The Muse # 66 mind over matter ~ being unreasonable: to be or not to be

Fear is something to fear.

Just the thought of that information is annoying. The recent health scare can easily invade the darkest corners of our minds as well as our public spaces. It is true that what we have to fear is fear itself, but that’s not all, now we have to fear our fear of fear as well.

It’s not enough to try not to get paranoid in the face of mysterious, mutant viruses spreading diseases; too much focus on not being fearful is not healthy either. Fear of fear is self-centered, squashed energy and represents a total loss of power which has you end up living like the content of those kitchen garbage compressors: oxygen-deprived, constricted, under constant pressure and in the dark about what really is going on around you. All you see from there is garbage and no light.

Short term fears can serve a positive purpose and actually boost your immune system, but ongoing anxiety can cause all kinds of problems that have been well documented, including depression and runaway inflammation.

What is a healthy dose of fear?

About a bucket-load. The sensation of fear can be as abrupt and as dramatic as a solar eclipse, either putting your body on high alert and ready to fire or leaving you cold and immobile, like a bug under a rock in a cave. While our reptilian-like instincts may tell us to go crawl and hide under a rock, regular exercise as well as a healthy social network is the way to live through a bad spell while strengthening you immune system to boot. Many studies have even found that personal characteristics such as trust and good maintenance of friendships and social networks really do benefit your health. A healthy social network is a network that processes your fears, not the ones that rev them up. You know who they are. Isolation is really unhealthy; you’ve got to find a way to let that anxious energy flow without flowing over. If you have more fears than fit in one bucket: divvy it up.

Think of your family, fiends and neighbors as your bucket-brigade; together they can help you handle a truck-load. Your health as well as your sanity is a matter of communication. Much of the matter of our bodies as well as our minds is communication. So tap into your community as well as your inner voice.

There is an art and a science to controlling your mind. It isn’t as simple as positive thinking. While positive thinking helps, reason doesn’t seem to have much bearing on the basic and most primal, physical level of fear. Positive action has a greater impact on the mind than positive thinking because action helps to release some natural healing juices in your brain. By taking action you also interrupt and re-direct the runaway train of frightful thoughts produced by your brain’s machinery. To relieve anxiety, here’s a plan for your bucket brigade:

1. take a break
2. take charge
3. take action

Take a break by turning off the media-bombardment so you can process and think.

Take charge of your self by doing a reality check and take reasonable precautions.

Take action for others by connecting with family and friends; don’t isolate yourself.

After that, you can let go: there is a time for reason and a time for un-reason, including leaps of faith. You can invent a mantra or say a prayer, or both. Twelve-step programs are not just for alcoholics, acts (and leaps) of faith are not just for the religious. To give your self over to a higher power may be easy for the faithful, but difficult for the realist, atheist or cynic. However, there is solid scientific data to support the common sense of faith. Faith is not about religion, faith is about saving good, reason and will. You see, without faith, reason is much more vulnerable to fear. Faith is about trust and letting go; replacing your fears with a personal connection to something greater than your self.

You may have heard the scientific community talking about it as the God gene: a human predisposition to believe in a higher power. The fact is, it is healthy to put your faith into the light of a higher power. It is an idiosyncratic truth that, in this, larger context, the less important your life might seem, the greater, more meaningful it becomes. The problem is that in operating all rationally, the mind thinks that it is the greatest! However, the mind just knows what it knows. Anxiety can cross wires and interrupt the circuits with more cunning than the mind can think.

Here’s to the mandate and paradox of unreason: Fear rules the mind. Faith rules the heart and your health too.

You choose.

~ Marit.

May 8 what body?
May 15 wild ducks
May 22 party like a squirrel-cat

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