Clearing out the Crud  Chapter Three

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FEAR is powerful

I think the more encompassing word is fear.  Fear causes hatred, fear causes almost every negative emotion we feel if you really look at it.  Fear causes hate.  You don't hate for no reason.  If you look at something you believe you hate, look at why.  There has to be a threat there.  We don't just hate for no reason.  Love is natural, it is everywhere and flows everywhere.  Hate is not natural, it is something we determine, we choose, and we create.  It is a way we react to something we fear.

Look at the events of September 11^th, 2001.  A man many of us had no idea even existed, caused us to fear in ways we never had before.  He turned our perception of flying, working, daily life and the view of our safety around 180 degrees.  He, in turn, is afraid of the United States for whatever reasons.  He struck at us in hate.  Most of us heard his name and immediately many used the word hate in conjunction with him.  Osama Bin Laden is a man to be hated.  In reality, he caused us fear, and we hate as a result of our fear.

I went out to eat at a Waffle House a few days after the World Trade Centers collapsed, and the cook was going off about how evil this man was, as well as the religion and nation of Islam.  He was venomous in his hatred for Bin Laden and the nation of Islam.  I spoke up about the fact that maybe in reality, Bin Laden had masterminded this strike against the U.S., but how could the whole of a religion and nation be seen to be evil because of one mans' actions.  He responded passionately about the people shown in the streets cheering after they heard of the strike.  I offered that it showed a small amount of people reacting to something they really had no conception of.  We were shown a people who live in war, know mostly war and pain, reacting to someone else having a dose of what they get daily.  Not everyone in Afghanistan was cheering, not every believer in Islam rejoiced at the pain the faceless people in New York were feeling.  I was soundly ignored, and he continued to spew hate for so many people he didn't even know.

How could he hate this man so much?  He never met Bin Laden; nothing was done personally to him except to give him fear.  The cook now feared, reacted in fear and gave his fear a name.  This guy just succeeded in clogged up his pipes.  Fear caused so many reactions in him.  Pain, hatred, inability to forgive and more fears that sprouted from the first pang of fear. I understand the feeling; I had some fear, too.  …At first.

Human beings have evolved living with fear.  Early man lived in a pretty hostile world.  Animals big and small could hurt and kill.  Fear was an emotion that developed.  Fear caused a rush of adrenaline that enabled him to overcome the animal, or run to live another day.  The fight or flight reaction was a reaction to fear, and undoubtedly saved many a human beings skin.

Later in history we learned to use the same response with our own kind.  We settled down in agricultural units, our well-being revolved around the crops and animals that were our food.  The natural resources were our shelter and protection.  We feared losing them, others taking them, a lack, a diminishing of.

Fear was a constant, something we used and developed.  We feared losing anything and everything.  Fear was taught to us as children, their perceptions became our own.  Fear bred hate.  Hate of the person who took something from us, and even fear that someone had more than we had.  Thousands of years of crud was clogging us up as we developed.

Is fear really necessary?  Did we have to turn to fear to survive?  Would not respect have served the same purpose without the destruction.  Respect the huge animal that wants to eat you.  With teaching to respect the tiger, you can avoid it as readily as being taught to fear it.  To respect the forces of nature and learn how to avoid or overcome the adversity, would work as well as fear.  Respecting the need to take care of and protect your crops and animals, without the fear of losing them, would be less harmful to ourselves and those we feared.  Relinquishing the perception of owning something or someone would take away the fear of losing it or them.

Fear is not necessary, it is learned, and learned but good it seems.  Take a baby or a toddler.  We teach them to fear.  Don't touch the stove, don't run into the street, don't talk to strangers, snakes are scary, bad things will happen, be afraid.  Be afraid!  Be AFRAID!!!  Well maybe we need to teach them about those things, but should we teach them to fear?  We fear for them and pass on that fear. Should we not teach them to understand? 

As a child grows, he learns more and more of the world and puts aside foolish myths. At a certain point we undo the claims of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and Jack in the Beanstalk becomes just a story, but we neglect to undo the teachings of fear. We gave them fear before they were able to assess threats to their persons for themselves.  We don't undo the perceptions we give them for their safety and health.  We don't grow out of fear; we embrace it and pass it on.  We clog them up from the very beginning.  The man who ordered the attacks on New York and Washington September 11th, was taught fear just as the rest of us, and he chose to nurture and cultivate and expand that fear, and many of us in return have taken it and expanded it within ourselves.  A vicious circle going the wrong way.

