I have been reaching ever heightening levels of bliss lately. Yes, of course, like everyone else on earth, I have peaks and valleys. But because of the very deep soul searching I have been doing on my path to enlightenment, I find my peaks so much higher and my valleys an opportunity to do some intense shadow work and cycle breaking. One thing that has changed a lot for me over the last few months is my ability to recognize the difference between when I lean into joy as opposed to running away in fear.
Running Away Out of Fear
Running away out of fear is what we usually do as humans, right? I heard this theory once, I’m pretty sure it was Gabrielle Bernstein: all humans are born with two basic emotions, love and fear. Everything else we feel stems from one of those two emotions.
This resonated with me so well. It is logical. Hate comes from fear. Anger comes from fear. Sadness comes from fear. Fear of being different. Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of being alone. Fear fear fear.
So when we make a decision based in fear, we are not making decisions that are good for us. We are making decisions that we hope aren’t bad for us. For example, a new job comes up that is perfect for me, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, I’m sure I’d be good at it. But I’ve never done it before. I may not have a lot of experience. Or it may simply be an unknown. So, I stay in the comfortable job with the stable income and the safety and familiarity that is my comfort zone. I made a decision out of fear.
I can’t tell you how many people I know who have told me “Oh! I would love to homeschool my children, but (insert very valid reason here).” The reason is always a valid one. It certainly feels valid. I’ve never done it. I’m not a teacher. I’m not qualified. What about socialization. What if I mess up? I have no support system. My husband doesn’t want to. All of these reasons are valid. But they are all also based in fear. If it’s true that you really want to do it, then not doing it is running away in fear.
Lean Into Joy
I am an advocate of never ever running away out of fear. But I am also a classic fearless personality. I have done a lot of stupid shit in my fearlessness. Many people will be happy to point that out. But I can also say that I would not be who I am today if I hadn’t jumped into things, even the ones that failed or ended badly. I am as grateful for the stupid shit as I am for all the wonderful adventure. Adventure I wouldn’t have if I had run away in fear.
Leaning into joy means saying yes, a lot. It means you say “I really want to homeschool, and here are all the great reasons, all the benefits, all the joy.” And then you do it. You know there will be difficulty, but you also know that there will be difficulty no matter what. You trust that you will handle the difficulty when it comes. As you always have. As you always will.
Leaning into joy means “I love this guy!” And then you fall head over heels and get your heart broken. You learn to trust that you needed that broken hearted experience to find the next relationship and the next, learning along the way, leading to your ultimate joy. This feels joyful, so I’ll do it. With each joyful decision you make, you learn.
The Difference
In contrast, when you make decisions out of fear, you get caught up in shame and guilt cycles, bitter and miserable, killing your own joy and the joy of others, handing that misery down to your children, hoping they will break the cycles you couldn’t.
You homeschool because you’re afraid of what happens in traditional schools. You take the job because you’re afraid of the job you’re in. You date the same abusive guy (convincing yourself you’re in love with him) because he’s comfortable, guy after guy after guy. You’ve become comfortable as a victim, and you’re terrified to break that cycle. I get it. Being strong is scary as fuck. So is change. So is anything new.
I want to be really clear here that I’m not judging anyone who stays stuck in fear cycles.
This is generational, thousands of years old, systemic, institutionalized training and conditioning we are all subject to. I have had the strange luxury of not only being a born into a fearless personality but also of growing up with a mother who promoted mental freedom and questioning everything. I say strange because my mother has still managed to stay stuck in her own fear cycles. And that is a reflection of just how hard this work is. A woman who intricately studied, investigated, and tried desperately hard to practice mental freedom has remained tragically frozen in the concrete of her own fear. Her own knowledge of this cycle and inability to get unstuck only reinforces the shame and fear. I call it the “I should know better” cycle. It’s one of the hardest to break.
I myself, raised under an enlightenment philosophy (albeit through a lot of tell and very little show), took years and years to even begin the work of breaking my own cycles, and it was only after more than five years of the crippling anxiety as a new mother that I could even see what was happening. I know absolutely that I will be doing this cycle breaking work for the rest of my life.
So, no, I am not judging you. I am merely speaking from my own experience, and I am only speaking to those ready to hear this. There will be plenty who will curse me, who will tell me that it’s not easy to just “lean into joy,” and even those who will nod politely and smile, and then call me crazy behind my back.
