Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman Read Free Book Online Page A

front of me, taking my head in his hands and placing his thumbs against the upper ridges of my eye sockets. My teeth chattered; I had an excruciating urge to urinate. But in another second, I had forgotten all. Colored lights flashed. I thought I heard his voice but couldn't quite make it out; it was too far away.  
     
    We were walking down a corridor swathed in a blue fog. My feet moved but I couldn't feel ground. Gigantic trees surrounded us; they became buildings; the buildings became boulders, and we ascended a steep canyon that became the edge of a sheer cliff.  
    The fog had cleared; the air was freezing. Green clouds stretched below us for miles, meeting an orange sky on the horizon.  
    I was shaking. I tried to say something to Socrates, but my voice came out muffled. My shaking grew uncontrollable. Soc put his hand on my belly. It was very warm and had a wondrously calming effect. I relaxed and he took my arm firmly, tightening his grip, and hurtled forward, off the edge of the world, pulling me with him.  
    Without warning the clouds disappeared and we were hanging from the rafters of an indoor stadium, swinging precariously like two drunken spiders high above the floor.  
    “Ooops,” said Soc. “Slight miscalculation.”  
    “What the hell!” I yelled, struggling for a better handhold. I swung myself up and over and lay panting on a beam, twining my arms and legs around it. Socrates had already perched himself lightly on the beam in front of me. I noticed that he handled himself well for an old man.  
    “Hey, look,” I pointed. “It's a gymnastics meet Socrates, you're nuts.”  
    “I'm nuts?” he laughed quietly. “Look who's sitting on the beam next to me.”  
    “How are we going to get down?” “Same way we got up, of course.” “How did we get up here?”  
    He scratched his head. “I'm not precisely sure; I had hoped for a front-row seat. I guess they were sold out.”  
    I began to laugh shrilly. This whole thing was too ridiculous. See clapped a hand over my mouth. “Shhhh!” He removed his hand. That was a mistake.  
    “HaHaHaHaHa!” I laughed loudly before he muffled me again. I calmed down but felt giddy and started giggling.  
    He whispered at me harshly, “this journey is real--more real than the waking dreams of your usual life. Pay attention!”  
    By this time the scene below had indeed caught my attention. The audience, from this height, coalesced into a multicolored array of dots, a shimmering, rippling, pointillist painting. I caught sight of a raised platform in the middle of the arena with a familiar bright blue square of floor-exercise mat, surrounded by various gymnastic apparatus. My stomach rumbled in response; I experienced my usual pre-competition nervousness.  
    Socrates reached into a small knapsack (where had that come from?) and handed me a pair of binoculars, just as a female performer walked out onto the floor.  
    I focused my binoculars on the lone gymnast and saw she was from the Soviet Union. So, we were attending an international exhibition somewhere. As she walked over to the uneven bars, I realized that I could hear her talking to herself! “The acoustics in here,” I thought, “must be fantastic.” But then I saw that her lips weren't moving.  
    I moved the lenses quickly to the audience and heard the roar of many voices; yet they were just sitting quietly. Then it came to me. Somehow, I was reading their minds!  
    I turned the glasses back to the woman gymnast. In spite of the language barrier, I could understand her thoughts: “Be strong... ready.”  
    I saw a preview of her routine as she ran through it mentally.  
    Then I focused on a man in the audience, a guy in a white sports shirt in the midst of a sexual fantasy about one of the East German contestants. Another man, apparently a coach, was engrossed with the woman about to perform. A woman in the audience watched her too, thinking, “Beautiful girl… had a bad fall