The fofblog and its discourse

I had said I wouldn't be looking at the fofblog when I was so hurt after being banned again but it defeats my will! We are chained to each other now, resolution must come but not from ignoring each other. 

32. Elena - May 2, 2010 [Edit]

It’s interesting how the people in the fofblog are beginning to express the same things I’ve always been saying and even more interesting how William here makes reference to diplomacy and how he had no diplomacy either and was as aggressive as other posters. “Diplomacy” what the fofblogmoderator is not willing to have! But William here thinks he can wash his hands off the problem with that meek acknowledgement while those that got banned remain banned! Isn’t it fascinating how we let our selves be known?

The rest of the post is very worth reading because he has a lovely intimacy with the people he’s talking to and is even beginning to use the word “we” which use to scare them all!

At the end where he writes: “Believe me, you need me a lot more than I need you!” there’s great difficulty, the superiority comes out, it won’t help. That whole paragraph is worth looking at because he is in fact expressing his fear: that they will leave him, cut off his friendship but instead of saying that he’s afraid of that and that it would hurt him, he picks up a tone of superiority saying that they need him more than he does and that will distance them. That is how absurd we are acting today because instead of acknowledging that we need and love each other we fall into these acts of superiority. Like Ton who is supposed to be wanting to help me and hasn’t stopped attacking me since he began to speak to me a month ago.

If we were indeed trying to create a culture of higher consciousness, it helped to work with a petri dish that had been washed and sterilized, with no unexpected elements that would muddle the results.

190. William – April 27, 2010
I posted many pages ago, and was driven off by some of the more aggressive posters on this site (in fairness, my diplomacy skills could use some polishing).

I’m returning because of the revival of the ancient diktat nixing contact with former ‘shippers — or rather “discouraging” it, with a huge wallop of velvet-gloved dominance. I suspected that the new policy of “openness” was a temporary ruse, and would change without warning. It did. This is the only way I know to speak to current FOF members en masse — so may I borrow the bullhorn for a moment?

I used to defend this “no contact” policy. It was harsh, but utterly necessary to create a “pure” experiment of consciousness – after all, you wouldn’t expect someone who left the monastery to come back during his lunch hours to hang out with the monks. It was an important decision: you were either in or out. If we were indeed trying to create a culture of higher consciousness, it helped to work with a petri dish that had been washed and sterilized, with no unexpected elements that would muddle the results.

This is true. And it worked. The experiment was kept pure. And as a result I can now say with certainty: The results are in – *and the experiment is a failure!* No “higher consciousness” was created – or at least not any kind of consciousness that is beneficial to the individual, or to society as a whole.

If you go back through this organization’s ancient texts, you will see page after page of aims for the organization that has failed. There were no “six conscious beings.” There was no “seedbed of civilization” – in fact, there was a highly skewed and petrified notion of what culture is, as filtered and distorted through one poorly educated gay man. There was no civilization that survived an earthquake, or nuclear war, or anything else beyond county taxes, and that barely. In fact, if you look around the FOF property, you will see a series of unfinished octaves: the burned-down bistro, the red-tagged theatron, the concrete winery that was never finished, the dilapidated “Apollo d’Oro,” the neglected vineyard. Your Teacher could not “be the words.”

Conscious? My foot! What was considered “consciousness” was in fact an apotheosis of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) behaviors, meticulously focusing on spotless shoes and microscopically-measured table settings. (Not to mention Viennese curtains and chandeliers in trailer parks — you see, I am even trying to embarrass you out of the FOF by appealing to your good taste!) Being conscious “in the moment” was used to buffer conscience, to avoid taking responsibility for oneself, and to circumvent “being the words” from one moment to the next. Gurdjieff, after all, said the measure of man’s being is reliability. Reliability happens *over time*.

This is the nasty truth: every single one of you was a better person when you walked in the front door. Those who are still, in a common-sense meaning of the term, “good people” are living off their diminished principal; they were once *better* people. Every single person that I observed had some big, fatal flaw that became and enlarged and distorted in the FOF beyond normal human bounds – be it lust, greed, laziness, self-importance, self-regard, whatever. (The people who were “closest to Robert” had the highest degree of personal distortion.)

