Spiritual Warrior

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A spiritual warrior is someone who is attempting to wake up. He or she is seeking self-mastery - a fundamental fearlessness at their core. Trungpa Rinpoche, who wrote Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior, explains warriorship as a basic sense of unshakability, immovability and self-existing dignity. "By tapping into the natural source of radiance and brilliance in the world, which is the innate wakefulness of human beings, an enlightened society based on dignity, fearlessness and compassion arises." Rather than offer his or her warrior skills locked in battle with one group pitted against another, the spiritual warrior enters the battlefield of life with gentleness, courage and self-knowledge.

To become a spiritual warrior, we have to work on balancing and integrating mind and body, we have to awaken from habitual behaviors, use compassionate discipline, learn to deal with the world with an open heart and without fear, and be aware of the sacredness of daily life. The spiritual warrior seeks to shine with the light of peace and radiance for his or her own sake and for the sake of all others.

I Aspire to be one of the many Spiritual Warriors on our Sacred Planet

Of course, we all know the inevitable next step once someone declares their intention to become a spiritual warrior. The initiation. The test. The moment when our world turns upside down. All of the sudden, there's a rent in the fabric of our life. Reality loses its cohesion and we feel like we're floating upside down in a deep wormhole somewhere in space. I've had more than a handful of moments like those in my life, but I have to admit, breast cancer has them all beat. Pema Chodron, a student of Chogyam Trungpa's, speaks of these moments as being groundless. There are small groundless moments, like feeling embarrassed, off-center and insecure, and there are monster groundless moments, like your husband telling you he's leaving you for another woman, or like watching your child die in your arms, or like being told you have breast cancer. Pema also talks of groundlessness as moments of awe, wonder, or great beauty that just stop your mind.

Colliding Galaxies

To the universe, the awe-inspiring groundlessness of a cosmic event probably holds a bit more cosmic weight than the kind of groundlessness that throws us into a tailspin, but we sure know which matters more to us. We're going to be screaming, "NO! NOT THIS! STOP!" till our throats are raw. But that won't do us much good. According to Chodron,

A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure, but it's also what makes us afraid...sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to he spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment - over and over again.

To Chodron, the central question isn't "how we avoid uncertainty and fear, but how we relate to discomfort." By staying with our pain instead of trying to escape it, we learn to soften into self-acceptance. Everyone must face uncertainty, but for people who have been touched by cancer, uncertainty is really in our face. But we can accept our situation without hardening into bitterness or blame, or without denying our vulnerability by escaping into spiritual inflation. Once again, I'm reminded of the word "surrender." We do our best, and then we let go and let God. By embracing the life of a spiritual warrior and surrendering to life's uncertainty, our hearts open and we have a chance to learn what freedom really is.

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