Tag Archives: fear

I’m standing at the graveside and my watcher helps me to climb down into my waiting tomb, I lie myself down and he places the wooden cover over the top completely sealing me in. The last light of the dusk disappears immediately and I am enveloped by a darkness deeper than any that I have ever known. Above me I can hear the sounds of the earth being shovelled on top of the wood so that I am surrounded entirely by the earth, there is air coming in and I can see the faintest tinge of light from that, but before too long night has come in its fullness and I am left in this small space.

There is just enough room to turn myself around as I try to find a comfortable way of lying down, worrying about the best way to do this is a welcome distraction from the incipient terror that is lurking in the depths of my being. I’m talking to myself about how important it is to keep my spine straight so that the energy can flow and I can go into a deep meditative space, when I begin to notice a deep chuckle just beyond the scope of my physical ears. It’s Mother Earth laughing at my silliness, and I can hear her saying, “It doesn’t matter how you lie, I will always be here to support you, do whatever you want my child.”

So I let go of all that mind stuff and I lay back and allowed myself to feel the fear that was running through my body, it was incredibly intense and it would have been so easy to let it take over and ask to be let out. But I was determined to last the distance, and I remembered one of the men saying that he handled the fear by doing deep yogic breathing, in through the belly, the middle of the chest and right up into the top, then back down again. As I did this I began to notice myself separating from the fear, it was still moving through my body at a rate of knots, but I was no longer attached to it.

For the first time in my life I truly understood the meaning of non-attachment, as I became the observer the thing that I was watching began to shift and eventually the fear was gone, and in its place a deep sense of peace. That was an important lesson that has been an invaluable ally to me in the years since and I think it is no accident that I am writing about it now. I’ve noticed in these intense shifts that I have been experiencing that I sometimes tend to go a bit unconscious while things are moving through me, time to sharpen my focus and be the observer.

For the conclusion to this story tune into my next post!