In recent weeks, real progress in dealing with fear. I get as many messages about fear as I do about my animals, and that is gratifying to me, because I think people are coming out into the open about their dealings with fear, as I have decided to do. My process is evolving. I do not seek any great revelations – turning it over to God is appealing but I don’t think that’s my path. Every time I acknowledge my fear, it diminishes a bit. Every time I get some help, it helps. Every time I meditate, I see it a bit more clearly. Mine is not a life of sudden awakening, but gradual awakening. Most people do not wish to awaken, it is a long and painful process.

I do wish to awaken, and coming to terms with the fear and panic that has shaped my life ever since a series of childhood traumas has taken me decades, it is a long and winding road. I am learning to leave some of our hyper world behind, and turn inward and to the needs and potential of other human beings. For many reasons, this is a frightening time for me as well as a meaningful one. In his book “Awareness,”  Anthony De Mello of the De Mello Spirituality Center at Fordham University writes that the very definition of spirituality is waking up. “Most people,” he writes, “even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep without ever taking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.”

This was my experience, and awakening for me has been living beyond and past fear and into a greater awareness of the beauty of this thing we call life. DeMello reminds us that every enduring mystic and prophet and spiritual leader – no matter what religion, what theology – are unanimous about one idea, one enduring principle, one central truth: all is well, all is well.

“Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox,” concedes DeMello, “but, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.” And they are reminded that life is a nightmare every time they listen to the world beyond.

And this is the choice, really for me, whether it comes to fear, anger, or the meaning and purpose of life. There are powerful forces, mediums, people and movements out there telling us every day, all day, through many alluring devices, that all is not well.  Just turn on any cable news channel or get the headlines beamed to you on your smartphone. We can accept their message or we can seek a different one. Prepare for emergencies, prepare for the end, which is always near. For me, the beginning of awakening came with the understanding that I did not have to accept their messages – the media, the lawyers, the doctors, the politicians, the Dystopians, the angry bloggers. I can seek my own message, and my message, increasingly, and despite the news and the sadness and chaos in the world, is the same as DeMello’s. All is well, all is well. It is my meditation affirmation, my antidote to fear, my daily message, my Christmas message.

The meaning of life in the world is not determined by cruel and angry, even murderous people. That message lives in my heart, and it is not touchable from outside of me. I look for the needs and potential of other human beings. And the need and potential of me. I will do what I can to love me and the earth. All is well.