Barry Long's teachings - some final notes.

 

Barry Long's teachings - some final notes. 

I'm going to write a few final words about Barry Long's teachings, after having courted them for the last month or so. There's a lot of good in his teachings, but there's some questionable areas as well, and certainly some grey areas that could be the source of confusion or frustration with seekers. Bear in mind that these are just my observations based on a few decades of spiritual experience, and should be regarded as just opinions (or ignored- if it bothers you, the reader).

What I like about Barry Long's teachings:

• I love how Barry Long keeps things real. In his talks, books and content, he's always trying to keep seekers thinking about self-honesty, and bringing things back to one's actual experience rather than getting lost in theories and philosophies that consume so many teachings out there and are a cause for endless debate and distraction
• I really like how Barry Long always brings in the primacy of the body, and a form of embodied awaking that makes use of the body, feelings, sensations and emotions. His starting point in his meditations and in his teachings with using the body is excellent, and there's no diversion into thought based conceptual models, which again makes intellectual bypass an impossibility here
• I like how Barry makes use of relationships and the roles of men and women with regards to spirituality. There's some inherent issues here as well, but he acknowledges this seldom used area
• I like how Barry Long's talks are generally spontaneous, unprepared and engaging for the audience. The pre-recorded teachings such as Myth of Life series are excellent in production, and he's a great story teller and narrative deliverer. 
• I like how Barry Long brings seekers back to the area of emotional maturity and the need to face emotions and work with challenging emotions and sensations via the body. Many have used this approach (and some directly from BL himself), such as Eckhart Tolle, who has pretty much lifted Barry's teaching in some parts word for word, apart from renaming some concepts such as 'personality'/'self'/'pygmy'/'thinker'/ into 'pain body' (ET's label). Likewise the body approach with regards to emotions and as a starting is pretty much Barry's focus that was lifted by a few teachers.

What I find questionable or doubtful about Barry Long's teachings:

• I find Barry Long's idea (e.g. in the tapes on Making Love) that making love equals a divine method by which actual love is produced, and that it is somehow 'god's design' that this is how spiritual development can and does occur -- to be a bit questionable. Similarly, his idea of celibacy as selfish needs some qualification. I don't find the sages of the past that preferred celibacy to be selfish or self-centred in eschewing sex- it was just their choice and aligned with what they were aiming to achieve. This is a highly personal area that will differ according to one's life situation, and isn't a one-size-fits-all teaching. This is probably why people like Eckhart Tolle removed this part of Barry's teaching completely while taking up the rest of BL's teachings.
• Much of Barry Long's stories and cosmology is exactly that.. stories and myth. It serves a purpose with the listener's subconscious and does really have an effect, however, it shouldn't be taken as literally true, any more than the Bible or other content that Barry often trashes in his talks. Admittedly, Barry's stories are helpful for spiritual insight, but they're still stories and creative content ultimately.
• Some of Barry's live audience talks give the impression that he's putting on a performance or being overly dramatic. This is probably Gurdjieff's approach coming through, and it's obvious Barry is acting in many instances, and isn't as authentic as say Eckhart during his talks. For some unknown reason, many of Barry's available talks are the one's he gave right before he died, and the delivery isn't the best or highest in form, which it totally understandable. Some of the responses to people's questions are downright silly or idiotic. Someone asks 'How can I love more?', and his response is something like "Just love more!!" or "Go out and find love and do it!" etc., which degrades the whole thing.
• A key issue I (personally) had with BL's teachings was the approach and treatment to the emotions and the body itself. He often states that the 'trickster', 'evil one', 'monster' etc. live in the belly/stomach as the emotional accumulation of the past (akin to Tolle's pain body), and this needs to be constantly watched, dissolved, dealt with and killed off. The approach often seems harsh, and ends up turning into a battle with the ego/pain body/self-- which of course ends up in a vicious circle with the ego trying to do away with the ego. There doesn't seem much compassion in this approach, and Barry's ideas of "love" rarely touch on self-love, or self-forgiveness, or even acceptance of the pain body. Instead it's something to deal with, corner and watch.. lest it enter one's brain and take them over with thoughts. While there's some merit to this idea, ultimately in the long run, this doesn't work, as anyone who's been on the spiritual path for years understands. Self-love and compassion are just one of those essentials that one needs to cultivate, understand and incorporate into any shadow work or emotional work. Barry seems undeveloped in this regard, and more intent on eliminating self-comfort, and having people 'on the cross' undergoing the pain of dissolving the emotional body, rather than using alternative approaches that may well suit some seekers in a much more effective and gentler way.
• Although there's a good number of teachers who have lifted Barry Long's material and incorporated it into their own teachings while not acknowledging Barry Long.. one can see that Barry himself did the same thing with lifting some teachings word for word, such as from Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi and others. Passing oneself off as a Western Master having little or no link with "Eastern teachings" isn't exactly true, and he often seems to give the appearance of having come up with all his content himself as some dramatic "God realized" Master appearing in the West (apart from some very early talks in 1969 where he openly directed others to outside sources). Barry Long developed his own glossary pretty much and students of his need to understand exactly what he means by terms such as 'self', 'me', 'I', 'intelligence', 'consciousness', 'sensation', 'god', etc.. which all have very different meanings to common parlance.

