Category Archives: Open Heart

What I Learned in Cultivating Courage

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I just finished the first session of Andrea Scher’s Cultivating Courage E-Course. In the course description, she says:

One conscious, brave choice — every day for 30 days. Who will you be on the other side?

During those 30 days, I developed a practice. I experienced inspiration, comfort, community, and a refined definition of courage. Here I am, on the other side, and this is who I am:

1. “I am larger and better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness.” ~Walt Whitman Every act of kindness is an act of bravery. My first thought often is something generous, but I usually stop myself, especially if a stranger is involved. I let those old, nasty voices about how I’m “too much” stop me, but this class, this practice has reminded me that this is my superpower, my nature, and maybe even my purpose.

2. I am not alone, and with a tribe, I am so much stronger. After 30 days in this class, I remember the importance of tribe, of communicating and connecting, of showing up and being vulnerable. Even though most of us in class were meeting each other for the first time, Andrea created a safe space, a secure container for our practice and our sharing, and we dared to be vulnerable, to connect. We quickly became a support team, a tribe of tender-hearted warriors practicing courage, encouraging each other and celebrating together.

3. What is an act of courage for me is just that, brave for me. Cultivating courage isn’t about becoming anyone else’s idea of brave. For me, right now, courage means cultivating confidence, the kind that Susan Piver describes as “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.” Trusting myself, having faith in my own voice, showing up with an open heart, even when it’s hard and even when it hurts.

4. Courage doesn’t have to be big or bold. It can be quiet and gentle, soft and simple. You don’t have to save someone from a burning building, or make a grand gesture to be brave. As Mary Anne Radmacher says, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’ ”

Andrea Scher is a maker of magic. She has a compassionate vision, and it’s so vivid, so vibrant that you can see it too, and this shared dream has the power to move you. You know immediately that you can trust her, and that with her support, amazing things are going to happen, you are going to happen.

P.S. One of the NaBloPoMo prompts this week was “What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” and another was “Tell us about your favorite pet.” As Andrea was putting together this course, she asked for courage stories, and the one I sent her was about my first dog, Obi, and having to let him go–the bravest and most loving thing I ever had to do. Andrea’s Cultivating Courage e-course has reminded me that this is who I am.

Three Truths and One Wish

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heart-shaped petal with a heart-shaped hole

1. Truth: the work of my heart is gentle, quiet and simple yet fierce. Spreading love and kindness, cultivating courage and joy, generating a sense of wonder and gratitude, allowing for play and rest, offering encouragement and inspiration, creating safe and open space where natural wakefulness can manifest, showing up with an open heart even when it’s hard and even when it hurts–easing suffering feels like my true calling.

2. Truth: the work of my heart may never be directly paid in dollars. I’m okay with that. It doesn’t need to pay my bills. I will get paid in understanding and awareness, connection and compassion, love and gratitude, joy and tender-hearted sadness. I will see and be seen. I will notice what longs to be noticed. I will be amazed and tell about it. I will be awake and alive, with my heart wide open. In this way, I will be wealthy, will have everything I need, more than enough.

3. Truth: the work of my heart softens me, scares me, makes me tender as it terrifies me. Sometimes it feels too big, too much, too hard, overwhelming, and I shut down, numb out or hide or run away, attempt to deny it, to escape. And yet, when I resist it, I suffer. I try to remember what Katherine Center said, that “you have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.” I try to remember that this is what life is, both beautiful and brutal, and that to open my heart and experience all of it, pleasure and pain, is why I am here.

One wish: There is an aspiration, a mantra, a chant that Susan Piver has shared that I’d like to offer here as my one wish today, that we all know this to be true, practice it, embody it:

I possess basic goodness.
All beings possess such goodness.
Knowing this, my heart opens.
When my heart is open, the whole world changes.

P.S. Basic goodness is our fundamental, inherent, natural condition–awake, wise, and compassionate. “Our most basic qualities (those we were born with) are openness, intelligence, and warmth,” (Susan Piver, from her post You are Good).