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the Fellowship of Friends Discussion 
the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
“Hardtruth: I also have reason to believe that you have been banned in the past, only to return using a different internet connection. Could you please tell me whether that is the case (here or by e-mail). It seems that there have been other people using this particular connection to write here in the past, if I decide to block you, they will be incapable to post here as well.”
Fuck you, you faggot cunt.
Re: post #1/33
A most reasonable and eloquent retort from our greatest advocate of Fouth Way knowledge. All in all, a sparkling example of the intellectual part of the intellectual center controlling the functions of the machine to maintain higher aim.
Hard Truth, 386, previous page, you wrote to Walerider:
“I always had a positive memory of you until …”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you think Robert Earl Burton and/or the Fellowship of Friends would EVER meet with, pray with, and apologize to, the countless victims of their spiritual, sexual, emotional, psychological, and etc., abuse (and mean it)?
Excerpts on:
Pope meets with victims of sex abuse by clergy, apologizes
Pope prays with victims of clergy sex abuse scandal
WASHINGTON (AP) — For 25 remarkable minutes, the shepherd of the world’s 1 billion Catholics met with a handful of victims in the worst scandal to ever tarnish the U.S. church.
One man, abused as an altar boy, said he placed his hand over Pope Benedict XVI’s heart as he pleaded with him to fix the problem of sexual abuse of minors.
The pontiff apologized to his guests for not being perfectly fluent in English, and “for everything,” according to another victim.
Plans for the secret meeting were kept quiet. But two Boston-area victims of abuse shared details of the meeting in interviews late Thursday with The Associated Press.
Though Benedict had been expected to address clergy sexual abuse in his visit to the U.S., the volume and frankness of his remarks over the first half of his six-day pilgrimage have been startling.
Benedict expressed shame and a determination to do better in a talk with U.S. bishops on the plane ride over, and again Thursday at a giant open-air Mass. . .
The pope ultimately asked Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston to invite a small group of victims who were “both open to meeting him and would derive a spiritual benefit,” said the Rev. John Connolly, a special assistant to O’Malley.
“The desire to do this was definitely from the Holy Father,” Connolly said.
He found two good candidates in Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne, who were molested by priests when they were boys growing up in the Boston area. . .
About three weeks ago over dinner, Boston church officials asked McDaid whether he would meet with Benedict if an anticipated meeting with victims came together.
“I said, ‘Of course,'” McDaid said.
On Thursday morning, McDaid did something he never does. He went to Mass.
He went to accompany his mother. But when McDaid heard Benedict apologize for the sex abuse crisis, “It took me totally by surprise. It was so heartfelt and emotional, I cried.”
Afterward, he found himself in a car with a police escort, barreling through Washington red lights to the Vatican residence on Embassy Row, where Benedict was staying.
There, he joined a handful of other victims in pews in the nunciature’s private chapel.
When Benedict arrived, he prayed and blessed the group. . .
“He stood there feet from us, and you could tell he was heavy, heavy with responsibility,” Horne said. “He looked at us deeply. You could see he searched for words, that he was thinking.”
Each victim was invited to spend a few minutes talking with Benedict. McDaid went first.
He shook the pope’s hand and told him that as an altar boy he had been abused by a priest in the sacristy of his parish.
“I said, ‘Holy Father, you need to know you have a cancer in your flock and I hope you will do something for this problem; you have to fix this,‘” McDaid said.
McDaid said that at that moment, he put his hand on the 81-year-old pontiff’s heart.
“He looked down at the floor and back at me, like, ‘I know what you mean,’ McDaid said. “He took it in emotionally. We looked eye to eye.”
Horne went second. Like McDaid, Horne hadn’t been to Mass in many years. None of his children have received the sacraments that define Catholic identity.
He too had seized the opportunity to meet Benedict, but was not convinced it would happen.
“Till I saw his little red shoes,” Horne said, “I knew it could go sideways.”
Horne said he felt a heavy responsibility to other victims, but knew he could only speak for himself.
“There was an opportunity for an unscripted, unfiltered opportunity face to face,” he said.
[Try that with Robert Burton.]
When he headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict reviewed the files containing horrific charges against priests in the United States. But Horne said what struck him was Benedict’s sincerity, warmth and sense of understanding that reading reports cannot summon. . .
– – – – – –
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.
Benedict’s third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.
But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley met with a group of five or six abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope. The group from O’Malley’s archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope and the whole group prayed together.
One of the victims, Bernie McDaid, told The Associated Press, that he shook the pope’s hand, told him he was an altar boy and had been abused by a priest in the sacristy of his parish. The abuse, he told Benedict, was not only sexual but spiritual.
. . .
Well over 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950. The church has paid out more than $2 billion, much of it in just the last six years, after the case of a serial molester in Boston gained national attention and inspired many victims to step forward. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy because of abuse costs.
Expected to address the problem only once during his six-day trip — at a Mass with priests in New York City on Saturday — Benedict has instead returned to the issue repeatedly, beginning in a news conference on the flight from Rome to the U.S.
He has called the crisis a cause of “deep shame,” pledged to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood and decried the “enormous pain” that communities have suffered from such “gravely immoral behavior” by priests.
On Wednesday, he told bishops the problem has sometimes been very “badly handled” and said it was their God-given duty to heal the wounds caused by abuse. He asked each parishioner at Mass on Thursday “to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt.”
But Thursday afternoon’s session went a step further. Lombardi said it was believed to be the first-ever such session between a pope and abuse victims.
Lombardi said that O’Malley presented the pope with a notebook listing the names of sexual abuse victims from the Boston Archdiocese. There were more than 1,000, he said.
– – – – – –
“I felt he was so sincere. The wonderful thing for me and I’m sure for everyone else, was the fact that he’s been able to see us face-to-face and he’s been able to put a face to the survivors. We’re no longer just victims in the sexual abuse crisis, he’s put faces to us and I think it’s far more personal and I think he understands it at a different level than he probably did before.”
“I told him what it was like as an altar boy,” McDaid said. “How it’s sexual abuse but it’s also spiritual abuse and that’s what I wanted to convey… the trauma is everlasting.”
McDaid said Benedict bowed his head and said “I’m sorry.”
just in case you are having a bad hair day…
http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/badhairday.html
F-YOU, YOU-FC,
That woke me up. By the ‘blistering, withering’ King of Diamonds?
Reposted by request: The Ouspensky letter (long), by his secretary:
It is twenty years now since the things I am going to write about happened. They have not been written before and seldom discussed. There was no reason and I felt no desire to expose a person while alive for an inward failure. Who was I to set myself up as a revealing judge? But I did learn a lesson as to what could overcome a guru.
This is written now because the case of P. D. Ouspensky is not an isolated one. It is a situation that may be typical of a man whose fate is to become a successful guru and, then through the force of outside circumstances, find himself unable to cope with his own reactions and hence, for a time at least, lose his way. I have been told, though I do not know it first hand, that during the last year of Ouspensky’s life, he found his way back to control of himself. I hope this is true because by nature Ouspensky was essentially a good man and not a dishonest one.
The case of Ouspensky has, perhaps, a special meaning for India since India has swamis and gurus of every kind, male and female. For many people—Indian and foreign—India is the fountain of ancient or Eastern Wisdom. It is a paradise for those who seek to be gurus, and those who want to find a guru to direct and lead them. The point is, perhaps, that here and there exist true gurus. But as the Tantras recognize, true adepts in spiritual understanding are very rare.
To a lesser degree the West is also prone to what can only be called ‘guruism.’ By no means is all of this search on the level of the Billy Graham kind of evangelism—a popular appeal to the sentimental religiosity of the under educated, or unhappy individuals whose empty lives cry out to be called back to the fold of God whom they ignored while they were reasonably happy. A sense of having strayed, or a feeling of emptiness envelopes such people and they imagine they are being granted a revelation. In such a state any God-image will do. Only God give me something to hold onto! But Gods rarely make their appearance by themselves. Usually they require to be introduced by a guru, one that is within the frame of a particular orthodoxy, or one of those non-conformist fellows, or ladies, who puts in a dramatic magnetic appearance.
The need to find a guru is not restricted to the ill-informed, the romantic, or those with a secretly bubbling well of potential hysteria or delusion. The need is also often lurking in people who in intellect are far above the average. At least three distinguished writers in the English language—T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and the clever, if acid, Evelyn Waugh,—found the answer to their spiritual search in orthodox Christian religious faith. And the faith—the act of faith—is identical whether it is devotion to Brahma, Jehovah or Allah.
Then there are intellectuals like Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Gerald Heard and, the most famous of this group—Aldous Huxley—all four once ardent rationalists with two of them having once shown a left-wing bent. Suddenly they tipped over to one or another form of mysticism as a way out for some sense of frustration. Huxley now writes articles about the marvelous visions he enjoys as a result of experimenting with certain drugs. One wonders whether this is a very morally responsible thing to be advertising to the world as a way to find ecstasy.
Huxley commenced his search for ‘The Perennial Philosophy’ in the mid-1930’s by trying to find the answer for himself in the Know Thyself philosophy and method of Peter D. Ouspensky. Huxley soon went on elsewhere; but that was not Ouspensky’s fault.
At that time in London, Ouspensky was the most likely guru—though he never called himself that—to make an appeal to the educated, reasonably intelligent person who had no place within orthodox religion, nor any special inclination to be. The sort of people who were interested in Ouspensky’s ideas were those who had some interest in the idea of self-knowledge and were seeking a philosophy to live by which was not orthodox materialism. Ouspensky mainly appealed to the rational person who questioned whether it might not be true, as said by Hamlet, that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.’
Ouspensky, a Russian émigré, who looked infinitely more like a doctor, or science professor, than any conventional image of a mystic, had a far-reaching intellect and an interestingly creative mind. He was someone alive and provocative. Hence his capacity to attract men like the prolific doctor-writer, Kenneth Walker. Ouspensky had the added attraction of sophisticated culture with not a vestige of fakir eccentricity. He was a sensible guru if ever there was one. And extremely well dressed as a middle-aged man verging on sixty.
P. D. Ouspensky made an impressive figure calmly sitting, presiding at his lectures, which were read for him. Today more than fifteen years after his death quite a lot is being written about him in Europe, especially in England.
My attempt to take a relatively short period—a little less than six years altogether of his fairly long life—is not to discredit Ouspensky, and particularly not to discredit his writings. But rather to induce people who are uncritical of themselves in relation to gurus to see that they themselves can unconsciously contribute to their beloved guru slipping, let us say, from ‘grace.’ Hero-worship is not necessarily respect. It can become slavish dependence which ends with an overwhelming temptation to the guru to lose all respect for those who have made themselves his disciples. It should be remembered that since man is not super-human, it is only too easy for the well-intentioned person to either develop delusions of grandeur, or become a dictator provided they are surrounded for long enough by people who say ‘yes, yes’ to them and their ideas irrespective as to whether or not their own conduct merits such awe. The political dictator has been the scourge of modern times as well as ancient. The rise of such dictators, frequently believing themselves to be their nation’s saviour, and their entrenchment, is aided by uncritical passivity and adulation, the very thing that devotees of gurus are most prone to.
If the guru ends in exploiting his disciples, they themselves have contributed to the distortion of his power.
II
The Ouspensky group, or school, in the 1930’s was esoteric. There was considerable secrecy maintained. Nobody could just be brought along to Mr. Ouspensky’s lectures in a casual way. A person had to be introduced by someone who, rightly or wrongly, had gained the impression through their own knowledge of ‘the System’ that such and such a person had what was termed ‘a magnetic centre.’ This was an element of personality which made this person suitable for the Ouspensky method of Self-Knowledge and Self Development.
I can only say what it was in my case which caused someone I met to conclude I had such a magnetic centre: the person—an artist—who introduced me into the group observed almost at the moment of our first meeting that I had certain poses—this was quite true—but when criticised in regard to those poses I did not reject the criticism out of hand. I was responsive because I wanted to know myself better. I was receptive. Presumably, all the people who came to the group were receptive in different ways.
When a person with the so-called magnetic centre was discovered, the discoverer then consulted with Mr. Ouspensky either directly or through one of his secretaries, both of them Russians, as to whether so and so could be invited to the lectures. Both the secretaries as I knew them—one a woman, the other a highly cultured man—were nice people.
The initial intention of this careful selection on the basis of psychological potential was no doubt very valid so long as the head of the group—and this applies to any group—was in a responsible state of mind. The reason given was that if unsuitable people came they would go out and misrepresent ‘the System’ which had come to Ouspensky from the famous Gurgieff [sic. Gurdjieff]—thought by some to be infamous—to whom, for example, the well known writer, Katherine Mansfield, had gone not very long before her death.
The danger in this reasoning about misrepresentation was that if something really went wrong—out of gear—within ‘the System,’ reasonable criticism and questioning could be shunted aside on the grounds that the would-be student and not ‘the System’ was at fault in understanding. I do not know if this ever actually happened in the earlier phases of Ouspensky’s work. I do not know what doubts there may have been in the minds of other people at the time I am going to speak of because I did not discuss my own observations, questions and reactions with anyone except P. D. Ouspensky himself. But if there is excessive secrecy, it is a pitfall to trap the unwary—both the guru, who is protected by it, and the disciple who can be exploited through it.
Madam Ouspensky, a very extraordinary woman older than her husband, had met the Gurgieff system in Russia before her marriage to Ouspensky, and before the Revolution of 1917. It was Madam—then either a widow or divorced—with half grown children, indeed, almost grown, who had followed the writings of Ouspensky who had been attracted for a number of years to philosophic speculation and mysticism. He had traveled far to investigate some of his interesting speculative ideas about the knowledge to be discovered through understanding of certain buildings and works of art. He had visited the Taj Mahal, about which he had some very interesting thoughts, and he had been to Ceylon where one particular Buddha greatly impressed him.
He had expressed some fascinating ideas in his writings published in Russia. Before he came under the influence of Gurgieff he had written the book Tertium Organum, which was the book which enticed Gurgieff to desire Ouspensky as a collaborator. Subsequently, there appeared the impressive book of daring speculations, impressions and experience—The [A] New Model of the Universe.
But ‘the System’ was something in practice outside of Ouspensky’s writings, and ‘the System’ was divided into the theoretical with which P. D. Ouspensky was concerned, and the practical application which was Madam’s province. It is not possible to detail the whole theory, nor even the whole practice. But the intention of this System was that it should be a way towards the unity of personality through self-awareness. It was to be applicable to people living in the world. It was not the religious way of the monk, nor the way of the fakir’s austerity, nor yet the way of the yogi’s contemplation.
The main thesis was that people live in a state of ‘sleep,’ but think themselves aware and awake and master of themselves when they only react to outside stimulation—to what other people think of them—or what in Ouspensky’s terminology was called ‘considering.’ It can hardly be denied that almost everyone is cluttered up with what can be called ‘false personalities.’
But, according to Ouspensky, people with ‘magnetic centres’—that is, the potential to become aware and, perhaps, reach a unified and transformed state of being—have within them a Higher Intellectual Centre and a Higher Emotional Centre, the latter being more important for man’s self-development than the former. There was much additional theory of potential chemical change in response to psychological change through the pursuit of becoming ‘awake’ and overcoming the mechanical aspect of most behaviour.
I met this system of thought and it greatly appealed to me on account of its reasonableness. I was not of a religious turn of mind, nor one who had a drive to pursue mystical experience by artificial means. I thought there was a great difference in levels of consciousness between those moments when any person was in the grip of ‘negative emotions’ and at any moment of detachment; or between the moment of ordinary consciousness and that of the creative moment. It seemed to me quite true that I, and indeed everybody else, was subject to the domination at times of ‘false personalities.’ I am quite sure that the Ouspensky system was of concrete use to me, and that his own loss of way for a period was not from an inherent flaw in the theory of the system.
First I attended the lectures only.
In due course, I was allowed to pass from theory to practice. Practice at becoming aware of one’s thoughts, actions, mannerisms, feelings—of oneself—the false and ‘asleep’ versus what might be one’s state if one was more and more ‘awake.’ Special conditions of physical work and the planning of it—gardening, housework, cooking—were organised in a country house where the Ouspenskys lived. This work was conducted under the eagle eye of Madam.
A cruel critic of Madam might say she was a dominating woman who enacting role of a guru, consciously or unconsciously, lived in very comfortable circumstances with all her housework done on a grand scale by mostly sincere men and women who were under the spell of her magnetic and mystic personality. I don’t know whether she was genuine or a charlatan; or whether she was simply a commanding type of neurotic. It is immaterial. I never really knew her well enough to be able to judge. I never fell under her spell. But I think she had great power over people whose imagination was captured by her.
I am sure I learned a good deal about my own mechanism from what she sometimes had me do by way of ‘work.’ Probably anyone could have learned something useful provided they were more interested in the work of self-knowledge itself than in the commanding personality of Madam.
One ‘test’ has always remained in my mind and it can symbolise the sort of controlled conditions in which anyone could observe something about themselves if they had a mind to: I had always liked my hands and I supposed I could dislike nothing more than picking fish to pieces to feed the cats. Not at all in my line! One day, I got the thoroughly unpleasant job of taking apart fish heads for the cats’ lunch. I observed myself at this nasty job. The truth was that a superficial vanity and not genuine repulsion had me think my hands (and myself) too good to do any such thing. Inside, I noticed I remained unmoved while de-boning the heads with my fingers. Through Madam’s choice of a job for me, I saw I could quite well do a very nasty messy job and not really hate it at all.
This had a kind of liberating effect so that I felt at the time, and still feel, that I benefited from the Ouspensky system. But I never lived in the house for any protracted period—some people did—and so I never became dependent upon Madam in order to feel myself ‘awake.’ There is no doubt that Madam exerted a tremendous influence upon the minds of the people who chose to live constantly within her shadow.
III
I was absolutely nobody in ‘the System’ in England from 1936 to 1938. But for the fact that I was a writer who at one moment was involved in collaborating on a translation from Russian into English of Checkov’s play The Cherry Orchard, and another piece of writing, I might never have come into contact with Mr. Ouspensky outside of the lectures and at the country house. But I did. He asked me to go and see him privately in a house in London, and he read the Chekov translation.
In consequence, he knew something of me, and I of him outside of the framework of the guru-disciple relationship. He was, I think, nearing sixty and I was twenty-six. I knew his homeland—Russia—from which he had exiled himself. He liked me and I liked him. But he did not become enamoured of me, nor I enamoured of him. This was never a factor in our relationship. What happened was that a friendliness developed, principally, I think, because I was not afraid of him, and perhaps there was an attraction in having a ‘system’ person who wanted to learn without being exactly of the foot-touching devotee type. I greatly respected P. D. Ouspensky and I was very willing to learn from him. And I honestly believed I had learned.
I do not think that anyone was ever kinder to me, nor that anyone ever respected me as a person more than P. D. Ouspensky. What happened later never affected my regard for him as a human being. I do not think I was even disillusioned because of an acceptance that men, even saints, have feet of clay. I will always be grateful to Ouspensky for what I believe I learned from his system.
But…well, my one experience with a guru who lost his way has made me sceptical of the wisdom of any man thinking himself fit to be a guru.
I feel quite sure that when P. D. Ouspensky committed himself to follow Gurgieff and married Madam, and left Russia during the Revolution because it boded ill for the pursuit of what he believed in, he was sincere. He was no less sincere, I think, when he broke away from Gurgieff in Paris because, as he told me: “Gurgieff had gone off the rails—become mad—and I wanted to save the system.”
Perhaps, indeed probably, Ouspensky remained in possession of himself throughout his period in England. I was in no position to judge. I don’t know. But in the autumn of 1940 he and Madam, as well as about half a dozen American members of the System and a couple of English ones arrived in New York, where there was a wealthy young couple, students of the Ouspenskys, who paid the major bills.
I, who had been only on the very periphery in England, had gone to America to do a job and was caught there by the outbreak of war. By chance I ran into one of the members and learned that P. D. Ouspensky and his wife had arrived: that already a rather large country house in New Jersey had been obtained for practical work and a studio apartment in an expensive area of New York was being negotiated for.
Because I believed I had gained much from the Ouspensky system, I was very glad they had come. Within a few days I was astounded that he should ask me to act as his secretary to do the arrangements for lectures and look after his living conditions for the days each week he would spend in New York. Why me? When all the people, save the young couple, were much older members of the System than I was. The only reasonable answer to this question was that I was the only person among those who were available to Ouspensky who had ever been in Russia. And P. D. Ouspensky for the second time in his life was now an uprooted man.
This sudden promotion, as it were, did not prevent me from carrying on my own outside work. Perhaps if I had not had a life outside of the System, I would not be writing this today. For some months I greatly enjoyed the work because I had no doubt at all that Ouspensky’s particular system was one of great help to anyone who wished to gain insight into themselves for the purpose of living in the world and being able to cope with the problems of living. I thought it was a means of establishing a fair amount of equilibrium though I did not notice any appreciable expansion of my consciousness. I can only claim that it made me moderately observant of my own reactions and gave me some sense of independence in decision. It did not lead me to mystical experience, real or imagined.
I cannot say there was an exact day when it struck me that P. D. Ouspensky was strangely extravagant considering that the young couple were paying the bulk of the bills. But he would direct me to buy the most lavishly expensive fruit, cheese and delicacies for his personal consumption. I wondered was I a puritan to think this a curious indulgence. It was not that eating and self-awareness were in conflict. But did a person choose the most expensive things when someone else was paying the bill?
One day I noticed that the people who actually paid the bills were not asked to share these expensive foods. But sometimes I had a goodly share of them. I was very appreciative of the good things of this world whether in food, or clothes, or the decorations of a house. I liked luxury and comfort and never held that a hair shirt was the slightest guarantee of spirituality in and of itself. It could too well be exhibitionism. But I did not think, or rather feel for myself, that I had any desire to be a slave to the need for luxury as a sign of anything at all.
When I went to the country house for practical work, I began to notice what I had not noticed in England: that the people who were the ‘old members’ and had been long under Madam’s discipline were drab in clothes, joyless, and strangely close-up people one with another. All were fearful of her displeasure. They were no less in awe of Mr. Ouspensky, though sometimes he seemed to extend a certain kindness towards them. I began to wonder why the pursuit of self-knowledge had to, as it seemed, eliminate an atmosphere of warmth between people and something that might be described as a lack of lovingness.
Again, I cannot pin down the day when I began to speculate about the inner state of P. D. Ouspensky. Increasingly after a lecture he would ask a few of the group, including the young couple and myself, to go out with him to supper at a not very distant restaurant. At first, these suppers seemed to me very pleasant. He would order drinks and something to eat and time would pass. Every evening there was a lecture the party—for that is what it was—would break up later and later. The young couple usually, if not always, paid the bill.
Ouspensky was often sharp with them and they took this, as others did to whom he was no less sharp, as a ‘test’ to ‘awake’ them up to self-awareness. But to me he was not sharp or sarcastic though I was well aware that I was no outstanding example of self-awareness. I deserved just as much ‘ticking off’ as anyone did.
The only, difference between the people Ouspensky increasingly ‘ticked off,’ and ever more harshly, and me, was that while I respected him I was not in awe of him. They lived to gain his approval and the more they hoped for it the less they got it. Sometimes he became furiously angry, particularly with the young couple who paid the bills.
The next stage, if you can call it that, was that Ouspensky began to show a greater disinclination to leave the restaurant where we would all go. The others would leave and he would ask me to stay on. With the others gone he would have another drink and another and yet another, though he never became drunk; or at least, did not show it. One, two, three, four in the morning and still he would urge me to stay longer. And hour after hour he would talk—extremely interestingly—about his homeland which I could discuss with him; about his life, but it was always about things before he ever met the system of Gurgieff.
He did not talk to me night after night because he had become enamoured of me, but because his assumption of the role of guru had cut him off from the normal avenues of friendship because, unfortunately, people who become devotees do not bring with them a sense that human beings, even if they are the most enlightened, are also human enough at bottom to require friends. But if a person, by reason of his greatness in the eyes of others, remains too long in a friendless condition then even when he meets someone who is willing to give of himself in that subtle relationship which is that of friendship, this may come too late to help him overcome the corroding effect within of having lived upon a pinnacle.
Ouspensky was no longer the guru of a system or I any longer a member of his group during those long hours over so many nights that we sat in New York, both of us having come from thousands of miles away. I was a companion for nostalgic memories. I was just someone to talk to and who would talk back. Though he did not say in so many words that he was extremely unhappy, I knew he would not take so many drinks if he were happy. He was fond of me because I was companionable.
One day, a nice middle-aged couple, rich, who had become breathless devotees of P. D. Ouspensky, shocked me by saying: “You must be very highly developed to work so closely with Mr. Ouspensky.”
It came as a shock because I saw I was flying under false colours for I was no more ‘highly developed’ as a result of what I was now doing than I had been when I was in England on the very periphery of the System. I knew it. The danger to myself of being supposed to be ‘developed’ far in advance of what I was, loomed into my mind. Here was a temptation to pose staring me in the face.
Then I became aware that Ouspensky had a certain interest in a man, a businessman, who had money and a girl friend. In short, a very unattractive man who kept an expensive mistress. Suddenly, this woman introduced the presumably rich widow of the long dead film star, Rudolph Valentino, to the lectures. What were such people seeking? Or was I wrong to think that people like this went from sensation to sensation because they had nothing else to do with their time?
One day Ouspensky instructed me to chastise on his behalf one of the people who had come from England with him after many years in the System, someone who in England had been almost as close to the central core as I now was. I could not do it. I would not, because I felt I would be doing something wrong towards this person and no less wrong to myself. Maybe, the person was a fool, but I was not going to be the instrument for chastisement for some minor thing, so minor that I have even forgotten what it was.
This incident, plus the remark of the couple who assumed I must be highly developed, disturbed me because it seemed an invitation to begin exerting power over people. I did not want to believe that Ouspensky had lost insight, and yet I felt that he had, or he would realise that however good or agreeable to him my intelligence might be in matters outside his System, I was not fit to be thought of as being in any way superior. I thought that the very last thing anyone should be encouraged in was arrogant action. I had that potential and I knew it.
Soon after this, Ouspensky mentioned he had heard of an exceptionally good restaurant where he intended to go to dinner some time. Then an afternoon came when he instructed me to cancel the lecture set for that evening because he wanted to go to dinner at this restaurant which had very good food and wine. I cancelled the lecture and informed as many of the people as possible. Ouspensky then asked me to go out to dinner at this restaurant with him. It was a most excellent dinner, but during it I felt the time had come when I must ask him for an explanation as to how he could consider that this dinner justified the sudden cancellation of a lecture. Where did such action fit into the System, and where also did his violent temper towards some people fit in?
The thought went through my mind several times: Is it I who do not understand? Is it I who have lost all sense of proportion? Is it I who am being temperamental in feeling that I have a right to seek an explanation and not to take all this for granted as being in order?
When the coffee came, I asked: “Can you, or will you, explain how it is you could cancel a lecture at a few hours notice for the sake of this dinner? I don’t understand. And I am sorry to feel compelled to ask you; but do you lose your temper with people consciously, or because you have lost control of yourself? You do not lose your temper with me in this way…”
“They are such fools,” he said. “I’ve lost control of my temper.”
“But surely, if we are to try to control our negative emotions, we cannot learn from you, if you can’t control yours,” I said.
Ouspensky answered bluntly: “I took over the leadership to save the System. But I took it over before I had gained enough control over myself. I was not ready. I have lost control over myself. It is a long time since I could control my state of mind.”
“Will you not try to gain control over your temper for everybody thinks you are testing them when you fly at them,” I said, for it never entered my head that Peter Ouspensky was not speaking the truth.
“They are fools!” he said contemptuously.
“But I really feel I have learned something from the System,” I said.
“Then you are the only one who ever has!” said Ouspensky.
“I have really tried.” I said, “tried for myself.”
“The others are deluding themselves. They have never gained anything,” Ouspensky said.
For some strange reason I was not aghast at such revelations. I was not even shocked. I was sorry because I did not feel for a moment that Ouspensky wanted to be in this predicament of disillusion and realisation that he had tried to become a guru when he had not attained the resources in himself to keep control of himself.
“Why don’t you give up the lectures and try to gain control of yourself again?” I asked.
“The System has become a profession with me,” Ouspensky answered.
There could hardly have been a more honest exchange of question and answer and I respected P. D. Ouspensky for admitting his predicament. I did not feel he had defrauded me because I had not built the whole of my existence upon the System and I was not a devotee who would be lost in despair if my guru turned out to have feet of clay. I spoke to no one for I hoped that Peter Ouspensky would decide to bring his lectures to a halt and seek to gain control over himself.
As the days went on I thought of the predicament I was in with the young couple paying not only the rents and the bills for Mr. Ouspensky and Madam, but, that up to that moment, they had handed to me any amount of money that P. D. Ouspensky had told them to. And he had insisted that I take some of it for my own expenses.
“Will you not give up the lectures?” I asked later.
He did not say yes, or no. I waited a week and then another. We often went out and talked a great deal. It was often about the attitude of the people who stayed in the country house. He knew they were afraid to be on their own. He was never indignant or enraged at my questioning him. I feel that he would have liked to halt the situation. But the question was how?
One day he said something that was somehow more revealing than anything else as to the way a man becomes entangled in a role, or a vocation.
“In Russia,” said Ouspensky, “there used to be a thousand or two thousand people at my lectures. Here there are a hundred—too few.”
Was it that a thousand or two thousand ordinary people did not corrupt P. D. Ouspensky? But one hundred rich people ready to enshrine him as a Master of far greater development, as they supposed, than they could ever hope to attain had exerted the power to lead him to abandon his desire for control of himself? Or weakened his will to set about it?
One day he said: “I have become dependent on the comfort, the luxury. I can’t give it up.”
As I said earlier, no one was ever kinder to me in a human sense than P. D. Ouspensky. Fond he was of me, and honest with me, too; but he was prepared for me to continue doing what I had been doing, even though I knew he had lost his way. Evidently he could not feel at the time that he was wronging his followers by continuing his role of guru though convinced—if what he said was true—that no one was deriving any benefit from it.
I said I must leave the System, and I left. He wrote me a letter and from that letter I sensed that he had from affection told me the truth about his predicament. But he accepted that he could not extricate himself from the hold professional ‘guruism’ had gained upon him. It was years before I ever learned anything more about P. D. Ouspensky.
Here was a man who was at heart honest; a man who was not by any means devoid of compassion for people. But adulation and comfort and the dearth of friends and the terror of a period of war had sapped his will to keep theory and practice united. It was only after Ouspensky died that I was told by the person who had first introduced me to Ouspensky’s books and the System, that towards the end of his life he found his direction again and had made a great effort to correct himself and his own system.
If a man of the undeniable qualities of Ouspensky can go off the track and become absorbed in egotism and dependence on easy living, and become callous as to the effects on himself and on others, what of the gurus who are less basically honest?
Being a guru is one of the riskier occupations psychologically, and being a devotee is no less risky. I have sometimes wondered how much damage P. D. Ouspensky did psychologically speaking to the people who were his devotees during the period he lost himself. I have also wondered what it was that shocked him out of his cynical and exploitive state of mind—if it is true, as I have been told, that he found himself again before he died.
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.
A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine, –
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
William Blake
7 ralph b:
“Reposted by request: The Ouspensky letter (long), by his secretary:”
Keep in mind that Miss Seton wrote this piece more than 20 years after the fact, after she had become a card-carrying member of the Gurdjieff Foundation. At the time of the writing the Gurdjieff Foundation was struggling to replace the household name (in the Fourth Way) of Ouspensky with the relatively unknown Madam de Salzmann, Gurdjieff’s main concubine and head mistress. The bait-and-switch never worked out because Ouspensky left behind an amazing legacy of written thought while de Salzmann left behind a cult and a hack-rewrite of Beelzebub’s Tales. No doubt Ouspensky enjoyed the pleasing appearance of this 20 your old woman, Miss Seton, and hauled her around as he relaxed and enjoyed himself, telling the poor dear amazing stories and other tall tales.
Thought I would say Hi to you. Iam not doing well, as I’m sure you know. In fact I’m about ready to check out. I can’t seem to bring myself to crawl from this hole. RB seems to be an emotional coward.
Hardtruth: You have been banned. I am really surprised that you enjoy this place so much, you spread a lot of bad energy around and inside.
Not inner considering?
In my view ‘not inner considering’ does not give anyone a licence to be unaware of the feelings others. Many bullies don’t know that they are bullying… Why should they?
Some writers say a lot. For me personally this can be overbearing, but well bearable; until such a writer attacks someone who dares to interrupt or criticise them, or tells their critic to go to hell, or to get off the blog, or until they attempt to belittle their critic by airing private information; I do not then see this writer’s behaviour as ‘not inner considering’ or ‘using the blog therapeutically’ but as tyranny, and intimidation.
A number of writers have in my view been tyrannising: the same people have wonderful brave and profound things to say and I would not want them to stop.
But calling threatening behaviour ‘brave’ is a mistake…
It’s a type of collaboration with the bully in the class
And supporting it helps make others like myself afraid to contribute… to put in our couple of cents.
#11 Thanks Shiek.
I have felt sad about the direction of the blog. My personal hope is that the Fellowship and Robert Burton will be revealed through this medium as the pathetic charicature that they are. Lately the content of the blog seems to be such that current members and others curious about the Fellowship might just dismiss the blog as a bunch of angry looneys and psychologically needy folks. And this would be unfortunate. There have been many intelligent, sincere and important posts that have helped some people make the decision to leave and I hope those will resume and continue and not get lost among the u-tubes and personal discussions, however interesting those may be.
Hope no one is offended by this. I just feel that keeping the content and tone of things up will help the real issues be seen and understood as well as give a push to those who are on the edge.
Thoughts on a day in which many hope that a certain political candidate finally acknowledges that her time has come and gone, and releases her attachment to being The One. But probably won’t.
____________________________________________________________________
The blog bears almost no resemblance to what it was a year ago, and the circumstances surrounding it, even less. Then, there was an enormous pent-up need to discuss, divulge, and unburden about matters for which many had had no meaningful outlet, in some cases for thirty years or more. There were many former and existing members who knew a lot less than they know now. There were members who knew, but lacked sufficient motivation to leave. There was a public that had no means to learn the truth about an organization they might consider joining.
All of that has changed. The stories have been told; any left untold are unlikely to reveal anything radically different, although they may well be therapeutic for the teller. No one within the Fellowship can any longer claim convincingly he or she doesn’t know. Many then-members who were on the fence have either left, or made their peace. Many former members who had held their pain or outrage inside had an opportunity to get it out and start healing.
Much of this occurred within the first six months, and although there remain people who are just discovering the blog, presumably their numbers have dwindled. There may remain members on the fence, but they are not likely looking to the blog for impetus to leave.
The blog itself morphed from a forum where anyone could learn new information, post a story or impression, stay a while, interact, get their bearings, make things uncomfortable for the Fellowship power structure, and move on, into a social club consisting of a handful of people who seem to read and post almost daily about any subject that appeals to them, recycling the same material like a cow chewing its cud. The transition took place as individuals, one by one, saw the blog as a place where they could satisfy their personal emotional needs, without regard for whether the satisfaction of those needs served any other purpose. Originally, everyone was welcome, since there were no “insiders”—it was a completely open forum. Over time, some were more welcome than others; anyone thought to be spouting the Fellowship party line were indignantly shouted down, and eventually others who weren’t considered one of the gang were given little energy, so they had little reason to stay unless they were willing to make a project out of being accepted.
For those who are now in the blog Inner Circle, the blog appears to fulfill a deep-seated need for validation and company, for an identity as someone who sees the truth and isn’t afraid to express it, or to feel special, exchanging one form of group membership for another. Some see themselves in a new, improved spiritual enterprise—a school without dues, hierarchy, or responsibilities, but informed by a greater understanding of what’s really important. Some seemingly are as yet unable to get on with their lives; as Gurdjieff used to say, some people will give up anything except their suffering. The blog was a halfway house that became much more comfortable than either life in the Fellowship, or life entirely without the Fellowship—an endless limbo of unresolved feelings. Some continue to want to destroy the Fellowship, and for lack of alternatives view the blog as an effort in that direction.
The end result is a fishbowl in which the self-selected residents swim and circle, waiting for the next bit of food, and the rest glance at it every once in a while to relieve the tedium, and occasionally toss in a few morsels just to see what happens.
I have to say that I do appreciate people coming up to discuss something new, even if it’s to say that the blog has had its higher times and is winding down. I feel that too but not unlike my nature I stick with things sometimes too long. I will however contribute when I feel it’s worth it to do so. Thanks for the last day or so of some new material.
It’s quite interesting to note… Oh, crud, excuse me… Must have been reverting there….
Ok, let me start over…
I personally believe that some of the actions we take don’t have any initial, obvious positive impact on anyone, but over time they may. And we may never even know it, or we may know it, but those results may be completely invisible to most others, or even to all others. (which makes our pitiful little egos wonder, “Uh, why did I bother with that? What glory in that?”)
I personally believe that the blog, to this day, continues to be a positive influence overall, and I’m glad it’s been here for as long as it’s been here. Meanwhile, I see the fof as a continued and persistent journey toward the edge of a very high and steep cliff, and eventually all the way over and onto the rocks, and into the ocean. (And I’m not going to insult sheep by using the typical analogy, because at least sheep are true to their nature unlike we pathetic chosen ones… “I think I could turn and live with animals.”)
Whatever the blog is, here it is. It keeps going.
I agree with much of what you wrote JAVOH in 14, but other people keep saying (offline and online) that this blog has “run its course” and doesn’t serve a useful purpose anymore. But I still imagine just one person — just one more person — by chance, taking a glance at this one day, and combined with many other experiences in the fof, finally realizing that it’s time to leave.
Not in good time, not after the full moon, not when they find a new job, not after they get divorced, and not when the triad is right — but right now.
THAT is “divine presence” — to find your “divine presence” within yourself, and not in the approving glances of a very dysfunctional society led by a very sick man.
Barely a word of what’s written here will ever — EVER — be uttered at a Fellowship meeting. That, in and of itself, is something to value about this blog.
Valuation is what you want? (speaking to you Robert)
Well, I have never valued anything you have said, or anything that your former cult members have ever written or said, any more than right here… in this little box, right here on the internet. Imagine that. Not one page of finely printed materials from countless Town Hall meetings, with beautiful four-color printed photos of fine art dazzling us on the cover… Not one “Renaissance Journal” has the “higher hydrogens” that could come even close to the “higher hydrogens” — the finer energy — that you find right here.
Not one candlelight dinner with Puccini playing in the background, accompanied by poetry readings, and fine wine, and fine food, and fine china, and seemingly thoughtful glances across the room. None of that comes even close to this blog. None of it has touched my soul as much as anything written here.
THIS is Love.
———————–
Alright, everyone. Onto another topic, or onto no topic. Have fun. It’s ok. I am very glad that all of you are here. Even you in your lashing out. ALL of this is infinitely better than the finest the Fellowship ever had to offer, or ever will.
The blog is still here
Who will know what purpose it serve?
Remembering the moment I discovered the blog
The juiciness gone
More common and ordinairy
Like the Greater Fellowship
It is still being read
Many still keep silent
Everybody has his/her own time
A matter of time
Many things are changing in OH
This blog helps the changes
Keep it up
Post, keep it alive
For the many purposes
You and me can not (over) see.
My 2 cents
Happy day(s).
just another voice out there:
Hey, despite what you say, even though it is largely true, the blog is better than watching television, that’s for sure! (I am dyslexic, reading is difficult for me.)
As far as chewing cud, well, that’s the process of digestion, isn’t it? For many, sometimes it takes a while. Understanding comes two years after experience, right? And what’s the problem with recycling? Near as I can tell, life is suffering, so to give up on that would be to give up on living. (Keep posting Zoecan1, hang in there sock monkey!!!) Everyone has needs, too, some more than others, but that’s human, just like you have the need to reflect back to us what you perceive about us on the blog, for which I am grateful. Really. I saw a lot of myself in your post. That’s cool. I can work with that.
To me the blog is whatever you need it to be or BEEEE, as the case may be…or not to be….or Auntie Bea…or whatever.
But you are right, the stories have been told…many, many people have posted so much useful and not so useful information, creative insights, quotes, gripes, pain, flames, etc….yet the Fellowship still continues business as usual. That’s an unresolved dilemma for me. I care about my community. You and I have supported (some say pimped for) a sexual predator in the guise of a spiritual leader, and much harm as occurred and is still occurring. So who is responsible? The Pope? We are!
I recommend anyone just tuning in to also spend time reading from the beginning of the blog, too. I can’t see how anyone in their right mind would want to stay a follower after reading all this. But that may not be enough to wake every follower up to the fact that Robert is a cult leader, not a teacher in any real sense of the word. We need to show them that we are just as, if not more evolved than them. How do we do that? Do we crawl under a rock to do that? Or do we accept our humanity as perfectly flawed (like they do) and stand up for ourselves and our community? I don’t plan on going quietly into the night as I did when I was younger and left ranks.
You are not just another voice out there. You are more than that!
People evolve and change for the better by taking a good long honest look at themselves, which is what you, Vena and others are doing for us right now, and what the Fellowship and Robert are unable to do. So rock on, my friend. Sure the blog has changed, because people change…and grow. It’s an inevitable organic process, and thankfully so. I am all for change. Change is good. Even my spell check has a ‘change’ button, for which I am grateful. I am certainly experiencing lots of change in my personal life, and I am beginning to feel better for it, too (thanks to match.com). The sheik tells me that WordPress has changed their overall format which is why this page is all messed up…now that’s synchronicity for you.
Time for change. Let’s do it…together.
33 is the symbolic number for awakening. Try it out in your lives.
To All
from ‘Prologue’ by Dylan Thomas
…………………..
“Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands.
Manned with their loves they’ll move.
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old sea-legged fox.
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer’s end
And the flood flowers now.”
To All
from ‘That Sanity be Kept’ by Dylan Thomas
……………….
“I sit at open windows in my shirt,
Observe, like some Jehovah of the west
What passes by, that sanity be kept.”
Should it make one laugh or laugh?
The stingy gloves that judge and moan what they themselves born,
the envy and the snobbery
with which they take no loss.
Bad losers are worse than no players,
the game is yours.
I laugh.
No bitterness left now, but joy.
So much joy that not one word can cut it short.
There they stay, the offerings at bay,
for you, for now, for more, for long.
They sit and watch as if they paid
and criticize as if they’d made
but their hearts remain so vain.
Please laugh and laugh longer
my love,
no pain,
finally no pain in vane.
Please let us all continue dividing our little selves in two or three or seven, it is a magic number, seven little personalities, the inside and outside and bring the authorized judges that will guarantee that we can write here without being afraid of not exposing ourselves but the imaginary picture of our selves. Hasn’t anybody told you that the blog is no longer the blog but the writer’s companion for before you go to bed?
Please don’t laugh dear ladies and gentlemen, this is serious!
Turn on the readers and off the writers!
Keep charging faster over the waves, allons enfant de la patrie!
Change! Charge!
Elena you have been dismissed together with Mr. Hardtruth who for a genius is about as stupid as you! Stop laughing, it is now time to sign the petition and bring down the Fellowship walls with the insurmountable conviction of the concurrence.
