From A Life Of Privilege To A Life Of Service EP 354

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hey, welcome back to another episode of Grief 2 Growth. This is a podcast where we explore the profound aspects of life, death, and what it means to truly live. I'm your host, Brian D Smith, in case you don't know me. And whether you're a longtime listener or joining us for the first time, I'm really grateful that you're here. At Grief 2 Growth, we dive into the deep mysteries of existence, drawing on both personal experiences and insight from a range of voices. Having navigated the heartbreaking loss of my daughter Shayna, I've gone through the depths of grief and emerged with a renewed understanding of life and life's incredible tapestry. And I like to share that with you. That's my, that's my goal. Today we're venturing into a fascinating conversation with Serge Bedington-Berens. He's an individual whose life story is as compelling as it is transformative. Serge was born into privilege as a son of a Russian princess. He embarked on a path that led him from a world of wealth and ego-driven pursuits to one of profound spiritual awakening and authenticity. In this episode, we'll explore how Serge navigated his soul's journey, transforming his life into a force for positive change. We'll delve into the significance of inner work for all of us, the the process of releasing old patterns and attachments, and the journey towards healing the heart. We'll also discuss his encounters with diverse sages and healers, his book Amazing Grace, and his insights on how to live a life aligned with one's soul beyond the constraints of traditional religion. By listening to this episode, I'm hoping you're going to gain valuable perspectives on personal transformation, overcoming ego, and the power of self-discovery. It's a conversation that I hope promises to inspire, to challenge, to inspire you, to challenge you and offer you new ways of seeing yourself and the world. And Serge has got some insights on what he thinks is going to happen over the next 60 years for all of us. So make sure you stay around to hear that. And after you listen to the episode, head over to grieftogrowth.com/community and continue the conversation there. So with that, I want to welcome Serge Bedington-Berens.

Hey there, Brian. Good to be here.

It's great to have you here. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with you about your, your personal journey, your spiritual journey. Now, I know you started with a life of privilege as a son of a Russian princess. So tell me what it was like growing up.

We had 18 servants for my father and mother and me. So I was cosseted. I was sort of cosseted and I had a lot of style and famous people around me and sort of members of the royal family, because royals like to hang out with other royals and celebrities. But I felt like a pea in the wrong pod. I felt I wasn't in the right tribe. My soul felt unfed. My ego got fed, and I went to all the best schools and Oxford University, and But I didn't want to be part of that superficial kind of upper-classery world that kind of Prince Harry has also escaped from. And so when my dad, who was a rather sort of a tycoon, you know, my dad was a tycoon and he wanted me to be a tycoon and he was really sort of was always making me wrong because I wasn't more like him. And so when he died and I was 23, I could start on my spiritual journey. I said, I don't want to be part of this rich set. So I gave a lot of money away. And, and somehow my soul now had a chance to come to life inside me. It had to be oppressed. I had to wear this false mask of my, you know, my persona of socialite and good with, you know, cocktail parties and dinner parties with smart people and smoking jackets and Gucci shoes and all that shit, man, as they would say. And then I was able to start my real life. And a lot of it happened when I went to California. That was a time of the Human Potential Movement, which was a fantastic movement, much more important, Brian, than the Haight-Ashbury, where all the visionaries from Europe, they all converged in California because they felt, yes, sort of here is where the space to be free to develop my thinking. Interesting. So, so I got— I was very privileged to hang out and even work alongside some of my spiritual heroes like Ram Dass, Joseph Campbell, Moshe Feldenkrais, Fritjof Capra, because a group of us started an institute for the study of conscious evolution. So So suddenly, from being in my artificial world, I was in a world of people whose life was saying, I want to make a difference. We need new paradigms. We need new ways of exploring the universe. And what I'm now finding as I'm nearly 80 is that sort of many of the ideas that I'm working and writing in my books now and teaching, because I teach a lot of seminars and webinars, still work as a psychotherapist and help people, is that they were all birthed about them. And they haven't much, you know, and sort of what happened in those, in the '70s and '80s in California, was an incredible sort of movement for transformation. And I think that we're now seeing it beginning to work because in a way, Brian D Smith, the counterculture didn't work. I think because the planet was not in as bad a state as it is today. So that we were all sort of visionary New Age is a great new world of Aquarius was going to unfurl and there would be love and light and peace, man. It's all beautiful, you know, sort of hang out with beautiful people and, you know, musical hair and, and kind of, and we were all a little bit naive. And I think now the same movement is happening, but we've woken up a little bit and realized that that the world ain't sort of quite as sort of beautiful as it's turning out. And we're now having to face the dark side of the planet. We're now having to face the evil side of the planet. And we're particularly seeing it, Brian, in your wonderful country, where I think you're, if Trump gets in and he may well do, and God help the world if he does. If you have some Trump listeners, I apologize, you know, sort of to you. But I think there's going to be a lot of challenges in the years ahead. So how about that for an entrée, Brian D Smith?

