I have decided to take the next few weeks, or months, to sit in and become deeply acquainted with the fear that shows up in my life.
Why? Because I no longer want it to be the driver of my life. As well, after a conversation with Caroline Myss last week, where I asked her why my life felt so hard, she suggested I needed to take more risks…that I needed to look at where I was most afraid and step into this fear.
So here goes.
The deepest fear I have been living with that has been exacerbated these last 2 years is around the fear of income flow, or lack of it. The fear of lack.
Every Monday morning…that would be now, I am supposed to sit down and do all my banking, pay bills, look at income, cash flow, etc. I hate it. I procrastinate. I am afraid. The ‘not enough’ and scarcity drives me.
What exactly am I afraid of?
I am afraid that there is not enough. That I will pay the bills and then there will not be enough. That when there is not enough I will become paralysed with fear. That I might have to ask for help, or reveal myself as not being capable, or able, or smart enough, or good enough, to make an income. That I cannot support myself. I fear the lack of flow. As I write these words and sit in the fear, I feel slightly sick in the stomach. This part of me that feels completely responsible to generate the income, to get back out there and generate, and do it again, and again. And yet I am good at it. I am very creative. I love creativity. I love generating. It is the need to generate to create money that I dislike. Its the pressure to need to actually generate money, this is what exhausts me. It feeds right back into life is hard, making money is hard.
More reflection, some days later.
The burden to create is a big fear. The key word is burden. I love creativity. There is also an element that feels that I am being punished…for what I have no idea. And some ‘poor me’ victim. ‘Why me?” Why is life hard for me? Why do other people seem to get it easy?
There is an element that is about being alone, doing it alone, going it alone…’Dear God, why have you forsaken me?” Then I get angry. I feel let down. “Goddammit I have done all this work on my interior, and here it is again. STILL!!! How much blood do you want from me? How much do you want me to give?”
Last night before bed I prayed and asked for clear direction. As I was driving to my run this morning, listening to a random audio that I download from multiple places, the message was clear. I need to give more. BUT…and this is a big but, the way I give is very important. I need to give from abundance, and light, and without a single thought to get something. I need to give because it is spontaneously arousable within me. I need to give from infinite supply. Sure I have given in the past, but often there has been an energy to my giving which has been about wanting to get. And when I give from this energy, I get resentful. I need to show up from a place of infinite supply. Rather than carrying this energy around that is deeply rooted in lack.
The practice is to give something every day, purely as an act of giving. If I were really ready to take a risk, as Caroline suggested, then I would give money every day. Random acts of kindness, for example.
Going even deeper….
At the very base of my fear is the thought that something is wrong with me and God has abandoned me. And a deep sense of disappointment that if I risk again I will again, be disappointed.
I feel a victim to God. Yet for years I have been teaching about the powerlessness that is a partner to the state of victim hood. This then raises the question, where have I abandoned myself? Where do I abandon myself? This question will require further study.
And because my deeper knowing knows that it is not true…there is nothing wrong with me and God has not abandoned me, that this is some belief I created a long time ago as a fractal of an experience I cannot even now recall, what do I need to tell myself when I am feeling this powerlessness?
As I was running in the forest this morning, this inner dialogue unfolded…and the words I need to speak to myself when I am feeling this fear goes something like this.
“I am here for you. Always. Always have been, always will be. Be still, listen, and trust.”
“I am” is a Universal “I am.” God, the Universe, me, everything.
And I thought about the 17 years I lived deep in the grip of a psychological eating disorder. How it ruled my life. And then one day I just said ENOUGH. Occasionally the remnants of this beast comes back, but I know how to banish it, again, from my existence. If I can do that around my eating, I can do this around my fear of income flow, work, value.
And I know how to live in flow. I do this in my work, my writing, and around my food. It is a matter of respect and attention. And trust. I trust that when I coach I am connected. When I write, I have no idea what words will happen next, where they will come from. When I teach, the same. I know that there is an infinite source, and infinite supply. I knew this when I first became a mother. I just had to relax into my own wisdom. Trust myself. It is a skill I have learned as an athlete. To know the difference between flow, and pushing.
Yet in my allowing and receiving, and my larger context of work, it has felt like I have been disconnected and out of flow. Yet I truly know how to do this…why would the principles be different?
First to be aware of the fear and contraction. Then to affirm the truth. “I am here for you.” Over and over. Listen and trust. And have zero expectations of what happens next, just like I do when I coach, facilitate, teach, write…Give up the thought that if I do this, I will get that…I hold an intention, but the intention is based on giving. In my coaching the intention is on the other…for me to facilitate the highest level of emancipation within the human spirit I am capable of. In my writing my intention is to share my experiences in a way that allows others the ability to find their own truth. In my facilitation we usually have an agreed intention, and a part of that for me, is again, the emancipation of the human spirit. In my parenting, the intention was always to create environments where my daughters true nature was allowed healthy expression.
The intention I hold in my work is the emancipation if the human spirit. I do this in several ways…by allowing different perspectives to become evident; by bringing light to truth; and by being the demonstration of everything I say, do, teach, believe.
So I have my intention, and my fear diminishing mantra, and then I listen, and trust, knowing that there is infinite supply. And move from this place, not expecting anything. Moving with what is spontaneously arousable within me.
This and a daily practice of giving from infinite supply, in a completely unattached way.
