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personal devil was
     something I had never heard and I wasnt going to swallow it easily.
    Today, before crossing the bridge, I had a strong feeling of the presence of someone,
     someone who was
    trying to give us a warning. But the warning was more for you than for me. A battle is
     coming on very soon, and you will have to fight the good fight.
    When you do not know your personal devil, he usu- ally manifests himself in the nearest
     person. I looked around, and I saw those boys playing and I figured that it was there
     that he would probably give his warn- ing. But I was only following a hunch. I became sure
     that it was your personal devil when you refused to give the ball back.
    I repeated that I had done so because I thought it was what Petrus wanted.
    Why me? I never said a word.
    I began to feel a little dizzy. Maybe it was the food, which I was devouring voraciously
     after almost an hour of walking and feeling hungry. Still, I could not escape the feeling
     that the boy had seemed familiar.
    Your personal devil tried three classical approaches: a threat, a promise, and an attack
     on your weak side. Congratulations: you resisted bravely.
    Now I remembered that Petrus had asked the boy about the relic. At that time, I had
     thought that the boys response showed that he had tried to fool me. But he must really
     have a relic hidden there a devil never makes false promises.
    When the boy could not remember about the relic, your personal devil had gone away.
    Then he added without blinking, It is time to call him back. You are going to need him.
    We were sitting on the ruins of the old bridge. Petrus carefully gathered the remains of
     the meal and put them into the paper bag that the monks had given us. In the fields in
     front of us, the workers began to arrive for the days plowing, but they were so far away
     that I couldnt hear what they were saying. It was rolling land, and the cultivated patches
     created unusual designs across the landscape. Under our feet, the water course, almost
     nonexistent due to the drought, made very little noise.
    Before he went out into the world, Christ went into the desert to talk with his personal
     devil, Petrus began. He learned that he needed to know about people, but he did not let
     the devil dictate the rules of the game; that is how he won.
    Once, a poet said that no man is an island. In order to fight the good fight, we need
     help. We need friends, and when the friends arent nearby, we have to turn soli- tude into
     our main weapon. We need the help of every- thing around us in order to take the necessary
     steps toward our goal. Everything has to be a personal mani- festation of our will to win
     the good fight. If we dont understand that, then we dont recognize that we need everything
     and everybody, and we become arrogant war- riors. And our arrogance will defeat us in the
     end, because we will be so sure of ourselves that we wont see the pitfalls there on the
     field of battle.
    His comments about warriors and battles reminded me again of Carlos Castanedas Don Juan. I
     asked
    myself whether the old medicine man would have given lessons early in the morning, before
     his disciple had even been able to digest his breakfast. But Petrus contin- ued:
    Over and above the physical forces that surround us and help us, there are basically two
     spiritual forces on our side: an angel and a devil. The angel always protects us and is a
     divine gift you do not have to invoke him. Your angels face is always visible when you
     look at the world with eyes that are receptive. He is this river, the workers in the
     field, and that blue sky. This old bridge that helps us to cross the stream was built here
     by the hands of anonymous Roman Legionnaires, and the bridge, too, is the face of your
     angel. Our grandparents called him the guardian angel.
    The devil is an angel, too, but he is a free, rebellious force. I prefer to call him the
     messenger,