Kamal Ravikant - Live Your Truth

Table of Contents

Live Your Truth

Copyright 2013 by Kamal Ravikant

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about this title, please visit www.founderzen.com

Cover design by Erin Tyler

Interior design by 1106 Design

Cover photograph by Mac Danzig

Author photograph by Jodi Swanson

ISBN: 978-0-9895849-9-9 (Print)

978-0-9895849-4-4 (eBooks)

Printed in the United States of America

For Werner

PREFACE

Somewhere along the way, you do your best, and then you surrender. Let go. Of attachment to outcomes. Attachment to what you desire. Like a paper lantern you light and then release into the night sky.

You do your best, you let go.

It is not powerlessness. It is freedom. Like youre in a dark room and its bright outside. Surrender means cleaning the window so that light can enter. Youre letting the light enter, not making it enter.

It is not giving up, it is accepting. And the light will enter. Always does.

Despite how we may rock the world, we have our weak point. That one thing that can bring us down. For me, its the end of love. I know Im not the only one.

I wrote this book over a period of two months after a painful breakup. On one hand, life was zipping. Things and opportunities Id wanted for long were happening easily. On the other, the Achilles heel.

I was doing my practice, loving myself. But the mind was resisting, refusing to let go. So I wrote. Night after night. True sentence after true sentence. I wrote for myself, to myself. A handbook, a guide. Reminders of what I know is real, what I know that works. So as the pain went away, I would be left behind with these records of truths.

If ever in pain, I think the best thing we can do is to create something. A record. Not of pain, but of what is real. Pain doesnt last. And when its gone, we have something to show for it. Growth. And because it is a human experience, it is of value. Something we can share with others.

This book guided me back to my truth. Light naturally flowed in. I let go of outcomes and returned to working on being my best self. And that is the greatest gift I can ask for.

SAIL AWAY

Live long enough and you start to see patterns in your life. The seasons and the storms. The way that things work for you, the way that they dont.

In the winter of 2012, I spent the last week of December at a monastery in Big Sur, high up in the hills overlooking the Pacific. No talking. No internet or cell phones. The sound of rain on the roof my companion.

A new year was coming. Rather than resolutions, I wanted to approach it from an effective place. A place of inner knowing, of lessons learned. The desire was to write down what I know that works what makes me healthy, what makes me productive, what fulfills me, the basics of what makes my life zing and then live it.

Id written a little book that summer called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It . Published it on Amazon, expecting to sell ten copies, max. It took off and became a success. Word of mouth, blog posts, tweets. The book has a life of its own, spreading around the world.

If anything, the book was a gift to me. It made me cross a threshold, showed me that my voice mattered. Sharing my truth mattered. My life mattered.

I got many emails from readers, mostly those who applied what I wrote about, how it improved their lives. But there were some that had a difficult time. They couldnt do the love yourself thing. Something was holding them back.

It happened to a friend Id shared the practice with. She tried everything under the sun accepting herself, trusting herself, liking herself anything but love. No matter how much I shared what had worked for me, she wouldnt go there.

When you have an answer and you see someone you love struggle with the question, it can drive you batty. I could share what I knew, but never force it. So how to get her there?

And heres what I realized. Loving myself, that was my truth. Something I discovered from within myself. And because it came from inside me, there was no denying it. I couldnt forget about it, rationalize it away. I had no choice but to live it.

I had to guide her to find her own truth. And she found multiple. Loving herself, being an example for her children, the gifts she wants to express to the world. Her life, she tells me, is vastly different than before. Shes taken risks, made changes in her career, her health, and even how she lives her days. Things she hadnt thought possible, hopes that she had buried away. Amazing opportunities she never expected are happening naturally. Not surprising. The truth is a part of her in ways she can never hide. She lives it. Rocks it.

In the end, we are human beings with human minds having human experiences. No different from each other or those who came long before us. The scenery might differ, but the basics stay the same. A truth you learn or a process you use can apply to anyone. Thats the beauty of life. The answers are always available.

At the monastery, I set out to write how to be better on the outside. But as is the nature of creation, what resulted was far different. Habits and goals and success are just details. The tip of a deep iceberg. What matters is the foundation, the stillness below the surface. The truth inside. Living it, the rest is a natural byproduct.

I hope that this book inspires you to investigate yourself, discover your own truth. When something comes from within, when it is a part of you, you have no choice but to live it, to express it. Thats when you become, well, awesome.

There is one rule, though: once you discover your truth, you have to go all in. Fully. Every single chip.

That is when the shift happens. As if theres a force in life waiting for us to make the decision, to commit, jump off that cliff. Then life breathes a deep sigh and opens the gates, fills the sails.

Its magical to experience. I wish that for you.

THE SAMURAI

Highway 1 leading to the monastery is closed due to storms. Rather than a three and a half hour trip, I drive almost six hours through back roads, switchbacks deep in the hills, sharp corners and turns, and occasional rockslides.

Youd think that this would be the best way to be present, to be in the moment. But the mind is active. A friend I lost this year, the company I built for four years and just shut down. Memories of a breakup still fresh. Thoughts coming and going, patterns of thoughts, loops upon loops. The mind pauses to hit the brakes, avoid a deer, then returns to the chatter.

I reach the monastery and check into my cold cement cottage. Technically, its called a monks cell, and is located in a row of similar cottages where the real monks live. There is a bathroom smaller than my car, an alcove for meditation, and a cubby for the one-person bed. About as simple as it gets.

I turn on the stove for warmth, unpack, and pull out a book I brought with me, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest swordsman in Japanese history.

Its a beautiful copy. Hardback, calligraphy. Written in the seventeenth century near the end of his life, its Musashis core teachings. I read it years ago and still remember simple lines that, if applied to ones life, would transform you. Its that kind of book.

Like many of his contemporaries, Musashi was also a talented painter, sculptor, and poet. Unlike his contemporaries, he was self-taught. Everything he knew, he had learned himself. His craft, hardened by battle. Action, not theory.