Get the most of life – Warrior's Way Podcast

Talking to the enlightened master Inside you

Posted on October 2, 2021October 2, 2021 by jameseke

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Learning to use active imagination can be a game-changer for inner growth

by James Eke

from Warrior’s Way Podcast episode #129

You might think talking to an imaginary friend is not necessarily the best way for an adult to live life but as a tool in our training toolbox, psychological genius Carl Jung’s process of active imagination can literally change your life. Or at least, active imagination is a powerful tool for training and development if you learn to use it right.

The best part of it is that you’ve likely done this before back when you were a kid and your imagination brought to life conversations that few of us adults even think about on a day to day basis but were key elements of the universe we lived in when we were small.

Now you might think to yourself, are you suggesting that I have an imaginary friend-like conversation as part of my training?

Pretty much.

What we have to remember is that the levels to our minds are a much deeper ocean than we understand – even those of us who have spent decades or likely even a lifetime meditating only really are aware or understand a bucket or two of that ocean, some people, the Einsteins of the mind – people like Jung or Dogen – they might have a bucket or two more of understanding but that extra insight is worth listening to and hoisting aboard. The insights that Jung received through active imagination revolutionized not just psychology but how we view the mind.

When we are actively integrating active imagination into our toolbox of techniques the important thing to remember that just like a physical workout or working on your Jiu-Jitsu positions, if you don’t work at it, active imagination’s actual potential for you won’t be realized. It will be like that person who says they want to learn to meditate, tries it a time or two and then says they ‘can’t meditate’ or ‘can’t find the time’ or simply don’t get the point.

Active imagination is a tool to help you to tap into the collective unconscious which is a place in our deepest depths of the mind that is likely inherited from our ancestors and isn’t shaped by our personal experience or egos – it is a place of memory and impulses that is not just common to all of us but which the individual isn’t even aware of in our walkabout life. We can get in touch with this through our dreams and interpretation of them but we can also get there with active imagination.

The practice of active imagination is to plumb the collective unconscious for contact with archetypes and allow for a non-forced conversation with aspects of these archetypes. There are lots of different archetypes, the father, mother, wise old person, trickster, hero and others. These archetypes can blend with each other or take on different faces. The important thing with this training tool is to not force it but to make it something somewhat similar to meditation where you are watching thoughts arise without attachment to them and with active imagination, using the same tack and see what the conversation brings.

Ever one to go back to Star Wars analogies, I like to think of it is our chance to take part in actual conversations with our own versions of Jedi Force Ghosts. Heck, for that matter, have a conversation with Yoda about your training. See what he says and what he suggests.

What I’ve found is that it is easiest to allow this form of training to evolve in an organic sort of way. Sort of just reach out into that ocean of the mind we were talking about and allow some suggestions about who to speak to and what you’ll usually find is something – or someone – will come to mind. It could be someone from a dream, maybe a grandparent, maybe a classical archetype, a religious one, a Buddhist Bodhisattva, or some Jedi master for that matter.

The thing is, the thing you are talking to in your active imagination meditation is not actually an entity like we think about. It is a process that is helping you to translate in a way the knowledge and memory that is transmitting out of that collective unconscious. A collective unconscious that speaks in a bit of a different language of sorts so that conversing with an archetype figure allows for some of that innate wisdom and knowledge that is under the surface of that ocean to come out in a way that you can understand it better.

What you might find in these conversations my surprise you. Maybe you’ll get a different outlook. Maybe you will get some advice to live in a more conscious and compassionate manner. Maybe you might even find that talking to what is really just an aspect of yourself you haven’t noticed before will give you the ability to see life in a way that you haven’t before that is more real, more healthy, and more present.

What I have found in my life and my training is that it is far greater to have multiple ways or a number of tools that I have to access to both examine my life and not just help with my training but help to navigate this life and who I am.

Socrates said an unexamined life is not worth living and what we need to understand is that training and living itself are one and the same massive ocean – we are all standing on the beach looking out. Sunset is on the way and it is our choice how far out we want to wade into that ocean and explore it and find its potential and undiscovered amazingness. I for one want to learn as much as I can. How about you?

