Peaceful Warrior

Peaceful Warrior is a movie that can be streamed freely via Netflix if you have an account with them.

The movie is based on facts though probably much of it is probably not to be taken as actually pictured.

The facts are that an actual person, Dan Milman, was a gymnast at the University of California at Berkeley. He had great ambition to compete in the Olympics. He had a terrible motorcycle accident that severely compromised one leg, apparently making him incapable of gymnastics. At that time gymnastics had been a religion for him, like winning or having sex, or being popular. Later he did compete. How he moved from there to spirit is visualized in the movie. In this author's judgement, that evolution is an interesting story of a person's awakening from the religion of sport to the spirit of sport and so is a spirituality story.

Milman before his accident gets to know a gas station attendant played by Nick Nolte who guides him before and after his accident to learn to return performing on the rings. It is up for debate when the gas station attendant was an actual person or a visualization of what was going on inside Milman's head.

At any rate, the last ten moments of the movie are the best. They are a conversation between Milman before he competes and a team mate of his. The team mate has the "sport as religion"

mentality, and Milman has the "sport as spirt" mind.

While performing on the rings, the voice of the gas station attendant asks Dan three questions:

1. Where are you?

2. What time is it?

3. What are you?

The answers Dan gives are:

1. Here

2. Now

3. The Movement

Those are the simplest statements I have come across about living in the spirit and how it differs from living in the world. The person of spirit lives of course in the natural world but not in all the variations of "the world's cultural carrots and sticks", of whatever variation.

The first part of the movie is about the world the second part about the transition from world to spirit. I hope you enjoy it.

If someone could point out to me that every great spirit guide is not pointing to a deep awareness of where one is, what time it is, and the response appropriate to the place and time they are in, please let me know. The response is usually the same: Love by responding to the needs of that particular here and now appropriately with all your being.