The Warrior's Greatest Challenge ~ Live as If You Are Going to Die!

The Warrior's greatest challenge

Welcome!

I am Anaam and today I want to talk to you about a topic that’s literally a matter of life and death for the Toltec Warrior, but of absolutely no consequence for the average man.

The Toltec Warrior’s greatest challenge is to live as if they are going to die.

This is a very profound statement and it’s easy to dismiss it out of familiarity or whatever else. But hang in there and I’ll explain why it is by far the greatest challenge that a warrior will ever face-apart from old age, if someone is fortunate or unfortunate enough to face old age.

Here’s what Don Juan said to Carlos Castaneda about it:

“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong-that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you: I haven’t touched you yet.”

Think about that.

Now here’s the scenario. I tend to come across a lot of self-styled Toltec Warriors, or people who fancy themselves as warriors, or possessing some kind of knowledge or whatever. Same as I’ve come across many Kung Fu artists and martial artists and a lot of these are running schools and dojos and this and that, and they’re worth absolutely nothing on the street. Absolutely nothing. A normal street thug would hand them their ass on a platter and force them to eat it. The point being, there’s a lot of delusion. Self-delusion and lying to oneself is rampant in the world. And so there’s a lot of so-called warriors. Especially keyboard warriors.

But here’s the quality of a true Warrior. The Warrior realizes that death is rushing towards them at incredible speed, and that it is their task to be alert and ready for when that moment comes. To be ready requires a very finely honed awareness. It doesn’t come by thinking about it or ‘identifying’ oneself as a warrior.

When you’re alone for a very extended period of time? That’s when you really see how much of a warrior you truly are.

This is the single greatest challenge for the Warrior: To live as if you’re going to die.

But the average man lives as if he is going to live forever.

Here’s how to really test it: You start feeling some pain in your kidney or in your stomach, and the pain grows worse and gets really bad, and you go to the doctor. A week later, the doctor says, I have some really bad news for you. And you find out you got cancer of the stomach, and you got 30 days to live before that cancer literally eats you alive.

What is that going to do to your mindset?

Those 30 days I can promise you will be more filled with life than your entire life so far. To be honest, It takes decades of constant, unrelenting inner work to really get to a point where one can realistically live as if one is going to die. This is because the illusion - our self importance - convinces us of our immortality in such a believable way! It indoctrinates us so heavily, we’re so hypnotized that we can’t even let any other idea in. So we make all our decisions in our life - all our miseries, all our sufferings, all our relationships, all the mistakes we make, all our triumphs, and everything else in between - based on our paradigm that death is never going to touch me.

But coming back to that diagnosis of one month to live - how’s that going to change you? well…It is going to change you to the point where you won’t even be the same person.

Unless you’re a Warrior.

Then it won’t change you at all, because you have already been living like that. And it will be simply a fact presented to you.

So your task as a warrior is to climb to that peak. Climb to that place where you can realistically say: you know, I have paid the price in myself, and now I live as if I am going to die.

It’s a very simple idea. Zen is all about that. But it is an extremely challenging idea to step into as a person. There are many prerequisites. A life of impeccability in everything is required.

I want to say that if you work with this idea for the next 10 years…perhaps for you it will take 10 months or 10 weeks. I highly doubt it, but just to be really on the safe side - because we want to give ourselves the biggest breaks that we can, right? - let’s say 10 years…for the next 10 years, be with this idea and gradually mould yourself into the kind of being that lives their every moment as if they are going to die.

And see what happens. See what happens to you when you embrace this idea and live it out fully - even for a day. You will have truly lived like a Warrior.

This one idea will negate the need to train in so many different facets of being a Warrior. It will negate the need to look at self importance for example because if you don’t have a lot of time to live - if you’re living like you’re going to die - you’re not going to take anything personally Right? You are not going to be offended by petty little things or petty tyrants. Petty tyrants will mean nothing to you. Your life’s hardships will mean nothing. Knowledge and clarity will come automatically because you will gain them by working with this paradigm, changing yourself, becoming that person.

That’s why it is the Warrior’s greatest challenge. That’s my claim. Other men of knowledge may disagree - that’s fine. It’s an open pathway. There are many ways to understand. But that’s what I have found in my experience and in my training.

Every Warrior knows the price that they pay to gain even a little nugget of knowledge within themselves. Find out day after day what the Warrior’s greatest challenge is all about. Let it reveal its meaning to you.

Let death talk to you. Talk to death and let death talk to you and listen to death. Learn to listen to death. Believe me, there will be no challenge in life - there will be nothing in life that will have the ability to stop you for long. I promise you this.

Till next time, walk in freedom.

Anaam.