CoachBri’s Blog

Meditation is the ending of one’s daily disorder. It is choiceless and cannot be something that is practiced. Willful mindfulness is for people caught in the web of mind tricks, meeting their own self-centered activity. Any willful meditation is not meditation at all because any method to become aware or mindful is created by thought, or the process of thinking, in order to get out of the trap or limitation of ego or self.

Meditation is love in action and not an escape from one’s fast-paced life. To see how inattentive one is to their anger, hurt, jealously, or quest for power or insecurity as it moves is the beginning of meditation and the unfolding of the religious mind. Self can practice all kinds of traditions, rituals or disciplines but they are all movements of ego to get out of ego. How can the ego with all the problems it causes in relationship also be the thing that brings ego to its death so that real relationship is authentic?

Meditation is perceiving one’s lack of authenticity and the lies that self is and projects in all its multiple identifications. Ego-self can identify with the letters after one’s name, or the amount of money in the bank, or a vow of poverty. Ego is the making of meaning to justify the experiences one has chosen and is often giving itself mystical qualities because it can’t face its limitations and petty superficial existence.

Self cannot practice meditation. They do not belong on the same axis because love and hate are not related to each other and are not opposites. Meditation and love come from the same root. Self and practice, be it yoga or any method to become something spiritual, is like a dog wagging its own tail. To really feel love and compassion is to see one’s un-lovingness and violence to another. For a virtuous person can never recognize their own virtue, if they did it would be an egoism.

Meditation is not mindfulness. Meditation is a mind empty of all the identifications with the things thinking has invented. When a mind is serious and sets aside all its identifications and playing games to cover up its loneliness and endless chatter, it can go beyond itself. The going beyond is not something thought or self can touch. That is the truly religious spirit and it is not tied to any religion or method created by self.

Coachbri

Here in Denver the air was thin and clean, the sun was warm and penetrating. In the morning I walked along the tireless river.  There were many ducks busy feeding and doing their daily activities. They all seemed to share the river and what she offered them. Larger birds seemed to be aware of other large birds and they would stop eating when they swam near each other. The smaller birds were no threat to the larger ones and went unheeded. Occasionally a small piece of paper floated down and was inspected by a mallard duck, which seemed to know something about these floating prospects. It would explore them with its flat bill and toss them about, picking at their contents. Everything that happened on the wide, shared river had meaning to its inhabitants and they all seemed to get along fine.

Human beings forever have been hurt by the tremendous influence of professionals in the area of their own development. Not able to ask deep, profound questions that are not the response of pressure from the outside or inside, human beings have lost touch with the own movement towards their gifts and inclinations.  We have sought, in our confusion and reaction to such a violent world of conformity and corruption, a state of mind that wants unshakable faith or some supernatural power to bring meaning and purpose to our lives.

Faith is the cultivation of minds that are deeply caught in their own self-centered pursuit.  They want this faith to be unshakable and whomever challenges it is seen as doing something sacrilegious. The faithful minded are always rooted in their belief, and security is their narcissism. To be free of the past influences with regards to our own life journey is to have doubt as a cornerstone of all religious endeavors.  Without doubt, any inquiry into anything will only lead one back to one’s own distortions and one clings to one’s distortion like a burr on a piece of wool. Only in seeing how one is so deeply affected by the professionals, who project an image of smartness and status, can one ever arrive at truth. Truth is the thing that brings freedom and that freedom means insecurity and a deep sense of energy that faces the unknown without anxiety. The deeper one’s faith, the greater the anxiety.  All anxiety is a mind caught in the past, trying to secure the future.

The sun and its glorious rays are soon covered by the clouds.  Off in the distance the silhouette of the mountains appears.  In the late afternoon the warmth of the sun dissipates and soon the game will start and I will enter a whole set of different illusions.

Coachbri

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

It was a warm spring afternoon. The air held the chill of the dying winter. The sun’s warmth could be felt best in the places of seclusion from the cool air. He was a tall, handsome and dressed to perfection. He held eye contact as if not to miss a thing. He was clear about paying for his time and he hoped that we would not be interrupted. He didn’t want me to answer the phone if it rang.

Okay sir that would be fine. Now how can I help?

I’m not really here for help as in counseling. I just wanted to bounce something off you. My friend Larry told me that he often comes to see you and you seem to enable him to look at things differently.

Okay sir. Where do you want to begin?

Well first I have to check you out a little, before I decide to let you in on my ideas.

