The Separation between State and Religion

In time we will realize that Democracy is the entitlement of individuals to every right that was in its times alloted to kings. The right to speak and decide, to be treated with decency, to serve and be served by people in a State of “love” that is, to serve with one’s work for the development of ‘life’. To belong to the Kingdom of Human Beings without racial, national, social or academic separations. To love and be loved. To die at the service of the whole and be honored in one’s death, for one’s life and work was legitimately valued. To be graceful and grateful. To have the pride and the humility of being One with the Universe, One with every realm of Existence, One with every living and deceased soul. To treat with dignity and be treated with dignity for One is dignified together with All others and Life itself. To walk the path of compassion, not in the sorrow of guilt but in the pride of being. To take responsability for one’s mistakes and sufferings and stand up again and again like a hero and a heroine and face the struggle that is put at one’s feet and in one’s hands. Millions of people, millions and millions of people might take many generations to realize the consciousness of our humaneness but there is no other dignified path for the human being.

The “work” as I conceive it is psychological and political. Psychology is the connection between the different dimensions within one’s self and Politics is the actualization of that consciousness in our practical lives. Religion is the ceremony that binds the connectedness between the individual and the Universe. The separation between religion, politics and science, the arts and sports is, in the sphere of the social, the reflection of the schizophrenia within the individual and the masses. The dialogue between individuality and the "human" belongs to consciousness. The tendency to develop cults resides in the shortcomings we’are finding in life as it is structured today. “Life” has become the private property of a few priviledged who cannot profit from it because as soon as it is appropriated it stops to be “life” or “life-giving”.

We are all the victims of our own invention and each one is called upon to find solutions. The only problem is believing our selves incapable of finding them. We are now free to use all Systems of knowledge objectively, sharing them without imposing our will on each other. To become objective about our lives means to understand that the institutions that govern its experience are critically important. That we are one with the governments, one with the religious activities that mark its pace, that the arena’s in which we move our bodies and the laboratories in which we explore our possibilities are ALL part and parcel of our own personal responsibility. That WE ARE ONE WITH EACH OTHER AND EVERYTHING AROUND US and acknowledge for ourselves a bond of love in conscious responsibility. That we human beings know ourselves part of each other and are willing and able to act on our behalf for the benefit of each and every individual. That we no longer allow governments, industries, universities or any other institution to run along unchecked by the objective principles of humaneness. That we do not allow gurus to abuse their power or governors to steal the taxes and use them to their personal advantage in detriment of the whole. That we do not allow abuse from anyone anywhere because life is too beautiful to do so and that we are willing to stop the rampant crime with the necessary compassion Conscious knowledge is every individual's right. Conscious action is every individual's duty.

Blog Archive

Sunday 11 April 2010

Complete analysis of discussion-Ton & Elena

The following is a detailed study of the blog discussion that led to my second banning. I will write my “aftermath” entries with a

**************Elena:
and make the comment


38. ton - April 6, 2010
32 Elena
“….the greatest challenge Humanists would face, is not to allow Humanism to become a doctrine.”
if it has “ism” or “ist” as a suffix,
it ALREADY IS “a doctrine.”
i’m reminded of this:
“In a way ideologies are drug fixes, because they fix some certain kind of mental disequilibrium. You just give yourself a shot of Marxism or Hegelian idealism and say, ‘Oh, that makes the pain go away!’ ” terrence mckenna

***********Elena:

Here is where the difficulties began. There is no looking at the idea of humanism or the ideas I presented, just a swipe away with everything because it is a doctrine or an ideology forgetting that whatever is stating that also comes from a doctrine and an ideology. The tone is already very aggressive although I have not expressed any aggression myself and simply presented the ideas.

I should have retrieved right there and realized that the conversation was not on a healthy platform





33 Thot — John Horgan (Rational Mysticism)
39. Elena - April 6, 2010
Hi Ton,
Would you say that reductionism is quite an obstacle too?


***********Elena:
Here my tone is now defensive. But I try to calm down and make it up in the next post with a song and then taking the criticism and offering another point of view



40. Elena - April 6, 2010
For you with love!

41. Elena - April 6, 2010
Actually Ton, the observation is very valuable, the problem is hardly ever in the doctrine but in the way it is lived out. We are after all, still trying to be human!
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty that makes human nature rise above itself in acts of bravery and heroism” Alexander Hamilton
42. nige - April 6, 2010
Hey Elena
Why are some of your posts coming up as ‘Adober Readable Only’?…..Nigel
43. Thot Plickens - April 6, 2010
True, humanism is a doctrine. Not to get too involved with translating here, but I think what Elena is suggesting is that one (a.k.a., Juan) can transform humanism into something that’s more than a doctrine.
[I'm not sure that's exactly what she's saying, though.]
But by becoming an actual humanist — not someone who studies it in books or professes to be one — you transcend the doctrine or the idealogy. You become the words.
Doctrines and ideologies are maybe a formalized or structured set of ideas — a set of organized thoughts. That’s good, but if they don’t go beyond that, and if we don’t think about them critically occasionally, maybe the drug analogy is perfect… We not only use them as a drug fix (as TMcK said), but we become addicted to them. And worse yet, the doctrine morphs into something the opposite of what we believed it was right before our eyes — and unfortunately often without us noticing it.
44. ton - April 6, 2010
“…the problem is hardly ever in the doctrine but in the way it is lived out. We are after all, still trying to be human!”
i strongly disagree that “the problem is hardly ever in the doctrine.” where you get all tangled up is in the “trying” – do you imagine that you’ll get it all figured out at some point down the road?
to simply be a human being… imagine that.




***********Elena:


In post 44 Ton’s tone is already VERY aggressive and he strongly disagrees and continues to patronize me with such remarks.


45. Elena - April 7, 2010
Thanks Thot for reading between the lines… is that how you say it? Connectedness is a question of grammar!
Oh Ton, isn’t it wonderful that we can disagree and still swim in this pool?
If you haven’t seen this film, please give yourself the pleasure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcWC9_l4ugA&feature=related
but this one is shorter if you prefer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKh0-Xg8i5A&feature=related
if only we’d been this clever!

***********Elena:
In these posts I continue to try to stay friendly, lighten up the conversation and maintain the principle that agreeing is not a condition for participation


46. wildz - April 7, 2010
30 — Agent 45/ Richard Boone
You can contact me at mom.victoria@gmail.com
Thanks for your interest!
47. Elena - April 7, 2010
If someone is writing a summary on JntC I would like to speak on her behalf. Without her help, they would have probably taken Dorothy Beaulieu to the old people’s home which is what Robert asked for and E.B and the other ladies in charge were eager to carry out. I told E.B. that if she did that I would leave the Fellowship the next day and Jnt called me later that evening and told me it wouldn’t happen. Somehow they actually overstepped Robert and let it fall through. Somewhere in this blog is that story.
I hope no one ever forgets that these people are all doing what they are doing because they are in a cult convinced that they are sacrificing their lives under the guidance of a divine being no matter how sick it is when looked at from the outside. Deprogramming these people should be “a labour of love”! even if that included the courts.
48. wildz - April 7, 2010
I commend what j_n_t did for Dorothy. She was also wonderful with some of the children under her care. However, her care did not go beyond what was comfortable for her. She was not willing to support my child over the lover of Robert.
49. Elena - April 7, 2010
That was true of my daughter too Wildz. She trained Girard’s son to give a talk when they were eight years old and she trained my daughter to talk after his son. She trained Girard’s son beautifully and mine poorly and then exposed them. I felt anger and shame but never said anything to anyone about it. But if I started telling such a stories about the Fellowship they wouldn’t stop beginning with the fact that no one who ever had a position in which they could have helped me, was willing to give me a paid job. I always worked for them as a volunteer! Even my husband wouldn’t pay for my medicines when I got sick supporting him on one of his trips!
I realize it is very important to shed light on all these little and big pains that we have but are these stories going to help any one of them still inside step outside? And isn’t that what really matters? Perhaps they won’t help in the short term but life is long enough to remind us of our actions. Not one of these pains is powerful enough to wish any of these people any harm. Those in the inner circle are in fact the most harmed. Those who actually took Robert on high and committed serious acts against themselves and their children, abandoning them, are the worst victims. As I said to one of them once: yes, you did that, take it and suffer it and then be there for it. All we can do is face our selves. Compassion is born in that suffering.
Parallel to denouncing these acts it would be wonderful if we could create a site of support where whoever can offer anything, offers it. “Institutionalizing” this help even with just a page, will send a very clear message of non-judgement to those inside and clear us about what our intentions here actually are.
I would still like to offer a place of rest for anyone inside if they wish to take it. Resting, just resting and having time for one’s self in the cottage in the Caribbean has been wonderfully healing for me. It is an ongoing offer. Take a few months off for your self and think it over without even committing to leaving the Fellowship, that would not be a condition. Just give yourself the opportunity to breathe outside for some time.
50. nige - April 7, 2010
Elena wrote…..
“All we can do is face our selves. Compassion is born in that suffering.”
…..I would add – “However long it takes”…..Nigel
51. wildz - April 7, 2010
I didn’t consider it little. My son came home telling me he wanted to KILL himself. I am, and remain, a MAMA BEAR!
52. nige - April 7, 2010
This may sound funny, but it was part of my “disentanglement process”, hving come out of the FOF. In 1991/2 I was involved with a Secondary Education Training Program. I thought I was going to learn to be a Craft, Design and Technology Teacher and take the qualification back to the Fellowship at Renaissance (never happened, obviously, and I was actually leading up to my first Mental Health Sectioning). The question I would like to lay open at this juncture is – what was the purpose of the Lewis Carroll School? Was it part of the ‘cultural ark’ and allowing the children a broad and liberal education for ‘fitting in’ or are those children, now young adults, involved with ‘alphanumerical professions’ or otherwise. What went right and what went wrong? Is there still some form of education in the Fellowship for youngsters? I hope the answers to these questions may prove enlightening…..Nigel.
53. nige - April 7, 2010
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’ll 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.
“Crossroads” – Don McLean
54. fofblogmoderator - April 7, 2010
45 is new
55. Elena - April 7, 2010
Wildz,
Thank you for repeating that “little” detail that easily escapes readers who are, even like myself, “just” reading a blog and often forget to hear the tragedy. Please also note that I said that if anyone is doing a summary on JntC I “simply” wanted to speak on her behalf. With that I did not mean to stop you or anyone else from looking at our suffering, what I meant is that all the sides need to be seen so that we are swift in our judgement and can still help those inside leave and not continue to hide in there because they think we’ll burn them at the stake if they come out and that their sacrifice will solve anything in this world. They already have too strong a tendency to go ahead with it.
The explosion of this blog three years ago should have been enough for all of them to leave but it is clear that they are too addicted to stop taking the drug because their concerned “family” asks them to.
56. ton - April 7, 2010
45 elena
i know that “the moving finger writes… and moves on” — but before it’s buried, let’s review this short thread in the context of something called the “thought terminating cliche’ ” — the effect of which is to discontinue reflective conversation, replacing it with “emotionally appealing phrases.”
it started with “We are one!” — which lead me to an “elegant” (as you put it ) questioning of doctrinaire sloganeering. what followed was (imo) a brief but constructive conversation which only scratched the surface in getting beneath what is otherwise a thought terminating, emotionally appealing cliche. (regarding the individual, the processes of individuation and individualism v collectivism…. cultural programming, dominant paradigms, the ‘christian’ mythos, social conditioning, self-sacrifice, cults… the conversation could go much deeper).
and with my “elegant” questioning of doctrine, you post:
“Actually Ton, the observation is very valuable, the problem is hardly ever in the doctrine but in the way it is lived out. We are after all, still trying to be human!”
another emotionally appealing, thought terminating cliche’ — followed by another:
“Oh Ton, isn’t it wonderful that we can disagree and still swim in this pool?”
dismissal is complete when the subject changes – as it always does… “and having writ, moves on.”
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.”
noam Chomsky



***********Elena:
So all my attempts to be kind and decent are thrown out with “emotionally appealing thought terminating cliché”
And my statement that we can swim in this pool even if we disagree is equally run down without taking it seriously into consideration.



57. Thot Plickens - April 7, 2010
ton, I sense you’re concerned that when someone finds one doctrine or ideology that proves to be destructive in some way, and then leaps to yet another doctrine without thinking critically about it, they’re potentially replacing one harmful thing with another?
The root of the word indoctrination does happen to be doctrine.
Sometimes I think a potential antidote to that tendency to be consumed by any one ideology or doctrine — to getting sucked in (sorry for the expression) to any type of group thinking — is to be open to manydoctrines, and to connect to many different groups. (without necessary “joining” them by the way).
But I guess it feels cozy and safe to have one doctrine, one ideology, one group, one leader, one nation, one religion, and to attach ourselves to that. Feels safer, but it’s often not so smart or wise, or in the end even safe at all. Even “non-dualism” becomes “dualistic” if you start approaching it in a certain way. The key is to reflect upon the idea, meditate on it, and take from it what is healthy and wise. Seems best whenever possible to avoid the labels — e.g., I’m a non-dualist, I’m a “student of the Fourth Way”, I’m a Democrat, I’m an American. We already start closing ourselves off from the rest of the world, and start down that path of becoming prone to indoctrination.
Or if I do call myself an American or attach any other label, doctrine, or ideology to myself — at least be able to say that I am also a resident of the world at large.
—
“And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
JFK, June 1963
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html


***********Elena:

This previous post by Thot is so telling because he is saying exactly what I am saying not from a doctrine but from my understanding and while what they are saying is valid because it is not supposed to be coming from a doctrine, what I am saying is worthless and indoctrinated.


58. Elena L - April 7, 2010
Hello Nigel, You are the last person I spoke to before leaving the Fellowship. You phoned me at the Chautauqua house and congratulated us on the birth of our new baby boy. He is now 26.
I can remember empathizing with your having to call and congratulate new parents and then, with discomfort, ask for a donation to fund the creation of a Silver Fellowship Baptismal Bowl.
At that moment, I appreciated the call, but in denying the request, I felt newly freed!
Did it get made? How was it used?
I too am interested in the subject of the Fellowship’s methods of ‘teaching’ children.
59. Elena - April 7, 2010
Dear Ton who have consistently checked on me and kept biting at my heels in the hope that I will move a different way, I sincerely thank you for your insight on my recent participation.
I am afraid that like you, I also feel that you pick on a little something of everything I am saying and neglect to address the whole idea, which is all right. If that is all you can do here that is what I am willing to take from you. It is clear that I am little more than a sloganeer for you and if that is what I am, please keep repeating it that I might one day see it and that whoever is reading me is three times careful with what they are hearing.
I write what I believe and it is not that I am following a humanist doctrine that I read somewhere as Thot Plickens suggests but that I have come to understand for myself that everything that made and makes me inhuman towards others is based on some kind of imaginary separateness that I justify because they are different to me economically, socially, academically, nationally or racially. When work on my self began I repeatedly observed those things in me and the more I stopped expressing negativity towards others for these totally absurd reasons, the more I understood that behaving “consciously” for me meant behaving humanly. I am still far from being all the human I wish to become so I thank you for pushing me on. I am glad for you if you feel you have already reached such a condition.
It is also very clear to me that most people don’t understand each other because as soon as they meet they catalogue the other person so thoroughly that they either fall into deep identification wishing to attract that person or totally ignoring them. This too I’ve observed in myself.
I sincerely believe that WE, every human being alive today, can behave humanly at least towards a few people and that wars as they are being waged are not only not necessary but criminal. Since this is my belief the least I can do is to not carry out a war with you and the many here as I did before I was banned. We are not here to agree but to talk and listen and help each other and those inside who, some agree, would benefit from not continuing to sacrifice themselves in the Fellowship cult. It is the duty of a nation and every individual inside of it to stop its people from destroying themselves or others, some still try to help individuals who are about to commit suicide, why aren’t we helping those in cults when we know they are on that train? How many more people in cults have to die before laws are passed to control them? Laws that forbid every institution and cult and anyone with no matter what authority to act against people’s human rights? I am afraid we are far from human today and need laws that will protect us from our very powerful inhuman tendencies such as Fascism just half a century ago and the equally fascist activity of Israelis towards Palestinians today. It is a blessing that so many Jews are already acting against the State of Israel.
I am also not here to be attacked personally or attack you personally but to dialogue about our understandings. Before I was banned I was still so emotionally shocked by the cult experience that people who did not agree and support me in everything I said were perceived as people who did not love me and my self steam was so low that I turned very aggressive towards them. I am very sorry that I needed so much protection after the cult experience and did not look for it somewhere else. I am a little less vulnerable today and your agreeing or disagreeing with me is an opportunity for me to reflect on my understanding and continue to hold you because you are simply another human being with as much confusion and pain as I often experience. Where you not, you would have no difficulty being kind and generous. I do not ask you to love me but there is a huge difference between a conversation in which there is love and one in which there isn’t any. There is no love in your tone, no kindness and when there is no kindness, it is very easy to dismiss what is being said because the other person has in fact dismissed one and just picked up the piece of what one said and used it for his own interests. I sincerely do not know what your interest is but I get a feeling that you are not interested in me which is all right. We are not here to focus on my self but on life. We are fortunate to have the right to freedom of speech and do not need to share deep love to be able to practice it. That is what laws are for.
I can understand that I have hurt many of you in my previous participation on this blog. I have already asked you to forgive me but I cannot force you to forgive. We each come to that in our own time.
I also sincerely thank you for questioning my thinking. Let it get buried deep in the ground if there’s nothing worth sprouting in it. It seems to be helping me and I have not lived in vain, so hopefully it can be useful to others. I have actually nowhere found a simple understanding of what being human means for the individual and society “together”. History seems to be crowded with those who dealt with the inner side or the outer side without getting to the fact that they are too sides of the same coin: the human being. Everywhere people seem to agree that it is enough to be human with those one likes and agrees with, but not with those who do not belong to one’s class, race or nation. Humanism as I am understanding it means Humanism: we are all equals as human beings. We all have the same rights and freedoms:
Civil rights include:
Ensuring peoples’ physical integrity and safety.
Protection from discrimination on grounds such as gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, national origin, age, immigrant status, etc.
Equal access to health care, education, culture, etc.
Political rights include:
Natural justice (procedural fairness) in law (such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy)
Individual political freedom, including rights of individuals (freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of movement) and the right to participate in civil society and politics (freedom of association, right to assemble, right to petition, right to vote)
Civil and political rights comprise the first portion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with economic, social and cultural rights comprising the second portion). The theory of three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be “first-generation rights”, and the theory of negative and positive rights considers them to be generally negative rights.
We are FAR in the world today from practicing these freedoms and rights and each and every one of these rights is horrifically abused in cults, which is the particular area that we are discussing in this blog.
My aim is to explore humanism as I understand it so deeply that there will be no doubt as to why we human beings cannot continue to allow these very destructive cults to proliferate in our societies. My aim I believe is to a certain extent your aim. May we at least share that portion of the effort even if we only get a third of the way. Others will surely pick up where we left off.
60. nige - April 7, 2010
58 Elena Larsson
I started composing a little statement about the Ceremonial Set, as the first major silversmitihing commission I had and how I died to the trade with my mental disorder and became reborn in the teaching of it to others. The ‘thread got lost’ and I have had to say it concisely, but I remember this song being ‘bandied’ as an example of the willfullness feature. How far from the truth can you get…..Nigel.
And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and ev’ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way”
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!
Yes, it was my way
61. nige - April 7, 2010
Further to answer Elena L. …..
This frigging money situation that made everyone uncomfortable …. for God’s sake it almost cost me my life. The other Elena (married Haven) has opened so many doors to the beautiful tool of self-questioning that leads to the Free State of Selfhood in Service of Humanity. The willingness to give, to the extent that it hurts our very being, but those are growing pains to Soul Maturity. I think we can all recognize ’surfacey’ people and we can all recognize those who are the Survivors and Followers of Destiny. Blessings…..Nigel.
62. wildz - April 8, 2010
Nigel, can you explain what you mean by :
“I think we can all recognize ’surfacey’ people and we can all recognize those who are the Survivors and Followers of Destiny.” In the context of replying to Elena L
Many thanks
63. nige - April 8, 2010
62 wildz
Pardon my choice of words…..I suppose they made sense to me in the overcharged state in which I have found myself at the end of my day. By surfacey I meant to convey anyone who is by nature living mostly by ‘the mask’ – persona, personality – and who has not been ‘cut to the quick’ by their play. The post to Elena was actually a curtailed version of a more descriptive one about how the ‘little play’ with the Ceremonial Silver Set was part of a larger picture in which I had undergone, in my own life, The Divine Comedy, – a process akin to what Gurdjieff described as awakening (to our essence possibilities as I would see it now) dying (to the core of our being – again, my choice of words, which I hope will make sense to you now) and the rebirth to the full-flowering of our spiritual nature. There are many who were more involved in the machinations of the FOF and whose play had an effect on how they exited and wish to presently position themselves. Do you think this subject is worth further ‘mileage’ to help the blog aim?…..Nigel.

