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Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself?
Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself?
Without bodies, fear would not exist. Recall recent news stories that fill us with horror. Think of atrocities from the past - committed by governments and by demented lone wolves - that shocked you when you first learned about them, and which disturb you to this day.
Think of the horror movies that most frighten, disgust, or upset you. Movies like 'Martyrs' or 'The Human Centipede', or perhaps the ‘Sloth’ segment of 'Se7en'. Always, it is revulsion at the amount of pain the human body can endure that causes fear. Particularly because our own bodies are just as susceptible as the hapless victims on the screen.
Thus, no bodies = no fear. And the parallel is that bodies = fear, an equation that every evil person or government throughout history has exploited to maintain power.
We identify with our bodies. We go so far as to think that we ARE our bodies, and what happens to them happens to us. The same way you can’t have water without wet, we think you can't have self without body. But, is this true, and if it ISN'T true, how might it be liberating, and how might that impact fear mechanisms within us, to become aware of that?
A Course In Miracles teaches, 'I am not a body; I am free
for I am still as God created me’. Sadhguru suggests meditating on the phrase, 'I am not the body; I am not even the mind’. Do these and other esoteric teachings enjoin us to despise or renounce the body? Hardly; they teach that there is a magnificent Self BEYOND the body, from and through which the body is generated.
This is why I frequently write that ‘you are Aware Existence, and all else is merely expression’. You are not your body, but currently your body is your primary instrument, your Satchmo's horn if you will. Through the body you express and experience, and that is why you created it. That is the purpose it was created to fulfill, by you!
Why did you create a temporary body that expires in a handful of decades? I don't know, but I assume it is not because that is the best you could do. Even with the brevity of its lifespan, the body is an incredible machine, with mind blowingly intricate design and systemization. There is no reason to think a more permanent version could not have been also designed by one capable of designing it. Given that Michelangelo was capable of painting the Sistine Chapel and sculpting David, it would be foolish to think that such was the full extent of his abilities (indeed, he was also a skilled architect).
Why did you create a body so susceptible to pain? Again, I don't know. I can only assume the answer is NOT that you are an idiot.
I have no clear understanding of why it is in the interests of The Self to create a body susceptible to unendurable agony, and the concomitant terror which results from that susceptibility. Perhaps at some point in the evolution of my consciousness I will.
My concern is less with the body than The Self. The Self is all. It is the alpha and the omega. It is NOT the body, and You are It.
So, for those who have reached the point of recognizing that we are Source, or Self (as I have and some of you reading this have and all eventually will), there yet remains a bit of a spanner in the works. For all that illuminating awareness, we nevertheless express through a body, and that body can STILL be ravaged in all sorts of agonizing ways. And…, we don't want anything like that to happen to us.
We don't want to be tortured by the mechanisms of a police state, we don't want to be tortured by a sadistic psychopath, and we don't want to experience the torture of cancer or other such excruciating illnesses.
Yet, we know.... our bodies CAN experience any of those things, and that is disquieting to say the least. The potential for our body to suffer equally as much as all the humans in the world who currently ARE suffering in the ways mentioned above continues, despite our knowing that ultimately we are NOT the body, but merely express through it.
Thus, we continue to have fear. We may not be experiencing fear NOW, but honesty leads us to admit that we WOULD be if the brownshirts were beating down our door right now.... or a knife was waved in front of our eyes by a sadist.
In such situations, simply repeating 'I am not the body; the body is merely an expression of The Self' will remove neither pain nor fear from the situation.
This may seem no more than a philosophical exercise, but it isn't if we stop to think a bit more about the way of the world, and what our potential role in it might be.
We know that governments use fear of what could befall our bodies to keep us docile. We know that we are continually being lied to, cheated, exploited, and yes.., we even know that right now a genocide is being carried out by a proxy state of the world's most powerful 'developed/civilized/democratic' nation. As members of the collective human family, we are called to condemn this ongoing atrocity and festival of sadism.
