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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Phil Stutz
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June 20 - July 3, 2023
Inner strength comes only to those who move forward in the face of adversity.
Courage is the ability to act in the face of fear. That this seems impossible to most people is because of the way we experience fear. Fear is almost always linked to an image you have of something terrible happening in the future.
To develop courage, you have to give up this illusion of future certainty.
present. The first step is to learn to experience fear without the mental image of the dreaded future event. Focus all your awareness on how the fear feels right now, in the present. When you’ve separated fear from what you’re afraid of in the future, it becomes just another kind of pain you process with the Reversal of Desire.
It’s a paradox; only when you desire fear, will you be able to take action in its presence—which is what courage consists of.
Staying in the present isn’t a state of mystical passivity, it’s an active process that takes effort. The goal is to be comfortable enough with fear so that you can act.
“When I don’t get immediate results, I become even more committed to using the tool.”
We’ve found that people who are non-avoiders actually get better rest and relaxation than others. It’s only when you face what you’re afraid of—inside you or outside you—that your mind can relax.
most obvious cue for Active Love comes when someone does something to you that makes you angry:
The cue is anger: the moment you feel it, use Active Love and keep using it until you regain your perspective and move on.
The “Shadow” is everything we don’t want to be but fear we are, represented in a single image. It’s called the Shadow because it follows us wherever we go.
It’s called the Shadow—the embodiment of all our negative traits—and we’re terrified that someone will see it. As a consequence, we expend a lot of energy hiding it, which makes it impossible for us to be ourselves.
In essence, worry had become a powerful superstition—with no more real benefit than a rabbit’s foot.
We assume (because science tells us so) that the universe is indifferent to us. Based only on what we see around us, this is a reasonable conclusion. But it makes us feel alone in a universe that doesn’t care about us. Feeling we won’t be provided for, we become obsessed with controlling our future. In that context, worrying seems to make sense.
