Suicide in The Fellowship of Friends Cult, aka Pathway to Presence

121. Arthur - August 27, 2011

I wonder how many in the current FOF think Robert Burton is such a such that they would submit to a Jim Jones suicide pact?

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-–-part-110/

Elena: I found the latter in the fofblog and put like that is not understanding the question of cults or the FOF cult in particular. For one, the gradual dismantling of people's personality has already taken place and there are hundreds of Fellowship members that no longer have enough will to leave the cult even if they ever realized it to be a good idea. They're I or self does not follow their intellectual or emotional centers. These have already been de-structured to the point that no matter how reasonable they thought or how much they needed human support, their I or self is unable to act on their pleas. This is important to observe if one is serious in trying to understand what actually happens in cults. The I of the members, their sense of themselves, their individuality, has been replaced by their place in the cult under the authority of the guru. The guru has replaced their free will and they have given up their free will in the conviction that giving it up will lead them to "heaven" or that at least, if they are obedient of the "master" who they believe a divinity, they will be protected from "hell" and suffering. Most cult members of our times are much more programed by the traditional christian mentality of heaven and hell and they are already very much prone to submission and obedience by the time they join the cult.  The member must be convinced of the divinity of the guru but convincing him or her is not difficult at all. It just takes some people to be obeying the guru for others to imitate the obedience. This allows him or her to commit and comply unconditionally, that is, to sacrifice his and her own free will to the will of the guru and the subsequent acts of satisfying each and every one of his whims becomes the act of "adoration". Sacrifice and adoration to the false calf becomes the only meaning of their every day worthless lives.

To ask wether people in the fellowship cult would be willing to commit suicide like in Jonestown is not the right question if we wish to understand suicide in the Fellowship cult, because it is not  taking into account the actual differences between the two cults. Evil learns its lessons and one should be able to realize that it learnt the mistakes it made in Jonestown to not make them as crudely in following cults. The Fellowship cult is much more "refined" than Jonestown. It completely abolished second line of work and jumped from self annihilation to divine surrender. It did not confront society or the social structure of capitalism like Jonestown did, it simply killed the "six billion dead people of the planet". It does not need to argue with "life" because it killed it. It is smart enough to stay so in line with it that it does not need to challenge it: it simply disappeared it and became invisible to it in complying with each and all its "laws" while at the same time, abolishing the human (s) and leaving only the divine guru. 

The people in Jonestown committed suicide at a critical moment in which the confrontation with life was too blunt to keep it a secret and the guru knew it. He had to force people into a sublimation of the horrors they had lived so that the horrors they had gone through would not be looked at bare and square. 

Robert Burton does not need all that. His sex life is widely accepted and supported. His abuses are too common in life to be questionable and every one inside likes the gold alchemy "glamour" convinced that trading the facts of life for an imaginary glitter is a deal worth paying for: it is the middle classes' opportunity to live out its frustrated dreams of belonging to an upper class. 

So NO, the members of the Fellowship cult will probably not commit suicide en masse like the people in Jonestown. They have already sacrificed their will to the guru so they are already non existent. Some will commit suicide like Abraham Goldman when the pain is too severe to avoid it, others will dry away in their own absence. The body does not go too far without one's presence. It continues to do what it's told but withers away. It dies of "self" starvation. 

It is interesting how the System turned around against the people and was used to enslave them. Now that I am working with it again it is easy to find how exactly it was used to manipulate people. I'll write about it in later posts. For now, the idea of "giving up one's will" to the teacher is one of the ideas that was manipulated and used against the members. In a real School, a teacher would assume authority for only some time, while the pupil strengthens and coordinates his or her own self based on trust. To put the pupil in contact with his and her own self is the aim of a true teacher, not to replace the will of the pupil for ever. Replacing the "life" within every individual, the "guru" of the cult puts the members in a retrograde disintegrating process. Keeping the reigns of the pupil's will is the most pervasive act any teacher can do and the consequences are as damaging for him as for the pupil. He might abuse and profit from it for some time but in the long run, the weight of those souls hanging on to his will keep them all entrenched. 

Mass Suicide is not necessary in a cult like the Fellowship of Friends. The members are already in an accelerated form of self annihilation: They are disappearing en masse without needing to spill blood. It is the perfection of slavery: people voluntarily self sacrificing themselves for the eccentricities of a sociopath. Nothing noble or humane about it: simply rampant decadence. 

