Hello lovely and courageous human,
Since last June I have been getting the nudge to share this story with you.
Honestly I thought it was just for you, until I found a document yesterday morning that I did not even remember having. It was then that I realized there is a beautiful twist to this whisper to share.
Along with the story arrived an answer and a greater understanding to something I have been calling in for as long as I can remember.
I am reminded once again – nothing we do is ever “just” for another or “just” for ourselves.
Over the course of the last two days I have put this Missive together.
As it happens – Mercury is currently “retrograde” which does tend to bring things from the past back into our awarenss, perhaps so we may have a deeper understanding.
It also signals a time to slow down and check for errors. Therefore I ask for your forgiveness and patience with any typos, miss-speliings or other errors I have inadvertently missed correcting before I pressed send.
May what follows be useful and restorative.
May it inform the deepest aspects alive within you in some beneficial and transformative way.
Once upon a time….
Thirty-five years ago I, a newly divorced single mother of three very young children traveled into the desert to cry for a vision for my life – what indigenous peoples have traditionally called a Vision Quest.
A day or so into my time in the desert – after I located, set up and got settled into the spot where I would reside for the remainder of my quest, it did not take me all that long to come to the understanding that I was well and truly afraid of EVERY. SINGLE. THING.
The outward manifestation of abundant and nonstop fear running, was me furiously stomping around in heavy hiking boots my jeans tucked tightly into the tops of my boots.
The purpose of the stomping was to scare the bejeezus out of any scorpions, tarantulas and rattle snakes anywhere so they would stay far, far away from me. To be clear no-one actually ever saw any of these beings out there as far I know in all the years of going out to that area.
So – there I was In the middle of the Eastern Washington desert, not another human for miles and miles, save for the two holding space for me in base camp some distance away.
I constantly scanned the horizon for danger, my nervous system on hyper-alert. Turns out this was actually my normal state of being – I just had no awareness of this true state of affairs until I was in the middle of somewhere and the busy-ness of Life was no longer distracting me.
For three days and nites under the vast expanse of sky – just me, my terror and I sheltered under a tarp held up with tent poles and some rope.
At night as I lay in my sleeping bag trying to fall asleep, the vastness of the Milky Way above me, I imagined that a bare chested, bearded cartoonish crazy-man was climbing up the far side of the butte where I lay. Hand over hand, a hatchet in his mouth, I was convinced he was coming to find me and hack me to pieces.
Needless to say my imagination was running away with me in its nightmarish jaws.
As a way to ensure safety and to let those in base camp know I was still alive and well a “buddy pile” was created. This was was an agreed upon and designated, easy to find place where we stacked stones somewhere out of site of both base camp and my quest site.
I would go in the afternoon and place a rock or some sign on one side of the stacked rock pile to signal I was alive and prevailing.
In the morning my friend in base camp did the same except on the opposite side of the pile.
The second day in I was deliberately stomping my way along a deer track toward the buddy pile, doing my best to scare off all the snakes, spiders and scorpions, my size twelve heavily booted feet pounding and shaking the earth in every direction.
When I was more than halfway to my destination a small brown mouse suddenly darted across the tiny downhill path I was traversing.
As I watched – it froze – right in the middle of the path.
I am sure it sensed my relatively enormous presence as life threatening danger, plain and simple.
My response was to stop and get very quiet – reasoning that would let the mouse know all was well and it could safely continue on its way.
Instead that tiny mouse stayed frozen in place.
Shaking and shaking – until it literally listed sideways and died of fright.
I still tear up whenever I remember this.
In the moment I was horrified, shocked and saddened. I felt awful and firmly believed I had killed that mouse.
I said prayers for its safe passage to the beyond as I had been trained and moved it gently to the side of the path, placing some cornmeal as offering nearby.
After much rumination I later realized that that tiny mouse bestowed upon me a priceless gift.
I have come to believe that this small and precious mouse gave away its life so that I could begin a profound healing process.
So that Fear would begin to release the viselike grip it had on my life and sanity.
So that I would be prepared to more deeply understand the power and nature of Fear.
In witnessing that life and death moment I was able to outwardly observe and deeply imprint how Fear itself can paralyze and even kill.
To this day I believe some of my own internal terror died that afternoon, along with that courageous little mouse.
Thank you Mouse. You are a dear and precious ally.
My relationship to Fear certainly shifted after that.
