PNTV: Discover the Power Within You by Eric Butterworth (#415)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book. The book itself is in the boxes we need to unpack for our library, but it's called Discover the Power within you. Discover the Power within you by Eric Butterworth, one of my absolute favorite teachers. Subtitle A guide to the Unexplored Depths Within. Now, Eric Butterworth was a 20th century unity minister. He was Maya Angelou's spiritual advisor. This book is one of Oprah's favorite books. She says it's one of the few she has on her nightstand, at least at one point. It is an amazing book. Eric Butterworth wrote another book called Spiritual Economics that I highly recommend. Check out that PNTV and the Philosopher's.

Note on it, of course.

And we talk about that a lot. In abundance 101 and in our Optimize Mastery series for our Optimize Coach program, the Prosperity section, I kick off with some wisdom from Eric Butterworth, who tells us that it's not about acquiring things, it's about acquiring the consciousness through which money and other resources flow when and as needed. He says the word prosper literally means to go forward with hope. Prosper pro spere, which is hope. To go forward with hope. The opposite of prosperity is not poverty per se, unless you're talking about poverty. Hope. Despair is the opposite of prosper. To despair, to go forward with hope or to lose all hope. Powerful stuff. And he's just a brilliant, brilliant, special man. And this book is astonishing. Of course we've got the Philosopher's Note 6 page PDF. We've got over 600 of them now. Optimize me, get the two free week trial if you haven't joined yet, etcetera, etc, etcetera. If Eric Butterworth was alive, I'd invite him to be a luminary, a guest faculty member in our Coach program. But unfortunately he is no longer with us. So the best we can do is channel his wisdom today. We'll start with what I call an intro pull quote. So on the first page of these philosopher's notes, I got a long quote introducing the basic theme. And then I've got a short one. Here's the short one which captures the essence of this book very well. And again, Butterworth was a Unity minister. He preached for decades in New York City's Lincoln Center. The more we understand the concepts of Jesus, the more we realize that the only time we can truthfully say that's just what I am is when we are referring to the divinity within us, you have a great potentiality, a divine self within you that needs to be released. That is what Jesus really taught. So again, this book is his Unity minister enlightened perspective on that. Discover the power within you. The divine is within you. Which leads us to the answer to the question, where's the divine? I already gave away the answer, the punchline. Now the very first words of the book. Butterworth kicks off with a Hindu story, which is one of the things I love most about him. This is a Unity minister who is starting his book about Jesus with a Hindu story. And he says, I'd love to see all of the great sages from all of the great traditions get together and talk about truth. And what they'd say is, any differences are really just semantics at the essence of it. They're all saying the same thing, which is to connect to and to express the best within ourselves. Which is one of the reasons why I'm most proud of the response we get from devout practitioners of multiple faiths, saying that we help them become a better rabbi or a better chaplain or a better Muslim, or fill in the blank Taoist or yogi or whatever. The philosophy is a stoic. The issue is, what is your philosophy? Are you practicing it? And they all point to the same thing, which is the best. The divine is within us. And the story Butterworth kicks off the book with is a Hindu parable where the lesser gods, everyone was a God at one stage, right? Then they're kind of demoted to lesser gods. And then they got to figure out where they're going to hide the divinity within humans. And they say, okay, hey, let's hide it deep in the earth. That's what will hide the divinity. And the ultimate God says, no, no, no, they're going to find it there. And then they say, okay, let's hide it in the depths of the ocean. No, no, no, they'll find it there. Let's hide it at the top of a mountain. No, no, they'll get there. They'll learn how to ascend the highest mountains. And then the ultimate God, Brahma says, we're going to hide it in the last place they're going to look, right within themselves. The divine is within each of us, and this is what we need to discover. And this, Butterworth tells us, is what Jesus was pointing to, that we can achieve what he achieved if we do what he did, if we connect to that best within ourselves. The divine is within each of us. I like to talk about the proxy to the ultimate force, which is our Daimon. At any given moment, all the wisdom we need is always already there. Again, we call it the Daimon based on the idea of the ancient Greek eudaimonia, Good soul. We just need to pay attention to that whispering voice within us and slow down long enough from all the inputs to check in and see. And then it's all about that internal civil war between the Daimon and the demon, which is the diminutive of the Daimon. Which one are you paying attention to? But no, the divine is within. And then another metaphor that Alan Cohen uses to kick off the documentary called Finding Joe, all about the modern hero's journey. I happened to be in with him. Deepak Chopra, Robin Sharma, Laird Hamilton, some other cool people. That whole movie starts off with Alan Cohen beautifully telling the story of the Golden Buddha. You may have heard of it, and it's actually a true story. Once upon a time in Thailand, many, many years ago, there was this huge golden Buddha statue. And now this Golden Buddha statue was revered.

