As prompted by Bindu Wiles, master architect of the 21.5.800, it’s time to write about fear. Well, technically it’s the day to write about discipline, but I missed the fear assignment and happened to have just written two days’ worth of writing assignments on discipline.
Fear. Fear is like a many-headed beast. Fear is a trickster. It can show up dark and scary from the start. It can appear as the most attractive thing you’ve ever seen. It can present itself as something incredibly sweet you want to devour. It can dress up like what you think love should look like in the movie of your life. No matter how it looks, fear is there to challenge the love in your life – the love for yourself, the love for others, the love for this planet. I think I’ll have a couple posts’ worth to write about fear, but I’ll try to get 800 words in as a start.
This song poses a seemling simple question: Will you choose fear? Will you choose love? It asks us to put our fears and choices in perspective, to take a step back and see the implications of choice in relation to the the Universe.
Battle of the minds / cries Below cries Above /You must pick a side
Will you choose fear? Will you choose love?
What does it look like, this orbital ball from the fringes of The Milky Way?
I wish it were simple as a three word question: Fear or Love? Because we would always choose love, right? I see them as opposite sides to the same coin. Love is not easy, sometimes it is just plain hard. Fear is always showing up, challenging and second-guessing love. Fear challenges us to choose – will we confront and work with fear or just concede to what it is telling us?
Fear shows up in life like this: My husband and I went to Belize a few years ago and took an overnight excursion to Tikal, Guatemala. We were wandering among the ruins with a rudimentary map and took a turn off the path that ended up on a gravel road. It felt wrong, but it looked kind of right on the map. After about 30 minutes, we came upon a sign that said we were 12 kilometers from a village and a truck passed us. This was wrong. We backtracked and found a sign ripped out of the ground and thrown in the bushes where we took the wrong turn. The sign had a picture of hikers with a big X over them and something written in Spanish that probably meant, “Don’t go this way! You’ll end up on a road outside the park and waste an hour of your limited time at Tikal getting stressed out over going nowhere.” The correct turn was about 50 feet up the original path.
Metaphorically speaking, fear is the asshole who rips out the sign and sends you on a path that might look right. The path might seem okay at first, but you ultimately wish you had stayed on the original path.
On the mat, we go to an edge where it is uncomfortable but not harmful. We go deep into chair pose and hold it…hold it….(wtf! I can’t do this! this sucks! why the hell did I come here? I’m pretty damn sure the other teacher doesn’t make us hold it this long)….hold it…go deeper…(f********k, get me out of this!)…..hold it….and then dive deliciously into forward fold. Would that forward fold be half as amazing if we had given up? No! Will we be able to really get to know this pose if we keep dropping out of it when it gets tough? No way. We build strength, we breath deeply, we feel alive. This is an example of how asana trains me to choose love.
Fear bubbles up inside of us and preys on our weaknesses It is that voice I talked about earlier that tells us, “you aren’t good enough, you can’t do this, no one wants to be your friend.” It is also the voice of pride and vanity that tells us, “you are better than her, you can do this better than anyone else, the world owes you everything and you don’t owe the world a cent.” Fear can destroy our self-esteem while simultaneously fluffing our ego. (Yes, fluffing, I chose that word carefully.)
On the mat, fear tells me I can’t stand on my head or float up into an arm balance. What if I fall? Fear shows up like a gangster in an old movie telling me I better not go deeper into camel pose or else. On the mat, I practice the courage to ask that little man, “Oh yeah? Or else what, wiseguy?” So I fall, who cares? At least I tried. No one is going to slit my throat while I’m in camel pose – that is completely irrational! Asana trains me to second guess what fear is telling me.
Love is the ultimate respect, fear is the ultimate disrespect. The yamas are the tools I use to actively choose love. It’s not easy – there are times that the yamas are real bitches. SATYA – truthfulness AHIMSA – nonharming (to yourself and others) ASTEYA – nonstealing APARIGRAHA – noncoveting BRAHMACHARYA – moderation, divine conduct. Don’t lie, don’t harm, don’t steal, be happy with enough, and take all in moderation….do the right thing.
Am I still fearful? Of course, I am human. Yoga teaches me to accept my fears and put them in their place. It gives me the strength and tools to turn up the frequency of love.
In closing, here is another arrangement of the song sung by the PS22 choir. (I love these kids!)
