I'm thinking this might be the most important post I have done to date. I want to talk about FEAR. False Evidence Appearing Real. Face Everything And Recover. And of course, F Everything and Run!
I'm not sure if I've told this story on my blog before. But every once in awhile, I find myself in Phobos's company. And when I become aware of the critter, he just skedaddles. The first time I found myself in his company, I didn't even realize he was an entity. And I call him "He" because Phobos in the Greek Pantheon was the son of Ares along with Deimos or Terror. Fear & Terror, lovely eh? (I would like to add I have a collection of short, in-need-of-rewrite plays I entitled Furcht, Elend LLP: An Olio of Oiliness for These Unctuous Times. Furcht, Elend are German for Fear, Misery, and it's a slant on Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches: Szenen von der Meisterrass--in English "Fear & Misery of the Third Reich: Scenes from the Master Race.")
Anyway, I had been reading a wonderful book--Freeing the Soul from Fear by Robert Sardello. I had gone up to the Cloisters on a lovely spring day two years ago, and I had finished lunch and walked to a bench in the Fort Tryon Park and read some more of what this wonderful teacher has to say about meditation. I picked up a rock and just meditated on it for five minutes. Being the compulsive thinker that I am, it was a challenge to piece together thirty-forty seconds of "peace", but I did at least manage to do that, focusing on an image of the rock which I decided to carry with me. Since this meditation, I've done it with other rocks, paper clips, and a candle flame, all of which work well. It doesn't really matter what it is, because you dissolve it anyway and then sit in the "void", with an incredible sense of well-being.
Anyway, I got on the bus back downtown and decided I wanted to go to a bookstore. I was looking for a specific item--the Druid Animal Oracle. I vaguely remember talking with my best friend about animal guides, and had just discovered that the Otter is indeed one of those. I've had some wonderful experiences with Otter as a literal guide through parts of NYC that I didn't know existed, and Otter's all about play. I know Otter's got a bead on Albany now, but I haven't had the time to pursue his adventures as of yet.
Anyway, I found what I was looking for and went to the checkout stand. At the time I had two credit cards, and I knew one of them was close to being maxed out. The other one, however, I din't have the card for as I had lost it. So I had to grab the one that I thought might be outgemaxed. Sure enough, the clerk said (with a sort of "Ha-ha" chuckle in his voice) "I'm sorry that card's declined your purchase."
Instantly, I could feel all my hormones ablaze. "Caught-caught-caught" was the sound of the alarm in my brain, but interestingly instead of feeling it throughout my entire being, I only felt it in my body. I really felt the adrenaline coursing through me and realized that I could just feel the rush of heat to my face, the quickening heartbeat, etc., and not take it in, not react to this stimulus. I looked at the counter and witnessed myself and made a conscious choice to only let my body be the vessel that experienced the wave of energy and not let the rest of me get upgecaught inside.
I told the clerk that I had lost my other card, and expected it in the mail, that it might even be in my box when I got home (which indeed it was, funny enough), and that I would be back Monday or Tuesday to pick this up. He duly noted my name and put it behind the counter where they keep stuff to pick up and I walked out of the store and for the first time ever:
I Felt Joy!
It was pretty incredible, all in all. I later understood that I now had a tool in meditation to put myself in a place of well-being and happiness, and that what Abraham Lincoln had said about "Most people are about as happy as they want to be," only told part of the story. People who had access to this tool were lucky if they ever felt joy at some point in their lives, and even then only a faux joy that would come with something like winning the lottery.
Anyway, since this particular Phobos-encounter, I have come to see that fears are like these winged entities that exude malice and threat. Sometimes they really are bad-assssss entities, but a lot of the time they are parts of myself that have been cut-off from my awareness. I do have moments like one particular night a few weeks ago when I woke up feeling a nameless fear. And when I got quiet and retreated into my Self and my body, I saw one of these winged dark things at the foot of my aura, trying to paw its way in. "Caught!" in reverse, huh?
What I'm trying ultimately to say about False Evidence Appearing Real, is that I have the personal experience of feeling that adrenaline rush course through me and disbelieve that I have to follow it to the ends of the earth. My five minute, imperfect stone meditation, where I only could get maybe 30 seconds together of uninterrupted focus, actually had a preventive effect. I have had other experiences where I've been confronted by ugly fears in others, and been able to breathe into the experience and get calm so that I could be effective in the matter at hand. I start every day with meditations, and the fears are sometimes there around me. They disappear when I start to breathe in the Ha Prayer, however. And the only ones that come in now are the ones I consciously invite in, with the help of one or several of my many guides.
Fear. It's not you. It's beside you, not of you or in you though that is what it wants to make you think. It wants to override your visions, your motility, your volition and turn you into a machine, and the more addictions you put yourself into, whether it's sugar/flour, booze, drugs, toxic belief, power-over others, shame, American Idol, or whatever, the more vulnerable you are to the machinic/Matrix aspect out there.
Because fear is the currency of so many people out there these days, and because predation/vampiry/cancer/addiction appears to be the dominant M.O. in the Unraveling States, Counties, Burgs, Towns, Hamlets and Individuals of AmeriConned there's a lot of icky-smelling vapor in the air. But that's ALL it is, vapor. It's not real.
There is another power source within, much deeper than the adrenal glands stoking fight or flight energy. And that, my friends is a source of a deeper awareness and understanding of what's really going on.
Free. Your Soul. From Fear....
No comments:
Post a Comment