Do you seek change in your life? Do you yearn to do and experience more? Do you want to embrace life fully and completely and yet… when that change beckons or when opportunities arise, you shrink from them because of the fear that causes your heart to hammer and your chest to constrict?
What is the fear that grabs your attention and clamours for you to pull back? Is it a message warning you that you are going the wrong way, or is it the noisy effect of your conditioning and the beliefs you have held and strengthened over the course of many years? Is it inner guidance, or is it negative emotion that needs to be recognized, observed, and released?
I have become a pro at “shooting myself in the foot” because of fear. I feel the inner call for change, the restlessness that seeks new experiences that will challenge, stretch, and invigorate me, and yet, when life presents exactly what I have yearned for, my first response is fear. My first instinct is to yield to the insistent voice of fear and to retreat to the safety of what is known… and even as I am drawn to that pull, I know that what is known no longer satisfies me. I know that I will be getting in my own way, as I have done so often in the past, and I will be preventing exactly what I seek.
Is this fear an inner message that I should heed, or is it the result of years of believing that I’m not good enough and that good things happen to other people? I have realized that it is the latter. It is not wise guidance from my soul to which I need to attend; it IS the projection of my own self-beliefs of inadequacy. Instead of being pulled into the negative energy of the squeezing hand of fear around my heart, I am called to see this expression of fear for what it is – negative beliefs about myself that only serve to limit and disempower me and that CAN be released and changed. As I recognize the fear and breathe into it, it releases its hold on me. When I feed into it, it gains power over me and imprisons me within the restrictive bars of my own self-beliefs because it perpetuates a self-projection based solely on fear, self-judgment, and lack of self-worth.
How am I certain that this fear isn’t an important inner message telling me that I’m going the wrong way? I know that it can’t be because it serves to restrict me. Its purpose is always to make me feel separate and “small,” and this is NOT what I know as my true identity. As God’s Divine creations, we are all magnificent spiritual beings of light and love. We are anything BUT separate and small. I don’t just know this in my head; I experience this empowering knowing when I get still and go within to my soul, to the awareness that I am so much more than my physical body, to the awareness that I am an eternal being who is connected to everyone in spirit. When I am within my soul, I know beyond words and thoughts that I am a part of all that is, that the words, “Be still and know that I am God,” show me the infinite consciousness of which I am a part.
As part of our spiritual inheritance, we have immeasurable creative power, and it is shown in the opportunities that present themselves in our lives. We are powerful creators who DO manifest that which we desire, and then, as many of us do, we close the door on the opportunities that we sought in the first place because of fear and self-doubt. What I am realizing is that there is opportunity within the realization that we self-sabotage and get in the way of what we desire the most.
This opportunity calls us to make a different choice in the face of fear. It calls us to recognize fear for what it is – an expression of old beliefs that no longer serve us. It calls us to rest quietly in the true knowing of our inner magnificence and the ever-present guidance of Holy Spirit that will guide us through the landmines of our past self-beliefs and show us the truth of who we really are in the moment that we ask. It calls us to see fear for what it is – limiting, self-imposed shackles of self-belief that can be released. All it takes is our awareness and willingness to do so. Namaste, my dears :))
