CoachBri’s Blog

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.

Relationship is the most important process of our life; it is the source of all happiness.

In a world where we are educated to earn a livelihood, we have forgotten how to live and get along with the people in our life the way we want and need to. This is the source of all the personal psychological problems. We have been conditioned to think we are weak and the process of trying to become something is slowly eroding our intelligence. Therefore we think happiness comes in letters after your name or in what you own or the size of your bank account. We have been taught to hate, to discriminate, and think we are different than other creatures of the earth, and now we have cultivated a sense of entitlement. We have being conditioned to think we are the most important and entitled to anything we want without any ramifications.

The psyche of human beings is entangled with knowledge, creating a self that seeks to acquire outside points of reference like religions, political associations, educational credentials and culture. The self, which is a process of accumulation, from conditioning external to us, has given us the impression it is an internal movement. The importance placed on these external movements has formed people’s personal identity thus we are attached to them and the horrors they instill. We are educated to have beliefs, opinions, and ideals, which we ram down people’s throats in all situations where we don’t get along. This source of not getting along is the practice of the external control psychology or self, ego, that
1. reacts to information
2. blames situations and others when we are unhappy
3. evaluates others when we are the ones who are miserable,
4. imposes on others what we think is best for them, which is the knowledge that creates a self.

Remedy: In every situation, practice dying to external control and practice internal psychology.

1. See your attachment to external psychology, which is the self.

Your are not the car you drive, the house you own, the letters after your name, the position you hold in the firm, the size of your bank account, the clothes you wear and you are not your religious or non-religious beliefs. Your political associations do not define you, your behavior does. Thus the phrase: “Get over yourself!”.

2. Don’t buy into the idea that information makes your behave! You are always in control of everything you do. Even when you lose it, you have chosen your behavior.

3. The common denominator in all of your human misery and pain is what you are thinking and doing in the moment that it occurs, so change you.

4.Don’t be an expert in anyone else’s life, just your own. You only know what is best for you.

Coach Bri

I have received a lot of questions lately – some deep, some not so deep. I am always amazed that people want to know what I am thinking especially around certain topics!

So here is a question I recently received. Please be advised that this is just what I see.

Brian, what do you think of what is happening is the U.S? The bailout, and all that?

Why do you want to know how I see it? Isn’t it more important to look and see what you think and feel about something?

True but I want to know what you think about all this.

Please tell me why?

You seem to see deeper into things I guess.

Well, please take this with a gain of salt sir most of it is opinion and therefore worthless!

It may not be!

First sir, in America a majority of the people are conditioned by religion, politics, being patriotic, and the need to conform. They don’t think for themselves. Most are extremist, pointing their fingers at the extremes of the east. Being so heavily conditioned (as we are also in this country), we are not really interested in change. We only want change that betters us economically. The debt of America is smoke and mirrors, the left hand bullying the right. The right hand tries to find away to get the bully back.

If we were really serious about change we would not be a part of any war, or the building up of armaments. Politicians are the children of the external control psychology that is destroying the world. Most will crawl into bed with anyone or one anything to get the vote. Is this not the way of politics? The crisis in America and in any country is in each individual conscience. It is here we have the tribalistic attitude that has created nationalism, the flag and all that is done in the name of it. This nationalism is at the root of war, poverty and the American way. In the same way, much of religion and the return to fundamentalism is a sign of deep confusion because it ends inquiry and confronting how petty and small our lives really are. Small minds criticize other, live in beliefs, and find security in religion and politics as a means to escape and be entertained. Take a look at the 700 billion dollar bailout, a trillion dollar war, and oil companies and other war profiteers making billions off the people they say they care about. They cut the soul out of their own people. Anyone who commits atrocities outside their own borders soon creates them within them. As you do on to others you do onto yourself. There are people in America that are awake and they have been silenced because they are not good entertainment. To get people to think for themselves you have to show them they are not themselves but what their nation wants them to be. But what their nation wants them to be does not create freedom! It is exile and tyranny. Freedom implies space! You can’t think if you think as a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, an American, a Canadian, or an Iranian.

All of this clouds the brain and creates reaction. The word react means to “re-in-act”, to do something one has done before. This doing what we have done before is external psychology. To free the brain from it means to be clear so that you can embrace you enemy, which is one’s self and all its self-interest. This is what cripples America and all nations the world over.

Coach bri