Facing your fears makes you courageous

Guts and glory are mere perceptions. The reality is in experiences and in learning from them. It’s through the experiencing and the learning that the soul is enriched.

When we watch a movie and admire a hero for the way he or she has fought for justice, against perpetrators of evil or crime or injustice, we come back feeling good. We loved the movie. But we don’t really think any of it is real. Because it’s just a story enacted for our entertainment. In real Life when we meet the actor, we do say we admire him or her and their ‘acting’. We know little about who they really are for us to be able to see the person behind the actor.

So it is with real Life heroism. Often people look at others around them and call them courageous and celebrate their valor or the stance they have taken in Life on fighting injustice or simply meeting a challenge head on. Someone who has found a deadly disease like cancer is often seen as a champion. Someone who has lived on despite the passing away of a loved one is believed to be very bold. Someone who fights injustice is seen as a ‘fearless’ crusader. And someone who refuses to run away from a seemingly impossible situation is believed to be incredibly resilient.

To be sure, everyone who has ever lived has had to encounter fear. Fear spares no one. Interestingly though all of us have the ability to be courageous. Because courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is what fear delivers when you face up to the fear. Because only when you face up to something, will you realize that it cannot harm you. Only what you run away from chases you, haunts you.

In a health challenge like cancer, you can feel fearful of death. But as long as you run scared of death, it will torment you. But the moment you discover that death is a non-negotiable eventuality that all of us who are born have to confront, you will no longer fear death. Then you start living. And despite your speeding to death, owing to your personal situation, you begin to feel blessed that at least you reasonably know how much time you have left to live. And you start investing in the living than obsess with the dying. Fear of death has delivered to you the ability__courage__to live simply because you stopped running away from death.

This is true with every Life situation. The more you run away from a problem, the more fearful you will be. When you face it, the problem, even if it doesn’t go away, will at least stop tormenting you. So, face your fears. It is from facing them that you become courageous!

To not fight petty battles is an intelligent choice

Sometimes the best way to respond to a situation is not to respond at all – not to say anything.   

A friend of mine was recently sacked by his organization. He is yet another old hand in that organization who has been booted out in the last few months. He posted a goodbye message on Facebook where he had many people offering him their sympathies for the ungraceful manner in which his exit was happening. He simply thanked all of them saying, “There are times when you must remain silent and simply move on.”

I liked my friend’s approach to his crisis situation. Offline he told me that indeed he was hurt with the manner in which his 30-year, meritorious, service record in the company was overlooked by the new management. But he explained, “What is the point in talking sense to people who have no ethics and no scruples? There are only two ways I can respond to them – either accept their golden handshake or fight their action in court. I decided to take the first approach. That way, I can be at peace and work on rehabilitating myself elsewhere.”

To not fight a situation or a scheming detractor does not necessarily mean cowardice. It means you have chosen not to expend your precious energy on a wasted cause. Silence is a very strong weapon that most people don’t even realize they have in their arsenal, let alone them knowing that they can deploy it. To not fight a petty battle is an intelligent choice. To remain silent in the face of provocation is also often the best form of aggression.   

Recognize the futility of fearing Life

Face Life. Don’t fear it!

Worry, anxiety, stress, depression, anger, hatred are all different incarnations, avatars, of fear. Your child is not studying well. You worry because you fear that the child’s future is in jeopardy. Your small business is not doing well and you are anxious to bag a new customer because you fear that if you don’t, you will have no money to run the family. You are angry with someone because you fear that their not meeting your requirements or expectations will affect your plans. You hate someone because you fear that your opinions, values, your freedom is violated. So, at the core of all destructive, debilitating emotions is fear. We fear everything: change, the unknown, risk and reality too!

Recognize the futility of fearing Life. Your fear is not going to help your child study better or get a customer to give you a contract or make someone work more efficiently or get anyone to love you, to appreciate you, to respect you. Look every Life situation in the eye. Face it. And deal with it. As children we were all scared of dark rooms. We would hesitate to enter them and require parental help in turning on the lights. So, how is it that we overcame that fear of dark rooms as we grew older? Simple. We learned to face that Fear. Because we learned that every room will have switches that would illuminate them. Learn, similarly, that in every situation in Life, a switch called trust can bring light and remove the darkness.

