Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from New York is Angel Millar. Hi Angel, hopefully I said your last name correct? Sorry. Yes, you did. Perfect. Good. Angel has a new book out. And the book is called the path of the warrior mystic, being a man in an age of chaos. And boy, have we had our chaos lately, I think an appropriate book to have out right now. What I would like to do angel is let the listeners know a little bit about you. Angel is a well-known lecture on intuition, symbolism and self-development, as well as an artist and student of the martial arts. He is the author of several books, including this three stages of initially attic, I always want to get that brace, okay, spirituality. And he lives in New York. And you can find out more of bout Angel by just going to his website. It's Angel noir.com. And that's m I, L, L, A R. And there you will see more about his books about Kim, about what he's doing. And it's a pleasure having you on the show. Because, you know, you write a lot about I'm going to call it history in this book. And you get into a lot of characters that some of the people listening today, even though who follow spirituality may or may not know. My sense is that you're very deep in this area. And I think that's a good thing because it pushes people's opportunity to explore not just their intellect, but their spirituality. And if you would tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and why your personal focus on wanting men to find a path to this warrior mystic. You know, I've had other gentlemen on here speaking about masculinity recently, in today's world, and how it's so confused.

Angel Millar
Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah, very much. So. Well, to go into my background first, I became interested in spirituality a little bit when I was around the age of 15. So that was quite young. And I bought a book on astral projection trading, I didn't really understand it entirely. But when I was 17, I came across a kind of new age, Neo pagan sharp, they became very involved with spending days there, and reading a lot practicing different types of meditations. And then later on, I became involved with some more kind of esoteric organizations. But really about the age of 28, it became a little bit disillusioned with much of what I had seen. By that point I was at our college, I'd also taken off, I began to take up, Kung Fu Shaolin Kung Fu. And so in a way, this book is a little bit of a reflection not only of the tradition of classical civilizations in regards to the manhood, but also of my own journey, which is one of them, sort of having this masculine and feminine. So on the one hand, fine art and on the other hand, martial arts, and, yeah,

Greg Voisen
where did the free masonary part come in and testing? You mentioned Western Mystery Schools a call? Yeah. And you know, I did a little bit digging and my wife, Lisa, yoga is the head of a Midwestern Mystery School called builders of the Aetna. Oh, right. Yeah. Paul foster case. Yeah, and Davies, and so on. And I have been married to her for 43 years. And she's been in that all of those 43 years. She started when she was very young. Wow. And it's interesting because I was trying to kind of make the connection between Freemasonry. Yeah, I know the boo ta they actually meet at Masons buildings, you know, they have their chapter right there. So how did that come to play for you? Yeah,

Angel Millar
so I believe regarding the Bo. Ta I believe Paul foster case was a Freemason. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, like, like many men, like many spiritual authorities at that time, such as Mandy Po Po as well. Freemasonry was something that I had been interested in again, from a very young age, and I grew up in England. I now live in the US, but I grew up in it And then at that time, Freemason was still very well known, although most people would say all Freemasons, they're, they're kind of corrupt politicians and businessmen are sounded terribly dreary. And then later on, I was told that they practice ceremonial magic when I was in my teens, which sounded a lot more exciting, especially believe it, but around the age of probably 18, I managed to get a hold of them used copies of a couple of Masonic rituals, the rose quar, which was obviously influenced by Rosicrucianism, right, and alchemy and hermeticism, I could tell that much. And also the royal arch, which is also in Great Britain influenced by Plato's idea of the elements, four or five elements, depending on how you look at it. And, and it seemed to be highly intelligent, again, I wasn't entirely able to make out everything that it was saying, but sort of piqued my interest. And then when I moved to the US, we would have been around the age of 29. I went into the Masonic Lodge in New York and asked if I could become a Freemason. And then I think it was literally a year later that I became a member. And yeah, and it sort of opened my eyes quite a lot. And in one way, it opened my eyes because I felt like it was stepping back in time, about 300 years, you could kind of get a different feeling of history. But it also made a lot of sense regarding the various sort of Western mystery traditions, orders that are out there, like the VO TA or the hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Greg Voisen
Why is Freemasonry in? Why is Freemasonry just for men?

