October/November 2009
How to Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American
Howard Dean
Re-Indigenating Ourselves
Shaktari Belew
Learning to Make Wise Use of Fear
Crystal Arnold
Community: The Structure of Belonging
Peter Block
Eating is an Agricultural Act
Michael Pollan
Serious Health Problems Associated With Long Term Cell Phone Use
Environmental Working Group
Eyes and Vision
Peter Moore
Francis of Assisi, Yogi and Saint
Charlotte Nuessle
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
Learning to Make Wise Use of Fear
By Crystal Arnold
Fear is a basic emotion that everyone experiences.
The question is, how do we deal with it?
And how can we best deal with it?
Understanding how to manage and transform fear is one of the most important skills we can master. Listening to the news, one has a plethora of things to fear: nuclear war, climate change, swine flu, economic recession. Then there are also the unique life experiences that create fear within each of us, such as abandonment, betrayal, dying, lack of intimacy, or scarcity. Clearly, we cannot afford to ignore or avoid this primal human emotion. Last summer, I was significantly affected by a workshop I attended about working with fear (both personally and collectively) and interviewed the facilitators to bring forth their timely wisdom.
Robert and Diane Masters are well known for their exceptionally effective psychospiritual theories and prac-tices. They work intuitively and integrally, combining cutting-edge psychotherapy, bodywork, energetic attune-ment, emotional literacy, and fitting spiritual practices.
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Crystal Arnold: How is fear used to create a culture of control?
Robert Masters: The more afraid we are, the more inclined we are to want to control our environment, both outwardly and inwardly. We can get so obsessed with wanting control that we lose touch with what really matters. And of course the more fearful we can keep others, the easier it is to control them. Fear is a basic emotion that everyone experiences. The question is, how do we deal with it? And how can we best deal with it? Fear is mostly just excitement in endarkened drag. It is unpleasantly stuck life-energy, too contracted to be available for more life-giving purposes.
Diane Masters: Fear comes through contraction, grip-ping self-contraction. It is bound-up energy. But when that energy expands, it’s not fear any more. It becomes excitement, energy that you can use to improve your life.
Robert Masters: When we tap into our fear, go toward it and skillfully enter it—meeting the dragon, so to speak—there’s a tremendous liberation of energy. Then we can feel far more openly, whether it’s anger, joy, or sadness. We’re freed to take action, to really take action, because we’re no longer frozen.
Fear paralyzes us. Our culture is full of paralysis, impotence, and apathy. Many of us experience psycho-emotional numbness and then disguise or distract ourselves from that by indulging in lots of stimulating activities. Such things, whether narcotic or erotic or electronic, amphetaminize us, making us feel juicy and alive. But underneath all this is a sense of numbness.
To really work with fear is to denumb ourselves, and that means we have to feel, openly feel, the pain of the world. In this, we let our heart break open to include it all, and I mean all! Once our heart breaks open and we can, to whatever degree, include the pain of the world, we are part of the solution. The key to working with fear is to get inside it. Turn toward it and take your conscious attention into it, practice relating to your fear instead of from your fear. This means becoming intimate with your fear, knowing it from deep inside.
You speak about intimacy often. Could you define this?
RM: Intimacy means relational closeness. This most commonly means with another person, but it can also mean being relationally close to whatever qualities constitute us, qualities that we all have. In our work, we teach people to become intimate with all of it: our fear, anger, lust, shame, and joy, our darkest and noblest capacities, our yes, our no, what is dying, what is undying. Intimacy is absolutely central to our work. Everything exists through relationship—everything—and the pinnacle, the fullest flowering of relationship, is intimacy.
I prefer intimacy to transcendence. Intimacy transcends transcendence. My favorite definition of enlightenment is intimacy with all things. A prayer arising out of this is: May all things awaken me. May I let everything awaken me, including fear.
Whatever we want to turn away from is precisely where the gems are—right behind the dragon. When we go toward what’s frightening, we breathe it in. We connect with it, we get a bit more intimate with it. Then we make a discovery—things are less terrifying when we connect with them, when we make room for them in our heart, when we stop losing ourselves in separation. When we feel like we belong in the deepest sense, we can uncover and move our unique gifts forward, feeling empowered and at home in this mysterious universe. Fear then is not a problem, but just excitement in drag.
