Creating A New Relationship With Fear

In this episode I share about being present with our feelings: Specifically anxiety and fear. There are times when we don't want to be in our body/minds, but staying present, sober and clear, and moving through them provides us with the greatest gifts of healing and transformation. I share my own personal shamanic journey through fear, and how shamanic meditation provides us with profound shifts in our thinking. Bringing us from our human experience to our spiritual one.

Transcript

Welcome to the Heal with Alchemy podcast. I'm Marisa, Shamanic healer and meditation teacher. This podcast is for all magical creatures, Anyone looking to deepen into self-love and spiritual practice. Join me on a journey to the wisdom of your own heart. Hello everyone. Welcome back. I am so happy and grateful to be here with you. I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who's been listening in and it was so wonderful the first month of launch to get so much amazing feedback and I'm very grateful. There was then about a six week lull, A break in me sharing with you and us spending time together and you know, Life happened unexpectedly. And I had just another initiation and the underworld to go through. So I just wasn't able to hold this face, But I am back and I am here and I'm just grateful for you for hanging on with me and listening in. So today what I want to talk about is suffering and being present with our suffering. So I've been sober and in recovery for 14 years, Which means I don't do any of the drugs, Even pharmaceutical drugs. So being present is something that I don't like to use. Well, I don't like to use this word and I do like to use this word. It's kind of like I'm forced, Especially in the moment. That's what it feels like when I'm really, Really struggling. I get, I can get really resentful that I have to feel all the feelings that I can't just, You know, Smoke a bowl or have a drink or just do something. Take a Xanax to like calm my fight or flight that when I'm going through a really, Really challenging time and I don't want to be in my body and I don't want to be in my mind, I don't have the option to really escape. Now I think you can find anything to escape. Netflix is a way to escape. There are food is a way to escape. So there are other ways that we relationship sex like we find other ways to escape, Of course. So I'm not saying that I don't engage in any of those other things. But when it comes to really being present with feeling deep suffering for an extended period of time or a lot of anxiety or fear for an extended period of time, I have to sit through all that or I choose to I should say, But in the moment, It feels like a half to if like we're being really honest, Right. But I had this profound experience over the last six or seven weeks because I went through something that was so emotionally challenging for me. And it really affected me on a spiritual, Physical level as well. And I had this moment about, I don't know, Five or six days into it where I was just like profoundly aware of the fact that I was feeling all of the feelings. Like I had this that compassionate observer that I work with all the time, Really practicing being in my divine self so I can feel the separation of my human self and my divine self when I need to. It was almost like I had this moment where I just had this up level of consciousness and I was looking kind of looking at myself and my emotions and feelings and, And I was just like, Wow, You are, You don't get to leave here. Like this is where the healing comes and I know you don't feel it or see any thing good coming out of this in this moment because all of you, All you are feeling is anxiety and fear, But something is happening here for you on a massive level. And it was just this feeling that I had. It didn't, I didn't get to live in that space the entire time because the whole point was for me to move through what really felt like a detox. It felt like I became so consumed and addicted to my human experience, Specifically just kind of one area, One role in my life. And in that role and in that area, I forgot who I was. I forgot my divinity and I forgot it because I stopped being who I was and I stopped being who I was out of fear. Fear is the mind killer. That's from Dune and I love that. Fear is the mind killer. I was so consumed with so much fear and I didn't even know it was happening. That's what's so wild. You know, I've had these profound moments in my life where I've hit a bottom, Right? I hit a bottom when I got sober. I hit a bottom when I was just done speaking to myself in a horrible way and not loving myself and hating myself and being mean to myself. And I hit a bottom when I found the four agreements and changed the way I saw myself in the world. And then this was another bottom for me. This was the realization that I can become addicted to people and that I am codependent and that I have old wounds that need to be healed and that I can very easily love myself in so many areas of my life but when it comes to the relationships that feel more risky or the relationships that I really want to have, Then it is in that space that I can completely lose myself. And it was shocking. It was shocking to experience such fear and anxiety and a mistrust for myself because when you start doing this healing work, You learn to trust yourself and the conflict inside of you happens when you want to make a decision or a choice but your fear is getting in the way and you just feel like you can't. And I had been living in that fear space for a really long time. My heart was telling me to let go of the drug, To let go, To stop controlling. My heart was saying, Stop, Be done. But my fear, My mind, My