2012 Survival Kit- Face Your Fears This Year

I won’t mince words.

You will not survive the times ahead if you are still enslaved to fear. Fear is the prison warden of the old, skewed-patriarchal, consumerist system. Fear keeps your mouth shut in the face of blatant injustice and corruption. Fear keeps you showing up to a job that makes you sick on every level. Fear cracks a whip of insecurity over your back so you continue keeping up with the Jonses. Fear keeps you in your ethnic ghetto. Fear traps you in the closet, invisible and insignificant making it easier for others to defame and dehumanize who and what you are.

Ready to be free? Good. Let’s get right into it with some common fears.

Fear Of The Unknown

This is the most primal fear. In fact, Fear Of Death is actually a heart-stopping hybrid of Fear Of The Unknown and Fear of Loss/Change. Can you imagine the first time our ancestors saw the vast ocean? Can you imagine how long it took them to wade into it let alone try to cross it? It is actually not a “fear” at all but a feeling of uncertainty. It is pure trepidation.

When you have no way of knowing what might be coming around the corner, the primal passive reaction is the Fight or Flight Response.

The goal of the lifelong truth-seeker, self-mastery pursuer is to ensure that whether their reaction is Passive or Active it is not Unconscious but Conscious.

Keep this in mind as we explore the other fears. Your goal is responding out of Enlightened Conscious Choice instead of Primal Unconscious Instinct, even when staring down an eviction notice, a parent’s finger pointing out the door, the barrel of a gun, a worthy romantic rival, a wave of riot police, a hostile audience or the crushing metal of a tank.

Choice obliterates Fear because it guides your reaction (Passive or Active) in such a way that you can achieve a brief moment of contemplation (Zen/Surrender/Focus) in order to acquire the knowledge to turn that adrenaline rush of fear into positive fuel to act in your best interests and/or that of others.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 1
A woman who holds decision making position wakes up to the fact that she is working for a corporation that uses unfair trade, child labor and is doing wrong to the planet, cheating its customers and also making her miserable. It is horrible! But she is afraid that if she quits, she faces an uncertain future.

She can respond either this way...

or this way

As you can see, the latter is preferable. It offers many choices and options to fully exploit the abundance of the Universe. Also there is no longer any separate Passive and Active but a hybrid of the two. When you face Fear like a spiritual warrior you learn: how, when, where to strategically give way or push through, block or punch.


Related To Fear Of The Unknown: Fear of Death, Fear of Change, Fear Of Moving, Fear of Growing Up, Fear of Losing Identity/Status, Fear of Taking On Leadership.


Fear Of Abandonment

This is another primal fear. Our ancestors saw what happened to the wailing baby buffalo abandoned by its mother. We knew if we were suddenly alone, in the wild, we were on the menu ourselves. We are social animals. Community is very important to us and exclusion from the community was preparation for death. It was what we did to former alpha males who were past their prime. They were relegated to the fringes to be picked off by nature.

Wanting to belong and be at the very centre of the community is still a desperate, primal need even though we are no longer at the mercy of the wild and healthy solitary survival is quite possible, even preferable in some cases. Rejection by family, peers, community is so strong a motivating force, it kept people silent during history's most atrocious events. Even today, it makes the teenager within her clique who sees bullying happen, stay silent, secretly hating her lack of courage.

The fear of being rejected by family, peers, community is so strong, it can make people do things on a social level what they know is wrong on an individual level.

I make it a habit of treating with intense suspicion ANY organization that has a problem with individualism and tries to force community contact and their members constantly try to insert themselves into your life, particularly when they try to make you afraid of everyone and everything outside their group. I see it as an attempt to groom people away from self-sufficiency, self-awareness, self-examination and ultimately self-actualization. Any system or organization can become an opiate when this happens.

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 2
A young man realizes he is gay. Despite how he was raised to carry on in his father’s footsteps, be stereotypically macho and get married to a nice woman; despite the culture which focuses on heterosexual love and focuses on homosexuals in a negative or contentious light; despite the religious indoctrination against being gay, he cannot help but be attracted to other men instead of women. He is deathly afraid of losing everyone he ever loved and being a pariah in his community.

He can respond to his fear in either this way...

or this way...

It is incredible how people unthinkingly allow themselves to be herded into all the belief systems and arrangements that have massively failed the vast majority of humankind simply because it is what is “expected” of them. We allow systems to continue at levels beyond what it takes to have products recalled and marketing plans tossed out. We will never sync human development with planetary preservation if we continue to operate this way.

There are people who want us to stay in certain herds and camps because it benefits them, not us.

Developing nations cannot simply unquestioningly adopt the economic and diplomatic systems imposed on them. The Caribbean region in general and Trinidad and Tobago in particular will not survive climate change, food shortages and natural resource depletion if we continue to crave belonging to the North American, consumerist herd.

