WHAT GAME ARE YOU PLAYING? Are you a “winner” or a “loser?” The answer to that question involves ‘discovering’ who we are and how we navigate the daily mix of our lives. Perhaps our status is best determined by first looking at what

CALL TO WARRIORS

In seeking to avoid a fight, we concede what we’re about. We’re about justice, fairness, equality—that’s our strength. We cannot concede our strength. We must realize, understand and believe that our current conditions do not reflect our ultimate potential. If we limit our choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, we disconnect ourselves from what we truly want. And all that is left is a compromise. In order to move forward, we need both the courage of our convictions and the commitment to do the work.(Gary Delgado, 1951 - )
  
A Call to Action: Become a Warrior
How do we best respond to the call we hear (or should hear!) to take responsibility for our future in these times? The Founding Fathers of this country had a challenge they faced that could be said to be far more daunting. Yet they took a giant step, effaced personal gain and created a new nation with a road map -- the Constitution of these United States. The first sentence crafted for that document, its Preamble. The word “preamble” comes from the Latin “pre-ambulate” which means to walk before, to lead the way. It starts with “We the People.” So what is the task for “We the People” today?
 
The Preamble was conceived as a statement of America’s national purpose: by “We the People” to form “a more perfect Union” that would “establish Justice, provide for the common defence, insure domestic Tranquility, promote the general Welfare” and then to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” to “ourselves and our Posterity” as its vision of America’s future as a free country. The national purpose, then, is plainly to keep us free. Nothing more. Nothing less. But what does that mean?
 
It means that the Preamble is not only the front line that drives the law; it is also a nucleus of ideals that would unify our people and accelerate our mutual security with the nations of the world. This drive, nucleus and acceleration would not only be America’s DNA, but also would be a template for civilization against barbarity—to keep us free from the corruption of power. The European Enlightenment had empowered our founders to replace the divine right of kings with the divine rights of the people. That was what led to America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. That was what also led to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by the United Nations in 1948.
 
How about taking responsibility for questioning those who be our leaders, getting full and real responses, and then working to make sure that those people and their responses resonate with the values spelled out in that Preamble to lead us to those goals? To do that, we need to become warriors.
 
The warrior is a timeless, primal archetype at the core of both individuals and groups. Warriors, whatever role they have played and whatever name we have given to them are, in fact, telling us there's something valuable about focus, determination, and courage for the common good. In the developed world, warrior energy is often sublimated into the activities around business and sports. And even here, in considering our opportunity and obligation to take responsibility for ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, our communities, our nation and our planet, a clear goal toward a larger good, beyond self, and for purposes greater than prestige and power is usually absent. The current day warrior has largely morphed into the celebrity, which hardly makes it warrior energy any more.
 
The secret of a good warrior is that one must be in tutelage to a good and wise leader. The warrior without a good leader has no wisdom, no temperance, no balance, no final goals. The warrior archetype is not going away any time soon, nor should it. Our job is to educate and redefine the warrior in the way that the great leaders we acknowledge lived out their passion. Warrior energy is not in its essence wrong. It takes warrior energy to see through and stand against mass illusions of our time, and be willing to pay the price of disobedience. It takes warrior energy to see through the soft rhetoric of "support our troops" which cleverly diverts from the objective evil of war. It takes warrior energy to walk to a different drum, disbelieve the patriotic trivia, and re-believe in the tradition of freedom, and the Nth Commandment [do unto others as you would have them do unto others].
 
The warrior in all of us is desperately searching for something heroic, transcendent, or self-sacrificing. Defining what our freedom consists of and how we can achieve and support it, for ourselves, our families, our friends, our associates, our country and for all those who inhabit this planet, that is a cause worth fighting for. And our fight must come from a place of learning. To rise above the ignorance that seems to permeate our current processes, our media, the choices must be pointed out and a way found and implemented to foster the education of “We the People” be carried out. Our great teachers who founded the religions we profess to follow proclaimed that was and is the path to follow and the victory to be won would be through the power of love.
 
What then, is the creative force that the leader who “We the People” are called to follow can unleash? Could this leader unleash the unbelievable force that one of our top immigrants ‘saw’ while sitting at his desk in a patent office in Switzerland? Albert Einstein foresaw that E=mc2. He understood that when all the appropriate elements are brought together and are unleashed, everything is possible. We have and are discovering that is true. What then are the elements the leaders must assemble and articulate to a receptive warrior following?
 
Warrior energy needs to be wholly dedicated and given somewhere or to something. It must be focused and released for the warrior to know that she or he is alive and has character. Our work is to find worthy causes and goals to receive worthy warrior energy. The opportunity is here, the time is now. It is up to each of us.