FEAR Archives -

A Child’s Fear

By Simone Lipscomb | March 2, 2014

The floats were slowly moving past with beads and moon pies and other Mardi Gras bounty being thrown from their decks. Music filled the air along with a general happy vibe. Then a loud shot rang out and the little boy in front if me dropped to the street and covered his ears. It was only the pirate float’s mini-cannon firing blanks but to the little boy it was gun fire.

Photographing Mardi Gras is great fun. Capturing different faces and costumes is quite a diversion from the nature photography that is my focus. But on this day my attention kept being drawn to the little boy who repeatedly dropped to his knees and flinched whenever there was the sound of a gun during the parade. Admittedly, I was unnerved a bit at first because the crowd was quite large and we all know anything can happen. But once I knew the source of the blasts it was simply an annoyance. For the child, it was anything but that.

Until reaching ten to twelve years of age, a child is in a concrete stage of learning without the ability to conceptualize and gain understanding of what is real and what is not real. So for the little boy yesterday, the shotgun blanks in the cannons were real gun fire. He couldn’t see over the crowd so could not locate the source of the blasts.

Fear was evident in his eyes and face, in his body movements. I finally knelt down and said, “Those sounds are scary aren’t they?” He nodded and his face relaxed. He went back to waving to floats and gathering beads and moon pies.

I can’t stop thinking about him…and all children who live in fear because of an increasingly violent society. What have we done to create a more gentle world? How have our actions or perhaps our non-actions contributed to the anxiety and fear of our children? How can we help make our communities kinder, more nurturing for our youth?

A quote from A Course in Miracles comes to mind: “What is not love is fear.” Lately I have asked some tough questions and with every hard question I ask the answer always points to love.

So…may we collectively find that which keeps us from loving fully and clear it from our hearts and minds. May love continue to grow and blanket our precious young ones. May the example we set teach our children of love instead of hate, of love instead of fear.

Light of the Soul

By Simone Lipscomb | January 31, 2014

Seeing the light of a person’s soul is one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever known. He had a wide open heart and unbounded love shining forth for me and I had an open heart and mind to receive it. To know love as given through an open heart can be rare, but it need not be.

While it wasn’t a forever relationship for me, the love generated from it lives on strongly in my heart. And I continue to be grateful.

As humans we have moments of allowing our light to shine and other moments when fear takes over and creates a cloak around the light. It can be scary to be open if others are changing around us. When life events create change, the temptation is to withdraw and not risk being open, not risk being vulnerable. That’s when all our filters kick in and we see the world through our wounds instead of with the eyes of spirit. Every person alive has most likely experienced this.

Last week a three hour lunch with a friend produced pages of notes as we bounced ideas off of each other about how to make a difference, how to be a positive force. One of us chewed food while the other spoke…all the while the chewer listened and allowed inspiration to come forth. Then we switched roles. Both of us have experienced frustration in our life’s path and the direction we feel guided. What came from that meeting was the simple idea of allowing love to move through us and open the way. An answer for all?

I find that when I become fearful, I get tense. As I tense my body, my thoughts follow and I feel smaller. And then…love is struggling to shine through the tiny cracks of space left open in my heart. But when I relax my body, my mind relaxes and then my heart opens and there is room for love. Or maybe the mind is first…or maybe the heart. But somehow the mind, body and spirit all work together to create an expansive and open heart. Or one that is shut down. The choice is ours.

As I have worked to move forward in life, I have struggled to understand why my heart keeps returning to that relationship. After months of no contact, my heart still feels the love. Clarity arrived as I finally realized that seeing the light of his soul changed my life for the better. Knowing the light of another’s heart was profound and I’ll not settle for anything less in relationship. But I also understand that maintaing that kind of openness takes a lot of work. And it begins with me. To find others whose hearts are open requires that mine be open. And it requires that I am willing to be vulnerable.

Each of us has the capacity to allow our light to shine. We have choice. When we live more open to love, love becomes the reality, the expectation…the way of being. As we are grounded in love, determined to stay open, we must be disciplined for it is easy to close down, to hide. But love is what will sustain us..not our fears or our anger. Love generates both urgency and patience. As we intend to live love, love changes our reality.

