The other day a client of mine after a one-to-one self-inquiry session asked me a very important question: “What do you think is the one thing that stops people from having a better life?”I paused for a moment to consider this and let my mind flip though the filing cabinet of memories of working with people over the years. A commonality came up and I said,
“Fear”.
I’ve observed this over and over again. We all want a wonderful life but when we start moving towards that life, we encounter obstacles. Sometimes we run away. Oftentimes we are on the verge of just getting what we want and then we quit. To me that’s one of the biggest tragedies in life: there is one more step to take to acheive our dream and then we back away.
If we only had the courage to take that next step.
We are afraid of so many things:
- People judging us
- Not having enough money
- Being seen as incompetent
- Being better than others
- Being alone
- Really connecting to others
- Having the wrong hairdo
- Finding the Lochness monster lurking inside
- Having others see the magnificent beauty of our soul
- plus a thousand more…
To be honest, it’s this part of the human condition that saddens me the most. I see so many people give up because of it. It’s where we lose our dreams and resign ourselves to silent desperation when we know there is so much potential inside of us. Not only this, it’s the place where we lose control of our lives and let others control us.
Politicians throughout history have known that if you can make a population afraid by convincing them they have an enemy, then you can easily control them. (There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, right?)
So how do we get over fear?
Here’s my thoughts:
A. Make fear your friend
B. Get clear you cannot be destroyed
A. Here’s an exercise you can do to make fear your friend:
- Sit in a comfortable chair and close your eyes.
- Imagine yourself in a situation where you feel fear.
- Let yourself feel the fear
- Begin to study it, be curious about it and notice where it is in your body:
what is it’s: shape, colour, size. texture, weight? - Play with it eg. Let yourself feel the fear even more….Turn up the volume of the feeling….Turn it down…Squeeze it into a different shape… Make it a different colour… Turn up the “feeling” volume again… Turn it down
- Then ask the fear if it has a message for you. There may in fact be something you need to pay attention to or the fear may tell you that it is really nothing. (All fears are not irrational. Some are actually telling you there is something to be concerned about.)
With this exercise you are training yourself to disconnect from the automatic fear reaction in the body and to let yourself experience fear without giving up. The more you can change your relationship to fear and be with it, instead of doing something to relieve it, the more you will be able get the results you want in life.
The second way:
B. Get clear you cannot be destroyed.
If we trace every one of the thousands of fears we have to their source, you will find that they all come down to one central fear: the fear of not existing (or the fear of dying).
And it’s all related to one thing; the Unknown…and in the face of that unknown we predict the worst.
For example:
If we tell the truth to others, we don’t know what will happen. The outcome is not known but we predict that people may not like us. We may be ostracized, left alone, penniless, with no place to go, starving and as a result, we might die. It may seem far fetched but if you follow fear to its origin, that’s where it goes. So we act the way others want us to be.
The solution;
Become established in that which is indestructable…your essential nature…who you actually are.
Why?
Because when you experience your true nature, the one you were born as, before all the fear hit you, before all the social conditioning, before all the overwhelming experiences of your life that caused you to contract, you will discover the most amazing thing… you are not your fear, you are not your mind, you are not all the stories you have made up about yourself, you are not your suffering…in fact no matter what anyone did to you…they never got you. You have always been whole, complete and incorruptable inspite of the suffering and pain you have experienced.
The magnificence of you cannot be destroyed.
Your essence has never been harmed…yes your personality has, your body has, your ego has, your feelings have, even your hairdo, but not the real you!
This is where real courage comes from…knowing that in your essential core you can never be destroyed by anything in life. With this inner strength established, you can take that next step when you are just on the verge of getting what you want, when you feel the fear.
When you know who you really are you will be much more able to make your life happen and face the erroneous fear of being mangled by your difficulties. You will be more able to heal where you have been hurt. You will have greater capacity to present the beauty of your true nature to others and shine, inspite of whatever people think of you.
You will be more able to create your life from your authentic self rather than recycle the same old difficulties dressed in different clothes.
Awakening to who you really are, is one of the most important things you can ever do in your life.
Russell Scott
www.awakentheguruinyou.com
If you are interested in the concept of awakening click on: Coming Home
or check out these articles:
Moving from Relief Addiction to Resolution
Caught Between a Rock and a Soft Place