CoachBri’s Blog

We were loading up the truck with great speed and efficiency. In the distance we could see the coming rain as it speckled the sky in tiny dark spots that were to reach the earth. You could see the clear line of wind and rain as it hadn’t reached us yet but when it did we would be soaked to the bone. We got the truck and trailer loaded and headed to the dump and the change in wind prevented the rain from reaching us full force. As we entered the dump, the ground was thick with dark black mud. The truck and trailer slid their way up the low-grade hill until it reached the top and we emptied it quicker than we filled it. The man at the dump came out to greet us. He slowly looked over the things we were dumping as if he was looking for buried treasure. His eyes lit up and you could easily see that what we were hauling in was of some use to him. He patiently helped us unload the truck and trailer and took the things he wanted to a different area close to his shed. He had the hands of the working man – strong, dirty, cut, but full of knowledge and experience. He was a man that knew how to use his hands and they were his livelihood. When we were empty he returned from his shed and gave us a bill. We paid it and left.

The dump is a very interesting place: people bring the things to it that they no longer want or think have value and discard them. The old man at the dump saw this junk and it was clear he had no hesitation in investigating what was brought into the dump and directed each person carefully where to dispose of it. It made me think of “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure” and I sat with the psychological implications of that statement for quite some time. It was almost 4:00 p.m. and after I had showered, I sat in the study waiting for my next appointment.

There was a strong knock at the door. I got up and answered it and invited the person in. I noticed by his walk and entrance his movements were very quick and stiff. He seemed to have a lot on his mind and had come to tell the story and wanted definite answers.

Hello sir. My name is Brian.

My name is Jon. I received your name from the pastor of my church and he told me that I may benefit from speaking with you. I live in London and on the drive up for an hour I’d been running thoughts through my mind, trying to decide what to talk to you about. Also I noticed the closer I got to your house the less interested I seemed in talking.

Okay sir that’s fair! Where would you like to begin?

I guess the problem is my wife. I just don’t understand her!

Sorry sir, I’m not trying to be rude, but why don’t you try spending time understanding yourself? That seems like a better investment of your time and money!

Well I know ultimately I’m here about my, my …?

Your unhappiness sir!

Yeah maybe that’s it. I just don’t get women!

Sir, what do you mean by “just don’t get”?

I don’t understand them. I don’t seem to be able to get along with them. Well, I never have!

Do you mean being able to get along with them or her in particular?

Yes, my wife you mean?

Okay, your wife. What would that look like?

We wouldn’t fight so much, we’d have a great sex life, we would be able to be together and enjoy each other’s company, she wouldn’t criticize me so much, I wouldn’t always be insecure with her, she would listen to me, she’d just do what I say.

Okay. So in other words she would love you the way you want to be loved!

Yes that about sums it up.

Sir, isn’t she saying the same thing about you, that if you loved her, you would love her the way she wants you to be loved.

Yeah I guess that sounds right.

Sir…

Can you please call me Jon?

Okay Jon. Throughout the dawn of time men have lived in conflict with woman.

Well I’m not convinced of that!

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. You can see it in your own life with your wife!

See what?

See the fact of the conflict!

And the conflict is?

Between you and her. Your ego bumping up against her ego!

Well I think that’s in everything. It is not just between men and women.

I agree with you Jon but you are here about a relationship with your wife.

Yes I am but your comment really covers all human relationship, doesn’t it?

I’m not sure but just for now let’s keep it as the conflict between you and your wife and let’s gain an understanding of that. I believe we can do that sir if you want. As men are we willing to take a journey together and take a hard look at ourselves so that we can look and see how deeply we are conditioned and how very little questioning of that conditioning goes on? And because we don’t question and examine our thinking but are conditioned, we have lost touch with our maleness therefore we are in conflict with woman.

Well there is no doubt that I’m in conflict with my wife. Most of the time I don’t like her and all the things she stands for.

Yes. Or you have a deep resentment for your wife!

Yes I guess I do.

How do you know that this resentment is an absolute indisputable fact?

While now that you’re discussing it I do feel I have a strong resentment of my wife. As a matter of fact I can’t seem to get close to her and get her approval.

Jon, your resentment is deeper than approval. You hate the fact that you need her far more than she needs you. Women are now saying I want a man in my bed but I don’t want them in my home. We’re coming to that more and more.

