Courage to Know Oneself

Courage to Know Oneself
By Dale Goldstein, LCSW

I have had a lot of fear in my life. Much of the fear started when I was nine years old and developed an unbearable fear of dying. I would lie in bed at night, knowing that I was eventually going to lose everything I cherished about being alive – especially life, itself. “Why was I born if only to die?” was the question that plagued me. I literally could not sleep at night. And I could find no solace from either of my parents. So I learned to deal with it by controlling my breath (I thought, “If I keep breathing, I will stay alive.”) – a habit that deadened my spontaneity and inner freedom for decades to come.

This issue wasn’t resolved until I finally faced death directly, within myself, and saw that what I was really afraid of was not death, but aloneness – existential aloneness – being all alone, forever. And when I opened to this Aloneness, needing to know what it really was, my consciousness opened to my wholeness and my interconnectedness with all existence – the all-one-ness. And I have not been lonely or afraid in the way I used to be since that defining moment.

This story exemplifies the underlying principle of courage. Having courage does not mean that one does not have fear. It means that one is willing to face the fear – to face Fear (the one underlying fear that all other fears come from), itself – in order to know the truth about something. In a very real sense, one could say that Fear is the separation from the Truth, and that courage is the willingness to go through fear to get to truth. All fears, then, refer back to the one Fear that is our separation from the Truth of who and what we really are – our True Nature, our undivided and interconnected Self.

Often, when people ask me what Heartwork is, I tell them that it is learning how to move through fear. (Interesting, because the word “courage” comes from Latin and French derivatives that mean “heart.”) Every “little” fear that comes up in our lives, if we can just allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable to it, curious about it – needing to understand it, having to know the truth – becomes a doorway to a larger, less fearful part of ourselves. Every time we face a fear, we learn that we have the ability to move through fear, we become a little more courageous in our lives, and we get a little closer to the Truth of our Being.

I often say that the difference between a child and an adult is that the child retreats from fear – chooses to stay stuck in their fear of the fear – whereas the adult faces fear – chooses to move through the fear of the fear, into and through the fear, itself. So, in order to fully understand courage, we need to understand why we would choose to not face our fears, but to continue to be afraid of fear. Why would we choose to stay stuck in a limited, tight, fearful place when we could be free and open and joyous?

This, of course, is a huge question. But I think there are a few key things we can see that will be very useful. The first question that arises in this inquiry is, “What is it that we’re really afraid of, anyway?” There’s an old Jewish expression that translates roughly into, “Don’t look too deep.” I think the entire Judeo-Christian ethos is based on the belief that what is deepest inside of us is fundamentally not good – original sin, the id, etc. So, if one should sincerely seek the Truth, what he or she will ultimately discover is that one’s True Nature is bad. And how could one live with that knowledge? And so we are afraid of looking into things for fear that we won’t like what we find. From my experience, however, what I have found to be deepest inside myself (and all beings) is pure love, compassion, wisdom, and understanding. It’s just a matter of looking deeply enough to see what’s there.

We are also afraid of letting go of the known. Even though we may be aware of our suffering, at least we are familiar with it. We may even have become comfortable with it in a peculiar sort of way. We have made a kind of pact with our suffering: “I won’t bother challenging you if you promise not to get any worse.” In essence, we are afraid to change because we have an unconscious belief that things will get worse if we let go of what we know. What I have learned, however, is that the only place that there is true peace is in the place of absolute letting go – the place of “not knowing.” From this place, I am able to respond freely and directly to the circumstances of my life.

We have taken on an identity, an image, a set of beliefs about who and what we and the world are all about. We see our lives through this set of beliefs. If we were to let go of these ideas about what reality is we are afraid we would no longer know what is real. And that is a frightening prospect for us. We are afraid that our world would be chaotic and even terrifying. We are afraid that the Universe is not a benevolent place.

And so we hold onto – cling desperately (like Gollum’s “My Precious” in Lord of the Rings) to – a set of beliefs about who we are and what the world is that were created (primarily in an attempt to protect ourselves from experiencing pain) very early in our childhood, and are buried deep in our unconscious. These beliefs/self-images serve to separate us from Reality – what IS – and are, actually, the source of all our fear and all our suffering. It is only by challenging/inquiring into these beliefs that we can move through our fears and come to know our true, courageous, free, open, loving, and peaceful self. The great poet, Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The spiritual path is one of being defeated by greater and greater beings.” In the process of inquiring into – seeing into and letting go of – our false selves, one’s awareness opens increasingly to the beauty and awe that is always present.

One could then say that courage is being more committed to knowing the truth than protecting one’s cherished ideas and images about who and what oneself and the world are.

What beliefs do you cling to? And are you courageous enough to challenge them?