Fear & Spirituality

What does Fear have to do with our spiritual journey?

How does Fear serve us?

How does Fear harm us?

These questions and many more have been swirling in my head this past month. To be honest, the past two decades have been my own personal exploration of these questions, but recently they seem to be surfacing up all around me in conversations, interactions... and emails.

I like to email updates and announcements to my followers on a semi-regular basis, or really whenever the calling arises within. Around a month ago, I sent out my updates for July. The message was personally written and done with a genuine heartfelt desire to share my offerings for those who feel invited and are seeking some support. A few days after sending my email, I was was taken aback with a rather abrupt email from a follower with strong words requesting that I stop sending emails because they do not align with their values. And then I was slightly horrified to realize this email was also sent to many people from my email base.

Hurt. Shock. Confusion. Embarrassment.

Then a sigh of, "Oh, there's Fear here."

Some of you may have received this email from this person, and what I found SO beautiful was that this

strongly worded email, with really only a few sentences, surfaced such an amazing surge of love and protectiveness from so many of you in this community.

So many of you personally defended and reached out to me to show support. Thank you. What felt like a brief moment of hurt & embarrassment turned into a beautiful outpouring of love that lasted for days. Wow. Truly, thank you!

But the email lingered with me. The Fear I could so easily detect in this person's words stirred something that I felt was worth exploring and sharing with you all. Especially with the state of our world as it is today, Fear is something worth exploring more than ever before.

What I have come to learn in my practice, profession, and personal life, is that when anyone reacts in a triggered state, there is usually Fear there.

I, myself, have become keenly aware of my own Fear that surfaces up in conflicting situations. My triggered reactiveness alerts me to something deeper happening here. Somehow, when this happens, I have unconsciously allowed myself to become or feel like a 'victim' in my own life and have reacted in Fear.

Fear of not being liked. Fear of not having enough or being enough. Fear of hurting. Fear that I am not in control. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change...

There are many fears that can drive us into reactive triggered states.

Simple innocuous things such as an email with announcements can suddenly turn on this Fear and before we know it, we have lost all sense of reality and are operating from Fear.

Sometimes this Fear is warranted when our life is in danger or someone threatens our livelihood, our adrenaline system kicks in and we react strongly to protect ourselves. This is a beautiful design of our bodies to truly protect and save us in dangerous situations.

But what is happening when we are in the comfort and safety of our own home and an email induces this same Fear? Or perhaps we are in a tense conversation with a partner, co-worker, or neighbor and we notice our adrenal system kicking into full gear, but we are perfectly safe.

For many of us in the western world, we have the privilege and luxury of not actually living in immediate physical danger throughout most of our life. And yet, when we start to look around at the behaviors and words of those around us, ourselves included, it seems so many of us are operating from a place of Fear.

Where did this Fear come from? Why is it here?

For some of us, we have grown up in abusive or traumatic circumstances. Fear served us and helped us find safety. Safety by building protective coping mechanisms. Safety by fighting back. Safety by hiding. We needed this Fear to keep us alive. It was a survival mechanism.

For others, we maybe do not have memories of trauma or abuse, but there is something deep within us where this Fear is triggered.

It could be a past life memory that we can barely recall but feel it in our bones. Fear of being seen, Fear of trusting, Fear of suffering. In some ways, this type of Fear is the most difficult to recognize and work through because we can't make logical sense of it in our heads. We rationalize how we had a good childhood, our parents weren't perfect but they did their best, we had a safe home... We almost don't feel allowed to have Fear, and yet, if we are willing to really sit and look, we see that we do.

And then there is the Fear of the unknown, Fear of not being in control. And this might be the most deeply seeded Fear in our society today. Fear of change.

When something surfaces in our awareness that questions our world view, the lens through which we view reality, it can feel very scary. It can feel immensely uncomfortable, disorienting. Most do not even realize it, but rather than explore their Fear or ask where it comes from, they fight back. The Fear of a different world view, a different lens of reality triggers a reactive state.

This has become blatantly clear on the world stage, as well as in our personal lives. Countries, cultures, religions have framed a worldview through which many people ascribe to make sense of their reality. People look to these structures and pillars of perspective to orient themselves in our world. When another country or religion follows a different worldview, many feel a need to protect, defend, and fight back. Sometimes the mere existence of anything outside of one's paradigm is a threat to their own perceived sense of safety and security.

