Courage is the ability to be with what is, without being a victim of what is. Courage is not an absence of fear. Do not allow fear to disturb your centre.

  

   Courage is like exploring the unknown and not being a prisoner of the known. A courageous person explores the unknown with or without fear or in spite of fear, whereas a non-courageous person is stopped by fear. Respect what you know and have courage to explore the unknown. The courage of a spiritual seeker is different from the courage of a soldier. The spiritual seeker drops his mind and explores the heart…it is a flight from the head to the heart…has courage to accept even death as he knows the art of living involves the art of dying. By accepting death, he has accepted life in totality.

 

   To accept both life and death gracefully requires courage. It is an expression of the higher self. The courage of the lower self is focused on winning and not accepting failure. The higher self operates from a different understanding altogether. It views success as God’s grace and failure as an individual’s own making. Failure is a shadow of the ego. With this understanding, life becomes magical. The hidden secrets of life flow in us. One cannot succeed against the whole. One’s success is the success of the whole. In fact one becomes the whole.

 

   “You are the fullness. There is fullness, here is fullness. From the fullness, the fullness is born. Remove the fullness from the fullness and the fullness alone remains,” say the Vedas.

Yes, in adventure, courage emerges. Let living be an adventure in the mystery of life. Life includes both time and beyond time. In sleep, you are beyond time. Learn to see yourself beyond time.

 

   Lack of adventure makes us live in cages. Is it not?

 

   A mental cage is mental imprisonment. A bird feels secure in a cage against its prey but the cage itself is a trap. It loses the joy of freedom and the vastness of the sky. The enlightened being soars in the sky of freedom.

 

   Our mental cages can be “Self doubt, fear of failure, greed for success, being jealous, should and should not, focused on the missing...” The adventurous spirit help us to free ourselves from the mental prison. The mental prison is an expression of the lower self.

 

Examples of Courage

 

 

 

   A friend of mine once told me of a story about an exam paper for a university which contained the question “what is courage?” and as far as philosophical value goes I believed that it was a question worth answering.

   Courage first and foremost is an age old term misconceived by the many and understood by only a few. A man once was said “courage is the ability to continue even in the presence of fear” and another more blunt man said “courage is the ability to carry on five minutes more than the man that had to run away already” and it is these phrases which epitomize the misconception. To truly understand what courage is one must underline clearly the few areas which courage is most certainly not. Courage although widely conceived is not the act of good in itself, it is not a noble or chivalric gesture because courage can exist in both good men and bad, is it not courageous that as I speak men in the far east are killing soldiers by suicide bombings, ending their own lives in a courageous manner to try and achieve their cause. And it is this example which my first point is based on, courage has no connection to noble values, the men that commit suicide in this manner do it courageously but at the same time is it not conceived in this side of the world to be evil? To kill a man with hopes dreams and expectations because he fights for a cause different from the other but still in one way the same? The cause to end conflict? This brings me to my second point regarding courage and that is whether or not it is a primitive instinct, a by natural law which is bound to us just as much as the instinct to survive when faced with a dangerous decision, or an instinct such as the one which drives men into the wars that since time memorial have existed and will until the final end? The simple answer is no, or to be more precise it is not completely so. While it is certain that people are born with an instinct of some kind that encourages them to go on and continue in the face of a situation greater than themselves is true but courage is something that is developed. The truest statement that has ever come to my mind is this, people are a product of circumstances, another debate would be what makes a person good or bad which is - without broaching the subject too deeply - the circumstances that have produced them. For example, a person who grows up in a shielded environment and who is provided for is grown that way through their own circumstances, and for this reason this person – it would be safe to suggest – would perhaps be less inclined to perform a courageous act, to stay in the face of danger, in hope that what they have done will meet their cause. On the other hand a person who has be groomed throughout life in a manner that is not shielded, a life which constantly asks more of them, asks them to show courage, in rough areas it is a necessity, a compulsory skill that when faced with a decision, a dilemma between pain and suffering and safety, or even between life and death one would stand and do what is unexpected and courageous in the hopes of achieving their own cause to be safe. And so it stands to reason that while everyone who is ever born will be born with courage not as we know it but as an element to their existence, as an instinct, courage is something that exists in both good and bad people, and that it is not only present in a few but it is present in everyone but to varying degrees and these degrees only vary because of the circumstances which produce people. To conclude the question and to provide a description of what courage is and not what it is not in my own knowledge it is safe to say this. Courage, is something that exists as blatantly as gravity and yet as elusively as religion. It is both an instinct and a natural blessing, courage is only shown when a man or a woman who have, throughout life, become a product of their circumstances and as such present themselves in a manner that separates them from the others who have grown differently because of their circumstances, courage is when one person continues in the face of total loss and still keeps going throughout the ordeal to see it through for better or for worse.