'Courage' from The Psyche and Psychism

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'Courage'

By Torkom Saraydarian

Courage is psychic energy which leads us to a planned and contemplated act of sacrifice.

What is psychic energy? The psyche is you, the real you. If you are able to detach yourself from your physical, emotional and mental vehicles, and from their distortions, inertia, glamour's and illusions, you will find your true Self. The moment of finding your Self is a moment of radioactivity. 

This radioactivity is called psychic energy. It comes from the core of your being, and when it manifests through sacrificial deeds, we say that man has courage.

In every act of courage, we have three major elements:

a. Contact with Your True Self

b. Careful planning or contemplation

c. Selflessness

In this case, contact with you true Self means to have an experience of freedom from all limiting walls of your personality in which you see the vision of your future becoming.

In planning and contemplation may take one minute or one year, but your action is definitely conscious and you have full knowledge of the possible consequences. You are using your discrimination; you are using your intelligence in each act of courage. An act of courage is not an act of foolishness. A true act of courage carries a deep wisdom, a clear discrimination and a developed skill-in-action.

The next element is selflessness. Selflessness is the foundation of courage. To be courageous means to give yourself for others, to detach yourself from your self-pity, touchiness and security.

Before a man reaches the full ｅxpression of courage, he learns to welcome blows on behalf of others. He stands for the true rights of others; he protects them from any kind of evil attack but he does this without exception. Through such a life, he attracts the attention of his Higher Self and eventually stands within his own inner Light. No one can have a virtue if he is not sacrificial in his own nature. Selflessness is the road leading us to Our True Self.

Courage cannot be attained in one day. You work for it for centuries. Every little act of selfless service, every little act of welcoming risks on behalf of others, slowly carries you up to your true Self. Watch the building process of a great palace or temple. It is not built in one day. It grows, stone by stone, very gradually. The masons build it with extreme care. Thus courage is built.

Psychic energy will never express itself unless you build a path for its ｅxpression, and the path of ｅxpression is nothing else but your sacrificial deeds for others. Courage, the energy flowing from your core, is group conscious in its action. If an act is separate, stupid, unrighteous or selfish  no matter how big an act it appears to be  it is the result of your glamour's, illusions, fears vanity or greed.

Thus true courage has a more inclusive goal: When it radiates itself, it is for a group need, a national need, an international or global need.

Courage has eight landmarks in its expression:

1. Absence of Fear

When courage radiates outward, it wipes away all fear because at the moment of its flow, you are at the centre of your true being and not identified with you physical, emotional and mental nature. When you are truly your Self, fear does not exist for you. You have fear only when you are identified with your not self or with your false self, with your garments, with clothes that you wear as your physical, emotional and mental vehicles. 

Nothing is these vehicles should prevent you from making a sacrificial act. That is why they must be trained from childhood to be sacrificial, to be obedient to the inner command, to urge of the Indweller.  When you are concentrating on yourself or are identified with your vehicles and their interests, you cannot perform courageous acts. Often courageous act go contrary to the interests of these vehicles if they are not purified. 

Radioactivity starts when you begin to decentralize yourself. Decentralization releases your true Core and your essence radiates. Now you are not a crystallized energy or ridge but an energy flow, a psychic flow. In such a state you are turning into energy, into a flow, and dissipating all crystallizations and attachments. Such a state of being makes fear impossible to exist. Every time you are in fear, you cannot perform sacrificial actions.

2. Discrimination

We cannot release true courage unless we are instinctively, intuitively and intelligently discriminative of how, when and where to use courage. There is a very fine dividing line between a courageous act and a foolish act. A courageous act has pure discrimination. All courageous acts must be harmonious with the divine Plan, with the line of evolution, with the karmic secrets.

 This needs the power of discrimination. Discrimination is called Buddhi in Sanskrit and that is spiritual insight, intuitive perception, penetrative insight into the causes of things on subtle planes of existence. That is why a truly courageous man is also a true disciple, a true initiate, a true prophet who stands for righteousness. He acts when he penetrates into the casual world and sees the necessity to act. It is not the courage of the western movies where they kill each other "courageously" for money, treasures and properties.

