Do You Feel Fear?

To be a hypocrite is to become a mind that can't know itself honestly.

Why is that? It could appear - albeit, to a naive person - that we can act one way in one context and another way in another context. For instance, consider Kelly Ann Conway - a person who pathologically lies and yet seems completely fine and confident with that. Why is that? Why does she feel so invulnerable to the sorts of feelings which emerge - and scourge - the mind for its incoherent behavior?

Some people may be inclined to interpret my last 2 words in the above paragraph - incoherent behavior - and ask themselves, why? "Who are you to say what is and isn't incoherent behavior", and being raised in a cultural which operates from the 'theory of individualism', it would be understandable that they would feel that way - given what they know and whatever they consider coherent is exactly a function of the affordances offered to them in their growth and development as a self.

How can a person honestly not see that chance affordances are the basis of what they experience as their "sense of self"? If you operate from any other assumption, you can only be considered by coherent people as ignorant - as in, not understanding basic physics (quantum theory, big bang, cosmic evolution) or the geophysics-biophysics that underlie the emergence of living beings:

In essence, if you were to 'rewind' the universe, Humans would be seen to be a natural phenomena that follows the same basic laws of matter.

“From quanta up, all “things” transform and the transformations have characteristic rules. Those rules are the four fundamental forces and their historical derivatives.” – Camelo Castillo, Origin of Mind: A History of Systems; pg. 31, 2011; Allardice Creek Press

The "historical derivatives" is all that emerges from the constraints imposed by the 4 physical forces. All of life emerges in this way. You, me: our being happens through the circular dynamics of being a system in the context of a larger system. Van Goethe captured this principle with his 'starry night' - intuiting with his style of painting the fundamentally dynamical - moving - ceaselessly responding nature of reality - each 'thing' connected like a puzzle piece into the world around it. The world is structurally connected, yet the mind can live as if that wasn't true.

I've suffered much in my life - enough to know that it probably isn't wise to orient yourself to reality in an antagonistic way. Yet that is precisely the attitude of some adherents of an individualist philosophy.

Firstly, and this can only be recognized by people who don't mind spending lots of time alone - is that our mind has 'two' general fluxes. First, we can be receptive to the world around us. The psychiatrist Dan Siegel refers to this as "conduition" - or 'conduction', where the frontal cortices (or observing self) pays greater attention to the world around it. In doing so, it experiences its attending self in a way that may be described as "passive awareness". In this state-of-awareness, the self is 'abnegated' as it calmly (and without any ulterior motive besides seeking to know the world truly) "takes in" reality as it reveals itself.

Siegels analysis also recognizes a second state - or the "predictive" and "agentic" state of awareness, which is active, and calculative, and interested in making 'internally coherent' the environment it internalizes and seeks to cognitively 'control' through language and narrative - usually as it is received by others. This state of awareness is concerned with the needs of the self, which it represents in the assertions and propositions of its speech. This is active awareness - a world projected and imposed on the world around it.

Herein lies the conundrum. In masculinistic cultures, the ego - or agentic, and cognitive self - the active self - is so involved with its own ideation - its own fantasy - because of the effects of trauma and competition on the way and manner the brain-self organizes. Imperialist cultures traumatize themselves without every realizing that they are doing so. The mind loses its internal "balance" - wherein the conscious, active self Pays Attention to its Passive Experience, and utilizes that knowledge in its relationships with others.

This process is obviously intuitive and a basic feature of Human becoming - every Human on Earth 'self-organizes' in this way when the context permits. Obviously, lead paint and other environmental toxins can disrupt normal neurological development - leading to behavioral consequences as a function of a nervous system being "stressed" by the heavy element lead. The culture that emerges from this toxic background could then be cited by racist opportunists as an example of an "intrinsic dysfunction" - i.e. with references to blacks - but this, of course, is not true.

Indeed, racist, elitist Humans are just as damaged - and governed - by the force of culture on the way and manner they self-organize. But in being so egotistical - and actively cultivating a culture of pride, egotism, and ruthless disinterest in the suffering of others, they disown their passive awareness of self as if it didn't still play a role in their functioning as a system. This amuses me - because the egotistical mind is so 'full of itself' - meaning, preoccupied with its own affects, anxiety, and fears, yet never 'naming their occurrence', or recognizing that their motivation in acting derives from the inchoate , difficult to understand feelings which arise in them.

