harmed, while we ourselves and our own families feel safe. Then it’s easier to wait and hope for the “implosion” of the FOF while we joke about its latest foolishness on this blog; meanwhile, we are very careful, aren’t we, to keep our own sons and daughters as far away as possible from Mr. Burton and his cult.
And Siddiq and Howard Carter and Nicholas, if you’re still out there reading, how do you sleep at night? Sedated with your C Influence? Or simply writing me off as a typical negative ex-student? Maybe your sleep is about to end. That’s what you wanted after all…
*REALITY CHECK* #428 Thanks again PA!
(Hey, like I said in an earlier post, if I went back to school, I would study rhetoric.)
NEFERTITI
“A painted limestone statue from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin depicts Nefertiti. We can see that her slender neck, which represents the sequence flowing freely, is not choked by the lower self.”
The esoteric interpretation of this misinterpretation: in reality the FOF views the ‘sequence’ as a mind activity, projected on the bust (not the whole body) of a woman. True presence engages all centers simultaneously, including the lower centers!
Interesting the use of the words “not choked by the lower self”…the Nefertiti bust, with her long, extended, unprotected neck is in very vulnerable position, and the writer’s instinctive center (bet you $100 it’s a male) has to think of ‘not choking’ her and letting her life continue to flow…why not use the words ‘unrestricted’ or ‘unhampered’ or ‘unrestrained’ by the lower self”? Another example of fear based spirituality, targeted specifically at women, whom are told will not awaken in the FOF. (Ladies can you back me up here?)
“Mohammed said, “There are people who recite the Koran but it does not go beyond their collarbones.” They intone Be, Hold, Hear, Back, Hear, BE, without engaging presence; it stops at their “collarbones.” This is why Nefertiti has a slender neck.”
Of course, the bust of Nefertiti (circa 1341BC) predates Mohammed (died 632AD) by almost two thousand years, so the two are completely unrelated, although Egypt is predominately Moslem now, it obviously (to me anyway) wasn’t when the bust was made, and as a religion Islam is VERY paternalistic. Why mention the two together here? Hmmm…do I detect some method to this madness?
Also, and more importantly, if you take a tube and stretch it, the inside diameter of the tube opening becomes smaller, so a ‘slender neck’ would in fact make anything ‘flowing’ through it more difficult, not more freely.
“The bust of Nefertiti represents the nine of hearts in “reverent devotion.” She is wearing a blue crown, which means that the nine of hearts has established the prolonged divine presence of the third eye.”
In fact, according to wikipedia, ‘During Akhenaten’s reign (and perhaps after) Nefertiti enjoyed unprecedented power, and was perhaps the most powerful woman on earth. Some time during the reign she was made co-regent: the pharaoh’s equal. She was depicted on temple walls the same size as the king, signifying her importance…”
So she probably was not depicted by the bust in “reverent devotion” to anyone as the misogynist writer suggests, but in divine exaltation, ‘extending’ her influence beyond her predecessors as a both a ruler and an equal to a man.
“Her slender, elegant neck represents the sequence moving freely, failing to be strangled by the lower self.”
Again the fear based imagery of ‘not’ strangling a woman. (Try ‘not’ to think of a pink elephant!) One might ask why on earth would ‘not’ being strangled be viewed as a failure of the lower self? One would think that not strangling someone would be considered right work of all centers, not a “failure” of anything. Very insidious and creepy use of language, if you ask me.
Of course geese don’t get asked their opinion in the making of fois gras. They are just force-feed down their long, slender, elegant necks…
424 Veronicapoe
For those interested, “Body Types Publication” is now online:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheEsotericHistoryArchive_46
Veronica, you’ve done it again. This really took me back. The “Body Types Journal” was the first big publishing project I worked on with Burton. It would have been 1973.
I was recruited in December 1972. When Burton found out I was a writer, from New York, and knew graphic arts, I got love-bombed. Of course, I was already blissed out just from meeting these people, all of whom seemed to actually like me, that the love bombing was almost superfluous.
The first thing I got to work on was the Via Del Sol Journal, which Don Birrell had started. I got calls at work from Burton hisself, inviting me to lunch.
“Hello, Joel?”
“Yes?”
“Dear, what are you on?” he would say. My friend and I sometimes showed up pretty high to the meetings the first few weeks.
“I’m not on anything, Robert.”
“Well, we’re at Denny’s so why don’t you come and have lunch with me?”
(This continued daily, by the way, until I figured out the joke, and one day got up my courage and replied, “I’m on the way!” After which, he stopped asking me.)
Needless to say, I was powerless. Stella would have me over to her house, put me between her and Harold, and pin me there for hours, lovingly. They were delightful.
Within a few weeks I had moved into Rosemary MacD’s teaching house and working with Burton on his various projects, trying to understand why he had such a poor command of English, why he needed so much help, but being way too blissed to really worry about it.
The Body Types Journal, by the way, was typeset on an IBM composer, sort of a rigged-up typewriter, but it did the job. I always hated the display face he picked, but there wasn’t much question who’s aesthetic was going to rule.
Thanks again.
JoelF
Movie suggestion “The Last King of Scotland”
Not a great movie but a phenomenal perfomance by Forrest Whittaker of brutal despot Edi Amin who was president of Uganda. I recommend it for the brilliant portrayal of a pathological being with a thin veneer of charm and charisma, turned on and off by psychic quick perception, covering a chasm of paranoia, cruelty and rage. Watching the dynamics of how people orbited him and how they were chosen to key positions seemed hauntingly familiar.
It is a brutal movie in places. Not for the faint hearted.
Hello Veronicapoe ~ 439 ~
You wrote ~
“Which leads–the way I see it– to the notion that by studying narcissism generally, as well as his particular brand of narcissism, we can gain some essential insight into our own narcissistic wounds, and how we can heal ourselves.”
_______________________________
Another way of seeing narcissism is a fixation on results, not the basic essence self (certainly in children there is a self during its positive expectation of the progression of the now and another self after the facts have played themselves out, i.e., third ice cream scoop on ground with cigarette butt embedded therein;
a kind of ceasing of the flow of now, with a very strong ‘self reflective’ in-burst or outburst.
I am not too sure about narcissistic wounds;
for me, I sense that Narcissism is the celebration of wounds and in of itself cannot be wounded, other than by self destruction, which is actually not done by the same force which supported the narcissism to begin with;
it’s amazing how all the features can spin outcomes of situations into confusion and intellectual busy-body-ness:
a certain plain kind of honesty is missing in the deep, habitual buffers of contemplating denying force;
oftentimes, for me, it’s just so simple as getting off my Lazyboy and making an effort that no one inch of ‘me’ wishes to do,
yet, the knowing, the spark to be quiet and Work, is enough, it dispels confusion
and the effort itself takes so much energy that oftentimes giving any to the mind activity of ‘should, could and would’ almost seems embarrassing or a kind of sacrilege.
Concerning Narcissus, there may be such a phenomenon as “narcissistic wounds”, though I sense this would be something subconscious, beneath the buffers and wiseacring to stay away from simple answers and efforts, the subtle pangs of conscience, i.e., feelings and really paying for one’s desire to be the kind of spirit you get chill bumps reading about in fairy tales.
Perhaps ‘Narcissistic wounding’… this would be a bit closer, for me, particularly with the legend ‘in mind’;
the ‘wound’ Narcissus ‘gets’ are ‘all of a sudden upon him’, in a flash, he could either surrender to his utter nothingness ‘in the head’ and move to his ‘little heart’,
or kill it, to achieve a release from the pressure of the crossroads, from the enormous ‘aha’ of his sub-conscious hypocrisies coming to the forefront of ‘right here and now, not going to leave any time soon-ness, no mater what your other self does to sidestep it’:
It’s a high mystery how this crossroads can either tear men and women apart, often leading to the destruction of the physical body (or abuse of it and others, in the name of god or gods) or lead a person to ‘struggle with the angel’ till something ‘snaps’ and one moves to another place, away from getting stuck near pond sides,
out amongst the world, to not hide, due to predictions that threaten the lower centers and precious conscious interpretation of tool-knowledge and tool-artworks,
rather, into the heaven & hell of this planet, to live a little deeper, to add onto oneself a ‘certain something’ that only exchange with others and one’s conscience while doing so can produce;
you can be sure Asaf doesn’t carry that smile out into life, nor do the ‘good students’ look anything like ‘good’ when you see them shopping in Walmart:
So much of the Fourth Way is about being ‘normally’ yourself; why add 30 additional feathers to a perfect male turkey’s strut? To get another males attention?
Asaf’s upward frown; he’s learned it from the master of perpetual upward frowning himself, RB:
I recall one of Robert Burton’s students once told me that he walked into the Galleria one afternoon to find Robert standing in front of a large mirror, frowning, then smiling, frowning, looking plain, then smiling…
He asked ‘the teacher’, “What are you doing Robert?” Robert replied, “I am teaching myself how to smile.”
Hummmm… right work of centers?
When I think of the traditional depiction of Narcissus staring into the pond ~
A quote ~
“For hours he sat enraptured by the spring, at last recognizing himself but tortured by the realization that he could never possess the object of his infatuation. Narcissus was tormented, much as he had tormented all those who in the past had been unlucky enough to fall in love with him. (Sound familiar?)
Finally unable to stand the agony Narcissus plunged a dagger in his heart and died, calling out a last goodbye to his reflected image. Where his blood soaked the earth sprung up the white narcissus flower with its red corollary.”
________________
Not to forget the plight of Echo (repeating the Sequence without Conscience).
The image Narcissus kills himself over; having got stuck with seeing himself ‘down there’ ~
I see the Fellowship of Friends ‘Struggling Self’, looking down into the lower centers and saying “I don’t remember myself enough” or “Damn, oh well, next lifetime I guess (that is if Robert Burton doesn’t bump it up a few lifetime years due to some sudden revelation of Benjamin Franklin and company).
There are certainly more than one voice within all of us; this phenomenon is hardly given any attention at Isis (cults cannot afford to delve into Gurdjieff’s ‘Holy Reconciling’, (counter productive)
particularly when it’s ‘conscious being’ celebrates his duality constantly: more relative awakening, more School of the Si-do, more pain body greed ~
“Look at me, up here-me, on this cross-me, made by me-me, me-drug by me, nailed on me, me-dying for you need me to die as me instead of you seeing you in me, me, me, me…
Even the crucifixion has become a distraction,
not to mention poo depicted on a cave wall… good grief.
It’s interesting; I saw a movie about Buddha once where he too saw/met with his reflection and said “You are only a reflection of me; you are nothing.” (something like this, not the exact quote.)
To me, this is the next stage after the suicide of Narcissus; (for Narcissus) ~ So much the Fellowship of Friends is tarting out these days (prunes, wheat grass, flak seed, raisins and chewing on coffee beans) is due to its constipation, it cannot sacrifice the king to achieve conscious, now-autonomy.
The constant celebration of the struggle will leave a tremendous ‘something’ upon people’s psyche;
yet this is somewhat an epic condition of the human situation: perhaps it’s simply part of the stew that keeps people curious and moving forwards; there’s too many combinations to make up any one rule of thumb, unless of course you have 10 thumbs…
I can see it,
years and years of ‘words’ and ‘importances’, ‘I wanna be your student affirmations and fear of the gods wrath, if one does leave their ‘mortal temple’ (?) And all of Robert Burton’s interpretations of their wishes and inclinations:
although for nearly 37 years Robert Burton has been taking about “Angels in the room”, not once has one showed up to confirm so sort of symbolic ‘Yo, homey, thanks for the publicity.’ gesture… No, Angels are too humble for that kind of thing, though not too humble to have you sit in jail for a couple months due to Robert’s impatience for ‘fresh meat’. And certainly we cannot forget the not too humble manipulations of essence-trust and magnetic center curiosity and naive thirst for experimentation…
Sure, nearly anyone like’s a good barbecue; though diving into a volcano after having 44 raw steaks sown to your body is a bit odd.
No reconciling, no movement beyond the Burton-lin Wall:
I will say this, that Robert Burton has ‘done’ (a happening by default due to his proximity on earth to other earthlings) one big positive thing,
he’s given thousands of spiritual seekers a photograph of himself, something to go by, so as not to make the same mistake twice, particularly with the ‘Robert Burton’ within themselves:
the ‘play’ of the Fellowship of Friends is nearly over, the internet and word of mouth will achieve this;
Asaf will carry nothing on, he’s Echo, not another Narcissus;
(Girard?)… No way; people will have to go through the
‘Baptismal of Fire’ alone and another ‘filler’ will simply not fit at the si-do of this silly mess:
maybe at the mi-fa, though that’s not where Isis is;
there’s not going to be any rebirths when all the conscious ladies are men…
_______________________
Love to you all.
It is a great sacrifice not to see things we are accustomed to see. We are accustomed to think that we live in a more or less comfortable world; certainly there are unpleasant things like [sexual abuse, greed, and corruption] but on the whole it is a comfortable [School], [and] a well-meaning [Teacher]. It is most difficult to get rid of the idea of a well-meaning [Teacher]. And then, certainly, we must understand that we don’t see things at all; we see as in Plato’s allegory of the cave – we see only the reflections of things which take place behind our back; and the things we see have lost reality. It is parallel to the cave; so very often we are controlled not by the things themselves, but by our idea of the things, our view of things, our picture of things.
* Peter Ouspensky*
Asaf: Robert, you said about dying, you reviewed many thoughts, and at a certain point you said that to die well is to do our best to keep self-remembering in place (so long as it’s in the Fellowship of Friends), no bold resolve (Dear, you don’t have to do me, you know? Yes, yes, do what I said, we have to get those cuff links!), no pretension (We’re going to paradise, but if you leave, you’re going “in Hell” or Reference ‘The Hell Letter’; it’s somewhere in this haystack of 5000+ postings.)
Robert: Yes. Do it without talking about it (and don’t go saying ‘no’.)
M____l Ma___y: Buddha wrote: “Your life has come to an end, and you are in the presence of death. There is no place to rest on this journey, and you are so unprepared. Light the lamp within; strive hard to attain wisdom. Become pure and innocent, and you will be free from birth and death.”
Robert to Asaf (not MM) ~ Did he say ‘you are unprepared?’
Asaf ~ Yes, (No, Asaf, he didn’t say “Hey Asaf, you’re unprepared.” Silly boy, cults are for kids.) “…and you are so unprepared.”
Robert ~ This is not our story; this is not your story (Well, you got part of it right RB, it’s Buddha’s teaching-story. I guess your story is better since yours is not Buddha’s story either…) He did not have a school. A school – it prepares you for death (or suicide).
