As
the unemployment rate climbs, layoffs continue, and
the economy contracts psychologists report an increase
in calls for help with anxiety, stress, and sleepless
nights. Naturally. When livelihood is threatened or
lost, fear appears. When health is threatened or lost,
fear appears. When a relationship dissolves, a business
fails, or a parent dies, fear appears. Fear comes
in many forms – such as anger, despair, jealousy,
resentment, grief, superiority, and inferiority as
well as anxiety. Sometimes it takes awareness by storm
and at other times insidiously pervades thoughts and
perceptions, like a sunny day imperceptibly becoming
overcast..
Much less than a recession can activate fear, such
as a rude stranger in passing and much more can trigger
it, such as the death of a child or your own impending
death. No single circumstance activates it. From birth
to death strangers, friends, school mates, co-workers,
and family trigger it. As many fears as you have,
that many will be activated frequently in the course
of your life.
An unprecedented transformation in human consciousness
is reshaping human experience, expanding human awareness,
and revealing new human potential, including the ability
to recognize fear as internally generated and to locate
and heal the internal causes of it. From the new perspective,
fear is not caused by a recession, death, illness,
or job loss. It appears in your awareness when fear-based
parts of your personality (the parts that are
angry, jealous, resentful, etc.) become active.
External circumstances do not create fear. They activate
frightened parts of your personality. Those parts
(not people or circumstance) bring with them your
experiences of fear.
Spiritual growth requires healing the frightened parts
of your personality and cultivating the loving parts.
That is the creation of authentic power. A good time
to create it is when a frightened part of your personality
is active (for example, when you are anxious,
depressed, angry, jealous, etc.). What sensations
do you feel in your chest, solar plexus, and throat
areas; what thoughts does this part of your personality
think (they will be judgmental, critical, and
take you into the past or the future); what intention
does it hold (it will never be an intention to
create intimacy, support others without hidden agendas,
or contribute love to the human experience).
You can use your experiences of anxiety, regardless
of what appears to cause them (such as the recession),
to learn about frightened parts of your personality.
The more familiar you become with them, the more you
will be able to challenge and heal them. I suggest
that you begin today. (Hint: Print out the Spiritual
Partnership Guidelines and experiment with them.)
Don’t waste a moment of Spring.
Love,
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