If you’re into personal growth, cleaning up your fears from your mind, as you tidy up your house after binge watching the new Netflix sensation, is the best thing you can do right now.

 

When I use to think about the word ‘fear’ I would instantly get the picture of a giant black hairy spider in my mind…

 

It never occurred to me that this fear was just the visible top of one gigantic bag of crap sitting in my unconscious mind, like a pile of books taking dust in the corner of my bedroom.

 

We don’t know we badly need to tidy up and clean it, until we can’t stand it any longer and along comes Marie Kondo, and her sparkling high vibes, to help us shift things and find joy.

 

I am an animal lover, an earthling who has deep faith in God and His creation. Hating spiders and insects was not really in alignment with my faith and my love for all living creatures. I knew I had to shift my mind to be a real nature lover.

 

So, I prayed and worked on myself to learn to accept bugs and spiders…as much as possible!

 

I mean, everything is a work in progress, right?

 

Now, I send them my love, tell them I respect them, but still get a neighbour to pick the big hairy spider that dares to come into my house to test my determination to learn to handle them with detachment and love.

 

I’m still learning, but I have progressed because I don’t scream my lungs out, running in my pjs outside like a mad woman, while leaving my bewildered daughters in with the beast.

 

Working consciously with determination on my most obvious fears, has lead me to discover and work on fears that were unknown because they were hidden by the beasty ones.

 

It has become a personal little game of mine, and I absolutely love it. They keep on coming, sometimes out of nowhere, taking me by surprise in a sea of inner tranquillity.

 

I have come to realise that it’s not so much the fears that we have that impact us, but more the importance we give them and our willingness to face them like a warrior.

 

For example, I remember that most of my friends in high school were absolutely terrified to present their projects in front of the class or to take an oral exam. Some would simply not do it, others become pale as a sheet, others vomit their guts out in loud noises.

 

It was never my case.

 

I felt the fear of being exposed and judged. I observed that it was stressing me out, but decided that actually, it was all normal.

 

What I discovered as well, was that amongst those feelings, was excitement.

 

Excitement to get my message out, happiness to know that after my exam I wouldn’t have to do it ever again.

 

Standing in front of my peers, I felt the power that I had in this position; people would listen to me. I felt their presence, their energy. It became some kind of fuel for my system to make me perform better. I became the warrior.

 

I was able to overcome the fear of public speaking because I found excitement in it. The fear is a low vibrational energy that doesn’t stand a chance in front of the high vibrating ones, like love, joy and enthusiasm.

 

I always have absolutely loved public speaking and I put that on the fact that I consciously chose that the fear and the stress were not actually going to stop be, they were going to be my way of healing, of transforming myself, of becoming the person I wanted to be.

 

I wasn’t a good student, more interested in boys and parties than academic results; but that one thing was my pride. I was good at something because I didn’t allow my fears to block me.

 

I learnt a great deal from that, it was my first hint of my conscious life dedication to self-development that would become my prime focus later on in life.

 

But it took years for me to start peeling off the layers of my subconscious mind.

 

This is where most of our fears lie dormant, like dark monsters hiding in a closet in our house, ready to jump out when we least expect it.

 

This is exactly how it is actually.

 

Our body, our mind – subconscious and conscious; represent who we are on earth. It contains all of who we are, it is the way we interact with the world. In our body/home resides our soul, our emotions, our experiences, our memories, our joys and our challenges… and our fears.

 

Our fears love to hide in drawers, corners, entire rooms, that we didn’t even know we had.

 

Like when we clean our house, at times we just find dust; but in other times we find new disgusting stuffs and we are like – ‘what the heck, how can it be this dirty?’

 

In our lives, we go through some obvious challenges that require us to look within, find what blocks us, the fears holding us back. It can be to finally get to talk to that gorgeous girl, to go for the dream job, or to tell our mum to back of…

 

We are conscious of the difficulty and the need to do it anyway. We are not always aware of the actual fears holding us back – it’s not always necessary to know – but we can sense that if we never do it, we will regret it for the rest of our life.

 

We know, we act, we clean, we clear; and then we feel amazing for having had the courage to do it. We feel light, we feel free, we feel spacious.

 

At other times though, things come out of nowhere, the monster in the closet is getting too big and starts suffocating, it needs to come out.

 

The same way, we experience tensions in our lives that create a pressure-cooker type of situation. Overtime, we start suffocating, we don’t know why, but we can’t breathe any longer. We need to do something.

 

If we don’t, the monster will just jump out and scare the hell out of us and might very well traumatise us and leave us lying on the floor. These are the worst fears, the ones that will end up creating anxiety, intense stress, depression and suicidal thoughts.

 

These are the ones that we have to release before they are so big they start taking control of our home and scare us too badly.

 

These are the ones that have been dormant for so long that we don’t even realise they are there. They inhabit our homes like shadows in the waiting, creating a veil of darkness inside of us, making us believe that our home – us – are like that and can never change.

 

We were not built this way. These are invaders and we have to reclaim what is ours, our fully enlightened home, where our soul can live in total freedom.

 

If we clean our home and tidy up regularly, there will never be space for unwanted ghosts, because all that is there will be things we consciously love and want there.

 

After years of working with people, teaching them how to look at their fears right in the eyes and deal with them, I can tell you something:

 

Once we face them, we give them love, we listen to them; well, they are not that scary anymore.

 

They have lived with us for a while and they have become familiar. They are not our enemy.

 

In fact, they are there to help us heal…

 

When we face the fear and stop allowing it to haunt our life by going for what we want anyway, we break free from them and we allow them to be free from us. We lift the sheet off the ghost, we lift the veil off our fear, the monster in our home can leave.

 

The power and joy we feel afterward is tremendous, intoxicating.

 

I don’t say it’s easy and that the freedom all happens in one go, but the more we do it, the easier it gets.

 

We didn’t come on earth a weak little light.

 

We came as a bad ass spiritual warriors, ready to take on any challenge that could make our soul grow, expand and vibrate in an infinite light that reflects the light of the divinity that we all are.

 

Once we shed a light on a shadow, it disappears.

 

So, don’t be scared my friends… Go, empty your closets with joy, ‘a la Marie Kondo’!

 

We might find some monsters there but most likely, we will find treasures we didn’t know we even had. We will find joy and confidence along the way.

 

Like in Marie’s episode, clear your body and mind, clear your home, with the help of your loved ones.

 

It will bring you closer and make the whole process more joyful. Remember that joy is a high vibrating emotion, so when you learn to harness it, it will help you a great deal with dealing with your fears.

 

Like my boyfriend, who’s intense and funny way to help me with my fear of spiders, is to hide plastic ones in my fridge, so I can learn not to die of a heart-attack when I just want to reach for my carrots; or when he decides that my birthday gift will be a giant hairy spider as a soft toy so I could learn to love it and cuddle it.

 

I mean, really???

 

It took me days to even touch it – I know, a soft toy – but now, I am happy to report that Valentine the spider is on my bed during the day and sleeping next to me (on the floor still) at night.

 

And I shall learn to love her the same way I love all other living creatures and all of the ghosts hiding in my closets.