As long as you want something, you will do just that. It depends on what you want. Indulging in certain pursuits is often futile leading nowhere or back to square one. If you say, “I want to be at peace with myself.” That’s a very frustrating and difficult goal because everything you are doing to be at peace with yourself is what is destroying the peace that is already there. You have set in motion the movement of thought which is destroying the peace that is there, you see. Thought is an interloper thrusting itself into and disturbing peaceful functioning of the physical/biological life of the cellular human organism. It is very difficult to understand that all that you are doing is the impediment, is the one thing that is disturbing the harmony, the peace that is already there.
You know the story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The red queen has to run faster and faster to keep still where she is. That is exactly what is done sometimes: running faster and faster but not moving anywhere.
You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, or go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by someone or something. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.