Spiritual Warriors

Student: One word we use a lot is “warrior” when we describe this path. What do we get out of seeing ourselves in the role of warrior?

Barbara: Well I very often see people come into this teaching with the idea of a warrior as somebody with a saber between his teeth taking on life, more like the idea of defenders against the world dream.

We don’t want to define warrior in that context. A warrior is really someone who, on the one hand, is seeking truth and willing to face every lie and vanquish it in order to do that. That is saying a lot right there, because in the course of executing this action, we realize that everything we say, and everything that we have told ourselves about life IS a lie. It is a distortion of some sort. So vanquishing lies is a fantastic undertaking.

The other side of warrior is to see this as a hunter, hunters who are turning the hunt inward, in the spiritual sense. We are literally hunting ourselves and looking for lies in order to vanquish them and ultimately find truth; which is experiential. It is not going to be found in a text, in a theory, in religious dogma. It is not going to be found in definition. It is going to be found in the world of sensory experience. You are going to know yourself as life itself.