Is it weak to admit you are frightened? I said I was, and people rushed in to tell me there was no need.
There is a need. Denying the fear would not be real. Fear is information. It is telling you something. When I said I wanted to run and keep running like Forrest Gump, that was not madness, that was my body asking to be exhausted. A warrior is not somebody with no fear. A warrior feels it and turns it into fuel. And most of our fear is not even here now. It is next week, or the week after, or down the road.
One thing to try: Next time fear shows up, ask it one question. What are you telling me? Then listen instead of arguing.
In this episode
(1:18) Denying the fear would not be real
(2:37) Forrest Gump, and why I wanted to keep running
(4:23) Feelings as information, not as enemies
(5:31) A warrior has fear and turns it into power
(6:42) Shame, guilt, courage, fear. All of them serve
(9:13) Fear is almost never about right now
(11:26) The fear was real. The thing feared was not
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
The story behind this one
I said I was frightened. Publicly, more than once, in the second week of the first lockdown. And people rushed in to tell me there was no need.
There is a need. Denying it would not have been honest, and honest is the only thing this podcast has ever promised.
I am also hopeful, and oddly excited. I put a webcam on Times Square and it was empty, and something in me went, look at this. All of that is true at once.
Then somebody told me a warrior has no fear. I do not think that is what a warrior is. A warrior feels it and turns it into fuel.
There is something else I want to say here that I have never put in an episode. Ask me what I would do with one hour of an able body and I would give you the polite answers. Walk in a park. Have a shower on my own. Sit on a toilet for an hour.
The honest answer is I would run. And I would keep running, like Forrest Gump, until my legs would not carry me another inch.
I have wanted that for twenty years, and I finally understand why. I want to be exhausted. I want to feel the far end of something and know I am safe. Which is exactly why people get on roller coasters.
What it taught me
Fear is information. It is telling you something, and pushing it away does not stop it talking, it just makes it louder later.
I know that because I have watched my own fears come to nothing. Lying in that bed at eighteen I feared everything. Whether I would ever have a girlfriend. Whether I would ever earn a living. Whether I would ever be a man. Whether I would ever enjoy sex again.
All of it turned out to be unfounded. The fear was completely real at the time and none of it was true.
Here is the difference between love and fear, and it is smaller than people think. Love is here. Fear is almost never here. It is next week, or the week after, or somewhere down the road. When you love somebody and feel fear, it is fear of losing them at some point that has not arrived.
And you know the relentlessly positive people. Notice how often they disappear for a fortnight and come back sunny again. That is the rest of it catching up with them all at once. Deal with it while it is ankle deep and you never have to wade.
Questions people ask
Is admitting fear weak?
The opposite, and I would say that even if it were not my own week. Courage does not exist without fear. There is nothing to be courageous about if nothing frightens you.
What should I do when I am frightened?
Say it to somebody. Sharing fear does not double it. Sitting with somebody and saying I am frightened too takes weight off both of you, which is not how it feels beforehand.
Are you all right?
Yes. This one is about being honest rather than being in trouble. Frightened, hopeful and a bit stimulated by the strangeness of it, all at the same time, which is roughly what being human looked like that month.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
fear · covid · acceptance · vulnerability
Read the transcript
I'm frightened.
And I've said that several times on my lives and in posts in
the last few days on Twitter and Facebook and I've got messages
and I've not come under fire, but I've had people come to me.
There's no need to be frightened.
Get rid of fright.
That's a negative emotion.
Well, I'm just being honest.
And isn't that what we should be?
We're taught to be honest as children.
We're taught not to feel these emotions.
And I believe the spiritual journey is about feeling these emotions,
understanding them, and having appropriate action because of them.
And yet when I look up in a situation like this that the world
has not seen in a whole generation, nobody alive today has
ever seen anything like this.
And I look up and say, I'm frightened.
I have fear inside of me.
I also have optimism.
I also have positivity.
I also have feelings of hope and love and community, spirit, compassion.
I'm not just frightened.
And I think to deny the fear now would just not be real.
