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

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

In our last session we discussed how thought plays such a large roll in creating and maintaining our problems.   You were very clear about this regarding fear of death. I can’t seem to remember what it was you said but it did scare the crap out of me! Now things keep coming back to me that we discussed.

Thinking is always on the move, looking to keep itself alive through activity. Thinking about something is thought’s occupation. It is always moving and when one watches or pays attention to thought it slows down. When one gives one’s whole attention to thought it ceases. It is like when you are in a car crash and things seem to happen in slow motion. Most of us only know the release from thought through some activity, competition, or adrenaline rush. If one uses concentration to quiet thought, it is freedom from and therefore a process of exclusion. Thought doesn’t want to end, and its primary directive is to find in some religious, political, or personal belief a place where it is permanent and secure. Thought creates all kinds of beliefs and material processes because it is itself a material process.

The chemical nature of thought is moving in an irrational pattern when it is used beyond the technical boundaries of its intended function. Where human relationship is concerned thinking is a mess. It creates groups of people and the illusion that we are separate beings in separate lands. Thought has created all the psychological problems of disconnection, fear, jealousy, hatred, greed, loneliness etc. Thought also creates the external psychology that most people practice to deal with there disconnected state only inflicting more damage and disconnection.  Thought creates the problem of disconnection and then tries to be the remedy to change it. You can’t use cancer to kill a cancer without creating the same result.

Our greatest challenge as human beings is to question everything that thought creates to make us better people, more loving etc. Thought is a movement that is caught in time.  Fear, jealousy, greed, and hatred are products of time because they are things we learn. Love and compassion are not the rooted in thought. They are another movement that is truly internal. Self is fear, jealousy, greed, hatred and is put into you by others. Where these are, love and compassion are not. To love another and reject someone else is not love.
Death is the ending of self and self is terrified of it own ending.  In the ending of thought one is no longer seeing through the eyes of time and one’s own limits. Then one is free and what is free is not held in the confines of death.

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

It was with me for several days. The walk in the cool damp air or watching a movie, or any distraction I tried could rescue me from my self. The I was front and center, feeling the mercy of my own condition. Self was strong and doing everything it could to keep itself alive. The mind was simply perceiving what the brain’s occupation is, was, and will always be – hiding from the fact of its mechanical limitation, imposed by its own self-centered thinking. One wanted something and the brain was driven to distraction and still is.

When the brain caught a hold of it’s own self-centered movement of trying to put meaning to the state one was in, fear of death arose. This too needs to be watched for fear is self, ego, meeting the illusion of its own making. The brain then began to demand pleasure and wanting another distraction again – sex, food, comparison, or some petty belief about itself.

Nothing in nature is ambitious, but thought is always trying to become something as a means to find some security. Everything must be held, and paid attention to. As the evening slowly dies I sit by the fire and listen to the soft music. Yes, just another distraction.

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

Without a shadow of doubt there I am, caught in a web of my own making. When they speak of the principle of integrity, here too I am lost. What seems to define me more and more is the lack of my own seriousness, and my complacency about it. My heart longs for something, but my mind creates it and therefore is lost. For what is created by the mind is limited and not the truth. I can’t seem to change from this position for this is truly where thought is locked. Day after day I am wanting or desiring something to cover over my inadequacies. I spend most of my time in thought by thought wanting to be out of thought, keeping me there. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to turn but to embrace the ugliness of my own condition.

We do no see the path, the only path, that all change must happen in the content of our own personal consciousness. The wind and water erode a stone, but what will wash away the hardness of the self? The self seems to be a hundred times the strength of stone, a million times more clever than the intellectual genius. It creates the prison of personal drama, thinks something and believes whatever it wants to secure its position. Then without intention or warning, love passes through it and leaves no mark or path. Somewhere between the notes of self there lives a profound silence. Like the birds on a wire each with their space or like the space between two musical notes, love lives. Life is not about now for now is the past of what has been. Go nowhere, be nothing, stop everything, shine not. For if you do shine you will not know you are shining. If you are blessed by love and it moves through you to someone or something you will not channel it or will it be under control of yourself. I see this yet my heart is heavy with the pain and disgust of myself.

Coach bri

Editor’s note: In what follows, Coach Bri discusses The Landmark Forum with an individual involved in the Forum. For clarification, a brief description of their method is included here from their website.
“Whenever we’re limited in life, there is something – a context or framework – that we are blind to and that is holding that limitation in place. Landmark’s technology allows you to create breakthroughs in a two-step process in which you:
• Uncover and examine the blind spots or context holding you back in your life.
• Find out where your current context originated and address it for what it really is.” www.landmarkeducation.com

You have me questioning the Landmark Forum. I listened to you give a talk to a group of people. And I was intrigued by what you have said; I am in training to be an instructor and will start training shortly. What you have discussed and the way you discussed it was devastating to me. I feel I have felt something deeply untrue about Landmark all along, but could never put my finger on it until I heard you speak. If you don’t mind I have some questions for you. So I thought I could come and see you in person. I asked a couple of questions the other night, but I was asking them out of anger because you were breaking down something I have found a lot of security in.