On social cohesion from fofblog

The following looks an interesting subject that should appear hear. It's good to see other people thinking about it. The approach is good, I suppose social cohesion is possible when the individual meets his own self and with that experience the fact of that cohesion in such a way that one would not dream of hurting others who are part of one's self just like a cell in the body would not act against another of its kind. 

105. 2011 - August 26, 2011

excuse the non sequitor- I thought it might be interesting to follow this thread from a web site (Zero Hedge) blog that I frequent. It’s a little lengthy but it might be of some interest to the people here to see how threads e/de/volve”. If it seems long we can have the moderator delete it.

-eureka-
“Let’s contemplate and discuss “social cohesion”… What is “social cohesion”? How can we have it – in a dynamic way, so it doesn’t diappear, sucked up by power or bureaucracy? If Libertarianism is based solely on individual pursuit of happiness, how can it possibly create social cohesion?
I want to hear all your descriptioms of dynamic cohesion – if such a concept/model is at all a real possibility.
OR – is U.S. quite simply too big and too divided – ethnically, culturally, financially, territorially – to ever be socially cohesive, and therefore by definition destined to fracture?
Let’s go a little deeper for a while. Let’s see if we have any real brain power – and any real interest in each other’s ideas – and thus by extension in community in general and this country in particular.
Thank you all. I await your intellectual contributions to our common potential for dynamic cohesion.”

-GoldBricker-
‘Your question is an old one.
See Plato’s Republic. Use the Allan Bloom translation.
Plato says that the state won’t hold together if it’s every man for himself, or a few in charge against all the rest. He holds that a form of organization arrived at by reason has the best chance, and says how he proposes to get there. He recognizes all sorts of concepts, including the value of division of labor and comparative advantage.”

-Temporalist-
First I think you should get a better definition of “Libertarianism” because it is not just about “individual pursuit of happiness” it is about the LIBERTY to do things even those that make you miserable too or even kill you as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else or their property.
People take things for granted when it is right there all along.  The U.S. Constitution has been disregarded for too long but one day it will be the law of the land again.  Perhaps the Declaration of Independence is one definition of Libertarianism for you; as it points out it is about “rights” not “happiness” and without Rule of Law, which has been abandoned in most of the modern world, there can be no “social cohesion.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
 
-Random_Robert-
Where this country has failed is in preserving the separation of church and state…  bear with me.
I’m not talking church in the Roman-Catholic, bible toting, mass on Sunday sense.
The church that has captured .gov is the church which espouses the “God’s work” of one Lloyd Blankfein.
You must realize that these uber-rich sociopaths (the same ones who no posess adequate concentration of wealth that they effectively chart the course of society) are compelled to fight for the status quo only to validate their own self righteousness… It is a religion to them, and they are the high Priests.
Does the Catholic Bishop truly believe that his robe and collar are his ticket to heaven, even as he is sodomizing the alter-boy in the confessional booth? Without seeing into the mind of a sociopath, that question can never be answered.
This status-quo, which is so vehemently defended, either creates sociopaths, or it simply offers them the nutrient-rich environment to thrive.  Either way, it must yield to entropy.
The Constitution?  the Constitution is easily summed up in 3 bullet points:
1) Express yourself
2) Represent yourself
3) Defend yourself
Societal cohesion is born out of the underlying respect that everyone deserves these 3 liberties just as much as anyone else does…
Deny the sociopath the ability to “do right” by you, and you remove their power to corrupt society.
 
-SteveNYC-
Firstly, to be “in pursuit” can not lead to lasting happiness, the statement was flawed from day 1. The “pursuit” itself of something, anything, will ensure that you can not become “one” with that thing as the desire to have it clouds your inherent relationship with it. Even when one gets what one pursues, it is but fleeting. When the illusion breaks down, so does the temporary state of happiness. In order to be happy, don’t pursue.
Secondly, there is limited understanding not just in this country but in all the world right now, about what we are. The fact that we are all linked, one, has been blown apart by the lies and misinformation rammed down our throats day after day after day by media, politicians, business leaders, neighbors etc. Until we realize what we are, “dynamic cohesion” is just a concept, a pipe dream. Our priorities as a race right now are all f*cked up.
Ok, that’s my 2 cents…..

