Fear
What is it about fear that gets us all tied up in knots? Is it the biological realm rearing its head in the face of a possible threat? Is it our minds making mountains out of molehills? Or is it some other nefarious element that lies outside of our control? The “fight or flight” response says “you must make a choice,” based on what’s in front of you and what capacity you believe you have to deal with it.
It’s not always right, this “fight or flight” response. Sometimes we act when leaving would be a better option. Sometimes we stay to quickly learn that was inadvisable. So how do we deal with fear in a manner that is most compatible with our True Self?
The nature of fear is twofold. First, we are reacting to a real or perceived danger. Second, there is an urge to do something about it, be it magical or otherwise. For a physical danger, fight or flight is likely the best course of action. We measure the danger and act, by either removing ourselves or confronting it.
With “perceived danger” that’s an entirely different matter. Here, we are manufacturing fear in response to a threat elicited in our minds. There may be a real trigger involved, but it’s what we do with it that takes us toward denial and/or paralysis. We now have an unspoken fear that we will attempt to manage with food, alcohol or other distractions.
It is rarely enough to realize that we are fearful and then choose to do something about it. It is exacting and true, however, that when we address the “feeling” of fear, we can get past it. What is necessary is that we accept it, let it flow through us and let it be. But when we run, hide, gesticulate or attempt to annihilate, we inevitably fail because these measures hide the real truth about fear. It’s a “feeling!” We need to accept it and feel it before we can release it.
Feel it! Love it! Embrace it! And fear will move through you. Fight it and you become its prisoner. So follow the path of accepting the fear as your own and then release it when you no longer need it. The lesson is learned. You can let it go. It is simple and effective. Try it and see for yourself.
Chapter 6: The Big Sleep
The heart of life’s mystery is within us and we are within it. The orchestra warms up to play the overture. We take a deep breath. We exhale. The God within us jumps in and the music begins.
Imagine an orchestra leader or band member forgetting where they are in the musical performance and what to play next. “What am I supposed to do?”, they might ask, feeling bewildered and confused, holding a magnificent instrument that is theirs alone and not knowing what to do with it. This is a reflection of who we are at this point in history, looking around, wondering what to do next. The Maestro taps the podium. What are you to do? What do any of us do?
We take up the challenge and move forward, that’s what we do. We learn our parts. We jump in. We play our song. We make our contribution to the whole. But, we forgot, didn’t we? How do we get back to our place? How do we learn to play our part again? That is the question we will answer now.
Long ago, when our race was younger, we lost our way. People turned away from their heart center and truest path to focus on survival. Survival, at that time, meant giving up our self. At that time humans were being battered by numerous forces that included meeting basic survival needs while dealing with dysfunctional authorities who did not know how to provide healthy modeling and direction. Many set their Self aside in favor of more pressing realities such as getting through life each day while trying to make sense of so many conflicting directives.
Our parents were lost as well, having inherited from the previous generation the conflicting directives espoused by church authorities and governments of the time. The roots of this disorder have been referred to as “The Fall”. And that is when the Big Sleep overcame a majority of humanity. Before, we humans were in regular touch with the Creator and could access our own divinity whenever we focused within. We knew the Creator did not sit on Mount Olympus, as some stories would have it. At some level, we were still aware that the Creator traveled with us, as one us. For example, Jesus’ task was to reawaken the population to that truth, but he was misunderstood and idolized. Jesus came to tell everyone that they were just like him, able to call upon all the truths of life in this world and know these in their hearts.
Jesus said “You shall do wonders greater than these”, referring to what was considered extraordinary, turning water into wine and raising the dead, as examples. These were quite marvelous feats but then so is levitating a body or pulling a rabbit out of a hat as many of today’s magicians are able to do. Jesus was not a trickster, but rather as a carrier of the truth. And that truth was that everyone carried the truth. This very important truth, which is ours to begin with, is manifested in the metaphors of Jesus’ teachings. It is every person’s task to uncover that truth, dust it off and share it with the world.
Today, we have an information explosion. The internet, newspapers and electronic media connect us to every part of the world and to every source of both useful and not so useful information we could ever desire. Yet, many lives remain unfulfilled and devoid of personal meaning. Very little of this information actually resonates with our truth, our reality, our piece of the cosmic puzzle. Much sifting of this information Tsunami is required to discern something of value. Much of it, as we well know, is simple disinformation issued for the purpose of advancing another’s agenda.