I have tried anger and frustration and impatience. I have tried to force change…but none of that ever works. Only through softening…and opening…and embracing light and love has my life shifted, has my vision cleared.

Love has known me. Light of another’s soul has touched me. That isn’t something I want to forget…ever. This is how we are designed to live.

May we collectively shed the cloaks of anger, hatred, frustration, hurt…. the past….and be willing to show the light of the soul to all.

Building Walls or Building Bridges?

By Simone Lipscomb | October 1, 2013

Walls of steel…walls of stone…..wooden walls…walls of fog…icy walls…emotional walls. To protect….set apart…keep safe…isolate…obscure.

Who among us hasn’t constructed a wall of some sort? Perhaps a wall in a home to provide protection from the elements or to create space within the home for privacy. Perhaps a storage room or garage wall to keep property safe. Walls are an important part of our lives. Sometimes they are the only thing between survival and death.

We construct inner walls as well. Many times these are erected in childhood when we’ve been harmed and we do this to protect that deep, sacred part of us to insure it doesn’t get wounded, scarred…annihilated. It starts out as an intelligent, survival skill but as we mature that structure becomes a liability that cuts us off from the world and usually from the people that love us the most.

One of the saddest things to witness is a person who refuses to deconstruct such walls and therefore creates a tighter and tighter corner in which to exist. If people in that person’s life act outside a very narrowly defined behavioral spectrum, his or her walls push them away and they are exiled forever. No amount of love can penetrate such rigid structures.

The perception is filtered through old wounds that fester like poison within and keep joy and true contentment from being accessible. And while I have witnessed such tragedy individually, microcosmically, I see this on a macrocosmic scale in how one political party relates to another; how our country relates to other countries and even how we relate to the planet.

The basis of all of this wall-building? Fear.

The Course in Miracles states: What is not love is fear. Over 28 years ago I read that statement and have pondered it. I see the absolute wisdom behind those simple words.

I believe it is time to deconstruct walls. Inner walls erected between individuals, communities, political parties, countries…the planet. If we aren’t coming from a place of love then we are coming from fear. Is this really how we want to live? Can we make positive changes in relationships, communities, countries…on the planet if we continue to base our behaviors on fear? Look around and the answer is evident.

If we must build anything let us build bridges from my heart to yours, from yours to others, from community to community, political party to political party…country to country….human hearts to the planetary heart. Who knows…when we meet in the center of the bridge most wondrous things can happen. When we choose to come from our hearts instead of our wounds miracles are birthed.

Whole Lot A Shakin’

By Simone Lipscomb | August 6, 2013

I was kneeling in the lush grass, removing my camera from the black leather bag when the minister said, “Let’s begin the rehearsal with a moment of prayer.” Since I was already kneeling I decided to remain on my knees and lift up my own prayers as mother-of-the-bride. It wasn’t mere chance that found me connected to the Earth Mother as we gathered to walk through the ceremony that would join my daughter and her fiancé as life parters…as wife and husband. I felt the strength of the Great Mother flow through me and surround Emily and Kevin and all who gathered that afternoon in the beauty of Dow Gardens. It was a continuation of an already powerful day.

Earlier that morning, while participating in a Pure Barre class with Em, my legs were shaking from fatigue (that’s what’s supposed to happen….but it’s quite challenging). As my knees were literally knocking together from the chair position I held on tip-toes at the barre, I wasn’t sure I would be able to hold the pose. The instructor reminded us that when our muscles shake it means they are changing. The truth of her statement struck a very deep chord within me that brought tears to my eyes.

The process of personal change and growth is far from easy. In fact, it’s the most difficult commitment anyone can make. It demands nothing less that complete willingness to look within at our behaviors and heal them so that we can move into a clearer expression of our true nature, our higher selves. This can generate a lot of fear and I remember many times when fear gripped me until I shook.

If you’re shaking you’re changing. Physically…emotionally….mentally…spiritually. That’s very reassuring…movement is a sign that progress is occurring.

Never would I have imagined that my daughter’s wedding could bring up so much emotion. Tender feelings of sacred love between mother and child, grief from choices made decades ago, joy for the love she has found, and a feeling of closing a huge chapter of growth in life so that I can move forward. Forgiving myself, forgiving others and celebrating the potential that life promises with an open heart.

