Every life has a core issue to figure out and work through in a meaningful way. What is your core issue? And how are you doing with it? The tendency is to address the core issues of others, to find fault in how others are doing things and going about their lives. These others are just showing you where your own issues lie. Thank them for being in your life as your greatest teachers and then take your attention off them and tend to yourself. It’s what you are there for—to resolve and to evolve!
We all get caught in systems of belief, sticky as a spider’s web… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Chuck, Jeanne and I write often of warrior skills, of learning to hone the skills and mindset of a warrior. We like to say that we are all warriors on our personal journeys. It might be difficult to grasp what we mean by this or to feel an attachment to the term, but be assured it’s not really that foreign.
The first step of acceptance of the self as a warrior comes in acknowledging that we are all spiritual beings seeking to graduate from Earth School, to find the means to connect with our High Self and move on from repeated lives here and to advance into other realities. Earth school is the preparation for doing just that.
A warrior does not seek to promote or aggrandize the self, but uses the term only as an anchor, as a focus. Much as a practitioner of meditation, yoga, tai chi, karate, etc., might practice the skills of those disciplines, in deep inner silence, so does a warrior practice the skills of the warrior in private. It is not something one talks about. It is something one does, all the time and to the best of one’s abilities, seeking always to advance to new levels of accomplishment, like learning to improve at playing a musical instrument or to perfect an athletic skill.
To bring attention to the self, to believe or state that one is better or more advanced that another being is not in the warrior’s best interest. The only thing that matters is the personal journey toward awareness, and so a warrior remains innerly focused on that intent. Awareness is whatever it is for the life one is in and the journey one is presently on. One person’s awareness might be another person’s confusion, or already assimilated into another person’s life, but all will discover what they need over time, when they are ready, and so awareness is very personal too.
And so, the only thing that really matters is the personal journey, and thus we use the term “warrior” in a very specific way, to describe a being who is privately intent on figuring life out on ever-deepening levels, intent on taking the inner journey to understanding and completion, in whatever way that is meaningful for the current lifetime.
Curiosity might be the catalyst to advancement… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Thus, references to the skills of the warrior and the processes of the warrior’s journey are always made with a far bigger picture in mind, the ultimate goal being that of the eternal spirit’s connection and union with its energetic self, with the Earth School being finding out that it is something else entirely. Experiences in life provide us with the direct means and the tangible products to take the journey to understanding what that might mean for us individually, utilizing what is personally relevant.
If you have any doubt about being a warrior yourself, stop right now. Instead, accept that because you are here, living in Earth School, you are already taking the warrior’s journey. You are curious, a seeker of something beyond that which is normally perceived, or you have been thrust into experiences and perceptions that you did not ask for but have had to contend with nonetheless. So the truth is, we are all warriors seeking meaning, understanding, and connection. If you are reading this—and I write this without any self-aggrandizement but simply as fact—you are already well on your way.
There comes a point during your time in Earth School when it becomes clear that “warrior” is indeed an appropriate term of description for what you are doing, for what you are attempting to achieve, to figure out, to sort through. In seeking deeper explanation, in the search for self-knowledge, for spirit connection, in the deep work of recapitulation, you are learning and honing the skills of a warrior. You might even discover that you have always been a warrior; you just didn’t know it!
So, when we speak or write of warriors and their doings, do not dismiss yourself from the mix, but more fully embrace your own journey as a warrior’s journey. Perhaps finding a context for what you are attempting to do and giving it a label, such as “I am a warrior taking a warrior’s journey,” will be just what you need to lock-in the practice and the deepening search for meaning that you have embarked on, even without your knowing, giving it a most fitting name. Do not doubt that you are worthy of the name, for in truth we are all warrior’s taking the warrior’s journey, just as we are spiritual beings taking the spiritual journey. They are one and the same.
At some point along the way we discover what it means to be in Earth School. We wake up to the fact that we are here to learn something. We become intensely aware that there is something else beyond this learning ground. That awakening offers us the opportunity to seek advancement beyond Earth School. It’s always our choice, of course.
What’s out there waiting for us? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
With our warriorhood practices firmly rooted, with our skills honed, our doubts melt away more easily and we move on more easily too. For now, however, we do the work we are challenged with in this life, both that which comes from within and that which comes from without.
The lessons of this lifetime, whether we are aware of them as lessons or not, whether we see a bigger picture or not, offer us the opportunity to connect with our future self. Making the decision to find out what that might mean is another step on the spiritual warrior’s journey.
