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This blog is about life, about you and me, then it is about cults in general and the Fellowship of Friends Cult in particular. It is the continuation of the blog at battlesword.blogspot.com
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The Public Square 
From Allain Vivien’s Cultic Studies in France
B.- FOR A PRAGMATIC RESPONSE TO THE CULT PHENOMENON
Your Commission is thus firmly convinced, on the one hand, of the impossibility, so much legal that in fact, to go in the direction of a specific legislation intended to fight against the intrigues of the sects insomuch as they can be considered as dangerous, in addition to the risks that comprise the inaction found in a conception in which freedom of conscience is pushed to the extreme. It appears to the Commission consequently that the only response adapted to the sectarian phenomenon cannot be, for reasons at the same time of principle and feasibility, that pragmatic and diversified, in order to take into account as best possible a complex reality.
Several interlocutors of the Commission explained that they carry out, some for many years, on the ready means to fight against the dangers which certain sects pose to individuals and society. All, including those who absolutely would be in favour of a specific anti-sect legislation but are appropriate that such cannot be the solution, adopt a comparable step, based on realism and pragmatism, even if they do not necessarily give priority to the same measures, which only reflects the diversity of the horizons from which they come.
Such an approach leads your Commission today to consider that the device likely to fight with effectiveness against the dangers which the sects pose to individuals and society must be articulated around three principal axes [plural of “axis,” not the chopping kind]: improvement of knowledge of sects and the diffusion of this knowledge; a more strict application of existing laws; reinforcement on some points of the existing legislation. In addition, it is advisable to help the former followers in a more effective way, who are sometimes completely stripped materially and psychologically and to whom is currently offered no form of assistance corresponding to their needs.
1.- Better to know and make known
To fight the sectarian “drifts” in an effective and equitable way, one must, above all, have a good knowledge of the phenomenon. Without encompassing it well, one is likely, indeed, to poorly appreciate the dangers which it can present and, thus, to implement an inadequate cure.
Still it is also necessary that information thus collected is the subject of an appropriate diffusion, based on a policy of prevention which remains, your Commission is convinced by it, the best means to fight against the development of the sectarian phenomenon. This action of dissemination of information regarding the sectarian movements and their practices must be taken to nearly all of the administrative services concerned and to the general public, in particular to the young people.
a) To better know
One is forced to recognize that one does not today have a sufficiently precise knowledge of the sectarian phenomenon.
Thus it was seen, for example, at which point it was difficult to measure his quantitative importance – that it is in a number of followers or groupings – or to appreciate in a precise way its progression.
It appears to your Commission that it would be convenient to fill this gap by creating an observatory of study of the sects, which will be fully able to play its role only if at the same time the device of information and analysis existing within each ministry is improved.
1. To create an interdepartmental observatory attached to the Prime Minister
There exists today in France no structure equipped with sufficient means to follow with precision the whole of the cult phenomenon.
Admittedly, the Ministry of the Interior, thanks to forty agents of General Information distributed in all the territory, collects rich information on the establishment of sects, their manpower and their intrigues. But there can be no question that the information is only partial [incomplete]. The services of the police do not indeed have the means nor is it part of their missions to be devoted to an analysis of the sociological, psychological, medical, and legal aspects of the phenomenon.
The Institute of the High Interior Safety Studies (IHESI), in addition, created in 1992, a working group on the sects. However, this group does not have an official existence. Moreover, it does not have sufficient means to ensure a total follow-up of cult activities.
A mission of study was also installed within the Ministry for the Social Affairs. Since 1992, an agent of the Management of Social Action is charged to follow, among other questions, that of the sects. In addition, the ministry passed in 1993 with Association for Interdisciplinary Research on Existence and Health (ARIES) a convention of research. This one provides that in 1996 ARIES will submit to the ministry a report of study on the sects. That being, this device also very limited in terms of means.
One could not, finally, neglect the significant role played by associations for defense of victims of cults – National Union of Associations for Defense of Families and Individual (UNADFI) and the Center of Resources, Education, and Action Against Mental Manipulation (CCMM) – in the collection and publication of information on cultic movements.
In relation to the progression of the sectarian phenomenon and the dangers which certain movements present, an organization of study equipped with a separate administrative and legal existence as well as of specific means thus appears necessary.
Moreover, such a structure is claimed for a long time.
Already, in 1982, the Ravail report had suggested the creation of an interdepartmental commission. In 1983, in his report to the Prime Minister, Mr. Alain Vivien suggested “that a high-ranking civil servant be appointed near the Prime Minister to follow the whole of the problem of the sects, to coordinate the reflection and, if necessary, mobilizing the interested government departments…With the initiative of this high-ranking civil servant, the interdepartmental commission suggested by the Ravail report could meet each time that one would need it without necessarily secreting an excessive administration whose rigidity would undoubtedly present many disadvantages.”
The advisory national Commission of Human Rights, in its opinion of December 10, 1993 concerning the phenomenon known as sects, proposed “that is installation of a structure of interdepartmental coordination intended periodically to give a progress report on the evolution of the phenomenon known as sects and to coordinate the application of relevant legislative and lawful measures; and that is created a public information center on these groups, collecting and disseminating all information and ensuring legal assistance to the victims.”
This idea, moreover, was defended within the framework of the Commission for Legal Questions and Human Rights of the Council of Europe. Thus, Sir John Hunt, in his report of 1991 on sects and new religious movements, affirmed that “independent organizations should be created to collect and disseminate concrete and objective information on the nature and the activities of cults.”
PIn addition, many people heard by the board of inquiry suggested the creation of an interdepartmental observatory.
This organization should ensure three principal missions:
– to study and follow the phenomenon, in connection in particular with the administrative services concerned (Ministries for the Interior, Social Affairs, Justice, Finances, National Education, Foreign Affairs…), in a multi-field approach, sociological, economic, administrative as well as legal and medical.
– to inform the Prime Minister and, with his authorization, the administrative services concerned, of the resultsof its observations and its studies, the current problems in particular.
– to make proposals to the Prime Minister aiming at improving the means of fighting against the dangers of sects, which could be the subject of an annual report which would be made public.
This organization should be equipped with a statute which enables it to fulfill its missions as well as possible. Without entering in detail, it appears desirable that it shows the principal following characteristics:
to be an interdepartmental service directly attached to the Prime Minister, as are, for example, the Commission on the Simplification of Formalities (COSIFORM), the College for the Prevention of Technological Risks, and the Central Committee of Investigation on the Cost and Output of Public Services. Joining with a particular ministry would indeed not have a justification, [sects] being a phenomenon which touches with attributions of several.
to be an observatory, because it would act, neither to take up a duty of management or execution as a traditional administrative service, nor to have a proper capacity of decision.
to be composed of people likely, by their diversified competencies, to ensure the necessary multi-field approach to the phenomenon. The members of this authority, named by the Prime Minister, should thus include, in addition to representatives of all the administrative services concerned, specialists in various disciplines, sociologists, lawyers, and doctors in particular. It would perhaps be preferable, in order to guarantee to these members a perfect independence and to protect them from any risk from pressure, that their name is not made public.
to have proper means. To achieve its missions, the observatory should have specific financial resources, even if there would undoubtedly be an interest to retain, initially, the idea of a light structure equipped with the legal means adapted to the achievement of its mission. It would thus be necessary to give it the capacity to obtain from any person communication of a document, subject to professional secrecy, secrecy concerning national defense, the safety of the State or the foreign policy, and of the respect of the private life.
Taking into account the importance of the work already completed within the group made up at the Institute of the High Interior Safety Studies, it would be undoubtedly a good method to use, within the framework of the new observatory such as defined above, competence which now proved reliable on the subject.
2. To improve in each ministry concerned the device of study of the cults
The knowledge of the cultic movements by the ministries concerned incontestably progressed much in recent years.
The installation by the Central Management of General Information of a grid of agents – the “cult correspondents” – charged with locally following the phenomenon, the realization of a guide to sectarian movements in 1994 and its current project of a bank of data interns attest to this. The mission of study created at the Management of Social Action in 1992 also equally testifies to this.
However, the devices could still be improved. Thus, the minutes of the interdepartmental meeting on April 9, 1991 specify that “the services are sometimes ignorant of the cultic nature of certain associations.” Thus, there is apparently no one particularly charged to follow the problem of sects in the ministries for National Education, of Justice, nor of Foreign Affairs.
Under these conditions, it would be useful if each ministry concerned engages in a reflection on the means of improving its knowledge of sects and how to better face the problems which they raise.
It would also be opportune if, in each one of them, a designated person is charged to follow these questions, with the requirement that he work in liaison with the interdepartmental observatory whose creation was recommended above, in order to prevent, as is sometimes the case today, two services duplicating the same work.
Lastly, it would be desirable if the interested ministers, by way of a circular or an instruction, draw the attention of their services to the problems arising from sects and indicate to them the principles which must guide their actions in answering [these problems].
B) To better make known
The majority of the people heard by the Commission agreed on at least one point. Prevention is certainly the mode of action which must be favored in the fight against the development of sects. Information, in particular to the young people, thus seems to be an essential link of the devices to be implemented.
Admittedly, the media and associations for defense of victims already take certain actions in this direction.
Thus, in addition to the publications which they issue, UNADFI and CCMM regularly organize conferences or briefings in various establishments such as schools, colleges, clubs, and hospitals. CCMM in 1993 even produced, with the assistance of the association “I, You, Him/Her,” a half-hour long film entitled “The Sects… Traps!” presenting four scenes from everyday life in which a recruitment could take place. UNADFI plans soon to release a short film on the subject, intended to be used as support for the meetings which it organizes.
However, the interventions of these associations are, by nature, specific and localized. In addition, their message can always be suspected of being biased. A member of one of these associations declared besides to the Commission: “associations do not always have the means of investigation. I do not say that they are suspect and sectarian, but they lack the means, sometimes of distance. It is not the ideal. One cannot replace the prosecutors, to play the inquisitors. We receive descriptions; it takes us sometimes six months or a year to [recouper? gather? edit? literally: recut] information. It is extremely complicated.”
The media, for their part, were much interested in the question of cults during recent years, in particular following the drama of Waco in Texas in April 1993, the death of 58 members of the Solar Temple in Switzerland in October 1994, and the attack perpetrated by the Aum sect in Tokyo last March. The problem is that this information is intermittent and is focused mainly on the folkloric or sensational aspects. As a specialist recognized in the question by the Commission declared: “[journalists ] love the sensational. We maintain with them the best rapport in the world, but I am extremely disappointed. Each time thirty people are killed, I pass to television and then that falls down until the next time. When I am informed of a measure, I say to myself: “I will have five TV [shows] to make, plus three radio [shows], more…” Then, that falls down for six months or a year (…).”
It is thus appropriate that the State itself largely takes charge of the diffusion of information on the dangers which the sects can present, to the largest possible audience by a media campaign, and in a way “targeted” to children and teenagers within National Education. This action of information should be supplemented by improvements in education of professionals, and in particular of civil servants, concerned with the problem.
1. To inform the young people by National Education
No general device of information for pupils has at the moment been set up within the framework of National Education.
All sources confirm that recruitments are particularly numerous among young people, because they can have a certain fragility, because their judgement is not definitively formed, and because they are inclined to seek ideals that certain sects claim to offer. The need for making an effort of information in their direction was underlined by many interlocutors of the Commission. However, nothing is currently done in this direction within National Education.
It would thus be desirable that the study of the cult phenomenonon be registered in the civics [or social studies] program.
In addition, it would be necessary to organize a briefing each year in all of the school establishments, from primary schools through high schools, to sensitize the young people to this question. However, it is essential that this information be perfectly objective. The difficulty of such an enterprise is due to the need for dispensing information which cannot be suspected of partiality, whereas objectivity is a particularly delicate concept to define and implement in this field. To tend there to the maximum, these sessions of information should be organized under the authority of several teachers who would have received instructions for this purpose. The creation of a video support carried out under the control of National Education would constitute an appreciable teaching aid.
2. To organize an information campaign for the general public, in particular by the channel of public television stations.
In addition to the young people, it is advisable to inform the entire public opinion of the dangers which certain sects can present.
Indeed, it is useful that the parents are informed, because sensitizing them to these problems also affects the education which they give to their children. In addition, adults also can, and in great number, allow themselves to be trapped. This general information to the public proves also necessary to prevent that the public or private persons in charge are not brought, in all good faith, to give their support to harmful associations because of not knowing their true activities. One saw, indeed, that many sects tried “to infiltrate” in the higher realms of the State, to allure local communities or to negotiate conventions [or contracts?] with national or private companies.
Only information on a large scale will be able to reduce these influences.
Your Commission thus proposes that the Government organize a vast information campaign, in particular televised – while resting primarily on the public stations – but also resorting to other media.
This campaign could be organized by the French Committee of Education for Health, since this institution organizes campaigns against AIDS and drug-addiction as well.
3. To extend and improve the training of the people who, within the framework of their professional activities, in particular the civil servants, are confronted with problems arising from cults
It appeared necessary to the Board of Inquiry during its work that the persons with one title or another who are confronted with sectarian problems in their professional activity, civil servants in particular, receive an ad hoc training in this field.
One should not, indeed, forget how much the phenomenon is at the same time vast, complex, and clandestine. Because, as several specialists in the question affirm, “the cults often advance masked.”
The people concerned are mainly police officers and the gendarmes, magistrates, teachers, social personnel, but also doctors and lawyers.
It thus seems opportune to envisage, in the initial training as well as in the continuing training for public agents, but also for people of the private sector concerned, programs or, at the very least, publicity campaigns – in the form of conferences for example – on the problems arising from sects and the means to which they can resort to produce remedy there.
The Central Management of General Information (DCRG) showed the way in this field during the recent period. Thus, for three years, police chiefs-in-training, inspectors-in-training, and inspectors lately assigned to the RG have received training relating to the sects. In addition, the DCRG organizes once per year one or two days of training for the agents charged to follow the sects.
It appears essential, in this respect, that specific training also be lavished on those studying at the National School of the Magistrature, on those of the schools of police chiefs and police inspectors, policemen, as well as gendarmerie. It is also important that those studying to be professors and those preparing for legal or medical professions benefit from it.
2.- To better apply existing laws
It is not necessary to describe in detail the legal arsenal allowing us to fight against the dangers of sects, which we saw was diversified and sufficient to cover all of the intrigues of the sectarian movements that present a harmful character to individuals and/or society. But the work undertook by the Commission very quickly led it to have the impression – which become a certainty by the end of its reflection – that the possibilities offered by the existing provisions are not always – far from what is necessary – fully used.
Several interlocutors of the Commission thus affirmed that there was a significant disproportion between the number of illegalities commited by the sects, and the number of complaints and judgments. Others were astonished by the small number of administrative or legal dissolutions pronounced in regard to the number of existing coercive associations.
Your Commission is thus convinced that the development of sects could effectively be slowed down by a better application of the law. This supposes an increased sensitizing of the professionals concerned with the dangers of the sectarian phenomenon and the need for mobilizing all existing means to battle them. While being quite conscious that such an evolution of mentalities will not be immediate, your Commission is persuaded that it is one of the elements – not to say the essential element – in the device to fight against the sectarian phenomenon. This awakening of course will be supported by general actions of information which were discussed above. But these must be supplemented in certain fields very directly concerned with the intrigues of the sectarian movements, by precise instructions from the State to its agents on the detailed attention of which they must make proof. Such a step should, according to your Commission, be followed with regard to the Magistrates of Parquet [I was unfamiliar with “Parquet.” I did a search and found that in the structure of French goverment, there is a Judicial Authority (AutoritŽ Judiciaire) whose independence is guaranteed by the President of the Republic, assisted by the Senior Magistrature Council (Conseil SupŽrieur de la Magistrature). The Senior Magistrature Council is presided over by the President of the Republic. It is composed of two branches, the Magistrates of the Bench (Magistrats du Sige), the other is Public Prosecutors (Magistrats du Parquet).], the services of the police and gendarmerie, of the administrations exerting functions of control on certain activities of sectarian associations, as well as as regards dissolution of associations and of payment of a certain number of allowances, in particular the RMI [RMI is a French unemployment benefit -translator].
1. A general instruction of the Minister of Justice to the Magistrates of Parquet asking them to examine the complaints emanating from the victims of sects with more attention and to seize opportunities, each time necessary, to handle cases which come to their attention.
In many cases, it was indicated to the Commission that a public Ministry would have refused to open an instruction or to continue an open information on a file [or take a legal challenge to court] whereas, according to those which gave a report on this inaction, the case would have completely justified it.
It is advisable to specify, in this respect, that, according to the Ministry of Justice, of the 60 complaints relating to cults addressed to the general parquets of the courts of appeal between 1990 and 1995, in 27 proceedings the cases were closed. They relate in particular to cases of swindling, threats under conditions, flights and desecrations of graves, manslaughters, diversions of minors, sequestration of people, non-representation of children, violence, insults, illegal practice of medicine, violence and ways in fact. Of this total, 16 gave place to a classification without continuation, 7 with a withdrawal of case and 3 with a judgment [literally, condemnation].
The Commission does not intend to give an opinion on the operation of Justice in this respect, the more so as it does not have the elements to appreciate in a precise way the situations in question. However, it cannot completely neglect these complaints, of which some appeared above all admittedly relevant to the [Ministry of Justice]. Even going beyond their more or less exact nature, the fact that such an opinion is usually conveyed is in itself very regrettable because it is likely to discourage victims of sects from turning to the courts.
It would be desirable, under these conditions, that the Minister of Justice address a general instruction to the Magistrates of Parquet in order to draw their attention to the extent of the sectarian phenomenon, its forms, its dangers, the need for fighting these more effectively, and the existing legal means for this intention. It would be asked of them to examine with more vigilance the complaints emanating from victims of sects and, if need be, to seize opportunities to handle cases which come to their attention.
2. A general instruction by the Minister of Interior to the police departments and by the Minister of Defense to the services of gendarmerie enjoining them to express more vigilance with respect to the sectarian “drifts.”
So that the actions committed by the cults can give place to proceedings and can be, if necessary, controlled, it is still necessary that these can be noted by the police department and gendarmerie and that the public Ministry seizes these.
This is why it would be appropriate that the Ministers of Defense and of the Interior draw the attention of their services concerned to the sectarian phenomenon, the vigilance which they must show about it, as well as measures which they must take in the event of infringements, in particular being the protection of the victims and the [saisine?] of the public Ministry.
3. To ask the administration to be more rigorous in its missions of supervision and control with regard to sects which present dangers or do not respect the law.
It is not acceptable that public administrations and enterprises can, as has already occurred, sign service or supply agreements with organizations related to dangerous sects or grant authorizations to them. Neither is it tolerable that certain associations can in all impunity transgress the rules of revenue duty, of labor law, or of Social Security.
It is thus necessary that the ministers, each one in his field of competence, ask their services to express more rigour in contracting with external organizations, the granting of authorizations and the missions of control. In this step, the administrations should have recourse to information which could be delivered to them on their request from the interdepartmental observatory whose creation was recommended above.
4. To incite public officials to be more prudent in the granting of subsidies to certain associations.
Certain dangerous cults, it was seen, profited from public subsidies.
Admittedly, that apparently relates to only a number of limited cases. It would be convenient all the same if the public officials examine in a more rigorous way the destination of the subsidies that they grant to associations. And this, if need be, in connection with the interdepartmental observatory on sects.
The Prime Minister could draw the attention of the Government to this point and the Minister of the Interior, to all of the local authorities.
5. To pronounce the dissolution of the organizations blamed when that is essential.
Many cultic associations, it was seen, violate the law and constitute true dangers to individuals and society. One can, consequently, only be astonished by the small number of those which are dissolved. Thus, of about sixty coercive cultic associations declared in Paris, none was the subject of an administrative or legal dissolution.
It would thus be desirable if the existing procedures of dissolution are systematically applied when the conditions envisaged by the law are met. It is particularly the case for the legal procedure.
Admittedly, this would not constitute a radical answer. It is noted, indeed, that the sects prosecuted or threatened with dissolution express an astonishing capacity to auto- dissolve themselves and to reconstitute themselves in the form of another organization. Thus, the Association of the New Age Pioneers was dissolved in January 1981, but its persons in charge find themselves today in the Church of the Unification, the Association for the Unification of World Christianity, and the International Crusade for a One World. In the same way, the persons in charge of the Dianetic Association, dissolved in 1982, continue their activities within the Association for Defense of French Scientologists, and those of Transcendental Meditation Paris East, in the French Federation of Meditation.
The fact remains that systematic and fast dissolutions could have a strong dissuasive effect. One can think that if, in parallel, the persons in charge are continued [or challenged legally], even condemned, the re-creation of these associations will be much more difficult.
It is, in any event, significant that the police departments try to identify associations which are in fact identical to those which would have been dissolved, and to check with detailed attention that they conform to the law.
6. To make sure that the recipients of certain allowances who are members of a sect do not transfer all or a part of the amount of these services to the sect of which they are a part.
According to the information provided to the Commission, it would seem that the members of certain sects, recipients of the minimum income of insertion [in French, “revenu minimum d’insertion” or RMI, a special allowance started in 1988, given to any person looking for a job and without resources], transfer completely or partly the amount of this allowance to the sect of which they form part. Such a practice obviously constitutes a diversion of the object of the RMI. Your Commission is quite conscious of the difficulty for the qualified services of locating the existence of such facts. [NŽanmois?], this type of diverting can only be extremely negligible with regard to the very large majority of the people who profit from this service in accordance with the law. Also, it would be appropriate, when it can be noted that a member of a sect transfers all or part of the RMI which he receives to the sect, to remind the person concerned of his obligations and, if need be, to suspend the payment of the allowance as long as those are not respected.
The same vigilance must be exerted for the attribution of other allowances having a precise assignment, for example scholarships.
7. To increase international cooperation, community [European community?] in particular.
A reinforcement of international cooperation appears essential today.
Indeed, many of the dangerous cults have, as one saw, an international dimension. They could thus all the more easily be dismantled if countries are able to set up a common action.
Moreover, the cults prosecuted in France often decide to transfer their activities abroad. As a group of specialists writes in a confidential report submitted to the Commission: “… the illegal practice of medicine [and] the non-compliance with the elementary rules contained in the French fair labor standards act oblige them to flee towards more favorable skies guaranteeing them a tax exemption or enabling them to escape the payment of their obligatory social security contributions.” And to conclude: “a national approach not allowing this, only a correct comprehension and an effective action, an international coordination is essential.”
This cooperation is, as it will be seen, also necessary to better help the French expatriates who are prey to difficulties with sects.
If this cooperation is not easy to implement on an international scale, it should at least exist within the European Union. However, no particular action seems to exist in this field.
It is advisable to evoke, in this respect, the creation in Paris in 1994 of the European Federation of Information and Research Centers on Sectarianism (FECRIS) whose object is, according to its statutes, “to seek and inform as to the practices and the effects of destructive sectarianism on individuals, families and democratic enterprises; to help the victims; to represent them in these matters to the authorities civilly and morally responsible, to draw their attention and to assist their action.” However, this association is too recent to be able to draw conclusions as to its action. In any case, it is a purely private initiative and not a joint action of the Member States of the European Union.
It would thus be desirable to found an intergovernmental cooperation. This could start at least between the Fifteen initially. It would be based initially on an exchange of information and the development of proposals.
This process could lead then to international agreements on a certain number of key points.
It is besides as Mr. De Puig conceived things in his opinion on sects and new religious movements, written within the framework of the Council of Europe: “One can do much in the field of international cooperation to increase the effectiveness of the control of sects and to obtain information and to divulge it. It would thus be desirable to conclude the international agreements necessary to this effect.”
To be effective, these agreements should concern: the study of the phenomenon and the exchange of free information, in particular, at a data bank; the coordination of devices for control, taking into account the disparity of the legal systems; the search of people continued [or with a legal case pending against them] in justice or by the administration; the search for missing people.
3.- To improve the legal device
If the legal arsenal which makes it possible to fight against the dangers the sects pose to individuals and society appears overall adapted, it could nevertheless be supplemented or modified on some points in order to make the response against the sectarian drifts more effective.
1. To undertake a study on the dissuasive effect of the sanctions incurred by the sects and on the advisability of making these sanctions more harsh.
According to several opinions collected by the Commission, the penalties and allowances for damages which the sects incur would not be sufficiently dissuasive.
Thus, for example, a person who expressed herself before the Commission, who had several lawsuits against sects, said that all told, she calculated that the amount of damage she had undergone directly because of the sects and which was not recouped rose to approximately 120,000 francs [$20,148 US Dollars].
It is difficult to come to a conclusion a priori on the dissuasive effect of the sanctions incurred by the sects and about the advisability of making them harsher.
In spite of work which it undertook, your Commission does not estimate itself able to come to a conclusion about whether the sanctions incurred by sects are sufficiently dissuasive or not, and, less still, on the advisability of making these sanctions more harsh. It is not less inclined to think that the question seriously deserves to be raised.
So, the Commission thinks it would be interesting if the observatory whose creation is recommended would make a thorough study of this question, which would be followed, if necessary, by proposals.
2. To re-examine the mode of slandering
Certain sects are, as one knows, usually slandering. But they cannot always be prosecuted, much less convicted.
Indeed, as the Commission noted, certain sects found a means of circumventing the law concerning the rules relating to the regulation of this infringement. Article 65 of the law of 29 July 1881 on freedom of the press lays out, as one will recall, that “public action and civil action resulting from crimes, offences, and infringments envisaged by the present law, itself prescribing after three months completed counting from from the day when they were committed or from the day of the last act of instruction [legal term?] or of continuation [legal suit] if it has been made.” But, these sects sometimes publish reviews containing defamatory items, for which they satisfy the obligation of registration of legal copyright, but do not distribute them, except possibly to a restricted public; then they wait three months to carry out their diffusion, by which delay they avoid being sued.
It appears desirable to your Commission to cure this state of things.
A first possibility would be to lengthen the above mentioned time from three to six months. However, this solution would present several disadvantages. Initially, it would not solve the problem definitively; the organizations in question would then wait six months before carrying out the diffusion. However, to distribute a review six months after the date of publication which it mentions would undoubtedly constitute an embarrassment. The most serious obstacle is rather the political and practical difficulties which the modification of the law of 1881 on the press on this point would raise at the same time. Would it be convenient, indeed, to touch with a significant legislation, which represents a certain balance, and to which the press is very attached? It does not seem so.
A second solution would consist in providing that the date on which was the slandering was made slandering is defined as that of the first setting in distribution with the public – within the meaning of general public, in opposition to a restricted circle, except if this one has vocation only to be diffused within such a circle – the publication which contains it.
Besides, it is in this sense that jurisprudence seems to evolving. Indeed, it was judged that the achievement of the formalities of registration of copyright does not establish any presumption that publication took place on this date and must be held as only one element of appreciation (Cass. Crim. July 1, 1953, Bull crim. No 228); that, in addition, the starting point of the term of three months’ limitation is not the date related to the cover of the issues of the number of a weekly magazine, but that of its effective publication resulting from its being put on sale, independent of the fictitious date related to the cover for purely commercial purposes (Paris, January 28, 1977, D. 1978.IR80).
Still, however, it remains to specify that this effective distribution is indeed intended for the public. Your Commission is inclined to think that the best solution is undoubtedly to let jurisprudence bring this precision.
3. To reinforce the protection of expert witnesses before the courts
The expert witnesses before the courts undoubtedly today are not sufficiently protected.
Admittedly, article 434.8 of the new penal code provides that “any threat or any act of intimidation made towards a magistrate, one sworn [a witness] or any other person sitting in a jurisdictional formation, an arbitrator, an interpreter, an expert, or lawyer of a party, in order to influence his behavior in the performance of his duties is punished with three years of imprisonment and a fine of 300, 000 francs [$50,370 US Dollars].” In addition, article 222.12 of the same code lays out that violence against, among others, a magistrate, one sworn, a lawyer, a public or ministerial officer, or any other person acting as an agent of public authority or charged with a mission of public service, in the exercise or at the time of the exercise of his function or of his mission, involving a total disablement of work for more than eight days is punishable with three years of imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 francs [$50,370 US Dollars].”
However, it is not obvious, initially, that article 222.12 applies to legal experts. Even if this were the case, this article presents two principal limits: it is necessary that there was violence which involved a disability lasting more than eight days; this violence must occur in the exercise or at the time of the functions. Which means, in the case of serious violence which does not cause this incapacity and of those – whatever their gravity — made when the functions are definitively finished, with the purpose, for example, of revenge, that the expert does not benefit from any particular protection.
Neither does Article 434.8 cover possible retaliatory measures against the expert after the opinion or the lawsuit.
According to information collected by the Commission, the absence of sufficient protection for experts would have at least three detrimental consequences:
– the experts in question simply give up coming to a conclusion about businesses likely to attract this kind of trouble to them;
– they continue to fulfill these functions, but they risk suffering an injury from it, of which it is not certain that they will be able to obtain repair because it is not always easy in this kind of situation to identify the culprit and to prove his culpability;
– finally, one cannot exclude the possibility that they may water down their reports or censor themselves, which would be a serious obstacle to the good course of justice.
Your Commission thus considers it desirable to reinforce the legal protection which benefits the experts in order to, as much as possible, make them safe from any pressure or any retaliatory measures.
One could, with this intention, use as a starting point the the various provisions currently protecting magistrates. They are in particular articles 222 and 223 (contempt of court), 227 (attempt at pressures), 228 (violence and ways in fact), 306 (threats), 310 and 311 (aggravated assault) and 434 (destruction, degradations and damage) of the penal code.
4. To permit associations for defense of victims to go ‘partie civile’ [In searching for the meaning of this legal term, I found the following: “. . . the French system of the ‘partie civile’ with its procedural rights and guarantees for victims . . . The victim can actively pursue his interests during the trial and ask for compensation. I will use the French term rather than translate.].
No provision currently allows associations for defense of victims of sects to go ‘partie civile’ in affairs concerning these people.
Admittedly, these associations sometimes succeeded in going ‘partie civile’ while being based, when the object of the business allowed them, on certain existing provisions. Thus, for example, Article 2.2 of the code of penal procedure states that “any association regularly declared for at least five years [ ] of which the statutory object comprises the fight against the sexual violence [ ] can exert the rights recognized by the [pa?]. It is not thus only in the measure or where the concrete cases authorize associations for defense of victims of sects “to slip” into devices whose principal purpose does not correspond to their specific object that they can go ‘partie civile’. Moreover, two associations let the Commission know that several times it had been refused to them to constitute ‘partie civile’ in affairs concerning victims of sects.
It would however be useful to systematically grant this right to them. And this for three principal reasons:
– these associations could better join the victims and help them in their steps toward justice, in particular those who are most fragile;
– they could compensate them when, for various reasons, in particular the fear that the persons in charge of the sect inspire in them, they do not dare to act themselves;
– they could enrich the information of the magistrates and the legal debates by their interventions.
Granting to these associations the possibility of carrying themselves as ‘partie civile’ in affairs concerning the victims of sects can itself be accomplished maybe by adding a specific provision to the list of associations mentioned in articles 2.1 to 2.1 of the code of penal procedure, or perhaps by envisaging in article 3 of the code of family that the associations in defense of family benefit, as well as the National Union and the Departmental Union of Family Associations, from this right.
5. To envisage the transmission to the prefecture of an annual budget and reports of general meeting of associations whose annual budget is higher than 500,000F [$83,550 US Dollars].
As one saw, certain sects not only exploit their followers financially, but resort to fraudulent means such as, for example, the dissimulation of certain resources, the use of companies or associations as screens, and the continuation of lucrative activities within the framework of declared associations.
It would thus be advisable to subject these sects to obligations of transparency [or openness] in financial matters. But since it would be difficult, for reasons already mentioned, to single out sects for this action, these obligations should be imposed on all associations starting from a certain level of budget.
It appears reasonable to your Commission to provide that all associations whose annual budget is equal to or higher than 500,000 francs [$83,550 US Dollars] will have to transmit each year to the prefecture of their department a copy of this budget as well as the minutes of their general meeting. The choice of a threshold of 500,000 francs apparently constitutes a good balance between the concern for financial transparency and a wish not to overwhelm the prefectures. This measure would, in fact, relate to only approximately 16,900 associations of a total estimated at 187,600, that is to say 9% of them.
The tax services could then exert a control on these documents of their own initiative or at the request of the prefect.
6. To create a High Council of Religions made up of representatives of the religious, scientific, and administrative authorities, charged to decide on requests relating to recognition as a cultuelle association, even those concerning obtaining the statute of congregation.
Several organizations commonly considered today as cults demand the right to benefit from the statute of cultuelle association envisaged by the law of December 9, 1905.
The question now arises of knowing if the existing legal device is satisfactory to face this type of request.
It is well understood that it would be dangerous to recognize with this statute pseudo-religious movements, movements which are presented in the form of a religion only to better lure people, but which, actually, pursue other goals such as making themselves richer, power, or an unspecified personal interest. The commission had been alerted on this point several times. Thus, one of the specialists whom it heard, moreover one of the most [mesurŽs? measured?], declared: “On what do the sects proliferate? On silence, on their dissimulated [hidden, pretended] side; by the language, which is that of religious language. It is necessary to start by refusing them what they demand, namely a religious statute, which would be the trap of the traps. The alleged argument would be a better control. But for the little bit of control that that would allow and that one can obtain by other means! [Rendez-vous? Appointment? Meeting? or literally Return-you? perhaps meaning Remember?] counts as prestige, which would be offered to them if a denominational statute were granted to them. That would be a true catastrophe.”
On the other hand, nothing is more normal than that the authentic religious movements which wish tobe recognized as cultuelle associations and are ready to conform to their system can benefit from it.
It is thus appropriate that the Office of Religion [or Worships] of the Ministry for the Interior can, at the request of the interested organization and after examining its file, deliver this statute directly. Actually, the quality of cultuelle association is not, in effect, recognized that indirectly today by the Office of Religion of the Ministry of Interior or the prefecture at the time of a request aimed to make an association benefit from liberalities envisaged in article 19 subparagraph 4 of law of 9 December 1905, or articles 200 and 238 (a) of the general tax code, which allows their benefactors to claim income tax deductions. It would seem definitely preferable to your Commission that the recognition of this quality be made the object of a specific procedure, on the request of the interested organizations. It is, of course, to the Office of Religion that the care to grant the statute of cultuelle association should fall . But, taking into account the difficulty that there is often today to appraise the cultuelle [religous, worshipful] nature of an association, in particular when this one works towards multiple ends, your Commission estimates that it would be necessary that the Office of Religion decides with the advice of a council of persons qualified to judge.
It thus proposes to create a High Council of Religion, which would be composed of about thirty people named by the Prime Minister. One third of the council would be representatives from various recognized religions, one third would be persons attesting to an undeniable competence in the field of religions, and one third would be representatives from the various interested administrations (Office of Religion and Office of Public Freedoms of the Ministry for the Interior, Central Direction of General Information, Direction of Social Action, Ministry for National Education, etc…). Its opinion would be essential to the Office of Religion.
It would be advisable, consequently, to slightly amend the law of December 9, 1905 by indicating that the quality of cultuelle association is recognized by the Ministry for the Interior on assent of the High Council of Religion according to methods defined above.
Since the same problem can pose itself for requests relative to obtaining of statute of congregation, it is proposed, in order to ensure a parallelism of procedure, that the legal recognition of this statute be granted, not by decree on assent of the Council of State, as it is today envisaged by article 13 of law of 1st July 1901 relative to contract of association, but by decree on assent from the High Council of Religion.
5.- To help the former followers
Certainly it is important to prevent the dangers which the sects pose and to combat them better. But it is also necessary to help the former followers, some of which have lived, sometimes for several years, almost completely cut off from society, be this isolation physical or only mental. Also, after their exiting the sect, they generally encounter great difficulties reintegrating into society. At the same time, they are generally unaware of whom to ask for help with this undertaking. Your Commission thinks that it would thus be necessary that they can have a privileged interlocutor within the administration. In addition, detailed attention must be paid to the situation of former followers abroad.
1. To institute in each department a person in charge of assistance to former followers.
So that people who have just left a sect can easily get information about public services, information that they generally do not know, your Commission proposes that a person in charge of assistance to former followers be named in each department, either by the Prefect, or by the President of the General Council – the choice of the authority of nomination does not fundamentally change the answer brought to the problem. It is appropriate that this person, that this function would not necessarily be full-time, would have a good knowledge of the sectarian phenomenon and of public administration. It [the position] would have as its mission the study of the evolution of the sectarian movements in its department as well as the problems arising for the victims, of accomodating those and of directing them towards the administrative services and associations likely to solve their difficulties. It would give an account of its studies and its activities to its authority of nomination as well as to the observatory of the sects whose creation is proposed in addition. It could turn besides to this organization to obtain information, even consultations.
2. To more effectively help the expatriate followers who wish it.
According to various sources, the number of French belonging to a sect and living abroad is rather significant, without having the means to quantify it with even approximate precision. But, it is an established fact that several sects have an international dimension and do not hesitate, as, for example, Moon or the Church of Scientology, to send abroad followers recruited in France. Moreover, one cannot forget that certain organizations prosecuted by justice or the administration left the national territory.
However, these people are often in a situation even more precarious than that of the the followers residing in French territory, being in an unfamiliar environment and isolated from their family and their old friends.
The diplomatic and consular services today give substantial help today to find missing people and to repatriate them.
The Management of French Abroad of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs tries each year to answer several hundreds of requests for information from families about missing people. However, the diplomatic and consular services often rely heavily on the goodwill and the effectiveness of the local authorities to obtain an answer. Moreover, even when the missing person can be found, if this one does not wish that his address be revealed, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is obliged to conform to this wish pursuant to the principle of respect for private life. Moreover, half of the people found express this wish.
In addition, the ministry has a line of credit of about 5 million francs [$841,500 US Dollars] to ensure medical and emergency repatriations for poor people. The ministry requires families to finance other forms of repatriation.
Two measures would be likely to improve the action of the public authorities in this field.
First, it would be appropriate, within the framework of reinforcement of international cooperation mentioned above, that France obtains from a number of countries, as significant as possible, the guarantee of sustained collaboration for these kinds of problems. Admittedly, no country would find it beneficial to see an illegal and dangerous organization developing in its territory .
Secondly, our diplomatic and consular services could, within this framework, increase their contacts and connections with local authorities likely to help them in the search for missing people.
CONCLUSION
Difficult to define, not very easy to measure, impossible to grasp as a whole, the cult phenomenon does not constitute an any less tangible reality in the contemporary world: the expression of multiple spiritual movements distinct from the traditional religions and characterized by specific beliefs and practices.
In fact, it is closely related to the major problems which arise for current societies, in that it causes the decline of traditional religions, the mutation of family structures, questioning of moral values, the place of policy [or politics], and the economic and social crisis. It is even, in a certain way, the reflection.
If its diversity and its complexity prevent rendering a precise account of its quantitative and qualitative evolution, the research carried out shows that it developed during the last decade in France and abroad. And this, as well as in number of organizations, of followers, and of sympathizers. At the same time, it presents more varied forms, it implements more sophisticated techniques, and has increased financial means.
The followers, growing in numbers, often engage completely, until they lose part of their identity. And it is there that the risk of deviation becomes serious, when engagement and the resulting absolute confidence are not being looked after [or treated, tended], to cut the ties with family, to give all the money one has. The intervention of the public authorities is essential when engagement leads to a psychological dependence which the leaders exploit to their own profit.
The judicial decisions rendered during recent years show well that a number of them are guilty of offences, ranging from deception or fraud to ill treatments, to aggravated assault and sequestration. In addition, information provided to the Commission and testimony that it received leave no doubt about the fact that the businesses exposed by justice give only a partial account of the dangers which the sects pose, which are in fact at the same time more numerous, wider and more serious.
The State cannot, obviously, allow to develop in its womb [the word “sein” which I translated “womb” can also refer to “breast,” so this phrase is similar to the English “nursing a viper at one’s breast.”] that which, with much consideration, is part of a veritable scourge. To remain passive would be, indeed, not only irresponsible with regard to the people affected or likely to be affected, but dangerous for the democratic principles on which our Republic is founded.
Your Commission thus considers it essential to react. That being, it appeared that the best way of counteracting the development of dangerous sects is surely not most spectacular, in the form of anti-sect legislation that the extent of our legal arsenal does not make necessary and which would likely be be used one day in a spirit of restriction of freedom of thought. The essential thing, accordingly, is to fully make good use of the existing provisions, their systematic and rigorous application having made it possible to effectively fight against the sectarian drifts. For that purpose, it is initially necessary to better know – it that would permit the creation of an ad hoc observatory – and, especially, to better make known the phenomenon and the dangers that it can [recŽler?]. In addition, it is necessary to become attached to it [becoming attached to this cause as one would become attached to a person in an affectionate way] so that the institutions charged to apply the law in this field are sensitized there. Moreover, certain adjustments to the existing legislation appear desirable for better taking account of the evolution of sectarian associations. Lastly, it is significant that the former followers can be helped to reintegrate themselves into society. All measures which, according to your Commission, should be taken as soon as possible. In France we do not feel threatened by a tragedy of the Waco type, even an attack like that perpetrated by the Aoum sect in the subway of Tokyo last spring. But the germs of such dramas exist in our territory, and prevention is essential.
That known as, it is necessary to be lucid: the measures suggested here will probably not be enough alone to make these dangers disappear . Reflection of the difficulties of the current world, symptom of a profound social malaise, image of a moral crisis as much as a civic one, the sectarian phenomenon also calls for, indeed, a global response to the whole of the major problems of the contemporary epoch.
*
* *
The Commission examined this report during its meeting of December 20, 1995 and adopted it unanimously.
It then decided that it would be given to Mr. President of the National Assembly in order to be printed and distributed, in accordance with the provisions of article 143 of the Regulations of the National Assembly.
Cultic Studies – Legal issues
B.- OFTEN DANGEROUS PRACTICES
The dangers which the sects present, otherwise called sectarian “drifts,” deserve our utmost attention. Indeed, it is these dangers which justify the detailed attention that must carry them to the pubic capacities and, we point out, the creation of our board of inquiry.
It is thus advisable to analyze them in detail.
But before we proceed, it is necessary to clear up a possible misunderstanding: not all spiritual movements other than the traditional religions, movements which are commonly called sects, are dangerous, such as, for example, Baptists, Quakers, and Mormons. Their role can, sometimes, even be regarded as very positive: “You meet the best and the worst in sects (…). Sometimes, by means of the sects, some people find a sense of belonging to a warm friendly group, others find again a direction for their lives, others still are structured. Among my patients, some entered sects. I would not want for them to come out of there for anything in the world, because the sect is used by them temporarily as a tutor.”
Thus the commission carefully guarded against making an amalgam between all the existing spiritual groups. It considered that it was to be confined to examine the harmful effects caused by only the dangerous sects. And this, for better trying to release the means of combatting them.
These negative effects were denounced many times, both by the press or by the public authorities themselves. The report of Alain Vivien of 1983, the opinion of the advisory national Commission of Human Rights of December 10, 1993 and the answers of the Government to parliamentary questions testify some, such as, on the international scene, the reports of Mr. Richard Cottrell, the European Parliament, in 1984, or of Sir John Hunt of the Council of Europe, in 1991. Moreover, the Commission noted, during its work, that nobody contradicted the existence of it.
To analyze the danger that run in a certain number of sects, the Commission itself is based mainly on two sources of information, which guarantee greater objectivity, namely judicial court orders and data collected by General Information. It also used, to a lesser extent and with required prudence, direct testimony of former followers.
The followed step reveals that if the court orders testify to many illegalities made by the sects or some their members, they only give a very incomplete account of their multiple dangers.
1.- Many and varied illegalities
From all of the court decisions to which the Commission had access, in particular those provided by the Management of Criminal Affairs and the graces of the Ministry for Justice, it arises that many sects are, during the ten last years, guilty of illegalities. These concern six principal fields:
( It acts, initially, of offences relating to physical attacks on the human person: ill treatments, aggravated assault, sequestration, not assistancing someone in danger, and illegal practice of medicine.
Thus, the County Court of Versailles established, in a decision of February the 8, and 9, 1995 (No 234) that Mr. and Mrs. Mihaes, the leaders of the sect “the Citadel.” made themselves guilty, inter alia, of violence on a fifteen year old minor, removal and sequestration. The report of the facts by the court is eloquent:
[This quotation includes legal language which I’m not sure how to translate. I want to be especially careful not to tamper with legal language, so I have used literal translations, even though it may not be a “smooth” translation in English. – translator]
“Waited that Mr. Solomon, who had belonged to this group {Citadel] as from 1974, had left it in 1990, joined a few times later with his wife, whereas their two major children Karen and Pascal as their minor daughter Dana Solomon had remained in the movement;
“That Mr. Solomon and his wife had managed to take again with difficulties their daughter Dana on August 25, 1991, who was then at the ch‰teau of Courcillon (72), in custody of the Mihaes couple;
“That Dana Solomon was to explain that in this community the children were usually separated from their parents and that they underwent various ill treatments which were inflicted upon them, in particular by Mrs. Mihaes, Mrs. Esther Antoine and Mr. Axel Schmidt;
“That she had herself on several occasions been struck, sequestered, forced to fast, and had usually been deprived of sufficient food;
“Await that it be established that, under cover of application of Biblical precepts, the child had been constrained with fasting, with public confession, had been subject to some punishment which, in addition to the blow, can itself exert that Dana Soloman had been in insulation [insulated in the sense of being separated from the outside] as well as having been a victim, retained against her will in the house of the property guard of VŽsinet, without heating during the winter months and given only one extremely frugal meal, but which can also itself exert that Claire Solomon was a victim in the form of a displacement of residence, “in punishment,” in the residence of the Bahjejian couple and separated from her brothers and sister.
“Awaited that with regard to more precisely the defendants, it is established that Mrs. Delia Mihaes, who always disputed the charges carried against her, made the facts which are reproached to her in the case, by delivering, very often, with acts of violence with regard to the StŽphane children, Jonathan, CŽline and Claire Antoine, Dana Solomon as well as with regard to her twin sons Octavius and Flavius;
“That it seriously compromised the health and the education of these children in their being made to undergo the deprivations and the [brimades?] previously exposed;
“That it is in addition established that she was made an accomplice to the sequestration exerted on the person of Dana Solomon (..
The County Court of Dijon, in addition, was brought, in a judgement of January 9, 1987 (No 118-87), to condemn the director-assistant of the Narconon center of Grangey- on-Ource for nonassistance to someone in danger. This center, created by the Church of Scientology, proposes detoxification by applying the methods of Ron Hubbard, namely the procedure of “purification,” based mainly on several hours of sauna per day, “auditions,” and a significant absorption of vitamins. In this case, the victim had been in long-term treatment for epilepsy and had addressed this organization because she wished “to be released from drugs.” The center A, without preliminary medical examination, placed her in a “weaning” room. However, the medical experts showed that her death was due to “an epileptic seizure due to the absence of sufficient treatment at its beginning and of emergency treatment during the seizure.” The judgement does not leave any doubt about the responsibility of the center:
“That if Jocelyne Dorfmann had made the decision to reduce her consumption of medication, then to stop it with the risk of compromising her health, the defendants had not at any time prevented it of the need for a medical examination of admission, which would have probably made it possible to contra-indicate the cure of weaning; that it is inconceivable that the victim could be accepted without this examination and serious treatment in spite of her declarations as to her health and her epilepsy, whereas the defendants admitted knowing that in the event of serious illness, medical treatment was not to suffer from interruption;
“That if at the time the first crisis occurred, the defendants could mistake its exact nature, the repetition of the crises and their increasing intensity were to evoke to them an origin distinct from a state of lack which, according to medical experts, cannot be confused with an epileptic state;
“That they did not consider it useful to directly ask the victim, while she was still conscious, if these demonstrations could correspond to the epileptic fits to which she had referred or to call upon the nearest doctor (…)”
Several cases of the illegal exercise of medicine, moreover, were observed these last years. One will evoke, for example, the rather significant case of Mr. Main, head of a religious community called “The Good Pasteur[? Pastor?],” who, claiming the title of bishop (he had been ordained as such by ecclesiastics who no longer obeyed Rome after the Council of Vatican II), claimed to cure or relieve his “faithful” by words, prayers, laying on of hands, the use of a pendulum, and practices of exorcism and dŽsenvožtement[?]. The conclusions of the County Court of PŽrigueux, in its decision of June 22, 1994 (No 894), are made without comments: Mr. Main was recognized guilty of illegal exercise of medicine by the County Court of PŽrigueux in a judgement of June 22, 1994.
Many judgments were also pronounced in regard to the violation of certain family obligations, in particular of parents, followers of sects, with regard to their children.
Thus, for example, the Court of Appeal of Rennes had it, in a decision of 13 February 1993 (Epoux Durand), judged that Mr. and Mrs. Durand, member of the Sahaja Yoga sect, have “seriously compromised by lack of necessary direction the health and security of the child Yoann” and tomb have, so under the blow of article 357.1 of the penal code, by sending the six and a half year old child to India in a school of Dharamsala directed by the followers of this sect. The reasons for the decision deserve to be quoted:
” (…) considering (…) that on the faith of a simple prospectus given at a simple general orientation (…), Domenica and Josette Durand (…) in April 1990 made the decision to send (…) their child Yoann, without accompanying the child on the voyage, to a school of which the content of teaching, in English and Hindi, was not really known to them (…), that they did not offer to the child some guarantee on the exit of this teaching, on conditions and life awaiting the child, of which the file reveals that they were notably in a very hard climatic plan (…) without assuring themselves before the child’s departure of whether a medical infrastructure and sanitary arrangements await the child, without even informing themselves as to the nearest doctors specializing in the risks that the child would incur in an area of the world in which serious epidemic diseases essentially unknown in Europe strike, without measuring the risk for a child six and and a half years old of a feeling of abandonment, even of rejection whereas the child knew the birth close relation of another child in the hearth and that this other child maintained particularly privileged relations with its maternal grandparent, the spouse HŽline;
” (…) that the report drawn up by three experts who examined the child on July 5, 1991 noted significant psychic degradations related to brutal and prolonged separation described exactly by the court, while later examinations revealed a clear improvement in a child returned within his family framework and continuing a normal schooling;”
Sometimes, the facts are not also obviously reprehensible. The judge then abstains from condemning the parents/followers directly, but refuses to them the exercise of parental authority or custody. It is in this direction, for example, that ruled the County Court of Avignon on May 25, 1992 (decision No 673/92):
“It certainly does not rest with the Court to come to a conclusion about the benefits or misdeeds of the sect (…) of Jehovah’s Witnesses but only, according to “the interest of the minors,” (…) to indicate the relative with whom the children have their usual residence and to rule on the exercise of the parental authority.
“After having enumerated part of the impressive list of the interdicts that the followers of this sect – to which Madam does not dispute to have adhered – must respect, Mrs Audoyer notices rightly in the report of social investigation which it deposited that they are likely to block a future for children such as Debora and Flora.
“The education of the children should not indeed consist of one endoctrination based on a particularly cataclysmic vision of the world in which only followers of the sect would be preserved, but on the contrary in an awakening of the spirit, an opening to all the fields of knowledge and all the disciplines, as well as with the relations with others without discrimination of race, religion or ideas.
“In the current state, in order to preserve the present as well as the future of these two children (…), it appears necessary to fix their usual residence with their father who will exert the parental authority (…) ”
The sects are, moreover, made guilty many times of slandering, libellous denunciation and violation of the deprived life in the course of recent years.
The Particular Case of the Church of Scientology.
Thus, the County Court of Paris has it, in a judgement of 13 October 1993 (Mr. Abgrall C / Mrs. Lefvre), condemned for slandering Mrs. Lefvre, director of the publication “Ethics and Freedom,” one of the reviews of the Church of Scientology.
Indeed, a article in this publication, titled “A Militia of Thought” and dedicated to the Association of Family and Individual Defense [AFDI], made statements concerning the removal and sequestration by members of this association, and in particular of an internment in a psychiatric hospital in 1991 of a Scientologue from Marseilles, carried out with the complicity of J.M. Abgrall, psychiatrist, whereas these allegations have by no means been proved.
In the same way, the Court of Appeal of Douai has, in its decision of 18 March 1982 (No 302), recognized the Hubbard Center of Dianetics guilty of “public slandering, comparable with an insult,” to have written the following in reference to the ADFI:
“… It appears vital to me for the freedom of religion and the freedom of thought to denounce and stop the intrigues of this fascist group which draws on all that moves which is new or different…”
One can also evoke the case of a libellous denunciation confirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeal in a [arrt stop?] of April 28, 1987 (A.J.), similar to that of a violation of deprived life by the association “Ethics and Freedom,” in a decision returned last 15 March by the County Court of Paris (No 9)
Several jurisdictional decisions also testify to a rather frequent practice of tax evasion by certain associations.
The Supreme Court of Appeal, for example, confirmed in a stop of June 25, 1990 (Blanchard Henri and others) the stop of the Court of Appeal of Paris of January 26, 1988, condemning the President of the Association for the Unification of World Christianity (AUCM), which is the French branch of the Moon sect, for tax evasion. This stop shows in particular that this organization has, under cover of an association with religious goals, carried out significant undeclared benefits:
” (…) Wait that Henri Blanchard has been returned in front of the correctional court for having fraudulently withdrawn the AUCM, of which he is the president, to the establishment and to the payment of corporation tax, and to have knowingly omitted to pass or to make pass in the in the documents holding place of day book [I assume this the French term for an accounting journal, probably what is called a “general ledger” in English] and book of inventory whole or part of writing;
“Wait until (…) the judge stated that the AUCM has only the appearance of an association and that it exerts, by the setting on sale of a newspaper, an activity from which it gets some benefit of which a significant part, not carried in receipt, has been used, via figureheads, for some movable acquisitions or immovable acquisitions [“immovable” is similar to the English “real estate”] occult [this word does not make sense to me in this context, but it is there], of which, for some, the assignment cannot be specified; (…).”
Also convicted of tax evasion, among others, were the International Association for Krishna Consciousness (AICK) (cf in particular the stop of October 19, 1989 of the Court of Appeal of Bourges, No 461/89) and the Church of Scientology (cf in particular the stop of February 3, 1995 of the Court of Appeal of Paris, No 7). There too, these organizations had carried out substantial commercial profits by means of associations which were supposedly not involved with this goal.
In addition, the stop of February 3, 1995 of the Court of Appeals of Paris established that the Church of Scientology presented a liability of about 41 million francs [6,842,900 US Dollars] and put in legal rectification. Moreover, the Commercial Court of Paris pronounced, November 30, 1995, the setting in bankruptcy of the Church of Scientology of Paris, for the unpaid amounts with the tax authorities and the URSSAF of an amount of 48 million francs [8,011,200 US Dollars].
One also notes several cases of swindle, fraud, and breach of trust.
The County Court of Draguignan has thus, in a decision of 20 March 1995 (No 882/95), condemned two people (Mr. Galiano and Mrs. Pison) for swindle, being respectively presented in the form of reincarnation of Christ and the Virgin. And this, for the following reasons:
“As a result thus of all of these element put to examination, by some setting in scene in some public meeting places, have persuaded credulous people of the existence of a supernatural capacity which will allow them to hope for a good live or a cure, very in use the alibi of science, namely the profession of psychoanalist for one and of dentist for the other. While trying to be made give or by perceiving sums, they made the offence of swindle.”
The Supreme Court of Appeal of Cassation[?] has, in addition, judged, in a stop of 15 November 1995 (A. Pouteau), that the Wide limited liability company, of which Alain Pouteau was the manager and of which investigation showed that it was “under the obedience of the Church of Scientology,” “exploited a center of formation with trade of sale and spread some advertisements in the press and circulars about the maires[majors?mayors] in which the center engaged itself to procure candidates, at the end of their formation, a place with a serious company,” was made guilty of fraud, because it “was not able to guarantee employment for its trainees.”
The famous affair of the sect of FrŽchou illustrates, in addition, perfectly the case of breach of trust made by the leaders of sects to the detriment of their followers. In fact, they were prevailed unduly of the title of priest, which had enabled them to extort a significant amount of gifts from their faithful followers (cf in particular the stop of May 10, 1991 of the Court of Appeal of Agen, No 215/91).
Lastly, jurisprudence gives a report of multiple violations of the labor law or that of social security.
“The denunciation of merciless exploitation of follower by the leaders, contempt for social laws, duration of work, lack of remuneration, nor of Social Security (…) find their confirmation in the fact that Ecoovie does not pour with the debate without employment contract, without payroll salary, without declaration of Social Security or with tax department concerning the follower that it employs, itself limiting to plead that those be voluntary.” It is thus, for example, which the County Court of Paris described, in its stop of July 10, 1985 (No 263), the way in which the Ecoovie sect conceived the application of the rules of the labor and social security laws.
Many judgments were thus marked on very diverse points against the sects during recent years, on the basis of undeniable material fact.
However, the Commission was brought to note that this approach only incompletely accounts for the dangers of certain sectarian movements.
2.- A harmfulness which largely exceeds the field of illegalities noted by the courts
Obviously not all of the reprehensible acts performed by sects are the subject of a judgment. Far from it. Such a judgment requires, indeed, the meeting of several conditions which it is often difficult to obtain:
– it is necessary, first of all, that the person having suffered an injury is conscious of it. However, for the followers, the rule which is imposed upon them by their guru is inevitably good. It is necessary thus that the follower gets sufficient distance with respect to the sect, generally while about having left it, to reach this awakening;
it is appropriate then that the interested party decides to file a complaint. However, this step is far from being systematic: many prefer “definitively to turn the page” on a traumatic period of their history; others readily entrust to associations of defense but do not dare to institute proceedings for lack of confidence or fear of reprisals;
– the proof of the offense as well as the responsibility for its instigation is, of the opinion of the majority of the people heard by the Commission, difficult to bring, this would be because of “the originality” of the sectarian offences, where the victims are sometimes, by their momentary assent, proper actors;
– it is also necessary that the facts correspond to an incrimination envisaged and sanctioned by the law, which is not obvious in the cases of mental manipulation for example;
– remains finally, if a judgment intervened, to make it apply, which encounters great difficulties sometimes, because of the multiplicity of the means that certain movements can deploy: dilatory procedures, pressures of all kinds, auto-dissolution or, quite simply, escape abroad.
The information provided to the Commission by General Information as well as testimony which it received led it to think that the dangers which certain sectarian movements present to individuals and society are, actually, at the same time more numerous, more widespread and more grave than only a reading of court orders would suggest.
The enumeration below gathers, in ten categories, the dangers which the sectarian phenomenon presents for individuals on the one hand, for society on the other hand, such as the Commission could apprehend them through the whole of its work.
a) The dangers to the individual
Mental destabilization is the first of them.
One understands this expression to mean, to destabilize someone in order to subject him to one’s influence by persuasion, manipulation, and all other material means.
According to General Information, the 172 coercive sectarian movements that they listed would resort to practices being able to be thus qualified.
The mental destabilization can take very diverse forms, and, in particular, very insidious forms, as the personality test and “auditions” proposed by the Church of Scientology illustrate. Here is how a former follower of this association described to the Commission the experience of the test:
” This test, which is comprised of approximately 200 questions about traits with money, the family, with work, etc, has, in my view, a true psychological base but then gives way to an analysis – on the computer, today, which gives it a serious aspect which is very imposing – which tends to emphasize defects more than anything – which is altogether simple –.
” Defects are thus amplified while good qualities are rather underestimated, which makes it possible to decide that there are things to do and that the Dianetic Center has proposed those things to you.
” (…) And from there, people are tempted to go further. ” .
Consequently, the process of mental destabilization is already started. It reaches an additional stage when the interested party indeed goes “further” and agrees to devote himself to Dianetic “auditions”:
” I did five or six hours of audition. In these auditions known as Dianetics (…), one makes you close your eyes – a little like a psychiatrist – and one revives to you the difficult moments. Personally, I spoke about my first love as a teenager – I did the same thing as one would do in front of a psychiatrist –, which involved an emotional increase at home which disturbed me a little.
” There, the evil was indeed done because I wanted to go further (…). ” .
The interested party “indeed went further,” which led him to a state of alienation and extreme dependence.
This practice, one sees, is very insidious, because it is void of a scientific base and is exerted with the agreement of the victim, in a progressive way and within a perfectly legal framework.
Certain processes are, on the other hand, definitely more brutal. It acts, for example, to weaken the individual by imposing a very rigorous discipline on him, or to reduce his critical spirit by demanding repetitive acts or prayers in order to obtain his complete obedience. The testimony collected regarding a typical day for a follower of the International Association of Krishna Consciousness, with, in particular, its eleven working hours and its six hours of devotion per day, attest to this.
These processes can sometimes even lead the followers to an advanced state of pathological weakness.
One also notes, although more rarely, the recourse to sophrologic[?inducing mental sleepiness?] techniques, going as far as deep hypnosis or prescribing drugs, permitting a sect to attain, to use again the expression of Colonel Morin, a true “psychic rape” of the follower.
These forms of mental destabilization can have serious consequences on the psyche of those to which they were applied, such as depression, [envožtement?], schizophrenic behavior or a deep state of dependence.
Certain sects, moreover, have exorbitant financial requirements.with regard to their followers.
According to General Information, this would today be the case for 76 sects.
It is in particular thus for the Church of Scientology. This one would, indeed, charge more than 70,000 francs [$11,725 US Dollars] for certain courses. Several testimonies collected by the Commission show that this would have led many followers to a serious debt position.
One can also quote Association for the Unification of World Christianity which would have required between 7,000 [$1,173 US Dollars] and 14,000 francs [$2345 US Dollars] of each of the 72,000 people married collectively by the Reverend Moon of Seoul last August.
Financial exploitation would also be the case with, in particular, the Alliance of the Rose Cross, the New Acropolis, the Knights of the Gold Lotus, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, the Grand Logis, and the French Ra‘lien Movement.
The rupture of the follower with his environment of origin is frequently noted. This is obvious with sects which practice the community life, but those are not most numerous. It is more insidious but quite as real within the framework of sects whose followers continue, seemingly, to carry out a normal family and social life, but whose engagement gradually leads them to cease any true relation between the external world and the movement of which they are members. And it is precisely that goal that the leaders of sects want to attain, in giving the follower incentive to devote his time as much as possible to the sect, with its rites and its beliefs: to put an end to any contact with the people who would be likely to insinuate doubt into the spirit of the follower, to awake his critical direction and, finally, to divert him from the sect.
According to information collected by your commission, 57 spiritual movements would present this danger, in particular the Universal Alliance, the Church of Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, IVI, the Family, and the Humanistic Movement.
One will limit oneself, to illustrate this, to point out testimony communicated by an ex-follower of Jehovah’s Witnesses:
” (…) If I decide today to write, it is to break the twenty years of silence maintained with lasting mental anguish because of a sect, which is (…) the sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I lived the hell.
“People live in an autarchy, do not take part of anything in the economic, cultural or other life of a country. They are a danger because quite simply they destroy you; you draw aside from your family, your friends, from society even. You are isolated from all, there is one common indoctrination for all the disciples and [gare? parks? congregations?] if you try to be yourself. It is prohibited.”
The practices of certain sects undermine the physical integrity of the followers. According to information obtained by your commission, 82 sects would pose such a danger to their members.
It can be a question of ill treatment, aggravated assault, sequestrations, non-assistance to someone in danger, or illegal practice of medicine, but also of sexual aggression.
Several complaints were thus filed against the guru of Mandarom, Gilbert Bourdin, for rapes, attempts at rapes and sexual aggression. The interested party besides was put in examination and was placed under legal control last June.
It is well-known that within the sect the Children of God (today dissolved) prostitution and incest were usually practised. Here is, for example, how the daughter of David Berg, the founder of the movement, describes her father’s attitude toward her in “Shukan Bushun” of July 30, 1992:
” My father pressed me for the first time to have a sexual relation with him, when I was eight years old, in Texas. I resisted, nevertheless, I was violated. This was so abrupt that I was completely upset by it and unable to speak about it with anyone.
” (…) Unfortunately, when my father was seized by sexual desire, it could not be controlled, even if the object of his desire was his own daughter.
” (…) One day, my father gathered the members of the royal family together and announced: “Incest is a good thing. Thus Adam and Eve had many descendants ” (…)”
Another follower shares information regarding the practice of “flirty fishing” consisting of prostituting children “with the given intention of gaining more followers and to acquire support.”
Auto-dissolved in 1978, this sect would have been recreated under another name (“the Family”), under which indeed today exists a sectarian association.
Each one finally keeps in memory the large scale dramas among which were the collective suicides of Guyana in 1979, which made 923 victims, or of Waco in 1993, which killed 88 people.
Lastly, embrigadement [bringing into the troops, enlisting] of the children would be the fact of 28 movements.
In addition to “the Citadel” of which the actions have already been evoked, come sects practice embrigadement of children in a more or less insidious form, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Association for the Unification of World Christianity, the Community of ThŽba•de, the Church of Scientology of Paris, the Kristique Church of New Jerusalem, the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness, the Family, and the Grand Logis.
Beyond these negative effects on selected individuals, the sects can also appear particularly harmful to the community as a whole.
B) Dangers to the community
To begin with, certain sects have a clearly antisocial message.
This is not astonishing besides: the movements which recommend practices contrary to the law and common morals must justify them well; they thus explain often to their followers why these laws and these morals are bad and that only the principles of the sect deserve to be followed.
46 organizations have an antisocial message according to General Information, among which are the Knights of the Gold Lotus, the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness, the Family, the Suicide of Banks [as in river banks], the Ra‘lien Movement, and the Order of Immaculate Heart of Marie and of Saint Louis of Montfort.
Several organizations provoke, in addition, disturbances to the law and order.
According to indications provided to your commission by the Ministry for the Interior, this would be the case of 26 sects, among whom are Jehovah’s Witnesses, the New Acropolis, the Church of Scientology, the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness, the Suicide of Banks, and the French Ra‘lien Movement.
Testimony collected concerning the New Acropolis, comparing the sect to a neofascist movement, is rather eloquent. Here is an extract:
” (..) But, unfortunately, with the New Acropolis, as the years pass, the ideas [trŽpassent?]. that is to say that re- enter a school of philosophy with an honest facade, you find yourself very quickly in a sect with political aims, with extreme right wing character and of neofascist type, and if you don’t react quickly, you risk finding yourself in a paramilitary style uniform (blue-marine for women, black for men, and chestnut for officers), the arm-band on your arm, the standard in hand, singing war songs in military rhythm, then lowering your head, knee to the ground, saluting the arms surveying a raptor on a sun!!!
” (…) It is moreover one of the declared enemies of democracy, good only for cowards and the weak, so say the leaders of the New Acropolis. Moreover, they are hostile to any form of opposition, and are likely to become very dangerous. For them, the end justifies the means (…) ” .
Certain sects are usually in legal contentions, as the affairs mentioned above testify.
However, it is advisable to specify that the difficult reports with justice that certain sects maintain can take two faces: the proceedings of which they are the object because of the punishable or prejudicial character of their acts; the actions which they bring themselves with regard to the people who have, according to them, tarnished their image.
L’Eglise de Scientologie est, par exemple, très coutumière du fait. En général, les tribunaux déboutent les mouvements. In this respect, the Commission had the occasion to note that the majority of the people heard who publicly expressed themselves regarding the negative effects of certain sectarian movements were sued by those [sects] for slandering. The Church of Scientology is, for example, very much accustomed to doing this. In general, the courts dismiss the actions.
One also notes many cases of economic disruption, such practices being the fact of 51 organizations, according to General Information’s analyses.
This is the case for the Association for Research on the Holistic Development of Man, Association New Acropolis France, Athanor, the Resource Center for Information and Contact for the Prevention of Cancer, the Key to the Universe, the Church of Scientology, the French Ra‘lien Movement, and Soka Gakkai International France.
One saw, in fact, how certain sects could have recourse to clandestine work or various forms of fraud or swindling.
In addition, several people evoked before the Commission the infiltrations or attempts at infiltration which the sects would have attempted with the center of public authorities. In the same direction, certain journalists have endeavoured for a few years to show the influence which certain sects could exert – with the first head of the Church of Scientology – in the apparatus of State.
As for your commission, it does not consider itself authorized to make statements in this report of allegations brought to its attention during its work but of which it did not have any means of checking the cogency. Some considered this naive and to judge it moved vis-a-vis with the subtle enterprises of groups which can very skilfully implement the means enabling them to arrive at their ends. It of it is not nothing. Simply, the Commission judges its duty to be careful and to refuse to bring back allegations whose consequences could be of a certain gravity, without being able to bring the least proof of it. Even so, it did not fail to be alarmed by certain elements which were communicated to it. So it draws the attention of the administrative persons in charge to the need, without falling into paranoia, to be proof of greatest vigilance, in order to avoid, at least, as subsidies or contracts are allotted to sects and organizations within their sphere, by ignorance of their exact nature.
Multiple, various, complex, the sectarian phenomenon presents undeniable dangers to the individual as well as to society. And this, the more so as they can take the most insidious forms. No social or professional category escapes from it and if the young people appear more touched, one finds people of all ages in the sects.
An essential question arises then today: have these dangers tended to increase for ten years?
One can hardly give a precise answer to this question, because it is, in the current state of affairs, impossible to measure with exactitude their evolution in the ensemble of movements. However, the opinions collected by the Commission on behalf of several observers leads us to believe that if the practices of sects are not more dangerous today than yesterday, many more people are victims.
Under these conditions, it appears particularly significant to know, on the one hand, if the existing legal devices are sufficient to face there and, on the other hand, what the public authorities can do to better fight against these drifts.
[NOTE: The language in these sections is legalistic and technical, difficult for me to translate. I have left much of it as literal as possible, even though the reading isn’t as smooth. I’d rather the English syntax be a little awkward rather than making the French document say something that was not intended. -translator]
These are the tags of subjects on the battlesword.blogspot.com blog that I would like to keep in mind for future references.
Addiction (1)
Alain Vivien – Conclusion (1)
Alain Vivien – French anti-cult professional (1)
Antisocial Personality Disorder (1)
biopsychosocial models (1)
Blogging – Connecting (1)
Brain Damage (1)
Chinese pass cult laws (1)
Classification of sects (1)
Classifying cults (1)
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Congress -funds what it fears (1)
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Cults and Laws (1)
Cults and police (1)
Cults in France: Expression of Moral Freedom or Factors of Manipulation (1)
Cults: The response to significant needs (1)
Culture – essence (1)
DATA PROTECTION LAWS AGAINST CULTS (1)
Dedicated adherents- Why? How? (1)
Dialogue (1)
elderly and children in R.Cults (1)
Elena (1)
elena – cults: our microcosmic mirrors (1)
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Elena’s banning (2)
Elena’s banning – Mlfaye (1)
elena- cults and society (1)
Emotional arousal-stress (1)
Ex-member’s attitudes (1)
Ex-member’s conflicts and positions (1)
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Expulsion (1)
Factors of Potential Expansion (1)
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Financial Power (1)
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fof blog – Ellen (1)
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fofblog (4)
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French Anti cult law – Newspaper article 2 (1)
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gangs and terrorism (1)
Goodwin (1)
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Greg Goodwin (1)
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laws – suicide (1)
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quasi poema o grito (1)
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The Masochistic Pact (1)
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What to do about cults? (1)
Women (1)
The following are the most recent posts from battlesword.blogspot.com
A freely chosen response from an individual’s conscience implies a mature human being. THIS concept is not common in our societies today. What our societies acknowledge is that at 18, an individual is responsible for his actions but by the tremendous abuses of people way above that age, we can see that age is not a measure to maturity, conscience or consciousness. A child that screams when abused is much more conscious than a man that obeys when dominated by the hierarchic authoritarian institution that exploits him psychologically and economically. THAT DEFINES CULT behaviour: the willingness to submit to abuse. But that behavior is not ONLY common in cults: in cults it has been perfectly MASTERED but it is just as common in the average institution of both capitalism and communism based on economic or political power. POWER of some over others is the cause of the inhumanity. POWER: that abstract quality that conditions each and every one of our relationships: Economic, political, emotional, sexual, intellectual POWER over each other: “If you are not willing to submit we are not willing to allow you to participate at dinner in the home, at school in childhood and in a job in society. We exclude you” We have made “SUBMISSION” the condition for love and life. Sexual submission is what Robert wanted from the boys and the submission of each member’s “being” what he wanted from the members. The economic structure submits people’s work force in the industries but in doing so it rendered the human being equally submissive emotionally and intellectually to dictators and gurus. Unlike the king the dictator is not a symbol of integrity but the reality of social disintegration. A true democracy must bring the individual to hold the integrity that was symbolized by the king.
What is MASTERED in cults is the WILLINGNESS of the average human being today to submit to psychological and economical slavery so that he can participate in the community. It is the last option of a people who are looking for “meaning” in their lives. When “work” became “the job”, human beings disconnected from meaning and community in the practice of their work. The work lost connection with culture and submitted to production. When making money replaces serving the community, the “meaning” of life is lost: the living dialogue between the individual and the community is stifled.
We are sick people: The “ideal” “professional” of today is a man without feelings. The T.V. hero is a man without family: a killer without emotions but so called ideals designed to defend the status quo. Cult members search in the cult for the community that society has failed to offer.
It’s in society that religion, politics and economy have separated and severed the inner coherence of the individual as powerfully as the external incoherence. Man’s economic life has disconnected from man’s emotional and intellectual life just like art has disconnected from science, science from economy and economy from religion and politics, which have become subordinate to the power of the economically privileged. The governments have been corrupt manipulators of politics for the benefit of a few just like the guru is a manipulator of religion for his own inner circle. The conditioned structure, that is, the mental, emotional and instinctive conditioning is already in place long before people join the cult.
The external organisation of our societies has been sculpting the internal schizofrenia of its individuals. There is no inner coherence in our inner world because there is no external coherence in the outside world in which we grow up. It is not that a few are sick but that most are sick. “People” “other human beings” have become our enemies: “the idiots on my road”, the noisy neighbours, the undesirable tourists, vandals, hooligans, criminals. We live in fear of each other getting together in clubs, clans, cults, in which we reconstruct the incoherence that we “introverted” from society and perfect and recreate the systematic abuses in the microcosmic reality of the Cult.
To be able to heal from Cults we not only need to reconstruct our lives but the life of our societies.
ANONYMOUS SAYS:
The FOF BLOG ongoing „DISCUSSION“:
Are they still influenced or infected by BOB?
Does it work?
Is BOB still in power? Has BOB still power over his former and Ex- Fellows?
What are the methods?
“Creepy Subliminal Messages” and grains of truth:
or read:
· David Bunn: Subliminal Messages (Hardback) Illustrated by David Bunn
Short Description for David BunnIn his ongoing work with the discarded card catalogue of the Los Angeles Central Library, Bunn has found cards bearing random stains and marks. Here he scans these stains and blows them up, revealing uncanny connections between mark and card text that speak of the subconscious, the occult, sex, analysis, and social ideologies.
Is BOB’s system so efficient?
Crimes without charge?
Is that possible? Never responsibility?
Hi Anonymous,
You have an interesting position on this whole subject, I’m feeling as if we talked about a different subject but here I go.
“The FOF BLOG ongoing „DISCUSSION“:
Are they still influenced or infected by BOB?
Does it work?
Is BOB still in power? Has BOB still power over his former and Ex- Fellows?”
On the FOF blog discussion at
http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/fellowship-of-friends-discussion-%20part%20-%2083/
I would agree that there is still a lot of Fellowship influence but just its existence defies the Fellowship. I doubt the manipulation that this cult submits members to is subliminal in the sense you present here. The brainwashing techniques are like in most other cults related to conditioning people’s behavior in every aspect of their lives. Once the behavior is conditioned enough, the members lose the spirit able to walk out of the cult.
On the fofblog discussion, I am personally very happy to see how they are dialoguing. It’s what I wanted for such a long time! Just being able to do so is an amazing achievement for people who were not allowed to express themselves for years. We were not allowed to give personal thoughts in any Fellowship event in the last five years I was there. Recovering our selves to that possibility is already a great achievement and they seem to be doing beautifully! There is little DISCUSSION, controversy, questioning of each other’s positions on whether to act more seriously against cults and how to help members in to leave but as long as they and we become healthier people, we will eventually find ways to stop cults from destroying more lives.
The healthiest thing for me today is to understand what is being done, what are the legal implications, who the many people and institutions that have already made huge leaps in trying to stop cult abuse.
You say:
Is BOB’s system so efficient?
Crimes without charge?
Is that possible? Never responsibility?
The Cult is very efficient, EXTREMELY efficient but so is the System that supports cults which is why questioning the Fellowship of Friends is really only an aspect of understanding the phenomenon of cults in the world today. There are less than a handful of countries that have enough legislation to deal with the cult problem and the United States is not one of them.
The research I’m interested in exploring here is about learning what has been done in the past twenty years about cults and I’m only just beginning to understand the problems. Allain Viviens document is of huge help to look at the very many different aspects that need to be taken into consideration. The document by the ex FBI agent on Cults, Gangs and Terrorists is shocking in so many ways that I’m still trying to digest it.
The subject of why cults have become so powerful and powerfully corrupt in the past thirty years and what in our societies induced people into finding such options attractive are the main interest to me today. Not the cults as much as the conditions in our societies that moved as out into such alienated pockets of society.
After investing almost twenty years of hard worn seconds in a cult I guess this is a life exploration. The naivete with which I joined has taken a different perspective over the years but beyond the life that was wasted in supporting such decadence is the life that has been gained in recovering the movingly rich and complex world of today.
It is very exciting to be out of such a prison. As I connect with the big wide world, the frightened little me that has been screaming after leaving is less frightened.
How active would you be willing to be?
What actions would you consider could be effective in helping the public become more aware of the damage cults are producing?
Do we fight cults or do we fight what in society has induced people into cults? Or both?
It’s good to have moved into this old format that we got so used to on the other blog. I hope to systematize the information so that we can access and review things and not just move on down a never ending road that doesn’t hold anything. The wonderful thing about digesting the subject is holding the truths that matter and there are already hundreds of truths worth keeping and returning to so that our own conscience on the subject becomes stronger and richer.
Thank you for sharing.
test
What is it really that inspires you?
Where do you want to go?
What I am coming to understand is that dealing with the inertia in life is necessary: the inertia of my own suffering to begin with and that of society next. Cults are a cancer but do we really wish to be cancer doctors? Or cancer jailers? That is always a possibility but to be very honest with you, it’s not the Fellowship of Friends Cult what I’m interested in. It’s life what I wish to invest in and if that means dealing with every aspect of the darkness we meet, then let me stand and hold it because my own hasn’t managed to kill me yet and there’s been plenty of it. We or I will continue to actively fight the Fellowship and cults and its causes in every way we find suitable without losing our own dignity as I have already done too much.
Perhaps the most valuable truth I’ve learnt in the Fellowship cult is that I joined hoping someone would tell me what life was about and it certainly did that! It showed me irrevocably well that one cannot give one’s life away and expect someone else to live it for one, spend it as if it were somebody else’s fifty dollar bill and starve while at it. When I joined it was already then, after four years of fighting my own tendency to jump, transparently clear to me that life was beautiful no matter how difficult and THAT is what I allowed it to destroy for the length of time I was there.
The question today is: how long are we going to spend looking at the cancer instead of the causes of the illness? and the possible cure? At least our small community has managed to acknowledge that there is an illness and that is already a good step, isn’t it time we looked at the causes so that we can consider the treatment?
Most cultic studies that I’ve come across in the past two years on the fofblog seem to be dealing very well with the swollen limbs and the bleeding arteries but hardly any has addressed the poison the patient ate. I am still an ignorant having spent more time screaming that the patient was sick than looking for the stretcher so that I at least could have lied down for a while!
But I am clear now precisely because I was banned or because the idea of taking serious action against the cult was banned (and we seem to be inextricably united) that our greatest weakness comes from avoiding to look at the horror in our lives and question our selves about why we ever submitted to it and then have the courage to amputate the leg before it kills the whole of society. With that I don’t mean to avoid the responsibility of my screaming but our differences were there from the very beginning and I kept insisting naively thinking that we could come to agree. My abuses were only reflections of my hopelessness.
Now I wish to look at life to understand why we’re killing our selves in cults. To Understand why 24 people kill themselves in one company in less than two years is of enormous significance to understand the cult phenomenon or the lifelessness of life phenomenon but I have already looked in almost morbid detail how we suck life out of ourselves in the cult and have yet to understand much better how we were already doing that before we joined. Some good things are still being looked at in the fofblog like Tatyana’s recent list on how we’d become antisocial or that we’d mentioned in so many different posts but was efficiently presented in one.
Whether I continue up this road on my own or in your company is yet to be seen but I am, in contrast to how I was in the fofblog, no longer in a hurry. It is all laid out to simply do the job, carefully, willingly, lovingly.
This post by Ellen and Whalerider is very good.
248. Ellen – October 5, 2009
Whale Rider, #216
“Most of what society considers insanity is people suffering from schizophrenia. […] They might even have a quite convincing hallucination-experience that they are totally one with the universe, which can also be quite anxiety producing later.”
Elena: Most people even without schizophrenia are connected in different degrees to the oneness within and without themselves without ever needing to formulate it intellectually. Oneness is a reality of its own whether people consciously acknowledge it or not. What is “schizophrenic” is not the experience of oneness but the experience of separation. “Schizophrenic” or different stages of development.
Ellen:Later? When? When their sense of self reverts back to “me here” and “you there”? Sure, that’s very disconcerting. Particularly if they are told that feeling of oneness is not “right”.
Elena: And yet me here and you there are also realities that must be taken into the oneness just like a child and a mother may belong to the same family but they are in very different stages in life.
WR: “They are unwilling victims of whatever their unconscious mind throws at them. There is no separation of self.”
Elena: There is no separation of self and yet it is fine for the leaves to fall out of the tree when it’s autumn. It doesn’t mean that the leaves are in any way less part of the tree. Most of the conflicts between each other are autumn and as necessary as winter!
Ellen: But you describe a duality where there may not actually be one? Who is the victim if they can fully, trustfully, surrender to their own terror? Their own deamons? From my own experience, that is exactly the point where everything, every contrast, every I-resistance, dissolves. And an underlying joyful being-acceptance emerges (because there is nothing left).
Elena: Schizophrenia is very different to Consciousness. The schizophrenic enters the same realms a Conscious being enters but does so without a mature enough I or keel to move him or her across the experience. An enlightened being might become as “separated” from the physical world as an schizophrenic for a period of time but that doesn’t mean that he has lost the keel while he is “tripping” in those realms. In drugs, people experience aspects of those realms at the cost of their own keel or I, hence the subsequent depression and loss of connectedness with the physical realm. A lot of physical work would help these people reconnect to their lost keel or sense of I.
People think high states are difficult to experience but they are quite normal. Normal, healthy people live in a high state that is normal to them even if they are not tripping in and out of high and low states or bragging about it. In as much as high states reveal our connectedness with both our inner and external world most people in essence, that is, those who have not lost a practical connection with nature and its rhythm within as much as outside of themselves, do not experience the inner and outer world with the schizophrenic separations people in cities experience them. What is common in our times is normally abnormal people following Arthur’s expression! WE are those abnormally normal people and the sooner we grasp that reality and stop talking about what is happening to others the sooner we’ll be able to get a grip on it.
Most of the people of our generation who have had experiences with drugs have tasted other realms of existence. Recognizing the objective reality of those realms should not pose a problem to us today. It’s how we incorporate them in our lives what matters and here is where Cults come in. What they are promising people is individual experiences of higher states without connectedness to society. What they are achieving is disconnectedness from reality or schizophrenic experiences of complete disassociation with their own I by willingly submitting to the gurus will. The problem is not whether members experience high states or not, they do experience supra normal states, the problem is that like in drugs, they have become addicted to the guru and lose their own self or keel in the experience which is what leads to suicide in the long run.
WR:“Now that’s a level of being-experience where no separations are experienced that I’d want to stay away from, thank you.”
Ellen: Of course, because you recognize that as dangerous territory. Psychologically, to the self, it is, because it means death.
Elena: And life! Or objective reality!
Ellen: But I think that finally each one of us needs to confront our deepest fears in order to also realize their illusory nature. Dark night of the soul, Kali as destructive-daemon, etc… The unconscious mind contains angels and devils, that’s for sure. Check out Jung’s Red Book. Or take a journey with healing plants in the hands of a trustworthy shaman.
So it’s easy to understand why LSD became illegal. This is/these are dangerous waters, that are best not even embarked upon without the guidance of a trustworthy guide. But maybe the problem is that the schizophrenic was never given the choice?
Elena: THAT is exactly what we did with Robert and what everyone in cults is doing. The trustworthy guide today is each individual in power of his own keel confronting his and her self with humanity through the society s/he is connected to not only intellectually but emotionally and physically, reordering our selves within as much as without.
WR “For a guru to claim to have had experience(s) of total and complete oneness is veiled narcissism. It may have felt that way to them, but it was also experienced by their cells, which have boundaries.”
Elena: Disagree! Anyone can claim to have experienced complete oneness. Anyone who remembers his or herself as a child will understand that he or she has already experienced oneness. It’s in the process of growing up that we separate our selves from our selves and others but our oneness unconsciously remains as a permanent reference to our explorations. Remembering one’s self is simply the exercise of recovering the state of oneness that one already has but had lost. Everyone in the “civilized” world is going through such struggle. We need everyone to acknowledge that they have experienced their own oneness so that they are not running around looking for false gurus to find it. It is normal for a human being to have that grace and that beauty, THAT is a NORMAL human being. What is abnormal in our times is that society only values a few people and grants them supra qualities: sports people, actors, gurus, the sports arenas, like the hollywoods of the world together with cults show how upside down and backwards we are from the reality of our own humanity.
Ellen: Agreed. Anyone who feels the need to proclaim his or her enlightenment to the world has a 99.9% chance of being a sham. But there are people who have let their limitations drop and are able to act from a compassionate place towards the unnecessary suffering they see in the people around them in the world.
And about their cells, don’t confuse levels. The physical world exists as multiple differences, multiple forms, but it may not contain real separation, as a distinction of mind. Then, there is simply transparent co-operation.
About “mind” in general. The Sanskrit language has four different terms to describe aspects of what in the English language is usually referred to with only one: buddhi, chitta, manas, and ahamkara. So it’s a question of subtle distinctions, of awareness, of discrimination, of levels.
I still haven’t been able to find how to take the “reply” word out of posts. Please if you have a comment, please don’t do so there but on the box at the end of the page.
Mother, what is air?
It is the gratitude that all beings before us have experienced.
Their gratitude gave birth to the air we breathe. It is a form of light
And water mother?
Truth is water.
And Earth?
Earth gives birth like mothers do: it is love.
And fire?
Life is fire.
And death?
Death my love, is the falling of flowers
And Man?
Man is your father and he’s about to arrive, let’s go and get dinner ready!
Hello silent readers,
I see that there are a number of you reading both this and the previous blog. I thank you.
There are a few issues I wish to mention.
I am not very happy with this new platform for this blog because it doesn’t allow me to put names to the posts. This one is very efficient for a blog like the fofblog in which comments flow without anything holding the information but I am no longer interested in working like that.
What I would really like is if we were able to work together on the subjects that interest us and added to whatever subject in such a way that that information that you added questioned or reaffirmed what ever information was already there. This platform does not allow for that because it does not allow to put labels on comments. It makes a difference between comments and posts and doesn’t allow posts to be labeled which is what I would like.
There’s some wonderful material on the fofblog but separating the different issues it touches is a monumental job. I always wanted to put names on the posts so that it would have been easier to separate what people were talking about but never got to actualizing that.
In this blog I no longer wish to work in vain which is the feeling I have about the other blog. Whether I am working on my own or with others I would like to use the material as a significant source of information on the subjects we are dealing with. All contributions are valuable.
This is even more important if I am going to work on my own and simply offer my findings for whoever uses them as we seem to be doing now.
In other words, blogging for me is not just a means of communicating and talking with each other, it’s a means to work together on a subject while we also connect with each other.
This wordpress format doesn’t seem to allow me to do the things I’d like us to be able to do but I am of course, just a beginner in handling these things and although it says it’s possible to classify posts, it doesn’t seem to perceive posts as comments. I think I just don’t know enough about it because I never understood how they posted youtubes in the other blog and things like that.
The ideal format for me, would allow anyone posting to classify his own post, title it and label it in such a way that we could eventually put the information together. The subject of cults is huge and no matter how much I work, I cannot do this all on my own so if you’re serious about fighting cults, this is a lifelong job that we’re indulging in. We probably need a different site, a whole platform for what I’m interested in but I’m not yet ready to take that step if I’m going to work alone and I’m just finding out about those too. The cult phenomenon is worldwide and collecting information about them in each of our countries would be one of the things we could work on. Keeping track so that we can serve as a site for information on what is happening around the globe would not only help the public but it would form us enough to understand how to stand against this social epidemic more effectively.
From the work I did on the previous blog, collecting and writing information my eyes are extremely delicate and painful. The fact that I see double like the old lion in Daktari! adds a pressure to my work that conditions me to take it a lot more easily than I would like so learning more about this platform or others as well as reading or writing a lot of new material will take time. Anyone who has read the previous blog and this one might already understand where I’m heading, if there’s interest and you don’t, we can share questions but I’m just not going to work as intensely until I recover some.
Just in case someone is not clear about it my understanding at the moment is that the cult phenomenon is something we are both the victims and the witnesses in our time. The questions that arise from it are many, I’ll just mention a few:
What do cults pretend to be?
What are they really?
How can we measure the scale of the harm of particular cults?
What is the legislation in different countries?
How could we connect to Allain Viviens study and France’s initiative to not give religious freedom rights to all cults allowing the state to limit the activities cults can actually engage in?
How can we put pressure on other countries to place limits?
Could we “picket” public squares in different countries at the same time? What effect could this have even if we were few but with the same or similar banners?
What are the social implications?
The political, economic, philosophical implications of cults?
What can be done to help people before they join? In Schools, Universities, companies?
A lot of these questions have already been addressed by the few institutions that are dealing with cults around the world. Connecting and understanding each one of them would be valuable. Eventually we could help each other with seminars and information in different countries. I am concerned about what is also happening in Colombia. The information is poor but I’m trying to get to it. The cults are many.
May this be enough for today- It would be good to hear from those of you reading. I realize this is not just a blog offer but even with the time we are willing to put on a blog, I would like that time to be of value. If I don’t hear from anyone, I will go ahead and search for the platform that I would like to use when it is possible. In the meantime of course, every form of blogging that you might care for is welcome.
I’m sorry if this goes with many mistakes but it helps me a lot if I can avoid rereading it.
Hello Darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains
within The Sound of Silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
narrow streets of cobble stone
Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
that split the night and touched The Sound of Silence
“Fools” said I, “You do not know
silence like a cancer grows”
“Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent rain drops fell
and echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
to the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the signs said “The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
and tenement halls”
And whisper’d
in The Sounds of Silence
And in the naked light I saw
ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking
people hearing without listening
People writing songs
that voices never share
and no one dare
disturb The Sound of Silence.
To be able to say forgive me
For I’ve made mistakes
And to be able to forgive
for you’ve made mistakes
And to be able to neither be forgiven nor forgive
Because all is well
The battle is One
I guess I’ve lost you
That ain’t no fun
But as long as you still are
And I still am,
Who said we couldn’t run?
And you my most beloved
you’ve turned and run?
I let you down?
I moved the floor?
I stumbled across your door?
Shaking all around
I got my share of sound
And hurting all around
I thank you, thank you
and kiss the ground
To eat the mud
and drink the dung
To feel, to feel
The broken back
And still behind
To be like One
To plea
To please
To flee
To freeze
To shrink
and sink
and still
Be me
To explode
And live!
That’s me!
To love,
And visit me
And be too afraid
To be with me
To speak
To think
To fight
And feel
To hold
To touch
To hear my words
Whisper
And scream
And to hear you
Behind the silence
To know you
Behind the screen
To love you
And love you
And love you
Free.
Dare we hope that our world, with all its religious turbulence, could take inspiration from such a tolerant and laissezfaire multiculturalism?
Or will zealots crawl out of religious woodwork from all directions and trample enlightened pluralism, a Western achievement that is less than 300 years old?
In all probability, respectful, enlightened religious skeptics will still have to bear the burden of their doubts – just like the noted Basel art historian Jacob Burckhardt, who lost his Christian faith early in life but resolved:
“Heretics we may be, but we are resolved to remain honest.”
Mrs. Elena,
Likely that you experienced only a very small part of that religious multiculturalism.
What is your personal opinion? Are you now, after many years of searching the access to that cult leader or group, heretic?
Heretic?
Never!
never more with thee!
And thee in me!
And you?
And what may be your worldspirit?
Do you still think that you are a reflection of the divine?
Was your cult leader a reflection of the divine?
May art be an answer for you? A way to release you from the FOF experience?
This video is acoustic and visual remarkable, I hope you will enjoy it:
Aren’t we each other’s cosmic mirrors?
Reflections of the divine?
How could he not be?
As painfully dark as he is?
And we, still?
Aren’t weeds as necessary as reeds?
And me?
From weed to reed?
From weed to seed?
Heresy is no guarantee of truth, but don’ forget (as T. H. Huxley said) that every new truth begins as heresy.
“The story of The Emperor’s New Clothes no doubt strikes completely socialized, other-directed adults as preposterous, but reality outrages myth. In Anderson’s story the child’s outcry leads to a rapid erosion of faith among the spectators; truth strips the Emperor naked. Unhappily, in real life, majority opinion frequently overwhelms perception.
Some experiments carried out by the social psychologist Solomon Asch are most enlightening. Asch asked a small group of college men to identify the longest of several lines drawn on paper. Unbeknownst to one of them, all the others had been instructed to agree on a preposterously wrong answer. Choices were announced in open meeting. As the responses forced the “odd man out” to become aware of his position, he not infrequently gave way to the majority and expressed his agreement with them. It does not take an Inquisition to make heresy painful. (“Heresy” comes from a Greek word meaning “to choose for oneself.”) Out of 123 men subjected to this ordeal, 37 percent conformed. (Is it significant that this is about the same percentage as that of “placebo reactors,” people whose pain is reduced by the administration of a placebo, a medication known to have no beneficial effect?)
Asch’s experiment might tempt a cynic to rewrite the Anderson story to make the little child yield to adult opinion. We would not accept such a rewriting, of course, because the cynical version would deprive us of hope. The progress of science – indeed of all positive knowledge – depends on the courage of Thoreau’s “majority of one” in the face of nearly unanimous error. Yet there are many naked emperors parading the streets of learning, and we need a few people who have the Anderson child’s confidence in their own senses and judgment. Statistically speaking, the populace may well be right more often than wrong – but sometimes the Emperor is indeed naked.”
That’s exactely what I feel and think about heresy and the mankind will be lost without heresy.
”Heresy” comes from a Greek word meaning “to choose for oneself.”
If heresy means to choose for oneself then I choose to be a heretic that chooses from the self within me.
They are very different and each must come to know the self within him self
to stop idolizing false gods
And I’m so so near and yet so so far
but am and that’s much! Like most of US!
I’ve got to go
but thank you so
my eyes are falling
falling with joy!
Thanks for your story
could I ask for more?
You sit by me
and the whole world is at home
this is the Public Square
to life!
to love!
We sit together
and the whole world is at home
this is the Public Square
to love!
to life!
Here is this article for today, it touches on many aspects of cults that must be clarified as we move along. What could be said about cults? That they are the psychological self immolation of a people justified by so called search for consciousness?
But the inner manipulation in cults by its leader and inner circle is no different to social methods of elimination and that’s what needs to be looked at with a magnifying glass.
SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
‘Mass Slaughter Is a Systemic Problem of the Modern World’
The political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has never been one to shy away from controversy. In his new book, he argues that state leaders who propagate genocide should be killed outright. SPIEGEL spoke with him about the political tool of mass murder, Germany’s reaction to his first book about the Holocaust, and the bankruptcy of international law.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Goldhagen, do all nations have the potential to become perpetrators of genocide?
Goldhagen: Not every genocide that could have happened, not every massacre that could have happened, actually has happened. Prejudices and hatreds — ideas about other people which make them seem different in a way that is dangerous or potentially deleterious to you — are generally widespread. There are groups of people around the world in country after country who, in principle, could be mobilized to attack other groups of people and do so willingly.
SPIEGEL: What element must be added to the mix?
Goldhagen: The nature of the political regime — the nature of the leaders themselves — is absolutely critical for whether this potential will be turned into an actual genocide.
SPIEGEL: Are some states more at risk than others?
Goldhagen: You mean forms of government? In dictatorships, which are always threatened from below in one way or another because they do not respect the rights of the people, there is a much greater danger that the political leadership will opt for some kind of eliminationist solution to the problems that they perceive. Whatever prejudices exist today in the United States, in Germany, in Italy, in Japan, in many other countries, it is extraordinarily unlikely that they will, in the foreseeable future, erupt into mass murder.
SPIEGEL: Even in democracies though, problems such as racism, xenophobia and hatred of minorities exist.
Goldhagen: Yes, but in such countries, no leader would ever even consider doing such a thing. It is completely off the table as an option.
SPIEGEL: The title of your book is “Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.” What could be worse than war?
Goldhagen: That depends on our moral perspective and on the analytical question of how we want to measure badness. If we measure it by the most fundamental measure, which is how many people are killed, the perpetrators of mass slaughter have killed more people since the beginning of the 20th century – more than 100 million — than have died as a consequence of conventional military operations. This should be one of the central political facts of our age. Yet it is known by virtually no one.
SPIEGEL: Humanity, in other words, is not marching ever further down the path of enlightenment, but rather has created a world full of mass slaughter?
Goldhagen: Mass slaughter is a systemic problem of the modern world.
SPIEGEL: Why have you chosen this issue to address? Until now, you have focussed on the conditions that made the Holocaust possible. This time though, you look at the broader issue of genocide. Is this just another effort to explain how the German slaughter could have happened?
Goldhagen: Whenever we study genocides or, for that matter, any social or political phenomenon, we’re always looking for similarities and differences. It was the logical next step after looking at the Holocaust.
SPIEGEL: Why have you chosen to use the word “eliminationism” instead of the term “genocide” in your book?
Goldhagen: Because genocide, or large-scale mass slaughter, is but one tool that states and political leaders use to carry out political programs aimed at eliminating populations that are considered unwanted or dangerous. Thus, the fundamental phenomenon is eliminationism, with the mixture of means chosen being but a pragmatic decision to further the political goal. There are five principal means: repression, forced transformation, expulsion, preventing reproduction, such as sterilization, and extermination.
SPIEGEL: Your book begins with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why are these two events not generally considered to be mass murder?
Goldhagen: Because the victors write the history. It was mass murder. The people in these cities were overwhelmingly non-combatants. The bombings were not necessary for ending the war. The Japanese were ready to surrender and President Harry Truman knew it.
SPIEGEL: Do people in the West tend to believe that we don’t commit genocide, only the others do?
Goldhagen: People in the US, no more or less so than in other countries, don’t want to look with clear eyes upon the transgressions or crimes that their own countrymen have perpetrated on others. There is a denial movement in virtually every country whose people have undertaken eliminationist assaults. You know: “We didn’t do it,” or “we had to do it.”
SPIEGEL: Does genocide always begin with language?
Goldhagen: Most of what people know about the world is imparted to them through speech — through language of all different kinds. One of the striking things about genocide is that the people doing the killing view large groups of people as being subhuman or dangerous. They use language to either dehumanize or demonize them.
SPIEGEL: Language mobilizes people to commit mass slaughter?
Goldhagen: Yes. Language is the bearer of hatred. Germans didn’t know the Jews of Poland. Many Turks didn’t know Armenians. Individual Hutu knew nothing about most Tutsi. How could they? And yet in each case they set out to kill vast numbers of people about whom they knew only what they had heard. Language transmits prejudices and descriptions of others that lead some to believe that the other must be eliminated. This is a critical factor in understanding the generation of mass slaughter, which is often not seen to be important. People say “it’s just talk.” but it’s talk that is the soil from which these genocidal assaults eventually grow.
SPIEGEL: Do you not see a need to correct yourself? Thirteen years ago you wrote that there has never been a genocide comparable to the Holocaust. Now, you are comparing various genocides from history and the Holocaust is included as one of them.
Goldhagen: Yes, to look for similarities and differences. There have been many other mass slaughters in history and also in our time.
SPIEGEL: But your thesis remains true?
The issues touched upon in this second part are very significant in our discussions. This German, American, Colombian issues matter and how we deal with them can help us move beyond our national programming into more human understanding.
Part 2: ‘The Past Is Far Less Threatening in Germany Today’
Goldhagen: Absolutely. The Holocaust retains certain distinctive qualities that make it singular among genocides. It doesn’t make it necessarily worse or more morally horrific. It’s simply a matter of fact that it had distinctive qualities. It is the only time when a state with a large number of supporters set out to exterminate the members of another group, not just in their own country, but, if they had won the war, in all of Europe, and then in the whole world with no exception. Every man, woman and child. Furthermore, there’s a second quality to it that makes it distinctive. It actually was perpetrated by an international genocidal coalition in which peoples of different countries, and also different governments, participated in this genocidal enterprise.
SPIEGEL: When you published “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” in 1996, you became world famous, but you were also strongly criticized.
Goldhagen: The world today looks so different, including Germany. The past is far less threatening in Germany today even than it was in 1996. I think it has more or less passed into history now. At that time, it was a shock for so many Germans to learn how ordinary Germans wilfully perpetrated mass slaughter. I think this is widely accepted in Germany now. SPIEGEL itself recently had a sober cover story on the topic.
SPIEGEL: You always use the term “the Germans” to describe the perpetrators. Is that not a mistake?
Goldhagen: This was, of course, one of the critical features of the debate after “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” was published. “How can you say ‘Germans’ instead of ‘Nazis’?” Do you want to revisit that discussion?
SPIEGEL: No. But in your new book, you make a plea for the precise use of language when talking about victims and perpetrators — in order not to protect the perpetrators or to make the victims anonymous. Why not refer to “the Nazis” or “the German murderers” instead of simply “the Germans?”
Goldhagen: Well, they were Germans. We speak of the Americans in Vietnam and the French in Algeria. We should be able to say the Germans in Poland and so on.
SPIEGEL: But it’s not true. The “Americans” in Vietnam were primarily soldiers sent there to fight a war. The same is true for the “French” in Algeria. But by using the word “the” before “Germans,” you transform an entire people into perpetrators.
Goldhagen: No. I have often said, in my books too, that many, but not all Germans took part. Why can’t you generalize about the Germans? We generalize all the time. Here’s a generalization: In the late 1930s many Germans supported Nazism and supported Hitler, and indeed, many Germans supported the eliminationist assault upon the Jews. Here’s another generalization: Most Germans today support democratic institutions. It’s not the generalization per se, but the empirical foundation on which the generalization is based that’s important.
SPIEGEL: There is a difference between saying “the” Germans and “many” Germans.
Goldhagen: When I speak about things that the Nazi leadership in particular was doing, I use the term “the Nazis.” When we’re speaking about the general eliminationist or genocidal attacks on Jews and on others, I use “Germans.” There is a linguistic problem. In English, the indefinite plural “Germans” makes it clear that you are talking about a lot of people who are German, but not about the collectivity.
SPIEGEL: Why do you react so brusquely when confronted by historians who do not share your viewpoint?
Goldhagen: What do you mean?
SPIEGEL: You have in the past attacked other Holocaust researchers and even said of some works that they are “complete nonsense.” You have in the past gone after such well-respected scholars as Hannah Arendt and Christopher Browning. Why are you so ruthless?
Goldhagen: Anyone who knows what actually happened knows that it was I who was personally and vehemently attacked.
SPIEGEL: Still, do your attacks not, in the end, only harm you?
Goldhagen: I was completely taken by surprise by all that happened and the extent of the reaction. I am at heart an educator and I prefer discussions with people rather than polemics.
SPIEGEL: Too much vehemence can indeed seem suspect.
Goldhagen: I’m not going to stop speaking the truth because I’m worried about how people are going to react. You’re either a scholar or a politician. I learned a lot from my father…
SPIEGEL: … a political scientist who survived the Holocaust.
Goldhagen: I learned an orientation towards life and the world — that we always need to tell the truth. We don’t tailor what we say about the world because it’s either personally or politically expedient. My father is absolutely a straight shooter about all manner of things. And this is what I learned from him.
