10 Jan INTERVIEW OF CURRO CAÑETE: “EXPECTATIONS ARE BORN OF FEAR”
The queue that had been in the Teatro Bellas Artes in Madrid from three hours before had not been seen by the writer or very successful plays. Sergi Torres drags crowds, but that does not matter, because, as he says, he looks at the eyes of that young woman in the second row who also looks at him, or those of the lord of beyond, the one in the fourth row, or In those of that lady, and whenever she goes on stage, even if she is as full as the other day, she revives that Sergi image of years ago, the one that gave her first talk in a small bookstore.
That distant day, in the bookstore, there were only five people, maybe six, maybe seven, but the delivery by Sergi Torres was the same as now. It was the same because years ago, when he realized all the suffering in him that had not suffered, he had not looked, he had not felt, all that suffering that was there for something and that he finally decided to feel, Years ago, when he realized all that, he decided to surrender. Give yourself to life, to your life as a teacher, to your message.
Since then there are no plans, no strategy, no plan. And yet, without a determined plan, says Sergi who manages to do his mission or his purpose. “My mission right now is to be talking to you,” he tells me smiling, in the dressing rooms of the theater, an hour before leaving to that scene full of people who have come from different cities to see him.
Q. What would happen if Ana Rosa Quintana started taking people like you to her program? In the US, Oprah Winfrey has often taken her successful show to Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Louise L. Hay …
At first you never know, because you do not know how people will respond. In the cinema or in the theater you do a work and you do not know how the public will respond. To prove it Ana Rosa would have to be involved in that message. To do it she would have to believe in it, she would have to live it …
Q. Why, if this theater is full, does the mass media give space to certain messages?
What we understand as a social mass, the large part, without realizing it, respond to concrete beliefs, to concrete systems, which we unwittingly defend. It often happens unconsciously. Whatever is new, different, has to find its own space.
Q. What about being in a theater, is it symbolic ?, does it bring something to what you want to convey?
It is something that ends up being like this. It’s not something that I think “I’m going to do it like this to break” but as what I propose is already a change of idea I realize that everything I propose also ends up generating changes of ideas. Being here and not being in a meditative or spiritual setting is interesting to me. Being able to offer it from the outside to where it is supposed to be offered.
Q. How was the jump of the Sergi Torres that gave lectures for very few people and the one that has that great demand of public and that it contracts conferences and workshops to him to the world?
I do not know how or what happened because there was no intention of mine either. What I am seeing is that the message I transmit is alive on its own. He does not need Sergi Torres or anyone who says so. It is the same message that is spreading in the form of people and I form one of these characters. I told a friend the other day that I never forget the first talk I gave in a bookstore with five people. When I go out to the theater, I leave that library again. It is very easy to relate success with the number of people who respond, with the number of people around, but in the end, success is something very deep. I do not know how that jump. Sometimes people call me to ask me how to write books, how do I do for … I’m actually the worst that can call because I have no idea, I do not know how to do it. We do not have marketing strategy. We simply announce what we do.
Q. If there was a moment when you decided to give yourself up, or let yourself be swept away by life, in your own words. And how, or when did you decide?
I think they have been like little moments of life. I remember some like when I felt that it was time to leave my job. That was an intense moment, because it meant leaving everything for what I had bet on life. You realize that inside you is being born something completely different that you do not know how it is going to be, that you do not know if it is going to sustain you economically speaking, you have no idea.
Q. There are no warranties.
No. But you know if you do not you’re going to suffer. Because you would be in internal incongruity. So yes you are making the decision to trust …
Q. Trusting you are gaining more confidence?
Yes, when you open your trust to life, it shows you many situations in which you can learn from trust.
Q. That moment in which you left the job was a brave moment, because you were doing well …
Yes, I collected my money, I was already well. I left the race and found work. I had been there for ten years, everything was fine. (Laughter)
Q. How to transcend that fear when you know that there are no guarantees and that if there are no guarantees that means that we can crash?
It depends on where you put your attention. If I leave my job to be in the theaters and I see myself in a bookstore with five people I get depressed in such a way that I look for a job like the one I had. Expectations are always born of fear. Then I realized that crossing that fear all that implies is open to feel it. I realized that I was afraid to feel fear, and that’s crazy. How could I be afraid to feel something that I feel. And there begins a profound process of liberation.
Q. So you talked about your message, that you are one of the people who carry the message. When was the message born?
From a very young age I already have memories of thoughts that are based on this message. About time, for example. For me the time was no longer linear since I was little. Or for example I wondered who it was before being Sergi. Those concerns were already there because knowledge was also. From there I go through a process of adolescence where I begin to learn to multiply, how to be loved by a girl, all these things … and I forgot all that part, until the 21 years that that comes out as a volcano. I had a kind of internal crisis where all that I had hidden began to sprout again.