Overall, there's a lot of good things in Barry's approach, and a lot of original and interesting and useful material, however, some areas need to be taken with a grain of salt and used wisely according to one's individual situation.

Peace to Barry.

Barry Long - 4 - Final notes in the Myth of Life series - Habits, Thought, Life, Karma, Death, Love, Relationship, Prayer, Consciousness, I-am.

 

The Law of Life - Karma

This recording deals with:

• Honesty, and radical self-honesty of one's inner state and emotional state. An evolution of consciousness (in terms of maturity of understanding and being aware of one's inner state) is talked about, and how that initiates a direct understanding of how life and the law of karma works. 
• There is some talk towards the end of the recording about the mechanics of "reincarnation", which is rather unique with BL's teaching, and equates to a continuance of ignorance only versus the dying to the moment in the now by understanding the truth of one's being. 
• The idea of individuals being free rather than a mass awakening is discussed. This idea also appeared in Gurdjieff's teaching, and BL may have developed this idea from there. By "individual", BL also refers to the beingness itself, as opposed to the person, personality and body, which cease at death.
• The main takeaways here are to cultivate a radical self-honesty, know when one is being true to one's inner state and life situation, rather than covering up the truth and living a life based on automatism and habit for the sake of safety and egoic comfort. The rewards for doing so are a deeper understanding of the "law of life" and a dissolving of ignorance that perpetuates itself in time and existence.

Seeing through Death

This recording deals with:

• The truth of death, misunderstandings about death, "death is a dead body" and the errors of equating life and the individual with a body only, and the consequences of society's choice in removing death and dead bodies from daily life and people's experience.
• The main takeaways here are the differentiation between the body, mind, and life itself (which does not die), and correcting the errors in beliefs around death, dying and the emotional pain of grief.
• Love is also mentioned, and the act of cultivating love between parties well before death arrives, so that we are able to understand and deal with death both personally and around us when the time inevitably arrives.

How to Stop Thinking

This recording follows on from the Meditation recording and should be listened to after that recording. It deals with:

• The consequences of the unquestioned habit of thinking, continual thought, and its source, which is an entity consisting of past experience, pain and conditioning but endowed with life that has given it the ability to take over conscious living.
• Lessons in stopping the habitual action of thinking. There are 10 lessons, that range from becoming more aware of when and how the 'thinker' entity takes control of the mind/situation, to understanding how emotion and pain lead directly to thinking and bypassing.
• The best part of this recording is that by listening and practicing along with the recording in terms of attending, feeling inside, and not thinking, then the listener actually experiences what it is like to stop thinking and maintain an aware, mindful state of being (at least for the duration of the recording, which should carry over after the recording is finished, and deepen on repetition).

Making love

This recording follows on from the Living Joyously (Being Behind The Mask) recording and should be listened to after that recording. It would work best with those who are already in a sexual relationship, since the topics and issues it deals with directly relate to this. It won't be so helpful for those who are single, celibate by choice, or have no interest in sexuality. Personally, I see it as an optional 'module' in Barry's teachings, although it should be noted that many or most of Barry's students were in relationships and were interested in this aspect of his teaching, hence his frequent focus on it. This recording deals with:

Barry's creative ideas and philosophy around how men and women began in creation and how "love making" fits in with the means to awaken.