Did you say Brave? Who ever said such a word here? You’re not bringing things from the outside world are you Missy? Here we are inside just as we were there, nothing from the outside world dear, just us, or just me is good enough, while you continue serving of course. You are supposed to be the servant, damit, shut up, Oh, but we don’t use that kind of language dear, it is tyranny, we like it with gloves and tea, dear.
That is how it always was and should continue to be! Too bad if it keeps us from experiencing orgasms, PLEASE BE QUIET, such words, for god’s sake, frigidity is what we like. Gold alchemy frigidity packed as a T.V. dinner and posted at noon.
Frigidity, rigidity, stupidity as long as it is ity enough and we can approve it.
It should come to be an honour to get thrown out; no wonder some men take so much pleasure in letting it be done.
The blog was once better, you have ruined it dear, we can’t post, we are too delicate to post aren’t we and besides, all the dogs you have barking at us and not letting us in, make it impossible! You see, I told you, we can’t post!
Remember the no laughing exercise dear, STOP LAUGHING, do you think you are in Church? We’ll have to get you out again! Thank God! thank God! please take me out again!
I personally like to view the blog as a river, and I find that, although trying to define and discuss its flux may be an interesting exercise now and then, generally by the time we are done, it’s already changed once again. IMO the best remedy against pollution and stagnation is pouring fresh water in it, come on rain, come on new feeders!
Just another voice, maybe I am missing something, but I write here quite often, and I am not aware of an inner circle either excluding or including me (or unaware of me?). I see separate people, I can hear their different voices; some over time sound repetitive, others refreshingly unpredictable. I am not happy about the fact that at periods only a handful of people are posting, but that’s when I feel even more compelled to keep writing. IMO this blog still serves a purpose as an interface between “innies” and “outies”, and as an informal meeting ground for us “outies”, and it would be silly to let it dry up until at least one of our common aims is reached. Personally, I am not going to let go until I see the petition off the ground.
The introduction of this concept of “Inner Circle” goes in the direction of creating even more division amongst us, do we really want to do that to ourselves?
This is a sort of a miracle indeed this blog continues to exist.
There is no moderator and hardly any rules, the Sheik has been hosting us without interference.
Regardless of the dissonant voices, the fights, the high and the lows, we do have a common wish, yes?
Thank You Ralph B for 7.
Blogs main theme was FOF. Now main theme is half a dozen active Personalities that have FOF in common. Becoming soap opera of offended people and self indulgence reinforcment network (just look at wirdo poetry ).
Nothing new. This is normal. Few needy and unhealthy people take much space, others keep quiet or go away.
The Greater Fellowship site is always available for chatting or serious discussion. However, it’s not for public viewing, therefore the “Inner Circle” of the Robert Burton Church cannot participate. Or, can they?
Anyway, for me and my kind, one day (all of us-I’s) will sit under a Kopeck, Banyan, Bodhi or whatever tree Buddha sat under, and drink a cup of ayahuasca to celebrate endings and beginnings.
Actually, I think the Buddha sat under a Mesquite tree.
“weird poetry”? Hmm. I’ll take any of this poetry over the most beautifully read Whitman or Shakespeare at the Academy.
Yes, lots of “personality” here as you said. A lot of fighting. A lot of unleashing of anger. Seriously, did you expect anything else given the history of this cult? And is that so bad? Or are you still holding to the notion that any contention or disagreement is “bad for your work”? :)
“Needy and unhealthy”? Remember, you’re talking about people who once languished in the fof prison. This is pretty bad sometimes, but it’s fresh air and powerful healing compared to that. Not always healthy, but even the most abrasive comments here are head-and-shoulders above the poisonous ideas of the fof.
I still find it interesting that people come here and feel the need to defend their past in the FOF, or their past in studying Fourth Way ideas. This is typical of former cult members, myself included, who do not want to face the pain that they made a mistake. It’s a sign that we’re still mired in the same patterns of thinking that we learned in the fof, and that we’re still healing from it. We made a mistake in joining this cult, and remaining in it, and it takes time to see that.
By the way, it’s a cult, it’s a cult, it’s a cult. The extent that we debate this fact, is the extent that we’re not escaping from the “cult think.” It’s not a group. It’s not an organization. It’s a cult. And you and I joined it.
ouspensky question 25
“Few needy and unhealthy people take much space, others keep quiet or go away.”
And the others keep quiet because… ?
bares relistening
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l48aOXWKx4E
Hail Fellow Travelers,
Interesting stuff from Ouspensky’s secretary. Taking a guru is itself the first test, because you can elevate the guru right out of the context from which you have any possibility to learn. Anyone know where these writings are from?
If I may engage, do posters have any recommendations for books or movies on the greater Gurdjieffian movement? I think the work of William Patterson is great, regardless of what I think of his “people.” I just ordered at Fields Books a collection of Parabola’s (I think!) essays on the Fourth Way, packaged with the first Meetings with Remarkable Men film.
Have folks seen Patterson’s remake of Meetings? What do you think?
Regarding octaves, practically it meant nothing more than:
“When starting something, there will be a lag sometime after starting and again before finishing.”
Like a lot of religious or metaphysical language, it remains vague enough to cover just about anything. The word ‘interval’ can mean so many completely different things (tiredness, friction, changing one’s mind, forgetting, getting-off-track, outside interruptions, etc.) that you could be assured the “law” held for all things.
Associated Press trying to morally elevate the Pope above REB was plain ridiculous. Every good thing Rat-Zinger has said is nothing but window-dressing. Canon law has not changed one jot since they started catching the priests at poke-a-boy–there is still no penalty for pedophile priests, and Cardinal Bernard Law, who sheltered hundreds of pedophiles in the Archdiocese of Boston, enjoys his retirement in the Vatican.
I get the Burton-hating, but if you think he’s a bigger monster than the Pope than you never got the “scale and relativity” thing.
walter.tanner@gmail.com
#27 Rear view mirror. Not to argue the fact that each of us joined the ‘cult’ however, I personally gained a lot from working with the ideas of self remembering and sleep versus waking up. That was also happening in those years, probably for many. Therefore I cannot and will not say it was a total waste of 20 years. I believe that before I ‘woke up’ to the fact it was a cult I quietly worked on becoming an awake person with whatever understanding I had at the time. This to me is not a waste of time. And the fact that I recognized cult activity later on was reason enough for me to leave and continue my personal work of waking up which goes on to this day. And that’s why I am very grateful that there seems to be an awful lot of help out here now to remind me to continue to observe myself and what’s going on in my life. I find it fascinating that our esoteric knowledge is becoming mainstream. It makes me very happy to live at this time in history.
28 “Few needy and unhealthy people take much space, others keep quiet or go away.”
And the others keep quiet because… ?
The others keep quiet because there is no point in participating in an angry fight. I begin to understand that Elena is not interested in healing and may be her staying in FOF is not the reason for her insanity. And she does take too much space with negativity. By the way the discussion stopped on an issue whether or not it is a good idea to call RB a teacher. After that there was pure insanity. Brrr…
Oops! I missed the moment (when the new page started), and there have been a slew of megaposts since then. But here’s the address again anyway. I think within this month, let’s say by the end of May, we should be sending the letters on to the lawyer.
Hope this deadline of sorts galvanizes those of us who respond to deadlines (I’m one, actually) to contribute our letters. Remember, each of us knows or has witnessed something. We are not called upon for legal proof, just witnessing.
Susan Zannos
2520 Madera Circle #106
Port Hueneme, CA 93041
(805) 984-7975
(805) 824-5588
Hi wakeuplittlesuzywakeup (31),
Yes, that’s an honest response, and I appreciate that. And think what you say is at least partly true for me, and for a lot of people. What I will say, though, is that I’m gradually realizing that it was the most serious mistake of my life to 1) join the cult, and 2) to remain in it for as long as I did, and that 3) it was the most important and positive step of my life to leave.
I think it’s fair to not look at anything in our lives as a “waste,” but I think it’s interesting that almost all of us who joined the fof — as well as those who join other cults — have an extremely difficult time using those words WASTE or MISTAKE, as well as many, many other words. The word CULT, for example, fits. No different word describes the nature of the FOF any better. But it’s just plain too painful for us to see it — well, sometimes it is.
Most of the time we see it, but don’t want to admit it to ourselves, or to others, that we joined a cult. And guess what — that’s a huge, huge reason that we had trouble leaving, and a huge reason that it’s hard that our friends to leave.
Some words are powerful. Omitting some words can be even more powerful.
From the waste, and from the serious error that we all made in following this person, maybe something can grow out of it. (And I should probably add a big, fat question mark to that statement.) I do believe in transformation — and I’ve learned about it mostly out here in the real world, and not in the fof.
Are the ideas you refer to really “becoming” mainstream? Or were they always there for us, and we were just unable to see them due to the ramifications of seeing them — the notion that the fof is far off the mark. The Fellowship of Friends is a lost world of imaginary dreams. Ironic isn’t it? Because that is exactly the description that Burton gives for the vast globe, and for the universe itself. His interpretations of poetry and art all point to a hopeless and sad universe filled with no possibilities.
Maybe, without realizing it, he’s simply seeing something about himself.
“Maybe, without realizing it, he’s (robert burton) simply seeing something about himself”.
I think it was Rodney Collin who proposed the theory that (and he found the idea in his research) that when we die everything we encounter comes from us. Ghosts, Goblins, devils, angels, saints, etc.
And, from reading this and that our view of the world comes conjured out from ourselves. Which matches what Collin said.
Robert E. Burton is unconsciously seeing something about himself.
Ayahuasca here (we-I’s) come.
zannos
Can I send you some written material (photocopies) which I think you might appreciate?
Nigel.
Ollie 32-344:
Thanks, I couldn’t resist these fine morsels, and I didn’t buy his book.
Jan 12, 2003
“I feel our good fortune quite deeply this morning. We are at the dawn of another year of working with the Gods. We have been chosen out of six billion people to consciously evolve.”
There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and about 10 who do. That doesn’t make the 10 supermodels healthy people to be so different from everyone else. That’s just pure elitism to sell something.
Jan 26, 2003:
“I do not think; I am present. Therefore I am—a conscious being.”
I have to agree, he isn’t thinking here. He’s lying.
Jan 26, 2003:
“On my level, I see sleep wherever I go. I cannot see it otherwise. I would have to be asleep to see it as awake.”
The Talmud says: “a man sees the world not as it is, but as he is.” So he sees sleep wherever he goes because he is asleep. The second part is true: one would have to be asleep to see him as awake.
Feb 02, 2003
“One reason there are not more schools is that there are not more teachers who care about their students—and there is nothing I care for more than my students.”
Sure he cares about you, as long as you pay the bill or drop your pants on cue. The reason there aren’t more schools is that as we wise up we really don’t need them.
Feb 02, 2003:
“Only I can love all of my students. What parent does not love all of his children?”
OMG, this one particularly disgusts me. What parent has sex with his children? Guess that makes him an incestuous pedophile. He should be in jail.
Feb 02, 2003
“I find it unique that I am the first man in history who asked for “Presence Please” from his students.”
From the look of things, Feb 02, 2003 must have been a long day with all these quotes. There is typo here. It should read that he asked for “Presents Please” from his students, sorry, followers.
April 6, 2003
“It is within my power to make my students immortal, and it cannot be achieved in any way other than that which the Gods dictate. Immortality is yours—you just have to accept their methods. You cannot expect to have a normal life with Gods in your life, because it is already abnormal to have Gods in one’s life.”
I’d say it’s abnormal to have ‘Gods’ in one’s life, especially when there is only one God, one Absolute. The rest is idolatry. Yes, immortality is yours, but you have to pay him anyway. Why? Because he says so.
April 6, 2003
“I was looking into a fireplace the first time my higher centers appeared. They were aware of themselves, and aware of the fireplace, and it lasted about twenty minutes. That was my first experience with myself. (…) There were two reasons why the Gods had me look into a fireplace. First, the eternal flame of cosmic consciousness had been established by the Gods. Secondly, I was looking into the inferno of hydrogen warfare.”
Hey, mushroom clouds worked as a fear tactic for George Bush, too. I don’t know about the cosmic consciousness part, but he certainly is flaming.
Aug 17, 2003
“Student: Why is it that the soul takes only one female body during the course of its nine lives?
Robert: To strengthen and soften the higher emotional center.”
It’s really because men are wimps and can’t handle being a woman more than once. It ain’t easy being a pimp either.
Nov 2, 2003
“It is such an incredible experience to circulate in life; with immortal vision I observe mortal sleep. In my students, however, I see the Promised Land.”
Yeah, he sees the Promised Land in his followers as he looks between their legs.
June 13, 2004
“As your teacher, I can see Influence C’s plans. I can see the part in you that counts.”
“And you know what, when Influence C commands me to, when I rub that part it gets bigger and harder. Isn’t that amazing?”
June 13, 2004
“I do not have to ask my students to love me more. I never knew such love in my life.”
“Just show me the money.”
October 10, 2004
“The Fellowship of Friends is the birth of conscious democracy for man.”
Yeah, a “demon-cracy” for the male sex slaves in his own little kingdom, all run by little ole’ him. I don’t remember ever voting for him…
36 Nigel
Of course.
32 somebody
28 “Few needy and unhealthy people take much space, others keep quiet or go away.”
And the others keep quiet because… ?
The others keep quiet because there is no point in participating in an angry fight. I begin to understand that Elena is not interested in healing and may be her staying in FOF is not the reason for her insanity. And she does take too much space with negativity.
Dear Somebody,
I am disappointed! I thought you’d have a few followers cheering at your post by tonight and you are all alone! Well of course, not quite alone but the other’s were answered yesterday and many others are keeping quiet so that they can then complain that they cannot speak? Let me share something with you since you are at least decent enough to address me by my name. I hold that in great appreciation. One of the wonderful things about being here for a year is bearing with so much misunderstanding that I cannot feel deeply offended when you call me insane. If you only knew what a delight it is to be this insane then you would not be so afraid of it. Tell me in secret, are you sane? I promise I won’t tell any body! I don’t know what you call healing but I don’t know any other way to heal and I haven’t heard any better suggestions from you! But I am certainly not holding your hands so that you don’t write or locking your computer, so allons nous, give us your discourse, no one is really stopping you but your imagination.
“By the way the discussion stopped on an issue whether or not it is a good idea to call RB a teacher. After that there was pure insanity. Brrr…”
Brrr…… you have so much indignation! Did you ever feel that much indignation with Robert or did it only just surface with me? Have you all of a sudden found a new target to hate or feel alive about saying I can’t bear with this? Or are you just going to try to convince me that the fact that you are only willing to look at about 1/60th percent of the blog is the objective view about it? Or about me?
My dear somebody, you honour me by using my name and talking to me and not dealing with gloves and tea cups to address me. We’ll be totally naked by the time this is over so if you have something to hide, keep putting your clothes on and setting limitations to how we are supposed to communicate in this public square that is not a pubic fair.
I am no longer in a cult, and will therefor not adhere to any word exercises that anyone wishes to impose here. I will speak as I feel I wish to speak and encourage everyone else to do so. As long, as often, as necessary or as joyful as they would like it. You would like it. Do not try to put harnesses and conditions on me, I have not tried to do that to you. I will continue to call The Fellowship of Friends, The Fellowship of Friends because I want the blog to get to the first line of google when it is looked up and understand the more we say it the more that will happen. Is that incorrect Unoanimo? And I’ll call the man I followed for seventeen years MY TEACHER, my so very corrupt teacher, as long as I want. At least I am clear that I sincerely believed in my teacher, the Fellowship of Friends as a School, and each one of you as human beings wishing to find some solutions to the madness of the “unexamined life”. In fact, that is all the blog is, an examination on our life in the Fellowship.
I am so happy to be able to say that I still believe in the System as a legitimate structure for work on one’s self and develop an understanding of the many worlds we happen to live in, and that people, frigid, rigid and often stupid, continue to be the people I love. But then I have loved my husbands and children and I argue tremendously with them. We love each other nevertheless.
What I will not buy is the idea that a few readers who have not written more than ten posts in a year come after a year and say they don’t like the show, they want to change the channel and feel self sattisfied with pointing fingers and showing indignation as if they were paying for the show.
You might be able to condition my writing the day I accept you to pay me for it but in the meantime, I will continue to write all I want, as often as I want for as long as it is possible. You don’t need to read me, you can skip my posts as I often skipped so many others when this was really over loaded with bullshit. And what is most important, you can write whatever you like, whenever you like and as often as you like. Write your word and share yourself without putting conditions on others and you will hear your self when you are questioned, for like me, you too will be questioned. Here is my answer and you can take it or leave it but I’ll still be here probably until you actually throw me out.
I appreciate your questioning the way I question Whalerider or others here but you might at least admit Whalerider got about six posts suggesting he not come looking for what he got. He really wanted it and stopped. Why do you not see that? Is it too subtle? I at least was never the first force in trying to expose him about anything but he finally opened the box! You see, we are now friends enough to be enemies and enemies enough to be friends. But not friends or enemies enough to be lovers! One must come to such place in order to know the people in one’s community.
I often wonder why I keep writing when I’ve said most of what I needed to say. Probably because more than saying anything, I so enjoy hearing others and sharing, refining, sculpting each other with each other’s hands and tools. So don’t worry about me, I’ll get off when you least expect it, don’t think I am not ready or afraid of finding another outlet for my love. An art, a work, for this is work and I am so grateful for the opportunity of working together. You can put it that way or if you prefer, working against each other. Please your self.
Nigel, now that you mention the written material I would also appreciate your sending to me the one you offered if you still wish to do so. My email is ludotekaatsucceed.net so that I can give you my P.O. Box.
Remember that Influence C is watching. It is a
moment-to-moment struggle.
The nine of hearts is the real heroine.
f we make sufficient effort, we do not need to hope
to be present.
I must say that there is something comic about these three last daily(22/23/24 April) ….from Robert
Hey everybody,
Here’s a trick you might try:
Whenever you are conversing with friends or relations that were kept in the dark for years about your involvement in the Fellowship Of Friends, and the conversation turns to philosophical/spiritual matters, you say out loud: “I was in a cult for XX years and this is what I learned.”
It helps me when I hear myself say it out loud. I was in a cult. I’ve had many interesting conversations result from using those simple words. A lot of my friends and acquaintances knew I had joined some strange organization in ’84 and noted the changes in me over the years, but never really received the whole story because, at a certain point, I stopped talking about it. Now I find therapeutic value in the simple admission of how I spent fifteen years of my life and what that experience taught me, how it changed me, and what that means to me now. All the information doesn’t come out at once and it doesn’t happen every time, but everytime I say it, admit it to myself, and discuss it deeply with people I know, I heal a bit.
Kid Shelleen (42),
When I was still emotionally connected to the 4th way as promoted by Robert Burton and the fellowship of Friends, I actively went about acting the High End Automotive salesman to a group of people. They enjoyed the sales pitch because it was different. I was a little disappointed because they didnt see the light as I did. Thank C Influence they were just lookers and not buyers.
It was not long ago, maybe within the past ten years, I gave a Fellowship Phone number to a prospective sucker. He enjoyed the ‘life-style’ of a Fellowship of Friends Student, including rolling around in a new Mercedes Benz. Nothing came of it.
However, halfway through the Shiek’s blog, it “dawned on me” that I wasnt a High End Automotive salesman, but a representative of a junk yard who reconditioned by any means possible.
I wrote a short note to all my previous customers that Robert Earl Burton “TEACHER” of The Fellowship of Friends was a fraud and that he was selling junk cars with bent frames.
It helped me shake off the dust.
Kid Shelleen 42
Ditto. And now that I more freely admit it, I feel much less defensive about the whole experience. I have to thank the blog for helping me to come out of the ex-cultist closet.
Last night there was a documentary “Inside the cult” on the National Geographic. Very interesting. Doomsday cult leader Michael Travesser prophesied that the world would end October 31, 2007. The camera was allowed inside the cult for some reason, there were amazing interviews and stories about the followers and the dynamics of cult behavior.
I wished all students could see this documentary because it shows how FOF fits perfectly into the definition of a cult.
– Self-proclaimed higher being – son of God, or God
makes people confused about his authority because how one can question the God?
-Voice of God (or Gods) sending special messages to the leader, or commands to do strange things (like sleeping with married women) which often goes against the moral code of the followers and make them sacrifice so much that it bonds them forever.
– donation and devotion
all possessions, social security checks, income go to the “Queen”
– prediction of a doomsday and promising a better life after this life
there is a very strong motivational force in the idea of doomsday just waiting around the corner, because it makes one hope that when everyone else will be fated to die one still can save oneself if one prays well, believes well or self-remembers well…
– alienating from the world and the families
preaching every day that life is empty and goes nowhere makes the followers feel safe and cozy in the cult
– the cult leaders sleep with their followers. This is the way to control and overpower them.
They interviewed the follower who seems to be close to the leader – his secretary perhaps – he told the story about how the God made this horrible thing – he FORCED Michael to sleep with his wife. And when he became angry with Michael, Michael told him: “You can not be angry with me – it’s God’s idea. Go and talk to God if you are angry with Him!” Poor guy, he was standing with his head to the wall in pain, when Michael and his wife told their story in detail about this “forcing” which of coarse occurred repeatedly and with quite a few women. Bad God, Bad God!
It was also interesting to watch how the followers were not disappointed when the prediction did not come true. On the contrary they were dancing in the night and singing “We are free!”
It was said that failed predictions usually don’t make cult members leave the cult, but rather adjust their thinking…
37 WR
“Student: Why is it that the soul takes only one female body during the course of its nine lives?
Robert: To strengthen and soften the higher emotional center.”
~~~
How did I miss this one from mister misogynous? only one female body during the course of nine lives to develop a soul? (lies anyway…)
The “guy” is really confusing, was he a “goddess” in a man’s body at one point?
———————————————————————————–
Kid Shellen 42
I have been fairly open in saying to people that I was in a CULT. It’s a kind of a dirty word really as there are even more terrible examples of cults in the media.
But once I start talking about it I just say it, still is a big reality check to even tell myself I was a victim of this spiritual illusion and have come to accept the “cult experience” in my life as something to be not pushed away as if trying to hide a part of me. I am not holding to the shame. It’s ok.
25/O.Q. Maybe so, but who cares what you think?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: “Your Fellowship (Government) is like a big baby –
an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”
What I think is important: Princess Bobby is a big dick with no responsibility at either end.
Thanks for your post somebody. In the fof, we sometimes talked about how we could “see ourselves” in other people. Very true. Not an idea invented by the fof, but still very true. I think a group of people could benefit by that attitude as well; i.e., the fof could “see itself” by looking at other cults, and seeing those striking similarities that you point out in #45.
“Could” is the operative word. One of the most obvious observable characteristics of any cult is the predictable amount of denial in its participants, and even those participants who left the cult a long time ago.
Bit by bit, I’m seeing that even long after leaving the fof, and even after reading several accounts in this blog, there’s a part of me that won’t let go of it, and a part of me that’s in denial about what I experienced, and in denial about Burton, and in denial about what I witnesses and unwittingly contributed to with each payment.
Within this cult, we were quick to recognize “buffers” in ourselves and in others (which is what the rest of the world often refers to as “denial”). But we were very slow to recognizing the “group buffer.”
Examples of this group denial are:
• “I still love Robert, but I had to leave.”
• “I had some of the most wonderful experiences of my life in the Fellowship, but it was just time for me to leave.”
• “Don’t compare the Fellowship to a cult. It’s different. Robert is not violent. That’s extreme thinking to compare us to a cult.”
• “Don’t compare the Fellowship to Nazi Germany. That shows a lack of relativity. Keep the discussion on topic, or you’ll lose people with your extreme thinking.”
Well, it might be that you WILL lose people with such comparisons, but not because it’s extreme thinking. You’ll lose people because comparisons to Nazi Germany are so dramatic that it makes your jaw drop.
See the 1997 BBC documentary series: “The Nazis: A Warning from History.”
No, Burton doesn’t have one of the world’s biggest war machines at his disposal, nor has he exterminated anyone. But the comparison is more about how he’s been skillful at manipulating people’s opinions. And the comparison is more about the group think that allowed the Nazi movement to take hold in Germany.
In this series:
• They present several interviews with former members of the Nazi party and ordinary citizens — each of whom describe their reasons for supporting the Nazis and supporting Hitler. And many of them were still in denial about what occurred even at the time of the interviews.
• They describe Hitler’s goals to build a new civilization following the great war.
• They describe the Nazi goal to “purify” the world, just as the FOF is now being “purified” (Burton’s word) by the recent exit of many followers.
• They showed how the movement took hold, and how anyone objecting to the movement was dealt with.
• They described how the Nazis were the chosen ones who would bring the world to a new era.
• They described how the assistance of huge numbers of ordinary citizens was important for the Gestapo (the secret state police for the Nazis) to accomplish its objectives.
• They described how many people tried to “please” Hitler in order to gain political power and move up the Nazi ladder.
The goal here is not to create fear or hysteria that Burton is the same as Hitler. The goal is to simply point out the fairly predictable responses when anyone points out the similarities between Hitler’s Germany and a cult such as the fof — to scoff, and to say that this isn’t us, and that we’re different, and that we’re above that.
Are we?
————————————
Available on Netflix: “The Nazis: A Warning from History.”
“New light is shed on the rise of the Third Reich in Germany in this comprehensive series through archival footage and interviews with those who survived Hitler’s reign, including unrepentant Nazis. The series reveals how the Nazi state compelled ordinary people to commit atrocities; the order and disorder within the German army; Hitler’s lack of motivation and propensity for getting his minions to do his work; and many other enlightening facts.”
For a simple definition of a cult:
A checklist, made by professor Eileen Barker, in which traits of groups that can evolve to be dangerous are described. Barker stated that her list was based on empirical research. The traits named include:
“A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially;
Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality;
Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others;
Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and Satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion;
Leaders who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers;
Leaders and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.”
There’s much more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_checklist#Eileen_Barker
Here’s my favorite quote:
Rob Preece, a psychotherapist and a practicing Buddhist, writes in The Noble Imperfection:
“In its simplest sense transference occurs when unconsciously a person endows another with an attribute that actually is projected from within themselves.”
In developing this concept, Preece writes that, when we transfer an inner quality onto another person, we may be giving that person a power over us as a consequence of the projection, carrying the potential for great insight and inspiration, but also the potential for great danger: “In giving this power over to someone else they have a certain hold and influence over us it is hard to resist, while we become enthralled or spellbound by the power of the archetype”.
31 Wakeuplittlesuzy: “I personally gained a lot from working with the ideas of self remembering and sleep versus waking up. That was also happening in those years, probably for many. Therefore I cannot and will not say it was a total waste of 20 years. I believe that before I ‘woke up’ to the fact it was a cult I quietly worked on becoming an awake person with whatever understanding I had at the time. This to me is not a waste of time.”
Happy to agree with you on this one littlesuzy. In the process of healing it seems very valuable to recognise what was true within my self no matter how false everything else was. Then I can more easily observe what was also false within my self. One of the things that kept me inside for a long time was wishing to be acknowledged by Robert. Wishing his love and attention. There is a tendency to think that this is not good, that this is vanity or self importance but if I go deeper into the question it is beautiful to realize that it comes from perfectly legitimate love. Only love for a Teacher in our times, seems to replace the self valuation that is necessary for one to develop one’s own self trust, or presence. It is interesting that one or I looked for a Teacher or looks for a teacher so that he can interpret the world for one and he can only interpret the world for himself because he, she trusts hsrself enough to be there for it, but when one cannot do that, that is, interpret the world one has been given to live in, one continues to look for “interpretations”. When will we come to the point of understanding that we can each interpret the world through our own subjectivity and still have a developed enough sense of our own self to make it sufficiently objective? Or to be more radical, when will our subjectivity mature enough to be objective because one is present enough to live and die for it? When will be present enough to objectify our subjectivity? Then we’ll honour the world we live in.
It seems that we have come to confuse SHARING with allowing others to INTERPRET the world for us, conditioned by such a hierarchic structure in or out of a Cult culture, that our coexistence depends on them and not on the fact that we are in fact EQUALS in terms of BEING. REAL I cannot be improved, changed, modified,
extinguished, aroused, depressed, coerced. It cannot even be tuned. It is, and all those other phenomena happen to “A WORK IN PROCESS” that is our life. WHY? Perhaps because Real I enjoys struggling with the many forms of itself and observing how we all return to the original state of integrity. Why? Why not? It is as if a master weaver stopped weaving because he is already a master. Wouldn’t he weave for the simple pleasure and beauty of doing so? For the sake of its own creation? Like wise, living can be living for the joy of it! Because we have enough holes to make whole. Because just as being here on Earth can be hell it can also be paradise. It is in fact paradise every time we actualize our love.
Anna, can I be tyrant enough to force you to have tea with me as soon as we don’t have a whole Ocean between our selves? I beg you to write again. You have the most exquisite style and I would love to copy you and learn from it or simply listen to you. When one is raised by beautiful Colombian peasants, one can’t expect to have such beautiful manners as you do most of the time! And we haven’t yet had time to actualize our love which I know is there. I saw your sister a couple of days ago and she was as warm as could be. It filled my heart with joy. When you talk, as you’ve done a few times on this blog, it is indeed like royalty but not the decadent royalty that external hierarchy wishes to pay money to and sub-serviance to but the inner spiritual hierarchy that I would like to pay tribute to. There will come a time in which we honour each other as much as we honoured Robert not because any one of us is better than another, but because we are each so profoundly beautiful. Us and every human being around us.
Ouspensky Question: I care about what you think. Thank you for questioning us and allowing us to reaffim our selves. Or just my self if you prefer me not to use us, or we.
Rear view mirror, I’ve become quite enthralled lately with observing the all-pervasive and mostly pernicious effects of propaganda (religious, political, commercial, etc) on the frail minds of us poor human beings (otherwise known as sheep). Coincidentally, I just finished watching a very interesting documentary on Japan’s late emperor (and cult leader) Hirohito. It clearly showed his lack of judgment, and his horrendous responsibility in the destruction he brought around the world and upon his people, and the amazing thing is that he totally got away with it. It seems that at the end of world war 2 the American occupants decided to rewrite history in his favour, simply because it was more convenient for them. I’ll post some excerpts if I can find them.
PS Now that I think of it, how many of you believe that George W will ever be brought to justice for his devastating decisions?
In the light of Whalerider 49, I am also reposting Ollie’s 32-344 offerings for those who may have missed them due to slow connection. Actually these quotes speak for themselves, but for those who can use a little reinforcement, I am also reposting a brief statistic at the end (the counting bug has got me, just hope I don’t start counting poops).
No need to invent. Here are some more actual quotations by Robert Burton, this time from about five years ago (all published in the so-called ‘Thoughts from the Teacher’).
– – –
Jan 12, 2003
I feel our good fortune quite deeply this morning. We are at the dawn of another year of working with the Gods. We have been chosen out of six billion people to consciously evolve.
Jan 26, 2003:
It is a long wait with Influence C. I am into my best period as a teacher. When I turned sixty, my higher centers matured in a certain way. I can now see what is in front of me. I can see the obvious in everything. For example, if I read a thought by Peter Ouspensky, I can see whether it is right, and appreciate it, or whether it is not, and correct it.
Jan 26, 2003:
I do not think; I am present. Therefore I am—a conscious being.
Jan 26, 2003:
[To a student traveling with Robert for the first time] You will start to alter your essence. You will eat things that you did not grow up eating. Everybody does it: the Japanese learn to eat Italian food; the Chinese learn to eat French food. You will also gain more experience with wine. You own a vineyard now, so you want to educate your essence in wine and move towards a Mediterranean aesthetic.
Jan 26, 2003:
On my level, I see sleep wherever I go. I cannot see it otherwise. I would have to be asleep to see it as awake.
Jan 26, 2003:
Student: I try to understand how you think.
Robert: I do not think—that is my virtue. I just see. I have immortal vision. All these people have mortal vision.
Feb 02, 2003
One reason there are not more schools is that there are not more teachers who care about their students—and there is nothing I care for more than my students.
Feb 02, 2003
I turned down the air-conditioning one degree—but I did it with presence. It is so important to do your work in private. One by one my students will join me in Paradise.
Feb 02, 2003
I find it unique that I am the first man in history who asked for “Presence Please” from his students.
Feb 02, 2003
Only I can love all of my students. What parent does not love all of his children?
Feb 09, 2003
We will be celebrating the miracle of the almond blossom around February 6th or 12th of each year. We will also be celebrating the Chinese New Year, as well as each conscious being’s birthday. We will invent dates for those we do not know, to fill the sparse months.
Feb 09, 2003
I see these things as the Gods see them. (…) Increasingly, I tend to look at the success of Apollo and of your evolution in terms of how long I shall live. The longer, the better.
April 6, 2003
It is within my power to make my students immortal, and it cannot be achieved in any way other than that which the Gods dictate. Immortality is yours—you just have to accept their methods. You cannot expect to have a normal life with Gods in your life, because it is already abnormal to have Gods in one’s life.
April 6, 2003
I was looking into a fireplace the first time my higher centers appeared. They were aware of themselves, and aware of the fireplace, and it lasted about twenty minutes. That was my first experience with myself. (…) There were two reasons why the Gods had me look into a fireplace. First, the eternal flame of cosmic consciousness had been established by the Gods. Secondly, I was looking into the inferno of hydrogen warfare.
April 6, 2003
I crystallized in what was then the Blake Cottage. My last ‘I’ before going to bed was, “It is not going to happen tonight,” but I was wrong. I awakened between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. and it hit. I was facing Mount Apollo with my back turned to California, and my higher centers fused. There was thunder and lightning, and when it cleared my world six was looking straight ahead, completely unfazed by the event. In a school, what one gains, we all gain, and my story is your story. Self-remembering is the greatest gift that one can ever receive, and one must give it to oneself.
April 6, 2003
Having founded Apollo and a civilization, I will appreciate the perfected nature of Paradise more than any other conscious being. Augustus said that he found Rome brick and left it marble. I found Apollo dust, and I will be fortunate to leave it brick.
April 13, 2003
One thing I have been wondering about is how much time elapses between lifetimes for ascending souls. The only thought I have encountered on this subject is from Plato, who said that the soul takes a new body about every ten thousand years. I do not know if this is true, but I am certain that the period between lifetimes is not uniform. One of the first things I want to know when I complete my role is when I will be reunited with you.
Aug 17, 2003
Student: Why is it that the soul takes only one female body during the course of its nine lives?
Robert: To strengthen and soften the higher emotional center.
Nov 2, 2003
Should I live to become old, I will not take any pride in my age, but I shall feel grateful for having been given the opportunity to serve my fellow ascending souls.
Nov 2, 2003
It is such an incredible experience to circulate in life; with immortal vision I observe mortal sleep. In my students, however, I see the Promised Land.
Nov 2, 2003
Curiously, we are the only people on the Earth attempting to stay out of imagination.
Nov 23, 2003
I cannot think of anything more important that I will do with my eternal life than helping my students escape. Although I have all eternity before me, the work I am doing now is the most important I will ever do.
Jan 25, 2004
I find it curious that joggers are uninterested in developing their souls.
February 8, 2004
I try to avoid Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Collin’s interpretations of the Bible. They did not understand it and I do not want to be influenced by them. I am more simple than they are, and I must protect that simplicity.
February 8, 2004
More than ever, I know that I am going to reach the conscious child within my students, from the conscious child within myself.
June 6, 2004
Life has a very distorted imaginary picture of conscious beings. In Alex Horn’s group, I was the only student who agreed to take out the refuse and sweep the floors. People do not think of Buddha as doing those kind of things, when, in fact, it is exactly what made him conscious.
June 13, 2004
We have a new religion: self-remembering and working with the forty-four Gods. It is the highest religion ever given to man.
June 13, 2004
As your teacher, I can see Influence C’s plans. I can see the part in you that counts.
June 13, 2004
I do not have to ask my students to love me more. I never knew such love in my life.
June 20, 2004
On my level, during the teaching events I see students being twice born right before my eyes. It is the most beautiful sight for the Gods.
October 3, 2004
I do not think that the Sufis had a school. Schools undergo very brutal shocks, and the Sufis have a certain cuteness in their works that suggests they were not in this position.
October 10, 2004
The Fellowship of Friends is the birth of conscious democracy for man.
February 6, 2005
The crocodile was intentionally created by higher forces to embody the attributes of the king of clubs. It is a grotesque creature, exactly the opposite of essence and higher centers. (…) All crocodiles are alike, and all think they are different. It is astonishing to cohabit with such a creature.
February 6, 2005
Zen is attractive to people because it has an instinctive element, and so makes it easier for the instinctive center to manipulate consciousness.
August 7, 2005
It is incredible to see that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky missed, while we have gotten it right.
From the Religious Propaganda Institute of Statistics:
We have examined the 35 original quotations (‘Thoughts from the Teacher’) at Ollie 343 and classified them in the following manner:
28 quotes promoting the “Teacher” and his “School” (I am present, I am a conscious being, I can see what is in front of me, I have immortal vision, I do not think—that is my virtue, I can see Influence C’s plans, the highest religion ever given to man etc.)
26 quotes where the “Teacher” makes unverifiable claims
15 quotes praising the high level of consciousness of “theTeacher
9 quotes promoting the uniqueness of the “School” and its messianic role
9 quotes where the “Teacher” stresses the difference between himself and the rest of humanity
9 quotes promoting the wisdom of “the Teacher”
8 quotes where the “Teacher” praises the love bond between him and his “students”
6 quotes where the “Teacher” makes unverifiable predictions
5 quotes demeaning other spiritual teachers and traditions
5 quotes regarding the future of the “Ark” (There will be lots of festivities and conscious democracy, Apollo will be made of brick. The longer the “Teacher” lives the better, in ten thousand years the “Teacher” and his “students” may meet again)
3 quotes dealing with the practical aspect of his “students” work (You will start to alter your essence, eat things that you did not grow up eating, gain more experience with wine and move towards a Mediterranean aesthetic. To take out the refuse and sweep the floors can make you conscious. You may turn down the air-conditioning, as long as you do it with presence. It is so important to do your work in private.)
Dear “students”, your “Teacher’s” teaching priorities are self-evident.
Above everything: It is within the “Teacher’s” power to make his students immortal. Immortality is yours—and it cannot be achieved in any way other than that which the “Teacher’s” Gods dictate. You just have to accept their methods.
Good luck to you all.
“October 3, 2004
I do not think that the Sufis had a school. Schools undergo very brutal shocks, and the Sufis have a certain cuteness in their works that suggests they were not in this position.”
Oh, those cute Sufis, with their whirling and their fezes and their wine drinking and those cute little cars they drive around in that parade in Philadelphia…
“Jan 25, 2004
I find it curious that joggers are uninterested in developing their souls.”
My absolute favorite teaching angle of all time!!!
51 lauralupa
PS Now that I think of it, how many of you believe that George W will ever be brought to justice for his devastating decisions?
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to this statement I can only express extreme frustration!!! &%$#@*&&&!+++
…and just by association about our Justice: assuming OJ Simpson killed his wife, how come he is roaming free?
…and how come Robert Earl Burton is still free after he settled out of court basically admitting his fault by paying 3 M dollars to T. B…..ee? I do not know about the law and I understand this was a civil suit, yet, the fact is that Robert Earl Burton had sex with a 17 years old.
TOUGHTS FOR THE TEACHER
“We have been chosen out of six billion people to consciously evolve.”
Doesn’t it make one feel small? If he put it that among 6 billion people you are the only ones who joined FOF it wouldn’t sound that cool, ah? But CHOSEN by the GODS! How many people can say they felt this emotion? Even top models can’t say that, I bet.
“I am into my best period as a teacher.”
Yes, I can see that. Still counting fingers in the pictures. What is the teaching? Definitely not the 4th way system as it was advertised when I joined.
“I do not think; I am present.”
May be you should think sometimes.
“You own a vineyard now, so you want to educate your essence in wine”
Do I own a vineyard too?
“On my level, I see sleep wherever I go.”
And on my level I see your level.
“I have immortal vision.”
No, you don’t.
“One reason there are not more schools is that there are not more teachers who care about their students”
Are you sure? How do you know that?
“One by one my students will join me in Paradise.”
Just make sure you do not end up in Hell
“I find it unique that I am the first man in history”
Oh, you are SO special! Almost like Napoleon.
“Only I can love all of my students.”
What about Meher Baba?
“I see these things as the Gods see them.”
It is because you are one of them and one of us, right?
“It is within my power to make my students immortal”
How long does it take?
“I was looking into the inferno of hydrogen warfare.”
Well, since it did not happen, do you think you might be just was looking in the fireplace?
“I crystallized in what was then the Blake Cottage.”
See, you can be wrong, body. Other cult leaders also believe that the God tells them things. They hear voices: “you are the chosen one!”
“Having founded Apollo and a civilization, I will appreciate the perfected nature of Paradise” Congratulations on founding a civilization. Good work. :)
“I try to avoid Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Collin’s interpretations of the Bible. … I am more simple than they are.”
O, common, give yourself a chance, you can do it, little steps, a few pages a day.
“We have a new religion: self-remembering and working with the forty-four Gods.”
Oops, I thought it is a fourth way school :(
“As your teacher, I can see Influence C’s plans.”
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
“I do not think that the Sufis had a school.”
I think they did.
“Zen is attractive to people because it has an instinctive element”
Not always.
“It is incredible to see that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky missed, while we have gotten it right.”
First of all I joined Gurdgieff and Ouspensky school, second how do you know that they missed if you avoid reading them?
It does seem confusing at first glance that people see positive aspects to their time in what obviously is and always was a cult. Part of this is due to an inability to sort out multiple streams of experience happening in the same period of time. Others here have pointed out that there is a tendency to mix up independent experiences, like being young, adventurous and physically vibrant, with other experiences that occurred while being so such as the music, politics and other cultural trends of the time. The worst pop schlock can engender strong positive feelings if associated with the most exciting experiences of your life. Many of us joined the FOF young. The same formative social and cultural experiences that we had while in the FOF, particularly those in the first years, were had by most other people, but with different associations, different “stories”. So cult victims who spent 10, 20, even 30 years under the influence look back and see they had a lot of wonderful experiences. Jesus Christ in a wheelchair, in 30 years of life, I would hope you had some wonderful experiences! So the question of how loud the continuing echoes of delusion from our time in the FOF are has nothing to do with whether much of the time was pleasant or painful, but how we interpret those experiences and what sources/causes we imagine for those experiences.
Another part of the difficulty is the moral dissonance we may feel in having enjoyed experiences bought with other’s pain, or even our own suppressed pain. Did any of the men Robert Burton sexually exploited enjoy any part of the associated experience – the travel, fine dinners, other perks etc.? Obviously some did. Did the rest of us enjoy the dinners, walks through the vineyard, drinking Renaissance wines etc. – all things bought through fraud, economic and labour exploitation of the gullible and sincere? I did, and I don’t think many of you could claim substantially otherwise. Does willfull blindness to pain equate to creating that pain? No, but neither is it a virtue.
Others stress the more “spiritual” gains they made while being a member. The same kinds of questions apply: how did those gains occur? Who is responsible, if anyone, for that growth or progress? Can you really be certain that you would not have grown equally through other experiences you would have encountered had you not joined the Fellowship? Most who joined the FOF were sincerely looking for truth and inner growth and were willing to sacrifice greatly in that search. It is likely that most such people would have found growth in their lives, regardless of whether or not they stumbled onto a cult.
