I don’t have the answers to the big questions in life. I’m still on my own road to discovery. Everything is relative. Everything has its story. Everyone has obstacles to overcome. For me they are our greatest teacher.Each of us goes through transitions and transformations. The important thing is that we acknowledge them and learn from them. I am no pundit. I have only my own life experiences to go on. And the obstacles I have overcome in life have been, in my way, difficult. Every relationship is a gift. What great gifts I have been given by each of the people I have encountered on my journey through life. How they have helped shape me into the person I have become and still hope to be.
Humans are the most extraordinary creatures, and the big part of me still wants to reach an even greater understanding about who we are. Not because I need to know more, necessarily, but because I am drawn to the process of discovery. If someone asks what makes me happiest, it is never anything I can quantify…but it is the spirit of the human being, which can fill me with more joy than anything in the world. Throughout these years, I have learned on my journey, that my spirit is uplifted by these encounters with so many different people from so many different places. Their amazing and pure souls are amazing and their light fills me each day.
It is what we don’t know that frightens us, and nothing stifles joy like fear.
Without fear, we cannot evolve. It is a natural human emotion that protects us from harm or even death. It creates something called “fight-or-flight response”, where people either fight or run away. But fear is also one of the most destructive emotions we have. It can quickly manifest into anger. And, as we all know, anger can be poisonous. You must approach your fears with as much truth and courage as you can.
Fight-or-Flight Response is very clearly embedded in us for survival, in the amygdala, a small area in the limbic center of the brain that becomes active only when people are emotionally aroused. It stems from the fight for survival; it keeps us from being annihilated. Fear can also override some of our other capabilities as humans, to live fully in a state of joy. When you think of all the things you are afraid of in your life, and you suddenly realize that you spend so much time defending against them that you have no time to open up to fearlessness, to experience the greater potential of our gift – the wholeness of being human. When people are full of fear, they feel out of control. They are lost, they feel powerless and so they lash out. Paranoia and polarization set in. If we can eliminate the negative emotions attached to fear – not necessarily the fear itself – if we can cultivate compassion and understand the root of our fear, then the experience itself will not control us.
I believe that it is important to actively seek a spiritual life. For me, it is that helps me modulate to the next level of my being. It is one of my greatest teachers I have ever had. I developed an inner yearning and a deep need to be grounded in some sort of faith. That need has continued to shape my entire life…now and forever…
Looking for answers to my own fear, I turned to God to try to find a sense of place, peace of mind, and the nurturing of an inner life. I had such a sense of longing for a connection to the vastness. I used to look at the moon tangled in the trees outside my window and feel this incredible space and time in the universe. Each night before I go to sleep, I read aloud Psalm 23 from the Bible, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” These words have given me immense solace especially in my days of treatment and healing back in 2003….and now, my greatest fear is here once again – to test my faith and my courage. But these words that I continue to read as days go by while I go through these treatment and such; it gives me the weapon to fight. My faith might be shaken, but I am one of those people who will NEVER QUIT…one who knows that my FAITH and HOPE for a better result will come, and one who knows that at the end of the battle, win or lose, there is a continuation of life, that death is nothing to fear.
