The following is a thought provoking post by special guest blogger Tawnya Jonsek. I hope you are inspired by it as much as I was.
I’ve spent the last week, without realizing it, nurturing a seed of fear within me. It wasn’t my intent to nurture this seed. In fact, I tried resisting it, repressing it, denying it – only to find it growing bigger and bigger, popping open and taking root in my mind. I wanted to banish the seed. But my persistence and insistence on resistance magnified it and gave it life within me.
How can this happen? How does resisting a thing make it all-consuming? Doesn’t this thing, this fear, realize I am shouting at it to go away? Can’t my mind see I’m not interested in the mind games it plays?
The truth of the matter is when I resist and suppress, I’m actually giving focus to this thing I do not want. This focus becomes a signal to the universe that it is just what I am wanting! And not only do I begin to see “signs” of the legitimacy of my fear, but it consumes nearly every waking thought I have.
In his book, The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of seeds of negativity and the power of diligence. Diligence has to do with not allowing these seeds, which lie in all of us, to take root or be nurtured. He talks about how once a thought comes to our minds, a thought of anger or jealousy or despair, repressing or fighting it does not work. The best way to root out this seed is, in his words, “recognize it, smile to it, and you invite something nicer to come up and replace it; you read some inspiring words, you listen to a piece of beautiful music, you go somewhere in nature, or you do some walking meditation”.
He likened it to listening to a CD. If a song comes on you don’t like, you don’t yell at the CD player, demand it switch songs, talk over the song or stick your finger in your ears. This doesn’t keep the song from playing! Instead, you find a new track or a different CD with a song you like and you change the song.
For me, “changing the song” involved meditation, talking with a friend and shining a light on my fear to see it for what is was – a baseless, negative thought my mind tried to entrap me into harboring. And as quickly as switching on a light, I saw it for what it was. The fear was gone and knowledge filled it’s place.
