You’d have to be living under a rock in a cave in the wilderness to be unaware of the “financial market meltdown” now being talked about in the developed world. The news is full of stories using language like, “turmoil”, “crisis”, “market in freefall” and “meltdown”. And people all over the country are wondering what’s going to happen to their investments, their superannuation, their future security?

Well, believe it or not, you do have a choice. A choice about whether you invest in love or fear. A choice about whether you scare yourself with the news and become stuck in a mindset of anxiety or whether you remember you create the whole of your own reality, you are a powerful, magnificent creator and you always have a choice about how to respond. Your choice depends largely on what you have been investing in…

If you have been investing in knowing who you really are, exploring your self-made internal representations of the world and choosing to align yourself with peace and love and joy, you’ll know that whatever is happening is simply a manifestation of the collective consciousness of the world. You’ll recognise your own choice to agree with the fear or not. If you have been investing in becoming aware of what’s really going on, beneath the surface of what appears to be so, you’ll remember that everything is energy – you are energy, money is energy, life is energy. When the energy shifts occurring in the world are driven by fear, more fear is the inevitable result. And the cycle continues.

You can respond to this cycle of fear in yourself and in the world by challenging your own fearful thinking, by not agreeing with anxiety that is prevalent in our world today and by remembering that everything is perfect even if it doesn’t look how you think it should. When you let go of your attachment to how things “should be” and instead accept the perfection in each and every moment, you’ll discover the inherent peace and joy that lives beneath the surface of your mind. When you invest in being fully present in each moment of now, your fear about the future dissolves and you experience real security – the security of knowing who you really are – Love.

Fear came to town this week in a very obvious way! A five-kilometre steel fence in the Sydney CBD a stark reminder that when fear is the pervasive paradigm, there are few choices but to manage, protect and defend. A false sense of security if ever there was one!

The jangly energy in this city is palpable. People are feeling frustrated, angry, annoyed, fed-up and more than a little anxious. Gridlocked traffic and “exclusion” zones all contribute to the mounting tension. Driving around today, I was struck by how many police are out and about – in cars, on roadways, on bridges, atop buildings, on the harbour and in the air – their intention to “guard” and “protect” – to help us all feel safe. Interestingly (and more to the point, obviously!) it’s not working. The very things that have been put in place in the name of “security” are having the opposite effect. People are feeling more and more stressed as our fear manifests in angry outbursts, frustration on the roads and in our cars, impatience with people and things that are not going how we think they should and making ourselves sick.

So what do we do?

Well, the first thing to become aware of is that we cannot resolve the paradigm of fear from within a paradigm of fear! Putting up more and more barriers, pushing and resisting and focusing on “trying to change” the external reality will never deliver lasting peace. What’s needed is a change of context, a paradigm shift from fear to love.

If you really want to live in peace, you need to be willing to go deep within yourself and allow the essential love that is you to lead the way. To remember who you really are and to consciously (mindfully) choose to be who you are moment by moment, irrespective of whatever is occurring outside of you. This does not mean denying or ignoring your external world and it does mean to centre yourself in love (who you really are) while making choices about how to respond.

When fear comes to town choose to greet it with love and watch what happens.