Fear's Invitation To Healing and Freedom
You don't have to eat the bagel whole. It is possible to take tiny bites, until you have devoured it.
The same goes for fear. It is possible to baby-step our way to the mind's fears, big and small. To acknowledge a fear, inside of our heads, and just silently glance in its direction.
Even just acknowledging the fear points us in the direction of freedom.
Say, instead of going to work one day, you decided to call out sick and go to the new exhibition at the museum. In the reflection of a glass display, you think you see the manager of the company you work for standing behind you.
Your insides freeze as you try to muster up the courage to quickly glance over your shoulder to see for yourself. It does take a bit of courage to make that quick glance.
If I step up to glancing at my own fears, in the privacy of my own mind, I get closer to the mind's fear every time.
Instead of that knee-jerk reaction of resisting fear, eventually I can mentally look right at it. I can look at the fear in the mind, and the feel-bad feelings it produces in the body. I silently notice and feel the body's natural response. Responses that rise independently from within.
A thought or an image may rise into my awareness. With a silent mind, I just notice. Sometimes there is resistance in the body. The jaw, or various muscles may tighten. There may be a twitch, or a pinch. Sensation may move around the body, and if I'm lucky it will culminate as emotion.
There's the jackpot. That's like spotting the golden ring on the merry-go-round. Now's my chance.
When the emotion rises, I engage it. The key is to stay out of any story the mind wants to tell, and to just put silent awareness on the emotion. The minute the mind lures my awareness back into a painful story, I have stopped moving toward my own healing and freedom, and I have resumed creating self-generated pain and suffering. Luckily, that last part is optional.
I watch the emotion. I feel it as thoroughly as I can with everything I've got. It's almost as if the emotion were a small, hurt child and I was wrapping my inner arms of acceptance around it, and silently holding the space.
The emotion swells within my undivided attention's gentle embrace. I stay with it, feeling and silently watching, until the emotion peaks and then it quickly begins to dissipate.
I call this squeezing the juice out of the lemon.
Sometimes the ride is quick and light, and other times the ride may require lots of tissues or a pillow to scream into. I roll with it the best I can, outside of any mind-made story. This is the way of it, the ability to heal and set ourselves free.
We are natural beings living unnatural lives. We are conditioned to look outward, when all of our magic is within.
So, go ahead. Take a small bite. Take a small glance. Keep doing it until the mind sees what the Soul already knows. You are the most powerful thing here.
Acquaint yourself with fear, and accept its invitation. Inch up on it, silently feeling it thoroughly until it melts away to reveal its treasures. In that, you will rediscover your own power and use it to set yourself free.
