Alchemizing Our Fear

In last week's blog, I talked about how we can use fear as our compass. Energy is not created or destroyed so I love the idea that we can transmute anything in our energetic body into a more supportive and productive energy. So now, the question is how do we go about doing this? Obviously, there is only so much that I can offer in a blog post but what I can do is tell you a personal story about an experience I had going through this and then pose some questions to hopefully make you curious enough to explore this theory on your own.

Recently I was face to face with some of my oldest patterns and limiting core beliefs. I truly felt, in every cell of my body that I was not safe and needed to self-preserve and protect. For weeks, I woke up with a feeling of dis-ease, anxiety, urges to control or micromanage. I knew what was happening. I knew this was me meeting and edge that I hadn't yet crossed and a ceiling that I needed to break through, but that didn't make it any easier. When the hormones and feelings are surging through your body, they are intense and impossible to ignore. I continued to practice my daily morning routines that keep me grounded and connected with my core and higher self, yet even that just felt like I was merely going through the motions. I Journaled, I meditated, I did my breathwork and they all would take the edge off for a short amount of time but eventually, the fear would creep back in. They craziest part is that I would ask myself what I was afraid of, and I couldn't even logically come up with an answer.

I have learned about this edge of discomfort, I have coached people through it but when you are in the tornado of it, it is so hard to see the blue sky. I just knew that all I had to do was not do what fear told me to do. So, every time I felt fear rise up. I listened to her. I held her close. I respected the role she played for me. I allowed her to yell and scream at me. I know she was just trying to keep me safe. And then, like I would for one of my children, I told her, "Sweet girl, you have nothing to worry about. I am here, I've got you, you are safe now - I am driving."

Then one day, out of the blue, I had a reflective conversation that put everything into perspective. I was able to zoom out and see the truth of life and my journey in it. In a snap, I felt all my tension that I had been carrying around, fall to the earth like sand. I felt a rush of love in its purest form, course through my body. I felt the truth and trust that everything is working out perfectly for me and the greater good. I just have to allow the discomfort and transformation to happen. I need to let go of resisting. Let go of thinking I know what is best for me. Let go of trying to be more clever than life so I can protect myself. All I am doing in that state of being, is resisting the blossoming into the next chapter of my evolution. As random and unexpecting as those uncomfortable feelings hijacked my body, I just as quickly and unexpectedly felt as though I was seeing life from an entirely new lens of love and deep knowing that I never felt before.

When we can hold the grace to allow our perspective to be such, the greatest challenges in our lives are often the greatest gifts for our soul's expansion. Just as anything dying in nature becomes an offering of replenishment to the soil for the next chapter or phase of growth, we have the opportunity to alchemize our struggles, challenges, and sufferings into a more beautiful and fragrant flower. When difficult situations or emotions are forced upon us, they are often mirroring back to us the things within ourselves we need to let die in order to be redesigned.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

~ Nelson Mandela

I know that I have forever shifted my relationship with fear. Not that we still won't have our meetups, but I have gained so much love and respect for the soul's healing journey she provides that I now see it as delicate dance. When we can change our relationship with fear it can remove the anticipatory anxiety as we begin to feel her creeping up. I now feel a deep sense of love and trust in the process and know that everything I am feeling is for my evolution and can surrender to the process. I know that fear is just a sign that I am ready to peel back the next layer and heal another subconscious story that has played in my head and body for long enough.

• What if every time you felt the sensation of fear in your body you felt gratitude and excitement instead of worry?

• What if the next time you felt fear, you listened closely to the self-limiting belief, story it was telling you about yourself and rewrote if from a place of self-love. "I am not worth" becomes, "I am a divine being and have always been worthy".

• What if the next time you felt fear, you closed your eyes, connected to your breath, and imagined all the uncomfortable feelings and limiting beliefs, magnetically attracted to the center of your abdomen, and forming a heavy black ball? Then imagine that ball becoming a beautiful glowing ball of white light and love, that grows bigger and bigger until it explodes and all that alchemized love and joy spreads to all your cells in your body. What if you allowed yourself to be overcome with the feelings of invigoration and peace, and just knew a healing on a deep level was taking place?
  

We know that perception, perspective, and projection play a huge role in not only how we see our life, situations and even conversations but also how we react or respond. How great would it be to use that same understand towards fear and learn to welcome the process. Knowing what I know now, feeling this freedom, inner peace, and self-love that I never imagined I could access, I am grateful for that challenging internal struggle. When we show up for ourselves, we heal on every level and the ripple effect pays off in all areas of life.

All the love,

Pamela

Fear

Fear is often nothing more than our subconscious trying to protect us and keep us safe and alive. In our modern world, for most of us we, more often than not, we experience perceived fear as opposed to actual life threatening fear. The problem is that our ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) doesn't know the difference and physiologically sets your body's responses into motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. Your blood pressure and heart rate increase. You start breathing faster. This physical response to an energetic or emotional feeling like if you miss a deadline at work, is triggered in the same way as if a tiger were chasing you. This life saving reaction is designed to give us what we need to escape death and now we are left sitting at our desk with no release for the energy that was just produced.

What if we rewrote the narrative and didn't listen? What if we used fear as our friend or compass to let us know that we have arrived at our next ceiling that we are ready to break through!

