Hi Andrew,
Good timing that you mention this as I can now confidently report from the other side of that “wall of fear”. I realised something similar a couple weeks ago, that this fear had been there all ‘my’ life, in varying degrees from mild anxiety to full blown terror. This terror itself is borne of ‘my’ existential angst at being a contingent ‘entity’ and is experienced by all ‘beings’. It is ‘my’ home, it is what ‘I’ am at core - the place where ‘I’ am forever threatened.
Exploring the very depths of ‘my’ being cannot be done “safely from a distance” or solved as a puzzle, Peter described well the means of effective exploration :
The only way it is possible to undergo a significant change in life is by experiencing something deeply and understanding the experience fully. I don’t know about a map at this stage – it’s more like throwing away the water wings and snorkel, strapping on a scuba tank, plunging into one’s own psyche and rummaging around the bottom, looking under all the rocks in order to see what the bottom really looks like.
It is certainly an adventure to dare to look in the place where ‘my’ fundamental insecurity exists and yet it is such a worthwhile exploration, it delivers the goods and then some.