In this deeply insightful episode of Supernormalized, CeeJay Barnaby sits down with Satyen Raja, the visionary founder of Warrior Sage. If you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or anyone seeking a more authentic and powerful way of living, this conversation is for you. Satyen’s work is a unique fusion of martial arts discipline, profound spiritual wisdom, and practical, real-world transformation. He guides individuals to achieve what he calls “peak experience,” helping them embody wholehearted leadership and align their wealth with their deepest truth . This isn’t just about business coaching; it’s about a fundamental inner shift that creates ripples through every aspect of life—your company, your family, and your community.
Satyen shares his personal journey, which has been deeply influenced by the pragmatic philosophy of Bruce Lee and the warrior’s path described by Carlos Castaneda . His foundation in Shaolin Kung Fu taught him to value what truly works under pressure, an ethos he applies to everything from business to his 38-year marriage . He recounts a pivotal, Zen-like moment from his youth when his master challenged him to lead against his own insecurity, a lesson that still anchors him today: “When given the opportunity to lead, lead” . This experience forged his understanding that true power comes from stepping up, even when you don’t feel ready.
Throughout the discussion, Satyen unpacks the core principles of the Warrior Sage, emphasizing the importance of equilibrium, integrity, and cultivating inner stillness to enhance outer effectiveness . He explains how making your word law can transform your luck and opportunities, and how leaders can bring tenderness into tough conversations without losing decisiveness . For anyone feeling that they’ve scaled their success but still feel empty, or for those who feel stuck and can’t name why, Satyen offers a path back to center—a way to integrate spine with heart and become a force for good in the world .
Transcript
CeeJay Barnaby (00:32)
Today on Supernormalised, you’ll meet Satyan, the founder of Warrior Sage. He’s guided leaders and entrepreneurs through meaningful inner shifts that ripple into their companies, families and communities. His work blends martial arts discipline, deep spiritual wisdom and practical transformation to help people live what he calls peak experience, wholehearted leadership, love without walls and wealth aligned with truth.
This is a super deep conversation and we touch on the works of Carlos Castaneda, Zen and mentorship in different ways that people probably don’t really understand normally. And he does so with such deep heart and authenticity. I’m sure you’ll enjoy. So on with the show.
Welcome to Supernormalised Satyan Raja. Satyan, you are the founder of Warrior Sage and it looks like from what I understand it, your life work is to bring people into the warrior power to make them more authentic in every step they take.
Satyen Raja (01:40)
Absolutely CJ. First of all, thank you for having me and everyone listening. My joy and honor to be with you today. Yeah, for me, the warrior and the sage are aspects within all of us worthwhile cultivating, opening and expanding so that we live more of a life of true power and light and power and real freedom.
CeeJay Barnaby (02:01)
Yeah, yeah, no, I that really jives with me because when I was young, I was seeking out a path and the books that appeared for me were Carlos Castaneda’s books. And it talks about pursuing the path of power, which is a warrior’s path. And for me, that opened up so much so quickly. And to this day, I understand that as a part of my own being and my core sort of drive as well.
Now, for you, what was the precise moment that you both, you and your wife knew that warrior sage had to exist not as a concept, but as your life’s path?
Satyen Raja (02:41)
Well I also was deeply influenced by Castaneda’s work and in fact our space that we hold our retreats here of our home in British Columbia is called Ixtalan, inspired by his book called Journey to Ixtalan.
CeeJay Barnaby (02:45)
good.
Yeah, right. Well, that’s powerful. it. I might have to come and study with you. That’d be really cool.
Satyen Raja (02:58)
And so we’ve tapped into
the same energetic field. you know, my life has been studying different forms of warriorship, different forms of martial arts since I’ve been 12 years old. Kung Fu is my base, Shaolin Kung Fu, more of a combative reality based training. So I was very interested in what actually works inspired by Bruce Lee, what’s pragmatic, not just in the metaphysical, spiritual.
around but what actually works when push comes to shove under pressure and I took that ethos into everything into relationship into my whole life that philosophy of you know let’s absorb what’s useful let’s discard what’s no longer useful and come up with our own creations which is a Bruce Lee’s essence of his philosophy and that also then led me to many paths of shamanism understanding the path of the inner awakening from
self-realization traditions of the East, as well as ⁓ deep work in relationship. I’ve been married with my wife for 38 years, Suzanne. And so, you know, and that’s its whole spirit. That’s the toughest spiritual journey and path. And that’s the one with the most juice. She’s the number one master because relationship, I think, is the crucible of where, you know, do we actually live what we’re learning? And so I dove into all these different paths over
CeeJay Barnaby (04:20)
Yes.
Satyen Raja (04:23)
well now 40 years and you know at 1999 we started warrior sage trainings with a bit of a jest from one of my mentors saying hey you’ve ran martial arts schools you’ve got these other businesses but you’re you challenged me he thought i was playing too much of a small game and i was the king of my own small little pond right big fish in the small pond and that edge has taken me to where i’m at today where we have trained hundreds of thousands of students
on the path of the warrior sage and especially leaders, leaders who are here to potentize their lives and make a more powerful impact.
CeeJay Barnaby (05:01)
Is there any single teaching from your early days that still anchors you 30 years later?
Satyen Raja (05:08)
⁓ yeah. You know, I remember, I have many stories from my Kung Fu apprenticeship with my masters and my head instructors. And I remember once I was very insecure, very nervous, very shy to speak in front of people. And I was an apprentice instructor. And one day one of the instructors on a, you know, it was a very ⁓ snow filled day and one of the instructors didn’t show, it was getting late.
