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Chapter 4
The Sword Is SharpenedIn this chapter, Dan is tested in ways he never imagined.
He buys a Triumph motorcycle, the same kind that Steve McQueen rode in The Great Escape movie Dan watched back earlier in the novel. But this isn’t the movies. And Dan doesn’t arrive safely – he’s involved in a very serious accident that shatters his leg.
The recovery for Dan is slow and painful, not only physically, but also psychologically since his doctor tells him he likely won’t be a gymnast anymore. But Dan sees things differently. He’ll just have to work harder, become stronger.
Dan’s a fighter. He slowly recovers his health, using meditation and his ability to singularly focus. What was the conversation we were having in the previous posts on “flow”? Yep, like that.
Dan fights on, moving to crutches, and then to a cane.
But while he’s still recovering from his accident, he comes down with a bad case of mononucleosis. Soc sends him to a hospital to see a regular doctor, but then he visits Dan with a very bizarre mix of herbs and a urine elixir to aid in the healing process.
Amazing what we will swallow when we’re sick! But the next day, Dan is feeling like a new man.
There’s an interesting exercise that Dan and Soc discuss – exploring emotions the way infants do – excepting emotions completely and then letting them go . . . .
A new character is introduced in this chapter – Joseph, who spent a number of years as Socrates cook and personal attendant. But now he has his own cafe and he specializes in uncooked natural foods.
And then Soc sets Dan off on a fast – from food and from sex. But this doesn’t last and Dan ends up hooking up with his nurse from when he was in the hospital. He breaks his fast and makes love to Valerie and Soc bans him from the gas station for a month.
Yep, warriors aren’t perfect.
But Dan has a way of bouncing back and he embraces the natural food diet, learning self control, and finds himself healing more and more.
He goes to visit Joseph, only Joseph’s cafe has burned down. In a lesson on not getting attached, Joseph mourns the loss very briefly and then simply let’s it go . . . .
But more tragedy comes, as Joseph passes away from leukemia. In the hardest lesson to learn, Socrates states that death is a transformation, nothing to be feared.
In many ways, I find this comforting.
In the last scene in this chapter, Dan has another vision where he must slay a giant with a sword. And he’s successful!
But looking deeper, there’s a metaphor here. As Dan says, “Soc, I’ve been battling illusions my whole life, preoccupied with every petty personal problem. I’ve dedicated my life to self-improvement without grasping the one problem that sent me seeking in the first place. While trying to make everything in the world work out for me, I kept getting sucked back into my own mind, always preoccupied with me, me, me. That giant was me- the ego, the little self- who I’ve always believed myself to be. And I cut through it!”
Dan transforms himself a LOT during this one chapter.
Chapter 7
The Final SearchIn this chapter, Dan and Soc go on a midnight run up the mountains. Previously, as Dan was recovering, this was a very difficult run, but he’s made significant progress and he runs effortlessly now.
But Socrates isn’t so fortunate. After Dan sprints ahead and waits, he realizes something is wrong and goes back to find his friend. Socrates is lying face down on the ground without a pulse.
Dan offers him CPR and revives him! There’s energy running through his body and he offers his own life up in exchange for his friend’s.
The next day, Dan visits Soc in the hospital and Soc explains this “lesson” as he calls it. “No matter how strong we appear, each of us has a hidden weakness that may be our ultimate undoing. House Rules: For every strength there is a weakness – and for every weakness, a strength. Even as a child, my weakness has always been my heart. And you, my young friend, have another kind of ‘heart trouble.'”
Dan doesn’t understand so Soc continues. “You haven’t yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peacful warrior’s way is not about invulnerability, but aboslute 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 the warrior’s sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.”
What Soc demonstrated by going on a run when he knew it could kill him was to teach what he had experienced. As Soc says, “I am a warrior, so my way is action. I am a teacher, so I teach by example.”
Soc tells Dan that Dan is also headed in the direction to be a teacher. I know I’m learning a lot just from reading this novel!
And then Soc sends Dan away – for 9 or 10 years! He knows that Dan is still searching, still seeking. Soc says, “A warrior is not something you become, Dan. It is something you either are, in this moment, or something you are not. The Way itself creates the warrior. And now forget me. Go, and come back radiant.”
Dan moves back to LA, his hometown. And he calls Linda and when she arrives in LA, proposes to her. They get married in a private ceremony at the courthouse.
It’s sad, though, because Dan says, “Why did I feel as if I had lost something, as if I had forgotten something important? The feeling was never to leave me.”
It’s the permanence of this sadness that’s so disquieting, especially after all he’d been through.
