Episodes
Thursday May 17, 2018
TURNING POINTS AND TRANSFORMATIONS - DESCEND THEN TRANSCEND
Thursday May 17, 2018
Thursday May 17, 2018
We must do shadow work, to go down into the depths of our psyche in order to the work of Transcendence. We must clear our subconscious debris, go down into the tomb, die to the false self, so we can rise up in glory and radiance and truth. Without doing depth work, we are shallow people. We must acknowledge our “weeds” of darkness, let them grow along side the “wheat” (light) in us, and be transformed through a process of coming into greater awareness. Bryan talks about Jungian Psychology, the shadow, and talks about the path to the True Christed Self. He talks about how suffering is a choice that we make, not a necessity. Recognizing darkness in us helps us to evolve and grow by shining light on our shadow nature that we repress from conscious awareness.
The songs you here in this program are written, composed, and sung by Bryan. Check out all Bryan Rice's published books and music at bryanrice.org.
Wednesday May 16, 2018
TURNING POINTS AND TRANSFORMATIONS - CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Pain and the ego are equated and you have a choice whether to suffer or not. Anytime you are in pain of any kind, you are experiencing the ego. We have the ability to program ourselves with happiness. When we are in Pure Presence or Essence, we are not identified with the ego. Though most therapeutic systems will tell you that you need to have healthy ego boundaries. Spirituality would say that you first need an ego in order to transcend an ego. We need to command a new Presence. The “Is-ness” of our True Nature is Presence and suffering is not desirable as is taught in many Eastern Spirituality traditions. Suffering is self-created. Bryan encourages people to put aside ingrained beliefs about suffering being somehow a sign of “holiness” or “worthiness”.
We do not need to crucify ourselves and need to take the crown of thorns off of our head and take the nails out of our hands and feet. Most of us in the West have been conditioned to believe that suffering is somehow admirable in the eyes of God. We are Infinitely Blessed, Loved, and “Need Do Nothing” to experience our Divinity. Pain comes from fear and emotions such as anger are draining to our life force. Anything that causes “dis-ease”, is not from our True Self. Only our egos can be offended. According to A Course In Miracles, God, who is beyond all gender, does not condemn nor inflict vengeance and suffering onto anyone out of punishment. We are whole, we are One, we are Innocent. Seeming to fall from grace is an illusion, it is not real, it is a “side show”. There is a way to live in moral harmony. When we hear words like “yield” and “surrender” yourself to a loving God. What it really means is being open and receptive to the Divine Flow of Life Force in our Being. We live in maya, or delusion as is spoken of in the East and God and the “Devil” are not outside of you. Choosing to live in duality creates suffering as well. Bryan talks about the movie “The Passion of the Christ” and how its depiction of the suffering of Jeshua (Jesus) was an extreme portrayal of what the human ego does to humanity.
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.
Friday Dec 09, 2016
Friday Dec 09, 2016
EPISODE 7
This episode starts with the notion that Intentions behind rituals as well as the “Presence” brought to them, helps to create an interior experience free of ruminating thoughts. This is a continuation from the discourse in episode 6.
Bryan talks more about his “God Shock” experience and how it influenced him to answer callings to many spiritual roles. But he is able to admit that the callings he received are not to be defined by the various roles he plays. He talks about not taking self-definitions seriously and renounces the idea of specialness. He shares his perspective on how, he, like Jeshua (Jesus) had to face mirages in the desert wilderness of his mind and had to wrestle with his ego. Bryan says he was called to a path called “The Way”, not to an institution or a role.
He briefly mentions all the ways we crucify ourselves and divide our psyche. The shattered psyche, expressed many times through mental illness, is the experience of the crown of thorns. Then he says that a sick mind creates a sick body. The body has experiences, but is not the “experiencer”. He points to the “Witnessing Consciousness”. He believes like other spiritual teachers that everything is evolving back towards God. The way of suffering that Bryan has traveled has allowed him to become a healer. He says that religion is a means not an end and that he is on a path of inclusivity after his awakening to Love.
The “Way”, the path, is what original followers of Christ followed before the institution of state religion. This “Way” includes “Life” or “Abundance”, “Death” (to the false self), “Resurrection” of the True Self, or what Hindus call the “Atman”, then it culminates in “Ascension” or “Transcendence”, and then later into “Assumption” or what he calls “The Cosmic-Bliss- Principle”, known more traditionally as the many mansions of God. We are all called to this path in our lives. Jeshua (Jesus) as an enlightened, self-realized being, demonstrated that we can all walk this path and should. Many saints and mystics from all religions and spiritualities have went through all these stages in their lives.
The process of Ascension he says, is rising above thought (the barking dogs), rising above body consciousness (dog-like desires), rising above impulses (dog-like instincts), rising above chemical messages in the brain, and rising above all the physical manifestations that keep us matterward or in our egoic script and screenplay (maya and delusion). Heaven he says is experienced in the upper chakras of our astral anatomy. Our bodies experience internally, the Cosmic Bliss Principle. But we can experience a descent “hell” by solely identifying with the body.
Bryan wants people to recognize the darkness as well as the light. Not to be defined by our darkness, but to name it. He references the biblical image of the “Wheat and the Weeds” (Yang-Yin) and says they are within us. We are made of dark, light, and admixed energy and these all influence our perceptions of self, God, and creation and what we project and manifest.
Bryan ultimately admits that he had to stop priding himself on being “religious” and learn to just “Be”, meaning, “Be present as presence”. After his transfiguration-like experience he owned up to the fact that he will have to pay that forward and go back down the “mountain” back into the “valleys”, back into the world to serve, like the disciples of Jeshua (Jesus) were told to do after witnessing their master’s Transfiguration.
Bryan cautions people about the temptation to get stuck in the specialness (or inflation) felt after having a mystical experiences. He, though he resisted, had to go back into the world to “serve”. Bryan furthermore, is thankful for the gift of “Holy Tears” that he was given - the joy, that motivates him to help pull others out of fear into love, and ultimately out of afflictive emotions into uplifting emotions and states of being.
Ultimately, he sums up our purpose. It is to be aware, to be present, to know who we are, to know who we are in God, to allow God to live through us, and to see God in everyone else.