MAGIC and Manila

Nickel Boys, which is set at the same at a fictitious reformatory just like mine. That could have been Zeitgeist, but he did follow me on Twitter, so I will never know if it was Zeitgeist or not. And, and besides the fact that yes, you expose yourself to people borrowing your ideas when you over talk your stories, it's possible to talk yourself out of writing something if you talk about it too much. I think a lot of the energy we spend talking about our projects, we should just spend working on them, but that's just me.

Well, I think that what she's really saying is that she has discovered from her experience and from studying the lives of others that it can be problematic whether or not you as an individual will tend to do it. To complete a project less if you talk about it is something you have to discover for yourself. You know, if you remember that the process is saying that you have to finish and submit one story per month. Either you do that or you can see that you've got an interrupted in your process. It becomes a diagnostic. So if talking about your projects tends to break the chain, you'll see it and if it doesn't, you'll see it. And if you tell your idea the wrong person, they'll steal it. But you have to have faith that you have endless ideas. It's not the idea, it's the treatment, the expression of an idea that should be uniquely yours. You know, you're writing what is in your heart, right? Yeah. You're writing the way you speak. Right. Nobody can do that but you. And if they tried to do that, they automatically are a carbon copy. So whereas yes, stuff gets stolen, there's also, as Tonan Reef says, the Zeitgeist. The fact is that, that ideas float around and more than one person grabs them. That's just reality. And sometimes you're getting ripped off and other times it's just coincidence. Sometimes both of you are inspired by a common thread. Colson Whitehead might have been inspired by her, or he might have been thinking about that for years, saw her writing about it and said, oops, I better get to work. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's impossible to say. Ultimately all you can really do is try a lot of different things and have the confidence to believe that if your ideas. You know, the first, my first idea that got stolen was for a television series called Room 222 that was being shot at my high school. And the deal that they made was that in order to shoot it at the high school they had to give people in the drama class screen tests, you know, interviews. So I went over 20th Century Fox, I was in the drama class, I went to 20th Century Fox and I interviewed with them and it was a very relaxed situation. And I started talking about ideas for possible episodes including one where a kid had been bullied, learns martial arts and becomes a bully themselves. We talk several beats through and a few months later. But that episode was on television.

Yeah.

And I looked at it and I had a couple of choices. I could have easily become embittered by that. But my reaction was, huh, I've got ideas worth stealing. And because of that it did not hurt me. What I would suggest with you is that if you are worried about having, about having your stuff stolen, that suggests that you're not really confident in the integrity of the people you're working with. And that's. We all find ourselves in situations like that where either they're not worthy of our trust or they have not yet earned our trust or we're not sure of ourselves.

Yeah, I think I'm more or less just concerned because I'm.

I'm.

Parent person.

You're what?

And I foolishly transparent. And I think sometimes I. I say things that I don't need to say to, you know, a general informational source.

Well then run it through the three gates. You know, it's true, it's kind. But is it useful? Why did you say it if it's not useful? It is now noon. Time for us to get started. My name is Stephen Barnes. I'm back from Asia where I was in Manila for a week studying Filipino martial arts and I had an amazing experience. But what I wanted to focus on is that I am now convinced that the magic formula is as powerful as anything that I have created or found over the course of my lifetime. Has the best combination of simple to implement and understand and powerful that I know of. And so I'm going to lean in on it. But I promised that there were some things that relate to this trip that I wanted to talk about. But before I do that, I would like to give my co host and the love of my life the beautiful and incredibly talented Tananarive due a chance to jump in here.

Hello everybody. How are you? Good to see everybody. Missed Miss Steve. Missed everybody last week and just want to give a special shout out to people who are on my newsletter. You might have seen my announcement that the Reformatory has been nominated for an LA Times Book Prize and a Bram Stoker Award and my novelette Rumpus Room for the Wishing Pool is also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, which is frankly shocking to me. No one had ever really mentioned Rumpus Room as making any particular splash before the Stokers, so that's always exciting that people actually know. I had a short story collection out last year. Since the reformatory got all the attention. No, I knew. It's just I'm late announcing it to y'. All. I've been talking about it on social media, Ross. But late announcing it to the group and to my list. And yeah, we're working on a short story for this, the Stephen King Stand anthology called the End of the World as We Know It. While Steve is. I'm doing the first draft while Steve is finishing his Star wars novel.

Yeah.

And that's about it.

Saying hi.

Our collaborative process is generally we talk over the project, we beat it out. Whoever's got the more time writes the first draft and then we jump in on it together. And we've been able to flow like that. I don't know. I think Ross might have been asking if I didn't know about the magic formula. I'm very. I'm very careful about what I teach. And I am not talking about something that just increases the odds of something happening, but seems to increase the odds of luck, of the unexpected happening of things that could not be predicted happening. There are things that are. That are natural. It's like if you send a story every week out to a different publisher and when it gets rejected, you send it back out. You do that, then there will be predictable results. One of those publishers will eventually say yes. On the other hand, if you pick up the phone and it's Steven Spielberg who heard from some completely disconnected source because he went to college with your grandmother and she told him that you have, you know, that she has a grandson or a nephew or whatever it is that is a writer and told him something about a story you told her at Thanksgiving and he wants to see it. That's coming from completely outside, you see. So the question of how you can do things directly that start having an indirect effect and whether or not it's completely disconnected, like a purely spiritual thing. There are people who would say that. Or whether it's a matter of casting your bread upon the waters or whatever, it's hard to say. All I can say is that I started noticing that not only did using the magic formula increase my efficiency on a day to day basis, but it increased the odds of things coming from outside occurring. So let's see. Stephen Bauer said So it was awesome hearing the Filipino martial arts professionals giving you pain and vectoring you towards joy in order to be of service to you in the art. Yeah, I can understand that. Absolutely. It was really almost disorienting. What I will say that one of the things I picked up about the art is that this is the purest art I've had a chance to practice in terms of something that is in its cultural context. In other words, I had studied with people in the United States who were part of really legitimate lineages, but it's in the United States. I always knew that I wanted to travel to Asia to practice Asian martial arts so that there wouldn't be as many filters. And I did not know what the effect would be, but I knew that something would happen. I could feel it. When five years ago, I first heard about this event, I knew that this was something I wanted to do. And when Covid came in and made that impossible, my first reaction was wondering whether or not I, you know, in four years, I'd still be able to do it literally physically. So I started changing my exercise program and my meditation program and my expectations of myself so that I would be able to. And over the last four months, as I ran into obstacles with my passport and other stuff, and it became harder and harder, that resistance got bigger and bigger. I kept a sense of faith. There's something on the other side of this. There's something here. There's something that's worth all of this stress. Let me apply the magic formula, I said, and if it works and if I get there and there was something that was worth it, I will know at a deeper level than I ever have that there's something going on with this. And I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to write that book about it. Well, you know, that things did work out. I got my passport two days before I was supposed to leave, and I went.

