Depression Talk

Fears will either play us or we can learn to play with them

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."~ Robert Frost

Days like these can work in our favor when we let them. It doesn’t appear that way, but it is true. Fear is on the surface. Everywhere we look businesses are missing. One day they are here. The next day they are gone. No one knows when the next shoe, let alone the last shoe, will drop. We feel vulnerable. Lifestyles and more are in peril. To risk sounding like I miss the point entirely, this is an uncomfortable time and place in which we find ourselves. Ego is tenaciously hanging on, conducting damage control, running its programs of fear. It is the hammering voice in our heads, and the soft yearning of hearts sick with worry, yelling at us to tighten down the hatches and protect ourselves from the devil winds to come.

These are obviously not fun times for most of us. Even those of us with money in the bank are feeling dread, wondering how far the economic spiral will go. The talk is depressing. As Ursula Bacon, a dear, wise woman told me this week, it is ‘depression talk’. She went on to speak about the power of our words. Even when we are talking about another’s viewpoint, our use of their words, validates that energy within us. Listening, night after night, to the news, gives the energetic thread added continuity. It is like a storm building. With enough wind it builds first into a breeze, then a gale, and eventually into a typhoon.

This morning another important piece to the puzzle fell into place when Earl Storm, a partner in Workplace Evolution, shared a quote he had recently heard by Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco. It is profound. “The future is not in front of us. It is inside of us.”
We are choosing our future, as Ursula said, with our words, with what lives inside of us. Fortunately for us, the beliefs we hold and the stories we tell ourselves aren’t buried as deeply anymore. All of our fears are coming out to play. They will either play us or we can play with them. The beauty of this moment is that our fears are visible if we are willing to look. We don’t have to dig or coax them out into the open. They are present.

We are at a crossroads. One road inevitably leads deeper into fear, anxiety and protectionism, leaving us more completely separated from others, less able to connect, and with a gaping hole in our hearts. This road appears, at first glance, to be our savior. It isn’t. It is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. No matter how much we insulate ourselves, no matter how much we rethink and analyze our situation, it will never be enough. Experience shows us this. There is no lasting calm. Upon this road, we devise and improvise layers of protective strategy, even when the only defense we can lay our hands on is mental maneuvering. Regardless of what we do the fears keep resurfacing with increasingly shorter intervals. Each time they resurface we fortify ourselves again, building a more impenetrable wall, effectively and efficiently separating ourselves from those with whom we are intended to partner and play.

Alone we are lost within the desert of our mind’s making. Together we can move beyond the crisis of spirit into an oasis of possibility. The second road, truly the road less travelled, leads to unity, to being in this together. It directs us into realization of our eternal and flawless connection with all beings. This road heals the hole in our hearts and allows us to flower into service and full use.

We choose. Granted, it is an extreme shift to turn and meet our fears, but so important. Fear is an insulator and it prevents us from seeing what is right before our eyes. Free of fear’s trance, we can see new solutions, creative ideas, and willing people with talents to help us find our way out of difficulty. We normally turn from fear rather than turning towards it, but we can choose to face fear now. And even if once again we choose fear, in the next breath we can choose differently. We are never beyond God’s grace.

When we stop for a minute, we will see that in the short term, turning and meeting our fears is actually no more uncomfortable than turning away. Note the anxiety present now. It is an uneasiness that never seems to quite go away. It is not intended too. Its purpose is to show us where we are blocked, where we can’t say ‘yes’ to God’s vision for our lives, where we still have our hands locked onto life’s steering wheel. When we are stuck and flailing about within our heads, we miss the love notes, the divine messages that line our pathway. We create the mishaps from within our disconnected and protective state. This turmoil is far less than what is possible for mankind. We created it unknowingly. With this new awareness gleaned from self-understanding we can turn and make a stand for the Good within ourselves and within us all.

In the short term, meeting our fears can feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to. It is only uncomfortable to the degree that we hang onto our patterns and personal stories. When we put them down, even for a minute, we can feel the relief. Imagine what it would feel like to not need anything. We can experiment and allow ourselves to sit right in the middle of being happy with what we have. We can take another step and imagine ourselves living simply, unattached to any thing, gladly giving all that we have back to the creator’s keeping. Breathe it in deeply. Let it swell and fill the ache created by hanging on. When we are willing to loose everything, including our lives, we become a blank page upon which God alone writes. From there, anything is possible.

In the long term, committing to make your life a divine experiment means coming out from under the pall of fear. Along this path we learn to get out of our own way and allow God’s way to emerge. With a little experimentation, we come face to face with our greater purpose (and it isn’t to accumulate the most of everything or to make ourselves right and others wrong). It is to be of real use, to allow God to express through our simple vessel. The more simple we become, the more empty of self-wanting and self-importance, the greater the flow of Pure Expression.

It is an adventure if we choose to see it that way. I do. Life is this amazing mystery, constantly unfolding in new and different ways. Just as soon as I think I know where it is going, life takes a sharp turn, zinging off in a new direction. The audacity of it leaves me breathless in wonder. Seeing my self as a character in God’s script is quite exhilarating. No, I didn’t get my copy of the script, but that’s alright with me. I’d rather not know where it is going. It is infinitely more fun to follow God’s breadcrumbs, along His trail, grateful that I am a simple player.

"Are there not... Two points in the adventure of the diver: One – when a beggar, he prepares to plunge? Two – when a prince, he rises with his pearl? I plunge!" – Robert Browning