Dance with your Fear

Dance with your fear



Fear, out of the blue, more or less... Where does it comes from? Where does is sit? In the pit of my stomach? Small and whispered? Or loud and screamed?

I feel ME, I am the same I was yesterday, joyful, light, happy and confident. Like when you have a pain in one part of your body – it can take up all your focus, or you can still focus on other parts of you that feel no pain, even focus on the you as the person inside the body, and there is no pain. Only somewhere the body is feeling pain. You can isolate the sensation and watch it from the outside. Same with fear. I watch this sensation. A part of me like a fur-ball is part of a cat. Totally part, it sits INSIDE, physically, it is made of things that were “made” by the cat. were once an attached part of the cat. And yet it is completely separate from the cat. So this ball of fear, this energy capsule of fear, this feeling, sitting in my system. In the pit of my stomach, but is cascades through all my blood highways as well. I feel the adrenaline. I feel it closing my stomach to food. I don't stop it, I don't change it, I don't wish it away. I stand and I observe it. Neutrally. It is there, it is not threatening me. Much of it belongs to someone else, but I may not abdicate responsibility either. It is in me not by someone else putting it there...

A side pocket is a sense of dis-empowerment. Hm...

There is more I can find in there, but the rest of me is singing with joy – there is music inside me. So why not invite the fear to dance? Dance with the fear. It is a most wonderful partner to dance with. Full of energy. It wants to be loved, as all things, but it loves you too. It does not come to hurt you. Do not run from it. It is a messenger. It wishes to lead you into another, maybe new, direction. That is not always so comfortable...

It whispers questions in my ear... This fear. It is spokes-person to other fears which sit much deeper. Which I have managed to de-voice... I must listen. I may not react with fearing fear. No, this friend will not outstay his welcome if I but listen, and pay him the attention that is due him.

I am listening!

Delete "must"

I got a lecture from a man of 102 years of age two days ago about the need to delete the word "must" (incl. "to have to") from our vocabulary because apparently it messes with our brains. (Not literally speaking...) It being severely disempowering, and giving wrong signal to brain of lack of choice in our lives, which has pretty dire spin-off effects... Makes sense to me. So I'll give it a try. Or try at least to use it very consciously! Good Luck to me...

Fighting vs. Creating

What is the point fighting against what was?
What is the point of fighting against what is not, and may or may not be?
What is the point of fighting against what is not, and may or will be?
What is the point of fighting against what IS?

If I ask myself honestly, I realise the illusion of thinking that there is a point to any of these.

You cannot change the past, you cannot change the future, which is always imagined (anticipated or feared), and you cannot change what IS at this very moment.

So what can you change? For you are not just a dead leaf blowing in the wind. (Or are you?)

CREATE is the word I love to use. Create the world you want to live in. Create the life you want to live. In Ghandi's words: Be the change you want to see in the world. Those are not just words. We all love complaining, let's stop complaining. (If you are not ready to stop complaining, complain consciously and real good and hard till you're done...) Live in the state "as if" - it is the most exciting way to be. It is the way every child lives. Put half your mind into the now, observe and accept what is, and put the other half into how you want things to be. NEVER into how you don't want things to be! Do not despair at all about the discrepancy. That is what drags us down! Grab the challenge. There is a difference between what is and what will be or what you would have it be. If that were not so, there would be no growth, no change, no progress, no movement. It is natural. Do not worry about that. Just be so simple and be so patient. Hold the picture, live the life, and watch it unfold. Be at peace with what is. It will change! That much is certain. If it does not, it is because you are keeping it in place somehow. Life is the most exciting journey you can ever be on. Make it your own. Own it!

This is my motivation to me. I thought I'd share it with you.

I'm an alien in my home...

how odd that those who are closest to us from birth turn out to be the most distant to us later on. does every child feel like an alien in it's own family? is that in fact more normal or common than feeling a part of it? i can't help wondering. is the alienation we feel toward our parents, or as parents toward out children, actually just an indicator of how alienated we are from ourselves? when you are young you do not feel this alienation. later on you pretend you don't feel it, or you feel it even more and suffer as only youth is capable of suffering... i don't know. i just wonder about it. there must be something good in it for us to "take home" ...

