Your alarm clock rings in the morning. You roll out of bed and begin to get ready for work. Your stomach begins to get tight as you survey an additional one day at a job you don't for real enjoy. You leave the house in a rush. There's traffic. You now know you will be late for work. You stress about what your colleagues might say. You ultimately get to your job. You have a lot of tasks to unblemished and feel overwhelmed. You want to ask your boss for help, but fear he'll take it as a sign you're being lazy. You keep quiet instead, and go about your work, burning straight through your to-do list but never feeling like you've for real complete anything. Lunchtime comes. You know you should eat healthy, but the angst of the day has you feeling down, so you conclude on fast food. You aren't feeling great about your body, and you're afraid your boyfriend is going to find man more provocative and that you will lose your relationship. The afternoon at work quiets down, but now you're bored. You're job is unfulfilling, and you know you should be doing something more in alignment with your dreams and values. But you just aren't obvious you could make it without a steady paycheck. You leave work and head home. Habitancy seem like they're driving crazy, and you have this sudden uneasiness you could get into an accident. You make it home safely and get your mail from the mailbox. One of your neighbors who you don't know very well makes small talk. You try saying something creative and funny, but it comes out sounding silly. You worry what you're neighbor will think about you now. You go inside, walk upstairs, and turn on the television. an additional one bombing, this time on a train. You don't know how you'll ever travel into the city again, the world being the terrifying place it is today. Your boyfriend doesn't call that night. Who is he with, you wonder? It starts to storm right before you go to bed. Thunder and lightning. Lightning has always scared you. You drift off into an uncomfortable, sporadic sleep...
The former scenario might be an exaggeration of someone's typical day, but the ideas it expresses are very real. Fear. We all touch it. We all feel it. But how come some Habitancy deal with it better than others? How come some Habitancy go about their lives care-free and adventurous, while others live with constant anxiety and stress? And maybe the biggest inquire of all: How can we learn to manage our fears, and even overcome them?
Bear in mind, for this discussion, we're not talking about the kind of fear which can serve us well for survival (i.e. If we're standing at the edge of a cliff, we have a self-preservation instinct that kicks in and tells us not to jump), but the more subtle fears that can derail a life from reaching fulfillment.
So let's begin by looking at a thought that you may or may not believe true for your own life. What if you knew that you would survive your own death? That's right, what if you knew for sure you would never die? How would you live your life with this knowledge? What power would all your fears hold then? Would you take more chances? Would you pursue your dreams no matter what? Would you live with more ease and confidence, knowing that 'the end' wasn't for real the end?
All provocative questions, if we for real knew we'd be colse to forever. But let's also think the other side of the coin. Say you're a skeptic, and not one to believe in life-after-death. You're more the type that thinks when we're gone, we're gone - buried in dirt, no longer conscious, only blackness, and there's nothing more. Okay, so if that's the case, and when we die that's for real 'it,' then what are you so afraid of in this lifetime? You'd think this type of man would live it up, take risks, do all things they could before the lights went out, right? So what stops us all?
Fear.
We're afraid. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of ghosts. Of getting hurt. Of how we appear to others. Whether we're smart enough, tall enough, pretty adequate - in a word, good enough. Maybe it comes down to our feeling inadequate in some way. maybe that's the key to it all. Maybe if we felt obvious in every area, get in every moment, we wouldn't fear anymore. The qoute is we're all human beings, with human pasts and experiences - and real human frailties that we deal with throughout our earthly existence.
So here we are, right now. We're in this moment. How do we go from living the way we used to live to a more empowering life of true leisure and choice? How do we turn our fears into allies, or even better, eliminate them entirely?
Some would believe it starts with acceptance. Of ourselves. Of life. Of the universe, and the way things truly are. Realizing we are spiritual beings in a corporal body. That we don't control the world, but are part of the public whole. That we don't always need to be right, look good, be perfect. That we are on a journey. That our mistakes are prominent stepping-stones to who we are today, and what we will become tomorrow.
The point is we must understand it is up to us to take responsibility for our own lives. We must shed the crippling thought that we are victims of a cruel world, that we are at the mercy of forces which are all greater than us. We must ultimately believe that while we don't control all things that happens in the world, we do control our thoughts, our perceptions, our reactions about what transpires. This idea in itself is so fully empowering, if only we fully grasped its power.
