Fear: a Construct of Complication

Ugly four letter word; FEAR.

It is something my adult life has been plagued by as I began to have panic attacks about 12 years ago. Fear is a cunning and sly predator which lurks in the back of all mans' consciousness. It is a construct of complication; when life is simple there is not too much to fear.

But we don't live in a very simple day and age on this planet; there is so much poverty, war, greed, cruelty and confusion. We have lost our simplicity, which indeed was our innocence. So it could be said fear is attracted to knowledge; the more you know the more there is to fear. Feel this.

Fear is like a funnel, as it engulfs you it gets wider and completely expands around you so that you can literally feel the waves of it throughout your body. Your stomach contracts in revulsion, your forehead throbs, your throat tightens and the hairs on your arms and neck stand up in electric tautness. And yet when fear diminishes we feel as though a literal weight is being lifted as our body relaxes very noticeably, and breathing becomes easier, vision lightens, and the head feels less heavy.

This funnel of fear sensation can be a warning system, and the better you get to understand how you feel fear, the quicker you can become at shooting it down. Fear is an emotional response, and just like any emotion we are able to change it; quickly and with determination.

This is something I struggle with, as I have battled fear and fear based feelings for many years. When I complicate my thinking, and worry about future possibilities, past events that cannot be changed, and big "mind monsters" like financial problems, health issues, security and safety, fear is attracted to me like metal to a magnet. But when I finally recover myself and exhale and push the funnel of fear from myself, I remember that there truly is nothing to fear, but fear itself.

Strip away all that complicates our lives; the things WE have created which serve no real purpose other than to complicate and confuse us as a people. We live a society where some people have much, and others have little. Some sit on hoards of riches, while others are literally dying every minute of every day because they cannot feed themselves, or afford medical care. And we let this happen. We have allowed our society to become so imbalanced, unjust, and immoral; no wonder we're seeing so much more anxiety globally. We all feel a deep guilt, and a deep melancholy for simpler times.

Sure, simpler times may have been "harder" physically, in that we had to work harder to provide for ourselves, growing our own food, hunting, gathering, working the land, and walking with nature to provide for us medicinally with herbs and healing compounds. But there was an immeasurable reward to those toils; a hard days work really is it's own reward. When a family spent it's days sustaining itself, together, as a unified force, it no doubt created bonds amongst them that could not be severed.

Now we are all busy on our own individual electronic devices, with our own agendas, plots, sub-plots... it's enough to fry my brain.

I am lazy and complacent, and don't know how to change the world. Gandhi said we had to be the change we wanted to see in the world, and I agree whole heartedly. And yet, I am a creature of comfort, and cannot imagine getting rid of my "tech" to live off the land. I am disabled, I could not manage it I'm sure. Nor would my family have a clue as to how to provide anything beyond the most basic of necessities. So going back is not an option; for any of us I doubt.

But the way we are moving forward will only create more reasons to fear.

So what do we do? We are truly at a crossroads as a species; the way things are going look bleak for us. I fear for future generations; we have lost the most intricate gifts we had, the ability to find comfort in small things, to sit in nature for hours, our children don't even know how to use the gift of imagination anymore, as the tv satisfies their every whim.

Maybe the answer lies in a simplification of where we are. We cannot go backwards, and forwards is fraught with fear, so perhaps just a small adjustment in our own lives would be satisfactory towards cutting the head off the mind monster of fear.

Turn off the tech. Turn off the tv. And just breathe.

When fear becomes epidemic something is wrong in our life; so rather than see fear as some loathsome beast to be conquered, see it as a warning system. It is simply that: a tool to warn us.

In ancient times fear warned us of predators or danger. Today fear warns us that we have lost center, our connection to Peace through Spirit. Fear warns us today that we are not seeing the big picture, and we are too focused on mundane and unsubstantial things; constructs of humanities greed or aspiration are not tools of Spirit, and if we do not feed Spirit in some way, fear becomes a warning sign to indicate our imbalance.

So just disconnect all the whirring buzzing humming things that overstimulate the mind monster, and breathe my friend.

Just breathe.