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12 Responses to “Beyond fear itself: a healthy relationship with fear”

  1. Marty Says:
    June 5, 2012 at 12:40 pm | Reply

    (J.R. notes: this one appears to have been typed poorly, but if all 4 of the lines are read, the message is quite clear and concise.)

    Fear can to hurt you, it is only awarding signal. It is a warnig signalad tefrear does no arm.

    I am afraid because abearas appeared on my walk in The woods.

    he growls and raises up to attack. I am deathly afraid. The bear then turns and leaves just as abruptly.

    Am I hurt or harmed. Has fear protected me or harmed me?

  2. maddiefiles Says:
    July 8, 2012 at 11:36 pm | Reply

    @JR Fibonacci: thanks for liking my post on The Stigma of Homelessness and including it here! Looking forward to reading more from you! Peace to you, The Original Maddie

    • Marty Says:
      July 9, 2012 at 1:05 am | Reply

      It is my auto correct on my iPad. Sorry

      Fear is a warning sign, a release of our fight or flight drugs along with the adrenal response mechanism. Tunnel vision, loss of fine motor skills, loss of some hearing, elevated BP, respiration and heart rebate with blodd pumping to our extremities.

      If you let go of the thoughts and observe our bodies mechanism along with it secretions of cortisol and adrenaline, it is harmless.

      Fear will not hurt you if you observe it. it is our friend. Why are we always afraid of our own inner world.

      Marty

      I run a support bog for complex childhood PTSD.

      http://ptsdawayout.com/

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 5:13 am

        Fright is certainly an ally. However, as we observe paranoia or anxiety or hysteria and panic, we find some patterns of behavior that can seem less functional. Trauma can lead to phobias and so on.

        As for “why are we always afraid of our own inner world,” perhaps we would be afraid even of that as a coping mechanism, right? Further, fear of the inner world may be temporary or optional.

        As a “developmental stage,” it is quite common that people learn to fear fear (to repress it/hide it). Open displays of fear can lead to bullies being attracted, kind of like open bleeding attracts sharks.

        In the blog, I list 6 modes of relating to fear. Fearing fear is first for a reason. Fearing fear is a typical stage in coming to appreciate fear and it’s function(s).

      • Marty Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 2:04 pm

        Fear is just an emotion we all have. Fear, anger or joy can not describe us. Fear is ramped up like pin with stress, anxiety, panic nd thought. I do not fear my fear.

        I have bought my fear and fight or flight mechanism out to play.

        I have condensed a healing model for PTSD wih a breathing tack novices can use instantly.

        There is more to the mind than neuroscience or therapy. Spiritually you cn go beneath emotions and thoughts and treat them as appendages.

        Rick Hanson says that living with parasympathetic nervous system activated with all our emotions available. people, events and things eist on their own.

        Try letting go of judgments and engaging thoughs nd fear will fade.

        Funny the mind is at its best wih the cognitive (ego) dormant.

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 3:58 pm

        Consider a linguistic model based in “grace.” Grace (or Life or God or the Tao) can produce activities that can be labeled “fearing” and that fearing can include a variety of thinking (neuro-chemical reflex patterns) all based on the fearing (a hormonal reflex response). The thinking can then be called “an ego.” The thinking can include thoughts like “I did this” and “I should have done that.” Those are all operations of fear. “I should try to let go of my ______” is again just a perpetuating of the frightened thinking. Noticing does not require fearing or thinking. However, noticing does not exclude anything. Noticing can notice “their fear” and “their ego” and noticing can also notice the claiming in neurochemical linguistic reflex of “me” and “my fear” and “my thinking” and “my struggling to get free” and “my typing” and “my triumph over the ego” and other such “foolishness.”

      • Marty Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 4:51 pm

        Interesting sounds somewhat NLP related. yes what you say is true to a point but science can not explain many things experienced by the mind. With functional MRI’s we can see what is connected to each other and how we create the ego but we are lost on how the kind and happiness works.

        Science and scientists have a way of separating the whole mind/body unity. Too much complexity and moving parts for any client to handle. in a session, how much do you think a client retains?

        Try seeing that the mind is way beyond our understanding. We create our ego out of past memories woven together as a story, Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson. So our judgments are connected to a identity ego as it is the one who experiences resentment, never feeling equal to others.

        If we can be present focused on now empty of thought, the ego is more dormant and life experience opens up.

        Every great performer, athlete etc lets thought go to be able to go beyond the cognitive. And produce masterpieces. Great artist like Beethoven.

