What are you afraid of, and what does it mean for how Present you can be if you are Fearful versus without fear?
Warning, going deep with this post! Please bear with me, I hope the “payoff” at the end is of value to you.
Jerry Colonna, Non-Attachment and Fear
This week I’ve come to the full realisation that I am without fear of that deepest of fears and that this means for me that I am more present to each moment than I have ever been.
**Edit: thanks to Dave Stewart of Fresh Air Leadership for challenging me on this post. One thing I wish to give more clarity on is that to feel without fear could be read to be without hope, to be detached from the world. It could also be read to mean that I feel somehow invulnerable, “bulletproof”. I want to be clear that I am absolutely passionate about life, as well as feeling open and vulnerable at this stage of life far more than ever. It is, however, being open to all that life brings that, for me, has evolved me to this place of “without fear”. I hope that is useful to explain!
For this recent epiphany, I give thanks to Jerry Colonna, a beautiful human and master coach, who I met this week at a talk where he spoke about being a “Better Human, Better Leader“. One theme that Jerry reminded me of ashe spoke was the Buddhist concept of “non-attachment”, which, as a coach, is a constant reminder to be “unattached to the outcome” for my clients. Jerry was also asked about Fear.
In how Jerry spoke of non-attachment and working with fear, I came to a realisation of being without fear.
Allow me to explain.
Memento Mori
As Jerry spoke of Fear that evening, it had me think of where I now sit with the idea of Fear.
I left the talk and took a longer than usual walk towards home, choosing a walk across the Thames and really soaking up how beautiful the London night is with all the landmarks lit up, even, yes, on a rainy and cold night.
I felt truly Present, fully alive.
At source for me was that recognition that I feel I am without fear.
To go back, in January 2018 I wrote “Memento Mori“, a post stemming from this phrase from the Roman Stoics that means, in a life-affirming way: “Remember you will Die”.
I started that blog with a Steve Jobs quote from my favourite speech (visit the blog for a link to the video of the full speech):
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs, 2005
A few months after writing that post, in April 2018, I was at the Modern Elder Academy with Chip Conley and shared with the cohort my wish to “dissolve the self”, for me linked to Buddhism and non-attachment.
The deepest attachment we have is to live itself, yet the conundrum of being “attached” is the fear of loss, with the greatest fear (as Jerry talked about recently) is the fear of death.
I’ve always been told I’m pretty fearless. Note that this is not the same as brave, courageous or even reckless, but for me, it is more that I am without fear, that anything that happens is to be accepted, even death.
So, to the title of the post, “Fear and Presence”. I have found that the more we can be unattached and release our fears, the more present we can be to the wonders of life moment by moment. In fact, when we are feeling fear, we absolutely cannot be present.
I leave you with a poem, the underlined passage particularly meaningful for me:
This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness
~ Rumi
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over! For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness.
These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning: Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw. Words and what they try to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof.