courage

Courage is one of the most important attitudes, or characteristics, that we need to develop within ourself for our spiritual journey. A great courage will be needed, because the spiritual journey is rarely, if ever, easy. On the contrary, it's challenging.

As part of our journey, we will be looking inside ourself and having to face the whole shadow side of our psychology, all those aspects of ourselves that we've rejected in the past, that we're ashamed of or feel guilty about. All of these we will need to acknowledge, and that takes a great courage.

The reason that we have rejected those elements within ourself, pushed them into the unconscious, is that we have deemed them to be unacceptable. So these unacceptable elements are going to need to come to light. And there will be a great fear involved in that. It will touch our deepest wounds: our fears of not being acceptable in society or in relationship. It will bring up every self doubt that we have. And we need a great courage to face all that.

Furthermore, a lot of this work is done alone. Who else can look inside our deepest, darkest corners? Only oneself. and this courage will be needed to stand alone in those moments of darkness. And sooner or later, we will face a dark night of the soul, the place of utter hopelessness, a place where everything we've put faith in seems to have crumbled to dust. This will demand a tremendous courage, to be able to sit through that dark night of the soul, face to face with whatever is arising, however bleak, to be able to sit with it, unmoving, unwavering.

These are the sort of challenges that our spiritual journey will throw at us. and the only way to get through those challenges is to have courage. When fear is arising to sit in that fear, not pretending it's not there. But not trying to escape from what is causing the fear, not trying to run away from the fear. And this is courage – to face one's deepest fears.

To help develop courage, you might try taking some risks, small things in your day to day life: perhaps talking to a stranger at the bus stop if that's something that is challenging for you; perhaps inviting someone out for a date, even though they may reject you. You could try taking a walk late at night on your own, even though it feels scary. You could try visiting a foreign country where you don't speak the language.

Anything that brings up some fear is a great place to start. And when that fear arises, try sitting with it, watching the fear, allowing the fear, without any need to do anything about it, without needing to fix it, without needing to retreat to safety, without needing to run away or escape.

There's a saying, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and it's rather like that. The things we are afraid of are never nearly as bad as we somehow expect. And that's why facing our fears is so liberating. We realise that there wasn't much to be afraid of in the first place, that things almost always work out well, and that taking those risks greatly adds to life, it enriches our life.

So this is the general way to try and encourage your own courage, to develop it. It will be needed.