In reading RVM’s comparison of life under Nazi influence to life under Robert Burton’s influence (page 33#48), I remembered reading a bit about Etty Hillesum. She wrote some astonishing letters and diary entries detailing her inner life as she experienced the deepening influence of the Nazis in Amsterdam in 1941-42. She died in Auschwitz in ’43. What is remarkable is that this experience turned her inward where she found great joy and fulfillment. The more hatred she experienced, the more consistently she refused to hate in return. Did the crescendo of insanity and cruelty all around her create her spiritual growth? It seems likely to have focused it and intensified the experience. Would we advocate recreating her experiences as a general method of spiritual development or hold the Nazis who persecuted and murdered her blameless because spiritual growth occurred within the sphere of their influence? Would we hold those most directly responsible for the financial, labour and emotional exploitation of 15,000 people, and the sexual exploitation of hundreds blameless because we experienced personal growth while it was happening?
Life is messy. Life is complex. People’s lives and motivations intertwine. It is finally a kind of laziness and moral failure to not address the whole picture. Our victimization and our complicity in it are two ends of a spectrum, all of which is true. Clinging to one end or the other distorts the reality of our personal and collective histories.
Kid 52: “Oh, those cute Sufis, with their whirling and their fezes and their wine drinking and those cute little cars they drive around in that parade in Philadelphia…”
not all sufis are mummers
…………………………………………………….
spring again!
each more amazing than remembered
birds are squawking
56 ton
“not all sufis are mummers”
Ah, but are all mummers sufi’s? And who makes their costumes, their mummers?
57 Bruce
“but are all mummers sufi’s?”
not all, but some mummers may be sufis.
their costumes? that’s a mystery…
good viewing for those who still work with the idea of “scale and relativity
http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=281325
1. All bats are animals.
2. Some wooden objects are bats.
3. Therefore, some wooden objects are animals.
It seems very strange to me now that I have been chasing after false prophets which have led me far from my own path.
I did not join because I was vulnerable, I joined because I found the ideas of 4th way interesting. I was promised that the Teacher is a student of Ouspensky’s student. That he teaches the System of Ouspensky which for me was almost a science – psychology, cosmology. A science and not a religion I was after. How did I end up in the religious cult? When did I deviated? Maybe for those who were looking for a guru, or immortality, or gods it is the right place to be. But what a brutal awakening for me!
Just to keep everyone updated, I am still working on making this site appear as it used to (or better), the design nightmare is proving to be difficult.
Leningrad cowboys
Somebody/60:
I did not join because I was vulnerable, I joined because I found the ideas of 4th way interesting. I was promised that the Teacher is a student of Ouspensky’s student. That he teaches the System of Ouspensky which for me was almost a science – psychology, cosmology. A science and not a religion I was after. How did I end up in the religious cult?
….
I was promised that the Teacher is a student of Ouspensky’s student.
Put differently, someone told you something that wasn’t true and that influenced your decision to join.
Put differently, you were lied to.
Being vulnerable to deceit is human.
Once you were lied to, and the lie influenced your decision to join,
The decision to join placed you in contact with social influences on your behavior.
If people can influence your behavior, they have the power to affect what you believe.
If people can influence you to distrust your ability to think critically, by teaching you to label “critical thinking” as contrary to your best interest, they can get you to believe all kinds of crazy shit.
If people can influence you simply to “suspend disbelief” as to certain things, they can get you to accept all kinds of crazy shit.
63 veronicapoe
Put differently, someone told you something that wasn’t true and that influenced your decision to join.
Put differently, you were lied to.
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Making the slope more slippery — many of the people who told you the lie had been lied to as, perhaps, had those who told the lie to them. The lie was probably believed by the people who told it to you, making it convincing and believable.
Some crisscrossing thoughts ~
Just a few days ago, after the Blog’s Part 33 began, a few news-articles floated to the surface of the pond that seemed oddly in sync to the ‘Nature’ of what’s been happening in here:
one was that a bear at a training camp mauled a man to death… The blog is a kind of training camp, IMO.
the second was a person who had been found to have been living with their mother’s half mummified body in her kitchen for one to three years, with newspapers covering half of its remains… The blog in a kind of kitchen and has its newspapers, IMO.
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I was thinking today about all of Robert’s ‘boys’, particularly M & D and a few things I saw within myself during certain times of my life recently… I had these thoughts about ‘Archetypes’ in the F.O.F.
IMO, the men who surround Robert are those with severely damaged inner feminine-spirits; while the women who are attracted to being ‘daughters to royalty’ are suffering with a severely damaged inner masculine-spirit.
In a cult or any likewise group of spirits sub-consciously mirroring and softly battling (or working on) one another’s complimentary ‘damaged halves’, this, IMO, is the only place where two wrongs can make a right, in so far as that atmosphere that exists, who has the incredible ability to justify and celebrate an external ‘I am because of this-having of material gravity-things and issues belonging to others affirmatively not my inner self’…
So the birth of that soul-shadow called ‘hypocrisy’, that we all have to pass through prior to an internal shift and the vision of the utter inner-spirit poverty that’s at foot and hand in the real (“The problem is that you think you have time.” Buddha) moment, its fortunes of gold being (with a Cosmic Level of Paradox) hidden beneath its ‘bandages’ (its trauma’s nakednesses and soul position buffered by the dance-ritual of an External Soul Searching Lifestyle) and only gotten out and spent by unwrapping or undoing the dance floor to see where all those Oracle of Delphi hypnotic fumes are coming from…
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I am experiencing a total rebuild, from the ‘mummified corpse’ up, of my inner masculine and ‘his’ disjointed, enraged and shattered forces and it feels at times I am doing it for tens of thousands of years concerning my family’s lineage… The hell bondage of the inner masculine in many ‘men’ and visa versa for ‘women’ is an atmosphere that, under special circumstances like the ones that just got Greg unfortunately kicked off the blog (again) and people rejecting Elena’s mirroring of their own inner situations, is so thick and palatable to the sixth-sense’s olfactory nerves, that it can be cut with a cheese knife and served on sun-beam-crackers…
This begins to shed some light on why (and how) those men with severely damaged or undeveloped inner masculine spirit-halves gravitate towards the external ‘beautiful women’ so strongly and stay that ‘fourth’ way, even if that woman does not wish them to stay that ‘fourth’ way for ‘her’ sakes…
Some say that ~ ‘Conscience is a Bitch’ and for the disconnected and trauma damaged masculine and the supra-masculine’d woman, what their own subconscious fixation-identity thinks and does from the trauma-effect and not the conscious causes, arising from their ‘inner-mess’, it is such and so the outer situation of the feminine (conscience) on the Earth today and the masculine (consciousness)… Men are dying in war away from home and women are dying in war at home, IMO, it’s an even spirit-situation exchange of forces… While the ‘war’ is what’s in between that space shared with conscience and consciousness.
Marriage only really wants to deal with the ‘AND’ (and) not the other two.
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While in the F.O.F. (and elsewhere) ‘The Mother’ or ‘Big Sister’ subconsciously symbolizes for the man what his inner feminine half needs to be and ‘Do’ in order to heal and bring the marriage, i.e., his own feminine (take care of myself without slowly killing myself from liver poisoning) autonomy, which sorta comes to the soul within the feminine body by default… So, hers will be how to be a ‘man’ without a man telling her from the point of view of not really being a ‘complete one’ himself, how to do it, without first consciously and painstakingly acknowledging her natural feminine-innocence attributes and she his masculine-innocence ones…
The man, at this point of subconscious adulation can be in an Internal Death-trance, staring at an external reflection of his very own internal antidote, while drinking a ‘make me feel good in bed-placebo’ and having fits and emotional convulsions alongside her own, outside of bed, which symbolizes ‘that space again’: IMO, making love can ‘symbolize’ for awhile the inner-union-achieved on a an electronic level; though it’s the molecular level of the soul’s real inner-existence that kicks you in the gut in the morning or after ‘The Little Death’ is over the waterfall in its barrel:
this ‘kick’, not unlike a birth kick from a pregnant mother’s womb, because maybe it could be that your soul is pregnant with your story (?) is usually in time reduced to a quick sensation of loss and panic for reinstatement of security or securing the trauma boundaries subconsciously set upon that space in between the two of you… (?) i.e., “How was it?”, “Are you ok?”, “Do you still love me?”, “Have you time to visit tonight?”, etc. Are we asking the lover these questions or our ‘other half’? Which, curiously, is a nickname for husband’s wives and sometimes for wives their husbands.
Some marriages are a kind of subconscious prayer, IMO, coming from the dreams of ‘her-herself’ within the man to get to (that) within himself, to marry the big ‘HER’, not the little ‘her’ (The signpost is not the destination its existence is altogether indicating.) and visa versa… Perhaps we can be together and make love in ways that are not over exhausting the Need & Impossible to fulfill Expectation-Department?
Maybe marriages are not supposed to ‘work out’ and be the ‘end all opiate’ that something inside nearly every human being automatically wishes it could be, instead, it may be that, in the right context and attitude direction, a marriage is a sort of practice between the two to find inside themselves what they’ve so ‘Till Death Do We Part’ affirmatively married to one another and vowed towards (?) Themselves as a soul incarnating as in a human being’s form and function (?)
How about ~ ‘Till Death Do We Join’ (?) Perhaps it’s the truer Inner Life condition of man that fears Death and not all the external stuff that justifies the fear of Fear itself…
Could it be that the rise in the divorce rate of the world is parallel to the changing inner consciousness that’s gradually sweeping out the hen coop of mankind on Earth so that the foxes will be obliged to sit on the eggs awhile and let the hens enjoy some late night fox coop raids?
In other words, to have total-fun without the expectations of the prerequisites that fly up in front of one’s face when the external ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ does not get the affirmation right and the prayer is not immortalized as something that everyone else has not gotten too, i.e., misery loves company and violent music to keep it that way.
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A little leap backwards~
To me, I only experience disappointment in others because I’m already in a state of ‘dis-appointment’ within; if you know what I mean.
This is why banning anyone from the blog is ultimately sorta silly, because who ever is being offended is exactly who and what anyways? And while ‘standards’ are being justified and upheld by such actions as ‘getting rid of the offender’, there’s an ‘offensive-quote’ being left up at the start of this Part 33 that is pretty much performing the same subconscious shock for newcomers and the ancient blog attenders alike every time people log onto this site, a one-liner that Greg gave once and to one person only…
So, what is it in oneself (and us as a collective ‘whole’) that would leave up Greg’s ‘one shock’ to be the shock and re-shock for about 1000+ people a day? Can reminders also be ‘drugs’ for our inner trauma’s drinking and snickering and ‘feels good to GET the justice to what we superstitiously believe to be the external source of injustice’?
IMO, the decision to keep Greg’s statement up, like a flag left stuck in a shattered scapula belonging to a pile of battle field dead bodies is saying what and to whom? What inside us likes to leave the crucification up and as a reminder of? Perhaps the crucifixion is the default-birth-position of every soul born on the planet Earth in the form of a human being; it’s a signpost and yet, it’s worshiped as?
Perhaps when we start turning the prayer hands and war-bugles towards ourselves and not the sky or the F.O.F. Gatehouse or The Moderator’s Power to take care of unfinished business, things and the carbon copy of the Real Work will start manifesting (?)
________________________________________________________________
In the F.O.F. ~
This inner-sub conscious externalizing could also explain how the damaged inner man in women gravitate towards what they ‘think’ is royalty or the Archetypal Table of Masculine-contents of a book (person) they really wish to read someday (a woman who ‘seems’ to have a proper masculine program going on, yet who is being projected upon by THE WISHER THAT SHE HAVE IT FOR THE OTHER and by this wish is lifted far above her actual level of inner existence-shinning for herself: how often do we get or take the opportunity, to verify how a person is existing as their own ‘kind of friend’ to themselves, without the self-jurisdiction-glasses of ourselves and its needy context?)
It’s easier for another to be the STAR WISHED UPON than to deal with THE FALLEN ONE within the wisher experiencing the onslaught of their own external-target-wishing; we’re too busy making and remaking the book cover (no offense Bruce) over and over again, so that it will look good on the shelf from a distance and stand out amongst the crowd. Though, this is a phase… I’ve got hundreds of books to recycle.
What we seem to worship in others and wish for from them is ultimately what we’ll have to totally undo some day (today?), one painstaking mummy-wrap at a time, so to enliven that star within us we’ve been looking for up in the sky… Who or what in the world set it in us to start looking heavenward instead of inward?
To me, the ‘Movie stars’ in the F.O.F. (and out) are simply this, they’re ‘fixed in’ the tension-releasing-atmosphere that surrounds one’s inner traumas, either from the damaged masculine or feminine spirit-half belonging to our soul’s ‘divided forces within’… In between this division can be built such things as the F.O.F., certain ‘kinds’ of families, careers, possessions ‘and possessions’…
Structures like the F.O.F. both holds the insanity of the contradictory situation that our soul is born in, while also embodying our ‘little story’ beneath our soul’s chin; just like a new fishing boat… usually named in the feminine, does and it also makes the two halves dependent on this structure, which is another discussion… It’s a two edged sword with no handle…
So how do you ‘fight the good fight’ without getting cut? Well, IMO, you put the sword down and run naked as fast as possible towards the war that’s determined to kill you anyway and maybe the utter cosmic ridiculousness and self reflective empathetic vibratory emanations ushering from such a participant’s solar plexus will be enough to get some good home cooking and a warm conscience-resonating hug of support from the other side of the moon or the eyes to open in the mummy.
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With these inner spirit-conditions in heart, I looked at Robert and thought, ‘He’s got a severely damaged inner man, this is how he can subconsciously pull off the ‘fact’ that he’s a ‘goddess’ in the subconscious-nesses of all the ‘boys’ (and himself) and F.O.F. supporters…
He is both a symbol of the ‘poisoned feminine being married to the poisoned masculine’ and the antidote that everyone who ‘follows’ him needs to WISH THAT HE’LL GET BETTER WITH THEIR ‘masculine’ EFFORTS (build, build, build in the external) so as to do what with their own inner Robert?
Because in some ‘reality’ he is a ‘goddess’, but it’s not him, it’s the subconscious need of his damaged masculine crying out to his soul’s feminine potential to be that for his deathbed-ridden-masculine half: perhaps it’s an affirmation to merge someday with The Work it will take to arrive at the level of self realization that every spirit is heading towards, to pull these two disconnected forces together and form a soul, something tangible and ultimately self-dependable or conscious-autonomy.
So, IMO, there’s a man with a damaged and disconnected inner masculine projecting and subconsciously supporting (and being supported by) those ‘boys’ and ‘others’ with disconnected feminine-spirits…
IMO, this is why people have subconsciously decided to call them ‘boys’ and not ‘Men’: because in the unconscious dream realm where all these forces thrive and move about with near absolute immunity from the soul’s conscience, others ‘daily, out of one dream-state and into another’ can sub-sense the objective patterns in the next one above where they just awoke from… though cannot connect the dots yet…
Robert’s ‘boys’ is a reflection of Robert’s ‘inner boy’ (and perhaps the age of his trauma’s birth) and what he’s doing to them is what a very large and deep trauma is made up of that has mummified his masculine,
which is bandaged even more so by the ‘symbolic’ Robert-worship-successes that the external F.O.F. ‘women’ have projected upon him, making him out to be the ‘patch’ they need to hold it all together, because, subconsciously, his disjointed masculine is a mirror image of their disconnected ‘man’ within, who plays ‘The Father supporter and protector’ or ‘Big Brother’ for Robert’s ‘little boy’ who needs ‘The Nine of Hearts to be realized in his Masculine Sphere and not the ‘I cannot speak to my dying mother because I have a word exercise, feminine-spirit condition ‘molded’ by the damaged masculine’s targeting of it’s creator’s external image or symbol’ and all of the collective subconsciousness of the F.O.F.
This is why all of Robert’s main ‘feminine’ supporters are those with strong masculine external affirmative powers… Their WISH UPON A STAR is stronger than those women who do not resonate with Robert’s inner soul-condition: this is also why and how, women with well developed inner feminine-halves are sent away or put under the thumb by their exact feminine-opposites (dark mothers and sisters against light ones): it is because their condition of inner-feminine-soul-half does not match the ’cause and effect’ within Robert’s inner feminine condition due to their proximity to his mummified and traumatized ‘boy’…
This is also how Robert targets ‘good women’s’ ‘boys’ or husbands and challenges them, defiling and raping the ‘Conscious Feminines Symbolic Masculine half’, imitating his own inner-state of affairs; its his trauma enacting itself out in the external world; challenges disguised as ‘making efforts, serving c-influence and dividing attention’ are always much easier than forgiving, forgetting and remembering where the account not to do so originated from.
Robert’s ‘boys’ are exactly that, they are the repetitive spirit-world-bound ‘ghost-receptacles’ surrounding his ‘Haunted House’ traumas; forget Ouspensky’s “House on Fire”, because haunted houses are arson proof and can only be lived in by its current owner, although there’s allot of people in the F.O.F. doing their darnedest to make Robert’s broom closets into condominiums… Though being a ‘receptacle’ is serious business; they’ll be allot of soul-body-part-retrievals to do some day on this planet (and now).
For the women in the F.O.F. with strong masculine halves, subconsciously compensating to survive the contradictory onslaughts from the ‘once in awhile gut-visions’ from their inner feminine’s real lifestyle and conscience-condition, their efforts to support ‘Robert’ are their efforts to embalm and quieten the feminine (living the Painbody’s struggle-lifestyle to awaken later than today) and easily ‘match’ his damaged masculine’s half-condition (called “He’s Conscious”)…
Yes, in fact HE IS CONSCIOUS, in so far as consciousness is concerned in the context of a dream-state situation of subconscious projections and exchanges of placebos, buffer-wrappings and affirmations to alleviate the tension in between that space showing the ‘division’ within themselves and as what within the mirage of the external?
________________________________________________________________
I remember seeing a little boy once playing in a sandbox, he did something with the placement of some objects in front of him and laughed with utter joy and ecstasy at the success of it; then he did something absolutely divine and miraculous, he clapped for himself… He had no time in the one and only moment to wait for a Sunday meeting, nor did he have time for ‘mirrors of approval’ to fix themselves enough so as to not show the cracks whom would normally fall to pieces when hung on the walls at ‘the real homes’; he had no time to wait for a phone call or a blog entry approval or remark to feel better or ‘right’: he simply knew within that in between space, that his own existence meant just enough RIGHT NOW to do anything he came here to ever do and that the only applause he’d ever really remember himself hearing from this life’s living would be just how many he got from himself…
_______________________________________________________________
L.t.y.a.
Joe Average,
What a great post! “People’s lives and motivations intertwine. It is finally a kind of laziness and moral failure to not address the whole picture. Our victimization and our complicity in it are two ends of a spectrum, all of which is true. Clinging to one end or the other distorts the reality of our personal and collective histories.” Couldn’t agree more deeply and yet, nobody is clinging to one end only. We’ve been looking at the dark end for a year and more great posts like yours are coming up but it is precisely understanding what was positive about the experience what will allow us to see the darkest side even more clearly. We are precisely addressing the whole picture. No one lost what was true, sincere and beautiful about their own search and that doesn’t mean that the Fellowship should not be closed and finished for all the reasons you state so clearly. But without people willing to even sign a petition it is so unlikely that we’ll manage that soon enough! People continue to leave though and that is very good news!
Laura, the detail with which you’re looking at these quotes is such a great kick in the belly at the Fellowship of Friend’s indoctrination. What a great job!
My favorite quote (probably the only original attempt at humor I observed) was said while observing a chandelier being moved: “If I was in shape, I could have levitated it.”
When we are playing we are thinking.
Benny Lava just wanted me to let everyone here know that the source of his Ancient Knowledge can now be revealed: It can be thought of by your limited, temporal minds as a cross pollination of Sufi psychology with Mummer cosmology. It is straight from the mountains of the Kanduharsh, by way of the streets of South Philly. Henceforth, all who follow Benny Lava shall be known as “Smufis.” It is the Fifth Way…with a bullet!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled de-programming, already in progress.
36/ Nigel – I’m intrigued, tells us about the written material.
(Extra points for gratitious sex and senseless violence). At the risk of repeating myself:
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn Pro.” – Hunter S. Thompson
Okay, I don’t know how to repair the design flaws, as soon as this discussion reaches 300 posts I am going to start a new blog and move the discussion there, it won’t cause any trouble. A new and refreshing look should do things well.
I realized that Robert Burton is similar to a Black Hole.
“Black holes are the objects which “escape speed” exceeds the speed of light. Nothing can escape, even the light.
Gravitational time dilation around the black holes becomes dramatic. Time essentially slows down.
What happens to you if you fall in a black hole? You cross the “event horizon” and you don’t notice anything unusual. …Everything seems normal, things follow laws of inertia, they going in straight lines you don’t feel any forces you don’t feel anything unusual.
When you crossed the “event horizon” because of the gravitational time dilation has become infinite (that means you are already in the infinite future of the folks back home), that means you can’t possibly go back. All the eternity had passed back home and you don’t notice anything.
If you were to fall in a black hole this what would happen: you speed would become slower and slower and come to the stop and you freeze in the horizon.
Sooner or later you’re going to be in trouble though – sooner or later the forces are going to become so dramatic the curvature of space-time is going to be so big that you will be stretched from head to foot as you fall and compressed the other way and eventually you will be thorn apart.”
Richard Wolfson
60 somebody
It seems very strange to me now that I have been chasing after false prophets which have led me far from my own path.
I did not join because I was vulnerable, I joined because I found the ideas of 4th way interesting. I was promised that the Teacher is a student of Ouspensky’s student. That he teaches the System of Ouspensky which for me was almost a science – psychology, cosmology. A science and not a religion I was after. How did I end up in the religious cult? When did I deviated?
————————————————————————————
Somebody, I resonate with what you say about the initial motivations in joining what I thought was a REAL 4th way school. I loved Ouspensky’s books since I was 18 when I first got a copy and then waited 8 more years until the “esoteric” school was found through a bookmark a friend of mine gave me.
When I joined the FOF I liked the people, the “students” , they seemed sincere, but there were also little alarms going off here and there, some of the things were just weird, like hearing about Armageddon, then the Fall of California, the exercises, and the somewhat puritanical looks my fellow American “students” seemed to have.
But in honesty I must also say I was probably perfect food for a cult, my life was a mess and I was desperate to find something that had some objective meaning, a path to help me escape.
I sure made compromises, shutting down my inner voice; after some time and having become more indoctrinated, there was always a logical explanation for my moral discomfort: surely it was my false personality, or I was just experiencing negative emotions! the “system” had an explanation for everything, my inner voice became my enemy. How long can one person can go on with such inner split and not crash?
Leaving the “school” was reaffirming my own voice, my self trust.
Fuck the “teacher”!
Words of the Day
This partly explains why Robert Burton was able to keep his cult going. He absolute depended on the sycophancy of his followers.
sycophant: a servile self-seeking flatterer
sycophancy: obsequious flattery
obsequious: marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness
somebody 71
The last part of your description reminds me of the story I heard the other day of a friend of a friend’s bad salvia trip. The poor guy suddenly found himself turned into a fold in an oppressive universe entirely made of infinite folds, and experienced the unbearable pain of being subjected to a powerful and seemingly endless process of compression and stretching. The trip was so vivid that he came out of it with the very unsettling suspicion that it was actually a glimpse of the grim nature of reality, while life as we know it, is just a simulation, or a dream layed on top of it. Something à la Matrix, you might say.
Salvia is definitely not a recreational drug.
Anyway, maybe he visited the place where people like Robert spend their ten thousand years between lifetimes, all folded and squashed in a giant black hole. That might explain a few things!
He “absolutely depended,” is what I meant. :) By the way, about the expression of anger…
One thing that I find fascinating about this blog is that — even here — there’s some resistance to the expression of anger. In the fof, we were absolutely “programmed” (I can’t think of a better word for this) to have a negative reaction to anger.
So any time I see someone object to an angry statement on the blog, I immediately wonder if that’s just the “Fellowship student” coming out in us. It’s still hiding there, ready to pounce at the first opportunity. This part of us doesn’t care that the message in the anger is positive and helpful and informative, and that it’s part of the healing process, and part of the process of seeing ourselves and the world around us more clearly, and without denial. It’s anger, and I’ll have no part of that.
That is programming.
Now, what I’m referring to here is not “hate”, which is a very different emotion. I think someone talked about the “Burton hating” on the blog.
Hmm.
To me, that sounds like a dysphemism. It tends to downplay any legitimate and informative statements about Burton that can help us see more clearly what the cult is doing to people’s lives.
What I see here is not “Burton hating,” but people expressing what they feel about the man after years or decades of feeling they could NOT express what they feel about him. This is one of the most positive outgrowths of this blog — and one of the most positive outgrowths of “leaving the school,” leaving the Fellowship, leaving the cult.
I think some people have expressed “hatred” in this blog. It’s an emotion, and it has an energy to it, and sometimes I think the person who was banned fits that description. So, yes, the entire discussion of whether the Sheik should “ban” someone does cross into that gray area of, “Is this hate? And if it is, do we want the blog to fall into that sort of discussion?”
Seems like an honest question and concern to me.
But the vast majority of statements on the blog are — to me — a graceful breath of fresh air. It gives me hope that others will find a way out of the mess they find themselves in — a mess called the Fellowship of Friends.
Thanks for your comments, veramente (72) and somebody (71) and all of you.
White House bars loaded labels from words of war
By Matthew Lee
AP 4/25/08
Don’t call them Jihadists any more. And don’t call al Qaeda a movement. The Bush administration has opened a new front in the war on terrorism, this time targeting language. The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility. For example, while Americans may understand jihad to mean holy war, it is in fact a broader Islamic concept of the struggle to do good. U.S. officials may be unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims”, says a Homeland Security Report.
“Regarding ‘jihad’, even if it is an accurate to reference the term, it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have and damages relations with Muslims around the world,” the report says.
Language is critical in the war on terror says another document, an internal “official use only” memorandum circulating through Washington titled, “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication.”
“It’s not what you say but what they hear,” the memo says.
veramente (72),
What you found as a Real Fourth Way school was actually a cheap plaster frame expertly covered with gold leaf.
It tended to fool like pyrite.
Arthur (77)
What you found as a Real Fourth Way school was actually a cheap plaster frame expertly covered with gold leaf.
It tended to fool like pyrite.
———————————————————
Arthur, remember the story about “real” knowledge being quantifiable.
Gurdjeff’s explained this as a metaphor: knowledge being a definite amount of gold you could use to paint well only a certain amount of vases, but if you tried to spread the knowledge/gold too thin you would have many vases badly painted.
This was a big attraction for me and made me wanting to have access to this knowledge.
Fool’s gold?
BTW The Fool is one of my favorite tarot cards. But this is another subject.
Hi.
the petition is alive and well and as Susan says it wont be too long now.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
If it comes to a vote about Greg…….Im for keeping him here!!!! No offense to you Sheik but his recent reply to you was too funny, and we will all be dead soon anyway!
Talking of funny here’s a supposedly true insurance claim which reminds me of an adventure I once had while chainsawing up a tree.
”
A man was in a work-related accident, and had to fill out an insurance claim. The insurance company contacted him and asked for more information. This was his response:
“I am writing in response to your request for additional information for block number 3 of the accident reporting form. I put ‘poor planning’ as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust the following detail will be sufficient. I am an amateur radio operator and on the day of the accident, I was working alone on the top section of my new 80-foot tower. When I had completed my work, I discovered that I had, over the course of several trips up the tower, brought up about 300 pounds of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the now unneeded tools and material down by hand, I decided to lower the items down in a small barrel by using a pulley, which was fortunately attached to the gin pole at the top of the tower. Securing the rope at ground level, I went to the top of the tower and loaded the tools and material into the barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the 300 pounds of tools. You will note in block number 11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh only 155 pounds. Due to my surprise of being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rather rapid rate of speed up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken
collarbone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. “Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold onto the rope in spite of my pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of tools hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Devoid the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed approximately 20 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in block number 11.
As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, and the lacerations of my legs and lower body. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell onto the pile of tools and, fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the tools, in pain, unable to stand and watching the empty barrel 80 feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind. I let go of the rope…”
J x.
Go beyond form towards that which is formless…..Nigel.
76 WhaleRider: “White House bars loaded labels from words of war.”
Yes — as lauralupa pointed out earlier — the comparisons of the F.O.F. to current events are interesting, too… definitely another way we can “see ourselves” — see what the fof is all about… by taking a closer look at history, current events, and other cults.
From the article that WhaleRider posted: “It’s not what you say but what they hear,” the memo says.
So, translated… The goal is not to convey information or to enlighten people, but to obfuscate and dis-inform.
That is the Fellowship of Friends. And sorry for saying this again and again, but I can’t help but point out the irony in this… that the intent of Robert Burton is not to enlighten you. He does not want you to be enlightened. He does not want you to awaken.
Of course, you may have tossed the Fourth Way out the window, or set is aside somewhere, but whatever those terms might mean to you — enlightenment or awakening — Robert Burton definitely doesn’t want you to experience them.
That’s not a shock to anyone who is aware of what’s happening in the cult, but it can be a shock to someone who is still in the fof and stuck in the group think. That realization is one of the first steps toward “leaving the school.”
79 jack
Hey Jack. Not wanting you to feel deprived, you can take in your fill of Greg and his wisdom on either his personal site, which he advertised here, or the Greater Fellowship. Seems like a win-win to me.
Talking about cults. Here is another “Waco” :) David Koresh
“Koresh stated that he had been told by God to procreate with the women in the groups to establish a “House of David,” his “Special People.” This involved married couples in the group dissolving their marriages and agreeing that only Koresh could have sexual relations with the wives.
A video clip of an interview between Koresh and an Australian television station notes that he was accused of impregnating the aged widow of the founder of Branch Davidianism. He sarcastically said that if the charges were true, if he had “made an 82 year-old woman pregnant… I do miracles, I’m God!”
On February 27, 1993 the Waco Tribune-Herald began what it called the “Sinful Messiah” series of articles. It alleged that Koresh had physically abused children in the compound and had taken underage brides, even raping one of them. Koresh was also said to advocate polygamy for himself, and declared himself married to several female residents of the small community. According to the paper, Koresh declared that he was entitled to at least 140 wives, that he was entitled to claim any of the females in the group as his, that he had fathered at least a dozen children by the harem and that some of these mothers became brides as young as twelve or thirteen years old.
Carol Moore, author of the 1994 online report “The Massacre Of The Branch Davidians—A Study Of Government Violations Of Rights, Excessive Force And Cover Up”, published by The Committee For Waco Justice, writes that Rick Ross, whom she described as a “deprogrammer” and “convicted jewel thief,” told the Houston Chronicle that Koresh was:
“your stock cult leader. They’re all the same. Meet one and you’ve met them all. They’re deeply disturbed, have a borderline personality and lack any type of conscience…No one willingly enters into a relationship like this. So you’re talking about deception and manipulation (by the leader), people being coached in ever so slight increments, pulled in deeper and deeper without knowing where it’s going or seeing the total picture.”
jack 79 – that’s an old Irish story-joke I heard on a Clancy Brothers live recording many years ago (1960’s?).
I also proudly proclaim that I was in a cult. The word ‘cult,’ like another four lettered word, ‘drug,’ is not clearly defined in our culture.
Where does a cult end and a religion start? According to The Guru Papers’ metrics, the Roman Catholic Church is a cult. Mormonism would fall under Eileen Barker’s definition of cult.
Tell me the difference between food and a drug: sugar is more refined than cocaine and coffee is incredibly psycho-active.
It’s a real fun game to play with people who think all ‘cults’ and all ‘drugs’ are bad.
And what’s this about the FoF being a ‘fake’ version of a 4th Way School? No, if you read any of the non-hagiographical writings on Gurdjieff, you’ll see he was seen as a fake, misogynist, and he fooled around with his students (sexually and otherwise). I CHOSE Burton because he seemed to fit the archetype of a Gurdjieffian guru. Some of you actually bought all the refinement stuff???
85 Walter Tanner
“he seemed to fit the archetype of a Gurdjieffian guru.”
Actually he must have fit YOUR archetype of a Gurdjieffian guru. Not mine, and I’m GUESSING not many other people’s.
“Cult” is really not that hard to define. They all have commonalities in technique and dynamics in relation to guru and members. But, of course, size makes a difference. Once the cult reaches a certain size it may become a mainstream religion, yet still contain the cult dynamic of the organism retaining power at all costs, with no real conscience connected. For me the only positive use of a “cult” would be the proactive use of learning to find the gold in the shit and then getting out of dodge. But that’s something the cult doesn’t teach,god forbid, rather it’s something, if one is lucky, that one is forced to develop in spite of the cult dogma and fear mongering.
83 somebody
Did some research on Carol Moore. She’s all over the place with connections to Scientology proxies, flame web sites and the new and improved Cult Awareness Network, which was bought out by one of the Scientology proxies and turned into it’s opposite.
“getting out of dodge” should be “getting out of Dodge” (as in Dodge City).
Thanks for taking out the trash, Shiek.
It is easy enough to ignore until the stench becomes overwhelming.
Funny when it happens to somebody else, eh Jack?
The following is part of the advertising spiel of a group who have been spamming me!
————————————————————————————————————-
Christs Light Update – “Rapture Energy”
We hope you are enjoying your free Christs Light Techniques.
These “End Times” are stress filled times. However, people report that by
using their mantras in daily activities, they are able to quickly relax
after encountering difficult situations.
People using the Christs Light Techniques have also reported flying dreams.
Flying dreams mean one’s Holy Spirit, (Light Body) is experiencing “Rapture
Energy”. When one’s physical body goes to sleep, one’s Light Body awakens.
Dreams of flying indicates one is having “Rapture Experiences” and
practicing for Ascension in their Light Body.
Rapture Experiences prepare one for the prophesized time when those who are
ready will use a worldwide surge in Rapture Energy to transform their
physical body to the energies of their Light Body and transport their Light
Body, (Holy Spirit), using Rapture Energy to the Promised Land.
Using Rapture Energy during the End Times to go to the Promised Land is
written in legends and scriptures around the world, here are 2 examples.
. Hopi Native American legends – “Kachina gods”, and those using
“Rapture Energy”, leave the “Red Sun” during the “End Times” and go to the
“Promised Land” of the “Blue Sun”.
. Christian scriptures (Matthew 24) – Two will be in a field/mill,
one uses “Rapture Energy” to travel to the “Promised Land” and the other is
left behind in the “End Times”.
The worldwide proliferation of low frequency wireless energies now prevents
most people from remembering their dreams, however we have created a way for
people to enjoy a “Rapture Experience” in the comfort of their home by
watching a DVD and then listening to a CD.
Good karma enables people to experience “Rapture Energy” and good karma
comes with every dvd and cd, as a major portion of sales proceeds
immediately goes to help AIDS orphans.
The energies of good karma enable one to “open up” and activate their Soul’s
energies during two spiritual energy awakening exercises in the DVD.
Then, the Star Children CD gives the ancient wisdom about how to use Rapture
Energy to cleanse and activate one’s Soul, (3rd Eye). Once one’s Soul is
ready, one is shown the ancient way to access the wonders in one’s Light
Body, (or Holy Spirit), and to fly with the Light Bodies of Archangelic
Eagles, as described around the world in historical records, legends and
scriptures like “Exodus”.
One may consciously enjoy the “Rapture Experience”, simply by listening to
the “Star Children CD” after watching the Guardians of Ancient Knowledge
DVD.
The new DVD and just released CDs below may be ordered at……….
____________________________________________________________________
I can furnish anyone with the address if they are interested.
jx
88 Mick Danger.
Call me what ever you want….
I know who and what I am…..
Telling me to fuck off or calling me a faggot cunt doesnt change that.
Now if I believed it, or my own opinion of myself could be swayed so easily I’d really be in trouble.
” how many times should I forgive my brother while we are together in the way?”.
jx
90 jack
I think he was referring to Greg, but you embraced it. And as I was saying, there are two other sites where you could easily provoke the aforementioned epithets if you’re indifferent or attracted to it. One can see here from the past pages that “fuck” or “cunt” really isn’t the objection, as many have used them. But the extreme venom, and it’s direction and incoherence is not meant to either make a point, enlighten or help, however indirectly.
I think the point he was making at the end of the post was it’s not funny when it’s directed to oneself, and it’s easier to dismiss it when it is someone else.
If I’m wrong, Mick, please let me know.
72 veramente
Fuck the “teacher”!
_________________
One thing is certain about FOF, especially about Apollo, is that there is a lot of sex energy. It seems to me that this energy can be addictive and make you high for a long period of time if you have your daily fix. This is all there is to it. Create sex energy, exchange sex energy, have wine, get into the flirt, affair, or orgy. It takes a while to figure out that one is living in the sexually overly stimulated community. For some other communities or work environments it may seem as a sexual harassment. For many this is the main attraction to the events, to the teacher and to each other. So the gravity of this cult may not be so much in brainwashing as in sexual addictions.
94 somebody
I think there are a number of “hooks”, depending one’s own particular weaknesses and proclivities. The sex energy is one of them, but I don’t think it can be nailed down with generalities. The idea of a cult includes having several different lures on the line to attract the different fishies.
I remember seeing a little boy once playing in a sandbox, he did something with the placement of some objects in front of him and laughed with utter joy and ecstasy at the success of it; then he did something absolutely divine and miraculous, he clapped for himself… He had no time in the one and only moment to wait for a Sunday meeting, nor did he have time for ‘mirrors of approval’ to fix themselves enough so as to not show the cracks whom would normally fall to pieces when hung on the walls at ‘the real homes’; he had no time to wait for a phone call or a blog entry approval or remark to feel better or ‘right’: he simply knew within that in between space, that his own existence meant just enough RIGHT NOW to do anything he came here to ever do and that the only applause he’d ever really remember himself hearing from this life’s living would be just how many he got from himself…
Thanks Unoanimo !
Hope you did it for yourself.
Beyond “approval or remark to feel better”,
pure, simple and immediate Appreciation.
75 Rear View Mirror, Fresh air indeed! Thank you for your many perspectives!
Jack, glad to know the petition is alive and well. I see your point with Greg but we are guests here and can very well understand the Sheik saying “out”. There does seem to be a tremendously fast trigger Hardtruth and when you are dealing with guns you better know how to control them. Any form of aggression is a gun in disguise and we do hurt each other. What I heard was that the Sheik was simply asking a question but the pressure seems to get at you before you can even answer. That is difficult. What pattern of authority was so strongly implanted that any kind of similar imposition triggers such reaction? If we knew your story we would of course understand but understanding our stories is not enough. Taking responsibility for them is also necessary. Unfortunately you cannot answer me but that’s alright because I am trying to see these things in myself as well. We spend the first nine years of our lives winding what we then spend sixty or seventy years unwinding. It is good to be able to unwind a lot of it with each other’s support but wether you come back or not is to me primarily a business between you and the Sheik.
I haven’t even payed for such a long time that I would not even consider I have any priviledges here. Could I ask how the money is handled here? What or who or how much or simply, how does it work? If we don’t give any money does the site get any from other sources? Sorry for my internet ignorance but there it is.
Hello Elena ~
You wrote ~
“…but we are guests here and can very well understand the Sheik saying “out”…”
_________________________________________________________________
Whenever things like this happen, for myself and for you, try and not ‘group’ (frame) things together so quickly, that could be another “gun” (?) The Sheik is not Robert and every man who says ‘out’ is not Robert either: when Robert said “out” to your inner voice’s freedom to experiment and merge with the external world, what else could that event have been pointing to, if, say, the universe itself was to be held responsible for such an event?
For me, we are all “guests” in each others lives and make choices and forms to dance this obvious and sometime subtle invitation outwards… Please remember that the Sheik also came to us, the F.O.F., as a “guest” and was later so open and kind as to stay with the feeling he had leaving the prospective meeting: surely something rung his ‘conscience bell’ otherwise he’d not be slaving over this passion called ‘The F.O.F. Discussion’ for over a year now…
You know, he’s being hosted by us too; love works both ways, otherwise it’s just a divorce pretending to be a marriage.
_____________________________
L.t.y.E.
For You ~
89 jack
I think what is most admirable and exciting about that stuff is that they
“have created a way for people to enjoy a “Rapture Experience” in the comfort of their home”
Now that’s what I’m looking for!!!
Actually, what may be sad is that the folks running those adds could possibly be becoming wealthy.
I’m so enjoying this blog, that is the company of all of you! It’s fun!
Uno, I do like your tone and before I forget, much enjoyed your previous post on Robert’s female and our masculinity! I mean women’s! It is a good look at how it inverts or reverts.
On being the Sheik’s guest I stand by what I said. It is by far his priviledge. I would in no way make conditions on him in that sense, I’d rather leave together with the rest of us, but no conditions. He has been a wonderful host! Inviting him to consider things would be something else and there is no where to go, it is good to have such an impartial arbiter or you’d thrown me out eons ago!
I cannot listen or watch youtubes up here, but will look at it when the time comes around. Thanks.
Could we meet? I’d like me book, and a good pillow fight! or snow fight if it were the season!
Yes, fun. :) And it’s true love.
TRUE love.
unoanimo 65
“Just a few days ago, after the Blog’s Part 33 began, a few news-articles floated to the surface of the pond that seemed oddly in sync to the ‘Nature’ of what’s been happening in here”
et voila le plat du jour
http://rinf.com/alt-news/media-news/pentagon-propaganda-worse-than-we-thought/3162/
The deception and propaganda trail continues (my previous post with the link seems to have disappeared, so here is the whole article from RINF:COM):
Pentagon Propaganda Worse Than We Thought
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
By John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton – PR Watch |
David Barstow of the New York Times has written the first installment in what is already a stunning exposé of the Bush Administration’s most powerful propaganda weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq: the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow has painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon’s ministers of propaganda.
Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and acting under Clarke’s tutelage and development.
One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, has called the effort “psyops on steroids.” As Barstow reports, “Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ’surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’ … Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war.”
Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow’s story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. “Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.”
Barstow spent two years digging, using the Freedom of Information Act and attorneys to force the Bush Administration to release some 8,000 pages of documents now under lock and key at the New York Times. This treasure trove should result in additional stories, giving them a sort of “Pentagon Papers” of Iraq war propaganda.
In 1971, when the Times printed excerpts of the Pentagon Papers on its front page, it precipitated a constitutional showdown with the Nixon Administration over the deception and lies that sold the war in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers issue dominated the news media back then. Today, however, Barstow’s stunning report is being ignored by the most important news media in America — TV news — the source where most Americans, unfortunately, get most of their information.
Joseph Goebbels, eat your heart out. Goebbels is history’s most notorious war propagandist, but even he could not have invented a smoother PR vehicle for selling and maintaining media and public support for a war: embed trusted “independent” military experts into the TV newsroom. As with most propaganda, the key to the success of this effort was the element of concealment, as these analysts and the Bush administration hid the fact that their talking points and marching orders were coming directly from the Pentagon.
The use of these analysts was a glaring violation of journalistic standards. As the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists explains, journalists are supposed to:
* Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
* Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
* Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
* Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
* Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
* Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
* Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money.
