Fear
Sandra
I promise I'll get to that part lll of the Do we create our reality? blog. I guess reality is taking its time!
In the meantime, things are are still going strong over there on Julian Walker's blog "The Alien Channel and other spiritual circus sideshows"- hop on over and see how it all lands with you.
In the meantime, a quote from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
If you are a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur , a lover - if you are a being of any kind... these are inspirational words:
Fear
Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?
Fear of the consequences of following our hearts. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of groveling when we try to make it on our own, and of groveling when we give up and come crawling back to where we started. Fear of being selfish, of being rotten wives or disloyal husbands; fear of failing to support our families, of sacrificing their dreams for ours. Fear of betraying our race, our 'hood, our homies. Fear of failure. Fear of being ridiculous. Fear of throwing away the education, the training, the preparation that those we love have sacrificed so much for, that we ourselves have worked our butts off for. Fear of launching into the void, of hurtling too far out there; fear of passing some point of no return, beyond which we cannot recant, cannot reverse, cannot rescind, but must live with this cocked-up choice for the rest of our lives. Fear of madness. Fear of insanity. Fear of death.
Those are serious fears. But they're not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that's so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don't believe it.
Fear That We Will Succeed.
That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess.
That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it's true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.
We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.
Of course this is exactly what happens. But here's the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they're better friends, truer friends. And we're better and truer to them.
Access: Public
consciousness
August 2008 
Despite agreeing wholeheartedly with Steven Pressfield's concusion , I see our root fear as dissolution into chaos. Everything else is derivative: If I leave my safe place and venture into the unknown (of success, power, clarity, etc), will I be able to handle it? Who will I be then? What will I have to let go of? Our minds reel at the prospect of re-organizing around a non-material center, because we are suspended for a period of time over an infinite abyss…
We are powerfully motivated to maintain our equilibrium, our secure attachment to an edifice of the “known” or the routinely perceived… This is the status quo. Every movement away from this arouses anxiety. It takes a lot of willingness to experience anxiety and to venture forth into mystery, to peel away the layers of what we think we know to arrive at a mercurial and awesome Truth. Not even knowing if such a thing really exists. Going on faith, so to speak.
But that beautiful concusion, on that we certainly agree! Interesting how we can meet in the center via different perspectives. Isn't it all too delicious?… !
Yes!
Beautifully expressed, Mary. And I LOVE that misspelled misspelling.
perhaps that is the answer - perhaps we need a kind of concussion, to help us navigate into the caverns of anxiety, rather than simply sitting on this side of the door, imagining all the horrors contained within.
Perhaps we will discover that what we are afraid of is the unknown, and by entering into these very caverns, we can experience the dissolution of our very selves through the letting go of knowing; and I deeply suspect that this may not in fact be as terrifying as we believe it to be.
On a more personal note. I have two strong memories of fearful situations, and I dealt with both differently. The first was when I got my first 'proper' job (inter/tranet project manager in the head office of one of Canada's largest banks.) I didn't want it, didn't want it at ALL. I didn't apply, I didn't even look for it. I was asked, out of the blue, simply because a man liked me, and thought I should go. I fluffed my interview so badly I was certain I'd managed to escape, but instead I got offered more money per hour than I'd ever made in a day, and a short term contract starting on any date which suited me. I tried to say no. Every cell in my body vibrated sheer terror. I was, literally, shaking. For days. But I knew I had to walk the cavernous path, if only because of magnanitude of my reaction. So I watched myself shake, and just carried on, until d-day, when I was almost speechless.
Good thing probably, It got me listening instead of talking. My first day, my first board meeting I realised that my fellow office workers were not of a higher or different order; quite the contrary, they were full of human weaknesses just like myself, and besides which, there were a few very odd and unhelpful processes going on, which I was able to see simply because I was not born into that kind of world. By the end of the day I had stopped shaking, and for the next three years (too long actually) went to work in a suit, much to the amusement of my socialist and artistic friends.
Next situation: David Deida's 3D Teacher Training intensive. First, and so far, the only one he ever did. Pushed beyond my envelope ( not all situations but one or two). Same response, sheer and utter terror. Only this time my body reacted not by shaking, but by freezing. I could watch all I liked but nothing on God's earth would make that body move.
I didn't pass that particular 'test', I didn't pass into that particular fear-room. I've thought a lot about it. If I was there now, would I manage to enter into it, rather than sit this side of it, as I did then? I don't know. Perhaps it was enough to sit and watch, perhaps it was enough to be humbled in my own presence.
Sandra