we live in a time when people are generally uncomfortable with the warrior form of masculine energy and for some good reasons. Women especially are uncomfortable with it because they have often been the most direct victims of it in its shadow form around the planet. Warfare in our Century has reached such monstrous and pervasive proportions that aggressive energy itself is looked upon with deep suspicion and fear. All we have to do is glance over the history of our species, a history which has been defined in large part by War. We see warrior traditions in nearly every civilization. In our centuries, the whole globe has been convulsed by two world wars, a third and final one despite the recent East-West fall still hangs over our heads. Some psychologists the human aggressiveness emerging out of infantile rage, the child's natural reaction to abuse on a massive scale. We believe there's much truth to this view, especially in the light of the prevalence of what we will be calling the Shadow Warrior. But we believe that the warrior should

not be identified with human rage in any simple way. Quite the opposite. We also believe that this masculine energy form persists because the warrior is a basic building block of masculine psychology. It is true that Warrior energy often goes awry. When this happens, the results are devastating. But we still have to ask ourselves why it is so present within us. What is the Warrior's function in the evolution of human life, and what is his purpose in the psyches of individual men? What are the Warrior's positive qualities, and how can they help us in our personal lives and in our work? [Music] We have already mentioned aggressiveness as one of the Warrior's characteristics. Aggressiveness is a stance toward life that rouses, energizes, and motivates. It pushes us to take the offensive and to move out of a defensive position about light tasks and problems. Proper aggressiveness in the right circumstances, strategically advantageous to the goal at hand, is already half the battle. Thank you. How does the warrior know what aggressiveness is appropriate under the

circumstances. He knows through clarity of thinking, through discernment, the warrior is always alert. He's always awake. He knows how to focus his mind and his body. As Don Juan, the Yaqui Indian warrior sorcerer, and Carlos Castaneda's journey to Ixtlan says, a warrior knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. At the function of his clarity of mind, he is a strategist and a tactician. He can evaluate his circumstances and then adapt himself to the situation. The warrior knows when he has the force to defeat his opponent by conventional means and when he must adopt an unconventional strategy. He accurately assesses his own strength and skill. Here is a difference between the warrior and the human. The hero, as we've said, does not know his limitations. He is romantic about his invulnerability. The warrior, however, through his clarity of thinking, realistically assesses his capacities and his limitations in any given situation. The warrior traditions all affirm that in addition to training, what enables a warrior to reach clarity of thought is

living with the awareness of his own imminent death, the warrior knows the shortness of life and how fragile it is. A man under the guidance of the warrior knows how few his days are. Rather than depressing him, this awareness leads him to an outpouring of life force and to an intense experience of his life that is unknown to others. Every act counts; each deed is done as if it were the last. This scent of the imminence of death energizes the man, accessing the warrior energy to take decisive actions. This means that he engages life, she never withdraws from it. He doesn't think too much because thinking too much can lead to doubt, and doubt to hesitation, and hesitation to inaction. Inaction can lead to losing the battle. [Music] The man who is a warrior avoids self-consciousness as we usually define it. His actions become second nature; they become unconscious reflex actions, but they are actions he has trained for through the exercise of enormous self-discipline. [Music] Part of what goes into acting decisively

in any life situation, along with aggressiveness, clarity of thinking, and the awareness of one's own death. Just training the warrior energy is concerned, the skill, power, and accuracy, and with control both inner and outer psychological and physical. Unlike the hero's actions, the Warrior's actions are never overdone, never dramatic for the sake of drama. The warrior never acts to reassure himself that he is as potent as he hopes he is. His control is first of all over his mind and his attitude. If these are right, the body will follow. The warrior has an unconquerable spirit, he has great courage, he is fearless, he takes responsibility for his actions, and he has self-discipline. Discipline means that he has the rigor to develop control and mastery over his mind and over his body, that he has the capacity to withstand pain both psychological and physical. He is willing to suffer to achieve what he wants to achieve. The warrior energy also shows what we can call a transpersonal commitment. His loyalty is to something, a cause, a god.

