The field of fear, of heart and awareness

Tenneson Woolf wrote a blog post on 'The drumbeat of fear' and posted it to the list serv of Art of Hosting. This brought a deep conversation. Here is what I found valuable.

I've been finding myself pulled in by the drumbeat. It's a little like the soundtrack to a horror or suspense film: nothing is happening on the screen, but the music inspires a foreboding of something so terrible it has me crawling out of my skin.

I'm trying to focus on what is actually going on in my day-to-day rather than the soundtrack. In the moment, I usually find, I'm quite ok. As a friend of mine once said: "I have no evidence today that my life sucks." I try to hold that space for myself.

I can feel my mind closing when I am in the clutches of it - possibility shrinks, defenses rise, mind races in circles.  When I sit in inquirey with a fear experience it is amazing to me to notice that I literally can't see clearly - I can look back into the options I was blind to, the people whose faces I could not see clearly, whose voices I could not really hear - my attention is on the frightening images and movies I am watching in my mind, the same fear stories going around in my mind flashing from the past to the future (to the TV news) with no time to stopover in the present moment and have a clear look around. I am looking for a place to hide or someone to blame - often both.  Retreating into my fight and/or flight response doesn't leave me much space for my wisdom to arise or much energy to act, and my tolerance for uncertainty evaporates as I grasp for surity.  And with my mind snapped tightly shut I notice my heart doing the same, adding a deep sense of isolation to the fear.

Let me offer the thought that it might be useful in this discussion to distinguish between acute fear, such as you experience when you suddenly see a speeding car bearing down on you, and fear as a mood or habit, for which we sometimes use terms such as worry or anxiety.  It's not surprising that we often refer to both kinds by the same word, fear, because both involve the same hormones and neurological arousal.  The difference between them is situational: acute fear is triggered by something actually around us in the environment; worry is triggered by something we are thinking/imagining.

This thread started with a post about the widespread fear being aroused by current economic and political developments.  Even if that's triggered by receiving the latest financial statement and seeing that you've lost tens of thousands of dollars from your retirement account, it is (according to the distinction I'm working on here) really a form of worry.  You aren't in immediate danger--even most people who've lost jobs aren't in the kind of IMMEDIATE danger that the fear response originally evolved to help us respond to--although the bad consequences may certainly seem closer than they were yesterday.  Such fear, fear aroused by our thinking/imagining--worry, we could call it, about danger that isn't yet immediate--seems to me to be a great candidate for the four-question treatment, which perhaps isn't really so much about the fear itself as about managing the thoughts/imaginings that are provoking the fear.

Acute fear is a different matter, because our exposure to the provocation--the speeding car, say--happens to us rather than being created by us.  We see it, our pre-conscious processing identifies it as a danger, and the physiological responses get underway BEFORE WE ARE EVEN CONSCIOUSLY AWARE of the situation.  That fear isn't caused by "beliefs" and there's no way to consciously prevent it, because the nervous system is moving before the reason arrives in consciousness.  In most situations we can modify our response once conscious awareness kicks in, although it's clear that if the fright is severe, it interferes with our normal thinking abilities.

I am all too aware that this acute fear response can get inappropriately triggered--my subconscious gets hypersensitive and responds to ordinary things as if they were immediate life-endangering threats.  This is not caused by my "beliefs," it's caused by unconscious memory associations.  My consciousness can be screaming the whole time that this is wrong, things are fine, but it doesn't stop my body from going into emergency mode.  And even if I know it was a mistake, even if nothing bad happens, the body's experience of the fear itself grooves the pattern even deeper and wider.

I get concerned about (some kind) of approaches when they lead people to treat acute fear as if it were merely a matter of bad mental hygiene.  It's not.  It involves memory associations not available to direct cognitive inspection and not under under immediate conscious control.

...working over the last several years with students living closer to the edge of survival... much less to very little fear in our gatherings.... concern, frustration, pessimism even...but fear? -- i mean no disrespect or criticism, truly -- yet somehow listening in alongside their stories slowly turned me to personally see my own fears often as enmeshed with something like luxury... I think these encounters help me to practice letting go of shoulds, and in that way letting go of the fear has already happened?

...when you say "For me it is found first in our presence that stills a space. Even better, opens a space."
You are reminding us of another beat, a heart-beat, a living rhythm different from the drumbeat of fear. Requiring some presence, and some stillness, and some openness if we are to choose to attend to it above and below the fear.

I find  the inquirey process of the Work of Byron Katie to be the most powerful practice I have come across for moving from fear into fearlessness.  Identifying the thoughts that are scaring me, walking them through the 4 questions of inquiry and out the other side the world changes for me every time.  My mind relaxes and opens as it comes to know itself and space is created for my wisdom to arise - landing firmly in the present moment it always turns out that I am safe.  Options appear where I was sure there were few or none and my impulse to connect with others is heightened as my heart relaxes and opens replacing the fear with compassion.  Through a deep practice in this work I have had my first real experiences of fearlessness and the amazing energy, love and creativity that flow from that place.  I have done courage in my life - and am grateful for it - and this is something different. It doesn't require any energy - it gives energy in fact - and the ability to see possibility, hear clearly and act decisivly and kindly is amazing.   It excites me because when I have touched it I have known that we have what we need to move through all the challenges we are facing.  It is inspiring in the work that we do - to know that this well of clarity, wisdom and power is inside us all somewhere and developing our mastry in hosting ourselves and each other into that place is such a gift to a world that seems to be inviting us to really show up.
 

Christy Lee-Engel, Miranda Weingartner, Holly Masturzo, Caitlin Frost, Marti Steussy,