Money is a tool of connection that in modern society has been designed to separate us. We are told money can buy security, yet so many feel unsafe. They are afraid of losing their money and of not having their needs met. Vulnerability is key to creating a more intimate economy where we are able to care about each other, through expressing our needs and wants. What would a more intimate economy look like to you?
RM: One of the first things we have to do is cut through the notion in our culture that says “I don’t need anyone; I’m autonomous.” Many of us refuse to acknowledge our need for others and the fact that we’re all interdependent. We need to know that what we do to others we do to ourselves; if we don’t get this in our bones, we’re just part of the problem. I call this a “full-blooded” awakening—it’s not done to get away from anything, it’s a radical “yes” to whatever is arising, including our “no.”
So many teachings advocate turning away from our “lower” qualities, rising above or otherwise avoiding dealing with them. But it’s much more effective to turn toward such qualities, to include them even as we liberate ourselves from their viewpoint. The sky doesn’t have a problem with its dark clouds. It simply has room for them, without getting sucked in by their agendas. Such spaciousness, such openness, is ours to embody. There are many pathways that demonize ego, making a virtue out of eradicating it. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with ego, what really matters is what we do with it. The same with our other “undesirable” qualities. Anger can be used in ways that harm us, and it can be used in ways that bring us closer and helps awaken us.
An intimate economy would rely on people par-ticipating deeply and fully, while at the same time remaining intimately connected with themselves. If they were not practicing this, they might have great ideas on how to handle money, but it would likely be too theoretical. What we are considering here is practical and action-based, to be done amongst people who have in common integrity and honor and an ongoing commitment to cultivating intimacy with all that they are. Money has become extremely and alienatingly abstract, and is becoming even more so. This is a real problem, paralleling our estrangement from our feeling and interdependent selves.
DM: There has to be trust for this to be successful, and this goes back to doing your inner work so that you are trustworthy and transparent. Without real trust and transparency, there is no intimate community.
RM: There’s a reluctance in most people to do deep work and, especially, to make the changes that resonate with such work. We have to honor the fact that work on ourselves is a lifelong process—sometimes hellish, sometimes heavenly, but al-ways serving our healing and awakening. Through the ups and downs of our journey, we could choose to say, “I accept, I’m grateful, I’m in, I’m here, and I refuse to accept the bullshit that is taken to be normal in our culture.” There has to be a healthy dose of that revolutionary spirit, where we unequivocally declare that we’re not going to submit to such “normalizing.” In forming a healthier economy (or a healthier relationship), we have to be able to say “no,” so as to make room for a truly sane “yes.”
Money is often about the value and worth of an individual. When people are told that they’re not enough, something’s wrong with them, something’s missing, they aren’t able to live in gratitude and fully tap into a flow of prosperity. How do we choose our values as a culture, and how do we value ourselves?
RM: There’s a lot of shame around money. To look at money in depth is to also look at how you live, how you deal with things, your shame levels, your sense of worth, and your fear around all of it. I was diagnosed with cancer last fall, and because of that I had to cut back on my work, which meant that our income got cut in half. We had to deal with our fear around this. I reached a point where I just had to surrender, to fully embrace what I valued most of all. Now we’re moving in new directions with our work, directions that we very likely would not have followed if I’d kept working as before.
DM: We imagined the very worst scenario of what could happen, and then faced it. We even thought about being homeless, and there was a knowing that we wouldn’t be going there. But we took it to the core of what was there, and just got present with the fear of it, until there was no fear. This is a great practice to do.
You speak of “fierce grace.” We could see what’s happening in the economy and the collective now as fierce grace. People are shocked and uncomfortable.
