It’s Only The Living Who Change The World

August 5, 2007

Samuel: Hello, dears.

Hello, Samuel.

S: All right, truth be told, I was having fun without you.

What were you doing?

S: Playing.

You just had a good month. You had a month of doorways. And you were not afraid of all of them. You had an opportunity to see what you’re afraid of, and I will assure you that in this past month, maybe in more than one or two ways, you had the opportunity to see where fear not only bites but holds on. And mind, if you will, that I’m not saying that it was because you had to experience that fear. I am saying, however, that you have had the opportunity to look it in the face.

So how did it show up to you? Now, don’t answer me this question. Answer you that question. How did it show up to you? And if your answer is “No idea. Did not see it. Did not get it. Don’t know what it is,” well all right, I’ll give it to you, it’s very possible that you may not at all have had fear coming to, oh, bite you. But looking through this room, I really doubt that. You’re way too on to you.

So I’ll ask again, what are the fears you looked at? Again, don’t answer me; answer you. What are the fears you looked at, and why in one of the most important months of this year would it have been sniffing around your door? And when it was sniffing around your door, did you let it in? Did you do what you could to chase it away, or did you recognize it for what it is? A piece of you that hasn’t been getting quite enough attention, and needs befriending. “Wait, Samuel, that can’t be right, because, you see, the fears I was looking at are friends to no one. My fears are much worse than any just plain fears.”

[Looking at the stuffed figure, Ti-ti] Do we have new clothes? Well now, you know, it’s not safe to mess with a pooka like that, so just sit there.

And the reason I started with that interesting little story time is because I wanted to be sure that before I get into the actual story time that I’m going with tonight, that you hear when I say, “This month is going to be a whole lot like last month.”

How do you know when something you are looking at is a fear? I am asking you now. How do you know if something’s a fear? And this isn’t a really deep question that you’ve got to pull out the miner’s cap and go questing within.

When something makes me feel disempowered.

S: Good answer. Like that.

When I avoid it and try and move around it, or away from it, resist it.

S: Good. Very good.

When it involves a belief system that I have about something.

S: That might be perhaps the exact second step. You realize it’s about a belief system, because fears are exactly about a belief system, sure.

When I’m in a reactive state.

S: Reactive instead of . . . ?

Responding.

S: Good for you, yes. Yes. Say that one more time.

Reacting instead of responding.

S: Good. Good. Did you hear that back there? Martin, way back there, could you hear what he said?

Very clearly.

S: Heard him very clearly, but I think, just in case, we should get it one more time.

Reacting instead of responding.

S: And there were a few hands over here too. Yes.

My fears are kind of like exciting things also. They make my heart beat faster, and they wake me up in the morning. My brain starts stewing about them.

S: That’s a pretty good signpost isn’t it? The keep you up at night or wake you up in the morning with your brain at full blast just cooking.

And was there another? Aye.

I was just going to say the panic in my stomach; it’s like jittery, heart racing.

S: And is it possible—be careful; I don’t mean this to be, but it might be a trick question—is it possible to have a fear you don’t know you have?

Yes.

One of the reactions, as Chris was talking about, that’s common for me is to feel angry or irritable or mad about something, and it takes me a while to understand that underneath that, I’m afraid of something.

S: That’s good. That’s good. And, Bonnie, repeat yours.

For me it’s recognizing that there’s a belief system at work there. That something is bad. That something is wrong. That it’s not working for the highest good.

S: And Bonnie is giving you the key now to that door that you, more often than not, want to keep shut. You recognize that there’s a belief going on here that isn’t serving you. Now, it might be serving the old you, and that wasn’t a time travel statement. It might be serving the you that you were an hour ago, but not the you you are now.

Kathy.

I was going to say that when I’m acting out of fear and I’m not realizing it, it usually is when I’m wanting to be controlling. And I don’t know that I’m being controlling until the karma comes back and hits me up the side of the head, and then I realize “Oh, wow, okay.”

S: Oops.

Oops. That was controlling, and that was based on fear.

S: Behaviors signal you, and they’re giving you important information. The behavior could be “I’m really unhappy; I haven’t laughed in an hour,” or a week, or. . . . It could be that your brain is cooking stew, and you are not sleeping well, and you have your stomach tied up. Have you ever thought about how interesting all of these physical metaphors can be? A stomach tied in knots. A brain stewing. If what you’re having to get is stewed brain, you probably will have your stomach tied up in knots. Makes sense to me. Yes.

