The Fear Cure: Cultivating Courage as Medicine for the Body, Mind, and Soul

As a child, Cameron Clapp was a well-behaved identical twin, born into a large Mormon family. He and his twin, Jesse, were athletic, handsome, popular, and academically gifted. Their parents got divorced when the twins were in middle school, and the divorce sent shock waves through the family that changed Cameron into a rebellious teenager with green and blue earrings and green and blue hair. He quit caring about school and started partying every weekend, never considering how his drinking would change his life. Even getting arrested for driving under the influence at the age of 15 while “borrowing” his neighbor’s minivan failed to knock Cameron off his self-destructive path.

Cameron and Jesse lived across the street from the train tracks, right next to a campground where they regularly sneaked in late at night, wearing camouflage gear, and stole hundreds of beers from the coolers of sleeping campers. As they drank into the wee hours of the night, Cameron never considered what would one day happen on those same train tracks he sat on.

Cameron was 15 years old on September 14, 2001, three days after the tragedies of September 11. He and his twin were very patriotic, planning to join the armed forces when they grew up, so when President Bush told the American people to light candles in honor of those who had fallen on September 11, Cameron and Jesse built a shrine to the victims with candles, a flag, and a spotlight before heading to a three-kegger party to help them numb the pain. They drank there until the party got busted, then they headed to a second party, where they switched from beer to hard alcohol.

Later that night, back at home, Cameron stumbled outside to make a phone call and noticed the memorial he and Jesse had built for the September 11 dead. Wanting to get a better view of the shrine, he crossed the street, lit a cigarette, and sat down on the train tracks to reflect.

Others tell him that the train cut off his legs first, way up high above his knees. Then the impact flipped his body over and his right arm got caught under the train. The engineer of the freight train called 911, and miraculously, Cameron survived long enough for the paramedics to put tourniquets on his severed limbs. They put his legs on ice, but there was nothing left to his arm—only a hand.

The doctors in the emergency room didn’t expect him to live. His family was called to come say good-bye, but Jesse was nowhere to be found. He had run away after hearing the sirens, knowing something horrible had happened the way only an identical twin can.

The next thing Cameron remembered was waking up in the ICU three days later, sensing that something was very, very wrong. When he opened his eyes, his whole family was there, and the first thing he felt was an overwhelming feeling of gratitude.

His first words were to his father. “Hey, did we find that bastard Osama bin Laden yet?”

Then Cameron looked down to see that his legs weren’t there. He looked to his right side and saw that his right arm was gone too. In a panic, he looked down between the stumps of his legs to see if what he called his “manhood” was still there. He breathed a sigh of relief to discover that it was. At least he had that, he thought.

After three weeks of rapid progress in the hospital, when Cameron was finally discharged, that’s when the fear and grief that had mostly spared him in the hospital swept over him. Wanting to avoid the pain of facing all he had lost, Cameron went back to partying, which was particularly hard on his family. They had to witness Cameron’s transformation from the handsome, active, confident, independent, funny teenager to a disabled, depressed, insecure, sedentary, substance-abusing teenager who needed help doing anything.

Cameron was on a downward spiral for seven years. Then one day in 2008, he discovered that his twin Jesse’s room was locked. Cameron and Jesse were living together, and Cameron got a bad feeling about the locked door, so he busted it down with his prosthetic leg and found his twin lying on his bed, dead from an overdose. Cameron says it was the worst day of his life.

Right after Jesse’s death, Cameron got very sick with a high fever, and he called 911. While he was recovering from an infection, Cameron realized he was at a critical choice point. He could let Jesse’s death be the last straw in a life that was going down the tubes. Or he could tap into an inner strength he barely knew even existed within him. Cameron chose life.