Fortunately for us, in Trinidad and Tobago, we have more than a few with revolutionary ideas. We just need to bring economic and political clout into the new spaces they create so that real change can happen. We have a significant advantage in this respect over other Caribbean islands where the people have been herded so well into their respective camps based on color, family name and social status and for the most part, remain in their camps out of fear of ridicule and diligently police their fellowmen who step out of the pigeon hole. It is sad because in today’s world a sense of community is just a click away. All the more reason why there is no excuse to remain among people who are not nurturing your soul and/or require you to hide your unique splendor under a basket.

My native island of Trinidad and Tobago has one of the highest numbers of awesome, freaks, free-thinkers, creative mavericks and revolutionaries per capita. If I were to list them all, it would take pages upon pages. But here are just a handful. Clockwise from left: Winston Bailey “The Mighty Shadow", a genius in the art-form of calypso, V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel Laureate, Dwight Yorke, the Fred Astaire of English football, Kevin Baldeosingh, our most outspoken atheist newspaper columnist, Anya Ayoung Chee, Project Runway Winner 2011, Godfrey Sealy our first ever openly gay AIDS activist and theatre actor/director/producer, Yao Ramesar, the most prolific Caribbean filmmaker, Rachel Price, fearless, straight-talking comedienne, Rikki Jai, chutney-soca pioneer and innovator, Keith Smith, beloved, poignant, social and cultural commentator, Meiling, genius fashion designer, 3Canal, Rapso prophets and revolutionaries, Gillian Lucky, fearless, un-closeted legal eagle and former Parliamentarian, Darren Cheewah, tattoo shaman and mas re-inventor, Denise Plummer, the boss-lady of calypso, Peter Minshall, the high priest of high mas (Carnival Masquerade).

I applaud all the people who have taken a good look at their inner-being, compared it to what is being offered within their current camp and made a conscious choice to step outside their camp in search of the important missing aspects, essential to their soul development, even if it means being an outcast temporarily or permanently.

The truth is, right now we need outcasts, free-thinkers, fearless creators, explorers, experimenters. We need freaks! How else are we going to come up with alternatives for unbridled, subsidized capitalism based on unfair-trade, irresponsible consumerism, exploitative labor and planetary destruction? How else are we going to come up with alternatives to oppressive fundamentalist religions? How else are we going to come up with alternatives for the monogamous nuclear family as the only respectable means to enjoy shared property, legal protection, sexual fulfillment and family-life? How else are we going to address in inadequacies of our educational system, judicial system and class inequality?

Related To Fear Of Abandonment: Fear of Being Embarrassed, Fear of Being Unpopular, Fear Of Being Invisible, Fear Of Being Wrong.

Fear Of Pain

This is a recent and unnatural fear.
Pain is something I have written extensively on before. If you do not feel like reading through it just yet, I will sum up the marrow of that previous essay:

Pain is not evil.

Pain is a natural, beneficial signal our bodies and minds were designed to feel to ensure our own self-preservation. It is how we know to STOP! SLOW DOWN! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED! It is the equally valid opposite signal to pleasure which tells us to: PROCEED! ENJOY! SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY REINFORCED!

When you relax, listen to the signal of Pain and surrender to it with conscious understanding that you should PROCEED, ENJOY because although SOMETHING IS BEING POWERFULLY ALTERED, it is for the best, pain can re-signal itself as Pleasure.

You can learn how to develop a high pain threshold or better yet, a highly enlightened pain threshold.It is an experience I have had while taking “cut-ass” from my father, being pierced, tattooed and getting a little freaky in the bedroom. It is an experience avid exercise buffs feel. It is even an experience women giving birth have had. The body releases endorphins to turn pain into pleasure when you accept the pain as something beneficial.

Bliss is actually Pain AND Pleasure firing at the same time. Orgasm involves both pain and pleasure nerve endings.

There was a time when we understood that pain was not in of itself evil but very useful to our survival. We worshipped not just the positive but also the negative aspects of nature because we saw it as part of one essential cycle. We incorporated pain into our various initiation rites. We knew hard toil brought sweet harvest. Calloused fingers produced lovely music. Wanting to live a life of eternal pleasure only was unfathomable to us, perhaps even scary or unnatural. Where was the contrast going to come from? Wouldn’t it be boring?

It was only when we began the class system of relegating the majority of the population to endure an unnatural, imbalanced, unnecessary amount of pain without any purpose, context or contrast while a few enjoyed as much pleasure as possible, that we lost this perspective and became either desensitized or oversensitive. When we selected who will enjoy more pain based on factors other than their own actions, factors like race, gender, culture, origin, then the utopia of eternal pleasure became desirable, particularly to the masses experiencing nothing but pain for no good reason. We turned something that was supposed to be harmonious into ridiculous extremes and both extremes of pleasure and pain are forms of suffering.

This, for eternity, with no contrast, is only appealing to those who live a life of meaningless suffering. To others it would be extremely BORING!

It may not seem like the person enjoying an unnatural amount of pleasure is suffering…not yet. But trust me, something vital is atrophying because of serotonin and dopamine overload and sooner or later a strong pain signal will be needed to establish balance. Negative feedback…you cannot fight it and when an entire society has pleasure overload, Mother Nature Herself will provide the negative feedback.

