By Leaflin Lore Winecoff
Fruits of a bit of “both/and” thinking, and self-query on warriorship. Perhaps there is something in here for someone.
Meditation works and is most powerful when used to create a foundation for real world action and response.
Medicine is here to help us and works best when we meet the medicine with our own efforts.
Powerful medicines easily become poisonous if misused.
Magic is real, and works most effectively when combined with action rooted in and reflective of the naturals laws (science).
Science is a valuable tool, and has the most potential to serve when practiced with the humility that acknowledges that ultimately we are all at the mercy of the mystery.
Violence may sometimes be appropriate (or inevitable), but if it is not enacted from a foundation of compassion, will ultimately only perpetuate more violence. (Yes, I believe that it’s possible for a sword to be wielded with compassion, not just for the oppressed but for the oppressor. That rage can be galvanized and made useful by love.)
Life has become a battlefield and we are all on it.
If you are choosing to battle from the meditation cushion, or from the woods, or from the cave inside your heart …. it may be useful to ask yourself to what end and how this might translate to action (and/or response) in the world. If it doesn’t, then ask yourself what’s the point?
If you are choosing to take it to the streets, please consider checking in honestly with your heart to ask yourself why and what you first and foremost wish to achieve. If you can recognize that it’s satisfaction of your own ego, how does that relate to the reality of the situation in the long term? How does refinement of intention affect course of action?
If you are wielding your words as a sword here, you might do the same … and ask yourself if this is the best use of your time and energy in this battle.
Much worthy warrior work is done from behind the scenes.
If you find yourself in judgement of how someone else is behaving in this (esp. if it’s someone you don’t know) can you have the courage to check in on what it is in your own experience that causes you to feel they are worthy of such judgement? Or that you are worthy to be the one to judge?
If you have committed to a particular path of warriorship, do you feel compelled to battle with others on the same side of the fight because they have picked up a different style of weapon or shield, or place on the battlefield? To what end (and whom) does that ultimately serve?
Are you battling for justice, or simply from the (understandable, but not entirely righteous) pent-up compulsion to battle, because you also have wounds?
If you’ve chosen a particular style of warriorship, can you put it down momentarily to at least educate yourself about what it looks like from another perspective on the battlefield? To do a bit of warrior cross training?
If you deem that someone is “spiritually bypassing”, are you willing to look in depth at your own understanding of the spiritual terrain?
The most powerful way to teach is through example.
The time for practice has passed. Whether you called it practice or not, whatever you’ve been devoting the gift of your attention to has been preparation for this.
It’s nearly impossible to be impeccable, but try we must, and forgive ourselves when we fail.
We ALL have to grow, and we must work with the conditions we have right here right now. As participants in the shift in conditioning.
May we not take action in ignorance, but learn to detect our own ignorance and let that inspire us to seek knowledge and actively LISTEN (perhaps for a call to action).
If we choose not to take direct action outwardly, may we use that stillness again to actively listen and not to seek escape … because there is no escape from this. This is very much real until we can recognize our delusions.
Until all of us are free, none of us will be free.
In the sage words of Bob Marley, “Release yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
A liberated mind is the most powerful sword.
The sword held in the hand that extends from a liberated heart will be the sword that liberates.
~Lokah Samhasta Sukhino Bhavantu~
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May I be happy and free.
May all beings in all realms be happy and free.
May my happiness and freedom contribute in some way to the happiness and freedom of ALL beings in ALL realms.
May we all find our truest and most effective warrior path in this battle and all battles.
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More by Leaflin Lore Winecoff: Leaflin: purveyor of magic
Visit Leaflin’s Patreon page: My name is Leaflin, and I am a purveyor of magic in the forms of paintings, yoga, healing, costumery and performance, poetic scribblings, and the way I dance through life. I wish to offer the you a strip-tease of the soul, in the hope that the terrain revealed is a treasure map for us both!