Below,
are six ways to support the mind in finding peace with the Fear of
the Unknown and perhaps to begin to experience the adrenaline rush of
conscious awakening as a harbinger of greater relaxation, centering
and grounding.
So
next time you experience irrational fear, try to play a little: relax
the body; breathe in the freshness of the present moment (regardless
of horrible feelings); admit that we all ultimately know nothing; let
yourself become be the conscious of your own consciousness; and open
up to the possibility of awe.
1.
Relaxation
It’s
a well known adage that what we resist, persists. Yet though we know
it, it often doesn’t help with our Fear of the Unknown. Even if our
conscious mind is ready to let itself be what the Zen calls Shoshin
(Beginner’s’ mind), our whole nervous system can go into stress
responses. This in turn, will spur anxious thoughts, which generate
more stress. When we can consciously relax the body, irrespective of
the sparking of existential fear, we begin to break the trance that
fear casts on our sense of freedom. Fear becomes just an experience –
like any other – belonging to the world of experiential phenomena.
2.
From knowledge to knowing
The
very nature of learning depends on the ability to open to the
unknown. It’s only through this mental opening that knowing can
begin, and it’s only through knowing that we can havea any claim at
all to knowledge. To put it simply, all knowledge utterly and totally
depends on the unknown.
When
we learn to replace the Fear of the Unknown with the active principle
of knowing, we can expand outward from our comfort zone, with a sense
of excitement, (but without freaking out).
3.
“I don’t know”
When
we’re able to say “I don’t know”, it can bring tremendous
relief to the nerve system. We are not required to ‘know’, nor is
there any demand that we suffer because we don’t know. The fear of
not knowing is so close to the Fear of the Unknown, and it’s often
rooted in educational trauma. Not knowing in itself can be both a
source of mental humility and mental expansion.
When
the thinking mind becomes humble, it can expand to include all
variety of new impressions. As a wise friend once said, “If you
want to be huge, you have to be humble.” One great question is
worth a thousand answers.
4.
Consciousness as primary
Wherever
we learned that existential validation comes through thinking – “I
think therefore I am” – we need to unlearn it. As long as
thinking is believed to be causal to existence, there will be no
freedom from fear, and no peace of mind. The unknown (the absence of
thought) will be perceived as an existential threat.
Listen
to the silence beneath the thoughts, attend to the gaps between them,
notice the feeling atmosphere of a thought, notice the one that
notices. Consciousness is not trapped in thoughts, nor does it depend
on them. Thoughts rise and fall within consciousness, and as such,
they are optional.
5.
Breathing into the unbearable
All
good so far, but there is always a deeper psychological charge to our
Fear of the Unknown. It will be found in that one outcome – that
one feeling experience – that must never be allowed to happen. It
will be an unbearable feeling, in categories such as the sense of
existential abandonment, betrayal, or isolation, that could come
forward the moment we step into unchartered territory. Our grasping
towards the known is fueled by aversion to this forbidden feeling
that could emerge out of the perceived chaos of the unknown. Yet the
feeling is anyway there, haunting us like a dark phantom, from behind
the aversion. The more we can be present to this unbearable feeling,
especially through the use of mindful breathing, the more our fear
will decrease.
Our
breathing affirms the gentle rhythm of the living flow of
interdependence, and a calm alignment of mind and body. The system
learns that it can bare the feeling – no matter how horrible. The
feeling rejoins the repertoire of the human experience, rather than
holding the human experience at gunpoint.
6.
Resourcing the sense of awe
The
Fear of the Unknown is an attitude-shift away from entry into the
sense of awe.
Psychologists
and neuroscientists who study awe define it as the emotional response
to something vast that surpasses ‘known’ frames of reference,
leading to a change in perception.[1] Awe, (a forerunner in what are
formally called “discrete positive emotions”) is clearly
connected to the loss of grasping toward the ‘known’ and a
willingness to turn toward the unknown. The sense of awe is
powerfully neuroplastic (facilitating changes in neural connections)
and is a deeply healing emotion. A 2015 study even revealed a direct
link between the sense of awe and our physical health through its
effect on health-proinflammatory cytokines.[2]
The
opening of the sense of awe is intimately connected with the
engagement of natural curiosity, an inherent quality of
consciousness, that has the power to being future-based fears and
expectations of pain, into the anchorage of the here and now, where
the mind is fully engaged in witnessing the miracle of all
experiential expressions of being alive.