And so there’s another junior instructor and then me really a lowling. And then the master comes by and he says to the fellow senior to me and he says, I want you to go ahead. There’s two classes to teach for whatever reason the other teacher can’t make it in. Right. Maybe he got sidestepped by snow or winter in Toronto, yada yada. So the instructor looked all nervous and tepid. He’s like, ⁓ I don’t know if I can, how do I do that?
And the master goes, you’re dismissed. He kicked him out on the spot. And I was like, he was very harsh man. And I was like, I just, I just like, I, and then he looks at me and he goes, Mr. Raja, I’m not even a Mr. I’m just a teenager, right? Mr. Raja, can you teach both classes at the same time? And immediately I went, yes, sir, no problem. I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t want to get kicked out. And although I stumbled, I learned how to teach two classes at the same time.
CeeJay Barnaby (06:11)
Whoa!
Mmm. Yeah, that’s a very
Satyen Raja (06:37)
I would give myself a two or three out of 10, but I did it. And at the end of the day, said to me, goes, when given the opportunity to lead, lead. It doesn’t matter what you think, what you feel, how strong you feel you are, if you’ve got the chops, the education, the knowledge, the know-how, the funding, whatever, whatever excuses you have for not leading, you got to toss them aside. When given the opportunity to lead, you lead. And that…
CeeJay Barnaby (06:41)
You tried.
Satyen Raja (07:07)
Jolt ⁓ has kept me going and has inspired me to just keep taking new edges.
CeeJay Barnaby (07:14)
Yeah, it sounds like a very Zen sort of school there. mean, with the Zen masters were renowned for being almost brutal and making sure people were really alert and connected to their senses. So, yeah, all power to your master that actually recognize that within you too.
Satyen Raja (07:30)
You know, he saw me and then because I took that leap, he gave me more responsibilities. And that was what I needed at that stage in life to evolve me. needed that extra push to go up. Because I didn’t believe in myself. I had someone who was willing to challenge me and say, hold on a sec, I believe you can do it. Although he didn’t say it directly, he meant it. And I think that’s something that we as leaders
CeeJay Barnaby (07:56)
Mmm.
Satyen Raja (07:59)
can offer everyone a loving, loving challenge. Not brutal, harsh challenge, but loving challenge that lifts us.
CeeJay Barnaby (08:07)
It sounds like he actually recognized within you the ⁓ notion that you’ve expressed of peak existence and ⁓ that ⁓ within that come non-negotiable markers that he could tell someone is living in it. How do you actually recognize those markers yourself?
Satyen Raja (08:28)
Well, integrity, congruence with who you are always shows up. You can feel it. And none of us are 100%. None of us are 100%. So we’ve got to have empathy and we’ve got to have some self-love and we’ve got to kick ourself in the ass to get ourselves off all the addictions, all of it. We need love, empathy, some self-holding and we need to kick ourselves in the ass and go, on a sec.
Who am I according to my own inner integrity? Forget anyone else’s. Forget any system, forget any society’s ideas. Am I living with my own integrity? My own truth? And if we are, the more we start shoring that up, that’s that sage element of the warrior sage. The sage is the introspection, the cultivation of wisdom. Wisdom doesn’t come from the best things in life. It comes from our pitfalls, our challenges, our
overshadow and looking in and going, holy shit, I’ve been an asshole here. I’m like, I haven’t been fully myself. haven’t been, I’ve been lazing around. I’m stuck in some dopamine addiction here and there. I got to recapture my life force. I got to recapture my, my presence, my attention. And I believe those who do that and they recapture their attention, you can feel it. They’re the master of where their presence goes. They’re not pulled around by the next distraction.
And I think that’s the heroic job of all of us individually as warriors, as sages, especially in this world where everything’s clamoring for our attention, our presence.
CeeJay Barnaby (10:13)
⁓ What does integrity mean to you?
Satyen Raja (10:18)
Integrity to me means, first of all, with our self and other, our word being law. If I’ve given myself my word, it shouldn’t be, my word should be coleslaw, all chopped up and all over the place. When I make my word law, and when I got this teaching from my teacher years ago, I was about 19, this is another metaphysical master.
He’s a crazy wisdom teacher and he says to me, he goes, how lucky are you Satyen? go, well, I’m okay. He goes on a scale of one to 10. I go maybe four. I’m pretty good luck. Okay. He goes, you want to get to a 10? I go, yeah. He goes, make your word law. He says, what happens in the energetic law of the universe is that when you make your word law in the minutia, you have to see said, this is where you have to sweat the small stuff in your word.
Not in all the doings you do. So if you say you’re gonna pick up someone at four, you pick them up at four. If you say you’re gonna return their call at two o’clock, you return it at two. Not at 1.58, not at 2.03, at two. And he goes, the more you get into that law with your word, then the universe follows. And then after two, three, six months, where you’re really attuning to making your word law.
then whatever you say starts to happen. People feel the nobility and the resonance of truth in your voice. They feel the congruency that you’re always on, you’re working to cultivate in yourself. There’s no arrival with 100 % truth. We’re always slightly out. Like the other night I wanted to, you know, I was like, okay, I’m going to take a week off sugar and I lasted five days, okay? So I feel out of integrity with my own loss. ⁓
Okay, I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m going love myself and I’m going to kick myself and I’m going now I’m going to make my word law. Because when you don’t, things break down. Luck, energy, people don’t come around you, opportunity wanes, you’re not trusted. When you make your word more and more law, after a while people trust you. They feel you. Higher transactions, bigger handshake deals.
more opportunity, more synchronicity. So that’s how I can tell if someone is integral is because they’ve got flow, luck, people around them are trusting of them and their word is law. They make what they say into reality.
CeeJay Barnaby (12:58)
It sounds like a point of co-creation from authenticity.
Satyen Raja (13:02)
Absolutely.
