CoachBri’s Blog

The fact is that most of us are not concerned about how we live. We are most involved in how to earn a living.  These are two different conditions, one of which is a pure brain activity. And the other is a brain activity with a far deeper, more sensitive and insightful existence. Part of this is the true activity of the mind which is universal, a deeper process that is connection with out effort. Because we are so concerned with making a living, we are cut off from the other because one cannot have one foot in peace and the other in war.

The animal kingdom is not at war amongst itself or its own species. We are the only creature on the planet doing that. The animals don’t strive to reach their potential – they live into it. They are all they can be! Humankind, on the other hand, live mostly in envy and therefore they are constantly consuming things to cover up their inner inadequacy. That is why death is viewed upon as the great inadequacy and feared more than anything else. Nothing in nature dies without beauty and grace – just human beings.

Filling our hearts with the things of the mind to cover up our impoverished state, we have lost the feeling for what it means to live. Living is a moment of joy and bliss. When in my daily activity I can be what I am fully, with a mind that is raptured in a state of attention, not in judgment or like and dislike. That attention has the quality of love. When one loves life one isn’t trying to be anything or become anything. What matters is living itself, freedom to explore life and be blown away by its beauty and ugliness.  When the brain and the mind are free from the false security of what thought has built, then living flowers because one is not concerned for oneself but the concern for the one and the many.

Death comes to all of us, as did living. What we learn here effects the next generation by either decreasing or increasing their burden, as the previous generations have imposed their burden on you. Living is short, death is eternal but most die having never lived. We are creative beings and that creativity is life itself, longing for itself and the source of all happiness. To make a living and forget how to live is like being creative with primitive tools that have no value to meet the present challenge. Living is meditation when one is in tune with an order not made by thought or knowledge. Living is a movement that embraces death with open arms, how difficult it is to live.

Coach bri

Most human beings today are bored to tears with their lives. They are sick and tired of all the crises on so many levels. We are fed a bill of goods from the very beginning and as we age we seem to assimilate every possible egocentric position in every stage of our development. Humankind has lived with so many psychological problems in every generation. At the root of these problems humankind has tried, since the dawn of time, to find some psychological security in something that he has created out of his fixation with matter and energy. We impose on our children the psychology that has been practiced on us by our parents called external control, or stimulus response, or cause and effect. Whatever name you give it, humankind, able to solve technological problems, has not solved any of his inner psychological problems. Resolving these problems is the only key to the kingdom of happiness.

Throughout the ages human beings have created, out of their internal problems, the society in which they live. The within always becomes the without. To put it another way: What you are inside becomes the environment you create on the outside. This has and will always be a truth or fact for all of humankind. We are all a collection of fear, greed, hatred, violence, prejudice, resentment, loneliness, and contradiction, with moments of compassion, love, and understanding, which are found scattered in each individual’s life.

We live as individuals in our presentation to others but actually we are not individuals at all. The word individual means all one, whole, and we are far from that and that is why history is always repeating itself. Yet every generation thinks it is going through this life as if these problems are unique and authentic. What a shock it is to find out that your ego-self is thousands of years old. (By this I don’t mean reincarnation, as that is just the Eastern world’s way of coping with the unknown, as heaven is to Christians.  This psychological need for security has been humankind’s main occupation.) Therefore we really have no authentic experience or self at all. Psychologically we are carbon copies of our ancestors, with different technology – that is all.

So the problems your great ancestors had are your problems and very few people are interested in psychological change. Just see the fact that whenever you are disturbed emotionally you practice external psychology on yourself or others because you refuse to put away your conflict with yourself or the other. Man has made conflict and struggle the purpose of living and most people never question it. If you want to have an amazing life, one must begin where one is. That is hard to face because everyone around you, from your parents and teachers, to your minister and shrinks, are telling you that you must become something, you must progress, struggle, and fight to find happiness. That definition of happiness is according to their and your conditioning, which you modify out of your own brutality and confusion. To find your way and be seen as successful in a world that is violent, competitive, and corrupt is not success at all.

Have you ever noticed that when you really want something and you get it, you eventually lose interest in that thing? If it is a person, you eventually will destroy them and they you, and you exist only through the images that thought creates in order to find your self-centered insecurity. Then all of the energy, passion, and compassion between you is gone. Sex runs your relationship in middle age and in the later years you will lead a life of frustration.  Where there is frustration in any relationship there is resentment and control.  Then we chase the next thing to distract us from own pain caused by our own disconnected state.  This growing dissatisfaction as you age is the state that most people are in and that is why as they grow old they lose all passion and vitality for life.