Angel Millar
Well, it's a complicated subject.

Greg Voisen
Okay, maybe I should not take you down that path, because we want to get in your book. But no, no, that's fine. No, no, no, that's interesting, because you don't see any female figures and free masonary.

Angel Millar
Yeah, well, so it's complicated in this sense. So the quote unquote, regular Freemasonry, which is the biggest one in America, and Great Britain, they have organizations for women or the women can join, such as the order of the Eastern Star. So women can get involved in a Masonic society as it were. And they have rituals as well, which are very much related to Freemasonry. So there is that available for women, and other under other groups, like the rainbow, Gods are not sure what they are and other organizations. But there are, there are also women, only Masonic lodges, not very many of them. That's one in Washington, DC, which is recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England. And so and so women can join, they're just very obscure and a little hard to find in Garrison, they tend not to have their own buildings, you can't just walk into one so there are there are actually women Freemasons, and I think there have been women Freemasons for several 100 years. Yeah, but no,

Greg Voisen
no, no, one of the things we talked about is the kind of this division between the masculine and feminine and that, you know, man is divided creature, he's compartmentalizes his life, thinking of behaving one way at home and other work and other with friends. And I'd say this is true. How would you recommend that integrating these different parts of our personality, become part of who we are as men in today's world? You know, we live in a chaotic world, let's face it, we live in a world where it's hard for people to find their identity. You know, we see so much occurring in that way. And I think it's not good for the mental health of a man or a female, for that matter, but in particular for me, no, no. Yeah. So how would you what would you recommend? Or to help people integrate all those elements of their personality?

Angel Millar
Hmm, yeah, well, first of all, I think you have to have a focus and something you're aiming towards, because this will at least sort of allow you to not take on board every single fleeting desire that comes along, when you can focus on some of them or one of them rather than every little thing that enters your mind. So having a focus is definitely a good idea. Personally, I'm sure we will come back to this as well. You know, I recommend practicing some kind of pod art in some kind. softer. So whether you know martial arts or weightlifting, or something that's strenuous and is going to push you physically, but something where you can, I don't want to say express yourself, or that's part of it, but you can express yourself in martial arts as well. But something you can kind of appreciate beauty, appreciate the feminine, and appreciate this of the more civilized aspects of life and of nature as well, perhaps you could say,

Greg Voisen
interesting, you know, and you speak about the atomization of modern society combined with cheap and immediate accessibility to entertainment via radio, TV, the internet. And it's all made it easy for individuals to avoid becoming part of a group that meets in the physical world. Yeah, you know, it's just like you and I, right now we're meeting resume, and write also to take pride in not being a joiner. You know, it's kind of like, oh, well, I'm not Yeah. Why, in your estimation, is it so important in our world today, for people to meet in groups? And how does this help men looking to express masculinity and feminine sides of themselves? You know, it's interesting in these borders, like Meishan, free masonary, what have they been doing? I'm wondering, during the pandemic, you know, if people are not meeting because so many people aren't meeting these days, yeah, you're just not, you're not coming together?

