Yogi Bhajan Quotes on the Spiritual Warrior

These times are demanding that we live as Spiritual Warriors—fearless, standing for truth, and lit from within by the radiance of the soul. The life of a spiritual warrior is a life of courage, compassion, strength and discipline. These qualities enable us to conquer our inner doubts and insecurities with steady determination and grace. In addition, as spiritual warriors we are called to stand up for the dignity and human rights of our neighbors, our communities, our nation and our planet. These quotes from Yogi Bhajan encompass the many aspects of the Spiritual Warrior.

There is nobody who can damage you, there is nobody who can undermine you, there is nobody who can limit you. Your power is in your own self. How you project yourself is your strength. 
4/5/83

In life, men are questioned, challenged, and tested. Do you believe yourself to be a man or don’t you? That is the question. Can you be questioned by the whole world and have an answer for it? And is your answer, “I am a man of Infinity”? If you don’t want to call yourself a man of God, then call yourself a man of Infinity
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

That is courage—anything so directly or indirectly done in which the manifestation of the will is towards righteousness.
7/30/80

Courage is when your spirit, your soul, talks to you, leads you in life—not your mind. The mind swings.
4/10/96

If you tolerate everything you shall go wrong, because your values go wrong, The mighty must not destroy the poor. You don’t tolerate this. It is tolerance that you do not tolerate injustice. 
1/8/89

For every human being, whether you are a woman or you are a man, in life one thing does matter: “It isn’t the life that matters, it’s the courage you bring to it.” (Yogi Bhajan’s favorite quote – by Hugh Walpole, Fortitude)
6/8/82

We have to confirm and reconfirm our integrity, that’s why we come for Sadhana.
3/20/84

Without fortitude nobody is going to respect you. You must come through and you must come through well. It’s a principle behind human life and it is the principle we relate to: Courage.
6/8/82

When there is no hope, you become the hope. Where there is darkness, you become the light. When there is all coward-ness, you become the courage. 
10/20/88

A person with character and commitment will undoubtedly win the trust of everybody. 
4/10/96

When there is absolute temptation, corruption, desire, and need, and you want it, and you walk away from that corruption, that is God. 
10/20/88

Self-trust is Divinity in you. Self-trust is dignity in you. Self-trust is grace in you. It comes to you when you have courage.
6/8/82

If you want to know what is good for you and what is bad for you, please ask your consciousness; if you want to know what is higher for you, what is lower for you, ask your consciousness.
6/8/82

I am asking you to be conscious of your own self. Feel your own feelings. Know your own feeling. Relate to your own feeling. Don’t go beyond you. There is nothing beyond you: nothing was, nothing is, nothing shall be. 
10/24/91

Sadhana is where you sit, dwell in the thoughts and words of the soul, and peel away all your non-reality with the vastness of your spirit. If you train your mind this way, then you will discover something for yourself. If you live in absolute fearlessness, God will live in you because fear and truth cannot go together.
-The Mind: Its Projections and Multiple Facets

If you don’t know you, even with all the wealth and friendship and power, you are miserable. The question is simple and that question is like a hanging sword on you: under all circumstances, can you contain yourself?
10/24/91

Basically in reality in your life, it is not the life which decides your destiny, it is the courage. And courage is nothing but commitment. 
7/30/80

What we require under all the pressures and circumstances of environments and temptations is that we should not lose our grip.
7/30/80

If you have done wrong, the question is how fast can you correct yourself? If you are very foolish, the question is how immediately can you turn your foolishness to wisdom?
10/24/91

Everything can be proven wrong but one thing nobody can prove wrong is self-experience. That’s all Infinity is: your own experience about yourself. That’s all that matters in this life. Have courage. Bring yourself back to yourself.
10/24/91

The question is, is your character shakable? Is your commitment shakable? Is your face and grace shakable?
4/10/96 

Question is how much you know yourself and how much you expand yourself and how much you project yourself, and with what velocity, with what caliber, with what capacity and with what continuity?
10/24/91