Asaf ~ And you also (geez Asaf, you’re great with those ‘and you said’ one liners, break dancing in a puddle of super glue as you do) said that we have Influence C until our last breath (or last paycheck, whichever comes first).
Robert ~ This is meeting number?
__________________________
Did someone say something about a meeting or a preaching?
Can I get an AMEN? Yes um, brother Uno., AMEN!
__________________________
l.t.y.a.
Hello,
The Robert,s game is a victory-victory game, that,s the trick.
The game of the blog is a victory-defeat game.
You only could win Robert in a victory-victory game.
Robert is playing now.You are playing now.The game isn,t good. Which is a good game?
Hello Eva ~
Welcome.
How do you distinguish our ‘game’ and Robert’s ‘game’ as separate from one another? I mean, after all, a tennis match does not have two nets, nor does a basketball court have a third basket for those members who don’t really care whether they win or loose: do you have a third net?
It’s interesting that the word ‘trick’ just popped up at the end of your description of Robert’s game; Freudian slip?
No one, even the ‘real’ students of themselves who are still in the Fellowship of Friends is trying to win with Robert; that’s part of the whole silly business that started this blog, that Robert Burton ‘thinks’ that conscious souls in lower center machines can be ‘games’ he plays in his one-man-band.
I have yet to see anyone in all the 5000+ postings that wanted to ‘win’ with Robert Burton.
“Which is a good game?”
Your being pretty silly ‘eva’… There is no ‘good game’; certainly there is some sort of ‘playing’ occurring down here, though I must say to you that I am finished with games, very finished and have (again) (excepting the good students in here that often play football with armadillos) not seen that sort of ‘tongue in cheek’ aiming occuring in here…
Good luck ‘eva’…
There is no ‘victory’, there is no ‘defeat’, everything that has seems to have lost will gain, all that seems to have gained will loose it… this is perhaps the real ‘game’, that Birth and Death are not seen by most as one of the same, but rather, dualistic, contradictory and enemies; yet, I guess you’ll have to deal with the Catch 22 thing when you realize that without ‘the lover’, there is no ‘beloved’.
_____________________
l.t.y.a.
There is much in unoanimo’s post warranting response. Here I respond only to this fragment:
> I recall one of Robert Burton’s students once told me that
> he walked into the Galleria one afternoon to find Robert
> standing in front of a large mirror, frowning, then smiling,
> frowning, looking plain, then smiling…
> He asked ‘the teacher’, “What are you doing Robert?”
> Robert replied, “I am teaching myself how to smile.”
The above example demonstrates a moment when the observer noticed that “the mask of sanity” is indeed a mask. See http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm
Brother Sheik, and others interested,
I receive a steady stream of e-mails asking where to find documents the links to which I have posted on this blog. Usually the complaint is that the link is buried somewhere in the mountain of posts.
To cut this Gordian knot I have bookmarked each of these documents on the http://www.archive.org website at
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/veronicapoe
Periodically I post the link to veronicapoe’s bookmarks here to help people find these documents. Please do not mistake such posts for spam and moderate them out of existence.
Thank you.
Newly moderated comments/comments retrieved: 435, 436, 439, 440, 446, 456.
Post 443 said:
“Any suggestions from bloggers as to music that heals from the FoF experience, and that beckons one to move on toward a bright spiritual future, will be most welcome, I am sure!”
Two songs that helped me before I was a fofer and, now that I’m long gone, mean so much more to me: “Box of Rain” and “Ripple” by Grateful Dead. Check out the lyrics; it seems Robert Hunter was channeling Rumi.
And from my current perch, everything juan needs to know about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is contained within Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
Also, try on the Finn Brothers’ “Everyone Is Here.”
From the email about the Tuesday meeting led by Peter Ingle “Peter explains the topic as follows: “The sequence comes to us as the objective science of awakening from schools of the past. Using it in the present, however, is a conscious art that must become deeply personal and practical.”
It is amazing to hear students talk about sequence as “the objective science from the past schools”.
3 meetings earlier Carlos Ca _ _ncho gave a following angle: “I asked Robert, why is that Asaf made up a sequence and we all have to do it? Robert replied: “You love me too much to blame ME for it?”
Isn’t it strange?
I have observed narcissistic personality traits in people whom lacked a parent (or two). When a child is not provided with a parent due to death, abandonment, or neglect, especially when the ‘missing’ parent is of the same sex as the child, the child imagines one to compensate. That imaginary parent is then idealized and perfect, but not real, as in narcissus’s reflection in the pool. The child and then later the adult cannot possibly live up to that perfection or the idealized traits of the imaginary parent, and thus is preoccupied with themselves “acting’ perfect, but deep down feeling flawed, inadequate, and imperfect. So they compensate with temporary ‘things’ that make them feel better. (They would never settle for a generic product, but want the ‘brand name’ product because it makes them feel superior. And the ‘thing’ or object always has to be new, bright or polished so they can ‘see’ themselves in it.)
The narcissistic wound is a wound the child inflicts upon themselves, derived from the child blaming themselves for the parent’s death or departure. Children are SO dependent upon their parents for survival, that they cannot ‘see’ (or acknowledge) defects in the parent, but blame themselves for their parent’s lacking out of extreme fear of abandonment. Once the unconscious mind accepts the belief that they are to blame for the lack of a parent, they live their lives with the deeply held belief that they are not worthy of success.
This is what I have been alluding to when I suggest that the FOF keeps one out of balance, forever doubting oneself, and never able to attain complete consciousness or higher centers (that which is already there anyway). One is kept striving for the unobtainable. That’s the narcissism that the FOF attracts in its followers. The level of ‘conscience’ that is ‘cult-ivated’ in the FOF follower is a foreboding feeling that one is inadequate, is not present enough and Robert always is. Robert just provides the unobtainable goals. Hence, one can only succeed in the ‘next lifetime’
It takes self respect to leave the FOF.
Eva (#14-454) How nice you see Burton’s game as a “victory-victory game, that’s the trick”.
There is a set of “victory-victory” games (usually called ‘win-win’, FYI) and they all, obviously, are based on co-operation. A co-operative mode requires energies flowing in two directions equally (between participants), and a common goal.
In a co-operative situation we have a teacher who also learns from the student; a teacher who understands that no matter how much knowledge and being he has, there is always something new to learn, even (and maybe especially) from the rawest student. And we have a student who makes the lesson part of his being by teaching others in turn, completing the ‘si-do’ of internalizing the lesson. In other words, no permanent hierarchy, since anyone can be a teacher to others at any time, and a moment later, an eager student. This is a good game, Eva.
I spent many years observing that Burton learns nothing from his students, except in a low, cunning way, how to control them or fleece them the better. You can tell this for yourself by following the “conversation” (read, “monotonous disjointed dialog”) at one of his dinners, or by studying the form of his pronouncements in publications such as “Thoughts from the Teacher”, or by his tens of thousands of arbitrary decisions made in order to control the lives of his followers in the minutest detail. Every one of these decisions is made to close down possibilities, to reduce his surroundings to always simpler terms that he can better monitor and control for deviance, and to satisfy his untrammeled desires.
See him raise the license plate in a meeting, purposing to draw admiration from the audience or transmit fear to it. See the members of the audience trying hard to get just the right sappy look on their faces, and at the same time memorizing gems like, “We are playing the master game, and C-Influence has chosen us all here in this room to be winners”. That is the source of your wiseacring, Eva, not your experience, not your being. How can I tell? Because there is nothing personal in your post, nothing to indicate the angle is yours, or how you made it so, or that you live it.
In a ‘win-win’ or co-operative situation, a teacher lights a fuse, and is delighted when the explosion of new possibilities in the student lights up the sky, including his own (the teacher’s) spiritual firmament. In contrast, the only movement allowed by Burton in the FoF is if it supports, glorifies, or magnifies his own position. Look at Girard, declared the sole fruit of 38 years of unremitting work by ‘44 conscious beings’ plus Burton himself, allowed to be a ‘man #5’ under the condition he stays the eternal student of Burton, subservient and obedient to the last, all his accomplishments and work dedicated to the glory of Burton, his whole being twisted to be merely a reflector of Burton’s supposed superhumanity. Burton has literally eaten him, negated all his potential (and that of many others)—a new Caligula. Look, I mean really look, at the rest of the high muckety-mucks; paler, bloodless versions of the same. This is your idea of a good game, Eva?
Trick indeed, he is the trickster and you are the tricked; he is the joker and the joke is on you.
MANY THANKS to veronicapoe #456 for your link to the piece about psychopathic behavior. It is awesome reading! I highly recommend it.
Here’s an excerpt:
“One very interesting aspect of the psychopath is his “hidden life” that is sometimes not too well hidden. It seems that the psychopath has a regular need to take a “vacation into filth and degradation” the same way normal people may take a vacation to a resort where they enjoy beautiful surroundings and culture…”
Sounds like an all night “Russian Romp” at the Galleria!
P.S. Eva, the game we play on this blog is the co-operative one. There is no hierarchy, and we all learn from each other. We take turns, teachers to our best ability one moment, students the next. No one can drown out another using charisma, dominance or power, or any other tool of false personality, we all have a turn and a space for our views. You’ll get (in my opinion) much more openness and honesty than in any FoF meeting.
Observer 440
What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness?
Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.
1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.
Have a nice day
In response to Observer’s post (440):
You wrote: “Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally?”
The reason most people join the FOF is because they are interested in the Fourth Way ideas of Gurdjieff / Ouspensky. The FOF claims (or at least did until recently) to teach these ideas. Robert used the prestige of the Fourth Way to lure unsuspecting people and create his own cult. He claimed to be a highly evolved master of this way. It’s not so easy to prove or disprove that claim, especially when you might not even see him for a few years until after you join and all your information about him is filtered through center directors, etc. In the mean time, you’re meeting with other people – most of them quite intelligent and well-meaning, and you’re studying these ideas together and sharing your experiences with them. That part was usually okay. For myself, there was always an issue of differentiating between the teachings of Gurdjieff /Ouspensky, which, for me at least, were quite substantial and legitimate, and Robert’s own stuff, which was flaky and weird. Eventually most people reach the conclusion that there is something wrong with Robert and leave.
Why do people stay? Of course the vast majority don’t, but it takes a while to verify that Robert is fraudulent, especially if you don’t live close to him where you are privy to some of the weirdest of the weird stuff. Furthermore, any kind of scrutiny of Robert is totally frowned upon. If you persist in doubting and probing into the truth about Robert you will be alienated by the others and maybe even kicked out. In the meantime there are lots of interesting distractions, people you become involved with, ballets, operas, plays, etc. and you tend to buffer your doubts about Robert because of those other things. And you’re told things like: ‘those are just ‘I’s, don’t be identified, that’s negativity, etc.’. Basically distorting Work ideas to create an uncritical atmosphere.
But the good news is that, by means of this blog, Robert’s deceitful ways are coming to light and hopefully there will be fewer and fewer new members.
Hope that answers your questions.
Dear Fellow Travelers,
Making Robert the villain distracts us from our own psychological weaknesses and foibles, whether by making him “instinctively centered” or a “criminal.” Both these are blatantly false and in no way connected, as one reader inferred from my post. They are two separate psychological strategies (“buffers”) for putting the fault on the guru, not the chela.
Some posters have made the catastrophic error of mixing up the “sex center,” “sexual energies,” “libido,” or whatever you want to call it, with one’s center of gravity. The center of gravity is the way you are in the world, and what’s important to you, over and beyond sex. I mean, we are horny, or “desiring intimacy,” so please don’t confuse Robert’s sexual appetite with his center of gravity. And as one who’s experienced it, Robert’s sexual persona is a submissive groveling woman, easily hurt by words, not some craven Casanova.
And now the criminal thing: Besides Busby, who got paid off quite handsomely, what exactly is criminal about Robert’s activity? Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the concatenation of the three forces that Rodney Collin calls “crime,” I’m talking about breaking U.S. or California law. Since Busby, Robert has stayed purely legal, carefully checking ages of the immigrant students. Again, what I hear is a psychological wound crying “criminal” in order to feel better.
So why do I focus more on the students than the teacher? I’m currently indebted to the work of Robert Altemeyer, a Canadian sociologist who’s been studying what he calls the authoritarian personality type. His focus is mostly in the political realm, but I think any student or former student who looks at his work will see that it can equally well apply in the spiritual realm — that we just want someone to tell us what is right.
I highly suggest this webpage, where you can read his whole book and see his research:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
walter.tanner@gmail.com
“Presently I don’t think there’s any need to express negative emotions no matter how often I fail to do that, but that does not mean that one has to stop feeling horrified by what is abominable. Expressing that horror is not a negative emotion but an affirmation of what one wishes to live by.” Elena
Oh, good, hi Elena, I hope you will be back more! And I agree, there are simply some negative truths that cannot be addressed with ‘happy talk’. Truth trumps ‘negative’. It is lack of boundaries and very deep sleep of the inner eye that denies this. It can become criminal when covering up crime. The fof is not separate from humanity like some strangled head (ahem…). All people are connected in very deep ways.
____
Whalerider…VERY interesting your comments on Nefertiti! Please keep those coming.
____
Joel, I loved reading about the publishing of ‘body types’. I’m about to read a book on Jungian body types.
____
Music, there is so much today! I still love Dvorak Requiem, but also love Zakir Hussein to Transglobal Underground. I just ordered the Prokofiev you recommended, #444. Nina Simone did a killer “Sinnerman” – really amazing.
____
“Not to forget the plight of Echo” (uno…)
Echo was a nymph who happened upon Narcissus as he gazed into the water and she fell in love with him. He was very beautiful but did not return her love and didn’t pay any attention to her. She sat by the bank gazing at him. After he passed into flower form she wandered the earth and finally wasted away so that all she could do was repeat the last bit of what she hears.
Veronicapoe #456 I too became enamored of that fragment. And, it’s interesting you used the word fragment.
I dismissed my first thought as imaginary. Then I find the fragment in your post.
To me it was the flinty spark of a cigarette lighter in the dark.
Walter (#14-326), in my opinion, almost every post on the subject of Burtons “criminality” means it in a psychological way, using 4th Way language—the triad of crime; I certainly do, and have pointed out the difference in my posts about Burton’s use of psychological power to overwhelm the resistance of his prospective sexual partners, quite separate from the purely legal definition (fiction?) of the age of responsibility.
I and others have also frequently pointed out that it “takes two to tango”, that he could not do what he does without our consent and uncritical support. We are willing accomplices while we are his followers, and thus equally culpable in the harmful results of his actions. I believe that one of the aspects of this blog has been to explore and embrace that truth, and another aspect is to help heal ourselves and regenerate the situation. But this does not let Burton off, and we must discuss that as well, and maybe serve as a warning to others.
I appreciate your reference and link to Altermeyer’s book. He wrote a longer one on the same subject (his expertise), called “The Authoritarian Specter”; maybe “The Authoritarians” is an updated synopsis? I’ll read it with interest when it downloads.
Thanks Ames, I think most other folks on this blog mean “crime” in the psychological sense as you define it — and its good that you flagged this piece of jargon since some non-FOFers do read this blog, and they may think RB is some sort of Mafia Godfather.
And you’re right, I’m not wanting to get Robert off the hook, he deserves all the criticism received.
I didn’t know about Altermeyer’s earlier book – I really like the downloadable one because it not only lays out his thesis but also shows how a principled researcher can weed out errors, lying, exaggerating and other things that can be statistically manipulated.
walter.tanner@gmail.com
Arthur/467 – regarding R.’s “teaching himself to smile” – flinty spark in the dark:
“What seems to be missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of an appropriate affective response to the knowledge gained from putting himself in another persons shoes, in the way that this happens in the normal person. This essential missing aspect of empathy in the severe psychopath is not in my experience easily seen and one does not often get a second glimpse of it if one has been treated to a first one by mistake.”
“A rather crude example might suffice for I am sure many of you have had similar experiences. A young psychopath who had inflicted multiple stab wounds on an elderly woman, and was charged with attempted murder, appeared subdued and appropriately sad about the offence during the early stages of a first interview. His eyes were moist as he accurately described how the woman must have felt during and after the attack. But later in the same interview, after a rather jocular rapport had been established, this boy blurted out, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The old bag only had a dozen scratches”. To my knowledge, in all his subsequent years at mental hospital, he stuck to all the right lines of remorse which he quickly learned were more appropriate and useful. The bright psychopath, the experienced psychopath, doesn’t stumble like that every often. Although with luck and the right question at the right time in the right place about how the other person’s feelings affected him, will produce a pause, or a puzzled look, or even rarely the question ‘how am I supposed to feel about it.'”
http://web.archive.org/web/20000122152912/cnet.unb.ca/orgs/prevention_cruelty/partial.htm
The idea is, he’s teaching himself how to smile so he can *appear* to have appropriate affective responses–making it apparent that he has to *teach* himself this, because it is not an ordinary feature of his human being.
#456 Veronicapoe
Thanx for the link, it goes straight into favorites.
“The psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life”
IMO this should be a major focus of thinking for everyone in American culture. Our leaders are increasingly becoming this type. It is this culture’s god.
“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”
W.S. “Hamlet”
Veronicapoe: (456) re: Robert practicing smiling
Sam Vakin’s website, which, as many know, is devoted entirely to the exploration of narcissism, describes that narcissists often practice various expressions in the mirror.
His explanation is that they are practicing to look like a human.
(Sorry, I couldn’t find the exact quote, but the site is easily accessible.)
Veronicapoe: (456) re: Robert practicing smiling
Others might remember that in the early 1970s Burton often had a drawn, painful, or distorted look on his face during meetings. It was really quite disconcerting. Obviously, people mentioned this to him, and he worked as I recall for about 2 years to try to eliminate this manifestation. He eventually ended up with what I thought of as the “drawn blank” look. Didn’t quite know what to make of this at the time, but might be apropros of this discussion.
JoelF
One day in psychology 101 they were talking about the different degrees of mental retardation. As I listened I became convinced I had been found out. “So, that’s what’s wrong with me, I’m mentally retarded”. I had alot of defining characteristics.
Then one day I read where beginning student doctors convinced themselves they had all the signs and symptoms of the diseases they were studying.
I’m the suggestible type as Gurdjieff would say. Not long ago on this blog somebody was talking about sociopathy. The only thing that “saved” me was how ‘regret’ entered into the relationship.
Now we are studying narcissistic psychopathy and I’m beginning to wonder again. When I was younger I spent a little time looking in the mirror to make sure about the arrangements. As I began to grow older the time spent looking in the mirror became less.
Around my teenager years I developed a dislike for taking photographs (painbody) as someone would say. Today I seldom look in a mirror. I think this is also narcissistic.
Off topic: Yesterday I visited the greater fellowship website and I was struck by the beauty of all the women. Handsome men too.
I saw that woman who used the word “BOFF” in one of her sentences. I agree 100%.
I just read #474 Skeptical Optimist: Robert had good teachers (students) for 38 years. Plenty of time to smooth the edges of an Instinctive type.
457 and 465 have been newly moderated
About “learning to smile”:
I’m one of those people who doesn’t smile very easily. I had braces as a teenager, and I became very self-conscious about showing my teeth. I’ve stood in front of the mirror practicing my smile on occasion. Should I be concerned? I think not.
By itself, I don’t think Robert practicing how to smile is a sign of sociopathy or neurosis. But, as many have observed, there are plenty of other indications.
Somehow related to this topic is the “not showing teeth” exercise. Is this really a current FOF exercise? It would certainly get Robert off the hook as far as needing to cultivate a warm, sincere smile!
——
I just noticed the little red spellcheck underlines in my comment box. I’m using Mozilla Firefox today; usually I use IE and they don’t show up.
take it easy 465
Observer 440
What am I not understanding about this group experience that kept you all so deeply loyal and involved for so many years–even in the face of overwork, poverty, and what sounds like outright silliness?
Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.
1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.
Have a nice day
************************
C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.
480
I remember the first time we were given the “cover your mouth” exercise when we smiled or laughed. Many of us then ran around with the giggling little girl essence act with our hands covering our mouths. What an affecting load of horse shit that was, must still be. I would tell them again, Jesus, look at yourselves, aren’t you embarrassed?
I heard the next exercise to be present will be to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time when giving angles, and reverse directions when receiving angles, then courtesy and walk away- just for the men.
To Observer (440)
You’ve asked a question that is both enormously simple and terrifically complex.
It may be helpful to explore some websites that describe the pyschology of cults.
There are also some excellent books written about the phenomena. I like “The Guru Papers” and “Cults in Our Midst”, which are readily available.
There are thousands of cults. Rick Ross has a website that describes quite a few in great detail.
There used to be an organization called “The Cult Awareness Network” that served the purpose of bringing attention to cults.
What is amazingly funny is that the Scientologists acquired it!
Basically, they all follow a similar formula and the Fellowship is just another example in another form.
LL
465 Take it easy
Do we have one of the assholes back already, brave as always- and anonymous again?
take it easy 465:
“Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school. 1000 words can not explain away, what is a written play.”
The question that Observer 440 asked was “what kept you so loyal and involved”, not “what made you leave?”
Darn that capricious, petty, vengeful C-influence anyway, eh? They gave you the play of answering the wrong question! What did you do to deserve that humiliation? Were you…reading the BLOG, perhaps? Could it be…Saaaatan? (voice of Dana Carvey as Church Lady intoning here).
#477 Arthur
It seems to me that pathological states are amplified and fixed ordinary conditions we all experience to one degree or another. It gets horrible in my opinion when they begin to be celebrated.
There have been studies done in recent yrs. showing college students with greater narcissism than the “baby boomer” generation. Talk about pouring from the full into the flood.
The frog is belly-up bobbing in the bubbling broth.
But then I am more of the glass is half empty kind of guy rather than a Hey, who took half my water! guy.
I try not to have judgement when I read entries on the blog. Having judgement “I’s” is something that occurs quite a bit for me.
When I read post 465 from Take It Easy and saw the quote; “Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.”,
I thought to myself, wow, there’s that style of Robert’s. So penetrating and effective. I probably should have never left.
Then suddenly I thought, hold on, what is a “true student”? Someone who will blindly give up there identity and money for a cause they will never comprehend or understand.
When Robert first mentioned how HE uses the sequence, I was very confused. Everyone I knew in the school talked about when Robert crystalized there was a bolt of lightning at the Academy or some such nonsence (whenever I hear stories like that I usually shut down right away. It does not compute) and I assumed that this guy was on such a different level- he was ALWAYS conscious. No need for no stinkin’ sequence. I mean how is it, that for 37 years everything BUT the sequence was the way to awakening. It wan’t that long ago that he had us counting how many times a day we “remembered ourselves”. Students all over the place were running around with those “clickers” that they use to count patrons as they enter a concert and keeping tabs on the number of times they remembered themselves. The goal was 100 times a day. Suddenly, one day the exercise disappeared.
Somebody give me a buzz when they move from the sequence. I’ll be curious to know what the new method is.
In the meantime I’ll be a student from the outside.
465/take it easy
“Robert said: The school never has lost a true student.
It `s that simple, C-influence has taken away their understanding, so they forget completely their own devine verifications, which have kept them all the years in the school.”
The greater question is: Is this a true school?
This once Fourth Way school, that said “religion was the sleep of the masses” is a now a center for “esoteric Christianity” .
And why, is the IRS/INS breathing so hotly on the Galleria, that Hallelujah we’ve all found religion?
The spinners keep spinning. Reinventing, rewriting with every succession to the pretender’s throne. Changing direction more times than a weather vane.
Extreme makeover indeed.
And why keep using the Fellowship of Friends? Why not be “true” The Fellowship of the Pretty, Full Pocketed and Those Still Able to do a Full Turn at the Plow.
Fellowship of Friends indeed.
Banishes its own when they become an unpleasant impression. Raises $62,000 for a garden expansion and leaves true students to raise money for medical treatment through private appeal.
And as far as C-influence goes, it seems far more beneficent, less vindictive that we were ever lead to believe.
When you walk out those gates every divine verification you every had walks right out with you.
May the C be with your (in lieu of the schwartz)
Cake
Bruce
I think the collapse of the FOF will be from within.
…………………………
Religions never collapse(apart from the jim jones one)they go on and on.
To Bruce (484)
Good observation. Now that I think about it, “Take it easy” must be one of those so recently banished by Nick.
I am so naive.
Most certainly it would be extremely hard for them to resist.
I, for one, am not going to take any more bait.
Entertaining their circular arguments and provacative statements engenders nastiness, degradation and emptiness.
There seems to be a great new energy here without their influence.
LL
steve lang 487:
“Everyone I knew in the school talked about when Robert crystalized there was a bolt of lightning at the Academy or some such nonsence (whenever I hear stories like that I usually shut down right away. It does not compute)”
Good call on your part. The Academy wasn’t even built until the early 1980s. His “crystallization” supposedly occurred sometime in the seventies. Unless he “crystallized” more than once.
Whatever.
Hey, Take it Easy (# 14-465), are you competing to be the laziest and most self–satisfied boot–licker in the entire Fellowship? I hope you have already been promoted to Official Angle Giver, you are fully qualified; you have provided one of the best examples of circular ‘reasoning’ yet found on the blog. Because your contribution was moderated, and folks may have missed it, I’ll repeat the whole thing:
Take it Easy. #465.
I personally want to thank you for contributions to the blog (including your many previous incarnations here,Cry baby,LOL etc )
You,along with ‘what observe ‘ ‘simple truth’ ‘Golb’ and others like them have done more than you realise. You have greatly contributed to a final and clearer understanding of what the FOf is really about by making your inner thoughts and attitudes available to the readers here. And hastened the proccess of escape for many who are now finally waking up and leaving.
Sincere thanks.
465: Here is this “Us and Them” thing again… Superior Us and inferior Them… This is the teachings of the true School of Love -very embracing and loving indeed.
How can you not see this, friend? What make you feel so superior – based on what IMAGINARY concept of yourself? What blind vanity…
How different is this hateful condescendent view from any extremist and separatist religious views? “We are better than Them, We are chosen by God, and they are going to hell”…
Historically it causes only grief and suffering.
Besides, do you know what puts you among the “chosen” in this case? No, not C-influence. It’s your monthly teaching payments, dude. Skip a month – and there goes your imaginary sureriority and unconditional love of your teacher.
What we are – you and me, and all, everyone – are the SAME in our essence which is Consciousness looking through us. No higher or lower beings – it’s all imaginary ideas in one’s head. (I know, it sucks for one’s Ego that wants so badly to be “above” others.)
By the way, when this “school” will lose you, (and it inevitably will sooner or later I asure you) please drop me a line or something.
We’ll have a laugh together.
malaec@yahoo.com
More Sacred mad teachings by the most Beloved Teacher ever!
The funniest of them all by far!
Excerpts from few teaching events:
6 POOPS
A cave painting from Lascaux, dating from 15,000-13,000 BP, depicts a rhinoceros hunt. It represents the sequence being intoned in imagination by the rhinoceros—the lower self. The steward is lying on his back, and rather than having five fingers on each hand, he has only four fingers. This means that he is taking the four wordless breaths in imagination. The six stools represent the sequence in imagination. Everything is in imagination. “You will see fantasies rather than the truth.”
The rhinoceros, which is defecating, represents the sequence in imagination.
A cave painting in Lascaux, dating to 15,000-13,000 BP, depicts a rhinoceros defecating. The six stools represent the sequence in imagination. The steward has been thrown down, and has four fingers in place of five, signifying that the four wordless breaths are not in prolonged presence, but in prolonged imagination. He has attempted to slay the bison—another symbol of the lower self—but rather than piercing him in the heart, he has pierced him in the intestines, which are coming out. Nevertheless, the lower self still had the strength to overthrow the steward and to destroy the sequence.
For those interested, a copy of the infamous “hell” letter to Sharole Manering can be found at the following URL:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000118211358/www.geocities.com/Athens/8444/sharole.htm
“A person is more easily made into a mythical figure if the outlines of his personality are blurred. Myths are largely constructed from our own projections; and the imagination cannot flourish where the exact facts are known.”
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay
Veronicapoe 496,
Great point – thanks. Obviously the blog serves to crack the mirror. Hard to project one’s highest aspirations onto a man who pays students to whizz in his mouth.
I hope it was not lost on all, that HC actually was N—O–S S–l—G and possibly Siddiq too. The timing of his appearance after initial speculation and the subsequent retirement of HC was a little too tidy for me.
Someone wrote recently asking what can we do? I would suggest the following;
Only pay by check for any Fellowship event. If you don’t yet have the stomach for walking away or more obvious dissent, just be sure you pay for everything by check. Cash is syphoned off and used to support RB’s delusional debauchery. If you don’t have a bank account have someone else write a check for you. This way you’ll be doing something, not much but something.
Love,
Ryan.
Hello ~ 460 Somebody ~
You wrote ~
“3 meetings earlier Carlos Ca _ _ncho gave a following angle: “I asked Robert, why is that Asaf made up a sequence and we all have to do it? Robert replied: “You love me too much to blame ME for it?” Isn’t it strange?”
_______________________
Yes, ‘Somebody’; it is strange, that anyone would consider a person who ‘could’ “blame ME for it” (or even produce such a closed ended accusation/blame energy) as something simultaneously worthy of producing a love for oneself as well…
Yet Robert Burton, after creating and teaching in a School of Relative Awakening, must by now be used to falling in ‘love’ with contradictions and hypocrites;
he’s certainly not in love with Carlos C., giving him such a ladder made of rock candy that no one would ever ‘really us it’; so much effect and no effectiveness… So much ‘tongue in cheek’, it’s a wonder he hasn’t worn a hole straight through to the outside of his face.
_____________________________
Hello ~ 462 Ames Gilbert ~
You wrote ~
‘…there is always something new to learn, even (and maybe especially) from the rawest student. And we have a student who makes the lesson part of his being by teaching others in turn, completing the ‘si-do’ of internalizing the lesson.’
_______________________
Yes; though, that’s a ‘commandment’ for a real teacher to follow, right? Robert Burton throws out students who graduate; worried about his shaky tenure position I guess;
since, after all, it’s being paid by a group of ‘Robert convinced appetites’, not a neutral, outside the box, group of world renown gurus or spiritual guides…
Is it not odd that the only qualifying ‘rank’ that Robert Burton has achieved in the hearts and minds of other ‘gurus’ of the spiritual path (real and wiseacred) is absolutely nothing… I mean ‘really’… Word!
All his ‘worldwide fame’ is self-produced, self-justified and absolutely self-centered;
that he is not recognized by any other than his students is not what I would consider to be the tradition here on earth;
I have seen pictures of groups of gurus together, it’s an amazing impression, no fear, no doubt, no Freudian games, no alpha-male canines (or bending over); simply time being experienced by one another’s existence and aims (and no aim, if you know what I mean).
______________________________________
Hello ~ Observer’s post (440):
You wrote:
“Is it possible for any of you to explain to an interested, sympathetic observer what was the principal attraction or connection that you felt that first got you interested? What kept you interested? And, as you began to have doubts, how did you silence them mentally?”
__________________________
I sense that this question is more applicable for those still in the Fellowship of Friends (a few do fall off the Greyhound bus every once in a while in here, having caught a ride on its bumper, having forgotten about the potholes);
although, it’s a good reminder of where many have been, to keep the peripheral fresh and practiced for look-alike re-occurrences in the present, particularly within one’s self;
I believe for many, the “how did you silence them mentally”
could be easily answered by giving examples of having ‘suggested’ to oneself that ~
it’s none of one’s business,
that one does not know the whole story,
that one is only responsible for one’s own bed,
they could just leave, etc.
See, all this sort of inner conversation is ‘one stage’, and the only stage that Robert Burton ‘feeds’ and ‘milks’…
There is another stage where something wakes up, a certain ‘feeling’, “A certain something”,
where one does not really ‘think’ it, one is it,
an inner-fact-state, that all is connected,
that segregating another (whom your money and efforts laterally support, like a family (George Bush is another triad) like Robert Burton to ‘JUST HIS BUSINESS’ is inner-crime;
it is a movement from the automatic and sympathetic emotions of essence and the lower center moralities (mainly based on Fear & Want and third dimensional results, hopes, complaints and compliments),
towards something much more consciously responsible, for both one’s actions and those actions and emotions in others that your spiritual and physical proximity supports, regardless of the ‘form’ the formatory center wiseacres that the support takes… (silent or loud; subtle or obvious, it all flows down and within the same stream of effect, particularly when it’s drowning one’s conscience in its own birth fluids)
Some students living overseas ‘think’ that their relationship to Isis is different because of an instinctive quantitative measure of time and space between themselves and Robert Burton’s actions (physically)…
Yet, again, this is lower center, School of Relative Awakening programming;
for all of our hearts are linked, all conscience:
and the physical distance is simply a buffer symbol, it means nothing in the spiritual realm; support for Isis is support, regardless of physical distance…
A man and woman came from somewhere, and it was not from another man and woman, otherwise there could be no ‘beginning’, as the triad seems to suggest when only looking at the physical world…
physical distance is nothing; a man spends 4 months climbing a mountain and still sees the same hand on his left wrist as he did prior to ascent.
_________________________________
Hello ~ 467 Walter tanner
You wrote ~
“And now the criminal thing: Besides Busby, who got paid off quite handsomely, what exactly is criminal about Robert’s activity? Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the concatenation of the three forces that Rodney Collin calls “crime,” I’m talking about breaking U.S. or California law. Since Busby, Robert has stayed purely legal, carefully checking ages of the immigrant students. Again, what I hear is a psychological wound crying “criminal” in order to feel better.”
______________________
Walter, has someone replaced your coconut milk with white lead paint?
Thanks for reminding me that being solar is very tricky business; I have a fair share myself, it helps to be present to ones thoughts alongside one’s conscience too
(and while writing within a little box that has the phrase “Submit Comment” means that you’re also writing to another scale and relativity than yourself;
though HC and Siddiq had yet to get around to learning that talking to others can actually be different than speaking to oneself)
maybe you just left the Fellowship of Friends last night, so, we’ll just pump your stomach, give you three gallons of organic cow’s milk and call it a night.
______________________________
Hello ~ 481 Graduates
You wrote ~
“C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.”
__________________________
Hummm… Maybe Robert Burton has an offspring after all (?)
Graduates! Don’t move, and keep your chin above your stomach while at a horizontal position with legs pointing down, I have another stomach pump in the root cellar and I think Betsy is prime for another 3 gallons…
__________________________
Love to you all.
Good evening Ryan ~
You wrote ~
“This way you’ll be doing something, not much but something.”
__________________________
Wow, more Fellowship of Friends logic: they can cash those checks and many are left blank or large salary checks given to key ‘members’, then gotten back in the form of ‘tax deductible’ cash donations…
If you’re out of the Fellowship of Friends, Ryan, do your higher centers well and get thee to your homework and mercurial-section of the Body Types book.
_________________________
l.t.y.a.
unoanimo 498
Hello ~ 481 Graduates
You wrote ~
“C influence has left the school and is working with those of us working against the spiritual criminal Burton and his enabling cult followers.
The good will of conscious influences has left the Fellowship of Friends and now works with the graduates of that now dead organization.”
__________________________
Hummm… Maybe Robert Burton has an offspring after all (?)
Graduates! Don’t move, and keep your chin above your stomach while at a horizontal position with legs pointing down, I have another stomach pump in the root cellar and I think Betsy is prime for another 3 gallons…
*******************
I’m not sure what the fuck you’re talking about, but just in case it is a lunatic’s version of a put-down, live with this:
Please keep in mind the main reason you so carefully hide your identity out of shame, even to the extent of not joining the GF except under the condition of being disguised. You were the one that got pumped, not me. I keep wondering why you feel so cheerfully glib, come on out and let’s see if you are still playfully creative under your actual identity.
Dear Purchasing awakening, keep them coming, please! I appreciate these updates, pearls all. Thank you for revealing the madness in glorious Technicolor…
Can you tell us more about this octave? How many people work to find ‘significant’ cave paintings, works of art, and so on to be “keyed”? Do you know what the criteria are, what alerts the searcher that s/he has found a juicy one? Is it a magic number from the Sequence, like four, six, ten or thirty of something in particular? Anything? What happens next, are the images sent on to the ‘keyers’? How many are entrusted with the interpretations? Can you reveal names—Linda? Asaf? Does Burton himself do anything at this stage, or is it all pre-digested and given to him to dribble out to best effect? Are there ‘spontaneous’ keyings by anyone, Asaf, Burton, whoever, or is it all tightly scripted? I know a recent e-mail called on the followers to contribute—is that usual? And finally, how is this stuff distributed and shown?
That’s a lot of questions, but inquiring minds want to know!
And in the meantime, I send you warm regards!
Ames
P.S. Uno, I was definitely not talking about Burton when I was putting forward the co-operative ‘win-win’ model of teaching!
Dear Purchasing awakening,
This is a P.S.
Could you also tell us how many of these images are “Photoshopped”? I’m kind of suspicious, being quite good at Photoshopping myself! And while I’m in ‘suspicious mode’, what about that license plate in the meeting where Burton held it up and read deep significance into it? Did some follower unscrew it from the victim’s car, and bring it back as a trophy? It looked in darn good condition, in fact—brand new. Could it have been ‘special ordered’ from the state? Not wishing to cast nasturtiums, but maybe by a follower? Or is it an exact duplicate of a real one, hand-forged (pun intended) by a Department of Artful Reproduction or some such?
Yours in fun and a belly–full of laughter (no simpering giggles here),
Ames
Hey Graduates:
You pissed off? I sure as hell am. I just can’t stand it when my own stupidity jumps up and bites me in the ass. You and I have tangled before. I thought you were being opportunistic and exploiting this blog’s weakness by starting your own blog. Now maybe you were and maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were just helping us to be more honest. And hey, you know what, I think it worked…there’s not the level of moderation now and the hardcore fundamentalists seemed to have backed off. So you did good, dude. I almost took you for a FOF spy, imagine that?
Here’s the thing, c-influence, that’s you and me…not the boogey man, not angels, not ghosts wafting in the breeze, and certainly not Robert the madman. Whenever we dig deep and get real with each other, I mean really reach out to each other without selling fear, and communicate what we perceive with our own consciousness, that’s c-influence. It may not come out the way you expect it, but it comes from people in the here and now. It lingers for a little while, it only lasts for a short time, and then changes and becomes b-influence. Sometimes it’s raw and hits you in the gut-sometimes it gives you the tingles. Now people who start today reading this blog from the beginning, they are already reading b-influence. Then by the time they post, they are participating in c-influence, the conscious influence we can have on each other. So, the only one directing your fingers on your keyboard is you. The only one directing my fingers on my keyboard is me.
You know, while I have been reaching out to you, and just after I wrote that last line, my higher centers kicked in gave me an insight about that stupid fucking interpretation of the Lascaux cave paintings…that’s been going on in the back of my mind while I have been thinking of you, buddy, and transforming the negativity of your last post to the unobomber about your idea of ‘c-influence’ directing us ex-fofers and all.
#494 “The steward has been thrown down, and has four fingers in place of five, signifying that the four wordless breaths are not in prolonged presence, but in prolonged imagination.”
Here’s how you can tell the writer of that piece of shit was in imagination, (or even prolonged imagination as the case may be), NOBODY HAS FIVE FINGERS! We all have only four fingers on each hand and a thumb. So the ‘imagined’ student with five fingers in prolonged presence is a myth, he does not exist, which is part of Robert’s narcissism and deception, ‘the prolonged presence of five fingers’ cannot be achieved, which keeps his followers following, and following, and following like sheep asleep.
So, thanks for your post. I ate it, and that’s what came out.
Thank you for your responses to the Gurdjieff quotation. I myself had not run across it until just recently. What I found particularly revealing is that Gurdjieff, right at the outset, tells us what should be the basis of our work, the use of our inner vision to create our own standards, and not those imposed on us from outside:
“The only true measure, never changing, objective, the only real one, is the measure of inner vision. ‘I’ see – ‘I’ see myself – and you have measured.”
Where would each of us be had we heard that right at the beginning and made it the foundation of our work, instead of following the “Pied Piper”?
But since most of us are “veterans” of the FoF, the following should sound familiar:
“When there is a socially imposed mandate to “think nice thoughts” and view the world in a positive light, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, people find it necessary to become highly attuned to the approval or disapproval of the “social norms.” As a result, they are motivated to learn how to think in social norms, and do not examine their own, honest experiences. As victims of Societal Stockholm Syndrome, we are encouraged to develop psychological characteristics pleasing to the system. These include: dependency, lack of initiative, inability to act, decide, think; strategies for staying alive, including denial, attentiveness to the system’s demands, wants, and expressions of approval of the system itself. We are taught to develop fondness for the system accompanied by fear of interference by anyone who challenges the system’s perspective. Most of all, we are conditioned to be overwhelmingly grateful to the system for giving us life. We focus on the system’s kindnesses, not its acts of brutality.
Denial of terror and anger [masquerading as non-expression of negativity], and the perception of the system as omnipotent keep us psychologically attached to the … Control system.
High anxiety functions to keep us from seeing available options.
Psychophysical stress responses develop.”
Adventures with Cassiopaea, Chapter 20
To apply RBs quote to the right people, “We are not better than anyone else, just luckier.”
To Ames Gilbert (502):
“cast nasturtiums, but maybe by a follower”
I love it!
I thought nasturtiums was a follower!
Cake gets the call
On the line,
Someone so respected, someone who has given me the benefit of many a doubt
“The donations office has informed me……”“Is it financial?”
No, I am leaving, I say.
I appreciate how fair you have been.
Maybe somewhere down the line, I say.
“You never know” the voice on the phone says.
If you read this, please know it is you and all those like you that break the heart of those like me when push comes to shove.
Robert, not at all. But you and those like you.
Well me to the left and you to the right.
But in my heart, I know we are but a breath apart
Until then
Cake
503 WhaleRider
While reading that post your higher centers kicked in in me and told you to tell me to stop laying claim to them.
(sorry, you couldn’t resist telling me…. I mean I couldn’t resist you telling you….. ohmigod! what is happening to us?)
Oops, I was wrong. They were mine. Back into the shop they go.
Here is an idea for all of you former students (and maybe current?) who are in the area of Oregon House AND who have been investigating Advaita.
Why not start a weekly Fourth-Way-into-Advaita study group at the Oregon House Community Center? Costs only to cover the rental. Meeting leaders to moderate but not to be “Teachers”. Meeting format similar to our old FOF Meetings, a reading, a topic, question and angles. Maybe a closing 10 minute meditation? Or a final reading? Or both? Advertise posters at the OH Grocery Store and Post Office?
I think it is very important to emphasize that it is not a format for discussion of the FOF or RB. There are other places for that (like this blog). It is for people who spiritually wish to go on with their lives, diving deeper into Self Remembering through understanding Advaita.
What do you all think?
Cheers,
Bass
506 Cake please.
Sing in your best Niel Young voice. “Dont let it get you down its only castles burning”.
Spend some time with some of the friends who have been out for a while and consider yourself lucky as many of us didnt have that option. Congratulations and good luck/love to you. Cy.
VEROnica Kapow. Ive said it before “Im gonna say it again”, you are a one woman army. The hell letter alone should be enough for the most rabid fof supporter to get a glimpse of the truth. Also those photos at the top of the page…. Now I can understand why it would practice smiling! that thing is clearly Alien. Well done V . Ltya. Cy
dear Bass and all others,
Very interesing…why not, let me think about it.
Love to all of you.
I really liked the dialogue in 467, 470, 471… Two people expressing their opinions directly, and two really intelligent and civil responses, despite their different points of view. But I like all of this… something to learn from every post. Keep ’em coming everyone. And if you’re thinking about posting and wondering if any of us might care…
We will care.
