Courage
Yes, unicorns are sweetness and light, but they are not all sweetness and light. They are also mystery and shadow, idealism and action, and even fierceness, aggression, and righteous anger. They will go out of their way to avoid stepping on insects and allow tiny birds to braid their shining manes with feathers and moss, but they will also not hesitate to fight to the death to protect themselves, their home, and those they care about. They stay hidden from the human world not out of shyness or fear, but out of a fundamental disagreement with many of the values that are exhibited by our mainstream culture. In fact, unicorns are social creatures and are well loved by their many friends in the forest and natural world.
You, dear unicorn ally, would do well to heed their example. While it’s wonderful to allow your sensitivity and compassion full rein, without the simultaneous courage to be who you are, step outside your comfort zone, and take action on your dreams and the causes you care about, your life will seem boring, static, and stale. You will lose the passion and wonder that called you to this path in the first place. Your body may even begin to cry out by showing you signs of illness and lethargy. And your soul’s light will slowly dim, depriving the world of the unique healing and magic only you can offer.
Of course, by its very nature, moving out of our comfort zone is always uncomfortable. Speaking up and speaking our truth can be terrifying at times. Taking action on our dreams, desires, and the causes we care about can activate our vulnerability and even sometimes our feelings of resistance and shame. But, as the unicorn teaches us, being courageous in daily life is also exhilarating, enriching, and necessary. It’s necessary for our own well-being and also for the well-being of the world.
If we fear one thing above all, it should be to let fear hold us back from living the lives of our dreams.
Your Wildness
It’s easier to live your courage when you also own your wildness. What is your wildness? It’s the largest part of your DNA and your ancient evolutionary roots. It’s the part of you that sees an open field and wants to run through it, that feels laughter flow through the deepest part of you like wind through an aspen grove, and that never hesitates to frolic in the sparkling ocean waves.
Of course, it’s also the part of us that wants to push someone when we get angry, chew our food with our mouths open, and stomp our feet when we don’t get what we want. (Clearly, there are reasons our elders saw fit to domesticate us.)
Now, though, you are at a point in your personal evolution when you can respect the manners you have learned while still wielding your wildness with mastery. You can learn to feel its current pulsating through you like a djembe drum, but you need not act on every single impulse it suggests.
Can you feel it there, beneath the language and the manners and the sophistication? Breathe in deeply. Breathe out fully. Repeat. Let your breathing follow a natural rhythm, but pay attention to when you are breathing in and when you are breathing out. After this paragraph, stop reading for a moment, and continue this attentive breathing until you begin to feel yourself inhabit a deeper part of your body and soul. Continue even longer until you tap into the vastness at the heart of who you are. All the emotions are there: all the love, all the anger, all the courage, all the fear. All the laughter is there too, and so is the desire to push people and chew sloppily and run wildly through the waves. It all simply awaits your presence and patience as you breathe into it all and let it be what it is.
This vastness is where your true courage lies, as well as your deep inner knowing of who you are and why you have come here into this human form. Your passion, your anger, and your love are arrows pointing to your path.
The mastery comes from reconnecting to your true, eternal, wild nature and then, moment by moment, choosing which impulses are appropriate to let rip and which are not. (Yes, stand up for yourself. No, don’t punch anyone. Yes, now’s an appropriate time to ask that person out on a date. No, it’s not an appropriate time to lick their face.) Do be aware that reclaiming your wildness will cause you to be conscious of more everyday pain in the form of vulnerability, passion, and heartbreak. But it will also cause you more everyday joy in the form of elation, power, and true success. So you see, masterful wildness is the only viable choice. (Unless you long for a life filled with numb mediocrity, which I know you don’t.) Besides, we can even learn to love the pain and let it be a portal to even more beauty. Poets do it all the time.
Owning Our Heartbreak
If the most popular #unicorn posts on Instagram are any indication, today’s mainstream unicorn associations most often involve cupcakes, children’s birthday parties, and blow-up pool toys. But the unicorn’s more traditional roots involve many a sad story of being hunted, killed, and cruelly exploited. And what else would you expect? Perhaps more than any other symbol, unicorns broadcast the message of purity, integrity, and the pristine magical power of the untouched natural world. Considering the increasingly harmful behavior of humans toward each other and the planet in recent centuries, one can see why our predecessors told stories of this pure-hearted creature being slaughtered, ensnared, and betrayed.
Heartbreakingly, one also can see why today’s unicorn symbolism is often so two-dimensional and plastic. While we may still enjoy the symbol, many of us have given up on the ideal of preserving the pure heart and soul of nature and have relegated it to the realm of child’s play—something appropriate for sparkly stickers and whimsical cake decorations, but nothing more. Additionally, some of us have become so disheartened by what we see happening to our planet and in the world, we prefer to retreat into our sparkly rainbow world of candy and plush toys.
