Fellowship of Friends

Fellowship of Friends Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Fellowship of Friends, 12585 Rices Crossing Road, P. O. Box 1000, Oregon House, CA.

The Fellowship of Friends was founded by Robert Earl Burton on January 1, 1970 in the San Francisco Bay Area, to establish a practical spiritual organization and to make it available to anyone interested in pursuing the spiritual work of awakening.

One’s Self is metaphysical, or other than physical, and yet it can shine forth lucidly for three minutes or three second...
11/07/2022

One’s Self is metaphysical, or other than physical, and yet it can shine forth lucidly for three minutes or three seconds. That is You. One needs to gather these little moments of consciousness when one can. If at the end of the day one has remembered one’s Self for one minute, it is not an occasion for disappointment, but
for gratitude. After years of such effort, something real emerges.
~Robert Burton, Awakening

Real ‘I’ is another name for Presence. Real ‘I’ is wordless. Schools avoid using the word “I”, because the lower self is...
08/21/2022

Real ‘I’ is another name for Presence. Real ‘I’ is wordless. Schools avoid using the word “I”, because the lower self is each ‘I’ that comes along. We rarely use the word ‘I’ because ‘I’ is not a word – it is this state.
~Robert Burton, Awakening

A Journey of balance and regeneration From one point of view, the work is a play between balance and imbalance. If the m...
05/11/2022

A Journey of balance and regeneration
From one point of view, the work is a play between balance and imbalance. If the machine is always balanced, there will be no need to search for the meaning behind our lives. If the machine is very much out of balance, the foundation for the work will be very unstable. It requires presence to observe and act with relativity. Are we too comfortable in a certain situation or too unsettled and starved for essential influences? In a way, it all depends on what produces more presence.
Sometimes right work is to get out of our comfort zone and do something extraordinary to produce the third state. In the work language, this is called “playing the fool.” It means intentionally moving things out of balance. In other cases, we observe the tendency of the machine to be very instinctive or burst in an emotional manifestation. Right work then would be to harmonize the situation by bringing in kings of centers and being more intentional.
Part of being more conscious means being more aware of the need of the moment, depending on the state. In school terms, it is the work of the steward to find the right balance between the different parts of the machine. This will determine the related effort needed in the moment. The term steward is part of the analogy of the human machine to managing a large household. The steward’s job is to ensure everything is working properly and nobody in the household is deprived of what they need. Balance on the level of the steward also means submitting to the will of the master once it appears. The master represents higher centers or presence. The steward needs to balance its own work between managing the house, attracting the master, and making the master want to stay.
Our internal steward does not develop overnight. It starts as a magnetic center, searching for meaning. It is the imbalance in life that drives the magnetic center to look for something else. Many times it would be a lack of meaning, a lack of emotional energy, or low impressions. When finding a school, and relinquishing the search for the work, the magnetic center develops into an observing ‘I’. The observing ‘I’ can only observe one’s mechanicality and changes in the state of consciousness without much control over them. One can observe the causes of certain manifestations. Some of these, such as negative emotions or identification, are expressions of internal imbalance in the machine. Only with more being amassed and the development of a steward, one can start shifting the imbalances into balance and harmony. It is a delicate process that continues to evolve throughout one’s life.

In Matthew, Christ said, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had fou...
02/06/2022

In Matthew, Christ said, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found
one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it." We cannot pay enough for the gift of finding a school and the possibility of awakening, but we still have to pay. There are many forms of payment and different scales in which it can be made.

On the scale of the moment, payment could be letting go of the idea of being ‘right’ in order to gain the state of presence. When we try to externally consider another person, the payment may be to give up one’s ‘I’s altogether and just listen. On the scale of one’s life, when one finds a school, one's identifications do no longer seem so important: one’s career, one’s nationalistic identification, or even one’s family. Payment may be monetary or psychological. School exercises aim at both.

In most cases, the reward – the state of presence and one’s evolution – would not be earned unless the payment is made in advance. It is clear in the case of efforts in the moment. One cannot hold on to one’s identification with being ‘right’ and be present. One needs to release the identification first, and let the other person be ‘right’, in order to use the friction of doing so for presence.

One of the aspects of being more awake is being more conscious of the payment. Unnecessary suffering may be much greater if we are not aware that payment is required. When we are aware that payment is required at a given moment or stage of our lives, we can understand what kind of payment is needed and make the payment more intentionally, thus making it much simpler psychologically.

From one point of view, all of our past moments, all our decisions, all of our struggles, all of our mistakes, all of th...
11/06/2021

From one point of view, all of our past moments, all our decisions, all of our struggles, all of our mistakes, all of the payment we have made, have brought us to the present moment. Therefore, there is no sense in regretting past mistakes, trying to think “what if…” We would not have been here and now if we had not made it through all of these challenging situations. Moreover, now, in a conscious school, we have learned to use many tools to work with similar difficulties and mentally separate from them, transforming them into presence. Without the school, we would be lost in imagination and identification without a way out. Galileo Galilei said, “The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written… Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”
When we are present, we rise above the level of the labyrinth.

Gampopa, the Tibetan Buddhist master, said, “The Dharma is only a collection of words and letters that has to be discar...
08/04/2021

Gampopa, the Tibetan Buddhist master, said, “The Dharma is only a collection of words and letters that has to be discarded when we have reached the other shore.” The Dharma, which in the Fourth Way tradition is called the System, has to be abandoned eventually. From one angle, work ‘I’s are still ‘I’s, and they have to be discarded because they are not the ultimate goal. Discarding even the work ‘I’s means we also relinquishing our sense of identity. There is nothing earthly we can use to attach to. This is the “other shore” Gampopa talks about. Having an ‘I’ that tells us to be present when we are already present defeats the aim of trying to get to this state. Such an ‘I’ in that instance is probably a manifestation of the four lower centers, trying to pull us down from the higher state.
The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said:
What we look for is beyond seeing.
Listen beyond hearing,
Grasp beyond reaching,
Merge beyond understanding.

The message in schools is always the same: to be present to your life by overcoming imagination. Sometimes, the similari...
05/16/2021

The message in schools is always the same: to be present to your life by overcoming imagination. Sometimes, the similarity in the message is striking, revealing connections between schools that seem eons and continents apart. Such are the Hindu image of the dancing Shiva and the dancing woman in the Tarot card number 21, The World.
The similarities in symbolism are expressed through an almost identical external features: the dancing figures being captured on one leg; the scarf on the lady mimicking the multi-armed figure of Shiva; the holding of the musical instruments or tools; the subduing the beasts.
"Every age receives Influence C’s blessing; the thread of schools
is virtually unbroken. All schools together form a single mystery
– wordless Presence. The only reason that the same message
has been used for millennia is because it works, delivering us to
Divine Presence." Robert Burton

We, the Fellowship of Friends, are a group of men and women, young and old, who have gathered together to share the life...
02/16/2021

We, the Fellowship of Friends, are a group of men and women, young and old, who have gathered together to share the lifetime pursuit of being present. Based in Northern California, with centers located worldwide, our school provides a place for aspiring souls to live and work together in an atmosphere of beauty and effort, under the guidance of a conscious teacher.

We were founded fifty years ago on the Fourth Way teachings of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky. Today we embrace the practical wisdom of all great spiritual traditions, recognizing that all esoteric schools teach the same thing: how to be present to your own life.

Address

12585 Rices Crossing Road, P. O. Box 1000
Oregon House, CA
95962

Telephone

+15306922244

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