fears surround us. pervade us. inside, within, beside, around, through, they are the rocks in our stream
the gravel in our flow
the fear of the first step on the electric steps
the anxiety when talking to a new person
the anxiety felt when addressing an audience
the feeling of how others evaluate our bodies and clothes as they share neighboring space.
the regret that perhaps the cheese & avocado sandwich was a better choice than the burrito
the fear of rejection by other people
the fear of failing the exercise undertaken
the fear of the ant biting my arm
the fear of that water having unhealthy bacteria in it.
the fear of failing to create a connection desired
the fear of doing it wrong
the fear of having brought too few clothes
the fear of making too much food
the fear of not being enough for a partner
the fear of taking a mistaken path.
the fear of not having enough food to survive
the fear of not having a shelter
the fear of being alone
the fear of spiders and their bites
the fear of being less helpful than desired
the fear of forgetting that important thing
the fear of seeming poor
the fear of seeming rich
the fear of seeming proud
the fear of seeming ashamed
the fear of seeming afraid
the fear of seeming insensitive
the fear of seeming weak
the fear of not understanding
the fear of damage to the body
the fear of helplessness
the fear of death
all these fears, and endless more,
the fear of not having anything to say
the fear of saying too much
the fear of one's joke not seeming funny
the feeling of seeming gay
the fear of not being good enough at sex
the fear of not satisfying one's lover
the fear of not being as good as last time
These fears and many, endless more, permeate our beings, personally and collectively..
On our plane of direction, they are scattered throughout, accumulated via lifetimes of experience and interrupted intention. One follows one's guidance until one finds blocks. obstacles, discomforts.
the fear of losing what is had
the fear of not achieving what one wanted
the fear of that girl seeing me look at her breasts
the fear of her seeing me looking at her face
the fear of having missed "the one partner for me" in the line that I was just in
The fear of having one's intimate thoughts read by people around me.
the fear of choosing the longer line.
the fear of uncertainty
the fear of seeming ignorant
the fear of seeming arrogant
the fear of seeming ridiculous
the fear of wasted time
the fear of missing out on the right person
the fear of missing out on the moment
the fear of breaking up a relationship
the fear of stagnating in a relationship
the fear of being wrong
the fear of seeming wrong
the fear of taking too much money from the ATM
the fear of taking too little
the space in which fears reside is rich, complex, at least as much as our outer space flowed through by air. As our attention moves through the world in this Life, it encounters fears often. At times small, like stepping onto electric stairs, it may be lightly felt and moved through, either aware or unaware that it was even there. Our flow of action follows our attention.
Sharper fears tend to have a larger influence on our actions. Feeling a flame heat up one's palm intensely, the body reacts by recoiling the hand, sharply repelled by the body's innate fear of damage.
Eye contact with an unknown person on the street can happen, and they often repel each other through one's fears. "Oh, look at that guy. His glasses have a nice.. whoops, he noticed, I'm gonna look away now", and the eyes avoid touching, like two magnets whose positive poles face each other.
Similar moderate fears meet us often along our path, and we choose how to tackle each one each time. We may ignore it, brush it away, then our flow of attention diverts, repelled by the force that fear exerts, leaving that diverted path in our flow untaken, and a "maybe" emerges somewhere in that space, a bubble resultant from the discontinuity in our flow of attention.
We may also choose to flow through that fear, and explore what is on the other side. This process requires an intention. Chance alone will likely divert our attention to somewhere else in our vast inner space. The other option is to be aware of the fear. To see it, to know, to feel it. And only we can decide to continue to move in that direction, through the discomfort felt.
Intention is practiced. In the experiences of some humans, action and attention move and bounce through mazes of self-made fears, to which the doer is often unaware of. In such a scenario, there is little practice of intention, of the active source. Sliding, bouncing, and crawling around mazes of fears is a reactive state of being, and it practices exactly that - reaction. It comes to the point that people only feel familiar with a situation if they feel guided, pushed around, by external forces. Led in this manner, given strict actions, the world is polarized with clear boundaries between the allowed and the disallowed. Such a reactive state does not practice intention, but is a game of pinball between the doer and her fears in the world. One such feels lost in a state of calm, itching for the familiar forces to react to.
Intention arises from freedom. Aware of the choices that surround it, the doer chooses a direction to move in, unshoved by fears in that moment.
Discomfort is how we feel a fear. And the way to move through it is to feel it. Unaware reaction to existing fears brings about predictable patterns through our experience, and such flows tend to congeal and solidify its borders into larger shapes, which require more powerful attention to climb or overcome. Like debris attracts more debris around it along the river.
