“Confess your hidden faults.
Approach what you find repulsive.
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go.
Go to the places that scare you.
– advice from her teacher to the Tibetan Yogini Machik Labdron
In 2009, fresh off the heels of opening my own yoga studio (a scary experience of its own) I decided that facing fear was going to be a good thing, an alchemic process for me. So, my New Year’s Resolution was to do something scary every day. On January 1st, I imagined great and gutsy things to try: climbing half-dome and facing my fear of heights and mastering my handstand in the middle of the room with nobody to spot me.
Sitting with fear for a year was incredibly enlightening. No more than 10 minutes went by after I set that resolution before fear moved through my body. A distinct clenching of my belly and closing of the chest along with an emotional response of withdrawal. Interesting, I thought.
What I discovered that year was that my fear has very little to do with the big gutsy life-threatening adventures. I learned that if I paid attention internally, I didn’t have to leave my computer chair, my home, my car, the yoga classroom – to get a very real and tangible experience of fear. Hell, I didn’t even have to leave my meditation cushion and my own mind! My thoughts provided me with more than enough fear to keep me deeply focused on my New Year’s Resolution.
Why had I never noticed this fear before? Sure, I’d noticed it from time to time. I noticed it when I felt stressed, or anxious, or noticed my shoulders lifting up to my ears. But how interesting — to notice a tiny and distinct clench in my belly every time the phone rang. To notice that little thought that had not yet formed words in the back of my head, a thought in utero that I could sense but not hear. A sense that when offered words, barely whispered, “what have you done wrong now?”
It didn’t take too long before I noticed that many of my strong emotions of aversion, frustration, desire, and craving were the surface level responses, the flower if you will. The genesis of those emotions deep down, at the root – is fear. I noticed that fear seems to live in my belly, travel to my shoulders, and communicate to me through my breath. No mountain climbing and jumping out of airplanes for me. I seemed to have plenty of fear swimming through my body right now, thank you very much!
There are many ways we deal with these fears, and some are more skillful than others. I played (and continue to play) with my response to fear. I’ve found that the most skillful way for me to deal with fear is to notice it arise within my body, to notice the thoughts that create or feed the fear, and to stay incredibly present as I watch it move through me. I discovered that fear moves on, as long as it’s allowed to have its life. It’s the times when I avoid the root of fear that it stays with me, following like a shadow. When I attempt to banish the fear, it gets more powerful, as if it were rebounding off of my attempts to push it away. It gets rotten and stinky until I can’t ignore it, and grows into a much larger and more powerful entity. It feels overwhelming, as if “I just can’t go there.”
Boyd K Packer’s recent General Conference talk, “Cleansing the Inner Vessel” garnered a lot of chatter around the blogger-nacle. Many read it as I did, as a very hurtful message to gay LDS members. Interestingly though, it was this paragraph at the end of BK Packer’s talk that seemed to be the root of the issue, it’s what really concerned me:
“Strangely enough, it may be that the simplest and most powerful prevention and cure for pornography, or any unclean act, is to ignore and avoid it. Delete from the mind any unworthy thought that tries to take root. Once you have decided to remain clean, you are asserting your God-given agency. And then, as President Smith counseled, “Don’t look back.”
This approach to working with the mind, denying our fear and discomfort is the very formula of repression. It is a natural reaction for sure — when we’re attracted or repulsed by something we see as harmful, we instinctively want to avoid it, push it away or cling to it. Sadly, when we take any of these approaches, we feed fear and give it new, much stronger life. We give it a life of it’s own that has a tendency to run quickly out of our control.
I’m convinced that if we want to see humanity grow in maturity and wisdom, then we will have to embrace our fears – sit with them and befriend them. If we want to know why we embrace harmful behaviors, then we have to be willing to do more than ignore and avoid. We need to learn to become extremely comfortable with discomfort. We need to go to the places that scare us.
What are your personal “places that scare you?” When you get to those scary places, are they really as fearful as you imagined them to be? What have you found to be a skillful means in dealing with that fear?
