Episodes
Tuesday Sep 22, 2020
Tuesday Sep 22, 2020
This episode of Turning Points and Transformations was a discourse and a sharing of insights inspired by a Course Bryan took called "910: Living in the World While Waking Up". He covered talked about the function of time as our ego's like to use it, how the past can imprison and condition us, he suggests ways to release the past, and to become more awakened to the Presence of Love in the Now, thus writing for ourselves a better future. He drew from a variety of resources and spiritual teachers to compliment some of his insights gained through life's struggles and personal victories. Love's Presence in the Now is how to have sacred communion and union with the Divine.
Monday Jun 05, 2017
Monday Jun 05, 2017
In this 2011 discourse and episode, Bryan shares from his research-driven book Silencing A Thousand Barking Dogs the topic related to optimal brain functioning or abnormal brain functioning as it relates to the developed and evolved or underdeveloped and non-evolved brain anatomy. He talks about how duality can occur in the brain and how “ghosts” or “influences” from our days spent in the womb and nursery years can impact brain development for good or for ill.
He begins by saying that the pre-frontal lobes play an enormous role in our biology of Transcendence and in the unfolding of the “blueprint” of the Spirit. Without the frontal lobes, we would not be able to control and keep in check the emotional limbic system, nor the reactive reptilian hindbrain. I an earlier discourse, Bryan mentioned the Orbital Frontal Loop are neural connections that are associated with the pre-frontal lobes and the third eye (Christ Eye) mentioning that it is this fourth brain in the five-fold brain system that is the last to develop and typically, in the context of the developmental life span, it is in late adolescence that this part of our brain system begins to form those very connections he mentions. It is worth noting that some children are born with larger pre-frontal lobes, while others have larger hindbrains. This is according to Joseph Chilton Pearce’s research.
What attributes to this? Conditions in the womb. An expected mother exposed to excessive fear, anxiety, emotional turbulence, and violence - conditions that would be detrimental to the climate of her nervous system. Such conditions could negatively impact pre-frontal lobe development and conversely might cause the hindbrain of the forming fetus to receive greater, but not better attention, and this may cause abnormalities in its frontal lobes. A negative consequence of such a happening is a child may be more prone to violent behavior. A fetus can live in a “pre-natal garden” or a “hostile jungle”. It is who the mother surrounds herself by and what environmental conditions she lives in that determines the intelligence of the future child.
Post birth experiences of either proper or a lack of bonding between the parents and children affect brain formation too and effects the overall blue print of when and if certain stages of myelination or the formation of neural connections occur on time or at all. Violent behavior and mental illness can occur because of a lack of bonding.
Bryan speaks of personal experiences which he calls “Refrigerator Love”, lack of affection in his youth, and believes his lack of bonding led to abnormal brain development and problems with attachment and in relationships with the opposite sex. He speaks of how he has overcome the deficits and mentions that many interventions to be shared in later episodes aid in the process of rewiring the brain for living a more enlightened life. By recognizing triggers and dis-identifying with oppressive thoughts and living a yogic lifestyle, Bryan has been able to transcend pain, mood instability, mental suffering, and arrested emotional development. In later discourses Bryan draws on medical research of people like Gerald May and Daniel Amen, MD to further explore brain disorders and how and why they occur.
Bryan shares how some of his spiritual emergencies and crisis experiences, which he characterizes as a descent into hell or being submerged in the subconscious led him into feelings of lack and scarcity. He makes mention of the power of words and thoughts as vibratory forces. Bryan does talk about his relationship with lack as it relates to “slowed” and “incoherent” states, negatively affected by brain imbalances. He touches on mania, depression, “affective disorder dogs”, mentions again schizophrenic disorders, anxiety disorders, the barking dogs of unwanted, persistent thoughts, his own past boughts with scrupulosity, obsessive fixations, hyper-religiosity, delusions of grandeur as he may have experienced them as the “brain anatomy of duality” in the context of Gerald May’s research. Moods are a mental nuisance. A barking dog. A thorn from a crown of thorns. Sometimes all the meditation and austerities in the world do not bring relief from affliction, Bryan says at one point. It is in those times we must weep with those who weep.
There are active ways to manage our thoughts. Whether in thoughtlessness or breathlessness, for instance. This is the goal of this series. To become free from bondage to our thoughts. Bryan doesn’t refute the value of taking medication while living a holistic, spiritual, yogic, and meditative lifestyle. He wants people to embrace a fusion of science and spirituality.
