Much of what holds us back is not reality itself, but the stories we tell ourselves about what might go wrong.
Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
It is the presence of clarity.
Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao: Daily Meditations,
When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you.
But if you can avoid avoidance – if you can choose to embrace experiences out of passion, enthusiasm, and a readiness to feel whatever arises – then nothing, nothing in all this dangerous world, can keep you from being safe.
Martha Beck
We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara – the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.
Pema Chödrön
The transformation of fear does not mean that we no longer have fearful responses. It means that we no longer believe that those responses are who we are. This is what practice is about: learning to stop believing that our deep-seated reactivity is who we are. Who we really are is much bigger than any of our fear-based conditioned responses. When we can really experience fear, we can see through this false identification, perhaps even glimpsing a vaster sense of Being.
Ezra Bayda, Being Zen
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