EMBODYING SPIRIT:
THE INNER WORK OF THE WARRIOR
George Breed, Ph.D.
This work is licensed under a
Copyright 2004
Flagstaff, Arizona
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Invitation
And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge,
then, I pray you,
be at least its warriors.
They are the companions and forerunners
of such saintship.
--Nietzsche(1)
Preface
Warriors of spirit across the ages and across disciplines (martial arts, healing arts, creative arts, spiritual arts, political arts) embody certain qualities. In embodying (deeply practicing) these qualities, stress effects are reduced, increased energy results, awareness increases, confidence deepens, the mind grows quiet and more open to creative solutions, right relationship occurs, and the state known as flow becomes one’s lifestyle.
The embodying of these warrior qualities is an essential next step in the transformation of human consciousness and in the survival of the human species. Until our consciousness opens to a greater light of awareness, we will continue to foul our nest, to murder each other and entire species, to hate, to live lives of isolated desperation while engrossed in our own reflections.
Practicing the embodying of these qualities of the warrior of spirit expands one’s capacity and capability. As our capacity opens, more awareness comes. As more awareness comes, our capacity to receive expands. We become co-creators or partners with the lifeforce, with spirit in this endeavor.
A purpose of this book is to introduce these warrior qualities (you will find they are not strangers) so that you may sit with them, entertain them, try them on for size, and perhaps find that they become you.
Embodying Spirit: The Inner Work of the Warrior is partly a manual with recipes from the warrior community for consciousness transformation. We are the ingredients. This life we are living is both mixing bowl and oven. Our Source provides the right temperature for our baking.
The root of “manual” is manus or hand. In a manual, useful information is made handy, near at hand. The value of a manual is, exactly as the name implies, in its use. A manual sitting on a shelf is in a coma, awaiting someone handy to bring it into life. The person bringing a manual to life is simultaneously resurrected. Possibilities are unleashed.
Merging with a manual brings into play the focused intent of creation. Tab A is actually inserted into Slot A. The carburetor is actually adjusted. The recipe is followed. Eggs are broken and stirred. Something new is born.
Concepts are combined with direct bodily experience so that a depth of comprehension is attained. The person’s whole brain, the entire embodying being, begins to know. Centering, for example, is no longer an idea or image, a mental projection, an illusion, but a living action, a way of being in the world.
For those who are only reading this manual, you will get some ideas for intellectual banter in your mental foraging. Unless the qualities discussed are already part of your experience or unless you perform the experiments, you will not know what you read. If you want water rather than a mirage, you must embody the qualities.
Part I: The Mandala: The Wheel of Keen Weapons
The Cosmic Journey
Comprehension of the existence of a vehicle for journeying and dealing with existence as a human began when I was a fledgling, a boy deeply open to understanding life as best I could from the vantage point of life in small town Georgia and Alabama in the1940s. I had known since early consciousness that the cosmos takes a personal interest in human lives.
My concerns narrowed, over time, into a few questions of basic human existence. How is it we trick ourselves into believing that we are separate chunks of matter, alien from the universe, alien from life, alien from nature, alien from each other? How is it that we trance ourselves into alienation, a trance in which we can become so deeply embedded we are willing to die for it? How is it that we sleep so deeply? How is it that we do not awaken? What are the principles, the operating principles of the cosmos, and thus, the principles by which we can live most fruitfully?
A practical model for embodying the lifeforce (spirit) of the universe has emerged from two major currents of the streaming of this life. At age 12, I was lifted into the cosmos. When 21, I began the practice of the martial arts in Okinawa.
The cosmic experience came unexpectedly and with startling clarity. We lived in a small town in Alabama, separated from Georgia by the Chattahoochee River, which consisted not only of water; it was also a river of time. Looking across the river, I could see into the future. Georgia was an hour ahead.
No one else was at home that day. Sitting quietly on the living room sofa, I was suddenly transported to a vantage point where I could see the globe of Earth. I remember a moment of fear that I would not be able to breathe in “outer space.” Something reassured me and I breathed calmly and quietly. I looked “down” to see my body. I had no body other than the cosmos itself.
The earth was beautiful. A soft golden light bathed it through and through and surrounded it with a golden glow. I sensed, felt, and heard the harmony of its music. I saw and knew with deep certainty that all on earth is interrelated and harmoniously connecting. All is one flow. Separation is an illusion.
I do not know how long the experience lasted. At some point, I was sitting on the sofa once again. I told no one. I knew from listening to adult conversations that no one spoke of such things.
The Martial Journey
The second current of this life came in joining the U. S. Marine Corps with two express purposes: to see how I fared in the world of warrior males and to go to Japan. I accomplished both.
Karate. Stepping into martial art training on Okinawa in 1959 was a life transforming experience. Tatsuo Shimabuku was a small and fierce man who inspired Okinawans and Americans to push themselves to the utmost in learning his particular evolution of the martial arts, Isshinryu (the way of one spirit, one heart, and one mind).
We spun and leaped and kicked and punched in the formal katas and free-style sparring under his direction. The poured-concrete floor behind his house toughened our bare feet with its wintry cold and summer heat. The body-bag on a high chain swung from jump kicks. The makiwara boards embedded in concrete yielded to our pounding fists and elbow slams.
As we worked through the katas, Sensei would make his rounds and periodically kick or punch particular muscle groups to ensure their appropriate toughness. He corrected our breathing, our form, and our stance. Often, while watching our maneuvers, he would sit quietly pounding a large nail into a two-by-four with the calloused flesh of his hand, occasionally stopping to sip some green tea.
Though he spoke little, Sensei Shimabuku taught much: quietness and confidence, the rudiments of Zen (though he never used the word), proper breathing, visual imagery, energy flow, stance, fluidity, focus, toughness, and open awareness.
It was from Sensei Shimabuku that I learned of the existence of martial art principles passed down across the centuries. The principles were displayed in his Agena dojo and on the graduation “silks” presented with a belt award (2)
I continued to look for the journals, diaries, sayings, and aphorisms of those recognized as proficient in the arts. I wished to be able to speak the truths of these arts in succinct meaningful words, words embodying truth, words pointing to deep understandings of reality, words assisting self-cultivation and transformation.
Jujutsu. After returning to the states, I soon linked up with some black belts in jujutsu in Atlanta, Georgia. Their martial way was more circular than karate. When attacked, they would divert the oncoming energy of the attack into a circular motion, add some of their own energy to the circle, and end with the attacker’s body slammed into some immovable object.
The jujutsu style of interaction was more polite than Isshinryu (“since you choose to follow this path of attack, we will assist you on your chosen trip”), but the end result was equally as devastating: a broken person.
We combined techniques. The attacker was blocked and softened with karate moves, then circulated through the air into a jujutsu bone break or choke hold. We had great fun, but the model fell short of an appropriate means of harmonious communication.
Ki Development. In 1974, at a summer training camp, I was privileged to attend a six-week training program on Ki Development at Fullerton College, California. On the lawn of the Fullerton campus, the teacher, Sensei Koichi Tohei (Aikido practitioner and student of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido),(3) asked for five volunteers to attack him. This smiling dancing man moved in flowing circles and spirals in the midst of attackers who were falling and sailing through the air and rushing toward a target that was no longer there.
I laughed at the spectacle and at the good-natured humor of this sensei who gave the appearance of a Japanese businessman on vacation — grey hushpuppies, blue socks, navy-blue full cut slacks, and a white open-necked short-sleeved shirt, Sensei Tohei moved gracefully with agile speed and power.
This was the martial art model applicable to daily life I had been looking for: the practice of positively grounding openness allowing non-colliding intimacy with a potential adversary. It was neither necessary nor desirable to rip out the other’s throat or slam the other’s head into the concrete after a full body throw. One could dance the dance of no harm to you, no harm to me. One could allow the dance to dance the dance.
I began learning Ki (energy) principles and their applications (mind, body, spirit moving as one) from Sensei Tohei that day. A lifelong focus on embodying these principles in daily life led to the understanding that martial art principles in their ultimate form are the same as healing art and spiritual art principles.
I began doing seminars, workshops, and retreats on the application of martial arts principles to daily life. A simple list of principles was all I had, principles teased from my own training and from the diaries and journals other martial artists left behind. I taught the principles everywhere I could: hospitals, schools, martial art training halls, Indian Health agencies, senior citizen centers, group homes for the developmentally disabled, state fairs, Elderhostel, state and county governments, community mental health centers, behavioral health agencies, churches, universities.
Of course as I kept teaching and living these principles, they kept refining me, and as they lived through me, continued to refine themselves. I practiced and taught martial arts (from the hard exterior to the soft interior) while continuing to ponder the writings and journals of those who had gone before.(4)
I also studied the spiritual literature from diverse cultures.(5) These readings (with accompanying practices) gave further validation to the understanding that the so-called “martial” principles were in accord with “spiritual” principles, that they described the same reality, the one cosmos.
The Professional Journey
My early research as a psychologist was a continuous pursuit of understanding the dynamics of nonverbal communication, a study of the expression of the spirit in which things were said, rather than the actual words spoken.(6) This quest naturally overlapped with explorations of therapeutic relationships,(7) of the field of healing,(8) and of the reality of the interdependence and interpenetration of all phenomena (mutual co-arising), as evidenced by my own and others’ direct experiences.(9)
I began to understand more deeply that examplars of expression of spirit, whether through words, through healing practices, through visual art, or through the martial arts, were warriors(10) with the courage and other warrior qualities needed to follow the path of spirit rather than human conventionality.
As a psychologist, I opened to the writings of Abraham Maslow (peak experiences), William James (cosmic consciousness & mystic experience), Carl Jung (synchronicity), Sid Jourard (transparent self), Kurt Lewin (field theory), Ken Wilber (integral psychology), and Jean Gebser (the evolution of consciousness). I saw that their views of the universe confirmed and enhanced the martial principles.
As a psychotherapist, I saw that these principles were meaningful and applicable to the daily lives of individuals caught in physical, emotional, interpersonal, mental, and spiritual pain.
All along the journey, the principles kept shaping and refining themselves. Only within the past few years did they begin forming into the present model, four sets of complementary practices arising out of the pulsating heart of Life itself. These 8 transformational practices allow a natural loosening of spiritual knots: the cognitive obscurations and emotional habits which create and compose the little separate self with all its demanding poses, anxieties, sufferings, and fears.
The Wheel of Keen Weapons: Practices Promoting Spiritual Strength
When the early morning sun peeks over the horizon, rays of light flash across the earth. Other rays of the sun are already extending upward into the heavens. This vision of the sun, the heavens, the earth, and the horizon forms a wheel of radiant spirit and its depiction of eight transformational practices or eight keen weapons (11) of a warrior (see Figure 1).This “wheel of keen weapons” invites practical embodying of the life force, of spirit in daily life.(12)
As can be seen, three of the principles are Earth focused: centering and grounding while being mindfully present with relentless intent; three have a Heaven focus: opening and releasing and forgiving while surrendering with lovingkindness, compassion, and appreciation; two are rays of the Horizon — participation in everyday life: calm and still with the speed and rhythm of effective action.
When Earth and Heaven principles are experienced simultaneously, we become like our cousins, the trees. We root and ground while spreading our branches to the cosmos. This is a practice of great trust.
Like trees, we do not go away with adversity. No matter the weather, we stand and open to life. With continuing adversity, we extend our roots even deeper, thus being able to open and engage even further.
As trees “planted by the rivers of water,” we maintain the symmetry of our roots with our branches. The deeper and more firmly based our roots in the Source of our being, the more successfully we engage the wound of this world.
Feet on the ground and head in the sky, conduits allowing the merging of earthly and heavenly energies, we move back and forth on the horizontal plane conducting our daily business – the business of right relationship with all we encounter.
