Journey

You’ve got to realize one thing, and that is – you need to tame your wild, crazy mind. You gotta tame it, alright? Your mind has a very bad habit which we call self-cherishing. And I call it, ‘What about me? What about me? What about me? What about me?’ And it’s a bore, and it’s a drag, and nobody wants to hear it. So you can just shut up, and get off of it, and… give. That’s all. Give. Give. Be here and give. Connect with people, right? And you’re so busy giving that you don’t have time to think about yourself. You’re going to be a lot happier. ~ Bhagavan Das

This is the time for awakening, for humans on the planet. This is the time to wake up out of the madness because the history of humanity is basically the history of insanity. But for the first time in the history of this insanity is the insanity threatening to destroy us. Mad intelligence. That’s what humans have developed. We could call it, also, you could call it cleverness. The old clever. But mad. Mad intelligence. So we’re coming to the end of this one way or another. Either we destroy ourselves or we wake up out of that dream, the nightmare. But to see your own madness is the beginning of healing and sanity because there is in every human being not only the madness, there’s also the sanity. Through the media, mostly what you get is the madness. But at the same time, there are millions of other humans who already have that awakening within them so that they can hear. It’s liberating to see we are mad. Some people say that’s depressing, it’s not depressing, it’s liberating us. That, I’m mad. But I realize that I’m mad.

Every child, an ego, gradually begins to develop it. One of the first things a child learns is his or her name. I am John. I am and then come other things after they still don’t grow up. I am a boy. I am a girl. I am strong. I am weak. The ego is always built on identification with this or that. The word I, the way it’s used conventionally, is the greatest delusion. Because when you say I, you think you know who you are.

Then the child gets toys. That’s my car, little toy. That’s mine, mine. Somebody takes away the toy. The child is an extreme agony. That’s mine.

Eckhart Tolle

• I’m here and I wanna go, Something tells me there’s a struggle. How I’m going to say goodbye now, I know you won’t like it. Chariot, bring me home, my chariot, Something feels like it’s a struggle.
• My name is Ego, I’ll be with you till your last breath, Right, here’s a small list of all the things that scare me to death. I can’t stand things that I can’t understand, And I especially hate things I can’t command. I don’t like the unfamiliar, and I’ve got to defer. But I tell ya, without me you could never be a Mandela, Who would know a Mohammad Ali without me?
• My name is Luck I’m not a real person more like a quality, I attach myself behind your eyes temporarily, And blind you to anything you think you might want to be. Make you promise me everything for fame, for idolatry, And when I leave you, you can never follow me. Find yourself caught, find in solitary, You will ever ever hollowed be.
• “Under A Stormy Sky / I’ve Been Away Featuring” ~ Daniel Lanois, Eddi Reader, Haale, Maxi Jazz, Michael Franti [SonicHits | Lyrics]

I remember when I was three or four years old, going out in front of my house and having a huge poop, like right in front of the house on the sidewalk. And then running inside, excited to bring my parents out. My mom and dad and showed them what I had done was they were so excited about it. And what was I, I was with. I was planted with, for it. And violently, you know, same on you. Look what you did. ~ Bhagavan Das

We’ve been trained and conditioned to shut down our spontaneous responses, our authentic and essential responses. From a very early age, you know, don’t cry. What’s wrong? You know, no, don’t be scared. I mean, we’re talked out of our feelings. And shut down, because nobody knows how to communicate from an emotional field. ~ Gabrielle Roth

Childhood is tough. Childhood is rough. Look at the kitchen on the playground and telling us what’s wrong with us. And why we’re not okay. And the bad part about it is when you’re 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12, you believe it. You don’t have the strength to reject it and say that’s not true. You take it all in and make it part of your truth. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