Excellent. I love it. Wonderful. Great. Thank you for that, for that, for that great introduction to the conversation. I do want to ask you, at what point— because, you know, most of us did not grow up with material privilege, and we, we think that would be the best thing ever— at what point did you realize, this is not what I want, this just doesn't work for me?

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

Well, because I wanted to be an ordinary person. I wanted to find my divine ordinariness.

Hmm.

But I was always mixing with people who were kind of sort of lived in their ivory towers, the rich. The rich and the celebrities, which sort of— and for me, the kinds of people I was meeting did not make my heart sing. And sort of wealth can be a terrible, terrible trap. And that's why when I I had inherited from my father, and I had to get rid of a lot of his money quickly because it can trap you into not doing anything, you know, just as poverty can trap you, you know, that sort of both polarities can be very entrapping. But I Yeah, it was not a world that I felt at home with. And I think it was kind of interesting when my dad died and I went to his funeral, of all the celebrities and royalties and famous people and tycoons, not one person said to me, hey, Serge, your dad's died, can I help you in your career as a young man? Because I was just 23, I just finished Oxford. And I felt, are, you know, they're not my tribe. I don't belong in this world. Interesting.

Now, I, I, I always hesitate to get political on the program because we're supposed to be a, we're a spiritual program and people jump on me all the time about me mixing politics with, with what I do. But we have to admit that Donald Trump is a world figure, a, a world-changing figure. And people around the world are focused on what's happening in America right now with politics because of, because of this person. Um, and you're, you're about of his age and were born in similar circumstances. You know, he's, he's kind of royalty, American royalty, uh, very privileged, uh, wealthy person. So what are your observations about someone like that who came from a background similar to yours?

Well, he's become a cult figure, and often cult figures are extremely sort of manipulative people. A Polish psychologist invented the term a pathocrat to discuss sort of world leaders who are psychopaths. Narcissistic, inflated, and paranoid. And I think that he comes in this clothing. But because of the particular sort of myths of your country, i.e., that the American dream was over is over and gone, and only the super rich seem to benefit from it. And a lot of people in your country feel ripped off. And he talks the language of victimhood. Look, the inner— what does he call it, Brian D Smith? This inner state, this— the deep state.

The deep state.

Yeah, the deep state. Yeah, yeah, the deep state. I'm going to be your sort of retribution. And so he poses as a kind of Svengali figure, sort of larger than life. And it's very interesting that even the fundamentalist Christians are really going sort of, you know, for him and sort of sees him as a Christ-like sort of figure where he's going to sort of lead them out, you know, and the waters will, will part and he'll, and he'll lead them to the Holy Land. And so because of the false narratives and false and falsehoods that are being sort of propagated, if you repeat you know, something that is untrue enough, people will, will believe in it. So I think that he embodies both the wounded ego of America plus a sense of, you know, disappointment that life has not turned out the way it should have done. And I think a lot of that has to do with the great conspiracy in the world that no one really points out and which Trump is very much part of, i.e., that it's really been a conspiracy where the poor have had to pay for the rich sort of getting richer. And I don't think that the poor need to be given more money. I think that they need— that the system needs to change sort of whereby the money that should be going to poor people and education and sort of medicine is going to make the super rich even richer. And so perhaps your wonderful country, if he gets in, will have to sort of face its nemesis because civilizations, they ebb and flow. And I think that we're seeing the end of one kind of civilization. And a book was written in the '70s about America, A World Power or a Rogue Nation. And I think your beautiful country that has given me so much, and I have so many American friends, is a world power, but it has a dark side. And that dark side is a roguish nation. I mean, America has started more wars than any other country. Yes, yeah, you know, and if the little countries don't agree with, you know, what's in it for America geopolitically, they'll get bashed on the head. Yeah, that's well, Well, we've gone a long way from amazing grace, but I would just like to say that I think there is an amazing grace or a fierce grace that is present in all this, sort of whereby only if we face the darkest part of our souls, both as an individual, and of course you in Grief to Growth will understand this very well. Only if we face the darkest part of ourselves individually and sort of nationally are we going to heal, because I think we've got to face the dark side. Or as a character in a Thomas Mann novel said, if a way to the better there be, it lies in our taking a full look at the worst. And I think that that that is what's happening to a lot of people and a lot of nations.

Yeah. Well, let's, let's get back to your, to your spiritual journey. Now, you've—

my spiritual journey. Yeah.

You've, you've gone through a lot of different types of philosophies and things like that. And you even made a comment in some of the information you sent me that you've studied a lot of things, and maybe some people might say superficially, as opposed to one thing more deeply. So how do you, how would you respond to that?

Well, I feel I've touched into many different traditions. I've been with Sufis, I've been with Buddhists, I've studied sort of mystical Christianity. I've, you know, I've been out in the desert with shamans, I've worked with psychedelics, I've done a lot of different things and it's given me a broader view because they all complement each other. Those true paths that look to find the infinite in the finite, or that really try to look at discovering our soul sort of nature, that they all have something in common. And I've taught workshops all over the world, and I work with individuals. And it's really great because I have all sorts of different arrows in my quiver and many different perspectives that I can give than if I'd just been a Buddhist or just been a Sufi. So, so all the great traditions, they all talk the same language, but they all sort of emphasize sort of different things. Like shamanism is more you connect with nature, sort of Christianity, you connect more with Jesus.