To have a great life is to be inspired and to learn about what is inside you and outside of you and your relationship to them. To study your own behaviour and see how your own egocentric activity will get in the way of relationship is the flowering of love and compassion. That is why in these matters of inner revolution, the journey of humankind, a person must have no authority of any kind. One cannot trust a psychiatrist, guru, minister, or priest. They are all products of conditioning.  They study some old knowledge of what others have said and choose what they agree with and then analyze you. Never has the world been in greater psychological danger than in this present age.

To find yourself in all of this madness and to lead an inspired life is to question the whole structure of one’s psyche and one’s place in society. A person must be willing to live a different kind of life that is free from all intentions of external control psychology and carve one’s own path. This means, however, that the person must be willing to stand alone. That aloneness is not loneliness.  Loneliness comes out of one’s own sense of being isolated. The process of isolation is created by the very separate nature of thought that created your ego-self and all its demands to be entertained. Just look around you and see how many people have to be drunk or stoned in order to cope with their painful lives of isolation. For most people the weekend is time to cut lose, get hammered, and get numb to the pain of life. How can such a person ever find inspiration through drink or drugs?

To wake up to this is to see that you are acting as the generation before you acted. This generation just starts all the vices at a younger age and because of that they think that is freedom. If one has children one wants to end all war for ever. One wants them to grow up and live a sober life with inspiration and love. A person who is crawling from pub to pub is not taking their life seriously.  To be serious means that one is meditating all the time. True meditation is not sitting quietly and becoming some fictional character of one’s own self making, or to get away from the world to get in touch with oneself. You don’t have to go away or practice anything, be it silence or chanting, which is a spirituality imposed by the self.

In front of you daily is the demand to be in relationship with people and material things. It is here and the external psychology that we practice must be set aside to end all conflict. We must question and hold these questions so that one is in a state of learning all the time. Not learning about how to earn a better living but how to live without any conflict within and without. This is the greatest crisis and challenge facing humankind.  This journey we share is at the root of our consciousness. To remove all external control is to come to a movement inside one’s self that is truly an internal movement. We have forgotten how to see and instead attach our self to a country, flag, religion, family, or club, which is identification with external psychology. This seems internal but it is not because it is imposed from the outside, as all images are.

To care about all this is to set aside all images of oneself and others and face what one is at all times without any judgment. The entity that judges one’s self or another is the heart of the deepest core of conflict. When one is greedy or hurt one is greed or hurt. Self tries to create the illusion that you, the self, is a different entity from the greed or the hurt but you are not.  To observe this movement of greed or hurt as it is happening and watch how it creates the division between the two is the act of meditation. Only then can the machinery of thought that started external psychology that is self is put to death. In the ashes of external psychology a new movement is born.  A truly internal movement is. The whole of nature is in that movement and to be touched by it brings meaning and purpose to one’s life and then one is inspiration itself.  Thought, with all its cunning movement, is put to death. That inspiration is love, intelligence, and compassion, and happy are those that it comes to.

Coachbri

Selfishness is pretty well known but not very well understood by most people.  We are so good at finding selfishness in others because we ourselves are full of selfishness, pretending or covering up what we are. We dislike people who have the same weaknesses or flaws that we do. We can criticize them so easily because any flaw a person has we recognize in ourselves, which is another level of self-ness.

Self-ness and selfishness are two different things.  Self-ness is a process of thought and conditioning that is our tendency in situations.  Selfishness is the meeting of one’s own needs regardless of how they affect others. In all situations it is putting one self first, taking the best because one knows it is the best or is the thing that most people want. Self is always rooted in envy, because to be envied is deeply gratifying to self. That is why one longs for fame because in fame one thinks fame will end one’s deep insecurity and inadequacy.  Selfishness is the art of getting one’s own way by so many means. It will take a variety of approaches or no approach, as it cunningly pays attention to the situation and the self-ness of the other. Selfishness is good at reading situations for one’s own self-interest or even promoting someone’s interest, if in the end it gets what one wants. This is often called good business and is how the world works.

In any relationship, self-interest or selfishness will always destroy the couple or team when it is not addressed or excused because a person has a gift or talent and is therefore tolerated. Tolerance in any form is hidden intolerance and eventually will act as a cancer and poison the environment and create deeper problems between the two or the many. Selfishness in our society is accepted and nourished in most aspects of living. Because it is external psychology (the psychology of disconnection) it is rampant and we resort to it whenever self cannot get its way. The habits of external psychology are then used to gain control of the situation or person we practice it on and deeper damage is done that divides human beings.

