I find it an ongoing challenge to live and authentic and compassionate life. I often screw up, choosing selfishness rather than genuine care for others. I notice that this selfishness is often rooted in fear. And my work with people over the years has shown me how often their fears are activated in their relationships with others, and this leads them to act in defensive ways and protect their heart. Relationships have the capacity to trigger a person's deepest fears, which often reflect patterns established in their childhood. We notice this when a strong emotional reaction is triggered, and automatic deeply believed, often fearful, thoughts dominate, which are very easy to take as the truth. When this happens people tend to maximize distance to protect themselves and act as if the other person can threaten the security of their inner self. Relationships open our hearts and expose our needs and feelings. Sometimes we clearly feel that is not safe. And when that happens we all follow some strategy to escape feeling the fears that silently run our life.
However, the truth about relationships is that they reflect closely our relationship with ourselves and reveal a lot about the clarity or confusion in our inner life. In fact our relationships can never be better than the relationship we have with ourselves. We often project on to the other what is going on inside ourselves, often what we are unable to manage properly, and this is at the root of our fears, and the reason they are so strong. Thus we can blame the other for confusion which is actually inside ourselves.
I notice this often in myself. Therefore I find that when strong fears are triggered it is good to try and turn towards them and let the fears in, looking on it as 'what' instead of as 'me'. Even if the fear triggered is strong, if I manage to do this soon afterwards, I notice the fear loses its power quickly and a more open response can emerge. The fear thus becomes a teacher which strengthens rather than paralyzes.
"Fear tells us to stop, to stay within the boundary of our protected cocoon-world. Yet when we feel fear, if we take even one small step toward it rather than yielding to our habitual pulling away, we move one step closer to the vast mind that lies beyond. When we feel fear instead of saying 'I'm afraid,' thus reinforcing our identification with our fear as who we are, we can simply say, 'Fear is present.' Thus fear's power gradually dissipates, and we begin to free ourselves from it. When we simply experience fear just as it is — without our opinions, judgments, and reactions — fear is not nearly so frightening."
Ezra Bayda, Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts)
