Discipline: teachings of my spiritual path

Since I have learned so much in the last 12 months especially with my work in the Amazon jungle but not only, I decided to share one teaching I learned every day on my other newsletter yawa.news but I won’t write more than once a week here on this one. Please also subscribe to yawa.news if you want to receive all my newsletters.

You can also listen to this on my podcast available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Discipline.

I realized what I learned the most from spiritual leaders is discipline. I learned most with Putanny Yawanawà you can see on the above photo when she guided me to my hut in the forest. She was the first woman ever in her tradition to be allowed by the “elders” to work with powerful plants in the Amazon forest. She’s wearing my hat and sundance eagle feathers as I was carrying some bags to the hut where I wasn’t going to be able to leave for months...

Discipline is very important in business life too of course. Delivering on what you promise to a customer or employee, showing-up on time at appointments (I got late or missed a few and felt terrible about it) or for example paying people on time.

Discipline defines how reliable I am as a human being and also defines how much my word is worth. It establishes trust between two human beings just becoming friends or doing a project together.

I was lucky enough to learn to be a plane pilot all the way to instruments multi-engine commercial and discipline is key there especially as you take passengers. Am I going to skip an item in the check-list? Would you fly with me if I did? Of course not. There is no pilot that did not go through bad weather or issues with the instruments or the plane itself. I had an engine failure twice in 20 years of flying (I don’t fly airplanes anymore, only a paraglider). It taught me a lot about self-control and “going by the book” while managing stress with my family or friends in the back. I landed safe each time and I am grateful for that.

While I worked with indigenous totally immersed in their world and their different reality the word “discipline” took another dimension. I went through 5 years of “training” with them.

Whatever I do I like to do it as best I can to (try to) reach mastery. Mastery of what and why indigenous - you are probably wondering?

It feels like being able to navigate an entirely different reality and world I knew nothing about. I wrote in my 50th birthday post about my first time seeing this new world.

Imagine a world where none of your references work anymore.

A world where suddenly I felt I did not even know how to walk when I discovered it. I was a baby again who just came out of his mothers womb.

Here are some words of discipline I heard from my teacher Putanny.

“Watch your thoughts. Watch your words. Do not let any negative thought or criticism stay in your mind. Do not swear. Do not wish anyone anything negative. Always go back to good thoughts. What you think or say is like prayers, they are likely to happen. Think about what you are about to do at any moment. Be always conscious about what’s happening around you and how you behave. Your words are important and can be as sharp as a knife, use them carefully. Do not talk unless you need to. Your training is not only what you drink or eat, it is also who you are with, your conversations with your friends and your family, the places you go to, what you read or watch, how you behave. Be always conscious about what comes into your mind and your body and even more conscious about what comes out of it, especially your thoughts and words. By going through this training you are not only going to learn to behave differently but you are also going to represent us at all times.

I wrote already about living with very little food and no water. I was also for many months in a very simple isolated hut with only a few clothes and a guitar, that’s it. I learned to live with close to nothing, no phone and no human interactions.

Humor.
Here is a “funny” story. I was asked to stop joking while “doing the work”.

When we would gather with the indigenous leaders for my teachings I got caught a few times joking and was asked to stop.

“What we are doing here is not a joke, it cannot be more serious and can be dangerous if you do not take it seriously”.

Same when you take-off with a plane there is no-room for a joke, your entire energy and awareness goes to your actions and constantly watching what the plane is doing and outside elements.

The reason I joke sometimes -as I always have- is that, like Osho, I think that humor is a very unique human capability. He says:

“Laughter is the only quality that distinguishes man from other animals”.

Osho goes all the way to saying “seriousness is a disease!”. Maybe, but it has many qualities too.

I did a few silent meditation retreats and the buddhist tradition doesn’t laugh much either. Spiritual work seems to have to be serious at all times.

