I can’t recall a time when fear was not an influence in my life. To me, life is born into the world through the forces of instinct and need, it’s called survival.
Need is the result of perception, a state of want that’s influenced by fear. Fear has an influence at the unconscious level of thought which in turn can influence creation. Nature, which dominates all levels of consciousness, drives the continuation of life. Built into every generation is a need to continue life through its offspring. A species’ survival relies upon this fail-safe measure to defend against unforeseen circumstances that could cease their continuation – extinction.
And yet, extinction is a natural effect of change in the form of evolution. Life evolves. As some species evolve into new species, others pass away into extinction – sometimes en masse.
The first motivating activity of a new life is to seek a means of survival. Through the processes of intake (breathing, eating), the newborn seeks to end the sense of incompleteness, unwholeness, and hunger for fulfillment. A need to feed in order to survive is thus born in EACH new member of a species.
When I perceive a hunger, I seek to satisfy it. A desire to feed turns into a need to feed when I sense emptiness or unwholeness. Feeding is my means of fulfilling the need – seeking to make me feel whole… again.
In the animal world, fear is a strategy representing an illusory ability to control a future in which our needs are filled each and every time. Thus, where there is perceived need, fear steps in to ensure fulfillment. The strategy has some limitations, to be sure – one obvious flaw in this strategy is that I often do not experience fulfillment after I have felt afraid. In most cases, that which I feared had substantially less impact on me than I imagined it. In fact, I probably expended much more life-force energy fearing an imagined outcome than I did when I actually experienced an outcome.
Fear steps in as a psychological defense against losing a source of fulfillment. In our tipsy-turvy world, fear of loss replaces loss itself, such that I tend to feed the fear of loss to avoid experiencing the loss itself, even when the loss is likely of low impact. By feeding the fear, I preserve the need. It’s as though need takes on a life of its own – complete with its own life-preserving fear strategies.
Every feed begins with a question in the form, “Who am I without ……?” Comments like, “I’m starving, famished, crazy hungry,” “I can’t seem to get enough.” “I want/need more.” etc. suggests an identity association with need. This seems to be true of emotionally driven thoughts about identity – it starts with a feeling of not enough and morphs into emptiness and followed by an active need to fill it. Feeling less than – powerless, helpless, unfulfilled, etc. suggests a hunger that goes to the core of our perceptual identity. “How do I gain a sense of wholeness of my identity?” Sometimes a sense of being satisfied is as temporary as the imagination is about wholeness. Surviving implies filling a need – feeding and feeding implies satisfying the fear of – not surviving.
My belief that I’m “not enough,” focuses a fear of not surviving, by enrolling others into my drama of need, exploits my actual worth by forcing support of worthiness. Digging for compliments, flushing out reassurances of being good enough from others – disrespects self and them into a pointless drama that ties up my imagination into a fruitless venture that can’t be satisfied by any amount of praise or flattery. Comparing myself to others, and thinking I’m better or worse than they are sets me up for a fear feed. Although I may hope this tactic satisfies my negative self image, it can offer me no more than a temporary sense of justification, an illusion of well-being as thinly veiled as true worth as air in a bubble.
My physical body gives me feedback to food/fuel levels required for maintenance of life. It is my thought-created understanding of what my body needs as compared to what my body actually needs that cause my mind to believe there is actually bodily feedback of pain and suffering, when there is no such thing happening. In order to exist physically – I MUST process – air, water and food. In order to exist as thought – I BELIEVE I must control my world through fear to prove I exist until I awaken to another way of being.
Nature tends to provide what all life requires to survive based on –
- Cooperation and problem solving.
- Intelligent use of resources and conservation.
- Respect for laws of nature.
- Communication and sharing.
There are two major requirements for survival based on fear –
- Do whatever it takes to live.
- Be on constant alert.
When I am feeding fear, I am seeking to avoid what I fear, which is pain and death. By feeding fear, I’m creating a probable need for resistance to the natural flow of nature. Resistance creates conflict, which I try to justify as real. Conflict brings more of what I justify by believing I did not create what is being directed at me from external sources. The more I believe fear is real and must be fed – the more I will seek to prove that belief. I must continually justify my fear – need – feed cycle.
