Comanche Warrior Awareness & The Eyes of the Masters by Mark Hatmaker

 

[This offering couples well with the prior Apache Awareness Pop Quiz.]

Strange as it may seem, there is an intriguing overlap between the, so-called, “artistic eye,” and the Indigenous Warrior concept of “Always Seeing.” [Suakhet’u.]

·        Always Seeing can also be gussied up to the tactical jargon of “Always Awareness.”

·        Always Awareness, to my mind, surpasses the weak tactical sister, and far-more touted “situational awareness” which is, by definition, situational, that is, used upon occasion.

·        “Always Seeing” is just that, alive and awake to The ALL of the Wide World Before Us, the Heavens Above Us, and the Flora and Fauna Around Us. [Those curious two-footed Fauna we call humans, included.]

·        Situational Awareness by dint of being a cortisol activated bottom-up neural process can not be elevated to Always Awareness as the continuous cortisol infusion would create health problems [mentally, emotionally, and ultimately physically.]

·        It is surmised much anxiety-depression diagnoses are rooted in an oversensitive reaction to stimuli [external and internal] leading to this steady suffusing of cortisol.

·        Always Awareness does not demand, require, or even desire cortisol to spur the nervous system to alertness.

·        Rather, it primes the system to Awareness over Alertness, and the Awareness can easily morph to Alertness if the correct stimuli prompts.

·        Cortisol infused awareness looks for trouble.

·        Top-Down Awareness [steady-state, Always Awareness, Suakhet’u Awareness] Never looks for trouble, it simply…Looks.

·        If there is trouble to be seen, it will be seen long before an over-primed cortisol saturated system can react.

·        And Always Awareness will not overreact to stimuli [false positives] having laid the stimulus in the foreground in perspective.

·        Always Awareness looks to the abundance of beauty around us which far surpasses the dangers, threats, “boogeymen” of the environment.

·        Always Awareness translates this stimuli intake to Positive Affect [Science Talk for Happiness and good moods.]

·        Situational Awareness of cortisol saturation starts from the premise of “Uh-oh!”

Enough science yakkity-yak. Let us look to the words of artists and Warriors themselves to assist in this Always Aware worldview.

“Every duty we omit, obscures some truth we should have known.” John Ruskin

·        Duty being an act or observation.

·        The distant look in the loved one’s eyes over the last few days—a sign of dissatisfaction? Pain?

·        The blooming of the trees this Spring? Did we note the blossoms and buds beginning on the Southern exposure turning every tree in sight into a magnificent compass?

“Tabe nanika.”

·        A Comanche Warrior maxim that translates to “Hears the sunrise.”

·        This refers to the cross-sensory use of the human sensorium, a sunrise is not simply seen by the Warrior, its warmth is felt, the rise in temperature leads to the microbes in the soil out-gassing and giving us that fresh spring scent, the music box of birdsong tells us the time, from the first call of robins, to the phoebes chorus shortly thereafter to the cardinals next to the…

·        And if we wake up early enough, the mourning dove and…

·        Well, we sense nothing of we “omit” a duty.

“If you have genius, industry will improve it; if you have none, industry will supply its place.”—Sir Joshau Reynolds

·        Some sense well, from the beginning.

·        If they choose to develop it, they will excel.

·        Some are not naturally awake.

·        If they decide to make the effort, the effort becomes the genius—as in all pursuits worth pursuing.

·        The Suakhet’u Program is the beginning of your industrious genius.

“Punit’i tuas’u punit’i oyok’o punit’i.”

·        The Comanche instruction on how to Read the World.

·        “Look, and look again, always look.”

·        Look here being [all senses looking.]

·        In the translation, if I asked you Young Warrior to Look, it is taken to mean—Turn it ALL on, what do you see, smell, hear, taste, feel?

·        You are a sensory antenna alive in a universe thrumming with input.

·        But…only if you activate that power.

·        Again, see The Suakhet’u Program.

“Try to put well in practice what you already know; in doing so you will, in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about.”—Rembrandt.

·        Where do I start?

·        Right where you are now.

·        When?

·        Now.

·        How?

·        Look, listen, smell, taste, touch.

·        To gain deeper understanding, see The Suakhet’u Program.

“Tu’tu’kar’u.”

·        Do the work.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.”—William Blake

·        Look over nothing.

·        See the beauty in all.

·        The utility is also there.

·        Beauty and utility need not be separated, be it the gorgeous blue hue of the male Eastern Red Cedar that colors my view or its useful bark easy to roll to duff in my fingers to use as an ever-present firestarter.

“What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.”—John Ruskin

·        What you attend to is your life.

·        Be it your phone, ephemeral newsfeeds, videogames, walks in the forest, kind acts…

·        Our lives are what we pay attention to…and pay is the correct word.

·        Each second spent, never returns.

·        We wisely ask, “Does this spent time return on investment or am I simply spending my life doing this [insert anything and everything] right now?”

·        Would I be happy dying doing what I am doing this very moment?

“Men to match the mountains.”

·        Said of rugged mountain men and frontiersmen.

·        They who went into the mountains and thrived, absorbed the beauty, the ruggedness, the stolidity.

“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”—Da Vinci.

·        This man could SEE.

·        Within his journals there are notes on how to paint a battle-scene.

·        One marvels at how much he saw without benefit of still photographs.

·        He notes which way dust would trail from a stampeding hoof, the glint of light on a flashing blade and numerous other details that we take for granted by looking [looking not Seeing] at still photographs or the works of past Masters.

·        He Saw these details by Seeing.

·        Details that many of us never see even with the benefit of a still photograph to study.

·        He Saw these details in action—no benefit of a freeze-frame.

·        A life of action that still took the time to See.

·        And never stopped Seeing.

When the Comanche Warrior was asked, “When does a Warrior stop Being a Warrior?”

“Ke’ Suakhet’u”

·        Till the last breath.

May we all See, Be, Thrive, and embody Warriors of Beauty and Warriors of the Ready.

For details on the 8-minute daily Suakhet’u Program to put you on the Warrior and Artistic Eyed Path—see here.

[Again, this offering couples well with Apache Awareness Pop Quiz.]

Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life, Not Just Readin’ About It

The Black Box Warehouse

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast