The Warrior's Way

Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new year!

We arrive not just in a new year, but a new decade. No matter where we are, we all reflect. We all hope. We all look to better ourselves and be as complete as we can be.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Carlos Casteneda and his series of books in which he tells of his teachings by Yaqui magic man, Don Juan. (These tales are rumored to be false, but the lessons are valuable none the less.)The teachings of Don Juan are a road map to navigate the 2 realities we live in: The physical and the spiritual and how to transcend them both. The gist of it is that what we perceive to be magic & miracles is really a level of awareness that allows us to experience such things.

I have read the many of the books some 20 years ago (I really cannot believe I'm that old.)and they have helped me shape my understanding of the world we live in. I am posting an excerpt from one of the books (Please don't ask which book, it's been 20 years. Also, I'm re-posting this from a FaceBook posting and the specific book wasn't cited.) in the hopes that you, the readers, can get your awareness shifted and experience the miracles that are waiting for you.

Don Juan says:

"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.

A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.

A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything
needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges. The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That’s the warrior’s way.

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.

Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that’s all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.

The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious because he has everything to gain.

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.

If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it—purge it, make it perfect —- because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile… To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood."

Let’s jump over walls in 2010!

See you all at the events where miracles happen.

Danny Brookings,
President,
Make It Happen Ent.