Here is a short story with a beautiful learning for us. A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter, “Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don't fall into the river.” The little girl said, “No, Dad. You hold my hand.” “What's the difference?” asked the puzzled father. “There's a big difference,” replied the little girl. “If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let go of my hand.”

The essence of trust, as in the little girl’s story, is not in the bind, but in the bond. To quote Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-American thinker and writer, you__and I__and all of humanity, are a creation of Life’s longing for itself. Believe in, bond with and trust Life to take care of you. This kind of trust can be transformational. And only such implicit trust in Life can extinguish fear and teach us how to face Life and live fully. 

Fear is a toothless opponent

Live without fear. It is fear that robs us of our ability to live freely.

We fear everything. Darkness. Loss of money. Death. Breakdown in relationships. Expectations not being met. Loss of face. Reputation. How can we claim to be alive when are operating under the influence of a debilitating, restricting force?

The best way to expunge fear is to ask yourself ‘what is the worst that can happen’ in any given situation and decide to face that moment. When you make that decision to confront a situation, when you walk up to it, fear will recede. Fear is actually a toothless opponent. Fear fears reality. And you, the real you, are the truth. But you think someone is more powerful than you. You think if you lose money you are finished. You think if you die, it’s all over. You think if a business contract does not come through you will be bankrupt. You think if someone says something about you in public, your reputation will be lost. But if you, in each of these situations, decide to not worry about the outcomes, will fear still torment you? Suppose you say, let the most powerful man on the planet come to you, and you will be unmoved, unfazed; what can happen to you? Maybe that man may come and kill you? Let him. Then where’s your fear? The truth is the man can kill your body, not you. Suppose you are willing to live a Life beyond and after losing all your money, what need you be afraid of? If something is hounding you, haunting you just now, be sure, be aware, that you are allowing it to do so. Your spouse is not an issue. But your thought of your spouse being unfaithful, your expectation of loyalty, your fear of being led up the garden path and being stranded alone, this is your problem. So, who should deal with this problem? You. And the best way to do it is to say, “So, what?” Say that and you are free no sooner than you have uttered those magical words. They are like a miracle mantra. Use them in any situation and you will be fearless.

Between you and fearlessness lies your awareness of your true Self. Fear has heaped layer after layer of deception and controls you this way. When you realize you are not your body, you are not your relationship, you are not your job, you are not your business, you are not your bank account, this awareness is liberating. Your true Self then emerges and fear, meekly, slinks away, drowned in the light of your awakening. 

Face your fears to be courageous

Courage is not something you acquire. It is something that surfaces from within you when you face up to fear in any situation.

In order to understand courage you must understand yourself first. If you believe you are a victim of the circumstances you are faced with, then you will live in fear, self-doubt and misery. Instead know that you are the Master and your circumstances are just that. They are circumstances and are therefore impermanent. Know that the energy within you is capable of overcoming any situation. Provided you turn around and face it. The Vietnamese dissident poet, Nguyen Chi Thien (1939~2012), was a classic example of someone who made the best out of any situation. To be sure, Thein had spent a total 27 years in prison resisting oppressive regimes and captors. Of this time, eight years were spent in solitude, in shackles, in the dark. He committed his poems to memory so that the authorities could never discover them! In one he wrote, of the regime and how he fought them:

“They exiled me to the heart of the jungle

Wishing to fertilize the manioc (cassava, a staple food) with my remains.

I turned into an expert hunter

And came out full of snake wisdom and rhino fierceness.

They sank me into the ocean

Wishing me to remain in the depths.

I became a deep sea diver

And came up covered with scintillating pearls.”

This is how you become courageous. When Life puts you in the dock, you face it with equanimity. You remind yourself that every dawn will take the night’s darkness away. When you look fear in the face, and do what you think you cannot, the circumstance, while remaining the same, will be less terrifying and your ability to deal with it will substantially improve!

Don’t flee from Life, face it!

Have the audacity to face Life. Look your most difficult moments in the eye.

