Safety and security are illusions. You create these illusions because you think you need them, but in reality they are what is smothering you. It’s not a conscious thing you do, creating your misconceptions of safety and security, but it’s something your ego does subconsciously because it’s been wounded.
Some of these wounds are innocent and some are more insidious, but they all have the same effect of keeping your spirit locked up in shackles. Someone made fun of the way you dance, so now even though that’s how your spirit likes to express itself, you don’t dance. Not even when no one’s watching. Or food was scarce when you were growing up, so now you keep your pantry stuffed to overflowing with the excuse of “it was a good bargain.”
Sometimes these wounds aren’t even ours, but ones we inherit from others. Great Grandma Wanda had a fear of flying, so no one in your family has traveled anywhere they couldn’t get to without a car. Now you have the travel bug, but only travel through your Pinterest board because you have an underlying fear of flying even though you don’t know why.
Authentic Safety?
You love to create but you’re afraid that your talents won’t pay the bills, so out of fear of failure and the unknown you take the “safe route” and get a regular 9 – 5. Health insurance, paid vacation, and all the other supposed perks. You don’t love the job, but hey, it pays the bills and you get to take a nice trip once a year. What more can you ask for? Sure, it doesn’t light you up inside, life is slowly losing its luster, and you find yourself snapping at your loved ones more and more, but isn’t that what adult life is?
Then one day you walk in to the office to find repossessors carting off all the furniture. Your company has gone bankrupt, leaving you and everyone else without a safety net. Now what? Find another 9 – 5 or branch out on your own and create a business from your creativity?
A Reality of your Own Creation
You’ve created these illusions of safety and security, but after they dissolve, which they always do, you’re left right back where you started. The original wound is reopened, and now you can choose to feed the fear again or to honor your spirit. If you can create the illusion of safety and security, then you can just as easily create the reality of your spirit’s true desire.
What is it that you desire? What will keep your adventurous part lit up? This is different for everyone, and doesn’t have to necessarily involve selling off all your possessions and traveling the world. You have to be honest with yourself, even if the answers scare you.
Then you can choose. Choose to feed your spirit, or choose to create another illusion.
