FEEEEAR The great liar......

"This is just preventative, to take care of you, so nothing worse happens to you."


 

"I'm doing this to prevent further and more serious problems."

This is how thoughts go round in my mind.

It only slowly came to me, the voice that said those things was really the voice of fear.

Sure, there is reasonable commonsense taking care of things, locking the front door, keeping your money safely out of sight, taking care crossing the road.

But there comes a point, and only I know when the point comes when it gets ridiculous.... that point is hard to spot, because there are no signs, there are not major fault lines to tell me I've crossed that point.

The thing that does tell me though is my body, the mental climate within myself. If it gets obsessive about an issue, or if the feeling is simply 'bad' then chances are I've let my mind run away with fear. Fear of the 'what if this..... or that ..... happens ?'

What if she leaves me... ?

"What if he does this........ or that .........?"

"What if my health .... ?"

etc....

etc...

etc...

This is a  very neat trick that fear does to the mind.
Fear gets me running around, thinking I'm doing something useful to prevent bad stuff happening.
It makes me think I'm fully taking care of myself, that this is a positive thing.
Yet the real trick is: fear is a great liar, its a distractor.
The real damage is done now. Right now. This INSTANT, in the NOW.

There is only one thing I've been told to do about it: 

Awareness.

Not to change it, just to be aware, not dislike or fight it, just to be aware. That awareness will change it by itself.

Fight it - and I get what ?  A war inside. An argument: "oh but I'm just making sure, that this or that bad thing won't happen to me... come on that's reasonable, EVERYONE is doing it!"

Awareness.


What is the climate inside ? right NOW ? 

Sounds very Buddhist doesn't it ?

I'll let you know how I go ....

 

 30Jul09 Thursday Melbourne:
Just found another liar...that works similarly to how fear works...
It is called: pressure and hurry....
Pressure and hurry promise the payoff, the peace and quiet in the future...hurry NOW so you get the PEACE you long for LATER... yea.. right... i'll take the peace NOW thanks....

You human beings tend to be hurried and pressured and thereby deny yourself the exquisite pleasure of savouring your lives.
In this way, a great amount of joy
and sweetness goes unnoticed.
If life is lived with care and attention
it will give you the sustenance
and richness you long for.
Allow yourselves to renew your committment
to your lives and to yourselves
many times a day