spirituality - lesson 3: fear

'the scream' by edvard munch, 1893

what is this fear? why are you, why is anybody, afraid? is it based on not wanting to be hurt? or is it that one wants complete security, and not being able to find it this sense of complete safety, of protection, physically, emotionally, psychologically - one becomes terribly anxious about living? fear is a survival mechanism, an animal instinct that helps us stay away from trouble. there are, of course, real dangers that exist and that one should avoid standing in the middle of a road with heavy traffic for example. fear is a projection of a perceived risk in our mind. fears are not just related to physical reality but also include more abstract worries. I have read this recently in psychology magazine: top 10 fears (in north america) 1. ARACHNOPHOBIA: fear of spiders 2. SOCIOPHOBIA: fear of people or social situations 3. AEROPHOBIA: fear of flying 4. AGORAPHOBIA: fear of open spaces 5. CLAUSTROPHOBIA: fear of confined spaces 6. METOPHOBIA: fear of vomiting

7. ACROPHOBIA: fear of heights 8. CANCERPHOBIA: fear of cancer 9. BRONTOPHOBIA: fear of thunder and lightning 10. NECROPHOBIA: fear of death followed by 3 of the most common and enigmatic phobias of mankind: ATHAZAGORAPHOBIA: fear of being forgotten, ATYCHIPHOBIA:fear of failure METATHESIOPHOBIA: fear of changes. the irony of fear is that the mindset we believe is saving us from risk can actually hold us back from living: this happens where fear acts as a way of protecting us from suffering. if these fear projections are not kept in check they can become exaggerated and seriously reduce our active participation in life. everyone has the capacity to fear, however the object of fear is something that is learnt. this is why one person can hand-glide over the grand canyon and another person can't even look at pictures of the grand canyon. how we learn to identify objects of fear varies. as a child we are taught certain things from our parents: 'don't talk to strangers', 'don't touch that, it's dirty, you don't know where it has been', ... and so on. some things are learnt through experience, say a barking dog that scares you when you were young or a secondary experience, for example watching the film 'jaws'.

janet leigh in alfred hitchcock's film 'psycho' , 1960

some of the strongest influencers of fear continue to feed us throughout our lifetime. they can be an incredible force to the extent of engineering mass manipulation. from religions creating apprehension of 'judgment day' to keep people adhering to doctrine to governments controlling social movements, throughout history fear has been one of the most powerful facilitators of social control. it is the very fact that fear can override reason and logic which makes such a compelling tool. a few of the illustrations in this lesson are posters created during periods of war. notice that instead of creating messages of reassurance they use fear to get the public to adhere to guidelines.

comic book fear by eric rose

mass media / mass fear social control only works where people give up self-control and responsibility. however, eventually the cultivation of anxiety and distrust increases a society's willingness to tolerate limitations to our freedom of movement. today it is the modern media, and those who work within it, who have the ability to define social situations in ways that have undesirable social consequences. these can be attributed to a few different sources. firstly, the distortion of public understanding of crime and other related social problems creates exaggerated fearfulness within a society. this has its benefits for those in governmental control, namely mass cooperation with laws and policing. examples can range from the effects of extreme dictatorism and threat of death to worrying that if you don't pay taxes you will receive a fine. fear makes money.