The networks using these analysts as journalists shamelessly failed to vet their experts and ignored the obvious conflicts of hiring a person with financial relationships to companies profiting from war to be an on-air analyst of war. They acted as if war was a football game and their military commentators were former coaches and players familiar with the rules and strategies. The TV networks even paid these “analysts” for their propaganda, enabling them to present themselves as “third party experts” while parroting White House talking points to sell the war.
Now that Barstow has blown their cover, the TV networks have generally refused to comment about this matter. Further compounding their violations of the public trust, they are blacking out coverage of the New York Times exposé, no doubt on advice of their own PR and crisis management advisors.
Since the 1920s there have been laws passed to stop the government from doing what Barstow has exposed. It is actually illegal in the United States for the government to propagandize its own citizens. As Barstow’s report demonstrates, these laws have been repeatedly violated, are not enforced and are clearly inadequate. The U.S. Congress therefore needs to investigate this and the rest of the Bush propaganda campaign that sold the war in Iraq.
The attack and occupation of Iraq continues, with no end in sight. Estimates of the number of Iraqi dead range from the hundreds of thousands to more than a million. The cost to American taxpayers will eventually be in the trillions of dollars. More than 4,000 US soldiers have lost their lives, and this is just a part of the horrific toll of mental and physical disability that the war is taking on hundreds of thousands of troops and their families.
This war would never have been possible had the mainstream news media done its job. Instead, it has repeated the Big Lies that sold the war. This war would never have been possible without the millions of dollars spent by the Bush Administration on sophisticated and deceptive public relations techniques such as the Pentagon military analyst program that David Barstow has exposed. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Victoria Clarke, who designed and oversaw this Pentagon propaganda machine, now works as a commentator for TV network news. She may have changed jobs and employers since leaving the Pentagon, but her work remains the same.
John Stauber is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
More on propaganda, excerpt from the article “Propaganda as Institutional Self-Deception”
When Siegfried Kracauer was commissioned in 1945 by the US government to survey Nazi newsreels, he concluded that one characteristic that separated fascist and democratic propaganda was a complete disregard for truth. Democracies, he argued, have to tell a “good story” and “refer to the truth even if they defy it.” In Germany, on the other hand, “where all powers are actually monopolized by the Nazi rulers and their allies in the sphere of great business, truth has lost any authority of its own; the sole concern is to maintain and extend their monopoly through appropriate propaganda that unhesitatingly confuses truth and untruth to these ends. Thus truth is put in the same position as untruth: it becomes a pure means, it is no longer recognized as truth” — something to consider, especially in an era when fake news is real, and real news is fake.
Anthropologist and psychologist Gregory Bateson argued that deceptions behind the negotiating of the Treaty of Versailles set World War II in motion. His point is that communications are cybernetic: they exist in a feedback system, and lying always comes back to haunt the liar. There is no running from hypocrisy.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/propaganda_instutional_selfdeception
In reference to the little polluted pond called FOF, clearly we see no signs of a thriving or developing “conscious democracy”. What we have instead is “conscious” fascism, with one single person (aka “the Teacher”, or “the Cheater”) monopolizing all power and authority, “with a complete disregard for truth, his sole concern being to maintain and extend his monopoly through appropriate propaganda”.
Hail Robert!
103/lauralupa
Awesome, woman!
somebody, here is a nice little animated presentation on black holes for us science neophytes.
What a fascinating universe we live in!
http://www.thinktechnologies.com/portfolio/demos/Blackhole.html
94 Somebody
One thing is certain about FOF, especially about Apollo, is that there is a lot of sex energy. It seems to me that this energy can be addictive and make you high for a long period of time if you have your daily fix. This is all there is to it. Create sex energy, exchange sex energy, have wine, get into the flirt, affair, or orgy. It takes a while to figure out that one is living in the sexually overly stimulated community. For some other communities or work environments it may seem as a sexual harassment. For many this is the main attraction to the events, to the teacher and to each other. So the gravity of this cult may not be so much in brainwashing as in sexual addictions.
————————————————————-
Indeed the sex energy was there…and how more tantalizing (at least in my times in the FOF) when we were restrained by the no-sex exercise unless you were married.
All these nice pretty people with ties and buttoned shirts, imagination running wild!!
The French, the Italians, the Germans, and the Americans etc., what a menu of possibilities…
But I agree with Bruce about the numbers of “hooks”, sex is one of them, perhaps even a distraction in some ways…
Bro – I can only recall one time when you were wrong, and that was long ago.
Besides, you beat that rap didn’t you? After all, they were only allegations.
Don’t hesitate to call if there is an actual crime-in-progress. (You too, Shippers!)
veramente (106),
Sex energy and the fellowship of friends. When the teaching center that I was in was closing down, I mentioned to the co-house manager, that I was going to Las Vegas. She mentioned that Las Vegas wasnt a place for somebody like me to go. I was photographed a couple of times of being “sexy looking” and looking a little like George Gurdjieff. I am centered in the Jack of Clubs, somewhat of a tramp and I like women. In other words, Las Vegas would be my undoing. Ha, what a joke. If I had known Robert Burton was ‘sucking’ I would have put more effort into breaking the ‘no sex rule’ and doing more of the thing that sounds like sucking. Actually, the reason for me being cast out with the rest of the Lucifers had a lot to do with sex.
Oh, the Jack of Clubs was giving to me to work with, I guess. I’m still working with it?
The “blackhole” reminded me of some of the Salvia experience reports. They wrote how they were being pulled forcefully down (gravity) and to the left. Some reported that they reach a point they refused to go (Wormhole). They knew something was beyond that threshold. A doorway to other demensions of space and time.
jack 89:
“The worldwide proliferation of low frequency wireless energies now prevents most people from remembering their dreams…”
So why even bother making the attempt to empower yourself? Let us do it for you!
(Now there’s one for the books…ELF is killing bees, too. Sounds like iPhone envy to me. This is classic Marketing 101. Make the consumer feel inadequate and then sell them something to compensate.)
I think it is the low frequency of self exploration in our modern world that prevents people from remembering their dreams and making contact with their own wireless divinity. Nowadays people don’t have the attention span to sit with their dreams to better understand them and thus outsource (project, transfer) their inner guides…the answer is always elsewhere, provided by some “special person” in some foreign land…or for $49.95 (plus $4.95 S&H) you can have the prepackaged experience in the comfort of your own home…
The dream world is that foreign land populated by all the shamans you’ll ever need. Home is where your heart is…within each of us.
Somebody, veramente, Bruce,
Yes, one of the hooks is that it’s a type of “social club,” which may sound great at first glance. Guys and girls checking each other out. Seems like a lot of fun. Count me in.
But overall, how effective was it for meeting people? For some, maybe it worked fairly well — occasionally — especially if they bought into the program and presented a certain facade. But over the years I’ve heard mostly complaints from disappointed customers, such as, “I’d never hang out with these people in real life.” –or– “I’d never visit this god-forsaken place if it weren’t for the school” etc.
When you consider the thousands of ways you can meet people, it’s pretty pathetic and desperate to use the fof as a type of social club — especially considering the huge investment of time and money. But unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what I did, and what most people have done.
In truth, though, the whole “sex energy” thing? Yes, a bit like one big party at times, and occasionally fun. But you know… To look for it THERE? And to ignore what we had to ignore to get it there? That is one sad and lonely group of people.
April 13, 2003
“One thing I have been wondering about is how much time elapses between lifetimes for ascending souls.”
Nov 2, 2003
“Curiously, we are the only people on the Earth attempting to stay out of imagination.”
veramente 78
Funny you should mention tarot. A kind friend just lent me her copy of Jodorowsky’s “La via dei tarocchi” and I am in the process of reading it with gusto. I highly recommend it, and I’ll try to write more about it later when I have some spare time.
Unfortunately this book has no english edition yet, and now that I think of it, if anyone in cyberspace is interested in sponsoring me, I would love to transale it! :.)
Following is an Amazon customer review of the spanish edition.
(Elena, I think you might enjoy this book. It gives a very different and much more interesting and spiritual perspective (why am I not surprised?) on the symbolism of cards that the one we were taught to value so highly in the Fellowship!)
“Forget everything you’ve learned about Tarot up to now – this is the Zen Slap of Tarot books. Don’t wait for it to come out in English, this may never happen. It is well worth struggling through the Spanish – I hear this book is also available in French and Italian, if you find one of those is easier.
Jodorowsky has obviously been contemplating symbols all his life, not only reading Tarot but as an artist and a film maker. He sees the deck as a mandala of consciousness and each card in a spread as notes in a piece of music. This is Tarot de Marseilles, the old-style deck. (Jodorowsky did a restoration with Philippe Camoin, which a friend of mine described like this: “It’s like they blew the dust off the Cover!” This book does that, as well. The Jodo-Camoin deck is what is used in the book, but this book is useful for any Marseilles deck.) The cards are interpreted numerologically, by the pictures, colors, by the little leaves on the pips – he finds meaning in all of it, it is consistent, well-reasoned, very insightful – it’s a beautiful thing, unlike any other Tarot book, it feels RIGHT….”
Rear View Mirror 111
You are a genious.
‘uno’ 99 For You ~
another icaro and
what is said
of beauty…
Reminiscences on truthfulness and procedure in the Fellowship
(X and Y are best friends and staying at The Academy)
You know says X “Sometimes Y and I talk about mental illness together, Y is studying Psychology you know, he tries to figure out which mental illnesses describe Robert best.
And then we both pray that Robert will do something to prove that he is conscious. We pray for a small sign, anything…”
There’s a pause, as it enlarges we both divide attention… and change the subject.
X hangs up the phone. “That was Y. You know that he was going back home next month to finish university, well Robert has told him that he may not, or he will be asked to leave”.
We are quiet. This is big. Y will be deeply bonded through this sacrifice.
~
Later (X & Y are now Robert’s right hand men)
“We don’t feel that G is really ‘with the program” says X, he is in his twenties- G is a powerful deeply caring woman who has been with Robert since before he was born. “Why?” I ask;
“She questions everything, It takes too long to get anything done, Robert is operating very quickly at the moment… she’s not up to speed, she will be retired” he says dryly; “I have found someone else”
I feel sorry for G but understand: Robert’s sphere is unformatory many things happen which seem unfair or illogical, things that most students could not accept.
~
Later a scandal breaks in which it is revealed that X & Y have set up their own sex ring. They have convinced a surprisingly large number of amenable females to take part in ‘orgies’, and given them access to Roberts otherwise inordinately expensive events.
X admitted “I would have sex with anyone, any woman, it didn’t matter what she looked like; I was obsessed. Robert asked me if I was using the same techniques to persuade women to have sex with me as I had used in my job of persuading men to have sex with him. When I told him I was, he looked thoughtful and decided to take me off that particular duty.”
~
Asaf asks “Would you tell me what you know about Z’s harassment of female students whilst on travelling teacher trips? This is something we take very seriously”
I interject “I know this isn’t really the point, but Z’s behaviour seems oddly to Robert’s doesn’t it”? “Well that’s a totally different conversation” he replies quickly.
“ Yes, yes of course” I stutter knowing that Asaf is very busy;
perhaps he will have a chance to explain this later…
(seems oddly SIMILAR to)
103 and 104 are newly moderated.
Elena: The running of the blog requires no money, just my time. At the beginning of the blog I was hardly earning enough to pay my rent (and working my ass off even to earn that) and the donations came very much in handy, it was never meant as a coercive measure, neither was it something to buy privileges with, I have thanked and thank again anyone who donated, but it doesn’t buy you anything – it’s a voluntary donation.
And I keep on running this blog for you, nothing less, nothing more and nothing else. I do not claim not to have gained some knowledge and wisdom here, yet that was never the purpose. I will probably keep this thing going for as long as I am capable of, it’s not as time-consuming as it used to be and if you are all gaining from it, who am I to say ‘no’.
As to Greg, he was banned ages ago, he returned even with more venom than he had before, he was banned again, done.
As for being called a faggot cunt, well, I enjoyed that.
On words,
Father Earth and mother Sky (Egyptian “turn around”):
Hope this link works (could not find the usual shorter set of little gys!!!!!!)
By the way, any help welcome!
Love.
Ok, did not work!
Perhaps just pasting this on your Google or Youtube browser?
Original Blessing (Lecture 1, Topic 2)
Dear Esoteric Sheik et al
At the present time, I just wish to say how appreciative I am of the ‘blog’. I was educated right through to degree level, and then recently in teacher training, in England but ‘turned my back’ on literary studies to pursue my craft-form of precious-metal arts until I was ‘stretchered’ back to England, heavily sedated due to the low side of my bi-polar disorder (you might appreciate ‘Google: bi-polar affective disorder – artists’) in 1989 and, although Robert had said I could be on sick leave and rejoin the FOF, that never happened. I could not carry on employment for 3 1/2 years due to
this, and had to be content with study – visiting ‘The Bookshop’ in local Exmouth and getting psychology books and poetry. There were many times of temporary
‘awakening’ until this now-time of permanent Serendipity/Synchronicity/Serenity brought about just over a week ago. Yes, I have students, but I am a professional and will take no advantage in my role – I would lose my business anyway, which is too precious to me. There are many of you trying to climb out of the pain that was caused to you in the FOF and are in different phases of that recovery, the ‘blog’ definitely helping you with this. Blessings to you all…..Nigel.
Thanks, Anna.
“Robert asked me if I was using the same techniques to persuade women to have sex with me as I had used in my job of persuading men to have sex with him.”
“I do not have to ask my students to love me more. I never knew such love in my life.”
Personally, I think if Robert Burton has anything conscious, it is ‘conscious whim’. Anyone who becomes so disappointed at the 49ers losing a game that he immediately takes off for Europe with his entourage is not engaging a level of restraint and ‘centres-muscularity’ (control, not indulgence, of his lower centres). At our teacher training (which took 3 years, part-time) we were taught to use ‘critical analysis’ i.e. reflecting upon our individual practice. You may find it interesting to note that Burton ‘awakened’ and then just kept on ‘floating up the man numbers ladder’. Gurdjieff talked about the stages – awakening, dying and being reborn. Therefore is Burton a conscious fake/charlatan. ………………….Nigel.
So that didn’t appear correctly. Does this thing work?
Sheik, I hope I have in no way offended you by asking and thank you for the reply. If you think by paying I think I am buying privileges then you offend me but I don’t think that is the case or is it? “it was never meant as a coercive measure, neither was it something to buy privileges with” That is certainly not what I understood, a donation is a donation right? No, it seems a very straight forward service and I am interested in understanding the deep money issues simply because I am no longer willing to let things happen in the community I belong to without knowing. I value your service and am willing to pay for it so I’d like to be clear what payment is required or if it is in fact magically free.
I hardly know what you mean by Greg or enjoying being called faggot cunt. Does that mean you are gay too? Like me? No need to answer that but I tell you we are all wonderfully weird! Not that it is so much fun struggling with it.
May this be an opportunity to again thank you deeply. I would love more of your participation whenever you are willing. Any voice that is not sculpted by our Cult personality gives us a lot of relativity so please do as the favor whenever we can honour your time! And still, I’ll send my two cents when things stabilize a little. We might not be quite a community but this is the closest I’ve ever been to one!
Laura, I’ll look for the book for sure. Did you ever check Ouspensky’s tarot book? It is beautiful too. Very short but essential. Allow me to tell a personal story amongst these wonderfully directed posts which I am seriously appreciating. I stopped using the tarot when I was around seventeen. It had become a normal thing for us to throw it and I’d learnt a little about how to interpret it but a day came when a friend`s wife asked me to throw it for her and it showed she’d die. I was unable to tell her the truth so I just spoke about changes and transformations. I never threw the cards again. She died in a motorcycle accident six months later.
Beautiful as they are and happy for those that find pleasure in them, I am now so involved in the expansion of now that the future is out of its range but very welcome. It is as though I had never really been here and here were a whole world of its own! Nevertheless, I am sure I will enjoy the book for I have enjoyed everything you have recommended us to read when I’ve been able to use youtube. Talking of which, these last posts of yours on the handling of news are excellent. Unfortunately, all of Girard’s work is exactly that kind of handling. I am still hoping he’ll recover himself, his wife and humanity but coming very close to Pandora on him as much as my self.
Here are some pictures that I need to look at, if you can see anything in them please share it with me:
I come home and wonder where mami is. I am about two years old. But it is neither mami nor home. “Mami,” screams the soul in soft tones and I run in, in perfect silence.
Essence has been attached to the skin like petals on a flower. Eyes delight in soft visions of your smile and each contour, each gesture, penetrates like rain in a sponge.
Desire then clings to the body like a cat on a tree running from a dog but I know it’s got to come down. I wait and look at it when I am not the cat or the tree.
Why let go of it? When the guitar is played music is perceived, longing gives birth to more longing and when you arrive a whole universe is healed.
I wish…
In reality a wound opens and bleeds.
I pick my self up and take my self to the cross. There I rest my self and leave.
Who am I then? How many?
Where do we ever stand when we are neither here nor there but here and there at the same time and penetrating and being penetrated are equally essential? Not quite equally. Where is the man that can open such heart or the woman that can close it?
How do you wish me to bear being what I am not and not being what I am? What is not and what is are not I either? True, life is an autumn in which everything but the essential is sacrificed. The law of gravity is not there by chance, everything is falling, falling, forever being welcomed by you.
Leaves fall from the tree but when do branches fall if not by lightning? And if not by lightning then on what mountain can I climb to offer my grace the sacrifice of these limbs? My so very invisibly visible limbs?
What the hands missed in warmth the eyes turned to fire
I burn and still it’s cold,
Breathing is shortened by the asma
But I see what I can no longer breathe.
It is not love but a carcinoma of loses.
Fixed to beauty and beauty fixed to loses.
Falling in love or in the recreation of loses
Where the I becomes fixed to what was not.
What cannot be healed by two can be healed by three
so I write in search for the third.
I’ve been watching this discussion for a few pages and it seems like there is no one from the current members of the Fellowship of Friends talking back to the detractors. That’s pretty impressive, no one out of a group of a thousand and a half people feels the need to defend his church. I gather some are reading all this.
Just for clarification, can the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion please repost an example of hardtruth’s (evidently Greg) venom, other than the reaction to your request/threat to block him?
How long does it usually take for a message to appear?
Elena: You have not offended me, neither have I aimed to offend you. The discussion is for free and always has been, as I said, I will keep it going. I am not gay but I have many gay friends, I genuinely enjoyed the fact that someone would consider ‘faggot’ to be an insult.
Wild Idea: A bit impatient, aren’t we? New comments have to be moderated first, if you have one approved comment, you can comment in real-time. It’s a precaution against spam and attacks on the blog (of which there have been a couple in the distant past).
Greg has been banned once before, he was here under the nick of ‘Graduates’, I don’t have the time to quote him for you, you will have to search the archives yourself if your concern is genuine.
Anybody knows if this happened this week in the Fellowship of friends?
A male student was asked to leave the fellowship of friends because he touched/ grabbed S.T.’s breast. S.T was formerly FR TH and is in her late eighties. His girlfriend has been asked to leave too, if she will not move out of his house.
Two more “students” leaving Apollo?
I wonder how many are still in and paying…..!
Anybody who can share some numbers, please?
Wild Idea,
I’ll try to explain. Current Fellowship of Friends students have come on and tried to defend their former Fourth Way School and now Church (not sure whether it’s Christian).
And yes, they came up against Greg too. Greg is the sort that likes to thrust the sword up to the hilt and twist. And yes, others have touched swords with Greg.
The exchange between former and current members is easy to describe. The Current Members are like Educably Retarded people trying to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to Einstein. It was horrible and disgusting to endure.
I hope that helps.
114 lauralupa
veramente 78
Funny you should mention tarot. A kind friend just lent me her copy of Jodorowsky’s “La via dei tarocchi” and I am in the process of reading it with gusto. I highly recommend it, and I’ll try to write more about it later when I have some spare time.
Unfortunately this book has no english edition yet, and now that I think of it, if anyone in cyberspace is interested in sponsoring me, I would love to transale it! :.)
————————————————————————
Lauralupa, you would be perfect for translating Jodorowsky’s book, you write so well!
In the meantime I can also recommend another book on tarots from Angeles Arrien, The Tarot Handbook: Practical Applications of Ancient Visual Symbols.
I never got into the Ouspensky’s tarot edition, could not relate with it.
More history needed? wrote:
“Two more “students” leaving Apollo?
I wonder how many are still in and paying…..!
Anybody who can share some numbers, please?”
————
Based on reports that I’ve heard, most people are no longer paying the usual $750 to $1,000 per month (which is an average when you include the spring and fall “donations”). If someone is having trouble making payments, all they need to do is ask for a break, and they can lower the payments indefinitely to about $100-$150 per month, and skip the spring and fall.
It’s become very lax in this regard. The intentions are obvious: Keep the membership numbers up so that it doesn’t become too obvious that public opinion is being swayed against Burton. How many people have worked out such a deal, I don’t know, but it’s an obvious effort on the part of “management” to weather the storm of negative opinion, and to keep the facade that nothing has changed, and that everything is fine.
But things have changed. And everything is not fine.
My guess is that the FOF 1) has some money set aside for such times, and 2) some of the more wealthy sycophants are helping to keep things afloat right now.
I’ve also heard that certain “assets” are currently being sold to help out.
By the way, something that I don’t believe has been mentioned on the blog yet… Robert Burton frequently would make statements such as [paraphrasing]: Make your teaching payments first, and Influence C will take care of the rest.
In other words: Sure, you may be a month behind on your rent, and a few weeks from being evicted from your apartment, but write that check for $1,545 (or thereabouts) for that Spring donation and April “teaching payment,” and everything will be fine.
Everything won’t be fine. This is one of the most underreported aspects of this cult — People do leave because of the heavy financial burden (in addition to everything else). However, people rarely will admit this because of the stigma attached to it. Rarely do we want to admit that we’re not independently wealthy and capable of buying whatever the hell we want, including a measly donation of approximately $1,500 to the Fellowship of Friends.
You hear about the people who visit Las Vegas and win $1,000 over the weekend. They share their story with everyone on Monday morning. We hear how they had a great time, and how Las Vegas is GREAT!
What you don’t hear on Monday morning is the story from that OTHER guy who LOST $1,000. The Fellowship of Friends is much like a casino. They know how to take your money. If you keep playing at the casino, eventually they will take back everything you won — if you ever did win something.
Wild Idea, your picture of the blog is good but like most of our pictures it is only looking at it from one angle. An appreciated one for that. For me the Sheik may have reacted quickly to Greg’s insults but I am with him that Greg does get into a terribly negative slant quicker than he can handle. As much as I’ve stood up for his participation I also believe there are issues in each one of us that we have to deal with on our own. That is, go and look for help where that help may be found. If you’ve a broken leg don’t look for a doctor in the blog. Any one of us here like Greg or myself can overpower the blog with our own ego and the possibility of a more open flow goes down the drain. While I stand by the idea of communities keeping their doors open without anihilating participants I also stand by the idea that a participant needs to know where his individuality is overpowering other’s freedom. It is a hard lesson but one gets it sooner or later with the help of those that call one insane. My suggestion would be that Greg, like any body else, is old enough to look at himself and apologize where he has been offensive and ask to be allowed to participate again if that is what he would really wish. I doubt the Sheik gives a real dam one way or another. I might be getting into conditioned structures but I do believe it is not structures what do us harm like in communities but the misuse of them, like in Cults.
I also doubt that the insiders are not participating here because they don’t have a Greg to pull their triggers. The insiders that remain are brainwashed enough to know that the only way they can keep living in a bubble is not allowing water to explode it. There is too much water washing over them though to feel at ease in any bubble.
Rear View,
The Fellowship of Friends is probably also relaxing the money issue because that makes those that still have any chances of remaining, believe that getting money from students is not the only real and blatant aim Robert Burton and the rest of enablers have ended up hving more desperately than anything else. It is so desperate that some of them are willing to finance the show so that they can continue exercising their little conscious ego on the condemned silent aspirants. It is not only the Fellowship they are paying for, it is trying to avoid the total collapse of their own systematically constructed personality exploiting other people’s trust.
Veramente (132),
I went straight to page 17 of the Ouspensky edition of the Tarot. It was lying on the floor gathering dust and cobwebs. Does that say something?
The fool is me. Wondering in the desert not knowing whence I came nor where I go. The sack I carry of valuable things is now become useless and meaningless, I keep going despite being bitten by the lower worlds. The crocodile (the robert burton’s) await me to lunch on my soul.
That’s my take anyway.
To the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
Of course my concern is genuine, but I don’t want to get banned for appearing to side with an unpopular person. I came across this blog around the time that someone going under the nick of alli babba or some such said something like f… you hardtruth because you are Greg and I was taken aback. But it did kind of put the hook in me for this site. I am wondering now why hardtruth was suddenly banned when he said something like that to you. You said that he had even more venom than he had before (#119) and yet you can’t seem to be bothered to find a recent quote to substantiate your statement (#129). I go to a lot of blogs and moderators generally tend to at least try and appear fair and neutral otherwise people stop using their blog.
I don’t think anyone should be banned unless they make dialogue impossible, which is a very high standard. Opinions I disagree with don’t make dialogue impossible. Long posts don’t make dialogue impossible. Abusive language doesn’t make dialogue impossible (although in my opinion it undermines dialogue and should be discouraged).
Greg keeps coming back because, like it or not, he belongs here and has something to say. Whether I agree with what he says or not or like what he says or not is beside the point.
136 Wild Idea
137 veronicapoe
People have short memories. While Greg has posted some thoughtful and useful analysis (which was never objected to) he also has posted some pretty off the wall, outrageous and threatening posts. When he was banned it pretty much got to the point where it was invective and little else, including, but not limited to telling people to shut the fuck up, cunt, faggot etc., while at the same time telling us dogmatically how we should get our shit together.
As for finding the mentioned examples for you, it behooves no one to go to the trouble of answering your own curiosity with our own time and energy except yourself. And as for banning, and your fear of being banned, I think other than Greg and maybe AG, it hasn’t happened, despite how hot the rhetoric has become in these thousands and thousands of posts.
You could also try a Google search using keywords like “A Fellowship of Friends discussion” + Greg + Graduates to better hone in on the pages that contain the posts we are talking about.
And one can go to the Greater Fellowship site where Greg prolifically propounds his dogma for any and all who wish to partake.
137 veronicapoe
“Greg keeps coming back because, like it or not, he belongs here”
The logic of that statement completely eludes me. This is based on what…that he was here?
If I intentionally walk into a ladies room, do I belong there?
Elena 126
Good! I’m not into divination either, and neither is Jodorowsky. Rather, he uses the tarot as a “mirror of the soul and therapeutic instrument”.
veramente and arthur, here are some things he writes about the fool:
“The fool represents the eternal traveller who walks around the world with no ties and no nationality. He could be a pilgrim going to a holy land. Or also, in the reductive sense adopted by many commentators, a mad man aimlessly walking towards destruction. If one chooses the strongest interpretation, one will see the fool as a creature free from all necessities, from any complex, from any judgement, beyond all prohibition, a being who has renounced all questions: enlightened, a god, a powerful giant amidst the flow of energy, an incommensurable liberating force…
his key sentence could be “all the ways are my way”
arthur, IMO you’ll beat the croc, and this last take fits you better!
love to all
Bruce, Veronicapoe, you both have such strong points. Yes, I also think he belongs here and sees many of the issues so clearly but I would also be inclined not to participate if this became a place where we can tell each other nothing but fuck off you faggot cunt. One of the points is that it is not about banning an individual but about banning certain behaviour. So we get into the delicacies of stating conditions. Maybe the Sheik could have warned him what the conditions are and then banned him if he or anyone else is unable to keep them, for no matter how free freedom of speech is, it is a freedom with responsibilities. The individual’s freedom stops where other people’s freedom and rights begin.
P.S. I meant to include Wild idea there too at the beginning.
143 Elena
I’m pretty sure he was warned before he was banned.
And if you recall, there was a poster who has had online contact with Greg for quite awhile, and we were given the info that he was banned at other 4th way sites that didn’t generally ban people. The poster predicted pretty early on that eventually Greg would create a situation where he would be banned here. It’s not even a possibility that this all just snuck up on him. The process covered several pages here.
But hey, fuck it, he can have my place.
Re. 130 More history needed?
To the best of my knowledge, membership was at 1,756 on April 15, 2008. Numbers continue to decrease each month. Looking back, membership was at 1,949 on Aug 15, 2007.
140/Bruce
Greg is an FOF casualty. I don’t know whether he’d agree with the statement, but the truth is, he spent a bunch of years of his life deeply influenced by what he’s called “a crappy little cult. ” Just like us.
Ergo, he belongs here. That’s why he keeps coming back. He’s struggling with his past and the existence of this forum gives him a place to do it.
149 veronicapoe
Of course that’s one way to look at it. I don’t don’t see it that way, and I’m not the person who banned him, or asked for him to be banned. Personally, for me, I wouldn’t share a space with him, even if it’s cyberspace. I have no problem with adapting myself to varied circumstances, and I have no problem with him being here. I just personally choose not to expose myself to sociopathic rants. We all make our choices.
No different than the above observation that except in a artificially created environment (FOF) I would never hang out with certain people.
And I don’t see Greg’s problems as due to the FOF.
But ultimately, it’s the Shiek’s decision, not yours or mine. And he isn’t burdened by the same inner bull shit that us ex-FOFers are. He has his own stuff, but it probably doesn’t include the same criteria with it’s guilt and moral shit.
Lauralupa (142),
“all the ways are my ways”, Hi, Neighbor!
Bruce, I’m with you. Greg was warned as a result of his personal, venomous attacks against Former Student, whom, regrettably, is no longer posting. Yesri Baba who confronted Greg’ style and was attacked is gone, too.
***Beware of anyone who is willing to tell you about their religion, but is unwilling to hear about yours.***
That’s how Greg presents himself. He’d make a great student of Alex Horn.
veronicapoe:
Would you feel differently if Greg posted information that others might be able to use to deduce your identity?
143 Elena (and others)
Greg was, and is, abusive. He was, and is, a caricature of abusiveness, really–he tries to be as offensive as possible. It’s a matter of principle for him–or so he imagines. You may have issues with abusiveness–you’re not the only one–and thinking of abusive people as puppy dogs who should be treated nicely so they become less abusive is part of the pathology of those who have been abused. Greg does not “belong here.” He belongs in therapy, but will not go there at least until all opportunities to abuse people have been cut off by people refusing to put up with it. So you do him no favor by enabling his behavior.
(Sound like someone else we know?)
156 Just Another Voice Out Here
“and thinking of abusive people as puppy dogs who should be treated nicely so they become less abusive is part of the pathology of those who have been abused.”
You hit the nail on the head. Enablers and sociopaths, the epitome of sybiosis.
155 whalerider
“He’d make a great student of Alex Horn”
I could be wrong, but I think Alex would have torn him a new one, at least one.
sorry, symbiosis
155/whalerider
He comes back, acts as he does, and gets banned over and over again, a circumstance he provokes because, so far as I can tell, he’s trying to work something out. I hear you, Bruce, that FOF didn’t cause him to be this way. But FOF figured significantly in his life, as it did in ours, and, in my opinion, he keeps coming back because he wants to interact with others, friends, acquaintances and strangers, who share this with him, and to be heard by us.
As to your hypothetical, whalerider, I hear your point. I’ll respond privately.
156/just another voice
I agree with 92% of your post. “Caricature of abusiveness” I agree with. “As offensive as possible” I agree with. “Doesn’t ‘belong here'” I disagree with. I have no fondness for abuse, believe me. I just fundamentally reject cutoff as the solution.
160 veronicapoe
“he keeps coming back because he wants to interact with others, friends, acquaintances and strangers, who share this with him, and to be heard by us”…
Right… by shitting all over them, there’ a sane approach.
161
““Doesn’t ‘belong here’” I disagree with. I have no fondness for abuse, believe me”.
Sounds to me that you have a very high tolerance for abuse, something must be fond of it.
If you were sitting in an office and one of your workers, when referring to you, would frequently say, “hey cunt, hey cunt”, out of your magnanimity are you going to put up with that shit?
This below story should make you wonder what Robert Burton has going on in the wine cellar and secret room(s) in the building where he lives.
Police say Austrian man raped daughter, fathered 6 children
Apr 27, 2008
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN
VIENNA, Austria (AP) – A woman who went missing in 1984 was found by police over the weekend and told investigators that she had been held by her father in a cellar, where she was repeatedly raped and gave birth to at least six children, police said Sunday.
Authorities said that the father may have told acquaintances and relatives that his daughter had joined a cult and disappeared.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, told reporters that the father, identified as Josef F., had been taken into custody. Police said Josef and his wife had been raising three of their daughter’s children. The other three grew up in the cellar.
“We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime,” Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.
The case unfolded after a gravely ill teenager was taken around April 19 to a hospital in the town of Amstetten, where she was found unconscious in the building where her grandparents live, police said. Told that the sick 19-year-old’s mother was missing, authorities publicly appealed for her to come forward.
Officers received a tip and picked up the mother near the hospital on Saturday, police said.
The mother, whom authorities identified as Elisabeth F., told officers that she had just been released after two decades of captivity at the hands of her father. She said that on Aug. 28, 1984 her father had sedated her, handcuffed her and locked her in a room in the cellar of the family’s apartment building.
In an interview with AP Television News, Polzer said that Josef F. had given police a code to unlock a hidden door, revealing the area where Elisabeth and the children had been held.
It had “several” rooms, an uneven floor and a “very narrow” hallway, Polzer said, adding that the door was “very small,” and that one had to bend one’s head to get through.
“Everything is very, very narrow and the victim herself … told us that this was being continually enlarged over the years,” Polzer said.
The area also contained sanitary facilities and “small hot plates” for cooking, Polzer said.
On its Web site, ORF reported that the rooms were at most 5.6 feet high and that the area had a TV.
The area also included a “padded cell,” Hans-Heinz Lenze, a senior Amstetten district official, said in remarks broadcast late Sunday.
Elisabeth said her father had been sexually abusing her since she was 11. According to the police statement, Elisabeth said that she and her children got food and clothing only from her father and her mother, Rosemarie, had not been involved.
Police said Elisabeth F. appeared “greatly disturbed” during questioning and agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for.
Police said Josef, 73, and Rosemarie had raised three of Elisabeth’s children in their apartment in a two-story building in Amstetten, a small town about 80 miles west of Vienna.
Josef and Rosemarie registered the children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.
The three other children apparently remained in the cellar with Elisabeth, police said.
“Elisabeth F. taught them how to speak,” Polzer was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency.
Police said the sick 19-year-old, Kerstin, had been found unconscious on April 19 in the apartment building, with a handwritten note purportedly signed by Elisabeth, asking that she be given care.
After Kerstin was hospitalized, police said, Josef F. freed Elisabeth and the two remaining children from the cellar and told his wife that their daughter and the children had come back to them.
The Austria Press Agency reported that, in addition to Kerstin, three of the children are boys and two are girls, the youngest of whom is 5.
All are in psychiatric care, along with Elisabeth and Rosemarie, police said. DNA tests are expected to determine whether Josef F. is the father.
Police cited Elisabeth as saying that she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later because it was not properly cared for, according to police, who said they are investigating.
Josef, the alleged abuser, then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the police statement said. It was not immediately clear if the twin who allegedly died was included in the police total of six children.
Sunday’s developments are reminiscent of the case of Natascha Kampusch, which shocked Austrians less than two years ago.
Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. She was held for the next 8 1/2 years by Wolfgang Priklopil, who largely confined her to a tiny underground dungeon in his home in a quiet Vienna suburb. Priklopil threw himself in front of a train just hours after Kampusch’s dramatic escape on Aug. 23, 2006.
162/Bruce
A workplace, where people go because they have to earn a living, is a completely different thing from a public forum with the motto, “Free Speech is a Dirty Business.” I think abusive comments are obnoxious. But in a free speech forum, I just skip the posts. I didn’t always, but I do now.
164 veronicapoe
I don’t see it as different, nor can I accept that kind of extreme abuse in ANY venue. Free speech, for me, doesn’t mean any and all. Free speech, to me implys the right to express any “opinion” or “belief” etc. For me, that doesn’t include “shut the fuck up you cunt”. What grand idea does that express, besides pathology?
161, 164 veronicapoe
“I just fundamentally reject cutoff as the solution.”
What solution do you propose? And on the basis of what experience do you think it will be productive? What is your aim in putting up with the abuse? How do you think it helps you, or Greg, or anything else?
Cutting him off may not help Greg–ultimately, only Greg can help Greg–but not cutting him off certainly will not help him, since it will allow him to continue his pathological behavior, and will lead him to believe he can get away with it. And it will result in a blog environment that is divisive and unproductive, as has been seen repeatedly. If he wants to come back because he wants to interact with people, be heard by people, fine–he should learn how to interact with people in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary pain. Do you have kids? Have they gone through adolescence into adulthood yet? At a certain point, a parent needs to bite the bullet and allow, or even create, consequences, so that the child learns he or she cannot just do whatever he or she wants with impunity. To avoid this sets the child up for a lifetime of suffering. This is the same with adults who never had to deal with consequences. Like Greg.
Regarding Greg, I agree with Bruce. I consider the chief value of the blog to be its potential for encouraging people to leave by revealing the falsehoods in the Fellowship and Robert Burton. Logging in to the kind of nastiness that occured around Greg’s posts diminishes the effectiveness and value of the information that can be found here.
Yesri Baba
Just Another Voice Out Here
brucelevy
whalerider
the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
I’ve read all of hardtruth’s posts and there is no more venom in his replies to different people than he received from those people. The way I see it is that you tried to tweak his ego first and he retaliated by tweaking you back far more effectively. Ego tweaking is not abusive because the ego is an inferior state of mind. Now you got revenge by talking the moderator into getting rid of the guy that hit back harder. As far as the main objective of this site goes it is a Pyrrhic victory because hardtruth actually supplied some interesting answers on the subject of the Fellowship of Friends while those listed above supply usually off the wall opinions that lack forethought.
The question set out in my mind is whether this is a site running under standard rules of conduct or on the basis of which people the moderator likes most. If it is who the moderator likes most then the cause you are promoting, the exposure of the Fellowship of Friends as a hypocritical and dishonest cult, is undermined in my opinion.
168 Wild Idea
You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
168 Wild Idea
And trust me on this, if you “read all of hardtruth’s posts” you wouldn’t have arrived at that conclusion, unless you’re either another enabler, or as off the wall as he is.
Concerning: More history needed? and the numbers in the Fellowship of Friends.
Several pages back, there were posted graphic images of the statistics for the FoF covering several decades. One of the things it showed was that for more than a decade now the numbers leaving FoF averaged over 30 per month, consistently. This trend depended, to some degree, on the other statistics of there being an average of 30 or more joining per month; that lasted roughly from 1992 to 2002. Thus the number in FoF over that period was roughly flat. Since 2002, however, the numbers joining have dropped off rather radically with a trend toward less than 20 joining per month in 2005. This curve was moving toward zero rapidly. This means that the numbers in FoF is declining in an accelerating fashion,
as a function of the flat to increasing departures and the declining joiners. The departures of 30 per month, if it continues at that pace, means a loss of 300+ per year. It will take about six years, then, until there is only Robert Burton left. Practically speaking, that will not likely happen because at a certain point there will only be the hardcore members who will not leave under any circumstance(s) and the 30 departures per month will level off somewhere above zero or at zero. This inner circle will sustain the illusion that everything is just fine. So, before there is a total collapse to a super nova or black hole, there will be a stage at which a dwarf star* state exists – notwithstanding that there would be a black hole type energy condition at the very center of it sucking in any matter that comes anywhere near to it. Beware the event horizon and don’t get sucked in your self.
*wikipedia.org defines:
‘A white dwarf [star], also called a degenerate dwarf, is a small star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. As white dwarfs have mass comparable to the Sun’s and their volume is comparable to the Earth’s, they are very dense. Their faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored heat. . . White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of all stars whose mass is not too high – over 97% of the stars in our Galaxy.’
That part about being ‘very dense’ means that nothing from outside of it will penetrate in a manner to have even the slightest affect on the progression. Since this condition appears to have already happened, it proves the theory likely to be in progress now.
Wild idea #168
Why do you care, may I ask? Why are you interested in this blog in the first place? Why is it to you to try and repair the great injustice Greg was done?
Trust me, Greg would not have it any other way. It is his apparent motus operandi. He will not quit until he has driven somewhat bunkers in an argument (his hook), and then when he has them where he want them, he will insult them, demean them, ridicule them. If he knows them personally, he will use that knowledge to expose their perceived weaknesses, the more intimate the better. You are welcome to request a membership to the greater fellowship website and visit his page or peruse the blog pages to find his ‘own’ website. Rejoice in his writings and rants, if you like. Try to become his friend if you wish, and best of luck. One thing that does not help is the occasional fawning about what he writes, the ‘genius’ calling (one of the most abused word in the english language, IMHO), or the ‘overwhelming ego’ qualifiers. I opposed his banning from the blog the first time around (as a matter of principle), but I pretty much dislike and distrust everything he has to say, and yes, I do think he has all the markings of a sociopath (unpleasant one at that).
The abusive poster, that you are discussing/debating about, under various aliases, has appeared on these blog pages and reeked abusive havoc several times. The person is a serial abuser and a sociopath. Prior persons in close relationship to that poster could testify to that. Until this abusive person realizes and accepts that they are ill and in need of a certain type of rectifying treatment, they will act out in the same repetitive fashion. Maybe there is an ‘abusers anonymous’ out there somewhere that can help. It is a dynamic very similar to alcoholism.
This is not to say that there isn’t any positive attributes about the person. Nor, that perfectly normal relationships are not possible with them. Far from it. But, you cannot argue with the facts that often things have gotten very ugly. There are only a certain number of times that you want to walk head first into a buzz saw.
wild idea:
A little history lesson: Greg has posted in the past as King of Clubs, Graduate, and most recently as Hardtruth. IMO, he is displaying antisocial behavior bordering on sociopathic. The more energy and attention we give him in this type of forum the worse he will become. You might think of him as a gambling addict being 86’ed from the casino or an alcoholic being asked to leave the bar. His rehabilitation is unlikely to occur here or any place that tolerates his behavior.
To Opus 111
Thank you for the invitation to delve deeper into the world of the Fellowship of Friends but no thank you. I have no interest in this other than if the moderator is running this site like a cult and a good-old-boys club or whether there is a shred of the integrity that everyone is complaining does not exist in the church. My contention is with the moderator over his expulsion of someone for an infraction that he usually ignores.
As for your comments, it contains plenty of what I would consider to be venom.
172 Opus 111
Thank you. I couldn’t add anything to that.
175 Wild Idea
Ok, I was trying to be relatively calm about your posts. I can’t imagine that you were even in the FOF, but other than that, you are clearly a douche bag. Bite me.
168 Wild Idea
“he retaliated by tweaking you back far more effectively.”
——————————————————————————————
To the extent the dynamic you describe even existed (that is, Greg was responding to ego-tweaking), his responses were not more effective, but more vicious and childish. Calling someone names is not “effective”–unless the “effect” seek is banning, of course, which I think is a definite possibility in Greg’s case.
But I disagree with your premise. Those men who have tried to engage in a mature way with Greg elsewhere, like on Greater Fellowship, have found consistently that, sooner or later, he will insult them in a manner that can only be designed to cause any self-respecting person to avoid him. He does not necessarily do this with women, particularly those he finds attractive, but can be quite gallant towards them. So there’s very obviously a pathology going on with him, and unfortunate as it may be, it won’t be “cured” by making excuses for it.
