07/16/2020
Reflections by Dr. Jealous
Fear, July 2020
Fear is something we all experience, but individual relationships with fear vary considerably. As a general practitioner for over fifty years, I have had intimate conversations with thousands of unique individuals about “their fear” and their relationship to it. Fear can vary in nature from an acute emergent terror to a chronic subliminal fear so akin to the individual that it remains constant and unnoticed (PTSD). Under natural conditions, fear comes and goes along with life’s surprises. Where fear becomes “steady” and “unyielding,” successful resolution is proportionate to the health of one’s perceptual integrity and stability.
Practicing amongst the rural “natives” of Maine, I soon came to realize that they had something “special” behind a sometimes-stoic veneer. Rural persons live on the land, deeply aware of the seasons, of changing weather and the “inconvenience” of natural events. They live in tempo with nature and her moods. This daily relationship keeps one’s observer “active” but in a way different from the “urbanite.” A natural perceptual balance between something greater and something living within that Greatness (oneself) is constantly nurtured. One does not override natural events and “speed up” the pace of life. When one’s attention is not only focused on the event at hand but is also simultaneously aware of the “background” (divided attention) … a certain balance is maintained that allows one to “observe” one’s fear in a broader more peaceful context. This separation between the observer and the fear creates a balanced relationship that allows the fear to be understood not “overlooked” or denied. One’s perceptual integrity is an essential feature of how one responds to, integrates and understands fear and its true meaning. Faith in God’s love and shelter will heal the imbalance.
In addition to learning from and admiring my rural neighbors, I have learned a great deal about fear from animals encountered on wilderness journeys. Naturally free, animals in the wild, are like the rural natives, alert and uniquely balanced individuals whereas domestic or captive animals tend to lose sensory precision. Animals in a wild environment are very alert, their sense wide and full. When sensing danger, these wonderful creatures become “still,” without “neurotic” fear. They wait, observe, and then act instinctually towards a sense of continuum and wisdom. Waiting is a key element in responding to the unexpected. In the case of human illness, fear can run wild and the individual will make irrational decisions by being overly “rational” about the situation. Waiting and allowing intuition and instinct to contribute to one’s moment with fear (however long) will yield unexpected ease of action. One senses oneself as an ally to oneself embraced by a tempo that is calming.
Fear brings us knowledge. If we “wiggle-away” from it, our senses will collapse and fail. If we wait, one finds that fear is bringing oneself to a deeper trust, delivering us from the “grip” of rational ambivalence with its frightening need to be immediately comfortable and subdued by denial.
My conclusion, both in my own travails and those of my friends and patients is that the root of fear is a separation from the Wholeness of Love. Fear arises when we lose our sense of the Divine Background, when one shrinks one’s perceptual field to the point where one in “alone,” separate and coldly isolated from the widen peripheral sense of nature’s tempos and the Divine warmth of Oneness.
During stress, the sensorium collapses, an individual feels “fear,” an alarm goes off warning us we are in danger of losing ourselves, of compressing our Souls and imprisoning our sense of Livingness. Fear as a healthy alarm clock tries to jolt us unto reawakening. If we do not, the fear remains chronically embedded in an ever-increasing grief and loneliness that forgets the object of its causal state. One remains “lost,” often not remembering “oneself” as the perceptual cycle closes more tightly. In all of its variety fear reminds us that something is missing and eventually we come to a point of memory that speaks to us so deeply that a softness pervades the sharpness of fear and we sense the healing light of a widening vista and the Divine embrace of freedom.
Fear is our Friend ringing the doorbell of our being, hoping for someone to answer. Our task is to hear this call and wait in a wider vision until a natural balance emerges from the instinctual core of our being. This is not faith, it is an instinctual knowing of one’s Origin in and from the womb of Life, it carries with it an awareness that carries us into the calm of maternal forces present in nature.
An Osteopathic treatment is aimed at neutralizing the fear and becoming more at home with it…the nit slowly resolves the fear as understanding nurtures change.
Quote: “Never be ruled by fear, only by Love’………. (Sufi master Richard fields, 1978).
The Love that rules us is sweet and eternal. Fear is the opposite……align with the vertical light that feeds you.
