Entry 322 - Entering the Unknown Courageously

9/30/20

“Courage will come to you. Just start with a simple formula: Never miss the unknown.
Always choose the unknown and go headlong. Even if you suffer, it is worth it—it always pays. You always come out of it more grown up, more mature, more intelligent.”

                

                        -  Courage By Osho

Constantly going into the unknown will help you become courageous; it will help you become free from fear itself, and it will prepare you for death. When you are constantly going into the unknown, you are experiencing a sort of death of what is and replacing it with that which is not familiar to you. You make the unknown your reality. 

You befriend it. You behold it. You trust it. You allow it to carry you as if you were floating gently down a river. Even though the unknown carries risk, you know it’s worth it because, even if the risk proves to be true, you still grow, you still mature, you still learn, and you conquer the fear that kept you caged in the known.

What do you have to lose by going into the unknown? Death is imminent; actually, every day, your body experiences countless births and deaths within it and without. We are surrounded by cycles of birth and death. New friends come into your life—like a birth—then old friends leave—like a death. A new cell is born, and an old cell dies. A new skill is learned: birth; an old habit is gone: death. Every part of our life is intertwined and engulfed in a web of birth and death.

But when one chooses only the known, they refuse to partake in the holiness of the cycle of birth and death. They only like the middle part, the in-between, the known of knowns. They like seeing the cage. They like seeing the four walls because that means safety from death. But they also miss out on birth because the two go hand in hand. 

So day by day, they slowly let time kill them, and by the time they get to their deathbed, they cling helplessly to life. They cry, they scream; they don’t want to go because their whole life, they didn’t truly live. They just did what they needed to feel safe and away from anything that ignited the fear of death, but now the fear of death is here, and nothing they can do can save them. 

They didn’t prepare for death because they never chose to go from the known to the unknown, so as they cling to the last bit of known in their life, they unconsciously slip away in a state of immense fear. The fear they tried to run from their whole life has become them.

Don’t let this be you. Don’t let your fear become a part of you. To release yourself from fear, you have to move through it. You have to defeat it. You have to see through it. You have to get comfortable with being okay with risk. You have to get comfortable with the idea of moving from the known to the unknown on a daily basis. 

You have to do things that scare you, that make you fearful, because once you do and you come out okay, you destroy that fear that once controlled you, and you experience freedom. This liberation will follow you and continue to grow stronger and stronger until one day, you can face your final unknown, death, and instead of clinging to life and being afraid as you die, you go forward with courage, knowing your whole life you’ve been preparing for this moment.