And when you are able to recognize the signposts that your physical, or your mental, or your emotional self is giving you, then you’re also going to be able to start taking some action. Fear—what am I about to say?—fear is . . .

Your friend.

S: Say it again.

Is your friend.

S: And say it again.

Fear is your friend.

S: You would say it this way, “Fear is my friend. Fear is my friend. Fear is my friend.” It goes right along with, “Change is good. Change is good. Change is good.”

And chaos, too.

S: Aye. And how do you treat your friends?

Now, do you have a friend in your life that you ignore as often as possible? That you only allow to come and visit you in very, very small pieces. You take a look; you slam the door; you run back to the other end of the house.

I’m not home!

S: I like Jim’s statement as can be said only by somebody whose family is dead. He said, “No, no, no, that’s not fear, that’s family.”

Back to a friend that, a friend that you talk badly about, and ignore as often as possible, and when they speak to you, you do everything you can not to listen. “I can’t hear you! No, no, no, no, no.” Got many friends like that?

Not for long.

S: Not for long. That’s right, not for long. And yet here I am, saying fear is your friend. Fear shows you a place where your security needs are trying to get your attention. Fear is your friend in that way. When is it not your friend?

When you let it rule your life.

S: Say that again.

When you let it rule your life.

S: When you let it rule you life. And so knowing what the fear is becomes vital. And knowing the way that you react is vital. And knowing what the hidden message is. Sometimes fear knocks on your door and all you recognize is that “I’m just really uncomfortable about something.” Or, as Kathy said, people start avoiding you because you’re so controlling these days, and you recognize “All right this isn’t behavior that I care to put out into the world. I don’t want to fill up the Grid with more fear.”

What do you do to do something with it? Well, I tell you what you do. This reminds me of a story. And, as is the case with so many stories, I will, I am sure, need your help in getting through it, because it seems that my version of your stories tends to be a little different than the one you grew up with.

That’s right, Oma, that’s very true.

So once upon a time, long and long ago, absolutely in a place far and far away, there were two children. There was a girl child and a boy child. And they were for the sake of the story a brother and a sister, and they were happy little children. And they decided that they were going to go on an adventure. They were going to walk, by themselves as opposed to with their parents, which is usually how they would do it. They were old enough now that they were going to walk themselves to their grandmother’s house.

It’s not that story, so don’t jump ahead like that. Too bad.

So they’re walking to grandmother’s house, and on the path—with Suzie in the audience, I just feel a very strong call to say, “Flying monkeys were in the trees,” or “they were alive,” but it’s not that story either. As they were on the way to grandma’s house, they came upon a portion of the road that did not look familiar. It’s not that it was unknown. There was a lot there that they thought they recognized, but it just didn’t quite look the same. And, of course, the girl child sort of poked the boy child and said, “It’s a different season, so of course things look different. Now just keep going. Come on. We can do this. Let’s go!” And eventually there came a crossing in the path, and at that point they had to admit they were lost, because neither one of them knew which direction to take. And the choice seemed to be that they could go through the woods, or around the woods. But they weren’t really sure at all if that was actually where they would go.

Well, one of them thought that it would be a lot faster to just go through the woods, because grandmother lived at the outskirts of the woods, and the other one said, of course, that that was exactly the reason why going around would be best, because ultimately they would end up finding the house if they just skirted along the outside.

But as it was getting a little later in the day than they had originally intended, suddenly it wasn’t looking like taking the long way around was the best thing to do. So the squeakier wheel prevailed, “Let’s go through the woods and get this over with! Let’s go through the woods and get this over with! Come on let’s go this way.” I’m doing this nicely, anonymously, don’t you think? And through the woods they went.

Well, of course, at this point nothing looked familiar, and they had no idea what they were going to be dealing with, and because they were in a situation with no sense of here is what comes next, they started being fearful. And, of course, when one is starting to become fearful, a series of behaviors begins to show up. Blame. “Why did you choose this road?” “Me? I did not choose this road. You chose this road.” As Kathy mentioned, taking control. “I don’t know where we are, but I’m going to take us there.” Or maybe the more subtle version of that: just simply knocking out every other idea. Negative. “No, not negative, Samuel, that’s terrible. It’s not negative at all when I’m simply pointing out the weak points. All I’m doing is helping us have a better understanding of what’s going on, because sometimes—brother or sister here—does not see the danger, and I must point that out.” Sometimes it’s paralization . . . is that a word?

Paralysis.

