///LOVEREIGN///

Be calm, let love flow freely within you,

then love will flow freely without.

When I was a toddler, overwhelmed with tantrums, each evening when I allowed myself to enter into a fit of uncontrollable screaming and crying, my father would pick me up, carry me to the back porch, sit me on his lap, and we'd gaze at the moon and the stars. After a while, my sobs would slow to an awkward hiccup, then eventually a peaceful calm. Love bounced between my dad and I and these celestial beings, connecting us, and creating a whirl of light around and inside of me.

"My fear grows fat on the energy I feed it,

and if it grows very big,

it probably happens."

A couple years after graduating high school, I began to experience the most frightening sleeps, ones overwhelmed with sleep paralysis. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, and when I finally gathered enough strength to conquer the mysterious force and wake up, I would be crippled with fear. Each night I would think about how horrible it was going to be when I fell asleep, and each night for several months at a time over several years the paralysis recurred. Looking back, I can see at what point the suffering ended: it was when I no longer let that fearful thought plague my mind, when I let go of my desire to escape the nightmare, when I released myself of anxiety.

We too often doubt the power of our minds. Just as we can make our greatest nightmares come true, we can also manifest our greatest dreams. Everything that exists in our lives, we believed into existence.

"The mastery of fear."
The reigning of peace & harmony, light & love.

Fighting with Non-Violence
Scilla Elworthy

Film photographs by me:
1. Leyte, Philippines - June 2012
2. Leyte, Philippines - June 2012
3. Tonlé Sap, Cambodia - July 2012