Episodes
Saturday Sep 30, 2017
Saturday Sep 30, 2017
In this second discourse on brain anatomy and duality, Bryan introduces a spiritual doctor named Daniel G. Amen. A clinical and neural scientist, a child and adolescent Psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Amen Clinic for Behavioral Medicine. A recipient of many awards, he is an expert on the relationship between the brain and behavior. and he is the author of several books. In this episode Bryan will share what he has learned from Dr. Amen in his book “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsession, Anger, and Impulsiveness” about interventions to take with respect to improving and maintaining optimal brain functioning, the climate of our thoughts, the climate of our feelings, the climate of sense regulation, the supervision of all the things that happen in the brain, all those thousand barking dogs we deal with on a daily basis. The essence of the book says that we are not stuck with the brain we are born with. Bryan says this is a good thing because the brain helps to create the reality, all the situations and encounters that we draw to us, what we come to know while in a body. It is important to note that the brain can turn on us and we don’t need to be mentally disturbed or deranged to know that. There is now medical and scientific proof that under activity or over activity in certain parts of the brain can create “afflictive barking dogs” we come to wrestle with, whether harmful, fearful, avoidant, aggressive, or impulsive in nature. Dr. Amen’s research in brain imaging has led to more effective treatment of mental disorders, allowing people to become much higher functioning.
Dr. Amen is noted for showing how your brain, or the “hardware of the soul”, can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Bryan says we need to learn to shake hands with the devil and realize that the devil has the face of our own self, rather the self-projected images of the brain, not just the overall mind that contains the brain within it. Bryan compares the journey into facing our worst “enemy” as the descent into hell where we realize that what we consider to be our enemy, is really our best friend.
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.
Tuesday Dec 13, 2016
Tuesday Dec 13, 2016
In this episode from 2011, from a mindset of one who has battled, wrestled, and sought to integrate the entire range of experiences from Deep God Communion to mental agony, Bryan draws from strong imagery and metaphor to describe not only what he went through, but he also tries to universalize brokenness, fragmentation, and what Toltec Master Don Miguel Ruiz calls “the mental disease of fear”, by putting it into a context of what a hurricane is like and how a “flood” of imagery erupting from the collective unconscious can create massive chaos, hallucinations, and other mental disturbances (“The Thousand Barking Dogs”). He reiterates, that psychological “noise” and disturbances of the psyche can be combated by identifying with the I Am Presence, that of which we are, within. Silence and stillness can be attained. Drawing on teachings of Ruiz and A Course in Miracles, he points out that only Love is real, and it is the wounds of fear, an “emotional poison” that influences other “venomous emotions”, all stemming from the imperial ego, that lead to mental unrest. Bryan shares personal stories and challenges with the various phenomenon mentioned above. He talks at length about how he integrated his shadow to gain new found awareness and to “exorcise” emotional demons through his art work. Bryan wants people to know that you can survive Dark Night of the Soul experiences that may take the form of mental illnesses and that you can recover from them with proper guidance and discernment. He shares poems that were later released as songs on the album “Fractured & Delivered”, where he had the chance to tell his story of recovery, discovery, and transcendence. More information on how to listen to or buy that album can be found at bryanrice.org.
Monday Dec 05, 2016
Monday Dec 05, 2016
In part one of the talk “God Shock”, before talking about abnormal ritualistic behavior, habits, obsessions, and fixations that are a continuation of his analogies of the “Thousand Barking Dogs” we need to silence to have lasting peace and deep joy, Bryan takes some time to talk about his understanding of enlightenment and what is expected of us after having had peak experiences or gradations in Higher Awareness/Consciousness. He shares what was the most powerful experience and time in his life where he truly felt Transfigured in the light of the Divine Allness. The All-Encompassing Love, beauty, the wonder, and the awe he experienced through what A Course in Miracles would call “Revelation”, Gnostics would call “Gnosis” or Divine Realization, even God-Contact, the Buddhists would call “Satori” (flashes of Insight), what Christian Mystics would call Communion with God, and what great Yogis and many Hindus would call Samadhi (Bryan called his experience “Spontaneous Samadhi and the “Divine Portal” This experience “happened” to Bryan. He didn’t do anything to earn it through meritocracy. True Grace was freely given by the Divine and That Source blessed him with the experience of Love he had been searching for his entire life. He has spent almost fifteen years trying to contemplate and understand this “Influx” of Love and Light, but he humbly admits, that mystical experiences don’t last forever and that true Enlightenment is found by being truly present in the “Now”, without any fear. Mystical experiences are often times followed by a period known as “The Dark Night of the Soul”, which Bryan spends more time exploring how this personally affected his spiritual journey and shift in awareness.
Sunday Nov 20, 2016
Sunday Nov 20, 2016
This is a continuation of the Introduction to the "Silencing a Thousand Barking Dogs", series. Orginally published in the summer of 2011, Bryan shares his personal journey of awakening, discovery, and recovery along with insights of how to become free from thought structures, inner struggles, the duality of the mind, egoic mental chatter, fixations of obsessive thinking and how to become free from our thought structures and overcoming blocks to true conscious awareness of Divinity. He helps us remember that we are in Reality One with All That is, and that we are Pure Being, not thought, or mental restlessness created by the split egoic mind. Thoughts are just vibrations.
In this free Introductory sample to the paid Series to follow, Bryan introduces key ideas that influence what we help to manifest and bring into the world where we seem to experience reality. All creation originates out of a "womb of creation", a primordial matrix. Our stream of mental activity directly impact what we "seem" to experience here in this world.
Bryan talks about mental fragmentation and chatter that humans experience is a universal phenomenon. He wants everyone to know that a "diagnosis" is not anyone's true identity and can through perseverance be transcended through union and communion with Divinity and true transformation of and recovery from a mental affliction is a process of ongoing evolution in consciousness.
Ultimately, Bryan wants people to understand how our "mental tape recordings" can seem to control our lives, but this need not be. The goal is liberation from thought. Stillness. Peace. Beingness.