I guess what I am saying is that while the intellectual understanding of the process is important (ie "Way of the warrior" and "the power of now" etc), the change is most potent by constant practice and experience so that our old habit of a busy mind is replaced by a new habit of a calm mind. Not religious, not dogma, not a sect, not weird at all! Just a space to practice a fantastic "simple" technique. The most powerful experience of this I have had was doing Vipassana meditation retreat - 10 days of meditating for 16 hours a day and not talking to anyone. I can manage up to a minute or so of that state before I distract myself by attaching to a thought and then I notice that I am thinking and detach myself again. In my meditation I practice "stopping thinking" - ie just being and observing myself being, as opposed to thinking about what happenned yesterday, or the tasks for the day, etc etc. When I can do that, the past and the future won't matter because this moment - the now - will be overwhelming.ĭan Millman: This way that I have done it is by making sure I take the time to meditate every day for at least 20 minutes - prefereably twice a day.
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I guess what I need to do is train myself to see the extraordinary to see the beauty and the love that is all around me at all times. But, the way of the peaceful warrior teaches us that there are no ordinary moments it teaches us that there is always something amazing happening and that we have but to open our minds in order to see it.
#WAYS OF A PEACEFUL WARRIOR FULL#
So why is it that sometimes my mind is like a laser while other times it is like a scatter-shot of disparate ideas? I've been meditating a lot on this conundrum today and my initial thought was that my mind races only when the current moment is not powerful enough to hook my full attention. When I'm at the gym, with a cold, iron bar in my hands, I am there 100% in the moment, feeling the muscles, feeling the joints, getting overwhelmed by the proprioceptive beauty of musculoskeletal system. When I'm watching a movie, I sit there in a completely receptive state. When I'm having a deep, meaningful conversation with someone, all I'm thinking about are the ideas being exchanged. When I'm at work, programming, I'm often lost in the moment and forget to eat or drink.
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There are many times when I am extremely focused on the activities at hand. It has become a struggle and a burden to pull my concentration back on track.īut of course, it's not always like this. It's gotten so bad that lately, I have felt unable to even enjoy a good audio book how can I when every few seconds, I find my mind darting off on a half dozen tangents.
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My mind is often racing over all the things I wish to get done: the books I want to read, the applications I want to program, the new technologies I want to learn, the new exercises I want to try, the friends I want to see, the movies I want to see, the ideas I want to put down on paper. On this last viewing, the topic that really struck a chord with me was the concept of living in the moment this idea that we have to let go of the past and the future and to live in the only moment that we truly have - this one.
#WAYS OF A PEACEFUL WARRIOR MOVIE#
The Peaceful Warrior is a deep, complex movie and I come away with something new every time that I watch it. Thanks a lot Charlie, you rock hardcore! I've seen this movie a couple of times before and was contemplating adding it to my DVD collection so Charlie's timing could not have been more serendipitous. Last week, after I wrote about acting like a warrior, Charlie Griefer was thoughtful enough to send me a copy of the Peaceful Warrior starring Nick Nolte and Scott Mechlowicz.