Faith Over Fear _ February 28, 2023

Fear.

It does something to a person.

It shows us how we cope.

It shows us how we survive.

It shows us what we protect, what we avoid, what we cling to, and sometimes, if we are willing to listen closely enough, it shows us the road back to love.

Fear can create pain and suffering.

It knows exactly where we are tender.

It grips the places where we are most sensitive and convinces us that holding on is safer than letting go.

But sometimes the thing we are afraid to release is the very thing slowly killing us.

And still, fear knows how to resurrect it.

It brings the voices of the past back into the room.

It reminds us of the people who left.

The places where we were rejected.

The versions of ourselves we became in order to survive.

We get to choose whether we run from fear or turn toward it.

We get to see what it has been trying to show us.

And eventually, we get to move beyond it.

Acknowledging yourself is medicine.

The shadows and secrets of timelines past cannot reach through time and become the present unless we continue carrying them there.

You are not there anymore.

And some of the people whose approval you spent years chasing were never truly there for you either.

I have held onto memories of people who made me afraid.

Afraid of losing love.

Afraid of ruining it.

Afraid of not being the right version of myself.

Fear taught me to see myself through the eyes of other people and then mistake their perception for my worth.

I acknowledge my fear of being seen.

For so long, I believed I was not good enough.

Not proper enough.

Not healed enough.

I took other people's judgments and used them as evidence that I was broken.

I carried their fear as though remembering what frightened them would eventually earn me love.

As though there would be some reward for making myself small enough to keep everyone else comfortable.

There wasn't.

So how do we let go of fear?

Maybe we look at it.

Acknowledge it.

Feel it.

Forgive what created it.

And continue walking.

Maybe fear does not return to tell us what we should run from.

Maybe it returns to show us what we would rather be running toward.

Take It Back. It's Broken.

Time and time again, I found myself sitting in rooms where people analyzed what was wrong with me and discussed how they might fix it.

I learned how it felt to be evaluated instead of understood.

To become a diagnosis before becoming a person.

To believe that somebody else's interpretation of my inner world was somehow more authoritative than my own experience.

At times I received treatments that helped. At other times, I experienced care as controlling, flattening, or disconnected from what I actually needed.

I learned how to sit still.

How to appear agreeable.

How to smile when I did not feel like smiling.

How to remain obedient to people and systems I believed held power over me.

For a long time, I hated myself because I didn't feel like I was what they wanted.

I felt like I was simply what they had learned to tolerate.

And I saw myself through them.

Many of those people were doing the best they could with what they knew.

That does not erase the impact.

Intent and impact are not the same thing.

My early life already contained instability, pain, scrutiny, fear, and uncertainty. I had learned to adapt before I even understood that adaptation was what I was doing.

It wasn't until I began leaving familiar structures that the tower could finally fall.

And the tower needed to fall.

I Ran to the Forest

I ran to the forest.

To the trees and the rain.

I sang to puddles and made the rules of my own game.

I began creating a world I could actually inhabit.

A place that felt real.

A place that felt safe enough for me.

Beyond the constructs of other people's rulers, I began deciding how I wanted to live.

So I am sorry if my liberation makes someone feel as though I believe I am better than them.

I do not.

But I am no longer willing to shrink myself in order to protect another person's relationship with their own limitations.

What do I owe anyone for who I became?

There are experiences I have kept almost entirely to myself.

I shared them through stories.

Metaphors.

Characters.

Spiritual language.

Poetry.

Anything that allowed me to tell the truth without directly identifying what happened, who was involved, or what I was actually feeling.

I believed that was politeness.

I believed silence made me less difficult.

I believed that if I never named the harm, I could never be accused of becoming the problem.

But silence has a cost.

Sometimes "letting bygones be bygones" means people never have to examine how their behavior affected someone else.

Sometimes the same unhealthy dynamics are repeated because nobody was willing to say:

This hurt me.

The Responsibility of Holding Space

One of the most important things I have learned through my experiences with ayahuasca, spiritual communities, ceremonies, retreats, and transformational spaces is that good intentions are not enough.

There are many people who sincerely want to help.

There are many people who want to create something healing, meaningful, or beautiful.

But fewer people understand the responsibility involved in holding another human being while they are vulnerable.

Safety matters.

Consent matters.

Boundaries matter.

Preparation matters.

Integration matters.

Humility matters.

The phrase hell is paved with good intentions exists for a reason.

Someone can genuinely believe they are helping while unintentionally creating harm.

That does not mean transformational work should disappear.

It means the standard should become higher.

If someone is entering a spiritual or psychological process that may bring them into painful memories, grief, trauma, identity questions, or intense altered states, they deserve to understand that possibility before they enter.

They deserve informed consent.

They deserve to know who is responsible for their safety.

They deserve permission to say no.

They deserve to change their mind.

They deserve aftercare.

They deserve a facilitator whose unresolved struggles are not being unconsciously imposed on the people they are serving.

A spiritual title does not eliminate the need for accountability.

A ceremony does not override consent.

Medicine does not erase boundaries.

Community does not mean surrendering sovereignty.

That is the balance I keep learning.

The Danger of the Automatic Yes

People are more complex than we realize.

We shift depending upon our environments.

The culture of a group can influence us tremendously.

A community can create such a powerful expectation around what healing, enlightenment, liberation, masculinity, femininity, sexuality, spirituality, or transformation is supposed to look like that somebody can move beyond their own boundaries before realizing they crossed them.

We often fail to exercise our no.

Sometimes we say yes because we do not want to disappoint anyone.

Because we don't want to be difficult.

Because everyone else seems comfortable.

Because the leader said it was good for us.

Because we want to belong.

Because we are altered, overwhelmed, exhausted, frightened, intoxicated, spiritually euphoric, or simply unsure.

But a pressured yes is not the same thing as a freely given yes.

There is a serious responsibility involved whenever one person holds significant emotional, spiritual, financial, sexual, medical, or social influence over another.

Especially when vulnerability is part of the environment.

What I Carried

I have a history of being taken advantage of.

I have experienced repeated trauma across different stages of my life, and those experiences shaped the way my nervous system learned to understand safety, intimacy, authority, and danger.

I sought treatment through conventional systems, including the VA, as a disabled veteran.

Some parts of that care gave me language and support.

Other parts left me feeling more disconnected from myself.

Eventually, I began exploring different paths.

I sought ayahuasca in 2020.

I experimented with changes in food, lifestyle, spiritual practice, ceremony, and community because I desperately wanted to understand what healing could look like for me.

That journey brought me into medicine spaces, ceremonies, festivals, retreats, service work, and communities where I discovered extraordinary beauty.

It also brought me into environments where my willingness to help sometimes became an invitation for people to ask too much.

Labor became expected.

Emotional support became expected.

Spiritual service became expected.

Sometimes recognition and reciprocity disappeared.

I kept giving because service felt sacred to me.

And eventually I had to learn that service without boundaries becomes self-abandonment.

I Will Bless Them Before I Curse Them

At the beginning and end of every day, I would still rather bless the people who taught me than curse their names.

That does not mean pretending harm did not happen.

Forgiveness does not require historical revision.

I lived for years with monsters inside my mind telling me terrible things about myself.

I do not want to become another monster inside my own head, repeating hatred toward people I once loved.

I can name what happened.

I can establish boundaries.

I can refuse access.

I can protect myself.

And still choose not to live inside hatred.

We arrive at conflict because relationships create expectations.

We form images of what another person will be.

What they will provide.

What we will become together.

What the relationship means.

And eventually reality asks:

What did each of us actually see?

Were our visions compatible?

Did we communicate them?

Did either of us give the other fair warning about our limitations?

Did we listen when those limitations appeared?

Love Is Multidimensional

I have learned that love is multidimensional.

There are endless ways to love and endless capacities through which love can evolve as we deepen our understanding of the human experience.

Love can be intimate.

Romantic.

Platonic.

Familial.

Communal.

Protective.

Erotic.

Spiritual.

Temporary.

Life-changing.

Love does not become false simply because its form changes.

Compassion feels to me like divine love moving in circles.

Like hummingbirds appearing and disappearing so quickly that all you can really do is witness them.

I am learning to become loving awareness made practical.

Spiritual practice implemented.

Presence with boundaries.

Goodness with discernment.

I am who I am because life repeatedly showed me what I did not want to become.

Again and again, I witnessed reflections that clarified me.

And eventually I became very clear about what I wanted my identity to stand for.

I wanted to see myself.

And I did.

What I discovered is that my presence can create love in people who are looking for permission to love themselves more deeply.

Not because I have perfected anything.

Because I stopped trying to become universally acceptable.

When I share the practices that help me become more grounded, more expressive, more compassionate, more creative, and more alive, I deepen my relationship with other people.

That feels like dharma to me.

Pure consciousness.

Clear intention.

Love.

When we choose faith over fear, we loosen the structures that have held us captive.

And love becomes less of an idea and more of an experience.

We all possess the ability to give more love.

We all possess the ability to become more receptive to it.

But perhaps the beginning is learning not to abandon ourselves while waiting for someone else to offer it.

That is the lesson.

That is the liberation.

That is the love I was always looking for.

The Ever After Love. 💕

The Beautiful Story Never Told, Jo He and Mai Taeo

"I would say that I wish you wanted to be here. For any reasons other than my own. We were a living shade of pink that rose in love and faded into a lavender haze as we were taken on a purple tidal wave of emotional overwhelm. I got lost in that haze and I guess I’m still finding myself. Again shimmering white light and pure intentions toward humble service. Yet, I want you here. I want to be of service with my beloved by my side because a ceremony, a sacred agreement, a moment of euphoric ecstatic bliss that transcends time and space is a deep frequency of healing for the world. I am the womb to hold you and the man to protect you. I was created for you and you were created for me. So, tonight I would say I wish you were here. I wish that you were here. I wish you were home."