        Emotions and thoughts are impermanent and if we let them exist on their own we can travel through life without the baggage of judgment.

        Anothe rRick Hanson nugget is “What fires together fires together”

        Here is a woman who has sat for seven years accumulative in retreat meditating.

        Shaila Catherine:
        Most people perceive things through the distortion of desire, aversion, or delusion; grasping for objects with thoughts, “I like this, I don’t like this,” or grasping for self with assumptions of “I am this, I am not this.”
        *
        It is our predisposition and assumptions that distort perception. For example, we might be basically aware that we are experiencing sadness, yet there is a difference between being able to say “I am sad” and being mindful of sadness.
        *
        When somebody is just generally aware that they’re sad, they may be caught in the story of it. They may be judging their experience or be caught in a reaction to the experience.

        Emotions or thought have nothing to do with who I am. remember Who am “I” has no subject.

        I am present absent of thought focused without doubt or worry in this moment.

        let us talk about pain next time. It is only a warning sign until it reaches a certain high threshold. Oh yes I have chronic pain from a triple rollover a decade ago.

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 4:03 pm

        Also, when one branch of consciousness directs another branch of consciousness to be attentive to breathing, that can be very functional. In the midst of an offering of instructions to be attentive to breathing, some branches will immediately open to “the root system” and some may not, saying “no, I am a separate individual isolated from any root system, any past, any network of biology or humanity or ecology. Biology is only over there, not in me. My reality is completely and intrinsically unrelated to that other reality over there. I do not want to breathe in the filth of that other universe. What are you trying to do, asshole, kill me with pollution? Breathing is the most dangerous thing anyone could do!?!!?”

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        July 9, 2012 at 7:46 pm

        “Letting thoughts go” is also just a thought. Let it go. 😉

        Let thoughts be. Let everything be. Let yourself be. No matter what you do, you cannot change that you are right now already. If life simply notices what life is already, that arises through grace, not effort.

        Further, when life notices what is already happening, there is nothing to do about it and no one to do anything about it.

        The unity of life is not divisible. Language can label different aspects of life as if they are isolated, but what does isolated mean? Isolation to a chemist is just when one substance is distinct from another. Isolation is a function of attention. Can attention be isolated?

        Can you let go of attention? Can you get rid of attention? Are you attention?

        The Devil came to Jesus and said “Hey Jesus, my beloved favorite son, I am offering you the rulership over the all of the earth and all of the heavens. All you have to do in exchange for me giving you all of that is that you give away your attention, that you put your attention in this little donation basket, and then in exchange for you giving up your attention, I will give you access to the kingdom of heaven and 144 slutty little virgins that have been dreaming about you for months. Blink if you accept my offer.”

        Well, as you may have heard, Jesus in fact did blink. However, after he blinked, he opened his eyes and noticed that the dream was over. The Devil was recognized as just a dream of an ego. There never really was an ego except as a perception, as a label, as a thought, as a fantasy, as a dream.

        Attention remains. The ego comes and goes.

        Attention cannot make the ego stay or make the ego leave. It is only the ego that tries to make things in to what they are not. Attention (grace, the living God) forms egoic activity if and when it does. Attention has no issue with the presence or absence of ego. The ego is a just a form of attention (a pattern of attention).

        There is no distorting of perception. There are just distinct perceptions.

        For instance, when looking at a straw placed in to a glass of water, the straw appears to bend. That is not a distorted perception. That is a perception of the refraction of the light, producing the appearance of a bending straw.

        Can someone label a particular perception “a distorted perception?” Yes. That is one real way of labeling. That label may be useful and functional. That labeling may also be less accurate than saying “it is a real, undistorted perception of the refraction of light.”

        All perceptions are real perceptions and only perception- nothing more. None of them are attention, but without attention, there is no perceiving. We could even say that there is no distorting of attention. There are just different formations of attention, and we can label them as the various perceptions, including the perception of an I.

        Some of that is explored in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSJW7-6DJx0

        Also, if you go to the homepage of this blog, you will see a few “optical illusion” images. Those posts repeat some of the content presented here.

        Linguistically, “who am I” is a sentence in which the subject is the pronoun “who,” similar to “who wants some ice cream?” Can language function without a subject? Yes, in the sense of commands with an implicit subject such as “click the link below to go to the next page.”

        However, the arising of a subject in language is not an issue when life recognizes itself as present. When life operates as an ego, the ego can have issues, such as pain. Pain is not an issue for life. Pain is only an issue for an ego.

