Fear

luc

luc

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(I wrote this a while back:)

Fear, the unholy alliance between my wounded body and twisted thoughts
It invades my mind, pins my soul to the wall
And takes all beauty out of my voice

Fear makes me please people instead of giving my best
It lives in a wrong future that isn’t even real
Fear steals my present and stuns my soul into silence

Fear makes me wear a mask to protect (and bury) my core
Fear is the illusion that I cannot be harmed if I keep hiding in hell
It uses every scrap of truth it can find against me

Fear keeps me from posting this


(Found a song today that seems fitting:)


https://youtu.be/FjAbdWjJe20
 
Thanks Luc! A favorite subject of mine. An incident occurred when I was 6 years old that created intense insecurity within me. I didn't trust myself. I desperately looked to others to figure out what I should do, how I should behave. I felt I couldn't handle any scrutiny. Being a relatively intelligent person I lived almost exclusively through my head calculating everything that had to do with my interactions with others in an attempt to protect myself. And to keep people from getting to close lest they find out I was a defective person who didn't know what he was doing, I became a chameleon taking on the qualities of whatever group I was a part of. I did not want to get pick on or bullied. I noticed early on that the people who were 'cool' got left alone. I gravitated towards those people and did what they did. Hence I began drinking and doing other things at an early age. That seemed to work well in the sense that it provided pleasure without the work and messiness of establishing meaningful relationships with others.

At some level I knew I was attempting to short cut and cheat the natural process of life but imagined myself smart enough to pull it off. And such was the intensity of my self centered fear that there seemed no other option. Besides I was having fun! Until I wasn't. It's not nice to fool mother nature!

At some point I may tell the whole story in detail but the short of it was; it just about killed me. (Not an exaggeration.) I said all that to say that what I found out was; the fear was real enough, it was what I was afraid of that wasn't real. There was nothing more inadequate about me than really anybody else. I had to reach a bankruptcy to be able to finally let go of the structure of personality I described that had been producing anomalies for quite a long time to use Peterson's terminology. Fear of the unknown is a bitch- kept me stuck for a long, long time. I was talking about all this at a meeting last night. I commented that the insecurity didn't go away completely. It just doesn't dictate my thoughts and actions anymore. All those years of trying to fit in with whatever group I was a part of has proved beneficial as I can relate to almost everyone! My life is different today. Of course I'm still a work in progress but a vast array of experiences coupled with knowledge has value which I try my best to make use of. Enough about me! Thanks for posting Luc, I really enjoy and get a lot out of what you share on the forum. :thup:
 
That's actually quite good! And darned accurate, too which is part of why it is so good!
 
luc said:
(I wrote this a while back:)

Fear, the unholy alliance between my wounded body and twisted thoughts
It invades my mind, pins my soul to the wall
And takes all beauty out of my voice

Fear makes me please people instead of giving my best
It lives in a wrong future that isn’t even real
Fear steals my present and stuns my soul into silence

Fear makes me wear a mask to protect (and bury) my core
Fear is the illusion that I cannot be harmed if I keep hiding in hell
It uses every scrap of truth it can find against me

Fear keeps me from posting this


(Found a song today that seems fitting:)


https://youtu.be/FjAbdWjJe20
Click to expand...

'Poetry is for clever people'. I could not properly digest this statement belonging to my Grade 12 Literature teacher, until years later I was spontaneously composing Haiku. No matter the IQ everyone has an immense creative capacity. It is a pity that we do not recognize it unless our emotions reach boiling or freezing points like in madly in love or in rage or paralyzed with fear. You cannot touch fear or love (at least I don't know how) but you can feel it. I must open a bracket here to try and explain that until late in my life I did not know that I was feeling. It was all I'm my head trying to understand what was going on. Well... early childhood upbringing and education. End bracket. I understand that you are 'revisiting stuff' by posting the poem but melancholy needs a reason and that reason should be followed. Yes good art is priceless and many thanks for sharing it but you need really to pursue the next step or what comes after fear. Or maybe you did that already. Learning is pain.
 
