Living Fearlessly

Those are the very first words of this little book.

Want to live fearlessly?

Be like Yogananda’s guru and look fear in the face. Then, it will cease to trouble us.

Yogananda left India and came to the United States as a 27-year-old yogi guru in 1920. His mission was to integrate the wisdom of the East with the West.

To help bridge the gap in cultures, he talked about Jesus as the perfect embodiment of spiritual truth. And, one of the American philosophers he references the most is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson echoes this wisdom about what to do with our fear.

As we discuss in our Notes on The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Self-Reliance, Emerson liked to say that “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.”

His advice on how to conquer fear was straight-forward: “Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do.”

What happens when we go straight toward the ghosts in the dark chambers? Well, he tells us: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

Modern science, as we often discuss, agrees.

We must APPROACH rather than AVOID our fears.

As we discuss in The Upside of Stress and The Telomere Effect, when we are willing to act in the presence of fear and see that the stressors in our lives are not THREATS to our well-being but an opportunity to practice our philosophy and forge antifragile confidence, we change our underlying physiology from a “threat response” to a “challenge response.”

Do that often enough, and the ghosts stop being quite so terrifying.

P.S. As I read that moral from an Indian yogi, I thought of another one of my favorite Indian sages, Eknath Easwaran. In his great book, Your Life Is Your Message, he tells us about a lesson he learned from his Indian guru—his grandmother.

The short story? He was complaining about how hard it was to meditate and change his habits.

He tells us: “I complained about it to my spiritual teacher, my grandmother. She was a very plainspoken teacher, with none of the euphemisms of the intellectual, so she simply led me to a nearby amla tree. The amla is a beautiful tree, a little like the mimosa, with a small fruit. She picked a fruit and said, ‘Here, take a bite.’ I started chewing. It was pretty awful.

I said, ‘I’ve got to spit it out, Granny. It’s sour, bitter, unpleasant.’ She just said, ‘Bear with me. Keep chewing for a while.’ So I went on chewing, and to my surprise the amla fruit began to get sweeter and sweeter.

Similarly, meditation and the allied disciplines require sustained enthusiasm every day — even when it seems icky. Especially when it seems icky! If you keep at it, you will find those same disciplines becoming sweeter and sweeter. When meditation time comes around you will find yourself hungering for the inner peace and calm it brings. The time will even come when you want a double helping.”

Approaching our fears? Of course, the pain tastes “icky.” Until we see that it brings us the sweet reward of tapping into our infinite potential. Our mantra for today is simple: “BRING IT ON!!!”

What do YOU do when you are “passing through the difficulties and tests of life”?

Do you complain and whine and act like it shouldn’t be happening?

Perfect.

We all do more of that than we’d like to admit.

In those moments, let’s remember Yogananda’s wisdom and Rule #1 of a noble, Heroic quest:

IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE CHALLENGING.

btw: Isn’t that a nice, warm and fuzzy thing to say?

It’s so obvious there in ALL CAPS BOLD on the page, eh?

The trick, of course, is to remember this wisdom RIGHT in the moment when the fear arises and our Resistance to reality creeps in.

Then, with that fear as our prompt/trigger/cue to PRACTICE OUR PHILOSOPHY, it’s time to move from Theory to PRACTICE to Mastery as we use every tool at our disposal as we step forward and do what we’re here to do.

Let’s do that. TODAY.

btw: I just love the image of thinking of every trial as a “pickax with which to dig into the soil of your consciousness and release the fountain of spiritual strength that lies within.”

That and the idea of not complaining every time it gets hard makes me think of Rumi and some of his poetic wisdom on fearlessness from our Notes on Rumi Daylight.

Rumi tells us: “This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.”

And: “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”

Rumi also echoes the wisdom from our last Idea on the bitter turning sweet: “Burdens are the foundations of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure.”

As you may know, Yogananda created what is known as the “Self-realization fellowship.”

The main idea behind his concept of Self- (with a capital S!) realization?

He tells us: “Self-realization is the knowing—in body, mind, and soul—that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it comes to us, that we are not merely near it at all times, but that God’s omnipresence is our omnipresence; that we are just as much a part of Him now as we ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing.”

That’s basically just another way to say what the great Franciscan priest Richard Rohr tells us in Falling Upward. He tells us: “As Desmond Tutu once told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, ‘We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!’”

Want to live fearlessly?

Connect to something MUCH bigger than yourself. Trust THAT wisdom.

How? Well... Here’s a hint: Notice the most frequently used word in that passage above.

If you could see my copy of the book, you’d see just how many times (SIX!) Yogananda used the words “calm” or “calmness” in the above passage. I circled it countless other times throughout the book.

If we want to connect with God (or whatever you choose to call that power that is bigger and wiser than our small selves), we must CALM our minds.

How? Well... Like Yogananda, I am blessed to have many people come to me to talk about their worries. You know what I tell them?

I NEVER (!) start with the problem. I ask them how their fundamentals are. “How’s your eating? Your moving? Your sleeping? Your breathing? Your focusing?”