That night I slept soundly on the rocky ground under my tarp and felt at home in both my body and on the Land.
Not long after that vision quest I began assisting my friend in supporting other questers in that very same desert. After a while I was wearing flip-flops, shorts and tank tops in base camp. I hiked in tennis shoes and shorts and knew I was safe.
Back to this particular moment in time.
I currently have many projects and ideas that are a continual nudge – much like an enthusiastic passel of pups waiting impatiently to be let out and run free to play in the yard.
The internal prods have been getting louder and more insistent.
For the last many months I have been asking my unseen helpers, guides, allies, etc as well as my own wise inner knowing to help me understand the frozenness, reluctance and doubt that continually arises around stepping forward.
I am keenly aware that this is a theme that has run through my entire life experience. It is something I’ve been circumnavigating for decades.
I now understand that this particular flavor of reluctance did not originate with me personally, rather it came down the ancestral lineage from my mother and perhaps her mother and most likely way before her, as a response to ensure survival of the lineage itself.
As I said as when I began this tale – I vaguely remembered writing an earlier version of the mouse story. This morning I was compelled to do a thorough search of all the files on my laptop to find it rather than simply proceed with the story.
Lo and behold – The answer I had been calling in and the key to how to proceed was contained within the single document I found.
It is an exchange with a business advisor I briefly worked with sixteen years ago and I had totally forgotten took place.
I share it below
The advisor basically wrote (presumably in response to something I had written to her.)
“I absolutely get feeling both excited and afraid. I feel the same way when I’m undertaking something new. And as a business owner it seems I’m always doing something new.
Would you say more about the fear piece? Sometimes bringing fears into the light can be really helpful. They (fears) have a funny way of sneaking up when you least expect it and keep you from doing what your heart is desiring.
Just be curious.”
Here is the first part of my still very familiar response to her –
“The fear is that I won’t show up all the way or do the work asked of me to move forward. Not that I am unable, but that I will freeze and not do it. That doubt will paralyze me.
This speaks to exactly what you said – about fear sneaking up and keeping us from what we most want. As I sat with this question, what comes is fear of being afraid and not moving.”
I then shared a very brief version of the mouse story.
After I continued and everything became clearer –
“Life is like this.
Thank you for reminding me.
When I start something new and don’t know the terrain I often feel afraid. And don’t even know it! The mind always wants to know the outcome – and that is simply not possible.
My inner guidance tells me to go in a particular direction. So I do – I step forward and then – often – Fear stops me in my tracks (as Doubt, the poisoner of dreams bubbles up.)**
(Doubt and Fear it seems are two sides of the same coin when it comes to taking action aligned to spiritual expression.)**
So I have learned to drop into my heart and feel the fear all the way and then decide – to trust.
This is my definition of courage. Following my passion, listening to the messages deep inside, feeling the fear and excitement of the unknown, accepting it ALL and moving forward. One step at a time.”
**The words inside parenthesis above are ones
I added in yesterday to illuminate for myself my
current moment understanding.
Holy hallelujah!
What a powerful and illuminating reunion I experienced with my old trickster allies – Fear and her cousin Doubt – who between you and me have been frankly kicking my ass of late.
In my very human forgetting I arrogantly slipped into “knowing” them and consequently had been viewing them both as adversaries. As something to “get over” rather than completely turning and facing them as the true allies they can be.
Today I am once again reminded that Fear has many faces and shows up subtly disguised in any number of nuanced variations – most often quietly hanging out just under the surface of awareness – unseen and unnamed.
In my current understanding here are some things I “know.”
Fear is absolutely not a “bad” thing.
Feeling fear is not a moral failure or a judgment on the value of our character.
It doesn’t say anything about us other than we are human and are partially a biological being.
Fear is simply energy, a natural and vital biological response.
Its underlying purpose is to keep us alive. The aspect of Mind is where things gets tricky for us humans.
Sometimes Excitement is interpreted internally as Fear.
Fear’s message distilled down is simply one of “Pay Attention!”
Fear itself, however is not a determinant of the quality of whatever it is pointing toward.
Fear could be saying –
“Pay attention! That’s a rattlesnake in front of you!”
Or…
“Pay attention! Mixed messages are coming in. This situation is confusing.”
Or…
“Pay attention! This is something new and unknown.”
In which case a very old biological survival imperative to freeze may take over because the mind has no history about the actual and specific situation to pull from in its data bank.
