What does “living a courageous life” actually mean?

When you see all what is going on in the world, it is quite concerning, isn’t it?

I was inspired by some perspectives shared by Dr Shefali in her book “a radical awakening” and wanted to explore how we can link those ideas to how we approach such events.

BELIEFS

I try not to believe in anything, even though it is difficult in some areas of life.

I try to just to be present to whatever is.

When we live according to nature, we do not need to believe, we just live in the is-ness of nature.

Beliefs are constructions of mankind in ideology, in self-imposed beliefs, in good or bad, in duality, in limitations.

When we live according to the is-ness, we do not need to believe. Or, at least, when we still have some beliefs, we know that our beliefs are just beliefs and not the “reality”.

When we are in truth, there's nothing to believe.

Beliefs come because we need to hold on to something that is not happening in the present moment.

Do you believe that you need to breathe to live? Or do you realize, with your own experience, that you need to breathe to live? You don't have to believe it, it just is what it is.

WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN BEING COURAGEOUS AND BEING AUTHENTIC?

Many people think that they are living courageously, but I am not sure they actually do.

Because if they were living a courageous life, they would do no harm to others, as living a courageous life means, to me, living a truly authentic life.

To live an authentic life implies living with awareness of our ego (not completely getting rid of our ego because such a level is almost unattainable to most of us). It means to live in identifying, understanding and befriending our ego. When we understand our ego, we do not inflict it unconsciously onto others. And when we do not inflict our ego on others, we do no harm.

Many people believe that they are authentic and courageous. If we do harm to others, we are acting out of ego, and if we are acting out of our ego, we are not authentic.

And if we are not authentic, we are not living a courageous life.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND ACCEPTANCE OF ALL PARTS OF OURSELVES

To live a courageous life is to take full responsibility and accountability for our egoic patterns. For this, we have to know ourselves very deeply, intimately (and not through hatred, not through resentment, not through anger, not through disappointment, not through shame, not through guilt). It means we have to enter an honest, transparent and truly self-honoring life where we honor the ego, we honor our rage, we honor our lack. By seeing and honoring them, we have integrated them. It's not to “not have”. Nobody can “not have”.

So it's not about “not having”, it's about integration.

I am for example asking myself: What is the ego trying to tell me? What is the ego trying to protect? What is the lack that I have that I have not healed? What is my inner child lacking? What is my inner child begging for?

Here is an inspiring extract from the book “a Radical Awakening” (Dr. Shefali):

“Integrating all our broken pieces, having compassion for ourselves, means accepting all the parts of ourselves. We even need to have compassion for the part of us that cannot have compassion for ourselves. We must observe all our parts as a loving mother might observe her little children considering each of them worthy of acceptance. She doesn't just pick the tall ones or the pretty ones, she finds something endearing about all her children because she understands how they came to be. In the same way, we, too, can challenge ourselves, to see all parts of ourselves as worthy of understanding.

We have the part of us that is imperfect and the part of us that doesn't like our imperfection, we have to accept both. Compassion for all sides of ourselves. We have the self-critical side of us that we think needs to be killed off and buried and, indeed, one may need this, but the only way to do this is to first have compassion for the self-critical side of us. When we show this part understanding and care, it diminishes. This is the point of compassion, to understand all our parts, even the parts that aren't compassionate and caring. If we are jealous of our friend, for example, and we feel guilty about it, we have two parts of ourselves that need our compassion: the jealous side and the side that reacts to this jealousy. Sometimes, we may have three or four sides to ourselves, all demanding our understanding. Simply cutting off parts of ourselves is not the answer, it will only further exacerbate our self-loathing. Only when we understand and integrate all parts of ourselves, do we enter a state of equanimity. This is especially true of our anxiety and anger: the more we denigrate the parts of ourselves that are prone to either, the more they grow. The only way to become less of anything is to first accept its presence. The more we resist anything the more it grows. So acceptance is like magic entering wholeness means something different from self-esteem or self-affirmation; true self-compassion is not interested in high self-esteem or thinking highly of yourself, it has nothing to do with feeling good about ourselves and everything to do with simply accepting ourselves. The goal of self-compassion is not to be more joyful or more of anything, it's simply to be one thing only: self-accepting. We don't need to see ourselves as “better than” or “worse than”, there is zero judgment or comparison, we should just see ourselves as we are and allow ourselves to be.

