006: Fear
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
-Artist Unknown
Fear is a precarious thing. A figure stands in a shadow and we constrict, a parent wounds us with a word–the way only a parent can–and we’re ready to explode. We remember an old embarrassment while humming on our morning walk, and we’re suddenly overcome with those same feelings, undiluted by time or distance.
There are all sorts of triggers but our responses are limited, at least in a general sense: we can fight, take flight, freeze or fawn, though the particulars are as infinite as the causes of our fear. For many of us, we tend to judge our instincts and impulses: “I wish I had said something instead of just standing there" or “I wish I would have let that one go."
Sometimes our fear is in reaction to our body's natural responses. I know I’ve frozen at the notion of fight, or fought back at the idea of fawning, and I’ve done my fair share of fleeing in the face of what’s arrived.
- Misaki Kawai
Then there’s the old cliche, “do what you’re afraid of." And, as we all know, the thing about cliches is that they’re overused, run dry long before any of us arrived on the scene. But the common counterpoint is that these old banalities became cliche for a reason. These phrases catch on because they resonate with those “in the know," the ones who have had the embodied experience, in which the lesson was learned on a level far deeper than the mere intellectual. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of a cliche suddenly ringing true? The ah-ha moment where it finally sinks in and maybe you start to question the notion of writing cliches off altogether!
I wonder where you’re at with, “do what you’re afraid of?" Have you come to know it beyond its superficial, boilerplate quality?
What if, as the poet Rilke said, “everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love?" That would mean our fear responses are misguided. We turn back when we ought to be pressing on. We get tense and stall when perhaps the answer is to release and trust. We lash out when we should be gentle and loving. All easier said than done of course, but something to strive for.
- Lena Fradier
In the book, "Medicine Cards” by Jamie Sams & David Carson, there’s a little story about Fawn, the deer, “who one day heard Great Spirit calling to her from the top of Sacred Mountain.” Along the journey up a horrible demon confronted Fawn. The work which this demon had dedicated itself to was, “[keeping] all the beings of creation from connecting with Great Spirit.” But Fawn was not put off by the demon’s fire breathing and smoke blowing, nor all the disgusting and violent sounds the demon could muster. Instead, Fawn spoke gently, but firmly, and with compassion, “Please let me pass. I’m on the way to see Great Spirit.” This rattled the demon with confusion, as it had only ever had success convincing weary travelers that Great Spirit had no interest in them whatsoever. The fearless love of Fawn then cleared the path thereafter for all who travel the road to the Spirit.
- Initial D: "The Fool with Two Demons" by Master of the Ingeborg Psalter
Demons, monsters–whatever you want to call them–seem to be created in the mind, and held in that defensive fortress in our chest. Our anxiousness needs these villains because without them what would we feel anxious for? We lack trust in ourselves to come out unscathed, when that very well might just be the point. I suppose today has become something of a Rilke appreciation post, but he’s chock full of memorable quotes. Here’s another to solidify this point:
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
One of the lessons that Fawn teaches us is that doubt and fear guard the path of desire. Seen in this light, then we can try to reframe fear and doubt, accepting that these feelings no longer exist as our warning to leave, but rather, the signpost affirming we are going the right direction. How can you reach the Highest Self, the Immutable Spirit within you, if you are unable to look your demons in the eye and offer them not a rebuke, but your support? This is what we do in inner child work. We reparent what finds protection in old, hardened feelings. Our demons can be thought of as the feelings so long compressed they’ve become stone. Perhaps it's my upbringing in a family of masons, but we can work with stone.
-Photographer Unknown
My fiancée and I were watching a movie together some months ago. It wasn’t a particularly good one, but there was a scene that later became an image for this very idea. The film was set in the old west, and a few outlaws and an alchemist hid out in the canyon-lands searching for gold. They had concocted a chemical agent that could activate the element, causing it to glow in the water, allowing the men to simply pluck the prize from the riverbed. I see fear as the alchemical response that lights our inner gold in the dark. Of course, within us it does not feel like a glow at all, or maybe better said, it’s glowing but it is guarded by a demon who hopes to convince us we are not valuable enough to reach it in order to protect us from experiencing the pain of not having our gold at all.
- River of Gold by Az Jackson
Fear can feel like something is being extinguished, or something terrible is on the verge of happening. But I invite you to build a practice of moving toward your fears. I don’t mean go walk on the ledge of a skyscraper–I speak only to the fears that parade around as proof of our limiting beliefs. I’m talking about the narratives that say things like, “I will never be a great artist because I am not honest enough” or “I can’t ask for that because they will say no." Pick a small cause to champion until you get your confidence and progress from there. Startle yourself with honesty, ask anyway in the face of doubt’s certainty. We would only fear the ocean more if we learned to swim in a storm, so pick a swimming hole on a sunny day and start there.
- Artist unknown
Another example of this idea that springs to mind is from a recent trip I took to Arkansas with my fiancée, Brian. He lived there for ten years and we spent a long weekend doing many wonderful things he had been dying to show me. We kayaked the Buffalo National River, swam at his favorite spot, and boated on Beaver Lake with his family. While on the lake, we took the boat to a large bluff that hung over a cove and watched as a young boy jumped some forty feet into the water below as if he did it everyday.
Well, I had to do it. The idea was such a thrill. My soon-to-be brother-in-law, being a thrill-seeker himself, came with me to help break the ice. Obviously, it’s one thing to look from below and think, “hey, I could do that," but it is an entirely different story to stand forty-feet above the glassy water and think, “yes, this is great idea.” But I did it–many times. Brian, however, was not so thrilled. He related to me later that he was torn because he did not want to start our engagement by backing out of an adventure. But he felt real fear at the idea of jumping.
Brian had never done more than jump off a small boulder or ledge at his favorite swimming hole, and even then he felt plenty of anxiety. As I climbed and jumped, climbed and jumped, he was frozen on the boat, locked inside his thinking, convinced that he should do it but that he could and would not. In one direction lay shame, in the other fear–not an easy choice to make. Eventually, he convinced himself to just climb up, knowing full well the only way back down was with wingless flight. He likes to remind me of what he said just before jumping. It seems apropos now:
“I’m only doing this because I love you”.
- Not a photo of Brian or I at the bluff
And it’s a nice reminder too, that we can encourage and support one another in the mission of following our fear, rather than escaping through dissociation, isolation, or some other form of avoidance. We don’t need people to push us, shame us, or try to inspire us with a heavy hand. Sometimes we just need an example, or a gentle word of encouragement and space enough to cultivate our courage.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Fear Journal Prompts
What is fear showing you that you want?
What would be 1% of moving closer toward what fear is showing you?
What does the fear need in order to feel safer to let go just a little bit more?
What do you notice in your body when you think about what you fear? Are your shoulders or jaw tight? Is your stomach sinking? Can you breathe into it?
If you woke up tomorrow, and all of your problems including the fear was gone, what would be different? How would that feel in your body?
Can you practice noticing where that desirable feeling is in your daily life?
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Enjoy the journey,
Katie