Fear of Pain is actually a hybrid fear made all the more intense by our current economic system and development as a species. We no longer have to do things the hard way. Water comes to us. Meat is nicely cut, cleaned and packaged for us in a refrigerated store. We can take a pill and lose weight instead of exercising and having to deal with muscular pain and stinky sweat.

Learning to face pain still is an essential rite of passage for many indigenous tribes still in existence around the world.

But all of it comes at a cost. Remember BALANCE.

There was wisdom in our ancestors’ take on pain and all bitter, smelly, gross, unpleasant aspects of human existence. You might as well deal with it and learn how to work with it. You cannot run from it. You cannot sanitize it, not completely. You need a little hardship, a little toil, a little inconvenience for contrast and most of all BALANCE. If you had to kill and gut your own chickens, do you really think you would eat so much KFC and develop clogged arteries and man boobs? If you had to collect and transport your own water, do you really think you would allow WASA to waste so much of it?

Let us look at a 2012-Relevant Example of this fear and how to respond to it:

Example 3
A young woman wants to be healthy, fit and beautiful but hates the discomfort, inconvenience, sacrifice involved in doing it the holistic way.

She can either take this approach...

Or this one...

The threat of pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience drives the consumerist economy. How many products to make life easier do we need? Was the pain, discomfort, delay and inconvenience really such a bad thing if it was making us slow down, do things with more thought, care, love? Worst of all, it stops us dead in our tracks when we want to do the right thing.

Related Fears: Fear of Discomfort, Fear of Work, Fear of Delay, Fear of Inconvenience, Fear of Loss, Fear of Punishment/Consequences.

Practical Tools To Fight Fear

This is a Survival Kit after-all, so this discourse would be incomplete if I left you without some weapons to put into use right away. Feel free to copy, enlarge, print and share.

Have you noticed that in tackling Fear, the one major, recurring Spiritual/Intellectual Gap is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. Our greatest ally in surviving the rapidly changing world ahead is Knowledge/Context and Mastery. From this, everything else will naturally flow and fall into place. It is no wonder that the war on Knowledge, Context and Mastery has escalated in the last decade or so. Blatant falsehoods are being touted as facts even in the information age. History is being re-written, forgotten, sanitized to allow past atrocities to return. More and more products and services are being introduced to make us lazier, complacent and even more pleasure-addicted.

Beware those who wish to restrict your access to as much knowledge as you desire. Beware those who wish to erase, twist or sanitize history so we do not learn from its context. Beware those who insist you are weak, helpless, lost, fallen without their particular system, group, product, service and want to discourage you from independently questioning, seeking inner strength and capability.

That is about the only warning or “doom and gloom” you will hear from me about 2012. Apart from that, I truly believe it will be an eventful time in the best possible way for many of us who are learning how to become comfortable with growing pains and be productive, happy, peaceable in spite of them.

May 2012 and all the years to come sing for you!

2012 Survival Kit- Fear and Fighting False Phobias

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)

Your mind goes blank, and you feel unable to speak, move or think. Your mouth goes dry and all the moisture accumulates on your palms. Cold shivers run down your spine and explode in paralyzing currents through every capillary in your body and every muscle seizes up. Yet even so, your heart feels like it will pound out of your chest. In fact it is the only muscle somehow activated by this stomach churning paralysis.

What creates this sensation for you?

Is it a snake slithering or cockroach scuttling or armed bandit shuffling across your path? Hearing, “You’re fired!”, “This relationship is not working, I’m leaving you,”, “Sorry, you do not qualify for a loan,” or the ominous growl of an approaching dog whose bite is worse than its bark? Does derisive laughter of your peers with whom you long to fit in or having your hidden weaknesses, lifestyle or private parts put on display trigger this sensation for you? Or maybe being put on the spot or in the spotlight? What about thinking about getting old, sickly and dying or watching it happen to your loved ones?

How often do you feel this sensation? Once a month? Once a week? Once a day? Many times a day?

This sensation is of course Fear.

What Is Fear?

Feel free to check the dictionary definition but here is mine:

Fear is the innate FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE to a person, place, position or possible outcome which makes one FEEL UNCERTAIN about their ABILITY TO SURVIVE unscathed or at all.

Like pain, fear is part of our inbuilt survival instinct.

We evolved and survived as a species because of it this “Fight or Flight” response. It primed our ancestors to take on things like mammoths, saber tooth tigers and stampeding bison. It is what urged them to struggle out of sucking quicksand and fierce river currents. It got their legs moving to run away from landslides, lava and tidal wave surges. Those who did not, their genes did not survive to our time.

However, as with all things, if it is not used purposefully fear will become a problem, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.

To Be Used Sparingly

Fear places tremendous stress on our heart and drastically alters our body’s chemistry so you can burst forth with superhuman strength and single minded focus in order to survive.

For those who push through fear, they find that just like pushing through pain, on the other side is often extreme euphoria, comfort, strength and power. But in that moment, when you get slammed in the chest by fear, it truly feels you ran a marathon in a matter of seconds. Something so profound is not a reaction to waste on petty things and should be saved for moments that truly deserve it- defending your life and health or the life and health of your loved ones.

