The radicality of the heart

From the mood of the warrior

Excerpt from the book „The radicality of the heart“ From the mood of the warrior -Introductory thoughts on the work of Carlos Castaneda and the teachings of Don Juan.

The first enemy: Fear

You become a knower, as Don Juan says, when you have taken upon yourself the toils of learning and sincerely struggle to solve the mysteries surrounding knowledge and power. In this effort you will encounter the four natural enemies of man: fear, clarity, power and age. Don Juan: „When a man begins to learn, he is not clear about his goals. His resolution is poor; his intention is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never come, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning. He begins to learn slowly – step by step at first, then in great leaps. And soon his thoughts are jumbled. What he learns is not what he imagined, and so he begins to feel anxious. Learning is never what you expect.“ When you have begun to recapitulate your life, or as you might say, to put together a collection of the memorable events of your life, you pick up a thread. Following this, you gradually uncover the hidden motives of your life. And you will probably soon find out that it is fear that has always been at the center of your actions. The deeper you dive, the more you realize that the fear you direct inward is the same as the fear you direct outward. You are just as afraid of the things that you think you will find inside as you are of the unknown and new things that come to you through events or people. Already at this point many people who have set out on the path of knowledge break off and fail. The hurdle seems to be insurmountable, the threat too great, which begins to shake you to your foundations. Every shadow becomes a demon that seems to devour you.

The second enemy: Clarity

Perseverance finally proves to be the appropriate attitude to face the fear and the dangers it conjures. At the same time, you resist the almost overwhelming desire to dissipate, to numb yourself, or to let yourself go in any other way. At this point in your learning, you may feel that the path you have chosen is primarily one of endless endurance and endurance of feelings. The steadfastness with which you defy fear finally leads you to a point where it gives way and begins to dissolve. You have penetrated to its root and have looked at and understood it in every aspect. It ceases to be the leitmotif of your life. You are no longer fixed in it. You gain clarity about everything that happens within you and around you. The long-awaited clarity of thought is the new terrain on which you move. You gain an overview and a proverbial perspective that give you the unshakable feeling of being sure of yourself. You now know your desires and understand how to satisfy them. Since nothing seems to be hidden from you, you think you can foresee the next steps on the path of knowledge. Without realizing it, you have faced the second enemy. He forces you never to doubt or question yourself. The unknown has become a calculable quantity for you. While you could identify and confront fear as an open enemy, clarity is like an ambush because it gives you the supposed feeling of superiority.

Don Juan advises Castaneda to think, above all, that his lucidity is almost a mistake. If the warrior „gives in to this feigned power, he has been defeated by his second enemy, and he will play with learning. He will hurry when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should hurry. And he will play with learning until he ends, unable to learn anything else,“ Don Juan admonishes. If you don’t want to end up as a bored warrior or clown, in order to defeat clarity, you have no choice but to persistently defy it, just as you have defied fear – perhaps for many years. You will find that in the former struggle with fear you were able to gain its actual qualities for yourself: Mindfulness, prudence and circumspection. Connecting with these qualities now will be an important help in any case to pass the confrontation with clarity as well. You weigh each step carefully, with patience and prudence, knowing that your life depends on it. Clarity is only a point before your own eyes.

The Third Enemy: Power

The four enemies represent, as one might say, the four aspects of inertia. Inertia is the immoderate tendency of man to let himself go. Fear told you to run away and stop learning. If you have resisted its pull, you have become fearless, which means that your fear no longer hinders your learning. In this confrontation you gained clarity for yourself. This led you to believe that you had already reached the goal of being a knower. If you did not give in to this imaginary power and could finally unmask the clarity as a point before your own eyes, you begin to see. With seeing you meet the real power. At this point in his development, a warrior begins to see what is happening around him, he sees energetic reality. He knows how to direct, manipulate and use the forces surrounding him according to his ideas. Above all, he also sees where the assembly point of his fellow men is fixed. He can therefore deal with them as he pleases. He gets what he wants. Everything seems to be allowed and to serve the own advantage. A person who succumbs to the temptation of power becomes a tyrant. He pays homage to his self instead of overcoming it. His decision to claim power has cold-blooded him and ended his warriorship. To the extent that he places himself above things and other people, he loses his connection to them. Holding fast in all circumstances to a path that has heart, surrounding yourself from the very beginning with things that have heart, will remind you to make the right choices even in the most difficult circumstances. A warrior makes his own mood.