From a spiritual perspective, Bryan argues that the ego is insane, deluded, keeps us in bondage to maya (delusion), illusion, self-concepts, and negative self-concepts, all barking dogs that just won’t “shut up”. Guilt is hell, he says. Guilt is of the ego. A result of unconscious guilt we all have from the primal rejection of God.
Bryan gives credit where credit is due. He expresses gratitude for his experiences of grace.
He doesn’t want people to misunderstand the use of mantra and prayers and how they can help release negative energy such as anxiety. May says the intent behind prayer is to facilitate depth of awareness. Yoga for, Bryan releases anxiety.
In a later discourse, Bryan will talk about how meditation heals and talk more about recent brain research from Daniel Amen, MD.
Sunday Jun 04, 2017
Sunday Jun 04, 2017
In this 2011 discourse Bryan draws on research from Joseph Chilton Pearce on the five-fold brain system of evolutionary history. In sticking with the theme of this series, Bryan begins by giving an overview of the animal brains and the endless train of compulsions we are subject to. Though, we as humans are supposed to be a rational animal, making us more advanced and evolved, we get caught in the grip of strong desires and other impulses that keep up imprisoned. Again, he calls the desires we are subject to at times, “dog desires”, citing that we fall into beastial subconsciousness when we act only from our less evolved brains, contained within the five-fold system. Our minds become noisy, he says, and we all can be subject to hallucinations, not unlike those experienced by the schizophrenic (though by not by any means does he intend to downplay the struggles of schizophrenia for those who are disconnected from reality as experienced in this world).
He says, our motor behaviors and self-grasping behavior leads to a chain reaction of self-destructive habits or traps that cause us to lose precious space-time in our lives. He compares compulsion and habits to trances and hellish traps that we think ourselves into. We sink downward, matter ward, into our lower chakras, directing desire energy down and outward. As a shaman, Bryan draws a parallel between the lower triangle (muladhara, swadisthana, and manipura chakras) to the lower world that shamans travel into when they seek to tap into people’s power animals for the sake of healing and retrieval from the deep individual subconscious or into the collective unconscious consisting of “ruling idea energies” that can affect our behavior, thoughts, impulses, and attitudes. The creative and sexual energies of the lower chakras, are not in themselves “bad” but are not the entire spectrum of which make up the human condition.
Bryan cites the book “The Biology of Transcendence” by Joseph Chilton Pearce, calling it revolutionary in coming to understand the five-fold brain system and the entirety of the human condition beginning with the earliest brain, the reptilian brain, often associated with the “id” in Fruedian terminology and culminating in the fourth and fifth brains, the frontal lobes, and the heart brain respectively, with the heart brain being the most advanced and evolved. Yes, the heart is a brain and can be measured. When entrained, neurally and energetically, with the frontal lobes, earlier developed brains are incorporated and give sovereignty to the higher brains. This creates a desired state of harmony and peace, equilibrium and even-mindedness.
Beginning with the reptilian brain, Bryan proceeds to share his understanding of behaviors, thoughts, attributes, and actions often associated with each brain, continuing with the old mammalian, new mammalian, then the frontal lobes (called the “angel lobes” by some people), and finally the heart. Understanding the older brains helps us identify the art of deception, lying, dealing with threats, formulation of emotions, making decisions, learning to walk, developing language and more. For instance, the quick reflex-oriented faculties might work well in a “dog fight” as Pearce says, but doesn’t best serve us in the pursuit of higher awareness.
Bryan talks about the power of the imagination as a god-like quality but then again asks the listener why we suffer from an endless train of obsessive-compulsive thoughts that carry us away from the present moment. The trick he says, is becoming totally still. To surround yourself with silence. He wants the listener to know what he has learned about the fourth and fifth brains, that it allows us to transcend thought. Bryan further comments on the process of evolution in consciousness and how the higher brains learn to incorporate the lower ones in order to better serve the highest good. Conflict and division however can occur when we are not following “Nature” or the Cosmic Plan for the evolution of our Biology which is made to Transcend.
Bryan shares his experiences of both bliss and the absence of it with activity related to the Third Eye and the part of the brain called the Orbital Frontal Loop. In efforts to better understand what he has been through and where he is going, he shares his personal insights about the frontal “angel” lobes.