Love Yourself

Love yourself.

Episode Transcript

(00:49):
Hi, I wanted to talk to you today about my guardian Angel.
Now there is a lot of controversy about my guardian
Angel, I'm sure, because people generally want Jesus, Who are

(01:14):
Christians. They want Jesus, and I think
that's wonderful because to me Jesus is the conduit to which I
became introduced to my spiritual nature.
In other words, not flesh and bone, although you know, this is

(01:37):
my flesh and bone. It belongs to me.
It's a gift I was given. It has a lot of problems.
A lot of them are in the brain and some of them are in the
nodes and some of them they don't even know where it comes
from. It's called bipolar disorder and
it has been sort of denoted justlike really since the late 50s.

(02:04):
Before that, it was there, you know, famous writers and such
had it. And we looked back and we see
symptoms, but mine is very aggressive was I should say was
because it's most aggressive when you're young.
I don't know if you know anything about bipolar disorder,

(02:26):
but that's my affliction. I've learned what it is and I've
learned to live with it. And you know, I don't care if
you're writing a thesis about it, when you have it, when you
wake with it, when you have insomnia with it, when you have

(02:46):
distorted thoughts with the disorder, it's much more.
It's profound. I guess that's why Kay Redfield
Jamison is so famous because shehas it and she she's a fellow at
Johns Hopkins University or someplace like that, really well

(03:08):
known. And she wrote a book called An
Unquiet Mind. And when I was diagnosed in
1999, when I just turned 30, ah,you know, they, they have to
look for something to diagnose you.
And really when you're, when you're on a 5150, which means
you're a danger to yourself or you're a danger to others, then

(03:30):
they sometimes put you in a straight jacket.
But in my case they did, but they asked me if they could when
they picked me up. And this is all in my book.
So you might as well just check that out if you want.
In my book, it's called Bipolar professional.
It's not the best book. There's a lot of things I wish I

(03:51):
would have done more in depth than I would like to get some
kind of a therapist's preface for it or something like that
because I'm not a therapist, butI have read a lot and I've
received not a lot but pretty good amount of therapy in my
life. But today I want to talk to you

(04:13):
about afflictions and really thespiritual solution to that
problem. Because this physical body is
not Damian. In fact, the name Damien is not
me. It's it's just a a I don't want

(04:37):
to say label it. If you look at different
languages, and I have a lot of study under my belt in
languages, so maybe I can make it simple for you if you have an
apple in English. OK.
And I used to teach this in all my classes when we would talk
about critical thinking. You have an apple, think of a

(05:00):
red apple right here. If I knew how to do AI, like
maybe my friend guy from Indonesia could make an apple
here. Right now he doesn't really do
that kind of AI, but anyway, he helps me with my artificial
intelligence band that has a base and has drums, and it's
wonderful. If you listen to my music
online, my name is Damien Riley.Should be somewhere in the title

(05:23):
or somewhere on wherever you're watching this.
You should be able to see how it's spelled and you just Google
it and you'll find that. I'm a musician and I have
currently, I think I have just over 100, you know, published
songs that are out there and youcould stream them and listen to
them. And some of them are just
recorded terribly with just me and a guitar and my phone.

(05:44):
Other ones just sound like they're in Wembley Stadium, you
know, because of guy, because this this person that was drawn
to me and I was drawn to him through YouTube.
But we just were mutual fans andwe started making songs together
and I would send him songs and he'd send them back with just

(06:06):
clicking in on the drums is everything I dreamed of the
stuff I did in my band Resolution when I was 16 years
old. And later on in the 63 little
was Fish and the Daisy Chain. And that's, I mean, there's
other bands I played in church that was a band sort of many
bands, many people. I met Billy Batstone.

(06:27):
I've met so many people. I've met Rick Fowles, he wrote.
Lord, I lift your name on high. My time at Calvary Chapel,
Capistrano Beach. But I want to talk to you about
a verse today. And so I'm going to go ahead and
show you because I'll be honest with you, my son.

