Ep. 6: Going DEEP - What Are You Willing to Throw Your Life Away On?
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With Andrew Reid and the liberation. It's a serious question, one worth pondering. Am I living the life I want, an intelligent life, or something else? How can I have a better experience of life?
Speaker 1:These are some of the questions explored in this series of messages without the brag and the advertisement, getting beyond even human institutions and society into the wilderness, nature, the reality of how life actually operates on this planet. These messages range from intimate recordings from the awakened forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts on a wide array of philosophical topics.
Speaker 2:Today, I sit here on top of the mountain, a charred mountaintop. But guess what? It's clear. The fires in some way purified the land, purified souls, got rid of the old and the little greens get to live. But it seems a good setting to explore the central question of this very series of messages.
Speaker 2:What are you willing to throw your life away on? So here I am the forest dweller, the hermit speaking and this seems like the right setting because being in a polished production studio like we have and all that in a commercial setting just doesn't seem quite right. Why? Because I need to be surrounded by reality, by the truth. And if we're going to find ourselves, if we're going to find our purpose, our direction, perhaps it's best to do it surrounded by the truth.
Speaker 2:But I know that we can find ourselves no matter where we are and that the truth of our lives and what we want to do will sometimes come in the most improbable moments or unsuspecting times where suddenly we have an enlightenment, an awakening, a Damascus experience where our purpose is illuminated but it's beyond our control. You can go out in the woods to try to be brilliant, to try to lose your grief sometimes, to write the book, to write the hit song. But all I know is that these things just happen. So again we're confronted with this dance with the external world and integrating it with ourselves. So this central question, what am I willing to throw my life away on?
Speaker 2:Again the central question in all of philosophy is how best to live. This is just perhaps a more pointed way of saying it that grabs us, gets our attention and the implications of this very intelligent question and weighty questions challenge us and that's what human beings need. It challenges our positions in life, that is the directives where we're going through our routines of life, our activities of life, the things we're thinking about when we're showering, on our drives to work, on our drives home, when we really have maybe a gap in our activities to consider the day and what we're doing with our lives or what I'll call our true honest moments. These moments of self inquiry, what am I doing here? What do I really want?
Speaker 2:What would make me happy? What would make me content? And so this question summons all these things. Just think about the words used. What?
Speaker 2:What equals or requires a choice, a determination of focus, a specific thing or things and saying no to the multitude of optional choices. Say no to the attractive opportunities to focus on things that are more singular. The word willing connotates again choice, a product of the human will which is at least 50% of the life equation. The act of the will dancing with the external world. And then to throw your life away involves an unsettling proposition of risk that things could go bad, we could die, we could lose our money, something could happen to our loved ones.
Speaker 2:And that summons the subsequent questions to the logical mind, is life serious? Or maybe life's not so serious? Or the third option which I think is always or most always more correct is it could be both or multiple things. Again I'm kind of purposely sitting here in the ashes of this burnout recording facility, this world class place on my property looking at it and in a way it's sad and in a way it's it's absolutely beautiful at the same time. But these close brushes with death, I almost died here.
Speaker 2:I mean I I was ready to die for this property. I was ready to die for my cabin except for one of these forest fighters from Oregon just grabbed me almost slammed me against his oxygen tank and said we gotta get out of here. We're gonna die. And of course we retreat as my buildings are going up. The barn went up in flames and then I come back and realize the recording studio gate because it's a gated property had not been undone so I parked along there because I knew that if I drove in there and I got in trouble people wouldn't know where to find my body.
Speaker 2:That's how bad it was but I had to knowing me and what I'm about of course I'm not just going to stand by and watch my things go up in flames so I go around the mountain because it's a long, I own that mountain and I go up and there's flames coming out but they hadn't consumed the road yet and so I circled the mountain and there's the studio up in front of me and it's just engulfed in smoke where you could just barely see the outline and then you could see the surrounding structures, little well house and all that being consumed. And of course I had things I loved. I had ancient guitars from the 40s 50s 60s, a Voyager system, my Sarah McLaughlin guitar, my favorite acoustics and I thought maybe I could grab a few of those. Oh there's a deer that just went by. How beautiful.
