If we carefully observe Uncertainty, we realise that we have only 2 ways to deal with it. Fear it. Or have Faith in it.
By now, you might have observed from my blogs, that I have innumerable wonderments about our Fondness. Fondness with Success, with Categorising, with a Leader, with generalising views, etc. There is one more Fondness, and that is the fondness with Measuring the uncertainty! A world of probability. It’s really fascinating and by my profession, I dwell in that world too! I tend to treat this probabilistic analysis about the “event” as another form of, “Neti Neti”, that is, “Not this, Not that” type of analysis. It gives us a momentary satisfaction to have captured the Unknown in our hand! I enjoy that moment of satisfaction. But It just takes “materialisation” or “manifestation” of that “event”, to realise the futility (people like to call it utility) of our exercise (actually audacity) to catch hold of that Unknown!
And believe me or not, that fondness doesn’t stop just there! It goes one step further. We “label” it Risk Analysis! Let’s not get into our another fondness to label the things. 😊 In this Risk Analysis, we first expect the returns of our action (or an investment), and then “calculate” the “chance” that this return differs from the actual return! Amazing, one step further, isn’t it?
Our boldness to fool ourselves, moreover taking pride in it, is commendable so much so that one of my favourite authors Nassim Taleb has entire book written about this boldness, called “Fooled by Randomness”!
Coming back to Fear. Everything we saw above, has a root in Fear. Unfortunately the world is governed by Fear. It’s true that evolution requires fear for its progress. But we also know that evolution is blind to what happens in future. It just follows Time.
All our responses have their root in Fear. Because we don’t know Love. Let’s keep discussing Love for another blog.
We often forget that there is one more friend offering his helping hand in the time of Uncertainty. Faith! Even if we don’t forget, we still prefer to ignore his friendship offer. We feel that Fear will help us more. Fear asks us to respond, or react. And therefore our classical responses are fight, flight and do nothing. These all bold endeavours mentioned above to fool ourselves are nothing but one of the fight, flight or do nothing responses. Basically we fear that our life is at risk. Even if we don’t take risk and play safe, it is because of fear too! If we take risk, it is also because of a descendant of fear, greed.
What would happen to my family if I die? I must “secure” my future by fearing it! Good luck! We forecast our income till retirement and do retirement planning as if we have been guaranteed (by our Fear 😊) to live by that time. We sense our competitors faster than our body sensations. Because they are threat to our existence.
We often take our beloved ones to the doctor because we fear something bad would happen to them (and we think it’s because we love them. Really?). In society, we behave in a manner driven by fear of rejection. How would people think about me, if I do this? We do everything to keep or build our image (it’s another story that we think we do everything for the promotion of justice and our sense of duty!).
We have beliefs about ourselves, about society, about relationships. Beliefs are always false! All beliefs are associated directly or indirectly with fear. Our anger (response to our ego being threatened), our anxiety (response to being heavily biased towards a certain outcome), our envy (response to our position being under threat), our greed (response to fear of future, or fear of loss of opportunity), all of our enemies are direct descendants of the mother of all, The Fear!
There is Faith on the other hand. If I choose Faith, I become fearless! All my actions (notice, they are not reactions, any more) are guided by the higher power of Intuition or the highest power of Awareness, or Love!
One similarity or difference between fear and faith, to me, is: Both deal with uncertainty. And yet are polar opposites.
Fear asks us to react, or respond. Obviously because we are her Grip. We are not free to act. We live happily in Her prison.
Whereas Faith inspires us to act, of course fearlessly. Freedom is what Faith gives us. It’s not a Grip, it’s Grace!
In fear, we mourn the death of the Known.
In faith, we are ready to welcome the Gift of (from) the Unknown!
Inspired by Anthony De Mello
The fear, without any doubt, is the most “preferred”, “the most faithful” and “the most favorite” soldier of King Ego! And it is the biggest hurdle in becoming Aware!
It is precisely because such an all pervading nature of fear that Shri Swami Samarth from Akkalkot (town of wisdom), assure his disciples:
“Do not have fear. I shall always be with you! “
Swami samarth maharaj, akkalkot
PS: Main inspiration behind writing this blog is my teacher Anthony De Mello. I call him Love Guru! 😊
Reinvent The Self! 