Which ex-Radio One DJ recently wrote this?

[Annie Labuntur]

There is no such thing as wrong or right, or good or evil, it is purely thinking that makes it so.

We say, 'I am not myself today,' but we never say, 'Myself is not my I today'.

For Moses said to God, 'Who are you?' And God replied, 'I am that I am'.

Manifestation is the art of making what you want to happen, happen. It is a real superpower available to all of us. Manifestation sounds bonkers, but it's not at all.

'I think, therefore I am,' chirrupped Descartes, way back in 1637. Except he hadn't quite 'thought' enough. I reckon his thinking quote was a bit off. Actually I'm being kind; he couldn't have been more wrong. 'I am, therefore I think,' is what he should have said.


Can't give +25 karma for a correct answer, so you'll have to settle for Eternal Enlightenment.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Gary Davies.

[Alberon]

Sounds like our good chum Neol.

[paruses]

Yes. He's into all that "I imagined I wanted a helicopter and then I had a helicopter" shit isn't he?

It becomes less laughable when it's people having cancer because they're too negative in their outlook.

[Annie Labuntur]

Gary Davies.

"Woo Gary Davies!"

[Shit Good Nose]

Bruno Brookes.  Whilst wearing his own halloween fright mask.

[Captain Z]

Mark Goodier

[Annie Labuntur]

I was expecting people to think of Tidybeard for obvious reasons, but it's not him.

[paruses]

Simon Bates then - he's pompous enough.

Ooh - or the one that Viz used to call lumpy face. Did Confessions. Simon ...

[Psmith]

Well that's a bit confusing for me."I am, therefore I think " I can agree with but not the rest of the rubbish.By their reasoning they should have agreed with Descartes ?
Anyway I think it's Simon Bates,I never liked him.

[Alberon]

There is no such thing as wrong or right, or good or evil, it is purely thinking that makes it so.

We say, 'I am not myself today,' but we never say, 'Myself is not my I today'.

For Moses said to God, 'Who are you?' And God replied, 'I am that I am'.

Manifestation is the art of making what you want to happen, happen. It is a real superpower available to all of us. Manifestation sounds bonkers, but it's not at all.

'I think, therefore I am,' chirrupped Descartes, way back in 1637. Except he hadn't quite 'thought' enough. I reckon his thinking quote was a bit off. Actually I'm being kind; he couldn't have been more wrong. 'I am, therefore I think,' is what he should have said.

[Kelvin]

Wouldn't surprise me if it was Chris Evans. They have Virgin Radio on at work, and I had no idea he was such a self help junkie, constantly coming out with cliches that leave even his string of guru guests stumbling for meaning. Big fan of Jordan Peterson, too, judging from something one of the other DJ's said once. That something being, "Chris is a big fan of that Jordan Peterson guy."

And I don't just mean he mentions that stuff occasionally. I mean that, outside of the Sky promotional guests he has on, it's literally all he talks about. I had always assumed he was more into the lad banter.   

[paruses]

Mayo. Simon Mayo.

This is the most excited about a thread I have been in a long time.

[Ray Travez]

First line is a direct quote from some guru; Osho maybe?

edit- Shakespeare apparently

[Alberon]

It sounds like someone from the seventies or early eighties to me.

Tony Blackburn.

[Annie Labuntur]

Kelvin wins!

A couple more:

All of us are light. Light is the place to be. Light is where we came from and to where we will return.

Have one substantial dollop of Marmite every day.

I'm not making that last one up.

[JarrowMonkey]

Simon Bates then - he's pompous enough.

Ooh - or the one that Viz used to call lumpy face. Did Confessions. Simon ...

Simon Salad Cream?

[paruses]

Yes! I enjoyed the structured vitriol in those strips as a 24 year old.

[Bum Flaps]

I remember hearing a Gary Davies phone in quiz on radio-1, probably mid 90s, it went something like this:

GD: Ok, tricky one here: What 'P' is the name of a fence around a medieval fortress?

Contestant: Um...er... a palisade?

GD: No, sorry I can't give you that, it says here: 'Pa..sill...adee', um, well, on with the quiz!

