The key to staying sane in troubled times: managing fear.

By Rose Diamond

Fear is one of the most difficult emotions to manage. But if we don’t learn how to manage our own fear and help those around us to manage theirs, we are going to turn crisis into disaster. As a former psychotherapist I have spent many years witnessing people’s reactions to their own fear (and this includes observing fear in myself). Most of us are afraid of our own fear and will do just about anything to avoid feeling it: alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, anti-depressants, over work, over eating and compulsive shopping, are some of the ways we avoid, or try to numb our fear.

Right now we are all facing a massive fear of the unknown. The world as we have known it is crumbling and none of us knows what is going to replace it. Personally, I believe this global crisis is an opportunity to create a more sustainable, humane society; yet in this present climate of crisis fear, at times it is difficult to maintain this trust that something better will emerge. I am no stranger to fear, having consciously chosen for many years a lifestyle in which I uncompromisingly live my passion, or do what I believe I am here to do, I know what it means to live on the edge financially and not know where the next dollar is coming from. Many people are being pushed into this same dilemma not through conscious choice but through external events over which they have no control. The opportunity and challenge in this is we can learn to live simple, sustainable, authentic, and community based lives which offer an inner fulfillment.

But people are not in a position to make conscious choices nor to think rationally about what needs to be done when they are gripped by fear. Fear creates stress and stress limits our sense of what is possible. If it is not attended to, fear goes underground and can manifest as anger, despair or ill health; fear literally grips the heart and squeezes the life force out of us. It cuts us off from the source of our creativity and empowerment. When we are afraid we tend to disassociate from the body and from the present moment and lose ourselves in worry, anxiety and doubt; all products of the mind. The kind of fear I am speaking of is a basic fear for survival, a root chakra fear which is connected to the oldest part of the brain, the reptilian brain, which as its name suggests is primitive, reactive and potentially aggressive. Such fear makes us feel more isolated, cuts us off from each other and causes people to become self protective, to look after their own and close their doors to “strangers”.

An important aspect of the Western psyche and sense of identity, particularly so in North America, is the belief that success means being independent, going it alone and competing with others for life’s goodies. These attitudes are being challenged by the current economic crisis, which is throwing many people into a situation where they literally can’t support themselves in the ways to which they have become accustomed, nor derive their identity from external sources such as status, money and material goods. This identity crisis comes on the heels of the economic crash and a shift of identity has to happen before anything new can be built. If we are going to survive as a species we have to learn to work together, to recognize we are all in the same boat, find ways to support each other and think creatively together.

So what can we do when fear comes knocking at the door of the heart? When people are gripped by fear, the first thing they need to know is they are not alone. Helping a frightened or distressed person to become more present is a good first step. Helping someone to become more grounded literally means getting them to put their feet on the ground and reminding them to breathe. The earth beneath us and the air we breathe are forms of support that are there for each one of us, always. By breathing into our fear, we enable the body, and thus the heart and mind, to expand, and we get back in touch with our own power and resourcefulness to effect change.

The skills of empathic, compassionate listening are very helpful. Giving someone you love or care about the space to vent their feelings is a good first step. But this can be challenging especially when their emotions are raw and put you in touch with your own fear. When we feel uncomfortable with another’s expression of feeling we tend to shut them down by interrupting, trying to “fix” them, or moving away. If we really want to help, the trick is to know when people need to express their feelings, when they need to be present and find inner calm, and when they need to look for solutions. People seldom find healthy solutions when they are afraid, and if you move into “fixing” them they are likely to become more reactive and frustrated, or to withdraw into depression.

Much of our fear is created by the mind. When we don’t know what is going to happen we tend to fill the empty space with fear. The insights and practical wisdom of spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, have helped me to learn how to drop my negative fear based thoughts. Learning the laws of manifestation and the creative process has helped me to replace the negative thoughts with positive, creative thoughts. To focus on what I can do, to stay present, take my next step, and be relatively unattached to the outcome of my actions, keeps me sane and enables me to go with the flow of my creative process. Maintaining this kind of focus in this current climate of fear is a spiritual practice requiring daily, moment to moment intent. When I fall off the wave, I have to summon all my strength, haul myself back on the surfboard and start again. Of course this is very challenging, and the bottom line is, we all need each other. Many people who are focusing on maintaining a positive attitude in this way, seek out or create communities of like-minded people for mutual support, comfort and encouragement.