human, I wasn't ready. And so of course in my life, The bottoms come in a very dramatic way. I mean, They come as like a melt, Essentially just like a meltdown of mind, Body, Spirit. And I had that breakdown. I hit that bottom. And the beautiful thing about a bottom is it usually if you allow yourself to hit the bottom and you allow yourself to remove yourself from the situation or stop the thing or whatever it is, Is it doesn't take long for you to begin to remember who you are again. And that's kind of what happened for me is that I felt a spaciousness once I trusted myself to make a decision that I needed to make. I actually felt relief. I felt a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of fear and a lot of crying and a lot of anxiety and a lot of fight or flight in my body and fear of the unknown. But I felt an inner peace because I listened to myself because I trusted myself. I trusted that part of me that was screaming at me to pay attention, That was asking me to do something differently. So when you think about where you're at, Just asking yourself the question, Do I trust myself right now? And am I living inside of that trust? And when we ask ourselves these questions, Remember we're compassionately observing, We're just tuning in. We don't have to make some huge drastic choice or change because sometimes we're not ready to make that. And for me, I usually have to hit some crazy bottom for me to make a choice that feels really hard. But really tuning into, Am I living inside of a trust for myself, My intuition? You know, It's so hard sometimes for us to trust our intuition because I know that we also experience a lot of anxiety and fear and sometimes our anxiety and fear, It feels like intuition and we don't really know what choice to make because we don't know if we're living in some type of anxiety or if this is really truly how we feel. The only way to learn to trust yourself is to take the action of trust, Which means that it's going through these times of not trusting yourself for so long until you hit a bottom or for going against yourself. That's how we learn. I really think that's how we learn any type of transformation is just by going through the experience and then when we get out the other side, We can go, Okay, It took me this long to trust myself and make that choice. But when I did, It felt so good. And then I can look back and go, Okay, So that was really me yelling at myself to do something differently. That was that part of me. You know that part of you. If there is something gnawing at you, A feeling or something gnawing at you, I believe that you know the difference between that and some type of anxiety and fear. Sometimes we have to get quiet. We have to do the meditations. We have to go within. We have to see them visually. We have to check in. I knew, Um, I knew what I wanted to do and I knew what I was feeling was very, Very real. But I was really scared. So it takes the time it takes for us to really create space, To make hard choices that are going to be painful and to put ourselves first, To create boundaries, To put ourselves first. And the suffering that comes with painful choices in our lives is no joke. You could be in a situation where you're really uncomfortable every day, But the thought of shifting it in some way or leaving it in some way or ending it in some way is far more scary than the day to day because you've gotten so used to the day to day suffering because you know that you know what that looks like, What it looks like on the other side. Well, We're just not sure. And our disaster minds will think the absolute absolute worst. I'll tell you what was on the other side of mine was not what I thought it was going to be at all. It wasn't. But fear is the mind killer. And it keeps us in these false safe places. It's a trickster who tells us you don't want to suffer. You don't want to feel that pain. This pain, You know, This pain, You know, This suffering, Just stay here. Just stay with me here. Even though every fiber of your being every part of you, There's this other part of you that's like, No, I don't want to keep doing this. I do not want to keep doing this, Even though that exists inside of you. This is just part of our human experience. It's part of our initiation into facing our fear into feeling the uncomfortable feelings. And we can do that. We can do that. There was something very powerful for me about feeling everything as it was coming, Even though it felt so intense, Because it was a new experience for me in sobriety. It was it was just a different thing and a new experience for me as a woman who's been on this healing path and has a deep connection to the other realm and my higher self. This was like a first for me inside of this type of container of moving through a challenge. And because this isn't just like responding to the small challenges like we talked about in last episode, Like this is those big choice life challenges, Right? These are like those bigger things that we know it's going to be hard. We just know it's going to be hard. And I had this moment where I it was like, You know, Nine in the morning and I my body had been in fight or flight for about what felt like two weeks. So my mind was actually doing really well because I was still I felt peace, Creating spaciousness for myself and tending to myself and I felt all this connection to my meditation practice and I was going into the other realm and doing these deep journeys on my fear and in just cutting cords and doing all these things. But my body was in fight or flight. And I was standing in the kitchen. And I just was like, I need a Xanax. Like how am I supposed to get through this without outside help? In quotation marks like a Xanax. Like how am I