“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (Henry David Thoreau)
We are living on a dysfunctional, Dystopian Earth right now. Pain is the pandemic that has never left us. And it’s getting worse.
Are you in pain right now? Pain comes from fear. Do you feel the fear? Is it a background anxiety or dread? Sometimes even a terror? An existential angst? An anorexia of the soul? A disconnection from your Self? A spiritual hunger? Fear has many names, but it is the buried emotion of the petrified seven-year-old you who never grew up; your ego: We are all Peter Pan on Prozac. Do you want to find peace in the midst of all the pain? The great thing about recovery and healing is that we begin to feel. The worst thing about recovery and healing is that we begin to feel. So, how do we heal and move from pain to peace? As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "The nearer the dawn, the darker the night."
The journey from pain to peace...
We wake up in fear: We bathe in it. We are all at sea, drowning in fear, and pulling ourselves onto each other to save ourselves. What we perceive is a sea full of people trying to drown us, but the reality is that we are all think that we are drowning and we are just trying to save ourselves. There is a way out – a lifeboat, but only we can pull ourselves up into it. We carry so much pain that it weighs us down like a rock and stops us from saving ourselves. We need to surrender that pain: See it for what it is, feel it, digest it, express it with vulnerability using the power of your voice, and let it go. As Paul Coelho wrote “If you are brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” Rumi said “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” If you keep reading this article you will understand why.
We also feel the fear as emptiness, dissociation, feeling dead inside, and feel that we are disconnected from ‘home’, from ourselves, and from each other. We are, and that is the problem. We catastrophise: The worst will surely happen, and we fear that we may not survive. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” It is fear that leads to every type of drama, conflict and war. All our interpersonal problems stem from a fear of other people. Most people are kind and want to love and be loved unconditionally, we just don’t see it, and we don’t know how to. Think of the German and British troops in the first world war playing football in the trenches on a truce on Christmas day. We really don’t want to hurt each other. But we do. Why? The answer is simple: Fear.
Our fear comes from not feeling worthy, that we are unlovable, unloved, and that this means that we will be abandoned by our loved ones and that therefore we will die. Fear is the product of our thoughts: A perceived danger of the future. This perception spoils our appreciation of life; of the now. Fear is a liar. Fear does not exist in reality. Only love is real. You can’t pour a cup of fear. Yet we somehow manage to drink fear. You can only create it in your mind. FEAR is almost always False Evidence Appearing Real. Aristotle wrote “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.” Evil is not real. Fear is just a story, a false narrative that we tell ourselves and even come to believe, fuelled by the fear and false narratives of others who are all also living in fear: Our very own bogeyman.
I hear you. I have felt your pain. As I write this I feel your fear. It resonates deeply with me. I have felt it to the core of my BEing. It has kept me in bed for days at a time, weeks even, too afraid to leave the protection of my duvet. Too afraid to trust anyone. Too afraid to do anything, frozen, disabled. We all feel it, this all-pervasive agony that affects every part of our lives, shapes all our interactions and connections (or rather causing a lack of genuine, authentic connections) and creates the world as we see it. It is a dark veil, a prism of a vast illusion through which we see the world. It is the only rope that holds us back from being limitless.
Fear causes us to react, not respond. We are reactors and not actors in our life. We have all become addicted to drama. We are hooked on negative thinking. We don’t always know it, but we are. As soon as we wake up, before even getting out of bed, we pick up our smartphone, and seek the latest items of bad news, just to confirm our fear that the world is a terrible and terrifying place. We check our messages, emails and social media, fingers hovering over options for drama. We have drama on tap. We get out of bed, grudgingly, anxiously, and rev up our nervous system with caffeine. Is it surprising that no-one ever smiles on the London Underground or wherever you commute? Is it true that one can get arrested in some countries for smiling at strangers? I don’t know, but probably, seeing how fearful everyone is. We are too wired with stress hormones. We crave that first after-work pint or glass of wine: A socially acceptable remedy. We have become parent-aholics. We even need wine to get through bath-time. Surely bath-time is the highlight of our day – being totally present with our children? Fear is as useful as a chocolate teapot or a rocking chair - it keeps you busy but doesn’t get you anywhere. We just can’t see a way out.
Was this always the case for us? No.
When you see the gaze of a baby, it is filled with joy, peace, presence, awe, hope, and unconditional love. Even puppies have the same gaze. What happened to us humans to make us grow up to live in fear as our norm? And how does fear affect our subconscious behaviour? Is there a solution? Well, yes there is. That’s what this article is about: You don’t have to live like this.
Aristotle the Greek philosopher wrote “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” What did he mean by that? The world is full of children. By that I mean that almost every one of us goes through life as our terrified seven-year-old selves. We are in Neverland: Never to grow up, and even as our bodies age, our egos refuse to do so. There are no adults. We are wounded children in the scary playground that is the world. Self-centred fear, or egoic reaction, is the default position of our seven-year-old selves; our ego. Our assertive adult self, our true Self, our real Self, our soul, or our ‘Higher Self’ (these terms all mean the same thing) speaks quietly (and is sometimes called the ‘fragile ego’ which is a misnomer as it is our true source of strength) and sits on the side-lines until there is reason enough to wake them up: Like a half-interested inverted helicopter parent, and show up for the game that is life, work, relationships; everything really. A great loss, a nervous breakdown, or ‘hitting rock bottom’ will do the trick nicely, thank you. There is nothing like a sudden metaphorical punch in the face to awaken our adult true fearless Self: Through trauma there is transformation. If we are ‘lucky’ enough for this to happen, our seven-year-old inner child is set free to play (which is all it really wants to do, as well as feeling seen, valued, heard, safe and loved unconditionally) and there may be an instantaneous shift into our Higher Self. But how to open the flower bud that is tightly closed? The bud that refuses to open? The bud that doesn't even realise that it's purpose is to open? The CEO who barks at their executives because their offerings might bring into question their ego, or the surgeon who throws her (or his) instruments around the operating theatre like a toddler lobbing their toys out of their push chair: Well, there is a challenge!
Fear rules our lives then, until we wake up our adult Self. The problem, apart from the toxic treacle-like consistency of it that glues us to the ceiling when we are drenched in it, is that it stops us from growing. We remain as victims, incapacitated by symptoms which preclude civil responses and bind us to reactive conflict: The ‘Drama Triangle’ that corners us all. Our scared dysfunctional seven-year-old wants a fight: A fight for their survival. A fight with anyone or anything that might threaten it. This is the coping mechanism that it has used to survive thus far. This mechanism no longer serves us and actually creates more drama and conflict.
How did this happen? Our parents (and their parents, and their parents, and so-on) played a huge role. Dr Gabor Maté, the world-renowned Canadian addiction specialist, and master of compassion, says "People have two needs, attachment and authenticity. When authenticity threatens attachment, attachment trumps authenticity." This happens every time, for survival reasons. You give up who you are, who you want to be, stop expressing what you feel, desire and need, in order to survive. This is trauma. Trauma comes from the Greek word for 'wound'. It is what we suffered alone as children, in every social demographic. It’s what drives us to seek external validation as a matter of survival: Seventy-five percent of superachievers have suffered childhood trauma. It’s what fuels the ‘Hustle Culture’.
We are each born unique with a purpose that will contribute to the whole. That is our worth. Our worth is who we are. Our BEing is our value. It is not conditional or negotiable. It is not just our parents who are at fault. Society tells us that we must be, achieve, or have this or that to fit a mould that will benefit society. We are forced to put on a mask and lose our authenticity through a fracturing of our psyche. It's what actors do. It's what we all do. The degree to which we wear our masks is proportional to our buried shame.
So, we are doubly-bound: We become enslaved to attachment, while hiding our true Selves in the shadows. We become ‘hungry ghosts’. We are insatiable in seeking a solution to our intolerable, unbearable pain and fear. We become disconnected from our Selves. Herman Hesse, who was a patient of Carl Jung, the Swiss-German author of 'Siddhartha', which tells the journey of his self-discovery and becoming the Buddha, wrote “You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with your Self. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.” We are only as sick as our secrets. Many of the wounds we have carried with us since childhood stem from skewed internal belief systems that are deeply ingrained in us as a result of our childhood trauma. We leave authenticity behind in our cradle in favour of external validation and survival through attachment. We are unaware. Lacking any sense of unconditional love, we seek ‘imitation love’ as a substitute, in the form of material possessions, power, money, and sexual relationships. We go through life unconscious and asleep. If you are reading this article, take heed, you might just wake up.
Marcus Aurelius wrote “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” We create our own version of 'Hell' or 'Heaven' inside of us with our ‘monkey’ minds (a Buddhist term). Once we realise that it is our choice which of these we create we can make that choice daily. Benjamin Fry, in his book 'The Invisible Lion' describes that our adult fears are appropriate responses to threats from childhood that no longer exist. It’s time to let go of our childhood traumas and realise that they had nothing to do with us. Andre Gide, the French Nobel Prize winning author wrote “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” Yet the monsters never go away by themselves. Not without inner work. That is what this article and my blog post articles are about: Moving from pain to peace.
Dr Gabor Maté writes "For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol.” We are hooked on fear and drama. We don’t crave peace. We are so used to the highs and inevitable ensuing lows that serenity is alien to us. Drama is what sells tabloid newspapers – we hope that others’ misfortune may momentarily distract us from our own. Nice. This is fuelled by the psychological phenomenon of projection. Projection is the subconscious projection onto another what we do not accept in our self. As Anaïs Nin wrote “We don't see people as they are. We see people as we are.” Projection is one finger pointing that way, but that leaves three fingers pointing back at yourself. As Gary Zukav, the author of Oprah’s favourite 'The Seat of the Soul', wrote “When you have an emotional reaction to what you see, you are judging. That is your signal that you have an issue inside of yourself - with yourself - not with the other person.” Everyone is using projection as a way of not looking inwards. If you have feelings of shame, you project them onto others. Our greatest fear is that others will remind us of our disconnected inauthentic selves that we are so profoundly ashamed of. According to Dr Gabor Maté "Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality." The Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology, and spiritual Master, Carl Jung said "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of your Self. What isn't part of our Selves doesn't disturb us." Blame disguises your feeling that you are a terrified child that needs taking care of when that’s a universal condition. We are all victims of victims of victims ad infinitum. Many of us have an unbridled fear-based ego. This is the human condition. This is the human predicament. We can either choose to perpetuate the cycle or break free from it. Hurt people hurt people. Healed people heal people. Transformed people transform people. It’s that simple.
We have a collective responsibility to look within instead of blaming and propagating fear and hatred. Everyone has the human condition until they look inside. That’s why it's called the human condition. That is why we call our society a 'Blame Culture'. It heaps shame and trauma on top of our childhood shame and trauma. I have heard psychologists say ‘If its hysterical its historical’, but try saying that to someone who has just been thrown into a hornet’s nest. We are all conditioned to judge each other. Those who judge do not understand and those who understand do not judge. We each need to stop being the cause of war in each other’s lives. J. Krishnamurti wrote “Inside you is the cause of every war. It is your violence, hidden and denied, that leads to wars of every kind, whether it is war inside your home, against others in society, or between nations.” We are sharing in a shared self and contributing to the collective unconscious. Denial is powerful. The shadow is secretive. We all need to stop holding up negativity as a beacon. It represents a deep sense of inferiority in ourselves. When we are unhappy, we blame others. The whole problem, and the basis of our fear, is that we have forgotten who we are and we don’t love ourselves enough, if at all. We justify our pain and anger by putting blame on the actions of others. We blame them for all the unhappiness that we have carried since childhood. Until we understand that we have to do the inner work we can’t understand that others aren’t actually to blame, and even if they are, we can’t do anything about it. We need to get to know and love our Selves, accept our incontrovertible Self-worth and find joy.
Those who have healed deep emotional wounds and come through the other side have not only developed resilience, courage, strength, wisdom, and compassion for others, but they can also become the light of inspirational change in others. We can be beacons of light rather than harbingers of hate and darkness. These lightworkers are Enlightened Witnesses. Marianne Williamson said “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” When we openly share our lived experiences, our wisdom, and our Truth with vulnerability and authenticity, and use our wisdom to help others to heal, it has a ripple effect that continues to radiate outwards. Those who have experienced the greatest pain will have boundless compassion, which is the superpower of initiating Self-compassion in others. Compassion and unconditional love are the only two things that you can truly give of your Self to another. This is what will heal the world. But we each need to choose to do the inner work necessary for this to happen.
Our lives really could be seen as consisting of peace, interspersed with a series of choices. We can remain present, with an alert stillness throughout. The power of presence, the now, is a timeless Truth. In Matthew 6:34 Jesus said “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
The solution is to ask your self the question when you face each choice during each interaction with others: ‘Do I choose fear or love?’ Or ‘What would my loving, compassionate Higher Self choose to do?’ Every human thought, word, act, behaviour and character is based on one emotion or the other: Fear or love. Marianne Williamson wrote “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” The chart below explains the stark choice. Who will you hire to run your life? Your terrified, projecting, blaming, chaotic, egocentric, juvenile self, or your fearless assertive adult Higher Self, spreading compassion and love? This is a path out of your personal and our collective 'Hell' into peace, joy and love.
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, Stoic Philosopher and author of 'Meditations' (which I play on repeat on Audible) wrote “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Plato, the Greek philosopher wrote “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” The reason that I cite such great philosophers from several thousand years ago until the present day, is that the Truth of the message has always been there, standing timelessly and unchanged. The path of Truth is clear, we just don’t see it until our lives become so unbearable that another way is the only way. As Anaïs Nin wrote “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” We each have our purpose in reminding each other that there is a path. We just need to hear the calling and choose to follow it, in every moment.
Who do you choose to run your life? Your wounded self of your Higher Self?
To choose your Higher Self, you firstly need to find out who you truly are. What are your core values? What are your core beliefs? We explore all these concepts in my series of blog post articles. Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, wrote “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” The ‘enemy’ is your own ego. The ego of others need not be your concern. Once you realise that you are on the right path, you will trust that your fear will disappear. Fear and trust do not walk the same path. Trust is another word for Faith. I love this very short story: “Fear knocked on the door of the house. Faith opened the door. There was no-one there.” There is no bogeyman.
Rosa Parks, the first lady of civil rights, said “I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. John Lennon put this beautifully “There are two basic motivating forces: Fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love our Selves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love our Selves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution based on survival and the struggle for life. The evolution that John Lennon described is a higher one; a path that leads us out of fear, struggle and survival and into peace, real love, and joy. The beauty of taking the journey out of fear, is that you will lose the mistrust that you have of other people and start to truly connect with others. Before you can make this simple choice, there is a journey that you must undertake, a Hero’s Journey. Finding your Self is half the journey, and one that we will take together in this article. I will be your guide to leading your Self out of fear: The only way out is inwards. And the only way inwards is to surrender. Don’t worry if you don’t even know what these words mean: I had to Google them all when I started my journey four years ago! I will explain everything as we go, so you can put Siri, Google and your phone down, unless you are reading me on it! The second half is to connect with others with authenticity, integrity, openness, vulnerability, and unconditional love. This will be your strength. In the Upanishad, the Hindu Scripture it states “Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.” It is our separateness that causes fear and hate. We are like sunbeams in the sky or waves in the ocean - all essentially one.
Joseph Campbell wrote of the Hero’s Journey “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” This is the paradox that your ego tries to capitalise on, telling you that this path is the road to certain death, whereas the converse is true. It is in the darkest cave that your soul will find its greatest rewards. You will need courage to enter this cave. The ego is a liar, using any ruse to stop you from taking this journey. The ego will tell you that you are afraid, lacking courage, and are powerless. As Rudyard Kipling Wrote “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” But it is in fact the way of the ego that leads to disaster and personal powerlessness. My ego and its fear was the cause of my writer’s block, which is what held me back from writing this article, after a four year journey of Self-discovery. But as you can see, I made the choice to enter the cave, today, so that I may guide you. My mentor Christopher Caddy, a truly exceptional being, and whose parents set up ‘The Vatican of the North’ in Findhorn, Scotland, guided me with hope and courage. It is by passing on his teachings and signposting that I will pass it forwards. Chris’ mother Eileen Caddy wrote “Start living and working for the whole, and see how your entire outlook and attitude will change.” Synchronicity is real: It is a concept introduced by Carl Jung to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection. He stated that “Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.” My father was called Christopher, my mentor is Christopher, one of my middle names is Christopher, my best early childhood friend was called Christopher, and my first stepfather was called Christieson. Christopher means Christ-bearer. I deeply value the teachings of Jesus, a human being and philosopher with infinite potential, who was crucified out of egoic fear by those around him, yet rose from the dead to give hope to millions. Your resurrection is your transformation. I hope that this article will lead you to the treasure that you seek. As Zig Ziglar wrote “Fear has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.”
There is a tale of the two wolves inside us all. One is evil: It is fear, anger, jealousy, greed, lies, inferiority, ego and resentment. The other is good: It is joy, courage, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, compassion, wisdom, and Truth. Which one wins in the fight that is life? The one you feed.
Lord Byron, the great English poet wrote “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” Brené Brown wrote “Someone, somewhere, will say, ‘Don’t do it. You don’t have what it takes to survive the wilderness.’ This is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself, ‘I am the wilderness.’” Are you?
We need to find out who we truly are and how the world works. When faced with life’s inevitable ‘obstacles’ and challenges, will you choose to remain seated at the seat of ease, the seat of your soul, and not accept the invitation to drama? Do you remain a witness or do you rush in to join the fight and become a suspect at the scene? This is a simple solution to living fearlessly. I am sharing metaphors, true stories, timeless Truth and wisdom, and signposts with you, to give you a cosmic view on your life and the forks in the road throughout my blog post articles. If every one of us made the choice to follow the path out of fear there would be no hate, no interpersonal conflict, and no war. We don’t need to fix anyone or the world, we need to do the inner work, and collectively we will automatically heal the world.
So, if fear is so horrid, why are we so addicted to it and why is still at the top of the charts as the emotion of our times? It’s because our ego deceives us - it tells us that we need to be afraid in order to survive. It is terrified of being annihilated. It has a loud brash voice. But the paradox is that what kills us and destroys our soul, and eventually our very lives, is our own ego and our fear. Our Higher Self is our way out of fear. But our Higher Self only speaks softly to us. We need to retune our ears and listen in the silence. The key is who we choose to be - our egoic self or our Higher Self. It’s a daily choice to choose love and your Higher Self. This is the true path.
These are the emotions that I have covered for you in my series on emotions (click on the link to be taken to them):
Namaste.
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.