Your life may travel many different paths, but it has only one true purpose. At the deepest level, your purpose is to find freedom, a way of being in which you feel simultaneously peaceful, powerful, happy, and productive. Yet if you are like most huma
Fear-Less Now
A Manual for Healing and Self-Empowerment in a World of CrisisBy Ingrid BacciBalboa Press
Copyright © 2012 Ingrid Bacci, Ph. D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4525-5148-7Contents
Acknowledgments..........................................................viiiIntroduction.............................................................1Chapter 1: The Knot of Fear..............................................16Chapter 2: Life on Crutches..............................................40Chapter 3: Taming Your Mind..............................................72Chapter 4: Finding Your Power through Non-Attachment.....................103Chapter 5: Healing Your Body's Energy Field..............................123Chapter 6: Healing Your Emotional Body...................................160Conclusion...............................................................186About the Author.........................................................188
Chapter One
The Knot of Fear
You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. -A Course in Miracles
In ancient Asia Minor, in the part of Macedonia that was at that time called Phrygia, an oracle consulted by local priests predicted that warring between rival factions would come to an end when a man with a wagon entered the town. That man turned out to be a poor peasant named Gordius, who was soon seen driving his oxcart into the marketplace. The priests declared Gordius king and rival factions accepted his rule. Years later, Gordius' son Midas succeeded his father as king. He dedicated his father's ox-cart to the gods, tying it with a large knot to a post in the town center. The knot was an intricate and complex Turkish one that had no ends exposed. Over time, the ox-cart and its knot became a shrine, and an oracle foretold that whoever was able to untie the Gordian knot would become lord of all of Asia. Many attempted to loosen the knot, but none were able to do so until Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great, wintered in the town of Gordium in 333 B.C.E. When he could find no end to the knot, Alexander took his sword and sliced it in half with a single stroke. He solved the problem of the Gordian knot by taking an unorthodox approach. The prophecy associated with the knot was also fulfilled, and Alexander went on to become the ruler of all Asia.
Gordian knots are intractable challenges whose solution requires taking a radically original approach. What, then, is the Gordian knot of our lives? If we are capable of liberation and fulfillment, what is it that actually ties us down? It might seem that for each person the answer to this question is different. One person might think that the primary problem he needs to solve is his lack of a loving partner. Another might feel that if only her health would improve, all would be well. Yet another might feel that his real problem is lack of money. Yet achieving any of these won't necessarily make you free or happy. You can be married to someone you consider your ideal mate, have excellent health and financial abundance, and still be miserable, restless or anxious. The real problem lies deeper.
As Vivekananda reminds us, it is an internal attitude we bring to life that generates all the other problems from which we suffer. The critical issue facing each of us is not what we have or don't have. It is how we feel inside: sad or happy, anxious or contented, irritated or peaceful. The fundamental knot of our lives lies in our emotions. The solution to our problems lies in developing internal mastery of our emotional life. If we can feel peaceful, alive and joyful deep inside, we can swim through life's problems with a sense of grace. Then we can also use our inner strength to achieve blessings such as health, abundance and satisfying relationships. But if we make our emotional state dependent on what we have or don't have, achieve or don't achieve, we can't be happy. We will suffer from fear, desire, restlessness, anger, impatience, jealousy, depression, disappointment, any and all of the host of negative emotions that can toxify our lives.
The Gordian knot we must cut through is the discontent we experience as a result of harboring negative emotions. As different as all of these emotions seem to be, they all have a single root. Anxiety, restlessness, worry, impatience, frustration, greed, jealousy, resentment, anger, and other negative emotions are all rooted in fear. It is fear that creates greed, anger, jealousy, worry, disappointment, irritation, impatience, and anxiety. It is fear that keeps us from owning our happiness. So long as fear holds a place in our hearts, we cannot be free.
How can we free ourselves from fear? Is it possible to do this? Let's begin to answer this question by taking a closer look at the dynamics of fear.
The Self-Destructive Face of Fear
None of us want to feel fear. We'd love to be free of it. Ironically, however, we cherish it. How? When we are afraid we tend to think that the problem we have is not the fear we feel but whatever it is that we are afraid of. We tell ourselves that if the situation or event that we fear would go away, we would no longer be afraid. We think that the problem is not in us. Instead, it is in the situation, event or person that we perceive as causing our fear. Yet in taking this attitude we actually rationalize fear. We justify it. We give ourselves reasons for holding on to it by telling ourselves that the cause of fear is outside, not inside.
Many of us spend an enormous amount of time making room for fear. We are afraid that we will get up too late; afraid that we will miss the commuter train; afraid that we will do poorly in school or at work; afraid that the car will break down; afraid that the weather will be lousy; afraid that our children will disappoint us; afraid that someone won't like us; afraid that we will get sick from the food we eat; afraid that we won't get hired; afraid that we will get fired. In each case, we give ourselves reasons to justify the way we feel. We assume it is reasonable or appropriate to feel the way we do. By giving ourselves reasons for our fears we give fear life. Once we give it life, we live as its victims.
