If your Warrior is physically weak, his ability to attack and defend as necessary can be developed with the discipline of martial arts and sports such as fencing. These can also be helpful in improving the sharpness and discernment of his thinking. In sports like these, deciding whether to attack or defend from one moment to the next requires split-second decisions applied with unwavering force and total certainty. Such discipline hones both mind and body.
Setting and Protecting Boundaries
One of your Warrior’s primary functions is to set boundaries and then protect and defend them. These may be the boundaries of your property, the physical area of land you inhabit, into which you don’t permit others to enter without your permission.
However your boundaries can also be intangible. For example, if you set a boundary around your working hours you might refuse a request to work more hours than your contract specifies.
Or you might set a boundary around the way you allow other people to talk to you. You might set a boundary around what is acceptable behaviour on the part of your friends, family, spouse and children. You might set a boundary with your wife or colleague during an argument by telling her that what she’s saying or the way she’s saying it are not acceptable to you. Your Warrior’s duty is to make it clear when people in your Kingdom overstep the boundaries of what you’re willing to accept.
You may also set boundaries around your emotional space. As a man you may feel the need to retreat into some kind of private personal space. This is often described as going into the “man cave”. By withdrawing into a personal space in this way and by setting a boundary about who can come into that space and join you, you’re employing your Warrior energy.
You might choose to set a boundary around who you want in your life or what level of involvement you want others to have in particular aspects of your life. You might set a boundary around old relationships or situations whose time has come to an end, so as to exclude them from your future life.
The more you think about this, the more obvious it becomes how essential clear boundaries are to every single one of us and how our internal Warrior is charged with defending and maintaining them.
You probably already know how effectively you keep your own boundaries intact when other people invade them. Perhaps in some areas of your life you maintain better boundaries than in others. It can be difficult, for example, to maintain boundaries with a boss who has power over you.
One thing is certain: a man who doesn’t protect his boundaries or who doesn’t even know where they lie is likely to be a man who will carry within him a sense of weakness, inadequacy and failure, maybe even cowardice. Knowing where your boundaries lie and what they represent is essential if you are to have a strong sense of your masculine power.
Awareness of Death
The Warrior is always aware of the possibility of his own death. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette made the point that many Warrior traditions believe the Warrior’s clarity of thought is a quality he possesses because he’s constantly aware of the imminence of his own death.
They suggested a Warrior is well aware of the shortness of life and how fragile it is. They believed this awareness can promote an outpouring of the life force and create an experience of life so intense that others can only imagine what this might be like.
Imagine the mind-set of male warriors of the American Native People going into battle with the cry “Today is a good day to die!” ringing in their ears. What an intensity of experience! Every moment of life would be fully lived. Maybe that is what we seek when we say “Live every day as though you might die tomorrow.”
Such intensity suggests the true Warrior will not hesitate in his actions. And indeed, a man who is acting in this way, with every move guided by clear decisions and focused action, should certainly be able to engage with life fully.
Perhaps this aspect of the Warrior’s psyche is the origin of the expression “He who hesitates is lost”, meaning that it’s often better to make a decision and stick to it than to change your mind. Thinking too much in a crisis can lead to hesitation. And hesitation can lead to the ultimate failure as a Warrior – losing the battle.
To put it simply: to embody the qualities of the Warrior in his fullness you need to be able to make split-second decisions on which you can rely, and you then need to be able to act upon those decisions with force and certainty.
This level of efficiency can be achieved through training and practice. It’s obvious that any outstanding Warrior in any area of life – the martial arts or other sporting disciplines, the armed forces, police service, fire brigade and so on – gains a large part of his power and potency from training.
Training for battle – any kind of battle, not just warfare – activates certain qualities within the Warrior’s psyche. These include skill, self-control, accuracy, decisiveness, and above all the self-discipline needed not to crumble in the heat of battle, whether that battle be physical, emotional or spiritual.
A true Warrior will never act in a way that inflates his power in his own eyes; he will never try to convince himself that he is more than he actually is. A true Warrior knows his power, knows his potential, and is well aware of his potency. He brings these qualities to his battles in a disciplined, controlled and totally present state of mind. This state of mind is a characteristic of great achievers in any field.
Self-control
A Warrior’s self-control is a form of self-discipline which embraces persistence in the face of setback, complete belief and positivity about the outcome of whatever tasks need to be completed, and the capacity to withstand emotional and physical pain. There is no room for self-doubt in a true Warrior.
To the extent that we embody this self-control so we can develop Warrior energy. While all jobs need at least some Warrior energy simply to get things done, if your chosen job needs a lot of Warrior energy – such as salesman, fire-fighter, police officer, teacher, doctor, lawyer, builder, miner, nurse and so on – then you also need a lot of self-control.
