Hello Beautiful Souls,
I’m taking a vacation for August, so no healing sessions and no Love eLetter until September. I hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer!
I’ve crested into something incredibly useful for me around fear and how to use it well.
It has global, even multi-dimensional implications.
It’s also really simple at base, though it will take me a bit to explain it, so bear with me.
My goal is that it sparks things in your own thinking, your own feelings, your own actions.
I’m not sharing this as capital ‘T’ Truth.
I’m sharing it as my truth, in the hopes that helps you, refine and uncover your own.
Fear is a driving force in my life, and I see it—because I have this bias— a lot.
I work with fear in myself, fear in my family, fear in my ancestry, fear in my culture, fear in the nations I grew up in and live in—political, social, and economic fears; global fears, environmental fears… you name it. Lot’s and lot’s of levels and layers.
The thing that’s crystallized recently is that we are making a home in fear.
There’s this whole portion of society that has set up house here.
We’re not only camped out, we’ve built a home.
A whole village-Fearville.
A civilization.
And we live here.
Together.
One big frightened family.
Yay.
We’re scared of everything. And why shouldn’t we be?:
We’re toxifying our environment.
We’re at war, killing each other.
We’re enslaving and trafficking each other.
Poverty is rampant.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I’m not making light of these things, it’s just that the list is endless.
It’s hopeless.
It’s destabilizing.
Hugely uncomfortable,
and very taxing on the physical, mental, and emotional bodies.
To the point that it’s debilitating.
The thing that’s really come to me about fear is that: we don’t need to live here.
This is not meant to be a home.
This is meant to be a sign or a signal.
It’s destabilizing on purpose.
We’re meant to do things as a result, not perch here.
Let’s look at: what is fear for?
Fear is a really uncomfortable emotion. It comes in lots of flavors—anger, hate, blame, shame, etc.. I’m using it as a catchall term for all of those things.
Some people think we should get rid of it, or release it, or never feel it.
This, I do not agree with.
For me, fear is a beautiful part of being a human. It’s meant to be a sign or a signal that something is not right. If I’m blaming or shaming someone, it’s “Oooh, okay, what’s going on here?” There’s something not right happening. If I start getting angry, that’s me giving myself energy to change– because something’s wrong. Something’s not right for me.
So, as a sign or a signal, it’s an indication: “Elena, something is not good.”
I want these signals.
I want these indications.
Otherwise, I might blithely trundle down a rocky road and face plant before I even notice what’s happening.
Signs are helpful!
What I want to do with them, though, when fears arise, is
pause and pay attention.
Notice them.
Feel them.
Learn from them…
What is this sign or signal specifically telling me?
What change do I want to make?
Where am I uncomfortable?
Why am I uncomfortable?
What do I need or want to do to feel more comfortable?
What giant leap or baby step can I make in the direction of more comfort and less fear, less discomfort?
What different direction do I want to take?
My point here is that fear is useful.
It’s helpful.
I want it.
Ideally, I want it as a sign or a signal—a momentary thing.
Fear is like turning on my turn signal, my indicator: “Okay, I’m turning now.”
And then, as I start to turn, it should turn off. I don’t want to keep going around in a little roundabout forever, circling in fear: “I’m in fear, I’m in fear. I’m in fear.”
No.
Turn.
Go down a different road.
Signal turns off.
“Okay. I’m not going in a comfortable direction. I’m choosing a different one. Let’s see how this goes.”
Signal turns off (until needed again farther down the road).
I can start walking down that road, taking baby steps or giant leaps—changing things in my life. I’m all the better for it, because I’ve made changes that make life more comfortable. Perfect.
That’s the ideal.
Unfortunately, I feel like what we’re doing as a human civilization at this point—at least those of us that are so wrapped up in fear—is we’re living here.
And we’re convinced that everything is going to hell on all these different levels.
It’s the end times.
And I think staying here is part of the problem.
Part of the reason I think we’re living here is because we have these crazy fear based cycles. Cycles of war would be one of them. World War I and II were not that long ago. Then there was the Cold War, which would have blown up the planet if we’d made it hot. And innumerable wars before and since. Slavery and trafficking would be another. Oppression. Social inequity. People not being able to feed and educate themselves or put roofs over their heads.
The list goes on and on. It’s bad.
What’s happening is that instead of making significant changes, we’re letting ourselves be in the fear and stay in the fear, and we’re not moving. We’re just stuck here. We do make changes, but they aren’t enough to get us out of the fear cycles. We’re still warring, slaving, oppressing, etc.. And we’re living in the fear that these things engender.
We’re stuck in this destabilized place feeling, “Something needs to change. Something needs to change. Oh my God, this is awful.” And we’re not making big enough changes to get out of it.
As far as I can see—from history that I studied in school—we seem to be repeating these cycles as cultures, as civilizations… We’ve been doing all these fear-based things for a long time.
And as long as we stay in this roundabout, living in Fearville, creating our homes here it’s going to keep being bad.
I guess at some point it’s so bad, we’ve done it for so long, that we will kill ourselves. We will not exist as a species anymore. Because we’re not changing.
We’re living in the roundabout of fear, instead of going down a better road, healing ourselves and doing whatever it is we need to do to make life better.
If that makes sense to you, here are my questions for getting out of it:
How can I refine your relationship with fear and how I process things?
What’s my relationship with my own fear?
How do I deal with fear?
…on a daily, moment-by-moment basis.
An easy one is when I have a choice, what am I doing? When I have a conscious choice to be in fear and not be in fear, what am I choosing?
- For instance, when I’m standing there brushing my teeth, what am I thinking about? Am I cultivating fear or not?
- Am I thinking about the changes that I want to make and setting up Love Ville or Joy Ville?
- Or am I wallowing in pain, making more of Fear Ville?
A more challenging one is when something scary is happening, and fear is arising… I’m already in fear.
- What parts of me are afraid?
- What do they want to tell me about this?
- What is the wisdom here?
- What direction feels less scary right now?
- What can I do to move in the direction of more comfort?
- What do I personally need or want?
For example, is there self-care missing? Do I need to do some trauma work? Do I need to feed myself better? Does my physical body need help? My emotional body? Mental body? Maybe none of that? Maybe all of it?
In general:
What’s the wisdom? What’s the signal telling me?
What changes do I want to make to help myself feel better?
These are two really important explorations that could come out of this.
There are innumerable ways to play with this.
If it sparks things for you, please go with them.
Whatever they are—even if it’s: Elena is totally wrong.
That’s fine too.
This is so important, I feel.
We’re going around in circles with this fear thing, and the circles are feel like they’re getting tighter and tighter.
That doesn’t feel good for any of us.
So, how can we play with this differently?
How can we learn from the moment—from the fear that’s in us—and do things that are different?
Be different?
Moment by moment.
Right now.
Such important work.
I hope that helps.
I would really appreciate hearing from you about this. Share with us: your thoughts, your feelings, your ideas, your practices—what you know, what you don’t know, your questions, your queries, your wisdom, all of that.
Let us know. It’s so helpful when we’re doing this together, because we can triangulate. One person says something, then someone else says something that helps you find yourself. You notice, “I’m a little bit like that, and a little bit like that—and here’s me.“
Happy Summer.
Huge love and big hugs.