people a cast a nation larger than individuals though that transpersonal loyalty may be focused through some important person like a king. In the Arthurian stories, Lancelot, though fiercely devoted to authoring to Guinevere, is ultimately committed to the ideal of chivalry and to The God Who Lies behind such things as Noble Quest and the lifting up of the oppressed. Of course, because of his love for Guinevere, Lancelot unwittingly acts to destroy the object of his transpersonal commitment, Camelot, but he does so because he has encountered the paradoxically personal and transpersonal goal of romantic love. This transpersonal commitment reveals a number of other characteristics of the warrior energy. First, it makes all personal relationships relative, that is, it makes them less Central than the trans personal commitment. Thus, the psyche of a man who is adequately accessing the warrior is organized around his Central commitment. This commitment eliminates a great deal of human pettiness, living in the light of lofty ideals and spiritual realities such as God.

democracy. Freedom, or any other worthy transpersonal commitment, so alters the focus of a man's life that petty squabbling and personal ego concerns no longer matter much. There is a story about a samurai attached to the household of the great Lord. His Lord had been murdered by a man from a rival house, and the samurai was sworn to avenge his Lord's death. After tracking the Assassin for some time, after great personal sacrifice and hardship, and after braving many dangers, the samurai found the murderer. She drew his sword to kill the man, but in that instant, the Assassin spat in his face. The samurai stepped back, his heat restored, and turned and walked away. Why he walked away? Because he was angry that he had been spat on. He would have killed the Assassin in that moment out of his own personal anger, not out of his commitment to the ideal his Lord represented. His execution of the man would have been out of his ego and his own feelings, not out of the warrior within. So, in order to be true to his Warrior calling, he had to

walk away and let the murderer live. The Warrior's loyalty then and his sense of Duty are to something Beyond and other than himself and his own concern. The hero's loyalty, as we have seen, is really to himself, to impressing himself with himself, and to impressing others. In this connection too, the man accessing the warrior is a second. He lives a life exactly the opposite of most human lives. He lives not to gratify his personal needs and wishes or his physical appetite, but to Bear the unbearable in the service of the transpersonal goal. We know the legends of the founders of the great faiths, Christianity and Buddhism. Jesus had to resist the temptation statement pictured to him in the wilderness, and the Buddha had to endure his three Temptations under the boat tree. These men were spiritual Warriors. The man who is a warrior is devoted to his cause even unto death. This Devotion to the transpersonal ideal or goal, even to the point of personal Annihilation, leave the man to another of the Warriors' characteristics. He is emotionally distant as long as he

is in the Warrior. This does not mean that the man accessing the warrior in his fullness is cruel, just that he does not make his decision and implement him out of emotional relatedness to anyone or anything, except his ideal. He is, as Don Juan says, unavailable or inaccessible. As he says, to be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly, with emotional detachment. This attitude is part of the clarity of the Warrior's thinking too. She looked at his past, his decision, and his actions just passionately and unemotionally. The warrior is often a destroyer, but the positive Warrior energy destroys only what needs to be destroyed in order for something new and fresh, more alive, and more virtuous to appear. Many things in our world need destroying: corruption, tyranny, oppression, injustice, obsolete and despotic systems of government, corporate hierarchies that get in the way of the company's performance, unfulfilling lifestyle and job situations, and in the very act of destroying, often the warrior energy is building new civilizations, new commercial, artistic, and spiritual ventures for humankind new.

relationships. When the water energy is connected with the other mature masculine energies, something truly splendid emerges. When the warrior is connected with the King, he is consciously stewarding the realm and his decisive actions, clarity of thinking, discipline, and courage are in fact created and generative. The Warrior's interface with a magician archetype is what enables him to achieve such mastery and control over himself. It is what allows him to channel and direct power to accomplish his goals. His relation to the lover energy gives the warrior compassion and a sense of connectedness with all things. The lover is the masculine energy that brings him back into relatedness with human beings and all their frailty and vulnerability. The lover makes the man under the influence of the warrior compassionate at the same time that he's doing his duty. When, however, the warrior is operating on his own, unrelated to these other archetypes, the results for the mortal man accessing even the positive Warrior. The warrior in his fullness can be disastrous. As we have said, the warrior in his pure

Form is emotionally detached. His transpersonal loyalty radically relativizes the importance of his human relationships.

THE WARRIOR ARCHETYPE: 10 Traits Every Warrior Needs to Embrace || Part 1

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