FEAR, THE TROLL BENEATH THE BRIDGE

Are there really a thousand separate fears, or just a thousand faces to the same old thing? 

What might the hairy one look like deep inside its bowels?  Annihilation?  Non-existence? 

What is primal fear and just how bad can it get?

Wouldn't it be awful to be eaten alive by wolves or whales, tigers, bears, snakes, or paralyzed by flesh-dissolving spiders, having your blood sucked by bats or vampires, bitten by the rabid fox, swarmed by rats, crushed in the avalanche, buried in mud by the slide, burned alive in the forest or roasted to ashes by hot lava?  Starving slowly, dying of thirst, freezing, drowning, bleeding your last from a wound? 

What is it really that we are afraid of?  Don't most fears, if not all of them, revolve around death or dying?

"Yes," is the customary answer to these questions - very few of us would disagree with that. 

What a paradox it is then, that enlightenment, which seems to require a death of the "self," may be unobtainable because of fear.  I mean, after we give up the "self" what is left?  If the "self" is all we have ever known, then it is everything, and to lose it is to be annihilated, to not exist.  This is anathema to the self-adorned ego voice and any attempt to coax or coerce this voice from the pulpit of the mind will be met by cunning, baffling, and powerful resistance.

So, how do we vanquish this fear?  Is it something that we can actually fight?  Is it vulnerable to the sword, to poison, to coercion, to bribery, or subterfuge?  Methinks not or someone, who would have made a lot of money with such a shortcut, would have developed a technique and gotten rich selling the tools or the secret.  No, it has to be something more powerful than fear. Maybe love will do the trick. 

How then, to love the fear?  Really, how do we summon enough love to overwhelm the fear, especially when most of us, if we really admit it, are far more fearful than loving.  Funny thing is, we talk all the time about love and how important it is and how much we are doing to encourage it into our lives, and we rarely talk about fear, even though fear holds far more sway over us than we are willing to admit.  OK?

So, being honest, many of us will have to admit that we do not have enough love available to go into the heart and do battle with our fear(s.)  Now, that kind of sucks, and leaves us without much of an option except to go out on another path and try to acquire the love or its substitutes to throw at the demons of fear.  Damn, if we haven't already tried that time and again to no avail.  Now what?

What if we allowed ourselves to experience the worst our fears had to offer, take the full brunt of it, drown in the shit, breath it in and let it pump through our veins until beads of blood popped out on our foreheads and our eyeballs bulged from the sheer awfulness of it?  What if we did that?  Yeah, that might do it, kind of get used to the real deal, and stop all this pussyfooting around with the fear-of-fear thing.

Ok, How?  How do we actually do such a thing?  Will we have to get strapped down and have friggin' attendants nearby with ventilators and epinephrine if the going gets too rough?  Is this something that might kill us?  Can our poor hearts take such a blast?  Can we do this one step at a time?  Is it necessary?  Really?

Those are all questions that must be addressed in one form or another by each one of us, but it is my experience that it can be done, even alone, if you have properly prepared yourself and are willing to do one thing in particular without which the whole practice will be either fruitless or dangerous and probably both.  That is:  one must utterly, totally and completely come to accept this trollish fear in all its hirsute glory as yours and yours alone.  Beyond even acceptance, one must come to actually embrace the fear, to welcome it, to take it in, and, in the end, even cherish it exactly where it is, congested like a ball of kryptonite all around the heart center.

Ball of Kryptonite doesn't work for you?  Then, let's say fear was like the swimming pool in the back yard.  We know its there, we see it out the window.  We even go out there and rake the leaves out of it, and scrub the deck around it, and twiddle our toes in it and lounge on the diving board and even, when we are brave, we walk into the shallow end and splash around a bit swooshing closer and closer towards "over our head" and then, like real sailors, we push off with our brave little toes until we are floating out in the deep end.  Now we are really doing it, eh?  Wrong, we are no where near it, not even when we gulp a big gulp of air and swim to the bottom and hold out until our lungs near burst.  Still we are not truly "down" with the fear until we open our mouths and breath in that fear, allowing it to fill our lungs and absolutely drown in the stuff . . . then our acceptance has grown to embrasure, then and only then will we know fear.

