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.