Have you ever considered the dynamic balance between a warrior spirit and a peaceful heart?
In this episode, I welcome the esteemed Dan Millman, whose remarkable journey from world-class athlete to revered spiritual guide unveils the intricate dance between the serenity of the present and the dynamism of action.
"Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not."
Dan Millman
With Dan, we explore life's unexpected lessons, the pursuit of purpose, and the delicate art of harmonizing the vigor of a warrior with the tranquility of a sage.
At 78 years young and still performing perfect handstands, Dan's philosophy is a testament to the power of embracing action over fear, fostering courage in every aspect of life.
This episode goes beyond mere reflection; it's a call to personal growth through deliberate choices aligned with the natural laws of life.
Our conversation delves into the profound notion that life is the ultimate classroom. Every hardship you encounter, every experience, serves to refine your character and deepen your wisdom.
Dan shares his vision of a world where your spiritual journey is a unique a fingerprint, on a path of joy and discovery. Join us for an episode that promises not just enlightenment, but transformation as you learn how to live with a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit.
Contact Links - Dan Millman
Website
Book: The Law of Spirit
Life Purpose Calculator
If you would like to contribute to keep receiving the best guests and content you can here:
Have you ever considered the dynamic balance between a warrior spirit and a peaceful heart?
In this episode, I welcome the esteemed Dan Millman, whose remarkable journey from world-class athlete to revered spiritual guide unveils the intricate dance between the serenity of the present and the dynamism of action.
"Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not."
Dan Millman
With Dan, we explore life's unexpected lessons, the pursuit of purpose, and the delicate art of harmonizing the vigor of a warrior with the tranquility of a sage.
At 78 years young and still performing perfect handstands, Dan's philosophy is a testament to the power of embracing action over fear, fostering courage in every aspect of life.
This episode goes beyond mere reflection; it's a call to personal growth through deliberate choices aligned with the natural laws of life.
Our conversation delves into the profound notion that life is the ultimate classroom. Every hardship you encounter, every experience, serves to refine your character and deepen your wisdom.
Dan shares his vision of a world where your spiritual journey is a unique a fingerprint, on a path of joy and discovery. Join us for an episode that promises not just enlightenment, but transformation as you learn how to live with a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit.
Contact Links - Dan Millman
Website
Book: The Law of Spirit
Life Purpose Calculator
If you would like to contribute to keep receiving the best guests and content you can here:
In this episode, I'm speaking to a best-selling author of 18 books and former world champion gold medal athlete, dan Millman, about how you can transform your life with a peaceful heart and a warrior spirit.
Speaker 2:There are times we need a warrior spirit just to roll up our sleeves and march into life and deal with the challenges that naturally arise in everyday life, as a form of spiritual weight training.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to the James Grant from podcast Super Soul Model series, where I help people tune and tap in to their natural state of well-being. This week's guest is a best-selling author of 18 books. His first book, way of the Peaceful Warrior, was released as a movie back in 2006. And he's also been a former world champion athlete, stanford University gymnastic coach, martial artist and professor at Oberlin College, and his latest book, which was released in 2022, peaceful Heart Warrior Spirit, is this week's guest, dan Millman. Welcome to the show, dan. Thank you, james. So, dan, for those of who may not know about your work or may not know about the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which is probably your most famous book, which started this whole process going, tell us about your journey from being an athlete, a world-class athlete, into now being a spiritual teacher. You know how did that all evolve and what got you into writing in the first place.
Speaker 2:Well, it's easy to reverse engineer or to look back. We can understand life looking backwards, but we have to live it forward. So, taking a retrospective, I never, ever, would have guessed that as a 10-year-old, discovering an old trampoline at a summer camp and loving jumping up and down and trying new tricks would lead to scholarship, to college, world championship and all that followed. I think in my case it was a process of disillusion in the positive sense of freeing from illusion. I noticed this made me happy for a little while, but then it wasn't that satisfying. I moved on and then that, and I kept searching and I guess when I shattered my right thigh bone in about 40 pieces in a motorcycle crash, as I write about in the book and is shown in the film, even though I didn't drive that recklessly, nor was my sex life quite as active as depicted, nonetheless, at that point it shook me up.
Speaker 2:I started asking bigger questions. I recognized my own mortality because, as we know, when we're in our 20s we think we're bulletproof and we know everything. And so it was a humbling process, some life lessons in one fell swoop, and I began to explore what is this inner world, what am I here for? And asking bigger questions about my purpose and that led to a search that I write about, as you mentioned that culminating book, peaceful Heart, warrior Spirit. It's the true story behind the story of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and the-year spiritual search, uh, with four very radically different mentors. So many people have read my book or seen the movie and think, oh, I learned a lot from this old service station attendant and then I started teaching, but it was a much longer process of preparation so you know, many people know struggle finding their purpose and direction.
Speaker 1:And how did you find your purpose and direction? Was that just something that came out as a result of having that introspection? You know how? Did that give us a guideline about how to look within and find our purpose, Because a lot of people find that tough.
