"This Week" by the
Bahrain Meditation Centre
16th December

Courage to Face Your Fear

Courage is always associated with fear. If we did not know fear we would never need courage. Courage and fear have therefore grown up together. The are frequent adversaries in ancient myth and legend, and the real stars of a thousand heroic tales. All good novels and great movies have a ‘hero moment’ when fear is faced and courage wins through. Traditionally courage means facing your fear, going through your fear, and thereby disempowering the fear.

The ‘warrior hero’ consciously chooses to face and fight his foe. His preparations are as much about mental focus as they are about physical strength. The ‘soldier hero’ however is not quite so courageous and often lacks any focus at all. He is following orders to face and fight, or there will be repercussions. Hence the soldier hero is often traumatized by the heat of a battle that he does not choose.

Then there is the courage of the ‘fireman hero’ who goes into the blazing building as everyone else is coming out. To his courage we pay tremendous respect and gratitude. The ‘entrepreneur hero’ on the other hand, will take such risks that all may be lost on one wrong turn or bad decision. Hence the history of most successful entrepreneurs is often littered with many failures from which some will rise and have the courage to try again. Then there is the false courage of ‘the fool’ who enters the sandpit full of vipers unable to follow the logic that one bite and he is dead. The fool is no hero and his bravado will probably be his demise. Towering above them all is the less visible courage of the angel who heroically ‘goes where others fear to tread’, usually in front of God. That’s where fear meets its greatest fear, which is love! The angel ‘in training’ has the courage to stand spiritually naked in the face of the pure love of God, knowing all fear will be dissolved, but also knowing it will be an extremely uncomfortable process.

In the meantime, back in real life, back in the personal life of you, it’s possible you may learn that your greatest fear is meeting your self, and that the greatest courage is to sit quietly, look inwards and see what is within your self. This is why it actually takes courage to meditate, to still the monkey mind, and cultivate self-awareness. Any attempt to meditate is an attempt to invoke your peaceful and loving core. It is therefore also an invitation to fear and all its friends to interfere, to come and disturb your gentle concentration, to shake you. For they know that if you reach your inner destination, and decide to stay there, that their days are numbered. Love and fear can never live together.

We are all now riddled with many fears but learn to live with them as if it were normal. If you do learn to sit quietly with your self, each one will come and knock at the door of your conscious awareness. Ask anyone who has seriously walked a spiritual path, seriously practiced meditation, and they will tell you of a thousand ways that we create to avoid truly facing and dissolving our fears. Internally we hide ourselves in memories and beliefs, in ideas and speculations, in grand visions and great plans. Externally we escape from our self by judging others, by blaming others for our fears, by living vicariously through others endeavours and achievements, or by just keeping busy, busy, busy. And in doing all the above we simply sustain our anxieties.

The good news is all our fears have one common cause and once seen the true definition of courage can then be realized. True courage is the ability to let go of the illusion that the fear is real.

While the fear ’seems’ real it comes from an unreal place within us. It always comes from miscreation. Whenever we create an attachment (which is miscreation) to anything or anyone we will create fear - fear of loss or fear of damage. Whenever we create an attachment we create an image of the object of attachment in our own mind to which we become attached and identified. It can be an image of a possession, an image of something desired in the future or an image of an idealized self to which we aspire now. It is in the moment if identification with the image, which mostly happens subconsciously, that we create unreality. We are not an image of anything. We are our self. Once we identify with the image we will then perceive a threat to the image. The perception generates the fear. The fear seems real because we give the image we create the status of reality. It is only by seeing and realizing how we do this that we can stop doing this, and thereby release the various fears that we generate. This is ‘letting go’ at the deepest level.

The regular practice of meditation gradually allows us to see the illusions we create within. Even then we will find subtle ways of ignoring what we see. We have become so accustomed to creating and living these illusions that even though they are the source of our inner discomfort we have become comfortable being uncomfortable! We are addicted to our fear. So real courage is looking inwards, seeing our habits of image creation, how we attach to those images and therefore how we brilliantly create the unreal in our own minds. It is then easy to see why the fear emerges. So do you have the courage to look into your self, see your self and all the illusions you create? Are you ready to see what FEAR really means, False Experience Appearing Real, be a hero and let go? Or will you continue to sustain the more common meaning of fear which is Forget Everything And Run?

Question: What are the three things you fear most and ‘where’ do you fear them?
Reflection: Courage is the ability to let go of the illusion that the fear is real - reflect on this and see what it means to you. Can you discern specific examples from your own experience?
Action: Identify two images you regularly create in your mind that give rise to fear in the form of worry or anxiety?

Om Shanti
(I am a peaceful soul)
 Tel: +973-17-712 545, meditate@batelco.com.bh, www.bahrainmeditationcentre.org
Bahrain Meditation Centre is administered by B.K.W.S.U. (visit: www.bkwsu.org.uk)