M01.18 The Kindergarten Kid

Fear is legitimate, but not smart. There’s a book by Seth Godin called Linchpin which talks about the reptilian brain, and how fear in that area is hard to rationalize or understand. We all know it. The deep-bellied gnawing sensation that eats away confidence, vitality and life. I had it this morning for no specific reason. I could think of many reasons why I felt that, still do a little, but none of them add up to what I experience. I don’t have any “causally related” feeling that says “Oh that’s why.” It just is. My technique then is to cry. I have ways to get that going – my favourite You Tube processing sessions with Katie – and I bawl my eyes out. Went through two packets of tissues this morning, wiping away tears, blowing my nose like a kindergarten kid with a bruised knee. Lucky I live alone here in Tokyo. I am so glad I can do that. So why is fear on my mind today? Because I witnessed it today, it’s dumbness: it will lead you into making decisions that ultimately do not serve your life. There’s evidence for that stupidity – when your startle pattern takes over, the brain gears to reptilian patterning: because it is faster. But it is also primitive. It is dumber. It can’t contain the possibility of the future, the possibility of the miraculous nor the enlightenment of creativity. Lives are scarred by fear. People stay in marriages too long, keep doing jobs that don’t nurture, carry on in professions they hate – all because the fear of what might be pushes them back into what is already. Or they don’t take risks when they need to. Where are you taking a risk? Where are you letting fear be your guide to happiness? Just as heat can only boil water, fear can only alarm you. Happiness is not drawn from doubt, nor is Success drawn from fear of failure: a result can only be produced from a cause that is similar to it. You want a new teaching life? Deal with your fear of the unknown. List all things you believe could happen:  I will lose my friends, people will say I only want money, I will betray my colleagues, I will burn all my bridges and I can never go back. Now look at that list and ask: how real are these? How much are those images of my creation? What has actually happened, as opposed to what I fear will happen? Make a list: my fear, my proof. What proof do I have that these terrible outcomes will come to be? What has already happened? Fear will never give you a future, it will only give you variations of your past. Has the past helped you arrive where you want to be? If so, then why do you even consider changing? Why be at this website? Why try at all? It is because you want to move to a new place. Listening to fear will not move you away from fear, it will move you towards it. Fear is how the-thing-you-already-know gets stronger. Patience, passion, hope, joy, enthusiasm, discipline, serenity, wisdom – all of these arise from love. Let love by your driver – it will extinguish your fear. Love of what you do, love of what is possible, love of helping others, love of what is right there, being offered, being possible... Desperation is not fear, it is love seeking itself at the places it is hidden. When we no longer frighten ourselves with images of an imagined horror show, love is all that is left.