Send Fear Into Exile
We come into adulthood with ideas about who we are and where we are going. These ideas invariably guide our actions, and somewhere along the line, one or more of these childhood precepts trips us up. We step back and wonder, where did I get this idea? or why do I feel this way? and it is times like this that we become our most powerful and true self. Through introspection we discover more than books and school alone can ever teach.
Introspection: A Look At My Childhood Concepts
“Women who are too muscular are not feminine.” That was a statement I heard several times as a child. I was also given the false belief that being moderately active would make me muscular and would prevent me from growing voluminous breasts. These arbitrary beliefs were just straws on the back of the camel that was my health, that broke fully at the age of sixteen.
I was fearful of not being feminine enough, beautiful enough, or good enough to have a loving husband when I grew up.
“Don't suck your thumb because it'll make your teeth grow in crooked and then you'll never find a good husband.” That was the statement that made me finally stop sucking my thumb. I stopped out of the fear of never having the love of a man when I grew up.
“I will be very rich when I grow up,” I said several times between the ages of eight and eleven. If you asked me why I would be very rich, my answer would change depending on my mood. Sometimes the reason was because 'I would never let myself be poor.' I had the same logic about being fat, and said, 'I wouldn't let myself get fat.' As if I could somehow will things to be other than they were. Sometimes I reasoned that I would be rich because I would marry a rich man. Sometimes it was because I would have a very lucrative career as a mathematician.
What strikes me about these childhood beliefs in retrospect was that some part of me wouldn't even contemplate that I might be anything other than fiscally rich at the age of nine. What was I so afraid of not having due to lack of money? Who gave me the idea that money meant happiness?
Or did I think that money would give me authority?
I resented being a child because of my lack of authority. I was denied the ability to make my own decisions too frequently to feel safe. Being denied the ability to make a decision once in a month is too much for me.
I balked at anything resembling the usual child-slavery. (The usual behavior of mankind where children are told what to do with no room for their own opinions, feelings, etc.) If I was told to do something there had to be a reason. I would not simply obey.
Resentment From Fear
If you are made made to do something out of fear then you would resent the person who forced you. That is perfectly just. Why shouldn't someone feel resentment? Why shouldn't a child resent someone who is forcing them to do something in fear? Why should anyone, at any age, ever be made to go against their ethics, beliefs, emotions or comfort zone because someone is making them afraid of doing otherwise?
If you have a strong desire to paint, but your mother is a musician and insists you ought to sing... That is all well and good if she sings to you with love, and brings you to music classes with love, and you come because you love your mother and are curious about music. It is entirely different if she says she will spank you, take away your toys, ground you, or prevent you from seeing your friends if you paint, or if you refuse to sing.
Let's say someone is dirty, and they feel that washing is wrong. They are unpleasant to be around because they smell bad and make you nervous. Nobody should say, “You have to spend time around this person or else I will reject you.” And nobody should say to that dirty person, “If you do not clean yourself I will throw you into the river.” Instead, that person could learn that most people will not choose their company if they are dirty, but that it won't be hard to find love if they are clean. If the dirty person must be removed physically from a situation because they are causing health concerns for others, then that is just, but that is different because in that case it is affecting the health of other individuals.
If you are strongly against something, such as abortion, you should not be made to help another person have an abortion under the fear of losing your job. If you are strongly pro-choice, you should not be made to keep a child you do not want to keep out of the fear that society will reject you.
Domestication Of Children Today
Yet as children we're told that we're not old enough to make decisions, and that we do not have the right to choices.
We are given candies that give us cravings for more sweets, but then made to eat soggy steamed vegetables that now taste bitter by comparison. Instead of saying, “Here, take this sweet and be happy [or else]” and then following that with, “Here, you must eat this or else you'll be stunted in your growth,” we can encourage children to make the right choices. We can say, “If you love your body as much as I love mine then you must want to eat this healthy food that will nourish you. If you choose to eat something that is bad for you I won't stop you, but it's not a very kind thing to do to your wonderful body.”
The way in which we're raised is domestication, allowing us to be ready for the adult life where we are continually doing things we dislike, things we don't believe in, and working a daily nine-to-five job where we'll slave away doing things we may even be violently against if we were given enough free will to think about it.
Free Will
We may cling to the idea that we have free will, but do we?
Is it free will you have to go to that job to make that paycheck to get enough money to get by? Are there really other options if you don't get enough time off work to seek another job?
Well, of course there are, but it is very hard and very unpleasant to break out of a box that is so small and so uncomfortable that you can not even turn around within it. It is difficult to garner strength in this crouched position that causes more cramps the longer you're in it. After a while you're in too much pain to want to consider what your real condition is.
You'd rather drink (or smoke, or eat and eat and eat) and be numb and through self-destruction find a little mental peace away from the awareness of the small box you're closed within.