CeeJay Barnaby (13:03)
Okay, so we’re looking at our results here. So leaders will often ask, will this change the numbers? What business metrics have moved most for your clients after deep inner work?
Satyen Raja (13:18)
It’s, it’s, it is almost so immediate, it’s funny. It almost seems like interesting because once alignment starts to happen and it’s fast, when I work with someone, you know, from this warrior tradition, I don’t like to take weeks, months. I don’t act as a therapist. I act more as ⁓ a attunement. And then, hey, this is the direction. We clear out all the garbage in the mind, all the restrictions in the subconscious.
CeeJay Barnaby (13:24)
Right.
Satyen Raja (13:48)
all the emotional waverings inside of ourselves, we totally attune that rapidly, then we do and we make those decisions. Then what happens is there’s usually a powerful decision that ends up in a much higher stakes win, always, always is the case. There’s always some money left on the table that needed it. There was some resistance to consummating that now that it’s gone. ⁓ Many times once presence increases,
So when they’re doing pitches, when they’re doing presentations, when they’re fundraising, their felt, even in a small little square on Zoom or on the computer, their felt over a crowd of other noise. Because presence speaks. Depth and gravitas has a vibration. And integrity, authenticity, making your word law and potentizing your capacities.
CeeJay Barnaby (14:34)
Yes.
Satyen Raja (14:45)
has value, it’s the most valuable thing in the world. As we go more AI, we need to be a more powerful being to continue in our value, not from just our doing, but from our beingness.
CeeJay Barnaby (14:59)
I think with this influence of AI, will actually cause more people to search for more authenticity and reality and things. so a lot of the fears that people have around it, they won’t really matter because people are like, well, I’d rather have the natural real thing. we can see people know when something’s off, you can just tell. And AI doesn’t have the soul that humans have.
It never will. So yeah, yeah. don’t think there’s…
Satyen Raja (15:30)
No, no. They can never have
that little giggle that we just had. They can simulate it, but it’ll never be from this genuine, true soul-to-soul contact.
CeeJay Barnaby (15:36)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, it’ll well, if it has a gig, it’ll be a sinister, weird one that will go, well. So what pattern do you see in founders who scale fast but feel empty? mean, do they need to recalibrate their trajectory?
Satyen Raja (15:59)
One of the philosophies of the warrior sage is equilibrium. Equanimity. All the great sages have spoken about it. We poo poo it in the West. We think of it as some metaphysical meditative above everything state. No, equanimity is being in balance, in harmonious relationship with what is. Things are going to fluctuate. As a leader, running companies, organizations, my own I lead, you I’ve led many companies through my life.
continue to do so I advise in many and what happens is we go from we’re not gonna go like this life is never gonna be like that but life doesn’t have to be high and crashing and like it doesn’t have to be like this it could be like this and that’s depending on our inner temperament our inner alignment of being and so for me equilibrium is essential so
With all the founders that I work with, I focus on what I call the five freedoms inspired by one of my mentors, Kevin Nations. And those are enlightened freedom, sorry, enlightened power, enlightened love or heart, enlightened freedom, enlightened flow and wisdom. Power, heart, freedom, flow and wisdom. The power to source yourself and to get grounded in your true nature and who you are.
and the power to have a vision and a mission that pulls you, that propels you in your organization. That’s essential. You’ve got to have a clean heart, an open heart as Castaneda said, a path without heart is self-destructive, destroys the world. When we bring our heart, our joy, when we cultivate affinity in our household, our teams with ourself, with life, then we have the meaning of life now. We’re not waiting until we have some windfall down the road.
CeeJay Barnaby (17:31)
Mm-hmm.
Satyen Raja (17:53)
This is essential for business leaders. Don’t wait, I’ve lost uncles, I’ve lost loved ones, I’ve lost how many people I know, business leaders, have lost happiness, fulfillment, beautiful relationships, and family love for the sake of a prize down the road and working neurotically. Even the idea of crushing, think about the words, crushing it has become a virtue. The term crushing it alone is not virtuous, especially if it deals with us.
CeeJay Barnaby (18:12)
Mm.
Satyen Raja (18:23)
We have to
CeeJay Barnaby (18:23)
Yes.
Satyen Raja (18:24)
look at the visual of what’s happening there and recognize this. It’s a more of a programming of excess doing. When we undo this neurotic doingness, the paradox is the Tao comes to us. We start flowing with life. Things, doors open with more prosperity, more ease, more joy. The things that you were postponing now start moving towards you. The resistances start to fall. And that’s because
Now we’re adopting, I believe, the best of the East and West. The fortitude, that focus, that drive of the West, and the tranquility, the equilibrium, and the foundation of inner well-being of the East. So these two are the warrior’s sage. And I think this is the evolution that’s happening in entrepreneurship that definitely myself, my circles are leading and are aiming to bring to business leadership and all leadership.
CeeJay Barnaby (19:08)
you
Satyen Raja (19:21)
So we become a higher resonance for the world to see and we’re happy. When we’re not happy, we do crazy neurotic, megalomaniac, distracting, horrible things as leaders.
CeeJay Barnaby (19:25)
Mm. Mm.
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve seen that throughout the world as we see it right now, the imbalance. And one of the major things for leaders that they would say was that they’re time poor. So what is a minimum daily practice that would produce meaningful change for somebody like that?
Satyen Raja (19:52)
If your time is full, it’s because we’re making it full.