supposed? I can't feel this way. This is too hard. This is too much. When's it going to stop? You know, And I was angry that I was in recovery. I was angry that I couldn't just take a couple Xanaxes and because of my body needed it, You know, In my mind. Like, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep feeling this. And you know, That thought is there, But I know I can't take one. But I have to tell you, It was I almost felt this like justification because my body was struggling so much. And isn't that just a medicine? Can I just use it for my, You know, Like I really thought about it. And you know, Knowing that I can't do that, And really, I just was like, Hey, What are my alternatives? My alternatives are, You know, Vetiver on my feet and balance and serenity on my chest oils and, Um, Drinking ice. It was drinking sleepy time tea at 9am. And then I was just feeling it. Just surrendering to what's happening in my body because it's in fight or flight for a reason. It's trying to tell me something. It's moving through the experience with me. And I have to let it because if I was just to take the Xanax and my body would think it was okay. And it wouldn't be okay. I'd be blocking my energy body and my physical body from the experience that it needs to have to move through because not only does your mind need to move through the challenge, But your body has to move through it as well. So there was no false sense of what was happening in my life, Like everything was happening. And my body and my mind was feeling everything as it was happening. And I just remember, Like, You know, Multiple weeks after that, When I was coming out the other side, I was like, Wow, I can't believe I endured that. And I made it. Like, Wow, My body got to move through the pain and suffering as well. And I didn't stop it or halt it from doing what it needed to do. I just took it a minute at a time. I was present with every single feeling and fear. And you know what happens when you're present with something is you get an opportunity to look at it to see it to transform it into shape shift it. So I went on a journey with fear. I took myself on a journey. And I closed my eyes and I went to the other realm. And I want to share with you what my journey was because I think this is why shamanic meditation is so important. This is why I teach others to do it. This is why I walk you through it is because when you're in these moments, You can have a complete energetic, Spiritual and mental shift from going into the other realm and facing whatever it is. And in this case, In this instance, For me, It was fear. And so I went to the other realm to meet my fear. And I'm gonna I wrote about it because it was such a powerful experience. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna share it with you right now. I'm going to read it to you. And this is very, This isn't this is very intimate. This is very vulnerable. This is like my deepest. This is my deepest stuff that I'm sharing with you. I'm hoping that you will be able to feel some type of connection and just knowing that you're not alone, Right? No matter where you're at on your journey, No matter how healed we might think we are, How many years of recovery we have, Like, That doesn't matter. You know, Fear is something that is with us that will always be with us and that I'm not sure we can ever rid of. And I think this journey was a profound example to me in my own life, Just this realization of, Of shifting my relationship to fear and it changed my life. I mean, This one journey completely shifted things for me. And it made me realize that if I had to go through all of this stuff I was going through, Just to get to this place to have this journey with fear, Then it was totally worth it. That's that's how powerful it was. So, I'm going to read this to you. And it is titled, Stardust. I landed softly, But with intention. The tips of my fingers and the bottom of my feet, Hitting the cold sand at the exact same time. My back arched, My gaze up, Waiting for the landscape to take its form. I have no clothes on, But I am not naked. I am much taller, Leaner and darker than I am in my human form. My long black hair falls along my arms until it touches the earth. I've been here many times before. A place to meet my guides, Cut cords, Time travel into the future and the past. But every time it is different. A forever changing landscape mirroring my internal world. The sky is black and a bright moon illuminates the desert floor. It is flat, Open, And I can feel its beating heart beneath my feet. Suddenly great shadows come from my right and then my left. I tighten at first and then exhale with relief. Giant ancient trees. It is just my sacred forest here to hold space for what is to come. I am here to meet my fear. I stand tall and call in my guides. My crow, My wolf, And the leathered skin shaman who only ever speaks to me with his eyes all circle behind me. I am ready. I open up my heart center and my body begins to ache. From fear, Meet me. A thick black oil pulls at the bottom of my feet quickly flooding the desert floor. It begins to shape shift making its way up to the sky suffocating the light of the moon. A giant black faceless octopus with large tentacles growing from its round center. They quickly slide across the earth, Up my legs, And wrap themselves around me. One, Two, Three, Four, Five coils around my body. From my hips up to my shoulders this dark mass begins to squeeze me. It feels like a pressure my body shouldn't be able to withstand. A squeezing so tight my spirit screams to leave my body. Every fiber of my being aches to escape my skin, My bones desperately wishing they would break in half or collapse in on themselves to relieve the pressure. Every