CoachBri’s Blog

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

Human relationship through connection is what gives life meaning and purpose.

Ask a man what he thinks and you give him honor and friendship. Ask him what he feels and he looks at you like you have two heads. I have watched this subtle meanness for some time now. It is sad and so deeply conditioned and causes so much unneeded suffering. It is common and practiced by uneducated as well as the so called educated. Most men wouldn’t be able to say much to each other if they didn’t practice this in all its subtle forms. Men are wounded and hide their hurt in so many sophisticated ways. Most men use humor to cover it up. If you listen to men in social situations, the last thing they would talk about or are even interested in talking about is their feelings. If they do they are classified as being ladylike, homosexual, girly, wussy, a fag, or a pansy. Men like the conversation to be either light and fun or intellectual. It is here where they feel safe. If you watch a group of men together with so-called friends, you will see how they joke with each other. Some of it is just in fun, light and not too personal. But unfortunately men have been deeply conditioned to establish their dominance in a situation. This is woven into our genes and comes out in most men as a means to satisfy their need for power. All men don’t learn this, particularly if they have been raised without power-tripping parents who let kids choose and learn. Or some boys questioned at a young age and have sorted out the fact that they don’t like being controlled by others so they don’t try to control others. These men make good husbands and great dads because they put relationship before intellect. They feel as well as think but feeling rules not thinking. Therefore they do things to keep the closeness and relationship strong.

Coach bri

I have come to see you because of something you said at a Friday Night Group.
One of the members of this group was there and he was causing a lot of problems, judging people and trying to get a fight going. He seems so unable to, as you call it, evaluate himself. He was very good at evaluating them but there came a point in that meeting where you locked eyes with him and told him to leave himself alone. Now there are two things that I noticed in him: One, was he was very afraid of you and secondly, the more important one, was how you seem to be aware of things that I am not. So my question is this: What is this awareness all about?

Okay, so you wish to understand this thing called awareness. Can I ask why?

Well, if I was more aware I think I would get more out of things, I guess?

So your inquiry is to get something out of this awareness. Is that not a self-centered approach to the problem?

Okay, yes it is. So what?

Is awareness a self-centered movement? Or is awareness stopped and non-existent when one is self-centered?

I kinda see what you mean but not fully.

In order to find out what awareness is, must we not find out what awareness is not? Then from there discover how unaware we are.

I am not sure! I feel aware sometimes. But then it doesn’t seem to last long.

Of course!

Why do you say ‘of course’?

Anything willful, planned, by effort, by imagining or by drugs cannot make one aware.

So you are saying it can’t be forced.

Yes but much more than that! Awareness has no cause, being unaware has a cause.

Which is what? What is the cause of unawareness then?

To be preoccupied sir. That is simple then isn’t it?

When you put it that way yes! So then why are we so unaware?

The brain is always active, thinking sir, it is on override. Thinking enters places where it has little value or meaning.

Those places are?

Thinking has very little value in the area of human relationship. It gives one the illusion of relationship because you think like someone else or like a group of people. This has been our downfall sir. Surely you see that!

I think I do but it seems too deep for me.

Yes that is another thing that thinking does to avoid the issue.

What issue? And I think you have just called me lazy.

No sir, the fact is we are lazy! You are only not lazy when there is some pleasure in it for you, when you find the motivation, no sir?

Yes I see that. But relationship?

Sir, relationship through thinking is only association. People who are united through thinking are united through beliefs, be they religious, political, philosophical, or economic, it is all so superficial. Relationship implies being connected, contacting, being in movement with.

So can you say I am connected through my faith or religion?

No sir, that is not true!

Why not?

That is simple to see! Because being connected through anything that thinking creates like religion, philosophy, etc, is going to separate you from some other group which then leads to conflict and war. That has been our history of life on this planet – lot of things put together by thinking and the denial of relationship because of those things.

That is amazing!

Yes! If you see it and remain with it! Relationship in life is the most important thing. Not the job you have or the car you drive. But a deep connection first sir with your being. You are not the things thinking says you are. You are far deeper and richer than that. To see the fact of that one must refuse to enter any relationship or give importance to any relationship that is based on what thinking has put together.

Then how do I live Bri?

Sir, most people are struggling for human connection, socially we have great difficulty finding love and security.

No doubt about that!

