Working Beyond the Machine, Girard Haven, Fellowship of Friends

Working Beyond the Machine

We imagine “freedom” means being able to follow whatever ‘I’s the machine happens to have, and “will” a way to actualize any desire that comes into the machine. In reality, however, freedom and will begin from being able to separate from the machine, and this separation begins with the ability to do what it does not want to do. 

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Rodney Collin, Abandoning the System

Rodney Collin on Abandoning the System

Rodney Collin was a student of P.D. Ouspensky in the last decade of Ouspensky’s life. He was with Ouspensky at Lyne Place, England, at Franklin Farms, New Jersey, and lived with him until Ouspensky’s death in 1947. The following excerpts are from letters written by Rodney Collin to his friends and students in the Fourth […]

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Imagine that

Imagine That the Miracle of Awakening is Yours

Imagine waking up one morning without your habitual thoughts or feelings. Imagine you have no thoughts about some event or task that will happen later. Nothing is circling. You have none of those thoughts without real reason or meaning, no song lingering in your mind since yesterday. Imagine instead that something else appears. Something that has […]

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Balancing yin and yang, Walther Sell, FourthWayToday.Org, Fellowship of Friends

Balancing Yin and Yang

Human beings are subjective. Each person sees the world through his center of gravity. Man has four brains, an instinctive, moving, intellectual and emotional center. Part of a person`s make-up is the fact that one of these centers is predominant and a person experiences the world more through this center than the other centers.  A […]

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Ernst Newman, Vermeer, A journey of balance and regeneration

A Journey of Balance and Regeneration

Balance and imbalance From one point of view, the work is a play between balance and imbalance. If we were in balance, would we still need to search for the meaning behind our lives? If the machine is very much out of balance, the foundation for our work would be unstable. It requires presence to […]

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Balance, the function of the steward, Natassa Cavalli, FourthWayToday.org, Fellowship of Friends

The Function of the Steward

What is the function of the steward in work on ourselves? Both science and objective wisdom indicate that to restore balance to our shaken “being,” practical work on ourselves is necessary. Science informs us that our thymus gland is the first thing affected by our emotions. It is responsible for our immune system and the […]

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Working with the higher and the lower, David Tuttle, FourthWayToday, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Burton

Working with the Lower and the Higher

How do we learn to work with both the lower and the higher impressions that surround us? At the beginning of the work, we hear that man is a machine. The work begins with the study of this machine. We study the lower and the higher within us. We learn of our four lower centers […]

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Perspectives on the Idea of Balance

Perspectives on the Idea of Balance

 “If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.” – Rainer Maria Rilke This was the poet Rilke’s response to a proposal  of psychoanalysis. At first glance, it appears to be a frightened and irrational claim. And yet it is based on an a concept of balance that […]

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