8

The Living Void

The void may be said to have two aspects: It simply is what it is. It is realized; it is aware of itself. And to speak improperly, this awareness is “in us,” or better, we are “in it.”

In my father’s water quote, there is a section about how water becomes the cup or the bottle or the teapot when put inside those forms. This is certainly a commentary on water’s flexibility—that it quickly adapts to whatever situation it finds itself in. But it is also a commentary on what my father called the living void. It is the concept that water is in direct and immediate response and cocreation with its environment. It doesn’t have to assess the cup and whether or not it will fit or how best to fill it. It just moves into place, naturally, immediately, and simply.

It Hits All by Itself

When the film Enter the Dragon was first released, there was a scene that my father had written and filmed that was cut out of the first part of the film initially. At the twenty-fifth anniversary, Warner Brothers put the full scene back in. In it my father is walking alongside a monk, who is his teacher, and the teacher is questioning him.

Monk: I see your talents have gone beyond the mere physical level. Your skills are now at the point of spiritual insight. I have several questions. What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?

Lee: To have no technique.

Monk: Very good. What are your thoughts when facing an opponent?

Lee: There is no opponent.

Monk: And why is that?

Lee: Because the word I does not exist.

Monk: So, continue.

Lee: A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. And when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself.

“It hits all by itself.” This is what it means to engage with the living void whether in martial arts or in life. But let’s take a few steps back first and start with the beginning of what we know of the void.

It Simply Is What It Is

We have been speaking of emptiness as a state of mind up to this point—this idea of being open and present to what is happening without judgment or conditioned thinking. Remember choiceless awareness? Emptying the cup of the mind? This is the first aspect of the living void. This first level of awareness is to release you from the prison of your inherently dualistic thoughts—good/bad, right/wrong—and to simply see things as they are without attachment. There is really nothing to try to do but accept, acknowledge, and sense everything that comes up moment to moment, including any resistance you may feel.

Another way of looking at this aspect of the void is to say the empty mind is the mental posture of honesty, sincerity, genuineness, and straightforwardness. In order to engage with what is happening openly, we have to be able to be fully honest and fully sincere with ourselves. We have to approach every experience head-on and without prejudice. If you can be fully present and honest about your experience, you can begin to truly research it. You will begin to notice what lights you up, what you love, as well as what turns you off and what you don’t want. You begin to understand where the obstacles are—the people you stand in resistance to, the places where you lack attention, the patterns you repeat over and over. In this state, you get to understand and see what your obsessive thoughts are, your routines, your judgments, how you interact and react in relationships—but if, and only if, you can be directly honest and sincere with yourself.

I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then feel like pretty cool.… But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself … now that, my friend, is very hard to do.

Once we can stop lying to ourselves and get fully sincere, then all of the tools and ideas we have been talking about and practicing with up to this point have prepared us to be introduced to the living void.

I call it the “living void” because this is not some black hole of a void that swallows up everything in its path. This is a realm of heightened and effortless awareness, and it is very much alive. You are the active perceiver and feeler here, and you perceive without obstruction. My father had many names for the void: emptiness, nothingness, the formless form, etc. Another name my father used for this aspect of the living void is “no-mindedness.” He said, “No-mindedness is not being without emotion or feeling but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked—a non-graspiness of the mind.” So we have an open mind and a sensing mind and an honest mind and now a mind that doesn’t get hung up on anything. We are aware of our thoughts and feelings, but we do not get stuck in a feedback loop (obsessive, distracted, overwhelmed, confused).

One can never be the master of his technical knowledge unless all his psychic hindrances are removed and he can keep the mind in the state of fluidity, ever purged of whatever technique he has obtained—with non-conscious effort.

When my father talks about “psychic hindrances,” he is talking about anything that blocks your flow and your immediate expression. We want to remove these hindrances so we can move away from reaction and into skillful response.

In life, there are those who react and there are those who respond. A reaction is an unskilled expression, which happens when we are unaware of our state and our primal brain, or when our ego operates the machinery. A response is a skilled expression, in which our higher self is present and at the helm and we are making a natural and masterful choice.

So in order to remove our psychic hindrances, we have to be aware of them. We have to be aware of all our hang-ups and conditioning so that we can dissolve them. My father bids us to cultivate “a mind that has no dwelling place but continues to flow ceaselessly and moves beyond our limitations and our distinctions.” We don’t stop having distinctions or feeling limited; we just decide not to let them control us. We stay consciously aware in the ceaseless interplay of life. We remove our mental blocks, our obsessive thoughts, our calculating mind, our need to be better than, our need to look good in front of, and we just are—unapologetically, sincerely, honestly, fully ourselves.

From this masterful place, you no longer need to position yourself before you speak or act. You just speak or act with trust that you are being the most realized version of yourself in the moment of your action. All of our practicing is for this—a place where we no longer have to pause to analyze everything, where we no longer have to remember to pretend anything. As my father said, “The knowledge and skill you have achieved are, after all, meant to be ‘forgotten’ so you can float in emptiness comfortably, without obstruction.” Imagine what it would be like to move confidently and naturally in every situation. It would be the ultimate in personal power, freedom, and expression. What does it take to achieve this level of personal proficiency?

The Stages of Cultivation

Now, you may think that there are a lot of people “not thinking” about what they do or what comes out of their mouths, and they don’t seem like “masters of being” to you! And you would be right. There is unconscious behavior and there is conscious behavior. To address this progression from unconscious to conscious and then to the void, which is both conscious and unconscious, my father created his version of the stages of cultivation. For my father, there were four stages of cultivation, and they explained the process of maturity in human artistry for him.

In 1966, my father asked George Lee, who had made the miniature headstone for him, to also make him four plaques to represent the stages of cultivation he had determined for himself and his art of jeet kune do. The stages were:

Partiality

Fluidity

Emptiness

Jeet Kune Do

Stage One: Partiality

Partiality is where most of us start, and this is unconscious behavior. In martial arts, it’s when you are a beginner and immature practitioner, and, to you, (by way of example) a punch is just a punch. Someone asks you to throw a punch; you’ve never thrown a punch before, so you just throw a punch. You don’t think about how to do it best, and even if you kind of do, you think about it without any specific knowledge on the subject—just what you think a punch should be like. It’s a punch, but it’s inelegant. There’s an inexperienced, uncontrolled wildness to it; there’s no technique, no skill. This stage is represented by a fragmented yin yang symbol with no inner relatedness and what my father called “the running to extreme.”

When applying this stage to life, there’s no awareness when it comes to thoughts, emotions, and actions. We are operating in unskilled reactions to what we narrowly perceive as good or bad, right or wrong. When we get defensive and are unwilling to listen and consider another’s point of view or feelings, we are in partiality. We refuse to see that there is any other side, any other experience, or any other way. We refuse to give anyone the benefit of the doubt or take into consideration that they are coming from their own set of experiences and understanding of life up to this point. We refuse to see the blocks within ourselves that are keeping us trapped in behavioral patterns. We are being tossed around on the waves of life and we don’t know where the shore is; we are just struggling to keep our heads above water at all costs.

Stage Two: Fluidity

Fluidity is the stage we reach once we’ve acknowledged that we (and everyone) have a lot to learn, and we begin to work on ourselves. It is the stage of a budding conscious awareness. In martial arts, this is where a punch is no longer just a punch. Suddenly we recognize all the intricacies that go into making a punch successful and we train and practice and start to gain skill. We begin to see that a punch doesn’t just happen with the arm and fist, but that a good punch involves the whole body and the senses. We start to see that in order to punch well and find our target, we want to be in optimum condition, taking into consideration everything around us—who or what we are punching, where we are, how we feel, what’s going on—and learn to work with what is. My father called this the “two halves of one whole” and represented it on the plaque with a full yin yang symbol with two arrows encircling it, showing the constant interplay of the complementary forces.

In this stage, we are open and engaged in learning and bettering ourselves. We see that harnessing our potential is achievable, albeit both exciting and terrifying.

We acknowledge our mistakes and our blocks, and we create processes through which to practice, learn, and grow. We perceive that fluidity is a possibility, and balance and wholeness become real objectives because we are beginning to see the results of our awareness and our effort. We cultivate our tools, and we work to change ourselves and truly understand ourselves, which then starts to extend into our lives as compassion for everyone around us. Why compassion? Because as we start to grow and understand our own limitations, we begin to recognize and perceive the limitations that everyone experiences, and we feel for them in a new way.

I think my father dipped in and out of fluidity early on in his life, but I really liken this stage for him to the time after the fight in Oakland when he made a conscious effort to let go of his rigid training and look upon himself and his art with fresh eyes. In that pivot, he really started to tinker and express and reach. He began to deeply consider what it would take to be more whole as a martial artist and a human being. He worked for understanding and for skill as he delved into all manner of combat, fitness, nutrition, and philosophy. And he trained, discovered, and integrated it all into his life.

