A Doorway to the Heart

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Why do we experience fear? This is a belief system that I want to let go of. I am ready. Still, I know that there is, or rather was, a purpose for my fear. In my last post I discussed how when we face our fears, we can find freedom on the other side of the emotion. Some say severe anxiety is fear run rampant, and manifests as a serious mental illness. My fear is very wrapped up in my codependent tendencies and the symptoms that I experience with schizoaffective disorder - bipolar type. Still, the fear is real and it is there, and ultimately manageable. I may not have control over my illness or my addiction, but when I surrender my fear, I feel freer and lighter.

There is no reason to be afraid of the past, and there is no purpose in being afraid of the future. Fear, like anger, drives us to accomplish things. Perhaps knowing our past, or even intuitively preparing for the future can be helpful. Faith, however, and hope, are in this very moment; in the present. So my anxieties can bring me useful information about how to make informed decisions regarding the patterns of my past, or what I need to do to feel safe in the future. But ultimately, still, the fear acts like a prison. If I want true freedom, if I accept the will of God, I need to let go of fear. To do this, it is helpful for me to look at the past that is still manifested in my body as trauma. What was I actually afraid of as a little girl, or as a teenager? What were the actual fantasies that terrified me so during psychosis and psychotic breaks? Also, where would actual fear have been useful when I was numbed out or crazy and walked into very dangerous situations in my past?

So, is fear good, or is it bad? Both are true. One is good and one is bad. But both have purpose and serve me. Fear as a survival and coping mechanism wakes me up to the peril that is around me. It is literally my deepest form of intuition. Also, I need to let go of the fear in my past so I can be with God in this present moment. What I am afraid of, can be simple and strange, and ultimately very limiting. I am afraid of cooking, I am afraid of being a student, and I am afraid of having lustful thoughts about other people. I certainly don’t need to be afraid of cooking being married to a chef and raised by another. But what is the information I can gather from this fear? Am I actually afraid of Steve and my mom on some level? Or afraid of losing them someday? Is my fear of cooking actually a fear of death? I am afraid of being a student, because I am afraid of ending up in the psych ward again. Three different times in my life when I was in full-time college, I ended up having psychotic breaks and became hospitalized. Why does school trigger me to insanity? Is this fear protecting me? Does this give me information about my deep past? Perhaps God had other plans for me. At this point, it certainly seems so. I also am terrified about having free lustful thoughts about anybody but Steve, because I was ridiculed and bullied as a youth in a Catholic Jesuit high school when I had a summer fling over the summer, and I did not confess. This pattern reemerged, or rather worsened, after I had been loyal and faithful to my partner for ten years. He, of course, was always forgiving, because I was always honest, but I still believe that I caused my poor beloved pain. I feel guilty. In a way, my fear is helping me honor something that I have come to believe in, monogamy. I can definitely dish it out but I cannot take it when it comes to sharing Steve. What a hard lesson to learn. But still, fear got me to where I am. I felt so guilty about having an emotional affair with a friend, that I got baptized and conformed to christianity. A surprising fit, though I still practice paganism and believe in a yearly renewal of vows on Imbolg every year.

If there is anything that I can gather here, is that I am divine. I am created by a benevolent universe, aka God, and I believe that I am good. Even if I do bad things, I am good. Fear is a part of who I am, so it is both good and bad. Sometimes I need fear. Sometimes I need to let go of it. And sometimes I need to look at it head on and move through it. If anything, I can choose either fear, or lack of fear. If I am anxious, I can choose to work through it or take medication. If I need it to uphold my values, then it can be good. If I am terrified of a person or an activity, I may need to move through it, come out the other side, and not become debilitated by it. Mostly, I am not my fear. It is a state of mind that passes through me. It is essentially a tool for survival. Tools can be useful or irrelevant. Bless it, bless it all, let go of the fear in the past and the present, and plow through the fear that you see in the future. Fear IS NOT rational. It does not need to be all fear all the time. I can choose me. I can choose peace, and I can choose to conquer my fear. They say that fear is the mind killer. Perhaps that is a good thing. Fear may even be a doorway to the heart.