Steve's development of Courage

[seeker5]

Steve,

In the book you write that Courage is the combination of Power and Love. You've also written elsewhere that you had developed a tremendous amount of Courage relatively speaking by the time you met Erin. I'm sure your Courage has grown tremendously since then, but at the time you still had a lot of Courage and had developed it over the years.

However, you also write in the book that when you met Erin, you were about Truth and Power, while Erin was more about Love and Truth. So I'm curious, since Courage is alignment with Love and Power, how you were able to develop so much Courage considering you were not aligned with Love at the time.

[Rose of Cairo]

I would consider myself a courageous person. At least relatively speaking, compared to my other characteristics. Others often say I'm courageous, too. And until now I've been totally not aligned with Power. I'm just learning that right now.

But I haven't read the book yet, so... Dunno!

I'm curious to see what Steve will say about it.

[Savage]

Great question.

When I wrote about meeting Erin, I was referring to Love in the context of a relationship. I was weak in the area of connecting with people. I had plenty of friends, but my relationships weren't very deep. Erin helped me connect with people on a much deeper level, going from communication to communion. And this helped me conenct more deeply with different parts of myself.

When I wrote about building Courage, I was referring to Love in the broader context of connecting with what you want. Even thought I developed a lot of Courage through dishonest means (i.e. not aligned with Truth), I was actually aligned with Love (in terms of how the book defines it) because I had chosen to connect with shoplifting. I loved that I was doing something that scared me on a daily basis. In fact, I felt pretty happy about it at the time.

Of course eventually I fell out of alignment with Love and Power on that path due to the lack of alignment with Truth. Stealing became an addiction. I kept doing it because I felt compelled, not because I was choosing to do so.

So you can actually do something like shoplifting to build Courage, at least temporarily. But if you aren't aligned with Truth, Love, and Power, the lack of alignment in one area will eventually bring the others down. It's actually a good thing that this happens because it helps you grow.

Later in life I found better ways to build Courage that didn't have that alignment problem with Truth. Learning public speaking and doing comedy improv are good examples. You can certainly build Courage without being reckless.

So you can actually be aligned with these principles in some areas of your life but not others. For example, you might have a relationship that really connects with you (aligned with Love) but a job you dislike (out of alignment with Love). In the long run, that's an unstable situation though.

[seeker5]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense.