Being Courageous

 

Photo Credit: Pixels||Spiritual Courage by Laurie's Intuitive

Being Courageous

Courage can be of two types. The first type is the most prevalent one. The first type is cultivated. You repress your fear and you go on repressing your fear, so much so that it disappears from your consciousness and becomes part of your unconscious. You are no more aware of it and you start thinking that there is no fear in you.

In ordinary situations it will work, but in any extraordinary situation in which real courage is needed you will have a breakdown. The fear will surface again. It was only on the surface that you were courageous. It had not become a part of your soul.

The second type, the second category of courage is spontaneous, natural, uncultivated. It does not come by repressing fear. It comes by understanding fear, by seeing deeply into your fear. And the moment you start looking into fear, the fear starts evaporating because suddenly you become aware that you are not it. It is just an idea in the mind and you are the witness of it. One thing becomes absolutely certain, that you are beyond it, that it does not constitute you or your being. In that very moment courage springs up, wells up. And that is a totally different thing. In no situation will it leave you. Even death cannot destroy it.

The first type is needed by all kinds of soldiers all around the world. The second type is needed by seekers. The seeker has to live an uncultivated life, natural, spontaneous, alert, aware, but absolutely non-repressive. Neither fear has to be repressed nor greed, nor desire – nothing has to be repressed. Everything has to be understood. And the miracle is that through understanding comes transcendence, through understanding comes transformation.

The difference between a courageous person and a coward is not that the courageous person has no fear and that the coward is afraid. No, that is not the difference. Both are afraid in the same proportion. The difference lies in the approach – the courageous person goes ahead in spite of the fear, and the coward stops because of the fear. Both are afraid!

Courage simply means that one is going ahead with whatever is happening in spite of the fear. The fear is present, the trembling is there, but it is not stopping you, you are not being blocked by it. You are using it as a stepping stone – in spite of trembling with fear, you still go into the unknown.

You need to be truly courageous to tread on the path of the unknown – turning inwards, becoming a spiritual seeker means you choose courage! Each human faces both the possibilities – courage and fear. It just depends on your choice – never choose fear because that will cripple you, paralyse you. It destroys you without giving you a chance to stand up again. Courage too destroys you, but that destruction is creative – it gives you re-birth as you rise again like a phoenix.