We live in a culture of fear.
Our consumer culture uses fear-based messages to encourage us to buy specific products or brands. If we don't, we will not be as attractive or successful as the role-playing models on the screen or page.
Our political leaders stoke our most basic fears for our safety and security in the ways they warn of terrorist and other threats. And our info-tainment news media amplify those warnings with fear-filled urgency.
As what I like to consider a consciously enlightened parent, I find myself issuing my own version of the same threats and warnings that have been passed down to me through the generations, all designed to elicit a fear of consequences.
Even "conspiracy theories," put forward to alert us to some of the sources of our fear, create as much fear and separation as do the so-called "bad guys."
Fear is so pervasive, insidious and exclusionary, so fully supported by every aspect and avenue of our lives, that it’s hard to know how to transform that energy into something constructive, inclusive and loving.
Yet it is possible.
It is possible to take all the energy of fear in our field and transform it into something else. It's possible to be the 21st-century alchemists we are and, through the eternal wisdom of our hearts, take what is leaden and make it light.
Where do we start? Within.
We begin in the beginning. And in the beginning was stillness. In the beginning was the void.
So be still. Be still and know the God That You Are.
In this moment, perhaps it is difficult to see or feel that mighty God power, that mighty God strength, that mighty God fearlessness, that mighty God voice that is the truth of who you are.
Yet it is the truth.
The truth of who you are transcends all illusion. Any image of yourself as weak or frightened is just that: illusion. Any curling up into the fetal crutch of powerlessness is illusion.
I speak often about choice. In any moment you have the power to either subscribe to the illusion or to shatter it. It's a choice.
Even the absence of conscious choice is a choice.
It's easy to subscribe to the illusion, as I said earlier. That illusion that is fed to us multiple times daily from womb to tomb. It's fed to us in our mother’s milk, in our schools, through the media, through our political leaders.
There is no fault or blaming in this. There is no conspiracy in this. And even if there were, that too would be illusion for everything outside of us is always a reflection of what we feel and believe.
There is no fault, for all those spreading the fear, whether consciously or not, were raised with the same fear and in the same illusion.
And so the illusion perpetuates, generation after generation after generation.
When we are abused as children, we are more likely to grow up to become abusers. If my parents acted in a certain self-destructive ways, I'm more likely to follow in their footsteps.
We all carry patterns and cellular memories through the generations. They pass from one generation to the next until, one day, someone wakes up in consciousness and says, "This pattern of abuse, of being in fear in the world stops here and now with me."
That is a choice: to see the illusion and shatter it. It's a courageous choice.
We live in a time and culture of myriad illusions. The primary illusion is that we need to be in fear that, somehow, we are in danger that unless we build up impenetrable defenses toward everyone, including the God That We Are we will perish.
That, too, is illusion.
If each of us were to recognize and fully embrace the extent of our God Power, the illusion in our lives and in the lives of those around us would shatter instantly. Instantly.
You are God.
You are the God That You Are. That God knows no fear. That God knows no illusions. That God needs no illusions. That God stands as a pillar of infinite, unwavering strength, of an omnipotence that you cannot, with the limitation of your mind in this moment, even begin to imagine.
The God That You Are is fearlessly strong, has no hesitation. It has no hesitation to step out and say, with the mighty God voice that is yours, "The illusion in my past, the illusion that has been carried to me through generations, the illusions in my family, the illusions in my life they shatter now. They end now with me. There is no more continuity. There is no more continuation. It is over."
Let me tell you a story from my life.
My mother, who made her transition 20 years ago, lived in great fear. Among other things, she feared that people would discover her secrets.
We all have secrets. We all have parts of ourselves we would choose to keep hidden. I spoke of the importance of embracing those parts of self in my last message, Coming Home: Living in the Radiant Oneness of the God That you are, and assisted some of you with that in the teleconference that bore the same title.
My mother had secrets. She had one particular secret that became the progenitor of many others.
This secret was revealed to me by her oldest friend, and it was revealed after all the principal players had made their transition.
I share it now with you for, in my life, it is no longer a secret: With diabetes likely having rendered my father impotent, my mother made a conscious choice to seek to conceive through other means. She turned, according to her friend, to a man who she had once loved deeply, became pregnant and bore a son.
That son was me.
There are various levels to this story. The one about its impact on my self-identity is for another day. Today's is a story about fear.
Imagine for a moment how you might feel in the conservative 1950s had you purposefully conceived child through a man who was not your husband. Now you are pregnant and carry not only a child but a terror that when this child is born, his very physical aspect will reveal the truth about him and the truth about you.
It's not possible for a fetus to form into a child in that energy of fear and not be affected by it.
Born into fear as I was, it's an energy I have grappled with throughout my 50 years.
We were all born into fear. There is no one among you who does not carry some level of fear about something.
Whether we are consciously manipulated into that fear or it's a byproduct of our genes and evolution doesn’t really matter. What matters is that only we can have created that fear (for we are the sole creators of our reality) and only we can dis-create it. Only we can alchemically transform it into something lighter, brighter and more constructive.
My mother was afraid. Likely, her mother was afraid. For these energies and emotions pass down through the generations, particularly when they are so powerfully supported by the prevailing global culture of fear.
Today, though, my opportunity and yours is to say, "With this body and with the spirit and consciousness that express themselves now through this body, I end this pattern. I end this pattern and shatter this illusion now."