I was abused by my father when I was younger. And I carried around. I didn’t tell anybody. It’s a weird thing because you, it’s one of those events that makes you feel, it’s a crime that makes you feel you committed it when you’re the victim, because it isn’t all pain. You know there is pleasure in it. So you carry this around with you, that you were part of the crime. And you’ll read this all the time when you hear victims of it speaking. I felt so guilty, I felt. And then the last guilt is when your father dies or the person dies and you haven’t confronted them about it. And you think, well time will heal it, but time doesn’t heal it. It actually gets worse. ~ Billy Connolly

The idea of shadow has to be liberated. We must go into the places that scare us into the darkness and make friends with our demons. The wound is the key because we are all wounded by birth. We are like, where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? Where is he? Where is she? And so we’re constantly recreating until we make peace with loneliness and with the shame and with our own anger. ~ Bhagavan Das

• I can’t kiss away these tears, I wouldn’t miss your edges, your cliffs, they are clay, they are clues gone astray, finding the ones we refuse. And we breathe in the breeze, and stir through the leaves that still fall on our feet, covering the lies we reveal. We are wounded in all the right places. As we lay gazing up, carved our names on welcoming bark. Didn’t cut, didn’t bleed. Lift us up to what we believe. I was torn. I was young, reaching up. A forest of creatures looked on, suffering nevermore the lies we reveal. We are wounded in all the right places. I feel it all. I feel it all. Who am I to talk. Who am I to punish you. Come around and put you down. Left your marks on me, left your what’s true. See it perfectly, living memories left you here for me. Left you here for me. I feel it all. I feel it all. I feel it all.
• ~ K.D. Lang (Wounded in All the Right Places) [Vimeo | 8Tracks]

The problem is you have to learn your way through these things. You have to fight your way through these things. And the big problem is when they medicate teenagers and children. Often at the request of the “expert” opinion of some fucking teacher that is having a hard time with a creative child essentially. Now, when you medicate a kid through those years, that kid is not learning how to deal with depression or anger. The discomfort that the child’s depression and anger brings the parent or the teacher. The idea that they would medicate him, it’s really a selfish thing. It’s really the teacher’s problem and the parents problem. So what they wind up doing is medicating these kids. And then the kids find their way, of course, like other teenagers, into self-medication along with that medication. And that’s a recipe for disaster. And all of these shooters in Columbine and that kid up in Oregon and that kid down south were all on antidepressants throughout their teenage years. And what happened was they got to a point where the rage just blew. Your kids got a lot of energy, find something to do with the energy. Get off your ass, mom, dad, and do something, rather than just put a pill into their mouth. ~ Tim Robbins

Rumble-Clip | Telegram

I am depressive by nature, I’m fairly melancholic by nature. I’m not captain Chuckles, you know. When things were really bad, things got really bad. I mean, you know, almost to an ultimate point. I was offered, you know, happy pills. You know, take a pill. So you take a pill. Take another pill. It doesn’t matter. It does matter. I decline them because it’s probably wrong. But I just think a human being has to understand the process of this thing. And externalize the pain and the anguish and the loss and the grief. And look at it and say, what is that? Recognize it. Just so as I say, it can take advantage. I know you get back in there. I know it. I know who you are. ~ Bob Geldof

Facing your demons. All right. Being a victim, you know. I am suffering everything is always fucked up for me. Nobody understands. That’s a demon. You understand? And it took me years of not being honest with myself, running from the truth, denying what was in my face, blaming everybody else. She’s an asshole, oh, he’s fucked up. Look at her. Look at them. Look at her. But then there was a common denominator. Me. And I had to really fess up. You know, I’m full of shit. I need a colonic. Because I can easily just sink. Yeah, I can sink into the depths. ~ Liza Petersen

• I have seen trouble, Trouble saw me, I danced around the trouble tree. I have seen beauty staggered on me. I have seen trouble, I am seeing double, I can feel. My heart is hurt, Nothing feels me. With sand in my eyes I can’t conceal. Everything is staggered on me.
• I have known better, I have belief. I have seen dark that’s Staggered on me. I have seen anger, Anger that seeds. I have known better, I have been quiet, Quiet has been good. I have been listening and I understood. I have seen trouble, Trouble saw me. I danced around the trouble tree.
• ~ Aluta & Michael Stipe [YouTube | SoundCloud | SoundCloud | LastFM | Lyrics]

