How strange to be living in the prostitute quarters
whoring ourselves for our daily bread

It all started so slowly with the exchange of our royal cloak
for an affectionate glance or stroke,
the bargaining of our crown jewels for a bit of acceptance

Until when we are acting like a circus bear
standing on our hind legs groveling for food
that we neither crave nor can digest
using powerful muscles that were not designed for such indignities

Since when did princes and princesses wear donkey skins and haul firewood
whacked to keep in line by the stick of self forgetfulness?

The tap dance you are performing is not graceful
you are confusing anxiety with movement
numbness for joy
and acquisition with tasting

Remember that prostitutes are much more honest than you
and have far more integrity in their exchange

Stop your squirming:
the pain you are suffering is just the glue of the donkey skin
being ripped off your back

There is only one way to stop suffering such indignities:
stop confusing the stench of the stable for your home

Learn to live raw
until your royal skin grows back.

3W: Human beings have a really hard time putting their minds around
incremental change.

AA: The system actually functions by dehumanizing people. People actually
go to that ego place which really ties into the fame thing. When you
go to the fame thing you’re just ego drive, ego overdrive, which is a very
lonely place. I feel more isolated, so I have to buy one more thing. I feel more
alienated; I have to buy one more thing. What we do is we get together, we
get shit faced, and we just totally try to disconnect. We check out guys, girls,
whatever you’re into, just disconnect, and talk about things that disconnect
us. This is one thing that’s a gift out of what’s happening now. Hopefully, it’ll
bring people together. Now, that’s the curse of the fame thing, that’s the curse
of the celebrity thing. All these shows that are on TV, this fame thing is about
me over you. Wake up! But, hey, whatever these shows on TV are, people want to
be famous. They’re taught we can get there, which is also insane. What? You’re
going to have 300 million people be famous?

3W: I relate to what you’re saying, we’re all obsessed with ego and obsessed
with being the best whatever, with fame, it just takes us far away from ourselves.

AA: The only way you’re really going to consume something is if you’re really
not content. The contentedness never happens externally. When you purchase
something new, all that does is touch the place that’s already content,
and then you get bored with it and you want to repeat that experience again
and again. This is Bush coming over after this horrific thing happens in our
country and he says, “Go shopping.” The system has a consciousness. To me
it’s not just about the fact that there are three mean guys sitting up there trying
to figure everything out. These systems have consciousness. Kind of what
we’re talking about: culture, as you say, is not your friend, but culture is not
some dead entity. When you read Alice Miller – Alice Miller is this amazing
psychotherapist and she studied the Nazis – these dudes were God-fearing,
church-going family people. To me these Nazis were monsters. The scary part
is that they weren’t monsters. There were a couple of psychopaths but there
weren’t millions of psychopaths. How could a culture decimate eight million
people? We’re the same people; we haven’t changed that much. Again, that
ego thing you’re talking about is narcissism, the checked-out-ness. It used to
be religion, then it became nationalism, now it’s become fame. To me it’s the
same damn ugly medicine that keeps repeating itself, and no one’s learned to think.
It’s culture. It’s got a consciousness and it doesn’t want to die.

3W: It’s crazy. I’m a person who is thinking about these things and I also feel
like I need total sensations. It’s hard to get away from.

AA: We don’t experience things directly anymore. It’s almost like we’ve lost
our digestive tracks and someone else has to chew our food for us. Then, by
watching them chew, we can actually taste the food because we don’t have
any taste buds. “How does it taste?” “Well it’s sweet.” “What does that mean?
I don’t really know what sweet is.” “Well, it’s got this experience.” We don’t
have direct experience anymore. Do we choose not to go to that fame place?
Do we choose to switch off the Internet that day and just sit down and
create something?

3W: Saving money is an interesting connection, too.

AA: Same thing. What is the fame thing? You get the money. It is connected
to that, it’s two sides of the same coin, really. Fame is a currency. Currency in
the way that people keep up with it. It’s what I’ve noticed with people. If they
know famous people, if they’ve seen them or taken a picture, it’s a currency.
It’s become a currency. “Hey I saw Joe Blow at this place, here’s my picture.”
It’s this impulse of taking a picture with a total stranger. It’s fame; it always
just blows my mind. So, what does that say? It says this person has something
I don’t have, and by putting my arm around this person and having this
picture taken, I am somebody now.

3W: Well, maybe we should talk for just a minute about my personal favorite
celebrity who just died, Michael Jackson. He was a really talented musician
and all these things. But, I think his greatest work was the sculpture that was
his body. People were terrified by it, and they didn’t like to look at it. But he
transformed himself into what he thought people wanted him to be.

AA: Absolutely. He was a guy who lived in the hyper-real as opposed to the
real. He lived in the extraordinary – the ordinary wasn’t okay. He had to go
to the extraordinary. His only experience would be in his peak thing, right, a
huge playground, this massive thing. It’s an amazing thing that people don’t
realize.

