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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Eckhart Tolle - Some further notes and recommendations for approaching his teachings - The Power of Now and related teachings.

 

Here are some further notes on Eckhart Tolle's material and teachings. I'm writing this for those attacted to his teachings, and the introductory ideas expressed in his books, talks and audio sessions. There are some who may stay with Eckhart's teachings for quite some time, or indefinately, others may receive the inner guidance to move on however, to deeper work and more thorough teachings and approaches to 'enlightenment' outside of what Eckhart teaches.

Key issues and things to note:

- Eckhart does a great job in all his books, talks, lectures etc. in detailing the issues around thinking, self-ing, conceptualising, and habitually thinking about the past and future. He also does a great job in examining how the ego works, the "pain body", and personal and social issues in general as a result of this. HOWEVER, the solutions that he provides are just too surface level to do any of this justice. He makes a great case for change, he explains the "what", and the "why" perfectly.. but the "how" is not sufficient or deep enough. Just provided snippets of approaches, or a shotgun approach in doing things such as watching thoughts at one point, or going into bodily sensations at another, or staying present, etc. without any structured framework or approach isn't going to cut it.

As a result, many of his students are stuck asking the same questions over and over, and left trying to work out how to meaningfully and effectively put these tools and lack of approach into practice.

- Eckhart doesn't openly acknowledge his teachers and the sources of the material that he puts forth as his own.. based on some magical awakening event story of what occurred for him one night. If we dig deeper and look at some of his source material, such as Barry Long's teachings, A Course in Miracles, and bits and pieces from other mystics and teachers (more recently in Advaita), it becomes really obvious that these previous sources are almost taken word for word with a slight variation in language. The "fountain of all knowledge" effect is lessened by this, but it's just more honest. The whole organisation around ET thrives on him being some enlightened teacher who has come up with all of this on his own due to his own awakening that apparently didn't require any pevious work or practice. This just isn't correct, and frankly, is a bit of a red flag.

- Eckhart's teachings have changed over time, according to the various interest and flavour of the month.. lately it's more about awareness, consciousness, and neo-advaita type pointing, whereas originally is was more about mindfulness, concentration, and awareness being focused attention in the body or on the mind stream. This is sort of interesting, but prompts one to wonder why the change, and why the need to appeal to the mass audience (apart from the monetary advantage of doing so). Why the need for such a massive organisation built up around ET The Teacher, if the whole point of the message is to be nothing, nobody and live with as little structure and baggage as possible?

- ET's ideas about 'enlightenment' as just too simplistic. He mainly defines 'enlightenment' as disidentification with the mind, and the mind-made self. Further, he makes it sound like no big deal.. so we can all quite easily make it 'enlightenment', without having to do any of the usual hard yards that progressive paths have stressed over the centuries such as conduct, ethics, developing concentration, developing sustained mindfulness, having devotion to the teacher/path, etc. etc. It's all reduced to just living 'in the now', stopping thinking, and feeling/dissolving the pain body (with quite minimalistic instructions, mostly taken from other approaches that use somatic work or body scanning etc.)

Taking the above into account, here's some GOOD material that can assist with the gaps in his teaching.. look for these audio lectures if you can find them, since they're the closest to what we might consider "meditation" or structure, which is clearly lacking in most of the talks, books, etc.

Recommended material:

1. Gateways to the Now -- an audio with 3 parts that goes for around an hour (with another hour of music), that details 3 ways to enter 'the now', being via the inner body, silence, and acceptance

2. Practicing the Power of Now - which has taken out the practical parts of The Power of Now, and made these parts into a manual so to speak. Although the practices even here aren't deep enough to likely effect permanent change or insight, they're all in one spot at least for review and consumption.

3. Essential Meditations with Eckhart Tolle - this 7 hour audio compilation is one of the better ones that focuses more on the idea of meditation and how to implement some of the teachings and philosophy that ET talks about elsewhere

4. Meditations for a New Earth - Although this is mostly given by Kim Eng, it does contain some good structured practices that can be used daily to give life to the information presented elsewhere.

5. Non-live material - When starting off, leave out the live audience material and hours and hours of live talks.. preferring the specifically given content and books such as Power of Now, Stillness Speaks, or the above audio lectures. The live talks tend to cater for large audiences attending a huge talk who are looking for a bit of entertainment and a bit of spiritual chit chat, and thus the live talks tend to contain mainly teaching stories and surface level pointers that are repeated throughout all the talks over time. The non-live material is more structured, and also was created for a specific purpose and thus it's more effective at delivering the message.

Overall:

Eckhart Tolle and his teaching material contains a lot of benefit in terms of providing an easy to understand philosophy around topics such as mindfulness, self, ego, emotional pain, and the ideas behind why and what is needed to be transcended for spiritual growth and liberation. There's tonnes of free content available online as well, which is generous. This makes ET appealing to beginners on the path, and also those interested in spiritual talk, conversation and entertaining ideas around the path.