And if you want me to talk about some of my other feelings,
since leaving hospital, breaking my neck, I've had this overwhelming
feeling to go for a run.
I'm in an electric wheelchair.
I cannot even stand, let alone take one single step.
I.
And for many years, if you ask me what I would do if I had one hour
of being able bodied and if I was with a girlfriend at the time
and they asked me, I would probably say I'd like to be intimate
with you.
I might say I'd go for a walk in a park, I might shower myself
or go toilet, go and sit on the bog for an hour.
But do you know what the honest answer would be?
I would go for a run.
And I would go for a run so far and I would just keep running
and keep running.
Very similar to the Forrest Gump movie.
And I get that part of the movie, I totally get it where he's
had these leg breaks on nearly always life.
And just one day he says, enough's enough.
And he went for a run and he just kept running.
And then people joined him and then things happened.
And that very famous pit where he steps on some dog mess and someone
says, have you got anything to say?
And he goes, oh, shit happens.
And the guy went on and become very famous with that bumper sticker
saying, shit happens.
I'm sure that's not the real story, but I love the story.
And he kept running and running and people said, why are
you running?
I just am.
Where are you Going nowhere.
Why don't you stop and turn around?
Because I don't want to.
And that's how I feel.
I just want to go for a run.
And I've felt like that for 20 years.
I've been cooped up in houses.
I get it why people want to get out.
I get it why they have fear and we have all these feelings of
anxiety.
All these things are going to start bottling up and bottling up,
and unless we acknowledge them, we're going to explode.
And we need to acknowledge that our children are frightened.
Our parents, grandparents, are frightened.
Fear is a wonderful motivator, and there's nothing wrong with it.
It's what we do with it.
That's what I keep saying.
Just like anger, you know, I could give you a hammer when you're
angry.
You could build something or you could hurt someone.
Is the action that's good or bad.
It's the action that is productive or non productive.
So we need to stop denying fear.
We need to stop denying anger, denying all these wonderful human
feelings of shame and guilt and anxiety.
When we see them as information, when we see them as
something, something's telling us, why do I want to run?
Why do I want to just keep running?
Do you know why?
Because I want to feel exhausted.
I want to run until my literally, my legs and my body will
not take me another millimeter.
I want to feel that extreme.
I literally want to be exhausted and collapse on the road.
And this spiritual journey is about this.
At the moment, we almost have to feel the extreme.
Why do we get on a roller coaster?
Because we want that controlled fear.
We want to go to the edge but know we're safe.
I want to run until I collapse, and I know I'm safe and
I know I'll be okay, but I want to feel that extreme.
And this is the problem.
The more we deny these feelings, the more we push them away.
And I really come under some.
I don't know whether it's not an attack, but it really is that
I should be more positive.
I should be.
I'm a spiritual teacher of some kind.
And I should be more of a warrior.
A warrior is always positive, has no fear.
I think that's untrue.
I think a warrior has fear, but they turn that fear into a power,
into the muscle and the courage to be able to go that step
further.
Taking control of your emotions is not about denying them.
It's about feeling them deeply and living with them.
You know, in some respects, we're going through this wonderful,
amazing, exciting Time.
Yes.
I even have excitement about this time.
It's excitement because I put on a webcam and New York Times Square
is empty.
And that stimulates something in me to go, wow, look at this.
You know, all these feelings are some kind of chemical in your
body stimulating something.
And unless we understand them, listen to them, and we build that
muscle around them to use them in a wise way, then what good are
they?
Why did they evolve?
Why are they here?
What's the point?
You know, shame, guilt, courage, fear, enlightenment, pleasantness,
pleasure.
All of these feelings serve a purpose.
What about love?
We don't choose to push that away.
Oh, I like that one.
I'll keep that one.
Thank you.
Well, how would you know love if you didn't know fear?
How would you know safety and that feeling of comfort and everything
is okay?
Because that's what love is.
Love is knowing everything is okay.
How do you love a baby?
You keep them safe.
You, you treat them, you feed them, just make them comfortable.
You're there for them.
You give them space to be a baby.
How do you love your partner?
You give them space to be who they are.