So what would you like to know?

Are you a religious person?

What do you mean by that?

I don’t want to have a debate and you pour out your religious beliefs on me. I am sick of that. My wife does it to me, my parents, even some of my friends.

Okay sir, so we are here again. What would like to bounce off me?

Why do I feel so shitty about my life? Life seems to be sad to me. Everyone gives me opinions and I don’t think they are really their opinions.

Yes sir they probably aren’t. Very few people think for themselves.

That is what I believe. My wife throws the bible at me and repeats some quote. I get the same thing from my parents. And people from my church. The other day I just couldn’t take it anymore and I walked out and walked home. When I got home my wife ask me where I went and I told her I had to get out of that place. I told her I thought the whole thing was basically lies. I don’t believe it and I can’t go anymore.

What did she say sir?

She cried and told me it was the devil. And I better be careful. She called the pastor. And he came over that afternoon. And it was horrible.

What was horrible?

I don’t know. He asked me questions and I answered and he kept holding up his bible as if it would deflect my responses.

Yes sir, the whole thing is so ugly.

Yes that is a good way to describe it. Ugly. Another thing I think is I am a realist. I can no longer tolerate all this meaningless discussion about God! I don’t even think there is one. I am sick of people saying stuff like if a good thing happens to them, well thank the lord looking after us. Or God blessing us. So god is punishing all those who have trouble or when things go wrong in their life? I don’t hear them say God is punishing me for something I did. Are the hungry in the world the wrath of God? It is all such bullshit. If I want to have sex with my wife and want to go down on her that can’t be a sin! So who do I believe, I am so tired of living by everyone else’s standards!

So what do you want?

I want to know why I feel so unhappy!

Feeling unhappy is a sign of something much deeper, is it not sir?

Like what? If people would just leave me alone and not try to run their belief system down my throat and if my wife would just accept me for the person I am and not what she wants me to be. And if my parents would just get over their son not being religious. Then my life would be great!

Can you control any of them?

No and I don’t want too. I wish I could just get them to leave me alone and not try to control me.

Sir when we are unhappy it is a feeling! Right sir?

Yes but so what? When I feel happy that is a feeling too.

Yes, so when you are thinking about how they are controlling you, how do you feel?

Okay, you and I both know that! I feel good and bad, so does everybody else. But knowing that doesn’t help me one bit getting them off my back.

Okay so what are you doing not to get them off your back?

Coming here to see you and walking out of church and when I feel sexual and want to screw my wife saying that!

And is that getting her in bed and having her?

No, it’s not! She tells me I’m too sexual and because I want it once a week. Her and the minister say that I shouldn’t want sex and that suffering is good for me will make me a better person.

Yes sir that is one of our favorite conditionings.

What is?

One way to control people’s minds religiously is to have them think that suffering brings them to a spiritual understanding or some reward for suffering.

I see that happening in my life, and my wife sure believes that.

I know sir. One way of keeping the world in poverty is to have them conform to the belief that their poverty is a path to God or is holy or something. They do the same in the Catholic church and many other churches to deny yourself sex or things, vows of this and that. It is all a bunch of garbage sir. Love doesn’t flower in conformity or denial or ritual. Love isn’t tied to anything. Love is love. It is relationship in freedom.

That is cool! Relationship in freedom. I have never heard that before!

No sir! That is why love has no chains or bounds.

I feel very chained.

Yes sir! You are!

Is it possible to cut those chains? I don’t know how!

Sir, if you see the importance you give to sex and how you are caught by it, how self-centered you are in it and the demand, the rejection and the withholding and the control of it, then it loses its hold!

But what do I do with all this pressure from my parents and family, even my friends?

Pressure for what sir?

To go to church, prayer groups and all that. It is bullshit.

Sir! If you are reacting to the control of it and people trying to control you then it will never fall away and only build your anger.

Well I sure am angry!

Is not the indication of anger your self-centered imposing on another and them not doing what or getting what you want from the other?

So you are saying I am angry and doing the same back to them the same way they are doing it to me.

Yes sir, that can be seen!

I think that is what’s happening!

All over the world it is happening and very few people are interested in all this. It is destroying human relationship and our relationship to the earth.

I feel so much better. I am sorry for giving you such a hard time.

You didn’t sir. You were hard on yourself!

So what do I do with my wife then?

Seek to understand her sir! Then demand nothing!

That’s how it used to be! Before we were married.