What I'm trying to say is that I think you would need an infinite number of Garies Davies and an infinite number of typewiters to come up with the OP's quote.

Must have been Steve Wright (in the afternoon)

[Kelvin]

Kelvin wins!

A couple more:

All of us are light. Light is the place to be. Light is where we came from and to where we will return.

Have one substantial dollop of Marmite every day.

I'm not making that last one up.

Ha, I had actually thought about starting a thread on this myself. The stuff he comes out with daily on his show is bonkers. Had Rebecca Front on this morning to talk about the new Iannucci sci-fi show (Avenue 5), and spent the vast majority of the interview talking about how hypnotherapy could potentially cure her claustrophobia.     

[Harry Badger]

Does Chris Evans still like to get Mr Winky out at work?

[Annie Labuntur]

Ha, I had actually thought about starting a thread on this myself. The stuff he comes out with daily on his show is bonkers. Had Rebecca Front on this morning to talk about the new Iannucci sci-fi show (Avenue 5), and spent the vast majority of the interview talking about how hypnotherapy could potentially cure her claustrophobia.     

Blimey. I don't listen to his show so the article came as a surprise. I knew he'd taken up long-distance running, but that's all.

The whole thing was in the Sunday Times colour supplement a month ago, by the way. It's online here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chris-evans-the-moment-i-saw-the-light-and-turned-my-life-around-0xxbm7r9g - can anyone get past the paywall?

[Bad Ambassador]

Billie Piper's boyfriend rents coach to Tory conference.

[Ray Travez]

can anyone get past the paywall?

For a while I went a little potty. This is when I realised I needed to do some work on myself in order to stand any chance of getting back to being a half-useful human being. To that end, I bought a farm, and then I bought another. Two farms in, my life still wasn't working, so I tried reading books instead. Fifteen years later, the farms have gone and I think I may be getting somewhere.

Here's a smidgen of what I've learnt:

■ What you're looking for is where you're looking from

■ Once you realise nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you

■ Everything you really want, you already have


■ We do not need to find or chase love, we are love

■ To be present, or not to be present, that is the question

■ There is no such thing as wrong or right, or good or evil, it is purely thinking that makes it so

■ We say, "I am not myself today," but we never say, "Myself is not my I today"

■ "I" is who we truly are

■ "I" is the witnessing presence

■ "I" is the stillness

■ "I" is everything

■ For Moses said to God, "Who are you?"And God replied, "I am that I am"(Gloria Gaynor would have her own take on this a couple of thousand years later.)

■ The point being, we "are"

■ And that's it

■ Everything else is a story

■ Our story

■ All our individual stories

■ All our collective stories

■ The drama, the characters, the props and locations, the heroes and the vagabonds

The fact that you're reading this now and where you're reading this now and what you did before and what you're going to do afterwards and the fact that I wrote it in the first place is a story, or the consequences of a story.

This whole Life Lessons issue of The Sunday Times Magazine is a story. Or rather, a collection of stories from a collection of storytellers.

We all imagine an identity every day. We usually do this by adding. (Big mistake — huge.) Adding to our "I".

Our clothes, our cars, our dogs and cats, our kids, our partners, our haircuts, our jobs, our gin and tonics, our caveman diet, our conversations, our opinions, our need to "go on holiday". It's all completely surplus to who we really are, our "I".

And the craziest bit is that we have to remake our story every single day and, frankly, it's exhausting. I mean, when things are going smoothly, when the world appears to agree with our story and we agree with our story ourselves, everything is fine, but this never remains the case for very long.

Sooner or later, we have to begin to tinker and make changes to keep our story-balls up in the air as we attempt to juggle our way to the next chapter. The problem is, when we add too much to our story that isn't who we really are, it becomes too heavy, and if we're not careful, it can come crashing down around us. This is literally when we have a breakdown. We have strayed too far away from our "I am" and our story is simply no longer sustainable.

In his stride: Evans likes to run marathons because "staying fit is easier than getting fit"
In his stride: Evans likes to run marathons because "staying fit is easier than getting fit"
GETTY IMAGES
Obviously, the longer we are around, the more chance we have of this happening, as our stories become longer, more convoluted, contrived, confused, more episodic and more dramatic and meandering and meaningless. This is why kids seem lighter, because they are lighter. Their whole identity, their whole story is just that, being a kid. That is an identity (a story) that the whole world recognises and agrees with. A story we all know because we've all been there.

