MEETING FEAR
February 3, 2024
Cave of Darkness
The Hero’s Journey, as in the awakening of the Sage, or the confronting of “inner demons”, we encounter an experience of feeling uncomfortable. Entering the cave of darkness within, we are confronted by ourselves. There exists a process of chaos, in-cohesiveness that behaves like the very bolt of lighting that shattered the foundations of the mythical Tower of Babel. Paul Foster Case refers to this strength in his book ~the Tarot, A Key To The Wisdom Of The Ages~ when discussing the TOWER card. “In its psychological manifestations it is the destructive, iconoclastic force which tears down the structures of ancient custom and tradition”. Case goes on to explain how this force involves a sudden influx of spiritual consciousness, represented by the lightning flash which imposes a new relationship between subconsciousness and self-consciousness.
The Hebrew symbol associated with the TOWER card of Tarot is the glyph Pei (or Peh). This relays the importance of how speaking effectively can lead us to reaching worthy goals. If viewed from the Tower of Babel perspective, when we loose the ability to communicate with others, we fall to pieces. We are forced within to find a new way to express ourselves in a way that can be understood by others. Additionally, when we fail to communicate with ourselves in a healthy way, we allow fear to creep in and generate tension between our self awareness and submerged intuitive senses. Peh symbolizes the power of utterance and out of it come the issues of life.
I was talking recently to a hypnotherapist associate, Julie Huesinkveld, about how she continues to encounter a sort of wall of apprehension in her clients that limits them from realizing their full potential. Some form of fear to embrace their possibilities and “rule the world” from a place of ease and clarity. At some point we all have an opportunity to address these fears of inadequacy. Sometimes meeting these fears will open a door to giving up or loosing something or someone we care about. These realms of un-comfortability are not much fun to dwell in, so without intention and willingness to meet those fears, the improvements can’t occur. Those changes shake our foundation, our beliefs, our perspectives and illusions. Julie asks, “How can we make this process more fun and enjoyable for people?” I absolutely love this perspective of loving our healing. Smiling as we adapt. Accepting our mistakes, growing and moving on. But how do we move out of our comfort zones and meet our fears?
Positive Thinking
It helps to look deeply at our goals and life plans and figure out what are the next steps to get where we are going. Often the number of small steps appear insurmountable, and need to be organized into attainable objectives that lead to bigger aspirations. In this way, we can listen to cues, subconscious impulses, and emotions that are guiding us, while experiencing self-awareness from a safe perspective. In the times I have become frustrated by an inability to manifest dreams, I have an opportunity to look again at the larger goals in life and be curious if those lost dreams were actually in alignment with my most important life goals. What am I afraid of? What is the thing I could loose that would impact me the most? Can I imagine myself in another time where I lost the thing I treasured most, and learn be okay with it now?
“There are only two kinds of thoughts,” explains Michael Gervais, “those that constrict us and those that expand us… Positive self talk is about choosing those thoughts that provide a little more space.” In ~The Art Of Impossible~, Steven Kotler discusses how, when Kristen Ulmer left her career as “the best female extreme skier in the world”, she became one of the world’s leading experts on fear. She recommends transforming ones relationship to fear by developing a regular fear practice. “We often don’t even recognize that the emotion we are feeling is fear”, states Ulmer, “Instead, it gets misinterpreted and redirected, showing up as blame, anger, sadness, or irrational thoughts and behavior.”
Laird Hamilton believes the best way forward is to practice regular risk taking. “Once you start confronting your fears, you quickly realize that imagination is greater than reality.” Applied to our personal examination of undesirable emotions, risk taking becomes the experience of feeling the pain, guilt, fear, anger, frustration, disgust, jealousy, envy, grief, hate, and loathing. Robert Weisz presents a compelling practice he calls Mindfulness-Based Somatic Emotional Processing in the book ~Minding The Body, Embodying The Mind~. “This conditioned reaction of struggling against experiencing unwanted emotions is a reflexive attempt to suppress them, to contain them, to change them, or to eliminate them because we fear that there will be painful or embarrassing consequences”. He goes on about the art of not struggling, “Rather than defending against those “difficult” emotions, we can choose to give them the attention they deserve: we can recognize, acknowledge, and accept them. Then we can somatically process them so we can receive and appreciate the wisdom of their message.” The secret is allowing our animal intelligence to do the work while training our mind to stay silent and witness the emotions unfolding in the body, without labeling them or deciding what they mean.
Rick Ruben offers insight in his book ~The Creative Act~, from a chapter titled “Listening”. “Communication moves in two directions, even when one person speaks and another listens silently… Listening is suspended disbelief. We are openly receiving. Paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what’s being expressed - and allowing it to be what it is.” As we apply this “Creative Act” to our inner dialog, we can meet our fears and begin to experience the grace of owning our power.