First of all, philosophically, seems like we are in time, whereas actually time is within us. When I take folks on spiritual adventure tours, I take my leaders on spiritual adventure tours yearly to mystical sites. Peru is next in line. One day can feel like a month, stretched out in time with such ease and spaciousness. Time restriction, the root of it is excess importance attributed to things. The more we…
Attribute excess importance emotional psychological energetic importance the more there’s energetic drag on the manifestation or the delivery of that experience in other words What the Eastern Masters have been saying start to relax that grip of control More and more when you do you win back your time and you’ll find a lot of what we’re doing is Excess doing to somehow think we’re doing stuff. That’s important
But much of it, if you look at the 80-20 rule, there’s about 80 % of the stuff that we’re doing, which is bullshit. 20 % is effective. And that’s why myself, I make sure I’m surrounded by my guides who can help dial that in. And also I have, with those I work with, I take a look at their schedule. And then we take a look and we go, my goodness, there’s all this. And rather than filling it with more stuff, we create more pleasure, more joy, more time with family.
time with nature, more time with our soul, with breath, with the joys, with our hobbies, doing nothing. And that’s the only way we’re going to, if we must be, we must come to greater harmony ourselves for there to be greater harmony in the whole. We can’t work the greater harmony in the whole and be duplicit with our own life.
CeeJay Barnaby (21:27)
Yes.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I say that to my wife sometimes because she gets caught up in time like that. And I say, look, I want you to stop and figure out how to get bored.
Satyen Raja (22:04)
Ha ha ha ha!
CeeJay Barnaby (22:07)
She gets it, so that’s a good thing.
Satyen Raja (22:10)
In my book, The Transcendent CEO, there’s a dedicated to extreme laziness, my philosophy of extreme laziness, okay? Now, I’m a driven man, I run companies, I’ve done lots of stuff, I’m a martial artist, I’m driven. But the heart of the, if you look at the yin and yang philosophy of China, Japan, Korea, and others.
CeeJay Barnaby (22:23)
Love it. Yeah.
Satyen Raja (22:38)
The yin and yang, for those of you who don’t know the symbol, it’s a circle and it’s like a fish and an S in the middle. And the dark is the yin and the light is the yang. But the heart of yin is yang. It’s a circle, it’s the opposite. And the heart of yang is yin, the heart of it. So I realize that if I’m going to be focused and intentional and deliberate, I need to have the heart of that be pure nothingness, stillness.
And the more stillness I cultivate through meditation, through being in nature, through dedicating more time to loving life, loving my wife, loving my children, loving my health, loving my fellow…
unity, loving nature. The more I offer that paradoxically, the more focused I can be. It’s like the Bruce Lee one inch punch. You’re relaxed, relaxed and at the end, boom, that’s when you put in the last boom and send a man flying. In the same way, we can master that energy where we are totally, I like to call it like being like Archimedes. We’re so masterful with our energy. We’re able to create big waves, big movement, lift the world.
with the path of least resistance. And that’s a training. It requires undoing a lot of psycho-emotional imprints we have around struggle, worth, value, who should value me, ⁓ am I being loved enough, will people see me as someone valuable if I work to the bones, all these deep imprints that are coming not just from us but ancestrally. So that’s gotta be sorted.
CeeJay Barnaby (24:26)
Yes.
Satyen Raja (24:28)
and healed and integrated.
CeeJay Barnaby (24:29)
Do you have a method for aligning personal values with board level decisions when the stakes are high?
Satyen Raja (24:38)
Be integral. This ⁓ method just don’t fudge with your principles and you’ll be a billionaire in your spirit and then your worth will be more and more and higher level business leaders will want to do business with you because you’re unshakable with even bigger numbers and bigger possible stakes. You’re not willing to sacrifice yourself for the dollar.
CeeJay Barnaby (24:40)
Yeah, circles all the way back there.
Satyen Raja (25:07)
And if you can do that company wide and integrity is first, you know, whatever, at this level of intelligence, people should know what integrity is. The fudging of it is why we’ve got the problems that we have and the lack of trust in companies, corporate structure, billionaires, entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of distrust in business. Just like there’s the common theme of mistrust and dislike of lawyers. It’s also with business. Okay, people.
CeeJay Barnaby (25:07)
Yes.
Satyen Raja (25:36)
as a common thing with a common person. Why? Because of the compromise of integrity for the quick game. The enlightened warrior sage, the warrior sage business leader, the transcendent leader, they’re not thinking of the immediate gain alone. For them reputation, their significance, the long-term value, the adding to the life force, the energy of others through their offerings is a…
CeeJay Barnaby (25:46)
Hmm.
Satyen Raja (26:06)
is a dedication, it’s a devotion. And that’s something to cultivate and if we’re not there yet, then you’re gonna be left behind. As our jobs, as other things can be replaced, fast dollars can be replaced through AI, robotics, innovation, all the things that are gonna happening. Those of us who have more realness, more truth, those of us
who have been integral during these times will be standing out even more so. Everything will become more more fake and so what is real will become more real and might I dare to say the most valuable thing is our realness and the truth we walk as we go deeper into the world of artificial intelligence. Soul and human intelligence is the most precious commodity.
CeeJay Barnaby (27:06)
Absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. When you’re working with clients, how do you weave martial discipline with spiritual compassion during a live intervention?
Satyen Raja (27:20)
CJ, you’ve got some really great questions you’ve been asking me, deeper ones, I really appreciate that. So thank you. Thank you. Well.
with my personal ⁓ clients who are founders, CEOs, investors, business leaders.
