Fear & The Illusion Of Identity
Here in the UK, we had two days of ridiculous heat. The weather maps were blood red and the news reports said we’d all die in horribly hot ways if we stepped outside. It was media fearmongering – the action of deliberately arousing public fear. It can get good folk thinking in negative ways, and cause the good folk who are already caught in the trap of negative thinking, thinking even more negatively. We’ve had a few years of almost constant fearmongering, and no doubt there’s more to come, so hey, don’t believe the hype, because our job is to protect our bucket.
All negative thoughts are converted into anxiety and drop into your stress bucket. A little stress in there is great – it gets you to work on time and to meet a deadline. We empty it every night in REM sleep, which is 20% of a good night’s sleep – and that isn’t much. So, if we add too much in the day than the brain can empty at night, the level rises. The higher the level, the more we fall from the vast intellectual main cortex of the brain – all the control, wisdom and resourcefulness we could ever need and more – to the primitive emotional part of the brain – the limbic system. It is home to the flight, fight and depression response. It is a negative, obsessional and vigilant mind that sees the worst-case scenarios and repeats old negative patterns of behaviour, which is great for when we come across a tiger – the stress shoots up, we lose intellectual control and act now, with panic, anger or enough depression to pull the rug over our head until the situation has changed – but it’s rubbish for non-duality and everyday life.
The more we think negatively, the more time we spend in the primitive mind, and the more time we spend in the primitive mind, the more we’re encouraged to think negatively – so round and down we go.
In this survival mode, we are very much the person, the body-mind. The illusion of identity is all we can see, because that will help us to survive the tiger. If there is a tiger, be nothing other the body-mind and protect it so that you’ll see tomorrow – that’s the remit when the stress goes up. But if there’s not a tiger, the foundations of a quiet mind are found in having the bucket down low, so that the control, positivity and neuroplasticity of the intellectual mind are in full effect – which I’ve found is essential in the world of non-duality or any goal, or goalless goal, you have in mind.
Unless there’s a life-threatening emergency growling in your face, reject fear and go the other way – grow the foundations of a quiet mind, flow through life’s challenges and abide in being again and again and again.