In life we are often confronted with situations in which we can take a certain decision and move towards one of our goals, but this is not easy. There is a moment that makes this decision the most important event in our life: if we act in that moment we gain all and if we don’t act we lose almost everything. This special moment can usually be perceived as a hesitation, as a break in the flow of events that gives us another perspective.

This moment of hesitation is a moment in which we are free from any previous ideas, any preconceived elements, when we are able to fly beyond the limits, but for this we have to DARE! There is much more to this DARING attitude than meets the eye.

These days I have been observing the reactions of people in the yoga school to the defamation campaign that some newspapers are spreading against NATHA YOGA CENTER. Their reactions were good from the perspective of being able to see through the smokescreen which the journalist created around this subject. Most people were surprised that an apparently reputable newspaper would do such a thing, others asked us to take immediate legal action against the journalist or the newspaper, and even more sent us messages of encouragement and solidarity. However, this is not enough! I noticed that few dared to act, to stand up and tell the truth as they know it, because it seems that they have to stand up against the entire public opinion. This case is very interesting because it shows that sometimes a newspaper can confiscate public opinion and replace it with the opinion of 3 (three!!!) people who have personal interests in the case. The other hundreds of students in NATHA YOGA CENTER may have the impression that they are standing against the public opinion if they are to tell their truth, while in reality they are just telling their truth against only three former students who have personal agendas. Apart from the immoral (and somehow illegal) manipulation that the newspaper is performing by confiscating public opinion (this is the subject of a following article) we face a problem of DARINGNESS. Three people motivated by personal interests and promoted by the agenda of a newspaper pose a big test to thousands of people to DARE or not to stand for the TRUTH. In line with these observations, here are some further thoughts on this important topic.

(see video in the end)

“To know, to wish, to dare and to keep the secret” says the ancient oral tradition of wisdom.

These four were considered the four most important principles in life, marking the path to perfection. The absence of one makes the other three meaningless and can even transform them into a mental prison.

These days knowledge is expanding exponentially as we have communication possibilities like never before. We have a vast amount of information and we are able to “connect the dots” and consequently see the bigger picture more easily than ever before. The reality that appears before us doesn’t fit (sometimes there is an immense difference) with the story that is constantly fed to us by the multitude of channels of (dis)information. Yet no one can prevent us from thinking and understanding and therefore WE KNOW!

We also have the wish to do something according to that knowledge and there are so many aspects today that require our immediate attention! We wish to perfect our being in ways that we know are possible. We wish to tell the truth about some things which we know happen in our society and are not right. We wish to be able to do something about the injustice we know goes on in our “backyard”. We wish to be able to investigate events that we know are not the way they are presented to us. We wish to be able to love and make our lover happy in the way that we know is right. We wish to be able to follow our ideals that we know are possible. Knowing all these aspects WE WISH!

Up until this point everything appears to be fine, each step in these events seem to lead to the next and evolution unfolds.

However, exactly when it comes to a practical action, when we have the moment of hesitation that gives us the freedom to act, WE DON’T DARE TO ACT in accordance with what we know and what we wish! We allow ourselves to be driven by the forces that surround us and by the desires these forces trigger inside us that seem to control “the game”. We dare not go against this apparently very powerful stream and as a result we lose our self esteem! We dare not challenge the system since we were made to believe we cannot live without the system. We dare not start an investigation on our own even if we know something is wrong and we wish to do it. We dare not begin a program of self-development even if we know we need it and we wish to do it. We dare not follow our dreams that we know are right and we wish to follow! We dare not tell the truth and we prefer to remain in the formal box of the socially and politically correct truth even if we know it is not humanly correct and we wish to say so. All in all WE DARE NOT!

Furthermore, in order to hide from this failure to dare, we quickly jump straight to the last part of the ancient phrase: we keep it secret that we know and even think to do something, but we NEVER DARE!

Without the principle TO DARE, the four principles are transformed into a mental prison instead of being the four columns supporting the “roof” over our perfected personality. Nowadays, this mental prison can be seen all over the place (if we dare to look around): “to know, to wish and to keep it all secret”!

Today this has become THE TRIPOD THAT SUPPORTS THE EGO, the mental prison in which people choose to spend their lives because they put themselves there and, after locking the door, throw away the key into the abyss of regrets.

If we learn to DARE, all four principles will work together to set us free. With this knowledge, we will wish to act and we will dare to do it, and then we will keep it secret from our ego! We will no longer consider our personality as being defined only by the events that happen to us, but we will begin to understand that we are the center of our own universe and this is a big secret!

We will dare to act silently, like the secret force of life that is always there and always secret. We will keep secret only the fact that we did it because the actions will become visible for everyone. In this way, the ego will no longer exist, being dissolved by the actions that we dare to manifest in the name of a higher principle of life that we start to directly discover in the silence of our secret place that is the soul.

It is time NOW to start learning to DARE since this is another lesson of life that sooner or later we have to take. Here is an excellent short video about this state. ENJOY and START DARING!