Lessons in Conscious Leadership : Befriending fear
What do I have to learn from my fears?
Fears of losing something. My health, wealth and happiness. My capabilities and my connects. My stability and sanity. My love, my life and my livelihood.
The first thing that I understand, looking back, is that most of my fears are mere imaginations. Hardly ever coming true. They arise out of imprints in my memory left behind by some trauma of the past which I would have caused to myself as a self-fulfilling prophecy – an outcome of fearful imaginations gone un-noticed.
Next, what comes to my awareness is that all my fears are in my thoughts. I may choose to identify with them and believe in them. Or I may choose to stand back, watch and be the one who knows the fear. I have come to learn that being a witness to the inner experiencing of my fears and not identifying with them helps in loosening their grip and dissolving them, by and by. I no more remain the one who is afraid but the one who watches and knows the fear as a piece of cloud floating across the face of the sky.
Finally, when the fear is too intense, especially when it is triggered by an event which my mind interprets as a threat, I have learned to call upon faith and surrender to it for being held and protected. Yes, my fear has gotten me touch with my faith – my love, the quintessential human faith. I have learned to accept the is-ness of a moment and the art of surrendering to it. With a knowing that we all live amidst interconnected realities and all that happens, happens for a reason, far more complex than what my linear perspective can see. I have learnt to be-friend my fears.
Fear, in itself, is not substantial. It’s a shadow, a state of lack. Lack of love. When I am not in touch with my love, when my mind comes in my way of communing with universal love, it’s then that the shadows of the past show up as fear. And since it is a shadow, it’s a lack, I know, I cannot fight it or work upon it. I can only shine the light of love for the shadow to disappear.
It is not that I invite fears. Neither is it that I enjoy being scared or afraid. However, having learnt from them and still continuing to learn, I look at them with reverence, knowing and believing that there is a larger design for them to surface in my consciousness. A design related to transcending them forever and living a life of universal love and acceptance.