The basis for fearlessness is really knowing fear.
_Pema Chodron
Uncertainty
The review of the last ten lessons from ACIM has left me pondering this tendency we have as humans to make the world more meaningful than it is so we do not have to experience its uncertainty. The world is uncertain. We do not like that feeling of uncertainty and will do whatever we can to avoid feeling it. Pema Chodron in Smile at Fear relays a study finding published in Times magazine that more or less proves that people are more afraid of uncertainty than they are of physical pain. Man, that echoes what I have been going through. I can handle the pain that I am experiencing with these bodily changes, I just feel like I cannot cope with the "not knowing" what is causing the pain and what my future may hold for me and my loved ones. The world beneath my feet feels more shaky than usual...not that it is...just that I am noticing it more and I am struggling to keep my balance. I fear this uncertainty.
Fear of Facing our Own Vulnerability
What causes uncertainty, which we would know as anxiety, uneasiness, worry in everyday life? That is basically fear in its many forms. Chodron tells us the uneasiness comes from having to face ourselves in our armour less forms. As the lessons showed when we have to face the reality that the world is meaningless and that we erroneously gave it any meaning it might have, we begin to blame ourselves rather than it. The beginning phases of the reversal [our mind training] are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within. (ACIM-T-11: IV:4:5) We begin a process of self loathing. We also have to face that we are feeling vulnerable, separated and alone. Without the story we made of the world and our fictionalized parts in it....who are we and can we cope? We doubt self. We do not trust our ability to make it in this world without our masks, defenses, armours and weapons....I guess...without our egos. Stepping out and away from ego ( who we thought we were) leaves us feeling very uneasy. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is because the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so. (ACIM-T-8:V:5:5-6)
Running Away from Unworthiness
We do not want to put down the defenses the ego has given us, we do not want to get beyond the protective walls we have built around this idea we have of a separated and vulnerable little being. Anything that threatens that pretense we have created is uncomfortable...it triggers us and we do anything we can to run away from having to experience it. We run into our busy work or our outward projections ( blaming and complaining) or we numb. We do not want to feel vulnerable. We do not want to sit with the fear of our own unworthiness.
So how do we get past that?
How do we get past fear. We stop running and go through it.
We do not run from it. Most, if not all the "horrors" we have perpetuated upon the world as human beings comes from our tendency to run from this vulnerability that arises when we put away our defenses. (Chodron; 2016). When we are truly ready to open up in an honest genuine way, to put down our defenses we take a brave look at our own vulnerability. We begin to understand fear.
We learn to just sit with the feeling of fear that lay within the protective fortress of our Iron heart. We allow the walls, the story, the concepts, intellectualizations and what not to dissolve and we simply sit with that feeling of uneasiness...that comes in my case, for example, with the form of not knowing what is happening to me physically. We learn to just sit with fear until it too dissolves.
We begin healing ourselves and ultimately the world...in the truest sense of the word.
All is well in my world.
ACIM
Pema Chodron (Aug, 2016) Smile at Fear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go5aNPKaXtc
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