I personally believe there are far more differences in others than similarities. Our population has grown so that the variables of interests, options, beliefs, personality, values, etc. Possible in each person are rapidly increasing. In short: since we are more aware of options available, we make more complicated choices and become more complicated in our thinking and our actions. Finding sameness is also harder because there are so many more people out there, thus so many more mismatches possible.

Why then do we waste so much time humoring those who are not healthy for us, even after it’s obvious that the personalities just can’t or won’t mesh? Why are we so unwilling to admit that we just don’t agree with them? So careful not to clash with them (as in the people who aren’t compatible for whatever reason and vice versa) instead of accepting that the situation is unhealthy or undesireable…then simply moving on? And, by contrast, why are we so quick to run from those that do actually mesh?

Why does humoring those we don’t “like” so often seem so much safer than connecting with those we do?

Who are we really afraid of? Ourselves…or the ones who are able to see past our b.s. to the individual beneath the social facade?

Nice to find you! I never knew much about you off screen and was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon your website to read your work and see what a gentle enlightened soul you truly are. I am most stimulated by your thoughts here and look forward to some mind wrestling or mind dancing with you. I see your astrology sign is an Aries…so I do not wish to butt heads with you here but to mind meld instead! It is quite refreshing to find a blog that challenges me.

Peace to you,
Your new friend
Janise

In response to this blog…

Fear is a primitive response mechanism… going back to the original Flight or Fight response before we consciously evolved. Fear is primarily a signal to prepare. A saber tooth tiger is running your way…fear triggers a response to Hide, Run! etc. As we have evolved in consciousness the Fear we feel now is more intuition about something being out of alignment. We feel hesitation about something or someone or some event. If we listen to the still soft voice within when this so called
fear emerges we will be guided to the right place at the right time to do the right things. Fear is not a bad thing, it is just a call to get aligned on some level. I like to call it my gut instinct. Its never wrong.

Feeling helpless is just surrendering to the thinking of there is no way or things cannot be changed, but in truth there is always a way it just takes time to find it… a new strategy or renewed perception or belief. Nothing is beyond help. If we ask ourselves more empowering questions we will find more empowering answers, a solution, a way, or how to surrender to that which cannot be changed and then peace finds us once again.

Also, there is no fear when one understands who they really are. We are not the body, not even our name, not our experiences, associations and surely not our wealth or lack of it. For all that is impermanent is not the true self. When we drop all that is false, illusion, ego and attachment what is left is the invisible…the invisible self, the perfect self, the Spirit Self, the one with God self, ageless, timeless, never born and never dies. When we truly know this and live as a spiritual being in the human experience then there is nothing to fear, nothing which could hurt, harm or endanger us. It is truly liberating to live with this awareness in the Divine play, the Divine Dream.

Peace,
Janise

Do we feel fear in the face of helplessness; or helpless in the face of fear?
Or both at the same time?
Our fear of being helpless makes us angry…and we lose our sense of judgment. This then makes us feel helpless. And because we feel helpless we get frightened.
Our sense of being helpless scares us.

The trick is to break the vicious circle.
Each of us has a strategy…a system to try to break the circle. Some fight; some fly. Some retreat into prayer or meditation or whatever label you wish to give to a period of focused thought. Some hide behind anger and aggression…and just go full circle in the process.
It seems to me that the first thing we need to do is define which strategy (not the last I hope) suits us best.
Butterfly-brain here can get distracted by the new ideas that come tripping along when she’s meditating …but I’m still trying to find my strategy and I’m beginning to believe I will.
that is the important bit. I am beginning to believe that I can do it. If I believe I can, then I can overcome the fear and empower myself. Pull myself together – re-member how it was before the latest monster crawled out of the woodwork – and push fear back to where it belongs…the trash-can (preferably not the one in the back of my mind).

One very tired brain is now going to give in to the anti-histamine and sleep; so I hope that rambling makes sense to someone.

I’ve wrote a story once; it started out as a fictional diary in my own language, but quickly turned into a story in an unfamiliar format and in a foreign language, for that’s how the muse would have it. I read the story out loud and had the story read back to me by a machine. Reading it out loud was indeed very helpful, it helped me find rhythm and texture. But letting the machine read it back to me was even better. How strange it was to have my words spoken back to me with the absence of emotions, human interpretation or the simultaneous sound track of my internal dialog. Even stranger was the process of translating it, and to see foreign words look back at me in my mother’s tong.

Strange and funny too, I had people fly on plains and walk up stares. Good for a giggle.

The emotionless machine was good, but I needed a real person to point out the flaws, the hiccups, the nonsensical twists and lack off texture in certain places. I found a ruthless one and I am very grateful to him, he boxed my ears, poked holes in places I muffled over and he had me look at it again and again.

And there it is again; only in the (honest) dialog do you get to learn the uncomfortable truth and the offensive criticism. It’s up to you to look in the mirror and see your blind spots.
Scary? You bet. Your carefully constructed paper wall of words gets ripped to shreds, and you come to realize; it is not just paper, it is not just words; this is me.

The same happens went you start to meditate, visit a Guru, talk to a shrink or a slightly tipsy good friend. If you could just open up to that offending view on you, become aware of what they see (…)

But no, rational mind struggles to stay within the norm; the form mind is comfortable in, grew up with and clings on to. We think we venture out, and bravely sit on a safu watching zebra’s and artichokes but when the lions come out and are about to devour our ego, our rational mind, we jump up and scream in protest, judge the method, the safu, the teacher, deny the experience and run away from the endless possibilities of awareness, close our eyes to the vastness of our consciousness and close our ears to the fact that that too is you.

