Tuesday 13 January 2015

Fear

Mummy's lecturing me about fear again
Fear is a huge thing in my life, the more I notice it, the clearer it becomes to me just how big an effect it has on my thoughts and actions- if I let it. 

From a Buddhist perspective we're driven by attachment (greed), aversion (fear) and ignorance and as usual I can say the Buddhist take on things is accurate in my observation of my own inner & outer life.

I guess that's why I'm a Buddhist.

It's hard to watch my kids experiencing fear, anxiety, shame (by which I mean fear of social exclusion) and it's hard not to project my own feelings on to them- to try to "save" them from experiencing these negative feelings. Of course my job as their mum is to stand back and offer them support and love as they meet with life and find their own way. And I must trust and respect them as fellow human beings who are entirely up to the challenges of living. Sometimes this is hard when my own fearful thoughts are jumping around in my head like mad chattering monkeys.

It helps me to remind myself and them that their minds are hardwired to be fearful, and that's OK. Here's what I mean:

We all come from an unbroken line of life, millions of generations stretching back into time, in which every single individual in that chain of life survived long enough to reach maturity and create offspring.

I don't know about you but I find this fact absolutely mind-blowing. And in my opinion, fear would have played an absolutely critical role in making this happen. 200 generations back in time, Og decided not to jump over that crevice in order to pursue the escaping deer. That's good, because the crevice was deep and wide and Og was right to be frightened of falling instead of reaching the other side. He went home that night without meat for the family but he clearly felt so bad about it that kindly Uga gave him some berries and then they made sweet sweet love under the stars because what else is there to do when there's no TV or internet?!

If you look at it in that way, then I don't know about you, but I feel that fear is put in a context, and in fact... I feel some kind of gratitude for this ever-vigilant fear in my mind.

So yep... feel the fear and do it anyway. Unless "it" is something really stupid or dangerous to yourself or others, in which case thank the fear and decide not to do it after all.

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