I had a conversation with an advisor the other day - we talked about the state of affairs in the world.
After the conversation I pondered the world's ills and started to peel back the layers to understand why people are suffering and causing others to suffer.
Yoda tells Luke in The Empire Strikes Back,
“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
People are deeply divided right now because we've let our fears manifest into hate, which has created suffering for others. Fear has robbed us of empathy and compassion.
Even though fear is natural and oftentimes useful, we must not live in fear nor make all of our decisions in it.
Meditation, self awareness, and stillness help us hack our subconscious by training ourselves to recognize when we're feeling fearful and judgmental. We can then ask, "is this fear serving me?"
What are we afraid of?
I can say from the experience of being in the war that I never allowed myself to feel fear, even in the really scary moments. Cause I knew once I feel fear, I will be on the dark side.
How would that fear serve me? Would it help me to get through the war? No, so I have to replace it with optimism and take real actions to move forward.