-EvlTheCat-
To be “in pursuit” of something is subjective.  As a base case place a man in the woods with nothing but a knife and a string and tell him to survive.  If he does not choose to be “in pursuit” of satisfying his basic needs then he is as good as dead.  If living does not make you happy then that is because you cease to appreciate what the natural world has to offer, or you have been convinced that a reward awaits you in a better place after you die..  This is the crux of the problem complex societies create; ceasing to understand the beauty and necessity of the natural world and to appreciate our place in it.
Our society, dependent of fossil fuels, has made the pursuit of necessity an easy task.  Upon removing the need to pursue basic needs people create abstract necessities to pursue.  Our need to dominate our natural surroundings is a perversely abstracted concept at this point.  When you pursue abstraction then I agree you will never be happy.
At this point requiring our abstracted world to revert to some more balanced natural state is inconceivable.  Central planners still believe this can be achieved by force, through laws, and elite run bureaucracies.  All perversions for the need to dominate our surroundings instead of living in balance with it.
As to the second part of your statement, I tend to agree with it, but on a cosmic scale as opposed to limiting it to a planetary scale.

-narnia-
if history has taught us anything, it is that “social cohesion” cannot be mandated by force.  no one can make me like you or value what you value and vice-versa.  true “social cohesion” only comes when you and I come together voluntarily.  the more you try to make that involuntary, the less likely we are to peacefully coexist

El Yo. The Self.

It seems important to clarify the idea that the I in the human being is independent from functions even if it’s difficult to understand that independence. Real I is not thought, feeling, moving or digestion. The sphere of the I is more closely connected to states of consciousness tthan to centers and their functions. “Functions” are conditioned by the state of consciousness that embraces them. The greater the state of consciousness , the greater the control of functions.

In the sphere of the  I, to call it somehow, will, dignity, consciousness, possitive emotions in the superior emotional center and the understanding of the laws that reign over the processes we are living through are included. To conceive one’s self independent from functions is to begin understanding the being rather than the being "this" or "that" way of the human being. The “ser”  and not the “estar”. In spanish the difference is very clear, in english to be is the same for ser or estar but they are two very different dimensions. One is speaking about the being, the other about the state of the being. To be is different to being well or not well. Being is beyond good or bad, well or unwell. Consciousness of the whole does not allow for  polarizationI. It lives itself out in the connectedness of all things. Cosciousness implies responsability and there is no possibility of judging as if that which could have been judged were not a part of one’s own responsability, one’s own self. Compassion as a positive emotion that cannot be turned into its opposite belongs to a state of consciousness in the superior emotional center. Likewise, dignity, humility and grace.

The latter are “qualities” of being and the differences between I, consciousness and superior centers is only in language. They are all, in fact, aspects of Unity.  

El Yo

 Me parece importante aclarar la idea de que el Yo en el ser humano es independiente de las funciones aunque nos sea difícil comprender su independencia. El Yo real no es el pensar, ni el sentir, ni el moverse, ni el digerir alimento. La esfera del yo esta más estrechamente ligada a los estados de consciencia que a los centros y sus funciones. Las “funciones” que realizamos las realizamos condicionados por el estado de consciencia que nos alberga. A mayor estado de consciencia, mayor control sobre nuestras funciones.

La esfera del yo, por llamarla de alguna manera, incluye la voluntad, la dignidad, la conciencia, las emociones positivas del centro emocional superior y la comprensión de las leyes en los procesos que vivimos por mencionar tan solo algunos aspectos. Concebirse independiente de las funciones es empezar a comprender el ser más que el estar del ser humano. “Ser” es distinto a estar bien o mal. El ser está más allá del bien y del mal. La consciencia del “todo” no permite la polarización de las cosas sino su conectividad. En la medida en que se es consciente se es responsable y no existe la posibilidad de “juzgar” como si eso que se juzga no fuese parte integral de la propia responsabilidad. El sufrimiento que implica ser responsable no se experimenta con identificación sino con compasión. Como emoción positiva que no puede ser volteada en un opuesto, la compasión pertenece a un estado de consciencia del centro emocional superior. De igual manera la dignidad, la humildad, la gracia . Estas últimas son cualidades del ser y las diferencias entre el yo, la consciencia y los centros superiores se da tan solo en el lenguaje. Todos son en realidad aspectos de la Unidad. 

The King, The Government and the Self

Yesterday I wrote:


"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."


The idea that we are One with the Government or the Church or the Theater or the Park is so new and rare to me that even for me this paragraph feels strange today. The magic of writing is that what is inside writes itself out through us and uses us as instruments to express itself. I learn from it, actualize myself in it, understand. The activity of writing is a journey in the dimensions within and without. Today, yesterday's journey sounds strange so I wonder how alien it must sound to others to state that we are in fact One with our governments, churches, theaters, parks... in these times in which what we've been brought up to feel is that we are separate, "individual". The wonder of such separation is that we've come to explore the fact that we are allowed to not agree with each other and don't have to go to war about it. That there can be so many religious beliefs and that we don't have to kill each other for it must be the beginning of humaneness and that we can disagree about almost all things and not kill each other about it must be the divine in our lives and yet that in so doing we isolate our selves in an individualism that ends up being totally disconnected to everything else in a selfishness without borders is as questionable as the former for we no longer have to kill each other, we simply don't acknowledge each other's existence and each struggles to get away with whatever is possible.