Advice on making relationships (man/woman) more loving, honest, and in particular focusing on sexual intimacy.

Note- there's some odd material in this recording.. especially Barry's views around the badness or selfishness of celibacy and the need for everyone to get a partner and start making love appropriately as a form of divine worship or practice. A better re-frame may be to view this teaching as a way to mindfully engage in sexual relationships and in particular the sexual act itself. Let's face it, sexual union with a partner isn't cut out for everyone or even of interest for everyone, just as celibacy isn't cut out for everyone. I feel BL went a little off track with the idea of 'once size fits all', if that's how the recording comes across, although it's obvious he was appealing to the audience at the time of writing and what he thought people were in need of, especially couples.

On the good side, this recording does bring to one's attention how unconscious and emotionally charged we all are when in relationship, and in particular, the differing needs between men and women while in relationship. There's also the key point of how unconscious men/women are in relationship, which extends to the sexual act itself, which is often performed mindlessly or as if in a trance. If anything, it brings some attention to being mindful and aware of what's giong on during and outside of sexual union.

A prayer for life

This recording follows on from the 'About Death' recording and should be listened to after that recording. It deals with:

• The common idea of prayer, and the issues and problems it has created in the world today collectively and for individuals
• Wrong prayer, and how the person/ego uses prayer to implement its own desires, craving and ignorance
• Right prayer, and what this involves, including examples of how right prayer would work and sound
• Guidance on the inner work around 'right prayer'

Essentially, Barry Long reframes prayer from the usual mental focus on goals, even altruistic ones, into a form of inner awareness or inner alignment with being, life, and surrender. Some of these ideas occur in Gurdjieff's teachings on the behaviour of the masses, gain and loss, planetary influence and how man's automatic behaviour and lack of consciousness have wrought conflict and disharmony throughout the world.

The "right prayer" sounds a lot like mindfulness of one's intentions, and aligns with his teachings of being conscious of one's inner sensations, feelings, and alignment with 'life' and 'being'. Overall, this is a good recording, and can be used with the meditation series and as a daily practice in affirming one's surrender of the destructive personality in favour of being, life, and flowing with our true nature.

A Journey into Consciousness

This recording is the last recording in the series along with "Who am I?". It deals with:

• The origins of man's existence and the cosmic nature of life
• The start of the 'spacesuit' or the human body and how this evolved along with the unexpected problems that came about with its use and identification, particularly with the emergence of the past and time
• Advice of resolving the problems above, and how to orient oneself in order to make sense of the mind, body and world that one finds oneself in
• Eternity, the present moment and how this is constantly bypassed by the mind that escapes into time, past and future.

A key point in this recording is the idea of the body being a vehicle to house the cosmic intelligence or 'life' that we are. By rightly orienting oneself in the body, but knowing oneself as life, or consciousness, or being, then one is able to live rightly in the present. Overally, this recording sets the scene for some of BL's ideas on cosmology and performs the function of giving a myth or narrative to the subconscious in order to bring the teachings to life. In this, it's a great and unique recording.

Who am I?

This recording is the last recording in the series. It deals with:

• One's true identity as "I" or "I am", and how this has constantly been covered over or erroneously oriented due to the mind's lack of logic and disoriented use of language
• Rightly orienting oneself as "I" and "I am" in daily life, and undoing the tendency to project one's "I" outward onto external objects rather than know one's "I" as the subject

There are many good points in this recording, and it attempts to deliver an experience along the lines of what Gurdjieff would call "self-remembering", and advaita teachers such as Nisargadatta called the "I am". One can see the influence of Advaita in this recording, and it's a highly practical way to initiate the listener into the feeling of "I" and eliminate the constant projecting outward of the conceptual self.

"Wisdom and where to find it" (book of transcripts from 1969)

This is an interesting book if you are interested in Barry Long's early career starting off from as far back as 1969. This book is a collection of various transcripts given in the UK to a small audience of seekers (presumably in response to an advert). The talks are around various topics and questions related to becoming more conscious, less habitual and how to relate to others and the world. Some of the advice is very specifically aimed at the person asking the question, so will be of limited use to those reading the book decades later.

