Courage, Confidence and Wellness

We spend a lifetime searching for balance.  We learn about a new piece of dietary information; we try it out.  Science comes up with new info about our body's function; we consider this, perhaps, by modifying our behavior.  We accumulate information and try to verify an approach to our own wellness through the decades.  And if we're lucky,  something settles in us that isn't so reactive.  It's hoped for—that we become discerning in our responses to new information, not jumping from one new fangled idea or another in a quest to be healthier.  This would go for a spiritual growing up as well.  In all of this, what is the difference between adapting and adopting?

Courage and a Self Confidence is required. Through our continuum, there is a time to follow and "obey".  There is also a time to find the courage not to look toward outward "authority",  but believe enough in what one has experienced, gathered information-wise and trust in one's own maturation process.  Or, maybe it's about following the intuitive messages even though all that outward advice makes sense.  A reliable practice of self-awareness will sort the false impulse from the true impulse.  It is a growing up of sorts;  a confidence in one's own perceptions, knowledge/understanding base and the experience of having navigated dark corners before.  It's a trust in speaking up, being adversarial when necessary, being close to one's own truth.  This doesn't negate being open to other information or an other.  It just means owning one's own grounded material in what Is.

This sometimes means finding one's own language within the known culture, whether it be in spiritual practice or wellness lingo.  Human nature makes us prone to being static in our approach, clinging to what has been known, whether it be language, way of understanding, an approach to a spiritual or wellness practice, or dietary and movement habits.  Because everything is changing all the time, being light "on our feet" is necessary.  A regular practice of entering into unknown territory, making efforts that are not familiar, or may be somewhat uncomfortable and foreign.  Becoming familiar with how—and where—I recede and retreat into habits that aren't useful is part of the self awareness practice.  If one has relied primarily on external authority to direct one's efforts in the past, claiming a semblance of one's own "master" is initially a rocky road.  It's sort of like being 20 years old again, finding your young adult legs under yourself, making first time life decisions, leaning into resistance and not capitulating.  It's possible to boldly strike out, to find the courage to be enough where you are, recognize your needs, and make a demand of yourself or of others to meet those needs.

It is true there is an "action" component to all this.  But mostly, it's sublimely internal. The action has turned inward, hence, doesn't have to be externally manifested to the extent it has been in previous decades.  Stepping up to (the responsibility of) oneself minimizes confusion.  Confidence is confidence, not arrogance.  Courage is courage, not being cavalier.  It's clear.  Understanding and living these differences makes us our own leader, mentor, guru.  And if we somehow find we have trickled our way into arrogance or have become cavalier, that's ok.  Because we have, at our foundation, taken responsibility and owned what is.  So we own that, and we mindfully work with that manifestation.  It's a beautiful thing. No longer are we afraid of being—or experiencing ourselves—as arrogant.  We are more afraid of not seeing what is.  We are more afraid of being static and internally atrophied.  Scary personality portraits of old are now interesting, beguiling, surprising and refresh our perspective.

"To thine own self be true." Hamlet, Wm Shakespeare

“And you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.”  John 8:32