This is not to discourage you from occasionally enjoying unicorn-themed birthday treats and other colorful or shimmery merchandise. Rather, it’s to acknowledge that those of us drawn to unicorn wisdom are not two-dimensional or shallow or childish, and it will not serve us to believe that we are. We are, in fact, deeply alarmed and pained by the institutionalized suffering of other people, animals, plants, air, water, and the entire planet.
In addition to acknowledging this painful truth, the entire world will benefit when we also choose to own it, feel it deeply, and transmute it into beauty through creative action and artistic expression.
What’s more, once we own the emotional pain we carry (from all sources), we become empowered to heal it. Doing so allows us to move forward in every area of our lives without being hampered by fear. Owning our pain shows us that even if we encounter something that hurts, we can do more than just handle it: we can heal it, transform it, and emerge stronger and wiser than we otherwise could have been.
193Unicorn Portal Key #8:
Own Your Deepest Pain
If you examine your memories of times when you were overtaken with grief or heartbreak or longing, you will discover that those feelings were rooted in love. Why else would your heart have been in so much pain? And when you look even deeper, you see that wherever there is love deep enough to cause you pain, there is also the most profound joy. Because love is what we are here for, and joy is the reward for feeling that love, even at the expense of our pain. That’s why, for those of us who choose to own the darkest midnight of our pain, that pain eventually cracks our hearts open to the blinding sunrise of our joy.
This etheric key glows with the rosy radiance of dawn after a particularly long and dark night.
To obtain it, sit in front of your unicorn altar or somewhere else where you won’t be disturbed. If you’d like, light a candle and some incense. Sit with your spine relatively straight in a comfortable way. Set a timer for twenty minutes, then close your eyes and breathe. Notice your breath and allow it to deepen. Continue to breathe while noticing when you breathe in and when you breathe out. When your mind wanders, even if it’s been doing so for some time, as soon as you notice, simply bring your attention back to your breath. Once the timer dings, open your eyes.
While this is a simple practice, it is also profound. Bringing your attention back to your breath allows your breath to get into deep places in your body, mind, and spirit. If there is stagnant, unhealed, or festering emotional pain, it will touch on that pain and the pain will begin to move. That’s why it’s a good sign if you feel resistance or boredom: push through anyway and you will uncover the pain. It’s also a good sign if you find yourself crying, whether or not you understand why.
Try this just once, and you’ll know firsthand: it takes courage. If you made it twenty minutes, you were courageous indeed. (To reiterate, successful completion of the breathing portion of this exercise does not need to entail perfect attention to your breath. Minds wander; it’s what they do. As long as you bring your mind back to the breath whenever you notice it wandering, you’re fulfilling the requirements for this key.)
Now that you’re in a receptive and open state, feel into your deepest heart. What pain is presently living there? Write it in your journal.
I am in pain because Mother Earth is being exploited. I am in pain because polar bears are losing their habitat. I am in pain because my parents got a divorce when I was three. I am in pain because I miss my cat since she died last year, and I wish I could have done more to save her. I am in pain because I say mean things to myself when I look in the mirror. I am in pain because I’m worried I’ll never be good enough…
Continue until you’ve been as honest with yourself as you possibly can be and mentioned every emotional ache and wound you can currently detect. If you can cry after you’ve come to this point, that’s wonderful. Crying is a beautiful saltwater bath for your soul. If not, though, don’t force it.
Next, look at what you’ve written and feel the pain as fully as you can. Get in touch with the deep ache in the center of your heart. Then create art out of the ache: paint, draw, sculpt, collage, create a short film, choreograph a dance piece, or write a song, poem, play, or short story. Even if you don’t think of yourself as creative, create something for the sake of the exercise: you don’t have to show it to anyone if you don’t want to. And don’t hold anything back out of politeness or care for others. Transforming pain into art can be a great blessing to the world. For example, remember the times you’ve been struck by the beauty of life and love while listening to a sad song (like “Yesterday” by the Beatles or “Wild World” by Cat Stevens) or watching a heartbreaking film (like Moonlight or The Deer Hunter). Funny or sweet art can also be powered by pain, such as the movies Wall-E, Bambi, and Harold and Maude.
Once you’ve created your art, you’ve earned the key. Congratulations! Close your eyes and imagine adding it to your collection.
Authenticity Over Safety
Now that you’ve chosen to feel your pain, how do you feel? Fine, right? And possibly, in a way, even better than you did before? As you can see, painful feelings are not the most crushing and damaging thing to your soul. Resisting and suppressing painful feelings, on the other hand, cryogenically freezes your joy.
