Embracing my fear liberated me: How to let go of hidden attachments
The other day I was visiting my acupuncturist for some work on my lower back and during the session I felt this sudden wave of fear rise up in me. I felt paralyzed and terrified and I couldn’t figure out what I was terrified about. My acupuncturist told me that the Kidneys is where the body stores fear and since we were working on the lower back it made sense that some of those emotions might come up. While that explanation helped me understand what happened, it also made me realize that I needed to spend some time with my fears.
Before the visit to my acupuncturist, I felt those fears, but it was on an unconscious level. They were there, but I wasn’t fully in tune with them or how they were showing up in my everyday behavior. But as I look back I see how they influenced some of my choices, how I hesitated in some situations, or didn’t speak up.
When I meditated on my fears what I discovered were memories of some of my mistakes and experiences that I hadn’t processed as much as I thought I had. All of those memories and experiences were lying in wait to be re-experienced. Every moment of humiliation or anger or sadness was re-experienced on an intimate level. I honestly had no idea that so much was stored away in my fear.
My choice to embrace my fear was scary, but also liberating.
So often fear is treated as an emotion to avoid contact with, or treated as a negative experience. But we feel fear for good reasons. Fear is a survival emotion that can help us recognize when we’re in danger. Fear is also an emotion that can help us recognize when we’ve become attached to experiences and memories that we need to find closure with.
When I felt my fear so intimately, I didn’t run from it. I recognized I’d been given an invitation to experience my fear and if I chose to run from it, I wasn’t fully honoring myself. In choosing to sit with my fears, to feel them on an intimate level, and to work through the experiences and memories attached to those fears, I was able to see how that fear had shown up in my present experiences and held me back.
Since having that realization I’ve worked with my fears every day through meditation and observation. Recognizing my fear and how its showing up has helped me speak up more and trust myself. It’s helped me accept and work with my fear as an ally, because if I’m feeling fear its indicating I need to pay attention to something about the situation I’m in. By doing that, I’m able to resolve the situation and be more practice in how I live my life.
When we recognize our attachments to the past we also discover how those attachments hold us back in the present.
I want to share how you can embrace your fear and allow it to become a spiritual guide of liberation. I want you to take a deep breath and follow that breath into your body. What do you feel in your body? Do you feel any blockages or coils or chains or heavy sensations? If so where are they?
Now I want you to continue breathing, but allow your conscious awareness to dive into those places where you feel blocked. You don’t want to try and force your way through that feeling. You want to actually embrace it and really feel it. It will feel uncomfortable. As you let that feeling in you may have some other emotions come up and some memories rise that are locked away in that fear.
If you feel ready, allow yourself to let those emotions and memories in as well. It can be intense and uncomfortable, but it can also be good because you’re allowing yourself to recognize how you’re still holding onto those emotions and memories on an unconscious level.
If you find yourself thinking about the emotions or memories, acknowledge your thoughts and then move back into feeling. The feeling of your fear and other emotions unlocks the narrative of the blockage, helping you to discover how it shows up in your life now as well as how it’s shown up in the past.
Stay with the fear and other feelings as long as you can, but stop when you’ve had enough. You won’t necessarily work through the fear and other emotions in just one sitting. Allow yourself some time to process and consider what you’ve experienced and then sit with your fear and other emotions again. Through repeated sessions you’ll be able to release your attachment to the fear and other emotions as well as the narrative. Then you can create a new narrative, one consciously chosen that helps you navigate situations in your life differently than you had before.
Embracing your fear is part of the path of liberation. When you consciously accept your fear, it no longer controls you, but instead becomes a spiritual guide that helps you work through the fear and everything locked within it.
Taylor Ellwood is the mad scientist and magical experimenter at Magical Experiments and the Business Wizard for Eccentric Entrepreneurs at Imagine Your Reality. When he isn’t writing his latest book, helping business owners or experimenting with magic, Taylor enjoys the wonders of the Pacific Northwest in Portland Oregon
