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Way of the Warrior Scholar

 

Musha shugyō is a samurai warrior’s quest or pilgrimage. 

A warrior, called a shugyōsha, would wander the land as a ronin, practicing and honing his skills without the protection of his family or school. Here we use ‘warrior’ two ways. As a set of skills, physical, emotional, intellectual, and otherwise, to enable a man to defeat his opponents and be fearless. Also as someone who penetrates the limits of his worldview, and learns to think differently. For us, Musha Shugyo is the Way of the Warrior Scholar

This is a short summary of all that follows, and an explanation of what dystopian forces oppose you, and how we will defeat them and set you free.

The reason so many commit suicide, and think about it, is because they live in a dystopian culture. Not that many think their culture is dystopic, no that is in the future, or in movies or novels.  But the reason there are so many movies and novels of this type, is because it is true, but not a “fact,” as that word is commonly used. So it is intuited, and enters the media as:  the Hunger Games, the Orwellian World of 1984, which is political correctness taken to the extreme. In Star Wars those who would be free must face the Empire, and best of all is The Matrix, wherein all are just human batteries, whose brains are pacified with an AI illusion of life. In other versions those who suffer dystopia are converted into the Living Dead, the Walking Dead, Zombies, and so forth.

When we read these novels, or see these movies, we oppose the negative forces. But after we leave the theatre, so many become part of them. 

 I rage against a dystopia wherein many live lives of no meaning, purpose, or beauty. This is not true for everyone. For there are many who flee from freedom and much prefer the life of a sheep to that of a snow leopard. They are very happy with a mundane life, and I don’t criticize them. It’s not me, and I see others who don’t fit the common mold either. But there are others who have a type of energy that makes them a poor fit for the common life, and without a life system they often self destruct. Yet they don’t know what is bugging them.

That is why I so like the movie The Matrix, and in particular like these words from Morpheus to Neo, when first they met.

 “What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad”.

And when you consider the rising rate of suicide you wonder why?  What were their thoughts? And perhaps you might wonder if there was a better way, especially if you too feel a splinter in  your mind. These are Hunter Thompson’s last words.

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your (old) age. Relax — This won’t hurt”

Can you feel that Hunter’s worldview and life system have let him down? I think that meaning, purpose, or beauty would have been enough to carry him through. But I am not picking on poor Hunter, it is just that his last words were so perfect. There are many others who have wealth and fame, and yet end their lives. If you do a google search on famous suicides you will be surprised at the large number of beautiful, wealthy people who hang and shoot themselves.

And yet others, who have had tremendous setbacks, become stronger and have lives wonderful and meaningful to the outside observer. For example Amy Purdy, as a result of meningitis had both of her legs amputated below the knee, lost both kidneys, and her spleen. She received her prosthetic legs a year after the amputation and began snowboarding seven months later, then finished third in a snowboarding competition at Mammoth Mountain≥  She went on to score highly on Dancing With the Stars. And you should check this out on YouTube. She is incredible. And I, watching her energy as she dances, would have a hard time imagining her a suicide.

 

I don’t know Amy, I have just read about her, and I use her as an example of a different mind set. It would be easy to give up, laying there in the hospital day after day with no legs, kidneys or spleen. Looking forward to what? And yet look what she has done. This is produced by a different type of mental framework.  In what I am so pretentiously calling the 1eye Life System, the path toward excellence is its own reward, just as the caterpillar’s journey toward being a butterfly is its reward. This is the finding of “Meaning,” and “Purpose,” in being and doing, not in words.

 

Check out this picture by M.C. Escher.

Just as this is a “meaningless” picture, so is the question of the meaning of life. By continually asking yourself a meaningless question you create groves in your brain that eventually grip you, and take you over a cliff called suicide. If not the actual death of your body, then the zombification of your life.

If you wish to place a name on The Matrix of your life, then call it Post Modernism. It makes your thought-language a negative life affirmation. We will only discuss this enough to point out the Dark Side in your life. So you know why you have, “a splinter in your mind, driving you mad”.

What I want to talk about is the opposite. It is a different worldview, a different thought-language. Think of this as being like upgrading your computer’s operating system. Imagine you had a very old computer, from the late 80’s, but capable of accepting a new operating system and doing things you haven’t imagined.

 I offer the 1eye Life System, and while this is not exactly as simple as taking the Red Pill was in The Matrix, I am going to present it in a manner that is very doable. I am not asking you to memorize this book. Instead we will work with a much simpler training tool.  I believe that a single paragraph, of nine points, can serve as an affirmation, and inner guidance system, to provide transformation into what you were meant to be, and eliminate doubt, fear, and confusion. 

I suggest that you may have worked a lifetime making yourself into what you are now, so you should expect to put in some effort making the upgrade.  This book is about that effort. But to make it effective, so  that it is doable we are going to use a mnemonic of twenty-five words, that covers the nine points of the book.  I will also have an exercise that aids in your metamorphosis. These exercises are just a repurposing of something you would normally do in everyday life, but now you are using that time to change

IIn the system you achieve transformation by memorizing a mnemonic, a memory code one paragraph long. The rest of the book explains that paragraph, shows how to use it, and provides training exercises to make it real. Just reading this material won’t do it. Most likely you have read books on tennis or golf, perhaps a few brilliant self-help books also. And yet how much did they change you? Three months later were you any different. So I have a different learning system for you.

People are not guided by information, witness so many overweight and smoking, but by emotion, so we will use the power of emotion to drive inner change. All of this is in accord with neuroscience, theory of narrative identity, and transformation theory, which we will briefly discuss as the need arises. And we will need to touch on them to describe the part of your life that is being hijacked.

These are Meaning, Purpose, and Identity, and they are not easy to communicate, because they are a process.  Take your time with this and read it again. Because what I am saying is that these are not words. And this is very important. These things spring from within, and can only be grasped by those who do the work. Spring from within means that they are a natural part of you, just as a bird’s song is a part of it. You will find these inside, just as that’s where you liver is. You won’t find them in any assortment of words. The meaning is there, I will show you the operations that make them real for you.

 When the young sit down around a small coffee table, and think themselves sophisticated and intelligent, they use words to try and attach semantic density to these vital categories. And after much late talk, and heated argument, they think themselves very clever and superior. This is similar to them having the most intense conversation about swimming, and then going out to drown.  

Consider another M.C. Escher masterpiece below. 

 You can’t actualize in your tangible life what is shown there. And if you spent enough time trying to take it seriously, you would be in trouble. And yet much of what passes for “knowledge” in the university is equally meaningless.  And there are so many people who are in trouble.

What am I trying to say? That you might be as out of place, in your culture, as a caterpillar dropped into a community of worms. For you to become what you really are, and enjoy the process, I present the 1eye Life System, and a special means of learning and using it.