Fear – Then and Now

THEN:

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a blog post called “Fear through the Ages” that began like this:

I was mostly a fearless kid. In fact, I can remember only two times I felt fearful—one dealing with deep water (still a fear to this day) and another when some kids threatened to kick my butt after school (I talked my way out of it). In all other matters I was a risk taker, not afraid to fail, pretty darn confident that it was going to turn out all right. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t Evil Knievel—I was wired more for cerebral than for physical pursuits—though there was that day with the motorcycles, jumping ditches at “the lots.”

In my twenties this fearlessness continued. I spoke my mind, interviewed for jobs I wanted but didn’t have the skills for and got them, quit a well-paying job to start my own business. There was never a moment’s doubt while I was going through all these things. I was like a superhero who couldn’t be struck down.

And then the thirties arrived and self-knowledge tangoed into the room. The real stuff, not the façade. I realized that I was actually a very fearful person all along but had covered it up with toughness and an “attack before you are attacked” attitude. In much deeper journaling sessions than I had ever tackled, I uncovered fear upon fear. I thought it was good at the time to have done that—to know who I really was, to know I wasn’t the image I had projected.

When I was pregnant with my son, all kinds of crazy hormones got added to the mix. There was such a mellowing of me with motherhood that I almost didn’t recognize myself anymore. The hard candy shell cracked and the chewy, emotional center dripped out and gooed things up. Having come from a family where “you don’t let ’em see you cry,” this new me felt uncomfortable. And then there were the fears. Let’s face it, there are no fears like the ones you have for a child.

Eventually, I came to embrace the more emotional me. Having a child made me a much more empathetic person. I didn’t just use logic to work through a problem; I began taking people’s feelings into account.

And then the forties rolled in. How’s this for reality?

I’M F$%&ING AFRAID…

And sometimes those fears are debilitating. They cause me to be cautious and second guess…they cause me to look longingly over my shoulder at the younger me who didn’t know herself better.

It seems inevitable that each year will get worse. There will be fears about health, disability, loss, death, finances, and a whole new generation of loved ones. Will I stop taking the very risks that brought me my biggest successes? Will I stay indoors for fear that a falling brick will land on my head? I’m not sure. I’ll ponder these and other questions while I bungee jump off my roof.

NOW:

Fifteen years later, there’s more to add to this history of fear in my life:

What I’ve come to realize is that everything I’ve written above is actually the opposite of Reality. The Introduction to A Course in Miracles says:

1 This is a course in miracles. ²It is a required course. ³Only the time you take it is voluntary. ⁴Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. ⁵It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. ⁶The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught ⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. ⁸The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

2 This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

²Nothing real can be threatened. ³Nothing unreal exists.

⁴Herein lies the peace of God. [CE In]

There’s something compelling about those words. I have studied the Course for many years and I’m still going deeper in my understanding of them. I suspect that is the way it will go in the future. There’s intellectual understanding of those words. But that’s not enough. Putting the Course into practice takes it to another level. Even then, it has been a process to understand something I’ve been hiding from myself for so long. Lucky are those who in a flash of insight suddenly “get it” and are able to hold onto it. Point me in their direction; I want to shake their hands. I’ve had those flashes of insight, but they are short-lived, as evidenced by the way fear will crop up again in my life in the most insidious ways.

Once you’re on to it—how it all works—the ego has to up its game and take subterfuge to new levels. It knows that once you are aware of the fear, you have methods to overcome it. So, fear goes undercover and manifests in ways that seem like physical problems.

Last week, I had to move from one place to another on my own with a sick cat. I had been preparing mentally for weeks. I thought I was cool with it. But about a week before moving day, I ended up with sensitivity in a tooth. As moving day approached, it mushroomed into excruciating nerve pain on the left side of my face. I didn’t have any signs of infection, no swelling, no fever. At one point, I had the a-HA moment: Ah, this is fear. This is distraction. This is sucking me back into this world from a place of peace and knowing that all would be well.

Even with that realization, it is really difficult to break through that kind of pain. Case in point, natural child birth after three days of labor was the most grueling thing I’ve ever been through, and even with the thought of the bundle of joy that was the reward at the end of it, no techniques I had learned made it any easier. That was then, when I fully believed in what I had been told—that pain was inevitable.

Last week, a friend of mine sent me a meditation that had helped him with pain. It was an hour long. I started it twice and got distracted. But the third time, I stuck with it and lo and behold, the nerve pain dissolved away. If it had been real, could it have just disappeared like that? None of this should have been very surprising to me. Years ago, I had been instantly healed of chronic and debilitating back pain just by reading a book by Dr. John Sarno. It was the beginning of reframing pain and fear. Years later, A Course in Miracles took me further along that path with its “response to temptation” exercises that help you work through all the manifestations of fear.

But you have to know you’re fearful first, right? And if that emotion is so buried in you, how do you know? I suspect we all have our tells. I have found that my body is like a car dashboard of warning lights and beeps. When some physical distress makes itself known, I stop and consider it. Is this the physical manifestation of fear? My first line of defense is using what I’ve learned in the Course to get myself back on track. Many times, that is sufficient.

This is no easy task, and I am no guru. So, I am not averse to using modern medicine when necessary. But many times, it isn’t. If I can remember that only love is real and that fear, no matter its form, does not exist, well, then, bye bye toothache, racing heart, intestinal distress, whitecoat hypertension…Pick your dashboard warning light.

I’m happy to report that although the move did not go smoothly, I have arrived and am mostly settled. This was the view from my bedroom balcony my first morning in the new place. The photo, taken while still bleary-eyed from sleep, does not do it justice. But it seemed like a fitting conclusion…and beginning.

With love and peace,

Margaret