Addiction #32 – Fear (6 Steps to Freedom … Step 4)
Step 04: RETURN TO THIS MOMENT
“We cannot destroy fear. We can only make it into a companion.” ~ inspired by Susan Jeffers
Another brilliantly effective way to remove fear’s grip on your life is to make that life a conscious one, and by that I mean repeatedly & purposefully returning your attention to you’re Here&Now –- to consciously interacting with your current surroundings, as opposed to worrying about what those surroundings might one day become or what your interactions with them might one day entail.
Fear lives only in the future, and ironically, all of our suffering resides there as well. What might happen or could happen or probably will happen HAS NOT HAPPENED & IS NOT HAPPENING. And yet it is the ego’s “mights” & “coulds” and “probablys” that are what turn our minor pains into great worries, our fleeting disappointments into great sadness, and incidental injustices into seething anger.
The only way to be free of fear is to depart from the realm where fear holds court –the realm of the “then” and the “soon” and the “someday”.
HERE is the only place where you can Care anyway, and know true Peace … NOW is the only time when you can truly Love, and thereby experience real Joy.
In essence, if you fear what the next wave might do to you, you will never hop on and discover where it is headed, much less enjoy the deep contentment felt while getting on board.
Life is not a continuum of time soaked in the bitter fears of impending death, probable pains and inevitable darkness, but is rather a series of loosely-joined, fully independent moments; a gentle series of “little lifetimes”, each ladled with delicious opportunities to do things Meaning-full and Kind.
And the only way to know real Peace in this string of priceless moments is to set aside your fears of all moments to come. Essentially, the only way to flow smoothly into your future is to courageously (and Joy-fully) embrace your today.
So set aside your worries and your tremblings for the trials & traumas that are possibly coming to you … Look around you instead, and see the opportunities to care for those in need that have already arrived.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
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