Listen to the full podcast episode here

There Is Nothing To Fear

Posted on July 3, 2021 by jameseke

How Training To Remember All That You Have Is Right Now Can Completely Change Your Life And Make You Truly Fearless

by James Eke

From Warrior’s Way Podcast Episode 117

What are you afraid of? What fears occupy your mind, even unknowingly?

Think about it.

Don’t tell me for a second that you don’t have any fears because, frankly, you’re lying if you tell yourself that.

Here is what I want you to do. Spend a day keeping track of all the things that come into your mind that have even the slightest tinge of something fear based.

This means things you are afraid to lose. Things you are afraid to let go of. Most of your anxieties. Probably a good chunk of your motivations too.

For instance you might workout like crazy but while this is definitely a positive thing I don’t want you to stop, you might be doing it because you are trying to keep old age away, sickness away or negative images of self. All of this is actually fear-based thinking. Personally I think some fear based motivations are positive and working out to keep yourself and healthy and biologically young for as long as possible is one of the best things you can do to improve the quality of the time you have here so don’t stop that, I’m sure not going to, but understand where it is coming from.

So I want you to truly examine your life and be honest with yourself and examine the things going on inside of you. See what comes from or fueled by fear. Don’t judge it, just examine it, write it down so at the end of the day you can see a bit more clearly what the truth is for yourself.

Here is the thing. Whether you are you, me or some sage sitting in a cave meditating all day, we are stuck clinging to our view of ourselves, the big view of ‘Me’ with a capital M.

This view of Me is something that we have been each indoctrinated with since we were tiny and we cling to it like it is the only think keeping us sane and safe. The thing is, it is all a bit of a convoluted bunch of BS that we tell ourselves and believe.

Some of us believe we are our job or our career – heck there are tons of people who go out of their way to remind us of all the things they did in their career that somehow should mean something to us. Think of all the people who tout themselves as somehow a cut above because they are a doctor, a politician, former special forces, actor, singer or whatever else. If you think about it from a Zen or just a common sense perspective, what the heck does any of that have to do with you or how you should truly see life and your place in it? It doesn’t mean anything. You can’t tell me that because someone did X that they are somehow far greater than someone who quietly picks up your garbage. For that sake, the garbage-man may well have some far deeper insights into not just their own life but reality as a whole than Mr Special Forces or Mrs I’m A PhD.

I’m not saying don’t listen to these people, I’m just saying that belief in our own hype is, from a certain perspective, completely ridiculous.

So if you aren’t your job or your education or your… whatever you want to fill in the blank here with, what the heck are you?

Well that is the best question you could ask yourself to get started on truly understanding your place in this universe.

Look at your hand for a second or two. Is that hand you? What if you didn’t have it anymore? Are you now less because you don’t have that hand? Now take that same experience and travel throughout your body. Is any of the physical aspects that you would believe yourself to be actually you?

Mind blown a little? Good.

Our physical view of ourself is part of this whole delusion of the capital M, Me. This Me is actually something that has never, ever remained constant. Think back to a year ago. Are you the same person you were back then? What about a week ago?

If you are catching my drift you’ll start to see that this view of Me isn’t all that solid. This Me has changed every single day – though more accurately it has changed with each moment in the present, in the now.

Yet we all cling to our view of Me. We live in fear of letting go of all of that. We live in fear of there not being a capital M Me. Here is a little whisper of a secret though – there never was any real capital M Me, it is just smoke and mirrors that we have bought into our view of ourselves.

Within us all though is something else. If you learn to practice stillness. If you learn to sit and breathe and let go, with time what you’ll find is that there is something hidden in there that is actual truth – and that is Truth with a capital T now. What you’ll find is just as there is this illusion and delusion of a Me there is also an I.