***********Elena:
So after my post 59 in which I don’t attack Ton and try to convey where I am Ton presents me with this post:

64. ton - April 8, 2010
dear elena,
you don’t like my ‘tone’ eh? i’ve made no personal attacks, believe me, i wish you only well-being. what i have done is to question a few of your assumptions and preconceptions —


***********Elena:
This is not true, the tone has already been very personal and aggressive and he continues with the aggressions:


apparently this rubs you the wrong way. if you are used to the notion that you are always right, and that your opinion counts more, then by now a certain kind of response should be expected… the soap box is no substitute for a little self-reflective analysis so i hope my ‘needling’ can at least give you pause to think. no, you don’t know everything, in fact you know almost nothing if you can’t get past identification with ego and the little self… you complained that i “pick on a little something and neglect the whole idea…” i say that the whole is contained in the parts, even if you can’t see it… anthropocentric humanism is at the root of the problem, from your current perspective you may not see it but inherent in this doctrine you’re preaching is human egotism writ large. there are alternatives to ‘ego’ based biases…. as a philosopher, scholar and ‘author’ you might want to do more research — for example, for a critique of the ‘ego-logical’ perspective see: rozak, naess, fisher, metzner, mckenna, et al, and see whitehead’s process-relational theory.
“What Humanist theories do not allow for is the fact that a system of ethics formulated from a human perspective may not be entirely accurate; humans are not the centre of reality. Spinoza argued that we tend to assess things wrongly in terms of their usefulness to us. Spinoza reasoned that if we were to look at things objectively we would discover that everything in the universe has a unique value…. a human-centred or anthropocentric ethic is not an accurate depiction of reality, there is a bigger picture….”


***********Elena:
The personal attacks in this previous post are very strong and wish me to believe that I am not right and that’s it. They don’t address any of the points I offered and at the end with the quote on Humanism by Mckenna, we never even find out what humanism he is talking about to which I, already pretty shunned answer with this stupid post saying I’ll meditate on it and actually go and research the people he asks me to.



65. Elena - April 8, 2010
Thanks Ton for your observation, I will carefully meditate on it.
Nigel, I don’t know what you mean about adobe reading my posts. If you’re talking about a different site to this one, please contact me at tabluttatgmaildotcom. Thanks.
I just received this email from JStreet. I don’t need to be Jewish to be human so I signed this petition and hope others here might be inclined to do so. This was just a site I happened to come across and left my name for further references, there was nowhere to tell them that I wasn’t a jew. You can find Jstreet on the internet if you would like to sign it.
I believe it would be wonderfully healing for Fellowship cult members and ex-members to realize that the Fellowship is not the only institution that functions like a cult and that millions of jews in Israel have been equally conned to behave as if they were in a cult, in fact when one looks at the way kibbuts were put together it is clear that they participated in very similar mechanisms and are now acting against those around them and the rest of humanity as if they were the “chosen ones”.
The internet is changing the relations of power all over the world, it is the most democratic invention we’ve witnessed in our lifetime, what a great joy!
Tell PM Netanyahu We Want a Democratic and Pluralistic Israel
Sign Our Petition
Full petition text follows below.
Prime Minister Netanyahu:
We, American Jewish supporters of Israel, are deeply concerned. Israel is rightfully proud of its democracy and its membership in the group of nations that value justice, freedom and the rule of law.
In recent months a disturbing picture has emerged of nationalist extremism that would stifle dissent and erode Israeli democracy. The threat has become all too clear to anyone who connects the dots:
* Women led away from the Western Wall in handcuffs for daring to wear prayer- shawls there, and their leader detained and interrogated;
* Dozens of activists unlawfully detained for peacefully protesting in East Jerusalem, and the longstanding peaceful protests in Bi’lin now outlawed;
* A former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset defamed in a virulent smear campaign against Israel’s leading human rights organizations, with images reminiscent of propaganda from the darkest days of Jewish history;
* The fundamental freedom of Israel’s vitally important civil society under threat from Knesset legislation that would selectively label some NGOs as “political” – in the manner of Russia, China and Iran;
* Women forced to sit in the back of segregated busses with support from the ministry of transportation.
* Years of effort to achieve recognition for Reform and Conservative Jews again threatened by a proposed law preventing recognition of non-Orthodox conversions in Israel.
Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, and it must not jeopardize its standing as a democratic nation. As a democracy, the rights of all its citizens must be upheld and safeguarded, and freedom of speech, conscience and belief respected by the government and private citizens alike.
We call on you, Prime Minister Netanyahu, to stand with us and with all those working to strengthen a democratic and pluralistic Israel.
Sincerely,
Sign Now, Add your Voice
66. No Kid - April 8, 2010
About the kids…
25 Wildz:
“I took him out of Lewis Carroll and enrolled him in public school. Not long after I was called with a message from Robert, “You are traitor to c influence.”
NK responds: Far far better IMO to be “a traitor to c-influence” than to betray your boy. Glad to hear that you intervened when he was being hurt.
#58 Elena L:
“…our new baby boy. He is now 26…ask for a donation…. At that moment, I appreciated the call, but in denying the request, I felt newly freed!”
NK responds: What a wonderful birthday present to your son: his parents free and able to rear him without dubious organizational entanglements.
Kudos to all the fierce parents out there.
I’m one, too. Nobody messes with my kid
because then they’d have to deal with
me…and I am definitely – No Kid
67. Elena - April 8, 2010
Ton: “anthropocentric humanism is at the root of the problem, from your current perspective you may not see it but inherent in this doctrine you’re preaching is human egotism writ large. there are alternatives to ‘ego’ based biases…. as a philosopher, scholar and ‘author’ you might want to do more research — for example, for a critique of the ‘ego-logical’ perspective see: rozak, naess, fisher, metzner, mckenna, et al, and see whitehead’s process-relational theory.
“What Humanist theories do not allow for is the fact that a system of ethics formulated from a human perspective may not be entirely accurate; humans are not the centre of reality. Spinoza argued that we tend to assess things wrongly in terms of their usefulness to us. Spinoza reasoned that if we were to look at things objectively we would discover that everything in the universe has a unique value…. a human-centred or anthropocentric ethic is not an accurate depiction of reality, there is a bigger picture….””
Sounds great Ton, would you share what you understand as the bigger picture? and what you’ve understood about what I am saying just to make sure that we’re on the same platform?
68. Elena - April 8, 2010
Ton, just to clarify, I am asking because what I am saying is so new to me that I hadn’t realized it was all that structured for you to come with this observation so it would be very helpful if you tell me what it is that you are understanding since it seems to be so clear to you.

***********Elena:
Here in the previous post I actually ask Ton to share what he understands but he is not willing and continues to attack me with his patronizations:

69. ton - April 8, 2010
elena,
i think we’re definitely not “on the same platform” — but that’s ok. no need to be sarcastic, clarity is an ongoing lifelong process, we both know that, and no need for disingenuousness, if you truly meant what you said, and were to “carefully meditate on it” then there would be no reason for me to elaborate (a hint: when you “carefully meditate” too quickly, you miss the point). regarding “isms” — do your “homework,” another ongoing lifelong process — i offered a few indications of where i’ve looked for a “bigger picture” (here are a couple more… thomas berry, wendell berry), but as far as that goes (“the bigger picture” that is), the possibilities are endless and it depends entirely on you. you see elena, we have this wonderful informational resource literally at our fingertips but what do we do with it? like most things that are used it can also be ab-used, unfortunately there are too many examples, but one that comes to mind in this connection is:



***********Elena:
Here is where he expands all he wants and lays it out with full force, ridiculing me or at least trying in every word but never answers the question just tries to fully press on the fact that I am not doing my homework, I am not good enough.------------

http://thefellowshipoffriends.wikispaces.com/message/list/home there are many others… think about it, or don’t, but consider this; IF you think you already “know it all” and you’re unwilling to consider other perspectives, THEN you’re not going to be interested in what’s potentially available, and of course we all have our little personal agenda to attend to… but you know all this already… right? speaking generally, one aim of “self-examination” is to “get over yourself” and this should at least free you up and point you in the direction of a “bigger picture.” i hope this helps… otherwise, i gladly leave the soapbox to you.

***********Elena:
How could I have continued after this? Trying to comply so that I could show them that I was willing to work so that we could have a conversation and I could participate? I was still feeling quite strong at the time and actually enjoyed reading the people Ton mentioned then wrote this dialogue hoping those participating would not doubt themselves or I.



70. Elena - April 8, 2010
Dialogue
Wretched Doubt:
Here I come
To convince your might
That you are mine
I:
Yes… perhaps…
I’m glad you’ve come…
Do sit, no, no, perhaps not now
I was about to “ground”.
Wretched doubt:
Ha, ha, ha,
You don’t understand
Where could you “ground”
when you can’t even stand?
Ha, ha, ha
I:
Do you think so?
Yes, maybe.
Who knows where
Who knows what
I never was
Wretched doubt:
Ha, ha, ha,
Ha, ha, ha
You are mine
To keep and fry!
I:
Love perhaps…
Would have allowed?
Wretched doubt:
Love? You mad?
I:
Enough love perhaps…
Would give the child
The robe of being,
The light of life?
Wretched doubt:
Ha, ha, ha,
What love you speak about
When so little of it is left by now?
I:
A circle then?
My fellow men?
Like soil for the plant to emerge?
Would that have helped me stand by now?
Wretched doubt:
You make me laugh so loud,
What ground but bog is found?
I:
Inside my self then could I have found
A whirling world
The dervish ground?
Wretched Doubt:
What self? What self?
The void is wide
You wretched soul
What self by now?
I:
In the deep cave of the wretched self
In which I drown
In that deep cave in which I rest my soul
Without hope or joy
Tell me, tell me now,
Is my self in that deep cave where I die
and still subside?
Wretched Doubt:
Hellas! Hellas! I’m drowned!