The human body and mind is a marvelous thing and able to grow stronger when subjected to stress with purposeful intent. The brave spiritual/truth seeker can also get stronger by learning how to use the sensation of fear to their advantage.

Today we rarely have to stare down snarling wild animals and hostile natural elements with little to no protection or understanding as our ancestors once did. In fact, some of us miss the thrill so much we deliberately seek danger and scary experiences to trigger the adrenaline rush our ancestors enjoyed several times a day.

Embracing fear, much like embracing pain can lead to pleasurable feelings on the other side as well as strength.

So how come with all our technology, seeming control over Mother Nature, freedom and prosperity our society seems so sick with fear induced stress? Why do so many people feel so confounded and powerless and afraid even though there are no lions scratching outside our door and we understand sickness is caused by micro-organisms and defective genes, not nefarious demonic forces?

Surprisingly, despite all our advancements as a species, we are still ruled by a lot of uncertainty, some of it is real and some of it is rooted in the spiritual diseases of Lack and Masculine/Feminine Imbalance. Do you wish to be free of unnecessary fear?

Freedom from Fear involves two things:

1. Understanding what is Real Fear and how to transcend it to power and purpose
2. Identifying what is False Fear and how to stamp out the Lack and Masculine/Feminine imbalance at its core.

There is a reason why I capitalized certain words in my previous definition of Fear. Here are those words again:

FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE
FEELING UNCERTAIN
ABILITY TO SURVIVE

When trying to differentiate Real Fear from False Fear these three key aforementioned factors play a vital role.

Fight Or Flight

When fear is based on real factors, choosing one of the following (Fight or Flight) immediately frees you from it in the short term and helps you survive. For example:

A woman finds an intruder in her apartment. She experiences the Fight Or Flight response. She chooses to fight and grabs a kitchen knife, defends herself and manages to discourage him and he runs off.
OR
Same scenario and she flees and calls for help.

In both cases, she is attempting to safeguard her survival. She may not be successful and may in fact die but her response to the situation is honorable, purposeful and valid. If she survives the incident, even with injuries emotional and physical, she emerges feeling extremely empowered and capable of dealing with the situation again.

Studies into the recovery of victims of sexual assault show that women who fight back while being raped recover faster from the shame, violation and fear. Women who become paralyzed by the Fight or Flight reaction take a much longer time to recover a sense of power and freedom from shame and fear.

Understand that Fight or Flight do not always mean literal Fight or Flight.

Sometimes Fight or Flight can translate to: (A) Staying and fighting for a relationship, goal or cause or (B) Fleeing from a relationship or abandoning a goal or cause.

On the other hand, when a fear is based in falsehood rooted in Lack or Masculine/Feminine Imbalance, the Fight or Flight reaction does not work!

This is often your first indicator that the fear is not valid. For example:

A singer has extreme stage fright and deals with it by fleeing from any public appearances. The fear never goes away. She never becomes empowered or capable of dealing with the source of that false fear.
OR
A man is extremely fearful of rejection and so, lashes out violently at any and every opportunity that brings up that fear. His fear is going nowhere! He is not becoming empowered and capable of dealing with the source.

So first clue that your fear is false:

• It does not go away when you apply Fight or Flight
• When you apply Fight or Flight you actually make matters worse for yourself and others.

Feeling Uncertain

Uncertainty is at the very center of fear. Or to put it another way, the actual sensations you feel as Fear is that indecisive, anxious, sickening crux between Fight OR Flight. You have no idea how the situation is going to turn out and for a split-second, you are indeed in a state of paralysis.

This in-between phase often manifests as avoidance or inaction. And some people never get out of that state of paralysis because their fear is false and as we mentioned earlier, cannot be solved by either Fight or Flight.

Nothing is as torturous as dwelling in the uncertain middle ground between Fight and Flight. It is literally like dwelling in a state of fearful, paralyzing paranoia all the time.

Fear only becomes a problem when you remain stuck in that limbo between Fight Or Flight. Often people get very comfortable in this state of fearful non-action and even find ways of justifying it. This is where resistance to change, compromise and the stagnation of the growth of your soul takes hold.

I speak from personal experience here.

For years I was afraid to lay my cards on the table in my relationship out of a paralyzing fear that my partner would be unable to deal with it and it will mean the conclusion or a drastic change in some way we both would not find pleasant. I justified it as being mature, civil, accomodating and long-suffering but the truth was it would keep me up at night. It would affect my mood. It would make me shut down all communication which would escalate into even more serious problems- constipation, piles, stress fuh so!

When you have no idea how something is going to turn out or which action you should take (Fight or Flight) you begin to fill that void with your own speculations of what will happen if you take action. Suddenly what you become afraid of is taking any action. Those of us with wild imaginations know how we can self-torture ourselves into insomnia and insanity. Worse yet you can be exploited by others to live in a state of Avoidance & Inaction, while others can commit great crimes. For example:

As we speak, we know something is wrong with unbridled Capitalism and so-called free markets. However we are so afraid of what revamping it will bring, we choose to just do nothing or even worse, stubbornly defend the failed system, its culture, politics and accompanying religious systems.