When I asked Cameron what helped him make that choice, he said, “I had people I could count on. I had a girlfriend who helped me a lot at the time, even though we had broken up. My spiritual life also got me through, my belief in a power greater than myself. I read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and A New Earth. That was a springboard for my spiritual growth, my self-esteem, and my confidence. That was my turnaround. My brother lost his life. I almost lost mine. But life is too precious. We’re lucky to get a chance to make our lives mean something. I had to grow up and take responsibility for the rest of my life.”

After that wake-up call, Cameron had to deal with his anger and grief, then buckle down—literally: to strap on his prosthetic legs and get back to life. This required adjusting his attitude, visualizing where he wanted to be, making a plan, and committing to radical change.

After becoming self-sufficient with two prosthetic legs and a prosthetic arm, Cameron was able to get a job working as a patient advocate and speaking at workshops held by physical and occupational therapists. Soon afterward, he was asked to give his first big inspirational speech at an inner-city high school in Minneapolis on Valentine’s Day.

A few days later, he got an e-mail from a foster child girl who didn’t feel loved by anyone—not her foster parents, not her friends, and not by the boyfriend she didn’t have. She said she went home after Cameron’s speech, and although she had been contemplating suicide, she flushed all the pills down the toilet and decided she was going to take action. She had a heart-to-heart with her foster parents, talked to her counselor at school about how she was being bullied, and decided to choose life like Cameron had.

This defining moment made Cameron realize that he had a real opportunity to serve others. He tried to make his message his brother’s legacy. Since then, he has learned to run, surf, ski, and golf on his prostheses, and he now serves as a camp counselor at Camp No Limits, helping young kids with limb loss learn to make the most out of life. He also participates in Operation Surf, a surf clinic for injured service member amputees. He said, “I go out there as an ambassador. I paddle out there with these short feet called ‘stubbies’ and surf waves with these guys.”

Cameron could have chosen to let his life be ruled by fear, but instead, he chose to let his greatest fears heal him. When you let loss initiate you rather than destroy you, when you allow life to be your teacher, even the most tragic loss can be a blessing. Cameron probably once believed in Fearful Assumption #2: “I can’t handle losing what I cherish.” And yet, after the tragic losses he has experienced at such a young age, I suspect he might now embrace Courage-Cultivating Truth #2: “Loss is natural and can lead to growth.” Having demonstrated not only that he can handle what most people would consider their worst nightmare, but also that he can alchemize loss into an opportunity to realize his life’s purpose, Cameron can help us identify times in our own lives when we experience that loss is natural and can lead to growth.

If we’re willing to let them, pain, grief, and loss are here to wake us up from the mindless slumber of the Small Self and free us from the soul cage of false fear. Graciously receiving such a gift does not come easily to most of us. In modern culture, we tend to have an unhealthy relationship with loss. In indigenous cultures, loss is more easily accepted as a natural part of life. But in our materialistic modern culture, we have no cultural mythology that helps us deal with loss, so we become loss averse. We view loss as failure, rather than being willing to accept it or even embrace it for the teachings that accompany it. We punish children by taking things away from them. We reward them by giving them things. We train our children to associate loss with personal failure, shame, guilt, and being “bad.” Loss is not seen as a natural part of life and welcomed as an essential part of growth. Instead, we resist loss at all costs, which means we also resist change, since change always requires loss in some form. Nothing begins without something ending.

In order to avoid change and its accompanying loss, we are willing to tolerate stagnation, to let our souls die slow deaths in order to avoid uncertainty and loss. Anything that requires risk becomes unacceptable. This is how fear is born. Dress rehearsing tragedy is just one way we armor against the vulnerability of love and loss, which triggers a feeling that Brené Brown calls “foreboding joy.” Most of us have experienced this: awash in gratitude for all we have, we are suddenly bulldozed by a fear of having it taken away.

In her research, Brené Brown was shocked to discover when people reported feeling their most vulnerable. Often, it’s when things are going best for us—when we’re standing over our children while they’re sleeping, or loving our jobs, or going into remission, or falling in love.