Okay sir, I will do my best, but I’m not against how any things are. I’m only interested in the truth.

Well let’s start there, as you were talking. There were other people who had taken the forum there as well. And they were very bothered by what you said!

Yes sir. Sorry!

Why do you say that the Forum is deceptive?

Well sir, that is easy. The truth cannot be bought or sold, and they claim what all religions claim.

What is that?

That by using thinking you can improve your character or increase your loveliness or compassion or improve yourself.

Okay, see, now why do you say that?

Sir, when you go to these groups, there is a seller in the group, is there not? A person who takes the crowd of people and influences them through positivity, and they’re often in this group to use language like, ‘Yes I see what you’re saying’ or ‘I’ve got it’ or ‘Yes, I’ve got that’. They also put people in the group to ask certain questions in a certain way, which basically is supposed to allow the recruit to feel comfortable and feel at a loss for not doing the training. It is this feeling of being at a loss for not doing the training that is a clever way of getting people to conform to what you want. And what I’m saying sir is that all forms of conformity are violent.

Yes I’m aware of this method and the reason they do it is that it helps people to relax and not be afraid.

It is deceptive sir!

Yes, but people sometimes won’t even entertain the idea…

Sir, how can something of any value begin with intended deception? I know if I want to improve my economic position in life or take a holiday or build a house, there will a need for intention. But to improve myself or psychological state, intention is not going to work.

Well, why do you say that?

Because are not all the religions, political parties, ‘isms’ and ‘anities’ about intention? They are there to help a man become a better person, more loving and have some ridiculous thing called a breakthrough, which means what sir? That they have gained a more powerful position in their life and are in better control of their life.

And what’s wrong with that sir?

Any position in your life where you feel more powerful is dangerous.

And the danger is?

That you’re strengthening your self-centered position.

Okay, and what is wrong with that?

Sir, what is the cause of all psychological problems?

Greed, fear, hatred, jealousy, prejudice… so many things.

No sir. Are not all psychological problems produced by the self? It is the self that is greedy, fearful, full of jealousy and hatred, envious, prejudiced. The self is the source of all man’s conflict. Right, sir? You see it?

Well, I can’t argue with you on that. I see what you are saying.

Now, is it not the self that takes Landmark? Is it not the self that goes to church, takes vows, practices yoga and all kinds of ridiculous things to improve itself?

So, you are against yoga to?

No sir. I’m not against anything. Yoga is good exercise but the fact that I can tie myself in knots has no bearing on how I treat other people, if I have love, compassion and sensitivity.

Well Landmark doesn’t profess to give people that either. It is educating people to be better people.

Yes sir! And are they not using thinking to do it?

What do you mean?

Well, as we have said, thinking put the whole psychological world together. Thinking has built beautiful buildings, marvelous cathedrals, great advances in medicine, human rights, etc… It has taken us to the moon, but it is also responsible for the inability for human beings to get along. We are all divided, separate and conflicted because of thinking, and the importance that we give to it. Thinking has created all the past and present problems and it will never solve our psychological problems. How can the thing that creates problems now solve it?

I see that. Landmark says that as well. You see, we create our reality, and then we lived into it and we have all these rackets going on, and they are just false and made up. So you spend a lifetime in all this mess. You are lost in all this confusion and the Forum cleans up some of the confusion.

I am not interested in cleaning up some confusion sir. I’m interested in ending all my confusion. So why create another mess, another ‘ism’?

Well you have Human Potential Plus, so why is that any different than Landmark?

I don’t know sir, but let’s find out. Why should someone take Landmark?

Because it will make their life better! It will help them to become more enlightened.

Okay sir! More enlightened to everyone that takes the training. It makes their life better and they are more enlightened.

Well, not everyone!

Now, what does that mean?

Well, some people don’t get it!

Get what sir?

How they lived into it and create their own misery!

So what makes them get it sir?

It is not the course, because if it was then everyone would get it. And I know that some people just get bits and pieces.

Yes sir, but that means they clear up a little confusion in their life. Is that right sir?

Well, Human Potential Plus does the same thing or do you say you enlighten everyone?

No sir! It enlightens no one. That is what I’m saying!

So, you are not different than Landmark?

Let’s find out please. Let’s be patient.

Okay, sorry! I shouldn’t treat you as I am.