In fluidity, we see that life is rich and varied and that there is not only one solution to every problem. We engage our many tools and develop more. We become creative and more expressive. We begin to be able to have moments of flow and hunger to find consistency of flow. We learn how to accept the ever-changing nature of life and to work with rather than against it.

Stage Three: Emptiness

This is the stage of living void, or the “formless form,” as my father memorialized it on his plaque within an empty black square.

This is where consciousness and unconsciousness begin to work together as one. There are no more halves, only wholeness. In our martial arts analogy, when we’ve reached stage three, the stage of emptiness, a punch is, once again, just a punch—meaning we have now gotten to a place of so much honed skill that we no longer have to think about how to punch or all the components of a punch or even when to punch; now we can just punch. But this punch is a masterful punch—at once skillful and spontaneous.

My dear friend and colleague Chris gave me the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, translated by Charles S. Terry. It’s about real life seventeenth-century samurai Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote The Book of Five Rings (which my father had in his library), and I came across a passage in the novel that I think captures the living void beautifully:

His plan came to him like a flash of light. It was not reasoned out by the theories of the Art of War, which constituted the fiber of the trained warrior’s intuition. To reason out a mode of attack was a dilatory process, often resulting in defeat in situations where speed was of the essence. The warrior’s instinct was not to be confused with animal instinct. Like a visceral reaction, it came from a combination of wisdom and discipline. It was an ultimate reasoning that went beyond reason, the ability to make the right move in a split second without going through the process of thinking.

Remember the scene from the opening of the chapter between Lee and the monk? The height of technique is to have no technique. Or, as in the Musashi quote, a course of immediate action is not to be reasoned out by theories or techniques on the art of war, but becomes the ability to make the right move in a split second without going through the process of thinking. The response just happens through a combination of wisdom and discipline that the warrior has attained. It emerges from the void, where there is no I and there is no opponent. There is only the totality of what is and what happens in response to what is. In other words, it hits all by itself! This is the ultimate in water level mastery.

In this stage of maturity, you are unlimited. You stand at the center point of possibility with the ability to move in any direction. This is no longer a tactical readiness but rather total awareness with instantaneous expression. Here, emptiness is not just a disciplined state of a mind free from judgment, but an environment for wise and instinctual creation where you cocreate your life fluidly and unstoppably with the moment. In this emptiness, we and the void are one.

In order to understand the process for achieving this advanced stage of emptiness (and before we can move on to stage four), we need to look a little more closely at the mechanics of getting there.

Bridging the Gap

In martial arts, there is a concept known as bridging the gap. The gap, most simply, is the space between you and your target or opponent. Whoever can bridge this gap most efficiently and effectively without getting caught in harm’s way themselves is the one with the higher skill or the best kung fu. In martial arts, there are many tools you must have in your kit to do this well. You must have great mobility—quick footwork that can move in any direction. You must have a great sensitivity—being able to read your opponent and his movements by being fully present and responsive to the slightest changes in condition. You must have a great sense of timing—being able to find the perfect pockets of ingress that you can easily slip into. You must have great understanding—an ability to bring all your experience to bear. And you must have great spontaneity—being able to move at a moment’s notice without telegraphing your movement ahead of time. It should be a seamless interplay of presence and movement. As my father said,

In order to achieve oneness of movement and true flow, the gap between movements should be bridged.

But how do we apply this to life? What gap are we trying to bridge there? In martial arts, we are trying to bridge the gap that exists between us and our targets—and in life, that means everything that we interact with, such as our goals, our dreams, our relationships, and our work.

We want to bring the same martial arts tools to bear on our gap-bridging in life: we want to cultivate the skill of mobility—being able to come at a problem and move through life immediately and from a variety of angles. We want the skill of sensitivity—being able to sense what is called for in any situation by understanding what is happening and knowing how we feel and what we want. We want the skill of timing—being able not just to lead but to be led to the best moments for our impetus. We want the skill of understanding—having looked at and learned from our past experiences so that we can bring what wisdom we have attained to the situation. And we want the skill of spontaneity—being able to act in our best interest with full naturalness and immediacy, without being bogged down by too much thought.

Notice that the gap is the place of emptiness. It is, in truth, the birthplace of reality. It is the moment, however small, in which a choice is made. In this tiny gap lies the moment of decision, of action, of reflex, of thought. This empty gap is the place where consciousness and unconsciousness meet, for sometimes we make a conscious choice in that gap, and sometimes we react unconsciously, spurred on by our subconscious conditioning and our training. Oftentimes our choices are influenced by how much time we perceive we have to choose a path—a lot of time, and we can be more deliberate and conscious; no time, and we may act subconsciously. But the more we practice choosing quickly and the more we practice conditioning our subconscious, the smaller the gap becomes regardless of how much time we may be given. We learn to act from a place of cultivated instinct.

