QUIETING THE FEAR

While there are times when it's useless to wait to be changed, there are also times when it's better to get quiet and listen.  When I'm in fear, I want more than anything to get out of it, and I can feel my mind racing, jockeying for some position to give myself the sense that I'm in control.  I want to believe I'm on top of things, that I have and can keep it together. 
     Fear comes up for all of us at any time.  What will I do if I lose that job and can't pay the rent, or if something happens to my partner or my child, or if I develop a dread disease? Fear is a very human emotion and it can be healthy and self-productive. But sometimes it takes me over. What will I do if I don't get any of the things I want most?  What if it turns out that every choice I've made has been the wrong one? What if the abyss still looms ahead of me?  
     When I'm fixated on those fears, I can feel my mind racing, jockeying to find some solid ground to stand on.  I come up with rationalizations, seize on what I think are certainties, decide what I must do, all to give me the sense that I'm in control.  But it's little more than grasping at straws. Besides, some part of me senses that I'm really filled with doubt and confusion - and that only doubles back and increases the fear.
     I no longer blame myself for feeling fear and wanting so deeply to move out of it that I rush from answer to judgment and back again.  The ego is a powerful entity and it will go a great distance in order to feel secure.  Experience, though, has shown me again and again that ideas I construct in the midst of fear seldom lead to useful, constructive actions.  In fact they open the way for the fear to return.   
     Instead, I'm learning to do whatever I can to get quiet, even in the face of fear, especially in the face of fear. Deep breathing, meditation, simply surrendering to the fear, acknowledging that I don't know what I should do - those things, both physical and emotional, create a space around the fear.  That space is also a part of me and I remind myself it's at least as real as the fear.  Sometimes an image comes, the hard kernel of fear wrapped in the soft cotton of spaciousness, or an immovable rock in a stream slowly shifted by flowing, clear water. These images are personal and no one has to respond to them but me.  Anyone can find the ones that resonate and create a space so that anxiety, doubt and fear can be brought down to size, sometimes slowly, always gradually. In that space, answers can come from beyond the fears, projections and illusions of ego; they can come from a deeper internal space. Intuitively I feel when these are answers I can act upon even though I can't know beforehand if these answers are the "right" ones, by which I mean, the ones that will be productive, will lead me forward on this path I'm walking. Only action, one action leading to another will tell me, and if my choices aren't productive I can get quiet again to deal with the new circumstances.
    I want to keep learning this lesson, that in the face of fear, it does little good to impose my frantic will. Instead, I want to be receptive, surrendered, so that I can hear the deeper truth inside me and be free to act.