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February 3, 2010
WHAT MATTERS MOST: THAT LIFE NOT BE GOVERNED BY FEAR
A friend says, "I don't want to think that hard," when asked what her biggest fears were. "In fact," she continued, "I don't even want to know what my fears are."
Indeed, the very act of turning around, or inward as the case may be, and facing the wild things that scare us may itself be scary.
What we don't know about ourselves can be running the show of our lives, directing our behaviors and habits from some unconscious place in us where we are afraid to go.
What we don't know can hurt us, and that which is buried alive has a creepy way of staying alive. At the very least, our unacknowledged fears can suck the energy out of our bodies and our daily lives. Doesn't it make sense to face them and push through them?
"I'm not scared of anything," someone else told me, defiantly, and I was reminded of a day in class when Jim Hollis said that there are people among us who would rather die than admit they are afraid.
That is a staggering thought to me.
And yet, fear is common to all of us human beings; to admit it at least gives us a chance at overcoming it.
It's pretty natural to be afraid of a run-away car, a poisonous snake or a gun pointed toward you. Who doesn't harbor fears of failure or success, rejection or abandonment now and then? The important thing that Jim teaches in his book WHAT MATTERS MOST: LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE is that our lives not be governed by fear.
What about these fears, though? Which of these everyday, ordinary fears show up in your daily life in a repetitive way? Does any of these fears govern your life?
-- fear of being wrong
-- fear of self-disclosure (if they know me, they won't like me!)
-- fear of not having enough, knowing enough, being enough, doing enough
-- fear of pleasure, joy, fulfillment
-- fear of feeling what I feel, knowing what I know
-- fear of losing control
-- fear of intimacy -- of knowing or being known
-- fear of being ridiculed, shamed, embarrassed in public
-- fear of losing
-- fear of others' diaspproval
-- fear of those who are different
-- fear of trying something new
-- fear of making a fool of myself
-- fear of authority figures
-- fear of trusting another person
-- fear of setting appropriate boundaries
-- fear of sayiing "no"
-- fear of standing up for yourself
All humans experience fear from time to time, but when life is governed by fear, we become crippled, paralyzed or entrapped in self-sabotaging behaviors that not only do not make the fear go away, but keep it alive.
Jim says that our fears are about being overwhelmed or abandoned, and that we devise various ways-- he calls them treatment plans --to avoid facing that which scares us or we overcomensate, trying to out-run the fear.
If you ask a Jungian how to deal with a problem, the answer is often, "consciousness, consciousness, consciousness," and so the first step has to be to become aware of the fear or the symptom that is masking the fear. We have to ask ourselves hard questions:
In what circumstances does this fear operate?
What physical responses let me know I am afraid?
Is my fear really justified?
What am I losing or missing in my life because of this fear?
Who else am I hurting because of this fear?
In SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION, Carl Jung said, "The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear. Only boldness can deliver us from fear, and if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated."
That is pretty clear, Jim Hollis says. It's pretty strong.
What will it cost you to hang on to your fears?
How does avoiding your fears keep you stuck in them?
Where in your life do you need to assert boldness? What will happen if you do? What will happen if you don't?
Grace abounds --
Jeanie
(This is the second in a four week series of reflections based on Chapter One of the book WHAT MATTERS MOST: LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE, by James Hollis.
You can order Jim's books from here -- http://www.junghouston.org or from http://www.amazon.com. You can also order CDs of his lecture from this course from the Jung Center in Houston.
Previous posts from this series can be found by clicking "What Matters" on the home page of this website.) |