This brings up an important point. For unicorn people like us, it’s important to get the hang of telling the difference between our intuition and our fear. For example, most of us feel some natural shyness before going to a party where we don’t know a ton of people. Usually, our reticence to get enthusiastic about the party is not our intuition telling us not to go. Rather, it’s our comfort zone asking us to stay in it. The problem is, if we listen to our comfort zone, we’ll never go anywhere fun or meet anyone cool. In these cases, we must push through the initial inertia and get ourselves out in the world. Quite often, once we do, we are rewarded with wonderful things such as exhilaration, fun, opportunities, and supportive new friends.
Of course, sometimes our intuition actually is telling us to stay home and not go to the party. For example, if you’ve been going full steam and you haven’t taken any downtime for a while, your body and emotions might need some time to regenerate with a blanket and a good book. There might be something about the party’s host (or any other aspect of the gathering) that doesn’t feel totally right to you, and your intuition is giving you the tip-off that the party isn’t actually somewhere you’ll want to be. That’s why it’s important to tune in deeply and see: Is this just fear of moving out of my comfort zone or might it actually be my intuition alerting me that something isn’t for me? This isn’t just true for parties. It’s also true for career decisions, creative projects, travel opportunities, personal relationships, and other situations.
Don’t worry: if you’re committed to being honest with yourself, you’ll be able to tell the difference if you simply choose to look a little deeper into your feelings. Additionally, in the next chapter, you’ll be cultivating a deeper and more vital relationship with your intuition.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”5 This points to an important clue: if there’s something you deeply wish you could do, but you think you can’t, that’s your comfort zone asking you to stay in it and not your intuition at all. This, for instance, is why so many people are so acutely afraid of public speaking. It’s a fear that has a bite to it because deep down, most of us actually adore the idea of standing in front of a crowd, saying words that are important to us, and then being heard, understood, and appreciated for what we have to say. You can notice this pattern, also, in those who go out of their way to assure everyone that they are terrible writers or artists or dancers. They are shutting down their joy for fear of being vulnerable. Of course, few of us are perfect at something the first time we try it, but being perfect isn’t the point. Living our lives is the point: giving things a try when we think they might open us up to the flow of everyday adventure and ecstasy, whether or not we impress people or win any popularity awards.
With all of this in mind, make a list in your journal of the things you would like to do but think you cannot do. What ideas make your heart beat a little faster? What makes you feel uneasy or even terrified but also exhilarated to contemplate doing? I’m not talking about legitimately dangerous things like standing in the middle of a busy freeway. I’m talking about life-enriching things like playing bass in a band, getting your PhD in child psychology, or moving to Asheville, North Carolina. Breathe deeply as you brainstorm, remembering what Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy) famously declared: “Fear is excitement without the breath.”6 Consider a roller coaster and you will clearly see that the line between fear and excitement is the very definition of fun. And choosing to walk that line is what allows you to follow the example of the unicorn by living a courageous and joy-filled life.
The Valiant Heart
In this world we are often trained to do what is known as “playing it safe.” This looks like a lot of different things, but it often involves putting a damper on your dreams in some way. For example, when you say you want to be a film director, your parents might tell you, “That’s a hard life. It’s a better idea to get a business degree and find a job with a good company.” Or, when you say you want to move to New York City, your best friend may say (in a disapproving tone), “Wow! But you’ve never been there. You don’t even know anyone there, do you? And it’s really expensive, isn’t it?” If we let them, even facial expressions and vocal inflections can discourage us from moving forward on our dreams.
Of course, your mother, father, best friend, or anyone else who may express discouragement is not usually doing so with malicious intent. Usually they are doing it for one or both of the following reasons: (A) because they are worried about us, and (B) because they are afraid of following their dreams and it makes them feel uneasy when someone else does.
It’s important to separate the world’s tendency to frighten us away from our dreams from what is authentically true for us personally. Is it hard to be a film director? Yes. It takes a lot of work. But when it’s work you care about passionately, it’s joyful work fueled with enthusiasm. You know what’s much harder than working passionately with enthusiasm all day? Working at a job you don’t care about, day in and day out. Perhaps you will get paid more reliably and consistently, but if your days are drab and uninspired, are you truly wealthy? Might it be more accurate to say that true wealth is getting to wake up and do what you care about all day? Similarly, if your heart truly desires to move to New York City, you must move there! If you realize you don’t love it or it’s too expensive, you can always move back home or somewhere else altogether. But the only alternative to following your heart is living your entire life wondering what it would have been like if you’d followed your heart. Talk about expensive! That’s much too high a price to pay.
So now that you’ve gotten clear on the things your heart of hearts is asking you to do, take action on them. Take one step toward a dream, and then another. Keep moving forward and pushing through the fear. That’s what courage is. The root cour means “heart.” Living with courage is equivalent to living with heart. Indeed, without courage, the radiant sparkle of your heart will slowly but surely diminish. You mustn’t let it! Stoke that sparkle straightaway!