Fear and Courage
We all have different levels of how much we are pushed to or called to face fear in our lives. Some of us lived in war zones or encountered traumatic circumstances that most people never have to deal with.
We learn to protect ourselves by letting into our consciousness only that which we can bear, that which we can absorb. In all of us, there is a great deal of hidden and repressed fear. In hidden ways, this fear has much more impact on our lives than we realize, and some of the areas of contemplation and exploration that we’ve talked about in this writing will help to bring that to light.
It’s not necessary to ruthlessly yank all of our fear into the light all at once. As we talked about in the first section, gentleness and gradualness allow things to unfold without being so extreme that one turns away from the journey altogether or gets too overwhelmed. Yet there is something to be gained from gradually, slowly seeing what fears lie behind our words, our actions, our thoughts, our reactions. When we look closely, there are many more fears than we are consciously aware of.
There is no one way to work with our fear, in terms of uncovering it and learning to make friends with it. It underlies all of this awareness work, as it seems to be the most omnipresent emotion for humans. Just having the intention to let it in, a little bit, and get to know it as we might a long-lost relative, is very helpful in the journey of seeing things more clearly.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
Ambrose Red Moon
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