3W: And he totally killed himself with drugs.

AA: That’s pain, that’s how painful it is. That’s how far away you get from
yourself and you forget that you need anesthetics. The metaphor for that is
lost on people. It’s not even using heroin, he’s using anesthetics, drugs that
anesthetize people. It’s crazy and yet it totally makes sense. We have this
projection on people; we have this addiction to perfection. Then, when these
people don’t meet our expectations– Tiger Woods is an amazing example in
that way, right? He became a totally perfect, clear projector screen. He had
no emotions; he was a good boy. Is he black? Is he Asian? He won’t even give
you that. The shadow gets so huge, totally in reversion to how good you pretend
to be. How perfect the projector screen, because there’s nothing really
genuine, really authentic. And this is how these things always work out and
people are always shocked. How did that happen? It’s like, “It’s not shocking,
it’s Michael Jackson.” Because the projector screen is so strong, the flip side of
it gets ghastly. The flip side is us napalming the bejesus out of babies. These
are the things we need to examine. Michael Jackson and Tiger are perfect
examples of people carrying culture and its shadow. Michael Jackson is us.
He was carrying that for all of us.

3W: He was this mirror. He kept mutating because we asked him to and then
we couldn’t even stare ourselves in the face. We couldn’t even look at him.

AA: There’s this mass consciousness that doesn’t want to change and only
wants to be changed when disaster comes – has to be forced to change,
doesn’t want to do the fucking work which is all this stuff.

3W: It’s like Bret Easton Ellis really nailed that with American Psycho.
There’s this character who’s this Wall Street success, but couldn’t help just
killing everyone around him in really perverse, sexual ways.

AA: I used to speak to some Vietnam vets in the Bronx. Those guys saw some
shit. I can’t imagine these kids now, doing this close combat. We’re taking
these guys, basically using them, and then throwing them back 24-48 hours
later in the community. It’s like the highest rate of suicide, homicide; we’re
living that nightmare. It’s not like in some distant future. These are the things
that aren’t working. But, nobody’s questioning why. That’s where the fame
thing comes in, the celebrity. “Pay attention to this, Tiger Woods has like 8
girls that he banged, check that out.” While your neighbor is losing his home,
your neighbor just came back from Iraq, your neighbor just shot his wife,
your neighbor’s a drug addict but there’s not drug treatments so he’s going to
go to prison for 20 years.

3W: I guess what you were saying earlier goes person by person.

AA: The machine is too big; the machine is way better armed than you’ll ever
be, the machine’s way smarter on that level. Forget about the machine, the
machine is going to eat itself alive; we have to step out of that. It’s not going
to be about shifting the system because the system has a consciousness and
this system is so profound. It can co-opt anything. It’s a very intelligent virus.

3W: Everything becomes style.

AA: You have to step out of that. It’s not about becoming something radical,
spiritual, or a monk or a caveman because that’s another thing. The question
is how do you live your life in integrity and real authenticity? Are you’re a rose
bush, are you an oak tree? If the system needs oak trees, it will tell everyone
they’re an oak tree. If you’re a rose bush and you’re trying to eat what an
oak tree eats, you are going to die pretty quickly. You have to figure out what
you are, and then feed that while you’re in the system.

3W: And then, you grow up in that environment, and nothing seems real
except for what’s hyper, hyper-real. Even that is unsatisfying as years go on.

AA: People are living in fear – that’s how you keep people in line. It was the
nuclear bomb, it was the Russians, it was the Chinese, always fear, fear, fear.
Now, it’s the Arabs. Once these systems are in place, how can you step out
of it? The only difference now is that we’re running against a finite line. People
laugh when it’s said there could be food shortages, actually laugh at you.
There’s a very distinct possibility in our lifetimes that we are going to hit
against that again. Right now, there are riots in many countries because of
food shortages. This is how this myth gets perpetuated. “We’re fine, it’s nothing,
stay asleep. Everything is under control.” That’s the part that’s going to
shift it to the next level.

3W: Sacrifice.

AA: Yeah, sacrifice but also the fact that this can be pleasurable. That’s what
I’m saying to you. For me, there’s a lot of serenity in the work that I do -
trying to help the world and forgetting about myself. When I forget about
myself, my big Self steps in. Now that can’t be all the time, because the reality
is that you have to feed all parts of you, but that’s a really powerful experience.
But that’s lost on this culture, that’s lost on celebrity, definitely lost on fame,
cause that’s all about “me.” “What else can I do about me? Let’s talk about
me, let’s talk about me.” That energy never gets into you.

3W: It’s always hungry and it’s never satisfied.