71. Elena - April 8, 2010
Hi Ton,
I hope you enjoy the little poem I just wrote while thinking about your post.
Thanks for introducing me to these great characters. Researching on Mckenna I found Erik Davis’ Techgnosis great site and a wonderful article on Gilles Deleuze that I just posted at
http://battlesword.blogspot.com/2010/04/beautiful-article-about-gilles-deleuze.html
Beautiful! It must have inspired me to write a poem!
By your answer to my question it is clear that you really don’t understand me or what is worse, trust me. Trust, yes, such a difficult thing to recover after we’ve rolled down the street struggling with each other. But even without trust, as long as we can keep rolling down the street we might actually learn to hop between the bumps and sing along with it. Will you promise me that if I help you smile, you’ll play with me?
I think I got a gist of what you are implying by your posts so let me try it out again and make it as short as I can so as not to offend the passers by.
Humanism as I am understanding it, has nothing in opposition with the magic that all these authors, in my short and superficial look at them, propose. Please realize that I am not inventing humanism, just understanding it and a substantial aspect of it is in any System you might look at. If you look at Deleuze’s article, it is very easy to realize that he is supporting my own statements that we must go beyond our class, nationality, religion, etc, etc, etc, to be truly human. Let me make that more clear: we must go beyond our identification with class, nationality, religion, etc, beyond and within and then from inside of “them” let ourselves be more truly ourselves, more fully that which we were given to be. Non-identification does not mean the rejection of one’s class, nationality or religion but rather the penetration of such realities into their very soul to allow one to be truly human. “Truly human” is not the linear sequence property offered us and enslaved us with convinced that by owning things we owned our selves! Non-identification does not mean the negation of who and what we are as the cult induces in its members, it means that one can allow for the reality of one’s conditions and conditionings to live themselves out without mechanically determining our response to the world. i.e. if I was born in the South of US it doesn’t mean I have to belong to the ku-klux-klan or that I have to drink coffee if I am Colombian. All the magic that these authors you mention seem to be bringing to our door is directly connected to the idea of higher states. They are simply and clearly talking about what was understood as high states in the cult and there is nothing “not human” about them. Previous to our time the Church might have made such states the power of a few authorities but today we swim and drown in them like beetles in a can of flies!
Everything they seem to have experienced and talked about in the book followed by anti-oedipus sounds like experiences of states of non-identification or third and fourth states or whatever you want to call them in their respective system.
I had picked the following passage:
Both Anti-Oedipus and its 1980 sequel A Thousand Plateaus were subtitled “Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” The authors contended that capitalism is balanced between its limitless production and the need to socially “codify” this energy in order to keep it under control. The first pole is fragmented and expansive; the second is paranoid and repressive. Deleuze and Guattari saw schizophrenia as an active “multiplicity,” a localized revolutionary force that liberated one from the confines of psychological subjectivity and the fascistic forms of the State.
Elena: NICE! Yes, it has both potentials: that of becoming an schizophrenic narcissistic sociopath like Robert, Mr. Haven and each in the FOF cult in the paranoid and repressive aspects or… the other kind!… the wonderfully creative people of all times that escape towards life!
What we are able to understand today is that PRECISELY those forms of power are the ones that developed the two personality hasnamousses that people continue to idolize in the fellowship cult.
Mckenna seems to have had his wonderful share of ayahuasca, here in Colombia in fact, says the article, but if you remember, what any of these mushrooms or plants do is catalyze the necessary mechanism in our body that will free the actual substance that gives the high state. The REAL magic is not in the ayahuasca or mushroom but in the human being, which brings us to the fact that we can “liberate” these states
if we ourselves become the catalysts. Prolonged non-identification goes exactly through the same process: a release of fixed mental, emotional and physical structures that inevitably change the chemical inner “imbalance” and free the I to access other realms.
When an individual stops his or her self from ignoring the waiter that just came to the table because he is only a waiter, the entire universe shifts up a scale and we become more human!
Many people do that naturally because they never learnt not to do it but when all our so called “civilized” world consciously learns to do it, we’ll actually “dine”!
I was hoping you would give us the pleasure of your thoughts and not make me answer you a long post such as this right away but here it is.
Have a great day, thanks for sharing!



***********Elena:
I send this wonderfully positive post but get slapped again with Ton’s next post


72. Golden Veil - April 8, 2010
*
This is about experiencing the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx20iTjxils
*
73. ton - April 8, 2010
golden veil,
haven’t heard of david whyte…. powerful. thanks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
dear elena, you end with:
“I was hoping you would give us the pleasure of your thoughts and not make me answer you a long post such as this right away but here it is.”
elena, elena…. elena, am i not writing words? are these not thoughts? you see elena, what you wrote here is a way of dismissing and discounting me as someone who may not entirely agree with you… and in the process you’re making excuses for yourself…. let’s be clear, i’m not making you do anything. what am i saying here elena? are these not thoughts? what are you missing? i will add that i know that you know that i’m not in complete disagreement with you… for example:


***********Elena:
For those of you in the future studying these things, watch very carefully the tone here and the insistence: After that beautifully positive post giving him what he has asked of me he just throws this back at me. He insists on not making me do anything but is unwilling to take my on face value and discards all my attempts for a kind dialogue. Then at the end he says he is not in complete disagreement with me and follows. This must be looked at carefully by those studying these things. On the one hand we clearly see that Ton was set on attacking me far back but because my arguments are pretty reasonable he gives a little credit to the arguments but continues the relentless attack. --------------






“we must go beyond our class, nationality, religion, etc, etc, etc, to be truly human. Let me make that more clear: we must go beyond our identification with class, nationality, religion, etc,”
imo the above is a start in the right direction but it doesn’t go nearly far enough… it’s only a beginning.



***********Elena:
Watch this one: imo the above is a start in the right direction but it doesn’t go nearly far enough… it’s only a beginning.

This is truly important. Here is where he begins the game of giving and taking or rather where you begin the game of giving and taking Ton for this analysis will hopefully also help you see what happened and eventually bring us to love and understanding. This “right direction” and the emotional manipulation wishing me to think I am on the right track and keep playing the game of working so that he finally accepts me and allows me to participate knowing that I am already in a difficult position trying to arrive is very telling. We must also note that if Ton really cared for a conversation he could have continued to have it on my site where he equally just attacked me and left when I stopped responding. --------

Ton continues:
you wrote:
“what any of these mushrooms or plants do is catalyze the necessary mechanism in our body that will free the actual substance that gives the high state. The REAL magic is not in the ayahuasca or mushroom but in the human being, which brings us to the fact that we can “liberate” these states
if we ourselves become the catalysts.”
oh really? gee elena,

**************Elena
Watch the tone: oh really? gee elena, and continues now shouting at me:


you make yourself sound like an expert on these matters… how much actual experience have you had with these “substances”?


don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating the taking of these “substances” — the point you seem to miss in all this is that there is in fact A RELATIONSHIP between the biota and human beings. but due to a conditioned blindness, you place the human above the rest of creation and THAT IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM… it’s why i’m saying that even so called “humanism” with all of these seemingly well intentioned “humanistic, people first” impulses, even all the lovable causes out there related to “human rights” — it’s still a form of human hubris and egotism, albeit on a mass scale. this is not to say or imply that there isn’t a ‘righteousness’ about it and that it isn’t a step in the right direction…. but it is after all a just a step.
the dialogue in this video may represent another step… but even this is couched in anthropocentric terms…. i believe the essential question is: “how to be more than human?”

**************Elena
Take a good look at this last paragraph. So I seem to miss that there is a relationship between the biota and human beings!!!! I should have laughed and stopped but I so wanted to participate and so made myself keep working with it!! I am so beautifully naïve!!! And such an idiot!! So he wanted me to lay out a full doctrine for a human being and because I don’t include the Earth in the post I offered I am worthless!! And I haven’t even placed the human above everything else in creation, I was just talking about human behavior!!





74. Elena - April 9, 2010
I see Ton. So for you we must first have an ecologic consciousness and that is more important than having a human consciousness. Now I understand you. Thank you for at last sharing what you think the priorities are.


**************Elena
So here I too start getting what looks like sarcastic which I am but I am also actually trying to be educated and sincerely grasping what he is stating and acknowledging it. ---------

It reminds me of a program on T.V. I saw yesterday with a man in Africa who has to look after one of the parks that one of the international organizations protects and he says: here we are dying of hunger and all you do is help us look after these animals but do not care about our lives. We have an arm and the permission to kill any of our people if they try to hunt animals.
So yes, I continue to believe human consciousness is the priority. All is One includes that consciousness of nature that is so significant to you. Everything else this man says is included in what I’ve been understanding. It is not new, I am just clearing myself about it and hope that in the process the tremendous confusion and isolation that was implanted in so many of us in the Fellowship cleans itself out somewhat.
About this substances, you must know I am a Colombian, some of them are born here or rather we are born with them here! By the time I was eighteen I decided that I was interested in finding my own way of becoming the catalyst.
Thank you for sharing.

