Whom do you trust?

I just don't know. I would guess that the answer is most often "my inner voice." When I am especially frazzled, this doesn't work very well. Then, I reach out to God. As an armchair theologian, I might venture the thought that both are one and the same. Just a thought. But the thing is that I think it is the belief that makes things work.

I watched in horror an episode of Hoarders on TV. Horror because I am such a minimalist that I couldn't even breathe watching the piles of crap in those houses. Then Greeley and I were talking about addictions and depressing depression and concluding, sadly, that the words that the hoarders spoke were the same words that come from the mouths of any addict. Myself included. Did I mention that I smoke?

Then Greeley started up about my fear of heights. For a long time he has been trying to understand this fear. He knows another friend who shares it. He tried again to talk to my rational mind about this irrational fear. I explained that it was visceral. It was also specific. I love flying. I adore small planes. I can't stand to go to our roof top observatory. Greeley is a star man and he goes up there nightly. I have only gone once and never to the higher one on his country house. Never.

Once, going up a ski lift at Killington, VT, I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder at the majestic view. I was so frozen that I couldn't get off at the top of the mountain. I knew I shouldn't have looked. I looked. I climbed the pyramid at Tikal, Guatemala, never looking anywhere but at the stones in front of me. Got to the top, barely, and almost fainted coming down. Now, that could have been because flying saucers land there, or most likely, it was because I am afraid of heights. There was a German lady, a big lady, who had to be carried down because she froze at the top. She must have looked over her shoulder.

But the reason I am telling you this with the opening of "Whom do you trust?" is that when I was at Yosemite Park, I was about to die when we stopped on the way in to look at a view,  an extremely precipitous view and the fear came. At that same moment I remembered that either a yoga teacher or a eurythmy teacher had told me to cross my arms in front of my chest and the fear would go away. I did so. The fear left. I couldn't believe it! When I uncrossed them, back it came with the faintness, the butterflies, the knees going weak.

I have no idea what went on in the esoteric sense. But in my world, I had a cure. Belief? Magic? Trust? I don't know. It worked and still works. This from the mother who gave her son a little stone when he was a kid. He had been afraid of squirrels or chipmunks or something. I gave him a "magic" stone that would protect him from any chipmunk attacks...and it worked! Is it belief? Is our unconscious mind really dumb? Or is there real magic that happens when you believe enough?  We all make wishes when we blow out our birthday candles. Many of us have wished upon a star. Fun to think about.