Crossing the Bridges: Nothing to Fear
Fear is like an obscuring mist, covering each step in uncertainty.
Doubt, uncertainty, dis-ease, discomfort, anxiety are all specific manifestations of fear. Worst of all, they come from a most intangible and illusive fear.
I have written quite a lot about fear. Both for Pathwalking and Positivity and even amongst my topical rants, fear is a subject I come back to rather frequently. Why? Because fear is one of the most pervasive driving forces of our modern society.
Those in power, or striving to obtain power, use fear constantly. Fear of the unknown, fear of outsiders, fear of the rich, fear of the poor, fear of anyone with a different sense of gender or religion or sexual preference. Fear is how they disempower you and I while they empower themselves, and provide false empowerment to their direct followers and believers.
Crossing bridges, or doing anything that involves working consciousness for creation, can be easily derailed by fear. More often than not it’s subtle, almost invisible. But that does not lessen it. Nor does that properly express the negative effect it can have on me and my psyche.
I want to be a best-selling author. Do you know how many people will tell me that I am crazy for wanting that? Do you know how often I have read about or been told that writers seldom make a living just by writing? Worse, my primary genre is sci-fi and fantasy. Niche audiences are an even harder sell. Madness.
This of course stirs up all kinds of fears that get in the way of my conscious reality creation process. I get the thought part mostly settled, but the feeling? Really hard to maintain the necessary positivity to set-up the vibration for manifestation when fear draws me dawn.
I doubt. I question my own sanity. Then I start to look at my job history, and feel bad about my career choices or lack of career choices, and I question my talent and abilities and become increasingly frustrated which makes me feel down and…oh, look at that! I am still not making the kind of money I want, nor doing a job I really want to do, and spend far too much of my time wanting but not working on that want.
Fear is a swarm of gnats. You can swat them away, you can douse yourself in bug repellant, but they always seem to follow you, get in your ears, drive you slightly mad.
But eventually you will escape the gnats. This is also true of fear.
I have mentioned in other posts that everything I fear is intangible. I fear failure, I fear success, I fear most of all being rejected and abandoned because of fear of success or becoming someone nobody wants to know anymore. Reasonable? Not even a little bit. Fear, like matters of the heart, is seldom reasonable.
Last week I discussed taking the first step, and that was putting the thought out, all by itself, and working with it and not overthinking or overanalyzing it. I want to be a bestselling author. Next step is feelings. This is where fear has crept up on me, and begun nagging.
I am working on feeling what it will be like to be a bestselling author. What will I feel when I am seeing the amazing number of books I have sold and the number of people I have reached? How will it feel to know I am making my living from this? And more. But then I am met with other, nagging thoughts intruding on these questions. Are you really a good enough writer to become a best-seller? Do you think your work is that good? Do you really believe you can make money as a writer? Shouldn’t you choose a more stable career path finally?
How do I overcome my doubt, my self-depreciation, my fear? That’s the ultimate challenge for me. I have taken any number of steps and combinations of steps to address this. Better diet, exercise, meditation, affirmations, writing out statements of abundance, visualizing, Prozac. I am constantly trying out different combinations of all of the above.
My toolbox for coping and adjusting my emotions is full of variable implements. The challenge is figuring out where and how to use them most effectively. I feel, for the first time in my life, like I am really, truly on the cusp of manifesting the reality I most desire. Despite issues with the world at large, I believe I can get where I want to go, and fear will not stop me.
Isn’t this a crazy ride? But that, of course, is life. As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!
Bonus thought. One of the all-time best quotes on the topic of fear and coping with fear, after FDR’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” is the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune:
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
GOAL LOG – Week 16:
Diet: I am continuing with the lower carb, lower sugar diet overall.
Exercise: I fenced Tuesday, took a good 20+ minute Monday, and hit the gym Tuesday and Wednesday.
Writing: The three blog posts were done, and I did some editing on Harbinger over 2 days.
Meditation: Two days last week, for no less than 4 minutes.
Gratitude: I have expressed gratitude for 5 things six of seven days last week.
This is the thirtieth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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