courage

• strength of character

3:5.61. Is cour­age—strength of char­ac­ter—de­sir­able? Then must man be reared in an en­vi­ron­ment which ne­ces­si­tates grap­pling with hard­ships and re­act­ing to dis­ap­point­ments.

• facing facts of life

132:3.4Re­vealed truth, per­son­ally dis­cov­ered truth, is the su­preme de­light of the hu­man soul; it is the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the in­dwelling spirit. The eter­nal sal­va­tion of this truth-dis­cern­ing and beauty-lov­ing soul is as­sured by that hunger and thirst for good­ness which leads this mor­tal to de­velop a sin­gle­ness of pur­pose to do the Fa­ther’s will, to find God and to be­come like him. There is never con­flict be­tween true knowl­edge and truth. There may be con­flict be­tween knowl­edge and hu­man be­liefs, be­liefs col­ored with prej­u­dice, dis­torted by fear, and dom­i­nated by the dread of fac­ing new facts of ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• facing facts of life

133:4.11To the run­away lad Je­sus said: “Re­mem­ber, there are two things you can­not run away from—God and your­self. Wher­ever you may go, you take with you your­self and the spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther which lives within your heart. My son, stop try­ing to de­ceive your­self; set­tle down to the coura­geous prac­tice of fac­ing the facts of life; lay firm hold on the as­sur­ances of son­ship with God and the cer­tainty of eter­nal life, as I have in­structed you. From this day on pur­pose to be a real man, a man de­ter­mined to face life bravely and in­tel­li­gently.”

• heart of Jesus’ teachings

140:8.20Je­sus did not at­tack the teach­ings of the He­brew proph­ets or the Greek moral­ists. The Mas­ter rec­og­nized the many good things which these great teach­ers stood for, but he had come down to earth to teach some­thing ad­di­tional, “the vol­un­tary con­for­mity of man’s will to God’s will.” Je­sus did not want sim­ply to pro­duce a re­li­gious man, a mor­tal wholly oc­cu­pied with re­li­gious feel­ings and ac­tu­ated only by spir­i­tual im­pulses. Could you have had but one look at him, you would have known that Je­sus was a real man of great ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of this world. The teach­ings of Je­sus in this re­spect have been grossly per­verted and much mis­rep­re­sented all down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era; you have also held per­verted ideas about the Mas­ter’s meek­ness and hu­mil­ity. What he aimed at in his life ap­pears to have been a su­perb self-re­spect. He only ad­vised man to hum­ble him­self that he might be­come truly ex­alted; what he re­ally aimed at was true hu­mil­ity to­ward God. He placed great value upon sin­cer­ity—a pure heart. Fi­delity was a car­di­nal virtue in his es­ti­mate of char­ac­ter, while cour­age was the very heart of his teach­ings. “Fear not” was his watch­word, and pa­tient en­durance his ideal of strength of char­ac­ter. The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tute a re­li­gion of valor, cour­age, and hero­ism. And this is just why he chose as his per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives twelve com­mon­place men, the ma­jor­ity of whom were rugged, vir­ile, and manly fish­er­men.

• confidence of thoroughgoing honesty

146:3.2The apos­tles were a bit dis­con­certed by the open man­ner of Je­sus’ as­sent to many of the Greek’s propo­si­tions, but Je­sus af­ter­ward pri­vately said to them: “My chil­dren, mar­vel not that I was tol­er­ant of the Greek’s phi­los­o­phy. True and gen­uine in­ward cer­tainty does not in the least fear out­ward anal­y­sis, nor does truth re­sent hon­est crit­i­cism. You should never for­get that in­tol­er­ance is the mask cov­er­ing up the en­ter­tain­ment of se­cret doubts as to the true­ness of one’s be­lief. No man is at any time dis­turbed by his neigh­bor’s at­ti­tude when he has per­fect con­fi­dence in the truth of that which he whole­heart­edly be­lieves. Cour­age is the con­fi­dence of thor­ough­go­ing hon­esty about those things which one pro­fesses to be­lieve. Sin­cere men are un­afraid of the crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of their true con­vic­tions and no­ble ide­als.”

• confidence of thoroughgoing honesty

160:1.7Suc­cess­ful liv­ing is noth­ing more or less than the art of the mas­tery of de­pend­able tech­niques for solv­ing com­mon prob­lems. The first step in the so­lu­tion of any prob­lem is to lo­cate the dif­fi­culty, to iso­late the prob­lem, and frankly to rec­og­nize its na­ture and grav­ity. The great mis­take is that, when life prob­lems ex­cite our pro­found fears, we refuse to rec­og­nize them. Like­wise, when the ac­knowl­edg­ment of our dif­fi­cul­ties en­tails the re­duc­tion of our long-cher­ished con­ceit, the ad­mis­sion of envy, or the aban­don­ment of deep-seated prej­u­dices, the av­er­age per­son prefers to cling to the old il­lu­sions of safety and to the long-cher­ished false feel­ings of se­cu­rity. Only a brave per­son is will­ing hon­estly to ad­mit, and fear­lessly to face, what a sin­cere and log­i­cal mind dis­cov­ers.

160:1.8The wise and ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion of any prob­lem de­mands that the mind shall be free from bias, pas­sion, and all other purely per­sonal prej­u­dices which might in­ter­fere with the dis­in­ter­ested sur­vey of the ac­tual fac­tors that go to make up the prob­lem pre­sent­ing it­self for so­lu­tion. The so­lu­tion of life prob­lems re­quires cour­age and sin­cer­ity. Only hon­est and brave in­di­vid­u­als are able to fol­low valiantly through the per­plex­ing and con­fus­ing maze of liv­ing to where the logic of a fear­less mind may lead. And this eman­ci­pa­tion of the mind and soul can never be ef­fected with­out the driv­ing power of an in­tel­li­gent en­thu­si­asm which bor­ders on re­li­gious zeal. It re­quires the lure of a great ideal to drive man on in the pur­suit of a goal which is be­set with dif­fi­cult ma­te­rial prob­lems and man­i­fold in­tel­lec­tual haz­ards.