Thanks for your comments :-[

genero81 said:
Thanks Luc! A favorite subject of mine. An incident occurred when I was 6 years old that created intense insecurity within me. I didn't trust myself. I desperately looked to others to figure out what I should do, how I should behave. I felt I couldn't handle any scrutiny. Being a relatively intelligent person I lived almost exclusively through my head calculating everything that had to do with my interactions with others in an attempt to protect myself. And to keep people from getting to close lest they find out I was a defective person who didn't know what he was doing, I became a chameleon taking on the qualities of whatever group I was a part of. I did not want to get pick on or bullied. I noticed early on that the people who were 'cool' got left alone. I gravitated towards those people and did what they did. Hence I began drinking and doing other things at an early age. That seemed to work well in the sense that it provided pleasure without the work and messiness of establishing meaningful relationships with others.

At some level I knew I was attempting to short cut and cheat the natural process of life but imagined myself smart enough to pull it off. And such was the intensity of my self centered fear that there seemed no other option. Besides I was having fun! Until I wasn't. It's not nice to fool mother nature!

At some point I may tell the whole story in detail but the short of it was; it just about killed me. (Not an exaggeration.) I said all that to say that what I found out was; the fear was real enough, it was what I was afraid of that wasn't real. There was nothing more inadequate about me than really anybody else. I had to reach a bankruptcy to be able to finally let go of the structure of personality I described that had been producing anomalies for quite a long time to use Peterson's terminology. Fear of the unknown is a bitch- kept me stuck for a long, long time. I was talking about all this at a meeting last night. I commented that the insecurity didn't go away completely. It just doesn't dictate my thoughts and actions anymore. All those years of trying to fit in with whatever group I was a part of has proved beneficial as I can relate to almost everyone! My life is different today. Of course I'm still a work in progress but a vast array of experiences coupled with knowledge has value which I try my best to make use of. Enough about me! Thanks for posting Luc, I really enjoy and get a lot out of what you share on the forum. :thup:
Click to expand...

Thank you genero81 - for describing my life :D My various attempts to blend in with the 'cool kids' got me nearly killed too, at least on a soul level. Not only did it lead to much suffering for myself, worse yet, I did all kinds of horrible things that I deeply regret. I'm actually quite ashamed of many things from my past, but I never really thought about them in terms of fear - but that's it, for sure. Fear of being rejected, ridiculed, bullied, singled out, smashed. In hindsight, I think this was a trap, one that many people fall into I guess. This world seems to be designed in such a way that we get sucked into the wrong way in incremental stages, which leads to our energy being drained and ultimately to soul-smashing :shock: - that's the (only) real thing we should be afraid of.


Ina said:
Yes good art is priceless and many thanks for sharing it but you need really to pursue the next step or what comes after fear. Or maybe you did that already.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's an ongoing process. To find out what comes after fear I think it's important to act despite our fear - and observe. Oftentimes, it makes us realize that this leads to the best and most interesting developments, which means that our fears were baseless in the first place. Slowly, painfully slowly, we start getting better at 'acting against our fears'...

Ina said:
Learning is pain.
Click to expand...

You can say that again! Which is why no matter how much we talk about how we love learning and want to learn, we actually avoid it like the plague most of the time!
 
Thanks for sharing those, spot on!

One horrible thing about our fears as well is that it keeps us from the very things we long for, keeps us separated, alone trapped in our heads, never really achieving the companionship, love, community that we wish we had. Fear so often pops-up and blocks it or diverts it to keep us "safe". I guess in the end, especially in this 'line of work' we need to have a little faith sometimes and push on through, see what happens. The worst that could happen is that we learn something new about how we’re made. Fear will tell us that that is a way bad idea, but it omits the fact that (hopefully) once we’ve whatever lesson comes along we don't have to go back and do it again! So fear doesn’t have to come into it then every time.

So much of the work seems to be about uncovering and processing fears in one form or another, maybe that’s one reason why it is said that the way is through the emotions. To balance things there we have to uncover and work on our fears. Even as luc said, "Fear keeps me from posting this", I remember SO many instances in myself of hovering over the "Post" button on the forum, worrying, fearful over what might happen. It’s a sorry situation indeed. There’s a real part of us in there somewhere, trying to communicate, to learn and grow, but fear wants to put the breaks on everything, to keep us "safe".