Everything we believe is a chain that keeps us in a pattern. If I strongly believe that I absolutely must eat a certain way to be healthy, then I am trapped.
Instead of putting myself in a box, I want to retain my free will. I do not want to be stuck with one option. I want many options. To attain many options I must educate myself. In the instance of food, if I want to be able to have options then I must learn many ways to eat that create a healthy body, and not become bogged down by one dogma. This is why I've broken out of the vegan norms and forged my own path. I am not subject to vegan dogma, or raw food dogma. I am thinking, reasoning individual. In my article, Beyond Veganism, there is a deep exploration of common vegan myths, health myths, core values and the ethics driving our actions.
Even if I do limit myself in action, it is important that I do not limit myself in thought. I may choose to to make the same choice again and again, but I do that only through my personal experience as to what is best for me. I remain empowered as long as I continue to feel free to reexamine my values and choices.
Education, ultimately, in all circumstances, is what allows us to retain empowerment and freewill.
As soon as something becomes “the only way” you become trapped. If “the only way” to survive is to keep your day job then you're stuck a slave to your boss. He can abuse you, curse at you, disrespect you and humiliate you and you may put up with it because “it is the only way” to survive.
It doesn't magically become easy to change just because you understand that you must change to be healthier and happier.
“Only when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing do we change.”
It is so very true. I didn't become a raw vegan because everything was all happy-go-lucky in my life. I began making dietary changes because my choices were thus: change or suffer horrifically each day unto death.
However, I am not as dogmatic as many vegans or raw vegans I've met. These values I hold are not "the only way" to create peace, prosperity and health on this planet. They are great powerful aids that I am joyful to share with others, but they are not the only way.
Why do we crave authority and riches?
Back to why I wanted to be rich so that I could have authority...
I believed that if I had authority I would have more free will. If there were no people with more power than myself then I would have full command of my actions.
I would never have to go against myself. I would never have to run a race when my body felt like it was falling apart (...thank you so very much you egotistical crass gym teachers...), and I would never have to sing with a dry, itching, swollen throat (...thank you so very much you very disobliging vocal teachers...), and I would never be scolded for being too slow when running or too raspy when singing because I'd never be made to do things so very inappropriate for my condition!
We're often made to feel that life is toil, toil, toil, but I've always felt that was absurd. I still do.
Of course, as a child I didn't think to myself, “I want to be rich, so that I may have authority, so that I will not have to fear anybody anymore.” Of course I didn't. I just thought, “If I were rich I could have lots of dolls, a big house, rich friends and anything I wanted would come easily.”
But I did crave authority and riches. I still do, but now I crave these things so that I can make a better life for myself and for my family and for anyone who wants to learn from my mistakes. I no longer desire these things out of fear, but out of love.
I didn't know I wanted those things out of fear. Most of us do not realize why we want something until much later, if ever.
Honesty In Relationships
I didn't realize until recently why I always wanted to be able to be fully honest in my relationships (including feeling inclinations towards being with other men, or having fantasies, or disliking my partner's friends). I now understand that this desire for full honesty was because I wanted to be able to give and receive full respect for who I am. I didn't want to have to be an image of myself, always pretending to be a certain way in order to be loved. That isn't love at all. That is being fake and being rewarded with small deposits of kindness in exchange for being fake.
What is a relationship worth if you can't be yourself in that relationship? If you're not even you in the relationship, is there a relationship? And if there is a relationship, what is it made of if your half of the relationship isn't even real? And what if their half isn't the real them either?
Then you're playing some sort of game where you both make an image and see if they can play nice together. You might as well play Sims online if that is what you'd like to do. Get into role playing if you can't be you and stop pretending that your image is you when it is not.
That is what it means to live a lie. Every time you do something that is against what you really want to do or say, then you are being an image for the sake of someone else, and you are lying to that person and to yourself. And when you do it for the sake of that other person, are you doing them any favor? If you tell someone your favorite color is blue when really you dislike blue and your entire house is filled with red and black, but you tell them this because they like blue, have you done something good for your relationship? Perhaps it may seem so at first, but it isn't good when they buy you a blue shirt for your birthday and then are so generous that they knit your a blue scarf for another holiday.
And now you're trapped. If you tell them, “I lied and said I liked blue to please you,” now you will be exposed for a fake and the trust in your relationship will be diminished. You will be embarrassed because they were so kind as to make you a scarf with their time and effort and you don't even want to wear it because it doesn't match any of your favorite clothing.
You didn't really lie to please them. What pleases someone is being around loving joyful people. You lied because you were afraid of not being accepted.
