Maintaining Your Courage

In epic tales or adventure movies the hero, with great courage, blasts through the problem and succeeds. Then the story is over. Supposedly everyone lives happily ever after. The wise magician knows that in real life situations demanding courage will arise again and again. Chocolate and fattening foods have to be resisted until all of the weight is off. Exercise has to be a daily habit if you want to get fit. A job that isn't perfect has to be worked until you have earned your college tuition or until the house payments are made. Habits that are strongly ingrained have to be replaced by new habits. Courage is a constant need. It must be maintained even when it seems boring or hard to do so. That is when your magical creative self can come to the rescue. I know a man who was dealing with a powerful problem of claustrophobia. He was working at enlarging a crawl space under a house that was being remodeled. He got very creative about congratulating himself on how much bigger he was making the hole hour by hour. He celebrated filling the container with the dirt he had to remove by bringing it into the sunshine as an offering to his eventual success. He constantly found ways to encourage himself with praise for doing his work in spite of his fear. Now he realizes he has inner resources that he can use to deal with other hard situations. By being proud that we are facing and accepting our fears we can keep them from crippling us. We can also challenge the way others try to be fearful for us. This can hold us back. Sometimes we enjoy the way it feels when other worry over us. But watch out. It may be a form of control. It is not good to be without fear at all. Fear is there to help us be careful when we need to be. Courage is there to help us carefully refuse to be crippled by our fears. Reach out to the realm of magical energy that surrounds you to learn how to look at your fears realistically. Then develop and maintain the courage to deal with them. May the spark be with you.