The path of knowledge IS the path of awareness.
Before entering the path, we live in a kind of automatism.
And when we choose to take the first conscious step toward knowledge, the first adversary of the path appears: Fear.
Fear was already there, showing its face whenever the unknown insinuates itself.
That’s why the tonal, at first, seeks to keep the unknown—the door of the nagual—as closed as possible. It enters a struggle to control everything, to fit everything into the known.
Fear threatens from a distance. It approaches and magnifies itself through our imagination, which projects onto the mirror of the unknown the Fear that was already in the subconscious.
In this struggle to avoid Fear, one only manages to become less conscious of it. But the effects are felt in daily life: in anxiety, in tension, in the attempt to control things, in nightmares, in a series of negative emotions that show a conflict is happening within the tonal.
When we surrender to Fear, when we surrender to believing in it and not challenging it, it grows in size, and the fear of Fear paralyzes us.
And then we cannot take new steps on the path of knowledge. We seek refuge in the known. And the price of this is accepting to live under the reins of constant, subconscious fear. The tonal becomes, in the words of the nagual Juan Matus, a petty and tyrannical guardian. We become fearful people, or oppressors.
Fear may seem to be the most terrible adversary of all, but the way to challenge it is simple:
When the unknown presents itself, we must feel fear and yet take a step. One at a time. We will be fully present and alert, observing, fully feeling fear, feeling the imminent threat of fear, perhaps wanting to run away, to close our eyes, even to faint from fear, or to try to drive it away with anger, but that’s enough: breathe, observe carefully, feel that intensity, and continue, even feeling fear, one step at a time.
It’s not about trying not to feel fear. That only increases the fear.
It’s like feeling a shower of intensity throughout the body that one does not resist.
By acting this way, we challenge fear. We feel it completely, and yet, we don’t fully believe in it, and we remain present.
Each time, with each challenge, a little more. Without getting frustrated or giving in to a sense of defeat when we cannot bear the intensity. An extra second each time counts. The main thing is the choice to challenge fear.
When we do this, at a certain point, we will finally realize that Fear gives way. Something within us that overcomes fear begins to strengthen: our Clarity.
With each step we take even while feeling Fear, we are strengthening, drop by drop, a certain confidence in the stability of our own perception. And this confidence eventually pushes Fear away.
J Christopher