Newton saw his falling apple one day and declared, "Look! Gravity." That was his identity that day, he became the gravity guy. But what about the tree whence the apple fell? The tree that had defied his gravity in the first place, rising skywards majestically towards the stars.

We see what we want to see, when and as we want to see it. Every day we see the world not as "it is" but as "we are"."How" we are, therefore, is the key to everything — along with "who" we are.

Two little words that are so spookily similar, I can't help feeling they were separated at birth. "How" we are is a direct result of "who" we are, or at least, who we "think" we are. And boom! There's the biggie right there. That word, think.

"I think, therefore I am," chirruped Descartes, way back in 1637. Except he hadn't quite "thought" enough. I reckon his thinking quote was a bit off. Actually, I'm being kind; he couldn't have been more wrong. "I am, therefore I think," is what he should have said.

We don't "have" to think. Thinking is a choice. Like making a cup of tea, or spending too long on the loo. It's up to us. Thinking should be a tool, like a hammer or a sink plunger, available to us as and when required. Except, of course, when our minds take over.

On my radio show, I get to interview lots of big brains on a regular basis. Brains far cleverer than the one floating around in my noggin, yet I am constantly gobsmacked by how lost some of them are in their own thinking. Then there are others who seem to have been well on the way to being and seeing the light, but then have suddenly stopped before the moment of truth. Their brains/minds once again covertly hijacking the situation to take credit for any recent eureka moments.

A combination of impatience and too much excess can sometimes convince one of having arrived at redemption and enlightenment before the fact. Which brings us neatly on to the dreaded ens...

Don't seek to be enriched and find yourself enslaved, don't seek to enhance and end up entangled, don't seek to be enlightened and end up enraged. Seek and ye shall find ... er, I don't think so. In my experience, if you seek the things you truly need, they will remain invisible or, even worse, be frightened off, never to be seen again.

The truth is that to find anything, one has to be available. It's the single most important thing. Life comes through us. We do not live a life, we are life. We do not breathe, we are breathed. Save your false smiles for banal selfies or those wedding photographs where everyone pretends to be happy because the photographer declares, "OK, one, two, three and smile!" What a total load of baloney.

Real smiles emanate deep from within. Real smiles have an infinite element to them. Real smiles come with a built-in calm and lightness.

And bingo, there's the biggie — lightness. Lightness is everything. We just choose to weigh ourselves down, like too many bags of sand in a hot-air balloon. Marie Kondo has made a fine living out of the art of decluttering, and quite right too as she's good at it. The key is not to decide what to throw out. What you do is empty everything out of all your drawers and cupboards so you can see the space you have just reclaimed, and then decide whether any of the objects you have removed "sparks joy". No more than five seconds is allowed per item, and if it's not a resounding yes to joy, then it simply has to go. That means the object gets given to a friend or a charity shop, put on eBay or in the recycling — wherever. The point is it just has to go. I've been decluttering for well over 12 months now. I barely have any clothes or shoes left and the only thing in my bedroom is a bed, a few books and a plant (which I involuntary inherited, but which I know I love and use for meditation).

Talking of meditation, I meditate every day, one way or another. Via contemplation, or walking, or tidying up the kitchen, or listening to one of my gurus. My No 1 guru will always be Eckhart Tolle. He of The Power of Now, the most prescient and useful book ever written. I first read it back in the 1990s. I read it at least once a year.

I don't understand why it's not part of the national curriculum. The general message is that clock time is fine for keeping appointments and transport schedules, but psychological time is where it's really at. It means accepting that it's always "now" and it can never not be "now", and that if you try to escape "the now" by projecting to the future or lamenting the past, you'll never be truly here.

Once you know this, you can never unknow it, and you can spot people a mile off who may be physically in front of you but might as well be on another planet because they are so unpresent.

This gets us on to the ikigai: the Japanese philosophy of combining what you're good at with what you can be paid for with what you love and what the world needs, underpinned with passion, a higher purpose, vocation and attention.

