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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Craving, desire, bodily impulses and management approach of various awakened "Nonduality" teachers.

 

12 February 2024.

I’ve been pondering a lot about craving, and dealing with craving. I noted that there’s a divide between mental type methods, and body methods or “embodied awakening” as SK calls it. I am moving towards the embodied practices at the moment such as Morrnah Simeona's Ho’oponopono 12 Step process and framework. This is much more on that embodied side than HL’s modernised form (which is a mix of both body and intellectual "tools", but for me in 2022 remained almost totally intellectual and mentally tiring vs now where it’s a breeze and effortless to work the practice and involves a strong connection with the Inner Child / Subconsious where arisings are mostly coming from).

Compared some advice today from NIS as well, which didn’t sit well about exteriorizing the craving or desire and watching it or observing it. Seems like the usual dislocated approach that I used to take, and most people take on encountering awareness teachings, and which works for a while, but not in the long-run. But on reading it later, it seems he was pointing to being aware of it first, and then somehow using it with the I AM.

This seems similar to the misunderstanding with Ramana, where people keep just ignoring arisings and emotions and going back to just awareness, when instead he MAY have been actually pointing to BEING the ego-I self and fully being present as the self, and then that gets subsumed into the I AM ness.. We don’t approach pure consciousness directly, since it’s not accessible for the intellectually identified mind, and will likely end up in spiritual bypassing and suppression of emotions, craving, etc.

A lot of teachers or teachings I've come across over the years, such as Shinzen Young, Scott Kiloby, Linda Clair, Eckhart Tolle, Barry Long, and many others, especially those of a more contemporary nature, are firmly in the embodied camp. Not to be confused with contemporary Nonduality teachers, such as Tony Parsons, Jim Newman, Ramesh Balsekar, Sailor Bob,  and all Neo-Advaitins who are firmly in the intellectual understanding only camp and don’t deal with the body at all except as some sort of aspect of consciousness.. And coincidentally are the most likely to be misunderstood and used for spiritual bypassing by the ego.

No such thing as awareness? Awareness just a construct? A new fad in spiritual circles.

I recently saw a re-posting by Scott Kiloby (article below) on challenging the idea that 'awareness' and 'consciousness' are not 'real', but just mere constructs. This thrust is doing the spiritual circuits these days, with a number of teachers coming out in an attempt to challenge the notion that awareness-is-all etc. (which was popular during the last few decades thanks to Neo-Advaita type popularity in spiritual satsang circles).


This idea (that awareness/consciousness is just a construct and not real or the basis of all) has actually been around for a little longer, like 2500 years, in Theravada/classical Buddhism. Some teachers like to think that they're being all innovative etc., in challenging this notion, or getting their readers to challenge the idea that awareness-is-all. Their students then get all cocky and run around the Internet challenging others to 'find awareness' or 'find consciousness' etc.. like it was an item one finds in the pantry.


What I'd like to ask these teachers though is this--> Are you then substituting yet another speculation for the 'awareness-is-all' belief-- ie. that awareness is just an empty construct? Or that reality doesn't consist of just awareness?
Because it certainly seems so. Nowhere on these blogs, posts and rantings, can I find any hint that this idea should be actually investigated via direct, clear, practical means, other than reasoning things out (which gives a temporary ok-ness to one's intellect). These teachers are also entirely missing the point that the 'awareness' teachings that make use of the word 'awareness' ALWAYS imply that awareness is not an object, not findable, etc. etc., and that 'awareness' is a pointer for use with very specific practices that lead to the unshakeable experience of what 'awareness' or 'not-awareness' actually IS. The awareness teachings (with the exception of Neo-Advaita) are not attempting in any way to posit a theory of the universe whereby one goes around sheeping the idea that 'awareness is all' and behaving in certain ways that affirm that belief.


So perhaps teachers that are proudly attempting to blow away the notion of 'awareness' should instead focus their efforts on guiding students (and likely themselves) into using 'awareness' as a practical pointer for self-inquiry, or not using 'awareness' at all, but engaging in other deep contemplative practices (such as Insight, vipassana etc), and thus doing away permanently with their own egoic identifications that lead one to posit the above philosophical nonsense (and also make a profession / living out of 'teaching' others what 'reality' is, an how students can deal with their 'problems' etc. via paid-for seminars and workshops etc.)