In other words, we’re most afraid when we feel we have the most to lose. Because we care so much, we love so much, we have so much, we are terrified that we might blink and lose it all. And the reality is, we might. Life is impermanent, and nothing we do can protect us against this harsh truth.

Because we can’t tolerate this truth, we armor against it with a variety of tools Brené Brown calls “vulnerability armor.” Foreboding joy is one type of armor. But there are others, like perfectionism. Perfectionism stems from fear, because we’re afraid that if we fail to be perfect, we’ll disappoint others, be rejected, fail, and be ostracized by those whose approval matters to us. Perfectionism is not the same as striving for excellence. It’s the misguided belief that if we abide by some external definition of “perfect,” we will be protected from the shame, blame, and judgment we most fear.

Numbing is another vulnerability shield. Because we’re not well equipped to handle our fear of loss, shame, blame, and judgment, we numb out with alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, food, sex, caffeine, even my addiction of choice—busyness.

It’s natural to try to armor ourselves from the vulnerability we feel when faced with the reality that every blessing holds within it the risk of loss. A healthier approach lies in learning to make peace with that vulnerability. But how do we do this? How do we comfort ourselves in a world that threatens to expose us to what we most fear or take away from us what we most cherish?

The vulnerability of how much you have to lose can gut you. You may find yourself closing your heart, even to those you love most, because you just can’t bear the thought of losing what you cherish so much. Fear is born here too.

We hate to face this painful truth, but life is impermanent. Everything we cherish we will one day lose. And life most often teaches us our greatest lessons through the vehicle of loss. Loss, if we let it, can initiate us into a soul-driven life. Loss can lead to a sort of rebirth that matures us, grows the wisdom within us, and opens a door to the next phase of our growth.

In her book Broken Open, Elizabeth Lesser writes, “Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego’s will to prevail. To listen to the soul is to stop fighting with life—to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty, and to wait.”

Whether the adversity we fear or have already faced is the death of a loved one, a divorce, the loss of a job, the dissolution of a romance, the loss of good health, or a financial loss, when we lose what we cherish, we have a choice. We can break down or we can break open, as Lesser describes. A breakdown in the wake of loss can lead to fear, depression, anxiety, isolation, addiction, or cynicism, and make us emotionally unavailable or unable to cope. It may even lead to illness or suicide. But there’s another way to respond to loss. Loss can lead to an unexpected blossoming. Through it, we can become more of who we really are than we ever thought possible.

Many of us walk around surrounded by a shell that protects us from the outside world. Whether we like it or not, loss offers the opportunity to crack the shell. Having your shell cracked in the wake of loss can feel unbearably painful; you may feel like a raw neuron, unprotected from everything that threatens to prick you, and want to put on even stronger armor. But this isn’t the only way to deal with loss. You can choose to let it break you open and leave you that way, available for living a richer, deeper life with your heart wide open.

How we deal with adversity affects how courageous we can become. Whether we’re talking about illness, the loss of a loved one, heartbreak, career disappointment, financial problems, or sexual abuse, it’s so easy to fall into victim mode and feel helpless, at the mercy of what feels like a hostile universe. We may not be able to change the circumstance of what happens, but we can always put on new lenses and view the adversity with a new perspective.

What if, instead of being victims of adversity, our souls—on some level—choose these challenges as a way to help us grow? I once gently asked someone with Stage 4 cancer whether she thought it was possible that her soul and God sat down for tea before she was ever born and decided that, in order for her to grow into the enlightened being she was becoming, she would need to get cancer at a young age. Is it possible that cancer or abuse or divorce or bankruptcy might be necessary for spiritual development?

Back in 2006, when my Perfect Storm blew through, I felt like a victim of a hostile universe, and I thought I would never survive the pummeling of adversity. But now, through the lens of my “retrospectoscope,” I see that it was all perfectly orchestrated to crack the shell of my ego and spawn me toward who I was meant to become. My soul chose well, even though my Small Self hated it all. I can now say that my Perfect Storm is the best thing that ever happened to me, because it woke me up from my unconsciousness.

