I used to think I was afraid of other people.  Then I realized how much power that gave away, and remembered a deeper truth - I am way more afraid of my own wild, uncontrollable self than I am afraid of what anyone can do to me on the outside.  And, even more true - I have the power to heal this fear, this pain, every time it comes up.  Now I heal myself bit by bit, every day, as this fear rears it's head.  And return myself to freedom, to power, to love. 

And that's way better than requiring anything to change on the outside of my life.

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​​One place external strife, abuse of power, a lack of integrity, disharmony begins is inside of me, and inside each of us.  As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people.  While the world is rising up to address abuses of power in our political structures of power (which is awesome!), there is also an opportunity to heal the cycles of pain, abuse of power, fear, lack of integrity, etc inside myself.  Because anything that creates a disturbance to my internal peace is a barrier to peace, to love, to harmony...a place where I am blind, controlling, out of integrity, abusive, deaf, within my own life.  Places where I am (potentially) acting out a mini-drama of the external world.  

And unless there is freedom, peace, love, harmony inside of me then I will not be truly free on the outside - no matter what the external circumstances.  

For example, last night I had an experience that activated a cycle of fear within me.  An exchange with two strangers that left me feeling vaguely unsafe, especially on behalf of my children.  I noticed that I *thought* I was afraid of the people - and the fear was that I thought I couldn't protect my loved ones.  That was the thought, "I can't protect my loved ones from evil."  

I believe that everything is a projection, and what I fear "out there," I fear even more within myself.  And so, an even deeper truth was that, "I can't protect myself from evil."  I felt vulnerable and unsafe for my own personal safety.  The risk that the strangers presented wasn't an overt threat of any kind, more a vague sense of fear that I didn't know what they wanted - which left me feeling vulnerable to "evil" that I couldn't see or understand.
(I'm leaving this intentionally vague because the point is the cycle of fear it initiated, not the specific events.)

And then, an even deeper extension of fear: I'm afraid of myself, of the "evil," or uncontrollable, parts of myself, within myself.  The places where I hold barriers to love, to peace, to harmony within myself.  The places where I judge another, and especially where I try to control another - like my kids.  The places where my response to an event is outsized to the actual event.  And I suspect that the desire to control another person - like my kids - is always an outside response to an event.

This is an opportunity to heal the fear and pain at the root source:
1. When the fear is active, feel it as it relates to another - whatever/whoever I'm assigning externally as the disturbance to my peace.
2. Turn it inward - I fear those exact same attributes within myself.
3. Feel the fear within my body.  See the blocks created within me that prevent connecting with the person.  The feelings of a barrier between people, of a block, of a narrowed focus.
4. "I take complete responsibility for my internal peace, my integrity, my internal health, and for healing myself."
5. Turn this fear, this pain, this block, over to the Divine.  Just turn it over, ask the Archangels to deliver it fully to the Divine, ask to release it from my body.
6. Allow the feelings to move, until humility and peace and connection and tenderness return.
7. Thank the external person, event, etc for allowing me to see myself more clearly and returning myself to my humility, to my neutral state of love.

If I were to stop controlling her.
She would burst into flames of her own
beauty.  Of her own free, wild self.
Control keeps her safe.
But it doesn't keep her tender spark alive.
And so.  I trade her freedom for her spark.
Alive.  But not fully living.

Trust.  And lay down the fear.  Choose the wildness.

What is being born.  Is alive.

We had a rough patch this weekend. It didn’t last long, but in the course of events my son’s energy got small.  And then he retreated to a story of a recent disappointment that had nothing to do with the experience at hand. ​

This was interesting to watch, because attaching stories to feelings is a very natural coping technique. In this case the trigger was unrelated to the story, though.  He was clearly feeling badly about what was happening within our family, and then seemed to fall into a victim mode of saying he was feeling bad about a recent event. ​

This got me thinking: What if the opportunity is to simply see the pain and acknowledge it for what it is - a feeling of fear or pain - and then taking great care to acknowledge the feelings flowing happening in the body, rather than using the head to assign a story. Or, perhaps to see both: the pain and the story, if it arises. And then, to see that they are unrelated.

Because sometimes fear simply cycles.  Pain cycles.  It’s like the weather - on a random Monday morning sometimes fear is activated in my body.  It is deeply uncomfortable when it happens, and I retreat to my head and the stories in order to avoid the feelings in my body.  But instead, maybe it’s enough to honor the pain cycling through my body without my mind getting involved, trying to figure something out, assigning blame, or creating a story of the meaning.