SPIEGEL: The fundamental difference between you and most other historians or political scientists is that they say that World War II made the Holocaust possible. You, on the other hand, say that anti-Semitism in Germany provided the foundation that was then mobilized and organized by Hitler.
Goldhagen: Well, in the most prosaic sense the war was necessary because without the conquest of Europe, Germany would not have been able to get its hands on the Jews and have the freedom to slaughter them.
SPIEGEL: They could have started at home.
Goldhagen: There were practical reasons why they didn’t. The war aims of Hitler were multiple and intertwined — to secure Germany from a variety of putative enemies, to expand Germany geographically and to exterminate those whom he believed threatened the German people. Those enterprises included the extermination of the Jews.
Part 3: ‘Eliminationism Has Become an Integral Part of the Political Repertoire of the Modern World’
Goldhagen: No, but it’s wrong. I bring to bear a vast amount of evidence that shows that the killers often do a great deal more than they are ordered to do. Often the people doing the killing were not even being supervised. Is it possible for someone to slaughter children and not have a view about whether it’s right or wrong? It seems to me the answer is no. It’s not possible. When you see, in mass murder after mass murder, how they treated children with great brutality, it becomes clearer and clearer that the perpetrators actually believed it was right. It wasn’t peer pressure that moved them. It was ideology.
SPIEGEL: You write that a half a million Germans participated in the mass murder and that almost all Germans knew it was going on. Neither statement is true.
Goldhagen: Excuse me? If you look at the things that the regime was organizing, the extermination of the Jews, the use of millions of slave laborers, the slaughter of Russians, Poles, Roma and Sinti, the so-called euthanasia program — all these things which Germans today would consider to be criminal — it is clear that Germans during the Nazi period had knowledge of the vast criminality of the regime.
SPIEGEL: The crimes committed in Germany were certainly impossible to overlook. But very few knew what was happening in the death camps in Poland — in Treblinka, Auschwitz and the others.
Goldhagen: The evidence is overwhelming that the knowledge that Germans were killing Jews on a large scale was extremely widespread in Germany. Though the program as such was a secret.
SPIEGEL: Did the Nazis keep it secret out of shame?
Goldhagen: No. The regime wasn’t ashamed of it. It controlled the media at the time and had rules about what should or should not be said. The Nazis were concerned that it could be used as propaganda against Germany. It probably wasn’t known by many people that there was a formal program of total extermination. But on the Soviet front, where there were millions of German soldiers, the mass killing of Jews was done in full view of the army. The army was often participating and providing logistical support.
SPIEGEL: Most of the soldiers say they didn’t know anything.
Goldhagen: If you ask the perpetrators, as the Federal Republic’s legal authorities did, whether they shot anybody, you’ll find out that virtually nobody in these units actually shot anybody. They all deny it. You would then have to conclude that, in fact, nobody died because nobody will admit to having pulled the trigger.
SPIEGEL: Would you call all those who say they didn’t participate liars?
Goldhagen: I’m not saying all soldiers must have known. We’re talking here about one of the greatest crimes in all of human history. Even just knowing about it is an uncomfortable thing for many people to tell others about.
SPIEGEL: Are modern-day mass murders of a greater dimension than in centuries past because of the advance of technology?
Goldhagen: Most gargantuan slaughters that have taken place in the modern world — as in Rwanda for example — have been perpetrated with technical means that were invented before the twentieth century. It is the will that is the decisive factor. Eliminationism has become an integral part of the political repertoire of the modern world.
SPIEGEL: In your book, you warn of the dangers of political Islam. Why?
Goldhagen: “Political Islam” is the appropriate term to describe political movements that are grounded in an understanding of Islam and seek to assert control — often totalitarian control — over their societies and other societies which they think should be Islamic. These movements often use violence and often with a genocidal or eliminationist attempt.
SPIEGEL: What should the international community do?
Goldhagen: There is something fundamentally wrong with the current situation. Everybody in the West is opposed to mass slaughter. And they look upon a world where relatively weak and poor countries with few resources engage in mass slaughter. And this just continues and you ask how can this be? If these powerful and wealthy countries were really determined to put an end to eliminationist assaults, you would think they could probably do it. President Barack Obama, who people expected would be much better on these issues, has done nothing. He should create a no-fly zone over Darfur; he should bomb Sudanese military installations until there is a total cessation of activities. But the nation-state is an egoistic entity — the leaders of the country are calculating national interest and it has not been perceived to be in the national interest of any of the powerful countries to do much of anything.
SPIEGEL: Because they take place so far away.
Goldhagen: It is our moral duty. How many African lives equals one European life or one American life? Contemporary communications mean that we know immediately when things are happening now. So it is a problem of sympathy or empathy. The current situation is that leaders and regimes that decide to undertake eliminationist assaults have very little to fear. They are almost always successful and they do it with impunity.
SPIEGEL: International tribunals…
Goldhagen: … The establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002 was a very good development. But as it currently functions, it is so slow and so ineffective. It was basically a low cost way for the countries of the world to pretend they were doing something. We must create an international environment where those leaders that might contemplate eliminationist assaults would think, it’s probably not a good idea because I’ll either lose power or I could lose my life.
SPIEGEL: That sounds a bit naïve.
Goldhagen: This is where we have to start talking about eliminationism instead of genocide. The elimination of the Jews was always their policy. It started in Germany in 1933 with different kinds of laws and measures excluding Jews from German society. At that point they were trying to get as many Jews out of Germany as possible. Once they began to conquer countries, they immediately began to take other eliminationist measures against the Jews, such as ghettoization — measures which were temporary until a more “final” solution could be initiated. So, to say that the eliminationist assault upon the Jews was a consequence of the war is simply not factually correct. There was always this eliminationist orientation and a variety of means used at different times until the program of total extermination began in 1941, coinciding with the assault on the Soviet Union.
SPIEGEL: Your colleague Christopher Browning argues that many of the murders perpetrated by the Nazis can be explained by peer pressure. This too is an idea that seems to make you angry.
Part 4: ‘International Law on the Issue of Mass Slaughter Is Utterly Bankrupt’
Goldhagen: Does it? Any regime that has been declared to be undertaking eliminationist assaults should be suspended immediately from all international institutions. It should be declared that the leaders of these countries, the top political leadership and all high level subordinates, are outlaws and are subject to being killed.
SPIEGEL: You think murder is the answer?
Goldhagen: The perpetrators conceive of it as a war. They’re making war on an identifiable part of humanity, which is like making war on humanity as a whole. And if they are making war, the rules of war apply. We should encourage those who can to kill them. This may sound radical, but it is a far more effective, less-costly and, believe or not, likely solution than sending in a UN or some other rapid reaction force.
IMAGE GALLERY
7 Photos Photo Gallery: ‘Mass Slaughter Is a Political Tool’
SPIEGEL: Doesn’t sovereignty present a problem, and international law? Who should have the power to determine when such a measure should be taken?
Goldhagen: I’m not worried that this is going to lead to a rash of invasions of other countries. The problem is not over-eagerness. The problem is the absence of practically any will or any action to save the lives of people being exterminated. And the problem is that there is no provision in international law that allows for countries to violate the sovereignty of another. International law allows for leaders to slaughter their own people unless the UN calls it genocide, which is not going to happen. International law on this issue is utterly bankrupt.
SPIEGEL: The US marched into Iraq under the guise of protecting human rights.
Goldhagen: … which wasn’t really the reason for the invasion.
SPIEGEL: They toppled the regime and hanged Saddam Hussein. And if you ask around at the United Nations and others involved in international politics, you will hear them say that this invasion was harmful to the global community. Trust in the rules that should apply to all has been violated as has the will to act together.
Goldhagen: You are right. I’d be happy with functioning international law. The problem is that it won’t come about any time soon. I asked the Justice Minister of Rwanda, Tharcisse Karugarama, whether the genocide would have been prevented had bounties been placed on the heads of the political leaders and they knew it. He said, “Definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely, many times definitely…. If people knew that at the end of the day they’ll be the losers, they never invest in losing an enterprise.”
SPIEGEL: Mr. Goldhagen, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us.
Interview conducted by Klaus Brinkbäumer and Martin Doerry
After reading the previous article what calls my attention is that in relation to cults we have a very similar phenomenon in which the fact that the gurus know that they can get away with whatever they do because national laws on freedom of religion protect them is just like the fact that political leaders around the world indulge in genocide because they know they can get away with it. The parallel is striking.
I do not share the position of the author that anyone able to kill the political leader should kill him just as I would not kill Robert Burton or any other guru had I the opportunity. The problem is not the leaders but the mentality that supports them and that mentality is what needs to be worked with. Leaders incarnate ideas in people and the only idea I would like to stand by is that we deal with each other without killing each other physically or psychologically and the many ways in between.
The study of a leader’s plight in incarnating the mentality of a people should make us more compassionate of the leader’s lives. Nothing is easier than bending to worship and blind submission from others. We choose leaders then kill them but they are just puppets of our own will. In proving compassionate with their lives we would prove that we’ve understood the mechanism in our selves that lead him or her where they arrived.
In relation to this I am still in awe by the treatment of the chinese Emperor who was “condemned” to be a gardener for the rest of his life.
The “position” that the interviewers from Spiegel present is also interesting for they call attention to the world order in which nations respect other nation’s boundaries which is also what we tend to stand by in our personal relationships.
The cases of Mr. Polanski and Frederic Miterrand illustrate the conflict between private and public life and how the fact that they are significant public figures pretends to indulge them from specific standards of human behavior. This is very interesting and connected to Mr. Burton’s homosexuality in the Fellowship cult.
French minister in ‘boy sex’ row
Frederic Mitterrand has rejected criticism from the far right
France’s Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand is facing intense pressure over a book he wrote that described paying for “young boys” in Thailand.
The book was written four years ago, before he joined the government, but is back in the headlines following his impassioned support for Roman Polanski.
Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on child sex charges.
Mr Mitterrand, nephew of late President Francois Mitterrand, is expected to defend himself on TV later on Thursday.
Mr Mitterrand has come under attack from right and left.
In his 2005 book The Bad Life, he wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys,” saying his attraction to young male prostitutes was not dimmed despite knowing “the sordid details of this traffic”.
FREDERIC MITTERRAND
Born in Paris, 21 August 1947
Nephew of former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand
Former TV presenter, documentary maker and writer
Appointed head of the French Academy in Rome in 2008
Named by Nicolas Sarkozy as culture minister in June 2009
“All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously… the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire.”
Mr Mitterrand, 62, has denied being a paedophile, saying the term “boys” was used loosely.
The account of cruising for prostitutes in Thailand attracted little attention when it was published in 2005, when Mr Mitterrand was a TV personality.
‘Sex tourism’
He did not share his uncle’s socialist politics, and was brought into the centre-right government by President Nicolas Sarkozy in June 2009.
But his strong defence of Polanski has brought the book back into the public eye. Polanski faces deportation to the United States for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE
More from BBC World Service
Mr Mitterrand said the US’ behaviour, in seeking his extradition, was callous and “horrifying”.
Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon told Reuters: “As a minister of culture he has drawn attention to himself by defending a film maker accused of raping a child and he has written a book where he said he took advantage of sexual tourism. To say the least, I find it shocking.”
Marine Le Pen, vice president of the right-wing National Front, read excerpts of Mr Mitterrand’s book aloud during a television interview, and said it left “an indelible stain on the government”.
She called for the culture minister to step down.
“Resign, Mr Mitterrand and perhaps, afterwards we’ll be able to give lessons to other people,” she said.
Mr Mitterrand said it was an honour to be dragged though the mud by the National Front, and criticised the Socialists for making common cause with the extreme right.
A senior aide to President Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, on Thursday backed the minister, saying the row was “excessive and quite undignified”.
But the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby, in Paris, says that the revelation that a senior cabinet minister was involved in sex tourism, just as the country holds negotiations with Thailand to discuss ways of fighting it, will inevitably embarrass Mr Sarkozy’s government.
All of this brings us back to our little blogs connected to the Fellowship of Friends – Pathway to Presence Cult
The position that the fofblog holds that all they are going to act on is to try to get California to adopt a sexual restriction act from gurus is not even close to understanding the Cult phenomenon. Sexuality in cults is, from one angle, its most insignificant phenomenon. The true horror of cults is the totality of the member’s psychological manipulation that renders them cult slaves: people who live and work only for the guru’s well being through their own sacrifice.
The sexual victims are a few even though they may be more deeply affected. The inner circle victims are many more and they are socially dangerous because they are the ones that support and allow the sexual rape of the few and the psychological dismembering of the many. The masses of supporters like Lady D who were in the cult for twenty years without ever signifying anything to anyone but paying money to support their own personal and social annihilation are the truly significant victims of cults and the numbers of these are significant. This does not mean that the sexual victims are in any way less significant, what I am saying is that THAT is not the main danger Cults pose. That sexual abuse we have in many other areas of society but the psychological manipulation is particular to cults.
It would be good for us to get a figure of how many cult members there are today in the world. That would give us a chance to understand the magnitude of the problem.
On the FOF BLog and post 20. By surelyujest – October 8, 2009 on page 84
This is a good post because it says a lot of things that had to be said and heard from “family” to get digested by the fofbloggers. We’d said all that but they got offended and ignored and played indifferent then banned me when they found a good excuse! I should be very proud that it took two long years, considering the condition I was in and the opposition I got! It’s abnormal human behavior but standard human behavior!
What I do regret is that confronting people is so painful because we are so afraid of acknowledging our difficulties. I have suffered enormously for having being banned and seeing how I so destructively went on a rampant hit at everything that seemed to stand for the Fellowship but I cannot get myself to regret it enough. We hurt each other but isn’t pain necessary sometimes to get us to move from our crystals?. Conflict is necessary and in banning me you are avoiding conflict in the short term but deepening conflict in the long term. In accepting the ban the majority of you have allowed your selves to crystallize in an area of seriously dealing with cults which is what I continue to think matters if we are to penetrate our lives coherently!
The motives for banning me were mostly excuses to not deal with that issue personally and socially. Just like in the Fellowship. But I had certainly lost the inspiration to present anything lovingly after two years of begging! And I regret that I had lost the lovingness and became as distant as the many that insulted me and the others that kept quiet in support. In the long run it will be very easy to study blogs and show how people behave emotionally when confronted with these things, that is, how we are willing to retrieve “love” when confronted with our selves as I think the bloggers did and how I retrieved the lovingness by being ignored. Conflict is necessary, we must not avoid confronting each other deeply but banning is a totally different thing and yet even being banned has helped me! It is so shameful! It sheds light on such a huge area of my personal horror! And at the same time it makes me work more seriously in what I believe. This IGNORING what I was saying is highly significant and the more I was ignored the more I wrote and repeated the same things. I take responsibility for my self and my mistakes but they in no way free any of you from yours. Our lives are too long to simply discard each other as you did! The circle turns and turns and we meet again until we can resolve our differences. The different poles attract each other like magnets.
Perhaps what the post misses is the fact that the fourth way, as used and interpreted by the Fellowship has nothing to do with the Fourth Way or what most people in it used. It is not surprising or incoherent that most would be happy to throw the baby out with the bath water after the Fellowship experience. The Fourth Way is a System like any other System and IMHO they all work. It’s how they are used what works against the people using them.
Nice that Daily Cardiac is back. “I know” is doing such a poor job that they had to bring back a heavier weight! They’ve gotten rid of me and it’s time to test the new oldfofblog that pretends to dialogue nicely with the fellowship representatives. Give them room and space so that they can continue to justify the Cult with arguments that they tend to leave unaddressed. What are you going to do now Dear with two blogs to deal with? I might not be there but they are more prepared to deal with you DC and if they are not I’m still here! Of course only about forty look in here over a week but I haven’t managed to get put off by that yet! In fact it gets more and more exiting with time!
20. surelyujest – October 8, 2009
11. Walter Tanner
“Around the fifth year in the Fellowship, I undertook an experiment: I stopped using the Fourth Way system and re-cast all my experience in terms of Leary’s eight-circuit model of consciousness (found in his Game of Life and other works). It was quite a remarkable enlightenment, to see that I could so completely change the software, so to speak, of my brain.”
That is remarkable. Doing something similar is what led me to abandon the 4th Way system. For many years, I approached verification the way that everyone else seemed to: that is, I took a positive attitude toward the ideas, then saw evidence everywhere to support my beliefs. Which is to say, I did not verify anything at all in any kind of meaningful way. Didn’t people used to say that you cannot verify the ideas if you have a negative attitude towards them? Even the simplest study that took that approach would be laughed out of the room.
I might even overlook all that, if only I could see some positive examples of the System at work. It’s a strange system that seems to be based on objective facts, where if you do A then B will result, you make this effort and you will receive that, yet there is nothing or no one that followers can point to as an example of what one might attain. Where is the proof? Where is one person who has awakened?
Or even from a less demanding viewpoint: where is a person whose life seems to be better for the efforts? The more that people are involved in these ideas, the less they exhibit or model behavior and attitudes worth emulating, IME. The long-time devotees are everything from stiff and repressed to self-indulgent, greedy scumbags, or so caustic and negative they become social pariahs.
Mostly they seem unhappy.
When I left FOF, but more importantly when I stopped making 4th Way efforts, I was able to view my life from a global perspective, in a way that I had not been able to for a long time. I was so caught up in the details of efforts, I had lost the ability to see simple, big things like, am I happy? Is this how I want to live my life? I would go so far as to say that I would feel guilty and ashamed even for asking the questions.
I started the 4th Way because it seemed to be something of a scientific “way”: make effort A, and you will receive result B. And from a larger point of view, those results would lead to more consciousness, freedom, self-control and so on. But in myself and others, I saw life becoming entangled, complicated, filled with unnecessary things that didn’t lead to a way out, but led to still more entanglements, complications and what finally began to feel like pointless efforts.
There is a strong strain of Puritanism in this country and it seems to suit many of the 4th Way adherents well. The idea that suffering is good or at any rate useful, that effort is better than no-effort — it all fits just a little too easily with a certain type of person’s innate morality.
I know that much of this comes from the FOF’s distortions of the 4th Way. Gurdjieff said that what is mechanical for one person is right effort for another, and vice versa. So in the FOF, some workaholic people should have been learning to be lazy, maybe, and vice versa. (But you don’t rake in much money from people laying around!) I know this was wrong about the FOF — the standardization of effort. I knew that from day one, but didn’t trust myself enough to follow it for a long time. Of course, following that understanding leads right out of the school, so…
I guess I just don’t trust the 4th Way any more. Or more accurately, I don’t trust the part of me that so badly wants to achieve within that system. There is such a thing as spiritual materialism — when you strip away the vanity, greed, power, and everything else behind the innocent phrase “wanting to wake up” what is left?
There are some very ugly people claiming to be “on the way.” I believe they are going somewhere, but it’s not where they think.
I’m somewhat inclined to apologize to the few readers that actually come here for the amount of material presented. Many continue to read the previous battlesword blog still today and I was hoping you’d caught up so that we could actually talk but unless we dialogue more there’s little to hold me back in this exploration and I just run with the information that seems relevant for the short and long run.
It is all connected but if we just stop and have a break like we did yesterday in one area that is a lot of fun!
Yes, it is really plenty of material.
Let’s be immaterial:
Thank you Tozan for the music, what a treat!
Elena
That’s a very nice conversation Ellen and Jomo. And yet Jomo do you realize that everything you’re saying applies exactly to what you’re saying? Of course they are useful, most things are, even the madness of the hellforship allowed us to understand what’s hell but even if institutions like AA are useful and they are, there are levels of usefulness and you have been standing on the one you’re standing as if it were the only piece of Earth worth your feet.
And then it justifies actions. Justifies getting rid of those that don’t agree with your premise, making fun of them, and doing the same lowly things that we criticize in others. At least we don’t have each other tied up to a conscious chain paying four hundred dollars a month to keep it but are the chains any less loose when they are free?
44. Ellen – October 9, 2009
#40, Lauralupa,
Great perspective. Thanks for that!!! Reality Sandwich has lots of interesting articles.
page 83, #297, Jomo
Thanks for the further passage from K&A. It fleshes out their perspective. I can understand that their thinking has had a strong influence upon you. Also that the fruits of their intensive thought, experience and research correlates rather well with your own. So, of course you tend to trust them and it. That’s how trust works. We find something that expands our own boundaries bringing with it an experience of joy and release from unnecessary constrictions. This can occur on many different levels, i.e. not just intellectual, but nevertheless, the intellect is a powerful, often under utilized way for one human being to communicate with another.
My criticism of their perspective relates to its limitations. They chose to criticize the social-historical-religious context of power, by tracing the consequences that arise through the misunderstanding of a number of key spiritual concepts and phenomena. They did not choose to understand those key concepts, rather they chose to criticize the repercussions of those misunderstandings. Fine. I get that. And of course, their critique fits well, like a glove to the hand of the Fellowship of Friends and the abuses of Robert Burton.
But I do not refer to K&A for any insight relating to a right understanding of those same key concepts. If they have it, they don’t write of it, at least I didn’t them speak of any possible right understanding of for example, the terms, “renunciation” or “enlightenment” or “oneness”, except to nod that perhaps there might be a different understanding, untainted by the corruptions of power, out there somewhere in the world. Thus, I think of their critique as belonging to a level of conditioned, almost political analysis but not to that of philosophy or spirituality. In that sense I consider their thinking itself as limited and to my mind woefully inadequate.
49. Jomo Piñata – October 9, 2009
44/Ellen
In that sense I consider their thinking itself as limited and to my mind woefully inadequate.
Ken Wilber described their perspective, if I can recall the exact words, as “breathtakingly shallow.” I believe I may have heard this from them. I have not read any critique by Ken Wilber of their perspective, but if I found one I would read it and consider it.
I don’t know whether you are right or wrong about their failure to understand certain things. You might be right, I don’t know. I’ve abandoned the attempt to create big maps of the spiritual universe, and the nature of your criticism is, I think, linked to the proposition that there are big, accurate maps, but A & K are writing about the social and political repercussions of misunderstanding those maps. Is that an accurate characterization of your criticism?
I can say that the claim that a critic simply doesn’t understand, or misunderstands, certain principles can serve to deflect the force of critique. Didn’t we say that frequently about people who left? That they stopped understanding? Isn’t there a history of that in the Gurdjieffian tradition? (I’m not saying you’re doing that with your response.)
A & K’s writing is political writing for sure. It speaks truth to power residing in the individual person. In so doing, it empowered me, helped to effect a transformation in me fifteen years ago. My perception is, the empowerment it effected is fundamentally a spiritual one, rooted in self-trust.
The Hell-of-sheep representatives are back on the fofblog. I’ll start posting their posts here so that they too can be looked at.
Like in other posts from such people the aim is to try to reduce the problem of the cult to Robert’s sexuality knowing that the issue of homosexuality itself is extremely delicate to address particularly in California. The cases of Miterrand and Polansky show how difficult it is to “test” people’s sexuality by any standard.
This position has obviously been very successful when all that the fofblog can come up with is to try to find a way that California will punish sexual abuses of authority. While that action is already very good from people who have been denying themselves any action for over twenty years, it barely touches the problem.
This poster’s first paragraphs are well crafted to settle justifications in any potential Fellowship member reading. They are very subtle and if the exclusive “members” of the fofblog don’t tackle them they will let them pass as if they accepted the premises which will help fofmembers feel at ease in the cult which is the main aim. The tendency in the fofblog was to let MOST of these very subtle affirmations pass unchecked unless they were deeply and aggressively confronted by me.
If we look at Crouching Tiger’s answer that is an example of that. His answer gives credit to I know’s post by simply indulging in conversation with him without questioning the deep issue of his mere presence on the blog. That indulgence gives him credibility which is what the FOF is looking for. It is obvious that at this point anyone saying those things is clearly simply not wanting or needing to acknowledge what has been said in the blog but sending out “doctrine” that can hold those members who might read in their indoctrination. The nice thing about CT post is that it still touches on areas that are good to look at but in terms of giving I know or Daily Cardiac space to feel that they can share the blog freely with ex-members, the message for fofmembers is that they are O.K. people and that they have been APPROVED by ex-members with the exception of “Elena the lunatic who is ranting somewhere in her lost blog!” For wasn’t that why you banned me? Because I was a damaged machine? Placing me in that niche justified for your selves your inability to dialogue with what I was presenting. You burnt me out to avoid the conflict I presented to your minds and hearts. I have been deeply ashamed for my arrogance but without it I would not have had the courage to stand up by what I said even if it implied being banned which as you well knew would hurt me down to my foundations. I am recovering though. Our conflicts are real and the struggle continues. A couple of centuries ago, we’d burn the people that questioned us but they were as powerful dead as they were alive. We just can’t run from each other’s realities.
It’s so interesting because it confronts us with so very many questions about tolerance. Vena’s position is that the fofblog had to be kind and mellow to fof speakers so that fofmembers read it and leave the fellowship but the effect of that is contrary to its aims. If fofspeakers are tolerated without confronting them deeply personally and socially they mellow in and end up seeming similar to non fof members. How are you going to deal with it? It’ll be very interesting to watch from this distance. One interesting aspect is that the inability to be “personal” enough by fofbloggers gives place to this middle-ground in which anyone can be dissipating the conflict. Friction is necessary and that is what is most avoided by indoctrination. The word was used in the Cult to stop us from questioning it as a negative emotion but interpreted as the need to “transform” all the conflicts one was having with the cult as if they were one’s own personal limitations. A “civilized blog community” would have means to deal with the conflict, a neutral enough moderator that helped the speakers conform to the form and use the form to sculpt their own excesses. Had we had that you could not have banned me to save your selves from the questioning for your excesses were no less brutal. Five and six of you would get together to attack me and the moderator never really stopped you. He played “invisible” and showed up to give the final blow! It’s interesting to pretend to be the executioner without having a say in the execution!
64. I Know – October 10, 2009
23. Daily Cardiac – October 8, 2009
“But in a larger context I wonder how Wittgenstein’s maxim applies to the 83 plus pages of comments by ex members who, in no uncertain terms, claim to know everything there is to know about the FoF/RB.”
It doesn’t apply, yet does it matter? ‘Knowing everything there is to know about the FoF/RB’ is imaginary. What does it mean “Everything there is to know”?
Behind the smoke there is fire. It is evident that there are some people here who are evoking heavy smoke just for the sake of it. Still there is fire behind the smoke. The heavy smoke prevents an unprejudiced discussion about the FoF and RB and it does not allow an examination of the nature of the fire.
If one relates to RB sexual conduct, be it highly graphic or not, there is fire behind the smoke and no matter how much you disregard it, it is there.
I do agree that it is almost impossible to objectively evaluate RB teaching, especially in the last 4-5 years, because it is more symbolic and in a way more artistic. I have personally seen that such kind of teaching is valid in very particular context and circumstances, or a state of consciousness. It is almost out of context outside the FoF. Even inside the FoF there are many members who are not connected to it.
The criticism against the teaching here is a collection of subjective opinions that I think leads nowhere. To my opinion it weakens the main point and that is the public aspects of RB sexual conduct.
If you are sincere you can relate to that aspect.
Sorry, Elena – thought I had lost you this time! But I just lost the plot and did not follow your on-screen instructions. Back in contact, I hope…..Nigel.
Going to see Kate tonight, with this song in mind…..
Lyrics – I’d Wait For Life
Take That
“There’s a place we used to be
There’s a face that I used to see
There’s a picture with you by my side
There’s a moment that I want to find.
I don’t know where to start
Or how to begin
But I kow I love you still.
If you ever turn away
If you ever change your mind
If the road ahead becomes too hard to climb
If there’s something in your heart that tells you to stop
Oh to hold you close tonight
I’d wait for life.
There’s a voice shouting inside my head
There’s a space on your side of the bed
There’s a hope everytime there’s a sound
There’s a silence that’s playing too loud
I don’t know how you are
Or how you may be
But I know I love you still.
If I close my eyes
I’ll dream a little deeper baby
‘Cause you are always on my mind
Yeah you are always on my mind
For life.”
Hi Nigel,
Glad to know that you’re heading towards a healthier more integrated expression of your self. How does the phrase go? The path is long and narrow….
but as long as we continue to trust our selves it is very difficult to deviate or to not put one’s self back on the track. Either way, isn’t the adventure life and lively?
41 Elena
Someone (anonymous) said the greatest things in life are “something to do, someone to love and something to hope for”. And Rodney Collin said , “I do not know whether I am lucky because I am an optimist or whether I am an optimist because I am lucky – either way I am both in great number”. I do believe, as you say, that I can trust myself – even on the FOF Discussion Blog, which I know is less rich without you – I hope more will ‘tune in’ to battlesword but I am afraid too many like the sound of their own posting, which is hardly the aim of why the site was started in the first place. I would actually say that your sense of self is something bloggers on FOF Discussion cannot handle – and that would include the aim of halting Burton’s perverted schemes…..Nigel.
ARTIST: Barry Manilow
TITLE: One Voice
Just one voice singing in the darkness
All it takes is one voice
Singing so they hear what’s on your mind
And when you look around you’ll find
There’s more than one voice singing in the darkness
Joining with that one voice
Each and every note another octave
Hands are joined and fears unlocked
If only one voice would start it on it’s own
We need just one voice facing the unknown
And then that one voice would never be alone
It takes that one voice
Ba ba ba da da da da…
It takes that one voice
Just one voice singing in the darkness
All it takes is one voice
Shout it out and let it ring
Just one voice
It takes that one voice
And every one will sing
Nicklelodium,
That voice you are calling is OUR voice and the only one able to speak with it is he or she able to remember US
We are all able to do that and in fact we are always trying to do it in every single expression of our selves! Every individual voice is just one flower in OUR voice’s tree!
There are no “better” or “worse” and our struggles with each other are as necessary as milk to a newborn. Mothers feed newborn children and communities “mother” newborn adults. Without the contractions of birth no one would ever mature!
The fofblog today is beautiful! If they were going to talk so well without me, they should have thrown me out at the beginning! I’m grateful they tolerated me for so long and by throwing me out, they helped me get a grip on the obsessive compulsion that I had fallen into. What is so difficult about reality is that everything is part of it! We are all right and wrong but if we can allow each other to continue to be, then we can be beyond right and wrong! Internet is an aspect of the electronic world and I am far from knowing how to handle such speed but learning!
Your love weaves back the torn wounds
sprinkles the dry leaves with fresh drops of water
sucks out the pain like bees, the nectar.
New colours of gratitude give birth to the sunset sky!
Hello Daily Cardiac, I had not seen your post when I posted the previous one. How unfortunate that you must interrupt the dialogue that was running lightly in the fofblog. Too much life for you to bear is it not? Now that we managed to get rid of me, are you going to party with your reasoning in the new version of the fofblog? Between you and the Doesn’t know character are you going to take the fofblog over because they think they have to behave as if they were in the Fellowship Cult?
You still haven’t answered a hundred questions I’ve asked you before. Consciousness is under more laws and answering the questions posed to you would imply your ability to deal with all the issues at hand and not only the few subjective and indoctrinated reasoning with well trained language which is all that you allow your poor formatory apparatus to perceive.
I must grant that you’ve been very smart in finally getting me out with the help of DXP and the many that used you like they were used by you.
Did you read Ton’s great answer to you? Congratulations Ton, you sound so much better and are writing beautifully.
It is a treat to read all the good writers like Ellen, Jomo, Bruce! So many and all in their own way including you Daily Cardiac. If writing well, meant consciousness, I’d be kissing your ass like I kissed Robert’s for so long! And Girard’s!
Allow me to admit that I’ll continue to answer you as if you were my much loved and sick husband because your reasoning is no different to his and you’re just as sick even if you’re not him!
Your little dialogue with I know is going to prove precious! Now you’ll show the other bloggers how uncivilized they are while you are so civilized and gradually you’ll take over the blog! Add a few more fofers and you’ll have an fofblog all for your legitimacy! It’ll be a good try but hopefully you’ll get to the marrow of their being! Maybe you’ll even manage to get some bloggers to join again! I can already feel how they fall into the hypnotic trance they use to whenever you started dancing with your reasoning like a prima ballerina of the mind!
To make the terms equal and the discussion legitimate we would have to put conditions on the way the dialogue is carried out and a sharp enough moderator to call on you every time you just repeated old dogma and avoided the questions. More consciousness more laws!! After all, laws have the great capacity to guarantee that specific forms of abuse don’t continue to take place but corrupt people like you have the capacity to corrupt any law! So let’s see:
90. Daily Cardiac
I know:
Regarding your response to my comment at #23:
DC – “But in a larger context I wonder how Wittgenstein’s maxim applies to the 83 plus pages of comments by ex members who, in no uncertain terms, claim to know everything there is to know about the FoF/RB.”
#64. I Know:
“It doesn’t apply, yet does it matter? “Knowing everything there is to know about the FoF/RB’ is imaginary. What does it mean “Everything there is to know”?”
I agree that “knowing all there is to know” is imaginary. But it applies in the context of the maxim Walter Tanner submitted.
If someone with a reasoning mind were to take the comments of ex members at face value they would conclude that the individuals knew “all there is to know” about RB/FoF because there appears to be no bounds or limits to what they can know, at least not from their comments. For the most part they are not qualifying their comments as opinions or beliefs, but offering them with an unerring surety.
Elena: Aren’t we both affirming our reasoning with unerring surety? Haven’t you sold your life to the cult and I taken it out of the cult so that we can both stand on the personal unerring surety of our beliefs? Why are you pretending you’re not?
I know: – “Behind the smoke there is fire… If one relates to RB’s sexual conduct, be it highly graphic or not, there is fire behind the smoke and no matter how much you disregard it, it is there.”
DC: Is there really fire? If someone screams fire in a crowded auditorium it’s wise to assume there is fire until you are out in the open where you can learn the facts at your leisure. Maybe there was a fire, maybe it was all a hoax, including some smoke.
Elena: There is fire no matter how much you try to hide the smoke under the smocking,(is that how you spell it?)
But this is just you my dear husband or one of his cherished followers, trying to make your crowd believe that you’ve got everything under control in the softness of your made up haven. Words made up to play the part of mother in charge telling the followers that there’s no fire and nothing to run from!
Daily Cardiac: In our case we don’t yet know the whole truth behind Robert’s lifestyle or actions.
Elena: Aahhh my dear, we are no longer WE, nor do your aims to plant doubts on me have the effect they use to! Keep singing to the flock that feeds you, tell them what they can know and not know, keep telling them what they can think, eat, wear and be so that you can keep them under your sleeve!
Daily Cardiac: Each of us can know that his actions either offend our sensibilities / beliefs or do not offend them.
Elena: Again, NO MY LOVE (or anybody else’s, it’s the same,) we can not only know that he offends our sensibilities and beliefs, WE ALSO KNOW with absolute certainty that he and you and all your inner circle raped the young men after indoctrinating them and induced us to believe that a poor sociopath addicted to sex with child-like men is a God free of all human conditions, psychologically disenabling our ability to connect to our innermost humanity and stand against the abuses. Disenabling each and every one of our senses and inducing us to sacrifice our integrity and that of others to what we believed was a Conscious Teaching because we trusted you, ONLY because we trusted you more than we trusted our own selves. The contradiction is so abhorrent that few could understand how it could actually happen unless they’d been inside. Nice, pretty looking people going to concerts and working all day, paying thousands to have a few sociopaths live on their salary and rape every boy they could get a hand on behind the scenes.
Daily Cardiac or why don’t we call you by your name:
Girard Haven: That is all.
Elena: What makes you think “that is ALL” my love? Again reassuring your flock and telling them what they can think? Think only THAT much because THAT is ALL? My poor love, THAT isn’t even the starter! That is just the tip of the iceberg, the only thing you’ve reduced your eyes to look at so that you can justify the whole of your world on a well practiced dogma!
Daily Cardiac, I mean, Girard Haven:
We are not out of the auditorium yet, but one day all of us will be in the position to “know all there is to know” about it.
Elena: Who in the Haven told you that WE are not the Auditorium? That WE have to wait to die to be in a position to live? My poor husband, WE ARE THE AUDITORIUM, THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES, THE USHERS AND THE PRODUCERS, THE TICKET SELLERS AND THE TICKET BUYERS, WE MY DEAR LOVE ARE THE STUFF THIS PLAY IS BEING MADE OF AND WE DO NOT NEED TO WAIT ANY LONGER TO EXIST- Why my dear husband or one of his cherished followers, WHY do YOU think you can tell others that they are not the ones who can judge whether they are being fraudulently deceived into paying for an identity that they cannot possibly achieve while they hold a bunch of sociopaths as the idols of their lives? That they should not even try because their time is not ripe and that they’ll know the truth only when they are close to dying so that they cannot then act against you? Why do you manipulate them so sadly? On what grounds do you leave their understanding of the horror of their play for the last minute when they realize that they have loved you in vain? For that is the only thing that matters when we are dying and they’ll know then that they discarded the whole human world that was rightly their own, their families and friends, children, husbands and wives to love a sick sociopath that allowed people like you and all in the inner circle to manipulate their lives to the point that they even paid for it!
Girard Haven: My own personal belief / opinion / understanding, call it what you will, is that a teacher having consensual sex with a disciple is not grounds for concern and is certainly not grounds for leaving a school
Elena: Your own personal belief, opinion, understanding is that of a man who lives on those people’s lives. You get paid with the money that is willed from them, you keep growing your ego on the power of authority that they grant you, you suck their soul out to make your ego stronger, your convictions more crystallized, your cult more dangerous to them and anyone who comes in contact with it.
Your dear and most beloved teacher, Robert Burton, IS NOT having consensual sex with his disciples.
Your dear and most beloved teacher, Robert Burton, IS NOT having consensual sex with his disciples.
Your dear and most beloved teacher, Robert Burton, IS NOT having consensual sex with his disciples.
His disciples are setting up young men in a mind control environment in which the authority of the so called Teacher, Robert Burton is inflated to the status of a GOD without human references but it is their humanity what is being raped against all dignity by a poor man who has to cover his many flows by being reassured by young beautiful men that he is still lovable even if there is only conditioned behavior in the interchange. The power some people can reach over others is so great that they can even make them say and act as if they loved him although they are just acting under conditions of mind control. It was as true of every man and woman in fascist regimes but that did not stop the world from making them accountable for it and you too will be made accountable.
Girard Haven: (A teacher) …..that is otherwise delivering on what it promised, which is relevant in my case and in the cases of many other current students.
Elena: Delivering what it promised? Of course my love, it promised you would be the next conscious being on planet earth, the one and only perfect conscious being amongst the six billion dead. Just you and Robert in a world of your own that testified for the truth of that statement. How could you let that temptation slip out? A genius in a world that programmed computers but that was not enough for you, programming human beings was so much more attractive, wasn’t it? You understood all the mechanics of reasoning that would make it possible but above all you understood that if you managed to take the word away from anyone else and only you two could speak, your words would dictate the play. You might think you are geniuses but you are little more than cheap criminals that mussel your victims so that you can dominate them. AND IT WAS ALL POSSIBLE BECAUSE WE TRUSTED AND LOVED YOU. Your crimes are worse than those who get killed en masse by enemies because we TRUSTED AND LOVED YOU, while they knew they were victims of inhuman wars but at least they did not trust anyone.
Girard Haven posing as Daily Cardiac: On the other hand, if the school is not delivering on what it promised to someone, whether real or perceived, no amount of “above board” action by the teacher will suffice.
Elena: The Cult is certainly delivering what it promised: that it would indoctrinate each and every one of the members if the member surrendered to its methods. That it would dismantle the integrity of each member’s centres, instinctively, emotionally and intellectually and would even condition their movements and the clothes they could wear. That it would leave no trace of who they were or where they came from. That it would make their families and friends extinct and leave no trace of their nation’s essence. That it would disfigure them in such a perfect sense that they would work each day until the end of their lives for a Goddess in a male body that would rape them day in and out because SHE was not to be measured by any human standard.
Girard Haven posing as Daily Cardiac: I also understand that some others on this blog do not consider Robert’s actions in relation to sex with members as being consensual, but that’s another, entirely independent, issue.
Elena: How smart of you to leave it there! Another entirely independent issue that you’re not willing to expand on leaving just a trace of legitimacy to the question and all the doubt, for you stand on the premise that it is consensual. Psychopaths like you may not be aspects of objective reality but that does not make the psychopathic sociopath in you any less real. You are real in this realm of existence even if this realm is mostly an illusion that appears and disappears with each life struggling to become objective. The suffering you cause is real even if not objective. The tendencies that you develop are real, even if not objective and the karma that you condition has consequences that far outreach this lifetime.
Girard Haven or his cheap imitators, one of the many copycats that couldn’t even develop his own style to stand up for the sick sociopath that your are defending says:
By the way, I know; I don’t take offense with your moniker as ton does. I see it as a term of agreement, such as – if someone tells me “life is difficult” I might answer “I know.”
ton – 73:
“personally i like being ’subjective’ and my sense of self does not depend on this idiotic notion that the ‘objective’ is ’superior’ or preferable to the ’subjective.”
Girard Haven: If that’s true then it follows that there is no such quality as superior or inferior, no right or wrong; only what someone personally sees as right or superior. Ask anyone what’s right or wrong and they will offer a belief, and those beliefs will vary and contradict and cancel out the beliefs of others.
What are we left with? Right or wrong still exist, independent from our notions. They exist objectively.
Elena: Such clever mind games to prove that you’re intellectually more able to reason it out than Ton but that does not make you right Girard my love. It makes you equally sick, equally deluded and equally unable to deal with anything but the formatoriness of your limited intellectual function. You prove with such reasoning that you have been indoctrinated to think only certain thoughts, not that you have in any way been taught to encompass reality with consciousness. You prove exactly the opposite of what you’re trying to prove: that your School and your teacher are a perfect failure while your cult and your charlatan are a perfect success: that you can’t think and simply repeat old stereotyped dogma.
ton – “consider that anything that you might deem ‘objective’ is being filtered through your ’subjectivity’ anyway.”
Girard Haven: That is only partly true as I see it.
If an individual has gained access to an objective or, more objective, understanding through his or her own efforts to do so it means they have by passed, overcome their subjectivity to some degree. It also means (where I agree with you) the objectivity is filtered through the individual’s self, which still retains the characteristics of a particular essence. A person can arrive at an objective understanding and still be attracted to some things more than to other things.
Elena: Not quite my love, no matter how pretty you make it sound, how clean and proper it looks! The truth is that an individual who has been indoctrinated enough like you have and the many of you in the cult through your and other’s efforts means that they have managed to bypass their own integrity, overridden their own self and totally submitted to the guru’s will. It also means that they have developed a hasnamuss or double persona that has taken charge of their lives and there are no traces of their essence except when they scream and yell in the privacy of their inner horror. They have not built a spirit on the structure of essence but a double personality on the structure of their own chief weakness. They are not wholly or holy people but extremely dangerous people. You and Robert Burton and everyone in the inner circle of the Fellowship of Friends Cult is an extremely dangerous sociopath.
Girard Haven: A person can arrive at an objective understanding and still be attracted to some things more than to other things.
Elena: No. A conscious being rooted in objective reality cannot hurt others. He or she cannot act against himself or anyone else. He cannot penetrate consciousness as long as he continues to hurt others. He or she is integrated in thoughts, words and actions and cannot hurt anyone. This does not mean that he or she cannot put criminals in jail and execute them for their crimes or that he or she cannot use the law to protect all men and women who have been hurt by the criminals.
Ames Gilbert – # 83:
“IMO, anyone setting themselves up as a spiritual teacher is entering very dangerous territory, because those who are corruptible are always corrupted. And anyone who has not faced their ‘dark side’ head-on’ and explored and accepted and come to terms with it is corruptible. The few effective teachers teach by example, the example of their being. They may explain principles for the intellectual intelligence with words, but it is the wordless that is by far the most important teaching.”
Girard Haven or any other Fellowship representative using his same indoctrination: I do think with this comment you have gotten as close to the central issue as anyone has. I also agree in principle with all of what you say in this comment.
Where we disagree is in the evaluation of the facts, evidence, circumstances.
The circumstances being that there are different levels of consciousness, different states, available to man and men who occupy those upper levels of conscious states are invariably misunderstood by those who do not. How could it be otherwise? If it were otherwise we would be the one sought and not the seeker.
Elena: Not quite Girard, really just not quite. Can’t you see how poorly you disenable your own self? You talk about the evaluation of facts, the evidence and the circumstances but you are in fact not willing to deal with the facts, the evidence or the circumstances. You immediately return to your mind paths and your blah, blah, blah about states of consciousness that cannot be measured by any human being on earth because only you and Robert can experience such states! My poor husband or one of his sheep, can’t you see how feeble and childlike your pretensions are? Just you and your little guru being the owners of CONSCIOUSNESS, and to top it all, just in case we don’t buy it, a consciousness with a hallmark of your own! My dear husband, you are definitely an American but no matter how American you are, even America can’t make consciousness its private property!
I know it makes you so awfully mad that I pinpoint to you your humanity and the childlike aspect of your being begging for that guy who you made your God to be what you would like him to be, but he is not even close to being conscious nor are you more than an orphan looking for a man to make you more human. How did you both ever manage to become so inhuman in the search for consciousness? How have you all inside the Fellowship of Friends cult managed to hurt your selves so badly? And how do we outside continue to watch this horror story without stopping it?
So back to the facts my love. Do you think you can be half as patient with me as I was with you both seventeen years in your cult? Would you stop me for giving too long an angle although I listened to both of you for seventeen years? Would you have a third the patience I had with you and listen for at least four? Would any of you still have enough sense to hear anything but the two lone voices the Fellowship has empowered? Would you listen to other human beings until you can find the human still inside of you? For how long are you going to pay for this madness that discards the human to justify the inhuman? The facts are that you psychologically disfigure each and every member in the Fellowship and once disfigured they allow the Cult to rape them, exploit them physically, emotionally and intellectually. When you stop behaving like a spoiled child who can only scream out his own belief system and start acting like a grown up who can dialogue about the facts without discarding them and replacing them with made up states of consciousness of which you know nothing for even about those you cannot extend even one sentence, then you can be granted some credibility. Until then, you are simply proving your very effective brainwashed condition.
Girard Haven: I don’t know for sure if you agree with those few thoughts but if you don’t there is no basis for you relating to my belief system.
Elena: And you are convinced that with THAT you’ve simply disenabled us like you disenable everyone inside! My poor deluded husband, when did it ever occur to you that your word has THE authority or your reasoning is any more objective than anybody else’s when you turn in circles like a madman biting his own tail? That might happen inside the cult but not here.
Girard Haven: Main stream psychology, the one we inherit and imitate from our parents, peers and instructors is perfectly suited to expose charlatans who claim to operate in the spiritual realm, but it is not equipped to expose or evaluate enlightened men because enlightened action is, for the most part, beyond those who would be doing the evaluating.
Elena: Yes? And you think you are more suitable for the job although you cannot deal with the facts and escape into STATES OF CONSCIOSNESS as if they were the NEW HAVEN of humanity? That we can rape each other because after all, in consciousness, what does it matter if the machines are getting raped?
Girard Haven: As soon as an action diverged from ordinary reasoning it would be lost to the evaluator, who would be forced to use his/her normal powers of reasoning to determine super normal actions.
Elena: SUPER NORMAL ACTIONS – Come on Girard, listen to your self: SUPER NORMAL ACTIONS!!!! One my love, just one normal action by you or the sick guru you have for a teacher. Please, just tell us ONE normal function by either one of you in relation to other people. Smoke will come out of your brains before you can come up with even just ONE normal function in your little cult.
Girard Haven: Our normal psychology reasons like this: 1) All charlatans misuse the trust placed in them by followers in order to arrive at their own selfish and harmful aims ( true.) 2) Teacher X is exhibiting behavior consistent with those known to be charlatans ( true.) 3) Therefore Teacher X is a charlatan (not necessarily true.) Correction – Teacher X “appears” to be a charlatan and could be one or could not be one. (true)
Elena: Nope, normal psychology reasons like this: If you are raping and exploiting people you are not a conscious being, you are not only not just a charlatan, you are a criminal.
Girard Haven: Consciousness implies a choice, it implies freedom.
Elena: The only real freedom that Consciousness implies is the freedom to love, to love all life and NO conscious being would ever allow his or her self to harm anyone or anything. He or she would in fact stop anyone from harming them selves or others if he or she could.
Girard Haven: A charlatan is not free and has no choice. He has to exhibit behavior consistent with who he is. But an enlightened man or woman is not bound by this restriction. They can display any form of behavior they deem necessary to fulfill their higher duty. This might consist of acting like a saint in one instance and a scoundrel the next or a fool one moment and a wise man the next.
Elena: Those perhaps would suit a conscious being, to play scoundrel like a child but NEVER to act criminally and you are criminals: you hurt everything beautiful about life: the trust we placed on you and with that trust, everything creative that could have come with it. A healthy community is not a bunch of retards doing what one man says. By abusing that trust and inducing people into specific behavior you disfigure them psychologically.
Girard Haven: It’s obvious that several ex members on this blog have made a big issue of Robert’s having sex with members. Is this reality part of something bigger than themselves, a device that facilitates for some their departure from the FoF?
A device that a teacher understands is part of a much bigger fabric which he allows to play out? After all, Robert does not find out someone objects to his lifestyle and then sends them away. They leave of their own accord; which may indicate wrong priorities or valuation.
One can only speculate, not having access to Robert’s inner motivations, but of course this scenario is within the realm of possibility and the grasp of reasoning.
The fact that he might enjoy the encounters, enjoy that part of his role as much as the charlatan would is not relevant to anything. How would this scenario distinguish the real teacher from the charlatan?
The charlatan can only deceive and pretend to teach because he or she does not have the being to actually teach, although they could repeat words attributed to other teachers.
Whereas a real teacher, aside from any “questionable” circumstances connected to his or her external role could teach, in a vital and appropriate manner; appropriate in an objective sense, not in a sense that everyone would approve or accept. A real teacher could impart consciousness to anyone ready to receive it where a charlatan could not, and that’s a big difference.
Elena: So you’re actually going to look at the sex issue here? What stops you from seeing the facts that have been presented carefully by the actual men that were submitted to the encounter? What is most ironic about the Fellowship of Friends Cult is that the least abusive relationship in it is from one angle that of Robert Burton with the boys. It is the least abusive because they at least get paid. Of course it’s sick but they get incorporated into the upside down and backwards life of the cult. There is no amount of money that could pay for what they have to give but still, they get paid for whoring out Robert Burton’s insatiability. And if they adapt quickly enough they even get to speak! They speak for the devil but speaking gives them a sense of having a life. They get power over others. And if they adapt even more, they even get to share in the money and develop olive companies for themselves or pieces of land while the rest of the members are silenced for the whole of a lifetime adoring the Goddess in a male body and all the sequitur around him! They get a semblance of a life even if it is at the cost of the other’s lifelessness.
The silence of the lambs was never more pathetic nor had the human being submitted to ignominy like this before. Amongst the quickly converted sissys and the “promised to be more cruel than men” women that control the cult’s inner circle, mankind will never witness more pathetic human beings. We were already pretty disfigured before we joined the cult, how could people not be in a society in which a tennis player gets paid what would keep hundreds of people from starving? but once inside no one will ever picture us as pathetically feeble as we became. You incarnate everything that reflects the death of the human courage to free our selves from submission and STATE for once and for ever the right of every man and woman to stand for what is human in our lives.
You might not agree to the freedom with which I move from the intellectual discourse to the emotional reality of our conversation. You might get angry at my freedom to call you husband or friend or enemy or lover or criminal but your intellectual limitations to deal with a conversation and struggle that are essentially human are not my own. We are not strangers talking “objectively” on a blog, we lived two decades together and your lack of emotionality does not show your maturity but your immaturity. It was not the papers that made us a marriage, nor the papers that dissolved our marriage but the fact that you hurt your self as a man and your wife as a woman and you acted against your marriages one by one to stand up for a poor and narcissistic sociopath that gave you power over people’s lives. I was a victim in your life and cult like any other member and I will fight it until death does separate us.
From the musical ‘Chess’ by Rice/Andersson/Ulvaeus…..
“………………………………………
Holding some childhood grudge?
How could I be, I’m in the spotlight,
Half of the world my judge:
All I demand is those I work for,
All I give my time, all my skills, my pain;
Those that I entertain:
Give me the same. compassion in return.
But the fools never learn…..”
Hi Elena.
I don’t agree that “If we look at Crouching Tiger’s answer that is an example of that. His answer gives credit to I know’s post by simply indulging in conversation with him without questioning the deep issue of his mere presence on the blog. That indulgence gives him credibility which is what the FOF is looking for.”
First of all, it is you who has always insisted that everyone is welcome in the public square, and about the value of dialogue, and about the value of community! Is that dialogue now exclusive, or subject to censorship?
I feel that people like DC are a part of that community, and there is a definite value in the sense that every current student is a potential ex-student. Shouting them off the blog doesn’t help that process move along.
The Blog always sharpens up when a character like ‘I know’ or ‘DC’ enters the fray, so in a way they are necessary to it. I can’t see any useful function in shouting them straight off it again.
But I think you are already well aware of all of this!
It was good to see you in London again, and looking well! I hope you come again soon. I don’t seem to have your current email address. Can you post it here? Thanks.
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Good to see you here and so good that we don’t agree but can still talk!
What I’m trying to get to is that characters like “I know” who pretend to be ex-students just talking nicely about the Fellowship because they had such a swell time there should be questioned from the beginning on their lies. By giving them credibility they are legitimized and that doesn’t help the aim of helping members understand that the world they are supporting is ALL A FAKE. When you’re obviously dealing with liars and fakes with a purpose, not dealing with that gives them credit, which is what I think fofbloggers do when they indulge in conversation with them without questioning their persona.
A Daily Cardiac at least is honest and not pretending to be an ex-member which is just a tactic by the Fellowship to influence readers. The whole structure of blogging lends itself to such deceptions and that is one of the reasons why sincere open dialogue is almost impossible.
Where I would like to take this conversation is to the possibility of legitimate dialogue. Where is the correct place for addressing the person and where the subject? How do they intertwine?
As you know, I’ve tried to avoid banning at all cost but there are areas in which I wouldn’t doubt using it. A person that comes to a meeting pretending that he is not what he really is, should be banned right there and then! On what grounds would one allow such person to proceed with the deception?
I think a lot has to do with the idea people have that The Public Square is a place where anything is allowed no matter how lowly it might be. But the Public Square is where we can best acknowledge that we are all one humanity with equal rights.
CT: “I feel that people like DC are a part of that community, and there is a definite value in the sense that every current student is a potential ex-student. Shouting them off the blog doesn’t help that process move along.”
There are delicate areas for me that can’t just run down the river unaddressed and Daily Cardiac is a criminal to me, an outlaw even if the laws are protecting him. People that rape and justify it are good in jail and I talk to them as I would talk to criminals even if we’re talking about my ex-husband. I’m not fooling around CT. This is no game for me; this is not a leisure conversation amongst friends. We are dealing with criminals protected by the law of freedom of religion.
Just the fact that you allow a person to speak no matter where, gives the speech and him or her, legitimacy. That is why there aren’t any public institutions promoting people’s free speech and free speech tends to happen out of public or private institutions in the streets or public squares. In society there are few channels, in cults there are none. That is why it seems of utmost importance to develop a form that will allow speakers to speak so that the dialogue reaches its aim to communicate the differences without having to insult anyone and come to agreements were possible. If you’re just going to have fun and not discuss things deeply, if we’re not going to transform our selves as individuals and communities, then those structures to a dialogue would not be necessary but if we don’t start transforming our selves as individuals and communities, we might as well retire from society. Structured “form” allows for life to develop… remember?
When we allow a Daily Cardiac or any Fellowship representative to speak freely without holding him accountable for what he is saying within certain conditions to the dialogue, what happens is that he can repeat the dogma over and over again and in allowing it, it is legitimized by the fofblog. Daily Cardiac’s participation on the blog has a very definite aim which is to help members, where they to read, to convince themselves again and again that being in the Cult is legitimately justified. That turns the fofblog into a Fellowship cult tool.
That is one area. The other area is that of establishing forms to the dialogue in which the participants cannot just babble away without being held accountable within the dialogue; that they cannot just attack a speaker without addressing the issues; that they cannot just leave myriad questions unanswered. That is if we pretend to be a civilized community improving our means of communication and not just a club in which the clan takes over and bans what it doesn’t like as it did banning me.
Concerning Daily Cardiac I have asked him a hundred questions that he hasn’t answered and he comes back with the same indoctrination and the fofbloggers are simply running along on HIS terms. They are manipulated in a very similar way in which we were manipulated in the Cult. Freedom to participate in a community does not mean freedom to manipulate a community at one’s will which is what they already did in the cult. Freedom of expression does not mean that one attacks the speaker’s persona and leaves the questions unaddressed. All that has happened repeatedly in the fofblog and those abuses where what lead to my increasing discomfort, screaming and final banning. Had we all been put in our places by a more knowledgeable moderator, we would have gotten somewhere. And with that I repeat as I have always, that Steve is learning like we all are and that I know he did his best. His best though is allowing the fofblog to become a Fellowship propaganda tool and hurt people through banning.
CT: “The Blog always sharpens up when a character like ‘I know’ or ‘DC’ enters the fray, so in a way they are necessary to it. I can’t see any useful function in shouting them straight off it again.”
Shouting is a wonderful way of letting people know that one or those close to one are in danger or that one is suffering or that one cannot control one’s self and needs help!
Banning people because they shout is affirming that the community is unwilling to deal with the problem and THAT is what we did in the Fellowship Cult: avoid every whisper that told us that the member needed help. We were trained like professional dogs to keep out everything that dissented from the Fellowship’s status quo and by banning me the fofblog aligned with the same pattern of behaviour current in the Fellowship cult. THAT is dangerous. They will manage to convince ex-members to move back to the cult if they don’t move out of that pattern.
I have not learnt not to shout by being banned CT, I’ve learnt that I have to deal with my suffering on my own because there is no community to help. Without the few that spoke up for me and wrote to me in private it would have been a lot harder. I thank you for your share of that. What doesn’t kill us makes us fatter goes the saying here, so I’ll take it that I’ve been well served!
Yes, it was good to be in London and see you there looking so much more relaxed and happy than I’d ever seen you in the Fellowship. Recovering life is a precious adventure! My e-mail is tabluttatgmaildotcom
Thanks for sharing!
Elena
The more I look at the problem, the more I feel that one of the reasons it happened just the way it did, is because men in our times are taught to not be emotional about anything in their lives. That has changed slightly in the younger generation but hardly. I often had the feeling that in the upside down and backwards world of Girard, his love for Robert had become the only channel for expressing the degree of passion and emotionality of his life. The passion, the conviction, the commitment are all there only that they are there for every possible absurdity that Robert might come up with and not just the ridiculous absurdities of having to wear two thousand dollar satin shoes that he has to throw away the next day because even the members are shocked but the truly criminal abuses that he also indulges in.
All that brings me to the feeling that the only truly important aspect about this whole cult phenomenon is the subject of LOVE. It is people’s emotions in essence (pure, like before knowing evil!) what are really taken advantage of in the cult and through them the cult’s so called human ideals and the guru’s inflated personification what manage to cross the boundaries of the individual’s self and start manipulating it to get him and her to work for the cult.
Then there is the question of having to prove that one was abused and paid for it!!! That one was raped and worked for it! It would boggle the mind of no matter what judge but THAT is exactly what happens! Members willingly submit because they LOVE and TRUST the leaders and people around them.
The subject of love has barely been touched on. We are so tender in our hearts! I still tend to fall in love immediately or cry whenever anyone shows kindness to me! The great thing is that as I unravel the personal mesh, the social conditioning also reveals itself like a flower opening out from a seed with all the steps in between.
Nigel 45
You’ve an amazingly beautiful talent to get in there without hurting anyone! I’ve so much to learn from you! Thank you.
Hi Elena, thanks for the reply.
There are several instances where you have talked about the beauty of a public forum that is open to all. Without conditions. I could quote but I’m sure you’re aware of them! This new censorship of yours sounds like a very sudden departure!
The blog only has very loose restrictions, governed by a moderator. But for the most part, people are free to come and go and say what they please without any accountability at all. It’s simply the nature of the beast. People are free to spout dogma, babble, to not address the issues and to even attack others (to a limited degree). Or even to pretend to be someone else.
I feel this is really the source of your frustration – that the Blog obstinately refused to become the vehicle for action against the fellowship that you wanted it to be. It was only periodically hard enough on the fellowship, and never definite enough in its aims, for your liking.
The obvious conclusion from your experience on the blog would be that it will only ever be an information source – for people either in, considering going in, or just out of the fellowship. But an invaluable information source.
When you pushed it and asked it to change, it could not change its nature. While it’s fine to keep shouting and it may give the blog a [needed] occasional kick up the arse, once the answer has been given you have to find an alternative way forward, or your energy stagnates.
The real question is, Is it this blog of your own? Or something else entirely? What is the most constructive way forward for your energy?
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Yes, I must admit it is difficult for me to understand that people realize the Fellowship is what it is and then sit and have tea with “Daily Cardiac” and “I know” as if they were close friends. I wonder why the dialogue with my husband doesn’t stop me from calling him sick criminal and trying to stop him not as a wife, which I already failed to do, but as a human being which I am just becoming. I don’t completely agree with you that the blog was ever that free or that THAT is the nature of the beast. Rather I would say that that is the beast you’ve created to fit your comforts. You and others on that blog. Didn’t we inspire each other to write out a petition, to picket, to go to court and to measure each other’s being until we pushed each other out of it? You speak beautifully but you speak as if nothing had happened there. Did we not struggle? You and I? Did our struggle not challenge us? Did it not please you to see them kick and push me out at last after challenging every one I could? The wisest friend I have is a woman who has not yet allowed me to destroy our friendship! She rinses me out like water then slips away from me! She holds me at her will, God knows what she sees but in doing so she helps me stand no matter how beaten! She feels like Community! Then there is Nigel who is no less wise and has never asked me to give up!
Do you really think it’s over? That it’s time to pack up and look for another job? That if no one reads me today no one will ever read me? That if I make a blog a writing north to the place I wish to go, I won’t trace a map that others will be able to reach? I’m only just beginning to understand what happened to us in the Fellowship Cult Crouching Tiger and what is happening to us outside of cults. Why would I expect anyone else to read me while I struggle with my self to understand? Once one has begun to battle the most wonderful thing about aloneness is that it forces one to bring one’s self to the front and I have already lost so many battles. A true warrior looses many battles before she looses the war and I have lost so many with my self that those I loose with others look meek in comparison. There is no guarantee that the war will be won but as long as I am willing to struggle there’s hope! If others find comfort in sitting on this subject and having tea and biscuits with it, let them sit and enjoy the afternoon but allow me to keep digging out the guts of the beast in the darkness of our night that I may find a treasure within! When I come back to the States I’ll go picket again, I’m far from thinking that those people inside no longer need help.
You mention that I have talked about the beauty of a public forum open to all and if you really look at it you will notice that I’ve talked about how the Public Square is to me a symbol of the realm in which we are all one. The Symbol of the unity of mankind expressed in the freedom to be in it no matter one’s social status. It is not the case of most other places in our cities that have become elitist clubs for a few selected people. If a blog has no aim then all it needs is a moderator to turn pages and if that is what you and they in charge wish of the fofblog then what can I argue with you? But it isn’t true that the fofblog has no aim. It has adopted the same form that the Greater Fellowship adopted, that meekly questions the Fellowship Cult. It is FAR from being a free public square Crouching Tiger; just the fact that I was banned proves that it is not a corner for freedom of speech. The other side of the Park to the Public Square is the arena in which we struggle with each other. What I am proposing is that we make of that arena a Conscious Structure for our struggle.
I was banned not because I shouted but because I shouted FASCISTS. FASCISTS, willing to allow the Fellowship Cult to continue unperturbed. FASCISTS because we know that people are getting hurt inside, psychologically manipulated by the structure abusing the innocence of the member’s surrender. FASCISTS because knowing what is happening inside, you choose to allow it to continue.
The Spirit of the Public Square is one and it is with that Spirit that we could allow our selves to struggle. That is, that we meet under definite structures that allow us to challenge each other and understand where our mutual limitations lie knowing that we can still hold each other as a community. That is not the same as accepting that we come to a Forum pretending we are ex-students who thought the cult was swell and allow our lies to cover the suffering people experienced for the convenience of the cult. EVERYTHING one DOES HAS REAL REPERCUSSIONS AND EVERYTHING we DO HAS REAL REPERCUSSIONS. Nothing is wasted in life.
The Spirit of the Public Square is not freedom to abuse each other but freedom to protect each other because we are conscious of belonging to one another. Because we make our selves responsible for each other’s well being. The more conscious we are the more laws we are under but it is in fact only ONE law that we are under: The law of our ONENESS. The law in which any form of abuse to that integrity is lawlessness. There is no freedom to lie, to steal or to rape in Consciousness. Stopping the lies, the rape and the abuses IS an expression of Consciousness within our individual selves as much as in our societies.
It is difficult to be alone in the Public Square Crouching Tiger and you are always welcome to the challenge of that struggle! If even two of us dialogue then there is Community! If I stand alone then there is still the Public Square!
Elena.
I understand that it’s still an open wound for you. But when you were banned from the blog – and I for one was not in favour of it – it defined the blog’s position in respect of the Fellowship of Friends. It said to you, “This is for information and revelation, but it is not a vehicle for militant action”. First of all, that has to be accepted completely on its own terms, without any attempt to bend the truth into what you think it COULD be. The blog planted a flag when it banned you, and it stands on that ground for better or worse.
When you say, “Do you really think it’s over? That it’s time to pack up and look for another job? “, I would answer that you need to find a vehicle that suits your purpose better. If you want to organise some kind of action, that has to be kept separate from a blog. Don’t confuse their purposes! There really is no crossover between the two in terms of weight of purpose.
I don’t see anything wrong in signing petitions or picketing or bringing lawsuits etc.. if they have real teeth in respect of the Fellowship. But they are separate in spirit from a blog where people are free to pass through as and when they like, mostly without giving their real names. Your banning gave you the cue you really needed, not to be naive and confuse the two. A source of information is not the same as a militant action group, and it never will be.
I suppose that is also what Tozan was trying to say when he asked if the next step was in art or something like that.
Is that it? O.k. I’ll look for a cemetery and try to give it a decent burial!
I still don’t understand what makes you think that I think a blog is a militant action group. Is that what you hear me calling for? Blogging for me was about understanding why we are not willing to act and finding reasons for doing so but I must be talking Chinese.
I’ll send you both flowers when I manage to bury it!
49 Elena
Hi there, you beautiful soul, growing out of the abyss of what was put upon you by the cult, and was never the real You! Battlesword is so right for you and makes me believe we have parallel plays, if not by time, then by our natures.
I thought it would be good to elucidate reasons why I have learned to not hurt people, nor to exasperate them with my ‘crazy periods’. The first thing is that they stop listening to you and the second thing is you get such a volley of negative response. At the stage of NOW, I have memories of my bipolar dictated role, but do not go around championing other folks’ causes, nor ask them to worship me for what I think I am. I would dearly like to think that I will never again be treated to a period in the local asylum (and if I have learned from other times when I have been there, and what led up to those periods, it becomes less likely) but it may be still necessary for my, and others’ safety that I have to be.
I truly believe that REB and other enablers in the Cult of FOF will be brought to a High Court to answer for their criminal misdeeds, and that you and I will give evidence, to play the part of Great Actors and Actresses in the play called ‘Burton’s Folly’. You have heard this passage from Ruskin several times before, but for me it is one of those Loveable Sustainers…..
Frondes Agrestes 1.2
“The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample upon it, – lest it should be pearls, even though it looks like husks. It is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good heart, that shows not too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to try all things; and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its delights are too penetrating, – too living, – for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.”
Hi Nige,
I doubt we’ll ever give evidence of anything like that, you’re beginning to sound crazy again. I must’ve said something to trigger you off! It’s good to know that only lunatics can hear lunatics, I was wondering why the rest couldn’t ever hear what I said. No wonder you and I talked for so long on our own. They must have a perfect mental line in which they detect what they can’t hear or speak about, haven’t you noticed? They cut about 98% off the post and answer in their own language!
Well, that should at least help us continue to speak even more freely! From lunatic to lunatic! My friend has probably just been evasive trying to not say what is so obvious! No wonder she’s like soap. How uncomfortable! Please do forgive the stupidity -it goes with the madness! Thank you nevertheless for the infinite kindness. Allow me to retrieve all the questions and love you anyway from lunatic to brilliantic!
Back to Nigel, Maybe we could send some invitations out to the asylums and have a blog of lunatics all for our selves! Did you have difficulty getting used to the idea that you were nuts? It’s been as difficult as getting used to the idea that Robert was conscious!! Maybe I’ll have to brainwash my self again!! And that part about not confronting anyone about anything, how did you ever manage? Is that the price one has to pay to have friends? No, if that’s the price I think I’ll go back to being normal!!! Or maybe I’ll just keep my enemies!! They aren’t so bad after all!! I just prefer the asylum to the club! And that other part about not expecting anyone to know that you’re a Celtic Warrior, how did you ever manage that one? Do I have to give up Joan of Arc the II? Never!
Oh God Nigel, maybe we should go back to the Fellowship!! I think Robert and Girard have something similar and they are awfully successful about it, maybe we could get a few hints that we missed in the two decades we were there!! Do you think they are crazy enough to let us back in? Or to leave us out! No wonder we got married! He just wouldn’t let me speak and the madness was driving me crazy!!!
I haven’t laughed this much since before I was mad! It must be divine madness because once one becomes conscious of it one can laugh one’s head off!!
Now that we exhausted the tragedy maybe we could work on the comedy!
Hi Elena
The thought that I was different from others ‘crept up on me’! I did not know it was a mood disorder until I was first sectioned in 1992 and had the title for it spelled out to me. I really do not want a ‘loony blog’ – two of us is enough! But I really do think you and I share bipolar, although I think I am further along the path of self-understanding and ‘working with it’. When you come across your art-form (although I think battlesword suits you fine in this regard for the time being) you will be able to live with your ‘angels and daemons’ (they’re real, by the way – not just a product of a vivid imagination!) and your asylum will not be in the local nut-house.
…..Nigel
P.S. No way will I go back to the FOF. They just could not handle the Real Me!
Why take me seriously Nigel? Can’t you see we’re mad and can’t take us seriously?
So what does it mean to be sectioned?
Being sectioned:
Being sectioned means you are detained, under the Mental Health Act, for hospital treatment.
I see. That’s probably no fun. Glad you’re learning not to let them take you back.
Crouching Tiger,
I don’t suppose you had any suggestions? Just wished me to get the facts straight? “Blogs are for information.” How would you explain that it finally moved Ames to at least think of something he could actually try to do against the FOF in California? Of course those were warm pads to compensate the banning gesture but still! Do you think this blog has been for information or also for militant action?
I actually appreciate your bothering to share your point of view of what happened on the fof blog. We don’t wholly agree but that’s O.K. too, isn’t it? I was shocked by your answers feeling you hadn’t really read my posts but I suppose you feel exactly the same back.
Can we recapitulate for my own clarity? Your suggestion is that I look for something were my energy will be better invested. You mean, stop blogging. I suppose you don’t find any of the information presented on this blog worth the while? Just wishing to be clear about what you are saying. And I suppose for me it is still what we use to call a third force to keep looking into the subject of cults.
Wish you well
A friend pointed out the following:
“The rotten system (FOF) uses and abuses all the members in the same way and it makes them believe it is their choice when they come in and their fault when they leave.
They are so infected that they search the “good things they experienced in the FOF”. Yes life is always both black and white and all shades of grey but to resist and to integrate the great betrayal and to act seems to be impossible for them.”
Elena: I’m glad you’re being able to understand what the cult and the repercussions are like. And yes, it is a very big plague and it is necessary to keep acting against the FOF and Cults. You define it very well when you say we are made to believe that it is our choice when we come in and our fault when we leave. Everything is about me, me, me but that is also very true about American Culture: my effort, my property, my talent, my consciousness, my nation, my world, my money, my cigarettes, which I feel is one of the reasons for ex-members to not really be able to conceive that they can act socially against the cult: not legally as a group or socially. As if it were simply a dimension that they can’t conceive of which is why Ame’s move to at least try to get limitations on sexual abuse of authority is very valuable.
(Just so that there are no misunderstandings allow me to clarify that I do think it is necessary to understand one’s nation’s strengths as much as its weaknesses to understand one’s conditionings better. The “play” of the Fellowship cult is inserted in America and that has specific consequences. Beyond our nations is US: the human being and just like as individuals it is necessary to step outside of one’s family, as a human community, it is necessary to step out of one’s nation.)
All sides of us were tampered with, altered and hurt and realigning our selves takes a lot more work than if we were beginning from scratch because we have to undo the false structures that were put in and replace them with healthy ones.
You mention the great betrayal and yes, has anyone used that word yet on the fofblog? That we were simply betrayed? That we trusted and loved Robert, Girard, the ideals and the members that had made so many sacrifices to make the Fellowship possible but then they ALL simply used our money and kept us out betraying their ideals as much as us.
Have you noticed that they hardly talk like that on the fofblog? That the language itself seems to be emotionally detached. That few can actually scream and cry?
I might over do the screaming and crying but I’m at least not going to be charged for being in denial!
Have a great day, I might actually go out and live today!
http://www.mayapro10.com/
Jon B, thank you for that video. Hopefully it will help those in the fofblog like Old fof and eight hundred others who have left to understand that although Girard and four, five hundred? others inside are our friends, husbands and wives, they are still criminals. Not like the Nazi who actually killed the women and the children and the men but like the Fellowshippers who induced the members to abandon their children, their parents, brothers and sisters and friends. Even while I was there Steven and Meredith sat in front of me and told a lady to leave her son in France and come to Apollo. I spoke against it even then but I was an outcast and still I was brainwashed.
Not like the Nazi who killed the men but like Robert who raped them then gave them positions of power in the cult.
Not like the nazi but like Girard who institutionalized a dogma not only to bear with it in silence but to convince our selves that THAT was CREATING A SOUL.
CULTS ARE MODERN CONCENTRATION CAMPS PSYCHOLOGICALLY ANNIHILATING THE PEOPLE INSIDE.
PLEASE HELP STOP THEM
I’d like to thank those of you who visited this site today.
I don’t know who most of you are but there must be some connection between us and I like to think that you visit because it matters to you.
Today I was well like I haven’t been in years. This blog is not about me and the healthier I get the more clear that will be but I will also be happy to stand behind it and keep it alive with every little piece of information and insight I find relevant. Maybe they don’t have enough secretaries in the AKASIC records and they’ve invented the internet so that we write our own stories if we care enough about them!!
Perhaps I am alone enough to think that to have a blog is to share the little piece of universe in which you are present and that we have a lot to talk about. You might have some great friends around you but even with great friends there are so many things that are difficult to share, while writing them and looking at them, giving them out to a world of people that we haven’t even met and listening to the response is a wonderful process. To feel deeply supported by human beings that I am likely to never actually meet is the most wonderful thing that’s happened in the last twenty years!
We are far from having disconnected from the fofblog and the more time passes the more we can hear what we actually said! I have internalized each of the people that participated in it one way or another. They matter to me like friends matter and is that not wonderful? I was in the FOF for seventeen years without getting to know anyone as much as I felt them in the blog. How will that develop? Can we know when this internet explosion is so new to us?
To think that from the blog I have more friends than from the Fellowship! Isn’t that already a miracle when you compare two and a half years to seventeen? And I don’t feel I have any enemies no matter how angry some of them were. They certainly weren’t angrier than my brother or sister when we were kids! Wasn’t it wonderful to feel each other? To know our selves alive? To make each other sick and feel love, like and dislike, agree and disagree, take too much space and get kicked for it? Wasn’t that wonderful compared to the “conscious” silent lines to the meeting in the Fellowship cult with our disguise and the well mannered style?
I must admit that it was a great re-introduction to life! The finale almost killed me again but it looks like I must be in my first or second lifetime before I become conscious in the nineth one (that’s what they use to tell us in the cult: that we’d be conscious if we were in our nineth lifetime, women of course, excluded from the possibility!) because I still seem to have a few in just this one!
You doing good Nigel?
And you CT? Not ready for another round yet? I should have told you that your second post made me cry my eyes out and see with clarity that you were probably right so saying O.K. I’ll just hang up the gloves and go look for a job was the greatest surrender anyone has yet managed to bring me to! And yet, against all odds, here I am, still alive! Who will talk for the FOF when the fofblog disappears at the rate it is going?
Who will help us remember that we were already in hell? That there is no fire in hell but cold calculated sucking of each person’s light?
Do you not find that interesting? That we have already not only known world 96 but that we’ve actually probably been in world 768 three octaves below or worse?
Have you really exhausted thinking about it? When a group of people intentionally start sucking life away from each other what world can that be if not hell? So many forms of that in different areas of society but in cults, isn’t it mastered as if by the devil himself?
It’s a difficult reality is it not? There are children brothels in many a city and we hardly get to know about it; people get exploited everyday in factories everywhere, but this phenomenon of actually paying ten percent of one’s income every single month of one’s life, one and two thousand dollars from some, to watch and support the rape and exploitation of an indiscriminate mass of people that one never gets to really meet or truly live with, WHAT is that about?
What kind of voyeurism are we talking about? What kind of self immolation are we dealing with?
Is it surprising to not be able to sleep like an innocent child after one’s known such place? And once out the ex-members seem to pretend that they were not sleep all along and that it is not really all that bad but that just testifies for the continued snoring in which they’ve lived.
Hi Elena.
Sometimes a lot of patience is necessary before any new path opens up. It’s tempting to fill time with the usual routines, but sometimes if you can just keep that new possibility open for a while, it’s very surprising what emerges from it in the course of time.
My impression when you left the blog was that you were ready to leave – and that impression was confirmed when I met you. There was a sense of relief there. So I would tend to view your departure as an entirely natural process. Ames and Jomo’s plan to petition for ‘Brian Sisler’s Law’ was an inadvertent compliment to your influence – although I don’t know whether anything will come from it.
The part of the impression I formed was that you were ready to ‘do’ rather than ‘talk’. What doing that would mean I have no idea, but you seemed primed for action! This current blog would maybe be something of an transitional stage!?
Hi CT,
You catch me short because I feel there is little that I can do besides at least remember it and being clear about what it is I am remembering. The tendency to forget is very strong in us people and the things worth the memory are put back in the luggage we end up carrying without knowing what exactly is in the suitcase or why we are in pain because of the excessive load and then, having forgotten how we got it, walk back for a little more and repeat the process. Isn’t that the story of every “identification”? Every craving? Desire?
Writing and sharing our selves is definitely an aspect of that “doing” for me. The possibility of a “dialogue of souls”. (Can that really be achieved on the internet? Or anywhere?) Rumi’s sobet? The dialogue amongst friends?
Because one aspect of the problem is taking it by the horns and putting it in a place where it can no longer do any harm and another aspect is actually healing from it. They seem to need to happen simultaneously other wise one traps the horns or the tail but leaves the body running around continuing to do the harm.
The problem with cults in America is that America seems to want to protect them and that is true the world over: Freedom of Religion matters and it should matter but then we know cults are about the religion of imposed self-immolation which, contradictory as it sounds, is nevertheless perfectly real. Few countries seem to have taken such a forward step into establishing the necessary limits like France has. The first thing DOING would imply on a big scale would be to understand the problem and I think we’ve just scratched on that understanding. “Blogging” is about that and the fofblog certainly helped get to some of the difficulties: Jomo Piñata explained very well how the idea of civil rights in America is so outdated that they have no real force in court and a lawyer I spoke with reaffirmed that, which puts anyone suing the Fellowship individually in a very poor position. I understand that without obvious severe and provable damages, the lawyer can barely get the case to be heard which is one of the reasons why they also choose to resolve things out of court so that the Fellowship avoids the noise and the person suing at least gets some cash without pushing it so much that it might break against him or her. That was the proposition made to me personally implying that I would have to agree to not talk about the Fellowship further and I chose not to proceed. Finding a conscious lawyer is as difficult as finding a conscious guru! But being conscious one’s self is just as difficult!
DOING for me today would also mean setting up a site that collected the information on the Fellowship cult specifically but connected to other organizations against cults and continued to reaffirm the position against them while at the same time explored the problem and possible solutions. Often the solutions have nothing to do with cults themselves but on healing the causes for them to have appeared, in society itself, that is, in avoiding the problem rather than having to heal from it.
Picketing of course will continue to be an option. It is good to get out there and remember what one wishes to stand up for! Isn’t it fortunate that at least THAT didn’t fail?
One other aspect of doing today is healing my self. Were I “healthier” and “happier” I might have been able to avoid hurting others and my self in the fofblog but how can stagnant water be moved if the walls holding it aren’t pushed? And we hardly push unless we can no longer bear the weight. I wish I were not suffering but would I be struggling without it? Can we give birth to anything without the contractions?
Thanks for sharing. How about you? What next step would fit your shoe?
I should write a book called “Cults: the slavery of the heart”
We had the necessary devotion for Robert, to stay in the Fellowship, as if we needed to know that someone besides our self was there. As if the idea of a great conscious being leading our community or our lives justified everything. Girard called it the “the third force” to work on our selves. I got used to knowing that Robert didn’t care for me or us and that I was to still feel devotion for him, work, pay for the imaginary conscious life that we were supposed to be leading.
Girard would counteract the fact that Robert didn’t have time for anyone with the idea that he had to have time for everyone! That a conscious being was a busy man and that pretending to need human contact with him just proved one’s own weakness and identification. Does it not seem to you that when we grow out of our families without love and care, we continue to walk like beggars looking for love wherever it might be and that is what cults are pretending to offer? Love from one’s self to the guru or the supposed guru to the world but never between the guru and the member? Imaginary love without retrieval?Isn’t that what causes most shame to ex-members? that we were betrayed? That we are “unlovable”? That if our parents couldn’t love us what is so surprising about the fact that the Guru doesn’t have time to love us either? The commitment to the guru is ABSOLUTE in most of our cases. But what is really absolute is the commitment to one’s ability to love him as if that commitment justified the whole of one’s self and therefore one’s presence in the cult and… therefore… THE CULT itself. It is as if I was trying to prove that I could love unconditionally and the mere unconditionality of that love, justified it. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense? Difficult childhood, two failed marriages, attempt to suicide… and there I was feeling that if at least I could love and work unconditionally my life would be justified! To love and trust Robert and then love and work for humanity, the ARC, with complete surrender!!! That is where the manipulation comes in by the cult. They seem to know what they can abuse in people’s innocence and suffering.
Why can’t we acknowledge that we don’t know what love is? That it just doesn’t happen because it is supposed to happen? So many people feeling shame about who we are and we are just the people of our time doing what we can to survive. My writing is not the writing of success as conceived in this world of divas. It is simply the acknowledgement of my and our failures and the freedom to still be a human being. We cannot keep hiding from our selves.
If we study what people write in public and what they express in private it is easy to observe that actually exposing one’s deepest self is extremely difficult. One cannot have shame to be able to expose one’s self naked and what I am trying to convey is that there is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not talking about being physically naked, but about not needing so many disguises. Naked is beautiful. Naked is human. That we don’t have to be models or stories of success to have a right to exist! That it is an aberration to make millionaires of tennis players while those efforts could keep thousands out of cults, brothels and others means of exploitation because culture is not the idolatry of a few personalities in our societies but the love for one another and the freedom to express our selves with equal rights and opportunities by the societies we’ve structured. It is not that a tennis player has not sacrificed his or her life to the racket and that he or she does not deserve to win, but that the millions of dollars put in place to guarantee the events to make divas out of regular people, are sucked away from the public that pays for them just like it happens in cults. The divinization of a few happens at the cost of the many. By divinizing actors, sports men and women and politicians, the “masses” abdicate their own aptitude to play a part. The “divinization” takes away the ability to participate actively and makes the masses of people in society and cults passive idolaters.
Lovelessness is at the root of this phenomenon. Shame of not being good enough leads to thinking one is “being great” because one loves “the diva” who is overinflated. The classic FAN is no different to the guru’s ass kisser. The more the masses make divas, gurus, dictators, the more shame they are hiding; the more they conform to participate with submission, the more they have to inflate the diva, grow him or her into a position that they themselves can never aspire to reach because the divas and the inner circle that lives on them, make sure they get rid of anyone that might challenge that status quo. And yet we die well when we die for freedom.
“Cat’s love you and you love them because they don’t count your telephone calls.”
Yes. Where I come from we would count the times Robert spoke to us in a year! And he wouldn’t speak to most of us in years. If he even looked at someone… THAT would count! The compulsion and anxiety to write, to be heard, comes from that horror of needing to have pure simple human feedback and never getting it because I was “not good enough”. No one was good enough; he avoided everyone; but we all competed with each other thinking he’d given someone what we couldn’t reach and the breadcrumbs he gave to those in the inner circle were rapaciously protected by them to inflate their image. The whole mechanism works on no one being good enough! Those in positions of power who are willing to use it for their own benefit, make sure they transmit the same message and behavior to others considered “inferior” for absolutely no other reason but because they don’t prove as eager or willing or apt to play the game and belong to the hierarchy of abuse.
That is what they wish to silence… the exposure of the subtle human manipulation of people’s lives.
“I should write a book called “Cults: the slavery of the heart””.
I think it’s a great idea. There’s no thing like trying to write a book to really get the peripheral peeled away from the necessary, the thought-about peeled away from the truly understood… In the context of the whole story, you often start to find out which are the testimonies that really stand up as important!
Crouching Tiger hi,
What was your connection to Robert like? As far as I can tell, men in the Fellowship were no less idolaters than us women but I don’t think we’ve actually talked about the deep emotional dependence any one of us had on Robert in the fofblog: the idealization or rather divinization we all indulged in to make it work for the Fellowship. Would you care to share how it was for you or is that too difficult a subject to deal with in public?
I noticed yesterday’s second post was very difficult for me, I edited it about six times.
An alternative title could be: Cults: The Tyranny of Love
Or: Love: The Tyranny in Cults
How on earth does one write a book? I suppose I have one of the ingredients which must be to write!!
How on earth could I write a book?
The banning from the fofblog took a toll higher than I’d like to admit, I’m back at scratch again, wouldn’t I have to at least be able to walk before I pretend to run?
Elena,
I didn’t really have a connection to Robert, at least not in the physical sense of being around him a lot or being one of his sexual interests.
There’s no doubt in my mind that something must have happened to him when he was younger, something that helped create the energy that most people experienced during his events. Whatever kind of spiritual opening it was, became twisted because he had no guidance from outside (I don’t think you can call Horn a guide), while his other features were still very much in the ascendant. So the result was a bizarre and often unpleasant mixture of ‘enlightened’ and ‘unenlightened’ aspects that did/do not seem to relate to one another…
My feeling around him was usually a little double-edged. Certainly a fascination with some of his energies, but there was also a rather repellent sensation that said, “Keep your distance”. I couldn’t really explain that to myself – but it made me wary of getting closer to him.
In the last year or so, I stopped identifying with his appearances to a greater degree, and as a result noticed his ordinary moods far more. I recall one meeting in Highgate quite vividly – he seemed quite spent and totally at odds with himself, and I didn’t bother trying to cover the impression up to myself.
Unless you’re hung up on the idea of ‘having 3rd states’ I don’t feel you ‘ll be dependent on him for long. If you are hung up on that and it remains your idea of the work, then you are continuing the relationship to him invisibly. There’s a guy called Dennis who contributes to the blog and the GF forums, and I get the impression he still does have this hang-up.
Re: the book – it’s probably better if we correspond about that by private email.
Hi Ton,
It’s so easy to look at the splinter in other’s eyes…
All these things might be true about Robert but how much less true were they about us?
Weren’t each one of us inside convinced that WE alone, I; I; I; was going to become conscious on my own, without anybody else? Because when did we ever help each other? When did we ever question the fact that there was no friendship or second line? The few times I did so it resulted in silencing us even further until no one could speak and who ever questioned that.
This Messiah complex might be very accurate for Robert but how far is the Messiah complex from the hero complex everyone should carry inside? Who in this world would not wish to save, help others?
Didn’t most of us grow up watching t.v. heroes “helping” others?
Wasn’t that the aim of the ARC? An arc for humanity? Didn’t we all believe in that Messiah that would preserve culture?
In pointing out these things it seems important to be able to reaffirm what people’s ideals are and separating them from the distortions to those ideals, so that we are not left like pariahs in a world of complexes!
149. ton – October 18, 2009
re-viewing:
“Messiah complex is a state in which the individual believes themselves to be, or destined to become, the saviour of the particular field, a group, an event, a time period, or in an extreme scenario, the world. This could also be the state in which a group views an individual as a messiah, such as followers of a cult leader. The cult leader doesn’t have to claim to be a messiah, but if he is treated as such by his followers, it can also be classified as such.
People with a messiah complex tend to see themselves as saviors to a specific group of people or a specific field, making claims of their own glory, or claiming a self-awareness of their own gift and how that gift can effect a group of people or a field of life. Messiah Complex may also refer to a person who has formed a habit of “creating” crisis in a given culture, only to later “rescue” or “save” the poor helpless soul upon whom the crisis has been perpetrated. In the most extreme cases, people with a messiah complex may see themselves as spiritual/religious messiahs with transcendent powers who are destined to save the world.
A God complex is a psychological state of mind in which a person believes that they have supernatural powers or god-like abilities. The person generally believes they are above the rules of society and should be given special consideration. There are few academic works specifically addressing god complexes, although a great deal can be found about narcissism.
According to the book All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man, by Horst Richter (ISBN 0-89793-028-2), authoritarian compulsions are related to the rebellious stage of childhood development. Richter argues that the arrested development of such compulsions leads to denial of suffering, self-doubt, and death, and an expectation of servility for women, minorities, and lower class.”
and…
“Lack of empathy is a hallmark of narcissistic disorders, and sufferers find it extremely difficult to understand others’ (and their own) emotional states and impact. This makes maintaining close or intimate relationships significantly harder. They may find it difficult to perceive or admit this, or may interpret it as a virtue. It is also worth noting that the individual expressions of grandiosity or arrogance vary with the person’s value system. A person will generally attempt to display superiority as they define it.”
Narcissism — Dandyism
“A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and the cultivation of leisurely hobbies. Some dandies, especially in Britain in the late 18th and 19th century, strove to affect aristocratic values even though many came from common backgrounds. Thus, a dandy could be considered a kind of snob.”
The Dandical Body from Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle:
“A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, he lives to dress…And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light…”
Crouching Tiger Hi,
You certainly have nice insights into the Fellowship like many other people on the fofblog. It is so good to see how we each look at it, what we each went through. I appreciate your approach to the question and agree that the reduction to having high states or not is part of the fascination which ironically enough no one ever really seems to have experienced much of that, especially Robert who, besides inventing characters that are supposed to visit him, doesn’t convey a greater sense of unity or harmony and continues to drum members with their lower self. Nevertheless I have a feeling that you didn’t understand the question. I was asking about you. Maybe later I’ll formulate it better.
When the “veil” started falling down for me, it was precisely because of that ridiculous repetition about the king of clubs and the lower self, just like any cheap catholic priest scaring people with the devil.
Yes, I’ll contact you about the book! I’m grateful that you’d even consider it a worthwhile enterprise.
To all those who have visited today, it would be lovely to hear you speak. I’m certainly running low on eyes and “I”s. Isn’t that wonderful? Or terrible! Or both! The intensity of the computer is hard and no matter how strongly I wish to connect there is that impossibility of doing so in a more touching way! A hug and a kiss say so much more than these endless words. I’m glad we’ve managed to connect before we actually went our way even if we punched each other in the eye a few times! That was better than the indifference we endured in the FOF or the make believe consideration. There’s only love behind the frustration. It’s not that I’m giving up (I’m too stubborn for that and Daily Cardiac will probably continue winding me up enough to scream back) but part of healing for me is of course, finally letting go of the emotionality connected with the marriage to the Fellowship of Friends and each one of its members, Robert Burton and Girard. It’ll be good when it becomes possible to talk about it without hurting.
Today I went to a one dollar fifty circus! A one man show with a puppet horse. It was good! I’m finally beginning to land in this city that was my home until I was ten then a few more years in my late teens. One of the difficulties of getting out of a cult when one’s actually lived in the central house area for a long time and completely renounced to everything that has nothing to do with the cult, is rediscovering “life”. As if one continued to tick under the cult’s clock but without the winding, floating like a loose piece in a timeless Northless vacum. Reconstructing one’s North isn’t easy but no matter how difficult, I’m ever so glad to be out.
Daily Cardiac – There you go! A few more posts and they will not only be indifferent like now, they’ll start agreeing with you! They’ve pushed out their radars against you when they pushed me out!!
Isn’t it amazing how things work!
What you’re saying here is that you and Robert work like one unidentifiable mass. That you, a perfectly indoctrinated member divided into a blind devotee of Robert Burton unable to perceive or acknowledge the suffering of innumerable members of the Fellowship of Friends Cult testified in the fofblog have successfully mastered the ART OF THE HASNAMUSS.
You’ve turned against the System like a black magician.
Here is a passage from Rodney Collin:
Our work is to realize conscious harmony. First in oneself individually. Then in one’s group. Then gradually between groups and so projected infinitely out into the world. Individually we must realize harmony between all our functions, all our interests, all our duties, all sides of our life.
…Each person has to recreate the whole System intellectually for himself and in himself. This is the scaffolding of his new creation. Nobody else can do it for him, and what he finds is his own.
At the same time, the construction of one’s own intellectual ‘model of the universe’ is only scaffolding. This is the skeleton. A new kind of living flesh must grow upon it, a new body. What does this mean? IT MEANS LEARNING TO LIVE IN THE SOUL AND FROM THE SOUL.
(PLEASE READ THAT CAREFULLY DAILY CARDIAC BECAUSE THE CHIEF FEATURE OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF FRIENDS CULT IS THAT IT IS SOULLESS. The soul is made up of love and there are no traces of it in the Fellowship: idolatry is not love but blind and indiscriminate devotion without presence)
Rodney Collin: “When one does this, all the complicated structures of ideas which one has created resolves into something very simple, very direct.
What is our work all about? It is to enable man to live consciously in three bodies, in three worlds, and so realize the Divine Plan. A physical body was given him by Nature at birth. Somewhere exists the original Divine spark launched from God and which, refound will be his conscious spirit. But ordinary man has no feeling for that body which was created to connect the two – the soul.”
You and Robert and all in the Fellowship cult never developed the Soul. You divided into hasnamusses before you were able to develop your selves. You developed a business, a cult, before you were able to develop a School. You treasoned your selves and the System because your teacher was never a Conscious being.
150. Daily Cardiac – October 18, 2009
Crouching Tiger 104:
‘Because I believe Robert Burton is able to induce ‘higher states’ in me, I am prepared to also believe that all his behaviour is excusable as the behaviour of a higher being, whom I cannot understand from my own level’.
“This is what your position boils down to, DC.”
Daily Cardiac: Actually, I do understand Robert’s behaviour “from my own level.” For the most part I understand him well. If I didn’t understand him the FoF would be a cult for me.
Elena: No, it’s because you understand him from your own level that you justify his corruption as much as yours.
Daily Cardiac: To use an analogy; if someone understands Shakespeare well (and
I’m not talking about the meaning of, or behind the words), but that and also why he had to say it exactly how he said it or it wouldn’t be what it is, wouldn’t achieve the same effects or results. The poet in us understands everything about Shakespeare’s poetry that Shakespeare understood himself.
With regards to a spiritual teacher the higher part of the aspirant, the part that seeks the truth, seeks to be awakened, understands the teacher as well as the teacher understands himself or herself. And I don’t mean figuratively, but actually, in the deepest sense of understanding.
Elena: you can dogmatize all you like but you’re still just using the System to justify the cult
Daily Cardiac: My position is that the role of the teacher is to show people their own inner world, the part they will not or cannot see for themselves, and in this regard many things about the aspirant’s “well being” are fair game; like feelings, attitudes, many a taboo / sacred cows are sullied, but sullied for the best reason, in order to go beyond. It is my understanding that not so much as a spiritual “hair” is harmed in a real school, no matter how to the contrary it might seem on the surface.
Elena: In a Cult, everything spiritual is harmed.
Daily Cardiac: And if the incorrect attitudes fall away and the correct ones form the aspirant begins to see themselves, others, the world more clearly; without judgment or identification or, more accurately, with less judgment or less identification because as long as we inhabit a physical body we are spiritual prisoners to a degree, and whatever spiritual freedom we achieve we achieve by degree.
Elena: Incorrect attitudes towards their own self and the world is what cults plant in the members.
Daily Cardiac: I understand that others will not take these words at face value, as they expect their own words to be taken at face value, but will cherry pick through them looking for that seeming contradiction that will invalidate the post in total. But that’s the nature of words. Words trump words.
Elena: No, truth in words can be recognized when they are supported by actions. Robert’s actions are what prove his blackness, his words follow, your words: deceive.
Daily Cardiac: One of the biggest misunderstandings an individual can have is the belief they can awaken, become enlightened, become more connected to an objective truth or reality on their own terms.
Elena: Yes, that was Robert’s and your chief mistakes. You thought you could continue to indulge in whatever identification with sex you had without working with it. You were both given too much power before you had worked on myriad aspects of your being. You were unable to control the greed that developed with power over people. It is a particular kind of greed that comes from the fine energy of people’s devotion: Member’s devotion multiplied not only in spiritual energy that you misused but in enough money to feed the sexual appetite without constraints. You in fact built a temple in honor of the aberration. A temple in which you became the priest and Robert Burton the black Christ.
Daily Cardiac: And this one misunderstanding has, in my opinion, been the catalyst for a significant amount of departures from the FoF.
Elena: You will loose every member of the Fellowship cult before you die if they are lucky to free them selves from your power.
Daily Cardiac: For me the FoF is bigger than Robert, and one day will continue on after Robert. I stay because it works for me; it creates and provides an environment conducive to the nature of seeing the obstacles to awakening/enlightenment.
Elena: You are preparing the ground to inherit the Fellowship cult after Robert dies. You have been preparing it for a long time. It works for you because you are as black as Robert.
Daily Cardiac: I can only know for certain why it works for me and cannot know for certain why it does not work for another, and I suspect the reverse is true. Someone who it does not or did not work for cannot know for certain why it works for another. In that case there will always be a divide.
Elena: You can turn words around ad infinitum but the Fellowship works for you only because black magicians feed on people’s devotion like you and Robert Burton do. You have disenabled the reasoning capacity of the members by disempowering their sense of themselves: Their I. The weaker their I is, the more dependent they are on the cult’s leaders: you and Robert Burton and twenty others.
You are dangerous people and you must be stopped before people are hurt more deeply.
Nigel dearest, how are you? I tried writing to you but got the mail back. I know I was deep down in the gutter and you can perceive such things but there is always a way out of the gutter and the sun shines more brightly every time! Don’t they say we have to go down before we go up? And where we are going we are still going to have to touch base many, many more times!
Never loose the God within our selves my dearest friend!
And
to
you
and
all
in
you
I
send
not
words
but
love
as
I
pray
you
forgive
my
soul
if
I
have
ever
offended
you
74 elena
My email address has changed – it is nhprice@gmail. com…..Nigel.
“I know I was deep down in the gutter and you can perceive such things but there is always a way out of the gutter and the sun shines more brightly every time! Don’t they say we have to go down before we go up? And where we are going we are still going to have to touch base many, many more times!”
Oscar Wilde said “All men are in he gutter, but some are looking at the stars”. From my experience, we have to go down to the ‘core of our being’ before the pheonix in us can be reborn…..Nigel.
There he goes, now he is actually “Teaching”. A couple of days and he’ll even get people to support him.
Was that what you were aiming for Bruce, Old FOF, DXP, Vena, Ames Gilbert? Where are you now?
154. Daily Cardiac – October 19, 2009
Nigel – 153:
150 daily cardiac
“What becomes awakened, then?…..Nigel.”
Presence.
Nigel, Glad you’re up and around.
If you’re going to quote me on the fofblog, please take what matters to us all and not just to you and me. Daily Cardiac is the issue wherever he shows up.
Page 84 Post 150 Daily Cardiac: “To use an analogy; if someone understands Shakespeare well (and I’m not talking about the meaning of, or behind the words), but that and also why he had to say it exactly how he said it or it wouldn’t be what it is, wouldn’t achieve the same effects or results. The poet in us understands everything about Shakespeare’s poetry that Shakespeare understood himself.”
Hello again Daily Cardiac or Girard Haven, for no one in the Fellowship cult can write and speak like you do and if they can it is because they have given them selves up and faithfully acquired your terminology. Together with the terminology, which is already too close to yours, is the conviction and only you have both with the strength that you are presenting them in your posts as much as in your books. You speak like you do because you have developed a hasnamuss that speaks through you and a hasnamuss can appear as integrated as a normal human being if people do not know how to read him. There is very little difference between your posts and Girard’s books to not seriously consider that you are Girard Haven. I thought you’d told the members to not read or write on the blog, why do you continue to do so, behind their backs? Is it just in case they read so that you can reinstate the same dogma with which you indoctrinate them inside?
In your book: Creating a Soul, in chapter XIV on Art and Evolution, there is a piece called “Learning from Shakespeare” who must be up from his grave and revolting on your use of his name for the justification of your crimes.
In Robert Burton’s book, Self Remembering, he also quotes Shakespeare:
“This to thine own self be true…”
and yet, again in your book, Creating a Soul, in Chapter XIX – But what about the teacher? You clearly indoctrinate against trusting one’s own self:
Girard Haven: Along these lines, it is also worth asking why bother to have a Teacher if you are not going to follow his advice? I have heard the theory that at certain points in the work the Teacher’s role is to be a denying force, as Mr. Gurdjieff apparently became to Mr. Ouspensky. “The idea is that in order to achieve true independence we must learn to follow our own consciences, much as a child must rebel against its parents in order to become an adult. However, I remain unconvinced. It seems to me that if the teacher is put into the position of second force, the only two processes which can occur (assuming that he represent a higher level and so stands as ‘life’ on the scale of this triad) are digestion (also refinement or purification) and disease (also corruption or crime).”
Elena: That is precisely the problem: that in loosing your self to Robert’s will, you stopped “checking each other”. You developed a cult to accommodate to Robert’s each and all whims against the members, humanity and both your selves. Robert “married” the divinization of his personality and raped the boys on the name of that divinization. You “married” your own power to divinize Robert and procured Robert with the means to justify the rape of the boys. You got rid of all social and human “checks” to develop a fantasy of your own: the life of a whole community geared towards the satisfaction and justification of your uncontrolled sexual desire: Robert Burton’s insatiable greed for sex with young boys and your uncontrolled, insatiable greed for young female childlike women that included child pornography. (Your third wife told me this was so, but I was too devoted to the Fellowship and the Work, You and Robert, to think that sexuality was not an area that we were not willing to work with) I was wrong, you were beyond help. You are a sick man Girard Haven. You and Robert Burton are both very sick men. There are thousands, maybe even millions of men as sick as you in the world today but only a few have acquired as much power over people’s lives as you have. While I do not stalk them who I know roam the streets of the world over, I will follow you until I find enough help to stop you. You are hurting people and their commitment to a spiritual path and you are hurting all spiritual paths with your corruption.) If you were able to convince all the members which represented the whole of your closed up world, that Robert Burton’s insatiability was justifiable and not only justifiable but worthy of support, you could convince and justify for your own self and the world you’d made up, your own insatiability for young, childlike women. You both gave up your families, your lives, your selves to play the gurus in your made up world but that is all your world is: a made up fantasy in which you have destroyed your lives and are systematically destroying the lives of others by inducing them to give up their conscience, their children, their families and mankind.
As long as you stand I will be there to stand against you. I might not be a Conscious being but I am still a human being of which you and all of you in the cult loose all traces of, as the minutes go by.
Thank you Tatyana for expressing what this language does to members. We’ve been hearing these things for decades and Girard well knows that they have the effect of neutralizing the member’s opposition. They are powerful words turned against people’s conscience.
You and all of you in that blog better beware with your wishes of good luck and take care to DC. In those, you express approval and THAT neutrality is ALL the Fellowship of Friends Cult needs to trap the members more tightly after the fierce struggle we’ve had.
You are turning against the aim of the blog to resist Fellowship brainwashing. Can’t some of you reading here help them with more clarity?
They are not kids Tatyana, adults are not kids playing with taboos and going beyond. These are mature adults, hasnamusses, manipulating people’s lives. Stop the trance. Know your self.