Why? Because, when we dominate our fundamentals, we create a more powerful connection to our best selves. At the same time, we create a CALM CONFIDENCE—knowing that we have what it takes to handle whatever life throws at us because we have structural, reactive, and expansive discipline and we are the type of people who know how to consistently connect with the best, most Heroic version of ourselves as we use every obstacle as another opportunity to practice our philosophy and forge a little more antifragile confidence as we get just a little bit stronger.

Then... After a high level discussion in which we help them get more clarity on what they think is the #1 highest-leverage thing they could START and STOP doing to most powerfully change their lives, I often encourage them to get a good night of sleep, meditate for a minute or fifteen the next morning then, before looking at their smartphones or checking their email or otherwise blowing up their brains with inputs, I encourage them to ask their daimon what she or he thinks.

The wisdom is ALWAYS there.

We just need to have the Wisdom + Self-Mastery + Courage + Love + Gratitude + Hope + Curiosity + Zest to connect to it.

Let’s do that. Today.

P.S. Yogananda also tells us: “The Sanskrit word for faith is wonderfully expressive. It is visvas. The common literal rendering, ‘to breathe easy; have trust; be free from fear,’ does not convey the full meaning. Sanskrit svas refers to the motions of the breath, implying thereby life and feeling. Vi conveys the meaning of ‘opposite; without.’ That is, he whose breath, life, and feeling are calm, he can have faith born of intuition; it cannot be possessed by persons who are emotionally restless. The cultivation of intuitive calmness requires unfoldment of the inner life. When developed sufficiently, intuition brings immediate comprehension of truth. You can have this marvelous realization. Meditation is the way.”

He continues by saying: “Meditate with patience and persistence. In the gathering calmness, you will enter the realm of soul intuition. Throughout the ages, those beings who attained enlightenment were those who had recourse to this inner world of God-communion. Jesus said: ‘When thou prays, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.’ Go within the Self, closing the door of the senses, and their involvement with the restless world, and God will reveal to you all His wonders.”

Have you seen the documentary Finding Joe yet?

As I’ve mentioned many times, it’s a film about Joseph Campbell and the modern Hero’s journey. The work we do together is, essentially, all about operationalizing the wisdom from that movie into our modern lives.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I think you’ll love it. (Trailer here. Full movie free on YouTube here.)

If you have seen it already, you may recall that Robert Walter (the Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation) tells this same story about a lion who was raised by sheep. He grew up thinking he was a sheep. Alan Cohen tells a story about the Golden Buddha to make the same point. (Here’s a clip on the Lion scene and the clip on the Golden Buddha!)

What’s the point? That we are courageous, spiritual LIONS at our core, not weak/meek sheep.

Know this: The thing I find most exciting about the Hero’s journey is the fact that when you and I move from being Victims to Heroes by doing the HARD WORK to move from Theory to Practice to Mastery, we have the chance to move from Victim to Hero to GUIDE.

We can become the strong lions showing the confused sheep-lions that we already have all the power we need to be the change we want to see. And THAT, ultimately, is how we will change the world together.

In short: We need YOU to roar.

Then, by our words and our example (with an emphasis on our example!), we can help others ROAR. And, together, we can change the world. One person at a time. Starting with you and me and all of us. Together. TODAY.

The reference to being tossed on a wave in a storm makes me think of Gandhi—who, for the record, was trained by Yogananda in his Kriya Yoga technique in 1935.

Here’s how Easwaran puts it in Strength in the Storm: “Few human beings are born with the skill to weather storms and stress with grace. Yet everyone can learn. We can’t control the weather outside, but we can control how we respond. ...

For it is in the mind that the storms of life really blow. What matters is not so much the turmoil outside us as the weather within. To a person with an agitated mind, something as minor as a rude driver can cause enough stress to ruin a day. By contrast I think of Mahatma Gandhi, who gave himself away when he confessed, ‘I love storms.’ Gandhi began life as a timid child, but he learned to keep his mind so steady that he could face tremendous crises with courage, compassion, wisdom, and even a sense of humor.

This steadiness of mind is one of the most practical skills. Without it, no one can face the challenges of life without breaking. And life today is challenging to say the least. We live in the midst of conflicts — within ourselves, at home, in the community, even nationally and internationally. This is an age of conflict, which makes it an age of anxiety as well. Nothing is more vital than learning to face this turmoil with confidence and compassion.”

And... Do you know what the most-often-repeated phrase is in the Bible? As we discuss in +1 #714, it’s “Be not afraid.” I repeat: Do not be afraid of ANYTHING.

Perhaps we can create a new mantra to go with “BRING IT ON!” and “OMMS!!” ... Say it with me now: “I LOVE STORMS.”

Here’s to the calm, antifragile confidence that activates our soul strength so we can FEARLESSLY navigate the inevitable storms that give us the opportunity to practice our philosophies so we can emerge stronger and fulfill our Missions, Hero.