You can be afraid of your boss, a colleague, your parents, your big brother or sister. You can be afraid of disapproval from your friends or of abandonment by your loved ones. You can be afraid that someone won't like you and you can be afraid that someone will try to cling to you or make excessive demands. You can be afraid of failing your exams or of failing in your profession. You can be afraid of succeeding. You can be afraid of people of a different religion, race, social group or nationality. You can be afraid for your health or for your family's health. You can be afraid of terrorism and you can be afraid of war. You can be afraid of financial loss or deprivation. You can be afraid of losing a job, of not getting a job or of not rising fast enough in your job. You can also feel a nameless generalized anxiety every day, an anxiety many of us attribute to the stress, pressures and demands of everyday life. And of course, you can be afraid of dying.
When we feel fear, we may say to ourselves that we are right to feel it. After all, this is a dangerous world, and we would be fools, misguided, or living in make-believe if we weren't afraid. We may tell ourselves that we have good grounds to fear our boss or our parents, because they hold power over us, because they have bad tempers, or because they disapprove of us. If we fear for our financial security, this may seem reasonable enough if we have lost a great deal of money, have lost our job, are concerned about future employment or are retired and don't know if we have enough to live on. If we fear for our health, we may justify this on the grounds that we have had hard times with our health in the past; or that toxic effects of environmental poisons are everywhere, or that cancer is all pervasive. It may seem eminently reasonable to be afraid of terrorism or war because people die every day due to terrorist attacks and we have either been in wars, lost family or friends to war, or make a habit of watching news about war on the television and internet. As for dying, why not be afraid of that? After all, it's the end of life as we know it. All these fears may sound rational enough. Yet they are not. Fear may be natural, but it's not rational. Why?
The challenges we face during our lives are sometimes enormous. They can and sometimes do include financial distress, controlling bosses, negative colleagues and friends, judgmental associates, discrimination, health problems ranging from the annoying to the life threatening, abandonment, loss and deprivation, floods, earthquakes, war and death. Life is a hard playing field. It is not meant for sissies. Let's not confuse the issue of whether or not fear is justified with the issue of whether or not life is tough. Life is tough.
No one wins at life in the sense of getting a ride free of major shake-ups. Though some have it easier than others, everyone gets their share of bumps. In this sense, and in this sense alone, fear makes sense. Fear is an expectable and very human reaction to difficult, sometimes seemingly unbearably difficult, situations. The issue, however, is not whether life does or does not have challenges, and it is not whether we do or do not on occasion feel anxiety. The issue is what you want to do about that fact.
Do your fears contribute to or impoverish your life? Does fear cripple you or strengthen you? Is it possible that your fears multiply life's challenges and provide a greater share of pain and misery than you might otherwise have? If this is the case, doesn't it make sense to begin systematically slicing through the Gordian knot of fear? Doesn't it make sense to practice challenging fear and gradually releasing yourself from its grip? Anyone who wants to improve the quality and authenticity of life must do this. You cannot find your full self if you cannot challenge your fear.
Fear is always fear of something, and that something always seems negative. Yet fear of negative occurrences does not help us either to control them or to make them go away. Fear worsens many challenges, invites numerous additional problems into being, and poisons our quality of life.
The social and political exploitation of fear has always been a dominant force in the control of one person by another, one group by another, and one nation by another. If someone holds the ability to put you in fear, they can control you. Those in power know that exploiting fear is to their advantage. Fear was the engine that brought Nazi Germany to power. It continues to be a major tool employed by governments around the globe. Fear of reprisal and fear of loss hold most people in work situations that bring them stress, insufficient pay, and too little control over their own lives. Fear gives pharmaceutical companies power and takes away human faith in the body's capacity to heal itself by natural means. Fear drives the wars that spread across the globe. And fear is a major force in a consumption-based commercial system, where the addiction to consumption is driven by the need to fit in, to be better than, and to have more.
While it's easy to recognize the repressive and oppressive social uses of fear, its oppressive role in our own emotional dynamics is harder to discern, because when we feel fear, we tend to tell ourselves that our fear is reasonable. Only once we see the complete irrationality and destructive impact of fear in our own lives can we begin to let go of justifying it and focus our primary attention on doing everything we can to release ourselves from its satanic grip. The next explorations make this increasingly clear.
Fear Destroys the Present
Each moment that you feel fear contributes to worsening your life. The clearer you become about this fact, the more likely you are to begin healing from fear. When you feel fear you feel bad. What's more, that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach, or the feeling that causes you to sweat or that makes you racy is a feeling that exists in the present moment. The present is all you have! Every time you feel fear, you are feeling terrible right now, and right now is all there is.
