The Spiritual Warrior Concept: Oxymoron Feeding Dualism, or the Nature of Life?

Is Being a "Spiritual Warrior" a Thing?

For awhile now, I have had a strong resistance to investigating the concept of "Spiritual Warrior." There was a huge part of me that had a streamline focus to that all is light and unified, all it ultimately Good in the end, and to even look into the concept that there may be necessary dualism within the unification concept could somehow be tiptoeing into the "Dark Side".

Western Spirituality is super light-focused, which is great, but can sometimes pump out "false-positives" (fake optimists who have stuffed their dark energy instead of purging it). The fear, of course, the that we will get our egos confused with light, and be a milder form of preaching, cult-leading, terrorism, or something else clearly fear/ego based "in the name of God."

Yet over time, especially since the Sanango diet, the Universe and Medicine have been dropping subtle hints, inner pulls, and physical opportunities for me to investigate this. So, letting go of my fear and trusting myself/my Spirit to hold the flashlight, I begin to consciously climb down into the great unknown question I haven't wanted to ask myself: do we need to fight for the light? And if so, what does that mean exactly?

Draw to Physical Strength Training

I have been (for awhile now) getting pulled to study martial arts - specifically Krav Maga, which was developed by the Israeli army for both military and civilians alike, to be able to effectively defend and attack against people and weapons. It's pretty hardcore - streetfighting from what it appears. What's also noteworthy is that this is one of the few martial arts that was NOT birthed in a longstanding tradition with spiritual roots - it is new, it can be violent (your option), and it is not considered sacred.

In the last year, some of you know I have not been able to read "spiritual" books unless they fall through pretty much directly from the Divine. Each time I try, I physically cannot do it...I get stopped energetically within the first few pages, and it would be like trying to trudge through reading a horribly thick textbook (no matter how wonderful the book may really be!)

These are a few of the ways the Divine will guide me into most efficiently feeding my Mind with concepts that I need to work on at the moment, step by step along my path, instead of having a haphazard, chaotic frenzy.

Meanwhile, I have also had a strong desire to return to lifting weights and doing significant cardio exercise. Not so much for the weight loss (though I won't block the beauty of releasing the last 10 lbs!) but in truth, for the strength and durability of my body. I want to be able to run away if I ever need to, or have the strength to pull myself over the side of a cliff (?)

Random, I know, and it's funny that it is NOT coming from fear, which makes it feel completely different. It is coming from almost a sense of preparation (I'm not saying that I will be dangling off a cliff at some point, or that the world is going to end and I need to be physically ready, so don't let fear spin out and exacerbate "preparation" - though I had to manage the fear myself at first!)

It's almost like I have balanced out the emotional body to a level, my spirit has had the opportunity to grow and strengthen, the Mind and Ego are always works in progress, but significantly more balanced than before...and now...time for the physical manifestation of that.

Visceral Human Nature

Soon after I returned to the States, I went to the library to look for the most non-"spiritual" book I could find (yeah I know everything is spiritual, but you know what I mean!) I found one called Babygirl...urban youth writing about a girl growing up on the streets (why I thought that wouldn't be spiritual is beyond me).

About a quarter of the way through the book I see a reference to Iyanla Vanzant (my teacher from Inner Visions) and I chuckled, forgetting sometimes how famous she is. That was the first inkling that this book may be more spiritual than I was expecting.

By the end of the book, it was clear there were some strong, "fight for the light" concepts in this book (mild religious overtones from what I gathered) and a woman in the end who was just a complete and total badass...calm, collected, no fear. Did what she needed to do to save the day (sorry to spoil) and emitted the Feminine Warrior Goddess like nobody's business.

I thought about the intrigue I feel when I see characters in movies where nobody can touch the woman because she outsmarts them physically, mentally, and spiritually. She also doesn't lose her compassion and nurturing nature - it is just applied where she chooses.

