[Kaspian]

I have been wanting to respond for this for days, but my perspective has shifted so dramatically since I wrote my earlier posts that I needed to let my thoughts and beliefs settle a little just to know what to say... Or maybe it's not necessarily that my beliefs shifted completely as it is that I have a much deeper understanding now, but what a potent transition!

The morning when I wrote my earlier response, my life needed a bigger change than I could admit to myself at the time. (Three cheers for a highly-intuitive and effective counselor.) A major time commitment that my husband and I had made together—we were in the same training program—had to go... now. We both had seen the training as a hugely beneficial thing in our lives, but too much of a good thing is still too much, and even the best of techniques, when eagerly applied to realms of your life where they don't belong, can cause problems.

And so, the fears.

The fear that my husband would feel that me taking care of myself (by leaving the training) would be at the cost of his well-being, because he did not yet understand the problem I had with it, I did not know how to show him how it negatively effected him, and my leaving would probably mean the end of the program. The fear that my husband would decide we were no longer compatible. The fear of telling the director of the training I was done, knowing how much the training means to her, and expecting a verbal attack.

One afternoon-evening I laid down as if to nap and spend most of the next 4 1/2 hours exploring my fears. Adrenaline burned in my body. I did not know ahead of time that they were so deep, so strong, so powerful. And yet, I had useful realizations, and by the time my husband came to tell me that dinner was ready, those fears had less power, and they began to feel like old fears.

There's more to the story, of course, but the short version is that the depth and strength of my fear of the possibility of loosing my husband showed us both the strength and depth of the love I have for him and visa versa. We have given ourselves and each other fuller permission to share our thoughts and feelings, even things that could be seen as negative or critical. Because that sharing comes from a place of love, respect, honor, and compassion, it bonds us, and the bond we feel now dwarfs what we had before.

So, if I had responded earlier, I might have said some things about releasing fear, facing fear, resolving fear, or whatever. Saying the words, "Feel the fear and do it anyway," has so little meaning as just words. It used to mean something like, "I'm somewhat afraid of this, and I don't really know why, but I'm going to do it anyway." And little changed, because that way of thinking is just a way for avoiding the internal work that needs to get done. At the moment, the phrase means, "Fully experience the fear, explore it, investigate it, find the fear underneath the fear, maybe the fear will burn itself out, but maybe not... and then do the thing anyway."

Fear is a signpost, a signal. Read the sign. The sign doesn't say: don't love, don't take the audition, don't set high goals, don't start working on those goals, etc. The sign says: look into this issue so that you can move forward with ease and power.