What does it mean to be a Warrior of Light?
'Warrior of the Light' book group read along - a halfway review by Colm Holland
What does it mean to be a Warrior of Light?
This month we’re reading ‘Warrior of Light’ by Paulo Coelho, and daily here on Substack, I’m sharing a selection of quotes from his book. Each of these daily inspirations offers encouragement, hope, caution, advice, and compassion for all of us who try to live ‘according to the light’. So where did Paulo’s inspiration for producing this book come from? I’m fairly certain this passage from the Christian New Testament may have offered something:
From the beginning of the Gospel of John, Chapter One: (King James Bible).
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.’
If we assume, for a moment, that when we desire to bring well-being and love to those in our world and sphere of influence, we are engaged in a battle between light and darkness. This is a well-worn metaphor and when we choose to ‘fight’, on what we see as the side of ‘light’, then we become a warrior of sorts. How we should behave, how we should ‘fight’, how we can survive, and how we can triumph is the subject of this book from Paulo’s perspective.
What I think stands out in my reading of these gems of wisdom, is how many of the battles we face are not external with an enemy ‘out-there’, but more often we are dealing with an enemy within; ‘The Dark Side’ to quote the famous Star Wars analogy.
This is beautifully expressed in the first post we viewed:
All the world's roads lead to the heart of the warrior; he plunges unhesitatingly into the river of passions always flowing through his life.
Carl Jung would agree with this sentiment. He wrote:
“Wholeness is perforce paradoxical in its manifestations, and the two fishes going in the opposite directions, or the co-operation of birds and fishes, are an instructive illustration of this.” (Jung, Collected Works 9.2 ¶ 224)
Jung expresses the quintessential psychological dilemma.
We strive for unity. Unity of purpose, unity of identity, and unity of desire. Our greatest fantasies and aspirations are ones we experience ourselves as unified around a singular purpose or ethic. And in these fantasies, our thoughts, feelings, and actions coalesce. Our usual experience of inner turmoil comes to rest in these sublime moments of unified thought, word, and deed.
Juxtaposed against this desire is the reality of paradoxical drives and desires.
If we follow Jung on this,
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