Speaker 2:In my own case. Many times we gain wisdom by making mistakes, and I made many mistakes. I really hadn't a clue about my purpose or direction. I was a psychology major in college. It was almost serendipity. There was nothing else really that interested me. But I didn't pursue that academically beyond my college years and I had no idea. I sold life insurance. For three months I was going to do flying trapeze in the circus, but that really the traveling lifestyle, didn't work. I was married very young and we had a baby on the way, so that wasn't going to work. And then I just fell into this coaching job at Stanford, which reflected my background and my skills.
Speaker 2:So in my own case there's no trail of breadcrumbs. I can't say from my experience, I learned this. But in the Peaceful Warrior movie that you mentioned, there's a trail of breadcrumbs. I can't say from my experience, I learned this. But in the Peaceful Warrior movie that you mentioned there's a scene in which my character, dan, follows Socrates, the old gas station lieutenant played by Nick Nolte, up this big hill and at the top Dan has this sort of revelation and he says Socrates, I just realized it's not the destination that makes us happy, it's the journey. Well, there's a certain wisdom in that, because most of our lives are spent on the journey, not just reaching one destination after another so true, but without a destination in mind, there is no journey.
Speaker 2:We just wander around. So I believe we're hardwired goal seekers, human beings. I would even define success as making progress toward a meaningful goal. To me that is success, not just reaching the top of the mountain, and I define every step of the way as a success, every bit of progress we make, because we cannot control the outcomes in our lives. I've learned that. But we can control our efforts, and by making a good effort over time.
Speaker 1:So meaning action. So action along the way is going to give us that feeling of purpose if it's meaningful.
Speaker 2:Yes, and if we look at our lives, what has brought us to this present moment is what we've done over time, not just what we've thought, or whether we had positive thoughts or negative thoughts, not just what we felt. Somebody came up to me after a talk I gave once and said Dan, I feel so inspired. I said don't worry, it'll pass. Yes, so true isn't it the?
Speaker 2:inspiration comes and goes, motivation waxes and wanes. So, yes, there is in this approach to living. I teach that I call the Peaceful Warrior's Way. It's focused on what we do. Barbara Rasp, a writer, once said the lesson is simple, the student is complicated. And to simplify our life, we can focus on what we need to do in each moment in line with our goals, rather than how can I change my thoughts and how can I fix my emotions so I can live wisely and well.
Speaker 2:As it turns out, we have less control over our thoughts that arise in our field of awareness moment to moment. We have less control over the weather that passes. You know the emotions that pass through us, like changing weather. They come and go and change all the time. But we can spend a lot of time with techniques and methods to try to fix our emotions and our thoughts so we can live well, rather than and it is a form of liberation focusing on what do I need to do right now. In fact, the most controversial thing I could say possibly right now is that I do not encourage my students, seminar attendees, I do not encourage anyone to feel happy or loving or peaceful or kind or confident or courageous. I encourage people to behave that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that word behave because when I break it down, you've got you know, you I think Neil Donald Walsh was talking about it as be, have, do, and he's just. It was a lovely book, but I remember taking the word behave and just go be have. So you've got to be that person to have that experience. So what would that? How would I behave to be and have that now. So I love like breaking these little words down and and I love your, I really I was in temporarily inspired by the way of the peaceful warrior to use your palm less, and then I was like applying a lot of the things. That was congruent in my own experience when I had a car crash and I had to wake up and I walked away pretty much unscathed, and so did my friend, and we were lucky that we walked away because, quite frankly, that that was a complete goner and that made me ask the right questions, which resonated with your motorbike story, albeit I wasn't in hospital. I was in hospital asking the big questions at the age of 19 and I was like, wow, okay, who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose? Because what I'm doing is I've gone down. I've gone down a very ominous road that is not taking me where I want to go and I feel deeply unfulfilled and discontent. But that's a nice wake-up call, if's there.
Speaker 1:But I never forget when we met in London years ago, dan. You did this talk in London way back when I think it was about 2005. And I just started meditating. I'd been spiritually awake for a little while because I'd had this car accident a while and I was asking some deeper questions, but now I was feeling a little bit more in tune with my soul, my body, for for sure, because I was working out and doing things right. And then you popped into my life and you did this one thing at this seminar. I don't know if you, uh, you'll ever remember, if it's something that you did all the time.
Speaker 1:You stood up on stage in London in front of about I don't know three or four hundred people, and you put your hand on this table and this table was wobbly and do you remember this? So, for all the listeners you know, tuning in, dan just got up on the stage. I remember you wearing black pants, black t-shirt and you were like, hey, let me just see if this works. And you put your hand on the table and it was a very wobbly old table and you got up and did the most perfect handstand, held your balance and dismounted from that wobbly table in a perfect handstand, whilst you were totally still and dismounted with such grace and as you dismounted with grace this was your opening thing to everybody, by the way and you said, after you dismounted with grace, you'd gone.
