Another rainy day... no matter, now it is the time for me to heal physically. M and J took the rental car out of town so that M could satiate his sightseeing and photographic compulsions. Recuperating on my own I ponder the reason I am here, thousands of miles south of the equator. I have never been this far south before. The desire to grow my professional career here has waned somewhat with my firsthand account of New Zealand's shrinking economy, and no doubt also due to the situation with my back and the inclement weather. So I surmise that this country New Zealand, is simply to serve for now as the outer arena for my inner work as a warrior.
When I began the Bright Path, I had never heard of Toltec wisdom and the term 'spiritual warrior' existed as a vague notion. Now the concept is more firmly rooted in my psyche. By now I have heard of a few definitions of what it means to be a spiritual warrior; the definition that I employ is the one offered by Robert L. Spencer in his book "The Craft of the Warrior" in which he states 'a warrior is an impeccable hunter of personal power'.
Impeccability is key to acquiring the personal power touted by the ancient Toltecs as essential for moving beyond ordinary realms of reality and thus transcending ordinary levels of awareness.
To quote Spencer on the relatedness of The Known, Unknown and Personal Power:
"To understand how to expand one's relationship with the universe, warriors distinguish between the known and the unknown. The greater one's domain of the known, the more effective he can be, and the more one can DO. Therefore it is necessary to expand the known by delving into that realm of infinite proportions, the unknown. Only by forays into the unknown can warriors grasp new knowledge. If the size of one's known stays the same, no new capacities or possibilities can develop, and there is no increase in personal power. This is the road to stagnation and senility.
Ah, but the unknown is the limitless storehouse of possibilities. All knowledge, all ideas, all abilities beyond what one currently has are in the unknown. It is, therefore, the lair of personal power, and the warrior must journey there to harvest knowledge and transform it into power. In this quest the warrior must depart from living the ordinary life, for journeying into the unknown is minimized in ordinary life. To go beyond the limits of the known requires great personal power already. Accordingly, the warrior must marshal his personal power to cross the border into the unknown, and he does so by the process of saving the power he already has, not letting it leak away** and be wasted. This process is called impeccability, and it forms the frame around much of the warrior's discipline, practices, and decisions."
What excites me about coming to New Zealand is precisely my curiosity of the unknown. By relinquishing my job, familiar surroundings and friends yet again I've once again been thrust into the unknown and admittedly it has left me feeling adrift and disoriented. Truthfully, I certainly do not feel any more personal power, instead I feel less. It seems my personality's basic fears* which I had conveniently and masterfully dodged over the course of my time in Malaysia through the preoccupation of work, string of relationships and tennis coaching sessions now confront me full bore. Consequently, I feel a sense of vulnerability and measurable loss of confidence. Lately, I observe self-criticisms and their attendant negative emotions which hitherto had been thought successfully dealt with. But I am here to create and I recognize that the right path entails challenge, if anything this current circumstance comforts me that I am treading correctly. So I resolve to do my best to stay alert and right minded.
* These are delineated by the personality enneagram contrived originally by Gurdjieff. (See The Fourth Way Enneagram)
** There are numerous power leaks such as self-importance, identification, binding habits, uncontrolled imagination, and negative emotions.
No comments:
Post a Comment