This I is an aspect of you that touches the universe, is in contact with all things, all places, all times. It has been called a whole lot of different names but don’t get yourself too caught up in that. Keep it simple and just understand that it is there, in the background, it is the aspect of you that is at peace, the aspect that feels the interconnection between the world around us and what lies deep within, it is that part of you that will suddenly smile when you are sitting outside and your thoughts drop away for a moment and see a leaf blowing in the air, a butterfly flutter by you, sunlight dancing in the dust.

You might think, wow this guy sounds like he has somehow transcended fear. Anyone who tells you they have transcended fear is probably full of it or full of something else. We all have fear. I’m sure that even the most enlightened among us still have fear at least to some degree. What they probably have in equal measure though is the ability to see it for what it is and either let it go or turn it into something to help them become more liberated.

I might have mentioned before that during the height of COVID I had a period of time that was deeply existential and wasn’t exactly fun. I saw vividly the mortality of not just myself but every single thing around me. I’m talking my home, the trees in the backyard, my dog, you name it, we were all going to be dead.

At first I was like, ‘Eke, what the heck is going on with your brain.’ And I didn’t like it.

Then I started to understand that my training brought this up from the mud that lays at the bottom of the pool that is that Me with a capital M. It was fear of losing not just the things around me but fear of losing myself.

As with all deep experiences, this one hasn’t completely gone. It still drifts back to remind me of the reality of life, the impermanence of all things. Here is the thing though, what it taught me after a lot of sitting, a lot of letting go, a lot of questions and swallowing the answers is that truly all we have is right now. It is all we have ever had. Now.

When we were children we lived in the now. That is why afternoons playing seemed to last forever. The same with summer vacation. It was because we let go of thoughts of the future and fear and were simply fully 100 percent in the now. Enjoying the sun. Enjoying our games. Enjoying our lives fully.

At some point we replaced all that with fear of the future, dwelling in the past, afraid of everything people might think, holding ourselves back until all there was left was fear that we didn’t really want to ever admit to so we just bury it.

Fear though is darkness. Fear grows into other things. What we need to do as people who are training on this path is let it go. Breathe. Let it go.

Examine that Me with the capital M and all that you cling to. What is its purpose? What false faces does it wear that you no longer need?

Examine the I that dwells beyond that. What does it say to you?

If we want to let go of our fear and find out what this universe is truly about and our place within it we have to do the work. It won’t be easy at first but it is a path of small steps. You’ll succeed lots, fail tons but just stick to it.

Understand that there is nothing at all to fear. Everything in life is change, constant, unending change and all that there is truly is right now. In this now is everything you could ever need but you have to embrace it, love it, appreciate it and give back all you have to it. Here it comes, right now. Oops it is gone you missed it. How about right….now.

Listen to the full podcast episode at: Warrior’s Way Podcast

In this week’s episode we discussed an excerpt from Normal Fischer’s book, When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen (please click link and pick up a copy).

Enduring the fires of anger

Posted on June 12, 2021 by jameseke

How those who make us angry or even dislike us can be among our greatest teachers

by James Eke

From Warrior’s Way Podcast episode #114

Our enemies are our greatest teachers.

Nobody likes to have enemies – at least I sure don’t – but the reality is that just like the Dalai Lama, or Yoda would tell you, anger just leads to suffering and darkness. What we need to do, through training properly, is learn to see the root cause of our anger, see full on the stupid things we ourselves have done that created the discord, accept the result and learn from it all.

It is easy in Zen or the martial arts to look at training through rose-coloured glasses. You go through the motions, you see the tip of the iceberg, you commit yourself to the aspects that are easy or fit easily in your life – what you really are doing though is forgetting about the true work. The true Way.

The simple fact is that while all the external trappings of training are beneficial, the reality is that the most important aspects of training are also the hardest.

Someone either does you harm or dislikes you or has decided to do whatever they can to harm, discredit, ruin or judge you and you feel it in your bones that this enemy hates you or feels nothing but desire for seeing you in misery. We’ve all been there. The automatic reaction to this is anger, confusion, fear, hostility, pain and any other assortment of things that are basically summed up with the word suffering. Then we want to somehow return some form of suffering to that person, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. This is what I call the throat-punch reaction – someone does something to us and we automatically want to lash back.