It was just beautiful.

It's just enormous. And then an invading army was coming in, and the monks knew that they'd want to take this Golden Buddha, so they covered it in plaster and cheap tiles and stuff like that. So now this beautiful golden Buddha is now hidden underneath this mud and plaster doesn't look so great. So the invading army ignores it. The monks were right. That was a good idea to do that. But unfortunately, by the time the invading army leaves, the monks who knew that the Golden Buddha was under that plaster are now dead. They're gone. And the new monks don't know. And a ton of time passes. Decades and decades and decades pass, and that huge plaster Buddha is put outside under a tin roof. It's valued so little, then one day, they're moving it. True story, all of those. And they discovered after a little crack is made, a little piece of plaster comes off and there's some gold coming through. They look at it and they're like, what is that? They dig a little deeper and they see that it's nearly pure gold. It's worth a ton of money. It's one of the most treasured Buddha statues ever made. And the metaphor is very clear. We all have the Golden Buddha within. We all have all the power we already need. Always already there. We just need to chip away at what's getting in the way and discover the power within each of us. Which leads us to the great decision. Another metaphor that's often used for that Divine power is the light. And Butterworth tells us we need to make the decision to flip the switch, to truly step into and express the best version of ourselves. And he quotes Jesus, which I'm going to quote in a moment, but I'm going to share a couple of other.

Thoughts before we get there.

First, Butterworth tells us, potentially man is stronger than his fears and greater than his weakness. The role of teachers and preachers and philosophers is to help people, all people, to know this basic fact of life. What do you think I aspire to do? Why do I show up every single day chipping away at my own stuff in the way, helping you? Here's a little hammer. Chip away firmly, gently, whatever you need to do. Then he tells us, but you must still make that great decision to affirm your unity with the infinite. You must still believe that I am, and then work tirelessly to act the part. You must claim your freedom, realizing that it does not mean doing what you like, but becoming what you should. The difference between hedonic and eudaimonic joy. Now, here's the passage I wanted to read from the Bible. Matthew 5, 14, 16. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick and giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is heaven. That's so good. Which reminds me of Joseph Campbell the Great again, mythologist. He once said in one of his books, am I the light or am I the bulb through which the light flows? Am I the light, or am I the bulb through which the light flows? The paradoxical answer to that question from my vantage point is yes, exactly.

Yes.

