TRANSFORMING FEAR
By Rev. Charla Hermann

It makes a great topic for a seminar, the topic of transforming fear. We all relate to the need to transform a thousand things that tremble inside our wee minds in the middle of the night. Fear is a major ingredient in a myriad of diseases that come from the stress, or so our medical world would have us believe. There is the nervous stomach that becomes the ulcer and moves into diverticulitis and, if you are really stressed and immune deprived, it can become Crohns. And that is just the mid-section of the body. Let’s remember that we have heart, liver, gall bladder, and a few other meaningful organs in-between. Lungs don’t do well when we spend so much time holding our breath, not to mention how chaffed the thighs get when spending too much time with our panties in a knot. Then there is stress headaches, grinding teeth or shoulders that won’t loosen even when the massage Goddess shows up every week! When fear moves into our bodies, it seems to be a very hard tenant to evict. We can know all about the fear, we can feel that it is all about fear, and we can even talk about how to transform the fear, all the while giving it life! Fear can feel like the heartburn you knew you would get, but simply had to eat that spicy food, in the moment, was just too irresistible to refuse.

All of these aliments would be a good reason to go through the process of transforming fear. Yet, we go through the rituals, the meditations, the intense mental dialog and then low and behold, we have to enter the real world. That world is filled with the phones ringing off the hook, e-mails, web sites, bills that increase daily, television reports, newspapers, freeways filled with too many cars, and bosses that want more productivity for their investment. Oh yeah, then there is that Social Security issue. Like, we are all not stressing over our futures and the cost of living, right? It has been months since any of us has met a stress free person. Perhaps the family cat is the only one not feeling the stress of these critical times. Yet, somehow, maybe even the cat is faking it to make everyone feel better. Well, it might be the catnip that is really in charge of this critters easy emotions. At any rate, we are all most certainly feeling the effects of stress from the Earth Mother.

So, back to the beginning. Here we all are sucked into the stress mire, yet having tools of transformation all around us. We have Stone People’s lodge to leek the stress out of the tops of our heads, like a pressure cooker that has boiled a few minutes too long. We have drums, rattles and songs to sing our energy up. We have a thousand tapes and CDs of meditation and visualization, along with dance vibrations to get us moving to renew and restore the Soul. We have yoga, Thai chi, and integrated breath work. Yet, many of us wake up in the morning , wondering what to do to lighten up long enough to stride forward around the wheel of life. When we remember to use our tools, they work for us, and we call our friends delighted with our remembering, as though it was a new discovery. We hang on to that moment, until the next stress creeps in to fill the void and allows us to once again focus on displeasure.

One Grandma says it is as easy as getting up and making your own bed before making someone else’s. Then put the right foot forward and step into the day with faith and hope. Oh yeah, and it helps to wear comfortable shoes! All great advice, yet the cries of crisis seem so much more complicated than that. Those calls seems to get louder and come more frequently with each new transformational progress. It seems that just as we get the business settled, the car breaks down. We have it fixed just in time to catch the septic system, or the dentist gets an unexpected visit. Be it our own stuff or some one we love, we are all facing a full platter to process each and every day. Joy becomes the in-the-moment thing that drives us and sustains us, but pausing to pray upon the multitude situations is a full time job for one and all.

One of my Spiritual Grandma’s used to tell me to kiss my monster on the nose. She would encourage me to get eye to eye with my fears. It seemed that it would work, until I came in contact with a new fear that didn’t even exist prior to that day. For instance, when I was young, I never feared losing a mate. I had no perspective. As I grow older, like everyone around me, I find myself wondering what it feels like when one partner goes first. I watch my parents who have been married forever, and wonder how Dad would manage without Mom’s cooking. I wonder how Mom would get around without D Dad holding her arm or how she would settle his lifetime of business dealings that only he understands. Those are simple questions. Not really filled with much fear as much as filled with curiosity about how things balance out. I do wonder if they fear losing each other. Do I fear that if I leave this planet first that no one will follow my instructions or how badly they will mess up my perfect plan of how things should work. After all, I spent an entire life developing the perfect plan for living...didn’t I?!

How on earth do we transform all of this, even in the best seminar? Oh sure, we have all had a great life, and most of us believe in some form of hereafter, or the next life chance stuff. We believe we knew each other before, and leave codes for each other to find ourselves in another life. Yet that inherent fear of losing someone we love seems big. Is it the fear of being alone or the fear of unfinished business that tweeks us in the dark of night? Is this kind of fear a simple acknowledgment of unfinished business or is it the knowing that all relationships change form at one time or another. Sometimes from physical to Spiritual and back again. Are we all making the best of the relationships around us. Are we building fond memories to hold in our hearts, or are we grasping at time to make things perfect to please some mythical vision of life without any fear at all? So, are these thoughts actual fear or a simple acknowledgment of reality of the actual act of transformation that comes when a person leaves their physical body and must now relate to them as Spirit ? Isn’t it more important for me to act will the ful compassion of a daughter and embrace the now instead of taking up brain space to wonder about the enviable things that I will get to deal with as a natural act of the cycles of life? Oh so many questions which all lead to answers of the heart.

The story of fear seems to go like this. Just as we have dealt with one issue; like fear of water and then we learn to swim, another new issue jumps in our path to allow us another gulp and lap around the roller coaster ride of life. Fear critters nip at the safe places of the soul, and we stand in line to feed them. It seems like we should have graded levels of fear, rating them on a scale of one through five. Say balancing the checkbook verses waiting for the lab report on a biopsy. There is a difference between an honest concern for an ailing grandchild, and fearing something that may not even happen. It lives only within the realm of possibility and has only taken form in our minds. It isn’t like fear needs to be created. There is an abundance for each of us to grab at and muse through. It is as there is a tree ripe with fruit, just dangling for each of us to harvest. Each fruit has a sweetness or bitterness to offer. Only after we have picked it and put it to our lips do we really know what we will savor. We watch our neighbor pick from the same tree and experience the flavor in a completely different manner. Why is that? Then there are the days that the tree is barren, awaiting a new drama to kick in enough juice to take bud and bloom into a full blown statement of life. Even if the last piece we picked was bitter, we tend to go back to try it again. There in lies our challenge. All of us has certain comfort zones that live within the fear fruit. Many times within the tears of screaming through the pain of bitterness tasted, we bring up enough adrenalin required to calm the troubled Spirit. It brings us to the old catch 22 of, how do I get calm without the need for the storm to fodder the stories that we will share with younger ones in our old and older age.

Sun Bear used to remind us to WALK IN BALANCE. It seemed a simple statement when we were young. Now the perspective of what is real balance in life has certainly changed for each of us. We each hold new respect for the gentle walk, and work each day to transform our steps into less of a push forward to flow gently into the day kind of steps. Hard to do when the demands grow with the visions for planetary healing. But, imperative in order not to rush the process of renewal and restoration.

It seemed there should be some cosmic answer as to how to pluck fear from the tree and swallow without any sorrow, grief, frustration, or remorse. There must be some ritual that can take us from pure panic to a place of personal inner calm. Is it the one where we go for a walk and sing a song? Maybe the song starts out strident and slows into a lullaby. Is it in the moment we simply stop everything we are doing and breathe and feel what is really happening all around us and allow ourselves the overwhelming moment that comes back into focus of the one thing that we can do right to transform the present situation. The old ones used to tell us , there is no problem that cannot be prayed through in less than six minutes. Yet, some days it feels like that trouble tree just drops fruit right on our heads so fast that we can’t even process it all for winter storage. We pray on it, cry on it, cook it in the lodge. We can do all of the ancient rituals we want, yet each of us has to admit that on any given day we are honestly holding something of fear in our lives. If we sat and made a list of every little thing we should be worrying about we would get nothing else done. So how about a list of all of the things we do not fear ? Have we a list of solutions and joyful opportunities that can be even longer than the list of fears ? When we live in fear, we are not living, we are existing, limiting the possibilities of that potential joy that is waiting just behind the curtain awaiting the opportunity to take a well deserved bow.

