Victor Villaseñor’s Interview with Jake Ducey: This is Jake Ducey, and I'm here with best-selling author Victor Villaseñor. I've just finished my book, Into the Wind, which is the story of overcoming and transformation. Victor, you were illiterate and now you're a best-selling author, and I'd like to ask you to please share about that process of overcoming. If you like to learn more, read this - Spiritual Solution You Must Try For 60 Seconds.
First and foremost, I had no intention of learning to read or becoming an author. I was just so full of confusion, anger, and hate, and I was here in South and Southern California, and I was so mad—I'm 19 years old, just about to turn 20—that I thought I was going to kill people, you know, be one of these people who go into a place and shoot up everybody.
So I packed my guns and ammunition here on the ranch, took off, and drove through Riverside, San Bernardino, and Las Vegas streets. George, Utah, turned left and went up into Idaho, then turned right and went into Wyoming. These antelopes ran across the road, and I slammed on the brakes. I jumped out, and I was prepared to just kill. It was so crazy, and I went running after him, and then I came up behind him.
I'd run around, and then I suddenly thought they were all so beautiful. There were snow-capped mountains, and I started crying because I realized at that moment that part of me was full of hate and rage, but part of me was full of love and beauty because of how I'd been raised by my indigenous grandmothers.
With The Eyes Of God, The Sun And Moon Come Up
When the sun comes up, that's the right eye of God; when the moon comes up, that's the left eye of God; and I said I need help from God. My grandmother said that we're all sent here; we're all five-pointed walking stars; we're all sent here to help God plant his or her on guard, If you like to learn more, read this - Pray For What You Want And Keep The Faith.
And I said I can't plant with all this hate and rage, so I didn't shoot him, and I'm walking away and I'm talking to myself, and I'm saying, “What am I going to do?” I'm just so full of hate; how can I plant any seeds? And at that moment, I slid off a mesa and found some white seashells, and I said, "White seashells here in Wyoming —does that mean the ocean used to be here?"
Thousands of years ago, at 6,000 feet, I found some Indian pottery, and I said, "Does that mean that there used to be an Indian village with a front?" Waterfront property and beachfront property? and then it hit me like a lightning bolt.
The Written Word Has Great Impact On Readers
All over the world, civilizations have come and gone. We don't know who built those hedges in England. What do they call the stones? What is it, the stone walls? And we don't know how the pyramids were built in Africa or the things in Peru. But we do know a lot about the Jews because they have a book called the Bible. At that moment, I realized that the written word is powerful, that it can influence people, that it can make a difference, and that the Bible gives the Jews a foundation so they don't panic, get full of rage, and be all confused like I was.
Then I realized I had to become a writer, and with that vision, I had the audacity to come home and ask my high school teacher how to become a writer. I've written about this in a book called How and Why I Became a Writer, and now I realize that every one of us has a purpose here on earth, and that purpose can be so incredible like mine that I can't read and become a writer, something that you can't do. Maybe that's exactly what you got to learn from musicians who are blind and become into music. If you like to learn more, read this - How To Pray To God | Law of Attraction.
There Is Something Amazing In Our Minds And Souls
There is something incredible inside our hearts and souls that, when we tap into it, makes overcoming anything easy. Does that make sense? So I was seeing the vision that allowed you to overcome once you saw where the purpose was taking you. It allows you to know how to overcome it because many people you know, especially young people who have lived here their whole lives, have said, "You can't do this; you can't do that; this isn't possible," and the overcoming process seems too grand for people to go beyond. Was it seeing the vision that allowed you to overcome?
The vision made everything seem possible. Nothing is impossible. Nothing's too grand because I had so much hate. And what am I going to do? Start killing people, or what am I going to do? That's a choice. Or am I going to pick up a pen and start making a difference by touching people's hearts and souls, and we will all come up?
I imagine every person who's ever thought of suicide or every person who's ever thought of killing somebody else wants to just get drugged out of their mind or drunk out of their mind because they can't stand it. If they take that moment and stop and breathe deeply at that moment, they can reach into parts of themselves where they've never reached before, and that's when we start touching our genius, and that's when we start teaching touching our greatness—to not commit suicide, to not kill people, to not go into a rage, to not take drugs, or whatever—to take that lonely, scary moment and do something magical with it.
