Move past the stuckness of fear into the flow of guidance

The most frequently asked question from the people who attended my first public talk in Portland was: “How do you deal with the fear-driven voices of the mind that can drown out the voice of guidance?”
Well…
What does it feel like?
First, it’s important to clarify how to distinguish the fear-driven voices of the mind from the voice of guidance. The short answer is that you have to go by what it feels like.

Guidance isn’t just a voice inside, nor is it only a mental thought. Guidance is a mixture of an inner voice or inner vision that has a distinct physical feeling that accompanies it. It feels peaceful, still, open and calm. Think of a time you have deeply known something in every cell of your body. Aaaah. Feel that.

Fear, on the other hand, feels like contraction, tightness, not being able to breathe. And it can come crashing in so very quickly! The feeling of fear itself is not inherently bad, but it can be so uncomfortable that our mind creates thoughts that are designed to help us avoid feeling the fear—this is what I call “fear-driven voices of the mind.”

Maybe you’re familiar with how this plays out? You receive guidance to say, ask for a raise at your job. There is a moment of peacefulness and calm as you feel into that guidance, that knowing that you have been increasingly aware of over the last few months, and then WHAM! Your stomach knots up and you can’t breathe. You’re scared.

The next thing that happens is that your mind might say something like, “Who are you to ask for a raise? You’re too chicken! Plus, you’re not worth anymore than you’re already getting!” And your trust in the voice of guidance is lost, much less your ability to act on it.

So how do you keep flowing with guidance rather than coming to a screeching halt with fear?

Stay present!

Unless you’re really closely tracking your inner dialogue and your body, the shift from guidance into fear will be unconscious, and you’ll begin to spin back into letting the fear-driven voices run your life. This is why embodied practices like yoga, dance, and tai chi are so powerful for helping you to first gain access to and then to trust your guidance.

At first you have to give yourself time to listen to your guidance—set aside time when lying in bed in the morning or on your meditation cushion—somewhere where you can be quiet, undisturbed and comfortable in your body.

As you begin softening your body to listen for guidance, know that as soon as you get a response from guidance you should keep listening attentively to your body so that you can feel when you might start to experience the physical sensation of fear and be conscious of any defense patterns that the fear-driven voices might try to run.

I call my most prominent fear-driven voice Tough Girl. She’s been invested in trying to protect me for a very long time, and from the perspective of my highest self, the part of me that is conscious of being sourced from Spirit, the Tough Girl’s words are never encouraging of living fully and meaningfully. Tough Girl is only concerned with living safely and free from discomfort.
We all have our own version of Tough Girl. Who is yours?

Go away!

Believe me, I know that it’s literally painful at times to feel fear, and that’s why the fear-driven voices are all about getting you to avoid having to feel the pain. But the good news is that if you’re aware of the pain, you have gotten past the tendency to keep yourself distracted and out of your body through any number of distractions (T.V., internet, iPod, constant companionship, workaholism) and you are in a place of empowerment where you can make choices to become unstuck from the habitual mind patterns that keep you feeling stuck.

When we do become aware of the fear and the corresponding voices, we tend to put our energy into avoiding the feeling and ignoring the voices. “La, la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you!” If we do decide to engage with the nasty inner voices it’s usually to refute what they are saying and defend ourselves with positive statements. “I can do it!” “I know I’m not selfish and that I’m smart enough. Go away!”

But have you noticed that the fear doesn’t really go away when you argue with the voices? And that the voices don’t go away just by being aware of them (think spiritual practice) or by knowing and analyzing where they came from (think some forms of western psychology). So how do you get the fear-driven voices to quiet down so you can hear your guidance?

The wave and the ocean

The only way to come back to the peacefulness of your guidance is to let yourself experience and feel the physical sensations and emotions that go along with the voice of fear. You have to cultivate your ability to experience embodied fear with a witness rather than the kind of hysterical fear that happens in the mind and paralyzes action.

Let’s take the example from above. When your stomach gets all knotted up about the thought of asking for a raise, instead of checking out back up to your head to figure out a plan or to get away from the discomfort, stay with the feeling in your belly. Allow yourself to feel the sadness, or perhaps anger or heart break that comes with feeling like you’re not worth receiving a raise. The inner voices might keep adding their two cents, and that’s ok as long as you also can stay with your body rather than letting your thoughts carry you away into your head. What is literally happening when you do that is that you’re thoughts are putting a wedge between you and Spirit, making you feel disconnected and alone and utterly and completely fearful.

But letting the feelings happen and the inner thoughts say what they have to say while keeping your awareness of your body is like watching the waves of you’re breath in meditation. Except in this case you’re watching the waves of your feelings while staying aware of the ocean of Spirit that you are held in.

I know this is really scary. Your mind will tell you not to jump into the waves of your emotions at all because you’ll drown, or that the waves will relentlessly keep crashing on you and you’ll become completely stuck and exhausted.

But if you go into the waves of difficult emotions and uncomfortable physical sensations in a conscious and embodied way, what you will inevitably find is that you will move through the breaking waves and into the vast calmness of Spirit again. The place where your guidance has been all along.

Except this time, you have experienced a shift in perception—not just in your mind, but a visceral, emotional and spiritual shift in perception that has actually rewired the habitual patterns of your mind, making it possible for you to not only trust in the peaceful knowing of your guidance, but to act on it.

Easier said than done? Sure. But it is something you are capable of doing. You can go into the waves of your emotions and find peace because you are a wave in the ocean of Spirit, a unique expression of the incredible vastness.

If you want to have a “lifeguard” present the first few times you dive in, contact me for a private session or for a free 15 minute consultation.

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