Selfishness is pretty well known but not very well understood by most people.  We are so good at finding selfishness in others because we ourselves are full of selfishness, pretending or covering up what we are. We dislike people who have the same weaknesses or flaws that we do. We can criticize them so easily because any flaw a person has we recognize in ourselves, which is another level of self-ness.

Self-ness and selfishness are two different things.  Self-ness is a process of thought and conditioning that is our tendency in situations.  Selfishness is the meeting of one’s own needs regardless of how they affect others. In all situations it is putting one self first, taking the best because one knows it is the best or is the thing that most people want. Self is always rooted in envy, because to be envied is deeply gratifying to self. That is why one longs for fame because in fame one thinks fame will end one’s deep insecurity and inadequacy.  Selfishness is the art of getting one’s own way by so many means. It will take a variety of approaches or no approach, as it cunningly pays attention to the situation and the self-ness of the other. Selfishness is good at reading situations for one’s own self-interest or even promoting someone’s interest, if in the end it gets what one wants. This is often called good business and is how the world works.

In any relationship, self-interest or selfishness will always destroy the couple or team when it is not addressed or excused because a person has a gift or talent and is therefore tolerated. Tolerance in any form is hidden intolerance and eventually will act as a cancer and poison the environment and create deeper problems between the two or the many. Selfishness in our society is accepted and nourished in most aspects of living. Because it is external psychology (the psychology of disconnection) it is rampant and we resort to it whenever self cannot get its way. The habits of external psychology are then used to gain control of the situation or person we practice it on and deeper damage is done that divides human beings.

Human beings are the only animal on the planet that, out of selfishness, will kill every living creature so they can have what they want.  Out of selfishness we form beliefs, dogma, and ideologies and kill others who threaten them. Self is always trying to be something. Whatever it sees itself as being, it lives into and it will kill for on so many levels.

Is it not about time we start to see the importance of being nothing? That nothing is holding the whole world and universe together. To be empty of self means to cooperate without self trying to control and dominate. Self, which is a product of thought, is never without motive or seeking some sort of satisfaction. To love another without motive or payoff is to have a mind that is truly innocent. As long as self dominates and runs the show, the awakening to a different movement is impossible.  Self is always giving itself qualities that it doesn’t possess and therefore it cannot be innocent. Self is always seeking something – seeking after enlightenment or God or the perfect experience or the perfect man or women, all of which is to seek under one’s own prejudice.  That prejudice will in fact be projections of one’s own mind and therefore a creation of selfishness. What is selfish is exclusive and love and compassion are of a completely different quality and will be inclusive. Selfishness and virtue cannot exist together, for a virtuous person could never recognize their own virtue. If they did it would be an egoism.

To see all this is in itself, and to understand it, is to free the mind from selfishness. This is the journey humankind must take if we are to have a world that is orderly, responsible, and sane.  Very few people are interested in all this or even care about being free. Freedom has nothing to do with self. Self is in bondage and a slave to thought and all its habits. Love is not a habit that can be practiced.  It is the perfume that makes all things possible with self-interest is set aside. Love is not selective or personal. It is expressed by its own volition.  It is whole and depends on nothing. Selfishness is always dependent on thought and is always trying to be something.  Love is like the air we breathe, free for everyone regardless of skin, color, race, or heritage.  One can’t go to love – it finds you when you are not!

Coach bri

I had to contact you after reading something you sent to a group of people. I know this person is your relation. But I don’t want to discuss her as she has been a help to me.

That’s good; I don’t want to discuss personalities, as it’s a waste of time and energy. How can I help?

That I’m not sure! Just your words really anger me. I felt so angry after I read them and yet when I asked my spouse about what you wrote they made an interesting remark.  Then we got into a major argument. My spouse also claims this is why they never attend things in the same spirit that I do and then I was called a gullible person, which only made thing go from bad to worse. I don’t see myself as a gullible person and I have an open mind. But what you wrote I hated you for and then I realized, as my spouse put it, why can’t I let this thing go?

So what was your answer?

I don’t know. I have tried to figure this out but I brought what you wrote and I would like you to read it, so I can get a better idea of what you meant.

I will read it if you like but I can tell you about it if you like. We are all caught in our own delusions thinking that when we are, they are not delusions.

I know. Please read it.

Okay.
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.

Well, that is what I thought is would be! It is very questioning the way you read it however. Something is more offensive about it or something…

Can I say you find it radical?

Yes, that’s it.

Yet you want comfort, right? And it offers none.

Yes! Maybe. It doesn’t feel good.  But why do I feel so angry!

Are you angry or disturbed like you have been called out?

Well my spouse said the truth hurts, which really upset me.

Is that why you’re here?

No, it’s because I am a meditator and do it several times a week and now I feel like you have killed it for me.

Killed what?

I get a lot out of it I feel.

Great. Like what?

It makes me feel peaceful!

Did it help you with the fight with your spouse?

No, because I couldn’t get into it!

Yes, which means what?

That all I was thinking was about our fight and how I am not listened to and judged.

Yes! And is that not a judgment of your spouse?

Yes I guess it is!

Can I speak personally of a minute?

Sure!

I have practiced all kinds of meditation. I lived in a few ashrams and practiced yoga till I could tie myself in knots. I lived in California, got involved in all kinds of healing practices from Bach flower remedies, crystals and tarot cards, and even took a course to develop strengthening my mental and spiritual power so I could contact the dead and be a psychic. I went and ate the macrobiotic way until a good friend of mine told my something Jesus said: It is not what you put in your mouth that defiles you but what comes out.  And what I have learned is that I can deceive and be deceived when I want something. The mind is always acting out of its insecurity, trying to create realities to support its beliefs. All beliefs, whatever they are, are created by thought and thought is an ego-self-centered activity and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything spiritual.

I resent what you’re saying

Yes I know! Shoot the messenger, right!?

Maybe! But what if you’re wrong?

Wrong about what?

Spiritual practices!

You practice meditation right?

Yes and yoga too!

Yes and how has it helped your life?

It has made me a lot more peaceful and I appreciate more. I am thankful more.

Do you have many friends?

Yes lots.

As you age and they age, are they more peaceful and appreciative than you?

No, I would say some are, some aren’t.

The ones that are, do they practice yoga and meditation like you?

Some are and some aren’t I guess.

So the ones that don’t practice, how do you explain them being more peaceful and appreciative as you?

They found their thing to do!

You mean their method, right?

Yes, I see what you’re saying!

Now who picks the method? Or the help etcetera?

I guess the person seeking a method or help!

Right! So choose the help that suits us the most?

Okay. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing, but what is the purpose of the method you choose?

To make me a better person, more peaceful, more giving.

Yes, better than what you are now. You practice to become something better.

Yes, I don’t have a problem with that.

Of course you don’t, until someone comes around and say it is an illusion.

How do they know that?

Does your meditation bring an end to the conflict between you and your spouse?

No not right now!  The day before.
So with your spouse, your children, your in-laws, are you conflict free?

No!

And are you?

What I am or not has no bearing on your life! If I was or was not it won’t help you.

Why not?

Because your mind wants to find out if my way works and if it doesn’t you will say why should I listen to him? And if you think I am free of conflict you will try it and see if it works for you, which is still becoming something, right?

So what’s wrong with that!

Your ego-self is looking for a system, a method, which I can teach to you. Then you become attached to a system, which means pain.

I see what you’re saying and I just want to smash you. You’re a real ass!

Yes I am! I offer nothing. Any system, any willful meditation, rituals, and traditions, are all the invention of thought and therefore caught in time and bound by thought and are limited.

I feel so sad!

Yes we are! Filled with sorrow because we have filled our hearts with the things thinking has made. You see, everything is moving in the direction of people trying to practice something.  That practice is the movement of thinking trying to get out of thinking. We need to see that any movement out of thinking is still thinking trying to find another dimension. This movement must come to an end to be beyond thought, which is a truly religious mind.

I feel the truth of what you say and sitting here with you has some effect on me. Like some silence is speaking through you.