My aunt reminded me of a book I hadn't read called Women Who Run with the Wolves. The energy of this book drips of the carnal, wild nature of the wise, wild woman. I am only at Chapter One and this is clearly the balloon pushing open the door of this investigation. It brings me back to the concept of Nature, and animals, and instinct. We like to thing we are more "evolved", but how do we really know? And is that better?

It seems the answers lie in nature. So why is it okay for a mama wolf to fight and steal to protect her young, and not for us to? Again, I'm not to a point where I know how I feel about it yet, but it's an interesting point to raise and mull over. I think people are sometimes so scared of chaos (maybe many years of government and religious control in our consciousness) that they blacklabel looking into any of this...just like it feels like the Western Spiritual community does at even looking in to anything dark.

Afraid of the Dark

If it weren't for my dark periods of life, I would have never searched. I would have never experienced the Light and fulfillment I do now. If I hadn't been so low, I couldn't have swung so high. We all know and understand the concept of appreciation. So why is it taboo to call a thing a thing? You can't really appreciate dinner until you're hungry. Air until you nearly drown. Light until you've been in dark.

I woke up in the middle of the night, understanding a deeper concept for a split second, then it moved back up to my conscious mind and I now need to explore it more to get back to where I understood in my wiser dreamstate.

"Letting something die and nurturing it back to health are both forms of healing."

They seem like opposites, but what I'm exploring now, it that maybe they are not always. If the body pushes a splinter out of the skin, extracting it, it disappears from existence in your body. It's like it died. You can't nurture a splinter back to health, and you can't nurture the body with the splinter still in there. It gets infected. This is not far away from the concept I've been investigating. The next day I saw a Grey's Anatomy on the very subject of the inner struggle for the healer to let something die in order to heal it.

But where, I ask myself, does this put the Buddhist philosophy, that I like so much and always strove to end up at when I reached higher levels...of never harm a living thing? I actually do not know much about Buddhism, so I'm sure I only have the "TV" version of what the philosophy is.

But, just like Christianity (which I tend to admire the original teachings of Jesus, but not necessarily what has been passed down through the Bible) it is an old tradition trying to be captured in words. How do I know that there is something in there that got lost along the way? Or that it's simply at a level that I am not at yet, and need to go through this process first to get there?

Many of us try to jump levels. We blindly do what they tell us...don't eat meat, do yoga, meditate, be peaceful and compassionate. But sometimes I feel like those things may or may not manifest naturally as we go through our process and rise levels.

If there is not a solid foundation under each step, we are just barely balancing at the top, not knowing why, and not truly being able to understand what we're seeing. The people who have actually reached some of these levels, the Wise Ones, don't judge us for our investigation process. They don't speak down condescendingly on our stumbling, or for not doing what they are doing.

They encourage us to find out for ourselves, instead of blindly following them, so we can truly understand from our own experience.

I have always felt like staying all 'peace, love and rainbows' and in the light was the safest, most effective way (again, don't trip out - I'm not talking about beating someone up for not doing their morning yoga - I'm talking about the concept of dualism and defense).

But to be honest, there is a part of me that feels I might have been staying in that place out of fear and for security. Why the intrigue? Why the draw to be able to defend myself physically? Why the books? What about my true, carnal, wild woman spirit?

Could it be the Dark Side trying to draw me in? Sure, that was my original fear to begin with. But I trust myself now, and my relationship with the Medicine, and the Universe. Investigating something must be done in order to understand it.

Maybe it all does end up in the Buddhist philosophy of unification, which everyone seems to understand completely except me. I understand it in the sense that I feel nothing is separate, there is no "God up there" and "us down here"...it is all the same system and the darker, heavier energies can help us experience the Lighter.

Or do I not understand it as much as I think I do, and this process is inherently unifying even more? Could it also be, that I am at another level where I am ready to start looking into these ugly truths that I was so scared of? Are they even ugly in the end, or is this just the way the system works to allow us to recognize higher levels of light?