When they come to my retreats or to my personal space, we actually do executive self-defense training. I actually do physical self-defense training that they would personally face, like as if they’re walking into their car with their briefcase or walking into a elevator or they’re going to an ATM or they’re going to a high stakes meeting. And we do some real life, very powerful training drills, men and women.
until one becomes absolutely grounded, centered under duress. And that ability to stay centered, grounded, and come out safe under high duress intensity in my dojo, if you can go through that and you’re well trained, when you come out of that, even if it’s a pure beginner, when they come out of that experience, there’s this part of them that goes, my body is safe.
and all of a sudden their presence drops in deeper. There’s a feeling of self-empowerment that’s way beyond mental reframing, coaching, mindset development, plant medicine, because now your mammalian body has been kicked up, developed, and your mammal goes, I am safe, I am powerful. And that shifts your whole physiology. Something happens. It’s not like there’s an arrogance that happens, there’s like a settling that happens.
With women, it’s really, you could feel it immediately. With the men, their spines go stronger, their hearts open, they become more fearless, more just grounded in their body, and women just feel like more safe to be themselves, and their hearts start to bloom. So it’s interesting. And then we take those same principles, that energy we anchor, then we anchor it into their work life. We anchor it into their home life.
So they’re able to be under duress, but calm in presence, in equanimity, in love. And that’s a cultivation. There’s no arrival of that. You’re always gonna grow in that capacity. And so the dojo is real in my training because I like to make sure that we’re learning at a body level, at a mind level, emotional and spiritual. Because then the learning and the imprint and the cultivation is complete.
CeeJay Barnaby (30:03)
you
Do you have any questions that you ask clients who feel stuck but can’t name it?
Satyen Raja (30:11)
Yes.
Because I work very somatically, meaning I’m tuning into the body, I don’t take a cerebral approach or a reframing approach or some type of just communication approach. I like for my clients to dive deep into where they feel the discomfort and how deeply they feel it. We tend to operate over it as leaders. We tend to operate over the stuff that’s inside of ourselves.
But that’s the stuff that’s talking to us. It’s a message from the inner voice that’s not verbal voice of our mind. It’s our heart’s voice, our soul’s voice, our body intuition, our gut feeling. I’m putting that all in one category. And that has such great value because that’s actually about 70 % of our wisdom is down there. 30 % of our navigation is more up here.
but we rely more on this or we think we are. But much of our decision and attunement and wisdom comes from here. If we attune and give it the space, the reverence and the awareness that it needs. So then I take them through a process where we ask that very discomfort, that contraction, that something that’s off or something feels stuck, we give it qualities. What shape, where do you feel this?
And then we ask that, what’s its goal for us? What does it want us to achieve? To realize, to attain. And this continues to open in our being and then the beautiful thing is when we get to the top of that, if you will, expansion, the very thing that was bothering us, the wisdom comes from within us and we have our own realignment within our own being. So rather than a cognitive approach, I like to take this
deep body level approach to unravel the wisdom, that’s actually then the person, the client has their own answer. They know exactly what to do next. They know exactly how to implement it. And then I’ll ask questions regarding implementation and grounding into reality. Like, okay, how are gonna live this truth in our life? And then we, and I hold them accountable to it. And that’s how we make really rapid progress.
CeeJay Barnaby (32:37)
When you have groups and they meet as peers, how do you turn comparison into communion?
Satyen Raja (32:48)
Comparison. This is one of the enemies of the warrior’s age. And it’s the biggest enemy you have inside yourself and we have in ourselves. one of the fun things I do is I actually have when we do group sessions, we do fun out loud. I ask everyone in a fun humorous way, go ahead and what are you comparing yourself to? And is there anyone you’re comparing yourself and why? And so I might say, well,
I’m going, well, I know that Bob there, he’s like made 10 times more money than I, and ⁓ I’m comparing, should be where he, I should have been there in my age and he’s so younger than me. And then, and then, everyone says their own version and becomes really hilarious. We lay out our, ⁓ the dirty eggs on the ground because no one is free of this, everyone.
CeeJay Barnaby (33:32)
Ha ha.
Satyen Raja (33:44)
And then what happens, and it might not be someone in the room, it could be an icon, a figurehead, but then what happens is, then the person who’s been pointed out, you say, what’s the gift you have to give? Well, what I want to share with you is, the reason I’ve made this money at a young age is, and how you can too. So we turn the comparison into something that’s separating you into a gift and a mentoring and a co-coaching.
for each other. So the very thing that we suppress is the very gift that we have to give.
CeeJay Barnaby (34:20)
fostering connection.
Satyen Raja (34:23)
Yeah,
another softer Zen method.
CeeJay Barnaby (34:26)
Don’t have to get the stick out with that, so it’s good. So what role do dyadic practices play and when are they superior to solo meditation or journaling?
Satyen Raja (34:40)
I don’t know if they’re, ⁓ I think all of those are daily practices. All of it, I think, and from my experience, all of them is valuable. You gotta find your Tao, your pleasure. What really works for me is ⁓ I like to start off the morning with meditation. I wake up, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, and I do a meditation. And for me, the meditation is a letting go.
grace meditation a surrender meditation to the higher power So all I do is I listen to some beautiful sacred song or I read some scripture I find something that’s moving to my soul and then I just surrender I say you know what I got the rest of the day for my will I’m gonna give you this hour to tune into what your will is What’s thy will be done? And so I tune in I just let go sometimes I feel like
my mind’s so busy but I keep letting go and surrendering. So I don’t try to steal my mind, I’m just in a state of surrender. I just let whatever come up, thoughts, emotions, body sensations, noise, I just surrender it. And then that deep surrender after that, however minutes I wanna do that meditation, then all these other practices really are powerful. But you’ve set the stage not in doing, but in letting go.
And from that letting go, all now your doings will flower from this place of deep stillness. Not neurotic, gotta get it, gotta get it. It’s coming from stillness. And then guess what? Then the fruits of that stillness through your action magnify stillness and peace.
CeeJay Barnaby (36:18)
Yeah.
It’s a good feedback loop. How do you measure intangible gains like presence, clarity and trust so teams can track their own progress?
