CoachBri’s Blog

The day was bright and full of promise. One could feel the warmth of the spring sun on one’s face. Climbing on the maple trees were small sap flies – a sure sign of warmer weather. The flies seemed to stay close to the tree but every so often they would spring to life and hover around the dark creviced bark. The little bugs were more active in the sun. They seemed to delight in its energy and then they landed again and remained perfectly still.

All of nature seems to operate as movement and rest. The whole universe is in a state of meditation. Meditation is deep, radical, and therefore profound. Any time the human mind makes contact with the movement deeper than itself there is instant order. That order is a true internal movement. Very few human beings are interested in the movement that offers no reward or significance to their self-centered egos.

At Friday night group, we all come with a tremendous amount of baggage, of opinions, ideas, and self-centered projections. The significance of Friday night group is established when people are willing to let go of their point of view and find the necessity to empty all of one’s preconceived notions and ideas to enter a state of dialogue. The dialogue is in itself free from all personal intentions and is a simple movement of discovering an action that can free the mind from having the thinking process as the dominant function of the brain.

In order for this process to be discovered, one must first address all the external psychology dominating their brain, which is the source of all conflict. When the brain is caught in any contradiction, trying to become something that it isn’t, or trying to achieve a self-projected result, it is a source of disorder and human misery. The intent of Friday night group is to give people a chance to think together, which means the ability to address our human disorder in the personal realm that is responsible for global disorder.

Human beings do not want to see that the soul they have is the creation of external psychology. This means any imposed morals from the outside are not moral. The immoral is a movement from the outside, rules or laws imposed to keep us on a moral path. Why can’t we face the fact that we are immoral? Yet we cannot choose who we love; we can only choose the behavior we use to express that love. It follows then that we can only choose the behavior to also express hatred, prejudice, fear, anger, anxiety, agreed etc. Very few people are really interested and see the significance that one’s daily problems are the problems of the world.

I am sure you have heard that saying, “To be in this world but not of this world”. I understand this to mean that even though one thinks, the thinking process is used by something much deeper in the human mind. Therefore thought or the thinking process is a functional process dealing specifically with material in the physical world. Thinking is made out of material processes in the brain. Any process, however grand or so-called sacred, is just an expression of external psychology. The art of dialogue is a group of people, two or more, willing to set aside everything they know and look at things for the first time. This process of emptying is to live in the present and no guru, book, tradition, or ritual can bring about a state of mind that
is internal, orderly, and not practiced. If one sees the disorder that they are caught in completely, the perception of that disorder is the action that is internal psychology. Happy are those who find this.

The shadows from the trees on the snow grow longer as the afternoon deepens; a few squirrels have come down from the tree to check me out. Their inquisitiveness and their hunt for food is impressive – they seem to move in an attentive state. That level of attention keeps them alive and in a relationship with their environment. If only humans could apply that same attentiveness to the doings of thought! Then we too would be in a state of meditation where psychological problems are not. Friday night group is a place where psychological problems end. In that ending there is a new beginning to bathe in that emptiness is to understand the significance of nothingness. In the universe nothingness is holding everything together.

Coach Bri

I was thinking about what you have said at Friday night group, and I had a flash of what I think may be that order you were talking about. What I saw was that I have been raised in a so-called religious home. But when I think of all the external control applied by my parents I feel that the level of criticism that I received and now practice on my family is what you say is my disorder. I think I see this. My son acts out of his disorder and I add to it. Do I have this correct?

What is the disorder you practice on your son?

Well, it is the same as I practiced on my husband! That anger and frustration!

Yes but are you not the anger and frustration, which is the fact of your disorder?

Yes, so what do I do now? Practice internal psychology, right?

So what do you do in your anger and frustration?

As you have said a thousand times, I choose a behavior that kills the relationships so I am caught in the thinking mode and I have to act it out on someone.

Can you see that choosing a predisposed position is one action that again reinforces the thinking process and external psychology?

I don’t follow that! Do you mean that practicing an internal psychology is also part of disorder?

No, I don’t think you can willfully practice an internal psychology.

I don’t understand. Can you make it clearer?

One must come to terms with something!

And that something is?

Your brain, my brain, is caught in a web called consciousness. It is made up of a self and every person has a self. Self is a product of memory, which is caught in time because self is a product of experience.