And.

It was indeed a transformative experience. I will be taking. I'm still. I'm not. Haven't even really begun to unpack it. But I. I wanted to choose to. To give you a sense of why I am now convinced more deeply than ever before that, yeah, there's something going on here. So that you can take this notion of your map or model. Be sure you have a map or model to get where it is that you want to go. You're taking daily action ma that you're every day filling yourself with gratitude and expressing gratitude and joy in life for multiple reasons. The trickiest reason is that the ultimate goal of all life is to be happy. And if you are filling yourself with gratitude, then you've won the game before you ever started. But you also, I think, induce from a deeper part of yourself some things that are extraordinary. Clear intentions. I had a crystal clear goal. I wanted to be in Manila on February 28. And the conviction that I could and should do this, that there was some value for me in doing this, that I didn't need to be able to see it ahead of time, that there was something that was going to be worth it, that even if it didn't work out, even if I didn't get to go, that I would have gained enough in the process of doing this, that it would be worth all the effort. I had to believe that, because how else can you keep doing it every day when the ultimate outcome is out of your control? How do you keep your mood high? And I. I know that I kept it high. I didn't keep it as high as I could because the last. If I had. No, if I had had total confidence I was going to be there, then I would have worked out harder. But I could feel that if I worked out harder, I mean, I worked out enough to keep, you know, for general fitness, but I wasn't doing specific. There are certain kinds of specific training because I could feel that if I did those things and was not able to go, it would hurt. And I could feel that it would hurt. And so I did not have infinite emotional resource. I was keeping myself together. Tadanariv, do you think I kept myself together pretty well? Your voice.

Yes. Absolutely. You did. I complimented you many times. I think the words I used were, I've seen you way stressed over far less because it was such a sustained period of stress. It feels like from October until two days before you left, this was sort of hanging over our heads and. Yeah. And especially that December, January piece where you're knee deep in the book and there's all kinds of stress related to really wanting to perform on that. I am. I think there are a lot of lessons that you learned about how to moderate your mood and stay focused.

You know, a couple weeks before the deadline, I was in the shower and I was thinking to myself that I was doing all this work and paid all this money and expended all this energy at the same time. And I'm trying to get the Star wars book finished the same time I'm trying to do the holidays. And there was no way for me to know whether or not things were going to work out. And I said, who is the person, who is the part of me who could celebrate no matter what, that would celebrate the fact that I did the best I could. I don't want to go over there to learn some tricks. I want to go over there to go further down the road of being a particular kind of person that I felt like I needed to be in order to live a life of meaning. That guy. That guy is independent of whether or not he's here or in Manila. That guy is independent of whether the money was spent or not, or whether it's embarrassing that mistakes I made could not get resolved or not, or the bureaucracies interact or not. That's about a beingness. And I decided to be that guy no matter what happened. And I just basically asked the universe, let me be that guy. Whether I get there or not, let me be that guy. And I made that commitment at that point to be happy and to celebrate the fact that I could come as close as this, that I learned as many lessons as I did. I was never going to let these problems happen again. Whatever it is that I needed to do, if that makes sense in order to make this next part make sense to you. The question of what was it that happened that was so worthwhile. I've got to explain something to you a couple different things. One is the question of what was it that I needed from the martial arts in the first place? And what it was, was I was just too filled with fear. And it was fear from any number of different sources, whether they were personal sources like being beaten up by bullies, or. Or social sources, like feeling that I was surrounded by a culture that denigrated me racially and threatened me. My mother telling me that if I succeeded too much or let people see how smart I was, they would kill me. Specifically white people, my own feelings.

Not you all. Of course not you all.

Absolutely. You guys are good white people. To look out at the world and have that feeling is. Is a pretty. It's a pretty horrible thing. And I had to work through those. Those things. So I went into the martial arts because I felt like this was a place I could get certain things. And I began that process. I began that search and I took, you know, I think Korean martial arts. First something called Endore you, which was an American amalgamation. Then I found Steve Muhammad in the Black Karate Federation. And I saw martial arts that were on the level of a boxing gym. And it was that level of seriousness. This was not strip mall stuff. This was if you have to fight for your Life on the way home stuff. And I found it to be really beautiful. But it was also confrontational in a way that wasn't good for me psychologically. It was grinding me down. And unlike many of the guys that were in those schools, I had not been brutalized enough on the street or had not been raised to find those sharp edges within myself. So the process of going through the fire that said felt like death. It felt just too much like it. And because I had options to do other things, I wasn't forced to go through that process. Not like going to Marine boot camp, where it's like, you know, after a day or two thinking, oh, my God, what am I doing here? And you can't get out of it, and you have to go through it and eventually come out the other side reborn. Because what gets burned away as the parts of you that weren't real anyway? Well, I didn't have the motivation to do that. So I kept getting. I kept bouncing off of it, and it was ripping my self image apart. I kept practicing things, but it became less. Less consistent. And I was working at Pepperdine University, and I met a guy named Jim Green who had moved from Texas to California to go to the Filipino Kali Academy. And Jim and I would put on the gloves and we'd spar. Jim's a great, great guy. And I decided to go down to the Kali Academy with him. And down there, these were the people who had inherited Bruce Lee's system. And for the first year, we were going through the five stages, which would be stick fighting and knife fighting and no stick fighting and boxing and kickboxing and grappling and trapping and stuff like this. Just different ranges. And then after that first year, you made a decision. Did you want to go into the kickboxing class or did you want to go into the Filipino martial arts class? I never really enjoyed sparring. I was good at it, and I was willing to do it in order to learn what I wanted. But the stick fighting just appealed to me a lot more. I went there, and that was when I really had a chance to experience Danny Inosanto. And Innocanto. Learning from him was like drinking from a fire hose. He is extraordinary, and he gave us so much that I had ego problems with how little of it I could absorb. And I kept getting the feeling, why is he doing it? Why doesn't he take some smaller piece and give us that and go deeper with it? My sense about that accelerated when one of the chief instructors, he would bring in people for special seminars, including A guy named Leo Gahe, who was one of his teachers, and he taught, I think, stick and dagger or something like that. And, you know, extraordinary man. And his nephew came into the class and just a kid about 14 years old, didn't know anything. And we were kind of told to take care of him and that was fine. He was cute, you know, he was working hard. And then something happened. Leo Gahey clearly asked Danny to start giving this kid private lessons. And within weeks, this kid got better than the rest of us. It was. I. I didn't know what to say. I could.

