Or: With this much horseshit everywhere, there must be a pony somewhere!
“Fear is Safe” is a direct quote from Richard Rudd, founder of the Gene Keys, but here is another: “Fear does not feel safe, but it is safe to feel fear”. This is the “Eye of the Needle” I am negotiating right now. How do I personally maintain calm when the waves of panic sweep through every person alive several times a day?
This newsletter has been delayed because every time I thought I’d finish it, the collective fear frenzy would rise another notch, trigger my fear of herd-insanity and I couldn’t find my truth.
This is my story. May it help you on your own journey through life as these scary, brand new events unfold at lightning speed. Look for part 2 next month…I’m sure I’m going to have a lot more material by then!
At this time a year ago, I was mostly done clearing out the three infections I had gotten from a tick bite the previous summer, (not a month after returning from my first visit to Maui). I remained quite determined to move to Maui and at the same time, I was fearful that I didn’t have what it took to overcome the obstacles to getting there. I thought it would let up once I actually got here and recovered, but today, whenever I go out in the world, or read the latest instant update on my phone, or wake up at three in the morning to the unhelpful alarmist litany of my mind, I am still confronting fear.
Fear was my best teacher for the last year and a half. Lyme disease has almost the same kind of dread attached to it as the mutant coronavirus, the difference being the lightning spread of “the virus” and the constant drumbeat of fear pouring into everyone’s personal phones. In order to get well, I had to face my fear every day. In order to stay well, I have to face my fear every day. The fear of lyme last year taught me how to keep my equilibrium in the midst of physical adversity. Now, my fear of the collective, media-driven panic is teaching me to keep my equilibrium in a society in free fall.
First of all, equilibrium is not stable. It’s not a tightrope walk. It’s more like falling down skiing or surfing, getting up and falling down again and again until I learn to stay on my feet most of the time. There’s always a lurch of fear when I fall again, but my confidence grows each time I get back up and stay up a little longer. Eventually, I learn to relax into the fall too. Everyday, I thank my parents for teaching me to trust my body to learn what it needs to do, and lately I do this internally ten or twenty times every day.
One of the best things lyme taught me was how to slow down. We are all getting a crash course in that now. I was forced to pace myself, to reduce my time at work, even though I felt more stable working. Paradoxically my practice became more profitable and my self-limited schedule was always full.
This crisis is paradoxical in a similar way, I am forced to take a time-out when every cell in my body seems to be screaming at me to DO SOMETHING to secure safety in my near future. Most of my friends have already sent out offerings of support to their email lists and I commend them for being pro-active! For myself, I felt the need to pause long enough to find my truth again before writing to you.
One of my most astounding discoveries in the last three weeks was that I can trust even corruption and red tape. Corruption is the tribal response to the fear of chaos: clamp down, make stricter rules. Red tape happens then: illogical limitations to personal freedom in the name of public safety.
It took me an entire year to meet the requirements to practice Acupuncture in Hawaii. I had to complete 160 hours of “supervised practice” and write up 5 case histories of 10 sessions each, AND pass two tests for the national license even though I had been granted the National License which Hawaii requires (all this after 32 years of supporting myself as a sole proprietor Licensed Acupuncturist in California which has the strictest requirements in the country).
Because of bureaucratic complications and my own incredible resistance to the process, I had to take those two tests 5 days before we moved to Hawaii January 20th. Then they took 2 whole months to tell me I passed. During that time, I kept facing my fear that I wouldn’t be able to practice here because of stupid rules and my incompetence.
I got the news that I passed the tests and can now apply for a license the same week that the governments all over the world shut down. So consider this: If I had passed the test in time to practice when I got here and didn’t feel as much necessity to build up my online Energy Medicine practice, I would have been out of work now, just as I was getting started. Every obstruction, frustration and irritation was actually perfectly orchestrated to support me during this time of unprecedented crisis.
Much Love, Respect and Gratitude to you during this trying and magical time,
David Kitts
“Incredibly, when you trust in chaos and allow your environment to mutate you, rather than trying to control it and stay the same, the greatest magic is revealed to you — that in chaos there is and always has been a vast underlying transformative order.” -Richard Rudd