Lifeletter #118 – Taking The Courageous Step

“Why is it so difficult to take the first, necessary, close-in, courageous step to claiming our happiness in life?” (David Whyte)

Fear has a thousand faces in our world right now. There is such a profound level of change going on. The world we know is unraveling, and it needs to. When we don’t know what is happening, when we lose control, we encounter a lot of fear. Our conditioned nature does not like this kind of change. Our old structures, both inner and outer, resist the depths of the transformation that is being asked of us. We might scramble desperately to find some security, some solid ground, which only increases our anxiety.

Sir David Hawkins, renowned psychiatrist, physician, researcher and spiritual teacher, has done an in-depth investigation of the levels of consciousness. According to his research, everything changes when we begin to access courage. The states of consciousness before we tap into courage are expressions of a very contracted, isolated, and negative way of being. After we open to courage, we enter a whole different field of possibilities. We make contact with a very different way of being, one that is connected to a much larger and brighter field of consciousness. It’s like entering an upward spiral, where we begin to make direct contact with love, willingness, creativity and inspiration.

His findings had a big impact on me. They lined up with my own experience of teaching public speaking for twenty years to people from all over the world, helping them to get up in public and speak directly from the heart. I have seen how easy it is for us, in this situation, to fall back into fear, to let the egoic needs for safety, security, and approval take us over.

I have a growing sense these days, that if we are going to step into any kind of ‘new story’ together, we will need to transform our relationship with fear. To stop treating it as the enemy, and learn to open directly to its energy.

We have such a deep-rooted aversion to fear and anxiety; I don’t think we really understand what courage is. We believe that courage is the absence of fear. We try to push these experiences of fear and anxiety down and away, whenever they arise. Or we try to be brave and push our way through the fear and terror. Neither strategy works very well, because it comes from fear itself.

How did we become so afraid of fear? We have a lot of very powerful stories about what fear means. These stories live in our bodies, in our cells, and in our collective consciousness. We have not investigated them; we have not yet discovered that none of them are true. Until we do, we are living lives that are at the mercy of fear. And living like this confines us, it closes down what is possible for us, both individually and collectively.

I’ve experienced vast amounts of fear in my life. In the areas of my life where there has been a lot of awakening and love and creative energy, I’ve learned to welcome my fear, to work with it, to regard it as an ally. The parts of my life where I got stuck, where the suffering was most intense, were places where I was not able to do that. A courageous woman I have been working with, who is an artist, said to me the other day, “I struggled with anxiety for ten years.” This happens a lot. It can take a long time for us to grow into a different relationship with fear.

On the deepest level, learning to be with our fear means that we step into a much wider and more fluid identity, and a radically different relationship with life. I want to invoke this possibility for anyone who is ready. I want us to realize that we can turn toward our fear and terror, slowly and gently, in a non-heroic way. When we are at the end of our rope, something new can tap us on the shoulder, when we least expect it.

“It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer in than we could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that that step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more complicated, our identities equally clouded by fear and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.” (David Whyte)

I’d love to hear from any of you who resonate with what I am offering here. We’re all in this together. Thank you.

with love

Shayla