Landon:
The most important question that a human being ever faces, and certainly faces now, is the simple question, who will be my teacher? Who will be my teacher?
Announcer:
Hi everyone. This is Heartbeat, the podcast featuring the insight and teaching of Landon Saunders. And on today's episode, we rejoin Landon one more time for the final night of his community workshop, Feeling Good About Yourself, where Landon is walking us through this question -- in the most critical moments, where will we turn for direction, for guidance? Who will be our mentor?
Landon:
I don't know what you think about the word "pagan" -- pagan.
Sometimes paganism is only used in a derisive sense. And that's unfortunate because paganism was a very powerful philosophy. It helped people to order their lives for long and untold centuries. It was a way that sort of kept things together in the pagan's view. It gave order and meaning.
protection to their lives. And so had we been on an ancient bank of the Nile River, the Tigris or the Euphrates River, and a big flood came, there was a God for that flood. And they would offer for that. It was their protection. And then when somebody got real sick, there was one for that. And then when they experienced some great destruction, there was one for that. And then when it rained too much, there was one for that.
And when the thunder roared, there was one for that. And when the sun was so hot and the crops were all parched, there was one for that. There was one for every contingency of life, hundreds and thousands upon thousands of gods. Until finally, ancient men and women were filled with anxiety. There's lots of evidence in the Mesopotamian region of the world that ancient beings were filled with this anxiety because they were constantly moving from here to here to here to here, running to get this one and get that one, and you get this one and then this one is upset, and you settle it with that one and then this one is upset, and about the time you get this one appeased, then this one is upset, and they're moving all their lives through all this anxiety, never quite able to bring all of it together, never finding unity, never finding the kind of wholeness for which they were yearning...and which seemed to cry out from the depths of their being.
Today, we hear a lot about one world.
That's in the right direction, ladies and gentlemen.
What we have to be careful with today is that there's something or someone that's going to fix everything that's wrong with us. And if we're not careful, we're sort of bowing down first to this and then to this and then to this and then to this, and we are always at the mercy of the latest fad that flies through the countryside.
And you want to make progress. And you are making progress. But as we're going through these confusing times of which we're apart, we want to remember who we are. We want to remember who I am.
You must remember who you are and you must remember your own wisdom. You must remember your own depths, your own good sense, your own common sense, your own deepest need and deepest contribution that you can make to this. That we are not at the mercy of all of this and we stay in absolute command of all of these matters and we give our lives and we give our rights to no one.
At the same time, who will be my mentor?
Who will be the one that takes me in the midst of this wilderness experience as I'm trying to make my own decisions and as I'm enjoying this process of thinking through the nature of my life and the nature of this world?
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Is there a mentor? Is there a teacher? Is there one who can nurture and who can encourage my life along? And how do I go about deciding? Who is it who can take this jangle that I may have already experienced in my life and help me to sort of sort through all of that? Who?
Announcer:
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Landon will be right back to continue working with this question and injecting a little bit of humor along the way. But we want to take a moment to remind you that you can dive into a complete collection of Heartbeat radio programs simply by visiting thisishartbeat .com and click on the radio page and enjoy inspiration that's refreshed every week. Now back to Landon.
Landon:
They say that it takes a long time.
And this is incidentally, I sometimes just call laughter damage control. Joyousness sometimes can be damage control. I used to tell parents who were really into it with their children, I used to talk to them about love and I still would. But I also now talk to them a lot about play and about joyousness. Because I've found that joyfulness is harder to manipulate than love is.
Love sometimes isn't all that it's cracked up to be in the wrong hands. You've heard some, I'm doing this because I love you, and you say, well, I could use a little less love then, if you don't mind. But if I can have, if I can find this, that someone says that it takes a long time to learn to laugh. Some people say it takes 40 years to learn to laugh. And I sometimes tell these people who are still in their teens, I say, you think you know how to laugh. What they know how to do is giggle and some of that sort of stuff. But it's a little thin. Now don't get discouraged if you're here in your teens. It's okay that your laughter is just a little thin and just keep laughing because you're going to learn in this process. And one of these days, after you've lived this a little bit longer, then you're going to experience deep and rich kinds of laughter. It takes a long time to learn to laugh. We need to learn to laugh.
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I love that experience of the Zen Buddhists. They're taught that when they get up in the morning, the first thing when they wake up, they get up and get in this crouched position and then laugh just as hard and as deep as they can laugh. And when I read that, I thought I've never done that. I want to try it in the morning. First morning, I forgot it.
Second morning I remembered it. As soon as I woke up, I got up, got in this crouched position, and I laughed just as hard and as deep and as loud as I could laugh. And I'll tell you for sure it is one experience when you're waking up in the morning. It will wake you up from head to toes. I literally danced more lightly into the bathroom that day than I ever had before. Now I will warn you.
If you sleep with someone, you better give them a warning the night before. No, tell them what they'll think on the next morning. And do you know when a person becomes the difference between a laugher and a world -class laugher? Now, you see you've got gigglers in the world, then you've got laugher in the world, and then with people who have wisdom, they get to be world -class laugher.
And what makes a laugher a world class laugher is when you can laugh at yourself. I've always loved the character of Samuel Johnson. Marvelous, brilliant, one of the most brilliant ones to come along in recent human history. But here was a man who knew how to have a good time. He was a big man. I mean, weighed over 300 pounds.
Never learned with all his brilliance and all his writing dictionaries, never learned to tie shoes, never really learned how to match up his socks.
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never learned how to dress. They say he was one of the sloppiest characters nearly imaginable. But he became very, very famous. And here's the great famous man is at the top of this little hill, a little grassy knoll here. And all of a sudden, he begins emptying his pockets before the dignitaries and the friends. And they think, what on earth is the great Dr. Johnson going to do? And before anybody can stop him, he just lies right down on the grass and then rolls down that hill.
And he got up and he said, you know, it has been years since I've done that. You may be in a family that has intelligent human beings in it, but they may not be intelligent enough to think and remember to get milk. And so you go, you think, boy, I'm going to go to bed and I think I'll have a nice bowl of cereal.
And so you get your cereal and boy, you just salivating all over and you're ready for this. And you get the utensils and then you go to the refrigerator and you open the refrigerator and guess what? No milk. It's not for lack of intelligence. There are intelligent people in the house. And so then the battle starts. It's like Nazruddin. Nazruddin said to his wife one night, he said, honey, bring us some cheese.
because cheese enhances the life and makes the eyes bright." And she said, Nazrudin, we don't have any cheese in the house. he said, that's wonderful, because cheese is so hard on the teeth and on the gums. And she said, well, Nazrudin, now which is it going to be? You know, what am I to believe here? He said, well, if there's cheese in the house, believe my first response. And if there's no cheese, my second.
So the next time you look up and there's no toilet paper, you'll know how to deal with that.
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You may not do anything that you do not enjoy doing.
In the workplace and then as we grow old. It's important to keep that sense of humor. I was thrilled to have a wonderful mentor, a number of mentors, but one of my mentors died at 96 years old. And I saw him when he was 94 and he looked at me with eyes shining and bright.
And we were talking about his age and he had just turned 94. And then with that twinkle in his eye, he said, you know, Landon, not very many people die over 94.
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I didn't argue with that one. He was a gentleman that on a February morning was very, very cold and we were going up this walk and there were snow on the ground and the sunshine come out and sort of warmed that walk and there was a little earthworm that somehow had crawled out and he was cold and bluer than normal. And my friend through these big thick glasses looked, took his little hat off and tipped it, and said, my, my, my friend, you picked a mighty cold day to get out. What are we doing? Don't do anything that you don't enjoy. And then he looked at me one day and he said, Landon, look at that. He was real paused. That hand was just going crazy like that. And he said, look at that. And his eyes shining just like a little child's. Look at that. He said, it didn't used to do that.
And he said, if I think real hard, he said, I can slow it down. Watch this. And then he slowly brings it down. It's like the woman that Ken Dykewald talks about. She's 84, 85 years old. And he keeps looking at her, something strange. And finally, he notices what it is. She's wearing braces.
And he said, why are you wearing braces on your teeth? And she said, well, I've met this guy and I want to look as good as I can. What are we doing? All we're doing. You may not do anything that you don't enjoy. And when I'm trying to make my trail through the world, if I learn the secret of joyfulness, I won't miss my life. Thank you.
Announcer: (13:27.438)
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