We can all try to remember this whenever things don’t go the way our Small Selves wish they would. Whenever adversity strikes, first we need to grieve and feel our genuine emotions, but then we can choose to put on different lenses. “Look! Soul growth! Bring it on. Let’s lean in and milk it for all it’s worth.”

When adversity strikes, it’s so tempting to attach to the outcome we want. Whenever I find myself praying for what I want, I remind myself of a Taoist story I love.

An old farmer had been tending his crops for many years when his horse ran away. When his neighbors heard the news, they sympathized. “Such bad luck.”

The next morning, the horse appeared, bringing with it three other wild horses. The neighbors said, “How wonderful! Lucky you!”

The following day, the farmer’s son hopped on the back of one of the untamed horses, but the horse bucked him off, and he broke his leg. The neighbors said, “How tragic. Such misfortune.”

The next day, military officials arrived in the village to draft young men into the army. When they came across the old farmer’s son and saw his injury, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

When adversity strikes, we just never know when something that looks like misfortune may actually be a blessing. So I’ve stopped praying for what I want. Instead, I simply offer up this prayer: “May the highest come into being.”

ENDBEGINNINGS

When Rachel Naomi Remen and I were sitting at her kitchen table, talking about a healthy way to view loss, she told me this story from her book Kitchen Table Wisdom:

I was 35 years old before I understood that there is no ending without a beginning. That beginnings and endings are always right up against each other.

That was the year I first went to Esalen Institute. I was just learning how to make jewelry and had cast a silver ring. I was proud of the design. At that time many craftsman were in residence at Esalen and the ring attracted a great deal of admiration and attention. Several suggested that I drive back up the coast a few miles and show it to the jeweler at a gallery we had passed on the road.

It was about to rain, but I made the trip anyway. The jeweler loved the design, and I left my ring with him so that he could recast it and sell it to others. I drove back down Route 1 to Esalen with difficulty. Some serious rain had begun.

During the night, a wild and violent storm hit the coast. At breakfast I was shocked to hear that we were isolated. A two-mile stretch of Route 1 just north of Esalen had fallen into the ocean. The gallery was gone and my ring with it. Through my numbness, I could hear several inner voices commenting on my loss. The loudest was my father’s saying, “This never would have happened if you hadn’t allowed a total stranger to exploit you.” And my mother’s: “You can never be trusted with anything valuable.” Mixed in was the voice of a very young part of myself that kept looking at the place on my hand where the ring had been yesterday and saying, “Where is it? It was right here.”

In anguish, I went to the edge of the cliffs and stood looking down at the Pacific, still wild from yesterday’s storm. Down there somewhere was my ring. As I watched the ocean hammer the cliffs, it began to occur to me that there was something natural, even inevitable, about what had happened. Pieces of the United States had been falling into the ocean for thousands of years. Perhaps all those familiar blaming voices were wrong. There was nothing at all personal in it, just some larger process at work.

I looked at the place on my finger again. This time it really was an empty space. For the first time I faced a loss with a sense of curiosity. What would come to fill up this space? Would I make another ring? Or find one in a thrift shop or a foreign country? Or would someone give me a ring someday because he loved me?

I was 35 years old and I had never trusted life before. Anything I had ever let go of had claw marks on it. But this empty space was different.

Letting go of precious objects, money that supports a certain lifestyle, social status, or professional kudos can be exceptionally painful, especially if we’ve wrapped our value around such things. This kind of loss triggers primal survival instincts, which often revolve around childhood traumas that surface in the face of loss in order to be healed. Letting go in relationships may be the trickiest of all losses, because such loss elicits feelings of rejection, abandonment, insecurity, and unworthiness, which also tend to stem from childhood wounds.