Ok I get that! Self is a group of experiences that I gather in the brain as memory. But I have a sense that I have aged and am wiser now than I was 10 years ago!

Yes but you’re not!

How do you know that?

You just have more knowledge about your self but you are still caught in your animal instincts and sustain them by using thought.

Okay I am more sustaining now than I was when I was 20.

Yes, true, but that is proof your not wiser!

I don’t get this then!!

Yes I know! Look at it! Or don’t look – the choice is yours.

No I want to look at it! It is just you piss me off so much.

Yes I know!

See! So you’re doing it on purpose!

No! You are angry now with me, right? Or your son or husband right?

Yes! Yes!

Who is it that is angry?

My self at your self!

So is your self different from your anger?

Yes, there is anger then there is me, my self acting out the anger!

What if you is anger!

Me is anger? I don’t get that.

You see, external control psychology has built the self out of memory. Self is a bundle of memory stored in the brain called self.

Okay, I see that and I guess it sounds right!

This sense of self is formed from the outside!
If I asked you, who you are, you would say what?

That I am me!

And who is you!

I would say I am a Canadian, a mother, a wife!

Yes and where did you learn that?

I guess from my parents!

Yes, but partly from your environment or society.

Okay!

And that is external from you!

What do you mean by that, “external from you”?

Well, you were conditioned to think you are Canadian.

I am a Canadian!

Yes, when you accept who you are governed by the external thinking. If you were born in the same place 500 years ago, would you still be a Canadian?

Of course I would!

Canada didn’t exist as Canada 500 years ago. The land did but not the conditioning called Canada.

Yes, I see what you’re driving at! How about my beliefs?

They are all put in you then you modify them to suit your experience.

Yes, but I have a belief about the universal energy and reincarnation! That is real!

Real yes, but untrue.

What do you mean? It is true to me. I live by it!

Yes each person lives according to his own belief! But why? Why is believing so important to us? To you or any human being?

Because it gives life meaning?

Okay, how? It only gives you a sense of false security!

Look I believe what I believe and I have the … damn…

Right to! And that right gives one a sense of security, no?

And what is wrong with feeling secure?

Well isn’t the demand for security a sign of insecurity!

Okay I think I see that?

Think you see that? Isn’t every problem you have with your husband and son you looking for security and if they only did what you said, lived how you want them to, there would be no conflict?

Yes okay, I see it! I see it! I get it!

What is it you get?

When I have problems with them we are in conflict and I see I’m the source of that conflict. I get that when my belief is there for them my self is there. The feeling of anger and frustration is the self, which is me in action.

Yes, now what can you do about that?

I don’t know? My life is this!

Yes it is! Now can I see that trying to change in any way is to avoid my inner ugliness and the fact that me, anger, frustration is all one clump of self or ego. So if I try to do anything to self, to change, is the wrong approach. This is self judging self, trying to get out of self, which strengthens self!

You know I think I do that! Strange as it is! That is my life.

Okay, so see the fact and remain with the fact that the self-centered movement is one movement. Fear is self, hurt is self etc. You can’t do anything about it. If you do you are creating more conflict. If you are willing to end all conflict, self and its beliefs no longer fuel external psychology and one comes upon a deep movement not the product of the self. That movement brings order and that order is a new beginning.

I have lots to think about! Thank you!!!

You’re welcome.

Coach bri

At one of your talks you said that awareness is the seed of transformation! Can you please comment on this?

When we are talking about transformation we are not talking about a shift from one level of thinking to another higher level of thinking. Awareness is its own movement and without it we are practicing external psychology. External psychology based on choice is a method towards greater effectiveness but is still limited and can be full of its own self-centered activity. Self and its methods towards happiness, from religion, politics, meditative practice, to yoga, are all created by the thinking process. Therefore they are limited and a vain pursuit in meeting one’s own needs in a way that creates relative sense of order that leading to being well adjusted. To be well adjusted to a society that is violent and deeply self-centered is not healthy mentally. Awareness is something that can’t be sought or practiced; it is not the result of a vain activity to quiet the mind or bringing the body under submission. It is when quality is found in the mundane and boring. To be aware is to recognize your own irrationality and its effect on the environment and the environment’s effect on you. In whatever environment you are in, seeing how you are related to the persons, things or ideas, is to come to terms with what is. In that actuality there is transformation of self consciousness into a process not touched by thought. Only then is one in true freedom.

