CoachBri’s Blog

If we could look at the world and see what it means to live in this world and reach our potential, I don’t think many people would say they are reaching it. Humankind seems to be willing to change technology at a colossal rate. However, we still live with the psychology of self and all its domination that keeps us behaving with animal instincts in the ways we parent, manage people in the work place, teach in our schools, coach athletes and keep a hold over our spouses. This self psychology is made by the process called thinking and our brain, being dominated by this self psychology, is the brainwashing that is the source of time. Humankind fails to see that the brain, being rooted in time, is the cause of all our problems inside and outside, by the endless need to become something better that we are.

But what are the facts? We have taken somewhere around 14 billion years to evolve to the state we are now, called humans. This is a measurement created by humans based on their need to put meaning to their existence. At some point in our evolution it was important to become more skilled at survival or one would die. Sometimes improving your position outside in society is natural. Unfortunately human beings extended this principal inwardly and concluded that “I too must become better”. There we formed a manmade self and the whole psychology of its function.

“Every generation blames the one before, all of their suffering comes beating at your door” (Mike and the Mechanics, “The Living Years”). This is a profound statement that encapsulates why human beings are caught in a prison of their own making called the psychology of self. The study of psychology is the so-called science of human behavior. But we have forgotten that this self we have created is a product of thought. Thinking is its mother. Self is born out of thought because thinking is a movement from experience, which gives us knowledge, which then creates memories.  Thinking, and words, are the past, knowledge is the past, memories are the past. Therefore thinking is rooted in the past and rooted in time. Self is a movement of time.

We run from the fact that self, being a movement of the past thinking it’s a movement in the present, is the source of all our anxiety. As self begins to see it is not real but a product of instincts being sustained by the thinking process, a transformation happens. That transformation is the dismantling of the self and all its beliefs, conclusions and images. These are all the children of thinking, which is a movement from the past, which poisons the present. A poisoned present is the psychology of self in action. The action is a process that creates conflict because it has formed all the religions, the political parties, philosophies, countries, etc. This for centuries is our madness leading to self’s biggest organized accomplishment: organized mass murder called war.

Therefore we are at war everyday because self and its psychology is that thing that dominates our life.  Few people are interested in getting at the core of the problem because they refuse to cease all movement or the so called spiritual movement rooted in knowledge. Knowledge, practiced in any direction is the most destructive force of a religious or spiritual life as it creates tradition and all tradition binds humankind to a movement in time. Love, compassion, and insight are movements not created by thought or bound by time. That is the movement lacking in and around our lives and the world at large. We, as separate individuals, are responsible for this!

Declan Brian O’Reilly

Human behavior is always looking for some means to an end. We are always wanting something and therefore we crave experience. The rich are tired and bored with their lives, and the poor are tired just trying to get enough to eat. Somewhere in all of this, loneliness is shared by all. The rich crave the most rare experiences, and set it as a status symbol, thinking that in that experience loneliness will be no longer. But soon after that outlandish experience, they are back again in their loneliness. The poor, being limited by poverty, ruthlessly seek spiritual experience as a means to cover up their loneliness. What is the cause of the loneliness we feel so deep in our hearts? Why are there so many people that suffer from it and are even controlled by it? They are often terrified to be alone.

It is interesting to know that the word ‘alone’ in the dictionary means ‘all one’. So the feeling of aloneness and the emotion of loneliness are two different things. Loneliness is a state in the brain aroused by thought. It is the state in which we crave experience. Human beings think that making experience better, more, wider, deeper, or faster, they will be able to kill or get rid of this feeling of emptiness which loneliness arises out of. We don’t seem to look deeper and see that experience is a self-centered movement; it makes for the strengthening the very center of the ego itself, which is who and what we have become. A human being, ambitious for spiritual experience, is no different than a human being seeking to be a millionaire or billionaire. Both are ruthless and self-serving, committed to something or some image that thought has put together.

By the very nature of the self-centered process, we cripple our relationships with each other, creating our own isolation. Experience is the building block of the self at its fundamental core. We have all been conditioned to live from that core and object to any other way of living. Human beings create the state of loneliness by addicting to experience, by the seeking of pleasure. Is not the promise of pleasure to give one experiences that feed the senses? This short period of time of sensual bliss soon gives rise to the feeling of being without, and one feels a sense of the void within. The void within, the center of the ego, craves a new experience to cover up the pain it is in. Pain is the source of all one’s appetites. When we feed this machinery, created by thought through experience, we waste our energy on superficial, meaningless activity and move closer to being more machine-like than human.

Each person is looking for a state of mind where all conflict has come to an end, where there is this sense of peace. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is a movement of perception, which has nothing to so with thinking. It is, in itself, love in action without motive. In order for this state to come about, the very center of sensation must come to an end. Sensation, without a center, is pure and uncontaminated. With a center there is direction, motive, and experience that is full of pleasure or pain. Awareness of the whole movement of thought and all its tricks can set human beings on a different path. Only in that pure attention and observation can the core of self be dismantled. When pleasure and pain are seen for what they are, then the human being understands the peace of no self. Then one is free from motive, choice, and craving.

Living a life acquiring pleasure is to live a life of conflict. In conflict we create our own misery. This misery is the cycle of External Control Psychology. We identify with religion, money, position, and associate with people and organizations to cover up our deep sense of emptiness. When this doesn’t work we crave conflict to reinforce our own self-centeredness. This gives us the feeling we are alive by breeding the energy of conflict. The energy of conflict is the source of external control because it will go to any length to have power over other people. External control is creating images through experience and when that experience is painful, we blame the other for the image we have created about them, ourselves, and or the situation.

Very few people care about reaching their potential. That potential is the striping away of all the things that thought has convinced us are important and valuable. True value can only be established when one is free from all wanting. Then the need to understand is more important than the words you use, which is relationship.

Coach bri