The Spiritual Path is for Warriors

God is such a personal experience, and your level of faith is such a personal inner experience. Each person has to forge his or her own way to God and to find, through the process of life and through trial and error, how to get there. The paradox is that we are already there. I want to read the following because it is such an incredible prayer. This prayer is a call for protection.

Protectors of heaven, earth and humanity and the Four Directions, please come quickly. You fiercely protect the profound, brilliant path. You hold the vitality of life in your hands. You constantly watch over the progress of all warriors on the journey of awakenment. At this time of plague, famine, and war, please come mercifully and put an end to all such obstructing discord. When we practitioners of open heart become fearful, quickly give us the potency and strength to rediscover our fearless nature. Great Protectors of Awakenment, in the universe of unseen phenomena you reside, constantly available and committed to assisting the genuine hearted warrior. Now I call upon you to assist me in my practice. Please help dispel obstacles in daily life. Quickly come into my mind and heart. Remove doubt and hesitation and allow me to experience the ground of basic goodness. Courageously protect the path. Guardians, do not forget your commitment. Dispel outer, inner, and secret obstacles. (Sakyong Jampal Trinley Dradul)

If you have forgotten that the spiritual path is for warriors, and if your warrior nature is not there, then your path will be very difficult. You will not have the fire within you that you need to make the choices and decisions that are in front of you with conviction, intention and power. And so, without intention, our prayers are meaningless. If we pray, and we pray, and we pray, but in our prayer we are really just wanting and asking and have forgotten how to make a commitment to ourselves that will be of equal measure to our intention, then we get a neutral result. Prayer without intention is like trying to breathe without air.

What is the intention of your prayer? And what comes after an intention? A vow. A prayer, an intention, a promise, and then a vow. We do that to pull ourselves up. If you are scaling an ice wall, you put your pick in so you can pull yourself up. You better make that pick strong, and you better drive it in hard so that it can hold your weight and lift you to the next level. Without that, you will fall back down. And if you do not put the pick in with all the power you have, it will not hold and the ice will crack.

So this prayer is very beautiful. It is fiery and it reminds one that one is a spiritual warrior.

(March 2014)

Maresha's next blog will be published December 30, 2014.

Messages of Light is published by the Sanctuary of Universal Light on Snow Dragon Mountain in Meredith, New Hampshire. www.snowdragonsanctuary.com