Do You Choose Fear or Adventure?

"When you breathe into your fear, it becomes an adventure."  Sonia Choquette

Fear holds you back.  You know how when you put on a seatbelt and the driver hits the brake and you feel the seatbelt lock in and there is no place to move? That is Fear.  Fear wraps you in its illusory arms. Fear says stay back with me and I will protect you. What it really means is stay back with me so I can hold you back.  When you decide to breathe into fear, you make the choice to surge forward, to clip the binding seatbelt! After all, adventures are about moving forward, aren't they?

Let's talk airplanes. I am not afraid to fly but I do not like the roller coaster feeling in my stomach when I anticipate the landing.  I have found that if I breathe as deeply as I can when the landing is close, the breathing shifts my focus and I do not get the roller coaster feeling when the wheels touch down. If I am focused on my breath, especially the long exhales, there is no room in my mind to anticipate, to guess, when the landing will occur. 

See, guessing is an issue.  If we make a guess how something will turn out, we stifle the adventure. In fact, there is no adventure to be stifled.  Guessing plays the If Game.  If this happens, I will... If this happens, I will... What if none of that happens?  What if you surrender to the outcome?  Fear is simply hanging out with you because you have not released your "control" (which you don't have, by the way) over the outcome.

Sonia says, "Keep moving into the unknown."

The great aspect of our earthly path is that we have free will.  You can decide to stay put cowering behind fear and that is okay because that is your choice.  You can totally play victim to Fear if you want to.  No one else should have a problem with that because it is none of their business...as long as you don't mind.  But know that Sonia says there is only one power in the Universe and that is Decision. Once you make the decision to move forward, everything will fall into place.

 

Time for a Zen story:

"According to an ancient Indian fable, a mouse was in constant distress because of its fear of the cat. A magician took pity on it and turned it into a cat. But then it became afraid of the dog. So the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to fear the panther. So the magician turned it into a panther. Whereupon it was full of fear for the hunter. At this point the magician gave up, and turned it into a mouse again saying, "Nothing I do for you is going to be of any help because you have the heart of a mouse."

 

How about you?

(By the way, in class today we blasted "I Will Survive" and sang along because when you decide to give up fear, you will survive and your adventure takes off! You can buckle your seatbelt to that!!!)

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