The Peaceful Warrior Experience: An evening with Dan Millman

Image: An invi­ta­tion to The Peace­ful War­rior Expe­ri­ence by The Crazy Colombian

Over the last 38 years of my life, there have been a hand­ful of authors that have inspired me; many of their books even changed my life. For exam­ple, T. Lob­sang Rampa’s fas­ci­nat­ing descrip­tion of life in Tibet in The Third Eye opened my eyes to a new uni­verse of spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy. Dou­glas R Hofstadter’s fas­ci­nat­ing and con­gru­ent explo­ration of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Goedel, Escher, Bach: An eter­nal golden brace proved to me that you can become an excep­tional gen­er­al­ist by weav­ing fields together that are seem­ingly far apart: in his book, Hof­s­tat­dter inte­grates dis­ci­plines seem­ingly as dis­parat as music, paint­ing , logic and math­e­math­ics. But it was Dan Millman’s semi-biographical tale of courage & growth in The Way of the Peace­ful War­rior that exposed me to an unusual path for achiev­ing bal­anced enlight­en­ment. This path was Dan’s unique blend of ancient wis­dom and every-day-smarts. His approach was unique and refresh­ing, and helped me start liv­ing my life as a Way of learn­ing, as a jour­ney in which I can inte­grate and bal­ance my War­rior and Peace-giving energies.

This explains why I got so excited one morn­ing when my wife told me that Dan was com­ing to Syd­ney. Not sur­pris­ingly, I jumped from my chair; logged on to the web; and quickly found Nibbana’s web site. There I found that Julie Ann Storr, the company’s CIO (Chief Inspi­ra­tion Offi­cer) had arranged for a Peace­ful War­rior tour of Aus­tralia & New Zealand (link). Accord­ing to their web site, Dan would be vis­it­ing major cities in each coun­try, where he would spend 2 hours explain­ing how to “gain clar­ity and per­spec­tive in the face of life’s chal­lenges and learn how to work with uni­ver­sal laws to achieve real-world out­comes in every­day”. His tour would cul­mi­nate with a 2-day week­end expe­ri­ence in Syd­ney, where Dan would ini­ti­ate atten­dees into the Peace­ful Warrior’s way, empow­er­ing your body, mind and spirit to dis­cover a new way of liv­ing. I don’t really need to tell you I imme­di­ately booked myself for both events in Syd­ney, do I?

In this arti­cle I want to share my per­spec­tives and impres­sions after attend­ing the first event. This 2-hour talk was held on Tues­day the 1st of April at the Syd­ney Masonic Cen­tre. At a later stage, I will post a follow-up arti­cle with a review of the 2-day week­end seminar.

Hav­ing a drink with other Peace­ful War­riors: A unique experience

Upon reg­is­tra­tion on the web site, I had an offer that was impos­si­ble to resist: if I reg­is­tered for a Gold-Class reserve ticket, I would be invited to join Dan with a small group of peo­ple for an hour of drinks and canapes before the talk started. For any­one who has worked in mar­ket­ing, that is what we in the trade call an irre­sistible offer with a strong call to action. You won’t be sur­prised to learn that I took it on the spot, will you?

For obvi­ous logis­ti­cal rea­sons, the drinks where held on the same build­ing where the main talk was held, albeit in a more inti­mate room. A lit­tle before 5:30 PM our small group assem­bled. Every­one seemed excited to be there, and there was a small amount of ten­sion in the air. As Dan entered the room, we all felt a sub­tle yet notice­able shift in the room’s energy; Peo­ple were happy to be there, and the ten­sion we had held in our bod­ies from antic­i­pat­ing Dan’s appear­ance quickly trans­formed into a sort of hap­pi­ness to finally be with him.

Over the course of the ensu­ing hour Dan played the per­fect host, work­ing the room with his sig­na­ture smile, ensur­ing every­one had a chance to talk with him. Some of us brought our books and DVDs for him to sign. Oth­ers were happy to just be there, and enjoy the con­ver­sa­tion of our Peace­ful War­rior master.

When my turn to meet him came, I intro­duced myself as The Crazy Colom­bian. Dan instantly recog­nised me, and had to remind me that hadn’t told him my real name, which I promptly did. After he moved on to the next group, I stole a peek at the ded­i­ca­tion of my book, and was very appre­cia­tive of the suc­cinct blend­ing of my blog­ging and my real personas.

Whilst hav­ing an oppor­tu­nity to meet Dan up-close and per­sonal was exhil­a­rat­ing, get­ting to know the other atten­dees to this event was just as stim­u­lat­ing. Every­one I met in that room was a Peace­ful War­rior on their own right, with a strong his­tory of per­sonal, spir­i­tual and busi­ness achievements.

It was 6:30 PM when Dan dis­creetly left us to con­tinue enjoy­ing each oth­ers’ com­pany. It was time for him to go and get ready for the main event.