Angel Millar
Yeah. No, they're not coming together. I mean, they were putting more education online, so lots of like pictures, but I don't, that doesn't really compensate for, for meeting in person. And, you know, I should say, that actually heard one prominent Freemason on YouTube, I think it was saying that he actually preferred the sort of education online and not going physically to a large. And I think that's kind of a tragedy. And if it's statistically, if you go back to the 1970s, I think, to, to America, two thirds of America, and I believe it was, we're still involved with clubs and going to a regular club meeting, you know, whatever it may have been. And then it from 1985, to 1994, there was a 45% drop in club attendance. And of course, you can find this as well in many kind of churches or religious institutions. And so we've really become people, you know, a century ago, we would have been involved with a club or a church or synagogue or some other religious institution, and maybe even some kind of trade guild, as well as some trade society. And we would have had this huge network around us, as well as our friends and family who would have lived around us as well. But today, we're more and more isolated, more and more cut off. And people have now take pride in this idea that they're not a joiner, as if joining something is a bad thing. And of course, you know, I would say that, okay, you shouldn't be a joiner, you should be a contributor. Because the more you contribute, the more you get back, the more you know, more enjoyable anything is, but you also kind of learn about yourself at the same time. And as to the benefits of being of being involved with like-minded groups, I think there are many, you know, one of them needs to have a support network, to some degree, definitely. And certainly, in this very unstable world, we need some kind of support network. And I know that for example, the people who have the fewest contacts have the earn the least money and the people with most contacts and the highest quality contacts, and the most money. So we do need some kind of network just to navigate this strange world that we live in. But I would say more than that, today. Another really good for reason for being involved with groups or clubs or whatever it may be is that you will meet people before people from different walks of life, people who have different ideas and life experiences to you. And, you know, the Internet was sold to us as creating a global village and now everybody says it's created a globe of different villages. We're all kind of isolated in our own echo chambers. And you know, if you meet someone that you probably wouldn't friend online, in real life, you can going to get a different life perspective. And there's too much in a time of people thinking that anyone who thinks differently to me is evil or a bad person. And you know, at least you can see that no, you know, people have their own problems. They're not out there being malicious most of the time, or they have their own life experiences, and you can kind of get a different read on society and people in life. And it's going to expand your mind and make you a little bit more compassionate towards other people as well. I think that can only be a good

Greg Voisen
thing. No, I agree with the fact that, you know, these zoom calls or Zoom meetings, and I have to be, you know, obviously, the podcast is one way to disseminate lots of information on books, right? I've done almost 900 interviews now over 14 years. So in one respect, it's very rewarding in another respect, I only need about 10% of the author's physically Right, yeah, to sit down and have coffee or really, you know, learn about them, or become friends with them or do something more than just an interview. And I And I honor what you're saying, because it is so true, whether we are more isolated today than ever. COVID helped to exacerbate that isolation. And it's not a good thing. Now that and you know, you state that it's through the body that we express our true self, and that our physical body is the alchemy alchemy laboratory, in which we can test and experiment, speak with us about the importance of this expression, as well as how our society today focus so much on the intellect. You know, you look at everything, you know, I get, I get three books a week in here, from authors, and you go, Well, is there another author going to write another book? You know, and it's about this, and a lot of times it's about the same stuff. And I, I'm not saying that's a bad yeah, I'm just seeing that. If you look at the 200 million titles, or whatever they are at Amazon, whatever the number is, it's, it's huge. You can find a book on anything, just about. Yeah, and it is expanding the intellect. But how is it helping us get to our true self? That question, because you're saying the physical, just like you said a minute ago, do some weights, do some martial arts? Express yourself in this mannerism? You know, when you look at Mind, Body Spirit, connection, you're certainly looking at when I say the arts, I'm going to use yoga as well. You may practice martial arts, but a lot of people use yoga and meditation as a way to make a connection to a higher power. Whatever that is, God, yeah, Buddha, whoever you want to call it. But the point is here, you're saying, this expression of the true self, I'd love to get your, your opinion here.