No problems are treated that way! I don’t care how you treat these! It is how I treat you that matters. Can we continue?

Yes, sure.

So what makes someone get it sir?

I have asked this question many times and in Landmark we say it’s because the instructor isn’t living into his own experience. And therefore he is not able to enlighten the people taking the training. Therefore we as instructors have to make sure we are living the message.

Sir, that is the whole point. Can one human being bring another human being into the light?

Well of course they can!

So then you are responsible for someone not getting it.

Well, I think indirectly, I am.

Sir, mankind has been trying to change for eons, and every time they’ve tried, no matter how the enlightened person was,.they were never able to pass on their enlightenment. Otherwise, the whole world would be living totally differently.

Yes, I have never thought about that before, but I do see what you mean. Landmark is based on a lot of gathered wisdom, and if it was that wisdom that changed people, Landmark would be out of a job. So then what is keeping people from getting it?

Yes sir, that is the question and can you answer the question?

I don’t think I can.

And why not, sir?

I don’t really know!

Because you have never asked yourself that question deeply sir.

Well, I take offense to that! But I get your point. This is a question we have asked all the time in Landmark, but no one really seems to have a good answer for it.

And let us answer it!

Well, I’m all ears.

Well, is not Landmark, Human Potential Plus, Christianity, religion or any ‘ism’ or ‘anity’ just put together by thought? Does it not depend on the person asking the question and how deeply serious they are?

You know, I think you’re right!

No sir, you mean to say, you see the truth of that. Sir, if there were no Landmarks, churches, ‘isms’, ‘anities’, temples, psychiatrists peddling their bullshit, what would a human being have to do in order to solve the problems in his life?

I don’t know, I guess he would have to do what you said the other night – see himself and look inside.

And that means not running away or becoming anything. It means reading your own book. Not helping or giving any kind of crutch to people, right sir? Do you see it?

I see what you are saying. And I feel that is what made me attracted to you.

No sir, not to me – to the truth of what is being said.

One of the basics of Landmark is you can’t hide from the truth.

Yes sir. Another one is whether you can you handle the truth.

Well since I heard you speak, for some reason I can’t go on doing what I’m doing.

Sorry sir!

No, that’s good! I feel I have been running from something and from Landmark. It’s about money and being powerful, and you talk about being nothing and letting power go. It is a bit of a shakeup, but I will be fine. I have one more thing I want to clear up, and that is about possibility and creating new possibilities, as we say in Landmark. A person the other night asked you about creating a new possibility. And you quickly destroyed this question, and I didn’t really understand what you meant. I also was again deeply offended and I saw that what you said really kind of knocked me out. I felt like I wanted to sleep.

Yes sir, go on!

Well, you said that you can have a lifetime of changing your possibility to avoid your own transformation. I found that rather shocking and fascinating.

Yes sir, I stick to the fact that willful change is superficial and insignificant. Real change is letting go of the known and entering into uncharted seas. It is not knowing what will happen. Just finding out and moving on sir!

Okay, that’s good, but that is pretty radical. We talk at Landmark about creating new possibilities.

Sir, you talk about getting what you want and creating a life you want to live.

Okay yes…well, what’s wrong with that?

That is what everyone is doing anyway, going after what they want. So how is Landmark any different than anything else?

Well, when you put it that way, I guess it’s about empowering people to be masters of their own life.

Sir, are we not that now! The behavior we choose determines the course of our life.

Yes that is what Landmark is saying, that you can improve the choices you make!

Yes and it all leads to the same thing. It is a movement of self-interest. And it will always be limited. Eventually it would lead to conflict with someone who thinks differently from you and you will have to work it out. It is this working it out that creates the difficulty in the habits that we have because of the psychology we practice.

Okay, but the possibility to make it better is there.

Better is to become something more, more loving, more compassionate. Sorry sir but love and compassion are not things you can think your way into. They’re something independent of thought.

I see what you are saying and that has cleared something up for me, because when I get close to people at Landmark, they are still the same. They may be a little more aware, but most of them suffer the same way about the same things as I do. All they’ve done is put a different language to it. And they seem to hide behind the language. I’m tired of projecting something I’m not.

I see sir! That is a huge discovery. As long as thinking is the dominant thing in our life the self is at the center of our living. There will be no peace every time someone has a so-called breakthrough. They become high and mighty and want to claim it as their own and attribute it to the organization or the mentality that they belong to in order to have psychological security. It is like watching the sunset and being blown away by it and then the next night you return to see it and recapture the same feeling. It is the old conquering the new, and the inability to let go. Same thing as Landmark’s sayings like “Let go and move on”, it so petty and superficial. The real question is can the self and all its limitations be broken, smashed and finished and find a way out of the web of giving thinking supreme importance? Can one face the danger that thought creates, and because one lives with that danger and the havoc it creates, move away from the fact in the perception of the danger. If so, we can even speculate about a movement that would not include thinking or living out of the self. Thinking is so cunning.

