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/
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?
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.
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.
8. Philip - October 4, 2009 [Edit]test
9. Elena - October 5, 2009 [Edit]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.
10. Elena - October 5, 2009 [Edit]This post by Ellen and Whalerider is very good.
248. Ellen – October 5, 2009
Whale Rider, #216
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.
11. Elena - October 5, 2009 [Edit]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.
12. Elena - October 5, 2009 [Edit]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
Their gratitude gave birth to the air we breathe. It is a form of light
And water mother?
Truth is water.
Truth is water.
And Earth?
Earth gives birth like mothers do: it is love.
Earth gives birth like mothers do: it is love.
And fire?
Life is fire.
Life is fire.
And death?
Death my love, is the falling of flowers
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!
Man is your father and he’s about to arrive, let’s go and get dinner ready!
13. Elena - October 6, 2009 [Edit]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.
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?
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.
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