Living Bravely

For a long time, I've felt heavy. Too heavy to even want to wake up in the morning. Not heavy physically, although that has been there too! The heaviness I speak of is a heart-spiritual heaviness. A soul heaviness. I've been carrying around some serious spiritual and psychological baggage. I didn't even know I was lugging it around. Most of us carry garbage from the past. It can be as massive as replaying terrible events of the past. We may be ruminating over living situations or the health and welfare of ourselves or loved ones. It can be as mundane as rerunning an argument we had 20 years ago, at a job we don't even have any longer, and the witty things we could've said. At least those are a few of the bags I was tossing out the window while brushing my teeth this morning. I knew that I needed to clean up my act, but I didn't know how to do it. Now I am much lighter. Dread doesn't crush me in the morning. Nor does it tap dance on my face throughout the day. Here is how I have been tossing out the garbage.

I've always been a sucker for books on spirituality, philosophy, and psychology. My book diet includes everything from Christianity to Buddhism, New Age to the random pamphlet some guy handed me outside a grocery store. For me, they all have value. Lately, I've been participating in a 40 day-fear-cleanse. The cleanse is from a book called, May Cause Miracles, by Gabrielle Bernstein. I both love it and hate it.

My criticisms are, like many, that she throws around ambiguous words. It is fluffy. When the definition of a word is ambiguous, it is difficult for me to create, understand the concepts, and use them. My last criticism is stylistic. The language can be a bit too "hip" for my tastes. But that's ok! It is important to note that Bernstein based the book and framework on A Course in Miracles. A Course in Miracles is a 1976 book by Helen Schucman. The course is unusual, ambiguous at times, and esoteric. A debate rages about how biblical it is or isn't. According to the introduction to A Course in Miracles, the premise [of the course] is the greatest "miracle" is the act of gaining a full "awareness of love's presence" in the reader's life. Huh? What does that mean? What does that even look like? This is how I define fluffy. Bernstein takes the ideas from that book, makes them her own, and simplifies them. Unfortunately, the fluffiness permeates both books. My final criticism is that Bernstein recommends meditations. Unfortunately, the prescribed meditations are no longer available on her website. The book is older, so I can forgive this and there is plenty available for free on YouTube and other platforms.

Despite these criticisms, the book has been valuable to me. Every day, for the duration of the course, it takes no longer than 5 or 10 minutes to perform the exercises. All it requires is a journal and I recommend doing a little research via the internet, or whatever you have handy. It is also useful to have a device on which to set reminders. These reminders will prompt you to remember the daily lesson throughout the day.

First of all, I have decided to use the book as a framework for my own cleanse. After the first day, I knew I'd need to adapt it to myself, which is pretty easy to do because it is so fluffy! There are no hard edges so it is easy to adjust to yourself, beliefs, or lack thereof.

Subsequently, I looked up definitions of love and fear. I needed to know what these things mean to me and why they matter. Why is being surrounded with love important? What can it do for me? What can it do for others? Plus, some fear is important and healthy! Everyone is familiar with healthy fears such as the fear of burning yourself. So how am I going to define the problematic fear? I did what I do best. I did research. I studied the Bible and the dictionary for definitions of love and fear. I meditated on the Greek words for love and reviewed the Hebrew and Aramaic translations. I reviewed Buddhist and Hindu discourses on love and fear. I reviewed psychological explanations of fear and anxiety. Once I had my definitions, I was ready to go forward. I am not going to define those things for you. I am going to allow them to remain fluffy. Like a mother horse urging her colt to take its own steps, I am pushing you to look into this for yourself.

I am 13 days into the cleanse and I have a few takeaways I would like to share with you from my journey and I hope they help you too.

1. Avoidance of fears causes our greatest problems. And I'm not talking about a fear of burning yourself on the stove, I'm talking about unhealthy fear (anxiety). Our fear of being uncomfortable. I'm talking about avoiding a doctor's appointment because you are afraid of what they will say. The fear of having a tough conversation because you don't want to lose the relationship. Not looking at your credit card statement because you are anxious. Those fears. The fears that we allow to grow from little seeds into giant maneating plants. We grow ill and our treatment becomes more difficult the longer we avoid the doctor. The tough conversation we avoided has now turned into our spouse moving out of the house. Our debt grows while we pretend it isn't there. It isn't there. So we don't need to look into remedies for our finances. If we had plucked those fear plants when they were small seedlings, the giant man-eating plants wouldn't be swallowing us whole now. Trust me. I've been dodging hungry things for a long time.

