“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung
What are you afraid of? Look at your decisions and even the places that you refuse to act, and you will know what you fear most, and thus the area that you protect with every unconscious choice that you make.
The fear of vulnerability is a big one that I see in others. In my work, and in my personal life. We fear the pain that comes along with being completely ourselves, completely in love, or of giving of ourselves without restraint. We hold back the best parts of ourselves and still secretly yearn for the beauty that can come from sharing them.
When people are afraid of love and the broken heart that can come with it, yet still crave it, they will date serially. They will choose lovers that they would never dream of committing to, even while some small part of them tugs at their heart, wishing for it despite all of the evidence that it will never be real with the people they have been, or are currently choosing. To protect your heart, you will choose partners, friends, and lovers that will never truly reach it. And you will go on doing this until you feel ready to try again, to open once more.
Because the small tug doesn’t ever leave. Despite your best efforts to bury it, you are still filled with it; made from it, and you will always be pulled to it. You only need ask yourself if you would prefer to follow the pull consciously, with openness, hope, and curiosity, or walk the path of fear, where the choices you make will end up in pain regardless of your self-protection and the walls you have built.
I believe our work is to understand our fears instead of bury them. Where was I taught that love is not safe? That being myself came with rejection? Was this a fear that was given to me by someone else, or is this fear my own, sharpened by my past experiences?
Most importantly, how do I move forward? We do not have to forget the lessons of the past, we just have to stop living out the stories that they told us about life and love, for many of them are not accurate and we make ourselves smaller when we feed them and grip them tightly instead of simply letting them go.
My hope for you is that you expand; that you choose to follow the path that will bring you the most joy, beauty, love, and growth whether you still hold fear, or not.
For anything led by fear is being misled.
With all of my love,
-Elena
