fear is the mind-killer

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

--"Dune- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear" (Frank Herbert)

A friend posted one of my favorite quotes from Dune. I love Dune. I love the book, I love the movie, I love the TV mini-series. They each have their own merits (and flaws), but how can you hate Sting as the gorgeous nephew or how freaky scary Paul's sister is at the end of the movie?. They all have that scene where Paul sticks his hand in the box and feels super excruciating pain and remembers the Litany Against Fear.

My friend was reliving some old fears in a new car. Funny, the post flashed me back to a couple of moments like that in my life. I remember the first few months after these events I would reply the moments, the sounds, the feeling, over and over again. They occupied my mind and my days. I hung on to what I could have done, what might have been. People doing certain things would bring it about again as well.

I can't really say that I forgot those moments. But they don't send me into fearful fits anymore. And I've even gone back to those places where they happened. It was a matter of reliving the "drama" of it one last time. Mourn the healing as it were.

My friend thought the fear being felt was "unnecessary drama." I disagreed. Usually, I don't believe in over the top drama. But this time, I thought it was necessary. Necessary drama happens when you're trying to get over an old wound like a bullet that entered but never left. It hurt going in. It's going to hurt coming out. If you really let go, when you relive that memory, it doesn't hurt anymore. If it still hurts then you haven't quite pulled it out all the way. Those deep old wounds, the ones we tried to bury, are like that. We often choose the pain that we allow ourselves to feel.

One time in class I wanted to see if I could be like Paul in Dune and see how much pain I could take. OK, so I was young and probably stupid. It was a pressure point class. My teacher started doing pressure points on my arm to make me feel the pain, deeper and deeper. I kept telling myself that I would show no pain, calm my face, show no pain. It felt like my arm was dissolving from the inside, a slow pulse of electricity that was burning up my arm. When the pain got close to my shoulder, I hoped to god that he would let go before it hit my heart. I was scared, but kept telling myself, show no pain, show no fear. The pain is merely physical.

At last he let go. (whew!). As I cradled my arm with the other hand, he asked me, "Didn't that hurt?!?" I replied, "of course it HURT! I just wasn't going to let you know that it did."