The Peaceful Warrior series

Image: preg­nant war­rior dou­ble sword 2 cour­tesy of diz­zn­bon

Wel­come to the Crazy Colombian’s series about how to live your life like a Peace­ful War­rior. This series of arti­cles were inspired on a week­end expe­ri­ence held on the 5–6 of April 2008 in Syd­ney with Dan Mill­man. In addi­tion to an up-to-date list of arti­cles in this series, you will also find a lit­tle infor­ma­tion about Dan Mill­man, and what it means to be a Peace­ful Warrior.

Like most good things in life, my appre­ci­a­tion for Dan’s teach­ings get bet­ter with time. It is for this rea­son that you can expect future install­ments of this series. If you want to stay on top of new addi­tions, you’ll want to sign-up to our on-line mag­a­zine (it’s free!). Enjoy!

The Peace­ful War­rior series

This is the list of arti­cles writ­ten so far in response to my expe­ri­ence with Dan:

• The Peace­ful War­rior Expe­ri­ence: An evening with Dan Millman
• A poem inspired by a Peace­ful War­rior master
• PW Series, Part 1: A Peace­ful War­rior week­end seminar
• PW Series, Part 2 : The Law of Balance
• PW Series, Part 3 : Ener­gise your body
• PW Series, Part 4: Trust your intuition
• PW Series, Part 5: The Law of Expectation
• PW Series, Part 6: The Law of Cycles

About Dan Millman

Born in Feb­ru­ary 22, 1946, Dan has lived a unique and eclec­tic life. Start­ing his career as a gym­nast, he shat­tered his leg after a motor­cy­cle acci­dent. The doctor’s prog­no­sis: he would not not be able to walk ever again. After such dev­as­tat­ing news, Dan went on to prove them all wrong by tire­lessly train­ing and fully recov­er­ing from his injuries. In 1964, at the ten­der age of 18, he won the World Tram­po­line Cham­pi­onship in London.

After achiev­ing this incred­i­ble mile­stone, Dan spent the fol­low­ing years as a coach to stu­dents at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and Ober­lin col­lege. After sev­eral years of coach­ing expe­ri­ence, Dan decided to help oth­ers in a broader sense. He went on to become a pro­lific self-help, best-selling author of over 13 books. His most famous one, Way of the Peace­ful War­rior was writ­ten in 1980, and was made into a movie in the sum­mer of 2006 by Lions Gate Films.

Nowa­days, Dan spends most of his time writ­ing and speak­ing. His keynotes, sem­i­nars, and work­shops are all designed to share the wis­dom he has accu­mu­lated as a prac­ti­tioner of The Way of the Peace­ful War­rior.

What is a Peace­ful Warrior?

We are all Peace­ful War­riors in train­ing. But what exactly defines a Peace­ful War­rior? I could not find a def­i­n­i­tion any­where — nei­ther in Dan’s books or any­where else on the inter­net. So, this is my attempt at shar­ing one def­i­n­i­tion of a Peace­ful War­rior. Feel free to add / sug­gest changes to this def­i­n­i­tion in the com­ments sec­tion at the end of this arti­cle, and I may amend this page with some of your comments.

A Peace­ful War­rior is an indi­vid­ual who:

• Has accepted the dual­ity of life (Male & Female ; Peace & War; Ying & Yang) and has learned to bal­ance & inte­grate these appar­ent oppo­sites through action in life.
• Ded­i­cates his life to Serv­ing him­self and oth­ers, fol­low­ing his pas­sion and dreams even in the face of insur­mount­able obstacles.
• Has the courage to do what needs to be done, even when it doesn’t come easily
• Has com­pas­sion for all those around him, guid­ing his actions with love — par­tic­u­larly for those who need it most (usu­ally those who are hard­est to love).
• Uses the pas­sion of his heart, the com­pas­sion of his soul, and the expe­ri­ences of his life to Be Present, and accept that there are No ordi­nary moments, ever.
• Under­stands that the expe­ri­ences he has along the jour­ney are more impor­tant than the des­ti­na­tion itself