In any given moment, a man’s growth is optimized if he leans just beyond his edge, his capacity, his fear. He should not be too lazy, happily stagnating in the zone of security and comfort.
Nor should he push far beyond his edge, stressing himself unnecessarily, unable to metabolize his experience. He should lean just slightly beyond the edge of fear and discomfort.
O Constantly. In everything he does.
nce you are honest with yourself about your real edge, it is best to lean just beyond it. Very few men have the guts for this practice.
Most men either settle for the easy path or self-aggrandize themselves by taking the extreme hard path. Your insecurity may cause you to doubt yourself, and so you take the easy way, not even approaching your real edge or your real gift. Alternatively, your insecurity may lead you to push, push, push, seeking to become victorious over your own sense of lack.
Both approaches avoid your actual condition in the moment, which is often fear. If you are stressfully avoiding your fear, you cannot relax into the fearless.
Your fear is the sharpest definition of your self. You should know it. You should feel it virtually constantly. Fear needs to become your friend, so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it. Rather, primary fear shows you that you are at your edge. Staying with the fear, staying at your edge, allows real transformation to occur. Neither lazy nor aggressive, playing
your edge allows you to perceive the moment with the least amount of distortion. You are willing to be with what is, rather than trying to escape it by pulling back from it, or trying to escape it by pushing beyond it into some future goal.
Fear of fear may lead you to hang back, living a lesser life than you are capable. Fear of fear may lead you to push ahead, living a false life, off- center, tense and missing the moment. But the capacity to feel this moment, including your fear, without trying to escape it, creates a state of alive and humble spontaneity. You are ready for the unknown as it unfolds, since you are not pulled back or pushed forward from the horizon of the moment. You are hanging right over the edge.
By leaning just beyond your fear, you challenge your limits compassionately, without trying to escape the feeling of fear itself. You step beyond the solid ground of security with an open heart. You stand in the space of unknowingness, raw and awake. Here, the gravity of deep being will attend you to the only place where fear is obsolete: the eternal free fall of home. Where you always are.
Own your fear, and lean just beyond it. In every aspect of your life.
Starting now.
