Emotional-behavioural
patterns seem, on the face of it, to bypass some important aspects of human
psychology. Where are the mental, the energetic, and specifically the physical
and will forces? Emotional-behavioural patterns seem to imply some emotion or
feeling that plugs directly into a demonstration of some kind and describes
some predictable line of repetitive unfolding, sounding mechanistic and
negative.
So far so good, in
our understanding of emotional-behavioural patterns. However, there is a place
for thinking, for energy, as well as for the corporeal and motivational.
Although these patterns are not a specialty in human psychology, our
observation of human behaviour, both inner and outer, leads us, fairly soon, to
observe the repetitive nature of human beings. Outwardly, facial expressions,
bodily gestures, speed of movement, sequence of behaviour, standard of behaviour
expressing values and preoccupations, predispositions, prejudices, and level of
awareness are enough to have us throwing up our arms in dismay: how, in what
way, and by means of what is the human animal differentiated from any creature
whose consciousness emanates from and is dominated by the base chakras of fear,
survival, belonging, and acquisition?
Mostly, by far,
human beings live their lives in a state of emergency, under conditions of
survival, fearing the worst, expecting disaster, dreaming of terrible violence,
poverty, paucity, anticipating the ravages of time, the onset of distress,
calamity, and failure -- in short, imagining a tragedy of life a million times
worse than what will, in all likelihood, ever happen to them.
What are we to make
of this? Do we genuinely live in a state of desperation anything like the one
we fear? Is our state of terror in any way equal to the threat actually posed?
Does our level of anxiety in any way represent a balanced response to what
might happen to us?
The fear of
poverty, I have noticed, is usually more prevalent in people who have access to
more than average funds. The fear of death in those who are not even ill, let
alone terminally ill. The fear of loneliness (in old age, for example) more
present in those who seem, on the face of it, more attractive prospects for
companionship. What do we make of this? Fear masquerades as panic, paralysis,
and hysteria, among other emotions, hides in dread, desperation, intimidation,
and hesitancy, and is thinly disguised in worry, jitteriness, and uptightness.
People today are shy, distraught, contracted, agitated, tense, and
apprehensive, which are all signs of fear.
The former
psychotherapist, now writer, and spiritual and social commentator, Stephanie
Dowrick, points out that the fear of death is part of the infant's early
experience, according to Melanie Klein. Dowrick goes on to say:
This is the fear of
'nothingness,' against which humankind has throughout history woven stories to
promise 'somethingness.' Heaven, reincarnation, the sphere beyond... let me
know through my body that I am alive, because it is certainly my body which
will be unequivocally dead. (Stephanie Dowrick, Intimacy and Solitude, p.157)
She goes on to
discuss sex, drinks at the bar, and human contact as ways to avoid fear,
loneliness, feelings of unlovableness, and abandonment... but the ultimate is
the avoidance of death. Fear of death conceals a deeper fear, as I have written
about before:
To live -- to truly
live -- there is really only one fear to overcome. Only one fear because it is
the one which comprises all the others. That is the fear of death. Within this
mighty fear is our denial of life, our avoidance of life, our lack of courage
in life, and ultimately our fear of life. Fear of death is fear of life and now
you sense what the journey of self-discovery has been all about. It is the
shedding of fear in the form of our obsession with survival, our terror of not
existing, our urge to rise out of the ground of being and realize ourselves as
(and here is the great point of choice) our individual, separate self or as the
true Self. (Richard Harvey, Moksha Dawn, p.42)
The mechanics of
the emotional-behavioural patterns are as effective and predictable
as they are proscriptive and confining... we fear our death; we fear our fear
-- but our greatest fear is our fear of life:
Emotional-behavioural
patterns are the automatic ways in which we react to life-automatic because
that's how we avoid risk and insecurity. We fear fear! We fear the unexpected.
We fear uncertainty. Just look at someone walking into any new environment,
because it's easier to observe others -- but better still look at yourself. You
plan what you will say, how you act, and how you will relate. You have a
repertoire of possibility and safety. You react within the parameters of these
anticipated circumstances and your rehearsed "responses." (Richard
Harvey, "Liberation from Conditioning: An Interview on the Sacred
Attention Therapy Project")
Life is so nailed
down for most of us, there is no room for the surprising, the spontaneous --for
an eruption of the sacred. With regard to "the emerging sacred
reality" the author Ken Carey writes:
Fear has a small
role to play in Creation. It functions as a warning system, advising each
creature of behaviour that might cause biological damage. Its role is to
protect the physical body. It was never meant to motivate human beings. Where
fear is honored as a source motivation, consciousness diminishes... The Fall
occurred when human attention turned to fear... (Ken Carey, Vision, P.9, my
italics)
We have arrived at
a simple truth: the fear that underlies our selling-out our humanity and
enacting our lives through self-imposed emotional-behavioural patterning was
never intended to be our mode of living, hiding behind the anachronistic need
for protection, feeling "safe" through repressing the life-force.
Fear of death is
fear of surrender to Infinity.
Learn to surrender,
to exist at Infinity while alive, and fear of death dissolves.
Fear of death is
fear of the Unknown.
So says Adi Da
Samraj in The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace. The unknown
awaits the one who sheds his emotional-behavioural patterns. It is something
wonderful -- what Rumi might call "a surprise of roses" -- but then
it is utterly ordinary and quite mundane. Life itself flows very close to you
and when you are released from your patterning, it pours through you like a
great refreshing torrent.
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