(06:49):
So many people are on my mind, but my son is really on my heart
and on my mind today. And when I awakened in the
morning, I lots of things are really speaking to me in the
morning on my TV when I leave iton.
And that's probably not a good idea all the time, but because

(07:11):
you never know what'll come on, right?
But I usually listen to like, meditation type people's
consciousness thinkers. Eckhart Tolle and are totally
not sure. I've never known exactly how you
pronounce his last name Is TLE. Wonderful guy and he talks about

(07:31):
being present and when you're present, yes, it's important
that you be present in your physical body.
But he's talking about sort of aspiritual, mental, non physical
presence. And it is referred to in
consciousness teaching and Buddhism, I believe as the
observer. OK, so deep inside us, not

(07:57):
physically inside us. OK, so I'm thinking of somebody
the other day that thought I wasjoking when I said, you know,
everything inside us is OK. Everything inside us never ages.
It's eternal. And that person kind of laughed
because these are uncomfortable truths that we don't talk about
them normally. So it's OK that she laughed.

(08:19):
But I'm not talking about my innards.
I'm not talking about my innardswhen I say inside.
It's just a figure of speech. But let's get back to the apple.
So here's the apple. OK, it's red right now.
I speak English. I was raised in Fullerton in

(08:41):
Mission Viejo, and then I started to grow up in my 20s.
My late 20s, I moved to Costa Mesa because I had a job out
there teaching or I started teaching and I think in English
because of how I was raised. I am a Christian and I know
Jesus and I know John 316. It's very important.

(09:02):
I'm not making light of it, but I'm just saying a lot of
Christians feel that if you justgive a poor person John 316,
you're doing your part, your eternal after that.
Now they're always eternal. We are eternal beings and you
don't really emphasize that too much in Christianity because

(09:22):
it's a limited book, limited by given to us by the Catholic
Church, but also limited and clipped all around it based on
what men in the Catholic Church,which we've learned.
They're not perfect, we've learned, but they're the ones
that is the entities that put together the Holy Bible.

(09:46):
OK, It came to us from the Catholics, and I have Alan Watts
to thank for that, for revealingthat to me.
And it's true. If you wanna go check it out,
check it out, you know, but you don't have to just take my word
for it. They wrote the Bible now.
They had texts and scripts and things, but they brought it.

(10:10):
Usually when you write things, you have an outline.
That's also called an agenda andhuman men have agendas.
You've heard of the Nice Seeing Creed, You've heard of the
Athanasian Creed. Maybe you haven't, but these are
groups that got together that codified or focused in on the

(10:32):
parts of the manuscripts that they wanted to be the Christian
message. And that's what we have.
So that's what I mean. I'm not saying it's evil and I'm
not saying it's fake. Hate that word.
Fake. So overused, fake news.
You know, something happens, youdon't agree with it.
People just blurt out fake. It's not fake.

(10:52):
I don't wanna use that word, butit's definitely curated.
This is a curated item. It's not a normal book.
OK, OK, so I want to look it up and I want to talk about the
verse that says be still be still be still and no that I am

(11:16):
God. OK, now I I point up because
that's how I was raised. I mean, when I when I went to
sleep at night, the prayer was God in heaven up above.
Well, now that we know we've identified with the web
telescope and even the Hubble telescope, but most recently

(11:39):
with the web telescope, and I guess they have a new one now
that they're going to put into orbit and it's going to see so
far out there. And the people that study this
stuff, they don't do it for an agenda.
They just observe. There are 300 trillion galaxies
out there. Not planets, not stars,
galaxies. And I've said that before, but

(12:01):
I've never really like focused on it as important.
But this book is based on a man name, Jesus Christ.
I call him Jesus Christo becauseI speak Spanish.
I just love. He's like my my buddy.
But he's also 300 trillion galaxies at one time.

(12:24):
He knows what's going on all over all these planets, Saturn.
He knows what's going on Earth. He knows what's going on in your
life. He knows what's going on now.
I say he. I don't even like to think about
it as a he. That's another thing.
It's in here as he. It's in here as Father, which is
OK, let's get back to the apple,OK?
You take another guy who's 56 like me, but he was raised in

(12:47):
India, OK? He never heard the message of
Christ. He he heard it, but he probably
heard it in different ways like enlightenment or self love.
OK, so I could get more into that, but I'm gonna I'm gonna
back off because I just want to talk about my guardian Angel,

(13:07):
Dane. I named him when I was a
teacher. I, my dear childhood, lifelong
acquaintance, it is a guy named Eric, and Eric loves puppets.
You know, we met when we were little kids and we used to look