Q. Can you briefly explain the message so that all types of people understand it?
For me it means to be a disciple of my own life. When I am a disciple of my own life, it teaches me things that my society can not teach me, my culture can not teach me, my relationships can not teach me, my religion can not teach me, and there I begin to discover myself beyond My own personality, beyond my way of being.
Q. When you are a disciple of your own life is when you can get to know yourself, is that too?
That’s right, because you are a way of life. I am a way of life. We have the same origin. If you know yourself, you will know the whole world because you will know life. It’s that simple. With regard to what you asked how to explain it to others, I do not ask that. What I think is to be at the service of this message. I come to this theater and I do not wonder how to make people come or how to explain things. There is no strategy. Because all strategy starts again from fear, from distrust, from doubt. Then this message is not born from there. My message is born of trust, openness, predisposition. It is quite another thing altogether. I realize that it is not the words but it is something internal that occupies all your areas, your personality, your habits … it transcends everything that we understand as a person.
Q. The moment you leave work, did you start directly with the lectures?
No. I think I remember being a year and a half or two years detoxifying, as I call it, the need to produce and earn money. I was not aware of how much I was playing a role full of beliefs. The belief that if I do not work, I am nobody; If I do not make money, I am nobody; All those ideas that are only ideas I was like two years seeing how they forced me to find a job, I was forced not to feel what my heart felt.
Q. And at what point did you get that you could not be affected by what others told you?
The family. I do not think there is a moment that I can tell you, in that. It was a process. Rather than wanting to break free, I was open to feeling my beliefs, to feeling that weight. More than wanting to release me …. How can I express this … I remember in a conversation with my uncle, who was saying to me, “but are you sure of what you’re doing?” And I said, “Look, I’m making this decision for the sake of a message, And I know that this message is not going to let me down. ” That phrase I told him but I was actually telling myself. I did not forget it in the whole process. Because there were moments of doubt, situations of “I have no money” … but that phrase “nooo, you keep walking …”. Now I find many people who make that decision but do not end the way. Because they end up believing again fear. Their doubts are believed. They talk to you but they say, “I did it but it did not work”. Of course, you did not finish the road. You do not know. You think not because you believed your doubts.
Q. And you have already freed yourself completely from fear?
I do not know. Because maybe now another obstacle differs from the one I am not aware of. What interests me is to feel what I feel now. And if an obstacle arises let us go for him, let us feel him, let us embrace him.
Q. I asked you because maybe you do not have that load that is very heavy and that you can still have others that are not at the point that you are.
Sure, look at what that truth is and how false at the same time. Yes that is true because I made the decision to cross that and it is as false as that any person can make that decision and be released in that moment. I required a post-decision process, but it does not have to be that way. Each case is individual. There does not have to be a process.
Q. It can be direct.
So is. In fact I have found people who called themselves followers and that in making the decision they are no longer. They become companions.
Q. At that time of doubts you had, was there ever a time when you thought about going backwards?
Of course, ideas always arise in the mind. The interesting thing is not to avoid them, but to contemplate them. Neither avoid them nor believe them.
Q. Continue, despite them, with decision and commitment?
So is. I am not fighting against my beliefs or my culture or my way of being but instead of being nothing I am contemplating. It is very different. Then my beliefs, my culture, now becomes my tool, instead of being the slave of them.
Q. Did you come to suffer, to have a bad time?
Yes (laughs). Yes, because one has to assume the suffering that has been avoiding all life. There is a moment when you realize that no one will suffer for you, even though we have tried many times to suffer others. “You’re to blame for this,” “you’re to blame for this,” we say sometimes, but when you realize this, you sit, you’re silent, and you open up to being yourself . And that’s where the show begins.
Q. You said, “How do you intend to accept yourself if you do not accept the life you have?”
So is. You can not accept life if you do not accept and you can not accept yourself if you are not accepting what happens. It is simultaneous. That is why many people are trying to reach a level of acceptance without realizing that it is a single thing. We are not separated from anything. We believe and perceive it like this, but we are not.
Q. That is the hardest thing to understand or accept from your message.
Yes, because it speaks of something we do not perceive. But it’s always been that way. When we sensed the sun moving, the sun moved around the earth, and who said it was not burned. When we perceived the flat earth was flat. One has to review their beliefs and their perceptions, because throughout history they have always deceived us. We have been killed because you are from one culture and I from another. What a sense this has. When we are all human beings.
