Some will find this topic irrelevant because they rarely if ever remember having experienced fear.
But when a child is filled with anxiety while his parents are away from home, that anxiety may not be recognized as fear of abandonment.
When an adult is enraged about losing his job, that anger may not be recognized as fear about not being able to provide for his family.
When another adult is saddened by the loss of her job, that sadness may not be recognized as fear about not being able to provide for her family.
When a person "doesn't suffer fools gladly," his intolerance may not be recognized as fear that he can't control people around him.
When some people come across as being aggressive in a dental or medical office, their aggressiveness may not be recognized as overcompensation for fear of dental / medical procedures.
When abattoir workers crack tasteless jokes about killing animals, their boisterousness may not be recognized as fear of their job's corrosive effect on them, and deeper still, fear of their own mortality.
When a person only foresees negative outcomes from any new suggestions, his chronic negativity ("only being realistic") may not be recognized as fear that the very universe might be unfriendly.
Most, if not all of our difficult emotions when deeply examined, will be found to be based on fear. And we fear being afraid, just like we're anxious about being anxious, and are depressed about our depression. We do not like our own (or anyone else's) difficult emotions, so we try everything to avoid them, but cannot escape.
Can we be wiser than compounding difficult emotions by trying & failing to suppress them?
Wise advice from: Amoda Maa “Falling Open in a World Falling Apart. The Essential Teaching of Amoda Maa.” 2020.
"How should I deal with fear when it shows up?
The invitation is to become sensitive, to become highly attuned to where this subtle grip takes over, to notice when there is a subtle tightening – either holding on for dear life or pushing life away. In that moment of noticing, you have a choice. It doesn’t matter when you notice, as long as there is a moment of noticing. In this moment, you have choice. It’s a choice that doesn’t come from the mind. It’s a choice that comes from the tenderness of the heart. It’s a turning away from the circumstances of life, and a turning toward your innermost.
Your innermost is the tenderness of the heart, and here the doorway of surrender opens. It’s the surrender of ego-mind’s grip on reality … and you don’t have to do anything. You cannot do the surrender. The tenderness of the heart doesn’t attempt to do anything with its experience … it simply is with the experience. It is intimate with the experience, it is close to the experience, and in the intimacy and that closeness, you come closer to yourself. You come closer to your true self, your true self as openness. Your essential nature, in the innermost, is openness.
Everything else – every maneuver that doesn’t bring you closer to your experience, that doesn’t bring you closer to tenderness – is a cover-up. That cover-up is what makes life burdensome, that cover-up is what makes life a struggle, that cover-up is what makes you fearful. So, how to deal with fear? By noticing the places and the moments in your life when you do not turn toward tenderness. Don’t look for freedom from fear in transcendence, don’t look for freedom from fear in some myth of spirituality. Don’t run away from fear. Turn toward fear and meet it with tenderness.
Life is your spiritual teacher, the only true teacher there is. Become sensitive to the places and moments where you don’t turn toward tenderness in your relationships – in your relationship to your spouse or to your children or to your dog, in your relationship to your work or your creativity or to your sense of mission, in your relationship to your bank account and to your taxes. Become sensitive to the places and moments you don’t turn toward tenderness in your relationship to your body – the aches and pains, the loss of eyesight or motion, the sickness and the wellness.
Every relationship is your teacher. In every relationship, you either operate as the tight fist of resistance and it’s a struggle, a burden, a nightmare … or you turn toward the tenderness of the heart, become intimate with your experience, and simply love it.
This – right here – is where the Beloved lives. This is the invitation of openness, the invitation of surrender, the invitation of tenderness – it is right here. Look to your life for the doorway to freedom.
‘Are you saying that I should meet all uncomfortable feelings with tenderness?’
Yes. Everything yearns to come home to your heart. Every energy that exists – everything that appears as your experience – yearns to return to source, to the formless. And your heart is a doorway to the formless.
The unwanted energies, the unwelcome feelings – whether abandonment or rejection or betrayal or grief or failure or vulnerability or fear – are here not to torment you, even though it may appear that way. They are here to invite you to welcome everything.”
above quoted from: Amoda Maa “Falling Open in a World Falling Apart. The Essential Teaching of Amoda Maa.” 2020. WISE, POWERFUL, VALUABLE GUIDE - highly recommended
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| Peter Levine PhD |
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