Fearful inaction by people who should know better has been at root of so much evil in our society.

The Cure For Uncertainty

There are three guaranteed cures for Uncertainty.

1. Knowledge
2. Enlightenment
3. Divine Trust

Whether you are theist, deist or atheist, one, two or all of the above work wonders. Let us explore how it works within one particular and very common scenario: A parent finding out their child is gay.

Knowledge

A mother learns her beloved son is a homosexual.

Before this, she has never had any personal dealings with a homosexual and her only knowledge about homosexuals came from one, very limited source which has painted a negative picture.

This picture is what causes her Fear because she as far as she knows her son is doomed, deviant, hell-bound, evil. However, this conflicts with other things she knows; her son is also kind, talented, loving and genuinely distressed by not being able to change to please her and fit into their family and community.

She is stuck in a state of uncertainty which can manifest passively as:

Avoidance and Inaction: Pretend my child is not gay, avoid the subject.
Or actively as:
Ignorant Rush to Fight or Flight: Condemn, denounce and try to change him or ostracize him and then spend the rest of her time over-defending her actions she knows it cannot be easily validated.

Because both responses are rooted in ignorance, it will wind up hurting her and her son.

The mother will remain in this state until she embarks upon a mission to broaden her knowledge and research ALL the medical, historical, sociological and legal facts. This will result in a new choice based on greater understanding of the situation. Knowledge can empower a more informed Fight or Flight response. She can now choose to:

Fight: For her relationship with her son, his happiness, his well-being and equality in society
Flight: Discard and remove herself from any false or one-sided beliefs that cause pain and suffering and the people and situations that promote them.

However knowledge only works if someone is receptive to it.

A pre-existing resistance to knowledge will cause someone to actually choose to remain in that limbo state of uncertainty and conflict or Fight or Flight in ignorance and then grasp at ways to justify it as it hurts others.The ability to be receptive to Knowledge comes from having Enlightenment.

Enlightenment

Knowledge is indeed Power. But knowledge alone is not what leads to power. What leads to power is being able to:

Accept the knowledge however disquieting, process it fearlessly and then make whatever compromises are necessary to live in harmony with that newfound truth, even if it hurts your ego, status, feelings, comfort level.

This requires Enlightenment.

If our mother of the homosexual already has the raw ingredients for Enlightenment- a level of fearlessness, freedom and fullness of self-esteem, when she learns about the medical facts, research and spiritual basis for natural sexual diversity her paralysis is instantly healed. She feels empowered to Fight or Flight from a place of truth even if she risks social, peer and family disapproval.

The opposite is true. If she is powerless and enslaved to a belief or the external trappings of her social standing and peer and family approval she will continue to choose deliberate ignorance. But where exactly does that power to be Enlightened come from?

Divine Trust

When that mother of the gay son learns about his sexuality, she feels genuinely powerless.

Now, she can rail against her utter powerlessness or she can simply admit the truth:

Although I gave this child birth, food, shelter and inculcated my values based on what I know, in the end, I have no control over many innate qualities this child possesses; his personality, talents, intelligence, sexuality and most of all, his self-determined, life choices.

It does not matter if you believe in a Purposeful Universe or Divine Plan or not. This is a Universal Truth- we cannot control everything and everyone. It is also called The Law Of Allowing.

Recognizing where your control ends and the will of another and the Universe begins is one of the most liberating, empowering lessons that sadly many do not learn before it is too late. Throughout their entire lives they take on other people’s shit, let other people’s shit unduly affect them and try to control what others do with a false sense of power.

Prayers for Bobby- The movie is based on the true story of Mary Griffith whose conservative Christian beliefs and standing in her church community made her reject her gay son leading to his depression and suicide. His death is what finally enabled his mother to find the courage to be Enlightened. Today Mary Griffith shares her Enlightenment with the world to save countless lives and countless parent-child relationships.


However, those who do believe in some form of Universal or Divine Purpose and truly act in accordance with what they believe, often find a lot more comfort in the process of admitting their powerlessness. Why? Because they feel a safety net under them if they just free-fall with love and trust into something higher, bigger, all-encompassing, even if they cannot exactly define or understand what it is.

This is also known as faith.

Not blind faith mind you! But faith based on Universal Truth about our human limitations; humbly admitting we lack the ability to understand everything right away and simply trusting that with time the answer will come.

Those whose entire sense of security rests in being overly certain they know ABSOLUTELY FOR SURE how everything OUGHT TO BE right now, are actually the ones demonstrating blind faith and are usually the ones plagued by the most fears. Certainty or false pride in having a certain position becomes a crutch for other insecurities. Sometimes only a truly tragic or humbling experience gives them the courage to let go, be still and let the truth unfold as it should.

To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light. ~Coventry Patmore

So, there is in fact a more empowering option than disempowered paralysis between Fight or Flight. It is Divine Trust.