I was thinking about this experience as I was walking through the woods this morning.  And then I noticed that my fear was cycling and that there was a fear, or a story, attached to the feeling of fear.

Aha!  An opportunity to practice what I had just observed in him.

And so, as I walked I narrated what was happening in my body: I feel fear. I feel pain. My pain cycle is activated. I feel puny, I feel vulnerable.

And then: I take complete responsibility for honoring this pain.  I take complete responsibility for honoring the feelings present in my body in this moment.

And then: Archangel Sandalphon, help me know my personal power to turn this pain over to the Divine.  To transmute this pain into wisdom.

And then: Archangel Sandalphon, I see that I am taking the actions of another person personally. Remind me of the times I have behaved blindly, out of my own narrow gaze and pain. Allow me to see everyone involved in this situation (the story) with compassion.  Compassion and wisdom. Allow me to see what within me is ready to be healed, that enabled me to take someone’s behavior personally.

And finally, something very interesting happened.  As I walked the feelings within my body transmuted into something else: sadness.

As I walked and acknowledged the feelings cycling in my body, honored the fear, and then handed it over to the Divine, it somehow began to change.  Underneath the fear was a deep sadness. A deep and ancient sadness of the world.  This sadness calibrated to all the pain of all the experiences of all the people of all time.  Sadness for the pain we have caused others.  Ancient sadness, so much more than my own story.

It resonated deep within my belly, and I somehow knew that it was ancient, not mine, and resided below the human plane.  It was perhaps what triggered my pain, it was the original kernel that found a pathway to my fear.  This pain elicited a tenderness and compassion within me.  Tenderness for the universal pain experienced by all.

This, too, I turned over to the Divine.

And somehow, witnessing the universal human pain at it’s source and opening it up to the Divine somehow healed it.  A channel felt created between the subterranean Universal pain of the ages and the Divine, and once this channel was opened up the pain was healed at its source.
And then, just like that, it was over.  My awareness returns, slowly, from the experience but it is now restored, clean, and peaceful. I felt as thought I took the deepest to dive into universal pain, witnessed it, opened and connected it to the Divine, and then healed it. ​

This feels like a divine power, to heal myself.

When a system is out of balance, every part of it is out of balance. Disequilibrium is disequilibrium. Dis-health is dis-health. 

One place I always have power is in my own world. I take complete responsibility for every place I am out of balance, or have exerted control over another.  It is far easier and more culturally validated to feel like a victim to external forces - but not for taking responsibility for the places in which I am a victim, or even a perpetrator, to internal forces. I make far more decisions every day that affect my life than anything anyone can do on the outside.

What voices, truths, do I exclude, reject, ignore, steamroll-over in my own heart every day?  This reckoning is as important, if not more important, than that in the outside world. I have far more control here, and I make far more decisions and actions every day that could have more integrity.  I have far more ability to exert and change my own life than I do the outside world.  

Today: What is one place I am out of integrity in my own world? What is one place I have steamrolled over my own truth in pursuit of an agenda? Sometimes I fail to see the entire reality of the people in my life. My focus zeroes on to an agenda that is urgent ... but not important. Sometimes I miss the important in my own life.

I allow a clock, a device that sits on a wall, to exert extraordinary influence over every part of my life. I allow a clock - a mechanical device - to tell me how much attention and time to give my beloved children. This is madness. The clock makes me a blind victim.  

I can go deeper still inside. Sometimes I view the beloved in my life with low respect. Even if it’s only in my head, I judge and narrow them to a few particular traits rather than seeing the whole person. These are my most beloved people, parts of my soul.  I can do better.

Going deeper, I am possibly harshest on myself. There’s no need for this. This is out of integrity, out of wholeness. Wholeness means seeing myself in a less narrow, more broad comprehensive lens.

All that narrowing of focus, minimizing to one or two dimensions, judging of motives, seeing with fear, reducing, that I do in the external world begins within myself. I do it to myself first, then I do it to my loved ones, then I do it in the outside world. If I want to get to the root cause of my powerlessness, it begins inside.

When I feel powerless on the outside, it is a good time to find my power on the inside. In truth my power doesn’t exist on the outside anyway, it only exists inside me.

These are things I only remember in the woods, in the quiet, still, peace of my true nature. When I return to my life, it’s noisy. It has clocks. It has news, and social media, and commitments. This time of listening is part of the cycle. The return to balance. May we all have the places in our lives that provide this return.