DO WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID OF

Many people tend to live little lives defined by their fears.  Most of those fears are imaginary troubles, based on what we think could or might happen, and have little to do with what’s really important in the big picture of our lives. I could explore the merits of taking risks based on those worries, but instead, I’m going to cut to the chase, and go after the One True Fear that is responsible for the ongoing suffering and low level depression and misery of millions of us. 

 

The thing most of us long for, hope for, search for yet hide from, shun and fear more than death- is Love. You know it’s true. Rather than allow yourself to really feel, rather than put aside the wall and be vulnerable, open, honest…rather than let others in and let them know the true thoughts and emotions that pass through you… you use the careful words, the pretense of not caring,  practice squelched emotional expressiveness and  endless waiting and questioning ‘who is the right One’ . These are the weapons that you are most likely to use to murder the possibility of intimacy, of love, of acceptance- before it frightens you too badly.

We are so attached to limiting who we can or should love, and limiting who might love us, that we have utterly forgotten that at the core of things, under our brilliance and stupidity, and judgments and longing and fear, what we are, are Beings who are made to shine.  We are love. Made from it. Live for it. And far too often die without surrendering to the fullness of it's power.

 

What is it that’s so utterly terrifying about Love?  It is stronger than our beliefs, politics, religious bullshit and racial bigotry. It is more powerful than our anxieties, petty worries, family baggage, sexism and victim stories. If we let ourselves Love, truly Love, the bright shiny, inflexible heavy armor that we have been wearing- which is wearing us out- would be revealed for what it is. The identity we try desperately to ‘sell’ as who we are in order to meet some delusional requirement for what we think other people must see in order to love us, would collapse. We would be revealed. And no matter what the person before us thought, believed, felt…  it would be possible to love him, or her.  Imagine that.

How else does Love scare the bejesus out of us? By stripping us of the falseness, the struggle and the lies that make up our dampened down daily existence, Love gives us back who we are. And that my friends, is terrifying if you’ve brainwashed yourself into believing that you’re a small mostly worthless bump on the ass of the planet.   You are an eternal being, made of stardust (literally) connected to all other humans, the natural world and the cosmos.  Now, what are ya gonna do? Hide? Gossip?  Pretend your life depends on keeping some crappy job? HA!

 

The Radical True Nature of what we are, is love. It’s what we live for. It’s what makes life worth living. It’s what we find in the Silence under all the bluster and noise we make.   The Love that we are, is already here. The Love that we are capable of feeling doesn’t have to be sought or found, just allowed.  And yes- you will feel afraid perhaps terrified- in the enormity of its shining power at first.  But you are more than your armor, more than your past, more than your stories of loss and fear. Reach for what you are, and you will find love there. Reach for what others are, and you will find love there.

 

So, do what you’re most afraid of- allow yourself to feel and express love full on, and whatever transformation may occur as a result, at least you will no longer be afraid.