3. Vision For A Greater Whole

Courage is motivated by a sense of unity. As it deepens, man achieves greater purity and radioactivity and embraces greater units within his heart. All his acts eventually turn into acts that unify the whole of mankind and create greater understanding between nations and between the kingdoms of nature.  Such courage turns into a unifying energy. 

The greatest courage is the courage that unifies and faces all attacks of those whose life is dedicated to dividing, to separating and to exploiting. Such a man stands for one humanity and faces all those problems which are the result of separate interests. M. M. refers to this point when He says: "Try to unfold the power of insight, That you may perceive the future unity of mankind . . . " Courage not only works for the greater whole, but also makes others work for the greater whole. 

Courage is so contagious. one courageous man can set aflame the heart of thousands of people and lead then into courageous action. Because of one courageous man, spiritual evolution goes forward. Courage electrifies you because it releases your true Self from its hindrances and chains. It touches Your Inner Core and helps you to see the real issue. once you have touched your Inner Core, you are radioactive, fearless and clear-sighted. one courageous man can change the destiny of a nation or even the destiny of the world, if he is in the right position. 

Each courageous man who comes to the world, such as Socrates, Gandhi or Christ, uplifts the whole world to a higher degree of understanding and cooperation. Courage must expand and involve the whole. If it does not expand it turns into selfishness, cruelty, crime, and destroys itself. 

Insight also can be defined as a vision which can see the future culmination of the causes not yet in action. This means that a man of insight can see the seeds and simultaneously see the seeds blooming and becoming a beautiful flower or a huge tree. He is seeing the cause, and, within the cause, the effect of the cause. His consciousness is not only embracing the past and the present, but also the future. 

In this case we define the present as the process of moulding the future. Thus the man of insight "perceives the future unity of mankind" and does not waste his lives fighting for separative goals, which is common for average persons. A courageous man is one who proceeds against the tide, against the current. In separative goals, one always puts the interests of the personality first. Goals that lead you towards unity are based on your Soul-consciousness or you basic insight of the future.

4. Courageous people are linked with a great source of energy with which they can do almost anything

We read in the Teaching:  "Not only the direct link with the Lord, but even an unconscious striving towards Hierarchy creates a glimpse of communion with cosmic forces . . ."  Also

". . . Fate can be overcome if thou manifest the Christ, Who sacrificed Himself for Truth."

It is impossible to be a courageous man without such a link or communion and without the manifestation of Christ through all your activities. A "direct link with the Lord" is the cause of inexhaustible energy. To manifest Christ means to be fused with the Lord with such intensity that He lives through you and wipes away all that limits you on your path to divinity. 

A greater voltage of psychic energy comes from the Hierarchy, especially from the Heart of the Hierarchy, the Christ. Fusing ourselves with Him provides us with an inexhaustible supply of psychic energy which in turns into courage in all our endeavours in any field. Fate is the prison which we build though all activities on the three planes of the personality. 

It is possible to destroy this prison through manifesting the Christ, or letting Him steam forth into all our activities, feelings, emotions and plans. Fate is the controlling machine that we created in the past and now we are mechanically conditioned by it. one we transcend it, it loses its control over us because our will no longer takes its orders from that control mechanism, but receives its orders from enlightened centres of spiritual realms.

5. Persistence

M. M. Says: " . . . Nothing can divert the fiery man from his goal. Neither by day nor by night does he forget his predestined path. He is indifferent as to where his ascent will be accomplished. The condition of his body has lost importance for the striving spirit . . ." 

