The Way of the Warrior

by Erwin Raphael McManus

  In the same way, music is both mathematical and romantic. Every note carries within it emotion. Without a word being spoken, music speaks to the deepest part of the soul. There is no thought that is disconnected from emotion.

  For the sake of imagery, I will speak of the heart as what carries all our experience and emotion, and the mind as the world that we create in response to the world around us as it intersects with the world within us. We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.

  A heart filled with violence will never see a world filled with peace. You can bring hope only if you have found hope. The mind can either blind you to the possibilities or give you sight to see what no one thought was ever possible. If you do not know your mind, you may very well be a prisoner of your limited thinking. When you know your mind, you are able to open your mind.

  Have you ever noticed what it is that we remember—the memories that shape our lives and experiences that we never forget? In our minds, what we are trying to remember are our lives, but most of our lives have been forgotten. I can understand someone else forgetting my life. After all, most of my life is pretty much forgettable. Don’t you find it strange that among all the people who have forgotten your life, you are one of them?

  It’s a peculiar realization to know that you have forgotten most of your life. Most of the experiences, the moments, the details—they all disappear, hidden behind selected memories that we call our past. But for every moment we remember, there must be at least a thousand others that we have forgotten. And we don’t forget consciously; it happens without us even taking notice. We just forget to remember, and that is much easier than remembering to forget.

  Some memories stick with us all our lives. They stick to us like peanut butter on the roof of our mouth: they are uncomfortable, even unwanted, and nevertheless our only choice is to swallow. Our memories create a maze through which our future experiences have to travel. The memories we remember create the barriers that we know. The memories we do not remember create the barriers that remain unknown. All of us have both visible and invisible barriers that we filter all our experiences through.

  You must never forget to remember. When you know your mind, you know your memories—you choose your memories. What you remember is how you shape your mind. Your memories are your mind’s design. The root of the word memory is simply mindful.51 Remembering is not a passive act; remembering demands of you perhaps your greatest mastery. You must take mastery over your memories. It is then and only then that you become mindful.

  This is the beginning of knowing your mind. You can move the walls that have trapped you in limited thinking by changing what you choose to remember. If you find yourself confounded because everything you remember is negative, limiting, and destructive, there is only one path forward: you must create new memories.

  The Space Between the Rain

  When I was around ten years old, I began a reading binge. For whatever reason, reading became a great escape for me. Behind the doors of libraries, those ancient places where books were stored away, were the endless treasures of lives I’d never lived and words I’d never known. I remember reading an endless number of books, but most of the lines that once captured my attention have long left my memory.

  So I have to think that it is not incidental that there is one line from one book that I have never forgotten. I don’t remember the book, I don’t remember its name, and I’m not sure who the author was, but I’ll never forget the line. In the middle of an obscure story, the writer described a man who suffered from a particular malady. This may not be an exact quote, but it’s exactly how I remember it: “There was once a man who was driven to madness not because he could count the drops of rain but because he could count the spaces in between the drops of rain.”

  I imagine thousands upon thousands of people have read that same book and have passed by the same line, yet I have never met anyone who remembers it, so I always found it curious that I could not forget it. Having now lived five decades, it has become clear to me why of all the things I have forgotten, I never forgot this. These words strangely created in me a sense of hope—not that someone would be driven to madness because of the spaces between the rain but that someone out there actually understood the madness that raged within me. What for others may have seemed an absurd and poetic description of an unrealistic struggle was for me a diagnosis for which I did not have language to explain. How do you put into words the madness that comes from seeing every drop of rain and every space in between? The writer didn’t offer me any solutions, but the cure strangely found me in the description.

  For as long as I can remember, I have always suffered from a particular condition that I could not fully understand or describe. The best way to describe it is encompassed in the word overload. One aspect of it seemed to be external and the other internal, but it felt as though both aspects were driving me to madness.

  Whenever I would walk into a room filled with people, I would feel as if I were being bombarded by unwanted information. It felt as if every detail in the room was crashing in my brain and demanding its attention. I seemed to lack the natural filters that allow most people to ignore much of what was happening around them. I felt as if I could see everything, and while that may sound like a superpower, it was absolutely debilitating. It would drive me to want to be alone so I could slow down the amount of data going into my head.

  It was in 2013 that I went through a process in which I received some interesting information on my neurological patterns. I did receive some good news: I had an extraordinarily high level of impulse control and a significantly high level of focus. But where I had a deficit, it was extreme. I was in the bottom percentile of what was called NeuroSpeed, which makes me sound really slow.

  I remember a conversation with one particular doctor. He explained that the best way to understand this phenomenon was with the imagery of shutter speed. Most people’s brains have rapid shutter speed, which creates the perception of chronology in our memories. My brain, on the other hand, was not designed for chronology but for imaging. My shutter would open up completely and receive a massive amount of information all at the same time and then close very slowly, creating the phenomenon of overexposure before the shutter would close. When the shutter is open, I see every raindrop and even the spaces between the rain.

