Paralyzed by Fear

For two full years, even with my best efforts, I could not maintain a consistent vibrational match to what my soul had in its sights for me. External conditions were too pervasive and the distortions exceeded my ability to rise above them. I was determined to help my partner attain his biggest dream yet, and I ignored every sign that was meant to redirect me for a long, long time.

Abandonment is a core wound - a terrifying fear - many carry into adulthood

In order to be on my authentic path, I needed to change my state of being. It had become impossible for me to do so under those conditions. So, I was released from it. Universal wisdom and cooperative components orchestrated a series of events that literally came out of the blue, totally unexpected and projected me out of that situation. Out of my life as I knew it. Completely devastated, it has taken me over eight months to begin to recover and to feel safe enough to trust and allow Divine Intelligence to manage this new direction that my soul had in store for me.

The fear paralyzed me – or rather, my perception of the fearful prevented my ability to comprehend the deeper truth of what was transpiring. Buried in the blankets of a bed, unable to move from a depression that originated from feeling thrown away. The remainder of my life had been based on a belief that I was a vital component of a marriage and family. But it was not meant to be.

In meditations, I sometimes felt the knowing and the reassurance that this was all happening ‘for’ me. But in the course of the daytime hours, conversing with well-meaning folks, anxiety and fear over what to do next would seep into my awareness and I felt icy tentacles gripping my heart.

Then, I was angry I felt fear, because I have considerable knowledge on how this stuff works, and it annoyed me that I was struggling with it physically within the confines of my own skin. My body was insisting that I pay attention to the symptoms that were prevailing which was also feeding the fear based on how I had been focusing my attention. The pervasive truth was there was no way I could medicate, avoid, or justify the pain and move on with the tactic that “it’ll work itself out in time”. No, I sat with this long enough to realize this was not my first rodeo with abandonment and if I skirt this life lesson again, it will most likely make the circuit again at another time.

Recalling stories of masters and gurus, I finally decided to go all in and trust. In truth, I was so exasperated and bereft that I just gave up. I gave up trying to figure it out, plan the next steps, worrying about what was going on with anyone else. I was ready to put the lessons of those masters to the test. One evening, a vision in a reflective moment was me walking off of a high cliff surrounded by thick fog with only a thought of a promise of hope while my belly was bordering on a full-fledged panic attack. I did not crash to the ground, however, I floated downward to land on a lily pad in a pond, then an easy step forward to another lily pad, then a stone, then to solid ground and the feeling of safety rose within me. It felt certain in my body. I sat for a long time just feeling how “safety” felt.

After several days of sitting with Fear, I was sort of surprised that a desire of wanting to feel love came about. Yes, I love my daughter, grandloves, and friends, but it was the wanting to feel love that was interesting to me. In contemplation I realized that I had been wanting to die. I wanted out of this nightmare and the devastation seemed too daunting to be able to survive it. Consciously or not, that was the truth and to admit it to myself was a sobering moment.

Sharing this with my daughter last month, who is navigating her own major shift as well, has been a blessing in so many ways. The two of us together, providing unconditional love and genuine concern for the other’s wellbeing, has moved mountains for our progress forward. In hindsight, I have some mom-guilt for being vulnerable with her, but the awareness that this IS how the mother-daughter chemistry works together for healing and transmutation restored peace within. It just felt foreign to me because I had not known anything like this with my own mother.

There are things to love all around us, everywhere

Recently, I’ve made concerted efforts to find things I loved everywhere in every moment, and feel wonder and gratitude for them. In the early days (just a couple of weeks ago) I could do it only a few moments a day. The remainder of the day I was in constant trepidation over what could/would/might happen anyway. What does that even look like? It seemed as though I was setting myself up for failure by trying to be grateful or optimistic. Being a Pollyanna. Naive. Ignorant. Which sounds ludicrous, I know, but it was as if I weren’t constantly on-guard anticipating the next bad thing that was bound to come at me, then I was being irresponsible.

