Becoming a Spiritual Warrior
A spiritual warrior struggles and sacrifices to win the war in order to go home to the Lord. As warriors, we engage on the battlefield of life to conquer the foes that block our way and build alliances and friendships to carry us forward on this journey. Foes come in the shape of everyday challenges. Maharaj Charan Singh used to call these challenges beloved thugs. These beloved thugs come to rob us of our higher selves so we lose our way and become distracted from our goal. We know them well as we fall victim to these foes of lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego. Yet, if we want to turn these foes into friends we must subdue and overcome them.
Lust must become love for the Lord and through that we love everyone and everything. Anger must become kindness so we are guided toward goodness rather than evil. Greed must become generosity so we orient ourselves away from satisfying all our own needs, instead putting our effort toward helping others. Attachment must become detachment, so we loosen all those ties that keep us captive to the temporary things of this world, allowing us to become attached to the only thing that is permanent – God. Ego must become humility. When we finally see that we are nothing, the grip of the ego is released and we are set free.
We have to walk the path of truth by transforming these worldly challenges that binds us here – people, places and things which in the end are fleeting and transitory – into their opposite of love, kindness, generosity, detachment and humility.
What helps us overcome and turn these foes into friends. There is a tale of two wolves in this world – one is good and one is evil. We know that in this world that both good and evil exist. In this story the question is posed, which one wins, the good wolf or the evil wolf. The story relates that the one that wins is the one you feed. So we need to decide which wolf we will feed – the good one or the evil one.
We may think we have no choice. Our karmic destiny is set and so we are captive to our karma. Yet, we are told we have limited free will. With that limited free will we all make choices. This is very important to acknowledge – we all have choices. We can choose to walk out the door in the morning and be consumed by anger, or we can go out the door with a smile on our face, full of love and be kind and thoughtful. These are choices we have the power to make every day. Even when we are in a bad mood, we don’t have to take it out on others. What happens when people are angry. They are upset, may feel sick, have a horrible headache, and perhaps shout out in distress. When someone acts out in anger, who is the one suffering. Often the angry person is the one who is damaged, both in the moment and in the longer term. Especially if anger, or any one of these five foes, become our default setting in life. Then the foe is in control and sets the agenda. We must remember that all actions have consequences. Eventually our karma catches up with us, perhaps when we least expect it. We can’t avoid it. So it is in our own interest to consciously feed the good wolf, and develop the five friends rather than the five foes.
Living in this world in peace and contentment is a great challenge, and a very rare treasure with which few are blessed. Contentment does not just happen; we have to work at it. The world is a mix of joy and sorrow, and no one can control how their life unfolds. Many people live in turmoil, and in fact create much of the drama and turmoil by their own actions. Only in spiritual union can we find true and lasting peace and contentment. To achieve this we need to orient our lives toward that goal. In doing so, we most likely will need to make some lifestyle changes, trade bad habits for good habits, and most of all get our priorities and actions in line with this goal. To do this we often hear the saints tell us: we have to be in this world, but not be of this world.
Heeding that advice is tricky because the world is very clever at trapping people here. It is so clever that we often don’t realize that we are trapped. In fact, we have many days, years, maybe even decades of happiness. Yet even in moments of happiness, we may have a sense of loss, doubt, and emptiness that makes us question our purpose in this world, in this life. If we get that little inkling that not everything in this world meets our deepest needs and fulfills our desires, then we need to explore further. Until we are prompted to look deeper into the meaning of life, we are merely nomads wandering in this world, lost and alone. Once that yearning is triggered, our search for the deeper meaning in our lives begins.
Then, guess what happens? We may encounter hurdles and great difficulties in trying to find the deeper meaning of our lives. How do we recognize them? Probably anything that throws us off balance or demands our attention to the exclusion of the Lord is pulling us into the world. Often we know exactly what those things are and how they manifest. For lust, do we want or desire something that totally consumes us? For anger, do we get mad easily or do we let little things unduly upset us? For greed, are we consumed with making money beyond our needs, having houses, cars, and accumulating more and more possessions? For attachment, do we have a list of wants and desires that are endless? Does our ego, the last of the five foes and often our biggest hurdle, hold such an incredible grip on us that we are driven to seek fame and fortune?
If we can transform our five foes to our five friends of love, kindness, generosity, detachment and humility, they become our allies on the path home. Making foes into friends is not an easy task, and it comes over time. We have to have a good reason to transform these five foes into friends. We must change our focus from being a worldly person to a worthy person, worthy of becoming a disciple of the Lord and applying ourselves to going home. It is a daunting task. One might ask is this even possible?
