In order to understand fear, you must first understand the difference between true fear and manufactured fear. Let me give you a personal example. I experienced true fear last year. It hit out of the blue. I had just come from an event at the local Indigenous Friendship Centre and it was a cool spring day. I had my route home laid out in my head. Stop at the art store in the mall, catch the bus to the University, walk to the grocery store and head home. Then it hit. Bam! The realization that I was being run over by a car that was backing up from a stop sign in a mall parking lot.
Hit from behind, I went down to the ground and ended up underneath the car. Everything seems to move really slow when the adrenalin rushes through your body. It’s like your mind starts recording in clips. I remember seeing the muffler and the undercarriage of the car and thinking ‘this isn’t right’. Then there was the realization that there were wheels coming toward my head. In the next instance the car stopped, went forward and once I saw the sky I bolted straight up.
It must have looked like I had risen from the dead as witnesses told me later that I was extremely lucky I wasn’t hurt. I was extremely lucky because it was these people that came to my aid otherwise, I would have been a speed-bump in thing called life.
The adrenalin doesn’t stop rushing through your body when the event ends. You are basically in shock and your body/mind/emotions goes into process mode. Even though someone offered me a ride, I was determined to continue my path home. I needed to process what had happened. While under that car I was consumed with the fear of my survival. The whole experience may have been a minute but it felt like an eternity. Dying and dying like this was not part of my story. I had a mission to fulfill and I wasn’t finished fulfilling it. But, this experience did enter my reality and it taught me something. In one moment, I am fighting for my life and the next moment, I am realizing I am safe. I am in one piece and I am alive.
All the issues that had consumed my mind prior to this moment meant nothing. These moments of my life when I fell off the trust track and became consumed worrying about imaginary happenings. The little nagging creature of the mind that says, ‘what if this goes wrong’ and you use the tag line to create a story with a negative outcome. A story in which the mind manufactures fear and fires up the body’s fight or flight mechanisms even though there is no threat. In this world of manufactured fear, we stop living or we equate living with survival. All because we forgot that we create the story.
Long, long ago in the Indigenous world, there was a trust in the flow. The hunters never went off to the hunt with the mindset, ‘last year really sucked. Sure, hope we can catch something’. They went off with the mindset of gratitude in the outcome they envisioned within. They trusted and because they walked within this vibration they were usually successful. The times when they weren’t did not become the vibrational foundation for their future hunts.
We live our lives conjuring scenarios in our mind. You read a sign on the street, hear a news report, talk with a friend and immediately a thought knocks at the door of your mind. With your permission, the thought enters your mind and creates a story that causes havoc in your thinking. If you actually stopped to take an inventory of the thoughts that you are thinking, you would find most are based on an imaginary fear, the bogey-woman under the bed.
We never think about how many outside forces are vying to grab hold of our minds and lead our thinking down the fear road. We also never consider how technology is isolating us. Through the focus on a little handset we have distanced ourselves from each other. We no longer call, send emails or write letters. Instead we send text messages with emotes. We no longer talk. Instead we pull out our phone and move the page up and down. Tap! Tap! Tap! We follow the trends of the moment and shift our focus at the drop of a hat. Last week’s story is old news. Or there are the individuals who are addicted to the dopamine high from a like on their social media account. Friends in a box.
Every day we are told that something bad is going to happen by politicians, mainstream, social and alternative media. Do you allow this information to taint your day? Does the show on the world stage affect your day to day living? How do you flow through the world? Are you aware of the people around you? Are you aware of your surroundings? Or are you fixated on a little screen in your hand pumping out the fear agenda? A pretend mind which brings us the latest information from everywhere around the world. In our technological world, we have shifted our focus to a reality that manufactures fear in a little box.
You have the power to control the thoughts that are flashing across the screen of your mind. You also have the power stop the negative storytelling. All it takes is the decision to watch and listen to yourself and take the actions necessary to know yourself. A decision to move from judging others and move to looking at the inner operations of you. What story are you telling and how are you telling it? Are the stories filled with fear? The power always rests with your choice. You can see every experience in a multitude of ways. It can be seen as nasty; in its aftermath humorous; callous and even traumatic; wonderful; or you can just forget about the experience and move on.
Be grateful for another day and another opportunity. See the blessings in your life right now. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. Enjoy the moments. Smile and know that whatever you are going through will pass and the sun shall shine.
Wishing you days filled with many pleasant and delightful surprises.
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