By Mary Cucarola – 6/22/24
“Getting involved in the darkness does not dispel darkness; it feeds it”. ~Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
Last week, as I was sweeping the deck at my house near the patio table, I found myself surrounded by wasps. I let out a scream, dropped the broom, and ran back inside. Bad memories of being stung by a wasp when I was kid crept in. Fear hit me like a brick, and I didn’t go back outside for the rest of the day.
Michael Singer says people don’t understand that fear is just a thing. It’s another object in the universe that you can experience. You can do one of two things with fear: you can recognize that you have it and work to release it, or you can keep it and try to hide from it.
I have been re-reading The Untethered Soul this week, one of my all-time favorite books, particularly the chapter on letting go. I feel like I have some “stuff” I need to let go of in my life and haven’t been able to do it. I think it may be the reason I am not able to write freely like I used to.
You continually go through life trying to create safety to be okay and prevent disturbing things from happening. Instead of letting go, you try to control it and life becomes “me against” the situation. The alternative, which is difficult, is to decide not to fight and accept that life is not under your control. Once you decide not to fight it, you have to face the fear.
How do you face fear?
When the stuff that holds you down rears its ugly head, you need to let it go. You simply allow the pain to come into your heart and pass through. If you do that, it will pass through. I know this is true because my grief counselor had me do this very thing after Cody died.
Every time I felt the awful pain of losing him, she told me to let it come into my body and let it pass through, not push it away. I did this for an entire year I worked with her, and it worked. I didn’t push away my pain or hide from it, I felt it and then I let it go. It was exceedingly difficult at times. It hurt bad, unbelievably bad.
It won’t be easier if you push it away, hoping to take the edge off. If you want to be free to the core of your being, you must let go right away because it will not be easier later. This is true with the big or little things that disturb you.
Let’s say you notice something in your heart that feels uncomfortable, if you stay in awareness, what you are noticing will pass. If you don’t let go, you’ll notice the energy that got stimulated in your heart works like a magnet. The next thing you know, you won’t be there. You will begin to react, and you will get involved in shifting your energies coming from your heart negatively.
You get lost in your uncomfortable “stuff” and hope you don’t say or do anything you’ll regret. You lose your clarity and confidence. You think about quitting your job, leaving your marriage, giving up on your addicted kid, or stopping writing completely. Five minutes have gone by, or an hour, or even a year while you are totally lost in your stuff.
This is the anatomy of falling. When you are in this state, your tendency will be to act to fix things. You don’t have the clarity to see what’s going on; you just don’t want to feel uncomfortable anymore.
You may feel you have to do something drastic. Your mind starts saying all kinds of things because it doesn’t like this space, and it wants to get away as fast as it can. Imagine if you do one of the things that mind is telling you to do, you are allowing that negative energy to express itself and it is almost impossible to let go. Getting involved in the darkness does not dispel the darkness, it feeds it. I have made some bad decisions in this state of mind.
If you feel shame, let it go. If you feel guilt, let it go. If you feel hurt, let it go. If you feel fear, let it go. Don’t fall, let it go. The bigger it is, the higher the reward for feeling it right away and then letting it go and the worse the fall if you don’t. That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up. You just have to be willing to try to feel it.
This morning, I retrieved the wasp killer spray from my garage and sprayed those little devils until they were all dead. I turned the chair upside down and shook it until their little nest fell into the yard. I fearlessly walked around my deck with coffee in my hand, checking on the hummingbirds and flowerpots. Then, I sat down and wrote this blog.
Happy Summer!
By Mary Cucarola – 6/22/24