Fear

Fear is generated by estrangement. When we no longer experience ourselves as a participating part of the universe, when we lose our sense that we’re part of a universal community that needs us just as much as we need it, when we pull ourselves out of the awareness on the oneness of all things, we feel afraid.
Anne Wilson Schaef

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.
Carl Gustav Jung

Since early childhood, fear has been a part of my make up. Whether in the school yard, terrified of getting physically hurt by the bigger, stronger boys chasing a ball, or at home, of being punished by my sometimes unpredictable father for some misdemeanour, or in the nightmares that consistently hounded me over a period of childhood years; fear was always within, or without – breathing down my neck.

In early adolescence, I discovered the power of the tongue, and my ability to protect my self by means of using it to ridicule and intimidate those I adjudged to be a danger to me. I still felt the fear, but it was now camouflaged against a backdrop of bravado. This, in turn, generated even more fear; the fear of being discovered and exposed as the fraudster I held my self to be.

While my bravado helped me do many things and achieve ambitious goals in life, my fears drove me further and further away from knowing, and therefore, loving myself. Substance addiction to alcohol and marijuana, which started in my mid teens, seems to have maintained this strange equilibrium, and enabled me, for many years, to remain functional. Seen from afar, my life was a model of success when I finally crashed and burned in the year 2003, at the age of 42.

Drink was, at first, a solution – not a problem. It insinuated a false awareness on the oneness of all things. Dope was even better in this respect. This pseudo-spiritual experience (we drink `spirits´) was powerfully alluring and effective; inevitably my habits gradually turned around like a boomerang and almost cut me to shreds. This is the nature of addiction. There is also the issue of denial and loss of reality in the active addict; the deeper we dig ourselves into the hole, the less capable we become of recognising that we are in a hole. It is a downward spiral which cannot be arrested without some form of `disruption´ strong enough to induce the willingness to `go to any lengths´ to change, to grow, and to recover.

In my case it was the spiritual bankruptcy of knowing I was living the life of a fraudster and hating my self for it. In the weeks before I finally quit, standing in one of my favourite places, in front of the family holiday home in the north west of Ireland, my gaze wandered east to the range of mountains in the distance. I had known this land all my life and loved the energy of the wide expanse of bogland framed by the mountains to the east and the Atlantic coastline on the remaining three sides. This huge area is traversed by a few sublime, ancient rivers of outstanding beauty, one of which passes directly in front of the family holiday home where I was staying.

In the fresh air, cleansed by the previous night of heavy rain, I tried to detect with the naked eye, where exactly the river tumbled down the side of one of those mountains. It then struck me that I had always wanted to go right up to the source of the river, but had, for some reason, told my self repeatedly that `this was not for me´. On this fresh morning I simply decided, there and then, that I would do that hike before the end of my holiday.

And I did. Apart from being physically challenging, there was a feeling of both strain and excitement in overcoming the old embedded narrative. It was not clear to me what exactly there was to be feared, I simply stuck to my decision to do something which had appeared beyond my capacity or I had maybe even held to be forbidden. When I got to the top of the mountain, alone after losing my hiking companions en route in my obsessive determination, there was a sudden encounter with an unidentified beast which, startled, immediately fled. This unexpected encounter generated a powerful wave of fear, which, when the beast had disappeared, gradually dissipated, to be followed, as I looked around me, by an almost trance-like feeling of connection with all living things in the entire universe. Filled with gratitude, I stood at the top od the world, and could trace the entire path of the river through the blanket bog, right over to the estuary and the open ocean beyond. The man who returned to the fishing lodge that evening had been transformed.

This experience of union and gratitude turned out to be simply the overture of the transformation that was about to begin and continues to this day. It was the `disruption´ that liberated me from the fear of fear, a state in which I had dwelt for many years. On my return to Germany I decided to seek help from those who had experience in overcoming the disease of addiction. I made contact with a fellowship which had been started by alcoholics in the United States in the late 1930s, and became willing to learn from people who had learned to live sober.

Facing and addressing our fears is a major element of the Twelve Steps devised and practiced by the members of this fellowship. After admitting our powerlessness over alcohol and becoming willing to believe that a power beyond our own ego could restore us to sanity, we are encouraged to `surrender´ our attempts to run the world ourselves, – to quit `playing God´.

Then, by means of inventory, and amends for the harm we had caused, we begin to get to know who we really are. Initially, in my shame and guilt for the `failure´ that was staring back at me when I looked in the mirror, I was afraid that if all my faults and shortcomings were taken from me, there would be nothing left but an empty shell.

This process of self-discovery, in the words of Joseph Campbell, is the dark `cave we fear to enter´. Instead of leading to the feared annihilation, I found that it indeed `held the treasure that I sought´. Upon my first completion of this expedition, I began to experience emerging intimations of purpose, usefulness, joy, and `peace of mind´.  I could not have made it without the loving, kind encouragement of those who had gone before me in what they called `the Fellowship of the Spirit´.

This spiritual path, like all others which have evolved throughout many ages and cultures, leads to a dissolution of the estrangement; the estrangement  known to all, like me, who have lost their way in life, who end up not knowing who they really are or why they are here. We move from a stance of being `apart from´ – a very lonely spot – , to being `apart of´; our families, our tribe, our society, and indeed all of Creation.

This awareness of the oneness of all things tends to be mercurial; I find it necessary to consciously cultivate it on a daily basis. Here too, the Twelve Steps provide guidance and practical tools. After admitting  and taking responsibility for my problem, turning my life over to a power beyond that of my ego, inventory and amends, I am encouraged to continue in these practices on a daily basis. Keeping a journal is very helpful in this exercise. Cultivating my sense of awe by spending time in the great outdoors and practicing my hobby of photography also help, as does the habit of writing a so-called `Gratitude List’ on a regular basis.

Then, through daily prayer and meditation, we are encouraged to sharpen our discernment for the will of the Great Spirit, in terms of our purpose in life, and to ask for the power to carry that out. Inevitably, we come to recognise that we have changed, or better `been changed´ and are emboldened, indeed inspired, to help others.

Because I have stopped and looked fear in the face, I am now in a position to accompany those who request my assistance, along this, sometimes rocky, sometimes terrifying path. Together we journey towards the liberation from fear and the embracing of its only true alternative, – love, in all our affairs.