Satyen Raja (36:30)
Yes.
We actually do subjective ratings with each other. So in our team trainings, we might sit across from each other like this. Okay, so are you up for a hot seat with me for about a minute? Okay, so on a scale of, we barely know each other well, we’ve had a nice immediate connection. So on a scale of one to 10 in terms of trustability, I would give you an eight out of 10. And why I give you an eight out of 10 is because you’ve been very present.
CeeJay Barnaby (36:53)
Yeah, go for it.
Satyen Raja (37:09)
You seem intelligent, I just get a sense of deep embodied wisdom from a life well lived. And I get that there’s goodness in your heart and that you wouldn’t jerk me around, I just sense that. To get to a 10, I would just need more time to spend with you and to know you deeper, that’s about it. Okay, so now your turn. You’re gonna give me a number one to 10 and I don’t care if you give me a two in front of the whole world, doesn’t matter, all right?
CeeJay Barnaby (37:35)
I would sit you between eight and nine as well, too, because I really appreciate the way that you’re sharing. The wisdom is embodied, obviously, and your understanding comes from a place of truth and authenticity. And to me, that’s most important. I hear your truth and I know you’ve lived it.
Satyen Raja (37:52)
and say to get to a 10.
CeeJay Barnaby (37:55)
Get to a 10, I’d have to come study with you, think.
Satyen Raja (37:59)
All right, there we go. So thank you, my friend. they seem confronting, but imagine getting the same reflection from two, three, four, five of your peers, teammates. We do this with many dimensions and guess what? The growth journey is accelerated rapidly because we get real. It’s not looking at a wall and listening to notes and falling asleep to the next speaker.
CeeJay Barnaby (38:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Satyen Raja (38:25)
And then more things to remember. Do I need to remember green, YPNG? What else do I gotta remember? Rather than remembering, we get people to be in real relating with real exercises so then the experience like this is embodied and it’s immediate and you learn. So we had that mutual recognition. Imagine some person getting six, seven, six from three people and they all had something congruent to share in their own way.
CeeJay Barnaby (38:42)
Mm.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Satyen Raja (38:54)
That person is going go, wow, there’s some good learning here for me. And it’s given in a, it’s given not in a reprimanding way. It’s given with here’s a number and here’s what you’re doing well. And hey, this is what it’s going to take to get to a 10 in my books.
CeeJay Barnaby (38:58)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, makes it more practical and engaging.
Satyen Raja (39:15)
Yes, and fun and at the end of the day, there’s more camaraderie, which is the magic. It’s the magic sauce that used to be in the old days, you know, all for one, one for all the musketeers, right? You know, in the companies I’ve worked in, some have spacklings, some have it with one team, but not in another team. Some are in disaster with their team dynamics. Everyone just doesn’t like each other and are so siloed and are
CeeJay Barnaby (39:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Satyen Raja (39:44)
just flat and you can see it in the outcomes. But once you fire up that magic, that human dynamic in a family, in your own self, in an organization, I mean, you become unstoppable, right?
CeeJay Barnaby (39:58)
How do you coach high achievers to bring tenderness into hard conversations without losing their decisiveness?
Satyen Raja (40:08)
That’s really good.
The Lotus Sword is the symbol of the warrior sage in my company. The sword represents truth. The lotus represents love and consciousness.
And so, as leaders, sometimes we have to make very powerful, very quick, very decisive decisions. Sometimes you have to communicate in a very direct way. One of my old spiritual teachers, Anjali, she said to me, the truth said without love is a lie.
So I could hammer someone, but if it’s with all this negative charge, then we’re adding all this stuff and it distorts the message. So the most important thing that we share is make genuine contact with the other. Get on their side. Even if it’s someone you have to dismiss and they weren’t working out for you, or you know it’s time for them to move on for whatever reason, it’s not a fit in those.
challenging situations. Connect with them. Get on their side. Still feel what’s their life about? What do they value? What do they wish to get out of life? And aim with compassion to speak in a way directly, cleanly, without fluffing around. Be direct. Get what you need to say across and communicate that. And trust
that truth said with care, truth said with care will land. Truth said without care will always be rejected. You’ll always get fingers, and even if you say truth with care, some people might come back with a rejection, with a retort, with a wall. But at least you in your own standard know that you gave it with care and cleanness. again, that’s a cultivation and art and something to drill, but the essence I wanted to share.
CeeJay Barnaby (42:13)
Mm hmm. Powerful. So what signals would tell you that a leader or growing warriors home life needs attention before their business can grow?
Satyen Raja (42:26)
I’ve lived through this. Okay. That’s why I’m mentoring business leaders because I almost lost my wife and kids with a spectacular career being teaching around the world with thousands of people and starving my own wife and my children’s attention. And I got to work. I got to be present on that forever because I am a driven man. So I got to be present to that.
CeeJay Barnaby (42:30)
He
Satyen Raja (42:56)
But I’ll tell you something, years ago I almost drowned in an accident. I had this wake up call in Hawaii. was in the middle of teaching a couples retreat with my wife and halfway through I was challenging the men to go out in the ocean with me farther and farther and I was trying to swim up on this crazy perch and I got tossed into this area called the washing machine. It’s like a whirlpool of
treacherous lava rock and I almost died and It was a miracle how I survived. It’s literally a miracle like Everyone has been ended up theirs passed Some I got spit back on the shore and after that I went holy shit, and I got this deep ⁓ Rescripting of my being My ego got ass-whooping got a drowning okay, but
And I said, you know what, what’s most important? And then I looked at all my businesses. looked at stuff and I went, you know, there’s a lot of stuff here that I need to simplify in my life. And I started simplifying the structure, the form. I tried new things to simplify my life. And now I’ve created a life of really simplicity where I’m a servant to positive impact businesses and investors and founders. And I’m a guide.
to things that are gonna better the world in a good way in many dimensions, which is my heart’s calling. And I don’t know if I would have evolved unless I had that ass-whipping. And so I think what I wanna share about that is it’s okay to, as my Kung Fu master said to me a long time ago, it’s better to be humble all the time than to be humiliated all at once.