The Saints tell us it is possible to control the five passions, our beloved thugs, through meditation. Meditation subdues the mind and quiets the five passions. The power of meditation awakens our inner consciousness and an intense yearning in us. It is that yearning that helps us on this path of transformation. The world will never truly satisfy our inner longing to reunite with the Lord. Only reunion with the Lord will bring us true and permanent joy. We begin one of the most challenging and rewarding battles of our life, to withdraw from the world and the sense pleasures and go home to the Lord.
Spiritual combat is not the type of combat where we need weapons of guns and knives, or engage in hand to hand combat with our foes. We are fighting a different enemy the world has given us - our mind. We are told we have a higher mind that can lead us closer to the Lord, and a lower mind that keeps us trapped in this world. So how do we fight that lower mind so we can tap into that higher mind? We may start by putting our faith in the satguru of our time and following his instructions.
For satsangis and seekers, the Master lights that holy lamp within our heart. When he does that, what should we do? We need to examine how we live our lives – are our actions pulling us toward the Lord or pulling us deeper into this world and our desires that tie us here. To escape worldly illusions, we need to turn our attention inward.
For those marked souls, a master will come to tell us the other side of the story. That our true home is with the Lord and we are destined to return there. Those fortunate enough to come in touch with a living master are given the opportunity to turn their lives around so they can balance their karmic account and finish off all their worldly obligations. First and foremost, meditation is our defense against the world so that we can turn our five foes to friends – lust to love, anger to kindness, greed to generosity, attachment to detachment and ego to humility.
The master is always drawing us closer to him through meditation. In doing so, our capacity to love and to be loved is expanded. This is a glorious path in which we are slowly transformed so that we are ready to meet the Lord. This transformation takes place through meditation and prepares us to meet the Lord when our karmic load has been eliminated so we are no longer held in bondage to this world. Meditation slowly loosens out ties with the world, while the ties to the Lord are strengthened. When all these veils of illusion drop away, then we are taken home to the Lord.
Every person is part of the divine plan. The Lord takes care of all of us, which should give us great comfort and solace. Yet we may resist and do everything to pull away from the divine plan. We need to stay the course and surrender so that we allow ourselves to go with the flow. We are told by the mystics that the Lord takes care of everything and everyone. Nothing is left to chance. So our role is first to believe this, and then to live by it. We are told we must put in effort on this path. We have our role to play. Part of our effort, which is not always easy or obvious, is to live in his will. Most of the time we may not know what is his will. Over time we begin to see that his will is what actually comes to pass. It is his will whether someone is born or someone dies. No one else has the power to give life or take life. That is in the hands of God. So if something so fundamental is out of human control, why would we think we control anything? The Lord oversees everything.
By following the master’s instructions and example we learn to overcome the mind and transcend death. In Spiritual Perspectives (Vol. II, pg 340, first edition 2010) Maharaj Charan Singh lovingly tells us:
We have to do our best. Then leave it to him. We shouldn’t try to deceive ourselves – that is the main thing. We must do our best and then leave it to him and not worry much.
Let’s do our best and meet the challenge to become a worthy spiritual warrior. Our job is to show our love, devotion, and effort through daily meditation. We can’t just think about meditation, we have to do it! We know that when we attempt to clear out our attics or basements at home, we are often surprised at how much stuff we own. The same is true as we continue making effort in meditation. We don’t realize how much we have accumulated in the subconscious mind until we attempt to concentrate. We can’t let these distractions discourage us from doing our meditation. Any and all effort helps us grow stronger in this struggle against the mind. The Saints tell us there are no failures on this path as long as we continue to make effort. The master comes to bring us back to our center, to combat all these worldly distractions and pull us back home.
This inner journey must consume us. Anything else that we come across is illusion and never satisfies that inner need. On this journey, the master is the warrior-king that leads us, surrounds us and protects us. He asks us to be a warrior on this journey home with him and seize this gift we have been given by the master. The battle has already been won and the freedom of the soul is assured. Baba Jaimal Singh writes in Spiritual Letters (pg 25-26, 7th edition):
The blessing conferred by the Satguru cannot be undone by anyone. So what is left now for you to worry about? You reached Sach Khand the very day you were initiated – that is the place for which you are destined.
Let’s do our best to become a worthy spiritual warrior and fulfil our destiny. Every disciple is destined to return home to Sach Khand.