This is recording 3 of 6 from a three-day meeting recorded on the 14th of May, 2000 in Coolangatta, Gold Coast, Australia. These materials were recently digitized and modernized from older formats after an extensive restoration process, and we are happy to offer them freely. The complete audio recordings from this meeting set will be made available later in the year in the subscriber-only podcast through Apple Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-barry-long-podcast/id1709595005 and Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/34rcMFK6b4CcicY7JDxo9f

In this episode, Barry describes the journey from attachment to detachment. He explains that while the beauty of existence — in flowers, the sea, and human love — is real and wondrous, it is attachment to form that causes suffering. Living the spiritual life leads to living the life divine — a state that occurs when one ceases to live from the self, and a greater intelligence begins to live through one. As this unfolds, true union — free of possession — becomes possible, and one draws to oneself one’s perfect mate. Barry says – "...your whole life is about bringing her or him into existence. Not someone outside you. Not a dream. But the true woman, the true man, the divine principle behind the body. And no one else can do it for you. You must live, love, and surrender enough for your true mate to be made real in your life."

Barry goes on to describe the nature of the self: a band within the psyche where emotions and attachments dwell. He says that human suffering arises from being possessed by negative emotions rooted in the psychic realm, accumulated over generations. By acknowledging the good in life, loving purely without attachment, and surrendering the selfish will, individuals gradually illuminate their perfect body — a deeper, divine something within the psyche. The true purpose of life, Barry says, is to light up this perfect body through love and detachment, by undergoing the circumstances of one’s life rightly — by suffering rightly. In time, a moment comes when suffering is no longer needed, when the self falls away and the psyche stands purified — and what is is the life divine.

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Extracts:

"The first sign of the true love coming into existence is that you never, ever want to be apart. You never want to go anywhere alone, unless you have to, of course. Always together. Always. But if you want to go and be alone — if you want to go down to the football club or have a night out with the girls — well, you’ve got some time to keep going until you bring this extraordinary principle of woman or man into existence in a body."

"When you're next angry, do you see that you're being manipulated? This is what we are talking about — starting to live the spiritual life — when you can see that your anger, your resentment, your negativity is not love but possession. Until you desist from being identified with these emotions, until you are purified of them, you cannot truly love or bring the perfect love into existence."

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Further reading:

📄 "Shakti" – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/259/shakti – "Shakti is the power of divine love waiting to enter woman and come through her to man..."

📄 "Original Tantra" – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/257/original-tantra

📄 "Love Is Not A Feeling" – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/253/love-is-not-a-feeling-%E2%80%93-article

📄 "Love Burns" – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/223/love-burns – "You must not lose yourself in love or you’ll suffer for nothing, like most do, when the object of love departs in time, as it must..."

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Barry Long demonstrates his one pointed love of truth in this most engaging interview with David Freeman from 1984.

Barry Long rarely gave interviews to the media and the purpose of this one was to promote his newly published book 'The Origins of Man and the Universe'.

More details about the book can be found here – https://www.barrylong.org/products/book/the-origins-of-man-and-the-universe

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All content © The Barry Long Trust

Support the show

All content © The Barry Long Trust

Support the show

All content © The Barry Long Trust

Support the show

All content © The Barry Long Trust

Excerpts:

I live with a woman or a man, if I'm a woman, to enjoy being together. What we've got to examine is what stops us from enjoying being together? That would be a reasonable question, wouldn't it?

Man is with woman, where I come from, for her to help him to give up his structures – only to help him, as he is with her to help her to give up emotion. So it's a two-way deal.

Man's main difficulty in living with woman is that he won't listen to her. If he gets emotional, where I come from, it is right for his partner woman to say, 'Why are you emotional?' If he gets angry, the same thing it is right for his partner to say, 'why are you angry?' Now there's no reason that he should not reply straightly why he's angry. 'I'm angry because of the way you speak with to me.' Then, 'what is it about the way I speak to you that makes you angry?' And so the questions can go on, as long as both are willing to engage in a straight conversation what I call them intelligent conversation. But there's no good one of them being intelligent. Without the other, that's hopeless.

A real woman is she who is true to the situation – not to be true to your own feelings, but to be true to the situation. So what is the situation between man and woman? The situation is that we are together to enjoy ourselves. And I do not enjoy your anger, if you're angry. And so I will point that out to you when you're angry, trusting that you are intelligent enough to either say the source of it, or to get rid of it within you. So that's been true to the situation. And if the man doesn't get rid of his anger, and insists on his that he has right to be angry or emotional, then the woman has to be a real woman has to very, very seriously look at whether she can remain in this relationship. Because it won't get better, no matter how much she thinks she can change a man unless he is willing to listen, she cannot change him. She only thinks she can. Because she thinks her love is so strong, that she can change anything, it's not true. There has to be a willingness to change.

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This is the second of four talks from Barry Long’s 'Truth of Love Seminar,' originally recorded in Bristol in 1992—over three decades ago. Newly remastered from old analog tapes, this recording is now preserved in digital form. We are happy to offer this particular recording for free. The complete series will be available through our paid podcast subscription and the upcoming Archive Application, set for release in 2025.