Somehow, I inherited a belief that all relationships, especially those with people I love deeply, are meant to last forever. I always figured that if I love someone, we should both be sitting next to each other in our rocking chairs when we’re 90, and if we’re not, it’s because somebody screwed up, probably me. My therapist jokes that I’m a doctor, so it’s in my nature to do CPR on dead things. I have a tendency to go overboard to try to save a relationship I value, even when it’s obvious to everyone else that it’s over. But someone once told me people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Knowing how to discern the difference is a skill worth acquiring.

It’s part of the human condition to suffer from the broken heart. Every single one of us has experienced this trauma at some point in our lives. The pain can feel so unbearable that we armor up against it, often shutting out intimacy before it even happens. My daughter, Siena, and I have discussed this often. When Siena was five, her heart got broken by a little girl named Vivien, the daughter of my best friend, born two weeks after Siena. Siena and Vivien had known each other since they were three months old, but they hadn’t actually seen each other since, because Siena and I lived in San Francisco and Vivien lived in Chicago. Siena had heard great tales of Princess Vivien, and Vivien had heard wondrous stories of Siena and her fairy magic. But finally, they were together in one place when my best friend and Vivien came to visit. They got to chase fairies in a Zen garden, play on the beach, sleep in the same bed every night, bathe together with Roberto the toy penguin, eat fish and chips at the English pub, watch fireworks over San Francisco on the 4th of July, listen to a dharma talk about Harold and the Purple Crayon at Green Gulch Zen Center, spend hours in a hot tub, and share other magical adventures that made them fall in love. They were so in love that Siena pretty much ignored me, her father, and my visiting best friend that entire week.

But then life as the teacher showed up, and Vivien had to go back home to Chicago.

Siena wept when she left. Inconsolably. For hours. She threw herself onto her bed and pointed to the trundle bed where Vivien had slept and said, “Every time I look at her bed and she’s not there, my heart hurts.” Then she wept some more. A friend of mine had just died, so I cried when she said this, because my heart hurt too.

Siena said, “Mommy, it hurts so much to love Vivien that I don’t think I ever want to see her again.”

That’s when I realized we needed to have a talk. I curled Siena up on my lap and told her I understood how much it hurts when someone you love has to go. I assured her it was all worth it. I told her that the loving is worth the leaving and that in order to fully experience the joy of loving others, we have to be willing to lose them. I said, “We have to give those we love permission to break our hearts.”

She looked at me with a furrowed brow and said, “But Mommy, I would never, ever break your heart.”

I said, “Ah, but you might. Without even meaning to. You could leave me, and I would cry, and I would look at your bed, and I might wish you had never slept in it because it would hurt so much that you’re not there.”

Siena started to cry and said, “But I would never do that to you, Mommy. I would never leave you. I will always love you and live in this house with you until I’m old.”

I told her how I had given my father—her Papa—permission to break my heart—and when he died two weeks after she was born during my Perfect Storm, he did. He cracked it wide open and it spilled all over the floor and made me think about sewing it shut with big wire sutures that would keep it closed forever. But then I decided to keep my heart open, in spite of how much it hurt. I told Siena that someday, someone she loved, someone she gave permission to break her heart—like me or her father or her Nana or our dog, Grendel—might break her heart, and she might feel just like she did at that moment, like she didn’t want to give anyone permission to do that ever again. She might want to shut down her heart so it wouldn’t hurt like it did when Vivien left.

Siena got it. She said, “Mama, when you fall in love, you should always leave a little crack in your heart, even when you feel like you should lock it. And that way, the right person can always sneak in.”

Right before she fell asleep, Siena said, “I’m going to give Princess Vivien permission to break my heart.”

I said, “I think that’s a good plan.” We spun the dream catcher, and turned the lights out.

A year later, when Siena was six, our beloved Grendel died quickly and unexpectedly of sudden heart failure, and the grief felt almost unbearable. As we held Grendel’s dead body in our arms, Siena wailed like we all wanted to and said, “Grendel, I gave you permission to break my heart, and you went and broke it.” We were at the veterinary hospital, and even the staff wept.