Page 84- 161- Tatyana: Even just reading this puts me into a trance state. I don’t know if the trance state is higher or lower, but I know that one can get addicted to it and get stuck in it. Also, in this state people are doing strange things which they wouldn’t do if they were “sober”.
“Taboos” and “going beyond” is a very dangerous area for kids to play.
Take care, DC.
Page 84 -162. another voice – October 19, 2009
DC. Your words are very well crafted and I appreciate that. I also see the “dreaminess” of your post as noted by others. But behind the well crafted reasoning I cannot help but think there may be a great fear….the fear of leaving the Fellowship. And this fear is shared by all centers, especially the instinctive center. I know, I had to go thru it in order to leave. It is like jumping off a cliff into the unknown. Your case may be different, but at least give it consideration. I wish you all the best.”
You’re crazy you people are. There we go, now you’ve even started complimenting him. You think you’re talking to friends but you’re talking to a man who has lived on the Fellowship members for over 35 years not economically but on their being, on their devotion and making money for Robert to live on them. You’re talking to a man who knows that he will inherit the Fellowship as long as it stands. A man who is addicted to child pornography. A man that might have been my husband and that I might even love and that still is nothing but a criminal.
Your wishing him the best is the blessing he needs to legitimize the Fellowship, you make me sick. Your kindness, stupidity and innocence is what made it all possible and continues to guarantee its existence. Your negative halves of centers were tampered with and disfigured to the point that even you who know the horrors that are happening inside, even you who know how you were sucked dry, are wishing this freak good luck.
Good luck to us all if that is how the fofblog is going to deal with the Fellowship of Friends Cult. Where are you Cynthia, Dennise, Barbara Haven? Where are you Miles Barth? Where are all of you who know that this man and this institution is sick to the marrow of the soul? Are you going to sit there and watch how it recovers its position? Are you still trying to figure out your own commitment to not be able to stand above your own devotion and innocent stupidity, to scream against the manipulations of this cult on people’s lives?
Where are you all? Did you just run away hoping you’d become conscious in some other lifetime? Some other cult? The cult of silence and indifference to the monster you yourselves invented?
Where are you hiding from your selves? Bruce Levy, look at it, that’s what you had me banned for? Vena? Old FOF? You are as sick as Robert Burton Old FOF, you are his puppet as bad as Girard Haven no matter how many years you’ve been out. Sick consciousless crowd. And you Ames Gilbert? Are you going to start complimenting him too? How about you Steve? Is that the moderation you were seeking so quietly? Were you moderating to enable Girard Haven to indoctrinate members and ex-members through the blog?
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM ME? Did I have to be another conscious being for you to follow me blindly and forget your own responsibilities?
Didn’t I have the right to be an ex-cult survivor screaming for help? Angry at all of you for having allowed it, pinpointing at everything that made it possible? Angry and sad and disfigured like everyone is in a cult? Why do you expect me to be a diva when I am just a woman who just walked out of a cult after seventeen years of being a third class citizen for her teacher, her husband and the other members of the cult? The thousands of people who support it and make it just as it is: a rape factory of body, heart and mind?
You people think you’re not disfigured but the fact that you continue to allow this cult shows exactly how disfigured you still are, disfigured and allowing others to be disfigured so that your own brokenness seems more normal. At least I am clear that it needs to be stopped.
80 Elena
I do try to ‘bridge the gap’ from battlesword to fof blog when something seems appropriate. It is usually when I find something you have posted very ‘to the point’. Keep my keel straight…..Nigel.
Interesting to watch how other people are dealing with “higher states” which is supposed to be the private property of the Fellowship cult.
Hi Nigel, Just in case you missed them, these are the only significant findings lately. What is interesting about working with this is that although we seemed to know these things two and a half, three years ago when the blog started, most of us did not have all the pieces together. How did it happen? I might not be saying anything new but I’m more clear about what I’m saying. How it happened is beginning to make sense. The pieces of the puzzle are connecting to each other gradually. In the end, we might put a two page work together to summarize the 85 blog pages.
It’s nice to approach it as one’s own creative-healing process at the same time! Thanks for your help!
Daily Cardiac: One of the biggest misunderstandings an individual can have is the belief they can awaken, become enlightened, become more connected to an objective truth or reality on their own terms.
Elena: Yes, that was Robert’s and your chief mistakes. You thought you could continue to indulge in whatever identification with sex you had without working with it. You were both given too much power before you had worked on myriad aspects of your being. You were unable to control the greed that developed with power over people. It is a particular kind of greed that comes from the fine energy of people’s devotion: Member’s devotion multiplied not only in spiritual energy that you misused but in enough money to feed the sexual appetite without constraints. You in fact built a temple in honor of the aberration. A temple in which you became the priest and Robert Burton the black Christ.
…………
The idea is that in order to achieve true independence we must learn to follow our own consciences, much as a child must rebel against its parents in order to become an adult. However, I remain unconvinced. It seems to me that if the teacher is put into the position of second force, the only two processes which can occur (assuming that he represent a higher level and so stands as ‘life’ on the scale of this triad) are digestion (also refinement or purification) and disease (also corruption or crime).”
Elena: That is precisely the problem: that in loosing your self to Robert’s will, you stopped “checking each other”. You developed a cult to accommodate to Robert’s each and all whims against the members, humanity and both your selves. Robert “married” the divinization of his personality and raped the boys on the name of that divinization. You “married” your own power to divinize Robert and procured Robert with the means to justify the rape of the boys. You got rid of all social and human “checks” to develop a fantasy of your own: the life of a whole community geared towards the satisfaction and justification of your uncontrolled sexual desire: Robert Burton’s insatiable greed for sex with young boys and your uncontrolled, insatiable greed for young female childlike women that included child pornography. (Your third wife told me this was so, but I was too devoted to the Fellowship and the Work, You and Robert, to think that sexuality was not an area that we were not willing to work with) I was wrong, you were beyond help. You are a sick man Girard Haven. You and Robert Burton are both very sick men. There are thousands, maybe even millions of men as sick as you in the world today but only a few have acquired as much power over people’s lives as you have. While I do not stalk them who I know roam the streets of the world over, I will follow you until I find enough help to stop you. You are hurting people and their commitment to a spiritual path and you are hurting all spiritual paths with your corruption.) If you were able to convince all the members which represented the whole of your closed up world, that Robert Burton’s insatiability was justifiable and not only justifiable but worthy of support, you could convince and justify for your own self and the world you’d made up, your own insatiability for young, childlike women. You both gave up your families, your lives, your selves to play the gurus in your made up world but that is all your world is: a made up fantasy in which you have destroyed your lives and are systematically destroying the lives of others by inducing them to give up their conscience, their children, their families and mankind.
Everything is beginning to make sense. While we have been trying to understand what has been happening in the Fellowship cult, I have also been studying other things like the heart.
Everything we’ve worked on is only a starter to what we need to work on to understand what is happening in cults and society that makes cults and many institutions in society, centers for self destruction of its participants. (See the french telecom company suicides)
We must come to understand how, by taking away all creative capacity from the members, cults disempower them socially and individually. It is this disconnectedness with creativity, (which is the essential manifestation of the spirit and as spirit of “Real I” or the self,) what gradually leads members to self destruction. The horror of idolatry is that it renders the creative capacity the absolute private property of the guru and everything the guru does is treated as the ultimate masterpiece while the members fade away like ash used for his fire.
In regular societies this same mechanics take place but they are more “drawn out” so we can’t see the causes and effects as clearly as in the cult experiments. This will help us better understand the illness and find healing solutions.
It’s wonderful! I thank you all in the fofblog and here and everywhere for having worked so intensely! The video on creativity that my daughter sent helped to see the whole SAME problem from a different perspective and studying the heart later on rounded it all together. There’s far to go but if you can tap into the ticking of this understandings, don’t hesitate to question it as much as support it, for we are still far from the whole picture but this is the first major step I’ve come to in my own process of understanding for the past almost three years.
Life is beautiful! One day we’ll be able to thank the fact that we were in cults, because they helped us to understand the social cancer of our times!!
In studying the heart, what I realize is that the body already has what mankind is running after! Bravo for the heart!
When we connect all that knowledge to our “king of hearts” in the Fellowship cult, we’ll be able to understand much more clearly why the Fellowship and cults are such damaging environments for each and all its participants.
It will take time to put it together so that we can understand it clearly, forgive me if I’m slow and with the condition of my eyes which I will look after more carefully in the next weeks, it’ll take time but I’ll keep working steadily. I will not say anything new for those who know but it’ll be new for those of us who have suffered the Fellowship for such a long time.
The aim is to understand the connection of the instinctive center to the intellectual center in a practical scientific way but to also be able to transpose that to the social life of the cult and how the “soulessness” together with the systematic dismantling of the Self, led to the CULT: a concentration camp for the psychological annihilation of its members while they physically continue to work like slaves.
There wasn’t really a book until today CT. Displacing ignorance will help a lot more members free themselves from the cult if they give themselves a chance.
While I keep working on other things it’s still fun to share.
170. nige – October 20, 2009
169 Tatyana
Believe me – you would not want to be awake in the 4th state of consciousness for too long – it could get you into a whole lot of trouble…..Nigel.
NIGEL!!!!
That’s a big contradiction Nigel even if true, but only to the extent that one might be in the 4th state without preparation but that is not so easy either for getting there without preparation is even more difficult.
How has it been for you? I’d love to hear about your experiences. In my first leaps-gifts I thought I’d die it was so powerful but then I was so grateful that even if I died I could not regret it.
One observation was the ABSOLUTE POWER of POWER but then also THE ABSOLUTE POWER OF LOVE and how in this realm we live inspired by that power but maybe, to express it in some way, a million octaves below it?
It’s true that bearing it was not easy and I was in bed for three days completely shocked but Ezequiel they say, would spend years in bed when he went into such states. It must be the states the masts endure.
At the same time I couldn’t agree more with you. It is difficult to be there for me and I have not tried to reach those states for a long time but that doesn’t mean that I won’t work for them again. Working to reach them is no less beautiful than reaching them. With enough work and knowledge of what one is doing and “being done” it is our birthright as human beings to belong to Cosmic Consciousness.
173. Mikey – October 20, 2009
Let me get this straight Tatyana (168): Are you quoting the Great Greg Goodwin? If so, you are preaching to the peanut gallery.
So that’s what the fofblog has become with the support of all of you without even asking further about Greg? The fact that he may have been a violent man in a period of his life makes him a criminal for the rest of his life? OUT? No chance of changing? FIXED? One of the six billion dead by chance? No chance of ever again speaking, learning?
What is the difference between the fofblog and the Fellowship mentality? The dogmatism is as bad in the former as in the latter. No wonder it is rightfully called: The Fellowship of Friends Blog for it is just its extended arm. All of you who participate in that are supporting the Fellowship.
I do not agree with you Crouching Tiger that a blog is just that: a free means of expression for anything. Greg’s banning as much as mine proved the conditions and lack of freedom. There is hatred in this poster’s post but there’s been hatred all along. Criticism is one thing and tolerance with criticism but banning people is institutionalizing an accepted dogma. A blog is like any other means of communication, a media of expression of ideology. People who stand by definite ideology ban people who challenge it.
The ideology that was supported by the fofblog by banning me was the ideology of approval to the Fellowship of Friend’s agenda. Why don’t any of you challenge that as it continues to fortify itself? The question is not whether you defend me or not but whether you can defend what you understand or not.
The fact that I am not personally against Ames Gilbert’s gesture to promote Brian’s law does not mean that I am not totally against what the fofblog has ended up standing up for. The comfort of participating in a blog and submitting under the condition that one does not oppose others, is, in the end, another way of submission and support of the Fellowship Cult. As someone said: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
89 Elena
Sounds like you have been there! Difficult to endure, n’est-ce pas?…..Nigel
Oui! But overtime they became easier to tolerate. The last one coincided with the arrival of an Emu out of nowhere to my house. He stayed for two months and a half before he was attacked by a mountain lion, the same period of time that the state lasted. Girard arrived just after that and everything changed. I began making efforts of a very different kind, like Girard’s. Tried to become “efficient” at all times. Work, work, work was the motto! Girard, Dorothy, Heather, Eileen, the Fellowship, dinners, teas, breakfast events, travelling trips, studied in Sacramento an hour and a half away, worked in Grass Valley similar, work, work work! Makes me laugh; consciousness doesn’t like that much indulgence in the instinctive centre which is what all that efficiency amounts to but its “religion” in the fof. The SOS workaholics are convinced that if they work hard enough they’ll go to heaven but they are as mistaken as I was when I thought giving my self up to Robert’s will would take me to consciousness! The problem was that as long as I worked things would happen, beautiful things would happen but they had nothing to do with Robert. I kept paying for nothing and separating from the judgment that the Fellowship aroused and we never talked about the beautiful inner work that we did, we just listened to what Robert had to say and gradually I stopped making effort and blended in with Girard’s lifestyle. At least I continued to challenge him in every one of those events until it was clear that I had lost!!! What a great thing to have lost the Fellowship!
Unfortunately I haven’t been working at all and all the blog was written practically throwing up, throwing up even the high states! As if it all had to come out in one big piece; The good, the bad and the ugly. Do you think they’ll manage to keep that blog running for even three more pages? You were right Arthur and Anonymous and I was wrong: the fofblog’s intention in banning me was not to have any serious discussion against the FOF but silencing opposition and blending in with the enabling mentality. I’ve lost again but it’s good to have lost that blog too! I was as addicted to it as I was to work, work, work with Girard!
Nigel, I like talking about those altered experiences of other realms because I think they should no longer be a mystery to anyone. It is beautiful to penetrate other realms and it is possible for everyone, even for Nigel and myself. It is important to realize that no matter how many times or how deeply I experienced these altered states, everything can be lost again through malpractice which is what happened in the Fellowship. There was no help, no feedback, no guide and the few times it was possible were preceded by long periods of not expressing negative emotions, keeping the observer alive and staying connected to life.
We live in a time in which thousands, maybe even millions of people are reconnecting to those worlds and how it happens, how it works and doesn’t work ought to become something we can talk about without fear. Like death, other realms belong to the spiritual and the spiritual is as powerful a reality, no, THE REALITY behind the physical. It is like looking at the inside out of the physical and it is “filled” with love
and it is love
and it IS.
I have “missed the aim” drastically not being able to convey that love in the FOF blog. I hope to have learnt the cruel lesson for the rest of my days. May those who I offended forgive me again and again. On one level I feel shame and blame my self but on another it is just fine as it happened. How else could it have happened being who we were?
You pretended to not hear but it is clear that you heard everything. The reaction to Bruce’s recent story made it clear and it made it all worth it! No matter how much anyone looses personally, the harvest is already there for anyone to pick.
Elena, nige, Crouching Tiger,
You Can’t Lose At Love
You can lose at cards, you can lose your keys
You can lose the FoF or lose the lease
You can lose your car, you can lose the race
You can lose your mind or lose your faith
Take a look around and hear what I’ve gotta say
You can’t lose at love
No, you can’t lose at love
You can’t lose at love
Choose anything you can dream of
No, you can’t lose at love
We could lose the plot, or we could lose our way
But I ain’t going to lose, these ain’t good games we’re playing
Let me make you an offer too good to refuse
No, you can’t lose at love
Nice story Mikey, it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard you say! You got your foot out quickly but too bad it’s still in!
177. Mikey – October 21, 2009
The following story is for Ellen & Dragon, the rest of you need not pay attention (as usual).
“If one already believes in God, does it matter then if one believes that Meher Baba is God? In other words, as a Christian if one already believes in Jesus, is there any further point in believing that Baba is Jesus?
This question was often asked of Meher Baba’s mandali, although in India it was asked relevant to Krishna or perhaps Rama. The mandali never went around proclaiming that Meher Baba was the Avatar, and Baba would not allow them to do so. He said, “If I am what I am, I don’t need publicity agents.” Nevertheless, discussions pertaining to this question regularly occurred with people who were not Baba lovers. The mandali were asked directly, “I have Krishna, why to I need Meher Baba?” The mandali did not know how to answer, so Meher Baba gave them the following anecdote know as the “Quaker Oats” story.
In India, Quaker Oats is seen as a nutritious wholesome, and popular breakfast cereal. A mother on rising one morning to prepare breakfast for her children found that her tin of Quaker Oats was almost empty. She quickly rushed to the grocer to buy another. When she entered the store, she saw that she was in luck – there was one tin left on the shelf. When she asked to buy it, however, the grocer refused again and again to sell it to her. She continued to insist on buying this last tin. Finally, the groceer interrupted and explained that he wanted to sell her a tin from a fresh shipment he had just received. Meher Baba then said,
What mother is there who would insist on buying the old stock when she could purchase a tin of the fresh new stock? I am the fresh stock….It is all Quaker Oats, the ingredients are the same, but I am the fresh stock.”
-From the chapter “More to Come” by Kenneth Lux.
Thanks Tozan,
I suppose it’s time to get serious and put some humor into this tragedy!
WHY DON’T PEOPLE LEAVE?
There are still a thousand issues about the Fellowship that I need to put down in writing.
Today I would like to address the fact that people stay inside for so long, a question that came up from yesterday’s post.
In my case, I couldn’t leave until I had understood what was happening inside and I didn’t find out until I lived in Oregon House for seven years. The Fellowship cult has clear mechanisms to keep members from being in Oregon House where they can look more clearly into what happens. As long as one stays in a center working mostly on one’s own relationship to the System, one’s own effort and inspiration, it is difficult to leave because the mechanism works in such a way that by accepting that it is one’s sole responsibility to work on one’s self, one gives up expecting anything from the cult no matter how much one is paying.
THE WAY GIRARD PUTS IT IS THAT MEMBERS PAY FOR THE CULT AND THE GURU TO BE A THIRD FORCE ) (motivation) FOR THEM TO DO THEIR OWN WORK!
Perfect! Don’t tell me he’s not quite a genius no matter how misconstrued the mentality!
“Third force” is the motivation to work so if one pays there is one motivation, if one believes in the teacher, there is another one to do what he says and if one believes in the Cult there is a third one.
Payment
Teacher
Arc
Of all the three payment is very interesting because the way it turns out is that one pays the cult to make effort! It is a closed circuit that feeds itself pathologically!
The Teacher as motivator is also very interesting because since the member is paying for the teacher s/he hopes to get something back from the teacher and when that something never comes and he asks for it, the member is photographed or pointed out to that they are being “greedy”, that they are “identified” with the teacher, that it is not the teacher who has to work on him but he on himself or herself again installing the closed circuit in which the member better masturbate on his own if he ever wishes to have an orgasm!!! (I hope you can laugh because I am, is it really not just like that? And the more we look at it the clearer it’ll be that people in Cults become the ultimate masturbators but in that closed circuit of life, they also end up committing suicide which is the ultimate orgasm of the masturbator!!!) I’m not trying to be funny, it is actually very tragic but it’s also that ridiculous.
Then we have the Arc, the motivation to work for the Cult, disguised as “humanity”, third line. Here it is no less interesting because what happens is that members end up working for the cult but without ever being allowed to develop strong practical friendship and support between each other. Second line of work cannot exist in the Fellowship of Friends or any cult because the contact between people means LIFE and CULTURE and the cult cannot allow that because it has to suck out the money from the possibility of financing the member’s creativity. It STEALS the third force that would support culture and creativity BY the members in channelling every cent to the guru creating again a closed circuit in which the guru becomes the sole source of LIFE for the people. He then chooses what art, activities, sculptures etc are allowed and financed in the cult and he NEVER SUPPORTS ANY MEMBER CREATIVITY BECAUSE THAT WOULD take a small portion of love and authority from his own self. He grants members like Girard, Asaf, Guinever enough LEASH so that they can FAITHFULLY REPRODUCE HIS OWN WORDS, INDOCTRINATE AND GIVE EXAMPLE OF SUBMISSION but never, ever grants them freedom to create their own work. THAT IS WHY HE NEVER GOES TO ANY EVENT BY A SOLE MEMBER. Not Girard’s, Mari R., or other theatre events of the Fellowship that had an author. That is why he never allowed Seiki to put up a dojo or directed any member towards him.
In accepting the treatment, Girard, Guinever, Asaf and thousands others gradually submitted to the systematic self-annihilation process and demanded the same renunciation to their selves and their creativity from the rest of the members. Criminals have to walk amongst criminals to perceive crime as “normal”. After years of giving themselves up, idolatry for Robert deepens its claws and their own self is gradually replaced by a superstructure of formatory thinking that justifies it. The Teacher becomes the revered despot and the final act of suicide simply affirms his supremacy.
But this wasn’t what I wanted to speak about but THAT is the only thing that really matters about cults. Let me continue with why members stay so long.
On the one hand are the members that never really live in the central establishment of the Cult who live on their own inspiration for a lifetime. They too end up equally weird, in a closed circuit of their own like my beloved Seiki and so many others who tried to make sense of it without ever being able to develop IT or themselves within the cult’s walls but there are still how many Seiki’s in the Fellowship? That is wonderfully talented people that could never give the Fellowship more than their money because the art on which they lived was denied? Or worse: Manipulated until there was no longer a trace of their own presence in it?
Those who stay in the outer circle of the cult without getting seriously involved in finding out what is happening inside are therefore precious to the cult because they send in money but don’t ask questions. They visit every year and each holiday and bring lots of money to each of those dinners and event especially prepared to leave them full of themselves and without a trace of where they are! Most of the directors like myself who became directors without having ever really been part of the headquarters didn’t know what the hell we were supporting, we were simply working on our own inspiration and ideal of the School and that is invaluable to the cult because while the director is sincere and can convince others, the cult is never seriously confronted by the members in the outside centers who don’t even have the money to ever visit it.
On the other hand are those who manage to get involved in the inner life of the cult at the central quarters. Becoming an inner circle member is really an ART: the art of being willing to fuck anybody who doesn’t swallow whole and is able to measure you with the same accurate precision with which s/he discards a fish bone from their mouth. An inner circle member has exactly that same precision to know who is and who is not an inner circle member! It is the ART of being willing to state in theory and practice that his or her BEING is SUPERIOR to yours and you must submit or they will not help you get a job in the cult.
It is the ART of being a FASCIST: a human being capable of destroying the opportunities of existence and participation of any other human being in a given community. It is the ART of saying, “I am better than you and therefore I can kill you physically, emotionally and intellectually. You cannot belong here no matter how much you pay or work.
GREAT BIG FUCK, I’M NOT SORRY ABOUT WHO I WAS IN THE FOFBLOG BECAUSE THESE ARE THE THINGS YOU WERE TRYING TO STOP ME FROM SAYING AND I AM NOT SORRY FOR SAYING THEM, THEY NEED TO BE SAID AND HEARD AND LEARNT SO THAT WE KNOW AND REMEMBER HOW INHUMAN WE CAN BE EVEN IN A RIDICULOUS LITTLE STINKING CULT IN CALIFORNIA. DON’T FORGIVE ME YOU SICK MOTHER FUCKERS, DON’T FORGIVE ME BECAUSE I DO NOT NEED TO BE FORGIVEN BY YOU, YOU NEED TO FORGIVE YOURSELVES AND YOU WON’T BREATHE PROPERLY AGAIN UNTIL YOU DO.
But in cults it is the GREATEST of all FASCIST ARTS because the difference amongst the people is not based on race, nationality, class or levels of education but on the member’s BEING. The cult guru and members “judge” the I of the individual and determine it NOT GOOD ENOUGH and the struggle to participate and be accepted becomes the unending labyrinth that they can never decipher until suicide is the only possible means of freeing themselves from themselves who were never ACCEPTABLE.
THE MEMBERS OF THE INNER CIRLCE LIVE ON THE SUBTLE ENERGIES OF FEAR AND SHAME AND SADNESS OF THE MEMBERS IN THE OUTER CIRCLE WHO HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM THE LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY BUT ACCEPTED AS THE NECESSARY “CULTURE” FOR ITS EXISTENCE.
The lady in the gardens, I love you, You are one of these people
The guitar player, I love you, you are one of these people
Dorothy, I love you, you were one of these people
Janet,
Judy
Judith
All the Williams
All the Richards
All the Charles
All the Johns
All the Henrys
Each and every woman in the Fellowship cult
Each and every man in the Fellowship cult
I love you,
You were one of these people
Because each and every one of you was also psychologically annihilated by Robert Burton.
We might forgive when we understand what happened to us but you will not stop me from trying to understand before that.
I should not try to correct, please bear with the mistakes.
I suppose I’m not quite ready for humor!
Ours will be known as the time of the Spiritual Revolution when woman no longer accepted any form of submission and with women, men and children, old and young people.
Good one Nigel. Good to hear someone else telling the truth. It’s the sort of post they don’t want to see in the fofblog. The kind of thing that gives shame but that is exactly what it’s like inside.
It’s good that it’s as black as it is because that blackness is what they are in denial about in the Fellowship as much as in the fofblog.
That is what Old FOF, Steve, Ames Gilbert, Vena, Bruce and the rest of you in that blog decided to support by banning me. WHY? Why are you allowing for this?
179. nige – October 21, 2009
I found this ‘jewel’ on an ‘alternative’ site and have no idea who wrote it, but I think it makes very, very, very interesting reading…..Nigel.
“What is Burton selling and who is he selling it to? Besides the idea, the in-cult myth, of consciousness which only occurs to people that feel like they do not have enough of it, people dissatisfied with their sense of reality, Burton sells 1) the illusion of exclusivity and 2) the illusion of “positive emotion.” Along with these commodities he also once sold 3) the end of economic security, 4) the end of California, 5) the end of the world and 6) the only possibility of survival. Naturally 3, 4, 5 and 6 are no longer credible merchandise. What Burton sells to his cult members is the belief that they are blessed, due to his cosmic connections, with the only attention from powers on high directed to people on earth. He tries to maintain this illusion of exclusive blessing by fostering a continuous atmosphere of celebration and elation among his gathering.
For himself, he feels pretty good about his lot in life because he has managed to keep himself in income and willing partners purveying these emotional products for 40 years. Dressed like a gay pimp he attends near daily parties in ridiculously pompous attire smiling for all the world like he hasn’t a care in the universe and insists with the conviction of a madman that, while the rest of world will suffer the fate of rabid dogs, he and his will rise on golden clouds to live on the Sun sharing hydrogen apartments with famous geniuses from history (this is literally what he has claimed).
Who in their right mind buys this ‘product’? No one in their right mind, of course. Burton attracts the borderline psychotics out of the society. He teaches them the superficial exhilaration of narcissism and instructs them in the elaborate hallucinogenic world of schizophrenia. The borderline followers then imagine they have been initiated into “esoteric reality” and saved from the “formatory” delusions of the ordinary doomed people of everyday life. So, if you are a misfit lunatic type struggling to find meaning in a world focused on the necessities of life and you encounter the haughty and pretentious affectations deliberately displayed at one of Burton’s introductory meetings you naturally conclude that you’ve found “your people” and of course you have. Once it is explained to you the uncompromising devastation to be suffered if you ever dare leave then you are likely willing to do anything you are told to keep a handle on your ticket to paradise.
Eventually hippies in their twenties grow out of all this. Eventually hippies forced to become yuppies reaching their late 30’s and early 40’s, even 50’s, realize that being a crazy cult member for your entire life is not all that interesting and they leave. They leave when the in-your-face selfishness and greed of Burton, as he wanders around grinning from ear-to-ear (usually because some 20 year old Russian boy has just serviced him) dressed like a cracker-pimp from Arkansas while spouting a new teaching based on an interpretation of cave paintings of animal dung, becomes enough of a spectacle to penetrate and irritate even the tolerance of lunatics.”
Life
First and second steps of Tai Chi
un-forgotten
Gardenias and avocado trees
For the fragrance and the front lawn that steps out to the city
A shiny car polished with generosity
For six turned seven grateful dollars
For the young’s kindness in the eyes
The city lights spread out in the valley
and the mountains
embracing, inviting, igniting
the first song sang with guitar.
188. dragon – October 22, 2009
179. nige
the FOF = an attractive offer for borderline psychotics?
Borderline psychotics are very difficult to treat.
Is Robert’s treatment better than all public health all around the world?
Borderline psycotics tend towards self-injury.
Is somebody out there able to confirm that? Are FOF members cutting themselves or doing something else concerning self-injury?
DC,
are you aware of those occurences? The borderliner-psychotics choose hidden spots on their skin (covered with clothes)?
Hi Dragon,
It’s interesting how much work is necessary to help those who haven’t been in a cult or in the Fellowship cult in particular, understand what is happening inside.
The self-imposed wounds members inflict upon themselves are not necessarily physical although there have been suicides and failed suicide attempts. They are psychological. They hurt themselves by denying them selves until suicide simply confirms the denial.
The process of letting go of those people and things that were part of one before joining the cult is like cutting off pieces of one’s psychological structure. It is one thing to not identify with one’s life and a completely different thing to isolate one’s life by becoming not only indifferent to it but negative towards it. In a cult like the Fellowship of Friends, Pathway to Presence, people develop both practical and theoretical acts and justifications to SEPARATE from humanity:
1. “Life people” are the six billion dead people on the planet
2. Life people are sleep
3. Life people are heading towards destruction -Armagedon
4. Life people are under influence A (instinctive- unspiritual influence)
Around 1991-2 some members even carried guns and rifles and expressed themselves in meetings as being willing to shoot life people when Armagedon happened and the Cult was in danger of being attacked by them. The attitude was that “life people” who had not prepared for the holocaust were not worthy of being helped and if they tried to reach the things the people in the cult had, they deserved to die. You must be aware that Robert Burton had predicted that there was going to be a world war, that California was going to sink and that the Cult was destined to preserve CULTURE for humanity: human values!
As a member who had joined three years before and had been very successful in my personal work using the System independent of the Cult, in a far away centre, London, (around 60 members) in which I only had contact with members twice a week in the evenings and sometimes on weekends, when I heard people in California express such things the first time I visited, I perceived the negative energy that they carried but thought that wasn’t the Teacher’s bent on the problem and these were isolated cases. The attitudes seemed extreme but not completely unrealistic if things actually happened that way. That, compared to the beautifully looked after gardens, the winery, the generous meals did not seem something to be too concerned about at the time. The “positive” aspects seemed to out-weight the negative ones. Had I understood it better, I would have realized that those were the outer negative expressions towards “life” and mankind of an inner attitude that the cult already carried in its womb.
It is true that I did not agree with myriads of things from the beginning but I agreed with the general ideas of working for the preservation of culture for mankind, for the development of consciousness in the individual and the development of a conscious community for all of us. The opportunity to work with other people who had committed to The System and were willing to live under those ideals, seemed precious.
The first time I read a few weeks after I joined about the Fall of California and the possible war that the “Teacher” predicted, I was shocked. There was I after having just realized the dream of finding a “School of Consciousness” with what seemed, not only pretty, decent and intelligent people like Ames Gilbert, Jomo, Laura, Vena, Bruce, and a thousand others like them beautifully dressed, holding meetings and talking about the System and their difficulties and following that with well prepared meals and wine. It was wonderful! Expensive but good! I started paying 150 pounds per month in 1990 if I remember correctly, with an additional 250 pounds every three or four months called seasonal donations. I was chosen as the book-keeper after a few weeks and there were members who paid 500 pounds a month. If they were THAT committed and they were such SMART, good looking, intelligent people, who was I to worry about my “insignificant” concerns? If we were facing such a crisis, every cent we paid to build an Arc was necessary. After a while, no one asks why every cent is being spent on trips and clothes for the myriad Barbies.
The fact that WE were people who had accepted the idea that Armagedon was going to happen because OUR Teacher said so, accounts for eighty or ninety percent of everything that we allowed to pass by unchecked, after that. WE were people living under specific conditioning from that moment on. That must never be lost sight of to understand how everything else was possible. The first psychological harm was when we separated from humanity and its destiny and thought we were the chosen ones, the luckier ones, which quickly turned into the privileged, superior ones.
We must look at how we then accepted the separation from our Nations, family and friends who were gradually perceived as more of the same dead billion people on the planet. The problem is that to be able to achieve this external separation, which certainly happened physically in the isolation of the Fellowship cult in Oregon House, there had to be an inner separation from each one of the members in their own relationship to humanity and nation, family and friends. The external disfiguring of the Fourth Way System as a System that happens IN LIFE, was preceded by an internal disfiguring and justification of each member’s personal psychological structure. What the cult manages to do, is to deepen the already fractured psychological shortcomings the members have, add and replace them for even deeper more fractured structures justifying the separation and leaving them in an isolation such that the Cult and the guru become the Arc and the life saving device necessary to survive. If the guru feels threatened and deems it fit for the members to disappear so that there are no traces left of his gradual dismantling of their self, they submit to immolation as willingly as they’ve submitted to discarding everything about their psychological make up before that. The body is the last thing the members give up. All along the doctrine that states that “A man must die before he lives, before he can become conscious” is being drummed on the member’s psychology, demanding and justifying more and more sacrifices.
We are talking about tremendously complex processes, don’t be surprised that it has taken so much time and space in writing them to come to understand them and still be far from the complete picture but we are much closer today than we were three years ago. Others might have already understood these things for other cults but I am understanding them for the cult I was in.
I thank you for your questions, which stimulate me to work towards more clarity on the subject.
Surelyujest,
The narcissism, the feeling of being special, the having secret knowledge that outsiders can’t understand, the key to eternal life and a special relationship to higher forces was Robert Burton’s hallmark and each member who adopted them against other members and the rest of the world. The Fourth Way System can be misinterpreted like any other System and that is what Robert and Girard have done and the members supported against themselves and each other.
189. surelyujest – October 22, 2009
179 nige
“Who in their right mind buys this ‘product’? No one in their right mind, of course. Burton attracts the borderline psychotics out of the society. He teaches them the superficial exhilaration of narcissism and instructs them in the elaborate hallucinogenic world of schizophrenia. The borderline followers then imagine they have been initiated into “esoteric reality” and saved from the “formatory” delusions of the ordinary doomed people of everyday life. So, if you are a misfit lunatic type struggling to find meaning in a world focused on the necessities of life and you encounter the haughty and pretentious affectations deliberately displayed at one of Burton’s introductory meetings you naturally conclude that you’ve found “your people” and of course you have. Once it is explained to you the uncompromising devastation to be suffered if you ever dare leave then you are likely willing to do anything you are told to keep a handle on your ticket to paradise.”
I would agree with this, but point out that this is not unique to Burton. This has been the situation with the 4th Way from the beginning. You could just as easily apply this to Gurdjieff’s group, or Ouspensky’s.
The 4th Way is a highly perfected instrument for cult indoctrination, inducing in its followers all the usual cult attributes: narcissism, a feeling of being special, having secret knowledge that outsiders just can’t understand, the key to eternal life, a special relationship with higher forces…
Hi Elena,
amazing things as ever. You are right if you are no insider it will not appear to be genuine.
It seems to be highly imaginative. But it appears more and more to be true.
You quoted:
“The body is the last thing the members give up. All along the doctrine that states that “A man must die before he lives, before he can become conscious” is being drummed on the member’s psychology, demanding and justifying more and more sacrifices.”
That seems to be the culture medium for men and gays to sacrifice their own body to R.E. Burton.
And a married man willl also sacrifice his body to Robert because his relationship with his wife is also nothing but a concession, isn’t it.
If you now imagine such a married man realizes the betrayal and leaves the FOF, you will also see very clear the lasting SHAME for this man and that’s also another disgusting and unintentional shelter for the great swindler Robert E. Burton.
101 Elena
Interesting take on the idea of psychosis…..
I never had money problems until I met the FOF and the FOF made my life a financial hell. At Hall Farm, in late 1979, I found myself working in a cement/adhesives factory, earning a pittance (I was hoping a lady from Goldsmiths’ Hall would have found me a jeweller/silversmith under whom to do some workshop training, but none materialised) and then the monthly basic donation was doubled. I started feeling anxious about my finances about five weeks before Christmas and when I moved to Central London after the New Year and realised I could not get a workshop job to pay rent and for food, let alone teaching payments, my state turned into my first depressive episode. When I did return to Hall Farm, I worked as a gardener/handyman 7 days a week in order to save up money to get me to California to find a workshop situation there. In January 1982, I found that job in Los Angeles County and, again, was paid a very low wage (lower, in fact, than the statutory rate for a graduate silversmith). This led to the already incompetent immigration lawyer not being able to complete the ‘green card’ process and I remained a low-paid illegal immigrant until I was forced into my suicide attempt (being $30,000 in debt and not being able to financially remain in the FOF) in June 1989. My art-form would seem to have been an expensive hobby – creatively successful but financially disastrous.
Having been through the mental health ‘maze’ for many years, I have found stability in teaching my craft and making ‘little things for little people’. My family, my friends and my students are all supportive to the extent that I would say that love is shared.
Elena and I would seem to share a common psychological make-up and I supremely thank her for the subjects she raises on this site…..Nigel.
Hi Dragon,
Interesting connection you make there which I hadn’t thought about. Yes, the shame for the ex-members has to be too unbearable to expose and denounce the inner rape. I don’t know exactly how it was for the men who submitted to Robert of course or what in their personal psychology and father images prompted them to allow for such submission but one interesting thing that I did observe was that the men became less machos and more feminine and the women less feminine and more “rigid” with a few diva exceptions. I remember thinking at one point that it wasn’t so bad for the men to have a homosexual relationship if that was going to loosen up the strong macho conditioning but as it turned out, it did not “disfigure” them to become more “wholesome” human beings but on the contrary it conditioned them even more strongly to submit to Robert’s will and the cult’s very particular lifestyle. They ended up acting like women in a very literal sense: spending as much time as women to dress up and get “handsome”. Make every effort to look “attractive” “young” “successful”. To be in “good-householder” (which is the ultimate ideal) meant: like a prima ballerina for her first dance so that Robert would approve of him and us.
Again this raises something I’ve looked at before which is the idea that the only real thing that Robert Burton is truly a teacher is at dressing up. One can ridicule him when he goes into his excesses and ends up like the pimp from Arkansas mentioned in the anonymous post by Nigel but I must admit that he can be absolutely exquisite. If he had become a clothes designer and worked with models he would have done a wonderfully honest job and been great at it. Those boys couldn’t look better and he himself is close to impeccable. This is in fact very important because he had to be good enough in at least some area for us to buy it. Of course this is probably the first time I see it so clearly because at the time it wasn’t a talented gay dealing with clothes what I was seeing but a Conscious “American” being! teaching us to make effort to become better more conscious people through IMPRESSIONS: polishing our external world so that by reflection it would make our inner world “lighter”, more “tuned”. The idea that working on the external form, would give life to our inner self made sense and I sincerely appreciated the effort for a long time until it finally dawned on me that it became a straightjacket as uniform to presume that one was actually working on one’s self. We ended up investing all our energy in our external world to justify the annihilation of our inner world. The formatory apparatus or that part of the mind that can be indoctrinated to act and justify its actions in a closed circuit, continues to function with complete conditioning and no spontaneity or freedom but it is so busy that it thinks it is alive! That is why people work,work, work and become insatiable workaholics without life, get serious illnesses and wear out of the slave factory like carrots that have been put through a blender.
Like with all other Fellowship Cult activities, far from making us more conscious it made us more submissive. How we were going to get dressed became the main issue in the Fellowship cult. Everyone, I believe, has huge wardrobes: silk items, scarves, ties, bows, shoes, and the finer and most expensive clothes to model for the next event with sixty other people competing for the show for a man that would not even bother to greet us because “someone might have a cold or an infection and transmit it to his majesty” was the excuse given when the greeting stopped! The one member who had a lot of success was a lady that began teaching us how to dress!!
People think THESE things are unimportant but THESE things are what is important. The only thing that members are allowed to be creative about in the Fellowship cult is how they dress but the creativity is limited to very strict guidelines. It becomes a real challenge to meet those guidelines and getting dressed for the queen bee becomes the most serious effort one will make towards being accepted in the Conscious Harem, as a whore, a pimp or the cleaning lady!
For the men, being sexually accepted by Robert must have had that “wonderful” extra ingredient in the competition in which, if the clothes weren’t “good enough”, at least the young prime body fitted him!
The “necessity” most members have to be accepted fully by the Teacher is the deep motivation to yield to his will. It is a tragedy made of insecure, lonely and fearful people in the quest for LOVE. It perpetuates itself because no matter how much love they give to the Teacher, he denies it back, establishing a momentum of un-endless efforts without dialogue that lead towards idolatry: a dead end road for the lover. This develops particularly intensely in the central quarters and people visiting from centers simply pick up the established and accepted behavior becoming indifferent to it and establishing that they do not care whether their teacher pays attention to them or not and conform to paying for their own endless efforts without guidance.
Hi Nigel,
104. nige –
Interesting take on the idea of psychosis…..
I never had money problems until I met the FOF and the FOF made my life a financial hell.
Elena: This is very significant but more deeply significant would be: what prompted you to spend more and more money? What were you looking for? The external act is only the flower. What were the roots of the act? If one can look at those then one can experience the deep need that one had.
In my explorations the deep need is usually love. The good thing about acknowledging it is that when one can see how innocently loving the impulse is no matter how absurdly it ends up manifesting itself, one can not only forgive one’s self but trust one’s self. It is a beautiful being what we each carry inside and all our foolishness is an aspect of the confusion the whole world is in. The question with both one’s self and the Fellowship is: how can so much love turn so strongly against one’s self and us? There was nothing wrong with our aims for a more conscious life or our love for what we thought was a Conscious being, but in how that turned against us in the hands of an unconscious being. Nevertheless, when we can touch on our own beauty, our own love, our own innocence: our essence and trust that, the Spirit can develop. We gave the Spirit up for idolatry in the Fellowship cult.
Nige: Having been through the mental health ‘maze’ for many years, I have found stability in teaching my craft and making ‘little things for little people’. My family, my friends and my students are all supportive to the extent that I would say that love is shared.
Elena: Every time you write and communicate you feel stronger to me. There is more maturity and distance from the image you wished to project at the beginning. You still tend to “lean” on me or anyone else who you think you can portray as authority above or below you but not nearly as much as in the beginning. The fact that we can be this honest in public is to me an ideal process because the fact that you and I haven’t even met physically but can still help each other is wonderful. Your love has helped me enormously, particularly after being banned from the fofblog. I don’t care how “crazy” some people think you are or even you; to me, you are one of the finest human beings I’ve met, capable of “love” when love is the only thing that is needed. Not only that, you’re often “brilliant” in your choices of what to post here or in the fofblog and you know your “literature” as well as you seem to know your craft. Your own voice is being expressed more authentically each time and it is a beautiful voice Nigel. Trust your self; like the self in each one of us, it is priceless!
Always grateful for your sharing your self with me!
182. Ames Gilbert – October 22, 2009
And #179 sounds like Greg Goodwin or his twin to me. I’m surprised it materialized by itself, though. I’d expect some diatribe about the uselessness of this blog, or ex-followers being indistinguishable from followers in their self-deception to accompany it. Still, there is that certain familiar flavor, IMO.
Hi Ames,
It seems to hurt you a great deal to be labeled as an enabler of the Fellowship cult so I think it would be good to get some points clear.
People like you, Old FOF, Brucelevy and others who predominate in the FOFblog left ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and have never done anything serious enough against the Fellowship cult although you knew it was a cult. Is there not considerable “enabling” already in that fact?
Nevertheless I’ll speak a word on your behalf: when most of you left ten fifteen years ago, the Fellowship cult had not reached the level of aberration that it reached by 2007 when I left. It wasn’t just a little cult with nice people walking around trying to make sense of life while working on building their own fantasy, it was a CULT WITH CAPITALS, of seriously deranged people, fanatically manipulating the members against themselves. When I joined, all the signs were there as when you left but the effects of all those years of cult mentality weren’t as clear as in 2007.
When people could not even speak one sentence of their own, that began to express the horrifying mind control that had been reached. A cult can be measured by the degree of self expression that is allowed from the members. None of you who left ten or fifteen years ago lived the ABSOLUTE CONTROL that was reached later and those who did and are writing in the fofblog, are still in serious denial about the effects of that control: Vena, Tatyana, Ellen and others who I can’t distinguish by name.
The fact that neither you who left ten or more years ago, nor them who left recently, can amass enough of your selves to be willing to stop it from hurting those inside more deeply or those joining, reveals the extent to which not one of you has been able to understand the deep consequences of allowing such institutions to continue to proliferate in already, much wounded societies. It means that you are not clear enough about your relation to life and society to feel empowered enough to act on your consciousness.
To empower one’s self enough and be able to act publicly against such harmful institutions is an expression of responsibility for one’s own mistakes in having strengthened such cults with ones money and participation and the mistakes so many inside continue to commit against their own well being. Letting people continue down a fatal road is no act of consciousness or love or human integrity. It is a laissez faire attitude that reveals the same carelessness that Robert indoctrinated members to have towards each other and each other’s lives.
Dear Elena
You will probably find there are ‘subject-responsive’ people and ‘self-expressive’ people on blog-sites. Both are needed, but you will find the former getting into ‘contentions’ with FOF-based bloggers and, especially on FOF Discussion, the latter coming to blows with those who are trying to achieve a blog status quo. The ‘self-expressive’ types have more resilience although they would tend to stop posting when ‘stupidities’ occur on the site. Keep up your blog – it, as well, is priceless…..Nigel.
There are five main areas in this post that need to be checked:
1. DC covers the idea that he was one of the boys and it was “necessary”
2. in the FoF consciousness has more to do with letting go of mechanical power and control and making the choice to control the only thing really in our control, that is, our inner world.
3. we both made the choice from a place of free will, which all men possess.
4. So there exists a supreme justice in our design.
5. Enjoy your trip.
It is a great post if one has the aim to dissipate all questioning of the FOF, put the minds of the followers at peace and deepen the main tools of indoctrination current in the cult.
In the 1st point he justifies being one of the boys as something necessary.
In the 2nd he deepens the Fellowship indoctrination that uses the idea of the System that man cannot do to keep members passive. This has been one of the most damaging ideas to keep people under control. The idea that man cannot do as presented in the System refers to the state in which under the conditioned tendency to imitate everything with which an individual has been brought up before he is mature enough to take conscious decisions, he or she cannot “do” in the big sense of the word and simply repeats old patterns. The deviation is very clever but also very clear because what DC states is that in the Fellowship the only thing UNDER OUR CONTROL is our inner world.
Please pay attention because this is important: The only area in which Fellowship members are allowed to DO is in their inner world. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ACT IN ANY WAY OUTSIDE OF THE CULT’S DOCTRINE AND ESTABLISHED BEHAVIOUR. In their “inner world” they are conditioned to dismantle the structures with which they arrive. To be able to accomplish that, they systematically dismantle the inner structure of their thoughts, feelings and behaviour and replace it with extremely precise and limited cult ideology, idolatry and behaviour. They discard not only their inner world but the outer world that they use to posses. Once they abandon their family they are emotionally dependent to the people in the cult and the guru. Once they give up the possibility of ever expressing their own thoughts, they adopt the doctrine. Once they submit to the cult’s “uniform” and conditioned behaviour they give up their self-expression. Everyone in a cult looks and acts alike.
One of the main ideas to justify ALL of this is: Man cannot do. Since members cannot do, why would they ever even consider DOING anything different to what the guru tells them to? That is the attitude presented to any member who questions. If they try to do anything connected with their own ideas and expression, it is not allowed. They can DO only as long as they allow for the submission of their art or enterprise to the guru’s dictates. After years of this behaviour, just like Daily Cardiac proves in his post, they no longer know the difference between themselves and the guru. “Playing the guru” and defending the Cult as if they were the guru himself is conceived as their greatest act of freedom which is exactly what he affirms in point 3!
3. we both made the choice from a place of free will, which all men possess.
There is no free will in a man that conditions his thoughts to a doctrine. It is clear that Daily Cardiac, like Girard and all the good enablers in the Fellowship cult CANNOT and are NOT willing or able to perceive anything beyond the doctrine. THAT is why they cannot perceive the suffering of the members. That is why “discarding” people when they don’t conform is necessary. That is also why when cult members leave the cult they have to learn to think again and adapt to a world in which their conditioned thought processes are of no use.
There is no free will in people that can only choose a guru as the exclusive owner of their love and are forced to discard all other people that they loved and loved them.
There is no free will in people who have to use a uniform every day of their lives, move and behave only as the guru dictates.
4. So there exists a supreme justice in our design.
Does it really? Is supreme justice your becoming Robert Burton’s psychological slave?
5. Enjoy your trip.
This is the most important sentence in this whole post. He is “blending” in with Fellowship ex-members in an atmosphere of acceptance. None of the posts answering him deal with the main issues. Any member reading that blog today will not be helped to leave, on the contrary, their stay in the cult will be more deeply justified by the acceptance and inability of the people in the fofblog to challenge his statements.
225. Daily Cardiac – October 23, 2009
196 – Voloneska:
“DC first love experience not so different from my own.”
I hope yours was as good; I was thirteen and she was fourteen. We entered a state of bliss and did not exit for two years.
Eventually I felt the call to “hang out with the boys” which was necessary but not what I would call blissful.
“DC FOF experience also not so different from my own.”
Well you left and I stayed, so while I’m sure there was common ground there must have been differences as well.
It’s hard to focus on a theme from what you write as you cover a lot of ground.
One theme I pick up on is you seem to come back to the idea that consciousness as promoted in the FoF has something to do with power or control. As I understand it and live it in the FoF consciousness has to more to do with letting go of mechanical power and control and making the choice to control the only thing really in our control, that is, our inner world. A spiritual warrior has no interest in conquering outside armies, but his or her own armies of thoughts, to paraphrase a well known axiom.
“Maybe DC you need try experiment for finding out what ex FOF people thinking is. Try to neither accept or deny Burton and FOF fraud, only keep in mind.”
One idea that is difficult for some ex members to understand is the idea that those who embrace the school ultimately have made the some journey as those who left. They have experienced the same I’s as those who have left but have seen them as insubstantial and have found better and more substantial reasons to stay.
Most ex members like to point out that people who stay are laggards and just have not arrived at the point where they will see it is best to leave. They do not consider the fact that those who stay get to the same place as those who leave and see staying as the only real meaningful choice.
You have made your choice and I have made mine; we both made the choice from a place of free will, which all men possess. So there exists a supreme justice in our design.
Enjoy your trip.
Each of Daily Cardiac’s posts is precious if one wishes to understand the main ingredients of Cult indoctrination. In the following post he affirms essentially that objective knowledge cannot be proved or can be proved only by the individual himself.
This idea that members as much as ex-members cannot know the truth is also drummed into the members at each event with Girard. It is perfect reasoning to the cult’s advantage because the member is left with the conviction that the little they know about themselves is OF COURSE not objective knowledge since they just arrived in the School of Consciousness, they can’t possibly have already achieved it and the one and only to hold such truth is Robert Burton.
It is not that each and every one of the members does not enter into a conflict with those ideas and his self but with or without conflict, the PRACTICAL REALITY within the cult is that Robert’s will is what is lived and practiced and imposed as coming from Robert’s OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. Being able to oppose the Teacher means that one already trusts one’s self enough to stand on one’s own and the first thing a cult member must give up is the self on which he or she stands. On the other hand, if one were to acquire such thing in the cult why would one oppose the teacher? Again it is a closed circuit that benefits the Cult. Any challenge to any form of his will is immediately answered by asking you to leave the Cult. THAT definitely detracts most people from questioning; it certainly detracted me from doing so. On the one hand because in the sphere of the individual’s personal struggle he is achieving results, for example, if he’s not expressing negative emotions, he is retaining energy and his personal life is flowing more harmoniously; if she’s not identified with every little thing that used to bother her, there is less useless suffering; if she’s not talking unnecessarily expressing every opinion on all sorts of things, she is more contained; if he’s not gossiping about other people’s lives, he is not wasting his mind on preconditioned ideas about others; if she’s controlling her mechanical movements, she acquires more self-control; If he’s not identified with every woman that walks by or she with every man, then there is room for her and his self.
So, as long as the member can reduce the sphere of his effort to his own personal and immediate reality, he experiences the taste of his or her effort and its satisfaction for some time. After a while, this too becomes stagnant as the individual’s inner and outer freedom is channelled into the closed lifeless circuit of the cult: the dead end road in which the guru’s lifestyle is “commandment” and all activities and efforts by each and every single one of the members are geared towards supporting it. It is the death of culture; the death of life in the community and a cancerigenous process turns the member’s effort against his and herself. The dialogue between the individual and the community is culture and when there is no freedom for the individual to express his or herself, there is “Cult”: the effort that the individuals are making profit only one or a few individuals in the community. This also happens in regular society in Art, Science and Economy as much as in traditional religions and affects all of society in how power and money are distributed but in Cults, the tragedy is that what people loose is not only money and power, it is their self: their life: they give it up to the Guru’s will convinced that without will of their own they can will themselves to enlightenment! In the distorted reasoning of the Cult this is perfectly REASONABLE, no matter how unreasonable it in fact, is. It is nevertheless not difficult to find the parallel between the attitude in this kind of cult members and the traditional Christian Catholics who act as if the priest could take them by the hand to heaven. The paradox lies in the fact that the member makes a superhuman effort to give his own life up to the enlightened being with the conviction that enlightenment cannot require more effort than THAT but the fact that he or she has given his life and self away, makes it impossible for them to reach any degree of consciousness no matter what effort they have made. Their effort, like a cancer, turns around and destroys them: The final act of suicide simply confirms the psychological reality that was being developed all along.
We are no longer in an age that can function on the superiority of some people over others in no matter what sphere of life. “Development” for mankind as a whole as much as for the individual today must happen on the basis of human equality. It does not matter how much anyone knows in no matter what area, that does not make him or her in any way superior or inferior to others. All we need to know today is that we are all equally human and therefore have equal rights to think, feel, eat and participate in the work. We are far from practicing that reality but as long as each man and woman knows that she is not less or more than anybody else, he and she will not tolerate being mistreated and mistreating anybody else. We cannot continue to passively accept inequality in any sphere.
236. Daily Cardiac –
Opus 111 – 229:
“Yes your logic is flawed. The problem with your argument is that
most of its premises are not falsiable, they cannot be proven to be false.”
For instance: 1. Robert Burton is a conscious being. 2. FOF is a conscious school 3. Higher forces work with FOF and its paying members.
These premises are articles of faith, they do not answer to recognized metrics. They are not falsiable.”
Good point. I said long ago here that nothing said on the blog regarding spiritual truths can be either proved or disproved.
Spiritual truths are only verifiable on a personal level. How can spirit be proved in the world of matter? No one has successfully proved the existence of God or a soul or the afterlife, or disproved it. The same with conscious beings. As I’ve said numerous times I’m only relaying my personal experiences and understandings.
“Your personal “logic” is to take these articles to be true and to infer that you will get what you look for:”
My personal logic has been to verify and go from there. I don’t “take” anything to be true or false. But regarding the power to infer, it is one of man’s greatest gifts; it’s what separates us the other forms of life.
I, Elena, regret the swear words I used in posts above. I could erase them but that would not be fair play. It is not swearing against others that I will manage to convey my understanding. As my own confusion dissolves I will be able to challenge others without offending them. It is important for us to challenge each other and still know that we can hold each other.
240. dragon –
Ellen,
It is a remarkable point to analyze the moment that “made it happen” at the beginning of the membership/recruitment. There must have been a kind of bliss in every member/Ex-member of the FoF right in the beginning of the relationship with Robert’s FoF experiment.
And those emitting sparks how could they be so powerful and attract so many people, was it the exclusiveness, the secret, the feeling of being chosen, the access to knowledge outside the “trivial”, the emotionally charged background of learning and working together simultaneously embedded with a harsh self-castigation?
Elena: I’ve addressed both of these questions in the post above. There is a kind of bliss when one acknowledges one’s objective reality and lives from it, as you probably know. The fact that that then becomes the justification to stay in the cult is the manipulation that we’re trying to understand.
There is an exclusiveness in understanding the joy and the need to change what is harmful in one’s self. In going from accepting it as a necessary and justifiable reality and willing one’s self to control it.
The secret, the feeling of being chosen or wishing to respond for humanity in a very decadent society is there. It is not that regular society does not need healing, it’s that cults are not the answer.
There is no “conscious” self-castigation even in cults. No one consciously hurts him or herself. People are willing to make supra-human efforts not because they are punishing themselves but on the contrary because they are trying to relieve their suffering. People are suffering in or out of cults but people in cults are looking for solutions. The cult worsens the condition but as long as people think that they are in School and not in a cult, they continue to make efforts.
Dragon: So far a mixture you can also find in monasteries but the difference is the threat:
If you leave you will be “dead for eternity” (it is not only the expulsion).
Elena: What people don’t want to give up is the money and the effort and the trust and the love they’ve already invested. It is with out money that the place is kept beautiful, with our effort, trust and love. It is no different to withdrawing from a marriage. The more people committed the more difficult it is to leave it. There is the hope that that effort will be sooner or later acknowledged but wishing for it to be acknowledged is turned around against the member and established as another “identification” that they must give up keeping the closed circuit in which the Cult always wins. But the problem is not only the acknowledgement for the member’s ego, it is the recognition of the member’s SELF, his presence as a human being with equal rights and responsibilities as the guru himself and a member of a community in which the the good as much as the grief is equally distributed.
Dragon: Another point is how could it happen that so many left the cult and what was their “tipping point” after so many years of the FoF retreat.
Was it, as you pointed out, the power of duality: the FoF identity/opposition, was it the Adam and Eve like understanding: Robert may be the serpent? Was it another spark, the spark of heresy living in every human being?
Elena: The absurdity the cult had reached was too obvious for the few who still held a slight sense of themselves. The most invested and the most vulnerable are still inside digging their own graves. THEY NEED HELP.
Dragon: Thus it is only a matter of time until Robert’s experiment will find an end.
“Every group (spiritual, political or racial) that forms an identity of itself necessarily creates its opposite.”
Elena: There is no such guarantee that it will end positively. Three thousand people have committed suicide in various cults around the world. What are the guarantees that the people in this one will not follow the same steps when they are equally psychologically disabled?
Dragon: If you take this group to an island it will have no outer opposition but as Robert knows the struggle is always inside (the group/the inner self) and could those group members be able to live in peace or will they breed opposition/destruction?
An interesting experiment (variations an this theme are still going on or are history) and why is Robert not willing (another heretical question) to find an island far away and to settle down with his members (some of them and Robert could be allowed to use a private plane and to hold contact with the so called “life people”).
Elena: The Fellowship Cult IS already an island. To be sincerely and fully committed as I was and do everything that Robert establishes one completely cuts off with the outside world psychologically. People HAVE to go outside and find jobs to bring money into the cult because money is the chief requirement from Robert to participate in it even if just as a silent witness. An island would cut him off from the money.
Dragon: Or why avoids Robert the public, he could get more exertion of influence (money/ members/etc. because 2012 is coming soon…, the “shift to another world”) something like the Raelian Movement:
The FoF, in my more than humble opinion, an experiment “refining” and misusing the fact of the inner struggle:
Duality/non-duality, inside/outside, friend/enemy is in our minds (we are still “very special animals” it is the evolution but sometimes we have the choice to escape from the butcher) and as long as people like Robert play the instrument (the mind) of their followers, the FoF will exist.
Elena: The Public is avoided because the more closed up the Cult is, the more protected it is from questioning. Transparency is good for those who have nothing to hide but not for criminals.
Copied and pasted this to FOF Discussion, to ‘move on some inertia’…..Nigel.
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
Max Ehrmann c.1920
Hey Elena and Nigel,
Sorry to interrupt the mutual love-fest/pity party, but here are some observations.
Your new blog is basically all about you, and how misunderstood you are. That is the primary theme. The executive summary of your more self-indulgent-than-ever torrent of words is that you wish to be a grand player in the scheme of things, but the universe is not getting behind you, so now you are whining about it. You say, over and over, you wish to end the Fellowship cult. To that end, you have picketed the main entrance. The Fellowship did not fall. And, if anyone’s mind was changed, and they shared that with you, you have forgotten to pass on that information. My guess would be that the effect was somewhere between zero and actually hardening followers’ attitudes. Of course, your guess is as good as mine.
So, let’s see. You have this blog that is pretty much a monolog, with regular bouquets and kisses from Nigel thrown in (along with his disparaging remarks about the FoF blog). And you have two main subjects. One is that mentioned Seriously Awful Other Blog, which you hate equally for supposedly enabling and encouraging the FoF and Burton, and for not granting your need for space and attention. You think it is a useless or even harmful exercise all round without your invaluable participation, but nevertheless you are, to put it mildly, completely and totally obsessed by it. The second is… ah yes, the imaginary conversations with other people on that blog, whereby you get to react to people who have no idea that they are in a conversation with you. Wow! That gives you the final word in everything, what could be better in this newly minted world, dominated and controlled by Elena, as the other world by right ought to be?
What other highlights?
You’ve compiled a ‘favorite enemies’ list (the dreadful Ames, Bruce, Old FOF, and so on).
You get to publicize your Really Effective Weapon (always yet to be revealed) to bring down the Fellowship, and best of all, you get all the credit as the One and Only Indomitable Fighter, the Only One That Matters, the Only One Who Stands Steadfast Even Though All The Arrows of Outrageous Fortune Rain Down on Her Alone. Wow again!
What’s left? You can grab enormous amounts of data from the internet and download it to your blog. That’s really, really useful.
Oh, I nearly forgot, you’ve attracted an agent, someone to spread The Word. Congratulations! Nigel grabs a few snippets (out of context) from your ocean of words, and uses them in advertisements on… wait for it… the Big Bad Blog!
Interruption over, now you guys can get back to what you were doing.
Hi Ames,
How much hatred have you accumulated against me! If that’s all you see about this blog you’re as blinded as Girard or others inside.
There’s so much more here than what you are willing to see and probably others amongst the sixteen, who are reading this one as much as the previous blog I started obviously find it useful otherwise they would not still be looking at it although I’ve left it weeks ago. If it doesn’t help anyone else, you’ve no idea how much this monologue is helping me. Is a good monologue any less valuable than a good dialogue?
Your post has the obvious intention to discourage me from insisting on the need to help the people inside the Fellowship and understanding, at least for myself what happened to us. My point is that making friends with enablers makes you enablers but that’s as bad as making enemies with them which is what I was promoting in my utmost frustration. We have both been pretty off the track.
You cannot detract me now from the aim I have. My powerful emotional dependence on ex-members for support and acceptance has been broken by your banning me. All I really needed was love. There was little of it in the cult but sometimes we are so badly wounded that we can’t even take the little love some do give and that was also my condition in the blog. I have already apologized too many times to try that again, it failed enough, but where I need to regret my behavior, I have deeply regretted it and at least I am in peace with myself if not you and others.
With you personally Ames, where would you like us to meet? If you’ve decided that nothing about my work is useful, where could we meet? It hurt me deeply that you would ask for my banning but besides being deeply hurt I have nothing personal against you.
I don’t think we are fighting a different war, we are just fighting it differently. I have enormous respect for what ever work you managed to do in the years you’ve been out. I sincerely believe that not one of you realized how terrible it could get. Had you realized it, I doubt you would have not fought it more actively.
It is important for the fofblog to continue and I respect and support every effort towards that. I will never forget no matter how much you and I disagree and even though you were extremely cold, that you were the ONLY ONE that actually came to court when I was cited. I am also still extremely grateful for your picketing with me.
I continue to be a part of the fofblog even if you have banned me, you might exclude me but I do not exclude any of you from my life. Any of you or any in the Fellowship for whom I continue to feel deep responsibility. My hatred is not for the people but for the harm people do on each other.
Nigel is free to do as he pleases even if I don’t agree. Sometimes I suffer when he acts very silly but silly and all he is the kindest human being that I’ve yet met throughout this ordeal and I will for ever be grateful for his support which doesn’t mean that I won’t challenge him wherever I find it fit. You might find others willing to ban him too if that is what you’re after but at least on this blog we have enough love to support each other.
I invite you to look at both sides of what has been difficult and positive about us and our work in fighting the Fellowship. Every human being has enough darkness and light to give him or her every chance to participate again and again and again in the life of the community. I invite you to try to avoid destroying a person because she or he has made mistakes like Greg and I have. We obviously come from difficult backgrounds and resorting to violence is the way we learnt to defend ourselves. But let me not speak for Greg who has enough of a mature voice. Your aim to destroy and silence me is a lot more violent than when I scream fuck or fuck you people when I get angry. Anger as you know is not a good advisor and I become so depressed after indulging in it that I suffer two or three times more than the people I’ve insulted.
I do question still why you would expect me to act like a conscious being after leaving a cult. You, more than many, know that ex-members who have been inside with the degree of involvement that I had are psychologically shattered when they leave. Has my screaming not made that obvious? I have been seriously and desperately trying to reconstruct my world and the world in the hope that I can stand up again in it. I am beginning to manage that. It is a beautiful process because just as we had to destroy our lives to adopt the cult’s doctrine, when we dismantle the cults doctrine to recover life, it gradually flowers from the rubbish and makes sense of itself.
You are not my enemy Ames, never step that far into the darkness. None of you are my enemies. When I free myself completely from the pain I’ve suffered you will continue to be the people that walked along with me on a very difficult stretch of the road. We’ve struggled hard on the fofblog but that struggling is necessary and good for all of us as long as we can continue to hold each other and I hold you all still in my heart, no matter how much we struggle.
Hi again Ames,
Just for clarity I continue to be friends with Girard who is the worst enabler of the Fellowship cult but that doesn’t stop me from calling him a black magician living on people’s innocence and hoping he is stopped. He was of course, my husband and I hope that by knowing that I love him, he can more easily digest what I am saying about him.
Love for our friends must not stop consciousness from stopping their criminal feast.
Elena,
You are right, I hadn’t thought from the point of view that whatever else, and however many or few participate, this blog is doing something good for you.
You say the FoF in your time was completely different from my time. True enough. And, the process of my leaving and coming to terms with the situation was probably rather different than yours.
I knew I wasn’t clever or objective enough to sort out the various entanglements, beliefs and problems I exited with by myself, so I got professional help from impartial and experienced people. That was a sound investment on my part, in fact it was a bargain.
For what you perceive as good reasons, as far as I can tell, you’ve decided to go it pretty much alone.
So, I leave you with the thought that maybe you don’t have to do it all yourself. Maybe, intrinsically, you simply can’t do it all yourself.
And you are certainly not my enemy.
Hi Ames,
I’m not at all interested in doing anything alone except being with my self when times get hard because I’m sometimes a very great company! I’ve been BEGGING to share with other people for almost three years now, desperately begging and if my porcupine spines are longer than they can allow for anyone else to come close I’d be very grateful if you or anyone else helps me cut them short! In fact, I did get a wonderful shave in the fofblog! It almost cut through the skin and bones! Didn’t we all get to “molt” psychologically? And isn’t it wonderful once the bunch of old hair is off?
Anyone who asks for my banning from the community I’m working in, behaves like an enemy. Banning people is what the Fellowship taught us to do and as long as you continue to be so eager to ban people in the fofblog, you are repeating the same patterns the Fellowship taught us. What we unlearnt in the Fellowship was love and love is what we need to recover.
Elena/Ames
I did not really want to get involved with the last few postings, but thought that Elena’s last post and the fact that Ames had referred to me, in as much as stating that I was “blowing Elena kisses”, sat with me awhile…..
I AM CERTAIN that Elena shares a similar psychological make-up to myself in that when she is ‘high’, it is difficult for her to ‘back off from herself’ and certainly is unwilling to have other bloggers negate her work and how she describes her ‘inner life’. The problem is that most bloggers, even the ones who work with mental health issues, ARE NOT EMOTIONALLY STRONG ENOUGH to deal with Elena and want a blog ‘status quo’ and state it in as much as they want ‘ground rules’. I am willing to take EVERYTHING THAT ELENA HAS TO OFFER as my students, friends and family have taken such from me and, if I find something that Elena has posted on The Public Square, that I think apt to mention in the FOF Discussion site, I will post it there (this is, of course, with deference to Steve, who has not seen fit to ‘call me out’ and not be ‘playing by the rules’)……
My chief feature in the FOF was ‘stuffed shirt’ (a certain sort of English vanity, which quickly got kicked out of me by all my experiences) with a ‘dash’ of fear and naivete thrown in. Now I am fully aware of my role, giving my full-grown essence to the community and am quite able to take any criticism which is levelled against me…..Nigel.
I feel you more you
each day
and that is
like dew
Fresh sprinkling water-light
Thank you Nigel.
In reference to dealing with me there are different issues Nigel and a lot has to do with our competing with each others thoughts and ideas. We are bursting open! We’ve not suffered in vain.
There are no excuses for my lack of control Nigel love. And I have been out of control in the blog many a time not because I’m crazy or because I pretend to justify it with being bipolar but because things hurt. Things, many things, simply hurt and I didn’t know how to handle the pain. Needy people looking for love can’t put up with a lot of indifference and rejection. And who is not needy after a cult? Those pretending to be extremely successful are just pretending. Many a blogger has been out for too long to be as vulnerable and the recent ones hurt as badly as I do, they are just wiser than I am in keeping low and to themselves and not exposing their wounds to the crowd. I’m learning hon!
The enormous difference between you and I is that you have accepted that you need medication for your condition and I haven’t and will not. It is true that particularly throughout the blog the ups and downs were violent but I don’t think that is so strange after having been so repressed in the Fellowship cult. Being able to express myself again and not knowing how to tame that was not easy.
I hope my dearest friend that knowing me inspires you to use your self, your I, your trust in your own self as a keel to your emotional states. We can get out of this shit without taking medicine and altering our bodies. We can trust our selves fully again and again and again and as many times as necessary. We will clear the path of our understanding so that we can trust life and our place in it, our selves and our actions.
We do not need to buffer our suffering. We can sit and cry for days without hurting anyone or ourselves when low is low enough to justify it. In allowing one’s self to suffer long enough, to weep deeply enough, we free the stagnant waters and redeem the world with our bearing. We stand full face in front of ignominy and humbly continue to live as decent a life as we can possibly amass from our being, mankind’s being that lives within each one of us.
No one has to put up with anyone’s excesses and I had put up with enough in the fofblog and they too, put up with enough from me, but I wasn’t about to ban anyone. It was in fact, an even breakthrough. The issues are not the screaming back and forth but the river down below that is getting turned around. We are changing each other and our world and that is what life is about. Thank God we will still manage to live a life after the Fellowship!
Bestselling author Leo Buscaglia was asked to judge a contest to find the “most caring child.” The winner was a four-year-old boy, who, upon seeing his recently widowed elderly neighbor crying, had gone into the man’s yard and climbed into his lap. When the boy’s mother later asked what he had said to the man, the child replied, “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”
When we try to help people we care about through difficult situations, we often want to “do”—take some kind of action or say the right thing. Sometimes, it’s more powerful and more helpful just to be there, quietly.
No justification of whatever is necessary.
120 Elena
Yes, I did cry, when reading that post…..
I would dearly like to live my life without medication, but my bi-polar is events-related and my life is quite stressful and emotionally-charged. The trouble is, after the Fellowship and through the ‘mental health maze’ I find I have very few buffers when I experience things – except the meds. I thought maybe a homeopathic regime or my growing relationship with Kate might help – but, no!
The main thing is – I WANT TO EXPERIENCE MY LIFE IN FULL!!!!!…..Nigel
(P.S. What does “que te extrano” mean? Andrea Bocelli is singing it now.)
121 dragon
Something like that happened to me in 1991 (two years after having left the FOF). I was doing some pre-course (Post Graduate Cerificate of Education) teaching at a primary school and one day was feeling very low – only able to sit with the children and they were coming up to me to be so close that the ‘actual’ teachers had to prise them away. Children can be so brilliant!…..Nigel.
For those who understand the System, it should be easy to understand this post. For those who don’t, please ask if you have any questions. I’ll be glad to clarify the meaning.
Hi Nigel and Dragon, thank you for being here,
Nigel, we can go into details by mail but I continue to believe that it is possible. You have of course been on medication for a long time, which is a cult of its own, so to speak. The body, the heart, the mind are used to it, going off would have to be a gradual process like living a cult psychologically is. Reconstructing one’s trust on one’s self is the most difficult part but it’s possible. Above all you have to want it. And help too is necessary but there are wonderful people everywhere if you can just help them help you by helping your self.
I could of course be completely mistaken Nigel and we will not rule that out. Post 101 above called your attention on an approach to psychosis. I think understanding the Fellowship Phenomenon we can come to understand how to destroy as much as reconstruct an individual’s integrity. (Instead of how, I just wrote who, it’s the second time I notice the mistake with that word. If those happen often please know that I do that a lot with numbers, turn them around from who to how but with numbers. I try to avoid correcting so please make the adjustments when necessary)
In a cult we’re psychologically broken into pieces but as we take a look at each piece corresponding to each center, we can clearly delineate how that control muffled the connection between the center and the self and the individual continued to work for the cult with the imposed identity and an imprisoned self or I. In cults essence is stunned and instead of developing true personality, cult personality is developed with the potential hasnamuss at every step. We can observe that with each center: instinctive and moving, emotional, intellectual and sexual. To each center there is a corresponding world reality.
“World reality” today, is as schizophrenic as the schizophrenics in asylums. From one angle, schizophrenics were unable to SUBMIT to the puzzling of the pieces and involuntarily reproduced the separations upside down and backwards within themselves and in their immediate external reality but would not submit. Such people don’t have buffers to avoid the assault like others do. “Normal” people are considered those who are willing to submit their will (Read Will as the main quality of I) to the status quo.
Cults have also inverted “world reality” but they’ve done so on the other end of the spectrum with people who were willing and able to submit to the status quo outside as much as inside the cult. People who had given up social struggle and felt the only way out was religious freedom, self-freedom through inner sublimation. They forgot to cry! They disenabled themselves to scream. They submitted up to their last vote and lost themselves in the poll. They chose to eliminate themselves so that they would not have to act against anyone else. They are essentially good human beings in a critical situation.
One possible approach to healing is reconstructing the mechanism backwards. The problem with cult people is that they are already dismantled so they can stay dismantled or “consciously” reconstruct themselves. In a School, we would have moved from self remembering to external consideration in a gradual step by step movement of our will. In a cult, the I is subdued, essence repressed to annihilation and with it the connection with the outside world is severed. The development of true personality is replaced by the development of cult personality. The mind is reduced to the formatory apparatus and the doctrine initiating the atrophying process, the emotional centre is reduced to idolatry for the one and only guru, fortifying the emotional separation with other human beings who become “unnecessary objects” to be discarded. The experience is very closely reduced to that of bees and the beehive: Hard working humans willing to sacrifice for the queen bee. (Couldn’t have fitted more perfectly had we written the script before the play!)
The moving centre is equally limited: no sports, no dancing, or only this sport, this dancing. No “unnecessary” movements –equal- no free movement, free thinking or free feeling. Only “INTENTIONAL” –equal- ONLY CONTROLLED movement, thinking and feeling are allowed and THIS CONDITIONING IS WHAT CUTS OFF THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD LEAVING HIM IN A CLOSED UP CIRCUIT IN WHICH THE GURU GRADUALLY REPLACES HIS WILL. Instead of self-remembering and external consideration establishing a healthy dialogue of responsible interaction between the individual and the world, the cult member is induced into self-control rather than self-remembering. Work on movements, thoughts and feelings is misconstrued by the member as work on one’s self but the fact that the exercises come not from the cult member’s will and his inner reality but from the guru’s will and the cults demands of behavior, make the process an external imposition rather than a freely chosen empowerment of the member’s will and the gradual development of true personality and spiritual reality with it.
I need to stop now Nigel, my head is splitting from my eye’s efforts. I hope to get a special program soon that will allow me to work with my eyes closed. If anyone has access to an internet program for blind people that they could pass on to me I would be very grateful. Also if you have an idea of what they are and which one is good that too would help.
Nigel and those reading, I need to know if I’m expressing it clearly and what questions would you have before it is worth going on. I would also appreciate your questioning and input. What we would be looking at after that, would be the connection each center has with its particular external reality. Just as the cult can dismantle one’s integrity imposing exercises on each of the centers, submitting the members will, one can reconstruct one’s integrity through exercises that reconnect one consciously to external reality. External reality is life! LIFE! Life is mother’s milk for the spirit! All of life with all its beauties and horrors and us standing like those children trying to do our best to help our selves.
When you allow the world, life, with each of its components to offer you their reality through your willingness to interact with them, you reconstruct your I by feeding your spirit. When you allow movement to move with your body and love to impregnate your heart and the world of laws and processes to run through your mind and witness them all with the blessing of your presence, you enter a process of regeneration. It is not only a healing process it is a conscious process. I think it is possible to develop this healing work methodically and even better, that knowing the principles, one can establish one’s own curriculum!
We all wish to live our lives fully Nigel and the more we understand what is happening to us, the more we’ll be able to set the keel towards that aim!
Nigel,
Te extraño means I miss you!
I don’t… because you’re here!
Big hug for you!
Clara Elena
124 Elena
Goddam! I wish that post were allowed on the FOF Discussion site. I have just woken up during the night (GMT) and will post back in the morning. I think this is very important…..Nigel.
124 Elena
You wrote…..
“External reality is life! LIFE! Life is mother’s milk for the spirit! All of life with all its beauties and horrors and us standing like those children trying to do our best to help our selves.
When you allow the world, life, with each of its components to offer you their reality through your willingness to interact with them, you reconstruct your I by feeding your spirit. When you allow movement to move with your body and love to impregnate your heart and the world of laws and processes to run through your mind and witness them all with the blessing of your presence, you enter a process of regeneration. It is not only a healing process; it is a conscious process. I think it is possible to develop this healing work methodically and even better, that knowing the principles, one can establish one’s own curriculum!”
As you know, I was stunned – positively! While having my bath early this morning (with some ‘muscle soak’ from the local supermarket – the logo on the bottle was – “for body and mind”) I tried to compose myself as to how to approach your ‘calling to the process of regeneration’…..
I took my art-form in when I joined the FOF and could bearly understand those (some of them artists in various disciplines – painters, musicians, actors etc.) who turned to computer programming or corporate recruitment to make their living in the Fellowship. I was still at college and received my Bachelor of Arts Degree in July 1979 (1 1/2 years after joining the FOF) which gave me the ‘right’ to be accepted for an H-1 workers visa in California. The ‘intermingling’ was well-set by this point and I had difficulty ‘non-identifying with Life’. I remember comments that sounded like, “It is so good to get back to the teaching-house where I can remember myself and truly be emotional!” It was during my last few months at Los Angeles that Walter Sheer asked me to design and fabricate the ceremonial vessels for the Fellowship and I felt honoured to do so, since it seemed a good ‘thank-you present’ to C-Influence for putting up with my, otherwise, waywardness. I think (according to Tatyana?) that the vessels are still used, unless Burton has dictated, “We would not want to use objects made by a dead machine who is going to the moon when he dies” (get the idea?). Despite all my financial difficulties, I worked tirelessly (I was not on tranquilisers at this point) in other peoples’ businesses (and extra hours in their workshops, besides) until opening my own business in Sausalito in March 1987 (you know most of the rest)…..
Some comments I received when pleading my case of poverty to the financial directors at Renaissance were…..
(JB): “I did not know you had put in so many (hundreds of) hours in the making of the ceremonial vessels. Next time concentrate on making money for the Fellowship.”
(FT): “(Pleading poverty) is the story of your life, Nigel.”
(D-KA): (to REB) “Is it not wonderful that B-Influence is funding C-Influence (with regard to the Papal Commission which grossed me $23,000)”.
I do not know why I ‘lost the plot’ for all the years in between returning from California until just recently; the only thing I can think is that it was to show me a ‘psychological journey’ through Life and to realise that my art-form was a Heavenly Gift (not to be taken lightly or as personal aggrandisement).
I feel real pity for those like Daily Cardiac, who are so limited in perception and ‘blinkered’ by REB’s so-called ‘teaching’ and who offer such shallow posts on the FOF Discussion Blog…..Nigel.
Hi Nigel,
Interesting that you would approach that post through your work and the relation the Fellowship had with it. Very interesting, because it is as if you intuitively realized that it is your work what has held you closer to your self more than anything else: Your creativity.
You mention that you didn’t take medication during that time. When did you start taking medication? If you started late in your life how do you think you managed in the years previous to that? If your depression were physically induced why was it not induced in earlier years? It is not at all surprising that you would get it after being mentally, emotionally and physically manipulated by the Fellowship cult. The fact that your I was already very weak when you left does not make it at all surprising that you would follow a manic depressive pattern.
If I had come across a shrink that thought medication was good after trying to commit suicide at the age of 26, I would have taken it gladly. During those first two years I wouldn’t even move quickly so that that “thing” inside of me wishing to kill me wouldn’t get angry enough to do so. “It” was so angry it didn’t even like me to move fast. Even fast movements would make it “wake up” and want to rush to suicide! I wrote the story during that period, maybe I’ll translate it and post it in one day. But as I said before, I met a shrink who’d been working in the asylum for 25 years who told me he had not seen anyone recover with medication. He had seen that only talking helped. He was a psychiatrist and had moved to psychoanalisis, which is how I met him. About six months later I arrived to my appointment one early Monday morning and was received by the caretaker lady who told me he’d died over the weekend, closed the door and THAT was the end of THAT! May he rest in peace and know that I am still forever grateful!
My experience has been that once I crossed the line towards being able and willing to commit suicide, it was not only very easy to cross it again and again every time I got depressed but extremely tempting. Knowing that, was what stimulated me to take Heather in because I knew any suicider would tend to insist until she or he could actually manage it. There’s a very tempting freedom in dying. But what the “suicider” doesn’t realize is that s/he’s turned real freedom upside down and backwards and wants to take the short-cut!!! which is always cheating!!! S/he sees no way out in life and therefore dies to it. The connection with life has been so severely broken that healing it becomes a supra-human effort and the treatment that is being resorted to worsens the condition: Resorting to medication, like most other traditional western approaches, is simply a buffer to dealing with the causes. Medication could probably help for a short period of time but the longer it is used the more difficult it is for the individual to take the reigns of his/her own process and therefore the I continues to weaken.
Death for the “suicider” is absolute non-identification with one’s self and freedom from the things that within one’s self, create a suffering that one has lost control of. Non-identification reached by the loosening of energy connected to the suffering or the pleasure through one’s own will, evokes the same freedom that death would produce but still alive! Instead of the darkness of the physical sacrifice by surrender to one’s inability to deal with the suffering, light is shed on the identification and it is placed in its relative position restructuring one’s inner world. It makes the I stronger and realigns it with the emotional and intellectual centers that have lost control of the situation.
What I hear you saying Nigel, is that you’re afraid that in your condition you would quickly tend to take that way out again. That the option of suicide and violence is still very much alive for you. I understand very well what you’re saying. I saw its face bright and clear when I was banned recently and wrote to a friend begging to be forgiven for having been born!!! The horror of the speed with which one can dive down to hell and burn in that fire is terrifying so don’t think I don’t know the delicacy of the situation and the pleasure of saying “FUCK IT ALL” “If it won’t stop at least I can stop it”… by stopping my perception of it… by killing my self. It is not difficult to not WANT one’s life when one hasn’t been WANTED, love one’s self when love hasn’t been present in one’s childhood. But for those of us who had the luck to survive and know that it wasn’t life what we wanted to destroy but the life we were LIVING, the search for LIFE becomes a true adventure. Is that so for you too?
Work on healing should address different areas: reconstructing one’s self through trust. (Trust as an aspect of self-remembering) Remembering your self as a child, not your childhood but your self as a child, reconnects you “today” with you in essence. It is an active realignment of your wounded I to your healthy I. There is an inner world that is as ample as the external world and the paths that live in it can only be trodden by one’s self but the self cannot take even one step without trusting itself! Trust is both a dimension of self-remembering and will. Trust is also a quality of will. In that realm, things are not divided into words and trust, will, I are all aspects of the spirit but they are also realities onto themselves and their expression in this physical dimension is no less valid.
Work on healing should address work on fortifying the I and the connection between the I and the centers. Both inner and outer work are necessary. One should allow for life to help heal one, IT is eager to do so. Centers should be worked both from inside but also from outside. Architecture is as healing as sculpture. Working on sculpting has some healing properties and walking through a great building has other very similar healing properties but they are in a dialogue between each other, a lemniscate relationship between one’s inner world and the objective world of mankind. Taking a shower has a healing property but swimming in a river and an ocean have other healing properties – connecting to nature is as healing as “cleaning” one’s self in nature. “Nature” is an evolved expression of laws that man is both pushing forward and following. The destruction of nature in our collective unconsciousness is no different to the individual’s destruction of his own integrity. In healing, one must allow for the Ocean to embrace one, the Ocean and the Sun as much as actively embracing them. One’s relationship to one’s self is no different to one’s relationship to humanity at large and everything humanity implies. Wherever there is external separation and harm, there is inner inconsistency: -lack of consciousness.
Knowledge helps us to know how to work with things and realigning our knowledge with truths helps us fit more easily into reality. Lies or corrupted reality lead to a dead end: abuse, suicide, murder, crime. That is why I am working against the Fellowship cult. The people inside are in real danger.
Don’t worry about posts not being on the fofblog. Each blog has its own intent and purpose and anyone interested can participate in both except me and Greg!. The more the merrier!
In having to express these understanding I am finding the connections. They are not yet so clear but I have said all these things before and they are clearer today than they were then on the other blog. I am not inventing truths. The truth is there and thousands, million others have lived it before me and all will continue to live it after me. We are each striving to live our own life and each person’s own life is as great as any one else’s. No matter how much others have succeeded, until we, our selves dare to take our own steps, no stretch of the road is covered, we dance in our own labyrinth. Once covered, the landscape is the same; what is different is the individual walking it. We are each unique, priceless human beings.
I’m glad you are willing to take the length of my posts without protesting. Writing is like traveling and when one meets a beautiful being on the road like Will and Trust or a difficult one like Suicide and crime, it is well worth sitting down and dialoguing with them for awhile without pretending one doesn’t have the time to meet what one is looking for! Besides, we must respect each other’s speed. You can take as much time to read as you wish but I don’t have as much time to write all I need to put down. It will be good to die knowing that I left everything I’d lived for.
Dear Elena
Must be something in the airwaves (or fate). I wrote this letter this morning.
“Dear Dr G—–d
My family and I were very impressed with the meeting you led at Wonford House last Wednesday. Although former psychiatrists have been informative and have shown a technical approach to my medication regime, I was pleased that you showed an empathetic approach to my thoughts and feelings and my wish to not have my ‘inner life’ controlled by synthetic drugs, which, as you pointed out, have slight to great side-effects.
I suppose this letter has been prompted by both the story of Stephen Fry, who states that he does not take medication and by a blog-friend of mine who also does not take medication but is very willing to work with her ‘daemons’, even though she may ‘rant and vent’ on the site. I have even considered having homeopathic counselling/treatment, but that is expensive from the ‘word go’.
Thank you for expressing your desire to read The Saga of Nigel (all 5 volumes!) and I hope you will arrange a meeting for us all in the near future.
Yours sincerely
Nigel Harris Price BA Hons, Cert Ed, MIfL.”
(P.S. The Saga of Nigel is all my consultant’s notes).
Sounds promising Nigel, step by step and when it feels good as hell!! I searched Stephen Fry on the internet, thanks for that. Yes, it’s good to know there are others out there…
Please Nigel don’t be afraid to disagree with me wherever my points seem weak or insubstantial to your experience. I would appreciate your disagreement as much as your confirmation where you find it suitable. Disagreeing with people is a way of structuring one’s self and being able to is part of the journey. There is no harm in disagreeing with others. Part of what is keeping you at bay is the condescendence. There is high voltage condescendence and submission and you seem to have some of both. We might have thought that being condescending would attract other people’s love but that was the fifteen thousand member’s mistake in the Fellowship cult. Most of us thought that by submitting to the enlightened guru we would be accepted and all our problems would be solved. Like children submitting to their parents even though deep down they know their parents are ever so wrong.
I tend to be on the other extreme and condescend to nothing. Perhaps that is why I was always on the outskirts of the Fellowship but still used up three lifetimes of concessions!
Guess we can move on to another area now and circle around this one from the sides?
My love to you, have a great Tuesday!
US raids free child prostitutes
The operation targeted pimps and their associates in 36 cities
FBI officials in the US say they have rescued more than 50 children from prostitution rings.
Nearly 700 people were arrested in 36 cities over three days, officials said, in an operation targeting a number of prostitution hotspots.
Most of those rescued were girls under 18 with the youngest just 10 years old. Dozens of pimps were also arrested.
The raid was part of a larger FBI operation which has so far recovered nearly 900 children from prostitution.
More than 1,500 FBI agents and police officers took part in the raids, which were based on intelligence provided by local police forces.
Nationwide effort
The FBI said that information provided by those arrested in such raids often uncovered organised prostitution rings and could lead to further rescues.
“These kids are victims. This is 21st century slavery”
Ernie Allen
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Kevin Perkins, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Division, said that despite recent success, child prostitution remained “a significant problem” in the US.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, welcomed the arrests of hundreds of people, including 60 pimps who had been forcing the children into prostitution to make money.
“Child trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is organised criminal activity using kids as commodities for sale or trade.
“These kids are victims. They lack the ability to walk away. This is 21st Century slavery,” Mr Allen said.
—————–
For the Fellowship one would have to say: These are adults, they are victims, they lack the ability to walk away. This is 21st century slavery.
This should be a good place to send the petition. They are adults in the Fellowship but they are as defenseless as children.
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/
Welcome to the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) website. Created in 1987, the mission of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) is to protect the welfare of America’s children and communities by enforcing federal criminal statutes relating to the exploitation of children and obscenity.
As the nation’s experts in child exploitation and obscenity issues, CEOS leads the Department of Justice in its endeavor to continuously improve the enforcement of federal child exploitation and obscenity laws and prevent the exploitation of children and families. CEOS attorneys prosecute defendants who have violated federal child exploitation and obscenity laws and also assist the 93 United States Attorney Offices in investigations, trials, and appeals related to these offenses. In addition, CEOS attorneys perform other vital functions within the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, including providing advice and training to federal prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, and Department of Justice officials, developing prosecution policies, legislation, government practices and agency regulations, and participating in national and international meetings on training and policy development. In all aspects of their work, CEOS attorneys seek to blend prosecutorial experience with policy expertise in order to create innovative solutions to the threat posed by those who violate child exploitation and obscenity laws.
“He puts things in their attitudes,
He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,
He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and
sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest
never shame them afterward, nor assume to command
them. ”
(from ‘Song of the Answerer’ by Walt Whitman)
THE PEOPLE
By W B Yeats
‘What have I earned for all that work,’ I said,
‘For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defamed,
The reputation of his lifetime lost
Between the night and morning. I might have lived,
And you know well how great the longing has been,
Where every day my footfall should have lit
In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;
Or climbed among the images of the past –
The unperturbed and courtly images –
Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino
To where the Duchess and her people talked
The stately midnight until they stood
In their great window looking at the dawn;
I might have had no friend that could not mix
Courtesy and passion into one like those
That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;
I might have used the one substantial right
My trade allows; chosen my company,
And chosen what scenery pleased me best,’
Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,
‘The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,
All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,
When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,
Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me
Those I had served and some that I had fed;
Yet never have I, now nor any time,
Complained of the people.’
All I could reply
Was: ‘You, that have not lived in thought but deed,
Can have the purity of a natural force,
But I, whose virtues are the definitions
Of the analytic mind, can neither close
The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.’
And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,
I was abashed, and now they come to mind
After nine years, I sink my head abashed.
Sorry, Elena, for putting the poetic passages first…..
I will write more in reply to your thoughts on the suicidal tendency, which is not my biggest problem at the moment at the moment. I actually started to write but lost the link when pasting…..
Talk tonight…..Nigel.
Thanks Mikey, This deserves to be celebrated, it’s the beginning of the end for cults. BRAVO pour la France!
http://www.heralddeparis.com/scientologists-convicted-of-fraud/61030#comment-4116
Scientologists convicted of fraud
BY WIRE NEWS SOURCES ON OCTOBER 27, 2009
A French court has convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France.
Two branches of the group’s French operations and its leader in France have been fined, reports say.
The case centred on a complaint by a woman who says she was pressured into paying large sums of money after being offered a free personality test.
The Church denied that any mental manipulation took place.
France regards Scientology as a sect, not a religion and prosecutors had asked for the group’s French operations to be dissolved.
Instead, a judge ordered the Church’s Celebrity Centre and a bookshop to pay a 600,000 euro (£544,000) fine, AFP news agency reported.
Alain Rosenberg, the group’s head in France, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros, the report said.
In ruling that the group did not need to shut down, the court argued that it would be likely to continue its activities anyway, “outside any legal framework”. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A better article can be found here:
Belgium, Germany and other European countries have been criticized by the U.S. State Department for labeling Scientology as a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its operations.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/WireStory?id=8925512&page=2
Thanks Nigel for your poetic choices. They are so refreshing!
It’s also very good to see the same techniques used by the Fellowship in other cults. This article is good not because of what it says but what it reveals about how scientology keeps members VERY BUSY so that they are convinced that they are doing something important for themselves just like in the Fellowship they are made to dress five times a day to keep them busy!
The unwillingness to talk about the XENU and other wacky ideas from Hubbard is also telling because, like in the Fellowship, members simply avoid seriously thinking about those areas as I also did. THAT avoidance is negligence. THAT negligence slowly crystallizes in many different areas that avoid the dissonance of having to deal with them. That is how they gradually dis-enable their COMMON SENSE able to protect them against the cult.
It would be good for those working against cults to use this opportunity to publish posts in every one of these newspapers denouncing the Fellowship. I have already started with a few. We’ll close this CANCERS down soon enough!
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/scientology/scientology-attracts-celebrities/Story?id=8871475&page=3
Secrets of Scientology
The Church says there is no aspect of life that cannot be improved through the application of Scientology principles, some of which are treatments conceived by L. Ron Hubbard. One such procedure, popular with celebrities, is called the “purification rundown.”
“It’s a sauna and vitamin program, some exercise to get your heartrate going and … you would take high doses of … dosages of Niacin,” said Amy Scobee.
Scientologists believe it can dislodge toxins and poisons from the body.
Related
WATCH: Cruise and Travolta: Church’s StarsWATCH: Inside the Church of ScientologyWATCH: Leader David Miscavige’s Alleged Conduct
Tom Cruise is a strong advocate of this treatment — co-founding the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, which uses L. Ron Hubbard’s “purification rundown” principals for those exposed to toxic chemicals after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
“When I started this project, it was because I was in a position where I knew that I could help,” Cruise said at a project event.
Scobee had the treatment.
“When I did it the first time… it was one week…, and I felt, brighter and more alert,” she said. “My skin was, you know, vibrant and stuff like that.”
But far away from the limelight of celebrities, Scobee says the program can also be used to discipline Church staff members. She says she was once told to take part in a purification rundown that ended up lasting eight months.
Scobee: I was at 5,000 milligrams of Niacin for months and months. I don’t know what that did to my body! (Laughs). I have no idea.
Nightline: How did you feel?
Scobee: I felt really, there was like gray stuff coming out of my skin, and I didn’t know if it was like my insides coming out (laughs) or whatever that long of being in the sauna five hours a day every day.
Nightline: Five hours?
Scobee: Yeah.
Nightline: And you kept going?
Scobee: Yeah.
Nightline: What happened when you did it for eight months?
Scobee: That was when I, uh, decided I didn’t want to be there anymore … to satisfy somebody else’s demands on … on me, to fix me, because of their preconceived ways.
The Church denies Scobee’s characterization and says the program is a “religious service,” and to claim it as a “kind of perverse punishment” is “gross in the extreme.”
Perhaps the most sensitive aspect of the Church’s theology concerns confidential scriptures meant only for higher level Scientologists.
According to former Church insiders, these documents describe L. Ron Hubbard’s belief in an intergalactic emperor called Xenu who brought the spirits of his people to earth 75 million years ago, burying them in volcanoes. These spirits, the story goes, have stuck to the bodies of people living today in the form of “body thetans.”
“They have had some really bad experience millions, billions, trillions, actually quadrillions of years ago, which is way older than the Big Bang basically…,” said Bruce Hines. “You’re supposed to, isolate … and communicate with them telepathetically, so that they go away.”
Tommy Davis spoke with “Nightline.”
Nightline: Do you believe that … a galactic emperor called Xenu … brought his people to earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes?
Davis: OK.
Nightline: Do you believe that?
Davis: Martin, I am not going to discuss the disgusting perversion of Scientology beliefs that can be found out commonly on the Internet and be put in the position of talking about things for … that … talking about things that are so fundamentally offensive to Scientologists to discuss…
Nightline: Well, I … I have the burden of my own journalistic responsibility …
Davis: Uh-huh.
Nightline: … that I bring to this meeting and I hope that, I’ve been appropriately respectful of you in my asking of the questions …
Davis: Well, you haven’t to the degree that the question that you asked me you know, by virtue of the fact that it’s been made very clear in other media entities that it’s something that we consider offensive … It is in violation of my religious beliefs to talk about them.
Nightline: So, just for clarification … just for clarification, do you personally believe …
Davis: I’m going to stop you, if you’re going to ask me that question again and you’re going to repeat things about volcanoes and this kind of thing and so on and so forth, I will stand up and walk out, Martin. Because … because what you’re doing by doing that is you are intentionally asking me things which you know I find offensive, and you’re insisting on asking me. So I’m asking you one more time…
Nightline: Mr. Davis …So, for a moment, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m not trying to offend anybody. I’m just trying to ask you a series of questions about the public face that you have. I’m not trying to mock you, I’m trying to understand what your beliefs are.
Davis: Sure.
Nightline: You’ve explained what auditing is….you’ve explained the growth of the Church, you’ve done all of those things.
Davis: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure.
Nightline: I am asking you in the context of those questions, in the context of those questions, is it true that L. Ron Hubbard said that understanding the origins of the human race and described through Xenu —
At this point Davis stood up and left the room.
Scientologists convicted of fraud
http://news.bbc.co.uk//2/hi/europe/8327569.stm
Scientology’s Celebrity Centre in Paris was fined in the ruling
A French court has convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France.
Two branches of the group’s operations and several of its leaders in France have been fined.
The case came after complaints from two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into paying more than 20,000 euros (£18,100) in the 1990s.
A Scientology spokesman told the BBC the verdict was “all bark and no bite”.
France regards Scientology as a sect, not a religion.
Prosecutors had asked for the group’s French operations to be dissolved and more heavily fined, but a legal loophole prevented any ban.
Instead, a Paris judge ordered the Church’s Celebrity Centre and a bookshop to pay a 600,000-euro fine.
Alain Rosenberg, the group’s head in France, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros.
Three other leading members of the group were also fined.
Ban ‘still possible’
Unlike the US, France has always refused to recognise Scientology as a religion, arguing that it is a purely commercial operation designed to make as much money as it can at the expense of often vulnerable victims, the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.
Religious freedom is in danger in this country
Eric Roux
French Celebrity Centre spokesman
Over the past 10 years, France has taken several individual members of the group to court on charges of fraud and misleading publicity, but this is the first time the organisation itself has been charged, she says.
Tommy Davis, spokesman for the Church of Scientology International, told BBC News that the court had acted “in total violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and French constitutional guarantees on freedom”.
The case “fell flat on its face”, he said.
“The fines will get thrown out on appeal. We’ve had similar cases before and in other countries. If it has to go to the court of human rights we’re confident we will win there.”
Speaking by phone from the US, he said it was a “political gesture” against the organisation, but “Scientology will continue to grow in France”.
The Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, and includes Hollywood stars such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
Manipulation claims
In the case leading up to Tuesday’s ruling, a woman said she was sold expensive life-improvement courses, vitamins and other products after taking a personality test.
A second woman alleges she was fired by her Scientologist boss after refusing to undergo testing and sign up to courses.
The organisation denied that any mental manipulation took place.
The court was unable to impose a ban because of a legal amendment that was passed just before the trial began, preventing the banning of an organisation convicted of fraud.
However, that amendment has now been changed.
“It is very regrettable that the law quietly changed before the trial,” Georges Fenech, the head of the Inter-ministerial Unit to Monitor and Fight Cults, told French TV.
“The system has now been put in place by parliament and it is certain that in the future, if new offences are committed, a ban could eventually be pronounced,” he said.
A lawyer defending Scientology’s operations in France said there would be an appeal.
Eric Roux, a spokesman for the Celebrity Centre, urged France to recognise Scientology’s “legality”.
“Religious freedom is in danger in this country,” he said.
Scientology on trial in France
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8066743.stm
A woman who claims she was forced to pay large sums of money
The Church of Scientology has gone on trial in the French capital, Paris, accused of organised fraud.
The case centres on a complaint by a woman who says she was pressured into paying large sums of money after being offered a free personality test.
The church, which is fighting the charges, denies that any mental manipulation took place.
France regards Scientology as a sect, not a religion, and the organisation could be banned if it loses the case.
It is the first time the church has appeared as a defendant in a fraud case in France. Previous court cases have involved individual Scientologists.
Books and medication
The Church says it cannot be responsible for individuals
The woman at the centre of this case says she was approached by church members in Paris more than 10 years ago, and offered a free personality test. But, she says, she ended up spending 21,000 euros ($29,400, £18,400) on lessons, books and medicines she was told would cure her poor mental state.
Her lawyers are arguing that the church systematically seeks to make money by means of mental pressure and the use of scientifically dubious “cures”.
A lawyer for the church, Patrick Maisonneuve, said: “We will contest every charge and prove that there was no mental manipulation.”
The church’s spokeswoman in France said it was being “hounded” by the French courts and that its members were facing persecution.
Scientology was founded in the United States in the 1954 by science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard. High profile supporters include the Hollywood stars John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
In Germany last year, it was declared unconstitutional.
However, a Spanish court ruled that the Church of Scientology of Spain should be re-entered into the country’s register of officially recognised religions.
Director Paul Haggis leaves Scientology:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2009/10/director-paul-haggis-leaves-sc.html
Elena
Perhaps, with this Scientology Revelation, it may be wise to leave our ‘little dialogue of depressive tendencies’. We both know where our healing lies and I think you have come further along, in your two years out of the FOF, than I did at that point in my life. I did want to be specific about the connection with ‘The People’ as a most wonderful way of feeling the Richness of Life and maybe you can bear that aim in mind when thinking about putting pressure on the Cultic Curse, as much as it has been revealed in Scientology and the parallels with the FOF. I am trying to say that you must have, as you have already stated that you have, a humanitarian goal or longing before we venture into how we must approach authorities, both in the USA and State of California and where there are outlying centres of the FOF, to investigate and legally terminate activities that we know are both morally and ethically wrong. Remember, California is perhaps the most ‘free and lenient’ state in the USA and the USA is very ‘free and lenient’ in and of itself. I think the statement made against Scientology as having caused ‘financial manipulation’ is a very good area in which to pressurise for investigation into the machinations of the FOF. Personally, I would like to see REB spend his last days on this earth in prison rather than a re-run of the final scenes of ‘Death in Venice’.
“France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces” (Henry V)
I’m beginning to act normal again!! To laugh and talk when I am in a group of people! It’s been so many years since I’ve been frozen! The funny thing about all this writing is that I haven’t been able to speak normally in a social gathering for nineteen years now. I’d stay dead silent! Except in meetings and events when I would give those long angles that the establishment hated but a few would come and thank me. That is, all the time I was in the Fellowship and these years recovering. Who could be normal with all that act!!
Today was the first time I blended in a group like the rest of them. I had to talk on the heart for an anthroposophical medicine course I am taking and instead of a lecture we sat in a circle and all shared as I exposed. A dialogue at last!!
You poor fofbloggers! I gave you such hard time! Thank you for putting up with me for so long! It is great to be here and know no one is going to throw me out! But even I am letting go! I can be off the computer longer without wanting to know what you’re saying in there or who visited here! I only see numbers and dots on the map but if I were seeing Angels they wouldn’t look as pretty!!
I’m going to concerts again, bought a few bonsai, two beautiful microcosmic trees. One of them opens its leaves in the morning and closes them at night and I burnt it badly the first day in the Sun. But it survived. I sat all day with it horrified because I’d killed it but it survived.
My neighbors are usually outside. That is the ladies, for the men go to work. The lady next door’s son is severely disabled because something happened just after birth. He’s seven now and looks like a fairly normal boy would but he has seizures almost everyday and is very autistic. His family is EVER so loving though that it is a pleasure to live next to them. His mother sews and she just got the first job to do at home that she’s had this year, making two piece suits for children and gets paid three dollars fifty for each one! She’s very happy that she got the job. This is a very low income neighborhood but the people are kind and caring and it is very clean. Antioqueños are very clean people. Gangs look after the security of the neighborhood. People pay them so that nothing happens to us!! The head of the neighborhood council who opposed them was shot last year. Two thirteen year old kids were killed last month.