Unlike Dharmaraksita’s wheel of sharp weapons(13) which provides a karmic explanation of our sufferings (“this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done”), this wheel of keen weapons represents our opening with full spirit into the world. This is the work of the wheel of keen weapons effectively engaging the soul of the world.
The weapons, the eight warrior qualities, are keen weapons. In embodying the qualities, we are the weapons. Keen means not only sharp and acute (having acumen or wisdom), but also bold, daring, fierce, and able. To embody the Wheel of Keen Weapons is to be fiercely alive with the capability and compassion that comes from deep wisdom.
It is no new news that the human race is deeply involved in genocide and suicide. We all play a part in the dinosauric consciousness causing such destruction. We must now step into a new consciousness. A transformation of consciousness is essential for the survival of the human and many of the nonhuman species. Embodying the eight warrior qualities produces such a transformation.
To transform our own consciousness requires a continuous practice of stepping out of the separative mind (14) with its conceptual layer of divisiveness, its tendency to harbor suspicion and mistrust, its “I”-dolatrous stance of I, I, I and me, me, me. We continuously practice opening to unitive consciousness,(15) to identifying with the Source that breathes us, to standing in daily life as spheres of influence, and embodying the radiance of our Source.
The core of the Wheel of Keen Weapons holds space for our Source, the great mystery that gives birth to all without ceasing, with rays of life extending outward. The Source Itself is forever aware and present, eternally grounding and deepening, infinitely opening and releasing. Our Source is inclusionary and compassionate, relentless and intentful, yielding and flexible, calm and still, active and engaging. We are invited to join in, to embody the same characteristics, the same qualities.
Brief Commentary on The Wheel of Keen Weapons
Earth Practices (Rooting)
- Centering. Centering one’s being before and during any action is essential. Praying is a centering of spirit. So also is settling down to one’s physical center of balance through a simple intake and slow expulsion of breath.
- Mindful Presence. Everything is taking place here in the present immediacy, even the past and the future. Attend to now. Now is the time.
- Relentless Intent. We set our face “as a flint.” Total commitment, no holding back, the mission has already been accomplished while it is being accomplished.
Heaven Practices (Opening)
- Opening. Opening is the counterpart of centering. Once we are centering, we open to all that exists, to all that is happening. We release apprehension and open to comprehension.
- Surrendering. Surrendering to no man, only to our Source, our former way is torn asunder and we are rendered anew. This is a continuous process.
- Compassion. Lovingkindness is the partner of relentless intent. We see God in all and all in God. We know it is hard to be meat. We hold appreciation in our hearts.
Horizon Practices (Engaging)
- Calm. Calmness allows clear seeing. Embodying of the Earth and Heaven principles produces calmness. One is at home in the universe.
- Action. Centering and present with full intent while surrendering to God with openness and compassion, one calmly acts. What needs to be done is done.
Augmentations
Each practice is augmented or strengthened by the other seven, and is especially strengthened by the two adjacent practices as depicted in the Wheel.
Earth Practices
· Centering practice is strengthened by the practice of Relentless Intent and Mindfulness. Centering requires presence, awareness, and living in the Now with diamond-hard one-pointed intent.
· Mindfulness is strengthened by the practice of Centering and Calm. Mindful presence requires focusing, condensing and deepening while being still, quiet, and clear.
· Relentlessness is strengthened by the practice of Centering while in Action. Relentless intent requires the stability of grounding and deepening while deliberately embodying and calling one’s energies into engaging life.
Heaven Practices
· Opening is strengthened by the practice of Surrendering and Compassion. Opening requires the surrendering of one’s ego and extending positive energies outward in all directions without bias (Compassion).
· Surrender is strengthened by the practice of Calm and Openness. Calmness is essential to surrender, which cannot exist with an agitated state. So is Openness: one surrenders into the openness of our Source.
· Compassion is augmented by Openness and Action. The extension of appreciation and lovingkindness for all requires openness as its companion and direct application (action) to the current situation.
