The Warrior's Way

Spirit is a force that pervades the universe, it is the force that rules and guides men’s lives and is available to everyone. But because of the limitations of our inherited notions of how we perceive the world, our connection to spirit is clouded to the point of being almost useless.

The Warrior’s Way is a strategy for polishing our connecting link with spirit. In that sense, it is a journey of return, a reawakening of our awareness of what it means to be alive, an effort to be sensitive to and respond to spirit’s directive, making available a world of magnificent possibility, and restoring ourselves to our natural heritage and rightful place as magical beings. 

The Warrior’s Way then becomes a course of action, to do battle with the forces of ignorance that deprive man of his power. It requires us to revamp our lives by altering our basic understanding and reaction to being alive. The elements of the world around us don’t change; the difference is in what we choose to emphasize and how we use them.

An example of this rearranging of focus is in the idea of death. Both the warrior and the average man consider death a dominant factor, impending and unavoidable. But a warrior treats death as a companion, an advisor, the great equalizer. Without a clear view of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty; the idea of death is what gives life its immediacy, its flavor; it is only because death is stalking us that the world is an unfathomable mystery.

Without the awareness of death, a warrior would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one’s ordinary time on earth into magical power. A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lustful.

(More on The Warrior’s Way and other facets of the teaching of don Juan are available in books by Carlos Castaneda. I suggest you start with Journey to Ixtlan.  Another good introduction to the material is my own novel, The Art of Terror and Wonder.)