Leaving Fear At the Curb So Your Real Life Can Show Up

We all have to dive into something we don't want to do from time-to-time, and one of the emotions that can come up in the process is fear, particularly if its something we don't perceive ourselves to be good at or avoid because the 'act' brings us into an energy we're not necessarily comfortable with.

Fear is a powerful word; when I think of living in fear or going to a place of fear, I think of darkness. In other words, fear is the the opposite of the energy source that gives light, love or connectedness. Its at the base of the very things that create friction in the world, such as war, racism and corruption.

But there's a joy in the process of embracing fear, because once you embrace it, you can unmask it right before its ugly clawing eyes. We can strip it down to such a granular level that we force it back into its rightful place....that nothingness place, where it cannot take ahold of us, it cannot grasp us by the throat, it cannot take control of our minds and our lives. Fear is the drama that we 'think it is,' not the actual situation itself.

I love these words by Leonard Cohen: "Dance me to your beauty....with a burning violin. Dance me through the panic....till I'm gathered safely in. Lift me like an olive branch...and be my homeward dove. Dance me to the end of love."

Then there's Ken Wilbur: "Whenever we split seamless awareness into a subject versus an object, into a self versus an other, then that self feels fear, simply becasue there are now so many 'others' out there that can harm it."

A friend of mine said as she stepped out on stage at a presentation she was giving recently, Let me introduce myselves. We often joke about how many of our selves inside our head there is at any given time and which self decides to show up at any given time. When we decide to surrender control to all of those selves, then the only self that is forced to show up is our 'true self,' the essence of who we really are, the self who operates from a place of love and connectedness, not fear and darkness.

Steve Chandler writes this amusing and touching snippet in a chapter of one of his books called This Insane Posse of Clowns: "there's a spooky imaginary source for much of my fear. It's the fake construct that pretends to be true. It's an unreal thing. And, because its not real, it is impossible to protect it from harm. It is what I call my personality. I'm frightened and defensive because of it. It feels like a costume I'm sewn into. What was once hastily formed in my childhood mind to give me a sense of a safe identity and separation now, in later life, becomes a trap.

Like being imprisoned inside a puppet; or stitched into a clown suit." Later in the same chapter, he says of being fearless, "It's a dropping of personality. It replaces it with the fierce thrill of doing what ought to be done."

Isn't it time you got out of that stitched clown suit, the personality that has you imprisoned inside a puppet and left fear at the curb so your connected life, full of all things possible, can show up?

Photo Credits: Fanpopp & DemocraticUnderground