I posted some of this on my Facebook wall yesterday, but more has come through since then…
When I came work for the National Park Service a year ago, my acting supervisor took me gently under her wing and helped me feel safe, wanted, needed. She told me all about the strange dynamics in this office. She shared about who I needed to watch out for, who I needed to be “on guard” around, who I needed to not trust. She shared who would get me in trouble no matter what I did or said. She shared about the strange quirks and behaviors of everyone so that I could feel comfortable and know that if someone acted in a “certain way” toward me that it wasn’t about me at all, but was, rather, that person’s strangeness.
For about two days, I felt safe with her knowledge in my head.
Then, I had to start interacting with “those people” and I was terrified! It made my work really painful and laborious.
Then… she left!
Three months ago, my “perceived protector” left and I have, literally, been in a state of PTSD ever since. It has made it so difficult to go to work. I have had a hard time finding the heart to go on there. I was scared every day because I had been left alone in a den of lions, without a shield. They were going to eat me alive!
And because I have been so scared, I recently asked, “What am I not seeing here? How can *I* experience these people differently?”
In the last year, NONE of those people have ever gotten mad at me. NONE of them have ever gotten me in trouble. NONE of those people have been rude, judgmental, bossy, impossible, back-stabbing, or any of the other things I was warned about.
And yet… I was still scared. And I was still believing I was going to be attacked at any turn. I was still waiting for one of them to “kill” me.
Thing is… ALL of them have been kind. ALL of them have been funny. ALL of them have been great to interact with and willing to go above and beyond what their call of duty is. ALL of them have treated me as if they valued me. I have had great, connected, peaceful interactions with ALL of them. And with the person she warned me about the most as being the worst? With that person in particular, I have had THE MOST wonderful interactions and end up laughing and feeling cheery and loved every time!
But, I couldn’t let it in. It didn’t match the filter through which I had been programed to see the experience.
Today, a series of intriguing events and my curiosity combined to create an implosion that resulted in me breaking through the barriers and being able to see the code of the program that had been laid over my eyes. That filter of blinding fear came tumbling down and I could actually see what was really going on. I could see how I had chosen to buy into her experience and make it my own because I didn’t have any other data input other than hers. And I was also ignoring my own experience! This masterful program had been ignited for me, like one gigantic Jenga tower, and *I* kept it in place because I had chosen to allow her experience to become my experience. Even though I was experiencing the exact opposite of what she had told me to expect, I couldn’t receive it because I had fully bought into her program of fear. It was causing a sense of insanity within me and rather than distrusting the program (because I didn’t realize I was even in a program), I began distrusting and questioning myself!
I can see clearly now and now I can see just how beautiful that space really is and that it IS filled with love. I can see that her masterful approach to keeping the matrix of fear in place there was so she could remain in a perceived sense of safety. I could see how she was running this program because she truly believed that what she was experiencing was the whole truth and that there was no other possibility. I could see that she really does believe that everyone is out to get her on this planet because, even though she has moved on from our space, she is experiencing it elsewhere still. I could see that she didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt; in fact, she wanted to keep everyone safe so she spun out this incredible program rooted in fear as a means of controlling the space. I could see the walls all around the place and how they had kept each of us cornered off, unable to interact with one another, thereby feeding the program of fear. It was a self-perpetuating virus, a cancerous program, that fed on itself and stayed intact because none of could see the truth: we were all buying into one person’s program of fear and running with it!
She succeeded for many years. Until I arrived. That kind of energy cannot exist when I am in the space. I know that now. I know that I shake out anything that is out of alignment to heal it. I just didn’t know that *I* was perpetuating that maligned energy until the walls began crumbling around me. That awareness – that I was an unknowing cog in the overall machine (a far too familiar position for me) – is what I have been healing within me… the ways that *I* have set myself up to fail in every direction, based on some of the choices I’ve made in situations where I believed that I “had no choice.” But now, today, as I look at the cascading code of this program, I understand that I chose into believing another’s fears and allowing them to become my own out of habit. I see that I became guarded, mistrusting, and on hyper-alert for attack because that is how I have lived this life, all while saying I am open and loving and trusting.
This gentle opportunity of my “integrity police” program has been so loving and so eye-opening, giving me the space to recognize just how many messages of love, kindness, and empowerment I have actually been bouncing off of myself, not hearing, not receiving because I have been hiding behind walls generated by other’s fearful beliefs. It gave me the opportunity to get crystal clear about how my choices have shaped my experience and that even when I think I am choosing positively, I am still experiencing negativity… although, I’ve gotten so advanced in this practice, it has become eerily subtle to evade my ability to see energy. I was unknowingly using my own abilities against myself!
This situation was a clear example to me that when my filters are programed to see fear, battle, negativity, and hatred, that is all I can experience. Even though – because I am choosing love, light, aliveness – I was experiencing something different than what this virus was programed to have me experience, I couldn’t actually let it into my being. I couldn’t actually allow the love to enter my cells and heal me. All that love was bouncing off the wall of fear. I couldn’t let it in because I could only let in what matched that fearful wall. And that wall… I have been living behind layer after layer of these walls for many, many lifetimes. For me, love has looked like abuse, violence, illness, death, heartbreak, misery, abandonment, and violation because… please hear me on this… because I HAVE LIVED WITH LAYER AFTER LAYER OF WALLS BUILT ON OTHER PEOPLE’S FEARS!
No matter how much I longed to feel love – healthy love – no matter how much I yearned to have someone really see me… it couldn’t happen because I was hidden behind walls of fear. Those filters, those walls, those programs have shaped my life, have shaped the love, have created a sense that I am “alone” in this world, that no one loves me, that I can do nothing right. I have been unable to feel love because anything coming toward me bounced off the barrier of “protection” I had bought into to “keep me safe.” And while I have known in my healing work for a long time now on a very conscious level that any “shielding” or “protection barrier” I put up only invites attack, I had not yet realized that when you’re living behind “protective” walls… everything is an attack. Even love.
I dropped the walls at work. I feel a keen sense of liberation and like I can breathe really well for possibly the first time in… forever. I look around me and I can see the code. I can see the fear. I can see the unreality of that reality of fear. And now I know… I can buy into it and experience the fear. Or I can choose to have my own experience, absent of fear.
It is a choice.
One person’s experience CAN shape yours if you allow it, as can your own experience shape your own future experiences. If you are willing to choose love, choose joy, choose connection and then see the world through those lenses, THAT is what you experience!
*image courtesy of BarnImages
