“You are what you fear”. Once I have heard this paradoxical thought, I can no longer erase it from my “hard drive”. Now anything that provokes in me a spontaneous reaction of horror or fear is next questioned, “Is this really me?”. At first, the thought seems so ridiculous that I want to throw it in the trash. But as the number of cases I’ve looked at grows, I realize, “Hmm, there’s something there”.
What we fear the most is what we don’t understand. Everyone remembers how, as a child, some friend used to tell stories about the “black hand” and how painful it was to come home at night. Of course, what is the “black hand” specifically, was not specified. The child’s heightened imagination gave the object its own creepy details. The more amorphous, strange and mysterious the source of fear, the greater its paralyzing power. The absence of clear contours, familiar categories, and identifying marks means that, potentially, the threatening shadow is cast by something that longs to tear, chew, and digest you personally and all that is dear to you.
There are universal things that scare most people. But there is a remarkable variation in reactions to the rest. Some people break into a cold sweat at the mere mention of X, while others don’t see X at all. Some are obsessed with “dangerous” Y, sniffing it out, looking for it everywhere, and, of course, finding it. Some cannot sleep peacefully at the thought that somewhere out there in the world there is a nightmarish Z.
The aforementioned idea indicates that the one who fears Z is himself Z deep inside, but rejects it. Without being integrated, this aspect of the personality remains misunderstood and unrecognized and, like the hound of Baskervilles, is forced to howl longingly in the swamp at night, terrifying the master of the castle. And yet he might have been tamed and trained to guard the inhabitants from wolves.
Assuming this thought to be true, a careful examination of your fears is the way to multiply true riches — the knowledge of how much more you are than you have always thought you were.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
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