As I have mentioned many times before the start to this year has been very rough due to the loss of my mother. It is something I have begun to really work on...working through the fear of not knowing what life will be like without her, how it will affect my daughter in the long run, and not knowing when the pain will subside enough to move forward. I don't want to spend the rest of my life on the wheel getting no where in my spirituality. I could definitely practice more, but I'm starting small. When I jump in with both feet and rush head long, I usually lose my steam and I wander much more quickly.
I chose a talk on fear and fearlessness this week, because I think it is very important. If we stop and think about it, fear drives most of our decisions. We speak and act in certain ways because we fear what this person or that person will say and think about us in reference to choices we have made. This is an impossible way to live your life. It is stressful and I feel, from previous experience, that it drains the life out of you always living in a state of panic.
Michelle and I were conversing the other day about bad times and how they just take over everything. She said to me "I need peace in my heart and quick". My response was "Peace doesn't come quick." I felt grounded for a moment, because I have learned this lesson. In the world of hurry up and get it done, peace isn't something you can snap your fingers and stumble upon. It takes work to invite the fear in enough to see around it and find a sense of peace.
In this video, Pema Chodron gives a teaching on fear and fearlessness. She talks about moments in time where we have the opportunity to choose wakefulness and sanity which allows us to connect with courage and bravery or the opportunity to choose violence and aggression. I think in general we forget we have these choices. I think we move so fast in today's world that we don't light long enough to give it a chance to work out.
My favorite quote from this video:
"The only way to experience fearlessness was to know the nature of fear. Fear is not something we got rid of or cast out, but that we became very intimate with and came to know so well that the journey of knowing fear, moving closer to fear, was in fact the journey of courage, the journey of bravery."
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