CeeJay Barnaby (44:35)
Hmm
So many good truths in this one I can tell you.
Satyen Raja (45:00)
So
I try to live by that. fail often, but I try to live by that. And I think as leaders, I really feel this sense of spine with heart. The old school leader was a lot of spine, less heart. The new wave, new age school leader, a lot of heart, but we’ve lost the spine. And so if we have spine and heart, I believe that’s the evolution that’s calling us now.
We can be the best of yin and yang.
CeeJay Barnaby (45:34)
How do you teach abundance without feeding greed?
Satyen Raja (45:46)
Really beautiful questions you’re asking, CJ.
Greed is our ego’s desire to stay safe. And it shows up as the scarcity of less or the scarcity of greed. So behind greed is scarcity.
There’s a scarcity within and it doesn’t matter if the person has a lot of money, many, many millions of dollars, billions of dollars. If they’re driven by what looks outwardly as greed, greed is disguised scarcity. Inside their ego feels not enough, not worthy enough. They weren’t given the love, the attention, the praise, the acknowledgement of who they were as a youngster or as a child. And so they develop this shell, this
shell that drives them, this personality, these identities they’ve developed that drives them, but it’s really underneath it is scarcity. And it’s also the other end. And so when people, and when I work with leaders and I go, okay, let’s go deep into this. Where do you feel scarce? What are you fearful of losing? What’s the worst thing that you can lose? Tell me what are you scared of losing? It’s a very confrontive question. For me, I’m scared of losing my…
Other than I’m my immediate family and loved ones, I’m talking material. Let’s just skip to material right now. But I do confront them with loved ones too. If I were to feel what I’m fearful of losing my home. I love it here and I do my retreats here. I’m fearful of that. I’ve scarce and I, and so, so this is my work to do. Cause the interesting thing is all these unconscious.
impulses that are sourced in scarcity that show up as fear then show up as greed in its megalomaniacal form.
They self-destruct. They always self-destruct. Scarcity always self-destructs. So we’ve got to get to the heart of it. And what’s happening, I can give you an example. One of my long-time revered clients, he had a stagnation in his company for 12 years and getting funding and crossing the finish line, getting it put out there, incredible technology.
CeeJay Barnaby (48:00)
you ⁓
Satyen Raja (48:17)
just struggle after struggle. And then when he engaged me, and the first thing I started off with was his scarcity patterns.
comes from.
Ireland and He didn’t want to break away from his he didn’t want his fellow brothers to think look He’s become a rich guy and not one of us now
And so he was subconsciously repelling on many levels and sabotaging on subtle levels abundance and this work coming on. And you wouldn’t do that consciously, you’d think, that’s stupid, why you ever do that? But our unconscious is huge, it’s big. It affects, even it can override and mostly is overriding our conscious logic of why we would ever do that.
CeeJay Barnaby (48:56)
Hmm
Satyen Raja (49:11)
And so when I went into it and we transformed that scarcity through our methods and our transformational methods, that scarcity turned totally around and within like a year and a half, he had a very powerful exit, multi-million dollar exit, and the technology has now come out into the world. And the mission of this technology is basically creating a world that doesn’t break down. You can sense when…
technology or mechanical engineering is going to break down way in advance so we can avoid the major accidents that happen. And so ⁓ the shift within and to go into the heart of scarcity is what every great leader, it’s a worthy task to do. Because the paradox is when we come up through the other side, we start to have a type of wealth and we become magnetically wealthy.
because we feel wealthy, we feel complete now. And then we start to have more gratitude for what we already have. So when you want what you already have, you start getting more of what you want. But if we’re always, I don’t have enough, then that hungry ghost can never, never be filled.
CeeJay Barnaby (50:21)
Yes.
Where do you see spiritual bypass showing up among successful founders and how do call that forward?
Satyen Raja (50:39)
There’s a trend with plant medicines of which I’m a well 35 year master facilitator of and trained hundreds and hundreds of facilitators way before this was known. And so I’m a deep advocate of this in context of sacred plant medicines, ayahuasca, psilocybin, many different master teacher plants in the right context with right mastership.
CeeJay Barnaby (50:55)
you
Satyen Raja (51:09)
right you know there has to be a depth to this there’s a lot of bypassing where people go for plant medicine ceremonies ⁓ and even if the people who wear the traditional garb and even have the indigenous background may not be scrupulous maybe shallow in their depth or their understanding or maybe coming from a voodoo type tradition where it’s more like wizardry wars than deep spiritual enlightenment because we don’t know in the west the difference between depth and
beginner than anyone seems potent to us if they have the right spiritual language or are flowery in some way. This is the spiritual bypass. Plant medicine spiritual work is meant to make you a stronger warrior. It’s not meant as a relief from the struggles or life nor is it meant in on its own to be a master teacher. It’s they are master revealers.
You must take your lotus sword in your own hand, take the reigns of self responsibility, self creation, take the wisdom you get from these realms and instead of bypass it, vow not to do the next, it could be 10 years from now, the next ceremony until you’ve implemented and embodied what you’ve learned on this round. And so that’s the spirit, any meditation, any spiritual endeavor,
where we know more wisdom than we’re living, we’re already are bypassing. We’re looking for more peak states rather than grounding peak experience of life. And this is the evolution of the wisening of the spiritual path of leadership is we must now cultivate the next stage, which I believe is peak existence, living ⁓ a harmonious life of equilibrium with our faith.