Eyes often reflect the attention we hold within. A desired connection with a person brings about eye contact. The intention of reaching a destination has us often looking in the direction we desire to go. Diverting our eyes to corners happens when attention is overtaken by internal forces, like thought, memory, evasion. Feeling the discomfort of a fear is a practice. It is a simple knowing that it is there, knowing that I stay in it, and knowing that I accept this discomfort. Only acceptance of fear can help dissolve it. Rejecting or ignoring only replicates fears within our attention space.
The acceptance of fears may come with difficulty. They are often experienced as "forbidden" areas. As areas out of reach, as the walls that make up our identity. If I have been afraid to jump off a high trampoline since I was a child, I may have thought about that scene throughout Life, and the experience may have been told as a story countless times too. Such repeated patterns congeal and remain, making them familiar. And anything familiar we may adopt as our identity. Why would one recognize something considered a fault and adopt it into one's own identity? Our human experience simply recognizes patterns. If it has two arms and walks on two legs and speaks with human words, every moment of our experience, it identifies itself with its human body. If we are born into country Yamalia, told since birth that we live in Yamalia, see Yamalia celebrate its national day on the same day every year, and see Yamalian laws, people, food, customs, borders, and are told of the contrast between Yamalia and its neighbors, we may identify ourselves as Yamalians.
As with how to eat food.
As with how to worship deities.
As with which sport teams are better, and the predictable feelings associated with their results and execution in their games.
the fear of seeming lazy
the fear of losing one's income
the fear of being in the wrong place
the fear of not knowing enough
the fear of being late
the fear of being early
the fear of losing the flight
fears are congealed patterns of attention born by repetition (habits) or sudden force (trauma) that we experience as repellent forces. They may shape our actions, our attention, and at times contribute to how we define ourselves.
When stepping through a fear, the discomfort is felt in one's belly and solar plexus, like butterflies in the stomach, like the sinking pit in the stomach.
The fear of forgetting that important thing
Staying in that feeling is what allows us to move through it. Like a stream flowing around a rock in its path, and reaching the other side. The more each fear is made aware of and felt, the fear wears away, softens, as a stone erodes due to a stream continuing to move through it. A fear thus practiced dwindles in feeling from a sweat-inducing shake to nervous eye-avertion to twinkly discomfort to stillness. As flows are in the world, dissolutions are often gradual, and are overcome after numerous practices. Paying attention to some fears may also uncover other fears we did not know were there, which may guide our action further. Into dissolution or into avoidance.
I write of fears until now as debris to dissolve. As litter to clean up. And one may certainly follow it so - I do. As all in Life, this is optional. No fear is inherently good, evil. Desirability and undesirability are of the perceiver alone. I speak of them as blockages to remove because they are very often not aware within the perceiver. They tend to appear, spread, and grow within the unaware perceiver. And in an environment where the housekeeper does not know to clean, garbage accumulates, and the housekeeper's experience may become a constant maze of tiptoeing between and around the scattered litter that they don't realize as such. They may just say "that's just how my house is". And when not made aware of, unknown remain also their effect on their actions and feelings, and the power they have to transform them at will.
"Fears are your friends", a friend once said. They remind you you are not in the present.
The spectrum between anxious feelings and lives-long barriers is encompassed by fears. There are many, and they vary between speckles of gravel, sharp thorns, smooth stones, rough stones, granite boulders, long fences, surrounding barricades, and raging hot volcanoes. Our experience of each of them is uniquely our own, and we learn to recognize them as we practice.
The discomfort that arises when stepping into fear is uncomfortable when it is not practiced. When one practices stepping into these fears frequently, the feeling of discomfort becomes a familiar warmth of intention. It grows with intention and dissipates with distraction. We remain centered, focused on our intention, by trust in oneself. In a world where all shifts, dissolves, and flows, the one guide to trust in is oneself.
the fear of there being a better word than the one I chose
the fear of not achieving an expectation.
the fear of falling out of balance
the fear of paying more than I could've
the fear of not receiving a smile back
the regret of having paid more than I could've
the fear of saying the wrong thing
the fear of having said the wrong thing
the fear of not listening to body correctly
the fear of eating imbalancing foods
the fear of raising a family
the fear of not raising a family
fear of not seeming cool
fear of not meeting others' expectations
the fear of missing that chance
the fear of losing a connection
fear of losing what one holds
the fear of offending another
the fear of too much
fear of too little
fear of hurting
fear of hurt
