When we face and transmute fear, we gain competence, confidence that doesn't depend on things happening in a way we are sure they must happen. But confidence that comes from being insecure, facing the unknown, and allowing support and grace to find us in unimagined ways. Letting go of certain hopes, and trusting that what we can't yet see or know is there to hold us if we take the frightening steps far enough into the dark for it to find us.
Intro
Hello, friends, thank you for tuning in to the falling into soul podcast. I'm your host McCall Erickson. It's an honor to be in this space with you sharing my experience and nuanced understanding of the alchemical processes that awaken and keep the soul well in our ever changing and challenging world. If you value keeping it real on this spiritual path, you are in the right place. This is episode 26 transmuting fear and insecurity to confidence.
A few weeks ago, I finished the audio version of my book The Second Half of the Mountain. This is a project I've been wondering how to carry out for four years now, if you've listened to some of my previous podcasts, you know, I've had a huge amount of insecurity in and around recording my own music and work. So I wasn't too keen on jumping in and figuring out how to record an audio book by myself. When what I faced every time I tried to do so was fear, overwhelm anxiety, insecurity, along with the understandable wishful thinking that some magical sound engineering team would swoop in one day and save me from this overwhelming hardship. If I'm so meant to do something. Why is it so damn hard? Why doesn't the universe make it easier already? If I'm called to do something from my soul, shouldn't the way be paved by a golden brick road? Oh my goodness. I've thought those things so many times. But of course, Alchemy of the soul does not work that way. Alchemy doesn't save us from shit. Alchemy holds us to facing the shit, facing our fears. The whole point of alchemy is to transmute the shit, transmute the fears to face the things we feel we cannot face and realize the depths in us that are equipped to face them.
So as I found myself working through fears and anxieties while learning to record and edit my audio book, I was reminded of what it means to face and transmute fears and insecurities. That doing so is the very thing that builds confidence, and resilience. So I decided to build an episode around this and explore three things that will hopefully give you some insight and tools on how to work with fear and insecurity.
- Number one, let's talk about how to transmute fear to competence
- Two the difference between competence and certainty.
- And three, what to do when your confidence is shaken.
Let's start with how to transmute fear. First of all, fear is a base emotion or energy in alchemy. And by base I mean starting point, like the base metal that we need in order to make gold. So we don't want to get rid of fear when it is the thing we are going to make gold with.
Fear is usually present when it's time to begin an alchemical cycle. It's associated with the element of fire and the procedure of calcination, which is the first stage and the seven stages of alchemy. Fear heats us up out of the static uncomfortable state we sometimes find ourselves in and finding ourselves wanting to stay there forever. And fear is present because the ego is being threatened. The ego is going to lose something. The fire burns away our expired identifications, mental constructs, stories, roles and identities, old skin, outdated dreams or goals, ideas of the way things should be, familiar concepts, familiar comforts, rigid grips, you get the picture.
Fear is a sign that something is being or about to be burned away by the alchemical fire to reveal something truer underneath. So in order to transmute the fear, we need to look into it. Ask what is being threatened, not dismiss it, not demonize it or shadow ban it or gaslight it, but allow it to guide us. It's not about choosing to "just think positive" instead of being afraid. It's more about looking into the fear, getting curious, conversing with it, ask what it is telling us. Yes, some fears are erroneous and unfounded. And you can learn to recognize those because the minute you give them a voice, they immediately diffuse. And you might find yourself bursting into laughter after uttering them out loud. They're just too absurd.
But some fears are actually more real, more weighty, and have to be worked with and faced, because here's the kicker, some of those fears are actually going to come true. And that's the point. I know this may sound terrible to lovers of positive thinking. But the antidote to fear when it comes to alchemy, is not to convince yourself that everything will be alright, that does no good to the part of you, that actually knows that on the way to everything being alright things are very often not all right, the part of you that knows something is at stake, the part of you that has to endure the loss, that part of you has to be honored. Not all fears are unfounded, we are here to face our fears, experience them, live through them, and gain the confidence and the resilience that comes from doing so. And the part of us that is equipped to do that, the part of us that experiences the loss, and does the grieving to get to the resilience is such an important part of us.
So no glossing over fears with positive thinking because fear is real. The threats inherent in human life are real to the ego. They're real to the finite parts of our being. But how can we honor that without being paralyzed by it, paralyzed by fear, fear unchecked, and unexamined can truly be paralyzing. It locks and spreads in the body. It can make us sick and drive harmful behaviors. So it's about loosening the grip of fear and addressing it without bypassing it.
And loosening the grip of fear is twofold for me. One, get more information and to do the thing.