**************Elena
I at least end the post kindly for I kept trying!!!


75. nige - April 9, 2010
This wasn’t quite the song lyrics that I wanted to search for and share…..my day and the sharing of dreams stated working and going to fulfilment had a high-point with a broadcast on Radio in Bob Harris’s of Beth Chapman’s song ‘How we Love’ investigate it until it moves you – intelligent lyrics and mellifluating melody. Her pasted a hint of how she affected me…..
Seems like after all we’ve been through
We would have learned by now
Never to fight for gets the last word
It doesn’t matter anyhow
But ’round and ’round we go in circles
Trying to work things through
And sometimes it feels like miles between us
But I keep coming back to you
CHORUS:
And it’s rough
And it’s tough
And it’s harder than anything I’ve ever tried to do
But I love you so much that in spite of the struggle
I keep coming back to you
Hold me now, just think about this room
That we have shared so long
We’ve studied that map of cracks on the ceiling
Talking till the break of dawn
There is something strong as history
Telling me this love is true
They say “Follow your heart and you’ll be happy”
So I keep coming back to you

**************Elena
Nigel is an amazing catalyst!!! He tells me here to watch out in a very fine way. The fact that Ton is already getting at me becomes clear and he senses it.




76. ton - April 9, 2010
74
“I see Ton. So for you we must first have an ecologic consciousness and that is more important than having a human consciousness. Now I understand you.”
dear elena,
no, apparently you don’t understand me, you would like to THINK you understand but that’s where understanding stops…. you see elena, understanding is not “thought terminating,” understanding is another of those ongoing lifelong processes, it doesn’t stop and if it does, it’s no longer understanding. it’s obvious to me that you really don’t understand, you are more interested in being “right” and thereby “in control” than you are in understanding. you surmise: “ecologic consciousness is more important than having a human consciousness” — no elena, you’re thinking in ‘black OR white’ when in fact they’re integral, one does not negate the other. i’m surprised at you elena, you with all your grandstanding about “ONENESS” and being connected… your limitation lies in how you define what being human means. one thing is certain, and for many this is a very difficult lesson to learn because the illusion is so deeply ingrained: the universe does not revolve around you and “yours.”
“About this substances, you must know I am a Colombian, some of them are born here or rather we are born with them here!”
i asked about your actual (personal) experience but you’re avoiding the question… a friendly word of advice: you shouldn’t speak of which you know not.
all the best

**************Elena
So in this previous post Ton again finds nothing to agree on and continues the attack, turns the assumptions upside down and draws the benefits then I start answering back.




77. Elena - April 9, 2010
Hi Ton and All,
At least I am not negating your premises as you have done with me rejecting whatever I say as not good enough. You just seem to be turning around trying to get the upper-hand over me but really saying the same things that I am saying only the technique is, negating them, saying I better go and research more and when I did and offered them to you, you said I was on the right track but still not good enough.
Good enough for what? Not complete enough for whom? Is a dialogue supposed to be enough, the totality? Why would you expect the mind to grasp more than is allotted to it? Why do you expect the intellect to supply what you yourself must provide? The love and the meaning and the wish to communicate healthily?
About those substances they are children’s play compared to the real thing. I’ll extend on the real thing in a different post if you wish. They have traditionally been used only for initiation rites for they are only a glimpse of their reality and not one we should have gotten lost in en masse as generations are doing today. No one should take these substances more than a handful of times. Have you seen how passive people who have taken marihuana for decades become? Passive and self-conscious and paranoid? And how people in cocaine can’t stop talking? Or in the cow dung mushroom, stop laughing? Or the horrors of “crack”?
The amanitas muscaria or Flykiller is the sacred mushroom in the Rig Veda. That is another story and still they themselves let you know not to mess around with them. And then there is the cacao sabanero. You can take it if you want to know what hell is like- many never come back from it. I’ve seen wonderfully smart people become like vegetables. There are official places here where you can take ayahuasca for twenty five dollars and the guidance of a shaman. Many people are profiting not only from connecting to ayahuasca but from connecting to the native cultures and shamans who have wide knowledge of this practices. All these substances when abused depress the I because they become active in the I’s realm and have to shun it. When the individual is not ready for the experience (and they are never ready if they are having to have it induced, which is why it is only an initiation rite), the drug lives itself out on the individual himself and while it gains power over him he loses power over his own self as we have clearly seen not only in every drug addiction but in every cult addiction, including the regular forms of “falling in love” that are so humanly practiced. That “ love intoxication” is in reality enough for us to deal with, without having to indulge in the abuse of substances.
I did not extend myself on this in the last post because I didn’t want to repeat myself. I have already spoken about these things somewhere on this blog before and thought you were aware of them.
I would ask you kindly to make an effort to keep our conversation to the realm of ideas without treading negatively on each other’s very personal realm. This is very difficult indeed and I have probably been the one who most strongly does it which is why I am asking you to help me. Being able to have a profitable conversation is an expression of the “being” of a community and in this blog-community it is clear that we go from people who agree with everything and cannot have a dialogue to people who disagree in everything and cannot have dialogue. People who cannot go beyond the personal attacks to the realm of ideas or people who are in the realm of ideas and cannot extend them to their personal sphere. All these “disconnectednesses” are aspects of our state of development as a community or “group” if you would rather, for yes, we are far from being a community even of human beings.
Recovering our selves from the cult’s destructiveness, rigidity and expressionless will certainly mean recovering the capacity to participate socially from our own self and not again from an imaginary made up mask that is buffering the possibility of being that self. It is very difficult for any one of us to expose our selves when we are afraid of being shunned, ridiculed or made sarcasm of, when not directly insulted, instead of simply being heard even if there is no agreement. We are not here to agree but to be and help, (if that is ever possible), members inside the Fellowship cult, be. They are not being right now, they are sacrificing themselves in a self-destructive cult.
When people are very vulnerable as many of us are and by vulnerable I mean, people who are not comfortable in themselves, they are desperately needing self affirmation but precisely because we are not comfortable with our selves, we come out as confronting and opposing the other person, which is what we can clearly see in Ton’s and my recent interaction and almost every interaction I had particularly previous to being banned.
Surely we will continue to live this out (if we give ourselves the chance) for quite a while still but if we take a look at the history of the blog, and see ourselves, all of us have become a lot less aggressive than we were when we started. Bruce doesn’t just FUCK everything and everyone all the time, (no matter how accurate those fucks seemed to be), those that only insulted all the time have mostly left and while I was out, few were left that talk but barely dialogue with the blog promising to disappear. Can we “be” and communicate? Disappearing is of course a possibility and being identified with the life a blog is not the cult we are in now, but I am personally much happier in a blog where we have already tried our selves than looking for other people to start again and still think this one can be a viable reference for those still under the grip of the Fellowship cult.
I give you my word that I will try to make my posts much shorter in the future or at least twice as effective if I cannot avoid the length. I am definitely here because I appreciate our background not only in this blog but what we share in common about the System as much as about the Fellowship cult and LIFE, always LIFE.



**************Elena
So I send out that post and actually ask for help from the others but no answer comes.

78. ton - April 9, 2010
“I did not extend myself on this in the last post because I didn’t want to repeat myself. I have already spoken about these things somewhere on this blog before and thought you were aware of them. I would ask you kindly to make an effort to keep our conversation to the realm of ideas without treading negatively on each other’s very personal realm.”
elena,
well thank you for extending yourself, what you’ve written is revealing something… and by the way, when have you ever balked at repeating yourself?


**************Elena
Nothing helps, Ton goes on with the attack----------


although it sounds like you’re wanting to change the subject, (and i realize that this may be a little bit of a sidetrack), please indulge me just a bit more as i follow a thread in the hope of getting at the truth, because i believe that an important part of being able to have a “profitable conversation” (as you put it), requires an implicit integrity and honesty.


**************Elena
and here is where he begins with his questioning of my honesty! This is a huge symptom here, please watch it carefully that you do not miss it. The man has obviously set out to destroy me and what a great victory if he can attack my honesty and continue:






it feels to me like you’re wanting to change the subject here because you’re backed into a corner,


**************Elena
He is obviously feeling very strong and thinks he’s backed me into a corner, which he had pretty well!! And goes on:

it sounds like you have no actual first-hand, personal experience with these “substances,” and no, living in columbia is not what i mean by an actual experiential encounter… it sounds like you may know something about the subject from an outside perspective but that you really don’t know it intimately, that is. from the inside out… and that’s ok, i’m not going to “judge” you because you’ve never eaten one of these compounds, and i’m certainly not here to convince you to do so… but, what i would suggest is, that you don’t have to dissemble and give vicarious, second and third hand accounts and expect it to be a substitute for the experiential. it’s better just to admit – at least to yourself – when your knowledge is limited to a certain extent… it’s more honest that way and with honesty we be able to proceed with a more “profitable conversation.”
you see elena, you may be fooling yourself but you’re not fooling me when you mix-up and group all these “compounds and substances” into a single category as you do, to me that’s a telltale sign… it shows that from an experiential perspective you don’t really know what you’re talking about. if you’d had an actual personal encounter with ANY so-called “entheogen” then you would know better than to lump it in with drug abuse or any so-called “recreational drugs.”


**************Elena
He had obviously barely read my post but it was still a great excuse to get me to talk about something that was delicate for many and continue to attack me.



79. 2010 - April 9, 2010
Elena-
You talk too much.



**************Elena

Then 2010 triumphantly comes along and supports Ton! I should have known the battle was lost from the beginning! So I answer a little stronger and actually start realizing that it is a set up.