RM: Our entire culture is in shock. Since the 1950s we have known that we can annihilate ourselves as a species. How did we deal with that? We went numb collectively, regardless of how stimulating our lives were. Shocks have a lot of power—we can use them to awaken ourselves or to go back to sleep. How do we use the shock of things like our income dropping, losing our home, our health declining, or a sudden death? If we don’t work well with a particular shock, then we’re “inviting” in bigger, more potent shocks. How hard do we have to be hit to wake up collectively? Very hard, I think. We probably have to hit bottom before we start to really turn the collective corner. Just like most addicts.
How does facing fear contribute to resilience?
RM: Working with fear skillfully makes one resilient. Once you’ve successfully dealt with your fear a number of times, there is a growing confidence. You realize you were paralyzed, but now there’s movement. Our capacity for resilience grows from openly facing what’s difficult. And face it we must, if we are to grow and ripen. In turning toward all that I realize more than just intellectually that my “lower” qualities are not demons, but just me in endarkened disguise.
Both of you, and so many others, have a deep desire to give of their gifts. How does fear relate to that?
RM: When fearful, you may think, “My gifts aren’t worth giving,” “If I give them who will want to receive them,” or “Who am I to do this?” We make ourselves small. Fear shrinks us. To give our gifts we have to embody who and what we really are. Then we’re not giving our gifts to get praise or egoic strokes, but because it’s our destiny, our soul’s expression and need. There is such a joy in moving our gifts, not because we become special in someone’s eyes, but because we are in deeply felt resonance with the whole of life. If we don’t share our unique gifts, we are denying the whole from having our own particular blossom.
DM: Part of our work with people is to heal that place within them that feels unworthy. Often there is an agenda for giving—we find people with the largest unhealed wounds tend to have the greatest need to be seen as very gifted or special in a unique way. But they are just sitting on a load of pain.
I see this within service-oriented people and community leaders around the country. Many of these people give so much from a place of sacrifice because “the community needs me.” Some become emotionally run down or even financially bankrupt. Could you speak to the healing that could happen with this dynamic?
RM: People have to look at the shadow of their giving. To what degree are they, by giving so much, compensating for difficulties they haven’t resolved? You get a lot of attention and praise if what you’re giving is spectacular. Self-sacrifice gets noticed. If someone is giving “self-lessly” and is getting run down, their giving is not as pure as it seems. There is an ulterior motive. Those who can truly give can also truly receive. Here, taking care of ourselves is not a luxury, but a necessity.
DM: For some it is easy to give, and their lack of self-worthiness makes it difficult to receive. They may feel there is no reason anyone would want to give to them, so they don’t really stop or slow down enough to be able to receive.
RM: When you’re truly giving to others you’re giving to yourself, too. If you leave yourself out of the equation, you’re making a major error—you’re not seeing that we’re all inseparably connected. If I identify with being the giver, helper, or healer, I have separated myself from you. It rigidifies our positions: You have to be helped and I need to help you. Thus do we lose touch with the “we” space, with community.
In this era of transformation many are honoring and integrating the Divine Feminine and the Great Mother archetype. With this, leadership and the way we create our money and communities becomes more about caring for the whole and looking at relationships as the true value and source of wealth.
DM: Men need to step more into valuing intimacy and relatedness. Part of our work with men is to help them open more deeply to vulnerability and their softer emotions, without losing any of their male force. It takes strength to let the emotions flow and to be vulnerable.
RM: Whether we begin with looking at fear or money, we seem to end up in the same place. When we act, we need to ask from where in myself is this arising? Where am I coming from when I handle money? Is the child in me playing with money now? Or the adolescent? Is there any greed, any sneakiness, any pain? Pay close attention, and you will know whose eyes you are looking through. Caring for the whole only works when we can back it up with real power, and that power comes from truly working on ourselves and our relationships.
What steps and resources do you recommend readers take?
RM: Start working with your fear and pain as soon as possible. Perhaps do some in-depth psychotherapy, or find a meditation practice that really grounds you. In my most recent book, Meeting the Dragon: Ending Our Suffering by Entering Our Pain, I take readers step-by-step through what the title suggests. I am creating an online course to work with personal and collective fear that will include guided audio sessions. And do not settle for a superficial approach to fear or shadow-work—the dragon must be met, and met fully. It’s not easy, but is definitely doable.
