CoachBri’s Blog

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