Hello Veronicapoe, Bruce, Wild Idea, Elena and Whalerider, et al ~
I was just about to post something towards Greg’s sphere and came across this
debate: I will try to be gentle here, though since I am delving into my own ultra-hypocrisies and crisis, I understand that on some crossroads ‘gentleness’ is simply not perceived as such, regardless of which nature’s abiding in the four points you’re standing in the middle of and trying to choose which one to take, because eventually, if you don’t get out of the middle of the street, some fool’s going to run you over trying to get a new planet from quadrant RE.4.1 to quadrant DE.35.6…
____________________________________
Hello Whalerider ~
You wrote ~ “Veronicapoe: Would you feel differently if Greg posted information that others might be able to use to deduce your identity?”
_________________________________________
Whalerider, you’ve done this yourself, so, you might ask yourself this question first before justifying an action of another’s (taken upon the symbolism of Greg’s outward manifestations) that was not taken upon you yourself by the Sheik for having done so to another (?)
____________
Hello Bruce ~
Admittedly in a big way: you and I have shared at times the near exact same kind of negative vehemence as Greg, you used similar (if not exact) language towards F.O.F. enablers (which the Sheik seemed fine with, so long as the cuss words and “Bullshits!” were kept flowing towards the F.O.F. enabler-bull’s eyes and not those supporting the ‘rightness’ of his/our Blog)… ? While I couched mine in Taiwanese rhetoric concerning the mathematical slants of certain kinds of hull eroding mollusks vs the esoteric patterns in certain poisonous starfish positions.
To me, energy is energy and quality is quality, no matter what direction or bull owns the eye the dart’s (and thrower’s) trying to put out… So, you’re use and sharing from the same language-stream that Greg’s fishing in is a bit of an enigma since the Sheik has allowed it to go on sale here as ‘Fresh’, while Greg’s ‘stall’ simply stinks and belongs to the area of gratuitous behavior towards alley cats (?)
Maybe it has something to do with your idea of innocence and who qualifies as ‘victim’ or not (as if anyone is disqualified as being a victim by another other than themselves as the definer of such?)…
IMO, it’s nearly all about subjective effects or very personal cosmos-contexts and nothing about the cause, content and quality. There’s allot of hoopla concerning the bullet and not much going on in the area of the Trigger-finger that got the gun to shoot in the first place;
Greg has been posting as ‘Hardtruth’ for a long time (and I am nearly sure that the Sheik knew ‘intuitively’ this and yet did not make a conscientious, preemptive move to block him until the beans were spilled, ironically by the Sheik himself…) I am not suggesting it’s the Sheik’s fault, only that waiting until the lion is showing its wounded side is a bit tricky, particularly if it feels like stalking the wounded… Which, it could feel that way to Greg if you step outside the box for awhile.
To me, the letter/note that the Sheik wrote to Greg, if you follow it standing in Greg’s moccasins, using your ‘positive imagination’ (that I know you can do) and With the Eyes and Heart of a Person Really Needing Help and not yet ready to see it coming from the Inside’ (which we all were: prerequisite for joining the FOF and BLOG in the first place) was just as ‘twisting’ in the ribs of a well known injured Lion’s side, backed into a corner once again by a salted, four sided Tibetan dagger…
Genteelly echoing a lion’s roar is not going to get the doctor and patient any closer to one another; then again, maybe that’s not what this Blog is about… (?) If it’s all war and no hospital, well then it’s simply the Shadow Self of the current F.O.F. regalia and regimen, mainly influenced and hosted by ‘Us’ the Children of Dorn (or Horn)?
To me, anything that’s in us that’s threatened by Greg is firstly threatened by what he’s mirroring into our soul’s buffered crisis and when the soul cries out ‘injustice!’, it may be a call into its own bathroom mirror and not the face of the Blog (?)
____________________________________
Bruce and Whalerider,
I love you guys; I hope we can dance this like Sufi and not WWF.
___________________________________________________
Elena,
BTW, you can download Youtube videos on Dialup, it just takes a little longer (about 10 minutes) for a 9 minute video… What you do is ~
Log onto Youtube (or click the embedded link) and find the video you wish to see, Click on it and when it shows on the screen, Press the Pause Button… The uploading Red line should still be taking place and moving from left to right, though showing no moving video feed, wait awhile, make yourself a matte and whalla, in less than 10 minutes you’ll be watching Laura’s video selection.
________________________________________
Hello Wild Idea ~
IMO, “ego-twisting” IS abusive if the present-soul ‘doing’ it knows better and is playing fisty-cuffs with its Conscience: believe me, there’s hell to pay and Conscience is the Pit-Master of it all!
_______________
L.t.y.a.
My apologies, I shouldn’t have resorted to name calling. I should have assumed that of the 48 laws we are under one of them must surely be that on every blog there has to be at least one jerkoff.
“Veronicapoe: Would you feel differently if Greg posted information that others might be able to use to deduce your identity?”
_____________________________
?
______
You tell me Whalerider…
I guess I have been banned, jeese what a place. Trying…Trying again…maybe I’m banned?
177 brucelevy
175 Wild Idea
Ok, I was trying to be relatively calm about your posts. I can’t imagine that you were even in the FOF, but other than that, you are clearly a douche bag. Bite me.
on April 28, 2008 at 4:39 am178 Just Another Voice Out Here
168 Wild Idea
“he retaliated by tweaking you back far more effectively.”
——————————————————————————————
To the extent the dynamic you describe even existed (that is, Greg was responding to ego-tweaking), his responses were not more effective, but more vicious and childish. Calling someone names is not “effective”–unless the “effect” seek is banning, of co 1000 urse, which I think is a definite possibility in Greg’s case. [end of quote]
Brucelevy’s message to me is venomous and abusive, it is not called for because I have been polite with my opinions. Will the director of this site ban him for venom and abuse, will half a dozen people come forward point out the fact that because he does this whenever anyone annoys him that he is sociopath? None of that will happen. There is something wrong here and I’m off to other venues.
Re: ‘He does not necessarily do this with women, particularly those he finds attractive, but can be quite gallant towards them.’
Modus Operandi in the socio/psych/pathology of the abuser personality, of the kind discussed here, is to entice the target into its lair with all and any manner of gallantry and seemingly unbelievable ‘hooks’ only to devour them at some later time when it suits them. This type of personality knows the price that must be paid to achieve the ends it desires and pretty much any means justifies the ends they seek. Many a spider web is full of such conquests – all wrapped up in the predator’s spun thread. And: ‘Oh! What a tangled web we weave when at first we practice to deceive.’ It does not matter if the target is the opposite gender or the same gender. It does not matter if the target is a potential lover or not. The end game is to satisfy the appetite of visiting its desires out upon the target and the pursuit is the best part of the game.
Didn’t some of you learn this above lesson from being in the Fellowship of Friends?
Wild Idea, I think you might be Greg.
So I know I’m not losing my mind…some of you please read over Wild Ideas last two posts a few times and tell me “no, that’s not Greg.
Bruce,
That’s a pretty wild idea…
____________________
After the “you are clearly a douche bag. Bite me.” I thought Greg may have
taken you up on your offer to “have your place”.
Wow, what a night in the Hall of Mirrors!
bruce, I think you are right. I had the same suspicion right after the third post.
Unfuckingbelievable, a Greg “sock puppet” (see wikipedia)
I thought it odd that when one disappeared the next one emerged at the same time.
Another Voice, I have never said Greg is not abusive, where did you get that idea from? If you read my four latest posts on Greg you will see that we do not disagree. In your second post here you are saying the same thing I am saying in my two previous posts so what is it in you that can read only what it wants to see?
The different degrees of our mutual blindness does not make any one of us a lot better than Greg for he is suffering the same thing but to a higher potential. Still, as I already stated, I continue to believe that he needs a therapy that cannot be given here.
Bruce, I agree and yes I remember those stories. That is why I am saying the same thing you are saying. I don’t think we have explicitly stated any conditions and that is why the issue has taken us by surprise because we are not trying to ban swear language, it is something else what we are trying to put under control.
Wild Idea, Bruce, there is much more than the language to consider in Greg’s behaviour. You have told people to fuck off probably a lot more than he ever has but there is nothing threatning about you no matter how many times you say it while Greg get’s very aggresive. So Wild Idea you seem to be an insider trying to discredit the blog with your bullshit about the Sheik’s objectivity and I am not buying it. Is the tactics getting yourself banned too?. Then you can cry because the blog is not objective and cry because it banned you and get some innies to believe you but not for long. Your tactics come around sooner or later also inside and nobody ends up believing a word you say. You are the kind that thinks “divide and reign” and are trying to divide people here. You are good at it but not as good as the rest of us. Too many eyes looking at you.
So yes, we have a person with more visible problems than the rest of us in this particular area but pinpointing and labeling are hardly going to help any body with anything but to create more of the same painful pattern for him.
Great considerations Veronicapoe, couldn’t agree more. There are areas in which most of us need proffessional assistance and this particular one just happens to be Greg’s. I guess psychopath and those other words are just an “educated” way of saying, you big bully. Hey Greg, would you be willing to apologize and ask to be accepted with the condition you won’t bully anybody? You do it so easily I doubt you even recognize it as bullying. We are dead blind to our own harmfulness. If you wish to answer that you can write to me. But that’s about all I’d be willing to help with if you can consider that help.
The rest is just for Another voice out here.
156 Just Another Voice Out Here
143 Elena (and others)
Greg was, and is, abusive. He was, and is, a caricature of abusiveness, really–he tries to be as offensive as possible. It’s a matter of principle for him–or so he imagines. You may have issues with abusiveness–you’re not the only one–and thinking of abusive people as puppy dogs who should be treated nicely so they become less abusive is part of the pathology of those who have been abused. Greg does not “belong here.” He belongs in therapy, but will not go there at least until all opportunities to abuse people have been cut off by people refusing to put up with it. So you do him no favor by enabling his behavior.
166 Just Another Voice Out Here
161, 164 veronicapoe
“I just fundamentally reject cutoff as the solution.”
What solution do you propose? And on the basis of what experience do you think it will be productive? What is your aim in putting up with the abuse? How do you think it helps you, or Greg, or anything else?
Cutting him off may not help Greg–ultimately, only Greg can help Greg–but not cutting him off certainly will not help him, since it will allow him to continue his pathological behavior, and will lead him to believe he can get away with it. And it will result in a blog environment that is divisive and unproductive, as has been seen repeatedly. If he wants to come back because he wants to interact with people, be heard by people, fine–he should learn how to interact with people in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary pain. Do you have kids? Have they gone through adolescence into adulthood yet? At a certain point, a parent needs to bite the bullet and allow, or even create, consequences, so that the child learns he or she cannot just do whatever he or she wants with impunity. To avoid this sets the child up for a lifetime of suffering. This is the same with adults who never had to deal with consequences. Like Greg.
Elena 134
While I stand by the idea of communities keeping their doors open without anihilating participants I also stand by the idea that a participant needs to know where his individuality is overpowering other’s freedom. It is a hard lesson but one gets it sooner or later with the help of those that call one insane. My suggestion would be that Greg, like any body else, is old enough to look at himself and apologize where he has been offensive and ask to be allowed to participate again if that is what he would really wish. I doubt the Sheik gives a real dam one way or another. I might be getting into conditioned structures but I do believe it is not structures what do us harm like in communities but the misuse of them, like in Cults.
143 Elena
Bruce, Veronicapoe, you both have such strong points. Yes, I also think he belongs here and sees many of the issues so clearly but I would also be inclined not to participate if this became a place where we can tell each other nothing but fuck off you faggot cunt. One of the points is that it is not about banning an individual but about banning certain behaviour. So we get into the delicacies of stating conditions. Maybe the Sheik could have warned him what the conditions are and then banned him if he or anyone else is unable to keep them, for no matter how free freedom of speech is, it is a freedom with responsibilities. The individual’s freedom stops where other people’s freedom and rights begin.
I think it’s the Sheik’s place to make such an offer.
Or not.
Elena
“Maybe the Sheik could have warned him what the conditions are and then banned him if he or anyone else is unable to keep them.”
Come on Elena, he was here while it all happened. Do you actually think he was caught unaware. I love you sweetie but that’s a ridiculous stance to take.
“We’re all stardust…………….” (my friend Ray)
In the beginning
If anyone can remember back that far
Was unfathomable womanhood.
By chance of Original Sin
Which became Ultimate Intelligence;
‘The Absolute was lonely so he created the Universe’.
This supports the Big Bang theory
Since the word of the Ultimate is the cry – I AM,
First account for me.
Creation was implosion
Then ap Rhys (impetuous one)
Throwing out too far (infinite dispersal of galaxies);
Then rolled back the tide to hold
Our solar system together.
Who knows? This may have been the time and place of all experience.
(nhp)
179 and 182 are newly moderated.
UnoAnimo: I like what you have to say. I didn’t ban Greg for attacking me, I waited for the initial pang of ‘I am being verbally abused’ to go away before I made the decision. I was not aware of Greg’s re-appearance until the point when I asked him to communicate with me (which, as you rightly pointed out I did too late and in an equally aggressive manner). I didn’t catch Greg earlier because I wasn’t paying much attention to the blog, to do so would mean to put the blog at a much higher priority in my life than it currently is.
As to Bruce’s way of communication on the blog, I don’t find it particularly tasteful but I see no reason to ban him. I am not ‘protecting’ the blog and trying to give it a particular direction, I am protecting the people who take part in the discussion, I don’t think that Bruce is dangerous in the way that Greg is. But yes, I would not enjoy being treated in the way that Bruce treats some of the posters (yet, somehow, there is very little venom in what he has to say, it feels more flippant and nonchalant, rather than screaming ‘destroy’ as Greg seems to do).
Wild Idea: Whether you are Greg or not, or a provocateur of some other kind, I do not care. I stay by my choices until I am led to believe that they are wrong, which you have not done. Since there are only two options available to me when dealing with dissent and aggression on the blog – acceptance or ban, I think I picked the right one.
If you or anyone else behaves in a similar manner to Graduates or Hard Truth they will be warned and then banned.
“Though external cleanliness has little or nothing to do with spiritual awakening,
it brightens, to a certain extent, the inner life.” Meher Baba
unoanimo:
I thank you for your post. Prior to my referencing your photo, all inferences to your identity were synchronicity and not an intentional effort to unmask you. (When I was informed of your identity, I was just as shocked as you. ) In reference to ton, I acknowledged my mistake and apologized directly to him. I apologize to you, if you feel any disrespect from me or feel that I have betrayed your trust. I hold you in the highest regard. I thought you could feel that. If you feel the need, I can contact you through back channels that connect us. My post to veronicapoe was specific to that person, which uncovered confidential issues extending beyond the scope of this blog.
I think the Greater Fellowship site warns before banning. They don’t care for personal attacks either.
Just a copy of communication between my friend, George, and myself…………………………..(has to be read from bottom communication by me first
then top communication by George second)
Nigel,
These bad recollections are dreams, which vanish when one wakes up to reality, the reality that God is good. And the prayer which brings this awakening is a hunger for righteous. “Desire in prayer.” You did nothing wrong. The cult, of course, was a lamentable diversion, and much that happened, the too good promise of the Pope’s visit opening-up any, let alone an extensive, market for expensive silver, would have fooled most people. But that sobering experience is behind you now. To look back is to become a pillar of salt. One must move on, and you have. You situation now sounds ideal. You’re sharing your hard acquired skill with those who have some sort of creative spark and want to produce something with their own hands. That kind of sharing is liberating in itself. We don’t live in the golden age of patronage, and it generally requires a wealthy patron or personal wealth to make the pieces you would like to. Your scaled down goals show you understand that. The fact that you even exist as a silversmith in today’s society is amazing, and aside from teaching in a craft school, could happen only in England. The glory days when Shreve’s produces wonderful objects in long over. About, owning your flat, I don’t know your situation there, but I suspect it is something you can own in your own name. For me to have a place of my own is essential. That your father and brother are trustees of your estate is a good thing because both love you and are genuinely concerned with your continuing welfare. Were anything untoward to happen to you, they would suffer terribly. You may resent this family restraint, but you shouldn’t. I’m an outsider, and even I know how much your family loves you.
George
On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:20:46 +0100 (BST) aprhys@nigelprice.net writes:
Dear George
As I sat with my soft drink overlooking ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’
(Simon and Garfunkel denied the influence, although having stayed
at Bickleigh, where my workshop is), I thought, “How necessary it is
in this life to find areas of peace”. You mentioned the Biblical passage
“Be still and know that I am God”. It puts the maniacs who thrust their
own God-concept into frenzied zealotism and violence to shame.
Whitman penned also, “Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what
I am…..both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it”.
I try to take that level of peace into my work life – not to be startled by
surprises that may occur. My students are lovely – all so willing to learn,
at whatever level they achieve – and, as you say, appreciating the skills
they are taught by me. I remember you told me, not long after I came
back from the USA, “You did nothing wrong”. It took many years (and
many attempts at coming to terms with myself) to realize this. You were
correct in saying that the companies I worked for, Trozzo, Argentum
Antiques included, my clients – the Catholic Church, Hazem Chehabi
and that Damn Cult, all benefited from me. But I know the main thing
in my situation is to bear no grudge. I was used – YES – but my skills
were honed and are stronger now and more refined – and able to
benefit my loyal students. Plus I am now making a decent living. As
regards eventually buying my council property – I have no progeny to
leave it to – added to the fact that my Trust Fund is presently controlled
by my father and by my brother, Richard. Technically, it is not my
money! Still, I continue with my role in life. May beneficial influences
fall upon you……………………………………………. Nigel.
Back to the salacious & mundane
People who are in a cult don’t think they are in a cult.
Sex in ye olde FOF, much like prison (another preverse setting),
is not about sex, it is about power.
Bruce, I’m glad you made that clear because it matters a great deal to me. What I mean seems to have been picked up by the Sheik and taken as a modus operandi, warning people and then having them move out, so that works!
When I said I’ll ban Widl idea I erased “we” because people have objected from my using the we, but I can say I think anyone can be banned whether the Sheik does so or not. And I can also ban them by not reading them or reading them all too well. I prefer the last option though. Indifference is a lot worse than dealing with it.
the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
As to Bruce’s way of communication on the blog, I don’t find it particularly tasteful but I see no reason to ban him. I am not ‘protecting’ the blog and trying to give it a particular direction, I am protecting the people who take part in the discussion…
177 brucelevy
175 Wild Idea
Ok, I was trying to be relatively calm about your posts. I can’t imagine that you were even in the FOF, but other than that, you are clearly a douche bag. Bite me. [end of quote]
Sheik, you mean you are protecting some of the people that take part in the discussion. You obviously give a pass to some abusers simply because you are not personally being abused by them.
You are not much of a moderator and this blog is far from anything evenhanded. As for their cause against the Fellowship of Friends I don’t think a fair evaluation of that church can be found at this location.
Something is going on here. A stranger (?) has arrived and seems primed.
“You are not much of a moderator and this blog is far from anything evenhanded. As for their cause against the Fellowship of Friends I don’t think a fair evaluation of that church can be found at this location.”
Taking advantage to stir the pot and sow discord in the enemy’s camp in an attempt to discredit and create a diversion.
Might even not be Greg!
I, too, had startd to think that Wild Idea equals hardtruth. If so, his desparation to be part of this blog is pretty sad. Looking back at the blog and the posts by King of Clubs and graduates, which Wild Idea conveniently avoided doing, is informing. His attacks on Duncan S are the most cruel, heartless, abusive posts I hve ever come across on the internet. I have been a member of numerous blogs and listservs for many years, and I have never read anything so hateful — apparently Duncan revealed at some point that he had trouble with alcohol abuse. Graduates attacked him terribly, calling him brain damaged, and so on. This is so far below the level of ordinary life that it is appalling — which to me undermines any of his supposed wisdom he spouts about the Fourth Way. As was pointed out after his last attack that got him banned, he is the blog’s most vocal proponent of the system. The vast distnace between his knowledge and his being speaks for itself. He is like an animal — like one of those big walruses that attacks and kills any animal that shows weakness. It seems to enrage him, which seems to me a big psychological sickness of some kind. I do’nt real;ly know whats wrong with him, but it won’t get fixed abusing people here. I agree that enabling him will just prolong w3hatever he has to realize to get help. These comments by hardtruth, only a page apart, tell thje story:
32-305
I can be relied on to supply some Fourth Way tips at this location as the inspiration comes over me. There is likely going to be some discouragement from those no longer under the sway of Burton’s directives, those that have developed an allergy to “work language,” and these aggressive and hostile forces no doubt will appeal to the operator of this site in an attempt to silence the public presentation of these invaluable ‘tips’. They will no doubt try to convince him that I am in reality some notorious misanthrope already banished from the impeccable society displaying their wisdom on these pages. Still, as a responsible investigator of the ‘system’ I will perform my duty as I see it and help facilitate the new return to the reliable old form.
33-1
Fuck you, you faggot cunt.
wild idea:
“As for their cause against the Fellowship of Friends I don’t think a fair evaluation of that church can be found at this location.”
One could reasonably argue that a fair evaluation of that church could not be found within the church itself either, if you could call it a church at all. IMO, it’s a rape factory.
If you are not or have never been a FOF member, what are you doing here? What is your agenda?
182 — Wild Idea
There is something wrong here and I’m off to other venues.
202 — Wild Idea
bla bla
I thought you were leaving? Your persistence is seeming more hardtruth like by the minute, and your sudden anonomous interest in him is more and more suspicious.
207 ralph b
I have absolutely no doubt that Wild Idea is hardtruth,Graduates, Greg etc. At least he has someone standing up for him and singing his praise….himself, as he always has in his humble enlightened way.
I find Wild Thought’s assertion “As for their cause against the Fellowship of Friends I don’t think a fair evaluation of that church can be found at this location.” sinister and even diabolical.
Myself and others have laid out honest and heartfelt accounts of our experiences of being exploited and degraded; to barge in and focus on this tiny incident is grotesque and disrespectful. There are hundreds of these accounts… there are thousands that will vouch for them.
You barge in here with your prim remarks about ‘even-handedness’, lacking all scale and empathy…
You are spitting in the face of our hurt; and of our often imperfect yet often brave, attempts to come to terms with it.
This comment is not about Greg. I would count Greg’s posts as heartfelt and thoughtful, (as well as venomous at times) It’s that comment… even the use of the word ‘church’ which upsets
205 ralph b and the others, why didn’t say anything about hardtruth while he was able to defend himself? You kept quiet for weeks and only come out with your true feelings now that you can’t be answered back. Seems a little cowardly. The person going by Just Another Voice Out Here has weirdly cataloged every word and nuance this hardtruth has uttered which seems like there is some kind of unusual attraction going on that is not healthy.
I have just found the Fellowship of Friends website which has a very different tone than the screaming and the complaining going on here, it is called the Art of Divine Presence. Now this is more like it. Nice soothing tone and some very interesting concepts. The main concept here is to run down a guy that tweaked your ego obviously far better than you could teak his and most of you didn’t seem to have the courage to even try to tell him what you thought when he could answer back. Shamefully and disgracefully unmanly of all of you.
The Fragility of Self-Esteem J Bryner
Do you feel good about yourself? Don’t get defensive! It’s just a question.
Placing yourself on a pedestal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, a psychologist says. New research reveals people with “fragile high self-esteem” are more defensive if they feel attacked by others than those who have more stable and secure self-worth.
The recent study, detailed in the June issue of the Journal of Personality, adds to a mound of navel-gazing research that is painting a more complex picture of self-esteem.
“There are many kinds of high self-esteem, and in this study we found that for those in which it is fragile and shallow it’s no better than having low self-esteem,” said Michael Kernis of the University of Georgia. “People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth.”
Kernis says the results are not meant to knock down high self-esteem, which has been stamped as one of the keys to happiness and to moving up the popularity or professional ladder. The study only adds another layer to this psychological phenomenon.
Self value
In general, individuals with so-called secure high self-esteem tend to present an authentic self to the world; they are genuinely happy with themselves and accept their weaknesses. A fragile self-esteem is unstable, and can fluctuate from day to day or within one day. Without constant validation, this person’s self-worth will take a dive.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Kernis and his colleagues got the self-value goods on 100 undergraduates, about 90 of whom were female. Questionnaires measured different types of self-esteem, life satisfaction and overall psychological well-being. Then, researchers measured verbal defensiveness by having each participant describe several challenging life experiences, including:
A time when you have felt less sexually desirable than a friend
A time when you’ve broken the rules
A time when somebody has come to you for help and you didn’t want to help them
Individuals with stable high self-esteem were the least verbally defensive while the unstable participants were the most verbally defensive. In addition, the researchers found that greater verbal defensiveness was associated with less life satisfaction and lower psychological well-being.
I’m better than you
One student, whose responses scored high on the defensiveness scale, described not helping another student in his geometry class, saying “… I didn’t feel like there was any gain for me. Even if that sounds selfish, it was really justified, because I was a better student and he was not a good student … I felt good about not wanting to help him.”
Another “defensive” participant described a time when she broke the rules, saying, “I have honestly never done anything bad. Like the worst thing I do is burn CDs … I’ve honestly never drank anything. The only time I have drank anything was in Mexico and I was 18 at the time so that was legal … I’ve never like broken any rules.”
Basically, the “defensive” students took the questions as threats to their perhaps artificially elevated self-esteem. “Potential threats are in fact more threatening to people with low or fragile high self-esteem than those with secure high self-esteem,” Kernis said, “and so they work harder to counteract them.”
Individuals with secure high self-esteem accept themselves “warts and all,” and so they are less threatened by the outside world, Kernis said.
Postscript to 209
_________________
• 520 Anna
Since leaving the school a month and a half ago some friends have asked about my story about and why I left. As you will see it has proven difficult to give a brief answer. If this was a “How are you?” type question that didn’t require a significant answer I am sorry and please scroll down as quickly as you can.
I’m not sure what putting all this down on paper has achieved for me personally… There’s a wish to record this internal revolution, to get things straight somehow.
If you are a current or former member you will probably recognize a lot of what’s been written. At the moment it looks like a sketch of a certain type of human’s frailty. Perhaps you have been that type of human too…
Last Summer I had breakfast at the Apollo D’Oro for what I did not know then would be the last time. I sat outside on the deck with a friend and we looked out across our little swathe of the foothills as the last strands of morning mist evaporating into another impossibly yellow California day. I ate as many of Herve’s croissants as I could and we had a funny, warm, affirming conversation. There was only one unpleasant moment: my friend who was prone to sensationalism started telling about an anti-Fellowship article that had just been published, I hadn’t wanted to hear “No, you must read it” he insisted “the guy is smart and absolutely right about some things; he went to an open meeting in London last year lead by RT and he said some interesting things about arrogance.”
I felt a surge of indignation: how could someone come to one of our meetings under false pretenses like that, and then no doubt distort everything to fit his agenda? It felt like a betrayal. I imagined the writer; he would be a sort of pale grey color and slightly rat-like, someone who made a living by undermining and demeaning the things that other people loved…No I wouldn’t read his article.
After a while we were joined by B who had just been reading the article too, he was shaking his head and saying “This is serious, this is really serious”. No it’s not I said to myself, why trouble yourself, don’t even think about it, and I had hoped we could change the subject.
Before I said good bye my friend he squeezed a copy of the article into my bag. I didn’t read it until the 28th of May this year and by then it was too late anyway.
The Background
That August I had no inkling that I would leave the school, it was the most precious, most sacred place in my life and there was no question of departing. I had joined 22 years earlier, had effectively dropped out of university, had put no energy into developing a career, my only ambition was to support the esoteric heart of the school, to communicate my conviction to others. I was penniless and all my friends were members.
Every Summer I would spend a month at Isis visiting inspirational friends and trying to fill in gaps in my understanding of the work and Robert’s teaching.
I had always considered myself a sceptical person as far as ideas were concerned. I had been expelled from Christian Sunday School at the age of five for loudly disbelieving the stories, and despite wishing desperately to believe in God I had never found anyone who could convince me of the existence of anything supernatural.
When I was twenty someone gave me an article about quantum physics which seemed to prove that other dimensions existed. I was awestruck; could it be that the seeds of those religions and mysticisms which I had despised before lay within the folds of these other dimensions? A few weeks later a student POL showed me In Search of the Miraculous; its rightness seemed impossible to dispute.
Until I was 18 I had been at boarding school. It was a hellish experience. I was bullied, the boys would spit and jeer at me, they would trip me up and kick me and laugh when I cried, and they even beat me up once. Often the girls would not talk to me so as not to be infected by my unpopularity, and years stretched by without friends. I was terrible at sport and good at poetry; I didn’t swear, wept constantly, had spots and was despised. At university I had my first taste of peace: I just read and read and read falling in love with dead writers and the productions that had emerged from their tormented lives.
Once in the school I discovered that my love of literature had been my Magnetic Centre, Other students seemed to actually like me, I was told I was a King of Hearts which was an acceptable thing. People hugged me and I gradually learned to hug them back. I threw myself totally into this new paradise. Instead of studying for college, I did Second and Third Line work, I studied the workbooks, wrestled with ideas I didn’t understand begged other students to help me understand, to help me Verify. When I couldn’t Verify something I learned how to Suspend my Disbelief.
When I failed my degree my Life family went into a panic. Unbeknownst to me they launched an investigation into the Fellowship with the help of another family who’s child Anne Rodney had been abducted from the School and de-programmed by an experienced anti-cultist.
I remember the day that my Uncle confronted me with his findings. He had obtained a huge stack of newspaper articles about the Fellowship and when he gave them to me with his hands were shaking and his face was red. He told me that Robert Burton was a charlatan and that I had been taken in hand by the Devil. I looked at him trembling there, so full of Negativity, and said to myself “He’s a fanatic, a Christian zealot, this is an inquisition” The first article on the stack was about a girl who had cancer, apparently Robert had told her that she must pay her teaching payments anyway and if she didn’t she would lose the School and go to Hell… The article didn’t touch me. My happiness and my conviction were unswerving.
The challenge of the Sequence
Twenty years later the Sequence emerged; it was heralded as ‘the answer’ the ultimate tool that would bring us all to consciousness. I was accustomed to my Lower Self resisting Robert’s idea’s, it would try to call them “absurd” and “useless” and it was difficult not to be able to substantiate them by going to a workbook. Instead I was forced to struggle to convince myself… or find someone else to convince me to the contrary.
I felt quite grateful to Robert. He seemed to like me in his way. Sometimes he would buy tickets for me to come to Isis, and invite me to come to events without paying. Occasionally he would send encouraging messages and he seemed to wish me to move to Isis.
I wanted desperately to prove that Robert’s tool was not “a weak minded invention” as my Lower Self proposed “a vain-glory in which he was reveling simply because it was his own creation;” that he was not “wrong” as he had been with his predictions of apocalyptic events…
After repeatedly questioning other students who applauded the tool, and remaining unconvinced, I eventually willed myself to Separate from such thoughts as they clearly did not lead anywhere; and to focus instead on my own Work and my own Presence. After all what could be lost by entrusting my awakening to Robert… I was not yet conscious, and as the years had worn by my initial optimism about my chances had proven naive to say the least.
At that time (and now too) I could say that I was ‘in love with Awakening’. Four years earlier after a final crushing disillusionment with relationships the entirety of my longing had transferred itself to the pursuit of consciousness. But again this was proving a path of heartache; during the day the constant numbing pain in my chest which I had normally acquainted with the pain of a failing relationship, now seemed to be connected to the feeling that I was ‘not doing enough’ in the Work. Even though I would immediately attempt to transform this Self Deprecation into a ‘Sequence’ the sadness endured and was exacerbated by the measurable failures at doing it. At night I would go to bed heavy hearted because I felt had not done enough Sequences; in the morning I would wake up and begin again, promising myself that I would do better, that today was a new day, that there were new chances.
I was the Centre Director and spent every minute of my free time engaged in Fellowship projects. At the beginning of this role I had hoped that I would be able to bring greater emotionality to the centre; I had hoped that former directors were being overly rigid about the instructions they were receiving from Isis, and that Robert didn’t really want meetings to be as dry and rigid as they had become. In fact the guidelines and materials emerging from Isis turned out to be even more sterile than I had imagined.
As often as I could I read the Thoughts (transcripts of Robert’s meetings) and attended at least two meetings a week. Time and time again Robert stated that if we repeated these six words and ‘did’ what they asked we would at the end experience ‘divine Presence’. He also emphatically and repeatedly stated that the Lower Self (described also as the King of Clubs, a crocodile and various other monstrosities) was what prevented us from doing it.
Yet when I tried to use the tool it ended nowhere in particular. Even when I did manage to complete a sequence or two it did not bring me to what the Fourth Way called Higher Centres. It seemed like rather cumbersome way of being Present, but I saw that I was much more often Present, using the old tools. I felt that I must be missing some esoteric point. I regularly called a friend who was one of Robert’s right hand men and the chief researcher, in the hope of revelations. But even he who had daily access to Robert and who orchestrated the research which proved the sequence, could not himself illuminate it; he recommended that I move to Isis and that then everything would then become clear.
Eventually I explained to myself that the Sequence was a sort of Prayer, a ‘tuning in’ to some heavenly music… Rodney Collin’s music of the spheres perhaps. I hoped that one day it would become a constant background to my life, a beautiful stream into which I could connect and reconnect.
I would try to do it, if it was not immediately musical or poetic or logical or resonant, surely this was just my own Lower Self rebelling as Robert had insisted it would.
In November I received a number of shocks at the same time.
Predictions and Photographs.
Robert sent a message asking me to apply for a religious visa and to move to Isis, because he predicted that the apocalyptic event of 2006 would actually occur at some point later that month. When called by a friend at Isis about an application I explained that it would be impossible for me to move so quickly. I had a child and no means to do so.
I sent Robert a note thanking him for his attention and received back the message from him that my King of Clubs and Lower Self were holding me back… and I cared too much about my child and my apartment in Amsterdam. Robert’s diagnosis was not particularly shocking or mortifying to me. I considered what he said and tried to find the truth in it. Yes for sure I was in my Lower Self most of the time, and yes I didn’t hold my work in great esteem, but on the other hand I didn’t feel especially pre-occupied with lower things; I was immersed in the three lines of work and had never given any energy to the acquisition of material property.
At that moment I couldn’t in all honesty find a way to agree with his diagnosis; if I was going to be struck by the magnitude of his insights that would happen later. In the meantime I trusted that he would forgive any temporary lapse on my part.
I asked other students what they thought of Robert’s words: some said that I was lucky to have received an invitation and attention from him; some assured me that my work was strong; others said that it must be a blow to receive such a strong, and by implication truthful, photograph.
During these conversations I registered that other students became very ‘sensitive’ There was a discomfort about the possibility that I might be ‘questioning’ Robert’s diagnosis; no matter how neutrally I presented the story they tended to pre-suppose that I was Negative or resentful about it.
But I was not upset, just curious.
During one such conversation a student MJ (who incidentally is very reserved and disarmingly beautiful) told us about a photograph that Robert had given her. She used to wash dishes in the Academy kitchen as often as possible so as to be closer to the heart of things. Her husband (who incidentally was an overtly sensual and extrovert type) saw her struggling through the task and massaged her shoulders in passing. Robert happened to walk through the kitchen, and a few moments later sent back a message to her stating that she was extremely lustful and that he did not want her to work in the Academy anymore.
Her story was well stunning. We sat there silenced for a moment; we did not allow ourselves to say his photograph was untrue, because we wanted him so much to be meaningful, yet we knew his diagnosis to be impossible, and his treatment of her so unfair.
I asked myself “Does Robert really know her? Does he really know me?” Quite suddenly a quiet space inside me had opened up in which it was possible to admit that Robert could not see things as they really were; that he could be wrong.
Expulsions
Cycling home one day MJ called saying that Charles and Angela Taylor had been asked to leave. Charles was a good friend, we had both joined in London, we had directed the centre in Hungary together. When I made my annual pilgrimage to Isis I would always seek him out, we would wrestle with the ideas and try to come to terms with aspects of Robert’s teachings which seemed obscure. He really wanted to understand, and his mental precision, his integrity, individuality and commitment had always been inspiring.
I called him immediately. He told me he had been called on Robert’s behalf because he had been attending meetings led by an Advaita teacher named Adyashanti who according to Robert was a “B influence virus” and Charles was asked to either stop seeing him or leave. Charles answered that he did not want to stop and was expelled.
In the past I would have wept when a friend left, and the friendship would have been over. Now there was just this ‘open’ state… There was no interruption from the usual tapes, there was no analysis of what must have ‘gone wrong’ with Charles’s work, and there was no attempt to justify Robert’s strategy.
In this new openness it occurred to me that the Fellowship seemed very much like a religion; Charles had been excommunicated. At the same time four other students had been asked to leave and Robert had requested that various people be ‘questioned’ and encouraged to inform on other dissenters. It was an inquisition; I felt surprised by this observation but not upset.
But I didn’t spend much time on pondering about Robert, what excited me now was the prospect that there might be another ‘way’ to awaken. Charles had said that Adyashanti was definitely Awake and that other so called Advaita teachers were emerging everywhere. They claimed that awakening was a very real possibility for every one.
Higher Centres revisited
Charles’ words prompted me to look back at my own success rate in the Work. I had had only two prolonged and miraculous Higher States in the school and both of these had occurred more than 19 years ago. Since then there had been Presence yes: a gentle state which was not colored by imagination or identification or negativity, I nurtured in it every way I could; it was peace, it was relief, it was sanctuary compared to the panic and strain evoked by the brutal world. I had believed that it would eventually lead to those miraculous states for which I pined, but thus far it had not.
Being Awake though… having Higher Centres in operation was different from Presence. The first time it had happened for me in the School was about 21 years ago.
One day while I was climbing the steps to my office everything sort of reeled inside me, Anna had receded, I could see my hand but it did not feel ‘mine’ anymore. Every footstep, that was taken was extraordinarily meaningful, and powerful and symbolic, all things and movements were connected, every action, every object no matter how mundane was alive and vivid and profound: turning the key in the lock, extending a finger across the keyboard; the dark dustiness of the passage to my room, a piece of litter… all these things were permeated with a kind of glory and a kind of silence.
Where had Anna been during this experience? I’m not exactly sure. My awareness seemed to have been coming from her but there was none of the usual ‘interference’ there had been absolutely no Negativity and no personal agenda at play; rather there had been total acceptance, total understanding, and all was imbued with this extraordinarily impersonal, yet gloriously powerful and intimate emotion.
This brief examination revealed two startling things. First of all what we called the Lower Self or the Lower Centres, clearly had absolutely nothing to do with Higher Centres, because once in Higher Centres they insignificant, irrelevant, of an utterly different Dimension, another World…
We had learned from Robert that ‘Consciousness had degrees’ and I had believed despite my own experiences that there was a gradual progression between the Second State (a characteristic of the Lower Centres) and the Third (a characteristic of Higher Centres). I had believed that if I made the right efforts my Presence would gradually and swell to become a full blown Higher State, to be Consciousness. However in reality this had never happened.
Presence was clearly just behavior of the Lower Self, a pleasant one yes, but it was not the Third State and it did not ‘swell’ to become it; Presence was actually part of Sleep; Consciousness was a quantum leap.
I could envisage that the Second State had degrees if one measured it in terms of the level of Negativity circulating or the amount of Presence. Possibly also Higher centres had their own levels, I wouldn’t know. But clearly the one did not run sequentially into the other.
From this perspective the Sequence was absurd. Admittedly it was a way of marshaling the Lower Self and of quashing passionate outbursts (the Queen of Hearts) and other undesirable behavior but it it’s usefulness stopped there. Its stated purpose was to prolong and deepen Presence. Perhaps it did prolong a certain temporal slither of the experience of Presence, but it also severely narrowed my experience of the moment, reducing it into a long, cold, disciplined line.
Most importantly I remembered that Presence serene though it could be, had not been my ultimate goal; Consciousness was. From this perspective any effort to do something different was simply tightening the grip of a ‘spiritual seeming’ version of
Lower Centers.
I tried to think of an analogy and came up with this: Imagine that you are longing to go swim in the sea, you stand at the water’s edge and then instead of leaping right in, believing that it’s not possible to enter directly, you take six steps parallel to the waters edge, at each step you say something like: Splash, float, cool, refresh, cool, Splashhhhh…, believing that at the end of these steps you will be actually be in the water, but of course you are not… you remain on the hard hot sand, to get in would involve dropping the notion of a prescribed route there, and this would be ‘wrong’ it would be contrary to your teacher’s instructions, so you persist in walking next to the waters for which you long, step, step, step, step, step, step… perhaps you will feel disheartened and defeated and give up in the end, or perhaps you will continue for ever, eternally failing, eternally missing your goal.
At this point a second radical question presented itself: Was Robert actually living in Consciousness? Based on my experiences of it the Lower Self was so diminished as to be irrelevant… it couldn’t have expressed itself in large terms such as greed, or lust, or fear, or the need to protect and insulate oneself, it would not have required material comfort or impressions because in that state there were no requirements; all impressions were glorious, even litter, and dirt; all were right, all was perfect as it was.
I knew a fair amount about the ‘behind the scenes Robert’ because I had been in relationships with people in his entourage. Apparently in the 80’s and nineties he had been frequently depressed and negative, his energy was often very heavy. His state had dramatically changed when ‘the Russians’ joined his entourage; he had become electrified and invigorated and emerged from seclusion to begin teaching and travelling on a tremendous scale.
At the same time more and more items were arriving from my past and placing themselves in the foreground. First hand reports of his anger and his jealousy, his irrational rages, and punishments and banishments, orgies with young men who did not want them… Birthday treats of 60 men… and so on; they all arrived and settled in full view. The first time I heard these things I had not flinched; I had simply admitted that I did not understand them and re-focused on ‘my own’ Work so as not to be pulled down by possible unpleasantness. But this time I did not change the subject…
It wasn’t that I was reveling in indignation or anything, in fact at the time, there was only one emerging memory that really hurt. It was the fact that Robert had said that he did not enjoy the meetings and the teaching events, and that he only did them so that he could be with the boys…
I did not feel much blame towards Robert for his behavior. Was it possible that I had in some way been supporting it? When Robert expressed an interest in owls I would go out and buy an owl card for him, and send him owl quotations; I had wanted to attract his attention, had believed that if I had more exposure to him I would be more likely to awaken. I had arranged introductions of young men to him…
Robert’s assistants were very good at anticipating his needs, I knew because I had been married to two of them. The whole of his life was organized for maximum smoothness and efficiency. Perhaps they anticipated his sexual needs as well; probably to please him they devised new logistical methods to improve everything…
What really moved me now was the excitement of recovering Higher Centres. I immediately went out and bought an Adyashanti book. I liked it, the writer seemed Awake and informed and kind and clean; but the book was hard to understand… on this first reading I raced through it trying to find what he recommended us to do, he spoke about Higher Centres which he called ‘Oneness’, but he didn’t tell me how to get there… I wanted some concrete lessons, a formula, help.
TH and Truthfulness
At the end of November a newer student called me. TH was 19 and had joined six weeks earlier after reading In Search of the Miraculous. His mother was friends with a student who had given the book to him.
He said that something very strange had happened to him and he wanted to talk about it so I invited him over.