And fear DOES get in the way, just as governments know it does, just as they count on it doing. Why, look at horror movies. Note how they have become increasingly gruesome, increasingly upping the ante in terms of visiting depravities upon the human body. Could it possibly be that this is partly done to increase fear in the populace of what could befall our own bodies, in order to render us docile? 'Behave yourself, and here's the latest Eli Roth gorefest to give you the willies about what COULD happen to your body if you don’t....' (If that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory, remember that Hollywood has always colluded with the powers that be to promote government sanctioned messages, in ways subtle or patently obvious ~ ’Top Gun', anyone? Conspiracy theory or not, the LAST thing we should be doing is letting Hollywood influence our intimate relationship with our sacred vehicle of expression; our bodies).
Thus, fear becomes an obstacle to creating a better world, where genocides do not occur. And fear derives from our relationship to our bodies. What, then, to do?
Throughout history, and continuing today, there have been many incredibly courageous individuals who have put principles over the desire to protect the body from pain. This is perhaps best exemplified by Nathan Hale's etched-in-history statement 'I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country'. As an American revolutionary, Hale was one of a group of men and women who knew that not only might they lose their lives, but that this may transpire by slow torture were they to fall into British hands.
Not to get overly triumphalist about the American revolutionaries (nor to single out the British for the all-too-common government practice of sadism); the same spirit Hale enunciated goes back deep into our ancient past (certainly the Jesus story, historically accurate or not, exemplifies this) and lives within the brave journalists, health care workers and everyday people in Palestine who know what the depraved Israeli government is capable of but refuse to back down. It lives within the student protesters in the U.S. and elsewhere who are standing up to governments all too eager to crack down, and looking for any excuse to do so. I consider all of these people heroes, as they have overcome the 'body = fear' equation. They are, to me, personal heroes, because they serve as reminders that I too can overcome it.
Then, we come to the inevitable chicken/egg dilemma. If the body is the vehicle through which pain and fear are registered and expressed, how and why did pain and fear first come about? If The Self in its purest state HAS no body, and yet created one capable of experiencing agony, was the agony always there, simply in an un-physicalized aspect? If so, is the body a physicalized outlet of a more subtle presence of fear and pain that goes to the very heart of The Self? If so, then it would seem that Source/The Self is inherently traumatized, inherently frightened, at least in some portion of its aspect, and this is hardly a comforting thought. If what we are (and as I maintain we are) at our core is Source, albeit in its expressive aspect, and Source is so deeply pained in subtle realms that it expresses through bodies that can be mercilessly tortured precisely because that torture resides within it intrinsically, then where is our respite? Where is there hope for redemption of suffering? How and where can we EVER feel safe? Perhaps the answer comes simply down to 'as below, so above'. Perhaps the Cosmic Source of all is, in at least some respect, troubled by....something, and whatever that something is results in the pain and fear that we experience in the physical realm. Should that happen to be so, is it necessarily cause for despair? After all, there is so much more than pain and fear on this world. There is beauty, there is compassion, there is friendship, there is joy, there is love in its many forms, there is creativity, there is curiosity, there is poetry, there is music, there is humor, there is growth. Even - though it sometimes doesn't seem so - there is justice, there is redemption.
Perhaps we can NEVER, in any form or even NO form, be completely without fear and pain of some kind, and although there may be no 'escape' from it, the way to not experience it may simply be to focus on the many positive things that pain and fear are NOT.
If Source were insane, I doubt it would be capable of creating so much wonder and beauty. And, perhaps, if Source weren't, at least in some respect, troubled, it would not have created pain and fear.
Perhaps.., but perhaps not. Perhaps there is (and ‘A Course In Miracles’ maintains there is) no pain or suffering whatsoever, or even the possibility of such, in Source at its most intrinsic, when it is not expressing through any type of form.
Perhaps, ultimately, the best we can do is something that is actually, pretty wonderful, and that is to celebrate our lives inside our 'divine robots', our physical form, though it be susceptible to the most gruesome suffering. Celebrate it as a vehicle through which the Cosmic Source can express some truly wonderful aspects of Itself, as best we can, for all the duration that we are blessed with bodies.
