The Truth Will Set You Free

BREATHE!

For decades, I was trapped by fear, triggered by childhood bullying. It caused massive stress in my life, and somehow I knew that if I didn’t learn to deal with it, I would never be a whole human being. An awake, aware, ADULT human being.

So I searched for allies, and never stopped asking the people I met if they had an answer for me. And finally, a Shorei Chito-Ryu karate instructor named Terry Letteau taught me a simple technique that gave me enormous CLARITY in this arena of my life. And what I saw was that my problem wasn’t fear…the problem was that I thought the fear MEANT something. That it meant I was small, or weak or incapable, or a coward.

In other words, I was afraid, yes. But then I was ashamed of the fear. And angry about my shame about my fear. And then frustrated with my anger about my shame about my fear. And then depressed about my frustration about my anger…

See where this goes? Instead of dealing with the core emotion (fear) my ego created an infinitely regressing “hall of mirrors”, that confronted me and drained me. Let’s say I had ten units of energy. To deal with the fear, it would take nine units. But I never had the focus, because of all the other emotions that pretended to be the problem. I just…never…got there.

But as soon as I could just say “I am afraid. It is natural. How do I accomplish what I need to do in life anyway? Where does it come from? What is it trying to accomplish?” then I was dealing with the thing itself…