For about two weeks he would visit me daily. I’m not sure how to present the episode and do it justice. It shook up everything; it was brilliant, and sad.
He asked me how he had appeared at the centre dinner two evenings earlier. The conversation went like this:
“Did I behave normally?”
“Yes”
“Oh… It was very difficult to hold myself together, I feel as if I will fall apart at any moment”
“Why?”
“I was sitting on the train, and ‘TH’ disappeared”
“What does it feel like?”
“Now my consciousness is everywhere, some times it is outside my body looking at it from a different spot, and sometimes it is as big as the room or as a field, or as an ocean”
“Is it nice?”
“Yes, but I am surprised that I can still do things like walking and talking and just living, and I’m afraid that soon I won’t be able to, I have not been able to sleep”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Three days”
“How did it start?”
“I was doing the sequence”
“How long had you been doing it for?”
“About two days.”
As an Older Student I felt obliged to come up with some kind of explanation, some kind of advice. But I found myself quite unable to speak. I realized that he had gone quite beyond the realms on which I could theorize. After a long pause he asked me another question:
“Do you think everyone wants to Wake Up?”
“No of course not” I began answering “only very few people have magnetic centres… even then the magnetic centre would have to be mature enough. Believe me I am always on the look out for magnetic centers but in all my years of interacting with many, many different Life people I have never…”
I suddenly noticed my voice. It sounded awful, my words hollow and insubstantial, I just stopped speaking. After another pause I asked him “What do you think?” He answered:
“Everyone longs to wake up, they just don’t call it that. They long for better cars, or for more money, or for varieties of sexual experience, for security, or for awakening… it’s all the same”
His words were not like mine. They had a profound ‘truth’ about them, they did not carry the charisma of conviction, and they revealed mine to be just shallow opinions; ideas which I been able to believe in and which I had just repeated and repeated and repeated.
As he spoke I kept remembering Rumi poems; they seemed so relevant. Eventually I recited one and as the exquisite words emerged I felt almost as if in some strange way I was lying again. At the end he said quietly “Do you really understand the poem?”
I asked him another question. “At meetings, you had been asking about the 2nd conscious shock, what does it mean to you now?”
“It’s the heart” he answered.
When he left I was in a state of shock. It seemed that this boy had Woken Up, but the implications of this were phenomenal… I couldn’t begin to comprehend them… and he had only been in the School for six weeks…
The next day he came by again. I asked him what he had been doing and he said “de-contracting my heart”. I did not know what he meant but it sounded very familiar; just like in fact something that Adyashanti would say. Over the next few became clear that although he had never read Adyashanti he was what Adyashanti described, and other things.
I learned that he was someone who had a lot of ‘will power’, in the past he would go climbing in the mountains without equipment, and sleep without a tent in the snow. And he had been unusually persistent with the Sequence. Eventually I asked him if he thought Will was necessary for awakening and after a pause, he said:
“No. What you call Will is not Will for me. I could do those things because I wanted to, for other people they would be difficult because they do not want to do them.”
“The Will exercises about eating from the Fellowship were interesting for a while” he said and smiled “but not necessary”
“Ouspensky was mistaken about Will and many other things”
I asked him about Robert Burton.
“Something is very wrong with him” he said.
On another occasion he asked me “Is it necessary to have a Teacher?”
I began answering him with the usual tapes about needing someone who had already escaped to show one the way out… when again I was forced to stop myself in disgust at what was revealed to be my ‘lying’. After a while I admitted that I didn’t know. He said that perhaps different teachers were necessary.
Although he never at any point suggested that he was special or important, in fact he was adamant to the contrary, it did emerge that he had developed a number of ‘supernatural’ powers: he could see vast distances and ‘read’ people. He could also read and assimilate huge amounts of information in short periods of time. He knew or rather was things that Ouspensky and Colin had pointed at and could refer back to exact pages in their texts.
Yet the experience was becoming increasingly difficult for him.
When told him that I wished I could be awake as he was, he told me that I was awake, even if I couldn’t see it. He also said that he would never wish what he had on anyone; sometimes it was wonderful but sometimes it was terrible and it paralyzed him with fear.
Over the two weeks he did in fact disintegrate outwardly. He stopped washing and gave away his money, his telephone and as many of his clothes as possible to poor people. He began running very long distances sometimes 50 km at a go. Although it was winter he would plunge in to canals, and he was at times frantically afraid of the experiences that were overwhelming him.
Strangely I was never afraid or repulsed by him, on the contrary I felt the most profound gratitude and awe; between bouts of fear he was so very pure and in his reflection I saw how very impure I had become.
Two Sundays later a stranger called me who had been sheltering TH after he had dragged himself out of a river. They asked me to come and pick him up from a spot fifty kilometers outside the city. When I couldn’t find him, I became very worried and called M, the student friend of his mother. I asked her if he had any history of mental illness. She told me absolutely not, and that he had been in every sense a normal teenager, albeit rather independent. I called his parents and ask them to help. Later that night he arrived on my doorstep stricken with terror. The next day he was taken away.
The Sequence, my Directorship, and Self Deprecation cease
I stopped trying to do the Sequence… Presence continued to arise, bursting through swathes of Imagination and Identification like balm.
All Self Deprecation ceased.
Christmas with the centre was very odd. I was the centre director but I had stopped believing in anything that was being said. I saw people talking about their verifications and knew that they, as I had, were actually talking about their beliefs. I saw students quoting poetry from Conscious Beings instead of expressing their own beings, I heard them using work language to fortify frailties and inconsistencies in their own limited understanding, but I couldn’t say anything. I saw them using classifications such as Body Types and Centre of Gravity to avoid experiencing more fully the wholeness that was before them. I saw all these things in myself of course too, but bit by bit these tendencies were dropping away in me, not because of any new found virtuousness or strength, but because I didn’t want them anymore. I had seen my lies and it was repulsive to reproduce them.
The most painful times were meetings. The quotations that we were forced to read were appalling. I allowed myself to register that exquisite pieces of poetry were in fact being butchered and molded to fit the lengthy interpretations which followed them. The constant theme was the necessity of doing the Sequence. At the end of the Sequence was Divine Presence. If we did not do the Sequence we were in the grip of some scaly many toothed monster, images of which were projected onto a wall simultaneously. There were so many words to understand, so many complicated mental connections, so much Disbelief to Suspend, so much failure to separate from. The form was in itself confounding our attempts to simply be. Why couldn’t our teacher see this?
In January a friend in the Council called on behalf of Asaf. He had heard rumours about TH and wanted to make sure that there was no danger of the Fellowship being sued. I reassured him, but was struck by the implicit assumption that I would not find this question tasteless and cold. For Theo’s parents his apparent madness was a tragedy akin to death: their beloved son who had been musical, bright, self-disciplined, energetic and with a wealth of potentials ahead of him had been reduced to a silent almost vegetable existence.
A week later I resigned as director.
Preventative dismissal
Being free of the Director’s work load was wonderful. My domestic life was in a shambles there were business letters that had gone unanswered, and bills that had been accumulating interest for the entire duration of my directorship, there simply hadn’t been time. I took a rest from meetings for a while.
Concern for TH plunged me into reading materials that I had previously spurned as A and B Influence. I wanted to understand the relationship between what seemed clearly an Awakening and what also at least outwardly had deteriorated into madness. I read about Kundalini about Meher Baba’s Masts, about supernatural powers and about psychosis. I wasn’t able to come to any conclusions. TH became mostly silent and he stopped eating or washing without assistance. But in his lucid times he had never focused on ‘himself’, there was no Narcissism, no hallucinations, no angels, no visions; for him it seemed the brilliance of the Real had been just too much.
My sister called me from Isis. She was worried; apparently two of my friends from Amsterdam had called her to find out where I was. As I told her about my new understandings and felt her stiffen.
I started to receive other calls from friends at Isis. They had heard that I was “having a difficult time”, I tried to explain that it wasn’t difficult but exciting. I tried to explain about the Sequence and was told that without doubt it was my King of Clubs and my Lower Centres that were resisting it. One person photographed me for using the word “utterly”; another sent me an exquisite poem from Rumi about not being troubled by doubt; but I wasn’t “troubled” I felt liberated.
Another Student asked me why I took the Sequence so seriously and that Robert would be sure to have another phase sooner or later. I answered that Robert was my Teacher and that he expected his teachings to be taken seriously, why else would he have a school?
They asked me how I felt about him and I answered that based on my own experiences of Higher Centres it seemed unlikely that he was living in them. Talking about Robert was challenging; I wondered if they would revere him so if they knew how he manipulated his entourage into compliance, if they knew how Negative he was in private. When I tried to describe this their voices became calm… and removed… it was as if somehow they equated me with the outrageous behavior I was describing; as if I was somehow sentencing myself as dismissible.
“It is clear” one person said, “That Robert is no longer your Teacher, why don’t you just leave?” I was stunned at first by this, it was so brutal: how could I “just leave”; for 23 years Robert had told us that the Fellowship was our real family. My friends were all members… and we had an exercise not to speak to ex-students.
I began to wonder about Conscience. Ouspensky and Gurdjief had said that it was imperative part of Awakening, yet Robert had never spoken about it. Why? In the past I had always imagined that he considered us not ready for the topic, perhaps it was too ‘advanced’; perhaps we were too much under Feminine Dominance to understand it correctly.
Now it struck me that Robert was the one who had coined this term. It wasn’t in the workbooks. Other systems spoke of morality or socio-cultural conditioning. But they had never suggested that going beyond these things meant abdicating from goodness and kindness and helpfulness and consideration, these were different, they were not disposable. Perhaps Robert had quietly and gently become the predator that Gurdjief had warned about in those who didn’t develop conscience? And perhaps we had helped him.
But no matter what new picture of Robert was taking shape in me, it was a new excitement about Awakening that was moving me.
One day as I walked through the park chatting with an erstwhile friend I sense the greenness of the place gently pressing itself into view. An avenue of trees lining up in the corner of my eye… a fragrance, an attendant peacefulness…
I heard my friend saying “But don’t you find the thirty work ‘I’s useful at all? I mean take the ‘I’ ‘Walk’ doesn’t it help you to be Present now…”. I looked at her quizzically and without irony answer “No, the word ‘walk’ is not particularly magical to me.”
In that moment I realized that I had never ‘done’ Presence, it had always just ‘arisen’. I had never tried, the trying would come a split second after, Presence would be recognised and named and called my own and there would be a scrambling to prolong… which would obliterate it utterly.
Meetings with more remarkable men
One Saturday I bought a book called the Open Secret by an English Advaita teacher called Tony Parsons. It was short and I read it in one sitting. It was perfect; he described his first experience of Higher Centers, he called it ‘being realized in oneness’; It was joy, peace silence, complete aliveness, total acceptance, unconditional love. He explained that he knew immediately that he had done nothing to deserve this state and that it had simply happened to him. Later he had become permanently ‘realized in oneness’. He explained that any ‘teacher’ who claimed that Awakening was a process which needed to be taught by himself and learned by his students, must have his own agenda for doing so.
When I got home I found his telephone number in England and called him. An answering phone said “Hello this is the home of Clair and Tony Parsons, please leave your message after the tone” after some hesitation (he was a conscious being after all) I left my number. Tony called me back, he had a friendly, ordinary voice.
I told him that I had experienced ‘oneness’, but that it had not happened again for the last twenty years. I told him that for all this time I had been in a school in which we practiced Presence and strove to Awaken. I asked him why I had not succeeded, and what his secret was, I was desperate… what could I do…?
Nothing he answered, there is nothing you can do. You can’t find something which is already there. “But why can’t I see it; what is in my way?” When you were a baby he answered, you lived in oneness, but your parents and those around you called you ‘Anna’, they told you you were separate from everything else and eventually you believed them. As soon as you left oneness you felt the pain of separation and longed to return. “But how?” I pleaded, “How can I return?”
Everyone is longing for oneness he answered, but they project their longing onto other things: cars, money, relationships, being a spiritual seeker… it is the seeker in you which is standing in your way.
A few weeks later I went to visit my yoga teacher, although she was busy she squeezed me in between two of her classes. I asked her if she was religious in any way. “Yes, I suppose I’m a Christian.” I asked her if she went to church… believed in Jesus and the bible. “Oh no” she answered. Well what do you believe in then? “Love” She answered. What is Love for you I asked. “Interest” she replied.
In February I received two messages from Robert. In the first he said that it was my King of Clubs and my Lower Self that were resisting the Sequence (this was a similar message to the one he had sent when he heard that it was painful for me that he was having sex with my husband). In the second message he sent me his love.
Is Robert interested in me? I asked myself, or is he simply attempting to align me, with the minimum possible personal involvement.
A farewell
Just before the end of the month I stopped all payments to the Fellowship. I could not bear to pay Robert another penny.
I did not feel anger towards him; I did not know who he was really. It was as if he had been some type of mirage. My teacher had been a dream, the sum the sum of my projections, my hopes and hopefulness.
I knew that he was not awake, but could not imagine him to be particularly malevolent: deluded seemed to be a better word, and hadn’t we all supported him in his delusion?
On May 28th I finally read the Sheik’s first report on the Fellowship. On May 29th I left.
One of my friends wrote to me and said how could you have left your friends of 23 years? I told her that it is so clear that if there is any leaving to be done it will be they who leave me.
It has not been as difficult as I imagined. There has not been as much shunning. Those of us who leave now are lucky.
And what about the work? There’s a certain type of certainty now that nothing can be done. The beautiful things like Presence simply arise, because we want them to; the ugly things I try not to avoid. Occasionally I force myself to read the blog; it is both wonderful and harsh.
For while I was surprised to hear Robert described as ‘evil’; I maintained the idea that we his students had been equally to blame. But two weeks ago I watched ‘What the Bleep do I know?’ The narrator explained that what we perceive in the present is collected from memories from the past… there’s that moment when you see a Shaman standing on the beach perplexed and looking out across what for him is a vast and empty sea. In reality a fleet of armed ships are looming over his cove; but because has never seen a ship before these are invisible to him…
And I know that I have been Naïve. Shards of anger cut through my day.
Consciousness… Oneness, of course is something else. The search for it was the beginning and perhaps the end of all this. Knowing and almost accepting that Anna can do nothing to achieve it has been so very liberating and so very humbling.
If there is anything to be done I suspect it will have something to do with the heart, with grasping for that fine thread of conscience that might have been lost… and with holding on to it no matter what; with allowing that organ to breathe again, to bound back from poor to pure.
Anna
It aint going to work because Elena hit the nail on the head, “too many eyes watching you”.
Sorry, Uno’s post came in first. I mean that whatever is going here it’s not going to work because of what Elena said about eyes watching. Sorry!
“I have just found the Fellowship of Friends website which has a very different tone than the screaming and the complaining going on here, it is called the Art of Divine Presence. Now this is more like it. Nice soothing tone and some very interesting concepts.”
Of course the victims shouts louder: they are the ones who are being tortured. The aggressor can remain sinisterly demure and even gently smiling (until he’s caught).
Some victims don’t know they are victims: like children who were raised in captivity, these ones are quiet because they don’t know anything else: I know I was…
The picture you get on the Fellowship website reflects a genuine wish on the part of the students who remain; I had this wish too, I was utterly blinded by it’s beauty… until finally a chink of real sunlight broke into my jail and I was forced to acknowledge that the man who occasionally visited and who asked so much was actually my jailor. I had lost my life to a sociopath.
P.S.S. to 212
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This is a quote from an former F.O.F. ‘student’ ~
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“When m & i lived at Kevin K’s house we were your “next-door” neighbors. i know that m developed a friendship with you and your wife during that phase but didn’t know that she had confided in you about the terror of her situation… it makes sense that she would turn to you and “your m” with the problem she faced.
“my m” fought valiantly against the power that was forcing her to act against her will. she fought it the only way she could, mostly with tears and verbal protestations. but there was little sympathy for her plight since it was the will of “the teacher” that she abort the pregnancy. Sharon s, linda, and other Robert Burton puppets were brought in to arrange the operation in L.A. and to try to convince m that the abortion was the right thing to do…
the explanation from the horse’s ass had something to do with the timing of the pregnancy, that the child would not be born on “the ark.” what outrageous bullshit!!! “the teacher” rationalized the whole thing based on the dire “prophecies” which at the time i believed… now i see that the predictions were nothing more than fear-mongering and another means of mind-control.
i’m not a “right-to-lifer” by any means, i believe it’s a woman’s right to choose what to do in the case of pregnancy. but given the situation and circumstances, m had no choice! she was coerced from the beginning, and i blame myself for this…. we should have just fled the scene then and there, but i was deeply brain-washed.
I’ve written previously that my “suspicion” at the time concerning the motivation behind the whole thing was jealous revenge… i left the academy and married m (you took the pictures of our wedding there at renaissance). i mentioned in a previous post that i went to miles with my concerns and suspicions — the next “conscious being” and already almost man # 5… what absolute rubbish!! i found no support from him, he backed “the teacher.” as a “task” from the teacher, i thought it was essential to convince m that it was the right thing to do…. i was just another “little eichman.”
this is stuff that’s been buried for a long time and it’s heart-rending to re-live… it makes me feel physically ill.
I was there at the hospital holding her hand after the abortion, trying to console her… (what a colossal fool i am), she could not be consoled, any words i might have uttered went unheard. the intent of the abortion worked as planned — by siding with “the teacher” i destroyed my wife’s trust in me and too, the marriage. I’ve written before, that my complicity in this criminal act is personally THE most damning event of my Fellowship of Friends experience. it’s a sin i’ve lived with for many years and i’ll go to my grave with it… there’s hell to pay. i loathe myself for my part in it and i have to wonder how a human being responsible for this situation many times over can possibly live with “itself” ?!? it’s completely monstrous!
in other posts, i’ve briefly sketched my difficulties when i left the fof… i lived a dissolute and self-destructive life, i slept on the pavement at night and aimlessly wandered the streets by day, like “wind along the waste.” later i realized that this was the manifestation of a strong death-wish, the humiliation of that kick-in-the balls courtesy of “the teacher” completely destroyed my will to live and i can say now, “but for the grace of god” and the loving support of a few earth-angels, i should be already, a long time in the grave.
thank you for listening to my story
____________________________
Inner circle facts Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Are you ready for some brutal facts?
Who would like to know how its really happening in his bad room? OK folks,fasten your sit belts,the Kansas going Bye Bye…
Did you know that usual orgies are formed from 4 to 6 student?.Usually two of them are SIMULTANEOUSLY entering Burton’s anus.Third person is laying on his back while Mr.Burton is providing him an oral sex while two from both sides are subject to the masturbation by MR.Burton with his two hands.
Some time there is one more student who’s role is to hold Burton’s testicles in his mouth during the whole time.Prior to all, by Burton’s request Viagra pills are shared and swallowed between all members of the orgy which are constantly provided by Mr.G.
Some time you can hear Burton’s words during the sexual activities “How incredible! We are getting closer,aren’t we?”
Some of them are asked to suck his nipples and his toes.All sperm gets swallowed by Mr.Burton at the end of the act.But that is not all yet.
There are two students who had the most terrifying and most humiliating role to play (in my opinion).They have to enter with their hands by their elbows into the Burton’s anus.(Looking for Consciousness perhaps)..both students are Russians.One of them had left the school and the other has been “shipped” back to Russia for disobedience.
And now get this:
Beside those depraved scenes there is another one which going to shake you all:
There is another act that Burton is preforming with a specific student of his own “inner circle”.This act of Humiliation is performed in his bath room while Burton is laying down and 3 students are urinating right on him!
And on the next morning,like nothing happened Mr.Burton is leading the meeting on Love?
How cynical indeed!
211 Wild Idea
You’re right, it was unmanly of me. I feel terrible about myself.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Here’s a Wild Idea: you like the fellowship web site — why don’t you join, leave the blog to the complainers and shouters, and every body is happy.
Wild Idea wrote (quoting an expert): “People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth.”
I hope you realize that you’re referring to yourself here. The quotation describes many people, including you, who have jumped onto the blog to defend Burton.
Your “wild idea” sounds a lot like obfuscation — which, by the way, isn’t a Fourth Way idea. Isn’t the Fourth Way largely about trying to see yourself, as opposed to hiding aspects of yourself?
I loved Anna’s response, as it gets to the heart of the matter:
“Of course the victims shout louder: they are the ones who are being tortured. The aggressor can remain sinisterly demure and even gently smiling (until he’s caught).”
I might add that ‘wild idea’ attacks on the moderator (questioning his motivations and implying underlying favoritism/corruption) are a trademark of Greg’s usual behaviour, one he has often displayed on the GFF. If interrupted or challenged in any way, he will push, nag, keep posting remarks on the moderator until he/she gives in (at which point he would point out how easily corrupted they are), or they offer a justification for their decision (at which point he will point out this clearly shows guilt), or until they blow up (at which point he will point out the lack of respect and composure). And on and on… Caveat emptor!
211 Wild Idea
“The person going by Just Another Voice Out Here has weirdly cataloged every word and nuance this hardtruth has uttered”
_____________________________________________________________________
If you’d like to discuss this issue, by all means do, but at least say something that isn’t obviously nonsense. Greg Graduates hardtruth has posted several hundred times on this site–which, as I recall, you weren’t interested in reading, but for some reason you’re very interested in defending.
It occurred to me as well that Wild Idea is Greg, but I think not. Greg is crazy but he’s not stupid.
good job, greg!
almost a whole page devoted to you and your little mind games.
I am always fascinated by how abusive people like to take so much space with their whining and complaining about how the whole world treats them so unfairly. You truly believe you are the victim, don’t you? It seems so hard to acknoweldge that maybe you are just being your own punishment. If you showed a little more patience and compassion towards life, life would mirror the same back to you. How long do you think you can keep up this silly facade so you can go on pushing people’s buttons just a little longer? How very clever to throw in that comparison with the FOF website, quite a hook you’ve got there.
You have come to the conclusion that other peoples’ ego are worthless, and that is how you rationalize stomping all over their feelings – what you like to call tweaking their egos (it’s for their own good, right? ’cause they’re such asleep hypocrites…), but IMO pretending to work on others against their will is just a “buffer” that keeps you from working on healing your own wounded ego, which ironically is the only thing that could really help you and everyone else to “move on”. Yes, one can theoretically agree with you that we are asleep, the ego must die if we are to awaken, etc., but you can’t help anyone through the awakening process unless you have “the being”, and I think most would agree that you do not come across as greg the zen master yet.
your dear ragu
(hmmm… in case you are not wild idea after all, well, sorry!)
221 Just Another Voice Out Here
I’ll bet you dinner at the restaurant of your choice in Nevada City that it’s Greg.
222 brucelevy
You’re on, Bruce. Not because I’m sure I’m right, but because it’d be fun to have dinner with you next time in the area. But I do question whether Greg has the ability to effectively mimic the writing style of someone with Wild Idea’s limited command of the language.
Please let’s not give this subject any more air time. Who ever Wild Idea is he/she has just walked into a recovery unit- jeered at the victims, told them that he/she prefers the ‘tone’ of Robert Burton the perpetrator.
I truly hope it’s not Greg. I enjoyed many of his posts and hope that (if it’s not him) he gets back on air, and kind.
Arthur, Lauralupa,
this feels now extremely off topic, however: what a coincidence to find book open on the Fool’s page. Arthur, we are all Fools; but it is not as bad as it could sound or look.
I already like Jodorowsky image better than the superficial interpretation.
I have a different version of tarots designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris, here is what Angeles Arrien says about the Fool in a nutshell:
“….The principle of courage; state of no fear, ecstacy and peak experience.
…He/She looks straight ahead; therefore, fear cannot make a dent.”
More later…
223 Just Another Voice Out Here
He’s trying, but not succeeding. What he’s recently said as wild idea is the same as he’s said many times in the past in his various personas , and his arrogant style, even restrained, comes through beyond his control, in his usual words.
But it doesn’t matter, because they’re the same person even if they’re not the same person (but he is).
I tend to agree with Bruce that Wild I is Greg.
The pattern seems to be participation at all cost, no matter whose side Greg has to play in. The addiction seems to be, desperately needing to be heard and addressed even if violently. It is a way of keeping some kind of contact and a similar pattern to Robert or any other person in different degrees. In some people, this drive makes them eat until they are obsessively obese.
So Greg, Wild I, what you are demanding from Ralph B and others about not coming up with such concepts while Hardtruth was here is the same I could demand from you for avoiding to deal with the questions I’ve posed to you. You avoid the real issues so that you can continue fighting and going down the same abusive path that you’ve taken so many times. Then being you yourself abused makes you feel more alive. It is the old hydrogen 12 or sex energy of negative emotions that are so clearly explained in the System.
The lack of a healthy sexuality which expresses itself in the well beingness with the world around one, pushes us to establish pathological patterns in which the natural, essence desire to participate is thwarted and extreme patterns of behaviour replace it.
When the individual cannot participate, that is, become a lawful part of the community, then third line inverts itself and instead of working to support the community it works to destroy it. All forms of crime work in the same pattern and all political and social struggle function under the same laws, which is just as true as saying that all legitimate human struggle goes through a similar process. The laws remain the same, it is the characters and the struggle involved what makes the difference.
In our situation we have quite a few individuals with extreme behaviour but in opposite directions. There is an individual with an extremely developed sense of himself and an equally developed clarity about the community that envelopes him but he cannot come to terms with either one of them in a harmonious relationship. The ego is desperate to prove itself so it stands up for the System as the TRUTH, destroys the Fellowship as the devil but also undermines other males that he cannot come to terms with while siding with women who might support him, even help him or justify his behaviour to a certain degree. The ego is fighting justified in the extremes by the outer and inner circle without being able to relax. That is in third and first line but unable to find rest or expression in the second line. It is really very interesting Greg and thank you for providing yourself to look at the phenomenon. So again, we have a very strong personality in the first circle of the individual sphere, in the third circle of the community sphere but very weak in the second sphere or the sphere of immediate relationships: family, friends, and acquaintances, that is, second line.
It is very similar to the Fellowship of Friends phenomena. The individual or first line is made to work “desperately” on himself to control his “presence” and the expression of negative emotions (convinced that this is work on himself that will develop into consciousness) while the third line is reduced to imaginary “divinities” expressing themselves in car plates through Robert, replacing any form of real practical third line to strengthen the community while second line goes into a deep hierarchic stratification in which nobody even argues because there is no room for questioning. The I is fixed in idolatry and the many Is are crystallized into psychological slaves.
In Greg, third line or the outer justification is the System, an imaginary great System that you uphold as the great truth that nobody else can come even close to understanding as deeply as you do. Like Robert with his divine connection to the Gods. It is a replacement for a legitimate connection to one’s own source of life or the divine within one as well as the acknowledgement of the divine within everything, but in our sickness it takes pathological forms.
In your first line you seem to present yourself as infallible. Wild I’s last post is good in showing the difference for you certainly are not accepting that you are abusive on other people and hurt deeply. What you, like anyone else in your state are really doing, is exteriorizing the extent of your suffering because you no longer know how to deal with it on your own. It looks like you are hurting other people for those identified with the situation or at the end of the rod, but you are desperately asking for help. You do need help but you don’t know where to find it. If you were not still hoping to get help you would not be talking to people, you would have gone into a more criminal behaviour not just with words.
In your second line you are telling other men to fuck out of your way. Was your mother abused by your father or other men? You defended me without my needing to be defended at some point as an excuse to prolong the fight with other men here. It is a very painful pattern and I have been through very similar one’s as so many of us. I do suggest with my warmest concern that you look at it deeply and without judgement so that you can really dig out the initial experiences that propelled you into this pattern. Suffering does not kill and going back to the initial experience, looking at it straight in the face like a bull that is about to attack you, does not stop us from taking out a red flag and saying to the bull, come on boy, I am happy to dance with you and carry the suffering of my time with my head up and straight. The suffering of my time that came to me through my parent’s play or whoever played their role.
A man’s suffering is only the codified language of the problems of our time. We can transform them in as much as we stop our selves from reproducing the same patterns and assuming responsibility for our individual actions. Every time we hold our hand from slamming the door, a whole chain of suffering is able to rest. A hero is a human being willing to carry the suffering without hitting back at the world. He slays the dragon within himself and offers himself to the attacks of others for he has tamed himself. What others need to see and are inspired by, is how he has tamed himself so that they too can tame themselves. We are not heroes here yet but we are all in the process of carrying our suffering without hitting back at the world that hurt us, for life is too beautiful to miss the opportunity.
I sincerely hope this long post helps you Greg. I did not wish to indulge in such personal stances publicly nor knew where it was going, nor found it necessary for I do believe you would well profit from a long session with a professional who can listen to you and allow you to cry your suffering out until you can stand up from the bed without wishing to hit any body else. Accepting that we can be helped by other people and beings, that there is enough love in this world and that one is not the centre of the world, is the first step to an understanding of the Inner Spiritual Hierarchy of the Universe to which we all belong and belong more deeply when we can give up our ego to our I, our common being human I.
223 Just Another Voice Out Here
From a recent Wild Idea post:
‘Brucelevy’s message to me is venomous and abusive, it is not called for because I have been polite with my opinions.’
If you look, the run-on sentence is the trademark grammatical error afflicting all of graduates/hardtruths etc writings.
If it is hardtruth, he is loving the attention. The best response is probably none. So i’m done.
227 elena
That was beautifully said. Thank you for taking the high road. hope it helps.
221 It doesn’t do much good to talk sense to a crazy (and in this case stupid) person.
Elena’s post helped me: am so relieved that something good is emerging from this thread…
Of course the more we say, “Let’s move on and let it go,” the more we’re bringing focus to the topic. Another approach might be to change the subject, and try to ignore threads that we’re less interested in. Also — as far as banning someone — I think the Sheik is simply evaluating our collective threshold for when someone is going too far. “Too far” means something very different to each one of us, but I’m glad someone is keeping an eye on it anyway.
About where the “thread” might be leading — there are many different threads here on the blog. Everyone has their own idea where the discussion should lead. And we have our own opinions about whether certain posters are sincere, or if they’re just messing around. In my opinion, it helps to point out when someone is just messing around, or when someone is trying to divert attention away from the very simple message:
“This is not a good man. People are getting hurt. Something is wrong here.”
Sometimes pointing out that someone is just “messing around” is part of that message, because that’s part of what’s wrong. Those who (seemingly) aren’t being hurt, don’t want to hear about the people who ARE being hurt Those people NOT being hurt (seemingly) do feel very defensive and threatened about these postings. Wild Idea is very right, although he’s directing his wrath in the wrong direction.
Many people (including Wild Idea? Who knows!) feel threatened by the opinions stated here because it IS a cult, and because the truth is the last thing a cult needs. And because hiding the truth and obfuscating are part of the General Operating Procedure within cults.
But sure, moving on is good too. It often comes back to focusing on what YOU have to say, and what YOU have to offer, and then not placing too much emphasis on things you can’t control. I know many people just enjoy the interaction and the youtubes, and I do, too, but I also really appreciate it when someone sheds some new light on what’s going on within the fof.
By the way… Just something to think about…
When we’re concerned about the discussion being too contentious, it might help to see how that reaction, too, is a product of our time in the fof.
The last thing the Fellowship of Friends wants within its confines is any type of argument. The last thing that Burton wants is any contentiousness, any disagreement, any critical thinking…
… any “negativity.”
Sure, we want some harmony here — but some of the most enlightening discussions have developed from the disharmony, and from the raw emotion of being pissed off.
Elena,
Aplauso for the curandero references directed to Wild Idea, Hard Truth, Graduates and Greg.
Some of us were laid low as indicated in Post 216. Self-destructive thoughts and death wishes.
Some of us need healing as you say, “down to the bones”.
Hello ‘Rear View Mirror’ ~
Maybe dancing the kind of magic that Elena has danced into the subject concerning Greg, i.e., actually giving ‘threads’ for weaving conscious warmth and not subconsciously ‘tripping’ within a person’s soul, that something it has attached to it, a some-thing that’s more of an oscillatory shadow-child that grows larger and deeper into the Netherworld’s tumorous obscurity by counting its losses as gains, which it expertly anticipates each time it acts…(?)
Maybe isn’t “going too far”, that this IS dealing with Robert and the F.O.F., though on a much grander and cosmic level than commonly ‘thought’ of as the right way to get at the nucleus, after all, the center is nothing without a context:
in so many ways it’s very possible to miss the forest for the trees and Robert is most definitely ‘the trees’, so, starting with ourselves is not an altogether unwise thing to do, because just like so many in here have already found out the ‘Hard truth’ way, you can be in a school of self development for a very long time developing a self that cannot graduate or use the knowledge to be the words if the words and ‘conscious’ laws given out by such an institution towards the meditations into one’s Conscience are always changing for the subjective benefit of one person’s subjective posturing and “just messing around” while not altogether really heart-interested in what he’s saying he’s trying to physically-do…
So, I say, Thread On! And may The Thimble be with you!
__________________
P.S.
Arthur;
These links are for you ~
http://www.latimes.com/features/magazine/la-tm-ayahuasca.02feb3,1,6118145.story
http://www.geocities.com/iona_m/Ayahuasca/Ayahuasca.html
Also, check into Scott Peterson’s situation; I think you’ll find a kindred soul there…
:.)
L.t.y.a.
Sheik, okay, I’m finally getting some good information coming in. The Fellowship of Friends is a higher school of consciousness and those posting here have dropped out. It’s as if you were hanging around one of those shops in Holland where a bunch of college kids have stopped going to class for a few months and instead spend their days getting high and complaining about the pressure of school. See what I mean? If all you know is what you read here then you come to the conclusion that study is the same thing as torture. The true story is actually quite different than the confused view of the world as seen by the drop-outs. Hardtruth was entirely wrong about his view of the church and someone needs to reverse the view he presented. I doubt anyone here will object because of their estimation that he is a sociopath.
Elena, is Greg going to become the new Girard in your relentless campaign to post the most words while exploring the most tortuous route around any kind of sane logic?
Anna, don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. Put it back inside where it will do you some good.
One idea the Fellowship of Friends church explains is the idea of “identification.” They say that the drop-outs here have succumbed to debilitating identification, meaning that they have lost all ability to face unexpected turn of events without an unrealistic over-reaction. Bruce’s abusive attacks would be a perfect example of this failure to evoke the reasonableness of a reality-check.
Currently I’m studying the teaching of the way and hope to report more information to the Sheik and other nonpartisan on-lookers.
235 wild idea
Your efforts to impersonate a new comer and defender of hard truth/Greg are commendable but hardly convincing. You came in wanting to defend Hardtruth/Greg but declined to waddle through all the postings to form your opinion on the tone and contents of his contributions; yet you quickly identified a “weakness” in Elena’s attempts at reforming and psychoanalyzing her yours and various other encounters by naming Girard (I knew it would be wasted on you/Hardtruth/Greg). Now, THAT is a lot of reading.
“Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” GWB
235 Wild Idea
This post is the perfect opportunity to examine whether one has outgrown one’s gullibility, blindness and stupidity and whether one is ready to swallow more horse shit.
And I have a bridge to sell.
235 Wild Idea
It incredible that you have such a high opinion of yourself that you assume we’re all fucking morons, Greg. I’m sure there are at least a few enablers here ready to bite.
235 Wild Idea
OK, OK, I was wrong. Obviously Greg. Bruce, I owe you dinner.
The guy pretends he just happened by the blog, and isn’t interested in reading previous posts or finding out more about the Fellowship, but then goes after individual posters with personal invective that reveals his intimate familiarity with the person’s posting style and with Fellowship buzz words, and can’t seem to get over the banning of someone he supposedly doesn’t know, from an organization he’s barely heard of. Yeah, right. Greg, get a life.
But you have succeeded in once again dominating (or diminishing) the arena. You really are a sociopath, and it shines right through your garbage attempts at subterfuge.
Greg” “Elena, is Greg going to become the new Girard in your relentless campaign to post the most words while exploring the most tortuous route around any kind of sane logic?”
Greg, you are already the new Girard in my relentless campaign and the fact that you finally addressed and faced me means I got through to you so yes, I have not seen anyone stand it for too long, we are too many and with enough sense to break the crystals sooner than later so I doubt you’ll survive without turning seriously abusive. But if you do, I will congratulate us all! It is what I would really like to see.
Interesting that you really give a dam about what is to be discussed as long as you can speak louder if not longer, like I do. You are just like Girard who made the means the end and it no longer matters what he says as long as he can continue to speak, so yes, you are definitely the new Girard in my campaign; People who love to fake they are alive instead of actually living; talking rather than saying something; Making contact violently rather than making love. Girard managed to get himself an indefinite position at the cost of thousands in the Fellowship of Friends, you at least have to go around knocking on blogs to see if anyone allows you to say anything before you start spitting on them. So how do you like that picture? Do you prefer this one to my more tortouse route? Good, be my guest! And I’ll of course settle for being yours. Tell us who you are! Come on boy, come on! You don’t frighten me either! And when this is done, you can take me out to dinner if Girard doesn’t beat you to it!
For a sociopath it’s basically impossible for anything that disturbs or contradicts the person’s view of life to penetrate the pathological inner walls that has effectively isolated them from any semblance of conscience, compassion, empathy.
Let me say it a different way. There is nothing that will be said here (and this is obvious from past Greg threads) that will register, in anyway, in the consciousness (and I use that loosely) a the sociopathic person. That’s why psychologists say it’s virtually impossible to do anything for a true sociopath. The organ that most people have that can listen, hear and utilize is simply not there, period. One can occasionally see the “act” of contrition, shame, regret etc. But IT’S NOT REALLY THERE. It’s like trying to talk to a bedpost, and a pretty nasty one at that.
So please, everyone, feel free to try to fix, reason with, discuss…. if you enjoy banging your head against a wall while you’re being laughed at and ridiculed (of course, not that that should really even effect one, cough). I’m sure if RB had any real balls and a semblance of conscience he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from laughing right in the faces of his “children”.
It doesn’t really matter who the person “is” — it’s just plain sad, whoever they are and whatever their motives. Whoever it is, it’s yet another unhealthy result of being in the fof. Maybe he’s still a member of the fof (and just trying to distract people), or he may be some former member lashing out in bitterness for being banned.
Either way, he’s a product of this cult, just as we are, and just as all of those remain are.
Yeah, rb may be laughing; but if yes, that’s also very pathetic.
Bruce, we appreciate your b.s. detector.
241 brucelevy
Here’s how Greg views what happened to him on the blog, taken from the Greater Fellowship “group” (membership: one) he created to talk to himself:
“There is no ego more outraged with injustice than one that has been bested at his own game.”
“When incompetents are left in charge of the unrestrained amateurish excuse for order that has come to be accepted by the residents then naturally their worst fear is anyone actually able to assess the situation accurately and effectively.”
“Nothing emasculates them more than someone clearly brighter than they are, their frustration erupts prematurely as they sit around the barn barren of women and spew forth theories about why their rival is evil.”
____________________________________________________________________
OK, so I can’t decide–which of the following is more apt:
Narcissistic personality disorder:
(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,
(3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique,
(4) requires excessive admiration ,
(5) has a sense of entitlement,
(6) is interpersonally exploitative,
(7) lacks empathy,
(8) is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her,
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
Sounds pretty convincing, huh? But what about this one:
Antisocial personality disorder
Three or more of the following are required:
(1) Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
(2) Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
(3) Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
(4) Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
(5) Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
(6) Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honour financial obligations.
(7) Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
243 Just Another Voice Out Here
[quote]
Here’s how Greg views what happened to him on the blog, taken from the Greater Fellowship.
[unquote]
As was previously suggested, you have a queer fascination for this guy. I’m sure he doesn’t go that way.
Speaking of sex, wouldn’t it be sociopathic to have gay sex with a guy dozens of times over a period of months and even years, willingly and more or less openly, and then complain to everyone that you didn’t really want it? There seems to be a disconnect that is not only not credible, but somehow emotionally vacant.
243 Just Another Voice Out Here
I’d go with door #1.
Just Another Voice Out Here:
Yes, I’m always glad when someone brings up these topics, because it highlights the illness, the pathos of the Fellowship of Friends.
“OK, so I can’t decide–which of the following is more apt…”
My answer is both, but it’s the narcissistic personality disorder that’s been grabbing my attention more than anything lately.
A scary thought is that we have many people in the FOF who fit these descriptions. It’s scary, because they have the added advantage of studying under a man who’s been making a living at it.
What feeds these disorders? The answer: All they need is a group of people who decide to follow.
If there’s a cure — and sometimes I wonder if there is a cure — it has to start with actions such as exposure, abandonment, honesty, courage, and departure. THAT would be love.
244 Wild Idea
“I’m sure he doesn’t go that way.”
__________________________
Are you speaking about that guy you don’t know, who used to belong to an organization whose web site you “just found”?
————————————————————————————————————
“wouldn’t it be sociopathic to have gay sex with a guy dozens of times over a period of months and even years, willingly and more or less openly, and then complain to everyone that you didn’t really want it?”
__________________________
I don’t know, would it be? Have you met some people like that in the hour or two since you stumbled upon the Fellowship of Friends web site?
Would this be an example of “Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure”?
247 Just Another Voice Out Here
Good questions. But I’m sure you realize that it has been very rare for Greg to directly address questions such as these in a truly introspective and honest way. It’s usually turned around and all salient points are ignored. It’s part of the futility and naivety of thinking one can make a difference with narcissistic personalities.
It’s ironic and sad that one’s life can be completely self oriented and self referential yet at the same time be completely incapable of actually looking at and seeing one’s self.
One thing that makes me think this isn’t “hardtruth” is that it reminds me of the other Burton lackeys who have tried to distract the conversation from the following pertinent facts:
Robert Burton has had sex with hundreds of his followers over a period of several years, and continues to deceive the Fellowship of Friends membership under the pretense of spiritual guidance. Not only does he severely cross ethical boundaries with this behavior, and other behaviors, but in some cases he may be breaking the law.
Whenever the conversation goes in this direction in earnest, one of these guys jumps into the fray and starts launching insults, etc., in an attempt to distract people.
This is cult behavior.
Now, “wild idea” could be “hardtruth,” but if he is, it doesn’t remind me of the hardtruth that I once knew.
Either way, I like the inspiration it provides.
Nice post, bruce… “It’s ironic and sad that one’s life can be completely self oriented and self referential yet at the same time be completely incapable of actually looking at and seeing one’s self.”
So true, and taking your comments a bit further…
It’s ironic and sad that [an organization] can be completely self oriented and self referential yet at the same time be completely incapable of actually looking at and seeing [itself].”
249
One of the giveaways is his complaints about the moderator here are too similar to his complaints about the GF moderator. I have no doubt about it.
And read 247 again, another giveaway. Actually its sort of a bad, pathetic joke at this point.
Yes, too many give aways to doubt it, he answered and now he’s gone back to hiding when challenged and told he is not frightning. Just Another Voice, good list but it is missing many other qualities amongst which is that they are brilliant. You think if Robert weren’t we would have stayed there for so long? They are tremendously smart. And I am far from believing there is no way to help them, much as I trust you Bruce! Regular psychologists just say it is impossible when they don’t apply the right tools but of course even getting them to the right tool is an odyssy in our corrupt times. So you’re probably right, very little that can be really done if they cannot help to help themselves.
I wonder how many of us recognize ourselves in some of the points in that list? But the list itself is somewhat cultic. Another stake for burning brilliant people because they defy the current mind frames.
Hello All,
Greg/Hard Truth/Wild Idea in reality is only a noisy little nat buzzing around until his brief time on stage expires. Let’s not forget about the blood-sucking hairy spider in the center of the web who is the real pest.
(And that spiderweb is only a little net in a musty corner of the basement of reality.)
252 Elena
I agree there are some brilliant sociopaths, but I knew RB pretty well and had many talks. Brilliant he’s not. He has a very simple shallow intellect. But he is very good at manipulation, as are ALL sociopaths. That’s where their brilliance lies, but I wouldn’t call it genius. I’d call it very focused, tunnel vision driven by pathology. Do you remember Scott Peterson who murdered his pregnant wife? He wasn’t brilliant by any means, but his range of false, acted emotions was unbelievable to watch. I think it’s dangerous to equate manipulation and lack of conscience with genius or brilliance. And what the fuck good is genius when one is not fully human?
[quote] It’s ironic and sad that one’s life can be completely self oriented and self referential yet at the same time be completely incapable of actually looking at and seeing one’s self. [unquote]
A necessary addition:
It’s ironic and predictable that one’s life can be completely self oriented and self referential yet at the same time be completely incapable of actually looking at and seeing one’s self, all the while accusing others of this condition without understanding that you are the worst example yourself.
Bruce musing about geniuses and Elena musing about disturbed people, there’s a productive line of discussion.
You’ve got a vital hotspot of human intelligence fomenting here folks.
255 Wild Idea
“You’ve got a vital hotspot of human intelligence fomenting here folks.”
_______________________________________________________
And if that’s what you think, Greg, what does it say about you that you nonetheless cannot stand being away from it? That you’ll lie and manipulate and pout because you’ve been banned (none too successfully, it’s true) by these people you consider morons?
Hello Wild Idea ~
Deja vu?
What can we do better here by not walking backwards so to go forwards?
________________
I said to my mom the other day, ‘Well, hummm… Try this,… You can be either a victim or a vitamin…’
She paused awhile and I could almost visualize that quirky neck thingy that happens when that space in between the left and right hemispheres gets tweaked a little and a tiny god-dust-mote lifts itself off the Absolute’s shaving cream jar and into the eye of that human part that can say with utter clarity and trust,
‘I feel its time to cut that beard so that we can take a look at what’s underneath.’
Can we do something here without the prerequisite of depleting another and which goes beyond what’s normally expected when having a conversation with oneself?
In art school there was something called ‘constructive criticism’ and just plain ‘Hey, I think the conversation about what the piece could be is better than what it actually is right now’… Then there were those mornings when the art teacher and class just stood starring into something on the wall as if it were 2001 Space Odyssey Part III…
Maybe it is Part III right now; so, can we discuss what’s really going on inside the tall mysterious rectangle or are these predictable blog environments going to be your shadow boxing rink forever?
______________________
L.t.y.g.
Wild Idea reminds me of John, the supposed new FOF student who claimed to have joined in London, whereas in fact no one had joined the London center for months. He also reminds me of Psychic, whose posts were “unlike any others” and also had a Dutch connection. And he reminds me of all the other dishonest attempts by hardcore FOF members to manipulate Wikipedia.
Here’s a story that hasn’t received enough attention and which I heard last year from the medical professional . A Fellowship student went to another Fellowship student who worked in the medical profession and described his problem. The first student told the medical professional that he was a pedophile and he was attracted to little girls. (I have no idea to what extent this was put into practice, but it was definitely a problem for him.) At some point he had gone to Robert and confessed this to him and asked advice. Robert’s only advice was to wait until 2006 (the supposed year of nuclear Armageddon) after which there would be no restrictions on sexual behavior. So the pedophile student waited and 2006 came and went and then he didn’t know what to do. After all, he had just been postponing the fulfillment of his sexual desires. Luckily he had the sense to go to the medical professional who was arranging to get professional help for him.
But what a piece of “teaching” from Robert!
1. Robert approved the student’s pedophilia by just telling him to wait until the moment is right.
2. Robert therefore put the children of Fellowship students at risk.
3. It was completely useless advice for someone who at that time sincerely admitted that he had a problem..
4. Robert was obviously looking forward to 2006 so that he would have no restrictions on his own sexual behavior. Whether he might desire some underage liaisons himself is anyone’s guess, but I would advise any FOF students to keep their children away from him.
It reminds me of the story of the wife of an important student in the Fellowship who contacted Robert to tell him that her husband was spending hours watching porn on the Internet. Robert responded that after 2006 there won’t be any Internet.
Pedophiles, “sucking”, Porn, orgies, pressured abortions and expulsions. What kind of Tax Exempt Church is this? What is the name of the Deity they follow? Is an Incubus/Goddess in a male body?
On the sociopathic list I have two going and working on the third, maybe I’m a candidate for such a Church?
Draco (258): I may occasionally copy and paste your comments into the blog from time to time, just to make sure the gist of your message isn’t forgotten.
I realize we each need to “process” this information “at our own pace,” and so on, but sometimes I don’t get it… What more do we need to know?
Or as “More history needed?” implies, is more history needed?
Probably yes, because — I don’t know about all of you — I’m still impressed with these stories; I’m still learning something. One more illusion drops away when I hear these anecdotes, and I get a clearer picture of the deception, and how I was deceived, and how I deceived myself.
——
Richard (253): Not that it hasn’t been fun talking about our friend W.I., but thanks for bringing some focus back to the real problem.
254 brucelevy
“…I agree there are some brilliant sociopaths, but I knew RB pretty well and had many talks. Brilliant he’s not. He has a very simple shallow intellect. But he is very good at manipulation, as are ALL sociopaths. That’s where their brilliance lies, but I wouldn’t call it genius. I’d call it very focused, tunnel vision driven by pathology. ….”
———————————-
you nailed him Bruce!
It follows with Draco’s (#258) commentary on Robert Burton’s “teachings”.
What is the name of the Deity of the Tax Exempt Church called The Fellowship of Friends Guided by the Succubus in a male body (who enjoys ‘sleeping’ men) and co-cloven hoofed helpers G. and Asap?
I know I said I was done with this topic, but i’m a moron and a hypocrite, so what the hell. If anyone has any doubts about Wild Idea, this should put them to rest.
168 Wild Idea
The way I see it is that you tried to tweak his ego first and he retaliated by tweaking you back far more effectively. Ego tweaking is not abusive because the ego is an inferior state of mind.
243 Just Another Voice Out Here
Here’s how Greg views what happened to him on the blog, taken from the Greater Fellowship “group” (membership: one) he created to talk to himself:
“There is no ego more outraged with injustice than one that has been bested at his own game.”
Sociopathic, pathetic, desperate, lonely, or just sad — your choice.
222, 236 and 238 are newly moderated.
Wild Idea has been banned.
Re: #263 Rear View Mirror:
“I’m still impressed with these stories; I’m still learning something. One more illusion drops away when I hear these anecdotes, and I get a clearer picture of the deception, and how I was deceived, and how I deceived myself.”
It is very easy, in spite of all we know, to fall back into a complacent attitude towards the Fellowship and Robert Burton. I see current members that I have known for many years and in general they are “nice” people. They are going about their lives much like anyone else but in great denial about the dark and hidden side of the FOF and RB. I agree that for those of us who know and have made a choice and especially for those who know and can not face the truth it is very important that these factual stories keep appearing at frequent intervals. In my opinion, this is the real value of the blog.
Arthur:
You wrote ~
“What is the name of the Deity of the Tax Exempt Church called The Fellowship of Friends Guided by the Succubus in a male body (who enjoys ’sleeping’ men) and co-cloven hoofed helpers G. and Asap?”
___________________
(Iblis) would be the name hiding behind the once Isis,
while (Azazel) is now back home ‘in’ Apollo.
__________________________________________
As for Renaissance ~
“The bull, the serpent, the ivy and the wine are the signs of the characteristic Dionysian atmosphere, and Dionysus is strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni. He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by panthers, and may also be recognized by the thyrsus he carries.
Besides the grapevine and its wild barren alter-ego, the toxic ivy plant, both sacred to him…”
________________________________________________________________
Once, Bacchus looked really good and some were even able to see him before waking in the morning, sprawled out over his coven; somewhere deep down inside all this mess is the spirit of the grape itself and oh how she burns inside the bottle starring at the fingerprints again of him who drinks her time and time so to be delivered himself by the subconscious forces beneath his feet to a further away place, deeper and more distant with each gulp and the ‘I am watching you sips’…
Yes, it’s a wild ride down here Arthur…
Oh Sheik, I am very sorry you’ve banned Wild Idea on the presumption he is Greg, which I think is correct. You are sitting on a hot chair but I thought you said you would ban anyone that got aggressive and nasty like Greg often does but Wild Idea hasn’t gotten there yet. Could you possibly reconsider and give us all one more chance? If he gets nasty then out again but if he doesn’t and he is not yet, you let it be? Please. He’s working on it, it is already very good that he has not become abusive yet. Please, we need to allow people to work themselves out. You might not have time to see the subtleties here and I don’t blame you but things are happening and we are trying to work with them. Please, one more chance, just open the door again to Wild I so that he doesn’t have to disguise himself again with another name.
Bruce you have a great point but you are missing the point. Greg, Robert and Girard for Girard has a slight variation of the same illness, are human beings like thousands of other people who need help and are not getting it because the illness they have is characteristic of our time so our time is lax with them, has difficulty spotting them and will do nothing about it when it does just as it is so clear here on this blog that the majority is happy to scream “psycopath” but are psycopathic enough not to even sign a petition.
The Fellowship of Friends phenomena was allowed and promoted in the state of California because of its lax laws on Cults and it is a widespread phenomena with the same characteristics in each one of the them and the State and the Nation are doing nothing about it which is one of the reasons we are so impotent to deal with it.
These people, Robert and Girard, are convinced they are not braking laws and they may be psycopaths but they are not extreme criminals yet. And they are brilliant probably like any other human being who has the opportunity to extend himself out into the world with the support of thousands or any human being who has to constrict himself violently because he has no support from anyone. People in extreme situations develop aspects that the rest in more normal situations don’t need to.
I understand very well what you’re saying about Robert, but just being focused enough to stand by the idea of self remembering for thirty five years and getting away with ripping off fifteen thousand idiots who never dared to question him is the work of a genius. What is so sad is that these stupid geniuses did not become psycopaths because they were aiming at it, they became so because they were unable to deal with their own weaknesses and the people surrounding them did not help them by blindly supporting them. Dividing into different personalities is a tragedy but it is still human enough that they, not one of them, has committed an abhorrent crime. Greg may be a fucking asshole but being a fucking asshole is not being a criminal and we do not have the right to ban Wild Idea when he has not yet even become as abusive as Greg and no one knows with absolute certainty that he is Greg, although I agree with you that he is.
One more chance I beg you all, and if not, Greg, I beg you to just talk it over with the Sheik and come to an agreement, grow up and do something for your self rather than play tricks with people you actually love. You are transparent to me. Each one of us carries both the beauty and the beast within himself and the divine can grow only at the cost of a human being taking hold of the beast within. Those who know the beast because they’ve been subjected to so much suffering are much closer to themselves than those who know neither the beauty nor the beast and settle for being “decent.” Life is not decent. It is a fucking wild struggle and what makes us “decent” is dealing with the shit, not banning it or thinking it doesn’t exist. A whole western ideology is trying to avoid looking at the shit that is happening around the world and trying to ban it but as we well know, that doesn’t really work. It is the well known pattern of prefering to deal with unnecessary suffering and wining about the tragedies rather than actually dealing with real suffering and finding actual solutions for it.
I do love you Bruce, so please do not take this personally, just hear me out. One more chance? He’s been a sicko to you but we know who you are and who the sicko is, but there is more in him than that. But if the price is your leaving your place to him, there is absolutely no deal! So please feel free to choose!
Dear All,
When I read Anna’s letter about the details of Robert’s “intimate life”, I feel so taken and wish that somehow I was better and earlier informed…..Strange, in this time and day so many student and ex students see a different reality. Sure, there is more material available which we can not deny. And still, even the students who are paying and feel too connected to make changes, are not so happy. Their world is shaken too.
What a charlatan he is, with no heart to exchange and share ….only taking, taking, taking. Miserable soul…pitiful….
I truly lost my innocence and now accept that I had to become this age to lose it. That is what it took!
Strange living here in OH a place I would never end up and do not feel a strong pull to go anywhere else.
Strange,
wondering,
pondering
wishing you all the good in the world
and connectedness and sharing instead of DOMINATION
Elena #270
What is it about your fascination that you have about people like Robert, Girard and Greg? You correctly label them sociopaths, you say they have hurt you, and yet you are desperate to redeem, help, reform them, whatever, on the condition that it be in front of an audience. You know where to find Robert and Girard. You can find Greg on Greater Fellowship and enter into an intense dialog with him, privately. The rest of us does not have to be subjected to his manipulative empty rants. Apologies for this rant!
270 Elena
If I didn’t know you I’d think that was a joke. It’s like “please sir, can I have some more insane abuse”? It makes me sad.
Hey, obviously the blog can do whatever the hell it wants, or at least the Sheik can. I’m at a complete loss as to your request, but that’s just me. Personally I won’t take another teaspoon of that shit. If two open venues doesn’t give you enough of Greg (his and the GF) then what can I say. Do you think there might be something in you that embraces abuse and insanity like this? It makes no sense to me at all, even from the point of altruism. Should we then welcome and embrace Girard, or RB, or the other perpetrators. Like the woman who loves the abuser…”it’s just his way of loving me, he doesn’t mean it…”
270 Elena
or did Greg write that post and use your name? MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN.
Sociopaths do not reform, period.
Ironically, many of the so-called “44 conscious beings” keep pointing to sanity, and to the exits:
“We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it?”
— Marcus Aurelius
Sorry to say that sadomasochistic exhibitionism goes with the FoF territory.
“Live where life lives.”
St John of the Cross
Yes, Opus 111 I have a great fascination for Robert and Greg and I would not have married Girard if I did not have a great fascination for him. They have hurt me to a certain extent but not nearly as much as a cheap criminal would. And I definitely do not believe sociopaths do not reform. Everyone reforms. Everyone, given the right opportunity and people who know how to handle them, reforms. Forgiveness and compassion are the only final truth and it is too bad so many of you here have not yet come to that understanding because you judge yourselves with that same rod. You have not seen the beauty. It is too bad. When you do see it, then the petty insults Greg offers you will be nothing but petty insults.
As for Robert, a few years in jail would do him wonders but have you Opus 111 even signed the petition? Greg does not listen but neither do most of you. “Throw him out, burn him at the stake so that we can go back to playing with throwing mud at the Fellowship instead of dealing with a real situation that just happened to cross our way.” “We are doing important things here to have to deal with a moron who tells us all how stupid we are and sends violent videos”
No Bruce, I am not just a woman who loves the abuser and is looking for a few more beatings, unless you think facing you and Opus 111 is that sort of a game. And I am not Mother Theresa cleaning the wounds and the dirt from the world but I’ve seen a great deal more REAL violence than Greg has offered to this blog, of course I never saw the videos but even imagining them, there is a very thick line between violent words and violent actions.
If we cannot even deal with violent words in a more sensible way than just banning people, then who the fuck are we but a bunch of sissys who were neither ready to question Robert Burton nor ready to not read or look at Greg’s posts but just let them be until he realizes that that is not attracting any dialogue and what he really likes is dialogue. Dialogue is what keeps us alive. That would be one solution. No one here is forcing anyone to actually read Greg’s posts. And they are just words. If we were in a more real situation and he were actually hitting people then it would be another matter but it is not and weak as his reactions are, he definitely reacts and tries to control himself every now and then.
Starve the negative emotions by not acknowledging them. Then he can scream and scream until they are out of him, then maybe he can talk. In fact he already talks sometimes and what he says is the same everybody else is saying with an exquisitely sculpted language.
Grant him at least that if you have the decency to recognize the quality in any one human being no matter how hurt and damaged he may be.
We are not playing here, this is our life and the problems we’ve been facing since the beginning.
263 Rear View Mirror, 268 Vena
After saying and reading everything about FOF I must admit I still have doubts sometimes.
Therefore this blog is very helpful for me. I need to be reminded about Robert’s twisted nature not to fall into imagination again that he is a Conscious Teacher and teaches us how to be present. I believe there are many – both in and out – who are in a similar situation.
I also talk to the current members and their opinions still confuse me. “Things look bad from the point of view of the blog, but – it is a very subjective, judgmental point of view”, “don’t believe the I’s”, “Robert never did anything wrong to me personally” “Robert is a great lover” “Robert loves you consciously” “Robert’s energy is very unique” “don’t be formatory about the form of the school” etc.
Apollo is not the Apollo it once was. A lot of people are laid off salary, religious visa’s folks are back to their countries, Apollo d’Oro is open for dinner only one or two times a week. But the events at the Galleria go on as if nothing have changed – Sunday meetings, pottage lunches, receptions, margarita dinners, rose gardens. One might feel that one is frozen in the “event horizon” (the point of no return where escape from the black hole is impossible due to the immense gravity)
Elena, can you send me your email again? I misplaced it. Thanks.
Blog not real, no matter how seriously you take it.
117 anna
“I feel sorry for G but understand: Robert’s sphere is unformatory many things happen which seem unfair or illogical, things that most students could not accept.
Robert asked me if I was using the same techniques to persuade women to have sex with me as I had used in my job of persuading men to have sex with him. When I told him I was, he looked thoughtful and decided to take me off that particular duty.”
_______
What techniques?
While a majority of students are trying to figure out the ‘technique of being present’ the teacher is having other “secret” techniques? hmm… interesting.
Bruce, ludotekaatsucceed.net
Opus 111 In reference to dealing with Robert, Girard or Greg in front of an audience I don’t think I am any different than the rest of us. I do not go to greater fellowship to look at posts but stay here precisely because it is supposed to be an open venue, a public square were like in London’s park anyone can go and scream the hell out of the world without being put in jail.
I am not aware of criminal behaviour, truly criminal behaviour in Greg so if there is really anything of that my position would be very different. I simply do not see Wild idea as violent as the first apparitions and yes, I do not like his tone very often but banning a behaviour is very different to banning an individual. The other thing Greg and I probably have in common is a moonlike feature but moonlike features are no different to any other feature. Other features get their way justifying their actions through reasons, tolerating Robert for years without saying anything, but moonlight features cannot stand it for such a long time. There is a great advantage to that. It is no coincidence that we are in fact the loudest and longest people screaming around here but it is very comfortable to find scapegoats and feel comfortable about it without really giving people a chance. Unfortunately wild Idea has been banned without showing extreme aggression. Those were not the rules the Sheik put out yesterday.
somebody 283
For sure he has a good set of sexual manipulation and exploitment techniques.
Those would be the only techniques he is really qualified to teach, since he has intensely practised them with verifiable success, and his pernicious influence has very likely already contributed to spread them a little wider around the world.
I totally agree with Bruce’s assessment at 257.
Robert “is very good at manipulation, as are ALL sociopaths”.
Maybe we could even start a thread on sexual manipulation at large in the FOF.
But right now I feel a little pooped.
Sheik, I for one do really appreciate the respite!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LyEJxzQM24Q
hey,that one was cut at the end! here it goes again
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=M1tVQ7L_cs0
283
Techniques?
It’s very Zen ‘somebody’… Money for sex: just down the street from Oregon House is Brownsvalley, the once-location for this area’s first ‘Cat House’ and since Ouspensky said that “Cats are an experiment in consciousness.”… Well, like the quote said ~ “He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin…” There’s a faux leopard skin to be often found on the Master’s bed… You can make to rest of the connections…
M & D are the ‘movers & shakers’ of the fresh meat quivering through the pearly gates of Oregon House or organ house, you choose… It’s really a Fairy Tale around here… No pun intended…
270, 279 Elena
“We are not playing here, this is our life and the problems we’ve been facing since the beginning.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Elena, I agree with you. So with all due respect, my suggestion to you is that you take very seriously Bruce’s #273, and follow up with some reading on the psychology of abuse. Here’s a start: http://samvak.tripod.com/abusefamily10.html. I know you’re not a fool, and that the basic concepts may not be new to you, but it seems that they haven’t fully penetrated; sometimes we say “yes, yes, I know, I know,” but then go on to behave in a way that proves we don’t really understand, and try to cover it all up in a pile of explanations.
There are a lot of connections between the abuse you experienced from RB, Gerard, and whatever may have occurred earlier in your life and your begging to give a prick like Greg
“one more chance.” Love may be the key to healing, but we have to understand how, when, and to whom to direct it. Victims of abuse have to relearn this.
279 Elena
Starve the negative emotions by not acknowledging them. Then he can scream and scream until they are out of him, then maybe he can talk. In fact he already talks sometimes and what he says is the same everybody else is saying with an exquisitely sculpted language.
—————————
Elena, I can understand your heartfelt desire to let this be a place for Greg to heal. However, he has been following this same pattern for at least 10-12 years that I know of.
He participated in a discussion list for former FoF members run by Stella Wirk in the mid-1990’s. He was aggressive and abusive, was banned from the list only to return under a different name — over and over again. It would appear that nothing has changed since then. Why would it now?
Unoanimo,
I visited those two links you gave me. The first I recognized the Shaman from another site. However, it was slanted negatively. Like “competitive jealously”. And, he goes to Austin, Texas not too far from me.
The second site was very interesting. I have two friends who are P.T.S.D walking wounded. One has a meaningless ritual route, the other owns a house but lives in the backyard. In fact my driveway attracts the wounded from all over the neighborhood. Like attracts like?
If I remember correctly Scott Peterson lived in Modesto, California (the land of fruits and nuts). He was a Agri-chemical salesman who was married to a cute girl and was in an affair with a blond. His Bio gets muddy from now on. He is suspected of Killing his pregnant wife and is let go. He starts talking too much which upsets his girlfriend who throws a wrench into his gears. Now both families are talking too much and the nation is all ears (that says a lot). He is arrested posts bail and disappears only to reappear with blond hair and 10,000 cash somewhere near San Diego, California. Something like that. Oh, California the land of fruits(Robert Earl Burton) and Nuts (Scott Peterson).
If Kindred Spirit was a question, it’s an interesting one.
The Devil rules the home of the Fellowship of Friends however and whenever it changes names.
Hello Arthur ~
Wow! No, not that ‘Scott’, this one ~
____________________________________________________________
By Viola Woolcott
“Scott Peterson is the Founder and Director of the Refugio Altiplano. Scott grew up in Michigan and took his first trip to South America when he was 17 to teach English in Ecuador and travel across the continent. He studied philosophy, anthropology and literature at Calvin College, UCSC, and the University of New Mexico. He studied herbal and shamanic medicine in New Mexico, Arizona and California with the Taos, Navajo and Hopi Indians in the Native American Church. He continued his shamanic and medicine studies in Brazil, Nepal and Indonesia, and lived in Bolivia and the Peruvian Andes for eight years, working and doing research on healing and belief systems. He worked with Shipibo and coastal shamans in Peru for seven years before locating the ideal location for an exceptional healing center. He established the Refugio Altiplano in 1996.
The Refugio Altiplano combines the wisdom of 1000s of years of shamanism with the knowledge of the use of healing plants and the mother of all medicines, Ayahuasca.
The Refugio Altiplano is a natural retreat of beauty, wilderness and solitude available year-round for international guests to engage in adventure, healing, balance, and alignment.
Personal view and experience:
Having done a workshop with Scott I like to add my un-biased and honest observation that for me it was the most authentic, sophisticated, exquisitely orchestrated center of profound shamanic healing and teaching I have encountered so far in my extensive personal research. The center is located in an exclusive, natural, relaxed, beautiful setting, and surrounded by the magic of the wild world of the Amazon jungle.”
_____________________________________________________________
Arthur: I’d never send you towards the darkness, unless of course we were both twin suns heading to another quadrant in the galaxy to start some new beauty…
:.)
282 Mick Danger: “The blog is not real, no matter how seriously you take it.”
Very true, and I doubt anyone here disagrees. It’s too bad we couldn’t have recognized the same truth about RB and the FOF when we first joined. If we had, we probably would have noticed the problems much sooner, and walked away much sooner.
Just Another Voice, you may know things about this person that I do not and that changes the picture. But this was true in the Fellowship as well. Many of you knew who Robert Burton was over twenty years ago and did nothing about it to warn us. Many of you know who Robert Burton is today and are doing nothing seriously practical about it.
What you say is true but in a very different light to the way you are saying it. You undermine me by saying “you need to learn to not be abused” but I have in fact not been abused by Greg even when I invited him to it. You undermine me by saying I simply “explain” things that you are not willing to look at deeply. The mere fact that there are a few people here that feel threatened enough by Greg’s presence should be enough to ban him, but many of us don’t know the real situations because they are not told here. How many more stories about Robert and others in the Fellowship are not told here because people think they are better off keeping them private?
I have spoken up both for banning and not banning Greg. When he told the Sheik to fuck off faggot cunt, I did not stand up for him but after he was allowed to continue for a few days as Wild Idea, it seemed absurd to ban him again without even getting aggression from him. Each situation requires different approaches.
But yes, I am tired of this and need to get on with other things.
Elena
Its clear when you say “its just words” that you do’nt understand the concept of assault. No, a person cannot say whatever they want, and yes, you can be arrested for ‘just words.’ If a person is threatning and abusive in their language wher they cause another to become afraid, that is seen as assault by the law, and the abuser can be arrested the same as if they hit someone. the internet is still young, and these ideas are less clear than they are in terms of the face to face interactions, but it is a well established fact that “just words” can be a crime, at least here in the US.
To be honest, I don’t care one way or the other if he’s here or not. I’m mostly a lurker. But if he was here, the blog would probably dry up quick. I think he drove off a number of people already, and would finish it off ipretty quick. Bruce for one would be gone i believe. Depends on how much crap you want to walk around in.
For Someone
Robert Burton uses manipulation. Over time his followers are groomed for this experience: he continually tells them that their lower selves will resist any thing that will bring them closer to awakening, he plies the males with luxury and ‘beauty’ has them floating in an unreal bubble, in which conscience and personal integrity are gradually dissolved and rejected as ‘feminine dominance’.
Women are groomed to allow their husbands to comply.
Eventually Robert pounces. If the follower rejects him he will threaten them with having to work out doors in the serf roles that those he is not having ‘sex’ with generally perform. Or he will tell them that they have to return to their home-lands which are often impoverished. He is prone to extreme jealousy and has been known to banish current ‘sexual’ partners simply for falling in love. He railed at my dear friend his most devoted and loyal follower for half an hour with out stopping and then banished her from his sight at events.
The sexual activity has been very unpleasant for most males that I have spoken with. The ‘loving’ experience is a myth. I did once meet a follower who applauded the experience briefly; but he suffered years of disgust and despair afterwards. The degradation is very difficult to absorb. You make excuses for it: it is so weird and ugly and cold and bewildering, and you are so desperate to believe that Robert holds the key to your higher centres that you re-describe what is happening to you in terms which make it bearable.
I know one follower who has been close to Robert for years, and who says that Robert is very ‘gentle’. But he has to do this… saying anything else would mean facing the full tragedy of his situation, facing himself.
One of the characteristics that enables Robert is that he does not mind if his boys absolutely hate the experience, as long as they comply. They have asked him about this but he somehow shakes their questions off. He sometimes makes their orifices bruised swollen and bleeding and mildly insists that they are being forced to let go of their lower selves. He tells them that it’s only their bodies, their ‘King of Clubses’ that reject it.
In the beginning Robert also manipulated his female followers in to having sex… there is testimony about this on the esoteric archives. It was disturbing reading: he had no interest what so ever in their pleasure.
I do not judge the students who submit to this: I know that they comply because their hope and longing is so desperate. I am so sad though that this ghoul has exploited (and necessarily obstructed) their search.
The sick reality only began to press against the boundaries of my bubble when Robert told a follower that he did not enjoy the teaching events and meetings, the follower had to press him to continue, reminding him of the money they made; so Robert did continue but reluctantly, saying “I only do it for you boys…”
295 sea
I didn’t know RB before 1974. He told me he had sex with one woman in his life (and he didn’t like it), so I don’t know about it being more than once (I read the excerpt so I don’t know if that’s the woman).
But yes, he has a whole list of standard arguments that eventually work. Think about this, other than males with ambiguous sexuality (whether they know it or not) do you think RB gets to fuck with straight men because he’s attractive, intelligent, disarming, pitiable? It’s pure psychological and spiritual manipulation of a psychopath.
296 brucelevy
Have to add a caveat:
The boys are also either naive idiots, or whores for power, greed, attention and the benefits of access. We’ve all been one or the other, sometimes both. That part is our responsibility to a greater or lesser extent. But the crime is still the crime.
296 Can you say more about males with ambiguous sexuality? What do you mean?
Also, how can a person be so stuck in sex? Is it all Robert thinks about – his boys and “techniques” day after day?
293 Elena
Let’s forget Greg.
I’m very happy to leave you alone with your anguish about RB and the Fellowship of Friends and Gerard. Be my guest. But make no mistake about what I said in #288–this is not about me, or about all the people who failed to “warn you” during the 17 years you spent in the Fellowship–all those “others” whom you now consider to have been obliged to open your eyes for you.
Some are trying to help you open your eyes right now, and you’ve responded by saying “I am tired of this and need to get on with other things.”
298 somebody
No it’s not the only thing he thinks about. The other two are money and bright shiny objects.
Ambiguous sexuality…meaning people who don’t know that they are inclined to gay or bisexual sexuality. One joins under the self misguided, or outer misguided (like parent’s wishes) assumption that they’re straight and find a convenient excuse to go the other way. I don’t think that specifically is bad. It’s better for one’s happiness to find out. But to call it something else is being dishonest with one’s self.
295 sea
Thank you!
In the documentary I saw a few days ago “Inside the Cult” one thing made me particularly sensitive. When the secretary of the cult leader told that the “God made this horrible thing – he FORCED Michael to sleep with my wife” It was so touching to see a man refusing to see the truth. One can only imagine that if something would destroy this buffer in him that his wife and his teacher were ‘forced’ against their will into an intercourse – he would probably kill them both!
But with RB’s boys it is not so obvious. So many times I heard “they like it, many of them are bisexual, or have extra sex energy, they would not do it if they did not want to, it improved them as men, nobody forces them!” And of coarse the guys themselves look happy, excited, on the mission and – well dressed… I know a few ‘boys’ who preferred relationship with Robert and left their wives and children to be with the teacher and to travel with him.
And at the end people get tired to worry about those strange guys, and focus on the rose garden. Or the sequence.
M and D get such bad press
In my experience they are very sincere seekers. They are also smart. M was horrified to discover about Robert Burton’s proclivities and he almost left the school. But he also felt that there was something ‘wrong’ with himself; Robert exploited this vulnerability by telling him again and again that his King of Clubs was holding him back, whilst simultaneously wooing him with wealth and compliments. The grooming took two years, and then Robert demurely led his conquest into the bedchamber.
I think that M’s disgust at the sex was part of the key to his compliance. The experience was so bizarre so ‘illogical’ so unknown… that he persuaded himself that it could be the product of something ‘other’. Having submitted he literally prayed that it was consciousness.
It was a relief for him that his equally logical friend D was drawn into the web: it must have bolstered his hope that ‘there was something to it’. He has continued supporting it, I suspect, because the more other people that comply, surely, the more ‘right’ it must be…
M has lied brutally to females in order to satisfy his personal whims; however he is most definitely under the influence of that shimmering and morality-free ‘bubble’ in which the inner circle are enclosed.
And he’s not a sneak; he doesn’t report on Fence-sitters. Nor is he a jelly brain he will give you a rigorous debate about his doubts and yours… he’s discretely and honestly curious.
Like us he is most definitely a product of the Fellowship of Friends: A cult for (relative)intellectuals.
301 somebody
“I know a few ‘boys’ who preferred relationship with Robert and left their wives and children to be with the teacher and to travel with him”.
He frequently creates situations where one is forced to decide between their wives and toys, travel and access. Some people willingly or unwillingly succumb to being smacked on the nose with a rolled newspaper while hearing “put out or get out”. Or “Your marriage is interfering with the desire of higher forces to have me work with you more closely goodness”.
Bruce,
I have heard two other versions of ‘the truth’ from different boys: Robert Burton was married to a student who was actually in the school in the 1990’s; He had a girlfriend, who he left and who then committed suicide. He seems to tell different things to different people.
I suspect that he may actually thrive on the fact that the boys don’t like it. And that his choice is less to do with homo-sexuality and more to do with the depth of his manipulation; seeing how far he can push, and then how much further: in other words with his psychopathy…
Conscience does not exist at the top of the FOF hierarchy. There may have been a spark, but it’s put out by one’s weaknesses (greed, power,lust, avarice and vanity). Once it’s gone, there’s no limit to the shit one will do to others, regardless of how altruistic they once were. Reinforcing and promoting the status quo is as criminal as the original crime.
304 Sea
You’re right about his ever changing stories, but in my experience the stories you related are pure bull shit, probably to reinforce the idea that he’s not REALLY gay, he’s just an angel or princess trapped in a male body.
As far as him liking it because the boys don’t like it, I think it’s more that he just doesn’t give a shit. He’s a sociopath. This kind of self reflection, even unconsciously, just doesn’t exist in these people. Like him dismissing valid questions…it doesn’t matter, so it won’t be dealt with. I wouldn’t attribute any kind of “external consideration” or normal human elements to this pariah.
301 Somebody
“I know a few ‘boys’ who preferred relationship with Robert and left their wives and children to be with the teacher and to travel with him”.
303 Bruce
Also as wife, you DO become ‘a pain’ you are nervous agitated and afraid. You cannot sooth him when he comes home, there’s no bubble, especially if you have a child.
Actually you are the one who needs the support; his dim conscience may recognise this but in his by now distorted perception he may reconfigure this as a ‘demand’.
Also Robert Burton has informed all followers that Women are a denying force to Men, and that children are a denying force to women…
And that women represent the queen of hearts etc etc
307 Anna
Need one say more?
307 Anna
I appreciate your truthful letter and your postings. Why do you think Robert wanted you to come to Isis? If he is so jealous of his boys – why would he invite such a beautiful woman any near?
At he San Francisco international airport is a beautiful exhibition of Buddha statues.
One struck me as truly special, a tall buddha standing, eyes closed,
both hands open by his side. The description that goes with it says:
(paraphrasing) The biggest obstacles for men to enter the realm of the Gods
are GREED & LUST. It so reminded me of Robert Burton!
How in the world does he think he can get away with this?
And if even if he can in in this life time, surely he will pay BIG TIME in the next!!!
Hey Mick D.
282/Blog not real
tell me, tell me what is?
my book of answers no longer has words
tell me
Cake
sea:
Straight men are not as likely to carry HIV, and thus are a safer pool of victims.
a memory:
In regard to an almost newly wed husband who had to travel with Robert Burton and the concern of leaving his wife at Renaissance, RB said: school first, marriage second.
All this talk about Robert gives me the creeps. I thank God I never spent any real time around him. I fear what might have happened, given how susceptible I was to being manipulated. I remember being shocked when an “older student” told me he had a negative attitude towards Robert. Yet I was secretly relieved, because I felt the same way, though I didn’t have the courage to admit it. And I wasn’t even aware of 99% of what was going on. Just the constant “Robert says” and “Robert has asked that we” micromanagement was enough to make me privately despise him. But of course that was false personality…jeez louise.
Here’s a story that someone told me:
Robert: “I’d like you to move into the Academy. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Student: [long pause and quizzical glance]
Robert: “I’m not trying to coerce you.”
Student: [long pause and quizzical glance]
Within a short time, the student was no longer invited to dinners and lunches at the Academy.
End of Story.
Dear Somebody
Why he wants Ana to come to Apollo?
I have an answer for you …..BAIT. Many beautiful women attracted young men to Apollo. That is why these beautiful women would work in the Apollo d’Oro….All bait for more young men.
Some women have yet no clue about this…..are still around. We all in a certain way supported Robert.
GRRRRRRRRRRR
Innernaut wrote: “Just the constant “Robert says” and “Robert has asked that we” micromanagement was enough to make me privately despise him. But of course that was false personality…jeez louise.”
Yes. And by the way, I never understood the “has asked” part of “Robert has asked that you wipe your shoes before entering the Academy.”
Why the past tense?
Why not “Robert asks that you wipe your shoes”? What’s with this, “Robert HAS ASKED” silliness?
The use of odd language and odd word usage is another giveaway that indicates cult thinking.
Innernaut, many of us wish we had privately despised him while we were in the fof, let alone publicly. Congrats. I recall hearing people saying negative things about him and thinking, “Ah, I’m better than that.” And I’d give myself a big metaphorical pat on the back. That, too, was cult thinking… blind loyalty, and complete and utter disregard for those who suffered because of the actions of this man.
Another Name: “GRRRRRRRRRRR”
Well, if it makes you feel any better, the women of the fof were by far more interesting to me than anything Robert had to offer. :) And I’m sure I speak for many other men.
Robert didn’t succeed in all of his of his manipulations, and I’m sure he still doesn’t succeed in all of them. And I’m sure this is a constant source of frustration for him. One hundred thousand orgies with 20-year-old men would not soothe his frustrations. This is his curse, and one of the reasons that he doesn’t let up.
Anna–Please e-mail me: zannoss at yahoo.com
Just Another Voice, you do not seem to really hear what is being said so why don’t you listen again if you wish to have a conversation? Why do you wish to leave Greg, Robert, Girard out? Isn’t it all about them too? How many more things do you wish to separate to make your point have better strength?
You may know things about this person that I do not and that changes the picture. But this was true in the Fellowship as well. Many of you knew who Robert Burton was over twenty years ago and did nothing about it to warn us. Many of you know who Robert Burton is today and are doing nothing seriously practical about it.
What you say is true but in a very different light to the way you are saying it. You undermine me by saying “you need to learn to not be abused” but I have in fact not been abused by Greg even when I invited him to it. You undermine me by saying I simply “explain” things that you are not willing to look at deeply. The mere fact that there are a few people here that feel threatened enough by Greg’s presence should be enough to ban him, but many of us don’t know the real situations because they are not told here. How many more stories about Robert and others in the Fellowship are not told here because people think they are better off keeping them private?
I have spoken up both for banning and not banning Greg. When he told the Sheik to fuck off faggot cunt, I did not stand up for him but after he was allowed to continue for a few days as Wild Idea, it seemed absurd to ban him again without even getting aggression from him. Each situation requires different approaches.
But yes, I am tired of this and need to get on with other things.
We had a recent encounter you and I in which you did not profit. I do not keep strict records of these but remember vaguely. If I look it up I’ll probably find what it is that is really bothering you pretending to be kind to me but actually undermining what I’ve been saying. I do not wish you to be my guest but if you really wish that please keep me as yours and we can look at the the very long threads of our thoughts. I would appreciate it if you concentrate on some ideas so that we don’t… what was the word Greg used? picket the ego only? something like that.
I would also appreciate it if you do not treat me as a coward, at least I can bare using my own name here which is a little more than you can stand up for.
Hello ‘Rear View Mirror’ ~
You write ~
“Why the past tense?
Why not “Robert asks that you wipe your shoes”? What’s with this, “Robert HAS ASKED” silliness?”
__________________________
I think a book could be written on your one question and it’s a good one.
IMO, the past tense thingy works in two tricky spheres and is totally subconscious, i.e.,
subconscious mind games or subliminal: sometimes it’s not what we’ve heard, but how we tell it back to ourselves and then of course there’s telling it to others.
“Robert has asked…” gives the impression that he’s already ahead of the person being asked to comply… Similar to Mom saying, “Your father has (worked) hard all day, please show some respect.” This puts the child in the realm of the sub-conscious past and obliges (now there’s another mystery: the phenomenon of ‘to be obliged’) him or her to all sorts of spooky superstitions and “He (died) on the cross for your sins” voodoo.
“Robert has asked…” also gives the Listener the impression that since the Deliverer is speaking in the past tense (this is also serving the Deliverer subconsciously as well), that the Deliverer has already complied on their part and should not be questioned in the present… The past tense immediately in the moment side steps the context of the Deliverer and puts a double-obliged upon the Listener, to wipe their feet because Dad said so and Mom already did it too…
Imagine someone saying, “Jesus is (dying) on the cross for your sins.” to a child of the moment; that child might then say something like, ‘Well, why doesn’t someone peel him off that thing and get him some help?’ Gurdjieff called it ‘Inner Considering’ and its power goes deep, much more so than the uncharted territories on Earth concerning the moment and its signposts, IMO.
If someone says, “Robert asks…” this brings things into the moment, which alerts the inner eye to its power to be and get the autonomy clockworks moving; students in the moment without the context of inner considering are dangerous to a cult that works with a applying two contradictory forces at the same time to keep the dog chasing its own tail for fear that it might start chasing it back if it stops struggling and just simply focuses on the space between the tip of its nose and the end of its tail, which usually equals the total length, height and width of its brain.
This is how it is that there’s a sign saying ‘Presence Please’ as students roll into ‘The Property’… It’s all very dreamy; “please” already implies that Robert’s already ahead of you in saying ‘please’: also ‘please’ in the collective American-unconscious is usually ‘used’ by people when they wish to stress upon your inner autonomous clockworks the sandy grit of forgetting your own common sense and helping them with some sort of “fooling around” business of their own…
Then there’s ‘Pretty Please’ and I am not even going there…
Thank you RVM; great question!
________________________________________________
Hello Somebody,
IMO, Robert asks the ‘beautiful feminine’ to move here so that he can abuse them too, creating the very state of affairs that Anna wrote about, i.e., “nervous agitated and afraid. You cannot sooth him when he comes home, there’s no bubble, especially if you have a child.” (Does that not sound like Robert too?)
He (Robert) sets the outer feminine in the exact spiritual state as his inner one is in under the influence of his damaged and traumatized masculine half, IMO. The wife’s husband or boyfriend them plays the outer role upon his wife that Robert’s inner masculine is playing too so to keep the circle of pain intact and the trauma safe, warm and out of the power of ‘conscious shame’…
The boyfriend’s role playing in some substrata of the Netherworld Robert’s soul-parts are trapped in, especially when he comes home to his conscience starring him in the face, even if it says not one word, he’s already been triggered and has “(Died) on the cross for her sins”; so she’s obliged to tend to his wounds and become the ‘Wounded Hero” America’s psyche is enslaved to…
IMO, within Robert’s inner world something is rubbing the feminine’s noses in their husband’s demise, coercions and rapes… ‘Beautiful Couples’ in the F.O.F. who have Robert standing in between them and doing what he does to them and their children, are subconscious mirrors of Robert’s spiritual/soul condition and participants in keeping the group’s consciousness, conscience and traumas asleep…
Everyone has a Pandora’s Box within them; Robert stands on his student’s boxes so to reach just that height higher in order to stash his out of their reach, all along they cannot open their’s because, although it has no lock, it ‘seems’ too heavy and stuck; what’s the use, right, there’s probably nothing of value in an unlocked box anyway (?)
___________________
L.t.y.A.
thanks uno for these answers and comments, and also the icaro…
I was thinking that in awakening the mind becomes the clear mirror reflecting what is a around one, while reversely, when one is stuck in a narcissistic phase like Robert, what is around becomes the mirror of one’s twisted mind…
Dream Catcher, this bit from the Bhagavad Gita also reminds me of Robert:
ARJUNA:
“By what, O descendant of Vrishni, is man propelled to commit offenses; seemingly against his will and as if constrained by some secret force?”
KRISHNA:
“It is lust which instigates him. It is passion, sprung from the quality of rajas; insatiable, and full of sin. Know this to be the enemy of man on earth. As the flame is surrounded by smoke, and a mirror by rust, and as the womb envelops the foetus, so is the universe surrounded by this passion. By this – the constant enemy of the wise man, formed from desire which rageth like fire and is never to be appeased – is discriminative knowledge surrounded. Its empire is over the senses and organs, the thinking principle and the discriminating faculty also; by means of these it cloudeth discrimination and deludeth the Lord of the body. Therefore, O best of the descendants of Bharata, at the very outset restraining thy senses, thou shouldst conquer this sin which is the destroyer of knowledge and of spiritual discernment.
“The senses and organs are esteemed great, but the thinking self is greater than they. The discriminating principle is greater than the thinking self, and that which is greater than the discriminating principle is He. Thus knowing what is greater than the discriminating principle and strengthening the lower by the Higher Self, do thou of mighty arms slay this foe which is formed from desire and is difficult to seize.”
“desire which rageth like fire and is never to be appeased”… that’s a pretty awful condition to be in. The hellish outer reality created by Robert is a reflection of the inner hell where he resides. A world completely ruled by desire with no love, no mercy, no truth. A world where constantly the living is turned into object, and objects are turned into temporary fillers for the insatiable and unending inner vacuum.
BRRRRRRRRRRRR
Anna and All,
It is not M and D. A rose by any other name would be. . . S and M, as in sadistic and masochistic. This process of initiation introduces a person into the criminal enterprise that is the Fellowship of Friends as has been designed by Robert Burton and his pain body. It is one where, once initiated to that absurd world, there is no escape (or, you would be insane to want to escape) – much in the same manner of a black hole where there is immense gravity so that light cannot even escape. It ushers one into a parallel universe where most values are the opposite of the world that most people live in – the Theatre of the Absurd. It is truly macabre. Once you have become accustomed to accept the absurd, then anything is possible. It is not about becoming conscious or awakening. It is about killing conscience and destroying the soul. Once again, beware the event horizon; the boundary of the black hole where matter (including light), as you may know it, completely disappears from the known universe. On the other hand, you could get swallowed by a worm hole and reappear at some ghastly remote place in the known universe. I think that latter situation could be called a deep throat experience.
Byron Katie will be in the Grass Valley ~ Nevada City area this weekend for two days.
Boy, page 33 has some heavy duty thought. Thanks!!!!
311/Cake
Well of course I’ll have to quote Some Enlightened Being
(But I don’t know who):
“That which changes is not real,
That which does not change is real.”
Damn! There are paradoxes everywhere in this place.
Elena:
“Many of you knew who Robert Burton was over twenty years ago and did nothing about it to warn us.”
Have you ever been raped?
After Troy, the warnings were there for all with eyes to see. Where you looking for them?
Innernaut:
Welcome back! It’s good to hear your voice.
“All this talk about Robert gives me the creeps.”
He gives one the creeps because he is a creep.
A creep in a jeep
A little Bo Peep
Who found some sheep
Who leap at a beep
He keeps deep
Asleep
In a heap
To reap.
317 RVM
Yes. And by the way, I never understood the “has asked” part of “Robert has asked that you wipe your shoes before entering the Academy.”
Why the past tense?
———————————————————–
Do not know why although Uno’s comment on this is very good.
At the time when I was in the FOF this was a blinding order for me. It froze my critical thinking.
How this happened I do not know. It was pretty fast brainwashing.
Even when I did not agree I had to obey because “Robert has asked”.
Typical dominant behavior, it takes away the blame from the messenger even when the message is ABSURD, and we were eager to obey.
Marionettes.
327 WhaleRider
Elena:
“Many of you knew who Robert Burton was over twenty years ago and did nothing about it to warn us.”
Have you ever been raped?
After Troy, the warnings were there for all with eyes to see. Where you looking for them?
————————————————————————————
I have to agree with Elena indirectly, we were numbed so much even crime was not perceived as crime.
When Troy story came up my faith in the FOF was already shaken, but remember at the time I felt perhaps there was a collective hypocrisy from us members and a blindness even from Troy’s father to let his 17 years old near to a well known sexual addict.
At the time I even thought about Troy: well he was almost 18…twisted thinking…sorry Troy and everybody! We were collective enablers in some ways.
But I also had NO idea how much of a sexual weirdo was this Robert Burton until I came to this blog.
I thought at the time he just liked to suck dicks and he was pretty pathetic in my view, and yet he was Robert Burton, the becoming man Number 7! oh well let us not be formatory… :(
veramente:
That’s my point. We were all so numb and shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about what we did or didn’t do in the past to warn others. That’s bullshit guilt tripping. Now that we have some distance on it, we can see it for what it was: a crime. I left before Troy.
Even if someone screamed in our faces, the FOF indoctrination runs so deep that we would have just written the person off as a sleeping person, food for the moon, expressing negativity.
331 WhaleRider
Even if someone screamed in our faces, the FOF indoctrination runs so deep that we would have just written the person off as a sleeping person, food for the moon, expressing negativity.
——————————-
Yes, and if someone warned while in, they were kicked out. If they warned after leaving, they were ignored, marginalized and considered criminals. I’m speaking of 20+ years ago, not now.
There was a rather brilliant exercise in effect at the time I left. We were not to talk about our partners as it was considered an aspect of gossip and therefore mechanical. I’m not sure about this (long time ago), but I seem to recall there being something about this being considered especially true for women. What an effective tool for discouraging women from talking about what was going on with their men.
on April 30, 2008 at 8:33 am323 Ill Never Tell
“Once you have become accustomed to accept the absurd, then anything is possible. It is not about becoming conscious or awakening. It is about killing conscience and destroying the soul. Once again, beware the event horizon; the boundary of the black hole where matter (including light), as you may know it, completely disappears from the known universe. On the other hand, you could get swallowed by a worm hole and reappear at some ghastly remote place in the known universe. I think that latter situation could be called a deep throat experience.”
__________________
I really like this posting. Thanks! This is exactly how I feel about it too.
I was still thinking about it checking my e-mail as I found this daily card which made… well… made me think of a rabbit hole. Weren’t we searching for the miraculous in the first place? Didn’t we wish to push our limitations and believe system of right and wrong far far beyond? Wasn’t the unknown “next world” the most attractive adventure, fairy tale we believed in? How could we resist the “black hole” “worm hole” “rabbit hole”?
The sequence is the ordinary world, and it
leads us to the extraordinary world–the four
wordless breaths passing beyond time.
Love, Robert
Al-Junayd: Know that your devoted attention
to anything in this world, whether it be small
or great, is a barrier between you and the
next world, a means of obscuring your vision
when it should be clear.
_________________
Duino Elegies
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Second Elegy
Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you.
Where are the days of Tobias, when one of you, veiling his radiance,
stood at the front door, slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us:
our own heart, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death.
Who are you?
Early successes, Creation’s pampered favorites,
mountain-ranges, peaks growing red in the dawn of all beginning,–
pollen of the flowering godhead, joints of pure light,
corridors, stairways, thrones, space formed from essence,
shields made of ecstasy, storms of emotion whirled into rapture, and suddenly alone:
mirrors, which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from their face
and gather it back, into themselves, entire.
But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we breathe ourselves out and away;
from moment to moment our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume.
Though someone may tell us: “Yes, you’ve entered my bloodstream, the room,
the whole springtime is filled with you . . . “–what does it matter? he can’t contain us,
we vanish inside him and around him.
And those who are beautiful, oh who can retain them?
Appearance ceaselessly rises in their face, and is gone.
Like dew from the morning grass, what is ours floats into the air, like steam from a dish of hot food.
O smile, where are you going?
O upturned glance: new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart . . .
alas, but that is what we are.
Does the infinite space we dissolve into, taste of us then?
Do the angels really reabsorb only the radiance that streamed out from themselves,
or sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace of our essence in it as well?
Are we mixed in with their features even as slightly as that vague look
in the faces of pregnant women?
They do not notice it (how could they notice) in their swirling return to themselves.
Lovers, if they knew how, might utter strange, marvelous words in the night air.
For it seems that everything hides us.
Look: trees do exist; the houses that we live in still stand.
We alone fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind.
And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.
Lovers, gratified in each other, I am asking you about us.
You hold each other. Where is your proof?
Look, sometimes I find that my hands have become aware of each other,
or that my time-worn face shelters itself inside them.
That gives me a slight sensation.
But who would dare to exist, just for that?
You, though, who in the other’s passion grow until, overwhelmed, he begs you:
“No more . . . “; you who beneath his hands swell with abundance,
like autumn grapes; you who may disappear because the other has wholly emerged:
I am asking you about us.
I know, you touch so blissfully because the caress preserves,
because the place you so tenderly cover does not vanish;
because underneath it you feel pure duration.
So you promise eternity, almost, from the embrace.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of the first glances,
the longing at the window, and the first walk together, once only, through the garden:
lovers, are you the same?
When you lift yourselves up to each other’s mouth and your lips join,
drink against drink: oh how strangely each drinker seeps away from his action.
Weren’t you astonished by the caution of human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Wasn’t love and departure placed so gently on shoulders
that it seemed to be made of a different substance than in our world?
Remember the hands, how weightlessly they rest, though there is power in the torsos.
These self-mastered figures know: “We can go this far,
this is ours, to touch one another this lightly; the gods can press down harder upon us.
But that is the gods’ affair.”
If only we too could discover a pure, contained, human place,
our own strip of fruit-bearing soil between river and rock.
Four our own heart always exceeds us, as theirs did.
And we can no longer follow it,
gazing into images that soothe it or into the godlike bodies where,
measured more greatly, it achieves a greater repose.
Once upon a time I encouraged somebody to call a Fellowship Teaching Center, but emphasized that they should not mention my name. I explained MY CRIME and that it was my TASK to come up with $2,500. I was convinced that sitting by the main Fellowship phone bank was a list of Persona Non-Grata. I mean the No-Speaking to Criminal elements rule was still in effect in my mind.
I wouldnt want any of you to go to hell talking to me.
So, you walk into the teaching center and the Director says, “the teacher has asked” and so you comply because you are a “student”. Otherwise, you go to hell in a hand basket.
I remember the meeting led by travailing (sic) teacher B___ W___ directly after the Troy B story broke. The meeting was progressing quite normally until a moment of silence left an opening and B., rather circuitously, started talking about the teacher and his life and blah, blah, blah — a lot of strange, vague generalities. To me, it seemed to be a rambling, disconnected monologue, unrelated to anything that had preceeded it. Finally, B. started talking about “the rumors.” I hadn’t heard any, so had no idea what he was talking about. Then out it came. I don’t remeber how he phrased all the pertinent details, but I do remember his closing line: “He could have just kept his zipper shut.” I suddenly became aware that we were being subjected to damage control. I wish I had allowed myself to really digest that feeling in the moment, rather than usher in the King of all Buffers – “Can I really understand or judge the teacher’s behavior?” Too bad for me, too bad for us all.
322 lauralupa
Thank you. For a long time I have been searching for an answer
and you helped me nail it down.
There is also a chapter in the I Ching related to this,
something like-when the master of the house has no sexual boundaries
it corrupts all who live with him-
“desire which rageth like fire and is never to be appeased”… that’s a pretty awful condition to be in. The hellish outer reality created by Robert is a reflection of the inner hell where he resides. A world completely ruled by desire with no love, no mercy, no truth. A world where constantly the living is turned into object, and objects are turned into temporary fillers for the insatiable and unending inner vacuum.
Hello Veramente ~
A line from you ~
“…it takes away the blame from the messenger even when the message is ABSURD, and we were eager to obey. Marionettes.”
_______________________________
When I was a teenager I felt allot of indignation, although the indignation itself was a sort of arousal of Arousal of anger about angry people already matrix’d or diagrammed throughout my mainframe; if an external situation ‘fit’ the matrix, wham, I’d be in there like a bloodhound on a Sunday afternoon jailbreak bayou trail…
Yes, “ABSURD”… though also a ‘button pusher’, yes? IMO, anything that gets the bugles of Absurdness blowing inside me these days is a pretty good indicator that (that) event or circumstance has dead stopped at a trauma-bunker’s duel M2 HB Heavy machine gun greeting party… So, I try to do deeper and find out what it is that’s resisting the relativity of my inner-mirror’s understandings and sense from Conscience or as Laura quoted “discrimination and The Lord of the Body” and exchanging it for a quick ‘WTF? Get out my face, let me get on with this hypocrisy thing’ reaction…
We say “absurd” now, though then, in the F.O.F., the men were slowly getting emasculated, the women’s eggs Chinese-drip-embalmed and something in our pain-identified stories did not feel all that uncomfortable about it, so long as it was a little clip/drip here and there and not all at once…
For many the Blog was that ‘All at once attempt’: when I read it for the first time, nearly around this season (I think), I knew with absolute certainty that this was my calling to bridge the gap between following the form of Hope, Mind-Self-Image-lust and Heavenly Wishful Thinking in regards to the F.O.F. and the enormous hypocrisies that its teachings and methods of ‘I can Do, but you can’t because Robert told me I could’ wiseacring… It was simply ‘my time’, my wife stayed on for longer, working on building her own conscience-bridge to her heart; it seemed that all I needed was to snatch the bag of nails from the F.O.F. Coffin-closer and use them on the bridge’s planks as I was crossing…
It’s not normal being normal because we have other choices not to be… While the F.O.F. children (hopefully) will be the inheritors of our wisdom from having been (as adults) pretty much where allot of children are ‘symbolically’ anyway, in regards to the world today and their glandular and spiritual conumdrums… Not that these go away with ripe old age.
There’s something inside all of us that simply will not admit that it’s growing up and not down and would rather look back as hot pepper while simultaneously turning to salt… Regret and Doomsday predictions are much easier to prepare for because it’s past tense and the Painbody ‘loves’ the past tense; there ain’t nothing better than some prehistoric poo-poo croûtons to go with one’s fossilized mustard greens and steamed ammonite’s.
The eagerness to obey… Well there’s certainly something inside us that’s eager and it intuitively understands that it owes something to someone, though does not know who and gets willy-nilly side tracked into believing the outside is the place to be looking for ‘Affirmation of bill-payment-success’, while it’s lost itself and all the incredible inherited god-chaos within; also the Conscience and Heart connections, though they’re growing too… Maybe it’s just the result of the disconnect between presence and functions, so the soul’s organs and mind just apply themselves to the external world’s ‘organs and minds’ along with its infant-spirit to other’s spiritual-issues (in the same state of “fooling around”); all the while the Real Ones (IMO) with spiritual-issues is the disconnected functions and screaming ‘Please, no more Renaissance wine and liver pate!’ Liver.
The F.O.F. is simply not a conscious school; it teaches to struggle within only in the context and pretext of subjectively looking out ‘outside’ for the ‘enemy’ or ‘other’… I mean, there’s a reason Buddha has his eyes closed while meditating… The real world’s within and our personal story-identity is the Mad Hatter making more tea than his kidneys will ever live to speak about.
IMO, the original ‘Marionette’ is my internal glands, organs and blood, while my mind’s personal story-world is the Puppet-master of my heart, sex and context of presence. I owe everything and nothing to everyone and twice as much to my body and story I’ve inherited through my incarnation into it… Maybe our stories are developing embryos carried by our souls, the names our parents gave to us and all that they imply are our pregnancies: so, who are your wet nurses when you’re not at home?
Will it be powdered milk, compliments of ‘Struggling to Learn How to Struggle more Effectively’ or Fresh Bubbly Inner-smile-milk compliments of Fresh Bubbly Inner-smile-milk?
Veramente,
Thank you so much for your post; it inspired me, as you can tell…
___________________________________
L.t.y.a.
Anna, you again surprise me with your language, delicacy and integrity. Thank you for presenting these pictures here. It is strange to see my self and what I’ve talked about Girard in your post and realize how delicate it is and at the same time how necessary that it is done so that we all understand, and especially they themselves, that no one is fooled any longer by their commitment to Robert. Brainwashed and brainwashing others so that they can keep their position running is pitiful. As Bruce implied, we are responsible for our whoreness even if the Fellowship is responsible for its abuses of power and very few of us played only in one side of the spectrum.
“331 WhaleRider and indirectly, Ralph B. (On :just words”)
veramente:
That’s my point. We were all so numb and shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about what we did or didn’t do in the past to warn others. That’s bullshit guilt tripping. Now that we have some distance on it, we can see it for what it was: a crime. I left before Troy.
Even if someone screamed in our faces, the FOF indoctrination runs so deep that we would have just written the person off as a sleeping person, food for the moon, expressing negativity.”
Thanks Veramente for speaking your truth.
Obviously I do not agree with you so are you willing to listen to other points of view? The reference I made to this fact in this particular occassion was within the context of Greg’s situation. People know things about Greg that I don’t and I defend him with what I know, if I am not told the other truths about him, I cannot stand where others stand.
The other issue, the fact that many knew what was happening and no one had the guts to stand at the pyle for a week once a year for twenty years and allowed for thousands of us to be manipulated, raped and exploited continues to be a fact. It reveals a characteristic of the level of unconcsciousness and lack of social responsibility and degree of brainwashing that the people who left the Fellowship had. I do not say these things so that you feel guilty about them, it is you who allow that particular emotion to surface within your being because perhaps you do feel guilty. I personally have nothing against guilt. When I make mistakes, and I often do, I feel guilt. After the guilt has been acknowledged then there is suffering in the recognition of my level of being and there is shame. After these, there is the desire to not have the same thing happen again. And after that there is forgiveness for my inability to have done better then.
Treating these things on the blog seems necessary to me so that we can digest them and yet when we met I do not think I made you feel guilty for not having told us twenty year ago nor has that been the case with any other student. I have now met many ex-students who played horrible roles in the Fellowship and I don’t think anyone of them can say I made them feel as though they were guilty of my suffering. Not even my husband who to me is the brains behind the Fellowship of Friends.
These things did happen to us, just as they can continue happening if we do nothing about them and the situation with Greg’s participation here is no different. I was hoping in that particular situation and knowing little about Greg’s background, that as a community we would have the being to deal with him. There have been mistakes in the Sheik’s side, very understandable but mistakes never the less and attempts by Greg to participate coherently. The fact that those efforts are not taken into consideration and that even you turned strongly against one of his best posts on what has yet been written succinctly about the Fellowship of Friends might give you a hint about what I am trying to convey. Vanity tries to go along with the popular posters just as it went along with Robert Burton and the popular people with him.
I do not see what is it that keeps someone from stating the truth about somebody else without hurting that person and protecting the rest. Why instead of labelling, screaming, mistreating Greg, someone here who knew his condition has been unable to say to the rest of us: this person has a long history of not only verbal abuse but it can also easily lead to physical abuse and that is why I seriously consider this person needs to be banned from this site. There have been many posters saying Greg is a sociopath and other names, but Duncan, who warned us so clearly, never said that he was physically abusive. If so many of you know about this situation, why would you even call him names, hurtful names that would only tend to quickly enrage him if he has such a condition? When you see a people on wheelchairs, do you insult them? And is that the same pattern that allows you to keep quiet for over twenty years but inversed?
Thank you for talking Whalerider.
#261 Draco”:
Bares reposting, lest we forget:
“Here’s a story that hasn’t received enough attention and which I heard last year from the medical professional . A Fellowship student went to another Fellowship student who worked in the medical profession and described his problem. The first student told the medical professional that he was a pedophile and he was attracted to little girls. (I have no idea to what extent this was put into practice, but it was definitely a problem for him.) At some point he had gone to Robert and confessed this to him and asked advice. Robert’s only advice was to wait until 2006 (the supposed year of nuclear Armageddon) after which there would be no restrictions on sexual behavior. So the pedophile student waited and 2006 came and went and then he didn’t know what to do. After all, he had just been postponing the fulfillment of his sexual desires. Luckily he had the sense to go to the medical professional who was arranging to get professional help for him.
But what a piece of “teaching” from Robert!
1. Robert approved the student’s pedophilia by just telling him to wait until the moment is right.
2. Robert therefore put the children of Fellowship students at risk.
3. It was completely useless advice for someone who at that time sincerely admitted that he had a problem..
4. Robert was obviously looking forward to 2006 so that he would have no restrictions on his own sexual behavior. Whether he might desire some underage liaisons himself is anyone’s guess, but I would advise any FOF students to keep their children away from him.
It reminds me of the story of the wife of an important student in the Fellowship who contacted Robert to tell him that her husband was spending hours watching porn on the Internet. Robert responded that after 2006 there won’t be any Internet.”
____________________________________________________________________
#295 Sea:
“For Someone
Robert Burton uses manipulation. Over time his followers are groomed for this experience: he continually tells them that their lower selves will resist any thing that will bring them closer to awakening, he plies the males with luxury and ‘beauty’ has them floating in an unreal bubble, in which conscience and personal integrity are gradually dissolved and rejected as ‘feminine dominance’.
Women are groomed to allow their husbands to comply.
Eventually Robert pounces. If the follower rejects him he will threaten them with having to work out doors in the serf roles that those he is not having ‘sex’ with generally perform. Or he will tell them that they have to return to their home-lands which are often impoverished. He is prone to extreme jealousy and has been known to banish current ‘sexual’ partners simply for falling in love. He railed at my dear friend his most devoted and loyal follower for half an hour with out stopping and then banished her from his sight at events.
The sexual activity has been very unpleasant for most males that I have spoken with. The ‘loving’ experience is a myth. I did once meet a follower who applauded the experience briefly; but he suffered years of disgust and despair afterwards. The degradation is very difficult to absorb. You make excuses for it: it is so weird and ugly and cold and bewildering, and you are so desperate to believe that Robert holds the key to your higher centres that you re-describe what is happening to you in terms which make it bearable.
I know one follower who has been close to Robert for years, and who says that Robert is very ‘gentle’. But he has to do this… saying anything else would mean facing the full tragedy of his situation, facing himself.
One of the characteristics that enables Robert is that he does not mind if his boys absolutely hate the experience, as long as they comply. They have asked him about this but he somehow shakes their questions off. He sometimes makes their orifices bruised swollen and bleeding and mildly insists that they are being forced to let go of their lower selves. He tells them that it’s only their bodies, their ‘King of Clubses’ that reject it.
In the beginning Robert also manipulated his female followers in to having sex… there is testimony about this on the esoteric archives. It was disturbing reading: he had no interest what so ever in their pleasure.
I do not judge the students who submit to this: I know that they comply because their hope and longing is so desperate. I am so sad though that this ghoul has exploited (and necessarily obstructed) their search.
The sick reality only began to press against the boundaries of my bubble when Robert told a follower that he did not enjoy the teaching events and meetings, the follower had to press him to continue, reminding him of the money they made; so Robert did continue but reluctantly, saying “I only do it for you boys…”
_____________________________________________________________________
These are the behaviors that we need to remember and continue to make public. Does anyone have any suggestions for addressing the question of Robert’s GREED and LUST to current members in a way that it could be heard and acknowledged?
Dear All
I left the FOF yesterday. The decision came partly as a result of reading the blog many months ago. Nothing has been the same since then…
I was the girlfriend who was asked to leave the house of a student who was expelled last week. Actually when I refused point blank, nothing happened. I was not asked to leave. But I did leave.
I wish you all well and thank you. I think it is important for you to know that the blog most definately has an impact and I am proof of that.
Those that have ears to hear DO hear.
Tina Burton
A page or so ago some posts indicated they thought the blog might be ‘winding down’ or even coming to an end.
I would say this certainly does not appear to be the case.
The Greg thing is mostly just sad. There is a fine mind there which has given the blog some very penetrating posts. Unfortunately for everyone, mostly Greg, there appears to be a social venom that is unnecessary at best, becomes mean-spirited, and degrades the blog in a variety of ways. It is much more than just disagreement which happens here all the time. What ‘Graduates’ and ‘hardtruth’ would eventually begin to produce seemed to move the blog away from the topic of exposing the fof and RB, and it sort of temporarily paralyzes the joy that people have in sharing useful links, and music, and humor. It seems no different to me than when you clearly see something within yourself that needs to be let go of because it undermines the movement toward your own freedom. Some things cannot be healed, they just have to be released so that something else can fill that space.
The blog seems to me no more or less ‘real’ (whatever that means) than anything else I encounter and which becomes a part of my experience.
Thanks and good stuff to you all (you too Sheik).
Vena, Sea, unoanimo, waskathleenw, veramente and others
“Does anyone have any suggestions for addressing the question of Robert’s GREED and LUST to current members in a way that it could be heard and acknowledged?”
I would like to find the answer to this question too.
I never spent any real time around Robert neither. All I know about what’s going on “behind the stage” is from this blog. It would be much easier for me to digest it if I met some of these males for whom ‘the sexual activity has been very unpleasant’. The ones I spoke to were either extremely happy or said that it was not that bad, or that Robert was a great lover, or that they had the best romance in their life. One guy said that the sex was good. Another said that he was never involved in any orgies and it was very functional, and he believes that Robert needs it for some reason we do not understand because he is conscious, besides he was giving him the most insightful photographs. Another that this was his only connection to the school. Actually, many people mention this “connection to Robert” as something special even if they are not having relations with him.
One lady who’s husband was RB’s lover said that she’d rather have her husband having sex with Robert than with other women.
So, I just don’t know what to make out of this. It seems rude to me to impose my concerns of someone’s personal life if they appear to be quite fine with it.
#324: I saw Byron Katie a few years ago. Very down to earth person who does a lot to help people all over the world and it would be difficult for even the most suspicious to put a label of guru on her. I know that she’ll be in Grass Valley for a nominal fee at a booksigning. She’s well worth seeing IMO.
“Does anyone have any suggestions for addressing the question of Robert’s GREED and LUST to current members in a way that it could be heard and acknowledged?”
No. People hear and believe what they wish to hear and believe, especially if they are caught in a mind/behavior control situation like the Fellowship of Friends. I try to keep in mind how I put the pieces together for myself when I made the decision to leave. I heard the hints, but dismissed direct attacks. For several years after the doubts began, I still had a part of me that was hanging tough to the idea that I could get what I wanted in the FoF no matter the external form of the teaching. I bet that’s what a lot of current members are telling themselves right now.
Maybe people have to see the weakness in the ideas of the teaching before they can come to the realization that Robert is a fraud. If you believe in the teaching and use it everyday to guide your life, it explains Robert’s behavior, or at least denies your right to question it.
Hey Mick D.
Thanks, maybe Buddha, maybe not?
But do you find this to be true for you? If so how did you get from here to there. Would you tell me? Link me up Scotty.
Me, just left with my sunday school logic, trying to make sense of it all.
listening
Cake
341 ~ Somebody ~
“Does anyone have any suggestions for addressing the question of Robert’s GREED and LUST to current members in a way that it could be heard and acknowledged?”
__________________
I am asking inside myself these days first ~ ‘What are my symbolic-versions of what Robert’s doing to himself and others? The writing is on the wall, some believe the wall belongs to a prison cell, others to Pink Floyd, while another tries to bang someone else’s head against what’s not a wall and instead is their own self knocking on the door from the inside, as Rumi would put it…
We’ll never ‘convince’ or ‘lead’ F.O.F. followers into the “heard and acknowledged” because they’re ‘following’ a dream that’s ‘herding and acting through knowing’ and this is all of our stories, it’s just not their internal time-clock’s ‘time’ yet… Some successes are not meant for anyone to do except YOU: wanting to help someone else SO MUCH is often a death wish… Trauma’s like the painful version of conscious- empathy, it deepens its pain-identity and that of the other Trauma-soul-tumor as well.
We can keep trying with our hearts, so long as the love’s not preordained by the mind’s idea of success, which it usually measures in Time and Emotional Sensationalism (sound familiar?) and not the Quality of the Love-wish, that’s eternal and fixed as an intent sent to someone’s ‘mailbox in the sky’, IMO; once the lamb hears and acknowledges its own external bell, it chews that damn thing off and leaves the Shepard so that it can get lost within itself and rightly so: not be found by the lust for wool and greed of the lonely Shepard again…
______________
The sparrows are building their mud houses,
incredible birds with spade shaped beaks… and rightly so.
:.)
Anyone else feel like it’s time to move away from the Greg thing?
bruce 346 – I thought we more or less already had…. ’til you brought it up again ;-}
340 is newly moderated.
I will be moving the discussion tomorrow, it feels like a good time to have a third beginning. The movement will also resolve all the design problems that the current version of the blog has been undergoing.
340 Tina Burton
You’re fantastic. Congrats.
Re: “I saw Byron Katie a few years ago. Very down to earth person who does a lot to help people all over the world and it would be difficult for even the most suspicious to put a label of guru on her.”
This last month, I happened to have the chance to look at Byron Katie’s teaching. Before that, I had not been attracted to her style but I had a semi-good opinion of her. After reading her words more closely and listening to her interact with people, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth, and I see her as potentially dangerous for messing with people’s minds, especially vulnerable people seeking an authority to put their trust in. She touts ‘non-duality’, and in the same breath proclaims getting rid of stressful thoughts and choosing to believe only that which does not distress us – experiencing only good thoughts and exhilarating feelings. Her ultimate-solution technique, which IMO has some limited benefit, is applied indiscriminately as a panacea for all of everyone’s problems. (Just do the sequence, dear.) She speaks down to her clients and does not really listen to them, she is so enamoured of her own glory. She uses loaded language and markets herself mercilessly, raking in huge amounts of money, and IMO encourages devotion and imitation. Her groups suffer from the cult dynamics that we are already familiar with, read accounts of her former students on the web.
Sorry, guys, that ray of hope – it’s always been yourself.
Please watch this video of Byron Katie in action and tell me what is your impression.
on “Robert has asked”
______________________________________
Do you remember what the Wizard of Oz says when he dismisses Dorothy and the others after their first audience with him? Not “Goodbye,” not “Remember what I’ve told you,” but
“The Great Oz has spoken!”
—————————————————————————————————————
“Does anyone have any suggestions for addressing the question of Robert’s GREED and LUST to current members in a way that it could be heard and acknowledged?”
___________________________________
“Kill one man and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.”~ Beilby Porteus
People are offended by the small acts of greed and lust they see others commit in their daily lives, and (occasionally) are shamed by those they observe in themselves. But when they see greed and lust on an enormous scale, they view it as something else entirely, and even as its opposite. RB knows this and uses it intentionally.
People join the Fellowship because they want something they imagine they don’t possess–call it consciousness, awakening, salvation, purity, whatever. That creates from the outset a problem that becomes obvious only in retrospect. Then they imbue the Dear Leader with magical powers because they want so badly to believe that he can give them that which they believe they lack–which only a magician could possibly do. From then on, they do not interpret his words and behavior as those of a mere mortal, with the same implications, but as those of a god, with whatever implications he ascribes to them.
In RB’s case, he even said, many, many years ago, that his chief feature was greed, but people choose to see his greed as something other than greed.
How to persuade someone that a person is greedy when they have already seen, over a period of years, that person do everything possible to surround himself with every imaginable form of material object and bauble, stuff his gullet with food and drink like Henry VIII, collect inordinate sums of money for every imaginable service, no matter how trivial, and generally act in a way that would cause any rational person immediately to roll their eyes in disgust at his absurd greed?
How to persuade someone that a person is filled with lust after they already know he cannot stop himself from having his every orifice rubbed every few hours? When they already know he is obsessed with trolling the world for new meat?
RB brags about his lust–that it cannot be satisfied by dozens of boys. He makes his inadequacy into its opposite, calls it “heroic.” And people believe him, because the alternative is too painful for them.
People who will pay large sums of money to dress up in clothes they cannot afford to sit slack-jawed while a simple-minded man mumbles incoherently about the esoteric significance of the number of toes on a puti are really not capable of processing information in a rational manner–they want that Something they believe they lack, and they will believe anything rather than accept that they already have it, or that Big Daddy cannot give them anything of real value.
I know because I was there.
Something I remember was when I looked in RB’s medicine cabinet and noticed that he had new containers of toiletries–deodorant, cologne, toothpaste–stacked one behind the other, three or four deep, so that as soon as one had been used up, there was another right there, ready to be opened, and he wouldn’t have to take the trouble to walk to the store, or even ask someone else to bring him a new tube of toothpaste. It was a small thing, but the impression of greed somehow impressed me more than all of the fancy cars, fancy furniture, wasted food, etc., I already saw everywhere around me.
Somebody (342)
A couple of Robert Burtons’s insightful photographs:
here’s one he gave me, via of course a boy follower, was “Robert sends you his love and wishes you to know that he’s noticed you’ve put on weight”.
The first challenge of course was to turn this in to something ‘esoteric’ I spent about a year on that.
~
Oh yes… he asked my husband to “only wear black underpants from now on.”
~
Of the fifteen thousand students who have left the school quite a number have already described their experience on the blog. Many had been in ‘denial’ about it for years. You would get statistically more accurate descriptions from here. It is terribly difficult to confront the awareness that you have participated in something degrading…
One of my ex-husbands told me that he loathed it. He said it was totally unemotional and unpleasant. That Robert would just wait there for him with the lower half of his face covered with KY. He could not even arouse himself by closing his eyes and imagining women, so Robert insisted that he took Viagra.
Around Robert you enter this strange world in which heartfelt reposes become very confused. Disgust is translated into ‘third state’ It is very difficult to admit that you are disappointed, or repelled especially when you have sacrificed so much, dignity, your family’s happiness, and ultimately perhaps your soul…
How many ‘events’ have you paid dearly for and then nothing really happens; you don’t have the fourth states and verifications you have craved. So what do you say when asked “how was it?” How do you elaborate…
351 Traveler
When one is attracted to one of the current “teachers” “gurus” etc. it certainly doesn’t hurt to peruse the anti-cult sites as they usually have info from people who have dealt with them. Katie, Tolle etc. have some pretty interesting and nasty stories that surround them. But yes, the cult dynamic is alive and well in most of the current trendy teachers. I also came away with a similar feeling to yours after watching some of the Katie clips.
351 Traveler
I couldn’t even watch the whole clip. Makes my stomach turn.
I was initially somewhat impressed by Byron Katie because she encourages you to question everything. I started getting suspicious when I realized she was telling people what the “right answers” are. I got totally turned off by her when I tried to read her third book and she was calling herself a “master” and just completely full of herself. There’s lots of discussion about her (and Tolle) over at the Rick Ross sight.
http://w3.rickross.com/cgi-bin/search?q=Byron+Katie&cmd=Search%21
‘In RB’s case, he even said, many, many years ago, that his chief feature was greed, but people choose to see his greed as something other than greed.’
Chief feature not greed. Just said was so to justify the behaviours and make it look like knowledge of himself. True chief feature is fear. The greed, dominance, power, vanity, lunatic, etc., effused by that machine is the smoke screen hiding the fear chief feature. Poor Booby is scared sh!tless and must continuously cram an endless fountain of immortal drink into this bottomless pit without ever having possibility of satisfaction.
speaking of black holes…
Holy Shit!
http://www.realitysandwich.com/discerning_safety
just imagine, there we are, probably still talking about Bobby, and all of a sudden… Zooooooot! (maybe not exaclty this sound)
this reality is no more
what were you saying, Mick?
Tina, thanks for sharing with everyone — Congrats and best wishes!
Remember what Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky in “In Search of the Miaculous”:-
“The Master, Self or Real ‘I’ is formed from Essence growing up”.
“Where there are arguments, there are idiots”.
I feel that Personality (either False or Work/True Pesronality) is what we use to communicate on the blog. I have no wish to persuade ‘bloggers’ one way or the other about their connections to the FOF, but feel sure that, having left it 19 years ago, I am better prepared to live life to the betterment of the Common Good, which is satisfying of itself…..Nigel.
Tina, congratulations. I’m glad you’re here.
Dear Tina, I am so happy you are out!
Welcome to the world of the free and the brave!
Anna, 302: “I think that M’s disgust at the sex was part of the key to his compliance. The experience was so bizarre so ‘illogical’ so unknown… that he persuaded himself that it could be the product of something ‘other’….
Re: trauma and mind control — you used the words “disgust” and “compliance” —
http://oneheartbooks.com/mind_control.html
Tina 340 you are inspiration to us all! You prove the blog is not “winding down,”
thanks James 341
Traveler, Xeena Bruce and others who question the brands-o-enlightenment ala Byron Kaitie, eckart tolle, etc. thank you.
352 JAVOH great insight into greed and lust… excesses of these “deadly sins” are tools for mind control… creation of an extreme environment, a “theater of the absurd” as it’s been referred to here, the “unreal, bizarre, illogical” situation — as Anna says in 302 — this contributes to a type of “shock” and compliance on the part of the susceptible.
Tina, that’s given me as much joy as meeting you when I joined the Fellowship in 1990. Bravo!
Just in case you are not aware, one of the reasons people do not use their complete name is because if your name were later looked up on the internet for a job or any other such thing, your connection here can get exposed. It seems a valid reason in the long run so if you don’t know about it you might consider using just half your name. Thank you for your courage to tell us that it’s helped.
It is a pleasure to see so much participation, thank you all for bringing your selves out. Now I can rest!
Anna, you are a gem and more like you will come hopefully. These things need to be told. Everyone will leave as soon as they understand and that is beautiful!
351
Hello Traveler ~
Thank you Traveler,
I heard today (by way of a very enthusiastic acquaintance; who I hope has not seen the Youtube video yet) about her scheduled appearance in Grass Valley/Nevada City and was planning to do some research before lifting anchor on Friday… I jumped the gun on that post (If I had more time I would have written more.)… Though I’m glad it happened the way it did: good to know you’re riding shotgun and box of tacks… You saved me approximately $35 dollars and 4 hours of time I will spend elsewhere…
I’m glad because had I done the Youtube thing first I would most likely not have posted any blog-blurb; so, the way it happened you’ve saved (hopefully, at least those out of the F.O.F. that read the blog) allot of “fooling around”, though for some the seeing-is-believing-ritual is better these days for their blood… I know that many current students will be going to see her, perhaps it will be ‘good’ for them to experience something familiar outside the All Too Familiar Box, if you know what I mean (?) I watched the first minute or so and have to say that she does possess that very odd ‘quizzical modality’, a matter of fact-ness and dualistic comparative protectionism that occurs between allot of spiritual gurus and ‘the student’… Whew! Ok, well, thanks again for the cold shower… I needed it.
__________________
L.t.y.a.
Code Breaker:
Gentle means “limp dick”.
How dare any of you question Reality?
353 Anna
Somebody (342)
A couple of Robert Burtons’s insightful photographs:
here’s one he gave me, via of course a boy follower, was “Robert sends you his love and wishes you to know that he’s noticed you’ve put on weight”.
The first challenge of course was to turn this in to something ‘esoteric’ I spent about a year on that.
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Anna, I remember too the inordinate amounts of time spent in my mind trying to figure out Robert Burton’s messages. Lots of imagination from my part at least, like interpreting dreams, reflections of my fears, my hopes and illusions.
I went to the Rick Ross site somehow stumbled on to Oprah’s connection to Tolle and read an interview given by Tolle.
The language he uses reminded me of my Fourth Way reading material. It seemed to be all there.
It also seems to me that these masters and gurus have “found it” or “got it” by grace while the rest of us have to sit and wait under worse suffering than they or until the ninth lifetime.
Well, my name is arthur salvialeaf at your service. Coming to you soon. Please use cash only for the salvation of your soul.
351
That Byron Katie video is absurd and insulting. Tells a woman traumatized by war she shouldnt be afraid? What a bunch of BS. The woman who was in the war is much more impresive than than Kaitie woman. Byron Katie sounds like shes talking to a litt;le kid. I wouldnt take a cup of free water frm her.
Maybe it’s a bit jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire when we try to replace the fof with another set of limited and specific ideas that will help us through our lives.
I stopped listening to that video after just a few seconds (agree with others who didn’t see anything of value there). On the other hand, that’s me. Maybe some of you have watched that video, or read something by her, and found some kernels of truth. The key for me to not “jumping out of the fire pan and into the fire” has been to:
1) Not look for “a teacher”
2) Try to be open to kernels of wisdom from people without wasting too much time and too much money in the process.
Of course, that’s my formula. Maybe y’all have a different one.
So, about this idea of finding a new “guru” or new “set of ideas,” I haven’t quite figured this one out. But I’m learning, and would like to share some thoughts on the topic. So the following are not necessarily deal breakers, but I would definitely call them red flags:
• Having a need for “a teacher,” and believing you’ve discovered one.
• When you find yourself focusing on the messenger more than the message.
• When you believe that others are lost or condemned because they don’t follow that same set of ideas.
• When someone suggests that you need to settle down to one set of ideas, and not “spend your life always looking.” Because maybe “always looking” is not so bad. Maybe it can be rewarding and transformative, and can help us attract some wonderful people into our lives. (Are we getting married or our gurus? Or are we learning from them?)
• When someone suggests dire consequences for not applying a particular system of ideas.
• When you need to join an organization.
• When you need to give up a natural part of yourself.
• When someone suggests their ideas are new, different, or original.
• When a set of ideas satisfies a desire to be different from the rest of the world.
• When someone promotes the idea that spirituality (or enlightenment, or awakening, whatever we might call it) is a finite thing that only a finite number of people can have. In other words, when the infinite and wondrous nature of the universe is ignored, and when our own wondrous and infinite nature is ignored.
——
So, probably not a comprehensive list of red flags. Also, these are just mine, and I’m just sharing them here. But probably everyone has their own red flags. (For some, maybe it means forgetting the fof, forgetting the blog, and forgetting the GF site, and just getting the hell out of dodge as soon as possible. I can think of a few old friends who used that approach years ago, even before the blog and before the GF site.)
About “originality”… Sometimes I think this is a key word. We usually think it means, “I’ve created something completely different from everyone else.” But something can be original and be very similar to something created by someone else. That’s because the word “original” really means that it comes from you — it originates from within you. That fascination with creating “something different” and being someone different and looking for ideas that are different, is partly what leads us away from ourselves, and into cults.
I also find it interesting that Burton characterizes other systems as being delusional whenever they suggest being in tune with nature and the universal laws. According to Burton, his ideas don’t “flatter” people, and that’s why people leave him in droves.
(Hmm. I disagree. See the thousands of posts on this blog to understand the real reasons that people leave him.)
According to Burton, we’re supposed to be the salmon swimming up stream, going against the ray of creation, and escaping the brutal fate that awaits those who go with the flow and do not struggle. And this is a great “hook” for the Fellowship (no pun intended here), because now we can explain away ANY sort of doubts or questions we have about Burton’s actions as just being part of that noble struggle to see ourselves and work on ourselves.
Ironically, there’s some truth to that. Because a lot of the “effort” and “struggle” of being in the fof was learning to “remember ourselves,” to remember that part of “ourselves” that was lost and forgotten, and gradually became more lost and more forgotten, as we remained in the fof.
Congratulations Tina! You’ve taken an important step towards becoming whole, towards strengthening confidence in your own perceptions and understanding. Leaving the Fellowship is saying good bye to superstition and fear. You won’t lose the good things you earned by your own honest efforts.
371 Rear View Mirror
Beautiful post. I couldn’t agree more with your red flags.
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