From.

From class to class, you could see him getting better. And it broke my heart because my sense was, oh, my God, I've been here for years and I've been training and I've been faithful, and this kid's getting the real stuff and we're getting the commercialized stuff. And because I couldn't work that out in my ego, Hawkins Chun, who was Danny's partner in a satellite school, was able to talk me into saying, well, I'm teaching combat tai chi over here, Steve. I'll give you the real thing. And so I left the school and I went with Hawkins. And Hawkins taught us really, really well for the first year. And after that, he would sit in the back of the class smoking cigarettes and let the senior students us take teach his class for him. And this went on for two years. And I kept pushing him to give us more and he stopped answering my questions. I was being rude, apparently I was not following protocol, apparently, or something else, or his knowledge was simply shallower than we had thought. And we'd learned to teach. And I remember he brought in a guy, he'd always said, well, you know, you do tai chi 20 years and, you know, your push hands becomes impenetrable. Well, he brought in a guy who'd been doing push hands for 20 years in my three years of Kali tore right through him. It was. It. I was like, what? And I was trying to figure out, well, just how good is this stuff? So I found out that Danny Lee, who was one. Who was a jet jpl, Jet Propulsion Lab physicist and, and had also been one of Bruce Lee's original students, was a tai chi master. And he was teaching tai chi up in Griffith park on Sunday mornings. So I went up there and I very, very, very politely asked him if I could push hands with some of his students. I mentioned my lineage and so forth, so on. He said yes. I pushed hands with a couple of students and once again just took them apart. And so Very, very, very politely and carefully, I asked Danny if I could push hands with him. He gave me this little smile and said, okay. And so I put my hand out. He put his hand out. There was a circle that was made, and a second circle was made. And suddenly his fingers were at my throat. And I said, thank you. That was what I was looking for. It wasn't that Tai chi didn't have it. It was that Hawkins didn't have it. And I had been conned into leaving a better path because my ego couldn't handle the fact that either this kid was just that good or Danny had the right and the obligation to his teacher to give him private instruction. I couldn't handle it. I was too ashamed to go back to Danny. But I studied other things. And I couldn't help but think that of all the things I had ever studied, the Filipino martial arts came the closest to feeling like me when I was doing didn't trigger anything negative within me. It was as valid an art as anything I had ever seen. It was just beautiful. So I went and I studied Indonesian Marco martial arts, which are part of the same archipelago of islands, the Majapahit Empire. And it was very good with Pindecker Paul de Torres, who was just magical. And his student Steven Plink, is just wonderful, who had great clarity and was able to help me understand things that Paul could not, because Paul's language English, was second. It had been years since I'd seen Danny, and I heard that he was teaching a workshop in. In Portland. I was living in the Northwest, so I went down to see him. It had been like 10 years since I seen him, and he was teaching a room full of people. And I walked in, just watched, and he turned around, glanced at me and said, hi, Steve. And I was just blown away that this great master who teaches thousands of students all over the world not just recognized me, but recognized me that fast and dropped me into a category. When I got back down to Los Angeles from. From the Northwest, I started studying with Cliff Stewart. And then I made a reconnection with Steve Muhammad and the Black Karate Federation. And that's a story that I've told other times where I was able to finally kind of own the path that I had walked. You know, I wasn't sure how good I was because I always compared myself to Steve and his guys at that school. And due to a circumstance, Steve was able to evaluate my skills and offered me a fourth degree black belt. I would have been happy with a brown belt. I mean, seriously, I had that Much respect for what he was doing. And I went to, I kept having that sense about Danny. And one day I decided that for a birthday present for myself, I was going to give myself a private lesson with Danny Desanto. And I got in touch with him and because of a series of happy coincidences, he and his wife were happy to hear from me because a lot of the old students, as often happens, had branched off and started rejecting the master. And so he was happy. So he gave me a three hour private lesson for free. And that was just wonderful. And he advised that I should come to, you know, that I should come to some of the seminars, not come there regularly as a student. And I started doing that. That sense of, that sense of a path lost, opportunity lost really hit me. So I met this kid named Julius who was a fan, who's also connected to several clans of serious Filipino martial arts, you know, Filipino immigrants. Julius Vladimir Francisco, nice guy. And he and I started training together some and I noticed he had very, very high level skills, but the emotional integration and so I could work with him on his emotional integration so that he could move with greater fluidity. And it was through him that I found out about the trip. And then I couldn't do it. And then I spent those years focusing to try to get ready to do it. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, including taking the wrong passport to lax. Tananarive had to take an Uber tonight. Tell a, Tell that story sound.

