Barbara Hebert – USA
Barbara Hebert, former National President of the TSA, but still very hard working for Theosophy
The things that are happening in our world today may increase our anxiety and even our fear of what will happen in the future. Pandemics, war, brutality, death. The uncertainty may encourage us to make fear-based decisions or to become caught up in a kama-manasic tornado of thoughts and feelings. Neither of these actions are helpful to us or to the world in which we live. There are theosophical concepts that will help us to learn to live without fear. However, it is useful to address a few questions first. What is fear? How does fear impact us? How does our fear impact the world around us? These questions help us understand what is happening and what we want to change. Change requires awareness, and awareness requires self-introspection and self-observation.
First, fear is an innate response to danger—physical or emotional danger. It is rooted in the evolutionary process of human beings. We needed to be fearful in order to survive…lethal dangers were everywhere, and we needed a fear response to protect ourselves. Today, we don’t face the same types of lethal dangers, but the innate response to fear still exists. It still provokes the same types of responses from us…physical, emotional, and cognitive. These responses are rooted in a part of the brain called the amygdala. When the brain perceives danger, the amygdala floods the body with stress hormones. This physiological response helped us to survive when we were faced with dinosaurs or rockslides or approaching enemies. Today, it helps us as well. When the stress hormones are released, we can jump out of the way of a car backing out of a parking space or move more quickly to catch a toddler as he or she reaches for a hot stove.
Some degree of fear can be useful and valuable, as long as we are not constantly afraid. We don’t want to let go of fear entirely…we want to catch that toddler or avoid being hit by a car. However, when the amygdala is constantly flooding the body with stress hormones, there are a number of physical and emotional issues that can arise.
Our bodies are hard-wired so that we react to predators and other aggressors as well as other life-threatening situations so that we can survive. As mentioned before, things have changed, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have many stressors in our lives. The body perceives these stressors (not having enough time, paying bills, problems with family, etc.) as threats. Sometimes we may even feel as if we are constantly under attack. The body responds, as it is supposed to, and releases the stress hormones. Continual release of these hormones is problematic for us.
As human beings, we try to avoid feeling fearful. It is a vulnerable feeling and makes us want to hide in the closet or under the bed. So, one of the things that we may do, instead of feeling fearful, is to feel anger. One of the best examples of replacing fear with anger occurs for a parent when a teenager misses a curfew and arrives home late. The parent, who is probably really fearful that something has happened to their child, feels angry and reacts angrily. It is likely that we can all think of times when we were fearful but covered that fear with anger.
Another way we avoid feeling fearful is through control. Many times, individuals have the perception that if they can control people or situations, then everyone remains safe. We don’t necessarily realize we are doing this. For instance, a teenager who was struggling with typical teenage issues told the counselor that it was her mother who required counseling because her mother was always trying to control her. The mother had experienced some trauma as a teenager, and based on these experiences, worried that something would happen to her child. Therefore, she tried to control her teenage daughter. However, she could not control the daughter which then makes the mother feel even more out of control, and the cycle of trying to control in order to avoid fear continues.
A third way we avoid feeling fearful is to simply avoid situations that seem risky or even unknown to us. We don’t look for another job even though we may be unhappy in our current one; we avoid relationships because we don’t want to be hurt again, we don’t continue with our education or pursue an interest…What if we fail? What if we look silly to others? What if we get hurt… What if….
Because fear is intensely personal and at times even subconscious, we may not even be aware of what we fear. As human beings, we can sometimes shove our fears down so deeply into our subconscious that we are not aware of them regardless of their impact on us. Therefore, we must look inside of ourselves.
The answers are always within us. When trying to understand something or seeking to learn, we often seek outsides of ourselves. In reality, there is no outside. We must seek within because that is where the answers lie. Identifying our own fears requires self-introspection and self-awareness.
We are looking for answers that will allow us to live without fear and its residual impact on us. Therefore, we work with the personality since that is our temporary abode. We know, however, from the Ageless Wisdom teachings that there is more to us than simply the physical. To paraphrase Shams of Tabriz, the spiritual teacher of Rumi, we are like fish swimming in water, searching for water. The answers are around us, within us, supporting us, feeding us. The answers are in the air that we breathe. When we look inside, we are allowing the soul, our true selves, to provide not only the answers but the safety and security and love that is inherent in touching who we truly are.
The true essence of who we are is the One Reality. When we look at the personal fears we experience from a different field of awareness, from the soul’s perspective rather than the personality’s perspective, we may realize several things.
We may truly grasp that there is an order and a plan to the universe. Each of us is connected to one another and to that Divine Reality. When we intuitively touch that connection, we feel a peacefulness that is almost impossible to describe, and that peace allays every fear and concern we might have. The soul has no fear. We realize that life is a spiritual journey, a spiritual evolution of the soul, that ultimately everything will be OK.
We recognize that this life is only one of many and lasts but a blink of the eye in terms of eternity. It is an opportunity to learn and grow. Given these thoughts, it may be helpful to ask: What can I learn from facing my fear? How will I grow by moving beyond my fear? How important is this issue if I look at it from a more universal perspective…from the perspective of my soul or higher self?
We are moving forward on this spiritual path, having experiences that facilitate the spiritual evolution of our souls. We experience situations that may make us fearful; however, self-awareness and self-introspection aligned with the Ageless Wisdom teachings can help us manage fear. We can do that by understanding our fear and feeling secure in the knowledge that there is so much more to ourselves and our spiritual evolution than in the our tiny personalities and the temporal problems we fear.