Your character will show the characteristic of your personality—whether you can contain against temptation and weakness and tragedy and calamity and be you. That’s the test of life.
10/24/91

I like to see how much one is near to one’s own truth. You have to understand how much you love your truth and how much your mind keeps you away from it.
4/5/83

Nonviolence is the highest Dharma. The only ones who can maintain peace are those who dedicate themselves to maintain peace at the cost of their lives. 
5/5/75

In the name of your faith, in the name of your human will, in the name of your human rights, in the name of your human freedom, let us all prove again that humans are humans—they all need love, understanding, and peace, 
6/23/84

Life has to be decided by dharma. Righteous duty is called dharma, the call of duty to righteous action. The right of self-defense is a Dharma, it is not a war; it is not a fight. 
3/30/82

Accepting the challenge is the first act of the man and converting any adversity into prosperity is the second challenge of the man. Nurturing and caring is the third challenge of the man. Kindness and compassion is the fourth challenge of the man. Being noble and honorable is the fifth challenge of the man. These are the five challenges which every man has to accept in his life whenever they come head on. Otherwise, you can call yourself a man but you are not. For that, you require character, instinct, intuition, intelligence, and knowledge.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

As we are entering the Age of Aquarius, we have to know what life is all about, and we have to become responsible, outspoken, leading teachers of this Age. That’s what we have trained for and that’s what we have grown into. You cannot live under a camouflage. You have to live openly, honestly, brightly, and forthrightly. Your words should be so strong that they affect every heart; your truth should be so pure that it lifts a person’s soul to the heights.
7/28/02

The question is how much can you handle your truth; how much are you willing to pay for your truth; how much do you love your truth; and how much do you know your truth.
4/5/83

There are only three permissible subjections of the self. They are subjection to higher consciousness, subjection to intuition, and subjection to God. Any other subjection is not permissible.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

We are people who have come from all around the world as aliens to live in a land where we will have religious freedom. But if somebody wants to take it away and we sit on the side and do not think and act and prepare ourselves, we are the worst to ourselves.
1/21/80

We want to build a strong man of you. Not so that you become “macho;” not so that you become self-destructive; but so that you can handle every challenge you face. Challenge is not something that destroys you; challenge is something that gives you an experience.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

We are not going to stop, we are not going to give in. The message we want to give the whole world is that this is the time for all of us to go hand in hand, no matter which congregation you belong to. Somewhere Christians are the minority, somewhere Jews are the minority, somewhere Buddhists are the minority. It’s a question of a very simple thing: let the forces of those who love God get together and re-establish that human rights will not be blocked; press will not be blocked; and facts will always be honest. 
6/23/84

When, as a man you react, no matter what the temptation is, or how hard the button is being pressed, you are not a man. Man never reacts to environments, circumstances, and pressures. Man accepts the challenge and makes his own way.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

The Guru is a store of technical know-how where you can go and get taken care of so that you are fit again to take up the responsibility of this planet. The Guru is the secret chamber of your inner self where you can confide your greatest secrets and be guided in the light of righteousness. Those who qualify according to these criteria are truly the blessed ones who have come to serve humanity and carry us through the times.
-1976 Kundalini Quarterly

Guru Tegh Bahadur laid down the first principle of the Khalsa: You shall give yourself to protect the weak – physically, voluntarily, aloud. You shall go and tell the king that in the political madness he cannot suppress the human being. 
4/17/77

The Cosmos works for those who have discipline, who have longing, who have some goal to reach in their lives, and who make a constant, constant, constant effort to reach it. That is dharma. Dharma is in every day, in every action, on every side of the day. Don’t waste yourself into the maya of this Earth.
2/9/03

Value your independence and virtue, your sovereignty. May you always be sovereign in your personality, your nature, and your action. And may Guru bless you. Take the flag of nobility and walk with it. There is nothing like being noble. Remember, nobility is the basic virtue to be human.
2/9/03

What should be the foremost powerful and beautiful body, the radiant body, needs to be polished. Armors are to be shined, and we are to become again the soldiers of Divine Light.
6/18/01