Speaker 1:Life is about balance. And I was like, wow, yeah, that's so true, because even when the world around you is wobbling, if you can maintain a state of balance, you're going to be okay, and that's not only for your body, but that's also for your mind, and I think that that sort of really applies to what you're saying, which is, you might not feel this way, but you can act this way. So what are you going to act, to do to bring a little bit more balance to your life? So I was just wondering could you expand on that a little bit, because I love that teaching.
Speaker 2:I'd be happy to Thank you, James, for reminding me of that. Yeah, it's been a kind of a thing to get people's attention. I'll often do it.
Speaker 1:You get people's attention when you show them something right. You show people like, hey, this is possible.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and now I'm 78. I'm still doing the handstand.
Speaker 1:You're still doing the handstand. You're still doing it, yeah yeah. Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 2:But yes, it was a point to make. Sometimes I joke with the audience and I go let's see Deepak do that. Yeah, because I know Deepak and I've met Neil as well and the different teachers. We each have our different viewpoints. But here's the thing If someone was afraid but they noticed a little toddler walking in the middle of a busy traffic, street, cars whipping by, they might be terrified to run out into that street, possibly get hit.
Speaker 2:But they find themselves doing it. So while they're feeling terrified, they behave with courage, and in fact we can only behave with courage when we're feeling terrified. Otherwise it doesn't take courage. And so they're feeling one way and behaving another, and in the same way we can. If we're feeling shy, we can still walk up to somebody and say hello, I find you interesting and would you like to have coffee or tea sometime. They can still do that. It may be difficult because they're feeling shy, but they can still do it, and that is, again liberating. Someone can say a kind word while feeling irritated. Again, it's counterintuitive, it's not easy to do, but that is a liberation from emotions, from waiting for the right emotions or the right thoughts before we act, and so in fact I'd like to.
Speaker 2:Actually, I'd like to share something with your listeners yeah, please do, yeah, to progress toward your goals. Please choose one of the following two methods. First method one find a way to quiet your mind, create empowering beliefs, raise your self-esteem and practice positive self-talk to find your focus and affirm your power to free your emotions and visualize positive outcomes so that you can develop the confidence to generate the courage, to find the determination to make the commitment, to feel sufficiently motivated to do whatever it is you need to do. Maybe that's familiar to many people, that process. Or the second method which I recommend is you can just do it, because life always comes down to what we do moment to moment.
Speaker 2:To someone who and it's not always easy someone who, let's say, is an alcoholic, it's just saying stop drinking would be facile. They may need to go through a process, join AA, do all kinds of things between here and the point where they actually stop the behavior of bringing alcohol to their lips. So it comes down to that. Whether it's a short process or a long one, our life will be determined by what we do over time. That emphasis on action. See, neil, I love Neil, but his idea of beingness I really, I'm like a hobbit. You have to show me things.
Speaker 2:I don't understand what beingness is. Even if someone is simply sitting in meditation, they are doing something active. They are focusing. They are attending to the thoughts, the passing emotions, letting it go, focusing on the breath. People in meditation are actively doing something, when it appears they're just being. So I don't know what just being is. Maybe it's existing, but wordplay is fun, but it has to match reality and it comes down to what we do and there's no way to get off that hook Now.
Speaker 2:We're only responsible for what we have control over. If there were a storm outside, you or I wouldn't be responsible for the storm because we can't control the weather. If we could, then we'd have some responsibility. So if people start to realize that they don't have any actual ability or control by their will over what emotions they're feeling in any given moment or what thoughts pop into their awareness, thoughts happen to us. We don't say I think I'll think this thought next. Random thoughts just come into our mind and so we're not responsible for the thoughts that appear in our awareness. We're not responsible for what. We're not responsible for the thoughts that appear in our awareness. We're not responsible for what we're feeling. We are responsible for the one thing we can control, which is our behavior and our response and our response to what happens.
Speaker 1:I remember before, you know, before, when I used to drink a lot, drink heavily. I've got to get out of this loop of lunacy that I put myself in and you know, my listeners probably heard this story many times, but it's quite nice to be reminded of, because what I did was like I saw three signs to learn how to meditate inside of one week. I mean, I'm just grateful I got. I saw these three signals and I had the awareness to go hey, these are three things telling me. You know, for the first time in my life, follow this, james, follow it. And so I began a tm transcendental meditation technique, which I learned over a course of a weekend and within four months I completely stopped drinking naturally and I changed my diet naturally to a plant-based diet. So I became vegetarian and, yeah sure, I could feel my body was wanting this.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying this is for everybody, but this is just how I broke free of that addiction.