AA: It’s that hungry ghost. The Buddhists have that wonderful image, right,
of this big ghost with a pinprick for a mouth and it can never get enough
food to feed it. And we’re all guilty of that to some extent but the system
makes sure that that keeps going on. Cause what is it going to look like?
There is an economic reality; we’ve been trading since we had seashells.
There is an economic reality when you have six billion, seven billion people
on the planet. It’s not going to keep going this way, so, what is the next step?
Well, you get that by Phil being the best Phil, and John being the best John,
and Jason being the best Jason. That’s how you answer that question, and I
truly know that in my bones. It’s not about going out there and discovering
the wheel, but each one of us go out and do that – instead of A trying to be
his dad, A is A, that’s my gift to this planet.

3W: What can the reader can do to become more of who they are?

AA: I would say, first and foremost, look at the places where you’re not really
you. We are basic archetypes where we rebel against the culture. I realized
I’m trapped being a rebel because I’m still connected to my past. How connected
am I to the past? That would be the first thing. The second is how
many times a day are you people pleasing or not people pleasing as a way of
people pleasing? Just start by examining yourself. It takes like five minutes a
day. And then really look at your relationships with things. Just look at the
way things are. You don’t have to drop out. You can look exactly the same
externally but you have a totally different experience in life, you can still take
the subway, but from a different place. If you’re really angry, if you’re really
sad, examine it. Give yourself a little bit of time to be bored, just a little bit
of introspection. Something that I do is, I just take one thing every once in
a while to work on. So, if it was anger, like in the morning, I would be like,
“Look, I’m tired today, I’m tired, I’m going to be more angry, so pay attention.”
At night, I would have a review, I would be like, “So that was good,
you were tired, you knew you were going to be angry, so you didn’t work as
hard today.” And whatever that thing was, examine it. I don’t want to be connected
to my past, I want to have a relationship with it but I don’t want to be
a slave to it. We never examine. The second we wake up we’re on the go. We
don’t fall asleep until we pass out because we’re on the go and we do it seven
days a week. So give five or 10 minutes a day.

3W: Five minutes?

AA: Literally

3W: Let’s talk about how we all think of ourselves as individuals. There are
a lot of spiritual advisers and philosophers that are just rejecting that notion.
But, there are also tangible things, like we all have individual fingerprints, we
have different DNA, we are literally, undeniably individual.

AA: We’ve gotten so lost in the individuation and now it’s sort of the journey
back into remembering we’re a whole. When that aspect of forgetfulness
of individuation becomes hyper individuation, that’s the Wall Street, that’s the
psychopath. Psychopath does not have a memory of being connected to
other people, that’s why it’s actually so disconnected. The problem with the
psychopath experience is that nobody is experiencing it. That’s why you stab
10 people to death when you’re a psychopath; there’s no experience, there’s
no body left, there’s no body home. Healthy culture tends to have a balance
between perpetuating itself and allowing you to be the best you. To me, that’s
a healthy culture. We’re in a culture that wants to decimate you if you’re not
getting into the program. And it does it.

3W-Phil: It’s this drive to make yourself thin, to make yourself vapid, just a
wrapper, that way you can become famous. Become a brand of self.

AA: One thing that you’re saying which has become one dimensional,
which ties into what you’re saying, which is chaos. People don’t want to deal
with the fact that there is chaos. The fact that you can have all the spiritual
understanding in the world and walk out and get run over by a car, this is what
all the bullshit in the way of spirituality doesn’t want to come to it. You can have
the deepest understanding of it, but if your number’s up, your number’s
up. That’s where the real courage comes in. If you know that every time you
get on that bike, you could actually be done, and you choose to do it, that’s
courage. Not in a stupid way, but you’ll approach it differently. If you’re sort of
unconscious, you get on that bike, hit the throttle, do a buck 80 without giving
a shit, you’re not really tasting anything. You’re in that psychopath mode.
So the fact that it is chaotic, and yet it’s all One, there’s nothing to be done,
yet it’s this wonderful, horrific play that’s happening… To kind of straddle
those things, that’s what’s really rare. That’s a new thing that’s happening
culturally.

3W: The thing about a bike that is a great benefit and interesting is I get
scared when I’m not on a bike. I get scared thinking about what happened
the last time I rode, how ‘it was fucking close’ and how I should do this or
that next time. But, once you get on, and the motor is going… no more fear.

AA: When you’re riding, if you’re riding properly, the only way to survive in
New York City, is you don’t think about anything. You’re in the moment, so
like, the gift of this whole thing, that’s the pleasure, the moment. When you’re
with your lover, and it’s awesome, it’s in the moment. These spiritual people
have been trying to tell us this forever. The magic is in the moment.

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up“.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:

Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up“.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:

Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up“.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:

Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up”.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:

Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up”.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:
 Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast

Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing a series of short videos that discuss various aspects of the spiritual path. These videos are segments of an extended interview conducted by Jonas Elrod, co-director of “Wake Up”.

If you cannot see the video player or file download links below, you may alternatively access and play the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AbdiAssadi

Or, you may access this video podcast episode via your iTunes application:
 Launch iTunes and Subscribe to the Podcast