It's 5 a.m. I just got off the phone with someone who couldn't sleep for thinking about a scenario that created anxiety. I found myself telling the person, "I am sorry you are telling yourself a story that makes you feel fearful." After we got off the phone, I wrote a bit about the conversation. I wrote that sentence. And it became clear to me why I stopped writing in my blog; and why I need to begin again.
I have been telling myself a story that makes me feel Fearful.
The details in my life that inspired this story aren't necessary, nor are they all mine to tell you. Suffice it to say, they very easily inspire Fear if gone unchecked -- and even then... So, while I've worked aggressively to carry Fear in the form of a Chair so that I might become acquainted with Fear, I have simultaneously lived in a situation that actually increased it's intensity in recent months and thus potential for Fear. And, as long as I carried the Fear Chair, it was clearly possible for me to objectify my Fear enough to deal with life head-on. Stepping daily (carrying a chair) into Fear and learning how to love my way through it.
When I put down the Chair in October, it was just prior to one of two crisis' that have happened since, in the lives of people close to me, and therefore also to me. The experience of the Fear Chair Project was drawn upon greatly as I walked through the fallout and loved myself and my loved-ones through the rubble and picked up pieces. The FCP indeed strengthened me beyond what I'd ever believed I could bear and gave me peace enough to be present, truly present amidst very Fearful circumstances without running away.
But something was not settled within me. I could feel it. I knew There was something amiss because I simply could not write in this blog. I could not WANT to write. This morning I see that, while the FCP did give me great strength, and Fear was something I felt I could coexist alongside, I still had FAR more to learn about Fear than was clear to me. This morning I learned that what I have been doing -- and this is related to the two crisis', because both are not finite, both crisis' will likely manifest in some form again in life and I will have to walk through devastation again -- and again -- and again in life -- this morning I learned that I tell myself a story that makes me Fearful. The conditions related to the crisis' are chronic, this is fact. I cannot change those. I can however change the story I tell myself about those conditions. And, I suppose perhaps this WILL change SOME conditions; but what I tell myself creates who I am in those conditions and in those crisis'.
I am learning to see myself separate from the conditions and separate from the crisis' of loved ones. I by no means love them less. I just love myself MORE. Increasing my love for myself does not diminish my love for others. (yesterday I heard myself saying to someone going through a divorce -- I've divorced before as well --, "love is energy, it can neither be created or destroyed. That's why when we love someone there is a sense of having loved them already, forever before. Because love was always there. Love remains, we just learn how to love differently and better which sometimes means we learn to love ourselves better and we must love others from a distance.") So, today I begin to see that, even from "up close and personal," I have a choice to separate myself from the story of the conditions that cause crisis' and love myself rather than live within Fear generated by that story. I can best love and be present with MYSELF AND WITH LOVED ONES if I separate myself from that Fear.
Think of it as a Chair perhaps...
And why not? Fear is no more real than what I make it be. Fear is no more a "thing," than it is a "chair." Fear is simply a reaction. A choice. A posture from which to view life. In the case of a chair, a posture of sitting down. Sitting out. Innactively watching as life happens, conditions happen around me. I vowed last fall to learn how to not do this any longer. I am still learning. And I AM learning. This was a tough lesson. Difficult to see. Difficult to see through. Fear is SO pervasive, so insidious, so eternal. It too is an energy. It can neither be created or destroyed. We just learn how to fear differently, better...
Deeply, eternally grateful...