Getting Beyond THE WALL

Do you remember as a kid having an experience similar to the following?

You and your best friend are having fun at your home. Maybe you’re playing video games; maybe you’re watching TV. In any event, you’re goofing off, being silly, and having a great time.

Then you break something…something that belongs to your dad or your mom—something you know they will be mad about once they find out.

Dread and regret washes over you, but mostly dread. Your older or younger sibling, who happened to witness the event, says to you, “You’re gonna be in so much trouble.” The anticipation of that is paralyzing.

As adults, we can still have similar experiences…emotionally. We can still experience strong dread around future events. Maybe you need to give someone bad news. Maybe you need to say no to someone and you don’t want to disappoint them. Maybe you need to make a confession, own up to a wrongdoing, or ask for forgiveness.

Or maybe you are downright fed up with something, and you so want to tell someone off, but you are simultaneously afraid of the confrontation, the discomfort of the experience, or the repercussions.

Fear like that very possibly echos what we experienced as children. It doesn’t exactly make sense in our adult life, but we feel the fear nevertheless and can’t seem to get passed it. In fact, strong fear can resemble a wall—a wall we cannot scale; a wall we cannot circumnavigate; a wall we avoid like the plague.

And what if we perceive the fulfillment of a strong desire existing only on the other side of a Wall of Fear? Are we doomed? Is it an immovable obstacle?

Often, we simply write off the desire as impossible to achieve and/or costing more than we can bear. But sometimes, the Wall of Fear extends all the way around us. We can feel trapped…stuck…imprisoned. And when that wall starts to close in, we begin to panic.

Does this resemble something you’re struggling with in your life? Do any of the following characteristics ring true?

• You’ve had a specific desire for a long time.
• Progress has never happened on its own, therefore you feel as if you have to act in some way to make it happen. However, you fear the specific actions you think you must take.
• Any forward progress was (seemingly always) followed by a setback.
• You have pretty much given up on the idea that your desire will ever happen. Furthermore, you might have shut down the feelings of desire and now feel numb.
• When alone, you secretly fantasize about confronting the situation head-on, which feels empowering, however once you get anywhere close to a confrontation, you panic and recoil.
• You have begun to see yourself as weak for not confronting the situation for so long. You wonder if every person that looks at you somehow sees this weakness. You have convinced yourself that you are not worthy of the fulfillment of that desire because of this weakness.

All of this brings to mind the Four of Pentacles in the Tarot.

In these four versions shown here, we see a depiction of a wall. Barbara Walker describes her version as Avarice—extreme greed. In the other three versions, you will see a man clutching and coveting his money.

As described in my book, Scribe to the Pantheon of Rome, the number four is about stability. It relates to matter, structure, and foundation. Four is the number that most closely aligns with the element of earth. In the Tarot, Pentacles are the suit that represent earth, so the Four of Pentacles is a double dose of earth. Four, itself, has nothing to do with fear, but maybe the compounding of four and earth together caused the card to be imbued with the idea of fear.

In my mind, the Four of Pentacles is about building walls of protection. People with money spend lots of money to protect their money. They buy locks, gates, fences, security systems, and walls. If they have enough money, they hire men to stand guard twenty-four-seven.

Greed, in a sense, grows out of the idea of protection. “If I had more money, then I could better protect the money I have.”

But walls of protection are also walls of imprisonment. When you keep things out, you keep things in; it’s simply physics.

It matters not what creates a wall of fear, if you have one in your life, you know it. You feel the panic when you approach it (in your mind). You perceive this wall as between where you are and where you want to be. And more than likely, you feel powerless or ignorant: you either don’t know what to do to get passed the wall, or don’t feel you have the resources to do it.

When a problem becomes a wall of fear, seeking a solution feels pointless. As soon as we approach the subject, we run right into the wall. This only enforces all of the negative emotions we feel.

Remember, however, what Abraham says. When we feel negative emotion, that is an indicator that our Higher Self thinks differently on the subject. If we feel the wall is insurmountable (and thus feel panic), our Higher Self must be thinking that this is not true at all!

Our Higher Self has a higher perspective, both in time and space. That means our Higher Self not only sees a way around the wall, but sees us making the trip all the way to the finish!

When you have access to Infinite Intelligence, there is no such thing as an unsolvable problem. It cannot be! But to gain access to Infinite Intelligence, we have to stop banging our head on the wall. We have to move ourselves into a place—into a state of being—where we can hear guidance and follow it.

A big problem we have as humans is that we are linear. We experience time linearly and we thus think about solutions linearly. “If I am standing here, and what I want is over there, and there is this gigantic wall between here and there, then I have to figure out how to scale that wall.” So we analyze and scrutinize the wall. We discuss it at length with others. We write books about it. And yet, all this does is make the wall more physical.

I say, skip the wall altogether. Spend as much time imagining what it is like on the other side of it. The fulfillment of your desire is beyond the wall, so imagine the journey over there…after you’ve already surpassed the wall, but before you have arrived. That journey should be easier to picture. That journey should feel better to ponder.

Start with the wall behind you, and move forward. The battle is over. It may have been rough, but you won. Now it’s time to journey further forward. See if you can get all the way to your desire fulfilled. Then what? Unlike a Disney movie, it’s not over yet. Your long awaited desire has been granted and now you get to live with the results. What does that look like? What might you want next?

It may seem unproductive to fantasize about life beyond the wall when your sense of reality tells you the wall is still there. But trust me, it feels better over there; go there often, then watch what happens. Watch the ideas flow in. Feel your empowerment grow.