Could you speak to the fear of scarcity?
RM: This boils down to the sense of not being enough. Maybe we were not enough for our mother, father, or teacher—then we start to doubt our right to even be here, let alone having our needs met. Since we don’t have enough we get desperate, and then we can never have enough, even with millions of dollars. And then we also make choices out of desperation. If we are full of desperation, then our reality will be colored with a sense of scarcity. We can do all of the abundance affirmations in the world, but this is on top of our feeling of desperation. What we need to do is get more intimate with our desperation, freeing up its energies without believing its point of view.
DM: Longing is fine. But desperation is not just longing—it’s a twisting of longing. It’s combined with the fear that what we really need will never come, a fear that our efforts will be fruitless.
RM: There’s a sense in this that you have to have something—it’s fear driven, there is greed in it, and it’s dark. When we get desperate our job is not to act it out, but to name it and go toward it. In desperation, need becomes neediness. Neediness is when we get tricky and manipulative with our needs—we crave something and use unhealthy means to get it. Others can feel this, most will turn away from us when we are needy. The more needy we are, the more desperate and obsessive we become.
This is paralleled by people who are lonely. Among other things, I often present to them the practice of dating their loneliness. Invite your suffering onto the dance floor. Take a few spins with it. Pull your wallflowers onto the floor for a whirl. Do so sincerely, and loneliness mutates and expands into aloneness, in much the same sense as desperation can shift into pure need and longing. When you ache for deeper connection, and stay with that ache, that yearning, then you invite in grace.
DM: Many people feel there is something unspiritual about need and attachment. But they are basic to our humanity. We’re attached to each other, and we need each other. When we’re in touch, we’re not needy with each other, we’re not codependent, but deeply connected.
This applies to an intimate economy—a single rela-tionship, or the field we can build together as community, of interdependence instead of co-dependence. Could you speak to the power of forgiveness? I hear a lot of blame about money, about other people out there causing my suffering.
RM: There’s a lot of anger in America now about what’s happening. That anger needs to be there to help fuel the turning point we need, but it unfortunately is more often than not turning into aggression, which is a real problem. Authentic anger is a vulnerable emotion—in it our tears are close to the surface, and we are transparent, even if we’re being heated and fiery. Once we get aggressive, though, we’re on the attack and are not even close to being vulnerable. All of this anger surfacing in America is in part good—at least it’s not fear or apathy—but it’s mostly not going in a healthy direction. Hostility, ill will, and sarcasm help no one. But if we can move from aggression back to anger and get vulnerable and transparent, some real healing and forgiveness can occur. Authentic anger, anger that does not blame or shame, is only a step away from grief and love. Such anger guards our boundaries, and empowers and energizes our stands.
Robert Masters is a critically acclaimed author, teacher of spiritual deepening, and highly experienced psychotherapist (and trainer of psychotherapists) with a doctorate in psychology. He has innovatively integrated mind, body, emotion, and spirituality in his work for the past 30 years. His latest book is Meeting the Dragon: Ending Our Suffering by Entering Our Pain. For more information on his work and writings and to subscribe to his free newsletter visit www.RobertMasters.com. Diane Masters, Robert’s wife and spiritual partner, works side-by-side with him in his groups and trainings, contributing deeply to the work being done. She is an intuitive healer and Reiki master, as well as a songwriter and professional singer, with a special talent for accessing and transmitting heartfelt spirituality through her music (www.DianeBardwell.net). Her latest CD is O Breathe Us Deep. Robert and Diane have recently relocated to Ashland, Oregon. If you are interested in receiving training, group or private (individual or couple) sessions with them, call (541) 482-2779.
Crystal Arnold earned a BS in international economics from Southern Oregon University and has completed the Conscious Bookkeeping course. She is creator of Money Metamorphosis, offering workshops, telecourses and financial coaching for individuals and couples. She is dedicated to creating a resilient local economy and a complementary currency. Contact her at crystalconsults@gmail.com or (541) 227-3577, and read her blog at http://www.moneymetamorphosis.us.