Are we having to go through this "individualism" to understand the "I"? The independence of the self? or the power of being? The fact that I, individual, can decide my own destiny without having to pay tribute to the clan or the king? Is capitalism in some way the culmination of such success? That I can run along my business without the intervention of the law and become at least economically as powerful as a king even if without any of his attributes?


That is perhaps the real question worth exploring: in giving ourselves the freedom to own our lands as much as our lives have we gone so far beyond that we've done it without the slightest consideration for the whole? And without the whole aren't we simply puppet kings of our own illusion? 


In the time of kings were we not One with the King? Were we not willing to give our lives to him who represented the whole? What has happened to us, human beings in the loss of that unity of being? And then, have we really disconnected our selves from the king or have we erected trillions of tiny little kings that have taken the whole and split it apart into millions of pieces without regard for the whole? Little kings in every sphere: dictators, divas, fathers and husband- abusers, and even little tyrant queens.


The Earth use to belong to a few kings that protected their piece and fought with each other, conquered and fused the cultures into each other. Now we have millions of little kings fighting for the pieces that don't yet belong to someone and trying to destroy those who own what they are after. Looked at coldly, man in that sphere is no more than an instinctive animal. The king erected himself as an alpha dog that the people followed or followed but in that unity, were there values? I  get the sense that in the unity of those clans there was a meaning to life that has been lost altogether. That the whole clan worked not only for the daily bread of surviving but for the daily struggle to survive their own death be it in the monumentality of the culture or in the aftermath. 


Have we human beings evolved?


What do we have today? Does the monumentality of our culture reveal enough human integrity? Are the divas of our times in the arts and sports worth the price? or do we pay such amount because we do not know what to do with our boot? Do the little kings of the times pay tribute to themselves walking around with such stars? 


As I write I wonder if it was any better in the time of kings or if its the romanticism of looking back what gives the taste of a people that were not as split as us for I don't even have to go back to the kings to see that the elder of my times have an integrity about themselves that my generation had already lost. 


Was it the T.V. what split us into thousands of non-beings? Moving back and forth into worlds that weren't our own? Living the film what we could not live in our every day lives and enacting the illusion with a reality that we couldn't grasp?


Today there is a distance between the government and the citizen that marks the pace of every abuse. Abuse against the king was an abuse against the whole and merited death. Today abuse against no matter who, why or how is covered up and hidden for mostly it is those in economic power who kill without being checked. The petty criminal is only their reflection in the mirror of life, the other side of the coin of a world that is upside down and backwards. The police and the military institution is designed to keep the status quo at no matter the cost.


How much more strange could a statement like that sound in such a reality? That we are One with the government, One with the church, One with the theater and the park, the industry and the scientific laboratory. It takes an effort to extend one's self into such realms and understand that we are each personally responsible for the institutions that have come to govern our lives.


There is a freedom to the individual that can see the world turn separately from his or her own dimension because the "world" moves at its own pace but that freedom is rare and most people move separate from the "world" in an alienation that reflects their disempowerment. In the infinite dialogue between the individual and the world lie all the possibilities. The "world" might not have yet reached the state in which it can guarantee justice and equality to each individual but every individual can reach a state of justice and equality within themselves. That justice and equality is the realization of our oneness in another dimension. From that dimension, the actualization of such reality in our everyday lives, becomes the objective aim of life. 


Thought in writing, is the possibility of stating the dialogue between multiple dimensions both within and without our selves. I beg you forgive me if the channel isn't as clean as I aim to establish it. 

The fofblog moderator

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-–-part-109/

46. J. D. - August 17, 2011

fofblogmoderator

I’m not very active on this blog and I’m no devil’s advocate, but I have to say that you are in some measure accountable for the childish time-out handed to the bloggers. Not much for enforcing it, but because you have failed to address the abuse shown on this blog for quite a while. It has been brought to your attention before, when it was quieter, but you failed to take any action. Is it some kind of fear or just apathy? This form of bullying has gone unnoticed or ignored for a long time, me included, until now (Ty GV) and I find the indifference displayed by most of us quite troublesome. It is quite hypocritical to think that we are somehow carrying on a healing process from the conditioning of the cult, and yet we remain blind to things like this in our “home”.