Tramatologists - neuroscientists with the deepest sensibility of how Humans work - recognize the symptoms of dissociated and repressed trauma as transforming within the mind-body as feeling-states which their active-consciousness, or "ego", doesn't have a language or culture to understand. The reason for the staunch dissociation is the absence of whats called a holding environment. If the trauma which formed you happened in the context of abuse, your body will always consider the other party you're relating with as a manipulator - someone not to be trusted. Abuse rules the body - determines the feelings it will feel - and the mind is nothing more than the "emergent witness" of what it's body records through the process of living.

Resisting Mythology

I love science. I think it's language - reason - is transcendent, because it speaks in philosophical ways that give priority to empirical realities - things which each of us have equal access to, and so allows us a "common reference" in our relating. Science produces knowledge of the highest order: and I truly believe that it has a deep spiritual core - it will lead us back to what we actually are: to know truly, and not fear - and continue to misunderstand the nature of suffering.

People who subscribe to 'occultism', to my mind, are mentally ill people who mythologize their existence in the garb of a narrative used by primitive peoples - peoples living in a day and age which didn't understand the nature of reality. Now, when I say "nature of reality", I mean "the nature of matter". To live in this world - to be a body subject to disorder and to be around other things with system-like properties - indeed, to exist within a larger system we call "nature" - is to be of this world. The dichotomy presented between

subject and object is a profound delusion of a self that over-estimates its being as an agent, and under-estimates the degree to which its agent-hood is subject to environmental dynamics - to which, indeed, its entire being is fundamentally adapted to - like a puzzle piece to the puzzle around it.

So my question - and honest and sincere inquiry is, why don't you feel fear for yourself?

For the person who lives like a hypocrite - who doesn't think coherency - or consistency - matters, why can't you see that your position is a function of what has happened to you in your development?

When I ask this - I try to feel care and compassion, because truly all of us - whomever we are, are brought into the world as a creature of need - and we never are the sorts of 'evil beings' we may think when we meet one another as adults. Hurt creates hurt. Sadomasochism is an example of Freud's "repetition compulsion" - like all animals do, from Elephants in cages to dogs being whipped - traumas are held in "procedural processes" i.e. the brainstem, which paradoxically seeks to put itself into the enactive process of the originating trauma as a way to 'resolve it' - but being a creature which can feel and think - and even think something that is the opposite of what the body indicates by its feeling, the human can "structurally dissociate itself" from the cause behind its feeling a certain way, and take a perverse pleasure in perpetuating the trauma once imposed by another on itself, onto an other.

Is there a God who punishes us? Or do Humans punish themselves by failing to reflect coherently on what they do - and naively projecting a "fantasy" outwards - either a "God" who the self needs to oppose, or just plain-old cynicism about the purpose and meaning of life.

The body - and mind - can be corrected, healed, and brought back into the "whole" i.e. the Human community.

It can be hard to say it, but its true: we need others. My mind and sense of self is just a part of what I am: the other operates as the 'world' out there which has somehow played a part in bringing about my sense of agency. The Easterners - Taoists - understood more deeply, I feel, with their Yin-Yang symbol. Who can deny that this is what reality is? Complementarity at the quantum level moves 'upward' through a complementary symmetry in the structures that make up the material world.

The only fear I feel is when I have a 2 ton piece of equipment hanging over my head in hopes it does not fall and crush me.

God is God.

We are here to participate in life and enjoy it.

Life is pretty simple. If you feel the need to make it more than what it is, you have either not lived or you are not happy.
I guess you can say I do not give a crap what someone thinks and no one influences my self being.
This is who I am .

Just my two cents from someone who has been around for awhile.

BTW, great post !

Spend a day in Iraq, we'll talk again Snowflake.
a reply to: Astrocyte

Yep.

Ignorant posts like this scare the crap out of me.

a reply to: Astrocyte

No I mean, I hate spiders gross ew yuk bleh. But, death? Nada. No fear of death.

Fear is something we hold onto, it's like a blankie we can't let go of.