2. Being here and now is a valuable tool. If you aren't conscious of what you are thinking and feeling in the moment, you can't make better choices. Period. Hindsight is helpful, but only to a point. For example, I gobble up 3 pizzas in one sitting. Now I feel over-full and bloated. Looking back at the problem later might be useful to me if I form a plan for future prevention rather than mentally beating the hell out of myself. What would have been more useful to me is if I had been present and mindful at the time of the pizza eating. If I had been present, I could've asked myself if I want or need to eat more than one pizza? Then I could've made the best choice for me at the moment. Also, I probably would enjoy the experience a whole lot more. Everything happens in the moment. Our most effective or damaging decisions happen there too. This is where that prompt or reminder comes in handy, to help us recenter in the now. I use my phone and it goes off hourly to remind me to watch and listen to myself so I can be the person I want to be.

3. Judging ourselves (and others) doesn't help bring anyone into the best action/mindset. Ever spent time judging your thoughts and emotions? The thought or emotion pops up and you judge yourself for it. It might sound like: I shouldn't think/feel/want that! I'm a (fill in the blank here - a parent, a spiritual person, a whatever) and they don't think that! Guess what? They do. Or you might be watching other people and thinking: Bob says he is (fill in the blank) but he's doing that! He's definitely not what I thought! It isn't what I'd do! Guess what? You might do what Bob has done. Heck, you might start judging yourself for judging Bob! Stop. The vast majority of what people do have nothing to do with you or me. It has to do with them and what they are dealing with. The Four Agreements reminds us not to take anything personally because it isn't personal. We're all fighting phantoms. The phantom of fear. Let it go. You're a person. Bob is a person. We're all afraid. We're all spinning on a rock in the deep vacuum of space, hoping to be happy. It doesn't mean what Bob did was ok. It means we're people doing things out of a response to fear. And there's so much fear. So many different types of it. If you don't believe me, look at the fears and anxieties people whisper or scream out into the void. There is the fear of the government, of different political parties, different races or religions or creeds, fear of losing their jobs, homes (below is a picture of me wondering if I would have a home to go back to due to fire), of rejection, losing love, being cheated, and spiders. Damn spiders! Anyway, these are just a few fears and anxieties. I've been using prayer or affirmation (again, a reminder throughout the day is useful) to remind yourself that you are just a person, who makes mistakes, and you are choosing better things now.

That is all for now, but there will be more. For now, I leave you with a story. I once worked at a place where the people filled themselves with fear and mistrust of each other. I mean serious fear. It escalated from annoyance to suspicion of stalking. It got out of hand, actually dangerous. Later it grew into the assumption that the person was going to cause someone physical harm. People were taking weapons to work to protect themselves from each other. We made decisions based on fear. I bought into the fear and didn't want to go to work there, talked at length about the "dangers", and fed the fear machine. I'm not proud of how I acted. After it ended, I judged myself and the people involved for a long while. Now I can look at us all with compassion. We were all afraid and we had chosen poorly. It isn't right. I cannot fix that event now. What I can do now is be here and now so I can notice what is happening, as it is happening, and make better choices.

Now, I can watch my judgments and ask myself if I am experiencing a real threat (fire bad!) or being uncomfortable. Based on what we're dealing with, can perform the right action/thought. I can sidestep the house fire and call for help, which is a wise plan to perform during the moment rather than retrospect. Generally, I'm dealing with being uncomfortable. 99% of the time, you'll find that this is what you are encountering. I made that statistic up, but you get the point. Tossing the luggage of fear out the door, I can wake up and hop out of bed now that I no longer drape myself with it. Rather than avoiding seedlings of anxiety, I can pluck that seedling and toss it aside.

Face the fears and live life bravely, my friend.

Love, your self-care Pixie.