Learning not to be afraid of fear

A central concept in Buddhism is Dukkha, which translates generally as discomfort but encompasses the full range of discomfort from uneasiness and annoyance to the deepest pain and suffering.

My recent visit to a psychic medium represenced me to this concept and illuminated for me how far I've come in my journey.

I'd seen Laura soon after I found out about Husband's addiction when I was looking for anything that might provide some answers about how it came to be that my life was suddenly unrecognizable to me. The session had given me some good things to think about (letting him "off the hook" - in other words, not trying to make him pay for what he'd done is one of the things I recall her saying.)

This time my friend Sara had set up a group session with the two of us and 3 other women. Laura worked with each of us individually, serving as a vehicle for communications from the spirit world from people who've passed on, as well as from what I'd describe as the Universal Consciousness. When she came to me, she had little in the way of messages from departed relatives, but lots of thoughts from this Universal Consciousness presence.

She started out by singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" which, in retrospect, was very funny given how our conversation went. A joke from the spirit world, perhaps.

She said I was like a rose waiting to bloom with lots of opportunity available to me if I would stop focusing on others, stop living in fear, and focus on nurturing and developing myself. She suggested that I'd have to do this despite the fact that Husband might be threatened by success that comes my way. She told me I needed to start walking my walk, and to live up to the expectations I had for others. That was the good stuff.

She also said that my relationship was a cluster-fuck, that fixing absorbs 80% of my life and that I live in fear of when the next shoe is going to drop. When she asked my why I was still in this relationship, I said "because it's my path."

"For how long?" she asked.

She said I'm in a no-win situation because Husband is threatened when my life gets better. She said They were telling her it's a pattern I got on track with, and that I can't continue to hide my life being afraid of what he's going to do. There's more to my life than being a wife and mother. And, with respect to Husband's addictions, there have to be dealbreakers because people don't learn until boundaries are set.

She said I'm at a point where I must choose what to do with my life now, and the result with either be that I expand or crash and burn.

While I could listen in the context of my experience and find a lot that made sense to me, the context in which Laura was speaking and Sara was listening and later talking about it with me seemed to be based on the past, and it was very confronting.