Even if we are judgmental, we must see ourselves, this part of ourselves, with compassion.”

The thing is that we have not learned to take full accountability.

Because we do not have radical accountability, moment by moment, we have fooled ourselves to believe that we are entitled, in some way. Entitled to what? Entitled to whatever our belief system says we are entitled to (e.g. “I'm entitled to that person loving me forever”, “I'm entitled to that person giving me more money”, “I'm entitled so if they don't give it, I load them for it”, etc.).

Most relationships that go wrong, in particular romantic relationships, are about entering a place of entitlement: “oh! you're not going my way, I cancel you, you no longer exist for me”.

If you cannot accept all parts of yourself, there is a risk that you cannot allow anybody else to understand you completely.

Because you donot understand yourself completely, when someone does not understand you, you are like “I cancel you!”.

People do this all the time only because they, themselves, cannot fully integrate and accept themselves.

When you understand yourself and you see your own versions of your own panic and fear and anxiety manifesting itself in all sorts of ways, you can understand other people's panic and fear coming out in their ways. Of course, it does not mean that you have to accept abuse, it does not mean you stick around when someone is betraying you, when someone is stealing from you or when someone is degrading you. In such a case, you walk away, but you understand that they are out of alignment, not because of you.

As you begin to clean up your own inner space, you do not take on the crap of others and you do not do harm through your ego; you really begin to become a healing presence in the world because you are healing toward your own inner child.

And because you are healing and accepting of your own inner child, you understand when someone else around you cannot take it, for their inner child. They are so cruel to their inner child that they project on you. Whatever they are projecting on you is how they feel about their own inner child. So these people who are canceling you, are actually cancelled in their own life and are canceling themselves.

So because they cancel themselves, they cancel you.

And that's what happens to many of us.

WHY SHALL WE DETACH FROM OUR BELIEFS?

The way to create change is with morality and heart, not fighting with weapons.

The reason why we project warfare onto the other is because we are dislocated within our own being.

Beliefs and ideology are the causes of warfare.

When you suspend beliefs, you are the greatest liberal.

So liberalism is freedom from beliefs, while “I believe in liberal views” is still a liberal view.

Liberalism is to be free of the view.

When you're free of the view, you can be in essence, and you do not look at the other as “are they coming toward my liberal side?”.

If you have a side, you're not liberal anymore, because liberalism includes the whole thing.

This is radical politics; it is beyond duality.

So what about, in our lives, trying to get rid of our ideological beliefs as much as possible, whether to this or to that, to success, to popularity, to money, to any idea?

And the only place you end up after you let go of your ideological attachments is liberation.

So a true liberal understands there is no side, there is no other, there is nothing to fight against.

True liberalism is the extinction of ideological chaos (“I should!”, “I'm entitled”, “how dare they?!”, “which side are you on?”, “do you believe what I believe in?”).

Mahatma Gandhi did not act like the British imperialist rule was not in his country, he did not act like “oh, there's nothing going on here”, no, he used his mouth, he used his talk, he used his energy and he used his power.

True liberation is ending the hatred within.

True liberation is understanding the duality that exists in our minds.

How do you load lovingly? You load lovingly when you know that your loathing is coming from your ego and your fear.

When you do no harm in terms of physical violence, you are just trying to end the ignorance that is around that person. So Gandhi did not say to the British to come and walk all over him. No, he stood up and told them “you are wrong, you cannot take away the rights of my people, you cannot have injustice, you cannot have physical domination”.

But he had no violence against them. He went to prison many times, waiting for them to peacefully leave. And ultimately, finally, the Indian people got enough inner sovereignty that the British could not control them anymore. But it took many years.