Angel Millar
But yeah, so one thing that definitely is happening today that we're becoming very much stuck in our own intellects. And I wouldn't even say mind, it's really the intellect that we're stuck in. And we sort of criticize everything discern, taking information and the information is often very skewed, as well. And they become very impassioned about information, and say that we have the correct information and anyone who doesn't is an evil monster, and they don't understand the information that we have. And it becomes this sort of very cantankerous relationship with other people. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and I'll speak for myself, you know, I, you know, I'm, I studied at fine art in England, which is a very design and fashion, it's a very feminine world. And I found that when I was practicing martial arts, and working out, I was actually a lot nicer person, because I was able to kind of express some aggression, and maybe not be as interested in all this craziness as well. And I found that, you know, when I wasn't doing that, there would be a lot more than me, we think of aggression as physical, but the world today, so many people are intellectually aggressive, and they are intending to harm people or to cause damage to other people through what they say, and the universe, but think of themselves as very nice people, but, but actually, they're hurting themselves and hurting other people, and they're too much in their intellect. We are a body. I mean, we're a mind as well, but we're a body. And if you neglect your body, if you don't train it the way you cultivate your mind. Things start to go horribly wrong. Then you think about when you get sick, how, how that affects your mind. You can't concentrate, you can't focus. You don't want to do anything. And people neglect their bodies thinking that their mind must be running perfectly well, but actually, it is affecting their thinking. They just don't realize it because they're so used to their body being unhappy. The and I forget to extremely high percentage of people in America that are on prescription drugs in any one month I think it might be it's almost 50%. And there is no way a population should have almost 50% on prescription drugs at any one time. So we do need to, you know, get healthy. And, you know, weightlifting, martial art doesn't have to be that it could be dance as well. It could be yoga, as you mentioned, these things, our bodies, just as we want to cultivate our mind as well.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to do it. And I totally concur with you that there needs to be a way for people to express themselves that way. So Angel, you know, in your chapter on the necessary work, you speak about the contrast, which I thought was interesting between Anne Rand, and the teachings of Zen Buddhism, you state that ultimately, we are Supra rational, and we find meaning in the body in the landscape in sex and love and spirituality, ritual, family, brotherhood friendship, and so on. In our modern world, how would you classify the warrior mystic? And what do we have to do to give ourselves permission to express ourselves in this way?

Angel Millar
Yes. In regards to the warrior mystic, if you look back through many different civilizations, you'll find that the elite warriors were trained not only in martial art and physical expertise in the battle, but we're also trained in or taught the softer arts such as painting, calligraphy, tea ceremony, and so on, depending on the culture. And you know, many of these figures were quite bloodthirsty because they were warriors, Miyamoto Musashi. For example, Japan's most famous samurai is also renowned for his Calligraphy is landscape gardening. And painting in the West, you have a figure such as the Viking Eggos, scholar Grimson, who was also a Norse poet and the first poet to actually use rain that at the end of the line, rather than at the beginning, but and so you have this contrast that is brought together in a single individual. And today in our civilization, we are encouraged very much to specialize and to find a niche and a niche within a niche. So that we have a captive audience in some kind of particular area, especially within the profession, so that we can be an expert in some miniscule area. And in our private lives, of course, we're also encouraged to be one type of person. And it really doesn't matter if you are from a sort of working class background where you're expected to get a working class job, or if you're middle class or upper class, there are expectations. For you to succeed, I have seen some areas that expectations for you to not go into some areas, and not to do certain things. And that really cuts across the board. And you know, if a guy might be expected to be tough, but he will not be expected to practice an art or vice versa. And I would say that, as we move into a more and more unstable future, a few other people began saying this, we're going to need to be much more of a generalist than specialists need to be I would say,

Greg Voisen
yes, yeah. I think people have to have much more of a generalist. mind frame mindset to function in this upcoming World. Yep.

Angel Millar
Yes, absolutely. Definitely. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Oh, you know, it is interesting because, you, you add a chapter on from obstacle to accomplishment. And you'd state that every field has its experts. That's what we're just talking about, but X does, and technical knowledge is not wisdom. counterintuitively, you said perhaps mastery of the art first requires one to be totally mastered by it, meaning the art how do we overcome the obstacles to become more of ourselves and express our true selves. Instead of being trapped in a world, which is probably calling for people to be experts in a certain field versus having this, as the warrior did this variety, he was a painter, he worked with his body, he had all these other things that he could do, right? Yeah. And yet, we haven't we haven't called on that. Our colleges today actually are asking people to focus on one thing. And I think that the educational system, while it is great in what it does, and the kind of people that we have coming out of colleges, it, it doesn't help people be more of a generalist.

