The Ultimate Source of Courage

I took a chance.

The gathering I just attended, The Science and Non-Duality Conference, with scientists, mystics, and artists, brought insights that I feel can be useful on our road of letting go and discovering the underlying limitless being that is the substance of all. And it all came from me taking a chance …

I presented on my book, The Ocean of Now, to great success and will share more about that another time, but first …

The night I walked onstage to perform my show, “Into The Unknown”, I tried something I’d never done: Choosing to not know what I was going to perform and not use anything I already knew. Yet I was calm. What is it that helps us feel at peace and confident amidst life’s swirling challenges, on a theater stage or on the stage of life? Read on for my proposal.

I had a global career as an actor, mime, and storyteller for 30 years – integrated with my interest in consciousness and freedom.

So what happened on stage at the conference? I improvised movement and a story based on a Rumi poem and also improvised a story based on a piece of music chosen by a friend, unheard by me prior to the show. Both improvisations were without preplanning.

The Rumi poem and my movement improvisation got a standing ovation – and after the show, many told me how courageous I was to perform from not knowing. How did I feel such ease, confidence, and even enjoyment in the unknown, with hundreds watching? First, I’ve performed since childhood and so my body has been well trained for creativity. Second, I have great inspiration in Rumi’s words. However …

What’s the parallel to life if you’re not a performer? First, what do we all have since childhood that we can rely on? The answer is beingness itself. We can also call it presence – awareness. If beingness weren’t here, we wouldn’t be either. The dilemma begins when we add our mental and emotional habits and fears to constantly reassemble an imagined character, a little me who is frightened in life.

I’ll tell you, if that character were the me that stepped onstage at the conference, fear would have been the constant. And so it is on the stage of life. Fear follows us everywhere on some level because of our constantly recreated character, the little me that we superimpose on pure being. Beingness itself has nothing to fear because it is the substance of all. Nothing is separate from it to fear.

That night when I performed, I chose to surrender to being. My body and heart organically did what was needed for an inspiring piece, then received confirmation with a standing ovation. Something went right, based on resting in being – rather than fear.

There is a great ease in this and I believe an audience and people in general resonate with it – as it is what we all yearn for. Pure being, free of fear. I imagine you’ve had glimpses of this or live with it at times. It is the ever-present undercurrent that carries us in life, like a trained body does onstage. Except beingness itself doesn’t require training, yet it does supply the wisdom, courage, and love that can organically fill every moment of our daily interactions, like it did for me onstage.

Second. As for inspiration, well, for me, offstage it is the same as onstage. I don’t mean just Rumi, but what his words refer to – the beloved and nourishing presence of being that permeates all that is. As I taste the nectar of that ever more deeply, I experience a resting and trusting, beyond the little me. I celebrate this warming light of being – in the heart and in the eyes of others looking back at me.

Thus onstage in the theater or in life, we have the option of resting, nurtured by beingness or edgeless awareness, letting the fearful little me dissolve into its calm source, like a wave reabsorbed into the ocean. This experience itself becomes our inspiration, our calling to dive ever-deeper. Then we can celebrate with our own standing ovation of joy and dance at tasting where all courage and all inspiration come from – our pure being. No rehearsal needed.

David Ellzey is a Coach and one of four global Sedona Method Instructors, a Best-Selling Author and Noted Speaker. Find out if Conscious Coaching is right for you.

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