I heard you at the conference and was impressed by your conversation; you seemed to hold the whole group’s interest. Since then I wish I didn’t attend it. For some reason I was upset about others being verbal about their struggle and how they struggled with the truth of what you were saying. I saw myself becoming annoyed by these people and I wonder why.

So I impressed you. That was not my intention!

Wait. I’m not finished – there’s more! After being so upset with these people I saw that I was angry with them because their struggle was my struggle and I had separated myself from them. And, as you say, what you dislike in anyone is the self which is you. This has been the most difficult time in my life. You have turned me inside out and now I have no clue on how I should live my life.

So what you are saying, if I have understood you correctly, is you are at a place inside yourself where you feel unrest. You have got the spirit of discontent. This came to you because the conference you chose to attend had an impact on you and now you are questioning the very nature of that impact. Do I have it correctly?

Yes that is it! Exactly!

So you have come to see me because you’re upset with me?

I think so!

No, that is not good enough!

Maybe I thought that I needed to see you! Can I tell you how I feel now? When I look at you and the way you are, I feel different. I just want to cry, I feel that you love me or something because you see through me! I couldn’t hold your eyes at the conference. I felt you were emitting some kind of energy.

I am sorry but that is just your thinking brain trying to avoid the truth of the matter, and it wants to make it about me, and that is a lie! I am a human being full of flaws and so are you! We are just meeting halfway and talking openly about the facts of our lives. We are self-centered sir, both of us. This is where the change must happen. We must both be willing to talk about the facts of our self-centered, egotistical lives and see the problem in the world is us, face the challenge of change, in a way that is whole, and not another egoism.

Well that seems impossible!

This is what awakened in you after the conference, did it not? This state of the impossible task we human beings must face, if there is going to be a human race. You saw the center of your own misery and you don’t want to change, right? You love your habits, the pleasure they bring and in the same breath you hate them.

I hate what I keep doing to myself. You know some weekends I try to be alone with myself and I can’t. Last weekend I went to a pub and brought a book and read there because I just can’t take being alone. I, as you put it, poisoned myself with booze every day or smoke a joint; it is all the same – I am running.

I know! I know! This is what we have reduced life to. Acquiring things, titles, money, sex, drugs, whatever, because we can’t handle the poverty of our own condition.

And that condition is?

We are slaves to thought. Thinking is the dominant factor of our life, it rules us and it has conquered us and divided us, inside and outside!

I don’t get all that. Can you tell me more?

Only if you are really listening! Not agreeing or disagreeing – that anyone can do!

Yes I understood that at the conference! It was a shock at first, but I never listen to anyone really, just my own thinking because, as you said, I am arming my comeback. I learned that at the conference that I really don’t listen at all, not even to myself. I always want, as you said, something to strengthen my point of view. And if I disagree, my point of view is strengthened.

Yes and therefore divided from the other with their point of view. Very few people talk it out to explore, open it up and find out. All of our problems are common. We all are poisoned by the things of thought.

And they are?

You know them – you suffer as all human being do who have an egotistical self.

Well at the conference when you talked about how we are all looking for security in and about self, that rang true for me.

Much more, much much more!

Okay, what?

Are we all not suffering with greed, jealously, over indulgence in one thing or another, loneliness, fear in one form or another, demanding, power tripping, and mistreating the ones closest to us? You know all this, right?

Well that about sums it up!

So now you are lost, right? What does one do when they’re lost?

Well I guess the first thing is to find out where you are.

Yes and we know that! A flawed, contradicting, self-centered human being. Who wants to run away from the fact that their thinking has created and conditioned who they are by what they have or don’t have? Shallow, petty, demanding pleasure, intellectual or otherwise. Right? Do you see it?

Yes that is me! But I have periods of happiness, few and far between.

Happiness, or amusing yourself with pleasure?

Okay if I’m honest, pleasure, and joy once in a while.

Sorry, how do you know it is joy?

Well the best example was in the conference when you said beauty is anything, anytime where self isn’t. I have had that happen to me! Where I wasn’t all about myself and just let whatever was there be there. I wasn’t thinking a lot.

