wishing you an ideal state, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton

Wishing You the Ideal State

Plato’s ideal state was never meant to include everyone, only those who support it. In Athens there were many who wanted Socrates put to death. Internally, the many I’s will never really support self-remembering. Only a small inner circle of work I’s will promote the presence of higher centers.

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ideal state, Plato, Fellowship of Friends

Working Towards the Ideal State

Working within the Fourth Way towards an ideal state, my soul grows up. It rests on a steward that aspires to balance the functions of the four lower centers.  A true steward works from the intellectual part of the emotional center. This part is now my acquired center of gravity, from where my work on self-remembering springs. […]

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Plato, uncreated light, Fellowship of Friends

Uncreated Light and Plato

Presence is the illumination of our soul’s efforts to re-member itself. It is the revelation of the divine nature of a human being. It can be the lighting up of an individual’s life with the eternal matrix of being from which the soul springs. This is the uncreated light from which it was born.

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William Blake, Sun, Gift of the Ideal State, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton

The State of “Good Householder”

We need a community where practical external good householder is developed. How can this be done? Through the creation of beauty that leads to internal good householder. And this produces an inner sun of harmonious action in the present.

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Platonic Academy, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, wordless presence

Plato’s Ideal State: A Wordless Presence

Sometimes a wordless presence enters and shows us the ideal state we seek. Living at Plato’s Academy This is no theory. It happened to me. I was a 19-year old sophomore student at Stanford, living in a boarding house off campus called Plato’s Academy (that’s what we called it!). The time: circa 1963, during civil […]

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‘Right Location’ in the Work

A Practical Choice How do we arrive at a ‘right location’ for our inner work in the Fourth Way? Horace, a Roman poet at the time of Augustus Caesar, said, “In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.” This is not just poetic or philosophical advice. It implies a practical choice to be made: where […]

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true and the false, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, FourthWayToday

The True and the False

True earth arrests true lead;True lead controls true mercury.Lead and mercury return to true earth;Body and mind are tranquil and still.— Zhang Boduan, Four-Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir This little verse contains everything one needs to know to awaken. However, understanding the meaning is not an easy task and requires a conscious teacher. And […]

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Mara attacking Buddha, unreal and the real, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, unreal and the real

Mara attacking Buddha: the unreal and the real

Your own search may lead you to ask the question: what is our existence? You will have to find  the answer yourself, feeling it by your own true sense within. Obstacles to understanding the meaning of life are many, and exist both in the external world and in our relationships to things. Further, our own identifications […]

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