Elena:

It's strange to observe how long it takes for people to acknowledge the truth about a situation. I personally believe Steve has done a great job being practically invisible in the fofblog and that there is an advantage to that "take" on "moderation" but a moderator should be so much more than that. That people settle for the same invisible moderation that is far from just or conscious and makes the decision to ban those who question them more than they are willing to take, simply states the level of being of a population that left a cult to fund another one. The subtlety of the excuses do not alter the facts. That we cannot ask for more than what we are and that it takes years and years for people to acknowledge their flaws is the process of growing up into what we could have done, had we been more mature.

Stating at last that Steve failed to address the abuse shown on the blog for quite a while must be an oxymoron if I understand correctly what oxymoron means. He allowed abuses for so long that the play was written out so that I would in turn become as hopelessly abusive as them and they would then have the excuse they needed to ban me. Not that the banner of victim suits me, I hit as hard as I could, but the banner of innocence and lack of responsibility for what happened suits them a lot less. This means that I am not inclined to justify my abuses in the fofblog. I acknowledged them already enough times and apologized. The opportunity that this gives us is to observe how long it takes a group of people to watch themselves and their behavior and begin to acknowledge the truth about what actually happens. 

They didn't ban me, I mean you if you are reading, because I said swear words, that was only the excuse they needed, they banned me because they were questioned to the bones about the passive position they took in relation to the Fellowship Cult. They banned me because I called for action, real, serious and definitive and labelled their fascism in not doing so. 

"J.D:This form of bullying has gone unnoticed or ignored for a long time, me included, until now (Ty GV) and I find the indifference displayed by most of us quite troublesome."

To hear someone acknowledge how troublesome it is to realize how they ALL remained silent to the abuse and the deep questions that were fought between us, is like balm to my heart. It is not that being banned was not positive for me, I have much learnt from it. I realize that had I been stronger and healthier and not just come out of a cult after seventeen years, I might have had the patience and the love to hold myself in the position that I understood necessary without offending anyone but that my abuse came long after I was abused by too many without the intervention of the moderator or others, is a fact. The strange thing about the truth, the facts, is that they continue to act on our being and straighten themselves out one way or the other in the long run. 

The second time I was banned for pointing out the manipulative questioning Ton was doing to me and getting harshly insulted by Nigel without reacting negatively to him, did show the level of biasness that the moderator and others have reached. That biasness in order to avoid confronting the real issues is what becomes criminal in all organizations, “cultish”. They “banish” what they don’t want to see or hear.  That Brucelevy, who I nevertheless firmly admire and respect, turned his whole weight against me because I "over did it", together with others who never "took me" and that in chorus they protected their act of banning me does not in any way diminish the fact that they did so because they were unable and unwilling to face the deep issues: 

That the Fellowship cult needs to be confronted, questioned and closed for good

That cults of the kind need to be overcome by humanity

That we are mature enough to acknowledge the harm they do to people and able to close them down.

That we, ex-members of the fellowship cult need to take responsibility for those leaving and help them out assuming the job of helping them find jobs and support. That we need an equally powerful institution to take responsibility for the institutions harming people.

That were we fully conscious of the horror we've been through we would continue our work fighting cults everywhere in the world because the fellowship is only one minute experience that is repeating itself everywhere with frightening possibilities. The “dismembering” of the human being into cults, parties, industries, sports, scientists, artists is an schizophrenia that individuals in every single activity are suffering beyond comprehension.

In the sphere of the religious, the human being today is at the mercy of gurus who take the suffering of people for their profit succumbing into an even greater slavery than the one they were running away from. Its an imperative for the human being of today to be able to confront his and her own life and participate in society without pretending to live out his emotional-religious life in a cult. 


Isolating our selves in a cult, in a political party, in the arena of sports or as mad scientists separated from the rest is just that: madness. Every human being must develop every side of his religious, political, physical, intellectual, sexual, artistic being. That we actualize all aspect of life itself: religious and political, social and economic, artistic and physical without separating them into cults of their own is necessary to avoid the schizophrenia on the individual.

The individual, in "our" ignorance, does not realize that the world today is in a race of separating spheres that will destroy it in the long run if they are not checked and healed. The experience of "unity", of "harmony", of "coherence" and "cohesion"  in social "life", is an aspect of a "civilized human". 