Well, if they're frightened, allow them to be frightened.
And if you're slightly frightened, sit down with them and
say, it's okay.
I'm frightened, too.
When you share fear, it's not sharing it in a way that you're doubling
it and you're making more fear.
The fear is there anyway.
You're just.
You reduce it.
When you sit down with someone and you put your arm around them,
perhaps not in this social distancing, but when it's all over,
when you can sit down with them or on the Internet or via video,
just look at them and go, do you know what?
I'm frightened, too.
And that's what I want this podcast to be today.
I. I'm frightened.
I'm also slightly stimulated and excited by this because it's
something crazy and new.
I'm also heart opened about it.
Collectively, consciously, it's going to lift us in ways that
we don't know how.
There's going to be less spent on defense.
I'm hopeful of that and more spent on human life.
But to deny an emotion that is there to protect us and help us and
to nurture love within us, yeah, it's true.
Love and fear cannot hold the same space.
But I don't think they're that different.
The only difference is love.
We're here in the moment.
When I love someone, I feel it here.
Now, when I fear, although I feel it now, we're very often not
here now we're fearing something that's going to happen
next week, the week after, or down the road.
That's the only difference.
If we love someone and then we suddenly feel fear, that's because
we fear losing that love down the road.
And that's the only real difference.
And then, of course, one feels fluffy and one feels a little sharp.
One we believe always leads to pain.
Well, I'm not sure which one that is.
We probably think both leads to pain, knowing us humans.
But, yeah, love doesn't lead to pain.
Fear of love leads to pain.
And yes, fear does give pain, but to deny it gives more suffering.
So in a world of uncertainty, in a world that everything is changing,
and I'm telling you, from the very top to the very bottom, you
know, one day old babies can feel this just the same as the leaders
right at the top.
None of them were expecting this.
And I don't think any of them, if they were honest.
I don't think any of you, if you're honest, hasn't took a deep
breath and felt some fear.
And I've always said my podcasts are going to be honest.
That's what they are.
I'll tell you the way it is.
The way I see it, I don't know if I'm right.
Try it out for yourself.
Sit down now and feel what you're really feeling with no fear
of someone saying you're right or wrong or get rid of that or do
this or increase that feeling.
Let them do that.
Leave that to them.
You know, I feared so many things in my life.
When I was lying in bed, I used to fear.
How was I going to live life?
Being paralyzed?
Was I ever going to get a girlfriend?
Was I ever going to settle down?
Was I ever going to be a man?
Was I ever going to be able to earn a living?
Was I ever going to be able to enjoy myself sexually again?
All those things I feared when I was lying in bed, all of them become
unfounded.
They weren't real.
But the fear of that feeling was real at the time.
And when you learn that the fear very often doesn't lead to suffering,
it's because we build that muscle.
So that person that fears climbing the mountain and climbs
it anyway, when he gets to the top of the mountain, looks the other
side, there's another mountain.
He doesn't fear the next one, but he might fear something new,
but he has the courage.
How can you have courage without fear?
Please tell me if you're listening.
To this on anchor, please record a message.
Tell me, can you have fear without courage?
This is what it means to live a deeper life is to be honest about
what we're feeling.
And when we're honest about our feelings, it leads to a deeper
feeling, but it leads to a lot less suffering.
Am I suffering here with my pain?
No.
No.
Because I know it comes and goes.
And I know that pain is a message saying, hey, heads up, something
might be going on, but to deny it would lead to suffering because
it's going to keep, keep knocking on the door.
Have you ever noticed these positive do gooders that are like,
oh, positive about everything.
Do you ever notice how long they actually stay positive about
every few weeks they lock themselves in their homes and say,
don't come near me, I'm really having a hard time.
And then they're coming out all pos and happy again.
That's because every few weeks the other emotions eventually drown
them and they have to wade their way through.
But if we deal with it when it's just like a little paddling
bit, if we acknowledge it, things will be a lot easier for us.
Thank you for listening.
If you can leave a review, if you can share this podcast, if you
can head over to my website.
All my meditations are now free and I'm live every single day,
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