Fear. Is what stops you from grabbing your shooting star. To grasp that dream and make it happen in this life. Sometimes the desire to attain something is too great that you never step up to the plate; in fear that when it is just in your reach, you will let it slip away forever. Actually Doug Hall of Brain Brew says that great failure creates greate success. If you are not willing to fail, you will not succeed. from Babe Ruth to Reggie Jackson, they all had great strike out totals next to their home runs. Listen to his audio on fear in business success.
Well Campbell describes this process many times when he elaborated on Buddhism. As Buddha had found his immovable spot under the Bodhi tree, he removed all desire before he was tested by Kama's three daughters Lust/future, fulfillment/ present, and Regret/past. Buddha had removed his conscience self from the world and put his fate in the hands of the universe. He was to become awakened to the fact all is one. A finger is Chris as I am my finger, as that finger in some silo somewhere is mine for when it pushes that button it takes my life with his. But Buddha would be unmoved because he would be the explosion and the explosion him. Then all would be lotuses? Then if you do not meditate on that person in some concrete bunker, you will not desire safety from him. Which in return will let you be able to go to sleep without fear of him. If you remove desire of attaining something, you will remove the fear of failure.
Take dating for example. You see this gorgeous red head in the distance. She was head of the cheer leading squad and dated the quarterback. You heard she just got divorced from some CEO. Now you want to go and start up a conversation with her, but your hands are shaking and your pulse is quickening as your knees are buckling! For the guy who was the head of the AV club to marry the head cheer leader, the desire is too much. So when she walks past you all you can say as she goes by is "Blathhhhhe!" Then again, it is always when you are content in a relationship and have no desire for anyone else that all the most attractive women come up to you and ask your name. I think woman are like dogs, they sense the fear and walk away. It is also the difference between being too conscience about something and giving up to your higher self and it's current. Any one of us can be a millionaire over night, it just takes a ski mask and the local bank! But what price are we willing to pay to get it. Lots a time we feel like we are half way through life and entering that dark wood, but it is never too late to find the path back to our self.
Now Campbell states that when man serves the state and not when the state serves man, you have a monster state. A state that runs like a machine, over conscience, that tries to stomp out the heart or individual self out of society. He calls Darth Vader the Machine Man. Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today.
"The other creatures laughed and said,'Fool! Let go and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom! But he heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried ' See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!"
Richard Bach, Illusions
Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system for the attainment of human purpose? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done. By doing what? By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you....When Ben Kenobi says, "May the Force be with you," he's speaking of the power and energy of life, not of programmed political intention. So when Luke Skywalker removes Darth Vader's mask he frees his father from his uniform of the state so he can feel alive for once before he dies. To be himself . The force is the same force that led Perceval's horse to the grail, led Hagen to that perfect stroke, and it is the river that leads you on your journey. It has always been there, you just have to pinch your nose and jump in. Some of us are in it already, but find themselves swimming up stream With great strength and exertion we can get to the place we should of never been, but eventually we can not deny the current forever and it will lead us to where we are suppose to be. But if we resist and panic it can drown us. More and more we continue, the more and more it will hurt us. Like grabbing a hot skillet, it will continue to hurt until we let go of it. It is sending us an explicit sign that if we continue in this activity, worse injury will happen. Much like an alcoholic must hit bottom and loose his wife, car and house before he will lose his bottle. But if we only just let go and let the current take us, life would be beautiful. But fear and guilt lingers in some until they can forgive themselves as they follow their own stream. It is like panicking and taking in some water as we float by. We stay water logged until we can forgive ourselves. Many traditions believe that in the next world it is ourselves that determine our punishment or rewards. Lots of time we are too harsh with ourselves, our worst critics. We start to hear our words through other's mouths. Words that were planted in us from our family and peers, from a distant past. We continue to live in the past and not the moment. Very few of us reach atonemoment, that's at one moment in time. Living for the now with forgiveness, understanding, and knowledge gained from the past. There is no punishments but learning experiences. And our rivers are the ones we are ready for. The river is symbolically a manifestation of our character. Even the landscape and the conditions of the environment match our readiness. It is all in the quality of our questions before we are born that determine which river we create. But unless we are ready for disenattachment from the world as the few who ride the little ferry boat of Buddhism, we still have to work to keep our heads afloat and swim toward the branches we want to take. Sometimes those branches can lead to higher spiritual development, others are just the ones we are ready for. What keeps us from always attaining those higher branches, desire for their attainment and the fear we might not make it to them before we expire from the effort. So the amount of fear or lack of it determines the rivers we choose.
