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Fear and Loafing

Two weeks ago, I quoted Nietzsche,

He who fights with mon­sters might take care lest he thereby become a mon­ster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Niet­zsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Apho­rism 146

The Will for Free­dom and the Wish for Restriction

Back in 1983, I sub­mit­ted my Mas­ters’ The­sis. It was titled, “The Fear Fac­tor,” and it’s kind of inter­est­ing, all 205 pages of it, not that I look at it often. The Niet­zsche quote reminded me of the “the­sis of the The­sis,” that fear keeps us stuck. Until we learn to see through it.

I pro­posed that fear comes in two flavours: 1) fear of the OTHER, and fear of the SELF. Let me note that both cap­i­tal­ized words dif­fer from their “small” counterparts.

• Small “other” is every­thing that is not me.
• Large “OTHER” is a largely sub­con­scious “set” of cul­tur­ally installed beliefs about the big, scary world. Depend­ing on the neu­ro­sis of my fam­ily and tribe, I may fear the world at large, or only spe­cific ele­ments of it.
• Small “self” is our pub­lic per­sona. It may be “that which I know about myself,” but is more likely, “That which I choose to reveal about myself.”
• Large “SELF” con­tains the small self, PLUS the sub­con­scious and uncon­scious realms, or the Shadow (accord­ing to Jung.) In other words, the SELF is the abyss.

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I paged through the The­sis, and one quote stood out:

“…there are fears of being sab­o­taged in one’s free will by inner ene­mies; or being restricted and con­stricted in one’s autonomous ini­tia­tive; and, para­dox­i­cally enough, at the same time of not being com­pletely con­trolled enough, of not being told what to do.”

Erik Erik­son, “Iden­tity and the Life Cycle,” p.77

This is the prin­ci­pal para­dox — how to move past being stuck.

Many of my clients assure me that what they crave is the free­dom to be them­selves. They tell me how impor­tant it is for them to express them­selves, to be cre­ative, to “let their song out.”

Being a Sim­ple Zen Guy, I invite them to go right ahead.

And out come the excuses, start­ing at the level of the OTHER.
“But what will peo­ple think?”
“My part­ner is very inse­cure, and (s)he will not like me doing that.”

“[Some­one] needs to do [some­thing] first!” And tellingly, “If I do that, peo­ple might fig­ure out who I really am.”

This is fear of OTHER danc­ing with the wish for freedom.

Our tribes taught us well—they kept us “safe” by insist­ing that “It’s a scary world ‘out there.’ ” Our eyes there­fore tend to look exter­nally first. And here’s a twist. The exter­nal OTH­ER­ness that we fear also includes our fan­tasies.

Many are the clients who hold them­selves in check by telling them­selves “scary sto­ries.”

“What if I pick some­thing, and some­thing bet­ter comes along?” (And they’ve even imag­ined what “bet­ter” looks like—it’s pop­u­lated with imag­i­nary peo­ple who are per­fect…)
“I already know this won’t work out.” (Again, an over­ac­tive imagination…)

What seems to be miss­ing from their equa­tion is the real­iza­tion that what goes on their heads is not real! It’s not called an imag­i­na­tion for noth­ing. When you tell your­self sto­ries, and scare your­self, the inescapable truth is—it’s imaginary!!!

In all cases, sin­is­ter motives are pro­jected out­ward onto anOTHER, and one stays stuck, BUT with some­one to blame.

Ques­tions, Questions

I have a cou­ple of clients who end­lessly ask ques­tions. What will hap­pen? What’s the point? How’s it all going to turn out? I keep say­ing that I have no clue, and the best way to find out is to just do the thing…

One client said, “I want to [fill in the blank] but if I sched­ule it, I’ll not have the free­dom to do other things.” Yet, when she does not sched­ule it, she does not do it. Free­dom, my ass. If I do what I say I want to do, I must (if I am an adult) accept the con­se­quences. Singing the “I want to be free!” song while doing noth­ing, means that you do nothing!!!

The other side of the OTHER coin is want­ing to be told what to do.

The prob­lem with this request to be told, or directed, is that is never gen­uine. If you tell them, then you are to blame when things go wrong, or are to blame if it goes right and wasn’t a big enough charge.

All of this is a dis­trac­tion from the main event.

In Zen, we sit and stare into the void.

We see that oth­ers, in a sense do not exist, or are sim­ply a dis­trac­tion. This is not so for the major­ity, who are addicted to their fear.

We have been taught to look out­side for con­fir­ma­tion, approval, mean­ing, and sense of self— “Always hold an adult’s hand when cross­ing the street…”

We have been taught this because our “par­ents” were afraid of the void, afraid to stand forth, afraid to be real, afraid to con­front the “imag­i­nary demons” that pop­u­late the void.

Con­di­tion­ing

This cul­tural con­di­tion­ing is so pow­er­ful that fully 95% of the pop­u­la­tion never con­fronts it. A few issues ago, I made men­tion of the “leap of faith,” and often say to clients, “You can’t make the leap in two jumps.” One client recently wanted to “Go back and forth.” In other words, to keep what she has for secu­rity, while pre­tend­ing to “on the other side.” It’s sort of like what you see 2-year-olds doing—they run ahead, “ignor­ing” the parent’s call, yet end­lessly look­ing over her shoul­der, check­ing. And then scur­ry­ing back when the dis­tance becomes “too much.

The real game

The real game is the inter­nal one. The game is this. My social self (the trib­ally approved ver­sion of me) is a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s anchored, in BODYWORK, as illus­trated to the left.

Beneath the sur­face is the “meat” of me—the stuff that I’ve been taught to repress, ignore, or deny the exis­tence of .

This is the SELF— or what Ben ‘n Jock call the authen­tic self, what Jung called the Shadow. We have been con­di­tioned to fear the SELF, and to avoid even acknowl­edg­ing its existence.

Yet, here lies buried our pas­sion, cre­ativ­ity, juice, and verve (as well as a lot of wacky, weird, evil, twisted stuff. We do not have to enact any of it, BUT we do have to see it, own it, and choose to let it remain background.)

If we do not do our Shadow work, if we do not dance with our void, the mate­r­ial con­tained therein will end­lessly “pop up” in things we judge about our­selves and oth­ers. This “barely hid­den” mate­r­ial will pull us to block ourselves—we expend much of our energy hold­ing this energy and mate­r­ial at bay.

Over the next week or two, let’s look at ways to get into this stuff.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. 9 Ways to Screw Up a Relationship
2. Drop­ping the Excuses
3. Clear­ing the Gunk Out of Your Head
4. 6 Ideas for Zen Mind
5. On Not Being You

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Tagged with: emptiness • Fear • Perception • Reality

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