I am so sad about Mark passing away. He will be deeply missed. 

I’m sorry that it’s been many years since I saw Mark but I will never forget his fabulous (and silly) sense of humor and his tremendous warmth and kindness.  Mark was a true “out of the box” character and I say that with the deepest respect. He was fun to be around and had a strong sense of family. He adored his beautiful daughter Amanda and it was pure joy to watch the 2 of them “hang out” together when she was little. Happily, it sounds like they were able to “hang out” more recently when he helped her put a new roof over her head. She is blessed knowing that he will always “have her covered.” 

Mark was a fairly new friend for me — I’ve only known him for 2.5 years.  I had been receiving his blog and learning from his teachings for about a year at that point.  For New Years 2023, he wrote a blog post about 10 things he wanted to do to expand his neural connections.  One of them was to make a new friend every month.  So, I emailed him and let him know that I wanted to sign up!  He emailed me right back (as he does . . . did) and we set up a Zoom to connect.  He had already profoundly influenced my thinking as a therapist -- his is the view of neurobiology that I most closely adhere to -- and then I had the gift of getting to know him personally, so that he also influenced me as a person.  I wrote a blog post about what I learned from him before I got to know him well: 12 Things I Learned from Dr. Mark Brady, a PhD Neuroscientist

One of the things he loved to do was send me cartoon ideas.  I'm posting one that he envisioned and captioned -- I just did the artwork.  He would be tickled by the subject matter and the timing of my sharing it with you. I also did a quick cartoon of him and one of his giant dogs. He was playful and loving and profound and self-aware.  I will miss him terribly.  But I'm also so, so grateful that I reached out to him and entered his sacred circle.

Thanks to him, I met some of you amazing people as well. Some in groups, some through being bcc’d on his emails (he liked the bcc).  And now we are all grieving — many of you for a long-time, interwoven relationship and for me, a new but important and densely interactive one. As I think about moving through a world without him in it, I think of this unattributed quote: “Be the things you love most about the people who are gone.” A challenge that I plan to think long and hard about - how to carry his legacy forward in my life. Big hugs for you all. 💜

There's a scene in the 1971 movie "Harold and Maude" where Harold is grieving Maude's imminent... departure, and he pleads with her not to go because he loves her so. Maude's response to Harold is, "That's wonderful. Go and love some more." 

Being a friend of Mark Brady was filled with such a profound sense of loving and being loved. 

As i grieved Mark's passing on August 1st, that first morning I woke and found out he was gone, it felt as though we had that conversation, me saying, it can't be true, and my heart was filled with such an ache of knowing it was true, and already missing him so, and a sense of Mark saying, "That's wonderful. Go and love some more." 

There are a few people in my life who have made such an impression and impact I sense I'll both mourn and celebrate them for the rest of my life. Mark Brady is one of those individuals. 

As others have described, he was utterly human and evolved and reverent and irreverent and brilliant and funny and tender and flawed and wounded and healing himself and others through his presence and listening and attunement. He was one of the most present people I have ever met, even when he'd get distracted or cranky or just plain tired with all that life was dishing up.  I learned more about the brain and about listening and about meditation from Mark than I have from any other teacher.  

He let me know, too, when I'd shared something with him that had enriched his life as well. It was that exchange, that giving and receiving and so much more that made friendship with Mark such a unique and powerful experience.  

May we each be inspired by his example to go and love some more.  His memory is already a blessing.

I Came to Learn

(For my teachers)

I longed to learn the art

Of mending the body-mind.

Of listening to all the words.

Of applying skills and knowledge like a surgeon,

Finding torn mind-flesh,

To render clean,

To join,

To heal

in ancient wounds.

I longed to learn to wield the glinting, sharpened tools,

Of the great scientists.

To speak in the tongues,

Of the New Gods,

To present their Evidence

With all the certainty and panache

That comes along with being

on the inside of a storied secret guild.

I longed to learn to unravel

The Greatest Mysteries,

With the arid tools of distant certainty,

With the discovery of tight formulas,

With the rendering and reading

Of beautifully drawn maps of this daunting hellscape

so detailed

As to make the actual trip

Unnecessary.

What I came to learn instead

Was to see nobility and grace

In Just Sitting,

Gazing, weeping,

Longing,

Frozen in fear,

Throat clutching in shame,

Without words

Or stories to tell, again and again

of what had once been,

Or why I am this way,

Or that.

I came to learn instead

How to gently trust and

Sit-with-the-People.

How to trust and sit,

With and within

Myself.

Arms reaching out.

Reaching in.

How to see myself and you,

Hold myself and you,

In the mirror-world of suffering

In the mirror-world of struggle and awkwardness

And the momentary bleakness of

our

Not knowing

Together.

I came to learn instead

How the essential chorus of

The Archetype of all Love Songs:

Has been silenced, quashed,

Made quaint and cliche

By the double blindness of false prophets and profiteers,

Cynics and carnival barkers,

Hawking their evidence,

Their potions, pills and optimizations.

Happiness without change.

Rebirth

Without labor.

Cures without care.

Come in close.

Let me share the intimate tenderness

Of what I have come to know these many years,

In careful study, yes,

But more so in deliberate practice.

In Beloved community.

In trial and compassion.

In the glacial coursework of soul learning.

I can listen and see without ears now,

Without eyes.

I now know without words. Speak and hear without stories.

I have borne witness again and again to the hidden wholeness made manifest

By what has always been and never dies.

Feel with me now

into what happens,

When the not knowing gives way to the embrace-sans-threat of Natural Perfection.

Natural Grace.

When otherness melts

into Usness.

And We into

Light.

And Light into

Love.

And Love into

This.

Just this.

Tell me.

What more can I possibly teach you?

learn from you?