Human beings are the only animal on the planet that, out of selfishness, will kill every living creature so they can have what they want.  Out of selfishness we form beliefs, dogma, and ideologies and kill others who threaten them. Self is always trying to be something. Whatever it sees itself as being, it lives into and it will kill for on so many levels.

Is it not about time we start to see the importance of being nothing? That nothing is holding the whole world and universe together. To be empty of self means to cooperate without self trying to control and dominate. Self, which is a product of thought, is never without motive or seeking some sort of satisfaction. To love another without motive or payoff is to have a mind that is truly innocent. As long as self dominates and runs the show, the awakening to a different movement is impossible.  Self is always giving itself qualities that it doesn’t possess and therefore it cannot be innocent. Self is always seeking something – seeking after enlightenment or God or the perfect experience or the perfect man or women, all of which is to seek under one’s own prejudice.  That prejudice will in fact be projections of one’s own mind and therefore a creation of selfishness. What is selfish is exclusive and love and compassion are of a completely different quality and will be inclusive. Selfishness and virtue cannot exist together, for a virtuous person could never recognize their own virtue. If they did it would be an egoism.

To see all this is in itself, and to understand it, is to free the mind from selfishness. This is the journey humankind must take if we are to have a world that is orderly, responsible, and sane.  Very few people are interested in all this or even care about being free. Freedom has nothing to do with self. Self is in bondage and a slave to thought and all its habits. Love is not a habit that can be practiced.  It is the perfume that makes all things possible with self-interest is set aside. Love is not selective or personal. It is expressed by its own volition.  It is whole and depends on nothing. Selfishness is always dependent on thought and is always trying to be something.  Love is like the air we breathe, free for everyone regardless of skin, color, race, or heritage.  One can’t go to love – it finds you when you are not!

Coach bri

He was 17 and no one was going to tell him how to live his life. He was clean and well dressed in the latest styles. His hair was groomed and hands were rough and banged up.

He started off the session:

I am here because my mother said I had to come and see you. But I think she is the one that needs the help.

You are probably right sir. Most parents who force their children to do anything are sowing their own seeds of misery.

I think she means well but she’s always on my case about something.

So how did you get bribed into coming and seeing me?

I didn’t. I said I would do it if she got off my ass about shit!

Okay, so now you’re here and if you like I will tell her you came and you’re off the hook. I don’t see anyone who is forced to see me unless the court orders it.

So I can go?

Yes.

And you will tell her I came and spoke with you.

Well you did and you are so I’m not going to keep you here resenting that you’re here, to keep your mother happy.  You’re a grown man and I don’t want to tell you that you need help when you think you don’t.

But I might need a little help!

How do you know that? You seem like a bright kid. You present like things are going well for you. Your not in any kind of trouble are you with the law or school?

No!

I didn’t think so!

You probably have a girlfriend and you know how to have safe sex so I doubt there are any problems there either.

No problems there!

Okay so you haven’t thought of hurting yourself in any way have you? Or killing yourself?

Maybe.

Maybe? Can you tell me about maybe?

It’s hard! I’m not sure how or why.

Yes you’re right – this kind of conversation is difficult!

No! Not the conversation! The words to express what I feel!

How do you feel?

Just empty, nothing seems to have any meaning!

Yes, life can be that way sometimes! How long have you felt this way?

I would say for about eighteen months now!

What happened eighteen months ago that you’re finding hard to talk about?

By this time there were tears flowing from his eyes. His big eyelashes seemed to hold a lot of tears and as he blinked on occasion, drops would flicker off his lashes and on to the floor.

Why is it that nothing seems important to me? School is full of stuff that I won’t even use or need in my life and people are mean.

So who is mean to you?

Not me really, I get along fine! People like me because – all kinds of reasons – because I fit their mold. So they’re comfortable with me.

Okay, so no one is mean to you! Are you mean to yourself?

What do you mean by that?

Do you like yourself, the person you are?

What person am I? I don’t even know that?

Know what?

The person I am.

Do you know who you are?

Yes, in a way!

Yeah, what way?

I guess the same way you are.

Which is what?

Oh shit man! Which guy do you want to see?

I like the guy in front of me right now! He is intense and he is questioning, and he’s sad…

I’m more than that.

