Infinite Courage and Endurance (I.C.E.)

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Hearing some background audio from somewhere. Yeah. Hello, can you see me? Yes. Hi. So it's just the three of us right now. Oh, it should be. It should be streaming. I'm just getting this together. Enable waiting room. Chat. Huh. It's looking at the streaming here. Still figuring out the technology on these things. I'm telling you, It's fun. Yeah, I love technology. I teach a quilting class via Zoom. Yeah, yeah. It's so much fun. That is a good thing. Mm. And get going because there's a lot of stuff that I wanted to talk to you guys today, you know. Hi, as always, Steve Barnes. I'm gonna leave you guys unmuted for a bit. If it gets too noisy, then I'll mute you, but otherwise, no. I'm gonna let us have an opportunity to interact with each other a bit here. This is. Oh, I'm seeing chat things here. Please feel free to send me chat messages or whatever. This is kind of a. An amazing moment. Let me introduce myself first, please. My name is Stephen Barnes. I'm your host today. The co creator of the Warrior's Journey class, the creator of Life Writing, created the Afrofuturism webinars and the Black Horror webinars and things like that. I've been a novelist and television writer, martial artist and teacher for a long time. And one of the most important things that I wanted to talk about today was a very specific threshold that's been caught some 2020. In about 1985, just about 1985, my first solo novel came out. It was called Street Lethal. And as a matter of fact. Let me get something to illustrate what I'm about to say. There we go. Okay. So over 30 years ago, I published my first solo novel. Its title was Street Lethal. And the lead character in Street Lethal was described roughly as looking a lot like Shaka Zulu, as dark as an African. When the book came out, this was the guy they put on the COVID See that doesn't look terribly African to me. Didn't look terribly African to anybody else either. When Octavia Butler started writing, they would put green people on the covers of her books, but wouldn't put black people on the covers of her books. When I wrote for Twilight Zone, I wrote about a street gang. And actually wasn't. That wasn't for Twilight Zone, that was for Outer Limits. I wrote about a street gang that hijacked a truck, a convoy within which was pieces of the Roswell UFO crash. And the characters are written black, but they would not cast the actors black. They told me that the. It was filmed up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and that if they. If they wanted black characters, they'd have to import them. There weren't enough black people in Canada. I saw the writing on the wall, and I saw that what it was that I was trying to create was not going to be embraced. And I had a question to ask myself. Well, what do I feel about this? What do I do? When I took a look at the graph lines of social change, I determined that it might take a generation, you know, 20, 20 years, 25 years or a generation and a half to get to the point where things were open enough that I could write stories that really touched my heart. In the same way that the typical Hollywood screenwriter can write stories, they can write stories about people who look like them, referencing their own experience, dealing with their values, their sense of history and so forth and so on. I was going to have to. If I wanted to stay in the game, I was going to have to find some way to write and create. Even knowing that I was going to be limited, that I was going to be cut back, I was going to be very disappointed at times that it was going to be a painful road to hope for maybe 30 years. And I looked at that and I said, am I willing to wait that long? Can I wait that long? Is it even possible to keep your heart alive long enough to see something like that succeed? I mean, by the time it happens, will there be enough of me left to be able to enjoy it? These are very serious questions. I was talking about investing a very serious chunk of my life without being able to get the kinds of rewards that I felt. I mean, I don't know for sure. I felt that I would have been able to receive had I not had this particular issue to overcome. And I decided that. Well, I discussed this with a dear friend of mine, Darnell Gadberry, electrical engineer, black gentleman. And I said, you know, if I don't write stories that touch my heart, I'm betraying that child inside me. But if I do, I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to support myself. I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be able to make a living and he said, one of the most important things that anyone's ever said to me, Steve, eventually someone is going to have to start writing these stories. If not you, who? If not now, when? And why would you want to create stories for the pleasure of people you wouldn't even want to have in your home? I said, damn. And I looked at it. I didn't sleep real well that night. And I decided that whatever price I would pay was not an unfair price, considering the prices that