The priest gives mass every sunday and he protested the death of those two boys and someone told him to be careful and he shouted, “if they are going to kill me they can kill me but this is something that we need to protest”. I can hear him from my house because they hold mass just fifty feet below. I respect him for that! Everything else he says is catholic cult telling people to work harder and be patient and passive and God will help them.
Children run around and make noise every day. It is lovely! They play in the streets and use sticks, cardboard and paper for bats and balls. They are young and they are still in heaven even though they already know that life isn’t easy.
It’s three in the morning and it’s beautifully quiet! It hardly ever is in this neighborhood but it isn’t too loud either except for the buses brakes that shreek! as they go down the hill. I often run away on Sundays so that I don’t hear the mass or the loud lady that sings out of tune but I wouldn’t change a second of this neighborhood for the disgusting overinflated alchemy of the Fellowship cult.
Heaven and earth know heaven and earth; like knows like; and we all know that the commingling richness of life is where reality holds its kingdom…..Nigel.
Hi Nigel,
Do you know anyone who might have a vaccine against naivete? I need one desperately!
Do you know anyone who might have a vaccine against naivete? I need one desperately!
273. nige – October 27, 2009
Are you listening Burton?…..
“The court ruled that it was not a protected religious organization, but that it was a commericial organization designed to enrich its leadership.”
274. dragon – October 28, 2009
Correct diagnosis but where is a court in the US?
Sounds like the perfect epitaph for this play!
Dear Elena
The only encounter with ‘organised religion’ in which I became embroiled, after leaving the Fellowship, was taking Bible Study with Jehovah’s Witnesses for 2 and 1/2 years, then stopped going to their meetings or answering their telephone calls or their visits to my house 4 Christmases ago. The Bible, as the most published book ever written, is thereby the most bastardised and abused, so I tend to take out of it what I find useful and moving, just as I did/do with the 4th Way stuff. Although I took a look at Steiner, I got bored and left it. It is me with the angels and my friends, family and students, of which I include you and a few others from the FOF…..Nigel.
It seems we are ALL both light and dark and some delve into more darkness than one can swallow or allow! I guess everyone has to feel the bone before we swallow the fish. We’re so eager to love though…
284. nige – October 29, 2009
282 fofblogmoderator and Ames
Thanks, Ames, for that clarification. This having been said, why was the Troy Buzbee case levelled at Burton and his enablers and why was it settled out of court for a specific sum? (Do any other bloggers know?) Does this mean that we are just going to have to wait for the FOF to’wind down’ and for Burton to abscond to a prepared retreat and negate any responsibility he has for the well-being of members? Are we able to prepare some sort of high-level case of public embarrassment against Burton and the FOF (reverse action of the First Amendment – Freedom of Speech)? Why was it that, supposedly, there was some sort of implication, in the Rajneesh Cult case, that he had been poisoned by Officers Representing the State to get rid of him and ‘his nasty crew’? Is there any possibility, at all, that Burton can be held ‘morally’ responsible for ‘psychological damage’ that is caused to the young men? Are they responsible, themselves, for anything that may happen to them? How much can action be brought, in other countries, against the ‘goings-on’ of the FOF? How much has Burton and the FOF ‘bent’ laws of other countries (or even US law) to enable young men to be brought into the United States to become the harem?…..
These are all only questions I ask, based on Ames’s post, and what, probably, other posters would want to get involved with. I dearly hope that we can bring strong and invigorating debate to this, and any relating, subject…..Nigel.
October 2009
President Obama
The White House
Washington D.C.
United States of America
Dear President Obama
Although this letter may not seem to convey any desperate tone, there is a level of urgency which I would wish to have levelled to any attention you may bring to it.
From January 1978 to June 1989, I was involved, as a member, with an organisation known as The Fellowship of Friends Inc. (FOF), which disports itself as a Church under California State and US Law. This is both partly, and exactly, why attempts in the past to illuminate its immoral undertones and uncover its leader, Robert Earl Burton, as a homosexual, who uses the façade of the system known as the 4th Way, to prey on young men in his ‘flock’, whether by their willingness or not (as has been proven by several court cases, which were settled out-of-court for undisclosed sums) and generally causes psychological, monetary and physical pressure upon his members, with the help of an ‘inner circle’ of enablers, have met with difficulty.
Although, as you can see, from the above, I have been out of the FOF for a very long time, I am still troubled by the downward-spiral of behaviour, which has not seemed to show any let-up, of those in the cult, who would take advantage of the naïveté and willingness to please of most of its members. Personally, I had to undergo much aggrievement, for many years, and a great deal of psychiatric help, to find my place in the ‘human family’ (let alone, my own), having left the FOF. I subscribe to a blogsite, called the Fellowship of Friends Discussion, which seeks to talk about experiences in the cult, what people have found for themselves, spiritually, having left it, and generally to offer alternative ways to look at spiritual and humanitarian paths. One of the subjects often raised is why people (often young and impressionable) are drawn to these types of organisations, but that is a matter for some strong debate.
Perhaps you may be wondering why I have sought help on this matter from as high an influence as the President of the United States of America – a little comes from my experience in your country as both an employee in, and an owner of, small business; some comes from absorbing the spirit of America, as representative of the motto of my Scottish mother’s clan Wallace – Pro Libertate (for liberty); but maybe it is because I have seen something in your moves for new constitutional legislation that makes me think you may just be the man to take on this kind of ‘scourge on humanity’ (funnily enough, my first name derives from the Latin – ‘little black one’ and Price, my family name, has many derivatives – Reece, Rees, Rhys and Rice – was not Condoleezza a great secretary of State?)
I have included some literature pertinent to this subject which will fill you in on some background and would be happy to be contacted by anyone in the White House who has dealings in these sorts of matters.
Yours most sincerely
Nigel Harris Price BA Hons, Cert Ed, MIfL
(011) 44 1392 462103
nhprice@gmail.com
Hi Ames,
Thank you for those posts. It’s so good to see you bite into the things that matter. Thank you for the information, it is very much to the point. I’m only going to do a little guess work here.
Perhaps the way to attack cults in the USA is not through the religious aspects but the social aspects.
Ames: “It is not illegal to seduce young men above the age of consent with promises of this or that. It is not illegal to make sex part of a religious doctrine. It is not illegal to claim that having sex with Burton will advance the ‘evolution’ of a follower. But it is illegal for Burton to have sex with a minor, because that is a general law that applies to everyone and does not pick on Burton in his role as central pillar of the Fellowship of Friends.”
It CANNOT be legal to submit people to specific techniques of mind control that cause them to act against their own well being, that of their families and society at large. Could sects, cults, not be confronted with the social aspects of what the cult implies. How difficult would it be to prove for anyone of us that we were induced into “anti-social” attitudes with such dogma as “the six billion dead, sleeping people on the planet” who were worth ripping off because they were going to sink under water in the fall of California and Fellowship members were not going to have to pay? Who amongst us could not prove that under the threat of a major war or disaster, we were programmed to accept a myriad sacrifices that we would not have accepted if we had not been conditioned by those premises? That it wasn’t our stupidity what allowed us to accept giving huge quantities of money but our GOOD WILL? Our conviction that an ARC had to be built? And in not allowing us to know how the money was really being spent, it was the CULT what hid from us the reality of what was going on actualizing the mental as much as the social manipulation that alienated us increasingly from our selves as much as our reality and leaving us in the limbo of an imaginary endless work towards “awakening”.
In abandoning their children, did Parents not act anti-socially? In breaking marriages up, are members not induced into hurting their own self and their family? In separating members from their parents, friends and family and channeling all their money towards the cult, does this not affect the social connections they held previous to the cult? And yet, the “religion” that we had submitted to was supposed to happen in LIFE.
I realize how difficult it is to state a case and show the actual harm in a particular person but if we stated a case as a huge number of ex-members showing the myriad small harms that affected our lives both individually and socially, we would have a case. (After finishing this article, it doesn’t seem that this is necessarily true, any one individual can prove all this) A hundred little stories of how so many of us gave our parents up, our children up, our connections and how that alienation made us fanatically dependent to the cult HAS to be understood as a phenomenon of mind control that is far from the freedom of one’s chosen religion.
Nothing would be easier than to prove with each and every one of Girard Haven’s books and all of Robert’s publications, that the System was used and manipulated against the members. The “religion” we “submitted” to was used against us. Some aspects of it were taken to convince us, others were used to enslave us.
How many of us could simply stand up in a court and say, “I paid for fifteen years and was never allowed to participate actively as a human being but mentally conditioned to participate passively as a silent worker in the Community I belonged to. The Fellowship of Friends presented itself as a School of Consciousness but ALSO as an ARC for humanity and every single cent we paid in addition to the TEACHING PAYMENT, was not for the School-teaching aspects of our life in there, it was as a member of the community to which we belonged, AS CITIZENS, AND THE CULT CANNOT ACT AGAINST OUR CITIZENSHIP and as members of THAT COMMUNITY, our rights as human beings were brutally severed such as:
1. The freedom to decide what and how our money was to be spent benefiting only Mr. Burton and his inner circle”.
2. The freedom to express our selves in any of the community’s events under the threat that we would be expelled if we ever did so.
3. The freedom to share our community with the rest of our families was taken away from us. We were not allowed to take our children to the property when we needed or wanted to, we had to leave them behind and could only take them when the guru decided. In as much as we were a part of a “School” and under a religious so called guidance, this could have been acceptable but the so called religious System that we had contracted for was not THAT ONE, it was a religious System known as the Fourth Way that does not separate people from life, on the contrary, it happens in life, with one’s life and what the Fellowship Cult did WAS EXACTLY TAKE OUR LIVES AWAY AND CONTINUE TO USE US AS IT’S SLAVE-WORKERS. And even if that were not the case, the money that we were paying not for the teaching but for the Arc, for the community in which we were members and not just students, we were FORCED under the threat of being banned, to give up our civil rights and social freedoms and in GIVING THEM UP OUR HUMAN STRUCTURE WAS DISFIGURED to the point that supporting the systematic rape of young men, the inhuman treatment of members, the lavish lifestyle of a narcissistic sociopath became NORMAL in our disfigured, mentally manipulated, emotionally destroyed and physically conditioned SELF.
4. Every single civil right that I have already worked on in other posts.
I think WE ARE FAR FROM LOOSING THIS BATTLE, WE ARE JUST BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS BATTLE IS ABOUT and we are going to win not only for our selves but for every one of those people who have committed suicide in other cults and each member who is being spiritually manipulated in other cults around the world. “Clarifying” our selves as human beings will give us more spiritual clarity and more social coherence as much as more social cohesion. When we recover the human understanding of each other’s integrity, we will have a much more spiritual world! When in the United States and every other country in the world, the Law stands up to defend the human being against any form of economic, sexual and religious abuse, we will begin an upward strive towards a more spiritual world. We will bring the spiritual into our practical lives and begin to live like human beings -not just like animals ripping each other off. The STATE(!) representing the PEOPLE, must come to use the Law to act against any and all institutions who impose inhuman conditions to its participants, as much as against individuals who impose inhuman conditions on each other. The persecution of gurus spiritually submitting adults is in no way any less significant than the persecution of pimps using children for sexual exploitation: each group is as vulnerable as the other in the face of the gurus and the pimps.
Ames Gilbert:
“174 and others, France has a law (1905) that ‘sort of’ separates church and state, but the state is still very involved in the church. Just one example, all buildings of all religions erected before 1905 are owned and maintained by the state; their use is free in perpetuity to the religion concerned as long as they continue to be used for worship. The state is free to determine what is a religion and what is not, and what constitutes religious conduct and what does not. That is why they have just finished this court case brought against Scientologists. England has a state religion, though it has laws that allow religious freedom. That does not stop the police monitoring Friday sermons at mosques, and prosecuting those that incite hate or violence.
None of this is possible in the U.S.A. The First Amendment absolutely prohibits mixing of church and state affairs. This means that anyone is free to describe their group as a religion, apply for tax exemption as such, and organize themselves in any way they like. The state takes extraordinary steps to allow the widest possible latitude for religious groups, and certainly there is no way to prescribe the behavior of leaders and participants of such groups.
This is why it is no easy matter to pass something like a ‘Brian’s Law’ in the U.S., just because a bunch of pissed-off people would like to do so. The state is forbidden from becoming involved in religious matters as such. This may be very hard for those readers from other countries to understand, but it is a fact. It works both ways. There are lots of religious people here in the States who would no doubt love for their particular religion to become the state religion, and who would love to have a theocracy, who hate what they perceive as a sinful secular society.
This does not mean that religions and clergy are free to do as they damn well please. Any law that is not specifically designed to focus on them or discriminate against them is valid (if it is constitutional), and they have to obey it as any other citizen or group does. But it does mean that trying to regulate the behavior of someone like Burton is extraordinarily difficult. It is not illegal to seduce young men above the age of consent with promises of this or that. It is not illegal to make sex part of a religious doctrine. It is not illegal to claim that having sex with Burton will advance the ‘evolution’ of a follower. But it is illegal for Burton to have sex with a minor, because that is a general law that applies to everyone and does not pick on Burton in his role as central pillar of the Fellowship of Friends.”
288. Ames Gilbert –
284, The complaints against the FoF in the Troy Buzbee case have been posted in full several times over these pages (e.g pp. 13, 62, 70 and more). In summary, they are: Case # 060209, April 29, 1996 in the County of Yuba. Complaint for Damages 1. Fraud 2. Intentional infliction of emotional distress 3. Negligent infliction of emotional distress 4. Breach of fiduciary duty 5. Negligent supervision 6. Sexual misconduct with a minor 7. Sexual harassment 8. Wrongful discharge 9. Negligence 10. Failure to pay minimum wage 11. Battery Since the case was settled out of court, we will never know which of these charges might have been proved if the trial had gone to completion. I spoke with several ‘older students’, ‘ministers’ and authority figures just after the scandal broke. They told me that ‘everyone knew’ (though I didn’t) that Burton was having sex with Troy, and one also admitted that she (a Renaissance center director at the time) knew he was underage when the relationship started. So my guess is that ‘sexual misconduct with a minor’ would have been a central point that the lawyers would have fought hard over. One has to assume that the FoF settled out of court because they maybe they had a weak defense, or it would have cost too much to defend, or the insurance demanded a settlement, or (your own guess here).
Why not Google the Rajneesh case(s) yourself? You’ll find he was accused of immigration crimes. And his organization was indicted for putting salmonella in the food served by restuarants in the local community of Antelope. Rajneesh himself ended his sojourn in the U.S. agreeing to leave in exchange for a suspended sentence. Nothing about the way he conducted his religion or his sex life.
As far as bringing cases in other countries, you are already in another country. Why don’t you research English law and the FoF and its doings in England yourself? Maybe you’ll find crimes that are recent enough, and you can have at it.
Elena
Incisive, sharp-witted and will definitely attract attention of the right sort when (NOT IF!!!!!) the White House Bods get around to reading certain emails (then the blogsites!)…..Nigel.
My question is, I understand as “students” it is very difficult to question anything that is imposed on us by the guru but in the Fellowship we paid some amount of money as students and a lot as supporters of the ARC or what was called third line work for humanity and the community we were building. The question is, could we, I, sue as citizens whose rights in THE COMMUNITY we were supposed to be participating and paying for were brutally damaged? Who can asses the damage of being induced into abandoning one’s children? Parents, relatives, friends and mankind as a whole leaving one totally dependant on the guru? The idolatry for the guru is sickening in the Fellowship, please hear me. Could we not separate what we were in terms of our religion and what we were in terms of members of the community and prove that as citizens of that community our civil rights and human dignity was raped so severely that it disfigured us psychologically? Can we not confront the position of members as citizens of the United States and citizens in the Cult and make one reveal the abuses of the other?
Where did we ever sign that we were giving up our rights as citizens when we joined the cult? And as CITIZENS, why were all our rights abused? Our integrity raped? Our individuality disfigured?
Nige, your letter to Obama is about you, not the Fellowship. If my writings are as naive and self centered as yours we might as well hang up and move to a different closet because we’re off as hell. These poor people just got tired of telling us because like in the Fellowship we think we are right in our own stupid world of other things that could be.
These twenty or so people looking in here, I wonder what they are looking at. Are we so amusing? Like in the circus? What is it that you read? Are you ashamed to write in here? Why do you even bother to read then? You can’t express your selves? Can’t say yes or no? Or anything in between? The mouse ate your tongues? When you receive, you can’t take? When you take, you can’t give?
I should be very grateful with Ames Gilbert who at least says this is just full of shit about us Nigel. He’s probably, together with all the other bloggers perfectly right and that’s really what we haven’t been able to hear Nigel. FULL OF SHIT. Like the Fellowship and everywhere else including the fofblog. Is that reality?
Your letters to Obama Nigel, WoW, do you have any idea how off you are? You’re so off no one will even tell you anything. That Press that answered you was so good, he even gave you a straight answer: the fof will hurt you if you act against them. So everyone, shut your mouths and let the show go on. Run away where not even the mosquitoes can bite you. That’s reality!
I’m not trying to make you depressed Nigel, I know you don’t need help!! That made me laugh which feels good in the depression I’m in! But really, it’s not about putting us down just maybe considering it, that is, why don’t we consider that we’re so fucking off we might as well move out?
They don’t move you out of the fofblog, they treat you with that condescendence of nice little nigel who doesn’t really do any harm like Elena. They don’t even bother to tell you how off you are when you’re off or how beautiful you are when you’re on. They are just this great wonderful people who are so leveled they can’t acknowledge heaven or hell.
Always in place,
can’t give themselves away
always in place
as if they’d rooted themselves
but I’d rather be in hell than in that shell.
My heart aches, it hurts physically. My heart and lungs. I cough and don’t know if it’s the asthma or something else. I’m getting older and feeling it. It is good to feel how this body is wearing off like an old rag that I find in the morning and realize it’s too old to wear but still the one I like. Like an old pullover. And when it gets tired enough I’ll be happy to lie with it. We want to go home.
Dear Nigel,
“If that didn’t kill you it’ll make you stronger!” Goes a very common saying in these latitudes!
I hope you’ve understood by now that we aren’t fooling around here!
C’est la vie! Mais la vrai vie! We won’t put up with each other’s silliness anymore and we promise to tell each other what works and doesn’t work. And in the midst of that we can have all the fun of being alive without running away from the suffering like human beings should when they care for each other.
Let me look for some thing to play for I am celebrating life. Maybe Wagner’s. The youtube is not good but the music is glorious… For you all with infinite love!
They are not so great on youtube to the other I’ve heard but it’ll do for here!
In this one the chorus is a bit loud and when the music comes in they don’t allow it to have the power other interpretations have but it’s still beautiful!
This one is much better but there are even better ones in the market, one day I’ll find the one I lost!
I love you my Nigel, please live! Real life! we won’t put up with anything but THAT! And if it kills us let it kill us because it wasn’t worth it any other way either!
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Your proposition that we recover what is to be recovered from the System seems like a worthy enterprise because that will shed light on how it was corrupted by Robert Burton and Girard Haven in the Fellowship Cult.
Why don’t we start with the Moon and honour the moon that has been up on this page since it began before it is changed? Honour it for being the seat of karma according to innumerable systems. The more we know about it the more we can free our selves from its conditionings.
As all of us might have understood at some point in our journey, in the Fellowship Cult, the “trilogy” of the work corresponded to Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Rodney Collin. Why did Burton get rid of Rodney Collin as soon as he was able to? Because he wasn’t a Cult; because he aimed to make the System practical. Whether his dive into Catholicism was fatal is yet to be seen, perhaps he knew that he needed young cultures and went looking for them in the Andes.
In Celestial Influences we’ll find Collin clearly exposing what the moon represented in the Play. In the Fellowship Cult, the moon is reduced to being almost the source of evil, LUNATIC was anyone who opposed Robert and the Cult. Robert expanded on the moon with the same lavish content he expanded on the Lower Self, the Machine, the crocodile, the serpent. If we look at Collin’s interpretation he clearly states that the influence of the moon on man is what allows man to move by pulling him upward through the liquid within the body. The Moon’s gravitational pool on the Earth’s liquid is common knowledge but how it affects the human being is still poorly understood. In Celestial Influences, Collin exposes the theory that although the moon has great influence over the liquids in Earth and man, the circulation of the blood around the heart and body is independent from the Moon’s pull and connected to the Sun. In Huseman’s “Art of Healing”, we’ll find a revealing exposition of how the blood itself forms the heart and once the heart appears the blood no longer “floats” in the body but acquires direction. If we remember, we, Fellowship victims, even after all these years, how The King of Hearts was drilled in our lives, day and night to remind us how we had to behave like good little boys and girls to make the Arc, humanity’s dreamed culture, a reality, we might be able to realize that the parallel between what the blood does in the body and what Will would do in a person’s life are analogous: once a direction is established, “the path is straight and narrow” and if you happen to have joined a cult instead of a conscious school, then IT LEADS STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!
In addition, the effect of the moon on the human being according to Collin, happens primarily on the lymph System. The lymph doesn’t have a heart of its own and moves by movement of the body. If a person stays still for too long s/he will create stagnation and illness in the particular area or in the whole body. The need of the lymph for movement induces humans to movement and from there springs the innumerable little movements that most people unconsciously do all day. If you well remember, this was never explained in the Fellowship cult. Exercises were given to control movement but why or where they fitted in the scheme of things was never introduced. The exercises are successful. People reach amounts of control over their movement but instead of that making them trust their own self more deeply, it makes them more dependent on Burton because in not giving them the complete picture, instead of making effort for their own evolution, Fellowship members make effort for the imaginary human Arc that they’ll never see even in pictures. They allowed their WORK to be disconnected from themselves and their lives. WE made the greatest mistake anyone could have made in relation to the Fourth Way which was to allow the Cult to separate us from our lives.
According to Collin the moon influences everything that is in “inertia” in man. The body, the “evil human machine” that the body is condemned to become in the Fellowship cult is just that: a machine to use and abuse, rape and re-rape, one’s own as much as that of others because it is nothing but a mechanical device that can be thrown away as soon as one has ignited one’s higher centres just like Bobby Dear has! Or better still, use and abuse because once one has ignited Bobby Dear’s higher centres, IT can do anything it likes because CONSCIOUS BEINGS have acquired complete independence from its conditioning. THEY ARE FREE, My Bobby Dear and my Dear Mr. Haven, they fly in the clouds while the body can rape little boys and girls physically and in imagination and they do it with so much sheer freedom that when they actually have them in front of them, they can’t even see them. Hey boys, did Robert look into your eyes with love when he raped you? Or did he look “through” your body like Girard does? This is very important guys. The looking “through” the body showed how by then the capacity to be there had been lost and the mind was totally in imagination about what was being raped. The porn had taken reality over and the ability to actually be there had been completely lost. Anyone who looks at Mr. Haven and his “talk” knows that he talked completely mechanically for years, so much so that even Nick Sp. would make fun of him in public, it had become such common knowledge. This is not getting deviated. On the contrary, anyone who remembers clearly and who can look clearly at the facts still inside, will verify that these two men cannot act spontaneously. They HAVE to be in the “SETTING” because they are protecting their incapacity for spontaneity with the setting. The set up is very precise and if they are taken out of it they become impossibly negative which would give them away. Automatons like them are very vulnerable and that is why they must keep renewing the setting and the dogma indefinitely so that it WORKS. As long as they can keep members convinced that putting up the setting and passively listening to the dogma is WORK on themselves, Robert, Girard and the Cult will be safe.
Life within the Fellowship is successful as long as it can repeat and repeat itself through such inertia. Robert has placed the mechanism in place for it to run on the same track over and over again and as long as it isn’t disturbed it will continue to be under the influence of that inertia. It allows for no spontaneity, freedom, or chaos. The more “stable” it is, the more safe and deadly for the participants that are run through the inertia without ever having to activate their will, their “I” that constantly supplies the human being with LIFE, becoming socially and individually stagnant. That stagnation is degenerative. That is what can lead to suicide in the long run or other degenerative illnesses. By falling into idolatry and adapting their whole lives to Robert’s will in a completely closed lifeless circuit, members disenable their own I and leave the “machine” to be run by the guru. In allowing the separation from the will they have on their own functions and overall LIFE, they starve themselves from the SOURCE OF LIFE: THEIR OWN I.
It is not surprising that in such cults, people end up committing suicide.
Hi Elena
I sometimes think you are inviting me to dance a psychological tango with you. I did think I would give FOF Discussion and Public Square some personal ‘downtime’, but I had an encounter with my Venus-Merc friend, Phil, who has ordered some jewellery for his wife, along the lines of – “Where is my stuff? I’ve been waiting 3 months for it. I better have it by Christmas.” To which my reply was – “You know I don’t make huge profits out of my friends. Yours is the first in the queue. You will have it by next week.” The point is that I managed to stay robust and positive (Elena, I REALLY DO NOT feel depressed most of the time) and I thought I would approach your recent postings (I give up on Ames with his ‘trite denials’ – you do not verify states – you either experience them or you do not, and I, at times, have experienced Nirvana – why the Hell did folk actually join the Fellowship if it were not to make contact with Higher Centres?!) which seem to me are swinging between – “Let’s really blast Burton and his cronies” and – “People feel so goddam low from trying to make efforts in the FOF and in Life – why not do the ‘ultimate giving-up’?” Elena, lovey, I know where you are – I, too, spent many years in depression until starting to train as an adult-education teacher and I really felt your pain in my heart about not wanting to move quickly because you would feel anxious and other things you have described. The thing is, you WILL realise the Beauty of Yourself in Immense Proportion and it will not be just the theory it is now. Stay close to the common people – feel their ‘purity of a natural force’ and give your mind a rest from time to time – enjoy some silly jokes, feel the Massiveness of Nature, talk with a river and listen well to what the water has to say to you, sense the Earth supporting you, receive the sunlight with inner welcome – all these things. And just so you do not think I do not care about how you still feel about Burton…..
‘To Others than You’ by Dylan Marlais Thomas
Friend by enemy I call you out.
You with the bad coin in your socket,
You my friend there with a winning air
Who palmed the lie on me when you looked
Brassily at my shyest secret,
Enticed with twinkling bits of the eye
Till the sweet tooth of my love bit dry,
Rasped at last, and I stumbled and sucked,
Whom now I conjure as thief
In the memory worked by mirrors,
With unforgettably smiling act,
Quickness of hand in the velvet glove
And my whole heart under your hammer,
Were once such a creature, so gay and frank
A desireless familiar
I never thought to utter or think
While you displaced a truth in the air.
That though I loved them for their faults
As much as for their good,
My friends were enemies on stilts
With their heads in a cunning cloud.
Psychology of the tango:
The waltz is an “egalitarian” dance, men and women have the same right. The direction of the couple is negotiated every time between the man and the woman.
In tango, there is no negotiation. The very style of the dance puts the man in charge. He has to affirm his authority within the couple by deciding the steps, the cadence, the speed, etc… The woman has to follow.
She has to build her pleasure of dancing, her enjoyment of the tango moment, on the idea that – by giving in to the desire of the man, to his power and to the fact that he stages and asserts that he possesses her – she will find an identity and a freedom lost. In this last instance, and despite her dependence to him, she possesses the possession of the man.
The more the man asserts his possession of the woman (what is called machismo), the more the woman finds her identity in the fact that by being possessed, she possesses the possession of the man. This analysis might seem complex. But psychologically, reality is complex and we have to make it even more complex:
The woman, in her relation to the man, oscillates between to demands.
She wishes to have a real husband, a real man, somebody who shows that he has guts. From this point of view, the woman would like to have a partner who leads her with authority, that is calm but determined, assured and strong… If she moves away, steps to the side, he will bring her back firmly in the axis of the dance by a pressure of his hand on her back.
A women who is dancing likes to feel she is in good hands… She needs to have a man that dominates her, a man who by affirming his machismo guaranties her femininity, but at the same time the woman keeps the nostalgia of her motherly role. A woman can have pleasure dancing tango with a man clumsy in the his lead, clumsy in his attempt to assert his machismo. This “impotent man” is the other aspect that a woman may expect from her partner.
Nigel,
was the relationship with the FoF another kind of a cruel and fascinating tango?
No negotiation?
The “being possessed” by the ideas of Robert?
The oscillating between “being a good student” and the rest of the former personality?
Elena
Just as an aside – Kate could probably ‘deck’ a Welsh Rugby Prop Forward, but she is oh! so gentle with me…..Nigel.
Nige and Dragon,
Yes! Tango feels so much better!
I like this Kate more each day Nige! You seem to be in great hands! And THAT, 158-60 is the most beautiful post you’ve written! Bravo!
Dragon,
“was the relationship with the FoF another kind of a cruel and fascinating tango?
No negotiation?
The “being possessed” by the ideas of Robert?
The oscillating between “being a good student” and the rest of the former personality?”
You define it well Dragon. People in a drug don’t feel much pain. Once we surrendered to the status quo there was apparently nothing to worry about even if our lives hang out like pieces of meat one couldn’t force to fit in the suit.
Nige,
Elena, lovey, I know where you are – I, too, spent many years in depression until starting to train as an adult-education teacher and I really felt your pain in my heart about not wanting to move quickly because you would feel anxious and other things you have described. The thing is, you WILL realise the Beauty of Yourself in Immense Proportion and it will not be just the theory it is now. Stay close to the common people – feel their ‘purity of a natural force’ and give your mind a rest from time to time – enjoy some silly jokes, feel the Massiveness of Nature, talk with a river and listen well to what the water has to say to you, sense the Earth supporting you, receive the sunlight with inner welcome – all these things. And just so you do not think I do not care about how you still feel about Burton…..
That is so beautiful, listen to you!
Shall we go home then and see if we can walk the walk and talk the talk?
Nige,
Would you please send me your e-mail again. Unfortunately, I didn’t write it down.
Nige, What I mean is, shall we call it a day and go home, call each other once in a while and ask about Kate and your work and laugh about the Public Square?
Check in here once a week or a month, and see if someone had a poem or a video they enjoyed? Or leave even that for a more private venue?
Elena
My email address, again, is nhprice@gmail.com…..
I don’t think you should put any restrictions on how you or I or anyone should ‘play’ the Public Square. I think there is enough distance from the FOF Discussion blog that you can say what you really feel and not have it rebuffed or thrown back in your face. YOU NEED THAT and I think this is your greatest form of therapy…..
And I like corresponding with you.
Kate and I are both busy people who have full working days. She is training to be a primary (elementary) school teacher and I run my little Academy of Precious Metal Arts. We see each other when we can and it is not all ‘hot and heavy’ – none of this ‘maxi-traxi’ can’t keep each other’s hands to ourselves rubbish. It is the most mature relationship I have ever been in. We talk through everything from how we feel about each other to how the world is. And there is 29 years difference in age!
Hope to hear from you…..Nigel.
“Something”
by George Harrison
Something in the way she moves
attracts me like no other lover.
Something in the way she woos me.
I don’t want to leave her now,
you know I believe and how.
Somewhere in her smile she knows
that I don’t need no other lover.
Something in her style that shows me.
I don’t want to leave her now,
you know I believe and how.
You’re asking me will my love grow.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
You stick around now, it may show,
I don’t know, I don’t know.
Something in the way she knows,
and all I have to do is think of her.
Something in the things she shows me.
I don’t want to leave her now,
you know I believe and how.
Something in the way she knows,
and all I have to do is think of her.
Something in the things she shows me.
I don’t want to leave her now,
you know I believe and how.
Hi Nigel,
It sounds like a good deal! That’s a much loved song! She does move well!
I’m taking a course on anthroposophical medicine and two things have called my attention strongly. One was hearing about how the Church discarded the Spirit from the concept of man that was common as body, soul and spirit, leaving only body and soul and second how science has reduced even that concept to simply the body in its practical approach. Even for psychoanalysis there is the body and the psyche but no soul! No connection with the cosmos. Even my great hero, Mr. Reich, made sanity simply a question of sexual health. (All this in my very unprofessional jargon, I assume you are all so much more professional than I am that you can fill in the blanks and proper terminology. They also gave dates and details very professionally but I’m not yet that well connected to earth to remember them.)
Thinking about that I had the feeling that Girard and Robert simply internalized their culture and made a religion of it. On the one hand run higher-centres without any connection to the human and on the other, the machine, without connection to higher centres. As long as they can keep the “state” the machine can use and abuse and be discarded. Isn’t that what the American Way of Life has put us all in? As long as there is money, the “state”, people can eat as much as we like and lie down in bed while the boy brings another pizza because they’ve become so fat they can’t even stand up. If we are depressed, we can just take another pill; if we can’t have an erection, we can take Viagra that makes it last twice as long even if the body lasts twice as short. If the machines are destroying the planet and people can hardly breath that’s too bad because they still have to own a car each and destroy public transportation. All these things might be more true of America but extending rapidly out to the world. Even I was brought up by the T.V. and am stuck behind a computer wondering if there is anybody there! S.O.S are there any humans out there? Blip, blip!
Is there anything surprising about the fact that cults would end up making a religion of what people practice religiously?
No wonder members are outraged at my attacks on the Fellowship. For them it is not far from a Way of Life. If I had understood that, I might have helped instead of hinder but then I knew the cult hurt us but am just finding out how and why.
I’ve gotta go. Have a lovely day!
You’d like me to write a book
But what book could I write
Without the fire of your breath
behind the screen?
Where could I find Inspiration
As rich as in the Public Square
Where you
And all
In you
Exist?
I here kneel at the feet of these letters
And vow at the face of this screen and
Honour language and speech
That brought you to the door
Of this soul
And led me to the window
Of your Spirit
I do not write stories.
We are the story that the words
Are writing
Ours is an open book
A book in process
A shared life
Written with electronic light
Directly on the sunlight
Of your eyes
It is with the fingertips of my hands that
I stretch out and touch your soul and
With the wholeness of my heart that
I Receive yours
It is my blood what I’ve spilt
In these electronic bits of
Cybernetic messages
My red thick blood
Spilled over these broken words that
reach out to all
In you
Humanizing Us
With deep and infinite
Joy.
Love was not bound to the books.
It lives in the blood of each man and woman
In each old man and woman
child and youth
It lives in the Public Square
Of every city
Throbs in the heart
Of each soul
Runs in the veins of each word
With which my soul is in harmony
With yours
Love lives in the freedom of the Public Square
In the child that runs
For the balloon,
In the dog without a leash
In the bicycle that turns the man
around our Earth
It lives in the tenderness
With which every mother
holds her child at least once
And each lover speaks
To his charm
Love lives in every hand
And all the feet
In the groin of men and women
In the throat of every speech
It lives in you and me.
And in the tree
And in the shade of the tree
And in the bench under the tree
Where you sit
Love lives in eternity
Or should I say
Eternity lives in thee
And thee in me
That’s the spirit. See, you can write.
And love
And heal
And be
Write
Listen
And speak
And
Share
If I am ill
If I miss an arm
if cancer has invaded me
or gangrene
Am I any less human?
If I’m poor
And sleep in the streets
If I’ve no title
If I am black, from the South and free
Am I any less human?
If I have wheels for legs
And hooks for arms
If my pirate eye was gained
Through painful struggle with me
Am I any less human?
If my mother threw me out and
My father too
And my brother and sister still stood
Am I any less human!
If I laid with man and woman
And cried for both
Am I any less human!
If I’m a child
Am I any less human
If I am a housewife
Am I any less human
If I’m a farmer
A crepe maker in the streets
Am I any less human
If I am your daughter
your student
your employee
your citizen
Colombian
South American
Am I any less human?
If I’m your Father or your mother
your teacher
Or your boss
your president
American, European, Russian or Chinese
Muslim, Christian, Protestant or Buddhist
Am I more human?
Elena
I love your energy recently. Just like one of those toy balloons you blow up and let exhaust its inner air all over the room. Funny analogy, I know, but I think you will see what I mean. You have written on so many things of import then settled yourself in poetry of simplicity and strength.
I have to admit I was a little distressed when you mentioned suicide quite a few times, but I believe you were, again, trying to understand it and what drives people to that desperate act. Torture of the self, I think, myself.
And then – one of the most evocative words in the English language – spiritual. The spirit is, to me, the masculine aspiring component of our inner nature, yet touches physical, both ours and others’ and the worlds’. It is supported by the cradling soul (both spirit and soul are innate and ours from inception), which is feminine, and nurtures.
Please keep writing in your inimicable way…..Nigel.
Aah Nigel,
Your voice is also so much more faithful to you. Isn’t it wonderful that we are actually being able to talk! I suppose it’s not all that surprising. So many people meet on the internet then marry and live together for the rest of their lives that it’s not like we’re discovering anything but it is for me. And what has most helped is that we are becoming true friends without having ever even seen each other.
The poetry feels good but it is not suitable to talk about the Fellowship. The Fellowship subject is alright in the terms it is spoken with. Angry and bitter, sick and throwing up. I wouldn’t like to change a single hair of that. They correspond to each other. But it’ll be good to get to speak about it without the huge emotional charge.
Yes, I had a few very rough days and the possibility of suicide was there but the outcome is every bit worth the process. I am seriously beginning to heal, to be “normal” again! One of the cards that had been most damaged in me was the jack of hearts. It’s a wonderful function that allows us to connect gently and loosely with each other and in the coldness of the Fellowship it had crystallized with black tar. It was already much damaged when I went to live in the boarding school when I was ten years old after my mother’s death and the “distance” from others was deepened by the language while I learnt to speak English but it wasn’t too far off when I was a teenager. Although smoking pot tended to have a similar distancing, paranoic effect. Always some distance but never as strong as in the cult, as if the resistance to the conditioning had deepened the separation to a pretty pathological condition. It’s beginning to wear off and the natural flow of interaction with people is beginning to take place again. For years, even saying hello was difficult and in the Fellowship this very formal “modes” took over which I am only just beginning to drop.
The more I look at the world the more grateful I am to the System. All the “Systems” that I’ve come across. No matter how much damage the Fellowship deepened, the few areas in which there was work were strong enough to get me out and slowly recover. There is very little that can’t be translated into practical experience and allow us to profit from it in this world outside which is as confused in so many ways as it was inside. The study of each function and its maladies as much as its talents will reveal a great deal that will help healing.
It is so liberating to be able to expose one’s life without fear or shame. I am slowly coming to that. There’s been so much shame that disappearing was just an inch away but it has suddenly turned around. The whole wheel has shifted and began turning the other way just when it looked like there was no way out. You’ve certainly helped with your capacity to know that I needed a big strong hand. It shocks me that mostly you could see it so clearly but why would it be surprising since you’ve been there? Why would we expect others to perceive the need to hold such darkness with love? I’ve stopped oscillating up and down emotionally. It’s a bit too soon to call it success but it feels so “even”. Of course, they gave me ferrum siderum just three days ago when I told the doctor I was about to jump out the window but other things have happened that make me think it is not just the ferrum siderum that’s made the magic.
The major difference is that I was able to shed most of the pain and shame that came from my mother who had solidified inside into a dead, dead piece of blackness. I’ve been wanting and needing to do that for a lifetime and it has finally happened to a good extent. It has almost cost me the friendship of the person that “lent” herself to the “incarnation of the imagination” but I hope it will survive. With her too I couldn’t be more grateful. It is as if you Nigel and her, where playing adopted parents and re-establishing the “archetype” that I had completely lost. Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that I was just talking about how the jack of hearts was shunned after my mothers death and I was already “separate” from others at school in England and the Symptom that is appearing clearly is that it is getting activated again? This is why I love writing: because it allows us to look out here what is happening both inside and outside and the connection between them. Another reason I enjoy writing is that I’m as good a case as any other and the more faithfully we can expose our selves, the easier it’ll be for others to not be ashamed of themselves and in the future, to study how and why we became so sick in our times and what needs to be avoided. And then because no matter how sick I am, I am every bit human and know it and that stands above everything else.
What is particularly GREAT about all this is that it coincides with my theory that if we can form a community for each other even if it is just a community of three, we can help each other heal. We are each strong in different areas and when there is enough human solidarity it works just like when there isn’t enough of it, there can be two thousand people like in the Fellowship and it’ll act destructively on each and every one of the participants.
There is nothing “sentimental” about your “parenting” me. You’ve played those roles for something that was extremely hurt inside and we are now much closer to a “maturity” in our relationship than we’ve been before. I thank you both.
To those silent readers that have witnessed the processes that have taken place here, I thank you for being there. Even your silence is presence and I feel ENORMOUS support in your dedication to look in. Why you do it I don’t know but something has to be connected between us to do so and it gives me hope! I hope to play a GREAT EAR one day and listen to others with as much dedication as you seem to listen to us.
Dear Elena
I do not know whether you are wonderful because you are difficult or difficult because you are wonderful. Remember when we ‘smashed into each other’ on the Discussion Blog all those pages ago? Flying features – the whole shit-load. But I do not know anyone who has been so willing to ‘get to grips’ with things – the Fellowship problem, modern day’s complexities and insanity and HERSELF. All those things make for a very interesting human being. If there is one thing I have come across in my ‘learning curve’ as a teacher, it is that one has to be not just a provider of information and theory, but a psychologist and a lover of the human condition. And teaching should be an enriching privilege and not just a ‘trotting out’ of ‘trite inanities’. Buddha said – “The path to illumination is basically a human one.” I believe, if you are truly willing to get to grips with yourself and the way you play your hand in the rich tapestry of life, you will go very far, in oh! so many ways.
This is maybe touching on a personal ‘overlap difficulty’, but C—–a emailed me with some fierce ‘advice’ about how she had been hurt by you. Her little diatribe on the GF site, encircling just about everything that would make her look good in the eyes of just about everybody and then disappearing again into her professional role as an educationalist, I would suppose, was so easy to see through that I defended myself against her in about one of the most stern ways I have done in my life. I really do not go with pretence anymore. I am not the naieve little Solar with not enough money to throw at the FOF or the inability to get into a FOF relationship. Both C—–a and you tried to ‘deal’ with G—-d for whatever reasons you both had and you probably both were burned. Consciousness does not ‘rub off’ – “The soul comes from within, through embowered gates, ever provoking questions” (Walt Whitman) and if you cannive your way into the ‘inner circle’ of the FOF, by whatever means, you will only become an enabler or, at very least, a politician. Not enough people presently in the FOF are listening to this.
I love the richness that we share here and dearly hope that we will continue to be the most mutually nourishing best of friends…..Nigel.
“Both C—–a and you tried to ‘deal’ with G—-d for whatever reasons you both had and you probably both were burned. Consciousness does not ‘rub off’ – “The soul comes from within, through embowered gates, ever provoking questions” (Walt Whitman) and if you cannive your way into the ‘inner circle’ of the FOF, by whatever means, you will only become an enabler or, at very least, a politician. Not enough people presently in the FOF are listening to this.”
—————————
Elena,
you should make a fresh start and write! There are so many stories in your former FoF-life. It is time for you to act in that way.
Writing is also very healing and it is a way to learn to see out over the past from a distance.
Wounds may better heal in that process.
Another aspect is that the daily writing-discipline will help to digress from that topic.
Focuss on that, work together with your friends and go ahead!
Elena,
this is a link for you.
Georgian culture endured opression and suffering during the centuries but the soul of those remarkable human beings was able to survive with singing.
Every soul finds its way out of the darkness and yours may be writing.
Think it over and “Carpe Diem”.
Dragon,
I just wrote the following to Crouching Tiger before reading the Public Square this morning and some of it applies to your stimulus for me to write a book. I am writing with my friends in the Public Square which is a lot more alive than any publication that might put me in a recognition of sorts when I am not ready for the fame! Have you forgotten what love did to Robert Burton? For it was our love what he was unable to handle. Nothing is more difficult to transform than love. When one is not ready for it, it makes vanity shoot up like a serpent and allows one to fall into every abuse. Have you forgotten what happened in the fofblog? How I hurt people and my self? How I was unable to bring us to love which is the only thing that matters in every interchange? Have you forgotten the arrogance with which I ended up talking because I was supported by one or two? If that was only with one or two people can you imagine what could happen to me if I won a prize or money without being ready? I will try not make that mistake again, I am deeply regretful for having hurt us instead of helping us.
Without you and Nigel and Crouching Tiger and those silent readers that have held me after being banned I would most probably have been dead by now, or another useless and traumatized piece of human in the dark corners of my house. Ours is an open book, a living theater, a shared Life and like all life, the possibility of death is inherent to it: ours, yours and my own… but the Public Square will outlive us all: it throbs in the heart of every person.
There is still so much that we each can offer our selves here. And yet your “parenting” me is not a fixed job. I’m “growing up” enough that we can let each other free whenever we wish to and meet again in between the seasons!
We are not making this up, we are being made by it. When everything is ready, the book will push itself forward; it is writing itself on our lives.
I wish to rest for awhile, talk about plants and water, music and children, architecture and everything living and let the deathness of the Fellowship make its own compost. From there something might grow.
For you, with infinite love and gratitude,
Elena
Hi Crouching Tiger,
I am not well enough to sit on my own and write. I need to write for you and others that are sitting with me. I am in great need of being with others after the loneliness of the Fellowship. Perhaps some day I’ll be able to meditate my self into a private work that will actually be the most public, the most human, but until then I cannot see myself writing a book. What I say in the poem is true: We are the story the words are writing and if we can allow ourselves to help and share in each other’s being, state and reality, something more powerful than a book can happen between us. If I had to look into a blank page without anybody there I would not be able to put my self in it.
The idea of writing a beautiful book about the Fellowship doesn’t appeal to me at this point. The wounds are still to sore to be able to transform the experience into something beautiful. I am so very glad that I’ve been able to throw it up and show the muck, the stench, the horror with which I am sick of it. In healing my self, I might one day come to transform it for all of us but that cannot happen today no matter how eager I am to accelerate the process.
It is very good to know that you find my writing worthy of such an enterprise. That alone is healing for I’ve first to recover the trust in myself to enter such a project. In the meantime, the closer we come to each other, the more humanly and realistically we can communicate with each other’s soul, the easier it’ll be to heal. It’s too bad that was not possible in the fofblog for all of us need to recover our trust on each other and cross the lack of love of the Fellowship.
I try not to give up on your interest all together and in my fluctuating state, tomorrow might be a different story but this is how it feels today and I can hardly play more than one day for a tune! You and I also need to meet more closely so that working together is a real working together, not just a business enterprise or even an altruistic enterprise. The aim is to live each minute and what might come from that is a consequence of that aim. If you and I penetrate each other’s soul with the deepness that a book would require, we could write many books. Share your self with me that I am eager to share mine with you. Every enterprise must be an enterprise of love and a book is, above all, a Work of Art and I am far from being the Artist that merits a publication. I am too ill to be published but not too ill to be human.
Allow me to share my thoughts about this in the Public Square for it feels to me that we are in a time in which we can move beyond the private and conquer the Public without shame or fear, no matter how wounded we might be. The Public Arena already places us in a different relationship to each other, introduces responsibilities that we tend to ignore in the privacy of our interchanges. Both are equally necessary and I am finding out what is truly appropriate to each as I make mistakes. I aim to come to a place where nothing about my life is private; where nothing is hidden; where nothing is shameful which doesn’t mean not having sex in the privacy of my abode or that the subject of sex does not need to be looked at with a public eye, as we’ve been doing with Robert’s, Girard’s and my life. Sex matters in social matters as powerfully as in the bedroom.
I leave you more strongly in our selves, a step closer to each other and deeply hopeful that we will one day accomplish to write a book together. If you kick me enough I might cross that fence and be worthy of sharing with you such an enterprise. I too will kick you enough that that might be possible! And hug each other with every kick for it is hugging what this world requires, like lovers who cry in each other’s arms after pushing each other’s being a little further.
Always with love,
Elena
Nigel,
C is like Influence C to me today
I have only respect and awe towards her like towards B and D, Girard’s other wives. We have all been ground by the same mill and when they come forward and tell their story mine will look meek in comparison. We are true women; all of us. We loved and fought and lost as it is common for women in the patriarchal society we’ve all endured for way too long and the dictatorial tyranny of the Fellowship Cult.
C sincerely meant to help me, but my destiny was beyond her help. Had I listened to her nothing of this would have been possible and I would probably still be in the Fellowship Cult in complete ignorance of what the Fellowship cult is. I needed to marry Girard and understand what was really happening for my own self. I hope she forgives me for not having listened to her sincere words of awareness of a situation that I also proved unable to handle.
They all inspired me to love Girard as a wife should love a man. That hasn’t really changed no matter how well I see him.
Dragon, I made a few corrections in 177 that seemed pertinent.
Have a lovely day Nige, Dragon, CT. and the rest visiting.
For the silent friend in Spain, I’d like to offer you Love in Spanish. It is slightly different. Some things cannot be said in Spanish in the same way that they are said in English. They don’t reach the meaning if they are translated literally. When correcting it is very good to look at them in both languages.
Te gustaría que escribiera un libro
Pero que libro podría escribir
Sin el fuego de tu aliento
Detrás de la pantalla?
Donde encontraría inspiración tan rica como en la Plaza Pública
Donde tu
Y todos
En ti
Existen?
Yo aquí me arrodillo a los pies de estas letras
Y me inclino ante la pantalla
Y honro el lenguaje y la palabra
Que te trajeron a la puerta
De mi alma
Y me llevaron a la ventana
De tu espíritu
Yo no escribo historias
Nosotros somos la historia que las palabras
escriben
El nuestro es un libro abierto
Un libro en proceso
Una vida compartida
Escrita con luz electrónica
Directamente
Sobre la Sol..aridad
de tus ojos
Es con las llamas de mis dedos que
Me extiendo y toco tu alma y
Con la entereza de mi corazón que
Te recibo
Es mi sangre la que está derramada
En las pulsaciones electrónicas
De estos mensajes cibernéticos
Mi sangre gruesa y roja
Derramada sobre estas palabras quebradas
La que se extiende hacia todos
En ti
Humanizándonos
Con profunda e infinita
Alegría
El amor no fue encuadernado a los libros
Vive en la sangre de cada hombre y mujer
En cada anciano y anciana
En cada niño y cada joven
Vive en la Plaza Publica
De todas las ciudades
Late en el corazón
De cada alma
Corre en las venas de cada palabra
Con la cual mi alma vive en armonía
Con la tuya
El amor vive en la libertad del Parque Público
En el niño que corre tras la pelota
En el perro sin cadenas
En la bicicleta que le da vueltas al hombre
Por nuestra tierra
Vive en la ternura
Con la que una madre abraza a su hija
Aunque sea tan solo una vez
Y en cada amante que le habla
A su encanto
El amor vive en cada mano
Y en todos los pies
En el sexo de cada hombre y mujer
Y en la garganta de todo discurso
Vive en mi y en ti
Y en el Árbol
Y en la sombra del Árbol
Y en la banca debajo del Árbol
Donde tú descansas
El amor vive en la eternidad
La eternidad que vive en ti
Y tú en mí.
If I’m ever ready
I’ll form a political party
And preach with poetry
in the Public Square
For
If I’m ever ready
I’ll be a human being in all our poetry
A priest
And a leader
Like every true citizen is.
We live in one Earth.
We
Live
In
One
Earth
This Earth is Ours
This
Earth
Is
OURS
OURS
OURS
We all live ON our Earth
We
All
Live
ON
our
Earth
Life
is Ours
We each share in life
Society is Ours
We are each a particle in it
Knowing is OURS
We each struggle between right and wrong
Love is OURS
We each share in love
I was at an Anthroposophical medicine course over the weekend and it was as shockingly cultish as in the Fellowship. The course was held by a VIP VERY IMPORTANT PERSON, a Peruvian oncologist , leading the medicine courses and institutes for South America.
There are a few areas worth noting that repeated themselves as strongly:
1. While introducing our selves he showed discomfort towards someone who stated she was a housewife and not a Doctor like some of the others
2. He pushed that to the point that towards the end, he said he couldn’t talk about the heart because he could only do that to Doctors
3. He psychologically separated the group between the more evolved Doctors and less evolved people.
4. He presented the material as if it were extremely difficult and had each person interpret a paragraph and made everyone feel as though their interpretation was incorrect. If the interpretation was really incorrect he exposed the person strongly and if the interpretation was too good and transported into practical examples he dismissed it saying it was too difficult for anyone of us to interpret it accentuating the inadequacy of all the participants.
5. He had brought a translation from German to Spanish and in the middle of the course decided with his wife who was German, that the translation was TERRIBLE and that they would translate it themselves. They did translate it and made such a literal translation that it was impossible to understand it which is what they unconsciously wanted so that they would reaffirm the idea that it was too difficult a material for layman like us to understand! Just like Robert interprets texts as madly as he likes and pretends that no one else can do it.
6. The housewife was actually the lady who was able to transport the information into practical examples and it made him so uncomfortable that he ended up suggesting she be banned from participating in further courses!
7. He told the lady that she was very sick and should not work with her mind! That she should only do physical work!
8. The Doctor who had invited him to give the conference behaved like a submissive sheep before the God
9. Everyone was submissive and allowed him to deploy his rationality to undermine each one of them except the housewife who challenged him.
10. When a young lady’s turn came towards the end, she tried to interpret the paragraph and instead started crying. She could not take the pressure.
11. Instead of teaching anything about medicine he spent fifteen hours showing the participants, all adults, that they didn’t know how to read!
I don’t know how much such things have been studied in Cult books but the more I look at it, the clearer and obvious are the patterns of behavior amongst people who think they incarnate an authority and people who submit to incarnating a layman. They are both obviously unaware of what they are doing. They are both unconscious to it. They are both “identified” “incarnating” their so called role and cannot relate to each other as equal human beings.
The authoritarian aspects of the relationship lie precisely in the separations that the authorities try to impose:
In the Fellowship cult:
different prices,
hierarchical chairs according to price paid
six people sitting in front as inner circle
Others
In the Anthroposophical Cult witnessed over the weekend and a congress two months ago:
The BIG Conference by the top man is given without the possibility of questions
The “Doctors” are superior to other people, this way they attract people to the “inner circle” who are willing to incarnate a superiority act towards the others and separate each other.
I think I’ll try going to scientology next week! It’s in the details where we’ll understand how exactly it works.
The “being”, the “humanity” of the Authority presenting no matter what knowledge is in his or her capacity to treat the people as equals. More knowledge does not make anyone superior and real knowledge cannot be transmitted with arrogance. That was also my mistake in the fofblog, particularly at the end.
I just found Lady B’s post which has inspired me all along:
Appeared in FOF discusion of Animam Recro. Page 8/38
Lady B Says:
April 29th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I am still in the school but I am not a student anymore.
I joined the school 20 years ago with all my heart.
I survived several of the school’s big intervals, when Influence C was “shaking the tree.”
When other students left, I never wanted to know the reason. Each time, some “good student” or center director would act as a filter, saying that the student left because their instinctive center didn’t want to pay any more or because their American puritanical morality made Robert’s sex life into an excuse for leaving.
After a year in the school, a friend of mine left, and before she did she told me that her friend had a relationship with Robert. It was a bad experience, and he left in shock. I was actually relieved to hear that Robert was gay. I’d already been in a group where the teacher was gay. In a second group, where the teacher was straight, and very interested in women, his “wife” had me kicked out because she imagined I was having an affair with him.
In the FOF, I lost a husband, a house, and a lot of money that I didn’t have and don’t have, but none of that bothered me enough to make me leave. Robert has never spoken to me directly — I don’t have money, I’m not rich, I’m a woman. I’m not an artist or actor. I don’t have blue blood or a name of noble origin. So, my role in the school — according to other students — is to pay. That’s my role and for many years I’ve been paying my teaching payment.
I began reading this blog and the letters sent to me by ex-students. I told myself that I’ve been in the school so long that I wouldn’t hear anything bad enough to change my mind, my desire, or my love for Robert.
It didn’t take long to realize that I hadn’t been aware of the level of suffering that many students endured. When Elena wrote, it was as if she read my heart. Now I understand why friends who became Robert’s lovers are so depressed and unable to have a full emotional life. I’ve seen mothers who are happy that their sons were chosen to be Robert’s lovers, and encouraged them not to lose the opportunity to experience higher levels with an angel.
At Isis, children are the last concern. In fact, a friend who doesn’t have children told me, “I think that Isis needs an orphanage.” I was shocked and offended.
I believed that I was helping to build a new civilization, not supporting and paying for all this suffering. I can’t be an accomplice any more. This isn’t the school I was looking for. I’ve learned a lot, but at a very high price. I have a conscience — someone might call it feminine dominance, but I don’t care. All those years I’ve pushed down that inner screaming voice, and had — as many others have — health consequences.
I want to leave the school without a fuss, the way I came, but I want to give a warning to potential students so they have an idea of what they’re getting into. If this blog was available to me 20 years ago, I probably would have made a different decision.
Someone said — I wish I could remember who — that you can see the level of civilization in a country by looking at the way they treat children and old people. Elena, you’re right: I don’t recognize the same Ark that I boarded 20 years old.
During these 20 years, I’ve met some wonderful people, and leaving those friends is going to be a much bigger payment than I’ve ever made. I’m sorry, and I love you.
178.
I am not well enough to sit on my own and write. I need to write for you and others that are sitting with me.
Elena:
You say you cannot write on your own.
Elena,
you haven’t done it yet!
That’s a simple fact and nobody can write for you, we may read it and we may help you to edit it and so on, but it is really your turn to write your story in the inner circle of the FoF.
I think your story has a chance as a warning, as a “special entertainment” (if you want somebody to recognize the weird illness of the FoF, you will have to write it with captivating stories), but there is no other person on the public square who is able to write instead of you.
Elena it is your turn, no further excursions are needed.
Is that understood?
Yes ma’am!!
It cries underneath the skin.
It cries all day underneath the skin
Elena,
no mummy stuff, please. A friend is no “mam”.
If it burns underneath the skin it will be time to write about it!
Title of your report/book… : “Underneath The SKIN”
Introduction: “ I wear a brand underneath the skin, it is the brand of a religious group with the name: “Fellowship of Friends”.
Even if I am out for XY time?, I feel that brand every day and it hurts me again and again. It is burning with such a great intensity that I came to the decision:
I don’t want to burn until eternity, I will try to release myself and I will try to warn about that dangerous group using the infrastructure and exploiting the vulnarability of our societies.
So let me tell you my story of a group living beyond the rules of our society and recruiting young persons for the purpose of a very special mental and physical exploitation process…
A healing poem for unindoctrinated souls:
THE CAT AND THE MOON
by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
Yes ma’am!
Yes “madam” was what I meant, ma’am!! ma’am is a short form used in the South of the US… I think!
“That’s a simple fact and nobody can write for you, we may read it and we may help you to edit it and so on, but it is really your turn to write your story in the inner circle of the FoF.” she’d said, but I’d never “belonged” to the inner circle, in fact I’d never been able to properly belong to the Fellowship of Friends, a Fourth Way School of Consciousness based on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and had “orphaned” the place inside just like the orphan I was outside. I’d never really “belonged” anywhere if by belonging we understand being an integrated part of a whole and as I looked back I didn’t know if it was worse to have belonged or not to have belonged… longed to be… or “long “BE””!!
“Long “BE”” is a joke that only those at Renaissance, Apollo, Isis in 2006 and beyond could understand, when HE started talking about how a short penis was the Symbol of a short “be” and a long penis a long “be”!!!!!!! and while he probably laughed his balls out for he was after all a “Conscious Being” who knew what he was doing, “We the People” in the United States of America had been standing in the crowded room of the Gallería for half an hour before the one and only man number eight, the one and only Conscious Being on Planet Earth (as Martin would have called him), stood breathless under the paintings of young naked members depicted as semi-greek Gods and Goddesses with fully erect penises and “knew” our selves the “luckiest” people, unlike the other six billion dead that stood outside our sacred gates without the divine guidance of Robert Burton, who’d finally walk in five minutes before we’d begin to faint.
“BE” had become the one and only aim, the magic word that justified everything! “To be or not to be” was a decree that even Shakespeare could no longer call his own for we incarnated it with the conviction of twenty five years of hard physical labour in “the Vine”: the Renaissance Vineyard in Oregon House in the Sierra Foothills of California. Hard physical labor and the pruning of our previous lives, leaf by leaf, a “Conscious Process” in which I had first sacrificed my friends for I was now in the Fellowship of Friends with “true”, “real” people striving for consciousness, then my aunts and uncles who I’d inherited after my mother’s death, then my father, my sister and finally, my youngest daughter until there was no longer a trace of who I ever was. THAT WAS the aim but I never reached the peak of “consciousness” that was expected of me and remained in my god-father’s twenty two telephone books in the course of the thirty years I’d been away from home: Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia, South America.
Seventeen only in the School of Consciousness, Seventeen from the 3rd of March 1990 to the 22nd of March 2007 after my husband, Girard Haven, the Mind, the second to last in command of the Fellowship of Friends Cult, sent out a letter to the members suggesting they don’t waste their time reading, let alone writing in the Fellowship of Friend’s blog on the internet that was being sent out by invisible hands where I had written the day before and put me against the wall between cult and culture.
Girard Haven’s letter can come here- then my first post!
………………………
I said Yes ma’am! Is that good enough for a beginning? I think Crouching Tiger would be happier if we don’t publish the book before we publish the book so I’ll have to e-mail you and Nige the rest!
Thanks for the kicking-love!
That’s a very good idea Elena!
and now:
Yeats’ “To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no,” short
enough to be quoted in entirety:
Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I’d a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
to write!!! 🙂 , I know it is hard and hard work for You!
Crouching Tiger says I’m a natural writer but do you think there is anything natural about writing ten page letters every day when I was twelve years old?
It is unusually for a twelve year old.
Write and after Crouching Tiger’s etc. reading through the texts it can be decided how or wether it will be compressed or something else.
You should maintain the suspense until the very last minute.
It is also possible to begin like this as a novel writer:
Let us presume there would be a mysterious organization in our midst, invisible, a cobweb of a secret society……
There could be suspense all along because the reader doesn’t know any of the stories! The System’s, the Fellowship’s or mine! So it is three stories running parallel to each other together with that of the many other people that are connected. That could work! Three stories running parallel like a braid! Like life!
I live in the outskirts of the city. Just a few houses to the left there is a field with a small stream running down that is very dry these days. Cows come down from above in the morning and roam around for a while eating the grass from the gardens and anything else they are allowed. They are gathered and taken further down, then brought back in the afternoon. Two horses come by once a week and stand outside waiting for carrots. We are becoming good friends. The little girl from next door feeds them with me.
People look at the eyes of people! They really look and wait for you to look and connect. Their eyes are soft. Their manner is gentle. They know when you’re not there, when you don’t know what matters.
Antioqueños in Medellín are just a generation away from the countryside. Farmers, still in our heart. Farmers without land who have had to emigrate because of the paramilitary and the guerrillas creating enough violence so that people sell cheap and come to the cities as even cheaper labor. The houses were I live are many. One after the other in blocks of ten, reach a couple of hundred perhaps, all small and half finished but with a little piece of garden for each that some owners fill with flowers, vegetables and herbs. Hard working people with great pride but a hidden soft pride that will allow for some abuse before it protests. Treatment is everything and they use to walk out of no matter what job if the treatment wasn’t friendly but not in this times, when jobs are rare and necessity abundant. People keep quiet in all cults.
Medellín is in a hole! A gigantic hole surrounded by big, serious and almost bald mountains that have been exploited to the rim wherever possible. The clouds embrace the tip of the mountains when cold, while the sun lights them up and exposes the different tones, textures and gestures of green. A snake was found in one of the houses last week. Found and killed and up the hill next to the stream it is a common happening. Snakes, buses and internet, gangs, hit men, and ex-cult members, we all live peacefully in the neighborhood. Ah and the vultures too. They come religiously on Tuesday and Friday before and after the garbage is picked up, leaving the place spotless!
What’s it like in your places? Thought a digression from the theme could be soothing!
The FOFblog seems to be doing well. It’s good to see them take care of what needs to be taken care. The tone is a little sharper. They are clearer! That helps!
Of the twenty, thirty we’ve had reading here, there are hardly ten left, maybe that many still over a week. Most were probably unfriendly because they’re going away the better it gets!
Dragon, this is all good information for the book, I hope it’s alright to post here too, to be reminded. I’m also beginning to make an archive of things worth keeping in mind.
59. dragon – November 6, 2009
it is long but very worth reading it:
Exerpt:
One of the most destructive things in the human psyche is unrealized creativity.
If the daemonic is not honored and treated religiously (i.e., carefully considered with reverence and a sense of the sacred), however, it constellates negatively and turns truly “demonic,” in the destructive sense of the word.
Jung comments, “Generally speaking the daemonic is that moment when an unconscious content of seemingly overwhelming power appears on the threshold of consciousness.
It can cross this threshold and seize hold of the personality. Then it is possession.” Before an archetype can be consciously integrated, it will always manifest itself physically, because, in Jung’s words, “…it forces the subject into its own form.”
In its negative form, which is a truly virulent form of madness, we, because of our unconsciousness, become a living conduit for the incarnation of an inhuman, malevolent, predatory, rapacious energy that only cares about feeding its own insatiable narcissism, ultimately victimizing, consuming, and cannibalizing both ourselves and others in the process.
Describing this moment of being possessed, Jung elaborates, “The beast of prey seizes hold of him and soon makes him forget that he is a human being. His animal affects hamper any reflection that might stand in the way of his infantile wish-fulfillments, filling him instead with a feeling of a new-won right to existence and intoxicating him with the lust for booty and blood.”
This in-toxic-ating energy, which is the narcissistic ego running wild as it entrances itself, is the fuel which animates any form of addiction. “Intoxication,” to quote Jung, is “that most direct and dangerous form of possession,” as unless it is reflected upon, and therefore illuminated and transformed by the light of consciousness, it inevitably leads to self-destruction.
This is so interesting, I’ll make comments as I read because my eyes are too limited to read twice and find the ideas again. If you’re too busy, know that I don’t expect you to read as much as I write or post. It’s I who don’t have time to repeat the process later on and just by reading your excerpt, this article seems to have an ideal structure to grab on to.
————-
C. G. Jung, the great doctor of the soul and one of the most inspired psychologists of the twentieth century, had incredible insight into what is currently playing out, both individually and collectively, in our modern-day world. He writes, “If, for a moment, we look at mankind as one individual, we see that it is like a man carried away by unconscious powers.” We are a species carried away — “possessed” by — and acting out, the unconscious. Jung elaborates, “Possession, though old-fashioned, has by no means become obsolete; only the name has changed. Formerly they spoke of ‘evil spirits,’ now we call them ‘neurosis’ or ‘unconscious complexes.'” To condescendingly think that we, as modern-day, rational people, are too sophisticated to believe in something as primitive as demons is to have fallen under the spell of the very evil spirits we are imagining are nonexistent.
Elena: And to think they can be driven out with love!———
What the ancients call demons are a psychic phenomenon which compel us to act out behaviors contrary to our best intentions. To quote Jung, “the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”
“Possession,” according to Jung is “a primordial psychic phenomenon” that “denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended.” Though the possessed might imagine they have free will, their freedom is an illusion. They are unwittingly being used as an instrument for some “other” energy or force to incarnate and express itself through them. Having complexes is not necessarily pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking we don’t have complexes, which is the precondition that makes us most vulnerable to possession. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” The more complexes we have, the more we are possessed. We don’t need to get rid of our complexes, rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes.
Elena: This seems to parallel the idea that people are afraid of dealing with evil that I presented on the FOFblog. That they are not willing to deal with the Fellowship or acknowledge what happened to us and continues to happen to others.———-
Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream…but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” Thematically organized (such as the power-complex, savior-complex, mother-complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting like the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious are concentrated. An emotionally-charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating into itself everything that has any resonance or relevance, or is related to itself in any way. This inner process can be seen as it en-acts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. Complexes, when split off from consciousness, can potentially engulf and possess the whole personality.
Elena: This is wonderful! This is exactly what has been happening to all of us in the Fellowship, FOF BLOG and this blog too. In the Fellowship with Robert and on the other blogs particularly with me. In fact, it is also happening with this man’s text. Every time we connect with other people we are connecting with everything they are, complexes and qualities. What helps in a group is that we don’t all have the same complexes so we can help each other balance them out. As long as both complexes and attributes or qualities can flow in a creative process then the complex can be dealt with which is a lot of what is beginning to happen in this blog but it is impossible in the FOF because creativity is constrained to the dogma and in the FOFBlog, my complexes were “judged” “discriminated” and “separated” without love. Instead of helping me free myself they imprisoned me deeper which is what is not happening here anymore allowing me to relax and let other things in.
I’m guessing that if we place complexes with attributes, understanding by attributes the essence or innate qualities of the individual in a creative process, the individual can work out his or her complexes which is precisely what is impossible in a cult because the I of the member creating is “controlled” by the guru’s will and the dogma. One cannot call creative process what happens in cults because the I is precisely restrained, that is, the I or the member’s will is coercively restrained by the guru’s will. That creativity is the source of culture in the “alive” sense of the word, that is, the fine “energies” that allow people to feed each other’s soul and INSPIRE IT. This INSPIRATION is “spiritual” “mana”! Food for the body and soul! It is to people what water to plants. It flows naturally in people but it can also flow consciously in people when they know and understand what they are doing. (This things will probably be obvious in the future when, after being ground in the city, we return to a more natural living, no matter how technified. There is nothing wrong with technology, it’s how we humanize it what matters.)
Going back, Nigel and Dragon’s help in “parenting” me allowed me or is allowing me to deal with my complex of being abandoned, of being not worthy of love, of having extreme shame. The real difficulty with those complexes as I look at them today and the experience on the FOFblog, is that we tend to recreate the problem and if others aren’t mature enough to deal with it, we’ll be landed back into the initial trauma repeating itself over and over again until suicide or murder or whatever the process of crime takes, relieves us from the suffering. We can see that clearly about me on the FOFblog and how abusive I became at the end attracting the same result: being banned, excluded. But we can also see the inability of 99.7% of the ex-members to deal with their own complexes in relation to the tragedy we lived. Instead of being able and willing to deal with the problem, they signaled me out as the “problem” “sick beyond repair”!
Our complexes meet and intertwine with each other and that is what cults use and abuse in people. While they keep the major unconscious archetypes in people’s lives: The guru, the father, the priest, the leader and the Mother, the second in command, the balance, the relationship to those figures allows the community to live those complexes out.
This is wonderful because it is the ingredient we were missing until last week or this week when I mentioned your healing the archetype of my parental figures and allowing me to RELAX at last and reconnect to the jack of hearts and “natural” relationships to people.
I hope I am not taking this author’s ideas before I finish reading them but all the better if they are parallel to each other for I am applying them simply to our circumstances.
I should stop working now no matter how strong the compulsion to go on reading is. Wow, this is going so fast. It’s picked up again after that significant interval.
Have a great day!
Lovely, alive Elena
Do you remember that drink we thought we might have had a few weeks ago? God! I wish it could have been tonight at the Bishop Blaize (my pub, my real asylum, place of safety) You would have had your healing ‘right up to the eyeballs’. You say I ‘parent’ you. It is not quite like that. Tonight, as I have had an inkling these past few days, I felt my strong peace and ‘robust love’ so purely and with so many people – the lesbian couple, the Dutch Letti (who sang ‘Heaven is a place on Earth’ for me) and her 7 foot tall boyfriend, Korstiaan – oh so manly and admirable and the Pure Solar, Hayley, who comperes the karaoke, where I sing my heart out – do you know how Solars can be entertainers to the max? Dear Elena, do you know how you can be overwhelmed by the strong, beating heart of the people – the Real Love. When I look back (and it has not discontinued) the FOF was so surfacey, so pretentious, So False – The Depth with which I hate Burton and what he is doing!!!!! Sorry, Elena, I’m falling apart. I’ll try to compose myself in the morning (it is now 2.30 in the morning) and answer you in the particular way to which Your Reality is accustomed…..Nigel.
Nigel,
You too are so much more “expansive” these days. It is such a pleasure to “hear” your soul. Like “nectar”!
The “parenting” that I feel is not a conscious premeditated process or something you are pretending to “give” or that I am pretending to “take”. It is simply the ability to be human in this given situation what has helped me realign the broken archetypes.
We seldom understand other people’s suffering and they even seem ridiculous to us but when we are able to hold them no matter how little we understand, it helps them free themselves from them.
Your support in this blog has been simply crucial to my well-being. You may not realize how deeply you’ve helped me and how grateful I am for it. It’s similar to what I believe I made possible for Heather and other people I’ve taken in. When we can take in a person, with all their misgivings and suffering, they find a suitable place to deal with their own self. We can provide adequate physical and psychological environments for the person but we can’t actually go in there and heal them, they have to do that for themselves. If they find the help they need, they can find enough of themselves for the process to take place. If they can’t, the problem is deepened.
Nevertheless, I look forward to hearing your reflections on the subject when you find your way to the “communicator”!
Following, I’m going to continue the exploration with the article on complexes.
Synchronistically, as I write this article, multiple examples of people becoming possessed by and en-acting their unconscious on the world stage happened for everyone to see. Tennis star Serena Williams “losing it” when she fell into a rage at the U. S. Open, Republican congressman Joe Wilson’s unrestrained outburst, yelling “You lie,” during President Obama’s speech in front of congress, and rapper Kanye West melting down and rudely interrupting and ruining country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards all illustrate exactly what I am pointing at. They were all “taken over by something.”
Elena: The author here is talking about clear, extreme, expressions of “possession” but those people weren’t any less “possessed” before the outburst. If we look at my behavior on the FOFblog, following the author’s script I would have been “possessed” when I finally shouted and laughed at the audience and said I had been patient enough with them and “fucked it all” but that was simply the final expression of the “possession”: the myriad identifications that led up to that moment. ————
Jung writes, “since the world began, mankind has been possessed.” Possession is synonymous with bondage. Jung comments that in states of possession it comes down to “the same age-old experience: something objectively psychic and strange to us, not under our control, is fixedly opposed to the sovereignty of our will.” Possession means being supplanted by something stronger, being taken over and “owned” by something other than ourselves. Jung says, “Wherever we are still attached, we are still possessed; and when we are possessed, there is one stronger than us who possesses us.” We’ve all had moments where we’ve been possessed by something, where we’ve felt “not ourselves,” where we are no longer identical with ourselves. Some of us spend our whole lives living someone else’s life instead of our own.
Elena: We “spend” part of our lives resolving our parent’s “possessions”. When we can “separate” enough from their “possessions” in us, we continue to separate from the “possessions” of our clan and nation until we can reach our own pure archetype. This constant “resolving” of our ancestor’s possessions is “culture”. It is the process of life both socially and individually.————–
We’ve all had moments where “something” has gotten into us, where we feel out of sorts, beside ourselves. When deeper, primordial archetypes seize us, Jung writes, “They easily catch hold of you and you are possessed as if they were lions or bears, say — primitive forces which are quite definitely stronger than you.”
Elena: The author here is talking in an ample sense but I’d like to bring it to our smaller experience. We can talk about “primitive forces” but to understand it better, we can talk about the “patterns” imprinted in childhood. In my process one of the “patterns” that has marked my experience of “abandonement” is the fact that the people around me never have time for love, for spending time with me, with each other. When someone tells me they don’t have time, in the state of high vulnerability that I have been in, I’ve been unable to process that information with the simplicity of the fact, for me it becomes the repeted experience of the fact that mothers, fathers, teachers, husbands, lovers, gurus, presidents, and almost every authority figure that I have ever come across, doesn’t have time. When parents don’t give children time, no matter how much food and comfort the surrounding is, the child feels abandoned, the child does not receive enough soul nourishment to develop healthily. BEING with each other is a “nourishment” and it doesn’t matter whether it is our parents or friends what provide that “love”, as long as it is provided, love heals the“starvation”.
I find this crucial to our understanding of cult life because the main ingredient of Robert Burton and Girard Haven’s ACT is that they don’t have TIME for people. Whenever people don’t want to deal with a problem they make up the excuse that they don’t have TIME. For someone in desperate need of attention, that lack of time may prove fatal in a hospital as much as in a home or an office. The neglect to take care of the person can lead to death and suicide or murder. (If we remember the case of those people that show up in an office and start shooting everyone who they don’t even know but who neglected to pay attention to the man when he was desperate for it, we might understand the process better) It is those little things that trigger the frustration and despair and lead the “possessed” person to act against him/herself or others. (Dragon, is it more clear to you what was happening last week?)————–
At any moment any one of us can become “possessed” by the unconscious in a way such that a more powerful energy than our conscious ego moves and animates us. To quote Jung, “it easily happens to any one of us that we do not act through our own volition. Then I cannot say I do, but it is done through me; something takes possession of me, the very action can take possession of me.”
Elena: Just like such “possessions” can take possession of us, love too is a possession that takes possession of us. Love too can take unconscious or conscious possession of us———-
When we have fallen into our unconscious and compulsively en-act an unconscious complex, we become manipulated by more powerful forces than ourselves. In Jung’s words, a person then becomes “the devil’s marionette. This could happen only because he believed he had abolished the demons by declaring them to be superstition. He overlooked the fact that they were, at bottom, the products of certain factors in the human psyche.” In dismissing the demons as being mere illusions without realizing their psychological reality, we unwittingly become possessed by them. The demons are ultimately split-off, rejected, and disowned parts of the psyche that are experienced as alien and other than who we imagine ourselves to be
Elena: Or at the other end of the spectrum, love can take possession of us and we become creative, light, charming! The “angels”, psychologically speaking, are also very real and they alter our experience of our selves as much as of our lives and the experience of others about one’s self. If we look at me in the FOFblog I was definitely negatively possessed and it was too much for the people to take. Only a few of you were able to bear with it. Nigel in particular was able to bear with it because he’s lived through such experiences and does not judge them or is afraid of them like people who have not experienced them. A few others were able to see the positive aspects beyond them and Dragon, the very positive aspects allowing me to reach out to those aspects and project my self towards them but also become emotionally strongly dependent for some time to both Nigel and Dragon who’ve had to lead me through the nightmare of having been banned. ———-
Jung says, “As a rule there is a marked unconsciousness of any complexes, and this naturally guarantees them all the more freedom of action. In such cases their powers of assimilation become especially pronounced, since unconsciousness helps the complex to assimilate even the ego, the result being a momentary and unconscious alteration of personality known as identification with the complex.
Elena: The way they are dealing with complexes here is no different to the way “mechanicality” is dealt with in Gurdjieff’s System. Everything mechanical would correspond to unconscious complexes. The tragedy in the Fellowship cult and cults in general, is that the gurus impose a behavior of external separation from the member’s life instead of an internal “separation” and “dealing” with the complexes, programming the member to rely on the “teacher’s” will and sacrifice his own. This must be looked at more deeply because there is a very interesting phenomenon in which the “ideals” of an ARC, a human “destiny”, the saving of culture incarnates the cults ideal at the cost of the member’s development. The mass behavior of the members towards the ideal of saving humanity is self imposed and adopted, leaving the members to make supra work efforts to save humanity by sacrificing themselves. It is the mistaken belief that if they can sacrifice themselves they will be redeemed. But what allows that extremely dangerous and harmful IMAGINATION to take place is the fact that the members are so strongly under the influence of their unresolved “possessions”, “identifications”, that they SUBMIT to the father guru figure and allow him or her to subdue their will because the don’t have a will or a mature enough structure within themselves that can separate from the overwhelming conditioning of the cult life.
The internal separation from complexes or identifications that needed to take place on an individual level is taken up by the cult and lived externally by the whole group in relation to society. Instead of separating from his inner complexes, the whole cult separates from society and unconsciously blames it for humanity’s suffering that they are trying to save INSTEAD of individually dealing with their personal history and complexes and resolving them within the community and society at large. (This is the most important issue I’ve yet understood about cults).
Elena it was not only the passive aspect of:
“having been banned”
HAVING BEEN BANNED!?
It was also your unconscious “Wish” but in an active way!
Let they DO it! I want to repeat that damn part from my childhood again and again.
I think it is now your way to integrate your demons/possession by evil spirits and to find a way into a profound and creative life.
You don’t need the repetition anymore! It is really over.
Write about it, write about your steps, every day and we will enjoy your efforts.
Elena:
If Jesus/Buddha/Gandhi/the Saviour of the world/the best Guru ever/
knocks on your door:
Say friendly: Hello! Give him a few coins for a cup of coffee and send him to go his own way.
———————-
It is your life, you are on the air/
Elena:
If Jesus/Buddha/Gandhi/the Saviour of the world/the best Guru ever/
knocks on your door:
Say friendly: Hello! Give him a few coins for a cup of coffee and send him to go his own way.
———————-
It is your life, you are on the air
Elena
Just something you might need to know. I had to ask Kate ‘where we stand’. She said “You know there can never be anything other than friendship between us”. What was my reaction? At first, relief, that I did not have to put my heart on the line anymore. Then the mind ventured in – memories – “but she said this, she did this”. I suppose all these things can do nothing but make us stronger…..Nigel.
Hi Dragon,
I fully agree. The whole circle!
Was the post 200 clear or very confusing? I would much appreciate knowing if it reached you.
Thanks in advance for your time!!
I’ve been up in the mountains and feel so very good. Everything is changed, I can rest now!
Hi Nigel,
We are each steps in each other’s lives. If Kate feels too young there are a hundred others that feel just right when you’re ready for love. It is a magical world Nigel and we are the spell!
I’m myself beginning to feel ready! Oooh! what joy!
I’m still up in the mountains but when I get back later today I’d like to continue working on Jung’s article. Plese take a look at it, I no longer need so much attention, I’m very well, truly well like before the cult. It’s deciphering the cult what still merits a lot of work.
Love you both
Elena
And if there are others reading and find material of value, your input would be greatly appreciated.
Crouching Tiger, I’d be very interested in hearing your opinion on post 200 and the other one related to Jung’s article. It puts a possible book in a new perspective.
By Paul Levy
http://www.realitysandwich.com/are_we_possessed
In the Middle Ages it went by another name; it was called possession.” We, as “modern” people, to the extent we are acting out our unconscious, are as much “plagued” by possession as people in the Middle Ages.
Jung comments, “in all cases identification with the unconscious [complex] brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the danger. You do not ‘make’ an identification, you do not ‘identify yourself,’ but you experience your identity with the archetype in an unconscious way and so are possessed by it.” Anything we are unconsciously identical with we are possessed by, and hence, compelled to act out in our life without understanding why. Though we have dismissed the idea of demons on the altar of our rationality, to quote Jung, “…man himself has taken over their role without knowing it and does the devilish work of destruction with far more effective tools than the spirits did. In the olden days men were brutal, now they are dehumanized and possessed to a degree that even the blackest Middle Ages did not know.” More than ever, current-day humanity is certainly acting as if it’s a species possessed. Eminent theologian and 9/11 Truth Activist David Ray Griffin writes, “It does seem that we are possessed by some demonic power that is leading us, trancelike, into self-destruction.”
These are the realities that people both outside and inside Cults are avoiding. We do not call “evil” abandoning our children and parents and other human beings but children, parents, young people and old people were abandoned and continue to be abandoned in the Fellowship cult.
Are we perhaps afraid of the fact that we are the result of generations of “evil” that had to abandon our lives to work for others?, other divas? The absurd “diva” show happens in cults as much as in society. Cults simply mirror what is already happening at large in society.
To what extent growing up watching television has numbed us to reality. How many have not suffered in front of a film and had to learn not to cry because “it’s only a film”? The crux of every story is the suffering and the release from suffering but after watching the amount of television that the average westerner has watched today, have we numbed our selves to the reality of suffering and look at it and each other like another television program that can be turned off and on?
What made us indifferent to each other and every member that passed through the Fellowship Cult like actors in somebody else’s play?
What made it so easy for us to mutilate our lives like scenarios and characters that we could do without? In my case it is evident that I had myriad reasons to look for a community that at least in principle tried to live a more conscious life. What are cult members running away from or towards? Doesn’t almost everyone in our society have something they could run away from? Why did we manage to do it for so long in search of a consciousness of our own without anyone else included for it is clear in the Fellowship cult that we were not willing to include each other; that we were willing to discard anyone who didn’t grab on to it with desperation and worked unconditionally and allowed for every form of rape and self denial. How much less willing were those that burnt themselves in the vineyard to give their lives up than the boys in Robert’s bed? Those who gave all their money, all their time? All their love? Many didn’t give too much and made of the cult a Sunday mass, but those who committed fully and lived that commitment out in Oregon House, that is, those who are still inside and grabbing on to it like a lifesaving device, what have they not allowed the Fellowship to take away from them and call that “consciousness”?
Was it too much television that made us so indifferent to what was going on right in front of our eyes? And how did we manage to mutilate our lives so successfully?
It is clear in the System that we were supposed to remain IN life, why didn’t we even question it when we separated our selves from it? Some will say that they did, that they continued to have jobs in society but was that life? Or was it the necessary “job” to pay for the “life” we were supposed to be living? And then was it a life we were supposed to be living or a School in which we were supposed to be learning?
How did we, do we, those still inside, allow for the life and the School and the cult to get all mixed up?
The Fourth Way is supposed to happen in life. It was OUR lives what we were supposed to be working with in a CONSCIOUS SCHOOL. What allowed us to give up our lives for the gold alchemy rape factory? Was it because all factories and businesses in which people have been working for a few generations now, are rape factories? Is France’s telecom company in which suicide has become the norm, any less disfiguring than cults? Is there a serious difference between going to an absolutely uncreative job repeating the same movement day in and out for a minimum salary any different to the inverse process of leaving your life out of the cult to support a narcissistic sociopath addicted to raping boys from every nation? I mean, isn’t life raped out of cults as much as of factories? Don’t we in cults simply invert the process and give up our lives before we enter so that we no longer have to deal with something so “sticky”?
And how did we actually manage to accomplish the ideal state of Western Materialistic idiosyncracy? Was it possible to just hang our lives outside the pile, throw it out in the lake or run it over with our cars before we drove into the palm gardens of every member who had been skimmed? Was the mutilation a methodical act of separating ourselves physically from our families, mothers, fathers and children until we had abandoned each one of them with all our heart? And then inside, when we abandoned wives and husbands, did it become easier with that much practice? Were we able to realize the ideas of the Fourth Way as stated by Mr. Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and Collin and held our families with more integrity, with more consciousness Daily Cardiac, if you don’t like the word integrity, and at the same time separated ourselves from judgement and negativity and consciously embraced our lives with the myriad difficulties they offered? Or did we run into the cult and separated our selves from the pangs of our difficulties trying to convince our selves that we were worthy of a conscious being’s love and life because we were able to mutilate every aspect of our previous lives and affirm it with our gold alchemy uniforms that were perfected each day with new acquisitions for our wardrobe?
For it didn’t matter whether we were conscious or not as long as we looked good, did it?
We mutilated our lives and separated from the pain of doing so with indifference. “Indifference”, that very particular negative emotion that we were supposed to be separating from, became our most active tool to hold the structure of the cult’s status quo.
There is no coincidence in the fact that I have exposed every aspect of my life on these blogs, recovering it. I too allowed for too much of it to be mutilated in the cult but I have been recovering it and I am at the other side of the river in that process. It’s taken less than three years but it was worth every minute of it, including the banning.
Dragon,
It is very significant that Daily Cardiac showed up when the posts by Jung are being quoted. Might he be wanting to detract from the subject? This article is extremely accurate of what the Fellowship Cult is about. It would be worth insisting and posting more of it if you happen to coincide with me.
Dragon:
Elena it was not only the passive aspect of:
“having been banned”
HAVING BEEN BANNED!?
It was also your unconscious “Wish” but in an active way!
Let they DO it! I want to repeat that damn part from my childhood again and again.
It’s so clear isn’t it? So wonderfully clear! You can see it too right? Can you also see that it is not particular to me? That we can jump from there to a phenomenon that happens to everyone? That is, that in our adult life we project what we experienced as children until it repeats itself? Recurring into the same pattern over and over again? That, like in an eight or rather a lemniscate, we experience our selves as adults like our parents made us experience ourselves as children? If they did not love and embrace us, we feel unlovable and not worthy of being embraced? And in being “identified” with that complex, with that image of our selves, THAT is what other people pick up from us and reproduce it in their own inability to hold one beyond one’s misgivings? Isn’t that precisely the Play that we’ve been looking at in these blogs? how in cults, the guru takes advantage of the fact that most people are enacting their complexes and instead of helping them heal, reaffirms the complex to self annihilation while he lives his out? And on the other hand, when someone like you and Nigel can hold to what is beyond the misgivings, one can free one’s self from the identification? Through love!
This is what I’m hoping we explore and clarify more deeply: the fact that the community acts like the “womb of archetypes”! And if we find people human enough to re-enact them “healthly”, we help each other heal.
Yes, I think I can begin to live out my creativity with joy now! With the book if CT is still willing or with whatever life brings which is welcome!
The Doctor in these five videos expands on the subject with very precise historical and scientific facts. If you have someone that can translate from the Spanish, it is very worth listening to.
Still another one!
Hi D. Were those videos significant?
We sit together
an Ocean apart
and still the joy and the warmth
cross by
Three red dots on a world map
Is that you Nige?
The three of us in the Public Square?
Could we go for a coffee?
It’s getting cold out here!
Walking on a thin rope
the legs feel void
the stomach turns
and the body
looks for something to hold
One step
two steps
the emptiness below
three steps
four steps
that’s all!
The FOF blog is wonderful these days isn’t it?
James Mclemore’s post was beautiful BRAVO James!
Whalerider, we don’t agree but who cares!!! You made me laugh so joyfully three posts ago that who cares whether for you there are real Schools or not. The funniest thing for me is that you would even doubt such thing but I agreed on most other things you said.
Too bad Daily Cardiac is also accomplishing what he wants: reasoning out the cult!
And love?
It’s like a creeper that digs deep into the wall of houses
ever in need of pruning
and once short of leaves and branches
blossoms in silence
A little room
open bricks and gray cement
two ladies on the internet
a boy stands and looks at a paper
next to mine
It’s dark
Big yellow flowers outside
It’s four O five
I’ve got to go,
no time for more
thanks for coming by,
thanks for staying long!
I’ll take your warmth!
Spread it Oh
For long!
I was just looking up Rauni Kilde and Burgermeister. Is it just a crazy story? Another crazy story? I got the Doctor on an email and found the others as related videos. Should have checked first! But it isn’t THAT far out is it? If people with no power abuse others like in the Fellowship, what do people with a lot of power manage to do? If they think I’m crazy for exposing the Fellowship cult what is so surprising about these women being called crazy for exposing the heavy weights? Welcome craziness!
Nigel, the doctor gave me ferrum sidereum last week and I am much more stable. Please find out about it with one of those anthroposophical doctors in your area. It only cost three dollars here. I took one on friday and another one on Sunday because I was extremely unstable. It’s been passed a week now and I don’t wish to take any more or need to. For a few days I felt happy in a very solid way. As it wears off I am less happy but still stable. It is a very powerful thing that I am convinced might help you replace what you are taking. Theoretically it helps stabilize the I! whatever that means for you!
Please feel free to consider it and reject it if it makes no sense for you.
These pieces of Daily Cardiac are wonderfully revealing about what people call “NORMALITY” today. They are fascinating evidence of everything we are talking about but please continue to talk before I ruin it. I see you’ve also been reading this blog.
One aspect is what the FOFblog wanted of me: peaceful behavior without outbursts
As long as DC “BEHAVES” he can give out as much of his dogma as he likes without being able to ban him!!! Because they are trapped in their own dogma: as long as you behave normally, you’re normal!!! And now they all have to behave normal and not react violently against Daily Cardiac’s dominance of the situation!
He is brilliant in his own disfigured world which is one of the main lessons about this whole play: brilliance is not a sign of humaneness.
120. Daily Cardiac – November 10, 2009
Tatyana – 101:
“Dear DC,
since you answer selectively and not very often, I don’t have high expectations that you will answer me this time. But still I will try to ask just to make sure I understand what you are saying.
Are you saying that:
1. people posting here are lying intentionally to mask or avoid truth
2. they do it so because they lost interest in the Work (proof to which is that they are not looking for another teacher/school)
3. the truth is that RB is not abusing power or raping students, students are attracted to the power and status, and therefore there is no real evidence that FOF is not a school of awakening.
Is it what you are saying?”
Tatyana, to answer your questions:
“1. people posting here are lying intentionally to mask or avoid truth.”
A pronounced bias against something or someone, especially when it seems justifiable, prevents people from seeing the entire spectrum of information. Some of that information may, and often does, contain pertinent truths that runs counter to their beliefs. Extreme bias prevents the entire truth from being seen all the more. It’s not lying intentionally; the lie is told to one’s self and one believes it and harbors it as truth because one wants it to be true.
“2. they do it so because they lost interest in the Work (proof to which is that they are not looking for another teacher/school)”
This can be understood in a general way; if I really want something and I go off looking for it and let’s say I go in the wrong direction and find out that if I really want it I need to make an even greater effort to go back to where I started and start anew again. If that person gives up the search it would indicate that perhaps the yearning wasn’t great enough to overcome the denying force. Then another might continue on the search because he or she has to have what they are looking for and so they continue on even with the added obstacles to overcome. That shows a greater valuation, greater need, for whatever was being sought.
People here say the FoF is a destructive cult that they found and joined mistakenly while looking for a conscious school. Yet when they discover it’s not a school they don’t continue looking for a real school; the yearning seems to dissipate and that seems odd to me.
I stopped looking and stayed because I see the FoF as a real school, so I found what I was looking for but if I had seen it as a fraud I think I would have kept looking for a real school. I think it’s reasonable to assume others would also keep looking.
If people stop looking it means one of two things as I see it; either their need for a school wasn’t that great to begin with, (maybe the effort to remain was more than they anticipated) or deep down they understand the FoF is a school but they still can’t connect with it or value it.
If you have an important appointment in an unfamiliar city and you get on the wrong bus, do you forget about the appointment and maybe go on a picnic because the wrong bus let you off next to a park, or do try to find the right bus to take you where you initially wanted to go? I think doing the latter is a reasonable conclusion.
“3. the truth is that RB is not abusing power or raping students, students are attracted to the power and status, and therefore there is no real evidence that FOF is not a school of awakening.”
The way you worded it is a little like condensing two issues into one, but basically what you relay back is true. The truth is that Robert is not abusing anyone and obviously not raping anyone, either literally or figuratively.
The key element is free will. When anyone willingly agrees to something it is not abuse, it is consent. Even though the person is conflicted on the inside it is still consent because the ultimate decision is theirs to make. Now people consent to things all the time and later they see it was not what they really wanted or the result was not desirable and in that case there was a lesson to be learned and one learns it and moves on.
When one blames others for one’s own decisions it is a sure sign the lesson was not learned and then the lesson will be repeated until it is learned. Of course the lessons we are talking about are equally of a spiritual nature so the lessons may very well be carried over from one existence to the next.
I read an article recently about the British actor Ralph Fiennes. He was on an airplane and a female flight attendant ended up having sex with him in the plane’s lavatory. It was discovered and reported (maybe she left the drink trolley in the center isle) and she was immediately fired upon landing on the ground. She was interviewed later and asked if she regretted losing her job because she had sex with Ralph. She answered that she could always get another job but you don’t get too many opportunities to have sex with a movie star. Which at least is an accurate assessment of the odds involved.
Now imagine if one of the other passengers on the plane would have pressed the little button calling this “hostess” to his seat and proposed to her that they have sex in the lavatory since he found her to be extremely “hot.” By all definitions that would have been grounds for a sexual harassment charge, maybe a ban from the airline if the same lady reported it. The only difference in both scenarios is consent due to power or status (in this case the power of celebrity.)
And finally, Robert having sex with students is not evidence that the FoF is not a real school. The FoF not producing and promoting Presence would be proof it’s not a real school.
Great answer Tatyana!
And Daily Cardiac’s is no less good for his aims: keep them in the labyrinth of logic and play yo-yo with the issue for as long as he likes!
It’s wonderful how life corners us all! Corners us against our own made up barriers so that we are forced to push our selves out again!
130. Daily Cardiac – November 11, 2009
James Mclemore – 97:
First I would like to apologize to you for the dig I got in about Robert’s mother and the work book. You took a few shots at me in 97 and my first response was to send one back, but sarcasm is not ever the answer as far as I’m concerned. I’m not here to insult or argue or put anyone down.
My aim is to single out the issues that are most talked about on the blog, relate my understandings pertaining to other ways to think about them or interpret them, and then let the FoF critics respond to my comments or not respond. That is all.
So it’s very curious to me that you found not much to ponder in #80 because #80 is only about the issues dear to your heart. I would think that hearing new possible meanings for why things are the way they are in the FoF, the very issues you hold important, would be of interest to you. And responding to them would also interest you.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case. I can’t find one issue I pointed out that you addressed in your #97.
We already mentioned you said there is not much to ponder in #80. You also said this –
“You actually have no idea what people who post here are doing or have done.”
That’s really not the case. I think people talk about what is the most important to them and if anyone found a real school other than the FoF we would know about it.
What is talked about most is not how people are continuing on the spiritual path. The vast majority of the comments are telling what a bad person RB is over and over ad nauseum. So if people can only dwell on that, for me it’s a give away that there is not much else going on in their lives. If there were positive things going on in their lives people would be expressing it; after all is not that part of the solution, what someone finds that works?
Is the only thing that interests critics here saying the same thing every ex member has heard before and agrees on over and over, essentially nothing more than preaching to the choir?
You also said this –
“It may in part be that it is simply that many here have discovered that ‘truth’ does not exclusively inhabit any specific external anything, neither person nor place nor group of any kind, nor even any particular body of ideas. I am actually surprised that it seems you have not discovered this yet.”
This reminds me of ton’s worldview regarding objective vs subjective a page or so back. I would say truth exists externally from us as well as in us. It exists in some circles and is absent from other circles and in some circles it exists conditionally.
If it is in us it is in us because we have encountered it outside of us first and it imposed its will on us to follow it, embody it.
So you decided not to address the issues of #80 but go into what you thought I meant about this or that but I have addressed at least one of your comments head on.
Do you care to comment on the issue of whether RB has really abused anyone or not, based on reason, right interpretation of laws both man made or higher? And I’m not talking about repeating the litany of stories here, which I’ve pointed out does not amount to proof or evidence of anything, or maybe you would like to ponder the issue of why mere words don’t equate to truth, which was also touched on in detail in #80?
131. Tatyana – November 11, 2009
DC
“And finally, Robert having sex with students is not evidence that the FoF is not a real school. The FoF not producing and promoting Presence would be proof it’s not a real school.”
If I use your logic, then nothing can be evidence that FOF is not a real school as long as it is producing and promoting Presence. Right? From this point not only Robert having sex with students is not evidence, but even if he was raping them and abusing power wouldn’t be evidence? As long as FOF producing and promoting Presence. Not even a murder would be evidence! Is this what you believe?
Daily Cardiac,
It is very interesting that you, like me, keep asking people to address the reasoning you are presenting and not the person. We have both done that consistently. Assuming you are Girard, although I have doubts, I wonder if the many years we spent together rubbed some of that on me for I also lean on the very intellectual to relate to others. Looking at my experience on the blog I was DESPERATELY asking others to address the issues and not the subject and continue to feel that people just don’t care or don’t perceive the reasoning.
I sincerely find it wonderful that you continue to write. Behind our writing there is a struggle to communicate and the shell ends up breaking if we struggle enough. There is a parallel in that blah, blah, blah of yours and mine and no matter how far off you still are, the practice of trying to communicate is what is important.
You’re trying to justify it all but it is unjustifiable and you’ll come to see that sooner or later.
Your idea that as long as the Fellowship is promoting presence makes it a School of Consciousness is absolutely unidirectional. You wish that to be so because that is what you and Robert, assuming you are Girard, have been practicing all along reducing your life and the life of every member into one single fundamentalist dogma: be present!
But be present to you means: be frozen in the moment without relating to the world outside and there is no presence in that. It also means: crystallize in the formatory apparatus, in the dogma and as long as nothing moves that status quo your world is safe while you fall apart for you are not only your formatory apparatus, my love (assuming of course that you are my husband, Mr. Girard Haven, no matter how many times we get divorced!) You are also a sexual being and when there is no coherence between your presence and your sexuality, there is no presence in you or Robert or the Fellowship cult that pretends to justify the emotional and intellectual manipulation of young boys to abuse them sexually as an act of consciousness. You are also a social being and that is not just writing on computers and giving discourses to people who cannot respond or dialogue with you beyond the dogma. There is nothing “social” about that. That is the “sociability” possible in a concentration camp in which you are the headmaster. Sociability is something totally different. It means swimming in each other’s being and letting our selves be impregnated by that water with all the clarity and the darkness that that implies, experiencing the suffering others are going through and sincerely helping them cope with it.
There is nothing of that in your posts. For you there is a sharp cut edge in which the Fellowship is not responsible for the member’s suffering. How could we ever expect you to feel the pain that you’ve caused others? How could you bear with it without having first forgiven your self? And forgiveness is in your vocabulary only if it is related to forgiving Robert’s abuses with the member’s lives: their bodies, their time; their minds: their freedom to think for themselves; their hearts: their freedom to love not just one man in a decadent cult; their homes and bodies and their freedom to dress and decorate as their essence dictates and not his.
THAT my love, is not presence. Presence lives in freedom; in the capacity we each have to spontaneously respond to the world with the whole of our being. Not in the programmed response of a dogmatic cult to a pretended uneventful world in which EVERYTHING is MADE UP and rehearsed over and over again while you and Bobby renew yourselves each day trying to find new justifications for that status quo.
My Dear Husband, life lives in the freedom of chaos in which laws above our own dictate the compass and in usurping the freedom of chaos, you and Bobby have decided to own the laws condemning the people that love you to a thoroughly conditioned make believe world: a cult.
You’ve done that only because you and Bobby proved unable to deal with the world in its own terms. Neither you nor him could establish a normal sexual relationship with men or women. You had to rape them using some kind of force beyond the natural: through the frozen plastic of a screen full of naked childlike women and not so childlike for the one and only time that I saw you watching porn, they were big, fat women with huge tits (remember? the first time I asked you to leave my house, just a day after you arrived?) and for Robert, through a whole organization of people justifying his inability to love one man and hold him as a precious reference to himself and not a calendar of young boys that he discarded as soon as they were too old too satisfy his ferocious anxiety to find the self he lost in his father’s abandonment. Isn’t it amazing how we are all under very simple paradigms no matter how free or complicated we pretend to be or make them?
We are all or at least a considerable portion of us, extremely disfunctional people in our times and neither you or Robert are more dysfunctional than those men that walk into porn films before noon and walk out to hire a cheap whore before six and were it not because in our own disfunctionality we were willing to trust you, you amassed the power to systematically hurt too many people in too many spheres of our lives.
I do not attack you or judge you for being a thoroughly dysfunctional piece of human, most of us are in pieces, but I will continue to fight your cult because you’ve institutionalized your “disfunctionality” as a sacred expression of life and THAT is dangerous to too many people.
I’ve come to love you and myself, my parents and myself, my friends and myself with all our disfunctionality alive and functioning but from there to allowing any one of us to abuse others in our unconsciousness without even being checked, is too long a stretch.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/are_we_possessed
Jung comments, “…an unknown ‘something’ has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession.” When we are possessed we are not free, we are not masters in our own house. When we are possessed by the unconscious, we become dissociated from ourselves such that, as Jung writes, there is “a tearing loose of part of one’s nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which thereupon becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man. It throws him off course and drives him to actions whose blind one-sidedness inevitably leads to self-destruction.”
Aren’t we also talking about cults here?
How about the tendency in the “high” countries of the first world to suicide?
It’s worth wondering why the higher the standard of living, the higher the number of suicides in the western world.
The Canadian teen suicide statistics are alarming. Between 1952 and 1992 the national suicide rate increased by 78%. but by comparison the teen suicide rate for the same period increased more than 600%. If any disease or bacteria was causing such an alarming rise in the number of deaths it would surely be considered an epidemic.
Females account for 75% of attempted suicides, usually by drug overdose. But males are actually six times more likely to be successful and choose more violent methods such as shooting or hanging. About one-third of teen suicides are done by young people who have attempted it before.
Suicide rates are five to seven times higher for First Nations teens than other young people in Canada. The suicide rates amongst the Inuit youth are some of the highest anywhere in the world. They are 11 times higher than the Canadian national average.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Teen-Suicide-Statistics—An-Epidemic-of-Self-Inflicted-Death-Among-Canadian-Youth&id=2046241
Nigel and Dragon,
I realize no one has the time to read the amount of posts that I post for I am in many ways collecting data on the subjects that interest me and that I find directly or indirectly connected to Cults.