So I'll give you a few examples. When I first moved to Hawaii, I was terrified of giant centipedes. Listen, I still don't love them. But I mean, I was overly terrified of them at first. They get into the house, they get into your bed at night when you're sleeping. And they have very painful bites. I was terrified of stories from my friends who were telling me all about centipedes, I would wake up in the middle of the night afraid they were crawling on me. Every itch or sensation on my skin, I was sure was a centipede. Eventually, I had to face them, though, because they did get in the house numerous times, I had to learn how to deal with them. I started asking myself why? Why was I so afraid of them? I mean, what actually happens when they bite you? What does it feel like? And why do they bite? Can you die from a bite? Is it easy to recover from a bite? Why do they get in the house? What's the purpose of their place in the Hawaii ecosystem?When I started to learn that they are actually really important to the ecosystem, they eat snails and insects that harm plants. I started appreciating them more. And once I learned about them, and started appreciating their role, and I dealt with them enough in the house, including having one crawling on the chair where I was reading one night, I started feeling more confident and dealing with them.
When we have experience and we know what we're dealing with, we become so much more equipped to deal with it. This is the alchemical way, learning as much as possible, the true nature of the things we're afraid of. So we can be in right relationship with them. If we don't know what we're dealing with, we can build up all sorts of inaccurate stories about it in our minds, based on our fears. So when there is a fear about something more information is needed to understand it better. It's easy to fear what we don't understand.
So whenever I feel like I'm being paralyzed by my fear, and it's locking in my body, I ask myself, how can I get more information about this thing I'm afraid of, get more information and start taking action.
Transmuting our fears to confidence is a more active alchemical process. A lot of the processes I've talked about in this podcast so far have been passive processes like you just have to subject yourself to them. But transmuting fear actually takes some action, first in the form of gathering information, not gathering information to the point of analysis paralysis, but gathering information for the purpose of loosening up some of our fear paralysis.
Another more recent example, when I started working on the audio book, I had to face my fears of doing it alone without a fancy sound engineer to help me. I was truly paralyzed at first. But I reminded myself of how to deal with fear: get more information, and then do the thing. So I started researching how to record an audio book, I read other people's stories and blogs about recording their own audio books, I got information about what was involved in it, what equipment was needed, I watched a bajillion YouTube tutorials about editing. Little by little, I assessed the situation and decided I could do it, I started building confidence. And then I had to just start doing it. Using my creative mantra along the way. "I don't know how to do this, but I'm doing it anyway. I don't know how to do this. But I'm doing it anyway."
Doing what we are afraid to do is how we become unafraid of doing it. Alchemy is very practical that way.
Many years ago, when I taught music lessons, I worked with a lot of performers. And the number one thing people would come to me asking for help with was performance anxiety, people wanted to know how to get rid of it, how to deal with it. And I knew from experience that the only way to deal with performance anxiety is to get on stage and perform. There is a confidence that comes from doing it that you can't gain any other way. And the more you do it, the easier it is to do it. Walking through the fire of our fears yields confidence.
I love this line in Catherine McCoun 's book On Becoming an Alchemist.
She says, "of all the phases of the great work this one, (she's talking about the fire, calcination) comes to the clearest conclusion, and rewards you with the most definite sense of accomplishment. The anxiety that signals its onset abates quite noticeably, your feet feel firmer on the ground, and something at the core of you feel stronger as well. A chronic fear may diminish or even disappear altogether. You rise from the ashes like a phoenix."
Rising from that fire time and again gives us confidence not only in ourselves, but in the fire itself.
Which brings me to point two the difference between competence and certainty.
The confidence we gain from seeing ourselves through the fire of our fears is not the same thing as certainty. Because we are actually building confidence in uncertainty. We are building confidence in the unknown. We are building confidence in what happens when things don't work out how we thought they would or should. What happens when things we are certain we need to have happen don't happen. What happens when we step into the fire and get burned, or when we get on stage to perform and forget the words. Or when a centipede actually does crawl on your leg while you're reading a book in your favorite chair. What happens when your fears actually do come true? What happens when what you depend on the most falls through? What happens then? That's what we're talking about here. That's what builds confidence in the unknown. Confidence in surrendering to the experience, confidence in what we can't control, confidence in the creative flow of our own souls. Confidence in life itself.
Trusting things to work out in a certain way, is not really trusting in life. Life is a manifestation of the mystery. Trusting it means trusting things to work out in ways you can't foresee or know. The willingness to move forward even though things aren't going as planned, even when your worst fears are coming true allows you to be surprised by unknown helpers and graces along the way. When the ground you thought you were walking moves out from under you, and new ground rises to meet you, it builds a different kind of confidence than certainty. It builds a confidence that comes from knowing what you can't yet see or know is actually more dependable than what you can see and know. It's knowing that at any moment, what you depend on could fall through, status quo could shift, loss can occur. But what's solid is the core that depends on nothing but the experience of life itself. Let me say that again.