my ancestors had paid, and that I loved my country and I loved my genre, and that this was the work that was set out for me to do. It was just my turn in the barrel. But how do you keep your enthusiasm? How do you keep your passion? How do you keep your sense of hope and faith going for 30 years before the door opens? That was my question. I do not honestly know or remember exactly what my thought process was, but I do know is I decided to try to do it. And I can tell you that last week, my first television episode in 20 years was broadcast. I mean, I'd gotten my Hollywood career going. I was just beginning to get some things happening when my family had to move from Los Angeles to the Northwest, and I had to move with it for 20, for 10 years to raise my daughter. And that disrupted my career. Got back down here, found out that in the time I'd been gone, the structure of Hollywood had changed, and they didn't hire freelancers anymore. It was all. Staff. And they didn't hire anybody for staff over 40. So once again, I'm screwed. Ageism, sexism, you know, racism, all those things hit you and you make your moves. Well, last week, despite all those things, I got my piece back on the board, and we have an opportunity to play. We'll see how far I can go. I don't know. We'll see what I can accomplish. But I'm seeing other people accomplishing things. And it feels to me that it was not a bad gamble. At the very least, I created bridges for other people to cross. But of course I want to cross it. You know, I want to be able to do it. But the question that hit me was, how did I know? I mean, that was just looking at trend lines. How did I know it would take this long? And how did I survive? How did I keep my. My heart alive? This is a question that I think comes to a lot of us as we move through life, are trying to accomplish goals that are larger than we see ourselves as being. And sometimes those things don't happen rapidly. Sometimes it takes six months, a year, two years, three years. Well, I just wanted to tell you that I had a goal that it took me 30 years to reach. It took me 17 years to earn my first black belt. So I guess I'm used to long term plans. If I was to ask myself how I did this, how I managed to last this long, that these opportunities have come back around because as we speak, we have two television series, a couple of movies, a couple of books, other things all happening at the same time. That door has opened. But if I had not kept going day after day through all of the discouragement, all the people told me I was nuts just for believing I could do this, I wouldn't be at this moment. So it seems to me worthwhile to go back and take a look because in one sense, there's nothing special about me. Everything I did has to be the result of things that I learned and things that I opened within myself that are available to others. At least that's the way I look at it. If I was to go back to the beginning, I'd look at what was the. If I think that part of what it is that helped me has been the martial arts training, something about the martial arts training, then I go back to what was the first moment when I realized that this was something I had to do. Not because I wanted to learn how to fight, because I wanted to learn how to control my emotions in some particular way. I wanted to learn how to be a particular type of person. Well, it would go back to junior high school. Some of you may have heard this story before, but I'll tell it again. It was a bully in junior high school who plagued my life. His name was Rudy. Rudy pulled a pair of brass knuckles out of me when I was in elementary school. Took my lunch money. I mean, that kind of kid. He was built like a little fireplug. He wasn't bigger than me, but he terrified me. And he had a brother named Oliver who was an even bigger bully than Rudy was. And Oliver had a gang, or at least he had, you know, the guys that hung around with him. So they were a terrifying group to me. I tried to stay out of Rudy's way, but one day, I guess I was in about eighth grade maybe, a teacher sent me down to the principal's office to pick up some mimeo sheets, I believe. And Rudy was sitting in the office and I didn't really notice him that much. But after I left the office with the mimeo sheets, I found out that Rudy was in the office in trouble again. And that he thought that I was in the office to talk to the principal about him. That in essence I had narc ed on him. And he swore to me that he was going to kick my face in after school. I was terrified. I was a little bookish nerd. I mean, I didn't. I'd never want to fight in my life. And I couldn't beat Rudy anyway. So I thought maybe I could sneak out of the school and get home and maybe things would cool off. So I zipped out the back gate as fast as I could after school and was walking home as fast as I could. Down there's a street called Washington Boulevard. Main road between Mount Vernon Junior High School and my house. And I hear this whoop from across the street and there's Rudy and his friends. And they're coming running across the street for me and I