And what about that trust? Can you trust someone more than you feel they ought to trust you? If you feel that you have been disloyal and dishonest it is easy to believe that they are lying to you. So now everything they say becomes suspect. They say they create comic books in their spare time, but are they just saying that to impress me?
And as soon as you say to someone, “I'm not sure about my friend, I think she may be making things up just to impress me...” now you've revealed yourself. You doubt your own friends, and perhaps they ought to doubt you in return?
I am not saying that just one instance of doubting somebody automatically shows that you are not a trust-worthy person, but people who lie often have trouble believing that others do not lie often.
Of course, those who eat cooked food every day have trouble wrapping their mind around my diet, and that I do not generally cook food. The first time I ever met a vegan I didn't understand or comprehend what it meant not to eat animals or anything that came from them.
Back when I could hardly walk a quarter mile I found it impossible to believe that I could ever be athletic, and people who were athletic were as alien to me as green marsh-men that live in pineapples at the bottom of the ocean.
Perhaps it is always hard to bend our minds to something different from our own experience. All the more reason to be honest, so that we can rely upon someone's words to convey to us a set of experiences different from our own.
With my husband, I can be fully honest. I can say anything at all that occurs to me and he never loves me less, or becomes jealous. And the reverse is true. He can confide in me about his doubts, and come to me in his moments of weakness. While I might say, “I don't think that is very prudent of you,” there is still love and warmth in my voice. I do not remove human compassion and affection from our relationship because he is hurting or mistaken. Instead of judging each other we kindly prod each other to think about the real causes for our actions.
The Root Cause: Remember To Question "Why?"
How often do most people think about the root cause of something?
Not too long ago someone told me, “When my stomach hurts I eat a particular food to settle it and then it feels better.”
I began to speculate and try to conclude why that was. When I began to tell this person why that might be the case, they said, “Let's not dwell on it. I'll just eat that particular food when I don't feel well and leave it at that.”
I was honestly quiet aghast. How could they not want to know the reason why? This is their own body, and they didn't want to figure out why their choice affected it?
If the stove burns your hand, don't you wish to understand that the stove is hot and how to know if something is too hot? You don't simply live in fear of the stove and never go near it. You seek to understand and control your actions and their outcomes so that they may be desirable.
If you do not question “why?” then you will not be empowered with the knowledge of why something happens. And without that empowerment you will not be able to change what happens.
Without understanding why you are poor, you can not stop being poor.
Without understanding why you are sick, you can not stop being sick.
If someone had been able to explain all of my various conditions to me when I was sixteen and given me the knowledge of what was wrong with me I would have had a lot less years of research to do before I could have cured myself. I had to start with, “What is wrong with me? Why is this happening?”
You can not start with the question, “How can I be rich?” You must first ask, “Why am I poor?” And then it may be wisest to progress to, “Why do I want to be rich?” If you can answer these two questions, “Why am I poor?” and “Why do I want to be rich?” then you will be able to find fiscal wealth, or discover the real wealth which you crave.
I crave the wealth of free will.
I can not have free will if I am not empowered with knowledge. Only when I can say, “This choice will make me happy,” and “This choice would make me unhappy,” can I make the right choice.
Sometimes there is no way to find out without taking a risk and finding out the hard way. This is why the biggest risk in life is to avoid all risks. You must find answers somehow, and one of the most effective ways to find answers is to take risks.
Now, I'm not saying you should jump off a bridge to learn about gravity, broken bones and possibly death. That would obviously be folly.
However, some things can not be so easily learned from others' mistakes. You can not learn, for example, if you like to sing if you never sing. You can not learn if you like to draw if you never draw. Nobody can show you what is in your heart except you. Someone else might be an aid, but ultimately, your experience of life comes from your own actions and perceptions.
Living In Fear
Up until recently my actions and perceptions were very much a product of fear. This is true for most people that we encounter in the world today.
We exercise from fear of fat. We don't exercise from fear of not being feminine. We exercise too much from fear of being called lazy. We restrict our singing voices for fear of sounding bad. We don't plant a garden for fear that it will not thrive under our care. We avoid relationships because we fear rejection. We avoid personal conversations because we fear discovering the fear in our own hearts.
How absurd we can be!
Wouldn't it make more sense to exercise because you love to swim, dance, or run? Wouldn't it make more sense to eat well because we love ourselves? Wouldn't it make more sense to sing because we love singing or to not sing because it does not interest us? Wouldn't it make more sense to try having a garden and put our love into it and continue or not based on the amount of love that poured out of us as a result of planting a garden?
Isn't it better to be yourself and be rejected for being yourself than it is to create an image and have that false non-existent person loved? You can not receive somebody's full love if they are loving an image that is not who you are. You can not respect that person and love that person in kind because they love something that is not you. If you make an image and someone loves that image you may feel guilt, anger, contempt or disgust. These emotions will be a poison to your relationship.