What's most solid is the core in you that depends on nothing but the experience of life itself, as it unfolds. We learn to be okay by having everything that makes us okay, stripped away, time and time again.
So this alchemical fire is an ongoing process that continually burns away the dross, burns away our worn stories, our wobbly support mechanisms. It keeps the ego surrendered and in service to the soul, instead of taking charge. It keeps us from certainty so that we can depend more on the experience of uncertainty.
This is the great confidence that belongs to alchemists that accompanies the Philosopher's Stone: trust in no particular thing, and trust in everything. Trust that what we can't yet know is there to hold us as long as we are willing and able to recognize and receive it when and how it arrives.
This wonderful quote came up on my Instagram the other day, from my friend @infinitepauseabilities, it's a James Hollis quote:
"We can find what supports us when nothing supports us by burying the unbearable, we go through the desert to arrive at a nurturing oasis we did not know was there."
Yes, we can find what supports us when nothing supports us. We build confidence by sometimes having our fears come true and living through it, seeing what in us rises and lives beyond it.
Again, to use the recent example of creating my audio book. For so long, I thought I could only do it if I got support in the way I thought I needed support. Until I was forced to do it the way it was happening. When no one and nothing came to save me or help me, I had to trust in the unknown support that came along the way. Yes, support came. It always does. But not in the ways I would have wished. Because the ways I usually wish are ways that would keep me way more safe, way less vulnerable, and less having to face my insecurity and inadequacy along the way. So the biggest key to receiving support from the unknown is the willingness to let go of how you think it should arrive and receive it in the way it actually arrives. So much of soul initiation is about learning to live without what we thought we could not live without, to do what we fear we cannot do. The Joseph Campbell line the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek is annoyingly and persistently true. This is the terror, but also the delight and the magic of the unknown: when we face the things we fear we cannot face, we come in touch with the deeper wilder parts of us that are actually equipped to face them.
And finally, let's talk about what to do when your confidence is shaken. No matter how aligned with core we are. No matter how well we know ourselves. No matter how much inner work we've done, our confidence can be shaken, because that is just part of the human path. We remain open and vulnerable to the experience of being alive no matter how much awakening or inner work we do. So if your confidence is shaken, the first thing to do is let it be shaken. If something you've grown to depend on falls apart, let it. There's something deeper and new that wants to hold you. It doesn't mean you've been weak, wrong or stupid. It just means you're here. You're in it. You're alive. You're evolving.
There is no escaping this as magical human Alchemist beings. The ground can always be moved out from under us. What we trust in most can always fall apart. And something new can always be born from the rubble of those pieces. We can't escape this, but we can get good at working with it. This is the development of our chemical metabolism. When we realize the fire is coming or that it's already burning and we can't escape it. Or sometimes it happens so fast before we even realize it and we are left in shock to deal with what is already gone. We get a lot better at not hanging on to what is already gone.
I love this line by Zen master, Suzuki Roshi: We don't need to learn to let go. We just need to recognize what is already gone. We don't need to learn to let go. We just need to recognize what is already gone.
Learn to realize what is going and gone and learn to realize what new is coming. And yes, we learn to be in the nothing space of uncertainty between those two. This is a muscle we build in alchemy. Real magic is not an escape act. It's knowing what we can't escape and working with it to make something beautiful.
The only stable ground is ground that is always moving. The Philosopher's Stone is the stone because it is absolutely fluid. We live from the unshakable core within by accepting that we are always shakable. We are always vulnerable to being shaken. This is the paradox. The outer shell we have built to keep us safe is already in some stage of cracking and that is precisely how we remain connected to the unshakable uncrackable core within. This is the paradox that we not only live, but become, through the alchemical journey. We will always be vulnerable. We'll always be playing with fire. And we'll always be facing fears. And if we see it through, we'll always be coming out renewed. We're always in this process in some stage or another. We're usually in multiple processes in different areas of our lives. We can be confident in our abilities in one area, but shaken by our abilities in another. Once again, the only thing to do is live it out. See it through let the magic happen. So much of alchemy is about learning to let it happen.
I hope this episode has given you some insight on how to work with fear and insecurity on the alchemical path. And finally, if you would like to listen to the audio version of The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening, I'll put a direct link in the show notes that will give you a special podcast listeners discount. Yes, the book is available on Audible and iTunes, and about 40 other audiobook platforms. But the royalties from other platforms are really not that great for me. Of course, by all means, do what works best for you. But if you want to put the most money in the hands of the creator, consider getting the book from the link in the show notes or on my website.
Once again, thank you for listening, and for supporting this show and my work. Until next time, be well in magic and soul.
www.McCallErickson.com