See why sir? Because the things that are supposed to bring us security, like money, a job, religion, my family, bring conflict and conformity. When I don’t conform to the demands of another, I am left out! Thrown out! Relationship and connection come about when thinking is quiet, when I have no judgment, no preconceived idea about myself and or another. This is the movement of compassion; it arises in the ashes of all my self-centered thinking. So many people are unaware sir of what is happening, how quickly life comes and goes and at the end of our years most people’s brains are worn out. They are dazed and confused by their conflictual lives. Conflict breeds its own energy, rising out of the mechanical process of thought which fuels the war machine and has been doing that for one hundred thousand years. Relationship, connection is a more subtle movement which blooms in awareness. That awareness is not something that has any relationship to thinking – one cannot think oneself aware. When you are in discord or conflict, hurt, jealously, fear, greed, we poison everything we touch. To be aware of these movements as they are happening in you without trying to get rid of them is meditation. In that meditation awareness is the cornerstone of all relationship, thinking is perceived and torn out. In that we are free and that freedom is the movement of love, compassion and intelligence.

You strike a hard bargain.

No sir, bargaining is another form of trying to get what we want. I want nothing from you! Just see the truth of what is being said. It has nothing to do with me really. I’m not trying to convince you of anything.

Well you’re doing a damn good job!

Maybe you just see the truth of what is being said.

Yes maybe! Thanks. May I come again?

Of course!

Coach bri

It is in the small things we choose our sorrow. In places where the relationship gets strained, we ask too much of a friend or we ask too little of ourselves. In all situations relationship is denied when we are not open with the people we care about the most. Or we isolate ourselves when people are not able to give to us because they are toiling with there own woes. The mark of love leaves a deep bite when it comes crashing into our darkness and leaves us naked without excuses or remedies for things others thought we couldn’t do or weren’t capable of. When we are touched by something real and innocent, we run to our deepest vices and plant ourselves fully in their chains, as if to say my change is not welcome if pleasure is withheld from me.

The music of anything is found in the spaces between the notes. In that nothingness we began and we will again drift into it. The time of birth and the time of death come when they come. Behind all things there is simplicity – live fully, die, empty, embrace the things that bring challenge to your day. Step away from things that give the illusion of being powerful. Cancer is powerful but it too dies. Hunger is powerful and it too dies. Yet the promise of pleasure is never as good or powerful as the promise it made. Behind it all is how you make your life, not for yourself, but so that others can find their riches in your heart. Truth is the only true power in this world and we run from her like vampires in a sunrise. We run from light because in its presence change just happens, and the illusion of control we thought we had is no longer.

Coachbri

Spring was making attempts to come but the cold arctic air was still felt in the mid afternoon. He was very disappointed in the weather and snow was forecast for the next several days. He walked into the office, strongly and briskly, and he dropped down into the chair and talked as if he wanted to get at it. He attacked the conversation about the weather as if he was taking personal offense to the cold and that cold was out to get him.

Why am I so unhappy? I seem to mess up all the time. If I talk to anyone I am ok. I listen but the moment I start to give my opinion, people are against me and I always end up in some sort of fight. My wife tells me all the time I love conflict. I feel I hate it and am sick of fighting. I feel she pulls that on me to get her way and she knows it hurts me so I will back off. I wish I just didn’t have to fight all the time

Sir if I may…Human beings have settled into conflict and all we seem to accept life as is a struggle. The question is: struggle against what? For what? Everything is made into a problem to be solved. This is from the technical and survival training we had years ago to use in order to battle the forces of nature. To survive in the wilderness thinking and all its innovation were essential so that we could live. But why do we live in conflict now? That is the question, is it not sir?

I think it is! But I have asked a similar question to that and when I ask it to people, we end up in conflict of opinion, then it goes downhill from there.

Sir, you see the war around you, the fighting on the TV. It is getting far worse with all these extreme shows. Really they are all conflict based and people love to watch those reality show because why sir? Why are we so interested in watching who gets sent home or loses the most weight etc? Why Sir?

I guess we like it!

What is there to like? We watch people emotionally torture people, right sir! We love to see people deal with rejection, fear, anxiety, all kinds of stuff. Why?

I guess it is entertaining, to see people suffer I guess.

Yes, but why do we want others to suffer? And watch it? The more gory the better.

I don’t know why. I just like it I guess.

Apart from that sir? You watch the extreme or go to extremes. Why?

I have no idea. I see what you mean but it seems so hidden.