(13:28):
at puppet shows. Well, he's carried that into
adulthood at least. You know, 20 years ago, I knew
he was. I don't really talk to him a
whole lot. Sometimes on Facebook he'll just
give me a like or whatever. But I was real good friends with
him for many years. But I don't like to use the word
friend because everybody thinks,you know, either I'm bragging

(13:50):
because I know somebody famous or, you know, he feels
threatened because he doesn't feel totally comfortable with
me. I, and I'm not saying that's
true. I'm just saying the word friend.
It's like calling something an apple.
It means a lot of different things.
And so there's some words that maybe as a writer or a student
of English, I've learned that you just kind of stay away from

(14:12):
certain multiple meaning words because they can be
misinterpreted. And that's what the art of
writing and communicating is allabout.
Even now when I talk, I'm thinking, what word should I
use? That's why I kind of paused
sometimes. But I don't want to call him a
friend because people just OHP. He's your BFF.

(14:35):
Oh, he's your best friend. Oh, yeah, right.
You know a lot of people, when Itell them that I know the
Stefani family, they say, you know, there's one of two,
There's one of two responses, There's either, this is the one
I like. They go, OHP, that's so neat.
What an interesting thing. That's the one I like.
That's a normal 1, but the otherone is, I don't know where it

(14:59):
comes from. Jealousy.
What? I don't know what it is lacking,
not having self love. Whatever the other response is,
prove it. And so through the years I've
just learned to not really mention it.
I used to mention it all as I maybe I was bragging.
I don't know. They're just people that my

(15:20):
parents knew. And I spent some time with Eric
because I was afraid, really, toreach out and make new friends a
lot. I mean, that's really why.
And so you reach out to what's comfortable and what's familiar.
And Eric was familiar because hewas somebody that, you know, I
don't want. I didn't grow up with them, but

(15:41):
there were significant times where we were at their house.
And you know, my dad likes to say he's their best friend.
OK, I don't know. Again, we all have our own
definition of what our best friend is, and I'm not here to
judge that. But the message I got as a young
man growing up when I had troubles was go to what's

(16:02):
familiar. And what was familiar was Eric.
So if you want to call that an acquaintance or a friend is up
to you. But I'm gonna call it an
acquaintance just for the purposes of this.
But I love him like a brother. And I do have an actual brother
calling, which I'm not talking about today.
I'm talking about be still and know that I am God and the

(16:24):
relevance of that. And in a minute, I'm going to
show you how to look. Look up verses.
I've had a long life of playing worship in church, leading Bible
studies, being a camper in leadership training.
They called it stilts. Add account Christian conference
camp called Forest Home. That's in San Bernardino County

(16:45):
up here in Forest Falls and justhad a lot of, you know,
experiences with that around that place.
They call it a mountaintop experience.
You know, I think the key to being really spiritual is to
take that mountaintop experienceand, and see it and feel it and
know it and spend time there. But most of the time we're down

(17:06):
here, we're in the middle. We're up.
And part of bipolar is you can'tcontrol your emotions.
You know, they'll, they'll just shoot up, they'll shoot down.
And sometimes they'll shoot up and they'll stay up there.
And they call that a manic episode.
And it can be deadly. I mean, people walk off
buildings and things like that, but there's different gradients

(17:26):
of it, you know, That's what I have and I wrote a book about it
called Bipolar Professional. You can buy it.
It's $20 and it's on Lulu com. There's an ebook and there's a
physical book. They mail you the physical book
in about a month, so I think most people would probably want
the ebooks. They're both 20 bucks.

(17:47):
It goes into my ministry. This is my ministry.
Your life is your ministry. OK, so by the book it helps.
And then I don't have to explaina lot of this stuff because I
spent a lot of time back in 2023.
So when it came out, when I put it out, it didn't come out.

