I am finally getting time to sit and write about a recent experience of inner work around a particular fear issue. The process unfolded quite nicely and I thought it might be helpful to show the myriad ways that the people in our lives, circumstances, and our guides challenge and show us what we need, asked for or otherwise.
My week began with a question from someone else, through Chuck, suggesting that I might channel Jeanne for information on the whereabouts of a particular person. Now, normally, when I am asked to channel for another person I am immediately faced with doubt and concern that I will not be able to do it and the person will be utterly disappointed. This happens all the time as my first reaction. Generally, I push away my fear and go ahead with the channeling, and thus far no one has been even the tiniest bit disappointed, in fact, quite the opposite. You would think this would help me in my indecision and doubt, along with the fact that this website is largely based on the fact that I channel, which I do often and thoroughly, receiving quite incredible information and guidance. But alas, I still have to face my utter black fear, which quickly turns to anger, at being placed in the position of being asked to participate in something not of my own design. This is very old stuff for me, going back to my childhood when I was sexually abused, forced into experiences that led to not only a total lack of control and loss of self, but having to endure the commands of a madman. Although I have done a complete recapitulation of my experiences, the deepest fears reappear in very subtle ways. And yes, I can push them aside in order to function and do as I am requested, because I really do want to accept the channeling challenge, but when I elect to go deeper and sift through my inner reactions and get clarity I also find resolution and, in turn, I subtly change and grow. It can be a slow and painful process, but it is also extremely gratifying. My challenge is to accept this new me, the one who channels, and find ways to not just include her in my life, but allow her to lead me where I am going next.
There is a field I pass by everyday and as I turn the corner I generally look out over the expanse of field towards the mountains in the distance and the open sky. The other day as I turned the corner and drove alongside the field, I noticed a deer sitting in the field, quite a distance in from the road. She was sitting straight up, looking back toward the road, an almost wistful gesture in her elegant pose. I wondered at the strangeness of this deer quietly sitting in the middle of the snow covered field on this bitterly cold day. When I returned several hours later on my way home I noticed she was still sitting there, in the exact same posture. Then it dawned on me that she must be dead. I was flooded with emotion, feeling such sadness for this creature, wondering about her end. Most likely she had been hit by a car and staggered to her resting place. Perhaps she was gazing back toward the road trying to figure out what had just happened. Perhaps she was taking in the damage to her legs that had given out beneath her. Perhaps she was facing her fear, turning to replay, recapitulate the incident that was causing her death. Perhaps she bravely and stoically sat up as death overtook her, knowing that she was passing into new life, afraid or unafraid, she was going anyway. Four days later she still sits there, frozen in the pose of recapitulation, still looking back, but definitely having moved on.
What is the meaning of this frozen deer in the field? Why did I notice her on the same day that I attended to my own nagging fear? What am I supposed to learn from her regal acceptance of her destiny, chosen or otherwise?
I began to look more closely at my reaction to being asked, on the spot, to channel. What am I afraid of? Failure? The request came quite gently, though I heard it as commanding, almost as if Chuck had said: Do this channeling or else! But the request was very delicately presented. Of course, I should have complied, but I was immediately dealing with a whole host of my own inner issues and conflicts. When I channeled Jeanne on Monday morning as usual, I gained some clarity in her Message #635. I knew I had to confront my own fears around being snatched out of my comfort zone and made uncomfortable by the demands of another. I decided to follow up what Jeanne had suggested in her message by opening The Red Book to see what Jung had to say about the issue. On page 303 this is what I saw as synchronistically significant:
“He who has the luck and misfortune of a particular talent falls prey to believing that he has a gift. Hence he is also often its fool. A special gift is something outside of me. I am not the same as it. The nature of the gift has nothing to do with the nature of the man who carries it. It often even lives at the expense of the bearer’s character. His character is marked by the disadvantage of his gift, indeed even through its opposite. Consequently he is never at the height of his gift but always beneath it. If he accepts his other he becomes capable of bearing his gift without disadvantage. But if he only wants to live in his gift and consequently rejects his other, he oversteps the mark, since the essence of his gift is extrahuman and a natural phenomenon, which he in reality is not. All the world sees his error, and he becomes the victim of its mockery. Then he says that others mock him, while it is only the disregard of his other that makes him ridiculous.”
I interpret this that a natural gift, such as channeling, should not be attached to my ego, but simply accepted as natural or I can be destroyed by it. In order to truly use this gift I must do my inner work around my fear and doubt of being a failure too, especially since I cannot truly attach to this gift. It does not belong to me, or to anyone. In order to get to a place of really flowing in my life, accepting what I am afforded to evolve, as Jeanne suggests: I must acquiesce to the inevitable without fear. I am not special, so why do I feel that I can reject a request to channel? It is natural, not a special ability, nor one to be afraid of, but one to acquiesce to. It has nothing to do with me. If I cannot allow for this truth I am caught in ego, deflated or otherwise, and subject to judgments by self and others. If I can become egoless, through more inner work, I will be able to truly channel. Fear is attached to ego and that is what I am fighting. Ego is constantly trying to reestablish its dominance and reassert itself as all-knowing, but this kind of knowing is false knowing.
Next, I turned to my Tarot cards around this issue of ego self and my feeble attempts to tap into the natural flow. Am I right that I must get beyond ego to accept that I am nothing except energy and as energy I have access to all knowledge, but I can only truly achieve this if I let go of fear, without ego’s constant demands? I shuffle the deck and pull one card, the one that feels right as I place the deck over my heart center. I pull the 9 of Disks, Gain, and the first thing I read is: hitting the mark, the bull’s eye. I immediately accept this in answer to my question; I am on the right track. Even though other insights are offered I take my question next to the I Ching and ask: Did I hit the mark in my assessment of my ego/energy dilemmas?
The I Ching answers with hexagram 40, Deliverance, with a moving line, six in the third place. I am in a good place, the burdens have been removed, resolved, and eased, but ego brings misfortune! My fear come like thieves to steal my jewels, my ability. I have them as a natural gift, but I must use them appropriately, or not. I fell into childhood fears. The catastrophe of doubt resulted in my falling into the hands of thieves, my old fears. When I am in a good place there is no ego interference, inflated or deflated, and I am truly a channel, freed of fear, pure energy, the two Me’s in balance. This hexagram turns into Duration in the future, perseverance furthers. So if I can work on my issues related to letting go of ego, which in this case are feelings of doubt and failure, I may be in this for the long run. This leads me to recall my horoscope for this year as written by Eric Francis for Chronogram magazine and Planet Waves. I am a Cancer and it clearly states my ultimate dilemma, my inferiority and low self-esteem issues and how to achieve balance with ego so I am not sabotaged by either.
So, in the end I have learned that I must maintain my self-confidence and let go to the energy of what is natural, which is channeling. I don’t own this; it is not my ability to own. I have access to it, but at the same time it forces me to confront my issues of low self-confidence and my inner fears, which are all tied in to my early experiences. Can I continue to face my innermost fears, however subtly or brutally they approach me? Can I look back as the dying deer obviously looked back and still move forward where the energy is taking me, as she did? Can we all?
Thanks for reading. Perhaps this has offered an insight into one way of tackling the inner process, which, depending on the energy of each day, unfolds in so many ways. What I find most often is that, at the end of the day, no matter how many oracles I ask, the one that I must always return to exists inside myself.
Happy Inner Work!
-Jan