There will be plenty of time to gain increased insight into the nature of pain, suffering and fear as we move along our path, bodied or un-bodied, physical or immaterial, for the rest of our neverending lives.
Think of the horror movies that most frighten, disgust, or upset you. Movies like 'Martyrs' or 'The Human Centipede', or perhaps the ‘Sloth’ segment of 'Se7en'. Always, it is revulsion at the amount of pain the human body can endure that causes fear. Particularly because our own bodies are just as susceptible as the hapless victims on the screen.
Thus, no bodies = no fear. And the parallel is that bodies = fear, an equation that every evil person or government throughout history has exploited to maintain power.
We identify with our bodies. We go so far as to think that we ARE our bodies, and what happens to them happens to us. The same way you can’t have water without wet, we think you can't have self without body. But, is this true, and if it ISN'T true, how might it be liberating, and how might that impact fear mechanisms within us, to become aware of that?
A Course In Miracles teaches, 'I am not a body; I am free
for I am still as God created me’. Sadhguru suggests meditating on the phrase, 'I am not the body; I am not even the mind’. Do these and other esoteric teachings enjoin us to despise or renounce the body? Hardly; they teach that there is a magnificent Self BEYOND the body, from and through which the body is generated.
This is why I frequently write that ‘you are Aware Existence, and all else is merely expression’. You are not your body, but currently your body is your primary instrument, your Satchmo's horn if you will. Through the body you express and experience, and that is why you created it. That is the purpose it was created to fulfill, by you!
Why did you create a temporary body that expires in a handful of decades? I don't know, but I assume it is not because that is the best you could do. Even with the brevity of its lifespan, the body is an incredible machine, with mind blowingly intricate design and systemization. There is no reason to think a more permanent version could not have been also designed by one capable of designing it. Given that Michelangelo was capable of painting the Sistine Chapel and sculpting David, it would be foolish to think that such was the full extent of his abilities (indeed, he was also a skilled architect).
Why did you create a body so susceptible to pain? Again, I don't know. I can only assume the answer is NOT that you are an idiot.
I have no clear understanding of why it is in the interests of The Self to create a body susceptible to unendurable agony, and the concomitant terror which results from that susceptibility. Perhaps at some point in the evolution of my consciousness I will.
My concern is less with the body than The Self. The Self is all. It is the alpha and the omega. It is NOT the body, and You are It.
So, for those who have reached the point of recognizing that we are Source, or Self (as I have and some of you reading this have and all eventually will), there yet remains a bit of a spanner in the works. For all that illuminating awareness, we nevertheless express through a body, and that body can STILL be ravaged in all sorts of agonizing ways. And…, we don't want anything like that to happen to us.
We don't want to be tortured by the mechanisms of a police state, we don't want to be tortured by a sadistic psychopath, and we don't want to experience the torture of cancer or other such excruciating illnesses.
Yet, we know.... our bodies CAN experience any of those things, and that is disquieting to say the least. The potential for our body to suffer equally as much as all the humans in the world who currently ARE suffering in the ways mentioned above continues, despite our knowing that ultimately we are NOT the body, but merely express through it.
Thus, we continue to have fear. We may not be experiencing fear NOW, but honesty leads us to admit that we WOULD be if the brownshirts were beating down our door right now.... or a knife was waved in front of our eyes by a sadist.
In such situations, simply repeating 'I am not the body; the body is merely an expression of The Self' will remove neither pain nor fear from the situation.
This may seem no more than a philosophical exercise, but it isn't if we stop to think a bit more about the way of the world, and what our potential role in it might be.
We know that governments use fear of what could befall our bodies to keep us docile. We know that we are continually being lied to, cheated, exploited, and yes.., we even know that right now a genocide is being carried out by a proxy state of the world's most powerful 'developed/civilized/democratic' nation. As members of the collective human family, we are called to condemn this ongoing atrocity and festival of sadism.