(18:08):
I put it out. It's very cheap to make a book,
self publish a book. You don't have to sit around
waiting for Random House to discover you with an agent and
come to your home like everybodydreams of Publisher
Clearinghouse unpublished. Now I'm whole guess what, once
you get published, you can be just as messed up as you were

(18:29):
before you were published. It's the idea is to go in and
fix yourself and for me anyway, and then publish that fixing
what happened there. And that's what I'm doing today.
OK, so I recommend the book to you anyways.
Here's how you look up a verse. OK, I want to talk about Dane.
And Dane is like almost real. Really at this point, probably a

(18:51):
little bit after I wrote that book, I started having an
imaginary friend, like a puppet.And that's where I was talking
about Eric and the puppets and all that.
But when I was a teacher, he gave me a puppet, a pig puppet.
And I used to use the pig puppetbecause it was just so
passionate. I remember being a little kid,
liking the puppet. And I would teach with the
puppet. I would talk about fractions and

(19:13):
I would sing songs and the puppet would sing.
And I'll put up a picture right now of me with that puppet.
And then here's a picture of me with Eric, my friend.
Be still and know that I am God is really a good segue into

(19:35):
Dane. OK, Dane is my guardian Angel.
He's 6 foot 9. He's a physical being created by
God, created by Jesus for me to take care of me.
He is my guardian Angel. So that was my puppet that I
started with, OK. And I've had some heartache in

(19:58):
my life and it's been difficult to work through.
So Dane was necessary for me. He was like a an imaginary
friend and he is an imaginary friend, but it's almost passed
from imaginary. He's sitting right there.
Don't be scared because I want you to do the same thing, but

(20:22):
you might not need a puppet. You might not need an
imagination. So let's get let's talk about
Dan another time. But I I do want to introduce him
to you. I've been thinking about writing
a book called Dame That's My Name and Dane Visit the Holy
Land. Kind of like Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventure, only it won't be all comedy.

(20:44):
It'd be very profound too, because I could explain it.
Like what religion means to me and God and his appraisal means
to me and we could have our experiences in the Holy Land.
And so I was going to make a book and I think about it.
I think I'm going to actually, but anyway, this be still and
know that I'm God is very important.

(21:05):
So however you get to that stillness.
For me, it's Dane, if you'd likehelp with that.
At this point, I'm not that big,so I'm very busy though, doing a
lot of things, serving a lot of people.
That's really what life's about for me.
It's serving other people. Do I always do it?

(21:27):
Heck no. I get selfish, I get weak, I get
tired, I get emotional, I get sad, you know, I think in my 20s
I never cried once, you know, But in my thirties, 40s and 50s,
especially early 50s. I'm 56 now, so I was like 5152.
And I'm not going to blame anybody for it, but there were

(21:49):
circumstances that occurred in my life that made me very sad.
And just thinking about, it's hard to talk about it.
I'm not gonna talk about it. There's not just it.
There's a few things, you know, um, about 2019.
I'll just tell you, um, through a mishap at work and that's all
it was, was a mishap. Um, profound waves occurred and

(22:16):
within the course of like 2 years I lost everything,
everything in my life. Everything and became
transplanted into a place I did not want to live here.
I call it the loft now because I'm so thankful for it.

(22:37):
It's wonderful. I wrote all over my walls.
I don't know if you can see the writing.
It's been painted over now. People give me a hard time about
it. They don't think it's normal.
But for me, being a teacher, I'm, I was always writing, you
know, always writing, just always picking up those sharpies
and writing all the time. Not Sharpies, dry erase, Expo

(23:02):
markers, you know, as a teacher,they just give them to you like
candy. And so I always had them in my
pockets everywhere. And I lost that job and it was
rough. And then it's nobody's fault,

(23:23):
but I got a divorce and that wasprobably the biggest ego killer
of my life. And that's why I kind of laugh
about it now, because I don't think the ego is good.
In fact, I think we're evolving away from even having an ego and

(23:46):
I could talk about that. But anyway, so that's kind of
how Dave came about. He's like a puppet.
So don't get scared when I talk about my guardian Angel Dane.
It's part of my stand up routinetoo.
I break him into that, which I'mreally trying to sort of develop
more than other things that I'vedone creatively.

