Accept the Risk of Absence

Last updated on: August 30, 2015 at 8:12 am by Annie Mueller

Accept the Risk of Absence 2015-08-20T08:31:18-05:00 Annie Mueller

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Fear is not meant to be a constant state of being. It’s meant to be an alert system. As an alert system, to real and immediate threats, it works remarkably well.

As an ongoing opportunity-assessment tool, however, it sucks.

If we allow fear to induce us into rejecting possibilities, or stressing out over maybes, we operate at a lower level of capability. We reduce our ability to reason, to empathize, to be creative, to be calm, and to make the most of whatever life gives us.

We can do better.

A Course in Miracles

Helen Schucman

Your creation by God is the only foundation which cannot be shaken because the light is in it.

Your starting point is truth, and you must return to this beginning. Much has been perceived since then, but nothing else has happened.

That is why your Souls are still in peace, even though your minds are in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful.

As you approach the beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you, as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death.

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Our minds are tired. Our bodies are tired. The constant fear that invades us (we call it stress, worry, or anxiety) is debilitating and damaging over the long-term to both our minds and our bodies.

But we don’t know what to do, how to turn off the fear response.
We’ve come up with a solution, which, despite is obvious inefficacy, we keep attempting. The solution is control.

If we can control all the things, we think, then we will eliminate the threats. No more threats, no more fear. No more fear? Peace, finally. The chance to relax and enjoy life. Wouldn’t that be great?

Buddha’s Path Is to Experience Reality

S. N. Goenka

Every sensation arises and passes away. Nothing is eternal. When you practise Vipassana you start experiencing this. However unpleasant a sensation may be-look, it arises only to pass away. However pleasant a sensation may be, it is just a vibration-arising and passing. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, the characteristic of impermanence remains the same.

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We quickly realize that we cannot control all the things.

So we narrow the scope. We diminish our lives. We reduce our options to a narrower set of situations. We limit life to a circuit of controllable (or at least predictable) experiences and we reject anything that seems too far outside of our circuit. Anything questionable. Anything unfamiliar, inexplicable, unknown, uncomfortable.

We come up with all sorts of lovely, logical reasons for rejecting those “outside” options, but the real reason is simple, visceral, and emotional: fear. We’re afraid of what we can’t control, because uncontrolled life is full of threats, and every threat carries the possibility of harm or discomfort.

And that is what we want to avoid, most of all: pain.

So we exist inside a small, safe life that we cultivate and curate and carefully, ever so carefully, control.

Thich Nhat Hanh

…I could not like to go to a place where there is no suffering. I could not like to send my children to a place where there is no suffering because, in such a place, they have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate. And the kingdom of God is a place where there is understanding and compassion, and, therefore, suffering should exist.
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There’s just one problem.

Safety is an illusion: change, discomfort, pain, suffering, all of these are necessary and unavoidable.

The attempt to wall them out ends up being a sure way to wall yourself in.

And fear, the thing which makes pain so painful, which makes the unknown so uncomfortable, is within you. You are in far more danger from the fear inside of you than from the threats outside of you.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

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