Fear Beneath
Whatever narrative you are choosing right now, set it aside for a moment, still yourself, and you may feel a tremble in your heart, one of wisdom, one of uncertainty, and herein lies the place we hide from in all our grasping, all our need to know, to figure out and control, herein lies the invitation to us all in these times of quieting, to dwell here for a while, humbled, confronting that which compels us to answer and solve, to keep busy fretting and seeking: death, dear one, death of the one you’ve known yourself to be, the fear beneath all other fears, the fear that keeps you preserving that which no longer works, while, underneath, preserving a self who clings to life. _____________________ […]
The Courage to Break Free from Worry
“Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts so seriously.” ~ Eckhart Tolle It takes courage to break free from worry. This may sound strange, but there is comfort in the fears that underly our mental fretting and catastrophizing. They are familiar, more familiar than we know, and they buffer us in insidious ways. For these reasons and more, we easily get stuck in fear and thus in worry. Many don’t associate worry with fear. They spend their minutes, hours and days worrying, often believing it’s a feeling—“I feel worried”—without considering that worry, like planning and analysis, is a state of mind. The thinking kind of mind. Fear, however, is clearly an emotion, and it’s the primary and primal one giving […]
To Welcome Someone into Our Heart, First We May Need to Learn to Push Others Away
There is a great emphasis put on letting love in. “Open your heart” says the self-help teacher. “Give yourself to love” sings the romantic poet. They make it sound so easy! Yet, for the one who learnt that love is unsafe, the heart is quite guarded. Coiled around it, usually for decades, is protective barbed wire. The closer one gets to the heart, the closer one gets to the wound and the protective mechanisms keeping people away. For this wounded one (who makes up many, if not most, Euro-westerners), asserting boundaries may be the necessary first step. Before letting love in, the old truncated impulse to protect must be exercised. Completing survival responses A precursor to the vulnerability of receiving is so often the vulnerability […]
Let Fear Motivate You—Fear Of What Will Happen If You Don’t Act On Your Heart’s Knowing
Fear is a great motivator. It’s not just our longing that drives us, our dreams and desires, but also our fear—fear that we may live the rest of our lives ignoring our heart’s knowing and neglecting our joyous, creative potential. Listen to your inner whispers; heed the nudges of your heart wishing to capture your attention. But if you find yourself persistently procrastinating, delaying your wistful nature, take a moment to consider the consequences. Consider what will come of you, what you will be relegated to, if you do not commit as best you can to this one, precious life. Feel the weight of gravity that stubbornly pulls you down into the never-ending banal job, the deadening relationship, the continual denial of your feelings, creativity […]