To truly consider another perspective outside of one's own, it requires that the individual has to give up their own paradigm of reality -- and that can feel immensely scary for many. It creates Fear. And for many, this Fear is simply too overwhelming to process or allow. For many, conscious or not, it feels far easier to fight against anything that brings this Fear to our awareness than to sit with our discomforts of what the Fear is showing us.

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In my own life, I have had the privilege to deeply question my own paradigm of reality multiple times.

In my late teens I experienced a very traumatic situation that threatened my life and called into question my entire faith and religion. I felt the entire foundation of my belief system shatter beneath me and I fell into darkness. I experienced what many people refer to as "Dark Night of the Soul." For a considerable period of time, I quite literally operated with no paradigm to orient my experience of reality. I believed in nothing.

Not everyone is called to go so deep into this exploration of Fear and the unknown, but for me, it was my journey back home.

Over two decades after this traumatic experience, I slowly began to build up my own belief system. For many years this revolved strictly around the physical tangible world. If it could be measured, visually represented, then I could believe that. Ideas and expressions of love, spirituality, and beauty actually scared me. I didn't feel like it could be trusted, and I even questioned if it was real. And yet, deep within me, I ached for it all to be real. There was a yearning within me, seeking to find this love I felt within but was terrified to see.

It was as though I led a double life for many years. My subconscious soul self yearned to understand life and death, to find the meaning of this existence, to embody the love I felt within, and yet my physical rational self wanted a world reality that could be safe, predictable, controlled, and socially acceptable.

For many years the only way I knew how to survive was to ignore and resist this subconscious soul part of myself. It was my coping mechanism that stemmed from Fear.

I judged others who were embodying this love. Ironic as it may seem, despite years of studying theology, I quietly criticized spirituality as a coping mechanism for life -- never realizing that I was victim to my own coping mechanism of ignoring and deflecting this part of myself. What I saw outside of me, I was terrified to feel or believe inside, so I resisted and fought back in my own inner personal battles. And yet, my subconscious soul self could not be quieted.

It took many years, but my inner battle began to wear down. My body even wore down. I faced a few set backs in my health that finally caused me to pause. I couldn't run from myself any longer. It took a naturopath doctor who practically pleaded with me to start taking walks on the beach, to journal, and to enjoy bubble baths to help my physical healing. I had so much Fear coursing through my body, I couldn't remember how to relax, how to feel safe, how to enjoy life.

The simple pleasures of walking on the beach or taking a bath simply felt too indulgent and unnecessary in my Fear-filled paradigm of reality. But once my physical health started to deteriorate and a doctor explained to me the validity of these self care practices with tangible evidence, I began to question this paradigm I had unconsciously adopted from Fear. I stopped resisting and I started listening.

Truthfully my healing journey began in so many other ways as well -- but this was a truly pivotal point for me. What started as a practice for physical healing to reduce stress, to reduce Fear, evolved into a spiritual practice. Spending time in nature and inviting in rest, beauty, relaxation, and love opened up doors that I never knew were shut. I began to explore parts of myself I didn't realize I was hiding away. I discovered I was a healer and that the spiritual shamanic path had been calling me for years in so many ways, and now I could finally hear it and follow.

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Fear is part of the experience of life embodied. It keeps us safe when there is danger, and it stretches us in ways to evolve our spiritual growth. But when Fear hijacks our nervous system and/or blindly shapes our paradigm of reality, we can become a victim to it. We run away from whatever induces feelings of Fear, and in turn we often run away from ourselves. In the worst case scenarios, our resistance to Fear can cause people to (re)act in forceful, ugly, toxic, and sometimes horrific ways.

But it does not have to be this way. Fear can teach us so many things.

Fear is a beautiful invitation to explore ourselves more deeply and encourages us to bring healing to parts of ourselves we didn't realize were lost in the shadows. When we began to allow space for Fear and listen, it is telling us truths about who we are. When we notice Fear rise up within us, and choose to listen instead of react or blindly follow, we can expand and evolve as an individual being and as an entire species on this planet.

We are living in uncertain and dramatically evolving times on this planet. I don't have to name any of it, we all feel it. Our world is changing and we have a choice. We can choose to blame others, run away, hide, give up, fight back -- or we can choose to listen.

When you choose to sit with the discomforts of our time, and to sit with your own Fear, what do you find? What path of exploration is stirred within you?