FOF Blog. women and malignancy in the FOF -We are One.

I just found the following posts in the fofblog. Anna's observation is so very valid. But women are only just beginning to actually speak out there which is wonderful! The voices are clearer. It's also good to hear them in a sort of "dialogue". We were unable to do that when I participated.  It was easier to attack what was not wanted to be said out loud. 

On the subject of malignancy in the fofmembers I don't think that there is such a thing as "conscious malignancy", but unconsciousness. What is most shocking about brainwashing is not that people become malignant at will but that everything they do becomes justifiable within the context of the formatory apparatus' adaptation. Mr. Haven was the mind behind the cult and managed to convince each and every member that his interpretation of Robert's whims, eccentricities and atrocities, needed to be accepted, worked with and sublimated. In every sense, his own weaknesses were sublimated if Robert's were. What he did with himself became at least "normal" if he managed to convince everyone that what Robert did with his self and the men around him was "divine". 

The deep tragedy for the people in the fof is that they don't realize the extent to which they've hang up their lives in the tragedy of two sick men willing to support and justify each other's acts at all cost: the members.

Evil is widespread in every cultic institution if by evil we understand the ability of some people to act against an individual's freedoms and rights. One cannot understand the damages people go through in such an institution if one cannot understand rights and freedoms objectively. That is, as innate qualities necessary for human development.

Freedom of speech, freedom of expression is not just the ability of someone to say what he or she thinks but the life giving activity in no matter what community that allows people to evolve. If "evolution" is the objective, we need to realize that the human spirit cannot evolve in constriction and blind obedience. Every individual must participate in the social process of no matter what institution he or she belongs to. Participate fully in every decision on how life is to take place. Men as much as women and increasingly children must be able to realize that they are in the hands of people able to dialogue with each other with profound love and respect for life. 

There is no freedom to "be" in cults and the cult turns against all the participants but they justify the horror too weak to hold their own self above the brainwashing. Brainwashing in cults is the most weakening and effective brainwashing of all institutions because it is performed with the innocent willingness of the members. They systematically turn against themselves not because they are consciously malignant but because they were unable to reach any level of consciousness that could hold their "self" above the status quo and the authority of the Guru's godliness. Cults, are the epitomy of dictatorship in the sphere of religion. People's emotional centers are meticulously trained to sacrifice their own self at the service of the guru who is adapted into a Whmiraculous figure whose all acts are beyond human standards allowing him or her to get away with murder. The guru is a psychopath that has been sculpted into one by the blind obedience of his followers no matter how much talent of his own he had before. The cult is a social phenomenon, that is, it is all the participants what make it so, not just an individual doing evil things. Looked at objectively, what we should be able to explore is the relationships we human beings have to authority. Why, when we are too weak to be our own self and apply our wisdom to our lives, we allow others to take the reigns of our will. Why in our times children are hurt so badly that adults are still too hurt and immature to take the reigns of their own lives and instead, willingly submit to the rule of a guru they've turned into a pseudo King-Priest just as willing to suck out their lives. 

Then the question of "life" itself gives us the opportunity to observe what "freedom" and "rights" mean.  An individual cannot develop without freedom and a society cannot evolve without rights. "Obedience" without consciousness of "life" is madness. Anyone can be turned into a "bee" in that condition. 

The rights in constitutions are not just political ideals made to hold a government in place, they are the understanding that life flows generously amongst the people when the individual can move freely within the framework of the law. If the laws turn against the individual and submit him as is widely happening in our societies and institutions, then life ceases to be "life-giving" and authority and power turns against the people. Blind authority, sublimated authority at the service of a "beyond" without practical understanding of our lives and the scope of their reach within our "communities" makes its followers as blind and deadly as their leaders. The inability to stand up for "life" in all its dimension, that is for the right to live out one's self with all of one's mistakes together with the people that one happens to be and instead submit one's self to the rule of no matter what man or woman willing to annihilate one's will for no matter what ideal, is deadly in our times: The King is Dead and every time we assume a hierarchic nobility in our present relationships, we are denying our selves, that is, every individual, to act on his own consciousness.  The issue today is not only that the King is Dead but that the Priest is also Dead. Divine authority, that is, the right to "consciousness" belongs to each and every human being. We are each responsible for "life". We are each responsible for each other and we are each responsible for our world and everything that happens in it. 

It is not only that every man is called upon to find the solution, it is that every man is in his and her own self, the solution: "life" and the ability to stand up for it wherever he or she walks the land. 

