Comfort is sought when courage is needed...

A few days ago I was in supervision with one of my teachers, Jane Peterson @humansystems and she said something that really resonated with me : comfort is sought when courage is needed.

I feel that this applies to me but also to a lot of my clients and to the general world climate. We forget that freedom is dependent on courage. Freedom (or free will) is just the possibility to make choices. There was never a deal or a guarantee that those choices would be easy, have no unpleasant consequences, or come at no cost to us. There is no guarantee either that those choices will be things that we like, or that will make us well regarded by other people.

Very often when we say "my freedom is being restricted" or "I feel like I have no choice" or "I'm stuck in this situation" what we are really saying is: "The choice that I have to make/want to make is really uncomfortable and I don't have the courage to suffer the consequences for it".

Because our freedom is inalienable, it's unbreakable and we will always have a choice no matter what situation we're in, even if the choice is between life and death. That's all freedom (or free will) is. We are lucky enough to live in a society where, for a lot of us, expressing our freedom through our choices comes at very little cost to us but that's not the case for most people in the world. And maybe what we need most in these times is courage.

Because when we anchor yourself in our ability to choose, in the deeply embodied awareness of our freedom, then there is no place for fear, resentment or feeling that life is unfair. And that makes us more able to face consequences for our choices, and also to stand up to what goes against our value from a very secure and stable stance, instead of being in reaction to what we perceive as a threat or an injustice.

That means that instead of being in resistance to something, we'll be in integrity with ourselves. And maybe that will lead to the same action, but the feeling of it will be a world of difference.