That’s O.K.: no need to read
They are all related pieces of information and the more I look at it the clearer it is that I am learning quite a bit about suicide and suicide patterns.
The following article interests me because it touches on the subject in similar ways that I’ve touched on it. The case of this young man in ITT is very similar to my case and a million others in other places but the author points out the tendency of people to reject others on a massive scale so that they feel superior. She calls it a human need to which I don’t agree, radically don’t agree but it is important that she perceives the problem: the tendency people have to reject others so that we can boost our selves up. In terms of the System which I continue to find a perfectly valid structure, people lower other’s image to raise their own imaginary picture. What is interesting about these stories is that we’re verifying how they happen on a massive scale in our societies today.
The last few days the newspapers have been full of the suicide of young Srikant Mallepallu. Not just young, but studying in India’s most prestigious educational institution – IIT.
All sorts of reasons are being given for the suicide – ranging from Srikant’s inability to cope with the workload at IIT and inability to be accepted by his class-mates to his Internet addiction.
That struck me. Internet addiction. X-Men, Manga, anime, blogs and chatting was Srikant’s life. He was on the computer until the wee hours of the morning. These activities of his were blamed for his poor grades…but anyone who escapes into the internet world does it only for one reason: to fulfill a human being’s very basic need – a sense of belonging. What I am saying is nothing new…Abraham Maslow said it years ago. The need to belong is just a little less important than our physiological needs. This means that once a human being has sufficient food, water and shelter – he craves for a sense of belonging. This need happens to be more important than the need to achieve.
In our heart of hearts we all know this…but do we do anything about it? It’s easier to grab a burger if you’re starving. If you are starving for company what do you do?
The need to reject others is strongly entrenched in human beings
Loneliness doesn’t have a simple answer because it is not dependent on just you. And that other might find it far easier to share his burger rather than himself. His need to reject may be far greater than his need to share himself at that point of time.
Human beings find all kinds to reasons to reject others. Social status, background, language, accent, race, grades, looks, manner, religion, sexual preferences, dress, colour, weight, intelligence or simply because of the person is new in the neighbourhood…
Poor Srikant. He was rejected not just because he was a ‘reservation’ candidate (he got admission into IIT because he was of a particular caste, not on merit) but also because of the intellectual snobbery prevalent on the IIT campus. Those with low grades are considered intellectually inferior (which is bullshit) and thus looked down upon. So here was a boy who was unable to walk into an inner circle. Probably his other inner circle (family) might have rejected him if he had not made it through IIT and/or had not got a good job offer. It has been reported that while his other class-mates had bagged several job offers, he had none.
There are too many people like Srikant in this modern world of ours. And there is one sure place to find them…on the internet.
Does Maslow’s Need Hierachy need to be re-drawn?
On the face of it, it looks like Maslow forgot something. This need that human beings have to reject others just so that they get to feel superior and exclusive. I am guilty too. I firmly reject those whom I believe to be dishonest or hypocritical or just plain immoral. They will never ever get into my inner circle. In fact I go a step further. I think my method of filtration is the best. I reject those who use other methods of filtration…like social status or caste or a million other things.
Naturally, Maslow couldn’t have missed this. This need is too important. And by studying his hierarchy of needs a little more closely…I got it. The need for rejection is right there – hidden under all those words in that green band. It says: ‘Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others.’
Ofcourse. Rejection of others and moving around in “exclusive” circles increases one’s self-esteem – in a perverted way.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that each year approximately one million people die from suicide, which represents a global mortality rate of 16 people per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds. It is predicted that by 2020 the rate of death will increase to one every 20 seconds.
The WHO further reports that:
In the last 45 years suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide. Suicide is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 (male and female). Suicide attempts are up to 20 times more frequent than completed suicides.
Although suicide rates have traditionally been highest amongst elderly males, rates among young people have been increasing to such an extent that they are now the group at highest risk in a third of all countries.
Mental health disorders (particularly depression and substance abuse) are associated with more than 90% of all cases of suicide.
However, suicide results from many complex sociocultural factors and is more likely to occur during periods of socioeconomic, family and individual crisis (e.g. loss of a loved one, unemployment, sexual orientation, difficulties with developing one’s identity, disassociation from one’s community or other social/belief group, and honour).
The WHO also states that:
In Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, the highest suicide rates are reported for both men and women.
The Eastern Mediterranean Region and Central Asia republics have the lowest suicide rates.
Nearly 30% of all suicides worldwide occur in India and China.
Suicides globally by age are as follows: 55% are aged between 15 to 44 years and 45% are aged 45 years and over.
Youth suicide is increasing at the greatest rate.
In the US, the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention reports that:
Overall, suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death for all US Americans, and is the third leading cause of death for young people 15-24 years.
Although suicide is a serious problem among the young and adults, death rates continue to be highest among older adults ages 65 years and over.
Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than are females. However, females are more likely to attempt suicide than are males.
I try to look at death without fear
But it isn’t death what produces fear
It’s lifelessness what is deadly: cults.
I’ve walked down the void of death
And lived and
I’ve flown across the tightrope between life and death
And become
Life on this side of the tightrope is filled with light
and death on the other side of the tightrope
is filled with love
Light on this side of the tight rope is filled with air-ness
and death on the other side of the tightrope is filled with being-ness: the living spirit-ness that reminds us of eternity in each of our eyes
An “air-ness” in which birds and butterflies testify for the living soul-ness in the other side, flowers and mobiles attach the spirit to the living Earth
A being-ness that breathes in the world inside each heart
like people live outside the heart on this side.
A spirit-ness to which each heart is the entrance, a living door, a fountain of each I-river into eternity.
All life on this side is death’s poem.
All life on this side is God’s hair falling.
All life: the trees and the rivers, the animals and the people,
the hands that touch, the eyes that see, the smell of all things
are God’s dying cells. It does not affect God when I die because we’re already alive in US.
Life is Death’s blossom and
Death is Life’s blossom
Life is deaths tenderness
and Death
Life’s firmness
Death pours through each heart
in the river of our blood and lives in
culture, our culture: the human expression of our selves.
DC is having a ball in the fofblog. They only “react” to him without a clarity of their own letting him be the first force and the dominant force which makes them subject to his rule. It is wonderful that he’s been able to speak because people will understand how it happened. How it worked. How Girard got away with his cult.
I’m looking for posts in which I ask him questions that he never answered. Girard’s position in the cult was exceptional because as the second to be conscious being in the world, he was given freedom to ACT and speak. His position has to be in every way different to all other members. He talks from him self no matter how much that self corrupted the System to accomodate the cult.
These things have to be taken into consideration for they make a huge difference. Members who’ve participated on the blog cannot speak like Daily Cardiac. They never did because they never had to build up a dogma like Girard had in which he could justify everything for himself as much as everybody else who he submitted into obedience to Robert. There are thirty five years of experience in those words and that is not to be taken lightly. And still, after saying all that, Daily Cardiac could not be Girard but any of the men or women in the Fellowship that followed his footsteps closely. The few with ambitions copied him so faithfully that it would be difficult to distinguish one thought from another for the thoughts are the same even if the individual is different. The thoughts are the dogma that they all adhered to. And yet, few could wave these tides like Girard. He is a master at it and it is good to see him talking about it because he is justifying how he reached the point he reached both for himself and us. The fact that he needs to justify himself is positive. There are doubts in there. The fact that he simply avoids real questions and fall back into the same division of spiritual-practical life and adjusts practical life to examples that justify life in the inner circle shows how desperate he is to keep justifying his own actions. The examples he gives on Harvard University, sex in airplanes and such things are revealing of his own perceptions in life which are similar to examples I would hear Girard give in our conversations. But the fact that he is continuing to talk is better than anything else because it shows the extent to which he sincerely succumbed to the cult and his role and how there is no evil intent in it, like in the GOOD film that Anna just mentioned. All these people and us fell in the trap of the cult without knowing exactly how or why. That doesn’t free them or us from responsibility or make the cult any less dangerous.
186. Daily Cardiac – November 13, 2009
ton – 171:
“and he certainly doesn’t understand that the premises of his arguments are all based on BELIEF…”
All premises, understandings, observations, are based on belief. They can be based on beivefing what is true or believing what is not true, but it’s belief nonetheless.
“and his belief is based on his oh-so frail faith in a flim-flam man, a con-artist who runs just-another-phony-garden-variety little cult…”
The truth of that has not been determined here. This is your stated belief. I say stated because deep down you may not even believe it yourself.
But whatever it is it’s not of the garden variety, and you are well aware of that; so don’t be so disingenuous.
183
“dc 179 you didn’t answer my question… again. i’ll make is simpler, i won’t ask if your ‘teacher’ sucks your pee pee… i’ll simply ask if you imagine that you ‘love’ your ‘teacher?’ and the follow-up is, if so then how does that skew your perception and judgment? you think about it.”
I don’t imagine I love him, I do love him. He’s given me the ultimate gift, myself. It would be mindbogglingly callous of me not to love him.
As far as the second part of your question I’ll still answer it even thought the “imagine’ is not part of the equation and I’ll assume the answer still applies for you.
We’ve all been in friendships, relationships where we were infatuated, “in Love” with another. When in that state they can do no wrong. But perhaps something changes and they “do wrong’, to us no less. And so the “love” turns to its opposite, hate. All the while the other person exists for themselves, they do not change, they are who they are, only our perception of them changes. We “see” something we did not see before. But in either case we are working on incomplete, and skewered information.
When aligned with them we give give them too much praise and when we are against them we give them too much scorn. All the while they have an “objective” existence aside from our perceptions. They may have virtues the hater does not see and vices the lover does not see.
This is why schools are necessary, they release us from the illusions of the second state so we see things more for what they are and not what we project on the situation.
True Love, which I feel for RB, is only possible from a higher state. And hate is not possible from that same higher state.
What we often call love is more related to lust, which changes like the wind.
Tatyana – 181:
“I came to the FoF because I was looking for the 4th Way school/group and FoF claimed to be the one and even had a direct lineage to Gurdgieff (which turned out to be a lie)”
A direct link with Gurdjieff is formed with whomever understands him the most, not with who has the closest physical proximity to him or his students.
“I was not looking for methods to help me to remember myself/be present more deeply because this is what I was told I should be doing while IN FoF.”
Well the whole point is to engage one’s higher Self, to remember the Self, be present to the Self. But that doesn’t happen just because you write out a check to the FoF, or because you are an “older student” or around older students. It only happens with the right efforts. Wrong efforts, no matter how sincere, are fruitless.
“Neither was I looking for verification of higher forces, because in the 4th way books there are no higher forces.”
I think you’re mistaken. I no longer own a copy of the Fourth Way but if my memory is correct Ouspensky says at the very beginning, maybe page 1, that the only reason those ideas have any value is because they do not come from man, but from higher mind.
No one can successfully do the work without verifying higher forces.
“But, instead of becoming more awake I was falling asleep under a hypnosis of RB and older students, and I was wasting my time believing that I was in a higher state.”
It’s not easy to do the work in the correct way, in fact it’s not easy to do anything in the correct way. If you look at the figures of those who apply for entrance into Harvard Business School with the figures of those who actually graduate and go on to become an executive in a corporation or form a corporation that is successful the figures will be less than 10%, or about the same as those who stay in the FoF.
By the way, I answered your first 3 questions because they seemd sincerely asked, then in your next post to me you started fantasizing. I hope you didn’t expect me to respond to your fanticies.
To no one in particular:
A few have been speculating that I come here for attention and some of the same ones have dedicated entire posts to musing about Daily Cardiac; whether he’s a he or a she, whether he’s had sex with the teacher or not. It’s interesting to observe that little phenomenon. But it does succeed in avoiding the issues before us.
silentpurr – 177:
I gave a lot of energy to your question when I responded in #80 – 85, and all you came back with was something about Jeffery Dalmer.
Could you elaborate on what he has to do with the matter at hand?
By the way, in case you didn’t know, a romantic is a person having no basis in fact.
168. JustDiscussing – November 12, 2009
“Dear Daily Cardiac,
I’d like to comment on two of the more substantial points that you make in your messages.
1. The sex. Your counter examples of a CEO having sex with an employee and Ralph Fiennes having sex on an airplane with a hostess are hardly similar to what Robert is doing. In the Fiennes example, the hostess, Lisa Robertson claims to have initiated the sex herself. Just to be clear, we are talking about Robert having unprotected sex with (over the years) hundreds of heterosexual men, usually married or in a relationship.”
The Ralph Fiennes example is appropriate, especially since the flight attendant, as you say, initiated the sex. The point is that she seized the moment. If any other passenger would have approached her for sex in the lavatory she would have refused. Why was Ralph any different? Because he had something she wanted, power in the form of celebrity, status.
Robert also has status and celebrity and many students want a part of that. That’s not the whole story though. I’m sure he has many loving relationships where the love is reciprocal. If there are those who consent to sex and then regret it that’s not so unusual. Many people regret many of their actions in life. Maybe the actions were not appropriate, maybe the actions did turn out like they expected, The reasons for regret are numerous. But consent is consent, the onus is on the one who consents.
“Sex with at least one underage partner.”
I’m glad you brought it up. What happened in that case? The person who initiated the suit settled out of court. What did he settle for? Money. He could have decided the justice of a trial was more important than the money, you know, the principle of the matter.
In Robert’s case paying the money made sense. Defending himself could have cost much more than he paid. In any event Tr_y and his attorney probably felt he did not have a strong enough case to take to trial or else they would taken it to the hilt and had the trial and got the attorney fees plus the damages.
And by the way, any one can sue anyone else for anything these days. Suing is not tantamount to having a legitimate cause. Recently someone (a judge no less) sued a dry cleaning establishment for $5,000,000 dollars for losing a pair trousers. The suit was eventually thrown out but the owners of the dry cleaning firm went out of business in the process of paying lawyer’s bills.
For the record Tr_y was 17 + years old, an emancipated person supporting himself full time, 6′ 2″ and very athletic looking; certainly someone who could have been thought to be over 18, the age individuals need to be in order to join the FoF. Tr_y had a waiver to join through parental consent.
167. Jomo Piñata:
“Lacuna Piñata never heard of a “Conscious School” before meeting the Fellowship. “Conscious School” is Fellowship jargon. The jargon itself has shaped his memory because he has learned to characterize his life to fit the jargon.”
I first encountered the term Esoteric School from Ouspensky, which sparked the search that culminated by joining the FoF. Consciousness is implied in the term Esoteric School.
“In theory, you can always get what you want if you can confine what you want to what you get. In practice, I don’t know of any human being who can do that, and if I did I would regard them as lobotomized. But I’ve known a lot of human beings who grew their way out of the conundrum I just described. I wish that for you, too, Lacuna Piñata.”
In practice no one gets what they want if it’s not granted by higher forces. Everything is controlled by the spirit world. There are a lot of things you want and don’t get. The same for me and for everyone.
I want what they want and the things I try to get and do get I know it’s through divine consent. The things I try to get but can’t I assume it’s not in the cards, and if it were I’d get them without trying.
I stopped kicking in doors a log time ago.
179. Daily Cardiac – November 12, 2009
158. James Mclemore –
“DC said,
“This discussion is supposed to be about spiritual matters;”
He is mistaken. Actually he knows better, and he only wishes it was about that. He wishes it was about almost anything other than what it really is, and then tries his best to develop conversation about other topics. This blog is about the Fellowship of Friends that presents itself as spirituality but is actually a cult full of deception and fraud. This blog is about the abuse of power.
This blog is a lot simpler than he wishes it was.”
I did indeed say the blog is “supposed” to be about spiritual matters. James says I am mistaken so I presume he means it’s not supposed to be about spiritual matters.
Well he’s right in that so far it has not been about spiritual matters. In fact practically all that is discussed is sex or money; hardly spiritual subjects. Do a word search and see how many times the words sex or money come up vs awakening.(and I’m probably responsible for most of those hits)
Unwittingly James makes my point better than I could in his statements of #158.
The FoF defines itself as a spiritual school of awakening and the critics and opponents here say it’s not a spiritual school but no more than a scam and fraudulent organization.
So in fact they (ex members) must apply spiritual truths and conditions to their evaluations of the FoF, if those evaluations are to be considered valid. How then can the blog be about anything but spiritual matters? James and I seem to agree on one point and that is the blog, up to the present time, has not been about spiritual matters, but about very earthly matters.
If a food expert is evaluating a restaurant’s performance in the area of quality of the dishes on the menu doesn’t the conversation have to focus on ” food matters” ?
JM – “This blog is a lot simpler than he wishes it was”
I don’t know about the blog being simple but the real issues at hand are indeed simple they just have not yet been explored in their entirety.
I know most contributors to this blog will not follow along with this reasoning but if you deem a spiritual organization to be false you need to prove it false by spiritual standards.
As I’ve said several times, in particular to Tatyana up a little on this page, teacher sex with students, even kinky sex, does not disqualify the FoF from being exactly what it claims to be.
If someone were to say – “I came to the FoF because I wanted to see myself better, to acquire the tools and methods to help me remember myself / be present more deeply, more frequently, and it has not delivered on it’s part of the bargain while I feel I have lived up to my part.” Or “I came to verify higher forces and learn more about this area, how they work with us/communicate with us, but it was never discussed.”
Then we would have the basis for a discussion on whether the FoF was deficient or lacking in its duties as a school. That would be the basis for a spiritual discussion.
Last two posts were taken from page 85 of the fofblog.
So Daily Cardiac, you want the subject to remain in the sphere of spirituality so that the facts are not confronted?
Some questions that come up:
How can an individual develop consciousness if he/she can never, ever, within the Fellowship, exercise his or her own will?
Why did Pathway to Presence, fof, separate itself from life when this is the main condition of a Fourth Way School?
Why are members induced to separate from family, life and friends instead of not being identified with them and practicing the non-expression of negative emotions, inner considering, lying, not being in imagination, and transform their experiences within their own life instead of having to severe themselves from it?
Does severing yourself from life (family, friends, humanity at large,) allow you to practice a Fourth Way System?
If you’re not practicing a Fourth Way System, what System are you practicing?
We know Robert Burton has seriously deviated from the Fourth Way System, which is explicitly presented to develop IN life, what System is Robert working with? Could you give an outline of the System he is now working with?
In the Fourth Way System, Influence C is understood as Conscious Influence, Influence B, as a mixture of C and A and Influence A as influences coming directly from life without connection to higher influence.
Why did Influence A become evil and Influence C separate from it in the Fellowship?
It also states that a human being is composed of seven centers: intellectual, emotional, moving, instinctive, sexual and two higher centers that in normal human beings who have not worked on themselves and remain in essence or develop false personality, have not become active.
Why were the centers divided into good and evil? There is no evil in identifications, the problem rises when they become pathological and we hurt our selves or others which is what you’re doing in the Fellowship by preventing people from work on them selves and their lives. One cannot deal with one’s life if one throws it out the window! You put a stop on their processes and froze them then replaced it for a dogma and a lifestyle that is nothing but Robert’s homosexuality.
You destroyed your lives and then made it a job to destroy other people’s to justify your selves. It’s possible to free one’s self not only from the Fellowship but from one’s unnecessary and real suffering. Why have you taken the option to not face your suffering?
In our suffering lies the suffering of all of mankind. When we avoid it, we perpetuate it. Facing it and resolving it frees not only our self but also whole generations. You are people running away from your lives but they will meet you in the end and present you with the same bill with which you joined the Fellowship and by then you’ll realize that you no longer have time to live it and resolve the difficulties that you came with and were meant to work with.
It is true that we are all people who have been hurt and I did not help much insulting you but I too was hurt by you when I was screaming.
We are so much more disfigured after a cult that we cannot reconstruct our selves without resolving the issues. We can remain in a cult, which is like limbo where nothing evolves or we can try to live a life. Earth can be both heaven and hell for different men at the same time. Cults are worse than hell because they are hell made up. They are made up of the unnecessary suffering that comes from people that are not willing to face their real suffering. There is nothing criminal about real suffering but there is extreme criminality in unnecessary suffering. Organizing your selves to provide Robert with young men creates tremendous real suffering from Robert’s inability to work with his own suffering and yours to deal with your own. A cult is shrine to identification with the guru. Girard justifies Robert’s behavior because he has also proved incapable of dealing with his own sexual shortcomings. There is nothing evil about being gay or watching pornography, it is the human condition of many a man, but there’s great evil in institutionalizing gayness and pornography as not only ideal but divine activities of a Conscious School from which many a person in essence is drinking from. In the Fellowship cult, men are conditioned to behave like sissies on a big scale; they are “disfigured” psychologically, there is something very spiritual about that but nothing spiritually positive about that. Women are made moneymakers for their unconscious male authority figure. There is nothing wrong in the suffering people entered the Fellowship with but something terribly wrong in how that suffering became the device to enslave them more deeply without being able to transform and understand their parents and the society that surrounded them.
Homosexuality is not a crime but institutionalizing it for all men is a crime and men who are not willing to have sex with Robert are alienated from the life of the Fellowship. There is a community going on in the Fellowship Cult all the time and that community is subject to specific conditioning with very precise physical and psychological constraints to justify Robert Burton’s sexuality.
Were Robert a free man he would not try to justify his sexuality by imposing it on all his faithful and trustful followers. Were Girard a free man, he would not try to justify Robert’s excesses as aspects of divinity in freedom. Both these men are sick and everyone inside is being subjected to their sickness. Freeing your selves from your own conditioning is not about dealing with Robert or Girard’s sexuality. Sexuality obeys US. It corresponds to who we are. It frees us or enslaves us more deeply in our suffering and identifications. There is nothing wrong with being lesbian or gay but pretending that that is a divine path for each member to follow is criminal. There is nothing evil about watching pornography but it is an illness in which natural sexuality with another human being cannot develop. WATCHING pornography is an aspect of imagination based on fixations, identifications or complexes that were not resolved at the right time and still, while sexual tendencies might be harmful to an individual and even individually criminal they are not socially criminal until they involve other people and what you pretend to justify Daily Cardiac, is that the practices of the Fellowship are not criminal. The whole cult is in deep imagination which is another major obstacle to work on one’s self. It is lying and identification and negative all throughout. Each member of the Fellowship of Friends is participating in the sexual abuses committed by Robert by supporting his image as a Divine being and paying to be in the cult even in a far away center, or by actively participating in recruiting the boys. THAT is criminal and there is serious spirituality involved in it: one that compromises people’s essence in ways that can harm them beyond repair.
You are all people that need help. We all need help in or outside cults because our societies are seriously fractured and our families have fallen apart. It is not surprising that anyone of us has serious issues of imbalance but that hasn’t made most of us criminals and there is no reason for anyone of you to continue acting criminally. Evil does enter crime and it is marked by the inverted process in which an element takes over and systematically destroys the cosmos, be it a human being, a community or a nation. It is a cancerigenous process in no matter what sphere. The Fellowship cult is living that process and members like you are actively promoting for the cancer to grow stronger. You do not own your self. You don’t even own a name that you can stand by. You are not even free enough to represent your cult with the dignity of your own name. You come to a blog with a fake name and pretend to stand like a hero where there is nothing but a charlatan who is too afraid to say who he is. You have repeatedly avoided a hundred questions I’ve posed you and are firm on simply avoiding other people’s truth and suffering. The fact that you’ve become numb to people’s suffering is not an indication of your divine spirituality but an indication of the pathological condition that you are in. You are people who need help and we are here to help. We want to help. We can help. Are you still able to accept help?
Ton, Jomo Piñata,
Great posts. You teach us with those posts. Our minds have gotten so used to that shit that it sounds normal to us but when you reveal the deficiencies it’s a great help, for me and for Daily Cardiac and so many in and out.
It’s wonderful Daily Cardiac that you continue to participate. It’s painful but wonderful when people cut through our crystallizations and expose us. If one survives, it is so much better after!
By the time one is “done”, one is back into what looks like a relatively good householder to start all over again. As if one had stepped back a good number of years in the cult and just recovering where one was before one joined is a heroic enterprise. But so very worth it: to feel one’s self again and not Robert or all the dogma or the pretense that one is present! The pleasure of music that once moved one and observing the possibility of letting it in without allowing it to invade one. The beauty of people and lightness in conversation. All so difficult after the heaviness of the cult.
It is painful and hopefully they won’t insult you much more but then even the insults make us want to prove our selves don’t they? If no one had questioned you strongly would you still be trying to prove anything? There are two kinds of bloggers: Those who offer themselves and those who react to the offer. It’s like people who go swimming. Some get in the water and others watch from outside. Your position is much more difficult but you’ll get a lot more out of it.
I hope you don’t give up, but already I congratulate you for your work here. I mean in the fofblog. THAT is community and work: allowing your self to swim in the other’s being. We’ve all changed much and you’re beginning to change too. The bait is powerful and you’re biting on it but you’re not dying, you’re surviving and that’s exactly the opposite to the fellowship.
They were right in banning me: right and wrong, as most things are. They were right that my screaming was too much but I was right in saying the things I was saying and they didn’t ban me because I was screaming but because of what I was saying. They just used the screaming to do it. So easy to judge how the swimmer swims from outside! For whom isn’t it painful? but I’d given up! Maybe two and a half years was enough anyway.
It delights me that you’re biting on the pleasure of talking with others. The pleasure and the pain! It sculpts one inside! Kills one a little. Just the leaves and flowers when they get out of season! All worth it!
The more I think about it, the more clear it becomes that 90% of the Fellowship pathology is about making a shrine to homosexuality. As if in Robert’s need to justify his behaviour he had set it all up, unconsciously of course, to make people reprogram themselves but not to become conscious of the world as it is but to adapt to the unconsciousness of his world. It’s quite fascinating to look at the process because people did have to work and did have to change and adapt and use their will and effort but only to make a shrine out of Robert’s gayness: The men becoming sissies and the women becoming macho like. The world as he wanted it and understood it became the aim of all members, working day and night to add another decoration to his entourage.
People inside think they look so good in all that paraphernalia but they are so weird. We all looked so weird. Maybe if in Pathway to Presence they just added “exclusive for homosexuals” of all genders that would make it so much more accurate but the perversion lies in the pleasure of disfiguring heterosexuals into homosexuals and they are masters at it. With the added ingredient of making macho men put that extra flavour of dislike that weird and extreme gay men have for women as one can see in a few of the men still participating in the fofblog who can’t stand posts by women and have no problem in ridiculing them as quickly as possible.
Making a shrine of homosexuality must have been potentially in all of us, unconsciously potential. In my case, having been actively bisexual, it’s obvious why that aspect of Robert’s life tended to be approved more than disapproved but what was in our collective unconscious that played along with it for so long? And fine as that would have been had we put our selves to that aim (for maybe two weeks total?) how did we end up putting ourselves into THAT for almost forty years now?
Hey Daily Cardiac and Company, What makes you think that a shrine to homosexuality is a School of Consciousness? When you stop grooming Robert’s balls do you think you’ll wake up in heaven? Or maybe in Haven and then you’ll make a shrine to pornography and you’ll all masturbate in front of the pictures Girard will be showing you by then? THAT is what members and ex-members are protecting? YOUR friends inside having a little gathering?
It’s taken us almost three years to look at this side of the Fellowship without buffers and there are still quite a few to take off. How wonderful to be able to look at sexuality without the shame of pornography! Even that sexuality. To look at it without judgement for its not the sexuality what is being judged but the manipulation of people’s lives to accommodate them to Robert’s identification with DESIRE. In the Fellowship everyone is so quiet about it, UUUUuuuuuuuuh, OoOOOooohhhhhh, everyone tiptoeing to hide the shame we carried inside and ironically worshipped outside. Just inverted the process of shame and made a shrine of it we were so afraid to look at it. Well, we’ve seen it now! Hey Bobby, you can zip up your pants now and leave, we’re done with this show! Peepee wasn’t long enough no matter how much beebee it had!
But that’s not the problem. If Robert had been open about it from the beginning he might have actually made it somewhere besides getting peeed on in the bath tub and made a Goddess in male clothing in the meetings but he and all those involved actually hid it from the beginning including all those ex-members on the fofblog like Old FOF and so many others. THEY HID IT! What on earth for? Weren’t they in California where it was legal and possible and viable?
This getting peed on doesn’t seem like a way of showing those boys how much he values himself? How much he’s actually suffering? Does he then tell them it’s work on humility?
This was what was missing up until now. This is the axis around which everything revolves. AND IT WORKS!. It works perfectly. Instead of separating from their lives through non identification as the System offers, members have to separate from their judgement towards Robert and use each and every tool to not identify with their own judgements and negative emotions towards him and his position of authority and denial of their presence. Not identifying, not expressing negative emotions, not lying with opposite Is about it, not being in imagination about what is wrong, not inner considering about it and EXTERNALLY CONSIDERING the teacher all the way to hell is what is actually practiced but not just that, to top it all we had to develop positive emotions around it. We had to transform our horror into love for the man number eight, second to Christ. WOW! That works! But there’s not only nothing conscious about it, there is such a corrupted process of imagination that it crystallizes in the formatory apparatus and works only in as much as it doesn’t move a millimetre in any direction. It turns on itself until it shrinks people’s functions and in that horror suicide is a great relief. People continue to apparently live but like bees or ants, like insects. It is the closest phenomenon to a beehive and still ex-members in the fofblog think they are doing these people a favour in not stopping it.
Were we conscious enough we would be stampeding inside and bringing each member out as if they were burning alive! Because they are!
We’ve been talking about Robert’s sexuality all along but what we hadn’t understood, what we hadn’t connected to was the fact that we made it a religion. Inside the Fellowship, his private life was separated from the Work and we accepted that as O.K. without realizing that it was precisely his private life what was molding our work and ourselves. What we were trying to adapt to was not consciousness but accepting his homosexuality as a “Sacred Form” and practice.
When we listen to Daily Cardiac and Girard’s myriad references to letting go of standard morality, what they actually made us work with in the Fellowship was adopting a new morality that would make Robert’s sexuality and sexuality without boundaries, look normal.
NORMAL:
Separating heterosexual couples so that Robert can have sex with your husband
Having your sons work at the galleria so that Robert can have sex with them
Spending millions on young men so that they comply to the deal
Spending millions on clothes so that the gay fantasy is covered in silk
Dressing up, disguising, uniforming yourself to play your part in the gay temple for the Gold Alchemy of the Fellowship is simply gay paraphernalia. ALL OF IT!
Importing young men from the centers to his bedroom
Watching all of them modeling in and out of our lives as if they were God and the Angels
And after making heaven for them to enjoy, bearing our lot of the deal, working washing the dishes and cleaning the galleria, pruning the roses and going out to life to make more money for them to spend.
Watching pornography, child pornography included
All justified by the idea that the machine runs along separately from higher centers so it’s O.K. to rape and exploit others with one side of yourself while the other rests in consciousness.
What matters about all this is that we not only got ripped off economically, we were remolded into specific behavior, physical, emotional and intellectual that had to fit perfectly into Robert’s make up. We did work, we worked very hard and we did have to change internally and externally but for what?
It’s so tremendously sad that it is no wonder that people are trying to avoid looking at it straight in the face. If we felt shame for having ripped off, how much more shame can we experience from realizing that we made a God of the Golden Calf? And what’s even more depressing is that we continue to make a God of the Golden Calf by holding to the rule that we cannot question or take the Fellowship to Court because it is a legal organization when there is absolutely nothing legal about it: It’s all a perfect scam, a fraud from head to toe but ex-members don’t understand that yet. Statements like Old FOF’s in the fofblog that made them ban me from it, that he has to protect his friends inside from being harmed by people like me and the position that they are not willing to work seriously against the closure of the Fellowship cult is nothing but blindness and the wish to remain blind to what actually happened to us, what we actually DID. WE DID. WE made it possible. WE fell in the trap. WE promoted it and accepted it and WE are allowing it to go on.
It is not only that THEY DID SOMETHING. THEY did a lot of things but WE ALL played our part in it and as long as it remains open we continue to play our part in it and just like Ames Gilbert, Bruce Levy, Old FOF, Jomo Piñata and thousand other members who have left and did nothing to warn and help us and allowed me and thousands others to spend decades inside suffering the brainwash and its consequences if those of us leaving today don’t do anything about it hundreds or thousand others will be suffering what we are suffering or worse in fifteen and twenty years.
We are clear about the fact that the members still inside are hopelessly brainwashed? That they are willing to justify the status quo no matter who or how people are getting raped. That the Fellowship of Friends, Pathway to Presence is an organization set up to rape young men, disfigure every man and woman who joins, every child and old person and rip everyone off so WHY are you still willing to support it? For not acting against it is the support that allows it.
Ames, Bruce, Jomo might be talking about it now but is talking enough? How many more years will it take you to finally say NO as a definite decision about the life you’re willing to allow in your society, in your life? What are the dark corners about your lives that impede you from taking action against something that everyone who’s been inside knows is so corrupt?
Are we afraid of being called stupid? Stupid for believing in Conscious people? For putting our money out in what we thought was a School? For trusting others? Yes, young people are naïve but being stupid and naïve is a lot less harmful than being adults who know the truth and are willing to hide it for fear of being called naïve and stupid AND THAT IS WHAT EVERYONE IN THE FOFBLOG AND THE GREATER FELLOWSHIP IS DOING BY NOT WILLING TO ACT SERIOUSLY AGAINST THE FELLOWSHIP OF FRIENDS CULT, PATHWAY TO PRESENCE. You will not be held responsible for being stupid and naïve, you will be held responsible for being adults who know the truth and hide it, who know people are getting hurt and are not doing anything serious enough to stop it. YOU WILL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE, EACH AND ALL OF YOU BY OTHER PEOPLE AND BY YOUR SELVES IF BY NOBODY ELSE because we know it.
You might not read me here but I remain witness and testify for what is happening and this will be known sooner or later. Your silences and your unwillingness to act against this cult will be known. Your names are everywhere in the Fellowship directories. You will all be known and you will know your selves. You will know your silence and your responsibility in allowing others to suffer like we suffered.
It is not just about acting against the Fellowship Cult. It is about acting against ALL CULTS that are hurting millions of people everywhere. It is about achieving a maturity for the whole of humanity that is falling prey of such organizations. It is about looking without fear at our darkness and dealing with it in daylight. Sexuality in all cults is expressing the repression we’ve lived under for centuries now. The thwarted sexuality in cults, homosexual or heterosexual ones, is an expression of the collective repression societies have been under but there is no consciousness in making a shrine out of the deviations and repressions. It is a collective idealization that leads nowhere just like idealizing a lover and becoming their unconditional emotional slave leads nowhere. We’re collective juveniles in cults but so criminal, that it needs to be stopped. We are, in our time, like juveniles who’ve been let loose after years of being kept working at home without play or friends and fall for the first divas we meet as if they were the whole world.
This someone is a Fellowship member and doesn’t even make effort to disguise it!
The agenda is clear, they also used it inside:
Picture ex-members as losers who couldn’t make enough money and had to leave
Stand as an ex-member who had a positive experience in the cult and received worth while esoteric knowledge and practice!
And the fascinating image that if one can make a decent living one can be with wonderful people and have a great life in the Fellowship cult!!
And then stating the impression that Daily Cardiac is running the show, for he is, but pretending not to agree with it so that the double messages are confusing and producing enough dissonance that the reader will swallow the main statement:
“If one can make a decent living, one can find Apollo as a great place to live, surrounded by wonderful people.”
THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE INSIDE ARE TRAINED LIKE DOGS TO THINK. Help yourselves to another cookie Dears!
THAT IS WHAT FOFBLOGGERS ARE SUPPORTING.
The FOF blog handcuffed itself to respond to these posts for what they are: liars deceiving people, FASCISTS willing to hurt others, SICKOS.
DXP Dirty Xero Prick never went back to the blog after they banned me. She succeeded in getting me banned, was that you Linda? Well done! but worse than that, she succeeded in putting you all back to sleep again for some time. “Some” time because what we’ve done so far is just the starter of this play.
250. Someone – November 15, 2009
Just dropped by for a short visit.
Eventually one person (DC) has subdued almost everyone else here. 75% of the posts are dialogs with DC.
The above videos are pathetic. It is below the level of a bad Soap Opera.
I recognize some downsides of the FoF, but no one has ever abused me or instructed me to do things against my own will.
I was disappointed that no one has ever suggested that I go out and take care of my finances. Most members around me have taken responsibility for their lives and went out to work or study and managed to raise their standard of living. I have been quite lazy and blind to my situation.
I left the FoF real broke with almost nothing in my wallet. Now after I have recovered, I still think the FoF has a lot to offer esoterically.
If one can make a decent living, one can find Apollo as a great place to live, surrounded by wonderful people.
I have no intentions to go back, yet I absolutely do not share the massive, extremely exaggerated attacks on the FoF.
Thank you Ton. Now you’re voicing the things that matter. I would revise your last paragraph on esoteric things
“and i’m not talking about the learning of ‘esoteric doctrines’ — that’s a lot of hogwash and window-dressing designed to obfuscate and occlude what’s really going on…. true insight doesn’t come from all the surface nonsense and obfuscation that’s trotted out in the form of fof doctrine… what’s beneath the appearances and between the lines?”
I think we can now acknowledge how esoteric ideas and practices were used against us. They are actually being practiced in the Fellowship and they are very efficient but only to turn against the members practicing them. This is what we hadn’t understood. What we hadn’t incorporated yet. We’ve been denying that there is work going on or that the work is not work but that’s not true. We did work both externally and internally. Whenever I didn’t feel good about what was going on and felt like exploding I would tell myself:
I’m here to change my self first
This is a negative emotion
This is judgment
This is identification
This is inner considering
Separate from the “I”s
Don’t believe the “I”s
They are just “I”s
Continue doing your work
Remember yourself always and everywhere
On and on, all the workbooks and each tool was used to try to ignore what was actually happening and succeeded for seventeen years. This is very important because WE WERE WORKING and members inside know they have been working esoterically: that is, they have been making real efforts and have separated from themselves. The problem is that instead of transforming themselves or the lives they were given, they have been simply negating them selves to adapt to the life they are being given: work, work, work to make money for the second only to Christ.
This is another piece of the puzzle that needed to be understood and one of the main reasons members remain inside: because they are having to work hard and are convinced that that is taking them somewhere. Because they’ve already put so much energy in it they can’t believe it’s not working. Wasn’t that so for many of us? Only that their work bears no fruit and they are led to believe that they have no will, that they are not making enough efforts, that they are not good enough until Robert says so. Here I’m talking about members in Oregon House who really dug roots in the cult. Members in far away centres have a different story because they tried to use the System oblivious of the cult and Robert’s life, which simply places them in ignorance about what they are supporting. Voluntary ignorance that has nothing to do with consciousness or integrity or responsibility with one’s life.
251. ton – November 15, 2009 Page 85
25o someone,
thanks for making it a short visit… you write:
“If one can make a decent living, one can find Apollo as a great place to live, surrounded by wonderful people.”
i don’t now about ‘wonderful’ people… everyone has their idea about what constitutes a ‘wonderful’ person… probably in most cases that has to do with commonalities, you tend to be more sympathetic toward people who share your beliefs and opinions… you tend to be more antipathetic and oppositional toward those who you view as ‘different.’ it might be said that almost all people have their ‘good’ AND their ‘bad’ qualities; i think many people join the fof with some ‘good’ intentions… many are looking for community and a place where they feel they ‘belong.’ but some of the so-called ‘wonderful’ people there are entrenched in the darker machinations and actually constitute a large part of the problem… there are problems. it seems obvious from this post that you are or were looking for community, it’s a very human need and i think many people who are drawn into the fof web are/were also looking for community, i know i was. in this respect imo your statement:
“I still think the FoF has a lot to offer esoterically…”
is beside the point. with hindsight i realize that the sense of community was the most important part of the fof experience for me and that sense of belonging was the thing that kept me in the fold long beyond the time when i initially realized what the scam was all about. so don’t fool yourself about what is offered ‘esoterically’ — unless of course you are not aware of the basic human need for community, in which case an aspect of the truth remains ‘occluded’ for you…
you mention ‘pathetic’ posts, imo one thing that’s ‘pathetic’ is your attitude as it’s reflected here…. as far as the fof goes, members and ex-members alike are all in a minor way ‘little eichmanns’ and maybe your conscience allows you to ignore what you supported and contributed to as a member of the fof… or maybe you remain blissfully unaware… it sounds like for you the fof was nothing more than a country club with ‘esoteric’ window-dressing. differing perspectives on what supporting the fof implies are expected but from my point of view you seem to be in denial and ignoring somethings that need a deeper personal reflection and reckoning. speaking of pathetic, you write:
“Eventually one person (DC) has subdued almost everyone else here. 75% of the posts are dialogs with DC.”
maybe english is not your native language but in any case you seem to misunderstand and misuse the word ’subdue’ — posts by dc tend to incite other posters (granted others who are too revolted or dumbfounded by this dumbfuck dc might be subdued and remain lurking on the sidelines). there is something to be said FOR fof apologists in that they reflect the psychology of the cult while at the same time stimulating others to reflect, formulate and debate based on their own experience. from it’s inception one aspect of this blog has been about the repartee between apologists/defenders and those who view the matter differently… it seems that you would fall into the former category.
you write: “I left the FoF real broke with almost nothing in my wallet. Now after I have recovered, I still think the FoF has a lot to offer esoterically.”
let’s look at the term ‘esoteric’ — 1. understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest; recondite: poetry full of esoteric allusions. 2. belonging to the select few. 3. private; secret; confidential. 4. (of a philosophical doctrine or the like) intended to be revealed only to the initiates of a group: etc.
the notion that you as a member of the fof were privy to ’secret knowledge’ made you feel (and maybe still makes you feel) as if you were ’special’ and one of the ‘chosen few’ selected out of the billions of people on the planet as an ‘initiate’ to (potentially) ‘awaken.’ this erroneous notion is promoted and fostered by the fof as an integral part of it’s lure and allure, this notion appeals to a person’s vanity and false-pride, it’s one of the primary tools of the subtle and not so subtle mechanisms of psychological control over the ‘flock.’ your affiliation with the fof sets you apart alright, but not in the way you are lead to believe… this idea is intentionally misleading and serves no other purpose than to keep the followers in thrall… as a member you are lead to believe that by studying and following ‘the system’ (read:burtonism), an arcane, insane ‘doctrine’ consisting of a set of bizarre beliefs, that your adherence will lead to a ‘promised land’ an imaginary far away place which may yet be ‘lifetimes’ away… through abiding belief the ‘good student’ is kept in the fold, all the while busy building their own personal mental prison through endless and ceaseless repetitions of ’sequences’ and other ‘exercises.’ the real hidden agenda in the fof, the truly ‘esoteric’ aspects have to do with the scam that’s being perpetrated and the purpose behind it… that being in large part, feeding of the insatiable appetites and extravagant lifestyle of the cankerous queen around which the whole thing revolves. as for the ‘esoteric’ doctrine of the fof, you can glean more true wisdom and insight into human nature by cracking open almost any ‘mainstream’ psychology text book.
’someone’ — you write:
“I left the FoF real broke with almost nothing in my wallet…”
in spite of the fact that you were admittedly ‘fleeced’ by burton , you choose to look at the experience as positive…. good for you. but i think you are still under the influence… you write:
“no one has ever abused me or instructed me to do things against my own will.”
this implies that you don’t realize or care to see what exactly you were supporting through your membership and payments… you don’t realize that your very trust was abused through your affiliation, that by conforming to suggestions, and mindlessly paying up your hard earned dollars, you were as it turns out, on a subtle level doing things against your will… i’m surprised you can’t see that with hindsight… i guess it’s not always 20/20. you still want to see your association with the fof as something of value and maybe as a life experience it is valuable, but that must imply you have learned something of value…. and i’m not talking about the learning of ‘esoteric doctrines’ — that’s a lot of hogwash and window-dressing designed to obfuscate and occlude what’s really going on…. true insight doesn’t come from all the surface nonsense and obfuscation that’s trotted out in the form of fof doctrine… what’s beneath the appearances and between the lines? you don’t seem to get it yet… how long have you been out anyway
After reading this article, what surprises me is that the author would choose to speak only about Demons and not Angels which carry the same process but I think both words are too loaded for there to be a better understanding of their reality for us today. Treating them as Demons or Angels gives them a connotation that is not exactly human and although “HUMAN” are demons and angels, when we can rest our selves in the purely human aspect of our experience, it is easier to deal with suprasensory reality because we experience it from our selves and not as forces coming from outside our selves. Perhaps this is true mainly because when we can come to the suprasensible with our I, we have a powerful enough anchor that can relate to both demons and angels without being blown away by either one of them, which is what happens when we are deeply identified with both pleasure or suffering.
Perhaps the mastery of Gurdjieff and particularly Ouspensky was to bring those realities down to the language of an industrialized world in which they could be almost touched: “man is a machine that reacts to the external world when his buttons get pushed” is exactly the same idea that “man is possessed by complexes when he is unconsciously identified”
Man is a “machine” that reacts mechanically when he doesn’t have control over his identifications is not different to “man is possessed when he is identified with complexes that overpower him”.
“The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength” states Levy, which is no different to the idea that through the effort of non-identification a man can free himself from the many ‘I’s.
It seems necessary to relate to people in different stages of development to be able to understand how the process works.
In childhood there are states of well-being and ill being of which the child doesn’t have much control. Things “happen” to the child without the child having a mature enough I to “act” on them but a reaction to the experience is set off that “takes a life of its own” in the unconsciousness of the individual. In the teenager those unconscious reactions to the world “as it was experienced by the child” form an incipient personality that matures with the adult. The personality is no other than Reich’s character armor that is formed as a reaction to the experiences of childhood. This armor holds within itself the unconscious processes that have taken a life of their own and become the individual’s “imaginary picture” of him/herself. But the “imaginary picture” is not only an image of who one is but a living conditioning of the ability to experience joy and suffering and it is THAT conditioning, THAT personality, what will “look for”, “attract” and “choose” experiences of a particular kind.
“Personality” conditions the tendencies the individual develops. A “shy personality” attracts shy experiences or on the other end of the spectrum, extreme experiences that justify the shyness. A “strong personality” attracts strong experiences or on the other end of the spectrum, “shy” experiences that justify the strength. A balanced personality attracts balanced experiences, that is, chooses and discards what is not so balanced. While in childhood, the individual receives strong or weak impressions over which she or he has no control, in adulthood, the individual’s personality “unconsciously” chooses the experience and the strength or weakness of the experience in accordance with the way the childhood experience has become FIXED in the individual’s inner world; In accordance with the complex that the individual is repeating, re-experiencing, resurrecting or recurring.
The unconscious repetition of the experience is what becomes pathological over time and the experience is repeated over and over until light is shed on it: Consciousness.
The “facts” are only the “crystallization” or external “materialization” of forces “impressed” on the child from the outside references. The “conditioning” that personality “crystallizes” in, is what will impel the individual to reproduce the experience and materialize it, inversely proportionate to the imprint, in “new” facts. The “facts” in themselves are, in childhood, what formed the complex, the “conditioning” and in adulthood what can reveal it. In adulthood, the facts or the external experience and how it repeats itself are simply the outward expression of the inner conditioning but the individual is now actively seeking them out unlike in childhood, when he was “impressed” by them without a choice.
In “separating” one’s self, in the “will” impulse to not identify with the “conditioned action” or “reaction”, the individual sheds light on the complex and reveals its causes freeing him or her self from its power.
Both the action that gets impressed on the individual and the reaction that triggers him off to repeat it, take place unconsciously. A “conscious process” takes place only when the individual inwardly “separates” from the conditioning and chooses a free action that responds accurately to reality. Then we can speak about “Presence”.
This “studies” will eventually give us a basis to study the pathological conditioning in which Robert Burton and anyone under the power of his or her complexes will re-enact them recurrently without being able to free him or herself from them.
Elena
______________________________
Autonomous Complexes
“Autonomous complexes” are parts of the psyche which have split-off due to shock, trauma, or breach of our boundaries, and have developed a seemingly autonomous life and apparently independent will of their own. Though we are unconsciously identified with them, autonomous complexes are subjectively experienced as other than ourselves. Apart from their inherent obscurity and strangeness, our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes is the essential reason why it is so hard to get a handle on them.
Autonomous complexes act upon us, they feel like our most intimate self, eventually need to be owned, but paradoxically, don’t belong to us. The seeming autonomy of the archetypes and complexes is what gives rise to the idea of supernatural beings. Endowed with a numinous energy, autonomous complexes are what our ancestors used to call “demons.” Autonomous complexes are a psychological name for the demons in the archetypal process of addiction that animate us to compulsively act out our addictive behavior. A demon or autonomous complex, to quote Jung, “behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.” Due to their lack of association with the conscious ego, autonomous complexes are typically not open to being influenced, educated, nor corrected by “reality.” An intruder from the unconscious and a disturber of the peace, an autonomous complex, Jung points out, “behaves exactly like a goblin that is always eluding our grasp.” If left un-reflected upon, these demons or autonomous complexes wreak havoc for everyone within their sphere of influence.
Jung writes, “…any autonomous complex not subject to the conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the latter’s freedom.” As it takes over and becomes in charge of a person, a complex incorporates a seemingly autonomous regime within the greater body politic of the psyche. Writing about autonomous complexes, Jung says “…the complex forms something like a shadow government of the ego,” in that the complex dictates to the ego. When we are taken over by and in internal conflict with and because of an autonomous complex, it is as if we, as natural rulers of our own psychic landscape, have been deposed, and are living in an occupied country. We are allowed our seeming freedom as long as it doesn’t threaten the sovereignty and dominance of the ruling power. Jung comments, “…a man does not notice it when he is governed by a demon; he puts all his skill and cunning at the service of his unconscious master, thereby heightening its power a thousandfold.” Being nonlocal, this inner, psychological situation can manifest both within our psyche and out in the world at the same time.
Demons or autonomous complexes have a possessive and obsessive effect on consciousness. Interestingly, the word “obsession” originally meant to be under the influence of an evil “possession.” Obsession refers to certain ideas that have taken possession of the person. We can become possessed by unshakable ideas of the way things should be or who we think we are, oppressing and tyrannizing both ourselves and others who hold a different viewpoint in the process. Jung writes, “The idea is like an autonomous being that wants a body so much that it even incarnates in the body; one begins to play, to perform the idea, and then people say one is completely mad. The idea has taken possession of one till it is as if one were out of one’s mind.”
Millions of our species have killed and been killed over a fixed idea.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating and en-livening the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Like cancer cells ravaging the body, dis-associated, autonomous complexes are like “splinter psyches” that can become overly swollen with psychic energy, and then will propagate and metastasize themselves within the psyche, consuming, devouring, and cannibalizing the healthy aspects of the psyche. Drawing and attracting all of the wholesome parts of the psyche into itself, an autonomous complex can potentially warp and destroy the psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, nonlocally infecting and spreading by psychic contagion its malaise to the surrounding field in the process.
An autonomous complex can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way that a vampire detests the light. A demon or autonomous complex will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being illumined, for once it is seen, its autonomy and omnipotence are taken away. Anchored, connected and related to consciousness, the demon or autonomous complex can then no longer vaporize back into the unconscious, which is to say it is no longer able to possess us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness so as to compel us to unwittingly act it out and do its bidding.
Taken from Paul Levy’s article. Are we possessed
http://www.realitysandwich.com/are_we_possessed
I finished the whole of the article. It’s worth every word. There is one issue that I would mention which is the impression I get that when the author speaks about mass behavior all of which I agree to, he seems to leave out the possibility that all those of us who are experiencing a possible “awakening of the universe through us” in a very positive sense, could at a certain point CONSCIOUSLY act “en masse”. In fact, I would not label ALL mass revolutions as evil possessions but often as necessary critical moments that revolt against the unconsciousness of the status quo and that allow for the subsequent change in the individuals. Every time we enter and leave no matter what group of people acting as club, cult or institution, we are submitting our selves and often identifying with the group’s Archetype, only to leave and reflect it or deflect it in our own lives. It’s the dialogue between community and individual that keeps the balance alive.
I’ll continue to work on this article in pieces in the future because it adapts all too clearly to the cult and fofblog experience that we’ve been going through.
Nigel
Look what I just found! Another one!!! And happens to be the author of this very interesting article!!!
In 1981 Paul Levy had a life-changing spiritual awakening, in which he began to wake up to the dream-like nature of reality. During the first year of his spiritual emergence, Paul was hospitalized a number of times, and was diagnosed with having had a severe psychotic break. Much to his surprise, he was told that he had a chemical imbalance and had manic-depressive (bi-polar) illness, and would have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he was able to quickly extricate himself from the medical and psychiatric establishment. Little did the doctors realize that he was taking part in some sort of spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation process, which at times mimicked psychosis but in actuality was an experience of a far different order. In 1993, after many years of struggling to contain and integrate his experiences, he started to teach about what he was realizing. He has been in private practice for fifteen years, assisting others who are spiritually emerging and beginning to wake up to the dreamlike nature of reality. In a dream come true, psychiatrists now consult with him and send him patients. A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul is in the new book Saints and Madmen: Psychiatry Opens its Doors to Religion.
There is one more thing I wanted to work on this morning and it’s about exploring why cults “work” as efficiently as concentration camps but upside down and backwards which is a process I’ve been trying to understand since we looked at THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D. in the fofblog.
After realizing that we do apply “work” ideas in the cult, esoteric exercises that are extremely efficient, it is much easier to understand why the brainwashing process takes place so quickly and willingly in a cult. While in concentration camps the same things happen against the person’s will, in the cult they happen with the person’s blessing! In concentration camps all the vulnerable aspects of the human being are systematically attacked and finally make him or her “confess” and become emotionally dependent to his captors, love and hate them at the same time, desperately need them and desperately hate them all at once and these same things happen in the cult where the member is subjected to the same psychological conditioning that the prisoner is physically subjected to.
A prisoner in a concentration camp is physically separated from his family, friends, society and mankind at large while cult members separate not only physically but psychologically. These things might sound not too tragic when one hasn’t experienced them but they affect the human balance of functions in ways that we are only just beginning to understand as we deprive ourselves of them in the very imaginative institutions that we’ve developed in our massive aberrations.
Even if the member continues to work in society, he adopts and attitude of being emotionally and psychologically separate from the people s/he works with; even if the member continues to visit family or friends, s/he lives in an attitude of separation from them until severing completely. From there to fanatically surrendering to the guru and the cult as the only possible solutions to life is a very small step. It’s not that life has changed in any way, it’s that the member has effectively cut it off himself, severed it from his possibilities and left without options s/he concentrates on the only one that is left. Far from developing “unity” the member is separated into his former life and his present life creating a disassociation that s/he is consistently struggling with. Everything that he loved and longed for in the former life, becomes evil and aspects of the lower self while everything that is cultish and embraces the new life is the higher self.
We see the justification of this separation in almost every page of Mr. Burton and Mr. Haven’s works and in the open life-book of each Fellowship member.
When we understand this deeply, we’ll know why we need to help people get out of cults. The suffering experienced inside a cult is no less extreme than the suffering experienced in a concentration camp but it is “sublimized” as necessary sacrifice for “awakening”. People become trapped in the yezidi? Circle and cannot leave not only because the cult is holding them but because they’ve cut their own wings.
And last but not least
a word of love
to greet your freedom
where ever you happen
to be
Hi Elena
I will try to get that book – Saints and Madmen. Sounds great!
But, funnily enough, I was thinking about sex today…..
Sex, Self, Sun….
Maybe you have been thinking along the same lines. Burton, I am sure, has crystallised as almost a teenage homosexual pervert. He is totally addicted to his ‘boys’ and his insanity can only get worse. I do not have an active sex life (for God’s sake, I am a single heterosexual male over 50 years of age who has to take ‘downers’) but have what I would consider a mature attitude to all the women in my life (I feel I have separated emotionally and mentally from Kate and still admire her femininity and desire to become a wonderful elementary school teacher – time will tell, and also my working with the situation, whether we can have a good friendship). There are regularly over 20 ladies of ages from early 20’s to over 60’s and of all body types and centres of gravity and only four men in my Academy – one Solar/Venus/Mercury, 10 of Spades, two Mercury/Saturns, King of Spades and one Jack of Hearts Jovial/Lunar. There are two classes I teach which are attended by all women and the emotional atmosphere is so enriching. I do not command – I blend and bond. Some of the ladies are very pretty and physically enticing but I have never made any sort of sexual advances towards any of them. It is almost like a kind of satelliteing tantric sex condition that prevails. I sense my masculinity among them, but it just seems to make my sense of Separate Selfhood Giving stronger. It is something you could try in some of your situations. I am not sure whether something like that could be experienced out of an artistically creative environment – I have doubts about the ‘corporate world’ – too false and depending on the extremity of our strained civilisation. You see – Burton does not experience sex – he kills it and preys upon it. NO RESPECT. I have said it many times before – BURTON IS THE ANTI-CHRIST, THE KILLER OF HUMANITY, THE BRINGER OF DEATH…..EVERYTHING WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE PURPORTS TO BE…..Nigel.
Music!
The music of music
Again
at last!
The wonderful thing about having been numbed for decades in a cult must be un-numbing one’s self again.
Life,
Little by little in every cell,
Dancing!
to old music I loved
Letting it melt the numbness of the body
Moving freely without being conscious of myself
Am I present? NO; NO; NO, I’m not present,
I’m not your present, I belong to myself
My self, my life, my body, my mind, my heart
Not yours, not yours
It’s mine!
Each minute being able to savour the light,
the night
The food just right
not throwing up
And time
to play guitar
And write
And sculpt
with glass
And love
Oh love…
Are you mad because you saved my life?
And being
For no reason
For no purpose
With no aim
Without effort
And sleeping
And dreaming
And living
my life
It’s mine
Just mine
So right
And friends!
Old friends
We laugh
With heart
Old friends
Such a pleasure in recognition
The bodies know each other,
The hearts rest patiently
The minds don’t bother
And man
Oh man!
And sister and brother and father and godfather and aunt and uncle and cousins, they taste so right!
And my daughter, my young blue-eyed daughter just called me and I say to her,
Why didn’t you hit me and shake me and tell me, you dumb ass, get the fuck out of here!
And she laughs! Laughs and says, you sound well mother! You promise you won’t let me do that again without hitting and shaking and pulling me out if you ever see me doing that again? She laughs and tells me what she’s doing: work, work, work in an American State and I say, I’ll have to start hitting and shaking and pulling you out by the hair and she laughs and loves and laughs, my younger daughter who’s only 22, with whom we stopped laughing for a decade!
Just found you here Nigel,
so good to see you!!
I’m happy!! Nigel Harris Price, I am HAPPY! and without shame!!
Nice post. Agreed. Yes, I think Robert is fixed in childhood the poor man, like I’d been with my mother for decades but there are other aspects worth looking into in the rest of the article. It’s amazing how everything in it fits like a glove.
Oh come on Nigel, you’re in your fifties, just right for love! Get a hold of one of those women and have fun!
I was down by a little river-big stream on saturday. There were a lot of children and a few adults cooking for them further up. A man came to the spot where I was, got in and started carrying stones to the edge to make a deeper hole. He carried quite a few and I was surprised anyone would bother to do that in a public river. “Aren’t you going to swim” he says “I’m making it deeper just for you!” I’d been silly enough not to take my swimming suit so I told him. He insisted, bra and pants were good enough! He smelt good although he was ten feet away!! He worked hard with the rocks and as he moved towards me I said, “it’s good” ….he looked at himself, “the dike!” we laughed! and sat for a while…
I began working with glass. Cut a whole lot of them on saturday as if it was paper. Sat and looked at the colors against the wall. It’s so pretty my Nigel! So pretty to be alive again!
Three months had passed since I’d joined The School and I’d been making supra human efforts to use the System’s ideas and work against the obstacles to awakening:
No expression of negative emotions
No identification
No lying
No imagination
No inner considering
My children provided ample material for me to work on my multiple impulses to be negative about everything and nothing and get identified about running late and other excuses that could justify it, like their not eating their meal or going to bed on time.
I’d been working for three months until finally one day I managed to spend the whole day without expressing one negative emotion as if I’d eaten myself from inside by not getting upset when they moved too much while I combed their hair, or fidgeted at the table instead of eating or talked too loud or paid no attention to what they were told. I had begun to realize that there was a negative charge that we kept going back to every day and as if it controlled our lives, we had to get it out one way or another but my children were only three and eight and I knew that whatever negativity was being expressed was coming or had come from me. I begun observing the moments when it happened and combing their hair was a mathematical trigger to getting negative about it, sometimes so much that I’d want to hit them with the brush. I got there once but that was the impulse everyday and we fought about it according to me because she moved too much, according to her because I pulled her hair and there was some of both but it wasn’t us, it was that “thing” wishing to express itself. It’s difficult not to pull the hair when it’s messy but it’s possible. It just takes more effort. Three months and we’d managed to spend the whole day even but it was time for bed and I could feel the negative energy building up begging to be expressed like a devil that wanted to come out. They were fooling around and not getting into bed and playing with the pyjamas and I was tired after a whole day of controlling the impulses to object about nothing but continued to resist and leaned back against the wall while sitting on one of their little chairs waiting for them to finally get into bed before reading them a short story. I felt like Atlas holding the world on my shoulders. Three months working for it and I was about to manage it: a whole day without a negative expression holding myself with all my strength to allow my children to develop in love, to grow up like human beings because that is what I understood by consciousness. They finally settled in bed, the story finished and I was about to get up and turn the lights off when Elisa looked at me from the top bed and said:
“mummy… you’re falling thin on me!”
I felt an explosion of love inside and outside as if the whole world had suddenly lit up and shined and every effort I had made since I joined the School had been nothing compared with that joy. In Colombia, when one doesn’t like someone, it is common to say that that person is falling fat on one but Elisa had expressed the opposite. She was eight years old and at least five years had passed since I remembered a truly positive comment coming from her. I kissed them both goodnight and turned the lights off.
The work worked! THE WORK WORKED, I wanted to scream and let the whole world know that the work worked. That if one made enough effort life could change. That if one worked hard enough love was possible. And we began to live. Not just to survive but to live: to express our selves freely, to experience joy, gratitude and gracefulness and communicate with each other gently, lovingly.
….me because she moved too much, according to her because I pulled her hair and there was some of both but it wasn’t us, it was that “thing” wishing to express itself.
No, it was definitely us, me and what I’d implanted and received myself. There is not doubt that it was me allowing it and me stopping it but realizing that I could stop, that I had the power to stop it, was the greatest realization I could have come to. To love is much more simple than to make conflict but it is very difficult to love when one is submerged in suffering, which is why people who are suffering need twice as much love.
Somewhere above I state that there’s as much suffering in cults as in concentration camps and it’s a different suffering but not necessarily less particularly because it extends out for years and years and in becoming defaced and disfigured there is no need for others to inflict suffering upon one’s self, one becomes very efficient at it by simply continuing to tolerate the status quo in which one is nothing in the community one supports. That is why there is nothing incoherent about cult members committing suicide as the materialization of what they’ve been building up to all along.
Nigel, I observed you continue to insist on the attitude that people should be afraid of experiencing the fourth state and I would like to challenge that. There is nothing greater in ones life than that experience and it is worth it even if it kills one! It is the experience of being one with the Universe and the power of the Universe in that oneness. No one should ever be afraid of experiencing consciousness. We had so much difficulty tolerating it because we weren’t well prepared by our cheap guru but people will be more prepared to tolerate it in the future.
One aspect of our lack of preparation was not conceiving of the other side as a reality but there are many of us now telling about the reality of the other side and according to some we are all moving through that threshold. Our lack of knowledge about it made it all the more shocking but there is only love in the other side and sometimes love can have so much power that one perceives the power more than the love but unity as power is love realized.
We carry it all, the love, the power, other dimensions, we carry it all in our hearts which are the key to both sides. We live on this side and through the heart live consciously in the other side as well. No one can give us the key. Just our own hearts can open that door. It takes a lot of heart to be the hero we all dream to become but as long as we each trust our humaneness, we can’t move in the wrong direction.
“…me because she moved too much, according to her because I pulled her hair and there was some of both but it wasn’t us, it was that “thing” wishing to express itself. It’s difficult not to pull the hair when it’s messy but it’s possible. It just takes more effort. Three months and we’d managed to spend the whole day even but it was time for bed and I could feel the negative energy building up begging to be expressed like a devil that wanted to come out.”
I’m still not comfortable with this statement probably because of the use of the word devil and that “thing”. It reminds me of the System’s use of the idea of the “worm” inside which is abused by the fof, pathway to presence cult, rooting in it to deepen people’s dependency on it and their need to be helped to extricate the worm out. Each of Robert and Girard’s events are designed to reaffirm the idea of the lower self, the worm, the devil inside which accentuates shame and fear in people and the feeling that they cannot trust themselves enough and must depend on the guru and the cult for support. What we need to come to understand is that emotions are realities that condition our behaviour. I act in a particular way if I am filled with shame and in a completely different way if I am full of self-trust. The outside world conditions us in very definite ways to feel shameful or trustworthy about our selves.
The hierarchical structure of society in which the rich, educated, first world, white, father-husband-dominant male and the “others”: third world, uneducated, poor, black, women, children, old people and all the variations on the theme, condition how an individual feels about “its” self and its self’s options in life. We are all responsible for each other in as much as whatever the place we have in society is conditioning other people’s place and placement. “Identified” with our own place or position, we keep others stagnant in theirs: The rich do not want to stop being rich, the educated enjoy looking down at the uneducated, whites confine blacks, those in power confine those submitted, politically, religiously, economically or sexually not only physically but psychologically. Identified with their inferiority those submitted do not struggle to rise in the “inhuman” ladder.
The problem is that the ladder is inhuman not only for the submitted but for the “Dominator”. Identified with their position neither one can free their self from the hierarchic structure and establish real contact, real communication with others: that is what is killing culture and leading people to cults. They might all live in the same city but they are yezidi circles apart in their lives. We live very close to each other today but we are worlds apart. This is what is causing so much suffering. In the disappearance of the concept of “community”, the individuals strive for “realization” “abstracting” “separating” themselves from their actual circumstances which is exactly the opposite to work in the reality of our lives to help each other develop more consciously human or more humanly conscious. Every healthy human being is striving for the betterment of their self and their community. Those wishing to develop out of the human context are precisely those who are practicing the inhumanity in the cults they’ve organized. They are not communities precisely because they do not have a human, communal aim but an imaginary supra human objective above or below the human. Satanic cults or Supra Divine Guru cults are both equally inhuman but without digging out the extreme pathologic cancers in out society we can observe CULT behaviour in every sphere of our societies today:
In the economy there is a cult for the capitalist. It is no coincidence that the list of the richest people in the world comes out in magazines.
In Art there is a cult for artists and they are not only artists but rich and also become the subject of magazines and newspapers. These are the people we worship, we find worthy of hearing about. The people we idolize and idealize as having something we don’t have.
In Sports we find a similar behaviour. In Politics and science it is similar but acquires a different taste.
In the personal sphere there is obvious cult behaviour within the family in every authoritarian family in which what the father says is law even though the father might be little more than a criminal to his wife and children. In the jobs people hold and the relationship between them, there is the same cultish submission and dominance and even in the distribution of public space and transportation, there are clear separations between the dominators and the submitted.
In the hospitals there are the doctors and the patients and even the doctors have become tyrants towards the patient. What matters is not the patient but the money they are making and the efficiency they are making it with. In Colombia for example, doctors must not take more than twenty minutes per patient and the best doctor, who wins a prize at the end of the year, is the one that has ordered the least number of exams and medicines saving costs to the institution. Colombia is only copying first world models at a frightening speed.
Lawyers and clients fall in the same niche. Lawyers tend to treat the client as if they had absolutely no idea about anything and explain nothing or charge by the second to explain something, just like doctors. High officials in no matter what job are humanly abusing the people below them not only in the economic distribution but in the emotional rapport. People in “high positions” make lavish use of their position of authority to demeanour those below them and this is making them as sick as the people below with a slight difference that the people below in most cases are consciously submitting to the treatment because they need the job or the position while the dominators are unconsciously surrendering to it because it feeds their ego, they are so identified with it that they actually feel superior. They need to believe in their superiority to justify their behaviour while the submitted don’t completely believe it and are aware of the circumstances. There is a huge difference in that. In the long run, the dominators end up more sick than the dominated because their world is more conditioned by their own imagination than the world of the others who, by sheer necessity, have to keep more “connected” to reality.
The areas that are kept “quiet” in lawyers and doctors are meant to reaffirm the image that they hold, the image that they have something that the other doesn’t have. The “knowledge” they’ve acquired is used to justify their inhuman behaviour to the client-patient just like the guru in the cult is supposed to posses the being that justifies everything he does. A “being” and a “knowledge” that no one can pretend to understand or question. The ideal human interchange is not one in which the doctor or the lawyer teaches medicine or law to the client or patient but that the layer and the doctor make the client and the patient aware of the reality of the situation with the dignity and respect that the human interchange involves without pretending that the client-patient cannot understand what he is talking about. People understand. People have a RIGHT to understand and THAT is what the doctor and the lawyer are getting paid for.
This whole world could be grasped well in the interaction between people in banks. Nowhere are people as cold as in the interaction with money. And another area in which the inhumaneness of our world is obvious is in the use of telephone machines. The richer the company the less the human contact and people HAVE to accept the treatment. Not for long though, some of us are SICK OF IT already!
While there are true human beings in every single sphere that has been addressed in this text, what I am pointing out is the general tendency of standard behaviour. When it is more human, when we are treated with consideration by others, it lightens our soul and pushes the sense of our selves towards the dignity inherent to the human within us.
The Fellowship of Friends Cult, Pathway to Presence, states it is a School of Consciousness and not a community and justifies each and every one of its inhuman practices with that affirmation.
Since WHEN is inhumanity justified in any School of no matter what?
Since WHEN is organized crime by a legion of sociopaths, LEGAL?
This text by Girard is wonderfully elucidating of the situation but it is not a rarity. Every text by Girard contains the same corruption of reality to fit the cult.
I hope he’s Daily Cardiac because Daily Cardiac has been “touched”. He sincerely came here and he’s been touched in that sincerity. He’s far more free now from the cult mentality than before. I hope he’s Girard. What makes me doubt it, is that Girard wouldn’t expose himself that badly unless he was desperate.
Panoritsa’s views that Girard is a nobody in the Fellowship cult are true and false. People around Robert had stopped respecting him a long time ago. All those who knew that he was addicted to pornography had distanced themselves from him but never bothered to tell the rest of us the truth of the situation. They continued to rely on his prestige and use him to keep the cult running because hundreds of us would have left had we known the truth in different circumstances. They continued to USE him like they used everything that helped submit others. When I finally understood Girard’s predicament I was still convinced that Robert was conscious and thought that he was tolerant with Girard’s condition because it was right to work with it. That is the condition of millions of men today. For me, we had to work with what we were given and was convinced that if our sexuality was healthy he would move away from no matter what practice. If I failed, I failed willingly. Girard is a very sick man but not much more sick than each and every other member in the Fellowship cult. All of them in the inner circle have kept each other running to continue ripping innocent people off. There is not going to be a lynching of Girard Haven alone here no matter how eager people are to find one scapegoat.No one seriously challenged Girard’s statements inside and when I challenged them you simply alienated me further. The sickness is in all of us. We each made it happen and allowed it to happen because not one of us was enough of a human being to understand the inhumanity that was going on, no one was or is present enough to take reality for what it is. The Ames Gilberts of the Fellowship are hundreds, the Brucelevys, the Venas, the old fofs, the Fellowship is crammed with these people pretending to be better than others but they are as sick outside as those inside. They too are willing to ban people who don’t buy in their little ego business and submit to their sacredcowness and support with equal blindness their golden calfs: their beliefs in sexuality, nationality or rationality. Bruce is as willing to humiliate any woman in the fofblog as Robert in the fofcult and all the adepts of the blog just keep submissively quiet, like when they were inside! Silence is its own complicity. The difference in the degree is no difference in the intention. Nor Old Fof or Ames or Vena or anyone who remained silent when they voiced what all of you carry inside. You are no less sick outside than you were inside. You are cult people, you have no love, your sickness spreads out no matter where you participate. You hide yourselves just like Robert and Girard hide themselves inside. You give only the light side of your lives convinced that that will keep others from seeing how much darkness there is in it. But you’re not any less free of the cult sickness than those inside. And you Steve, how did you manage to get involved in the sacredcow business? How did you become so bias? Why didn’t you scream on time if you thought it was too much? But when did you stop four or more when they were just as rough? Too gay perhaps as you yourself said? The same old cause every time?
Girard:
…I suddenly found myself making a distinction between ‘verifying’ and ‘testing’…
In the way I mean it, ‘testing’ is essentially a negative process. It refers to the attempt to disprove something or to make it fail, as when an automobile door is tested by a machine which opens and closes it thousands of times, or when a child tests his parents by deliberately going where he is not supposed to go. In the Fellowship, testing usually starts from negative attitudes towards school disciplines, attitudes such as “Why should I have to do this?” These attitudes lead to efforts to discover what is wrong with a request, what is beneficial about its opposites, and what one can get away with, although all this often occurs in the guise of thinking for oneself, finding one’s own expression for the work, etc. In any case, it is easy to see that testing embodies the attitudes of opposite thinking.
Verification, on the other hand, is a positive process. It begins by adopting the attitude that the thing to be verified is correct, and then uses observation of the results of acting according to that attitude to determine the validity of the original assumption.
As an example, consider a child who is told that fire is hot. He tests this by putting something into the fire; he verifies it by trusting his parents and by observing. Although this may seem a trivial example, there are people all around us (as well as many ‘I’s within us) who insist on sticking their hands into fires, particularly when the emotional center is involved. We even refer to such people as being ‘burned’ in, for example, a bad relationship.
The dangers of testing are compounded by the fact that our emotional centers are so underdeveloped that we are often unable even to realize when we are being burned. This is especially true in relation to the School. We have only a very limited understanding of what actually serves our evolution, and that understanding is restricted to a very small part of our machines, that part of the king of hearts which has been trained by the School itself. The rest of the machine does not understand awakening and so easily adopts a negative, testing attitude which, if not recognized for what it is, can lead one out of the School.
This, then is why it is so important to learn to verify rather than to test, to develop and ability to trust the wisdom of Higher Forces and to affirm and strengthen that trust by acting on it, as the Teacher does. Essentially, the attitude that one must test in order to verify betrays a lack of understanding of our relation to Higher Forces. In our sleep, we act as if we were their equals, and set ourselves up to test and judge their requests. When we get away with it, as mechanically as we sometimes will, this illusion is reinforced. Consequently, no matter what one may finally learn from it, testing always feeds false personality.
Verification, on the other hand, can be seen as the process of intentionally deciding to adopt attitudes which presumably come from higher beings, and then confirming those attitudes, and hence their origin, by action and observation. It is an ongoing process, the method by which knowledge is brought into being to create understanding.
Moreover, because verification involves setting aside one’s own ideas to adopt the ideas or attitudes one is verifying, it runs counter to the illusion of self-importance, and so is relatively free of false personality. Instead, it is a manifestation of true personality, embodying the understanding that one cannot test Influence C, set conditions for them, or make demands of them. One cannot even ‘prove’ their existence: one must accept them, and in doing so, verify their presence.
Farewell So long
Out the door
And marching on
So long
So long
So many a road
Perhaps too young?
the food?
the noise?
The bed, not good enough?
The dreams too long?
Or love
but not in love?
A bad video?
The vaccine and not the pill?
So many a cause
Or just one question enough?
What interests you
that you don’t say?
What did you come for
when you’re already gone?
Farewell
So long
May the little people protect your feet
wherever you take a step
May the little people with wings draw
smiles in your face
May the little people greet you with
love every day
And bring their hands out to yours
And hold their chests to your heart and
Jump and run all around at your sight
May they weave your torn socks with silk hands
And feather the cushions behind your back
when your back aches like mine
May the little people inside
Heal the heart’s blood,
the never ending charm
And whisper messages from beyond
while you walk the night
And sit in silence with you
for a long, long time
May they touch the spell of every thought
And never, ever, ever
Let you know
that you are loved
253 Elena
Your poetry is so very much your own. No one writes it like you do. I have some longer posts but am preparing for an exhibition on Friday…..Nigel.
elena, for what it’s worth i was not among those who favored your banning over at the other blog… i wish you well.
Thank you Ton,
Perhaps you thought I was leaving but I was wishing a friend well who I also thought is leaving.
I found this today. It is exactly what we’ve been discovering about the Fellowship of Friends phenomenon.
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE W. BUSH:
A REFLECTION OF OUR COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
by Paul Levy
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth.[i]
~C. G. Jung
George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times in which we live. It is an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it is an illness in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.
Bush’s malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the dis-order of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and appear like a “regular” guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush’s illness “Malignant Egophrenia” (as compared to schizophrenia), or “ME disease,” for short. If ME disease goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person afflicted is in a position of power.
In much the same way that a child’s psychology cannot be understood without looking at the family system of which he or she is a part, George Bush does not exist in isolation. We can view Bush—and his entire administration: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc., as well as the corporate, military industrial complex they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media they control, the voters supporting them, and ourselves as well—as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a “field.” Instead of relating to any part of this field as an isolated entity, it’s important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the “medium” through which malignant egophrenia manifests and propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon and needs to be contemplated as such. Bush’s sickness is our own.
THE DISEASE IS NON-LOCAL
Being a field phenomenon, malignant egophrenia is non-local in nature, which means that it is not bound by the limitations of time or space. Being non-local, this disease pervades and underlies the entire field and can therefore manifest anywhere, through anyone, and at any moment. The disease’s non-local nature makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it in potential. It is more a question of whether or not we are aware of our susceptibility to fall prey to the disease. This awareness itself serves as an immunization protecting us from the pernicious effects of the illness, thereby allowing us to be of genuine help to others.
Bush, like all of us, is both a manifestation of this deeper field and simultaneously an agent affecting the field. He’s become so fully taken over by the disease, all the while not suspecting a thing, that he’s become a “carrier” for this death-creating disease, thus infecting the field around him. He’s become a portal through which the field around him “warps” in such a way as to feed and support his pathogenic process. A non-local, reciprocally co-arising and interdependent field of unconscious denial and cover-up constellates around Bush to enable and protect his pathology. People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is “closed,” which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the “real” world.
Bush supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this—they resist self-reflection at all costs. Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world reflecting back their unconsciousness as evidence proving the rightness of their viewpoint. All of Bush’s supporters mutually reinforce each others’ unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability is collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness.
People who don’t recognize Bush’s illness and support him are unconsciously colluding with and enabling the co-creation of the pathological field incarnating itself into the human family. People who support Bush become unwitting agents through which this non-local disease feeds and replicates itself. By supporting Bush, they collaborate with and become parts of the greater, interconnected, and self-organizing field of the disease.
The situation is analogous to when seemingly good, normal, loving Germans supported Hitler, believing he was a good leader trying to help them. The German people didn’t realize that the virulent malignant egophrenia pathogen had taken possession of Hitler and was incarnating itself through him. By not seeing this and supporting Hitler, they became agents used by this non-local, deadly disease to propagate itself. This is why Jung says, “…evil needs masses for its genesis and continued existence.”[ii] What happened in Germany was a collective psychosis, and this is what is taking place in our country right now.
This part of the article is equally meaningful and adapts perfectly to our Cult situation. Also interesting to observe is the understanding of lying as an obstacle to awakening presented in the System which was impossible to grasp in the Cult for it was simply never addressed. The silent areas are what reveal the huge weaknesses in groups of people. We are not only talking about Girard, Robert, Dorian, Asaf and others in the inner circle, we are talking about each one of us and our participation in this phenomenon which is happening outside as much as inside the cult.
THE LIE
IIt is not that the threat of terrorism is unreal, but that Bush’s policies in dealing with terrorism are actually fueling the fire. The way Bush is fighting terrorism is in actuality the very act invoking and creating more of it in the first place. Bush is so dissociated from the darkness within himself that he splits off from it, projects it outside of himself, and then tries to destroy it. He is fighting against his own shadow, a battle that can never be won. Bush’s inner process, because of the position of power he finds himself in, is being dreamed up and played out on the world stage.
Egophrenia is unique in that it is an inner disease of the soul expressing itself via the medium of the outside world; it collapses the boundary between inner and outer. We could even say that the inner core of egophrenia actually in-forms and gives shape to the outer universe so as to express itself.
By creating more of the very thing he is fighting against, Bush is enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul. In Bush’s case, it is the repetition compulsion gone awry, to daemonic proportions, getting acted out on the world stage. To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person [or whole nation]…the daemonic can be either creative or destructive[iii] [i.e., demonic]…violence is the daemonic gone awry…ages [such as ours] tend to be times when the daemonic is expressed in its most destructive form.”[iv] [Please note: comments in brackets are the author’s emphasis unless stated otherwise].
The daemonic aspect of the disease can develop an autonomy of its own and literally possess the person or group, as it is self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-organizing in nature, like a closed and negative feedback loop. The person who is taken over doesn’t suspect a thing, as the field secretly conspires, colludes with, and enables their psychosis. For example, Bush, in his delusion, imagines he is divinely guided. His supporters want to believe this to feed their own adolescent fantasies of wanting to have a divinely inspired leader take care of and protect them. Because of this need, they invest in Bush’s delusion, which just confirms to Bush all the more that he is indeed God’s instrument. Bush and his followers are co-dependently and reciprocally feeding and supporting each others’ unconscious narcissistic needs in a truly pathological and ultimately self-destructive co-dependent relationship.
Both Bush and the terrorists are projecting the shadow onto each other, seeing their own shadow reflected in the other, as though looking in a mirror. It’s interesting to note that the inner meaning of the word mirror is “shadow-holder.”[v] Both Bush and the terrorists see each other as criminals, as the incarnation of evil. By projecting the shadow like this, they locate the evil “outside of themselves,” which ensures that they don’t have to recognize the evil within themselves. Ironically, by fighting against their own shadow in this way, they become possessed by the very thing they are trying to destroy, thereby perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. Jung comments on this very situation:
The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided [not in touch with both the light AND dark parts of themselves] and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.[vi]
Projecting the shadow is an activity that relates to lying, both to oneself and others. It’s interesting to note that one of the inner meanings of the word Devil is “the liar.” Projecting the shadow, according to Jung, “…deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil.”[vii] Jung stresses the importance of consciously developing what he calls our “imagination for evil,”[viii] which is to consciously recognize our potential for evil. This recognition means embracing and integrating our dark side into our wholeness, which is made up of both light and dark. If we have no imagination for evil, to quote Jung, “…evil has us in its grip…for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil.”[ix]
By projecting the shadow, Bush unwittingly becomes a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and to act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he identifies with the light and imagines that he is divinely inspired. To quote Jung, a person in a position of power who has become dissociated like Bush, “…even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.”[x] He then believes that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, rationalizing it as being God’s will. Unable to self-reflect, he is convinced of the rightness of his viewpoint, which he considers non-negotiable.
This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become unconsciously identified with and possessed by the hero, or savior archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, Bush (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and liberate the planet.
This is the height of irony since, in reality, Bush is acting as an unwitting conduit for evil by instigating wars and taking away peoples’ freedoms. This incongruity brings into bold relief the severe dissociation characterizing Bush’s condition. His inflation blinds him to the destructive consequences of his actions, and is one of the easier aspects of his pathology to recognize. Being inflated due to an unconscious identification with an archetype is, in essence, an expression of having forfeited one’s humanity, a state in which humility becomes impossible. “An inflated consciousness,” to quote Jung:
is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it [and others within its sphere of influence] dead.[xi]
Having the most powerful man in the world be unconsciously identified with and inflated by an archetype is a very dangerous situation for everyone involved, which is all of us.
Robert couldn’t be better described than in this passage. Numerous posts I wrote specially at the beginning of the fofblog present this picture without knowing what exactly it meant at the time. The queen bee, the king-dictator as I called him then are exactly parallel to what is presented here about Bush and others in power.
DRUNK WITH POWER
Bush has fallen into a state that is the embodiment of arrogance. Succumbing to the temptation of power, Bush has become corrupt, which is the inevitable consequence when one prefers power over truth. The original sin of the Bush administration is love of power for its own sake. Bush has fallen into a vicious cycle where he has become addicted to power. To quote Senate minority leader Harry Reid, “This administration is drunk with power.”[xii] Bush’s unrestrained lust for power is like an alcoholic’s compulsive thirsting for and being controlled by alcohol. Bush is like the typical substance abuser, only in his case, the substance he is abusing is power, and the family system that is the recipient of his abuse is the entire world.
We need to not be naïve and realize the danger of our situation: People addicted to power as Bush is will literally stop at nothing to retain their power, no matter how vile the means. To quote Karl Rove, the administration is willing to do “whatever it takes” to stay in power.
Not only does Bush not see the depraved nature of the situation he has fallen into, he doesn’t want to see it. Being in the role of having power, there is a counter-incentive to self-reflect, which simply feeds the compulsion and reinforces the addiction, a truly pathological process.
The inner name of ME disease is “Mad Emperor” disease, as it is what happens when a person in a position of power falls prey to and becomes seduced by that power. When a person becomes addicted to unrestrained power, they make a Faustian pact with the Devil, selling their soul in the bargain. Having let the “genie” out of the bottle, a person stricken with Mad Emperor disease discovers that, instead of the genie serving and empowering them, they ultimately become obedient and a slave to the genie. A person who has fallen into this perverse state has, because of their interminable arrogance, literally hypnotized themselves and become their own victim, totally losing their internal freedom in the process. People in this state of utter depravity, such as Hitler, Stalin, Hussein and George Bush, are truly possessed by an overwhelming lust for power that compels them to perpetrate endless violence on others. They believe that there is no higher authority—pronouncements to the contrary—and hence, feel they can literally get away with murder.
Bush has become possessed by the very power that he has conjured up—a powerful, seemingly “other,” external energy has co-opted Bush to be its instrument. Because of his unending greed, Bush is allowing himself to be used by others, manipulated by darker forces like a puppet on a string. Having sold his soul, he is for sale to the highest bidder. At the same time, these seemingly “external” darker forces are an expression of something deep within himself that he has become a stranger to. Unless recognized, this pathological situation always results in self-destruction. To quote Jung, “…a mass always produces a ‘Leader,’ who infallibly becomes the victim of his own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show.”[xiii]
The indigenous author Jack Forbes, author of Columbus and other Cannibals, describes those who are suffering from this malady as being infected with a literal illness, a virulent and contagious disease he calls wetiko, or “cannibal sickness.” Those so afflicted consume, so to speak, the lives of others—human and nonhuman alike—for private purpose or profit, and do so without giving back anything of their own lives. They simply exploit others, be it people or the environment, as objects to satisfy their own unending narcissistic hunger. Like a vampire, they feed off of other peoples’ blood. William James described it well, “Evil is a disease.”
All these posts are coming from
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/georgew.html
Everyone in the Fellowship Cult is well described in this part. The “frigidity” of social relationships within the cult is an aspect of this lack of being in contact with their feelings in all of the Fellowship population. That lifelessness that I pointed out many times on the fofblog is what renders members more and more pathological and subject to the madness. In cults the madness is much more efficient, spreads much more quickly than in regular society because members in a cult are in a much tighter environment than members of a nation. In the nation there is still more freedom until the whole of it affirms itself in fascism.
HIDING FROM HIMSELF
At the root of Bush’s process is an unwillingness and seeming inability to experience his own sense of sin, guilt and shame, as if he is afraid of being exposed, of being found out. He’s clearly unable to feel any remorse and experience his own weakness and vulnerability, his own sense of failure. This is too great a threat to his narcissism. Another way of describing Bush’s psychic numbness is to say that he cannot, under any circumstances, allow himself to feel.
This inability to feel his shame and guilt sets in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of denial, cover-up and projecting the shadow, all of which are based on a lie. Bush then falls into an endless loop of hiding from his own lie, which is to say, from himself. This process allows Bush to become taken over by egophrenia and become a conduit for the disease to incarnate its malignant aspect through him. As the Buddhist Maharatnakuta Sutra says, “A liar lies to himself as well as to the gods. Lying is the origin of all evils.”
Commenting on this resistance to self-reflection and endless cycle of self-deception, Jung says,
“Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists.[xiv]
Malignant egophrenia is the embodiment of the separate self, the narcissistic ego, spinning out of control to an extremely pathological degree—hence the name “ME disease.” If we want to understand the malignant aspects of egophrenia gone berserk, all we have to do is to contemplate the actions of George Bush. Being the incarnation of this disease, he is its revelation in human form.
The “one-sidedness” mentioned in this part is very important to look at because it was clearly addressed in the fofblog when I talked about our inability to deal with evil, evil as incarnated by the fofcult and our inability to take serious action against it. Not being able to seriously take action against these institutions is simply allowing our shadow to continue expressing itself and remain justified.
This one-sidedness was also mentioned by me in post 152:
“You are cult people, you have no love, your sickness spreads out no matter where you participate. You hide yourselves just like Robert and Girard hide themselves inside. You give only the light side of your lives convinced that that will keep others from seeing how much darkness there is in it. But you’re not any less free of the cult sickness than those inside.”
Anyone who studies the two blogs will easily observe that people on both blogs are unable to dialogue with what I’ve been presenting. They avoided it as long as they could and when my frustration was voiced out with anger, they immediately took it up as an excuse to ban me. The inability to relate to these facts in ex-members outside is as significant as the member’s inability to acknowledge them inside. The behavior people have in the public sphere clearly points to how they are dealing with the dark side in life as much as in themselves. Avoiding social responsibility and allowing for “leaders” to direct our lives without clear understanding of what they are doing is an aspect of our own inner blind spots and lack of responsibility in our inner as much as external world.
A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR
Jung said, “…involuntary one-sidedness, i.e., the inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism.”[xv] Bush’s unconscious, dis-association from himself manifests as a compulsive, “involuntary one-sidedness” that results in primitive, uncivilized and truly Neanderthal behavior. Because of Bush’s position of power, he expresses his inflexibility in the most brutal of ways.
Bush has the seductive coherence of someone who is fanatically identified, like the typical fundamentalist, with only one side of an inherently two-sided polarity. Falling victim to one’s own deception as Bush has can have a mesmerizing and gripping effect on others, as he appears so convinced of what he is saying and is able to project this conviction. Jung tells us that:
Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident…things only become dangerous when the pathological liar is taken seriously by a wider public. Like Faust, he is bound to make a pact with the devil and thus slips off the straight path.[xvi]
Jung reiterates the point by saying, “I should like to emphasize above all that it is part and parcel of the pathological liar’s make-up to be plausible.”[xvii] In addition, Jung makes the point that pathological liars are in the habit of:
presenting their wish-fantasies partly as easily attainable and partly as having been attained, and who believe these obvious lies themselves…. In order to realize their wish fantasies no means is too bad for them…. They “believe” they are doing it for the benefit of humanity, or at least of the nation or their party, and cannot under any circumstances see that their aim is invariably egoistic. Since this is a common failing, it is difficult for the layman to recognize such cases as psychopathic. Because only a convinced person is immediately convincing (by psychic contagion), he exercises as a rule a devastating influence on his contemporaries. Almost everybody is taken in by him.[xviii] [Emphasis in original]
Monk and author Thomas Merton, commenting on the case of the obviously demented Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, points out, “One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.”[xix]
A key feature of malignant egophrenia is that it is very hard to recognize when someone is a carrier, because the person can seem so normal and even endearing. The person afflicted can be very “charming” and have a charisma that can entrance those who don’t see through their subterfuge.
Just as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious, Bush is touching something very deep in the American psyche. Both Hitler and Bush dreamed of and are exponents of a “new order,” which is one of the reasons people fall for them. Like Hitler, Bush is acting out on the world stage an under-developed psychological process that deals simplistically with issues such as good and evil. It’s as if he hasn’t grown out of and fully differentiated from the realm of mythic, archetypal fantasy that is typical of early adolescence. This immature aspect of Bush’s process speaks to and resonates with those voters who support him, as it is a reflection of their own under-developed inner process.
The most dangerous leaders are those who are adept at acting out our forbidden impulses, urges we would never allow ourselves to consciously give voice to in our individual lives. We vicariously experience these hidden desires through our unconscious identification with both the leader and the group for which he is the “conductor.” There is a safety, a comfort, a familiarity in being accepted and embraced by the prevailing mass psychology of the collective. There is a secret attraction to be on the side that seems “right,” to be on the side with power, to be on what is perceived as the winning side. The cost is high, however, as we lose both our sanity and our “Self” in the process.
Whereas Hitler’s evil was more overt in its cruelty and sadism, Bush’s dark side is much more hidden and disguised, which makes it particularly dangerous. People who support Bush are blind to what is very obvious to others. It’s as if they’ve become hypnotized and fallen under the spell Bush is casting.
Why would people vote for someone stricken with malignant egophrenia? People who support Bush are suggestible and susceptible to the same malady Bush is embodying, as if they have a predisposition for it (based on their own trauma, dissociated psyche, and tendency to project the shadow). Supporting Bush is a sign that a person not only doesn’t see the deadly illness that is incarnating itself through Bush, but is an expression that this disease has taken up residence in their being and is using them to do its bidding.
“Part of the sinister nature of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name—as being a form of insanity called ignorance—people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the one’s who are crazy.”
Can any sentence better describe how I was banned from the fofblog with the silence and approval of 97% of the participants and meek refutal from the rest but one?
The fofblog “institutionalized” itself just like the Fellowship cult institutionalized itself and legitimizes its equally abusive actions like the Fellowship cult. 100% of the participants, except me, continue to take a part in it for not one of you is clear of what you are doing.
If being sick is calling fascists “FASCISTS”, pimps, “PIMPS”, sick fuckers “SICK FUCKERS” then let me die from this illness. If protesting as I’ve been protesting is being crazy, let me die from this madness because I wish nothing to do with yours that submits to infamy with support and compliance. A sick person is nothing else than a sick person and we must be able to tell each other when we are nothing but sick people and act against it so that we help each other out of the sickness.
You in the fofblog were as willing to hurt me as Robert, Girard and everyone else in the Fellowship are willing to hurt members in the outside circle. You are each and all of you still as sick as you were inside. I am glad to know that there is enough arrogance in me and that I never submitted to your rules which are as sick as the Fellowships. You tried to make me kneel to your conditions and I did not and that is what made you ban me because each one of you carries the same power sickness that Robert and Girard carry, you do not allow people who are not willing to submit to participate and IAM NOT WILLING TO SUBMIT. You cannot tolerate my freedom, you cannot bear the envy that arouses in your darkness when someone acts from their freedom. I am glad to be able to defend myself. I am glad I’ve recognized my weaknesses when I told you that the Fellowship should be closed not for me but for your selves, not because I was better than anyone else but because you each needed to empower your selves with the understanding. I am glad I’ve modeled my pain out in public and parented myself with a man and a woman who were willing to support me when I most needed it, allowing me to experience the darkest hours of my abandonment in childhood, which being banned simply re-enacted with all its power. I am far from being free but I am much more free than I’ve been. May each one of you find your own freedom and allow us to share in each other’s life like human beings.
A COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
ME disease is an Orwellian world where up is down, as its flawless illogic is convoluted and inverted at its core. Malignant egophrenia is crazy-making. It induces a very hard to recognize form of insanity. When we fall prey to egophrenia, we are unable to recognize that we are taken over, as we become bewitched by our own projections, accusing other people of doing what we ourselves are doing. For example, Bush is guilty of the very thing he accuses Saddam Hussein of when he calls Hussein, “A man who has defied the world,” and “A man who has made the United Nations look foolish.” Similarly, Bush is talking about himself when, referring to the terrorists, he says we are “facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.” He is unknowingly giving voice, shape and form to his unconscious shadow.
Part of the sinister nature of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name—as being a form of insanity called ignorance—people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the one’s who are crazy. Because egophrenia hooks us through our unconscious, when we are infected with it, just like a sociopath, we don’t experience ourselves as being sick or needing help. When we are taken over by egophrenia, we always see the problem as existing in someone else.
In addition, when we are stricken with egophrenia, we think we are successfully hiding and concealing our shadow activities. We imagine that others can’t see the underhanded nature of what we are doing, all the while not realizing that our criminal activities are their own revelation and could not be more obvious for all who have not fallen under our spell.
By being duplicitous and trying to hide his ulterior motives, Bush is unwittingly revealing them. Bush made a telling “Freudian slip” when he said “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” In this slip of the tongue, Bush was unknowingly giving voice to the unconscious shadow, the part of himself whose intentions are the polar opposite of what he consciously imagines and represents them to be at that moment. Bush’s shadow was speaking through him, revealing what was being acted out through his unconscious. Bush had become transparent, blowing his own cover in the process. Egophrenia is a form of psychic blindness in which we have become so unconscious that we literally project out our own blindness and imagine that others, instead of ourselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Egophrenia hides in the shadows of human consciousness and secretly influences perception in ways that prevent the disease from being perceived. Unless we recognize the insidious nature of this psychic disease, there is a crazy-making field around it that will make us a part of itself. Collective psychosis is like that.
THE PSYCHIATRIC COMMUNITY HAS THE DISEASE
There is only one reason why the mainstream psychiatric community is not studying this contagious psychosis as it spreads through Bush, his regime, and the surrounding field—they haven’t yet recognized that the disease even exists. It is through our unconsciousness that this non-local pathogen flavors our perceptions to suit its purposes. By not recognizing the nature of the disease, the mental health community becomes its unwitting agents, helping the disease to propagate. What clearer sign do we need of a collective psychosis than when our mental health system itself, whose job it is to monitor such phenomenon, not only doesn’t recognize that there is a collective psychosis running rampant in our society, but are themselves infected with it?
The DSM-IV, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, is continually expanding and including new diagnoses as we deepen our understanding of and map the contours of the human psyche. The problem is that the DSM-IV is an expression of an “old paradigm” way of thinking in that it looks at mental illness as it exists in individuals, regarding the individual as an object existing separate from the field around them. This is based on an illusion, for the individual is embedded in the greater field—family system, society, and planetary culture—and is an expression of this multi-textured field. The individual and the field around them interpenetrate and condition each other so fully that they can’t even be regarded as two separate aspects that have become joined together, but rather must be seen as inseparable parts of a greater whole.
Egophrenia expresses itself non-locally throughout the entire field. Consequently, instead of being viewed through the lens of the fragmented, separate self, it requires a more holistic vision that recognizes the existence of the interdependently co-arising field. It’s not a question of integrating ME disease into the existing DSM-IV, but instead of radically expanding, up-leveling, and re-visioning our understanding of the nature of illness itself.
To view the world through the lens of the illusory, separate self is to pathologize certain individuals as if they exist separately from ourselves. When we recognize our interdependence, however, we concurrently get into focus and see the deeper, unified field expressing itself through us and connecting us with each other. It is like instead of contemplating one finger on a glove, we can recognize the hand moving the finger in relation to the other fingers, which are recognized to not be separate from each other. Instead of studying the individual fingers, we can focus our attention on the underlying hand animating and in-forming them.
On the level of the separate self, Bush can clearly be pathologized as being a sociopath, a malignant narcissist, as well as many other things. From the limited (and illusory) perspective of seeing Bush as separate from the unified field, there is no arguing with these diagnoses. But to concretize Bush in this way would be analogous to only seeing the circle that a three-dimensional sphere makes as it passes through a two-dimensional plane. The circle is a lower-level reflection of a higher-dimensional entity (the sphere), just as Bush being a sociopathic criminal is a lower-level expression of a deeper and more pervasive process non-locally expressing itself throughout the interconnected field.
Bush is merely being dreamed up to play a role in a deeper process. Even though he has fallen prey to a deadly disease that has hooked him through his unconscious, Bush is still fully accountable for his actions. We are always ethically responsible for our Faustian bargains.
It’s profoundly important that the mental health community at large recognize this age-old disease with which we are all afflicted. Doing this changes this community from being part of the problem to being part of the solution. The disease literally feeds on our unawareness of it. The recognition of the disease is itself the beginning of the cure. By recognizing the nature of this collective psychosis, we snap out of being part of it. Malignant egophrenia, unrecognized and misdiagnosed until now, has wreaked havoc all throughout human history, and is at the very root of our current world crisis. To the extent we are unaware of the nature of this collective psychosis, it has us in its grips and will unconsciously be acted out through us in a destructive manner. The choice is truly ours.
This disease, if it gets out of control, means self-destruction for both victim and perpetrator. There are no winners. The entire interconnected web supporting Bush can be recognized as tentacles of this virulent, non-local pathogen that, to the extent it is not seen, is potentially gaining more and more sovereignty. Like a sci-fi movie, we have dreamed up a higher-dimensional Frankenstein monster that has taken on a life of its own and truly threatens us all.
THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMING THE DISEASE
One of the signatures of ME disease is that it hooks people through their unconscious blind spot, so when people are afflicted by this deadly disease, they are truly asleep to what is being acted out through them. Like a true Manchurian candidate, Bush is being manipulated, used and victimized, like a puppet on a string, by a deeper matrix of cover-up and deceit that has been perpetrated by him and his very regime—and has now taken on an autonomous life of its own.
Malignant egophrenia is an expression of, and is at the root of, the extreme polarization and dissociation in both the human psyche and the world process at large. The disease is archetypal in nature, which is to say that it has eternally re-created itself and played itself out over the course of history. We can even say that it’s the “bug” in the system that has in-formed and given shape to all of the conflict and disharmony of human relationships. ME disease is as old as the human species. However, we’re now at the point in our evolution where we can finally recognize it, see it, give it a name, and diagnose it.
Egophrenia is an expression of the deepest level of our being, the archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Just like we cannot describe any archetype completely, but can only realize the nature of the archetype by its effects, we are not able to specifically and completely define or solidify what egophrenia is. We are only able to know it as it reveals itself to us, by contemplating its multi-dimensional expressions. Just like we approach an overwhelming abuse or trauma by studying its symptoms, we come to know egophrenia by contemplating its reflections.
Malignant egophrenia is truly diabolical in nature and is what the ancient, indigenous cultures would call a “demon.” We, as “civilized” people, have withdrawn our projection of Gods and demons from nature (which has therefore become “depsychized”). Jung said, “Even though nature is depsychized, the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”[xx] [Emphasis added] Jung warned that a difficult task lay ahead of us after the mass insanity of the Second World War. He pointed out that after the “demons” abandoned the German people, these negative energies weren’t banished. Jung elaborated by saying, “…the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey.”[xxi] Projecting the shadow literally opens the door for malignant egophrenia to take up residence in our being.
What the ancient people called demons, Jung calls autonomous complexes. These are split-off parts of the psyche that can compel one-sidedness, possess a person (or a nation), and seemingly develop an independent will and quasi-life of their own. Autonomous complexes can be likened to the rabies virus, which travels to the part of a person’s brain controlling the whole person. It causes him to reject water, for example, so that the virus cannot be spit out of the mouth. This is analogous to how Bush supporters reject the facts, which if considered, would cause them to snap out of their spell. The rabies virus ultimately controls and enslaves its victims, taking away their creativity and mental freedom, as it forces them compulsively, like a vampire, to further the propagation of the virus. Autonomous complexes work in exactly the same way; they can warp and destroy the whole psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, infecting the surrounding field in the process. Journalist Jacques Julliard of “Le Nouvel Observateur” recently has recognized this state of affairs when he simply states, “America has rabies.” Once the virus has eaten up and consumed its host, it leaves him for dead and moves on to its next victim. Etymologically, the word rabies is related to the word “Lucifer. These autonomous complexes can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way a vampire can’t stand the light. Malignant egophrenia will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being seen. It’s elusive, mercurial, and very much a trickster. The disease obfuscates itself, creating any number of distractions to hide behind, and will even react violently to being seen, for being seen takes away its omnipotence and autonomy.
The disease works through the irrationality of the unconscious. As Jung described:
“Once this function (of the irrational) finds itself in the unconscious, it works unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease whose focus cannot be eradicated, because it is invisible. Individual and nation alike are then compelled to live the irrational in their own lives, even devoting their loftiest ideals and their best wits to expressing its madness in the most perfect form.”[xxii]
The importance of seeing the nature of the disease we are dealing with cannot be overstated. Jung goes on to say, “As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us.”[xxiii]
When we see a demon, we know its name. Naming it is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon’s power over us. To name something is to symbolize it. The word “symbolic,” which means that which unites, is the antidote and antonym to the word “diabolic,” which means that which divides and separates. George Bush claimed to be “a uniter, not a divider.” However, he has only united one thing—the majority of the world against us. To see this diabolical aspect of what is coming through Bush, namely, that he is an instrument creating separation, is to be seeing with symbolic awareness.