Yes in perception thought has no place! It may have a place after but not as one perceives.

I think I get that!

So you are lost and the world says don’t be! Do something, solve a problem, create a problem to solve

Yes that is me!

No, it is the condition of all of mankind – to create problems and solve them. It gives us a feeling we are progressing. Towards what?

I have no idea! I have being doing that to keep my shitty fearful life working but… I have no wisdom!

And so you are chasing after wisdom?

Well I guess I know that the last thing I am is wise!

What tells you that?

Well how can I be! Most of my discussion with you points out that I am basically irrational.

Yes and seeing that is the beginning of wisdom!

What is?

Do you see that human beings think they are rational? They are addicted to drink, smoke, sex, work, acquiring things, money, power, ambition, wanting to be envied, or rich, or famous. And the things they will do to achieve – they hurt, kill over for a flag, which is nothing but a piece of cloth that is colored! They live in fear yet they think they are rational. To see that one is irrational is the beginning of rationality. That is wise! Do you see it?

Yes I think so but language seems to be wrong or misleading.

Yes thought is never the thing it is describing. So one is lost! Be lost fully and you know where you are lost. Then from being lost, question the very direction you want to move it since it may be another irrational direction. Just be still, open, and perceive it all without choice! In that awareness there is feeling and movement, not as a causation of thought. In that movement compassion is action and its own direction, apart from the process of thinking.

Thank you so much for your time!

You must come again!

I will. Thank you!

Coach bri

I have come to see you because of something you said at a Friday Night Group.
One of the members of this group was there and he was causing a lot of problems, judging people and trying to get a fight going. He seems so unable to, as you call it, evaluate himself. He was very good at evaluating them but there came a point in that meeting where you locked eyes with him and told him to leave himself alone. Now there are two things that I noticed in him: One, was he was very afraid of you and secondly, the more important one, was how you seem to be aware of things that I am not. So my question is this: What is this awareness all about?

Okay, so you wish to understand this thing called awareness. Can I ask why?

Well, if I was more aware I think I would get more out of things, I guess?

So your inquiry is to get something out of this awareness. Is that not a self-centered approach to the problem?

Okay, yes it is. So what?

Is awareness a self-centered movement? Or is awareness stopped and non-existent when one is self-centered?

I kinda see what you mean but not fully.

In order to find out what awareness is, must we not find out what awareness is not? Then from there discover how unaware we are.

I am not sure! I feel aware sometimes. But then it doesn’t seem to last long.

Of course!

Why do you say ‘of course’?

Anything willful, planned, by effort, by imagining or by drugs cannot make one aware.

So you are saying it can’t be forced.

Yes but much more than that! Awareness has no cause, being unaware has a cause.

Which is what? What is the cause of unawareness then?

To be preoccupied sir. That is simple then isn’t it?

When you put it that way yes! So then why are we so unaware?

The brain is always active, thinking sir, it is on override. Thinking enters places where it has little value or meaning.

Those places are?

Thinking has very little value in the area of human relationship. It gives one the illusion of relationship because you think like someone else or like a group of people. This has been our downfall sir. Surely you see that!

I think I do but it seems too deep for me.

Yes that is another thing that thinking does to avoid the issue.

What issue? And I think you have just called me lazy.

No sir, the fact is we are lazy! You are only not lazy when there is some pleasure in it for you, when you find the motivation, no sir?

Yes I see that. But relationship?

Sir, relationship through thinking is only association. People who are united through thinking are united through beliefs, be they religious, political, philosophical, or economic, it is all so superficial. Relationship implies being connected, contacting, being in movement with.

So can you say I am connected through my faith or religion?

No sir, that is not true!

Why not?

That is simple to see! Because being connected through anything that thinking creates like religion, philosophy, etc, is going to separate you from some other group which then leads to conflict and war. That has been our history of life on this planet – lot of things put together by thinking and the denial of relationship because of those things.

That is amazing!

Yes! If you see it and remain with it! Relationship in life is the most important thing. Not the job you have or the car you drive. But a deep connection first sir with your being. You are not the things thinking says you are. You are far deeper and richer than that. To see the fact of that one must refuse to enter any relationship or give importance to any relationship that is based on what thinking has put together.