Speaker 2:They're so lovely this time of the year with their shiny coat. And so I was determined to get something and I started up towards it and I thought wow this is really hot and I can't breathe. Can't even see where I'm going and then I turn around I hear a roar and then you know I'm shut off. My path back is blocked by flames that erupted behind me and sealed me off except for the road. So I just put my head down I really didn't have any other option and I ran through and I burnt my lungs up.
Speaker 2:I didn't know it at the time everyone said it'd probably go away well it didn't and so on Good Friday I knew it was my last day on earth but somehow I survived the night and it was a slow rebound and it still is and I still am fighting it but I want to live. Why? I have a vision for my life. There are things I still want to accomplish, things I want to do but I also know that this property is a big part of it and my makeup is to throw away my life on whatever because I think it's a key to success. It's a it's a key to living really a very fulfilled life.
Speaker 2:So there's this risk element. What are you willing to throw your life away on? So it contains the acknowledgment of death, the great certainty that we all must face that we're gonna have our turn to die. Are we gonna die well or are we gonna die with the music still in us, with the unfinished book with the unfinished piece of art with the unaccomplished business family goals whatever. But these close brushes with death just like the bullet fragments in my head from a robbery or just all these things being knocked overboard and drowning near drowning in Alaska a few times or the when the grizzly got at me and I had to jump off a cliff to get away.
Speaker 2:These brushes with death bring us to ourselves, bring us to our senses and say what am I living for? If it was over now would I have regrets? And some people could say well it's lights out, you're not gonna know anything anyway. Well maybe not. I suspect that we continue once we exit the physical body but we do know this we're never gonna be back in this form like we are now because that's just not the way life works.
Speaker 2:But what do we all want? We want to live a well lived life, we want to live an intelligent life, we want to live a life which we've thought through, a considered life and we want to be a realized person not leaving anything on the table, anything that's going to cause regret or guilt. But this question, questions do what? Questions like this cause us to go deep within ourselves into the realm of thought, the realm of ideas. And thinking and thoughts are what people produce and are.
Speaker 2:We are thinking creatures. That's what you do on your drive to work. That's what you do on your commute home. We think and we like puzzles, like challenges, we like games of chance. But many ways we're in a game that has no ultimate solution, only temporary destinations, temporary oases until we get bored with our Mai Tais, our Bloody Marys and sitting under the coconut tree and say to ourselves maybe the coconuts are better in the next oasis.
Speaker 2:But this is such a worthwhile question. And can you say what would truly satisfy me? What would I be content, truly content with? Where it's not just fun. Usually, again, it contains this element of accomplishment, of doing something, of risking something, of sacrificing something, the pain side, in order to have the happy side or that deep satisfaction of achievement and there's something to that to grow yourself and become really your best self which is really probably your function in this earth.
Speaker 2:Why else would you exist? There's only one of you. Are you to imitate the masses? Live lives imagined by other people? Of course not.
Speaker 2:Your job is to figure out your own life. So what are you willing to throw your life away on? And one way to look at this is what I'll call the good soldier. Now who is the good soldier? And of course I'm using idiotic reference to humankind here, but the good soldier can only be a good soldier if he or she considers themselves already dead.
Speaker 2:Because if they're still clinging to life, they don't have the courage to get up out of the foxhole or charge out of the trench. They're clinging to their lives. They're not even good at saving their neighbors, their fellow soldiers because again they're clinging to their lives, they might die. Whereas a good soldier goes I'm already dead, it's a good day to die in fact maybe and they fling themselves in the hail of bullets. That's a great attitude in a way to live life and I'm not seen to be outrageously reckless.
Speaker 2:We need to make calculated moves based on intelligence but what are you really risking? It's almost a zen and spiritual state. So this question summons and conjures up many things. Again risk, loss, it can be a bit scary. But we have to recognize that there's a relationship of risk and reward and those at risk more attain more.
