Sourcing Fears

There is a scene in Star Wars' The Empire Strikes Back that depicts a young Luke Skywalker being trained by Yoda on the most desolate and hostile looking planet there could ever be. At some point Yoda makes a comment about how the young man is always looking into the future instead of taking account of what he's doing in the present.

Yoda: "This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless."
(Starwars episode V:The Empire Strikes Back) 


I seem to suffer from the same predicament, except it never seemed so obvious to me. I always thought that I was focusing on the present, on what I was doing in the now, but action in reality is showing me the true extent of the picture and... I've always been lost ahead in the distance.

I know this for a fact because it hit me this morning on my way to work... There I was, walking down the street and thinking that I was really about to quit, and I felt this intense wave of fear wash over me at once. At once I tried to dig deeper within myself to find out the source of that intense fear, and the source of that fear - once found - told me everything. Well, at least some things.

The fear had very little to do with the action I was about to take, you see. The fear stemmed from imagining ahead - the consequences that might unfold as a result of that action.

"Damn conditioned mind, stop trying to come up with all the possible consequences that may or may not unfold as a result of the action I'm about to take..." I thought to myself.

When it comes to jobs it's become almost impossible not to be infected with this intense obsession of looking ahead into the future because society itself, or its system, wires most of us that way. It basically brainwashes us to associate work with wages, the latter being further linked to survival. Add to that how it entices us into lifestyles that require more and more enslaving into that vicious circle and that's it, you're pretty much done for. No matter how many times a day you'll find yourself wishing things were different, or that you were doing something different - whatever it is you find yourself moaning about - you will remain stuck in your condition because the Fear will kick in almost at once.

The Fear... the one that prompts your conditioned mind to instantly look ahead and worry about what might or might not happen if, say, you quit your job.

It all starts from a young age, really. Remember how teachers and parents would always warn you that if you didn't do well at school you'd have a crappy life/fail later in life? From that moment on, the seed is planted - we start contemplating ahead and the Fear only keeps growing from there. We become human beings trapped in the illusion that we have something to lose.

True freedom lies in having nothing to lose - true autonomy, independence, freedom of both mind and body, you name it. There is nothing that can taint you at that stage, but I know that's not a stage that can be reached at the drop of a hat.

Of course that links back to this famous notion of attachment, but the world is awash with different views or definitions of what it means and entails.

In the midst of all these thoughts that danced in my head today I couldn't shake the somewhat shocking realisation that I had been suffering from the same predicament as almost everyone else out there. That's a sobering thought.

It also changes the rules of the game for me. Challenging as this may be, I have to keep going in a direction that's pretty much akin to feeling my way in the dark - but maybe that's the whole point. Maybe that's exactly what I need, because it scares me, and if it scares me then I must be on to something real at last.