Then how do I live Bri?

Sir, most people are struggling for human connection, socially we have great difficulty finding love and security.

No doubt about that!

See why sir? Because the things that are supposed to bring us security, like money, a job, religion, my family, bring conflict and conformity. When I don’t conform to the demands of another, I am left out! Thrown out! Relationship and connection come about when thinking is quiet, when I have no judgment, no preconceived idea about myself and or another. This is the movement of compassion; it arises in the ashes of all my self-centered thinking. So many people are unaware sir of what is happening, how quickly life comes and goes and at the end of our years most people’s brains are worn out. They are dazed and confused by their conflictual lives. Conflict breeds its own energy, rising out of the mechanical process of thought which fuels the war machine and has been doing that for one hundred thousand years. Relationship, connection is a more subtle movement which blooms in awareness. That awareness is not something that has any relationship to thinking – one cannot think oneself aware. When you are in discord or conflict, hurt, jealously, fear, greed, we poison everything we touch. To be aware of these movements as they are happening in you without trying to get rid of them is meditation. In that meditation awareness is the cornerstone of all relationship, thinking is perceived and torn out. In that we are free and that freedom is the movement of love, compassion and intelligence.

You strike a hard bargain.

No sir, bargaining is another form of trying to get what we want. I want nothing from you! Just see the truth of what is being said. It has nothing to do with me really. I’m not trying to convince you of anything.

Well you’re doing a damn good job!

Maybe you just see the truth of what is being said.

Yes maybe! Thanks. May I come again?

Of course!

Coach bri

Without a shadow of doubt there I am, caught in a web of my own making. When they speak of the principle of integrity, here too I am lost. What seems to define me more and more is the lack of my own seriousness, and my complacency about it. My heart longs for something, but my mind creates it and therefore is lost. For what is created by the mind is limited and not the truth. I can’t seem to change from this position for this is truly where thought is locked. Day after day I am wanting or desiring something to cover over my inadequacies. I spend most of my time in thought by thought wanting to be out of thought, keeping me there. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to turn but to embrace the ugliness of my own condition.

We do no see the path, the only path, that all change must happen in the content of our own personal consciousness. The wind and water erode a stone, but what will wash away the hardness of the self? The self seems to be a hundred times the strength of stone, a million times more clever than the intellectual genius. It creates the prison of personal drama, thinks something and believes whatever it wants to secure its position. Then without intention or warning, love passes through it and leaves no mark or path. Somewhere between the notes of self there lives a profound silence. Like the birds on a wire each with their space or like the space between two musical notes, love lives. Life is not about now for now is the past of what has been. Go nowhere, be nothing, stop everything, shine not. For if you do shine you will not know you are shining. If you are blessed by love and it moves through you to someone or something you will not channel it or will it be under control of yourself. I see this yet my heart is heavy with the pain and disgust of myself.

Coach bri

I love this little cabin you have. There is such quietness in here. Every time I have been here the same feeling is here. It was like this at your other place too.

What was sir?

This feeling I have!

Well maybe you are making it up; sorry but doesn’t the feeling exist in you sir?

Well it does but the cabin is creating it too!

Sir, the cabin is a dead thing! Perhaps you are giving it life as we do to move the light off us. Or is the comment on the quality of the cabin, that it is well made and put together by a skilled carpenter?

Okay, I guess that is a better way of putting it.

So what have you come to talk about?

As you know, my search for God tires me out.

Then why search?

Because I must!

Yes sir many people are ambitious for God, money, enlightenment, sex, stocks, bonds, a bigger house… It is all the same really isn’t it?

With all respect, I don’t think so! To search for God is something I do that doesn’t benefit me. It is a selfless thing to do.

Sir, sorry that is the most arrogant thing to say.

Why is that?

Your search for God means what sir?

I think it is plain enough to see, the love of God, whatever you want to call it.

Yes, so you are seeking something. Right sir? How do you describe the thing you are searching for?

Well, I call it peace then! You can’t argue with that can you? When I leave you, I feel more peaceful.

Sorry sir. That is not my intention.

You mean you don’t want people to be more about peace? Are they not coming to you for help?

Yes sir they are and I don’t help them.