Yeah. I think we live in a very interesting time, because I was talking with someone about this the other day, you know, the world is getting smaller. Something happens in, in Russia right now. And I hear about it on the news 30 seconds later. You know, we live in a time where the world is so we can— and, you know, used to be if you were even a Catholic, like living in America, you might live in a Catholic neighborhood. And all your neighbors were Catholic. So you never got to know anybody who was even a a Protestant, certainly never a Hindu or a Buddhist. But now we, we can learn from— we know all these different traditions, and I think they all have their strengths and they all have some, maybe some weaknesses. I, I love— and I've studied very superficially a lot of different traditions also, um, and I can take the best from each of them. And I think that, yeah, I think that's why the world is coming to the place we're coming to now.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that the only solution is a change of consciousness, an uplift of consciousness. I don't like the idea of a reset because it means we're creating our future in the image of the past and the image of our present society. But our current narrative, the way that most institutions work, is not going to create a future. We have to shift the level, or as Einstein said, the solution to problems doesn't happen at the level of the problem, but at a higher level. We've got to create a new, a new narrative for, for politics, for economics, for how the world is going to work. And I call that an upsurge. Humanity has to raise its consciousness. We have to move beyond desiring other people's property. We have to move beyond envy and aggression. And we have to look at the hostility in the bottom of our hearts and our fear of people who don't see the world as we do, our fear of immigrants, our fear of people whose skin is a different color from ours, our fear of people who believe that God is different from the way that we see it. And sort of basically my whole thesis and my whole sort of life work is about the opening of the heart. Because when we open the heart, then the opposites become reconciled. Then we have a natural compassion and an empathy. If my heart is open to you, Brian D Smith, I can feel my being into your being. So I understand what moves you. And actually, my heart is open to you. And I feel you are a very tender and loving man.. And if my heart is closed, I won't see you in that way. I won't be able to, to sort of walk in your shoes. And that's the new consciousness that's needed, an opening of the human collective heart. And, and sort of maybe this is going to happen when things get so bad that we realize that there's no choice but just to start loving our neighbors as ourselves. In fact, the last chapter of my book, Amazing Grace, I look at the future and I say that I think, to quote you, out of the incredible grief that is going to happen, a lot of growth is going to happen. And I believe a new society will come into being, but not without a lot of struggle. And I certainly think that if about 5% of people can really awaken their hearts in a big way, that, that there can be a quantum shift in consciousness in the world. And by the way, I just want to say, and I always like to say this, I believe a lot in being of service. And if there's anyone who's listening to this program would like to have an hour with me, no charge, just get my email, send me an email and say, hey, Serge, I disagreed or I agreed with what you said, or I've got this problem. I'd like to talk with you. I'd be very, very happy to talk with you in a therapeutic or a political or whatever way you'd like to talk with me. So please be in touch. Thank you, Brian D Smith.

That's very generous.

And it's not really generous. It's just that I think we all need to be of service to our fellow human beings in the way that we're best able to be of service. I don't go into the rainforest and confront the guys who are sort of chopping them down. I don't go in a little dinghy and confront the Japanese whalers who are killing the whales. But this is that this is my way that I can help people. And it, and it actually makes me feel good. So I just sort of really want to, to put over the idea that the more that we can be of service to the emergence of a, of a new consciousness and a more humane world, the more we benefit our own spiritual and psychological growth.

Yeah, absolutely. So your, your vision for the world, and I do want to, I want to get into that a little bit later on, like, you're, because you talk about what you think is going to happen over the next 60 years. What's that based on? Is that based upon just your observations of humanity? Is that based on some spiritual insights you've been given? Why, what is it you're basing that on?

Well, I rely a lot on insight. I don't call myself a psychic, but I do have insights. And a lot of people whose work I really respect also have the same sort of vision as I do. So I feel that I'm not a lone wolf crying in the wilderness. But my experience with people is that change often doesn't happen unless there's a lot of suffering. I just made a recording which people may want to see on my YouTube channel called Fierce Grace. And I have had fierce grace come into my own life. And it's been sort of with me in the last year as I've had to deal with some chemotherapy. And it's knocked the hell out of me, but it's been very good because it's really allowed me to tune more into the healing power of nature, get closer to my darling wife, and closer to my dog, and closer to animal and nature consciousness. And it's actually had an awakening effect on me. And so I'm aware that when we really go to the end, when we go into the darkness, that the light emerges at the end of the tunnel. And so I feel that sort of that there are helping forces in the dark things that are happening in our planet at the moment. And we can even argue, Brian D Smith, that your Donald Trump is an instrument of fierce grace. And I think that he's come to do an important piece of work for the planet, if not to awaken a lot of people to the fact of his loathsomeness. Because I think that one human being, I can't think of any other human being who combines all the traits that are most not needed if our world is to move to a better place.

