Fear.

Did you ever read that book “Feel the fear and do it anyway”?  I did. I owned it for years but didn’t reread it. Nice idea. Nice concept but it just seemed so hard to feel fear and still do the thing that I thought was causing the fear.

I’m the sort of person who feels fear about just about anything. The fear can be very strong. It can actually be terror. Or sometimes a feeling of panic. It can stop me doing things. It can make me avoid things.

The bottom line is that for me, fear is triggered by many things – fear of getting it wrong, fear of making a mistake, fear of offending someone, fear of conflict, fear of disagreement, fear of not knowing what to do if an unexpected situation crops up, fear of not being liked or approved of, fear of criticism, fear of negative judgment, fear of not being independent, fear of asking for help, fear of not being good enough. Fear of fear.

What a block to living life freely!  You’d think that with this list, that I would be living a very narrow life. You’d think that I wouldn’t be doing anything. Well, I have to tell you something. It has not stopped me lately.

Over the last several years, I have done many things that I could have not done, if I had let the fear have its way. I have put myself into many situations where the fear was very loud and annoying.

How come? Why? Because the call of freedom from the essence of me has been stronger than the human feeling of fear. I have learned again, and again that my brain will continue to work even when fear is felt. That I can put myself into situations where I know that fear will show up, and I can still cope. I can allow the fear to be present and know that something deeper and stronger will guide me. Very reassuring. This reassurance gives me the ability and the strength to expand into the richness of life. It doesn’t mean that the fear goes away. Or that uncomfortableness goes away. It means that I honour myself enough that I refuse to let fear limit my life. As I write this, I think is this really true? Maybe I am limiting myself in ways I don’t know of!

And so I continue to work on and face the fear patterns of behaviour that I have learned in my childhood and that were reinforced in my adult life. I continue to inquire into them, to understand them more so that I can be more aware of them. So that, in that split second, I can make a different choice. A choice that is more supportive of freedom.

And there is a magical story about fear too. If I drop deep into it, and down through it, into the essence of my self, I find something very beautiful…………..

Judgement

Judgement.

After you have had an important conversation, do you go over it later? Do you remember the words you have used, and replay it, analysing and judging them? I used to do this everyday. I did not remember what the other person said necessarily, but I remembered what I had said. Then I would pull it apart, thinking whether it was the right thing to say, the kind thing to say. I would decide which words were right and which words were wrong – then I’d feel awful about the “wrong” words, or because I’d worded it in the wrong way.

Maybe you go over conversations in your head and judge the other persons words? It’s much the same really. When we are judging others, we are actually judging ourselves. Sometimes it’s a way of avoiding judging ourselves. It all gets tangled up.

Maybe you go over conversations or things people have said to you, and think how good they were?

Funny, we seem to treat negative judgements as judgements and positive judgements as okay. Even a positive judgement is a judgement. If you consider someone’s comments about you to be positive and they make you feel good – it’s still a judgement. If they say something negative about you or your work, it’s a judgement. Just because one lot of judgements make you feel good, doesn’t make them right. It’s just that you feel good and we all want to feel good, don’t we?

We hear criticism in someone’s words or even just in the tone of voice, and we feel judged. How is this? When someone gives you some feedback, what leads to this being a judgement – one that you don’t want? Or is it just their opinion, one which does not need to be taken on board personally by you.

What if we could listen to the criticism/feedback and leave out the judgement that it was a judgement.

Recently I was my own harsh judge. I sat under this judge and believed every damn thought I had. “I made a mess, I did more harm than good, I did it wrong, I am useless, I can’t trust myself, I’m hopeless, and so on.” Were these thoughts true? No, they weren’t. But the judge and the doubts were seriously overwhelming. Until I realised that I was believing my own thoughts, all of which were conjured up out of my own head, supported by my past.

In this way we create our own suffering. There is no need to believe the thoughts in your head. They are only thoughts, not wisdom.

The way to wisdom is to drop deeper than your thoughts and your emotions and find out what’s here.