CeeJay Barnaby (52:49)
you
Satyen Raja (53:06)
our family, our finances, our fitness, and our fun, and philanthropy, and fucking, and whatever else you want to put in there, okay?
CeeJay Barnaby (53:16)
You
Are there any single practices that you recommend that reduce reactivity during rapid growth phases?
Satyen Raja (53:27)
The first inner psychological one is make a note what are the things that you have the most charge with.
One to ten. Okay, that teammate, this situation, write it down. What’s got you the most? What do you have the most emotional charge, the most tension with? Okay, then scan that, feel that, magnify that feeling. Magnify, don’t suppress it. Turn it up. And paradoxically, the more you turn up the images, the thoughts, the emotions and the body sensations, and the more you see the end of it, the problem, go to the end of it.
Don’t think positive, think worst. What’s the worst fricking thing that can happen? Go right to the end until it hurts in your imagination. Images, thoughts, then that cleanses you of the worst thing. And at the end you go, well, that’s not too bad. And you brush yourself off energetically, mindset wise. And now you’ve lived out in your ego fear minds method of the worst thing that can happen and you’re still alone. You’re still okay. You’re fine.
And then what you do is you turn down the importance. So you know how there’s bass and treble and maybe mid-range on a basic ⁓ amplifier or audio or radio. Imagine importance is the bass. it’s like, it’s too, the bass is too loud. Turn. And I like to train my ⁓ CEOs in turning the bass of importance down.
It’s an inner practice. There’s many other subtle ones, psychological tension release, but this is a psychological one that you can do in the middle of anywhere in a boardroom. Just notice, I’m making this far too important. Relax importance. Or I’m making the closing the deal important. Just even that energy of excessive leaning in is making things too important. Someone else is going to lean away. The more you lean in, the more they lean away. But if you just lean into this, you’re not leaning in.
or leaning okay forget it i don’t give a shit lack of musical but the more you’re here you’re not leaning in or away that’s the energetic artistry and the the subtle black belt teaching i’m giving to the leaders are picking this up okay
CeeJay Barnaby (55:54)
Mmm. ⁓
Satyen Raja (55:55)
Lower the importance.
CeeJay Barnaby (55:58)
Yeah, it made me think of Carlos Castaneda again, just circling all the way back, ⁓ because he talks about in the books ⁓ how self-importance when it’s magnified too much, that’s when you get a petty tyrant. And they’re the worst people in the world because they think they’re doing good, but basically they’re focused on destroying everything without knowing it.
Satyen Raja (56:19)
Three
types of importance.
But actually, two types of importance, self-importance and importance on other stuff.
Importance of another stuff, that’s a lifelong cultivation to turn the dial on it down and when you do you become more tranquil, become Buddha-like, more Daoist, you become more harmonious and things come to you magically. Sounds paradoxical but they do. It’s just physics, metaphysics. Then self-importance has two flavors. The nasty one we know of megalomania.
Think so much of yourself, okay? Self-importance. That’s hiding deep insecurity. Anyone who’s showing up like that is hiding deep insecurity. Whether they know it or not. They’ve developed a false identity of this self-angrandizing version. The insidious version is self-diminishment. That’s the other side of self-importance. Self-importance also shows up as I’m not good, I’m not worthy.
CeeJay Barnaby (57:25)
Yeah.
Satyen Raja (57:30)
I’m just a peon. I’m just a little… ⁓
CeeJay Barnaby (57:34)
That’s the inner asshole. I call it.
Satyen Raja (57:35)
Yes, you got it.
You got it. So either one, the self-angrandizing or the self-diminishing, when we see and catch ourselves in any of those and learn to come to our center and not be a slave of either one of those mindsets or those identities, and we break out of that.
Power, that’s enlightened power.
CeeJay Barnaby (58:02)
So we’ve come to the end of the podcast. I think that’s a great place to end right there. That’s perfect. Enlighten Power is what everyone is actually searching for without even knowing it as far as I’m concerned. And look, how can people find you and your work and engage with you?
Satyen Raja (58:18)
My website is warriorsage.com. I’m on Instagram. I’m on all the social media, LinkedIn, Satyan Raja. And what I always love to do is those of you who have been moved, inspired, if you’re a business leader and you would like some advisory, some consulting, you want to reflect something by me, just hit me up. My email is satyanowarsage or reach me on any of my channels and I’d happy to be a ear and give you some.
reflection from my purview.
CeeJay Barnaby (58:50)
Excellent. Thank you, Sartjan, for all that you’ve shared. I’m sure there’s some people out there that will get great benefit from this. And for the people that need that little bit of tuning, they’re just waking up to the, probably going, wow, wow, wow. Okay, so thank you. Appreciate it.
Satyen Raja (59:04)
A true joy,
CJ, a true joy. And I look forward to hosting you and welcome you to Ixtalan. We’ll have our journey. Okay. All right.
CeeJay Barnaby (59:12)
I’d love to do that.
All right. I’ll just say goodbye to the listeners.
An awesome talk with Satyan just now. I really love all that he shared there and it actually prompts me to get back into the books of Carlos Castaneda and to ⁓ maybe even seek out a martial arts teacher myself. think that I may actually have to get over to do his course because I it sounds to me like it’s be right on point. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, please like and subscribe. If you’re on YouTube, that’d be very appreciated. And if you’re on a podcast app.
best thing you can do for me is give me five stars and say something nice. And that’d be very appreciated. If you think a friend should hear this episode, please share that to them now. And thank you so much for listening until next episode. It’s bye for now.
