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This week: Facing Our Fears Edited by: Sophy  
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Hi, I'm Sophy ~ your editor for this edition of the Spiritual Newsletter. This week we'll talk about facing our fears.
The Rev. Scotty McLennan, author of the book "Finding Your Religion," compares humanity's innate need for spiritual searching to climbing a mountain. In his view, we are all endeavoring to climb the same figurative mountain in our search for the divine, we just may take different ways to get there. In other words, there is one "God," but many paths. I honor whatever path or paths you have chosen to climb that mountain in your quest for the Sacred.  |
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Facing Our Fears
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Dorothy Thompson
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you,
well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation
for the hours and ages that will follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
German Proverb
"Do not be afraid." We find this announcement in Judeo/Christian Scripture over and over again. Abraham, Moses, Mary, Joseph, shepherds tending their flocks, Paul sitting in a jail cell, disciples rowing a boat in the strong wind, the women looking for Jesus' body - all of them heard these words. In fact, the phrase "do not be afraid" appears almost 100 times in the Bible. Apparently, humans have always been and still are very fearful creatures, and biblical characters are no exception. In a passage from Matthew, it says that just as night was about to give way to daybreak, as a storm was pelting the little boat they were in, the disciples were terrified, even more so when they saw Jesus walking out to them on top of the water, thinking he was a ghost. And as Jesus reassured them that it was actually him, not a ghost, and told them not to be afraid, Peter stepped out of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But fear took over again when he noticed the wind and waves, which caused him to sink. I always have found it funny that he wasn't afraid of the fact that he was walking on water, but by the waves and wind. But I digress. The point is that, for a brief moment, Peter let go of his fear and was able to walk on the water with Jesus, but as soon as he allowed fear back in, he sank into the waves. I love this story because whether or not you believe it actually happened or not, it offers us a great metaphor about how easily our fears can sink us.
The timing in this story from Matthew also seems appropriate to me, because it's the time fear steals in at my house and finds me most vulnerable. Some small concern, barely noticed during daylight hours, takes on monstrous proportions in that still, quiet time just before dawn. A worry about a possible medical issue, a concern about a task left undone, fear about money, a careless word or action that may have hurt a friend. Fear does not confine itself to the middle of the night, of course. In fact, it tends to control much of what we humans do, much of the time. For instance, fear about financial security prompts career choices or constricts our reactions to the needs of others. Fear about our relationships moves some of us to cling and others to flee. Fear that our labors may amount to nothing produces an obsession that robs vocation of its pleasure. And on a larger scale, unresolved fear of those who are different than we are ultimately leads to destruction and war.
Fear, as wisdom traditions teach us, constricts our souls, strangles us and keeps us from drinking deeply from the well of life. It bears down on us like a heavy weight, making us less able to creatively and fluidly respond to everyday challenges and live our lives more fully, to their greatest extent. Fear plays upon our natural feelings of vulnerability and turns them into unnatural expectations that something terrible could happen to us. Fear tends to hold us back, filters our perceptions inaccurately, and defeats our personal faith by paralyzing us from being able to do anything constructive. It holds us prisoner. And fear is addictive; once we get going down that path, we notice even more reasons to be afraid.
Dealing with fear and anxiety lies at the core of a healthy human and spiritual journey, because fear is the hidden slave-driver that often controls us and robs us of living in freedom as our authentic selves. A couple of years ago the New York Times had an editorial about this glitch in human nature, titled, "Scaring Us Senseless" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb said that the great fallacy of Western thought from Aristotle through the Enlightenment is that we are always rational beings. But neurobiologists accurately show that our risk avoidance behavior is governed by our emotional system, not our intellect. Taleb writes, "This emotional system can be an extremely naive statistician, because it was built for a primitive environment with simple dangers. That might work for you the next time you run into a snake or a tiger. But because the emotional system is impressionable and prefers shallow, social and anecdotal information to abstract data, it hinders our ability to cope with the more sophisticated risks that afflict modern life." Meaning that once upon a time, our natural fear instinct was very helpful in keeping us alive when dangers in the primitive, pre-modern world threatened our safety. But most of us living in the modern Western part of the world don't live with those kinds of dangers anymore, we don't have to rely on fight or flight quite as often in order to survive, and as such, fear has become a very powerful, and rather unhealthy, irrational motivator.