Since I don't believe anything is separate anyway, and nothing ever really dies, how do I know this isn't an area that you must release a shitload of fear first in order to see and accept?

If I had tried to investigate this before, my ego would have been running the show and you end up with some crazy person doing clearly harmful things "in the name of God". Okay well maybe not, but that's where the fear-mind wants to go.

I realize that every person reading this will be reading it from a different place, and many will judge/fear/etc me in this process. That's also part of letting go of my ego enough to honestly speak where I am in my Life apprenticeship.

Maybe this is the shift now that the dark stuff doesn't scare me as much, after purging so much of it out of my body. Part of me doesn't want to have been wrong all those years in debating my best friend about the nature of Light and Dark (he's my soul-contracted ego-barometer!)

But even saying these words out loud (love blogging) makes it more clear that anything based out of fear is limiting, and only the spiritually strong survive. No stone unturned, right?

So in the end, I'm not clear yet. I am investigating. For those who know me, I'm one of the most non-violent people I know. Investigating the concept of Spiritual Warrior is an uncomfortable place and an uncomfortable conversation...but for whatever reason, it has been presented to me to look at.

So I'm looking. They fought in Avatar. They fought in the Matrix. They fought in Star Wars. Made-for-media movies, or manifestations of the nature of Nature? Many Archangels are depicted with swords and shields. The question is, why? And even if it's just us as humans looking at something through our own eyes and our own level, that is the level we are at.

To try to jump levels would be to oppress real things in our consciousness that are there (causing toxic, out of control buildups and explosions), and meant to be understood at this level, so that we can learn to manage them fully informed, and continue to rise to the next one. To pretend something is not in our consciousness and hide from it causes much more chaos than actually looking at it through conscious eyes.

**I wanted to add a caveat at the end - I still believe in 'defense only' in ceremony. I am not talking about engaging in unnecessary spiritual battles over ego. I'm talking about big time (2012? just kidding - maybe) kind of thing. Ego and integrity are obviously two very different things...

NOTES FROM THE FUTURE (2018)

Guess what era we're in now, friends from the United States? The Great Unearthing (catalyzed by politics). We've had to collectively recognize and take ownership of the ugly 'secrets' of our country's past, and bring it up to be dealt with. It's been ugly, but necessary. God willing, if we reach the critical mass and move along this process quickly enough, maybe we'll be over the hump by election time 2020. But this work has applied here in full force...

Not being afraid of the dark, check. The dark is just a shadow without the sun shining there, and often is our best teacher. Learning to do ego work in a loving way (vs the ego battling approach I took forever) has made it so much more gentle, yet more efficient and effective.

But also, recognizing that while we need to learn to speak (loudly at times) learning how to hold the space of human connection underneath while speaking for social justice, for me anyway, has been imperative.

That is not the same as "being neutral", I still have opinions and also leave room for shit I can't see. Normal. But learning how to speak with conscious connected delivery (vs shit-talking snark about any entire political group) is very important.

Learning to find my place as an ally in communities I want to support without "white-knighting" is also key. Getting my bearings on speaking out while respecting all human life (even if I think in my human mind that they're being assholes) is key.

It's not us against them, it's us against the systematic indoctrination of ignorance. If we work together to recognize and admit that what we've all been taught into the depths of our subconscious about society, certain groups, etc - everything can change.

When we recognize the amount of healing certain groups have endured being shit upon for years by our country (and therefore built up energetically in the body), having that compassion helps when holding, recognizing, and allowing that space.

When I asked the Universe to show me my white privilege walls, I was astounded as to how much I had not been able to see, even living in Northern Virginia with many friends of color. I considered myself pretty smart, progressive and open-minded. The invisible blinders over this construct are insane. There are hidden layers upon hidden layers, and intent and willingness to look is key. 

This, to me, is where my intuition was trying to take me as to what a Spiritual Warrior is. Holding that space of power, but seeing clearly and wielding it wisely. And knowing who the "enemy" truly is...

Back to 2010. I'll be in touch:)