Barry mentions teachers in the book such as Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti (alive at the time), and those teachings clearly come through in the talks given by Barry at this time. There's some mention of a sort of 'mystic death' experience that Barry had in India prior to coming out at a teacher in the 70s (or even 1969). The details of this event are a little vague, and I've not found much written on the actual experience in BL's books. This book has a vibe of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's philosophy with a bit of Krishnamurti rebelliousness thrown in. Barry seems sincere in addressing the audience at this time.

There's some good parts in this book, being those on self-observation and habit breaking. There's also a lot of philosophy as well which sounds much like Ouspensky's content. Later Barry moved into a totally different direction with emotional work, relationships, sexual union, and mindfulness, which is a good direction to proceed. Eckhart Tolle probably took the best parts out of Barry's teachings, and used those in his simplified approach.

Still, Barry does have some interesting creative content in his later teachings, particularly around the origins of man, the psyche and why emotional work is important, as well as the basics of entering back into the body as a valid means for awakening.

Some of the best recordings in terms of being useful for personal awakening and inner work are- "Start Meditating Now", "How to stop thinking", "The Being Behind the Mask", "A prayer for life", "A Journey into Consciousness", and "Who am I?". Those in relationships could do with listening to "Making Love", if only to become aware of how unconscious behaviour and emotionality affect our close relationships with the other gender with whom we are in intimate relationship with.

Barry Long - 3 - The being behind the mask - notes

 

The 3rd book in the Myth of Life series is "How to live joyously" and consists of two parts- 'The being behind the mask' and 'The law of life - Karma'.

Here's a few notes on the first part of that book or course, which is "The Being Behind the Mask".

This teaching lecture goes for around 60 minutes and deals with the difference between what BL calls the 'personality' and 'being'. It details the issues that have arisen with the mistaking of personality to be one's self, and then goes on to detail one's true nature of 'being'. It also deals with nature's remedy for the descent of man into the physical world, how this works for animals (but not man), and some other courses of action one can take in remedying this abnormal situation, which is the cause of maladies both personal and worldly. Finally, it gives 10 tips or pieces of advice with the aim of conserving energy and stopping the leakage of vital energy needed to conduct the work in setting things 'right' again within and without. Examples include ceasing voluntary but aimless activity, talk, pandering to the personality etc.

It starts with a parable or fable about a man (existing at a prior time when man and woman were not so attached to bodily form) who comes into possession with something novel, being an amazing mask (representing the fabricated personality), that becomes the source of much excitement and pleasure out in the world, but ultimately ends up becoming a source of pain and suffering due to habit and identification. At the same time, the loss of one's knowledge of one's self as the real identity and source of joy also adds to the catastrophe of man (and woman) having totally identified with the mask. The fable does have a happy ending, but you'll need to listen to the whole story in order to gain some appreciation for the problem and the solution.

The advice given towards the end of the lecture is helpful in terms of immediate practical actions one can take to save energy and reduce stress. There is no direct practice given here around mindfulness of the body or going back to the energy field of the body as an anchor- which was adviced in the previous two recordings. This lecture is more about discriminating between the false self, the personality, versus the real self or being behind the mask. 

The lecture as a whole fits in with the previous 2 lectures in terms of naming the personality as yet another manifestation of the previously mentioned 'thinker' and 'pygmy', which are both accumulations of past pain, emotion and fabricated self-ing.

There is some subtle use of pointing towards one's beingness or conscious presence that exists prior to the 'personality' and indeed IS one's true nature. But there is not direct or implicitly pointing out of this fact at this stage in the series (which is the main aim of the last recording in the series).

Barry Long - 2 - Notes and "Start Meditating Now" book and audio.

 

The first book or audio in the "Myth of Life" series is "Start Meditating Now". This is a fitting start for the series, and it's refreshing to find a purely practical teaching at the start, which sets some foundation for actually experiencing the points and philosophy that Barry Long puts forth throughout the rest of the parts in the series, and indeed future talks. Contrast this to a lot of teachers that give a heap of philosophy and theory up front, then at some point find the need or call to deliver a practical means of experiencing that to their audience. Both theory and practice should be one whole.

Start Meditating Now

The basic meditation itself is similar to a body scan / vipassana scanning routine, though it is purely around the inner subtle sensations within parts of the body, rather than gross sensations.