Like what?

I’m all self-concerned. It’s me! Me! Me! Fucking me, that’s all I care about!

Okay, so good, thank God!

What the hell? Thank God for what?

I thought I was the only one feeling like that, but now I know there is at least two of us!

Shit man, I am all over the place! I am greedy to a fault , angry to a fault, jealous to a fault!!! And horny all day! And I just want to jerk off to porn and play video games all fucking day and just tell the world to fuckoff!!!

Well except for the horny all day stuff I’m with you. Although when my wife around sex still comes to my mind.

I’m not fooling around here! This is real stuff!!

Yes and I see that you mean it! But I still don’t feel any different than you!

Well what am I doing here then!

Maybe you’re making friends?

You’re too old to be my friend anyway!

Well that’s up to you! But how many friends do you have right now?

Lots!!

That you can say all that you said to me?

None!

So we are friends then!

Okay, but you get paid

Yes I do.

Maybe I could end up helping crazies too.

Well my friend, you are far from crazy!

I feel crazy!

People who choose to be crazy don’t know they are. And definitely don’t talk about problems in the sane way you do.

How do you know that?

Those marks on your hands are from hitting walls?

Hey, how did you know?

Because you’re not crazy. You’re angry and when you’re as angry as you, sometimes people choose to do angry things like punch walls!

I don’t want to but I can’t help it!

Well, did you get any more angry than you were today with me?

No, that’s about it, but I wanted to punch the wall!!!

Yes, you wanted to but you made a better choice and you didn’t!

Well why do I feel this way?

Because a lot of what you say is true and you haven’t figured out how to satisfy yourself in a more useful way.

I think I better find some better ways!

See crazy people don’t say that. People who are choosing to crazy don’t self evaluate like you just did.

Maybe my mom was right about seeing you.

Okay. What would you like to do about that?

Eat crow I guess!

Hey eating crow is part of life sometime.

Yeah! I do feel better but shocked.

About what?

The things I said. It just spilled out. I ‘m sorry.

No problem. It happens all the time in here.

I think I should come back.

Okay. Next week?

Sure. Thanks.

Coachbri

The morning was dull and cloudy but far across the lake the sun was breaking through the clouds in spotlight beams that gave the forest an enchantment. I took a path and walked deep into the woods for several hours, just taking it all in. As one walked, one forgot everything – time, distance, and comparing or naming anything. The brain seemed to be quiet and only for being startled by a noise of an animal or the call of the crow, I didn’t register anything.

The small uninhabited lake was clear, soft, and inviting. I removed my clothes and went in for a dip after sitting in the sun that I guess had been out for some time. The water was cool and delicious; I felt my body float on the top and drank in the afternoon sky. Small fish began to nibble on the hairs of my legs and arms and after a time I swam back to the shore as the body felt a chill. I sat for some time on a large log that someone had used to build a fire pit area that had gone without use for a long time.

The benediction of this day was felt all through the walk back to camp and into the evening. One could feel the order of things and one was in tune with it. This was not because one wanted to be or practiced something to get there.  The order felt was like music where the silence between notes is clear, full, and still. The brain and all its activity had come to an end. One stood and felt completely alone by not lonely; on the contrary, one felt rich and whole and yet active, like the point where the archer’s bow is pulled and ready for release but held suspended in quality. One wanted nothing, was nothing, and felt that nothingness was holding everything together.

I know these words are all wrong to but to put that benediction into words is like trying to put fire into a package and mail it to a friend – everything would just be burned away until nothing was left.  What is it that is true, unmovable, and that human beings can’t go to? All our religions, systems, and methods have become the most evil thing. This nothingness is full of love and compassion and strength. It dies and is born in the same moment. It is living and I am dead except for these brief periods that come unannounced and leave without a farewell.  It can’t be corrupted or invited for any invitation is arrogance and self- aggrandizement. These words are so feeble yet one must express it as a blessing.
Coachbri

There was a penetrating quiet on the lake this evening. Off in the distance one could hear the sound of a loon calling its mate. That haunting yet enchanting sound pulls me back, into the days I was a teenager, full of piss and vinegar. The lake was like glass and one could see and hear a quiet motorboat off in the distance fishing. Every so often one could hear, coming across the water, the squeak of a dock being rocked by waves that quickly lessened in their intensity and rhythmically passed and hit the opposite shore.  Then silence would come again and all the earth seemed to be caught in the balance of that movement.