Geez dude if you designed the zodiac it would go like:

1.Pisces.
2.Pisces
3.Pisces
4.Virgo
5.I love Pisces! Why can't everything be Pisces?
6.Sagitta- uh...Libra, no Taurus...and Pisces.
7.what the hell is Ari-

(beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep)


Consequently I only believe in this stuff by about 30%. Probably because I'm an ari-

...


Lighten up..

a reply to: breakingbs

You like Virgo, that's a plus!

I myself dont feel fear instead I eat it...
For fear is the great motivator that fuels all of makinds advancements out of necessity...
That's why we are hardwired to respond to it with heightened senses. It must be met head on with bravery and overcome...
To feel it is to allow it to take over... It will cripple you and own you...

a reply to: 5StarOracle

I heard that Canadian Men eat FEAR for Breakfast!

I feel fear quite often.
Anytime I am up somewhere high (Except for climbing trees, they always felt safe).
Going on a bungee cage with my lad a few years back was truly horrible
Haring around a bend on a fast bike to find someone blocking the road, the last few seconds before you have a fight.

Fear is just a natural expression of how your body works, it's adrenaline running through your veins, your muscles tightening, ready to act.

It can be like a drug, and only really harmful if you get your fix by poking bears with sticks or picking up snakes or something.

There is a problem with language - it lies!!
No one feels fear. Fear arises.

Language implies that there is a thing called fear and someone feels it. Fear happens, no one feels it.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
There is a problem with language - it lies!!
No one feels fear. Fear arises.

Language implies that there is a thing called fear and someone feels it. Fear happens, no one feels it.

You never felt excited or horny then?

originally posted by: SprocketUK

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
There is a problem with language - it lies!!
No one feels fear. Fear arises.

Language implies that there is a thing called fear and someone feels it. Fear happens, no one feels it.

You never felt excited or horny then?

Excitement and horniness happen. But language implies there is someone who owns those feeling - there isn't - language lies.
It is a little like saying 'I am growing my hair' when really no one is growing hair - hair simply just grows.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain

originally posted by: SprocketUK

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
There is a problem with language - it lies!!
No one feels fear. Fear arises.

Language implies that there is a thing called fear and someone feels it. Fear happens, no one feels it.

You never felt excited or horny then?

Excitement and horniness happen. But language implies there is someone who owns those feeling - there isn't - language lies.
It is a little like saying 'I am growing my hair' when really no one is growing hair - hair simply grows.

Do you not think that perhaps what you are describing is a disconnect between the literal language and its interpretation?

We all know that we don't grow our hair, but most of us understand that the statement actually means "I am not going to cut it for a while until it reaches a length that pleases me".

a reply to: SprocketUK

Fear is not an object you go over to feel is it? No one would go up to an object called fear and feel it. Fear just happens doesn't it?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

But you feel it, from the hair on the back of your neck standing up, to your breathing becoming shallower and your heart rate rising. They are all things you feel.

just the same as you can feel hot or cold or tired. They are all things you can't touch, but can feel.

originally posted by: SprocketUK
We all know that we don't grow our hair, but most of us understand that the statement actually means "I am not going to cut it for a while until it reaches a length that pleases me".

The story 'I am growing my hair' is untrue - hence language lies. If it is not realised that language lies then it will assume a lot of things are true when they are not. The stories that arise are very hypnotic. Who are the stories talking about?

originally posted by: SprocketUK
a reply to: Itisnowagain

But you feel it, from the hair on the back of your neck standing up, to your breathing becoming shallower and your heart rate rising. They are all things you feel.

just the same as you can feel hot or cold or tired. They are all things you can't touch, but can feel.

Language implies there is 'someone' feeling - there isn't. Feelings arise and subside.
There isn't anyone 'in there' feeling.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain

originally posted by: SprocketUK
We all know that we don't grow our hair, but most of us understand that the statement actually means "I am not going to cut it for a while until it reaches a length that pleases me".

The story 'I am growing my hair' is untrue - hence language lies. If it is not realised that language lies then it will assume a lot of things are true when they are not. The stories that arise are very hypnotic. Who are the stories talking about?

Rather than lying, language is inaccurate, broad, multifaceted. It's not a page of code to be parsed by a machine, we have to grow and learn in order to develop the skills to communicate. That's why it's always better to talk with a human who understands the nuances of language than some bot like Siri which is limited by it's programming.