Time is going to be rough whether you like it or not. Time will force you to adjust and change. Let us see how powerful your mind can be, what vastness you can achieve. You have to let the stress go. You have to intuitively know what will lead to what. You have to learn what is in-between the lines.
9/10/92

Some people are afraid of commitment. They think it is slavery—going into the dungeon. No, you are meant to commit: commit-ment. It is meant to commit. What you commit to is your choice.
7/7/92

A growing man is affected in his integrity, his commitment, his dignity, and his communication by the difference between his external face value and his internal value. If your inner value doesn’t match your face value, you’re always in trouble. You should not forget that the outside is what you look at, but the inside is what you deal with. People are not dealing with your outside—the outside is giving an impression. It is the inside they are dealing with. The inner values are the real values which people want to relate to. Therefore, please deal with your inner values and keep your face values impressive and clean.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

Commitment is knowledge within itself. You don’t commit to get the knowledge. When you commit, knowledge comes to you. If you can commit and hold on to it, there is nothing more you have to learn. When you commit, things will happen which will shift in you, change you, stop you, make [tempt] you to disobey, revolt. Such opportunities will come to you. Even if you forget the truth that is the basis of you, if you continue to be committed, that’s all it takes. Commitment does not ‘begin’ anything. Commitment is the end in itself. 
10/16/73

Trust is no good if you can’t keep it. Keeping it is no good if you can’t deliver. 
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

The day you start preparing for that last day by reminding yourself, ‘When I quit the planet, what legacy am I going to leave behind? And what link shall I have with Infinity?’—then you are liberated.
3/28/94

How can you be trusted? Your word must be everlasting. For your word to be final, you must be in touch with your intuition. Your virtue is in your intuition, not in your emotion.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

What price you put on yourself is your price. Pricelessness is deathlessness. Then you ultimately become a very reputed person.
7/7/92

Keep up means keep the trust flowing, keep the trust going, keep the trust living, keep the trust accelerating. Keep the trust in the memory of the other person forever and ever. 
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

Akal Moorat—becoming a deathless warrior. No one can conquer us because we have conquered our self. If you conquer yourself, you have conquered time and space. 
3/12/89

Don’t let your emotions and your feelings and your fears and your needs detour your performance. When there are emotions and feelings in the way, jump over.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

If you can turn your body into blood and turn your blood into milk, and you can nurture a child as a mother, the man has to turn his soul through his mind and give the basic value to the child so that in life they become perpetually successful, identified as gracious. The base of a man is that of a saint. The work of that man is a victorious warrior. His life and his identity is his reality.
1/22/89

Just imagine, “What is my integrity?” Integrity is in proportion to the longitude and latitude of your sphere of consciousness. That is your integrity. 
3/20/84

Life flows in order for you to develop values; and as the life flows and you develop your values, the deeper and deeper should be your commitment.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

 [In the Aquarian Age] people will be open, straight, simple, and their beauty will be internal, not external. Both men and women are going to reach out with such dignity, such devotion, such an elevated loftiness of self. The beauty of the human character will be so bewitching, that not only will the ones who are willing be enjoying and realizing, but also their realization will be so profound that no destructive temptation by another person will work. 
1/8/00

We’ll master ourselves through our service, through our character, through our commitment, and through the most powerful thing that we have—our grace. Our individual grace is the most wanted quality today. And our projection, which will give us satisfaction, fulfillment, and exaltation, is our nobility. We will act nobly, graciously, kindly, and compassionately. These are our essential features. 
–The Self-Sensory Human

We are required to have a different kind of strength. We are required to have within us what we need. We cannot go with the free flow of insanity. Life requires much more commitment. Life needs the nurturing of commitment and commitment needs strength of character. Character needs strength of values and values have to be learned from the learned, practiced and lived.
–Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man

People in integrity don’t promise, people in integrity do not talk, people in integrity just deliver. That is what integrity is.
3/20/84

 [Many of these quotes can be found in Man to Man: A Journal of Discovery for the Conscious Man, available through  KRI .]