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Just Satsang with me, a few stories to help you along this path we call life. find the meaning of the Zen proverb, Water that is too pure has no fish in it. Within this track, I teach how I remain centered and also why they call me the wave whisperer.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome.

My name is Douglas Gorman.

Thanks for joining me.

Today,

I'd like to share with you guys some insight on this journey we call life.

On this journey,

I've come across many stories and many beautiful parables that have helped myself in my journey and helped some other of my friends along the way too.

I've earned the nickname the Wave Whisperer and after I tell this little story,

I'm going to tell you how I got the nickname of the Wave Whisperer.

So the story goes like this.

Once upon a time,

There was a very generous king and this king had a son,

A prince,

Who he gave his inheritance to at a very young age.

I guess the prince was turning about 18,

19,

20 years old and the king wanted him to have part of his inheritance so he gave it to him.

And pretty much right away,

The prince started squandering all his money and drinking in bars all the time and hanging out at the pub and basically squandering his life away and not learning to be a new ruler of the kingdom or anything.

So the king got worried and he went to his noblemen and asked his noblemen in his court what he should do about the situation.

And one of the noblemen said,

Hey,

Send a priest in.

Send a priest to him and he'll knock some sense into him and help him come around.

So the king did,

He sent his wisest priest down to the pub and the priest came to the pub and started to hail fire and brimstone at him and basically saying you're sinning and you're wasting your life away.

You need to come back.

The king needs you to take over the kingdom one day and you can't do that if you're just hanging out in the pub every day.

Well,

That didn't work too well.

So the son basically just laughed at the priest and sent him on his way.

So anyway,

The king,

Upon hearing the news of the religious person that he sent to him and having no luck with that,

Asked his noblemen again what he should do.

And one of the noblemen said,

Hey,

Why don't you go down there and try to talk some sense into him.

So the king did.

He went down to the pub and screamed and shouted at his son and raised hell and basically tried his hardest to convince his son to come back home.

But the prince was just too inaugurated and maybe too plastered from alcohol to even consider what his father's words were.

Maybe the burden of being a prince is just too much for him and he needed to escape from it.

So anyway,

The king went home very dissatisfied and disconcerned,

Wondering how his son's going to turn out and what's going to happen to the future of the kingdom if the son doesn't take his place at the king's side.

So he went to his wise men and asked one of his wise men what he should do.

What do you think would bring the son home?

And the wise men said,

I tell you what,

You just leave it to me.

I'll go see him and I'll take care of it and I'll try to bring him back home.

So the wise men went down to the pub and of course as wise men go,

They have mystical ways.

He basically sat down with the prince and ordered a beer and had a conversation with him,

A real conversation,

A casual,

Real,

You know,

Like,

Hey,

You know,

How you doing,

You know,

Type conversation.

And they had a couple beers together and many laughs and just really enjoyed the evening together.

Then the wise men told the son,

He said,

Look,

You know,

We can come back here to the pub anytime you want and have a drink,

But you got to have balance in life.

Balance is the main key to everything.

And that balance would be to make amends with your father and,

You know,

Take your place at the king's side.

And don't worry,

The good times will always be had.

You'll have plenty of those too,

But you have to have balance.

You have to have,

You know,

Responsibilities.

I mean,

After all,

The kingdom does need you.

You are going to be its ruler one day and you have to learn how to be a ruler.

But a wise ruler knows when to have a good time and relax.

And a wise ruler also knows when he has to be responsible and take care of his duties and take care of his kingdom.

Anyway,

I guess the moral of this whole story was that there's a proverb,

A Zen proverb out there that says,

The water that's too pure has no fish in it.

I thought that was a beautiful proverb.

I heard it tonight and I shared my thoughts on what that meant on the internet today.

And I thought I'd share them with you guys too.

It's like basically it's saying,

You know,

That no Zen master or no master,

No enlightened person will ever get anybody to follow him or to take his word serious unless he gets his feet a little bit dirty.

You know,

That he,

I don't know,

I want to say lives a little bit,

But my whole approach to spirituality is that it is life affirmative.

I do so many of these active things in my life.

I'm an avid surfer.

And if you ask me,

You know,

Hey Doug,

You know,

What's your favorite thing to do?

Of course it would be meditate,

But meditation goes into everything I do.

So when I surf,

I meditate.

When I skydive,

I meditate.

When I,

You know,

Ride snowboards or skateboards or basically anything I do,

I try to make a meditation out of it.

It's like a game in life.

And this way of living,

This way of bringing meditation into everything you do is living life at 100%.

Like water only boils at 99 degrees Celsius.

And before 99 degrees,

It just simmers and gets hot.

But at 100 degrees Celsius,

The water will boil.

And that's kind of the way you have to attack spirituality.

You have to put 100% into it.

And I don't like to use the word effort,

And I definitely don't like to use the word duty.

These,

You know,

Being a disciple,

Being a devotee is,

Being a devotee is a higher level than being a disciple.

Being a disciple is very close to a master,

But a devotee is basically devoted his whole,

His or her,

Excuse me,

Whole life into developing this relationship with their master and wanting to experience what that master is experiencing in life.

And here's the thing in life too,

Another helpful insight,

I hope this helps,

That I hear a lot of people saying,

You know,

You're already it.

You know,

You're already there.

You're already a Buddha.

You're just asleep.

I don't think it helps to me people actually saying that.

It helps maybe,

You know,

One out of a billion.

But that one out of a billion person was probably so close to enlightenment anyways,

Just the ability to relax and forget about enlightenment could bring it on.

I mean,

You think about a fish in the sea,

And the fish is surrounded in the sea,

Surrounded by water,

All it knows is water,

Water is his whole life.

