“Take A Chance on Doing What You Love” Episode No. 191 (Subtitles)
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him. So, he made a conservative choice instead. He got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. Thank you, Divine Spark, all that. I mean, it’s a potion of some kind. There are a lot of elements that have to come together at the same time.
I believe maybe there’s a little bit of fate involved. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe as a soul floating out in the ether, you just go, “Okay, it’s my time,” and everybody gets a chance to be this famous at some point if you believe in the reincarnation or whatever. Maybe they just go, “Okay, there are the parents that are going to set me off in that direction.” Back and you go in there. Who knows? Maybe it’s fate, or maybe it’s that maybe it’s just that I believed. You know, I always believed that whatever form it took, it would take place and if exactly and whatever form it took would be okay. Yeah, because I was fully, uh, prepared to just play out to, you know, stand-up comedy and comedy clubs.
Yeah, but there’s something within you that constantly push the edges of the envelope wherever you were, well or at least took advantage of the opportunities that came around and a lot of it has to do with, you know, just the courage to jump in. I mean, you know, to do films that are out of your so-called Power Alley as they call it, uh, is it takes nerve you know, so uh, I have the nerve, you know, and see if I have the goods, but I have the nerve, a lot of people think that you know, I’m kind of going through something, uh, but but it’s been my whole life, you know, and uh, they go like, well, it’s a reaction to depression, he’s dealt with depression his whole life, and I have there’s no hint of depression in my life whatsoever, it is depression only happens when you don’t accept what is and and when you’re playing a character you know in life.
So when I tried to go back and play Jim Carrey, I got depressed and now I don’t try to do that anymore. When I was about 28, after a decade as a professional comedian, I realized one night in LA that the purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern, just like my dad, and when I realized this, I dubbed my new devotion the Church of Freedom from Concern, the Church of FFC. [Applause] [Music] And I dedicated myself to that ministry. What’s yours? How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out.
As someone who’s done what you’re about to go and do, I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. [Music] [Applause] And how thought is responsible for, if not all, most of the suffering we experience, and then I suddenly felt like I was looking at these thoughts from another perspective, and I wondered who is it that’s aware that I’m thinking, and suddenly I was thrown into this expansive, amazing feeling of freedom from myself, from my problems. I saw that I was bigger than what I do. I was bigger than my body. I was everything and everyone.
I was no longer a fragment of the Universe; I was the universe. And ever since that day, I’ve been trying to get back there, you know? Things are happening, you know, and they’re going to happen whether I attach myself as an ego to it or not, you know? There are grooves that are cut pretty deep, you know, from my entire life. I still, there’s still an energy that wants to be admired and wants to be clever. And there’s still, uh, there’s still an energy that wants to free people from concern. And now it goes further. I want to, you know, kind of relate what this is to people so that maybe they can also kind of glimpse the abyss of it sounds scary but it’s not. Well, my choosing to free people, am I choosing to free people from concern got me to the top of a mountain. Look where I am. Look what I get to do everywhere I go. Look this. I’m going to get emotional because when I tap into this, it really is extraordinary to me. I did something that made people present their best selves to me wherever I go.
[Music] I am at the top of the mountain, and I was and I the only the only one I hadn’t freed was myself, and that’s when my search for identity keep it. I wondered who I’d be without my fame. Who would I be if I said things that people didn’t want to hear or if I defied their expectations of me? What if I showed up to the party without my Mardi Gras mask and refused to flash my breasts for a handful of beans? I’ll give you a moment to wipe that image out of your mind, but you guys are so ahead of the head of already know who you are. And that piece, that peace that we’re after lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself.
You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor go. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory. [Applause]