That’s okay. I’ve been in all of those positions. I had to go through them all to get here. To crazy land.
Lean into Joy: Constant, Ongoing Work under an Onslaught of Fear
I’m still not immune to falling prey to fear and having to speak to myself firmly but lovingly, urging myself away from the flight. “Don’t run away from your fear, Shanna. Face it. See it. Then remember your loving space, and lean into joy.”
Just this morning I got a message from a client. He was strung out on anxiety, undoing all of the good work I had been coaching him through. He was ending our work relationship together (for the fourth time), and he was turning back to the things that led him to me in the first place. He was clearly acting out of fear. His message read loud with anxiety and terror at change, at progress, at moving away from his comfort zone (even though it’s incredibly painful for him).
Naturally, I began to get all caught up in his fear. I began to take it personally. I was filled for a few moments with abject anxiety.
I was trying to respond to his message, to calm him down, and my kids were jumping around, interrupting me, screaming their normal high energy morning screams, and I snapped at them.
“What’s wrong with me?!” I thought suddenly. I don’t typically respond like this. Why was I so strung out?
PMS triggers fear cycles for me.
I detached from what was happening in that moment to witness myself with love.
I realized that my period was one week away. My hormones were out of whack, and at this stage in my cycles I’m prone to falling back into my own negative cycles, reacting to my old triggers. I realized I was attaching myself to someone else’s problems, internalizing pain that did not belong to me.
I realized that all of it was fear based.
Because I became hyper aware of this fear, I also saw the onslaught of fear present in the media, today it is over the legislation of women’s bodies, tomorrow it will be something else, and I felt the connection between what happens to us on a mass level to what happens to each of us every day on an individual level.
Fear is all pervasive. It is manipulative. It is seductive. It will take all of your power if you let it. It will help you turn yourself into the thing you fear the most. Out of fear, the oppressed becomes the oppressor. The victim becomes the victimizer. The abused becomes the abuser. And the cycles continue.
Recognize the Fear, and Return to Your Loving Self
How to we defeat fear? We lean into joy, into love.
Return to your loving self. This has become the answer to me for everything.
Christian people say “What would Jesus do?” Muslim people call on the Koran. Jewish people commune with God. Buddhists practice detachment.
As a pagan, I practice some amalgamation of all of that.
I ask “what would my highest, most loving self do?” I return to the literature that inspires me most. I commune with the universe/my inner voice through meditation. I practice detachment.
I remind myself that I am not attached to anything.
All of this fear, and everything that stems from it, is but a part of a finite human experience that we are actually meant to enjoy. Fear is simply an opportunity to see what we don’t want, so that we can turn toward what we do.
The trick is to maintain our focus primarily on what we do want, the same thing that deep down, we really all want. We want to feel good. We want joy. We want love.
Breathe through the fear. Remind yourself you are safe. Remember that love wins every single time. One person acting with love and kindness, with compassion and whole heartedness, is vastly more powerful than one thousand fearful people. You make an immeasurable, invaluable difference when you act every single day to lean into joy.
Our most powerful examples, the ones who have effected the most change in hearts, minds, and history, have all come from a primarily loving place: the men – Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Plato, Mohammad, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. – and the countless women who have persisted from a loving place: Sappho, Mary Magdalene, Hildegard of Bingen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Catherine Beecher Stowe, the Grimke Sisters, Florence Nightingale, Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Anne Frank, Wangari Maathai, Shirin Ebadi, Malala Yousafzai, and so many, many more.
Violence begets violence.
Of course, there are other men and women I admire greatly for their strength and perseverance, from Abraham Lincoln and Nat Turner to Cleopatra and Joan of Arc. But these powerful rulers and warriors used might, violence, and fear to effect change. And it is my fervent belief that in the end, violence begets violent, whatever the reason. Yes, sometimes violence is absolutely necessary, but it is my hope that we can only resort to violence in those desperate absolutely necessary circumstances.
I am hoping we will lean into joy, turn to love. Each of us in our own way. I am hoping we can redirect the seemingly unstoppable tide toward bloody revolution we are on now. I am hoping we can make the march toward peaceful revolution together. Because together we rise. Together, in love, we are in fact unstoppable. I have an unwavering faith in this.
Together, we can turn toward love and live out our happily ever afters.