AC: The self, which we worship at the moment, is actually a terrible prison. It’s a cage. You are trapped…When you get trapped in your own short term desires, it’s a cage…Maybe it’s good to escape from that daily grind of having to listen to your consciousness constantly saying that “I want this. I want this. I want this.” Which we are encouraged to believe is liberation…Maybe it’s not.
RB: I think you are quite right. Even pop spiritual orators such as Eckhart Tolle will say to you this incessant inner narrative, the relentless thinking – there’s no freedom in that. And watch where those thoughts take you. If I’m walking my dog in the field…this material reality is…I am a man, in a field with a dog. In my head what’s happening: “Oh God. Why did I do that for? This will probably go wrong. What’s going to happen?” …There is a self-imposed tyranny to that…
AC: People live inside their heads very much. Because they are encouraged to, that is the end point. But actually what’s going on in those heads are things that people don’t want to tell. Fear. Loneliness. Doubt. Because actually if you are going to be the right kind of individual, you mustn’t have that. You see that on social media at the moment…
RB: …Self is the relentless driven inner narrative…I myself have had to battle…I believe the disease of addiction has at its core a kind of circuitous self-centeredness that can only be ended, well first by removal of the initial substance…once those things are gone you recognize those drives are still present. What is it?! You become obsessed with food. You become obsessed with sex. You become obsessed with work and other people’s opinion. In the end you begin to recognize that the only way to end this circuitous torture of self-obsession is with ideas that have always been present in religious and spiritual doctrine, service, connection…in whose service is perfect freedom. It is so beautiful. You give yourself up…it is an idiom that implies that there is an upward transcendent trajectory.
~ Russell Brand, Is Civilization Crumbling? With Adam Curtis. (Under the Skin. With Russell Brand. Podcast #50, March 24, 2018)
Live & Learn 
I admire and now love Russell for the being he has become 💕
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Well stated Val. He has come out the other side. Brilliant.
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Couldn’t agree more.
Service Service Service.
Especially for no monetary reward or recognition. Invisible service…
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The scope of service is not limited to heroic acts, great gestures, and huge donations to public institutions. They also serve who express their love in little things. A word that gives courage to a broken heart or a smile that brings hope in the midst of gloom is as much service as heroic sacrifice. A glance that wipes out bitterness from the heart is also service, although there may be no thought of service in it. When taken by themselves all these things seem to be small, but life is made up of many small things. If these small things were ignored, life would not only be unbeautiful, it would be unbearable.
~ Meher Baba
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Yes…
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I thought this your dialogue David. And was about to tell you how brilliant you were. Still, you did find this Baba quote. Bravo. 😄
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I wish! Thanks Bela…
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I was always mystified and kind of scared by RB. If he has become this ‘new’ himself, I’m more than happy for him. I’ve never obsessed about anything, don’t do self-invention or have ever taken myself seriously, so how could I say anything about this interview/talk? But there is always hope, for all of us.
This – incidentally – ties in rather interestingly with a Frida Kahlo exhibition, described in the Guardian… Have you seen it? https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/12/frida-kahlo-making-her-self-up-review-v-and-a-london
Would have preferred to see your Meher Baba quote – gave me more joy and stillness… 🙂
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The Kahlo exhibition sounds fascinating, Kiki, if a bit misguided, as the reviewer argues. Thanks for sharing…
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I hadn’t seen Frida Kahlo exihibt or read about it Kiki. Unfortunately it isn’t for me. I land in the same place your reviewer did in the close:
“As such it is awe-inspiring – but is it truly “intimate”, as it is billed? I feel a far greater intimacy looking into Kahlo’s eyes in her paintings than I do wandering among 80-year-old clothes. Artists live on in their art. This exhibition overwhelms Kahlo’s living legacy with its excessive adoration of a dead woman’s stuff.”
~ Jonathan Jones, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/12/frida-kahlo-making-her-self-up-review-v-and-a-london
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David; that is what I find so interesting – it’s one man’s opinion and already there are so many readers expressing their OK with it. Even here…. We don’t know what OUR feelings were, unless we have seen the exhibition with our own eyes and with our own open mind. I’m not a particular FK fan but have read a lot about her – and also the museum is a ‘multi culti’ affair and a great one. I thought it was an honest review and obviously the writer can only give his own feelings. It wd make me want to see he exhibition rather than had I not read this review.
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So agree Kiki.
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Boom 💥
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I give up ….and will again tomorrow! 😉
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Ha!
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Love the Baba quote even more than the Brand excerpt!
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Lori; just wrote exactly same thing to David – maybe we two are the new influencers of Dave’s writing? 😉
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Ha! That’s funny.
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It looks as if I’d written after your comment – but in fact it was all there, only had to search again for the Guardian article… 🙂 Wishing you a great day. Shake paws with your dogs for me, will you?!
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Absolutely Kiki! They are both here with me, enjoying the morning’s fresh air….
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and it all comes back to what’s important
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and that’s the punch line…
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