Me too. My natural tendency to duck a fight became outright cowardice, an exaggerated unwillingness to face hard facts, an unwillingness to draw logical conclusions from what I saw (the comment about “bystander effect” in #173 above is a painful reminder), a distended ability to rationalize what I saw with mobius loop kinds of thinking and mental shell games. When I finally saw that the whole showboat was taking people to an isolated desert island – I left.

The hour is late. Now you folks are in an endgame. The drawbridge is going up, but the troops are diminished. You are running out of bucks, and the times are against you. The truth is, any nation that has any substantial internet penetration does not attract new FOF members. And the internet is everywhere.

So you find more and more remote nations to recruit – places where people are too poor to have a water heater, let alone the internet. And you are drawing in students for whom the FOF, in all its garish vulgarity and kitschiness, is a much better prospect for a lucrative future than anything they will find at home. These are what you call “magnetic centers.”

In any case, fresh meat won’t save you: These people will not bring money into the FOF, though they will continue supplying you with sexual partners (a.k.a. prostitutes) beyond what your native skills would attract. The dollars are going to go down, once you’ve finally exhausted the coffers of people who were once householders, or who once leached off people who were householders.

Let’s face it: If you had read the stuff about Robert’s behavior before joining — you would have kept a wide berth, too! This is the miserable secret truth no one will talk about in the FOF. Most of us who joined in the 70s and 80s didn’t know, and once we did know, we were too heavily invested to bail. The only way left to us was denial.

I was taken to task in previous posts for not using my real name (how many of you do?), yet here’s something I would not say to current FOF members if I were using my real moniker: I have a dear relative with Alzheimer’s, and honestly, it’s easier to deal with the Alzheimer’s patient than you! There’s less denial. When I am with you, I have to pretend that I do not see you teetering on a terrible precipice – morally, financially, spiritually, psychologically.

But still I meet with you. Still I talk to you. I’m waiting. I’m waiting for you to bail. I’ll be there for you when you do. You’ll need as many friends as you can find. You’ll need your whole psychological rolodex to reconnect with jobs and housing. It will be one of the toughest things you’ll ever do to reestablish yourselves – but the sooner, the better. Really. It won’t get easier if you wait another five years — leave, before they carry you out feet first! Even if you can’t leave now, start building bridges out. At least start thinking aright. Make an aim. Start now.

You are welcome to cut me out of your life with the latest diktat. Believe me, you need me a lot more than I need you! My friendship is one I won’t withdraw on anyone’s say-so. You will need a few of those. I know. I’ve been there.

Reply

33. Elena - May 2, 2010 [Edit]

This one is also very interesting because it uses the word we and looks at the problem from an US point of view which is what they were denying all along until recently. Although they threw me out, the little I managed to express, particularly around the fact that cults are not one guru against the members but a two way phenomenon, seems to have had its effect and they are chipping away at it again. This is good. As long as there is dialogue there is hope! Conscience is a wonderful thing!

Interesting also that at the end he comments on Someone not understanding Golden Veil. Such a simple remark that could have been possible in Ton and my encounter but that was avoided so that they could ban me no matter what!

The incredible thing is that they’ve become so used to playing and hurting people’s lives in the Fellowship and using and discarding at their convenience that they don’t even notice when they are still doing it outside.

2010 Part 91

Here’s a quote from a financial blog I was just reading regarding Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein. From what this blogger describes, it sounds like like Lloyd would be the perfect CFO for the FOF.

“We all have a tendency to see ourselves as doing good, spreading the wealth, marching towards the betterment of man and mankind and anything we do can be explained away as part of this grand and noble cycle. In my typical long winded manner, what I’m saying is that Lord Blankfein truly does believe what he is saying. His is the most dangerous type of scoiopathy because he’s suffering from the delusion that he’s correct, whereas most sociopaths don’t even think about the morality of their actions except in relationship with how to use someone else’s moral makeup against them.

He has passed over into the insanity we all flirt with, where we sometimes create a world within a world and we occupy that world and reinforce that world to perpetuate our own insanity by believing not only that we are sane but that we are doing God’s work, that our (in)sanity is benefiting those around us. The perfect positive feedback loop that pure insanity represents”

#213 Someone– Your comments sound way off base. I think you misunderstood Golden Veil.