Fear.
Fear is the mind killer, Frank Herbert, Dune.
Lot of validity to that thought, fear being a very basic animal instinct, thought being anything but.
Afraid. Afraid of what? The unknown? The imagined? The real? Is there a difference?
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. Mark Twain
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. Mark Twain.
I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. Mark Twain.
I’ve lived a long life and seen a lot of hard times…most of which never happened. Mark Twain.
OK. You get the point.
What I like about this quote, and its various generic permutations, is the obvious implication that what we fear most, invariably doesn’t happen, or hasn’t happened. There are other versions out there, with different wordings to the effect that life as we experience it is largely imagined.
The reason I am tying this fear topic to the freedom of will and actuality of the freedom of will is due to the fact that fear is the ultimate absence of freedom. Fear is paralyzing. Fear is blinding. Fear is complicating. Fear is not real. Fear is imagined. Fear is the mind killer. Dune.
Now let us not get into all of the animal levels of fear that are incredibly useful to protect our beings from physical harm by getting our blood and hormones flowing when needed, physically. This is a philosophy site. We deal in imagination only. No. . . wait . . . I meant to say truth only. Yeah, only the truth. I want the truth and nothing more. Yoko Ono. Moving On. Double Fantasy. (Yoko’s portion of that album actually smoked Lennon’s, to this day, but when you have I Found Out under your belt what’s the difference?)
So why is it that we experience so much fear? The ongoing struggle between animal humans and enlightened reasoning humans. Logic. Cold, hard, logic. The cool and calm never flinch under fire, under stress. This is because they have no fear. Time is a factor. Fear will take away many opportunities to make decisions much more effectively to meet one’s goals and values. So part of the enlightenment of full responsibility and recognition of true desire and the revealing nature of action is freedom from fear. Next we can address fear. We can see that fear is our imagination playing tricks on us as we make excuses for not being true to ourselves, or actually, being true to ourselves and not realizing that the selves we are being are not all that.
Let go of fear, take responsibility, make reasoned calm decisions, be at one with the universe and all is peace.
Peace, contentment, calm.
Goals or states of being? Both.