While valor is generally used in the context of war or the battlefield, it is, as an element of love, linked with the act of speaking truth to power, especially when an injustice is committed. It is common in today’s social order to pretend ignorance of the injustices of our world. Self-absorption in one’s own world is one key threat that undermines the expression of valor, and fear of consequence is the other.
Valor is the aspect of your love that defends its presence in the face of injustice as measured in the social order. If you don’t defend your virtues—or those too weak to defend their own—you have separated from them and have lost an opportunity to be a co-creative force in the world of form.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you must become an activist or advocate for a list of social causes. It simply requires that you defend yourself from injustice. Children in particular require this protection. When I was only about seven years old I vividly remember going to a store with my father and while we were walking in from the parking lot we noticed a mother quite literally beating her child in the backseat of her car. It was a busy Saturday and there were many people in the parking lot, but it was my father who approached the woman and asked her to stop. His voice was firm from his conviction and the woman immediately stopped.
This was an act of valor because there was no real judgment associated with it; it was simply an injustice that required intervention in the moment. Compassion for both the child and the mother were present in my father, and I believe the mother knew this. This is an example of how the virtues of the heart seldom appear in isolation, but rather as an ensemble that braid themselves for strength and potency for a given situation.