Horizon Practices
· Calm is augmented by the practices of Mindfulness and Surrender. To be still, quiet, and clear requires both mindful presence and letting go.
· Action is augmented by practicing Relentless Intent and Compassion. Acting with relentless intent by itself can be cold, cruel and ineffective and must be balanced by the appreciation and compassion that comes with knowledge of interbeing.
The Core Practice
· All practices are, of course, augmented by the Source, which gives birth to all, is in all, and is beyond all. Our Source is a radiant example of the creative energies of all eight qualities — —the macrocosm that we, as microcosms, emulate.
The process is a mutual interplay. Our Source provides us with the capacity needed to embody these qualities and, by our deliberately practicing and embodying these qualities, we develop our capacity for opening to and merging with our Source.
Part II: The Metaphor: Warriors of Spirit
The Metaphor of War
Early in the evolution of language, it no doubt became clear that saying that one thing was like another was an excellent way of defining. If I say you smell like a rose, you know what I mean (if roses have been part of your experience). Simile and metaphor are directly useful means for arousing images in another’s consciousness in a relatively pain free way (compared to the excruciating attention demanded by logical analysis).
Waging war (an interesting term in itself) appears to have always been a part of the experience of humankind and thus a potentially useful metaphor. In the Judeo-Christian story of the beginning, the two parents of humankind became aware of separateness, of an internal and external split. This duality, this splitness, opened further into the ability of Cain (an affirmed member of every human camp) to ask the question “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The question, of course, is a statement – “I am not my brother’s keeper.” At that point, both I and my brother become an It – a separate object upon which war can be waged. And the war begins on two fronts: the internal war of I against me, the outer war of me against him and us against them.
War has become the human condition. We wage war to find peace – whether it is the peace of enjoying the spoils, the peace of exhaustion, the peace of sudden release from carnage, the peace of relaxed vigilance, the joyous peace of victory, the peace of balanced scales of revenge, or the peace of freedom from fear. [All these “peaces” are of course temporary and illusions.] We have no peace so we fight to attain peace. Odd, but then we are odd beings.
What is my point here? War is known to all. War is thus a useful metaphor for the inner struggle of humans. Writing and speaking in war language creates vivid imagery in the consciousness of the reader and listener. Humans can attend to and gather meaning from the images of war. Thus, it is a place to start in describing the journey toward and with God.
The Monk-Warrior Metaphor
A metaphor, to be useful, must be rich in its descriptors and predictors of action, in its ability to illuminate a course of action not previously understood or understood “as through a glass darkly.” The monk-warrior metaphor contains this richness and illuminative usefulness.
What is a monk-warrior? A monk is one who has “retired from the world and devoted himself to religion in solitude; an anchoret.”[i] I like the image induced by “anchoret.” An anchor rests in the calmness of the deep or is firmly affixed to solid ground. The calm of deep anchoring is the practice of the monk.
A warrior, according to the dictionary, is one who is “engaged or experienced in war,” which is “the state or fact of exerting violence against another.”[ii] The concept of a nonviolent warrior evades the dictionary and ipso facto the general public. The definition of warrior I choose is that of frontline responder; one who engages deeply in whatever action is called for at the moment, basing all action on the premise of no harm. “I will do no harm to you and I will not allow you to do harm to me.”
A monk engages God; a warrior engages individuals. The monk-warrior does both. The monk knows that wherever she goes, she is always meeting God. The warrior knows that wherever he goes, he is always meeting himself. Together they engage God “outside the camp,” in the midst of the profane.
The monk-warrior stands in the nondual, listens to the voice of the nondual, groans with creation in the continuous birthing of God, laughs with delight in Life’s delicate unfolding. The monk-warrior stands in the fires of the nondual (the primary world) and cannot be burned with dualistic fire (the divisions, pressures and controversies of the secondary world).