Angel Millar
No, no, that's right. If you go to the very top colleges in the USA, they don't want you to have a good education and or good, you know, score in education across the board, they want you to be extremely good at one particular thing. And if you're not good at other things, it doesn't matter. But yeah, so there are a couple of things to say that and one is, you know, we will face obstacles in our life, some worse than others, perhaps. But there's an idea today that, for example, Malcolm Gladwell says that, really it's where you are born. And when you are born, that determines whether you will succeed or not. Noticeably, you can't reverse engineer this. But so he will say that, for example, while Steve Jobs happened to be born the right year, and was living around Silicon Valley at the right time, and 1510 years earlier, or 10 years later, wouldn't have happened. That is true. But what made Steve Jobs kind of revolutionary was that, you know, he introduced you know, different forms to the computer or look like a calculator before that. And the reason he did that was he studied under a Trappist monk learning calligraphy, where there is no way on that you could say that that would be likely or that he would be in the right time and place to learn calligraphy under a Trappist monk, yet, he was able to use that and revolutionize computer. And if you look at many of the most famous people, certainly most of the innovators in different fields, they had horrible childhoods, many of them nearly died or had deaths in the family or disease, extreme poverty, and it was really going through and experiencing these obstacles that enabled them to push themselves forward in life and to become something. And today we're not only taught a specialized were told that we, you know, we must protect ourselves. And if we experience some obstacle, it's very unfair. Whereas you know, that was really what was propelling people are the artists, Mr. Monk, best known for his painting The Scream, had deaths in his family, his mother and sister, all kind of poverty, horrible childhood. And he said later on that that was his rudder. That's what gave him direction in life. And without it, he would be rudderless. And so I think we want to be very careful about thinking that, you know, if we're born in the right place in time, or if we have all the benefits, or if we have all, you know, all the luck and the privilege that's going to make us usually that just cripples people, those people can become experts, but they never become innovators. Yeah. So yeah,

Greg Voisen
that's a very important point you make I mean, yeah. Steve Jobs is a great example. I happen to be reading a book that a gentleman wrote Ken Rusk, and it's in it's called Blue Collar cash. And the interesting thing was that, you know, we have people that work in the trades, our world has kind of moved, you know, we don't have enough truck drivers. We don't have enough people to do plumbing. We don't have enough people to do take these roles, yet. College has said, Hey, if you take these roles, you're going to make more money. But the reality is, it's not true anymore. No truck drivers making as much as the well educated person who came out and is a middle manager. And those roles and positions require that they become a lot more versed and use their hands. And he said, Yeah, he said, the interesting thing, angel, he said, there's this step back moment, and I thought that was interesting because And when you create something with your hands like you're a landscaper, or an architect or you're or a plumber and you fix something or you build a house or you build a wall and you're a Mason, and you take the step back moment, and you see what you created, there's a tremendous reward in that. Yeah, versus all these people that are working on the internet, right? It's, yeah, there's a big difference. I thought that was a great statement that he made and you state that we're trapped, or that we do what we want to do eat what we want to eat, buy what we want to buy, and believe in what we want to believe. How do we move beyond the psyches? And that we're trapped in by them and start to ask the difficult questions about how to live our lives?