Attention is most important of all. When we do things with our full attention — with total presence — time ceases to exist. Remember, time is merely a human construct as opposed to consciousness, which is a universal state. To be truly conscious is to be truly present, giving one's full attention to "the now" in this moment; this single moment that is both unique and ever-present. To exist in this state of now is to be free. Free of everything, especially fear.

Fear is also a human construct. Such constructs usually end up doing us more harm than good. We create fear — and all other aspects of our life story, or personality, or character, or identity, or whatever else we want to call it — through the dreaded duality of the "I" and the "self". "I" fear for "my" wellbeing suggests there's two of us to each person. This is conflict. This is the road to "self" hatred and "self" loathing. Almost all fear is imagined. All that is imagined does not exist. Nothing that is made up can hurt you, unless you continue to write the script that means it can. In which case, "you" are driving your "self" crazy.

One of my other go-to gurus is excellent on this. His name is Sadhguru, an Indian man who went up a mountain one day, sat on a rock, felt himself disappear (for what he said felt like 15 minutes but was actually many hours) only to return completely enlightened. He has remained enlightened from that day to this — that's close to 40 years now. This may sound crazy to some, but it's really not crazy at all. He's the real deal. I've studied his talks for literally thousands of hours. I even went to see him in the flesh last year and he is 100% above normal human intellect.

Sadhguru and Eckhart are both excellent when it comes to manifestation. Manifestation is the art of making what you want to happen, happen. It is a real superpower available to all of us. Manifestation sounds bonkers, but it's not at all. Listen to either of these guys talk about how it works and you'll get it straight away. The basic rules are:

First of all, channel your inner Spice Girl. What do you really want? No, I mean, what do you really, really want? Because when you truly want something, it's because deep, down inside, you know you already have it. This is what is referred to as manifestation.

Manifestation is talked about a lot and sounds too good to be true, but it is true and it does work. But only through truth. Truth is the magic ingredient of manifestation.

Manifestation is a question of recognising your own bespoke treasures and bringing them to life, as opposed to trying to beg, borrow, buy or steal someone else's.

Manifesting is realising what is truly yours. The more I "practise" — or work on being present, which I try to do every day — the more I can sense what it is I am supposed to be doing with my life. When I'm really tuned in, the mere thought of straying from the path that life has intended for me makes me feel physically uncomfortable. The discomfort comes when "ego" knocks at my door. When I'm fully present (in other words, fully conscious), I can ignore that ego. I wait for the knocking to stop and he disappears.

In weaker moments, however, when I'm tired, or vulnerable, or stressed, or insecure, I may well answer the door to my ego, at which point he has won. This is when we begin to chase things we "think" we want, or that we are supposed to want. This is our ego in its element. He has dragged us into unconsciousness and will keep us there for as long as possible. This could be just a few seconds, or an entire lifetime.

During this period, the ego has full control over all our decisions, causing us to spend all our time consumed in the pursuit of "adding" needlessly to who and how we really are. This is how we become "lost".

The point about manifestation is that it does not take orders from the ego, it only takes orders from our own true consciousness.

This is why daily "practice" is vital. Any kind of practice will do. Anything that reminds our "selves" that our "I am" is behind everything. The "I am" that is totally still. Still, without fear or frenzy.

Traditional meditation is ideal, of course, but if that strikes you as a bit woo-woo, there's meditation available everywhere. Walking the dog, going to the gym, washing the dishes by hand instead of sticking them in the dishwasher. All that's required to be totally present is a sense of spaciousness between truth and fiction. Between "what is" and what "is not".

This is why lots of rich people end up deeply unhappy and eventually very angry. They sacrifice the first half of their lives gathering fortunes they don't need and can never spend, and then the second half guarding their spoils from equally "lost" predators trying to take it from them. What a load of old nonsense. And so bloody exhausting and futile.

Stay light and keep it simple. Keeping it simple will keep you sane.

