PNTV - Take Off from Within by Ervin Seale
17 Dec 2025 · 12 min
Brian Johnson summarizes and reflects on Ervin (Irvin) Seale's short book Take Off from Within (circa 120 pages), presenting its core themes: taming the unruly ‘‘monkey mind’’ (humorous drunk/stung monkey metaphor), achieving independence from others’ opinions, avoiding excessive worry about global suffering as a reflection of unresolved personal issues, and becoming an "enlightened hypnotist" — intentionally reprogramming oneself with positive mantras and practices. Johnson emphasizes practical practices (daily meditation, exercise, spiritual nourishment) and acting regardless of current feelings. The episode ends with a brief promotional call-to-action for Johnson's newsletter and membership.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got Take off from within by Irvin Seale. I'm not even sure how I found this book, but I got on a new thought old school, new thought binge when I first arrived in Bali. Brought out a bunch of these books. Guys like Ernest Holmes, Raymond Charles Barker, who we just did, Irvin Seal and a bunch of other people, and then modern religious scientists, which is the school of thought these guys ascribe to include Michael Beckwith from the Secret, Louise Hay, founder of Hay House, deeply influenced by Ernest Holmes and his religious science. And this book is great, 120 pages long, densely packed with wisdom and. And let's jump right in. First, big idea. He's got a great image for, you know. You've heard of monkey mind before? Well, he's got a great way to describe it. We have our minds, right? Imagine you have a jumping monkey, right? And then it gets maddened. And I'm not sure if he means crazy or just upset, but either way, imagine a crazy monkey that's jumping around. That's your mind. And then get that crazy jumping monkey drunk. And then that's your mind going from thought to thought to thought to thought to thought. That's not enough. Get your crazy jumping drunk monkey mind. Stung by a scorpion, that's our mind. Isn't that a great image? Thought to thought to thought to thought to thought. A crazy drunk jumping, stung by a scorpion monkey. Pretty funny stuff. So imagine that and laugh the next time you see your mind going out of control. And then realize what we've got to do is we've got to settle down and tame that monkey. We've got to let him get rid of the poison from the scorpion bite, get sober and become a more well disciplined, well behaved monkey mind and ideally a transcendent mind. Pretty funny, but I just love that image. Think about that the next time your mind gets out of control and then adopt and put into practice some of the stuff that you really resonate with all the different things that we talk about and I'm sure you study in different places, etc. What is it that works for you to tame that crazy monkey? Get on it. As you know, our mind is the ultimate arbiter of our happiness. He goes off on that. I have some great quotes in here actually, from Aurelius to Tolle to Shakespeare to Viktor Frankl and some other ones. I'm going to pass on that, though, because we talk about that every single time. Your mind is going to determine your level of happiness. Can you shape the contents of your consciousness or not? Broken record. All right, so the next big idea we've talked about Ivana as well, the idea that we need to get independent of what other people think of us. So great quote here from Terri Cole Whitaker, awesome teacher, Another religious scientist, actually. Terri Cole Whitaker, she has a book that's called what yout Think of Me Is none of My Business. Isn't that awesome? What you think of me is none of my business. This whole idea of getting totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others. We talk about this again throughout all the different episodes. So I'm going to let it go at that and move on to the next big idea, which is an over concern for a suffering world. He makes a great point here. He says over concern for a suffering world often reveals someone who's just not really well integrated. They're not very happy with themselves, so they're overly concerned with a suffering world. So if you find yourself lamenting all the things that are terrible in the world, the economy and, oh my gosh, the current administration or the past administration or the environment or the health epidemic issues, all these different things that you might be over concerned about now, those are all valid concerns. But if you're over concerned about it and you find yourself just incessantly talking about it, you might want to look in the mirror and see if that's a reflection of your own failure to integrate some of your own suffering, some of your own challenges. And he says, you know what? Oftentimes people who have an over concern for these issues, who haven't dealt with their own issues are more of a nuisance than anything. Because the only way that we can really help in the world is to start by getting ourselves strong. It's why Gandhi says we need to be the change we want to see. Michelangelo says