So, when you have an ideological difference with someone: check your own ego. And then, choose the righteous action, the best action, that is available to you, through discernment, through love, through understanding that your ego is activated and asking yourself: “now, how do I rise above?”.

So it's not about a president or about a specific person, it's about the ideological ignorance that exists represented by that person.

But you cannot fight ideological ignorance if you are ignorant. So, check within yourself first.

And part of that checking toward a better culture is about self-integration, is about inner wholeness, is about receiving your own self reflection for yourself, your own validation for yourself. When you do that, you disintegrate rigid archetypal belief systems and you enter the oneness of all humanity, you enter a oneness consciousness, because you have disintegrated the separation within yourself.

When you have disintegrated the separation within yourself, you don't have separation with the “other”, you just see others as representations of their own ideological rigidity and ignorance. There is nobody you hate anymore. So, the people in your life who have hurt you, you do not hate them, but you fight the ignorance that caused them to act in that way.

And how do you stand up to ignorance?

Three conscious choices are available to you: you can stay and accept the situation as it is, you can initiate a change (i.e. try to change the other or yourself) or you can leave (emotionally and/or physically). But first you need to understand that you are not fighting the person, you are fighting the ignorance.

Ignorance comes from attachment of belief systems, so if you yourself are attached to belief systems that they should not treat you this way, you are not different than them.

So true liberation is the extinction of all separation within yourself.

It is the extinction of all rigid superiority within yourself.

It is democracy within yourself, which means all your parts are fully accepted, all your parts are democratically allowed to have sovereign entity.

There is no hierarchy of “oh, I like this part, I don't like that part”.

So until we disintegrate the separation that lies within us, which means we stop loathing parts of ourselves, which means we enter radical, honest, accountable, self-wholeness and acceptance, we will not heal the other when they are in their ideological rigidity and ignorance. And therefore, we will cause warfare and therefore it'll be ego to ego, to ego, to ego, to ego and that is what this world is about.

True liberation is the liberation from ideological attachments.

True acceptance of the self is the pathway forward to world peace.

You can have the UN and the Hague and all other institutions, it doesn't matter. If you haven't healed your inner wholeness and the broken parts within you, you will keep projecting it onto the other, and you will do harm, intentionally or not. You can only do no harm when you have your own ego under full awareness and acceptance.

THE HEALING OF THE WORLD STARTS WITH INNER WORK

Sit with yourself, ask yourself: do you truly accept who you are? do you truly understand who you are? do you understand where your belief systems have come from? Most of our belief systems are constructed by culture, itself based on other people's unconsciousness.

This is difficult to accept, but as long as you are rigid and hold on to “I am right and you are wrong” or “I'm a liberal, you're a republican, I'm a democrat, I'm pretty, you are not, I'm smart, you're not”, you are just completely about to engage in warfare. It just hasn't manifested yet.

Because if you're in warfare in your mind and heart, you're in warfare with others.

And as long as you are in inner warfare, the outside warfare is coming.

When the conditions rise and the trigger comes, warfare comes out.

So a world that doesn't focus on self-inner growth and healing, like our world does not, will be a world of unremitting warfare, as it is.

We keep doing things from the ego. We do not heal the inner self.

Without going completely crazy about what is out there, I choose to simply go inward and do the work.

Because at least, I can do that.

So we can always do that when we are upset at someone: turn inward. Ask yourself: what do I need to learn? How do I need to grow? How do I need to heal? How did I co-create this?

It's about healing those hurt parts of yourself. The reason our earth cries and so many children and adults suffer is because we live with separation and division within ourselves, because we have been told we have to believe in certain things and when those beliefs do not come true or are not shared by others, we have an issue with ourselves. If you do not believe anything, you do not have an issue.

It is a simple rule of life but no one wants to give up their belief systems. Most people think that their belief system gives them comfort. I am afraid our beliefs belief systems actually give us suffering.