There are only two fundamental and polarised emotions that humans experience. One is love and the other is fear. Perhaps as such the most important movement a mind can make is to learn how to move from feeling fearful towards experiencing a larger sense of love.
The difference between love and fear is a stark dichotomy. In love there is expansion; in fear things shrink. In fear we become closed; in love we open up. In fear we experience doubt and unassailable confusion; in love we enjoy a peaceful trust.
Moving towards love doesn’t mean you can ignore fear. Turning away from fear in the pretence that it doesn’t exist will have it growing larger in the shadows of your mind. Like cockroaches under the cupboard, left alone fear breeds until it’s a plague that overflows through the rest of the house in your head.
The true antidote to fear is courage. Courage means going into the unknown in spite of all the fear. Courage doesn’t mean fearlessness. Fearlessness happens if you go on being courageous and more courageous again and again without end.
The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, which means “heart.” So to live courageously means to live from the heart rather than the head, with which one constructs an illusion of logic as security. To live with courage is to live with the unknown; to live upon the sharp knifes edge of insecurity, and so to move forward towards trust.
When you feel the threat of fear assail you, when the challenge seems as large as to be overwhelming, focus your attention on the supra-physical space inside your chest. This meditation upon your heart doesn’t force fear away; rather it gently and naturally transforms it. Uncertainty will become “wonder” and insecurity will reveal itself as “freedom”.
As you listen to your heart you create your true and more functional reality. Be courageous and keep moving forward on your path regardless of the fears. Your courage will gradually transmute fear into love. In love you will experience the life and challenges you have chosen as a gift.
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