The energies of the nondual radiate through the monk-warrior into the dual, engaging the world of human fabrication. The monk-warrior stands in dualism, facing and dealing with all that arises. In this arena of action, the monk-warrior follows the tactics, strategies, and battle plan provided by the nondual, follows the wisdom of the primary world.
A monk-warrior faces and deals honestly, directly, effectively with all that arises in the dualistic world, while grounding, deepening and opening in the nondual. The monk-warrior stands in the nondual while engaging the dual. Engaged action occurs from the realm of non-duality within the realm of duality.
Monk and Warrior Paths as One
In the Bhagavad Gita, the warrior Arjuna raises the question as to which is the better path: the path of renunciation or the path of holy work. Should we withdraw from the secondary world or should we work within it? Krishna answers by addressing what is to be renounced: not work but the splitness of mind that comes from living in the secondary world. The two paths are not separate paths.[iii] They occur simultaneously.
The path of holy work, engaging in action, in relationship, can be considered as the path of the warrior; the path of renunciation of duality, opening to and living in unity, as the path of the monk. The warrior is the arrow and the monk is the bow which lets the arrow fly (living in unity produces right relationship). Each is relatively useless without the other. In essence they are the same, bow-and-arrow.
Krishna affirms the two paths lead to the same destination and though they appear different, they are truly one. Together, they are a formidable agent of change.
I am aware of at least two categories of monk-warriors: those who hone their skills on the social front and those who sharpen their skills in the martial arts. Individuals in both categories open to the infinite while living in the world of flesh and bone, deepen and ground in the nondual while engaging the “ten thousand things.”
Morihei Ueshiba is an example of warriors of hand-to-hand combat who refined the martial arts from acts of destruction to acts of creative relationship. Ueshiba took this refinement to its utmost by attempting to embody the principle of “no harm to you, no harm to me” in the martial art, Aikido – translated as “the way (do) of moving in harmony (ai) with the ultimate energy (ki) or nature of things.” Osensei Ueshiba developed a form of hand-to-hand combat based on relational harmony.
The monk-warriors who focus more on the social front have been called social mystics.[iv] A social mystic can be understood as one who engages the world while embodying a consciousness of “direct intuitive observation,”[v] as one who lives with great presence in the realm of duality while simultaneously opening to the web of being, to the interrelationship of all things. The social mystic is a living practice of being “in the world, but not of the world.”[vi]
The social mystic directly engages the realm of the dual. Jesus, an exemplar of the social mystic, has often been cast as a rebel. As John Dear puts it, Jesus was “trouble from day one.”[vii] This is the hallmark of a warrior: refusing to be cowered and continuing to engage no matter the size or power of the “opposing” forces.
This was true of Moses and the power of Egypt, of Buddha and the forces of Mara, of Gandhi and the British Empire, of Rosa Parks and the civil authorities, of Martin Luther King and segregationist hatreds, of Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh and the military-industrial complex, of Dorothy Day and socio-economic injustices; and it continues to be true for as many as dare.
The social mystic is familiar with the realm of the nondual; has been “seized” by the nondual and embodies more than “normal” consciousness. Through practicing stillness and listening, the social mystic continues to experience a deepening of relationship with the source. Living within the solid ground of existence, the social mystic has a deep and open knowing of reality as interbeing, as intersubjectivity, as completely relational. This realm of relational action is the place for direct application of warrior virtues.
Self as Mercenary
A mercenary is paid money to engage in the activity of seizing resources from others. A mercenary is a warrior of “the world.” By “world” I mean all that has arisen from human thought that separates humans from the “rest” of existence.
The “world” is what the currently dominating socioeconomic system says is so: that only humans (and some humans more than others) matter; that everything other than the human consensus reality (whatever we humans agree to) is a mere backdrop to the human melodrama; that everything defined as non-human (which includes some humans) is a marketable resource to be used.
According to this view, the earth is to be used, the beings we label as “animals” are to be used, and the “space” and “matter” of the universe are to be used. Everything “non-human” is branded as a resource to be sacrificed to the survival and comfort of humans (certain humans). Even humans are now branded as a resource: what was once called the Personnel Department is now Human Resources.
