attempt to dig deep into fear

["amater_8" <izbezumljene_ovce@...>]

 Hello,
I noticed most of the posts here are questions of some sort, so I 
though of adding some observations of mine conserning the soul mirror 
work, just a small fragment of it. There are still questions in this 
post to be answered though, and claims to which you may not disagree, 
but this is forum so feel free to write in.


Fear: I have found this to be the most confuzing motive for action. 
Trying to fit some character trait which is caused by fear into one 
of four elemental cathegories appeared to be very hard to me. Lets 
look at shyness. People are oftenly fast to identify it as a product 
of water element, without much tought, but lets place some here 
anyway. Long post, but those who are interested will read it.

Shyness - we can call it... fear of people? But it can't trully be 
fear of people in a manner in which we would be afraid of a 
disgusting gigantic worm. Shy people are not disgusted by humans 
(unless if it distorts later into misantrophy), they actually would 
love to be able to comunicate with them in a normal way, but they 
can't. Because when they try, they start to get scared about how well 
will they perform their role of a normal, un-shy person. And when you 
are scared, you freeze (I haven't studied psychology so I can't tell 
exactly why, maybe someone else can). Fear comes because we actually 
*care* about what other people will think of us. 

So it becomes apparent that more exact description would be... fear 
of peoples opinion? But its still not good enough to identify this 
obviously negative character trait. 

Maybe fear of the possibility that your superficial appearence will 
for some reason make certain person think worse of you, which would 
be horrible for your ego? Ah - hold on. Ego? Isn't that thingy which 
is usually product of fire element? You know... egoist, man with over 
developed sense of self-importance. Why is that term showing its ugly 
head when we tought that shyness is caused by pure water element, as 
Bardon suggested us? Well, it seems that nothing is as simple as it 
may appear on first IIH reading. We were kindly warned that we should 
meditate on our traits and especially on what caused them, and go 
deeper and deeper. And deeper.

Words like 'lust', 'lazyness', 'rage' are just that - words. Words 
won't help you realize what those negative traits really are. For 
example if you repeat words to yourself and concentrate only on how 
they sound, soon they'll lose their meaning to you. And it will seem 
strange to you how you were ever able to attach that empty array of 
letters with certain emotion and think its the same thing. Thats the 
reason why sorting negative traits into elemental cathegories is so 
hard. It is not the word itself that you are trying to find place 
for, but complex group of activities in your mental level. That is 
why Bardon asks us to write down specific situations in which our 
traits manifested themselves, so for example if you are lazy in 
general you can't just write 'lazyness' and then go and take a nap. 
You have to do something radical which is against your nature and 
take your initiation as an act of war. And then try hard to make 
yourself write down exact events and occurrances in which you showed 
lazyness even if it takes you a month. Then admire the strength of 
your new-found will. :)

But lets get back to the shyness, which is undisguised as fear of 
letting your ego getting hurt by another existance. Maybe you decided 
that you already found the solution for this problem - reduce the 
ego. But rushed solutions are not what I am interested in, I'll 
decide about that once I reach the second step of the book. I'm still 
conserned about what elemental cathegory this confuzing, double-faced 
and all around ugly trait belongs to. Meaning, I'll dig further.

How or why does ego get hurt? What does it mean? Maybe secretly shy 
person wants to be admired for its outstanding abilities, which quite 
possibly exist. After all, one of the ways for ego to become that 
vournerable is isolated childhood, during which the child is drawn to 
inhabit its own worlds, and is surely practicing to be creative and 
imaginative. Those skills are usually praised by general public, but 
the uncomunicative person which owns them lacks the practice in 
social skills, and will show them rarely.

So, the ego of that person is aware of its worthiness and it simply 
can't allow itself to be tought of any worse then it deserves. So, 
once the individual through hard lessions learns that he lacks the 
skills to show his true self before another living man, he will in 
future either avoid contacts when ever he can, or will try hard to 
have them but will most of the time fail to use his full resources. 
Because he has fear of not being able to come up with right thing to 
say, and when he say something he'll fear that he said the wrong 
thing. And he probably will. Doesn't that sound like trying to talk 
some girl into a date for the first time? It is like a state of 
shock, and some people actually live their life like that all the 
time. 

So, can we be satisfied with calling shyness a... fear of failure? 
Ah - you noticed I started using the word 'fear' again, and since I 
still don't know what fear is I guess we are not even close to 
solution. A thought arives - can't we just call shy person a wimp and 
a coward, and try to meditate on coresponding element? I guess I 
could do that, but this issue is too personal and I must dig further, 
as for the rest of you, you don't have to read this to the end, 
unless you are interested. I think I'm about to make an important 
point though. *tickle*

Fear of failure - why does this fear thing actually PREVENTS us to 
achieve our goal? I'd like to hear a word from learned psychiatrist 
here. This is not alarming kind of fear which helps you gain legs and 
find a way out, it actually freezes you from performing rational 
actions and it makes you look weird to your fellow man. You fear that 
something will happen and - it happens. And you are too frozen to 
prevent this. What is this thing that has its own will, subconcious? 
And how to fight it, with sheer bravery? Simply put, being bold and 
brave is not that easy when.. you're not. So actually, you don't 
think you are brave enough, thats how the fear can molest you. As a 
matter of fact it is maybe so because, in this case, the trait has 
developed into something more serious and destructive. 

Or maybe thats what it always truly was... a fear of SUCCESS. Sorry 
for typing capitals here, but it was really enlightening for me when 
I came to this tought. Here, sense of self worth is actually reduced, 
at subconcious level. I won't exactly write how or why, I think it 
would be best for people to meditate for themselves on this twist in 
a plot. Especially if you have some of the problems, described here, 
because you ARE a victim of a plot, very cunning one, seems like its 
there to totorture you, but its actually made for you to crack it 
down and maybe even one day set yourself free. I'd also love to hear 
your opinions conserning various kinds of fears and their placement 
within the system of four elements.

May you all be thorough in searching the answers, dig deep.