The Luminous Warrior Revisted

Forgiveness, Gratitude and Love

KW Norton’s recent post, THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING AND BECOMING: Unhappiness - And War, Violence & Genocide - Are Reflections of Our Own Consciousness, inspired me to revisit the Andean concept of the Luminous Warrior. I originally posted on the Luminous Warrior in February.

 According to anthropologist and shaman, Alberto Villoldo, in his reflections and teaching on Andean cosmology (Source: The Divine Quest), the Luminous Warrior is an archetype, an ancient force of nature that became embodied in certain humans. The Luminous Warrior has brought death to fear. The Luminous Warrior is the one who has no enemies in this world or the next. He has freed himself from the need to have enemies. She has understood that whoever you recognize as an enemy is a part of you that is still unhealed, or as Norton suggests a reflection of your consciousness. You can have an adversary, but an enemy becomes someone that you see as being evil or being angry at you or hunting you or abusing you in some way. We must be careful that we don't turn people into enemies, into scapegoats, so that we don't have to heal our own deep wounds.

There are legends in the American southwest that when the cavalry was facing indigenous peoples, the luminous warriors could not be killed. They would be there. The soldiers would fire at them, and the bullets would miss. They could not be killed because they no longer considered the other as the enemy. They understood that at any other time they would be sitting next to that soldier around the campfire, exchanging stories. It just turned out that in this moment in history, they turned out to be adversaries.

Adversaries are different from enemies. An adversary can be understood as a person, group, or force that opposes or competes with another. It refers to someone who is in opposition to another or stands in the way of their goals. Adversaries do not necessarily hold deep-seated animosity or hatred towards each other. They are simply competitors or opponents in a particular context and on occasion are even open to compromise. An enemy, on the other hand, is a person, group, or nation that is actively opposed or hostile to another and seeks to harm, damage, or defeat them. Enemies are typically characterized by deep-seated animosity, hatred, or ill will and often imply a more serious and enduring conflict or opposition compared to "adversary." Enemies are viewed as threats to one's well-being, security, or values. The relationship between enemies is usually marked by a high level of hostility, distrust, and antagonism.

The Luminous Warrior is an invitation to go for the deep healing and to embrace those parts of ourselves that we need to attend to, so we don't keep denying them, burying them more deeply in our psyche and then project out onto others turning them into enemies. We cannot undertake that deep healing when we are disempowered and living in fear. The very first thing we need to do is to transform the fear within us into a source of compassion. Fear keeps us disempowered, and if we are disempowered, we cannot look at our deep wounds. We'll be overwhelmed by fear—fear of not being good enough, fear of doing it wrong, fear of being wrong, fear of not being smart enough, fear of being hurt, fear of loving or not being loved, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being judged, fear of being misunderstood, fear of embarrassment, fear of being rejected, fear of being inadequate, fear of …..you put in the word.

The shamans discovered how to transform fear into love. They understood that fear was not the absence of courage. Fear was the absence of love. Whenever they felt fear emerge, their world would begin to collapse and make them feel smaller and smaller. It would make them want to go into hiding. Fear collapses our world and makes us disempowered.

How do you transform fear into love? According to the Luminous Warrior, it has to do with the practices of forgiveness and gratitude. Forgiveness is essential. We need to forgive those people that we believe hurt us. The very first step is forgiveness. And then we need to be able to say thank you for teaching us the lessons that they offered us. We are not thanking that person that abused us when we were little for what they did to us. We are thanking spirit for offering us an opportunity to grow and evolve into our highest and best form. And when we get to that place of gratitude, we have transformed fear into personal power, into medicine. Then we begin to understand that things don't happen to us. They happened for us. I realize this is a challenging shift in consciousness. The Luminous Warrior knows that things happen for us so that we can learn. They happen so that we have an opportunity to grow. They come to teach us how to be more deeply human and compassionate. When we can step into that awareness and embrace that consciousness, we become the luminous warrior who has no need for enemies. We no longer need to make somebody wrong to make ourselves right.

The way we get there is by learning to transform our toxic emotions into gratitude, compassion, care and love through the practice of forgiveness. Forgiveness is step one. Gratitude is step two. Then we become empowered. Fear disappears because it is replaced with love. This love is not that fussy feeling that we have for someone that we just met where our eyes lock and we believe that person to be our soul mate. Of course, this happens, but the kind of love we are speaking about here is a vibration that comes when we can access the Luminous Warrior and have gratitude for all of life. The Luminous Warrior is an archetype. According to Jung, archetypes are innate patterns of thought and behavior that strive for realization within an individual's environment. Therefore, we all have access to the Luminous Warrior. The steps are forgiveness, gratitude, and understanding that things happen for us so we can face and heal the unhealed parts of us and turn fear into love. As KW suggested, the world reflects our consciousness. What will the world reflect if we could access the Luminous Warrior of the indigenous peoples of the Andes and change our consciousness into one of forgiveness, gratitude and love where we have no need for enemies?

To access the Luminous Warrior, we need to reset our nervous system. Here is an audio journey to reset your nervous system and journey to meet and download the energy of the Luminous Warrior.

You can access my original post on the Luminous Warrior here.

https://shamanshalley.substack.com/p/medicine-wheel-the-west-and-the-way?r=iwrui

You can read KW Norton’s post The Great Chain of Being and Becoming here.

THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING AND BECOMING