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The Blessing “Masculinity ought
to be defined in Joe Ehrmann ******************************************************* In Corrogue this morning I am a peaceful warrior. I dance and become the dance. I have awakened at dawn with wings ready to fly into another day of loving. I feel like a dervish. Inside I am dancing. Outside I feel I am love in action. I take an early morning walk along the lanes around my home that are shrouded in morning mist. The beauty of this morning is such that I am misty eyed with thankfulness. I walk to the lake and sit quietly simply breathing in and breathing out. This is enough. The heart is full and what else to do but to share this fullness. This is the beauty of a heart in flow with the moment. The best way I do this is to share this beauty through writing. The best way is to allow this beauty is to allow the writing to flow through me. The more I try to write about such beauty the more there is resistance. The one true beauty is that of surrender. In this surrender to beauty I feel I am a chosen one. “To be born is to be chosen,” says John O`Donoghue the wonderful Irish writer and poet. Each of us is an embodiment of light. Science tells us that the chances of any one of us being here to dance on this earth are about one billion to one. So imagine how chosen you are. Why not learn to be the dance of the Cosmos that you already are. Why not dance the delight you are. Why not risk all for love. This loving life is what the writer Dan Millman calls, “The way of the peaceful warrior.” I have been reflecting on what it means to be a warrior. I think a warrior is one who has embraced the mature masculine. A warrior is not one who has been smothered by the distorted values of the diseased masculine within our culture at this time. A warrior is one who loves life and is protective of life because life is love. This is not the dynamic of the soldier who is trained to kill or be killed. A soldier is one who loves Thantos more than Eros. A warrior loves the wisdom of the erotic that is the wisdom of life and life in the body. The warrior is a being of wisdom. Matthew Fox the spiritual theologian and founder of the University of Creation Spirituality tells the story of a soldier who comes back from the Vietnam War. This soldier is from the Native American tradition. On his return to his homeland he feels wounded in so many ways. So the elders of the tribe take him aside and tell him, “Now we will teach you how to become a warrior.” So for four years he undergoes extensive training to become a warrior. The first task he was required to do is to learn to play the flute. Having done this he gives his first public recital to the assembled tribe and the elders. He does well. Following the applause each elder approaches and takes the flute and carves a piece out of it with a knife. The flute like the soldier was in pieces. It was then no longer playable. Then he was given another task. So he continues to be trained in this way for four years until there was nothing more that can be taken way from him even his attachment to life. He is left to love only what was in the moment. He gives up attachment to all that is in form to enter the formless. In entering the formless he discovers something that can never be taken away from him. Thus he crosses the real threshold beyond death into the eternal. Then he is a real warrior. I have heard a great saying; “Do not give a gun to a warrior who does not know how to dance.” This is to say one should not give the ability to destroy to someone who cannot surrender to the creative. One of the greatest weapons available to the warrior is poetry. Especially the poetry of life written by mystics from all traditions. This is a real weapon. It cuts through the illusion of separateness from all that is. It cuts to the heart of the matter. This is not the language of the politician, the professor, the priest or clergy or the language of perpetual growth. This is the language of the beyond. This is the language that is a bridge to peace beyond understanding. I remember being told a story about an old man who was a warrior. This was from the movie with the title “Out of Rangoon.” This old man was helping people flee across the boarder. At the very end of the movie those who are fleeing to safety are required to cross a bridge. In the centre of this bridge stands a boy soldier with a gun and bayonet attached. He is terrified as are the rest of the party. The old man approaches slowly and more slowly as the child soldier becomes more and more agitated. The old man approaches with open hands and open body and stands before this child soldier. Then he gently pushes aside the gun and bayonet and takes the child in his arms and the soldier weeps. This is the approach of the warrior who lives beyond the limitation of time and space and can see into the illusion of separateness. This is the real fear that causes so many of us to act out of the madness of separateness from love. Like the old man who crosses the real bridge of separateness from all that is the warrior does not desire to fight. The warrior loves life and all life. To fight is to lose. The warrior knows that the real fight is the individual surrender to love. In that surrender lies the true way and the real power. This is not just surrender to another but to the one and all. The warrior is a dweller on the threshold between time and the timeless. Because they enter the knowing of the timeless death for the warrior holds no fear. The warrior is not interested in macho posturing. The warrior flows. They flow into the beauty of both the masculine and feminine. The warrior is not the immature masculine. This is the one who can be persuaded to pledge allegiance to something and anything outside of their own understanding of what it means to “be love.” Warriors do not believe in concepts but live for love. A warrior is not a fundamentalist. They are more interested in fun and are not mentally rigid in their thinking. They flow into the world and play. They are childlike and when they need to be fierce they are fierce. A warrior creates peace but it is a peace without attachment. Neither does a warrior resist evil. This is one of the highest teachings that the warrior understands. I love the following quote from Osho. 'A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way his very way of live is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear.' The warrior is discerning. They are not judgemental. They wait. They keep silent. They do not pledge false allegiance to little things such as nationality, country, or to any limited view of the world that is outside of their relationship to love. Ultimately they are interested in only one thing and that is surrender. They know that this takes tremendous courage. This is not the courage of the soldier willing to die but the courage of the one willing to let go into nothingness. This is why the elders of the Native American take the wounded soldier and teach him how to let go. They teach him how important it is to give up all attachment to the ego and the idea of separateness from the Great Spirit. Many of us have become “the people of attachment.” Our homes are full of everything and anything. There is little space in which “to be.” The energy around our home does not and cannot flow and we stagnate. We slowly die within clutter and our attachment to clutter. We find it hard to breathe out. We refuse to let go. We, unlike the real warrior, fear our dying and thus fear our rebirth. In our present culture we appease our fear of separateness and our distance from our soul by going shopping. In our present culture we appease our fear of separateness and our distance from our soul by going shopping for handbags and other items. This is compensation for the fact that there is little or no awe in our lives. Shopping has become the new religion. The Mall has become our place of worship. Our God has become the God of perpetual growth that cannot and never can be sustained. As the Tao Do Ching tells us, “When men lose the sense of awe they turn to religion.” We buy and buy things because we no longer create. We get satisfaction but we lose our connection with what is essential. Without expressing our co-creativity with the Beloved we stagnate. Our ability to create is what makes us human. Creation is what it means, “to be.” It is what makes this being born an experience of wonder. It is what makes this being born the experience of being chosen. This sense of awe is our birthright. We have to choose to allow it. We have to become peaceful warriors and practice discernment. Otherwise the energy field called the body begins to vibrate at lower and lower levels until we surrender not to love but to the slow death of passivity. Thus we never experience the awe of “being love in action” which is the real way to be alive in this world that is simply extraordinary. The energy field called the body becomes stagnant
and we can no longer fight for our life. At this point we retreat
to the non-living room and suffer from couch-potato-itess and
live our lives through surrogate celebration. What then to fight
for? What then to live for? Like everything in this culture of
never enough life too becomes a commodity that is to be consumed. © Tony Cuckson RECOMMENDED
READING
Tony Cuckson who runs these groups is a storyteller, writer, workshop leader and Anam cara (Soul Friend) .
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