Category: Fear

Yesterday, I wrote about how I plan to survive 2014, a year Queen Elizabeth would probably have called Annus horribilus. Presidential elections are no longer proud and affirming national rituals for us; they are paths full of landmines, hatred, lies, threats,  lawsuits, and bitter divisions, even violence.

They are a test of all of our strengths and perspectives.

They are enduring dramas for us, especially those who don’t live enmeshed in conflict and chaos and don’t want to.

I came to understand in 2016 that elections were becoming triggers – upsetting, divisive and traumatic things that frightened millions of people.

Everywhere I go, people ask me if we will survive another election intact.

Of course, we will, but we will have to work at it and look at ourselves. And be prepared. The thing to fear is fear.

We are a nation that is not able to protect our children from being slaughtered while they sit in classrooms; why would anyone expect our elections to be free of worry and frustration?

Many unpredictable things can and will happen, and our pundits and leaders will not have thought of any of them, nor will our journalists or our own selves.

Our elections have become a kind of malevolent cancer, something to dread, not celebrate. A year from an election is far, far away.

The honest pundits admit that nothing that happens now will be the same by next November.  

If you follow these things, as I once did as a reporter, then you the early winners rarely make it all the way, they have habit of burning out or blowing themselves up,

But our media live on drama and worry, not truth and thoughtfulness.

Things in America are ugly, but they are also usually pretty short-lived. We collectively have the concentration of field mice.

This year will change quickly and often. We’ll see. Anyone who tells you they know what will happen is someone to ignore. This could be a lonely and bumpy year if you don’t hate someone or blame someone else for everything.

I expect to do better than that. You’re outside the tent if you don’t live to prove that Hunter Biden slipped some money to his father.

The world outside will fight about it all year; the billionaires are determined to win it all.

I must admit that I care nothing about Hunter Biden, who seems to have lived a lifetime of confusion and poor judgment.  

He is any parent’s nightmare. I have to live in my own bubble, as I have never met someone the least bit interested in this manufactured drama.

Many real issues have gone untreated.

Reading over the piece today, I realized I left out something essential to our survival.

That is the idea of understanding and softening what the shrinks call “original fear.”

Original fear is the fear ingrained in us even before we can speak.

Many of us think of things that trigger feelings of fear and sorrow. Donald Trump and his associates and extremists and zealots of all stripes and all sides and colors are powerful in their anger, paranoia, and fear.

They live for it and project their pain and suffering to the outside world and to vulnerable and weak people and what has happened to them.

It has little to do with us.

Everyone reading this, including me, has experienced some suffering in our lives and past, and our suffering is something we often think of or are reminded of or need help with.

I’ve suffered from extreme anxiety for much of my life and am relieved and happy to share my hard work, knocking it down and, at times, removing it entirely and replacing it with new and brighter emotions.

It can be done.

Even if I had fear ingrained into my DNA early, I could renew myself by creating a new story for my life.

We can construct alternative triggers that bring hope and happiness, not just fear and resentment.

If I hadn’t learned to do this, to live in the moment and give rebirth to myself and plot my own life, suffering would have haunted me wherever I went.

If I revisit these memories and experiences, I will relive them repeatedly. I got tired of that.

People often write me messages wondering how they will survive in 2024 and what might come after it. I have no idea.

I can’t answer those questions.

I do know that I won’t become a prisoner or creature of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, red or blue, progressive and conservative, new media or old.

One way or another, they are all triggers that awaken frightening and painful experiences.

The political parties are closer to each other than one might think. Just ask any Washington lobbyist. There seem to be few clean hands.

I refuse to become a slave to someone else’s values.

I am no longer the child of original fear, fragile and vulnerable, with no way to defend myself and no one to protect me. I can do it myself.

There is a film, writes Thich Nhat Hanh, an image stored in every consciousness. It shows the suffering of the past.  

Every time my mind goes back to the past, and I see that image or watch that film, I suffer again. The idea of mindfulness reminds me that it is possible to live in the here and now. The past is no longer important to me.

Every time, reliving the past is a slap in the face.

The past is behind me; the future is beyond me. I don’t have to relive that fear again and again. I don’t have to relive it all.

To deal with the awful reality – a Presidential election as a trigger, not an honored and honorable ritual – requires care and consideration. It requires silence; it means going inside, not outside. Who do I wish to be? How do I wish to feel?

It means meditation and contemplation. In the depths of my consciousness, I decided to do good rather than argue about it, and the first answer was the Army of Good, among many other things, that gave me new memories of good, love, and compassion.

This was one of the best decisions of my life, and it changed the trajectory of my emotions.

Over these good years, these new experiences and understanding have softened or pushed out those memories and families and mistakes and slights of the past.

People like Donald Trump do not frighten me; the poor man is such a mess I have little but pity for him and the people he has transfixed. Being inside of his head must be a horror.

He is just not important to me; he is more like the coyotes that howl and bark up on the hills.

I am not a new man, but a better and more manageable one. I love my life, and the riches of it give me something much better to weave into my DNA at any age, even my 70s. I can cut those chains and bring some soft pillows to lie on instead.

The feeling that I am fragile, vulnerable, inadequate, and unable to defend myself, the sense that I will always need someone to be with, will probably always be with me; those feelings will always be there.

It’s so easy to be caught in the past; it’s helpful to remind myself – meditation, silence, safety, focus  – to stay in the present, a safe place because we know and see it.

There is nothing to guess, only to see. And I had to go deeply inside of me to see it.

I have only recently learned that the past doesn’t matter and the future is not knowable. This has changed my life.

Politics in 2024 is a trigger, just like bedwetting when I was young or the lectures and scolding of my father,  and it is important to me to see it that way.  

