What is fear?
fear is the rejection of the unknown
Fear is our emotional response to time.
Fear is the bodyâs alarm system to protect against immediate danger and all the unknown âwhat-ifsâ of time (what if the interest rate goes to 97% as it has in Argentina? What if RussiaâŚ? What if my wife leaves me?). Fear is a motivator and initiates problem solving strategies and life-style changes. (If I meditate daily, will I have more calm and peace in my life? If I move to higher ground, will I be safe from the rising sea levels? If I live with present moment attention, without judgement, will fear subside and relationships improve?)
Are fear and desire coupledâinseparable principles of movement? One is a movement towards something, the other away from something. An amoeba moves toward food (appetite) and away from bright light (safety).
They are indeed, even more so than hot and cold, up and down.
For example, desiring/wanting mango ice cream is essentially the same thing as not wanting (being averse to) a different outcome, or fearing that the ice cream man has run out of mango.
We usually consider that the amoeba has not yet gained the ability to fear - which is a psychological reaction.
For example I (or someone smarter than me) could make a robot programmed to move towards the dark and wet environments and away from light sources, without the need to create some kind of fear mechanism nor in fact any type of self awareness.
Are fear and desire biologically programmed into us, like K mentioned? Are fear and desire impulses of an advanced neurology ensuring the survival of the species. Are they the same impulses of the amoeba, only more complex and thus termed differently?
Fear is the rejection of the unknown.
Fear is our emotional response to time.
Fear is the bodyâs alarm system to protect against immediate danger and unknown âwhat-ifsâ of time.
Fear is an expression of desire.
Fear is the conditioned reaction to a perceived threat of pain and/or harm.
What is the common ground underlying all of our takes?
Yes! And the code has been in development for billions of years. If you take the leap to thinking of fear and desire as repulsion and attraction, you might argue theyâve been driving the universe since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago!
So it sounds like we need to learn to live with them in the healthiest way. We also need to be aware of our programming and learn to adapt to environmental changes as they come. Fear and desire are here to stay.
The common ground is: fear thrives in prison ( in the known).
Fear canât exist in the unknown (in freedom).
Fear rejects the unknown.
I am back to my initial statement.
Could you explain more about this âprisonâ?
This prison is oneâs own confort zone.
Who wants to loose his/her confort zone?
It took years to create it and daily effort to maintain it.
Whoâs the creator of the confort zone ? Fear.
Does that mean comfort prevents âfreedomâ?
Fear is a psychological prison. Its walls are the known. The known is an illusion that can include ghosts, vampires and gods.
This is I think the huge evolutionary leap that repulsion/attraction has made thanks to the human brain.
Our ability to imagine into existence the objects of fear, and its subject : me. And to live from that illusory center, existing all over our map of reality, as much in the imagined future, as in the stories that will never appear in the world outside our head.
Seems that way. They can be minimized, worked around, coped with, seen for what they are. But I doubt they ever utterly disappear.
obvious innit guvânor?
Confort zone - I am not referring to the physical confort
What are we doing? Coping, minimising? or seeing? These seem like 2 very different angles of attack - and with huge differences in results methinks.
If we are on kinfonet (or have ever joined some esoteric sect) does this mean that we are aware of the mysterious magic of seeing?