S: That’s the one. Sometimes it is paralysis—thank you, David, there’s a reason that you are my editor—you’re walking down the road with your brother or sister, and you suddenly realize that you’re the only one walking on that road. And as you look back, well, there your sibling, self, friend, is kind of standing there carefully examining everything but the road. “I wonder what kind of tree that is there. Have you thought about it? It looks sort of like one of those very common silk trees.” Why is it they call them silk? Never mind. “Look, the road’s sort of flatter over here, so maybe this is the better way to go because, you know, it’s more road-like there, so it might mean more people trample it. And, you know, I found that I’ve got this rock in my shoe, and I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life getting it out.” All right, maybe it’s not a rock in the shoe, maybe it’s sort of like an ergonomically destructive office chair.

Stuck in your foot?

S: Which is a really interesting thought, isn’t it? No, instead of a rock in the shoe, your personal version might be any number of things that allow you to not deal with what you’re looking at. And what you’re looking at might be choices that you made all along, but all of a sudden aren’t getting you—let me try that again—are not getting you into anything familiar, because everyone knows—instinctual, deep-seated knowing—that unfamiliar is bad. So your brain scans the million bits that flow in in every millionth of a second, looking for any bit that might be the tiniest familiar, so that it can say, “All right! This is how to manage it.” It’s a lot for a little girl and boy wandering down the forest, isn’t it? But there you go, the one looks back and there is the other, producing all of the symptoms of “frozen in fear.”

How do you get somebody out of “frozen in fear” without resorting to physical violence. Well, one of the things that you might do is try to redirect them, but more than likely what you’re going to do is you’re going to lure them. Now, I’d like to tell you a little something outside of this story. Luring yourself away from your fears is never going to work, never going to work. Now, when I say “lure yourself,” what am I talking about? Can anybody give me an example or two?

First of all, are you talking about distracting yourself, which is what I’m thinking of, distracting myself away from that. Or are you trying for more permanent?

S: The distraction might be a part of it, but the whatever it is that you’re doing to make that distraction happen. You are in the road, and I’m saying, “Suzanne, wait, wait. Don’t just stand there. Look! Over here there is a B flat that I hear.”

Oh, let me go find that!

S: Yes. And so that’s the lure there. The distraction is the “Hey, look at me! You, frozen in the road!”

Right.

S: Lure. I hear a sound over here. Come listen! So I suppose I got you out of answering that altogether, didn’t I?

It reminds me, I think, of the Law of Extremes. Like if you have a fear of gaining weight, and the luring yourself, you know, would be over-exercising, watching your diet, and being obsessive about that. You may be avoiding the fear of being overweight, but you’ve still got the issue of not being accepting of yourself.

S: Such a wise child. You should have been one of those siblings. It would have helped a lot.

The lure is an avoidance technique, and I probably don’t need to say more than that. It’s an avoidance technique.

I have a question about fear. We all have that deep instinct within us that when we kind of evolve and grow in our journey, fear does become a friend, and you understand that polarity is something you embrace and transmute. And it’s a beautiful experience to come home to yourself in that manner. However, there are times when you have had maybe traumatic experiences, and your instincts have been bludgeoned, and fear is a tool that says, “Don’t turn right in the forest. Keep on this particular path. This is not a wise choice for you.” How do you determine between the two? Which is one you should embrace, and when you say, “I’m going to disregard the fear and keep walking even though it’s very dangerous.” And what is the fear that you want to embrace and love, and say, “This is a part of me that I need to transmute.” Is there a distinguishing factor there?

S: Absolutely. Excellent. All right.

Often the fear is just what it appears to be, and that tells you that there is this underlying belief that we’re talking about. And you have to say, “Even though I have fear, is that belief really worthy?” and if it is—typically it’s not—so you just go right at it.

S: And right the first time. Fear is your friend. Fear is your friend. Fear is your friend. It is, as Bonnie had said early on, always the frosting on a belief. If the belief works for you right now, then it’s simply a signal. If the belief isn’t working for you right now, it’s a defense mechanism. When you get your defenses, up, you have a toxic belief. And here is the tricky part: the belief may not have anything to do with the situation that brought the fear up.

Really?