Divine/Universal Trust is not dejectedly throwing your hands up in the air. It is not giving over your power or cowardly refusing to do the right thing. It is throwing down your burdens and weapons and admitting, “Okay, I am lost! I need a map before I continue!” or “Okay, I am tired. I need strength beyond what I can fathom to deal with this!” or "This is not working, I need to try something else, I don't know what yet but I will cease and desist until it becomes clear."

Throughout history, great strides in human rights, social justice and yes, even science have been made by people who did just that instead of CONTINUING TO PRETEND THEY KNEW WHAT WAS BEST BASED ON THE SAME PARADIGM THAT LED THEM TO THE CONFLICT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The greatest warriors and martial art philosophies of the world embrace this state of being still or Zen just before you unleash your Fight or Flight. When you get good enough at it, you can actually do it on command or in a split second when your life is on the line. Combining wise, purposeful focus with the power of that adrenaline rush can save your life and the lives of others.

There is a favorite scene of mine from the movie The Last Samauri where the character Nathan Algren played by Tom Cruise, foreplays the entire battle in his head, analyzing each outcome before he launches his attack. Yet it happens in a split second. The state of being still and letting God/Universe is actually like getting the benefit of hindsight without the regret.

Conversely, great tragedy and human set-backs have been made when we rushed to Fight or Flight without the benefit of either Knowledge/Enlightenment that can only be obtained in that moment of stillness.

Can you imagine what our world look like right now if the USA had not rushed into bombing Hiroshima, invading Iraq or adopting post WW2 economic plans based on unbridled consumerism and corporate omniscience?

Thank goodness for all the people that embraced that stabbing shard of doubt, that unsettled feeling, that twinge on their heart-strings, that moment of pause and simply surrendered and learned to be still long enough to be enlightened before acting.

Ability To Survive

Remember how we started this discourse. Fear (Fight or Flight) is a tool that primes us to have the strength and focus to act in defense of our own survival. So truly the ultimate barometer of whether that Fight or Flight response is valid is whether it has resulted in- Our Survival or Our Demise.

In the last Survival Kit essay on Masculine/Feminine Imbalance, one false fear was already laid bare. The False Fear Of Losing Ownership/Control Over Another.

In the next easy we unveil some more false fears that are plaguing society by measuring them against the litmus tests of this essay. We will also reiterate and affirm the Spiritual Power-Ups that fight these false fears.

I truly hope that a newfound level of courage will come to you and me by the end of this exploration.

2011 The Year We Prepare

Every cycle of the earth around the sun has its own rhythm influenced by various planetary alignments. No two years are ever the same. I’m sure you’ve noticed how some years seem to drag while other years seem to race to the end. Some years start slow and finish fast. There are years that begin with total stability and end in chaos. Some are predominated by natural events, others dramatic human events. Some years feel victorious. Some feel laborious and others, tragic.



The major astrological discovery of 2010 was that the sun, like its stellar cousins, sings. Yes, it produces a constant beat, a key that reverberates through space. Adding to the symphony of this sound energy is the accompaniment of billions of stars interjecting their music and subtle variances. Every year has a distinct rhythm.

One of the key tactics of many spiritual seekers is to try to be in tune to the particular rhythm of a year. According to the principles of Numerology (for those who believe in the potent symbolism of numerals), 2010 was a Number 3 Year i.e.- 2+0+1+0=3 and it sure did feel like one.



Three is a very restless, uncertain numeral. It is indicative of huge creative leaps, shifts and growth. In 2010, laws that we never thought would get passed did- Health Care Reform, Marriage Equality and the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the USA. California came very close to legalizing pot. Even more female leaders were elected around the world. Brave statements were made by various progressive groups challenging the status quo, economic paradigm and the established religious organizations. Can you believe the Pope actually said that condoms are okay for male prostitutes to avoid disease? But he did.

While last year did not feel very reassuring, all of these chaotic trusts forward are a sign we are still growing, learning, changing. That’s a good thing isn’t it? I am glad we are evolving and not stagnant. But we all know that growth hurts. Critical fluctuations in finances, health, foreign policy, interpersonal relationships and even the weather gave us all a lot of discomfort. I experienced the awesome and awesomely terrifying power of a real hurricane (Tomas in Saint Lucia) for the first time in my life.

This new year of 2011 is a number 4 year i.e.- 2+0+1+1=4.

Four is the number of earth, foundation, solidity, realness and stability.
Stability sounds like a really good thing now for many people who have been adversely affected by the uncertainty and rapid changes in 2010. However, if the kind of stability you are longing for in the upcoming Number 4 year ahead is political, economic, social, meteorological, seismic, environmental, well, the news is not so good.



Given the set up of 2010’s shift, there will continue to be some major natural “earth shaking” aftershocks in our man-made systems, values, societies, laws and relations. Seismologists predict a record number of earthquakes and climatologists predict a record number of storms. With all this seemingly never-ending, chaotic inconstancy in our natural and human world, how do we enjoy the foundation, solidity, realness and stability promised in a Number 4 year?
We enjoy it WITHIN.


Don't expect a break from the upheaval in 2011.

That’s right! The secure, comforting foundation of 4 stable corners and elements promised in 2011 is meant to be internally experienced.