80. Elena - April 9, 2010
Ton: elena,
well thank you for extending yourself, what you’ve written is revealing something… and by the way, when have you ever balked at repeating yourself?
Elena: Thank you for thinking that a dialogue is worth between us and asking me to extend myself. I am balking now at repeating myself because I will no longer give too much time to something we’ve already tread on. Repeating our selves viciously is another way of recurring and destiny evades us.
Ton: although it sounds like you’re wanting to change the subject,
Elena: I am not only wanting to change the subject but wanting to not over-impose my own views in this forum by sheer quantity. And I am also not interested in proving my self RIGHT to you. I understand I may be wrong and can still be here and that is enough for me. People who agree to everything that is happening as we did in the Fellowship cult are as dangerous to life and freedom as people who are unable to agree on anything and must look for something to prove the other person out. Rightness is not the same as righteousness and every time we are right to each other we strengthen each other’s being. The capacity of “resilience” is not only possible in individuals, it is just as necessary in communities.
Ton: (and i realize that this may be a little bit of a sidetrack), please indulge me just a bit more as i follow a thread in the hope of getting at the truth, because i believe that an important part of being able to have a “profitable conversation” (as you put it), requires an implicit integrity and honesty.
Elena: I tell you right away that you will only get as far as what is true for you and not truth and that will already be plenty. Your tone and words and persistence in trying to prove me out shows a pathological ingredient in you for you do not converse or in any way share your own experiences about the subject and enrich me or anyone else with them, you are here simply to prove that I am not being honest or that everything I say is not enough or that as you have tried before, that I am not in a condition to speak and should be banned. Let me tell you right away that my freedom to speak here does not come from you but from my love for Freedom of Speech.
Ton: it feels to me like you’re wanting to change the subject here because you’re backed into a corner,
Elena: backed into a corner by your ridiculously aggresive behavior, convinced that you are the only truth here? Don’t give yourself so much credit.
Ton: it sounds like you have no actual first-hand, personal experience with these “substances,”
Elena: Do you? When you can’t even relate to the very specific ones I’ve mentioned?
Ton: and no, living in columbia is not what i mean by an actual experiential encounter… it sounds like you may know something about the subject from an outside perspective but that you really don’t know it intimately, that is. from the inside out… and that’s ok, i’m not going to “judge” you because you’ve never eaten one of these compounds, and i’m certainly not here to convince you to do so… but, what i would suggest is, that you don’t have to dissemble and give vicarious, second and third hand accounts and expect it to be a substitute for the experiential. it’s better just to admit – at least to yourself – when your knowledge is limited to a certain extent… it’s more honest that way and with honesty we be able to proceed with a more “profitable conversation.”
Elena: No Ton, I do not have to prove anything to you or tell you of my personal experiences with these substances to convey to you that I know what I am talking about.
Ton: you see elena, you may be fooling yourself but you’re not fooling me when you mix-up and group all these “compounds and substances” into a single category as you do,
Elena: If you cared to read carefully enough you would realize that amanitas muscaria, the sacred mushroom of the rig Vedas, was clearly differentiated from the other substances I talked about.
Ton: to me that’s a telltale sign… it shows that from an experiential perspective you don’t really know what you’re talking about. if you’d had an actual personal encounter with ANY so-called “entheogen” then you would know better than to lump it in with drug abuse or any so-called “recreational drugs.”
Elena: a “telltale” sign Ton? So are you now going to go and tell on me so that you can shame me publicly? Wouldn’t you be delighted if you could do that here again where shaming people is the very essence of what we’ve been feeding on when we have exposed the abuses so common in the Fellowship of Friends. I am so good at it myself Ton, why do you think I would fail to recognize it in you? Shaming people for their actions is what people in anger do and I was so very angry with the Fellowship and so vulnerable but I am no longer in that state and going beyond angering and shaming people is what is necessary to understand the beauty beyond the tragedy. If we are to heal as a community who suffered together, we would do good in taking that step.
I understand this is a forum where people can have a conversation and not a court where people are being tried for crime so I will kindly ask you to stop acting as if you had any right to ask of me things that I do not owe you. If what I am offering you is not good enough for you that is your problem and not mine, that does not give you the right to call me dishonest, thank you. If we had moderation here you would be called on for the absurd attitude that you are unkindly expressing. With all due respect fofblogmoderator, with all due respect and gratitude, the role of a moderator is to protect the participants and help them understand each other, I ask you to do so by intervening when people label someone as being dishonest when there is nothing dishonest about their participation.
Now let’s look at entheogens not for the sake of proving to you that I know what we are talking about but for the sake of the subject itself which is beautiful.
From wikipedia: An entheogen (“creates god within,” en εν- “in, within,” theo θεος- “god, divine,” -gen γενος “creates, generates”),[1] in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts. Most entheogens do not produce drug dependency.[2] With the advent of organic chemistry, there now exist many synthetic substances with similar psychoactive properties. Entheogens are tools to supplement various practices for healing and transcendence, including in meditation, psychonautics, art projects, and psychedelic therapy.
I personally do not agree with the definition of entheogens as substances that “create god within” I would define them more as substances that reveal the God within. And would insist that these are initiatory substances and NOT substances to be abused as we’ve seen in our present societies. They are certainly different in quality, marihuana and cow dung mushrooms are not as “godrevealing” as amanitas muscaria but they nevertheless enter realms beyond our habitual consciousness and expand our perceptions beyond the “known” senses. I have no “scientific” knowledge of these substances, what I am telling you is from personal experience. I would still affirm that amanitas muscaria and ayahuasca are not substances to be taken for anything other than “ritualistic” purposes and that the God within that they reveal can be reached without them. The experience of Godliness when experienced through these substances does not imply that the person will connect to his own self for a prolonged period or that they will know how to reach it again without it. Any one of these experiences when induced with a substance are a before and after event in anyone’s life and yet they are child’s play when compared to the real thing. The “real thing” only has to speak to you once for you to never stop hearing it… or talking about it… perhaps that is why I am so insistent in the need of connectedness.
This is my last post to you Ton. You and I are only two of the many voices here, it will be very good to hear others on many other subjects. I will not indulge in further conversation with you until I hear a more sympathetic tone in your posts and a willingness to give rather than demand. You have no right to demand here- that is not a healthy attitude. We are not forced to be here, we are here willingly. You have a right to share in a conversation but not to position yourself as the judge of whoever is speaking. A blog can be an art-form of love between people or a school forum of immature teenagers to lynch those who the group marginalizes. That is exactly what is happening in society where the poor blokes just take up a gun and shoot everyone around them as protest. If that is what you choose for yourselves it would be no surprise, after all, that is what was widely practiced in the Fellowship cult and people were thrown out like rotten food when they protested. I will leave this one as joyfully and willingly as I left that one and you can carry on with your dictators of how you like things to be. No wonder this blog is dying like the Fellowship, such places don’t carry any life. If we are willing to take a different direction we might one day reach the Golden Age of the Fellowship and be remembered for our amazing ability for resilience or regeneration and not for the repeated failures to act as human beings.


**************Elena
This seems to have had a tiny effect and Ton shows up with apparent kindness wishing me all the best and saying he hasn’t demanded anything from me but he has in fact held a very authoritarian attitude all along.



81. Elena - April 9, 2010
Thank you 2010, you on the contrary, talk too little.
82. ton - April 9, 2010
elena, why so defensive? i’ve “demanded” nothing of you… and of course you don’t have anything to prove to me…. a point i’m trying to make has to do with honesty…. because i consider it to be important. let’s briefly review… this thread started when i suggested that there are limits to the anthropocentricism of a doctrine you’ve been espousing which we’ve identified as “humanism.” i did not suggest there was anything wrong with the doctrine or that there is anything wrong with you for supporting it… i merely indicated my opinion of the limitations of said doctrine and in the process suggested avenues of research that have influenced my own perspectives. after your “in depth” research (apparently you perused something by mckenna), you came back with your “informed” conclusions regarding the “REAL magic” — that it’s “in the human being” and etc… i pointed out that this sort of ego-centric species-bias was in fact at the root of the problem and at that point i questioned whether you had ever actually ingested one of these compounds that you so blithely dismiss, because from what i could gather in what you wrote, you didn’t really grok the experience nor the wider implications. i questioned a type of arrogant and blind anthropocentricism which IS the problem… i suggested that you consider the relational aspect in nature which the human species ignores at it’s own peril and destruction….
now back to the point, which is honesty… and i am not accusing you of anything, i am not trying to “shame” you, (i will say that shame implies one has something to hide), and i am certainly not “angry” as you say, i am simply trying to understand where you are coming from…. yes i did read carefully enough to see that you mentioned amanita in the context of the vedas…. now is that supposed to imply that you’ve actually ingested amanita? because that’s not what i took from your history lesson. is there a further point to this little tidbit from the annals of time ? you don’t seem to me like the type of person who would be ashamed of admitting to experimentation…. so i wonder what are you ashamed of? i’m curious to know…
and i really do hope this is not offending you…. that’s truly not my intention… look, i’m not ashamed of my experiences with these things… by the way, i think i’ve related the story here about the night of my 21st birthday, but here it is again briefly: i did ingest one of these substances, i left the party and spent the rest of that balmy july night nestled in the arms of a great elm tree overlooking the lake illumined by a nearly full moon…. as the sun rose, i came down from the tree, and i resolved to search for a “natural” way to experience the profound state of merging – what maurice bucke termed “cosmic consciousness.” soon thereafter i found a “workbook” with one of those insidious bookmarks in it… i telephoned the number, and the rest, as they say, “is history…”
all the best
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke
83. Mariposa - April 10, 2010
No Kid,
Hey Hon, good work posting. Hugs. A.
84. Mariposa - April 10, 2010
Thot Plickens #200
I simply wished to express a gratefulness to nature for bringing Spring to the area ( after a historical winter of snow) and wish fellow ex-members to look forward to a future with positive prospects with my post. I guess you felt a need to devalue this wish, and why? Maybe we all now need to write under an artificial name and surrender our whole life stories in the FOF as “suffering ” to receive a notice in your mind as an authentic memory , and perhaps as well to many other posters . As you may now know, I have been on the GF site for 2 years. I already know your questions and have lived them for 40 yrs. We do have work to do. But, for a moment, for a day, check yourself and study the gifts we have. An appreciation of spring flowers. For Yourself.
Sorry, for the neg. explosion to you today. I’ve got a lot of current problems to work on here on the farm which keep me up all hours and am a bit “ruffled”. Also, No Kid gives me reminders of my youth. .A.