  It appeared that my inability to filter out the massive data my brain was processing and my ability to retain massive amounts of information were directly interconnected. From a neurological perspective, my superpower was also my Achilles’ heel. My strength was my struggle. For better or worse, the two were intertwined. It is said that our strengths are the shadows of our weaknesses. For me, this was certainly true. I have always been a person who has a thousand ideas a second. And although that can work wonders if you are in a room that needs problem solving, it is a nightmare when you are trying to turn your brain off. A thousand ideas a second—just take a moment and let that sink in.

  How do you stop your brain from overwhelming you with unwanted thoughts and ideas? There would be days the onslaught inside my head would be paralyzing. Ideation is a wonderful gift to be given, but sometimes it’s the gift that never stops giving. It would be impossible to count how many times Kim and I have lain in bed and she would break the silence by pleading with me, “Could you please turn your brain off? It’s so loud in this room that I can’t even sleep.”

  Some days it would be worse than others. On those days, I would crawl up into a ball in the corner of the room and beg my brain to stop, to give me some reprieve. Some days all you want inside your head is silence. I can tell you, as someone who has been on this journey, that you need to know your mind or else your very thoughts will drive you out of your mind.

  I thought I was alone in the world with this battle. Just to know that someone else understood my struggle was enough to help me face it one more day. More than tha
t, it let me know there was a way through, that maybe even, if only for a moment, I could take the madness and turn it into genius. At the very least, I could take the thousands upon ten thousand voices that were in my head and, like a conductor who is not overwhelmed by the sounds coming in his direction, orchestrate them into a beautiful symphony. Looking back on my life, this was perhaps my first great battle. This for me may have been the first step on my journey for the way of the warrior. I would either lose my mind or know my mind.

  Around the age of twelve, I found myself sitting in a psychiatric chair looking at blotches of ink on a card and being asked, “What do you see?” This question was so much more profound than it seems. If I told the doctor what I saw, he would be able to see inside me. How we see the world is how we see ourselves. The warrior understands that their mind is both their greatest strength and their greatest danger. The warrior sees every raindrop and celebrates its beauty. The warrior sees the spaces between the raindrops and sees them as the way forward.

  Making the Rain Dance

  Have you ever stopped to listen to the rain? My wife, Kim, loves the rain. Whenever it rains, everything has to stop and I have to join her as she listens intently to the sound of every drop as it hits the tree branches, and the leaves that remain after winter, and after it hits the ground and bounces back up in a thousand tiny pieces. Actually, she hates getting wet, so she doesn’t actually like the rain; she likes how the rain creates a sound that soothes her soul and calms her spirit.

  If you listen carefully enough, you can hear the rain dancing. Yet when we speak of rain, we think of it as a whole and not the sum of its parts. But in some sense, both of those perceptions are accurate. There’s a unity, almost a communal nature to rain, in which it moves in concert, each drop to the other. Still, every raindrop is unique and solitary and independent of all the others. The perfect metaphor for perhaps the most difficult and critical discipline for the warrior is that your thoughts are like a rainstorm. They are both the single thought of who you are and an endless array of thoughts crashing against your soul.

  When I was young, this internal reality affected how I related to my external world. It was hard to listen to people because it was so loud inside my head. School seemed to move at a glacier’s pace. All my thoughts moved at what seemed like light speed, or at least they moved me into imaginary worlds. Sometimes I would find myself drowning in my thoughts. I look back now and realize that I was ill-equipped to deal with the world around me, so I created an alternative world within me. I quickly became more comfortable in the world I imagined than in the world I lived in.

  It shouldn’t be possible to lose yourself inside yourself, but I have become convinced that this is the only place where you can be truly lost. If you’re not careful, your thoughts can become more dangerous than a bullet to the head. The warrior knows that their imagination is not a place to escape but to create. The warrior retreats into themselves not to hide from the world but rather to prepare for it. There is no surer way to lose yourself than to spend your life thinking about yourself. When you fully know yourself, the focus of your mind moves toward serving others. To know yourself is to know the world.

  According to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California, the average human has around 48.6 thoughts per minute. That adds up to a total of almost seventy thousand thoughts per day,52 meaning if you’re on the lower end of the spectrum, you’ll have about one thought every two seconds. If your brain is a bit more compulsive, you may have up to one thought every second. Imagine that—one thought every second. And I doubt that thought lasts only a second. And although the data on how many thoughts we have in a day is still more speculation than science, it is even more unclear how many thoughts we can hold in our minds at the same time. How many thoughts can go racing through our minds, moving through so quickly that we can’t take hold of them? Yet every one of them finds its way to cut into the fabric of who we are.