• Trouble take the backseat! Trouble take a rest! Trouble knows the fight, Took me to the test. I’ve held my heart, so close to my chest, You leave me wanting, I can’t forget now.. ( I cannot fight) And I know I am in the fight! Yeah I know I’m in the fight! This feeling I can’t find! ( I cannot fight) This feeling I cannot find! Left holding nothing! Nothing to feel! Trouble, is staggered on me. Left holding nothing! I want to feel! Something, somewhere is real!
• ~ Aluta & Michael Stipe [YouTube | SoundCloud | SoundCloud | LastFM | Lyrics]

I believe that God has created a void in every man, and the only thing that can fill that void is God himself. And when men don’t find God, they start looking to fill the void everywhere else. Some will do it with drugs, alcohol, sex, personal achievements/work-a-holics. So that’s what it is. Man is trying to find satisfaction. It’s a feeling he can’t find. And he’s either going to find it in God or search for it in vain in things. ~ Dr. Ed Defries

That there is going to be enough to make us happy in this world. This is one of the basic illusions that carries us through life. We’re born hungry in every level. We’re hungry for everything. All our senses are hungry for input. When you don’t get enough, you think that there is enough somewhere. And until you get enough and realize that it isn’t enough and it will keep coming back, you keep dreaming that romantic image that this will be enough, this relationship, this car, this thing that you know, because wanting doesn’t stop no matter how much you get.

We’re kind of like living as if all of us are supposed to be Kings. All the time. And all have everything we want. And when we don’t, there’s something wrong with us. And we get angry. We take our suffering so personally. How can this happen TO ME? ~ Krishna Das

• “What I Need Is Something Different” ~ Boots Riley*, Speech [whosampled]

Everybody wants to behave just like an American. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to me. I don’t think they are always happy people there. I don’t think they are. They should be unhappy. Because of what’s happening in the community, it’s not enough to have money to be happy. Money doesn’t make people happy. But it is peace of mind. You have. And I will be surprised if we have peace of mind. Because if there is no family. In the Materialistic life, everybody is running after money. We have no time to sit down, talk peacefully, be friends. It’s a disaster. ~ Seiko Camara

• Every bankers, a fucking thief… Everybody better hollow with me.. Every crime that I did was petty… Every criminal is rich already… Every landlord got a complex Sorry, I got caught up looking at my hair in the thing and it looked like it was messed up…. They sell broken dreams and can’t help us…
• “Mothers Don’t Cry” ~ Miles Solay, Miss Honda, Ramata Diakité [mozaart.com]

Everyone wants you to cast camera on fire Shahrabarimy Kal. Woohoo! go now go now they see we are dying.

I guess it’s because we get bombarded and bombarded and bombarded with the image of the image so many times that our brain loses the ability to really react to them. You know it could be that the pace of the world is blocking out that still, small voice of God. You know everybody’s looking for God and the bombardment…You know Earthquakes end. Storms come to an end. The media never shuts off.

They give us the Bible, they give us the Quran, they give us the Talmud, they give us daily newspapers, the six o’clock news, pronounced much by politicians, government policies, sitcoms, advertising. None of it bears much resemblance at all to what’s really going on in the universe. And when’s the last time you heard anyone complain?

TV is an emanation of the triumph of the blasé. I want to say I think it’s a disgrace. How can the blasé be triumphant, they can’t possibly have a good army? They’re blasé. They’re not known for their gung-ho, but they’re kicking ass right now. The blasé are kicking ass. I could see how blasé’s saint could be a good thing, but to have blasé as the status quo for everybody? That’s a Supreme bummer. That’s a gigantic psychological limitation. ~ Speed Levitch

You are dominated by the corporate powers. They never leave you alone. They are with you in the bedroom. So you are never alone. So there is no choices. You think you choose, but you do not choose.

