Firstly, yes I am 6 foot 3… Bruce is not… fun fact!
(Religious disclaimer pre-reading: I truly believe that everyone should be free to explore whats within them, religion of any kind, faith in general, race, colour or creed, we are all equal regardless of class, status, history or heritage. So please consider my religious elements within this blog, as explorations)
So, last night for World Mental Health Day I was invited to the private screening for Bruce Parry‘s new film – “Tawai – A Voice From The Forest.”
Started with a meditation to ‘un-clutter busy minds’ which normally makes me feel a bit sick, because it’s usually someone who drunk some Indian tea once and considers them self a Yogi, however I tried to let go of everything and just reset my mind to focus on the film.
And it really was a different concept to where Bruce has been before, with Bruce travelling to the Amazon, India and talking to doctors etc. about how we live and feel within the energy that binds us. (As it binds the Jedi or Avatar)
Now this mindset is really along the trail of my thinking and feeling, in a sense of what we are about. With the Amazon peoples flitting through the rain-forest like electricity, aware of everything in nature but the concept of time…
Because the concept of time doesn’t not apply in the same way as in nature.
I think the film is for each to define their own meaning, but ultimately we are cutting off ourselves from where we should be as human beings. We don’t interact, or feel, or touch, or smell in a manner in tune with our ancestry… We are to consumed with money, or time, or peoples perceptions of ourselves and we are literally living inside our mind, we’re not emotively or instinctively using our heart to make decisions, which is the distinct difference between the western human and those we deem enlightened.
Sitting there in my waistcoat and jacket, with immaculate shoes I feel embarrassed and saddened and guilty that I still care to some degree how people perceive me, but I’d still be happier sitting amongst the mottle trees and rainy canopies really living.
I felt quite hypocritical in my ‘fancy dress’ ashamed that I was even sitting in a wealthy hotel which I watch peoples homes and minds being destroyed…
After the film as you can imagine people are clamouring to chat to Bruce and congratulate him etc. but my mentality is slightly different… My mentality is of the boy with no father, bred on Bruce Parry & Ray Mears and a longing for adventure and colour. So I simply enjoy my beer and wait for the ‘non Amazon thinking’ crowd to drift.
At the start of the film I saw in Bruce a change that I’d not seen since his time filming in Tribe, it felt like he’d lost a part of his soul since he set out on his first adventure all those years ago and there was a grey area I could see within him…
I approached him initially casually, having not met Bruce before, but sharing quite a close mutual friend, there was no pretence, other than perhaps that moment that must have gone through his mind while considering what I might be going to attempt to sell him…
However, my opening gambit was, “hi Bruce, I just wanted to let you know that it was your penis that made me go out and explore the world…”
At this point I see the Tribal Bruce. I see the light and the energy exuding out of him, that energy that makes you just feel calm. When you’re safe in a space without angst.
As he chuckled away I went on to explain that as a young impressionable man I’d see an episode of the Tribe where the indigenous people retract their penis inside them and their other gentlemen bits. Bruce, like a true explorer attempted this, in the interest of the ‘when in Rome mentality’ and trying to be truly respectful of their culture…
However, as the episode makes us aware, Bruce is relatively well endowed and nearly passed out trying to do this, in the spirit of the tribe. In fact he was pretty sick and then nearly passed out…
Now watching this, internally I genuinely felt that if someone like Bruce was willing to almost knock himself out or make himself sick, to better feel what the people around him feel every day, in the hope that he might find some sense of himself in their world, I felt that this was enough to get me off my arse and try to make myself more open to the world I live in…
I used to be a consumerist whore, filling my mental and emotional coffers with clothes and ‘stuff’ as the hoards do every day, then during my time living on an island in Cambodia and travelling the country on a motorcycle I met a man… I met a man who asked if he could simply have my belt…
This man changed my perception of things.
Previously I’d been wrapped up in assimilating any sort of assets, I used to be one of those guys who bought all the golf clubs, ski gear, surf boards etc before that 1 weekend, never to be used again…
But in seeing that all this man genuinely wanted was a belt to hold up his trousers I was overwhelmed with a sense of morality and I’ve not bought anything in the same mindset since… If fact even if I go and try clothes on now I will consider, cut, fit, longevity and still put it all back on most occasions.
Many people will not connect with Bruce’s film because they’re lying to themselves… This sense of urgency and time and we crush our soul with daily is becoming overbearing… we are the virus, the cancer that will kill our planet if we don’t change.
Superficiality if rife and what i love about Bruce Parry is that he’s not a wanky, pretentious guy, trying to get us to conform to his way of thinking… he’s just exploring what makes us feel whole…
That’s ultimately all I’m looking for. Any semblance of that opportunity to feel like I’m complete and happy.
When Bruce met the Giri family in India, who are considered some of the worlds few enlightened, he said, I’ve been reading a lot of books on the subject of mindfulness etc. and what is it to be… And they simply replied… That’s a shame because your cup is full… Forget about what you’ve learned, this is programmed from school and beyond and cannot be fought in western culture, you must empty your cup in order to fill it and you can’t learn anything with you mind… it is only with our heart that we can truly know the feeling of the world around us… it is here where we judge ourselves and we know the truth about ourselves, even if we never speak it to anyone…
It is in searching for this truth and ridding ourselves of these societal shackles that we free ourselves…
Today I feel free… and I genuinely hope that you are able to free yourself and your mind and feel within you the path you should take.
I don’t believe in religion, I believe it was created to establish populace control and initially keep ignorant society repressed in their relevant boxes. However, now I feel that religion, however still fictional in my eyes, is sometimes just a gateway for people exploring how they fit into the world, and regardless of which God is which, if that mindset and that energy you portray in a positive then I think that it is important that people share their gods and beliefs because some people just genuinely need that sense of faith.
What I do believe is that we all have some sort of symbiotic relationship with our planet, we are all made up of energy and matter, as is our earth and the sooner we all start trying to live outside our conscious thought and just feel within us what the path might be, we will far outweigh our own evolutionary expectations.
If I compare my consideration, to the film Avatar, then you may scoff… But ultimately, this is what we’re talking about with Tawai… There’s something deeper we’re all missing…. Find your own truth and for ‘God’ sake, empty that cup and start exploring…
At the end of the evening I asked Bruce if he’s consider doing an interview with me just to chat in general about how his experiences have changed him, he agreed…
I mentioned before I left for the evening that I’d seen a marked difference in his energy and approach, since the original days of Tribe 12 years ago and in watching his most recent undertaking, I was keen to know whether he had lost that element of soul along the way…
He didn’t answer….
He simply smiled and said… “That’s one of those interview questions then!”
I will be sure to share our interview when we get together again and in the mean time please talk to people; just get over any of that negativity that we attract day to day and just be yourself and be free in whatever you do… Let those who surround you know that you’re all together and through our combined energies we create change in perception…
Here’s a beautiful shot of my fiance Anna and my ‘son to be bump’ due 5th February. I look forward to exploring all this with him when he’s old enough to relate.
THE BIPOLAR BUSINESSMAN 