The paid edition of the podcast is available through Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-barry-long-podcast/id1709595005 and Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/34rcMFK6b4CcicY7JDxo9f

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Summary:

In this episode Barry Long addresses those who are growing older — especially women — urging them to remain open to love, regardless of age or past experiences. He acknowledges that many in their fifties, sixties, or seventies may feel content without a partner and even find the idea of relationship burdensome. Nonetheless, he emphasizes that if love — or the possibility of a good, honest partnership—presents itself, one should be receptive and that age is no barrier to intimacy or genuine connection when it arises naturally and without force.

Central to Barry’s message is the need to be at peace within oneself, cultivating a sense of well-being and integrity in every aspect of life. By getting one’s life right and releasing emotional states such as fear, resentment, or longing, we create the internal space for the right person to appear — at the right time and under the right circumstances. He cautions against living in a state of restless yearning; instead, trusting that when love is meant to come, it will, and it will arrive as part of life’s inherent goodness.

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Highlights and extracts:

"Life is its own solution. Life is not perverse. Although we often think it is. Life is a process, a wonderful process of integrity. There is justice and rightness in life. As long as we can stand back far enough and observe it. The difficulty is with personal love, that it makes us put our eyes right up close to the scene, and we can't see the total picture."

"Be open all your life for the possibility of love coming in as man or woman, no matter how old you are. And be open even to the possibility of making love, no matter how old you are. You don't have to make love – you are free. But don't have an attitude against it. Don't ever think that you're too old. It is not true. You are never too old to stop making physical love. Given that the man or woman arrives and you are drawn together you are never too old to make physical love."

"Don't be disappointed. Don't be discouraged by anything that has happened in your life. It was your lot. Everything that happened to you was absolutely right, and it was to make a finer a man or a finer a woman of you."

~
We are happy to announce our work on an extensive digital archive of Barry’s talks, spanning an extraordinary 30 years. This comprehensive repository features over 600 hours of video and 2,000 hours of audio recordings, offering unparalleled access to Barry’s timeless insights and teachings.

This project, many years in the making, was brought to life by a dedicated team who worked tirelessly to digitize and modernize a vast collection of archived recordings. Many of these materials were stored on outdated formats such as cassettes and magnetic tapes, requiring not only careful preservation but also the application of cutting-edge technology and expert knowledge of analog and digital audiovisual systems. From meticulously restoring fragile tapes to ensuring the highest quality playback in the digital formats, every step of the process was undertaken with precision and care to safeguard this invaluable archive.

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All content © The Barry Long Trust

This is the fifth recording in a series of thirteen from the Gold Coast Talks, originally recorded in Australia in 1998—over 25 years ago. Recently, this recording was digitally remastered to enhance its clarity and quality. The complete series is available for purchase through the online store: https://www.barrylong.org/series/gold-coast-talks

The paid version of The Barry Long Podcast offers an expanding library of Barry’s teachings. Available on both Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-barry-long-podcast/id1709595005) and Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/34rcMFK6b4CcicY7JDxo9f), the subscriber-only edition features over 100 episodes, with more than 200 hours of listening. This collection includes a mix of talks from the online store and exclusive, previously unreleased recordings.

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Summary:

In this talk Barry explores the profound question of why humans suffer, delving into the intricacies of human emotions and the illusions that perpetuate suffering. He challenges narratives that trap individuals in cycles of pain and suffering, pointing to the deep-seated human propensity for attachment – our tendency to cling to what causes us pain. Barry says that by moving beyond emotional suffering and embracing the stillness of being individuals can uncover a life of profound liberation and peace – this is the sacrifice of the self – and the next step in our evolution.

~~
Extracts:

'So I ask you, will you make the great sacrifice – the great self sacrifice? ... let me tell you what self sacrifice is. I give up my moodiness. I don't have to display it to anyone and get knighted or something for it. I have to do it in this body, in this space without any positive demonstration of what I'm doing, because if I give up my moodiness, I give up the positive demonstration of moodiness, and then what am I? Well, I'm not moody. And who's going to notice that? Well, some people might notice that he or she is never moody. Isn't that en-lightening?'

'Do you want this life to go on, up and down, up and down? You meet a new man or a woman. You're all up here. You make beautiful love, isn't it wonderful? Then a month later, bang, what's happened to our love? What have we done? Why are we growing apart? Why? – Because of ignorance. Simply, ignorance. Why does the love that you first have – why does it have to go stale? You know how beautiful is when you first meet, when your bodies are first together, making love, it's wonderful, it's glorious, you want it to go on forever – well, that's true, because that's the body's making love. As soon as the human comes into making love, love goes out the window, all those thoughts, all those judgments of the other, all those self doubts, moodiness comes up, opinions come up, and an emotion comes between us that we cannot see except that we can feel, and we despair of that drives us apart, and we say to each other, 'what's happened to us?,' 'where is all the love we had?''

~
We are happy to announce our work on an extensive digital archive of Barry’s talks, spanning an extraordinary 30 years. This comprehensive repository features over 600 hours of video and 2,000 hours of audio recordings, offering unparalleled access to Barry’s teachings.

This project, many years in the making, was brought to life by a dedicated team who worked tirelessly to digitize and modernize a vast collection of archived recordings. From meticulously restoring fragile tapes to ensuring the highest quality playback in the digital formats, every step of the process was undertaken with precision and care to safeguard this invaluable archive.

We look forward to sharing more updates in the coming weeks and months, including how this digital archive will be made accessible to the community.

Support the show

All content © The Barry Long Trust