I felt the fear at first and began to react.  Oh my God, why did this happen, oh moan, oh groan.  I felt true pain in my heart for those hurt and those who had lost family and friends.  I had anger at the people responsible for this. I was glued to the TV set, uncomfortable and angry, I didn't like it.  What could I do differently? I found myself stopping and paying attention to what I felt.  How could I make this feeling go away? 

I had to let go.  Let go the fear, let go the blame, let go the hate.  When I did let it go, a piece of crud slipped away and I felt much better.  Others of the same mind began to communicate with me, and I found that there was a lot of love flowing around.  Not just for the people who lost loved ones, who were hurt, confused and in pain.  I found love going out to the people who had been involved in this attack.  They were in pain, they hurt and were afraid and lashed out, as I have done many times.  My lashings out haven't caused the scale of pain that mobilized this world, at least I don't think so, but I have hurt and feared and lashed out.  I have had to forgive myself and was forgiven, and pain and hurt and fear receded.  Could I do less for these men who needed love and forgiveness just as much as I did?

Without the crud, there was no fear.  No hate, no pain.  Compassion, certainly and prayers for those who were still in fear, but, my pipes were unclogging and I could feel okay again. 

 Human beings, by changing the inner attitude of their minds,
can change the outer aspect of their lives. - William James

Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself. -Tolstoy

When we let go of fear, it doesn't mean anything changes except ourselves. That is all we can do. Take care of ourselves.  If we stop the fear inside ourselves, there is change.  We open up another pipe for love to flow through.  It maybe doesn't seem like much, but it is.  Everything we do affects the world we live in.  Stopping the fear you feel inside yourself makes a universal difference.  Like the water cycle, tiny differences have a world of effect.  Maybe you can't measure it, or see it, but the difference is there.  That's what counts.

In chaos theory there is a phenomenon called “The Butterfly Effect”.  It was developed by a Meteorologist named Edward Lorenz in 1963.  Basically it is the propensity of a system to be “sensitive to initial conditions”.  It started out with the theory that, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.   His next talk had changed it to Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?  The butterfly effect amplifies the condition upon each iteration. 

Now this is just a theory, but I personally think it is valid.  Everything we do affects something, which affects something, ad infinitum.  Look at the world today.  A world of fear basically.  Our worlds are ruled by fear.  We have security systems for fear someone will steal something of ours.  We now go hours early to catch a plane because of fear, most of what we do and see is ruled from fear, people sue at the drop of a hat, and companies change the way they do things and change our lives by effect due to the fear of being sued.  Fear generates more fear, which, well you know what happens.  Love does just the same.  As you create love in your life, You create a force set in motion out in the world and the butterfly effect is set in motion.  And it all starts in your mind….

It takes a conscious choice.  We have choices.  It's all about choices.  We choose to perpetuate fear, or to replace it with love.  Fear serves no purpose.  Hate serves no purpose.  Neither makes us feel good.  We may feel righteous in our hatred, even powerful for a bit, but it saps you in the end, clogs you up.  It takes you a step away from feeling good, from feeling love.  You have a choice.  But it means listening, learning, letting go and living it.  Listen to your heart, not your pain, not the grumbling of others, not society or any other man-made construction.  Listen to the voice, the spirit, the inner child, your heart, nothing else.  Let go the old preconceptions and learn to live another way, a gentler, happier more loving way.

Society and its morals are fleeting.  They change daily, hourly, all the time.  Unfortunately, fear and its many disguises (hate, greed, pain, etc.) are the driving force behind most of society.  During the “dark ages” in Europe, babies born with deformities or handicaps were considered “evil” and were routinely killed when born. Deformed infants were killed at birth in India and China and by Greeks and Romans¹. In Athens, deformed babies were abandoned, exposed to the elements at the gymnasium. In Sparta, a council examined newborns, and the weak and deformed were thrown into a deep canyon from Mount Taggetus.  In Reformation Europe, Martin Luther called infants with congenital defects "changelings that Satan lays in the place of the genuine child, that people may be tormented by them²."  In Denmark defective babies were placed in a hot oven to die.  In Scotland they were left on the beach at low tide in hope that the "little people" would take back the undesirable child.  In the 12^th Century, children who were born with deformities were cherished as they grew, but rarely would be allowed to be married, and were most certainly barred from the priesthood.

