In the previous post we began looking at how the soul wants to live, but can get buried in fear. This fear is based on hurt and cultural conditioning that needs to be felt and reevaluated. To start with, most fear in our culture is very unconscious. It is easily seen in male dominated religions, racism, sexism, and any imbalanced attitude where the hurt and rejection is projected onto another. As we gradually become aware of our fear and are willing to feel it and learn from it, release is possible. As long as the fear is unconscious, there is no chance.
Chinese proverb: “Harm enters only where fear makes the opening.”
Emotional maturity
Fear of emotional maturity is always the most interesting to me. A maturity that has the curiosity of a child and the objectivity of an adult. Both qualities are asking for life. We need curiosity. Otherwise, there is no motivation to learn and develop. We also need a growing objectivity about emotions and relationships. Otherwise, it is based on contrived ideas of right and wrong. Every developmental stage has this tension, whether it be adolescence or middle age. There is a natural desire for maturity, but also a fear and uncertainty about how to mature, or even what that looks like. So, we are pressured by life itself to look closely for examples of maturity in history and the present. Living in fear and confusion for extended periods of time is not maturation.
For example, remember when we first swam in the deep end of the swimming pool? There was fear, even fear of drowning, but we probably had learned a few skills first, such as how to swim or at least dog paddle. It wasn’t just courage, but a little understanding of water and how to swim. This is a step of maturity. How different our life would be if we had not learned to swim. To ease into the deep end of the pool required first a toleration of fear and excitement, then a sacrifice of the fear when we jumped, for the next level of freedom. We cut loose of the sticky relationship with fear based on our new abilities.
Fear is not something to just get over. It is an ongoing discovery of how we hide from intimacy with the self and others. In the above example the swimmer had learned some things about water and swimming before jumping into the deep end. Just as we are always learning about the nature of relationship to others, our emotions and attitudes. People feel they are drowning in their lives because they think maturity happens with age. But it takes a particular effort.
I use the word sacrifice with fear because there is a leap of faith when we move into a new stage of life. The fear is relinquished to jump into a new perspective, new practices, and new abilities in relationship to others and the self.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