To know that we are not only not just people at the service of power allowing it to enslave us in multiple forms in our daily struggle but that WE, each human being is "life", that is, that each human being carries within himself the "Spirit" able to stand, defend and actualize what is good, beautiful and "decent". And by "decent" I don't mean the morality of immorality but the ability to protect and pull our selves away from our most vicious and criminal behavior and reinstate our will as human beings replacing the animal within us by the Human being in us. 

Authoritarian organizations, cults and institutions are good for animals in nature but culture cannot survive in dictatorships. Culture is life in a society just as creation is life in the individual. The individual cannot create if he or she has to submit their will to another man or woman. To become objective about our selves as human beings, means that we are mature enough to understand that we, each and every one of us, is responsible for the whole. What, when and where, who, by whom and at what time. Why. Everything that happens around us is our responsibility. Leaving "life" for someone else to organize and submit us reveals our immaturity as human beings and reveals our "clan" animal behavior. "Mass" behavior is nothing else but the instinctive animality in human beings. 

That we are each able to respond for life and that in so doing there is a harmonious response does not mean that we are acting on mass but that the individual has become mature enough to respond "objectively" to the needs of the moment. If, for example, "we" act to protect the Earth from the unconsciousness of greed, it does not mean that we are giving up our individuality or consciousness of it, it means that many of us understand the objective need to act in the protection of our home: the Earth. 

That we, the people of today, the people whose "lives" are being lived in these times, stand above our conditionings and state that this world be protected from the rampant corruption and abuse of the authorities in the different realms of power in all institutions, means that We the People of this World have become aware of the objective power of our lives and our responsibility with the human being as a developing entity. That we in our times, do our part to protect our world for future generations to grow and develop, is not just a duty that we are to perform with obedience but a right that we are to perform with joy. 

It is not our duty to obey, it is our duty to BE. "Being" is the state in which the individual is able to incarnate "life" and its "life-giving" force against everything that acts against it. The conquest of "our selves", the conquest of our consciousness of our selves as One Human Being struggling to actualize the power of "life" in the realm of the physical, is the most beautiful endeavor that any man will ever begin. That we "paint" this world with our acts and live our selves out in its disappearing "reality"only to state that we have "lived" a "decent" life, that is, that we have loved and responded consciously for everything around us and left it a better place for coming generations, makes every life heroic. The hero knows that the only thing that needs to be preserved is life itself and in his and her consciousness a human being IS life itself: the summit of creation: the ability to create and recreate its principles in our every day practice, for the short period of our existence.  

http://fofdiscussion.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/fellowship-of-friendsliving-presencepathway-to-presence-discussion-–-part-111/

95. Anna - September 3, 2011

Josiane, Shirley,

Post under a man’s name. You get treated better.

Trust me. I’ve tried it.

96. Shirley - September 3, 2011

I’d like to add that I don’t have well-defined thoughts about good and evil. Perhaps like many people, I know what repels me, but can’t always articulate why. For ex., why do I feel that RB is in a different class of malevolence than the guys doing the Meet Up groups? Is it the scale of RB’s acts, and how he deliberately misguides so many people who are “searching for the miraculous” (etc)? On the other hand, I looked at one of the Meet-Up sites when Ames mentioned it, and saw Ames’ comment, before Abd. removed it. I think the removal of Ames’ comment indicates the lack of openness of the Meet-Up sites, and that those sites are not for true discussions but to encourage new people to find themselves attracted to the FF people leading those meetings and, before you know it, find themselves at FF prospective student meetings.

97. For the record - September 3, 2011

Josiane and Shirley,

Something to think about: Maybe your inability to see malevolence in your former fellow fof followers is the same inability that most of us had for a certain amount of time in seeing the malevolence in Robert Burton.

I won’t try to answer that for either of you — you’ll have to do that for yourselves. But for me, that was definitely the case. Just as it was difficult for me to believe that someone I considered a friend in the FOF would knowingly lie about important matters, it was difficult for me to believe the same about Robert Burton. Eventually I could see that Robert Burton was “a liar” — which by the way, just means someone who habitually lies.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to realize that his closest followers would adopt and imitate and manifest the same trait. When you’re defending your tenaciously held view of the world that you have stubbornly held onto for many years, and especially when the ego gets involved defending your supposed superiority over others, lying seems like a small thing.

The more you push back at Bruce and X-Ray, the more I wonder whether or not you’ve entirely escaped from the cult and its group think. Remember: Probably the main ingredient for keeping people on board with everything is to convince them that things really aren’t that bad, and that people in the group really aren’t that bad. At some point, sensing a malignancy is the only way to really remove yourself — both physically and mentally and emotionally.