Why are we occupied with ourselves, morning and night? Thought moves from one thing to the next without tiring. Thought, rooted in the past, is always trying to take charge. by having options about this and that as if they really mean something, when in fact they only divide us from each other.

A warm breeze blew across the lake as it made tiny ripples in the water. One watched as it ascended and moved by. Our minds are like the water and thought is on the surface making some disturbance. We get caught up in the disturbance and forget about the depth and richness of the beauty of the mind. The mind is not Christian, Muslin, or Jew. It does not belong to any system or government or country. It is whole, fresh and undivided. It cannot be corrupted by money, fame, power or self-interest. Human beings spend so little time there because thought is dominant in our lives and we give all importance to it and it is the source of our unhappiness.

Thought can always change the variables in the same set and build another illusion. The difficulty is that the person feels that what one thinks is something new and profound. Then we make it into a reality for ourselves and cling to it because it gives us an image of who and what we think we are.  Any image we have of ourselves disturbs the surface of the mind and we are once again caught in the web of thought. To live without an image of oneself seems impossible and it may be! But to end all images, in yourself and about the other, is to find one’s daily disorder and free the mind from it.  That freedom is not a point of arrival but an act of perceiving one’s own deceptions and illusions without knowing what is true. But is not the breaking of the false the movement toward truth?

Small fish are jumping now in this lake of utter silence and clarity. When the brain is not chattering there to is silence and clarity. These can’t be sought or practiced. If they are, self is there again, following its own interest and cleverly using thought to maintain its own existence. Without the energy of the wind the lake is calm and clear. Without the energy passing through the cells of memory, the brain too is quiet and clear as all thought stops. The ending of the one is the beginning of something thought can’t touch or move towards. Words have no place here and afterwards thought is always trying to break in and capture it.

The sun is setting as it just touches the treetops in the horizon. Another day is slowly coming to an end. We are all in need of renewal every day. To set aside all the things thought has done but then to put meaning to this day is another illusion. Our days have no meaning but what we give to them and there too we are caught in a world of our own making. To face thought and all that it has done, to find peace when we are still at war in ourselves, is the state in which human beings are caught. In a crisis people come together and cooperate to find security, which is needed yet shallow. When we end the images we have of others and ourselves and thought is used only to assist love and compassion, then cooperation will be the intelligent way of living and a human beings shall be free.

The golden light fell upon the distant shore as the flock of geese heading south gave inspiring honks as different leaders took the head spot. The green of the shoreline was vibrant and soft. Another day ends here on this great planet. I am lucky because I love!

Coachbri

I had to contact you after reading something you sent to a group of people. I know this person is your relation. But I don’t want to discuss her as she has been a help to me.

That’s good; I don’t want to discuss personalities, as it’s a waste of time and energy. How can I help?

That I’m not sure! Just your words really anger me. I felt so angry after I read them and yet when I asked my spouse about what you wrote they made an interesting remark.  Then we got into a major argument. My spouse also claims this is why they never attend things in the same spirit that I do and then I was called a gullible person, which only made thing go from bad to worse. I don’t see myself as a gullible person and I have an open mind. But what you wrote I hated you for and then I realized, as my spouse put it, why can’t I let this thing go?

So what was your answer?

I don’t know. I have tried to figure this out but I brought what you wrote and I would like you to read it, so I can get a better idea of what you meant.

I will read it if you like but I can tell you about it if you like. We are all caught in our own delusions thinking that when we are, they are not delusions.

I know. Please read it.

Okay.
Meditation is the ending of one’s daily disorder. It is choiceless and cannot be something that is practiced. Willful mindfulness is for people caught in the web of mind tricks, meeting their own self-centered activity. Any willful meditation is not meditation at all because any method to become aware or mindful is created by thought, or the process of thinking, in order to get out of the trap or limitation of ego or self.

Meditation is love in action and not an escape from one’s fast-paced life. To see how inattentive one is to their anger, hurt, jealously, or quest for power or insecurity as it moves is the beginning of meditation and the unfolding of the religious mind. Self can practice all kinds of traditions, rituals or disciplines but they are all movements of ego to get out of ego. How can the ego with all the problems it causes in relationship also be the thing that brings ego to its death so that real relationship is authentic?

Meditation is perceiving one’s lack of authenticity and the lies that self is and projects in all its multiple identifications. Ego-self can identify with the letters after one’s name, or the amount of money in the bank, or a vow of poverty. Ego is the making of meaning to justify the experiences one has chosen and is often giving itself mystical qualities because it can’t face its limitations and petty superficial existence.

