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The Iliad – Audio

Rage, sing of the rage of Achilles… that is the first line, the opening line of the Iliad. The Iliad, a book that I have just finished reading, and a fantastic book. So, so fantastic that I’m going to do this month’s VIP lesson about it. The Iliad is a classic, classic story that goes back all the way to ancient Greece, more than 2500 years ago it was written about events possibly even older than that, definitely even older than that.

So, the first time I read the Iliad, as I went through it, my first thoughts, my first feelings about the Iliad were, well, this is an exciting story. It’s an exciting war story. It’s a story about the Greeks fighting the Trojans and there are lots of big heroes, lots of blood and guts and killing and fighting, and all of that. To do it the normal kind of, what you might think of in a Hollywood movie as an action story. That’s the surface. That’s the first thing you probably noticed. It’s the first thing I noticed, but then as I went deeper into the story and thought more about it, I began to see deeper messages, to feel something more. And those messages were fairly obvious.

Messages of values and virtues of honor, for example. We’ve done recent VIP lessons about honor, you know, that many of the heroes on both sides of that story are honorable men and some of them are very dishonorable, not honorable. And also courage, because in this story the heroes of the Iliad they face terrible, terrible things and sometimes they’re afraid, but they fight anyway. And sometimes they don’t sometimes they run away. So there are messages about courage, about honor, and about loyalty.

So these are very strong messages, very powerful, very, very powerful. But then it goes deeper still and this is one of the things about great literature, great, great books, especially the classics, the ones that we value and respect for long, long, long periods of time and this is why I believe that those old, old books, both religious and non-religious are much more powerful and they have something for us that’s much, much deeper than most modern media, including books, TV, etc. movies, blah, blah, blah.

And as I read the Iliad and thought about it more deeply, I began to find the messages about wisdom, about mortality, the human and animal, all life in fact, truth that we all die, and then how do we face that? And messages about our limitations, the fact that we as human beings, every one of us, we have limitations we are not all powerful. Every single one of us will face limitations, therefore, we will face failures, therefore, we cannot have everything we want. We will, just by being alive, face pain, suffering and disappointment and we will encounter strong limitations, no matter how much we want something.

And messages about fate, the Western word would be fate. In the East they would say karma.

It’s very similar, especially in the Iliad. The fact that or the idea that many parts of our life we have no control over, things will happen to us that we cannot control. And there are certain things inside of us, certain parts of our brain, our biology, our bodies that we cannot control, we cannot choose, we did not choose, is a part of our fate or our karma. And then finally at the deepest level as I thought more and more and more about the Iliad and read it more and more deeply, there are powerful, powerful, powerful messages about acceptance, about humility and about really, spirituality and grace.

Finding the wisdom and the truth, the deep truth and the deep wisdom within. You’ll often find this with ancient books, the ones that are considered classic. That they have these many, many layers. So a child might read the Iliad and just see a story about heroes fighting one another and maybe someone a little more mature, with a little more experience in life would find the messages of honor, courage and loyalty, but then someone with even more life experience, probably older, would find these deeper, and deeper and deeper messages. It’s such a powerful book, such a powerful story.

Now, I’ll give you a quick summary, just some quick information about it. It was written by a poet, we don’t really know who the poet was. We say the Iliad was written by Homer, because when it was finally written down first it is believed that this story the Iliad was first an oral poem.

Oral meaning it was just told verbally and then the original poet who finally then wrote it down.

So first he wondered around; Homer, is what we call him. He would wonder around and he would perform this story and then he finally decided and he wrote it down.

Now we don’t know his real name. He’s called Homer, but his real name could’ve been anything, any Greek name, we’re not sure. And it’s the story of the Trojan War. Now, in Greece, ancient Greece there were many, many, many stories about the Trojan War and we now know that the Trojan War was a real thing. That back in kind of the pre-history of ancient Greece there was a war between the Greeks and the Trojans, the Trojans were where Western Turkey is now, along the Mediterranean Ocean. The Greeks sailed over and there was a huge big, big fight.

Now in the story, it’s just a part, the Iliad is just a part of the Trojan War. The Trojan War, according to the legends of ancient Greece lasted for 10 years. So the Iliad is only about the last year. So the Iliad does not cover many of the other stories. There are other legends and other stories about the Trojan War that were not written by Homer. So this part, the Iliad is only a small slice, a small piece, almost at the end of the Trojan War. So in the Iliad you have Troy, the Trojan city and around it is the Greek Army. They’re sieging it. They’re attacking it. They’re trying to take and destroy Troy.

It begins with a powerful disagreement between two of the big Greek characters. One, the big super hero of Greece named Achilles. He’s their best fighter. He’s the son of a God. He’s super, super, super powerful and the other one is Agamemnon, who is the top king of the Greeks. And they have a big fight and disagreement, Agamemnon insults Achilles. Achilles insults him back and this creates a division in the Greek Army and Achilles says I’m not going to fight any more, so good luck to you. This has a lot of big disastrous results, when Achilles decides to stay out of the battle.

