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

There was a penetrating quiet on the lake this evening. Off in the distance one could hear the sound of a loon calling its mate. That haunting yet enchanting sound pulls me back, into the days I was a teenager, full of piss and vinegar. The lake was like glass and one could see and hear a quiet motorboat off in the distance fishing. Every so often one could hear, coming across the water, the squeak of a dock being rocked by waves that quickly lessened in their intensity and rhythmically passed and hit the opposite shore.  Then silence would come again and all the earth seemed to be caught in the balance of that movement.

Why are we occupied with ourselves, morning and night? Thought moves from one thing to the next without tiring. Thought, rooted in the past, is always trying to take charge. by having options about this and that as if they really mean something, when in fact they only divide us from each other.

A warm breeze blew across the lake as it made tiny ripples in the water. One watched as it ascended and moved by. Our minds are like the water and thought is on the surface making some disturbance. We get caught up in the disturbance and forget about the depth and richness of the beauty of the mind. The mind is not Christian, Muslin, or Jew. It does not belong to any system or government or country. It is whole, fresh and undivided. It cannot be corrupted by money, fame, power or self-interest. Human beings spend so little time there because thought is dominant in our lives and we give all importance to it and it is the source of our unhappiness.

Thought can always change the variables in the same set and build another illusion. The difficulty is that the person feels that what one thinks is something new and profound. Then we make it into a reality for ourselves and cling to it because it gives us an image of who and what we think we are.  Any image we have of ourselves disturbs the surface of the mind and we are once again caught in the web of thought. To live without an image of oneself seems impossible and it may be! But to end all images, in yourself and about the other, is to find one’s daily disorder and free the mind from it.  That freedom is not a point of arrival but an act of perceiving one’s own deceptions and illusions without knowing what is true. But is not the breaking of the false the movement toward truth?

Small fish are jumping now in this lake of utter silence and clarity. When the brain is not chattering there to is silence and clarity. These can’t be sought or practiced. If they are, self is there again, following its own interest and cleverly using thought to maintain its own existence. Without the energy of the wind the lake is calm and clear. Without the energy passing through the cells of memory, the brain too is quiet and clear as all thought stops. The ending of the one is the beginning of something thought can’t touch or move towards. Words have no place here and afterwards thought is always trying to break in and capture it.

The sun is setting as it just touches the treetops in the horizon. Another day is slowly coming to an end. We are all in need of renewal every day. To set aside all the things thought has done but then to put meaning to this day is another illusion. Our days have no meaning but what we give to them and there too we are caught in a world of our own making. To face thought and all that it has done, to find peace when we are still at war in ourselves, is the state in which human beings are caught. In a crisis people come together and cooperate to find security, which is needed yet shallow. When we end the images we have of others and ourselves and thought is used only to assist love and compassion, then cooperation will be the intelligent way of living and a human beings shall be free.

The golden light fell upon the distant shore as the flock of geese heading south gave inspiring honks as different leaders took the head spot. The green of the shoreline was vibrant and soft. Another day ends here on this great planet. I am lucky because I love!

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

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

Whatever thought creates is limiting.

You can’t trust what you think unless compassion is behind your thinking.

You can live without a self-concept.

How you define yourself is your sickness, life has no definition; we are interdependent creatures who share a planet and a universe.

What takes time to learn anybody can learn. The real important things to learn in life must be perceived and held; they are their own action.

Thought is the lowest material process on the planet, unless it is accompanied with love.

Love transforms thought and therefore it is never subjective.

Coachbri

The morning was thick and rich with moisture. The birds were active, darting at each other, moving from tree to tree. The mating ritual of the birds was in full movement from morning to night.

Thought is always pregnant as it gives birth to thoughts in one direction and then a second later it is giving birth to another set of thoughts, just to keep itself alive. Thought hates to be silent because in true silence self has no place and thought is only a waste of energy. True silence is not the result of thinking, willing, planning or choice. It is a blessing that comes when self is not active in the pursuit of desire.

Nothing in nature is driven by thought and everything reaches its potential. In the silence of the morning something beyond thinking is sensed. It is more delicate than a warm breeze. It holds all life together without direction. It is both in solitude and connected to everything. In its presence thought has no place. This energy seems to live, explode and die and is immediately born again in one movement. It is deep, rich and true and depends on nothing. It holds love, compassion, intelligence and so much more. Thought has no place in it or relationship to it. Yet it can use thought.

The dog that has been in the field comes running when it sees me. It has been digging after something in the ground. Her nose is black with the dark earth.

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