We have huge propaganda systems. Public relations industries, fundamentally propaganda systems, it’s an enormous industry. Developed first and Britain and the United States. There’s the two countries that were most free in democratic, and that’s where you need a propaganda system. Because there you can’t control people by force anymore. So you have to control their beliefs and attitudes. And this is very conscious. The core of democracy is the engineering of consent, and you’re directed by the educational system, by the media, to have the aspiration of becoming a millionaire. And then if you don’t quite make it, you didn’t meet your aspiration. But there are other values. There’s another value to say, OK, I won’t be a millionaire, but I’ll help the people who really need help. You don’t have to go to Ethiopia to find this. You can do it right in the United States. ~ Noam Chomsky

• “my intention is the deepest truth… I open myself completely to you… my intention is the deepest truth. How can I be a better love to you? How can I be a better brother to you? … Can you hear me? … How can I be a better sister to you? How can I be a better human?”

There will be a dozen letters from young people in Canada and the United States and England. And so on saying, you know, I don’t like what’s going on. What can I do? Interestingly, I never get that question from people in poor countries. They don’t ask me what they should do. They tell me what they’re doing. It’s only in the wealthy privileged sectors that people have no idea what to do. Elsewhere they do things. And that’s part of our education and indoctrination. To make you feel there is nothing you can do. And it has to really be imposed, strenuously, in the richer and more powerful countries, because you can do a lot, in fact, you can do anything. ~ Noam Chomsky

• “Age of information, truth always changing… so many ways to say things.. we’re better off communicating”..

How do I find peace of mind? How do I find that place inside of me where I can stop listening to this inner noise and start really listening voice?

With all of this chatter in our ears. We have to clear out this chatter. Your parents, your aunts, your grandmothers’ voice. Everybody’s voices in your head.

“You are the problem” “Chatter” “People talking over the top of each other”. “All the voices”.

Stop. Pump the brakes. So it’s just a switch in the internal tape and reading out all that external and historical stuff.

There’s no way out. We are all stuck in our minds.

• Everybody!

I think one of the common misunderstandings about meditation is that you enter your mind and you become very still and there is this voyage. Actually. You feel very uncomfortable. You’re mind is going crazy. It’s like you’re trapped in a cage and you don’t want to be there. You want to be down the pub of watching television. So it is uncomfortable and it should be uncomfortable. That’s the process. It’s your ability to stay with that to begin to explore a very simple question in a way. Why is it so uncomfortable to be still?

The human being is great. It is a great… you are Good. You know this is important to get your basic goodness, and stop beating yourself up. ~ Bhagavan Das

We have this peculiar shame about ourselves. We have this contingent state of worrying about why we are and feeling bad about it. We feel bad about the fact that we masturbate, that we shit, that we have to have sex in order to reproduce. What is to be ashamed of in that? I mean how bizarre. The state that we are given. This is how you make another one of yourself. You put this penis into that vagina and you pump out lots of seeds and another baby gets made. And if we spend our lives not allowing that to be on television as if it is something to be ashamed. And words that describe it like Fuck or Cunt or something are made taboo words. Whereas kill, cruel, torture, we could use those words when just describing the traffic. And they’re not taboo words. But those are things we do of which we should be absolutely ashamed. Completely ashamed. ~ Stephen Fry

• “Am I alone, yeah, yeah.”