Love does that. It shakes us to our core when we open ourselves to it. True love rips us open and our willingness to stay with the shaking, the terror of opening ourselves so widely that we heal is an act of courage. This love is found in all interpersonal relationships. Feeling such profound and vast love for my daughter has transformed me….and will continue to in the years ahead.

A Course in Miracles teaches this foundational truth: What is not love is fear. Twenty-eight years after first reading that statement it continues to deepen in meaning for me. Practicing this one, simple truth is worthy of a lifetime of work and dedication.

The beauty of Emily and Kevin’s ceremony reverberates within my mind and heart today as I allow space to feel the shift within myself and between us. There was a whole lot a shakin’ goin’ on leading up to and during the past week, especially at the Pure Barre classes I took. Shaking physically opened up emotional pathways that unlocked freedom to love more deeply.

And perhaps the most wonderful thing of all is I didn’t lose my daughter. I truly gained a son.

Awakening from the Dream

By Simone Lipscomb | March 6, 2013

View from Blue Ridge Parkway near Cherokee, NC

It was a dark and cloudy night. I was riding my bicycle in the mountains and had followed a friend to a turning point. After he made it to his driveway, I turned to go but mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up behind a fence and at the bottom of a very steep, winding road. I knew the road would take me home but the danger involved was too great in the darkness.

So I turned around and headed back beside the fence to the main road. But along the way saw huge, fresh bear tracks or scratches where a bear had claimed his territory. I got very frightened and as I pedaled faster, I passed a large, dark shape. I became even more frightened. Then something started chasing me and as I glanced down I saw it was a large coyote. I pedaled faster. Another large coyote appeared and both were attempting to drag me off my bicycle. I tried kicking them and launched my cat off the bed. He wasn’t impressed.

My legs actually ached and I was so shaken that I sat up and wrote notes on the dream and attempted to decipher it. What the heck had I eaten for dinner?

When I went back to sleep I dreamed I helped people speak to large gatherings. In fact, I even helped Bill Moyers speak to a group of students. His chair, for the gathering, was beautifully colored in white with red and purple flowers.

Maybe the answer to my nightmare came in my final dream of the night–Bill Moyers. He worked with Joseph Campbell in a series entitled The Power of Myth. As I started researching on the internet I found an interview Moyers did with Campbell on the journey of the Hero archetype. Within this 51 minute recording I found answers.

Entrance to underwater cave in Akumal, Mexico

Campbell spoke of this journey we undertake–that of slaying the ego–to find our true nature. In this journey there must be courage as we face our darkest, deepest fears. The journey includes a theme of death and resurrection…a dying to a part of us that no longer serves us and being born into a greater version of ourselves.

The journey always begins by going into darkness, our unconscious.This triggered an experience I had in meditation last week where I journeyed into dark water, through a vortex and ended up connecting with a huge whale. Campbell spoke of the whale as being a symbol where all that is unconscious within us is held. He says the unconscious is the edge or interface between what can be known and what can never be discovered. We must learn to live life with knowledge of its Mystery and our own Mystery.

Life is an adventure of being alive. We journey into our own unknown in order to slay the ego so that we can follow the soul’s path. He said the journey to save the self actually saves the world. We bring the world to life by bringing life to the self.

“Follow your bliss,” he reminded as I listened intently. The ego tells us why we can’t follow our bliss, the path of the soul. It’s what keeps us small. The adventure of the Hero is having the courage to do it anyway.

There is within each of us a quiet center and from this center is where all action comes. Unless the center is found, we’re torn apart because we act from outside ourselves. This always leads to ruin in some form, he reminded.

The dream was a reminder for me that I am on a journey into my own life, my own unconscious. I choose this journey willingly and admit it is scary as hell at times. We all have darkness or unknown dragons or coyotes nipping at our heels. And it may indeed feel as if they want to slay us.

Campbell said that as the Hero leaves the realm of light and moves toward the threshold of the unconscious, the monster comes. The Hero is either resurrected after being torn to bits by the animal or kills the animal, tastes the blood and transcends.

I suppose we each have the choice of continuing our slumber or taking the journey of the Hero and risking everything to find our true nature. Ultimately it is a journey we do alone but made sweeter by those who have the courage to shine a light for us as we emerge from the dark waters to welcome us back home.