In a previous blog I touched on fear a few times..I feel it’s only right take a further look at this. I can only talk from personal experience about how it has affected me and observations of others but I hope it will resonate with whoever needs to hear it. Some things in this might trigger some people, if it does take a moment to explore it, it could well be your fear talking..or is it your ego..? I sometimes wonder if there’s a difference..
Take what resonates and leave the rest.
According to psychology research, fear is a primal emotion that involves a universal biochemical response and a high individual emotional response. Fear alerts us to the presence of danger or the threat of harm, whether that danger is physical or psychological. Sometimes fear stems from real threats, but it can also originate from imagined dangers.
Fear is generally used for protection, as explained above it is a response to danger. We detect a threat, whether it be physical or psychological, and our bodies respond in varying ways depending on the person, the situation, the previous training or experience in handling fear response etc etc. I’m not going to pretend I know how it all works as I’m not a psychologist or Dr of any kind but this much is clear even to an observer of fear.
We can be fearful of many things, some physical, some mental, some emotional and some a combination of these things. We can be fearful of objects, animals, the future, our own thoughts..we can even be scared of other peoples thoughts which aren’t even known to us! We can talk ourselves out of fear and we can talk ourselves into fear! Fear can stop us from doing so many things that we would love to do and it can also drive us on to do the things we most love to do!
"You didn't come this far only to come this far" Jesse Itzler
The effects of fear can range through our physical, mental and emotional bodies too, as I have said before one will invariably affect the other, especially over time. I have come to this realisation in my own body in the form of poor posture via a lack of confidence throughout the majority of my life having left me with a rounding of the upper back and a tightness across the chest. This has been brought on by the fear of being seen, the fear of standing tall and being accountable so I ducked my head a bit, rounded my upper back as if to hide from the world in an attempt to go unnoticed and over time the muscles got used to the shape with some muscles shortening across the chest and some lengthening through the rhomboids and trapezius and now I have neck pain. Thankfully through awareness I have seen this and it is readily correctable with the right exercises, discipline and also a shift in my consciousness around being seen and heard.
It’s an interesting thing is fear…
The crazy thing about this is we don’t even realise the fear is creeping in. A little hesitancy here, a little pause there and it sets itself as a pattern. Neural pathways start to be created, the more we repeat that moment of hesitancy, if through fear rather then rationality - we always have a choice how to respond to any given situation - the path is strengthened the neural pathway thickens, chemicals are released and the body gets used to that behaviour, it gets used to that release of chemicals and, whether they are good or bad for us, the body learns to like it. When the body likes something it repeats it, the pathways get more established and we look for bigger hits of that release. Without awareness this can be a curse, yet with awareness it can be changed, just like my physical postural distortion, with the right exercises, discipline and a shift of consciousness / awareness.
What are you scared of..?
How many time have you been asked that..? Quite a straight forward question isn’t, quite harmless..most people would go straight to phobias, I’m scared of heights, spiders, wasps, buttons and light bulbs..yes it’s a thing! But all these things are external..things outside of us, things that are rational at times or at least can be rationalised. Falling from heights hurt, spiders can bite and be poisonous, wasps sting etc but we rarely go inwards when we talk of fear.
We can be scared of getting hurt, we can be fearful of rejection, of failure, of judgement, of loss, we can even be scared of change, fearful of the unknown. We can be fearful of a whole manner of other things yet when asked it is rare for us to jump straight to these things.
Is it because we don’t think we are scared of these things..? Is it because these things don’t matter to us..? Is it because we’ve been taught not to reveal too much about ourselves..? Is it our ego trying to protect us..? Have we been raised, most likely inadvertently, not to express our emotions..is it because we are actually fearful of the very things mentioned above and we don’t want to be judged or that we don't want to be rejected for showing vulnerability or expressing our true feelings..?
Vulnerability..it’s an interesting one too. Do you think it’s weak to be vulnerable..? Is it easy to be vulnerable..? To show yourself, your fears, your quirks and things that embarrass you about yourself to other people..? Your weaknesses..How does it feel standing up and saying, ‘I can’t do that, can you help me please..?’
