“Run, run, run but you can’t hide for that which you run from is inside.”
Wali Ahmed Sababu
I’ve been afraid most of my life and this has been both a gift and a curse. It’s not always a giant fear but it never quite disappears either. Usually it sits in the back room of my mind filing its nails but I know it’s there. I tiptoe around it carefully, not wishing to disturb it.
My fear takes on various forms. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of losing control. Fear that I will lose something important. Fear of pain and disability. Fear of the unknown. Fear that something bad will happen to someone I love. Fear that I will let someone – anyone – down. Fear that someone, somewhere is unhappy with, disappointed in or angry with me. Fear that humanity will destroy itself.
My fear of failure has driven me to ridiculous lengths. I am seldom satisfied or fulfilled unless I am working, for example. I feel secure when I have a purpose, a job or a responsibility. I need to accomplish. I became addicted to work ever since I discovered people will pay you to do stuff. Suddenly, the world made sense. I usually had at least two jobs throughout college and grad school and when I finally launched into private practice nearly thirty years ago, I was pleased to find I could push the limits of what is normal or reasonable.
I routinely schedule eleven hours of direct client care each day except Fridays when I schedule nine. I am blessed to have a small waiting list so I rarely have an open slot for long. Most weekends find me in my office working like I am now. To me, it’s my bliss and gives me a tremendous amount of peace but to others, it looks pathological, which is obviously true.
I have never missed a day of work in my life due to illness, unless I count the time, in 2008, when I was nearly killed on my motor-scooter. On that occasion, I missed two weeks as I lay in the hospital and then rehab. Both my wrists were shattered and I have metal rods in them now. Two ribs and several small bones in my back were broken and I have a rod where my left femur used to be. But thanks to a wheeled walker I could lean on, and good friends who drove me to work, I could get into my office to sit and listen to my clients and forget myself and my worries for awhile, which gave me tremendous relief.
I missed another week after my bilateral double hernia surgery earlier this year and I have taken vacations but I don’t always enjoy them. Work is my pleasure. I used to think I would retire someday until I realized serving my clients was kind of like heroin. It is hard to imagine not doing this. It scares me to think about it.
Fortunately, there is another “side” of me. I know this fearful role I play is just a dream. It’s not real although I treat it that way. My spiritual self views my fears and anxieties with a kind of detached amusement. It understands and accepts that my fear of failure leads me to seek the illusion of being in control. The mindful part of me notices my fear without judging it and invites me to go deeper.
In his book, Falling into Grace, Adyashanti explains that at some point we could all benefit from admitting we do not know what we think we know and are not in control of very much and that’s really ok. We cling to what is, in essence, “conceptual certainty” but if we examine it closely, we realize there is nothing there but our thoughts. And what are our thoughts, except illusory, intangible descriptions of our thinly sliced perception of infinite reality?
Deep down we are afraid of being vulnerable, hurt or rejected. Or in my case, not needed or useful. We instinctively seek to protect ourselves from a terrifying vulnerability that is just a concept or thought, based on a memory of pain or loss. Most of us respond with some kind of armor, avoidance or emotional restriction. We become tight, suspicious and stressed. But is it necessary? Is it helpful? How often do our lives become much less fulfilling as we place primacy on seeking security and avoiding pain?
Steven Hayes reminds us that when we seek to avoid experiences that lead us to feel vulnerable, we will miss out on opportunities to learn, grow and connect with our values.
The truth is, we cannot prevent ourselves from being vulnerable, only from feeling that way. No matter what we do, as long as we are alive, we are vulnerable. Sometimes we get what we don’t want or we fail to get what we do want. No matter how much armor we wear, the pain gets in. We suffer. All our efforts to control the universe within and around us are doomed to fail.
Adyashanti states, “…vulnerability is always there, whether we’re consciously opening to it or not. It’s not like we’re more protected when we armor ourselves with self-image and other ideas about who and what we are.”
We can connect intimately with reality as we experience it in the present moment or we can seek a kind of false protection within the refuge of our thoughts. We can be open or closed, free or trapped, accepting or avoidant, willing or unwilling. Regardless, we will not ultimately control what happens next, only how we respond to it and what we decide it means.
In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris suggests we understand that our willingness to be vulnerable means we “expand” and make room for our experience, including our fears and other “negative” emotions. He states, “If we give unpleasant feelings enough space, they no longer stretch or strain us.”
In order to do that, we need to operate from our observing self, not the thinking mind. When we are the observer, we are aware, attentive, focused and mindful. Instead of thinking about reality and fighting with it and seeking to control it, we just notice it and allow it to be what it is. This is pure perception or awareness, what the Tibetan Buddhists call “self-luminosity.”
Adyashanti states, “The deepest reality of who we are is this open field of awareness that is self–luminous, self–knowing. In other words, who and what we truly are knows itself. It knows itself as a field of unknowing, as an open expanse of being.”
This “part” is our true self. Adyashanti writes, “It’s the part of you that has always existed and…never changes.” This eternal aspect, or “beginner’s mind,” is, essentially, our “innocence,” a deep area of our mind “that’s very light, that never takes its ideas as truth” and instead remains humbly aware that it might be wrong.
Adyashanti states, “We tend to be quite protective, holding ourselves back behind some wall of fear, usually a fear of the very thing that we crave – closeness, intimacy, and union. Why is it that we crave these things? Because, in reality, the fact is that we are actually one; we are all intimately connected. Therefore, we are all naturally pulled to this union and intimacy, though we are also simultaneously frightened by it.
“Somehow, we must find the willingness and the courage to open ourselves to true relationship, so that we can become once again open to true intimacy.”
The key word is willingness. We remain conscious and awake in the present moment to the fear within that seeks to protect us but more often numbs, narrows and restricts us. Are we willing to fail? Are we willing to look foolish? Are we willing to present ourselves honestly to the world and be judged, evaluated and known? Are we willing to feel our feelings?
Harris suggests a four-step process: observe, breathe, create space and allow. We observe the sensations in our body; consciously breathe into, open up and create space around them and refuse to resist. Allow them to be. We allow reality to be what it is within and around us while noticing our ancient, automatic and ineffective thoughts and fears and our desperate desire to resist and control them.
Adyashanti explains when we are willing to be intimate with our resistance, we discover our fears were never our enemies. They were and are our “allies,” our teachers and friends.
Can we be intimate with our fear the way we’re intimate with a sunset, a song, or the look of love in someone’s eyes? When we stop running from and are willing to be intimate with our fears, we often discover something transformative: our confidence. Hayes tells us that the etymology of the word confidence reveals it to mean “with faith” or “with fidelity.”
He writes, “…in short, it means being true to oneself. The act of running from scary feelings in the effort to feel more confident is not a confident action because that very act has no self-faith or self-fidelity. When frightening feelings are present, the most functionally confident action one can take is to feel them fully. In other words, experiential acceptance is the behavior of confidence.”
Adyashanti gently urges us to not shut down when afraid and instead be willing “to open our heart to the whole world” because “we’re not separate from anything or anyone.”
He writes, “Anything you consider separate from you can scare and…intimidate you. But when you have the willingness to open your heart, to be intimate with the things you don’t like, with the people and events that frighten you, with the state of the world that may intimidate you, then you will find a way in which the core of you has an avenue through which to express itself. You can express and manifest the very depth of yourself in the outside world, so that there’s no longer a division between inside and outside and there’s no longer a boundary for our love.”
