096 Sam Morris: Divine Adversity: From Paraplegia to Zen Warrior

Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior Training®, an enlightened leadership and embodied wisdom coaching program. In 1999, Sam endured a spinal cord injury, paralyzing him from the waist down. This incident catalyzed a deep dive into somatic healing arts, depth psychology, wisdom traditions, and the innate intelligence of the body. Sam trains his clients in how to master the inner workings of the mind, body, and spirit and live from an enlightened state of presence in their businesses and in their personal lives.

Topics We Covered

Instead of Overpowering the Enemy, Think Interactive Play
How to Stop Self Sabotaging
Letting Go and Accepting Divine Grace (While Insulting the Ego)
Advice to Unhappy Overachievers (Especially Our Younger Selves)
Open Heart Has Its Own Protection (According to Gary V)
Samurai Leadership Lesson: Use BEATS to Get Out of Your Head
Getting My Mind Blown on a Regular Basis
How to Laugh at the Absurdity of Life
How to Face Extreme Life Challenges (Without Them Taking Me Out)
What to Do When You Feel Hopeless, Overwhelmed, Mental Darkness
The Key to Unlock Your Potential
What Happens After Samadhi, an Experience of Oneness?
How to Engage the Parasympathetic Nervous System For More contentment and Peace
A Simple Method to Quiet the Mind
Discipline Our Mind, Don't Beat Ourselves Up
How Psychedelics, Yoga, & Martial Arts Prepared Me For My Spiritual Awakening
How Breath Work Led to My Spiritual Awakening During the First Nights of Paraplegia
How to Overcome Paraplegia PTSD Dissociations and Limiting Beliefs
No One Can Copy Your Experiential Resume And Therefore Your Unique Genius

Wisdom Quotes

"We are all immaterial awareness. There is nothing material about us other than the way that our minds shape our experience of life in the three-dimensional world that we live in."

"Who you are is not the subject of your thoughts and feelings, who you are is the awareness that thoughts and feelings are happening."

"For me, the potential. Is in having a deeper understanding of the nature of the human existence and of relieving oneself of the burden of being caught in the subjective projections of the unconscious mind."

"This feeling of overwhelming burden and that life just felt so impossible. And it's so easy to go into that story and believe it."

"What can I do to make the most of the challenges and try to even have some fun with them as they're happening? To be able to navigate through the challenge without it taking me out."

"Life is all that is. And I would prefer to open up to experience life as all that is versus looking at it through the limited lens of this Sam ego, through my own limited memories and experiences, going through from birth to death. That's a very limited way of perceiving life."

"A lot of people don't realize is just your simple being your present moment awareness. Just that alone is creating value. Just your ability to listen and pay attention is creating value. You could hang out with a monk in the room who says nothing. You could feel a tremendous amount of value from what they offer just by being present, not even saying anything."

"Business does not have to mean being closed off and cold at all. The strongest leadership comes through kindness and compassion and a genuine desire for everyone to end up in a better place than they started."

"If I am postponing my happiness and fulfillment until some arbitrary deadline, when I have achieved some goals, I'm just kidnapped my own happiness and fulfillment."

"When I can really let go and accept that divine grace is moving through all of us all the time, that's where the beauty really lies. The ego hates that, because it wants to prove that it was able to do things in some sort of special way."

"We actually are never separate from our animal and our animal only understands things through a very direct, simple communication."

"The mental chatter, the monkey mind that we experience is. Where we are disembodied, where we're not connecting to the body first."

"The practice of coming into your body I see as creating a resourceful mind. So the mind is able to operate in a way where it is serving a greater intention that comes from the whole body, from the physicality, from the connection to the breath, from the present moment."

"All these things that we're taking so seriously, All of these things that we worry about most of which will never happen. All of this with the punchline that we die at the end. What a great punchline."

"When you're more present, you can actually sense energy more. You can feel energy. You can feel not only your own energy, but you can also become aware of the energy of people who are also in your environment. We all know the experience of when we are relaxed inside of us, we can pay better attention. We can observe what's going on in other people more."

"The noblest of human values, is warmth and kindness"

"It never was about getting to the destination.It was about being more playful and creative. With the present moment experience that we're all having, because as cliche as it is to say, it's true, this moment right now is all that exists."

"My definition of the purpose of purpose is co-creating meaning along with the divine."

"My definition of fulfillment is co-creating fun. Along with the divine."

"My definition of wealth is an awareness that our needs are always taken care of"