Victor Villaseñor Wrote About Forgiveness
Into the wind, I write about forgiveness. I state that forgiveness is the alchemy of the soul, in which the feeling of possibilities returns to the human spirit. You said you had a lot of hate; was there a process of forgiveness of yourself and others that was creating this restriction in your body, and once you had this forgiveness, it opened up the space for this creativity and this vision to come through? The forgiveness didn't come for a lot of years; the decision to become a writer came, and then I started writing. If you like to learn more, read this - Spiritual Solution You Must Try For 60 Seconds.
As I wrote in the process of writing, the hate started going like there's a movie called Billy Elliot about a boy that wants to be a dancer, but his father wants to be a boxer Irish, and in the process of learning how to dance in this macho world, it's the process that makes the difference. There is no peace. There is no path to peace. Peace is the path, and it took about five years of writing without even knowing how to spell and then saying, "Well, if you don't know how to spell, look up the word." What a stupid thing if I can't spell! How am I going to look it up?
Life Has Many Curves, Ups And Downs
The most important thing is that life is full of twists and turns and ups and downs, and like when you yourself fell off a cliff and almost got killed, it was a turning point for you to come home and become a writer. Well, we all have to fall off more cliffs and almost break our necks, and we all have these things that cause us to open up and wake up, so you know something that I know.
A lot of people my age, and really people of all ages, deal with the idea that there's this consensus about who we are, what we're supposed to be, and what's possible, and first of all, it's not normally possible that someone who's illiterate becomes a writer, and second, coming from where you came from, it's really an impossibility, so was there a process? What was your process?
When people would say you can't be a writer, did they tell you you couldn't be a writer? You know, that's really important. When I came home and told my friends I'd decided to become a writer, they started laughing, like Billy, a neighbor here, who said, "Oh, come on, you can't spell anything, you can't write anything, and you didn't even do well in school.” I said, “Billy, stop it." “I've decided to become a writer; if you're a friend, please help me." I had to get rid of all my friends; only three of them stuck with me, including Ted Berlin, who became a cop. John Flo Tina became an airline pilot, and the other one—I forgot his name.
Stay Away From People Who Keep Bringing You Down
You've got to get away from people who keep knocking you down. I rented a dumpster in Mission Beach. I went six months without speaking down there to try to find that voice again, and on the dumpster it said it's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you aren't, and I was thinking wow, so I tried to find that drunk or that homeless person who wrote it, and then they said oh, that's the poet, he's up in San Francisco, and I said what's he doing up there riding on dumpsters?
So here's this guy that lives in San Francisco and comes down to San Diego for the winter, and he writes his poetry on dumpsters. I was thinking I never got to meet him, but you know that guy had found a niche, and on dumpsters he'd write these great things, and there's encouragement all over the world.
So it wasn't my friends that encouraged me, only a few of them; it was meeting people all over once you're in the search; once you've made that decision, things seem to come to you from all directions in the book that I just finished, which is called Why and How I Became a Writer.
Beginning Boldness Has Genius
I came back to my old English teacher, and I told him, "You know, I've decided to become a writer more than I thought." He was going to laugh because I got DS and I should have gotten FS, and he looked at me, and then he said and walked me across the classroom and showed me a poster up on the wall. It said, "Bye, Wolffe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe," the German writer, and said whatever you can do or dream you can do; beginning boldness has genius, magic, and power, and that's what I live by: whatever you can do or dream you can begin.
Don't pay attention to what anybody tells you; boldness has genius power and magic because what we're doing is walking around and listening to other people's opinions. Those frightened people kept us working on two cylinders, and when we finally jumped forward, we were working with all eight cylinders. We're incredible people with incredible opinions, and everything the world tells us about school only serves to bring us down.
I actually didn't pass my normal junior English class in high school, and now I'm here with you in that process, and I'm here living my dream, and for me, it was that exact thing. It was the beginning of the action, and I wasn't hearing that around me. Would you say that's really what it boils down to: did you flunk school? I didn't; that's a normal thing. You knew English; does that mean you flunked it? Well, then just say what your junior year was like; yeah, say yes, I think my junior year was like third grade twice; congratulations.
