Fears, Courage and Bravery, what are they? (Follow up of "What is Courage?")
Dear friends,
This is a follow up of the previous post "What is Courage?". I therefore strongly suggest you to read that one first.
For this reason, you find this post here below in smaller fonts; if you have read it already then just scroll down.
From bareful blog "What is Courage?" (New post starts below)
The word Courage comes from the Latin "Coraticum" whose root is "Cor", heart in English. It literally means "to be comfortable in your heart space". Therefore a Courageous person is he who follows his heart. The opposite of this word is Fear and in fact Fear is what prevents you from following your heart. Following your heart means to do the things you Love, living in the Now, not worrying about the Past or the Future. If you are in Love with someone, truly in Love, you will fight any obstacle which is interposed between you and this person; think of Romeo and Juliet. If you really desire something with your heart, you will go through anything needed to achieve your goal, you will follow your heart and the rest will not matter. In this case you are being Courageous, there is no Fear. If you follow your heart or if you are in your heart space: Fear cannot exist.
Fear, in reality, is nothing else but the absence of Courage, the absence of Love. Fear is like Darkness, it does not exist by itself; Darkness is only a manifestation of the absence of Light. If you are in a dark room and you start to fight the Darkness you will be defeated. Go to the same dark room and bring Light, the Darkness will disappear, it will dissolve. The same way: bring Love in your life, do not fight Fears, do not dwell on your Fears. You might be wondering: what if I have Fears which are there for a long time, Fears which track back to my childhood? Well, consider that: if you bring a candle in a dark room the candle illuminates the room immediately. The Light of the candle does not care if the room has been dark for ages. And if the Darkness is not all away, then bring more Light! Similarly: bring in Love and your Fear will disappear, bring in more Love and your Fear will totally dissipate!
Courage and Fear are emotions, and they are very powerful: they literally create the world around you. The cognitive equivalents of Courage and Fear are Trust and Doubt respectively.
If you are Courageous you are Trusting your own resources, you know that for any new situation that is presented to you, you will find a way to deal with it. You go towards the Unknown because you Trust you will make it your home. You Trust yourself.
If you have Fears you are Doubting your own resources. You Doubt you will be good enough to face the New. In this moment there is no Love. In this situations ask yourself where is the Fear coming from, why you have Doubts, there are plenty of exercises that will help you deal with that and give you the way to bring in more Love. At the end, when you look deep into your Fear and into your Doubts they will dissolve, because they aren't solid as you think, they aren't real!
Follow your heart, be Courageous, Trust in your own resourcefulness! Do not believe in any dogma but Trust yourself and welcome the Unknown.
Bring Light into your room, bring Love into your life!
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What is Bravery?
As stated above, Courage is the act of following your heart. When you follow your heart there is no Fear and everything is an expression of Love, it is Art, it is Poetry. This applies to everything in your life, yes, everything!
What is then Bravery? Can you overcame fears with Bravery?
Here is an example from my highline experience:
When you are balancing across a thin line several hundreds or thousands meters above the ground you have to do something with your Fears in order to cross the line.
There are two ways to get on the other side:
a) You can train, understand and evaluate the risks, be prepared, know that you can do it and cross the line enjoying every single step. There is no hurry to get on the other side, in reality you don’t focus on crossing it, but you experience every move.
You have been Courageous.
b) You are caught by Fear, you lose contact to your breath, you nearly close your eyes, you bite the bullet and go! You throw one foot after the other in a semi-controlled manner hoping for the last step to come.
You have been Brave.
This example applies everywhere in your everyday life, even when crossing the street.
In both cases you have accomplished your task, but only in one case you have overcome your fears and fully enjoyed and Lived the experience. Only in one case you have well evaluated the situation and minimized the risks. Only in one case you were fully in control, living the Present and not longing for the future moment of "accomplishment".
If you act Brave you might succeed many times; but are you really living your life? Are you being here and now? Are you really overcoming your Fears? I suggest here that with Bravery you are not overcoming them, you are just pushing them down.
We are all Brave, Courageous, Fearful and Coward in different moments of our life. What matters is to be aware of this and to actively bring more Courage into our life; which in other words means to follow our heart!
Remember also that there is no Courage without Fear. A Courageous, a Brave and a Coward share the same Fears, what makes the difference is what they do with it.
If you have Fears then great! Welcome to the club!
Look carefully and with curiosity into your Fears, and you will see your path unfolding!
Salva
(extract from the notes of my workshop "Empower Yourself" ran with Mirjana Power)