Living in fear?

What is your mind focused on most of the time?  Take some minutes to sit and examine your thoughts.

Are they generally upbeat and optimistic, or do you, like me, find thoughts creeping in like ‘What’s this pain…is it cancer?’, ‘I hope the kids are alright.’, ‘I’m really worried about so and so…’,  ‘I hope nothing happens to my husband in London, what with the terror threats….’?  It is natural to worry about some things, but we really need to try to determine just how many of our thoughts are focused on the nasty things we have seen or heard practically everyday of our lives.  How much of this is taking up our mind and affecting our standard of ‘Living’?

Because if you do think of worrisome things a lot, then you are ‘Living’ in fear, and let’s take it one step further, if we are frightened of something happening most of the time we are not really ‘Living’ at all.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t worry from time to time, or have times when we end up obsessing over what we have said, or done, wrong. My feelings are that many people live with a mindset which is, quite frankly, pretty damaging.

The tarot card I have chosen for this blog is The Devil.

Really, in tarot, The Devil is about addictions or habits that we are perhaps ashamed of and this card represents the imaginary control these addictions have over us, but which, in fact, can be removed with our own will power.

In this picture The Devil’s hand is reaching towards the female who is cowering.  She seems to be at his mercy, and there is none, he will control her mind by his own will and there is nothing she can do about it.  She is weeping and afraid, and it appears there is no escape from this demon, and the fire which surrounds her.  The truth is she is not in chains, she is not bound to him……… she can release herself as soon as she likes.  But has she examined her circumstances, in an effort to escape?  Is she allowing herself to be manipulated because she wants to be?  Is she just too weak to fight?

What IS happening is that she is allowing a situation to overpower her to such an extent that she feels incapable of, or unable to, escape.  If she were in a film we’d be screaming at her to get up and run, and calling her an idiot!!

This card is a brilliant one, because it shows only too clearly how we can be managed by outside influences which in fact have no real control over us.  And it covers all the worries and despair we carry round with us daily, such as we have not given to as many charities as we should have, wondering whether we have contracted some flesh-eating bug that has been found in the country, or fearing that (oh my God) some horrendous giant spider might take to living in the bathroom!  We are blessed with the media and all the knowledge we have at our fingertips, but it is too much at times – and certainly too much horror.  It is not often balanced with beautiful, inspiring information or stories that would lift our wearied spirits, even though there are many places you can find them.

Can we do anything about this?  Of course we can.

We have the power to examine what we watch on TV, what we read in the newspapers, whether we focus on the horrors of the world.  We have the power to examine whether we are ‘Living’ in fear.  We can look for the signs that we can escape and it is down to us to escape.

I am not saying we should ignore the evil in the world, I am saying it is up to us to balance the bad with the good – nobody will do it for us.  If you want to watch the news before bed, do it, but how about reading a story from an inspirational book before putting out the light.

We can take control, we can manage what is going through our mind and actively sift through our thoughts to erase the worries that we don’t need, and can’t do anything about.  We can actively change our thought patterns in a second, even if it is by looking at a picture on the wall, or watching how a bird flies through the wind outside the window.  We can ‘park’ some worries until we can proactively deal with the problem at hand.  We can learn how to divert our thoughts from the fearful to the fruitful, and see how quickly those pains ease, how our spirits are lifted and how much more joyous we feel; how we are not ‘Living’ in fear any more but just Living and enjoying our life with so much more freedom and ease of heart.

And most empowering of all, it is great to know that we can kick The Devil’s arse out the door and choose the way we want to Live.  Think about it……..

I’m choosing to be joyous.

Patricia x