The Way of the Warrior

or: Hooray for Sun Tzu's War Academy

In my previous post, I talked about such wonderful concepts as world peace, cooperation, and so on. On the face of it, that sounds like I have no time for the values of a warrior culture.
NOT SO.

It was the masculine, warrior side of my nature that got me through the hard times. When I was deep in the throws of psychosis, molly-coddling, sympathy, tea-and-biscuits, just made me go all limp and weepy. I needed strength to survive; I needed to fight for survival --- and, whats more, I needed the kind of mentality that draws strength from the fight. I needed to feel challenged, not helpless or needy; I needed to keep in mind the line from the old hymn: each victory will help you some other to win.

So, in case anyone should have picked up a wrong impression from my last blog: I cannot rate the WAY OF THE WARRIOR too highly.

I am with the Native Americans on this one: there is no such thing as 'bad medicine'.

One can, however, misdirect abilities, to the detriment of the self. (I shall probably return to this subject later, but, for the moment, I will let it go)

There are a whole host of programs on TV at the moment, such as EXTREME DREAMS, and another about disabled people going on an SAS led trek across Africa. People who take up those sorts of challenges are accessing the warrior (NB they are most often led by members of the SAS) in themselves, and the experience enhances all warrior virtues and abilities. And people who come back from those trips always talk about how their lives have been transformed: doors open, because they have much more confidence in themselves, because they have much more bottle, because they can concieve of doing things, and enjoying doing things, they would never have considered possible, much less desirable before.

Then, of course, one could go on about all those other challenges such as: reaching the Poles, getting to the top of Everest; reaching the moon ---

There is no single human ability that is bad, only sometimes misdirected. And, every single human ability enhances and enriches life, and the more abilities one aquires, the more doors open.

Another topic comes to mind now: abundance. When too many doors open, you are faced with unparalled choice --- aaahhh! I think I will transfer to another blog --- joan-well --- to spout words of wisdom on this subject!