“Our glacial days of digital perennialism place us in a constant ‘now’ without ever really being present, and icons are torn apart.
No sooner does A Hero rise than He or She is exposed as A Hypocrite — Malcolm X was a rent boy, Gandhi had some odd nocturnal habits and even Che, the obligatory teen portal into rebellious sentience, was a Homophobic MURDERER.
Too MUCH Information.
The iconoclasm of our omniscient but omni-dumb days unweaves the carpets that we may have walked upon and leaves us in the wasteland of the ‘only Human’.”
Excerpt From
Mentors
Russell Brand
“If I say, ‘Well, Jimmy isn’t Perfect,’ I will ultimately use the ordinary details of Human Fallibility to impair My Own Progress.
Sometimes when I am making an incredible fuss over some minor piece of bullshit, when I am contemplating leaping out of my car like a slender James Gandolfini to confront someone at a traffic light, I think: ‘Wow, there are Men who call me up for advice and here I am, unable to contend with normal emotions – what A Fraud I am.’
But this is not the case, my all too evident flaws do not prevent me being a successful mentor as long as these relationships are correctly BOUNDED.
All of the people I mentor understand the nature of this dynamic, its benefits and its limitations. They know that The Method I Use is Verified and Ancient.
They know that I want nothing FROM them, that My Only Intention is to HELP them; I don’t want Money, Prestige or Power from them.
These are Men Like Me, Men that have turned to Drugs and Sex to cope with the absence of a Spiritual Dimension to Their Life — who in the abscence of loving guides have improvised philosophies from their primal urges and crazy circumstances.
When They NEED Me,
I am not The Fool
at The Traffic Lights,
I am The Man
They Need Me to Be.
Once I called Jim when he was about to take his seat at the theatre or something that meant there was little in the way of small talk, and though I was quietly frantic he dispatched insights like sharp, quick darts, for all I know while buying a box of Maltesers.
Perhaps Young Men like Me go awry because nobody can hold them. I don’t mean embrace, I mean in a parental sense, like (parentheses), to ‘bracket’ them, to stand as a dam either side of the wayward lash and unmovingly emit Care.
The only Authority I ever knew was Negative. Either Inefficient or Corrupt. This is the consequence of living with false ideals in a Materialistic Society.
The Authority that I give to Jimmy is SACRED, I know he is flawed but I am not consulting with the flawed part of him, I am consulting with the part of him that is willing in spite of his own numerous obligations, work, and family to provide loving counsel for free.
I believe this relationship becomes a conduit for Truth, Divine Truth.
That needn’t mean it’s all chocolates and roses. There’s a fair amount of ‘suck it up’ and ‘face your fear’, but it is Truth. Perhaps we can take Truth to mean The Timeless, The Universal. Things that will not erode and fade, qualities I need to live the life I have moved into.
How does someone who has never been A Father become one?
How do any of us progress beyond our temporary limits?
The Potential Person we can Become hums in an invisible grid Within and Without us.
A Genius may actuate by intuition but all of us need Heroes, Role Models and Mentors, that we may see what is possible, living mandalas to lock onto as we inhale and expand into new states.”
Excerpt From
Mentors
Russell Brand