So imagine, if you will, that you can be in total concert with this gap, no matter how tiny. You could consciously choose your response with ease and confidence, or you could condition your subconscious mind with so much nutritious, positive practice that when you responded unconsciously, the response was still a perfect expression made with ease and confidence. What if this gap could become so tiny that it seemed to disappear altogether? That seamlessness is the feeling of true flow, where we are moving within the oneness.

As Bruce Lee reminds us …

All movements come out of emptiness. The mind is the name given to this dynamic aspect of emptiness and emptiness is sincerity so there is no crookedness, no ego-centered motivation, only genuineness and straightforwardness which allows nothing between itself and its movements.

We want to practice bridging the gap between sensing and doing. I say “sensing” rather than “thinking” because traditionally, to think implies the analytical mind and does not include intuition, instinct, feeling, and the subconscious. Up to this point, we have been discussing how to develop the whole body as the sensing instrument to work in lockstep with the mind, and now we are looking at how to shorten the response time between sensing and doing, such that thought and action become the oneness of expression.

What we are aiming for is for there to be no dislocation in the movements. They are done with flowing continuity like the movement of a river that is forever flowing without a moment of cessation or standing still.

How do we do this? Well, this is where the instruction manual needs to be written by you. Through all of your practice and discovery, you will have started to develop a sense of what works best for you. My father said “perception is the way of truth,” but this is not a perception that anyone can give to you. It is a perception that you must uncover for yourself. It comes from effortless and pliable awareness upon which you can act immediately because you have done the work to know yourself intimately—and because you are willing to fully live and stand by your actions.

Freedom is something that cannot be preconceived. To realize freedom requires an alert mind, a mind that is deep with energy, a mind that is capable of immediate perception without the process of graduation, without the idea of an end to be slowly achieved … At this point, many would ask, “how then do we gain this unlimited freedom?” I cannot tell you because it will then become an approach. Although I can tell you what it is not, I cannot tell you what it is. THAT, my friend, you will have to find out all by yourself!

This sense of freedom results from learning how to flow effortlessly in life. The effort we do apply is that of training, of working on ourselves so that more and more, we can become more whole and choose how we respond and participate in the rapid unfolding of life with a growing sense of ease. We get to stop overthinking so much and let naturalness become the norm. We’ve all had the experience where we just knew what to do or what to say in a given moment, and it felt so right and so natural, and there was an enthusiasm or easiness that permeated the whole exchange. It could be in a personal conversation or a pitch meeting or on the tennis court or in a fight, where you masterfully kept your cool because you could see the whole situation so clearly.

So how can we practice being one with the moment and bridging the gap? One way to look at it is in not second-guessing yourself once you’ve done a lot of good, solid personal practice. So, for example, when someone offers you a hand, you take it if that’s what you instantly feel. Or when someone asks you to do something that doesn’t feel right, you can simply say no, thank you. When someone offers you an opportunity (like sign this two-picture deal with an unproven new studio and producer in Hong Kong), you can sense immediately if it fits and you can say yes or no with full confidence.

It’s Simple

The challenge with a notion such as the void is that it is at once simple to understand and difficult to implement. I love my father’s description of simplicity. He said, “Simplicity is a quality of perception in approaching any problem.” The void? Simple—be fully present, wise, and responsive in every moment. It’s just so hard to actually do! The idea is fairly easily conveyed, but to gain this simplicity in the doing feels challenging and like it may take an inordinate amount of practice. To start, can you hold the idea of simplicity in your approach itself? It’s true that you won’t get it right all the time no matter how skilled you are. But we’ve let go of notions of right and wrong for ourselves. Mistakes are something for which we can be grateful, because there is no learning when we don’t get things “wrong.” And without learning, there is no expansion to the next level of being. So don’t get bogged down in your approach before you practice; just simply practice.

When we break the idea of oneness into parts, we can become overwhelmed with all the different pieces—be observant while fully engaged, present while also sensing, responding naturally while also reaching for our dreams, knowing ourselves while also forgetting ourselves. Help! So instead I suggest that you don’t break it into pieces—simply begin, and then practice and hone. And rather than trying to be more, aim to be less—less obstructed, less compartmentalized, less separate, with less ego. Over time, the less becomes more—more peaceful, more healthy, more whole, more real.

