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Bill McMichael | Cause and Effect Advocate | Pilot

@billmcm1819

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Air Force instructor pilot and commercial airline pilot. I completed a three-year meditation retreat. Your mind is more powerful than the jets.

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Thirty years ago, a friend told me about her experience of dying, going to heaven, and coming back. What do you do with that? Heaven? She was clearly sharing with me an experience that had been very real and profound for her. That she had almost died was a fact. But, Heaven? The whole thing raised more questions than it answered. I have spent the rest of my life since then trying to figure out what it meant. I had no idea what was coming.

When I was younger I led an All-American life. I swam on my high-school’s varsity swim team, earned a National Merit Scholarship for academic aptitude, and went on to the University of Virginia where I earned a degree in economics.

My father had been a Navy fighter pilot and after I graduated from college I followed in his footsteps and became an Air Force fighter pilot. My time in the Air Force was short. The Cold War ended in 1991 and with it the Air Force’s need for pilots decreased dramatically. My Air Force career was over almost before it started.

As it turned out that was a blessing because I was able to leave the Air Force and get hired by American Airlines. I would work there for 19 years. Being a commercial airline pilot gave me the time and the money to pursue other interests. That was fortunate because my friend who had the near-death experience told me about it shortly after I got hired at AA. It was going to take a lot of time and travel to figure out what her story meant.

It’s been a thirty-year journey. Where did it take me? Among man other things, I spent ten years in formal studies of Asian classics with monks who had mastered these teachings. At the end of my studies I went on a three-year meditation retreat. What came out of that? There is only one answer to all of our problems – kindness.

Kindness? That is too simple.

No, it isn’t. by @billmcm1819

What if 72 seconds out of every hour could make everything you do dramatically more powerful?

That’s one of the things we’ll be teaching at our upcoming 3-day retreat – along with how meditation becomes a real tool for solving real problems in your life.

Registration is open – link in bio. by @billmcm1819

Intense pressure doesn’t have to take over your mind. Meditation helped me stay calm and handle it. by @billmcm1819

Your mind has more potential than your body, but most people never train it.

Try this: sit down, close your eyes, and count 10 breaths without your mind wandering.

How far did you get? by @billmcm1819

🎃 Halloween in our neighborhood 👻 by @billmcm1819

Evanston tonight. by @billmcm1819

That restless feeling, checking your phone, scrolling, always needing to do something next, doesn’t disappear when you sit down to meditate.
It follows you in.

More on my YouTube channel – link in bio. by @billmcm1819

We don’t notice how much noise surrounds us every day until we step away from it.

After years of silence, even a gas station felt overwhelming. And that’s when I understood what a cluttered mind actually costs you. by @billmcm1819

Struggling to make progress in meditation?

The problem probably isn’t your practice. It’s everything outside of it.

What do you do between sessions that might be working against you? 👇 by @billmcm1819

It has been a historic week here in Arizona. by @billmcm1819

Can you imagine what is it like to touch a legend?
In this video, I touch upon two legends at once: the cabin at Diamond Mountain @diamondmountainretreat and the incredible person who built it during a three-year retreat - @billmcm1819 .
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Уявляєте як це, доторкнутись до легенди?
Цим відео я торкаюсь одразу двох - будиночка в Даймонд Маунтейн і неймовірної людини, яка збудувала його в трирічному ретриті. by @billmcm1819