State of Fear

Our being is roiled with so many fears, day in and day out
big fears and small fears - from fears of one's job, status, even life to trivial ones like fear of approaching an annoyed friend or lover, fear of speaking to someone about something, fear of doing something new. Why do we have to fear so much? What are all these fears for? Can we not be rid of these fears for good!

The concept of God is to help man's ascent from the depths of fear, where he is bound by a tangled web of morbid feelings. The atheists must definitely be a courageous lot for they risk living without a belief in God...for most others such lack of faith will surely turn their heads to madness (I don't know of other types, but definitely a Scorpio man or woman who is an atheist definitely risks a lot for Scorpios have such intense feelings of all types including fear and they are such a suspicious, fearful lot!)

The first thing about fear one should realize is that it is but a reactive mental process - a feeling aimed to ensure an organism's survival, but conversely an organism which spends most of its lifetime in fear, be it externally or internally induced, only manages to diminish its lifespan considerably. The key to a long-lasting, healthy and fulfilling life (and all these three are inter-related) is to live a joyful life with very minimal and only necessary fear, only when absolutely required. Its like a bitter pill one takes when sick and if one has to take a bitter pill every other day, then it just goes on to show that one leads a sickly life and no pill can help such a person.

One should understand that fear, at its basic level is just an interplay of chemicals in our brain ensuring a certain mapping or linkages between neurons - it is not something very big or insurmountable - its in your brain and it can be surmounted.

Whenever you are fearful and you know consciously that it is just one of those irritating, irrational fears (most fears are like that only) - then just tell yourself -

Do not be fearful, Do not struggle
Let it go, let it leave out as you exhale breath
Calm down, relax, close your eyes
Stretch your lips as if you are smiling
Mentally imagine yourself smiling.
You inhale fresh air and smile grows more prominent
Now there's a shine on your face, you are positively beaming
Feel the joy as you inhale the fresh air
Feel the relaxation as you exhale
Its wonderful, its serene
Be joyful, be calm, be at peace

Some thoughts

A cell is an autopoetic system - it has its individuality, which it maintains by its internal processes relating its various parts and this defines life. Existence is life. According to Franciso Varela - this is a necessary and sufficient condition - but a stone or inanimate object exists and continues to exist without having any flow of matter or energy. The answer to this is that if you break a stone into small parts, the individual parts of the stone still exist, but if you break a cell, its individual parts cease to exist because their existence was dependent on their mutual relationship - their organization. Hence the struggle for life - the various parts of a cell form a set of operational processes between them, which is information, which helps them to operate together to keep their organization alive.

If we look at a macro level, in business world organizations behave similarly to the cell organization - they have departments (akin to organs) which have their specific function and each employee (akin to a cell) who have their specific roles all related to each other through processes. Life is a team game - our groupings at a macro level mimic what they are at a cellular level, which constitutes us.

The individual cells or even the organelles within a cell, may not be conscious of the life of the system which they constitute and may want to exploit each other for their own sustenance, but in the process they put the existence of the entire system at risk.