"Anger Is The Bodyguard Of Fear"

One of my greatest shortcomings in this lifetime is my defensiveness. I am pretty sure that it was rooted in my DNA, lol.

I have done a lot of self improvement work in this lifetime as you may have guessed. I don't ask my clients to do anything I haven't already done myself.  For me it is a matter of personal and professional integrity.

So imagine my surprise when I was working on a home improvement project and listening to a book, (Not a self improvement book!) and this quote popped out. Not that it is a completely new concept to me, it just encapsulates so much meaning in it's petite little self. It takes a whole lot of knowledge and ties it up in a pretty little bow.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It is leading me down roads of questions about myself and what I really fear.  I know that my defensiveness is really just another word for my anger, and to quote the Course In Miracles, "anger is simply an attempt to make someone else wrong." So if I extrapolate that, all of it is truly rooted in a belief that (somewhere deep down), I fear that if I am wrong I will in some way be injured or cease to be lovable. 

Once again, this is not news to me, I am well aware that in my smallest self I fear that I am innately flawed in some horrible way that makes me unworthy of love, in my experience that is the human condition.  But past attempts to really move on from the behavior of defensiveness have been intermittently successful.  Knowing and transforming are two VERY different things. I see and feel myself opening and changing thoughts and behaviors, that I experienced as very challenging in the past, in new and exciting ways.

I know we have to be exposed to thoughts/beliefs a number of times before we even begin to grock them. (How's that for a '70's reference?) I call this process "planting acorns." I can have 10 conversations with a client about the same subject before they have their Aha! moment.  That Aha! is what I call the "great oak." I am definitely having a GREAT OAK moment with my defensive self.

I love the freedom these words have created in my mind and my heart.  What about you? What few words have caused the acorns that were planted in you to suddenly turn into great oaks?