In the late 80s and early 90s, there was a 7-year drought in California. During the first few months of 1993, the drought ended. Streams and rivers overflowed, waterfalls roared, and the valley flooded. Nature was unleashed.
We, with our measly words, can’t produce anything close to that. But the outpouring of feelings and ideas on this blog reminds me of that year — the year when the drought ended, and rain finally nourished the land.
David B. (466): Very succinct and accurate.
My dear friend Yesri Baba:
Just lay it on me, soulbrother. Tell me like it is. (I guess that dates me…) Am I pushing your buttons speaking about my higher centers?
I write about my higher centers because in the FOF it is a taboo subject. To me it’s the big white elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. Of course, I realize I run the risk of losing all creditability as a fully realized, self-levitating, conscious being number 11…because we all know that the Tao of wise guys is that they don’t’ talk about being wise, they just are. But screw it, that’s a gamble I’m willing to take to help you guys humanize the narcissistic trait of spiritual self-deprecation. You have higher centers, I have higher centers, we all have higher centers! But what you won’t hear in the FOF is that guess what, they have been there all along. We just fail to use them or notice them unless pushed or we have the aim to use them for ourselves. The FOF teaches its followers to mistrust themelves.
Remember the quote from Jung:
“But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple. This, for the vast majority of people, is an altogether ideal technique. Its advantages are: the odium dignitatis, the superhuman responsibility of the prophet, turns into the so much sweeter otium indignatis. The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi divine being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all responsibility is laid at the Master’s door.”
IMO, people exposed to the FOF get stuck in feeling that they cannot possibly live up to the level they imagine that Robert is and the instutitional manipulation of what they don’t talk about reinforces being mired in the beginning stages of work, which is the realization that most of the time we lack the will to believe in ourselves. By abdicating our higher centers to Robert, we get to be included in his group, and bask in the non-existence of ‘otium indignatis’.
At some point, hopefully you wake up (or grow up) to the fact that you have higher centers too, (whether you use the sequence or not), and you begin to see the truth of the situation in stark contrast to the backdrop of all the insanity that is being spewed out of the FOF these days.
IMO spiritual evolution is not about higher vs. lower; it’s about integration and wholeness. IMO the FOF is leading people away from integration and toward separation and compartmentalization within its followers in order to put up with Robert’s crap, and it’s not healthy. We have Robert as a prime example of the result of inner compartmentalization, and his cowering, spineless followers are partly to blame for his illness.
Unoanimo (498) and Graduate (500): Keep up the good work. It’s been fun reading.
It’s hilarious that Abe and Co. called the blog a “mudfest” or some such thing way back on Page 2 or 3. I think the idea was that we’d all turn our noses up and stop reading if there was any “negativity.” Maybe labeling the blog a mudfest would discredit it and make it seem irrational, etc.
Of course, the thinking there is that there’s absolutely nothing irrational in the thinking of Robert Burton. And Robert Burton would never express negativity, right? Very wrong. He does. We all do.
Uno, thanks for describing the potage lunch. I couldn’t help picturing, the many times I came across this unfamiliar term, more of a dotage lunch.
And a more general thank you to all the excellent writers out there who are pouring out their thoughts in such heartfelt ways. This blog is like a spark of electricity for me, and arc or bridge back more than 20 years, illuminating sealed off parts of myself that have accompanied and influenced my life’s journey but were hitherto not examined in the light of my current understandings.
Cake Please 506:
Congratulations! The next months will most likely be very vivid with many new possibilities. For many of us, leaving the FoF was (and continues to be) a time when an unusual amount of transformative energy was/is available – amazing things can happen!
Good luck and love from Rhino
I just remembered a funny idea I had years ago which still intrigues some little part of my mind to this day.
I was reading a lot of Rodney Collin when this came to me, so be forewarned. Collin stated that being fully awake in the present allowed one the opportunity to repair and/or help oneself in the past. If this were true, I reasoned, and if there was indeed an awake “Me” in the future somewhere, than I may be sending help back through time to the me sitting in this chair; hence, I am C influence. I am my own Guardian Angel. That thought catapulted me into an extremely strange state for about a month.
I also remember the meeting where I finally got up the nerve to ask about this idea. My recollection is that there was a prolonged, stunned silence after the question, but that it opened the door to a frank discussion (which was hard to come by at the time) of our understanding of what C influence really was.
“I do not know or wish to know what results will be formed in your mentation on learning about the strange convergence of life circumstances I will now describe, but for my mentation, this coincidence provided material for reinforcing my belief that all the events that occurred in my life, far from being simply the results of chance, were created intentionally by certain extraneous forces.”
-G. I. Gurdjieff
*****************
I’m not interested in your opinion of my verifications, because I already have my verifications and they are not so superficial as to be negotiated with or bargained over by personality’s puny accommodation with the demand that reality be maintained within the range of a comfortable sense of logic.
Bravo Kid Shelleen! Congratulations!
I am going to go out on a limb here. What you described is how I make my living. I ‘escort’ people into the past to repair their ‘pain bodies’, update their understandings, and then into their future to help create the life they want for themselves. And it works! But you don’t need me to do that. You are indeed your own Guardian Angel, your own c-influence! With enough accumulated self-awareness and belief in yourself you have the ability to send your consciousness along the length of your fourth dimensional time-body to heal yourself and set yourself up for success in your future. That’s self-remembering. That’s virtuosity. I urge to explore more in this direction. It’s the deeper level of work to ‘know thyself’.
To Comic Relief (505):
Yes, to quote, “a dedicated flower of fashion”.
Cake: “Well me to the left and you to the right.
But in my heart, I know we are but a breath apart
Until then
Cake”
I recently called, out of the blue, an old friend still ‘in’. We hadn’t spoken for, hmmm, close to 20 years. She was a friend who I really deeply loved, altho no one could annoy me more, but still she was a real soul friend. I won’t ‘out’ her here, but we spoke and it was just as you say, Cake, we were still after all these years soul friends. Like no time had passed. It was a great blessing for me.
Like having nasturtiums cast at my feet and roast (cut up pieces of) chicken fly into my mouth.
#495 For those who don’t know, Sharole had terminal cancer when whe received the hell letter.
Christina
Dear Cake Please!
Welcome to the other side- the real world !
Now , with real friends , (not those do not tilt their head, with a beatific smile and give you some ‘bull’ about, ‘the sequence reallllly works for me’,) you can go forward, you have moved on.
The past is just that, wonderful/not so wonderful memories that roll around in the chambers of your mind. They are part of you, and not part of you. They are the past. Just that.
THIS IS IT! Nothing more, nothing less. Living, life, your dog, your cat, your grandchild, your kids, the phone call, the leak in the roof, the not so feeling great today, the feeling great today, the sorrow, the joy, laughter with friends, more laughter with friends, and then laughing with the world. The joke has been revealed. The Buddha laughs out loud!
Love you my friend
You know me, I am you, you are me.
518
Is that your translation beneath the what Gurdjieff wrote? Please, in the future (or present), write such things in Japanese so I can better understand it.
Word!
Yep, the Indy 500 is up and smoggy.
Dear Parent and other Parents,
I suspect that as a parent, you would be sick to your stomach if you found out that your handsome young son of 21 was called by Robert and was drawn into his perverted circle of young ment. Like “Parent” you would probably want to kill the SOB.
Soooo, I have to ask the question. What about the parents that have gorgeous young daughters ages18-25 that are getting into relationships and marriage with some of Roberts closests ‘consorts ‘ or ‘prostitutes’? Young girls, niave, who only want attention and love from ‘big daddy’ or because their boyfriends are in the ‘inner harem circle’. And that gives them some kind of ‘status’ from the onlookers. Doesn’t that make you twitch? Aren’t you worried that they may come down with HIV because of the dozens going through the portals of Roberts bedroom? Aren’t you concerned that their lives are getting screwed up before they even begin? That these young girls have been conditioned to believe that sharing their boyfriends/husbands with Robert Burton at any time of day or night is NORMAL?
As a parent, if you think this is normal and fine, well, all I can ask is ” what ever has happened to your conscience and your common sense of parenting’?
#513 WhaleRider
Dear Whalerider,
Oh, if you could only know how much I agree with what you wrote in that post. (except for the next to the last paragraph assuming “you” was specific rather than generic). I can’t remember how many times I tried to express that earlier on in the blog. I think it is the biggest distortion/lie/crime of the fof to turn souls into carrots hanging on cosmic strings.
The only button your post pushed was the “rhetoric” button.
What prompted my little goof was how language shapes how we see things. I wouldn’t use the concept “higher centers”. I think those words are meaningless for this crowd now. I probably would have said ‘my wonderfulness kicked in’ and don’t you just love those possessive pronouns?
The “c-influence” stuff you wrote in that post was right on in my opinion. It is wierd how since reading this blog I can see what my concepts of this crap were, way back when. They ain’t that now. I remember a ways back on the blog getting into it with “ex-lax” (hey, where are you buddy?) after I wrote that there was no invisible influence behind the material world directing or controlling it. It would have been just as true to say there is nothing but invisible influence.
One concept I can relate to is soul brother. Keep doing what you do. (I know you will)
10/Flying Free
Was it Manocher (“Manoush”) Movlai?
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
Good afternoon Ames G. ~
The keying, which is not to be related to “The Key-Master” in the second Matrix series, is a sort of kidney shaped round table (or other anatomical parts, depends on the month) of about twenty people; ‘the boys’ help too…
Robert Burton has assigned certain time periods and or civilizations to ‘certain someones’; they mail findings to Asaf, etc. I think Allen G., has the Aztec & Mayan wiseacre-flints, one of the ‘Russian boys’ has Egypt, a few ‘over-sea-eers’ have their ‘homelands’, etc.
See? It’s just like the good ole days of Rome-planning; but with monopoly money, so to speak…
The keying is a feverish octave; people looking for anything that fits into Robert Burton’s mother-goose kaleidoscope: not that they ever reference Joseph Campbell; no, he would be ‘too heavy’ a foot on the tail of the Alpha Male.
For the most part it’s a affirmative-paternal thing; more hobbies for The Family of Relative Awakening; and an interesting ‘effect’ of the ’cause’ stemming from Robert Burton’s lack of personal aura-ship from his own intentional suffering being and uninhibited by ‘chief feature’ first line;
not to suggest that everyone’s ‘first line’ does not experience some ‘feature denying force’, though, traditionally, one does not express one’s so called ‘higher centers’ through the octave appetites of chief feature…
The license plate octave is a Robert Burton signature thing: amazingly effective in a Jack of Hearts country like America, particularly amongst the ‘really young spirits’… I sense that cereal and old school lunch boxes are next; who knows maybe action figures and comic book characters (?)
I mean just think what they could do with Scooby Doo!
School Be Do (?)
The license plates are not photos of actual real time plates (very rarely they are); they come from a graphics program, either through Photoshop or the DMV website where you can preview what your license plate will look like…
It’s a weird one Ames, yes? Robert Burton (already an affirmation guru by default) affirming a license plate affirmation to back up his personal and ‘school’ affirmations… Not much room for the transformation of negativity there.
It’s interesting that the Fellowship of Friends has a very, let’s say, primordial idea of negativity, they ‘think’ it means something ‘instinctively felt as negative’ or ’emotionally touchy’, something that either scrunches up the face or one’s small intestines;
yet, to me, negativity is anything that negates one’s freedom to consciously experiment with the actions and reactions taking place within oneself as one is perceiving and being perceived by the ‘cosmos’ immersed in (presently), within and throughout.
This can come in the form of conscience, imagination (daydreaming), first state dreams, arguments, feature-plays, movies, coincidences, ‘accidents’, crossroads, automatic inner dialog, hypnosis, a relationship, a task or aim unfolding, intensional suffering, helping others for the sake of love, not personal ‘I did it-ness’, dropping a cup of hit tea on one’s lap, etc.
I must say though, going back into history (similar to what Gurdjieff often did in order to locate conscious impressions and gather a sort of emotional ‘signal’) is a very first line octave, albeit a possible ‘second line’,
though mainly by coincidence and networking one’s particular essence towards the possibility to attract like or kindred spirits to share in one’s ‘beloved’…
So far as a third line octave, unless your school is building a conscious work of art, like a pyramid or Chartres Cathedral (been there done that) out of pure celebration of primarily and simultaneously building an astral body; then it’s soap-stone-dope and out of the traditional and conscious triad of conscious art creation…
I am sure you know about this ‘triad’, being a “Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson” reader to the end.
What conscious work of art has Robert Burton and Company contributed to Heaven and Earth?
Bronze copy-statues?
Limestone copy-ampitheatres?
Mature palm trees uprooted from somewhere else and transplanted at Isis; to give the ‘illustion’ of having been there for ages?
A wine vineyard that served mainly in the school as an endless source of inexpensive, though high hydrogen self-calming nectar, unregulated by a ‘teacher’ with an unstoppable (up till recently) greed feature and self-calming example?
His students, in and out? Well, no, for he has proven to not be the sort of ‘teacher’ who can walk along with a conscious individual whose contributed to ‘his school’; rather, he walks himself, round and round the Poseidon Fountain gathering, chained to his contempt for any sort of creative critique or ‘other than Robert Burton form’ ‘form’; particularly when it comes in the form of a good looking man who can say ‘no’ from the heart, not Robert Burton’s version of the Lower self Hafiz. If a teacher is not big enough to continue being a soul’s ‘teacher’ regardless of that student’s actions or opinions; then he is no teacher, such prerequisite, strong-armed conditions are for ‘leaders’, not teachers.
So far as the keying thing ~
Take a look at certain colonies of insects; now there’s a humble subject of reality to ‘key’ (unlock)…
Though not Fellowship of Friends style, where you start off the ‘do’ with wiseacring (calling it ‘my key’ and photo-shopping the images) rather, with the object of attention’s ‘attention’, its ‘with or without you’ objectivity.
The Fellowship of Friends loves to see their fingerprints on mirrors; to such a degree that there’s simply no mirror’s mirroring left.
_______________________
‘Graduates 500’,
I still love you, no matter how nasty you get; no matter how more nasty you get by wiseacring as to my personal life experiences; if you ‘think’ that a person is better ‘known’ or ‘honestly perceived’ once you are given a ‘real name’ to match to the already ‘static’ image/framework within the mind belonging to that person’s ‘then-portrait’, you are missing out on a very large and incredible conscious fact, i.e.,
that we are always changing and growing, if we are truly working on ourselves, we are never the same, we are not long or short orgasms followed by an opinion and a cigarette or ‘to the rim glass of wine’ or a teaching video, edited to suit the ‘after meeting viewers’; we are not truly being that are designed to respond truthfully to opinions or attitudes, these are spiritual viruses, no different than those the physical body has and gives.
