On Courage

‘The Turn of the Tide’ – John Duncan – WikiArt

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Not to suffer is not as desirable as we like to proclaim. We have mixed feelings towards our agonies and traumas. In fact, we have come to like the beastly thing. Suffering has given us many of the things we cherish in our life. Suffering has given us the hopes that we love to entertain, the pleasures we have developed as a routine of escape, and all the little addictions we enjoy in secret. It has shaped our drives and the nature of our beloved possessions. And our best friendships may have developed as a result of this beating pang in our heart. So this is not easy to let suffering go. A lot will go with it that is like the backbone of our beloved self. Being at peace and happy comes with a price.

There is some identity in our suffering, where is hidden a private treasure that we’d rather keep and nurture. If we are honest, we have to confess that our wounds have made us what we are, have formed the self that we believe we are, the personality that we have come to befriend. We haven’t fought our suffering with constancy, and have come to collude with it, socialise, associate, fraternise. We have indulged in every bit of it. We have surprised ourself having feelings for our pain, entertaining a secret love affair with everything that bites us. So to end suffering requires clarity and courage. For we won’t abandon a dream so easily, or put an end to a pleasure without balking. We need to be convinced. Our road to true happiness is paved with reluctance. We have a natural and well-rehearsed resistance to bliss.

So there are obstacles to get to the place of no suffering in ourself. This is a place where we have nothing to rest on, and nothing to hold on to. We have to stand alone, not seeking for an identity, not taking refuge in a self. Truth is delivered to us with cliffs hanging on all sides. It is a vertigo that can generate fear. It is a land for which we need every bit of our heart to accept to tread with any constancy. If we come from the illusory point of view of being a self, it will not be a home that clings to us naturally. We will need a constant push, which only our heart can give. We will need courage. Our courage so far hasn’t been real courage, for our measure of happiness has been obtained through the exercise of will, ambition, conformity, and fear. Courage was taken to be effort, or practice. It was fabricated. But courage isn’t something that needs to be exerted. It is not born of the mind. It doesn’t come with ignorance.

Courage is not in the doing, but in the undoing. Courage lies in abandoning, letting go, giving in to our being at the exclusion of everything that this being can be, or be couloured with. Being is our ultimate subjectivity. Nothing comes before it. It is our pure essence. It has no clutches, and is free of conditioning. Not that there is no conditioning at the level of our body and mind, but this conditioning doesn’t apply to us, to what we truly are. What we are is naturally healthy, untouched, unconditioned. To be what we are doesn’t take any effort, or work, or practice, but it takes courage. Courage in abandoning ourself to just being. Really, to be only being takes an immense heart.

Courage is to treat the finite with some measure of infinity. It is effortless, natural. It is not a fight or a defiance. Not a resistance in the least. Courage thrives when we remove ourself. It is that part of ourself that we haven’t yet recognised as our own, and that we borrow secretly to wage our battles. It is our heart stepping inside our mind to take a momentary control and appease our afflictions. It is a hint of the infinite that we choose to embrace and brighten our experience with. And courage is a healer, with creativity as its best tool. It comes from that part of ourself that is constant, immovable, unwavering, unflinching. We find it at the heart of ourself, in what creates us and gives us our life and our identity. It is the unborn in ourself that we tap in when we are met with difficulty and challenge. It is our emergency reflex, when the mind is found unreliable. It is this precious resource that lives in and as our most profound being.

Courage can never come from a position of separation, which is a man-made belief that infants our despairs, our divisions and conflicts. It is not violence either. That which is already qualified, conditioned, soiled, cannot produce real courage. It is too tainted by ignorance to be efficient. Courage is to raise oneself above our belief in being a limited entity, and dip our action in reality. Courage is made of that which is here without any shadow of doubt. It is certainty in action. It comes with confidence and faith, and is often clothed with a sense of undefeatable peace. It is a call from our being, displayed in an atmosphere of silence. Courage takes its roots in our innermost, most trustable essence as being. It draws its presence and character from the very light that bathes all experience. Courage is also the reason why adversity often pushes us towards the depth of our being. Because trials and tribulations are inviting us to open our heart, which is where courage abides.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by John Duncan (1866-1945)

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Website:
– John Duncan (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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