It's a very interesting observation. And I, you know, I try to help people understand. I think everyone is here to teach us something. Everyone's here to challenge us. Everyone. So when someone challenging comes into your life, as opposed to opposing that person, it's like I look at, try to look at what are they here to teach me? And, and Donald Trump is someone that embodies— I'm going to say it— the very dark side of America. And we're— and, and, you know, 60% of our country looks at the other 30 or 40% and says, this is not who we are, this is not— and, and that part of the country said, yeah, this is who we are, you know, this, this man is who we are. This is the, the slogan, Make America Great Again. You know, going back to what they perceive America to be. So I, I agree with you. I think that, you know, it's really interesting when we look at bad people in our world. They're here maybe to teach us something. And, and, and you said something real also really important thing about how people don't seem to grow unless there's some sort of pain involved. Um, my, my whole program, Grief to Growth, it's like we take that, that, that that pain, the chemotherapy even, you know, and it makes us go deeper, challenges us and it moves us forward.

It makes us go deeper. I think that the whole social media sort of paraphernalia, it superficializes us and our challenge is to go deeper. For me, spirituality is not sort of sitting on a sort of mountaintop saying, oh, and being able to make other people wrong because I'm more enlightened than you. But spirituality is just a question of going deep and treating our fellow human beings in a kindly and appreciative and respecting way, whoever they are. That for me is what being spiritual is. I have talks with people who belong to a community called the non-dual community. They love to make me wrong that I don't feel sort of like them, that I'm totally in tune with the infinite. I say, I want to be a human being, you know, I'm here on Earth. I don't want to be some sort of kind of sort of guru-like figure who is above everyone else, is that we need to enter more deeply into our humanity. And that's what being spiritual is for me. Yeah. And I feel that that's probably for you and the lovely program you do. Yeah.

I think you just said something really, really important because this whole idea of non-duality reality, that, that, you know, we are all one and there's no dark and light. And so I have an old friend, and every, every time I say this, I think about him. So I give credit to Mike. It's like there are different levels of reality. We live in a dualistic environment, you know. It's like, so sometimes people will say, well, there's no good or bad. So then people will take that so far and say, well, then that means nothing I do is wrong. And I'm like, no, on this level, we have rules, right? We don't torture babies. So we can't say from a spiritual perspective, it's okay to torture babies. No, we have different rules on different levels. And we are here to have a human experience. We are here to feel all of the emotions, not just, not just peace and love and light. We're also here to experience challenge and fear and darkness. That's why we incarnate. That's, that's my belief.

Absolutely, absolutely, Brian. Yep, yep. And I think that we're at a very interesting point in history. And I think it's also important at this time that we remember to smell the flowers, that we don't get pulled into, say, Trumpian catastrophizing, that it's all so terrible. Because that's the main narrative. And especially it touches a lot of young people. Yeah, sort of luckily, I have a young 24-year-old daughter who's quite a cool girl. And she's not touched by that narrative and she feels positive about life. But so many young people are touched by this catastrophizing that it's all terrible. We need to allow the joy and the celebration of life And I think that we live in a world that is based on the polarity between success and failure. And if you have qualities like you're pragmatic, you're a go-getter, you have a good commercial sense, you're materialistic, then you're successful. And then you'll make it some. And all the, what I call the transpersonal or unitive qualities of joy and kindness and and, um, and beauty, they get sort of left behind as not being important. And, um, I think the world is going to be saved by joy and beauty in the end. And, and, and it's very interesting, I think that the artists and the musicians and the, and the poets and the, um, and the jugglers and but they're the people who are doing most to heal the world. And so let's not forget, after you've listened to this program, sort of anyone who's doing this, go and meditate on beauty. Find the things that make your heart sing. Go and hang out with a good friend. Go and give something to a friend of yours who is in trouble. Read a beautiful poem.

Yeah.

Well, you play the guitar.

Yeah. It's interesting because we were talking about how bad things are and I have realized almost universally, if you say to people, the world's in terrible state right now, almost everybody will agree with you. The world is terrible. There are wars, there's poverty, there's, you know, there's etc. But statistically speaking, the world is not in a worse place than it's ever been. Poverty is actually— global poverty is actually going down. I, I, and I've said this to people, as when, when Hamas invaded Israel a couple of months ago, it is terrible, it's awful, it's, it's horrible, but compared to World War II, it's, it's like nothing. You know, the 6 million Jews died in war, and that's just Jews. And then I looked up how many Germans and And British people died in the bombings that were going on, and then the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So things are in a way getting objectively getting better. But what I think is happening is human consciousness is saying, this is wrong. This is— we're finally starting to say we're not going to accept this as normal anymore. And I think our consciousness, as you said, you mentioned earlier, you know, 30 or 40 years ago, probably no more than that. Wow. 50 years ago. We thought we were ready for this revolution that I think you foresee coming, but I think things kind of do have to get worse in a sense, or people perceive that before we're ready to make that transformation.

