Love? Fear?
May. 28th, 2008 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grim23I've not updated my wonderful visit to CA. I'll do that soon. Still processing. I learned a lot.
Two things: One, I was asked, " When will you stop letting "fear" be the only reason for failure?" An interesting question. When I asked what else there was besides fear, the person felt that it was not their place to say. I respect that. I myself "fail" often - that's the process of learning. For me, fear is often the reason I fail, especially in relationships. I give in. I settle. I don't speak my mind because I fear further damaging the relationship, or hurting the other person. It's not the only reason. Apathy, dissimilar interests, the other person's issues, your own emotional baggage, not taking responsibility for communicating your needs, the timing - there are many reasons. But they can, and often do, boil down to fear.
Tori Amos, of all people, recently said that, "some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover what your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin." Elizabeth Kubler-Ross writes that we can make our choices built from love or from fear. I choose love. Carlos Casteneda wrote that a Warrior never worries about fear - he knows it's there, and looks for it, because that's what the warrior strives to overcome in order to grow. Stagnancy is when you stop looking for it, and get comfortable with the fear, and overlook it instead of embracing it.
Two, a Samurai I'm impressed with, found a quote I'm enjoying:
"When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity, in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern."
-Anne Morrow Lindberg
I welcome a discussion.
Two things: One, I was asked, " When will you stop letting "fear" be the only reason for failure?" An interesting question. When I asked what else there was besides fear, the person felt that it was not their place to say. I respect that. I myself "fail" often - that's the process of learning. For me, fear is often the reason I fail, especially in relationships. I give in. I settle. I don't speak my mind because I fear further damaging the relationship, or hurting the other person. It's not the only reason. Apathy, dissimilar interests, the other person's issues, your own emotional baggage, not taking responsibility for communicating your needs, the timing - there are many reasons. But they can, and often do, boil down to fear.
Tori Amos, of all people, recently said that, "some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover what your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin." Elizabeth Kubler-Ross writes that we can make our choices built from love or from fear. I choose love. Carlos Casteneda wrote that a Warrior never worries about fear - he knows it's there, and looks for it, because that's what the warrior strives to overcome in order to grow. Stagnancy is when you stop looking for it, and get comfortable with the fear, and overlook it instead of embracing it.
Two, a Samurai I'm impressed with, found a quote I'm enjoying:
"When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity, in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern."
-Anne Morrow Lindberg
I welcome a discussion.
Re: Fearless love?
Date: 2008-05-30 06:34 pm (UTC)The best things in life involve change. So do the worst. *smile*
Re: Fearless love?
Date: 2008-05-31 08:55 pm (UTC)I was thinking of the Chinese parable about the farmer and his good/bad luck experiences, and I was able to find it online:
"There was once a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmer’s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmer’s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the Taoist farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, "Oh what bad luck!" The Taoist farmer replied, "Maybe."
About a week later, the horse returned bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the Taoist farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the corralling of the horses, came to see for themselves. As they stood there looking at the corral filled with horses, the neighbors said, "Oh what good luck!" The Taoist farmer replied, "Maybe."
At that same time in China, there was a war going on between two rival warlords. The warlord of the Taoist farmer’s village was involved in this war. In need of more soldiers, he sent one of his captains to the village to conscript young men to fight in the war. When the captain came to take the Taoist farmer’s son he found a young man with a broken leg who was delirious with fever. Knowing there was no way the son could fight, the captain left him there. A few days later, the son’s fever broke. The neighbors, hearing of the son’s not being taken to fight in the war and of his return to good health, all came to see him. As they stood there, each one said, "Oh what good luck!" The Taoist farmer replied, "Maybe."