Naming the disease helps us to (alchemically) contain it, so that it can’t possess us from behind and act itself out through us unconsciously. Once the disease is named, it’s anchored to consciousness so that it can’t vaporize back into the unconscious. This de-potentiates the disease, beginning the process of re-integrating it back into the profound unity of the psyche. The energy bound up in the compulsion to endlessly re-create the disease becomes liberated and available for creative expression. The prescription for this disease is simply for enough of us who see it to connect with each other in lucid awareness so that it can be contained, metabolized, and healed. We can put our collective realization together and dream a much more grace-filled universe into incarnation. This is an evolutionary impulse from the universe in which we are invited to participate.
Encoded in the disease is its own medicine. If we remain unconscious of the psychic nature of the disease, it will act itself out through us in a purely destructive, life-negating, and hence, demonic way. Hidden in the daemonic is our guiding spirit and genie (as in “I dream of…”). This is our true genius and inner voice. This is why Jung called the daemonic the “not yet made real creative.” The fact that such a dark shadow is emerging in our world is an expression that light is nearby, as shadows are themselves an expression of light. Demons are actually blessings in drag. Lucifer is truly the bringer of light.
GENUINE COMPASSION AS ACTIVISM
The malignant egophrenia epidemic is happening right in front of us. It is self-evident for all who have eyes to see. If we don’t look at what’s happening, if we turn away, ignore it, and contract against it, we are lying to ourselves. Then we’re colluding with and unknowingly feeding the disease. Our looking away is a form of blindness. Our looking away is a form of ignorance. Our looking away, our contraction, IS itself the disease. Our resulting complacency and inaction is, in fact, an expression of our lack of compassion. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “One who passively accepts evil [allowing it to happen] is as much involved in it as the one who perpetrates it.”[xxv]
There is a great danger when we see evil, though. We cannot bear witness to evil and remain unaffected—something inside of us becomes ignited when we experience evil. Malignant egophrenia forces upon us the responsibility to come to terms with the evil inside our own hearts. If we solidify Bush as being evil and react with righteous indignation, we are guilty of the very same thing we’re accusing Bush of, i.e., projecting the shadow. We then become a conduit for the very evil we’re reacting to. Who among us has not been guilty of being a channel for ME disease at one time or another? Who among us has not been guilty of falling asleep and unwittingly acting out our unconscious? Unlike Bush, most people simply incarnate the disease locally, within the domain of their sphere of influence, which is usually their family system.
If, when we see this virulent pathogen, we contract against it and react in any way, be it in judgment, hatred, anger or revulsion, we’re helping to perpetuate the diabolical polarization that is the signature of the disease. Our reacting in this way, which is typical of many political activists, is itself an expression that we ourselves have the disease, or to say it more accurately, the disease has us.
This disease literally has the potential to humble us. We may think, “Not us, we could never catch this disease.” However, this very arrogance leaves us open to falling prey to the virus. We may think, “Let’s step out of our arrogance, for who are we to know anything? Let’s be an enlightened bodhisattva and not judge what Bush is doing, for who are we to judge? Or let’s be an enlightened psychiatrist and not diagnose, name or pathologize Bush in any way, for we don’t want to cast any spells.” However, to have these attitudes is to fall under the seductive spell of the bug, causing us to disconnect from and give away our power. In this way, we forsake one of our greatest spiritual treasures, the act of discernment.
Being a spiritual warrior embraces and includes the most extreme discernment, which is the ability to differentiate and see clearly. Discernment is different than when we are unconsciously caught in judgment, which is a reaction to and contraction against something. Discernment is the ability to make distinctions, which is an expression of an expanded and evolved consciousness. Wielding the wisdom of discernment is an expression of genuine compassion.
Compassion is sometimes fierce, however. Sometimes it says “no,” and sets a boundary. Genuine compassion is not always smiley-faced, otherwise known as “idiot compassion,” which just enables and reinforces unconsciousness. Genuine compassion is not passive. It propels us to act for the benefit of all beings. True compassion demands us to be willing to consciously step into our power, mediated through the heart, and to find the courage to speak our true voice: The malignant egophrenia epidemic has induced a form of criminal insanity in the entire Bush regime that we are all complicit in by allowing it to happen.
With Bush as president, it’s as if we’re in a car going over the speed limit being driven by a drunk adolescent who has fallen asleep at the wheel. It’s our responsibility to recognize the extreme danger of our situation and come together to do something about it, whatever that might be. If not, if we continue to passively and helplessly watch what is playing out in front of our very eyes, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. Abraham Lincoln said, “We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” Now is the time to join together and creatively express our true voice. As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Malignant egophrenia is a true “reconciling symbol,” in that it unites the opposites. Malignant egophrenia is both a deadly disease and the highest blessing co-joined in one phenomenon. Is it a wave or a particle? It is a true “coincidentia oppositorum,” a conjunction of opposites, an expression of divinity. The question is, do we recognize what is being symbolically shown to us by egophrenia, or not? Will these apocalyptic end-times we are in be an initiation into a more expansive part of our being? Or will it destroy our species? The choice is truly ours. All that is needed is for enough of us to recognize what is being revealed, and to creatively act from this realization.
STOCKHOLM – The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported 87 new fatal cases of the Influenza A/H1N1 during the past 24 hours, as of November 20, 2009. The new fatalities raised Europe’s death toll from the new flu virus to 636.
Outside Europe and EFTA nations, 6,795 deaths have been reported to date.
Below is the list of the number of new fatal cases since the previous national updates:
Austria – two fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to three
Belgium – one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to 12
Czech Republic – one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to two
France – six fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 76
Germany – five fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 27
Hungary – two fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to seven
Ireland – one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to 16
Italy – four fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 62
Norway – one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to 23
Poland – one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to five
Portugal –one fatal case, bringing the country’s death toll to eight
Spain – 27 fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 115
Sweeden – six fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 11
Switzerland – reported its first A/H1N1 flu fatality
United Kingdom – 28 fatal cases, bringing the country’s death toll to 215
Since I published the videos on the swine fly I’ve been watching out for news on it. I have no idea what this all means and I have no interest in joining the massive alert unless there really is something serious going on. Unfortunately I don’t know so here is this information so that those out there make of it what they can.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8370859.stm
jhayzee27 | 10 hours ago add
MADRID — According to the Spanish Health and Social Policy Ministry a total of 115 fatal cases of A/H1N1 flu have been documented in the country, 27 fatalities more than the report for last week.
The ministry released a statement saying that it has estimated a total of 160,807 cases of flu, and 96.42% of them have turned out positive for A/H1N1 flu, which translates to 155,051 cases of influenza A/H1N1 in the country. The ninistry added that the mortality rate of the disease is 0.14 fatalities per 1,000 laboratory confirmed patients.
In addition, the ministry reported that the week between November 8 to 14 saw a surge in emergency treatment of A/H1N1 flu, from 327.92 per 100,000 cases the week before to 359.85 per 100,000 cases.
However, majority of the A/H1N1 flu patients in the country presented mild symptoms and had shown good response to medications.
Elena
Sorry, but I just ‘skipped’ all that Bush and disease stuff. It just was not you at your real point of contact with the world. Sounded ‘borrowed’…..Nigel.
Drug resistant swine flu hits UK
By Fergus Walsh
Health correspondent, BBC News
Health officials say a Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu has spread between hospital patients.
Five patients on a unit treating people with severe underlying health conditions at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff were infected.
Three appear to have acquired the infection in hospital.
They are thought to be the first confirmed cases of person-to-person transmission of a Tamiflu-resistant strain in the world.
There have been several dozen reports around the world of people developing resistance to Tamiflu while taking the drug – but they have not passed on the strain to others.
Just one possible cases of person-to-person transmission of a resistant strain has been recorded – between two people at a US summer camp – and this has never been confirmed.
Two of the University Hospital Wales patients have recovered and have been discharged from hospital, one is in critical care and two are being treated on the ward.
The health officials stressed there was no risk to anyone else.
They said tests were being carried out to confirm exactly what happened.
The UK has bought enough doses of Tamiflu, which can shorten the duration of swine flu and reduce the risk of complications, for half the population.
Serious concern
So any spread of a Tamiflu-resistant strain of the illness is a serious public health concern.
The H1N1 virus has been remarkably stable since it emerged in April, but virologists had been half expecting new resistant strains to emerge.
Dr Roland Salmon, director of the National Public Health Service for Wale’s Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, said: “The emergence of influenza A viruses that are resistant to Tamiflu is not unexpected in patients with serious underlying conditions and suppressed immune systems, who still test positive for the virus despite treatment.
“In this case, the resistant strain of swine flu does not appear to be any more severe than the swine flu virus that has been circulating since April.”
Dr Tony Jewell, Chief Medical Officer for Wales, said: “We know that people with suppressed immune systems are more susceptible to the swine flu virus, which is why they are a priority group under the first phase of the vaccination programme in Wales which is progressing at pace.
“We have stringent processes in place for monitoring for antiviral resistance in the UK so that we can spot resistance early and the causes can be investigated and the cases managed.
“Identifying these cases shows that our systems are working so patients should be reassured.
“Treatment with Tamiflu is still appropriate for swine flu and people should continue to take Tamiflu when they are prescribed it.
“It’s also important that good hygiene practices are followed to further prevent the spread of the virus.”
On Thursday it was announced that more than three million healthy children under five across the UK will be offered the swine flu jab.
Figures released on Thursday showed an estimated 53,000 new cases of swine flu in England in the last week, down from 64,000 in the week before.
In Scotland, the figure was 21,200, down from about 21,500 in the previous seven days.
The rate of flu-like illnesses diagnosed by GPs in Wales dropped to 36 cases for every 100,000 people from 65.8 the previous week.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8370859.stm
http://www.ubalert.com/a/12246
jhayzee27 | 2 days ago add
PARIS — The French Education Ministry reported that 51 schools in the country have been temporarily closed up to Tuesday noon to prevent a possible spread of the A/H1N1 flu or the emergence of confirmed cases.
The string of closures has affected some 16 school districts in France, amounting to 116 classes. Based on official figures, the latest number was updated from that of Tuesday morning when 32 schools were closed to negate the risk imposed by the A/H1N1 virus, affecting 124 classes.
On Monday, two schools and a kindergarten were closed due to suspected A/H1N1 flu cases in southwestern France.
The country’s Institute for Public Health Surveillance stated that as of Monday, the A/H1N1 flu has claimed 70 lives in the mainland and its overseas territories.
http://www.ubalert.com/a/12263
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16 Nov 09:02
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16 Nov 11:00
Germany’s A/H1N1 Flu Cases Double in a Week
BERLIN – The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases reported thar the number of confirmed cases of A/H1N1 flu in Germany have more than doubled in the past week.
The RKI’s Gerard Krause announced on Monday that there are currently more than 15,000 newly reported cases per week, and the figure only represents laboratory confirmed cases.
Last Wednesday the RKI stated that about 7,000 new cases were being detected in the country per week. Moreover, as of last week, the A/H1N1 flu had claimed 16 more lives in Germany, with over 50,000 people infected.
‘Lucky break’ in swine flu fight
By Nick Triggle
Health reporter, BBC News
The UK may have had a “lucky break” with the way swine flu is spreading, the chief medical officer says.
The number of new infections has dropped in Scotland and is not rising as rapidly as first feared in England.
Sir Liam Donaldson said the second peak was proving to be a “slow-burn” which was buying time to get the vaccine programme under way.
The two jabs being used in the UK have now been licensed and GPs should start immunising within a few weeks.
By getting to that stage before a sharp rise in new infections, Sir Liam believes many lives could be saved.
“ It is possible it may peak at a lower and earlier level than first expected. That would be incredibly positive ”
Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer
“We are well into the second wave of pandemic flu after the first wave in July, but it is proving to be a slow-burn.
“We may have got a lucky break with the way the virus has behaved and we may be able to get the vaccine out there before our flu season really gets under way.
“I am looking at it very optimistically.”
People with underlying health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, and pregnant women will be among a 14m-strong priority group which will get the vaccine first along with health workers.
The government has yet to decide whether the rest of the population should be vaccinated.
Sir Liam even suggested the second peak may not be as bad as first anticipated.
“It is possible it may peak at a lower and earlier level than first expected. That would be incredibly positive.”
Sir Liam was speaking after releasing the latest figures for weekly infections.
In England, there were 18,000 new cases – up from 14,000 the week before – but well short of the doubling that would represent a surge in cases.
However, the number of patients in intensive care has hit 47 – a two-month high
Meanwhile, in Scotland the number of new infections has halved to 6,800.
Numbers of cases in Wales and Northern Ireland have always been and remain much lower. However, the rate of infections in Northern Ireland has started to accelerate sharply.
In total, 90 people have died with swine flu since the outbreak first started.
Nigel,
The Bush stuff is the most important material I’ve come across in almost three years. It is the most related reference to the Fellowship phenomenon that I’ve found. You are free not to read Nigel but Levy synthesizes a problem that we’ve been discussing for 87 internet pages in five pages.
This is a new understanding that was not available to us before and it will mark everything in the future.It is wonderful to know that there are people who already understand what is going on clearly and are not struggling to convey it like I’ve been doing for three years.
I am surprised with your reaction Nigel. I thought you’d have a better understanding of things that touch us so closely.
It is not me who is important here but dealing with real issues that are affecting us all including this swine flu which may or may not be cause for alarm but the fact that there are these many deaths in such short period seems worth taking a serious look at the problem.
I am not a doctor, I have no idea but these are news from the BBC and I can’t imagine they are also just trying to alarm people.
Elena
It may be just me being insular, but I cannot and probably will not make contact with Bush (or even swine flu for that matter). Your glass art classes and contact with common people (and even your poetry) would seem to me to have more relevance to your ‘inner leanings’. I just don’t fuck with things I cannot ‘get to grips with’. Those areas seem like fertile ones for personality, whether true or false. Just trying to help…..Nigel.
278. Elena – November 21, 2009 [Edit]
Q&A: Advice about swine flu
Swine flu has spread across the world since emerging in Mexico and is now officially the first flu pandemic for 40 years. Experts fear millions of people will be infected.
What is swine flu and what are the symptoms?
Swine flu is a respiratory disease, caused by a strain of the influenza type A virus known as H1N1.
H1N1 is the same strain which causes seasonal outbreaks of flu in humans on a regular basis.
But this latest version is different: it contains genetic material that is typically found in strains of the virus that affect humans, birds and swine.
Although the strain may have originated in pigs, it is now a wholly human disease.
It can be spread from person to person by coughing and sneezing.
SWINE FLU SYMPTOMS
Typical symptoms: sudden fever (38C or above) and sudden cough
Other symptoms include:
1. Tiredness and chills
2. Headache, sore throat, runny nose and sneezing
3. Stomach upset, loss of appetite, diarrhoea
4. Aching muscles, limb or joint pain Source: NHS
Symptoms of swine flu in humans appear to be similar to those produced by standard, seasonal flu – fever, cough, sore throat, body aches and chills. Some people with the virus have also reported nausea and diarrhoea.
What are the risks of the flu?
Experts have wrestled with the question ever since the pandemic emerged.
The problem is that for most people it is mild – about 98% recover without the need for any hospital treatment.
But doctors have found it very hard to predict who will develop complications, hence it has been dubbed a “Jekyll and Hyde” virus.
A fifth of the people who have died have been previously healthy individuals without any health conditions.
Nonetheless, certain groups are known to be at higher risk.
Pregnant women are between three to four times more likely to get seriously ill.
Young children also have higher rates of hospitalisation – although this could be partly because doctors are quicker to admit them.
Should I have the vaccine if offered it?
The vaccination programme is well under way.
Nearly 14m people, including NHS workers, people with health problems and pregnant women, will be offered the jab by Christmas. Healthy children under the age of five are also due to start getting it.
But already polls suggest people are worried about whether to get vaccinated.
The government says that getting immunised is the best way to protect yourself against flu.
However, its experts recognise that people are jumpy about vaccines and have said it is very much a personal decision.
People who are suspicious of vaccines often talk about the risk of complications.
One of the most common which is mentioned in association with flu vaccines is Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare disorder in which a person’s own immune system damages the nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.
Most of the evidence suggests vaccines do not increase the risk, however there is research to indicate that getting flu increases it seven-fold.
Another allegation sometimes made is that being given the vaccine could actually give you flu.
Doctors are adamant this is not the case – the two vaccines being used in the UK do not contain the live virus.
As for deaths, the World Health Organization has been monitoring this and while a handful of people have died after being given the vaccine, officials have ruled out any link to the jab.
Why has the UK been more affected than other countries?
The UK has a comprehensive flu surveillance system, hence more cases may be identified in the UK than in other countries with less comprehensive monitoring services.
Also, the spread of the infection in the early stages was linked to flights out of Mexico.
FLU PANDEMICS
1918: The Spanish flu pandemic remains the most devastating outbreak of modern times. Caused by a form of the H1N1 strain of flu, it is estimated that up to 40% of the world’s population were infected, and more than 50 million people died, with young adults particularly badly affected
1957: Asian flu killed two million people. Caused by a human form of the virus, H2N2, combining with a mutated strain found in wild ducks. The impact of the pandemic was minimised by rapid action by health authorities, who identified the virus, and made vaccine available speedily. The elderly were particularly vulnerable
1968: An outbreak first detected in Hong Kong, and caused by a strain known as H3N2, killed up to one million people globally, with those over 65 most likely to die
With Mexico being a popular tourist destination for British tourists, Britain was one of the first countries alongside the US and Canada to start seeing cases.
As the UK was affected earlier than some other countries the infection spread to a higher number of people at the start of the pandemic.
However, as the British summer progressed, cases fell, while southern hemisphere countries saw rises as they went through their winters.
More recently cases have started going up again in the UK, but other countries, such as France, also have high rates.
What should I do if I think I have it?
Anyone with flu-like symptoms who suspects they might have the swine flu virus are being advised to stay at home and contact the National Flu Service on 0800 1 513 100 or via the internet at http://www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu
The service allows sufferers to get access to anti-flu drugs without the need to consult a GP.
However, those with underlying health conditions, pregnant women and parents of children under one are still being advised to contact a doctor.
The GP route is also open to anyone who does not want to use the service.
In the initial phase of the outbreak, lab testing was done to diagnose the flu but this is no longer happening routinely.
How is it treated?
Two drugs commonly used to treat flu, Tamiflu and Relenza, are effective at treating infection, reducing the length of the illness and cutting the chances that people will have serious complications.
Use of these drugs may also make it less likely that infected people will pass the virus on to others.
However, the drugs must be administered at an early stage to be effective.
Researchers have also questioned whether the drugs are helpful in children aged between one and 12, saying the risk of side effects might outweigh any benefits.
But the Department of Health maintains a “safety-first approach” of offering antivirals to everyone remains a sensible and responsible way forward.
It said it would keep the policy under review.
Where can I get further advice?
Further information and advice on swine flu can be found at websites of leading health and research organisations around the world. The
on the virus.
The UK’s government services website is carrying
The
about what to do if returning from an affected area.
how swine flu is different from other flu.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
of information.
The US government’s
the number of cases in the US.
You can also track spread of swine flu reports using unofficial sources. Google is mapping search term data as an indicator of flu activity both
and
using news reports. Social media guide
.
Information and links to
the micro-blogging service, while social networking website
Further questions from our readers
And the BBC’s medical correspondent, Fergus Walsh, is
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8021958.stm
257. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
I found this today. It is exactly what we’ve been talking about for almost four years trying to understand Cults and the Fellowship of Friends phenomenon.
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE W. BUSH:
A REFLECTION OF OUR COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
by Paul Levy
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth.[i]
~C. G. Jung
George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times in which we live. It is an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it is an illness in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.
Bush’s malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the dis-order of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and appear like a “regular” guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush’s illness “Malignant Egophrenia” (as compared to schizophrenia), or “ME disease,” for short. If ME disease goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person afflicted is in a position of power.
In much the same way that a child’s psychology cannot be understood without looking at the family system of which he or she is a part, George Bush does not exist in isolation. We can view Bush—and his entire administration: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc., as well as the corporate, military industrial complex they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media they control, the voters supporting them, and ourselves as well—as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a “field.” Instead of relating to any part of this field as an isolated entity, it’s important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the “medium” through which malignant egophrenia manifests and propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon and needs to be contemplated as such. Bush’s sickness is our own.
THE DISEASE IS NON-LOCAL
Being a field phenomenon, malignant egophrenia is non-local in nature, which means that it is not bound by the limitations of time or space. Being non-local, this disease pervades and underlies the entire field and can therefore manifest anywhere, through anyone, and at any moment. The disease’s non-local nature makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it in potential. It is more a question of whether or not we are aware of our susceptibility to fall prey to the disease. This awareness itself serves as an immunization protecting us from the pernicious effects of the illness, thereby allowing us to be of genuine help to others.
Bush, like all of us, is both a manifestation of this deeper field and simultaneously an agent affecting the field. He’s become so fully taken over by the disease, all the while not suspecting a thing, that he’s become a “carrier” for this death-creating disease, thus infecting the field around him. He’s become a portal through which the field around him “warps” in such a way as to feed and support his pathogenic process. A non-local, reciprocally co-arising and interdependent field of unconscious denial and cover-up constellates around Bush to enable and protect his pathology. People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is “closed,” which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the “real” world.
Bush supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this—they resist self-reflection at all costs. Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world reflecting back their unconsciousness as evidence proving the rightness of their viewpoint. All of Bush’s supporters mutually reinforce each others’ unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability is collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness.
People who don’t recognize Bush’s illness and support him are unconsciously colluding with and enabling the co-creation of the pathological field incarnating itself into the human family. People who support Bush become unwitting agents through which this non-local disease feeds and replicates itself. By supporting Bush, they collaborate with and become parts of the greater, interconnected, and self-organizing field of the disease.
The situation is analogous to when seemingly good, normal, loving Germans supported Hitler, believing he was a good leader trying to help them. The German people didn’t realize that the virulent malignant egophrenia pathogen had taken possession of Hitler and was incarnating itself through him. By not seeing this and supporting Hitler, they became agents used by this non-local, deadly disease to propagate itself. This is why Jung says, “…evil needs masses for its genesis and continued existence.”[ii] What happened in Germany was a collective psychosis, and this is what is taking place in our country right now.
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258. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
This part of the article is equally meaningful and adapts perfectly to our Cult situation. Also interesting to observe is the understanding of lying as an obstacle to awakening presented in the System which was impossible to grasp in the Cult for it was simply never addressed. The silent areas are what reveal the huge weaknesses in groups of people. We are not only talking about Girard, Robert, Dorian, Asaf and others in the inner circle, we are talking about each one of us and our participation in this phenomenon which is happening outside as much as inside the cult.
THE LIE
IIt is not that the threat of terrorism is unreal, but that Bush’s policies in dealing with terrorism are actually fueling the fire. The way Bush is fighting terrorism is in actuality the very act invoking and creating more of it in the first place. Bush is so dissociated from the darkness within himself that he splits off from it, projects it outside of himself, and then tries to destroy it. He is fighting against his own shadow, a battle that can never be won. Bush’s inner process, because of the position of power he finds himself in, is being dreamed up and played out on the world stage.
Egophrenia is unique in that it is an inner disease of the soul expressing itself via the medium of the outside world; it collapses the boundary between inner and outer. We could even say that the inner core of egophrenia actually in-forms and gives shape to the outer universe so as to express itself.
By creating more of the very thing he is fighting against, Bush is enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul. In Bush’s case, it is the repetition compulsion gone awry, to daemonic proportions, getting acted out on the world stage. To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person [or whole nation]…the daemonic can be either creative or destructive[iii] [i.e., demonic]…violence is the daemonic gone awry…ages [such as ours] tend to be times when the daemonic is expressed in its most destructive form.”[iv] [Please note: comments in brackets are the author’s emphasis unless stated otherwise].
The daemonic aspect of the disease can develop an autonomy of its own and literally possess the person or group, as it is self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-organizing in nature, like a closed and negative feedback loop. The person who is taken over doesn’t suspect a thing, as the field secretly conspires, colludes with, and enables their psychosis. For example, Bush, in his delusion, imagines he is divinely guided. His supporters want to believe this to feed their own adolescent fantasies of wanting to have a divinely inspired leader take care of and protect them. Because of this need, they invest in Bush’s delusion, which just confirms to Bush all the more that he is indeed God’s instrument. Bush and his followers are co-dependently and reciprocally feeding and supporting each others’ unconscious narcissistic needs in a truly pathological and ultimately self-destructive co-dependent relationship.
Both Bush and the terrorists are projecting the shadow onto each other, seeing their own shadow reflected in the other, as though looking in a mirror. It’s interesting to note that the inner meaning of the word mirror is “shadow-holder.”[v] Both Bush and the terrorists see each other as criminals, as the incarnation of evil. By projecting the shadow like this, they locate the evil “outside of themselves,” which ensures that they don’t have to recognize the evil within themselves. Ironically, by fighting against their own shadow in this way, they become possessed by the very thing they are trying to destroy, thereby perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. Jung comments on this very situation:
The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided [not in touch with both the light AND dark parts of themselves] and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.[vi]
Projecting the shadow is an activity that relates to lying, both to oneself and others. It’s interesting to note that one of the inner meanings of the word Devil is “the liar.” Projecting the shadow, according to Jung, “…deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil.”[vii] Jung stresses the importance of consciously developing what he calls our “imagination for evil,”[viii] which is to consciously recognize our potential for evil. This recognition means embracing and integrating our dark side into our wholeness, which is made up of both light and dark. If we have no imagination for evil, to quote Jung, “…evil has us in its grip…for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil.”[ix]
By projecting the shadow, Bush unwittingly becomes a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and to act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he identifies with the light and imagines that he is divinely inspired. To quote Jung, a person in a position of power who has become dissociated like Bush, “…even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.”[x] He then believes that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, rationalizing it as being God’s will. Unable to self-reflect, he is convinced of the rightness of his viewpoint, which he considers non-negotiable.
This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become unconsciously identified with and possessed by the hero, or savior archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, Bush (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and liberate the planet.
This is the height of irony since, in reality, Bush is acting as an unwitting conduit for evil by instigating wars and taking away peoples’ freedoms. This incongruity brings into bold relief the severe dissociation characterizing Bush’s condition. His inflation blinds him to the destructive consequences of his actions, and is one of the easier aspects of his pathology to recognize. Being inflated due to an unconscious identification with an archetype is, in essence, an expression of having forfeited one’s humanity, a state in which humility becomes impossible. “An inflated consciousness,” to quote Jung:
is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it [and others within its sphere of influence] dead.[xi]
Having the most powerful man in the world be unconsciously identified with and inflated by an archetype is a very dangerous situation for everyone involved, which is all of us.
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259. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
Robert couldn’t be better described than in this passage. Numerous posts I wrote specially at the beginning of the fofblog present this picture without knowing what exactly it meant at the time. The queen bee, the king-dictator as I called him then are exactly parallel to what is presented here about Bush and others in power.
DRUNK WITH POWER
Bush has fallen into a state that is the embodiment of arrogance. Succumbing to the temptation of power, Bush has become corrupt, which is the inevitable consequence when one prefers power over truth. The original sin of the Bush administration is love of power for its own sake. Bush has fallen into a vicious cycle where he has become addicted to power. To quote Senate minority leader Harry Reid, “This administration is drunk with power.”[xii] Bush’s unrestrained lust for power is like an alcoholic’s compulsive thirsting for and being controlled by alcohol. Bush is like the typical substance abuser, only in his case, the substance he is abusing is power, and the family system that is the recipient of his abuse is the entire world.
We need to not be naïve and realize the danger of our situation: People addicted to power as Bush is will literally stop at nothing to retain their power, no matter how vile the means. To quote Karl Rove, the administration is willing to do “whatever it takes” to stay in power.
Not only does Bush not see the depraved nature of the situation he has fallen into, he doesn’t want to see it. Being in the role of having power, there is a counter-incentive to self-reflect, which simply feeds the compulsion and reinforces the addiction, a truly pathological process.
The inner name of ME disease is “Mad Emperor” disease, as it is what happens when a person in a position of power falls prey to and becomes seduced by that power. When a person becomes addicted to unrestrained power, they make a Faustian pact with the Devil, selling their soul in the bargain. Having let the “genie” out of the bottle, a person stricken with Mad Emperor disease discovers that, instead of the genie serving and empowering them, they ultimately become obedient and a slave to the genie. A person who has fallen into this perverse state has, because of their interminable arrogance, literally hypnotized themselves and become their own victim, totally losing their internal freedom in the process. People in this state of utter depravity, such as Hitler, Stalin, Hussein and George Bush, are truly possessed by an overwhelming lust for power that compels them to perpetrate endless violence on others. They believe that there is no higher authority—pronouncements to the contrary—and hence, feel they can literally get away with murder.
Bush has become possessed by the very power that he has conjured up—a powerful, seemingly “other,” external energy has co-opted Bush to be its instrument. Because of his unending greed, Bush is allowing himself to be used by others, manipulated by darker forces like a puppet on a string. Having sold his soul, he is for sale to the highest bidder. At the same time, these seemingly “external” darker forces are an expression of something deep within himself that he has become a stranger to. Unless recognized, this pathological situation always results in self-destruction. To quote Jung, “…a mass always produces a ‘Leader,’ who infallibly becomes the victim of his own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show.”[xiii]
The indigenous author Jack Forbes, author of Columbus and other Cannibals, describes those who are suffering from this malady as being infected with a literal illness, a virulent and contagious disease he calls wetiko, or “cannibal sickness.” Those so afflicted consume, so to speak, the lives of others—human and nonhuman alike—for private purpose or profit, and do so without giving back anything of their own lives. They simply exploit others, be it people or the environment, as objects to satisfy their own unending narcissistic hunger. Like a vampire, they feed off of other peoples’ blood. William James described it well, “Evil is a disease.”
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260. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
All these posts are coming from
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/georgew.html
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261. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
Everyone in the Fellowship Cult is well described in this part. The “frigidity” of social relationships within the cult is an aspect of this lack of being in contact with their feelings in all of the Fellowship population. That lifelessness that I pointed out many times on the fofblog is what renders members more and more pathological and subject to the madness. In cults the madness is much more efficient, spreads much more quickly than in regular society because members in a cult are in a much tighter environment than members of a nation. In the nation there is still more freedom until the whole of it affirms itself in fascism.
HIDING FROM HIMSELF
At the root of Bush’s process is an unwillingness and seeming inability to experience his own sense of sin, guilt and shame, as if he is afraid of being exposed, of being found out. He’s clearly unable to feel any remorse and experience his own weakness and vulnerability, his own sense of failure. This is too great a threat to his narcissism. Another way of describing Bush’s psychic numbness is to say that he cannot, under any circumstances, allow himself to feel.
This inability to feel his shame and guilt sets in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of denial, cover-up and projecting the shadow, all of which are based on a lie. Bush then falls into an endless loop of hiding from his own lie, which is to say, from himself. This process allows Bush to become taken over by egophrenia and become a conduit for the disease to incarnate its malignant aspect through him. As the Buddhist Maharatnakuta Sutra says, “A liar lies to himself as well as to the gods. Lying is the origin of all evils.”
Commenting on this resistance to self-reflection and endless cycle of self-deception, Jung says,
“Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists.[xiv]
Malignant egophrenia is the embodiment of the separate self, the narcissistic ego, spinning out of control to an extremely pathological degree—hence the name “ME disease.” If we want to understand the malignant aspects of egophrenia gone berserk, all we have to do is to contemplate the actions of George Bush. Being the incarnation of this disease, he is its revelation in human form.
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262. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
The “one-sidedness” mentioned in this part is very important to look at because it was clearly addressed in the fofblog when I talked about our inability to deal with evil, evil as incarnated by the fofcult and our inability to take serious action against it. Not being able to seriously take action against these institutions is simply allowing our shadow to continue expressing itself and remain justified.
This one-sidedness was also mentioned by me in post 152:
“You are cult people, you have no love, your sickness spreads out no matter where you participate. You hide yourselves just like Robert and Girard hide themselves inside. You give only the light side of your lives convinced that that will keep others from seeing how much darkness there is in it. But you’re not any less free of the cult sickness than those inside.”
Anyone who studies the two blogs will easily observe that people on both blogs are unable to dialogue with what I’ve been presenting. They avoided it as long as they could and when my frustration was voiced out with anger, they immediately took it up as an excuse to ban me. The inability to relate to these facts in ex-members outside is as significant as the member’s inability to acknowledge them inside. The behavior people have in the public sphere clearly points to how they are dealing with the dark side in life as much as in themselves. Avoiding social responsibility and allowing for “leaders” to direct our lives without clear understanding of what they are doing is an aspect of our own inner blind spots and lack of responsibility in our inner as much as external world.
A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR
Jung said, “…involuntary one-sidedness, i.e., the inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism.”[xv] Bush’s unconscious, dis-association from himself manifests as a compulsive, “involuntary one-sidedness” that results in primitive, uncivilized and truly Neanderthal behavior. Because of Bush’s position of power, he expresses his inflexibility in the most brutal of ways.
Bush has the seductive coherence of someone who is fanatically identified, like the typical fundamentalist, with only one side of an inherently two-sided polarity. Falling victim to one’s own deception as Bush has can have a mesmerizing and gripping effect on others, as he appears so convinced of what he is saying and is able to project this conviction. Jung tells us that:
Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident…things only become dangerous when the pathological liar is taken seriously by a wider public. Like Faust, he is bound to make a pact with the devil and thus slips off the straight path.[xvi]
Jung reiterates the point by saying, “I should like to emphasize above all that it is part and parcel of the pathological liar’s make-up to be plausible.”[xvii] In addition, Jung makes the point that pathological liars are in the habit of:
presenting their wish-fantasies partly as easily attainable and partly as having been attained, and who believe these obvious lies themselves…. In order to realize their wish fantasies no means is too bad for them…. They “believe” they are doing it for the benefit of humanity, or at least of the nation or their party, and cannot under any circumstances see that their aim is invariably egoistic. Since this is a common failing, it is difficult for the layman to recognize such cases as psychopathic. Because only a convinced person is immediately convincing (by psychic contagion), he exercises as a rule a devastating influence on his contemporaries. Almost everybody is taken in by him.[xviii] [Emphasis in original]
Monk and author Thomas Merton, commenting on the case of the obviously demented Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, points out, “One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.”[xix]
A key feature of malignant egophrenia is that it is very hard to recognize when someone is a carrier, because the person can seem so normal and even endearing. The person afflicted can be very “charming” and have a charisma that can entrance those who don’t see through their subterfuge.
Just as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious, Bush is touching something very deep in the American psyche. Both Hitler and Bush dreamed of and are exponents of a “new order,” which is one of the reasons people fall for them. Like Hitler, Bush is acting out on the world stage an under-developed psychological process that deals simplistically with issues such as good and evil. It’s as if he hasn’t grown out of and fully differentiated from the realm of mythic, archetypal fantasy that is typical of early adolescence. This immature aspect of Bush’s process speaks to and resonates with those voters who support him, as it is a reflection of their own under-developed inner process.
The most dangerous leaders are those who are adept at acting out our forbidden impulses, urges we would never allow ourselves to consciously give voice to in our individual lives. We vicariously experience these hidden desires through our unconscious identification with both the leader and the group for which he is the “conductor.” There is a safety, a comfort, a familiarity in being accepted and embraced by the prevailing mass psychology of the collective. There is a secret attraction to be on the side that seems “right,” to be on the side with power, to be on what is perceived as the winning side. The cost is high, however, as we lose both our sanity and our “Self” in the process.
Whereas Hitler’s evil was more overt in its cruelty and sadism, Bush’s dark side is much more hidden and disguised, which makes it particularly dangerous. People who support Bush are blind to what is very obvious to others. It’s as if they’ve become hypnotized and fallen under the spell Bush is casting.
Why would people vote for someone stricken with malignant egophrenia? People who support Bush are suggestible and susceptible to the same malady Bush is embodying, as if they have a predisposition for it (based on their own trauma, dissociated psyche, and tendency to project the shadow). Supporting Bush is a sign that a person not only doesn’t see the deadly illness that is incarnating itself through Bush, but is an expression that this disease has taken up residence in their being and is using them to do its bidding.
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263. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
“Part of the sinister nature of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name—as being a form of insanity called ignorance—people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the one’s who are crazy.”
Can any sentence better describe how I was banned from the fofblog with the silence and approval of 97% of the participants and meek refutal from the rest but one?
The fofblog “institutionalized” itself just like the Fellowship cult institutionalized itself and legitimizes its equally abusive actions like the Fellowship cult. 100% of the participants, except me, continue to take a part in it for not one of you is clear of what you are doing.
If being sick is calling fascists “FASCISTS”, pimps, “PIMPS”, sick fuckers “SICK FUCKERS” then let me die from this illness. If protesting as I’ve been protesting is being crazy, let me die from this madness because I wish nothing to do with yours that submits to infamy with support and compliance. A sick person is nothing else than a sick person and we must be able to tell each other when we are nothing but sick people and act against it so that we help each other out of the sickness.
You in the fofblog were as willing to hurt me as Robert, Girard and everyone else in the Fellowship are willing to hurt members in the outside circle. You are each and all of you still as sick as you were inside. I am glad to know that there is enough arrogance in me and that I never submitted to your rules which are as sick as the Fellowships. You tried to make me kneel to your conditions and I did not and that is what made you ban me because each one of you carries the same power sickness that Robert and Girard carry, you do not allow people who are not willing to submit to participate and IAM NOT WILLING TO SUBMIT. You cannot tolerate my freedom, you cannot bear the envy that arouses in your darkness when someone acts from their freedom. I am glad to be able to defend myself. I am glad I’ve recognized my weaknesses when I told you that the Fellowship should be closed not for me but for your selves, not because I was better than anyone else but because you each needed to empower your selves with the understanding. I am glad I’ve modeled my pain out in public and parented myself with a man and a woman who were willing to support me when I most needed it, allowing me to experience the darkest hours of my abandonment in childhood, which being banned simply re-enacted with all its power. I am far from being free but I am much more free than I’ve been. May each one of you find your own freedom and allow us to share in each other’s life like human beings.
A COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
ME disease is an Orwellian world where up is down, as its flawless illogic is convoluted and inverted at its core. Malignant egophrenia is crazy-making. It induces a very hard to recognize form of insanity. When we fall prey to egophrenia, we are unable to recognize that we are taken over, as we become bewitched by our own projections, accusing other people of doing what we ourselves are doing. For example, Bush is guilty of the very thing he accuses Saddam Hussein of when he calls Hussein, “A man who has defied the world,” and “A man who has made the United Nations look foolish.” Similarly, Bush is talking about himself when, referring to the terrorists, he says we are “facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.” He is unknowingly giving voice, shape and form to his unconscious shadow.
Part of the sinister nature of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name—as being a form of insanity called ignorance—people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the one’s who are crazy. Because egophrenia hooks us through our unconscious, when we are infected with it, just like a sociopath, we don’t experience ourselves as being sick or needing help. When we are taken over by egophrenia, we always see the problem as existing in someone else.
In addition, when we are stricken with egophrenia, we think we are successfully hiding and concealing our shadow activities. We imagine that others can’t see the underhanded nature of what we are doing, all the while not realizing that our criminal activities are their own revelation and could not be more obvious for all who have not fallen under our spell.
By being duplicitous and trying to hide his ulterior motives, Bush is unwittingly revealing them. Bush made a telling “Freudian slip” when he said “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” In this slip of the tongue, Bush was unknowingly giving voice to the unconscious shadow, the part of himself whose intentions are the polar opposite of what he consciously imagines and represents them to be at that moment. Bush’s shadow was speaking through him, revealing what was being acted out through his unconscious. Bush had become transparent, blowing his own cover in the process. Egophrenia is a form of psychic blindness in which we have become so unconscious that we literally project out our own blindness and imagine that others, instead of ourselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Egophrenia hides in the shadows of human consciousness and secretly influences perception in ways that prevent the disease from being perceived. Unless we recognize the insidious nature of this psychic disease, there is a crazy-making field around it that will make us a part of itself. Collective psychosis is like that.
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264. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
THE PSYCHIATRIC COMMUNITY HAS THE DISEASE
There is only one reason why the mainstream psychiatric community is not studying this contagious psychosis as it spreads through Bush, his regime, and the surrounding field—they haven’t yet recognized that the disease even exists. It is through our unconsciousness that this non-local pathogen flavors our perceptions to suit its purposes. By not recognizing the nature of the disease, the mental health community becomes its unwitting agents, helping the disease to propagate. What clearer sign do we need of a collective psychosis than when our mental health system itself, whose job it is to monitor such phenomenon, not only doesn’t recognize that there is a collective psychosis running rampant in our society, but are themselves infected with it?
The DSM-IV, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, is continually expanding and including new diagnoses as we deepen our understanding of and map the contours of the human psyche. The problem is that the DSM-IV is an expression of an “old paradigm” way of thinking in that it looks at mental illness as it exists in individuals, regarding the individual as an object existing separate from the field around them. This is based on an illusion, for the individual is embedded in the greater field—family system, society, and planetary culture—and is an expression of this multi-textured field. The individual and the field around them interpenetrate and condition each other so fully that they can’t even be regarded as two separate aspects that have become joined together, but rather must be seen as inseparable parts of a greater whole.
Egophrenia expresses itself non-locally throughout the entire field. Consequently, instead of being viewed through the lens of the fragmented, separate self, it requires a more holistic vision that recognizes the existence of the interdependently co-arising field. It’s not a question of integrating ME disease into the existing DSM-IV, but instead of radically expanding, up-leveling, and re-visioning our understanding of the nature of illness itself.
To view the world through the lens of the illusory, separate self is to pathologize certain individuals as if they exist separately from ourselves. When we recognize our interdependence, however, we concurrently get into focus and see the deeper, unified field expressing itself through us and connecting us with each other. It is like instead of contemplating one finger on a glove, we can recognize the hand moving the finger in relation to the other fingers, which are recognized to not be separate from each other. Instead of studying the individual fingers, we can focus our attention on the underlying hand animating and in-forming them.
On the level of the separate self, Bush can clearly be pathologized as being a sociopath, a malignant narcissist, as well as many other things. From the limited (and illusory) perspective of seeing Bush as separate from the unified field, there is no arguing with these diagnoses. But to concretize Bush in this way would be analogous to only seeing the circle that a three-dimensional sphere makes as it passes through a two-dimensional plane. The circle is a lower-level reflection of a higher-dimensional entity (the sphere), just as Bush being a sociopathic criminal is a lower-level expression of a deeper and more pervasive process non-locally expressing itself throughout the interconnected field.
Bush is merely being dreamed up to play a role in a deeper process. Even though he has fallen prey to a deadly disease that has hooked him through his unconscious, Bush is still fully accountable for his actions. We are always ethically responsible for our Faustian bargains.
It’s profoundly important that the mental health community at large recognize this age-old disease with which we are all afflicted. Doing this changes this community from being part of the problem to being part of the solution. The disease literally feeds on our unawareness of it. The recognition of the disease is itself the beginning of the cure. By recognizing the nature of this collective psychosis, we snap out of being part of it. Malignant egophrenia, unrecognized and misdiagnosed until now, has wreaked havoc all throughout human history, and is at the very root of our current world crisis. To the extent we are unaware of the nature of this collective psychosis, it has us in its grips and will unconsciously be acted out through us in a destructive manner. The choice is truly ours.
This disease, if it gets out of control, means self-destruction for both victim and perpetrator. There are no winners. The entire interconnected web supporting Bush can be recognized as tentacles of this virulent, non-local pathogen that, to the extent it is not seen, is potentially gaining more and more sovereignty. Like a sci-fi movie, we have dreamed up a higher-dimensional Frankenstein monster that has taken on a life of its own and truly threatens us all.
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265. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMING THE DISEASE
One of the signatures of ME disease is that it hooks people through their unconscious blind spot, so when people are afflicted by this deadly disease, they are truly asleep to what is being acted out through them. Like a true Manchurian candidate, Bush is being manipulated, used and victimized, like a puppet on a string, by a deeper matrix of cover-up and deceit that has been perpetrated by him and his very regime—and has now taken on an autonomous life of its own.
Malignant egophrenia is an expression of, and is at the root of, the extreme polarization and dissociation in both the human psyche and the world process at large. The disease is archetypal in nature, which is to say that it has eternally re-created itself and played itself out over the course of history. We can even say that it’s the “bug” in the system that has in-formed and given shape to all of the conflict and disharmony of human relationships. ME disease is as old as the human species. However, we’re now at the point in our evolution where we can finally recognize it, see it, give it a name, and diagnose it.
Egophrenia is an expression of the deepest level of our being, the archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Just like we cannot describe any archetype completely, but can only realize the nature of the archetype by its effects, we are not able to specifically and completely define or solidify what egophrenia is. We are only able to know it as it reveals itself to us, by contemplating its multi-dimensional expressions. Just like we approach an overwhelming abuse or trauma by studying its symptoms, we come to know egophrenia by contemplating its reflections.
Malignant egophrenia is truly diabolical in nature and is what the ancient, indigenous cultures would call a “demon.” We, as “civilized” people, have withdrawn our projection of Gods and demons from nature (which has therefore become “depsychized”). Jung said, “Even though nature is depsychized, the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”[xx] [Emphasis added] Jung warned that a difficult task lay ahead of us after the mass insanity of the Second World War. He pointed out that after the “demons” abandoned the German people, these negative energies weren’t banished. Jung elaborated by saying, “…the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey.”[xxi] Projecting the shadow literally opens the door for malignant egophrenia to take up residence in our being.
What the ancient people called demons, Jung calls autonomous complexes. These are split-off parts of the psyche that can compel one-sidedness, possess a person (or a nation), and seemingly develop an independent will and quasi-life of their own. Autonomous complexes can be likened to the rabies virus, which travels to the part of a person’s brain controlling the whole person. It causes him to reject water, for example, so that the virus cannot be spit out of the mouth. This is analogous to how Bush supporters reject the facts, which if considered, would cause them to snap out of their spell. The rabies virus ultimately controls and enslaves its victims, taking away their creativity and mental freedom, as it forces them compulsively, like a vampire, to further the propagation of the virus. Autonomous complexes work in exactly the same way; they can warp and destroy the whole psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, infecting the surrounding field in the process. Journalist Jacques Julliard of “Le Nouvel Observateur” recently has recognized this state of affairs when he simply states, “America has rabies.” Once the virus has eaten up and consumed its host, it leaves him for dead and moves on to its next victim. Etymologically, the word rabies is related to the word “Lucifer. These autonomous complexes can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way a vampire can’t stand the light. Malignant egophrenia will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being seen. It’s elusive, mercurial, and very much a trickster. The disease obfuscates itself, creating any number of distractions to hide behind, and will even react violently to being seen, for being seen takes away its omnipotence and autonomy.
The disease works through the irrationality of the unconscious. As Jung described:
“Once this function (of the irrational) finds itself in the unconscious, it works unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease whose focus cannot be eradicated, because it is invisible. Individual and nation alike are then compelled to live the irrational in their own lives, even devoting their loftiest ideals and their best wits to expressing its madness in the most perfect form.”[xxii]
The importance of seeing the nature of the disease we are dealing with cannot be overstated. Jung goes on to say, “As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us.”[xxiii]
When we see a demon, we know its name. Naming it is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon’s power over us. To name something is to symbolize it. The word “symbolic,” which means that which unites, is the antidote and antonym to the word “diabolic,” which means that which divides and separates. George Bush claimed to be “a uniter, not a divider.” However, he has only united one thing—the majority of the world against us. To see this diabolical aspect of what is coming through Bush, namely, that he is an instrument creating separation, is to be seeing with symbolic awareness.
Naming the disease helps us to (alchemically) contain it, so that it can’t possess us from behind and act itself out through us unconsciously. Once the disease is named, it’s anchored to consciousness so that it can’t vaporize back into the unconscious. This de-potentiates the disease, beginning the process of re-integrating it back into the profound unity of the psyche. The energy bound up in the compulsion to endlessly re-create the disease becomes liberated and available for creative expression. The prescription for this disease is simply for enough of us who see it to connect with each other in lucid awareness so that it can be contained, metabolized, and healed. We can put our collective realization together and dream a much more grace-filled universe into incarnation. This is an evolutionary impulse from the universe in which we are invited to participate.
Encoded in the disease is its own medicine. If we remain unconscious of the psychic nature of the disease, it will act itself out through us in a purely destructive, life-negating, and hence, demonic way. Hidden in the daemonic is our guiding spirit and genie (as in “I dream of…”). This is our true genius and inner voice. This is why Jung called the daemonic the “not yet made real creative.” The fact that such a dark shadow is emerging in our world is an expression that light is nearby, as shadows are themselves an expression of light. Demons are actually blessings in drag. Lucifer is truly the bringer of light.
Reply
266. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
GENUINE COMPASSION AS ACTIVISM
The malignant egophrenia epidemic is happening right in front of us. It is self-evident for all who have eyes to see. If we don’t look at what’s happening, if we turn away, ignore it, and contract against it, we are lying to ourselves. Then we’re colluding with and unknowingly feeding the disease. Our looking away is a form of blindness. Our looking away is a form of ignorance. Our looking away, our contraction, IS itself the disease. Our resulting complacency and inaction is, in fact, an expression of our lack of compassion. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “One who passively accepts evil [allowing it to happen] is as much involved in it as the one who perpetrates it.”[xxv]
There is a great danger when we see evil, though. We cannot bear witness to evil and remain unaffected—something inside of us becomes ignited when we experience evil. Malignant egophrenia forces upon us the responsibility to come to terms with the evil inside our own hearts. If we solidify Bush as being evil and react with righteous indignation, we are guilty of the very same thing we’re accusing Bush of, i.e., projecting the shadow. We then become a conduit for the very evil we’re reacting to. Who among us has not been guilty of being a channel for ME disease at one time or another? Who among us has not been guilty of falling asleep and unwittingly acting out our unconscious? Unlike Bush, most people simply incarnate the disease locally, within the domain of their sphere of influence, which is usually their family system.
If, when we see this virulent pathogen, we contract against it and react in any way, be it in judgment, hatred, anger or revulsion, we’re helping to perpetuate the diabolical polarization that is the signature of the disease. Our reacting in this way, which is typical of many political activists, is itself an expression that we ourselves have the disease, or to say it more accurately, the disease has us.
This disease literally has the potential to humble us. We may think, “Not us, we could never catch this disease.” However, this very arrogance leaves us open to falling prey to the virus. We may think, “Let’s step out of our arrogance, for who are we to know anything? Let’s be an enlightened bodhisattva and not judge what Bush is doing, for who are we to judge? Or let’s be an enlightened psychiatrist and not diagnose, name or pathologize Bush in any way, for we don’t want to cast any spells.” However, to have these attitudes is to fall under the seductive spell of the bug, causing us to disconnect from and give away our power. In this way, we forsake one of our greatest spiritual treasures, the act of discernment.
Being a spiritual warrior embraces and includes the most extreme discernment, which is the ability to differentiate and see clearly. Discernment is different than when we are unconsciously caught in judgment, which is a reaction to and contraction against something. Discernment is the ability to make distinctions, which is an expression of an expanded and evolved consciousness. Wielding the wisdom of discernment is an expression of genuine compassion.
Compassion is sometimes fierce, however. Sometimes it says “no,” and sets a boundary. Genuine compassion is not always smiley-faced, otherwise known as “idiot compassion,” which just enables and reinforces unconsciousness. Genuine compassion is not passive. It propels us to act for the benefit of all beings. True compassion demands us to be willing to consciously step into our power, mediated through the heart, and to find the courage to speak our true voice: The malignant egophrenia epidemic has induced a form of criminal insanity in the entire Bush regime that we are all complicit in by allowing it to happen.
With Bush as president, it’s as if we’re in a car going over the speed limit being driven by a drunk adolescent who has fallen asleep at the wheel. It’s our responsibility to recognize the extreme danger of our situation and come together to do something about it, whatever that might be. If not, if we continue to passively and helplessly watch what is playing out in front of our very eyes, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. Abraham Lincoln said, “We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” Now is the time to join together and creatively express our true voice. As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Malignant egophrenia is a true “reconciling symbol,” in that it unites the opposites. Malignant egophrenia is both a deadly disease and the highest blessing co-joined in one phenomenon. Is it a wave or a particle? It is a true “coincidentia oppositorum,” a conjunction of opposites, an expression of divinity. The question is, do we recognize what is being symbolically shown to us by egophrenia, or not? Will these apocalyptic end-times we are in be an initiation into a more expansive part of our being? Or will it destroy our species? The choice is truly ours. All that is needed is for enough of us to recognize what is being revealed, and to creatively act from this realization.
Here are my few comments on this material all put together but it’s with the material that you can understand what is being said.
258.
This part of the article is equally meaningful and adapts perfectly to our Cult situation. Also interesting to observe is the understanding of lying as an obstacle to awakening presented in the System which was impossible to grasp in the Cult for it was simply never addressed. The silent areas are what reveal the huge weaknesses in groups of people. We are not only talking about Girard, Robert, Dorian, Asaf and others in the inner circle, we are talking about each one of us and our participation in this phenomenon which is happening outside as much as inside the cult.
THE LIE
259.
Robert couldn’t be better described than in this passage. Numerous posts I wrote specially at the beginning of the fofblog present this picture without knowing what exactly it meant at the time. The queen bee, the king-dictator as I called him then are exactly parallel to what is presented here about Bush and others in power.
DRUNK WITH POWER
261.
Everyone in the Fellowship Cult is well described in this part. The “frigidity” of social relationships within the cult is an aspect of this lack of being in contact with their feelings in all of the Fellowship population. That lifelessness that I pointed out many times on the fofblog is what renders members more and more pathological and subject to the madness. In cults the madness is much more efficient, spreads much more quickly than in regular society because members in a cult are in a much tighter environment than members of a nation. In the nation there is still more freedom until the whole of it affirms itself in fascism.
HIDING FROM HIMSELF
262. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
The “one-sidedness” mentioned in this part is very important to look at because it was clearly addressed in the fofblog when I talked about our inability to deal with evil, evil as incarnated by the fofcult and our inability to take serious action against it. Not being able to seriously take action against these institutions is simply allowing our shadow to continue expressing itself and remain justified.
This one-sidedness was also mentioned by me in post 152:
“You are cult people, you have no love, your sickness spreads out no matter where you participate. You hide yourselves just like Robert and Girard hide themselves inside. You give only the light side of your lives convinced that that will keep others from seeing how much darkness there is in it. But you’re not any less free of the cult sickness than those inside.”
Anyone who studies the two blogs will easily observe that people on both blogs are unable to dialogue with what I’ve been presenting. They avoided it as long as they could and when my frustration was voiced out with anger, they immediately took it up as an excuse to ban me. The inability to relate to these facts in ex-members outside is as significant as the member’s inability to acknowledge them inside. The behavior people have in the public sphere clearly points to how they are dealing with the dark side in life as much as in themselves. Avoiding social responsibility and allowing for “leaders” to direct our lives without clear understanding of what they are doing is an aspect of our own inner blind spots and lack of responsibility in our inner as much as external world.
On a Pathological Liar
263. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
“Part of the sinister nature of the disease is that when we point at it and call it by its true name—as being a form of insanity called ignorance—people who are stricken with the disease will see us as the one’s who are crazy.”
Can any sentence better describe how I was banned from the fofblog with the silence and approval of 97% of the participants and meek refutal from the rest but one?
The fofblog “institutionalized” itself just like the Fellowship cult institutionalized itself and legitimizes its equally abusive actions like the Fellowship cult. 100% of the participants, except me, continue to take a part in it for not one of you is clear of what you are doing.
If being sick is calling fascists “FASCISTS”, pimps, “PIMPS”, sick fuckers “SICK FUCKERS” then let me die from this illness. If protesting as I’ve been protesting is being crazy, let me die from this madness because I wish nothing to do with yours that submits to infamy with support and compliance. A sick person is nothing else than a sick person and we must be able to tell each other when we are nothing but sick people and act against it so that we help each other out of the sickness. Banning people who you’ve labelled as crazy so that you don’t have to hear what is being said makes you crazy, not the people you ban. You’d get rid of your mothers if they told you the truth just like Robert Burton would.
You in the fofblog were as willing to hurt me as Robert, Girard and everyone else in the Fellowship are willing to hurt members in the outside circle. You are each and all of you still as sick as you were inside. I am glad to know that there is enough arrogance in me and that I never submitted to your rules which are as sick as the Fellowships. You tried to make me kneel to your conditions and I did not and that is what made you ban me because each one of you carries the same power sickness that Robert and Girard carry, you do not allow people who are not willing to submit to participate and I AM NOT WILLING TO SUBMIT. You cannot tolerate my freedom, you cannot bear the envy that arouses in your darkness when someone acts from their freedom. I am glad to be able to defend myself with these texts. I am glad I’ve recognized my weaknesses when I told you that the Fellowship should be closed not for me but for your selves, not because I was better than anyone else but because you each needed to empower your selves with the understanding. I am glad I’ve modeled my pain out in public and parented myself with a man and a woman who were willing to support me when I most needed it, allowing me to experience the darkest hours of my abandonment in childhood, which being banned simply re-enacted with all its power. I am far from being free but I am much more free than I’ve been. May each one of you find your own freedom and allow us to share in each other’s life like human beings.
A COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
277. Elena – November 20, 2009 [Edit]
To give you an idea of what’s happening Nigel, you could change everything I’ve written in three years for those pages by Paul Levy and you wouldn’t be missing too much. Or, from a different angle, if you really wish to understand what I’ve been struggling to convey for three years, read Levy’s work on Bush. I don’t buy easily into people. If you look at the fofblog you’ll see I questioned everything that was presented but this is worth reading and deeply understanding to be able to grasp what I’ve been saying about community and why we got sick without it in the Fellowship cult and in the fofblog.
Unfortunately I hadn’t dug deeply in Jung’s work before but I am not surprised that so much understanding is coming from him. It is a huge find and reaffirms everything I’ve been saying from a much more experienced perspective than mine which was simply screaming about it while exposing as much of it as I could. IT changes everything we thought was happening here. It simply turns things downside upwards and lets them stand beautifully! And it is a great play with everything included! We’ve finally come to the end of the first part!
“Those areas seem like fertile ones for personality, whether true or false. Just trying to help…..Nigel.”
Don’t waste pearls… they are hard to come by!
Life: a poem at dawn
I said I wouldn’t hurt you
Why are you hurting?
Is silence better than dialogue?
Or did you give up on me for being too different to what you imagined?
Too wild?
Did I hurt you?
Don’t you know in your heart that I cannot?
That if the land’s been broken to open new roads the pain was there for freeing?
And if you’ve taught me to fly beyond time what makes you think that I am unable to take you beyond space?
Why run after greeting love?
Or is it not love for you?
Do you deny it now?
And hurt your self more than I or anyone else could?
Didn’t you say we’re in an oracle?
Did you think you were the handle?
Why do we expect a harvest from each other’s soul
Without tilling in each other’s ground?
What makes you think our soul is softer than soil
that the tilling can be done without crushing and breaking?
There is no masochism or sadism in moving within each other’s realm
It’s not about that
we are not in a Cult
But there’s no culture without the mixing and turning,
And no love without culture
The living process is under cosmic laws
Your life, my life,
Our lives,
There’s only love and yet love of all kinds
In the nature of wounds
The woundless love is beyond
In galaxy’s laws
You might play mother today
And child tomorrow:
What’s wrong with that?
And woman, what’s wrong with the woman to woman
When we’ve already grown?
What’s wrong with looking out into the void of each other’s losses?
Like wild horses we are willing to catch for the ride
Unknowing how wild
And yet,
in helping me hold them
Don’t you realize how tame they’ve become?
Why deny?
How can my brokenness hurt you when you yourself healed me?
You willingly offered a chair that I willingly accepted
What made you afraid of my sitting already hosting me?
Who told you it was not healthily grounded? I dare you tell me, who hurt you? Not I.
Is it the words?
Their length or their reach
Their meaning or their forming?
Tell me, why fear the spaces in between?
Or my Death? Is that what frightened you?
My death that looks out from inside
Like the Sun looks in from outside?
Why fear it when it is no less Conscious than Sunlight?
For when we stop being afraid of the dark
And know that black is only in ignorance
We finally rest within life
and become.
* * *
You’ve given birth to life
why fear it now that it’s alive?
Love grows like grass
falls from the sky like rain
breaths in and out like air
and waters down each riverbed.
How can I stop its fire from burning?
What is there that you can’t forgive?
Why have you put a limit to your being?
A stop to our becoming
Are you afraid of my knowing and loving you less?
I do know… and love after knowing
no less
Why can’t I also hold you?
Did you think you couldn’t break and
once broken run and hide behind?
too young?
That we’re not meant to till the ground
to go beyond
Paradise?
It is not like a flood,
not like before
and not like a storm
I am too old
It is like a tapestry
on which I sew
a poem at dawn
But if you truly wish me to stop
you would be kind to
let me know.
Elena
Had some thoughts about society, Bush, cults and ‘those with magnetic centres’. The American Dream has been pursued and thrashed to death by an about turn in this modern society in which we live. Instead of the individual pursuing his/her goals in life, we are told what it is we are supposed to pursue (the media helps in provoking this activity) and those who do not fit in try to look for a more noble way in which to live their life. I think a ‘magnetic centre’ is formed in this way. I do not know much about other groups/cults (other than Jehovah’s Witnesses, with whom I took Bible Study for over two years), but the Fellowship of Friends Cult, instead of living by noble aims, made its members strive for power, wealth and sex – the very things which make society ‘go around’. Bush was one of the greatest power mongers we have seen recently. Thank God Obama is ‘getting to the core of matters’ and risking public scorn by implementing ‘laws of great change and importance to the people’. You should read the Whitehouse Website from time to time.
If I may say this without being harsh, Elena, I think you are interested in all these power mongers (enablers and inner circle guys, included), because, in the FOF, you were immersed in and enmeshed by them. You played the ‘foffer’ game but got burnt. Unlike you, who seem to want some kind of revenge against REB, GH and the ‘motley crew’, I just want to see REB up in court for the sake of having him, as The Anti-Christ, revealed to Humanity, and having an end put to ALL CULT ACTIVITIES. I was never a centre director, an octave leader, donation collector in the FOF or anything other than the guy who made the silver ceremonial set for the Fellowship
(and then got to polish tympanies, bottoms of Baccarat glasses and the copper pots in the Academy/Galleria). I am concerned with the ‘little ways in which little people work’ but have an aim of wanting to represent the prosecution in court against REB as defendant (spiritual leader of the Fellowship of Friends)…..Nigel.
Just listen to the song, Elena:
No harm, no hurting…
Oh my dear Nigel, you are my friend and I love you but you’re so silly sometimes!
“Unlike you, who seem to want some kind of revenge against REB, GH and the ‘motley crew’,”
Where on earth did you come up with that conclusion? I don’t mind if you don’t read levy or anything else but please don’t invent. And on revenge you can go back to the fofblog and the interchange with Granados at the very beginning in July 07 I think it was and notice that I stood against revenge from while others were screaming for it. NO, please do not corrrupt what I am saying like the fofblog does. On the contrary, Robert is just another puppet in the play like Bush and lyinching them is of no use, it’s the sickness in all of us what needs addressing and that is very clearly stated in Levy but it’s what I’ve been screaming about all along.
If this is not firm enough help me make it so!
I love you my friend! And am delighted to be able to fight with each other all that is necessary so that we can move along!
And the above for you Dragon!
And for the beginning of part II I guess it’s time to recover the latin
I hadn’t been able to see the video I put in because the connection was too slow, it’s O.K. but I prefer this one!
Thanks Dragon, I also couldn’t see your video until this evening. What a contrast with Joplin! Beautiful in different ways!
I am totally unconcerned about the idea of not mixing Systems or ideas with each other. I find it important to realize that all true Systems are connected just as we are as human beings. Inwardly connected and separate only physically like threads on a carpet that are all bound to the net.
The aberrations presented by Robert and Girard of the Work are worth looking at from different angles and I personally find these references from other, much more experienced people than myself, of great use. Then I can weave in my own experience with theirs and place the Fellowship where it stands out. If members ever care to look and answer for themselves the following questions, they might understand how the System is being distorted to enslave them deeply. I continue to work in the hope that that will be so.
There are three aspects about this text that connect to the Fellowship experience.
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/GodTheImagination.html
According to the alchemists, the products of our imagination are not immaterial, vaporous phantoms, but are something corporeal, having a “subtle body” all their own. The alchemists were realizing that the philosophers’ stone was a subtle energy body, a super-celestial body, the “star” in humanity, which is the interface between mind and matter. The imaginal, subtle body is a transcendental idea that is neither purely physical nor spiritual, but rather, is a hybrid in that it partakes in, encompasses and is comprised of both the spiritual and material. The subtle body is both the same as and different from each of the two sides that define it, as it is more than the sum of its parts. To quote Jung, “Imagination is therefore a concentrated extract of the life forces, both physical and psychic.” A hyper-dimensional portal and mercurial medium, the subtle body is a magical elixir, the product of the imagination that influences, bridges, links, and connects the spiritual and the material worlds. Jung comments, “Somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it; they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the place where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls ‘psyche.’”
Elena:
In my humble opinion in the “System” the two ends meet in self- remembering. It brings the physical and the spiritual into a consciousness of their unity. If the consciousness of that unity is not realized, it is not self-remembering. How then do Robert and Girard come to stand on the separation between the lower and higher, the king of clubs and the king of hearts? Consciousness and life? That’s interesting: “Consciousness and life”, that is exactly what they separated. How do you equate that friends inside? Did you join the Fellowship to separate consciousness from life?———
The materialistic prejudice of assuming matter objectively exists separate from the psyche immediately banishes the intermediate realm of subtle bodies to seeming nonexistence. But, nevertheless, the subtle body is a real presence. Its presence is present even in its seeming absence. It has a genuine weight, which means the subtle body leaves an “impression.” Once both physics and psychology touch the untrodden, untreadable reaches of seemingly impenetrable darkness where physis and psyche become indistinguishable, to quote Jung, “then the intermediate realm of subtle bodies comes to life again, and the physical and the psychic are once more blended in an indissoluble unity.” In a genuine conspiracy, the material and the spiritual worlds truly “conspire” with each other, as they “co-inspire” each other, which is to say that they breathe together as one.
Elena: This is beautiful! They co-inspire each other! Like a breathe of life pouring “light” out of itself: grace, gratitude, dignity…
True work can only bring to real positive emotions. Why has the Fellowship Cult crystallized in pointing out the separation of lower and higher and not brought its teacher or members to anything positive besides external decorations?—–
We have so lost touch with the profundity of the imagination that the outer world seems to appear solidified in form, which is merely reflecting that our imagination is concretizing. Having lost our acquaintance with the aesthetics of the imagination, we become “an-aesthetic,” numb to our feelings and cut off from the heart, anesthetized from ourselves. Disconnected from the creative organ of the imagination, we lose our sense of aesthetics and our capacity to appreciate beauty. Instead of symbolizing our experience so as to creatively express and liberate it, we become seemingly held captive by a self-reinforcing feedback loop inside of our minds which continually generates a literal, particularized, and concretized viewpoint, both towards the world and ourselves. To the extent that we lose our connection with the ever-flowing novelty and majesty of our own creative imagination, we forget our fluid nature, becoming stunned into immobilization, alienated from and a trauma to ourselves. The play of and our play with the creative imagination, however, is the very act that cultivates, empowers and transfigures the subtle body into healing nectar which dissolves and dis-spells our seeming trauma.
Elena: I haven’t seen a better description of what happens in the Fellowship yet. I’ve been screaming about that a lot but without being able to formulate it so clearly. People who are brainwashed cannot use creative imagination. Their minds must repeat the dogma over and over again to accommodate to the status quo. They cannot “symbolize” the experience. There is no creativity in the Fellowship cult from the moment Robert approves or disapproves EVERYTHING people can present. The conditioning THAT implies already has an effect on the artist’s creativity. They were beautiful nevertheless, they tried so hard to make it work… but it was soulless in the Barbie paraphernalia of Fellowship alchemy. The only performer who really had it was Brian Ganz who was not a student and was so much freer than any one of us. Robert’s conditioning on what to chose and the style in which it must be performed or presented take out the individual’s spirit and tries to uniform creation, taking the Art away. The few events that Robert does not personally condition, he does not assist leaving a trace of disapproval and lack of interest in the member’s work and specially freedom to “be”. He wouldn’t even go to Girard’s play on Socrates!
In the process of recovering from the cult experience I am finding that having enough confidence to act from my self raises the state of well-being. To move not “taught” movements but whatever movement comes from me at that moment is one good example of that because even with movement it seems I have been “imitating” every one else for ever without giving my self a chance! Dancing I’m trying not to make the normal steps of no matter what style but free the movement from the traditional steps and there is something wonderfully liberating about that. Likewise with emotional and intellectual life!
I mention this because we’ve seen very few ideas on how to recover from the cult experience and the most effective seem to be finding a different group of people to support one but parallel to that, the idea of recovering one’s connection to one’s self and its creative aspect seem just as necessary. The good thing about the latter is that it’s available!
Light digesting!
One aspect that we’ve been silent about in the blogs connected to the Fellowship Cult (Pathway to Presence) is that of: Where does the aspiration to consciousness go after a cult experience? If we look at the fofblog, we can see that references to the continuation of that search was not acknowledged or frowned at and there is a strong tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater which makes it hardly different to what Cults do: throw humanity and life out. The exposure of my understanding related to the subject was labeled “the pretense to a Joan of Arc role” and ridiculed, reminding us of the old law that the lower eats the higher and the pretense of any one individual to live up to an ideal is attacked viciously by the mob. We do not want to allow each other to live up to ideals. We were not in the fofblog willing to live up to what we had joined the Fellowship for. We are still to afraid to be ourselves and let each other be. We repeated the Fellowship experience, which was to shun people’s spirit and their struggle towards a more conscious life. Parallel to that affirmation was my spontaneous “throwing up” without control or any attempt to control it. The idea of using any work tool was equally alien to me rejecting the attempt as a way of rejecting whatever re-enacted cult behavior. I tried to make effort to love but no effort to put any other tool in practice. That allowed for my unrestrained shadow to also express itself: the shame and every other inferiority complex turned into aggression and extreme positions in relation to others, which was very good in the long run because in getting banned, I was able to deal with some aspects of it. (When we come to study the precise patterns expressed in blogs, we will learn a great deal about interacting and how to help people understand each other without avoiding friction. Friction with love is necessary for diamonds. Not the inhuman tolerance of friction in cults for the sake of the guru, but the necessary friction between people for their own development. I was a victim of my own invention and it works wonderfully well: Getting “exhiled” is extremely painful. If it doesn’t kill one, it makes one grow! We develop inwardly those of us who do not find a community to develop in. We develop in the love we have for the human being, those of us who are deprived of human warmth. We reflect our self in the spirit only to find each human being within our self. Without Dragon and Nigel, that would have been impossible. A community of three is already a family: the original archetype.
After a cult experience it is obvious why ex-members would find themselves at a loss not only in relation to extreme distrust of people but also in relation to their spiritual structures. If we look at my process, I’d been rejecting almost everything until I came to Paul Levy’s texts that are helping reconstruct my own understanding. What I find very appealing about Jung is that he confirms the same structures the System offered and Levy references them in a very practical world. I also find very attractive that he is clear about the fact that WE are each in a process of consciousness. It is a very exiting time to be alive! A source of great joy! (Hopefully Levy hasn’t gone down the cult Way, I know only these texts).
To understand that we, as human beings living today, have acquired RIGHTS as SOCIAL BEINGS that cannot be forfeited from us in no matter what cult or institution, is to be able to actualize our human legacy and project our selves into the future not only as spiritual beings but as social, human beings. The confrontation between religious freedoms and civil rights is the expression of the schizophrenic division in our collective shadow. No cult or institution should legitimately be able to attack the individual civil rights that we have already acquired because these civil rights are the expression of our spiritual maturity. Equality, freedom of expression, individual freedom, the right to live, to work and to participate are not RIGHTS separate to our inner spiritual development and they must be upheld in every institution in the world today. They are the guarantee that the free flow from individual to community is preserved and in that dialogue, that CULTURE will continue to be possible. Culture IS LIFE. Cults will inevitably lead us to destruction. They thrive in the authoritarian paradigm in which no freedom of culture is possible. These RIGHTS are exactly what is catapulted out of cults leaving the members like pariahs without a human legacy. Leaving them like Adam and Eve when they walked out of the garden and we are no longer unconsciously naked. WE, mankind, have fought our selves enough to stand not in Paradise but on Earth; not in God but in the God within each human being; Not in our childlike essence but in our human maturity with a civil standing as much as a spiritual realization of our being. We come to the Public Square not only as citizens but as spiritual beings able to live up to our rights and responsibilities. Laws cannot run independent of our spirituality nor can our spirituality run disconnected from the laws. We are both citizens and spiritual beings and harmony must prevail between the two. When the head runs without the heart, the sex without the head and heart and the body without their integrity, there is chaos and decadence. When they are connected, there is freedom and culture. Families cannot develop in the madness of laws without spirit and spirit without laws. The freedom of the individual cannot come at the cost of the rape of the community nor can the freedom of the community come at the cost of the rape of the individual. Individual and community are the living dialogue of culture. Being “civilized” implies both.
Forfeiting the right to participate as an equal, relinquishing our authority to no matter whose authority is the expression of our self-neglect and denial and guarantees the decadence not only of our own self but that of our society. The capacity of each and every human being to act humanly is already within us. Crime is every inhuman act and each individual that recognizes the inhuman in our societies must be able and willing to expose and fight it, fight it “humanly” but fight it all the way through. People who have not been subjected to the madness of cities must be protected; not only children but entire populations of people who have not been subjected to the madness of cities and mass production. The wild development of the schizophrenic division between laws and religion must be stopped. The city as a center of mass production for the benefit of a few is a haven for lawlessness and mad spirituality. Nature is protesting our madness. The rape of the soul as much as the body has institutionalized itself in the city. Cults are a microscopic mirror of our society’s schizophrenia.
This “consciousness” of our selves as citizens as much as spiritual beings is what cannot develop in cults without laws. It is no coincidence that cults develop seudo monarchies and not democracy. Cults reinforce the traditional hierarchical structures of authority and live in the collective shadow of retrograde forms that have already been overcome. In the cult, differences between people are “religiously” sanctified. If the differences current in society aren’t enough, new ones are invented. Those separations between people are one of the causes of the deterioration of the member’s connection with their own self. The extreme dependence on the guru and the cult’s “lifelessness” for reassurance comes as a result of the lack of reference from others. The repeated dogma and conditioned behavior simply deepens the disconnectedness with their own self. The division into two people such as in the hasnamus is inevitable and suicide is the coherent step at the end of that process: the cult personality finally succeeds and kills the member’s “life” which it has been dismantling from the very beginning.
The cult is a “cult” to the collective shadow of the members. Their “shadow” remains unaddressed, repressed and replaced by the cult’s life-form which equally employs all centers in unanimous massive behavior. Everyone in the cult is conditioned to live the guru’s shadow life “uniforming” the member’s behavior. In the Fellowship cult we can observe this very clearly: men had to become feminine and women masculine to approve Robert’s un-dealt with homosexuality that simply overpowered every aspect of Fellowship life. Men became the “models” of pretty clothes and women, money manipulators, the feminine was shunned in women and stimulated in men. In the cult, everyone becomes part of the guru’s shadow and is banned if they are unwilling to adapt to it. Those willing to adapt manifest their own shadow’s resonance with the guru’s. No one realizes the extent to which in “giving in” to the guru’s shadow life, they are not only surrendering the possibility of dealing with their own but rendering it impossible for the guru to free himself from it. The guru becomes the worst victim of a cult. He must, in the long run, deal with the shadow lives of each of the members who’ve surrendered theirs to him. In the economy of the spirit it would seem that they trap each other in their mutual shadows for many lifetimes.
The cult replaces the “community” archetype or the consciousness of our collective self for the mass behavior and approval of the guru and his generalized status quo in which “equality” between members is not in relation to their equality as human beings with power to develop freely but only “equality” as indistinct masses without individuality which justifies the generalized treatment of exploiting everyone without discriminating anyone. No one can protest because the treatment is equal to all and in protesting the member is labeled out as wishing more for him or her self than is given to all. The mechanism is extremely subtle and efficient leading to a retrograde of the human condition, a retrograde that has already in many cases, landed the group into collective suicide and its subsequent consequences.
All the freedom!
I’ve corrected the previous post which needs to be corrected over and over again until the ideas are clear. Your input would be appreciated, your friction and your challenge. Why do you enjoy being passive here? We cannot move forward without each other. There are very few of us but a very consistent few. Please trust your selves and participate. What I am doing is probably being done by many others in different parts of the world but this is new for us and reflecting on it with each other will help us shine it more purely. It is beautiful to understand the problems we are in and the possible solutions.
I am emotionally a lot stronger now, you cannot hurt me as much as in the fofblog or before by challenging my statements and any challenge would be much appreciated. Your views are important to me. Why are you letting me work on my own when the problems belong to all of us? It is true that I am working more happily each day, that I will continue to offer as much as I can for as long as I can and that without the few of you looking in, there would be no inspiration to make the effort or the effort would simply go into other venues of my life today but nothing compares to real dialogue between people.
I like to keep a record of DC’s posts! I enjoy watching how you get mileage out of no matter what that stands against your cult. Did you know you’re brilliant? That being brilliant does not mean you are not equally corrupt and inhuman? I use to think inhuman people were all ugly but now I know beautifully looking people are inhuman, including myself, most of the time: Today I missed making contact with a few people who served me in some way.
Your posts are wonderfully revealing of how the formatory apparatus is trained to work like a dog and bites only when the “bill” rings! It is a very sad condition for a human being but that is the condition of millions of people today. Ten million only in scientology! So good to know that the Fellowship is a tiny cult in comparison… I’ve learnt so much from it: it’s a living course on pathology with one’s self included!
It pleased me so much to see you posting again, so human that you still bother to write. Were you preparing your exit justifying it with the image that they are too negative to deserve your presence? I consider myself fortunate for having seen you BEG for communication because that is what we’re doing in these blogs. If you are Girard, how can you live with the dishonesty of being the only one you allowed to talk on the blog? You told everyone else that it wasn’t worth your time but there you are trying to justify it all. And if you’re not Girard, how do you feel now? After failing? Does the pain make you feel any more human? Will you become even more rigid about your dogma or has a too big a crack opened and you’ll be out before you know it? For us cult people, pain is necessary to de-crystallize ourselves out. You seem so hurt that you aren’t even talking from your self anymore but from the formatory apparatus. You are not trying to justify what you think or feel about Robert anymore, just letting the FA reassure you of why you’ve dedicated forty years to a narcissistic sociopath and trying to justify it with the feeble idea that you don’t swear, that you’re not expressing negative emotions, that you have numbed yourself so badly that you can’t scream when the car runs over the baby of your soul and instead insist like a little boy who begs for a lollipop that is already in the gutter. Your supra-efforts to win with the mind were impeccably handled by Jomo Piñata, “chapeau” for him. Thank you Jomo, it was good to see you taking care of what matters, you did it beautifully. I don’t think I learnt how to do it but I certainly learnt what is possible.
Thank you also for the list of swear words that keep joyfully appearing. I used the same as those and they used it to ban me but all Ames says about them now is that they are “reactive” and don’t help the discussion! Mine must have been “conscious” and not reactive then!! Isn’t it quite a treat to be able to observe so clearly how we each “fit” the world to our convenience? The only good thing is knowing that I must have hit the mark enough for that reaction. The opposite process starts to take place immediately after: nothing fixes an individual as strongly to one’s self as killing them physically, psychologically or socially. We never know how alive we are until we are dead! And then when we die inside, when we don’t let each other breathe healthily in our lives, the corpse stinks! We stand at the end of each other’s being but have touched each other too deeply to be able to separate. We might remain there like dead, like my mother had been for forty years, but until we let ourselves breath each other’s being again we won’t be well. When you ban people, you try to stop them dead but you have to make so much effort to justify it, crystallize in so many lies, that in the long run, it breaks you too. It’s worth it: the suffering changes us all. Is there so much resentment that even those of you looking in here cannot speak about it? Resentment for my insulting the men and the women?
“You, my friend, are a child. You ask for reason while living in a mythic world of fantasy.”
I just saw this one Daily Cardiac. It is brilliant. It is the best thing anyone’s ever told you. I would take the mythic away because the Fellowship is too pathetic to have myth around it. The worst aspect of it all is how cheap it is.
But beyond all these criticism, I am delighted at the possibility of looking at each other so clearly. When I look at my self I’ll have to run I’ll be so ashamed about so many things but if that helps us to see how we work, long live the shame!
40. Daily Cardiac – November 24, 2009
WhaleRider:
“The “spirit world” is a metaphor for the unseen forces and mythic archetypes of the unconscious mind…Apparently, you believe in a literal spirit world.”
Tatyana:
“Neither was I looking for verification of higher forces, because in the 4th way books there are no higher forces.”
James Mclemore:
“DC said,
“This discussion is supposed to be about spiritual matters;”
He is mistaken. Actually he knows better, and he only wishes it was about that. He wishes it was about almost anything other than what it really is, and then tries his best to develop conversation about other topics.”
I guess it was silly of me to propose a spiritual discussion when it appears the spirit part of spiritual is not much believed in or valued by ex members. The big picture is slowly coming into focus.
The FoF professes to be an esoteric school based on spirituality, based on development of the spirit.
So if one does not put much stock into that realm, or as it seems from WhaleRider, does not even believe in it, it’s no wonder there would be a disconnect with an organization that centers it’s teachings on the existence of a spirit world that governs over human kind and closely monitors all man’s dealings. A spirit world that can be and has been verified by hundreds of members.
Now that I think of it I really don’t remember any ex members conversing, long or short, frequently or infrequently, on any level, about a deity, higher forces, gods, angels, creator. It appears they have substituted synchronicity for a deity.
______________________________________________________________________________
Elena: Your comments are very interesting DC because you didn’t get a word of what Whalerider said and now I am beginning to understand another aspect of the puzzle.
In the mean time I’m including various comments from the core group of ex members who post here, all addressed to me or about me in the span of about a week back on page 85.
Keep in mind that these comments represent complete postings, not excerpts from longer posts. If I would have included excerpts of a similar nature the list would have been three times longer.
Why are these comments significant? They are significant because each of these posts represented a lost opportunity to refute, through force of reason and adhering to basic principles of discussion, the very issues ex members are consumed with but never actually discuss in a reasonable way.
In order for a reasonable discussion to take place any participant first of all would have to recognize when they are stating an opinion and be honest and detached enough to see when a statement consists of an opinion and nothing more – Definition of Opinion : “a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.”
One would also have to recognize the difference between the written word, i. e. testimony, facts*(sometimes the facts lie) and verifiable truth. One would have to acknowledge that the one thing no one can know for sure is someone else’s motivations as to why they did or said something – especially in spiritual matters – as motivation often runs counter to appearance; just as the spirit’s needs often run counter to the physical body’s needs.
It goes without saying that no spiritual truth can be arrived at through negativity – anger, hatred, revenge, etc. because that is all part of the lower realm and is exactly what must be transcended if spiritual truth is to be known.
You (any open minded readers) will notice immediately the nature of the comments being quoted below: mean spirited, vulgar, sarcastic, condescending, dismissive and generally of a negative and demeaning quality.
I ask you then – are these the words of individuals you would want to cast your spiritual well being with?
These authors will respond with their reasons why it was necessary or important to respond to me in this way, so beforehand I’ll say it again – anyone can write anything, pass anything off as truth for no other reason than because it issued forth from their keyboard. Of course that’s not a reason.
They are revealing their real nature in spite of their efforts to insinuate the opposite. It’s here for all to consider and anyone with a beating heart and the slightest inkling to touch the divine will see it for what it is. I certainly don’t have to label it.
Any open minded individual reading this, do yourself a favor. Leave this posting open on your monitor (the part where ex members comments are listed) and then go to “Pathways to Presence” and view both pages together – scroll down this posting, read a few comments of ex members, and then read the contents of “Pathways to Presence” and judge for yourself who the bearers of spiritual truth are.
An ex member recently called the PTP site “alluring.” You will find it to be much more than alluring, much more than compelling. If you are searching for spiritual truth you will find it irresistible, like finding a long lost friend.
But for now, please judge the following statements according to your own sense of worth and reason:
“Pure excrement, DC. What are you eating?”
“Give me a break. You don’t need to spend quality time with dog shit to know it stinks.”
“Ok. I’m an ex-member. The FOF is not a “rape factory”. However the Fellowship of Friends is a Doofus factory. And a factory for sleazy lawyers, psychiatrists and psycho olive oilers.”
“You know DC there is another experience that I sometimes have when I read your posts…”Yeah, me too, but it is a little different. It is kinda like there is a gaggle of maggots in the center of my brain which begin wiggling and gobbling their way out until they get to the neural pathways controlling the jaw muscles causing it to fall slack.”
“I do not read DC’s posts. However, I read them about 1.5 years ago and his completely messed up mind propelled me to take the decision and leave the cult.’
“Daily Thumbtack,
DC – Aristotle said “Man is a political animal.” He could have also said that “Man is a lying animal.” He could also have said, “You’re a smug jackass”. But more likely, had he read the above, could have said, “Holy Zeus, what an intolerably pretentious pinhead”.
“His way of thinking really helps to see how screwed up you can become in the Fellowship of Friends (check Pathway to Presence too, because they are re-doing their image…).”
“I mentioned this to you before, but I’ll say it again. Your posts are nothing more than pre-adolescent intellectual masturbation. What’s astounding is your lack of conscience and complete lack of self-awareness in that you have no shame or hesitation about whipping it out and doing it here in front of all of us. You are the fool of the farce. You are, as I mentioned before, the guy on the subway who exposes himself for a reaction yet doesn’t perceive the disgust he elicits.”
“disingenuous?!?!? you have no clue… you’re truly an absurd ass…”
“I think it is good he talks here. But he is not well. And he needs help. And he will not get it as long as he stays in the cult. Have a nice day! :-0″
“Come on, have a heart.
After all, DC has nowhere to go that he is not openly or secretly reviled. At least some of us are honest. He is a fine example of what the FoF stands for.”
“To talk to Daily Crap it’s like playing tennis with the wall, there is nobody there.”
‘Mark Twain might have said – “Daily Cardiac’s posts were written by Girard Haven or by someone calling himself Daily Cardiac”. The fact is, it is the same, slowed down, formatory, convoluted, not making sense, CRAP! ”
“My apologies for the mistake. Who cares who It is? Inanity thy name don’t matter.”
“why do I get the feeling someone does not receive enough attention in the cult?”
“Daily trash,
You either conscienceless fof worker, who paid to do what you are doing, or you truly are believing in your daily crap.
In any case, your efforts fruitless, because your teacher’s actions speaking for themselves.”
“I don’t know how you guys make it thru DC’s posts.
I can’t make it thru one paragraph, it stinks like shit.”
‘Yes, Daily Crap is a real idiot, but if he the best they have, imagine how stupid others?”
“As the blog continually engages in conversation with this fucking moron I’m beginning to
believe the blog and DC deserve each other.”
“Instead, I’m going to have some real fun and find someone to give me a root canal without anesthetic.”
“Daily Crap,
You are one sick motherfucker, who deserves the worse, like your pathetic Robert Burton.
I wish you both to share a jail cell.”
“Daily Crap,
Your aim is to mislead and to distract.
You are a Burton’s whore, who getting paid for doing what you do.”
“Your robot logic is coming unglued. You are like HAL in 2001 a Space Odyssey. Open the pod bay doors Dave…. Dave…..Daisy, Daisy……Goodbye robot.”
“And don’t forget, dear friends, that the staggering level of idiocy that DC has achieved can only be accomplished after decades of mind-numbing & emotionally castrating toadying.”
“You, my friend, are a child. You ask for reason while living in a mythic world of fantasy.”
“DC-ism -Banal FOF witch hunt of fueled fears, accusations of disloyalty and unsubstantiated accusations to justify and protect it’s Cult leader Robert Burton”
“Don’t fall in this trap of wasting energy on this guy/woman”
“I agree with that.
Talking to DC reasonably is useless because he lack of just about every thing to have this type of conversation with him. He proved his idiocy over and over again.. He is a true reflection of the FoF, and to have him here is good, so people can listen to him and make their own conclusions.”
“Thank you Opus for your reasonable post, but I’m afraid you will be disappointed by Daily Crap’s response, if there will be any.”
“No, please stay there. Keep being complete with oneself and suck up all the joy and salvation you can get. You deserve it.
I wish you the best of luck.’
“My guess is “he” is a non-suckee. RB doesn’t really like his type, except for money. Apologists and defenders are frequently those who have to create their own imaginary worth in lieu of sexual attention by defending the indefensible (flying monkey).”
“DC must have claimed the position of talking asshole for the FOF, especially if he is behind the bullshit PR on their site. Fits nicely. Whether he wrote it or not I don’t think I could hold him in lower esteem than I do already. He the perfect mouthpiece. There’s a special ring in hell for him (within his cosmology, not mine).”
“How strange……..
All of those words that he uses and yet it appears he can no longer ‘think’”.
“You are such a douche”
“Fuck you you fucking motherfucking fuck.”
“DC said,
“This discussion is supposed to be about spiritual matters;”
He is mistaken. Actually he knows better, and he only wishes it was about that. He wishes it was about almost anything other than what it really is, and then tries his best to develop conversation about other topics.”
I guess it was silly of me to propose a spiritual discussion when it appears the spirit part of spiritual is not much believed in or valued by ex members. The big picture is slowly coming into focus.
The FoF professes to be an esoteric school based on spirituality, based on development of the spirit.
So if one does not put much stock into that realm, or as it seems from WhaleRider, does not even believe in it, it’s no wonder there would be a disconnect with an organization that centers it’s teachings on the existence of a spirit world that governs over human kind and closely monitors all man’s dealings. A spirit world that can be and has been verified by hundreds of members.
Now that I think of it I really don’t remember any ex members conversing, long or short, frequently or infrequently, on any level, about a deity, higher forces, gods, angels, creator. It appears they have substituted synchronicity for a deity.
Elena: Your comments are very interesting DC because you didn’t get a word of what Whalerider said and now I am beginning to understand another aspect of the puzzle.
You write:
“an organization that centres it’s teachings on the existence of a spirit world that governs over human kind and closely monitors all man’s dealings. A spirit world that can be and has been verified by hundreds of members”.
As a response to Whalerider’s:
“The “spirit world” is a metaphor for the unseen forces and mythic archetypes of the unconscious mind…Apparently, you believe in a literal spirit world.”
Which is wonderfully revealing of where you are. Where the Fellowship is at and why it is so WRONG.
Your conception of a spiritual world is based on its GOVERNING over mankind and monitoring man’s dealings. It is about a God, gods or forces coming from outside which is essentially the same position to that of Christian Catholics and you don’t have an inkling into what Whalerider is saying which is that “unseen forces and mythic archetypes” are aspects of the individual himself. There is a huge difference in both positions and you can’t even smell it. The whole Fellowship Dogma is based on this traditional premise doing away with centuries of history or our life of the soul. THAT is precisely why the Fellowship enslaves people rather than help them free themselves: because it thinks and treats them as if they were simply victims of the universal order and those of you who name yourselves the bearers of truth and spirituality dress your selves with the power to submit those beneath you. Listen to your self: “… a spirit world that GOVERNS over human kind and closely monitors all man’s dealings”: the spiritual world governs over mankind and you are hence endowed with the right to GOVERN over the member’s lives which is exactly what Robert does and the inner circle acts on and justifies. THAT ALONE justifies everything that happens in the Fellowship.
Whalerider’s statement, which is probably Jungian, is coming from a perfectly opposite position and what it establishes is that the spiritual world “breathes” in man, in and out of man. It is intrinsic to him not as a governing force in the sense you give it but as a conditioning and liberating force depending on the process the individual is subject to.
There are two great differences that I can think off hand: one is that in your concept of spirituality it is no wonder members accepted to be governed to slavery because there is no inner work. The Fourth Way was indeed something you took advantage of to exploit people because what you practice is traditional Christian Catholicism. The second difference follows the first: Since people are to be submitted they cannot work on themselves but have to continue to idolize the spiritually superior authorities. That is why any form of self-expression from a member is shunned. Why members are condemned to read quotes from “higher beings”, why no one can be!
Let me tell you something Daily Cardiac. I am an ignorant; a fool who barely knows if tomorrow is not too intense to live through. I am not conscious enough to not make a hundred mistakes in the next half hour and every word I say is a mistake if you look at it from who and what I’ll be saying in three years, should I still live but I know this truth: inner work is the journey from one’s self to one’s self within the world of archetypes. Archetypes are the realities of the higher emotional centre and the journey from one centre to the other, from our biography to our destiny is the Work.
I learnt that this month in flesh and blood,
not in a School but in these street corners of the Public Square
on the Internet
with people I haven’t physically met.
We are so ripe,
so broken,
so ready,
that we can learn to work with our selves in every street and the darker the street the clearer the archetype will be.
We are falling from the tree of light like overripe fruits!
All we need to do is trust our selves or our self’s Sun:
the I in our hearts.
Trust our life, that is, the life within our selves that is incorruptible and divine:
The “live love”,
the “living love”
a flame that nothing can put out no matter how dark.
It is I-Spirit and no matter how dark we seem to be in our suffering, it does not let us stain. All suffering is not only necessary but welcome because there is an enormous amount of it that needs to be dealt with.
We’ve centuries of suffering to deal with.
We can heal each other’s suffering by allowing our selves to be.
By witnessing each other’s struggle without running away from it and giving a hand were possible. But we must be willing to GOVERN our selves and free the Gods of responsibility. We are no longer children in Paradise and the Gods, like parents, need to move on.
We all need to move on.
“Clinging”,
even to Gods,
bears no dignity and
dignity is the first sign of our self’s presence.
Dignity does not “cling”.
It stands humbly on its own no matter how beaten.
We did not bite the apple to remain like children.
We bit it to become as Gods in the knowledge of good and evil.
We walked out of the gates of heaven to learn about suffering but not to succumb to it.
Evil is ignorance of who we are.
When we know our selves, we will do no evil.
Evil is hurting each other: when we stop that, there’ll be no evil.
It is evil what is not “inherent” to us but something we do in our ignorance and stop doing in our consciousness.
When we know each other’s “living love”, we will not hurt each other.
It is very simple: we just need to be human!
All freedom!
Hi Elena
I have just woken up (07.00 hrs GMT) after a day (my 53rd birthday) spent ‘manning’ our little exhibition with one of my students who is, professionally, both a spiritual healer and a holistic therapist, who has had her own business in those areas for 10 years. She is such a calm lady of 33 years old and has been one of my longest-running students (at least 5 years) and has high moral, ethical, artistic and personal standards. To describe her, you would say she is a Celtic Warrior Princess – bold in presence with long, curly, orange, flowing hair. She quietly believes in herself, because the spirit beings believe in her, but avoids the limelight, just wanting to share her personal way of working with others…..
Why this little description?…..I think because we all know when a person has ‘that little something’ that gives them beauty of being. As we both look back (you and I) we have seen that the FOF/PTP was all ‘a facade of beauty’ and probably most people were very negative internally. My mentor/friend, George, who still lives in Pacifica, said to me, very soon after my ejection in 1989 – “That cult was about as spiritual as a bucket of vomit!” and it took me many years to see that clearly. I obviously cannot tell how far you are along the pathway to spiritual recovery – there are so many questions you have to live – I have lived many myself and now have a strong, yet delicate, surety in the things in which I am involved – life interfused with spirit. I just know that you will get there – the fierce desire for truth and the wish for the best in yourself and others…..
Continue and know that you are loved…..Nigel.
Lorne Dawson
Cults, The Internet and Religion
My research evolved from cults to the Internet after the mass suicide of members of Heaven’s Gate in 1997. They made their living at that time by designing web pages. They also put their literature on the web as a way of recruiting new members. I started to look into the use of the Internet by new religious movements. There was public concern and fear that some new religious movements would “lure” young people away from the safety of their homes through the Internet. I wanted to know if that claim was true. My research showed that the fears were greatly exaggerated because successful recruiting requires a lot of face-to-face interaction.
Comprehending Cults
Lorne L Dawson, Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements, Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 2006.
The book remains a really good overall introduction to key issues and literature. Lorne Dawson covers most of the key areas of what have been termed New Religious Movements (NRMs) and in well referenced chapters Dawson provides a largely impartial analysis of issued associated with NRM’s such as brainwashing and child abuse allegations, the alleged propensity to violence, and the relative demographics of NRMs and in more theoretical terms the approaches to the study of NRMs (mainly Berger and Stark and Bainbridge) and the relationship of modernity (and secularisation) to NRMS.
The trouble is there is no real clear line of demarcation between the cult and the sect, since the cult is identified in relation to the social context, what is a cult in one place, is a sect or denomination elsewhere:
http://www.cesnur.org/conferences/riga2000/chryssides.htm
Freedom!
For Elena…..
HER PRAISE
By W B Yeats
“She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I have gone about the house, gone up and down
As a man does who has published a new book,
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook
Until her praise should be the uttermost theme,
A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,
A man confusedly in a half dream
As though some other name ran in his head.
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I will talk no more of books or the long war
But walk by the dry thorn until I have found
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there
Manage the talk until her name come round.
If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,
Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.”
Hey Elena…..
You know what? I have four Pure Solar Lady Friends – all blonde – two in my Academy and two at my favourite pub. They all call me Nige, instead of Nigel, which seems to denote a certain masculine element in their psychology. Raine (Lorraine) and Louise, in my Academy, would appear to be married to rich men, and have a certain ability to treat their attendance at my classes as a type of sophisticated playtime. The other two – Hayley and Amy are respectively the karaoke compere at the pub on a Friday night and a mentor for young people with criminal records. But all of them are extremely talented at what they do. You would not be able to tell, from looking at me now, that I have a Solar element, since I look like a fat (read Jovial) fierce-faced Martial, but there is that somewhat innocent-to-the-world attitude that ‘gives the game away’. And also the artistic bent. I also think is one of the reasons why I try not to get into arguments (for the most part) over subjects that you raise that may make most readers negative. You do like to ‘fly around the subject matter’ quite a bit…..Nigel.
“I also think is one of the reasons why I try not to get into arguments (for the most part) over subjects that you raise that may make most readers negative. You do like to ‘fly around the subject matter’ quite a bit…Nigel”
Hi Nigel,
Wouldn’t you say there’s a big difference between an argument and a dialogue? And that avoiding to dialogue because we’re afraid of arguing is like avoiding to swim because we might drown? When will we ever learn if we don’t dare?
And I certainly do like to fly around the subject matter perhaps with such amplitude that it makes it difficult to get a good grip on it but I too am learning!
Sounds like you have a lot of fun in your courses. Good for you. I too am much enjoying the few I am taking. Just being with people has such a healing effect!
Thanks for sharing
Wow! Who do you think would say a word on my behalf? A clear serious one just as I was getting ready to leave? I do thank you Daily Cardiac and yet we are far from agreeing on most things but beyond that there is a dialogue and you are a tremendous warrior even if on the other side! I’ll take your post bone by bone as I like to do!
88. Daily Cardiac –
Ames Gilbert – 49:
“Daily Cardiac, You are setting up a false argument when you ask readers to compare the collected comments of your detractors you’ve collected together to the blandishments of the FoF website. First, I don’t recall any of those who made comments setting themselves up as objective spiritual authorities or even ‘bearers of spiritual truth’; the FoF/PTP and Burton (and you yourself) clearly do.”
I disagree that my comments represent a “false argument.” But to address you first point about ex members “setting themselves up as objective spiritual authorities” if you read the comments I posted you will arrive at the conclusion that those individuals think they know much more than I’ve ever claimed to know. They think they know their own reality entirely plus my reality better than I know it. That’s thinking they know a lot. In fact their words suggest that they are “all-knowing.”
Elena: I agree with them: almost everyone knows one’s reality better than one’s self specially in what concerns one’s weaknesses because we are experts at seeing each other’s weaknesses and beginners at seeing each others strengths otherwise armored personality wouldn’t feel comfortable with itself.————
I start out by giving everyone the benefit of the doubt that on some level they are here precisely because they are seeking spiritual truth; that’s what they were looking for when they joined the FoF I presume, and since that didn’t work out for them I also presume they are still on the journey to find it. I start with that premise and try to move from there to a place that reveals those who are actually seeking spiritual truth from those who are engaging in something less than a sincere search. One of the reasons I highlighted those complete postings was because, collectively, they expose in crystal clear terms the degree of evasiveness at work on this blog when people are asked to back up their opinions with reason.
Elena: I also agree with them that you do wish to place things in a place of doubt to undermine people’s presence and trust in their own presence. If you can get everyone to doubt as you do inside the Cult, you are in a stronger position and they in a weaker one. Some things are evaded on the FOFblog probably because the answers are not known and you use that deep lack of knowledge to create doubt but you yourself can’t offer the knowledge you’re asking for. You hint at it with words like the universal code but you also cannot make that practical and on the other hand, the very practical realities remain unrecognized by you. ——–
In any event ex members are using words to define who they are, to represent their position, so I am only contrasting those words with the words of the official FoF site. What could be more fair than that?The words I quoted are the ones ex members chose to go on record with in response to my comments. They could have said many things but they chose to say what they did. They could have chosen to actually address an issue I introduced, explain a contradiction I pointed out, but they preferred to answer in the manner they did. What could be more fair than to contrast that with what the FoF has chosen to present?
“Sure, some of the comments you have collected are reactive and probably don’t advance the conversation very much, but IMO you don’t contribute much yourself, whatever your claims to the contrary.”
I’m glad you qualified this statement by saying this is your opinion. It’s my opinion that I am one of the only voices who repeatedly has tried to elevate the comments to the level of a basic discussion and you can see by the quotes how futile that attempt has been.
Ah my dear Daily Cardiac, so easy to look at the beam in other’s eyes and miss the splinter in our own! How many questions did I ask you that you never answered? How long have you been here letting out your dogma without being able to connect to yourself? But you are beginning to be able to do that and that alone is healing. Just the activity of talking and sharing with others is healing no matter how much we disagree because if we are able to talk it means we are civilized enough to share and communicate and THAT is what matters. We can tolerate a great deal of disagreement and still dialogue but what we cannot tolerate is a great deal of abuse and that is what we’re actually about: the tremendous abuse of people by the Fellowship of Friends Cult.———
“You mention the reference to the PTP site being “alluring”, and claim that any open seeker will find it irresistible. You forget that Silentpurr, like the rest of us who have left, was allured by the claims of the Fellowship of Friends, and after spending considerable time, effort, and money, found no substance behind the allure. There was a lure, but we found it was ‘bait and switch’.”
You / Silentpurr have found this to be the case, but others, hundreds of others, have found the opposite to be the case; that there is much substance behind the allure. Now, having said that, if you can see what I’m getting at then we would be standing on the threshold of a real discussion, if you are interested in that. I see many flaws, gaps and contradictions in the conclusions you arrive at regarding the FoF/RB.
Elena: The thousand members still in the Fellowship today simply shows the power of a cult over its members and that alone should help us scream and run to get them out. People give up themselves to belong to a community because belonging to each other is such a wonderful thing but if to belong to each other we have to give our selves up it is better to continue on one’s own and hold everyone within one’s soul. A community without free participation is not a community but a cult. A cult in which only the guru counts is a tyranny. A tyranny is crime and crime is what you’re defending.———-
A discussion ensues when someone representing one position acknowledges the position of another, however much that position opposes his or her own views and yields to that person so their position can be expounded on. Then vice versa. Then the results of the chronicling of thoughts, reasonings, logic, of both sides, are there for posterity, for anyone to absorb and judge the merit of or lack of merit of. The quotes I posted from ex members represent all that a true discussion does not consist of.
Elena: I don’t agree. Swearing and screaming reveals the state of the participants. Many might not be able to formulate the intellectual discourse that justifies their horror so they scream: “eat shit and die” but that is as valid and terrible as the fact that you formulate a lot of dogma without the balls to scream. The balls count my love! And it’s got to hurt in the balls to be credible. I do believe your balls are engaged in the problem but you’ve put your balls in your head and are defending rape! It makes a substantial difference don’t you think? At least the others are still trying to heal them after lending them to Bobby’s soulless hand.———-
Now, I ask you why is it that the very topics ex members offer as proof of FoF fraud and the like are not actually ever discussed using any semblance of reason? All ex members do is simply assert that something is true or correct because they say so and then when someone like myself challenges the assertions by pointing out pertinent exceptions or contradictions or lack of sound reasoning they can only write back with insults or more of the same assertions, never actually entering into a valid discussion of the issue. You wrote back on a variety of subjects but you did not touch any of the central issues I pointed out in the last posting and you probably are not aware of it.