PS — Yes, I’m borrowing the title from the book, “Places that Scare You”, by Pema Chodron — a book that’s on my top 20 list of Buddhist must reads!
I absolutely love the concept of ‘mapping’ the ‘places that scare us’ in this kind of geographical metaphor… it works for me because it’s part of my nature to want to explore, and thinking of it as another place to visit makes me believe that there’s really nothing stopping me. You can go anywhere, just by putting one foot in front of the other. :)
The picture at the top reminded me of a life-changing experience I had, on a holiday a year or so ago – I went ‘cliff jumping’ with my brothers. Nothing could be further from my nature, to throw myself off the safe ground, forty feet into a dark pool of water… I had to shut my rational mind off, and just jump, without thinking. It felt amazing – I was airborne – and the experience has became a symbol of what’s happened in my life in the time since.
Your phrase “what have you done wrong now?” jumped out at me. I sounds like something a parent would (constantly?) tell a child. I wonder if you (and us) are ‘suffering’ (<- need a better word) from emotional abuse heaped on us, perhaps unintentionally, by parents? Is at least some of the fear we experience the latent fear of disappointing our parents, a fear of discipline, a fear of being left alone?
First off that observation about the end of Packer’s talk was one of the most insightful I have heard in that whole discussion.
Yesterday I was driving with my sister and BIL and we were talking about the current state of the world. My sister, (a therapist) was talking about different ways that people deal with this fear. She mentioned a commune in Southern Utah which is trying to reject the evils of society by living as an independent community in the desert. We also mentioned how my father ( a very informed Conservative) seems to be obsessed with the idea that the world is going to hell. To him Liberalism is literally a tool of the Devil to enslave people. The political wars being fought are, to him, God’s wars.
I felt very inarticulate trying to communicate my distaste for living by fear. It doesn’t seem wrong on the surface to become engrossed in politics. People usually do so from a desire to be a more accountable and responsible citizen but, as an observation, my father does not seem to be very happy these days. The world is his opponent and he is powerless to make it something that it is not. He is anxious and worried because of a perception that exists in his mind about what “the world” is like. He is preparing and stressing over scenarios which will almost certainly never materialize.
I tried to say that I was just very uncomfortable with the way we are expected to engage in politics and that there was something about it that is very flawed even though I can’t quite put my finger on it. When someone pulls out statistics to demonstrate why the world is more dangerous or degenerate than it once was, I am not informed enough to refute it but the only thing I have power over in this crazy ass world is myself. I don’t want to live my life consumed with fear. To some people that may see irresponsible and I understand that point of view but in some inexplainable way it seems like our large-scale problems are connected to several individuals who are engaging the world from a place of fear.
Laurie, I love the way you describe the observations in your body when you are afraid. I think that is where it needs to start. We need to cultivate an awareness of what is going on within us if we want to change what is going on in the world. Identifying fear (even down to where it manifests in the body) will help us understand the roots underlying our true motivations.
Be Not Afraid
I think you are right. It is important to be brave and confidant and fearless. If Jesus is your champion that allows you to do this, this is very important. If self-awareness, self-acceptance, and adventure to learn new things allows you to live without fear, this is very important. There is something very important that happens to me when I decide not to be afraid or around people in fear. I call it living. I have a life.
My father used to often say this is the main principle of management: people will do what you want because they fear you or they love you. I think many people live their lives like this. For them, people fall into one of those categories. The reality is that interpersonal relationship are as various as there are numbers of people. I don’t need to be afraid if someone does not accept me or if they are purposely trying to scare me to do what they want. I can leave and find a more peaceful loving place at any time. I can have a life.
I love Pema Chodron. Great post.
“If we want to know why we embrace harmful behaviors, then we have to be willing to do more than ignore and avoid”
So true!
@ Adam, Ah yes… there are times when I wish I could dip my toe in those places that scare me. Slowly inching my way in. However, if you have done this you know that it is inevitably more excruciating. Better to jump in with a splash.