just. I just wanted to throw up. And they catch up with me and Rudy gets up in my face and he's slapping me and spitting in my face and come on and fight. And he's there with Oliver and Oliver's there with his two or three friends. And it was a horrible situation because I couldn't beat Rudy anywhere. But if I did, then I knew Oliver would jump on me. And if by some miracle I beat Oliver too, then his friends were right there. So there was just nothing, There was just no way for me to win in this situation. But he was hitting me and hitting me and spitting at me and cursing me. And I don't know how many 14 year old boys you may know, but that's a very tender age. Your. Your sense of identity, your sense of being, your sense of masculinity, masculine force and power is just beginning to form. And I was being destroyed. That his abuse, the pain, the public humiliation was ripping my guts out. I couldn't fight him. I couldn't not fight him. I couldn't fight him. I couldn't not fight him. And something happened. Something in my head broke. It just broke. And I realized I would rather die than go through this. Rather die than live like this. And I put my books down on the. On the sidewalk and I walked out into the middle of Washington Boulevard. Stood on the double yellow line with cars and trucks zipping past on both sides. And I looked at Rudy and I said, come out here and do that. And he looked at me and I looked at him. And when he looked at me, he saw that. That I was going to kill him if he walked out there. I was going to push him in front of a truck, that he had pushed me too far, that this wasn't a social game anymore. This was something else, something far deeper, something far worse. And he blinked and he said, oh, man, that guy's crazy. Although he didn't say guy, he said something else. And he and his friends walked away and they never bothered me again. And the people in the cars and trucks were yelling at me and screaming at me, get out of the street. And I walked out, walked over to the sidewalk, picked up my books and walked home thinking to myself that something had happened, that I hadn't been a victim right there, that the bullies who had come after me earlier had come after me because they saw something weak. And then in that moment, they'd seen something very different. And I sensed that if I could find that place inside me, whatever it is that I found in that moment, that I'd never have to be afraid of a bully again. And I spent my life after that. As soon as I got out of high school, I started studying martial arts and started that journey that I've been on for a very long time since then. And it's been. I was looking for that, that place for. There's that thing that is connected directly to your survival where you're prepared to do whatever it takes to be the person that you're supposed to be in the world. That part does not stop, that part does not quit. And I had to find what that was. Years passed. I started studying martial arts. I actually got pretty good at it. 1972, I was the National Korean Karate Champion. I took second place in the national Korean Karate Championships. And I was feeling pretty good. Then I went to Steve Sanders Black Karate Federation School. I'd seen him perform at a demonstration. I'd never seen that kind of speed and power and grace. I walked in the school, asked him if I could study there, began to study, doing okay. And then one day, this 12, 13 year old kid, same age that Rudy was, asked me to spar with him. I said, sure. That kid kicked me all over that school. I mean, I couldn't even touch him. He just thrashed me. I was shocked. And he was just as he, well should. He's bragging to everybody I beat a man. He just strutting around the school bragging, you know, can't blame him. And I broke inside. Something inside me said that all of my training, all of my practice, it just didn't make any difference, that I was never going to be strong, that I was the same weakling. I'd been. And I began to anchor massive fear to going into the school. And this plagued me for years. I would drop out of a school until I started feeling vulnerable, at which point I'd start sending a school again until I started getting good enough to attract the attention of the upper belts, at which point I dropped back out again. And this happened in a cycle, over and over and over again. I remember being terrified to go into one school and pick up a jacket. I left there for fear that somebody would ask me this far. And I remember driving down the street with tears just streaming down my face, saying, God, will you either take away my urge to practice this stuff or just let me do it? I mean, other people don't practice this stuff if they're not enjoying it. Nobody's gonna say anything to me about it. Why do I have to keep banging my head against this wall? What is it? Some part of me, deep down inside, knew that if I did not finish this path, if I did not complete this cycle of my life, that I would be missing something that I desperately needed to survive. Years passed. I asked martial arts instructors, yogis, hypnotists, therapists, gurus, coaches, can