Still not literal enough for you?  Let's towel off and head to another experience in the House of Fear, one that will really get your motor running.  Take crucifixion, for instance.  Imagine yourself on the cross.  That has to be tough.  I mean you're hungry, tired, sore, pinned down, there is no escape, and somebody is liable to come along and poke you every now and then just to see if you are still awake.  Yeah, crucifixion, we are all terrified of that.  It makes the dangers of drowning seem like a lullaby.  Yet, there is something about crucifixion as a metaphor, that is perfect for a full blast confrontation with fear.

Think about it:  danger surrounds us really.  To the right of us, to the left, behind us and ahead of us, up above and from below, all sorts of malign events can come to pass.  Behind us lies our past with its secrets and sins, ahead of us the future with its doubts, impending doom and other terrors.  To our right are the "righteous" who seek to control, tax, or enslave us while to our left are the "sinister" forces of corruption and decadence.  Beneath us are the trolls of disease, snakes, boiling pits and darkness, while above fly the valkyries of deluge, dust, pestilence, lightning, and an Abrahamic God who will smite us as he sees fit.

Danger surrounds us, all the time, like it or not, no matter how many pills we take.  It converges on the heart center and the adrenal cortex right behind it.  We are pinned by it as to a cross, only not a four-armed cross, but one with six arms:  four for the cardinal directions of front, back, left and right, and then two more for the up and down of life.  Get it?  See why fear can come to live in the heart? 

This, it seems to me, is why the image of crucifixion is so deeply powerful and, I dare say, useful.

For many of us, the only relief we get (itself an illusion) is when we attempt to control the circumstances of our lives so that these vectors of danger, and the fear which arises when we risk exposure to such dangers, are kept to a minimum through isolation, ignorance, substance-abuse, and co-dependent behaviors.

This, is not freedom, heart-centered peace, or (duh) enlightenment.

It is however, my experience, that just on the other side of this baleful coin, lies the bliss of reunion with the Source.

Here's how I get there:

CAVEAT:  do not practice this alone unless you are already familiar with the actual emotion of fear and not just the trigger stuff we call fear but is really the fear-of-fear fake stuff that we contend with in our heads.  Real fear, which is rarely experienced for long before we are either fighting or fleeing, is felt most exquisitely in the heart.  Fighting and fleeing are both heavily adrenalized states that may be accompanied by "sick-to-the-stomach" visceral terror which is also not pure fear, ok? Pure fear is not terror, does not shriek, and has no claws.  It is a feeling alright, a cold one, dense, dark, strong, ancient, and deeply tired. 

The goal in this work is to experience this feeling without going into the adrenalized states which are more indicative of the fear-of-fear reaction zone with which we are far more familiar.

Depending upon your level of familiarity with this kind of work, you will prepare a single incident of "fear" or danger in your field that you would like to work with.  A good example for the moment might be the fear of financial insecurity that accompanies us most of the time but is particularly acute and irksome now in this time.

Prior to starting the encounter session, you will write down your fear (eg. Financial insecurity) and imagine how that fear might appear in the form of "danger" from each of the 6 directions described above.  This is the work that is involved with this exercise.  Do not take it lightly as it is the key to the alchemy that will result.  It is vital that you actually consider what financial insecurity truly looks like to looks like to YOU from each one of these directions.  It is not hard, using financial insecurity as a particular "face of fear" to see how it could manifest from each one of the six directions:

           
One)  Beneath us, the Despicable:  money stolen or lost via negligence

Two)  Before us, the Portentous:  stock market uncertainties, job loss, homelessness

Three)  To our right, the Righteous:  taxes, outside control (fascism), war,

Four)  To our left, the Sinister:  gambling, cheating, pornography, addictions

Five)   Behind us, the Shadow:  debt and other liabilities, things stolen and not returned,

Six)   Above us, the Mighty:  Abrahamic God-smite, pestilence, tornadoes, lightning.

Whatever you choose to work on, start modestly.   Do not try to work with your deepest "fears" first.  Work with someone around whom you trust yourself implicitly - a someone who will dedicate themselves to simply being with you, for you, beside you, holding space for you - "watching your back," as it were, while you practice the following method of relaxing, or surrendering to your fear.  Your support person is not there to advise or counsel you, only support you.

