Reflecting light through action, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, Awakening, Socrates

Reflecting Light through Action

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says:  “For no one Lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, nor in a hidden place, but rather he sets it on a lamp stand so that everyone who enters and leaves will see its Light.” This passage implies that that men and women who receive […]

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The Golden Key

It was as if everywhere he looked was illuminated by a bright light. Inexplicably, every impression he beheld glowed and seemed to present itself in its entirety. He was dazzled by how completely he perceived the minutest detail of all he saw. The world around him was no longer shrouded in mystery.

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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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Change

We need to construct our lives around the effort to increase consciousness, or presence. We do this through working to deconstruct, transform, and transcend whatever within us resists or distracts us from acceleration into higher worlds. We come to realize, with time, that every moment of presence is a triumph, and a reason to be grateful.

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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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Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, transcending the system, Fellowship of Friends

Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on Going Beyond Knowledge

What do Fourth Way authors say about going beyond knowledge, going beyond the system, and changing the location of our sense of ‘I’? From Views from the Real World, Gurdjieff: Beyond this world, beyond the limits of our knowledge, there lies a world, incomprehensible for us, of noumena—a shadow, a reflection of which is the […]

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Gurdjieff, Transcending the System, David Tuttle, Fellowship of Friends

Transcending the System

So often, the work on the Fourth Way stays at the level of the steward. However, at a certain point, this work does not lead any further. This kind of work can begin, in a subtle way, to strengthen our sense of ‘I’ in the four lower centers. In truth, Real ‘I’ can only belong to higher centers.

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