Discharge your loyal soldier...(Richard Rohr)

Discharge your loyal soldier...

Paradoxically, your loyal soldier gives you so much security and validation that you may confuse his voice with the very voice of God. If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God. (Please read that sentence again for maximum effect!) The loyal soldier is the voice of all your early authority figures. His or her ability to offer shame, guilt, warnings, boundaries, and self-doubt is the gift that never stops giving. Remember, it can be a feminine voice too; but it is not the “still, small voice” of God that gives us our power instead of always taking our power. 

This kind of closure is much needed at the end of all major transitions in life. Because we have lost the sense of the need for such rites of passage, most people have no clear crossover to the second half of their own lives, and remain stuck and trapped in early identities and personas. I wonder if this is not one reason for the high incidence of “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” or PTSD, in our country today. Most are trying to live a human life with an unhealed soldier dragging them down.

--Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

QUESTIONS:

1. Can you name your loyal soldier?
2. What is your soldier trying to protect or shelter?
3. Is there a parallel with the elder brother in the Prodigal Son parable?
4. What kind of ritual might you devise to discharge your loyal soldier?
5. How will you celebrate the "death of the false self and the...birth of the soul"?