It has been over 6 weeks of social isolation, change in work life, change in everything normal and learning how to live in this changing world.  I am continually feeling blessed by the whole experience.  I feel as if we are being given a giant opportunity to retreat to ‘the cave’, to self reflect, to look in the mirror and to grow personally, emotionally and spiritually.  I know that I have been seizing the opportunity and it has felt extremely hard but rewarding.  I am not sure that there has been another time in history where the world has slowed down as much, our common distractions have been removed or at least lessened and we’ve been united in such a profound way.  This also leads to many different ways of dealing with ourselves and what is arising in these uncertain times.  The overarching emotion at the beginning of this pandemic was fear, I believe that this is a global lesson in fear and I hope that we learn it is an emotion like any other that we can feel and release.

Truth: Fear is just an emotion like any other, we are designed to feel and release it.

I saw this diagram on my dad’s Facebook page and I think it speaks so clearly to the choices we have right now.

I think this diagram so beautifully shows our options, what it doesn’t address is the way to move from fear to growth.  I believe most of us want to be in the growth sphere but our hearts are in the fear sphere and we only know how to use our will power to pretend to be living in the growth sphere.  I am sure we can recognize how nice it would be to feel hopeful, to help others, to feel joy and spread happiness, but in our hearts we still hold fear.  Most of us walk around in vast amounts of fear on a regular day, fear of being judged, of doing the ‘wrong’ thing, of being hurt, of being exposed, of hurting others, of feeling the pain inside of ourselves, and so much more. And now, we have this added layer of fear, fear for our lives, our livelihoods, of our safety and the safety of those we love, of other’s actions during this time, of conspiracy, of passing on the virus, of getting the virus, of breaking the new laws, and so on. Denying these fears will not help us grow through them and stops our ability to grow in most ways.  We need to learn how to open to our fears, to feel them and to release them.

Truth: Love cannot exist in the same space inside of us that fear does.  We must remove the fear to open space for Love to enter.

It is easy to say ‘feel your fear’ it is much more difficult to do it.  We are taught to live in our fears, to feel that we are scared and then make almost any choice possible to avoid that feeling, from stuffing our face, indulging in drugs or alcohol, seeking feelings of protection and safety from others, controlling our worlds, over working, distracting ourselves with the myriad of things available to us today, going as far as murder, just so that we can avoid feeling the fear and the underlying emotions.  We are allowed to do this, we have free will and we can exercise it in this way, however, it leads to more pain and suffering in our lives.  We have a choice, and right now, it seems that the whole world has conspired to create space in our lives to make a different choice.

Opening up to feeling fear is a process, one that takes an extreme exercise of our Will.  We currently operate without thinking most of the time, from our current Will, we sometimes have new desires that we nourish and grow which eventually lead to a change in our Will, but we don’t often recognize the process nor believe that we can initiate, maintain and complete it, but WE CAN!

We can start by:

• Increasing our desire to feel the fear – this may not be easy so there may be several steps we have to take before we can sincerely do this
  • Discover what our resistance is to opening up to feeling the fear – these are usually many sets of fears within us, fears and false beliefs that we have been taught and have accepted as true.  These fears and false beliefs will be unique to each of us and many will have similar flavors such as: false beliefs about our worth, about what love is, both giving and receiving love, about our strength or vulnerability, about the world and how it operates, and so on.
    • Once we discover our resistance intellectually we have to open to it emotionally for change to happen, this again requires an exercise of our Will, we need to learn how to open to emotion when most of us have been taught how to suppress it, not feel it.
      • It is a learning curve and it takes time to learn how to feel again, how to feel the true emotions that are inside and that are coming up, not the preferred ones, the ones that we have been taught are ok to feel or result in people doing or giving us what we want, but the true emotions tied to the resistance we have to opening to the fear.
        • This takes HUMILITY (the ability to feel whatever emotions is present whether it is pleasurable or painful)
        • It take HONESTY (the ability to allow the emotion without trying to fit it into the narrative we’ve written for our lives and being open to discovering something different)
        • It takes LOVE (the compassion and acceptance for ourselves and others)
        • It takes FAITH (the growing belief that it is possible to connect with and feel our emotions and the result will be positive)
        • It takes ACTION and REPEATED ACTION (we have to do it again and again, softening, discovering and exploring each time as we allow ourselves to learn)
          • Some actions we can take to help us are:
            • Create time and space in your life to allow for the feeling of current emotions, the intellectual processing of our past and the opening to discovery
            • Journaling our feelings – being honest about our frustrations, our anger, our blocks, our fears, our feelings and thoughts about them
            • Speaking our thoughts and feelings out loud to nature or some space where other people won’t hear
            • Asking ourselves what am I feeling? What am I really feeling? on a continual basis
            • Sitting in stillness and being aware of what we are thinking and feeling – what impulses come up? what discomfort comes up? why is it so hard or easy to sit here?
            • Asking for help from whatever you call our Creator, sending out sincere feelings (not contrived ones that we wish we felt, but the real ones no matter how angry, sad, aggressive, pathetic, etc. we deem them)
            • Challenge yourself in the world, for example, speak up in situations where you would not usually, practice saying and doing things that push you a little and feel your response to doing that
  • Read the following post (COVID 19 Reflections on Fear) if you want to read my reflections while going through this process

• Feel the fear as it arises – often it is a physical sensation that accompanies the emotional ones, we all know that feeling in our gut, the feeling of something wrong, the feeling of terror that we are in danger.  We were designed to feel this, to release it and to grow from the process.  Emotions are supposed to be Energy in Motion, we just need to learn how to allow that again.

I am positive you will discover, as I have, that once we go through this process it starts to get easier and easier to do it.  It also gets easier and easier to do everything else in life because our fear is lessening inside of us, our resistance to feeling is lessening, our suppression of emotions is lessening and all that energy that went into maintaining that is now freed up.  I also know that it will begin to shake up your world, as it did mine.  I had quite a safe little castle built around me, it felt sad and pathetic, but it felt safe.  I liked that more than anything and I was able to pretend that it was perfect for me.  Once I started to break it down it was very uncomfortable for a time, the safety was removed, the fear increased, the anger increased, my doubts increased, but surprisingly my joy increased, my sincere joy and I felt the increase in connection to my world as well.  It was hard and uncomfortable and messy but SO WORTHWHILE.  I cannot stress that enough.  As with most things the more you work for it the better it feels.

So, it is a choice right now to be conscious of what is happening, to take advantage of the home time, to take advantage of all the triggers in our lives triggering our emotions, to make the choice to open to the emotions and to feel them to heal ourselves.