tip of the iceberg, Robert Earl Burton, Fellowship of Friends, Dante, Divine Comedy

The Tip of the Iceberg

What we see, be it Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’, or Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, is but the tip of the iceberg. In these two masterpieces of world literature we see but a reflection of what an individual, such as these two authors, may invisibly attain.

Read More…
Receiving and reflecting the light, Fellowship of Friends

Receiving and Reflecting the Light

We embody what is higher by being present. We can learn to hear if our hearts are in the temple or in the  bazaar. When we identify for  ourselves the flavor of those virtues–courage, prudence, humility and moderation–which Plato associates with the Ideal State, our work with others will be stronger: more direct and more compassionate as required.

Read More…
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. 

Read More…
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 […]

Read More…
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 […]

Read More…
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 […]

Read More…
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 […]

Read More…