The Warrior of Light can afford to live each day different from the next. He is not afraid of crying over old regrets or feeling happy at new discoveries. When he feels that the hour has come, he casts everything aside and departs for the adventure he has dreamed so long about. When he understands that he is at the limit of his endurance, he leaves the fight, without feeling apologetic for having done one or two crazy and quite unexpected things.
The story below illustrates what I mean.
A man in quest of sanctity decided to climb a high mountain with just the clothes on his back and remain up there meditating for the rest of his life.
Soon he realized that one set of clothes was not enough, because it would get dirty very quick. He descended the mountain, went to the nearest village and asked for other clothes. Since everyone knew that the man was in quest of sanctity, they handed him a new pair of shoes and a shirt.
The man thanked them and climbed back up to the hermitage he was building on the top of the mountain. He spent the night putting up the walls and the days in meditation, eating the fruit of the trees and drinking the water of a nearby spring.
One month later he discovered that a mouse was chewing the extra clothes he had left to dry. Since he wanted to concentrate only on his spiritual duty, he went back down to the village and asked them to find him a cat.
The villagers, in respect for his mission, satisfied his request.
Another seven days and the cat was almost dying of starvation because it could not eat just fruit, and there were no more mice in the place. He went back down to the village for milk; as the villagers knew it was not for him – after all, he resisted without eating anything other than what nature offered him – once more they helped him.
The cat finished the milk quickly, so the man asked them to lend him a cow.
Since the cow gave more milk than was needed, he began to drink it too, so as not to waste it. In a short time – breathing the mountain air, eating fruit, meditating, drinking milk and doing exercises – he turned into a model of beauty. A lovely girl who climbed the mountain looking for her lamb fell in love with him and convinced him that he needed a wife to look after the house while he meditated in peace.
The man spent three days fasting, trying to know which was the best decision to make. Finally he understood that marriage is a blessing from above, and accepted the proposal.
Three years later, the man was married, with two sons, three cows, an orchard of fruit trees, and he ran a place for meditation, with a huge waiting line of people who wanted to know the miraculous “temple of eternal youth.”
When someone asked him how all that had started, he would say:
“Two weeks after I arrived up here, I had only two garments. A mouse began to chew one of them, and…”
But no-one was interested in the end of the story; they were sure that he was a wise businessman just trying to invent a legend to be able to raise even higher the price he charged the lodgers at the temple.
But like a good Warrior of Light, he did not bother about what others thought; he was happy because he was able to transform his dreams into reality.
Funny how he had to make such a journey to find all he needed was in a way already before him.
Ha três semanas atrás eu lia algo numa revista falando sobre guerreiro da luz.
Surpresa pesquisou, queria saber mais, e quanto mais buscava ainda mais fascinado ficava pela leitura. Resolvi comprar o livro.
Incrédula percebo, me achei neste manual, preciso dele triste ou alegre, leio me reencontro, e continuo minha caminhada.
Enfim gostaria de saber, de onde vem tanta sabedoria espiritual?
Ainda não havia lido coisa alguma sua.
Muito obrigada por escrever.
beijos
Muita luz
Ivone
I heard a different version of this story…a yogi was sent on his way from his teacher to meditate in the woods….he needed a new loincloth because when he took his off to sleep the mice ate it…a woman in the near by village gave him a new one…same thing happened…the woman gave him another and another and then asked him the problem…he confessed about the mice so she gave him a cat…then even though the cat chased away and/or ate the mice it needed milk so he asked the village woman for milk…she gave him a cow…then the cow needed hay and he spent all day searching for hay to feed the cow and couldn’t perform asana/meditation/pranayama…then the lady had the bright idea to give him one of her daughters as a wife to care for the cow…a few years later his teacher came looking for him and was suprised to find him with a wife and kids no longer practicing yoga…the yogi explained what happened and his teacher said you never needed that second loincloth…the one you had was enough…you should’ve just stayed in the woods…the story represents the the niyama of aparigraha…non-accumulation of wealth, fame and material goods…-S (P.S. LOVE your books)
soy una ferviente admiradra de sus novelas me encantaria llegar a ser una guerrera de la luz trabajo dia con dia para lograrlo pienso que desarroyando la capacidad de adaptacion a las diferentes situaciones que se nos van presentando en la vida y la aceptacion cuando un ser querido le toca marcharse a otro mundo dejarlo ir al fin que solo se nos adelanta,,, son ejercicios para adquirir poder mental y espiritual y algun dia alcanzar un nivel un poquito mas elevado, saludos cariñosos tu amiga; blanca
Is a warrior of the light bestowed by the creator with special gifts? And if the answer is yes, how can the warrior recognize the gift and how does he figure out how to use it and what for?
Charlene
you are like a kind of guru to me, I love the warrior of the light and sometimes I feel I am like him, other times I am so sad and so desperate with this world and I don’t understand why people is so mean that I simply would like to dye. Why it seems sometimes that God is not listening to you, that only bad people succeded?
Dear Paulo,
I just want you to know that I am fascinated of your ideas and your writing style. Thank you for sharing your talent to the rest of us who enjoy your visual description of the places, people, and situations depicted in your fictions. I love reading your books, but these two are my favorite: Like a flowing river, & By the river Piedra I sat down and wept.
