Day 206 – Being fearless is essential–not the just fearlessness of competition or first days on a new job, but true fearlessness within every moment. In today’s reading Rolf asserts this happens on the mat, writing: “Many postures require us to unafraid. Others require us to let go, to surrender parts of ourselves while other aspects of ourselves are being strong and expansive.”
The inability to do this, the fear of letting go, is asmita, “an exaggerated sense of I-ness, or self-centered fear.” What is there to fear in most situations? Failure is opportunity to learn. If we envirsion ourselves “as being weak and vulnerable to attack” always, we live fearful. The world becomes “split into things that can make us feel less afraid and things that make us even more afraid” and, even on the mat, we “experience this vague fear as an inability to know peace for more than fleeting moments.”