Last evening, we were visited by a family which has got mired in a web of circumstances. The father, who is a Director in a firm, had signed several personal guarantees for financial transactions on behalf the firm. The promoters of the firm embezzled the money and vanished. This gentleman now is having to face the consequences of the firm’s transactions and is accountable to the firm’s creditors for monies owed to them. His wife and two daughters brought him to us – so that he can get some direction on how to deal with creditors in a situation like this. The gentleman, with his limited wisdom and experience, and also fearful of the ire of his firm’s creditors, asked me if he too must “vanish” from the scene. I told him that I wouldn’t advise that he takes such a step. I said that he cannot disrupt the lives and education of his daughters and make them pay for his wrong choice of associating with that firm and for the firm’s questionable dealings. I advised him to seek legal opinion and figure out a way where he could disassociate physically from the firm. In the meantime, I advised him to meet all the creditors, individually, and explain to them why he too is a victim of the circumstances and why he doesn’t have the means to pay any of their dues.

“But taking that route means I will have to face the anger of the creditors. They won’t believe me. They will deal with me very harshly,” feared the gentleman.

“You don’t have a choice Sir. While they will be belligerent at first, they will also appreciate your proactive and responsible behavior. You will have to convince them of your sincerity and genuineness. This is your singular option right now and the only way you can, over time, get out of this mess,” I explained.

The gentleman and his family went away promising to act on my advice. Whether they do that or not is entirely up to them. I hope they will. Because running away from a problem does not make the problem go away. Facing a problem too does not make the problem go away. But when you face a problem, there’s no chasing, there’s no expending of precious energy wastefully. That energy can be employed in solving the problem instead.

But the normal tendency we all have is to run __ from challenges, responsibilities and consequences __ away from Life. Instead stand up and face it. Look at tough situations and say that you are going nowhere and you intend lasting the journey. When you do that, you will find no peak difficult to scale, no challenge impossible to overcome and no trouble that obstructs your path forward.

How do you get this quality called courage in you? By knowing that what you are going through is a test and that the lesson will appear only when you face the test and survive it. By knowing also that nothing is permanent __ not money, not Life, not troubles, not opportunities. When you face Life with such clarity and equanimity, you will be unshakeable. You will have what the world calls courage. And with courage you can last any journey, however impossible and treacherous it may be. Swami Vivekananda couldn’t have said it more appropriately: “Face the brutes. That is a lesson for all Life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of Life fall back when we cease to flee before them.”

At the edge, there’s no fear, only bliss!

Go to the edge with Life! Know that you will either get a hand that will hoist you up or you will be taught how to fly!

Don’t despair. Don’t fear. Just go the whole distance. Picture yourself as a kid. You were scared of dark rooms. But your parent told you NOT to fear and to walk alongside him or her. You did. And you overcame that fear. The same principle works here too. In Life. Just know that Life will NOT let you down. So go to the edge. If you don’t you will spend the rest of your Life grieving that you should have gone!

The edge I talk about here is not metaphorical. Sometimes a career situation or a relationship break-down or a health condition – anything can take you to the edge. The other day we met someone who worked with IBM for 15 years in the UK and ended up with having to go through a messy divorce with his wife. She wanted a lot more alimony than what was due to her. The man quit his job and transferred all his cash and assets to her name and came down to Pondicherry to start Life anew. Simply, just like that! Another person we know had to spend all his money on getting a fix to a crippling cancer that was in its fourth stage. The doctors said he stood no chance. But miraculously he has been cured. He says, “Until sometime back, I had lots of money and did not stand a chance to survive. I had no Life. Now I have no money, but I have a Life!” So, all of us do go to the edge – in our own unique ways. But we tend to approach it with fear. Instead face up to whatever it is. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is what fear delivers if you look the fear in the eye and face it squarely.

Remember: Life is not to be lived seeking security in everything around you. Life is an adventure that has to be gone through. There will be pulsating and nerve-wracking, agonizing and endurance-testing days, weeks, months and years – at times. But live them all the same. Without fear. In true faith. It is only then that you actually live. At all other times, when you are in your comfort zone, you only exist!  

The fear of the edge only exists till you reach it. Like the fear of any unknown. Once you are there, at the edge, and let go, you will find that there’s no fear, only bliss!

A Life lesson from a blade of grass

Being humble, yielding, in times of adversity, is being courageous. That’s when you emerge “cleansed” and “stronger”!

