Of Fear

We all know fear. Apprehension in difficult situations. The fear for loved ones. Panic even, when all we thought we knew crumbles around us. But it is a natural thing. Instincts of self-preservation come to the fore to warn us from impending danger. Surely there can be nothing harmful in that?

As fellow disciples of the Paths you know this to be false. Fear IS harmful. Fear can get out of control. It paints hundred dreadful fates for ourselves, makes us hesitate. Makes us reconsider. It arises even, when there is no true danger. It is the cheapest of tricks in the arsenal of fiends and sorcerers. Fear fashions shackles the mind and paralyses the body. There is no harmony in one afraid. No unity. The Truth slips away from him.

But how can it be overcome? What is it that makes fear so dangerous? A man who fears is betrayed by himself. His body betrays him and his minds stabs him in the back, crippling him. When the mind perceives or even only imagines a threat or simply something unknown, it begins to worry. But body and mind are tied together. The body feels the mind being troubled and reacts. A physician would speak about humours and bodily fluids, but the why is not relevant at this point. But you all know of what I speak. The heart begins to race. Ice flows through our veins. Muscles tremble in anticipation of a mortal threat. A feeling like the flow of a lightning rips through our nerves.

And the mind sees. Sees the body in uproar and in turn reacts. Imagination runs wild. Phantasms of pain arise before our inner eyes, visions of possible futures. Reason is overwhelmed, cannot solve the riddle set before it in form of nameless sensations. Panic sets in, unreasonable and devouring. And the body feels. And the mind sees. Each expression of fear is the source of the next, between mind and body fear escalates. And we hover in the darkness of not-knowing. We falter.

But it does not have to happen in that way. There are those, who advocate the power of reason as weapon with which to defeat fear. In complete separation of mind and body can freedom be found from the dangerous urges of the body, that corrupt the clarity of thought. When there is only conscious thought to govern any action, when the intellect has assumed total control, then there can be no fear. For reason knows only degrees of danger and proper responses to it. Thus they say.

But you, my friends, know that this cannot be our path. Separating mind from body, bringing that foolish dualism to its very conclusion, is the antithesis of all that we strive for. Thus, there is another way. A transcendent way. Through inner harmony can fear also be overcome. When there is no distinction between mind and body, between thought and action, how *can* we fear? The master does not waver in the face of danger. Fear flows through him, flows through him and finds no hold. Where there are no two parts, between which fear can escalate, there it cannot control, there it cannot destroy us. Like reed in the wind the master bows and bends, when fright comes over him, and like reed he does not break and is not overcome. And so after surging through him, the fear leaves the master. He remains free. In harmony. In Unity. And he acts.

-- Overheard in the Great Gymnasium