Would you fly with a pilot that keeps joking all the time including about the flight itself or even safety? I love humor, it’s all about finding your own limits or “being your own master”. I definitely got into trouble doing jokes in business too but some amazing things happened as well thanks to my humor. Another limit is the image you want to carry, if I joke too much I will look like a fool.

Back to discipline.

Here are a few other discipline points I got to focus on that come to mind. Some of them will sound obvious but I appreciated the reminder.

1. probably the most important: be aware and conscious at all times about yourself, your behavior, people, animals and the space around you.

2. always consider your reality is a restricted view of what’s really happening because of your conditioning, culture, education, mood and imagine other realities. If you concentrate or meditate enough you will see another reality like synesthesia.

3. you are not who you think you are

4. work on remembering and interpreting your own dreams. They cary very important information and they are another plane of reality you go to every night. In dreams you have no fear and can achieve anything.

5. be always humble and do not spread your own illness

6. tidy-up your home which is your mind

7. always keep your “room” or physical home tidy or your mind will be messy

8. show-up on time in ceremonies (same as business appointments…)

9. do not leave a ceremony before it is closed

10. stay calm at all times

11. do not move much, stay in meditation unless you are invited to move or dance

12. “don’t speak unless it improves on silence” (Borges) and do not talk in ceremonies and in general talk only when necessary

13. speak your truth always even if it sounds like talking like a knife

14. do not say the opposite as what you think like the “Heyokas” do

15. never interrupt someone who is talking and let him finish

16. do not swear

17. do not get angry or let your fear possess you

18. do not joke

19. do not lie ever

20. always remember the power of our voice

21. if you learn a song, say the ancient language words and melodies exactly as we teach you

22. sing along but never sing higher than whomever is singing

23. use patience always. The indigenous learn for 20 years or more to work with some plants, like it takes 10 years to learn to cook rice in Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

24. always look good in ceremonies and at all times, even alone in nature (they believe the “spirits are always looking”). Do not walk around without a shirt on even if it’s hot.

25. the “medicines” are to be respected - more on that in the future but I highly encourage you to watch the new Netflix Series “How to Change your mind” especially the last one on native American peoples.

26. strictly observe the “dieta” rules (my current food and drinks restrictions during a full year)

27. take care of your things at all times (for them whatever you have including your clothes carries your “energy” and cannot be left behind or shared with others. Like your water bottle for example I got in trouble for forgetting mine once.

28. During a “dieta” nothing can be shared with anyone to “preserve your energy”. For example I buried the remains of my food (like fish bones) after each meal so animals did not eat them or any fish meat left on them.

29. do not borrow anything from anyone, especially without asking (obvious but always good reminder)

30. do not drink alcohol, it is poison

31. do not use your phone much or you won’t discover what your mind and body can do.

32. Do not use any technology at all during dieta, unless it is to record or play songs. This is a huge challenge in our ultra connected world. I am using my laptop right now and very conscious of it. I take long periods of offline time daily too, meditation helps.

33. indigenous knowledge is as important as modern technology and science

34. do not eat much, only what your body needs

35. “big” breakfast, normal lunch and no food after 3pm. Every day.

36. do not drink much, only what your body needs (no pure water either in my case for one year)

37. meditate daily, as long as possible and always remember to look inside. Do not be scared to look inside.

38. do not hang-out too long in noisy or crowded environments and when you feel overwhelmed go back to a quiet place in nature (I got overwhelmed in Paris, now feeling really good and much stronger)

39. whatever you are deciding to do always believe strongly that you can do it and never let thoughts as “I cannot do it because I am like this or I have that condition”, just convince yourself that you can do pretty much anything, it’s all about your thoughts.

40. of course, respect nature and plant often. Do not take more from nature than what you give to nature. A challenging one with the way we all live in the western world.

The benefit of this work for me is sensitivity and a feeling like I have a bigger antenna in my head.

My intention is to keep sharing one teaching I learned a day on yawa.news and no more than once a week on this one.

Thanks for reading!