I have referred to this truth we are seeking as the Golden Truth, the pulse that animates all life, our heart and our soul. These are symbols for an inner reality that connects us with All-That-Is, the Great Creator, The Inner Voice. This inner reality is the key to who we are. Our feelings, our heart and our soul take us there. We are truth and we are God in this realm. Let us choose to awaken and retrieve that reality for ourselves.
We were lulled to sleep as children. More accurately, we were conditioned to the dominant trance of our culture. In part, this happened because our parents looked to us to fill their hungry hearts which were left wanting by their emotionally distant parents who never had all their needs met either. This cycle of feeding off the young for one’s emotional fulfillment perpetuated this symbiotic cycle and kept the population trapped in this interminable sleep. This emotional hunger keeps us looking for comfort outside ourselves while our connection to the divine goes unattended. The responsibility for breaking this cycle has now shifted to us.
At this time in history, there is a movement afoot to challenge the old rule and return to our roots which are our divine heritage. This is the place where we can no longer be enslaved because we all belong to God. God is us, and that is the plain and simple truth. Healing ourselves will take us there. We need to trust ourselves, to see and believe that this power we seek has always been ours. It was through a certain misfortune of circumstances and adaptations in previous generations that we lost our way.
When you learn to trust yourself and recognize that this is your correct path, you cannot be enslaved again. You can only belong to the Creator who gave you life and invited you on this journey of self-exploration and self-discovery, and urged you to cross the mountains and plains of the earth and move into the hills and valleys of your heart. “Come play with me” the Creator says, “and I will join you there. Don’t forget who I am now, and certainly don’t forget who you are,” was likely added.
There is a movement afoot to affirm who we are, who we truly are. As we undo the misdirection that enslaved us over the past several centuries, we return to that center within, the place where the Self turns on its axis and shows us our part in this grand design.
We are now here at the threshold we must cross, the one predicted by the soothsayers and prophets of years gone by. From seers like Nostradamus to great poets like William Shakespeare, from Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, from Buddha to the Dalai Lama, they remind us of the same reality, that there is only one truth that lights up our lives. Christ, God, Mohammed or Krishna lives and is here among us, rising right now among the throng we call The Army of Light. We are here and the Creator is among us. There is nothing but joy to be had in this knowledge.
We now realize that there is no savior per se, only us saving ourselves. We are the answer to our prayers. Our 12 step groups, our spiritual growth classes, our meditation exercises, our New Age studies, whatever calls us, commands our attention and draws us inward can be a way out of our sleep. Whatever alerts us to the world within and without, whatever places us in the therapist’s office or a support group is our challenge to heed and our path to follow. This is our goal friends, to find our one true path and see it to the end. We can no longer shut out our heart-centered lives. Healing our wounds will set us free. I believe that with all my heart and I’ve dedicated my life to it.
As we ponder this next horizon, we ask ourselves how do we get there. The repression of previous generations that denied us our emotional and feeling reality can no longer restrain us. We moved beyond this particular stumbling block toward the healing movements that are currently afoot, helping people recover hope, confront childhood traumas and deal with similar blockages. What is the essence of all these healing thrusts? We will examine that now.
When therapists take clients on to their caseload there is one primary purpose, which is to assist this person in overcoming the blockages to their evolution at the moment. Initially, it may not look like this, their problem having been tagged as a phobia, work trauma, parental intrusion or other psychological infraction, but that is what it is. We evolve more or less naturally with healthy parenting and mentoring. When these processes go awry, we become blocked. With the right kind of help we become unblocked and return to our natural path. That is when we continue to evolve. Perhaps clumsily at first, but certainly more consciously now that our inner guidance is leading the way.
At this time in our collective human history, we, as a species, can choose. We can embrace Conscious Evolution or we can remain unconscious and continue stumbling along in concert with our unexamined script. The latter has been the unspoken and unchallenged status quo until now, while the former is the newly articulated spiritual path many of us are choosing to follow. Major aspects of a new age psychology and spiritual awareness are focused on Conscious Evolution. The New Age has given us some great resource material. But aspects of this movement do nothing more than identify the current fad and try to capitalize on it. This false application of evolving ideas will not have any longevity. The True Path attracts truth seekers who are thoughtful and responsible and approach this newly emerging material with discernment.