Okay, see how you’re doing it again! You want it to be about me, as if I am special or have some gift or some bullshit like that!

Well look what is happening! My emotions are all over the place. If I wasn’t sitting here with you this wouldn’t be happening.

Look, you are here and you have chosen to talk and you’re nice enough to listen. Your kindness is in spite of anything you have done. You have been willing to look at the illusion you are caught in.

Illusion? What illusions?

Can you see the truth of what is being said?

Yes I guess I can!

Can you see you want that to be about me?

Yes.

The fact is you decided to look into you owns delusion and illusions around meditation. Because of that you have set aside or emptied some of your content of your ego-self. The end of illusion is the function of meditation. Now can you in your daily life have discussion with people to see all of your illusions and delusions and face them and realize you can do nothing about them? This means not trying to change or judge them. Just watch them. In that watching is the true flowering of meditation. It is the highest form of art and most difficult to live into. It means seeing your selfishness with your spouse, your children, your job, your neighbor, everywhere, and end it.

It seems almost impossible!

Yes, but better than living in some illusion about myself and my fabricated gifts so I can impose my ignorance on others and make a living or ego life from them.

You’re too much! I want to thank you. I will read your blog!

Please remember how you feel right now!

I feel good. It was helpful I owe my spouse an apology.

You feel good because you questioned. That has nothing to do with me and all to do with you.

Yes I see that but you seem like an authority.
We only want and make authorities when we our confused.

That is a topic in itself.

Yes, some other time perhaps!

Yes thanks.

You’re welcome.

Coachbri

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

It was a fresh night – a welcome relief from the intense humidity of the last few days. The birds’ calls seemed to be clear and sharp. From the noise they were making and how active they were, they to seemed to enjoy the cooler evening. The sunlight on the large ash tree added to the warm inviting color of the moss that was so gentle on one’s eyes. A teenage boy across the field wearing a muscle shirt was talking very loudly to two girls who were flirting back at him to win his affections. Their voices, young and carefree, seemed to carry in the breezes of this cool night. They seemed to talk endlessly with energy and excitement without stopping. An older couple, frustrated with them, asked if they could be a little more quiet. They just laughed and slowly made their way farther down the field and began again. The older couple let everyone around them know they were annoyed by these youth. Looking for agreement they didn’t get, they too moved on, away from the mirror which was unnoticed by their resistance of their ego self.  Humankind has not changed over time except in the area of technology. As a species we are barely holding our own.

“Why is self so strong in us?” was the question he asked.

What do you think sir?

I have no idea. I have tried very hard to do as you ask and see that I am the thing in my life that must change. But when I am in a crisis I always want the other person to change, even though, as you say, I am the one in pain.

Sir, what is the self and can it really change?

My self seems to always be on the move. I just get one thing and then I seem to be something else.

Yes sir. The self is always moving in contradiction.

But why does it do that?

Because self is a product of thought and thought is a movement, or energy, moving through a material process called matter.

That doesn’t tell me why it is always moving in contradiction! That doesn’t make sense to me!

Sir, thought has made yourself, myself and everyone else’s self. If you take on the thought of a Christ you call yourself a Christian. If you identify with Canada which thought has put together, you call yourself a Canadian, right sir?

Okay, yes!  But why is that a contradiction?

Because you or anyone else is not born a Christian or a Muslim or a Canadian or Chinese. It is the human brain taking on that conditioning from the outside, it is imposed on you and you must conform to it.

I still don’t get it. Why would we take it on?

Because if we don’t you are branded or punished.  You, needing people to be loved and belong and be safe, are forced out of fear to conform. That conforming is the beginning of violence.  See it sir!  Thought creates a sense of self to cover emotional trauma.  We naturally form images to be secure and those very images created the hurt and rejection we fear. So the contradiction is self always trying to find security through the images that thought has made and at the same time those images are always the source of the hurt because it can never be totally secure.

Why is that?

All images are made by thought and therefore a product of time!

So what? Who cares if they’re a product of time? They bring some security.