part of me ready to succumb to death to not have to feel the pain anymore. But there is nothing I can do. Nowhere to escape. I am forced to feel everything. And I hear a voice call out to me, More. Show me your fear. Immediately I opened my mouth and begin to scream. Black oil violently soars out of my mouth onto the landscape. I see visions of all of my fear scanning my past for every moment, Every interaction, Every time and space. I felt deeply afraid. It is so much. It is too much. And I begin to feel rage. A heat begins to fill my body. Suddenly a flash. Pitch black sky. A single face. It is mine. A younger me. I am screaming. A flood of emotions. Anger, Grief, Frustration, Abandonment. It isn't fair. I don't deserve this. Why is it always so hard? Why can't you just give me what I need? A flash again. I am pulled out of the other realm. I'm lying on my bed. My body aches. I can still feel the weight on my chest. Tears flood down my cheeks, Soaking my pillow. I must go back. I am not done. And I close my eyes again. And I say, Fear, Show yourself to me. I am standing coiled in black. And I ask my guides to help release me from its grasp. I am so exhausted. Fear, I say, I will not run from you. Just let me go. If you want me, You can have me. The tentacles suddenly release themselves from my chest. I fall to my knees, Breathing heavily. I stand and slowly begin to move towards the black mass. I walk along it, Inside of it, Atop it, Underneath it. I surrender. I let the darkness consume me. Standing in its center, I say, Fear, If you want me, You can have me. For every time I try to flee from you, You tighten your grip. I surrender. There is no relief. The pain has not disappeared. The tears continue to rush down my cheeks. But my body stops heaving. My breath begins to calm me. And then I feel spirit. The landscape begins to expand, And the black mass appears to get smaller, Even though it hasn't changed in size at all. I can see the moon again, The stars, And the other galaxies. I can feel the soft sand beneath me and my guides alongside me, The black mass now floating above me. And I hear a voice say, When you make room for the fear, When you sit with the fear, When you meet your fear, You loosen its grip. But how can I get rid of the fear entirely? I cried. And the voice replied, You will never be able to get rid of the fear. The fear is trying to protect you. It was squeezing you so tight to try to keep you safe, To keep nothing and no one from hurting you. You think your fear comes from your current state of mind, But it does not. It feeds off apparitions, Stories and trauma is like a child wild with no self awareness attaching to things. It is simply a mechanism to tell you when you're in danger, But it is flawed. It feeds off lies and micro fears and tells you your life is in danger when it is not. The only way to overcome it is to meet it. It is to believe you're stronger than it. To believe from the deepest part of your body and soul that nothing and no one can ever destroy you. Yes, Your experience may be destroyed your relationships, Your dreams, Your ambitions, Even your physical body. But you divine being made of stardust cannot and will not ever be destroyed. You must not live in fear. You must make the best of every moment, Every sunrise, Every full moon, Every hug, Every kiss, Every laugh, Every taste, Every smell, Every sight and every sound. For in one instant, It can in one day will cease to exist exactly as it does in this very moment. So when fear wraps its tentacles around you, And the oil begins to rise in your throat, Acknowledge its message. Relax your body and hold it in your arms. Sit with it. See it. Love it. And remind it of your divinity. Find it your stardust and you have nothing to fear for you will never be destroyed. The dark mass disappears. I sit wide eyed, The base of my spine begins to twinge. I turned to my guides. They already knew. They wanted to tell me for a long time, But it wasn't time. Every moment leading up to this was imperative for me to truly understand, To know and to feel it in my body is truth. I feel myself being pulled out of the other realm and back into my bed. I can feel my divinity like I never had felt it before. And for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of my fear. I am stardust. I never can and never will be destroyed. So can we learn to love the mind killer? I had an experience the next morning. I was getting ready and distracted and wasn't really feeling any fear about anything. And then I got in my car and I suddenly felt the fear and I could see it now though. You know, This black oily faceless octopus and the funny thing that happened was is when I was, You know, As turning the keys on, I had my hands on the steering wheel and the feeling came and I just saw this, This black, You know, Octopus sitting in the center of my chest cause that's where my fear is. And I just suddenly saw it as like a baby octopus. And I was like, You're not, You're not sitting there today. So you can wrap yourself around my wrist. And suddenly it was just this really cute black baby octopus made its way from my chest down my arm and wrapped itself around my wrist and it was scared and it was fear, You know. And I'm like, That's where you belong now. I can't, I can't let you sit in the center of my chest anymore. You know, I'm going to have to learn to love you and not see you as a killer. You know, Can I have compassion for my fear and can I know deep down it's trying to protect me even though it's doing a very flawed job at it. And having this little baby octopus around my wrist is something I can, I can do. Having it in the center of my chest or oil in my throat or all of that, That I was able to release in that vision