Wars, famine, pandemic, divisive politics, etc.
Fear – how do you respond to it? Do you lash out in order to protect yourself, physically or mentally? Or do you sit with it and explore the lessons that it may teach you? Fear is very complex and has many ways to manifest through your emotions. In essence fear is a signal for you to be weary of potential danger. It can be just a slight unease, an intuitive nudge or full on “fight, flight or freeze” experience, all depending on your previous experiences in life. Unfortunately our psyche has hijacked this very useful system, with good intentions, but for its own agenda. Compared to any other time in history there is far less today that should scare us; we live in the most peaceful time in history. However, in the past 20 years we have become increasingly fearful; terrorism, immigration, loss of “liberty”, etc. And then in 2020, enter; “Covid 19”. This is law of resonance on a collective level; embody fear and it will show up for you to experience.
Since there really isn’t much to fear, we devise things to fear, in our minds, in our psyche. Commercial and political interests, such as media, advertising, social media, etc, then uses that weakness in our defences to exploit us and get us to buy their products and engage our attention. Most often the fear we experience is founded in an Original Sensitising Events (OSE) through which we will then view present and future experiences. If you go back and heal the OSE, you will most likely resolve all events triggered by this fear up to the present moment and future events as well. If you don’t deal with it, it will keep showing up time and time and time again.
With these basic premises set out for us to understand fear, let’s look at 2020. Looking on social media people have been pretty much been done with 2020 since the first quarter of 2020. People are posting reasons why “2020 should go f**k itself”, or how we had 150 days in March, etc. It has been a challenge for sure, but what has been the biggest weight on people is fear. The fear has polarised people in various opinion camps, opinion mostly based on false information perpetuated through social media. The challenge was that science was playing catch-up trying to understand Covid-19, so people who pretended to be in the know started making some huge assumptions, that were later debunked by-and-large. It was, unfortunately, too late though for those succumbing to fear. As a side note, I noticed large parts of the “new age” or spiritual movements spreading many of the fear based conspiracy theories knowing that full well that fear is what fuels negativity. I will delve into this in another article showing why spiritual advancement does not necessarily equate to personal maturity.
Fear comes out of uncertainty and lacking factual information. It could be that we don’t know what tomorrow holds, how I am going to make money, will immigration cause me to lose my job, [insert prejudice] people are bad and want to cause me harm, etc. The negative results from fear come when we make assumptions to establish a certainty about our uncertain situation or using information that feeds our confirmation bias to validate our false beliefs, it gives us temporary relief. The problem with making assumptions and statements is that we shut ourselves off from the lessons and the opportunity to freeing ourselves from fear. The solution to this is quite simple actually; start asking questions, not just any types of questions but compassionate questions.
Ask questions relating to what you can control, what hurt, pain and trauma someone has experienced, or perhaps what action can I take? When you ask empowering questions you start to gain acceptance for that which you don’t know. You start understanding that you aren’t meant to know at that particular point and if you can’t control it or take action to heal it, you are left with only one option; to accept it. I started out in the pandemic shouting from the roof tops about what we should and shouldn’t do, but when I snapped out of it and started just observing it, understanding that at that moment I could only control my own thoughts, words and actions, I cleaned up my act and tried to work towards help others heal their fear, primarily through my weekly live online guided meditation sessions (link) and by practicing compassion. That is my contribution to the collective energy to break us out of this fear based resonance that we currently find ourselves in. I implore you to make that same active choice and contribution as well. If you don’t, that is ok, I accept you and your path in life as it is.
Use the formula of asking compassionate questions to any area of your life; politics, conflicts, information, “truths”, cultural and religious rules, etc. You will find yourself on an island of serenity with this exercise, permitting everybody else around you to own their stuff and for you to give yourself permission to own 100% of your own energy. Over time you will find that you invite more and more peace and understanding into your world, bringing with it much healing and life flow for you to enjoy.
Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash
This is a great article. Knowing where to focus your attention is the most important thing. I love the compassionate questions aspect as that allows you to move into the gentle aspect which is the antithesis of the fear energy. You’re doing awesome things in the world!
Thank you for your kind words, most encouraging.