(24:07):
I'm trying to add stand up to it, but I only have about 6 1/2
minutes. I do these for 30 minutes.
I wanna show you how to look up a verse.
So anyway, that's my little introduction to Dane, and I
think that's what I'll think of this episode as my introduction
to Dane, and we'll get more intoDane and his relevance to me and
what it can mean for you. Mostly because really, what Dane

(24:28):
is about, you know what he's about.
Self talk, self love, a puppet that you might have or a
guardian Angel that's 69 that's manifested right there and he's
with me all the time now. Jesus too.
But you know, the Bible says if you're a Christian and you

(24:51):
believe the Bible, it says that 2/3 of the angels stayed in
heaven, but one third were cast down because they wanted to be
like God. I guess I'm not an expert on all
that, but what I think about because of my raising and where
I was raised in the language that I know, that's all.

(25:13):
That's the only reason. It's not because I'm special,
not because I'm chosen, it's because of I don't call it a
Masana like they call it in Spanish, which I speak Spanish.
They call it an apple here. OK, so signifier.
That's the word I want to use the signifier for this red thing

(25:37):
that you bite into it and it's sweet and it's got a, you know,
skin on it. It's got a little stem.
Any, any human being that's had an apple, I'm sure we all have
on the earth, unless we're allergic to them or something.
But you still know what they are, right?
We'll tell you in their languagewhat that is.
And I don't know it, I should learn it in other languages, but

(25:59):
I know in Spanish. It's Monsanto.
That's the name of my first EP album that I made and lots of
other reasons why I called it Monsanto, a teacher being a
teacher. And on the covers, Cal State
Fullerton where I went to college.
But anyhow, the way you look something up and I want you to
be still today, that's what I'm talking about.
And I'm running out of time. So I want to do this real quick.

(26:21):
And son, are you listening? This is for my son and for all
of you, too, but I'm going to kind of do it as a conduit
through my son right now, the way you look something up in a
Bible. Because he's going to church
now. Yeah, he's gonna be a dad and
we're just pray everything goes right with that.
I'm so excited that I'm gonna bea grandpa.

(26:44):
And what you do is this is how you become this little marker
here. This is how you become an expert
on looking things up. You just put it on the index or
the table of contents, and when you get to the table of contents
like that, something like that, whatever your Bible.

(27:04):
I got this at the $0.99 store. But you know, I've had so many
Bibles. I had a Spanish Bible for a
while. Help me learn Spanish.
Bible is a beautiful thing. I don't worship this thing,
though. It's gonna burn.
It's just words. It's a book, and it's a limited
view of the universe. I know a lot of people worship
this book. People in my family that I love

(27:27):
worship this book. OK.
And that's wrong. And I think Jesus would say it's
wrong to you if you were here right now.
So it's the King James Version. That's lots of versions, stuff
like that. But I'll talk more about it in
future spiritual podcasts. Route 66 is Spirit 2, I guess is
still here. I thought about dissolving it

(27:48):
into my horror movie podcast, but that's never going to work.
So this is my spiritual podcast here to say.
So we look up songs because it'sin Psalms and it says right
here, Psalms is on page 257. OK, so this is I look like a
genius, but I'm really just I have a one bookmark.
The one bookmark is in the tableof contents.

(28:10):
Get it? So I look up Psalms, he starts
to learn the books of the Bible.Then I used to memorize them.
I recommend that. I mean, if you're bored.
OK, so it's got the page here I'm flipping through.
It's 2:52, so I look for 2:52. Page 252.
Here it is and here I am, and then it is.

(28:40):
I forget what it is. Well, I don't remember now, but
it it's look how small the wordsare.
I didn't prepare well enough. I should have highlighted it,
but it's it's in songs and I think it's 40 Psalm 40.
So let's go to that 4011 maybe. Is that correct?

(29:03):
All the Bible scholars out therethumbing their nose, but I just
have a little little shortcuts. OK.
So 40, I think it's 4011, isn't it?
40 whatever. No, it's somewhere in there.

(29:23):
God bless me for trying, right? But it's in here.
There's Bibles all around. The trees are the Bible,
everything that is in existence that has life in it, including
that lamp shade, including that water bottle.
Thank you, Wayne Dyer for pointing that out.
You know, it's very true. Be still and know that I am God

(29:46):
and having a Dane, having a puppet that says good job Dame,
you know, that's a short for my everybody in my family is always
called me Dame because it's short for Damian.
So I go good job Dame, and that's being still.
And most importantly, I only have 45 seconds.