Speaker 1:I broke free of the beingness that I was before and it was taking that action that was inspired and it happened naturally as an offset. I'm a firm believer that success is just a series of good choices that you make and, you know, luck and good fortune just comes from a series of making lots of little good choices, and I think that you clarify that quite nicely in way of the peaceful warrior and actually in some of your other work which I loved, was, you know, talking about the, the, the spiritual laws in the natural laws, um. So I'd love you to expand on a couple of things for, like some of the audience, if you could, of like some of the natural laws that you think people should really pay attention to, just go, you know, because people don't necessarily say we've talked about action and you talked about law of action in one of your, your books, but is there anything else that you you think, hey, people really need to listen to this because they may oversee it if they're struggling with purpose or direction.
Speaker 2:Sure, we can loop back to balance, because I actually didn't address that question directly and let me say that we're hardwired differently. I've come to recognize each of us has our own process. There are some people, for example, that when I was teaching gymnastics, learned back somersault quicker than others. But I also noticed that those who take longer to learn it often learn it better than those who learn it faster. So each of us needs to respect our way of learning and our way of living. So each of us is different. I wish I could say change to a plant-based diet, which I more or less have myself. I'm still vegetarian. My wife and I went for 50 years now and I learned TM as well, way back when. It's like the McDonald's of consciousness. It's accessible to everybody. It's a beautiful method, a lovely method of meditation, mantra meditation but in your case that worked. I wish I could tell everybody. Just, if you have a drinking problem, meditate and eat vegetarian and it'll you won't have it. But it's different for different people, of course, and you acknowledge that in your totally.
Speaker 1:And I would always say, if this I like, I've always been totally non-pushy to everybody. My whole family is very different. You know, very different lifestyle to me. Even my friends, to a certain extent they're like James, what are you doing? It's like, yeah, I've just learned, started meditating. Um, I've let go of a lot of these habits that don't serve me any well. It's like my life kind of depended on it. But I'm not pushing it on you, I don't want you to do it.
Speaker 1:This is just kind of what's working for me and I feel that there's a great liberation being able to own it for yourself, even though it's going to be completely different for everybody. And I recognize that and I was like look, this is just the way of james, you know, you say the way of the peaceful. I'm like this is way of the james and this is just how he's rolling right now. And they go are you going to drink again or maybe don't know, are you going to eat meat again? Maybe I don't know. You know, I was just like are you going to eat fish? Maybe I don't know. So I just leave it there. And you know, 20 years later, maybe I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 2:Well, I like that, and that, I don't know, is a beginner's mind. It's an open curiosity to what life brings us, and one of the tenets of this approach to living that I teach is that there's no best book, no best teacher, no best philosophy or religion or diet or system of exercise. There's only the best for each of us at a given time of our life. Life is an experiment. We have to find out what works for us. But in terms of these spiritual laws and the law of balance, which is the first law in my little book called the laws of spirit, I really love this book, guys.
Speaker 1:I'll make sure you've got a link to it. This is one of like. This is one that seems a little off-piste for most of Dan's 18 books, but it's actually one of my favorite because it's got such depth and content that you can use every single day, so I have it playing in the car from time to time. That you can use every single day, so I have it playing in the car from time to time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I enjoy it, but anyway, tell us about it. Well, the law of balance can be applied physically. In fact, it can help us to cut our time of learning in half, learning any physical skill. And the way the law of balance can be stated is that anything we do, we can overdo or underdo. Some people talk a little too fast, others a little too slow. It's hard for people to follow them. Some people eat fast, some people eat slow. There's no one balance for everybody. Like what is balanced exercise? Well, it depends if you're going to training for the Olympics or just want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. So we each have to find our own balance.
Speaker 2:But that principle, the way it works, is most of us tend to undercompensate, because when we're used to doing it one way whether it's talking too fast, eating too fast, whatever that feels normal to us. So it feels strange to change that. So we tend to undercompensate. And the example I give is if you were learning to hit a cricket ball or a baseball depending on what culture you're from and you kept missing because you were a little child. Let's say you're just learning, but then somebody notices that you swing on one side, let's say in baseball you swing too low. Every time you keep missing the ball because you swing below it. You might want to tell the child swing higher, but they will undercompensate, they'll swing a little higher, a little higher. Finally they may hit a pop-up fly. But if were to tell that child, make sure you miss it the next five times, but make sure you swing too high in trying to swing too high, they're probably going to connect with the ball much quicker.
Speaker 2:If they shoot in basketball, if they shoot and they notice they shoot mostly, they miss the hoop to to mostly to the left. Instead of trying to correct and shoot for the basket shoot too far to the right In archery. If you shoot high and to the left, shoot low and to the right the next one. So by working both sides we find center and that applies to anything in life. Working both sides, that's how you actually apply the law. It's not just abstract thinking or ideas or theories. It's something you can apply in everyday life. And this, as you know, from the laws of spirit, that little book, this ageless woman sage teaches me these laws. We're up in the mountains doing different things and that's how I really anchor them in in how they can be applied in everyday life. So that I hope, addresses this question of balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just wanted to add one more thing that people can do. You know, if they're doing sport, like next time you're out in nature, get a stone and try and hit a tree, and you'll know where the stone is going, and then just completely go on the other side and then you'll see what dan's talking about. And I love to do this exercise, just to keep reminding myself if I'm in balance or out of balance, because we're always out of balance perhaps in some area. Every day, you know, every day you might be out of balance.