There’s an ancient Chinese analogy for understanding courage, for demystifying the popular perceptions we have of this magical quality which we all possess but don’t summon, don’t use. Imagine a 3000-year-old ancient tree, 300-feet high. The very sight, the presence of this tree gives strength, denotes power. But a huge storm, like Nilam, can__and often will__ uproot this tree. When the storm blows over, the tree which, obviously logically aware of its might and power, fought and refused to surrender, lies defeated, uprooted and felled. Whereas the blades of grass at the foot of the tree and around it, remain un-uprooted. Imagine the meek, easy-to-yank-out blades of grass, being able to withstand a whole night of fury. And after yielding to the storm, allowing the storm to ‘cleanse’ them, the blades of grass are again looking fresh and dancing in the early morning sunlight, with little drops of dew adorning their tips like crown jewels. That’s illogical, right? The mighty tree has been felled and the meek grass lives on, happy, blissful! And yet, this is what happens. This is what courage is all about. The tree showed logic and operated from its head__its knowledge of its strength and its ‘unyielding nature’ is what felled it, not the storm really. On the other hand, the grass showed tremendous mindfulness, ‘yielding’ happily when the storm raged and finding the song in its heart back the next morning! Between the two, the grass showed courage.

Courage is not fearlessness. Courage means going all the way despite the fear, in spite of the unknown. The storm represents the phase that sometimes we encounter in Life. And the tree represents those who operate from too much logic, too much ego, too much unwillingness to change. And the grass is the inspiration for all of us__to be willing to let go, surrender, yield, so that our inner equilibrium remains undisturbed despite the huge storm raging outside. Courage is therefore choosing the way of the grass__to NOT treat Life as something to be conquered, defeated, but to yield humbly, intelligently, and to go with the flow!

When you are fearless, you are free!

Life’s arduous situations can break you physically, can make you immobile, can cripple you – but they cannot break your spirit, they cannot puncture your conviction, if you simply choose to remain strong from within! But how do you remain strong from within when there’s absolutely no respite from the outside? Say, when your Life is hanging by a thin thread owing to a terminal health condition, or when you are caught in a legal maze and there’s no way out, or when your business has gone bust and you simply don’t have any money to even meet your daily needs, or when your separation from your spouse has drained you emotionally, financially, physically and you have lost your will to live? Where do you draw strength from in such, and other debilitating, circumstances, where you are consumed by fear, self-doubt and hopelessness?

Interestingly, you must leverage your fear to gain courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is what you get by looking your fear in the eye, by accepting it, and deciding to face it. In reality, a courageous person is also fearful of consequences that logically appear to be on the horizon. But while she or he is fearful from within, she or he is able to pull herself or himself together on the outside. A coward, on the other hand, is both fearful from within and on the outside. But if you can leverage your courage, while becoming more aware, you can attain fearlessness. And fearlessness is not an outward emotion. It is the complete attainment of freedom from fear – within! That will happen, that can happen, only when you realize the true nature of your inner being. When you know that your soul is untouchable, unbreakable and immortal.

Let’s understand this better. All the world’s scriptures talk of this truth. Yet why do you still fear things, people, events in your Life, despite perhaps, knowing and believing this doctrine to be true? Because you haven’t allowed your inner being, your soul, to experience this truth. Examine all your fears. They are always about losing all that you already know as impermanent – your job, your money, your health, your relationships! What kind of intelligence are you, the much educated you, displaying when you are fearful of threats to any of these impermanent aspects of your Life? Someone says you will die because of your health condition – and you are afraid of death? Someone says she will leave you for whatever reason – and you are afraid of losing her? Someone says you will be sacked for non-performance – and you are scared of unemployment? Someone says you will be convicted and sentenced – and you are afraid of imprisonment? But aren’t you already imprisoned, held hostage, by your fear(s)? Think deeply about this. Everything about your Life so far and the rest of your Life will be taken away from you sooner or later. If it is the fear of losing all that you hold on to that’s keeping you anxious, agonized and fearful, then know that your fears are fully justified. What you fear most will surely happen to you. Sooner or later. Including your death! It is only when you experience this realization, this awakening, at the core of your inner being, in your soul, will you be free from fear. Will you be fearless from within. Will you be free.