Tools or no, fear is real. The emotions of what if have to be played out. There is power in putting things into perspective, not to amplify the situation, but to honor it with pure thought and insight. To acknowledge fear is to honor it’s power and give it due respect. To hide fear, is to push it down into the body where it can gain your attention by taking on new life, in order to make you deal with it. It is the old, one way or another, dilemma. It seems that stepping up to the plate to deal with the fear is the best way to walk through it. We do not comfort it, but engage it and ask it what it wants of us. How can we calm it’s Spirit to lead it to a peaceful place? We honor that within the fear is a truth, a real concern, seeking an Allie. If we are to make relationship with that fear, we must seek to make a choice with it for the highest good for all concerned. We are each in the center of that concern. Fear is the reminder to stop on the corner until the light turns green to allow us to cross into a new place of safe knowing.

So I decided to make a list of all of the things that I fear, just as soon as I finish the one about all of the things that I love about life. So far, there is no room on the paper for fear. To live my life in fear is not to live at all. To surrender the fear is to give power to the divine gift of choice. This reminder grabs my soul on a regular basis. One of the only tools that I have found to consistently work for me is the BUT/AND theory. A wise woman once offered to me, that when I am making choices, instead of speaking my choice and saying BUT, ( as though there was a reason for the activity NOT to happen...) I was reminded that saying AND as a reason that I WOULD continue to see my choice as a working option. AND it works!!! It allows for the choice to be made. For instance: “ I want to write this book, BUT, every time I sit down someone calls and I have a new distraction to getting it done.” .... the option.... “I want write this book, AND, every time I sit down someone calls to fill the next chapters with stories of healing and adventure.

In this time when the airwaves are filled with violent and sad images of those in crisis, we need to transform fear. When we are seeing police officers in the grocery stores and schools, and children do not feel safe in the local park; We need to transform fear. We look for a magic wand and wait for Mickey Mouse to show up in a wizard’s cap to make enough brooms to sweep away the mountains of fear all around us. Yet, isn’t it each one of us who will sing the song and move the broom to allow the fear to take on a new image in our mind’s eye ? When we call upon the winds to put hope into the breath of fear, we must exhale to make room for that hope to fill our lungs. When we are seeking spiritual food, we need only look as far as the spiritual garden tended by loving hands of a grandmother or young one. It is however each of our choice if we seek to walk within that garden and pick the fruit of healing to fill the vessel that has been emptied of the fears and open to the possibility of a new tomorrow.

It seems that every direction I look to seek the answers, the arrow on the map points to me. It points to my making sound choice. It points to me discerning what situation is going to make me uncomfortable so much that I am paralyzed with fear OR, I can choose the direction on the map that carries me down the road of joyful soul-ution. In any case, the task of transformation lives within me. There is not a transformation spa in the yellow pages that is going to do all of the work for me. I can look to others to ease the pain of the wounds. I can look at them and ask for a new way of seeing or feeling things, AND still it is me that must do the seeing and feeling. An old revolutionary once told me she discovered; “ You cannot fight for peace.” I can reach out and choose which path allows me the comfort of the journey to peace. No one else can walk that walk for me. I am in control of the outcome, as it is MY steps that get me there. In any case, I have found that it seems to be my perception of the situation which needs as much adjustment as the adjustment of the actual situation, itself! The honest answer to the transformation process is actually all about me being ABLE and WILLING to change how I am viewing the situation and allowing myself to see a non-fear based option to create comfort that my Body, Mind, and Spirit seek to live and walk in balance.

May each of us seek the peace that we find. May we find the path to the place of deep inner calm. May we each know that we are not alone in our fear and certainly not alone in the choices of seeking solution. The healing team is readily available for each of us to access, remembering to CHOOSE to access is the challenge of our journey. May we all know the peace of knowing, and in the knowing we are whole.

( Rev. Charla Hermann is the Founding Director of Hawkwind Earth Renewal Cooeperative, a wilderness healing center based in the Northern Alabama mountains. For information on monthly programs and healing retreats, contact us at cjhawkwind@earthlink.net, or P.O. Box 11, Valley Head, Al. 35989 (256) 635-6304)