I know how to deal with it as a physical disorder, not a matter of life or death, not the end of the world, not a threat to a way of life. It didn’t break me then, and it won’t break me now.

That interior incursion has helped me stay grounded, be more human, and find happiness and peace rather than fear and unease.

Being alone in quiet,  going into myself, I find comfort and hope, not trauma and worry. I find happiness and meaning.

Give it a try, I told myself. What I feel is up to me, not any pundit or political party.

That was some of the best advice I ever had.

First, I worked on learning how to turn fear into love. Then I started learning to breathe it right out of my body. As I progress through this transformative process, I’ll keep sharing it. Take what you want, roll your eyes if you need to, and leave the rest behind.

To my amazement, I didn’t believe this was possible until I tried it and found out it was honest and could work for me. I have learned and am still learning how to exhale fear and despair.

I have been teaching this to the Mansion residents with some success, and I’m not selling the idea, but I believe if you have fear and work at this and concentrate on breathing, you can almost see (and you can feel)  the fear leaving your body when you exhale.

My efforts were inspired by Buddhist, Jewish (Kabbalah), and Christian teachings of St. Augustine and Thomas Merton. The prophets and philosophers of spirituality all believed it and practiced it.

I think the Viethamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh (who died at the beginning of this year) was one of the first to write a book about it.

I am in awe of what these great minds can each me and how relevant it is today.

Their time was even crazier and more frightening than ours. They all felt tremendous fear and worked hard to reduce and release it.

“We have to be aware of our feelings,” writes Thich Nhat Hanh in his book Fear: Essential Wisdom For  Getting Through The Storm.

“There’s a whole lot of feelings blowing in us day and night. Every feeling is a drop in in that river. A feeling is born, manifests,  stays for a time, and then passes away…We’re free even from our feelings. And with mindfulness, we can bring a feeling of well-being, happiness, at any time.”

It was hard for me to believe this was possible; I’ve felt tremendous fear and anxiety all my life.  And I’ve never really trusted organized religion to help me.

I could barely do the things that cloistered monks and rabbis could do. Mindfulness, I learned, is just a new name for concentration and focus.

Nothing I tried helped me ease my fear or worked as well as I hoped or for as long.

But learning how to exhale fear and despair out of my body and exhale it has helped more than anything else, as odd as it sounded to me.

I mixed things up a bit and made the process my own. I steal from one faith and another and make my mix. I looked for what worked for me, not just for them.

No single faith has worked for me, but each has some beautiful apples on the tree; I pick the ones I like and chew on them repeatedly.

First, I leave all of my devices behind in a different room. I made sure the house phone was turned off. I set my timer for 30 minutes, sometimes less, sometimes more.

I takes a few minutes to clear my head and let in the quiet.

I close my eyes, sit straight in a comfortable position, and put my hands on my knees. I go inward, as deep as I can in my mind. I try to feel my body all over. I have no trouble finding fear; it is always in the same position, in my stomach, just below the heart. I turned on some Gregorian chant to quiet my nerves and settle me.

I’ve been told to speak to my feelings: “Hello fear, hello, my anger, hello my sadness and pain. I know you are there. I know you are a part of me. I’m going to take good care of you.” It sounded strange, but it felt just right. These words connected to my fear in a personal way; it is, after all, a part of me, not just an enemy but something to know and try to love.

I don’t need to fear fear is the idea, I guess.

This is a practice, an exercise. It takes time, concentration, solitude, and quiet.

The more I  do it, the less fear I feel and the stronger I get. I am not fearless and can’t imagine that state for me, but this is where breathing and exhalation lead.

Fear is inside me; that is where I can find and connect to it differently. I’ve always looked outside to the disconnected world for the answer to my fear; I never understood that fear and fearlessness are cousins; they live inside me. It’s the things inside of me that can hurt me.

I breathe fear out of me.

After breathing and being still,  and cleaning the distractions of the world from my head, then it was all about breathing. Deep breath in, count to four,  deep breath out, count to four,  pause, repeat four or five times.

Breathing is essential.

Then, eyes closed, I meditate some more. And then, I went inward again and tried to connect with my feelings, especially my fear. I found it again; I had no trouble feeling it.

I understood what the monks meant when they said to see my fear and connect to it, to get in touch with the seed of mindfulness in me. It is not different from me; our outside of me, it is inside, a part of me.

I felt the energy and power of the fear and the pain; both stood out; I knew exactly where they were, where they lived, just as much a part of me as my nose.

Then I began to take the deepest breaths and exhale fully and with feeling.

There was no fighting, no violence, no conflict. And less and less fear.

The air I was exhaling became warmer and warmer, and I felt the fear stirring, ever so slightly, then more distinctly. I felt it come up my mouth and out my nose, and into the air around me.

The fear never leaves me; it doesn’t need to return; it is always there. But it is different, and I feel differently about it. It just happens.

Mindfulness is a conscious spiritual practice of being aware of all the elements of the present moment without being lost in the past or the future. It is paying attention when the mind wanders to negative places where no creative or positive outcome is possible.

This meant recognizing and locating the fear, which brought relief and familiarity. When I tried to find it again, it was outside me, but not gone.

Breathing is an exercise; the more I do it, the deeper it goes, and the more powerful my very intimate connection to my feelings, which slowly ceases to be something I dread but recognize and accept.

I think the exhaling fear and despair helped me understand my mind and let go of the illusions, impulses, and conceits so I could feel the true nature of reality and inch towards a kind of fearlessness.

Once I learned where fear lives, I began fearing the outside world less and less. I’m unsure what to make of it, but I’m glad to share what I am learning.

I’ll keep at it and keep sharing the process.