I'm gonna tell this part of the story because you all know what a, what an effort it was. It felt like it took a village to just sort of give Steve velocity enough, velocity enough to take off and get to Manila. And the day of his departure, I, I had told him, honey, I love you, but I Lax, I just can't do it. It's, it's, I, I, I've forgotten how to drive since COVID and the traffic there. But I'll, I'll get you close. So I took him to Julius's house. We took pictures with his dad, and I drove. It had still taken a good part of the day, mind you, to get Steve off. And it was evening by the time I got home pretty much. And I was, and you know, some of you may have seen me dancing to the Thriller video. So I was doing my Thriller practice and I just by chance, I went to get my phone because part of me knew I needed my phone in case something came up. So. Ding, ding, ding. Steve has reminded me of that many times. And also he was on his way out of town. But the ringer wasn't even on. I didn't realize it, but the ringer wasn't on. I just literally happened to look down at my phone and I saw that Steve was trying to call. I was like, oh, he must have made it to the airport. This is his goodbye call. No, it was not his goodbye call. It was his call to say, honey, I am so sorry, but I brought the wrong passport. They had sent two passports and they looked identical except one had a black and white photo. I mean, I looked at both. I mean, the photo, I'm telling you, looked identical. But one was the re. Was the expired one and one was the new one. And he had taken the expired one. So because I had had, let's say, a gummy. That evening I was already. I was chilled out for the evening. I was ready to like, like, this is my dance. I'm going to watch some tv, I'm going to go to bed. It's like my glass of wine at night. So it's like, honey, I can't drive to the airport. So I had to take the Uber. And it was such a whiplash to go from quiet evening in the bedroom to the crush of humanity at the international wing lax. Once I got out of the Uber and I met Steve, it was like, wow. It was almost like I got to go with him on his trip for that, like very, very brief moment. But you know, that's. We knew it would take everything to get him there. And apparently everything meant a last minute trip to bring him his passport.

Yeah, you'll bless your heart. Tony trusted me, trusted my intuition that this was something that I needed in my life. I couldn't even tell her exactly why, but I. I felt that if this spring, this well of knowledge was something that I felt like I needed in order to complete myself as a human being, that going to the source of it would be an experience where I could not even figure out what it was I was going to get. But I did feel that it would be extreme. So Julius and I traveled there. We had our layover in Taipei and got to Manila and it was amazing. It was eight to nine hours of working out. Every day, every hour and a half, we'd switch to a different instructor lunch break. I was completely overwhelmed by the end of the first day. I hadn't done that much working out in a very long time. We the second day they actually had us do some tourism. We went in and I had that sense of the culture that these people. I was right that what I was getting there was unfiltered. This was stuff that was taught from father to son and uncle to nephew and niece, because you never knew when the colonizers or the enemy from the next island or your neighbors with a feud might boil over and a stick or a knife would be the difference between life and death for you and your family. This was not strip mall taekwondo stuff. This was as close to reality as I have ever seen. If I had been to workshops that had lethal techniques, but they would, on a two day workshop, they would spend 90% of the time building you up to that. And then there'd be one hour of the real thing at the very end. Same thing I saw happening when instructors from other Filipino styles would teach at Danny's Academy. The majority of it was drills. Good drills, solid stuff, really, really good stuff. And then a little hint at the end of this is what you do if you were fighting for your life with this. That was turned on its head here. This was real. I mean, this was, it was like, oh my God. And it was intense and it was. I was surrounded by it. This wasn't European culture with a dash of this. This was Asian culture with a d dash of the European. You could you. It overlay the. They'd been colonized by the American, by the Japanese and the Americans and the Spanish, you know, and. But underneath it, you could feel, going all the way back to Vedic India, you could feel that, that pulse of reality, something happening there that was just fraking different. And I, I. The first hint I had was I glimpsed a connection between this and Tai Chi that I hadn't seen or felt before. That's going to require me to, to go through a lot of thought about it. By the second day when I was at the governor's house with, looking at the way the Europeans had othered these little brown people. When you get cultures colliding at different levels of technological development, it rarely works out well for the one at the lower level, the one with the softer steel or wooden swords. The Native Americans were basically a Stone Age culture flirting at the edge of the Iron Age. And they ran into a culture that was Iron Age flirting with technology. There was no contest. And something happened inside me and I just felt it. It's like something kind of collapsed inwardly. And being around these people who were poorer, it was the same sensation I'd had in Tanzania. Poorer than me in some ways, but knew who they were. They had their language, they had their culture going back thousands of years. Their great, great, great, great grandfathers and grandmothers had lived on this land and they knew who they were in a way I did not. And I saw people who had come from Germany and England and other places who were training there in that same sense of being welcomed. That was the whole thing. We were being welcomed as family, we were being treated like family. That sense of caring and the lethality of the movement was balanced by a joy in the movement. I mean, it was happiness. I remember this one little lady, I can't remember her name, but she was dawn size, she was small, but she was an absolutely lethal pixie. I mean, and it's like, wow, she was dangerous. And it turned out she lived in Japan. She teaches Japanese special forces, I mean, in special police units. And this, this, you know, these people, what they have, the wealth that they have, is just amazing. Supposedly the greatest collection of Japanese samurai swords in the world was some old Filipino guy who during the occupation used to go out and kill Filipinos, kill Japanese soldiers and take their swords.

These.

You don't need this kind of technology. In a world where the law is trustworthy, where the justice system is trustworthy, where guns are available and trustworthy, why would you spend so much time and energy? So this is one of the places on the planet where the knowledge still runs that deep. And something happened inside me and I just collapsed inward and I fell into the arms. I mean, I was talking to this German teacher, Dieter, that I felt what I was feeling in my heart and why I had come here and what I was looking for. And his face was just suffused with so much kindness, as was Grandmaster Rene, the Filipino gentleman who put this whole thing on. And I just started crying and he just kind of pulled me into his chest and said, welcome home. And I could really feel that the next day was another hard work day. And it was. I just wanted to learn as much as I could and just worked out as hard as I could. So like I said, these were eight, nine hour work days. When the last day finally came, I was in an observational place. I was saying, there's something here, there's something I haven't seen yet. I was so full that that first day, if I only had that first day, that would have been enough. By the last day, I went beyond that, beyond that, beyond that to the point where I can't even really look at what happened yet. I'm still unpacking it, but I was observing and I was seeing old people who were no longer fighters, but still had knowledge that they were giving to the young people. And I could see this is a life path that I could walk, I could do this. I could see I'm being. And Julius, because I had helped him, was inviting me to people, was introducing me to people as his uncle. This is Tio Steve. And I realized what a gift that he was, what a gift he was giving me. He was taking me behind the door, that this was a family gathering. And he was taking me to the center of a family gathering, where clearly people's attitude was, what can we do for you, Steve? You know, be part of this family. Bring your wealth to my people. We will give our wealth to you. And I just. I wanted to hold on to something. So we did. The morning of that last day was out on the beach, and then when it got too hot, we went into the hotel and we're working. There's several people working. And one of the last instructors was a guy who was once again, you know, I was looking at his movement and I was thinking, this isn't self defense. You know, first I was thinking, is this police stuff? Then I realized, no. Oh, my God. This is sentry removal. He's teaching us. You know, this is. This is beyond. This is war to the knife. This is not in any way filtered. And I had to ask him, I said, are you in the military? And he said, I teach military. He lived in New Orleans and he travels and he does seminars and he teaches. He teaches elite units. Very, very serious. And he was giving us what he gives them. And I was, like, stunned. It was just beautiful. And after the class, I had. Let me. Let me change this picture here for a second. And I went over to Julius and I said, that guy, he's amazing. I got his contact information and.

