The Purpose of Fear

I have to wonder “aloud” here if there is any fear inherent in intuition or if the fear is really the resistant reaction to an intuition we have that seems be going against what we think we “want” or “expect” from the moment. It seems to me from my experiences that fear comes into these moments of intuition in order to cloud the clarity of what we are being shown from the broader perspective afforded by the wisdom of that “gut” feeling. Fear needs us to give our energies to it in order that it may live in and through us, and if we began to follow that wisdom of intuition that “goes before us to make the crooked places straight,” then fear would be forced to slowly die within us. So fear steps in and muddies the picture that intuition affords us in order that it may continue to live its base life.

The key, then, must be taking a step back anytime understanding is fuzzy. No decision should be made from this state because if what must be done is not clear, then we can count on the fact that fear has stepped in to attempt to eclipse the knowing and wisdom that we are intended to be in relationship with. This takes courage, particularly when one feels caught in a whirlwind of the pressing concerns and decisions and relationships of this world. Yet, this courage comes naturally when we realize that fear is blindness and that it can only lead us into a pit of despair. Fear (of a psychological nature) is always a conditioned response, and our intuition that we must stop and not make a decision from a confused and pressure-filled perspective will lead us to a transcendence of these conditioned responses. It is unfortunate that we have so ignored this intuition to stop in the midst of the storm of fear within us that it no longer seems to be an intuition, but we can open ourselves up again to its protecting wisdom whenever we choose to no longer run in the direction and do all the things that fear tells us we must do to “fix” the moment.

I do agree with you that fear is a sign that not all is well. However, I think that there is a subtle difference in what we are saying. When you say that you have had times (as we all have) in which you were steeped in fear due to an intuition against a particular course of action or path you were taking, I find these to be two separate things (fear and intuition). You then stated that another perspective was that fear was the intuitive response that the action you were taking was not the right one. The first way in which you stated it seems more accurate to me. The fear you were steeped in was a response to the intuition because there is another part of you that does not want to follow the intuition because it (this other part of you) already knows what it wants and for various reasons – all of which are unimportant – it does not want to accept the course of action that wisdome has provided you. (By the way, the “you” here is all of us – not pointed at you.)

I would say that it is the fear that corrupts the intuition and leads us in its blindness down the paths that our internal wisdom tells us are not good for us or those around us (sometimes, because even a dog has his lucky day, fear will accidentally in its blind groping lead us down the right path, which only further harms us because then we actually believe again in its lie as opposed to seeing it as the dumb luck it was). Pure intuition as I see it is fearless. For instance, there is an instinct when I pick up a hot pan on the stove to throw it down. I do not have to feel fear in order to know to throw it down. Or say I sense some kind of danger when stepping out into the road and my body becomes alert and steps back onto the sidewalk before being hit by a car. There was no fear in the instinctual knowing of what to do. The fear comes afterward when I think about what almost happened or could have happened to me.

The same could be said of your example of the woman in the dark parking lot. I think we confuse fear for the natural alertness of intuition. We have all heard that noise in the night in the dark of our homes that brought all of our senses wide awake. There is an appropriate heightened alertness there. But then where do we often go wrong? Fear steps in and our minds begin imagining all the bad things the noise can be, and in that moment our intuitive alertness is lessened and we are more susceptible to missing something important or making a mistake.

Yet, the fear I was speaking of in my original comments was psychological fear: fear of what may or may not happen tomorrow, fear of what this or that person thinks of me, fear of not having enough power or money or respect of fame, fear of failing at some decision or action one is called to take, fear of what to do, etc. I believe that if we all search our memories, we will recall moments in our lives when suddenly, in the midst of all the turmoil that our fears of this nature had been inflicting upon us, we had a quiet intuition that our lives were not meant to be ruled by fear in this way.

So, to the point of what I am saying, our first response to a fear we experience over some action we are taking should not be to decide is this fear telling me not to take this particular action because it is wrong for me but rather to understand that this fear serves no purpose in me other than to burden me with resistance to what I know instinctively is true for me in the moment. We have lost sight of this instinct over time as human beings because we live in a world that is ruled by fear and that teaches us that fear is the only way. We are asked to see through and past the fear to what is true for us in the moment. This goes along with the old saying that courage does not mean that one has no fear but that one did what was right in spite of the fear.

Fear always comes with two sides to it: one side will tell you why you should be afraid to take this course of action while another will tell you why you should be afraid if you don’t take this course of action. That is why there is pain and confusion over what is right for us when fear is the master we serve in the moment of experiencing its energy within us.

I say all of that to say that I agree with you that in the moment in which we notice fear in ourselves, we must sit with it, but the understanding that we want to gain of it is that it always comes from the same place: resistance to what is and to what we know to be true in the moment. Sure, there may be different external circumstances or conditions that elicit the fear each time we experience it, but the truth of it is that this is always the root of it despite how it shows up in us, and if we reflect on our lives, we can see the truth of this. Our first task, then, is not to try to analyze the condition that brought the fear up within us, or what the fear is telling us to do about the condition, but to understand the true nature of fear as a principle and see that it does not serve us as we presently believe it does. Once we see this and work with applying this understanding over and over in our lives, fear loses its power over us.

What is left, then, if we no longer consent to be guided by fear? True intuition. Our natural inheritence is regained. There is no pain or hesitation in true intuition (just like with throwing down the hot pan on the stove). One sees the way forward without suffering over that path in the way that fear makes us suffer due to its divisive and incomplete nature. In fact, it is fear that then stepped in during those moments I described above when our intuition told us we weren’t supposed to live in such fear and confusion and because we are so accustomed to living in fear, we eventually lost sight again of that intuition. We have lost even the clear intuition that fear as a guide is a hit or miss guide at best.

So yes, we must sit with fear as it is an indicator that something is not right, but what is not right about it is that it is circumventing that knowing that came before the fear. Fear is an emotional reaction to the instinct that we no longer trust because fear steps in and begins telling us what we are doing wrong. And if you’re like me, you’ve had fear lead you in one direction and then when that didn’t work out tell you why you were so stupid for going in that direction.

All moments of pure intuition are peaceful. There is a knowing of what we must do, and when we submit ourselves to that will, fear will normally step in and pretend to be the one to lead us down the right path, but we will not be fooled by its usurpation of our inherent gift of wisdom. The stopping in the midst of fear that we both talked about is really about reclaiming this gift from the throes of the fear that has imprisoned us and separated us from our natural and knowing intuition.

I think we can all look back in our lives and discover moments in which we were in relationship with this intuition. I know there are examples I could describe from my own life, some of which were major life-changing decisions, and because I followed that intuition despite the corruption of fear that tried to step in once I was aware of that intuition, I have never regretted those decisions, even if someone external to me might look at it and think it was a hard decision to make. Yet, if they had been inside me in the moment that I knew what I must do, they would see there was no struggle in me at all over the decision.

Thank you for a really stimulating topic and discussion! I am learning more about this through this conversation and through our perspectives on it.