Your negativity passes straight through me and returns to you in the form of a greater love for your possibilities at not being such a being who hunts with boomerangs for the sake of physics and fun…
This ‘raw material’ you possess is exactly what has kept the Fellowship of Friends a school of relative awakening for 37 years; it can be transformed and given back to you in such a triad as a school or friendship (or by certain forms of being alone), though not by such enterprises as the Fellowship of Friends, who, is not a School of Love, it is a School of Drinking Blood, that is pretty much the gist of it…
People will get something from the FoF, that is for sure, though it will not be what it claims to give; the ‘love octave’ is an affirmation for the FoF, this can be quickly discerned by the fact of Robert Burton’s brutal discrimination of the beautifully faced male bodies and the blue collar faced male bodies, his extreme impatience of not getting what his self calming wants RIGHT NOW and the students inability to absorb point blank photographs without wiseacring some excuse that points to their ever refined belief in the holiness of having more than one self.
I wish (more than wish) you well; the observation I gave you was for ‘you’, that that other ‘thing’.
___________________________
P.S. Ames,
You wrote ~ ” P.S. Uno, I was definitely not talking about Burton when I was putting forward the co-operative ‘win-win’ model of teaching!”
_________
Yes, I can see where my first sentence might be mistaken as a question to you yourself; though it was more of a group-blog-think phenomenon appearing in my mind as a sort of blog-self-evident ‘fact’… Hope that clears ‘that’ up.
_____________________________
Love 2 you all.
______________________________
To 440 Observer.
Here is something in relation to your question.
After my time in the FOF I got in contact with other Gurdjieff groups. Usually I would avoid advertising myself as an Ex-FOF, since the FOF has a very bad reputation in these circles. But one day we talked about it and one person said to me, he heard so many horrible stories about the FOF, but each time he meets somebody who has been in there, he is positively surprised and finds them rather OK. And he didn’t even know have of the real dark side of it.
So if one reads this stuff about the drippings and droppings from the cave walls, one would think all these people are complete lunatics. Even I tend to think, oh my god, I am glad it was not that bad during my time. But was it that different? We were talking about the arch, the reason for the existence of the school, building a new civilasation and so on. By now we were supposed to fly to all the museums in Europe and take the precious art back to Renaissance. All imagination, complete fantasies of a sick mind, projections. It is the same with the stuff I read here about ancient art. All complete trash and I believe people in the FOF know it. One can feel it in ones heart that this is neither truth nor wisdom. It is fabricated nonsense. As long as one is in, one plays a game as if one would not notice, to avoid too much trouble. But when you start to believe in yourself again, it all falls off like an old coat. The need of playing these kind of social games disappears and one becomes normal again.
There is only one person that will not be able to experience that freedom, because he is the only one that can not step out of this yezidi circle. I also believe that most members know in there heart that RB is far from what he imagines to be. It just takes time to admit it and love yourself enough to stop following wrong idols. Part of the problem is that good and wrong ideas are mixed together. Also good and bad experiences are part of the FOF. So one believes by leaving the bad and wrong one would also loose the good. But that is not the case. Lies and wrong ideas, and fantasies will disappear. The history of the FOF is an example of that. The only problem is, new lies are invented again and again.
Love and Friendship will prevail, the GreaterFellowship is showing us this truth.
Correction to Post 529
‘At bottom of letter to Graduates 500’
Needs to be read as ~
“I wish (more than wish) you well; the observation I gave you was for ‘you’, (not) that other ‘thing’; well sorta for that too, though secondly, by serendipity.
l.t.y.a.
Tim,
Help me make it past the first 5 minutes of this movie. If it is two unrelenting hours of this, I’ll be in bed for a week. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending, just give me some indication where it’s going with these gut-ripping images. In fact, Tim, based on my friendship for you, if you say, trust me, you need to see this, I will.
Hello Tim ~
When I pushed the play button on that movie link’s window, the word/phrase “buffering” appeared at the top left hand corner… somehow, for me, this is not a coincidence…
This kind of propaganda is just the flip side of what Robert Burton and friends produce to cover up the ‘similar images’ from his War Room experiments, choking a young student with his penis, having to be pulled away from the young man before he suffocated in Robert Burton’s insane appetite for ‘sensation’ and ‘sensationalism’…
These death and destruction images certainly can show something, yet, …. well, good grief Tim, isn’t it enough that it’s July and August already, no need to rub it in bro…
:)
unoanimo 529
‘Graduates 500′,
I still love you……….
(SNIP, as in slam the floodgates on this constant stream of narcissistic, effeminate narration)
***********************
You can’t imagine my relief.
Still, a bit of advice: get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend, depending on your orientation, because spending every drop of creative material your body generates from day to day on this relatively insignificant imaginary backdoor to the attention of Robert Burton is a waste of your spirit.
Hey everyone!
Yesterday (Wednesday), between the hours of 1:30 – 3:30 CA time, guess who showed up on the Greater Fellowship.
Abraham Goldman, legal council to the FOF.
Yup, he was on for about 30 minutes. No friends, no phone number, no other information. Just the silouette and his name.
He disappeared about 30 – 45 minutes later .
Guess he was looking around to see what scuttlebutt he could find. Maybe see if there were any lawsuits being organized . Probably hugely dissappointed, or greatly relieved – because all he would see are about 400 smiling faces.
Wonder how he got in – the Greater FOF it is by invitation only?
Or did he have someone hack in for him (not really above his tactics). Oh well, your guess is as good as mine.
More insights into the Psychological Control System, which parallels the FoF, PERFECTLY:
“The Control System does not inculcate belief by lying – at least not all the time. The lies, the subtle twists on the truth, are generally buried deeply in a soft cushion of warm and tender concern for their “chosen ones.” The Control System proceeds by the method of imitation. It APES the expression of the positive, and all the more carefully when it wishes to be mistaken altogether for truly benevolent intentions.
The strategy of the Control System is to begin its work by adhering so closely to the letter of the positive as to be virtually indistinguishable to all but the most perspicacious individuals. It instills belief through a sort of rhythmic lull of entrainment, which then permits acceptance of all that is said when it finally diverges slightly or greatly from the set pattern and pulls the mind of the believer along with it.”
Adventures with Cassiopaea, Chapter 21
The first 60 seconds of the Zeitgeist movie (link posted by Tim 528) are quite horrible.
After that, it gets pretty interesting. I’m about 20 minutes into it. Thanks Tim!
Regarding Abraham on the Greater Fellowship,
A member of the GF invited a current student. The current student passed the invitation on to Abraham’s office, presumably for investigation. It sat on Abraham’s desk and he decided to take a look. He showed up on the Greater Fellowship as mentioned in the post above.
I noticed that he had joined right away and sent him a message explaining that I did not want to interfere with anyone’s GF experience, but since he showed no friends or invitation, I needed some information regarding his intentions. I asked him to please contact me and explain his purpose.
I gave him some time and when he did not contact me, I sent him another note explaining that I needed to ban him but to please contact me to discuss his purpose. I explained that if his intentions were appropriate that I would personally invite him back. I then banned him and he disappeared from the site.
He wrote me a beautiful letter asking about my family, offering his love and love from Susan, and explaining that he personally very much enjoyed the site. He enjoyed seeing old friends that he had not seen for so long and never knew what had happened with them. He said it made him happy to see such a healthy, non-negative site. He said it was an uncomfortable mirror to see some faces that had grown older. He also mentioned that he does not read the blog anymore (since the 4th itteration) because it was too negative for him.
He said he would enjoy being able to get on from time to time as a pleasant way to spend time on his breaks at work.
I wrote back and explained that I was sure that he understood that due to his unfortunate role, many were frightened by him. I asked him if he had any ideas regarding how to deal with that. I told him that after some thought, I needed to speak to others before forwarding him an inviation.
An this is where we are now.
I look forward to your comments.
William Heinz
Wlheinz@comcast.net
Flying Free (535): Your post is a nice example of the perspicaciousness.
——————————-
Had to use that word after reading Truth is Where You Find It (536): “The strategy of the Control System is to begin its work by adhering so closely to the letter of the positive as to be virtually indistinguishable to all but the most perspicacious individuals.”
One more hint that we were (and are) just your run-of-the-mill cult. Nothing special, nothing unusual.
The movie that Tim posted is very interesting. Don’t worry about the first minute or so, it gets into right after that.
Regarding Abraham on the Greater Fellowship,
He entered, was noticed, communicated with, and banned for now. He emailed back that he enjoyed the site, appreciated its lack of negativity, and enjoyed seeing pictures of old friends. He indicated that he would like to be a member of the site as a “pleasant way to take a break from the daily routine at the office.”
Any questions can be directed to WLHeinz@comcast.net
Just to make sure it is understood : AG did not hack into the site, but entered via a 2nd hand invitation.
Sharon 540
Regarding Abraham on the Greater Fellowship,
He entered, was noticed, communicated with, and banned for now. He emailed back that he enjoyed the site, appreciated its lack of negativity, and enjoyed seeing pictures of old friends. He indicated that he would like to be a member of the site as a “pleasant way to take a break from the daily routine at the office.”
Any questions can be directed to WLHeinz@comcast.net
**********************
Let him back on. Let’s not decide based on arbitrary judgment who should join us and who should get kicked off – lest we become our own enemy.
I support Graduates’ view on that.
Well, unless there’s a brewing revolt, and we’re thinking about storming the gatehouse and taking over the Academy, the winery, and Apollo D’Oro, and planting a huge GF flag on the top of the mountain. (Because if that’s the case, we should keep things quiet for now and not allow Abe on the site so we can talk in private. We’d need to maintain the element of surprise.)
All kidding aside, I can understand the impulse to ban him, but on the other hand I would suspect he’s had access to the site through other GF subscribers anyway.
This is so bizarre, this entire thing — what ever happened to the friendships we believed we had such a long time ago?
Well, maybe some of them weren’t friendships after all.
I can feel that naive impulse that says, “Maybe all of this will be a bad dream, and the ‘higher angels of our nature’ will prevail. And people like Abe, and Ni_k, and others, will one day soon say to themselves with brutal honesty and sincerity, “WTF am I doing here?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, guys, can you please direct the discussion to William? Don’t make any assumptions, please! You don’t know anything about “the impulse to ban him”, our friendships, the circumstances of his appearance, or anything, and it may not be appropriate to be public about it here.
That’s WLHeinz@comcast.net
Hello Graduates ~
You wrote ~
“Let him back on. Let’s not decide based on arbitrary judgment who should join us and who should get kicked off – lest we become our own enemy.”
“Still, a bit of advice: get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend, depending on your orientation, because spending every drop of creative material your body generates from day to day on this relatively insignificant imaginary backdoor to the attention of Robert Burton is a waste of your spirit.”
___________________________
Hummmm. Did you say “arbitrary judgement”?
___________________________
Forever yours,
Unoanimo
Not your Romeo, not your Juliet, not your teacher’s pet, just a Beyond Thunderdome place set, waiting and kinda not waiting for your chardonnay let’s be honest without tha witchy wild stuff, Us and They arm wrestling bet.
how can I enter the greater fellowship site?
Zietgeist. How’s the water looking in that glass?
Regarding Abe Goldman’s purported visit to ‘the blog’…
A few weeks ago, I saw from a distance dear Abe strolling through downtown Grass Valley. He was alone, carrying a large leather satchel, and appreared to be a bit lost. Perhaps he was looking for an address? Anyway, he was a quite ‘soft’ impression and I felt a bit sorry for him, wondering what he might not be hearing of the sounds that surrounded him.
IMHO, Abraham has gotten bad press, and bad vibes, from this blog, and I just wanted to offer the possibility that his particular play is deep and complex enough to make it, and him, rather difficult to understand (and criticize), objectively speaking.
In my experience, Abe is a gentle, sincere, and intelligent fellow. If he has had to show his professional teeth over the years as an attorney in defense of the FoF, well — that’s his job in his chosen context.
A host of you fellow bloggers were once very good at the jobs you did! Digging holes, planting palm trees, cooking Italian dinners, planning events, acting, dancing, and so on and on.
So, please do consider the possibility that Abraham may just need to delve into this dark world of ‘the blog’, for himself! Give him a break. Welcome him to participate.
I wish I had a bookmark I could place between posts. Lots of reading left. But, I’ve got to go to (first state).
Yesri Baba #436 thank you for your thoughts to me. You are appreciated.
Veronicapoe #49(5)? The Hell letter. WhaleRider wrote a soulful letter some time back that shocked alot of people. This Hell Letter to me was almost as strong.
Me: “Robert, can you come over”? “My doctor said I only have a few hours to live and I want you as my spiritual guide to hold my hand”.
Robert: “yes dear, I’ll spring right over”.
Me: “Oh, thank you Robert this means life to me”
Robert: “Dont fret dear, I’m coming”.
Robert comes over and sits by my death bed:>
Me: “Robert could you hold my hand and prepare me for my
death like our breathen the holy and ancient Egyptains”?
Robert: “Hold on dear, whats up with this hospital gown”?
Me: “No, Robert. Hold my hand, hold my hand. What are you doing? Hold my hand why are you suc__……”.
Abraham is welcome here in the dark world of the blog. In fact I believe he has visited here at least once. It was the the light world of theGreater Fellowship site he was banned from.
548 my2bits:
I liked your compassionate post.
Actually it was the Greater Fellowship space, not this blog, that he was “banned” from. As far as I know, almost no one has been banned from this blog. Maybe AG reads it daily, and he may even post here for all I know. Who cares?
The GF site is a little more selective about who they allow to join. I guess they’re worried about “spying” or some such (to me) silliness.
What a sad, sordid little fear-based world these followers of Mr Burton have created for themselves! The good news is that in time, as the trance is broken, they can reclaim a different way of being.
2b:
Very good! “WTF AM I DOING HERE?” should be printed on t-shirts and sold at the OH store!
Xena & Cathie ~
Go girls!
A quote from above ~
“The GF site is a little more selective about who they allow to join. I guess they’re worried about “spying” or some such (to me) silliness.
What a sad, sordid little fear-based world these followers of Mr Burton have created for themselves!”
_____________________________
Hey, and those who are no longer his followers too!
;.)
Graduates and my2 and Cathie
yes, let AG join. Thank you for not leading with fear but with compassion and friendship.
The Greater fellowship site is a very good thing to happen for so many people. We are actually all connected, in more and deeper ways than is conveniently apparent.
Hey, I want one of the WTF AM I DOING HERE? t-shirts too!! and I’m not anywhere near OH.
Markus L: ~ Menander said: “Carelessly we live, thinking death will never come.”
Robert: This is why one by one we each must take out turn at death, to make us more serious, and to make the school more serious, it is a method Influence C uses; they keep us completing our roles one by one and remind us not to be this way: not to be careless about the time we have left.