The Fourth Enemy: Age

The fourth enemy, old age cannot ultimately be defeated, as death waits at the end of every path. Age reveals to the warrior the essence of inertia. A warrior, however, resists his enemy to the last second in order to face death with complete alertness and awareness. He resists the senility of old age, the irrepressible urge to retire and the seductive desire to give in to fatigue. The one who gives in to fatigue loses everything he has gained in his life. Everything he thought he had overcome comes back to him – including fear. A warrior who resists old age is an epitome of dignity. Therein lies the paradox: only he who resists old age is perfected by it.

The Evil in All is the Desire to Please

2012″ -call of the HOPI- Indians

This call of the Hopi was transmitted to the shamans and sages of this world some years ago.
„We are in a raging cosmic river. It is so strong and powerful that many people will fear it. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will also feel that they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly for this reason. Know that the river has its purpose and destination. The Hopi Indian sages call for us to break away from the bank and be swept into the middle of the river. We are to hold our heads above the water to keep our eyes open for those who, like ourselves, float in the river with confidence and joy. At this time, we should not take anything personally and refer to ourselves alone. When we do, our spiritual journey and growth begins to stall. The time of the lone wolf is over. Orient yourselves to the group, to fellow human beings. Let’s eliminate „FIGHT“ from our vocabulary, from our consciousness. Everything we do in everyday life should be seen as a sacred act. Do not seek leaders apart from yourself. Regain your own power and keep it for your development. There is no more map, no more creeds and no more philosophies. From now on, the instructions come straight from the universe. The plan is revealed, millisecond by millisecond, invisibly, intuitively, spontaneously and lovingly. Go into the cell and your cell will teach you all there is to know.“
The Hopi are the westernmost group of Pueblo Indians. 7,000 of them live in northeastern Arizona, in the midst of the Navajo reservation, on the edge of the Painted Desert in a 12,635 square mile reservation. There are between 8,000 to 12,000 Hopi today.
According to Hopi prophecy, we currently live in the fourth of seven worlds. The 1st world ended by fire. The 2nd world ended by floods and ice age as the earth became unbalanced. The 3rd world ended in a flood. For the HOPI, the 5th age will begin in the near future. According to their legends, there will be fire everywhere on earth and a time of great upheaval will begin. The 4th world will end with a great purification as preparation for the entrance into the 5th world. The great purification is marked by the emergence of a great star: the blue star, companion of the dog star: Sirius, which will stand during the day as a second sun in the sky. It shall shine a hundred times brighter than Venus and look like a second moon in the evening. „You will hear of a dwelling place in the sky above the earth, which will fall with great noise and appear as a blue star. Shortly thereafter, the Hopi sacred customs will disappear. The passage between the worlds will emerge.“ What remains for you now on the path of knowledge is to end with fear. To be with it at every bend in the path, where it wants to ensnare you again in a new coat and advises you not to go on. The truth behind fear is simple. At its core you realize that fear is always the fear of being completely true. Your helplessness, destructibility and vulnerability is the truth that you are barely able to face. That which you are in your deepest core, want, or what wants to be expressed through you, is forbidden in the world as we have created it together. The whole circus of your life is an endless dance around this very sober fact. The fear of death, the threat of non-existence, the uncontrollable, the unpredictable and the uncertain is a variation on the same theme. The warrior sees that control is ultimately impossible and that in the really important questions of his life he is thrown back upon himself and at the mercy of the forces of fate which are intellectually impossible to grasp: Life, it is revealed, is a succession of dangerous moments. The tendency to let oneself go, the attachment to possessions, pleasures and relationships are here the means to disperse and shield oneself emotionally. Any form of faith, always linked to a notion of continuity, is exposed as a flight into the illusory. Go where your fear is, the insight advises the warrior. He confronts the fear within himself. For, in order to overcome fear, one must be afraid, take it to oneself. He accommodates it, makes room for it without yielding to it.