Show me one image you have that is secure!

Well I have an image of you that you’re a nice person!

Yes and if I yell or criticize you, you will begin to like me less and be hurt by my behaviour towards you.

Okay I see that! Okay, my mother loves me!

Okay. Has she ever hurt you?

No, never!

So you get along with her?

Well, most of the time!

And the other times?

Well, she is a pain at times and is hard to love!

Which means what?

I don’t know!

As long as she lives up to your image of you she is okay! But because she has some other images of you that you don’t like she is on the outs, right sir?

Yeah I think you’re right, but what has this got to do with self being a contradiction?

Everything! Self is one thing one moment and then something else the next. Self is a product of time and your whole psyche is put together by thought over time.
So this means there are two movements going on in man: the movement of time and a movement that is not of time, which in this discussion we can your “beingness”.

And they’re in contradiction?

Yes sir, all the days of our lives. Self is always trying to find security in a world that it has created that is completely insecure.

So nothing in life is secure?

Have you been able to find something that is?

No, not yet.

Sir, this is the fact! To be mentally well adjusted in a world as sick as this one is no measurement of mental health. In fact, people who can’t fit into this world could teach us more than the people who are. To give your life to achieve money, power, position, material things, and large banks accounts and to identify who you are with it is a sure sign of madness. Do you see it sir?

Yes I think so!

That is why I have such great feelings for the alcoholic and the drug addict. They are living that life because of the emotional trauma of this life. They weren’t loved, their needs were not met, and they are the walking wounded. So then the drug companies step in and assault and exploit them so they can cover up their emotional pain. It’s a vicious circle sir. Do you see it?

I think I do! So you say we are living and self is our emotional trauma.

Kind of sir. First there is both then your culture imposes into you their sickness.
Then looking for connection you are forced to conform for acceptance and approval and all that. When you don’t or won’t be controlled, external psychology is applied on you and the damaging nature of external control cripples us. In our pain we drink, drug, and addict to all kinds of things to cover our emotional abuses others inflict, which causes a huge wound in us psychologically. I can become a great doctor or politician, actor, or escape to the street. It is all the same. I am caught in the web of my own confusion and that is what I must free myself from. Be on street drugs, brain drugs, or the drug of religion or politics, or whatever my life is, chasing pleasure and the avoidance of pain. That is what most people are about! So seeing all this, can I not stop escaping into meditation and psychics and contacting the dead and all those games but face my own self-centered living and stop all external control in my life? Then perhaps the emotional trauma in our life heals by something beyond self and the movement of thought. Only then can one really face life without any expectations of our vain becoming.

Thanks Coach Bri.

You’re welcome.

Self, the ego, is a limited thing that gives quality to itself that it simply doesn’t possess. It is always wanting something in one moment and can in a few short moments want something completely the opposite. Self is always in contradiction and hides in a sense of superiority when it is found out for the lie and contradiction that it is. This sense of being superior is embedded in the fabric from which self is made, which is from experience, memory, and knowledge, which form a thought. Thought is always bound by time and anything that is put together by thought is time and therefore limited. This limiting process that thought is based on that self is nothing more than beliefs sustained by self’s identification with the very beliefs it has built, which is calls faith. Faith breeds a sense of superiority and in this process finds meaning and purpose, which has always lead to conflict and war. Be it the war in a marriage or with a child or against two countries, self-interest and a sense of being right is how ego/self keeps the damage going. Only where self is not love and beauty are. That process is seeing what self is and all the conflict it inflicts in oneself and another and ending it. That is the highest form of intelligence and the birth of compassion.

Coachbri

It was a great warm day for October. The leaves performed a ballet in the gentle wind. The beauty of the colors in such high contrast took one out of oneself for some time. I felt the woods and how it spoke to me. The cords of my heart were strung so softly, reminding me of the beauty of death and the release of love.