Is it that we are so desensitized? Sir, in the extreme we feel alive; our emotions are touched because we have lost all our sensitivity.

Well I feel like nothing touches me. Except sex perhaps and then in that it has to be aggressive, or degrading. I don’t mean I hit her or anything it just that….

That there is no sensitivity or tenderness in it. Right Sir? You are with the body but not the being.

That basically sums that up! But there is so much conflict between us.

Yes John! And the source of that conflict is what?

I guess we are on different pages. Or something!

No, much deeper, your self is in battle with her self and where self is, love, compassion, and tenderness are not.

That is true. We haven’t been friends for the past ten years.

Yes sir, friends don’t live in conflict. They don’t take part in it.

Well we have lots of that; sometimes I have nothing but hate and resentment for her and nothing else.

And for you, what does she have?

I guess the same – she has just given up on me.

Given up on what Sir?

On me. I have let her down. I am not the man she once wanted or ever had. I can’t live up to her expectations.

Can she live up to yours sir?

So you are saying it is my fault then or both our faults?

Does it matter whose fault it is sir? Really?

Well I blame her and she blames me.

Yes, so then what? Two people waiting for the other to change, two people know how the other should change, two people sure they know what is best for the other and therefore no relationship.

Ok, buddy, you have made your point. So there is my miserable little life.

No sir, life is what happens to you when you are not in conflict. The problem is we are in conflict most of the time.

With what?

With time itself and everything it has created.

Wait! That is a bit off. I don’t get it.

Thought has produced who you think you are. You have gathered that from the outside, thinking it is an internal movement. Therefore you are always trying to become something better that what you are. So you are programmed to build an image about yourself because everyone around you is building images about themselves.

Why would they do that?

To belong, to give one’s self or ego a sense that it is real.

But if it comes from the outside, it is not from my inside, then why does it feel so important and precious?

It gives one a sense of security which is false and because it is the only thing thought knows what to do – to build images and think they’re real.

So you are telling me I am in conflict with my wife because I see her through an image.

Yes sir!

What image?

The one that suits you at any given time.

So if that is true I am doing this to her and she to me then that means that our relationship isn’t real.

Sir, if you see you are in conflict with someone, isn’t that conflict based on opposing points of view, opposing images? So drop your image!

Well why should I? Why don’t you tell her to drop hers?

That is just it sir! Do you see it? I am miserable, and I want someone else to change. This is how we live – so irresponsible to our own transformation.

Bud, look, I know you are right and at the same time I am happy about this conversation but at the same time … you!!! I’m just so angry, yet grateful … no, angry for…….

… You’re pissed at me, right sir?

Yeah, but I see what you are saying. It is just so demanding and I see it is me, not her. My whole life is this blaming.

I know! Petty little lives we live, right sir?

Yeah! Thanks!

Coach bri

Relationship is the most important process of our life; it is the source of all happiness.

In a world where we are educated to earn a livelihood, we have forgotten how to live and get along with the people in our life the way we want and need to. This is the source of all the personal psychological problems. We have been conditioned to think we are weak and the process of trying to become something is slowly eroding our intelligence. Therefore we think happiness comes in letters after your name or in what you own or the size of your bank account. We have been taught to hate, to discriminate, and think we are different than other creatures of the earth, and now we have cultivated a sense of entitlement. We have being conditioned to think we are the most important and entitled to anything we want without any ramifications.

The psyche of human beings is entangled with knowledge, creating a self that seeks to acquire outside points of reference like religions, political associations, educational credentials and culture. The self, which is a process of accumulation, from conditioning external to us, has given us the impression it is an internal movement. The importance placed on these external movements has formed people’s personal identity thus we are attached to them and the horrors they instill. We are educated to have beliefs, opinions, and ideals, which we ram down people’s throats in all situations where we don’t get along. This source of not getting along is the practice of the external control psychology or self, ego, that
1. reacts to information
2. blames situations and others when we are unhappy
3. evaluates others when we are the ones who are miserable,
4. imposes on others what we think is best for them, which is the knowledge that creates a self.

Remedy: In every situation, practice dying to external control and practice internal psychology.

1. See your attachment to external psychology, which is the self.

Your are not the car you drive, the house you own, the letters after your name, the position you hold in the firm, the size of your bank account, the clothes you wear and you are not your religious or non-religious beliefs. Your political associations do not define you, your behavior does. Thus the phrase: “Get over yourself!”.