Creating Safety Through Change
In the process of meeting fear, we are also presented the task of distinguishing ways to create safety for ourselves. Robert Augustus Masters presents a chapter titled “Let’s Stop Being Negative About Our Negativity” in his book ~Spiritual Bypassing~. “There isn’t such thing as a negative emotion… they simply are. Consider anger. When we are hostile, we emit unmistakeable negativity, bristly and mean-spirited, tight and heartless - but to take this as an example of anger being a negative emotion misses the mark.” When we exercise a “fear practice” and take risks to face our uncomfortable feelings, we can potentially learn and train ourselves to avoid negative behavior all together. If something needs to change and no headway seems possible, we may just need to take some additional risks and imagine our greatest terrors coming to pass. Whether those fears happen or not, it doesn’t matter. You are preparing your mind for the worst. But we should still be hoping for the best. This can be a handy tool when addressing change that is extremely uncomfortable. As a friend recently told a story about when he was working with Ayahuasca in Peru, the shaman noticed when he was struggling. He was imagining being eaten alive by a huge snake the size of a car. The shaman calmly reassured him to stop struggling and let it happen. When he faced his fears and became devoured by the creature, everything became known and the struggle ended in epiphanies of bliss. I take this to represent an archetype of accepting fear for what it is, so it no longer needs to be experienced as pain. Fear is simply an experience that deserves attention. In some cases, creating safety may require we conduct dramatic movements in order to change the unhealthy circumstances around us.
Change requires some amount of chaos to shake up old failing foundations. In the times that I have resisted my own difficult emotions, they build up pressure until when they do come out, they have been messy and painful for myself and those around me. I research this issue to learn manners of regulating my own emotions and becoming more comfortable with a fear practice. Creating a safety net by trusting our animal intelligence and our minds to collaborate on big feelings when they come up, helps with the process. Taking on Julie’s endearing perspective of “being better and doing better is fun” can be embraced by anyone. Take the time every morning to “wipe off the chalk board of your mind”, and with practice, your emotions will be far easier to regulate. What needs attention gets it. Everything else can wait and that is fine. Wiping off the board of random thoughts also provides a window of emotional tolerance that assures all big feelings will get caught in the safety net of awareness. I am not suggesting to become forgetful or undependable! Only that clearing the mind and taking deep breaths each morning helps brings the chaos of change into a new frequency. Imagine the way Cymatic forms completely dissolve into oblivion as one frequency pitches to the next, reorganizing into a new pattern.
In ~The Mysticism Of Sound And Music~ I appreciate the way that Hazrat Inayat Khan discloses a passage about sound. “Therefore the knowledge of sound can place in the hand of a person a magical instrument with which to wind, tune, control and utilize the life of another person to the best advantage.” I feel this analogy is appropriate as a model for best working with others as well as ourselves. If we view our voice as a magical instrument that can tune and direct our community for the best outcome for ourselves and others, then our self consciousness is equally capable of tuning in with our subconsciousness for the benefit of integrated wellbeing.
Once again I refer to Case’s book, ~The Tarot~, pertaining to the DEATH card. “It is by death that social changes for the better come to pass… Psychologically, the emphasis falls on imagination. Change your ideas and your old perception of personality dies… In the mental nucleus of each tiny cell, implanted there by subconscious response to your new patterns, will be an impulse to realize the new thought in body structure, in function, and in external action.” The death that occurs in our EGO during the hero’s journey of confronting our greatest fear, is a necessary change required to bring about a complete readjustment of one’s personal conceptions of life and its values. Alteration from the personal to the universal viewpoint is so radical that mystics often compare it to death.
Summary
By meeting fear we invoke a bolt of transformative power that will impact our lives and those around us. Sometimes things have to be shaken to rubble before new patterns being to emerge from that chaos. When we are impeccable with our inner dialog, we choose to make more space in our thoughts, becoming less constricted in our mental processes. As we affirm and visualize the new form that is emerging from the chaos, we send those safe impulses to our cells. Our cells regenerate and with practice we learn to recognize fears before we even label them or attach stories to them. When our words are properly charged, we can control and tune our environment to work with us at peak potential. Sometimes the destructive effects of change can be unsettling, we may even doubt our judgement. In the end, we just have to do the best we can with these forces of change and give ourselves tools to manage our emotions and learn to express them with grace. Only by confronting our demons can we expect to control the lightning bolt of communication in a way that will be most beneficial. Only by changing our view can we slay fear.
Avery Runner is a content editor for www.wisdomnexus.org