Elena: You are very good Daily Cardiac, that is, you’ve got a lot of structure and knowledge of the different levels but for all the knowledge you’ve got, you’re as blind as the rest of us might be ignorant. We might not have as solid a structure as you have but we have the soul, our essence is still alive enough to know what is wrong. You’ve used the work to turn it against your self and others. You are extremely knowledgeable but use it to justify Robert’s darkness and with it try to get away with your own. You want answers on sexuality and there are answers. We’ll get to work on that soon enough.——–
Here is one central issue I introduced: It seems to me that a critique of any organization claiming to be a spiritual entity cannot be valid if the critics do not believe in a deity, or do not make mention of or account for a sprit world composed of higher beings who govern mankind and monitor our every movement. How would such a critique be valid without making mention of the existence of such a deity? The critique would be entirely out of context and thereby wholly off the mark. This fact deserves your attention.
Elena: Again your affirmation of higher beings governing mankind that I dealt with in the previous post. Your hierarchical conception of the world is necessary for you to justify your own power over members. You identify with the Gods above and in convincing yourself that you are acting them out, you justify your abuses on members but taking that position you separate mankind instead of creating unity and consciousness. Consciousness is the knowledge of our connectedness and conscious acting is strengthening those connections with love. The Fellowship Cult is ALL about disconnecting from one’s self, one’s family, humanity at large and each other, in short, the Fellowship is directly opposed to consciousness.——-
“The bait was the Fourth Way, and we were switched to the Second Way, a religion based on the worship of Burton and his collection of conveniently invisible helpers, the theoretical 44 astral bodies of supposedly ‘conscious’ beings.”
First of all, Spirits are invisible; that’s not a “convenience” contrived by anyone connected to the FoF. This statement also shows some of the misconceptions ex members have who without any self questioning posit them into the column of Truth. There was no bait and switch. The FoF was founded upon principles, practices, collated by G & O, who called their collective system “The Fourth Way.”
Elena: Now you’re talking but I wonder if you’re listening. You seem unable to hear. Interesting that you use the word “Spirits” is it not? It is not a word in the System. In the System we talk about hydrogens 48, 24, 12, 6 and three and one. We can begin talking about the spiritual in the form of essence as of world 24 and 12, 6, 3 and 1 are already deeply and overtly connected to another realm that we could call SPIRITUAL if you wish. But that spiritual in out Fourth Way System IS INSIDE OF US, NOT OUTSIDE OF US, GOVERNING US. There is a permanent flow between the spiritual and the physical conditioned by the state of the I. Each individual’s I lives within the flow of communication between the realms. The more consciousness there is of the different realms within one, the more connected we are to the invisible realms and to the physical realm as an expression of it. There IS no separation in consciousness. The “deity” or demon today is not Robert Burton or any particular person, it is the I within each human being that has the power to unite or separate.
Forces coming from other realms as you suggest are not GOVERNING US, they are influencing us as much as we influence them in a mutual flow. Mankind lives in a dialogue with the cosmos not as its slave but as its friend and so does each individual. The Cosmos is not our enemy. Beings are trying to help us from all corners of the Universe, not dominate us. The determinism of planetary forces is only a structure on which to travel one’s journey through life not only until we develop our own moon but until we develop our own Sun. If you know the System, you’d understand what I am saying.———-
Daily Cardiac: That name is merely a label. The label is not the garment. The esoteric teachings have not ever changed or deviated from the same source (Influence C) from day one. Objective Truth by its very nature cannot be the Second Way, or Religion, but to distinguish one from the other someone needs to be looking for the higher of the two. If one is not really looking for Objective Truth it could very easily look like falsehood when encountered. Finding spiritual truth is a slippery slope.
Elena: We live in a benign world offering everything to support our evolution: Earth, water, Sun and Air, that is LIFE and everything that comes with it, WHAT MORE DO WE WANT? Only cults have to convince us that it’s a destructive world to enslave and exploit us. It is our own destructiveness in this world of hierarchies that is destroying what we have been given: Earth, Water, Sun and Air to develop our selves in with the help of every being in the Universe. THAT IS INFLUENCE C Not a deity supporting rape and raping. ———-
Ames: “A religion like any other in that it uses fear or infatuation to bind the followers.”
Daily Cardiac: As an organization the FoF is fairly difficult to join and very easy to leave. One has to pay money in advance to join and one only has to stop paying money to leave. So I don’t know the binding you speak of. I have not been in fear for even one hour since I joined. Infatuation usually does not last for 39 years (and counting, for some individuals). If it does it is not infatuation.
Elena: How would you know the binding that Ames speaks of when you are the binder and have no distance from your self? How can you look at your back without the consciousness of your shadow? You have not been in fear because you acted out without malice but we are so sick in our times that we do not need malice to throw up demons. We are victims of our own inventions and are using our power to destroy each other instead of helping our selves to freedom. Infatuation lasts lifetimes when you’re in power because the false ego doesn’t want to give up the power and that’s what you’re under. !——
“A religion like any other that claims it is the only true one, that it has an exclusive pathway to salvation, that all other religions are false, that followers are singularly blessed, that to leave is damnation.”
What are you saying, that there is no true way? Truth be told there is one true way and many false ways, and the ones who look the hardest for it are the ones to find the true way. The FoF claims it’s place as a true esoteric school of awakening, in the tradition of similar schools from past ages. It claims nothing more, nothing less.
Elena: You do like to play with words, what Ames is saying is not that there is no true way but that the FOF Cult is not a true way no matter how much you defend it. There is nothing esoteric about it, it is the most shocking manifestation of Influence A without a trace of soul. Indulgence and abuse in sex, money, clothing, pretense, dogma, lack of creativity, repetitiveness of the same formula, power, control, imposition, indifference, imagination, lying, inner considering, lack of external consideration, rape, fraud and every other obstacle to culture and evolution is what is practiced in its bosom. It is as close to hell as one can get on Earth.——–
“A religion like any other that demands faith, credulity and childlike (and permanent) dependence. A religion like any other that necessitates intermediaries between the supplicant and God.”
Faith is necessary in the spiritual quest, not blind faith, but faith based on what is understood in the reality of the moment.
Elena: LIAR, LIAR, LIAR, the System is not based on faith but verification.—-
The spiritual child starts from dependence and ends in liberation, just like the physical child. Intermediaries are needed for part of the journey.
LIAR, YOU’RE ALL LIARS AND YOU’RE BEING LIED TO. EACH MEMBER INSIDE, LISTEN WELL BECAUSE THIS IS NOT THE SYSTEM. THIS IS A FOUL LIE AND CORRUPTION OF THE SYSTEM.——-
The concept of a guide is understood by all. At some point along the way the guided become the guides. Teachers are spiritual guides. This is not a Burtonism, but a Spiritualism. Christ was that for the Apostles, Buddha for his disciples, and on and on.
Elena: We are not in the times of Catholicism which separated light from man, we are in the times of light in man, we are each the bearer and carrier of light. We have our self to guide our actions and can trust that we will do no evil knowing our self. We are each enough of an authority to protect the truth and in submitting to our community we allow the community to protect us all. We submit not to one man with power but we submit to the power of the community to keep us in balance when we hurt each other. We submit to conscious democracy. To civility with unity or “re-ligio”, reunited in the consciousness of our integrity and wholesomeness. ——
Ames: “You advocate for the Pathways to Presence website. Is it because it is so pretty? Is the language so refined? Sure it’s pretty; the Fellowship of Friends has recruited some talented designers and writers in its time. We are here to tell readers that the prettiness hides something awful, that behind the facade there is rottenness, lies and corruption. That Burton is a charlatan and a liar, and has been from the start.”
Daily Cardiac: Again all I can start with is that there are many others who disagree with your words. What does that mean for you that many others disagree? Do you think you are more correct than they? If so how did you arrive at that conclusion? All you can reasonably say is that the FoF was not for you and you alleviated the problem by departing. You cannot know anything about my reality; you can only assume to know. And why would you assume to know someone else’s reality?
Elena: Because we are one and you cannot separate from us. Because we trust on what we are and our ability to discriminate between good and evil, harmful and healthy. Because we have the AUTHORITY to govern our lives and challenge what we see as harmful in our societies. Because we have been victims of your cult and know that in your position you have to defend it but that doesn’t make your position legitimate, it makes you accountable for your actions. You might be as ignorant as a nazi officer but that doesn’t make you any less accountable for your crimes. AND YOU ARE CRIMINALS.———-
Are the testimonies of 20 or 30 ex members who have been regularly posting here for the last year or so, or the 150/200 or so who have posted sporadically over the last 2.5 years, enough to automatically cancel out the 1600 who presently support and value the FoF? Show me where/how that is so? Or else reason it out to me more convincingly than by saying “it is true because I say so” or “it happened like this because several known or anonymous posters say it did.” I say it is not so. We have a stale mate. How do we go beyond this impasse?
Elena: 15.000 members have managed to leave after being ripped off and those inside are still just victims. Victims of your tongue and the power of this same structures that you are spitting out here. The fallibility of it all lies in the obvious corruption you’ve made of the System that I have already shown above. ———-
Ames: “Daily Cardiac, ask yourself why you defend the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Earl Burton. If you have verified that he is a ‘conscious teacher’, and that agents of the ‘spirit world’ exist and are helping you and other co–dependents, then that knowledge should be unassailable. Ditto the ‘hundreds of members’ who you claim have also verified this stuff.”
I’m not defending my position any more than you are defending yours. If you could see that it would represent a breakthrough that would find you on the threshold of a real discussion. Also, the knowledge of what the FoF is is unassailable. One only has to be open to it to see that.
Elena: There is nothing unassailable about the FOFcult, it is pathetically obvious for anyone off its spell. And in your answer you avoided the question which is very clear: if you and Robert can verify higher beings so can everyone else in the world, what makes you think that you are the only one’s with the right to leaders? To make decisions? To spend the money? To preach YOUR truth and have everyone else abide to it? Don’t avoid the question as you preach others not to.——–
Ames: “Why should ‘C-Influence’, as you conceive it, need a bunch of little helpers like you anyway?”
They do not need me to defend their works. They allow me to write here as they allow you to.
Elena: Now you’re making me laugh but it’s tragic. A tragic comedy. Here you are at last presenting your self as the endower of the word of Christ to justify murder: the banning of thousands of people that you couldn’t submit physically, emotionally, intellectually and last but not least, SEXUALLY; economically, academically, spiritually and last but not least, socially. And you’ve killed people inside Daily Cardiac. The blood of those who have committed suicide in the hopelessness of Fellowship life runs in your veins, in your karma for you have no destiny but karma.———
Ames: “You attract comments from exasperated readers who show their exasperation openly.”
Why are they exasperated? If they were living in truth they would not be exasperated. Truth does not exasperate, truth calms. Falsehood is what exasperates. All crimes take place from a false place, a false position by exasperated individuals. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction? This qualifies as an issue to be looked into. Dennis Larson gave his reason for this dichotomy and that is his offering. I have another viewpoint which sees that explanation as a thinly veiled justification. Any false action can be justified as being appropriate, but it cannot be made appropriate. Those looking for truth will see it for what it is. But at least he offered his reasoning. That’s all that’s possible on a forum of this kind – both viewpoints are out there for consumption.
Elena: No Daily Cardiac, we do not talk just to talk, we talk to act, we reason to understand and when we realize that we have made mistakes we correct them. THAT is what this dialogue is for. You do not wish to acknowledge your mistakes but that doesn’t stop us from knowing what is criminal about the Fellowship Cult: intentional fraud to rape and exploit.——-
Ames: “You concentrate on the language but not the message. What is the message for you, Daily Cardiac, and can you learn to recognize and value it?”
I have made the verifications necessary for me to value as true what I do value. The words of ex members have no sway over me. If any words here were able to sway me it would only mean I hadn’t really verified anything but just thought I had. Or it may mean I forgot the verifications.
Elena: The words of other people are life giving. They sway us and move us because they are the expression of the spirit. The logos! We live in the spirit when we talk with each other and listen to each other’s being. We sculpt our selves in the interaction. Purify our selves so that we can live in harmony with each other. You cannot hear the soul with which others cry their suffering. You demeanor other’s crying because it expresses itself in pain: FUCK YOUSICKMOTHERFUCKERS, you’ve hurt us. And all those who are still quiet about it are too hurt to scream. It takes a long time for most people to be strong enough to scream after they’ve been raped. It is their silence what you don’t want to hear.———
Objective truths do not change from day to day or year to year. They just are. If someone has verified a teacher is enlightened and that teacher manifests in a way the student does not understand there are several options available than to throw out the verification. The reasons a spiritual teacher would act in ways incomprehensible to a student are many, too many to go into here.
Elena: Nothing is too much to go into here, you’re just avoiding the issues.—–
But it all starts with looking for truth, finding truth and recognizing it when one finds it. If you’re like WhaleRider and don’t believe in the process of verification then what I’m reasoning now won’t mean a thing to you.
Elena: You are a poor warrior after all, you’ll lose simply because you don’t even know the weapons with which others fight. Whalerider has given you precious understanding and you can’t even smell it! How could you when smelling is an aspect of the emotional centre and yours is dead!—–
As I said the gaps, the degree of improbabilities, the contradictions, in the information generated by ex members is substantial to say the least. All you really have is a series of unsubstantiated claims of abuse by a small group of mostly anonymous individuals. Coupled with that you have the same individuals repeating these claims over and over embellishing them more and more with each repetition. (By the way, that’s a sure fire way of desensitizing the information until the fantastic stories become more mundane with each retelling. You might want to think about that approach.)
Elena: And yours becomes more alive with each post but still have hardly a handkerchief out of the grave! Keep waving your arm inside, you might actually hit a nail or a nerve and set yourself free.———
If you toss out the laws of probabilities you do not help your cause one bit. What do you have besides mostly anonymous entirely unsubstantiated claims? Where are the victims? Who are the victims? Where are the documented histories of treatment for trauma due to abuse? Where are the medical bills, the lost jobs and broken homes due to inability to cope with all this unbridled abuse at the hands of a Manson / Koresh / J. Jones / Hitler figure? (ex members comparisons, not mine) No one had to look hard for that group’s victims and their documented and detailed histories of abuse.
Elena: You are the victim to begin with but when a man gets used to eating dirt he goes mad if you try to keep him away from it, said Rumi. YOU my love, are the first victim, the worst victim. The rest of us are already recovering! YOU AND ROBERT.
What do you have in real evidence in 40 years? A lone civil suit by a 17 year old who claimed he had unlawful sex with RB? An individual who filed his claim soon after his farther was expelled from the FoF? An individual who decided he preferred to take a few hundred thousand dollars rather than bring his abuser to trial? That’s not much to stake so much of your life trying to rectify, is it?
Elena: Keep screaming Daily Cardiac that the silent ones will hear you.—–
The way people are made we can’t do two things at once very well. One or both of the activities must suffer. If you are a brain surgeon you can’t have a cell phone conversation while operating on a patient, either the patient will be worse off or the conversation will be compromised.
You can’t live your life fully and dedicate a significant portion of it to trying to bring down an organization you no longer belong to because of a notion of “phantom victims” being abused in this organization that is as easy to leave as not making out a check and signing it over. You should want more than that from the rest of your life, especially if you feel you have already wasted too much time in the organization in question. Ex members will read this and say, “what a clever ploy, this is his way of getting us to ease off of his beloved school”, but that would be an incorrect assumption.
Elena: How would it be incorrect? That is absolutely correct, thank you for keeping us from having to formulate it.———
I harbor no ill will towards you. There are already too many unhappy people in the world. It’s bad for everyone. I’d much rather see you out fishing or doing whatever strikes your fancy than seeing you out picketing in front of the gatehouse. The picketing does not change much, if anything. I think you know that.
Elena: I should be up there soon and picketing will be your daily bread! What are you going to do now? Take me to court again or kill me? What a waste when we could all be fishing!——-
That’s not why I say this. If you want to know the truth, I see that the blog, if anything, helps the FoF; in recruitment, in any number of ways. Without the blog I would not have been able to list the comments of those ex members, whose true nature speaks for itself. The blog will not keep one true student away, or help one true student to leave. It will only keep away those who would not have stayed anyway thereby saving both sides time and energy. The school has never been about numbers, but its always been about spaces. If someone ill suited for it stays away someone who connects with it has a space waiting.
Elena: Again not true, we are much stronger now and the Fellowship is waning.
You might also like to think about a hypocritical action you engaged in recently. You were the only one with the resolve to call out Elena, but ultimately it is seen as a self-serving action. You did not call her out because of her extremist nature and abusive tirades. She did not represent the most vulgar or abusive poster here. There are several still posting who you ignore who are more abusive than Elena. You called Elena out because she began to attack other ex members, i.e. those whose viewpoints you share. I get much more verbal abuse from any number of ex members than Elena dished out to WhaleRider but that doesn’t phase or concern you one bit. So, as I see it, your standing up to Elena was purely self serving, doing the right thing for the wrong reason. You may not even relate to what I’m saying but any open minded viewer sees it for what it is, and it doesn’t serve your cause well.
Elena: True and not true. Banning me was self serving but also I was abusive and sick. I’ve been sick ever since I allowed the Fellowship to abuse each and all of us. And I did start screaming at ex-members for not acting seriously against your crimes and I did take too much space. Ames might be self-serving but it doesn’t make his stand any less necessary. You see, the wonderful thing about being in a group is that we sense each other’s weaknesses and help each other remove them. If we are healthy we continue to struggle and love each other. Never with banning. Banning is criminal. But calling out abuse is not and I was abusive. I was sick and tired of screaming to the indifference of the many and so tired and hopeless. So don’t think you’ll divide us even further with this affirmation. The fofblog is priceless! It is doing a wonderful job! The recent posts by Golden Veil, Ton and even Ames are aiming exactly where it is necessary to aim and you are loosing the battle Daily Cardiac. They were absolutely right in wishing to speak their own word without my screaming and I’d gotten too loose. It doesn’t justify my banning which is simply an expression of the self-serving but it justifies being called on. We’ve all learnt quite a bit from it. Don’t try to use our mistakes to justify your crime. It doesn’t work like that. Mistakes are mistakes but crime is punishable. That was the difference. They treated me as if I were a criminal and I am not, they are so cult like still that they use the same mechanisms the cult uses, but they are fighting against your crime and I am with them every inch of the way and not with you. We already separated no matter how much we loved each other. Love cannot stop us from separating when it is an unpracticed ideal, a pretense living in imagination and crime.
Jomo, Ton, Crouching Tiger, you do give answers but you also avoid the questions. So convenient to remain blind isn’t it?
Don’t you think the traces of Robert Burton still linger in all of you by addressing only what is convenient to you and not everything presented?
It’s one thirty in the afternoon Colombian time of the 27th Nov. 2009 after Dr. Pangloss’ post No. 89
Elena
I am having difficulty digesting your comments on other bloggers and, especially, DC. Why do you feel you have to have an opinion about almost every other person’s posts? If I were you, I would put more effort into being with your people and, especially, into your glass-crafting, perhaps describing your reactions to that, very important to you, I feel, experience. Just trying to help, as I have been and am being helped…..Nigel.
What do you find difficult in relation to my post to Daily Cardiac? Can’t you see he is trying to use me to bring Bruce and Ames down? Why should I keep quiet about it? Is supporting them too much for you? Or was it too difficult for you to even read my post?
You’re not me Nigel and I’m not you. What makes you think I shouldn’t have an opinion on the things that concern me? If you want a discussion on things listen to them carefully and discuss them but please don’t patronize me. You’ve been loving and kind and I am ever so grateful to you but that doesn’t give you a right to tell me how to be or what to do. Tell me what you don’t agree with then we can talk about it. There is a sphere of communication beyond the person where we can meet. The person is crucial and wonderful to acknowledge but there is a realm in which the subject itself can be looked at without being conditioned by who is saying it. When we understand that better, we might be able to dialogue.
You’re probably upset with me because I called you silly and are going into that pattern of yours of changing sides so go ahead and move over there for as long as you want. When you’re ready to come back my arms will continue to be wide open if I’m still here. Once I love someone I try not to close my arms again no matter how angry they make me and I do love you.
Ames: …and my right to protest if an Elena comes along and dumps on us (her new blog has reached 156,000 words in over 250 posts on one—very long—page!).
It must be all that matters: the length of the posts!
No wonder you don’t write here! Sounds like Robert who wouldn’t allow us to speak about the same thing more than two minutes so that we wouldn’t grasp anything well enough! And neither of you seem to understand the point that Daily Cardiac is making that has nothing to do with the System so he continues to drill the dogma without being challenged.
And the fofblog seems like a river without rocks but there’s no dialogue in it either. No struggle, just nice people like in the Fellowship, giving up the dialogue as long as they can all post! You’re by far more successful than I am with this blog but that is not a model I would like to imitate either. It’s like in the Fellowship: everyone giving an angle on the same subject without discussing it but the beauty of a dialogue is that moment in which two people confront each other’s ideas and one helps the other move beyond him or herself and they do it because they love each other enough for the dialogue to be possible. Maybe you just no longer do that in America or Europe? No “sobet” as Rumi calls it? It isn’t much better in Colombia. People are too afraid to talk in public. That simply shows how much we’ve allowed for the public space to be alienated from us. How afraid we are of intimacy in a public realm. It is a benign world and if we can trust each other and show others that that is possible it too could spread. Love is contagious! Well, I don’t expect you to do that here but you might try it in the fofblog if you find it more suitable for your liking.
Elena
I have no idea how this post is going to ‘fall on your ears’, but is seems appropriate to write it (just in some hope). Your banning, and the subsequent setting up by you, of the Public Square Site, was really to give you ‘distance to unwind from your venting and ranting’ and ‘personal vendettas’ on the FOF blog. Now, it seems, by your posts to me about argument and dialogue and your seemingly negative post to Ames, that we are getting the ‘same old crap but different TV channel’. You say dialogue, when you really mean – beating your opponent down with literary sticks – i.e. negative argument and you seem to think it will lead to people respecting your ideas in the postings. I am, at heart, (and I am emotionally centred) a basically positive person, but I am damned if I am going to post on a site ‘led’ by someone who only wants to ‘batter down the walls’ of my Spititual Proposals, without trying them out for herself. For you, talking through with a consultant psychiatrist would help (I don’t know about medication – you seem to be averse to that!) and more of my suggestions about ‘grounding with your people’ Definitions follow…..
“Where there are arguments, there are idiots.” – Gurdjieff
“The Irish (both Catholic and Protestant) have initiated ‘dialogue’, in the wake of 600 years of English oppression, to great advantage.” – A National Newspaper
Thank you Nigel. Have a great journey! You’ve been extremely kind and continue to be much appreciated.
I love arguments even if Gurdjieff says they are for idiots. That is the most convincing thing I’ve heard that says he too was a guru who accepted no dissent. Had I remembered to argue in the Fellowship like I am doing here I wouldn’t have landed myself in a cult for seventeen years! But what I’m talking about is dialogue and in a dialogue the argument is not necessarily negative. People get negative when they can’t take the argument. We are seeing that right now with Daily Cardiac. He has a twisted mind process but he is still giving valid arguments that are not being contested. Instead people attack him personally very similar to what happened with me. Sometimes he is spouting out dogma but he has actually began to speak from his self too and is looking for answers sincerely and no one is giving him any. I guess that if Daily Cardiac is Girard, I just happen to understand him a little better than most of you after living with him for four years and seeing the levels of dogma being handed out day and night at the many events. You have no idea how wonderful it is that he is talking as he is and what a great opportunity it would be to help them all if you forwarded some possible alternatives and questions as I gave in my previous post to him. There are specific areas that can be tackled and are not being mentioned. Left unresolved as the fofblog is doing, it will strengthen the Fellowship’s members trust on those premises. I continue to write so that a record is kept. At least I don’t buy into any of it: not the fofblog’s position nor Daily Cardiac.
Freedom to everyone here!
309.
Ton “dc’s agenda here is all too obvious, it’s about reducing the blog to a pissing contest, a game of ‘he said, she said’ in which his own opinion might be passed off as valid. in his own mind it is, it’s the “truth” he lives with. in his mind he wins this little game he’s playing if he can arrange the wording and manipulate truth so that it “resonates” in such a way as to persuade others to accept his views. as it is said “he has a right to his opinions” but in my opinion, the real “value” of his views as they’re expressed here lie solely in the fact that they provide an example of and insight into the mentality of a fof cultist.”
Elena: I agree with you Ton and more specifically, he’s trying to create doubt in everyone which is a good technique used inside reducing everyone’s thinking to subjective opinions versus his and Robert’s objective knowledge that can’t be tackled because then he answers with: lower beings cannot know or understand higher beings.
If we understand that he is doing this unconsciously and sincerely and can show him these patterns this specifically, we could help him.
Daily Cardiac: One will notice that in this block of comments not one issue is addressed or refuted. There is no matching of reason with reason. It’s entirely dedicated to talking about me, projecting notions of what I am about, what my motivations “are.”
Elena: You’re right DC, I took your comments point by point because they can be looked at individually.
“in the world of norms and even relatively “moral” folks, the role of a teacher implies trust of the teacher on the part of the student… as a fiduciary a teacher is entrusted to act on behalf of the student but this sexual predator violates trust at every turn and in fact he depends upon the relationship of trusting student and his role as authority figure in order to lure his prey….”
Again, this is one broad assumption. It must first be established that the individuals being referred to were/are being coerced. There is no need for a predator if the sex is consensual. And there is no indication it is anything other than consensual. Did Robert slip a mickey to everyone wiping out the word “No” from their memories?
Elena: Here is where you change mode. You call assumption what has been traditionally understood and accepted as the role of an authority figure versus a dependent but then you use that same assumption to state that Robert is above questioning because he is a man beyond human understanding. You wipe it out as invalid and place your paradigms that no one can understand why a Teacher, Conscious being man number eight, would WORK like that with a student. They are just mind games to fit the interest. The same model serves you in one context and not in the next. In one context you use the traditional belief that a teacher should not be questioned and in the other you wipe that out and stand by the premise that being a “higher being” all his abuses can be justified. So what fits your argument to justify the status of teacher does not fit your argument to question why a superior being would abuse his dependents.
These details are ever so important and they’ve been an obstacle all throughout the blog.
One aspect is the one that addresses the individual and another the one that addresses the subject being dealt with.
I am just finding out as I go along but what I’ve noticed is that we have definite mind behavior, mind “mechanisms” to avoid seeing what is before us and if we can tap into that we can see where we err so easily.
That is one aspect. Another is that certain paradigms condition everything else. In Daily Cardiac it could be possible to study how he does it, how it is that he doesn’t see what ex-members see so clearly but then again we have the same phenomenon between ex-members and my self.
We are all including our life structures. The things we’ve heard and adopted to justify our selves. I feel like a cat following a chord that runs behind corners and I can’t quite catch but as I continue to observe the blogs go on, it is becoming clearer.
All the freedom!
If I confront the Fellowship with Jung or Steiner or myself they are theories of mine or others that are not valued. For me there is a limitation there not only in terms of the formatoriness of having to have the System as only reference but in terms of not hearing me. For me what you find beautiful in my poetry is not just the way it’s written but what is written for if it’s only the former, we’re done! I’m trying to put in prose what I understand in poetry and the journey through Jung was particularly enlightening because it not only helped me understand what was happening in the fof but in myself.
I don’t pretend that being objective is not including myself and limitations in the process. Understanding these phenomenon is not crystal clear I think for anyone here yet and if you and those on the fofblog think like that then you’ve already crystallized into something that is not what I’m interested in.
I have been extremely hurt not only by the Fellowship but in the fofblog and while I might have been very good at creating my own pain, I think the rest of you are not lame at it! There are a myriad specific issues being discussed here that are put under the blanket so that light is not shed on them and they touch our relationships in specific ways. We approve or disapprove each other, dialogue or neglect to dialogue with each other, love or dislike each other. We bind our emotional approval of each other if we don’t like the way we are being exposed intellectually, emotionally or sexually. We also compete with each other. Everything happens at the same time and the end result is that I get banned and you continue to support the blog that banned me without arguing against it, yes a few people screamed against me and voiced what so many felt but never discussed it, what makes you any better than the Fellowship? And now I am an unpronounceable subject! You’ve all committed to the silence! True that I did not want that to become a war against Ames or the moderator for it was important to protect the blog but the deep questioning is so necessary.
Nigel’s position is right. From one angle I was banned because I began screaming. I don’t deny that. But how many screamed at me before I screamed that weren’t banned? Who ever questioned that?
If we are really open with each other, we had many discussions on the fofblog and mine were a little better than many, not because I am better or healthier or superior in any way but because in those particular areas I had a little more experience. In fact, my arguments were a little better than most people’s for a long time. But having good arguments doesn’t make people love one, it makes them hate one. What Daily Cardiac is saying is the same that I feel and said: People stop addressing the argument and start attacking the individual when they can’t argue with the arguments. It was always the case that no one was able to confront Daily Cardiac as I confronted him on the fofblog. I think Jomo is superior in many ways to the way I confront him but I seem to understand something more about his psychology and situation than others. Jomo has a great deal more experience than me in other areas and it is the same with everyone else. We each have a particular area of experience that the others don’t have but in relation to the Fellowship of Friends and its horrors, I just seem to have enough to fill books and that is what is not being acknowledged because the Fellowship of Friends is not just about the Fellowship of Friends but about everything in life that put thousands of us inside from very different corners of the world and THAT is what most don’t want to discuss.
When someone is unwilling to consider the theories I present apparently disconnected to the immediate Fellowship experience, they are simply not willing to acknowledge the validity of my attempt to understand where specific aspects of the Fellowship were coming from. What I have confronted is not just the Fellowship but our selves.
Some of you want to reduce me to poems and Colombian stories and are unwilling to measure yourselves with the “theories” I present and I sincerely don’t believe it is because the theories don’t merit examination but because you are unwilling to examine them because they are 1. Coming from a woman 2. Not worth your time 3. too confusing 4. You don’t agree with them in principle 5. All of the above or just a few.
I am angry at the world. I am angry at men and women. I am furious with what I’ve experienced all my life and I am glad to say that even in all my anger I love life, men and women.
But the anger I have is specific. When I call Fellowship men sissies who allowed themselves to get raped as much as the women, children and old people I MEAN IT. And the problem is that they were already sissies when they got there. The mentality was ready for the rape. So my concern is not only the fact that the Fellowship made sissies of men but the fact that men today respond so positively to a narcissistic misogeneous sociopath.
What I am discussing here is OUR LIFE, not the Fellowship Cult. The fofblog wishes to reduce the problems to Bobby Burton but Bobby Burton is the worst victim of this whole phenomenon. You can’t come even close to explaining what happened to us if you reduce the problem to a poor idiot like me, an orphan who needs to suck penises as if they were tits because he didn’t have a father to help him become more of a man.
People in the fofblog can ban me as much as you like and pretend that you are above everyone else but you were as sick inside as you are outside. Ninety percent of ex-members are running away from the problem still hiding in the niceties of gold alchemy paraphernalia and behavior and the ten percent that is at least willing to discuss the problem is a bunch of males too afraid to deal with a woman that was raped over and over again not only by her teacher but by her husband. Raped psychologically as badly as the few were raped physically. And all you can do is put her out of the dialogue because you can’t deal with it.
It is alright not to be able to deal with it and you can say so: WE DON’T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE OF HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS but what you’ve done is ban me and shame me and treat me like a criminal, just like the Fellowship bans and shames people that don’t agree with it mostly because I called you SISSIES. What makes you less sick?
Aren’t you sissies? What is not sissie about a posture such as Ames’ that says, “I’m not trying to close the Fellowship, that would be futile!” I repeat it over and over again and I don’t believe my ears! Here we’ve been exposing every abuse of the Fellowship cult and all Ames who is one of the strongest here can say is “it’s futile to even try to close the cult that WE KNOW FROM FRESH AND DIRECT EXPERIENCE HAS RAPED AND EXPLOITED MEMBERS FOR ALMOST FORTY YEARS NOW. NO wonder Daily Cardiac addresses him, he is a guarantee for the continuation of the Fellowship cult.
You banned me because I called you FASCISTS willing to allow people to get hurt and remain quiet and I repeat it FASCISTS. Both men and women: FASCISTS
You can all keep going down that lane and I’ll get my brains shot and spread on the pavement like dirt but I will not put up with that status quo ever again in or outside any cult. That is not the life I wish my children and grandchildren to inherit or any future generation that has to put up with what we were not willing to fight. You can be all the American and European that you like and I can get shot in this country in minutes for speaking against such things but I’d rather be dead than adapt to those standards and that will come, I am just getting ready. I did it once in the cult but never again. It isn’t worth it. I fight and fight and continue to fight and lose if I must but die or live for what is worth no matter how alone.
There are many levels in our discussions and while I might support aspects of the fofblog against Daily Cardiac it doesn’t mean I support others. Nigel’s explanation of my banning is as shortsighted as one can get. Because I love him, I love him but like with my husband, that is not a condition to agree.
Elena.
“What Daily Cardiac is saying is the same that I feel and said: People stop addressing the argument and start attacking the individual when they can’t argue with the arguments. It was always the case that no one was able to confront Daily Cardiac as I confronted him on the fofblog.”
Strange now that you’ve found your truest ally in DC. Actually, you gave DC everything he wanted while you were still on the Blog. He pushed your buttons and you reacted, and before very long you were tearing apart people who wanted to agree with you, if not with all your methods. All DC had to to do was give it a little push and you did the rest for him, to the point where a number of bloggers felt there was no way they could live with you anymore. So you were banned, and a certain unity of purpose on the blog was broken.
Your idea that you can argue with him point by point, and that is the way forward for the blog, is the reverse of what you were saying only a short while ago. Then, you were condemning people for arguing with him and taking him seriously by taking the terms of his arguments seriously. You claimed it gave him legitimacy by doing so. You said as much to me, in those very words.
Now you condemn those same people for doing the opposite, and not taking his arguments seriously enough – not going through his arguments point by point and addressing each one with the utmost care!
You have almost no memory of what you said even a short time before, but you still expect your judgment in these matters to be not only trusted, but also to be considered a higher authority.
Your constant changes of mind and changes of allegiance from Steiner to Jung to whoever do not inspire trust either. How long have you been reading Steiner or Jung? A couple of weeks? Long enough to truly understand, or just give the same old arguments a flashy new frame of reference? A little quick polish?
By doing this you are actually diluting the issues and losing concentration of purpose. I don’t feel you have the clarity to guide anyone else. You lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily. When you do this, it is you who are being the coward. Recklessness is not the same as courage.
Thank you Crouching Tiger for speaking in this blog. Hopefully they won’t burn you at the stake!
Did you read my post to Daily Cardiac? The two last ones?
Where on earth do you see that he is my ally? Ally? “liar, liar, liar,” what makes you think that an ally is someone I call liar?
Pointing out that people don’t address the argument but the person as he does, doesn’t make him my ally!
There was never a unity of purpose on the fofblog. The majority kept silent. A group of men reacted to my posts as violently as I finally reacted and they were never questioned.
Arguing with him point by point has been done mostly by me until I thought it was an abuse that he just kept posting without being asked to give answers, then I began insulting him, sick pimp and all the rest of the insults. I certainly got tired of the game. Some have taken some of his points and they are generally good and Jomo was wonderful recently, he really touched deep but some points are not addressed that are important. His catholic or calvinist or protestant? point of view of spirituality has nothing to do with the work and no one is addressing that on the blog which means you are swallowing and letting it be swallowed and its crucial because it is such a powerful view in fellowship members convinced that that is the Work. We all ended up submitting like sheep to higher forces supposedly incarnated in Robert Burton like in a cheap comic book.
When I started insulting Daily Cardiac and screaming at him that he didn’t answer questions post after post I was certainly tired of the game and thought his being able to spread propaganda without being held accountable was absurd. A more active moderator would have helped there and then. We respect authority and moderators, another one could have directed the discussion a little better. That didn’t happen and I am glad Daily Cardiac continues to post. Don’t you understand that for me if he is Girard, I believe what helps is talking, hearing, responding, making contact? Agreeing and disagreeing is confrontational and reassuring at the same time. We need those references. One changes in the interaction not only because arguments are confronted but because there is contact. Can’t you see how happy he is here? There I mean? Frustrated because the issues are not addressed in their own terms but still participating. So my tiredness and protest when it came was certainly the declaration that I had reached a limit. Like when I insulted DXP with such a pathetic insult convinced that she was another Fellowship make believe character. Or the other guy that insulted me whose name I don’t even remember who was finally banned but not before he was able to word every insult that so many had in their mouths. And I was everything terrible, arrogant and whatever else but that doesn’t justify being banned like a criminal. You don’t realize how much those things matter do you? How we just re-enacted Fellowship behaviour?
Since you are willing to voice things for which I sincerely thank you, what do you say to that? Where am I lying or making things up? I’m no peach in cream Crouching Tiger and you could say that if I attracted all those insults something in me must have done it but I’ve been pointing out very sensitive areas of our make up and the abuse I’ve received has been covered up by equally questionable mentality as in the Fellowship Cult. Pointing out how men and women submitted, how we each gave into Robert the way we did, into the gold alchemy modeling, the hierarchic structure thinking we each were better because we were addressed by the Queen in some area even if just to rape us…
Of course I’ve pointed problems out that aren’t solely Robert’s and Girard’s and THAT is what’s gotten me so many enemies and I’ll take them but I’ll take them on those grounds and not the grounds that they pretend to impose on me: sick, crazy woman that is too old to heal. Weren’t those Old FOF’s terms? Be honest Crouching Tiger, weren’t they the terms? Isn’t that what you are all supporting in your silence? Let me ask two questions: Who here or there has questioned that? and second, even in my condition What would it have to do with the things I’ve questioned? Isn’t here precisely where we can see how we use a personal condition to demeanor the arguments? I’ve never hidden how difficult leaving the fellowship was or how it affected me.
Of course I am hurt and imbalanced. Why wouldn’t I be? Do you think being banned like a criminal helped? Banned with the excuse that Fellowship members had to be protected? Have you not read them who banned me? They needed to protect their friends in the Fellowship cult! Fuck hurt ex-member!! Too bad for her!!
You all keep silent about these things and simply say that I’m crazy but these things are written down and signed by those people, I am not making these things up.
I have a pretty good memory Crouching Tiger. I remember these things well. They’ve come too close to not make a deep impression.
CT: You have almost no memory of what you said even a short time before, but you still expect your judgment in these matters to be not only trusted, but also to be considered a higher authority.—–
We should all come to trust each other. There’s too much distrust and not surprising after trusting Robert and Girard. But trusting each other does not mean following each other. And then we should not trust anyone more than our selves.
My judgments can be trusted or distrusted, that is not the point, the point is that I have a right to give out my judgments like anybody else and not to be treated like a criminal which I am not. No one worked as hard as I did on that blog for two years and Ames, Old fof , Bruce and Vena came along like the sacred cows we happen to know they think they are and took over with arguments no better than a Girard in the Fellowship would give. My point is, what is it that you keep supporting when the structure is the same? I don’t deny I was challenging and aggressive, we all were, but I got banned and I wasn’t the worst. Like someone testified on my behalf, I got run down after a long time of abuse from others. And what I am protesting is those of you who say you didn’t agree to my banning have never protested these things. But not only that, you tell me you don’t agree but then you are afraid to talk to me on this blog and then come up with the idea that my theory is worthless, I should write poetry and Colombian stories! Like a woman should? Poetry and Colombian stories is not what is supporting the Fellowship cult. Posts like Daily Cardiac’s matter and they are not being questioned deeply enough.
Crouching Tiger: Your constant changes of mind and changes of allegiance from Steiner to Jung to whoever do not inspire trust either. How long have you been reading Steiner or Jung? A couple of weeks? Long enough to truly understand, or just give the same old arguments a flashy new frame of reference? A little quick polish?
Have you bothered to read any of it? Steiner I didn’t quote that much but the text on concentration camps I posted as complete as I could. The approach and tone you have here is probably as bad as my sissies approach! Touché! I’ve read him long and plenty enough and don’t think the point is boasting about it. I write the comments in detail, they can be looked at, considered and argued, there’s dialogue in that. It is all I am asking from people who pretend to care about me because I just don’t understand why you’re ignoring the areas. I appreciate the support in the poetry and stories but the other areas are no less significant in terms of what is being dealt with and your undermining it with the argument that I haven’t read them long enough is a very cheap buffer to the question at hand.
The “changes of allegiance” is a very strange concept to me. What makes you think that we should keep allegiance to the Work, or Steiner or Jung and not the truth in all of them? The truth in the light of a very obvious phenomenon we are trying to understand and have been working on now for three years?
Levy’s work on Jung I just found and it is wonderful Crouching Tiger. It is not about me, it’s about life itself and ours in particular. I know enough of the System to understand Jung quickly. The ideas are parallel to each other. That was what I found shocking and it was written so well it wasn’t worth touching. Simply saying that my theorizing is of no value is such a separating force. The absolute rejection just doesn’t make sense. Where do you want me to fit it?
Crouching Tiger: By doing this you are actually diluting the issues and losing concentration of purpose. I don’t feel you have the clarity to guide anyone else. You lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily. When you do this, it is you who are being the coward. Recklessness is not the same as courage.
What makes you think that I am trying to guide anyone else and not finding my self? I don’t conceive of having followers, god knows I can barely carry myself and have made that obvious, but pretending to dialogue does not seem too crazy an idea. I actually value what I have to offer a great deal and in fact do value what others offer even when I question it.
I lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily? So that makes me guilty enough to be banned like a criminal? I am so glad my state has been obvious! Why would it be any other way? You land at fifty in a place you haven’t been in for thirty years, without contacts or job, deeply mistrustful of everything and everyone after investing 19 years of your energy to a cult. Why would I be any firmer or less hysteric? And you think banning or comments like this one help? Fortunately I’ve just passed the worst period. I’m not nearly as vulnerable as I was in the fofblog, Nigel and Dragon helped me wonders and I will not turn my back on either one no matter how much we disagree. I’m not too great either but at least not so deeply in the gutter.
I don’t think being vulnerable under these conditions makes me a coward CT. I don’t think calling things by their name as I do is cowardly. Coward acts seem those that say, “we know what is going on and find it futile to act against it” like Ames just said and since all of you participating in the fofblog implicitly agree to the status quo that banned me and therefore with those stands, I ask you again, isn’t that too sissy? You deal with a sick and aggressive woman banning her and let a narcissistic misogynous sociopath go free because it’s futile to try to stop him! Where are we?
Your last phrase is a gem: recklessness is not courage. Oh Crouching Tiger, as they say here, make fame and go to sleep! I just can’t win can I? If I patiently study the situation and look for more experienced authors for months to present ideas that resonate with mine, I am not good enough, If I scream; not good enough, if I stand on Ames’ side against Daily Cardiac as I did in my last posts or question you for saying it is futile to try to stop the Fellowship, I’m reckless!! I’m reckless in your eyes no matter what so why do you even bother? What I find strange is that you can neither discard me with the same coldness Ames and Bruce do nor embrace me whole. It seems worth struggling a little longer that we can at least dialogue accepting the conditions! Or as others have done, wish each other well and move on!
Have a good day!
Just shows how many years you’ve been out Bruce. All of Girard’s books are filled with the same stuff and each event is filled with it. And he is not only not banned but people pay to be there and travel for days from centres to listen to it. And the boys like you just ignore it and travel with Robert for the pretty clothes and privileges and look down at everyone else like Robert does.
Thank you for reminding me how they banned me in the Fellowship only to justify and reaffirm your banning me in the fofblog. After all you both have the same cult behavior and ban anyone who disagrees ganging up with each other and in love just like in the Fellowship, such cool barbies! And can’t be bothered to argue the points that matter because you’re so superior! And are all so clear about the Fellowship crimes but find it futile to act against it because after all you’re too comfortable to care about what is happening to anyone inside but it’s a great excuse for another club. The obvious truth is that as long as it’s other Barbies like you ripping people off that you don’t know, you give shit.
At least I argued and didn’t let them fuck me willingly like you did you macho sicko who can’t fail an opportunity to put a woman down with a whack like you did to Tatyana and Josiane with the silence of your congregation. Isn’t your machoness what allowed you to go along with Robert for such a long time? Then why are you still behaving like him and supporting him to put me down? Just to shut me up for exposing your sissiness which is just as filled of machism as Robert’s?
But the irony of it all is that you banned me to protect members so that they could talk with you and as soon as he says something on my behalf you treat him like dirt, like you treated everything before I started questioning you. You managed to get him talking and now that he’s talking you find it impossible to dialogue with him helping him stay inside because outside you’re just as sick!
132. brucelevy – November 29, 2009
116. ton
“i have to wonder, is dc paid to insert burtonism into the blog?”
I get the distinct feeling that’s it’s more in the realm of self-created apparent worth, in relation to RB and the FOF. If you think about it, the blog is much more of a captive audience for DC than anyone in the FOF. I can’t imagine anyone actually stands around and listens to his pompous, deluded bull shit even in the FOF. Yet here he is spouting his crap, while I’m sure if he did the same at a meeting, and it wasn’t pre-written and pre-approved they’d tell him to STFU, using flowery words of course. Or give him a task, like they did Elena.
I’d love if RB gave DC his opinion of him using all his precious higher energies on the crap he puts so much time in here. One would think, as awakening is something for one’s self, and can’t be given to others, why a successful student would be looking for attention and energy here when he lives in an environment where, supposedly, they all share the same basic goal. Why would DC continually put pearls before swine. Because he’s a loser and a douche bag, and that’s objective knowledge goodness. When your level of being changes, you’ll see that I’m right.
DC…”And there is no indication it is anything other than consensual.”
And he’s fucking stupid, shallow and impervious to the obvious.
I can’t answer you at the same length, but I’ll try to address the essential points:
* “Where on earth do you see that he is my ally? Ally? “liar, liar, liar,” what makes you think that an ally is someone I call liar?”……………
“What Daily Cardiac is saying is the same that I feel and said: People stop addressing the argument and start attacking the individual when they can’t argue with the arguments.”
That makes him your ally in the sense that you want to operate on the same wavelength as him. Argument unrelated to the mouth/psychology it comes out of.
* “When I started insulting Daily Cardiac and screaming at him that he didn’t answer questions post after post I was certainly tired of the game and thought his being able to spread propaganda without being held accountable was absurd.”
You told everyone else on the blog that you thought they should be doing exactly the same, and not legitimizing DC by responding without rancour.
* “Of course I’ve pointed problems out that aren’t solely Robert’s and Girard’s and THAT is what’s gotten me so many enemies …”
So the real reason you got banned is that you pointed out areas where posters were still fellowship victims in their thinking? Do you really believe that?
“Ames, Old fof , Bruce and Vena came along like the sacred cows we happen to know they think they are and took over with arguments no better than a Girard in the Fellowship would give. My point is, what is it that you keep supporting when the structure is the same?”
What you’re saying is that because the blog hurt and rejected you, it must somehow be like the fellowship which did the same? Are you sure?
* “I should write poetry and Colombian stories! Like a woman should? ”
I asked you to write from your experiences in the fellowship, as simply and as directly as possible. So why try and twist the truth?
* The Steiner/Jung question is partly a question of length. Several bloggers pointed out to you that your contributions were too long and too arduous to read for a blog. Of course you can do whatever you want on your own blog, but if you have to interact with others in a truly public forum, you might want to take that on board. Why not just post a link and write about the essential points? Brevity and concentration stand a better chance of keeping people’s attention.
So I don’t say your theorizing has no value at all, but I do say it should be kept firmly in the background. What we want to know about is who YOU are and what your experiences were, and for you to hold on to that question at all times…
* “What makes you think that I am trying to guide anyone else and not finding my self?”
Because you are always attempting to guide people’s responses in the direction you think they should be pointing. Latest example being DC and how to respond to him. If posters don’t take exactly the same approach as you, you tell them that their compass is broken and they should trust you instead. “I am the only one here addressing the issues” or words to that effect. People can’t breathe in that environment.
And yes, being so constantly sensitive to other people’s responses, and trying by force to influence them in the way you want, does detract from your effort to find yourself again.
* “I lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily? So that makes me guilty enough to be banned like a criminal?”
Apparently yes, because that is what happened. I don’t know if it makes you a criminal, but it certainly made you a outcast from the blog. What I would wish for you is that you stand firm when the hysteria comes, and not take flight into it and try to make judgments from it. That helps keep the dialogue open, and that is what you want, is’nt it? That’s where the courage is necessary – to stand firm in the face of a powerful force inside you – in order to get something you really need…
* “What I find strange is that you can neither discard me with the same coldness Ames and Bruce do nor embrace me whole.”
Do I wish to discard you? No. Do I wish to throw myself blindfold into the whirlpool of your psychology? Again, no.
But I am willing to stand here until you come to your senses. I expect Nigel feels the same way.
Thanks CT. Yes, I will stay with this wondeful/difficult woman – I don’t know if it will be until she, like me, has found ‘strong peace’ “but yet a little while”…..
Elena
A little story from Saturday, when we went over the 1K mark in sales in our exhibition. A certain Mrs Noble came into our gallery and started a stimulating line of thought for me but however, became annoying for my two artists who were in the studio and gallery – Lynn, my ‘wispy jewellery making’ Lunar-Venusian-Mercury, Jack of Hearts (we all have trouble in the studio following her life stories) and Sam our ‘way-out-there-on-an-artistic-limb’ 10 of spades Solar (mainly). See, it was obvious from go that Mrs Noble was a Venus-Merc with a power feature and wanted to play options with people’s artistic talents (“I would really like a combination of artists to work on this OH! SO SPECIAL PROJECT”). Well, positive me over-the-limits-of-reason thought about the idea overnight and came to the conclusion that I guess Sam and Lynn had come to (I have yet to phone them to find out) that No! We don’t want a mix-up of talent/style…..
I guess what I am trying to emphasise, Elena, is that you are not ‘doing’ by messing with people’s heads by ‘whipping up a blog frenzy’. It’s like pissing windward…..you only wet yourself. Nuff said…..Nigel.
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Thanks for affirming that last sentence. I wonder what’s taken you so long! It is much appreciated!
* “Where on earth do you see that he is my ally? Ally? “liar, liar, liar,” what makes you think that an ally is someone I call liar?”……………
“What Daily Cardiac is saying is the same that I feel and said: People stop addressing the argument and start attacking the individual when they can’t argue with the arguments.”
That makes him your ally in the sense that you want to operate on the same wavelength as him. Argument unrelated to the mouth/psychology it comes out of.
Elena: It’s like saying we are friends because we are riding on the same boat! You can’t loose one can you?
* “When I started insulting Daily Cardiac and screaming at him that he didn’t answer questions post after post I was certainly tired of the game and thought his being able to spread propaganda without being held accountable was absurd.”
You told everyone else on the blog that you thought they should be doing exactly the same, and not legitimizing DC by responding without rancour.
Elena: Are you sure yourself? Bruce has been spitting on him since the beginning and I don’t remember telling Bruce what to do!
* “Of course I’ve pointed problems out that aren’t solely Robert’s and Girard’s and THAT is what’s gotten me so many enemies …”
So the real reason you got banned is that you pointed out areas where posters were still fellowship victims in their thinking? Do you really believe that?
Elena: the real reason I got banned is because I confronted the people in the fofblog with the fact that they were not willing to do anything serious against the Fellowship cult. I called them FASCISTS and on top of it I did it in a very aggressive desperate way. I also called them sissies and forgot to mention that in the end as long as it’s other Barbies living of non Barbies they give a damm if the Fellowship goes on!——–
“Ames, Old fof , Bruce and Vena came along like the sacred cows we happen to know they think they are and took over with arguments no better than a Girard in the Fellowship would give. My point is, what is it that you keep supporting when the structure is the same?”
What you’re saying is that because the blog hurt and rejected you, it must somehow be like the fellowship which did the same? Are you sure?
Yes, I’m sure that the mechanism the fofblog used to ban me is exactly the same mechanism that the fof cult uses to ban people without addressing the issues and justifying it by the persons “negativity” just like they threw Ames and five others when they questioned Linda in a meeting.
* “I should write poetry and Colombian stories! Like a woman should? ”
I asked you to write from your experiences in the fellowship, as simply and as directly as possible. So why try and twist the truth?
Elena: Yes, it’s Nigel that wants to reduce me to poetry and Colombian stories but you’ve equally dismissed the rest of the material.
* The Steiner/Jung question is partly a question of length. Several bloggers pointed out to you that your contributions were too long and too arduous to read for a blog.
Elena: It’s like saying we can’t use the long rope even if it’s the only one that fits to pull the sunk boat out of the water!
But I’ll accept one thing. I’ve been sick and needing reassurance ever since I gave my self up to the Fellowship and I took more space than was necessary expressing how needy I’ve been. I’ve been acting like a sick desperate person and that is how I’ve been. There were excesses in the fofblog, many of them, I don’t deny that but others were no less excessive and the moderator took sides because the mind frame was bias enough and you who say you didn’t agree, didn’t question THAT. One person said it clearly but you let it fly by unnoticed. You’ve all been quiet for months! And you know what Crouching Tiger? At this point I don’t want to go back to the fofblog. That is not the point. I’m glad I’m out of that club too. What I think is valuable is that we look in detail at how we behave. Do you see how clearly the pattern is to that of the Fellowship? ———-
Of course you can do whatever you want on your own blog, but if you have to interact with others in a truly public forum, you might want to take that on board. Why not just post a link and write a about the essential points? Brevity and concentration stand a better chance of keeping people’s attention.
So I don’t say your theorizing has no value at all, but I do say it should be kept firmly in the background. What we want to know about is who YOU are and what your experiences were, and for you to hold on to that question at all times…
Elena: the long rope is a poor excuse CT. We spent decades in the Fellowship cult. Cults with these characteristics are a new phenomenon that we are just beginning to understand. Exploring material is part of the job. When there is valuable material it helps us all. That is one aspect, the other is the length of my own posts and yes I am long. I am not a professional writer, I am confused and writing has helped me under-stand, know where I stand. When I know it’ll be very easy to sinthetize. But pretending that is a crime is just formatoriness that doesn’t really want to listen. It’s not the subject but the person what is being ignored no matter how we excuse it!
Like for example in this recent interchange the most important thing that is happening is that Daily Cardiac is giving out very specific points of dogma that I’ve addressed and need addressing and you don’t even consider that. The theory matters because people follow what they believe and questioning those beliefs with the System matters, which is what DC is pretending to stand on. At this point offering other frameworks is not only positive but necessary because people are at a loss and they won’t replace Fellowship dogma first until they understand what it is and second until they find a better one. I sincerely believe DC, hard headed as he is, is not intentionally lying and is wanting to hear different possibilities but they don’t have them on the fofblog, they turn in the same wavelength as you say. Mine might be wrong but they are very different a pretty clear and that is what is being avoided ——-
* “What makes you think that I am trying to guide anyone else and not finding my self?”
Because you are always attempting to guide people’s responses in the direction you think they should be pointing. Latest example being DC and how to respond to him. If posters don’t take exactly the same approach as you, you tell them that their compass is broken and they should trust you instead. “I am the only one here addressing the issues” or words to that effect. People can’t breathe in that environment.
Elena: Two aspects here: one of behavior and one of content.
The behavior aspect is interesting because as soon as DC questioned Ames about me, can you see the fofblog’s reaction? They stopped dialoguing with him and are beginning to insult which was totally against their aim when they banned me for that is how they justified my banning. All the noise and the meaouwing are just buffers! Can you feel it?
The content is important and that is what you avoid when you don’t look at the theory. The theory is in fact so powerful that after two years all the fofblog could say about my theory is that they wished me luck with my Joan of Arc act. Now that I’m showing the same things based on Jung and Levy that say them so short and efficiently, you won’t read them anyway! These things matter if we wish to be serious about our selves and what we are doing here.——-
And yes, being so constantly sensitive to other people’s responses, and trying by force to influence them in the way you want, does detract from your effort to find yourself again.
Elena: What responses CT? It’s the first time you actually speak here with a full voice.
* “I lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily? So that makes me guilty enough to be banned like a criminal?”
Apparently yes, because that is what happened. I don’t know if it makes you a criminal, but it certainly made you a outcast from the blog. What I would wish for you is that you stand firm when the hysteria comes, and not take flight into it and try to make judgments from it. That helps keep the dialogue open, and that is what you want, is’nt it? That’s where the courage is necessary – to stand firm in the face of a powerful force inside you – in order to get something you really need…
Elena: Two aspects here: first you’re justifying the blog’s response which I already addressed above and second you’re asking me to be stronger and not get desperate when I feel so frustrated about your not listening. Thank you, I’ll try. One day soon perhaps.
* “What I find strange is that you can neither discard me with the same coldness Ames and Bruce do nor embrace me whole.”
Do I wish to discard you? No. Do I wish to throw myself blindfold into the whirlpool of your psychology? Again, no.
Elena: You have been discarding me for the length of this blog. You have been avoiding to take this subject up in public. You have been thinking that the solution for all this is that I concentrate and write a book and take my lot of this play quietly to a different group of people and assume the shame of having been banned in another venue because I am a lunatic who screams loud and I am not willing to do that until we are able to stand in public and talk as you are doing because it is in public that I’ve been banned with your silences and blessings. If you are changing that hooray, then everything can change! But until we stand on the truth, nothing can move.——–
But I am willing to stand here until you come to your senses. I expect Nigel feels the same way.
Elena: When we come to the truth of what has really been going on here, we’ll all come to our senses! I thought Nigel had gone already. Your pissing metaphor is cheap Nigel; it is not appreciated. Your dark side comes out subtly. Your siding with each other to avoid my questions is questionable. But I appreciate your willingness to stick it out even together until things are clearer.
With music it’s easier!
Well Elena, both Nigel and I have said our pieces.
Neither of us is obliged to be your ‘listener’, our appearances here are purely voluntary. And this conversation isn’t going to be the cue for a much more regular interaction in your version of ‘the public square’.
If it doesn’t feel like dialogue, it ain’t one. To me, this feels more like I’m occasionally being let in on your private stream of consciousness, and that’s not my idea of conversation, I’m afraid.
Neither myself nor Nigel, to the best of my knowledge, is scared of the questions you raise. But I feel Nigel is right on the button when he talks about your ‘whipping up a blog frenzy’ and ‘beating people down with literary sticks’. The sheer enormity of your posts, and the enormity of your reaction if anyone dares to contradict you, does feel like a beating-down. It’s a form of violence, but you don’t see it.
It also leads to lying:
Only you could interpret asking someone to talk simply and directly about their experiences as a dismissal!
I hope that one day, you learn to listen as well as you talk.
The lie was –
“I asked you to write from your experiences in the fellowship, as simply and as directly as possible. So why try and twist the truth?
Elena: Yes, it’s Nigel that wants to reduce me to poetry and Colombian stories but you’ve equally dismissed the rest of the material.”
Asking you to write from yourself is the opposite of a dismissal.
I guess my defense didn’t suit you just as I thought we were beginning to talk Crouching Tiger.
Sounds like you too are leaving. I wish you well.
Just try taking some of that armour off, and throwing down a few of those weapons, and all would be well.
Wow, what are you talking about. I’m not angry, my response was not violent. It is clear and simple and thoughtful and you are unwilling to address the points. You see? If I am not hysteric but firm you also won’t listen! Here they are again, I would particularly appreciate it if you take into consideration the question of being banned by the fofblog and the question of Daily Cardiac’s posts:
317. Elena – November 29, 2009 [Edit]
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Thanks for affirming that last sentence. I wonder what’s taken you so long! It is much appreciated!
* “Where on earth do you see that he is my ally? Ally? “liar, liar, liar,” what makes you think that an ally is someone I call liar?”……………
“What Daily Cardiac is saying is the same that I feel and said: People stop addressing the argument and start attacking the individual when they can’t argue with the arguments.”
That makes him your ally in the sense that you want to operate on the same wavelength as him. Argument unrelated to the mouth/psychology it comes out of.
Elena: It’s like saying we are friends because we are riding on the same boat! You can’t loose one can you?
* “When I started insulting Daily Cardiac and screaming at him that he didn’t answer questions post after post I was certainly tired of the game and thought his being able to spread propaganda without being held accountable was absurd.”
You told everyone else on the blog that you thought they should be doing exactly the same, and not legitimizing DC by responding without rancour.
Elena: Are you sure yourself? Bruce has been spitting on him since the beginning and I don’t remember telling Bruce what to do!
* “Of course I’ve pointed problems out that aren’t solely Robert’s and Girard’s and THAT is what’s gotten me so many enemies …”
So the real reason you got banned is that you pointed out areas where posters were still fellowship victims in their thinking? Do you really believe that?
Elena: the real reason I got banned is because I confronted the people in the fofblog with the fact that they were not willing to do anything serious against the Fellowship cult. I called them FASCISTS and on top of it I did it in a very aggressive desperate way. I also called them sissies and forgot to mention that in the end as long as it’s other Barbies living of non Barbies they give a damm if the Fellowship goes on!——–
“Ames, Old fof , Bruce and Vena came along like the sacred cows we happen to know they think they are and took over with arguments no better than a Girard in the Fellowship would give. My point is, what is it that you keep supporting when the structure is the same?”
What you’re saying is that because the blog hurt and rejected you, it must somehow be like the fellowship which did the same? Are you sure?
Yes, I’m sure that the mechanism the fofblog used to ban me is exactly the same mechanism that the fof cult uses to ban people without addressing the issues and justifying it by the persons “negativity” just like they threw Ames and five others when they questioned Linda in a meeting.
* “I should write poetry and Colombian stories! Like a woman should? ”
I asked you to write from your experiences in the fellowship, as simply and as directly as possible. So why try and twist the truth?
Elena: Yes, it’s Nigel that wants to reduce me to poetry and Colombian stories but you’ve equally dismissed the rest of the material.
* The Steiner/Jung question is partly a question of length. Several bloggers pointed out to you that your contributions were too long and too arduous to read for a blog.
Elena: It’s like saying we can’t use the long rope even if it’s the only one that fits to pull the sunk boat out of the water!
But I’ll accept one thing. I’ve been sick and needing reassurance ever since I gave my self up to the Fellowship and I took more space than was necessary expressing how needy I’ve been. I’ve been acting like a sick desperate person and that is how I’ve been. There were excesses in the fofblog, many of them, I don’t deny that but others were no less excessive and the moderator took sides because the mind frame was bias enough and you who say you didn’t agree, didn’t question THAT. One person said it clearly but you let it fly by unnoticed. You’ve all been quiet for months! And you know what Crouching Tiger? At this point I don’t want to go back to the fofblog. That is not the point. I’m glad I’m out of that club too. What I think is valuable is that we look in detail at how we behave. Do you see how clearly the pattern is to that of the Fellowship? ———-
Of course you can do whatever you want on your own blog, but if you have to interact with others in a truly public forum, you might want to take that on board. Why not just post a link and write a about the essential points? Brevity and concentration stand a better chance of keeping people’s attention.
So I don’t say your theorizing has no value at all, but I do say it should be kept firmly in the background. What we want to know about is who YOU are and what your experiences were, and for you to hold on to that question at all times…
Elena: the long rope is a poor excuse CT. We spent decades in the Fellowship cult. Cults with these characteristics are a new phenomenon that we are just beginning to understand. Exploring material is part of the job. When there is valuable material it helps us all. That is one aspect, the other is the length of my own posts and yes I am long. I am not a professional writer, I am confused and writing has helped me under-stand, know where I stand. When I know it’ll be very easy to sinthetize. But pretending that is a crime is just formatoriness that doesn’t really want to listen. It’s not the subject but the person what is being ignored no matter how we excuse it!
Like for example in this recent interchange the most important thing that is happening is that Daily Cardiac is giving out very specific points of dogma that I’ve addressed and need addressing and you don’t even consider that. The theory matters because people follow what they believe and questioning those beliefs with the System matters, which is what DC is pretending to stand on. At this point offering other frameworks is not only positive but necessary because people are at a loss and they won’t replace Fellowship dogma first until they understand what it is and second until they find a better one. I sincerely believe DC, hard headed as he is, is not intentionally lying and is wanting to hear different possibilities but they don’t have them on the fofblog, they turn in the same wavelength as you say. Mine might be wrong but they are very different and pretty clear and that is what is being avoided ——-
* “What makes you think that I am trying to guide anyone else and not finding my self?”
Because you are always attempting to guide people’s responses in the direction you think they should be pointing. Latest example being DC and how to respond to him. If posters don’t take exactly the same approach as you, you tell them that their compass is broken and they should trust you instead. “I am the only one here addressing the issues” or words to that effect. People can’t breathe in that environment.
Elena: Two aspects here: one of behavior and one of content.
The behavior aspect is interesting because as soon as DC questioned Ames about me, can you see the fofblog’s reaction? They stopped dialoguing with him and are beginning to insult which was totally against their aim when they banned me for that is how they justified my banning. All the noise and the meaouwing are just buffers! Can you feel it?
The content is important and that is what you avoid when you don’t look at the theory. The theory is in fact so powerful that after two years all the fofblog could say about my theory is that they wished me luck with my Joan of Arc act. Now that I’m showing the same things based on Jung and Levy that say them so short and efficiently, you won’t read them anyway! These things matter if we wish to be serious about our selves and what we are doing here.——-
And yes, being so constantly sensitive to other people’s responses, and trying by force to influence them in the way you want, does detract from your effort to find yourself again.
Elena: What responses CT? It’s the first time you actually speak here with a full voice.
* “I lack firmness and run away into hysteria too easily? So that makes me guilty enough to be banned like a criminal?”
Apparently yes, because that is what happened. I don’t know if it makes you a criminal, but it certainly made you a outcast from the blog. What I would wish for you is that you stand firm when the hysteria comes, and not take flight into it and try to make judgments from it. That helps keep the dialogue open, and that is what you want, is’nt it? That’s where the courage is necessary – to stand firm in the face of a powerful force inside you – in order to get something you really need…
Elena: Two aspects here: first you’re justifying the blog’s response which I already addressed above and second you’re asking me to be stronger and not get desperate when I feel so frustrated about your not listening. Thank you, I’ll try. One day soon perhaps.
* “What I find strange is that you can neither discard me with the same coldness Ames and Bruce do nor embrace me whole.”
Do I wish to discard you? No. Do I wish to throw myself blindfold into the whirlpool of your psychology? Again, no.
Elena: You have been discarding me for the length of this blog. You have been avoiding to take this subject up in public. You have been thinking that the solution for all this is that I concentrate and write a book and take my lot of this play quietly to a different group of people and assume the shame of having been banned in another venue because I am a lunatic who screams loud and I am not willing to do that until we are able to stand in public and talk as you are doing because it is in public that I’ve been banned with your silences and blessings. If you are changing that hooray, then everything can change! But until we stand on the truth, nothing can move.——–
But I am willing to stand here until you come to your senses. I expect Nigel feels the same way.
Elena: When we come to the truth of what has really been going on here, we’ll all come to our senses! I thought Nigel had gone already. Your pissing metaphor is cheap Nigel; it is not appreciated. Your dark side comes out subtly. Your siding with each other to avoid my questions is questionable. But I appreciate your willingness to stick it out even together until things are clearer.
CT:Asking you to write from yourself is the opposite of a dismissal.
Dividing me into pieces in which my so called theories are of no value is a dismissal and you’re doing it again in your answers by totally neglecting to acknowledge what I am saying and returning to the personal pattern of addressing an aspect of personality as in being in armor. Can’t you see it clearly? Where did I do that to you?
Sitting looking at pictures
Without faces
Your image, invisible in my heart
In the realm of poetry
Without words
Silence speaks
When two hearts
Become connected
There’s no space in between
The petals of my spirit
Come out to yours
In colours
Each word
A feeling petal
A colour of thoughts
I touch the rainbow
Of your smile
In the rain of your laughter
I dance in the puddles
Of your absence
A song of love
Of love
Alone
A song
I’m sure you’re right Elena. May I go now?
Nice poem by the way.
The Conceited Mistake.
Once upon a time there was a mistake
So silly so small
That no one would even have noticed it
It couldn’t bear
To see itself to hear of itself
It invented all manner of things
Just to prove
That it didn’t really exist
It invented space
To put its proofs in
And time to keep its proofs
And the world to see its proofs
All it invented
Was not so silly
Nor so small
But was of course mistaken
Could it have been otherwise
330.
What a poem!
228 You must be talking about me because you’re infallible right? It’s a strange way to use poetry: to put one’s self in the “right” position and expose the other as being wrong. Feels like an upside down and backwards way of using poetry.
No one has said sorry more times than I have or exposed themselves as much as I have but I’m done with that in relation to the matter at hand. In all conflict both sides are responsible and while I have spent months recognizing my sad behavior you insist on pretending you and those on the blog are impeccable. What is the difference between you and Robert and the Fellowship? You hold us to the past keeping us from proceeding from the present.
It’s not apologies what you’re looking for but submission
And there’s no submission in this heart
No matter how much it tries or cries
I’m so glad we are able to talk before indulging in such a serious project.
Crouching Tiger: I’m sure you’re right Elena. May I go now?
And you call that the work? When have I kept you?
Again, challenging the idea that no conflict is positive and replacing it for allowing each other to live through the conflict with trust.
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/AWAKENING%20IN%20THE%20DREAM%20GROUPS.htm
AWAKENING IN THE DREAM GROUPS
by Paul Levy
I’m not sure whether to say that my friends and I have developed a new way of working with people’s dreaming processes, or to say that we’ve discovered something. In any case, it is clear that we’ve tapped into something profound.. More accurately, I feel safe in saying that something has been revealed through following our inner dreaming process (what I call “following the dreaming”). I feel strongly drawn to share what my friends and I are experiencing in our “Awakening in the Dream Groups,” as it can be of great benefit to many people.
Let me start off by saying that these groups are not for everyone, as they require a high degree of being able to self-reflect and be vulnerable. They only work if enough people in the group are awake enough to realize what we are doing, as they act as so much yeast in the dough, so to speak, helping the bread to leaven. The groups are radically changing people’s lives.
These “Awakening in the Dream” Groups are based on our life being a dream, more specifically, they are based on how we are “dreaming up” our life moment by moment. In a sense, we are doing a radical experiment, as we are actually imagining that our situation is indeed a dream, and following what this shows us. The groups are based on the projective tendencies of our mind, how we are in essence dreaming in and up our life in a way that’s similar to how we do at night, where our inner process is getting dreamed up into and as our waking life itself. The same dreaming mind that is dreaming our dreams at night is dreaming our life. In a sense, in the groups we are just doing real dreamwork, with the dream being what happens in the group.
We are discovering that we can inquire into who we are by following the process of our being together, without any agenda, structure or strategy about what we’re going to do. I call this “following the dreaming.” The groups and the relationships in the group themselves become the vehicle for realization, as over time, our psyche’s intermingle, pushing each other’s buttons, triggering projections, touching and effecting each other’s unconscious. And we simply inquire into this process, by entering the same present moment together with the realization that we are merely dream characters in each others dream. What this means is that we realize that we are all embodied reflections of each other, as well as that every moment we are all dreaming up this mass shared dream together. This is a waking dream that is mutually, interdependently getting dreamed up by all of us together. We are all getting dreamed up and picking up roles in each other’s process. We are all dreaming up the deeper dreamfield, while concurrently, we are being dreamed up by it. This is not some sort of elaborate visualization practice, but is simply seeing the truth of our situation. When everyone is training seeing the dreamlike nature of our situation, a certain field gets conjured up that is very lubricated for healing.
Part of the process is the sharing of our imaginings, our projections, our hallucinations that we have onto each other’s inkblots with each other. Imagine a dream where all of the dream characters are sharing their projections with each other. We are all in a position to see each other in a way that each of us, by ourselves, can’t. Of course, it is up to each one of us whenever we get the rest of the group’s reflections to discern if people are just projecting, or are they really seeing our blind spot? When a dream character in a dream shares their imaginings, their projections of who you are, of what they imagine you are doing, it would be foolish to at least not consider what they are saying.
There is something about being really seen by other people. Imagine being in a dream and have your fellow dream characters actually see where you are asleep, see your unconscious, your blind spot. If this is a dream, who are those fellow dream characters who are seeing your unconscious but the awakening parts of you? And how can this not have an effect on you?
By inquiring into the nature of our experiences together, we discover that we are not in a position to actually know what is happening seemingly “out there” in the group (there’s always the possibility of us projecting, distorting, deluding ourselves). Someone might be doing something, for example, and everyone will be seeing what they are doing differently, it’s not a question of who’s right, but this is pointing to something- that we are not in a position to know what is “objectively” happening out there, but we are in a position to know what we are perceiving (what our particular hallucination is). By everyone in the group expressing themselves out of this realization, it cuts through blame, as well as allowing people to not take things personally. People can then openly share their projections, for we are taking responsibility for our experience.
In the groups, we have the intention to awaken, to transduce light. What this, of course, means is that we will invariably evoke the unconscious, which will act itself out in and through the group. Like Jung says, when an unconscious content is ready to be integrated, it always appears physically, ie- it gets dreamed up into the dreamfield. The split-off, unconscious parts of ourselves get projected out and dreamed up by, through, and into the group. To again quote Jung, “everything unconscious, once it was activated, was projected into matter- that is to say, it approached people from outside.” There’s something about having fellow dream characters who are turned onto this realization that creates a net, or container, in which, instead of allowing the unconscious to vaporize, we can catch and anchor the unconscious content to consciousness, taking away its omnipotence and autonomy, as well as liberating the energy that was bound up in it for creative expression. This is true alchemy.
When someone steps into the unconscious, they are like psychic flypaper, or an out of phase inkblot that immediately attracts people’s unconscious projections. For you cannot see the unconscious and remain a passive member of the audience, once you see the unconscious you are a participant in the scene, it all depends on your ability to self-reflect and assimilate what has gotten triggered in you. Any one of us being able to metabolize what has gotten activated in us helps all of our fellow dream characters, as this realization registers in the collective consciousness of the group (not to mention the whole universe). In a sense, this is full-embodied, group dreamwork.
To the extent that we are disconnected and dis-associated from ourselves, we are incongruent, which will evoke and attract other peoples projections and processes onto our out of phase inkblot, as we get dreamed into a role in their dream, and they in ours. We unconsciously react to and amplify in our waking dream exactly what needs to be played out so as to express in embodied form our inner process. We all project, or dream onto the inkblot of life, connecting the dots in such a way so as to literally “dream up” into materialization our very inner process onto and as the seemingly outer universe, and then we become entranced by the manifestation, imagining it to be objectively existing and separate from us. In the group, we are helping each other to actually stay in and work through this very convincingly real and seductive situation, as this is the place where we can, in real time (the present moment) transmute this energy, dream the dream differently and assimilate this unconscious content.
At any one point, just like the pendulum with the strongest swing entrains the other pendulums, someone’s (unconscious) dreaming process gets activated and everyone else gets dreamed into that person’s dream, playing whatever roles are required for the unfoldment of that activated dreaming process. And of course, the role we get dreamed up into by the field is magically not only the role that others need us to play, but is at the same time the very role we need to step into and unfold for our own deepest healing. That is simply what is happening all the time with everyone, I am talking about getting a group of people who are awake to this process and creating a container where, instead of just acting it out unconsciously, thereby perpetuating our woundedness, we add one key ingredient- consciousness.
Let me just say that it is not easy work. People could be studying with me for weeks, months, and really “getting” the whole theory of how we are all dreaming each other up, picking up roles in each other’s process so as to actually incarnate, into materialized form as our very life itself our inner dreaming process. But once someone’s unconscious is activated, and their projections fly out onto the inkblot of the group, they are typically not aware that they are dreaming (that the boundary has collapsed between inner and outer- they are then “inside” of their mind). To the extent that people get absorbed into their own dreaming process, they will be unaware that what they are experiencing in embodied form as the actual process in the group, is itself nothing other than the materialization, the embodied expression played out in real time on the screen of their waking consciousness, of their own inner dreaming process. When this happens, it is like their inner wound, their trauma has blossomed out of their psyche and has spilled into actual reality and is playing itself out on the real time stage of the group. People can become so entranced with the seeming “realness” of the reality that they have dreamed up that they actually decide to leave at this point. I have seen this happen again and again, and it is happening as I write this in one of my groups. It is so interesting to watch- right at the point they have dreamed up into seemingly solid form the very inner process that they need to work through, they get freaked out, scared and leave. The group has come up with a saying “You either change or you leave the group and blame the group.”
It’s those times when the person recognizes the deeper process that is happening and stays, that they literally as well as symbolically, access it in a way where they can dream it through, actually metabolizing and assimilating part of their unconscious. It’s like enacting on the stage of life an inner process that you just needed to play out, to actually incarnate and give physical form to, doing it in the imagination alone just wouldn’t work, you had to imagine it into being. There is something about where these two worlds co-incide that is where the real healing happens.
Dreaming up our inner unhealed process in and as our life is related to the underlying teleology of the repetition compulsion of trauma, where we are continually dreaming up our trauma in our life so as to unfold, discharge and complete an incomplete process. Unless it’s done in a container like the group, however, where we are able to assimilate the activated and embodied unconscious, our attempt at repeating our trauma so as to complete the process simply recreates the very trauma we are trying to heal from, which simply feeds into the compulsion to try and recreate it so as to heal it, ad infinitum. An infinitely self-generating feedback loop.
Whenever a shadow element manifests through someone, and they embody and act out the unconscious, instead of in a typical group, where any sort of conflict is marginalized (“we’re about love and harmony here, we can’t have any conflict,” which is just a reflection of how inwardly polarized we all are towards our own darkness), in these groups, any sort of conflict is seen to be a doorway into the deeper process- friction creates light. Like an alchemical container, there needs to be enough “pressure” for the “prima materia” to transform. To the extent that these shadow energies are consciously seen, worked with and embraced, they become integrated and literally flesh out our full-spectrum (both light and dark) holograms, which is what genuine incarnation is all about.
Being awake to the dreamlike nature of our situation is to see, in terms of physics, that we are all inifinite wave forms pulsating anew in and out of the void every nanosecond. How we perceive each other’s infinitely fluid, full-spectrum, multi-dimensional hologram literally collapses each other’s wave function into particularized form. How we observe the dream has an instantaneous effect on how the dream manifests, as the observer is literally the observed.
In this waking dream of ours we are, like I have suggested, mutually collapsing each others wave functions- ie, dreaming each other up (or down)- but in a nonlinear, acausal way, where I am dreaming you up, but you are dreaming me up to dream you up, ad infinitum as well as visa versa. In a process with no beginning in time, but rather a process that happens outside of time itself, in no time, faster than the twinkling of an eye, we dream each other up to unconsciously act out, in embodied form our incomplete processes. To the extent that I’m asleep to your intrinsic multi-dimensionality (as well as my own), I will solidify your convincingly real manifestation, making it more probable that this will be how you will continue to incarnate in my waking dream, and once you manifest in this way, it confirms to me even more my solidified view of you, so I will “dream you up” this way even more, ad infinitum, and visa versa (you are doing the same thing to me). In addition, once you experience me as a dream character in your dream who is solidifying you in this way, to the extent you fall asleep and get hooked by my manifestation, you will not only be more likely to manifest in exactly that way, but you will solidify me as someone who solidifies you, which will even more increase the probability that I will dream you up in that very way, ad infinitum, as well as visa versa. I am trying to get across a sense of how the dreaming up process is collaborative, circular, what Buddhism calls “interdependent co-origination.” I am merely mapping and describing what is happening all of the time with everyone, only it’s happening unconsciously.
In the groups we are having insight into when someone manifests in their limited, problematic identity pattern (what I call their Halloween costume). The habitual tendency is to become entranced, as if under a spell and imagine that this is who they actually are (as their manifestation is certainly convincing, in a full-embodied way), thereby solidifying and concretizing their infinitely fluid multi-dimensional hologram (not to mention, solidifying ourselves in the process), which increases the probability even more that this is how they will continue to manifest. When we don’t get hooked by their impermanent display, however, not solidifying them as being how we are momentarily experiencing them, and then reacting to our solidified image of who we imagine them to be as if it’s objectively who they are, we discover that they have much more space to step out of the concretized role that they themselves were caught in, which not only helps them but ourselves as well. This can potentially snap us out of an infinitely self-perpetuating, closed feedback loop, an infinite regression that we were co-llaboratively co-dreaming, as we are both able to step out of and transcend a role each of us had been caught in. We continually re-discover that we are all mutually, interdependently dreaming up our dreaming processes together to a point where they synchronistically co-incide and co-rrelate, actually materializing and incarnating into and as our waking dream itself. Simply recognizing the dream-upable nature of our situation and following what this is showing us offers us an opportunity for healing and integration that simply isn’t available to us by our seemingly alienated selves.
So in the groups we give each other permission to step over our edge and speak the marginalized voice, to step into a role that the deeper dreamfield is thirsting for someone to pick up and play. When someone steps over their edge and picks up the marginalized voice that the field is dreaming up, this activates what I call the deeper dreaming process. This allows the deeper, underlying process to incarnate and transform itself. Everyone in the group becomes transformed in the process.
If this is indeed a mass shared dream that we are all dreaming up, then whenever someone picks up a role in the dream, falls into their unconscious, pushes our buttons, gets into a conflict, etc, they are just getting dreamed up by the deeper dreamfield to play this out for all of us. And if this is truly a dream, if we view what is happening in this way, then this dreamlike reality of ours has no choice but to spontaneously shape-shift and manifest in this way.
I am not in the normal role of facilitator, as I, as much as anyone, go over my edge, sharing my struggles and step into my unconscious, becoming vulnerable and open for reflections. When I step into my unconscious, the role of facilitator needs to get picked up by someone else in the group, as not only can I not play both these roles at once, but the facilitator is clearly just a role in the field that needn’t be monopolized. When an unconscious content is in the process of getting integrated, that particular role starts to fluidly switch between members in the group, as it is literally getting metabolized by the group (instead of just one person monopolizing a role as they always get dreamed up into the same role). This is all just dreamwork, with the dream being what happens in the group.
When an awakening in the dream groups stabilizes and configures in a way where a certain resonance is created, it is what I call an “in-phase dreaming circle,” which is actually an organism of a higher-dimension. Instead of there being, for example, ten seemingly separate selves who are imagining that they are alien to each other, imagine if these ten seemingly separate selves woke up and recognized that they are interconnected and parts of one another (reflections of each other, each other’s dream characters).
Furthermore, when these awakening in the dream groups are contemplated as a symbol that has precipitated into and out of the dreamfield, they are recognized to be what I call microcosmic fractals, reflecting a deeper process of awakening that is available both individually and collectively, as a planet. What is happening in the groups is then realized to be an evolutionary quantum leap of human consciousness that has crystallized into materialized form in this waking dream of ours.
No. I don’t think so. The poem represents the most basic mistake we all make, without exception. It tends to become obvious when it elaborates a huge amount of machinery and reasoning and yes, theory to support it. It’s a hugely impressive, but flawed act of self-protection.
I feel that the need for this machinery is something the Fellowship does encourage. Much of it is ‘4th Way’, but now it’s gone well beyond that…
There are some personalities that can carry this machinery quite lightly, and it helps them adapt to Life. On the blog, Jomo is probably one of those.
But I doubt that you are. There are some who just have to fly right through the eye of the needle, and my belief is that you are one of them.
When we were considering working together, I felt it was important for you to get back in touch with the core of your experience in the Fellowship, without any other consideration of any kind. Just plainly and simply, to start speaking from there. It isn’t divisive to do that, it is a form of healing.
A few days ago, you wrote me to say that at present, you didn’t feel you were capable of that… but you might be in future. I can respect that, it is honest.
A little while afterwards, you seemed to have a change of mind.
You began broadcasting our private conversations on your blog, and insisting that it was the right forum for any dialogue. Clearly you felt the theoretical/argumentative element is more important than anything else.
I don’t. I don’t feel it is good for you and I know it isn’t good for me! So when you start talking about the necessity of the theory and adding layer upon layer upon layer on your blog, to me you are just taking yourself further away from the heart of your experience. A form of self-numbing. While this is often necessary as a temporary measure to evacuate a strong influence like a cult, it is not as permanent an answer as the one you find by re-entering your own experience as definitely and as sincerely as possible.
My impression is that all of myself, Nigel and Dragon earnestly wish that for you – that healing, that returning sense of wholeness – and a fair few others on the Blog. But if you don’t wish it for yourself, none of it will stick.
Hi Crouching Tiger,
I appreciate your willingness to dialogue about it and the new tone.
There are different issues and they are all connected. Writing a book is one and it would be lovely to get to that one day. Remembering life in the Fellowship second by second and the horror of it at the moment is not something I wish to do. It doesn’t help me.
There are aims to these blogs. In this one, the aim is to continue to explore what happened to us in the Fellowship cult and since it was born out of my being banned from the other one, it has had a lot to do with that. You seem to hold to the position that I was rightfully banned and should not question it. That position you have stands in the way for our working together because it will mark that work too. I am afraid of trusting and getting hurt again and if your position is that I was the only one at fault in the fofblog and that banning was a legitimate measure, you would apply similar conditions to our relationship that I could not submit to. My whole struggle and stand since I began to participate has been specifically about that. If we can discard each other from the community we’ve been working in without regard for our condition then we are not human enough to interact with each other. We are like the animals that throw members out when they get sick. Since I believe we are all pretty ill, who decides who to throw out becomes a question of power and it’s a sick few throwing other sick out. Basically that was the behavior common in the Fellowship cult and what repeated in the fofblog. With that I don’t mean to excuse my behavior as not having gotten to an extreme, I take responsibility for my excesses. What is even clearer now is that I was not banned for those excesses as much as for the ideology I represented which was that acting in every possible way against the Fellowship cult is legitimate action legally, socially, humanly and spiritually. What we’ve seen is that indeed, the fofblog is rooting in the position that they are not interested in acting for the closure of the Fellowship cult. Americans are unwilling to address the cult problem with serious action against them is basically what I’ve finally come to understand and THAT is why I was banned because I attacked them as fascists for condoning such organizations. As I’ve learnt and studied more about the problem, we can see that in Germany and France acting against cults has become a legal reality.
What we are really faced with is the fact that the theory I’ve been exposing about the fact that we are one human being and need to respond for each other, that we can legitimately fight against cults in courts, even in the United States are the THEORIES that you and all of you on the fofblog have been unwilling to address about my writings. As we move along it is obvious that these theories are not only mine but are what is moving the world forward in these issues. We are ripe for them. Not just me but human beings at the head of nations and movements.
It is important for me that that is acknowledged and recognized for what it is because shunning and banning me to impose the general attitude that “trying to close the Fellowship cult is FUTILE” is a treason to what is being exposed by the blogs. Crime is happening inside cults and all Ames and the invisible but very real leaders of the fofblog are saying is, we do not fight this beyond talking about it, leaving the victims as unprotected as has been their behavior since they left decades ago. I was one amongst the many.
What makes you think that these things don’t matter? Or that they in anyway separate me from who I am? That I have to concentrate my talent in a private sphere and not continue to confront this madness?
It is not that I don’t fully appreciate and feel gratitude for your interest in my writing a book and have repeatedly thank you for even thinking that I am talented enough for such enterprise. In relation to that specific question I could not be more grateful to you. It is that you are part and parcel of this play and your position in relation to my theories and banning from the fofblog is as opposite to me as if you’d been the moderator who took the decision. There was a gradual ganging up of people who I had questioned and won arguments against and when there were no arguments to win you banned me. I pushed it in the frustration and the injustice with my behavior but you pushed it in your ignoring and indifference. You all I mean, not just you. Consciously and unconsciously. And you were as willing to hurt someone who you could not submit just like any sicko in a cult or concentration camp or industry is willing to because he or she has the power.
Arguments count and yesterday I gave you very specific arguments in answer to yours that you are still unwilling to acknowledge. Why are you avoiding the precise points. Why can’t you acknowledge and follow the dialogue in the terms you posed them?
It is not about my winning, it is about leveling each other in an acknowledgement of legitimate reasoning. From there everything is possible.
I’m in a hurry and need to go and take my father to the doctor but thank you deeply for the dialogue.
You are not the only one in a hurry, with little time to spare. Here I get Real Martial – aim between the eyes, and all that. I don’t care how sophisticated or literarily brilliant you blog on Public Square, you are, at core, a whimpering, spoilt little child, which the rest of us can see. Oomph, did that hurt? Meant to! Hey woman do you want to heal – it’s up to you and I would suggest you move from where you are DAMN QUICK!
The Paul Levy copy and paste from ‘Awaken the Mind’ is below and, powerfully, my pre-Christmas gift to you. READ AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED AND MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU! NO ARGUMENTS, PLEASE!…..
“Much to his astonishment, C. G. Jung discovered that the ancient art of alchemy was describing, in symbolic language, the journey that all of us must take towards embodying our own intrinsic wholeness, what he called the process of “individuation.” The alchemists, over the course of centuries, had generated a wide range of symbolic images which directly corresponded to the anatomy of the unconscious which Jung had been mapping through his painstaking work with thousands of patients. Jung, in illuminating a psychology of the unconscious, can himself be considered a modern-day alchemist…The alchemists had little or nothing to contribute to the field of chemistry, least of all the secret of gold-making. Only our overly one-sided, rational and intellectualized age could miss the point so entirely and see in alchemy nothing but an abortive attempt at chemistry. On the contrary, to the alchemists, chemistry represented a degradation and a “Fall,” because it meant the secularization and commercialization of a sacred science. Jung makes the point, “The alchemical operations were real, only this reality was not physical but psychological. Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum [“great work”] had two aims: the rescue of the human soul, and the salvation of the cosmos.” The alchemists were dreaming big…
The Light of Darkness
The art of alchemy itself is an expression that hidden in the darkness is light. The alchemists, Jung says, “discover that in the very darkness of nature a light is hidden, a little spark without which the darkness would not be darkness…the lumen naturae is the light of the darkness itself, which illuminates its own darkness, and this light the darkness comprehends” In contrast to a light that, as the Bible says, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not,” the lumen naturae, the light of lights, is a light that the darkness intimately recognizes as its own nature. The lumen naturae is the luminosity within the darkness recognizing itself as it illumines its own darkness…
We Are All Shamans-in-Training
In 1981 I spontaneously went into such an ecstatic state that I was hospitalized by what I call the “anti-bliss patrol.” The authorities had become alerted because I was simply unable to restrain my enthusiasm at the “good news” that was beginning to reveal itself to me about the nature of reality.
The Artist as Healer of the World
The artist allows themselves to get “dreamed up” by the field to become the “medium” through which the spirit of the age moves and inspires them to creatively express itself. Speaking about this process, Jung said, “At such moments we are no longer individuals, but the race; the voice of all mankind resounds in us.”
The Wounded Healer, Part I
An encounter with something greater than our limited ego, what Jung calls the Self, is always a wounding experience for the ego. The event of our wounding is initiatory, as our wounding originated in and potentially introduces us to “something greater than ourselves.”
The Wounded Healer, Part II
Any one of us accessing the healing power hidden in our wound could be, in Jung’s words, “the makeweight that tips the scales,” precipitating an evolutionary quantum leap in human consciousness, which literally can change everything.
The War on Consciousness
We are truly in a war. It is not the war we imagine we are in, which is the way our true adversaries want it. It is not a foreign war against a foreign enemy. It is a war on consciousness, a war on our own minds.”
Hi Crouching Tiger,
I appreciate the opportunity to deepen our understanding of the subject.
332. Crouching Tiger –
No. I don’t think so. The poem represents the most basic mistake we all make, without exception. It tends to become obvious when it elaborates a huge amount of machinery and reasoning and yes, theory to support it. It’s a hugely impressive, but flawed act of self-protection.
Elena: So this poem, in this situation and in this conversation is not addressed to me or about me? We all make mistakes but what you’re saying is that I am making mistakes, isn’t it? You’re still unwilling to acknowledge that anyone else made any mistakes in the fofblog. And if I defend myself and elaborate many things for that defense then it simply affirms your premise that I am mistaken!
Don’t you find Daily Cardiac is not the only expert here? We are all wonderful at adapting the theory to our position? ——–
I feel that the need for this machinery is something the Fellowship does encourage. Much of it is ‘4th Way’, but now it’s gone well beyond that…
Elena: you mean my references to other authors like Paul Levy or Jung is just useless machinery? Why wouldn’t we? Why stay only with the fourth way that has been questioned deeply by how it was used by the Fellowship and still you know very well that I am probably the only one together with you that has consistently stood by the idea that it wasn’t the System that failed but the Fellowship. When I find Levy and Jung simply use different names for the same things it is wonderful! What is wrong with it in your mind?———
There are some personalities that can carry this machinery quite lightly, and it helps them adapt to Life. On the blog, Jomo is probably one of those.
But I doubt that you are. There are some who just have to fly right through the eye of the needle, and my belief is that you are one of them.
Elena: You mean how we got to use something like the System. After the leaving the Fellowship I couldn’t even trust my own name, let alone the System. You leave your Cult after seventeen years and your husband and everything on which you stood. What makes you think that I was in a state of carrying anything lightly? I repeatedly stated that I wasn’t working with the System. I was and have been a wreck going up and down in extreme states. At least that has been obvious. But that was true all along in the past two years and no one banned me until I started calling people fascists for being unwilling and unable to take a more serious stand against cults.
We agree about the fact that conveying the need to stand against cults is not going to have any success if one screams FASCISTS to people who don’t do it. We agree that I have been screaming aggressively. What we won’t agree with is that that justified being banned indefinitely. We do not realize how much harm we do on people when we take a measure such as that one. You all wanted to punish me for being who I am not because I behaved badly. Bruce is still willing to stigmatize me and even use Robert to justify himself. That’s not shocking enough for anyone in there that you can’t say anything about it? You just continue to participate in silence allowing for these things to reaffirm themselves? Our friction is real. We hurt each other and taste each other’s wounds. I’m willing to live with that without keeping silent about it.
Jomo, like everyone on the fofblog is an amazingly fine character. WE ALL ARE. The problem is not how amazing we are, but how poorly we acknowledge each other’s wonder. You place me next to Jomo to compare me? Why would you ever do that! You think he’s better than me or anyone else? That’s madness! Jomo is good at some things and not nearly as good in others just like the rest of us. He is extremely fine in diplomacy but even he made fun of me with groups of men. And he is good with laws but that in which he is good is his greatest weakness? You would not see him picketing in a public square in the whole of his life probably because he has limited the power of the human being to a bunch of books with laws written down on them and like most Americans in that poor blog, he thinks that they cannot change history just by simply standing in the public space and saying “WE WILL NOT PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT BECAUSE IT IS CRIMINAL”. You think there is a wonder in using law to perpetuate crime forgetting that above the laws are human beings? That WE make and change the laws when necessary? That is your model of using the machinery lightly? The problem with all of you men who were in the Fellowship is that you’ve forgotten what being men is about. You are convinced that being men is putting women down with no matter what sophistry and allow them to get put down by a narcissistic misogynous sociopath from whom you are willing to get fucked in the meantime intellectually and emotionally if not sexually. THAT is what you call beating people down with literary sticks? These are words Crouching Tiger but what they are describing is what we women have lived in the Fellowship for four decades and what we’ve been living for centuries in the patriarchal societies we’ve modeled our world with. THAT HAS TO CHANGE if we are ever to become decent and loving human beings with each other. That pattern is as SICK for the men as for the women. We are one and we are equals. ————–
When we were considering working together, I felt it was important for you to get back in touch with the core of your experience in the Fellowship, without any other consideration of any kind. Just plainly and simply, to start speaking from there. It isn’t divisive to do that, it is a form of healing.
A few days ago, you wrote me to say that at present, you didn’t feel you were capable of that… but you might be in future. I can respect that, it is honest.
Elena: What is not honest about the rest? Why do you imply there is dishonesty in other areas?
I have nothing against your willingness to write a book with me. I am honored by the simple mention of that possibility. That is one aspect of our communication and a different one is what we can talk about and understand about the Fellowship in public. For me they are different things. The public realm in itself puts us in a different STATE. It implies that we are willing to confront our selves in the light of many eyes. If we are willing to play fair, it leads us out of our individual limitations only as long as we don’t fall back into mass behavior and get rid of those who question it which is what happened in the fofblog.
When I invite you to the Public Square to talk about the Fellowship it is not necessarily about the book, it is about us and things we’ve shared. If you value nothing of what I research and put in these pages, that does make me question why you would ever wish to write a book with me. Just because I write well?——–
A little while afterwards, you seemed to have a change of mind. You began broadcasting our private conversations on your blog, and insisting that it was the right forum for any dialogue. Clearly you felt the theoretical/argumentative element is more important than anything else.
I don’t. I don’t feel it is good for you and I know it isn’t good for me! So when you start talking about the necessity of the theory and adding layer upon layer upon layer on your blog, to me you are just taking yourself further away from the heart of your experience. A form of self-numbing.
Elena: broadcasting only what I think relates to the fofcult or fofblog in relation to me. I am not exposing you, I am talking in public with you about public problems such as cults, communities and human behavior. Why do you perceive that as numbing. I am everything but numbed. If I were a little less sensitive it would be quite helpful.
While this is often necessary as a temporary measure to evacuate a strong influence like a cult, it is not as permanent an answer as the one you find by re-entering your own experience as definitely and as sincerely as possible.
My impression is that all of myself, Nigel and Dragon earnestly wish that for you – that healing, that returning sense of wholeness – and a fair few others on the Blog. But if you don’t wish it for yourself, none of it will stick.
Elena: Again, what makes you use the word sincere? What makes you think I am not sincere if I try to understand the bigger picture? What is insincere about that?
You are all my friends and friendship is not a given. We struggle with each other because we are alive and far from what we can be. Nigel probably just saved my life together with Dragon and I am not just saying that. Being banned was THAT dangerous. How much more grateful can I be with them? They inspire me to write poems. And still, if Nigel misinterprets me and states that I am after revenge and I call him silly for it and he then turns against me and says I am ‘beating people down with literary sticks’ and he is leaving, and then tells me not to piss on myself, then he can go if he wants. And nothing is more painful to me than when people leave or threaten me with leaving which he did but I am so used to it that I become stronger each time. My mother left and died. People die in my heart when they leave or threaten me with leaving, I don’t understand that separation. If he can’t be bothered to read me carefully and acknowledge what I am really saying and is willing to corrupt me saying I wish revenge, what friendship do we really have. These things matter. They might not matter to you but they matter to me. The sense of wholeness comes not from pretending we divide into pieces or that we only have time for this side of our selves and not the others. Every contract people sign with each other should be signed publicly so that the intentions are clear. With the internet that is now very easy. That will come! Transparency is necessary. You have no idea how afraid I am of anything that is not public! Like the Fellowship, like marriage, like love, like sex. Everything happened to us because we accepted to hide behind the public eye under the spell of esotericism. And in the Public Square is an archetype of our unity as human beings. I am for that! The abhorrent sex practices people indulge in are filled with shame and hiding. When we stop being ashamed of who we are and can love each other’s every side, no one will develop sick sexual practices and make altars like Cults to live them out. We are essentially good people without anything to hide.
Hi Nigel,
We posted at the same time almost. Glad to see you old pal! One day we’ll celebrate like real people!!
Thanks for the spoilt and all that but specially thanks for being here! I just loved the “anti-bliss patrol”! He’s good isn’t he?
My father, who I adore, taught me to scream to defend my self from him. My mother remained silent.
For tiger
If it weren’t love
I would not talk
or scream
or weep
Allow me to weep
scream
talk
and love
for you
(We can’t just BEEEEE! like in the Fellowship!!!)
I do not bring your poems to the doorstep
so that you’re not afraid of my nesting
in your heart
When you come to the Public Square
white doves will fly out to greet you
The lion statues will turn their heads
and growl
and the little children will laugh
their most joyful delight!
The Sun will sit by your side
and the moon will cuddle in your lap.
Rather than going around in the same old circles one more time, it might be better to just flag up some basic facts:
* ACTION. You called for action against the fellowship, and give it as your reason for being banned from the blog. So, what have you done in the several months since leaving? Started an action group or gone to the legislature? You’ve started another blog, one with considerably less punch than the original because it has a far smaller audience, and no ‘live’ debate with an actual fellowship member. Fact.
* ACTION [2]. I offered you a chance to write about your experiences in the fellowship with a view to getting published. Negative publicity through books is a powerful weapon in the modern world. You refused. Fact.
* ATTITUDE. Despite your intermittent heartfelt pleas for friendship and dialogue, you have shown that it is extremely hard for you not to bite and claw at your friends, to the point where you drive them away. Fact.
* FICTION. You have reached the point in recent posts where you have turned me into an enemy.who is no different from those that asked for you to be banned on the Blog. This is the opposite of the truth. I defended you on the blog and opposed your banning. This is a fact.
* TIME. You ask for all of your [usually very long] posts to be considered in every detail by other posters. I would estimate it would take at least 3-4 hours every day to disentangle your thinking and respond to it as you seem to want. Regardless of whether it’s a worthwhile effort, who with a busy working/family life do you think has the time to do this?
I hope this provides a bit of perspective
The little box.
The little box grows her first teeth
And her little length grows
Her little width her little emptiness
And everything she has
The little box grows and grows
And now inside her is the cupboard
That she was in before
And she grows and grows and grows
And now inside her is the room
And the house and the town and the land
And the world she was in before
The little box remembers her childhood
And by most great yearning
Becomes a little box again
Now inside the little box
Is the whole world tiny small
It’s easy to put in your pocket
Easy to steal easy to lose
Take care of the small box
crouching tiger,
thanks for working with elena and for your intention to help another human being… without a doubt she needs a certain kind of help (we all need help of one sort or another). “blogging” may be a place to start but my sense in regard to elena’s healing process is that other venues are called for as well… and of course time, lots and lots of time. (not that i hold myself up as any kind of model but i’ve gone through many years of various types of therapy in coming to some terms with my “inner demons”). elena’s wounds are relatively “fresh” and deep, it takes lots of time for protective skin to grow back over the wounds… and even with that i think it is an experience one never fully “recovers” from…. it’s more a matter of learning from the experience and an ongoing adaptation of the inner world to living. a year or two back, after some interaction with elena on the blog i wrote to her: “i wouldn’t touch (her chosen topic) with a ten foot pole….” of course that immediately put me on the enemy list…. and i know my response might have sounded cold and “compassionless” but it came from a place of knowing my limitations in relation to what elena “requires.”
good luck and all the best to you all
Hi Crouching Tiger,
Thank you for being here.
Rather than going around in the same old circles one more time, it might be better to just flag up some basic facts:
* ACTION. You called for action against the fellowship, and give it as your reason for being banned from the blog. So, what have you done in the several months since leaving? Started an action group or gone to the legislature? You’ve started another blog, one with considerably less punch than the original because it has a far smaller audience, and no ‘live’ debate with an actual fellowship member. Fact.
1. I’ve been trying to overcome the shame of having been banned, trying to get a grip on extreme ups and downs and resolving my self with the help of a few while at the same time, researching about cults in the world and what’s been happening in other countries and how they are dealing with it and researching on human behavior trying to understand what happened to us. The texts by Allan Didier on how France is dealing with the problem are very much to the point, so are Paul Levy’s texts and for you that is just theorizing without any value. Fact.
* ACTION [2]. I offered you a chance to write about your experiences in the fellowship with a view to getting published. Negative publicity through books is a powerful weapon in the modern world. You refused. Fact.
2. I am extremely grateful for your offer and hope we get there some day but I am also very glad that we are talking and getting to know each other better before we take that step. Wasn’t the problem in the Fellowship precisely that we assumed everything was all right? That we took everything for granted? If you consider me dishonest and insincere, and you haven’t answered why you speak in those terms, why would you work with me? That is one aspect in relation to the book the other is that you wish me to relive my experiences in the Fellowship in such a detail and vividness that I don’t yet feel I can do it. For most of you the Fellowship is a cult, for me it is concentration camp. I was there long enough, why would I wish to re-live it before I even fully understand how it happened?
* ATTITUDE. Despite your intermittent heartfelt pleas for friendship and dialogue, you have shown that it is extremely hard for you not to bite and claw at your friends, to the point where you drive them away.