Maybe why the '60s turn on, tune in, sort of drop out sort of didn't work was because the world, because the global crisis was not as bad as it is today. And so there wasn't the same urgency. There's now a sense of urgency, but I agree with you. We have to balance the dark and the light. And I think, I think it was some rabbi who said something to the effect of dance your painful dance on a sea of joy. And sort of how can we bring the dark and the light together? And so we're not going up into the light and escaping the darkness, but we're not just going into the how terrible it all is, but that we sort of dance between these opposites. I think that that's the great challenge. And I think that that's the challenge in my life. Because I've had a lot of sort of interesting sort of challenges and sort of difficult things have happened. I'm sorry that you lost a daughter. I don't know how I would be able to deal if I lost my only daughter, but I can see that it's made you a brave and sort of loving man to have gone through that tragedy., and I really take my hat off to Brian D Smith, and I think that we have to be open to face the worst and hope for the best.

Yeah, I want to switch gears a little bit here. I know you talk about the keys to living a content life or a happy life. So as with your age and your experience, what would you say to the audience? What are some of the keys to living a content life?

Okay. I'm just doing some essays for my new book that's going to be called Three Chord Man. And I'll tell you why in a moment. But an essay I'm finishing is The challenges of getting older.

Hmm.

And, and I think the key to living a good life is to have love in our life. And not everyone has it. But if we can be part of a community, that's really, really important. When I came to California, I was part of a spiritual community. Of like-minded people. So community is important. I think that, I think that we need to keep in good physical shape. I mean, I do a lot of sport every day. I keep in good shape. I go to the gym. I work out. And I think we need a good relationship with animals. It's so important. And and a good relationship with nature, because there's something so beautiful and healing about animals and nature. And I think that we need to work at opening our heart and emptying our heart of the pain and finding what makes our heart sing. I mean, I'm working as hard as I have ever done in my life, not because I'm some sort of workaholic, but I love to work. I love to be with people. I love to teach. I love to write. Makes my heart sing. And so I think that those things are very important because There's that wonderful sort of story that Joseph Campbell talks about how when he was a student, he was in a cafe and he saw a couple sort of having lunch with their son and their son and he heard their son saying, oh, mom, I don't want to eat that, that meat. And the father saying, 'Come on, you need to eat it.' And the mum said to the father, 'Can't you see he doesn't want to eat it, honey?' And suddenly this touched the father, and he stood up and shouted at the whole restaurant, 'I've never done anything I've ever wanted to do in my life.' And a lot of people don't do the things they want to do. Wow. And that applies to a lot of very wealthy people who are stuck on the materialistic thing to earn more money. And I've had a lot of very wealthy people as clients, and they're no happier than the rest of us. So that we need— we're lucky if we can find our thing. And if we can't find our thing, as our main work, then let's do the things outside our thing that makes our hearts sing. Let's have a hobby, something that we like. Let's play music. Let's sort of collect stamps or whatever it is. So that it's about being creatively involved in life. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, you know, obviously you're doing something right to, to be in the, in the shape you are at, you know, at, at 80 and, and to be the, the passion that you have about what you're doing. I mean, I, I hear you say I'm writing my next book and I'm like, wow, okay. Um, cuz I've written one and I'm trying to get, get around to writing the next one. But I, I love the, the passion that you have for what you do, the passion you have for humanity. Um, and you, you said you're not doing this for, for money. You're doing this because you want to contribute. And what makes your heart sing. I love that.

Books don't make you money unless you're Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle.

Yeah.

And I ain't either of them. You know, I'll tell you what my next book is called, Three Chord Man. And I'll tell you how I was at a dinner a few months ago and talking about music sort of with a woman whom I didn't know, and she said, Serge, are you a musician? I said, no, I'm a 3-chord man, i.e., I play the blues, and all you really need is 3 chords to play the 12-bar blues, and I'd never really advanced beyond that, but, you know, I'd play a bit of blues. So, and then a friend of mine sort of heard me say that and said, Serge, that's a good name for your next book. So my next book is going to be called Three Chord Man.

Yeah, I like that. I like that. And so what's that book going to be about?

Well, it's going to be about sort of letters to my daughter about how I feel the challenges that I feel that she faces in growing up and about our relationship.

Awesome.

I'm not an intellectual, you know, I'm a kind of feeling person. And so, so yeah, it's going to be fun. Like, sort of this book is fun. It's, I just say a tiny bit more about it is that It's fun. It has all sorts of stories like, you know, about the Deb scene and the upper-class scene in England, because I was at Oxford, you know, at a time that it was a little bit sort of Downton Abbey-ish, the world I grew up in. And it's also about my spiritual journeys and the things that the seeker has To Look Out For. And I wrote it because I think, Brian, we all need to tell our story in some ways or other, you know, either to a person who loves us and sees us or through music or sort of telling our story is our way of finding out who we are.