This self-control is something every one of us who has embarked on a journey in life which requires endurance, persistence, resilience and determination knows about. The more you have it, the stronger the Warrior archetype within you. When you understand this, you also understand how discipline of mind and body are essential for the achievement of your goals.
A Set Of Principles
I’ve already described how the archetypal Warrior is no mindless servant. He has discernment and uses it to ensure that the cause for which he is fighting is a just and noble one.
Does this mean, you might ask, that soldiers who fight for tyrannical and repressive regimes are not true Warriors? Were the soldiers who supported Hitler or any of the other tyrants in human history mere puppets of those tyrannical regimes rather than true Warriors?
In one sense this must be true. These men, like many before them, fought more or less willingly for tyrants, bullies and immature leaders.
If an immature leader is to wage war and win he must gather around him Warriors who lack discernment and who are prepared to follow orders blindly. In fact, in modern warfare such blind obedience is often necessary. Soldiers may not have a choice about fighting. Troops may not really be aware of the bigger issues behind conflicts, especially when they are puppet soldiers dancing to a tyrant’s tune. But even though soldiers may not be informed about the cause for which they are dying, there is no reason for us to follow their example.
Each and every one of us fighting our own battles, of whatever kind, can choose to make clear, principled decisions for ourselves. In our own lives we can decide what is sufficiently noble and sufficiently in line with our deepest values to be worth fighting for.
For example, are the ethics and morality of the company for which you work in line with your deepest values? If not, are you prepared to find a company for whom you can work with integrity? Are you doing what is right by your family, defending them against dangers of all kinds in a way that
matches your principles? Do you treat your employees and associates with clean warrior energy or a barely concealed form of vindictive bullying?
You get the idea, I’m sure.
This is the important point here: citizens of a country may be pressed into service in the Armed Forces whether they like it or not. However, those of us who have causes and principles for which we are prepared to fight can make our own choices and decisions about the rightness of what we are doing.
Within the context of that idea, now take a moment to answer these two possibly uncomfortable questions before you read on: what cause, what values, what principle, would you be prepared to die for? To put it another way, what do you believe in so clearly and with such passion that you would be willing to fight to the death to defend it?
When we explore the male archetypes in my workshops I ask men what they would be prepared to die for. The answer I get most frequently is “my children” or “my family”. Perhaps that is an example of warrior energy manifesting in its purest and most mature masculine form. In fact, nowhere is this clearer than in men who have just had children. Even when I simply ask these men to imagine a threat to their infants they usually experience a wild rush of protective warrior energy that seems to come from the core of their being. I haven’t met a man yet for whom this was not true. You may have felt this yourself.
You probably understand that the quality of the Warrior’s loyalty and the way in which he conducts himself are associated with something greater than him. This may be a cause, a set of values, or some principle. It is always something which is just and worthy of the Warrior’s investment of commitment, time and energy. Yet how, in our society today, is a man to find a cause which his Warrior can justifiably serve? As you may expect, the answer to this question is often provided by your King, your Sovereign archetype. One of your Sovereign’s most important roles is to help you find the truest expression of all parts of yourself, including your Warrior.
Emotional Detachment
Sometimes an ordinary man may have to step out of his humanity and stop feeling human emotion to fulfil his role as a Warrior. After the Second World War, a military historian named Colonel Sam Marshall claimed that he’d interviewed hundreds of troops after they’d been in battle. He also claimed his work showed that only a small number of enlisted US troops would knowingly fire on the enemy – between fifteen and thirty percent.
This myth has been repeated many times since then, for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes, perhaps, because we’d like to believe that we are innately caring and well-disposed towards our fellow man, and sometimes to show that killing does not come naturally to us.
However, Marshall got it wrong. The reality of conscripted soldiers’ conduct in battle was very different. Fredric Smoler has written a fascinating account of a detailed investigation by a later military historian named Roger Spiller into Marshall’s claims. Smoler shows us the uncomfortable truth. He concludes: “In battle’s hard school, ordinary people eventually discover, quite by themselves, the knack of skilful killing.”
In short, ordinary men and women can indeed become killers.
Often the transition between “ordinary men and women” and trained killer seems to be a very short step. You may say that any one of us could make the step into killing another human being, given a powerful enough reason, ranging from political indoctrination to an obvious threat to our homeland, loved ones, and ourselves. And that’s precisely the point – the inhumane detached killer in us seems to lie not far beneath the surface.
For many men – and in our age women – this killing is most obvious in war. But even though the human transition to killer seems to come easily, this does not necessarily mean that a Warrior is cruel. It may simply mean that a Warrior is making his decisions in a detached way that best serves the greater need for which he is fighting. (Although, as we all know, sadistic and inhumane killers do exist.)