If you were truly in tune with 2010, then you have already undergone a lot of growth deep down in your core and bravely submitted to the process despite the growing pains. You have sloughed off a lot of old baggage, useless or unhealthy friends, family or situations and thinking. If so, then you are more than ready to access the peaceful, solid certainty that will enable you to find the stillness in the eye of the storm that will continue swirling and culminate in an irreversible shift in 2012.
You already have in your hands, a survival kit and more than that, the key to open it and use what is inside.




Inside this survival kit are valuable lifesaving tools created by:

• All the universally true principles the human race has been taught by advanced souls around the globe, through the ages
• All that the human race knows is scientifically true based on pure, honest observation and deduction
• All the human race knows is ethically true from honestly examining our human history and human behavior free from any agenda and/or insecurity
• All your ability to honestly examine your internal and external factors and then creatively apply all of all of the above to enhance it.

The contents of this survival kit, skillfully applied can help you and our species survive and thrive. That is a comforting thing for those who have it and know how to open it.

Now if you missed 2010’s growth spurt, survival kit delivery and tutorial because you were distracted with unimportant matters, do not panic. In celebration of 2011, The Year We Prepare, I invite all who read my blog and any who stumble unto it to join me as I try to apply the tools that promise us connection to the still, stable, epicenter of our existence.

Consider this a crash course to tackle the three most crucial obstacles to perfection and progress we face. They are obstacles which the entire world will be forced to confront whether we like it or not or are ready or not. On the horizon is a soon-to-be-historic crossroad. When we arrive at it, we will be forced to choose to either drastically change our priorities and paradigms or stubbornly hold on to what is ailing our person and planet. At this moment, our very survival as a species will depend on overcoming:
1. Fear
2. Lack
3. Masculine/feminine imbalance.

These are the three areas that I will focus on using the survival kit. They have consistently been the priorities of genuine spiritual leaders from every culture in the world because to anyone who is even a little bit aware, it is so clear how they handicap our progress. Starting with…

Fear
Passive Manifestations- Apathy, regression, powerlessness, servitude/enslavement, stagnation, stress, sickness, addiction, deliberate ignorance/avoidance,
Active Manifestations- Prejudice, hate, clannishness, violence.

Spiritual, emotional, psychological and health gurus throughout the ages know that it is essential for us to evolve away from the primitive, powerless animal. Instead of reacting out of a desperate struggle to survive we need to shift towards proactive, powerful and purposeful living. Overcoming fear safeguards us from being exploited by the less moral people in religion, politics and commerce. It makes us able to listen to the nobler inclinations of our humanity: Forgiveness, Compassion, Curiosity, Creativity, Knowledge, Growth, without worrying about consequences.



Get your "Fear Shot" this year.

From Christ’s admonishment not to fear those who can only destroy the body but not the soul, to the Eastern wisdoms inspiring honor and dharma even in the face of death to the fearless non-violent surrender of great people like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., the time has come for us to be able to prioritize truth, love and the fullest realization of the human spirit over rudimentary survival or mercenary ends. We will never be able to make empowered choices in our lives otherwise. Make 2011 the year you get inoculated against fear.

Lack
Passive Manifestations- Unworthiness, ingratitude, insecurity, disappointment, neediness (emotional & material), poverty (mental & material)
Active Manifestations- Envy, greed/gluttony/ meglomania, hubris

Like unfounded fear, here is another outmoded survival tool in need of a serious revamp. The need to hoard, fatten and grab to stay alive served us well but now it is time to temper it with perspective and sustainable preservation. Our competitive streak needs to give way to our compassionate streak in all aspects of our lives. It’s time to remove clutter from our homes and burdensome ego build-up in our hearts. Our feelings are too easily hurt. There is rampant discontentment and depression even when we have every reason to count our blessings. We are incapable of feeling happy about where we are, what we have and why we make decisions unless we can see someone else deprived for not doing the same or having the same. We seem unable to choose self-mastery over self-righteousness.



Take your Anti-discontentment Prescription against feelings of lack.

Contentment, gratitude and a deep inner self-satisfaction is more than just a spiritual benefit but science is now revealing it may very well save our lives and our planet. This year it’s time to access the antidote to discontentment which can be taken before or after envy, false pride, ego strikes at your heart and releases harmful stress and obesity causing hormones or triggers sordid greed-filled actions.

Masculine And Feminine Imbalance
Passive Manifestations- Low self-esteem, biological slavery, feelings of abandonment, infantilism, shame, powerlessness, fear of change/inconstancy/nature
Active Manifestations- Domination/conquest, repression, viral expansion, racism, homophobia, misogyny, violence.

The biggest war raging right now on our planet is not the War on Terror or the War on Drugs. In fact, all wars can be traced to the ultimate and original war- The Battle Of The Sexes. It is on this violent front that we need peacekeepers, more dialogue and resolutions on every level of combat:

• Between men and women on the front of the family, society, relationships, gender roles and human sexuality
• Spiritually and religiously where there is the destruction and continued denial of the Female Divine counterbalance to the Male Divine, resulting in a skewed society monopolized by the monotheistic, macho and machochistic imperatives
• Economically/socially- the predominance of the Omega societies/systems concerned with hierarchical order, material acquisition, expansion and domination over the Alpha communal material sharing, preservation and harmonization.