We cannot continue to allow for the religious aspects of our emotional life to be banned from our lives and hidden in cults away from the current of socio-political life, just as we cannot continue to allow for the political aspects of our intellectual life to be reduced to hierarchic parties without objective responsibility. NO ONE is doing this to US. We are all part and parcel of a process that is living itself out, the process of becoming human beings in our own right. We are ALL equally responsible, and equally responsible for each other.

It's strange to observe how a man who served the Fellowship cult all his life continues to serve the people with his death. That having served the darkest side of the Fellowship and being discarded for it can now serve to open other member's eyes about their situation. It is a good thing that all things can turn into positive ones, that we do not live our lives in vain. Life itself is like a child’s learning to walk through the fall and in its scale, death wrings our hearts into an understanding that cannot be avoided forever.

The real miracle is in the fact that "life" is threads of a force that we cannot see but are living themselves out. That the physical reality simply knits but that it is in the physical reality that we are meant to actualize our love that is no other than the actualization of our being and its unity, diversified. We are fish in the Ocean of Life and it lives itself out in our swimming.

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. 

On A. Goldman's Suicide and Pathway to Presence Cult

And will Robert have Abraham Goldman's name erased from every paper in the Fellowship Cult aka Pathway to Presence like he has done with the other members that committed suicide? Because it shames him to embrace the people that supported him and that he turned his back on? Because all in the inner circle are willing to back him up and hide the horrors of the Fellowship Cult?

This death will not be forgotten as easily as they forgot the death of so many others. Abraham Goldman believed in what he did for the Fellowship Cult and Robert Burton and turning their back on him will be too difficult a task but acknowledging it will be no less so. That is why they acknowledge only the instinctive suffering that he was going through unable to hold him dear in their womb and realize that he had no one to turn to in his suffering like everyone else in the Fellowship cult who went a step beyond what was "allowed".

It was not "allowed" to go deaf or "take" the act of inifinite piety that Abe had taken. It was not allowed to look in any way different to the rest: well organized Barbies with a Monalisa smile.

There is a tragedy in the man that realizes that he worked his whole life for a moment that never came. That he or she sold his soul to the devil in the hope that at least the devil would recognize him but that that moment never came because the devil is the devil and can never give up his own place. That he toiled in the name of God and struggled for the sake of the devil and was burnt alive before he took his own life. Abraham Goldman is not the first or the last man in the Fellowship cult with this luck. We are shamed not by his will but by the tragedy of its outcome. Robert Burton lives on the demise of his followers. The fact that those in the younger generation are willing to play along with him and discard the older generation that put him in the throne with the hope that they will be recognized  and pampered, speaks only of our human innocense but in its unconsciousness it reveals its greed. The trouble with essence is that it is subject to degenaration. It can be turned against itself because of its innocence.

There is a dignity in the man that takes his life when he acknowledges his shame that the Japanese people well recognize but of which we know little in the West. To say that Abraham Goldman was simply unable to tolerate his physical suffering is to rob him from the dignity that embraces death, however it comes.

I do not condone the things Abraham did to support Robert's cult reign like I do not condone Girard Haven's brainwashing of thousands of people but the tragedy goes well beyond their individual misdeeds. To understand the human drama in which we struggle a whole life to become, within no matter what cult, without ever reaching more than the step in which we acknowledged someone else's life and made him into a puppet guru is tragic enough to judge ourselves for taking our own lives.

There is a dignity that cannot be stolen from anyone's death. In the act of suicide we are not simply declaring our personal defeat, we are also stating the failure of the world in which we lived. Suicide cult members are the symptom of a failure within the organization that reveals its flaws: the question of being, of authority, of the self.

I acknowledge Abraham Goldman's tragedy as my own. I ask for forgiveness for not having had enough courage to fight the Fellowship wisely and for having been unable to inspire more to find their road to life.

Humaneness in the Fellowship cult or the lack of it

Found this on the fofblog and would like to add that I would not be surprised if the facts were that Abe was forbidden to dine with Robert long before, that the fact that he couldn't hear and had to wear strange things to be able to do so made Robert uncomfortable and intruded into his imaginary gold alchemy world without sick or deaf people suffering. I repeatedly saw him ask people who "didn't fit" to not attend his dinners or events, including Mrs. Cambridge, an old veteran of the Fellowship. The other side of the coin was when he used the sick like Mr. Bishop to lead meetings in which their "last word" was in support of the Fellowship. He gained with everyone's misery so do all in the inner circle that support it.

