Customer Reviews

The Craft of the Warrior

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The path of spiritual knowledge and freedom has often been described by using the metaphor of "going to war"; hence the term "warrior." Make no mistake, though, this book has nothing to do with violence or military action. It is not a Green Beret handbook and has no photos on how to perform a proper takedown. Rather, it is a textbook and reference manual on the development of spiritual power.

Many others have traversed this same territory, and the author is a student of various paths, and so he presents a synthesis of some of the threads he has encountered: Carlos Castaneda and the Toltecs, Dan Millman, Shambhala, G.I. Gurdjieff, the Feldenkrais method, A Course in Miracles, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming are his main sources, alongside his personal experience as a psychotherapist.

The result is a very useful and well-organized distillation of the ways and means to personal power -- power over self, as opposed to power over others. People familiar with any of the above sources will find similar concepts here, but presented in a very straightforward format (as opposed to some of the storytelling styles of some of the sources). The seeking of personal power is, after all, a very practical pursuit, not something limited to stories about people who have had supernatural experiences or extraordinary teachers.

The warrior's way represents simply the most effective and efficient way of living in the world: with minimization of energy waste and maximization of available resources, achieved through honing the self down to a fine point by relentless self-examination and action. It requires discipline, nonattachment, compassion, and surrender of self to be truly free, and these things are available to anyone. Spencer's book makes this all the more clear in his drawing from many sources, showing that, truly, truth and opportunities for gaining power can be found almost anywhere you look.

All in all, a most lucid presentation and thorough description of what is expected of a person on the warrior's path. I would also recommend A Toltec Path, by Ken Eagle Feather.

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.

Robert L. spencer delivers tools of the trade for personal empowerment based on examples from current foreward-thinking authors such as Dan Millman, Carlos Casteneda, Brooke Medicine Eagle, and others.

The ideas of these authors are not brought forth to debate their reality, but rather what we might find useful from their ideas to break out of old comfortable habits and find new ways of looking at life and seeing ourselves.

Spencer quotes Millman and Casteneda, "The happiness of the ordinary person is tied to the events of her day. Warriors generate their own happiness."

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.

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

This slender volume serves as an introduction to several of the various schools of thought concerning the concept of modern-day Warriorship as a path to personal power and self-improvement. Robert L. Spencer discusses some of the core concepts of Warriorship, such as personal power and impeccability. He also addresses many of the pitfalls facing the student of the Warrior way.

CRAFT OF THE WARRIOR is decidedly philosophical in outlook, geared toward the spiritual. This is not a "success" book in the vein of THINK AND GROW RICH or HOW TO LIVE THE JAMES BOND LIFESTYLE.

Spencer briefly summarizes the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, Dan Millman, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, G.I. Gurdjieff, Feldenkrais, A Course in Miracles, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming as schools of thought in this area (there are others). The reader is invited to explore any or none of them at his leisure.

As a starting point in Warrior learning THE CRAFT OF THE WARRIOR should be read in conjunction with THE AWAKENED WARRIOR by Rick Fields, a series of essays on the subject which provides practical examples along with the theory in this book.

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.

Every year I read at least one book that is solidly outside my personal worldview and for 2010, Robert L. Spencer's The Craft of the Warrior (2nd edition) seemed to be the ticket.

Spencer's thesis is that a new myth is emerging in which people are embracing a life of conscious living where they forge a destiny based on real choice, freed from desire, the fear of death, and other limiting beliefs and practices that the author considers self-defeating or even self-destructive.

The life philosophy within the pages is an interesting and occasionally confusing fusion of Carlos Castaneda's Mesoamerican shamanism, Dan Millman's contribution to the human potential movement, G. I. Gurdjieff's esoteric Christianity, and Chögyam Trungpa's Tibetan Buddhism. Added into the mix are insights from the disicplines of the Feldenkrais Method and Nuero-Linguistic Programming.

Especially helpful to the researcher is a rich collection of footnotes and a comprehensive index which can act as a springboard for further reading and insight.

However, for this particular reviewer, Spencer's choice of models leaves the reader questioning the supposed superiority of mystical warriorship as a viable lifestyle.

It is a proven fact that Castaneda's travels with don Juan are fictitious with one investigator proving through library records that when Castaneda was theoretically having peyote experiences with don Juan, he was actually doing research in the library about such experiences. Castaneda's later bizarre behavior with the Three Witches (his three live-in lovers), the suicide of one of his protégés, and his promotion of the dubious practice of Tensegrity leaves one wishing Spencer had found a true mystical warrior that was closer to what one sees as a warrior ideal.

One fares even worse with Chögyam Trungpa whose own followers freely admit was an alcoholic and surprisingly, for a Buddhist monk, very sexually active with many women throughout his life. Unless mystical warriorship is simply reduced to "If it feels good, do it," and "The end justifies the means," this particular researcher will simply continue with the writings of John Eldredge and even Stephen Covey where warriorship (conscious living) means the ability to embrace nobility and power in following external and objective true north principles.

However, one fares better with Dan Millman (though his autobiographical book is by his own admission a fictional account and his beloved and mystically powerful teacher Socrates never existed). One also fares better with G. I. Gurdjieff who appears to be by all definitions a true mystic with some intriguing insights such as the Enneagram. For this particular reviewer, it appears that Gurdjieff will require further research.

Bottom line is that there is some merit to Spencer's work taking into consideration his models for men living conscious lives merely deal with human beings in all their frailty. A little agnosticism on the part of the reader appears to be in order.

There's nothing in it about building authority or winning over enemies, rather you will find the usual Buddhist practice of rationalizing intellectual laziness, submissiveness, and concrete-bound (non-) "thinking". Calling a person practicing what the book preaches a warrior is in my opinion highly misleading. Real warriors interested in personal emancipation and the philosophy of winning will learn more from authors of books about life strategies (like Robert Greene or Balthasar Gracian) and sports psychology.