A study of fear, part 2.
Listening to an audio of Ken Wilber on Love and Evolution, he reminded me that the opposite of love is not hate, it is fear. (Course in Miracles)
When I am in fear, I squeeze out love. When I am in fear, I contract, shut down, isolate myself further from the world, re-inforce the illusion that I am separate. Oh this was a remembering that was beautiful to hear. I know how to do this…when I am aware of the fear, I simply remember to open my heart to love. And to ask, with constancy during the day, “What would love do in this circumstance?”
Love is the opposite of fear. Of course! Open my heart, allow the Universe to support me, which it is doing anyway. For in the fear I shut down. I become an impenetrable block. And my greatest yearning is to be in flow, to be giving and receiving as in a beautiful dance.
Today I was listening to the wonderful Jean Houston, and she was talking about how many indigenous communities do not ruminate over their problems. They dance them. What a wonderful thought. What a wonderful activity…to dance your problems. She also shared an incredible exercise of manifestation using all of your senses…..it went like this…
Imagine the project you want to bring to life..
Now working with taste…in your imagination…
Taste the most amazing crisp apple..
Taste ice-cream..
Taste hot buttered toast..
Taste a green salad, with olive oil and lemon juice…
Taste a chocolate mud cake, with a chocolate mouse filling and fresh raspberries….
Taste something from your celebration dinner when you have finished your project.
Smell..
A garden of roses..
The sea…the waves as they lap on the shore..
The meadow after rain..
A pine forest..
Bread baking..
Smell your project…don’t worry about the logic of it..just smell it..
Touch..
the long soft nose of a horse..
Plunge your hands into a barrel of potato chips and break up as many as you can..
Walk through a great tub of warm honey..
Play patty cake with a small child..
Climb a tree..
Touch your project as its being accomplished.
Hear..
A rainstorm on the roof..
Someone singing your favourite song so beautifully your heart breaks..
Martin Luther King giving his speech “I have a dream…”..
Hear something that has to do with the accomplishment of your project.
See..
A sunrise…
A sunset..
A space shuttle taking off..
A fallen star..
A good friends face..
See your own face..
See your project being accomplished..
See, hear touch, taste, smell the project……then dance your project…bring it into your whole being. What a wonderfully embodied manifestation exercise.
As I move forward daily into my own unfolding, I am paying ever increasingly more attention to my intuition. Not only hearing it, but acting on it. For the longest time when I think of joy, I think of dance, bare foot…on the sand, or grass, or somewhere were there is space. When I think of being in the presence of my beloved, I think of lying with my back on the earth, again on the beach, or grass…but stretched out, feeling the earth beneath me. These images come to me so naturally, but do I do these activities.??..no…only in my mind. How easy it is to do these things…to be present to what I love. Just as I love running in the forest…especially hurtling down a hill at break neck speed, throwing all caution to the wind…love love love this…why do we not do what is so easy to do, that we love, and if often free?
About 18 months ago I wrote a piece, The Emergency Tool kit. My own little kit of actions to take when life seemed too hard. How easily we forget our own medicine.
I have a beautiful little silver box sitting on my desk, given to me by a beautiful friend for my 50th birthday. Inside it she placed a silver egg. Very symbolic. This gift spoke to me more than any other gift, in its simplicity and the profoundness of the message. (Although I do LOVE my ipad.) I use the box on my desk to place the things that I am worried about. Its my “God” box. When my worries are in the box, I no longer have the right to worry about them.
“When you try to do God’s work without God, it is very exhausting.”
(I am speaking on the God that is source, Great Spirit, Universe, the Field)
If I really want to worry about what ever is in the God box, then I have to take it out of the box and get deep into the worry. Just as I have done with this study of fear. Get into it. Go to its source.
I am seeing how deeply the tentacles of scarcity are attached to my being. I am not sure when or how this happened. I was not like this in my earlier life. I was not like this in my 20’s. I think it may have really started when I became a parent. It is almost like I am in the arms of a giant octopus that is keeping me stingy and tight. Contracted and seriously lacking in spontaneous generosity….I can be generous, but often only when it serves me…and at the core of this, is fear.
From this moment, the practice is love. What would love do? Open myself to the love of all creation. How very delicious.