In a way it is interesting to realize that Robert himself will give the members the opportunity to realize what they invested their lives into by discarding them as soon as they are of no use to his interests. Most, like Abe, will not be able to tolerate it and finding no purpose to their presence, opt to leave tragically.

We can measure the level of Consciousness of any institution by the human standard within it. The standard everywhere today is miserable but in cults it is dramatically so because the innocent people that compose them actually sacrifice themselves for a taste of it without ever being able to experience the gratitude that comes with it. The truly conscious experiences that individuals have within a cult come from their own work and effort, not from the cult that takes the credit and turns them against them.

I still experience the desire to throw up when I remember these things.

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-%e2%80%93-part-107/

011/08/05/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-%e2%80%93-part-107/

2. Shirley - August 6, 2011

I heard that a FF email went out to its members that said Abe had suffered from “instinctive friction” and that he had been scheduled to have another operation regarding his hearing problem on Monday.



To dismiss what Abe must have been going through as “instinctive friction” is so typical of the FF’s attempt to diminish someone’s suffering through the manipulation of concepts.



This is not about whether a person liked or respected Abe, or not. It is to recognize how the FF insulates its members from deeply feeling or thinking about something like intense physical suffering or disability and what it does to a person (hi, debilitating chronic pain, anyone?) and their relationship to the world, or their “self-image.”



In addition, it was reported that Abe left letters for each member of his family.

On Abraham Goldman's death and in his memory

68. waskathleenw - August 2, 2011


Hi folks,

Earlier this evening, I received an email saying that Abraham Goldman killed himself last night. Susan and Rosie came home from the ballet and found him.

The person who contacted me feels that this should be on the blog, but didn’t want her name mentioned. She says she KNOWS it’s not a rumor.

I wasn’t given any more detail than this.

_________________________________________

This post came out in the fofblog telling about Abe's suicide, the long time lawyer of the Fellowship of Friends Cult. I am sorry to hear this and express my compassion to his family and friends.

How many will have to follow before those in the fofblog and greater fellowship actually decide to take serious action?

The deception that every single member within the Fellowship of Friends is in, is such, that it is no surprise that many will follow. I've studied and presented why and how suicide happens in cults consistently in these blogs and went crazy screaming about it in the fofblog, only to get banned because they allegedly had too many people to protect in the Fellowship cult. 

With friends like that, who needs enemies? 

How many do you have to watch die before you act against the cult and help those inside leave? How much more do you have to hear to understand that when people are so trapped they cannot leave on their own free will? How will you feel after more tragedies take place because you were unwilling to move a finger to stop the cult from continuing to run freely?

It is not just the Fellowship cult that is promoting such deaths but all cults everywhere. The tendency that people have to give away their authority to false authorities renders them weak and alienates them from their own self to such an extent that the actual suicide is just the final symptom of a long standing reality.

May we forgive ourselves for not having had the courage to protest louder and more effectively and stop the ongoing madness within the Fellowship of Friends Cult.

My ex-husband writes me beautiful letters telling me about the glory of his state in the cult but should he ever look at himself with the clarity that Mr. Goldman has seen his situation, I would not be surprised if he also opted for such exit. When we build our lives at the cost of other people's lives it catches us, sooner or later. No one gets away from the facts for ever, no one can hold the illusion without it revealing itself. That alone should be enough to grant us the relief that life is wiser than the make up lives that people pretend to hold on to but allowing the tragedy to take place without having done anything about it even though we were much warned, is just another aspect of the same tragedy.

There is no authority where tragedy is rampant. The authority of authority is in the right of people to act against harm even apparently acting against people's free will to decide their destiny. There is no free will in deciding one's destiny if one is acting against one's self and that of others. Objectivity or consciousness is expressed in the law where the law stands above the individuals to protect them from their own self. We live in a consciousless time in which people have lost the meaning of life and are protecting its rampant destruction. People acting against themselves and others cannot be protected by the law to continue doing so. THE LAW must protect them from themselves and if the Law does not stand for LIFE then we have what we have today: millions of people acting against "Life" without being checked by anyone.

Objectivity in understanding the Principles of Life requires that we are clear about what harms or protects the human being:

The Human Being is a social being

Society must embrace every individual and serve as reference to their life providing legitimate opportunities for their development. 

Within society (and by society I mean every group or institution that anyone belongs to) every individual must have equal right to choose and decide what is done with the fruit of their work. The possibility of acting against life itself is simply a crime and is not taken into account.