I personally don’t think it is easy to be seen, not to be truly seen. Warts an’ all as they say..it takes courage and strength to let your guard down doesn’t it. So many people put on brave faces and put on shows of courage and strength, even aggression. The best form of defence is attack as the great Sir Alex Ferguson used to say, but really, quite often, they are just as scared as anyone else and it’s just a facade.
Fear isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, it is a form of protection. Let’s take the fear of falling out a window, as an example, or more to the point the fear of hitting the floor after falling out the window, protects you from hurting yourself. We can use fear for self preservation - protection both physically, mentally and emotionally - but this can be where lines can get a little blurred if we’re not aware.
We can see fear as a good thing because it protects us. We could open up a window to cool down, to smell the world and hear the sounds of the birds, we may even explore the sensation of being free and flying out of the window in our minds eye but then pull back with the realisation that falling out would hurt, or worse, so we scrap that thought and enjoy the breeze, smells and sounds by just leaning on the windowsill. Perfect. Then a thought creeps in, I could slip and fall out..so we take a step back from the window and enjoy the sensations from a safe distance. For some what can happen next is another thought creeps in, but what if someone trips and falls towards the window, they could fall out..maybe these thoughts are your own, maybe they are from ego or maybe they come from an programmed response in your subconscious - safety first from HSE at work - So we then shut the window to eliminate the risk of falling.
In just a few moments we’ve gone from the imaginings of freedom, the chance of enjoying a cool breeze, the sounds of the birds and the smells of life to locking ourselves in a hot stuffy room festering away from the wonders of life. It may be a silly example but hopefully you can see where I’m going with this and how easy it is to slip away and use fear as a reason NOT to live, not to experience the highs and lows of life. We can talk ourselves out of ANYTHING if we justifying it well enough and, as I know from personal experience, the brain is extremely good at justifying all sorts of weird and whacky reasons NOT to do something!
Now I’m not saying we should all jump out of our windows to see if we can fly but we could at least be happy to sit on the ledge and dangle our feet out, finding a healthy balance between freedom and self imprisonment. We are energy beings having a human experience..we are here to sample, to feel, to love, to hurt, to explore, to fail and learn..to grow.
We’ve been educated / indoctrinated into using our brain to process every action, every step and every reaction. Think before you speak, think before you act, think about the consequences..it’s never feel..feel into your response, feel into what you want to say, feel into how you want to act. I believe if we did this we wouldn’t need to think about the consequences as we’d be coming from a place of understanding, not only of ourselves but of our surroundings and other peoples situations. Maybe, just maybe, the more we feel into our lives the less ‘situations’ there would even be.
This could be a long blog - or a 2 parter I've not even touched on the ego yet!...Take a break if you need lol I'll still be here when you get back!
Scrap that..ego will be a part 2...
How do we feel..?
In some cultures past, and some present, it isn't unusual for children to spend the first part of their life in darkness to help them trust their instincts and intuition. Getting used to using their senses to navigate life on this realm and then introducing them to the light of day and letting their brain compute the experiences they've had. Internal sensory perception before external sensory perception.
There are experiments out in the scientific world today that show that the heart responds to situations and encounters before the brain. These studies have shown the heart responding to situations before they are even known to the physical body. The heart has been shown to respond to images up to 5 seconds before a randomly produced image has even appeared on the screen.
I've talked in previous blogs of how we are energy and we communicate via frequency, our hearts being fundamental in this process sending out an energy field measured up to 10 meters away from the body, but I would bet my own heart that it goes way beyond that! Our hearts have the same neurons as our brain, learning and remembering just like our head brain.
Greg Braden mentions many a peer reviewed study that the heart responds first and sends information to our head brain which then relays the response to our physical body. These old sayings like follow your heart are around for a reason we've just be programmed away from these ways of being.
We don't give our bodies the credit they deserve for the pure innate magic they poses. they are amazing vehicles for our energy beings to navigate this life experience. Maybe it is because it doesn't make logical sense to us to see these things - seeing is believing, we are told, but maybe when we start believing we start seeing..maybe it's because we're losing connection to nature, to ourselves..to our hearts!
Take time to meditate, to be still and feel into your heart, feel into a situation, feel into your environment and start to believe, even start to KNOW, things can and will be different on the other side of releasing the fear.
Feel the magic.