So what can we do about this? I'll offer a few impressions that have come to me in recent years, as I have strived, successfully for the most part, to face down my fears and no longer let them have so much control over me. And then I'll invite you to share some of yours. My evolution involved a white water river rafting trip my husband (Bob) and I took together just 15 years ago. We had reserved spots on a raft to spend a day on the Arkansas River in Colorado, just above Royal Gorge. There is great rafting there, with class 2-3 rapids most of the way on the trip we took, and 4's and 5's later down the river in the actual Gorge. I was excited about the trip for weeks, and could hardly sleep the night before from anticipation. When we arrived at the river that morning, we went through a brief training class, which included them sharing about potential dangers on the trip, which was not a good idea for me to hear. Then we put on our wetsuits and went down to the launch site where, as soon as I saw the rapids, right there at the start, I started to freak out. I became terrified and started to cry a little bit, and told Bob I no longer wanted to go, it looked too scary. But Bob reminded me we had already paid for the trip and wouldn't get our money back if I bailed, and since I'm a cheapskate at heart, that finally convinced me to move forward and get in the raft. That and the embarrassment of having the river guides see me cry. I am pleased to report that as soon as I put my happy butt on the front edge of that raft and we moved out onto the river, I had the time of my life. In fact Bob says I had a smile plastered on my face the entire trip, and I was disappointed when it ended.
Several things happened to me as a result of that trip. One thing was that I realized that if I allowed my fears to overwhelm me in that instance, and win the day, I never would have gone on that amazing river trip. And because of my ability to face my fears that day, several years later I enjoyed an eight-day rafting trip in the wilderness of southern Utah with Bob and my sister. We had one large raft which carried all of the supplies we would need - a tent, sleeping bags, all of our food and water on that boat - and there would be scorpions and other wild critters along the way (and no cell service if we had any kind of accident), but I did not let fear of what might happen keep me from going. Because if I did that, I would have missed out on the trip of a lifetime. And my facing my fears about rafting has translated as a great metaphor for the rest of my life. Anytime I am afraid now, and I feel the fear crushing and paralyzing me from moving forward or living my life, I visualize myself getting onto that raft all those years ago, and I am once again empowered to push those fears aside and get on the boat, as it were.
What fears bother you the most? What spiritual resources have you found to be most helpful when you are overcome by this emotion? What have you done to successfully overcome those fears and move out of their shadow? Write about them in a static item, and share them with me in the comments section below.
Have a great week, Sophy |
Below you'll find spiritual items from around the site, some about the topic of fear. Please let the folks know if you read their piece by leaving a thoughtful comment or review.
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Here are some comments from my last Spiritual Newsletter on Play, "Spiritual Newsletter (July 27, 2011)" :
From Budroe 
Many people have, for many years have wondered why I would preach from the pulpit about God's desire to have His Children "Be Playful". Thanks to your great NL, now many will know exactly why. Superb!
Exactly - play is such an important part of our nature for a reason. We are meant to play! Thanks for writing in.
From monty31802
You did a fine job writing this newsletter and I enjoyed it very much.
Thanks very much!
From JoyLin 
Hi Sophie, I so enjoyed reading about summer and the freedom it brings to a child, and some adults. Memories are like an ointment, to our minds. I just lost my mother last Tuesday, she had been on hospice for about 5 weeks, and I have just returned home, from her out of state services.I have only recently signed on to this forum, and am at a loss as to how to navigate. As with all other aspects of life, I just need to play a little to find my way.
JaeRee
So sorry to hear about your mother, and yes, "playing around" with the site is a good way to get to know it better, just as with other aspects of life, as you say. Thanks for reminding us of that. And please feel free to email me with questions about the site. 
Please keep your comments and suggestions coming, they are greatly appreciated!
Sophy |
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Spiritual: August 24, 2011 Issue [#4575]
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