Bravery and facing your fear

When Arty Amarisa, BFRP, asked me to join her in a podcast, the theme was about bravery and Birth Yourself Brave.   

In it we discuss, among other things, the need to sit with our suffering, and synchronously only this weekend I read the following in When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön:

“No-one ever tells us to stop running away from fear.  We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear.  […] So the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in.  Usually we think that brave people have no fear.  The truth is that they are intimate with fear.”

And Pema goes on to tell the story of a young warrior who was challenged to a fight with Fear. “Then the young warrior said, ‘How may I defeat you?’  Fear replied, ‘My weapons are that I talk fast and get very close to your face.  Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you I have no power.  You can listen to me and you can have respect for me.  You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.’”

Here is the link to the podcast where we discuss the courage needed to face our demons and a few of the Bach flower remedies such as Mimulus, which can help.

And this is my poem which is read out at the end:

Bravery is not the overcoming of fear  

but the manifestation of love.

What is love but understanding?

What is understanding but 

a foundation stone for the world.

As building and foundation are one,

we are one with the world.

One whole.

Expressing love through bravery

is a way of upholding the universe.

~ Lesley Cooke