______________________
nor the present now Robert Burton;
there is no tomorrow.
Hello All.
What is the “Greater Fellowship” thingy. I missed something.
Also, I’m always curious about posts that use the school language to describe thoughts and feelings. There are several different contexts in which it is used. Some seem to still validate it by using it seriously to describe thoughts or feelings. Some seem to still believe in the language.
I understand that school language is something we all share and which can be understood. I often don’t understand when an ex-student still uses it to describe their current experiences as though he or she was still in the school.
I am not being negative. I’m simply curious.
Also, I am not stating that others do this, but that I do not.
LL
#532 if memory serves & #533 Unoanimo re: #528 Zeitgeit – The Movie:
It’s a nearly-two-hour film (so you have to get beyond the “buffering” stage U. to get the message.) The prologue is unnecessarily violent. You can skip it.
The film examines the myths behind Christianity, the War on Terror & the Global Economy. It attempts to debunk some of the accepted views, perhaps attempting to create its own myths.
Similar to the FOF-Robert Burton controversy, somewhere between myths and debunking of myths, there are opportunities to engage critical thinking. We must arrive at our own truths. But first we must discover our own myths.
To Laughing Love (556),
You wrote, “I’m always curious about posts that use the school language to describe thoughts and feelings… I understand that school language is something we all share and which can be understood. I often don’t understand when an ex-student still uses it to describe their current experiences as though he or she was still in the school.”
Very good question. Here’s my answer…
Our work language gives us the precision we need to reach higher centres. Using intentionality as one speaks is a tool that’s useful for one’s work. One must not waste time with the language of life. They are not ready to embrace the task we’ve been given from Higher Forces. As you do the will of your Teacher, you will have everything you need to reach Paradise. Do not inner consider your good fortune.
Yes, I’m kidding.
But not entirely kidding…. because (hopefully) everyone can see from that paragraph just how easy it is to spew out supposed profundities with the so-called work language — even little ole me. But can’t you imagine almost anyone in the Fellowship, including Robert, saying something very similar to the above? Pre-digested, nothing original.
Going back to page 3 of this blog, here’s a post by “George Orwell” :
http://animamrecro.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/the-fellowship-of-friends-discussion-part-3/#comment-4058
Following this, someone posted a link to an essay by the actual George Orwell… “Politics and the English Language” from 1946:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Very relevant to us, today, here.
As far as using the “school language,” I think it is a combination of things. Part of it could be that many people posting on the blog have recently left the fof, and that it’s still a habit to use those same old terms. But “from one angle” (argh, there I go again — an old Fellowshipism), the “work language” does sometimes describe certain concepts more concisely and more accurately.
And you also suggested that. But you bring up a great point. Even while in the FOF, I know some people who tried to find new and different ways to talk about “the ideas,” partly because many terms and phrases began to lose their meaning as people over-used them. If it was worthwhile trying that within the fof, it’s definitely worth a try outside.
Orwell’s essay is worth checking out again. The use of the language is a key point in everything we’re discussing here on the blog. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important topics.
Here’s how they ended their post…
P.S. From my essay, since it’s not clear many of you still read books:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
To # 527 Veronicapoe
Don’t know if it was Manocher Movlai. He introduced himself as ‘Manoush’, and the card he had his acolyte give us did not bear his name, but the name of the institute he was affiliated with, (which I do not want to post here- since it really has no bearing on the story).
The point is, that there are thousands of spiritual predators that want to draw you in to their webs- much like Robert Burton had. And there are many that want to follow.
It is an ‘old tale, full of sound and fury signifying nothing’.
Re: #556 Laughing Love
You make a very interesting point, and one that I think is worthy of further consideration.
As a student who is in ‘the process’ of leaving the Fellowship, I find myself in an in-between world vis-a-vis the ‘Work language’ and, of course, many other things.
On the one hand, I am starting to jettison old and unwanted concepts and terminologies. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to suddenly depart from the language that has become an integral part of my emotional, intellectual and neural ‘circuitry’ after a few decades of complete immersion.
It feels artificial to forceably stop using the ‘Work language.’ On the other hand, I admit that it might actually help my personal process to just let this language go and try to find a new one to use to express my thoughts and feelings.
Just not there yet, and don’t want to adopt another artificial language-a-la-mode.
Perhaps the intentional use of language is a key to our successful re-orientation in the world? Just witness the linguistic diversity we are witnessing on this blog!
551 Cathy
Very good! “WTF AM I DOING HERE?” should be printed on t-shirts and sold at the OH store!
—————————————————=
554 KA
Hey, I want one of the WTF AM I DOING HERE? t-shirts too!! and I’m not anywhere near OH.
—————————————————-
Hey, I want two!
Who can do the graphics?
David B. 466
take it easy 465
I am the local (mostly disinterested) Observer who asked the question about what kept you all so involved for so many years in the face of such strange silliness when it is obvious to an outsider that you are obviously such intelligent, spiritually motivated people. One of the things I find mostly puzzling is the not-so-subtly-veiled “us vs. them” feeling within FoF, which the contrast between two of the posters who answered my initial questions, so clearly points out. When you first heard a nonesensical response, as given to my respectful, honest questions, (as in post 465) how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way? How did you make it okay to shun people who had been committed friends and co-followers just months earlier? How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds? Did the camaraderie make it all okay? Were the operas and art that distracting? It is obvious how intelligent most of you are, but many of you spent ten or more years in the Fellowship. How did you silence your disbelief and irritation and pay good money year after year and make that investment feel worthwhile in your heart, mind, and spirit? An early respondent suggested I read up about cults, and I have done so. But I wanted to take advantage of this forum to ask some real people who experienced all of this–what they were thinking “then”, and what gradually or suddenly changed their minds to “now”.
Again, these questions are asked very respectfully and I am very open to your answers and thoughts.
Thank you.
Re: #556 Laughing Love
I’ve been out of the Fellowship for 23 years, and I still use some of the language, in a limited way, with other former students. It’s a form of precise shorthand, and we know exactly what we are talking about.
Maybe it’s laziness, but why reinvent the wheel when familiar terminology continues to describe some things really well?
Leaving the Fellowship doesn’t have to mean abandoning the things that still work.
to Observer–you are an obvious phony.
Nobody should spent so much time trying to convince you are “mostly disinterested” and that you pose “respectful, honest questions” etc.
Since we are so “obviously intelligent”–trust me, that we can indeed spot a phony when we see one, at least on this blog!
To Observer [#440 & 561]
I highly doubt that you are a real person, however your questions are real enough to deserve an answer. What keeps us all making intense efforts despite evidence to the contrary? Is it just Brainwashing? Is it just Sleep?
The true, positive thread that keeps the Fellowship of Friends running is Self Remembering and the inner states that can be achieved by doing such a practice continually, or at least regularly, particularly in the company of like-minded Friends. That the Fellowship as an organization has some “myths” attached to it’s base, is it’s own unfortunate spiritual Achilles Heel, finally creating a travesty out of the word “School”.
Over the years, many healthy individuals, disbelieved a few of the myths but instead tried to use them and the School atmosphere to transform their personal lives. Some have maintained a level of respectful distance from the Enigma-of-Robert-Burton, knowing that he did a number of strange things in his private life, but in public inspired us all to be Present, the Golden Apple. Thus, in between Self-Remembering and all the strange predictions, proclamations and sordidity (sp?) lies a land called the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt.
In it’s early and initial stages, the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt means the land of No-“I’s”, a wonderful space for Self Remembering. One learns to react to Robert in the space of having no “I’s”, simply trying to transform the inherent contradictions. In it’s later stages, the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt, digresses to the land of No-Eyes, an unwillingness to accept the reality that is in front of one’s face. The death of Conscience. This blog pulls the curtain away from behind the man who is behind the Wizard, revealing him in his sad and full, lack-of-glory. We can dismantle the myths. We can see through the Enigma. We can try to understand how far the-Benefit-of-the-Doubt may have distorted our own perception of reality.
In the end, we may come to realize that the aim of the Fourth Way system is indeed to bring a man through Self Remembering to Conscience as both Gurdjieff , Ouspensky and Miles Barth stated. And the Fellowship does indeed do just that, by default, but not by intention. Graduates, one and all, I salute you. May the force be with you…
Love,
Bass
Aka, Baby-in-the-Bathwater
Highly recommend Zietgeist the movie 2007.
528 Tim Campion. Dear Tim. Thank you for going out on a limb and posting Zietgeist the movie 2007. Thereby solving a problem I had. there were a whole host of other movies with parts of the information in them which would take up too much time and people would be unlikely to watch. I even considered trying to edit them into one. No need! someone already did it. I hope you arent ostracised for posting it as I know where the urge to post it comes from.
It should come as no surprise that the covert aspects of government have been utilising principles of mind control to “govern” the choices of the people it all started with Freuds nephew Bernays. One of the questions the film doesnt answer is what they have been doing with all of the money? and the answer to this is pretty terrifying!
Americans take care your country and constitution are under attack in the manner that great men such as Lincoln and Kennedy warned about and you know what happened to them for having the guts to go public. You have been hypnotised on a much bigger scale than by Rb.
And to those discussing the use of work language.
Of course if you are discussing with someone who doesnt know it then you have to get creative and find common reference points, which can be much more difficult and time consuming than sharing observations with someone who does where you can point with surgical precision to a specific thing. It can save very much time that can then be used for other things.
Its also a good idea sometimes to make the effort anyway to be creative as it escapes the danger of parrot fashioned formatory understanding.
To use an analogy; If you were talking with someone who understood Spanish but didnt understand any of the other languages you spoke and you also spoke Spanish then it would make sense for you to speak Spanish together rather than both trying to speak Mandarin.
MLTYA Cy.
To Lucie
Well, no I can’t attend a dinner with Robert, I am leaving. I say. Shocked at the resolve in my voice.
And in a second, a thousand silent spark fly back and forth between you and I. Arcing through decades, through countries, through time and space.
You with your stomping six year old charmer,
Me just orbited into the meaning of life, clinging to my newborn.
No work language for those bonds,
Transparent we were, one to the other.
So, today, taken a back, you were. Didn’t really want to do that to you. But there we were amid a flurry of emotional affirmations about the depth of our friendship.
My heart and door always open, I say, feeling it is a platitude not worthy of you, my friend.
Well, you say, my heart yes, my door no.
Words follow, respect the exercise, I would understand, of course. Me biting my tongue. Deep breath. Good Luck. Adieu, Adieu.
Respect you. I do. With every breathe, you are all and everything this school could hope for. More than it deserves. Good student with a capital G. And I do mean capital.
But understand, not at all. Barbaric tradition. Best I can say.
But sad, not at all. Because as sure as you are in my pocket, I am in yours.
Dogma-proof, the heart.
A la prochaine,
Cake
p.s. Cy, your words not lost here. Truly, these are glory days for those taking flight. I know, it was not always like this, many suffered for our days in the sun.
Observer #561
Thank you for participating in this forum! You help us to “see” ourselves more clearly.
You say, “One of the things I find mostly puzzling is the not-so-subtly-veiled “us vs. them” feeling within FoF…how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way?”
Boundaries define us. They are inherent in our psychology. You live on one side of an imaginary line drawn on the earth, I live on the other. Elections are polarizing, sports are polarizing, so are religions. Patriotism is polarizing, too. Bush said to the world, “You are either with us or against us”. Nobody agrees one day to talk that way, we always have.
“How did you make it okay to shun people who had been committed friends and co-followers just months earlier?”
The followers of the FOF didn’t make it okay, the leader established the practice of shunning as a rule. The Mormon Church does this too. In my experience, most people ignored the rule. And as with unjust laws to which nobody adheres, the rule was recently abolished.
“How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds?”
Without change, life gets boring and stale. We accepted the changing landscape as part of keeping our lives new and fresh. Change forces us to ‘think on our feet’.
“How did you silence your disbelief and irritation and pay good money year after year and make that investment feel worthwhile in your heart, mind, and spirit?”
People who join groups are unsatisfied with the way their lives are going. In order to make changes, most of us substituted the group as our new family. We were encouraged to distance ourselves from our former lives by moving away and changing our names. As with dysfunctional families or even a dysfunctional workplace, you do what you need to do in order to stay. You either learn to suck it up, (so to speak) or you leave. The fear of abandonment runs deep in everyone, and fear is a powerful motivator. Have you checked the “Terror Threat Level” lately on Fox News?
Hello Ames,
May be it would be nice to publish again the letter you wrote long ago to A. Goldman regarding his conscience and his position towards the FOF.
Or at least if you can give again the reference of your post.
thanks.
Aline
Flying Free, I asked about “Manoush” because, if it is the individual whose acquaintance I made, I might be able to add something to the point of your story. I took a number of bodywork classes from this individual of Afghan origin in Oakland, where his institute was located….
Cake, your honorable post to Lucie resonates. I stand with you.
Dear observer,
I have been thinking of your question…a lot.
As Martin clearly pointed out…we gave him the benefit of the doubt. Many of us came from abroad and had to catch up with the culture, the way of living in USA, simply surviving. Many of us are immigrants which had much better jobs in our home countries…
Many of my fellow students I trusted and I counseled with from time to time and i thought I knew less. I remember the moment that I told a friend: “Robert Burton is like the emperor without clothes, the story of Christiaan Hans Anderson.
Many things I do not understand yet and it will take time. I have gone in the darkest of my darkness in myself and have looked for clues…
I learned a lot and one is to be good friends with myself and not depend on a authortian figure like a Robert Burton.
I gave too much, I was not very self assured and was amazed by what people could express….I should have looked at their actions too. And I did after many years…a couple of years ago when I really saw the coldness in Robert how he could let people go so easily if they did not “bow for him” or supported his vainity or kissed his…
I had wonderful moments but the demands slowly increased and I got used to it…this is what life was supposed to be…An after life seems our rewards. Yes it was kind of silly but this is what was. Now our sunglasses hvae dropped and we see very different. Dear Observer if you are real and I think you are. Please inform new people you meet from different countries about the blog or give them a card with the website in their hands.
I wish I had know when I joined and I feel so sorry for the center directors in different parts of the world, thinking they are recruiting searching souls instead they are recruiting, money, sex and a nice bunch of people to work their …off.
I am healing, digesting, leaving a great bunch of people.
Love to you and your conscience.
P.S. to come bak to your remark: about avoiding non members.
My position of working in a nearby town, I was not able to make much of a discrimination between fellowship or non. Although my limited time made sure that I had not much time to socialize with non members. The time I have socialized with non members was very enjoyable.
Cake,
I read your post to Lucie, too, and found myself speechless, yet filled with emotion. Glad Veronicapoe was able to find some words. I couldn’t, but am with you both.
