Andrew: Hi Vineeto,
To echo Adam’s theme of initial reaction to later appreciation, I took this as encouragement but didn’t specifically have anything to be courageous about. I was also surprised by the encouragement to be friendly with myself, it is always a great reminder for me. (…) (link)
Hi Andrew,
Perhaps this is something to take note of – reminding yourself to be friendly with yourself until it becomes a beneficial habit. As your further post indicates, this reminder allowed you to feel some of the deeply buried fear and contemplate it.
Andrew: The drama in the moment of writing about the fear of failing again, has revealed more of the simplicity I look for these days, rather than any “thought out” type of conclusions based on the “story of my life”.
The simplicity is the basic fear intrinsic to being a survival (and reproductive) program, at my core. It’s a feedback loop which is now focused on the fact there is a lot less potential life ahead, than there is behind, and the daily reminders from the aging process that this is not math, or theoretical.
The fear, which is me, and has always been so much that a) was ever present, b) not admitted, ever.
I distinctly remember the moment I vowed to myself I would not admit I was afraid even. It of course, didn’t stop me being afraid, but it means I denied it to myself so thoroughly that in many circumstances I didn’t even feel it.
That moment was as a child when the stove caught on fire, an oil fire on the cooktop when someone had left oil heating up. I remember “screaming like a girl” and in that was even going to douse the flames with water, though I don’t remember what happened. I remember such shame sitting on the step out the front of the house, that I vowed that I would never be afraid again.
I was about 10 years old, I think.
I have of course, felt fear many, many times, but it is surprising how few, if any will I openly admit feeling it. I probably have talked about it, in theory, but admitting, in the moment, that I am afraid, is rare. (link)
This was a harsh treatment indeed for a 10-year-old, and when fear is constantly pushed away, it automatically grows – the very affective energy of pushing it away increases the affective charge of the unwanted feeling. And when it is seriously suppressed, over a long period of time, it results in all kinds of psycho-somatic side-effects. For additional general information see Richard, Dissociation and Trauma.
So it’s very beneficial that you can now allow to acknowledge and feel the feeling of fear, as much as you dare each time, being friendly and shining the bright light of awareness and contemplative attentiveness on those feelings.
Richard: Attentiveness gets not infatuated with the good feelings nor sidesteps the bad as attentiveness is a non-feeling awareness; a sensuous attention. Attentiveness is not sentimental susceptibility for it does not get involved with affection or empathy or get hung up on mercurial imaginations and capricious intuitions or ephemeral auguries. Attentiveness does not register feelings and compare the validity of experience according to it ‘feeling right’ or ‘feeling wrong’. Attentiveness is an aesthetic alertness that takes place with minimised reference to self. With attentiveness one sees the internal world with blameless references to concepts like ‘my’ or ‘mine’. (…) Attentiveness is seeing how any feeling makes ‘me’ tick – and how ‘I’ react to it – with the perspicacity of seeing how it affects others as well. In attentiveness, there is an unbiased observing of the constant showing-up of the ‘reality’ within and is examining the feelings arising one after the other … and such attentiveness is the ending of its grip. Please note that last point: in attentiveness, there is an observance of the ‘reality’ within, and such attention is the end of its embrace … finish. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness …)
When you apply this kind of contemplation, at bit at a time, and then perhaps longer, not getting side-tracked into imaginations or intuitions, then the affective charge of fear will diminish and allow you to more deeply understand how you tick. It might well diminish the restlessness you reported. Of course, you can do that with any feeling that arises.
Cheers Vineeto