…from Fear.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have never been married and I hold no expectation that I ever will be. However, today I declare my toxic relationship with fear to be over. It is here with this article that I am filing for a divorce from fear. It has been a long time coming. I don’t express any behaviors that are linked to any particular phobia. I admit I am not fond of certain things – I’ll crush any spider in the confines of my apartment; if I see a snake, I will definitely go the other way; and no one has ever given me a viable reason to jump (with a parachute of course) out of a perfectly good flying plane.

I have mentioned before that fear kept me away from writing on the webpage for over a year. At first, the fear masked itself as being busy. Honestly I could have post an article once per week or even as little as twice a month. For some reason I stayed away. Then it became; “Well I haven’t written for so long, why bother?” I came close to shutting this webpage down but there was a little something, Spirit, which kept whispering not to shut it down; that I could do something with it.

I kept asking myself, what am I afraid of? Is there a fear of failure? Well, not exactly. I have failed on other ventures before so any failure would hurt but it would be more or less accepted. Even though this failure would be acceptable, it would lead to self-judgment and self-ridicule of how much of a failure I was again and I was just wasting time on something no one cared about. Is there a fear of judgment from others? Granted at first I would be hurt from hecklers and naysayers but as I have alluded earlier it wouldn’t be as bad as the judgment from the lady in the mirror; she can be unforgiving.

Is there a fear of success? This question is definitely getting closer to the heart of the issue. How is success defined? Is posting one new article per week a success? Two articles per week? Is success based on how many visitors I have to the webpage? What if this page does go viral? What would I do? Would I succumb to those whispering of how I have become “too good” to be with family and friends? And how I have become narcissistic and truly believe in my newly found grandeur?

At this point, I have discovered that this fear is based on a few concepts; the past, the future, and judgments that accompany them. I have heard countless quotes and affirmations about how the past should stay in the past and why worrying about a future that isn’t here is not good for the soul. The past and the future are fear’s greatest allies. When we focus on these two places, the ego and fear flourish. Then why continue to replay the mistakes of the past and seek out the worries of the future?

The answer is that the fear I have been describing doesn’t get to the heart of the fear that I have been experiencing. I feel that it goes deeper and I was having trouble finding the words to express it. Then the other day, I was perusing my personal Facebook newsfeed when I ran across a post for a page dedicated to A Course in Miracles. On it they had a quote from Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles and many other related publications. This is that quote:

 Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are

POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE.

It is our light, not our darkness

That scares us.

We ask ourselves…

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?

YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD.

Now I understand why children are afraid of the dark and insist of having light near them. I call upon my fellow Spiritual Adventurers, when we teach our children to overcome the fear of the dark, we must not let them become too comfortable with it or they will begin to fear what is important, their own Light. For those of us who have become accustomed to the dark and fear our own Light, we need to train ourselves when the dark does come upon us to welcome the Light in our hearts to shine even brighter so the dark passes like a swift wind.