Fear may arise unrecognized – in this case as reluctance – and significantly slow the roll.
Most of us learned at a very early age to push fear away. Way, way down into the vault of our unconscious, most likely because it activated unresolved energy carried by the big humans that were our caregivers.
Pushing it down in the moment was a truly brilliant survival strategy, by the way.
Unfortunately Fear’s message then becomes distorted and muffled, even to the point of complete denial that Fear even exists, negating the possibility, even the probability that it is a determinant of the direction and execution of one’s day to day life.
Fear unchecked, unrecognized, unexamined and unexpressed, I have found is absolute poison to the Spirit, the mind and the body.
Sometimes events we have experienced in the past leave such a powerful imprint on our psyche – which Jung said IS the body – because we were not able to fully express what we were feeling at the time and no-one was there to support us through it.
The survival response activated by the event then keeps the distress signal turned on and/or creates an unconscious habituated response to stimuli that reminds the psyche in some way of the original event. This is the definition of trauma I currently use.
This is especially true of events where we felt overwhelmed, afraid and alone.
I have come to see and understand that for thousands of years, at the very least, Fear has been systematically weaponized and utilized by Empire, Patriarchy and those who wish to control humanity – harvesting energy, money, time and attention – for their own agendas, benefit and means.
I know that Fear can immobilize and divide us, even/especially from our own Divine Self.
Fear can in part facilitate the Spirit-sickness we “modern” humans are wont to succumb to. The sickness of separation from our own wise inner knowing, our wise internal compass, our North Star, our true nature. As well as the insidious and deliberate separation from each other, Nature, the Earth and her wisdom and rhythms. Separation from the All.
Fear is an enormous – perhaps nearly infinite subject. After all it is possible the origins began eons ago in a single celled organism as biological life began.
Perhaps this is the invitation for each of us to initiate a open and curious conversation with Fear. To deepen our understanding and relationship to it.
To reevaluate what we make Fear mean – about us, about others, about the nature of Life in general.
To endeavor to become more intimate with its nature and what it actually is and how it has actually been influencing our lives.
To bring this into the light, into the shared conversation so that we may experience increasing freedom from collective bondage.
So that we may each bring the gifts that only we can bring into the collective experience.
The good news is we don’t have to go back into the past and undo anything.
Simple habitual awareness consistently practiced over time, often in the presence of a wise and well seasoned guide at first allows us to see and experience things in a new light – to alchemize the cellular responses so they no longer are unconsciously driving us.
As I sit quietly in this moment I am aware of deep gratitude for the heads up and re-membering that this finally completed action of sharing the little mouse story has gifted me.
The fresh air. The recognition and understanding.
The stronger foundation upon which to move forward.
I can already see and feel the path open before me.
Here’s to truly acknowledging and feeling the fear.
Saying “Hello! I see you.”
Allowing it to move, rather than ignoring it or shoving it down and then “doing it anyway.”
To heeding Fear’s call of “Attention!” to come back to the body.
To Breath.
To Stillness.
Back to the Self.
Aligning once again with the generative impulse alive within each of us that sparks the original authentic creative impulse we deeply yearn to express.
Welcoming the intrinsic bestowal ignited by your Divine Spirit – the Divinity alive within you – that only you are able to contribute to the Infinite, however that translates into action and genuine expression in your particular life.
As I come to a close, I know there has been much left unsaid about Fear and how it impacts our lives.
My prayer is that this be the start of an ongoing conversation.
Feel free to send along your own wisdom. I gratefully open to it. It does take all of us, after all.
I also want to acknowledge that as I once again picked up the threads of the Missive this morning it was with the unsettling news that the US has again engaged in war in the Middle East.
Perhaps there is something far wiser than my human understanding at work in bringing this particular story and sharing to fruition today.
May we all remember that Fear can be an ally – a natural result of stepping out in authenticity and aliveness.
And may we all willingly open our hearts, minds and hands to receive the blessings of this sacred exchange so all may know the true freedom of our own authentic expression, then generatively pass it on contributing a thousand-fold to the fulfilment of our most generous visions for the future of all.
~ ~ ~
This Missive is dedicated to my dear friend Nancy and to all who have been paralyzed at some point in their lives by Fear and yet chosen to step forward acting in alignment with their own deepest inner guidance – in trust and faith – anyway.
Bless you whoever and wherever you are.
