And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency. When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience! ~ don Juan, A Separate Reality

The holiday season is a weird time for a lot of warriors because many choose to appease their family members by maintaining a story that no longer serves them. They feel the pressure from the mold of man to spend time with their friends and loved ones and then they find themselves caught up in a lot of drama, drama that isn’t necessarily theirs but they become unwitting accomplices. And then they complain about the choice that they made to be there in the first place.

I had a wonderful time this season, going through the motions of the spirit of Christmas with family members and friends who live for the season whether it is to celebrate the winter solstice, the birth of Jesus or the madness of compulsive obligatory consumption. I used to rebel, the thought of repeating the patterns of a story that I recapitulated long ago seemed like a waste of energy to me. But it doesn’t matter anymore because all it boils down to is fluidity and an exercise in detachment.

For the warrior it doesn’t matter which season, occasion, holiday, or story is repeating itself, what matters is the efficiency and impeccability through which the warrior functions along with the choices she makes. When deciding or choosing to surround oneself with the monkey-mind, a warrior can only laugh and make every act one of controlled folly. If we choose to put ourselves into these types of situations then as impeccable warriors we must tolerate the sometimes outlandish, doltish or trivial dream of others and be patient with them while they repeat the patterns. If we don’t, we are not walking our talk by allowing the people we like and love to have the freedom of their dream even when we are so far removed from that reality.

This holiday season was fun for me and for my partner on this path. It started on the winter solstice, also the BIG date for the end of the world and concluded yesterday. Over the course of 8 days we had a total of nine people come to our house, for days at a time, and today is the first day we are alone. We had fun, we ate good food and too much of it, we drank good wine and good scotch and shared gifts. We hiked and we played music and we danced. We watched movies and together we shared the photos we took on our hikes with those who did not accompany us.

The best part of this 8 day marathon with friends and family ended with an impeccable warrior friend arriving, one who has no expectations, no connection to any stories and who is contented to simply be aligned with intent. We hiked; my partner, my friend and I, mostly in silence, for hours in the rugged and beautiful wilderness of northern Arizona along an amazing turquoise blue, crystal clear river. Without words we marveled at the fluidity of the river and of the old lava flows and at the massive root structure of trees.  We know that as the pure energy that we are there is nothing that can stop our flow or halt our dance in awareness and when we surrender we can no longer even halt it ourselves; all we can do is continue to flow. We aligned with the energies of the earth and we were energized beyond our wildest dreams by just merging our awareness with hers. And with this boost from the earth we have further strengthened our commitment to continue walking as impeccable warriors in our common goal of assembling a new band of awareness; laughing with carefree abandon all the way. ~ Keep Dancing and best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2013!!!

When the assemblage point assembles a world, that world is total. This is the marvel that the old seers stumbled upon and never realized what it was: the awareness of the earth can give us a boost to align other great bands of emanations and the force of that new alignment makes the world vanish. Every time the old seers made a new alignment they believed they had descended to the depths’ or ascended to the heavens above. They never knew that the world disappears like a puff of air when a new total alignment makes us perceive another total world. ~ don Juan, The Fire from Within