Then, later in the story there’s a description of all the different battles. When the Trojan’s come out they attack the Greeks and it’s these back and forth battles, lots of blood and guts, lots of… the heroes on both sides are killed. Then finally, Achilles’ closest friend gets killed and he kind of wakes up and realizes ugh, this is madness and Agamemnon the king also realizes this is madness, what is happening and they finally make peace with each other. And then Achilles goes out and kills the guy, the big hero of Troy named Hector; he’s their top hero. Hector killed his best friend, Patroclus and Achilles then goes and kills Hector.

He doesn’t just kill him, he kills him and then he drags his body around and they poke, they stab his body and do all kinds of horrible stuff to, he does all kinds of horrible stuff to Hector. And this causes the king of Troy to try because it’s his son and it’s horrible. And so far, it’s bloody and there’s all this anger and revenge, but then, I think the most powerful part of the story is at the end, because somehow Achilles is just… you know, rage means like anger. So Achilles is this killing machine right, he’s just argh he’s super tough and he’s super angry, and he goes and destroys Hector and finally, King Prium from Troy comes to the camp and he begs Achilles, please give me the body of my son back. Give me Hector back so that I can have a proper funeral for him.

So at the end, very unexpectedly, Achilles sort of has a moment of peace and there’s some kind of… I don’t know if forgiveness is quite the word but kind of… between the king of the Trojans, King Prium and Achilles, the great hero. And this is where you find really there’s kind of a message of peacefulness, wisdom. It’s very powerful at the end and so Achilles… they make peace, Achilles lets him have his son back and that is the end of the story.

Now, I can’t describe the whole thing because it’s a very, very, very long story with lots and lots and lots of characters and lots of things happen, but that’s the basic idea.

 Why is this important to you?

 How can this help you in your life?

Well, because one of the big, big themes, the big, big messages of the Iliad is the theme, is the message, is the reminder that we face great limitations as human beings. This is a big truth of life. Now, sometimes in the VIP program I teach you how to overcome limitations, overcome challenges, achieve your goals. All of that is great. Indeed even in Iliad everybody fighting is trying to do that. They’re doing their best to win, but there is another side to this that sometimes I think that, you know, kind of the leadership gurus out there now in the modern world, that they don’t tell you about the other side of this and the other side is very important. That we have human limitations, we are not unlimited.

Sometimes you’ll hear people say, humans have unlimited potential. Well not in this life we don’t. It’s not unlimited, you have limitations. For one, you are going to die as will I, as will all of us. We can face natural disasters or just the hardships of the natural world. We cannot control these they’re beyond our control. War, big, the politics of the super powerful, we cannot control these and these can have negative or difficult effects on us that we cannot control and that we cannot change.

Enemies, we may develop enemies in life. Sometimes people just hate us for no reason.

Sometimes they have a reason sometimes they don’t and sometimes we can change that or get away from them and sometimes we can’t. Illness, of course, we will do everything we can to be strong and healthy. Eat healthy food, to exercise, to age, to get older in a way that will keep us as strong as possible, but we cannot totally avoid illness nor can we avoid aging.

There will be losses in our life. We will lose things. We will have failures. Sometimes it’s our fault and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s bad luck or fate and there’s nothing we can do to change it. And, of course, there’s the ultimate one is that we will all die and there’s no way to avoid it. So this is the other half. We have to think positively and try to overcome challenges and learn and grow. Yes, but we cannot become crazy and think that we will completely do everything we want, that it’s possible. We have to also be honest and say, some things cannot be overcome.

So, what do we do about this? That’s a hard truth. That is a very tough thing to realize. In the Iliad we find an answer, how do we deal with this? What is the message, at least that I find in the Iliad, about this truth, this hard, hard, truth of life that we all must face? The message in the Iliad is this. We have our fate we cannot control everything. We are limited. We cannot control the outside world at all. There’s only one thing we can control and that is our own soul, our own soul. You could say the mind and soul.

So, we can control that. We cannot control everything that happens to us. We cannot control winning and losing. Oftentimes, we are going to lose. We cannot control any of that stuff, but we can control our own inner self, our virtue, our honor, our goodness. That is the only thing, in fact, that we have power over, that we can truly control. That’s it.

So out in the world results are never guaranteed. No matter how much you want something and how hard you work, there’s always a chance you will fail. There’s always a chance you will not get it, always. Nothing is ever 100% guaranteed. So how do we face that? Well, of course, we keep trying to do what’s best in life, but we have to focus just on our own soul, that is the most important thing. You could say your own spirit, your own character, your own mind, whatever word you want to use. That is the only thing is how good a person you are, how strong a person you are, how wise you are. That you can control.

And so, where does wisdom come from? It comes from the inner peace of mastering yourself and only yourself, so that you can accept anything that happens in life, so that when you’re defeating, you’re losing and you’re facing sad, tough events you have a kind of inner peace.

You’re at peace with yourself. And when you’re winning and doing great you don’t get too crazy about it, because you also have that inner peace, that inner virtue, that inner goodness of your soul. That is a powerful message and we’ll talk more in the interactive lessons and in the commentary about how you do that. How do you do that? Why is it so powerful? How can it make you more happy?

All right, I will see you in the interactive lessons and in the commentary.

Bye for now.