On Fear

Day 20

Fear, along with anger and many other emotions, often comes along with a feeling of pressure. When I felt afraid yesterday, or socially anxious (hard to distinguish the two sometimes), I felt conflicted. I wanted to say something, but I also wanted to not say something. There is a sort of energy fight going on. We said before that energy and matter are really just two aspects of the same thing. We know something exists because some change happens. We know change happens because something exists. To be and to do are both aspects of being. Thus, to be afraid and to not do an action are two aspects of the same moment. They don't have to be, for we can certainly be afraid and act, or not act for reasons beside being afraid, but in the moment where we stand in a line at the grocery store and decide to not do something, there seems to be a definite likeness between the two. If fear creates pressure, then what is this pressure?

Since everything is the world, any pressure that fear creates should be explainable in the world. Since actions and existences are aspects of the same thing in the world, we shall talk about them as if they were the same thing. This is not a technical discussion where I map out just what is going on and try to figure out the logic of all the issues behind being afraid to act – that is quite a large and complicated psychological endeavor that attempts to understand the logic of the world is a very precise and clear manner. Rather, I wish to talk of generalities. I used the example of fear because it was that experience which suggested the coalescence of this piece yesterday, but the same could be said of just about any emotion, or any thought process we have about action.

If fear is something, then it is an area of the world. I once spoke about the idea of the council, and about the idea that emotion acts like a series of colored lenses, showing us the world in new guises. Thus, if the world is made up of things and the world is a logical field with connections, and the connections are also things, then a colored lens is a way of looking at the word which reveals some lines and hides others. The same statement, heard when we are angry, sad, or happy, can be interpreted different ways. A bad joke about how dumb we are is sometimes funny when we are happy, but not so funny in the ten minutes after we do something really foolish and feel bad about it. We can also explain this by the fact of being drunk – we actually see the world in different ways, and understand what is and how things connects differently because we change our brain chemistry. Drugs and emotions are similar things in this respect, though one does things forcefully and one is, most of the time, amenable to our personal efforts to effect them. Because we are part of the world, this is to be expected – if you change our minds, then you change the world, and vise-versa. Emotions are us changing ourselves, and being drunk is the world changing us. These different ways of seeing the world are different ways of constructing a logical field, which is the world.

When fear leads to pressure, what I expect happens is that fear is an emotion and emotions effect how we see the world, and so being afraid is a certain structure of the logical field of the world, and this logical field is such that when we act, when we modify the world, we tend to do it in certain ways. However, when we are angry, or hyper-logical, or sad, we tend to modify the world in ways that are yet more strange. Being afraid is us looking at the world and saying that I want to live, and isn't this a scary place to be right now so I should run or hide. Being angry is saying that the world needs to be smashed, and being hyper-logical is like saying that the world needs to have less emotion in it when we make decisions about what to do. Because the world in each case effects how we will act, we can say that the world in each case is a bundle of moving energy. It tend to move in a certain way, or construct and temper the world to be in a certain way. When we are afraid we run and when we are sad we cry. These emotions tend to create a flow of energy and a type of logical construction of the world, and so we have two possible worlds that can arise out of our actions. Really, I suspect that there are many more emotions pushing on us at the same time and that we don't tend to end up in precisely one emotional-effected world or another, but rather one which is some amalgamation of the two.

We can also describe this as a series of logical field which effects how the world propagates into the future. These logical fields create areas of higher and lesser probability, by bringing into existence possible worlds. That is, they are attempting to create new limits on the world and what was the area of the world under lim, is not the same as the area of the world under lim'. Because movement is existence and existence is movement, as long as we are alive the world will move and change. Thus, there is energy available to change the world. Indeed, this energy comes from the very existence of the world and is not different from it.

If different emotions, lead to different logical fields, then when the times comes for us to actually act, when we actually change the world, then there is a discrepancy between the logical fields of our two emotions. There will be things that we both want to do and do not want to do, ways that we intend for the world to be and ways that we do not intend for the world to be. We 'act' by creating a new gem in the world, which is partially a new construction and partially made up of new shards brought about by our actions. We can say that something has changed and that we understand the world to be different after the change. These changes are like any other changes were they happen instantly, but also happen slowly. Each particular change is instant, just like we have trouble describing how a single moment differs from another single moment, but they also happen slowly, like we can see how a myriad of changes link together to result in something happening like a snowball flying through the air and hitting us. This is also an example of why existence and change are two aspects of the same thing, being.