**************Elena
When I look at Ton’s previous post it is still so aggressive but I wish to be there so I keep trying to soften things out and tell him my little story:



85. Elena - April 10, 2010
Thank you Ton, that is a much more workable tone. I am glad you’ve gotten a grip on yourself and realized that we’re just trying to have a conversation here.
If I remember correctly my account of those experiences is already here somewhere in this blog. To satisfy your curiosity, the first time I took a little of amanitas I realized it was very powerful and it wanted me to clean up so I prepared for two weeks before taking it again, then I went back to that marvelous place for they only grow in particularly beautiful forests, usually pine forests in my country. It wanted to teach me how to breathe! So this army of mosquitoes started walking around my face and the idea was that they could only walk through the bridge of my nose if I breathed properly!!! It took a long time before one of them actually crossed the bridge and I was ecstatic of course and Godlike but it made me very exited so I began to breathe too fast and they again couldn’t cross the bridge so we started again each time with more intense Godliness!!! It’s very funny now but I must admit, my first gurus were mosquitoes!! I was lying on a bed while this massage was going on and a friend who was also up at the farm walked by and saw all these mosquitoes on my face and got the fright of his life thinking I’d died and the mosquitoes were already getting at me! Oh it’s so good to laugh!! So he started moving me and getting the mosquitoes out and I was so disappointed but I knew he wouldn’t understand if I told him to leave my gurus alone!! I was much surprised though when looking at a book years later, saw that they were called, amanitas muscaria or amanitas matamoscas which means mosquitoe killers.
It invited me into the sacred but what it conveyed to me very clearly was that everything I had experienced belonged to it and that my job was to get there without it. In another occasion I not only took a little more but gave my beautiful golden retriever two petals which was very little and after a while he sat there and looked at me for a long time. THAT was difficult. Dogs do not hold their site to humans for too long but Arrow just stared at me and what he told me or rather asked me was, why did you give me this, what do you want me to do with this, I am a dog, as if he were literally saying, you want me to be conscious of the fact that I am a dog? It was very “painful” not because there was anything wrong with being a dog but because he couldn’t do much with it anyway. I very much regretted having given him any. Fortunately it eventually wore off and we went back to being a dog and a seventeen year old on her way to study in Belgium and away from the all too intense highs of Colombia.
This is why I love writing and sharing because this story made me realize that when I experienced the real thing there was also suffering like for Arrow. That suffering. That very particular kind of suffering in which one knows that one might just die in the experience and that it is alright to do so, that one wouldn’t stop it for a second. I was thinking after that post that after you connect with the real, it wishes to penetrate everything like water, burn like fire, give life like Earth and breathe like air. It is like the power of love: life.
Compared to the experience with amanitas, think of the real as a thousand times more powerful than “substances” then you’ll understand when I tell you that they are difficult to bare and live through. I was only totally paralysed for two days the first time about three weeks after I joined the Fellowship but they say Ezequiel would spend years in bed. I guess those are the states the masts live in. I haven’t actually experienced such states for years. Shortly after I started living with Girard and working, working, working for the sake of working, working, working on being Fellowship “efficient”, they stopped happening and I soon became another conformist automaton.
So good to be out! Cheers!
86. ton - April 10, 2010
“Thank you Ton, that is a much more workable tone. I am glad you’ve gotten a grip on yourself and realized that we’re just trying to have a conversation here.”
elena,
you’re confused, it was you who lost your grip, not i….(“This is my last post to you Ton”).


**************Elena
Again, nothing works! And the attack starts again at full blow.-----------



you’ll have to forgive me if the “conversation” here is not to your liking, but i feel compelled to respond to you as honestly as i can… and i don’t need to point out that this format does not conform to the norms of conventional “face-to-face” conversation and social interaction… there is a certain freedom that the relative anonymity of the situation provides… one CAN ’speak’ in a different way here, responding more freely and expressing feelings that might not be spoken of in a ‘normal’ formal face-to-face encounter. so i’ll ‘warn’ you now, i will continue to convey my honest responses based how i feel after reading your posts and if it rubs you the wrong way, then so be it.
speaking of ‘tone’ — there is a general impression i often get when reading your posts… you’re dismissive of another who happens to challenge or disagree with you, you attempt to marginalize and diminish the other, seemingly in order to feel in control and “superior” to… you feel the need to be in control… we all do to some extent, but some more than others… i think that the need to control can be an over-compensation based on the fear of a loss of control… what do you think? i think leaving the cult behind represents a tremendous loss of control… the structure that formerly helped give a sense of self are suddenly gone… it’s a difficult adjustment, it takes time.
even though you’re not revealing much, here’s an example of a situation in which it sounds like you lost control and it scared you:
“Compared to the experience with amanitas, think of the real as a thousand times more powerful than “substances” then you’ll understand when I tell you that they are difficult to bare and live through.”
maybe it’s just me but, another impression i often get when reading your posts is one of condescension…. when i read the above, to me it suggests or implies that the reader does not understand or has no experience with “the real” as you put it… that “the real” is something that you are specially privy to, that “the real” is something the reader will understand only by you telling him about it… maybe you wanted to explain or say more about it? maybe it’s a language thing…? but i don’t think so, your command of english seems better than mine and i’m a “native speaker” — so if it’s not an issue with the language then what i’m sensing is an attitudinal thing… an inferiority/superiority complex…. but which is it, inferiority or superiority?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_complex


**************Elena
And I keep trying to comply. I really am sick allowing for so much abuse without protesting. So are all those people that just looked without protesting. Sick to their very bones.

87. Elena - April 10, 2010
Hi Ton and All,
Thanks Ton for the ongoing analysis, I also believe it’s a worthwhile one. So let’s see.
In this last post and the one before you are engaging with me, not demanding of me as you were in the previous ones. In the one before this one you still had a demeanouring attitude but it was already much softer than in the ones before so I complied as generously as I could.
If you take a look at our whole conversation maybe you’ll notice that we actually stand for the same things but the antagonism comes in how I or you are doing it. We should have already learnt this in the Fellowship: that standing for the same ideals does not mean that in our daily life we actually practice them: Robert is just another human being trying to live out his life but ended up enslaving thousands who shared similar ideals. I think he had the talent for it and we helped him a great deal. As if immature “essences” in adults in idealistic cults lead to criminal pathologic relationships.
The healthy attitude that I think would have been possible for you or is possible for you and us in the future is that when one looks at a post and thinks one can enhance it with one’s understanding then one enhances it as you are in fact doing in this one without ridiculous little personal attacks or ridiculing the other person which is what I mean by getting out of grip about what is actually happening. If we don’t assume that the other person is participating in “good faith” we are already failing to grant them a “human” condition.
It’s good that we are clear about the fact that even if posts are not of our liking, we can still share in the conversation as equals.
Ton: speaking of ‘tone’ — there is a general impression i often get when reading your posts… you’re dismissive of another who happens to challenge or disagree with you, you attempt to marginalize and diminish the other, seemingly in order to feel in control and “superior” to… you feel the need to be in control… we all do to some extent, but some more than others…
E. Sure, I’ve probably done that plenty and the more I look at it the more it seems to be an aspect of having been very weak and vulnerable after leaving the FOF and the lack of a strong family and social environment but if we look deeper we can see that the tapestry of our conversation is in fact much deeper than the tapestry of our convictions. I don’t quite know how to put it but I’ll get there. We clearly struggle with each other even if we substantially agree about the principles and where that “struggle” happens is where the real thing is. We are all think we are human but when we confront each other our inconsistencies clearly appear.
Ton: even though you’re not revealing much, here’s an example of a situation in which it sounds like you lost control and it scared you:
“Compared to the experience with amanitas, think of the real as a thousand times more powerful than “substances” then you’ll understand when I tell you that they are difficult to bare and live through.”
Oh yes, one definitely loses control in those states, like with entheogens, only that entheogens were in my case mild enough to not create suffering. Definitely scary no matter how wonderful, like winning a huge lottery and knowing everything about life will change.
Ton: maybe it’s just me but, another impression i often get when reading your posts is one of condescension…. when i read the above, to me it suggests or implies that the reader does not understand or has no experience with “the real” as you put it… that “the real” is something that you are specially privy to, that “the real” is something the reader will understand only by you telling him about it… maybe you wanted to explain or say more about it? maybe it’s a language thing…?
E. No, I can see where and why you would feel that and yes, that is probably the other side of not feeling strong within myself and at the same time in the context of how you presented the conversation in which what I was understanding was that for you entheogens are the culminating wonder of creation (being a little sarcastic about it), I was trying to convey the difference.
Ton: but i don’t think so, your command of english seems better than mine and i’m a “native speaker” — so if it’s not an issue with the language then what i’m sensing is an attitudinal thing… an inferiority/superiority complex…. but which is it, inferiority or superiority?
Elena: This is important because what I’ve noticed is that we all give each other these acts of superiority/inferiority roles. We are all competing for credibility, space, acknowledgement, love, friendship even if we all agree about the basic tenets. We are talking in a definite context Ton and the things we’ve gone through here are extremely complex. Let me round this off quickly here so that we have an ongoing analysis and I don’t try to pack it in all in one post.
I think we each have a strength, a life and a direction and we are each powerful in that area. I have, like every one of you, a few and what has traditionally happened here is that they are dismissed and instead of us taking on an analysis of what is being said, we’ve ended up violently attacking each other. The downside of those attacks is that we are all pretty hurt but the up side of them is that, imho, we’ve shed a great deal of unnecessary luggage. We’ve almost skinned our selves clean. What we’ve shed and will continue to shed is a lot of the imaginary picture we had about what it means to be American or Colombian, this or that class, education, etc. All that should have happened in the Fellowship had it been a real School because the opportunity we have now is to deal with each other as human beings and live out that ideal in our interchanges. If we limit ourselves to being friendly to each other because we share the same programming and essence, then we can leave this Forum and each go and join our nation and feel good about our selves in it but the times are dry for that crop. I believe we live in a time in which our particular strengths and conditionings need to come up to what is human in them and we can share even while disagreeing. The subjects we are dealing with are not easy, they are extremely painful, or at least those are the ones I am not willing to avoid. I believe we have learnt something crucial about inhumanity in the Fellowship cult and can put our grain of sand in the current of a more human world. Were I to think that you are not the best recipients of my understandings around it, I would not be participating here. Were I not to value your strengths and understandings, I would not attempt to work with you.
88. Elena - April 10, 2010
P.S. Another nicer way of putting the inferiority/superiority roles complex is that we are each struggling for space in each other’s being. When that love is denied to us by hierarchic justifications and acted out in concrete manifestations of inequality, we legitimately struggle. That is what life is about!
Big hug!!!


**************Elena
I tried to express my love!!! It was a very good post for me, even if no one else heard I learnt things from that post. And then comes the final blow that I am unwilling to take! He takes nothing but the point in which I myself declare that I am being sarcastic.

