Walking Through The Fear
I wasn’t actually walking as I walked through the fear. I sat still on a railroad tie, leaning against a fence in the sun, cowboy style. My hat was even tipped over my eyes, shading my face. Blue jeans, square toed boots and rowel spurs. Quite a look.
As I sat relaxing, I started to feel these familiar waves of fear come up on me. And one of the horses, about 30 yards away, showed up in my awareness. It was Josie. She started telling me her story of fear as I felt my own crashing over me, wave after wave.
The past two years have been a time of tremendous courage as I’ve faced just about every fear I could find. Homelessness, moneylessness, all sorts of -lessnesses. It turned out I kept running and running from the sensations that come with fear, having just enough courage to know that it was there, but not enough to sit still, turn around and say, “Hello my old friend. Let’s have a new conversation.”
So, sitting here leaning on this fence, feeling the sensations, I knew there was no more running. No matter what it felt like, I was going to rise right through it. Besides, there is nowhere to run to anymore! The courage, I’ve discovered, is in just being okay with knowing that there is no fear that is bigger than me, knowing that whatever might seem horrible, I can expand my heart right through it and watch it dissolve. Rising and expanding through it always, ALWAYS, creates space for new perspectives, new actions, new awareness of who I really am.
I didn’t go into analysis at all. I just sat there and let the sensations of fear fly through my body - adrenaline, panic, tingles, prickles, nausea. No resistance, no battle. Just a lot of intense sensations, and a lot of deep breaths. After all, I’m in no actual danger. I’m just sitting here against this fence surrounded by horses…
Josie. Josie starts showing me a rough scene she’d lived through earlier in her life. A scene where she was tied and expected to stand tied, and as the saddle was put up on her back, things went haywire for her. A series of behaviors, hers and that of humans, embedded a pattern of fear and resistance in her that felt a whole lot like what I was feeling. We were sharing our senses with each other.
In the past, I would have responded to Josie’s communication by getting up and trying to “help” her through her stuff. But today was different. I sat still, and I let Josie help me. I listened to her story, watched her story, felt her story, and it made it easier for me to turn around, look at my own fear-sensations and say, “Hey old friend, you know…let’s do things differently now.”
I just let time pass as all of the sensations buzzed my body – not emotions, but actual body sensations, the tingles and prickles and stuff – and soon enough it all moved through. Either I walked through it, or it passed through me…doesn’t matter. I felt in my body that it all shifted, I felt new space where I used to hide all of that debris from myself, and Josie relaxed, too.
People use stories a lot to share experience, to commiserate, to impart wisdom. I don’t always enjoy hearing stories when they just go in circles, stroke egos or hide the truth. But sharing stories in this way, addressing the truth of what we sense and how it feels can be a doorway to totally dissolve the emotional charges and the fear-based debris, when we share and listen without judging, trying to hide from the emotions and sensations, or trying to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place.
The fact that Josie’s story came up was my invitation to let whatever sensations her story brings fly right through my body, clearing space for more of who I truly am. That’s what it looks like to me, that’s what I watch in others.
Walking through the fear is, simply put, the courage to allow sensations to move through the body with awareness that it’s happening for one reason only – to complement my life by leaving my body. I can hold on if I want, but I’ve already been there and done that…why not fly into new space?