Q. If you believe in miracles, what is the most miraculous thing you have ever seen?
You may be disappointed by the answer. Because the miracle we understand as something phenomenal, water, wine and all that … But in reality it is very quiet. For me the most miraculous thing I have seen is to have been able to see beyond my mentality, of a mentality like mine, that had everything clear, that knew how things had to be … That for me is a miracle. Because our system of thinking is based on not leaving it out of fear. Looking beyond fear, looking beyond the current human conception of things, for me is the great miracle. Once done, miracles see you everywhere. In that flower, in that smile, in that call of which you say, “but how can you call me now, that I am thinking of him, and how can this happen just when I need this.” You start seeing it once you’ve seen it in yourself first.
Q. Is there death?
No, death does not exist. I have no doubt that it does not exist. That does not mean that if my son died, I would experience the result of beliefs that may still be in my head, but I would cross them knowing that death does not exist. I explain? Knowing that death does not exist allows you to live your mourning in peace, without suffering. Live death in peace, instead of suffering it. We are accustomed to suffering because we have an idea of death that is scary.
Q. Is the idea of living in the present compatible with the idea of having a mission and a purpose?
Of course, it all depends on where you put your attention. If you put your attention only in the present you will realize that your mission is to be in the present. And if being in the present something is taking a form that is. My life mission is to be talking to you here now. I was born to talk to you. This makes me to talk with you to complete my life. Be complete. No need to go on stage.
Q. How much training does it take to be in the present most of the time?
LOL. It is unavoidable. And this has trick. Because the only thing that needs to be most of the time in the present is to be alone in the present right now. I know that for the conceptual mind this is not enough. Because the conceptual mind is already thinking “now, now yes, but then what.” But if you can see that thought then what, you will realize that it does not make sense and you will realize that you are in the present. And so the anguish of wanting to stay in the present most of the time disappears. When it disappears, you are present. That question implies a doubt. And the doubt will never lead you to get it. But if you are present only now, you will feel your doubt. And when you feel your doubt you will realize that your doubt does not make sense and you will be present. As for whether there is much time of practice or training, that I do not know. But I do know that it requires a present decision again. A decision to be present. I will be present now. The mind will tell you, yes but what good is this if you are not going to be. And you look at that idea and let it go.
Q. Being in the present even though we do not know what will happen next …
That’s. Present is pure ignorance. And most people are terrified of ignorance.
Q. You said: “Happiness gives us fear”
We have made happiness an idea. We believe that it is a happy feeling that we get when we get what we think. That idea of happiness is trying to get it all the time, but we never get it at all. Real happiness has nothing to do with it. It has to do with the fact of being happy, of being, and nothing more. For the present human mind that is the horror. “How? Let me try a little more. “, We thought. Authentic happiness is a state of consciousness that also allows you to be sad. Because happiness includes everything, it does not exclude anything. If we avoid something it implies that I am making a decision based on my fear of seeing that. Because that takes away my happiness. That way you will not get happiness. Because fear is not the guide to happiness.
Q. How do you feel, Sergi Torres, here in the theater, this afternoon, knowing that there are many people waiting? How do you handle this success and all this mess that has formed you? Countries, followers around the world …
When I go to the theater I go to that bookstore I talked to you about before …. How to express this. For me it is very authentic, it is very human. I now go out on the stage and look at the person in the second row, the one in the fifth row, I look into the eyes, I am talking to a person. I am not talking to a full theater that comes to see me but I listen to a question that a person does. I listen from where you ask because that’s where I can learn how that person sees things. It’s mutual, it’s something that we walk together, it’s not something I see as a success or anything like that. It is not like this.
Q. And when you speak generally to all, in whom do you look?
I’m listening to myself
Q. You do not get nervous …
I do not get nervous because I do not know what I’m going to say. Sure, imagine that I knew what I have to say and how. That would be a threat because … what would happen if I did not get it? What if they do not understand me? What if they do not tell me what I know? That would be a tremendous threat.
Q. Do not ask yourself if you are going to meet expectations …
No, because I already know that I will not fulfill them. I do not come to meet expectations.
Q. You are writing another book.
Yes.
Q. Advance something …
I can not overtake you because … there is a publisher, Uranus, who proposed a project and we are together.
Q. In this coming and going of countries you can concentrate on the book and take time …
Look what I’m going to say: no. But I’m not interested in the least. When I sit down to write, I write, and when I do not, I do not. It is a requirement that I have put to the publisher. I do not know when I will have the book.
Q. You have no pressure, then?
I never have that pressure. Because I do not demand anything. You imagine a river that would demand so many cubic meters a year …
Q. And without demanding anything, can much be done?
Life itself proposes nothing and look around you. Awesome. From a flower to an iceberg that melts. Animals, nature … everything. It is spectacular. That is creative consciousness. No expectations. Simply a pure expression.
An Interview by Curro Cañete