When we're afraid of making the wrong choice, then we are doomed to make the wrong choices.
If you are constantly restricting your child because you're afraid they'll end up just as messed up as you are, then you're making them just as messed up as you are.
If you are constantly restricting yourself because you're afraid of rejection, then you are rejecting yourself and thereby are already suffering worse rejection than can be offered to you from other people.
I have a poem about this topic, and it is as follows:
Send Fear Into Exile
I am angry with you,
Because I'm afraid that you're right.
I am angry with you,
Because I'm afraid that you'll leave.
I am angry with you,
Because I'm afraid of myself.
I am feeling sad today,
Because I am afraid of tomorrow.
I am feeling sad today,
Because I am afraid of yesterday.
I am feeling sad today,
Because I'm afraid to fade away.
You are making me jealous,
Because I'm afraid you love her more than me.
You are making me jealous,
Because I'm afraid that she's prettier to see.
You are making me jealous,
Because I'm afraid that you'll set me free.
I have been struck sick,
Because I'm afraid about finances,
I have been struck sick,
Because I'm afraid of losing friends,
I have been struck sick,
Because I'm afraid.
You have forgiven me,
and I feel love.
You have given me truth,
and I feel love.
You have smiled with me,
and I feel love.
I accepted your forgiveness.
I have forgiven myself.
I accepted your truth.
I have found truth within myself.
I accepted your smile.
Now I smile for myself.
You showed me love,
and I freed myself from fear.
I am not afraid.
I live love.
~ Raederle Phoenix
January 2012
Notice that it was I who set myself free from fear. Someone else can empower you with knowledge and lend you their love, but you must ultimately love yourself and banish fear yourself.
How To Get What You Want
If you want authority, you must ask, “Why am I powerless?”
If you want love, you must ask, “Why do I feel unloved?”
If you want to be accepted you must accept yourself.
If you want to be loved and respected you must love and respect yourself.
If you want change in your life you must not balk when things fall apart, but instead you must build yourself a strong foundation with the bricks raining down upon you.
If you want to be happy you must stop living in fear. Fear is the root of most problems. It is the stem to the anger which causes us to reap a harvest of bitterness and regret. Fear is the root to the tree that bears fruit of jealousy, betrayal and anxiety.
Yet if we sow the field that is our life with love... We find that the fruit is sweet with kindness, the seeds are rich with compassion, the branches are strong with honesty, the trunk is fortified with virtues and the sun that smiles on us is warm and pleasant with love in return.
Because we love we are patient when we choose what nutrients to suck up from the land that our roots are planted in. Because we are patient and not afraid of being too slow we choose carefully and correctly. Because we love we are not afraid that we have wasted our time because we know our branches have sheltered many with compassion, and that our fruit has blessed many people with joy.
In love there is no need to fear death. When you live love there are always people who will care about you and want you to smile as you make them smile. These people will be there for you in life and in death. And why fear leaving a life well loved and lived? You will die with a smile on your face knowing you have left the world a happier more loving place than when you entered it.
In love there is no need to fear anything at all. Strong love and strong fear can not exist in the same person simultaneously. You are either living love or living fear. And no action made in love can be regretted.
The Law of Attraction
This truth is the basis for The Law of Attraction, which simplifies emotions into “good” and “bad.” I dislike an aspect of this view, which is that to call something good or bad is to judge it. We need not be judgmental. We must choose for ourselves what we like and dislike. In other words, we should discern, not judge. The difference? To judge is to find someone or something guilty. To discern is to discover the causes behind the actions. Love brings joy, and we may choose to call this good. Fear brings misery, and we may choose to call this bad.
If you wallow in fear, you reap misery.
If you bask in love, you reap joy.
This is why I strive to send fear into exile.
~ Raederle Phoenix
Originally written on Febraury 5th 2012
Edited, updated, and graphics added on September 21st 2012
Edited, updated, and graphics added on September 21st 2012
Sources of inspiration: The Secret (documentary), Eyes of Horus and Lord of the Horizon (a fantastic duet series taking place in ancient Eygpt with the heart of the book being about sending fear into exile) by Joan Grant, The Art of Happiness (a practical guide to finding happiness) by Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama, The Mastery of Love (a Toltec wisdom book) by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Continuum Concept (a book that shows us why we are the way we are and how to raise our children to live without fear), Sugar Blues (a book that shows us how to love our bodies by how to avoid some serious poisons present in today's food supply) by William D, and Many Lifetimes (a book that shows us how to stop being afraid of death) by Joan Grant.
To see all the books I recommend, click here for my habitually updated book recommendation page.
To send your own fear into exile, click here to learn about my free e-mail course with lessons that focus on overcoming fear, cravings and vices and reaching your goals.
