Fear and It will Appear
It is often a challenge to discern what is at the very foundation of things happening in our personal worlds and in our world at large. It has looked to me from time to time as complicated issues and complicated motivations and so- called complicated reasons. Of late, there has been a cacophony of noise on many fronts…environmental, political, medical…you name it – lots of noise. As a psychologist by training I can tell you with great certainty that the profession loves the notion of complicated reasoning and theories of “why” stuff goes on…I never entered the study for that reason. I always wanted to know how to sustain growth and development – what moves us to grow and change even when things are challenging and difficult.
My own exploration has led me to one reason behind all the noise, the confusion, the anger – whatever you have seen that falls into the so-called negative has Fear as its ancestor. Fear can look like protection – but if you look more closely you will find it only fosters suffering. If you are standing in the middle of an oncoming train- you don’t need fear to tell you to move. It is a natural innate instinct. When flight or fight was discovered as a response to events, it was associated with our early origins of being attacked by tigers or other aspects of primitive life. There is no mention of fear as the motivator to fight or flight…actually from a certain vantage point it looks like common sense.
Fear is not a thing…fear is a feeling ..that carries an entire suitcase of thoughts that tumble through the mind and yes we continue to scare ourselves to death with them. The title of this blog does not mean to convey that your fear makes stuff happen – but it does create a situation where you think stuff is happening. When we get lost in fear we futurize and catastrophize whatever is up next – and then we suffer as if things were happening – when it is only a feeling followed by a lot of useless thinking.
Before the fear showed up – who are we – we have this presence that conveys all is well…that in the moment – there is peace. Of late, people have shared with me that their fears are so fast in happening and so continuous they can’t see the space before Fear appears. This is a worthwhile practice – notice who you were before that feeling and thought – notice the moment -the gap between thoughts and you will find one of two things (that are actually the same in feeling) Peace or Love.
The simplicity of life is that there are only two tracks to be on…fear and all its cousins or Love absolute. In these time, we need more Love -Compassion for ourselves, for the fear that is having people lose their minds in traffic, on airplanes, in rallies. Give yourself great compassion when you find yourself in the fearful noise and send it on out to all of us – we need it right now!
