The Fear of Fear: Potter and Ged; Me and some Thoughts

Love and fear are the opposites. It’s not love and hate. I realise this, and it’s been talked about by many, many grand human beings – who were/are far, far wiser than I am. Most of the time I’m too indifferent about things to really “hate” anything or anyone. Things disgust me, irritate me, annoy me; some people disgust me – but there it ends. Nothing – or so I keep telling myself, and have been telling myself for the longest time - deserves or is worth hating.

Not to say that I don't feel violence within. Not to say that I am not a violent person. I am. And I know I can be. Yet even now I believe that there is a time for violence, and that time is when one is faced with violence from elsewhere. If I am threatened - physically threatened; if the ones I love are threatened - physically threatened - I do hope and believe that I can make violence work to prevent the instigator.
Yet this post is not about love nor is it about hate nor about disgust nor about violence. It’s the aspect of fear. I know about fear.
Even more than love – or at least just as much as I have felt love, have I felt the crippling and devastating demons of fear, which have driven me out of myself.

Very few of the fears are really real. Is fear ever real? Maybe, sometimes. I doubt it though. In some sense, and I don’t know how to explain it – fear seems “imaginary” while love feels very, very real.

I am reminded of Harry Potter’s experience with the boggarts in The Prisoner of Azkaban. He conjures up the dementors. And what indeed were boggarts and dementors? Boggarts were virtual representations of our deepest fears. All the other kids saw that which they feared the most, walking out of the closet. Lupin told them exactly how to ward them off: “think of “funny” things. Think of humour. Conjure up something hilarious that makes you laugh. Watch your fear dissipate”.
And it worked. It worked for everyone, but Harry.
Because Harry conjured up the dementors.
And the conjured dementors were real, or contrarily – never seemed really real or imagined. Or more appropriately, the conjured dementors were in fact, as really real as their “real” counterpart.
Dementors, sucking out one’s soul with their death kiss.
As I wonder, and wonder some more – my mind wanders, and gets fuzzy.
I can’t really pinpoint what the dementors really are/were nor can I remember (memory loss plagues me again!), although I’ve written plenty on them and thought about them elsewhere and at other times.
But how indeed are dementors gotten rid of?
(This I do remember, and have had to remember. Rowling has no idea how much I thank her, and how grateful I am for her books).
By thinking of the happiest thoughts that one is able to imagine. That works.

And what about occlumency? Harry in The Order of The Phoenix has images hurtling through his insides.
Ron’s dad being attacked. And it was true.
Dumbledore wanted Potter to be able to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. Snape was given the task.
Potter rebels, Snape reacts.
Harry is in the same boat – reading Voldemort’s thoughts. Reading what Voldemort wants him to read. Sirius dies. Not the way that Harry had seen it – but Sirius dies trying to save Harry.
Ironical indeed. Harry had rushed in to save Sirius because he saw the “image” of Sirius being tortured.
Occlumency and the power to distinguish between the “real” and the “imagined”. A power indeed for those who do see within – to distinguish between one’s fantasies and reality; to distinguish between mind and soul and body crippling fears, and reality as it is – out there in the real world, in the “real” time-space continuum.
Occlumency – the tool that separates madness and clarity. That’s how I see it.

Fear and the chasing shadow that hunts Ged in LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea.
And what does Ged do? He turns around to face it. He hunts the fear. He chases the fear. He chases down that hulking shadow, for Ogion tells him, “Name it. Name the shadow.”
Ged says, “But it doesn’t have a name.”
Ogion replies with his infinite wisdom, “Everything has a name.”
And Ged indeed does name the shadow.
The fear.
The fear of fear is what Ged had been running away from.
“What exactly do you fear but fear itself?” This is what one of my dearest people asked me once. And this has seeped through me through the years.

Yet fear I still do feel. Wild banshees that shriek within. This fear is not something that I can ever hope to express in words or in any human language. And the world as I know it crashes and breaks down all around me.
Images of brutality, rage, anger, torture, savage cruelty, viciousness, and sickening sliminess run around within. The images come unheeded, unasked for, uncalled for, uninvited. But visit they do, and it takes everything I’ve got to deflect them; to show them the door, and many times over they have indeed gotten the better of me; where all I can do myself is shriek and shriek – sometimes silently and wildly within, until I implode.
Two months ago, I watched, and watched, and watched them come in like laughing hobgoblins.
Monstrosities.
And there was nothing else in me as I watched, and I nearly lost all I’ve got in terms of intangibles and incommensurables – but somehow I didn’t……I would have mentioned names - but I know that it would be deeply distressing and embarrassing for those concerned.

The only “thing” that explodes the fear is love.
I know. I know that. I feel that with every bit of me.
For the fear is a feeling that rises from within, and love too is an emotion that rises from within.
Both may, and sometimes indeed do rise from without.
And if the fear is an emotion, which is life crippling, the only element that can save the mind from disintegrating completely is a power that is strong enough to shatter the fear, and that really is love.
The horrors that exist within our world – they do indeed live within the mind. That which-is on the outside lives in no less mighty a form within.
So does the love. That also exists.
Yet love is hard to practice.
Extremely hard to practice, even within.
Some days my energy is spent on chasing out my own fears.
It's all I can do. To "get" enough love inside to chase out the blinding fears and phobias.
"Being and acting with love, compassion, and kindness" is left for later.
I do "try" not to get angry and not to feel violently angry or not to let disgust paralyse my senses and sensibilities.
Sometimes there is no trying. Things simply are what they are.
There is an easy Is-ness.
No disgust. No anger. No violence. No pain. No guilt. No fear. No happiness. No euphoria. No nothingness. A coldly rational, completely non-emotional, completely dull metal like Is-ness. A blue-glacier light that simply Is. That's how I would describe "it".

Clarity is priceless. Clarity of mind. Clarity within. The Dalai Lama stresses the importance of a peaceful mind. "When the mind is peaceful", he says, "it does not distort 'reality'." Yet sometimes when all else fails, and even clarity seems to be a fairy tale, what gets me through is love.

Yet, I also know that when one can see with clarity, all is what-it-is. And fear, I've noticed is the one thing that eclipses clarity.

Sometimes anger does it for me or an intense disgust. Yet most often than not it is a strange unreal fear....even now.

I'm reminded of what Lennon said, "I talk about love because I know I am a violent man."

I’ll conclude this (seemingly random) post with a story about the Dalai Lama, which I found in a book on Environmental Ethics: He was once asked, “You talk about compassion. How would you show compassion to Hitler?” The Dalai Lama responded with a lightning sharp “Show compassion to Hitler? That’s easy. Kill him.”