We’d rather be the toe we stub on the doorsill. Painful but controllable and user-friendly or so we think. But did you control the doorsill, can you control the pain, the scream bursting out of your mouth when toe meets sill? No. So you judge; “Stupid toe and who put this doorsill in the way any way, and you, don’t look at me like that when you are startled by my scream”. We’ll do anything to get back to the norm, to not feel helpless and out of control.

I choose a path in martial art, it all started with fear all gift wrapped in a quest for bravery and my soul. I choose this art because it has no competition and no judges. I choose this path because it is an art and not a fight. I choose this martial way as a way to feel safe in the world, have some technique, something I could DO when the need arises. After 20 odd years I find that the path I choose is actually the path of NOT DOING. This training in not doing, of giving up control, facing the enemy without fear or anger, used to collide with my years of training in doing, but I gave up that fight, bowed respectfully and moved on.

The art of not doing has helped me find my feet when I think of stories and put them on paper and has come in very handy when I sculpt, sit on my safu or behind my PC to find form, shape and color for someone else’s thoughts and ideas.

This is not to say that the need to DO something, seek out control or have it my way, does not rear its funny little head every now and again. I let myself be seduced into a discussion with doing every so often, I collide with the worlds doing on a regular basis. But stepping away from that and observing without keeping score, becomes easier and easier.

When I read these words back it sounds all too wonderful and I must say, while writing these words, now, I do feel incredibly happy and free. Do I have my live in order? No, not even close. Does everything float my way? No, I wish. Do I have everything under control? Well now, you must be kidding. But still, I feel incredibly happy, for no apparent reason. But then again does there have to be a reason?

I know all too well what helplessness feels like, there were times that I became so scared that I could not move. I had to choose more times than once to stay were I was or move in spite of my fear. Feeling that helpless is like dying, giving into it is death.

One of the collisions with immobilizing fear became a story. My way of looking without judging was to play 20 questions and to turn it into words on paper. I wrote it and rewrote it, read it and had a machine read it to me, translated it back and forth and picked my words with care. The hardest part was to give it an ending that took me years, but I finally did and the story said: “Now I’m told”.

I know it’s not perfect and it never will be, it’s like a Zen tea bowl, there is always a flaw, and I’m no master, but it is full of Gods breath, love and Ri. I send it off into the world, for it was not mine to keep or claim. Besides I had a promise to keep I made to the universe. Where it will land I do not know, I have no control over that. Scary? I would say so. Is that fear a reason not to send it out into the world. No. Is fear ever a reason to not let go?

Every step I take on the tight rope is a step in which I learn, every step I do not take is a step closer to death.

To find my balance on lives tight rope and to go with the tides is to experience the one-ness and the love. It gives me the split second chance to find the energy to face fear with a smile. Being aware that balance is not a static thing makes me relaxes in the art of not doing and helps me surrender to ever expanding consciousness. It gives me some clarity, makes me smile and write this story.

I’ll remain forever learning with a grin,

Softly

That does clarify things somewhat. Even so, I think automatically lumped all those different degrees of fear together. Which might be part of the problem. When I wrote about my personal definition of fear, I included in it that kind of pressing, heart-sinking fear that comes from feeling like everything is lost and there isn’t any way out or any place to go. Or so it seems at the time. And even then fear to me is the danger warning that tells me the thing or situation that is happening to (or around) me or might happen to me is a potential threat.

I don’t know if this would clear up anything, but at least for me, the fear I refer to is not the ‘fight or flight response’ but the feeling that your conscience, your soul, is about to take a flying leap into an abyss. Everything else around you disappears and you’re left completely and utterly alone. You’re scared because you can’t think, can’t reason and utterly helpless.

xt

I’m new to your site, I find your writings intense and thoughtful which make me ponder your conclusions.

Our minds have a life of their own, I’ve found that one of the most difficult things to do is to be aware of our own frailties and embracing them instead of fearing them.

I wish you a wonderful 2010 and hope that all of your birthday dreams come true.

What are you planning for the big Six Seven anyway?

Also, it’s hard for me to understand just what is meant by “listening without judgment.” Judgment in and of itself is not the danger. It’s basing your judgments or decisions on inner biases and prejudices without admitting to yourself that this is what you’re doing. In our lives we think of snap judgments, good judgment, bad judgment and so on, but isn’t “judgment” just another word for “decision”? I would think that the motivatio(s) behind your judgment would be the questionable factor. That aspect of “witnessing” that would lead to eventually passing some overall judgment or generalizing inappropriately? Witnessing or observing while reserving judgment, that I can understand. And agree with. But is it possible to listen or see or think or feel without making any decisions or identifications whatsoever?

Maybe what it all boils down to is not being able to disassociate myself from the belief that mind, body, and spirit are so interconnected as to be symbiotic. Take out any one and the other two are ineffectual. So when I try to view the mind as deceptive when it comes to observing myself or others or as an instrument voracious seeking to control myself or others, my immediate thought is that this does happen but only as a response to the motives of the spirit (who an individual is deep inside) and the body (how that individual copes with her own senses or physical awareness). The thoughts are the extensions of all three. Of not just the mind but the spirit fueling the mind and the body housing the brain and the “soul.” The reason why a sentence heard or read when your world is crumbling, imploding in on itself sounds so different on a day when everything is going your way. Or why your stomach might hurt when you’re frightened or your head when you’re stressed. It seems to me that it is not so much that the brain deceives or misleads but that when any one of the three sections of your being (?) Is compromised or vulnerable for any reason, the other two tend to be faulty as well. Explaining certain reactions to fear or rushes to judgment, overwhelming onslaughts of helplessness. Loneliness. Negative reactions to yourself or somebody else.

?

Zephie