Speaker 1:Today I was like I was feeling a little low on energy. I've been traveling, I've been doing this, that and the other, lots of work, lots of interviews, speaking to clients, and it's been great. But then I found my energy a bit lower. So I was like you've got to take a nap, james, take a nap, slow right down. And then I was like right, I've had a nap, I feel great. Now you need to pump some blood through your heart off you go for a run. So I went and did sprint training up and down a hill, came back, I was like wow, I am back again.
Speaker 1:This is just applying that balance that dan is talking about and only you can tell, like the audience, only you guys can tell what you need to do, uh, in order to stay in, and I love Dan's application and just being reminded of the law of balance. I mean it's so powerful. So, your teachings of, like practical wisdom, is there any other spiritual insights that you'd love to share? Or something practical and another physical exercise other than balance that you think, wow, people should, really could not should, but could be aware of that. Maybe some people don't think of that would really help them enjoy a great quality of life.
Speaker 2:I hope your listeners appreciated that what you just said not should, but could, because it would be very useful for all of us to change the word should. You should be this way, I should be this way to, I could be this way. It's much less judgmental and it's more realistic as well, because most of us we think we know how life should be, but we really don't. It's unfolding in a sense of mystery. It's evolving. So we need to trust our process and, even though I hinted at it before giving that example of learning a somersault that we have to respect our own way of learning and living.
Speaker 2:Speaking to young people today, many of them are depressed because they're looking on social media and everyone else seems happier than them, the people. They see their pictures. They're showing their best self, they seem to be having more fun or traveling more and that sort of thing, and that comes from comparing ourselves to other people. It's a profound disrespect for our own self. Sir Walter Raleigh once said I cannot write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me. And so each of us has to recognize our story is our treasure, our own story, our life. It's like a novel being written and we don't know what the next chapter is going to be. You certainly didn't.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't.
Speaker 1:At these various points in your life no, and you know, dan, one thing that I really appreciate about you, you know, like conversing with you before you came on the show before, when we were like writing to one another, me being in spain and you being in, uh, brooklyn you always wrote at the end until then, until then becomes now.
Speaker 1:Tell me, now it's now and now it's now right. Tell everybody a little bit about that, because I think that was a really beautiful way of understanding life, sure, and I, and I think that you know you, you. This is why I really appreciate you and appreciate your journey and appreciate your story and appreciate your last book, um, that I think the audience will massively appreciate. Well, but I just really like to just bring that home for people until then becomes now. Tell us about what you mean by that. I know what that means, but it's quite nice to hear it from you, because I never heard anyone said that before and when you wrote that on every single one well, that's, that's the thumbs up on the other one, I was like I really like the way Dan's saying that, because it's fun, it's truthful and it's got a depth of wisdom.
Speaker 1:That is like, yeah, that's so right.
Speaker 2:That's a Millman original, I suppose.
Speaker 1:A Millman original. You can take that.
Speaker 2:And it comes from the realization. You know most people roll their eyes when they hear about living in the present moment. Because you know, we've read Be here Now, ram Dass, power of Now. We've read my book. It goes into the present moment. But there's many realizations I've had since then.
Speaker 2:Any physicist will tell you you cannot grasp the present moment Because if I say the word now, from the time I intoned that n sound to the ow sound, a million nanoseconds have gone by. Which nanosecond is now? So when teachers like me suggest attending to the present moment, we're really saying handle what's in front of you. Attending to the present moment, we're really saying handle what's in front of you and the way time works. It's a paradox because time seems real to most of us and in the conventional world it is real. We set up a time to link up here for our conversation. So time is a functional thing. We know we're going to be doing something this evening perhaps or tomorrow, and yet from a transcendental view, there is no time. And here's an example. Let's say I was sitting on the shore of a river and I was, and you were in a boat and you're meditating, you're doing your TM in a boat and you're sitting very still and you're coming down from what appears to be the past, passing in front of me, what appears to be the present, and then moving on in that river of time into the future. But from your perspective, you are sitting in the eternal present moment, absolutely still. And so that's the paradox of time. Conventionally speaking, it's real, but transcendentally speaking it's an illusion. All we have is the present moment, the present moment, the present moment. So when I write, until then becomes now. Well, until then, we've all heard that phrase, but it will become now. And here we are in this now and now. Life is like a motion picture with many frames One frame, another frame, another frame. They all come in front of us in the present moment. That's all we have. What we call the past doesn't exist anymore, except in the neural impulses in our brain we call memory. And if someone said to me but wait, dan, I know the past exists. Here's a picture of my fifth birthday party Well, all that's actually happening in that moment is someone is showing me a photographic image of a memory, but it's happening in this present moment.
