Three short discoveries on letting go of fear

Number one: The tears that come

I had sat and told her that I knew that I had so much love to give and it was so easy to offer, but that deep down I was afraid I might love and give all my life and never be fully loved myself.

"Don't be afraid" she told me "of course you have fears, we all do, but that is just what they are, fears. By letting go of each fear you experience, by seeing it and what it is, you don't have to be that fear or be governed by it."

And the tears became a celebration of no longer needing to hold on to that fear, a gift of relief from the heaviest and most deeply carried burden.


Number two: Meandering

Cycling through London it seemed everyone in their cars was swearing and almost crying with the frustration of being a driver in rush hour. I imagined a film in which those awful moments when drivers really lose it, when they assault other road users, when they scream at themselves, were shown. Followed by the statement 'There is another way. Cycle'

Then a cyclist cut up another cyclist and they were swearing and everyone was annoyed at the log jam on the cycle lane. Nobody could see how beautiful the light was as the sun was in the final throws of setting.

So rather than stay on the main roads with everyone speeding to get to their next destination I took a different route. I didn't think about which way I would go or how convenient or fast it would be, I slowed right down and saw beautiful buildings and people walking along, enjoying the slight Autumn chill creeping in. If there is ever the option, if there is ever no real need to rush, we should take the time to let go of what we planned and see what happens!

Number three:

Remy, my friend from the street has called a few times now. Only the anger is getting less strong and he rang today to tell me, he wants his life. A life where he can connect with loving people, by taking care of them, by doing in the world what the people he knows have gone out of their way to destroy him can't. Rather like a candle, he will continue to blow in the wind but he has begun to see himself and the light in himself, and sooner than I think or we think, he could set the world on fire.

Street Connection

On Saturday I had been at lunch on the Southbank in London. I walked back across the bridge and went to the post office to send postcards (even the odd poster!) and as I exited I saw a bright man sitting in a doorway begging for money for a flight back to Canada. I stopped and said: "Tell me your story"

He was, if anything, a story teller. In a much summarised version he says: he is embroiledvery deeply in a conspiracy involving a diamond company and as a result two people called Jack and Sheila are out to kill him. The thing that strikes me in retrospect is that he is wholly caught up in the act of revenge, the anger of the injustice. When I ask what he exposed these two individuals for, why they have destroyed his life, he wheels it back round to the fact they are just bad people who hate and bully and are going to hell.

I don't see the story. I see a bright, beautiful, intelligent capable man who is trapped on the other side of a thick glass wall. He is suffocating himself with the idea of anger. I watch it dance between us and see that all I can do is keep connecting him with the fact that there is something other than this anger. There is an escape route for him, a way away from both the phantoms of his mind and the reality of his homeless situation. It is the present moment. When he connects with it during our 40 minute conversation it causes him deep pain (he cries) but there is also in his eyes a recognition of the light after the darkness. He sees that he could indeed help others move on from substance abuse, that he could just start by volunteering to allow others to be free, that he is in fact totally capable of leaving the situation of the street behind him.

After watching him sit with the light for a little while I left.

He has given me a phone number for him. I messaged him good luck. He called me. He was back in the dark place and again I just listened. This man is so desperate to hold on to the anger that he wants to just rail against it with someone listening. I don't hear that, I hear the man behind and wonder if he will ever find himself.

• I wonder how much these connections really help?
• And how much is possible by offering time in this way?
• How much more might be possible if one could just walk the earth being attached to nothing and only giving what was needed, receiving what was needed, offering it up to the moment?