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Arwen: Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur‘s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.
Aragorn: The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness.
Arwen: Your time will come. You will face the same evil, and you will defeat it.

I didn’t initially set out to find an image of Aragorn to use as gravatar of A Warrior’s Journey – I first had mind to the indomitable figure of Spartacus so ably portrayed by the excellent and able-bodied Andy Whitfield of Blood and Sand fame, a series which very much emboldened and swelled the passions within.

However, I could find none so compelling and sovereign and vivid as the above of Isildur’s heir riding to battle, none so apt.

Here the sky lours behind him, his world is on fire, but he has conquered his doubts and is set to his task, it matters little he faces conquest and death, in his Warrior Power he is unflinching and vital and ready for all.

We all have our doubts.  The flow of our Warrior Power falls back from a flood at times and dries to a trickle.  It is then we are left with a sense we are feeble and false, and that what courage we have formally shown was nothing but the fruit of a lie.  As with Aragorn our past comes ready to haunt us.  We know more keenly the smother of work that hardly inspires us, relationships that lack the lustre of old, evanishing dreams once held close to our hearts, goals we are unable to realize…the list goes on…

Bereft of our Warrior Power we may submit to a world we do not much like, no matter how much we may seem to protest and struggle.

Aragorn inspires hope.  Having taken up his sword, Anduril, Flame of the West, he is assuming his power: steel in his heart and steel in his hand, he’s ready to cut down all that stands in his way.  He no longer doubts his claim to the throne.  He has made a decision.

Claiming our Warrior Power is just such a decision.  It entails facing our fears, commitment with patience, self-discipline, a willingness to partake in aggressive encounters whenever need calls, the will to live with passion…

Our Warrior Power does not settle for a dreary existence, its eye is where the challenges are, the thrills and the dangers…

Knocked down, it’s the energy that helps us rise up…

Beat down, it’s the energy that says we will never submit…

It’s the energy of life that carves for us a path of our own…

Of course Warrior Power is easily seen through the examples of Aragorn and Spartacus and such of that ilk.  But it is  also displayed in less obvious ways:

The babe that takes its first strides in the world.  The will to lose weight and transform ones shape.  The marathon run for a charity cause.   The meditator who cuts through the noise of the mind.

A Warrior’s Journey need not be one of conflict and war.  Rather it is the simple assumption of our power to determine our lives as we see fit, the courage to follow our hearts.

At the end of it, with our dying breath, is the knowledge of a life well lived:

“Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.”

—Description of Aragorn’s death

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