Persistence is a continuous effort and striving towards the goal. That is what real concentration is: when your goal, like a huge magnet, attracts you, polarizing all elements around you to serve your ascent. only through persistence does psychic energy pave the way for victory. No obstacle can hinder our path if we do not give up. Persistence allows psychic energy to gather its momentum, its right voltage and sharpness. Courage never gives up because as the obstacles meet courage, courage increases its strength. All great works in any field of human endeavour are the result of persisting courage because the courageous one knows instinctively that the victory will be one.

6. Experience

Experience is the knowledge which is accumulated within your consciousness through your failures and successes. Because of your failures and successes you now know what to do. Courage automatically uses those ways and means which lead you to success. This does not mean it does not create new ways for achievements, but it uses all available data to secure its success. 

Experience is an ever-growing ability to understand the laws and principles of nature; this brings success which, in turn, helps your achievement. Experience even helps you see that there are failures which are really successes and are successes which lead you to failure. Any time a success stops, it turns into failure. Any time a failure is stopped, it turns into success.

7. Joy

There is no courage without joy. Joy radiates from courage. If there is no joy in a courageous act, you will find that the motive power of such courage is not the psyche or psychic energy but a glamour, illusion or a post-hypnotic suggestion. Through joy, courage becomes contagious. It radiates and magnetically gathers all those who are willing to cooperate with the act of courage. M. M. Says, "Joy is a special wisdom." 

Joy provides the energy that flows into courageous acts and protects the flow from any sidetracking influences. It keeps the vision of the achievement present in the eyes of the courageous man, thus providing steady inspiration for his efforts. Joy heals the wounds received on the path of a courageous life. Joy disperses any negative accumulations in the aura of the courageous one. It builds a shield around the person through which all of the arrows of the adversary cannot penetrate. Joy changes bitterness into love; it nourishes the nerves and strengthens the heart.   M. M. says: ". . . A smile carries power."

If there is no joy in your efforts, you are destined to failure, or your efforts will lose the goal and turn away from it and change into an effort of self-seeking. All negatively polarized force eventually comes back and strikes the source. All positively charged energy creates no reaction that can hinder your path. Joy gives the quality of positivity to all your actions on all personality levels. Never was a command rejected when it was given with joy. Joy carries the command to your Innermost Centre, where you can see it as it is. You obey the command, not because it is given by someone, but because it is necessity, a task, a responsibility.

"Joy is the manifestation of the Creator's Power, illuminating a world in darkness. And Our Teaching enables all to share it, through labour."

Look at the Milky Way. What a tremendous beauty and ｅxpression of power! What a great manifestation of joy! It is this joy that penetrates your Innermost Being and leads you to greater works of courage. The power of the Creator releases the power of creativity in you. It is in this creative labour that you share in the joy of the Creator.

8. Virtue

A courageous man is a man of virtue. All vices and character defects create fear, short-sightedness, instability, lack of persistence and failure.

A virtue is the flowering of the psyche or the psychic energy. An energy release from our Innermost Core turns into a destructive energy when it hits vices located in the lower mind, the astral body or the etheric body. A real act of courage cannot be performed before we clean all our vices to such a degree that they are not restimulated, creating a chaotic condition in the personality, or do not leak the energy or misdirect the energy into the channels of vices.

Virtues provide those conditions in which a released energy gathers momentum, creates enthusiasm and paves the way for greater success. The Ancient Wisdom tells us that no virtue is granted to you or given to you; you work for it. If you are a musician, a great talent, or a great genius, you worked for it, age after age, striving in the same condition, having the same interest and knocking on the same door on different levels and with greater and greater intensity. And when, life after life and age after age, you are running with the same striving and enthusiasm, you are releasing the talent within you, the genius within you. That is how virtues come into being. If you have any virtue, you worked for it by exercising your courage.

If something is given to you, you don't have a personal virtue or any merit because of it. You must have a virtue as a goal in front of you and work for it, develop it, unfold it and open your nature towards greater beauty. If you do no do it, no one is going to do it for you. Virtues are ｅxpressions of you Inner Divinity. They synthesis of all the virtues is your real self. 

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From "The Psyche and Psychism" By Torkom Saraydarian