I.

Want to train with him. He's just unbelievably good. And Julia said to me, he should be. He's Leo Gahe's nephew. And I said, what? He's Leo Gahe's nephew. I walked over to him and I said, excuse me, were you at the Kali Academy in 1980 when you were about 14 years old? He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I was there at some. I said, oh, my God. I flew. I pushed through a river of crap and flew all the way around the world to meet the kid who broke my heart because he was so good and it improved so rapidly and my ego couldn't handle it. And he is this lethal sweetheart of a guy, just, just wonderful. And I now know how to get in touch with him. And if that was not a sign from God that I Have completed an entire cycle of my life. And that I could forgive myself for not being wise enough to see what was right in front of me. And that I've been welcomed into the heart of a community of people who are very real. There he is. His name is Mel Tortel. And I don't know what to say. I knew that something would happen. I just didn't know what it was. And if that isn't a completion of an entire cycle of life, I don't know what is. The magic formula works. As soon as I committed to getting what I needed, whether the external world cooperated or not, I had won. And the universe let me go over there and struggle through it and get my life straight so I could do it. And align my time so I could do it. And when I got on the other side of this, I only beginning to process. So all I wanted to say to each and every one of you is the five minute miracle is where you start. Interrupt your stress patterns. Interrupt your pattern of thinking. You know who you are in the morning ritual. Redefine every single day and embrace that magic formula of having a model of how to get there. Whether it was Victoria Whitlock who understood the passport process and came to my home and was helping me for hours and hours every day work through that, Or Julius who knew that there was a map of how to get to what it was I wanted, that I didn't. It wasn't even what I wanted, it was what I needed and didn't even know. Or the people there who provided a map. And I just had to humble myself and be in the beginner group and just learn as much as possible. Or taking the daily actions that I was taking every day to get there and to prepare myself physically and mentally to fill myself with gratitude so that no matter what happened, I was going to be okay. I was going to be okay. Wasn't it great that I even had this possibility? Wasn't it great that I could turn the light on in my life and see the things that I needed to accomplish to get myself straight to. To heal things from the past? Wasn't it great? And no matter what happened, I was giving thanks for it. The clear intention. I knew exactly when I was supposed to get on that plane and go. I'd known for months. And the belief that this was congruent with my path, that this was who I am, this is what I needed to be in order to complete myself and my life all the way through to the end of it. Those five things created a situation where I was in a no lose position no matter what. And from there, the universe gave me one hell of a gift. Now, I wanted to give that to you to the best of my ability. Every word I've just told you is true. And I am grateful for all of the cheering on and the support that you gave me for weeks and months. And I am so grateful to all of you and I'm so grateful for the chance to share this with you. Ross, I am writing the book. I have to get finished with the Star wars book, which hopefully will be finished by the end of this week. I had to put that on the back burner. I had to have that faith too, that there was something here. It was this important. Now, if you have any comments, questions or requests about anything that I've talked about here or in previous weeks, this is your opportunity to ask. Raise your hands. Orion.

Hello. I'm in a similar situation. I have an appreciation for fire dance, for teaching me five minute miracle and the magic formula. I pretty much conquered the five minute miracle, thank you very much. And I'm doing really well on magic formula and morning ritual. And that's what has. Five minute miracle has reduced the stress in my life considerably and allowed me to focus on things that I should be focusing on. And the magic formula has allowed me to focus on my goals, which y' all helped me find in the first place. So I, I'm so very happy about all of that. And the achievement is I have had. I'm 77 years old and I've had cartilage absent from my knees for 30 years. And one of my goals was to lose the weight so that I could get my knees fixed. I'm sorry.

Okay.

I've lost £130. Thank you. And yesterday I got the dick to my knees to be protected. Thank you. Thank you all so much. You're my tribe.

And you are ours, sweetheart. That is fantastic. It is wonderful. I am so proud of you and I'm so happy for you. You've done this for yourself. You've done this for yourself. You have the joy of being witnesses to your becoming. That's it.

Thank you.

You know, we are all one soul in that sense and we are so proud of you. And when you do magic like that for your life, you create room for others to create magic in their. You're a blessing to us, sweetheart.

Thank you.

Is there anything that we could do to serve you?

I just love being part of this community. I learned so much from everyone and somehow whenever I have A question. That's what you focus on that week. I don't know how that works, but I really appreciate it.

I suspect that it's because at the core, all of our questions are connected to the same things. You know, it's like at the core of us, we're all just children looking for love. We all want to move away from pain. We're all dealing with fear that. That at that core. And if you just address the core, it is generative. Yeah, it is. It is generative. And this path is not for everybody. And there are other paths. I just. I hope people will find whatever path is good for them. All I can do is honestly report back what the territory looks like from where I'm walking. That's all I could do. And I'm so grateful that there are so many people who feel that. That that's something that is of value to them. That is what a blessing it is to do that. So thank you for letting me share with you, Orion. It's always a joy to watch you pop up in here. You know, when your name comes up. I just. I always smile every single time I've known you.

Or since the 80s, I think through the science fiction conventions. NorWestCon mostly, and Alexander, too, but that. Through the medieval fairs. But anyway, I love you all.

Love you, too. Love you, too. All right, who else, raise your hand. Who else has any comments, questions, or requests about anything that we've covered or talked about or what, something that's going on or something like that? Volunteer or you will be voluntold. Mary.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

The fact that you were so aware of what you were experiencing that you were experiencing, and then you could bring it back to us and we could feel what you felt, and you were just so there and so present and so willing to feel and be vulnerable. And I mean, that's just. That's amazing. I mean, I got chill bumps. I was snotty. I'm like, no, I cannot be a snotty mess on tv. But I just wanted to thank you for being you.