And. And then Richard Rohr, the great Catholic mystic monk, tells us that he had a conversation with Desmond Tutu once, and Desmond told him, you know what, Richard? Father Rohr, all we are is this little bulb. But our job is to remain screwed in. We've got to make that great decision to remain screwed into the divine power that's already there. We just need to quit doing the things that unplug us, flip the switch and stay plugged in. Which leads us to the next idea, which is one of my favorite in this book and in any book ever. Butterworth tells us that on the Sermon of the Mount, when Jesus said, the meek shall inherit the earth, that word meek is actually prais. Right? So Jesus spoke in Aramaic the gospel is written in Greek, praeus. We translate it into English as meek has a weird meaning to it. Butterworth tells us what the word really meant. What he was really getting at wasn't meek per se. It meant something closer to tamed or disciplined. And Steve Chandler talks about this in one of his books as well. He says, there's a big difference between meek and discipline. The discipline shall inherit the earth. Little different take on it, right? Those who are able to maintain their connection to the divine energy and harness and tame themselves such that that can flow through those shall inherit the earth. Huh. Interesting difference in the story there, right? Butterworth tells us it's kind of like Niagara Falls. Imagine the Niagara river running over these falls. There was a ton of latent energy, always already there. But until they learned how to harness it, until they learned how to tame it, until they learned how to do some meek prayers, work on it, and channel all that energy, the latent energy, into actual energy, they couldn't do anything. But once they figured it out, boom, they can light up nearly the entire Eastern seaboard back in the day. That's what we're talking about. When we can make that connection to the divine within ourselves by disciplining ourselves, creating the protocols that help us more and more consistently stay connected to the best within ourselves and. And stop disconnecting ourselves. I think I have a red ant. We're sitting here in the barn. I'm in the barn out here in Austin. I think a red ant just got in here. It's hanging out with me. Thank you, red ant. Stoic gods blessing me with the gift of a little red ant to challenge my equanimity. Boom. Let's go. So we've got this huge amount of energy that we have cascading down in our lives, and the question is, can we channel that in a positive direction? Can we discipline ourselves and. And actually give our best, remain consistently plugged into the divine? I absolutely love that distinction. What do you think? Pretty good, huh? All right, next idea, the second mile. Do you know where the whole idea is? Go the second mile. The whole idea of going the second mile comes from. I didn't until I read this book. So back in the day, Jesus, of course, lived in Jerusalem in Israel, which was a subjected to Roman rule. Now the Romans had a lot going on for them, right? So Seneca and Jesus were actually born itching my toe again. Seneca and Jesus were actually born around exactly the same time. So you've got Seneca the essayist, the Stoic philosopher, the billionaire entrepreneur. The advisor to emperors, etc. Rome, and you've got Jesus in Israel. Now, Rome was cool for a lot of things. They weren't too cool with their subject colonies, whatever they were called, right? And one of the things that the Romans had as a law was a Roman soldier could demand that a non Roman could care had to carry their equipment for a mile. This is one of the things, right, you got to carry here, carry my stuff for a mile, thank you very much. And what did Jesus say? He said, don't carry it for a mile, carry it for two. Go the second mile, carry it for two miles. Now why would he say something crazy like that? Because, as another Roman Stoic said, epictetus, the wise man does nothing reluctantly. As Buddha said, if anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart. If he had only carried it for a mile, Butterworth tells us, he would have been a subject, he would have been a slave. He demonstrated his sovereignty by going the extra mile joyfully. Outperforming his contract is how a modern philosopher, peak performance guru Jim Affomo, puts it, what's your contract? Outperform it. Demonstrate your sovereignty, demonstrate your mastery, demonstrate your connection to the best within yourself and do more than what is asked of you with joy. That's going the second mile. That's an awesome idea. And then finally, we have heaven and Hell. Butterworth makes the powerful yet obvious point that heaven and hell, these are not distant places that we're going to arrive at at some point in our future. Butterworth tells us it's right now. Right now, we are either in heaven or in hell, and we're creating it depending on whether or not we're listening to our Daimon or our demon. Again, I draw this line all the time, but if this is what you're capable of being and this is what you're actually being in any given moment, it's in this gap where regret, anxiety, disillusionment, hell exists. If you close that gap and you actually express the best within you right now, you live with Arete, you high five your inner Daimon, you pay attention to that divine voice and you express yourself fully right now by disciplining yourself to act and be your best more and more consistently, what do you experience? Heaven. When you close the gap, there's no room for anxiety, regret, disillusionment, depression, hell, etc. And then, important note, if you do happen to have a gap that you consistently create, either Daimon or demon, it's that gap that some say is the ultimate hell. And again, I Don't know who said this. I think it was an anonymous thing that just floats around out there. But some say that hell is to get to the end of your life and meet the version of you you could have been. Ah, man, here's who you could have been. Boom. That's you rocking out with some sweet hair. And here's where you are. Sad face down here. Oh, hell. The gap between who you're capable of being and who you actually were. And again, the only scenario in which that exists is when you can't do anything about it. The good news is you can do something about it right now. And Butterworth would say you do it by discovering the power within you. It's there always already. We just need to chip away at what's getting in the way. Which begs the practical question, what's the number one thing you're currently doing that's getting in the way of you being able to have that connection with. To the divine? Another metaphor Butterworth uses is he says that the wire with the least resistance is the one that can flow the most electricity. You need to have. Get rid of your resistance. Get rid of your bad habits. Whether that's obsessive technology use or anger or hostility, or not getting enough sleep, we're not moving or eating toxic sugar and ultra processed food. These are all creating resistance to the divine. Be a good human being, be a good animal. Get yourself dialed in via the fundamentals and get that physiology right so your psychology can get right and your mind, your body, your body, your mind and your soul can shine through. Make the great decision to flip the switch. Remember, the disciplined, the tamed, the harnessed, the one who submit to the higher force will inherit the earth. Go the second mile and let's make today a collection of plus ones. Plus ones. Plus ones. Plus ones. I can never draw this line enough from my vantage point. Which way you going? Minus 1 or plus 1? End of that day you feel great. End of this day, not so much gaps. Boom, boom. Go here, listen to the whisper that is the divine intelligence within you and give us all you got today.

