Fears Belong On Paper
This morning I awoke grappling with fear. Ugh. I could feel it in my chest and in my head. I wasn’t conscious of it as much as I was simply in it. In this early morning state of mind; I was all wrapped up in my fear. It was me, I was it. My chest was tight, my head occupied with fear’s narrative. And though this fear was attached to a specific situation in my life, it was functioning as a lens through which I was now seeing the entirety of my day. It weighed me down and made everything seem scary and a bit unhinged.
Then in a flash, I understood something I’d never understood before. This fear, the one telling me “Be careful. Don’t get too invested. You’re gunna get hurt.” was actually trying to protect me. In an instant upon this recognition, the grip fear had on my morning loosened a smidge. It’s as if there was the tiniest opening that hadn’t been there only a moment before. In that moment, as I was making the coffee, some impulse had me listen beyond the suffocating narrative I was caught in and I understood for the first time, that my fear had assigned itself to be my protector. I think I actually smiled. I became conscious of my fear; listened, got its intended message and it relaxed a bit. I was no longer my fear. My fear was no longer me. Read more…
What is it about the mind that has us continually going back to it for validation, approval, and diagnosis? Is it really the resident expert on how I am doing on a daily basis? Is it the best resource on the progression towards my goals? And most importantly to me, does my mind really understand the deepest longings of my heart and the beauty of the path that I am on? Can it truly grasp the arc of my growth and comprehend the depth of my transformation?
The world needs all of you. All-of-you. Not just the pretty, polished, just-right parts of you but also, the darker, in the shadows, rougher, gutsier, raw and messier parts of you. You know why? Because life is about color. And in those parts of you is where the color is, where the energy hides out, where the rubber hits the road. It’s when we exclude parts of ourselves that we get into trouble. When we push out, reject, shame or otherwise banish them from our lives, they get louder, uglier and destructive. At the very least they turn into a low-level hum of discomfort or anxiety. So when they present themselves, bring them into the light. Greet them with a friendly “hello” and integrate them. Our job as our friend Rumi suggests, is to be a host to all that arrives (see his poem “The Guest House”). When this is the place from which we come, when we endeavor to make all parts of ourselves feel welcome and heard, they soften becoming allies instead of villains, they reveal their hidden messages and power to us, they begin to show us where they came from and how they are meant to help, not hinder. 
Questions are powerful. Our brains are hard wired to find their answers. Ask yourself a question and your brain begins searching for the answer. Let’s do a quick experiment … ask yourself the following question: “Where are my keys?” Now watch as your brain gets you the answer. It works with any question. Notice what it feels like when you ask this kind of question: “Why do I always do this?” If you’re like me, maybe your anxiety level goes up a bit – perhaps your breath shortens. That’s because that kind of question really does not have an answer. It’s a trick question. Its very structure keeps us locked into a certain place or stuck in an unwanted behavior. The thing is, your brain does not realize that. It does as it was asked – it goes in search of the nonexistent answer. It goes, and goes, and goes in circles. And with the increased frustration produced by this endless loop, we ask the same question setting up the same dead end cycle which leaves us stuck in the same pattern that brought us to ask the question in the first place. And we wonder: Why don’t we move ahead or break out of that pattern that is so clearly wrong for us? It’s because we’re asking the wrong question. 
We do not live out our lives in a vacuum. In the arc of each lifetime there is a line between everything; a thread that connects each of the paths we’ve taken, the choices we’ve made, the jobs we’ve had, the friendships won and lost. When you follow this thread back to its source you discover that it connects us to who we are, what we want for ourselves, to what lights us up. Everything expressed within a lifetime is manifested from the individual, the self, the soul. I believe our choices are born from our values; the very things that we desire and live to express. Each choice has at its base a connection to something meaningful to us. The art is to follow the connections, to see the relationships between our choices, to discover what they reflect about us and then to see where they’ve been pointing us.