Yeah, yeah. But speaking of that, that reminded me, I had a client that we worked together for several months. And what she would do, as we start working, because she wasn't sure what she really wanted to work on, work with me. And she said, well, I want to leave a legacy for my grandchildren. So she figured that out. And she said, I want— what I want to do is I want to tell you my story. So we would get together every week, and she would just— she started from the time she was a child. And she just— she continued the next week in our next session, our hour-long sessions, telling me her story. And it was so fascinating. I learned so much from it, for one thing. But as she went back and retold the things that had happened to her life, because she was trying to write it down for her grandchildren, but just reliving it in her mind just opened up— it was just wild watching her transformation as she just simply told her story. So I think that's really, really important for us to do.

And also to tell our story to someone who sees us and listens to us.

Yes, yes.

Because if we— because that allows us to tell our story. Like, I can go to a party and I can bump into someone. In fact, I did once, and they said, 'I'm sad.' No, tell me about yourself. What are you up to? You've got rather long hair for someone your age, blah, blah, blah. So tell me what you're doing. You know, into that space, there was nothing I could say because the person was not interested in my story.

Right.

But if we meet someone and they look into our eyes and we feel they care, not because they know us, but just because we're a human being, and they say, what makes your heart sing, and we feel heard and listened to, and there's a kind of love there, then we've got a space into which that we can empty our beingness into, and in doing so, that we can discover it. And there's something sort of lovely about you, Brian, because I feel your love, that it's part of your nature. I feel a generosity in your being, and it allows me to tell my story to you. And so just sort of being with you and hanging out with you feels quite healing.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

I—

it's funny because we talked about the non-dualist before. I do believe that at some level we are all one. We are all connected, that I am you, that you are me. We are all God living through these various avatars. Facets, whatever term you want to use. And so I love connecting with other people, and I love hearing their stories. And we can all learn from each other's stories. You know, I don't have to go through it. That's one of the great things about humans. That's one of the reasons humans have survived the way we have, because we don't— each, every generation doesn't have to learn knowledge over and over again. We can, we can share knowledge with each other, and we can not just technical knowledge, but also what's your experience been? What did you learn when when this thing happened to you? What was it like being a super wealthy person? You know, I think it was Jim Carrey that said, I wish everybody could become famous and wealthy so you could realize that's not where happiness lies. Because a lot of us are pursuing— we're pursuing fame, we're pursuing wealth, thinking that's what's going to make me happy, that's what's going to make me happy. But all we have to do is look at the people that have it, you know, people that win the lotteries or people that are born into that type of wealth. That they're not any happier.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so we're into the question, what makes us happy? I mean, that's the great mystery, and I think it's really important what sort of makes us happy. And I think, although I've told the things that sort of make my life work, I think it really boils down to a deeper connection with our own divine selfhood. If I can, and you know, I don't want it to sound all sort of spiritually kind of, but I think when we connect to ourselves, that there's a sort of happiness because we're living with an us that's more real. And I think that when we live with an us that is more superficial, as I did for the early part of my life, when I was a professional ski racer, I enjoyed that, and the girls liked it. You know, a lot of my early life was being really superficial, you know, and I would sort of work out and get great muscles so, you know, I could parade on sort of beaches and girls would like me and I'd be this cool ski racer. But it didn't really make me happy. Yeah. And it didn't, it sort of, it kind of fed my narcissism. And a lot of my life, dear Brian, has been about recovering from sort of being extremely sort of narcissistic. Which is actually a way, which is a residue for unhappiness. And again, if we return to our great orange-hued blonde bombshell that we've been talking about, I can't think of anyone more unhappy and who looks more unhappy than poor Donald Trump.

I feel sorry for him a lot of the time, and I know people that know me well will probably be surprised by that, but I do.

I do as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do as well. What makes you happy, Brian D Smith?

What makes me happy is I love teaching. I love helping. I love sharing with people. You know, it's interesting. I think people like you and I, we come into the world and I felt like I didn't connect. I'm like, I'm like, why am I here? I feel like I'm on the wrong planet. I was born in like the early '60s. So I remember being a little kid and turning on the TV and seeing the Vietnam War. And I thought, what is— what kind of place is this where people kill each other on purpose? I just, I never understood that. And why do we have money? Why don't we just— why don't people just work and then give away? And, you know, I thought it should be a barter system, if anything. What makes me happy is seeing people reach their potential, seeing people wake up as to why we're here. I would say it's like, where did we come from? Why are we here? And where are we going? So helping people answer those questions. What is the purpose of your life? You know, how do I take whatever I've been given, whatever that is, and how do I, how do I make the most of that? I love, I love doing this. I love when people, you know, reach out to me and say, I listened to your program and it really helped me. I think, I think you and I agree with like, we're here to help each other. I think that's— people say, what's the reason why we're here? We're here to help each other. Some of us, I think, are more awake in this dream than others are. I think some of us are still very much asleep, and some of us are here to help those other people wake up. So that's what I like to do.

