The double-edged sword of freedom
There is a thought-duality that dominates our lives, whether we know it or not: fear and trust.
Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. By extension, the idea that we will not have what we need.
Trust: a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. By extension, the notion that we have what we need.
Most of us learn to fear fear and stop trusting trust. In terms of survival, it just makes sense. It’s not particularly pleasant, though.
What I find interesting about the situation is that so little of our education builds the qualities required to drink in the nectar of fear and turn it into the honey of freedom.
One of the most common ways that we try to deal with an imbalance of fear and trust is to try to regulate the “world out there.” Sometimes that can go really well. We can arrange our lives so that they are just humming along. We can become very proficient at what we do and enter into these really cool grooves, like flow states.
However, at the end of the day, our stability and freedom ends up being reliant on factors that we can’t truly control. It’s a fairly fragile way of being that ends up taking vast amounts of energy. There will always be an emptiness because the absence of something can’t be fulfilling. It’s not enough to be absent of fear.
Instead we must use the experience of fear to discover the intrinsic resources we have available within us. Or, as one of my favorite Sci-Fi’s put it:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
– Bene-gesserit, Litany Against Fear
Dune by Frank Herbert
We discover our true power by facing our fears and allowing them to flow through us, not by blocking or turning away from them. Each time we face fear, we have the chance to look within at what that fear has cleared out and fill that space with trust. Trust in our capacity to endure, to see through, to learn and to grow. Each moment of trust builds on a timeless truth; we already have everything we need.
When we release into this kind of trust we build an intimacy with the “world in here.” We no longer need to manage fear by avoiding it in the “world out there” because there is simply no space for it. We are full of a force far more powerful: the inner light of self-knowledge.
I invite you to slow down and see where your life is motivated by fear and where it is motivated by trust. Where you find that fear, will you let it flow through you to see the excitement and opportunity for new layers of trust to present?
Overtime, I hope you can learn that a moment of Fear is also a moment to practice Trust. As we learn to Trust through Fear we also learn to respond positively in challenging situations. The more we do this, the more we realize that all challenges are preparations for success.
In this transformation lies unbounded freedom and joy.