I'm a snotty mess. We can be a snotty mess together. I am so grateful. You know, the martial arts were never about wanting to be a badass. They were about wanting to have the right relationship with my fear, to not be afraid of my fear, to own the parts of myself that I felt like my father would have given me if he'd been there, or that the culture would have given me if it had held me as precious and Worthy of protection. When I think about the boy I was, as open hearted as I was, who felt like I had to go through all of this in order to complete myself. And I realized that on the other side of that, what I've got is the capacity to help other people go through that without having invested those tens of thousands of hours in training on hurting people. Because the core of it is just that sense of you deserve to survive, you belong here, you're worthy of love. If you embrace that, the rest of it is instinct and then you can get on with your life. You know, I can get on to whatever is next. I can get on to whatever it is I would have been had I not needed that. And I will continue to practice that because now I can see how I can step beyond myself, I can contribute to what. There was a woman who I was training with, who was one of the people. There were many, many people there, you know, even in the beginner's group who are above me. There was one woman who was there who was not. And I was able to induce her emotions from her and show her how to put her technique, how to have her technique ride on her emotion. You know, what are you feeling? You know, what do you hold precious? Now you are protecting that thing, the stick. The knife is a metaphor for that. How many of us want to bring dreams into the world but are afraid of rejection? Afraid that if we don't put all our attention into earning a living that we're going to starve? One of the most accomplished ladies that I know deals with constant fear that she's going to be a bag lady. This woman is a multi millionaire who is an extreme level of skill, hyper competent, and that fear of being helpless on the street is still deep inside her. How many of us, because of gender or abuse or race or growing up in a non optimal family or poverty or wherever else, are dealing with these fears? And it's difficult for us to see that we can become competent enough to deal with the fear as part of our automatic process and that we could then spend our time focusing on what do I love? What do I want to give to the world? I'm so much to be grateful for. How can I show the universe how grateful I am for the gift of life and joy and love and a woman who would not even hesitate to jump into an Uber and drive and ride out to the airport to bring me my passport. But I was the one who forgot it.

Oh, come on, baby, now you. I had to make sure you got on that Plane.

I know, but how do I say thank you? Sweetheart, you never hesitated. That's who you are. That's who our love is.

And I. I'm just glad you caught it in time that I can make it.

I know, but do you hear who she is?

Yeah.

Do you hear who she is? That. That who she is is somebody who doesn't need to be thanked as long as she knows that she's loved and appreciated. She's not asking for me to say this because that's who she is.

You damn sure would have done the same for me.

I would have hesitated a second, you know that. I would have laughed and said, oh, okay. I would have thought it was an adventure.

I wasn't laughing.

Yeah, I know you were.

Anyway, but I wasn't cursing either.

That's a good thing. That's a good thing.

The gummy probably helped a lot with that.

Oh, maybe so. Sort of just rolling with it. Also, as I've gotten older, you know, my dad is 89, and he has diminished mobility and, you know, diminished cognitive capacity. And at that age, every day is like a new thing to deal with. And his saying is, it is what it is now. I'm sure I was saying that it is what it is. So. So yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, this is great. I was really looking forward to doing this because I knew that part of my task was to find a way to convey this. So thank you, Mary.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else? Comments, questions, Requests about how to apply the magic formula, about five minute miracle, about your morning ritual, about your writing, about your lives, about anything that I can describe, what this position on the path says about where it is that you are, and very grateful that so many of you have considered that that perspective is useful. You know, just wanted to be honest and kind and useful in the world. It's. Let's see. Yes, Becky.

Okay.

Can't hear you. Cannot hear you.

Hear me now?

Yes.

Can you hear me now?

Okay. Sorry. I don't always hit those buttons.

Right.

I just want to experience a group of people who celebrate with me how. How happy I am that my cardiologist actually told me I should sign up for a marathon because I'm doing so well physically. My congestive heart failure, and she said I could do a marathon. I laughed. She said, you laugh. You could do it.

And that might not be a bad goal.

To go from congestive heart failure on both sides of my heart. Being told at the hospital part of my heart was dead and hard and I couldn't heal it. Being Told I've healed my heart and I just sign up for a marathon.

Let's, let's everybody give Becky a hand. That's just wonderful.

Thank you. I came home, told my husband, and he said, you know, not to, not to get too prideful. Alexander can relate to this because we talked about this kind of thing at Oricon. Somebody who always rains on your parade when you have something to celebrate and you want to celebrate with someone instead, they.

Well, how about everybody unmute yourselves? Let's celebrate with Becky. There is nothing good on you.

Go walking.

Maintain it.

Do it up.

Yeah.

There you go. Looking good, by the way, Becky. You're looking, you're looking kind of hot. What can I say?

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Life is starting to fill you up. It looks good.

You're gonna have to get one of those Jackie Joyner cursy one leg leotards when you run your, your marathon.

Absolutely.

Now go get, go get hugged and chat.

Okay, thanks.

Okay.

How you doing, buddy?

Not too badly. I, I, I just wanted to say something that struck me because in some ways you're not giving yourself enough credit at this moment. And it's understandable because the gratitude is gushing. But it could have been that your father could not have given you what you needed to learn. Mine couldn't. Through no fault of his own. He just didn't have it to give. My mother didn't have it to give. Your mother was an extraordinary person from all the stories you've told us, and she did a great job of showing you.

She showed me where Fort Knox was, but she couldn't get through the gate.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, give yourself some credit because you started out there and you've been following a course and you've had models in mind all the way. This is the result of you working the magic formula.

Yeah. It is not.

Do not underplay how hard you've worked.

I don't. But I think and I appreciate that. I'm not going to say any buts or anything at all. Let me just, let me just receive that. And I appreciate it. Tom. Thank you. Alexander.