Hey guys, this is Bry. Hope you enjoyed that video. We have a lot of people ask us what Optimize is all about. So I just wanted to give you a super quick tour of our site. Tell you what we do. We do two primary things. We have an optimized core membership and we have an optimized coach certification program for people that want to go from theory to practice to mastery. So the core membership is basically 10 bucks a month depending on whether you do monthly or annual. And you get instant access to over 500 philosopher's notes, the six page PDF, you know, 25 minute or so MP3 recordings of these great books. And then you get over a thousand optimized plus ones, 50 optimal living 101 masterclasses, etc. And we have a free trial the team set up, get it, you know, free for 14 days and then go from there if you like it. So we're blessed to have a lot of people who subscribe to this, including some of my friends who happen to be some world class peak performance gurus like Talbin Shahar, who taught the two of the largest classes in Harvard's history. Starts every day with Optimize. Ben Greenfield, friend and coach Optimizes, bar none. My go to source for taking a deep, efficient dive into some of the world's best books via the Philosopher's Notes. It's an indispensable resource. Thank you, Ben. Marcy Shimoff loves philosopher's notes. Mark Devine, retired US Navy SEAL Commander, dear friend who starts his days with Optimized plus one winning win in the mind routine to charge him up for the day's battle. If you're serious about leading heroically, I recommend you use them too.

Huya.

Thank you. And 10,000 plus other awesome humans around the world. That's the core membership. Then we have, and I should say we have apps. Excuse me, you can get apps, iOS and Android. You know, we feel pretty proud and blessed to have basically a 4.9 ranking and people saying some great things. You can check that at Optimize Me Apps. And then our coach program is all about helping you master yourself so you can serve heroically, so you can empower others to do the same. We have trained over a thousand optimized coaches from over 50 countries and yeah, really excited about this. This is one of the core levers for us to fulfill our mission to change the world one person at a time together, starting with you and us today. We've been told that here's one little thought and we have hundreds of testimonials you can check out about how it's transformed people's lives. And if you want to be a coach, your coaching practice. Now, half the people who do this want to be coaches. The other half just want to master their lives. But Barb, a coach of ours, says I already had two coaching certifications but Optimize Coach was indisputably the most valuable I have taken. Thank you, Barb. Honored to be part of your life. You can learn more about what we're doing with Optimize Coach at Optimize Me Coach. There you go. Hope you're doing great. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hey guys, this is Bry. Hope you enjoyed that video. We have a lot of people ask us what Optymyze is all about. So I just wanted to give you a super quick tour of our site, tell you what we do. We do two primary things. We have an Optimize core membership and we have an optimized coach certification program for people that want to go from theory to practice to mastery. So the core membership is basically 10 bucks a month depending on whether you do monthly or annual. And you get instant access to over 500 philosopher's notes, the six page PDF, you know, 25 minute or so MP3 recordings of these great books. And then you get over a thousand optimized plus ones, 50 optimal living 101 masterclasses, et cetera. And we have a free trial the team set up, get it, you know, free for 14 days and then go from there if you like it. So we're blessed to have a lot of people who subscribe to this, including some of my friends who happen to be some world class peak performance gurus like Tal Ben Shahar, who taught the two of the largest classes in Harvard's history. Starts every day with Optimize. Ben Greenfield, friend and coach optimizes, bar none. My go to source for taking a deep efficient dive into some of the world's best books via the Philosopher's Notes. It's an indispensable resource. Thank you Ben. Marcy Shimoff loves Philosopher's notes. Mark Devine, retired U.S. navy Seal commander, dear friend who starts his days with Optimize + one winning win in the mind routine to charge him up for the day's battle. If you're serious about leading heroically, I recommend you use them too.

Huya.

Thank you. And 10,000 plus other awesome humans around the world. That's the core membership. Then we have, and I should say we have apps. Excuse me, you can get apps, iOS and Android. You know, we feel pretty proud and blessed to have basically a 4.9 ranking and people saying some great things. You can check that at Optimize Me Apps. And then our Coach program is all about helping you master yourself so you can serve heroically, so you can empower others to do the same. We have trained over a thousand optimized coaches from over 50 countries. And, yeah, really excited about this. This is one of the core levers for us to fulfill our mission to change the world one person at a time, together, starting with you and us today. We've been told that here's one little thought, and we have hundreds of testimonials you can check out about how it's transformed people's lives and. And if you want to be a coach, you're coaching practice now. Half the people who do this want to be coaches. The other half just want to master their lives. But Barb, a coach of ours, says I already had two coaching certifications, but Optimize Coach was indisputably the most valuable I have taken. Thank you, Barb. Honored to be part of your life. You can learn more about what we're doing with Optimize Coach at Optimize Me Coach. There you go. Hope you're doing great. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See ya.