Can the search for enlightenment be distilled into a plan simple enough to be followed every day? Dan Millman (author of the bestselling Way of the Peaceful Warrior) offers twelve down-to-earth points to help us master the life we live.

The Monthly Aspectarian: Dan, as I look over your new book, Everyday Enlightenment, one of the things I'm struck by is its applicability to everyday life.

Dan Millman: That was my primary motive for writing in the first place. I really don't see myself as a writer or a speaker as much as I do a teacher who loves to share what I've learned. I had read many books from the East and the West and from different spiritual and religious traditions but they were draped in so much arcane language and cultural trappings that I wanted to share in a way people can find has real common sense to it. And my work, especially in Everyday Enlightenment, can help people whether they are believers or non-believers; it can help Christians or Jews or Sufis or Buddhists or Hindus to be better at whatever their way of life is — because it deals with things we're all doing, whatever our beliefs or religious persuasions. A sense of self-worth is important to anyone, and reclaiming our sense of will, turning what we know into what we do — these things make someone better at whatever they do — taking care of our bodies, managing our money — everyone is dealing with that on some level or other.

TMA: Why don't we take a quick trip through the twelve points, or Gateways, that you present in your new book.

DM: That's probably a good idea since its major strength is not one Gateway or another, but the entire picture of the twelve Gateways — which, I propose, form a new definition of what we call success or fulfillment.

The first Gateway: Discover your worth. The second: Reclaim your will. The third: Energize your body; The fourth: Manage your money. The fifth, Tame your mind; the sixth: Trust your intuition. The seventh: Accept your emotions. The eighth: Face your fears. The Ninth: Illuminate your shadow. The tenth: Embrace your sexuality. The eleventh Gateway is Awaken your heart. And the twelfth Gateway is: Serve your world.

TMA: Those are all very good pieces of advice. Now, Discover your worth: "You open up to abundant life only to the extent you believe you deserve it. How good can you stand it today?" That strikes me as being very New Thought.

DM: I think I can express it best in a single quotation by an Indian saint named Ramakrishna. He once said that an ocean can pour from the sky but if we're only holding up a thimble, that's all we're going to get. And that's what happens in life. Many of us only hold up a thimble.

For example, I used to teach a martial arts training and during that training I gave people the opportunity to stand up before the entire group and say, "Excuse me, but I'd like a standing ovation." That's scary for many people who might need it most. And people would respond so enthusiastically! They'd applaud, cheer them on — and when that would happen, some people would just open their arms and absorb all that energy and all that love people were giving them. And other people, after about three seconds, would hold up their arms and wave them as if to say, "That's enough, that's enough, I'm getting uncomfortable." And that's how many of us approach our lives.

We tend to sabotage ourselves — in our relationships, our spiritual practices, in our financial arenas, even in our health. Look at young celebrities today — Robert Downey, Jr., Christian Slater — sometimes people who are handsome, talented, adulated by millions of people for their acting skills, they make a great deal of money, and they're running off on self-destruction trips. Again: why are they doing it? I don't have the answer to everything, I don't presume to . . . but it has something to do with their self worth. I believe they're self sabotaging because on some level they do not feel deserving of all they're getting. It's not the only theory, and if they heard this, they might go, "Oh come on, that's too simple" — but I can guarantee it, it's an important factor.

Some people have read some of my books and say, "You sound a lot like a Christian mystic," or other people will say, "You sound a lot like a Zen teacher" or "You sound a lot like a Taoist," others, "You sound like a Sufi." And some people may say I sound like a New Thought church — but it's not wisdom belonging to one or another church or body of ideas, it's perennial wisdom.

TMA: Truth is truth.

DM: It's not "my" wisdom, it's simply giving reminders, hopefully, of what's realistic. If you let go of all comparative boxing, you know, this church or that one, or it comes from here or there — if we simply look at the idea of discovering our worth as an important — the reason I put it first of all the Gateways is not because it's more important . . . because to each of us, different Gateways take on more importance at different times. For some people at one point in their lives, "Manage your money" might be the key. For somebody else, it might be dealing with sexual issues, another time, it's facing fears, and so on. But the reason I put Discover your worth first is because if we don't come to a point where we begin to appreciate our innate worth as human beings and show ourselves the same respect and place the same value on our lives as we might on someone else — until we do that, it doesn't do any good to talk philosophy or talk about the other Gateways or personal growth or even religion until someone comes to the point where they say, "Maybe I deserve to go to church and commune with God," or "Maybe I deserve to make a little more money" or "bring my creativity into the forefront of my life." So until we discover our worth, we sabotage or don't open our hands up to life and the gifts and grace that life offers.

TMA: I like the second point, Reclaim your will. "Self respect comes from doing what needs to be done, whether or not you're in the mood." You know, there's that phrase, You know what you need to do, why don't you just do it?