And if we look at enlightenment like that,

Enlightenment is everywhere.

It's all around you.

It encompasses everything.

But it's scary because a part of you has to die to experience it.

And like when a fish gets pulled out of the water and he gasps for air,

All of a sudden he knows what the ocean is.

You know,

He realizes,

You know,

I can't live without the ocean.

So then we put the fish back in,

Hopefully,

And the fish is very thankful.

And from that point on,

He has a perception of what God is,

Of what the ocean is.

And what we're saying is what,

You know,

We have a perception of what enlightenment is.

You have to be pulled from your peripheral and brought back to your center.

And when we can bring you back to your center,

Then the work begins.

Then we can make the changes.

Then we become,

You know,

Life affirmative and we don't escape from life.

We don't go hang out in a cave in the Himalayas trying to seek for something when you can find it right in the marketplace.

And that's one of Osho's greatest teachings is that you can become a Buddha in the marketplace.

He called it Zorba the Buddha.

I mean,

If you can't meditate in a busy street in the city,

Just sit down and meditate and still your mind.

If you can't do it there,

What good is it going to be to do it up in the Himalayas?

Your essence has to be centered.

And I had my essence tested recently with the purchase of a vehicle I just bought and a couple things going wrong with it right away.

And you know,

Just looking at life in general and things got a little overwhelming.

But it can't pull me off my center.

But I can feel the pull,

Right?

I can feel that tugging,

You know,

They're saying,

You know,

You need to focus on these matters first and take care of these situations first in life before we can maybe make any spiritual videos or try to be spiritual.

Because when we have different levels of ego,

And there's like four or five levels of ego that you have to basically shed and each one works backwards in a lineage.

But anyway,

We'll get into that another time about the levels of the ego.

I'll make a whole separate video for you.

I just wanted to share some thoughts with you guys and girls and really thank you for taking the time to listen to the words that I share.

Oh,

Yeah,

I was gonna tell you why they call me the Wave Whisperer.

I don't know if I put it on any of my other videos.

Sometimes I get a little absent minded as to what I've shared and what I haven't shared because I share on YouTube,

I share on Facebook and here on Insight Timer too.

But anyway,

Over the years since I've been surfing,

Let's just say since I've been surfing and I became centered,

It seems like there's a gift that's given to me every time I show up to the beach to ride waves.

It may be real small and not rideable and I'll get in the water and all of a sudden it picks up and it's rideable.

Or it might be,

You know,

Super choppy,

Super sloppy junk surf.

I'll get in the water and all of a sudden it starts cleaning up a little bit.

Anyway,

Over a period of like 10 years,

This just kept happening to me and even my friends were noticing it and we'd just make a joke out of it because I don't think I have any super special powers that makes a surf better.

It's just either incredibly good timing or maybe it could be just like a gift that existence has given me for sharing my essence with the world.

I don't know.

But I'll tell you,

One time my friend and I,

He was actually my roommate at the time,

And we drove down to Surfside and we took surfboards with us and we took some drums with us and we went there before the sun came up.

Got up super early in the morning and drove to Surfside and we were going to just hang at the beach all day.

No matter what happened,

We were going to have a good time.

So anyway,

We got to the beach.

We drove up on the beach and it was just daylight breaking and there were some fishermen in the water and it was a lake.

I mean,

Not even half an inch of a ripple.

It was just calm,

Peaceful,

Still waters.

And as a surfer,

We don't go to the beach too many times when it's that calm or still.

It seems like there's no purpose or no need for us to be there if there's no waves.

But when there's no waves,

There's a beauty to it in itself too.

So anyway,

Mike and I drove down the beach and we didn't want to disturb any of the fishermen with our drumming.

So we found a spot about a mile between two fishermen and we parked the van and just got the drums out and started playing drums and just tapping on the skins,

Having a good time.

I saw a pod of porpoises right out in front of us,

Probably about 20 yards,

30 yards out in front of us.

I said,

Hey,

Mike,

Let's grab the surfboards and paddle out to the porpoises and hang out with them and have some fun with them.

So we did.

We grabbed our boards and we paddled out there.

And then as we're playing with the porpoises,

You know,

They were they were all very friendly that day.

And we're just sitting there playing with the porpoises.

All of a sudden,

A wave,

A thigh high wave started coming our way.

There are no low pressures.

There's no wind.

There's nothing to drive at that wave.

We don't know where the wave came from.

But anyway,

We rode this wave for about an hour.

The waves held up for about an hour and about as long as the porpoises were playing there.

And then the porpoises left.

And I said,

Hey,

Mike,

I'm going to go to shore.

So I paddled to shore and Mike paddled in right after me.

And as soon as we got out of the water,

The waves disappeared.

I mean,

It was flat as a lake,

You know,

Flat.

I mean,

Completely calm again.

And we couldn't explain it.

But anyway,

Stories like these just kept happening and kept happening and more and more over the years.

It just just gave me the nickname the wave whisperer.

But anyway,

That's a that's the joke of I guess because I also try to make sure whenever I go surfing that I pick the peak time or the best time that you know that I think it's going to be to go surfing because we have you know,

For surf forecasting sites nowadays that allow us to figure that out.

But back then back when me and Mikey went to the beach that one time that was before you know,

Swell Info or surf line or any of those guys came out.

So that was a while back.

Anyway,

Okay,

I've shared enough with you all tonight.

Thank you very much for joining me.

If you liked this video,

Then please give me a rating that says something good about me.

Leave a response and I'll respond back to you.

I've responded back to everybody that has left me a message.

But anyway,

Thank you again for your time.

Take care.

Transcribed by https://otter.

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