Angel Millar
Yeah, but I think we have to question what we know. And I don't mean this in some kind of self-flagellating sense. But if you read the news and something shocks, you read the read the news from the opposite sides perspective, and usually you'll find that they have a different perspective, some facts may be left out, some facts may be distorted. And at least that way, you can begin to realize, oh, okay, there really are two sides to every story. And I would say approach life a bit like that. There's always something more we can learn. We don't have to have an allegiance to one particular side. And we should always be trying to go beyond what we know. We're really pushing ourselves. And so yeah, I think, you know, if you can study, study things that you're you haven't been exposed to, before you can meet, meet different people with different perspectives. But really try to learn and try to listen to people and let them speak and try to understand where they're coming from, or understand different arts as it were, then you're going to be opened up to a different understanding of life that's more complex and nuanced, and a little more forgiving, and a little more creative as well. You're able to come up with creative solutions yourself as well, which is what we need.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. In a, you know, it's almost like, when you look at that perspective, you look at it from I remember Margaret Wheatley used to talk about ecosystems. And you know, it's the ICA it, all these ecosystems that are out there. They're all interdependent. And I think that's what you're really saying is the interdependence that we have the ability to operate within that not our independence, but are interdependent, and Angel in your chapter on fear in the higher self, you state that in our world today, estranged from nature, and with a belief in science and faith in politics, many people in the West find it almost impossible to accept that life is inherently chaotic, unsafe and often unfair. Or that brutality can invade at any time, or that we will be treated unjustly. What are some of the ways to embrace what is happening in our world get access, the spiritual nature of life, and transmute our beliefs to live from our true self, as you call it?

Angel Millar
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it's very difficult for people in the West, obviously, at least, to a certain income level, to realize that, you know, life is brutal and unfair. For much of the world, obviously, it's not like that. And for many poor people in America or the West, it's also not like that it's much more chaotic. And I think in a way we've seen, especially over the last year or so with COVID, which has been, in my opinion, largely a kind of financial divide with people who are middle class and who can work from home saying, you know, we all need to extend the lockdowns and people that are living right on the edge and really need to do something physical like cleaning or driving a truck or whatever it may be, to make enough money to pay their rent saying, Oh, we've had enough of the lock downs. And, you know, we live in a strange and divided world, but in regards to understanding that life is chaos, and it could all change very rapidly, especially I think the way things may be going. I would say that, in a sense, we just have to face that. Our civilization today is unusual. It's not been like this until very recently. Think of the world wars of the 20th century in on the left Last day of the Battle of the Somme there were 20,000 deaths on the British side alone and 40,000 casualties on the British side. And, you know, that sort of mayhem, maybe relatively unusual what we saw two great wars, in the last century, many others as well. And civilizations and countries can be wiped out very quickly. And I think, you know, we don't want to be morbid or paranoid about what may be, but I would say that we should prepare ourselves as a whole, prepare ourselves to be adaptable for the future, to make sure we're healthy to make sure that we have enough stamina and willpower to go into the future and make changes in our lives or be adaptable and seize opportunities as they can, and not the passive victim.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you know, you speak about the ways things can change and how chaotic it is, and that it is fragile. People don't look at it as being that fragile. But on the other hand, the wars that are being fought, even though may not be physical, are emotional wars. And also, you know, when you look at our cyber world, it's the war in the cyber world that's creating the division, the divisiveness amongst us as individuals to question so many different things and try and look at things in a different way. And, you know, yeah, between AI, artificial intelligence having its effect on, you know, how we do our purchases in how these things appear. Thus, the problems that we're seeing at Facebook, you know, it's I, I, honestly, it's going to get worse for Facebook before it ever gets better. Yeah, and, and it is a challenge. I mean, do you want to comment about on that war, because there is a war being fought in our cyber space?

