Fear and Alignment

I wonder where humanity would be if we all knew we could do and be absolutely anything. I wonder if it would be anyplace different to where we all are right now? Chances are if we are living our lives defined by fear then we are somewhere other than where our hearts truly desire to be.

I contemplated about what I would write this morning as I lay in the comfort of my bed. A potent emotion, fear has been present in my life as a block to creativity. Although it’s a feeling that not many people seem to like sharing. The stereo-typical male will generally not admit to such an emotion less he be ‘un-manly.’ Nor will you hear many adults admit to their fears authentically less they appear childish or insecure.

Fear is something with which most of us have had a relationship with wether we like it or not. If we look around in the world it is the primary subject that motivates and drives the news, cinema, economy and war. It also inspires those who build empires, dictators and those who claim themselves victims.

I have tasted fear in my being. I see it in the eyes of animals in slaughter houses treated inhumanely on YouTube. You can also see the reality of capital punishment in a few clicks. So what drives the mechanisms of fear? Let’s have a look. Below is the panic cycle, it is a very close friend of fear.

If we look here at the panic cycle in the diagram, we observe that each stage escalates in anxiety which drives the self protective mechanism based on an interpretation of reality appearing a certain way. If you have heard of the acronym F-alse E-vidence A-ppearing R-eal, it would serve us well here to note that once we are in a state of panic we are amplifying internal perceptions and seeking reinforcement of them externally. For example I am in a relationship and I am jealous all the time and desperate not to lose my partner. I am so possessive because my fear causes me to not trust my lover. She finds me so self absorbed and unattractive because I can’t trust. I unconsciously search for ways to prove my fears which eventually manifest.

So what else happens when fear operates?

So most of us know the experience and feelings of fear. It may cause us to live as though our very life may be on the edge. As though a certain experience, person, event or situation may take us beyond the tipping point and from there we know not what. We could even go further and say that everything we know about our own existence may be annihilated. It is this primal fear that grips the ego.

Recently, I encountered a breakthrough in my relationship with fear through snowboarding. I realised as much as I was thrilled to try something new I was also very scared. Strangely it was an exhilarating sensation to feel both fear and excitement in varying degrees and to eventually step through it.

I spent the first day of snowboarding hitting the ground, hard. It turned out the snow was quite icy in places as I found out. As I lay on the ground recovering (not the whole time mind you) people wizzed by asking “Are you ok?!” Thankfully I was. But a few times I seriously had my doubts.

As soon as I picked up speed going down the slopes on my board I noticed myself thinking if I fall I’ll hurt myself which was inevitably causing me to lose confidence and balance. It happened time and again. Not to mention as my mind turned to the images of falling I would encounter the experiences I didn’t want.

Bruised and sore I felt like a crippled grandpa that night. I contemplated never snowboarding again wanting to treat my body with kindness. A week later my bruises had healed and there was fresh snow on the slopes.  That day, on the slopes I harnessed the power of my passion and I felt the joy of being alive and living fully. I forged a new pathway in my life without avoiding fear but by embracing life, completely. It was then that I could experience my environment. Something shifted and flowed through me that was fresh and new. It no longer mattered to me wether I looked the part or wether I won the appreciation of others. My full participation was more valuable and fulfilling than anything else.

So what matters most in life? It’s true there is absolutely everything out there, pain, oppression, death, torture and mindless insanity ( don’t believe me? watch the news or google real war scenes). At the same time the exact opposite exists. The trick is to get off the entire loop of fear and it’s opposite which I have heard is love. Yet I believe that love can become undermined in the effort to eradicate fear and hence return to fear once again. So how to exit the loop. To be at peace with exactly what is. It’s a new paradigm in which the entire relationship to our experience shifts the world we know or don’t know. Reality changes based on our perception. If you are interested to explore the concept of how reality changes depending on how we view it check out the philosophy of Phenomenology.

We will forget all that really matters time and again. We will forget to be present (maybe not now). But the beauty of it all is this… We will inevitably return to the truth, to our own essence. This truth is that we will remember we are peace which I believe is not the opposite of fear but the end of the entire loop  that creates pain in the first place. Which essentially is karma. Which we created. So we realise that, this dance, this play, this movement through life sickness, death and all of creation are our interactions. We  are evolving. This degree of our progress in evolution is defined by our capacity to dissolve our resistance to the presence. Put more simply by Eckarte Tolle- you can ascertain your spiritual progress by the measure of peace you experience in your life. Dissolving our resistance to fear as well as love, intimacy, money, sex and everything that exists in all of creation certainly does bring peace where-as fighting it certainly destroys that peace.

What if suddenly we said yes to life just the way it is without trying to fix it or change it? What would be different?