Life holds you in its hand

I read recently that most people would rather suffer physical pain than experience uncertainty.  Amazing, isn't it, when you consider that all of life is uncertain?  Being human carries with it all sorts of uncertainties -- about relationships, about jobs, about life itself. 

I also ran across this stunning poem by Rainier Maria Rilke:

You mustn't be frightened
if a sadness
rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety,
like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and over
everything you do.
You must realize that something is
happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand
and will not let you fall.

This is what the Spirit/Self knows.  Life never forgets us, never lets us fall.  The Universe is always there, offering us the gift of everything.  Fear and anxiety are simply emotions; we do not have to live by them.  When we get caught up in them, we actually make them worse.  I don't know how many sleepless nights I have spent after a small fear came into my mind and I picked it up and started listening to it.  Listening is like feeding the fear - it grows and grows and takes on new shape and new ominousness.  If instead I simply say, "Hello, friend," to fear, like I would say it to fondness, it is merely there, sitting quietly, instead of in control.

Learning to befriend our fear is not complicated, but it is difficult.  We have been trained to fear our fear!  That must be true if we as a society would rather suffer physical pain than uncertainty and its inherent fear.  Here's the secret:  It's just another feeling.  We have feelings all the time.  If we just acknowledge that, and let them flow through us while noticing the teaching they bring, then what was fear of fear turns into grace.

Remember, life holds you in its hand.  You are the Beloved.

Blessings,
Rev. CC