Last Friday, my daughter, Sophia, and I packed up the car and headed north. The plan was to camp at Lake Sikiyou at the base of Mount Shasta for the Labor Day holiday weekend. Sophia got out of school at 12:30 pm and we were on the road shortly after that.
It took longer than anticipated to get through Los Angeles and that added several hours to our trip. We were to arrive around 11:30 pm. I was so excited to get to Mt. Shasta, though, and didn’t mind the drive. I went there last summer with a good friend of mine and had a magical time. I was eager to share that experience with Sophia.
We finally pulled off the freeway around 11:00 pm and began winding our way down the dark, windy road towards the campground. Suddenly, I noticed a woman carrying a baby around 9 months old and running across the dark street to me, waving her arms and yelling, “PLEASE STOP!” I could tell she was sobbing. I immediately pulled over and rolled down the window to ask what was wrong. She told me that she had been left at Lake Sikiyou and had been walking back to where she was staying at an RV park. She had been walking for hours and trying to flag people down but I was the only one who had stopped.
Just then, an RV pulled up and asked if everything was okay. The woman recounted her story for them as my wearied brain tried to make sense of what was happening. The couple in the RV told her they would be willing to call the police for her. She said no, that she just wanted to get home. They wished her good luck and drove off.
The woman came back over to me and I got out of the car and cleared space for her in the backseat. She sat down with her wide-eyed daughter sucking on a pacifier and snuggled in her lap. I Googled her RV park and it was only 6 minutes away. The woman’s name was Jericho, a very interesting biblical name that I had never heard before but would become etched in my brain. Her daughter’s name was Rose, Sophia’s middle name.
The woman sighed as her tears started to dry. She thanked me profusely for stopping and told me how she had been walking for hours and no one else had stopped. I asked her more about what happened and, although the details were a little fuzzy, my interpretation was that she was at a party at the lake with lots of drinking and things went south. She grabbed her baby and decided, for their safety, they had to get out of there. I asked her if she would be safe if I took her back to her RV and she assured me that she would be. She just wanted to sleep. I dropped her off and watched to ensure she made it in okay, then I drove off.
By this time it was close to midnight. Sophia and I put up our tent in the dark and climbed into our sleeping bags. I listened to the coyotes howl as I laid there, unable to sleep.
No one stopped to help this woman and her baby. Why? I could only assume one thing – fear – and that broke my heart.
Our society has become consumed by fear, so much so that we are willing to pass a woman and her baby by, all in the name of protecting ourselves.
Look, I get it. We see something on social media or the news about scams and people trying to kidnap or hurt other people. It might happen to one in a million or even one in 10 million but we convince ourselves that it could happen to us and we need to be careful. “Better safe than sorry,” goes the saying.
The underlying essence of “being careful” is fear. Fear of losing something. Fear of being hurt. Fear. Fear. Fear.
Energetically, what we feel within, we experience without. Each of us creates our external world every day with what we feel inside. If we are afraid of everything, so much so that it keeps us from helping a woman and her baby, is it any wonder that we have created a pandemic where we are told that our very existence depends upon staying away from everyone, including our loved ones and neighbors? We’ve built up so many internal walls of separation that it only makes sense that it has manifested externally.
Let’s look at this from a spiritual perspective. We are spirits living a human experience. If we are eternal, what are we protecting ourselves from? Remember that we are eternal souls and we are here to remember our True Essence – Love. When we all are able to cultivate internal love instead of fear, that’s the world that we will see reflected back at us. We have the ability to create Heaven on Earth, filled with love, joy, peace, compassion, understanding, equanimity, equality, but it has to start with each one of us.
Don’t know how to stop being afraid? Contact me for coaching and let’s work through it together. You have the power to create the life that you want and when you do, you energetically uplift the world.
Sending you love!
Lara