Warrior of the Light

The Warrior of the Light listens. If conversation lags, he encourages Evil to continue talking by asking all about its various plans.

When he has heard everything, he gets up and leaves. Evil feels so weary and empty after all this talk that it does not have the strength to follow him.

The Warrior of the Light unwittingly takes a false step and plunges into the abyss.

Ghosts frighten him and solitude torments him. His aim had been to fight the Good Fight, and he never imagined that this would happen to him, but it did. Shrouded in darkness, he makes contact with his master.

"Master, I have fallen into the abyss," he says. "The waters are deep and dark."

"Remember one thing," replies his master. "You do not drown simply by plunging into water, you only drown if you stay beneath the surface."

And the Warrior uses all his strength to escape from his predicament.

The Warrior of the Light behaves like a child.

People are shocked; they have forgotten that a child needs to have fun and to play, to be slightly irreverent and to ask awkward, childish questions, to talk nonsense that not even he believes in.

And they say, horrified: "So this is the spiritual path, is it? He's so immature!"

The Warrior feels proud of such comments. And he remains in touch with God through his innocence and his joy, without ever losing sight of his mission.

The Latin root of the word responsibility reveals its true meaning: the capacity to respond, to react.

A responsible Warrior is one who has proved able to observe and to learn. He is even capable of being "irresponsible." Sometimes, he has allowed himself to be carried along by a situation, without responding or reacting.

But he always learned his lesson; he took a stand, listened to advice, and was humble enough to accept help.

A responsible Warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.

A Warrior of the Light cannot always choose his battlefield.

Sometimes, in the middle of battles not of his choosing, he is taken by surprise, but there is no point in running away. Those battles will merely follow him.

Then, at the point when conflict seems almost inevitable, the Warrior talks to his opponent. Showing neither fear nor cowardice, he tries to find out why the other man wants to fight, what made him leave his village in order to seek him out to fight this duel. Without even unsheathing his sword, the Warrior persuades his opponent that this is not a fight for him.

A Warrior of the Light listens to what his opponent has to say. He only fights if absolutely necessary.

The Warrior of the Light is terrified when making important decisions.

"This is too much for you," says a friend. "Go on, be brave," says another. And so his doubts grow.

After some days of anxiety, he withdraws to the corner of his tent where he usually sits to meditate and pray. He sees himself in the future. He sees the people who will benefit or be harmed by his attitude. He does not want to cause pointless suffering, but nor does he want to abandon the path.

The Warrior allows the decision to reveal itself.

If he has to say "yes," he will say it bravely. If he has to say "no," he will say it without a trace of cowardice.

A Warrior of the Light accepts his Personal Legend completely.

His companions say: "He has remarkable faith!"

For a moment, the Warrior feels proud, then immediately feels ashamed of what he has heard because he does not have as much faith as he appears to have.

At that moment, his angel whispers: "You are only an instrument of the Light. There is no reason to feel proud or to feel guilty. There are only reasons to feel happy."

And the Warrior of the Light, aware now that he is but an instrument, feels calmer and more secure.

Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too," says Marek Halter, "because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others."