zenjones

Hallowe’en is a week away, and as my practice more and more becomes an exploration of fear, I thought I would use the holiday to deepen my awareness of fear.

It is interesting that we have this celebration of all things scary—as if our culture knows the importance of awareness of fear. There are many ways in our culture to experience fear in a controlled environment: horror movies, amusement park rides, reading scary novels. But, of course, one of the main causes of fear is realizing you have no control.

I remember going to see Jaws and “controlling” my fear. I was surprised and gratified that I could use my mind to avoid fear, telling myself it was only a movie, and being curious as to how they achieved their horrific effects. I did this at all horror movies after that, keeping a tight rein on my reactions. It wasn’t ’til Alien, 15 years later, that I decided, What the heck, let’s see what happens if I let myself get scared. I shrieked, I mashed my face into a throw pillow, and eventually found myself sitting on the back of the couch pressed against the wall, trying to escape that monster. It was really fun to let myself get scared!

Real fear is not so fun, nor so easily accessible. For me, anger is my instant refuge. No matter what fear inspires it (of being unloved, of being discovered worthless, of losing comfort, of loss of control, of loss of identity), I flip right to anger, and rarely experience the actual fear viscerally. Often I can see it intellectually, and I go back to try to re-experience it sometimes, but anger keeps me safe from fear.

Hallowe’en is concerned with the fear of death, which doesn’t do much for me. I’ve survived the deaths of loved ones, and I don’t fear what comes after this life. I do have a fear of many of the processes that take you up to death—of pain, of loss of independence and loss of dignity.

I wish I could greet the fear in my life as I did when I let myself experience fear at horror movies: Hey, this is fun! And I wonder what our costumes would look like if we dressed up as our real fears.