Keep The Faith!

What do these 10 Time Magazine covers have in common?

They are all from the 70’s. More good times to come.

Lessons From The Peaceful Warrior

The movie “Peaceful Warrior” aired on Showtime this week. A few years ago I read the excellent book it is based on “The Way of The Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman . The movie reminded me of some really valuable lessons the story offers, a few of which I have listed below:

I call myself a Peaceful Warrior… because the battles we fight are on the inside.

Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what’s good for you. They don’t want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe theirs. I want you to stop gathering information from the outside and start gathering it from the inside.

Death isn’t sad, the sad thing is that most people don’t live at all.

Everything has a purpose, even this, and it’s up to you to find it.

Socrates: Where are you?
Dan: Here
Socrates: What time is it?
Dan: Now
Socrates: What are you?
Dan: This moment.

This moment is the only thing that matters.

The people that are the hardest to love are usually the ones that need it the most.

3 Rules of Life

Paradox: Life is a mystery. Don’t waste time trying to figure it out.
Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all.
Change: Know that nothing stays the same.

The Journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.

If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

You haven’t yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior’s way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability–to the world, to life, and to the presence you felt. All along I’ve shown you by example that a warrior’s life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior’s sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is…The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.

Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness–if you had little time left to live–you would waste precious little of it! Well, I’m telling you…you do have a terminal illness: It’s called birth. You don’t have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason–or you will never be at all.

Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation…is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew.