Courage

Someone close told me a while ago - "Know what you feel". As simple as it sounds, I thought about it for a really long time, and had a hard time coming to terms with it. It suggested that there was a way to separate yourself from what you feel, to be able to look at what you feel, and decide what, why. I wrote about judgments in an earlier post. Feelings are very heavily guided by them.Think about the times you have felt disgust at someone who has been accused of something. Do you really know if he has done it? A lot of times, the feelings that are generated by these random judgments, and the enactment of these feelings are the worst that can be done to someone. It is worse than what the traditional cultural judgments can ever provide anyone.

So, I think, the ultimate courage anyone can show is to look at themselves and analyze what they feel and why they feel it. It is somewhat of an out of body experience, and at times, you feel the rush of suddenly discovering something about yourself. Let me tell you one of my own experiences. One of the biggest problems I am dealing with right now is that my personal philosophy of life and my experiments around it are causing me a lot of mental anguish mostly because I find what I want more and more out of reach. One of the reasons it is a problem is that I look at a lot of scenarios that could happen and then worry about them. So, then, I was driving the other day, and I suddenly realized that I have a habit of looking in all the mirrors frequently and look at the vehicles coming behind me and think about what they could do. And then there was a sudden realization that these two behaviors were the same...Those realizations about self are very interesting.

Why I claim it is the ultimate courage, is because at times these realizations can throw off your complete belief systems. Whatever you have thought of, believed, "had faith in" suddenly turns out to be based on certain false prejudices. This is probably the hardest thing that an individual has to deal with. But know that it is not a bad thing. It is certainly a difficult thing. You do not have to feel guilty about what you felt at that time. Those feelings were based on your own conditioning - cultural and otherwise. As your thought evolves, you should be able to understand your conditioning and keep adjusting yourself. It is necessary to know that those were just stepping stones to get to where you are. Also, it is important to recognize that there is no "right" philosophy of life and "wrong" one. What is, is. It is just a point in your life's experiment. It is not the beginning or end of anything.

So, let me finish this post by wishing you the courage to look at your belief systems, to understand it and to know that they are not absolute. I wish you the courage to confront it, analyze it, and if it feels insufficient, or if there are some incorrect prejudices that form the base of your personal philosophies, I wish you courage to change it. You will be a happier person for it.