The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Fear and love

So, then, let's take a look at our basic ideas.  From time to time, it's a good idea to go back to the foundation...and because the basic ideas behind LIFEWRITING, the FIVE MINUTE MIRACLE, and THE MASTERY TECHNIQUE are very very simple, we have to look at them from every angle, and see how they apply in every situation.  You may by now grasp that I'm trying to build a four-dimensional model that can lurk about in your subconscious, giving you greater and greater access to your intuitive intelligence and personal energy.
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Again, I am fully aware that this is an oversimplification.  All models are.   Please grasp what I'm saying "between the lines" and forgive me for being so dualistic.  Life has one aspect, two aspects, three, four, seven, all the way up to infinite.  Each way of looking at the universe produces different results, and has different disadvantages and advantages.  That said, here we go again...
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  Are you clear on your fear reactions, and how they manefest appropriately and inappropriately?  The questions of life and death plague us all, and I've met very few human beings without some kind of an ab-reaction here.  They over or under react, carry fear from things that happened in childhood, react to power or relationship issues as if they were mortal concerns.  We have two basic nervous systems: sympathetic and parasympathetic.  The sympathetic nervous system, which responds to the "Fight or Flight" drive, might be said to be powered by Fear.  The parasympathetic nervous system "cools you down" and is what most forms of meditation seek to trigger.  It might be said to be powered by Love.  The following oversimplifications might help to clarify how these aspects can be visualized or conceptualized:

Sympathetic-Parasympathetic
Ida-Pingala (yogic energy)
Male-Female
Right Brain-Left Brain
Conservative - Liberal
Yang-Yin
Management- Art
Warrior-Healer
Adult-Child

Pick your own metaphor.  They all work, as long as you don't mistake them for the reality of existence, or attach scalar values to one or the other.  Note how often each "side" considers itself "correct" and tries to norm its values to the exclusion of the other.  But in the yogic model (ida and pingala) these two energetic "channels" wind up the spine, and only by balancing them does the kundalini energy rise up "shusumna" and produce an evolutionary effect.  It is in the willingness to explore the concept of balance--WITHOUT getting locked into the "this and not that" box, that we confront one of the prime paradoxes of existence, and in resolving the paradox, move on  to the next phase in our lives. 
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This is similar to studying anatomy (individual organ systems) one day, and physiology (the interaction of organ systems) the next.  We move back and forth between over-isolation and over-generalization, because the actual balance point is so delicate as to be almost invisible.  Play with these concepts.  Where does your own fear manefest?  In relationships?  Career?  Your body?  Are you equally comfortable in artistic and management modes?  Can you enter flow state while you balance your checkbook?  think of the horrible arguments between artists and the book companies or movie studios they work for.  Villains!  they shriek.  And yet, if artists or writers start publishing companies or studios, the artists who come to work for them will complain in the exact same way.  What happens here? 

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there are different life roles, different positions from which we look at the same mountain.  To understand this is to embrace all of the myriad aspects of the human experience, and seek communication rather than blame.  There are monsters on both sides.  And great, loving folk on both sides.  And when those men and women...or liberals and conservatives...or artists and managers...or adults and children...reach out to each other to understand, the world gets a little brighter.  Fear and Love join together to create an energy for which we have no effective label.  It is the pure white energy, like pure light before it strikes the prism of experience.  One has to go beyond words.  It can be experienced.  The path to it can be pointed to.  But it can't quite be spoken of...unless you too have seen it.

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