“all fears will roll away like mists”
We choose to live in a Paradigm-B world of fear and chaos, but then strongly deny that it is our choice to make. Yet when we constantly fill our mind with images of the past or future, we are creating fear and worry. When we are attached to possessions or wealth, for instance, we are creating fear and anxiety. Fear of loss, fear of change.
Attachment to the idea of “freedom” creates a great deal of fear. Americans are very defensive if not paranoid about their freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to carry weapons. But how free are we? Shoshana Zuboff warns in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) and related articles that: “The rise of surveillance capitalism over the last two decades went largely unchallenged. ‘Digital’ was fast, we were told, and stragglers would be left behind. It’s not surprising that so many of us rushed to follow the bustling White Rabbit down his tunnel into a promised digital Wonderland where like Alice, we fell prey to delusion. In Wonderland, we celebrated the new digital services as free, but now we see that the surveillance capitalists behind those services regard us as the free commodity. We thought that we search Google, but now we understand that Google searches us.”[i]
“The companies that collect all this information on your movements justify their business on the basis of three claims: People consent to be tracked, the data is anonymous and the data is secure. None of these claims hold up, based on the file we received and our review of company practices.”[ii]
We fear the loss of our income and prestige, as did Rowan Winch, age 15. “[He] built a media empire from his Pennsylvania home, but in July [2019] Instagram disabled his most popular account. Now ‘I’m a lot less confident,’ he said.”[iii]
We fear the loss of our health and we fear death, but a great many individuals in America today also fear and mistrust science and medicine. The corona virus pandemic (2020) in America exacerbated anti-intellectualism. On the other hand, those who do trust science also live in fear: “These protesters don’t understand that nobody is immune to this infectious disease that doesn’t respect state borders. We are not the land of the free and the home of the brave individually, but their individual actions have profound impacts on the collective. We’re in a dangerous situation by letting ideology take priority over the health interest and well-being of the nation.”[iv]
Authentic change can indeed eradicate fear. Profound and timeless change is possible for all of us, but we must choose wisely. The Point of Power Practice helps us look closely at our fear (reactions) and stay focused in the present moment, which is the best way to deal with fear.
Insight # 81 comes to us from Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) an Indian lawyer, politician, and social activist.
“The illusory foundation of our normal outlook is fear. But fear has no place in the heart once we have eradicated the most ingrained attachments, particularly those involving wealth, pleasure, and safety. We become intrepid [fearless] when we no longer consider ourselves owners, but ‘trustees’ of what life has assigned to us, and no longer masters making demands on others, but servants who have nothing to lose. Then ‘all fears will roll away like mists.’”[v]
__________
Additional Reading:
- Fear, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
__________
[i] Zuboff, Shoshana. “The Known Unknown.” The New York Times Sunday. January 26, 2020, p. 1.
[ii] Thompson, Stuart A. and Charlie Warzel. “12 Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy.” The New York Times Sunday Review. January 26, 2020, p. 2.
[iii] Lorenz, Taylor. “Boy, Discounted.” The New York Times. December 1, 2019, p. 1.
[iv] Villarosa, Linda. “Who Lives? Who Dies?” The New York Times Magazine. May 3, 2020, p. 50.
[v] Ferrucci, Piero. Inevitable Grace. Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1990, p. 294.