I wish I could report that merely speaking the words has the desired impact. It has an impact, yes. But like any vibrational altering, what that statement does most powerfully is bring into our lives the opportunities to make the choices that support it.
Like every human being on this planet, I am not perfect. Like every human being on this planet, I cannot yet hold the God Resonance of fearlessness 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But here's how our evolution to fearlessness works: We begin from a place of fear-filled paralysis in many parts of our lives. Eventually, we move from paralysis into fearful courage, for we need no courage when we are not afraid. Finally, from that place of courage, sometimes even unknowingly, we move into a place of fearlessness.
Let me tell you another story...
When I was 18 I took a driver's ed course and learned how to drive, passed my test and got my first driver s license. For reasons that are unimportant right now, there was no family car to practice in. So when, a year later I was working with a local theater company and a package needed to be collected downtown, I had neither driving experience nor comfort behind the wheel. The producer didn't know this when he tossed his keys in my direction and said, "Take my car and pick it up. You have a license, don't you?"
I nodded.
Had I been fearless, perhaps I would have said, "You know what? I don't feel comfortable doing this. I haven't driven since I took my test last year."
In my fear of being humiliated, I said okay. Fear presents itself in many ways.
I drove downtown in his blue Valiant without incident. On the way back, while maneuvering out of the curb lane to move out of the way of a stopped car, I hit the gas instead of the brake. The blue Valiant valiantly tapped into the car in front of me, causing minor damage to both vehicles.
When the owner of the other car emerged in a rage, I shrank deeper into my fear and insecurity. Not wanting to involve the producer’s insurance, I offered to pay cash for the repairs. The other driver grew increasingly unpleasant over the next weeks, continuing to contact me with ever-increasing estimates for the cost of repairing the damage.
I never told anyone about this incident. That was my secret.
As I held that secret over the ensuing weeks and years, my fear of driving took on monstrous proportions. I continued to renew my license every year, but I didn't sit behind the wheel of a car again for more than 20 years.
During those two decades, I bicycled, walked and lived in cities with excellent public transit. It's true that I didn't need a car. But I lived under the illusion that my life was not circumscribed by fear.
Then, shortly before my 40th birthday, when I felt called to move to rural Nova Scotia, I realized that something needed to change. I couldn't live in a rural area if I couldn't drive.
I was terrified far beyond anything rational or logical. My terror did not decrease as my fingers walked through the Yellow Pages in search of a driving school...as I called the school and registered...as I stepped onto subway to ride to that first class.
Yet, I acted. Somehow, 20 years of paralyzing fear had transformed itself into the courage to act. With great trepidation I stepped into the classroom. With even greater trepidation I got behind the wheel for my first practical class.
I gripped that wheel so tightly, with so much need to control, that I could not even loosen my white-knuckle grip when I turned.
Yet over time I relaxed, then relaxed some more. On the eve of my 40th birthday, I drove the 1,000 miles to Nova Scotia. Fourteen months later, I drove back. And two years after that, I embarked on the three-month odyssey that landed me in Sedona.
Hundreds of thousands of miles later, I love to drive. There is no fear. Therefore no courage is required. In the car I am fearless. I am more than fearless, for driving is now one of my great joys.
Fear became courage became joyful fearlessness
I have moved through that trinity countless times. You have too — from early childhood to wherever you are right now. You have done it over and over.
We all move through that progression, as first we cannot move and then do move, despite our fear. And then, in our relaxed joy, we cannot even imagine how we could have been so frightened.
We all move through that progression, over and over again, as we are called into deeper and deeper expressions first of our courage and then of our fearlessness.
We are called to do and be things that we could not have done or been, could not have imagined doing or being.
The 39-year-old who was terrified as he stepped into that driving school classroom could not have conceived the life I now live. And the 39-year-old's courage would have been inconceivable to the 18-year-old whose fender-bender caused him so much anxiety.
What do you fear? Do you fear opening your heart to the next level? Do you fear opening it to yourself? Do you fear speaking or writing your truth? Do you fear your power? Do you fear judgment or ridicule? Do you fear death?
Whatever it is today, you can begin the journey from fear to fearlessness. It's a journey you already know. All you need to do is remember that you know.
From that knowingness you can take any energy of fear you still carry within you and, through love, patience and compassion, transform it into joy-filled fearlessness. You can remember the alchemy of your soul, the alchemy of your heart, the alchemy of your love, of your aloha. And from that memory, you can remove all that is leaden within you.You can remove it and change its form to one of golden light, the golden light that is the truth of who you are.
And here’s a great gift: Each aspect of fear you transform into fearlessness makes it easier to take the next aspect of fear and transform it as well.
But the greatest, most whole-making gift of all is this one: Each act of transformation within you has a rippling, hundredth-monkey effect that moves out beyond your home, beyond your family, beyond your city and country. It travels at rocket speeds along the energy grid that connects us all and affects everybody.
And as more and more of the fear that so permeates this planet is transformed, our schools, media, family and political leaders will also transform, for they are our creation. When we no longer create from fear, we will no longer create fear.
So breathe into your power. Breathe into your love. Breathe into your heart and allow it to expand to take in all of you. Allow the alchemy of your soul to create light from darkness, gold from lead, empowerment from fear.
Be the God That You Are. In all ways. Always. Now.
