Dan Millman

[rob]

Hello, I read the book "Sacred journey of the peacefull warrior" by Dan Millman. He claims he was an apprentice of a female hawaian shaman named Ruth Johnson. Does anyone know about him ? It is a popular book here.

[educatedindian]

To start with, Millman endorses and has obviously studied obvious frauds like Serge King.
http://www.paulwaters.com/hsbooks1.htm

The "tests" in his books are pure Hollywood.

http://www.change-manage.co.uk/bookbargains.htm
"Dan Millman takes you through his experiences on Hawaii with Mama Chia – a kahuna or Hawaiian Shaman. The ‘Journey’ once again provides him with many tests of his developing ‘warriorship’ as he seeks the ‘light’ that is within all of us. As well as offering superb insights into our own personal processes, the book also acts as a good introduction to Huna, the ancient art of living developed by Hawaiian Shamans."

Huna is pure fraud, invented by white hucksters back in the 1920s. Hawaiians don't call their traditions that, or their healers or elders either hunas or shamans. The parts about warriorship, light within, mastery, etc, all seem to be obvious thefts from Carlos Castaneda.

Millman reminds me at times of Miguel Ruiz and his four agreements, people paying big bucks to have someone tell them extremely vague nonsense, with occasional basic and obvious things.

http://www.danmillman.com/
"The Purpose: Evolution
The Arena: Daily Life
The Time: Now
The Method: Action
It begins on the ground.
It starts where you are.
And it works at every level."

OK, that's about as clear as mud, rehashed self help stuff that doesn't have a thing to do with Hawaiians.

http://attrition.org/~martums/works/reviews/warrior/
"Dan Millman: Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Someone did some bad acid during their college years
Crap or fertilizer?
Warrior is one of the few books that I deliberately read before seeing the film. With Nick Nolte and Amy Smart in the trailer, it looked great, a must-see. The reviews on the early pages boldly proclaim how the book can have a profound effect on one's life. I tore into it with high expectations. In retrospect, many of the reviews I've seen about this book are polar. Either it has a powerful impact on the reader, or it's just a waste of time. On the outset, I was expecting the former. Unfortunately, I walked away with the latter.
The autobiographical journey we embark on with Millman is certainly unique. He overcomes adversity, goes through enormous personal growth, and ultimately makes a powerful transition into adulthood. But the book is less than the sum of its parts. It does not have any powerful revelations, lacks any great or meaningful insight, and fails to deliver any message worthy of the praise and hype which surround it. In short, to quote Bierce, the covers of this book are too far apart.
Millman's deliberately slow, loquacious style of writing makes you wonder if he graduated from the Stephen King Diarrhea of the Word Processor school of writing. Could he have dragged it on any longer? And what a fantastic and improbable tale he weaves. Is Socrates real, did he do what Millman describes, and where did Millman get this delusion? The entire experience is such a huge crock. It's a revolting work, and a huge, HUGE letdown.
This book is the biggest disappointment I've read in ages. It sucked more than the vacuum of space. Dan Millman did some bad acid, and we're paying the price. I want my bloody money back. Millman is a fraud. And so are the reviewers, if they even exist, who give their testimony in the front of the book.
You couldn't pay me to watch the film.
Grade: F"

I suppose what you're asking me is did Millman actually meet this Hawaiian teacher and are the book's claims about Hawaiians for real? No, obviously not. Millman is obviously ripping off charlatans like Lynn Andrews with his writing style and storylines.

http://www.holisticpage.com.au/_Dan_Millman.php
"Sacred Journey Of The Peaceful Warrior (Book) 
Dan Millman 
Within the pages of Dan's first book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Socrates sends Dan out into "the fires of daily life" to learn what he must. During this time of difficulty and disillusion, Dan's is given a grant to travel around the world. Sacred Journey relates the first part of his travels, as Dan searches for a mysterious woman shaman in a Hawaiian rainforest to find a critical clue that will direct him to a hidden school-the next step on his journey.
In the process, he learns the secret of the three selves and experiences the tower of seven levels" 

You bet. Hawaiian traditionalists are just waiting around for lost white people so they can tell them the secrets to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and so they can write books about it all.

It's basically another self indulgent fantasy of someone imagining himself the Great White Savior and Master of the Ways of the Dark Skinned People, not too different from Castaneda or even Tarzan books when you get down to it. The biggest clue that it's all phony is that I can't imagine any traditional elder giving someone license to mope and be self indulgent for so long. Traditional communities and elders are COMMUNITY oriented. They wouldn't be telling someone to focus on ME ME ME as these type of books do.

Hope you get your money back and didn't spend it on more than the book. When you say his books are popular "here", where do you mean?

