Exercise Twenty-Five

July 27th, 2006

Releasing Primal Fears

In exercise nine, we practiced searching out and letting go of the fear of fear.

Fear is one emotion that we avoid. If we are diligent at watching our emotions we realize how much of our life is about fear. We do most things in life to avoid having to 'face our fears'.

EXERCISE

The intent of our spiritual practice leads to the ultimate surrender of the self, for we aim at residing in the higher fields of consciousness.

This exercise is neither about what you should fear or shouldn't fear; it is about pulling up the hidden and the dark hold that fear has on the personality. It is about finding the primal fears of survival. Our greatest positionality, belief system or stance is that we are the self. We identify and name our self to have memories and a future. In order to release our self from this belief we must be willing to dissolve the primal fears.

We avoid thinking or searching out our base fears. These fears hold us tightly in the world view. They keep us protecting our life, searching for safety, constantly trying to protect and defend the self. If the final door to enlightenment means we must be willing to surrender this self, then let us practice getting over our 'self'. Let us look into the face of our deepest fears and release them. [Please review Exercise nine.]

• Choose one thing about which you are afraid (they are all about survival in some form or another).
• Abandonment - being alone;
• Death - Losing a loved; yourself, death of your children, grandchildren, partner, friends;
• Loss of safety: losing your home; you money; your status; the function of your body;
• Pain; an accident; old age; loss of bodily function, mental acuity; disease;
• The fear list is endless.
• Ask for Higher Help in making this list and trust whatever comes to mind. From now on be on alert for any situation in which you have a primal fear rise up.
• Watch your self hide away and scuttle away from those fears, just watch.
• Example: let's use the fear of being alone.
• Imagine your worst scenario, being alone, no family, friends, isolated. Use your imagination and measure your fearfulness on a scale of 1 - 10 with one being least, and 10 being the maximum.
• Now go through the process of letting go of the reason you are afraid. Instead, be with the sensation.
• Stop labeling it fear.
• Instead, tell yourself that this is how you feel when you think about being alone (or whatever the 'situation' is).
• Notice where you feel this in your body.
• Map it…tense neck? Shoulders? Tight stomach? Legs? Dry throat? Whatever the symptoms are, allow yourself to let them be.
• Tell yourself you can handle these symptoms, no matter what they are. You can just let them be.
• Imagine you are swimming past the symptoms into the energy field.
• You are moving into the whole field of fear.
• When here, you experience a generalized feeling, without a label.
• Now you have a vibration which is expressed in your body as these thoughts, this emotion, this sensation.
• So how this is expressed through us is what brings fear. This field-feeling, is what we avoid.
• Remind yourself this is the sensation of the energy field of 100 (this field may well include all the fields around it pride, desire, grief, apathy, guilt, shame).
• Remind yourself that courage is 200 on the same scale, while love is 500.
• Be in this energy field, watch it, allow yourself to notice it and not to fight or avoid it.
• When you do you will buoyantly gracefully move out of this field and into a higher vibration.
• Now how long it takes to drain the vibration out of this primal fear is not known.
• Just let the feeling, the sensation be, tell yourself you are feeling sensation, that is all.
• A survival mechanism had you avoid this sensation, dislike it, fight it.
• But now you go directly to the field and with no resisting, no taking a position about liking or -disliking the feeling.
• Eventually you will let go of this energy.
• In the meantime, understand that, when you treat it this way, this energy cannot affect you.
• The field of fear is like a sticky web, the more you resist it, the more it holds you, the more you believe it has power over you, the more its apparent strength grows.
• How long it takes you to release the resistance and drain away, does not matter, it will take as long as it takes. Do not resist it. Let it be.
• Remove the label of 'fear', don't call it anything. Let this energy be and thus prove to yourself that you are not afraid of it.
• Be aware that you will most likely lose track of the field sensation within seconds. This practice needs to be repeated over and over again.
• When you believe you have released a primal fear, go back to your scenario of being alone, or whatever you chose from your list and begin again to map the feeling in your body.
• If you feel the sensation has drained out, be certain, by bring the primal fear situation to mind once again. You will note that when the release is permanent you are no longer caught in the field of fear.
• If you do feel caught, it merely is a cue that more releasing is required.
• Move past the symptoms, let them be, do not resist the feeling.
• Primal fears may take some persistence to disentangle but are well worth the effort.

This exercise helps you to let go of the judgment of the primal fear energy as well as the belief in fear thought itself. How they hold you is by avoidance, how they trick you is by believing in their power. This exercise clearly dis-empowers the beliefs.