Could you actually be fearful of what you want?
There is a quote by Marianne Williamson, the author, that I always loved. But it also challenged me.
It says this:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I’ve thought a lot about that.
I consider all the ways that I hold myself back.
I also read this quote from Suleika Jaouad’s new book that was along a similar vein. It too was chilling in the cord it struck with me:
“I found the more clearly I could see my fears, the more I understood them, and the more I began to notice a stranger irony: I feared the things I wanted most. If you’ve had your sense of stability ripped away, it can feel dangerous to have hope or to take risks. Hope ca nbe dashed; risks can end in failure and disappointment. …but in many cases, my fear was not protecting me from harm, but from preventing me from attaining what I wanted most.”
She goes on to say:
“Once I had that knowledge, I got to choose. I could brace myself against pain or discomfort, or I could be open to it all - though I have to say, being in the world and facing my fears didn’t always feel good. it was like building a muscle: often uncomfortable, sometimes painful, always exhausting. But each day, I got stronger, and I began to see the rewards. I Realized that the more I ran away from fear, the bigger and more looming it became. Yet if I confronted the fear, it lost its power. As the fear evaporates, other feelings materialized in its place - feelings like wonder and curiosity. And as the author Elizabeth Gilbert once said to me, ‘You don’t have to be particularly brave. You just have to be a tiny, tiny bit more interested in something than you are afraid of it’.
You just have to be one percent more curious than afraid. this idea is powerful and transformative. When you’re in a fearful place, the idea of charging forward without a trace of apprehension is intimidating. Such an expectation can immobilize you. And so, rather than moving forward, and through, you remain stagnant, ruminating about something that may or may not come to pass.”
~p. 62, The Book of Alchemy.
I’ve been weighing this through mt own life, perspective, and my neuro-divergent and traumatized brain.
I also filter it through my body- now much more regulated, my nervous system no longer stuck in survival and fight or flight.
And I wonder -
Is there merit to this?
Have I finally reached some point of homeostasis now and so I cling to calm and familiar -
Because the unknown and the big dreams and going for it with my ambitions -
It also [must] involve a degree of discomfort? Of uncertainty? Of fear? Of possible rejection?
Am I tempering the joy and the blessings, limiting my potential, because I also am actually deeply fearful?
If I am honest with myself - I am.
Even though I am not proud of that.
Even if I don’t like to admit that.
There is truth in it.
But then, it is also something that I can work on.
Knowledge of that then means that I can address that and work to embracing the fear of what I want to happen -
Because I want the big joys and the potential roller coaster of emotions -
But it may involve (re)considering how much of my traumatic past and neutrality - trying to avoid hope because it could come with a disappointment or let down or crash.
But to temper the joy and avoid the blessings either.
I guess to sum it all up -
It strikes me as consistent with the statement that I often see circulated on social media that says-
“We’re not healing to handle the stress. The pain. The hurt.
[because we have that covered]
We’re healing to be able to relax, to feel the joy.”
Amen.