I hear many people these days talking about how “things are only going to get worse”. I don’t think this helps anybody; our thoughts create the situation we fear. Whilst the global economy in its current state is certainly bankrupt, the flow of commerce freezes in local communities when people hold onto their money. Abundance and prosperity can only come from staying open, trusting and sharing what we have. I also read even in “progressive” internet news groups criticisms of President Obama and how he isn’t living up to expectations after two weeks. As if there’s some great magician in the sky who’s going to wave a magic wand and make everything better. The reason people love Obama is he sows seeds of hope and encourages grassroots action and involvement. Hope alone is not enough. Life will only get better if we each choose to create it better, and that means connecting with our own power as creative beings and not passing the buck to any politician, guru, hero, or demi-god of our imagination; nor giving our power away to an invisible oligarchy of robber barons.

We all need hope, and positive models of people who are creating more peaceful sustainable lives, and the skills to build our lives anew. I agree with Obama, it’s not going to be easy, the path is strewn with challenges, the process of changing deeply ingrained attitudes doesn’t happen overnight. But it is possible, and it is worth working for, and we are the only ones who can do it.
Rose Diamond offers Coaching for Positive Change for people who need a helping hand in troubled times. Go to: www.awholenewworldcoaching.com

"The ONE LAW" of Universal Expansion

By Woods Elliott

One of my favorite subjects of thought is what I call cosmopsychology, or the study of how staggering it is to the human being to have such an ungraspably infinite setting for one’s home. I mean our location here in the universe is breath-taking, even crazy making. Is this not the most awe inspiring universe on hand as could ever be imagined? For most of my life I haven’t really felt at home in this vast cosmos. I was never sure what little me had to do with big IT. What meaning could there be behind such an unspeakable enormity? While finite, we’re at the same time in conjunction with, well, infinity! Bewildering. You get the picture?

In my book, Dazzlephrenia, I try to feel more at home in the cosmos. This is not an easy achievement as my title implies. Surely how we look upon the infinite cosmos, and ourselves in relation to it, deeply impacts us emotionally and psychologically and will, into the future, influence our way of being in the world and living our lives. There is more identical connection between pinprick stars and us than appears at first glance. That’s the thing. There must be a plausible correlation. It behooves us to perceive ourselves as more cosmic beings, integrating the cosmos, its central themes, patterns, and features, into our view of ourselves.

The cosmos is now generally regarded to be in an extravagant act of some kind of ever-evolving energy; this is its evolutionary property. I had a thinking buddy in Colorado, when I was organizing a small local philosopher’s club, one of many intriguing thinkers who were drawn in. His single, nearly obsessional contention was what he called The One Law of Universal Expansion. He believed everything in reality was subject to this primary cosmic law. And he believed that the human condition needed to be primarily understood in relation to this one basic driving principle. I recall he objected fiercely to deism, because it had stopped expansion beyond the concept of God. He thought the invention of God had put a cap on our imagination. I was immediately attracted to the novelty of his viewpoint. I had never heard anyone before him posit such an obvious notation, and at the same time, had never heard anyone bridge astrophysics to human psychology so uniquely. Why don’t people more readily see themselves as needing to expand like their cosmos? Why do people seem to go out of their way not to make such an obvious connection? This got me thinking about universal expansion and what that had to do with me and my life.

It seems to me that people have gone out of their way to not think of themselves as needing to expand like the universe and I’m not sure why this is so. Despite this, when I try to get down to my own deepest needs and strivings, what grabs at me the most, what I come away with most, is my unstoppable need to delve more deeply into what existence is: to learn more. Now, when you think of it, isn’t learning just a subtle way to self expand? So when I’ve achieved something in life, I’ve moved on to something new. Kept growing, extending, deepening. Are we not mostly evolution or expansion-in-action? One way to look at expansion is visual.

When I ponder the tie between cosmic expansion and love of freedom, I find myself remembering my first adventures out west, my first airplane flight from sea level Long Island to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1965, when I awoke after a night flight to see snow-capped mountains outside the hotel window as if they were on a big billboard of some kind. Wow! My eyes delighted by all the “extra” space the distant mountains created.

