THE WARRIOR’S WAY
By Don Juan Matus
as told to Don Carlos Castaneda
WARRIORS
If you really feel your spirit is distorted you should fix it-purge it, make it perfect, because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit is to seek death, and that is the same as to seek nothing, since death is going to overtake us regardless of anything. To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood.
My benefactor said that when a man embarks on the paths of sorcery he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been forever left behind. That knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive. The first thing he ought to do, at that point, is to want to become a warrior, a very important step and decision.
A warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance; then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain his balance.
There is no flaw in the warrior's way. Follow it and your acts cannot be criticized by anyone.
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 either as a blessing or a curse. A warrior must be calm and collected and never lose his grip. 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.
You hinge everything on the feeling that everything is too much for you. No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to change that. It doesn't jibe with the life of a warrior.
All of us go through the same shenanigans. The only way to overcome them is to persist in acting like a warrior. The rest comes of itself and by itself. The rest is knowledge and power. Men of knowledge have both. And yet none of them could tell how they got to have them, except that they kept on acting like warriors and at a given moment everything changed.
A warrior must be fluid and must shift harmoniously with the world around him whether it is the world of reason or the world of will.
The most dangerous part of that shifting comes forth every time the warrior finds that the world is neither the one nor the other. I was told that the only way to succeed in that crucial shifting was by proceeding in one's actions as if one believed. In other words the secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing. But obviously a warrior cannot just say he believes and let it go at that. That would be too easy. To just believe would exonerate him from examining his situation. A warrior, whenever he has to involve himself with believing, does it as a choice, as an _expression of his innermost predilection. A warrior doesn't believe, a warrior has to believe.
Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, because the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.
Any warrior can become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he can be a man of knowledge.
But you want to find the meaning of life. A warrior doesn’t care about meanings. If Lucas lived like a warrior--and he had a chance to, as we all have a chance to--he would set his life strategically. Thus if he couldn't avoid an accident that crushed his ribs, he would have found means to offset that handicap, or avoid its consequences, or battle against them. If Lucas were a warrior he wouldn't be sitting in his dingy house dying of starvation. He would be battling to the end.
You must cultivate the feeling that a warrior needs nothing. You say you need help, help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. I have tried to teach you that the real experience is to be a man, and that what counts is being alive; life is the little detour that we are taking now. Life itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.
A warrior understands this and lives accordingly; therefore one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being a warrior.
wolf singing in dark forest by Daniela Musolino
If a warrior needs solace he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped; by talking he's merely relieving himself of his pressure. That is, providing that the warrior is given to talking; if he's not he tells no one. But you're not living like a warrior altogether. Not yet anyway. And the pitfalls that you encounter must be truly monumental. You have all my sympathy.
A warrior makes his own mood. You didn't know that.
The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less a warrior.
Self-pity doesn't jibe with power. The mood of a warrior calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning himself. It's a difficult technique. It is required that you hold onto yourself and let go of yourself at the same time. That's what I call the mood of a warrior. It's convenient to always act in such a mood. It cuts through the crap and leaves one purified. One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act. Otherwise one becomes distorted.
There is no power in life that lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You whine and complain and feel that everyone is making you dance to their tune. You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. There is no power in your life. What an ugly feeling that must be.
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 average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You're after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness means being impeccable in one's actions and feelings.
A warrior cannot be helpless, or bewildered, not under any circumstances. For a warrior there is time only for his impeccability; everything else drains his power, impeccability replenishes it.
warrior woman
Impeccability is to do your best in whatever you're engaged in.
The key to all these matters of impeccability is the sense of having or not having time. As a rule of thumb, when you feel and act like an immortal being that has all the time in the world you are not impeccable; at those times you should turn, look around, and then you will realize that your feeling of having time is an idiocy. There are no survivors on this earth.
A warrior is never idle and never in a hurry.
A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing, and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man has abandoned himself and is no longer a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.
A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts. There will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.
Vixen&GL-pencil_jpg
Life for a warrior is an exercise in strategy.
You are aware of everything only when you think you should be; the condition of a warrior, however, is to be aware of everything at all times. A warrior is never available; never is he standing in the road, waiting to be clobbered. Thus he cuts to a minimum his chances of the unforeseen. What you call accidents are, most of the time, very easy to avoid, except for fools who are living helter-skelter.
A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. But 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.
The mood of a warrior is not so far-fetched for yours or any body's world. You need it in order to cut through all the guff.
African American woman at NBLF 2010 by Bab Kuroji Ntu-Patrick
To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of the warrior spirit. It takes power to do that.
A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret, but as a living challenge.
It takes time for every one of us to understand that point and fully live it. I, for instance, hated the mere mention of the word "humbleness." I'm an Indian and we Indians have always been humble and have done nothing else but lower our heads. I thought humbleness was not in the warrior's way. I was wrong! I know now that the humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of a 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 for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.
That's why I don't understand what masters feel like. I know only the humbleness of a warrior, and that will never permit me to be anyone's master.
You like the humbleness of a beggar. You bow your head to reason.
homeless woman on the streets
A warrior is always ready. To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born a reasonable being. We make ourselves into the one or the other.
It's your duty to put your mind at ease. Warriors do not win victory by beating their heads against the walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over the walls; they don't demolish them.
The spirit of the warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his will is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.
This is your world. You are a man of that world. And out there, in that world is your hunting ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind, or he doesn't feel insulted when he is used and taken himself.
A warrior selects the items that make his world. He selects deliberately, for every item he chooses is a shield that protects him from the onslaughts of the forces he is striving to use. A warrior would use his shields to protect himself from his ally, for instance.
The average man, who is equally surrounded by those inexplicable forces, is oblivious to them because he has other kinds of special shields to protect himself. Look around you. People are doing that which people do. Those are their shields. Whenever a sorcerer has an encounter with any of those inexplicable and unbending forces we have talked about, his gap opens, making him more susceptible to his death than he ordinarily is; we die through that gap, therefore if it is open one should have his will ready to fill it; that is if one is a warrior. If one is not a warrior, like yourself, then one has no other recourse but to use the activities of daily life to take one's mind away from the fright of the encounter and thus allow one's gap to close.
A warrior encounters those inexplicable and unbending forces because he is deliberately seeking them, thus he is always prepared for the encounter.
angelic being from album lacuna have haud voluntas by Procer Octavis Branch
I personally believe that to be a warrior is more suitable than anything else. Therefore I have endeavored to show you those forces as a sorcerer perceives them, because only under their terrifying impact can one become a warrior. To see without first being a warrior would make you weak; it would give you a false meekness, a desire to retreat; your body would decay because you would become indifferent. It is my personal commitment to make you a warrior so you won't crumble.
I have heard you say time and time again that you are always prepared to die. I don't regard that feeling as necessary. I think it is a useless indulgence. A warrior should be prepared only to battle. I have also heard you say that your parents injured your spirit. I think the spirit of man is something that can be injured very easily, although not by the same acts you yourself call injurious. I believe your parents did injure you by making you indulgent and soft and given to dwelling.
There is nothing in this world that a warrior cannot account for. You see, a warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.
A warrior treats everything with respect and does not trample on anything unless he has to. A warrior never turns his back to power without atoning for the favors received. In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior, not a whimpering child. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees, only to realize that nothing matters.
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