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Two approaches since it doesn't appear that you are trying to get above the document root.
First is to use a relative path. Say you are in the folder /Foo/Bar/Bletch and you want to read a file in /Foo/etc called config.ini. You would open "../../etc/config.ini"
The second works if your server is a *nix operating system and you have shell access. Simply create a symbolic link from the current folder to the file.
$ ln -s ../../etc/config.ini config.ini
.. means the parent folder.