(30:06):
It's taught me that that means Ineed to love myself.
Oh, where is my second wife? Oh, where is my soul mate?
Which is a great thing to want. It's nothing wrong with that,
but if you don't love yourself, you can't love a soul mate.
You have to love yourself. And it's, it's a process and

(30:29):
it's wonderful. And sometimes you feel like a
real sense of lack about it. Like I'm not another person.
Like my mom says, sometimes you want something with skin on it.
That was a popular phrase. She didn't invent it and she
wasn't putting me down, but it was real diminutive when she
told me that because it doesn't help hearing that sometimes you
need one with skin on it. No, you need this one with skin

(30:50):
on it. This is the one you got to love
and have experiences with. So I've gone over 30 minutes.
So I'm going to let you go. I look forward to doing more of
these because this morning was areal awakening for me.
But it's not just lip service, OK, you need to love yourself.
And if you need a puppet to say good job, Dave.
And it turns into a 69 Angel, which probably something like

(31:15):
that really is hovering around me all the time.
But I codified it and made it actually a named being and it's
and I don't have any problem with that.
But I can already tell you a lotof people are going to start,
especially since I have a real loose lifestyle, loose mouth.
And I use the F word and I'm in a rock band with a guy from
Indonesia. And sometimes I put, you know,

(31:36):
real gothic type pictures in my videos and stuff like that
because I like that kind of art.But I love Dame and Dame is a
great guy and Dame has overcome a lot of things and even though
the Dame thinks he needs a cute little girl on his arm
everywhere he goes that loves him, which I once had.

(32:03):
That was not the right path. The right path is in and right
now in our world, I think of young people in their 20s
especially. Very difficult time for me. 30s.
You kind of grow into your own skins.
It gets better, but the 20s werereal dark times for me.
People don't know that because Iwas in church, I was leaving

(32:23):
worship all happy and had all myhair and but it was very, very
dark time in many ways. So be still.
What does that mean? You gotta be still.
And here's where it begins. Talk to yourself in the morning
when you wake up. Listen to affirmations, OK, but

(32:44):
also right on three by 5 card. Put it on your mirror in your
bathroom. You're a star.
Smile. Be strong.
That's a Woody Allen movie. Broadway Danny Rose.
It's a joke, but it's you are a star.
Smile and be strong. I'm gonna let you go now.

(33:06):
OK? I hope that helped you.
But please today write it on a 3by 5 card or just think it in
your head or just like this ring.
It's not a wedding ring. It's on my right hand.
It's just it's kind of a spiritual thing for me.
And when I look at it, I think tell yourself that you love
yourself, that you're great. And that's what that reminds me
of. I used to have one on this hand

(33:27):
and it would remind me my ex-wife when I was married to
her. But another person is not your
Ave. to be happy. No I'm not talking to her.
I just saying for every party knows it, but for everybody

(33:48):
you've been entrusted with a body.
Love it. It's not perfect.
It's got a lot of problems. It has afflictions like my
bipolar. There's lots of other things
too. My blood sugar is too high.
There's lots of problems that this body has, and guess what?
They just get worse. They just get worse.
So how do you deal with it as a child of God?

(34:09):
You love yourself. Forget loving a little woman.
Forget loving little baby. We've got a little baby coming.
There have been a little baby just came Baby Orr and my little
niece had a baby Ore and he's a beautiful little boy and he's
probably going to be friends with Mateo and Mateo comes my
sons son. It's not a perfect situation for

(34:33):
anybody ever. When a baby's born.
I had all the money in the worldthat, you know, I, when I moved
up here, I just felt like I was totally rich.
When I had my children. Saint Marys Hospital over here.
It wasn't a perfect situation and I was still struggling, but

(34:53):
I had enough money to buy diapers, you know, and there's
people who don't and I've had students that have told me
they're so struggling with papers they can't turn them in
whatever because they're trying to work all night long to pay
for those diapers, you know? So I always recommend a young
people before you have a baby, make sure you got your stuff

(35:14):
together, you know, it's a lot more enjoyable.
And if there's emergencies and again I have lost everything and
then got it back in spiritual ways.
I'm still working on the finances, but I'm rich.
I live in a house on the hill. Some mentality guys, but it
begins by saying for all my faults and problems, I love this

(35:40):
guy. Let's leave it at that.
Can you try to do that today? Namaste and God bless you in
Jesus name.