Fear as a teacher

What is fear? 

During my research for this post I came across this witty definition: 

 “F-E-A-R: has two meanings: 

    Forget Everything And Run 

or 

    Face Everything And Rise. 

The choice is yours.” 

— Zig Ziglar. 12/11/2017

According to the American Psychology Association

Fear is an intense emotion aroused by the detection of imminent threat, involving an immediate alarm reaction that mobilizes the organism by triggering a set of physiological changes.

This might be the reason the human species survived some of its challenges until now. The fact that our ancestors were able to detect a threat and out of fear and the will to overcome it found ways to be the fittest of a number of situations that had risen. 

I tend to dislike fear for what it makes me feel, but I have learned that if I let it pass through me it cannot hurt me, but instead leave me with a lesson of a specific experience. The unknown, the possibility that what is imminent might not necessarily pose a threat nor what is new, nor what is different, nor what is beyond understanding. Fear can teach how to prevent a threat but it can also be an awakening for a new beginning. That which needs to be overcome. Fear as a hurdle to overcome, to understand the undiscovered truth of the new. 

I fear one too many things, and it is okay to acknowledge that it happens. The choice will always be on my side. I can be reckless and ignore it, I can try to understand it, to desiccate whatever it is that is producing the emotion within me, I might even invite it for drinks and let its purpose unfold. The truth of the matter is that fear is a teacher of choice. Do or do not. Let it pass through or let it reside in you.  Once again I think it is pertinent to bring the litany of fear from Frank Herbert's Dune. 

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

The experience is not the individual but a part of it. 

Fear is not the end, but an instant.

The dreamer, the seer, the player of woven dreams made real, the awareness of the soul manifested - only those different manifestations of the same true-self can unweave, disconstruct, face, obliterate, transform, ascend ... over fear as a limitation of being. 

Fear is an alert in the ongoing life, not the end of it.