        The neurological “ego” process is perhaps a residual fear or a residual pain. It can fade naturally. Pushing it away makes no difference at all. Clinging to it makes no difference at all. Ignoring it makes no difference at all.

        However, talking about it… is just what the ego naturally seems to do: talk about itself. So what?

        It is only the ego that claims to push itself away, to cling to itself, to ignore itself, and so on. So what?

  3. Marty Says:
    July 9, 2012 at 4:54 pm | Reply

    What fires together wires together sorry.

  4. Marty Says:
    July 9, 2012 at 8:09 pm | Reply

    Not exactly, you are speak of non-thought which is impossible, as you say.

    No thought is much much different. You see going beneath the conscious you reach the other hemisphere of the brain. There exists no dialogue, no words, no right or wrong no good or bad.

    It is without language because words are powerless and impermanent to even care about.

    Be present without worry about words or linguistics if you want to be happy or expand the mind.

    No words, no judgments just life as it is now.

    • jrfibonacci Says:
      July 9, 2012 at 9:49 pm | Reply

      First, you must recognize that there is no such thing as language. Next, you must recognize that in language, there is no such thing as irony (or joking).

      Now, stop trying to figure out the puzzle of existence. There is no puzzle of existence, though there can be “puzzling about existence.”

      Imagine a tree with two main limbs. On one limb, there are no words. On the other limb, there are words. That limb contains all of the constructions of language, such as “here is what you should do if you want to be happy” and “here is what you should do if you want to expand the mind beyond the ego.”

      On that limb, there can be attention to the ego. Life can be not how it is, how it should be, how it should not be, or any other “way” that can be constructed in language.

      On the other limb, there are no words. The limb with words can talk about the limb without words. It can talk about how wonderful it would be if the two limbs were not isolated from each other. It can talk about how to reconnect the two limbs through a trunk, and also talk about an eternal trunk that connects the two limbs, but has been severed by a mysterious evil limb that distorts the direct perception of the inherent unity of the whole tree.

      All of that is hysterical foolishness. However, that is what that limb does.

      Who can see the neurological function of language (that “hemisphere” of neurochemical functioning)? Who can simultaneously see the network and branches of neurology that are not linguistic, such as breathing, but in fact are the trunk out of which the neurological branches of language arise?

      Noticing is not a who. Noticing just happens. There is a noticing that is deeper than the “I” network of neurological filtering or neurological interpretation through words.

      There is noticing that arises in words and there is noticing words. The noticing of words is not a word noticing another word. There is no who or “I” noticing words. There is just the noticing of words.

      From the neurology of unidentified noticing, there can be a noticing of the identifying in language: “here I am and over there is a chair.” Identifying is a function of language. Language is a function of life. Life can notice identifying. The identifying can never notice anything.

      Noticing is eternal. The identifying can call it temporary, but calling something a temporary noticing is just a temporary labeling. It is the labeling that is temporary. It is the labeling that is secondary.

      The breathing and the noticing and the “unconscious” are primary. One function of the “unconscious” is consciousness or attention or noticing. Everything is a function of the Unity of Life.
      Only the Unity of life can name multiple things, like two limbs that each have twelve branches. Each of those branches may have sixty minutes. We can call that tree a day with twenty-four hours or a day with 1440 minutes. Which one is the real length of a day, because obviously there cannot be a day divided in to 24 parts and a day divided in to 1440 parts?

      How can we connect one hour to the next? How can we connect one minute to the next? How can we connect one branch of life to the rest?

      These are linguistic formations of hysterical foolishness. When the hysteria or panic called “ego” subsides, then there is no one here to mind if there is a good or evil or not.

      Right or wrong are real labels, but there is no one here to care. Lists can be made of right behaviors and wrong behaviors and those are real lists and real categories. They are just language, though.

      Language is a wonderful social phenomenon. Language can talk about “our country is better than their country.” That is the kind of thing that language can do.

      Stop wanting to be happy. Be happy. Be whatever you are already. Stop wanting to be something else.

      That is more hysterical foolishness, but “I” am just teasing (again?) The ego will keep wanting to be something else. That is just what it can do.

      If there is a noticing of the ego wanting to “make a difference for someone else” or to “become how it should be instead of being how it already is,” the noticing does not mind. The noticing just notices.

      The ego cannot obscure the noticing. The ego is a function of the noticing.

      The branching cannot block the tree. The branching is a function of the tree.

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