Speaker 2:Past is past and the future is our imagination. We can get up and we have the ability to plan our day, to say, oh, I have to run this area, and then we run that area. But memory is not so accurate as we've learned and what we imagined happening that day. If we wrote down everything we think is going to happen and at what time it changes, it simply does so. We don't want to become too attached to the plans. So memory and imagination are wonderful human capacities, but we are often lost in the past and future.
Speaker 2:And if we want to quiet our mind, the best way to do it is focus on what's happening right now. If we were sitting in the same room right now, james and I tossed you my keys and said catch, you'd reach for them with a cat-like awareness. You would not be thinking about what happened yesterday or what's going to go, you're going to do tomorrow. You would be pure awareness In the present moment. There is only awareness when we're thinking about anything, it's from the past or the future. So by focusing on what's in front of us, that's our moment of sanity, that's our moment of power. That's our moment of sanity.
Speaker 1:That's our moment of power, that's our moment of reality right now so you said something that I really liked in that is, like, don't be attached to certain things, um, but at the same time, you, you know, like when people are, you know, struggling to find their purpose and direction, they're trying to attach to their purpose and direction. So how can we find orientation, or how does one find orientation in that? And, by the way, I've written all these questions down, and I'm just thinking my own questions instead of yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's why I like these, so here I am with you and I'm like going well, this is james, this isn't you know, stuff that I've really. Oh yeah, let me ask dan this. I was like well, these questions are going right out the window.
Speaker 2:Well, feel free anyway. Yeah, but taking up that idea, we can have an aspiration in this present moment. In fact, one of my books, another small book like the Laws of Spirit, it's called the Four Purposes of Life. And you know, when I was writing that book, james, a friend of mine, said I don't need to read your book, dan. He said I know the purpose of life it's learning to love. I mean, whatever the question, love is the answer. And I went well, that's a good purpose. And another friend said, no, no, the purpose is realization, enlightenment. And I went well, that's really a good purpose too, for humanity. But another friend said no, no, that's all philosophy. He said our purpose is reproducing, keeping the species going. So they're all right, they're all correct. But just as we divide the days of the year into four seasons or the points on a compass into four primary directions, by looking at our life through four purposes, it helps make more sense out of it.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go into that right now. I'm just going to say the first purpose is learning life's lessons. There's a lot more to that Twelve courses in the school of life and so on. But the next one is our career or calling. Sometimes they're the same, like in my case, maybe in yours, but sometimes they're separate, which is fine. We have a career that makes an income, and then we have a calling or mission or hobby, whatever it is that we love to do in our spare time. The third purpose is a more mysterious one. I don't know if you've read my book the Life you Were Born to Live.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that the one with all the?
Speaker 2:life path numbers. The life path numbers. Right, I'm intrigued to know what number you are. What number are you? Uh, mine's a 268. It describes my life path, um, and I can say a lot more. I mean we can do a whole hour just on that life path material, um. But it's my second most popular book. It has been over.
Speaker 2:We do another show on that, dan, because you know, I think that people would really love to to to know about that, but because there's so much depth in that yeah, well, in the meantime, let me just say that anyone can go to my website, peaceful warriorcom, and look at the life purpose, find your life purpose, and there'll be a calculator they can put in their date of birth and they might, might, see a sample, a taste of some core issues in their life, and there's much more, of course. It deals with relationships, finances, health and so on, and so it's an extensive system and, again, it's been read by well over a million people, maybe two, and it's kind of scarily accurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It's quite accurate. I don't know exactly how it works, I can't say how adding up the numbers of one's date of birth can give valid, reliable, accurate information, but it seems to work. And there are many numerology systems and none of them make any sense really, and yet it can be very useful as a tool. But the reason I mentioned the four purposes is the fourth purpose.
Speaker 1:The first one was the, so let's just go to recap.
Speaker 2:Learning life's lessons.
Speaker 1:Learning life's lessons. Number two was career.
Speaker 2:Number three was and number three is the life purpose. The life path system. Yeah, and that's another kind of life purpose, another approach, right path system. That's another kind of life purpose, another approach. But the fourth purpose is perhaps the most important and the most manageable, because we may not know our cosmic purpose ultimately, but we always know our purpose in the present moment, like, for example, my purpose is very clear in this moment, sharing with you and your purpose is very clear, and your listeners, in this moment, their purpose is clear. So we always know our purpose in that moment. Otherwise we're not living on purpose.
Speaker 2:Robert Byrne once said the purpose of life is a life of purpose. When I watched my granddaughter here in Brooklyn when she was little, crawling across the floor, she wasn't crawling just to get a workout, she wanted her big brother's toy, a sparkly toy. So that's why I say we're hardwired goal seekers. So in this moment we can have a plan, in this moment we can have a goal and we just can handle you. You know that that analogy it's it's uh, everybody's heard it, but it's beautiful that we're like cars driving at night and we can only see as far as our headlight beam. But we can make the whole journey that way? Sure so, if we focus on our purpose in each moment, we're living a purposeful life, and that can lead to progress toward our goals.