From us

From This?

To be made more whole

and healed

And free?

—Sean Patrick Hatt

I had Mark in mind as one of my teachers when I wrote this poem last Spring, though I never told him so: One of the many regrets I’m left with. There are many things I didn’t say that I wish I had, and many things that I said that I wish I hadn’t.  But such is the way of real intimacy. There was a lot of forgiveness in our friendship. That’s what made it so rare and precious.

I am adding this poem as it is one of Mark's favorite authors. He told me he read another book written by this author (tilted Unbinding) at least 7 times...he used to hold up the book with what seemed like millions of tabs in it marking the information he found valuable. That he would then share. He also sent me the Unbinding book  (twice). I think that was is way of hinting I needed it (I did). I appreciate very much our shared humanity, especially in these moments. With gratitude. 

Having the courage to

to share our stories, to stop hiding

both from ourselves and others,

allows the healing experience

of feeling understood and known

It allows connection

through our vulnerability.

We become spiritual friends,

kalayana mitra in Sanskrit.

We become soul friends,

anam cara in Gaelic.

We encourage each others’

boundaries to become more

porous in the healing space

of undefendedness and acceptance.”

~ Dr. Kathleen Singh

The Grace in Aging, pg. 235

With heartfelt condolences for the great loss of Mark to his loved ones, Amanda and Muriel, and all who were lucky to know him, I want to remember Mark and celebrate his life in the spirit of his tireless search for human connection and equanimity.

I met Mark 20 years ago when he was a mentor at ITP and I was a new doctoral student, searching for a faculty to explore the potential of a transpersonal collaboration. Mark responded to my request in the way he responded to so many with an unequivocal Yes to his "big brain question." Little did I know how much heart he would bring into studying the brain and that our academic collaboration would grow into a continued mentorship and friendship.

I feel blessed to have learned from Mark, to have experienced his contagious enthusiasm, his patient teaching, gentle nature, and creative approach to sharing complex information. Over the years he became a dear friend to my family as well. He would share articles with each of four of us, from flying and finance, to building, to art and music and movie scripts, to mysticism and spiritual development all with a broad human interest and always a personal touch.

Mark was an exceptional listener and reached one and all with thoughtfulness, insight, and care. He was always in the process of learning something new, making new connections, bringing up challenging questions about the human potential, and sharing a new spiritual practice he has undertaken even when challenged by the physical toll of illness.

When I’m overwhelmed I think of Mark. He knew how to get things done, from building one house at a time to fixing his deck one board at the time, to writing one blog at the time but not starting to post before he had 100 ready, to going for a walk in the woods one step at a time to staying present with one note at the time from Rumi’s poems as a mediation. But most of all, Mark sought to understand and accept that we’re all doing the best we can and will do better walking by each other’s side even from afar. Mark will stay close in mind and heart but will be dearly missed.

Dorit Netzer

Mark's daughter, Amanda, found this post by Mark. She said it feels like he wrote his own obituary, and I agree.  I am so glad he wrote it and she found it. It speaks for itself.

https://floweringbrain.wordpr…

Muriel and Amanda,

I can’t imagine your heart ache right now. Mark was such a huge presence—a great pulsing sun of love and wisdom and light. I’m holding you both in my heart with tenderness. Know that if you should need me, I will be there for you, for Mark.

With deepest resonance in grief,

Sean

The Hidden Singer

The gods are less for their love of praise.

Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing

but its own wholeness, its health and ours.

It has made all things by dividing itself.

It will be whole again.

To its joy we come together —

the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,

the lover and the loved.

In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then,

not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,

but as a little bird hidden in the leaves

who sings quietly and waits, and sings.

~ Wendell Berry ~

I wrote this the morning after Mark passed away:

I awoke this morning at three forty something and was acutely aware of how much more alone in the world I am today than I was yesterday.

That’s because my dear friend Mark Brady was the one and only person on Earth who I could count on being awake long before me no matter how badly I had slept.

On this early morning, I awoke awash in that aloneness, knowing I would not sit on my couch in the pitch dark, open my email, and find some new bit of psychospiritual sustenance that had come from Mark for me to take nourishment from.

And I would not answer said email at Oh Dark Thirty Seven and immediately find my brother on the other side, where I could imagine him safely tucked into the warm envelope of the glow of his office within the dark and silence of his house, surrounded by mountains of fascinating books, and until recently, his beloved Berners—literal mountains of dogs.

Over these past 21 years, Mark has been an exquisite companion to me, at all hours of day and night, through the most important passages in my life—among them: the finding and honing of sacred vocation, the completion of a doctoral dissertation, the birth of my only child, and parenting a son in this age of miracles and horror.

Mark taught me many invaluable things over these years and passages. But perhaps the most important lesson was what he called The Big Brain Question. He said, all human beings, from the moment we take our first breath, gaze into the faces of others asking, “Are you there for me?” For Mark, health and wholeness were all about how early and often that question was answered in the affirmative by the people we most loved. And if “early” wasn’t in the cards for you given conditions beyond your control, then “often”could make the essential repairs for the rest of your life. We were always a work in process—in Marks words, “Healing trying to happen.”

He and I were mirrors of that process for each other. We loved each other fiercely, and hurt each other, and repaired those tears in the space between us again and again. Sometimes in writing. Sometimes on long walks. Sometimes over lunch. Always in good faith. Truly good faith. This knowing was inviolable. And it’s why we both could say we knew the BBQ inside and out—as asker, and as answerer.

In Mark, I had a guaranteed “Yes.” And I am a fortunate man for having had a friend, a brother like that.

I am about the age now that Mark was when we met. I will live the next 20 years until my 80th hoping to have the kind of impact Mark had on me on just a few folks along the way. And that will be his legacy too.