And, well, I mean, it could have been me saying that. And I think that because of that, I have a lot of good spirit in me despite having been ill.. And I found a really interesting thing that despite having been quite ill this last year, my spirit has never been stronger.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that we need to think about the spirit, but we need to work on ourselves. I wrote a book before this called Gateways to the Soul: Inner Work for the Outer World. And by the way, Guys, I would love you to buy my books because all the money goes to a charity and I'm now paying it to a charity to help the Ukrainians. But I've got them, but I can never find mine. Yeah, but I wrote a book. The book before this was called Gateways to the Soul, and the book before that was called Awakening the Universal Heart. And I'm not just trying to sort of promote me, but all the money, if you buy Serge Bedington Barron's books, it'll all go to a good cause. And sort of maybe that you can get something out of them.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, so, so yeah, so please do. Because I don't want to make money sort of out of doing this. So, yes, the challenge of the world today is, ja, is to realize more and more our interconnectedness. I think I think that the problem is that too many world leaders are hyper-disconnected human beings, and they've come into their positions of power because they've been cunning and they've had an emptiness that all disconnected human beings have inside them. So they wanted to fill it with power and status, like sort of Netanyahu, with power and status and fame. And then you realize that these leaders don't care about their people. They just want to be seen as great people. Again, the orange man, does he care about his MAGA crowd? Not one iota. He just wants them to care about him because he feels so empty. Inside that unless he's continually being fed from the outside, that emptiness comes back. So how can we create a world, Brian, where we have good human beings in positions of power? I asked myself, how did Martin Luther King succeed in doing what he did in America. How did Nelson Mandela sort of manage to affect the transitions he did without there being a civil war in South Africa? My explanation is that both had such big hearts that they were able to hold the whole of their nations inside. Them.

Wow, that's beautiful.

That's, that's what's needed. How do we, how do we allow our hearts to grow so that they can encompass more of the world outside us, inside us, so that I can encompass people who are completely different to myself. I'll tell you, Brian D Smith, I was brought up to be very prejudiced and homophobic, and, and Black people or Asian people were non-goers in the world that I was brought up. And we used to sort of imitate them and tease them. I mean, it's horrifying. It's absolutely horrifying. I look back on that, but it was a gift because I was born with all the worst things about the patriarchal sort of male sort of mindset. And I've had to heal that. I mean, all my friends when I was young, they were all sort of white upper-classy kind of people like me who spoke, you know, this with the same English accent as I.

You know, it's really interesting you say that. I'm curious. I always get to this and I, Yeah. Do you, do you, do you believe that we plan our lives before we, before we come into this incarnation, that we choose, for example, the circumstances of our birth, things like that?

Absolutely. And I, and I believe we choose the parents we have to give us the problems we have, because, because our lives are all about solving certain problems. But, but where we have free will is how we deal with the challenges that we're given, that we have free will with.

Yeah. And the reason I asked you that question, because when you bring up things like—

I do believe that.

When you bring up things like soul planning, people who are born in poverty, or people who are born to parents that beat them or alcoholics or whatever, they might say, well, I would never choose this circumstance. I would choose to be born wealthy. But, you know, I love your life because it also presents an example. There's no perfect life, right? So you might— someone might say, well, because let's take— again, we're going to keep using his name— Donald Trump. There are a lot of people who would love to trade places with Donald Trump. I would love to be born into a family of fame and fortune and have millions of dollars. Um, and so they would say— and I, I just kind of laugh. I think God goes, you know, if you want to personalize God like that, okay, I'm going to give you what you asked for. You could— you're going to be born— you're going to be born into a wealthy family. You're going to have— you're going to have fame, you're going to have millions of dollars, you'll never want for anything. Boom, there you go. And then you end up, you land on like, whoa, wait a minute, this is not what I was expecting.

Yeah, exactly. Well, I'll tell you something quite interesting. I read a book and I got to know him and I corresponded with him because I had a chapter in this book on ayahuasca, on my experiences with ayahuasca. And I talked to a guy called Chris Bash, who wrote a book called LSD and the Mind of God. And he's a professor of history and philosophy in the States. And, and about sort of 20 years ago, that as an experiment to understand how the cosmos worked, every 2 weeks for over some years that he would take massive dose of LSD, you know, as an academic, to see— not to heal himself or to get high in a hippie way, but to really expand into the cosmos and see how the cosmos worked.

Interesting.

And so he really got to sort of hang up there with some of the great sort of minds who dictate events on the cosmos. It's a fascinating book. But he said that in one of his high-dosage sort of cosmic consciousness sessions, he had the experience that all his lives were happening at the same time.

Yeah.

And that, I think, is a very interesting thing.

That's becoming a more common understanding.

Yeah, that all our lives happen at the same time. And, but, but again, unless one has personally experienced that, you know, we don't really know, but it's definitely a book worth sort of looking at. Yeah, sort of reading, not not because of the LSD sort of part of it, but because of the insights that came through ascending into cosmic consciousness and experiencing what goes on in those realms. Yeah, and the beings. I'll tell you something. Yeah, no, no, you're going to say something.

No, go ahead, man. Go ahead, please.

No, because just as I decided it, I realized I wouldn't say it. So you come in, Brian.