Another idea worth inspecting is that of 'Universal Oneness.' plainly put, this means we're all connected. That people, things, events - all things - happens in divine rhythm with all other things in the universe. think this example: You're driving down the highway, and you conclude to convert lanes. Now was that straightforward move just some random act which will ultimately have no succeed on whatever or whatever else? Or did your changing lanes set into appeal a chain of events which will for real reach out and alter the policy of the whole universe?
Let's survey this example a bit further. You convert lanes. This forces the car in the other lane to pay attention as you switch into her lane. She steps on her brake as a succeed of your 'random' move. Her stepping on the brake causes the car behind her to miss the light it would have made. The man who just missed the light picks up their cell phone, calls their spouse to say they're running late. The spouse decides she now has time to go shopping for a few extra items for dinner. She is out driving to the supermarket and inadvertently cuts off an additional one driver. She waves in apology. Anyway, it turns out the other driver is New York Yankee, Derek Jeter. He's a bit frazzled by nearly having his car hit, but continues on to Yankee Stadium. He has an off night, goes 0 for 4, and the Yankees lose a close game, 3-2.
Now this may seem far-fetched, but for real stop to think about it. Did that customary person, who initially changed lanes, succeed the outcome of the Yankees game? Might Derek Jeter have gotten a key hit had he arrived at the ballpark a miniature earlier (or later), or had he not experienced the close call while his own drive to the stadium? Our first response might be, no way, that's for real stretching things. But when you dissect the example, and think that every activity we take (in fact, every thought we think) has an succeed on our world, it becomes a lot more plausible than first imagined.
So how does this reveal to overcoming our fears? By understanding we're all part of a holistic universe, that we're all interconnected, that we all make similar mistakes on our journeys, we can start to release the ego part of us that permanently thinks we're 'outside' the rest of the world, that we're 'different,' that we're the only ones feeling a obvious way. Truth is, our road is everyone's road. Our path effects everyone. And everyone else's path effects us. And the 'grand path,' the one that started with One Universal Mind, ultimately leads to the same place. And we're all going there. So what is there at all to be afraid of?
Which leads to an additional one thought which will be discussed here, and that is the idea of 'flow.' When you are in the flow of the universe, your life runs smoothly, synchronicities occur seemingly without much effort. And maybe most prominent of all, your well-being is no longer determined by external events. What goes on 'out there,' in the material world, unfolds according to a expert plan. When you allow yourself into the flow, even the most traumatic events become more understandable and manageable, because all things occurs as part of something much greater than ourselves. Again, you cease feeling like a victim of circumstances unraveling colse to you, and instead, become an active participant in the (yes, sometimes roller coaster) ride we call life. We learn to live as part of life, rather than fearing what will happen to us as a succeed of life.
Finally, what seminar about fear would be unblemished without mention of the extreme human fear - the fear of death. We touched on it earlier, but what if you knew you wouldn't die? How would you live your life differently? While these words are not intended as a definitive seminar for the theory of life-after-death, ponder this: It has been said (if not ultimately proven by measure physics) that the idea of time as we know it does not for real exist. As humans, we comprehend that time is passing (i.e. We look at our watch, and the hours change, the days, weeks, etc). In this model, when adequate time passes, we will ultimately 'run out of time' - or in other words, time will expire and we will die. However, measure physics suggests it is not for real time which is passing (moving), rather it is we who are passing (moving) straight through time. To survey this, look at a clock. Say it reads 2:53. When the clock changes to 2:54, are you for real any distinct (i.e. Older)? Or are you exactly the same man you were a miniature ago, just experiencing an additional one occasion of your duct (movement) straight through time. Think about what this means. maybe we aren't for real getting older (it's been said that the soul of an eighty-year-old is the same 'age' as the soul of a sixteen-year-old), maybe that's just our own miniature perception of a universe more vast than we ever imagined. Also, if we accept the idea that we are passing straight through time (and events), rather than time passing, is our death for real inevitable? maybe we pass right straight through 'death' as well, and continue on our soul journey.
What does that idea do to your fears?
Of course, as with most subjective matter, there aren't any right or wrong answers here. Just lots of good questions. And that's the charm of being human. We can choose to ask ourselves the questions we want, and talk them in the way that best serves our purpose. Ultimately, we can choose to live any way we desire. We just need to keep our minds, hearts, and senses open to the myriad of possibilities along the way.
And what have you got to lose by doing that? maybe some of your fears?