Speeding Into The Wind Takes Guts
So what does it mean to go into the wind? Speaking of this action, to go into the wind I think it's a wonderful statement that your book is the title because when you go into the wind, it's when the sails are picked up on a ship. It's when you raise yourself out of the water and start really moving, and then you don't go directly into the wind; you go three-quarters into it, and you pick up speed. Speeding into the wind takes guts, a decision, a focus on where you're going, and the flexibility to keep switching like you're simulating. That's a great title. Thankfully, what really intrigues me the most is the process of overcoming obstacles, which began once you realized you wanted to become a writer.
As A Writer, You Can See Your Vision And Dream Clearly
How about we hear about your five best sellers that you have? One of them is actually becoming an HBO series. How about the process? Were there rejections in the process? How about stuff like that? because we've heard about your illiteracy.
Actually, once you’re a writer at this stage, you see your dream clearly; you see the vision, but there are still things that happen. Once, I spoke to my old English teacher, Mr. Moffat, in Carlsbad, and I said, "How do I start to become a great writer?" And he said, "You're going to have to learn how to read," and I said, "Oh, you knew that I didn't know how to read," and I said, "We kind of figured it out after you were the chess champion of all the faculty."
I'm still getting F and D work," and I said, "How do I do that?" He said, “Go to the library and check out fourth-grade books and start with those.” and I said, “Well, that's kind of embarrassing to check out,” and he said, “Well, saints for your cousin, why to them?" But I lied to them, and he said, “Of course you know that's part of life." I was thinking, "Wow," so I went to the library and checked out books for my cousin from Mexico.
Rejection Was A Way Of Life, And Learn That Rejections Can Get Better
I started learning how to read with fourth-grade books, and then this little girl started watching me read once I got up to about seventh or eighth-grade books, which took a few months, and she said, “You want me to read that for you?” She's about six years old. I said, “What makes you think I can't reach you?” She said, “Well, you're mouthing every word.” So I'm going to the library, and she says, “I'll read it for you if you want." I said, “Okay, you read it,” but I figured you knew she was six or seven and could read. She read the whole thing fluently. So here's a seventh-grade book. She's six years old, so she can read better than I can.
The most important thing was that I had no ego. I had no fear. I wasn't going to let anybody talk me out of it, and I wrote for 10 years and had 265 rejections before I sold my first book, which was called Alabama, which they changed to Macho, so it's 265 publishers who rejected me again and again. I finally died when I finished a book. I'd make ten copies, xerox them, and send them to ten publishers, and then, when they came back, mail it out again. That way, rejection was a way of life, and I'd say, "God, I'm doing well this week."
Brag About Rejection Rather Than Being Afraid Of Rejection
I got eight rejections last week, but only got five, and then one time I sent it back to the same publisher, and the editor wrote back and said, “Very sneaky." I just rejected this book last month, and he said I really looked at it, and actually it's a pretty good book; you're getting better, so I started getting better rejections, and then somebody said how a rejection should be better, and I said when you have over a hundred rejections, you really learn that rejections can get better.
So I tell people not to be afraid of rejections. brag about rejection. I asked out twenty girls this month and was rejected twenty times. You just keep going and having fun, so you know you're speaking about fun, and you're making me laugh. What is the synergy between having humor about yourself and also about your failures? Why is that important?
Without humor, you're a dead duck. You've really got to laugh at yourself and at the world. I mean the world is upside-down, everything is a big crazy joke, and I mean like we're told and in Christianity we don't kill, then we put on a uniform, and all of a sudden onward Christian soldiers go kill everybody you can.
Everywhere In The Government, There Are Such Hypocritical Lies
There are such hypocritical lies everywhere in the government. The bankers are supposed to give this money to the people, but with our houses, they kept it all everywhere we looked. What I've learned is that when the sun rises, it is the right eye of God, and when the mother moon rises, it is the left eye of God, as my grandmother taught me when I was a child. God is always with us, and now God is not something you believe in; God is a verb; it's what you do.
I don't believe in God; I don't believe in anything over there, and the universe is good. Only I truly live like my grandmother would say: they lived with God; they lived with possibilities; they lived with the unknown. Once you're in tune with the unknown, no one becomes very small. What we know is only this big; the unknown is infinite, and once you're in tune with the unknown, which is infinite, no one is so little that they can take themselves that seriously, so staying in the known is limiting our capability of growth.
We think we know this much, and we think we know everything. It's only this much that we've learned in the last hundred years, and all these goodies that we've gotten, like cell phones and jet air, are gifts to us from our sister planets.
