Secrets of courage

When you are left with nothing, you will still have yourself. That, you can never lose. Your own Self, moreover, once you come really to know it, is infinite!

Swami Kriyananda is a direct disciple since 1948 of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi. He is the founder of Ananda Sangha, and of seven Ananda communities in America and Europe. Now 78, he has moved to India to make his Guru’s teachings known in the land of his birth: to teach the liberating meditation technique of Kriya Yoga, and to establish communities where householders and renunciates alike can seek God in the company of fellow devotees.

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One of the most courageous men who ever lived was Mahatma Gandhi. Repeatedly he walked into life-threatening danger. Whether or not he felt fear we may never know, but he went anyway. We all honor men and women of courage. What prevents people from showing courage in their own lives? Purely and simply, it is their attachments! They fear losing what they have, defined by them in their hearts as their security. NOTHING in the world is secure! Life itself will be stripped away from you someday -- perhaps at a moment's notice, or even with no notice at all.

You will find it helpful to keep in mind that security lies in yourself, not in anything outside. Try visualizing the worst thing that could happen to you. Perhaps it is failure, or poverty, or serious illness, or mockery and contempt from others. Perhaps it is death itself. Face such possibilities, mentally. People usually try to brush these thoughts under the carpet, where the sheer number of them makes an ugly bulge, not easily ignored though people pretend they don't exist.

You will find it very helpful, instead, every night before you go to sleep to visualize a bonfire. Cast joyfully into its flames every attachment, every fear of possible loss. When you are left with nothing, you will still have yourself. That, you can never lose. Your own Self, moreover, once you come really to know it, is infinite!

I wrote a song many years ago that expresses this sentiment:

GO ON ALONE

Walk like a man, even though you walk alone!
Why court approval, once the road is known?
Let come who will, but if they all turn home,
The goal still awaits you: Go on alone!

Follow your dream, though it lead to worlds unknown!
Life's but a shadow, once your dreams have flown.
What if men cry, "Your dream is not our own!"
Your soul knows the answer: Go on alone!

Give life your heart. Bless everything that's grown.
Fear not the loving: All this world's your own.
Make rich the soil, but once the seed is sown
Seek freedom, don't linger: Go on Alone!

Walk like a man, even though you walk alone!
Why court approval, once the road is known?
Let come who will, but if they all turn home,
The goal still awaits you: Go on alone!

Swami Kriyananda's programme appears at 2200 hours IST on the Sadhna Channel. (For more, visitwww.anandaindia.org)