One more thing:  remember always that there is a point to this exercise, in more ways than one.  In fact, the "point" is the point, as will be made clear momentarily.

• Sit comfortably in a straight-backed chair, hands folded in your lap, eyes closed as if for meditation.
• Your support person will sit directly in front of you, as close as possible - close enough so that they can easily reach out to hold your hands or your knees if you should need such reinforcement.
• Sit quietly for a few moments, centering awareness at first into your brain, and then asking aloud for your support person's help, wait until they say "yes," and then, on an out breath, let your awareness move slowly down from your brain, acknowledging your ears and nose, your mouth, chin, throat, shoulders, and lungs before coming to rest in your heart.
• Sit easily with your awareness lightly held in the heart.  Do not strain.  Breath easily.  Imagine the heart expanding on the in-breath, and relaxing on the out breath.
• Gently call to mind that you are now present to choose to experience something right there in your heart which you have long-denied yourself.
• Ask your support person to remind you to continue to relax and stay present in your heart if for any reason your breathing should become labored or unsteady.
• Now, in whatever sequence suits you, imagine each set of fear/dangers as they arise from each one of the 6 directions.
• One by one, bring them to their separate stages around you.  This is an entirely sensory process, eg. "What does homelessness look like?"  "If my debts were a concrete block on top of me, what would that weight feel like?  Preparation is key.  You do not want to invent things here but work from a prepared script.  This is why the support person should be there for you - to hold the list and prompt you if your memory or focus should waver.
• Once you have set the stage with details of the dangers in each of the 6 directions, you are ready for the real first step in this process, and that is ACCEPTANCE.  Here we get for the first time perhaps, to CHOOSE to accept something about ourselves that we have denied for most of our lives.  Ie:  "I choose to accept, utterly, that I am surrounded by danger, and the best that I have been able to do so far is to pretend that it isn't there."
• At this point, our awareness is still external to ourselves - "out there" away from us in each of the directions.  It is as though we were on a stage, in the center, while all around us, above and below, were these visualizations (with teeth) that have until now seemed so real.
• Feeling into them from our central location, visualize the 6 directions as they extend outward from the heart center and sense the energy that you are using to hold the dangers at a distance.  This, it seems to me, is the one and true Cross.
• As you sense this energy, accept it, allow it to be what it is, and without judgment, welcome its presence in your life.
• Once this charged field has been acknowledged, breath into this energy field and consciously relax and visualize the energy direction which has been outward towards the dangers to reverse itself slowly and begin to point inwards towards the heart.
• Take it easy, breathe, reach out to your support person if that will help and remind yourself that the very energy that you are relaxing is inexhaustible and is available at a moment's notice; that you are just choosing to relax and allow the outward defensive energy vectors to reverse themselves and flow towards perfect connection in the center of your heart.
• Relax and breathe, relax and breathe.  If you have prepared well and put your best energy into this process, you will begin to feel what you may have been running from all your life - that is the actual fear which surrounds the heart.
• Approach this slowly and steadily if possible but keep in mind the goal is to allow yourself to relax, to surrender, to ALLOW yourself the full experience of what you have been avoiding - that is how much of our lives are spent pretending to not carry this fear in our hearts.
• When all attention has been condensed into the heart, and the feeling of the fear becomes acute, continue to breathe and let yourself sink into it further, further, and choose again to breathe it in acceptance and compassion.  (things will go quickly now, so if you start to feel any sudden shift underway, do not try to stop it but just let it happen.)
• When acceptance of fear comes to include compassion, allow your awareness to shift location to the point where all six arms of the cross come together in your heart center.
• What may have begun as a certain warmth that arose with the compassion will build around the heart center.
• Imagine, then, the six vectors again reversing direction and turning into "v-shaped" rays of brilliant white light emanating from the heart center.

After your experience, whatever that might be, commit to continuing to practice this technique until you can run through the entire sequence in a few minutes or less.

Say this prayer after each practice:

"What is it that I love when I love my God? It is a certain light that I love and melody, fragrance, food, embrace of the God within, where, for my soul, that shines which space does not contain; that sounds which time does not sweep away; that is fragrant which the breeze does not dispel; and that tastes sweet, which, fed upon, is not diminished; and that clings close which no satiety disparts - this is what I love when I love my God." - St. Augustine.