A Master Conversation About Letting Go -- with Timber Hawkeye

Before The Afterlife

“I’m not a teacher, I’m not a guru, I’m not an anything. All I am is a sharer, and it seems unusual because it’s the stuff no one talks about … “ begins author Timber Hawkeye.

Best known for his book, Buddhist Boot Camp, Timber has continued to write and speak about what It means to be at peace in this world. Particularly, he loves to talk about letting go, and how to appreciate what’s right in front of you. And people lap up his message. Awarded 900+ five star reviews on Amazon, Buddhist Boot Camp continues to be a perennial best seller.

It’s odd that we need reminding about the simple truth of letting go. And yet … we do. In fact, Timber says, letting go and seeing our world as abundant removes the barriers between us.

“There’s a constant flux of incoming and outgoing, if I live with this perspective of abundance and enough … that nothing is missing. The moment I realize that I have more than enough – I pass it on and that keeps the abundance flowing to all. That breaks the boundary between us and them.”

In our conversation, I was really struck by how light-hearted, genuinely peaceful and fun Timber is. He has an admirable clarity and calm in a time most of us find turbulent.

Timber Hawkeye calls himself ‘A Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love’ … and I agree.

Here’s what I learned from him:

• How a quest for simplicity drew him to Buddha’s teaching
• Letting go as a spiritual practice
• Why letting go of our extra stuff liberates the soul
• The difference between non-attachment and detachment
• How and why we identify constantly as victims
• Why it’s easy to be a minimalist in a get-get-get culture
• How to redefine what ‘enough’ is
• Is life really ‘a piece of cake’? … and how to make it truly so
• The difference between unconditional kindness and ego
• How we learn to be separate from others
• On using social media vulnerability
• How to live in ‘this time’ of political turmoil
• Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate

BIO

Timber writes:

Ten years ago, when I left the corporate world and moved to Hawaii, I started emailing my friends and family every month to let them know what’s going on in my life. About eight years later, my friend Kim suggested that I share those emails with the world because she found the letters inspirational, and she figured other people would benefit from reading them as well. That’s how the blog-to-book Buddhist Boot Camp was born! Each chapter is only a page or two long, and you can read them in any order. Faithfully Religionless reads more like a conversation that we might have on a park bench somewhere. It is an open and honest memoir that gets more intimately personal than Buddhist Boot Camp did, while still sharing the underlying intention to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire. Kim was right! People all over the world have found the message in Buddhist Boot Camp refreshing, inspirational, and more importantly, motivational!