Well, what I wanted to do is I teased at the beginning, I know you've got a vision for what you think humanity's going to go through in the next 60 years. We've kind of touched on it, but I want to put that question out to you because I promised the audience I would ask that question. So what do you see us going through?

I see us as going through a collective dark night of the soul, a collective consciousness. I think that we're going to go through, and we are going through, some dark places. And that's why it behoves us all to be courageous and open-hearted and loving. Because then we can circumnavigate— no, that we can navigate these dark places in a strong and loving place so that they don't destroy us, but they uplift us. But I think that things are going to be taken away. I think— look, all the very wealthy people on the planet, the billionaires, that they all know that if they were to just give one month, one year salary, that sort of poverty on the planet could be eliminated 3 times over. But why don't they? Because they're afraid of making the shifts. Where sort of most people know there's a lot wrong with the planet and that we need to make the quantum shift. But they can't see, conceive of anything beyond the ego consciousness. Hmm. A, and so they don't know that there's anything beyond it. And B, they don't know how to make the shift. Because to make a shift onto a new level, you've got to develop your consciousness, you've got to work on yourselves. So, so they are not going to give up the reality that cocoons them, the sort of wealth that cocoons them, the need to own sort of billions and billions of dollars and sort of billions and billions of Picassos and Lucian Freud paintings. They're not going to give that up, but I think that something will happen and it'll be taken away. Chris Bash talks about this in his book, that he feels there's going to be a significant ecological crisis and maybe a financial crisis, which after all is certainly in the offing, you know, that the world is quadrillions in debt, how it still, how the financial system still continues to operate. I just don't know. But I think that something will happen and we'll all be put in the same boat. And we'll realize that all our elitism and our yachts and our money and our fame and our glory is not going to help us, that we're all going to be in the same boat.

Interesting.

I don't think it's going to happen in our lifetimes. May happen in my daughter's lifetime. But I think, again, I see this as what I talked about earlier as being about fierce grace. Yeah, about fierce grace, because there's a divine aspect. And it's the parable of the prodigal son, isn't it, Brian D Smith? That we have to lose our way to find it. And sort of God was happier from the one who'd lost his way and then came back into the fold than the one who'd never fallen off their pedestal in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, that's the human story.

I had a great friend from school and who was a multi-multi-millionaire. In the '60s, he inherited $100 million sort of, you know, dollars. And in the '60s, that's almost a billion today, right? And, and, and he spent it on sort of, you know, on sort of crazy stuff. And in the end, he ended up a sort of hobo on the streets here. And, you know, some people like me, we had to look after him and sort of pay his rent.

Wow.

And then, and then, and then he got a cancer that began to eat up his face. So this beautiful, handsome playboy who had everything and was so selfish and the most beautiful women and everything, sort of lost everything. But in the end, he became the most beautiful, gracious, loving human being. And, you know, and he smoked his last cigarette because I was with him just before he died. He smoked his last cigarette almost before he took his last breath. His life. But somehow he found himself in those last weeks of his life when everything was taken away, and he became the most beautiful human being. And his death incredibly touched me. So that's really what life's about. How do you and I and all of us, how do we become Brian D Smith, the beautiful being that we really are? How do we become the sacred divine self that is inherent in all of us? How do we strip ourselves of these false images and the false narratives that have guided our lives so that we find the real story of who we are, that is basically a divine being in a human body. And we have all these temptations and we have all these challenges, but somehow I think, I feel that humanity is going to pull through, is going to pull through very well. And the, the divine that created the experiment of human consciousness on planet Earth, that this divine force that is both beyond us and within us, this divine force is not going to give up on the human condition. And that humanity is going to move into its next step. And so my heart is full of hope. My heart is full of joy. Great.

I love ending on hope and joy. So I think that's a great place to wrap. So what I'd like to do is have you— you've mentioned your book a couple of times, but give people the exact title of your book and where they could find it. And where they can connect with you.

Okay, guys, if you want to connect with me, just Google my name, Serge Beddington Barrons, and you can get onto my website. But my email address is infosergebb@gmail.com. infosergebb@gmail.com. So write to me. My book is Amazing Grace, and you can get it from Amazon, and there's lots. And please buy it because the money will go to a good cause, and you'll have fun reading it, and I think it can be instructive. And my other book is Awakening the Universal Heart, and my other book in my crazy convoluted. Oh, my other book is underneath my computer. My computer's been sitting on it.

Here's my other book, is Gateways to the Soul and Work for the Outer World.

Cool. Yeah. And after every chapter— excuse me— after every chapter are exercises to how to get closer To the Soul. And so it's a workbook. And all of these books, the profit is going to charity to help the Ukrainians.

Love that. I love that. Well, Sergei, it's—

Yeah, great.

It's been great getting to know you. It's been great meeting you. I feel a connection with you. I love the inspiration that you're giving to people and the work that you're doing. So thanks so much for doing this today.

Great, great, Brian. An enormous, an enormous privilege. So can we stay on a second after?

Sure, absolutely.

Yeah. Great. Thank you very much for having me.

All right. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Lovely. Yeah, lots of love to you.

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