Practical Spirituality On: Reclaiming the Warrior

When we discuss the concept of the warrior many people will often think of fighting and violence. Our minds are drawn to the soldier who fights to maintain freedom for his or her country and to advance the cause of the nation without question, or to Rambo who goes and shoots up hundreds of people. This was not always what was considered a warrior even though many soldiers can be warriors, but not all, by any means. The warrior path was primarily a spiritual path, not only a physical path created to promote one's own well being or the well being of people who are similar in their beliefs and attitudes.

During this millennium it is time to reclaim the old warrior spirit and to become compassionate warriors. The compassionate warrior fights the battle on two fronts with one being more important than the other. The first and most important, is the battle within. The compassionate warrior stands against her most dangerous enemy: the maladaptive thoughts, ideas and fantasies planted within herself through socialization. These are the ideas that make us into hungry ghosts who can only find satisfaction by looking outside of ourselves and consuming. These ideas make us find very temporary satisfaction and self esteem through the attainment of material things and power over other people and objects. At the same time they cause us to ignore the beauty, the power, the majesty that exists within ourselves already.

They cloud our vision and turn the universe into a bunch of billiard balls and particles bouncing around. They make a beautiful sunrise or sunset into the rotation of a planet. They cause us to ignore the beauty and the magic of all of the things that take place in nature and in creation because we are always trying to explain them and struggling to get more than we have. We exploit nature instead of enjoying it, and engage in one-up-men-ship as a way of being. Our energy is used playing out some role or part that has been assigned to us through our early life experiences. Until the compassionate warrior, through the strength of her intelligence and applied love (compassion) destroys these enemies she will be trapped in a box and will always need to obtain good thoughts, feelings and ideas about herself from others; thus she will always be a debtor, in need of social approval.

The second enemy that the compassionate warrior must defeat are the exte
al enemies that enter in and harm his friends, family, and community. Today, in our age, instead of fighting against advancing armies the enemy are usually false thoughts and ideas; the very thoughts and ideas that socialize us and take aware our power to awaken to the true self. These thoughts and ideas are passed on by every institution, and especially the media. Messages are sent to tell us who we are, how we should look, what we should be, and that we are not good enough and if we are we won't be until we get older. With every movie, every commercial, every book where the rich, powerful and beautiful are at the center of the story, these maladaptive thoughts and ideas are reinforced until we give away all of our power and end up feeling empty. We become depressed because we give away our hopes, dreams, and desires to a small group of people that bring their dreams to life in the media and cajole us to join along or be ostracized.

The compassionate warrior destroys these false ideals by wielding the sword of truth. He shines the light onto the darkness and the manipulation so people can see the falsity and through the use of logic and intuition, the two sides of intelligence, he dispels the false and reclaims his right to make decisions, to decide on what is right or wrong, and to help each community chart its own future. At Diana Sarah Wellness Center we focused greatly on what we call our Warrior of Compassion Guild. This is a group of people who work together to reclaim their power and to become active participants in their communities and the larger community through peaceful, legal, and responsible means in our democratic society. We have not list or meetings, we are joined together in spirit. These people will have read On Being Love's Warrior: Becoming the Compassionate Warrior Within, written by Kendall Ronin, which is a step by step manual on how one can reclaim one's power within and become a leading member in one's community and the society at large.

Times are troubling now. We are confronted with negative messages all the time. We are divided by the media and some media outlets are actually lying. Many of the religions are supporting racism, sexism, homophobia, and war. It seems that the spiritual person is left on his or her own. This is not the case. There are those who work to reclaim the warrior archetype and the power within. Today it is necessary, for anyone who wants to live a life of peace and beauty, and to raise a decent family with loving children in this age, to become a warrior within and reclaim the warrior archetype. This I have already begin. I hope that you will join us.