S: Really. Yes. You need to look to the belief. I do not want to take away from your experience by denying any part; however now I’m going to do it. However, fear only has one purpose, and that is to keep you alive. Now, it is true, there are several different versions of alive. There is the alive-but-very-dead, zombie version, which some of you were just recently. There is the alive-breathing-getting through—laughing now and again—but just not really living version of alive, and that’s most of the people on this planet. I’m not trying to make you laugh when I say that state of life should be feared more than anything, because it is not living while you are alive, which is that third state—living, involved, growing, expanding, multiplying, and that does not have to mean sex, sacred or otherwise. Darn!

What are the symptoms of life? Cindy.

Joy.

S: Well, the fact of it is, there’s not one answer. And the answer that you have to that question right now may change, next week or next year, but you do need to know your answer. You cannot give what you do not have, and you are here to live love, to bring about the transition that you signed up for. You are here to give up yourself, to gain yourself, and when you fear that what you are fearing is the belief that you cannot handle what you don’t have control over, that you are alone in it, that there is no one else who can help you feel alive.

And just as a quick aside, in August I promise you, I promise you, you are going to have the opportunity to know what it is that makes you feel alive. Isn’t that exciting?

[ . . . ] less if we’ve already done it? [ . . . ] alive then.

S: Well, what is it you were doing that brought about that life?

I was [ . . . ], and eating, and laughing, and falling down.

S: You were being playful, and loving, and encouraging, and supportive.

Thank you.

S: You were being Suzanne at her best when not leading a toning. That’s the other best.

Pardon me for a moment, I’m going to slide a little here. This brother and sister finally got themselves on the road, and as they got moving, and soon the sun was going to set, and they started getting nervous, well, they eventually came upon a cottage that they were so relieved to see. They knew, “Oh good!” this was their grandmother’s cottage. And, of course, it was not. It was a wicked old witch who ate them.

You see, they had a reason to fear.

S: Sure they did. Absolutely. I don’t want to even pretend that there are not a whole lot of reasons in this world for fear to be in your life. And as you beautifully said a few moments ago, “All right. I can see the belief underneath this. I can make friends with this one, so that I don’t constantly just irritate it, and get it covering over my eyes, and ears, and mouth, and making it impossible to function in this world. Frozen. Paralyzed.

There are those fears however that are so tied into your deeply ingrained “stay alive” beliefs that they only look reasonable. They look controllable. It’s easy to keep those, to not see the danger of constantly living with them as your companions. The weight—that’s not waiting for, it’s heavy upon—the weight of the importance you have given the belief over the needs of your present.

Now, they continue on down the road, and they see a house and they go to it, oh my gosh, it is not grandmother’s house, it is the wicked witch who ate them. Why in the world would I be telling you that somewhere in your life is a wicked witch that will eat you. Well, that’s not at all what my message is about, and yet that’s probably going to be the part that you remember the next time you’re in a fix, and you’ll say, “Well, you know, Samuel said sometimes we’re just going to get eaten and spat out. Well maybe a little digestive enzyme would help.”

You are such a powerful manifester that you do create into your everyday experience everything that you need to be what you want to be. What’s wrong with that picture?

Well, I’m letting my fear run me, and if it just runs me then I am going to get eaten up, and I mean, as a child I was in fear, built lots of walls up, and that was my security system. And it doesn’t work anymore. And so when I have an emotion and I start feeling panic, I have to look at, “Okay, take a deep breath. I’m good. What’s going on, and how can I deal it differently,” and find different ways.

S: Yes. I don’t suppose you could say all of that again, could you?

And maybe if I allow the fear to guide me, it is going to eat me up. I learned that I have to take a deep breath when I start having the fear and the panic, and then I have to learn to make a different choice, or see a variety of choices that I can make, and not react in the same way, and get those walls down, and figure out there is a different security system that I can have that is better.

S: Aye. Bonnie.

In thinking about those fears that Mary was speaking about, they come up, and in your waking time you process that, you deal with it and you choose how you’re going to react. But sometimes in the dream state the fears that I work through during the daytime show up in my dream state. Is that just another process of working through it, or does that mean I’m not working through it in my waking state?

S: Well, it can mean that, but not likely. You see, you feel on so many levels. You “get” on so many levels. You are, in a very simple way of saying it, functioning on so many levels. And all of those levels are affected by the weight of the fear and the release of the fear. They don’t all happen at the same time, however, because the great fear that you feel for going down the wrong journey—track—and seeing the evil witch and getting eaten up, in your waking time your brain says, “All right, I actually have a lake of the known for this. I know how to deal with this. I have sat at Mary’s feet, and I have learned how to master fear.” Well, yes! “And I get it.” But your brain still has all of these pieces that don’t quite fit. It’s a piece from over here and a piece from over there and a piece from right here, and they don’t have a lake of the known to fit into, but they are in your present consciousness in order to be released into wholeness. The only way your working brain is aware of that process probably translates into nightmares. Not necessarily the big nightmares; sometimes it’s just the “fell off the cliff. Ooh, woke up! Boy, almost landed!” Splat. You can get sidetracked by that, or you can recognize “This is a part of me working to wholeness. Help me see so I can work it through.”

