Susan Leonhard, a dear blog member, painted this beautiful picture of a scene overlooking my husband’s hometown in Norway. Every year, we trek up to “Kambenutan” to view this spectacular sight. She did a magnificent job capturing its beauty, and I’m so grateful. My husband sent pictures to his family, and they were equally impressed. Thanks so much, Susan!

This is a hard act to follow, but Erik would haunt me if I didn’t share his words on fear.

Erik: What does fear come from? You gotta know where it comes from.

Me: Is it something created by the ego?

Erik: What is the ego?

What, is this a pop quiz? Just like in Middle School, my palms begin to sweat.

Me: I see it as that small child in yourself that wants to exist at all costs, so it identifies itself with things like roles, a desire to be right by making others are wrong, comparing oneself to others, anything that creates that sense of separation that makes it stand apart with its own identity.

Erik: Yeah, and it wants to be acknowledged. The ego has this fear that it’s going to die or go away, so it tries to live by the highest standards that someone else or society sets. Just like we talked about, what our culture does is create a lot of fear around being wrong. The whole truth is that there is no right, and there is no wrong. There just is. Only humans define things as right or wrong. Don’t live up to your expectations, which are usually defined by other people and society, and you’re not as worthy as you want to be. That fear the ego has is basically a way of saying, “I’m not certain” When it’s not certain, the ego tries fills in the gaps of mystery by creating all these stories, and we allow uncertainty to start making us think in a very catastrophic way because that’s what we’ve been taught. If our life experiences have always been about things that we label as “negative,” then we’re going to create negative stories around them. That’s what you’ve done with most of the fucked up shit you’ve been through.

Me: I guess when we’re uncertain we almost never create positive stories. Humans tend to think the worst-case scenarios.

Erik: Yeah, and that’s fucked up. Our brains are wired for fight or flight so we assume it’s going to be the worst possible outcome. In your case, the fact that your parents beat the crap out of you can make you create stories like, “I’m not worthy of love,” or “I can’t trust anyone,” or “I can never find peace and joy.”

Me: The last one. It’s the last one. That’s my story.

Erik: That’s right. It’s pretty simple though. Don’t let the story take over your life. Let go of the story and recognize that the story was written for you not to you. People’s suffering is rooted on what they hold onto.

Me: So what do you do? Let’s say, for example, you’re uncertain about whether you’ll have enough money to pay the rent, and you might be on the street the next day. What do you do?

Erik: You have to remind yourself of situations where you didn’t know what was going to happen, but in the end, it all worked out fine. You need to pull from past experiences to see where you were in a difficult situation and see that everything resolved itself.

Me: That makes sense. I had a brutal past, but I’m alive. I have a loving family. I have a roof over my head and food on the table.

Erik: I say this to people like some blog members, all the time, that you have to create this imaginary bucket, put a label on it called the “fuck it bucket,” and just throw all that shit in it.

I laugh.

Erik: I’ve been wanting to use that for a long time! You just have to do that. You have to throw your hands up and—

Me: It’ll be okay. Okay, so let’s talk about some of the difficulties or struggles that come from uncertainty.

Erik: Bring it on.

Have a lovely weekend everybody!