Then what do you do?

Together we break illusions that we are caught in.

Okay so you seek to break illusions.

No sir! You either break them or live in them. If you are caught in a trap you must understand the trap you’re in otherwise you fall into that trap again, in a different form.

So what is the trap you think I am in?

The seeking for God.

So seeking is a trap?

Well it must be!

And how is that?

What is God to you? Or your picture of truth then.

Okay, what is yours? Why should I tell you mine and you poke holes in it? You may have a better picture of God than I do. It may be more refined than mine.

That is my point! Whatever picture I have of God, is it not put together by myself, my self-centered thinking?

So then you don’t have a picture of God then?

Sir it is not the point to have or not have. Look at the facts. Anyone’s picture of God or any picture or image thought puts together is limited because it is not real – it is cultivated by one’s thinking, and all thinking is egocentric in these matters.

I still don’t get it. You are telling me as a minister to not have an image of god. That’s absurd!!

What is the point of the image or any image?

To know what to look for!

So the image you have is the correct image?

For me it is!

That’s the whole point – is that not what everyone is doing? They think the image they have is the correct one, the superior one. No one ever says, “I have the incorrect image of God and he over there, they are more correct than I but I want to believe in the incorrect image”!

I get your point. Every time we get together I feel like my mind is being sliced in two. You are always the teacher and me the student. I would like to teach you something for a change. After all, I am the minister!

Sir, in our discussion I am learning.

Well it doesn’t seem like it.

That is just another image. If I am not putting these questions to myself then we are not questioning together.

It doesn’t seem like that!

To keep the brain in a state of learning one must be aware of the relationship and lack of relationship, which is a continuous process. Therefore there is no need to seek.

Well, isn’t that then seeking to be aware?

No sir. Learning is in the present. Seeking is the past. The thing sought is a picture put together by the past. If you think of building a house or you actually do the building. It is too different things.

Yes I see. Doing the building means so much more. And you are saying in that process experience and thinking have to work together.

Yes partly. Sir the human brain is always chasing or seeking something. It is a superficial movement going on in the brain and one of the sources of our disorder.

To seek is disorder.

Yes sir. Whatever picture or image you create about God, it is a self-projected image or one’s self according to one’s self. Therefore the self will make God in our image, and we are willing to kill and hurt others to protect our image.

Well that’s for sure. So why does our mind do this seeking?

Seeking is one of our deepest conditionings. The mind is always chasing something. It thinks that through improving itself, by reading, yoga, and meditation systems, it can reach God, truth or something beyond. To find what is beyond thought you can’t use thought to find it. It can’t be found. Maybe the ending of all this seeking is the birth of something else. In the ashes of thought perhaps the phoenix rises.

Thank you for seeing me. I enjoy our discussion yet I do fear them. I hope someday to come to Friday night group. It is rather far away for me.

You can always stay over sir!

Thanks. Sometime then!

Coach Bri

Poem by Coach bri

Photo by Peter Luke

Poem by Coach Bri

Photo by Peter Luke

I have been away for some time and have not been able to make it to the Friday night group. For those of you who are interested, I want to tell you why I feel it is so important.

The Friday night meeting is held at John and Sandy Masskant’s, whose loving friendship and thoughtful giving have allowed many people the opportunity to connect. They also help run workshops and provide so much to the attendees. They are friendly people who don’t judge other people’s lives, and allow them to be who they are.

For the past ten years, the people of Friday night group have welcomed people in a special way, identifying for people how they suffer like other people. People at Friday night group build an environment for others to be straight and honest, questioning their own experience to discover the drama and pretense of there own condition. Little is said behind people’s backs at these meetings. It is said to their faces and, in a way, that invites sharing and seeing how things in their lives cause them pain and anxiety. When I’m not there I miss the people and the push to find a wholly different way to live. .

To heal the brain from the damage of external control psychology, one must be able to pull out of oneself and look at the mess we are in inside and face the pain of it. What is amazing when you do that is the pain you thought was going to be so bad, isn’t. What happens when you break the illusion of your self-inflicted misery is that you untie a knot or bundle within the brain and great amounts of energy are released. This energy is freedom and in that freedom needs and wants subside. In that state love and friendship is, which is the act of real healing. .

Coach bri