My father often likened the process of becoming one’s true self to that of a sculptor. We are the chunk of raw marble, and rather than try to add more marble to make our sculpture, we are to chip away all that is hiding the art within. With every piece we chisel away, we reveal our true self. My father used this analogy with his martial arts as well:

Being wise in gung fu does not mean adding more but being able to remove sophistication and ornamentation and be simply simple—like a sculptor building a statue not by adding, but by hacking away the unessential so that the truth will be revealed unobstructed.

“So that the truth will be revealed unobstructed”—this is what we are after. And to me, our “truth” equals our “soul.” In my father’s world, the height of cultivation means to move from being the experiencer (who can stand slightly to the side and evaluate the experience) to being the experience itself. When you are the experience itself, there is no time to assess (“this experience is great!”)—there is only the experience, and it is what it is and we are it. This is being whole. This is oneness. This is true flow. And when we start flowing, some magical things start to happen.…

Magical Thing Number One: Your Pace Quickens

Many people who have come to see the archive of all my father’s books and writings are astonished by the immense amount of output they encounter for a man who lived only to the age of thirty-two, during which time he also made movies, taught, and helped raise a family. And how was he able to be so prolific? By living in the void and not getting stuck in the gap without a bridge. And when you don’t get stuck in the gap, your pace increases exponentially.

His pace of creation, of doing, was quick—not rushed, not harried and stressful, just immediate. He became so adept at translating thought into action (helped by his martial arts practice) that it became second nature to him. When he had an idea, he went immediately to the execution of that idea. Now, of course, not all ideas are good ideas, but you get to the good ones faster if you move through the bad ones faster. The goal isn’t not to fail; the goal is to fail faster so that the lessons from the failures can be implemented and lead you to success more quickly.

How many of us have stuff we want to do, but we put it off over and over? Think about whenever you’ve had a thought, even one such as “I need to do the dishes,” but then you didn’t act on it. And later you beat yourself up for still not having done the dishes, or maybe you have the thought five more times before you actually get up and do them, and then while you’re doing them, you’re kind of annoyed by having to do them because now you’ve left them until you’re tired and you just want to go to bed. Now think about having the thought that you need to do the dishes and then just doing them. Done. Boom. Next. No time wasted on extra thoughts about it or berating yourself over it—the task (and yourself) no longer imbued with negativity that bogs you down.

Now use this example for something bigger. You have the thought, “I’ve always wanted to write a novel.” And when you have that thought, you are filled with wonder and enthusiasm. Now, if that thought is followed by further thoughts about your potential inadequacy or how you don’t have time or how ridiculous the idea is (after all, you’re not a writer), you’re in the gap without so much as a rickety suspension bridge. But if you instead follow that thought with grabbing a pen or opening your computer to start putting down your ideas, or signing up for an online course on how to write a novel, you’re no longer in the gap. You’ve moved across it. And whether you write a whole novel or not, you now have the start of something to play with. And you now get to decide how much of your effort you want to put toward the full execution of it. It may ultimately take you ten years to actually write a novel. But guess what: if you fall into the gap between thought and action (the black hole version of the void, rather than the living, cocreating kind), and you never get started, all you’ll have in ten years is a lot of wasted time and energy on thoughts and feelings about the novel you never wrote and no novel to show for it.

Let’s look at a different example. You are in a conversation with someone you’ve just gotten to know recently, and you have the thought, “I really like this person; I feel so good when I’m with (him/her/them),” but you second-guess yourself and you don’t express it. Now this person never knows how you feel about them; you miss an opportunity to bring your relationship closer by fostering some potential connection with them; and you’ve sacrificed your own self-expression in the moment. Or should I say, in the gap. That’s not to say every thought needs to be expressed, but when it feels like an expression of your soul, then practice honestly expressing yourself out loud, in real time.

How do you know what is an expression of your soul? Well, first, don’t take it from me—experiment and figure it out (go back to earlier chapters). Play with expressing and not expressing and see what feels right. If you don’t express something, and it keeps popping into your mind unbidden, then it is likely looking for expression, and you get to decide what the appropriate expression is. Notice how your body feels. When you feel light, energized, and uplifted, you should follow that. When your body feels constricted, sinking, or depleted, figure out how to expiate, express, and expel this feeling in a productive way. But don’t get caught up in the gap of either a missed opportunity or stewing. Learn to move into positive, unrestricted action, and you will suddenly accomplish so much more in much less time—and you will look back and be amazed by your progress.