DM: You bring up an important point. That's the major challenge most of us deal with whether we're talking about personal growth, spiritual growth, any kind of drive toward human potential ...

TMA: Or cleaning out the garage.

DM: We all know what's it's like to do things whether we feel like it or not. Most of us go to work whether we feel like it that day or not. Or we do our homework. It's not something new. And yet, so many of us say, "Gee, I know I should exercise, I know I should eat a little better, I know I should meditate or go to church, or whatever it is — because we haven't fully reclaimed our will and recognized we do have the power. I don't mean to give people just more good advice. We already have plenty of good advice.

In the chapter on Reclaim Your Will, I go into keys which have to do with what we can and cannot control in this world. If I can't write something fresh, I won't bother writing a book. I don't want to rehash what's already been written by me or anybody else. So I think people will find information that is radical yet realistic.

TMA: The next point, Energize your body: "The only thing you are sure to keep for a lifetime is your body." There are a number of ways to go about doing that, and everybody would need a different combination of disciplines.

DM: Somebody's vitamin or mineral deficiency might be different from another who has a different one. So we all have different needs. Some people exercise but don't eat too well. Some people eat well but they don't get enough rest. It's different for all of us. In this chapter, I go into the Holy Trinity of Health, which is, again, something we all know about but we don't all do. Most important is moving, breathing, stretching, every day. Some kind of conscious exercise appropriate to our age, level of condition, and so on. The second is diet. Of course we all know about this, but I've put into the book principles of diet that aren't the usual things that you'll find in books — simple things you can actually apply that aren't idealistic where people read `em and go, Oh yeah, it would be good if I did that — but they don't actually do it. Things that you can apply in everyday life.

And the third, which we often ignore even though it's getting into the news, the magazines, is getting enough rest. Most of us are sleep deprived. Ever since the electric light or even the kerosene light was invented — you know, people used to go to bed with the dark and get up with the dawn, and now we stay up late, watch television, we feel we have to do more and more work — and most of us don't get as much sleep and regular sleep as we need.

TMA (grumbling to himself): I know I don't.

DM: That's the Holy Trinity of Health, those three. One of the principles I work with in the third chapter, Energize Your Body, is Simple is Powerful, because you're most likely to actually do and maintain what's simple. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing. That's why in the this chapter, I teach the Peaceful Warrior Workout — which I've been doing myself every single day for the last fourteen years. It's a very efficient, complete, balanced routine of physical movement, breathing and tension relief that can be done in less than four minutes a day. It's almost excuse proof. For the amount of time invested, it gives really wonderful results. I don't just say, Eat well, you know, eat your vegetables, and so on. I give information in such a way that people can actually make use of it.

TMA: Now the fourth point, Manage your money. "Money is neither god nor devil but a practical necessity." But I think people have a lot of different kinds of issues over money.

DM: Well, there are a number of Gateways that we tend to have issues with. Manage your money is one; the tenth Gateway, Embrace your sexuality, is another area of controversy. Even the ninth Gateway, Illuminate your shadow, these are all areas we wonder what it's about or we have charged emotions about them, think they're good or bad — again, Everyday Enlightenment — enlightenment, illumination, awakening, can happen to anyone. In the Epilogue of the book, I present a realistic yet radical practice anyone can do to practice enlightenment here and now.

Rather than think of enlightenment as pie in the sky . . . someday if we're a holy person, if we live perfectly, we're going to walk around with this beatific smile and be blissed out all the time — I mean, the images we have about enlightenment amaze me sometimes. I want to bring it down to planet Earth where we can practice it every day. Before we can do that, though, we need to have some degree of mastery, some degree of understanding of all of the twelve Gateways that allows us to take on this practice. If someone jumps right to the Epilogue of the book they'll learn a val-uable practice but it'll be more difficult to fully engage it unless they've gone through and at least understand the contents of each of the twelve Gateways.

So — Manage your money, in a spiritual context, is not about getting rich, thinking oh, I've finally conquered the fourth Gateway by getting rich — no. Nor is it about declaring vows of poverty and giving everything you own away. Neither one of those. Those are both extremes. It is about achieving sufficiency. That's a key work. Stability and sufficiency — so money doesn't manage us anymore. So if the car breaks down we don't have to go through a trauma wondering where we're going to come up with the money. Because otherwise, our attention is trapped by our issues in the money area.