Speaker 1:Which is another way of like saying you're building. You know, like I have this little analogy that I like to use is that, as I've started the podcast, like five years ago in November, it was say something like that, and I remember just thinking, well, I've got to begin. I don't know how to begin, but I have this calling. I've had this calling for a long time and I've not listened. So I was like, right, james, how many times does it take for you to really listen?
Speaker 1:I feel like my inner guidance was saying you've got to do this. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do this because I don't want to share this information. And like my inner being was, well, you're going to share it because you have a gift. And I'm like, well, why me? Why does? Why does the world need another coach? Why does it need another teacher? I was like, well, you have a way of explaining it like nobody else, because your story this is what you were alluding to at the beginning, dan, which I really appreciate and I hope Someone in the audience or all of you take this is your story, is your treasure map, right?
Speaker 2:because there's not a single story on the planet exactly like yours or mine or any of your listeners. That is our treasure. Yeah, and yes, it does take a certain hubris, but also, yes, it does take a certain hubris, but also an inner calling to share with other people. You know, andre g once said everything that needs to be said has already been said, but it needs to be said again because no one was really paying attention. Yeah, I mean. Each of us beautiful analogy, right? Each of us has our own way of expressing our own wisdom and sharing it with others.
Speaker 1:So if one is listening, someone's listening in and they're going. Well, what's my purpose and direction? Well, your purpose and your direction, if you're listening to what Dan is sharing, is like unfolding your own story. Having a look at your own story and noticing some of the mistakes you've made. Now you've come back from that and using that to uplift other people in some way will then sort of give you the headlights about the next step, and then the next, and then the next step and to trust that.
Speaker 2:to trust that rather than the fear of missing out. And other people are getting it and I'm missing out. Somehow Nobody is missing anything. As somebody once said, everyone has the best seat. I think it was John Coltrane. A musician said everybody has the best seat in their own life, which is the front seat. The front seat. And as somebody else once said, be yourself because everyone else has already taken.
Speaker 1:I love that one that one, and something that I really liked that you said at the beginning, dan, was you said I think the theater roosevelt said that is that you know particularly some of the young listeners listening in because I like to feel like I'm a bridge between you know different levels of demographics, and you said that comparison is the thief of joy, and I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said that, something, somebody like that and and I remember you know, like it is true, it's like we all do compare, particularly when you're younger, but realize that you know your mistakes and you're the front, you're sitting in the front seat of your own life and, although my life challenges may be coming onto your lap without your permission, sometimes you just realize it's going to serve you really well as you pass through, as that storm passes through and I can say that from one of you know several of my own challenges that I've gone through and, as you, you know, go into your book and your stories.
Speaker 1:You're like I've gone through this, this and this and here I am and you become a lot more open to life. And I guess my last question that I wanted to really ask you today was just about trust, because I think a lot of people find trust, trusting in something greater, trusting life, trusting the universe, trusting your inner guidance. You know that it's going to take you in a direction, because some people feel like they don't have control. So how does that trust bring back that sense of control, what you can from your perspective, because I really love the way you put it down right well, here's how I would put it.
Speaker 2:Uh, I view daily life as a form of spiritual weight training that's a really just already.
Speaker 2:That's just like bang, have some of that you know, if we don't lift enough weights, we don't get any stronger. Now I do not recommend fractures as a method of spiritual growth. No, I do not. We don't have to suffer in order to grow.
Speaker 2:However, many of us have noticed that lessons repeat themselves until we learn them and if we don't learn the easy lessons, they get more dramatic to get our attention. So we can see daily life as a school, our classroom and in fact, daily life is guaranteed to teach us everything we need to learn and to evolve as a human being. People were evolving before books and before seminars. But sometimes people say well, dan, why do you write books and teach seminars? Because a good book or seminar or any communication can remind us of some things and help us to learn more easily, more gracefully, the lessons of everyday life. But our daily lives? We need to start to trust that Adversity is a part of life. In fact, sometimes I ask audiences raise your hand if you've ever experienced that that's. That's a whole other thing. But but most people can appreciate that they're a little wiser and a little stronger for having gone through that difficulty. Sometimes digging our way out of a dark hole can give us the strength to climb the mountain.
Speaker 1:That seems apparent in your case yeah, one thing I just wanted to sort of leave on a high was something that you well, I just I took an idea that you said once and I and I hope the audience, can take loads of little ideas that dan and I have shared today. But I really love dan's take on, do the physical stuff to get the real understanding. You know so, when you were showing the balance, like you showed the balance of the, of doing the handstand because of your experience on a wobbly table, and that to me just shows you can be centered in a wobbly life experience. And one thing that I chose to do shortly after we met was I decided that I'm going to go and do a skydiving course. So I went and did a skydiving course and the purpose of me doing that was, number one, because I thought it'd be fun, but number two, I thought it'd scare the living daylights out of myself as well, because the mind would say no, but the body's actually going to go. Sorry, the body says no, but the body's actually going to go. Sorry, the body says no, but the mind's going to go, I'm going anyway.