Angel Millar
Oh, yeah, very much. So. Yeah. But I think, you know, this war between different groups is often kind of almost, I mean, it's a very passionate and angry, intense and destructive war. That is extremely true. But you know, it again, it is because people will look up the other side or other people is not really quite human. And, you know, I've even seen people make comments Absolutely, to that effect that people who don't agree with such and such a person on vaccines, let's say, are simulacra of human beings. All excuses of human beings are not actual people. And it's really, it's very destructive, not only for society, but for our own conscience and our own soul, when we refuse to look at people as actual people with their own lives and their own problems, and their own aspirations as well. I think that we really do need to get back to the point where we can meet different people and see that they are human beings and being online all the time. It's one of those things that makes us think that other people are exactly how they've been portrayed in the media, or by the, you know, the most angry social media posters out there. And it's not really the case. You know, people really need to stay, take a step back, realize that the people they're angry at are human beings just like them, and hopefully you can meet them at some point. Or people like them and understand that.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's definitely a world where we're seeing chaos and wars being fought over the internet. Yeah, and that is escalating into physical stuff, which is then manifesting itself out in the world, which you were talking about earlier. The anger. Yeah, anger that individuals have toward other individuals has been exasperated by this problem. And you know, you state that society tries to protect itself from nature and from chaos yet, they intervene. And then if you would speak with us about, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, Guan, and the Green Knight and the representation of the five pointed star, a sign invented by King Solomon, I know because of my wife's work in Hebrew, and you look at what Bo ta was done. Everything's around a five pointed star. Right. So speak with us a little bit about that because it's on the cover of your book as well.

Angel Millar
Yes, yeah. So in in regard to the five pointed star in green and the Green Knight, which is a Middle English myth. And in the myth there's actually a movie out now I don't know if you've seen it, I haven't seen it yet. But, uh, but in the original myth, King Arthur's court are celebrating Christmas when a mysterious giant green night and says the whole one makes this challenge and says, I'll give anyone my axe, who wants to chop off my head on condition that I can do the same to them next year. And everyone there, including the Knights are a little bit nervous about this, but Gwaine one of the Knights steps up and says that he will allow that. And so he chops off the green knights head, the Green Knight puts his hat back on and tells him to seek him out.

Greg Voisen
Interesting, yeah, a year

Angel Millar
from now. And so he's spent this entire year on a kind of pilgrimage towards his own death as he would perceive it. But before he sets out, he's given an a shield and on the shield is a pentagram. And it has different meanings. One is, refers to the fourth thing because and the thumb refers to the five senses to fellowship, generosity, courtesy, compassion and purity, and also to the five wounds of Christ. And today, of course, we will think of the pentagram as a satanic symbol. If you watch Hollywood movies, or in witchcraft, it's shows up there, but it has a long and very complicated history in architecture, it embodies the the golden ratio as well, which is, you know, the perfect number that you find embodied in in classical architecture, that you will even find it in Freemasonry early on. And in Oh,

Greg Voisen
yeah, it's interesting how it's been distorted in the surround it. You know, I think my wife speaks about the Golden Dawn, you know, and right, so, you know, you you look at this and, and five pointed star, and what you just said was, so had so much meaning. Yeah, comparison to how people misinterpreted and misinterpret so many different things.

Angel Millar
Anything. Right? That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And, and I think they need to be a little bit more educated about really what the true meaning and significance was. And it requires you to go back into history, and really look at history, not not current day. Right. So, you know, Angel, if you were to leave our listeners with three important points from your book, and, and what would they be? And what is the importance of having them living their lives as this higher men in a modern world today?

Angel Millar
Yeah, so the three points I would say, develop your mind, body, and spirit, where we are whole people, we're not just an intellect, we're also our body. We're also creative people, we need to develop ourselves as a whole. Secondly, I would say, try to give up criticism, this criticism on online media, we're constantly we're constantly assaulted by a criticism, whether it's aimed at us personally, your people in general, or some political side, or whatever it may be, it's very destructive for our spirit and our consciousness, give up criticism and become a creator instead, you know, like the mist? Yeah, the mystic gi Gurdjieff, said that we will give up our happiness before we will give up our suffering. And I think it's weirdly true that you know, a lot of the people who are online attacking other people that actually are living perfectly, you know, perfectly comfortable alive. But the, rather than give up their suffering, they give up their happiness to suffer. It's a very strange human thing. But we have to make a concerted effort to give up criticizing give up feeling angry, and be creative.

