The Craft of the Warrior

While reading this fascinating book by Robert L. Spencer and learning so much valuable information and techniques on how to lead an impeccable life, I just came a cross a passage that truly deserved for me to stop and email you. It is such a simple truth yet so often forgotten by us in our daily life. So here it goes: "Internal inconsistency makes prayers and affirmations ineffective in another way. Tart points out that how we live our lives often negates our prayers. A person who prays at night for peace may engage in conflict all day long. The day's behavior actually acts as a different prayer, whether the person intends it so or not. What we hold on our minds and express in our actions has great influence over our lives. As Gurdjieff said, "Your being attracts your life." This hit right home, for I am guilty of that very thing. Praying for peace and balance in my life, then actively getting engaged in strives with my children, arguments with my husband and taking on way too many things on myself to even have a slightest realistic way to have it all in balance. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about our weaknesses and how to regain back your power leaked out with our very actions.

I started with great curiosity The Craft of the Warrior and I was not disappointed! It is an excellent synthesis of all the above authors as well as some others I did not know. Not only a synthesis but more: Some of the practical suggestions and explanations it offers are especially rewarding, like for example what Castaneda meant exactly when Don Juan said "erase personal history". That according to Spencer it really means that one should free themselves of the slavery of one's past and not blame the past for the present. That I did not get in the first place from Castaneda. And one can find more of these explanations in the book. Also rewarding are the chapters about personal power, living with intent etc. that also throws more light on some of the questions and problems. They did to me, anyway! I would highly recommend this book to everyone interested in starting the path of the 'warrior'. The book is easy to read and great fun! I could hardly put it down before I finished. What I missed are some references to Buddhism that I consider relevant to the subject. After reading it I will want to read some of Millman's books and maybe study some NLP also. There are two aspects in the book that in my view could be corrected in future editions: 1) She: the third person is always she; and after the 100th time it started to irritate me. Could not it rather be they? 2) The FELDENKRAIS description on pages 16 and 17 is not all accurate and could be a little more detailed: a) His knee injuries and surgery problem did not happen in the 1930s, but in the 1940s in England. c) Feldenkrais did not get his black belt in judo AFTER his knee problems, but long before when he was living in France indeed in the 1930s. He was one of the first European to earn a black belt in Judo, founded the Judo Club in Paris, and wrote two books on judo. b) He did not 'immigrated to Palestine, France and England before arriving on Israel after WW II'. In fact: He emigrated to Palestine at the age of 14 shortly after the end of WW I. He moved to Paris in 1928 to study physics, mathematics, and mechanical and electric engineering. He was Joliot-Curie's principal assistant when J-C won the Nobel prize in 1935. In 1940, when the Nazis took over Paris, Feldenkrais was on one of the last boats that escaped to England. He returned to Israel in 1950. One afterthought: being less familiar with the rest of the topics in the book the above mistakes make me wonder how accurate they are.

My warrior life has begun when I started doing yoga many, many years ago when it was almost forbidden and hard to obtain in Hungary. It continued with the reading of the Inner Games books, preceded and followed with studies in Buddhism. Then on my first trips in the USA in the early 80s I managed to purchase some of Castaneda's books. I also have Trungpa's Shambala (it did not make sense when I first read it - will try again now!) and the Tao of Inner Peace, Opening the Inner I (neither was much of a r elevation at that time). I also read some of the 4th way books (Ouspensky, Gourdijeff). AND after being a teacher of English and travel organizer for a great number of years, eventually I have become a Feldenkrais practitioner. With that background I started with great curiosity The Craft of the Warrior and I was not disappointed! It is an excellent synthesis of all the above authors as well as some others I did not know. Not only a synthesis but more: Some of the practical suggestions and explanations it offers are especially rewarding, like for example what Castaneda meant exactly when Don Juan said "erase personal history". That according to Spencer it really means that one should free themselves of the slavery of one's past and not blame the past for the present. That I did not get in the first place from Castaneda. And one can find more of these explanations in the book. Also rewarding are the chapters about personal power, living with intent etc. that also throws more light on some of the questions and problems. They did to me, anyway! I would highly recommend this book to everyone interested in starting the path of the 'warrior'. The book is easy to read and great fun! I could hardly put it down before I finished. What I missed are some references to Buddhism that I consider relevant to the subject. After reading it I will want to read some of Millman's books and maybe study some NLP also. There are two aspects in the book that in my view could be corrected in future editions: 1) She: the third person is always she; and after the 100th time it started to irritate me. Could not it rather be they? 2) The FELDENKRAIS description on pages 16 and 17 is not all accurate and could be a little more detailed: a) His knee injuries and surgery problem did not happen in the 1930s, but in the 1940s in England. c) Feldenkrais did not get his black belt in judo AFTER his knee problems, but long before when he was living in France indeed in the 1930s. He was one of the first European to earn a black belt in Judo, founded the Judo Club in Paris, and wrote two books on judo. b) He did not 'immigrated to Palestine, France and England before arriving on Israel after WW II'. In fact: He emigrated to Palestine at the age of 14 shortly after the end of WW I. He moved to Paris in 1928 to study physics, mathematics, and mechanical and electric engineering. He was Joliot-Curie's principal assistant when J-C won the Nobel prize in 1935. In 1940, when the Nazis to

A great introduction to the life of being a warrior. I can't think of any other way to open up your mind to the vastness of the world we live in.

Robert has done a great job of pulling together many view points (such as G.I. Gurdjieff, Carlos Castenada, Dan Millman, etc.) and made it easy reading. Doing the "work" is much more difficult. A must read for anyone on the Path