Self cannot practice meditation. They do not belong on the same axis because love and hate are not related to each other and are not opposites. Meditation and love come from the same root. Self and practice, be it yoga or any method to become something spiritual, is like a dog wagging its own tail. To really feel love and compassion is to see one’s un-lovingness and violence to another. For a virtuous person can never recognize their own virtue, if they did it would be an egoism.

Meditation is not mindfulness. Meditation is a mind empty of all the identifications with the things thinking has invented. When a mind is serious and sets aside all its identifications and playing games to cover up its loneliness and endless chatter, it can go beyond itself. The going beyond is not something thought or self can touch. That is the truly religious spirit and it is not tied to any religion or method created by self.

Well, that is what I thought is would be! It is very questioning the way you read it however. Something is more offensive about it or something…

Can I say you find it radical?

Yes, that’s it.

Yet you want comfort, right? And it offers none.

Yes! Maybe. It doesn’t feel good.  But why do I feel so angry!

Are you angry or disturbed like you have been called out?

Well my spouse said the truth hurts, which really upset me.

Is that why you’re here?

No, it’s because I am a meditator and do it several times a week and now I feel like you have killed it for me.

Killed what?

I get a lot out of it I feel.

Great. Like what?

It makes me feel peaceful!

Did it help you with the fight with your spouse?

No, because I couldn’t get into it!

Yes, which means what?

That all I was thinking was about our fight and how I am not listened to and judged.

Yes! And is that not a judgment of your spouse?

Yes I guess it is!

Can I speak personally of a minute?

Sure!

I have practiced all kinds of meditation. I lived in a few ashrams and practiced yoga till I could tie myself in knots. I lived in California, got involved in all kinds of healing practices from Bach flower remedies, crystals and tarot cards, and even took a course to develop strengthening my mental and spiritual power so I could contact the dead and be a psychic. I went and ate the macrobiotic way until a good friend of mine told my something Jesus said: It is not what you put in your mouth that defiles you but what comes out.  And what I have learned is that I can deceive and be deceived when I want something. The mind is always acting out of its insecurity, trying to create realities to support its beliefs. All beliefs, whatever they are, are created by thought and thought is an ego-self-centered activity and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything spiritual.

I resent what you’re saying

Yes I know! Shoot the messenger, right!?

Maybe! But what if you’re wrong?

Wrong about what?

Spiritual practices!

You practice meditation right?

Yes and yoga too!

Yes and how has it helped your life?

It has made me a lot more peaceful and I appreciate more. I am thankful more.

Do you have many friends?

Yes lots.

As you age and they age, are they more peaceful and appreciative than you?

No, I would say some are, some aren’t.

The ones that are, do they practice yoga and meditation like you?

Some are and some aren’t I guess.

So the ones that don’t practice, how do you explain them being more peaceful and appreciative as you?

They found their thing to do!

You mean their method, right?

Yes, I see what you’re saying!

Now who picks the method? Or the help etcetera?

I guess the person seeking a method or help!

Right! So choose the help that suits us the most?

Okay. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing, but what is the purpose of the method you choose?

To make me a better person, more peaceful, more giving.

Yes, better than what you are now. You practice to become something better.

Yes, I don’t have a problem with that.

Of course you don’t, until someone comes around and say it is an illusion.

How do they know that?

Does your meditation bring an end to the conflict between you and your spouse?

No not right now!  The day before.
So with your spouse, your children, your in-laws, are you conflict free?

No!

And are you?

What I am or not has no bearing on your life! If I was or was not it won’t help you.

Why not?

Because your mind wants to find out if my way works and if it doesn’t you will say why should I listen to him? And if you think I am free of conflict you will try it and see if it works for you, which is still becoming something, right?

So what’s wrong with that!

Your ego-self is looking for a system, a method, which I can teach to you. Then you become attached to a system, which means pain.

I see what you’re saying and I just want to smash you. You’re a real ass!

Yes I am! I offer nothing. Any system, any willful meditation, rituals, and traditions, are all the invention of thought and therefore caught in time and bound by thought and are limited.

I feel so sad!

Yes we are! Filled with sorrow because we have filled our hearts with the things thinking has made. You see, everything is moving in the direction of people trying to practice something.  That practice is the movement of thinking trying to get out of thinking. We need to see that any movement out of thinking is still thinking trying to find another dimension. This movement must come to an end to be beyond thought, which is a truly religious mind.