However, the "how" isn't developed deep enough, and the teachings generally remain on the surface, in an attempt to cater for as wide an audience as possible. Because of the sheer volume of content available, trying to sort the wheat from the chaff is also a challenge for beginners with these teachings. As such, many seekers have encountered ET's ideas, and agree on their value, but end up confused, or doubful as to where and how to EXACTLY implement these teachings to give lasting change and the sort of 'enlightenment' that is promised in much of the talks and books.

These teachings are worth delving into, trying, checking out, and confirming for oneself.. but do keep in mind that they're more of a starting point on the path rather than a destination or complete approach.

Desire for liberation. A necessary factor.

Suffering as a starting point.

"I teach suffering and the cessation of suffering." (reportedly The Buddha)

"In this world, all things come into being and perish, therefore there is the repeated experience of sorrow." (Sri Vasistha)

"The settling of the mind in its goal by turning away from the mass of objects, through observing their defects again and again, is known as peace." (Sankara)

"Suffering has made you dull; unable to see its entirety and enormity. Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you." (Nisargadatta)

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." (Ecclesiastes 1)


The question often strikes me, when out and about mixing with society, 'How does one relate on a deeper level with those seeming 'others' we meet in our life? How can we relate to these strangers, apart from the concepts overlaid automatically by our own mind?'

Is there a way to relate to 'the other', which can bypass the conditioning and sabotaging of the ego that is only interested in obtaining something from others? Even altruism and so called self-less acts for others, in the end, seem empty, done usually for secret self-serving motives such as pleasant feelings, future rewards 'in heaven' etc.

One way which has been recommended by sages since time immemorial is that of recognising and working with suffering. We can find references to the use of suffering as a foundational base in many orthodox and esoteric spiritual traditions. The reason for this is manifold, but in essence, there are not so many other starting places which begin as close to the bone, ie. our ordinary, present experience as felt during our daily suffering existence.

This doesn't mean that one intentionally needs to find specific areas of suffering, such as physical pain, relationship conflicts and other problematic areas we all have, though it can include this. Rather, these teachings point to the UNIVERSALITY and all-pervasiveness of suffering and sorrow inherent in our very existence, which we all initially find ourselves, usually started from around age three; as separate physical entities living in a seemingly random universe. Despite our individual beliefs about the universe and our existence, the hard facts that we find when on the street or alone at home verify the truth that sages have taught in the past- life itself, and the body itself, IS suffering. "There is suffering."

But isn't this just another mental filter? Do not mystics also proclaim the unreality of "the dream" of existence? Yes, but we have no choice but to start from where we are. Attempting to start from a conceptual place of 'elsewhere', while ignoring our present state of affairs leads to further suffering down the track. As all things in existence are also temporary, then views and beliefs themselves, and attempts to circumvent our present state of affairs must end at some point, and appear as the awful truth we were attempting to escape from via our magical thinking. Follow up on any "Law of Attraction" devotee after a few years and find out whether they still have the energy and motivation to attempt to will unreality onto their reality. Fortunately, all of us have only a limited supply of energy, motivation and will-power, which will one day be exhausted and bring us to the ultimate discovery of suffering and its inescapable presence in our lives and in those around us, while we exist in a body.

Yet a strange thing happens once we embark on this via dolorosa and embrace the existence of suffering everywhere we look. We find that the separateness and power of the ego seems to diminish slightly. External objects and people are no longer simply objects of attainment. We join creation on a fundamental level and are united "in suffering" with others, high and low. Our heart opens up, even ever so slightly, in the form of compassion for those around us, as they are no longer "perfect" or idealised, or despised.. but merely other entities also "fighting the good fight" and trying as best they can to live with their own sufferings of existence.

Most importantly though, working with suffering and investigating its all-pervasiveness, may allow us to come to certain life-changing conclusions. Perhaps there is no solution to suffering within this reality we experience here. Perhaps all efforts to obtain "perfection" (physical, financial, emotional, intellectual and whatever your 'summum bonum' happens to be) are doomed to failure due to inherent limitations in existence- impermanence. Perhaps we've been looking in the wrong place for happiness and love all along, the wrong place being any external place whatsoever. As we become less enchanted with possible solutions and imaginations for a pleasant future, our desire for real, permanent liberation also increases. A doorway is opened, which previously did not exist.

We have no choice but to start where we are. Man is a machine, sages such as Gurdjieff tell us, man who sits in a public house drunk with dreams about himself. Yet there are clues and hints within the dream, as in the movie 'Inception'. As a dog that traces the scent of its master, we can trace the scent of Godhead if we truly desire. The subtle fragrances of love, kindness, contentment, and happiness float past a dozen times a day unnoticed, and often amongst the messiest of situations.

May we have the grace today to see ourselves as we truly are.