Anna Frank Believes That Humans Are Basically Good
My grandmother raised me by saying that we belong to eight sister planets, and our twin sister destroyed them. There are six sisters left, and they've all found harmony and peace. The question is whether there is intelligent life on other planets. The question has always been: When is there going to be intelligent life on this planet?
So I'd like you to please think of the five most influential people, whether they're authors or other people who've made a difference in your life, and instead of listing them, I'd like you to please tell me what you think the common thread between them is that allowed them to make a difference in your life and the lives of many others. What is the philosophy behind the list?
Anne Frank is the little Jewish girl that's locked in a room during the Nazi things, and she kept herself together by writing her diary, and the Germans have lost the war, and she writes, and she doesn't know that, but she writes that. She still believes that humans are basically good. They found her, they murdered her, they killed her, and yet she is a testament that no matter how awful things get, you don't give up on human beings because deep inside are good people. The majority of people all over the world are good people, and the testament that she left is just fantastic.
The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck, a writer who has had a significant impact on my writing, has a unique style of portraying the lives of ordinary people, particularly the workers, in his book The Grapes of Wrath. However, he has also written a lesser-known book called To an Unknown God, which unfortunately hasn't received much attention from readers.
In this book, Steinbeck delves into the spiritual beliefs of indigenous people, which is a fascinating subject that deserves more recognition. It's intriguing to see how Steinbeck explores spirituality in a different light, and it's a shame that this book hasn't been given the attention it deserves. I have had an impact on a considerable number of people, who have come in groups or blocks.
As someone who got a degree in philosophy, the intellectual contributions of the Greeks, Germans, and French have had a big effect on me. Throughout my experiences, I have found it difficult to fully accept the notion that every single one of them is suffering from a state of persistent false beliefs.
According To Victor Villaseñor, Confucius Is One Of The Greatest Writers
To me, one of the greatest writers of all time is Confucius. When he was about him and he wrote this little book and this little poem, he had been brought in by the emperor to be an administrator of a state, and he brought it to such flourishing greatness that everybody else got jealous until the emperor said, "Unless you get rid of Confucius, we're going to rage and then throw you out." So he got rid of Confucius, and as he was leaving his gates, they asked him, "Oh master, what are we going to do without you?" And he said, "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” That is writing at its best.
Now people say, “Oh no, that's English." They stole everything all over the planet, just like the Spaniards stole all the gold and everything. The English stole everything, including the literature and brilliance of other cultures; that's from Confucius, not the British.
The World's Intelligence, Brilliance, And Culture
What time has come on earth for us to start understanding that there's brilliance, intelligence, and all the cultures all over the world and stop thinking that Europe is the place? What is one thing that you would like to leave behind, especially for young people in this age where we hear more about impossibilities than possibilities? What's something you would tell somebody who is stuck, and maybe they don't even know what their creative expression is?
I do something with the audience when I give a talk. At the end of the talk, I invited two people up. I say I want a man and a woman, and the women always come running up. Finally, a man comes up, kind of scared, and then I take the hands of the woman and say, “I want you to learn two words in Spanish.” I say, "Wet your lips." Go ahead and wet them. They'll be flexible and round. That means to be affectionate and loving. I'll say I had a blast. They say I can't roll, but you can roll ours if you're wet with little rips and if you drink tequila — once I got him there.
I said that from now on, when you meet somebody, I will shake hands with them. I don't ever want you to ask somebody again, “How are you?” Because the truth is you don't want to know, and then they're going to say, “Fine,” and we've been very superficial from now on. You shake somebody's hand, you look into their eyes, into the pupil—the gateways into the soul—and you say, “Have a fantastic day and a great, juicy night.”
Uptight Breath Allows You To Relax Your Mind
People start cracking up and laughing. I don't do that for high schools that get dangerous, but I say that from college and up, and then I say, "Let's hug heart to heart," and I've moved the person this way so the hearts are against the heart, and I said, "Bend your knees," and now heart to heart hug me. And we hugged, and I said no, “Wiggle your ass, wiggle your ass,” and I said, “The reason we do that is wherever the ass goes, the brain follows.”
So I want all young people to know that an uptight breath allows you to relax your brain, so go with the flow of creation. So what I say is: dance, relax your ass and your brain, and start realizing that every day is a miracle.