You are an onion. Once you get everything perfected on this layer, you’ve got the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and be those layers dimensional consciousness, be those layers aspects of yourself, be those layers different life experiences at different times and means, it doesn’t matter. You are experiencing it, and your job is to not let the fear rule. Learn what you can, not only about how it shows itself up to you, but also what your typical reaction is when it shows up so that you can take action the next time it shows up. The action that you need to take for something that has been floating around on the back side of your mind, only showing up when you’re dreaming, or waking you up during the night without you realizing you are dreaming, but giving you the insomnias, these are the ones that need to be made whole.

How do you make it whole? If you’re getting it in this life, then you’re completing it in this life. That’s important. No need for great journeys down the river of time, taking you into . . . no, right here. Right here. How do you bring wholeness to a fear that is so elusive? Well, it’s not any different than what you do for any other part of your life. You function in balance and wholeness in every way, functioning at your very best, and you deal with what comes at every step you are taking. And that sounds dreadfully simplistic. I would like to assure you, the human security system provides you with blinkers, blinders: “I cannot hear what I do not know anything about. I cannot see what I don’t want to know anything about. I cannot see you!” The security system creates in you a means of avoiding whatever you don’t want to deal with. You will have ample justification. And when the time comes that the lack of sleep, or the number of “waking up in a cold sweat, terrified” or whatever else it is that is causing you to recognize that you’ve got some fears trying to get your attention, then you act.

What is it in your life—your waking, day-to-day moment, now—that is causing you to die instead of live? What is it going on in your present consciousness that isn’t about being alive, living while you are alive? What are you doing—and I promise you, your answer will be something close to “nothing”—what are you doing to fill your life with that which feeds the joy, the power, the love you are? What can you do tonight, tomorrow, every tomorrow, to successfully bring completion to the fear that it’s all bigger than you, you’re not worth it, you’re not enough. That is what it comes down to. What are you doing to look that one in the face, and say, “This is August. It’s supposed to be a fun month!” All right, well, maybe you would just rather say, “Be gone!” It was going with that intensity. I thought “This is August; might be something more interesting to say to a fear.” You know—big picture—the most powerful thing in the world that you can do at all, in any way, is love.

So putting that aside now, by being fully alive, you threaten anything that brings you death. What makes you fully alive, that’s your sword, not your shield? You are in this world because you have chosen—you made the compact, and a whole lot of you remember it—you are in this world having made the compact to bring it through its time of transition. That’s now—to be what you really are, to do what you are here to do—but that doesn’t mean that you go to the nearest cliff top and fling yourself off, laughing all the way down—because, of course, you’ve got to be happy about that, right? It means you take the step, and then the next one, and then the next one, being the best you can be during that step.

Yes, this world does have interesting eating patterns—that was [referring to] witch eating little children. I’ll try it another way. Yes, in this life you are going to walk through the dark forest, you’re going to knock on the wrong door, and you may well get eaten. Rarely do you hear the other part of that story, because this is how it really ends: After weeks of fattening up those little children, and, as I said, stewing them up and eating them down, they were just too tough to make it through that witch’s system. And as every heroic tale is bound to tell you, the witch—not a good witch; this one was a bad witch—vomited them up. I don’t understand why that’s funny. Nonetheless vomited them up, and now you’re going to make a choice: they were whole and unscathed—you’ve got stories like that floating around; the great fish belched it out or something yes? Those poor plankton eaters, [they’ve] been hunted mercilessly since then—or their energy was totally transformed, and they were given the opportunity to start over. Every time you knock on the witch’s doorway and get eaten up, it’s not the end of the story because there are still choices. You make them based on what you are at the time. You’ve got to know that.

August has a lot of doorways. Now you know what to do if one of them is the wrong one. Be living. Live. Live for you. Live, and laugh, and dance, and fall, and live, anything and everything you need to do to let yourself be alive and not eaten in fear. It’s only the living who change the world, and that is your title.

Glochanumora. That would be you. Happy trails.