2. Don’t buy into the idea that information makes your behave! You are always in control of everything you do. Even when you lose it, you have chosen your behavior.

3. The common denominator in all of your human misery and pain is what you are thinking and doing in the moment that it occurs, so change you.

4.Don’t be an expert in anyone else’s life, just your own. You only know what is best for you.

Coach Bri

Over the past twenty-eight years of working with people, mainly managers, I find it amazing that CEOs spend most of their resources on bricks and mortar, hardware and technical skills. They often talk about how people are their greatest resource yet fail to spend any money building the capacity of their employees. They don’t seem to perceive the link between relationships and Quality service or Quality products.

Most CEOs have bought into Boss Management, creating managers who practice the relationship-destroying habit of Boss Management. People today want a work culture founded on integrity, ownership, leadership, and empowerment. They want to be creative and responsible in a whole new way that the present management style (Boss Management) kills.

Relationships that work are highly dependent on openness and honesty in order to build trust. The habits of relationship, listening without reaction, ownership, responsibility, connective solution building, empowered decision making, and the removal of fear and coercion, allow people to get the best out of themselves and coach it out of other team members. When we gain an understanding of how we are motivated from the inside out, it helps us gain an understanding of how to coach ourselves in the important relationships in our lives.

This has a benefit in two directions. It makes my home life most effective and flows over to the work place. So when employers deliver the right kind of training, employees get the feeling they are cared about, and therefore they see their relationship with their employer as need-fulfilling to all the relationships in their life and will often give unparalleled energy to the company. Working on self and learning to get along becomes a process of self-evaluation and learning. This new way of dealing with people allows people to put quality in the forefront of their minds. This is a result of improving the quality relationships by creating effectiveness in person and professional lives. This capacity-building process, which can be taught from the front line to managerial level, and even VPs and CEOs, is the catalyst for greater productivity, ownership, accountability, and cooperation under pressure.

Boss Management works when you lead the market and are uncontested. But with globalization and competitive markets, Boss Management creates crises to meet manager’s ego needs, rendering the company helpless and losing the competitive edge needed. Self-evaluation and adaptation are lost.

Coach bri

It was a harvest evening. The large sun was setting on the lake and it gave off a rusty red glow. The large full moon could be seen in the distance, bright and powerful. There was clarity to this moon as its reflected rays came through an atmosphere cleaned by four days of intense rain. The play of light on the water and the green banks and clean foliage revealed a deep sense of beauty. The trees washed with rain to the trunk, with their green leaves and dark brown and grey branches, were showing their strength and gentleness that created their longevity.

What will clean the mind of all the garbage and debris of a thousand yesterdays? We never seem to set aside the self, the ego and all its attachments. The space around us is so polluted by our on desires and expectations that everything humankind touches is corrupted. The mind longs to be fresh, clean and without burden, yet thought poisons everything we do by thinking it is needed in relationships. Thinking is the common denominator of mankind. It creates the psychology of ‘I’ that reacts and takes things personally. It is the thing that, when miserable, blames others and knows how they should change. Thinking creates the self that knows what is best for other people, and how they should live according to their particular bias. Thinking is the power trip, the gossip, hurt, and fear. It is also the infliction of religion, and the imposing of belief, to the right or left. We become political to remove the challenge of relationship. All behavior created and sustained with thought prevents relationship. Without relationship all life is without inspiration and meaning. To remain inspired is to enter relationship without effort and without belief which kills vulnerability.

Love has its root in vulnerability.

Coach bri

What does it mean to be human? Is it the chaos we create when we impose our beliefs on others by wronging them for their’s? Often what people think takes on a moral purpose and in conversation with them, what is destroyed is the relationship.

She was nice to look at – friendly and yet strong. She was not a pushover and was not going to be mistreated by anyone. Whenever you entered a conversation with her, she was very skillful and bright. Within a few moments she often unknowingly challenged what you said. The challenge was not a conversation based on two people talking things over together but more of a conversation that was her imposing her more profound view of the situation. She always had moral purpose to her behavior and she knew the right solution, question, and answer. Often in the conversations one felt as if they were being setup. Within a few moments interest would be shown by her telling you, from a more moral perspective, how and what to think. This would of course be done with the best of intentions and perhaps even unnoticed. When around her one had to very careful and conscious of what one said. In this atmosphere all connection and creativity were was stifled. In that was also a profound sorrow.

Coachbri