This post might appear a little inflammatory, though the point needs emphasising that 1. awareness isn't an object 2. awareness teachings aren't attempting to define a new theory of how the universe operates and is put together 3. awareness teachings make use of very specific practices that lead to results beyond intellectual philosophising, beliefs and speculations.

Taken from http://kiloby.com/what-if-awareness-isnt-real/

Scott Kiloby:

What if awareness isn’t real? A recent scientific study found that awareness or consciousness is a construction of the mind like everything else – like the self, our world views, all of it.

This latest scientific discovery is not particularly groundbreaking. In fact, postmodern philosophical explorations in the last century have essentially obliterated inherent metaphysical notions like awareness or spirit. They have torn these notions to shreds in so many ways and from so many angles that it is embarrassing in those circles to posit such notions. Whatever we think is pregiven as a reality is exactly not that. It is a construction. This has been dealt with so directly that there are now things like non-metaphysical nonduality and post-metaphysics popping up. Yet, most of the spiritual community is ignorant of what science is currently saying and what these postmodern explorations have uncovered about how our minds conceive – essentially “make up” – everything, even our most profound metaphysical notions. Even though our spiritual circles are slow to see this, we have all already seen it, yet we often turn a blind eye to it. For example, those who follow certain regional traditions and teachings tend to see what those teachings and traditions teach and nothing more. For example, a Buddhist is not going to find Union with Christ. A Christian is not going to realize nirvana. True nature is realized only by those who follow teachings that say that there is a true nature and that this is what you are. I found this out long ago when I would meet with people who had experiences of the dropping away of everything. They didn’t follow any teachings. When I suggested they were seeing their true nature, they looked at me as if I had just said “You are a squirrel.” Even when they began to call their realization “true nature,” they did so by taking that on as a conception, a context for what had been seen. And that’s the mind, through and through.

Awareness gets thrown around as if it is the final realization, as if everything is just awareness. But look around – nothing in the universe is labeling itself awareness. Labeling happens through the mind. And to say that we have to be aware in order to even see a universe is still the mind, for it posits a division between what is aware and what one is aware of. All divisions are of the mind. They are constructions.

The perennial philosophy itself, which is the notion that there is one pregiven reality that we all come to see, regardless of our particular tradition or spiritual view, has been obliterated also. If there is one pregiven reality, why is everyone still arguing about it? Is reality arguing with itself? How would that happen anyway if there is one reality? Why do Buddhists, Advaitists, Scientists and Christians still assert that whatever they are realizing is what everyone else is realizing as one fundamental truth? Could it be that what they are realizing is only what their teachings and traditions make room for? Could it be that the notion of one fundamental truth is just another way the ego wants to be right? If so, that has nothing to do with a pregiven, nonconceptual reality. That is all about self.

Is this the end of metaphysical notions like awareness? I say “no.” It just means it is time for a change in how we view these things (or non-things). Setting up the notion of awareness can be helpful on one’s path to freedom. It provides a way to identify less with thoughts and other arisings that come and go. But inevitably, many land on that conception as a final realization, still dividing the universe in two, between awareness and all that other stuff that comes and goes.

We often hear that all there is, is Oneness. But did you know that many schools of Buddhism do not posit Oneness as a final insight. Instead, they say it is empty too, like everything else. It is a construction.

Wow, this sweeps the proverbial rug out from under us. It calls on us to look at our reality differently – to stop taking the words of spiritual teachings, science and religion on face value. It calls on us to look at our conceptions, no matter what they are and no matter how profound they appear to be.
But isn’t this what freedom is about anyway? Isn’t it about not getting cozy within mental prisons that create more divisions and, instead, letting the fire of freedom burn everything up?

If you are willing and ready to let that fire burn it all up, nothing that is said here will offend you. Instead, it will excite you at the possibility of going deeper then where you are currently landing in your conceptions of reality. If this offends you, and you wish to argue with me, be prepared. I’m not defending a view here. I’m merely inviting you to examine your own. You’d only be arguing with yourself. Apparently, that’s what reality does.