On our best days, all of us are light. Light is the place to be. Light is the place to live. Light is where we came from and to where we will return. Light is our permanent, natural state and all we have to do to stay light is to stop adding. Stop adding today and feel your own lightness begin to return tomorrow. It may not be quite as straightforward to do as it is to say, but the sooner you start, the sooner you'll begin to feel the benefit. Coming down a mountain can be surprisingly more difficult than going up one. This doesn't mean we do away with mountains. It just means we might want to choose our mountains more carefully.

MY HABITS FOR A HAPPY LIFE

■ Drink beetroot, tomato and cranberry juice

■ The 16-8 daily diet. Don't eat for 16 hours and then eat only within an eight-hour window

■ Drink alcohol only on Fridays and Saturdays

■ Eat meat only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and probably not on all of those

■ Drink one magnesium drink every day

■ Have one spoonful of manuka honey every day

■ Have one substantial dollop of Marmite every day (good for vitamin B12 and gorgeous on oven-toasted sourdough, with lashings of butter melting through the holes)

■ Run five miles to and from work every weekday. Ten miles in all

■ Enter a marathon or half marathon at least every three months (staying fit is much more satisfying and achievable than getting fit)

■ Ditch all the sappers in your life (a sure sign of a sapper is someone who spends most of the time talking about other people)

■ Mix only with zappers

■ I got rid of my phone on January 21, 2019 (I haven't missed it for a single second)

■ Get tested for the three Cs every five years: skin cancer, bowel/colon cancer, prostate cancer

■ Eradicate any other conditions that impact wellbeing (I recently had my varicose veins microwaved and it's like I have brand new legs — amazing!)

■ Sort out your sleep. Declutter the bedroom first, and keep to regular bedtimes — 7.30pm for me, Monday to Friday. Weekends, more like 10pm

■ Get up at 3.30am in the week and 5.30am at weekends

■ Meditation, meditation, meditation. Which includes cleaning the kitchen every night from 6-7pm

■ Give my job all of my attention while I'm at work. Barely think about my job when I'm not at work

■ Have a daily to-be list. For example, be grateful, be thoughtful and so on. Review it at the same time, same place every day (say, while waiting for the kettle to boil whenever the first cup of the day is being prepared). Look at the time I have available for my life. Do the maths. After doing the maths, realise that once I've loved all those I need to love and done all of the above, I have no time for anything else left. Except holidays. Hurrah

■ Have at least two holidays permanently booked at all times


CHRIS EVANS'S RECOMMENDED READING

The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth Eckhart Tolle
Inner Engineering Sadhguru
An Invitation to Freedom Mooji
A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind Shoukei Matsumoto
Everything Is Figureoutable Marie Forleo
The Conquest of Happiness Bertrand Russell
Eat Yourself Healthy Dr Megan Rossi
Stuffocation James Wallman
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** Mark Manson
The Men on Magic Carpets Ed Hawkins
Start with Why Simon Sinek
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Charlie Mackesy
The Road Less Travelled M Scott Peck
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The Four Agreements Don Miguel Ruiz
Zen Shunmyo Masuno
How Not to Die Michael Greger
Tao Te Ching Lao-Tzu
Ikigai Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles
Wabi Sabi Beth Kempton
The School of Life Alain de Botton (and friends)

[bgmnts]

This is a H.S Art pisstake yeah?

[Ray Travez]

Running ten miles a day seems like a lot of bother. So much for The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F***.

[Annie Labuntur]

Thanks for the copy and paste, Ray. I have the mag but no scanner.

I meant to look at this Eckhart Tolle chappie a while ago when I saw someone say he was more of the real deal than Deepak Chopra. But I see that he's being feted by Oprah and others all the same, so maybe it's the same old platitudes and complacencies that only wealthy people can afford to indulge.

Inner change requires winner change.  Just made that up myself. Let's write a self-help book!

[Captain Z]

Let's write a self-help book!

If you don't start the HS Art thread, I will.

Tried some Deepak Chopra once, but I can no longer find it in Tesco.

[Annie Labuntur]

If you don't start the HS Art thread, I will.

I'm not going anywhere near that bunch of zanies!

Then again if Chris Evans can own Descartes, who knows what we could be capable of?

[BlodwynPig]

Nice one Chris. Now shuffle off this mortal coil you bargain bin Neol.

Narcissist to his core