Friday Night Group has been going for about 15 years now. The group is formed by people who are interested going beyond the limitations of the self and thought. Most of them have seen through the conformity of beliefs, personal and religious. We question and purpose of illusions that the mind is caught in, and is creating, that make our minds petty and small.

Most of humanity is caught in the illusion that we are separate beings, doing separate actions, living separate lives. We are afraid to see that we are all one consciousness. Yes, one big thinking machine. We all employ thought to set up and determine our reality regardless of what it is. Thought on its level is the thing that has created what we are, how we see ourselves. Thought gives itself all these amazing qualities, one being that it is eternal.

Thought can’t handle that it is a process of memory, gathered and modified and is a movement from the past, through the present to the future. Thought want to be timeless and knows that it is not but can’t handle the truth of it. So what does it do? It attaches to anything that has any sense of nominal presence. So it created the entity called self. Self is at the center of all our problems and it reinforces itself by creating solutions.  The only problem with that is that whatever solution it makes, it causes other problems because it sees itself separate from the problem that the self has created.  Take for example fear. Fear is self thinking about the future and trying hard to get guarantees of its future. By doing this it keeps chasing its own tail and giving itself the feeling it is has a life that is permanent.

Friday Night Group is about the dismantling of self and all realities created by thought. It is the action not based in time. Every night is a challenge to let go of all one’s preconceptions. Yes, empty the mind of all the things self takes refuge in! This is real meditation and the whole universe is involved in it.  Humankind is the only species that is outside this movement of meditation.  Self’s reaction to this is to go and sit and meditate, to connect because it perceives its own disconnection.  You can’t ever connect to the universe because you are already connected. Self is the disconnection to the universe so any willful practice to connect is self again trying to fix the problem – it is self-created. We are on a journey and questions must be asked and held. To arrive is to fix the mind again in an illusion of its own making.

Coach Bri

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