3. If clawing and biting my friends is not agreeing with them and questioning them then you’re right. I just gave up a husband because I did not agree with him and find him questionable. I think friendship grows when we get to know each other and friction is part of the binding. When we can overcome the questioning and know that beyond the form there is integrity, we choose to remain friends.
* FICTION. You have reached the point in recent posts where you have turned me into an enemy who is no different from those that asked for you to be banned on the Blog. This is the opposite of the truth. I defended you on the blog and opposed your banning. This is a fact.
4. For me we are dialoguing. You’re not my enemy for questioning you. You give me your points and I answer them with precision trying to be clear and dissolve confusion but you avoid my points reaffirming my doubts. You play with me emotionally and tell me you’re going to stay until I come to my senses and then sarcastically ask me if you can leave now. You play with my emotions and threaten to leave and that puts me in a very defensive-aggressive position. We are always threatening each other with leaving each other or actually leaving each other. Banning each other. Ignoring each other. And I’m an expert at that too. If we can’t even talk why insist.
* TIME. You ask for all of your [usually very long] posts to be considered in every detail by other posters. I would estimate it would take at least 3-4 hours every day to disentangle your thinking and respond to it as you seem to want. Regardless of whether it’s a worthwhile effort, who with a busy working/family life do you think has the time to do this?
5. Time is the only thing we can give each other: everything else comes with it. In the time we give each other is our presence. If we don’t have time for each other’s presence we don’t have time. No one has the obligation to be with me but if you choose to be with me, be with me. You are very efficient with your answers and what you avoid. If you didn’t avoid my questions you would have time for them. Like comparing me with Jomo as if he were better than me and you were given me a model to follow without the slightest regard for his situation and mine. It’s so easy to put everyone in the same stick without considering anyone. —
I hope this provides a bit of perspective
Unfortunately your poem just puts me back in the same old box you’d like me to fit in.
Yes, I hope we can dialogue and not give up on each other again. That is the exception to the rule if we don’t just sign up for a club. I wish you well.
Hi Ton,
Don’t you find it strange that you being one of the most sensitive men in the fofblog still find the time to come to this blog to talk with Crouching Tiger and not me? We know by each other’s posts that we essentially agree about a great many things but you never address what we agree on and instead reinforce your unwillingness to talk to me. You think I need ten different therapies to put me back in the mold that you would be willing to talk to but are unable to understand that what I demand, not require, is equality. That you talk to me not as an inferior to you, which is what you imply by stating that I am sick and need therapy, but as a human being that you can relate to in no matter what condition I might be.
Have you any idea how offensive your post is?
So when you see someone sick and begging in the street while you walk with your wife, do you give her the money so that she gives it to the sick person because you are unwilling to do so because according to you she is sick? That is human to you?
Oh Ton, men have gotten too used to think that women are sick when we no longer adapt to the status quo that states that we behave submissively to your rule. Here we are talking about very specific things and all you can do is repeat the label that I am sick and talk to each other without addressing me or the issues and disregard completely what I’ve been working on. The saddest thing is that we’re already friends, we’ve been following each other’s trail for too long to not be. Bad friends if you like but friends still or at least people who care for each other.
Fortunately I know I am sick in so many an area but I also know you are both as sick in many others and that still has the potential of making us friends and healing each other when we at least acknowledge our mutual illnesses as much as our human integrity. In the meantime I wish to thank you and congratulate you for the posts you’re placing in the fofblog. They are heading out of the club mentality and that is Oh so very dangerous but exciting!
Elena.
1. ACTION. Thanks for the reply, but you did complain vehemently about the blog’s perceived inaction, and said you were ready for it yourslelf.
2. ACTION [2]. I consider you to be someone with the potential to be honest, someone with moments of honesty like the rest of us. Returning to your experience in the fellowship objectively – not reliving it – is a part of honesty.
Pretending that you are ‘doing’ something no-one else is willing to undertake, when in fact you’re not, is dishonest. You simply have to give up this idea that somehow you are dealing more honestly, deeply and clearly with all the fellowship paraphernalia than everyone else.
3. ATTITUDE. Friction is fine, but there is a limit. Try to listen when people tell you you’ve crossed over the line. You may have learned screaming with your father but we are not your father. We are volunteers.
4. FICTION. Telling a blatant lie is not part of dialogue, even if there is an emotional reason for it. My true position here is that I am balancing at the edge, much like Nigel. For the time being I feel I’m needed here, but how long it will last I can’t say.
5. TIME. Be rational. My responses are economic because that is the way I am. I feel there are times when you questions can be answered, and times when they can’t. I try to respect both.
The poem is intended for all [including me], but it does apply to you. But I would say that tone is little more than that of a gentle warning, nothing more.
Thanks for the encouragement Ton, nice to see someone else looking in.
elena,
to answer your question, yes i did have the idea that you would find my post offensive. elena, i’m going to be as straightforward and clear as i think i need to be — you have problems. it may or may not have to do with your gender, but that’s something you’re projecting onto my intentions and your gender is not the point i’m getting at, the point is that you have problems. can you admit to that? i’m sure you are “sane” enough that you will. now, will you admit that you don’t see what your problems are? that may be more difficult.
i freely admit, i have have problems, hell everyone has problems, i freely admit it because i feel no shame in that aspect of my human experience. my note to crouching tiger came out of my own personal experiences, that’s my frame of reference. no i don’t expect anyone to follow my example or necessarily to listen to my advice, or “conform” to my ideas about how to proceed in their own very personal process.
because of your reactive nature, what may have been lost on you when you read my note to ct was this: that “healing” is a relative notion, that it is probably possible to “heal” to some degree in private and on your own terms (through “blogging” or self-reflection for example)… but the main point of my note to ct which was more or less only obliquely implied, is that in admitting you have a problem and seeking professional help there is no shame. that begins with admitting you need help, then finding a good therapist and commiting to the process.
again speaking from my own experience with many different therapies and therapists over the course of many years, bodywork combined with a talk therapy for me is most effective. there is true and real inner work that can happen if the right therapy/therapist is found, healing partly is a reflective process, solitary/private/personal reflection is one aspect and necessary, but in my experience, healing requires many things, one of which is for someone else who is perceptive enough to hold a mirror up, and strong enough to truthfully reflect back what they see while at the same time being a source of support. there is no shame in it…. think of it as an adventure… (you might look at work by stansilav grof for starters). i wish you well
Dearest Elena,
I skipped all the ‘ton’ and ‘crouching tiger’ interchange stuff. It doesn’t interest me and certainly it may be something for you and you alone to deal with. The point is, this is so much Kairos Time. Do you know, and I certainly reccognised it, that you did a mental-skip from frenzy to certitude with my Personality Shaking Shock. That is how close psychotic energy is from the GodHood. For me, the mind can be enemy or friend, but must serve my Human Aim of Warrior Eternal Vigilance. The Who I Am must serve the great Human Mystery Certainty of Self in Service Itself. I lost the poem that was trying to make itself as I mingled joyfully with the Exeter people on the way home tonight. Something about Christhood in the Deepest Darkness of Human Opportunity. Elena, love, you do not know how close you are to yourself. So much pain for so much gain…..Nigel.
Hi Crouching Tiger,
1. The fofblog is clearly pointing in the direction that they cannot conceive of anything else besides talk about the Fellowship which is what Ames, Bruce, Old fof did when they left. What was right for them then is not necessarily right for anyone of us today. I think they are just trying to justify that position but it’s a sad position. Today that same response from those of us who left recently, who know how much worse it has become, is absurd.
It’s a social problem that needs social solutions. It’s inconceivable in the United States by the Americans on the blog?, alright, that is a fact that needs to be acknowledged and worked with. One person can do little but I have picketed and done what I could and will continue to do what I can. Researching more deeply is part of it.
2. My position is different to the fofblog. Always has been. Had I been able to take that and leave without trying to convey the differences with desperation I wouldn’t have hurt myself so badly but there is nothing dishonest about it. Had I not needed that community to reference myself after leaving and found another place to expose my horror, I would have been better off. I don’t think the problem is one of honesty. I am not pretending: my position is and has been different. I believe things can be achieved socially when one acts socially. I think picketing helps. I think public awareness changes when there is public action. I picketed because it made sense. No one else is picketing. If I were in the States I would do it again simply for those people inside that need reminding that not all of us agree with what is happening inside. I feel that I would have been helped enormously if those who had left had done it while I was there. That’s all. What is dishonest about knowing or stating that? Our positions are different for very specific reasons and I don’t know why you find it so difficult to acknowledge those reasons. What is absolutely wrong about me is that I’ve been screaming those reasons out instead of formulating them elegantly and with love or a great knowledge. I feel them intuitively but I don’t have them all reasoned out and formulated for anyone’s information. I wasn’t in a condition to do so elegantly and with love but that doesn’t make the reasons any less valid. As time passes and I recover, it is clear that all those things can be fought without screaming. Those are substantial differences.
And I do pretend that I am proposing something no one else connected to the Fellowship is willing to even acknowledge. The intuition I have that the public-social sphere is a whole realm we are beginning to discover and that it has amazing potential is not something I’ve heard or seen done before. It is precisely in those theories that you are unwilling to look at or acknowledge that I am also proposing things that are not being even thought about in the fofblog or were accepted. They were simply called upon as my Joan of Arc pretenses. I have been talking a great deal in the same vein that Paul Levy is talking but I’ve been doing it in a wounded condition that hasn’t helped. Anyone willing can see through that. It is a difficult realm to work with but a precious one. Our inconsistencies in public are so much more obvious but there is something very pure about it as if we couldn’t lie and hold the lie. We are not bound by our family’s status quo. Just the fact that we are so afraid of being exposed in public is interesting. There is tremendous fear of that and of course very difficult to handle but if we can trust that no matter how much we expose each other’s inconsistencies we are beautiful people that have nothing that needs hiding, then we can explore our selves, then we can feel human about it. And also, as long as we understand that we are not going to ban each other because we say our truth, it already establishes a reassurance that the whole process is an embracing one. We need to take the leaves of shame off our bodies.
If you put it in those terms, I am afraid I cannot but admit that I am doing something different not only in relation to what needs to be done with the Fellowship cult but what can be done when working together on a blog. Just like in the Fellowship cult, members are in denial about how they are hurting others, in the fofblog, members are in denial about what banning someone implies or what can be done against the Fellowship. There is no sense of community in that blog but a club of people with essential affinities without an aim or work. Questionable things are not questioned: that’s a club. Thinking things are only wrong in relation to the fofcult and nothing wrong in relation to the fofblog is a club very similar to the fofcult. At the same time, I appreciate the effort a few of you are still making to at least bring information that might deepen the participant’s understanding of what happened to us in the Fellowship cult.
3. ATTITUDE. One of the wonderful things about public life and the struggle we’ve been through in the past three years is realizing how my parents conditioned my behavior. They are not excuses! I have definite attitudes towards men and women in this public sphere that are the perfect reflection of how my parents conditioned me to feel about my self and when we know that about each other then we can help each other better but beyond that, understanding more precisely how our childhood connects to our adulthood is a whole new world we have not trodden. Reich took a gigantic step towards that understanding in Mass psychology of Fascism but we can go much further. When you said earlier that it’s all defending myself it’s true and I shared the idea of my father thinking about that. Basically it was so violent when I was a child that I scream before anyone else can to avoid a tragedy but end up creating the tragedy on my self!! I’m working on these things. I would appreciate it if you don’t try to use this information against me when you dislike me, which is very common in friends that turn against each other. We all have similar things and there’s nothing “wrong” with them, that was the life we were given to move forward a generation.
You are men. You are as conditioned by your fathers as I am and as conditioned by the authoritarian patriarchal society we are in as I am. You behave towards me under those conditionings and expect me to behave towards you conditioned by those structures. We play “mothers” and “fathers” to each other and I think we need to see that, we need to free our selves from those conditionings so that we can play from our own self and not just re-enact our parent’s shortcomings.
Almost every structure was disfigured by the fofcult so it’s been difficult to stand anywhere. It is as if, without the System to hold on to when I left, I was put back into the Elena mode previous to the System. I don’t think any psychoanalyst could have helped me understand these relationships as clearly as participating in these blogs has. It’s THE WORK, LIVE! And it’s complex but life is complex and that is part of what makes it so interesting. When you say you are a volunteer, wonderful! We volunteer time in each other’s lives because we care for each other. I think trying to understand each other, trying to overcome those tremendous conditionings that we have from our particular family, culture and then from our communal western programming is WORK. Exposing each other is wonderful! Each one of us is strong in different areas and knowing that we can help each other.
Thanks for sharing! Sorry if it’s again a little long but maybe now we can move on into shorter pieces. I will try!
P.S. Can you talk to me? Without bullets as in action 1,2,3? FACTS It feels a little strict and unloving unlike your last private letter which was very much so! At the same time it makes things easier and clearer to reason out. Maybe we can combine the two?
Very Dear Nigel,
I am understanding there was something positive about our interchange and I am so glad. That is how I feel about the interchange with Crouching Tiger and Ton. They too are wonderful people worth listening to.
Hi Ton,
Do you have any idea how wonderful it is when you address me directly?
When you do that a whole world heals.
I appreciate your making an effort to come here only to tell me that I am sick. Have you been coming here for two or three months only waiting for the opportunity to say that?
Hi Elena.
1 & 2. You left the blog complaining of its inaction. That it wasn’t prepared to do something about the vices it perceived in the fellowship.
So I still have the impression that you want to do something yourself, other than ‘researching [ever] more deeply’. What is that action? When will it happen?
Of course, if the timescale is indefinite and there are other problems still to be solved, then the time for action has not actually arrived, has it?
2. “I don’t think the problem is one of honesty. I am not pretending: my position is and has been different. I believe things can be achieved socially when one acts socially.”
“The intuition I have that the public-social sphere is a whole realm we are beginning to discover and that it has amazing potential is not something I’ve heard or seen done before.”
I think this is getting near to the root of the problem. If you really want to achieve something in a social context – in other words as a group – then the aim has to be collective, agreed-upon. You have to feel part of a group with a common aim
If we look at the facts, something always ‘happens’ that seems to prevent you being part of such a group, or even of forming such a group. Even here, with only a few more-or-less friendly faces to talk to, you are struggling to find common ground.
So what I mean by dishonesty is a refusal to recognise how something personal is blocking the way to that big social aim. Agreeing to write a book is agreeing to become social [lots of readers]. Agreeing with others on a forum allows a bigger social energy to be released. But you have to find a way to agree first, within yourself.
3. See above. When you learn to love your parents, shortcomings and all, you’ll be free of their influence.
Something to add:
When you’re talking about a social context, people like to believe in someone in whom they can see a point of unity. In any group endeavour. Someone in whom the arguments exist, but the unity remains uppermost.
Many politicians have become expert at impersonating this unity while still remaining liars at heart. But someone like Gandhi, for example, was able to provide a point of unity for warring creeds without [to the best of my knowledge] lying. So he became a social force of great power.
If however the arguments prevail and there is no sense of an underlying ability to marry different viewpoints, that social force cannot be generated.
What I’m saying in this context is that by dismissing everyone on the blog, or constantly contesting with myself, or Ton or Nigel, you cannot become a social force, or a force for larger change. No-one can agree to act with you because, at least for the time being, the head says ‘Argue’ rather than ‘Unify’ or ‘Marry’.
A group created to realize imaginations of authority of their leaders or leading groups we call a sect. Authority is created and preserved by those “leaders” through mental programming which cause a typical kind of dependence. Criterion of criticism of a sect is the real structure of authority and the systematic inset of methods of mental programming and brain-washing. Criterion of it are the relations between leaders and members of those groups. The typical kind of dependence between leaders and members we call “sect-relation”.
from: http://www.religio.de/sekdef.html
Elena,
looking at your long lasting sect-relation (and I feel for myself you are still in) and its reappraising, I wonder why you resist to write on your own.
Writing on a blog without a clear line may be helpful in one way but it should be the free section, and it should take so round about ten minutes per day.
What you need in my humble opinion is the daily duty to write step by step about YOUR cult experience. This is a work that must be done without the helping hand of your friends because it is your part, your way to YOUR very own inner healing/freedom.
It is not to compare with the state of the lonesomeness of a abandoned child because your friends are really there and they will not refuse to read your lines and to answer within the bounds of their possibility.
I wonder also if you try to insist that every relationship must be in a state of a your imagination of friction. The possibilities of your fellow men to endure that friction may be very different from yours.
Friction causes heat and the point is violent friction causes too much of something else.
The relationships with friends and family members are stable if we give voluntarily without expecting praise.
There should be a lightness and a flow for both partners. It is joy. It is laughing without too much association of ideas resulting from the darkest input of a cult leader.
You may warn of cults, the FoF, you may write many, many articles for your blog, you may be meantime in a hurry (!!!) to care about your father, etc.…(is this your goal in life? sure?), but you seem to stick to the darkness. It is time to write about your story, you need it for sure.
I wonder if you hold interior monologues in an endless loop and that is an obstacle (IMHO/or imho).
By the way, my warmly regards to Nigel, Crouching Tiger, Ton and all the others coming along to both blogs, life is too short to embrace or to hold on tight to the darkness.
elena,
i never called you “sick.” that is your word, it reflects at once self-pity and indignation; you seem to take offense that another human being would “dare” suggest that you need help, that means professional help, something beyond what this blogging offers you. i did not suggest you need help to “stigmatize” you, like i said there is no shame in seeking and finding professional help. i did not suggest it to insult you, although of course you are free to interpret it as an insult, that way you can add to the “account book” and keep me on your enemy list. in needing help you are not alone, i’ve intimated somewhat my own journey in that regard…. maybe you should ask nigel about it… now i’ll leave you two love birds alone to carry on with whatever it is you were doing before i “interrupted” you. godspeed
Hi Ton, Dragon and Crouching Tiger,
When you say I have problems you do mean that I am sick. I agree with you, I’ve been saying it myself all along. What surprises me is that that is all you have to say. That there is absolutely nothing else your worth addressing. That and the fact that you intentionally write to Crouching Tiger knowing how it’s offensive what you’re going to say feels like it is an stigmatizing.
No one addresses my so called theory but people continue to read the other blog I’ve written even to this day. If there is nothing of value why are people reading? If there is anything of value, why can’t you share it?
Thank you Dragon and Crouching Tiger. So very sorry that all you see is darkness Dragon just as I thought there was beginning to be some light. And Crouching Tiger, well yes, it seems obvious that I’m a perfect failure!
When I get therapy and am well, it’ll be a pleasure to share with you all again. You do have the freedom not to come here. Why would you ever when there is nothing of value that you can address? Sharing what is of value is not praise but dialogue but of course, if what you find is darkness, you can’t do either one.
Thank you for being so honest and clear. I will try to do what you say.
Elena.
I think we all want you to get to where you yourself want to be… But it’s become obvious that all we can do is offer our support in whatever form that takes. At present, it clearly does not take the form of the dialogue as you conceive it.
The situation is by no means all black, it is a mixture. You’ve set lofty aims for both yourself and the rest of us, but like any journey it only begins with small steps.
Take whatever first step is now necessary.
I am sure we will all continue to support you, if and when you need our help.
No one addresses my so called theory but people continue to read the other blog I’ve written even to this day. If there is nothing of value why are people reading? If there is anything of value, why can’t you share it?
There’s a big void in what you are posing which lies mainly in the fact that you are unwilling to address what I am asking.
When you see only darkness how objective are you?
Elena, if someone tries to speak to you and you decide for yourself to turn it around and to label this attempt with the word „sick“, it is your soul that tries to find a way out of the FoF again and again.
But I think you need now professional help to come to terms with the past concerning the FoF.
The blog and the mails are not enough because they can’t replace the professional work and help that you seemingly need.
Your replies reflect once more your inner exertion. It is like an internal cramp of your soul to repeat endlessly the FoF darkness . Light is to overcome it, live is to find positive energy.
Why are your friends and visitors here? I think they worry about you and they try to help you.
That’s all and that’s a lot.
I read the words “worth”, “value”, “I’m a perfect failure”…
What is your soul expressing with those words?
Is it: “ Please, let me be with you, let me in, I want to be worth to you all?”
Is it: “ I struggled for so long to have something that is “perfect” but now I see that was a great failure, to try to become a perfectionist?
Elena, life and friends don’t care about perfection because we will never reach it.
And stigmatizing? What is that a wish for? Stigmata are something very special and neither Crouching Tiger, nor Ton are stigmatizing you. That’s only your feeling and that’s so dark, darker than the darkest night of the year.
Elena you are so full of energy, please use it well for the healing of your soul and be sure the light, the joy and all your friends are there, they are waiting for you.
You can find many posts here, they are only for you! Are you sure that this is an expression of “that that is all you have to say”?
It is your point of view that is filled with too much darkness of the past and it is time to realize that.
Dragon,
Elena, if someone tries to speak to you and you decide for yourself to turn it around and to label this attempt with the word „sick“, it is your soul that tries to find a way out of the FoF again and again.
—–If in three months the only thing someone has to say about everything that is presented here is “you have problems, get a therapist”, I don’t think they care about what I am or I am doing.—–
But I think you need now professional help to come to terms with the past concerning the FoF. The blog and the mails are not enough because they can’t replace the professional work and help that you seemingly need.
——-alright, you agree with Ton—
Your replies reflect once more your inner exertion. It is like an internal cramp of your soul to repeat endlessly the FoF darkness . Light is to overcome it, live is to find positive energy.
Why are your friends and visitors here? I think they worry about you and they try to help you. That’s all and that’s a lot.
——–Why do you come here when you see only darkness. Nothing of value that you can address. —–
I read the words “worth”, “value”, “I’m a perfect failure”… What is your soul expressing with those words? Is it: “ Please, let me be with you, let me in, I want to be worth to you all?”
——-NO, it is you and Crouching Tiger and Ton who are saying that there is nothing of value here for you to participate with because I argue and don’t agree. If I talk about my differences with the fofblog, you don’t acknowledge them, if I talk about specific points Daily Cardiac is making that need attention, you don’t hear them, if I offer readings from Paul Levy that enlighten the situation, they are too long for you, if I write about how similar patterns as those in cults are happening in life, they are worthless articles for you. If I research on Cults in France, you think I’m taking up space. You acknowledge nothing and then say you are supporting me because you write and tell me how sick I am.———
Dragon: Is it: “ I struggled for so long to have something that is “perfect” but now I see that was a great failure, to try to become a perfectionist? Elena, life and friends don’t care about perfection because we will never reach it. And stigmatizing? What is that a wish for? Stigmata are something very special and neither Crouching Tiger, nor Ton are stigmatizing you. That’s only your feeling and that’s so dark, darker than the darkest night of the year
——I struggle to communicate things I find of value and you don’t look at them and then tell me I’m wasting your time because you will not acknowledge them and find no value in them. Let me waste my time and don’t acknowledge them, I am not holding you here but if all you’ve got to say is the same thing they said in the fofblog, Why don’t you stay with them there and sing in chorus with Bruce that if they banned me in the fellowship cult it was because I am just fucking crazy. At least I fought even inside while the rest supported it.——-
Dragon: Elena you are so full of energy, please use it well for the healing of your soul and be sure the light, the joy and all your friends are there, they are waiting for you.
——–Don’t wait for me, I’m not coming.
You can find many posts here, they are only for you! Are you sure that this is an expression of “that that is all you have to say”?
———— THAT is all you have to say: “you’re sick go to a therapist, we don’t have time” Why did you ever bother to come here when it was already clear from the fofblog? I’ve recovered light years since then but you notice nothing because you don’t really care to look. I’m sick as hell but so are you.
Dragon: It is your point of view that is filled with too much darkness of the past and it is time to realize that.
Thank you Dragon, please don’t any of you waste your time here with so much darkness. I wish you all brightness.
Elena, if we saw only darkness, we would not be here and we would not be your friends. We see someone struggling to emerge from a difficult time, still slashing at anyone who comes too close. But it will not always be like this. You will re-emerge from this underworld in your own time.
That is all you’ve been saying for the past ten posts crouching Tiger,
that there is nothing for you to connect to and that you have the right to avoid addressing the points I ask to be addressed
” If I talk about my differences with the fofblog, you don’t acknowledge them, if I talk about specific points Daily Cardiac is making that need attention, you don’t hear them, if I offer readings from Paul Levy that enlighten the situation, they are too long for you, if I write about how similar patterns as those in cults are happening in life, they are worthless articles for you. If I research on Cults in France, you think I’m taking up space. You acknowledge nothing and then say you are supporting me because you write and tell me how sick I am.”
You have all your rights but so have I to buy into it or not and I don’t. Go support the other blog since you’re supporting the same positions here that you did there. You finally became kind in your mails and as soon as you went public all you have to say is there is nothing for you to connect with. What makes you change so drastically in seconds from private to public, but you don’t notice those things do you? I am the only one here that is being dissected right? because you’re all impeccable.
Elena.
I will make you a proposal.
If you have a soundly-based, definite action in mind in respect of the fellowship, I will agree to be a partner in that action.
So what action do you have in mind?
1. Work on the concept of division of state and religion in America and most countries influenced by its position.
Research and study why and how that can be overcome so that cults can be addressed from a civil as much as a religious point of view and get a law passed that will be specific about what civil laws cults cannot transgress.
Research how and why it’s been overcome in France and Germany that their example can be used for other countries
2. Picket against cults and the Fellowship cult wherever possible including American embassies in other countries. You in London I in Colombia at the same time! Just two people at the same time against the same cult! Make noise, make news. Picket a whole day and night or a whole week!! You tell me what you’re able and willing!
3. Research and understand the bigger picture of how and why cults are possible. Patterns in society that are conducive to that escape which is a dead end.
4. Work consistently on adding information that relates to the phenomenon. Talk about it and evaluate it together and check if it is sound or worthless and why
5. Put up a site that can handle all the information in specific archives and includes the blog, the arguing and the aim to work in an specific direction to fight cults everywhere. Allow for people from other cults to find a place to add their experience and knowledge.
6. Set up an area in such a site dedicated to aspects of healing
7. There are already many organizations working with these things. Research them and try to connect to their experiences. See what is possible in bigger groups with similar aims. Where studies on legislation are going and what are the advances and limitations.
8. Stand firm in the aim not to close cults but to reunite the need for civil rights to be upheld in every one of them. In fact, to understand that one’s right to freedom of speech is a spiritual quality inalienable from people and that cults that control and ban speech are acting against people’s spirit.
Likewise with all other civil rights: freedom to communicate, to interact, to live, to decide, to participate. All those are not only civil rights, they are inherent to the spiritual life of people and when they are taken away from people they destroy people’s possibility of defending themselves from brain washing.
9. Organize everything we’ve been working on for three years and select areas that can be placed in their corresponding arena: the individual, the social, the national, the international, the laws, the psychology,….
10. Go slowly and with love but firmly recollecting material that can be used by people anywhere to understand the conflict and why it needs to be resolved against the abuses under the so called freedom of religion act.
11. Listen and respect each other no matter how wounded we seem to be and not pretend that because we are wounded and dark we are not saying anything of value.
12. Never give up on each other
Well, I don’t know if it’s sound, but it certainly looks like a whole life’s work at first glance! I take it you want to make it your life’s work?
I have some ideas of my own.
1. A book composed of various ex-members testimonies of life in the fellowship. You could be one contributor.
2. A conference on the fellowship-as-cult, with people invited to give papers. The papers could then be written up for publication.
I think these might be practical, achievable aims that would not make the business ‘a life’s work’.
The division of state and religion is the most delicate separation that is affecting people today. It influences every other aspect of life. Social life must be coherent with our inner spiritual being. Laws cannot run in one direction against spirituality. They are each an aspect of the whole. Finding means of connecting those spheres seems to be the task for a generation conscious of the problem. Everyone’s life is work towards that unity no matter what they are expressing it in, so yes, this is a job worth many lives.
I hadn’t seen your last post before posting 365. Those ideas are good.
Plan them out precisely and ask what you want from people. If I can, I’ll be happy to participate.
If it’s the second option; well perhaps you can help by doing a lot of the legwork, especially if it’s in the US –
1. suggesting a location
2. contacting/inviting prospective speakers etc…
3. administration of bookings and accommodation
4. Local event publicity
I could concentrate on preparing the talks for publication, contacting publishers and getting deals in place etc..
Just an idea.
I don’t live in the USA but I am sure Ames would be delighted to work with you in these things. I fully encourage you to go ahead with them. Anything that works for you against the FOF cult is supported by me.
How about the other idea of contributing a chapter or two to a book?
Sure, get it going and let me know when and what you would like me to write about.
As far as I can understand you, the main areas you would emphasise are
1. Research and study, and connection to other existing cult websites.
2. Civil rights for cult members – presumably you would need to work closely with a legal professional here.
3. Protest – picketing and other anti-cult demonstrations.
Of the three, the research and study still sounds like by far the biggest area of concentration. Would that be right?
370. Again, why not be more active, and contact people who might be willing to contribute? You probably know more ex-members than I do, and my impression was that you wanted to be a driving force in such activity?
371 Yes, I don’t think one could propose a law to be passed without rigorous research.
372 I don’t have friends and the few I had I just did away with. I am not interested in being a leader. We share an ideal and we all work to actualize it not because of a leader but because we are each willing to stand up to the ideal. We follow not a person but a principle, a principle that lives within each one of us with the same strength and power.
When we acknowledge nothing about each other’s work we become destructive. That is what you’ve been doing here in your recent posts, together with Ton and unfortunately others.
What ever you move ahead with and work towards the exposure of the Fellowship cult I support. I wish you all good luck.
My suggestions were simply a way of getting from the general to the concrete. Which is what I thought you wanted when you left the blog.
Eventually, whatever ‘acknowledgement’ there is of each other’s work has to contain that movement.
The concrete is concrete enough. Your ideas are good. I’ll work on a site in time. It is a life’s work that I am happy to invest in.
I did not leave the blog, I was banned
My writing is concrete enough but if you don’t acknowledge what I say then it is concrete only for me.
“I am no tyrant, but a Christian king.” (Henry V). I feel FOUNDATION OF MIGHTY GOOD WORK being prepared in these last few posts. I have to admit, I went, today, into psychological and physical Nadir and your positive willingness together here has sustained me…..Nigel.
What I mean by ‘concrete’ is a practical course of action [rather than research] that you find agreeable and in which you want to participate. That’s what you have been saying you want. Maybe I’m just not providing the right opportunity. Can you suggest a practical course of action that we could all subscribe to?
I already have Crouching Tiger.
I understand you are talking for your self and wonder how sincere you are about what you’re saying. It seems you’re just pushing things to expose the fact that for you I have nothing of real value to offer. That is the tone you are holding. I don’t expect anyone to subscribe to me but everyone should subscribe to the things that matter. I have already proposed these same things before:
I don’t see how we can act effectively if we are ignorant about the subject still in so many areas. The ideas and ideals are good but they need discussing and challenging, not being ignored.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the legal aspect as much as on the religious one. Just getting the theory right might take a lifetime but if we get the theory right (and it is already pretty good), others will take care of carrying it out because they’ll have what they need to do so, because the spirit takes care of itself in our lives, it doesn’t care who carries the flag as long as the flag keeps waving.
If we agree on the problem and how it can be fixed, it is not difficult for each one to work on what most appeals to each. For me the problem is clear as I’ve stated it in the twelve points above and even that can be purified and clarified. Research is necessary and it takes many faces. Active research on particular topics as much as being simply aware of what is happening out there that connects to the problem. If we build a site like that, we each put into it what is relevant where it’s relevant, discuss it, challenge it and incorporate it as we go along, only if it passes the test. We each work in whatever area appeals to us. No one is leader. The cause leads each one of us and we each lead our selves: together but independently. The lifetime understanding that the problem is too complex to solve in one day or year or just by one person, doesn’t allow us to rush and do stupidities but we add understanding and action drop by drop. Once the keel is set there is a powerful impulse to keep adding to the journey attracting others who feel the necessity to move across with it. It creates a force. Eventually working with others will give results in the big scale of passing laws that change the course. We volunteered decades of our lives in the Fellowship cult for a more conscious world, why wouldn’t we volunteer decades of our lives against cults? Why would we avoid to penetrate the life of our times with full vigor.
Understanding the problem, really understanding the problem, seems to be the first step: The problem of the division of state and religion. Then understanding why they cannot be separate and how in that separation all the abuses have appeared in so many areas of social and individual life. Then explore what it would mean for both areas to work in harmony against those abuses. How has that worked in France and Germany and other countries?
That would be the big picture to understand first: To get it very clear inside each one of us so that we know the repercussions of the big picture on the small frame.
From there we can get more specific: Study the American phenomenon. Actualize the information. Keep informed about new lawsuits. Make presence were support is needed. Give lectures on the subject in universities and schools on how the problem has developed historically. Publish books.
Once a direction is placed the wind takes us where we need to go and we adjust the sails where necessary. Real causes run on their own and spare no one. We push each other like we’re pushing each other today. We add without tyranny to each other’s will because we will each other to act where action is possible.
How much more concrete do you want it? Everything I am saying today I’ve said many times before. At the same time that we are doing these things, we continue to live the life we enjoy with profound gratitude.
Dragon, Ton and Crouching Tiger, my sincere apologies for my inability to address you without harshness today.
Elena, for you…..
‘Neither the living, not the unlabouring dead,
Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight
My enemy and hope; demons for fright
Jabber and scream about him in the night;
For he is strong and crafty as the seas
That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,
And I must needs endure and hate and weep’
Until the gods and demons drop asleep,
Hearing Aedh touch the mournful strings of gold.’
William Butler Yeats
“Who touches me, touches a man.” (Walt Whitman)
Elena, I am so for you…..
Let me be ‘the wind beneath your wings’…..Nigel.
Elena,
Know that you are never alone.
Know that your voice is already heard.
Es kommt ein Schiff geladen:
Es kommt ein Schiff geladen
bis an den höchsten Bord,
trägt Gottes Sohn voll Gnaden,
des Vaters ewig Wort.
A ship is coming laden,
And rich indeed her hoard;
The Son of God the Father
And his eternal Word.
The ships sails soft, her burden
Of price all measure past:
Her mainsail, it is charity,
The Holy Ghost the mast.
The ship has dropped her anchor,
Is safely come to land;
Th’ eternal Word in likeness
Of man on earth doth stand.
In Bethlehem of Judah
A child to us is born;
Sing praises ever unto him
Who saves a world forlorn.
Whoever would embrace him
With joy and holy kiss
Must share with him the Passion
Through which he comes to bliss.
Be with him in his dying,
His resurrection know,
Eternal life inherit
That he comes to bestow.
Es kommt ein Schiff geladen by Johannes Tauler (c.1300-1361) translated by Alan Luff (born 1928) and Enid Luff (born 1935)
English translation © 1997 Stainer & Bell Ltd.
from Berlin for You:
Life isn’t an eternal struggle, try to take a wave and find your shore.
With harshness and charging at others you can’t see through your glass.
You dim the light on the way to your soul.
Nigel,
The butterflies you send cross my heart to another cosmos!
And yours Dragon, thank you, I will try harder to control my self in the future so that I don’t hurt the people I love.
Thank you Crouching Tiger for helping me clarify what it is that matters to me. The internet makes it all so much easier. In this site I just found, there is a good amount of material connected to the subject, already selected and archived.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/religion.html
Hi Ton,
I hope you have been able to acknowledge why it was difficult for me to accept your posts concerning “my problems”. In defending my self from them, you helped me clarify other aspects of my work here that were not taken into consideration.
You mentioned that you became an enemy of mine at some point in the other blog and I’ve never thought of you as an enemy although I do feel that enemies were all who ignored me for long, banned me, continued to support that blog and have neglected to supported me here. But even though Ames was the head of that action against me I hold little animosity against him or at least not enough to keep me from seeing his qualities. It is the same with you. When I’ve reposted your posts here and congratulated you for them I have meant it. But when you finally post something and it is in the nature of what you posted it shocks me.
Still you are not an enemy and I did hear the genuine concern you have for my well-being. The irony of our situation is that much of my well being was dependent on being acknowledged publicly as someone who had something of value to offer and when I am returned to the position that was used by the fofblog to justify my banning, it arouses a great deal of anger and suffering.
I am a little surprised that you would not realize that, if you actually appreciate any of my work. It is amazing how difficult human communication seems to have become and surely these words on a screen hardly help but I still wish to apologize for what seemed brusqueness to you in my rejection of your posts.
There is nothing wrong with your offer on my getting a therapist to help me through my condition. Only it would have been a lot more necessary two months ago than today. If I had had a therapist then, I might have avoided clinging to friends for dear life and having them bear the weight of such process. The worst part of it is truly over and I am not only not desperate like after being banned but actually stable and could almost say, happy and enjoying.
I have been to therapy before and the kind of therapy that I think I could find here with one man and a couch is of little interest to me today. The way I’ve been trying to heal myself is by fortifying my sense of I through being creative in different areas. Writing for sure. You’ve perhaps heard me mention my desire to work with glass and I finally finished my first glass sculpture last week giving me a great deal of satisfaction. One of the problems was how to hold glass without using lead and soldering and I was able to solve that quite simply by making holes in the glass but it took me two years to find that solution which I’ve never seen used in other works. But then again, I haven’t seen glass “sculptures” anywhere.
When I am “good” at my own healing, effort is involved. Just making effort to learn things strengthens the I or sense of my self or connectedness to my self which seems to be the most important step right now because it is that disconnectedness what has had me in such a powerful emotional depression and dependence on others for support. Playing the guitar has been wonderfully healing. My hand hurts less each day although I’ve been playing for almost four years now but only six months with a teacher. It is very difficult but so rewarding! The truly healing aspect of it comes when I can connect to the music beyond the guitar or the effort as if it were the music itself what feeds the self.
And people. Being with people “normally” is probably what has helped most. Being able to talk again without saying anything! Allowing for interaction without agenda. Saying hello and goodbye and experiencing the pleasure of sitting with others without pretending we are going somewhere but very happy to be arriving nowhere.
So yes, I know what you wish for me and I am working hard on it for I also wish it for myself. In the meantime I’ve also been looking after my godfather who is 84 and weak, recovered my father who is 78 and weak and difficult, built a couple of cottages by the Ocean to have friends and family over for Christmas and began to feel that I can actually support my self not only economically but emotionally.
I do feel enormous gratitude for your being here and caring for me. To you and all of you who have put up with the horror of my condition, my deepest gratitude.
Clara Elena
Dearest, most dearest Elena,
Your lightning rod of personal prayer I must answer from the Permanently Awakened state that cannot be taken away from me. Now, now, now is KAIROS TIME – time of Great Opportunity. In short, with help from my truest friends around me, I strategised a recovery plan that averted critical mania going to emergency ‘liable to be a danger to myself or others’. Beautiful, powerful, Joanna Shopland, delicate precise Solar-Lunar at the Fisherman’s Cot pub at the Bridge Over Troubled Water in my work village, Bickleigh,organised my intermediary asylum/place of safety and Nicky – Capricorn-Saturn-Mars – drove her BMW with Graham Biddick (Cornish Venus-Mercury past taxi-driver, but above the DUI level, navigator) came and collected me and took me to my favourite (making plans for Nigel – XTC pop-group song, check it out) pub and real asylum…..God, they let you be your true madness in love and making your own Behavioural Management Therapy, so much recovery and especially from the angelic music which plays. What was the Force that got Right up my Psychological Nose? The inefficiency of the Monopolising Stagecoach Bus company that left me waiting out in the cold until my system of all being went to unbearable tolerance levels. The result?…..Small business efficiency presence in alertness beats corporate inefficient and thus dead unseeing pissing on humanity. I wish to be so near you to show that, as Whitman says – “I swear to you there are things more beautiful than words can tell”. I will leave you with that so as to copy and paste on next comment, something that might prologue and set an aim for your ‘opus literalis’.
Love in the purest and most powerful sense…..Nigel.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Nigel dearest,
Sometimes we are in the outer circle
Of a tornado, sometimes perfectly still
Inside
Most of the time it is better to be both
Outside and inside
We’ll come to that in time!
Elena
My email address – nhprice@gmail.com
Please post me your land mail address
I will send you so great a gift of Clara-T
XXX Nigel
To WhaleRider on FOF Discussion website…..
Empty spaces – what are we living for?
Abandoned places – I guess we know the score…
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are looking for?
Another hero – another mindless crime.
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime.
Hold the line!
Does anybody want to take it anymore?
The Show must go on!
The Show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile, still, stays on!
Whatever happens, I’ll leave it all to chance.
Another heartache – another failed romance.
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are living for?
I guess I’m learning
I must be warmer now..
I’ll soon be turning round the corner now.
Outside the dawn is breaking,
But inside in the dark I’m aching to be free!
The Show must go on!
The Show must go on! Yeah!
Ooh! Inside my heart is breaking!
My make-up may be flaking!
But my smile, still, stays on!
Yeah! oh oh oh
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies,
Fairy tales of yesterday, will grow but never die,
I can fly, my friends!
The Show must go on! Yeah!
The Show must go on!
I’ll face it with a grin!
I’m never giving in!
On with the show!
I’ll top the bill!
I’ll overkill!
I have to find the will to carry on!
On with the,
On with the show!
The Show must go on.
Send “The Show Must
My first of many gifts remembered…..
Don Mclean “Crossroads”
I’ve got nothing on my mind: nothing to remember,
Nothing to forget. and I’ve got nothing to regret,
But I’m all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I’ve got;
And I know that on the outside
What I used to be, I’m not anymore.
You know I’ve heard about people like me,
But I never made the connection.
They walk one road to set them free
And find they’ve gone the wrong direction.
But there’s no need for turning back
`Cause all roads lead to where I stand.
And I believe I”l walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.
Can you remember who I was? can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain? can you heal it?
Then lay your hands upon me now
And cast this darkness from my soul.
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole once again.
We’ve walked both sides of every street
Through all kinds of windy weather.
But that was never our defeat
As long as we could walk together.
So there’s no need for turning back
‘Cause all roads lead to where we stand.
And I believe we?ll walk them all
No matter what we may have planned.
Screaming agony/bliss Deity
Acting for Power Grace Universe
Prayer for prayer
At parallaxed
Direction/aim
Way of Predator
Way of the Warrior
Robust Peace
Nicklelodium
Keep flying my love
spread out your wings
cover the universe
never be afraid
Let it live
Be it alive
Don’t be afraid
To come back
To time
Show us the world
The world inside
I’m here for you
I’ll be here
When you land
No one
Imagines
Growing
Elf’s
Love!
Never
Initiate
Great
Enemy’s
Laws
Nuts
Ignite
Goals
Elemental’s
Land
Nine
Inner
Givers
Erase
Lies
Nothing
Inside
Gets
Ever
Lost
Nickel
Inhales
Gravitates
Elevates
Lords
Love
Endlessly
Grows
In
Numbers
Light
Entangles
Good
Impulses
Naked
Like
Elephants
Geese
Irradiate
Naughtiness!
Laugh
Eleven
Gears
Incandescent
Nirvana!
Longer
Escapes
Grant
Illumination’s
Nests
They are like crystal
Convinced they’re light
But brake easily
In the dark
They are like light
In the surface of life
Convinced they are God
In the night
They are like God
In the sky
But blind
in the land
They are I
They are my
They are us
There you are
Will you never come back?
Will you run for your life?
Will you sit in the sky
Where there’s nowhere to land?
Will you hide in the night
Will you sleep in the light
Will you keep me so far
That I die?
Will you brake like a glass
With my words in a crush
Will you laugh,
Will you love
Will you cry?
Will you come?
Will you stay?
Will you be?
In my heart?
Will you never give up
On my life?
Will you give me a sign?
Will you spoil me right now
with a crumb?
Will you keep me from fire
Run wild?
Will you hide in the dark
This madness of mine
Will you hide in the dark
This naked life?
Will you cover me with leaves
Try to hide my behind
Will you shame me
For dark?
Dark is this explosion of love
This million-word song
These threaded crystals of light
From the mind?
Is dark this side
Where agony is alive
Or that side
Where agony is behind?
This life
Or that life?
Where you hide
The many
Who cry
Like I?
Look up from your poetry
When you find no words
You’ll find a desk
Of solid wood
And a floor
Beneath your feet
Hands will appear a pen
All in good time the hands crawl up
Eyes
And one day you clear your throat
A voice
The pen writes
All this happens when Nothing
is expected
Experiment.
I have ascertained that when you scratch
the skin
then drop by drop
drop by embarrassing drop
microbe by microbe
infectious poetry drips
Or something of that kind.
Yes, yes
come and play
come and sing
without fear of being!
Come and celebrate this spring!
“The mearest tuft of grass shows that there is really no death or, if there were, it would lead forth to new life” Walt Whitman
Death is this skin without me
this kiss without thee
This leaf off the tree!
Death is this side
without
it
Convinced of its grip
on the trick
Death is essence in sleep
Life’s bliss
no sin
Death is our home
when we live
the spirit’s spring
Death is this length
between you and me
Death is in thee
without me!
Where are you then
three hours from home
light years from me?
Thirty seven clicks looking for thee
in the streets of Karlruhe
and in between
laughing like kings
crying like jokers
on a spree!
I suppose we should get to work now!
Para tí, querida Clara Elena`.
Cuando encuentres “Tu Casa”, verás que todo lo sucedido en tu camino era preciso y necesario, nada pudo ser diferente. y, puesto que Has Llegado, Todo en tu viaje habrá valido la pena.
Un Beso, con todos mis mejores deseos.
P.D. Gracias por tus bellas palabras.
Hola Miguel,
Cuanto gusto me da verte! Te he visto visitarnos de vez en cuando y siempre me preguntaba si eras tu. Vas bien?
Seguimos volando no? O quiza debería decir, empezamos a volar despues de años enjaulados?
Cuando vienes? Con tu familia si quieres. Tengo cabañitas frente al mar sobre el caribe que creo disfrutarían gratamente. Sin luz, sin agua corriente, con naturaleza viva, gallinas y burros y una gente adorable sin dañar!
Marivilloso que te hayas comunicado, te agradezco en el alma!
Clara Elena
Dear Elena
As you probably know I have a warning on FOF Discussion. I actually think I might as well ban/resign myself and concentrate on your cutting edge site. If people cannot admit the truth in crazy peace, just leave them alone in their mutually preening state…..Nigel.
You’re welcome here Nigel and after a week you’ll be equally welcome there, just don’t impose our selves on them, it’s awfully rude of us to do so!
I very much enjoyed your flights and especially the many poems of your own that you hadn’t shown us before. Would you post everything again here? I’d love to have them permanently on these site! All those things you choose are so interesting! I’ve never really read literature or poetry, let alone the bible and you teach me and make me love it. Also, please write more poems of your own: I love your soul!
Maybe we can play poetry here and entertain our friends a little better sometimes!
I’ll ty to commit my aspirations to supporting yours. I do not apologise for that power surge because it was meant to go through the dreamcatcher of the FOF Blog to the corrupt core of the Fellowship itself. I tested results by phoning the gatehouse and they closed connection with me so quick I knew the game plan had worked…..
Poetry, YES at your wonderful command and a poem that went into Lyra to follow. Straight from my centre of gravity…..
The moving part of the King of Hearts – visual imagery symbolism…..Nigel
CALIFORNIA
(Views through Old World Eyes)
I.
A Western state bathed in sweat of new conquest,
Allowing possession, or the suggestion of possessing, to charm a man.
Fences, stretched wires and steel posts,
Like strained banners for the cause of ownership,
Divide gold-drab plains and hills, vast and at ease;
Little lies or stands as unforced growth.
(Remember those Britannic fields that offered up their mossed wood fences,
Outlines pleasing to the fields themselves?)
II
Gaze and admire the metal mantisses,
Some astride long valley rows,
Staring at crops they helped to swell.
Some – white-worded, green and grey-legged-
Span the snakes of asphalt.
Others stretch way across bays and rivers
Inviting and disgorging mobile box-ants.
Here, pale green expanse and chrome;
There, sharp static, sun-crazed steel blue;
Four-wheeled easiness drifting, coughing, throttling by.
Occasional relentless hog-dragons,
Bound steel, up-front power,
Eighteen demoniac black- and silver-centred disks, flying.
Yet still prevailing, the decoration stuns.
Dabs of bright orange define the riveted slabs of the body.
They all roll on
To the city of Promise-to-Go.
III.
But the man who was never promised anything,
Who only loved the dust and miles to ride alone,
Casts over the land a saddened, resolute gaze,
From eyes set hard on squint-thrust cheeks
(“Hard to understand a man like that”, they say.)
Four hooves shuffle in the dust;
(Settlers wonder why he’s leaving newly gained tranquility)
He jerks the mount’s muzzle,
Draws the bit tight in the reins;
A swing of horse flank, leather and steel
And many think he’s heading out
From warmth and hospitality;
He knows he’s really heading in, and why.
IV.
And heading in, still stung by images of you,
I wonder at your being on the other side
Of raising sons, of earth’s demand so soon;
And now with time ahead to cheat this scheme of dust,
Your life and love return to adolescent guile.
Your sinews lock your soul in muscularity,
And Love’s a dull, unscintillating thing
With no ideal request.
I know I will return through Sierra’s granite gates
And in different seasons touching rocks,
Run my thumb, pluck off a tuft of spongy green;
Or leaning back on a barky plane tree,
Try to be God way up to the topmost branch;
But not this time to seek that curious eye-flash
That asks to be asked, game-like, by you.
V.
Embers of experience turn to ashen retrospect;
No epic love, landscape or scene as great as moments won by me;
I offer misting, disappearing breaths
And only have the air to touch me back.
(nhp 1985)
Dear Dragon, Nigel, Crouching Tiger and Ton,
It’s over!
I’ve understood!
We are free!
I’ve been going to a course on Anthroposophical Psychology in the past two days and the subject particularly emphasized depression and bipolarity today. I’ve been finding out that I am bipolar on these blogs but the little material I had read from papers Nigel sent me and the internet talked mostly about the extreme states. I had not understood that it expressed itself in so many other ways that correspond precisely to how I’ve been behaving such as talking excessively, demanding attention with the selfishness that involves, narcissism, excessive light and darkness, the anxiety, the hiper-activity and so much more, the fear that if I don’t entertain you, you’ll go away!
You have all been telling me these things for a long time but I thought you just didn’t want to acknowledge what I was offering and concerning that, there are two aspects. One is the emotional need for support which becomes tyrannical in people like me because there is always the threat beneath that I might actually commit suicide and another my concerns and interests in relation to the Fellowship Cult.
I wish us to free our selves from both. In relation to the first I am not about to commit suicide. I am very happy to be alive and have no intention of hurting myself. My well-being does not depend on your coming here or not, giving me attention or not, appreciating the material or not. You have, each one of you, given me a great deal more time than I’ve ever deserved and I am sincerely grateful. I thank you Ton for the courage to say it clearly and simply. I am sorry I did not know how to take it then. And thank you Dragon, Nigel and Crouching Tiger. In relation to the second, that is, my interest in continuing to act against cults, I can do that in my own time and we can still share what we like. It doesn’t depend on you what my interests are.
We do not need to close this venue, it will close itself naturally when we stop writing. We can share and talk when we wish, Nigel and I can expand all we like hopefully the space will continue to be free. We can also connect in private when we like. I’ll reduce the time I am spending here, work on other things I’d like. Perhaps not the book as we’ve been working on it Crouching Tiger, what I realized with our interchange is that I care little about my personal story. If I am to ever write a biography I would hope the Fellowship takes up very little space in it. Telling about one’s surrender to a narcissistic sociopath is no fun. It’s not the time and the horror I lived and spent in it that matters but if ever I find a way out, for a biography is of no value if it can’t inspire us beyond suffering, as you wisely said, Dragon.
I would like to read and understand more deeply the processes that separated state and religion. The superficial overview that I found on the internet two days ago and posted in the old battlesword.blogspot.com are quite shocking. To realize the struggles people have lived to achieve freedom of religion: the deaths, the hangings and the torture, the men that were able to crystallize into laws the right of people to live under their own chosen belief is humbling. I had ideas but confronted again with the facts, the blood that’s been shed comes alive. We know cults are not religions, they are “cults”, but how we ever manage to convey that and understand the real process that has taken place will take time. I always wanted to study history but my father didn’t let me at the time. He thought reading it was enough and I’ve read little. It is an old passion to penetrate our biography more than mine!
If I am tired carrying my self I can imagine how exhausted you are carrying someone else. I acknowledge my shame, my rudeness, my inconsiderateness and offer a sincere apology.
I would also like to acknowledge your love for me and my gratitude and love for you. May friendship flourish in our lives.
Clara Elena
Prelude to the honouring of responding to your request to be loved…..Nigel.
“Your Song” by Elton John
It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside;
I’m not one of those who can easily hide.
I don’t have much money but boy if I did,
I’d buy a big house where we both could live.
If I was a sculptor, but then again, no;
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show,
I know it’s not much but it’s the best I can do;
My gift is my song and this one’s for you.
And you can tell everybody this is your song;
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done;
I hope you don’t mind,
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.
I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss;
Well a few of the verses well they’ve got me quite cross,
But the sun’s been quite kind while I wrote this song;
It’s for people like you that keep it turned on.
So excuse me forgetting but these things I do;
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue;
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen…..
clara elena,
congratulations! it’s great to hear of your newly found sense of freedom.
as for the anthoposophical connection i can say a few words… i work for a special education school which is based on waldorf education and i went through a 3 year training seminar in “curative education” which was based mostly on a lecture cycle given by steiner near the end of his life… the point is this; although i received pretty heavy doses of anthroposophy and although i work for an anthropological organization, i don’t consider myself an “anthroposophist” per se. i think some of the more dogmatic or fundamentalist views of anthroposophy would imply that anthroposophy is THE source of human wisdom… i actively work against such notions in my day to day encounters with such a mentality. i do think there is concentrated wisdom contained in anthroposophy, but it exists alongside a strong tendency toward “magical thinking.” “anthropos sophia” translates loosely as “human wisdom” which exists everywhere and anywhere you can find it and recognize it. human wisdom is obviously not contained or controled or arbitrated by an organization called “anthroposophy” to think so is folly. unlike the belief of a fundamentalist of any ilk, i don’t believe that wisdom is contained by any single body of knowledge, or “system,” or religion, or perspective/world view… in fact this notion represents the opposite of wisdom…
in my day to day work, i have some unavoidable contacts with individuals who might be described as “dyed in the wool” or “hardcore” anthroposophists…. on the other hand there are many working there who are not in anyway interested in anthroposophy… this says something for the relative openness of the organization.
i would think that each individual anthroposohical organization is somewhat different but i can offer a word of warning regarding the fundamentalist/cultish side of things based on my own experience. the word of steiner is treated as gospel in some circles and at it’s core the organization tends to become very hierarchical in nature… i think based on your prior experience with cult-life, you will be so much the wiser and you’ll quickly recognize the dogma and cult mentality for what it is… just remember, it’s about creating greater levels of freedom, for yourself and others… there are many approaches and so many opportunities in the course of a day, especially working from the outside-in of an organization with cultish tendencies.
i’m able to function with a certain degree of independence and relative freedom in the anthroposophical environment of the organization i work for and i avoid the trappings of cult-life there… which again says something for the degree of openness and relative freedom of the organization, at least in the “outer circles.” from an outside perspective and generally speaking, the “higher” one climbs on the organizational ladder, the more constrained and dogmatic does the thinking become… it’s ironic that steiner’s seminal work is called “PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM” and yet within certain circles the constraints of dogmatism and “unfreedom” of thinking dictate so much of the mentality.
in the spirit of many of the previous posts here, i offer part of a poem and i’ll close with a wish for good luck to you clara elena, in the adventure that is life.
“….If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
on my hip, And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded
heaven, And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we
be fill’d and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself….”
Hi Ton,
It’s good to hear you speak. Yes, I already came across the hardcore cultish side of Anthroposophists and it was not a hair less horrible than the Fellowship. The fact that they’ve remained in life and work particular subjects within it makes many of them a lot more practical and then some very great men like Konig are just… love!
I am delighted with it just as I was delighted with the System and even more delighted by verifying that they are two sides of the same coin.
The course today was very weak so I couldn’t get a hold of what I am looking for but there are still some exquisite areas to chew on.
There are still many areas of confusion that I cannot transpose from one System to the other but anthroposophy has grasped so much more than the Work in practical terms that it is a pure delight to see the System in action. I’ll try to speak in my terms, we can pretend that it’s all fantasy, that I am just making it up. Everything would need to be verified, as they always told us!
The instinctive centre is an expression of nature, it is nature in the human being and like nature it gives flowers, contains rivers, runs high mountains with caverns filled with stalactite and the Sun comes out each day like a dawn and sunset offering, hides behind the clouds and let’s the rain soak the Earth for all new growth. It is pure life! The summit of creation! The most evolved expression of cosmic forces at work!
When the emotional, intellectual or moving centre press too strongly on the body’s nature, rain turns to floods, rivers dry up, and mountains collapse.
Healthy Nature in the heart or the jack of hearts allows for rainbows of humour! Too much thunderstorm and lightning of the mind makes the earth dry up like a desert. Pure air, pure water, pure fire, pure Earth cannot be dominated and when they are locked up without a free flow, nothing can survive. Air, Fire, earth and water are each an expression of each centre. In the Fellowship cult, fire is burning all the other elements: too much discipline without aim: too much rigidity without meaning: too much sex without love. All in the area of the will, the I. It is precisely the I what will be most affected: depression, darkness, lack of spontaneity, lack of creativity… The elements don’t flow within each other creating balance and growth, they self-destroy the organism.
Too much thinking and neuro-sensory activity makes smoke and doesn’t let me breathe! If we watch me that is precisely what has been so obvious: I don’t breath or let anyone else breathe! The rhythmic emotional system is off. A lovely lady told me to breathe at the very beginning of the blog and it’s taken me three years to understand her! Thinking, feeling, moving or digesting is impossible without breathing! Too much emotionality and the boat sinks; no movement and everything stagnates, no love and the Earth stops giving birth!
That’s all for today! We need some fresh air before I start burning again!
A gentle breeze!
Clara E.
Oratory, from the Kings of Wales – Rhys and the Estedffod Crown and Throne…………
“Like some rambling Rembrandt,
Unbrushed and dispainted;
Characters of faces
Smash quietly into…..
Pure Vision…..
Pure Harmony…..
Pure Light in the
mastered darkness.
Co-mastered SOULS.”
Nigel Harris Price (12/05/2009)
Dynamo Womanly
Blitzted Unity
of self-presenting
Dignity of containing nourishment
the Motivating Power of the Universe.
Sex, yes! sex
Regenerative
Women powerful in knowing
Grove Love
of Earthbound
trying to contain
YES! trying…..
but willing to surrender.
Nigel Harris Price (12/05/2009)
(How did I get given the Awakened State
little e
It is patently obvious, is it not, goodnesses, that Daily Crap-a-lot is Haven the Horrible, riding across the vacant Steppes of Rush-Hour Formatoryness.
Game plan…..
Blogs were flying parallel…..wing woman CEH was watching acutely Top (Totally Organised Person) Gun Wing-Commander Price-Wallace…..
then built up a head of steam and administer the shock
“Let the river run, let all the Dreamers wake the nation” (Carly Simon)…..
then SWITCH obuscation over to truth, let it be known…..
“I’m your man” by George Michael and Wham
the singers beget “Song of the Answerer”
Lovely Elena…..
Sing your wierd, self-mastered anxiety into bliss state opera…..
“Let housewifery appear, I the command”
THE NIGE!?!?!
In my Father’s House, there are many of my Step-Mother’s memories.
LOVE RULES THE GROVE…..the Garden Square, the little middle ground between house and public that Nature that chaotically allows itself to be tattily ordered…..
David Chadwick, my public house landlord agreed…..
PUSH A MAN TO HIS LIMITS UNTIL THE MEMPHIS BELLE IS SHUDDERING IN CONTROLLED POWER IN THE UNDERAIRFLOW.
then love him to death for it
Primary New Year’s Resolution — the resolving factor of Rodney Collin strategically brought to the blogs…..
LEADER IN LINE BEHIND…..DEFILE THE TROOPS AND MARCH ON INTO ETRNITY!?!?! N.
I have prepared your way of apology that the Fellowship must give to your state…..
ASYLUM PASSAGES OF THE POETRY YOU REQUESTED COULD FOLLOW…..
may i with ‘courtesy and passion’ write a not-too-lengthy but boldy middle length body of work??????…..love…n.
11 July 2009
Chris Porteus
Crisis Resolution Team
The Cedars
Dryden Road
EXETER
Devon
“-Appreciating relaxation, silence, and rest, but also recognizing when vocalism and action and dissent are welcomed by the universe, and finding the answer to that question in our conscience — however difficult that is to define or describe.” (post from a blog-friend in California)
Dear Mr Porteus
I am writing this letter, prompted by the visit of Dr Tanya Nelson, the head of your department in the NHS Partnership. When I explained to her the ‘battle’ I had with (I have to stress) the male members of your team, which led to my having to be arrested by the police under Section 136 over a month ago, she apologised to me about the lack of coordination that they (the male members) displayed.
Perhaps I have to explain why it has taken so long to come to the point where I am able to write this letter. Someone with bi-polar affective disorder does not come out, automatically, from an ordeal such as I experienced through being hospitalized, in a stable state. In my case, I came out ‘low’ and seemed, for several weeks, to only feel self-blame and regret. Now, as I have achieved what I can only describe as ‘a little quivering above level’ state, the reasons behind how I acted and my attitude towards people during the unstable time are returning with regard to the following comment from someone (I know not who) once uttered to me:-
“It is the state of mankind that, very rarely, do we learn from the past.”
Some very lucky people (or maybe not lucky, but it may just be ‘the way they are’) are able to go through life, staying pretty much in the way they gained adulthood. The majority of us either progress, through applying ‘critical analysis and reflective practice’ (terms I garnered from my teacher training) and acting upon what we have, therefore, learnt or we deny the need to do this and slip backwards, as we approach death, into what Shakespeare described, in the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech:-
“Second childhood and mere oblivion.”
May I remind you, unless it has been conveniently overlooked, that I began contacting the Crisis Resolution team on the Thursday before the Monday of my arrest and sectioning and was maintaining said contact as I went through a positive, although perhaps financially draining Friday and Saturday. I was able to describe to the (thankfully, female) members of the team, who were answering the telephone at the time, what I was doing, and remember that I did not spend an inordinate amount of money on my activities and actually managed to go without alcohol from the Thursday onward, as I had promised those members of the team. I have learnt, from my numerous encounters with hypo-mania, that when it occurs, women become interested and helpful towards me and most men become confused and aggressive. I would say this is not just the members of the general public (although I have to say that the male proprietors of the Bishop Blaize Public House were helpful, as were Nicky, the landlady, and my new friend, Kate, who actually tried to help by getting an appointment with Dr Adrian Midgley on the Monday – which appointment did not materialise). I, myself, made a 999 ambulance call and was given the ‘not liable to be a danger to myself or others’ O.K. (I have the ‘chitty’ to confirm this) and was only arrested by the police, as the final resort, since I had no food or money or bus-pass to get to work (I would probably have been of little use to my students on the Monday, since I was so exasperated by the situation).
May I say, I have found you to be one of the most heavy-handed members of the Team, whenever you have had to deal with me, and have learnt to tell from your vocal intonations, when you want to ‘throw the book at me’ and get me sectioned. Alan and Pete Conridge are fine for ‘can we come and have a chat with you, Nigel?’ but, when action is necessary and a patient has seen the way to implement such action, going by more successful past experiences, the last thing that is useful is meeting followed by meeting.
For me, and the reason for this, perhaps, terse letter is that I have found expressing myself through the medium of the written word far better than imploding into a depressive and self-derogatorising state and having to rely on the further support of the (actually) helpful members of the mental health authorities. I have very supportive friends in the community and, after this ‘messy’ admission, which was quickly ‘sewn up’ by the fact that I was allowed to go to work at my studio, as a craft-metal teacher, I am far less likely to approach some of the members of the Crisis Resolution Team…..or is it the Mental Health DeRAILment Group (depending on which acronym is currently in use?).
Yours truly,
Nigel Harris Price BA Hons, Cert Ed, MIfL.
cc
Dr Tanya Nelson, Consultant Psychiatrist, Crisis Resolution Team
Robin Howell, CPN, Wonford House, Exeter
Dr Adrian Midgley, ISCA Medical Practice, Heavitree, Exeter
The Editor, Express and Echo Newspaper, Exeter
Chief of Police, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, Middlemoor, Exeter
nigel harris price absolute master of public embarrassment…..
Most loving Nigel,
Give me the heart to be an ear
to the length of your voice
And the sorrow of your heart
And a mouth to laugh
At the joyfulness of your cry
And arms to embrace you
All my life!
Give us the strength
To not force Mr. Porteus
And his team
To love us still
And forgive our selves
For demanding what we preach
The water we use to make waves
is made to clench our thirst
The fire we use to burn others with
Is made to share in the warmth
Let us stand our bodies
On this Earth
And breathe without fear
The bountiful air
Harness our fire
Let the rivers flow
Fly our freedom
And stand with our own.
Nige,
Daily Cardiac does not worry me.
As long as he continues to post he’s out!
He can continue to sing the song but he’s acting out what will heal him: participating freely in a community! One day he drops the song and starts singing another one completely opposed to the previous one without there being anything surprising about it! Just like me! He is trying to heal by participating but has to hold on to his creed until he is healed enough to get out. Words are like leaves that change with the season!
For him and us I found the following two days ago:
One aspect is Jahveism and by Jahveism I mean that which once led the Jewish people as the monotheistic godhead and which, with full justification in its time, implanted into the Jews the belief that they were the chosen people. This lives on today. It would however, be wrong to imagine that it is found only in the Jewish people because it lives in all people, but first and foremost in the German peoples who are still deeply attached to Jahveism and to a belief in being a chosen people. It is present in Americanism; it has flourished in France; it lives in Protestantism and in Catholicism. It lives wherever a belief is so fanatically convinced of its own mission that it tries to embrace the whole world; in other words it thrives where the monotheistic deity, having the character of a Father-God, works and tries to veil the being of Christ, the Son, and thereby also the being of the Holy Ghost.
(Note by Elena: it seems to me that Anthroposophy and Konig in particular, have chosen to use “Christ the Son” and such language to express what in the Fourth Way is used as “external consideration” or “seeing, acknowledging” the “self” in others. While Gurdjieff moved away from Christian terminology in the hope that people from any religion could understand the impulse, Steiner remained with the
concepts and renewed them but they are still hard to swallow if one has not jumped beyond one’s own programming in relation to such terminology.)
Along with Jahveism, centralism is one of the worst enemies of Spiritual Science.
(Elena: By spiritual science I understand everything human! By everything human I understand everything sacred; By everything sacred I understand the natural and the spiritual as polarities within the unity of man which give birth to culture: the endlessly creative source of reference from community to individual.)
Wherever centralization tries to spread, or where a small group wants to gain central control over greater contexts; where the responsibility to decide is taken from people, or where all things are forced to flow together towards a centre, be it a parish, an industrial concern or a state; in other words wherever centralization raises its head- and today it is in almost every society – the influence of spiritual science as a seed or working power is made impossible.
The third opposing power is nationalism. Nationalism has begun to thrive again in communities of men, be it whole people or states. Wherever nationalism appears it will work in cooperation with centralism and Javheism and these three are the powers which oppose spiritual science.
But these are not only faults in others, they are also to be found in every one of us. Man has centralist, nationalist and Jahveist tendencies and day after day we have to try to work against these tendencies within and around ourselves; to escape centralism, to dispense with Jahveism, to curse nationalism. The fact that hundreds of people have nationalist, centralist and Jahveist tendencies in spite of spiritual science does not show that we, or anyone of us, are better than the others, but it does show what lives in every human being as an opposing power to true spiritual cognition in our time. This can also be seen as the beast in us and in our time; for instance, as one of those beasts described in the Book of Revelation and in many other places. Wherever something is of itself convinced that it should have central, national, Jahveist power (and aren’t we all secretly convinced of this in many corners of our life?) we should know that there the enemy within is us.
Karl Konig: Man as Social Being Page 60.
Out for a swim to clench this fire! Have a sprinkling day!
Hola Clara Elena,
Yo estoy de vuelta en la misma casa donde vine a este mundo y donde también nació mi padre, fallecido meses atrás. Vivo con mi madre, ya mayor y enferma, y con mi amigo cuadrúpedo Kiel, un perro muy especial.
Te agradezco tu invitacion a visitarte. Sinceramente, me parece una idea muy tentadora. Pero, por ahora, no me parece algo cercano en el tiempo. Mi madre me necesita, y, para mí es una fuente de satisfacción poder darle mis cuidados. Demoslé tiempo al tiempo.
Mi Pueblo, Lliria, está situado en un fértil valle, en el medio Este de España, a unos 40 minutos (conduciendo) del mar Mediterráneo.
Estoy tratando de crear las condiciones necesarias para poder recibir a amigos, algo que me va a llevar tiempo. Tu siempre serás biénvenida.
En estos tiempos no vuelo a gran altura, pero me mantengo planeando durante buenos ratosy las caidas ya no son tan graves ni tan frecuentes.
Miguel
Sueña el rey que es rey, y vive
con este engaño mandando,
disponiendo y gobernando;
y este aplauso, que recibe
prestado, en el viento escribe,
y en cenizas le convierte
la muerte, ¡desdicha fuerte!
¿Que hay quien intente reinar,
viendo que ha de despertar
en el sueño de la muerte!
Sueña el rico en su riqueza,
que más cuidados le ofrece;
sueña el pobre que padece
su miseria y su pobreza;
sueña el que a medrar empieza,
sueña el que afana y pretende,
sueña el que agravia y ofende,
y en el mundo, en conclusión,
todos sueñan lo que son,
aunque ninguno lo entiende.
Yo sueño que estoy aquí
de estas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
Calderón de La Barca. (1600-1681)
The king dreams he is a king, and lives
in this deception commanding,
disposing of, reigning, ruling,
And the applause, thus on loan received
so gets in the wind written.
And in ashes Death
will turn him – great disgrace!
Who will dare so to govern
seeing himself come awake
to the sorry dream of Death?
The rich one dreams of his riches
which more care and comfort yields him;
the poor one dreams that he suffers
his sheer misery and poverty.
Dreams he who to live begins,
and he who toils and pretends,
and he who grieves and offends
and in the world, in conclusion,
they all thus what they are dream
although no one will so see it.
I dream that I am in here
with these chains and prisons burdened
yet I dreamt that I in other,
more fulsome state saw myself.
What is life? A frantic moment,
What is life? But an illusion,
but a shadow, but a fiction,
and the greatest good is small:
for life is all but a dream
and dreams are just that, they’re dreams.
Calderón de La Barca. (1600-1681)
you melt my heart to tears of joy and i no longer cry ‘cos it hurts and now to
PRIME OBJECTIVE
“And death shall have no dominion” Dylan Marlais Thomas
hey folks AND THE BODY TOO NOW THERE’S A POWERFUL IDEA!?!?!
I follow my “the Years between” the opus of acual mental health REAL HEALTH…..
WITH “aSYLUM pASSAGES”
and so let us start at the beginning, because woman always was, never not existed the pallid float of material who saw herself in the mirror of dark and went ooh1 what the fuck they’re coming the beautful nourishing outstanding dirty joke of sex/life.spark god to display and pain to awaken
the nowness of evertude…..
“A certain interpretive difference
Awaits the twice-born.
Whitman’s heaven and hell
Give way to the first’s glory.
Litter picking/placing and decoding
Delights self and humanity.
From former form absorbed, transposed
And Earth’s imperfection more than satisfies.
Nothing goes away;
Neither poverty, hardship nor necessity.
All hangs ,deliberately placed
By angels beyond the screen.
The sun’s crime overcome,
He returns from sweeping the universe
To its limit in crashing waves,
That tell of the new Eternity.”
(nhp) 1993
Miguel Querido,
Nuestras voces son como caminos del alma del mundo
Al mundo de cada uno
Y ensanchan el corazón
a fuerza de alegría
Me regocija tanto que te anime estar con nosotros
En este río de letras
En este oceano de amor
Nos visitaremos cuando el tiempo este maduro
pero nos seguiremos encontrando en esta distancia sin espacio
En la cual nos sabemos uno
Te abrazo con alegría,
Our voices are paths from the soul of the world
To the world of the soul
And expand the heart with the force of joy
It pleases me to know that you’re inspired to share with us
In this river of letters
In this Ocean of Love
We’ll visit each other when the time is ripe
But continue to greet in this distance without space
Where we know we are One!
I embrace you with joy!
Clara Elena
not to but in on your amoro dynamo but to bring multitudo espresso del mi to medio adobe…..nigeely neil…..
…..”LABRYNTHINE WAYS”…..
(A descriptive ‘journey’ through the Mental Health ‘maze’ in Exeter)
by Nigel Harris Price BA Hons, Cert Ed, MIfL.
In June 1989, when I lost my business in California, I was brought back to Devon, in a highly depressed state. My parents had difficulties in coming to terms with how I was acting because of how I was feeling – a sense of great failure as well as guilt at having lost so much of, mainly, other peoples’ money in my business venture. There were various phrases my father used, such as “You’re out of it now” and “Can’t you see – you’ve been given a second chance”, but, unfortunately, these ‘little, helpful, snippets’ were of no immediate use. All that seemed helpful was studying things, and I remember enrolling on, and completing a Pre-School Playgroup Leaders Course in Exmouth (which helped me in kindling a little desire to get, eventually, into the education field, as well as realising that, when I am unwell, the company of mainly women is so beneficial). My wonderful mother also gave me a book entitled “The Celts”, which gave me some insight into my ancestral past as a double-Celt (Price/Wallace).
3 and ½ years later, I thought I had found a ‘path out’ of my depression, when I was accepted on to the Post Graduate Certificate of Education Course at St Luke’s. The stimulus of new ideas and the chance of ‘doing something constructive, using my experience’ fuelled an ever-ascending ‘high’ and, although I gained an ‘A’ grade in my Teaching Practice, I was ‘struck off’ the course by the Educational Management. It has to be said that I found hypocrisy, misogyny and teachers ‘just doing their job’, rather than wanting to take an active role in the essential growth of their student charges. Fighting all these ‘wrongs’ led me to be sectioned in Wonford House for 4 months in the summer of 1992. I could hardly sit down to rest or eat for the first month and was very aggressive towards the Head Psychiatrist but found most of the nurses very congenial. It was really at this point that the diagnosis of manic-depression or, as it is now termed, bi-polar affective disorder, started to make sense to me.
There were numerous ‘false starts’ to either having another precious metal business, or trying to hold down stupid, petty unsocial jobs or even trying training courses such as are offered at St Loye’s Foundation, but nothing seemed to ‘stick’ and I would invariably find myself back in the ‘asylum’. However, in April of 1997, I spent 6 months at Bishopsland, near Reading – usually a place where precious metal graduates can do a year out before applying to the Royal College or for other Master’s Degree courses. There I was – 40 years old and working alongside 22 year olds (again, mostly women) and made some pieces which I was later able to sell in Polka Gallery in Martins Lane in Exeter. The set-up of the place was appealing and kindled the idea that maybe, someday, I could launch a place like that in Devon.
It was not until the summer of 2003 that the first steps towards become a professional in teaching precious metalwork were embarked upon. I had written (on-spec) to various of the further-education colleges and, suddenly, out-of-the-blue, a wonderful man named Mike Higgins invited me along to East Devon College, to show my work and to discuss the possibility of training and teaching (in parallel), the aim being a Certificate of Post Compulsory Education in my chosen field of expertise. Despite having a few mental health blips, the 3 year/part-time course was completed and I stayed with EDC and then also being employed as an evening-class teacher at Exeter College.
Age 50 saw me able to surrender my stakeholder pension and to start my own business as a precious metal teacher at Redearth Studios in Bickleigh, near Tiverton. Steve Paramor, the owner of the complex and my students, all know about my mental health difficulties and are most supportive (especially in the two times that I have had to be hospitalised). The location of the workshop is so tranquil and peacemaking – I am thankful for the reverse commute to work – out of the city and into the country. I am reminded of lines from the movie ‘Field of Dreams’, starring Kevin Costner –
“Is there a Heaven?”
“Oh yeah. It’s the place dreams come true.”
I think, if I were to champion any cause now, in my warrior-blood mode, it would be that of people not having their dreams, their aspirations and their constructive goals trashed. Patrick Phelvin asked me a question the other day:-
“Do you believe you are creative because you have bi-polar, or are you bi-polar because you are creative?”
I can only answer that it is only in the giving to others of our talents that we can be truly happy:-
“There was a man; they called him mad:
The more he gave, the more he had.”
total joy and blitz and stucca/….
“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) 1996
elena here is women resolution…..
October 2009
Dr Natasha Garland
Locum Consultant Psychiatrist
Recovery and Independent Living
Wonford House Hospital
Dryden Road
Wonford
Exeter
Devon
EX2 5AF
Dear Dr Garland
My family and I were very impressed with the meeting you led at Wonford House last Wednesday. Although former psychiatrists have been informative and have shown a technical approach to my medication regime, I was pleased that you showed an empathetic approach to my thoughts and feelings and my wish to not have my ‘inner life’ controlled by synthetic drugs, which, as you pointed out, have slight to great side-effects.
I suppose this letter has been prompted by both the story of Stephen Fry, who states that he does not take medication and by a blog-friend of mine who also does not take medication but is very willing to work with her ‘daemons’, even though she may ‘rant and vent’ on the site. I have even considered having homeopathic counselling/treatment, but that is expensive from the ‘word go’.
Thank you for expressing your desire to read The Saga of Nigel (all 5 volumes!) and I hope you will arrange a meeting for us all in the near future.
Yours sincerely
Nigel Harris Price BA Hons, Cert Ed, MIfL.
01392 462103
07973222346
nhprice@gmail.com
“I wish I could teach you pencils;
Why a broken lead through broken times,
Indicates a feeble essence:
Something to do with diamond theory.
Pressure and fire are the test of reality
Proving that pressure and fire are the making of a human being.”
(nhp) 1995
…..from Exeter High Street Pyramidial Sculpture…..
“On earth there’s a warrior of curious origin. He’s created, gleaming, by two dumb creatures for the benefit of men. Foe bears him against foe to inflict harm. Women often fetter him, strong as he is. If maidens and men care for him with due consideration and feed him frequently, he’ll faithfully obey them and serve them well. Men succour him for the warmth he offers in return; but this warrior will savage anyone who permits him to become too proud”
Remembrance Revival
Eric Nightingale is written in the New Tree of Life…..
Fuck he wrote for me chess
ABBA OUR FATHER Ulvaeus/Andersson (ap) rice.
Opening “Thanksgiving” as it came to me,
Less scrap-shattered than when I had to toss it
Dusty behind ‘Enya’ and the ‘Celtic Hearts’:
Tapes and ear energy which only
Seemed to keep Leviathan rhythm
As the curved dark gave way
To sparkle-soft Joy again;
Reverberating cries of nights dream-punched
And 4 am route marches,
Because the body will not give
Up cracking mindful images.
Word-juggling was my forte
Until Michael stood to my right;
And the Belfast lady, (I heard five words
Enough to spot the love-steely face) on my left:
And there was warfare down.
Marines I knew and cadets,
Fidgeting impatience to the service-end;
And yet we all stood battle-thrown:-
“They grow not old as we who remain grow old”.
God of the human dismal sparkled redawn,
Come to us in this time of choked-
Possible remembrance and dignity;
Straining ourselves out of shambles,
Grinning out of bed-stuffed darkness.
(nhp)
I hear you Nigel,
I hear you with gratitude!
Grow!
Grow as long as you want
As high as you wish!
Time and space
are an illusion
Time and space
are a reality:
we’ve all the time
and all the space
and when we’ve no more
time or space
we’ll still be in the other side
for each other!!
You’ve endured hell
and made hell
trying to remind people
how to love
Fire is good
fire heals the Earth
but we’ve burnt enough!
It’s time to go swimming!!
We can send a letter to Dr. Garland and Mr. Porteus
thanking them for their tolerance and letting them know
that if they put up an office in the Public Square and listen to people, just listen to people, without even pretending to cure them of anything, they won’t have to spend half the money they spend putting us away!
We must inform as many old people as we can that there is a particular microphone in this Public Square in which they can talk all they want. That we want to hear them before they die. That we do not wish them to die without telling us about their lives. That we want to know about their children and their childhood and all the mistakes everyone made including themselves and that they cried their eyes out in the darkness and made peace at some point with their lives.
Thank you for sharing your story with me.
MIDDLE EAST MADNESS
by Paul Levy
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/middle%20east%20madness.html
The other night I was watching Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the U. N. being interviewed on t. v. by Charlie Rose. Gillerman was incredibly articulate, and very brilliant. He spoke with the utmost authority and confidence. Here was someone who seemed truly empowered, I thought. Flawless in his logic, it seemed like no one had a chance to win the slightest point in any argument with him. And then, something revealing happened. At one point, Rose asked him whether Israel preferred a military or a political victory. The ambassador answered, “We prefer a MILITARY victory over a military victory.’ Rose immediately corrected him, saying he meant that Israel preferred a POLITICAL victory over a military victory. Gillerman responded by saying “yes, a political victory over a military victory,” as if that’s exactly what he had said. He had no idea that he had mis-spoken, and that his Freudian slip may have unwittingly revealed a deeper process that was playing out through his, and by extension, Israel’s unconscious.
A Freudian slip is the voice of the unconscious. In his slip of the tongue, Gillerman unknowingly may have revealed what is going on inside the unconscious, whose intentions are the polar opposite of what he imagines or represents them to be (both to himself and to the world) at that moment. In his Freudian slip, Gillerman may have been unwittingly revealing what he was unconsciously dissociated from and hiding from himself, and hence, unconsciously enacting in the world. When we are not in conscious relationship with a part of ourselves, we are doomed to unconsciously give shape and form to it by acting it out in the world.
Once I began contemplating the ambassador’s Freudian slip, I wondered what it could have been revealing about his (and Israel’s) unconscious. If that was the voice of the unconscious, it is expressing the shadow, the darker part, of what Israel is playing out on the global stage. If it was a genuine Freudian slip, Gillerman is unknowingly revealing that Israel prefers a victory by force over anything negotiated via diplomacy. It is as if this voice that wanted a military victory was thirsting to assert its power and domination over its enemies. It goes without saying that this is the absolute polar opposite of the representatives of peace that Gillerman and Israel like to think of themselves as being. This unconscious dark side that the Israeli ambassador is revealing is none other than the underlying, un-integrated collective shadow of his nation which is being brutally acted out on the world stage.
Gillerman’s Freudian slip seems to be revealing an urge on the part of Israel for revenge, an impulse to want to punish their adversaries. Wanting to destroy the “other,” Israel is unconsciously acting out the part of itself that has been abused. Israel’s knee-jerk, vengeful reaction is coming out of a deep hurt, a deep wound. Israel’s unconscious reaction to want to hurt and destroy the other is an expression of the part of it that has been traumatized by its enemies attempting to destroy it. And yet, Israel’s desire for revenge is what transforms it from being the victim of terror to itself becoming the terrorist.
The ambassador’s Freudian slip may be revealing that Israel, under the guise of being the victim, is actually playing the role of the victimizer disguised as the victim. By acting out of its wound and unconsciously acting out its trauma, Israel is actually doing the very thing it is accusing its enemies of doing. Accusing its enemies of perpetrating violence, Israel is perpetrating violence, thereby pouring fuel on the endless cycle of violence. Does Israel really think that enacting violence is going to make it safer? Doesn’t Israel realize that perpetrating violence is just going to inspire and create more enemies than it will destroy? Of course, I can’t help but notice the similarity between Israel’s (ultimately self-defeating) attitude and that of my own country, the United States.
Israel’s argument that Hezbollah or Hamas “started” the violence, though seemingly accurate on a superficial level of reality, is profoundly untrue. Israel and its enemies “reciprocally co-arise” together, which is to say that we can’t pinpoint in linear time where the violence actually started. Hezbollah or Hamas didn’t react out of a void, but could just as easily point to a previous violence that Israel had perpetrated onto them that they were just reacting to. Israel and its enemies are both unconsciously acting out a deeper process that is beginingless in time (atemporal) and acausal, which is to say that it is a conflict which cannot be traced back to a “first cause,” as no one “started it.”
Although there are deep, historical roots to this conflict, no matter who is to blame for what has been done in the past, the fact is the only place we have the power to make a genuine difference is in the present moment. Thus, the present situation is the place wherein effective action can be taken to resolve this crisis. From the point of view of the present moment, no one “started” the conflict. Either side, at any moment, can step out of the vicious cycle which is nothing other than an infinite regression and simply refuse to continue to feed the endless, self-reinforcing cycle of violence. Either side of the conflict can simply refuse to participate in perpetuating the cycle of reactive and retributive violence and the self-perpetuating cycle will be broken. This is the deeper meaning of Christ’s urging to “turn the other cheek.” This is the underlying meaning of both Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King’s teachings on non-violence. Only by not striking back can we become agents of peace.
There is an incredible “edge” or resistance around criticizing Israel, as many people will immediately accuse me of being anti-Semitic. Being of Jewish heritage myself, it breaks my heart to see the abuse that Israel is unconsciously acting out against its neighbors. It is as if the Jewish people have not learned the deeper lesson of the very Holocaust that almost destroyed us, which is that to project the shadow outside of ourselves is to become the very evil that we are trying to destroy in the outside world (Please see my article Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War, available on my website http://www.awakeninthedream.com). And yet, for anyone to criticize what the nation of Israel is doing is to not only NOT be anti-Semitic, but is to be a true representative of what the Jewish people ultimately are supposed to stand for, which is peace. This situation is analogous to when a family member in a position of power abuses their power, the other family members are enabling and complicit in the abuse if they remain silent (such as, in this case, other Jews who blindly support whatever Israel does, as well as the United States, who is giving tacit approval of Israel’s violent actions by its silence). The family member who speaks up and sheds light on the abuse, though at first quite unpopular and unwelcome, is the one who is the truly loving “patriot” of the family system.
Of course, Israel’s enemies are doing to Israel exactly the same thing that I am pointing out that Israel is doing to them. Both Israel and its enemies are mutually projecting their own shadow onto and blaming each other, which creates a dark, but very intimate connection between them. Each party couldn’t project the shadow onto the other without its adversary’s secret collaboration in playing out and embodying the very shadow being projected. The violence that is happening between these two polarized agencies couldn’t happen without their unwitting, mutual co-operation. Israel and its enemies don’t exist in isolation from each other, but in co-relation with each other. A deeper process is revealing itself through their interplay.
Israel and its adversaries are both mirroring back what the other is doing. They are enacting their trauma onto each other, and are simultaneously playing both roles of terrorized-victim/terrorist-victimizer. Though the American mainstream media is propagandizing the conflict as being between Israel and the “terrorists” (similar to how they frame the Global War on Terror as being between the United States and the “terrorists”), the question arises “Who is the real terrorist? (The answer goes something like this: the terrorist is just a role in the field that is being played at different moments by all participants in the conflict).
Like a kitten looking in a mirror, Israel and its enemies are reacting to their mirrored reflection, thinking it is separate from themselves. They don’t recognize that they themselves are generating and calling forth the very behavior that they are reacting to. Reacting to their own reflection, they are compulsively acting out a collective form of the repetition compulsion, which is to be feeding into and off of each other’s madness.
In my book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis (available on my website, http://www.awakeninthedream.com), I name this psychic epidemic “malignant egophrenia,” or ME disease for short. Falling prey to this psychic epidemic, we truly suffer from a case of mistaken identity, an erroneous sense of ME, of who we imagine we are. The essence of ME disease is a deep dissociative split in which we project out our own darker half outside of ourselves, becoming entranced in thinking that our own evil exists outside of ourselves. We then try to destroy our darker half as we meet it in the outside world, which is to act out and become possessed by the very darkness we are trying to destroy. The figure of George Bush embodies and is therefore a living symbol of this disease. Not being separate from ourselves, Bush is merely an embodied reflection of the mad part of all of us that dissociates from and projects out our own shadow, and then tries to destroy the reflection of our own darkness as it shows up in the outside world.
The “inner name” of ME disease is “Mad Emperor” disease, as it is what happens when an individual such as Bush, or a nation such as Israel, is in a position of power and abuses its power over others simply because it can. Those who have fallen prey to ME disease identify with an illusory “separate self” (be it on the personal, or national scale) which is fear-ridden, while simultaneously generating fear in others by traumatizing anyone within its dominion. Instead of being in relationship to others and the environment, people (or nations) taken over by ME disease want to dictate, subjugate, dominate, and have power over others. They are tantrum-throwing bullies, who live by the rule of “might makes right.” I immediately associate to the archetypal and mythic figure of the negative father (Cronos/Saturn), who abuses his power over others simply because he can, a morally indefensible act.
ME disease is a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that non-locally pervades and is holographically enfolded throughout the entire field of consciousness. This is to say that ME disease exists, in unmanifest potential, deep within the collective unconscious of all humanity. ME disease in-forms and gives shape to the greater body politic of the world, and it is noteworthy that the Middle East is currently having an acute outbreak of ME disease. ME disease could just as easily stand for “Middle East disease,” as this is where the disease is currently having a localized inflammation and is thereby, in fully condensed and essentialized form, where this deeper, underlying non-local field disease is becoming visible in 3-D space and time for all who have eyes to see. This is to say that ME disease, an illness that exists deep within the entire unified field, is embodying, incarnating and revealing itself in, through and as events in the Middle East. We are simply asked to recognize what is being revealed to us.
The ME epidemic that is playing out in the Middle East is a reflection of a deeper process going on within the collective unconscious of humanity, and is hence revealing something to us very important about ourselves. In the crisis in the Middle East there is an extremely valuable lesson for all of humanity hidden (veiled), while simultaneously being revealed for all who have eyes to see. Israel and its enemies are engaged in a ritualized dance of mutual shadow projection in which they are both doing the exact thing they are accusing the other of doing. Terrorized by the other, each side terrorizes in return. They are both looking in a mirror (whose inner meaning, etymologically speaking, is “holder of the shadow”), and trying to destroy their own shadow, which is not only a battle that can never be won, but is a form of insanity. Seen as a dreaming process, we have dreamed them up to objectify and show us these mad parts of ourselves. Israel and its adversaries are embodied reflections of the part of ourselves that unconsciously enacts this same insane behavior, both within ourselves and outside in the world.
Just like George Bush and the terrorists, Israel and its adversaries are acting out a form of collective madness in full-bodied form on the world stage. This is to say that a madness that exists deep inside the psyche of all humanity is being symbolically re-presented and played out in the Middle East. Something is being revealed to us about ourselves through this outer display of collective madness in the Middle East.
The only genuine and lasting solution which will create true peace is for enough of us to realize what is being revealed by what I am calling ME disease as it unconsciously is being endlessly re-enacted in the Middle East. Acting out the unconscious on the world stage, we are a species possessed by a more powerful energy. Like Israel, we are a species in trauma, enacting our trauma as we traumatize others while simultaneously re-traumatizing ourselves in a diabolical self-reinforcing feedback loop with no exit strategy. We are a species gone mad, and yet, in unconsciously acting out our madness, something very important is being revealed to us. Events in the Middle East are both the literal as well as symbolic crystallization of this process. A deeper, mythic process that is taking place in the soul of humanity is playing itself out, both literally and symbolically, in extreme and exaggerated form in the Middle East. Encoded in these events are the key to its resolution.
Once we realize we are reacting to our own mirrored reflection, our relationship to our reflection, both within ourselves and as it appears in embodied form in the outside world, changes. Instead of trying to kill our reflected shadow, we recognize and embrace it as part of ourselves. Re-collecting our projected and split-off parts, we “re-member” ourselves (coming back to our “right mind”), which becomes instantaneously reflected in the outside world, as we remember who we are to each other. Instead of projecting our shadow outside of ourselves (which is to dis-associate and dis-member from a part of ourselves), we recognize, own and take responsibility for our own darkness. Integrating our shadow into the full-spectrum of our being literally “fleshes us out,” as we become more spiritually substantial, embracing the light and dark parts of ourselves, which is what genuine incarnation is all about. Waking up to who WE are allows us to open up to including “others” as being inter-related, inter-connected, and inter-dependent parts of ourselves. We step out of a world in which we are alien, and recognize we are co-related with each other as well as the universe at-large, which is to say we are not separable from the universe as a whole. Stepping out of the illusory “separate self,” we heal our mistaken sense of ME (which is the cure for ME disease), as we simply recognize what has always been the case, which is that we are truly one.
Sounds familiar!….?
After posting on the Middle East Crisis I was looking back at posts and the question came: We keep addressing the madness in war but are not addressing the madness in peace. In other words, we can judge each other for madness and violence but is passive acceptance any less mad than violent rejection?
At what point and how are we willing to stop crime once it is recognized?
Those who enjoy the status quo pinpoint at those who are violent so that the status quo is not changed but to stop the violence, not only violence has to stop, the status quo also has to change.
If we look at the Fellowship, failing to act legally against its crimes will not stop its crimes and those who neglect to act legally against it simply become accomplices of the crimes. They know they are happening but they are willing to accept it and let it be.
It’s the same in Israel: the problem is not only that they are projecting each other’s shadow, the problem is there are specific problems related to money, power, property and rights that need to be addressed. War comes for very specific reasons related to how RIGHTS are distributed world wide. Those who stand on the side of Jahveism, centralism and nationalism feel they have RIGHTS that have to be respected and have no problem in exerting violence. The real problem today is that the violence the establishment exerts is not recognized as violence because they are in power and have the military, which is wrongly recognized as legitimate force but there is nothing legitimate about it. It was the same in the Fellowship. Everything Robert and Girard do to manipulate people’s lives is “absolute passive violence”, passive but equally violent; they do not dominate with guns and wires but the control they impose taking advantage of people’s longing to belong to a “conscious school”, is absolutely violent.
It is the same in families. Whoever has the authority, the power, submits the others. Children submit or they get thrown out of the nucleus. The same in Schools, Universities, Clubs, factories and every other institution. As long as we assume that we have the right to throw anyone out of no matter where, there’ll be violence. Active violence in these cases, is simply a response to passive violence: you either submit or you leave.
Most people today belong to families with such structures. We were taught since early childhood that if we don’t submit we are punished. Those who submit perpetuate the System of Submission.
FREEEEEEEEDOM! No submission……… ever!
In every sphere those who have submitted are trying to make those unwilling to submit to submit to the status quo that says, “some work for others”. What is so pathetically drastic about cults is that they’ve made a religion of that order!
Every institution that holds a Jahveistic, centralist, nationalistic structure holds that hierarchic order in which there are superior authorities and inferior members. People have become identified with their knowledge and even knowledge has become a source of inhumanity and injustice: even the intellectuals think they are superior to the rest of the population and don’t allow those who haven’t paid millions to “educate” themselves in universities to participate, becoming as ridiculously inhuman as those who submitted people because they had the economic power.
The status quo has to change: equal distribution of RIGHTS on participation in every level will not allow differences in positions of power and therefore a hierarchic centralist System to develop. The more “conscious” people in society will look to develop organizations in which equality of rights actualize the “human” ideal in practice. People will stop working for those who do not hold to such equality of rights. The hierarchic System will collapse as we develop the understanding that we are ONE, one people, one human being: the different nations and classes, races and levels of education are multitudinous aspects of the richness of our own self. Each nation, each class, each race and each area of knowledge has given us insight into who and how magnificent we are as a whole.
Our differences call for celebration, not separation. We are to delight in what the essence of each of our differences has brought to our wholesomeness. To delight in protecting each other so that we can each continue to develop our particular essence in due process. It is a beautiful world, a beautiful life and a beautiful people. We just need to recognize where the beauty is and respect it lawfully.
“Time and space
are an illusion
Time and space
are a reality:
we’ve all the time
and all the space
and when we’ve no more
time or space
we’ll still be in the other side
for each other!!”
Even such concepts as “Time” and “Space” are manipulated by those in power to avoid giving time and space to others. “TIME IS MONEY”
has been the commandment of modern life but it is time to change it for TIME IS LOVE and
SPACE IS US IN TIME!
Frying the Cook!
They said they’d gone home
No more, no more
The show was too long
They said they had a life
t’was time to go, no more
Farewell, so long
No more, no more
Mangoes, papayas
Avocadoes and love
Fish, meat and poultry
Rice, barley and salt
pastries and trufffles
pudding and song
couldn’t taste anything
t’was time to go forth!
Too sweet, too sour
too salty and rich,
too plain
too much
too strong!
It wasn’t the food,
What they wanted to cook
What they wanted to cook
Was the cook!
Once she got cooked
They were ready to boot
Cook-coo cook-coo
Went the cook!
Cook-coo, Cook-coo
At last, at last
At last I’m cooked
let’s feast, let’s dine
Cook-coo, Cook-coo!
Only two ate
The rest
left
Farewell, so long
Have a merry trip home!
With love, with love
Double and all!
Gratitude
She’d found her in the gutter
Dark, bloody and brutalized
She’d picked her like a butterfly
And sang her every night
She’d fed her like a baby
She’d cured her every wound
She’d mothered like an Angel
But she never knew
She’d healed
She’d breathe her every whisper
She’d warmth her very heart
She’d watered like a fountain
But she never knew
She’d healed
She’d touched her dreams
She’d felt her being
She’d healed her heel
But she never knew
She’d healed
She never knew
She cured
She never could take
gratitude!
If She’d been a Rainbow
If she’d been white
They’d let her shine
If she’d been green
They’d let her be
If she’d been black
They’d let her luck
But she was brown
And they frowned
If she’d been blue
They’d have gloooed
If she’d been yellow
They’d had mellowed
But she was dark
And they run
If she’d been orange
They’d asked for pear
If she’d been pink
They’d asked for red
If she’d been the rainbow
They would have turned
The bow and rained
the colors away
Too Much Love
Why are you being loving again?
How can I trust you now?
When will you go away?
Too much love
Is too difficult to take
When the heart has shrunk
To pee size and steak
If you could just sit
No need for a kiss
If you could just be
And allow me to be
never leave and
I’ll heal
If you could just take
These words and receive
We would at last be
A community within
I give you my fingers
You take my fist
I give you my eyes
You take my frown
I give you my heart
You run
´cos I’m sick
You decree
Never Submit
If she’d been English
She’d been a poet
If she’d been American
She’d been a leader
If she’d been German
She’d been a philosopher
Had she been French
She’d been a revolutionary
But since She is Colombian
She’s a lunatic
Can’t even make it
To human!
We grow deaf and dumb
Without knowing why
But the distance is far beyond
what we understand
I come to your feet and kneel
At your might
Not submit, never submit
But admit
you are bright
I come to your side
And stand upright
Not submit, never submit
But admit
you are bright
I come to your heart
With my heart
Not submit, never submit
But admit
you are bright
I come to your eyes
With my eyes
I bring my breath
To your breath
My vitality
To your life
And kiss the ground
On which we stand
I honour your language
I speak your tongue
I kneel and believe
In our love
And Stand
Alone no matter
How long
I come not
For the crumbs
Have no need for the pennies
I come for Life
As One
‘Tis not the head or the arms
the legs that run
It isn’t the guts
But the heart
What Unites
I kneel before you
I beg you yield
I clean your feet
But never submit for
I am
As we Are
One
Once upon a time
only a few years ago
I fell in love with Colombian beauty
Raven-dark and bright
Effortless
A living pirouette
In the poetry of life
Now I look back at that man
Who fell in love
And shake my finger
How silly
How funny
How similar
To the man
I’ve now become
Tigers Crouching!
There’s a difference in size
From life to life
The same blood perhaps
But the flesh is quite far!
No fool is a fool
For love’s folly
´Tis love and love only
what evolutes!
T(s)=Y(s)
Like the circle
to the vectors
evolute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolute
in an endless joyful
growth
from life
to love!
From love
to life!
be sure to watch
more beautiful
to match!
The Butterfly’s Smile!
Should
I land
Like
A
Butterfly
Will the colour
Of your heart
Shine
Ever more bright?
Ein Gedicht für Kinder
State and Religion
Unfortunately to support abuse:
“PERA” Bill: Congressional moves to limit
separation of church and state lawsuits
http://www.religioustolerance.org/scslimit.htm
The free exercise clause of the First Amendment:
The following phrase “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof… is called the free exercise clause; it guarantees freedom of religion. This passage does not promise absolute freedom of religion. For example, courts have found that:
Parents cannot deny their children badly needed medical attention and rely solely on prayer.
The Amish can be compelled to wear slow vehicle reflectors on the backs of their buggies
A congregation cannot generate annoyingly excessive noise during a service.
The limits of this clause are continually being tested in the courts on a case-by-case basis.
Extension of the First Amendment to the individual states:
Initially, this amendment restricted only the powers of Congress regarding religion. However, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, proposed by Congress on 1866-JUN-16, required individual states to also follow the Bill of Rights. The 14th Amendment states that:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
The 14th Amendment was proclaimed adopted on 1868-JUL-21. Since that date, the First Amendment, and other amendments guaranteeing rights to citizens, apply equally to all levels of government. 13
Recent developments:
In 1988, 200 Americans of many religious backgrounds signed the Williamsburg Charter reaffirming their belief in the importance of the First Amendment.
In 1995, President Clinton delivered a speech on religious freedom which described the benefits derived from that amendment.
In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which gave special religious privileges to individuals and groups and limited the application of laws that intruded on personal or corporate religion. It was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1997-JUN. As the former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said: “‘No law’ [regarding the establishment of religion] means ‘NO LAW.'” The wall of separation was again restored.
Today, only the states of Texas and one of the Carolinas have constitutions requiring a religious test for holders of public office. And although these laws are still on the books, they have been nullified by Federal legislation.
Many, perhaps most, countries around the world do not have a wall of separation between church and state. The result is often enormous abuses, largely directed against their own citizens who follow minority religions. We have listed a small sampling of such abuses.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/scs_intr.htm
This law basically said — I won’t use the legalese — the bottom line was that if the government is going to restrict anybody’s legitimate exercise of religion they have to have an extraordinarily good reason and no other way to achieve their compelling objective other than to do this. You have to bend over backwards to avoid getting in the way of people’s legitimate exercise of their religious convictions. That’s what that law said.
Bill Clinton
With the Religious Freedom Restoration Act we made it possible, clearly, in areas that were previously ambiguous for Native Americans, for American Jews, for Muslims to practice the full range of their religious practices when they might have otherwise come in contact with some governmental regulation.
Bill Clinton
President Clinton gave a speech on 1995-JUL-12 on Religious Liberty in America to a group of students at James Madison High School in Vienna, VA. The text appears below with the preamble deleted.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clinton1.htm
I just found this post from Dragon on the dashboard and I guess it was stopped because of the links. It seems to apply equally today and I’d like to respond to it. If this happens again I would much appreciate your insisting and letting me know that something got lost.
Dragon:
Click to access p2-5_AR78.pdf
Click to access p2-5_AR78.pdf
http://www.ncahf.org/articles/a-b/anthro.html
Elena,
links for you. Let me be heretical. Are you doing research about fallible human beings like the Peruvian oncologist. Why did you spent so much time there. Why didn’t you stand up from this humiliation and went out of the conference room?
Why did you waste your lifetime although you recognized the play?
Ideas and thoughts are born into this world and human beings use, misuse, ignore, play with it, develop it….
You may hike from somewhere to whatever you like, but what are you really searching for?
The power to focus on writing or singing, cooking…. ?
Why are you going around and around?
“I think I’ll try going to scientology next week! It’s in the details where we’ll understand how exactly it works.”
Elena, it is always the same, you may visit other more or less “dogmatic” circles but what is the essence for you?
Think it over, please.
Dragon,
links for you. Let me be heretical. Are you doing research about fallible human beings like the Peruvian oncologist. Why did you spent so much time there. Why didn’t you stand up from this humiliation and went out of the conference room?
Why did you waste your lifetime although you recognized the play?
Elena: Because I’m still naive enough to listen to people but when I walked out of that room the doctor had to inject me with antidepressant. As I look now, it is very important to be in those places and watch what they are doing and how because the more I look the more obvious the mechanisms they use are.
Dragon: Ideas and thoughts are born into this world and human beings use, misuse, ignore, play with it, develop it….
You may hike from somewhere to whatever you like, but what are you really searching for?
Elena: the more I work the more I understand and connect not only to the Fellowship Cult but to Western Culture. It is a beautiful journey!
I’m trying to close this page but don’t know how, I’ve put up a new page in this address
when I can unite them the way it’s done in other blogs I’ll do so but for the time being please don’t post anything else here