you help me with this fear that I'm feeling? And none of them could. They all just brushed me off. A lot of them didn't even understand what it was I was saying. They'd say, have you read my book? There was no personal connection at all. Then one day, I'm with my brother in law, Patrick Young, and he was studying Shoreishito karate under a gentleman named Terry Leto up in Central California someplace. And Terry taught his. He had a garage door. And Terry was a human wolf. I mean, he's one of these people who was made for classical martial arts. His body could perform those movements perfectly. He just did it. And he was just deadly. After the class was over, I asked the same question that I'd asked so many other people. Said, I have a problem. Can you help me with it? You know, I have. I'm terrified of sparring. And I expected Terry to either laugh at me or ignore me or say, I don't know what you're talking about. But instead of that, very calmly, he said, oh, your problem isn't fear. I said, it isn't? He said, no, your problem is lack of clarity. I said, lack of clarity is. Is there a cure for that? He said, oh, yeah, sure. You just visualize a glass tube filled with water and there's glitter suspended in the glass, in the water. And you wait for the glitter to settle to the bottom. And when it does, you see what you see. I said, what? He said, yeah. So I said, okay. So I went home. And for like a half hour every day for weeks, I would visualize a glass tube filled water and it was swirling, all the glitter was suspended in it. And it took me about six weeks to get the water to calm down and for the glitter to settle to the bottom. And when it did, I saw something. It was like a flash of lightning. I saw that my problem had not been fear. My problem was that I thought the fear meant something. I thought that the fear meant that I couldn't or I shouldn't or I mustn't, or that I was weak or that I was a coward. No, it just meant I was afraid. It meant that my body was trying to get ready to. To protect me by fighting or running away. That's all it meant. It was just energy in my body. But because I had labeled it, I turned it into something disastrous. I was guilty about my fear, and then I was worried about my guilt about my fear, and then I was ashamed about being worried, about being guilty, about being afraid in this infinitely regressive hall of mirrors of an effect where instead of just having the primary emotion to deal with fear, I was now dealing with guilt and worry and pain and shame and all that other stuff too. Until I had no energy to deal with the primary emotion. Then as soon as I was able to simply admit to myself, you're afraid, Steve, you're scared. I was able to just start looking at the primary emotion itself and say, how do I deal with this? It's enough of a challenge as it is. I didn't need to add all that other stuff. I was shocked with the power of that realization. And I asked, I went back and I asked Terry, where did you learn this? Where did you get this? And he told me about a gentleman named Harley Reagan, Swift Deer called him, who taught Native American spiritual practices and martial arts. And so I looked up Harley Reagan. I ended up going to a thing called the Warrior Retreat. It was a 10 day retreat in the Tehachapi Mountains. My brother in law Pat and I went there in the back of my pickup truck with a camper shell on it. And for 10 days we studied these things. It was very interesting. But the thing that was one of the things that was most interesting about it, besides, Harley was definitely one of my most fascinating characters in this life. I'll tell you about him some other time. There was a woman at this workshop named Dawn Callan she was only about 4 foot 10, 4 foot 11 built, you know, little hourglass figure, cute little honey blonde. And she was teaching the woman's trap. And she was just very friendly and open and fun. But there was something about her that I kept having questions about. You know, what She's. She's got something special about her. I could feel that. I could feel that there was something special about her. Well, at the end of her week, there was a graduation ceremony where the women would stand in a circle around the mat, and a mugger in heavy armor would stalk the mat and drag one woman at a time onto the mat, engage with her verbally and physically, and they would go into combat. The woman would then have to defend herself, deliver at least three solid strikes. And dawn is hyper vigilant during this extremely intense combat exercise. And unfortunately, there were supposed to be three men in the mugger outfits, and two of them hadn't been able to come that week, leaving only their head mugger, Robert Humphrey. So she asked if a couple of the guys that were in the men's track would substitute. I said, sure. Sounded like fun. It was intense. It generally was fun because I felt like even though I was getting beat up, you know, I was in armor, even though I was getting beat up, I felt like I'm doing this to, you know, to protect the sisterhood. So it was kind of cool. But