The Nazi's had a pilot project before the Holocaust, the German "Euthanasia" program. Between 1939 and 1941, 70,000 to 100,000 patients -- mentally ill, disabled, men, women, and children -- were killed by lethal injection or gas.  The problem was that it escalated into killing people whose deformity was their race.

Things have changed.  Now there are laws to protect those with physical and mental differences.  They are not regarded as “evil”, though they still have to run the gamut through people’s perception of them.  So we have learned not to fear a child born different.  Or have we? 

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values.  Professor Singer is also know as “Professor Death”.  Mr. Singer's teachings include the suggestion parents should have the right to kill their infants up to 28 days after birth if the children have severe disabilities.  At that age, he says, children don't understand what it means to be alive.  "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person," Mr. Singer has written.  "Very often, it is not wrong at all^3”.   This is from his book “Practical Ethics" 

He is not alone.  Steve Pinker, in The New York Times two years ago, argued that "we need a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being and grant it a right to life."  He went on to argue that "the right to life must come…from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess.  One such trait is having a sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people."  A baby, it would seem, has not had such experiences.  Other traits, he argued, "include an ability to reflect on ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die³." Heck with that logic all babies should die. 

And there is John Stewart Mill, a 19^th century philosopher who pushed forward the concept of “utilitarianism” is often cited as the ethical foundation for the modern-day suggestion that mentally and/or physically deformed babies should be destroyed. Many of those who think we can determine who is to live use Mill's utilitarian philosophy. 

On the flip side we have such things as a Study Paper from the American Lutheran Church.  In their Journal of Lutheran Ethics, a paper on Health, Life and Death: A Christian Perspective, there is a section called Christ's response to the Challenge.  It is very enlightening and enlightened.  In one particular sentence it sums up perception of others very well.  “However, the handicap that an individual struggles with may be more obvious and visible than is the person.”  How true.  We often overlook the person in our struggles with perception.  If you ever get the chance to see the play “Twilight of the GOLDS”, don't pass it up.  It is a wonderful study in fear and perception.

At any rate, society and its morals change, and we often feel helpless to stand outside of the norm.  Even if it causes us pain and suffering, for most of us fitting in is more important than our health and well-being.  More important even than our happiness.  And it is all from fear.  People hurt others from fear, rip them off, put them down, in fact every mean thing you have done or have had done to you comes from fear.

It may be hard to swallow, but fear causes and has caused every negative thing you have ever encountered.  Behind every person who has hurt you, wronged you and made you mad, is fear.  Every time you have attacked someone it had a base in fear. And the thing to remember is that the pain, fear or hurt you or they caused was a cry for love. Underneath all the excuses and the lies we tell ourselves, there is something that was feared.  And we needed love back.

 The fear and attack we receive from others doesn’t always have to do with fear of us personally.  It may have nothing to do with anything we have done. 

 Ever gone to a fast food drive-thru and been treated rudely?  You didn’t do anything to deserve it; you just wanted something to eat.   You ask for extra ketchup and get a mean stare and the ketchup almost thrown at you.  You feel attacked and often you retaliate for the rude behavior you have received.  How was this fear?  It is just a bad-mannered person treating you badly.  There could be a hundred reasons why the person treated you so unjustly, and you did nothing to deserve it. 

 Maybe the person ahead of you cussed them out about not getting enough ketchup and thy fear another scene.  Could be the manager threatened to fire them for giving out too much ketchup to everyone.  They could be losing their house or car that day and see you all snug and seemingly okay and react to that.  Who knows, who cares.  The thing is they feel fear and need love. 

 You don’t have any personal obligation to them, but what would be the harm in showing love back to them instead of attacking them with a look or with words.  At this point your choice is for you not them.  You could give them that dirty look and drive of in a huff, angry and ready to spread your anger around to others much as the fast food worker did to you.  You could give them a piece of your mind, or talk to the manager and complain about the employee.  You are right and they are wrong and we have learned that attacking back is the way to feel better. 

Sorry, but you are wrong and only hurting yourself. 