Most of us have negative programming whether we're aware of it or not. I know I did. until I did a lot of looking into that area. Negative feelings about money, especially versus spirituality. So that's what I address in Managing Your Money. It's not just about balancing your checkbook, though that's certainly part of the scene. It's about career, finding the right livelihood; it's about finding the beliefs we have, taking a good look at them for good or bad. The larger context, the reason I wrote the twelve Gateways, the reason I wrote Everyday Enlightenment, is as a means to free our attention. Because if we can talk about God and Spirit . . . you know, there's a favorite saying of mine: There's God, and there's not paying attention. Many of us aren't paying attention to commune with Spirit or God to see the beauty in the world and recognize that grace and the gifts we're all getting because we're too busy worrying about our aching back, our body issues, our money issues, our discipline issues — and once we go through these Gateways and begin to reclaim them, begin to achieve some mastery over them, our attention rises up through our body, literally. Finally up into the heart. And then we don't just talk about or philosophize about love or see it as some ideal, we begin to bring it into life in a whole different way.

In Awaken your heart, the eleventh Gateway, I have a very different approach to what it means to awaken our hearts.

TMA: Well, you're written here, "Love is the emotion that opens the Gateway to everyday enlightenment. Can you act with love without reason?"

DM: And that's the key. Easy to say, not so easy to do. All of us have had relationships for long periods of time — can we act with loving kindness whether we feel loving in the moment or not? Most of us, if we feel antipathy, we act negatively. Negative words and expressions come out of our mouth. If we happen to feel "in love," then we can act loving and kind. So that's one of the keys to Awaken your heart — acting with loving kindness. And as I said, one of the radical keys to the book is a close and realistic look at what we can control and what we can't control, what we're responsible for and what we're not responsible for.

TMA: What will you be doing in your talk in Chicago?

DM: I'm going to be in Chicago twice this year. The first time will be in May and then later on, in October. In any case, I'm going to be presenting all twelve Gateways, and going into more depth in some of the areas based on whatever the people in attendance would like to go into. We'll be covering some ideas that are actually new. People will have to try them on. They won't just fit in with whatever we already know. And they are different from what's normally taught out there in terms of realistic ways to approach living well, constructively and productively.

The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth 1 - Discover Your Worth: "No matter how intelligent, attractive or talented you may be — to the degree that you doubt your worthiness you tend to sabotage your efforts and undermine your relationships." You open up to abundant life only to the extent you believe you deserve it. How good can you stand it today? 2 - Reclaim Your Will: "Until you reclaim your will — assert your power to act upon what you know — even the best plans remain unrealized." Self-respect comes from doing what needs to be done, whether or not you are in the mood. Can you turn knowledge into action? 3 - Energize Your Body: "If you lack vitality, nothing else really matters; if you have your health, anything is possible." The only thing you are sure to keep for a lifetime is your body. How might you take better care of your body? 4 - Manage Your Money: "By clarifying your goals and using your gifts, you can make good money, doing what you enjoy while serving the highest calling of your soul." Money is neither god nor devil, but a form of energy and a practical necessity. Have you achieved financial stability? 5 - Tame Your Mind: "The world is...a reflection of your mind. As your mind clears, you perceive reality simply as it is." You see the world through filters of belief, opinion and interpretation. How do your beliefs shape your experience? 6 - Trust Your Intuition: "Your subconscious holds keys to a treasure house of intuitive wisdom, clear sight and untapped power." There are hidden ways of knowing about and responding to the world. Have you accessed your inner guidance system? 7 - Accept Your Emotions: "Accept emotions completely, let your feelings be; just don't let them run your life." Feelings are natural; you need not fix them, but transcend them. Have you made peace with your emotions? 8 - Face Your Fears: "courage is not in the absence of fear, but the conquering of it." Everyday courage is not a feeling but an action. Have you made fear your servant and guide, or let it become your master? 9 - Illuminate Your Shadow: "Releasing energy once bound in defense of self-image, you find energy, understanding, humility and compassion." Self-knowledge generates authenticity, energy and compassion. Do you truly know yourself, or only your self-image? 10 - Embrace Your Sexuality: "Life is not a matter of indulging or denying the energies of life, but observing, accepting, and wisely channeling them." Making love can be a spiritual practice and a celebration of life. Have you realized your potential for intimacy and joy? 11 - Awaken Your Heart: "Love endures not from words or feelings alone, but from actions that carry you beyond the interests of separate self, beyond reason or motive, to embrace all people, things and circumstances." Love is an action that opens the gateways to everyday enlightenment. Can you act with love without reason? 12 - Serve Your World: "Service is both a means and an end, for in giving to others, you open yourself to love, abundance, and inner peace." The final gateway brings meaning to life. How might you make a positive difference for someone today? — from Everyday Enlightenment by Dan Millman

Dan Millman is a former world champion athlete, college professor and bestsellling author whose eight books, including Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Life You Were Born to Live, have inspired millions of people in more than twenty languages. He is also a sought-after, inspiring lecturer. His latest book, Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth, was published in April.

Dan Millman will be appearing May 28 at Infinity Foundation co-sponsored with Nightingale-Conant Publishing. Call 847/400-1898 for more information.

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