Fear and Curveballs

Inspiration:
What would happen if you recognized that life, rather than being something that has to be controlled, is something to be opened to - and that the safest thing you will ever do is show up for the life that you have been given rather than always trying to make it be the way you think it should be?

Intention:
Today I will be willing to open to life - all of it - the fear, the pain, and the joy.


What would it be like to fully acknowledge that you will die and you have no idea when that will be? If you can unhook from the fear that this brings up inside of you, something amazing can happen. You finally recognize that you want to LIVE, fully LIVE before you die.

In order to fully live we need to change our relationship to fear. Only about one percent of fear is necessary to our survival - we step off the curb and the body jerks back when it hears the roar of the approaching truck. Most of the fear we experience, however, is only a game in our minds, stories of fear that go all the way from what will happen if I am late to the appointment, to what if he/she doesn't like me, to what if I get some debilitating disease? They are often very subtle, but they can become huge when life throws us a curve ball.

All the while we are cultivating our garden of fear, life is unfolding, birds are singing, planets are spinning and life, moment by moment, is appearing out of Mystery. All the while we are caught in our minds, we are cut off from this amazing adventure of life. In order to not be run by fear, we need to understand that our fear of dying is actually secondary to our fear of living. We are afraid to open to life. This fuels fear even more than our fear of death!

What would happen if you recognized that life, rather than being something that has to be controlled, is something to be opened to - and that the safest thing you will ever do is show up for the life that you have been given rather than always trying to make it be the way you think it should be?

This is where the fear of death can be our great ally. For fear always says we have time. It says life will finally be okay when I stop doing this or when I find my soul mate or my partner/parent/boss changes or I have enough money. What if you could accept that you don't know how much time you have, that death or illness could come at any moment?

Whatever you feel when you contemplate this truth is exactly what needs to happen. It may increase your fear, and that is okay because the only way we can get unhooked from fear is by getting to know it. Here is a wonderful quote from Krishnamurti:

It is not that you must be free from fear. The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create resistance against fear. Resistance in any form does not end fear. What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it, not how to resist it.

Facing the fact that we don't know how much time we have helps us to see our fear so we can learn about it instead of getting caught in it. For anything that generates fear becomes an opportunity to get to know it. And the more we get to know our fears, the easier it becomes to recognize the game of fear in our minds. The more we see this, the more our attention is freed to come back to this moment - for this moment is where life is happening and it is the only place where we can be truly alive.





Quote: "Anything that generates fear becomes an opportunity to get to know it. And the more we get to know our fears, the easier it becomes to recognize the game of fear in our minds. The more we see this, the more our attention is freed to come back to this moment - for this moment is where life is really happening and it is the only place where we can be truly alive." -- Mary O'Malley