Of course in any battle, warfare or not, there may be a stepping away from emotion. Sometimes there is no choice but to put feeling aside. This ability to detach from feeling is part of what enables rescue workers such as firemen to enter burning buildings and save people’s lives at the risk of their own.
And emotional detachment can be helpful to all of us. When the Warrior has to act in service of the greater good, for example by killing what needs to end, such as a relationship which has outgrown its time, emotional detachment allows a cleaner and easier severing of connection. Later, other parts of us can grieve the loss.
Destruction and Renewal
Running right through any discussion of the Warrior archetype is our awareness of the destruction this archetype can bring about. But to look at the inhumane destruction of modern warfare, say, and be deceived into thinking that such destruction is an inevitable part of the Warrior’s way of doing things is a mistake.
A Warrior in his highest purpose will destroy only that which needs to be destroyed so that something new and more virtuous can take its place.
This may mean the end of a relationship, or a change of lifestyle, or standing up for what you believe in, or something else. This is the Warrior responding to the “No!” we may feel in our guts, the “No!” which tells us enough is enough, but which so many of us can and do ignore.
To kill that which needs to die is a true Warrior virtue.
You only need to look around the world today to see many things which you might well think need to be destroyed and replaced by something better, including evil and despotic governments. In fact you may think there are plenty of places where using warrior energy to destroy these harmful entities would indeed be a just and right mission. Yet that view discounts the pain and suffering of the people who would be harmed if the Warrior were to act. Our own feelings about such destruction, and our empathy for those who would be hurt, is held in another part of us – our Lover archetype.
You may be able to accept that Warriors sometimes need to kill or destroy what currently exists in order for something new to take its place. But for such “killing” to be successful there must also be a powerful Sovereign with a strong enough vision to ensure that what has been destroyed is rebuilt in a more wholesome form.
The Warrior and Other Archetypes
The Warrior archetype needs to works in harmony with other archetypes, for warrior energy working alone can be uncontrolled and potentially very destructive. Yet when the Warrior works for the Sovereign, together they create an energy from which something truly magnificent can emerge.
Many of our greatest films, legends, books and other stories depict the mature King and the mature Warrior acting together to produce profound change where it is needed. Sometimes these energies are found within the same individual, a man we can truly call a Warrior King.
To take this idea further, when your Warrior’s fierceness is tempered by the authority and judgement of your Sovereign and guided by the wisdom of your Magician, you can be a truly inspiring force in the world. You can get things done!
Indeed, a true Warrior King can guide family, corporations and even countries into greater prosperity through his committed and discerning stewardship of the Kingdom – and his fearless action on its behalf.
Of course the Warrior can also connect with the Lover archetype to bring an awareness of the interconnectedness that all living things have with each other and with planet Earth. When he touches his Lover, a Warrior may come back into connection with his humanity. He is reminded that those he may have to destroy in some way (whether that be physically, emotionally or spiritually) are just like him: thinking, feeling, sensitive human beings.
So a Warrior can be compassionate. But this quality will only be manifested in his actions when he is connected to his Lover energy. Without such restraint, such softening, the actions of the Warrior can be truly disastrous both for the Warrior himself and for the world around him.
Uncontrolled by his King, free of the tempering influence of his Lover, and without the counsel of his Magician, a W
arrior may run amok, careless of consequence, driven by self-interest. In his purest form he may pillage and destroy to get what he wants, then rejoice in the plunder, ravage his rewards, and cast them aside without a second thought. This is why all Warriors need a King who can control them.
Your Warrior Needs To Serve You
For some men with strong warrior energy, the welfare of even those closest to them comes second to the pursuit of the battles in their lives. And no wonder. To achieve success in anything which requires the Warrior archetype to go out and “win” is immensely self-affirming for men. This is, after all, a core archetype in the male psyche.
Do you doubt it? Then pause to consider for a moment – which is more important to you: your work or your relationship with your wife or partner? Staying with your family or finding your place in the world of men?
So many men hesitate to answer those questions truthfully. Deep down, they know that success in life, even in small matters, as well as getting things done in their world, is what really matters to them. For some, victory on what they see as the “battlefield” of life is most important. No surprise, then, that champion sportsmen have elevated levels of testosterone after winning. The expression of this competitive energy, an energy deeply programmed within our male genes, brings each of us more fully into a sense of who we are as men. After all, is anything more important than winning, at least to a Warrior?
Whatever your own truth around warrior energy, none of us is served by trying to hide, repress or deny the Warrior archetype within us. Rather, what is required of each of us is that we manage our Warrior so it truly serves us and everyone around us most fully.
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