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

It was 2:15 AM and I suddenly awoke. I put on my shoes and jacket and entered into a warm November morning. It all seemed so strange – the night was dark warm and had the feeling of summer. As I left the confines of my house and entered onto the path between the tall trees, the stars became visible. It was a calm and still night and there was a profound silence. As I took the path to the driveway and then onto the road, I felt as if I was the intruder. I walked down the road for some time, just watching my own thoughts and how each one connected or had some type of feeling with it. I was amazed at my own mechanical state of thinking, watching how I was thinking and feeling and had so much residue of the past. I eventually came to the small town and sat in the silhouette of the street lamp. The small town had such a different feeling at night. Everything seemed so much smaller held in the canopy of darkness. A small amount of light that seemed to hold the town in place offered one a sense of certainty. I stayed there for several minutes and then took the road back to my house. As I walked across the property I made my way to the pond and sat down on the wooden bench overlooking the small pond. The fountain of the pond seemed to offer a gentleness as all moving water seems to. I leaned back on the bench, stretched out my arms and tilted my head to the heavens. I breathed the warm November air in deeply and felt that amidst silence all thought seemed to come to an end. I felt the rapture of every living thing around me. I felt the song of silence remove all thought and false security of the self. I watched the heavens move and the changing canopy of the trees as the sun peaked its head on the horizon.

In the last month or so people have been consumed by the Canadian election and now the American election. There are some people who are not interested at all and have become apathetic and I can relate to their apathy. The greed of the American economy created by deception and corruption has been fed more lies and deception by a massive bailout that in time will probably reach about $2 trillion. There is so much corruption within politics, economics, and religion. Such things have stupefied the brain. What is going on today has been going on since the dawn of time. Political, economic and religious revolt, one group trying to overthrow the other. This has been the history of humankind and every generation plays out the same sorrow, misfortune and corruption, thinking that they are going through it for the first time. We refuse to see that our brains are stupefied by beliefs. In America religious idealism in the name of Jesus and the common phrase of “God bless America” has stupefied the person’s brain. In the Eastern world the Muslims have the same fanaticism as the Christians, each pointing the finger at each other, creating conflict that eventually will lead to war. This has been the history of humankind and no political movement to the left or to the right will put humankind in a better position. Every president in the United States that has tried to govern with some sense of truth and principal has been assassinated. America is not the only country that has dealt with assassinations. But the fact remains, whether Obama or McCain become elected, the disorder, corruption and greed will continue. Whoever gets elected gets elected based on the favors for the money they’ve received to push their campaign.

In all religions the goal is to turn humanity in a different direction, a different course than we are presently on and no religion has been able to do it. Instead, it has created fanatical belief systems that people have been willing to kill for. Religion has become an instrument of war, claiming peace. Political and economic policy, however noble, will never change a human being. All throughout history everything has been tried to educate humankind toward a different movement that allows us to live together peacefully and satisfy our basic needs without preventing others from meeting and satisfying theirs. The failed system of communism has the intention of offering economic equality. But because of the external control psychology of human beings, we aren’t able to bring about economic equality because inwardly we are corrupt. Every ism, anti, philosophy or belief system that thought invents will never change humanity. The very nature of that philosophy or belief system is put together through the process of thinking which in itself is a mechanical and corrupt movement. Most human beings are caught in the web and the network of thinking. Thinking has become the dominant factor operating in human beings and everything that it creates is limited.

When you hear the Sarah Palins of the world discussing their stupefied belief system, they act as a mirror to see your own. Why can’t we set our belief systems aside and see clearly that if you have a strong belief in God, in the state, in politics, in your country or in economics, that belief is created by thinking? We want to be rescued by God and do things in the name of God, because we love that approach to life and then we are not responsible for what we do or think. Beliefs remove the power of doubt and skeptical thinking and it is only through doubt and skeptical thinking that human beings can begin to solve their internal problems. And then there are external problems. The movement to solve the external problems is the same position as communism. Communism tries to create the environment of the equality without first removing the poison that prevents equality. These are the internal forces created by thinking, such as agreed and self-centeredness.

Obama may be elected, although I do have my doubts, because the election will probably be fixed. America is a country that shoots its own presidents and then covers it up, as in the case of JFK, and will not open Pandora’s box and make those people responsible for the death of the Kennedys. In light of this mentality, how can we possibly expect of America to heal itself when lies and deception are more important than truth? America has become a nation of personal beliefs, based on a false religion of Christianity. Every time a person amounts to some good or has a sense of clarity or insight, we have been trained through our conditioning to connect that insight to some tradition or belief system we hold so dear. But the fact is people come upon goodness from insight and compassion, which is an internal intelligence because they have gotten their self-centeredness out of the way.

Throughout the world, America has been hated because they keep putting themselves in the position of telling other people what’s best for them and ramming down other people’s throats their identification with a piece of colored cloth called the flag. This is a sick form of motivation. Human beings, regardless of creed and colour are one organism, as all trees are one organism. Regardless of the type of tree, it is still a tree and it reaches its potential as all things in nature do, except human beings. Our minds have become mediocre because we are full of the things of thinking. We are not Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, and Communists. This is all a sign of our deep internal sickness because we have identified with the outside. We are one world, one people, and one planet. I have lots of good American friends and most of them see beyond the political organizing and don’t identify who they are with their flag.

Billions of years ago tribes warred over belief systems. Today those tribes are nations with just more sophisticated belief systems interwoven with instincts that have now given us the arrogance to destroy our planet or create genocide. When you think of Obama, who attends a Christian church regularly, and the Republicans call him a Muslim, and then you have McCain who they call a Christian who doesn’t attend church at all, this shows you how nuts and stupefied the American brain is. All beliefs stupefy the brain and that stupefaction brings about conflict. That conflict leads to division and war and that is an absolute fact. You have only to look at your daily life with your husband or wife or your children and see that conflict of belief is playing out – it happens on a personal scale so it’s happening on a global scale. The only way out of this stupefaction is to end one’s beliefs and set the thinking process in a safe place, which is dealing with technological things.

Where thinking creates the psychological entity of the self, that self will look for certainty and that certainty will be false. If any country invaded another country people within that country would rise up and protect their homes and fight for their life. But why is it that psychologically people come in, peddling their beliefs, religious political or otherwise, and we will fight to the death to maintain our psychological beliefs. We constantly give up our power to doubt and discriminate to some religious or political authority because we have become mediocre and complacent, fueled by our greed. We are addicted to the pleasure that thought brings and we have bought into the pleasure of thought and are paying an enormous price. Beliefs give us a great sense of pleasure but create unbelievable insecurity. Therefore our ability to discern, our ability to make our own decisions, or our ability not to decide, has been crippled because we have lost the capacity to listen. Listening now is simply listening through the content we have of the other’s content. This is sensory listening and that sensory listing is corrupt. To really listen is to set aside one’s prejudice, one’s content, so that through that listening the false can be perceived. Most of us are not interested in anything but maintaining our own pleasure. And until we began to look deeper into the structure of ourselves we will never change because we are the world that we have created – the mess is ours.

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