I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- The Litany Against Fear, Dune, Frank Herbert
I remember only one time when I genuinely said this to
myself. There have been many times when I might have thought “Fear is the mind
killer” and then gone about my day, but one time I used the litany against fear
as an actual litany. I was in the hospital, recovering from the surreal feeling
of waking up after general anesthesia. I just had my third knee surgery in as
many years and was about to be a senior in high school. The first two surgeries
reconstructed my ACL, and I went back to playing soccer each time because that
was a core part of my identity. This was supposed to be an exploratory surgery
(screws from the first time prevented an MRI) and the doctor hoped the ligament
was merely strained and could be fixed. Not the case.
It came unbidden. I don’t remember who told me the news, but
I remember thinking it, repeating the whole thing, which I had read Dune enough
times to memorize, over and over. I would not be recovered in time to play
soccer my senior year. I would have to have another full reconstructive surgery
and months of painful rehab, for nothing, because I certainly wasn’t good
enough to play in college. (Side note: I ended up playing rugby and I don’t
regret it, even though I did tear my ACL again senior year... haven’t had surgery
because just thinking about hospitals and IVs and anesthesia fills me with
dread and whatever I can run fine everything’s fine...) There’s probably no way
for me to really convey what a blow this was, and I don’t exactly want to try,
but the litany helped.
Part of it, I think, is that any kind of litany would help
in that situation. A mantra that you repeat gives you something to focus on
that is not the turmoil of your emotions or the racing of your thoughts, so you
are able to just be while the shock
wears off. But of course the mantra can’t be something meaningless – I don’t
think “red socks red socks red socks” would be very encouraging in a time of
crisis – so the litany helped because it is powerful. Fear is the “mind-killer”
that prevents me from thinking rationally. I must “face my fear” instead of
running away from the way things are. It will “pass over me and through me”
because it is insubstantial, it is only fear; it is not the thing I fear and it
is not me. “Only I will remain.” Saying the litany against fear or a similar
mantra is a stabilizing force, and as we learned from the Avatar TV series, the
first chakra (Earth) deals with survival and is blocked by fear.
This is significant, not just because I love that episode
and it is one of the best explanations of the chakras I’ve ever heard, but
because the chakras represent a hierarchy. You must open the base chakra before
the others because spiritual insight or cosmic truth means nothing when you
fear for your very survival. Fear is one of our most tangible and powerful emotions,
and that is why it is so easily used to manipulate people. The conservative
agenda has been very successful with “they are taking away your freedoms,”
while loftier ideas of compassion (the heart chakra) and truth (the sound
chakra) have much more difficulty taking hold. How can one have compassion for
the other when one is afraid of the other?
I won’t go into politics or the culture of fear because it
makes me angry, so I will stick with psychology. (I just mistyped “psychoco.” Freudian
slip!) The hardest part of dealing with fear is not knowing what you’re afraid
of, or even that you’re afraid. It can be hidden under layers of hate, anger,
worry, anxiety, or despair. Of course, there’s no easy answer for that, but we
could all use a little more introspection and self-awareness, because the
things we are afraid of have power over us. We act or react to avoid them, but
our fear of them comes from the inability to clearly see things as they are.
That spider is not going to do you any harm; it is merely being a spider. That
future disaster does not exist, because the future itself does not exist and
neither does the past.
Face your fear. Find a point of stability within yourself. Open
your Earth chakra. And if you still want to kill that spider, at least it won't be out of fear. ;-)
