Is there a difference between being fearless and being brave? The answer lies in the fundamental principle of expansion and contraction.
According to the universal Law of Energy, everything in the universe, including us, is made up of energy waves. These vibrations work together to expand and contract to create our outer reality. When we are in ecstasy, we expand. When we are in fear, we contract.
If we were fearless, experiencing no fear at all, we would have nothing to expand into. That would mean we would live in a constant state of contraction. Being brave does not imply having no fear, just the opposite. Being brave means you are willing to confront your fears until they have no power over you. Being brave means baring your soul to your vulnerabilities, your imperfections, and your fears. To paraphrase Anaïs Nin, life shrinks and expands in proportion to your courage. Don’t be afraid to expand and collapse into yourself, for this is how galaxies are made.
In the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell introduces the The Law of the Few, a concept in which any type of success, both social and personal, is dependent on having a rare set of social gifts, gifts acquired only by the “few” who are willing to work for them. What does it take to become one of these few? It takes the ability to live a life full of courage over a life full of fears.
Adore your fears until they have no power over you.
Most of us were raised to believe that it’s a dangerous world, full of bad things lurking in the shadows, that we should fear each other, and especially the dreaded “Other,” or we may find ourselves in harm’s way. When you live in a fear-based way, paranoia, instability, and the constant need for security inevitably set in.
Living a life full of fear leads to the need to keep yourself safe, which precipitates the need to control your surroundings, which induces feelings of victimization, leading to trauma, which generates paralysis, causing numbing, which leads to all sorts of un-ecstatic addictions. And here we are.
But you don’t have to live this way. You can choose to live a brave life, in which love, self-expression, and ecstasy are the norm. But it does take courage, an enormous amount of courage.
Sure, life throws you for a loop sometimes, and it can feel like the entire world is against you. But the choice of whether you handle life’s twists and turns with courage or cowardice is up to you. The challenge is to become spiritually awakened enough to go from being a mere victim of the world to realizing that you actually ARE the world. Once you can do that, you free yourself to embody soul.
And that means you live beyond surviving. That means THRIVING.
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