It is an act against life to alienate individuals from the money they provide to support no matter what institution. The alienation acts against the individual and life itself leaving the profits to the institution that crystallizes in a lifeless automaton sucking out people's life. THAT is a descending octave. Every institution that so uses its authority (and in our days, are there any exceptions?) is the false calf. Every human being is willing to surrender his and her life to an ideal but surrendering our selves to false ideals unable to hold up LIFE itself is THE TRAP. 

LIFE itself doesn't need titles. Human Beings don't need POSITION.  To be acknowledged is a bonus of joy and gratitude, a resplandescent act of recognition from one human being to another that enriches their "being" but the false statuses given in organizations with which people identify are false calfs that tread on crime and alienation from our own selves. We don't need false POSITIONS, we need serious acknowledgement of our objective rights. We need to bring our selves up to our selves. We don't need people in power, we need objective consciousness of objective realities that empower each and every individual to BE the LAW that stands up for life. Speech is an objective reality that every individual must empower his and her own self to enact. To know that one speaks because one IS and has a right to do so, a legitimate human right that no one can take away from our humanity is an understanding of objectivity in our lives. Freedom of Speech cannot occur amongst people who do not understand that Speech is not a freedom that can be given to us by any government or institution but a legitimate quality of our human condition. To stand up for our rights is to stand up for what is human within us. No one can be offended by the act of exercising one's rights. All rights in the constitution are not favors from the government to the people or from institutions to the workers, they are qualities of being human and neglecting to practice one's rights means neglecting to exercise one's humaneness. It is not only that we are born free it is that we must remain free by acknowledging our selves as human beings and practicing our legitimate qualities: the right to speak, to work, to communicate, to education, to decide and participate as an equal to each and every other human being. To share with equal rights what belongs to all of us. To be human today does not mean to belong to a particular nation, class or race but to stand above all differences and hold up the legitimate right of every individual to the objective practice of LIFE. Speech is both an aspect of life and life giving. It is life generating its own impetus of life. It is the voice of the spirit within which all of us can evolve through dialogue. 


We can allow for objective reality to permeate our lives. We can be able to stand above our individualism and allow for legitimate action to permeate the chords of our being. An individual is a string in the instrument of life and our acts are its music. We can allow for the music to enliven our selves. We can be and let it be by not forbidding our selves to legitimate action.


Cults are the game of false authorities: people looking to be someone in a made up world in which they convince themselves of its legitimacy only to find the illusion killed them at the end of the road. There is a legitimacy in all search, in all illusion that must objectify itself but when the illusion replaces reality and builds up its own delusion, we have a pattern of crime in which everyone involved is the victim.

The Fourth Way is The Way of Life and was never meant to be practiced within a cult. Every cult using its principles to live itself out is acting against Life itself. It is very easy to use the ideas against the followers and submit them to a slow process of self annihilation and put them at the service of the cult. 

We live in a Time of Cults in which we can see the same structures being acted out not only in religious organizations but in organizations in every sphere of Life but none of them are as effective in rendering a human being helpless and hopeless, as the religious organizations because the religious organization acts directly in the sphere of the self. Economic organizations have the same pattern but act in the instinctive sphere more strongly than in the sphere of the self. Political and religious organizations are much more dangerous because they relate more powerfully to the self in as much as the power of "authority" is involved. In religious organizations, in as much as we delve into the sphere of the supra-human, a divine authority is evoked to justify the hierarchy  and with it the distribution of "rights" and the individual self is suppressed at the service of the divine authority, a mechanism that is a hundred times more effective than "Position" within the national or social milieu. In the political cult, the dictator is never as effective. 

The "IDEAL" of any cause is important but the religious organization places the ideal above the individual, while in the political organization it has been the "nation" what takes the place of the divine and the individual is as lost in the "masses" as the member in the "we are all beggars". These are all mechanisms to alienate people from their own identity and rights. From one angle, to overcome such illusion is the struggle of every individual, from another angle, to overcome that "pattern" is the struggle of all human beings. 

To Be, as an individual, means that one IS, no matter where. To BE, as human beings, means that we ARE everywhere. That WE are able to uphold the principles of Life above anyone of us acting against it. The "objectivity" of our BEING resides in our capacity to hold up the principles of life everywhere. That is the power of the Law: that should we die for standing up for life, we die alive. That should we live without a law capable of standing up for life, we are already dead. 

That lawyers everywhere as much as people in every walk of life come to understand that it is their responsibility to connect to life itself beyond the institution they are feeding themselves with, is a must. That we begin to act objectively in an already too criminal world, that is, that we begin to act for Life and against all forms of crime, is a must. And that we do it with the necessary compassion and understanding, is an obligation.