I don’t get what you’re saying! I need her more than she needs me? I don’t think so!

Jon, what do you want from your wife?

I want her to meet my needs so that I can be happy!

Which means what? You see her as your source of happiness and that source of happiness is outside of you in her.

Yes I would agree she is a source of my happiness.

Now do you really think you’re the source of happiness in her life?

Not like she is for me!

That’s my point. Men, since the dawn of time have sought happiness from sources outside of themselves. Not finding it in woman, we resent them, their power.

This is getting very complicated. I’m pretty easy-going guy. Just fuck me the way I want it, yeah, the way I want it and she can pretty much get everything from me she wants and needs.

Yes Jon you have just put it perfectly: your conditioning of woman is they are there for your pleasure, and the more pleasure she gives you the more she covers up your inadequacy.

I didn’t say that!

Let’s be real Jon. Don’t you want your wife for sex?

Well it’s a bigger part of the relationship then it is for her!

Which means what? You want it more often than she does and when you get it the way you want it you perceive your relationship to be what?

Fantastic I guess.

Okay, so when are you in conflict with your wife?

What? I don’t get it!

So you’re dependent on her to give you pleasure. When she doesn’t give that to you, what do you do?

I don’t know. Stay away I guess. Keep out of her way.

More than that Jon. Don’t you try to bully her, get moody, manipulate her, pout, see strippers, pornography, hang out with the boys etc?

Yeah I guess you’re right, if I’m being honest.

Why wouldn’t you want to be anything but honest?

The conversation were having right now is very different. I’m not used to talking to people like this!

Yes I know it’s very hard for men to be honest. Most men will debate theoretical physics, politics, economics, but very few men will really discuss the matters of the heart. Sex for most men meets their sense of loving and belonging, a deep need that exists in most human beings. Men really believe and have been conditioned to think that sex satisfies that need. But all that does is inflame the appetite for the behavior of sex. Now I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with having sex – it has its place. But unless we face our deep resentment of woman, we can’t go beyond.

I don’t understand this deep resentment of women! I don’t think that’s in my life!

So tell me what happens when you get together with a group of male friends, especially when there’s drinking.

Well, we joke around a lot!

No you don’t joke around a lot. What happens is you attack each other jokingly, you dig at each other, criticize each other all done in fun, until one guy really gets ganged up on, made a fool of, and all the guys laugh when he gets pissed off. Everybody hates to be that guy that gets picked on but the fact is that’s how most males relate with each other, to different degrees.

Okay I see what you’re saying. That’s true but why?

Because we are all so frustrated!

Frustrated about what?

Frustrated with the fact that we need women far more than they need us. We try to connect through the intellect which doesn’t work. So we spend our time humiliating them in all kinds of ways because of our own inadequacy. Our own frustration is from not knowing how to find happiness from a source inside ourselves. So when we can’t we addict to all kinds of things. Addiction is always the sign of dependency caused by inadequacy within ourselves. That’s the pain, and woman was born with purpose, a vessel of creation that doesn’t have a clue how to nurture a man. Therefore we have conflict and all the anger and brutality that go with it.

This is really rattling me! I just don’t know what to say. I see some truth in what you’re saying but the problem seems so overwhelming. I can’t tell my wife what I really think of her. I know in my heart what I really want to do is humiliate her. I want to hurt her as bad as she hurts me. I am so sick of her independence and her strength and… and!

The fact she doesn’t need you!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Jon I know this is difficult but when are you happiest with your wife?

When I’m not so dependent on her and my life is filled with other things. I just don’t know if I can remain married. A part of me knows I love her yet by what we’ve discussed that seems to be a contradiction.

Yes you’re right it is the very structure of thinking, which is at the root of conflict, is a contradiction. The point of all this Jon is to face the fact of your conditioning without condemning or justify it. If you can perceive all the disorder in your relationship with your wife, then something new takes place. And that newness has nothing whatsoever to do with thought or the thinking process. Thinking is where we hide, where we lie, where we resent. Face it Jon and see it as it is.

I know this is just the beginning for me and I know why my pastor sent me to you. This conversation is very profound to me, so thanks. I know I would like to come back and see you but I need little time to digest all this.

I understand, come back whenever.

Coach Bri

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