They settle into married life. Linda is a part-time bank teller and Dan sells life insurance.
Soon, all of Dan’s training and discipline begins to leave . . .
After finding out Linda is pregnant, they move to northern California for new work and to be near Linda’s parents.
And Dan finds a job as a coach at Stanford, fulfilling Soc’s prophecy that he would become a teacher.
But still, Dan’s feeling of loss continues. His memories of Socrates and all of their experiences together were fading. And it took its toll on their marriage.
Their marriage struggles after several years and one child is born. Dan works as a coach, sits with a Zen group, and studies aikido in the evenings. He is very much in search mode.
He takes a position in Ohio on the faculty at Oberlin College, but still, it’s not enough. He continues his search. His work at Oberlin gives him opportunities to travel around the world – Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, India.
And he had many experiences, but sill, there is that feeling of loss.
He and Linda are definitely on separate paths, but stay together for a long time and try. But after 6 years or so, their marriage comes to an end.
Dan moves to Palo Alto and lives a solitary life, seeking solace in what he had trained in earlier with Soc, going deeper and deeper into his mind, as he says, “like a sword.”
He then goes to seek answers in the Sierra Nevada, to get lost in the mountains.
You’re ahead of me in this book – so – Joseph is a new character to me – and interesting! Thank you for posting Chapter 4. I hope you didn’t have to re-write it!
The exercise of exploring emotions like an infant is an excellent practice. Accept, let go. Accept – FEEL – Let go.
However for someone with a history of trauma there may be some intermediate steps. For example, practised lying down is too vulnerable, too like the child who was traumatised. For these people, practise should be at least sitting, if not standing, to emphasise the adult power with strong emotions. It is more difficult to feel while sitting and standing, but the emotions are less likely to be overpowering. For someone with no trauma, practising this exercise lying down – or in a foetal position, would bring the emotions up more strongly.
I am at the end of a small fast. For the Roman New Year, I have decided that intermittent fasting is an important way to cleanse my body, oxygenate my cells, revitalise my mitochondria, and hopefully find a deeper connection with my Heart and Spirit.
Fasting is a common practice in most religious traditions. Jesus fasted in the desert for 30 days. Ramadan. Lent. Yom Kippur. Refraining from sex is a common part of the fast, and most major religions advocate for celibacy as a spiritual path.
I’ve dedicated my life to self-improvement without grasping the one problem that sent me seeking in the first place. While trying to make everything in the world work out for me, I kept getting sucked back into my own mind, always preoccupied with me, me, me. That giant was me- the ego, the little self- who I’ve always believed myself to be. And I cut through it!
Dan conquered the Giant with a sword.
I’m having an ego-shedding experience right now. It’s scary! When I look at – everything – I wonder about Love and connection and the importance of things, and I can feel myself shifting and actually disappearing into a sort of nothingness. This is the scary side, where the nothingness looks like nothing. It’s nothing so dramatic as a vision of killing the ego with a sword, and that actually makes it scarier – it’s like feeling a void opening up beneath me (it’s not depression, it’s different from that) and a dissolution of “identity,” “personality,” and the person called “Jan.” I’ve been through things like this before, and I know, as Soc said,
Death is a transformation, nothing to be feared.
Transformation, a shedding of skin (I’ve been colouring a snake for months), to be born anew. What will come out of the darkness will be better than before, closer, more human, more real, more present than my current experience.
Thank you for sharing this – it is timely for me, and I hope that sharing my stories gives you some practical applications to latch onto.
Great book, eh?
You mentioned the power of literature in an earlier post.
To me – literature – IS Art. When I speak of Art, I’m speaking of writing, visual, musical, all arts.
I just read this Christmas Story – how Dickens predated Freud in his wisdom of healing from trauma via dreams. You might say that A Christmas Carol is an ultimate shamanic healing – the healing occurs in dreaming, in deep access to the Inner State, and the man is transformed.
The exercise of exploring emotions like an infant is an excellent practice. Accept, let go. Accept – FEEL – Let go.
However for someone with a history of trauma there may be some intermediate steps. For example, practised lying down is too vulnerable, too like the child who was traumatised. For these people, practise should be at least sitting, if not standing, to emphasise the adult power with strong emotions. It is more difficult to feel while sitting and standing, but the emotions are less likely to be overpowering. For someone with no trauma, practising this exercise lying down – or in a foetal position, would bring the emotions up more strongly.
Thanks for mentioning (cautioning) this. This is very true. It reminds me of the specific poses on trauma-sensitive yoga that can open up too much, too soon, too vulnerable.
I’m having an ego-shedding experience right now. It’s scary! When I look at – everything – I wonder about Love and connection and the importance of things, and I can feel myself shifting and actually disappearing into a sort of nothingness.
Sounds very existential. Is this related to your recent fast?
Great book, eh?
Awesome book! Thanks for recommending it.
I just read this Christmas Story – how Dickens predated Freud in his wisdom of healing from trauma via dreams. You might say that A Christmas Carol is an ultimate shamanic healing – the healing occurs in dreaming, in deep access to the Inner State, and the man is transformed.
Great article off the MiA site.
I never thought of that story as “shamanic”, so I may have to give it a re-read in that context.
Thanks for the feedback!
Chapter 8
The Gate OpensThis chapter continues right where the last chapter left off – with Dan hiking deep into the mountains, continuing his search and he is happy, as he thinks, “For the first time in years, it seemed, I was content.”
He hikes, eats edible roots and berries, and meditates.
And then – suddenly – out of the woods – out of nowhere really – out walks Socrates!
And the contentment he felt seems to fade away. He confesses to Socrates, “I have nothing to bring you, Socrates. I’m still lost – no closer to the gate than I was when we first met. I’ve failed you, and life has failed me; life has broken my heart.”
And Socrates says something so unexpected – “Yes! Your heart has been broken, Dan – broken open to reveal the gate, shining within. It’s the only place you haven’t looked. Open your eyes, buffoon – you’ve almost arrived!”
After a day of swimming and hiking, Dan tells Socrates what has happened over the past few years. And when he asks Soc where he goes from here, Soc says, “Why cares? . . . A fool is ‘happy’ when his cravings are satisfied. A warrior is happy without reason. That’s what makes happiness the ultimate discipline – above all else I ahve taught you. Happiness is not just something you feel – it is who you are.”
He goes onto say, “This is the final task I will ever give you, and it goes on forever. Act happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love, and do what you will.”
Okay, here’s where it gets weird for me (and I don’t remember this part being in the movie version) – Socrates tells Dan about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Here’s a short video clip about it for those who may not have heard of it:
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Alex Gendler
The reason this affected me so much is I came across this a few months ago in another venue and it’s the “connecting points” that seem very surreal. So it’s like my own journey is being connected when these various threads have these kinds of connecting points, one part of my life (my outer life) is now connected to my Urban Shaman studies (my inner life).
And Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of those connecting points. I’ve been awakening from so many illusions over the past few years and seeing threads of connections emerge is really cool.
Socrates and Dan sit around a campfire at night in a cave (very fitting!) and Soc says, “All the peoples of the world, Dan, are trapped within the Cave of their own minds. Only those few warriors who see the light, who cut free, surrendering everything, can laugh into eternity. And so will you, my friend.”
Suddenly, Dan is grabbed by something or someone pulling him deeper into the cave.
He hears Socrates say, “This is your final journey.”
Falling, damaged and broken, Dan lands in a meadow. Time is altered and passes faster and Dan has the feeling of being dead, as if his flesh decomposing.
He had become “part of the carrier birds that had feasted on my flesh, part of the insects and rodents, and part of their predators in a great cycle of life and earth. I became their ancestors, until ultimately they, too, were returned to the earth.”
He continues: “The Dan Millman who had lived long ago was gone forever, a flashing moment in time – but I remained unchanged through all the ages. I was no Myself, the Consciousness that observed all, was all. All my separate parts would continue forever; forever changing, forever new.”
He comes back to himself, lying in the cave. Fear was gone. He had survived his own death because, as Millman writes, “Because I knew.”
He and Soc dance around the cave in joy at Dan’s awakening. As Millman writes, “I didn’t speak much, but I laughed often, because every time I looked around – at the earth, the sky, the sun, the trees, the lakes, the streams – I realized that it was all Me – that no separation existed at all.”
As Millman describes this: “There was no way to describe the impact of this knowledge. I was simply awake.”
Yes! I know I’ve posted this before, but it’s so good and so relates to this that I must post it again:
How Do You Define Yourself? – Alan Watts
I really, really like this line describing Dan’s experience:
“I had lost my mind and fallen into my heart.”
And thus, the gate has opened. But it is a “gateless gate” because the gate itself is an illusion. There are no barriers.
Socrates warns Dan that he will lose the experience of his recent vision, but Dan is not afraid of this.
And they part ways, and Dan goes back to his teaching job at the university and Soc disappears into the mountains.
Dan realizes something really incredible: “I closed my eyes to meditate, but realized that I was always meditating now, with my eyes wide open.”
Dan and Soc meet up later at the gas station. And here, at this place where it all started, Soc hands Dan his journal, his life story. Soc has come to the end of his journey with Dan. His work his done.