[educatedindian]

Found a more detailed description of his claims. It's obvious this is all taken from modern pop psychology and earlier Huna frauds like King and Long. I really have to wonder why anyone would think Hawaiian elders would use terms "autonomic behavior" and "access energy".

http://www.menstuff.org/columns/millman/04.html
"In Sacred Journey, through a story of his meetings with a Hawaiian kahuna named "Mama Chia," Dan learns of the three selves that make up a complete human being, and learns how to access enhanced powers of healing, energy, motivation, and intuition -- even "past life" experiences and abilities.
This model of the three selves is as profound and sophisticated as any proposed by Freud, Jung, or others in the western traditions. Although these selves have been described by Max Freedom Long, Serge Kahili King, and others, in Sacred Journey Dan directly encounters each of these selves for a visceral understanding.
To clarify their fundamental nature here, he has graciously allowed us to excerpt the following description from his book, No Ordinary Moments:
The Three Selves
Body, mind, and emotions form one kind of trinity that comprises the human being. Another powerful trinity, called the three selves, provides a useful model for appreciating the scope of our lives. The three selves are comprised of the basic self (or subconscious), the conscious self (or ego), and the higher self (or spiritual consciousness). Insight into these three distinct forms of consciousness provides powerful leverage for attaining greater awareness, motivation, enjoyment, and inspiration in our lives.
The Basic Self
The basic self has sometimes been called our "inner child" be-cause the qualities, motives, and characteristics of this consciousness closely resemble those of a four-to-seven-year old child. Like young children, basic selves share common qualities, yet some basic selves show more strength, confidence, and understanding than others. Separate and distinct from the conscious mind, the basic self closely identifies with the physical body and manifests as our body wisdom -- our instinct, intuition, gut feelings, latent drives and abilities, and memory. In charge of our body, the basic self works through the autonomic (involuntary) nervous sys-tem to maintain our body's functions and generate our energy for life.
Like most children, the basic self remains highly open to sug-gestion (hypnosis), programming, visualization, or any form of healing that works with the subconscious. If secure and happy, the childlike basic self demonstrates playfulness, energy, inspi-ration, loyalty, determination, and spontaneity. But if our conscious mind ignores, devalues, or suppresses the basic self (as often happens), then it tends to withdraw, block energy, lower immune response, and sabotage our endeavors. By becoming more conscious of how our subconscious works, we can access energy and courage and improve our health and sense of well-being. The basic self serves as a foundation from which we can leap to higher states of awareness.
The Conscious Self
The conscious self serves as the center of logic, reason, and discrimination -- all necessary tools for life. Its major function involves conscious learning so that we can better adapt to and thrive in our environment. I use the terms conscious self, conscious mind, and ego interchangeably.
When working in harmony, our conscious self guides, educates, and reassures our basic self as a parent would a child, helping it understand life while allowing the basic self to express its own unique capacities. When out of balance, the conscious self tends to use logic and reason to devalue the feelings and intuitions of the basic self the way some adults tend to devalue the feelings of children. This results in an estrangement between mind and body; we lose touch with our feelings and our deepest intuitions...
The Higher Self
The higher self, a radiant aspect of our consciousness sometimes referred to as our "guardian angel," completes the trinity of the three selves. The higher self awareness manifests qualities of selfless courage, love, compassion, wisdom, altruism, and joy. It serves as a "cheerleader to the soul," reminding the conscious self of the spiritual possibilities beyond the material world and the limits of the conscious mind."

[nahualqo]

Hawaian and Native American spirituality are based upon Nature. Hawaian spirituality is deeply based upon the Earth of Hawaian Islands which has a great deal to do with Volcanos and Earth animist forces. For instance in our tradition three levels of consciousness are in English clouds, rain, lightening. The iconography is all earth based, with animals or with sun, stars and planets. I was very close with a Hawaian that knew their spiritual secrets and from my experience their knowledge is kept very, very close to the source. A non-Hawaian not coming from a long respected family ties to knowledge would never get close. Therein lies the rub. It is easier to make something up than to honestly do the work. Frank Cushing was one of the first White Men to get initiated in a Zuni Native American spiritual tradition and then reveal the secrets in a book to the delight of white readership he calously angered the Zuni people that he betrayed.

Here is a source which eloquently defines that Native Amerian Spiritual themes are quite difficult to attain due to long term religious predjudice and secondly our beliefs are even more difficult to understand for those not raised in our specific world view.

Themes in Native American Spirituality by Lee Irwin.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0095-182X(199622%2F23)20%3A3%2F4%3C309%3AITINAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

Hello, I read the book "Sacred journey of the peacefull warrior" by Dan Millman. He claims he was an apprentice of a female hawaian shaman named Ruth Johnson. Does anyone know about him ? It is a popular book here.

[rob]

Thank you for this long and well documented response.
I had my doubts when I read that he (millman) went through an experience of shamanic death in just a couple of sessions. We have a group of siberian shamanism here, where the siberian shaman offers shamanic death experience in 3 evening sessions, expensive ones.
I am not sure what shamanic death means, but I know in literature of christian and islamic mysticism, the notion of mystical death and resurrection, which takes from 20 years to a lifetime.
Thanks