I do see what you are saying. Does that mean that Landmark is a bad thing?

Sir, why is it that we have to look from a point of good or bad, why can’t we see the conditioned way of looking, the conditioned way of investigating?

What do you mean by conditioned way of looking?

Self-improvement is the path within society. This movement is created by society for society in order to bring about a competitive state to make us envious, greedy and ambitious. Self-improvement – it makes one fit into society, give one a sense of power and accomplishment. It allows one to be well adjusted within that society. However, what is the point of being well adjusted in a society that is so sick and corrupt? You may fit into it better. But you will live a life of fear, hurt, jealousy, conflict, violence and self admiration. Landmark, religion, ‘anities’, ‘isms’ and other systems of though do not and cannot find the truth. Is it not the very process of society to bring about conformity? That conformity, which is imposed by our parents and grandparents destroys our relationship to them, cripples our minds and hearts, and kills our sensitivity to the planet and its inhabitants. Self-improvement is man’s central problem preventing him from waking up. I think in Christianity, although I’m not a Christian, it is said, ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’

It is pretty hard to listen to what you are saying sir!

Yes, this living into something is a nice distraction for us. It is like the external world, saying there is such thing called higher self. Self itself needs to come to an end before life has any meaning sir. You see the truth of this? We have to live out of a completely different way of being. And no one can tell another what it is or how it is.

Yes! I feel what you’re saying because I noticed that my mind is so quiet. This is the deepest conversation I have ever had in my life, and I thank you for it. I have also enjoyed reading articles on your site.

Sir, do you know what the word discussion means? It means to shake, and perhaps you have been shaken sir!

Well, I have!

That is the whole art of conversation, to bring about in our conversation a meditation. Real meditation is the emptying of the self.

Boy, this opens a whole other can of worms, these questions!

Yes sir, we have to continue to hold questions. Probably our whole life long!

Thank you so much for seeing me!

No problem sir. I too have been shaken. Thank you sir!

Coach bri

It was a cool spring morning, full of the anticipation of warmer weather. The earth was softening and the leeks were springing through the spoil. The black moist earth looked and smelled rich and great for growing. The soil seemed to shine and enjoy the intensity of the sun’s warmth. All the earth was waking up from a cold winter of snow and wind. The birds had not yet returned yet standing dignified in the full and expanding stream was a blue heron. It was still, silent and graceful and it had the patience of that old worn creek. It was there doing its thing, waiting for a small fish or insect to float by and with great precision and adequacy it picked its meal.

As one walked along the meadow, and enjoyed the smell and peace of nature, thought was found in no place. Only compassion from the earth and one’s being seemed to join together. It was not to be experienced because then it would come out of comparison. Joy seemed to be everywhere, beginning and ending at the same time. The large maple was a buzz of activity and sap flies were all around it. Off near a large rock one could see the warmth of the sun as it melted the snow. All around the rock on the north side icicles had formed. If you got close with the camera and looked through the lens it was as if you were looking at a mountain. The hanging icicles looked so cold and yet a small bug would see this place as a large mountain in a desolate ice field. Life always is full on, and yet very few people investigate what living is all about.

We seem to be consumed with what happens after death. How can we possibly understand death if we have not fully understood life? So most of our life is a movement of self-centeredness. We try to get as much pleasure as we can, never seeing that the demand for pleasure increases our pain and suffering and for most, suffering and escaping from it has become our main occupation.

We have a tremendous need to be entertained. When our entertainments are denied, we are angry and frightened.

For most of us, living is getting an education so that we can get a job and work, to buy the pleasure we think we want and need. Pleasure has never been the route to happiness. It has set up in us the source of contradiction within. One moment we want one thing and the next moment another. This movement is the self or ego in action. There is no end to self-centered action – only pleasure pain and the need to again fulfill one’s own self-centered activity that leads again to this feeling of being unsatisfied. And again we are off pursuing another desire. Living is a huge field to explore but for most we are only involved in a small little field. Our brains are dominated by thought and all the things thought has put together.

Thought is responsible for many great innovations, like technology, but thought will never be able to create a mountain or a flower. Nature is not the product of thought, it can only describe it. Life is one continuous movement from birth and the beginning of thinking and then death and the ending of thinking. Just because thought ends, that doesn’t mean life is over. Life is more than thought playing itself out, based on how it has conditioned and set patterns and grooves, which is the center of self. When the mind is free from all the movements of self, living and dying are of little consequence.

Coach bri