WELCOME TO FEAR - NOVEMBER 2021

WELCOME TO FEAR

 

Last night I was listening to a podcast by my Mentor Michael Meade and became fascinated by the Sufi story about FEAR.

Mulla Nasrudin or Nasreddin, a 12 century Mulla (1208 – 1285) is still quoted in the Middle East and Tukey areas, where he lived and travelled on his faithful donkey. His stories are profound teaching stories. In this story he is dealing with a lesson about Fear:

One night, Nasrudin was riding his dinkey and suddenly heard a powerful noise near him on the road. He was overcome with fear and was about to run like mad, but he stumbled on a person.

“WHO ARE YOU? Asked the Mullah.

“I am a Dervish, and this is my place of reflection” he was lying on a cot in a poorly lit room.

“Well, you must let me in” said the Mullah, “for your snoring left me shaking with fear”

“Well, take the end of this blanket” said the Dervish, “but be quiet as I am in contemplation now”

Nasrudin became quiet and fell asleep. But in the middle of the night, he woke up and was thirsty. He woke up the Dervish and said: “Now I am thirsty”!

The sleepy dervish said: “Go down to the pond and get some water”

“NO”! Nasrudin said: “I am very frightened”

“All right” said the Dervish, “I will go but only because providing water to a stranger is a sacred obligation”

But the Mulla cried” “NO! do not go, I will be even more afraid if you go and leave me alone here”.

The Dervish said: OK, take my knife to defend yourself” and went to fetch the water.

Alone, Nasrudin worked himself into a lather of fear and was shaking all over. Soon the Dervish came back carrying the water.

“Keep your distance!” shouted the Mullah, “or I will kill you on the spot!”

“But I am the Dervish with the water for you!”

“I do not care who you are, you may be a robber or a fiend coming to hurt me!” Exclaimed the Mulla.

“But you were thirsty, and I brought you the water” said the Dervish.

“Do not try to make nice to me, you fiend” Said the Mulla, “be gone”!

“But that is my cell you are occupying”!

“Then hard luck to you - now you must find another place, you fiend” exclaimed the Mulla.

 “I guess I will have to, but I do not know what is going on here”! said the Dervish. All perplexed now.

The Mullah answered: “Fear is multidimensional. It is stronger than thirst, sanity, privacy, or property. You do not have to have it in order to suffer deeply from it.”

 

FEAR IN PANDEMIC TIMES

In today’s times of Covid pandemic, climate crisis, military coups, economic failures, and all sorts of corruptions, we have plenty of things to fear about indeed. When reflecting on the multidimensional causes of fear, we can reflect on these ‘causes’ in a psychological way. Here we discover that our “little ego” (I call it our inner child) wants to make sure that we are protected and safe all the time. Even safe from our own feelings that are inside and may be the energies to connect with the big Self or True self that deals with erasing fear when connecting with Soul that is the real source of all love and wisdom.

In the Mulla story there is a warning as to how easily we can find ourselves in a situation where the instinct to help others can encounter people who make demands out of fear and then we lose our centre and get lost in the drama of what I call the “poor me” syndrome that stems from neurotic fears of ‘something out there’. Also, giving a weapon to a scared person can lead to harm to one that is helping without awareness. Fear reverses a situation by creating more anxiety, more projections and more panic leading to damage of self and others.

Today the world situation is much the same where Covid pandemic (Panic) has been spreading globally and people are reacting with anxiety and get very fearful and feel great pain from losing their family members, and others are denying the reality of the disease and take on strong aggressive action against vaccination and hurt others with attacks against mask orders and border closures.

Further fears of the collapse of the economy, climate crisis and lack of clarity in political leadership, creates a space where the “little self” enters the survival mode (fight or flight) and thus people develop a strong lack of trust in others and begin to create a state of collective paranoia with the raise of conspiracy theories and false beliefs. The old extremist feelings emerge when fear is at the centre and groups evolve that are ready to ‘defend’ themselves and their families against any imagined enemy.

Historians state that during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, people developed extreme beliefs in leaders that would save them. in Germany they supported the emergence of the NAZI party that promised health and wellbeing to all.

There is a similar surging of the extreme right and white supremacist groups that promise a new dawn for the good people and eliminate the bad. Some denigrate and deny the medical research and resist vaccination despite huge evidence of success in many fully vaccinated countries. Some believe that only god can save us and urge people to pray for a cure from heaven.

Unfortunately, many people do not understand the phenomena of fear as an energy that drives us into panic and all sorts of self and others harming behaviours. The loss of rational thinking collapses the intuitive centre and a loss of inner resources that give us a chance to evolve and grow even if fear is so strong that blinds us from resetting our lives towards real growth and development.

INTUITION AND AWERENESS are the main tools of developing strong capacity to deal with fear. This way we realise that fear is a door to our own survival as it generates body/mind hormones that energize us into positive beings that have been living on this Earth for many thousands of years developing solutions from the Big Self. Seeing the direction fear is guiding us (with awareness) we evolve as a greater human.

Any emotion (or motion) and particularly fear can move us to a massive amount of information and knowledge to be able to resolve our life issues, but by repressing our emotions, we lose our emotional intelligence and become more lost to our creative resources. As a wise teacher said: “who fears to suffer winds up suffering from fear” Courage wakes up in times of fear.