Main course: The Peace­ful War­rior Introduction

I was thank­ful (albeit not par­tic­u­larly sur­prised) to find that Nib­bana had reserved the best seats in the house for Gold-Class reserve ticket hold­ers. Like an eager stu­dent in his first day of school, I took my place on the front row, and waited patiently for our teacher to arrive. Julie Ann did the usual intro­duc­tions, and amidst a wave of applause, Dan emerged to the front of th audience.

As many of you would know, Dan used to be an elite Ath­lete, so his intro­duc­tion to this lec­ture will come as no sur­prise to you: In a demon­stra­tion that only lasted a cou­ple of min­utes, this 62 year-old war­rior showed us that age and fit­ness can (and should) mix. In a humor­ous man­ner, he explained that giv­ing talks is not what he used to do; and that his occu­pa­tion many years ago was to do “this”. He then used his hands to hold on to the bor­der of the table, and in a con­trolled and slow motion, brought his body to a 90 degree angle to the table; then went fully ver­ti­cal; fin­ish­ing with a slow and con­trolled descent. I was in awe. Even in my fittest days I could not have achieved such sim­ple manoeu­vre, yet here was some­one quite a fair bit older than me doing it in front of 100 peo­ple — and that is after decades of not being a pro­fes­sional gymnast!

Image: Dan Mill­man fin­ishes his talk by The Crazy Colombian

But Dan’s gym­nas­tic antics were only a warm up to the heavy intel­lec­tual & emo­tional lift­ing we would do with him over the course of the fol­low­ing 2 hours. To ensure he left no man behind, Dan used a vari­ety of edu­ca­tional tools, includ­ing audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion; Poetry read­ing; and Humour. The talk was struc­tured around the theme of his book The Laws of Spirit (link), which cov­ers 12 Uni­ver­sal Laws. In this talk, he dis­cussed eight of those:

• The Law of Bal­ance : Every­thing that we do, we can overdo and underdo. If the pen­du­lum of our habits swing too far to one side, it will inevitably swing back to the other.
• The Law of Unity : We begin our life on earth as sep­a­rate beings; but just as each rain­drop is a part of the ocean, so each of us is a part of Spirit.
• Law of Choices : The choices we have made in our past have brought us to our present, just as the choices we make today are shap­ing our tomorrow.
• Law of Process : Any jour­ney starts with the first step, and unfolds only as we take every indi­vid­ual & sub­se­quent step.
• Law Of Pres­ence : Life is a series of moments; spend­ing too much time in the past or in the future robs you of the abil­ity to enjoy your life where it is lived — in the Now.
• Law of Cycles : “Every­thing dies & changes, even radi­a­tors” (link)
• Law of Sur­ren­der : Stress hap­pens when the mind resists what is; go with the flow, and sur­ren­der to the moment.
• Law of Action : We may know some­thing with our brains; but it isn’t until we expe­ri­ence it within our lives that we can truly com­pre­hend them; The path to Aware­ness is paved with Actions, not intentions.

Like I men­tioned, one of the things that Dan did was encour­age audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. In one such occa­sion, he asked for a vol­un­teer to demon­strate a com­pet­i­tive game he wanted every­one to try out; given I was at the front row, and knew who I was, he asked me to help him. In this game, the 2 par­tic­i­pants face each other at arm’s length. Palms fac­ing out go out in front, as if you were going to clap on the other person’s hand. The idea is to gen­tly (and not so gen­tly) clap against each oth­ers’ hands, and try to get your ’oppo­nent’ off-balance. You can achieve this both by push­ing hard with your hands, in which case your oppo­nent will likely be thrown off bal­ance and have to take a step back to regain it; or you can just ’give in’ when your oppo­nent tries to push hard, which will make him loose his bal­ance and take a step for­ward to regain it. Every time you take a step for­ward or back­ward, your oppo­nent scores 1 more point.

The point of the exer­cise was to show us that in com­pet­i­tive games, there are 2 ways in which you can look at your oppo­nent: You can either con­sider them some­one you must beat at all costs, and who is not deserv­ing of your respect or admi­ra­tion (think George W Busg against the Mid­dle East); or you can treat them as both your stu­dent and your teacher at the same time; your stu­dent, whom you will teach of his own weak­nesses every time you win a point; and your teacher who will teach you of your mis­takes every time you loose a point. Dan was very emphatic on his opin­ion that the ’ulti­mate com­pet­i­tive mind’ is, in his opin­ion, one of the worst things we have in mod­ern life; and encour­aged us all to con­sider how we approach our work lives; the sports we play; and our own rela­tion­ships. Do we feel we must win at all costs, or do we engage in the game of life ’as if it really mat­tered’, but knowl­edge­able that it really doesn’t?

