A spiritual warrior doesn’t fear death. Death is inevitable. A warrior recognizes that to fear death is ridiculous waste of time.
It is also an act of disrespect towards the gift of life.
That a warrior has no fear of death is not extra ordinary. It’s just common sense. What is extraordinary is how a warrior is able to face such an inevitable outcome with sobriety and not flinch with fear. A warrior is able to do this because she has control over her attention. She is able to look straight into passing of her body with the awareness and will power to not let her self be distracted by a thought or belief.
To have control over one’s attention doesn’t just mean to focus on something by controlling your will. You also have to control the point of view you see it all from. Many people can focus on death but do so from a point of view from fear or uncertainty.
A spiritual warrior is able to hold their attention on the immortality of their body from a point of complete acceptance and love for the unknown.
Overcoming your fear of death is not a major accomplishment. It is a fairly obvious and straightforward approach to living a satisfying life. The extraordinary accomplishment is the control a warrior has developed over their attention.
I use to be in awe of my fellow spiritual warriors. I had the utmost respect for them. There are very few people who have the courage to challenge their fears, judgments, and inner demons.
Spiritual Warriors still have my utmost respect.
However I am no longer hold them in awe.
I have come to realize that all those inner demons, fears, and that great big inner judge are not real. They do exist, but they are not real. They are creations of your imagination and only exist in the abstract. The only power they have is from the faith you put in them. They have no sustaining power of their own, or are any more real than a dream you had last night. They exist only in the abstract imagination of the mind.
What you are really facing are projections of your imagination. When put in that perspective, you realize that your inner demons are illusions. Then it doesn’t take as much courage as I first assumed.
I still have the utmost respect for spiritual warriors that challenge the fears, judgments, and illusions in their mind. However I no longer see it as taking extraordinary courage. It’s really just a matter of common sense to rid your mind of these emotional drama making illusions.
JW. asks about Control Folly
So I’m battling with this idea of controlled folly. ( I think I know what you would say, don’t believe in controlled folly, lol). Do you have your own personal idea of what that is? I have a couple of interpretations of what that means. One would be to live in a state of love and grace while still respecting peoples fear boundary’s. Another would be to extract deeper meaning from what people say while still acting like there is little meaning in the way things happen.
Thanks for your time Gary, I always appreciate hearing from you.
JW
Dear JW.
For a Spiritual Warrior Control Folly doesn’t have much value as a practice until they have cleaned their mind of all old beliefs and social domestication. At that point a warrior has the option to act in any circumstance with an infinite number of choices. Any one of his actions is completely unimportant. However if a Spiritual Warrior chooses, he will engage in the experience in a way that is deeply connected and meaningful. That is Control Folley.
To engage in a way that is with complete respect and with unconditional love is just the common sense choice to be Impeccable.
Control Folly is really only something that can be done once a Warrior has cleaned their mind of old beliefs and dispensed with all their old habits. Until then a person can too easily delude themselves into believing they are making a choice.
Gary
