WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOVE IS STRONGER THAN FEAR?
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOVE IS STRONGER THAN FEAR?
If love and fear are considered the two most powerful emotions warring in our hearts, then focusing on love for 90 days CONSCIOUSLY (DAY 12!) is creating space for my unconscious mind to deal with my fear. Looking at this, let me list the fears that have been most consuming for me in life. Let's run up the Chakras:
1) Survival fear. We had food and economic insecurity in my childhood, no question.
2) Fear of loss of love and sexual connection. Intertwined. Everyone experiences rejection, of course. Many have faced divorce and heartbreak. How we react to it determines and expresses our character.
3) Power. I was taught that if I did not succeed, I'd be insignificant, and risk real poverty and loss. But also taught that if I wasn't careful, I'd attract too much attention and racial animus…and be killed. Talk about a no-win scenario. Both the males and females of my tribe made it clear to me that if I didn't have power, I would not be welcome, not have friends, brothers, girlfriends. This fear drove me to gain power in an arena I saw my tribe appreciate: entertainment. And to deal with the fear of being punished for excellence: martial arts. Fear, in that sense, defined my life.
4) Emotion. Fear is a great motivator…but will burn you out. Eventually, you have to shift to love. By the time I found Sri Chinmoy and "Heartbeat Meditation" I knew that I couldn't sustain the energy necessary to transmute fear into gold. One day something would break inside me. So the quest for love began. But there was another fear here: it had to do with my absent father. If I wasn't lovable enough to attract and hold a father, (I reasoned), there had to be something terribly broken inside me. I had to be hideous, weak, unworthy. TERROR of looking deeply within myself, because the only logical conclusion was that I was a twisted thing. Only love and faith…and frankly, lots of sex…convinced me otherwise.
5) Communication. This was the key to my future. Specifically fiction writing, television/film writing. But all the doors seemed shut. I not only knew no one who made a living writing fiction, I knew OF no one of my racial tribe doing it. Terrible fear and self doubt (was it us? Was it "them"?"), as well as terror that if I was the first and only, I would be alone in a context where I was unwanted. In terms of SF or fiction, everyone reading these words is ahead of where I was--you at least know ME. I needed to learn and grow when it seemed everything in the world told me I could not. One thing drove me on: I loved writing. So much that I decided one day I'd rather FAIL at writing than SUCCEED at anything else. There was fear, yes…but the love was stronger. The HOPE was stronger.
6) Intellect. I dropped out of college to start my writing career, and that triggered a decade of insecurity any time I was dealing with degreed folks. Or people who would poke that insecurity. Some nasty people out there. But I fell in love with the concept of modeling: any given result is like a recipe. If you can follow the "cook" around in his "kitchen" and take note of everything they do, to the degree that you can duplicate their process, in a single day you can learn to bake a "cake" it took them DECADES to learn how to do. I LOVED this, and knew that if this NLP principle was true, this meant I needed to bond myself to people who could teach me things. The secret was…love. Being able to genuinely connect with strangers and endear myself to them. How to do that, with integrity? With Larry, it was genuine admiration, high energy, and emptying my cup--whatever he told me to do I just DID. Same with Steve Muhammad, except that fear was more of a blockade. I had to find ways to go "around" the young bad-asses in his school. This was a lack of understanding my own fear, lack of understanding that EVERYONE feels fear. My father should have taught me this, I reckon. This was one of the holes that his absence left in my heart, and part of the reason I'd die and burn in hell before I'd abandon my kids.
7) Spirit. I lost my parents fairly early, and that disabuses you to your unconscious hope that maybe you'll live forever. So what was my life going to be about? Just as learning about racism in 1st grade set me on the path to solving that problem ("how do I win a rigged game?") the lack of illusion about death caused grief of course…but also set me free to ask better questions. Fear was a fear of disruption of one of the previous areas: life, sex, power, love, communication, or career. To the degree that I had navigated them, I was awakening my deeper "energies".
And that brings me back to today's 90-Day Love Feast thoughts. I've gotten where I am by having a minimum score in each of those areas. No "breaks." What happens if I remove more of the remaining obstacles? The urge to give Tananarive all the love, passion, and support I can demand I be MORE on each level. More than I've been…and answering that question: "what would I have been had I had a perfect supportive family and culture?"
And this is where some people will say that the obstacles called forth the strength. While true, it’s a little like dividing a group of runners into Red and Blue, and strapping refrigerators to the backs of the Blues. Yes, some of them will make it up the hill, and they will be STRONG. But if you are of the group that didn't HAVE those refrigerators strapped to you, or worse still, if you look like the people who strapped them on…you might want to be mindful of your implication that you or they were doing me a favor. No. I survived the gauntlet, that's all. And if I love myself, and am grateful for who I am, in one spiritual sense yes, I have to be happy for EVERYTHING that happened.
But you'll note I'd die before I let you strap one of those Frigidaire to my son. It ain't that kind of party. I can do the psychological jiu-jitsu to say "thank you God, for giving me another opportunity to discover who I am" but don't mistake that joy for permission to try again. That would be a serious error.
LOVE got be through each of these levels. Love for life, for passion, for my own heart and soul, my various tribes, my family, for writing and teaching, for learning and modeling, for my connection to the universe from which I came and to which I will one day return, a single bubble of foam that bobbed in the waves for a while…and then popped.
There is the "male" aspect of who I am, and the "female". I won't get pulled into political bullshit about this: divide up those traits as you wish, with the average man around the world and throughout history having 20% more of male characteristics, the average woman maybe 20% more of the female. The Yang and Yin of it, which create a dynamic. Physics says that if energy and matter had been distributed equally after the Big Bang, nothing would ever have happened. It was the "lumpiness", the unequal distribution, that got everything in motion.
If men and women were really totally the same, we'd simply be an asexual species reproducing through parthenogenesis. That ain't us. What are the differences? A world of discussion there, but I know that almost half of me is female, and that is a critical component to my creativity, recovery, intuition, empathy, and aliveness.
And Tananarive represents my female side. She is my personal piece of the "Divine Feminine." And serving her is, in essence, serving myself. And the more selflessly I serve her, the more the Feminine within me will nurture the Masculine, and together, TOGETHER, they create an energy beyond either, and nurture every level of my being.
Serving her is serving every level of myself. From love. Not from fear that she might leave me. I have no such fear. Or fear of being a bad husband. Just for LOVE of myself, my family, the world…and her. Tananarive. Who trusted me with her heart.
And as I would not fail my children, I won't fail her either. And to do this, will focus on HER for the next 78 days. This is the next level of the classic SOULMATE PROCESS class, on which we're having a 66% price reduction so that anyone committed to healing themselves, finding a partner, or improving their relationship can come along for a wild ride. Find out more at www.soulmateprocess.com
But for me…wow. One day at a time people, and at 12 days I'm already digging deep. I have no idea who I'll be by September. Join me!
Namaste
Steve
