Winter solstice was a couple days ago; the shortest darkest day of the year. It seems like only a couple weeks ago we were basking in endless sunlight anticipating fall. Winter is an excellent metaphor for the experience of life. We all experience times of “winter” in our lives; times of sadness, fear, and pain. But just like the planetary winter, these times are really the experience of the absence of the light and warmth that radiates from the source of life. On earth that source is the sun. In our lives that source is our connection to love.
All over the planet and throughout history cultures and peoples have celebrated at this time of year to welcome the gradual return of the light. The darkest is past and new days of greater light are unfolding. In the physical world this proceeds automatically as part of the laws of gravitation and motion. In our personal lives things are not so automatic. We can get caught in cycles of fear that create the experience of grief, separation, and loneliness for years and years – dark times. This fear is just the absence of love, but we get trapped in our historical stories that have convinced us that the love we need is unavailable. These stories are misperceptions, but we don’t know that. We believe the stories because they seemed true when we first interpreted events we experienced. Sometimes we simply were taught the fear by well meaning, but misinformed caretakers.
Unfortunately most of these fear stories get lodged in our unconscious before the age of six, before we have any analytical filters to challenge them. In these early years our brains are vulnerable and soak up everything like a sponge. We don’t have enough experience yet to get a feel for what makes sense and is real and what is nonsense. So a lot of nonsense gets laid down in our early brain as true and real in our beliefs. Once something reaches the belief level, it takes on a life of its own because the belief now filters our perceptions producing what is called a confirmation bias. What this means is that we interpret our perceptions of the world in such a way as to constantly affirm our beliefs. We ignore contrary information and only “see” and remember stuff that tells us our belief is right. Every fear we pick up now becomes a seed from which every new experience builds new and greater fear. Fear is like crabgrass in our head. It digs in deep and grows like crazy. We feed it with our conviction that we need our fear to keep us safe, to help us survive.
The exact opposite of this is actually true. Our fears are what limit our life, decrease our adaptability, and make us more vulnerable to pain and suffering. Not all fear is false, just 99% of it. But our brain rationalizes that fearing unnecessarily 99 times to keep us safe 1 time is worth it. But what if we could drop the unnecessary fear and keep only the appropriate healthy fear? It is good to fear feeding the baby bears and avoiding insulting bikers in the biker bar. But it takes maturity to know what fears are truly likely to have negative consequences and which are not real. Full ability to grasp consequences of ones actions does not even happen until age 25 to 30. The brain connections are literally not there until that age.
The problem is all those early fears lie deeply hidden in our unconscious brain. They pop up any time you have an automatic reaction to something. Pain and pleasure reactions come from these unconscious memories whenever you start to feel the pain or pleasure before the actual physical experience has occurred. The process of anticipation is simply these historical memories being triggered to the surface. The big problem with this is that the filters and confirmation bias pops up with them, keeping us from actually experiencing the truth of what is happening in the moment. We see and feel what we expect to see and feel, not the truth. Without truth we can not adapt to reality effectively, which leads to failure and suffering.
What can we do about this source of endless suffering in our lives? The simple answer is to convert this fear into love. But this is fairly meaningless to most people. Trying to cover the fear with a conscious effort to love does nothing. The unconscious mind stuff is thousands of times stronger than the most powerful application of will we can muster. The conscious mind is a wimp compared to the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is where our survival instincts live, as well as little automatic things like control of our heart beat, blood pressure, and breathing. Try consciously stopping your heart some time – not so easy to do.
What is love anyway? We are not talking about romantic drives or idealized concepts of the oneness of all humanity. However good those may feel, they do nothing to eliminate fear. Love is the total embrace of all that is in the now moment. Love is the unconditional acceptance of everything that is right now in this moment with an enthusiasm for participation in the flow of what is. True love combines the yin of vulnerability with the yang aligned action. Fear is the opposite of this. In fear you see what your filters tell you and you act from willful self interest. Love is the opposite of fear just as light is the opposite of dark. And just as dark is simply the absence of light, so too fear is simply the absence of love.
Another way to describe this is to see fear as automatic prejudgments about things and love as a state of non-judgment – neither for nor against anything. Fear also contains automatic reactions, while love contains heartfelt balanced actions. Fear is survival and self-interest driven, while love is driven by the greatest good for all by looking for the win-win in the moment. Fear is also driven by concerns for the future or the past, while love is totally now centered. Can you see how love and fear cannot coexist? They are opposites. Moving into a state of love automatically eliminates fear. There is nothing to solve or fix. Fear is not something broken that needs to “heal.” Fear is only a perspective of seeing life through historical filters instead of opening to what really is real in the present moment.
The greatest preserver of fear is our desire for comfort. The desire to avoid those automatic reactions keeps the hidden drivers of our life safely in the unconscious. Unfortunately they completely control our life from down there. The only time we have access to those beliefs and prejudgments is when we are feeling one of those uncomfortable reactions. The old saying “you have to feel it to heal it” has a lot of truth. You have to feel the fear reaction in what ever form it takes to access releasing the pain memory and judgments you made so long ago. Once you have brought the pain to ease, you can then re-see the life experience without the old filters and hopefully see a larger truer picture. With this in hand you can then adapt more effectively from a state of love – embracing what is and finding a way you can participate with it from love.
A point that escapes most people is that fear can appear in many forms. It is not just being afraid. Fear also appears as anger, avoidance, resistance, automatic attractions, “in love” states, idealism, negativism and positivism, many forms because FEAR is the Failure to Embrace and Accept Reality or Relationship. Fear puts us living in our head’s simulation of reality instead of what is right in front of us. We do this in part because it feels easier for us. Adaptation in each moment requires massive amounts of energy. Automatic pre-programmed reactions are so much easier. The problem is they don’t really fit the situations we are in and so don’t work so well. This creates pain and suffering for us, so most commonly we retract from life in some way like addictions, inhibitions, avoidance, distractions, anything that diminishes our awareness of the feedback from life that tells us we are not flowing smoothly radiating love which we know inside is the most powerfully effective way to function.
As the days turn lighter, consider releasing the fear in your life and opening to a bigger world in which you are filled with love. For me, this is the message of the holiday season.