I feel the truth of what you say and sitting here with you has some effect on me. Like some silence is speaking through you.

Okay, see how you’re doing it again! You want it to be about me, as if I am special or have some gift or some bullshit like that!

Well look what is happening! My emotions are all over the place. If I wasn’t sitting here with you this wouldn’t be happening.

Look, you are here and you have chosen to talk and you’re nice enough to listen. Your kindness is in spite of anything you have done. You have been willing to look at the illusion you are caught in.

Illusion? What illusions?

Can you see the truth of what is being said?

Yes I guess I can!

Can you see you want that to be about me?

Yes.

The fact is you decided to look into you owns delusion and illusions around meditation. Because of that you have set aside or emptied some of your content of your ego-self. The end of illusion is the function of meditation. Now can you in your daily life have discussion with people to see all of your illusions and delusions and face them and realize you can do nothing about them? This means not trying to change or judge them. Just watch them. In that watching is the true flowering of meditation. It is the highest form of art and most difficult to live into. It means seeing your selfishness with your spouse, your children, your job, your neighbor, everywhere, and end it.

It seems almost impossible!

Yes, but better than living in some illusion about myself and my fabricated gifts so I can impose my ignorance on others and make a living or ego life from them.

You’re too much! I want to thank you. I will read your blog!

Please remember how you feel right now!

I feel good. It was helpful I owe my spouse an apology.

You feel good because you questioned. That has nothing to do with me and all to do with you.

Yes I see that but you seem like an authority.
We only want and make authorities when we our confused.

That is a topic in itself.

Yes, some other time perhaps!

Yes thanks.

You’re welcome.

Coachbri

It the still of the night
I find the silence pour into my heart.

I think of the people of Norway and the sorrow one person can stir up.

But soon silence returns and the tears will stop flowing.

One man’s disorder will cause people to question what is important in this life.

May silence fill their hearts and out of her find a place where sorrow ends and freedom begins.

To walk with death everyday and be awake with her is to dance in death’s face.

Let Beautiful Norway Dance

Coachbri

Meditation is the ending of one’s daily disorder. It is choiceless and cannot be something that is practiced. Willful mindfulness is for people caught in the web of mind tricks, meeting their own self-centered activity. Any willful meditation is not meditation at all because any method to become aware or mindful is created by thought, or the process of thinking, in order to get out of the trap or limitation of ego or self.

Meditation is love in action and not an escape from one’s fast-paced life. To see how inattentive one is to their anger, hurt, jealously, or quest for power or insecurity as it moves is the beginning of meditation and the unfolding of the religious mind. Self can practice all kinds of traditions, rituals or disciplines but they are all movements of ego to get out of ego. How can the ego with all the problems it causes in relationship also be the thing that brings ego to its death so that real relationship is authentic?

Meditation is perceiving one’s lack of authenticity and the lies that self is and projects in all its multiple identifications. Ego-self can identify with the letters after one’s name, or the amount of money in the bank, or a vow of poverty. Ego is the making of meaning to justify the experiences one has chosen and is often giving itself mystical qualities because it can’t face its limitations and petty superficial existence.

Self cannot practice meditation. They do not belong on the same axis because love and hate are not related to each other and are not opposites. Meditation and love come from the same root. Self and practice, be it yoga or any method to become something spiritual, is like a dog wagging its own tail. To really feel love and compassion is to see one’s un-lovingness and violence to another. For a virtuous person can never recognize their own virtue, if they did it would be an egoism.

Meditation is not mindfulness. Meditation is a mind empty of all the identifications with the things thinking has invented. When a mind is serious and sets aside all its identifications and playing games to cover up its loneliness and endless chatter, it can go beyond itself. The going beyond is not something thought or self can touch. That is the truly religious spirit and it is not tied to any religion or method created by self.

Coachbri

It was a fresh night – a welcome relief from the intense humidity of the last few days. The birds’ calls seemed to be clear and sharp. From the noise they were making and how active they were, they to seemed to enjoy the cooler evening. The sunlight on the large ash tree added to the warm inviting color of the moss that was so gentle on one’s eyes. A teenage boy across the field wearing a muscle shirt was talking very loudly to two girls who were flirting back at him to win his affections. Their voices, young and carefree, seemed to carry in the breezes of this cool night. They seemed to talk endlessly with energy and excitement without stopping. An older couple, frustrated with them, asked if they could be a little more quiet. They just laughed and slowly made their way farther down the field and began again. The older couple let everyone around them know they were annoyed by these youth. Looking for agreement they didn’t get, they too moved on, away from the mirror which was unnoticed by their resistance of their ego self.  Humankind has not changed over time except in the area of technology. As a species we are barely holding our own.

