Natalie Goldberg writes: "Naturally our great fear is usually the one most important to overcome to reach our life's dreams" in her essay Engendering Compassion. She digs to the heart of fear, realizing that when we get close to our greatest fear, when we touch that nebulous boundry, we bring our whole life into question. When we become unsure of ourselves we make our lives even more painful by questioning why we are here, why we have chosen the path we are on, why we are the people we are today. We decide that everything, in the face of our fear, is a terrible mistake. It is a way of stepping back into comfort of never having to move through the darkness to some sort of understanding. The way is too frightening to face, too dark to blunder through. Yet on the other side is our life's dream.
Overcoming our fears, facing that dark wall, is the only way to truly live the life we want. Yet the overcoming means a questioning our entire life, and feeling pain and uncertainly - it is a bitter choosing. Much more comfortable to fit ourselves back into the mold we’ve been set to. Much easier to believe what others believe of us, rather than reaching out to pluck the chord and see if it rings true. If we challenge other's assumptions of us, indeed our own assumptions of ourselves, we risk censure, we risk condemnation we risk alienating the things that make us comfortable, give us security. But at what price is comfort? At what price is security? Is it worth your life's dream? Is it worth reaching the end of your life and wondering why you didn't take the chance?
"When we write and begin with an empty page and a heart unsure, a famine of thoughts, a fear of no feeling - just begin from there, from that electricity," Goldberg confidently states. Just? A hard beginning. The angst of a heart unsure is terrible to work through. What do I fear most? A question for the heart. It is most likely the fear the stops me from writing. What is on the other side of that fear? It feels like more uncertainty; yet in that uncertainty is my life's dream. So I must do as Natalie says and write on, through the fear to gain a dream.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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Ah, fear. What a topic! It's an ongoing battle for me. That's why I got my tattoo (fearlessness in sanskrit). To remind me of what lies within me.
This is from one of my favorite books - Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron:
On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt whenever we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes year, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart -- our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.
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