Category Archives: Daily Meditations

Starve Your Fear!

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Artwork by Mary Beth Volpini at drawntocolor.com.

Artwork by Mary Beth Volpini at drawntocolor.com

Let’s talk about fear. Inner fear. How elusive and arbitrary it can be. We sometimes struggle with fear over the simplest things – talking to our boss, having a routine visit to the doctor’s, or taking an exam. We might be fearful for our health, bank accounts, jobs, or kids. Of course, we can feel legitimate fear, but usually what we fear is not based on our outer reality but rather coming from within ourselves. Assagioli calls this fear a widely diffused psychological poison.

In order to deal with fear effectively, Assagioli urges us to eliminate or minimalize the fear within ourselves. He also warns us of a vicious circle that can occur – the fear within us can open the door to the influence of external fear, and external fear feeds the inner one.

To break this vicious circle, we need to use our skillful will to withdraw our attention deliberately from the psychological poison of fear. The energy that is holding and nurturing the fear will then be released. We can then redirect this new-found energy to do the most good in our lives.

Last year, Susan came to see me because she wasn’t able to become pregnant. She and her husband were both 30 years old and had been trying for one year without success. Susan had a doctorate in biochemistry and knew exactly all the ways the body functioned – and didn’t function. After two of her friends had died of cancer, she was terrified of the disease. She had spent hours visiting various doctors asking for multiple aggressive and invasive tests just to ensure herself that she did not have cancer.

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Celebrating and Redeeming Flesh

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baby with muscles

I am writing on a warm morning in early autumn. The oak branches are full and alive, corn fields lean with their ripeness, and rabbits graze in the filtered light. As the days grow shorter, I am trying to embrace autumn (and then the long winter) that will soon descend on Northern Europe. To do this, I have been collecting the yellow birch leaves that strew my path, acorns fallen from the night winds, and chestnuts that are still encased in their prickly green shells.

To fully participate in the beauty we find in nature, perhaps we need to start with appreciating our own living nature, beginning with our bodies. Autumn is autumn with all the decline and loss it might evoke, and all its shimmering colors, low filtered sunlight, and the fervent calling of wild geese overhead. This is true of who we are as well. We are who we are … wondrous and onerous, fragile and strong, light and dark.

This time of year also seems to be mirroring my own aging process. Lately, I have experienced a number of what I call OPTs (Old Person Things). I leave the kitchen, walk down the steps into the cellar, and stand bemused as I try to remember what I came down for. I take my wallet out of my purse and put it back without removing the bills that I need. I search for glasses, shoes, jackets and even credit cards that are sitting right in front of me. I watch (horrified at times) as my cognitive skills slow to a near standstill, yet at the same time I can feel myself grow more open, grounded, and at peace.

Take a moment now to wonder about your own body — to find your body wonderful! Your body contains a hundred times more cells than there are stars in the galaxy. Everyday, your heart, on average, does the daily work of lifting 1000 kilos from the ground up to the top of a five-story building. We have 656 muscles throughout the body. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, breathing, thinking, and speech bring us powerful revelations and gifts.

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Radiate Like a Living, Walking Billboard

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Billboards

I often wish I had loads of money so I could buy up space on billboards all over the world. On each road sign, I would advertise a higher quality reminding people that such energy does exist – in life, inside them, inside everyone. Why not write or draw your own billboard of a quality you long to have? Here’s how:

  1. Sit quietly. Breath deeply.
  2. Then choose a higher quality that you would like to develop or come more in touch with. Here are just some suggestions:
    Evocative Words
  3. Once you have selected a quality (try to stick with one at a time), reflect quietly on the meaning of the word. What is its nature? What is its meaning? Take your time. If an image or idea comes to you, hold onto that image. Try not to censor any images.
  4. Try to “feel” the quality that the word embodies. Let it permeate your being. Allow the word and feeling to take you to a time and place in the past when you felt the feeling. Try now to feel it.
  5. Realize the value of this quality. Recognize its purpose and use, especially in this turbulent world. Praise it in your mind. Desire it.
  6. Allow the quality to express itself on your face.
  7. Now take a card and write the word. Elsewhere, record your thoughts and images. You might want to draw your image on the card.
  8. Place the card where you will easily notice it during the day. Where it will easily catch your eye – at your bedside, on your bathroom mirror, on your desk.
  9. Notice your dreams that night.
  10. Throughout the next month, look at your card. Close your eyes and then open yourself to the inner quality your desire.
  11. Resolve as much as you can to be a living example of this quality. Radiate it! Become a living walking billboard of it!