So many moments in my life, I allowed fear to make my decisions for me and allowed my nervous system to get the best of me. If those moments, I can tell you that I truly believed that the choices I was making by running away or avoiding, were for my best and convinced myself that I was "protecting" myself. All I was doing was allowing myself to stay stagnant and even though I saw big things in my life, especially in romantic love, I kept myself safe and guarded.

More recently, when I feel fear creeping up, and it does often, living at the edge of my comfort zone, I simply do nothing. Nothing might look like taking a deep breath or three. Nothing might look like turning inward to my highest self and connecting with the only truth which is love. Maybe asking myself, "what would love do?" Nothing might look like withdrawing and taking some space to gain deeper clarity. There is nothing to figure out. In the stillness, peace and clarity unveil themselves.

“There is no illusion greater than fear”

~Lao Tzu

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In my Yin Yoga class, my instructor read this beautiful short story about fear from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön and I would love to share it.

"Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly.

But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle.

The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful.

They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?”

Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?”

Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say.

If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.”

In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear."

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• What if instead of fighting, we asked fear why with wants and needs to be seen and heard?

• What if the next time we wanted to flea a situation, we paused for just a moment, closed our eyes and played out the what if game from all perspectives and from a more grounded space, made a choice based on what our highest self and values feel connected to.

• What if the next time we froze, we reframed it and congratulated ourselves for taking the pause when we needed to and allowed ourselves the grace of a moment before jumping forward or backwards.

If there is one thing I have learned in the last three years of continuously pushing myself into the realm of discomfort is that growth, expansion is that change ALWAYS feels uncomfortable. Learning to find the equanimity within discomfort is the journey. I understand that as humans, we will feel fear and dis-ease. It's the decisions we make during those moments that pave the path for our future. I have learned to not make any decisions when I am in a state of confusion.

Confusion to me, only means that I have not yet received enough information to gain full clarity. Once clarity appears, there often isn't a decision to be made at all, there is only one logical choice or direction. Be patient, and wait for the story to unfold. Tell fear that you see it. Let it know you are grateful for the protection it provides but then let it know that you are driving now and it can relax in the back seat.

All the love,

Pamela

Discipline and Dedication

Setting goals and cultivating an intention statement paired with a clear path of action steps, is only the preparation for moving towards fulfillment. Discipline and dedication are the fuel that will get you through to the finish line. Taking that time to set a SMART Goal and then actually pushing through the discomfort of initiating and completing each tiny action step, one at a time, is where progress and momentum take place. Without discipline and dedication, it's so easy to become bored or feel stagnant in the execution of a singular task as our minds begin to wander, or feel overwhelmed, anxious and instinctively try to avoid them. For me, I can sometimes be deep into a task and randomly get a thought that takes my attention away from mission at hand or get discouraged by all the effort I'm putting in before seeing the results come to fruition. Discipline and dedication are what always support me and pushes me through.

The practice is learning to discipline ourselves and sit within the discomfort of our ego and old self trying to convince us to escape the growth and transition you are asking of it. One of the egos main priorities is to keep us safe and life predictable. When we quiet our monkey mind and bring ourselves back to focus and remind ourselves of our intention behind this action step, that is when the growth and the change take place. The action of saying no to the impulses and holding strong to the intention is what makes us that elevated version of ourselves.

The ironic part is that when we set out to achieve something in life, we believe that achieving the goal is the transformation when in fact the process we go through getting to the goal is where the real growth takes place. In those moments of discomfort, distraction and avoidance, if we pause, notice what is happening and tell ourselves no, return back to the present moment, stay here, and finish the job at hand, that is how we train our ego that we are in charge and we choose to raise the bar of our lives and will not let anything distract us from this new reality.

"We don't necessary always get in life what we dream about,

but we do get what we are willing to tolerate,"

~ Regan Hillyer

In life, we can only reach the level of fulfillment that our identity allows us to, which is why it is so important to continuously take the time to notice where we are with compassion and gratitude, dream about where we would like to go next and begin our journey of elevation!

Meditation and breathwork are some of the best tools we all have at our disposal in every moment of the day, that can use to begin training our monkey mind.

• What if the next time you felt yourself being pulled away from the present moment, you paused, closed your eyes, and took a slow breath, counting in for 4, hold for 4 and exhale for 4 while noticing the subtle sensations and changes that you feel within your body. I invite you to do it for 3 rounds before opening your eyes.

• What if the next time you knew you had a task that you are avoiding, you closed your eyes and connected to the why behind the task and how the highest version of you would handle the situation, connect with, and embody that as truth and move through with confidence and pride.

• What if the next time we felt board or stagnant in a task, we asked ourselves, how can I notice the extraordinary in the ordinary and brought creativity and passion to all things we do.
  

Consistently reflecting on and redefining the baseline bar we set and the standards we hold ourselves to, is an important part of continuously elevating our identity. Feeling the desire for more, dreaming of the life where you already have it and then setting the intention to not settle for anything less.

In life, sometimes when we ask for a $1 and don't receive it from who or where we are asking, it can be easy to feel disappointed, but when we relax into the truth that everything our heart truly desires is already on its way to us. All we have to do is notice, receive and be grateful for the quarters as they come our way, with faith and patience, know that we will are always receiving what we need, in its divine timing. It just often doesn't look the way we expect or happen in the time we expected it.

All the love,

Pamela