Two months after we lost Grendel, when our hearts were still raw from the loss, Siena said, “Mama, I’m ready to give another dog permission to break my heart.” We talked about how dogs don’t live as long as humans and how getting another dog meant we would likely have to endure the same kind of loss one day. But, I reassured her, we could hope that a new puppy would live at least ten years before we had to say good-bye again. Siena nodded her agreement, and two-month-old Bezoar joined our family.

Six months later, I could barely breathe when I got the phone call from the kind man calling from Highway 1, tearfully confessing that he had just run over Bezoar in his car. Siena and I buried her tiny body next to Grendel.

It has taken us a while to recover from the back-to-back losses, but Siena came to me recently and said, “Mama, I’m ready again. I’m ready to let another dog break my heart.” Soon, we will once again invite another dog into our lives, and we will love fiercely until it breaks us open yet again.

We’ve all had our hearts broken, over and over. The hardest thing you’ll ever do is keep your heart open in the face of serial heartbreak. Closing off your heart is the easy way out. It makes sense. Nobody would blame you. But then you’d miss out on the love.

Life is full of traumas to the heart, and perhaps more than anything else, it triggers false fear because we’re so afraid of heartbreak. Love feels risky. Love feels unsafe. Love feels like something to protect against. But closing the heart is never the solution.

It’s impossible to consider our discomfort with the unknown without pointing out the elephant in the room—death. Not only our pets’, but our own. Most people perceive death as the ultimate loss, though perhaps it is the ultimate beginning. We can’t really know what happens beyond death, because death is a mystery. Every religious tradition has its own beliefs about what lies beyond death, but when it comes right down to it, science can’t prove what comes next. We can only be curious. Is life over once our hearts stop beating? Is there a heaven? Does hell exist? Is there a long-bearded God who sits in judgment and decides where we go? Do we reincarnate into other human bodies? Do we become angels? Do we become ghostly spirits, sticking around the earthly plane to haunt humans? Do we come back in some other form? Or do we simply decompose in soil-filled graves and cease to exist? The truth is that nobody knows for sure, and this fills us with fear.

What if we could know? What if we knew with certainty that death was nothing to fear? What if we weren’t afraid to lose our own lives or those we love because we knew that what came next was actually an upgrade? What if death represented not failure or loss, but the natural course of the soul’s journey once it has learned what it’s here in human form to learn? As we discussed in Chapter 2, imagine how things might be different if health care professionals didn’t fear death. How might health care change if we trusted death as a natural, even welcome part of life? Would we stop grasping at every little test and treatment that might prolong life? How might end-of-life care change?

How might a peaceful acceptance of the inevitability of death affect all our other fears? Perhaps we wouldn’t be so afraid of suicide bombers or the Ebola virus or plane crashes. We might stop living in fear of pesticides in our food and nuclear bombs and hurricanes. We live in a world filled with uncertainty, but if we weren’t afraid to die or lose someone we loved, perhaps we’d be less ruled by our fears. And how would that feel? What would life be like if we were less afraid?

Because so many of us have such an unhealthy relationship with death, we forget that death is a natural part of life. As Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra, M.D., say in their documentary film by the same name, “Death makes life possible.” Only through a healthy relationship with the inevitability of death will we come into right relationship with our fear of loss. This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t try to avoid death when we can. No need to tumble over a cliff if we can simply step back from the edge. Sure, it’s not a bad idea to avoid walking around dark alleys in dangerous neighborhoods at midnight. It’s worth teaching our children not to jump into swimming pools when they don’t know how to swim. There’s nothing wrong with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation when facing a cancer diagnosis. This is why true fear can increase the length of time we’re blessed to live. But assuming that we’re mindful about doing what’s within our power to enjoy a long, healthy life, perhaps we can see death as a natural part of life, not something to fear but the beginning of what’s next.