And fear DOES get in the way, just as governments know it does, just as they count on it doing. Why, look at horror movies. Note how they have become increasingly gruesome, increasingly upping the ante in terms of visiting depravities upon the human body. Could it possibly be that this is partly done to increase fear in the populace of what could befall our own bodies, in order to render us docile? 'Behave yourself, and here's the latest Eli Roth gorefest to give you the willies about what COULD happen to your body if you don’t....' (If that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory, remember that Hollywood has always colluded with the powers that be to promote government sanctioned messages, in ways subtle or patently obvious ~ ’Top Gun', anyone? Conspiracy theory or not, the LAST thing we should be doing is letting Hollywood influence our intimate relationship with our sacred vehicle of expression; our bodies).
Thus, fear becomes an obstacle to creating a better world, where genocides do not occur. And fear derives from our relationship to our bodies. What, then, to do?
Throughout history, and continuing today, there have been many incredibly courageous individuals who have put principles over the desire to protect the body from pain. This is perhaps best exemplified by Nathan Hale's etched-in-history statement 'I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country'. As an American revolutionary, Hale was one of a group of men and women who knew that not only might they lose their lives, but that this may transpire by slow torture were they to fall into British hands.
Not to get overly triumphalist about the American revolutionaries (nor to single out the British for the all-too-common government practice of sadism); the same spirit Hale enunciated goes back deep into our ancient past (certainly the Jesus story, historically accurate or not, exemplifies this) and lives within the brave journalists, health care workers and everyday people in Palestine who know what the depraved Israeli government is capable of but refuse to back down. It lives within the student protesters in the U.S. and elsewhere who are standing up to governments all too eager to crack down, and looking for any excuse to do so. I consider all of these people heroes, as they have overcome the 'body = fear' equation. They are, to me, personal heroes, because they serve as reminders that I too can overcome it.
Then, we come to the inevitable chicken/egg dilemma. If the body is the vehicle through which pain and fear are registered and expressed, how and why did pain and fear first come about? If The Self in its purest state HAS no body, and yet created one capable of experiencing agony, was the agony always there, simply in an un-physicalized aspect? If so, is the body a physicalized outlet of a more subtle presence of fear and pain that goes to the very heart of The Self? If so, then it would seem that Source/The Self is inherently traumatized, inherently frightened, at least in some portion of its aspect, and this is hardly a comforting thought. If what we are (and as I maintain we are) at our core is Source, albeit in its expressive aspect, and Source is so deeply pained in subtle realms that it expresses through bodies that can be mercilessly tortured precisely because that torture resides within it intrinsically, then where is our respite? Where is there hope for redemption of suffering? How and where can we EVER feel safe? Perhaps the answer comes simply down to 'as below, so above'. Perhaps the Cosmic Source of all is, in at least some respect, troubled by....something, and whatever that something is results in the pain and fear that we experience in the physical realm. Should that happen to be so, is it necessarily cause for despair? After all, there is so much more than pain and fear on this world. There is beauty, there is compassion, there is friendship, there is joy, there is love in its many forms, there is creativity, there is curiosity, there is poetry, there is music, there is humor, there is growth. Even - though it sometimes doesn't seem so - there is justice, there is redemption.
Perhaps we can NEVER, in any form or even NO form, be completely without fear and pain of some kind, and although there may be no 'escape' from it, the way to not experience it may simply be to focus on the many positive things that pain and fear are NOT.
If Source were insane, I doubt it would be capable of creating so much wonder and beauty. And, perhaps, if Source weren't, at least in some respect, troubled, it would not have created pain and fear.
Perhaps.., but perhaps not. Perhaps there is (and ‘A Course In Miracles’ maintains there is) no pain or suffering whatsoever, or even the possibility of such, in Source at its most intrinsic, when it is not expressing through any type of form.
Perhaps, ultimately, the best we can do is something that is actually, pretty wonderful, and that is to celebrate our lives inside our 'divine robots', our physical form, though it be susceptible to the most gruesome suffering. Celebrate it as a vehicle through which the Cosmic Source can express some truly wonderful aspects of Itself, as best we can, for all the duration that we are blessed with bodies.
There will be plenty of time to gain increased insight into the nature of pain, suffering and fear as we move along our path, bodied or un-bodied, physical or immaterial, for the rest of our neverending lives.