This video popped up on Facebook yesterday, which I hadn’t seen before and fits the theme well I think. I guess the message of it is in consciously choosing to face one’s fear, we finally manage to process it and come out the other side. (fear would stop me posting this because 'some people might not like it')


https://youtu.be/QqhvAM7vRlw
 
luc said:
(I wrote this a while back:)

Fear, the unholy alliance between my wounded body and twisted thoughts
It invades my mind, pins my soul to the wall
And takes all beauty out of my voice

Fear makes me please people instead of giving my best
It lives in a wrong future that isn’t even real
Fear steals my present and stuns my soul into silence

Fear makes me wear a mask to protect (and bury) my core
Fear is the illusion that I cannot be harmed if I keep hiding in hell
It uses every scrap of truth it can find against me

Fear keeps me from posting this


(Found a song today that seems fitting:)
Click to expand...
SO True. How many times we think we handled our fears, worries, anxieties , they pop up. Thank you for sharing Luc. Appropriate lyrics in the video.
 
FWIW, though that was very good, Luc!

What you wrote (and peoples comments) recalled a SoTT Focus article 'Fear and Knowledge' and in particular what both Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda were discussing - worth adding here,OSIT:
(Don Juan said)"When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.

"He slowly begins to learn - bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.

"And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: Fear! A terrible enemy - treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest."

"What will happen to the man if he runs away in fear?"(asked Carlos)

"Nothing happens to him except that he will never learn. He will never become a man of knowledge. He will perhaps be a bully, or a harmless, scared man; at any rate, he will be a defeated man. His first enemy will have put an end to his cravings."

"And what can he do to overcome fear?"

"The answer is very simple. He must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.

"When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy."

"Does it happen at once, don Juan, or little by little?"

"It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast."

"But won't the man be afraid again if something new happens to him?"

"No. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity - a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed." (p. 53-54)
Click to expand...

It is a process, little by little, and as the road seems long indeed, perhaps as don Juan said, it is "vanquished suddenly" when the time is right. Each person here for instance, as some have done and are still doing, can look back into their past and really see where their fears were rooted - and in what way they manifested; horrible things, confused things et cetera - fears strong grip holds back most people, and unfortunately, many of our systems of upbringing seem to either be designed or are the resulting outputs of fears very grip.
 
Thanks for sharing that quote voyageur. The thing that struck me on reading it was how very much it sounded like Gurdjieff, if you’d have attributed it to him it would fit. That association prompts thoughts about the 'general law', and what a large part fear must play in our lives there. That the general law places obstacles on our path and we come to a stop or get diverted through fear. The general law then is not only to be considered as something outside of ourselves, but the law runs internally too, in a large part through our fears.
 
Thank you Luc, and others, it put in good perspective this multi-dimensional block. The way you said things indicate the right direction : through the damn thing we want to avoid.

I have a story similar to you and Genero81, I was a shy little boy waiting for his brother to connect with others instead of doing it himself. Though I have some idea where my fear of the moment could came from I have no particular memories about a specific event that put this seed in me. Your stories gives me hope about going through without evading, cause I know it will be now or later anyway.
 
Alada said:
Thanks for sharing that quote voyageur. The thing that struck me on reading it was how very much it sounded like Gurdjieff, if you’d have attributed it to him it would fit. That association prompts thoughts about the 'general law', and what a large part fear must play in our lives there. That the general law places obstacles on our path and we come to a stop or get diverted through fear. The general law then is not only to be considered as something outside of ourselves, but the law runs internally too, in a large part through our fears.
Click to expand...

I've given some thought to what exactly is the 'predators maneuver' if there is such a thing. I think that this maneuver is psychological in nature and rooted/ implemented through fear manifesting itself according to the internal make up of the individual. For me it manifested as insecurity. For others; perfectionism/ rigidity. For others, some other way? Castaneda says the predators fear that their maneuver will be discovered and that food will be denied. Fear is how they give us 'their mind' as a 'foreign installation.'

My thoughts on the matter for what it's worth...
 
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