lots of people benefit (i.e. profit) from the marketing of fear and there are whole industries built upon it. security services, defense equipment and insurance are all but a few of the thriving business which are dependant on a certain degree of fear in society. fear makes us buy irrationally, paying the odds for contraptions and solutions to save us from impending risk. fear of aging leads us to buy wrinkle cream, fear of illness leads us to buy endless vitamins and supplements. and so corporations feed into and off public paranoia. 'trust brand x' (aka fear the other brands) is a common trick in the marketing book. branding is practically built on the breeding of distrust in other brands and the anxiety cultivated by questioning loyalty. to remain safely in a cocoon is not the solution in evading the perpetual scaremongering pervading society. to live in denial is give up the control we have on circumstances that directly affect our life. reality and delusion buddhism categorizes fear in two ways - healthy and unhealthy. unhealthy fears are referred to as 'delusions', and define a distorted way of looking at yourself and your environment. if person has a fear of sharks and lives no where near a shark's habitat, this an irrational fear that is not healthy, just as fearing old age or being taken ill by a cold. these kind of fears paralyze any remaining free will when control is already taken out of our hands. there is not much we can do about getting old or dying therefore there is not much point in fearing it. you may however, fear for living an uneventful, wasted life; there is something you can change about this, there is the ability to be proactive. this is what in buddhism is referred to as a healthy fear, one that is motivational and encourages an individual to pursue skill and control in their life. the belief is that if one is in control of themselves then there should be little need for fear. to remove unhealthy fears one can ecognize vulnerability and then find a way to avert the danger by removing the actual causes of all fear and, in buddhist terminology, remove unskilled actions motivated by fear. the apprehension of a present or future danger must be evaluated through the correct filters as reason can be clouded by external influences that proliferate society and cover up reality. trusting in nature and the natural course of events can help with this. if we dont see when we are behaving against the laws of nature, we can only rely on pain to alert us. maybe it is this pain that is at the root of fear. a poisonous spider is not likely to bite unless being provoked / attacked. the fear of spiders can therefore be eradicated by the acknowledgment that unless one actively attacks a spider they are unlikely to receive any reaction that could be scary or life threatening. simply trusting yourself in a situation that could be risky and believing that you have the self control to keep you safe will be the soundest way of overcoming a fear.

jack nicholson and shelley duval in stanley kubrick's film 'the shining', 1980

no one has 'no fear' someone you may perceive to be fearless has just learnt to control unnecessary fear and their reactions to it. now why is there fear? you have been hurt, haven't you? and out of that hurt you do all kinds of things. we resist a great deal, we don't want to be disturbed; out of that feeling of hurt we cling to something which we hope will protect us. therefore we become aggressive towards anything that attacks what we are holding on to for protection. do you only fear of physical pain? or is it more a psychological fear of danger, of uncertainty, of being hurt again? or of not being able to find total, complete security? is it fear of being dominated, and yet we are dominated? so what is it that you are frightened of? are you aware of your fear? you might say I am not frightened of yesterday or of today, but I am frightened of what might happen tomorrow, in the future. tomorrow may be twenty-four hours away or a year, but I am frightened of that... fear of the unknown? or is it the fear of letting go of the known? the future is the result of all the expectations one has because of the past. why should one be afraid of the unknown, when you know nothing about it? please enquire into it. fear of letting go the things I have gathered - my property, my wife, my children, my name, my books, my furniture, my capacities - to let go the things that I know, that I have experienced: is that the fear? I might get ill, I might lose a job, a dozen things might happen to me, I may go insane, lose all the things which I have stored up. there might be an atomic war, there might be an ice age - I am frightened of all that. now please enquire, how are you going to deal with it? by living in the present! I think about tomorrow, and the past has given me a sense of security; though there may have been a great many uncertainties in the past, on the whole I have survived. up to now I am fairly safe, but tomorrow is very uncertain and I am frightened. can I know anything except the past? the moment I say I know it is already the past. when I say I know my friend, I know her in terms of the past. in the past there is certainty and in the future there is uncertainty. so I want to draw the future into the past so that I will be completely safe. we explain it, we give cause, we think we understand it, and yet at the end of it we are frightened. I want to go behind all that and find out why fear exists at all. thought says, knowledge is my security.

maybe the living system needs to think about tomorrow, this is a fundamental rule of life: if needs some sort of prediction. thought is necessary to protect physical survival. that is part of our life, that is what we are doing all the time. human thought replaces instinct. the weather is hot, I must plan to buy some trousers that will be cool. that means planning for tomorrow. I have to understand what is to live now. I don't understand what it is to live now, nor have I understod what it is to live in the past, therefore I want to live in the future, which I don't know, as I don't know what the present is. so I am asking, can I live completely, wholly, today?