So we have two possibilities coming into actuality, two flows of energy coming into conflict, and two waves of constructions that we are attempting to do at once. This leads to areas of conflict in the world. We can understand this by imagining a big field of lines which are all moving into some sort of shape or pattern. Imagine that there are two patterns starting at opposite edges of this field. They slowly spread over the entire field, and eventually meet. Where they meet there is confusion, what looks like fighting, and a snarl of energy - The area over which they are fighting, the bundles of sticks which two two patterns are attempting to exert influence and to direct, are not one pattern or the other. This is the area of conflict in the world, the area where the logical field of the world is going to go to a different pattern, and the place where energy flows are opposed to each other. Again, there may be several of these patterns at one as we experience several emotions, thoughts, and intentions, but lets keep this simple for now at two patterns.

As this area of conflict happens, we can say that when we choose to act, the conflict is resolved It either goes one way or the other, or is some mix of both of the patterns. Thus, the world coalesces after a change, and we have a slights new world which has shifted around the edges. The structure of what is is now different. When there was active conflict, that corresponds to times where we are deciding what to do. Certainly we have all felt this, where we start to act one way, then go another, bouncing between the two possible actions until either we do something, or something in the world does something to resolve the conflict, whether it be to say hello to a pretty gal or not, to pet a strange dog or not, or to eat the chocolate chip or the peanut butter cookie.

Here we have a picture of what happens in conflict, how we act, and why we are often so conflicted. Because we are the world, a choice of action changes ourselves. To act, to live, is to change and experience change. This is both living and dying, wrapped up in one moment – sometimes in small ways of little consequence, and sometimes in large ways that indelibly change who we are forever. Big changes are not defined by the action themselves, but rather by how much they change the world. So, sometimes something very big, like a war or family death changes the world drastically, but sometimes they do not. Sometimes a small thing, like a sentence whispered by a stranger, means nothing to you, and other times it shifts how you see the world. Have you ever heard someone whisper an idea that could have come out of your own head?

There are further ideas that I want to quickly talk about that arise out of this vision. The first is that these areas of conflict, of decisions, are areas of tension. I feel like often our tensions are still withing within us, and we do not resolve what we have very often. It tends to take a long time, and old fears that we thought long vanquished can come roaring back. I talked about one pattern winning over another, or a new pattern emerging that is a mix of the two, in the field. We can think of these patterns like patterns of atoms in blurry gemstone which is full of a whole bunch of areas that are slightly different from one another. A clear gemstone is generally one pattern of being all the way through, but a cloud gemstone is full of many little areas – and stresses. I think that the logical field of the world is more often then not like the cloudy gemstone than the clear one. It is full of faults. Strike one of these faults at the right angle, and you might break it open, or you might split the rock in half. These faults are also areas of tensions. Sometimes, the areas of conflict in the world are not solved, but simply papered over without being fixed. We can understand a moment of confusion as being unable to see the world clearly, like looking through a cloudy gemstone. We can understand moments of clarity like looking through a clear gemstone – the world is revealed, and energy is released from areas kept under tension.

If the world was always clear, then the world would be boring. It would be beautiful of course, like the world as a Leibnizian order, but sterile. We want to resolve these areas of conflict and clear the gem, but we don't want to get rid of the possibility of these areas. Rather, we want to be open to new ways of understanding the world, of new patterns in the logical field of the world. This is what happens when we experience something new, when we need to re-forge the world. We have some flaw, some paradox or conflict of energies directed towards a future action, what changes the world.

Thirdly, there are types of actions that tend to have different effects. There is a reaction to every action, but in daily life there are certain tendencies that can clarify these actions and push them to be in different categories – though these categories are, as always, vague and shifting. All action is a type of touching, but some ways of touching are different from others. Listening is a generally passive act. Speaking is usually a generally active act. This is because you listen from something, but you speak to something. This something can be yourself or another, but when you speak you open a channel through which energy can flow backwards to you. When you speak you are saying something, you are extending yourself into the world in a particular way. This reinforces the idea that you are the world, and the world is you – by acting, you change what is and how things can be. Certain possibilities are brought nearer or farther from you, and certain limits are easier or harder to construct.

Lastly, the idea that being is existence implies that it takes energy to exist, just as it takes something to exist for whatever energy is to flow, and for possibility to become actuality. Thus, sometimes we need to rest. Each action we take also has the possibility of exhausting us, of feeding energy or pattern back and dissolving us. This happens all the time of course, but some times are easier to deal with than others. I said that we do not want to get rid of the possibility of the world being like a cloudy gemstone, but we also do not want to get rid of the possibility of a clear gemstone world. A gemstone under too much pressure flies apart at the touch of a feather. This is too fragile to survive, and so we often need times of rest and recuperation where we slowly work through our stresses, where we slowly deal with the conflicts of our lives. If once we have been struck too hard, we are fragile, but luckily we are not quite gemstones – we are living beings, and though we can be injured, we can also heal.