I have seen this occur to many people I know. You get a new job, and you fear leaving what you have. You get a chance to relocate, and you fear what lies ahead. Cliched I know, filled across the web with advice on stepping out into the unknown, bridging your fears….yawn, I know.
But if you are the first in your circle of friends or family doing something untried, be assured of resistance. Not from the outside, but first from within you. You might begin to feel like a part of you is dying. Your ego has become too attached to what you have. You know that feeling of being stuck- you ARE stuck, or more precisely, your ego is to something that is no longer you.
The beautiful thing is….yes, a part of you is dying. You just need to let it die.
There can be no new life without death.
You feel scared primarily because you have defined yourself as only your past. When you realize you are also your present, and your future, you realize that you haven’t lost anything- you were only aware of one part of yourself.
Now, you might ask, why is the present and future part of me, when I have not lived it yet? To answer that, you need to understand things beginning with your birth. Before you were born, who were you? Did you have a past before you were born? If so, you are currently living the “future” of your past life — you think your life’s movie started only when you were born, but your birth was merely an intermission in a far longer life. Your birth was merely a gateway to what you are living right now. So, there is no more getting over a “past” because you are already living a “future” of sorts. If you don’t believe in reincarnation, I suggest you read “Many Lives, Many Masters” by Brian Weiss, and his experiments with regression therapy.
But, I shall also offer one more perspective. When do you fear “losing” something? Only when you have it in the first place. You didn’t have your past earlier- it has only now become your past. Tomorrow, this post on Quora will be part of your past and you may fear not finding it. So, fundamentally, you fear losing the past because you think it “belongs” to you.
Your experiences don’t belong to you, they are already part of you. Let me give you an analogy. Think of yourself as a meal/ curry — earlier you were the vegetables in your childhood, over time life has added a bit of oil, some butter, some spices and you have become a complete curry now. You are not the vegetables, you are now a curry. Letting go of the past is the only way for life to convert you into a curry, a meal, something nice and appreciated. Now, thinking you are no longer a vegetable is truth, but realizing that life has made you into a lot more is also truth.
Now the question arises, what is my true nature? I was a vegetable earlier, now I am a curry. Or a better analogy- you were a caterpillar earlier, then you were a pupa in a cocoon, and then you became a moth/ butterfly. Does the butterfly miss being a caterpillar? Maybe. But is it also the caterpillar? Yes. So, your true nature is the past, but it is also the present. And soon, your true nature will also be the future, for today’s present will become a part of you. Life ADDS to you, it doesn’t exchange your past and give you a new present- it BUILDS on your past and gives you a present, and then a future.
You become more complete as you move through life. But what you miss is the feeling of incompleteness, the hope that you would one day be complete (which you had in your childhood). And now that you are more complete (not fully, for that is an ongoing process), you wonder, now that I am complete, I have nothing more to look forward to. My advice, stop looking forward to anything and life will present you with something to excite you- a child never looks forward to growing up, and he/she is happy. You miss that feeling of incompleteness which you had as a child. But when you realize you are still incomplete, you have a lot to look forward to, you attain peace.
Fear is felt when you lose something, but you neither lose nor gain anything with time. You merely see different versions of yourself. And one day, when you move on from this world, your future of today will become an “intermission” of sorts before the next act begins. Your life movie was incomplete before you were born, it will remain incomplete tomorrow however much you try to “complete” everything in this life.
So I leave you with this…it is only once “you” as you know yourself die, that your real true self can come to life.
Balanced Perspectives 