F E A R
Fear is always about the future.
The anticipation of what might happen when, if. Because of what happened before that might happen tomorrow or the next moment.
Fear yanks you from the present moment.
In this moment is where your power emerges in strength. In this moment is where you are able to trust and to make confident choices about the next step on your journey. But when fear yanks you from the present, you are separated from this inner capacity. In the future, which hasn’t happened, you are working with limited resources, hamstringed.
Fear dislodges you from the power of your Center of Being.
In the present moment of your being, you have a powerful ally as the Center of your Being. This Center is the energetic origin of the balance of all of you, body, mind, heart and soul. Disconnected from Center, you are disconnected from the flow of your Being and Becoming found at Center.
Fear leaves you hanging where it is difficult to help yourself.
Disconnected from your Center of Being and this present moment, you will struggle to feel trust and confidence. You will struggle to feel capable of overcoming fear and its challenges.
Fear is powered by ego’s inflexibility.
Energetically, ego is an inflexible sense of self. At the Center of your Being, your understanding of who you are learns and grows, open like a beginner to new understandings. Ego is threatened by this confidence because fear feeds ego the doubt necessary for ego’s continued survival. Ego embraces fear as a way of maintaining control over the entire motion of your life.
Fear is also driven by ego’s absolute belief in anything but self-truth.
The domineering fear created by ego will not survive if you trust yourself. Thus, ego will promote anything as truthful except your personal truth. Fear is ego’s partner in attempting to destroy any sense of trust, truth or confidence so that ego can exert sole control of your Being and Becoming.
Fear is fed by stories – stories which want to convince you that yesterday’s bad event predicts tomorrow’s worse event.
The natural cycle is to explain to yourself why an event has occurred. This story, while helpful perhaps in the moment, over time can loose its beneficial nature and become a block to expanded personal growth. Fear will catch on these outdated stories as a way of trying to convince you of the likely success of the fear. The idea is that if you believe the story, perhaps you can avoid whatever the worse event might be.
Fear drives us toward the illusion of control.
Control is the belief you can manage the future and avoid fear’s predicted events. There is nothing that can be done to guarantee the future. Nothing. Control is illusion. Instead, you have choice about what you do in this moment.
Fear also drives us toward the illusion of perfection.
Fear wants to convince you that if you exert control, life will be perfect. The notion of perfection exists in the future where we have done good and right and are now perfect. So that perfection is not of this present moment, it always is just over the hill.
T R U S T
Trust is the ability to stay with yourself in this moment.
When you trust yourself, you are here, now, with you. Not dragged out in the future trying to be different, trying to avoid being less than.
Trust refuses to follow fear into the future.
Fear thrives when you are not present to yourself. When you have allowed fear to scare you into believing that only by being worried will you be able to keep yourself safe.
Trust releases whatever doesn’t serve.
When you trust yourself, you learn over time that what is truth of you in one moment may not necessarily be truth in the next moment. And you learn that personal growth comes from being able to be present to whatever no longer serves your Being and Becoming in this moment even if it is yesterday’s hard won truth. Truth is not static. Trust is dynamic. And your personal truth is always in motion. When you trust yourself, you live in the dynamics of truth, letting go of the outdated and the no longer beneficial.
Trust is hard because disappointment often produces blame, judgement and more fear.
However far you are on your journey, however much you have learned and grown and released, life has its challenges, its disappointment, its traumatic events. And this bumps and breaks push at you, trying to convince you that you have failed, been less than, made bad choices and shouldn’t trust yourself.
Trust comes in little steps.
Often when there is trouble, we believe that big motions, giant steps will get us out of the mess and moving in a better direction. However, trust comes in small motions, bit by bit, where we learn that we can trust self. And this is true because we often interpret events as backward steps instead of seeing them as opportunities for new learning. So what can be a positive step forward, may instead be interpreted as failure and a step back. Little steps, consistently taken, create trust.
Sure, it’s possible to live most of life in fear.
And that is the choice that some people will make about their lives.
And it’s not the only choice.
Because, ultimately, fear is a choice.
And a choice that can be changed.
The choice to not choose fear often comes when the pain of being separated from yourself becomes too painful.
Like a juggler standing on a moving object trying to find balance and not drop anything, fear challenges us, attempting to shake our world and question our balance.
Fear is a house of cards too demanding to maintain.
Trust begins by letting go of the need or compulsion to stand in fear.
Trust comes when we let go of the need for perfection.
Instead, we move towards balance as an inner feeling, rather than proof from outer authorities.
Balance is standing in the flow without judgment because Balance always is.
Trust does not need control in the face of balance.
The Spiritual Practice to Release Fear
To release fear, bring your fear into the present moment by asking yourself:
In this moment, what do I fear?
Is there anything I can do about this fear right now?
When fear is felt in this moment, you are in this moment where you have access to the power of your Center of Being, to your capacity to trust yourself, and to your willingness to hear your truth.
And in this moment, you can be aware of whatever may be fueling your fear, especially outdated stories, past trauma, or unneeded habits or beliefs.
And you can use affirmations to help yourself shift whatever no longer serves your ability to trust yourself to move forward in life with confidence.
Remember: Fear is almost always a signal about a lack of trust.
When you feel fear raise its head, don’t run from it. Instead, bring it into the moment and embrace the fear as a source of learning. Then feel into what you don’t trust in the moment. Move toward the feeling of flow and balance, trusting that you will be able to release whatever is no longer needed.
Fear released is trust.
For a deep dive, begin with What is Spiritual Practice?