Everything in nature reaches its potential. As they die the leaves change color and beautify the landscape.  Even the evergreens look more majestic intermixed with all the maples and oaks and shrubbery.  As the seasons change the intelligence of the earth is tireless and without any self-concern. It takes what we throw at it and will cleanse itself of all our abuses. This truly is love. Love is never about acquiring someone or something, it simply is.  It is never full of duty or expectation. It is an overused word and underplayed in action and will always be so when love is the result of the thinking process. One can’t think oneself to love and the jealous, the greedy, and the powerful can never know her.

Love is a radical state of being that cannot be found in anyone’s vision of will or practice. As a person seeks to practice mindfulness (the propaganda of the present day) it can never bring about the state of love. Mindfulness can bring about a more orderly society, which is much needed. But that state of mindfulness is but a shadow of the thing that is love and therefore mindfulness is limited.

Once the leaf is cut from the source, the tree, it falls to the ground and dries up.  One can’t come to love through any practice, for the entity that takes up the practice is the same entity that creates all the disorder in oneself and the world.  The death of the ego self is the only thing that brings about order, and that order is death itself. Only in death is there true transformation and renewal. That renewal is the leaf that falls to the forest floor without any drama or self-assertion. The leaves and their death are food for the next generation born out of decay and the ashes of time. Death is everywhere, in any moment we can not only die a physical death, but that is the natural state of things.

Psychological death is what is behind all the spiritual movements but they have tied themselves to the chain of rituals, traditions, and ceremonies in order to bring about a sense of security. Love is the living movement of wisdom and the glue of truth. That movement is venerable and completely insecure and never do the two ever meet. To sit in the forest and watch the life of it and see that I am the intruder, opens the mind to something beyond the petty little self the I is. Like the tree that drops its leaves in the fall, we need to drop all that self is, not looking for an outcome of something better. For the vain pursuit of self is always to become something more powerful, more aware, more loving, or more enlightened.

As one moves out of the stillness and benediction of the forest, self seeks to claw its way back up from the cavern of my brain.  Self’s job is to kill attention through being inattentive. A human being is the only thing on the planet that takes thought and gives it qualities that it doesn’t possess. When we are inattentive to thought all disorder begins and sustains itself. If each thought is cut from the source, thought loses all its importance and the brain is silent with itself because it is empty. That emptiness is a renewal and in the ashes of that death something new is and happy are those who find it.

Coachbri

Friday Night Group has been going for about 15 years now. The group is formed by people who are interested going beyond the limitations of the self and thought. Most of them have seen through the conformity of beliefs, personal and religious. We question and purpose of illusions that the mind is caught in, and is creating, that make our minds petty and small.

Most of humanity is caught in the illusion that we are separate beings, doing separate actions, living separate lives. We are afraid to see that we are all one consciousness. Yes, one big thinking machine. We all employ thought to set up and determine our reality regardless of what it is. Thought on its level is the thing that has created what we are, how we see ourselves. Thought gives itself all these amazing qualities, one being that it is eternal.

Thought can’t handle that it is a process of memory, gathered and modified and is a movement from the past, through the present to the future. Thought want to be timeless and knows that it is not but can’t handle the truth of it. So what does it do? It attaches to anything that has any sense of nominal presence. So it created the entity called self. Self is at the center of all our problems and it reinforces itself by creating solutions.  The only problem with that is that whatever solution it makes, it causes other problems because it sees itself separate from the problem that the self has created.  Take for example fear. Fear is self thinking about the future and trying hard to get guarantees of its future. By doing this it keeps chasing its own tail and giving itself the feeling it is has a life that is permanent.

Friday Night Group is about the dismantling of self and all realities created by thought. It is the action not based in time. Every night is a challenge to let go of all one’s preconceptions. Yes, empty the mind of all the things self takes refuge in! This is real meditation and the whole universe is involved in it.  Humankind is the only species that is outside this movement of meditation.  Self’s reaction to this is to go and sit and meditate, to connect because it perceives its own disconnection.  You can’t ever connect to the universe because you are already connected. Self is the disconnection to the universe so any willful practice to connect is self again trying to fix the problem – it is self-created. We are on a journey and questions must be asked and held. To arrive is to fix the mind again in an illusion of its own making.

Coach Bri

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