Lovely excerpt from Michael Singer’s “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself“, one of my favorite books ever. He’s a very accessible writer. He leads you down the merry path to “aha” and you know how you got there and why.
Change can be viewed as either exciting or frightening, but regardless of how we view it, we must all face the fact that change is the very nature of life. You have a lot fear, you won’t like change. You’ll try to create a world around you that is predictable, controllable, and definable. you’ll try to create a world that doesn’t stimulate your fears. Fear doesn’t want to feel itself; it’s actually afraid of itself. So you utilize the minde in an attempt to manipulate life for the purpose of not feeling fear.
People don’t understand that fear is a thing. It’s just another object in the universe that you are capable of experiencing. You can do one of two things with fear: you can recognize that you have it and work to release it, or you can keep it and try to hide from it. Because people don’t deal with fear objectively, they don’t understand it. They end up keeping their fear and trying to prevent things from happening that would stimulate it. They go through life attempting to create safety and control by defining how they need life to be in order to be okay. This is how the world becomes frightening.
….Life becomes a ‘me against it’ situation. When you have fear, insecurity or weakness inside of you, and you attempt to keep it from being stimulated, there will inevitably be events and changes in life that challenge your efforts. Because you resist these changes, you feel that you are struggling with life. You feel like this person is not behaving the way they should, and this event is not unfolding the way you want. You see situations that happened in the past as disturbing, and you see things down the road as potential problems. Your definitions of desirable and undesirable, as well as good and bad, all come about because you have defined how things need to be in order for your to be okay.
…Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness. If you have no fear, you could be perfectly happy living in this world. Nothing would bother you.
I happen to mostly agree with this. I’m just no sure how to live it.
I think it’s saying if you aren’t afraid then when you feel the need to speak out, you do so from a place of being centered. That lends power to your words and whatever cause you’re speaking to/for. I find this very provocative and think about it a lot, especially with reference to politics and hateful people: how to move from the center….I think that ripples flow out easier from a defined center. Having a defined center means being constantly in the now since the center moves.
What do you think?
4 Comments
Jackie – looking back over the arc of my life (it’s one of the good things about getting olde) I see all the places I’ve had angels watching over me too. Close calls but never final calls.
Wow. I need to read Singer’s book. I know we’ve discussed this but now I really need to read it.
“People don’t understand that fear is a thing. It’s just another object in the universe that you are capable of experiencing. You can do one of two things with fear: you can recognize that you have it and work to release it, or you can keep it and try to hide from it.”
This has been an issue for me. I know this intellectually and have even been rather brave in many instances that caused me fear……….and then I read Rita McGregor’s comment and I realized that I have a huge issue with “losing the roof over my head” and now I’m wondering why because I have always been taken care of in one way or the other – and there have been several times over the years where it seems angels have come out of the sky, wrapped their wings around me and whispered “breathe”.
I’m going to think about all of this. Thank you, Tammy……and thank you Rita…..for inspiring and powerful thoughts.
Rita – what an amazing story! I guess I share you fear tho it has always manifested for me as not having enough money. I would have lost the roof over my head when breaking free of the battering marriage I was in when the kids were little, but the house I was buying I was buying from my Dad and for six months I just didn’t make payments. That may sound like generosity on his part and in his own way it was. We never talked about it. After I got my feet under me I started paying again and that’s the only way I wasn’t on the street with two little ones in tow. I think when I manage it, letting go always lets the best thing happen. So thanks for that reminder!
Sounds like a great book. For decades I have said that fear is the root of all evil–not money. I have faced a lot of my fears head on because I wanted to understand them and release them. I had this fear of losing the roof over my head–for as long as I could remember. Not sure why even. But when I left home–I kept losing the roof over my head (was even a vagrant for a summer). Over and over and over again. Until I worried about it less and less because I just accepted that I would keep moving and moving and I had always survived.
So–as a further test–then my health decline entered the picture. My arm was injured and I couldn’t do the physical jobs I used to do. Had to move three more times. Then I got mono working two jobs and decided (since workman’s comp refused to send me for schooling) to go to college on my own–and moved to Fargo/Moorhead. Where I physically went slowly down the tubes–until I couldn’t finish school, couldn’t work to support myself, was losing my apartment, had tried three times to get on disability, and thought I was going to have to live on the street or somebody’s basement…talk about confronting one’s fears.
I finally had to totally and completely hand it over. If I was meant to live on the streets and lose the rest of what I owned–so be it. I would survive–probably–LOL! And if not–then that was okay, too. I have always loved my life and learned much from it. Had a wonderful son we never thought would live that long and he had a wonderful girlfriend (Leah). I had to have faith that things would work out however they were meant to work out. They always had in the past. I handed it over–with all my heart and blind faith.
And within two weeks I had been approved for disability, found the apartment I lived in for the last 10 1/2 years, and got a back-payment that paid for the move! And now I am here in my new home that is even so much better!! But if it was all gone tomorrow–I am grateful–for everything. I have always tried to live my life like I might not be here tomorrow…so I am always ready to go, you know? But I think I have finally gotten over my fear of losing the roof over my head.
From the time I was a kid I had asked to face my fears when it was for the betterment of my soul. Be careful what you ask for, eh? ROFL! 😉