Note: these questions (as well as a preamble explaining how I came to this process) can also be found here, at The Trouble With Bartleby, where I will continue to document this work.
http://lunaparker.blogspot.com/2012/08/fear-journal-preamble-and-1st-set-of.html
If you are interested in participating or in this journey. You can simply listen, privately engaging with the work, you can send your thoughts or responses to me, add them to the facebook dialogue going on around these questions, or you can comment on the blog posts themselves, by following the link above.
Exercises
Note: Participants were first given something to sign that requests that we commit to the program, and commit, with our whole hearts, to being honest and gentle with ourselves as we do this work. I'm adding: to let go of judgement, of shame, and of self- or fear of - condemnation. You don't need to physically sign something if you feel it is enough to make that commitment internally. Some of us really benefit from the embodiment of an act like that, so write it down if it's useful to you.
The first questions given are these.
It was suggested that one respond to these quickly, with gut responses, and that one not take too long on each question, remembering it is always ok to come back to them. (I have, and will add those thoughts as well).
WHAT IS FEAR?
What does fear mean to you?
Where does fear show up in your daily life?
What are you most afraid of?
Identify the color and share of fear.
Where in your body does fear live and manifest itself?
What do you get when you choose fear in your life?
Fear is a state of tightness where something learned blocks one's/my capacity to access or achieve my potential.
Fear shows up in dealing with money. In dealing with people who have money or power. In explaining unusual choices, in proving myself, in dealing with others who fear (especially my mother), in moments of stress, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, and loneliness.
I am most afraid of not achieving my potential. And, of being alone.
Of causing others to suffer. Of not helping others as much as I could/should. Of being irresponsible. Of struggling, forever. Of not being able to communicate. Of being misunderstood. Of not being enough. Of not having partners/team/support. Of no one being there when I'm sad, sick, or old. For Beckett.
Fear is amorphous, like an amoeba. It has the ability to become, fill, fit in, or appear as any form, any color, any organ, etcetera.
Fear manifests itself in my skin, in my stomach, in my shoulders. In my back, in my organs. I destroy my digestion.
When I choose fear I get a void. I get tight. I get blinded. I get and operate from the place of personas that are no longer relevant to me.
What are the reasons you are addressing fear at this time?
I am taking on this work because I feel myself at a place where the hold fear has on me below my intellectual plane is standing in the way of me realizing the life I want. Also, I am ready, perhaps for the first time, to let go of fear.
Because I no longer fear on a higher level.
Because it is time.
Is there a problem you are trying to solve? What is it?
On a practical level I have a history of struggle: with finances, with "the system," ultimately with a willingness to be a full participant in the ways/values of our time. I have recently engaged in an intensive time of mindful/spiritual practice which assisted me in detaching my perceptual relationship with financial abundance and currency with my distaste for the system in which it is so deeply entrenched. I have become aware of another possibility in which currency can be understood as an approximation/stand in for value and appreciation, and in which I have become able to desire abundance in a new way that doesn't equate ethical value and creative honesty with poverty and struggle.
While I've been pretty open to change in all areas I recognize a tendency to resist being "wrong" as a symptom of failure, recognizing this pattern as a place wherein I equate the making of mistakes, lack of understanding, inability to realize an idea, or even a slow learning curve as a place where I must feel ashamed and wherein I will experience loss of love and appreciation, loss of connection, abandonment.
The idea that I do not have to prove myself and that love can be un-conditional is new to me in anything but an entirely intellectual sense of "understanding" that concept. I have come to practice a mindful manifestation of a reality that inhabits a space of unconditional love from source, from an intelligence inherent in our biological and energetic systems. (note: If you don't practice energy work, don't fade away! this language may just alienate you. I'm sorry if so! there's many names for it. for the religious or spiritual among us this is also "divine love"... you don't have to 'understand' this if you're still feeling unconnected to that -- direct message me if you want to talk more about it.)
That being said -- despite my openness to change, behaviorally I struggle with letting go of a perceived need to be the best and the brightest, to need to prove myself and compete (most of all with myself) in order to be "enough" and be deserving of love. This manifests in great feelings of doubt and shame if I can not empirically prove my net worth via acknowledgement or quantifiable outcomes as being intelligent, useful, or helpful -- or, ideally, all three.
My own process as student or beginner has always been something to hide. As a child I would throw tantrums in the bowling alley because I was so ashamed that I couldn't turn my practical understanding of the concept immediately into physical form. This has translated into a lifelong practice of avoiding ever doing anything badly in public -- a fear of having to do so. ... but isn't that linked to the shame of buying a "self-help" book? Admitting to whomever -- fellow shoppers, the check out person -- that you need help? Apparently this struggle is a common one.
I am working hard to listen, even if I do not have space to speak and therefore cannot be appreciated or seen as smart or having done well - to trust that I have not, in so doing, lost my opportunity to be loved or appreciated. I am learning to share tasks and loosen control -- rather than feeling doubly guilty for time lost and poor judgement if others I delegate to help me also struggle, my common route: a second helping of fury at the self for not achieving the results, and of not doing my part to ensure success. Related to this is other people's mistakes, unhappiness, illness, losses -- learning that I could not have helped them, saved them, prevented their sadness, and that it is ok that I did not. I cannot fix and or prevent everything for everyone, nor is it my responsibility to do so.
I am recognizing the root of these behavior and fear patterns in my maternal ancestral line, and also creating forgiveness and compassion for those who passed along the most deeply embedded parts of the fear. The notion that "what has happened before will happen again" and thereby preparing for the worst is an illusion, and something we have only been propagating ourselves via self-fulfilling prophecy.
Do you know what? It's really hard to admit all of this. But once it's out, it feels both silly and real, and there you are, on paper, and then, too -- others admit it too. And it feels kind of amazing, and scary, but also like you're not ashamed. And I'm not ashamed. I'm really ready to move beyond this.
Thank you for listening, thank you for doing this work with me.
ONWARD.