When did even I adopt this way of meeting life? I could not identify it as my short term memory was mostly a blur. But I could see that living like this had become a habit. That is, until I saw it. Once it is known, it can no longer be labeled as a habit. At that stage, it is called a choice. And if I chose to continue the behavior, I was nurturing a victimhood mentality. And if there is one thing I abhor, it is self-victimization. So, I promised myself that I will not make that choice anymore.

To love and to be loved is my highest value, virtue, and reason for being in this life.

Some have said that hate is the opposite of love, but I disagree. I believe that fear is the opposite of love. There is still some essence of love in hate, because when we ‘hate’ something, there is a thread in its relativity to ‘love’. In the early days, I would not have hated him so fervently had I not loved him so deeply. But fear is not so easily linked with love because, in my opinion, it is a complete absence of any other emotion. Fear to this degree is all-consuming and there is a total lack of any ability to mitigating it to the self or anyone or anything else. Fear (or terror), for me, are in a caliber all to themselves.

Given that the ego-mind-identity is solely concerned with sustaining life and avoiding dangers, Ego uses fear to keep authentic love out of your life. Learning to love requires one to abandon fear that you are in an unfriendly world. There must be an assessment of one’s reluctance to embrace love. If one does not feel the full presence of love in their world, then one has alienated themselves from it, likely in some effort of preservation. When you realize this, you will be able to transform fears into love.

See how we substitute fear for love: Ego steadfastly promotes fear because it fears AUTHENTIC LOVE itself. Authentic love is something that comes from God/Source/Creator. It is not created by the human body to dole out like pieces of pie to certain people. Love is the All and Ego is aware that it cannot understand nor predict the All, and helps you to convince yourself that you are somehow incomplete, which is the actual source of all fear. To prevent having the incompleteness exposed, we expend a lot of energy creating the false image of happiness. The fear about this keeps us seeking relationships that we think will satisfy the longing within us.

What happens next is that we enter a relationship starved for the love that IS our higher self (that we have not fully realized yet). All the while, your inner hunger is masked, pretending to be something else. So people fall in and out of love claiming to have ‘found it’ and then ‘lost it’ again and again. How different it is when we can simply notice the inner emptiness and think “what’s not to like?” It is this longing which is being human and knowing love. In this, we are letting the ego-personality know that Fear is not our choice – Love is our choice.

Imagine how different we would look if everyone knew that we were already complete? What would you have to buy? Need to own? Be in a relationship with? Who is there to impress? These questions and their answers remind us how we have been programed generation to generation to live from a fear-based state of being as opposed to a love-based state of being. This reminds us how unaware we are of our Divine connection. The fear that is a substitute for love is simply a fear of being what is unacceptable. Virtually all fears are traced back to self-worth conditions.

When we love ourselves, we easily transform our fears back to love rather than allow them to direct our life

If we have an inner feeling of being complete and whole, knowing the Loving Presence that is there, then fear itself can become a loving invitation to know more or to adapt something in our life. Fear will no longer threaten us as it did when we’re unacquainted with our higher self.

In a fear-based projection of the self, addictions, detrimental habits, and unhealthy relationships will always exist. Fear will cause us to shun all efforts to be loved by others by refusing to allow the risk of an intimate encounter in the development of a companion or friendship. We are instead driven to selfishly pursue our own goals even at the expense of others.

Ego also uses guilt so that it can thrive. Guilt is the inner fear that you should pay the price for any and all mistakes that you have committed in your life. This, in truth, only keeps distance between us and our true spirit. No, Ego doesn’t absolutely reject love, but there is a background voice that moderates what amount of love is acceptable. It says that love is quite a high ideal; one that is loaded with danger. It carries a subliminal warning to not give too much love because you may be taken advantage of and because you are so special others will always take advantage of you. This unconsciously promotes inauthentic love. It convinces you that your partner is just the right person because the relationship fills the emptiness inside, and that is good enough. All the while, you are excusing unloving words or actions to make the rational fit the circumstances in order to continue the ruse.

One cannot know real love and true peace with this belief system

Do not be conformed to this life but be transformed of it. Romans 12:2