Yes sir marriage is about a union, not a disconnect!

I think you’re right!

No sir you see the truth of that!

Thank you

You’re welcome.

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 have received a lot of questions lately – some deep, some not so deep. I am always amazed that people want to know what I am thinking especially around certain topics!

So here is a question I recently received. Please be advised that this is just what I see.

Brian, what do you think of what is happening is the U.S? The bailout, and all that?

Why do you want to know how I see it? Isn’t it more important to look and see what you think and feel about something?

True but I want to know what you think about all this.

Please tell me why?

You seem to see deeper into things I guess.

Well, please take this with a gain of salt sir most of it is opinion and therefore worthless!

It may not be!

First sir, in America a majority of the people are conditioned by religion, politics, being patriotic, and the need to conform. They don’t think for themselves. Most are extremist, pointing their fingers at the extremes of the east. Being so heavily conditioned (as we are also in this country), we are not really interested in change. We only want change that betters us economically. The debt of America is smoke and mirrors, the left hand bullying the right. The right hand tries to find away to get the bully back.

If we were really serious about change we would not be a part of any war, or the building up of armaments. Politicians are the children of the external control psychology that is destroying the world. Most will crawl into bed with anyone or one anything to get the vote. Is this not the way of politics? The crisis in America and in any country is in each individual conscience. It is here we have the tribalistic attitude that has created nationalism, the flag and all that is done in the name of it. This nationalism is at the root of war, poverty and the American way. In the same way, much of religion and the return to fundamentalism is a sign of deep confusion because it ends inquiry and confronting how petty and small our lives really are. Small minds criticize other, live in beliefs, and find security in religion and politics as a means to escape and be entertained. Take a look at the 700 billion dollar bailout, a trillion dollar war, and oil companies and other war profiteers making billions off the people they say they care about. They cut the soul out of their own people. Anyone who commits atrocities outside their own borders soon creates them within them. As you do on to others you do onto yourself. There are people in America that are awake and they have been silenced because they are not good entertainment. To get people to think for themselves you have to show them they are not themselves but what their nation wants them to be. But what their nation wants them to be does not create freedom! It is exile and tyranny. Freedom implies space! You can’t think if you think as a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, an American, a Canadian, or an Iranian.

All of this clouds the brain and creates reaction. The word react means to “re-in-act”, to do something one has done before. This doing what we have done before is external psychology. To free the brain from it means to be clear so that you can embrace you enemy, which is one’s self and all its self-interest. This is what cripples America and all nations the world over.

Coach bri

It was a warm October afternoon and the trees were at the pinnacle of their color. The contrast between the evergreens and the orange, red and yellow trees was so gentle on the eyes. Every once in a while, a gust of wind would pass through the trees and send the leaves falling of the earth. Each leaf had a dance of their own but they fell with such grace and dignity. At the end of their life they fell from the thing that gave them life to the ground, to become a source of life for the Earth. Everything in nature seems to have its own intelligence and psyche. Everything seems to fulfill its potential with such grace and beauty. In the sunroom there were hundreds of ladybugs making their journey up and down the window in an endless cycle. Every so often they would meet a fly and then they would move around each other as not to interfere. Even here, in the life of insects, there seemed to be an intelligence or understanding that allowed each to exist together and share the same window.

Human beings tend to make everything into enormous affair. We are so cluttered with all the things of thinking it is almost impossible for us to understand or have compassion for anyone or anything. Over the last six weeks mankind’s greed has come to a pinnacle. The mortgage fiasco in the United States and the billion-dollar bailouts paid by governments will again only operate in the interests of the rich. The division between rich and the poor is forever widening and now both the Canadian and American elections, full of hypocrisy, move away from the central question of how the government will lead people out of poverty. We all have heard that the source of good government is its ability to take care of its weakest member. In today’s politics and economic greed, the external psychology of human beings keeps the poor from finding bridges out of poverty.

I have received a ton of e-mails lately from people asking me to comment on the mortgage fiasco and the election. I am really intrigued why people want to know what I think. What really matters is what they think. What is at the root of their thoughts and actions? I don’t see myself as a very political person. But I have answered these questions as best as I can. Politics, religion, sports and fashion are just distractions. If we are not involved heavily in any one of these four, we are probably involved in other entertainments. Why is it that we need to be so entertained! Is it because through these entertainments we are kept away from the central question? Are we as human beings reaching our potential? Very few people are really interested in their own transformation.

Coach bri