Wow Christine, it’s so good to hear from you in this way, for a number of reasons- your utterly genuine nature in sharing at this level of introspection, your willingness to be vulnerable which further illuminates your courage and strength, and your uncanny and eloquent way of capturing in words and understanding just exactly what has burdened me for the past year. And so add to all of that a deep connection I have always felt with you as my coach, across time and the other side of the world.
I have also been caught up in the lack of income flow since January of last year. 2010 felt incredibly cruel to me. Financially I was devastated. Near the end of the year, I needed to make a shift. I needed to be still and know that God (I AM) is God. The alternative of constant activity to spark something had clearly not worked. And I was hearing what sounded like victim language oozing from my mouth and my thinking.
So I got still. Spent lots of time between Thanksgiving (US) and New Years quietly with God. Reading, praying, listening. I cut out everything that didn’t have to be done. I made hours of time available. And finally just before the New Year, it came. Peace. Trust. A letting go as I’ve never experienced. My circumstances are just as tough as before, but I’m not worrying. I’m trusting. And believing that God does have a plan and I do have a purpose and He will make it happen. I simply must do each day what is right and true and serve and love whomever is put in my path. And most importantly – that I am loved. That was a hard one to sink in, but I finally put down the baseball bat.
This new thinking yielded new sales and new prospects nearly effortlessly within days of my “shift”.
I’ve been amazed that I made it all the way past mid-January with that peace intact. Even through troubling news about my tenants and my house. It’s only been in the last 2 days that I’ve felt a familiar shroud of doubt looming in the shadows. Thank you for helping me name it – fear of lack of flow, and especially… thinking “What’s in it for me?” when thinking about prospective business. This fear started bubbling at the same time I paid my big chunk of bills this month. And so I am getting quiet again this evening and remembering I am loved, and focusing on all those I know I can help tomorrow.
It truly is a day at a time. Thank you, Creator, for giving me this day. May what I choose to do with it be pleasing to you.
God Bless You Christine and much love to you. I look forward to accompanying you on this journey.
Hi Karen,
what a lovely surprise to hear from you after so much time. And what a beautiful response to my post. Thank you for taking the time to write and for sharing your own journey so intimately. We are going through such a seismic shift in all dimensions. It will require trust and silence and a peeling away of all illusions like we have not needed to do before.
Blessings on your journey and do stay in touch.
warmly,
Christine
In recent years, following a serious visit (you might recall) from the black dog, more than one person has suggested to me that I keep a journal outlining my daily activities. For a time it helped although after the initial period of 4-6 months or so, I found this to be of little value so I ceased doing it about 4 years ago.
I recently decided (at my own instigation) to commence a process that’s a variation of that theme. I started journalising my thoughts. I found this to be quite disastrous because whenever my thoughts became of the negative variety (which was often), I found the journalising process to be debilitating & therefore destructive. The more I recounted negative thoughts in the journal the more negative my thoughts became. So I promptly ceased journalising which has already had a positive effect.
It struck me as I was reading your “A Study of Fear” that maybe you might have found similar negative debilitation as a result of all the many scriptures you regularly formulate of this kind for your readers.
I’d be interested in your comments. After the last 3 good years since my retirement almost 5 years ago during which I’ve enjoyed good balance & “satisfactory” personal peace, I again find myself in a fragile state of mind (which drove me to instigate the journal of daily thoughts in the 1st place). Maybe you’ll have a thought that’ll add value & can push a button that’ll turn things around for me.
I hope you are well, Christine. Your “fear” article caused me to question how you are travelling yourself these days?
Ciao … Don
Hello Don,
lovely to hear from you. I have worked with many people who get consumed for various reasons with the black dog, and there is, like most things in life, no one formula that fits all. I have found that depending on the stage you are in, and the type of experience you are having, sometimes deep introspection is not appropriate, and that it is best to focus away from self, onto others. I know when I was going through mild depression I was caught up so much in my own pain, that to go deeper into it was just feeding a fire. What I did that really helped was to focus on what little acts and gestures I could give to others, everything from a smile, to a kind thought, to a compliment, to a real gift. And to do this in every single human transaction I had in the day. That became my practice, and it took the focus of my own down spiral. It really worked. I had to take the focus off me, and really give consciously to others.
Once we are out from under the darkness, and have mechanisms in place to extricate ourselves should we start to slip back in, introspection and contemplation is a valuable tool. The key is a level of objectivity, to not make it personal and if possible to find the humor in our way of being.
Sitting in how my fear shows up has been fascinating, and not in the least depressing, because I am being very ‘clinical’ about it…observing myself with some level of abstraction and curiosity, while maintaining the rigor. Indeed, I am able to find the humor in it, not from a shaming place.
I am traveling well. Like many people, for various reasons, it has been a hard few years on the income front. However my health is stunning, my family are well, I live in an amazing place and the journey I have been on is quite extraordinary in ways I could never have imagined. I am however, truly over being paralysed by fear, hence my inner inquiry. I feel very strongly that these times we are in are truly the breakdown of so many illusory systems, and therefore we all need to be prepared on the interior and able to respond to change with a lightness of being. This I feel is the outcome for me for the last two years of very deep inner work. The ability to dance on the winds of change like a feather and with great integrity.
If you want to give me a call I can recommend some things for where you are at right now.
warmly,
Christine