Get your gender issues back into balance this year.

The survival kit has the ointments, splints and bandages to repair the extensive damage caused by thousands of years of the primitive aspects of the testosterone factor being allowed to run amok. It can repair the damage of colonialism, religious fundamentalism, consumerism and many other “isms” ruining our planet. We can get in touch once more with our “Mother” whose absence from our lives is felt in ways that just might surprise you. We can help men and women relate better to one another and be free of sexual shame and sexual dishonesty. We can unite science and spirituality. We can balance the masculine and feminine within and in doing so, achieve Ishvara- spiritual and emotional freedom from biological/sociological gender limitations and the ability to walk the path of the higher genderless soul- our true identity.

The Gloves Are Off

I usually take great pains to be diplomatic especially when it comes to religion. I often run the risk of having my altruism and universality mistaken for weakness of position. You see, many fundamentalists rate conviction and accuracy based on the narrowness of your path and the unwavering passion of your protracted battles against “enemies” not your ability to establish common threads and consider new angles.

On the other hand, we “free-thinkers” never aggressively campaign against any “enemy” save ignorance, fear, hatred, lack in whatever form it comes, even if it is within our own cliques or belief systems. Therefore we cannot be as stalwart and unchanging. We are growing in knowledge. Things change and grow and so must the stances we take even if the core principles remain the same. We can never compromise our humanity for a belief system. If following a rule or principle involves harming another, we would rather break the rule. This is what separates us from the fundamentalists for whom any inhumane means justifies an end believed to be noble.

Today I will take the gloves off and say that fundamentalists who refuse to even allow the possibility of alternatives, even in a limitless universe and refuse to listen openly, change their mind and grow are a hindrance to the survival of our planet. It is time for us who bridge the gaps between secular and spiritual, science and sentiment, atheist and theist, human rights and human religion to make a firmer stand. We have many names. They call us moderates, open-minded, independent thinkers, truth seekers, new-agers, liberals, fair-minded.



Let this be the year they call us champions of the new world to come.

We who are open to seeing the THE truth about God/Universe, the human condition, our history, no matter how much it requires us to question, change, explore, examine, be open to listening to opposing arguments, research, experiment, change our mind, agree, disagree, find common ground, challenge it, change again ad infinitum must make a stand against people who claim to have absolute truth without submitting to the same process.

We who walk the harder more uncertain path of the spiritual and intellectual adult CANNOT continue to be cowed by spiritual and intellectual infants! Those who are incapable of applying truth processes and tolerance principles must be excluded from determining the future of our planet.

What do I mean by Truth Processes?- Is it scientifically true? Is it historically true? Is it universally ethically/morally true? If it is a personal/subjective truth then is it clearly defined as such? Anything you cannot prove by any scientific means or valid historical precedent you MUST share with open-ended, unconditionality. You never use coercion or deceptive tactics to prove a belief.

What do I mean by the Tolerance Principles- You never seek to inflict personal beliefs on others as absolute/scientific truth just to get validation, pass judgment or enjoy power over them. You never use your personal/subjective truth as a justification for infringing on another’s human rights, privacy, reputation, well-being and prosperity. You allow all their fair and free chance to choose self-actualization.

There are people on this planet who outright REFUSE to abide by these peaceful, fair-minded principles and it is for this reason, the gloves are off!

It may rock our peace-loving sensibilities to hurt feelings, crush egos and challenge comfort zones that make others feel so safe but where we find fear, lack, pride, greed, envy and dominion we must find the courage to speak up and out. Where you see untruth, injustice, ignorance, needless suffering, imbalance, denial of free choice, then your mission is clear regardless of cultural and belief differences.

We must stand firm against the “isms” and phobias that result in the opposite of encouraging curiosity and openness to learning, even if we find it in our own hearts, which from time to time, we will. I often uncover "isms" and phobias in my life where I least expect and only because I am open to having them pointed out by family, friends and my own conscience. Fundamentalists have no such conscience, checks and balances and the time has come for the world to be wary of them for this very reason. The subjectivity they accuse us of, is also a facet of their lives for they can never live up to their rigid rules either. Whether they like it or not, the human disposition is compelled to be flexible, open and changing and hypocrisy is the only way they can hide their human disposition while monitoring their neighbours' conduct.

Now is the time to grow strong, deep roots in the principles that enable inner peace, holistic health, sustainable prosperity and true spirituality. If there is merit to Numerolgy and all the predictions, then the Number 5 year of 2012 will bring potent chaos, confusion and seeming catastrophe for many.



Magical or mayhem? How you experience 2012 all depends on your preparedness.

It is my wish that there will be many friends, family, fellowmen who are rooted, fearless and open to true community. May 2012’s Number 5 to be experienced as the magical integer, the fifth dimension, the fifth chakra of creative power and universal expression that makes our ascension assured.