Review whatever’s making you insecure. Focus on what you fear. And peel away each fear by asking yourself, ‘So what if this (that which you fear most) happens?’ When you get an answer to this question, ask yourself this question again, in the context of your answer, and so on. Keep going until you have no more answers. For instance, ‘What will happen after I die?’ does not have an immediate known answer. Yes, conjecturally, from what the scriptures tell us, the answer could be that ‘your soul is set free’. And so what if the soul is set free? Or if it is trapped somewhere, someplace? Will it matter to the person that you are currently? Since it won’t, why labor over your fears? So, whatever be the situation confronting you just now, don’t resist it, simply accept it for what it is. And know that since your spirit can never be broken or taken away from you, anything that’s happening to you, therefore, is not at all relevant! So be fearless. Be free!

You can’t fast-forward your Life

When you believe you can no longer go on with your Life, when the odds are stacked against you, when you feel you are up against a wall, when you vainly wish you could simply fast-forward such a phase of your Life, choose a quiet place and think deeply. Ask yourself: why is it that you feel you can’t endure your situation anymore? Is the situation forcing you to want to give up or is it your refusal to accept it for what it is? Be objective. Be practical. Be honest. You will quickly realize that the situation is simply, well, a situation. Let’s say the situation you are faced with is a broken marriage or a phase of acute unemployment or a stifling legal quagmire or fourth stage of a rare germ cell cancer or even something as common as a splitting, unbearable headache. Is the situation the problem or are you, and your inability to deal with it, the problem? Pain in reality comes without suffering. Your belief, expectation, desire, wish, whatever, that it must not exist in the first place, as pain, as a situation, is what makes you suffer!

Often thinking deeply about yourself and the way you are receiving and responding to Life helps. But when despite that effort, when your mind slips back into its default self-sympathy mode, it is perhaps a good idea to zoom out and look at Life around you. Almost always, when you stop obsessing with yourself__in sympathy or from grief__you will find how much more blessed your Life is, compared to so, so many peoples’ lives out there!

This morning’s newspapers reported that Anand Jon, the India-born fashion designer, who has been tried for fresh charges of sexual abuse this time in a New York court, had been awarded an additional five years in jail. So, that makes it 64 years in jail in all for Anand, with a Los Angeles court having already awarded him a 59-year sentence. Anand is only 39. If we take into account the years he has spent in jail so far, Anand’s got over 50 years of imprisonment still left. Without going into the merits of his case, because I am not entirely sure he has received a fair trial, I am just contrasting his situation with the one I am faced with. And I can’t help but internalize these two unputdownable lessons from his Life and my own:

• Even wishing a situation doesn’t exist is a luxury many don’t have. Anand Jon surely doesn’t!  
• The only way to be free from suffering is to accept pain: Assuming his cases are not immediately reopened through appeal (at the moment, the family does not have the financial wherewithal to support this) in a higher US court, what other way does Anand Jon have than to accept his Life for what it is?

I have no idea how Anand Jon feels about his Life just now. His last recorded sentiment in public is through a November 2010 blogpost. In that he writes: “…I do know that there is a Purpose to all of this and it is beyond my own exoneration. God clearly had bigger plans for me than just influencing the hemlines, and though I can and will win this ordeal, I may not survive it, and this makes me concerned about the pain my loved ones will go through. It is a fascinating concept that I think more about them than myself. My pencil (I only get two per week) is running out of lead, so I also learn patience. Maybe that’s what it’s all about – taming the ego and revealing love…” But, thanks to this reflection this morning, I do have a deeper understanding of how to face the Life that I have been given.

Maybe my sharing here will help you too to face your Life situation with equanimity. Because wishing that a situation didn’t exist is what triggers the suffering. And simply accepting that it does exist, and that you can’t do anything about it, is what makes it endurable. Some see this endurance as the indomitable human spirit. Some see it as raw courage. I believe it is nothing but an awareness of the humbling reality that you can never fast-forward your Life. You have to live through some of Life’s grueling situations __ however long it takes. You can comfort yourself though __ that, like Anand Jon says, along the way, you will grow to become more patient, more humble  and more loving!

Learning to live when you hate Life

We all know that not all our wants are ever going to be met. So, even though, often times, we do plunge into despair and grief over unmet expectations, we have the ability to overcome, repair and revive ourselves.