I just wanted to thank you because I'm using your magic formula daily, in and out through the day. I don't, when I first get up in the morning, it's not that easy because I've got dogs and everything else to have to just get rolling in the world. But I managed to find that, that five minutes, even if I have to do it a minute at a time throughout the day. But it, it's led me into a Just recently a really scary I, I getting myself a course to learn designing program. I have basically ended up making a huge career change in my life. I just kissed off a six week gig Muskogee, Oklahoma because they were, they've been dragging their feet with a, with a contract and just, they've been kind of on my chain for a couple times the past years. I've done it and I finally looked at what I was going to get and compare it to what I was trying to do with the new production company. I'm in Imaginal plus a move that I've got coming up in this next month, I'm moving to Wisconsin. And I looked at it all and I went, you know, the money just isn't working. I mean it's good money, but it's not, it's going to interrupt and interfere with this advancement of a dream that I'm working with right now with this new production company where I've got a book, I've got a cd, I've got a double LP album, I've got a stage show. And all of these things are coming up at the end of this year in winter. We've all slated it to happen in winter. And I'm like, it won't get done if I'm busy playing renaissance wandering minstrel.

For no, it won't be able to do. You've done that for half a life. You have the right to create security for that little creative kid inside you. I want you to apply the pareto principle here. 80% of the value you've ever gotten in your career came from 20% of the gigs and 20% of the people. Cut the other 80% away. Start being ruthless. You're not going to be safe emotionally unless there's a part of you that is absolutely ruthless. You can pick up that stick, pick up that knife. There is a time to kill the century. There is a time to sever the part of you that needed the part of you that believed you needed to have anybody around you that wanted to be around you to be safe. No, you don't need that. You need the right people around you. You need the right opportunities. You don't need just whatever will come. You've been a wandering minstrel long enough. It's time for you to anchor yourself. Then play all you want. It's. It's like there should be two different types of assignments. One, the kinds that pay well enough and the kind that you do for free. Okay, when it's work time, do work. When it's Play time. Have fun.

Yep. Yeah. It, it, it.

I.

Applying. What I've learned here and what we've talked about here was the only way I got myself out of the decision. When I made the decision, I wrote in, I said, look, I'm pulling my application. I'm not going to be there this year. I've got a life changing situation. I cannot.

Well, you are. You are correct.

So I'm taking it.

I think that we can, we can understand what it is that you're saying. Hopefully you'll have a more stable Internet connection, you know, in your. In your new place. But we hear you and we will be here for you. And you've asked for years, you asked for years, you've asked me certain questions about beingness. And I hope that this gathering has given you an opportunity to get some of the answers you were looking for.

Very much so. Very much so. Thank you and thank everybody here because we all are talking on the side and doing stuff. So I really have appreciated this because it's giving me a leg up because I'm just becoming a writer. I didn't expect to be a writer. I thought I was a musician. Apparently I'm not.

No, you are a musician and you're a writer. You are as an artist and you express yourself as a musician. You express yourself as a writer. But I want you to also express yourself as a living being and as a dynamic body. You know, that. That, like Larry Niven said about me, he said that I'm an artist and my primary art form is my life. So that's what I want for you, too. You're very much an artist and your art form is your life. You have been willing to explore some transformative experiences. That level of courage and clarity is extraordinary. And I want you to get exactly what you wanted out of it. I'm your ally. I'm in your corner. That's frozen up. All right, so who else? Alexander, if you want to say something, you might try cutting off your visual, cutting off your camera. That might stabilize your connection better. Or it might not.

Can I say something?

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

This is Sonia. I'm always too late when you ask for the hand to be raised.

You're not too late. You're just on time, sweetheart.

Well, today I just jumped in there. I just want to thank you guys because I know I sit and I'm quiet, but I'm learning so much. And I know it's information I need and I know that there are things I still need to learn. And I'm like, why? What is it with you in the magic? I mean, why can't you get a routine going with that? But I just wanted to appreciate.

It's hard in that sense. The obstacle is the offering the. That. That look at it as a developmental, but it's also a diagnostic. If you can't get yourself to do five minutes, then you know that what's stopping you is not the external world. That's the good news. What's stopping you is beliefs and values and notions that you have. And as tough as it is to deal with that stuff, at least it's under your control. You know, you can say, okay, I need to remove these things so that I can. So, for instance, you set your phone to go off once every three hours, and that's when you do your breathing. You might be the kind of person who needs that kind of reminder. That's the average person. That's why we've got tools and books and things, because our. Our brains and bodies can't do everything automatically. Don't be afraid of imperfection. Ain't none of us perfect unless perfection is a verb, not an adjective. To constantly be looking for ways to heal ourselves and to realize it's never too late. It's never too late that the joy that we're looking for is in our hearts. It's always there. That we could move beyond fear to joy and look for ways to heal the world around us. This world needs its healing so badly. There's so much fear, so much pain. One of the reasons I structure this the way I do, to not be contrary to any other philosophy or any religion or whatever it is you're doing, is I'm hoping you will take a look into your past and find the things that benefited you there. And then just use these things as perspectives or springboards or irritants or whatever it is, or little flavorings into what you're doing. If you want to use this as a core, that's fine. It will bear up under it. But the important thing is to find yourself. You're not going to fly all the way around the world to Asia to do what I did. You'll do something else. You'll do other things. You'll take a journey into your heart. You'll find someone who you need to forgive. You'll find something you need to let go of. But start with loving yourself, with believing that deep down at the core of it, people will say, they're no bad dogs, and then think that human beings that are bad, they don't Draw that connection between the fact that all of us just.

What?

To be loved and to love and to be out of pain. And along the way, things happen that twist our behavior, twist the way we react to the world. If we could forgive dogs for biting, we could sure forgive ourselves for being imperfect. And Sonia, it's an honor to have you here. And never fear that we're judging you for lurking.

Okay, thank you. I mean, but I just wanted to let you know that you're helping me grow everyone here. And I appreciate it and I hope to continue.

I hope that you will. You are absolutely welcome. You know, I always. We talk about the products that we sell, the services, you know, the, you know, lifewriting premium.com and fire dance Tai Chi. But I think all of you know that I end up giving most of that money away at Christmas. I mean, seriously, what this is about is how do you live in the space of mastery? And I don't see anything less than mastery as being worth investing, spending our lives for, exchanging our lives for. And masters are always learning, they're always doing and they're always sharing. That's what they do. Who's next? Yes, Heidi.