I think that the light and darker like these amazing lovers and that they need each other, they balance each other, they hold each other, they embrace each other. At a certain point in the day, every day they touch each other. As they pass, you know. And then there’s the third force, the shadow, which is kind of the ego part, the part that separates the night from the dark. And puts us in a position of thinking we have to be like a good girl or a good boy or a good person. Instead of being a real person and a vulnerable person, we just don’t trust. We’ve been taught not to. ~ Gabrielle Roth

If you substitute content for happy, you’re probably find that you’re happy. Because we’ve associated happiness with laughing. You know, and smiling and throwing beach balls to your children. And I’ve never been that guy. So I thought, well, maybe I’m not happy. But if you switch it for content, the practice of contentment. It’s like, oh I’m happy. I’m a happy man. Oh, lucky me. ~ Billy Connelly

And we’ve all got something to be thankful for. Stop bitching, stop complaining, stop worrying. Worrying is praying for what you don’t want. So stop praying for what you don’t want. And just let go. ~ Bhagavan Das

• The world is beautiful. Place to be from the love of my past down from my power. Voices from behind they call me. Whispers speaks loud from the corners. And each step that moves beyond, isn’t it the same for you? Isn’t this the honest truth… It’s all about me, it’s all about you. All the lies, all the truth… It’s so beautiful. But I pray please lift me up and help me stand. We’re moving on just hand in hand. But it always goes back down to me to you and you to me. Each step moves us on, here we go. Each step moves us on, here we go. … Each step moves us on, here we go. Onward, forward, still miles to go. Each step moves us on, here we go.

And now I’m old, more than 80. I’m not afraid of death. To be or not to be that question. If I could not move, if I could not work freely, if I could not hear or see. What’s the use of living? If to live, is a delight, then live on.

I’m not afraid of death. What I’m afraid of is old age. Once you get old, you become weak, you become powerless, don’t know what to do. You can see people working, you know how to do it, but you cannot do it. This is what I’m starting to feel now.

In my case, there’s a fear of not doing all I want to do before dying. Because I feel that I still have time. There’s still sun on the walls. But it’s a sun that’s coming down. It’s given me a sense of loneliness I didn’t have before. A sense of solitude, a sense of, for instance, young people keep to themselves. So all the people need to have friends more or less their age. But then those friends die and disappear. I keep losing people all over the years. And young people have their own lives. They have their own time. They don’t have time for others, no? Or they pay polite visits or polite conversation. How are you? But you see that they want to go. I never think of myself wrinkled, no? I never think that I have right here. But I do have a sensation sometimes when I glimpse myself at the mirror and say, oh, how ugly. And that is sad. ~ Elena Pontinowski

As you get old, it’s the constant process of loss. I have lost so many good friends. One very recently, dear dear friend, who died suddenly a month ago. And that’s very upsetting. You lose parents, of course. And if you’re unfortunate sometimes children. Certainly friends and power. Your eyes, your ears, your ability to run and get up. It takes five minutes to get up off your chair and get moving. Those are big losses. That’s what we deal with is the loss. I guess Death is the final loss, you lose yourself.

• “Solita Sin Solidad” ~ Carlos Santana, Lila Downs [YouTube | LastFM]

I never put makeup. I never dial my hair. When I go to the States, my friends tell me why don’t you make a face lift? Why should I hide my wrinkles? I’m about 70. I’m proud of my age. I’m proud of my wrinkles.

Let me think about what that might be. The sense that life is not limitless. I’m sitting with people who are stupidly wasting their time. I’m a better therapist because I’m impatient with that. I don’t excuse it. My tendency is to shake them up and say, wait. The days are getting shorter. Wake up.

Aging is going from a perceptual stance of ego to a perceptual stance of soul. You become wisdom. You don’t have to know anything. You become compassionate. You give up all the striving. Anywhere where I drop to body, that’s the perfect place to die. And we each die and are appointed to this beautiful. ~ Ram Dass

If you can face death, if you can look death in the eye, then he will reward you by letting you live, really live every second that you have lived.

I’ve watched the last of my friends who were diagnosed together around the same time die this Summer. There’s really no way to put into words the loss that you feel from that. The other side of that is that when your friend is dying and in bed and can’t talk, and all you can do is wave your finger at each other. You know there’s a tremendous amount of love there. Money doesn’t count. Possessions don’t count. I’m beginning to find myself again, but I don’t know what my survival will be. And then I think, well, does anyone really know what their survival will be?