Main impres­sions & Favourite moments

As you can imag­ine, I thor­oughly enjoyed Dan’s infor­mal style of pre­sent­ing his mate­r­ial. From the first few min­utes with his unusual use of acro­bat­ics, Dan grabbed the audience’s atten­tion, and held it throgh­out the 2 hours with his relaxed and down-to-earth style. His lib­eral use of quotes pre­sented us with wise, irrev­er­ent, and some­times funny ways of look­ing at some of life’s chal­lenges. Of the poems that he read, I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed Present Tense (by Jason Lehman):

It was spring,
But it was sum­mer I wanted,
The warm days,
And the great out­doors.
It was sum­mer,
But it was fall I wanted,
The col­or­ful leaves,
And the cool, dry air.
It was fall,
But it was win­ter I wanted,
The beau­ti­ful sow,
And the joy of the hol­i­day sea­son.
It was win­ter,
But it was spring I wanted,
The warmth,
And the blos­som­ing of nature.
I was a child,
But it was adult­hood I wanted,
The free­dom,
And the respect.
I was 20,
But it was 30 I wanted,
To be mature,
And sophis­ti­cated.
I was middle-aged,
But it was 20 I wanted,
The youth,
And the free spirit.
I was retired,
But it was mid­dle age I wanted,
The pres­ence of mind,
with­out lim­i­ta­tions.
My life was over.
But I never got what I wanted

I also enjoyed his reminder of how to achieve goals in our lives. Accord­ing to Dan, when­ever you face an impor­tant goal in your life, you can approach it in one of 2 ways:

(1) You can find a way to quiet your mind, cre­ate empow­er­ing beliefs and pos­i­tive self-talk, 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.

(2) Or you can just do it.

If you are not sure which of these two is the easy way to achieve, you may want to look at my pre­vi­ous post How to Reach your Goals (link).

Over the course of those 2 hours, there was only one thing that stood out as some­how neg­a­tive, although it was not within Dan’s con­trol. A num­ber of peo­ple were dis­re­spect­ful and did not switch their mobiles off at the start of the talk. It really puz­zled me that after the first mobile phone went off, other peo­ple didn’t reach for their phones to ensure they were off; It was not too long before a few other calls came through into the room. Thank­fully this only hap­pened a hand­ful of times, so the audi­ence was able to focus on Dan’s talk and enjoy it for what it was : a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to chal­lenge our views; to recog­nise that our lives are sim­ply a series of moments that are as spe­cial as those we enjoyed dur­ing his talk; and to con­tinue on our path to become bet­ter, more peace­ful warriors.

Image: Julie from Nib­bana bor­rows Dan’s mic
to close the event by The Crazy Colombian

Clos­ing thoughts: An expe­ri­ence worth having

Was the talk worth its’ price? It depends. If your cri­te­ria of value is to find entirely new mate­r­ial, fresh ideas, and learn new things every minute of the talk, then the answer for you would prob­a­bly be no. Like I men­tioned, Dan bor­rowed from him­self and oth­ers a num­ber of times, and used con­tent that you may have come across before.

On the other hand, what makes this a valu­able expe­ri­ence is not the con­tent pre­sented. Don’t get me wrong: the con­tent Dan chose for this talk was as high qual­ity as that he has pre­vi­ously put in any of his books. And what makes this a valu­able expe­ri­ence is not either the way in which the con­tent is deliv­ered, which Dan did with flair and panache. To explain the value of this expe­ri­ence, I’d like to first use an analogy.

Imag­ine that you have never heard of the game of Tenis; and that some­one told you of its ben­e­fits. You get excited, and decide to pick up a book at the library. You read all about the tech­niques; the great play­ers of our times; and the var­i­ous styles of the game. You then decide to finally put it all into prac­tice, and go to a court. How­ever, you become a bit dis­ap­pointed: You miss the ball most of the times, although you man­age to get a cou­ple of really good hits. You attribute those to beginner’s luck, and decide to try a dif­fer­ent approach. The day after, you write to the Wimbledon’s tour­na­ment win­ner, and ask for a tape of all his games; You also buy front-row tick­ets for some of his games, and make sure you observe and take notes through­out the games. At the end of this, you go back to the court, and this time you start hit­ting the ball reg­u­larly. You may not be win­ning against a decent oppo­nent yet, but you feel you’ve learned the basics. You finaly decide to take the plunge and hire a good coach for a series of lessons in the court. In those, your coach gives you some gen­eral advise and shows you by doing; and when you ask for it, the coach also pro­vides some advise spe­cific to your sit­u­a­tion. After your lessons end, you ask the top player in the club to play a game with you, and although you don’t win, you man­age to hold your ground. Some years later, after weekly prac­tice and many more games, you start win­ning on a con­sis­tent basis.

Today’s pre­sen­ta­tion was like the sec­ond step, when you observe a mas­ter in action. Watch­ing Dan talk about the Way of the Peace­ful War­rior gave us not only some of the knowl­edge he has put into his books, it also gave us an oppor­tu­nity to watch a Peace­ful War­rior in daily life. I antic­i­pate the week­end expe­ri­ence, which should be anal­o­gous to the last step, where you get the mas­ter to teach you in person.

Thank you, Julie Anne, for bring­ing Dan to Aus­tralia. Thanks to the very pro­fes­sional team at Nib­bana for pulling together a great evening. And Thank you Dan for show­ing us what a real-life Peace­ful War­rior looks like, and for shar­ing the wis­dom that comes from years of practice.

Tagged as: Dan Millman, Life skills, Peaceful warrior, Peaceful Warrior Series