Then I keenly remember a euphoria of perception when first to Denver, in the mid 70’s. Mountains have a powerful presence on people. There’s a geospiritual correlation between mountains and humans, a literal uplifting of some kind you can directly experience. I went around smiling for months just because I had daily visual beauty and depth of field all about me. My eyes drank in expansive views in an almost sensual manner. There was a sense of being visually grateful, even privileged, just to be there. The setting had enhanced the quality of my life in some unclear but real way. My dear geologist friend, Hal Proska coined the phrase “geospiritual”, he too was a great believer in the energetic nature of unknown forces at work beneath the surface nature of the ordinary world.

I lived below majestic Pikes Peak in Manitou Springs and in other wonderful sites in Colorado for nearly twenty years. Felt free as a bird. So much room to move around in! You can even find actual remote places where there are no other people around for miles. That can be very relaxing. I felt more fully alive there than I do now in visually-hemmed in Williamsburg, VA, where a large nearby highway intersection opens up enough clearance to take in the sky. That’s sad and sorrowful to say, but true. Are my eyes less free than they were in Manitou? Can our eyes be confined?

We need to see how the law of expansion bears on us and the lives we lead. Is it possible that what people refer to when they use this familiar word, freedom, is simply referring to that cosmic aspect in people which corresponds to the need to be free to expand like the cosmos?

This is why I sometimes feel a quick fury at the slow driver holding me up, getting in my way, not letting me be on my way! But the truth of this is really driven home if you remind yourself how we punish people for wrong-doing. We put them in jails, restrict their movements, imprison them. Don’t we mostly prize freedom very highly? Is there anything else that grieves us more than to be caught in a traffic jam, or in some other way be restricted, trapped, crowded, confined, overpowered, or held against our will?

You can see how easily the cosmic and human need to expand conforms with one of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings about “space consciousness”, relearning a more spacious recognition of the larger “container” of awareness out of which all else arises. He teaches the importance of bringing more space and stillness into our experiences and relationships with others. It does seem that consciousness wants to keep expanding and enlarging, doesn’t it? Don’t we feel more present, peaceful, and relaxed when we feel expanded, enlarged, and freed? Eckhart urges us to remember the deep ground of awareness that underpins and enables the world of forms.

I’ve been doing some expansive work with my equally reflective soul friend, Rose Diamond, during the past two years. We refer to it as our Consciousness Practice. It represents our joint wish to experiment with bringing more conscious awareness into our relationships. In this practice, we set aside a regular time to be very present and transparent, co-create a sacred space, and enter into a very strong witness-centered form of awakening more completely into the present moment. This practice came quite naturally to us; both introspective types, trained psychotherapists, analytical and intuitive, and prone to self reflection and deeper types of exchanges than most people seem comfortable with. She and I will be talking more about our practice over time, but for now I just wanted to make a point about the importance of us learning how to expand into more open states of receptivity than we usually do, and what gifts and blessings this gives rise to. Most people would agree that there is a very special energy, intense higher forms of consciousness have. Surely this unnamed enlivening power is of an energetic nature; you can feel it as an entraining vibration moving throughout the whole body, in every cell so to speak.

Many days I feel like an expanding cosmic being. Other times like a lead balloon, as we say. :-)

Some Thoughts on the New Presidency from an Alien

By Rose Diamond

I’m an English woman living for a while in America, and according to the authorities that makes me “an alien”. I have to say, I frequently feel I’ve flown in from another planet and I’m witnessing a bizarre culture, but I felt like that in my birth country too.

After England, I lived in Scotland for twenty years, and that has a culture quite distinct from England; it’s own separate legal and education system, tradition of song, poetry, music, interpretations of religion, and so on. From Scotland I moved to New Zealand where I lived for twelve years, and now I’ve been here in Virginia for the last two years. Whilst these countries are all Western and English speaking, they’re all quite different. New Zealand and America are like the yin and yang, at different poles in the personality spectrum.

