Fear and the Energy of Aversion
El miedo y la energía de la aversión
A question about why fear feels so intensely unpleasant, and how identification and aversion amplify it beyond its natural proportions.
Fear and the Energy of Aversion
A question about why fear feels so intensely unpleasant, and how identification and aversion amplify it beyond its natural proportions.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about fear. I'm running into it quite a lot, or it's appearing quite a lot. I don't know what the question is exactly, but why is it so unpleasant? I notice that when the judgment subsides a bit, the judgment of "this shouldn't be happening" or "I don't like this," that also reinforces the sense of unpleasantness. If I notice the judgment, it stops being as unpleasant. But it's such an intense energy. The first reaction is always to find a way to get out of it.
I think there are two ways to approach this, and they're complementary. They're like two sides of the same thing, the front and the back, the tail and the head. I don't think there is one side that's the source.
The two sides: identification and fear itself
You actually mentioned both of them. The identification, the "I," is one side. By looking at the attachment and the process of identification, you can in some ways activate fears, because identification is part of the mechanism. But as you see through that illusion, you also deactivate the mechanism and the reactivity of fear.
Ultimately, it's related to rejection: the imagination of something ending, something that appears to be a certain way, and the desire for it not to end, not to change. Think of the millions of forms and ways in which that manifests. For example, I have a good feeling in the body in this moment. Maybe it's more pleasant than what I normally experience. Then the sense of that changing and ending can bring up fear. "What if I go back to feeling how I felt yesterday, and yesterday I felt pain?" So it's that attachment to something, and there's going to be an identification there: the attachment to something being how it is.
It takes many forms and shapes. It could be the reverse: wanting something to be how I imagine it should be. I remember feeling a certain way, and now I don't. I felt better, I had that glimpse, that expansion, that well-being or peace or pleasure, and I don't have it now. Then the sense that maybe I won't have it again, or I won't have it soon enough, can bring a certain fear. This could be with sensations in the body, with relationships, with experiences in life.
Desire and aversion as one energy
A core part of this has to do with identification and desire, but desire comes with aversion. Want something, don't want something. Yes to this, no to that. It's a two-sided energy. The "I" is that which is involved in this push and pull of aversion and desire.
From the other side, you're asking about the fear itself and why it's so unpleasant. The fear is going to be as unpleasant as you want it to be. And "want" touches upon that desire, which is the same as the aversion. Aversion and desire are one energy with two sides. You can't have a desire for something without an aversion to something. You can't have an aversion to something without a desire for something. The fear is going to be equal in intensity to the force of the aversion or the desire. It pushes back with equal force. The more you push with aversion, the more you receive the equal force of the fear.
If you have a specific example, we could work with it and clarify whether it's in relationship or whatever context.
I'm not sure I understand the aversion part. What do you mean?
Aversion to the fear, or aversion to a circumstance, aversion to something in life. It can take infinite forms. When do you feel the fear is intense? What is it about?
A concrete example
I can give you a recent example. I got into finding out more detail about my residency in Spain, which expires in July. I realized it wasn't as easy as I thought to renew it, because I'm still married but no longer living with my spouse, and that's a significant factor. So I realized it wasn't straightforward, and maybe I need to be looking into other options. Without going into all the details, it's basically a fear of suddenly becoming much more alert to the possibility of staying irregular or having to leave.
There's one thing, which is the practical aspects. You can do everything you need to do, and the fear in a sense is like an alert: "I don't want this." That alert can be an energy that you naturally invest in doing everything within your control, anything possible that can be done to either extend the residency or deal with what happens. What are the options? Do you need to leave if you don't get it, or can you stay in some other form, in some other capacity without the residency? All of that is the practical side.
When fear gets amplified
But then when the fear gets very intense, that has to do with aversion and desire. It's one coin. You can look at it from either side. The more you have an aversion to, for example, having to leave, or whatever the outcome would be (having to get a visa, staying for a period as a tourist, staying illegally), the more there is a certain energy at play.
One thing is a choice: "I don't want this. I will work as much as I can for this not to happen. I will do everything that can be done." That's fine. Another thing is the energy of "No, not that. I will not be okay if that's what happens." That second energy is not coming from reality. It's coming, in a sense, from a choice. It's a way of relating to an imagination.
As I was saying in the beginning, fear has to do with something ending. What's ending here is the possibility of you being a resident in Spain, and all the implications for your life. The more there is an aversion, which is basically a declaration of "not this," and not only "I don't want this" (which is fine), but "I will not be okay, life will not be okay," the more you amplify that energy. How much am I not going to be okay? That is fear. It scales proportionally.
I notice both of the things you're describing: both the choice of "I don't want this" and the sense of "I won't be okay if this happens." I see that that's what creates the fear, mostly.
The fear could be very natural and minor. There's a possibility you have to leave, and that's unknown. It could be unpleasant, and you don't know what's coming. There could be some fear there. But when the sense becomes "No, I will not be okay," the more energy you put into that conviction, the more the opposite energy appears as fear.
So one side is noticing the belief that "I won't be okay," and the other side is not looking away from the fear when it appears? Feeling it?
Feeling it versus seeing the root
It's not so much that the fear dissolves by feeling it. If you're pumping an energy and then feeling it as a way to stop pumping it, it doesn't work. What can be done is to see that the "I will not be okay" is based on a belief, and you don't know that. You don't even know, for example, if having to leave might be the best thing that could happen to you. Just hypothetically speaking, how do you know? How do you know it's not the best thing for your life? I'm not saying that's true, but I'm showing how the mind decides what's right and wrong and what's going to happen, and it's all an imagination of the future.
Naturally there will be significant fear here, because it's a big change, a big life circumstance. Notice the desire and the attachment to things being how you know them to be: "Things need to stay this way and not change in that other way." That is different from "I prefer things to be this way. I prefer to stay, and so I'll do everything I can."
The grief underneath
Ultimately, part of what we are fearing is the change itself, a very deep feeling. The grief of the change, the grief of the possible ending of your residency in Spain. What the fear is really about is not so much what will happen if you have to go to a different country. It's the feeling of grief and the fear of something new. The more we are able to feel deeply, to feel the grief, to feel the natural fear (not the pumped-up fear, just the natural fear of life), the more space there is.
The natural fear is not the one that wakes you up at night so you can't sleep. That kind of fear is the one to investigate at its root and cause. Though it might be natural, too. It might be that for a period it wakes you up and you can't sleep, and that's simply part of the process.
Thanks. That's helpful.