 You are the one that will have this negative incident on your brain the rest of the day, and who knows how long.  You haven’t done anything that benefits you.  Nothing negative benefits you in any way.  Even the fleeting feeling that you got them back, or made their day worse isn’t a good feeling, you have sunk to a lower level in retaliating and that is not a good feeling.  Now we have been taught that it is good to fight back or stand up for yourself, but it isn’t good or right.  It is part of the crud that blocks us. 

 Someone was hurting and now you have hurt yourself.  So what could you have done to leave feeling better both for yourself and the employee?  Simple.  Give the love that they were craving from someone.  It doesn’t have to be anything big, just a smile and a thank you would suffice.  A kind word would be better.  You can’t solve their problems or fears, but you don’t have to add to them and hurt yourself in the process.  A smile may be a small thing, but it removes a small piece of crud from both of you.

 There is a wonderful story about a dog trainer that shows how much fear can be interpreted wrongly as attack and how it can be overcome.

 As a young boy I had the opportunity to train with a man who was a master at "obedience" and guard dog training. On my first day of study he took me to an industrial site. Behind the fence of one warehouse yard was a madly barking dog who seemed intent at ripping us to pieces.

 My teacher handed me the keys to the fence lock and said “This is the first time I have seen this dog, and I have been asked to tame him down some. Open the gate and let the dog loose."

 I immediately started to think that raising tropical fish would be a better hobby than training dogs.
"I am new to all of this." I said, "Why don't you open the gate and show me how to do it?"

"I tell you what" he said, "Either I kneel down about ten feet from the gate and you swing the gate open so the dog cannot get to you, or we will do it the other way around, with you kneeling down out in the open."

 It didn't take me long to start putting the key in the lock, as my teacher moved to an open space and knelt down.

Low and behold, the dog raced out, seeming to ignore my teacher on the one hand, but running around in large loping circles that my teacher was the center of. My teacher was calm and slow to move, and eventually he reached in his pocket and pulled out some doggie treats. Within a minute or two he literally had the dog eating out of his hand.

"The lesson is," he said, "Every dog that's been trained in a violent manner barks and growls and appears to be genuinely mean when they are behind the fence. All the dog is really doing is showing you how frightened he is. The dog is expecting to be mistreated by you just as he has been mistreated by his trainer, and thus he is simply trying to protect himself and not the premises.

 When you open the gate on such dogs they invariably run out of the yard. Mistreated animals have no real 'home' to protect because there is nowhere in the world where they feel safe, loved, and protected. If your dog does not feel protected BY you, he will not protect FOR you."

Intuitively this made a lot of sense. I thought back on the kids that were the most violent in my high school. The ones from my neighborhood, I knew came from violent families. Their outward violence in school was actually a preemptive strike. Just like the mistreated guard dog, these kids were expecting to get mistreated by others, and thus they went into attack mode as a confused form of self defense, NOT as a form of offense.

"The louder the dog barks," my teacher said, "The more frightened he is. The primary identity of a beaten dog is one of fear."  

from Pure Heart, Simple Mind(tm) Official Newsletter of Seishindo(tm)  Volume 1, No.22; November 15, 2003

 It makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?  We go through so much of our lives feeling threatened and being afraid.  It seems normal to us.  It often seems more important to be right or inflict pain back for what you feel you are receiving, or to protect yourself against a threat. I can't begin to imagine why, nor do I have any conception of how we got to be this way when there is another way so easily had.  But I am not concerned with figuring it out.  I am interested with finding another way, and I much prefer being happy and content to what I was before.

As you know from your own life, fear is powerful. 

 Exercise:

Look at your life, honestly but not in judgment.  Find and experience the last time you were angry, or hurt someone, or cried or felt hopeless.  Don't look at the surface, he said that or she did that, look deeper.  Look at why you felt hurt or angry or fearful.  Try to take your feelings out of it. 

Tips:  If it helps, put someone's face over yours; look at yourself as you would a friend in the same situation (you will certainly se a situation differently when it is someone else's).  Or try to put  it in the past, time makes a difference.  The girl you loved in grade school crushed you and you were sure you would never get over it, now it is laughable, there is no sting, it is the past and you have moved on. 

Find what you fear or feared.  Picture yourself letting go of the fear and see if you can write a new scenario into the circumstances.  One that is positive, fear-free.   

Fear rules us all too often, and makes us miserable.  But, thankfully, there is a cure.  Ah yes, you know it well.  Love.

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