Hi everybody. It is so wonderful to see all of you again. Two weeks was too long. And I promise I'm going to try to find this link and share it within the Facebook groups. And all I saw while I was scrolling and I think I caught it off of Twitter, a video a couple of days ago that had the caption about a teacher demonstrating for students. And there was some sort of twist in the caption about the teacher really making a point or something, but whatever. I clicked on the video and it showed this 80 year old Asian man in the white sensei robes with a black belt student in front of him with the typical robe. And the student went to strike the master and hit him on his shoulder like this. And the master didn't do anything. He didn't flinch, he didn't stress, he didn't tense up. And the student went flying backwards, head over heels. It was one of the most magical things I'd ever seen. And when the student stood up, the teacher barely swung his foot six inches and caught the back of the heel of the student. And the student flipped over backwards again. And it was one move after another like that, where clearly the. The teacher, the old man was just having a blast and so was the student, as the teacher kept on telling him, bring it, come on, hit me again. Here, hit me. And the teacher never moved, never lifted his arm, never did a Thing, the student would bump him and go flying.

That's funny.

I want to share that video with.

Everybody because I'm watching it. There are truly amazing instances of efficiency, effectiveness, utilization of combat psychology. There are also demonstrations. I have no idea which this might have been. I'd be happy to take a look at.

Was just the idea that when you talk about mastery and unconscious competence and to see it demonstrated so completely, effortlessly in this. And he was tiny. He was like Don Callan size, this little old man. And the student was over six feet tall. And the teacher could not be moved no matter what the student did. And effortlessly. It was amazing.

That is amazing.

That's all I wanted to share.

Be sure to send it to me over on Facebook. Okay?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? We've got 15 minutes maybe. All right, so let's talk about it again. Be sure that you're absolutely certain that maybe I'll cut things a little bit short today. The M is for map or model. Find someone who has accomplished what it is you intend to accomplish. Accomplish. Preferably starting with fewer resources than you have. You're looking for somebody who built, who made the delicious dinner you want with no more ingredients than what you have in your kitchen. In other words, there are books and tapes and videos, tons of stuff on any aspect of success that you could want, whether it's finding relationships, healing your heart, improving your body, making money. What you're looking for is a map or model that will lead to actions that you'll be able to define, small actions that you can take every day. What can you do today? So if somebody said to you, what action did you take today? That might not be anything more than making a phone call, writing something down, writing one sentence. But it needs to be every day. Every day that you eat, you should move. Every day that you eat, you should do the things that are required to put you on that path of hunting and gathering. The gratitude thing is so critical because ultimately what we want is feelings. We want the feelings, feeling of being out of fear. We want the feeling of being happy. We want the feeling of being of growth. That success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. To the degree that you feel good about what you did to move towards a worthy goal, worthwhile goal, you're going to feel good. And when you're feeling good, your stress level drops. When your stress level drops, you see potential around you, see possibilities. The eye is intention, clear intention, smart goals, you know, specific, meaningful, as if now, realistic and time bound. Do you know what you want and when you want it. Goals are dreams with deadlines. Write it down. I've heard it said that the person who just rereads their goals every day is going to be way ahead, Way ahead of the person who looks at their goals on, you know, January the first. The person who rewrites their goals or speaks them aloud every day. That now it's getting deep inside you. You know what it is that you want and why you want it. Okay. Make sure you've got the emotions behind it. And that touches the sea. Character, conviction, the belief that you can and should do this. This is a positive thing for yourself, your family, the world. That even if that story is rejected, the act of writing it and submitting it is an act of courage that takes you closer to being the person you want to be. Even if you get beat in that tournament, you had a chance to learn things about yourself that you had to be in that arena to learn. Even if she says no, even if the date doesn't work out, you're putting yourself out there. You're learning about yourself. Those five things. Just be sure you don't have a zero in any of those categories, and you're in the game. By the time you get up to about a five in each of those categories, an average of five of those categories, I think that magic thing starts kicking in. That's what I noticed years ago. You can leverage this with things like Brendan Burchard's High Performance 6 or Musasi Miyamoto's Nine Principles or Don Callan's principles or any number of other things you could do. But what I'm begging you to do is to make this your foundation, that you. Five times a day, you're doing 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing to break your stress cycle that you build that into every day having a session where you are deliberately chanting affirmations that connect you to the magic formula. Let me take a look over here. Actions, map or model. That's right. Actions, gratitude, Intentions, conviction. Yeah. You have to feel that what you're doing is who you are. Why are you doing this? Ultimately, it's who I am. This is who I am. Why would I fly to the other side of the world to practice martial arts? Because it's who I am. Why am I here every Saturday doing this? It's just who I am. Why am I going to kick ass on that Star wars book? It's just who I am. Why do I every single day be sure that my daughter and my son and my Wife, know that I am. Adore them. You have the answer to that. I'm blessed to exist. I'm blessed to share this world with so many great souls, so many people who are also on a journey, who are allowing me to speak honestly from my heart. I treasure being able to speak my truth from my heart more than I could possibly say. And one of the greatest gifts of the martial arts is I can do that publicly. What you got to do, I mean, it's like, why should I not, why should I not be who it is that I am? What could the world possibly offer me that is worth pretending to be something that I'm not for even one moment? Last call for comments, questions and requests. No. Then you can hear that the jet lag and other stuff are still in my system. So I'm going to take the rest of the day off. But unmute yourselves and everybody high five and cheer. Everybody.

Thank you all.

So great to see you. Good to see everybody.

Good to see you all.

I hope you all have a great week.

Alexander Adam is asked, how many meetings are there left? I don't know. I'm, I'm committed. I'm committed to doing it for the rest of the year. You know, this is, this is. I, I love doing this. As long as you guys love coming here, what could we say?

I, I'm gonna miss the next three because I've got three weekends of full day events. So I won't be here for the next three weeks. But that's why I wanted to know. It's like, oh, no, I'm not gonna be.

Well, we'll be here. We love you, Alex.

I'll try to make sure that you get a link to it so you can watch. You take care of yourself. Remember, you're taking care of business so that the little boy inside you can play.

Yes.

All right, guys. Well, the divinity with me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Namaste.

Love you.

Better, Steve.

Love you.

Bye bye.

Bye. Bye.