Here is the thing, we don’t want to lash back with the throat punch reaction because of anything else except that you want them to feel like you feel and so you can feel right and believe that somehow they will see that they were wrong.

This is pointless though.

We all do dumb things – sometimes really, really, really dumb things. We are all human. I’m sure even the Dalai Lama has had moments in his life that he thinks to himself, “well now, that was really freaking idiotic…how have I been training this long and still do dumb stuff?” The difference between likely him and you though is he probably instantly laughs to himself and then uses that stupidity of being human as a great lesson to move on to a better place in his training.

I’m no Dalai Lama. I am a simple dude who tries to do his best, falls flat on his face, looks back on the past and wonders how on earth I’d ever been so dumb and I try to be better. Some lessons have come easy like a smack in the face that wakes you up, other lessons have been far slower coming. That’s ok though.

Over the past few years I have really come to see, despite hearing it for years or more likely decades, that compassion, patience, and letting go are the most important things to learn from training, that this is actually all that really matters in training.

You might want to believe that Zen is all about sitting. Or you might want to think that Jiu-Jitsu is all about tapping someone out. Or that you need to have high kicks or be able to meditate for 30 minutes without moving, or any other multitude of aspects of what you believe training to be. Thing is, you need to let go of that. You need to let go of this ego-centric view of what training means, this need to attain, this need to prove yourself.

What matters, what training, what the Way is about is coming to an understanding at our most fundamental level that we are all more connected than we can ever understand. This life and our view of reality in which we live is just a dream. Maybe even just a dream of a dream.

Doing harm to another just injures ourselves. This doesn’t mean not to train in your martial art though it means to train yourself so you never have to harm someone.

Responding to hate with more hate is maybe even worse than physical harm. When we lash out with hatred we lose a part of ourselves that we may not even realize we are tossing aside.

The same goes when we are judgemental, critical, mean, selfish, cruel and angry. Of course we are human so these kinds of things will still show themselves. What we don’t or shouldn’t do though if we are serious about our training is let them loose. Instead, see the anger, ask yourself where it is coming from, how much of it did we ourselves create? Then reshape that emotional response into patience and compassion.

Every morning when I sit for my meditation I think about all the people I remember and even those I no longer recall that I have wronged, that hate me, that I dislike and I send back into the universe that I hope they are loved, safe, healthy and will be liberated. I’m not doing this from some lofty perspective but from the perspective of a flawed human who makes mistakes and wishes and tries to learn from them.

If you love your life at all, or even if right now you don’t, you got here, right at this instant through all those events, mistakes, friends, enemies and whatever else has occurred. All of that happened so you could be here, right now, listening to this, breathing, maybe smiling. The question is, if you have been brought here by all these experiences, what are you going to do with it? What did you learn?

It took me 52 years to get to where I am right now. It has not been easy. Some of it was terrible. Some of it was sad. Some of it was wonderful. Some of it was crazy. All of it was, in retrospect, amazingly interesting in its highs and lows – a story of growth and change. When you can see your life in this light and learn from it you really start to see what training can actually be. What really matters most.

I hope that you are at the place in your own journey of training that you can see that compassion, and development of patience and kindness matter more than anything else.

I think that the fact that you are probably someone who understand that training is important, what I would hope is that you make patience for yourself and others the foundation of that, add to that the cultivation of compassion for others and yourself and strive, every moment you can to let go of anger. Be grateful when you get the opportunity to train to let go. Be understanding to yourself and others for the flawed humans that we all are and simply do you best to be better regardless of all the rest.

When you make this your central point of training, real growth can happen, real change.

Here is the thing: imagine if everyone lived life this way. Imagine if everyone trained this way.

Learn to breathe. Learn to let go. Endure the fire of anger with compassion.

LISTEN TO THIS FULL PODCAST EPISODE AT WARRIOR’S WAY PODCAST