Courage.
Courage is the emotion that is the border between destructive and life-supportive emotions.
In the book Power vs. Force, David Hawkins deems the level of courage as the shift from negative to positive energy.
As you can see on this Map of Consciousness, the emotion of courage sits around an energy level of 200. Below courage, the emotions are pride, anger, desire, fear, grief, apathy, guilt, and shame.
And above courage, there’s neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightenment.
Usually when people have had “enough”, they sit in an emotion of anger. Anger and pride are both energetic states of being. Now how you use that energy is another story.
You can transmute that energy into more destructive, survival states of being. Or you can venture up this map into higher states of consciousness.
I can remember from my own experience of family members not thinking I could amount to anything.
This made me angry. Which turned to pride because now I have the motivation to prove them wrong. And turned to courage, which propelled me to take action and achieve things they didn’t think I could.
My only mistake back then was that I didn’t have the wherewithal to move up the map. I didn’t know the things I do now. So I was wavering back and forth between states of anger, pride, and courage.
In my opinion, staying inside that dark side of motivation is not a healthy one.
You may come across that treasure chest you’ve been searching for the entire time. But as soon as you open it…
It’s empty.
And as you look back, there’s a trail of destruction. Burned bridges, lost love, lost happiness and peace.
I’ve written about the Map of Consciousness briefly before. But at the time, I just assumed that if I could stay on a level of courage I could automatically move up the map.
Nope.
Because what really defines courage and sets it into reality? Action.
Therefore, the other levels that I want to get to (Peace being the ultimate state for me), require action. They need to be practiced.
It’s not surprising to me that the level above courage is neutrality which also correlates with trust.
Because as you continue to exhibit courage and take action, you build trust. Primarily with yourself.
That trust in yourself comes with higher self-esteem and confidence, which leads to the next level of willingness and optimism.
You may not have complete faith that you’ll accomplish whatever you’re venturing out to do. But at least you’ll believe it’s a possibility.
And the very last level in this sector of consciousness before all the good stuff like reason, love, joy, and peace, is acceptance.
Rule #1 of Miyamoto Musashi’s principles of life (The Dokkōdō) is:
Accept everything the way it is.
This takes an insurmountable amount of courage. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves and think we have control over things we really can’t control. We want to influence and bend reality to have a favorable outcome.
But we really can’t control outcomes. Uncertainty will always exist.
We can’t control how other people act, feel, and behave. But we get so caught up in being annoyed or pissed because they’re not meeting our expectations.
Just this past week, I had someone tell me they’re moving in a new direction with a newsletter project we’ve been going back and forth on for months.
The old me would’ve been angry and probably moved myself down to grief or apathy.
But no harm, no foul. I just said that’s cool, but that doesn’t fit what I want to do. Best of luck and let’s keep in touch.
Accepting things the way they are is what leads to surrendering and letting go. Another topic I wanna dive deeper into in the future.
Not accepting is what leads to resentment, grudges, and other destructive emotions. And although these emotions may not affect your day-to-day life, they will exist until you can let them go.
These emotions get swept up into what Carl Jung calls your “shadow”. An existing part of you that is composed of everything you don’t like about yourself and other dark emotions.
I would love to dive into the shadow and shadow work in the future too. But here’s the short truth.
You can never become whole until you accept your shadow. Embrace it and just let it exist. If you keep resisting, it could lead to random outbursts or feelings of depression or apathy over seemingly insignificant things.
To face your shadow requires what?
Courage.
It’s easy to distract yourself with social media, video games, drugs, and alcohol. To really look into yourself is a scary and painful thing.
When I sat down to do this work, I found a lot of seeds of resentment, anger, pain, guilt, and shame that still existed. But noticing their existence allowed me to let go. It allowed me to forgive.
Now all that liberated energy is available for me to use to create and move myself into higher vibrations.
How I’ve Used That Energy
Outside of all the inner work, I’ve been able to transmute that energy into a lot of good things externally too.
I let go of a business I spent a ton of time and focus building up for 3 years.
I reset myself to pursue this business here alone and also overcame a fear of being alone. Now I’m comfortable in my own skin and enjoy spending time alone.
Fun fact: The translation for The Dokkōdō is The Way of Walking Alone.
Other notable things I’ve surprised myself with over the past year:
Solo traveling to Vegas to meet potential clients
Went up to a random girl who I thought was gorgeous and told her that’s what I thought. Didn’t lead anywhere because she was from Cali, but hey, she didn’t slap me in the face. We had a nice conversation and it was a cool experience knowing how I used to be.
Recently picked up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again. It’s been 11 years. Walking into a gym knowing no one is pretty intimidating and getting my ass whooped isn’t fun, but I’m with cool people and I did miss learning.
Most importantly though, I’m moving my way up to joy and peace. I’ll leave enlightenment to the sages.
But all of this requires courage. That’s where it starts.
And also a duality to all of this…
Without fear, there can be no courage.
Week 79 P4P Updates
One of our newer clients has a fight coming up in March. He’s been in training camp this entire time, but finally got time to give me the material I need to complete the first newsletter issue.
It’s a pretty good one and I’m looking forward to making it a weekly thing.
Other than that, up to 2,758 subscribers across the clients.
Oh, I also tried something new this week. I deleted all the social media off my phone.
I still have some business-ish stuff I need social media for… but definitely not for the amount I was using it.
It’s funny to see how many times I grabbed my phone unconsciously, hoping to do a quick scroll on Instagram or TikTok and realize there’s nothing there.
I’ll re-download a couple apps for the weekend to distract myself. But I think this may be something I continue.
Back with another rant next week.
Trust the process, love the process.
Kevin