70:2.52. Put a pre­mium on for­ti­tude and cour­age.

26:5.3That, then, is the pri­mary or el­e­men­tary course which con­fronts the faith-tested and much-trav­eled pil­grims of space. But long be­fore reach­ing Ha­vona, these as­cen­dant chil­dren of time have learned to feast upon un­cer­tainty, to fat­ten upon dis­ap­point­ment, to en­thuse over ap­par­ent de­feat, to in­vig­o­rate in the pres­ence of dif­fi­cul­ties, to ex­hibit in­domitable cour­age in the face of im­men­sity, and to ex­er­cise un­con­quer­able faith when con­fronted with the chal­lenge of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Long since, the bat­tle cry of these pil­grims be­came: “In li­ai­son with God, noth­ing—ab­so­lutely noth­ing—is im­pos­si­ble.”

101:3.73. Gen­er­ates pro­found cour­age and con­fi­dence de­spite nat­u­ral ad­ver­sity and phys­i­cal calamity.

16:6.9These sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sights, these cos­mic re­sponses, are in­nate in the cos­mic mind, which en­dows all will crea­tures. The ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing never fails to de­velop these three cos­mic in­tu­itions; they are con­sti­tu­tive in the self-con­scious­ness of re­flec­tive think­ing. But it is sad to re­cord that so few per­sons on Uran­tia take de­light in cul­ti­vat­ing these qual­i­ties of coura­geous and in­de­pen­dent cos­mic think­ing.

160:2.83. The en­thu­si­asm for liv­ing. Iso­la­tion tends to ex­haust the en­ergy charge of the soul. As­so­ci­a­tion with one’s fel­lows is es­sen­tial to the re­newal of the zest for life and is in­dis­pens­able to the main­te­nance of the cour­age to fight those bat­tles con­se­quent upon the as­cent to the higher lev­els of hu­man liv­ing. Friend­ship en­hances the joys and glo­ri­fies the tri­umphs of life. Lov­ing and in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions tend to rob suf­fer­ing of its sor­row and hard­ship of much of its bit­ter­ness. The pres­ence of a friend en­hances all beauty and ex­alts ev­ery good­ness. By in­tel­li­gent sym­bols man is able to quicken and en­large the ap­pre­cia­tive ca­pac­i­ties of his friends. One of the crown­ing glo­ries of hu­man friend­ship is this power and pos­si­bil­ity of the mu­tual stim­u­la­tion of the imag­i­na­tion. Great spir­i­tual power is in­her­ent in the con­scious­ness of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to a com­mon cause, mu­tual loy­alty to a cos­mic De­ity.

100:7.15His cour­age was mag­nif­i­cent, but he was never fool­hardy. His watch­word was, “Fear not.” His brav­ery was lofty and his cour­age of­ten heroic. But his cour­age was linked with dis­cre­tion and con­trolled by rea­son. It was cour­age born of faith, not the reck­less­ness of blind pre­sump­tion. He was truly brave but never au­da­cious.

143:1.6“Be­cause my Fa­ther is a God of love and de­lights in the prac­tice of mercy, do not im­bibe the idea that the ser­vice of the king­dom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Par­a­dise as­cent is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all time, the rugged achieve­ment of eter­nity. The ser­vice of the king­dom on earth will call for all the coura­geous man­hood that you and your cowork­ers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loy­alty to the gospel of this king­dom. It is easy to die in the line of phys­i­cal bat­tle when your cour­age is strength­ened by the pres­ence of your fight­ing com­rades, but it re­quires a higher and more pro­found form of hu­man cour­age and de­vo­tion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth en­shrined in your mor­tal heart.

143:1.7“To­day, the un­be­liev­ers may taunt you with preach­ing a gospel of non­re­sis­tance and with liv­ing lives of non­vi­o­lence, but you are the first vol­un­teers of a long line of sin­cere be­liev­ers in the gospel of this king­dom who will as­ton­ish all man­kind by their heroic de­vo­tion to these teach­ings. No armies of the world have ever dis­played more cour­age and brav­ery than will be por­trayed by you and your loyal suc­ces­sors who shall go forth to all the world pro­claim­ing the good news—the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men. The cour­age of the flesh is the low­est form of brav­ery. Mind brav­ery is a higher type of hu­man cour­age, but the high­est and su­preme is un­com­pro­mis­ing loy­alty to the en­light­ened con­vic­tions of pro­found spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. And such cour­age con­sti­tutes the hero­ism of the God-know­ing man. And you are all God-know­ing men; you are in very truth the per­sonal as­so­ciates of the Son of Man.”

111:6.2The cour­age re­quired to ef­fect the con­quest of na­ture and to tran­scend one’s self is a cour­age that might suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tions of self-pride. The mor­tal who can tran­scend self might yield to the temp­ta­tion to de­ify his own self-con­scious­ness. The mor­tal dilemma con­sists in the dou­ble fact that man is in bond­age to na­ture while at the same time he pos­sesses a unique lib­erty—free­dom of spir­i­tual choice and ac­tion. On ma­te­rial lev­els man finds him­self sub­servient to na­ture, while on spir­i­tual lev­els he is tri­umphant over na­ture and over all things tem­po­ral and fi­nite. Such a para­dox is in­sep­a­ra­ble from temp­ta­tion, po­ten­tial evil, de­ci­sional er­rors, and when self be­comes proud and ar­ro­gant, sin may evolve.

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.