Life is nothing but a sequence of present moments: one Now, followed by another Now, and then again followed by another Now. In your lived experience, there is neither past nor future. The past is gone and the future is not yet here. The only thing you can manage is Now. When you feel fear, you defile Now. You do that by focusing your attention on a future anticipated negative event or situation. Whenever you feel fear in the Now, you desecrate, demolish and destroy your present in the name of a non-existent future that currently exists only in your mind.
The real problem is not the possible future event that we worry about, although we may say to ourselves that that's what it is: that the problem is what will happen tomorrow at our job, or how our sweetheart is going to treat us this evening, or whether the stock market is going up or down in the morning. The real problem is the present moment that we destroy in the name of our concern about a future event.
When we fear something, we project from a certainty, which is our present experience, to an uncertainty, which is an unknown future. We take a non-existent negative future event, bring it back into our present as if it were real, and feel terrible. We find a reason to be anxious in this Now, and then in the next Now and then again in the next Now. All in the name of something that does not yet exist, and may never exist!
Uncertainty in the face of the unknown is the ultimate source of fear. But if what will be is an unknown, is there any reason to paint it in dark colors? Life itself is an unknown. Can we embrace it? If we cannot, we relate to all of life like some of us related to our first dive off a diving board: with fear and trembling. We can stand there quaking on the diving board of life, or we can trust and dive in. Those are the choices. They happen every single moment, every single nanosecond, of our lives.
Work with the exercise below to clarify for yourself how much you may justify feeling fear in the present on the basis of something that has not yet happened and may not happen. This will support you in the process of learning how to release fear.
Exercise: Do you justify fear?
1. Write down everything you can think of that you are afraid of, no matter how trivial. Include things you are afraid of doing; things you are afraid might happen; reactions you are afraid others might have to you; fears about your health, your looks, your relationships; fears about the environment, the society, politics, finances, death.
2. Now write down the reasons you give yourself for being afraid about each thing you have listed. List as many reasons as you can think of.
3. Ask yourself these questions as you look at the reasons you give yourself for feeling afraid. When you feel afraid, does your reason involve something that is happening right now, or that you anticipate but has not yet happened? Are you acting and feeling as though something that has not yet happened will happen? Can you become more aware that the real problem is not the future that you are afraid of but the present that feels unpleasant when you are afraid about the possibility of a future event that does not yet exist?
4. Notice what your body feels like when you are afraid. Does your stomach or neck grip? Do you sweat or get butterflies? What do you say to yourself when you feel afraid? What kind of images come to mind? Clarify for yourself the exact sensations and images you have when you are in fear, and recognize how unpleasant they are.
5. If your fear involves unpleasant impressions that you justify by reference to a future that hasn't happened, can you let go of it? Can you recognize that it doesn't serve you to feel fear? Be patient and systematic with this process, and it will gradually yield results.
Fear is a Habit
Fear is not only an ingenious device for feeling bad in the present moment. It is also a habit that breeds more of itself. The more frequently we feel fear in the present, the more likely we are to feel fear in the future. Let's say you have a friend who is very critical of you, and you are afraid of confronting that person. If you are afraid today, and don't resolve your fear and address the issue, you will also be afraid the next time that this person criticizes you. Each time we give in to a fear, it solidifies its hold over us and becomes stronger.
Many people wake up each morning with low-grade anxiety and restlessness. From the moment of opening their eyes, their minds occupy them with the pressure of things to do, commentaries on what has been or will be, and various other concerns. This internal pressure cooker doesn't stop. It doesn't leave them alone. The pressure cooker reflects the impact of habits of mind built up over years of facing each day as a series of demands on their time. The sense so many people have that life controls them and that they cannot take charge of their lives guarantees living in fear.
Each moment of our lives we cultivate either habits of fear or habits of freedom from fear. The present moment is our moment of power. It seeds our future. Karma tells us that in the future we reap what we sow in the present. What does this mean? Some people think that earning good karma means performing good actions and earning bad karma means engaging in bad actions. But what is good and what is bad? Good and bad actions are all relative to specific situations. In the end, good actions and good karma are whatever fosters internal peace and happiness, both of which also tend to make us more able and willing to nurture the peace and contentment of others. Bad actions and bad karma are whatever fosters the opposite. Working in each moment to build inner contentment and fear-lessness is the core process by which we build good karma. The more we cultivate positive states of mind now, the more likely we are to experience them in the future. Allowing yourself to dwell in unpleasant emotional states now creates bad karma for the future because it increases the likelihood of unpleasant emotional states in the future, not to mention lowered energy, a depressed immune system and disease. A fear-filled existence is the essence of bad karma. It is a painful existence bedeviled by suffering.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fear-Less Nowby Ingrid Bacci Copyright © 2012 by Ingrid Bacci, Ph. D.. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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