Magical Thing Number Two: You Feel Powerful

Another magical thing that can happen when bridging the gap and living in the void is personal empowerment. You begin to feel like the master of your own destiny. You are captaining the ship. Your insides are starting to match your outsides—meaning, you are aligning your thoughts and your actions. You are becoming your real and fully responsive self in every instance. You no longer have to wear a carefully constructed mask for anyone or hide who you really are. That feels good and allows you to feel more confident and ultimately more empowered.

This can be a little scary at first, but when you clean out your mental closet and take responsibility for your thoughts and actions, there’s a maturing that happens. It’s called being authentic.

One is the captain of one’s soul, the master of one’s life. What causes such realization and subsequently causes a shift in one’s behavior? To be real. To accept responsibility for oneself.

There’s an e. e. cummings quote that I love that says: “It takes courage to grow up and be who you really are.” And it’s true. To become fully expressive and responsible for all one’s actions and choices is some serious adulting. But if there’s one thing I have noticed time and time again, it’s that no matter the situation, people deeply appreciate it when others are authentic and take responsibility for themselves, especially if they can do so with kindness. And it’s not only good for the recipient; it’s good for the responsible party as well. Yes, it can be hard and even painful, too, but it builds integrity. And having integrity leads to a sense of empowerment and wholeness.

What might it look like to be responsible and clear in your communications? What would it be like to release yourself from codependence and stand on your own sturdy feet? Can you be caring and honest? Can you be truthful and loving? How powerful would it feel to speak and act with immediacy from your heart with confidence and compassion?

My father said, “Every circumstance of every man’s life is the result of a definite cause—mode and control are yours.” Mode and control are yours. You have the ability to own your circumstances, to truly see yourself and then to be in conscious collaboration with yourself and your life, and you get to decide how to do that. There’s no right way or wrong way; there’s only taking responsibility or not. And taking responsibility is empowering. It gets less scary the more you practice it, and the more natural it becomes, the closer you are to living in the void. The closer you are to functioning from the root of your being.

The root is the fulcrum on which will rest the expression of your soul; the root is the “starting point” of all natural manifestation. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well-ordered.

From a well-ordered and rooted soul springs a grounded and authentic life. And when you live up to your heart and soul’s authenticity, you do so humbly and without needing validation because you know who you are. You don’t need anyone else to give that to you. You can be authentic and creative within the living void, leaping confidently over all the gaps, simply because it makes you feel powerfully whole to do so.

Magical Thing Number Three: You Are Safe!

When you’re living in the void and you feel whole and authentic and you are flowing, you start to feel safe. When I say safe, I mean internally safe—feeling like you can trust yourself, take care of yourself, stand up for yourself, be okay no matter who you’re with or what’s happening, and be yourself without fear. When your efforts become natural and purposeful, you don’t have to prove a point or position yourself or manipulate a situation or a relationship to be sure others think well of you. You may think that you do that stuff because it feels good and powerful and you’re being clever, but mostly you do it because you don’t feel good enough or powerful enough just as you are; and when you don’t feel good enough or powerful enough, you’re likely to feel unsure and inadequate and fearful—you feel unsafe.

That feeling of insecurity is a powerful driver to do whatever we can to make it go away. But the true warrior (meaning the regular person who tackles life head-on) doesn’t look for safety from the outside. They work to nurture their own sense of internal security, which comes from working diligently to know themselves and make an ally out of change and the unknown. If you have the mental image of a warrior as someone who runs out bravely and determinedly into battle, translate that image instead into the image of someone who valiantly takes on whatever life throws at them with grace and determination, someone who doesn’t turn away from a challenge or from acknowledging their own shortcomings, someone who doesn’t seek just an ideal image but rather an ideal soul. That’s a modern-day warrior and a hero.

And, by the way, warriors also feel fear, but what they don’t typically feel is insecure or unsafe. They don’t feel unsafe because they know they have the tools and the skills and the confidence to solve their own problems or to meet failure with grace; they know they are in cocreation with their life and all the lives around them. They choose when to act and when to stand down. They are deeply in touch with their abilities, and so they can move swiftly over the gap and move definitively within the void to take action in the face of a beautiful flowing stream or a raging storm, whatever it is that shows up.

Let’s just put it this way: I have no fear of an opponent in front of me; I am very self-sufficient. They do not bother me. And then, should I fight, should I do anything, I have made up my mind, and that’s it, baby …

And that leads us, my friends, to stage four.…