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Warrior Awareness: A Self-Test & Wise-Awake by Mark Hatmaker

 


There is not a Warrior, “sheepdog,” scout, “Hoo-ahh!” tactical warhorse alive who does not tout situational awareness.

There is no prepper, combatives certificate possessing, “Got the OODA Loop t-shirt” wearing Hoss who will tell you that being unaware of your environment is a good idea.

None.

Eyes on. Ears pricked. Alertness primed.

Aware and awake is the first and, often, best defense.

Pop Quiz

One-Point Southwest, right now, no hesitation.

Two-You have been kidnapped. You have been locked in a trunk. During the brief transport to the house you are to be kept or dismembered in you notice an open area next to the house. At some point you are able to grab a phone and have 10 seconds to describe what surrounds the house.

Is that open area a field, a meadow, or a pasture? [There is a difference and scouts, and CIA Field Operatives alike know that difference. Do you?]

Three-Name the last body of water you drove over or next to.

Four-If it is a river, which way is upriver?

Five-If it is a tidal region, is it in Neap or Spring Tide?

Six-You’ve been tasked with a BOLO for New Jersey tags right now—an infant’s life depends on finding this vehicle. How many New Jersey tags did you spot so far today, before the BOLO? Where?

[If you require notification to notice what’s around you, well…]

Seven-Back to our kidnapping. You’ve noticed this single-tree [the photo] to offer clues in your 10-second phone call. You live in a low-wind area, and you know your transport has been brief.

Which direction are you looking when you see that tree?

Eight—You are plotting your escape. You have decided that going under darkness is ideal. You notice that this evening’s moon has a ¼ sliver showing on the left face.

Will you have more chance of escape under cover of darkness tonight or tomorrow night?

There is no time to Google moon-phases, make a decision now! You’ve seen the same 29-day cycle since you’ve been born, you’re squared away on this knowledge, right?

So, how’d you do?

Here’s hoping well, but…I have hit many a pronouncer of “Always have your eyes open!” with these and other varieties of questions and often wind up with many a sputtering song-and-dance.

It seems that to many “Eyes open” is looking for some movie trope rather than what is actually around us.

Environmental awareness is less about looking for the pony-tail baddies in leather trench coats lurking outside John Wick’s house than noticing the real-world day-to-day EVERYTHING around you.

Some may say, “But Mark, I can’t live 24/7 under hyper-vigilance, that would be exhausting.”

You’re right it would be. If…and only if that awareness is primed as looking for Negative Anomalies.



In many American Indian traditions there is a warrior culture that primes such seemingly preternatural awareness in an easy relaxed manner that does not require secreting cortisol as a constant drip.

In the Comanche Warrior tradition, there is a concept called Tabe Nanika, which roughly translates as “Hears the Sunrise.”

A sort of educated synesthesia is involved. One learns to not merely look at what surrounds one but to learn to smell, hear, taste, touch and associate all the senses with as much phenomena in the word as the Warrior can.

To be Tabe Nanika means “Yes, I know that the sun will rise between that fencepost and that Red Cedar, but I also know that the cardinals will begin their metallic chittering as the rays break. This will be followed shortly by a lone male mourning dove giving his mating cry that is distinct from the call of the mated mourning dove. I can smell the tiger lilies when dew is on the ground as they will begin opening and turn their faces to the east.”

One can go on with the plethora of environmental observations that can be made with each individual environment and time of day.

In essence, Tabe Nanika is learning To See the Good So That You Can Easily See the Bad.

If the Warrior is wide-awake to all, and most of the world [fortunately] is good, then the anomaly of “something is off here” sticks out like a turd in a flower bed.

If one is only looking for the danger—one may, in fact, be blind to myriad precursors to danger by dint of removing the “good” from the sensory inventory.

Also, as in some of our Pop Quiz Questions, a blindness to benign at the time stimuli can lead to ignorance as to how to use all in our environment as clues to a wonderful world and as tools for our survival.



A Warrior wishes to be more than awake.

A Wise Warrior wishes to be Wise Awake. That is Tabe Nanika.

[For more on developing Tabe Nanika, The 1st Volume of The Suakhet’u Program: Opening the Sensorium is scheduled for release in September of this year.

·        It lays the foundation for the Morning Practice and opens the doors for the “Alive Walks & “Being” Practices to come.

·        This Video/Booklet Program will be a Black Box Subscriber exclusive initially with a roll-out to gen-pop further down the road.

·        For a bit more on this see here: https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-suakhetu-program-opening-sensorium.html

·        For more on The Black Box Program itself.

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