Moving Beyond Fear

Talk from New Year's Day:

When we have to let something go, we often realize just how special that thing was. Being here with you on this New Year’s Day feels like one of those sweet moments of remembering that our being able to gather is a gift. I am equally grateful that we can be together in both of these forms this year. Technology has allowed us to stay together and many of you have been attending virtually since the start of this pandemic. If it was not for you, I don’t think we would be here today. It shows the strength of this mindful community. I feel very grateful sitting here with you.

A couple of weeks ago, I went for a walk in an area of South Mountain Reservation that I hadn’t been to since before the flooding of Hurricane Ida in September. As is the case on many of the wide trails in the woods, there is now a deep chasm running down the middle of the path where the water forged its own path. In places it looks like a deep crack in the earth. As I stood there looking at the uphill path, I couldn’t help but feel how the pandemic feels like it created a chasm, too. The path has always been rocky, that’s just the nature of life, but the pandemic dug a deep groove into our way of being. Life, as we know it, has been changed. 

My friend Dorri recently offered the image that 2020 was like the stone dropped into a pond and 2021 was all about the ripples it created (I might say a large boulder and the waves it created). And while there was some relief in 2021 in being able to gradually connect more, do more, be more free, and open up again, there was also much struggle and hardship. “Relief” doesn’t quite fit because for many it was a more difficult year, a different kind of struggle from the previous one. The after effects took hold and are still taking hold. And now we have this new wave, while less life threatening (if you are vaccinated), it is deeply disrupting. The psychological and emotional toll is still working itself out and likely will be for some time and I think this is important to acknowledge.

However, I’d like to propose tonight that 2022 could be a year we proactively move beyond fear, which is the title of my talk tonight and my theme for this year: Moving Beyond Fear. I think it is fair to say that fear may have been the most dominant emotion raised in the past two years. It’s always there, of course – there’s love and there’s fear and we move in between them, but fear has largely been in the spotlight. Beyond COVID, there has been an abundance of fear driving our societal issues, our politics, our economy, our movement toward greater social equality and justice. The message of fear has pervaded our lives in a much greater way than it has to. 

What if we choose to meet this ‘22, not under the grip of fear and not under anger (which can come up in response to fear). What if we took back our inner freedom by letting go of our often habitual responses to what feels uncertain, unknown, threatening. It’s not that we can eliminate fear, but we don’t have to be governed by it. It doesn’t have to be in the driver’s seat. 

In many of my talks and writings this year, I’ve been emphasizing that while so much is out of our control in life and how learning to let go is vital to our peace of mind, there are things that we do get to choose and how we think about what is happening and where we put our attention, is one of the only places where we do have control. We can’t necessarily control what thoughts come in or what feelings or sensations arise, but where we take them and what we do with them, how we add onto them or not, how we react to them…this is something meditation, mindfulness, awareness, shows us – that we can choose what we nurture. Of course it takes consistent practice to build that muscle. That’s why we are here.

What if we choose to make ‘22 about getting back into the world, physically, creatively, actively again and allow ourselves to do something that has been impeded – that is to have goals and to dream, play, and find momentum and flow again in what brings out our aliveness? What if we loosened the binds that we have been living under, the binds that kept us laying low, keeping safe, staying small and instead stretch, again. Open, again. Move, again. Be present and engaged in community, again. Active in this one life we have in this body? And of course we still need to make wise choices around our and others’ safety, but psychologically, to exercise those muscles again so that they don’t atrophy. 

When I went on that walk in the woods, I remembered going there by myself, after a few months of the start of the pandemic, and talking about it on a Sunday night – how aware I was of the kind of withdrawing from the world that had taken place inside of me during those more restrictive lockdown months and how, as an introverted person, it made it even more pronounced that I had to get myself out again…that I had to stretch again, even if it was uncomfortable. Being here today is uncomfortable! I definitely have stretched over the past year, but now I’m now seeing the effects around me on so many people who aren’t picking up their lives again. Where fear is still the predominant feeling guiding people’s actions (or non-action).

We all know that when we don’t use something, we lose it. My invitation to you tonight, to choose to move beyond fear, can be applied to any threat that you might be feeling that is changing your actions, that stops you from doing something, from feeling something, that keeps you from living. It is going to take conscious, clear intention to return. Any time we get knocked off of our path, after we allow ourselves to stumble for a while, we must decide with conviction that we will get back on again. And so this is what 2022 can be about. Get back to being fully engaged in our activities and with others. We need people; we need contact; we need accountability; we need to show up.

Winter is a great time to look inside and sense what it is we tell ourselves that holds us back. To look deeply into fear. It’s the only way to shift toward love. To do that inner work of listening and tending to ourselves with kindness so that we can love more, be more present and in awe of what’s here and then create from being inspired. When I was reflecting on what gets me to move beyond fear, passion is what came. When I am passionate about something I believe in, it drives action. Passion is what has me here. We can let what inspires us be in the driver’s seat. Consume what inspires you. That might require us to stop consuming and watering fear. We consume fear every time we open the news, or listen to talk radio, or rehash what’s wrong with the people around us, again and again. We consume it every time we stop doing something or feeling something that our heart is asking of us. Every time we give in to doubt and insecurity. We don’t have to let these current conditions be the reason we don’t engage in what makes us connect, love, and create. 

So you might ask yourself right now, “what inspires me to move beyond fear.” Take a moment, close your eyes and let yourself find what it is. You might call up a moment when you did something where you felt fearful, but did it anyway. What enabled you to do it? Right now, what does it feel like in your body to call it up? Let yourself take some full breaths with that energy. Watering it right now. Welcome it into this New Year. 

We will always have things that scare us in life. This is a wild place that we are born into. It just is. If we are truthful with ourselves and able to admit to our vulnerability, we know this to be true that fear is a part of life. What do we do with it though? We can curl up into a ball and cower and sometimes we will. We can harden our hearts from it and sometimes we will. And sometimes, we can face it with presence, tend to the pain of it with compassion and kindness, and then recognize that nothing can really be taken from us because we were never separate to begin with. Remembering our non-separation can free us to create and move and act. To move beyond fear is to know that we are connected and we can courageously show up. 

May you all walk bravely into this year and feel inspired in connection, love and creation.