There are 5 points in this lecture that goes for around 1.5 hours.

(A) The actual meditation process and instructions

- The what and why

- Posture, set up, initial breathing yoga (similar to HA breathing, or tan tien breathing)

- Attention within the body, directed to between the eyebrows (a classic point of focus)

- Attention to the subtle energy sensations in the hands, face, lower body, upper body parts

- Entering into stillness once the body scan has been done, or returning for a repeated cycle

- Returning to inner feeling, body anchoring as much as possible outside meditation

(B) Releasing tension in the body and in attending to sights and sounds

(C) Dropping inner bodily tension and emotional tension into the lower abdomen

(D) Resting in stillness

(E) General tips and advice outside formal sitting sessions

- Habit of mind curiosity

- How the mind becomes distracted by hooks

- Ceasing unnecessary and nervous related bodily activity

- Ceasing thinking automatically about past and future events, memories etc.

--

Overall, it's a nice routine and a complete set of instructions and guidelines around establishing a meditation habit. A couple of points could probably be developed more, such as coming out of the meditation session (for some reason this seems to  have been omitted), and also a little more on integrating the formal meditative experience into times outside of formal sitting. Otherwise, done repeatedly, this lecture would yield good results over the long term.

Some quotes:

“Unless you intend to act, there’s no excuse whatsoever for thinking, and certainly not brooding.”

"Meditation is discovering what you are now. Not what you have been or what you think you are, but what you are now."

"Meditation is a process of self-unfoldment and can't be rushed."

"Why do you need to meditate? To know yourself. Why do you need to know yourself? Because what you are at present, what you think you are, is not yourself."

"Meditation is the art of entering your own unconscious.. where your true self lies is inside your body. It is a place of extraordinary stillness and creativity."

"When you're sitting doing nothing, your mind tends to wander all over the place.. the mind has gotten into the wandering habit and you've probably never thought to stop it.. stopping thinking is a gradual process and not an easy one."

"Finally, you will have to master the subtle, unsconscious thinker that has been controlling your mind for so long without your realising it."

Barry Long

Barry Long - 1 - General notes on his teachings and content

Barry Long was an Australian spiritual teacher in the 70s to the early 2000s and presents a mixture of teachings but in a cohesive whole. He draws on techniques and traditions from Buddhism, Tantra, Gurdjieff Work, Krishnamurti, and much of his content seems to have been created by BL himself.

Barry Long is an excellent 'next step' after exploring the teachings of Eckhart Tolle (for example) or similar surface level teachings that don't provide much structure apart from attending satsangs and talks. Barry Long influenced an enormous amount of ET's teachings, for instance, and some of the concepts are pretty much word for word or have been substituted with a new label (e.g. Barry Long's concept of 'the pygmy' was translated into Eckhart Tolle's concept of the 'pain body', which of course is a bit more palatable and politically correct nowadays).

Barry Long is relatively unknown as a teacher, and doesn't have the wide audience appeal that many of the more charismatic teachers have. Time is also getting on, and there aren't too many new people taking up his teachings, and some of the older students have moved on elsewhere.

That said, one of the BEST spiritual DIY courses that I've come across happens to be Barry Long's "Myth of Life" series. It's a superb and brilliant DIY set of audio teachings that covers pretty much all bases that one would want or need in a spiritual path. Topics covered in the series include meditation, stopping habitual thinking, mindfulness, love and emotions, sexuality and sexual union, somatic experiencing with emotions, self-enquiry and self-remembering, and the use of storytelling in an attempt to impart some self-awareness on the listener regarding the unconscious plight that humankind now finds itself trapped in.

I'll be going through this series over the next few posts. The series can be listened to and studied and used practically for a while, even years, and still yield benefits over time. It's a little unfortunate that this series was pretty much a one-hit-wonder, and some of BL's later talks, lectures and focus seemed to move off the early material in works such as the "Myth of Life" series, and onto more mundane topics such as love and relationships between men and women, integrity, and emotional management... which is all dealt with in the Series too, but the overall focus is that of liberation and mastery of the self.. which again doesn't appeal to the wider audience as much as talk above love, relationships, emotions, and life situations.

I'll leave this here for now and continue on with the next post on Book 1, Part 1 of the Myth of Life series.

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