Spiritual Survival And The Warrior Path
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
If
you are one of those brave souls who has experienced something like
one of the Dark Nights of the Soul described above, congratulate yourself:
you are a survivor. Jamie Sams tells us in Dancing The Dream (1999), “Any
person who has successfully gone through a Dark Night of the Soul
has developed the ability to endure, to find inner strength, to learn
from mistakes and be accountable for them, to pick up the pieces,
and to carry on as a better person.” Continuing to live and
struggle in spite of trauma takes a great deal of courage. And just
as cowardice is death, so courage is life. “It is an act of
courage to live in this world at this time, so we must honor ourselves
and the valor required to embrace the human condition without abandoning
our integrity and purpose for being.” Integrity
arises out of courage, and sets us on the path to spiritual development.
When we are true to ourselves, we will be true to others and to the
Divine within us all.
For
those who still look around and find themselves in the midst of Darkness,
despair not. Realize instead that the world is offering you an opportunity
to grow and change. Jamie Sams in Dancing The Dream (1999)
tells us, “Opportunity is the last thing that we normally think of when
we are in a crisis, but that is one gift that is always being given. We
are given the opportunity to grow, to learn how strong we really are, to
see the value of loving support, to become more sensitive to the pain of
others, to share our burdens with others instead of thinking we are always
alone, and to ultimately trust that we will be better people on the other
side of our present, darkened passage through life.” If we wish to
move through these dark times, we must accept the challenge offered to
us by the adversity life gives us. Acceptance of life’s challenges
changes us into spiritual warriors. We may not win every “battle,” but
the satisfaction that comes from doing what our hearts call us to do in
the moment in spite of all opposition cannot be taken away, not even by
defeat. A warrior who maintains integrity in the teeth of failure may be
beaten, but never broken. Even when we must die for what we believe, the
spirit of our courageous action lives on to inspire countless others, and
eventually the thing that we fought for will indeed come to pass. “Accepting
these difficult rites of passage allows us to be brave, to take courage,
and to acknowledge the warrior nature of our spiritual essences.
The awakened human spirit walks the path of human transformation
with exacting grace and has been waiting for us to discover the power
of the spiritual warrior existing inside us. If we act from our warrior
nature, facing the issues at hand rather than shutting down during
harrowing times, we will not have to repeat the difficult lessons
that life uses to force us to confront unpleasant issues.”
The
alternative to the warrior path, craven as it is, will not appeal
to the courageous. However, if you find yourself stuck in some sort of
interminable dark time, it probably follows that you have refused to
accept some crucial challenge that life has been offering you. Denial
of the challenges that lie before us can cause the Dark Night Of The
Soul to last for longer than it would have otherwise, dragging on for
years instead of only a few months. Nevertheless, even those of us lost
in some corner of Limbo must rejoice in the opportunity to become spiritual
warriors in spite of all the time we’ve lost. It may not be easy
cheering up when the whole world looks black, but the solution remains
the same: release the past with its failures and tragedies, and embrace
the challenge of being present in the moment.
This
imperative may sound simple, but becoming fully conscious may be
the most difficult thing you will ever do. Most of us are not even aware
of our continuous internal monologue, except when we take the time to
consciously “think.” A
little meditation will open our eyes to the fact that we are always “thinking” on
some unconscious or subconscious level. More meditation might make
us wonder if “we” are actually the ones thinking, or
if that little voice in our heads has a mind of its own. Our thoughts,
when we observe them, seem to continue thinking themselves without
any effort on our part. This automatic thinking makes up a large
part of our inner experience, and what goes on inside us affects
what we experience in the outside world. It follows that a change
in our thoughts would also produce some change in the world around
us, at least in terms of our own perceived experience.
Christine Jette tells us in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), “The
mind is powerful. What you think about affects how you feel and creates
experiences which correspond to those feelings. When you believe
something to be true, your experiences validate your beliefs. Your
attitudes and opinions attract things to you like a magnet. If you
feel you are not worthy of love, you will find yourself in unloving
situations. If you are loving toward yourself, love will come your
way.”
This concept
may be difficult to swallow at first. After all, the world has a
reality of its own, separate from our thoughts concerning it. If you
believe that you can walk on the freeway at rush hour without getting
hit by a car, and act on that belief, your thoughts alone probably
won’t
save your life. The erroneous notion that “you create your own reality” cannot
be debunked too many times in the aftermath of New Age dogma’s influence
and the simple minded ignorance of its most militant advocates. Of course
the world exists just as it always has, and wishing won’t make it
different. You can run up against the brick wall of reality’s limitations
all you like, and all you’ll get is a sore head. However, your
mind and its thoughts have no such limitations. You can think anything
you want.
Unfortunately,
most people don’t even take the time to examine the
contents of their own minds. They spend their time trying to change the
world outside, when the world inside can be changed so much more easily.
In fact, many of us probably aren’t even aware of the thoughts
that make up our view of the world. We may be limited by all kinds
of thoughts that do not actually correspond to the world as it really
exists. However, those thoughts will continue to limit our experience
until we consciously change them. Reality selection, as author Robert
Anton Wilson calls it, can be practiced by those who become aware
of their own thoughts and of how those thoughts affect what happens
in life.