I still had that question about Dawn. I was noticing that her level of focus was just supernatural. And her ability to help these women access that strength within themselves was beyond anything that I had seen, especially for the short period of time that she had them for. And so, inevitably, as ego will, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to attack Dawn. Find out, well, what's what with her. She's standing about 15ft away from me with her back to me talking to some women. And I'm stalking the circle. I'm in the middle of the circle and her backs to me. And I thought to myself, I think I'll attack Dawn. The moment I thought it, she stopped, turned around, looked at me over her shoulder with this reptilian grin on her face, and it felt as if someone had hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. She had not moved. The force of her will was something I had never experienced. It just. All the wind sucked out of me. Just. I did not know what in the hell had happened, But I knew I had to find out. I began studying with dawn and actually sponsored some of the workshops she did with Lynn. And I found out ultimately how she had done what she did, that all she did with these women was she connected their life force, their instinct, their animal instinct, their animal right to be alive, with their spiritual intuition about their place in the universe, the animal and the spiritual both together. And when she did that, she put them in touch with the part of themselves that would not quit, that would not stop, that felt no fear, that was totally alive in the moment. I mean, it was unreal what she did. And I wondered whether or not I would ever be able to do that. Well, at one workshop, there was a woman and I began to assist on. There was a woman who could not punch or kick the bag, let alone attack an attacker. And nobody could do anything with her. Nobody could help her. She just kept breaking down into tears. And anybody tried to help her. So they brought her to me and they, you know, they said, you know, steve, can you do something with her? So I tried. And she was like. She couldn't hit the battle so much. She was all up in her head about that. And so I said, do you by any chance have a daughter? No, I don't have a daughter. I said, do you have a little sister? And she said, yes, I have a little sister. I said, would you do anything for that little sister? She said, yes, I do. Anything. So I said, then here's what I'm going to tell you. If I get past you, I'm going to. And then I said something absolutely horrible that I will not repeat here. And she looked at me and something shifted completely inside her. And she came at me and she knocked me through the wall. It took three grown men to pull that woman off of me. It was. She was just total fury and fire. And I. When I managed to pull myself up off the ground, I looked at her and I said, that's it. That right there, that place you're in, right there, that's what you're looking for. That is the place. That is the place that you go. She told me later on that that had been the best and cruelest gift anyone had ever given her. Many of us have been taught that we cannot fight for ourselves, but all of us are programmed to fight for the people and things that we love. And that part of us, the part that would fight for an innocent child or someone we love, will not quit, will not stop, will not back off. And when you can make contact with that part of you now, you've got something that cannot be taken away. That is the part that has the potential to have courage and endurance of infinite capacity. That kid who walked out into the middle of Washington Boulevard with the cars and trucks, it was prepared to die before he would let himself be dishonored. That woman who was afraid to raise her hands and found the strength inside herself to become a friggin tiger. I tell you, it was like nothing I had seen. It was like everything you would want from a mommy, tiger. Because the little kid inside you doesn't ask, can you win? What the little kid inside you asks is, will you fight mommy, daddy? Will you give it everything you have? Do you love me enough to put your ego aside and admit that you want it and give it everything? And if you do, when you can, that's when your game goes to a completely different level. Finding the things in your life that you will fight for that are bigger than you are, to inspire you, that's what will keep you going. That is what kept me going for 30 years. Every day. Reconnecting with the part of me that was not going to quit. That is what I want for you. That's what I want for each and every one of you. Our time here is drawing to a close. I hope that some of you will go over to realwarriorsjourney.com and see what we have over there for you or reach out to me on Facebook and connect with me. What's important is to know that that force that I found is within everybody. There's not one of you that doesn't have it. It was given to you by nature. And anybody or anything that has ever told you that you did not have that was lying to you. You've got it. You've all got.