Speaker 2:And you might say I have a high tolerance for risk. This has developed over time and it's not even applicable to all situations sometimes we're more terrified of some situations than others and you see some of these guys in their pickup truck no fear. Well they're fooling themselves. Fear is part of the game guy. You think the soldier getting up out of the foxhole even if he considers himself dead isn't terrified?
Speaker 2:But that's part of it. That's part of courage. And like I said earlier, it confronts us with the great certainty. The great certainty of death that not many of us get out of this life alive, right? And despite our best efforts to preserve it, we can't.
Speaker 2:So it's best to throw ourselves into whatever endeavor we have with full force. It also recognizes the will, this self determined aspect, this personal agency as it's called in philosophy and the role that we play in our lives and that we're not just this little speck of dust that's being thrown around by the big bad world. We need these events if we really reconcile and these events, forest fires, this illness, going broke help us. And on a further subtler level, what am I willing to throw my life away on also implies the truth that in order to truly be good or great at anything, that it will require tremendous time, sacrifice, literally your life. Like when I was really breaking out, I heard Earl Nightingale say, if you'll spend five years learning everything about your profession, spending all your time doing it, whether you're making cabinets, what are the special screws, how do you prepare the wood, just understanding everything thoroughly, every aspect, every detail, the minutiae, being meticulous in your knowledge, that you will find yourself in five years in the top 5% of those in your field.
Speaker 2:And boy has that not worked out many times for me depending on where I want to focus. That's great advice. But normally you're not going to get great at anything working forty eight hours a week. I don't even know how to do success with that. A lot of times it's the eighty, one hundred hour week especially for durations or seasons of your life.
Speaker 2:There's the risk. Is it worth it? You better enjoy what you're doing. And I did. And so why would anybody go into a direction that didn't give them energy, that felt like burden and didn't give you back life?
Speaker 2:So even that five years in whatever direction throwing yourself into it entirely where you wake up, you work the day, at night, you sleep on it, you dream about this and it's something you enjoy and obviously you get good. Because what we find is that the fiftieth percentile, the average people, the huddled masses, the herd know very little about what they do even if though they're getting a paycheck from whatever job or field they're in or the satisfaction from raising a family, they're probably doing very average ways and they wonder why they're in the fiftieth percentile and that's the fact. That's what makes it easier to succeed than not. But you got to pay the price in this just world. The other thing about what are you willing to throw your life away on again it kind of takes this zen state.
Speaker 2:Right? A state of pure focus, of pure intention. Focus, intention, purpose, discipline. It can even be language just love. This is of high mind, of high consciousness, of high vibration and at least in quality.
Speaker 2:If you love something enough, yeah you're willing to throw your life away on it and that's such a beautiful thing. And I think the other thing is we just want to avoid the regret and guilt of dying before we finished our business. We don't want to die with the music or art still in our heart, Our art never seen, our music never heard, the building never built, the business not grown. So we need to be startled by an unsettling question, an uncomfortable question. What are you willing to throw your life away on and what is worthy of your life?
Speaker 2:Again, it's why so many shamans, holy people, myself, whoever, would go out in the wilderness to get around the truth in a lonely state, isolated from society, from other people, where we gain our vision or perhaps regain the vision of our youth. Think about what you used to think about as a kid, what you wanted to be, what turned you on. That may give us some clue. So with this excellent question, what are you willing to throw your life away on? Perhaps intelligence is the key here because it's such an intelligent question.
Speaker 2:Recognizing all these aspects of success in life and living a considered life that we're conscious of and that we're not living obliviously but we're living the life that we determine, what's right and good for me as I see the world and not through the lens of any other belief system, whether it be a religious belief system or a societal belief system or whatever. But to become this truly self actualized, self realized person knowing their direction in the areas that we deem right, good and delightful in our eyes. And that's the whole point, that we isolate ourselves to find ourselves, to bring ourselves to ourselves, to realize that our happiness and everything comes from within us and not from the external world or circumstances. That you are the world.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you need anything further, just go to mbi.life.