Greg Voisen
are very important.

Angel Millar
And what Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I would say that realize that. Although, you know, you mentioned Ayn Rand, the Iran who says we should be rational producers, I would say that realize we're mostly non rational. In the in the medieval period, they had the idea that there was intellectus, and ratio and ratio meant rational thought, which was kind of like the workhorse of the mind. If you needed to figure out a solution to a problem you would use ratio or rational Thinking. But there was also intellectus, which meant contemplation. So if you've contemplated nature, or you've contemplated the sky or flower, the belief that you are actually contemplating the nature of God or you're contemplating something design and you're absorbing, in a sense, from the Divine that there was this other way to perceive the world. And I think today, we could say that not only do we have, you know, rational thinking, mostly we're rationalizing, but let's say we have the potential to think rationally the potential to contemplate, we're also moving through different states of consciousness throughout our day, sleep into hypnopompic, the state between sleep and waking, maybe meditation, daydreaming, contemplating aesthetics, and so on. And so we go through these different states of consciousness or flow if you're practicing safe martial art, or dance or yoga, or maybe something else. And not to get stuck in the idea that we're rational because we're largely not rational. And that's why, of course, in the tangent, that's why advertising doesn't speak to us rationally shows us images of happy people, bright colors, and someone to motivate us. Because we don't, we're not really motivated by rational thinking. So I would say, you know, realize we're not really entirely rational, cultivate the non-rational, whether that's practicing an art to the body, of course, health, going out into nature, and recognize that we're passing through these different states of consciousness throughout the day, sleep hypnopompic, daydreaming and make those work for you, they all have a purpose, we're multi-dimensional people. And we really want to grasp that multi-dimensional nature that we have, and not reduce our own selves down to a cliche, I would say, in regards to living as the higher man, which I think you can tell how I regard is really developing our whole selves. And of course, I understand that, you know, many people probably don't want to practice martial arts. But if you can make your body a little stronger, even if it's see through dance, or through working out, that's going to be a big plus, you know, practice some kind of art, calligraphy painting, some kind of design, whatever it may be, you're creating, you know, redoing cars or something, whatever it may be, whatever is your thing, and cultivate the intellect as well understand culture. And you develop ourselves as a whole beyond the cliches that people want us to be, because maybe they're afraid that we're going to be out of their control, develop ourselves as a whole. And I think it's important to have this sort of classical reference, you find this type of figure through our history, to really realize that we're in a, we're in now we're not at the end of time, this isn't, this isn't the perfect world. And we're not going to make the perfect world probably, this is another period of time and what we believe now we won't believe in 20 3040 years from now, it keeps changing. And we need to be able to navigate that, while really not selling our soul in the process, and really encountering this kind of chaos, and enabling that to make us stronger, or becoming stronger through interacting with it not giving into.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you bring up some very important points there that I think as a conclusion, to our interview, and to our listeners, knowing more about your book. You know, I think that becoming the man that you want to become in the age of chaos requires What angel just said, and it also requires a bit of courage. Because you will have to muster up that courage to do that. And a willingness to stretch. Stretch yourself, you know, he's talking about stretching from the standpoint of the body but I'm talking about stretch your intellect, stretch your body stretch everything. thereby becoming more of a higher, we'll just call it a whole person. An angel, I'm going to direct the listeners to go to your website. Again. It's Angel Mylar, and that's a n g e l m I l l a r. There. You can learn more about Angel his prior books as well. We'll put links to those books on this blog. This book, the path of the warrior mystic being a man in the age of chaos. If you want to learn more about that, that will also be at the website, Angel thanks for being on insight, personal growth and sharing some of your insights and wisdom about what it's going to be like to become this. I'm going to just call it whole hire person in today's chaotic world.

Angel Millar
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I'm really glad you invited me on

Transcribed by https://otter.ai