“Why is self so strong in us?” was the question he asked.

What do you think sir?

I have no idea. I have tried very hard to do as you ask and see that I am the thing in my life that must change. But when I am in a crisis I always want the other person to change, even though, as you say, I am the one in pain.

Sir, what is the self and can it really change?

My self seems to always be on the move. I just get one thing and then I seem to be something else.

Yes sir. The self is always moving in contradiction.

But why does it do that?

Because self is a product of thought and thought is a movement, or energy, moving through a material process called matter.

That doesn’t tell me why it is always moving in contradiction! That doesn’t make sense to me!

Sir, thought has made yourself, myself and everyone else’s self. If you take on the thought of a Christ you call yourself a Christian. If you identify with Canada which thought has put together, you call yourself a Canadian, right sir?

Okay, yes!  But why is that a contradiction?

Because you or anyone else is not born a Christian or a Muslim or a Canadian or Chinese. It is the human brain taking on that conditioning from the outside, it is imposed on you and you must conform to it.

I still don’t get it. Why would we take it on?

Because if we don’t you are branded or punished.  You, needing people to be loved and belong and be safe, are forced out of fear to conform. That conforming is the beginning of violence.  See it sir!  Thought creates a sense of self to cover emotional trauma.  We naturally form images to be secure and those very images created the hurt and rejection we fear. So the contradiction is self always trying to find security through the images that thought has made and at the same time those images are always the source of the hurt because it can never be totally secure.

Why is that?

All images are made by thought and therefore a product of time!

So what? Who cares if they’re a product of time? They bring some security.

Show me one image you have that is secure!

Well I have an image of you that you’re a nice person!

Yes and if I yell or criticize you, you will begin to like me less and be hurt by my behaviour towards you.

Okay I see that! Okay, my mother loves me!

Okay. Has she ever hurt you?

No, never!

So you get along with her?

Well, most of the time!

And the other times?

Well, she is a pain at times and is hard to love!

Which means what?

I don’t know!

As long as she lives up to your image of you she is okay! But because she has some other images of you that you don’t like she is on the outs, right sir?

Yeah I think you’re right, but what has this got to do with self being a contradiction?

Everything! Self is one thing one moment and then something else the next. Self is a product of time and your whole psyche is put together by thought over time.
So this means there are two movements going on in man: the movement of time and a movement that is not of time, which in this discussion we can your “beingness”.

And they’re in contradiction?

Yes sir, all the days of our lives. Self is always trying to find security in a world that it has created that is completely insecure.

So nothing in life is secure?

Have you been able to find something that is?

No, not yet.

Sir, this is the fact! To be mentally well adjusted in a world as sick as this one is no measurement of mental health. In fact, people who can’t fit into this world could teach us more than the people who are. To give your life to achieve money, power, position, material things, and large banks accounts and to identify who you are with it is a sure sign of madness. Do you see it sir?

Yes I think so!

That is why I have such great feelings for the alcoholic and the drug addict. They are living that life because of the emotional trauma of this life. They weren’t loved, their needs were not met, and they are the walking wounded. So then the drug companies step in and assault and exploit them so they can cover up their emotional pain. It’s a vicious circle sir. Do you see it?

I think I do! So you say we are living and self is our emotional trauma.

Kind of sir. First there is both then your culture imposes into you their sickness.
Then looking for connection you are forced to conform for acceptance and approval and all that. When you don’t or won’t be controlled, external psychology is applied on you and the damaging nature of external control cripples us. In our pain we drink, drug, and addict to all kinds of things to cover our emotional abuses others inflict, which causes a huge wound in us psychologically. I can become a great doctor or politician, actor, or escape to the street. It is all the same. I am caught in the web of my own confusion and that is what I must free myself from. Be on street drugs, brain drugs, or the drug of religion or politics, or whatever my life is, chasing pleasure and the avoidance of pain. That is what most people are about! So seeing all this, can I not stop escaping into meditation and psychics and contacting the dead and all those games but face my own self-centered living and stop all external control in my life? Then perhaps the emotional trauma in our life heals by something beyond self and the movement of thought. Only then can one really face life without any expectations of our vain becoming.

Thanks Coach Bri.

You’re welcome.