Whenever I think about death, I can’t help thinking about Lee Lipsenthal, M.D., a physician who spent much of his career working with Dean Ornish, M.D., and teaching physicians how to find balance in a medical life. Lee lived by the credo “Today is a good day to die.” Lee didn’t have a death wish. His friends and students knew what he meant—that every day, every bit of love had been expressed, that every dream had been fulfilled, that Lee didn’t hold back from living the richest expression of life that he could, and that death is nothing to fear when you have no regrets. Such a philosophy is easier said than done when you’ve just been given a terminal cancer diagnosis at a young age, as Lee was. In his book Enjoy Every Sandwich, Lee wrote, “I … knew that the more fear and anxiety I had, the higher my stress hormone levels would be. High stress hormones wear down the immune system’s function over time, giving cancer a better chance to grow. Fear promotes cancer growth; calm decreases it. My mode of being became ‘get quiet, enjoy life, and let my body do what it knows how to do—cure cancer.’”

In the end, cancer won, but until then, Lee enjoyed every sandwich—BLTs, to be specific. If we’re willing to face it, the inevitability of death grants us the opportunity to relish the blessing of life while we still have it.

Some teachers and researchers, such as psychologist Michael Newton, Ph.D., who examined the experience of his patients under hypnosis, posit that life on earth is in essence a school for the soul: here, we live out the challenges and triumphs and, yes, losses we have chosen in order to learn and grow. I’m not suggesting we should skip straight from grief to gratitude when we lose what we cherish. Don’t even think about telling a grieving parent who has just lost a child, “Don’t worry, his soul and yours agreed that he would die young so you could learn the spiritual lesson of nonattachment.” This is not helpful when someone is in the throes of human grief.

Knowing that loss can initiate you and trusting that every struggle comes hand in glove with soul growth doesn’t diminish the pain of loss when you’re in the heartbreak of it all. But when you look back, you may start to see the gifts. Over time, once you’ve experienced enough loss, you’ll start to sense the growth opportunities in such moments, and the knowledge that growth accompanies loss can help ease the suffering.

To get this perspective, I find it helpful to practice observing my life from the witness position. Martha Beck makes the analogy of playing a video game. As a human, you can get very engaged in one of these games. Some of them are so real that you start to fully identify with your video game avatar. Your avatar may have a name, a costume, a personality, and special skills that equip you to play your best. You may get so lost in the game that you forget to eat or pee or feed your kids. You might be so engrossed that if someone were to interrupt you while you were playing the game, you’d startle, having briefly forgotten you’re not your avatar. In truth, you’re the human holding the joystick.

Now step back one more level. What if, instead of just being a human playing a video game, you’re a soul playing a human who is playing a video game? What if your whole human life is as much of a game as the video game is? And what if you can manipulate the game of life, just as you manipulate the joystick? What if life is not some random, chaotic sequence of events, but a carefully orchestrated symphony of perfectly timed, artfully composed movements, conjured up between you and the spiritual forces that guide you to help you grow as a soul?

Think of the greatest challenges you’ve ever faced—childhood abuse, the abandonment or neglect of a parent, illness or disability, the loss of a loved one, betrayal, heartbreak, divorce, poverty, being the victim of a violent crime, selling your soul for a paycheck, or whatever has hurt you the most. What if, instead of being a victim of these traumas, on some soul level, you chose these challenges? This doesn’t mean you condone wrongs perpetrated on you. It doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be angry or grieving or heartbroken. But you can distance yourself enough from the game to see that there’s a part of you that is safe from all this hurt, a part that is standing back, watching you feel what you feel and learn what you need to learn.

For us as humans, joy is fun. It’s easeful. It’s sexy and silly and hilarious and connecting. It’s full of love and beauty and massages and heart-openings. Joy can teach us just as well as loss can. But joy tends to take longer, while loss puts us on the fast track.

Once you start viewing loss as an opportunity for growth and initiation, you stop fearing loss, you start accepting what is, and you absorb the lessons life on earth is trying to teach you. And once this happens, once you let yourself become a student of life, humbled by life, no longer resisting it, something shifts, and life no longer needs to teach you by whacking you with cosmic two-by-fours. Once one of your greatest fears comes true, you learn that you are not in control the way you thought you were, and you let go if you’re willing to let fear cure you of your constant grasping. Once you learn what you’re meant to learn from loss, you can lean into joy without holding back. Perhaps our ability to surrender into loss with an open heart is the measure of a successful life.

COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #6

Be the Witness

When you find yourself getting mired in the emotions of loss (or any other painful emotions, for that matter), try this exercise, which helps you remember that you are not the avatar, getting shot at by life; you are the soul playing the video game of earth school.

If loss is causing you to suffer, notice the emotions you feel—grief, loneliness, anger, hurt, sadness, disappointment, anxiety, resentment. It’s easy to mistakenly identify with those emotions as who you are. But what if instead of being the emotion, you are simply the soul who is with that emotion? What if, instead of saying “I am sad,” you shift to “I am with sad”? What if, instead of being a sad person, you are the expanse of consciousness witnessing the part of you that feels sad?

Try the following exercise:

If you start to feel an emotional disturbance, such as anger, frustration, sadness, or hurt, name the feeling and notice it.
Step back and witness the part of you that is disturbed by this feeling. You are not this feeling. The part of you that is feeling this feeling is your avatar. You are the soul who is witnessing the angry, hurting avatar.
Close your eyes and give yourself as much time as you need to fully witness the emotional disturbance. Let your soul offer love, compassion, and comfort to the avatar part of you that is suffering.

Even in the midst of negative emotions, the expanse of pure consciousness that is you at the soul level can be at peace, even when the avatar part of you is grieving or hurt or angry. You can ride the emotions like a wave, and they will pass right through you. Studies show that most emotions last no longer than 90 seconds unless we attach stories to them. You have a feeling of being lonely—and this will pass through you quickly unless you make up a story about how you’re lonely because you’re unlovable and worthless and nobody will ever love you and you’re going to be alone forever. When you attach to the story, you suffer needlessly and the suffering can linger for years. But you don’t have to choose to suffer this way. Your soul can find peace, comfort, and stillness even in the most difficult times if you’re able to view your negative emotions from this witness position.

COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #7

“I Accept” Meditation

Most of the unnecessary pain we experience when we face loss stems from our resistance to the loss. Because we falsely assume that whatever we once had should last forever, we resist, yet the resistance causes more suffering than the loss itself. Next time you find yourself resisting loss, try closing your eyes and spending 20 minutes in meditation repeating the mantra, “I accept.” When you accept what is rather than resisting, you come closer to freeing yourself from unnecessary suffering.

This sounds easier than it is. It’s no small feat to accept cancer, the death of a child, the loss of a limb, getting fired, the end of a romance, or bankruptcy. But resisting won’t bring back what you’ve lost. If you find this exercise challenging, go back to Courage-Cultivating Exercise #6 and practice being the witness. Notice the part of you that resists your loss, and open your heart with compassion to your avatar self that doesn’t want to accept what is. Love and accept even that part of you. Acceptance is your key to freedom.

To listen to a free “I Accept” meditation, download the free Prescription for Courage kit at TheFearCureBook.com.

COURAGE-CULTIVATING EXERCISE #8

Find Gratitude in Loss

Pull out your journal and reflect on a loss in your life. Maybe a loved one died, or maybe you were abandoned by a parent or rejected by a lover. Maybe you lost your money or your house or your pet or your best friend. Maybe you had to let go of a dream or say good-bye to perfect health. Don’t ignore any sad, hurt, or angry feelings that come up, but do allow yourself to shift your focus so you can pay attention to any blessings that may have arisen as a result of the loss. Have you ever felt that a loss is initiating you into some new phase of life? Has your heart opened? Has your soul grown because of what you experienced? Write down your reflections.