How To Feel Safe In An Unsafe World. (Part One)

This is the first article in a series of three articles how our unconscious safety and security nets are stopping our progress.

In my opinion, everyone needs to understand how and why we react from a misunderstood need to protect our safety and security. This behavior rules our world and has huge implications on our development, from a very young age. Understanding why we act how we act can help teachers and parents navigate the many pitfalls bringing up the next generation. As you read this article you probably will recognize yourself. Well, I do hope so, because the better you understand yourself the easier it becomes to clear out issues and help others.

Okay let us have a look at our world, as we tend to see it:

Unfortunately, these days, when you switch on the television, or buy a newspaper you mainly see a world full of negative news. The media is full of disturbing stories about the financial markets, global warming, the end of the world approaching in 2012, wars and crime at your doorstep, just to mention a few items. Zooming in a bit closer to home, maybe a close family member has health problems or you lost your job, perhaps even your home?

Since we are unwitting victims of this constant bombardment of negativity it is of little wonder that the negative beliefs we all hold are constantly reinforced and produce deep-rooted feelings of disturbing insecurity. For many of us our internal alarm bells are on constant red alert. This expresses itself in stress, anxiety, or a permanent feeling of being hassled. And as if this were not enough geopathic stress and electromagnetic pollution add to these feelings as they add further strain on our brains as well as our immune systems.

If you are a parent or teacher this anxiety, stress or unease of course directly affects your kids too. This is particularly so if you are dealing with children below the age of 7, because until that age their brains function predominately in alpha and theta mode. This means their minds are like sponges, they suck everything up, but in totally uncritical mode.

When we are reacting to the bad news on television, or the threat to our job we do not realize that this is just the tip of the mental iceberg. We are lulled into a false sense of security as soon as we turn our attention to the things which are more pleasurable. We switch off the box, with a bit of luck we find a new job and convince ourselves that all is well. We have returned to safe normality, whatever that means to each and everyone of us. Our old coping mechanisms appear to have served us well yet again and we can relax into the old comfort zones. This process keeps repeating itself until the next time something happens that rocks our boat. Then the entire process starts all over again.

Alas, unfortunately for us the security and safety we seek has a fundamental flaw: It only exists in our mind, because in reality there is no such thing. We equate safety and security with maintaining a certain status quo forever, but this assumption is in direct contradiction to one of the fundamental laws by which the universe operates.

The principle building block of the universe is energy and energy is in constant motion. Therefore we have to accept that any seemingly static state of affairs is just an illusion. An illusion we have created ourselves.

How can this be?

You may have read about how we make up our own realities and how our thinking, positive and negative, attracts exactly what we think about. Since most of us think positive and negative thoughts at the same time, but do not realize it, we get mixed results at best.

The law of duality dictates that in order to know happiness we must know sadness, in order to enjoy sunlight, we must know darkness. It is the duality experience that enables us to make choices in our lives. This goes for our view of security too. In order to crave security we must know what it feels like to be insecure or be in seemingly unsafe territory.

When you accept this premise, you can start viewing many events in your life from an entirely different angle.

Let us stay with our need to feel safe: The first question is where does the idea of safety emanate from? Answer: From our internal representations. We have learned these representations from our parents, teachers and other caretakers. But they are not necessarily our own. We just think of them as our own representations. To further complicate matters, our internal representations come in many guises. What we think we react to, or are afraid of is seldom the root cause of the emotion.

For those of you who are familiar with energy therapy and already use EFT regularly you will know how EFT shifts the energy in the body, and how focusing on a problem often leads to surprising realizations about the origins of our emotions.

Anyway, staying with the mind for now: The conscious mind only reacts to what it perceives on the surface, literally. Rather like an onion, once you peel off a layer, and then another, a new vista appears each time. As we get deeper into these layers of the mind, we find the key to all our core feelings. Children on the whole have far less trouble accessing these levels, because they are not as inhibited as us grown ups.

Mercedes Oestermann van Essen is an Energy Therapist and EFT practitioner specializing in performance psychology, relationship issues and bereavement counseling. www.eftmindpower.com