and to really see it and experience it. I was done with it sitting in my chest with letting it consume me, You know, But I had to face it. I had to face it and I did. And it was a bookmark in my life of being with my fear in a completely different way than I ever had before. And, Um, I really want to invite you to journey with your fear. Next time you're feeling it to close your eyes, To take yourself to your favorite landscape and to say, Fear, Show yourself to me because you might be surprised at what comes. I was very surprised from that vision and my guides were very audible. They shared some deep messaging with me that I, I hadn't had a vision like that before. And I've gone on a lot of journeys, You know, So I just want to invite you to, To meet your fear and to sit with your fear and your emotions and your feelings and to be with it. If that's grief, If that's anxiety, If that's stress, If anything that you can close your eyes and you can, You can see it and experience it in a different way. I don't know if you've ever seen that TV show, The United States of Tara. It was one of my favorite shows because she has, You know, Um, DID. So where she like turns into other people, Like multiple personalities, Like Sybil. Um, You know, In the whole show, I don't want to give away the show, But the whole thing is that they take over these different parts of her takeover and she doesn't exist when they take over. She doesn't know what's happening. She's not there for it. There's no rules and guidelines, So they make a mess of her life. And when she comes back, She's cleaning up the mess and a whole part of the integration of all of the personalities and the archetypes is them coming to like the conclusion that she's in charge. That if they want to take over and have their time to play, That's fine, But there are some rules and there are some things that need to happen and you know, She is present for everything. And I always thought that was such a beautiful metaphor and visual just for the different human experiences we have in our lives and how fear can take over us in such a deep way that we forget who we are. We actually can disassociate when we're feeling so much fear, Trauma or anxiety. We can come out of our bodies. I mean, It's wild, But when we face it and sit with it and we remind it that, Hey, You're not in charge fear, Then it can turn from this giant black mouse in the center of your chest to this really cute little black octopus that just hangs out on your wrist. It's like, I know you're going to be there. I get it. I surrender, But I'm not going to hide from you anymore because when we hide, We stop living in our authentic truth. We stop trusting ourselves. We stop making choices that are the best for us. You know, And that message I got of like, What's the worst that can happen? Like, You're never going to be destroyed. Like it's going to be okay. You know, You're going to be okay no matter what. And I believe that we can be okay no matter what. Man, It takes a lot of courage and strength and willingness and fight to lean into the tools to not drink ourselves, Smoke ourselves, Take pills ourselves to death. If you're at a place where you want to do something different and you don't want to escape your fear anymore, I really want to invite you to explore it. You have the courage and the strength and if you don't feel like you do, Then it's really important to get some help from someone that you trust or therapist or healer. But to have someone there to help you, To teach you how to walk through these, Like walk through life on life's terms, Because life's hard. It's beautiful. And there's all this joyful stuff that comes with it. But it's also just really, Really hard, You know. It's hard. Now, The gift I got was coming out the other side. And I got to do that. I magically had a women's retreat planned during this time and it was life changing for me because I really remembered who I was and all the work I've done to get to a place to to love myself. You know, As I am to trust myself and to trust spirit is going to take care of it, That I'm going to be OK, You know, And that I can leave a lot of space and openness for the mystery and I have to control everything. My choices are not going to affect my divine destiny, Really, Because the destiny of my heart is going to happen regardless of some of these smaller choices, I guess is what I'm trying to say is I can just trust. I don't need to know everything. I don't need to fix everything for myself. I, You know, I don't need to live in fear. I don't. I can experience it, But I don't need to live in it. It doesn't need to be where I come from. And I was coming from that place for a really long time in one of my relationships. And, You know, Thank God I hit a bottom. So thanks for letting me share that with you. Thanks for being here and listening. And I hope that you get to look at your fear in a in a different way and explore it. I hope you have a wonderful week. And if you need anything, You know where to find me. Head to healwithalchemy. Com to learn more about one on one healing, Our Sisters of the Moon Women's Circle and the free self love series. If you want to dive deeper into your practice of returning to the other realm, Then check out my meditation and magic subscription on Patreon. Just click the Digital Cauldron bubble at the top of my website.

Reviews

Amazing and timely as I had recently made a choice to honor my needs during a very traumatic time. Doing this created so much fear of abandonment which actually happened. But afterwards I felt so much relief and freedom that until this talk I couldn’t understand. Thank you!

Thanks for sharing your experience.. gave me a new perspective on viewing unpleasant emotions 🙏🏽