From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Tue Oct 21 2003 - 08:58:54 MDT
I am still trying to place the issue of the Fear Factor. I do understand that they are real fears and there are imaginary fears which can cripple your actions.
For example, a minor true fear of mine every morning is that the turtle will bite my toe while I am working. This is a real enough, predictable, and useful fear. I only have to lock her out, or wear shoes, or make a habit of keeping my feet dangling in the air (which I usually do according to my principle of least intervention), or just let her have some bites. Apparently this is not the kind of fears we are talking about.
The issue seems to be the unfounded fears, or the real fears that their consequences or their significance have been magnified out of proportion and are crippling us. Such an example would be if I had no reason to believe that the turtle would bite my toe but I still kept my feet dangling just in case. That fear, I would have to confront by testing against reality and finding out if I have to take some action or not.
A difficulty is that, if the turtle doesn't bite my toe one day, that does not mean that she won't the next day either. So, confronting a fear may help break a mental block, but it doesn't completely rid you from that fear, except if you manage to think yourself into believing that it did.
So, I would still have to make a decision under uncetainty. To do that, I would have to take into account the significance of what I am afraid of -- how bad would that be if it happened, and what is the price I am paying for avoiding it. This is the closest I have come to confronting possibly unfounded fears. I have always been taking many risks (or perceived risks) testing my limits. But the evaluation of the results is still mine.
What all this meant to me was knowing myself, the environment, and my place in it, but usually I didn't associate it with taking control of myself. It was rather like more efficient floating.
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