Another characteristic of human nature — perhaps the one that makes us most human — is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence trans… - M. Scott Peck

Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cure. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace — a gift of God, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair.

But while all fear is not laziness, much fear is exactly that. Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lose what we have if we venture forth from where we are now. In the section on discipline I spoke of the fact

The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.