It's not getting what we want, wanting what can't have, wanting things to be different from how they are that make us build up this inner resistence to what is. I have been doing a bit of that lately, and quite a bit of it today. It's been a frownful day. And by 6pm I was bloody exhausted from nothing... Now I know my energy drain is nothing but my own mind... Am not managing it all that well.

On top of that I became so acutely aware of the masses of negativity around me. Who is actually really ALIVE out there? Really JOYFUL for no particular reason? Really just there to smile at the stranger, and not just so bloody worried about all the little and the big things going on in their own lives? Worry over here is a state of being... Goodness me. I was quite overwhelmed. And at the same time I must acknowlede what I see in the mirror of life... My own negativity magnified... That was a mouthful a bit bigger than I could chew... At least I didn't freak out, which is what i have been doing lately each time I come upon such a realisation...

And so the journey continues...

A drizzly walk on the wild side

Yesterday I went for a drizzly walk in the Botanical Gardens. What a piece of Paradise. It made me think about man’s relationship to Nature. How we like her wild, and controlled, controlled wild, but mostly controlled. And a certain “giving of direction” serves her well, or at least does not hurt. But mostly we simply rape her blind. Yet in a garden like that, we keep plants from all over the world for our own viewing pleasure (with some educational benefits). It does seem to me like an altar to Nature, a place to show our complete reverence. (Is there anything like it in a zoo? Or is that “simply” a collection of caged animals, purely there for our entertainment? (Again, barring the one or two cases where near extinct creatures are given a habitat to perhaps multiply abundantly enough to be re-released into the wild.)

As I was walking along all by myself – there was almost nobody about, for people here call days like yesterday “miserable” – they don’t like all the inconvenience of the heavenly waters… – I suddenly found myself right back in last year’s pilgrimage. Just me and nature, rain, birdsong, total and utter peace and harmony. I could hear it all talk to me, or rather NOT talk, but embrace me. I could feel how deeply, deeply connected I am with this earth and everything in and on it. I depend on it, even for the guidance of where to place my foot. You can walk on rocky or rooty terrain, and need never look down, and you will not slip or trip. She will guide you if you let her. Oh, it lasted only moments yesterday, but I had plenty of it last year, and will soon again when I go hiking in June.

And then the real “hammer” came, also something I experienced lots of on my walk last year. From within this space “suddenly” I came people. Even just seeing them from a distance. It was enough. (Last year it was always these shifts I had to make inside when approaching and entering into cities or human dwelling places.) I was struck by the sense of totally disarrayed energy that they presented compared to the natural flow of nature on her own. I could describe this better with pictures. I think animals do not need to see people, or smell them, they can sense them. A disruption in the energy field around them. Wow, I perceived that so strongly.

And suddenly I understood another factor of what has been so troublesome with this transition back to Europe for me. Entering this different energy field. Back in SA I was almost only surrounded by like energy, from just a certain to a very strong level of like-mindedness. Here I am not anymore. I perceive myself as an alien here. And I allow the world around me to constantly affect my own energy field, and throw me off kilter. All the freakin’ time. It’s distressing to say the least. Every conversation I have I enter someone’s world, abandoning, for moments, my own… And what happens to the house when the master is away? (Or, in other words: When the cat is gone, the mice come out to play.)

I must become much more aware of this. Much more “vigilant and alert” (French accent, which movie? :-) ) and become the “ever alert watcher of your inner space” (Eckhart Tolle)

Have a blessed and mindful day!

Song to Emily

Sadness is my middle name
Sadness and Joy to me are the same
A waste of time every breath that I take
A lie the word the smile I fake

Tomorrow just another day
Yesterday has blown away
I hate the world for hating me
It's blindness to the things I see

The life that screams inside me won't be killed by you
The thirst for love inside me won't be filled by you
You think you know me, that you got me figured out
You're so conceited, and that's what you're all about

I didn't ask to be here, did I now
Gotta make the best of it anyhow
Like a fish on a hook left on dry land
And you really think you understand...

(inspired by Emily's blog)