The Best Piece of Advice I Ever Was Given

Photography by PaulPrescott.com

I was in an Ashram*. Having my hedonistic, narcissistic, capitalist-conditioned mind blown open by a small group of people who dedicate their lives – completely – to the benefit of the world around them. A small group of Swamis.

Before I left, I asked my favorite Swami for a piece of advice. Here’s what he said...

(you can read the rest here on Elephant Journal)

My wife told me to edit this (too graphic). I didn’t – read at your own discretion.

I had a miserable childhood.

Don’t get me wrong: I was blessed with great parents who gave me very strong foundations. But beyond that, I got a fairly tough deal.

Each and every school I went to sucked. Sucked with a capital S.

Strange really because they were all private schools; or as we say in England (in a typically counter-intuitive, oxymoronic kind of a way), public schools. The schools that parents have to pay a lot of money to send their kids to.

So I supposedly had one of the best educations that money can buy! Sure didn’t feel like it though… and I suspect that education is not something that can, or should be, bought…

***

When I was six, we lived in Israel for a year. I didn’t speak a word of Hebrew when we first got there, and I didn’t know a soul, but the ‘teacher’ made me stand facing into the corner at the front of the classroom, all the Israeli kids behind me sniggering at the pale, dumb kid who even the teacher didn’t like.

My mother had to pick me up from hospital one day – I’d had my head cracked open by a rock-wielding Israelite. I must admit, I may have thrown the first stone. But his was a lot bigger…

How your personal views are worthless (and why you should probably re-think everything you think you know)

I once believed that:

If I don’t wear shoes, I’ll hurt my feet.

If I don’t keep warm, I’ll catch a cold.

I only need to practice yoga to stay fit and healthy.

I only need to stay fit and healthy to be happy.

What’s good for me is good for everyone.

When I was at school I had a friend who was, to be honest, an asshole. He once hawked up a big green lump of phlegm out of the depths of his chest and spat it full in my face. Yes, that kind of asshole. But he was nevertheless my friend, and I loved him, and somehow still do (although we’ve long since lost touch).

He once told me this saying, and it’s stuck with me ever since:

The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why bother?

Of course it’s a bit silly, but when I heard it then it felt very right. Perhaps because at that time the whole adult world seemed to be pitted in a deadly struggle to teach me crap. Parents, teachers, extended family, family friends, and distant relatives were all hell-bent on cramming my head full of algebra, geology, ancient history and chemistry, at a time when all I really wanted to do was climb trees.

Many years later I read the classic book ‘I Am That’, by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and the following line changed my life:

“Love says ‘I am everything’. Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two, my life flows.”

Socrates said:

“All I know is that I know nothing”.

Such simplicity. Such beauty. Such wisdom.

That’s the kind of ancient history I am interested in... 

Get out feeling good. (The wise grieve neither for the living, nor for the dead.)

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, oil on canvas, 1793 (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels)

You probably think you are “(insert your name)”. You’re not – you can legally change your name, but you won’t have changed what you are – your name is just a handle with which the world is able to pick you up and examine you.

You probably think of yourself as either a man or a woman. You’re not. That is just a gender association that you make based upon the genetic choices that your cells made when your body was being formed biologically. You are only an association as long as you are not being the genuine article.

You probably think of yourself primarily as your body. Most people do...

AN OPPORTUNITY

I have no idea why, but a friend of mine here in Slovenia asked me to write an article about Autism. So I will! I like a good challenge...


The reason it's a challenge is because I don't feel myself to be any kind of authority on the subject. My experience is limited:
I spent a year of my life working with young people for a charity in England called the Prince's Trust. My job was to recruit 15 young people (aged 15 - 25), and then lead them through a 12 week course, which included many different things, for example a two week community project, a week of team building exercises in Wales (canoeing, rock climbing, bridge-building), and a week with the fire brigade. I ran three such courses, and on one of them I recruited Rosie, a 16 year old girl with Asperger's syndrome - a form of autism...