This “world” view is an illusion based upon the false premise that each human is separate from all else. Under the sway of this illusion, we humans, like lemmings wearing virtual reality headpieces, march blindly toward and over the cliff of extinction watching our favorite movies as we go:
· All is Well, Technology is Savior
· Gimme More Stuff
· I Got Mine, You Get Yours
· This World is Not my Home, I’m Just Passing Through
· The Earth is a Disposable Diaper, Cause Jesus is Coming Soon
· Don’t Bother Me, I Got Enough Worries
and that perennial favorite
· HUH? WHUT?
According to this “world” view, the major responsibility of humans is to consume. Earth is one big Slurpee and we are here to slurp it.
The Sacred and the Profane
We humans appear to always be in a fix. In a fix, in the sense of being caught in a tight place with no clear way out; and in a fix in the sense of always fixing it, always working on it. Both fixes are associated with a dualistic split. We are divided from ourselves, both intra- and inter-personally, within and without.
Being religious/spiritual folk, we regard one aspect of our being as sacred, a second aspect as profane (outside the temple). We are forever working to get the profane inside the temple while simultaneously resisting the sacred; and we work to live in accord with the sacred while resisting the profane.
In our better moments, we rest within the sacred while engaging the profane with loving compassion. This is the work of the bodhisattva,[viii] who has vowed to remain outside the temple, outside the camp, as long as there is one other who has not made it in. All the profane (those standing before the fanum, the temple) are invited in.
Of course, each individual, including budding bodhisattvas, must continue inviting him/herself into the temple. This is known as spiritual practice. We must continue the practice of living within the temple of the sacred, while engaging our own profaneness.
While doing so, we must continue to invite the whole world into the temple. We sacredly engage the profane within and without, all day long, each day, each moment, with each breath.
To be and do such requires a warrior of spirit.
Warrior of Spirit
A warrior of spirit does not cling to body, to intellect, to soul. A warrior of spirit lives in accord with spirit, the lifeforce that breathes us, that brings us into being at each moment.
A warrior of spirit has a body and is not the body.[ix]
Emphasis upon the body can blind us. We wash the body, oil it, perfume it, dress it, exercise it, soak it, dye it, trim it, feed it, drain it, parade it, hide it, admire it, hate it, park it, abuse it, caress it, inflate it, reduce it. And still, for all its splendor and wonder, it is a mass of urine, poop, pus, and burbling gases on a steady journey toward decay and compost. A warrior of spirit has a body and is not the body.
A warrior of spirit has an intellect and is not the intellect.
Emphasis upon the intellect can blind us. We build belief systems and mistake them for reality. We forget they are merely beliefs – habitual states of mind. Today’s beliefs are tomorrow’s exhibits in the House of Curiosities. Beliefs are states of mind to be trance-ended. Beliefs, no matter how holy and fervent, can blind us. A warrior of spirit has an intellect and is not the intellect.
A warrior of spirit has a soul and is not the soul.
Emphasis upon the soul can blind us. The soul is the seat of emotion, passion, and feeling. The soul can be full of love for some and hate for others, of likes and dislikes, of joy and depression, of righteous and murderous anger. The soul is the seat of deep attraction and strong aversion. Even our very souls can blind us. A warrior of spirit has a soul and is not the soul.
As warriors of spirit, we live in accord with spirit, which is notorious for guiding a person into the realm of unconventionality. The structural rigidity of patriarchy or pseudo-matriarchy (some forms of feminism which would replace a rigid structure with a rigid structure) or our own favorite concrete world view are ignored in favor of the spirit’s tendency to move in creative unpredictability.
A warrior of spirit is truly that: a warrior of the spirit; fed by spirit, directed by spirit. A warrior of spirit, seasoned by long experience, knows and trusts the voice of spirit and will continue following spirit’s lead into the unknown – off the beaten paths into the newness of creativity. In this way, fires of life are born.
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