IF truth be known, I am often fascinated by the hidden messages of childhood fairy-tales and animated Disney productions.

Often these messages can be very subtle, but once revealed become glaringly obvious.

There is no better example of this than the great Disney film, The Wizard of Oz. I am going to particularly focus on The Lion in this film as it is of relevance to this particular article.

What was it that The Lion was searching for?  Yes you’ve guessed right, Courage, but he came to the realisation that his search would be futile if he didn’t have a heart.

So it is clear from this film that there is a definite link between Courage and the heart. We often hear phrases bandied about like – ‘That team has no heart’. ‘He spoke from the heart’ – ‘You nearly put the heart crossways in me’ and ‘he put his heart and soul into it’. We hear of powerful characters like ‘Richard the Lionheart’ and the Lion is the chosen symbol that represents the great victory of The Battle of Waterloo.

A great question to ask at this stage is ‘why is it that the heart is so connected with courage?’ A solution to this might well come from our exploration of the French language.

You see the French for ‘heart’ is ‘le Coeur’. That is where the word ‘courage’ originates from!

When we ‘speak’ from the heart we say exactly how we feel about any particular subject without fear or fervour. In that space we get to know our true selves and we also reveal our true selves to others.

In other words, ‘what you see is what you get’ and in a funny way most people like that about a person. There is no mask, just an honest revelation of one’s true feelings.

Perhaps there is one rider to this, in the sense that sometimes we have to assess the situation and take into account, the sensitivities of a situation – for example at this festive time of year we have to take into account the sensitivities of a child when we talk about Santa Claus.

Let common sense prevail . As a side note, my father always said that; “The thing about common sense is that they gave it the wrong name – It’s not that common.”

So speak the truth or forever hold your peace!

To thine own self be true !

A key to unlocking this is my great and favourite subject ‘Meditation’ or Mindfulness.

An example of practicing meditation is when we concentrate on our breath. What I mean by this is if we focus our minds on the process of how we breathe.

We follow the path of our breath in through our nostrils down into our lungs and slowly we continue and follow the process as we breathe back up out through out nostrils and mouth again.

This is best achieved when done in a slow calm focused manner.

You see what is happening here is our breath is acting as ‘an Anchor’ and keeps us away from our thoughts as it is impossible for us to be ‘in our thoughts’ and connected with the process of the breath at the SAME time. You cannot be in two places at the SAME time.

So by logic, if we are connected with our breath, we are not in our thoughts so there is ‘Absence’ of thought that that particular moment.

If there is absence of thought there is absence of ‘Fear’, as it is impossible to have fear without thought.

I must at this stage put a prerequisite to the above statement as what I am referring to here as fear is ‘Psychological fear’ (there are other types!) i.e. fear that originates from our thoughts.

The breath if used in this manner can connect us with our body-energy and particularly to our heart if we wish to speak or write without fear.

In other words, we speak the truth of what we feel without any fear of danger.

This usually leads to an honest and engaging conversation and at least the person you are speaking to knows exactly how you feel but as I said above it is best done with some awareness of the sensitivity of others.

POST NOTE: As I write this article live my son informs me that in fact it was the tinman who was looking for a heart and the Lion got a medal for courage, but the theme of the article remains the same!

Next week I am going to write about – Courage Part ll