Should we ignore, or remain in denial about adverse situations or issues, we learn little if anything at all. The situations fester and pester more and more. We feel more pain or hurt. Should we continue to isolate ourselves from our feelings of hurt about what’s going on, we isolate ourselves from love, joy and fulfillment as well. This might need some explanation.
Image sourced from The Hero Construction Company
We can’t learn if something is wet or not if we don’t know what not-wet, i.e. dry, is. Likewise, we are unable to be selective when we detach ourselves from negative emotions. Should we detach ourselves from sadness, we detach ourselves from not sadness, i.e. joy.
I recall when a relationship, I was in, broke up, not too long ago. I took myself to the pub at night, to inebriate myself from the fear and sadness of spending lonely evenings on my own. It took me 9 months before I readied myself to acknowledge the sadness, fear and start to move on life.
So here’s the curious dichotomy: when we ignore or deny fear, we deny not-fear – i.e. courage.
And it takes courage to deal with inner issues. In fact, all issues are inner issues. (When the relationship ended we both had issues to resolve but they were different issues.She had hers. I had mine. They were both proprietary.) The more courage we demonstrate to ourselves to deal with our inner issues the more we learn about them.
And when we learn more about a subject, we become wiser, we become expert and eventually we become a master. Not only are we a master at what’s going on, we become a master over our fears. We don’t hide from, or deny, them. We manage our fears. We control them. We become warriors. We become heroes. To some people, this ends the journey (“Hail, the all conquering hero!”). It does not. It ends a significant part of the journey and starts the next.
When we acknowledge our fear and gain mastery over it – we start to experience the stillness or void from which we base our actions. We start to realise that the issue, we faced, was attracted by and to our fear. We brought the issue, perhaps unknowingly and albeit unwantedly, on ourselves. The issue brought the fear to the surface so that we can erase that fear and evolve to the good.This is a fundamental rule to the game of life. (It might even be the only rule. I’m still working that one out.)
When the fear is fully out in the open in front of us, noone else,we see through it. We wise up to the habits and patterns inside of us that manifest that fear. We realise that those habits and patterns are only habits and patterns – and nothing more. They are not reality but responses we took on, usually in our early childhood, to adverse situations. And when we see their illusory nature, they disappear and so does the fear.
We begin to realise we had nothing to fear in the first place. At this stage we are not fearless, instead we experience fearlessness. We have transmuted our fearless state of mind into fearlessness.
The warrior or hero does not ignore or deny, but manages and controls, their fear. The master or magician, through the wisdom from insight, dissolves fear. Magicians are not brave. They have no need to be. They know fear for what it is – a very real-like illusion.
Fearlessness is a symptom of having achieved a spiritual step on our road to enlightenment. Only two types of people experience fearlessness – masters and fools.
When we become a master at one stage of our journey we instantly become a fool (or totally uninitiated) in the next stage. We become both master and fool at the same time.
We experience the two purposes of fearlessness:
- It tells us we’ve achieved mastery at one level
- It gives us the encouragement to tackle the next stage in our development.
Such is the computer game called “Life” – until we take the last step, of course.
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Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
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Paul C Burr 