Do you have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition? Are you stalled out because of your fears and limiting beliefs? These are tough questions that demand some deep reflection because if you want to change, you have to have the courage to see yourself as you are and care enough to act in spite of your fears and frustrations.

We’re living in a cycle of time when one age is dying and another is being born. To live in this age of ‘in between’ requires courage and care. A choice confronts each of us as we feel our foundations shaking. Will you resist participating in the creation of a new future or will you courageously care enough to create something new from within?

Courage is a caring place within. It’s the ability to live with uncertainty and step into the inner and outer unknown where there are no well-worn paths. To live into your future means you must care enough about yourself and others to risk becoming something more. It requires listening to your inner guidance system, re-Sourcing, coming Home.

On the map of the scale of consciousness formulated by David R. Hawkins, courage is the foundation that gives rise to all other virtues and personal values. It is the platform from which all higher levels of consciousness are built. It is an assertion of the Infinite Self and the willingness to care enough to make the bold ascent to be fully human.

The acorn becomes an oak through a built in system; a puppy becomes a dog through instinct, no commitment is necessary. Humans however, become fully human through choices and commitments. Worth and dignity come from these known and unknown daily decisions. Courage then is essential to our being and becoming. Adding care for ourselves and others nurtures this courage to grow into the fullness of who we are.

I’ve delivered over four thousand speeches in my professional life and each of them demanded courage and care to prepare and deliver. Each speech was a challenge to my ego self that was concerned with affirmation, acceptance, and the fear of rejection. Each one was also an opportunity to grow into a greater awareness and willingness to succeed and fail. Each one was a small step in changing the world by changing me.

What are the challenges inviting courage from you? If you’re dealing with physical courage, cultivate a sensitivity to your body by listening to and caring for it. If it’s moral courage that’s needed, let yourself experience the deep suffering of oppression until you’re forced from within to do something about it. Social courage requires intimacy. Let go and allow yourself to be emotionally vulnerable with another. If it’s creative courage that’s inviting you, free your imagination and allow yourself to be drawn by it.

Stop, look, listen. Love, learn, laugh. Yield to the field and caring courageously, begin to enLighten Up. As you continue, you’ll be surprised by joy. You have permission to do so.