Two weeks ago, I stumbled across a rather intriguing conversation that eventually led me to have an energy reading. Apart from it being an incredibly resonant experience, a few things stood out. “Do you like yourself? Do you think you’re fun to hang out with? Do you think you’re likable?”, the lady asked. I was kind of lost for words. “I love myself,” I said: “but I never thought about whether I like myself or not. I don’t know if I’m fun to hang out with, to be honest.” Somewhere during the reading, she felt an intense contraction in my throat area. I found that to be intriguing. “Yes,” she said: “You are holding back, not revealing everything that you are thinking and feeling.” She was right, I don’t. I started asking myself why I am cautious and when, because I don’t always hold back. I discovered I am mostly cautious sharing my beliefs, especially with people who I feel will not welcome them. The why remained a mystery. The rest of the week, I’ve been pondering those two things: Do I think I’m fun to be with and why am I holding back? The easiest and most logical conclusion would be that I don’t express myself fully in the fear that people will not like me, which most likely would be right but I knew there was more to it than that. So I kept digging, and I unearthed some interesting finds.
“Don’t rock the boat”, momma Fear told me.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the others might fall out.”
That was not the answer I had expected.
“Why are we in this boat in the first place?”
“So people cannot leave you.”
Huh? Come again. This reeks of kidnapping. I found it to be disconcerting to say the least.
“Why would people leave me?”
“Because they will not like you when you make them feel unsafe.”
Uh, okay…
“What would happen if they left me.”
“You would be alone, it would kill you.”
A completely non-sensical and at the same time enlightening conversation.
Apparently, I am scripted to believe that people will not like me when I make them feel unsafe; when they don’t like me they will leave me, and when they leave me I will die. Better not rock the boat then, better not say or do anything that might make them feel unsafe. The thing is I know for a fact that I will not die when I am alone; I went through the horrible pain of aloneness, it did not kill me and ever since I do not resonate with it anymore. Yet somehow momma Fear still felt the need to protect me from it, and she did so by cunningly using another fear that apparently still lingered beneath the surface.
Fortunately, fear of fear, however powerful, is easy to let go. The tricky part is recognizing it for what it is. After that, all we have to do is start doing what we’re afraid of and let momma Fear realize the so-called pain she is protecting us from isn’t there anymore, in the way you would open the valve of a tire and let it deflate gently. And as to whether I like myself or not, I have come to the heartwarming conclusion that I do actually like myself, in fact I really like hanging out with myself, I have a lot of fun with myself. It is true that I have no clue who will stay in my boat once I moor it in the harbor and set them free, and I am okay with that. Even if it is just me in that boat, talking to myself and rocking the boat just for the fun of it, I’ll be having a great time, and there’ll bound to be other people who like hanging out with me as much as I do.
photo by Christian Bowen
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