Courage in the Face of Uncertainty:
Revealing our Shadows
By Michael Karlin
Co-President — Mythic Imagination Institute
Photo by Anne Parke Photography

All around us we are overwhelmed with terror alerts, wars in Africa and the Middle East, environmental disaster, genocide, increasing rates of HIV and other infectious disease, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, misogyny, "evil empires," and nuclear threats. According to the 2005 UNDP Human Development Report, in the 15 years since the end of the Cold War there has actually been an increase in people's feelings of insecurity in the world. You likely feel it too. The world is becoming a scarier place. We are living in a culture of fear, and that fear is becoming a cancer to those who become infected by it. This fear turns us in on ourselves. We want solidity and certainty; something solid to steady us. We turn to fundamentalism, literalism, and materialism to ground ourselves with an externalized sense of clarity and certainty. We start to believe we own the Truth, with a capital "T." Unfortunately, there is no such certainty, at least not in that way. When these don't work well enough, we numb ourselves with anti-depressants, sleeping pills, alcohol abuse, and overindulgence. This may successfully allow us to cope with the world, although it does nothing to solve its problems or enable us to live a meaningful life.

The irony is that, as scary as the world seems to be, our greatest fear is of ourselves. We are terrified of our own wounds, frailties, and mortality. It is this fear projected out into the world that manifests itself in the laundry list of terror cited above. And it is this fear that we must face first. As Michael Meade so eloquently points out in the Forward of his recently re-released book, The Water of Life, everything begins within.

The trigger for all weapons lies in the human heart. The heart is the most tormented country, where each person must battle with their own darkness, with their own incapacity to believe in life, and with their own inability to forgive themselves and others. The deepest meaning of jihad is not a war against unbelievers but the ethical struggle in the human heart...The real war occurs in the human heart, as does the real peace.

What we need now is courage — courage to face the world and courage to face ourselves. Courage is a noble virtue exalted in myths and legends, but these archetypes of courage are not locked in those stories meant to glorify a fictional character; they are there for us as patterns to reveal what is already present within us. They can help activate our own courage.

In order to face the world, we must first understand the terrain of our own darkness and integrate it into our being. Otherwise, we simply project our own darkness into the world in the name of goodness.

Courage comes from the French word coeur, which means heart. We literally need heart. We need to open our hearts and unleash our courage, but the heart cannot be fully accessed when it is veiled in shadows. There is a Chasidic belief that there is nothing in the world that does not carry within it the divine spark. Our duty is to uncover this spark and reveal it to the world. Every evil inclination can be sublimated into good. As the Talmud says, "A child born with a temperament for blood can turn out to be a murderer, a butcher, or a doctor." It all depends on how we nurture that soul and direct its intentions. This is a lifelong path on which we all must embark. This is a journey inward that can then connect us with the wounds of the world, and enable us to find the courage and the wisdom to make it better.

Models of courage exist in stories, and they exist in life. Examples of courage abound all around us of individuals who have faced the world and themselves — who have made the decision to wade in, and not be drowned. We all have this capacity within us.

December 7 to 9, the Alliance for a New Humanity will be gathering the faces of courage in Puerto Rico for the 2006 Human Forum. Individuals and organizations from all over the world who have accepted the challenge that our times pose will be present. These are people who are on the inner journey, and who are manifesting this path in the world in some form of action to contribute to creating a more just, sustainable, peaceful world. The Mythic Imagination Institute will be producing the event, weaving together archetypal stories with living stories to show how they reinforce each other and can be used to inspire us to action. Albert Schweitzer once said,

"In everyone's life at some time our inner life goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

People like this are coming to Puerto Rico to breathe in courage and to breathe out encouragement. We need each other now. Please join us in Puerto Rico.

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