The courage of the soul is quite another matter. It’s the endurance and the long-suffering sometimes, and the quiet will to persist in spite of difficult circumstances.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you, the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way with new eyes. So, stay with us, and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our theme for today is courage. Sometimes it takes a lot of courage just to face life, so we’re going to talk about how to develop that courage within us. Our founder is Alice Bailey and she has written twenty-four volumes of literature and all of the dialogue that you’ll hear on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey, as does the following quote: “Permit the courage of your soul to strengthen you. This courage is not a fighting courage or any sort of struggle to be what is called ‘brave.’ It is the courage of sure knowledge, held steadily and unquestioning in the midst of difficulty and discomfort.” That’s a different approach to courage and I certainly want to know a lot more about that. What is the difference between the courage of the soul and the fighting courage of the brave?
Sarah: I think it’s almost comparing the effect of the rush of adrenaline on the physical body versus the stamina of someone who is tenacious enough to persist in a quiet low-key way at a certain task. It brings to mind that myth of the tortoise and the hare. The hare had the adrenaline to rush forward, but the one who won the race was the tortoise who had the stamina and the persistence and the drive to keep going, even though at his own measured pace. I think there is a biological reaction in the kind of courage that is the fighting courage of the brave, which would include anyone who’s in an experience of a threat to his physical being or a threat to his loved ones. Whether you’re in a war or if you’re being attacked in a crime or your house is on fire or your car is in an accident or whatever, I think there’s a kind of a physical impulse that nature provides to get you out of a situation. As I understand it, the adrenaline rush that takes over speeds up the heart and gives one a surge of energy and an impulse that enables you to react very, very quickly to salvage yourself or to salvage your loved ones. To me, it’s an aspect of how biology is a God-given attribute. Our bodies have their own wisdom and their own sense of reason and purpose. Sometimes you’ll hear of soldiers doing the most amazing things in times of war for themselves and for their fellow soldiers. Or you’ll hear about the mother who lifts the car off her baby and she doesn’t know afterwards where that strength came from and she couldn’t duplicate it, but at the time she came up with it because circumstances demanded it. That’s the courage of the brave. But the courage of the soul is quite another matter. It’s the endurance and the long-suffering sometimes, and the quiet will to persist in spite of difficult circumstances.
Dale: I think these two are related: the courage of the soul and the courage of the brave and the acts of the brave—the firemen going into the building and so forth. I think the courage of the soul is probably a higher correspondence to that lower courage that you spoke about, of the adrenal rush. They’re like polar opposites, but yet one and the same. They’re of the same polarity, the same pole, but of the opposite ends. What is interesting is what motivates. In each case, there’s a similarity of motivation, as I understand it. Each time they’re involved as a saving force. The mother wants to save the child pinned under the car or the soldier who performed some brave act on the battlefield saves the lives of his buddies and his squad, and so forth. In the courage of the soul to persist there is involved the salvaging of the lower nature and the redeeming of the lower nature. I think that impulse from the soul which provides the strength corresponds to the adrenaline rush. It’s the influence of the soul that suddenly comes through and provides the wisdom and the strength to persist and to lift up everything in the lower nature. We can get into this more as we discuss it in this program, but I think the two are related: the higher and the lower expressions of courage.
Sarah: Well, I was thinking about the word itself: courage. Isn’t it from the root coeur, which is French for heart? I think it probably is from that same word root, which implies that it’s a quality of the heart which, as we know, is the life aspect and a minute ago you almost defined it as an expression of the life, which it is. It’s the salvaging aspect.
Dale: Our animal nature has been given this salvaging ability in the adrenal glands — which relates to the lower astral nature, the lower astral plane — and provides the strength to do these impossible things. We inherit this, actually, through the animal nature and it’s passed on through all these eons of time. But at the higher end I think the soul provides the same thing for the disciple or for the more spiritual person to persist and also to work at salvaging and saving. It’s kind of the saving force in each case.
Sarah: Yes, and as we know, in all spiritual development “as above, so below,” so the biology of the human being is the lower counterpart of this high quality of the soul; you’re right, and yet this opening thought said that the courage of the soul is the courage of sure knowledge held steadily and unquestioning in the midst of difficulty and discomfort. So, there is that aspect of continuity and tenacity, that ability to persist and not to waiver. Even though there are tests and obstacles to one’s continuing, one does, and that brings in the spiritual will. The refusal to give up, the refusal to let go of one’s convictions or ideals or standards or whatever the issue centres on, requires courage, and that’s a special kind of long-term spiritual vision that takes real courage to display. That’s I guess what I mean when I say it’s so different from the adrenaline rush that makes one act spontaneously, but both are expressions of the salvaging power of life itself to persist.
