Nothing Is Wrong - Whatever Is Happening

Feelings And Stories Of Unworthiness And Shame Are Perhaps The Most Binding Element In The Trance Of Fear. When We Believe Something Is Wrong With Us, We Are Convinced We Are In Danger. Our Shame Fuels Ongoing Fear, And Our Fear Fuels More Shame. The Very Fact That We Feel Fear Seems To Prove That We Are Broken Or Incapable. When We Are Trapped In Trance, Being Fearful And Bad Seem To Define Who We Are. The Anxiety In Our Body, The Stories, The Ways We Make Excuses, Withdraw Or Lash Out—these Become To Us The Self That Is Most Real.

As Long As We Are Alive, We Feel Fear. It Is An Intrinsic Part Of Our Makeup, As Natural As A Bitter Cold Winter Day Or The Winds That Rip Branches Off Trees. If We Resist It Or Push It Aside, We Miss A Powerful Opportunity For Awakening.

I Recently Read In The Book My Stroke Of Insight By Brain Scientist Jill Bolte Taylor That The Natural Life Span Of An Emotion—the Average Time It Takes For It To Move Through The Nervous System And Body—is Only A Minute And A Half. After That We Need Thoughts To Keep The Emotion Rolling. So If We Wonder Why We Lock Into Painful Emotional States Like Anxiety, Depression, Or Rage, We Need Look No Further Than Our Own Endless Stream Of Inner Dialogue.

The Mistake We Make Is That When We're Feeling Another Person Is Not Treating Us In The Way That Makes Us Feel Secure And Loved, We Fixate Our Attention On That Person And What's Wrong With Them. We Also Fixate On What's Wrong With Us. Instead, We Can Bring Forward Two Wings Of Awareness: The Wing Of Mindfulness (noticing What's Going On Inside Us) And The Wing Of Kindness (compassion To What's Going On Inside Us).

Through The Sacred Art Of Pausing, We Develop The Capacity To Stop Hiding, To Stop Running Away From Our Experience. We Begin To Trust In Our Natural Intelligence, In Our Naturally Wise Heart, In Our Capacity To Open To Whatever Arises.