Love,
Bass
Dear Aline, here is the letter you asked for (from post #13-670):
______________________________________________
When Abraham Goldman subpoenaed me in 1996 to get documents relating to the Troy Buzbee case, I enclosed this letter with the material he requested.
21 October 1996
Abraham,
One final appeal to your conscience. As the person best equipped in the Fellowship to bring the reign of madness of Burton to an end, you must act to do so. You are the only one with complete access to the information, to all the evidence accumulated through the years, and you have been Burton’s confidante for all these many years.
Please think back to when you joined the Fellowship. Surely, if you had by a miracle been given the knowledge of knowing then what you know now, you would have turned away. It cannot have been your ambition to end up catering to a charlatan and a pervert, covering for his mistakes and predations, wearying yourself to the bone with lies to cover his omissions and commissions? Surely you imagined a life of openness, not lies? Surely you imagined a life among true friends into whose eyes you could look with joy and honesty, knowing they could see the same in yours? Surely you did not imagine a life where your final defense against your own conscience would be, “I was only following orders”? Please, wake up and follow your conscience. Do not be afraid. There is so much love and help and forgiveness—if you wish. Face up to your responsibility. You could help so many people by telling the truth, now. You could save so many people so much heartache in the future. But, best of all, you could be helping yourself. You must have lain awake many nights struggling with the latest revelations of the day about Burton, and your heart must have ached to be in a place where none of this had anything to do with you. Such a place exists, both psychologically and physically. Look within. Act and forgive yourself, as all others with a good heart already have. Nothing can take away your responsibility for your past actions; you must face up to them yourself, but there is all the help you need if you ask for it.
You can make your life exactly as you wish it. You have done so until now, and will do so in the future. It is your gift from God, to do with as you please. If you wish to continue as you have done—thy will be done. If you wish to break away from this mess—thy will be done. It is up to you.
Know, that even if I personally am sometimes angry about the situation, I am not angry with you. You have your lessons to learn, and you have chosen your path. But, know that I believe you are strong enough to create joyful changes, if you wish. I send you loving wishes and encouragement.
(signed)
Ames Gilbert
565. Cake .
Hi Cake I just want to make sure that you are aware of the Greater Fellowship Web Site, as
“assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.”
If not just reply with an E mail address and I would be happy to invite you. Love to you . Cy.
To Observer (561)
Bass Ackwards (563) and Whalerider (566) have already addressed your questions somewhat but I will add a bit more here to try to clarify.
Referring to a post by a current FOF member (465) who said ‘C influence takes away their (former students’) understanding and causes them to forget their divine verifications’) you wrote:
“how did you tell yourself it was okay for people to talk to others that way?”
Well, you have to understand that this is just the kind of stuff that FOF members say to each other to convince themselves that they are right for staying and the people who leave are making a mistake. While I was in the FOF, I often doubted the truth of such statements but would only say so to a few close friends who I knew I could trust and who probably shared my doubts. If you were to express doubt or criticism of these kinds of statements publicly you would risk becoming a pariah. Although I’m sure many students have doubts about Robert and his teachings, very few have the courage to give voice to those doubts and risk being ostracized, especially when they have severed all their ties to the outside world and have nowhere else to go. I remember in the days right before I left the FOF, I wanted to confront the other members at a meeting (that was back when they still had meetings) and stand up and challenge them all on some of these things. I thought it would be good to stir things up and at least get people talking, and what did I have to lose, right? I had already made up my mind to leave. But somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was just too uncomfortable and, perhaps even frightening, being only one person against all the others. I suppose I was just still too close to it all and wasn’t sure enough about it. I certainly hope that those who are currently poised to leave will consider not going quietly. You will be amazed how many others are also having doubts about the emperor’s clothes.
You also asked:
“How did you deal with the constantly changing rules and predictions and “sequences” and ritualistic “babble” and make that all okay in your minds? Did the camaraderie make it all okay? Were the operas and art that distracting?”
The camaraderie was a big part of it for me. I wanted to be in a community of people who were dedicated to working on themselves and I was willing to tolerate a lot of Robert’s weird crap in order to have that. I remember wishing that Robert would just die or something so we could get rid of the weirdness and have a ‘normal fourth way school’. I have spoken with others who shared those sentiments. Of course that was naive and knowing what I know now I would never rejoin the FOF even if Robert were no longer there.
One other thing. In your post you refer to the “intelligent, spiritually motivated people” in the Fellowship. I think that is attributable to the quality of the fourth way teaching, not so much Robert. Probably most of the truly sincere and intelligent ones are there in spite of Robert, not because of him, and they will eventually leave when they figure it out.
So anyway, Observer, I hope that helps you. Since you were never in the FOF, I’m sure it seems really bizarre and incomprehensible, but I’m glad you’re making the effort.
#440 observer, you said “I can tell you are mostly all so intelligent, committed, energetic, and talented in many ways……. I can tell this was an amazing group of people, very intellectual and obviously outspoken, ……. Most of you sound like amazingly bright, earnest, passionate, dedicated people.”
Well, yes we ARE all so very intelligent and amazingly bright. Flattery will get you everywhere observer!
Since I completely doubt you are just who you say you are I’ll just address this to everyone who reads this blog. The folks in and post fof are, from my experience, a sort of unusual group. Not as in ‘really special’ but more in the misfit way. When one has interests that are a bit out of the norm then to find an actual community of other misfits where one can interact is an overwhelmingly positive thing. Lots of people are into enlightenment and when someone who needs community finds one that fits them they too become devoted.
There were/are many facets to the fof experience and this is just one – from my point of view. –I think community is a basic human need.
When I lived at Renaissance I went with two friends one day and hiked out some gorgeous park, sat by a fresh stream and read out loud from Lewis Carol – each taking a part that oddly fit us. It was a strange and wonderful afternoon – odd in a way that was comfortable to each of us. Hi to both of you (Griffin and Turtle) if you are here!
I’ve discovered that those kinds of magical experiences do not end post fof, but the community affected me greatly and I still am attracted to the community. I’m here on this blog and so are you.
#568 Veronicapoe
Yes, the card did have a body work institute name on it. ‘Manoush’ might be same guy. Don’t know. Just my story – one sunny, winters day in a coffee shop. It happened right after I left the Fellowship of Friends, so it kind of magnified the ‘lies’ that I bought into”. I smiled all the way home.
‘ no more systems, no more hooks, no more teachers lying looks’.
Here’s the reply I sent William when he emailed about the question of whether to allow AGoldman onto the GF site:
William,
I don’t envy you this decision.
It’s also obvious that if AG, in his capacity as the FoF lawyer, wants to know what’s going on at GF, it wouldn’t be very difficult to find out.
I did react strongly to the idea that someone would be “banned” from the GF site, since we’re all adults now and excluding people just goes against the grain for me.
I’m not sure I would be rushing to add AG to my “friends” list but so what? If the GF really is to open to all past/present members, I see no reason to exclude him, and I say that as someone who has been on the wrong end of his legal activities. Maybe membership in the GF will bring some additional humanity to AG and his work?
So I guess my vote is to let him in. There are certainly other past/present members I don’t care for, but I would fight for their right to be part of GF. Why pick AG out of all others? Just doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Good luck.
JoelF
Re: “Manoush”
I recall a former Fellowship student reading him the riot act for intellectual dishonesty about twenty years ago during a presentation at his institute. This individual expressed anger at him, indicating that she felt he presented Gurdjieff’s ideas as part of his talk without identifying their source. He admitted that he was influenced by Gurdjieff’s writings. He exuded charisma, I have to say. He showed up when the talk was underway and left before it was over, so that no one could mix with him casually.
Hello ‘Cake please’ (565) ~
Beautiful post; encased in a large sheet of amber that one is.
_____________________
Hello ‘Tim’ (557) ~
You wrote ~
“The film examines the myths behind Christianity, the War on Terror & the Global Economy. It attempts to debunk some of the accepted views, perhaps attempting to create its own myths.
Similar to the FOF-Robert Burton controversy, somewhere between myths and debunking of myths, there are opportunities to engage critical thinking. We must arrive at our own truths. But first we must discover our own myths.”
______________________________
Hello Tim,
When I write to someone in this blog I really start off as if they are the only one’s who are going to read my response to whatever they have written me or my reply to something they have simply ‘put out here’; of course this is not the ‘real case’, that’s alright with me, yet that ‘fact’ does not keep me from writing only to you and not really expecting others to read my mail…
I mean, think about this scenario ~
Your lover is gone to Australia for a month to study the various style of kangaroo jumping distances and you are writing here or him a letter, a love letter… You place it in the mail box at around 9PM that evening; you get a call at 3AM from someone ‘in the neighborhood’ saying,
“How could you be such a sap; don’t you understand that they are having a great time without you? Get a life, go to Australia, live a little and you spelled ‘relinquishment’ wrong.”
_____________
It’s like that in here sometimes: it’s all good though.
To me (and please understand that my ‘feeling’ does not reflect my opinion of you or anyone else, so try not to judge me for having one) the ‘do’ of the film said it all and still says it all, to me…
After reading your post about the premise of the film, I can see that my intuition has not failed me (again). Intuition is a tricky little thing, sometimes it’s a quick exhale to get rid of a mosquito, other times its an unknown intake of a gnat down your throat and yes, there are times that its connected to ones conscience and being, like a sort of ‘passion’ to leave things as they are, to walk away, not lonely or against the world, simply see it as not one’s business:
an example ~ One day I saw two dogs, one had escaped having gotten its chain tangled in another dog’s chain, which was still ‘tied up’ (really, this is true and not a metaphorical scene)… I was very young, about 9 or 10; I saw that the ‘escaped dog’ had its teeth showing, growling, really pissed off, while the other dog was truly ‘out to lunch’ about it all; being a very large dog, though passive and very emotional, yet, it still needed to protect it’s interests…
Well, I thought I would just prance in and untangle the two, I took a hatchet from my grandmother’s steps where I used to sit and crack walnuts, just in case the other dog got ‘touchy’ with me…
I reached in to untangle the chains and the big passive, emotional dog (the dog that I had known pretty much all my childhood life) sunk it’s teeth into my wrist all the way to the bone…
I stepped back and whirled the hatchet through the air missing my Uncle’s dog’s skull by about three inches; I was truly freaking out, blood, saliva, pain, having just seen a rabies commercial on TV the day before and hearing about the 60 shots in the stomach one would get, etc. Not to mention the ‘shock’, the utter contradiction of my altruistic ‘wish’ and the very objective ‘result’.
I learned that day that we live in many different objective worlds, whose relationship to one another is subjective; oftentimes I sense that the only objectiveness concerning the multitudes of life forms on the planet earth is the fact that they are all ‘on and in’ the same planet… that’s about it.
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Without going too far into how the film is not for me; it’s just not something I am attracted to untangle. Critical thinking, truth and Myth, for me, their beginnings and truer reason for existing within me as impulses, cannot be found in applying them to external affirmations or even internal affirmations; our ‘personal myth’ is highly irreconcilable, partly due to the fact that we do not end, that we grow, change, shed numerous skins and profoundly change in ways we could never unfold in a solo way… So, ‘personal’ is a pretty shaky subject for me these days.
Critical thinking; what’s that? It’s easy to be critical when you’re a negative type or a king: it is also a very ‘self evident’ (effect) of a circumstantial (cause)… For the most part, as I see it, ‘critical thinking’ on the planet earth is 95% buffer and 5% conscious conscience knowing that it’s ‘critical thinking’ is going in the direction of deeper love, not better missiles and law books. It also educates Essence, though its a rough and tumble ride, because ‘being’ critical and not staying that way throughout, not making it a habit or turning it into a pair of sunglasses, is a tricky seance.
And ‘truth’… well, go figure; it’s all unfolding… a never ending origami hobby. Certainly as a being phenomenon, in your heart and gut, in your presence, in this now, its applicable, though I would beware of connecting it’s sensations and thought provoking hydrogens to being critically or mythologically successful.
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Thank you Tim for your reply; hope to meet you all some day (or night).
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Hello Observer (561) ~
Try and find a similar situation where you have done something in your life that its outcome would elicit the same questions to yourself as you are asking people on this blog…
Whatever your answers are to yourself concerning this ‘similar situation’ (like a friendship, a love affair, a marriage, an ‘real’ friendship which suddenly shows itself as mostly affirmations and circular; an appliance warranty that says ‘Limited Lifetime Warranty’)… those ‘kinds’ of answers are the one’s you’re really looking for.
Sharing results is not always getting results.
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Love to you all.
Hey Sheik ~
How’s it going?
:)
579 Uno animo.
hi Uno.
The time you took explaining why you didnt continue watching zeitgeist after your early interval would have been better spent watching the rest.
Not to disparage the almost mythical status you have here on the blog…. really you are a wonderful contributor.
But in this instance I think a combination of bad publicity and faulty intuition has prevented you so far, from recieving something which I for one consider to be really worthwhile.
It gets much better about fifteen minutes in!
But if you are as I suspect Solar Jovial, Lunar then I guess trying to convince you to watch the rest will have the opposite effect.
Which is a shame for me personaly as I would like to have heard your opinion of it.
LOFLTY- Cy.
This was my contribution to the banning AG forum:
the ‘greaterfellowship’ is not a completely open site. It is a private network where one has to have an invitation to come on the site. AG violated that rule. It creeps me out. He knew he was violating the network rules. He did not have an invitation. He did not email anyone on the site to see if it was OK. Many here who actually WERE invited don’t want him. I don’t hear anyone saying “Oh, I really WANT to send Abe an invitation because he is so social and warm and would just so much enjoy reconnecting and making new connections”
Unwanted entry thru a back door… how typical. a pattern with the fof!
Hello Cyclops ~
You wrote ~
“Which is a shame for me personaly as I would like to have heard your opinion of it.”
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We’ll, just for you my one-eyed brother… I’ll cozy up to it and see what happens…
BYW… your body type thing is not my ‘skin’… Doesn’t really matter though; we’re all wearing the same 18 foot long boas one way or the other.
Hey, if we were as predictable as our features and body types then we couldn’t ‘really’ show or be ourselves, now could we?
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Hello KA ~
Creepy or not; banning is the habit of the Fellowship of Friends and the ‘Us’ vs ‘They’ dehydrated coconut bongo one-man-band.
Backdoor? So what, you never snuck into another movie, after the one you paid for just ended?
If not, try it, people look at you like ~ “Hey, I didn’t see that guy get up to take a pee!” LOL
Take risks, jump off the cliff… Abraham Goldman is about as harmful as an electric chair is to an astral body.
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l.t.y.a.
583. Unoanimo.
Spasiba Tovaritch. Cy