Robert: I guess courage can be controversial at times. I remember one time when I was in charge of a group of teenagers and a person came to the door and challenged me and wanted to come in and I said, “you’re not coming in” and I saw the security guards backing away but I stood my ground. It turned out that I wasn’t wearing my glasses and he had a large gun sticking out of his pants. I was given credit for all this courage and I really didn’t have any courage at all; I’m nearsighted and just wasn’t wearing my glasses! (laughter)
Sarah: You just couldn’t see. (laughter) God looks after us, doesn’t he?
Robert: So, I guess courage is really when you have fear in your face and you do what you have to do anyway. Where does courage come from?
Sarah: I think it comes from experience and from testing. I don’t know if anybody is born particularly brave. I think there’s probably an assumption that the brave, courageous people are just sort of born that way and that’s an inherent part of their temperament. But there are a lot of people who have displayed incredible bravery who would say that they had no choice, and that in fact their fear was deep and almost overwhelming in spite of the courage they displayed. Usually very brave people will say that, in fact, they felt enormous fear, but that it didn’t stop them. I think it’s the ability to look the fear in its face and continue, to not let it overcome you.
Dale: Looking beyond oneself, too, and looking at the situation. There’s a reaching out tendency there to help and to save that is very strong.
Sarah: Do you mean a larger goal, a larger vision?
Dale: Yes, one steps outside of himself or herself and is able to do these acts of courage.
Sarah: The testing aspect, though, can be a surprise. I know in my own life I’ve been surprised at the times when I’ve been tested, when I’ve been very, very afraid to do something. I can remember at the time being overwhelmed with fear and also being absolutely determined to do this task because I simply felt I had to. I guess the assumption was that something would get me through it. I think that a lot of people who have had to deal with a lot of fear in their life draw upon that sense that if they go forward with something that seems necessary and right, that somehow they’ll make it through. I was reading just the other day in the paper about a woman who had undergone a lot of testing in her life, physical illness and personal sorrow, and she had gone through it all because she had no choice, and she felt a little embarrassed when people would say how brave and courageous she was because she said, “I had no choice.” It was also the way she was raised. She said that when they were children and ill, their mother would give them about two days to get over it and then they were supposed to be back on their feet. (laughing) So, I suppose that early conditioning of getting on with life and not indulging in self-pity helps an awful lot. But where does courage come from? I don’t know. People like Eleanor Roosevelt have spoken about it. She was someone who dealt with a lot of personal fear, who was very, very shy as a girl. Very shy. She suffered from inferiority, from a sense of not being wanted, of being unloved, worthless. She really was psychologically very troubled as a young person. So, she knew all about fear, and she said that you gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You just stare it back like a big bear, you stare it down. She said you have to do the thing you think you cannot do. I think that’s the same thing that compelled me. I really know what she means: you have to do the thing that you are convinced you cannot do. There’s some test there.
Dale: That test brings up the deepest spiritual strength so you can realise it’s there all the time and you can bring it forth, but it just needs that point of tension perhaps to bring it out.
Sarah: Yes, it’s refusing to take the easy way, I guess.
Robert: Is courage needed in spiritual development? That’s certainly what Lucis Trust is primarily about.
Sarah: Yes, absolutely courage is needed. There’s a question that is asked of every aspirant, every applicant at the door of spiritual knowledge, and it is: Have you counted the cost? Many people will respond by saying, “What cost could there possibly be? It’ll be only good, it’s only right and beautiful what I’m asking to enter into,” and then they find that there is indeed a cost. It can be quite devastating and yet so subtle, and it takes courage to endure the cost that you pay. Everything comes at a price. Everything of value has a price, and the same is true of the spiritual path. It has a price in the sense, for one thing, that one’s closest friends and loved ones may not necessarily stand by you and applaud. In fact, they might be quite disappointed and withdraw and that comes as a great surprise to people. They think that people around them should welcome and support their decision to, say, undertake a pattern of daily meditation and spiritual study. In fact, people can resent these things because it takes the person away from them. It takes their time in another direction. That person used to be available to them during the time that they now spend in spiritual practices of some sort, and that’s resented. Or they might just resent the fact or fear the fact that you’re becoming different. They are afraid that you might move on or move away from them in consciousness, in interests, in the things you enjoy in life; you won’t be the same, and it’s probably true you won’t be. They sense this and they can become quite fearful and resentful. Those are just a few of the costs. The other aspects have to do with one’s own inner obstacles, where you might want to start developing more spiritually but then all of these obstacles come up like other interests—your favorite pastimes, your desire to learn French, your desire to play the piano. The mind and the emotional nature can throw up all kinds of reasons why you just don’t have the time or the energy to develop spiritually.
Dale: Right. It takes courage to break away from the normal or what we perceive to be the normal, established patterns of living and thinking and believing and behaving. So as one is beginning to, as we say, “step onto the path,” that path perhaps is going off in a different direction than one’s family or loved ones or friends. They may be staying on their own particular path, and as you follow your particular path, it may take you off in a different direction. In consciousness—not saying physically you’re moving away—but your consciousness is moving off in a different direction, and it’s maybe becoming more inclusive and this presents problems as you’ve just said. It’s a difficult thing to take into account, to handle, but it’s extremely necessary and the strength one gets to do this comes from the soul, as we’ve said earlier.
Sarah: I think there’s no overestimating the loneliness of the spiritual path. That’s one of the costs that takes quite a lot of courage to endure. You might think that you would move into a realm of greater identification with your fellow man, and you do. But at the same time, on a personal level, you might feel more isolated. It’s a very odd phenomenon, but I think many people who begin to take themselves in hand find this because chances are they find very few people around them who think as they do. They’re breaking loose from a kind of social or group attitude; whatever group or whatever element of society they’ve associated themselves with, they’re breaking away from that and trying to move into a new realm, and it’s inevitably—for at least a certain stage of the way—rather lonely. I think that, again, is a kind of soul-imposed experience because you have to learn to stand on your own feet. You have to learn to think for yourself. You have to learn to turn inward for your guidance and not always be looking to the world around you to tell you what you should think, what you should do, what you should value.
Dale: But the strength to do that, as we’ve said, comes by way of the soul because that whole stepping onto that path into the world of the soul provides nourishment in the form of knowledge, greater knowledge and wisdom that provides the strength, because as is said in the opening quote today, “It is the courage of sure knowledge held steadily and unquestioning in the midst of difficulty and discomfort.” That’s really what one becomes in possession of: more knowledge that provides the incentive and the motive to keep going.
Sarah: I think that’s where one of the failures of courage happens with a lot of spiritual seekers. They don’t act according to whatever knowledge they do possess, and we all do have a certain amount of knowledge in terms of spiritual values and moral precepts. Not all of us are equal in the knowledge that we possess, but we all have a higher knowledge that we could live by if we so chose, and so many people fail to live up to the highest they know. They don’t live up to the best in them. We can’t be more than we are, but we can be—to use the cliché— “the best we can be.” We can live according to our highest standards, whatever those might be, and when we fail, that’s a loss of courage.
Robert: So, never betray the best within you.
Sarah: Yes, that’s right.
Robert: Do you think it takes more courage to live in today’s world than it did to live in earlier times?
Sarah: Maybe. I don’t know. Earlier times had their own terrors and traumas. We’re about to see the Civil War series again on PBS, and certainly that was a terrible time. During the World War of this past century that must have been a horrendous time.
Dale: I think the fears and the courage needed today are perhaps of a different nature. You need courage just to get out of bed in the morning if you live in the large metropolitan areas where we’re now today subject to threats of terrorism and all of that. So, if you let those things get in the way and take possession of you, then it can be quite terrifying and it takes courage to face just the daily trials.
Sarah: I think people today are more psychologically sensitive than in the past,; that maybe the stimulation of the times—we’ve talked about the spiritual energy that’s so much more heightened today than it was even a few decades ago—I think that does exact a cost in terms of the stress that people are under. They feel acutely sensitive to the undercurrents that are in the world, and that’s part of the fear and the confusion today. Yet we’re told in the writings of Alice Bailey that we should take comfort in the assurance that love rules all, and that we are supported by spiritual beings on the inner planes. We’re given more help and more guidance than we might be aware of or realize, and we should take courage from that. It is, after all, love that rules the world. The world is as Einstein said, “a friendly place,” and we are developing toward something, I think, wholly good.
Dale: Absolutely, and the big thing to keep in mind is the soul. The presence of the soul is always there, and that’s who you really are and that will provide the strength you need to cope with the terrors of the world today.
Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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