I’m going to light this and just say a short prayer, because if you involve God in your work, you have to succeed. There’s no failure. Just open a spiritual eye in your brain. Because most of our brain we never use, and that’s the spiritual side that we should cultivate to serve God properly, heals the life.

The simple dynamic of history is not a conflict between God and Satan. It’s not a conflict between good and evil. It’s a conflict between ignorance and enlightenment.

It would be easy to become religious, it’s an effort not to. Not in an orthodox sense, but seriously to suddenly just depart from all the sciences and decide that there is a completely unidentified set of quite detailed and purposeful forces that are driving us.

It’s never random, there’s nothing random in the universe. The most fundamental levels of nature, there’s one single pattern in which you and I and our thoughts and our behaviors and our interactions are actually part of an overall pattern. ~ Deepak Chopra

It makes no sense to any of us. We’re not very significant as creatures. It’s over, it begins, it’s over, and for me it’s a blessed oblivion. Nothing, the absolute thrill of nothing, the relief of nothing. God, nothing, nothing, wow.

The more you can be an individual and be honorable at the same time, you’ve got it made. ~ Ram Dass

• O son and daughter of noble birth, now the time has come for you to seek a path. As your bread stops, visions will appear, and while on this journey from life into death, if you should find yourself calling out, O Lord of great compassion, am I beautiful enough? Am I wearing the right clothes? Do I have the right connections to get me into where I’m going? To these concerns, I say, do not worry. With this kiss, there are revelations tattooed upon our lips. Revelations will be read on account of this silent pact with recognition, where I’m beginning to see that we are slowly becoming healed.

• I take a moment to myself so I can hear myself, to hear myself, be real myself, life’s addictions and afflictions cause abrasion from the fiction. Sometimes it’s easier to live in fiction, I can run, but I can’t hide from the pains that reside down deep inside. There is no pill, that can be swallowed, there is no guru that can be followed.

So it’s a great opportunity for construction, for new ideas, for getting closer to the truth and moving past organized religion and make it real, and deal with the chaos and the pain while you’re home to the universe. That’s heaven now right there that we’re walking every day with it. You can change it, you can live hell tomorrow, and be in heaven today, right now. It’s nothing esoteric out there, it’s right here.

• There’s no escaping from my home history, those that I hurt and those that hurt me. I was dead for a million years before I was born. I’ll be dead for a million more after I’m gone. So I live to give something that can live on, like the way you heard my song when the music’s gone. That the warmth of the sand when the sun goes down, sitting with myself nobody else is around.

You know whether Lord is Buddha or Jesus or Allah or whatever? If He’s a God, He’s going to know your cool guy and you ain’t got to worry. If there’s a heaven, you’re going.

Stop. Be here now.

Be in this moment.

We live in a dream, our lives are fragile. All of us have one foot one foot on a banana peel and the other foot on the grave. The surrender is not an option, because you can only fight it so long. It’s a cork floating in the middle of the ocean, screaming, I must control it, I must have control. It’s hard to just let life happen. ~ Bhagavan Das

• “Why Must I Feel Like This Today?” ~ Baaba Maal, Krishna Das, Michael Franti, Radio Active, Ulali [SonicHits | 8Tracks | Mp3.pm]
• “Serenity Prayer” ~ Eddi Reader, Huun Huur Tu, MXO [YouTube]
• “1 Small Step” ~ Baaba Maal, Nana Tsiboe
• “The Truth Is Changing” ~ Amapondo, Will Young [8tracks]
• “Freedom” ~ African Show Boys, Nana Tsiboe [8tracks]
• “Arrival” ~ Aida Samb, Al Tanbura, Alanis Morissette, Eugene Hutz [YouTube]
• “Forgive Me” ~ Amjad Ali Khan, Sharon Lewis, Suzue [YouTube]
• “Set Me Free” ~ Joseph Arthur, Rokia Traoré, Sussan Deyhim, Yungchen Lhamo [8Tracks]