There is No Tiger
As humans, we adapt to stress to such a degree that we don't realize when we are stressed. But even when we're not conscious of it in our bodies, it still resides. Peace is our natural state of being—peace without fear. When there is fear, anxiety, worry, stress, overwhelm, it may be noticeable in our minds as thoughts. To be preoccupied by thoughts indicates that there is fear in our bodies, and that fear began with a thought, a belief that we made real through believing it. Only this happens unconsciously. What we become aware of is being hooked by the belief and by the feeling of stress that reinforces this belief.
We think, If I feel stressed, there must be something to be stressed about. But it all started with a thought. What is that thought? Though it may change based on the context, the thought comes from a core belief in not being cared for by God. When we feel stress, it is essentially an expression of believing we are alone, left to fend for ourselves, to fight for what we want or need, because there is no God who is looking out for us. Stress is fear, and fear is a belief of being without God. How much of our lives we live in this belief. It’s so stressful, so overwhelming.
Our trauma is what created this belief, not that it was God whom we believe abandoned us in the stress and adversity of our early lives, but people—our parents, our caregivers, those whom we trusted to love us and protect us, to respond to our needs. Our bodies recall the stress of such loneliness and abandonment, and still they recall it, for the belief that was created then still lives in us. Now, there is so rarely a real threat that warrants the kind of activation we experience in the day-to-day. The “tiger that we fear will kill us” are the everyday consequences of inaction or mis-acting, at work, home, relationships. The tiger may not exist, but our life still feels on the line. We react to situations based on what we fear will happen to us—to our safety, lovability, financial security, which to a part of us feels like a real and present threat.
The consciousness that reacts to a physical danger is not the consciousness that reacts to a make-believe danger. A physical danger comes and goes, but a make-believe danger persists. The real danger is a reality we fear to learn is true—that God will not care for us in the world or does not exist in the world. We would rather live out our days in continuous stress about work and finances and relationships, rather than go beneath the surface of these fears to face our greatest fear. But how do we do that? We start by letting go of our need to control or manipulate situations and people to get what we want or to prevent what we fear from happening. Letting go brings us in contact with the fear of our present reality, of being rejected by others, of losing out on the deal, of not being able to pay our bills. It's important that we are present to these because they are the wheels that keep our stress active.
