Do you remember playing telephone when you were a kid? It’s where everyone sits in a circle, and one person begins with a simple sentence, a one-liner, and whispers it in the ear of the next person.
No one gets to say “WHAT???” and have it repeated. You need to listen carefully the first time. Then you whisper the very same thing into the next person’s ear. The very last person in the circle says out loud what they heard.
Peels of laughter! Sometimes it’s total nonsense and hilariously different from the original sentence.
Well, the other day when doing The Work with someone, I thought fearful stories were like this game.
Only they’re passed along from one generation, to the next generation, to the next.
Here’s what you should fear. Be afraid of THIS (insert whispered story).
How do I know you should be afraid? My mom told me. My dad told me. My grandpa told her. They gave that look of fear. They painted a terrible picture.
A frightening thing happens….and then WARNING, WARNING.
Teach everyone how scary that is and how you need to be very, very careful from now on.
There are events and experiences that cause fear in many human beings. Abrupt behavior, loud sounds, events where things break into pieces or are physically altered, or emotionally hurt. Change. Loss. Surprise. Anger. Blow-Ups. Crashes. Wars.
But trying to stay in a holding pattern of Calm-And-Collected and BE CAREFUL has its drawbacks.
Because we also like relaxing. We LOVE relaxing. It’s a place I want to return to, a homeostatis, and maybe the reason I first ever began to want to do The Work and find out what moves me away from peace.
And what about when we get a wee bit bored and actually want some excitement, or what if we want to improve our performance or results in some area (like health, eating–my favorite–love, money, romance, support), or create something new, or grow, transform or participate in change, on purpose?
We like developing and growing, and we like remaining calm.
But these two things don’t always go together!
Sometimes it’s like we’ve got the foot on the brakes and the foot on the accelerator at the very same time.
I want something different, but I don’t want it to be….scary! And remember! We need to be careful!!
How do you react when you believe, as you’ve always heard from people around you, that bad unexpected frightening things can happen in this world?
What happens when you want to do something new?
I’m careful.
Very, very careful.
I walk on eggshells.
Eggshells are so easily broken….I barely step out, I don’t move, I don’t take the risk of being rejected, or setting the person off, or having that worrisome thing occur.
But who would you be without the story that you need to be careful? At all.
Gasp!
If I’m not a LITTLE bit careful, I’ll be a fool. Ridiculous. I’ll do something completely stupid. I’ll lose everything. I’ll make a terrible decision. I’ll go against what my parents told me. And their parents before them.
Are you sure? Do you have to be afraid, and careful, in order to make sure you don’t fail, lose, or get hurt? Are you sure you need to never get hurt, fail, or lose?
Are you sure you need to stay entirely peaceful every second of every hour?
Wow. I never thought of that before.
A year ago, I went to a lecture and read a book by an author and speaker I found super interesting. Unexpectedly. I wasn’t looking for anything new to attend, I had been attending a lot less for a few years, in fact. But when a program appeared with an Enroll Here button, I clicked it and just knew to sign up.
I was simply drawn to it (and it’s been a wonderful adventure and brilliant people). But not easy. A day of travel just to get to the location. And sometimes daunting and mind-opening in a way that’s not exactly….happy.
What if you turned your thought around, and the very thing you ought to be careful about, and worried for, and avoid, or resist, or feel nervous over….
….has some powerful medicine to teach you?
This can even be true about very dreadful things, like getting a disease.
No, this isn’t saying sickness, violence, sudden change are easy and you need to be happy they’re happening. That would be ridiculous and kind of mean to yourself.
But what if you did become willing to have it occur, if it did? What if you noticed what you were OK with about it happening, or if it had anything helpful to offer in the way of a teaching, or it helped you eliminate what wasn’t working in your life?
Anything. An example, no matter how small, of how that thing you feel so worried about happening that it causes you to be careful in your life, even when things are fine….An example of if it happened, you’d be OK with it.
Even look forward to it.
I know it’s weird.
But it’s an exciting approach to duality and the negative, dark, scary things of life’s unfolding ways.
How could this part of Reality work for me, rather than against me? Have I ever heard of anything coming out of a situation I’ve always found scary like this, where the outcome was amazing change, or some kind of transformation, or some small advantage?
Who would I be without my story of needing to be careful?
Maybe not participating in the game called “BE AFRAID: PASS IT ON!”
Instead, you might be afraid, and do it anyway, or inquire, or pause and breathe deeply and keep going.
Who knows what being you will look like, without living a life of being afraid of being afraid.
“A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on Earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You’re the one.” ~ Byron Katie
This doesn’t mean you never, ever experience one non-peaceful or violent thought.
It means when you have a violent or less than peaceful thought, you move to look at it, you don’t automatically believe it (and pass it on), you turn it around, you’re committed to understanding it, you open your hands up with wonder.
Whatever it looks like. Pass it on.
Much love,
Grace