But what do you do when your basic needs are not met? What do you do when you are not loved? When you are not understood? What do you do when you don’t know where your next rupee or dollar in income is going to come from? What do you do when it is a special day in your Life, your child’s birthday, and you can’t even afford a new dress for her? What do you do when the only person you can relate to in the world has been taken away by Life, in a ghastly, unexpected accident? What do you do when you know you are dying of cancer and there’s so much pain that it feels like your whole body is on fire __ and yet death seems so elusive?

What do you do when you must live though you wish you could actually die?

Contrary to what you want to do is, often, what you have to do. And to do that, to live when you would much rather die, you must look your situation in the eye, and despite all your grief, choose to live, LIVE, in that tormenting, torturous moment. That’s when you will find that despite all the pain, you feel no suffering. When you have learned to overcome suffering, you have learned the way to joy, you have learned to live!

Yesterday, a close friend called. He is going through a painful phase in his Life where his brother and he are separating as business partners. The separation has turned messy. My friend says he has tried to be completely giving and has agreed to all terms and conditions stipulated by his brother, however outrageous they have been. The idea was to ensure a peaceful, amicable partitioning of the business. Even so, said my friend, his brother was taunting him and provoking him. My friend did not want to blow up and confound an already vitiated situation. So, he called me asking for advice on what I thought he could possibly be doing.

I was reminded, even as my friend spoke, of a similar situation I encountered some years back. My entire family had concluded that (my wife and) I had cheated them in a transaction involving family property and some substantial cash borrowings. In fact, they still do. Just hearing them say what they did, and reading some ghastly text messages from my siblings, was both humiliating and traumatic. I must have died a thousand deaths in the days and weeks following that episode. Then, call it a revelation, call it enlightenment, I suddenly reasoned that I sought my family’s understanding because I needed it badly. It dawned on me that to understand me (and my wife) did not appear to be on my family’s agenda. Instead misunderstanding every word and action of ours appeared to be on their agenda. So, what was the point in demanding understanding when it was not likely to be given? I looked at the scenario dispassionately and came to the following conclusions:

1.  What was the basis of the misunderstanding? – My family believed that my wife and I were faking our bankruptcy and so were feigning an inability to settle money borrowed from the family

2.   Where was my grief, my suffering coming from? – That I, a son of my family, was being misunderstood, was not being trusted. My ego demanded trust. Whereas the situation completely lacked it because my family simply did not give it or me any trust!

3.  What was the way to end my suffering? – Settle my family’s money for which I didn’t have any means then (or even now) or let go of my need, my craving, for understanding. I chose the latter.

4.   Despite what I felt or experienced, I realized my family had a right to its views and opinions. They didn’t fulfill my need, but surely they believed their reasoning to be sound and so backed their behavior!

I shared this learning with my friend yesterday. I told him to give up his need for his brother to understand him. I told him that at the root of all our suffering is a cause. The cause often has little to do with what may have led to a situation. Instead it has everything to do with our need for the situation to be different. So, let me clarify, it is not even about a want. It is about a need, a more basic, often elementary, non-negotiable, human requirement. For instance, a son, a child will need a family’s understanding and not merely want it. A brother will need his sibling’s understanding and not merely want it. A companion will need her partner’s love and not just want it. A cancer patient will need a cure or death and not simply want either of them! If money be a common denominator for a standard of survival in the world, a basic income is then a need for the qualified, skilled and experienced, and not just a want.

Yet, as is with my story, or my friend’s, or even your own, Life, sometimes, will put you in a place where even a basic need is not fulfilled. You will initially hate such a Life. Because unhappiness__when wants are not met__can perhaps still be endured. But insecurity__when needs are not provided for__suffocates. And yet you have to live! That’s a difficult place to be in. This is when you must learn to live fully with what is__without grief or angst or rancor or suffering. When you do that, your own definition of what is it that you need will undergo a tectonic shift. Then, you will realize that Life is so benevolent. Because all that you really, badly, immediately, need to live is always available, in abundance, to you! Then some of your needs become wants and you reconcile to them not being met. Such an awakening and reconciliation delivers inner peace unto you. You then learn to surrender completely to the moments that make up your Life and you live, fully, freely, peacefully, joyously, in them!