Conscious Evolution is exactly that, becoming conscious of who we are, what we feel and think, and taking full responsibility for ourselves. We can no more deny this to ourselves than we can stop our breathing. It is a fact of our lives. Becoming awake means we become responsible and fully alive, experiencing both the pain and the ecstasy of life’s freedom when lived consciously.
When we first attempted to shut out life’s pain, we immediately became enslaved to it. Caught in its grip we writhed and twisted in a desperate attempt to set ourselves free. But, we couldn’t because we had shut off access to our center, our feeling network, our Heart, the place where everything is processed. Without this center of feeling activity to guide us we became lost. Many offered us their brand of salvation. No brand would ever work, unless it included a route back to our Self. In our center of experience is where the damage lay and needed correcting. This is where the psychological and emotional blows first took place and knocked us off course. These injuries would stay within, buried, but active, until we owned them and took responsibility to work our way through them.
Psychological and emotional wounds have an uncanny ability to deny time. The fact that they occurred many years ago is irrelevant. Emotional wounds know nothing of time, they continue to fester and drive us. We are speaking of unhealed wounds that have kept us stuck. There is no absence of woundedness within our lives. There is only an absence of healing.
Our unhealed wounds threw us off course. Those injuries are what need to be addressed in the present. Otherwise, they continue to exist unhealed. Through my years of practice, I worked with many adults, male and female, who were beginning to remember childhood sexual abuse decades after it had occurred. Those marks were as fresh as the day they were inflicted and their wounded heart closed up. Such woundedness keeps us from our Self until we find the courage to go within, to the scene of the damage, and repair the original rupture. Many of us need to undertake this mission.
I had many cases like this during my years of practice. It frequently happened that someone would show up at my office recounting a recurrent dream or repeating behavior pattern that kept them stuck in some quagmire, be that low self-esteem, anxiety or depression. Oftentimes, these wounds were wrapped in guilt and shame. These people were at war with themselves without knowing why. An injured part of them was trying to get their attention and another part them kept trying to push a memory away, judging it as old, frightening or irrelevant.
After an initial assessment, it was explained to the client that this war would continue unless their approach changed, unless they listened to the feeling memory and understood what it was trying to tell them. After realizing that I was not going to align with their unhealthy protector self, the part of them that wanted to continue denying their experiences, they would finally accept that they had to go through these feelings, and I would guide them along. Through the process of accepting and feeling their pain, they learned that therapy was safe and it brought with it increased emotional freedom.
Working through feelings is exactly like this. These have to be accepted before we can finally move forward and bring more consciousness into our evolution. As repressed feelings began to be released, using the tools of acceptance and emotional expression, the client would see for themselves that this was the better alternative, one they could apply to many dimensions of their life experience. They were no longer at odds with themselves by rejecting what needed to be heard. By listening to those inner voices, and accepting and moving through their blocked feelings proved to be the better option.
As a client began accepting and listening to their feeling nature, they were typically moved to tears. They often felt a strong urge to forgive themselves for their contributions of self-criticism and self-denigration. They could end the cycle of replicating what they had learned from unhealthy authority figures. The role I played in my clients’ lives was that of ally, mentor and supporter. Therapy ended when they adopted and incorporated those roles for themselves.
This explains why so few of us can do transformation on our own. In fact, none of us really do. We don’t all necessarily go to a support group or seek the assistance of a therapist, but we do talk to friends, write in journals or visit a talk show that addresses our problem. We all suffer in similar ways, especially when we are closed up. We feel as if the world is doing something to us when we are in fact recycling those original traumatic circumstances and the associated feelings. We repeat such behavior until we find the right help and learn a better way.
No one moves forward psychologically, spiritually or emotionally until their state of woundedness has been accepted and healed. This process of acceptance is at the heart of Conscious Evolution. Choosing to heal ourselves by uncovering our unconscious blockages is the first step. Choosing our brand of emotional and spiritual growth is the next step on the horizon.
For more information about this book and the author go to:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/DrMoeProductions