Living in different cultures in this way means I’m always an “outsider” and I have to be diplomatic when making social commentary. One of the things I like about the Brits is we do social commentary very well, anyone who watched David Frost back in the ‘60’s or Monty Python, knows that the Brits love to laugh at themselves, at each other, and at their politicians. I think that’s a healthy release of tension.
Another aspect of living in different cultures, or being a “spiritual gypsy”, is it makes me trans-national. I don’t have any allegiance to any particular nation. I really do feel like a global citizen, and from that perspective I find blatant expressions of nationalism disturbing, even when they’re positive expressions.
So here I am living in America in the worst economic meltdown for 80 years, observing, suffering, rejoicing, and attempting to build community. Along with millions of others, in this country and elsewhere, I felt a huge relief and joy when Barack Obama was elected. Of course I understand the significance of him being a black man, the first black president, and that seems so hopeful for this country and for the world at this point in history, a triumph of justice. For me, the joy at his election comes because he is clearly a conscious person; he moves and acts with grace and beauty; he thinks before he speaks; he doesn’t stoop to the same ole, same ole negative politics of dirt throwing; he stands for something. He’s smart; he’s articulate; he’s inspiring. This is all very refreshing in a politician, especially a politician as central on the world stage as the American President.

I was very moved on election night and on inauguration day to see so many Americans overcome with joy at the election of their new president. To me this shows there is a real longing in oh so many people in this country, for something new, for change, for a politics with heart maybe? A politics to remake America as a more humane society.

What concerns me is the huge gap between the joy, the longing, the hero worship, on the one hand, and the stark reality of people’s lives on the other. I live near Williamsburg, and this is not a poor town by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, every day I hear reports that commerce is frozen. Nobody is spending on anything but the bare necessities. Even people who have money aren’t spending it. So there’s one level of recession created from national debt and inflation, and another level created from fear. When money isn’t circulating everyone suffers, everyone is stuck, people become more contracted. It’s a difficult time to be living through. I hear every day of more people losing their homes, not in this area, but elsewhere. Where is the humanity in a society that turns people out of their homes? Isn’t having a home and the wherewithal to keep it running, a basic foundation for any humane society? Isn’t accessible healthcare for everyone another basic of a humane society? How have we, with all our technological prowess, creativity and invention, got so far from what really matters?

I see a huge and deep longing for change in so many of the American people but I don’t know how many people really know how to manifest positive change. Days after the Obamas moved into the Whitehouse I read in the alternative press lots of bitching and moaning about the new president: “Well, he’s been in office for five days and he hasn’t changed the world yet, he can’t be any good, he’s just gonna be another big disappointment like all the rest.” Come on guys! How about taking a bit of responsibility for the change you want to see?

I was at a Martin Luther King breakfast on Monday, and black community activist, Mrs Bobbye Alexander, stood at the end and said, “If Obama fails, it’s because each one of us has failed.” The time is well past for believing that any one hero is going to make it right; we’re moving from the age where we put authority outside ourselves and either hero worship that authority or crucify it. And we’re moving into a time when we realize the authority is in each one of us. If there has to be a hero then you’re it, and I’m it too. If we want positive change then we have to be the change and create the change, and join with others who want it too. We have to change our thinking and learn new skills. If there’s going to be any evolution in this country, it’s going to come from the people, and from each person making the commitment to raise his or her consciousness, and to live from that higher state of consciousness on a daily basis. When enough people raise their consciousness, the politicians have to follow suit. Obama knows that. Fear is the biggest barrier to higher consciousness; it’s the way people have always been controlled. Feeling disempowered and handing over your authority to a hero or an anti-hero, is an expression of fear, or not knowing what else to do.

Living at this time requires a big courage. It’s the courage to stay awake and be clear eyed. It’s the courage to hold the vision, the longing, the dream in one hand, and at the same time not flinch from reality, not avoid or deny the suffering which is caused by the present deprivation. We need people to keep the hope alive. Obama is such a person.

I have no idea what kind of politician he’ll turn out to be, or how much he’ll be able to restore from the former president’s legacy of ruination and constitution breaking. But I do see him as a new kind of politician: a conscious politician, a bridge builder, a man who listens and wants to hear all sides, someone who has understood the new paradigm of unity we are moving in to. None of this is easy. I would venture to say that the individual work of restoring our own consciousness to a clear, peaceful, creative state is almost as heroic as being a President. We all have our unique contribution to make. We are each responsible for the collective good. There is an enormous amount of work to be done. This is no time for bitching, moaning, complacency, or passing the buck. The time is now, and we are the people. The opportunity for real radical change to a more humane, united society and world, won’t ever come again in this way.