The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

late at night when the truck in front of us stopped suddenly—seemingly intentionally. I was sure the driver was purposely wanting to aggravate us, and I reacted by getting out of the car and angrily confronting him. Unintimidated, the truck driver also got out. I was fuming, but my emotions were muddled. I felt offended that the driver had intentionally stopped in front of us. The feeling was strong because I felt important for having recently served my country. Huffing and puffing I shouted, “How dare you stop like that! I just got back from Korea serving my country!” His response left me feeling like an idiot, a feeling that remains vivid to this day. “Well, I served my country in Vietnam,” he stated. My Ego’s comparative game had been decisively turned against me. Serving in peacetime Korea was clearly no match for serving in Vietnam during a war. I just stood there embarrassed in front of my friends. My Ego wanted some kind of response to retain its superiority, but fortunately I was finished, for the time being, with obeying its dictates. I at least was aware my Ego had made a fool of me and that I didn’t want to feed it with any more stupid acts.
    Don Juan tells Castaneda that if you live by the Ego, then you can count on being offended or defensive for the rest of your life. You will constantly be tricked and trapped into doing idiotic things and wasting power. It took me until age 35 to go beyond the idea that I was better than others. I also realized we are interdependent, and each of us has a value which is not determined by comparison.
    Achievement
    Once in place in our young psyches, the Ego serves as a tool of society. We are easily trained to equate our self-worth with our achievements, whether those be the traditional achievements of mainstream culture, such as wealth and “success,” or the equivalent elements in climbing, such as the highest number grade or biggest mountain we have managed to climb. We have been conditioned to believe that great accomplishments somehow make us more valuable. It may be true that success in business makes us valuable to the nation’s economy. It is inaccurate to compare a high-volume producer/consumer with an actualized human being. What about our true self-worth? Is our essential value as a person defined by our potential to generate cash or, for that matter, to climb difficult rock? Obviously it is not.
    Achievement, as a primary motivating factor, is a self-limiting trap. Our value systems have been shaped to equate our own deepest sense of personal worth with achievement, but the light of logic casts serious doubts on this mindset. Is a poorly educated or disadvantaged person intrinsically less valuable than a business executive? Does climbing 5.13 make us more valuable than an acquaintance who merely climbs 5.11? Few of us would answer yes when the question is put bluntly. Yet, this system is deeply programmed into the average person, and it controls his sense of self-worth. The more we think about it, the more misguided a pure achievement-orientated value system becomes.
    A warrior is a realist. He realizes that, in an absolute and external sense, he is no more and no less valuable than any other human being. Outside factors, such as other people’s opinions, change capriciously in response to complex agendas. They are not reliable sources of self-worth because they are here one day and gone the next. A warrior knows that the functional, day-to-day value of life and of acts must be decided personally, internally.
    The point is, a value structure tied to the Ego is an unconscious habit, logically flawed, and is out of tune with reality and our own natures. Ironically, not only is this value structure flawed, but it actually damages our ability to achieve those goals on which it is based, in our case, specifically, the goal of climbing harder and better.
    We face a paradox. We want to climb harder in part because of our desire to achieve. Yet achievement-motivation is tainted by the ploys of the Ego. In reality, it is the good feelings associated with achievement that inspire us. We will embark upon a process of striving indirectly for the external goals we may have. The Rock Warrior’s Way begins with breaking down our habitual, achievement-oriented mindset and placing our motivation on more solid footing.
    Breaking Habits
    Our habitual mindset feels comfortable, since it is familiar, but it draws from a shallow well. Once you carefully examine