Speaker 1:So a friend of mine and I came over from hong kong. We went and did this like free fall university, uh thing, uh, several years ago, and we were both petrified doing it. But we're like, we've got to do this, and the reason why we were doing it well, at least my, my case, I can't speak for him, other than he thought it would be fun was because in my mind, I thought, if I can land out of a plane pulling my own cord many, many, many, many, many, many times, then I can pretty much do anything. I put my mind to Now you didn't talk about that, but this an idea that james suddenly thought, well, this would be a good idea, and so it didn't matter what I set my mind on. It was like I will stand and do a long term goal, it doesn't matter how long it takes. So in my case, you know, one of my missions is I want to help a billion people with enjoying a greater, uh, healthy life, happier life, wealthy life and greater fulfillment.
Speaker 1:Time doesn't matter how long time it takes, right? So I've started. So it's like, right, I put my mind to it. I know I can do it. I've jumped out of an airplane. I'm still here. I survived a car crash, I survived alcoholism, and here I am still chipping away brick by brick, and I just love the way you put it on. You know, just turn up your action. What are you doing? Because that's the only thing you've really got control on when you're moving towards your purpose.
Speaker 2:Spiritual life begins on the ground, rooted like a tree. A tree can't grow branches and leaves and extend to the sky until they put in deep roots. So I do believe in physically grounded, physical training. Enlightenment may be a bodily experience and it may be that meditation sitting in meditation doesn't just quiet the mind. Maybe it quiets the body, and when the body is still, the mind tends to follow. So I believe that our practice is physically grounded in the way we approach everyday life. You know, a man wrote to me soon after Way of the Peaceful Warrior came out and he read it and he said Dan, now I really am interested in spiritual practice, but I have a wife, three children, a full-time job. How can I find the time? And he came to understand that his wife, his children, his full-time work were his primary spiritual practices. Yeah, and they will demand more and develop us more than sitting in a cave and meditating.
Speaker 1:I know because I've done both okay, I did one christmas I did instead of going to my family, who were living in sweden at the time. Um, instead of going to see them, I said I'm going to meditate this christmas. I remember this, right, I sat there and I was like, okay, I'm bored, now I'm bored. I was like it was a real. I was like, okay, I've meditated. Now I've not gone to see my family, I've stayed in england, which is where I was living at a time, and I've missed out on that two weeks of being with my family celebrating because I want to sit and meditate. And I was like I won't do that again.
Speaker 1:So I never did it again, but I had the experience, you had the experience you learned the lesson right lesson, which is, you know, being around people can sometimes be a really beautiful thing yeah, well, ram das also said you think you're enlightened.
Speaker 2:Go visit your family, yeah, yeah, and also the training itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you, like, I have a really great relationship with my family because I don't judge them. You know, I try not to judge them and I know that you're different from me, but I love you as you are, not as the way I want you to be, but just as you are, and I found that that gave me a lot of peace. You know, if we look back to you know your new book, peaceful Heart, that gave me a peaceful heart thinking that way. You know, and the warrior spirit is I don't need to change you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that brings up the whole idea of peaceful warrior. You know people often ask me well, where did you come up with that term? And actually I was teaching a martial arts course at Oberlin back when, based on my experience with Aikido and Tai Chi, and so part of the course was Aikido and part was Tai Chi.
Speaker 1:One was Japanese, one was Chinese, but both from the Orient right, exactly, both from Asia, and they have a certain approach.
Speaker 2:And I was going to call it for the school catalog the Way of the Warrior. But then I went, you know, that doesn't quite fit, because both of these are receptive martial arts, they're not aggressive martial arts. And I said, and then I had a light bulb moment, I went why don't I call it the way of the peaceful warrior? And that's when the term first came up. But the reason that term applies to every one of your listeners and you and me. It's not some exclusive club. We're all peaceful warriors in training because all of us are seeking to live with a peaceful heart among, with more serene heart, a more, more equanimity in the midst of the chaos of the everyday news. And but there, and as you acknowledge, there are times we need a warrior spirit just to roll up our sleeves and march into life and deal with the challenges that naturally arise in everyday life as a form of spiritual weight training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really like that. You know, for people who think that you don't know if they're on a spiritual course or a spiritual awakening or whatever, don't worry, you are, because that's happening exactly. You're just on it, whether you like it or not. You know, dan, it's been a real joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. This week's super soul model is dan millman. Thank you, dan, you're very welcome. Thank you, thanks for tuning into this episode and if you've enjoyed this or any of the others, please remember you can support the show, and your contributions do allow us to keep bringing you the best guests. In the meantime, till the next episode, I wish you green lights all the way.