  When Kim and I were first married, I was still trying to work my way through the torrential rainstorms that flooded the inside of my brain. She found me this way only once or twice, but I would often sit in the corner in a fetal position, trying to get my brain under control. It’s hard to explain what I was experiencing, but basically it felt like a barrage of endless thoughts ricocheting inside my head, refusing to be quiet.

  Maybe this was the best thing that could happen to me—an almost crippling awareness that too many thoughts were happening at one time. It was in hearing every raindrop that I realized I needed to find a way to turn them into a cascade. If we as humans are so complex that these three pounds of gray matter can operate at such blinding speed that it causes computers to pale in comparison, how are we ever expected to find peace of mind?

  It may seem completely counterintuitive, but I also know what it feels like to be paralyzed at the other end of the spectrum. I remember being nineteen years old and having no idea what to do with my life. I had barely graduated from high school. I had no hope of gaining admission into a college. I couldn’t even imagine a future worth fighting for. I was drowning in meaninglessness, and it had become a daily struggle to simply survive.

  Unfortunately, many of us are not struggling with too many thoughts and ideas; we are suffering from a mental atrophy that is the result of apathy, uncertainty, or fear. One of the curious things I have learned about the brain is that it is essentially a lazy muscle. That’s why we are so teachable. Once we learn something, we don’t want to unlearn it. Once we believe something, we don’t want to unbelieve it.

  The mental structure that makes us teachable gives us the same potential to become unteachable. If you think you already know everything, there is nothing left to learn. It is ironic that the most intelligent people are the most aware of how much they don’t know. Genius isn’t about what you know; it’s about your insatiable curiosity for the unknown. If you are not careful, you can trap yourself inside a closed mind. You have no future because you are living in the past. You see the world as lacking opportunity because you are blind to the endless possibilities all around you. Arrogance makes the brain rigid; humility allows our minds to stay open.

  While I was attending a seminar on neuroscience and cognitive development, it was stated that gratitude may be the most significant lubricant to mental acuity and adaptability. I wrote about this many years ago in my book Uprising, and only now is the most advanced neuroscience catching up to what Scripture taught us all along. I know this is harsh, but small-minded people will live small lives because they can survive only in a small world.

  If you find yourself living in a world where there is only cynicism, negativity, and distrust, you need to realize that it’s a world of your own making. There is a more beautiful world out there to be known, but you have to be able to see it. You have to want it. You must be willing to risk, to step outside of what you know, to live in a more extraordinary unknown.

  We all know the old adage about why an elephant with all its power can be held in place by a small rope and peg. This is because elephants remember when they were babies and did not have the strength to pull the peg out of the ground. In short, elephants remain captive because their memories lie to them. They tell them that their past is their future—that what they experienced before will always be the reality that is before them.

  Remember, your brain is inherently lazy. It will retreat to whatever previously set boundaries and patterns you have established from your past behavior. This is why it is so important to always try something new. People who travel have significantly higher IQs than people who do not. People who read authors with different perspectives become more open minded and empathetic. You can start with small things: try new foods, meet new people, learn a new language, consider a new idea, try a new approach.

  In other words, break out of the routine you have established for yourself and force your mind to engage the n
ew. This will begin to unlock opportunities and possibilities. This will open your mind to the beauty and wonder all around you.

  The ultimate purpose of knowing your mind is not to be limited by it. The mind of the warrior is postured in humility and textured with gratitude, where it is most free.

  Captivating Thoughts

  Almost twenty-five years ago, I was invited to an event in the mountains of North Carolina. It was there that I first encountered a renowned theologian who over the past two decades has become one of the most influential voices coming out of New York City. I remember that after his brilliant presentation—and, frankly, being new to faith, I hadn’t heard a lot of brilliant presentations—I risked asking him a question that must have seemed heretical to him but was painfully personal to me.

  In the few moments that we were allowed, I asked him a question that might help me figure out how to bring seventy thousand thoughts a day into a common narrative. Because in truth, for me, it didn’t feel like seventy thousand thoughts; it felt like seventy thousand voices screaming inside my head. I don’t know how crowded it feels inside your head, but sometimes all the different voices are determined to tell you who you are. It can feel like an overcrowded elevator where there’s not enough oxygen for everyone to breathe.

  So I said to the theologian, “Scripture tells us that we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This seems to be an impossibility. There are just too many thoughts to take captive.” If you are having one thought every second, all you would do every second of your life is try to take that thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I asked him in that moment, “Is it possible that the only way to take thoughts captive is by the shaping of a mind-set or the creation of a worldview—that once you’ve shaped your worldview, then it guides your thoughts? That once you have established a mind-set, that mind-set filters your thoughts?”