Soc gives him some words of advice: “You will write and you will teach. You will live an ordinary life, learning how to remain ordinary in a troubled world to which, in a sense, you no longer belong. Remain ordinary, and you can be useful to others.”
I really like the sense of humility here, especially after such a powerful experience such as exploring the finality of the life/death experience. It tempers the feeling of power of immortality and fearlessness. The contrast is what makes this so grand.
Soc walks into the bathroom . . . and disappears . . . .
In a way, this is another reminder of humility. What a place to make a grand exit!
Dan leaves the gas station to return to his job and his life, full of love and compassion for his teacher, his mentor, his friend.
Next up is the Epilogue. For next week. . . .
Epilogue
Laughter in the WindThis is the final chapter of the book and the time and place where Dan turns from “student” to his role as “teacher”.
Ironically, though, he leaves the university and moves to San Francisco to become a house painter.
In another turn of events, he calls Joyce and invites her to come live with him in California.
And with Joyce by his side, he quit his painting job and returned to teaching only this time, not in a university, but in a small gymnastics studio.
You know, it strikes me that this is someone who really has learned about wanting and needing less, about humility, simplicity, about being happy for the sake of it without any cause or material gain.
And Joyce tells him a story – about leaving home prior to high school and not having any memory of several years. About dreams – about Dan and about “a white-haired man”.
And her nickname – Joy!
Wow, didn’t expect that.
The lack of any historical reference for Joy renders her a kind of mythic presence.
I’m quoting that from what I wrote from my entry on Chapter 2.
Full circle and all.
And Socrates? Well, he did leave a message for Dan by changing his business card (remember the business card?) from: Emergencies Only! to “Happiness”.
I really liked this part:
“Then I felt the truth of it. Socrates hadn’t come, because he had never left. He was only changed. He was the elm above my head; he was the clouds and the bird and the wind. They would always be my teachers, my friends.”
Beautiful, beautiful story.
Thanks so much for posting these. I really appreciate that you brought the idea of book reviews here – so that people can “preview” a book before reading it themselves – or – get the “Cliff’s Notes,” er, “Coda’s Notes” version if they don’t have time to read it.
I wrote:
I’m having an ego-shedding experience right now. It’s scary! When I look at – everything – I wonder about Love and connection and the importance of things, and I can feel myself shifting and actually disappearing into a sort of nothingness.
Coda asked:
Sounds very existential. Is this related to your recent fast?
No. It’s about lovingkindness meditations. Buddhist practice. I’ve been doing a lot of heart work, trying to create resonance between heart and body, and my poor heart just keeps going in loops. So I tried a little lovingkindness meditations, and struggled with the word, “Love.” I struggled to attach that word to a person.
I imagine it as a beam of energy that radiates from my heart, but it’s still “imagination,” it doesn’t have practical application. I think of people that I love, but it is still thought.
We live in our heads so much, to the detriment of our hearts. I’m trying to get mine going, and in the process am asking hard questions like: What is love? How do I love? Who do I love? How can I love better? Have I ever loved?
Then, there is a complete dropping away: What am ‘I’?” Yep. Existential is a great word for it.
So – if I were not stable, this “lovingkindness” – seemingly so sweet and safe – could be dangerous, as it is making me question the very earth that I stand upon.
Todd Rundgren has a song, “The Meaning of the Verb ‘To Love'” Thinking of Love as a verb.
ANYHOW, I came here today because Dan Millman has a new talk with Sounds True.
Thanks for the Dan Millman talk! I look forward to listening to it. I really enjoyed his book.
We live in our heads so much, to the detriment of our hearts. I’m trying to get mine going, and in the process am asking hard questions like: What is love? How do I love? Who do I love? How can I love better? Have I ever loved?
Then, there is a complete dropping away: What am ‘I’?” Yep. Existential is a great word for it.
Thanks for explaining this and your thought process behind it and for it.
I hope your heart finds healing soon. I wish I had some sage advise, but it sounds like you are making progress on your “process work” and I hope it helps you to write about it because it sure helps others.
Thanks so much for posting these. I really appreciate that you brought the idea of book reviews here – so that people can “preview” a book before reading it themselves – or – get the “Cliff’s Notes,” er, “Coda’s Notes” version if they don’t have time to read it.
No, thank YOU for letting me writing here. I enjoyed exploring this on your site and becoming more familiar with all that you have to offer us here.
It’s truly a beautiful cyber resource, very serene and calming in the midst of a very chaotic “real” life. It’s very good to have places like this to read and refresh.
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