Thank you and may you find more and more inspiration and meaning to the creations around you.
May the Lord bless you today and always!
Sincerely,
Charmaine
I was looking for more of you to read until my library calls to tell me The Winner Stands Alone has arrived — and I discovered this section. Thank you.
Warrior of the Light Issue no 196: I love this story! I feel like I have been part of this story – a story which is not invented, but just too incredible to believe. No one but God could have written this story….
Crazy creative concentrated & calm
Thank U
Much love*
I want to thank you, Paulo, for posting this story and your thoughts about it. I read it last night, just before going to bed and, as a result, fell asleep with a sense of peace that I otherwise might not have had.
Yesterday I was rather troubled, as I have been struggling for quite some time now to make this one dream of mine a reality – to open a yoga studio. Over the past couple of months, everything has been falling into place. I even managed to rent a space (though one in need of much renovation), and at this very same moment, a couple of students appeared, as if from thin air, not in response to any advertising – I hadn’t gotten around to that yet – suddenly, they were just there. But now a month has passed since I rented the space, and I’ve gotten an accurate assessment of what it will take to accomplish the renovations: at minimum, a couple of thousand dollars, money which I do not have. So, since I wanted to rid my land of the pines that are growing on it anyway, I decided to sell the timber to use the money for the studio.
First there were rains; it was too wet. Then there were issues about how to get the timber out – a logging team with a special truck was required. One obstacle after another, but each of these I overcame. The ground dried up, I found the right loggers, but now, the bottom has completely dropped out of the timber market. The wood, I find out, will bring next to nothing. At this point, I am in a corner: rent is due, I am paying for a space that is not suitable as it is, and which I cannot afford to renovate. I took every risk, I tried every resource, I had every faith that somehow it would all work out, that somehow it would all come together in the end.
Yesterday afternoon, all my resources were exhausted. With the rent due again in two days, and no funds on the horizon, there was nothing to do but accept that this is NOT MEANT TO BE. So, I said to myself, Maybe there is some other way of looking at this: maybe there is something else that I am meant to do, some other form that this dream is meant to take:
In this moment, I think I have arrived, like the man in the story, at the point where I am borrowing the cow to feed the cat who was borrowed to eat the rat who was gnawing my second set of clothes – my dream is still my dream come true, but it is metamorphizing beyond my control, becoming something other than what I expected, taking on a form other than what I initially conceived. Of course, I can totally renounce the dream, just as the man in the story could have easily become frustrated at a certain point, packed up his one set of clothes and climbed down off of the mountain, declaring, “Forget this! I’m just going home.” But he didn’t. His approach was more fluid than that – he allowed the dream to take on a life of its own. He allowed it to become, not what he insisted it “should be,” but what it was “meant to be.”
So, with that in mind, I realize that there are two variables that I have not yet played with: one is time, the other is place. Maybe it is not time to do this yet. Maybe I need to back off a bit – spend my summer engaged in something else (sign up for yoga intensive, maybe make that walk to Santiago) – then try it again in the fall. Or maybe my house is a better location. I can easily afford to give up one room in order to turn it into a practice studio, the accomplishment of which would cost almost nothing. And then there is the whole green yard – a perfect spot for outdoor yoga, which many people prefer.
I don’t know what the answer is yet, but I just know that sometimes we have dreams and those dreams DO get out of hand – they take on a life of their own and lead us down roads that we never would have considered, much less expected to travel. So, faced with an obstacle that absolutely will not budge, I am forced to seek out another path, one that goes around it. I’m not going to let that cat starve for the sake of my sanctity – I’ll go down and borrow the cow…and then I’ll wait, and see what transpires tomorrow.
Something tells me that I should be feeling disappointed right now – I should be crying because my dream (as I conceived of it) is going down the drain. But I don’t feel that way. Actually, I feel quite excited. I woke up this morning with a keen sense of anticipation – like the kind I experience when reading a good novel – wanting to know, What happens next? Something is happening – I can feel it – and it’s definitely not happening according to the plan that I had laid out. Nonetheless, I feel certain that everything is happening for a reason – that even the immovable obstacles are there to send me off in the right direction. I can’t guess at the outcome, I don’t know exactly where I’m headed, but I am certain that all is exactly as it should be.
Thank you, Paulo, for this wonderful story, and the insight that it has offered me.
With much love!
Savita
Hia paulo ! friends
while the theme of your ’story’, the first para, is ‘cool’, the story which follows is also good but the last para is …..
the man was able to transform his dreams into reality? but he never dreamt of any of what happend, it was just as things unfolded, in fact the chaps’ dream was to mediatte in peace, but did he have that, what he ended up with was a business.
love
aditya
I liked that story soooooo much.Amazing.was also funny,and give us a good example.God wants us to be happy.
Yes it´s all about the personal legend.
Foloow YOUR own heart, no matter what anyone else thinks about it.
But when other people try to push you to another road, we need strenght and peristence to still going on our own path.
Love and hugs from Jessica
Savita,
The end of the journey (the acomplished dream) will fill your soul with glory.
The journey itself will bring your daily happiness and utility.
When you reach the end of the road you will need a new dream to keep you going ;-)
So…enjoy the journey …!! ;-)
You will succeed !!
Iohara