criticize by creating. It's not enough just to criticize. What does that do? Create something. And start by creating a consciousness that has the power to actually affect significant changes. And if we want to make a difference in the world, which I certainly do, and I trust you do, I'm not sure if this fly does. That's flying around right now. But if we want to make a significant difference in the world, we've got to start by transmuting our own suffering into personal power, into really a connected sense of being, so we can make a difference in the world. So just check in on that over concern often reveals a issue with ourselves. So the next big idea here is the enlightened hypnotist. He says, look, we've all been hypnotized. We've all been hypnotized by our parents, our society, media is constantly bombarding us with what it thinks is its truth. The medical industry, this industry, that industry, we're constantly being hypnotized to think a certain way. And the then we hypnotize ourselves with limiting thoughts and the consistent, the same thought patterns day in and day out. We're constantly hypnotizing ourselves. He says we need to become enlightened hypnotists. We need to hypnotize ourselves in a more powerful way. We talk about mantras often. The word mantra literally means a tool of the mind mantra. Man is I believe mind TRA is tool. A tool of the mind is a mantra. So we need to hypnotize ourselves with positive thoughts, with recognitively structuring our minds so we have better interpretations than the habitual interpretations we have. The hypnotized way of seeing the world needs to go with the enlightened hypnotist. Another really cool thought here. I mentioned in the note Maxwell Maltz, in a great book, Psycho Cybernetics that we have a note on and the episode on talks about the fact that if you just think about hypnotism, did you know that you can take a world class weightlifter, right? One of the strongest people in the world and you can hypnotize them. And basically what you're doing when you hypnotize someone is you're turning off their conscious mind and you're communicating directly to their subconscious mind, which in relative proportion the conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg. And the subconscious mind is the real base of the iceberg where all the power is the. So when you flip off the conscious mind, you can do wacky things with people when you hypnotize them, right? So you can take a weightlifter, incredibly strong, hypnotize them, tell them that they cannot pick up a pencil from a table, it's too heavy and they are too weak to pick up a pencil from the table. Now obviously when they're conscious, they pick this up, no problem. But when they're hypnotized and they're told that they are too weak to pick up this pen from the table, they won't be able to pick it up. It's an amazing idea. Hypnotized can't do it. Well, guess what? In a more subtle way, we're hypnotized day in and day out by our thoughts, by the media, by our conditioning, etc. So we need to hypnotize ourselves in a more powerful way. One other thing. Have you ever heard of applied kinesiology where you can actually stick your arm out and do muscle testing and stuff like that? Somewhat wacky, but it's pretty powerful. And I've seen it work and I've experienced it myself. Where you can test someone and you can have them say something like, I hate myself, or think about all the things that they're ashamed of, the most terrible things that have happened in their life or whatever, and then test them for strength. They will be significantly weaker when you push down than you. If you hypnotize them with thoughts of strength, thoughts of acceptance and love, and thinking about all the times they felt most powerful, all the things they're most excited about in their lives, they will actually be stronger on a cellular level. We're weakening ourselves energetically and physically through the negative, hypnotism versus the positive. So obviously hypnotize yourself with the positive. We've got some other really cool stuff in here, a couple of ones quickly. He says, we need food for the spirit. Just as you can't live without food for your body, you need food for the spirit. Stuff like this. This is why I decided to do this professionally. I take a shower every day. I now meditate every day. I train every day. I immerse myself in this stuff every day. And I know if I don't because I get a little bit cranky. It's subtle, but I can feel it. So we need to nourish ourselves with good food for the spirit every day, whatever that is for you. Final idea, he says, we need to get to the point. We're the type of people that no matter what we're feeling, we do what needs to be done. We talk about this in Constructive Living and a number of other places. But ask yourself, no matter how you're feeling now, what needs to be done. And develop that personal power to go out and rock it. So that's a quick look at Take off from Within. Hope you dug it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.
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