89. ton - April 10, 2010
elena,
“in the context of how you presented the conversation in which what I was understanding was that for you entheogens are the culminating wonder of creation…”
you see, here is where we run into problems over and over again. it has to do with the fact that you’re reading things into what is being conveyed… this is not just a problem with you, it can be a general problem in communication…. there is a message but the interpretation distorts it.
so let’s be clear, if you go back and review what i have written here, i’ve never said or even implied that “entheogens are the culminating wonder etc.” in fact if you follow this thread back to around 71, you’ll find that it was YOU who first brought up the subject of ingesting these substances, so in the interest of keeping our facts straight let’s go over this again…. how did we get to this point?
from the beginning, i suggested that ‘humanism’ has it’s limitations, not that it is entirely bad, but that there are certainly biases connected to the doctrine… i suggested alternatives in the form of authors, who imo take a broader perspective than the one you are espousing and representing… (is that possible elena? is it possible that someone may have a broader perspective?). i mentioned a number of philosophers but you latched onto something you picked up in a superficial reading of mckenna… and yes he is well known for openly talking about “entheogens” and yes that tends to get a lot of attention because it’s still a “taboo” subject in many respects…. but taking “enteogens” is not the point i was trying to make… so you missed the point, do you see? we got sidetracked here because i questioned your experiences when you seemed to present yourself as expert enough on the subject to casually dismiss the “entheogenic” experience as inconsequential compared to what YOU consider to be “real.”
now i’ll suggest maybe you should go back and really do a little more research on some of the other authors… spinoza, whitehead, thomas berry or wendell berry for example, in their own ways they come to similar types of “conclusions” as mckenna but with absolutely no mention of “entheogens” — see you miss the point when you latched onto the “entheogens” and i still question whether you really understand the deeper implications… (when one has a fearful or unpleasant experience, the natural / “easy” thing to do is to somehow try to bury it or dismiss it).
i will say that if you really took the time to get past the surface and give a more in-depth look at the work of mckenna, you might have discovered that it’s not all about taking “entheogens,” that’s really “the tip of the ice-burg” and such a small part of his philosophical discourse. you see elena, it’s about changing your perspective and thereby changing behavior…. but when you are so convinced that you are “right” in your convictions then changing your perspective will be the last thing on your mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
90. Elena - April 10, 2010
It is interesting how you think that I don’t acknowledge the whole of what you are saying but here again all you are saying is that I fail and fail and fail and that I have to research and research and research to come to something that you understand but are unwilling to tell us about. I think I would rather fail if you think that I have to go and read all the authors you’ve read to be able to have a conversation with you.
Thank you very much for your time.
91. ton - April 10, 2010
dismissed… again.
92. nige - April 10, 2010
How does REB give a submarine a blow-job?
He creeps up behind it and sucks all the seamen out. n.
and by the way folks – elena not allowing ton to support and nourish…..
truth stands,as the soul (activating higher emotion) thrusting supportively the spirit (higher intellect activated) of itself and knows that when the present unticks the tock of the clock and times of experiencing the present are so knit together that one can no longer not be, really and individually, not according to syetem or dogma there is no need for attack or defence…..Nigel.


**************Elena
This post by Nigel is very significant because he has obviously eaten Ton’s story and thinks he is actually trying to help me in any way which is the impression they all WANT to have after the multiple confrontations we’ve had. Nigel has gone from my being the wonder of a new doctrine to me not allowing Ton to help me!


93. Elena - April 10, 2010
Yes Ton, the difference is that I dismiss you after I hear you and you dismiss me before we even start.
There are already in the little we’ve talked so many new things that you are missing that what is the point of going on? And then you treat my offering a perception as if it were a finished theory when from the beginning of arriving here I said, I would like to present these ideas so that they can be looked at and destroyed if necessary but instead you say they are not good enough and that I have to work and work and research because I might be wrong but you don’t even look at them in detail, you don’t even consider them seriously. If you really understood what you read, you would be able to share it without evading the question repeatedly.
That is fine. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to hear. One day someone who wishes to understand will take it home.
Nige, “elena not allowing ton to support and nourish”, if you think someone manipulating you like Robert did with the idea that you can’t know anything, that you’re not good enough until you do everything he says is nourish and support, no wonder you jump back and forth without knowing where to stand. Trust your self Nigel, trust yourself so that you are not swept away by each wave.
94. We Were There - April 10, 2010
2. Elena –
“I would like to apologize… for the obnoxious behavior I managed to get to in my frustration with this whole issue that led to my banning and ask to join this conversation again.”
Elena, can you clarify what you meant by ‘this whole issue?’
95. nige - April 10, 2010
Sorry Elena
But I have no difficulty in bruising the ‘id’ so that the ferment of getting to grips with one’s blaming others for what cannot get to grips with in oneself. The log in one’s own eye…..if you remember the Christian Book?
In pleasant ICT terminology, you are in ‘a loop’. In a personal bruto-description of my Immortal Reality Making…..
Your head is up your rectal orifice.
Does that answer your request for being a holder of the flame of truth. and by the way I was already doing what you wanted me to do
Engage brain before hitting keyboard
Don’t, woman, wear the petty cloak of masculine bad ideas for bullying people out of there basic ‘Vita Brevis de Veritas’.
96. Elena - April 10, 2010
We Were There, your name says it clearly, we were there! That issue.
Not finding mechanisms that would lead us to a clear action to stop the Fellowship from hurting more people was very frustrating. I do wonder why others sit and watch people sacrifice themselves and don’t try to understand what happens but try to stop those who do. We are each marked in our lives in such a way that our compromise cannot avoid some issues and on the contrary, find in them a road to our self.
Nigel, deep thanks. We flower more fully each day. Keep trusting yourself no matter what anyone says.



**************Elena
That was actually a wonderful for me and Nigel perceived it. ----------
97. ton - April 11, 2010
look elena, it may seem that i’m picking on you



**************Elena
No Ton, you’re not picking on me, we’re out on a stroll in kew gardens!! And he continues:


but i’m going to continue to respond because, although the same old familiar patterns are emerging (why do you suppose that is?), nevertheless i hold out some hope for you.
this IS a “conversation” elena, even though it is not to your liking… when the “conversation” here is not to your liking, that is, when your sense of authority is questioned or challenged, you become defensive and accusatory which prevents you from “hearing” what is being “said” — so we end up going ’round and ’round and ’round… but i’ll keep at it for a while.
you say i “treat your perception as if etc…” but i NEVER treated your perception as if it were “a finished theory,” that’s just plainly absurd when quite the opposite is true. you say that you “would like to present ideas so they can be looked at… etc.” well, you have done so, and i have responded to your ideas… and i never said the ideas you’re so “identified” with “are not good enough” — what i did was to offer sources for some alternative perspectives…. and yes i have looked at your precious ideas “in detail” and i have considered them “seriously” — seriously enough to respond, but you don’t like the responses you’re getting and that’s ok with me because i’m not here to please you.



**************Elena
Not for a second Ton, you simply took the opportunity to say all the things you could not say on my site knowing that you would be backed by everyone on that blog. And you continue:


as for my understanding of what i read, you have no idea, but here’s another clue that will help you more than trying to know what i understand: you would do well to be more concerned about YOUR OWN understanding, or rather the lack thereof. what you should understant is that i’m not here to spoon feed you, i’ve tried to encourage you to grow up and do your own homework…


**************Elena
Do my homework means working for you until I am good enough but I am good enough now my friend, I am actually pretty wonderful already, here, on my own and knowing life is long!---------

but that annoys you, so you lash out.



**************Elena
my poor fellowship of friends bloggers. You’ve been lashing out at me all along and if I say what you’re doing you ban me! Life is long my friends, all too wonderfully long and you will see your selves and everyone will see WHY AND HOW you supported the abuses in the FELLOWSHIP CULT by keeping equally silent when all the abuse went on.




Ton: maybe it comes from walking so long in lock-step with your fellow cultists, but i really think that what you want is nothing more than someone who will agree with you, someone who will support your fragile, inflated ego. as long as the other person agrees with you or doesn’t challenge you, then everything is love and kisses, but when your sense of authority is called into question, the daggers come out… this little spat with nigel is the latest case in point.
i’m NOT here to massage your ego elena… why do you think i posted that link on “ego-death” ? that was intended for you my dear, did you study the topic in any depth, or did you simply ignore it? elena, here’s a bit of tough love for you — your problem is that you’re on a major ego-trip… it’s past time to get over yourself, but it’s not too late.



**************Elena
And then here we have Nigel flipping again. One at least realizing the deep meaning of it all! They’ll probably ban him shortly too if he doesn’t shut up! Nigel love, if you like to be there you better shut your beak!!
98. nige - April 11, 2010
Now elena robust happiness on the blog has been at this juncture achieved i have a dream that requires your financial commitment and my commitment to your enlightment because of your 9th lifetime role. The bishop blaize pub on exeter quayside has an example of our ‘city of robust love’ walt whitman, the complete poems penguin edition page 164 . gay pride had a massive coming out of the woodwork this friday gone and i flirted with the radical babes in the pub – you don’t need to have sex in bed to really have sex in its full, nourishing capacity – i would be so happy to introduce you to my ‘nighest’ friends. The cutain of doubt will be lifted…..trust…..trust…..trust.
Chapman spent her youth moving frequently due to her father’s Air Force career. Teaching herself to play guitar on an instrument that was intended as a gift for her father, Chapman wrote her first song at age 11. While singing in clubs in… Read More
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99. fofblogmoderator - April 11, 2010
Sorry, but I have no time for diplomacy. The Elena experiment is over. If people don’t like it, someone can volunteer to take over the blog.


**************Elena
And this amazing comment from the fofblogmoderator giving his blessing to the show. WOW!
100. nige - April 11, 2010
fofbm
And I am gritting my cross-bite malocclusion mouth on the end of the rope. Steve,,,,,my email address is nhprice@gmail.com if you can buzz me operating method/conduct/requirements. I have medium haul psychological patience.
“Leaders approach chaos and order with the authority of personal magnetism legitimized with a commitment to their own destiny”
Abraham Zoliznic – Business Magazine – June 1989
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