1 :: “There is absolutely nothing fundamentally to be afraid of” – said Alan Watts. All fear of what is not present is therefore imagined. We do not need to carry round fear in our system. Our body will generate the physical sensations of fear if there is a real danger. But we are paranoid people, and we seek an exaggerated degree of control, and so we imagine an array of fears that are not present, based on misinterpretations of past threats, and hold this fear in our system so that we can remain ‘safe’. In fact we are wearing ourselves down with stress and anxiety because we cannot let go of the sense that we must preemptively guard against threats that do not exist. ::
2 :: Until we begin to heal some of the unconscious shame inside of us, it will remain very hard to tell the extent to which what we call our “personality” – the “real me”- is a coping mechanism to compensate for and keep at bay feelings of unworthiness.
3 :: To love another being involves a pure non-judgemental witnessing which, seeing no distinction between observer and observed, seeks to be of service to the well-being of the observed as if the two were really one (because they really are). ::
4 :: All judgement is self-judgement. We judge ourselves through others. When I judge another, I am experiencing unconscious shame at the sight of something I have not accepted in myself. ::
5 :: Nothing is inherently shameful. Evil is wrong in that it is unwise, not that it is shameful. Shameful implies the lowering of the individual’s value, the reduction in their humanity, the corruption of their worthiness and deservedness of love. This is always a lie. ::
6 :: I think I am afraid of [insert fearful scenario here]. Really I am afraid of how I feel when [insert fearful scenario here].
7 :: Jung was right when he said “Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation”. Repressed anger bleeds out in all sorts of strange ways. This is the real meaning of micro-aggression: the perpetually untidy room, the carelessness with which we may drop our belongings onto the floor or table, the self-destructive tendency to abuse the body with drugs, alcohol, poor quality food and little sleep. And the list goes on: the perpetually short temper; the argumentativeness; the subtle moments of rudeness, shortness, abruptness; sarcasm or snide comments; withholding affection, kindness, gentleness or eye contact; forgetting commitments.
8 :: Grief is a tax on the belief in permanence. ::
9 :: We are afraid of fear because we do not understand it. What we really fear is the overwhelm of emotional entanglement – the conflation of physical sensations with a mental story, thought or belief. When we confuse these two, fear becomes FEAR and then we tend to resist it. This resistance creates a flavour of instability and discomfort we call anxiety. ::
10 :: Emotional entanglement: when neither the physical sensations of an emotion nor the mental story associated with those sensations are witnessed clearly, but instead are conflated, as if trying to watch the television and listen to the radio simultaneously, rendering two otherwise very manageable phenomena as one indecipherable and overwhelming mess. If complete attention can be brought to the physical sensations alone, this can be enough to prevent mental spiralling. If an appropriate degree of surrender can be accessed and maintained, the emotional energy will release itself and be gone forever. This is how we shed triggers. ::
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