Reflection N° 137 - Fears

In animals and humans, fears are one of the survival pillars. In humans, fears spring from ignorance. Jesus Christ, the Great Solar Initiate, was unaware of fear, and admitted to be Crucified to redeem Humanity, though he did not serve his purpose. Now he has come back under the name of Maitreya and with other power, –he is Master of Justice.

Many powerful men and women have known fears. Some of them were quite popular Great Initiates of Moon and Fire, who have marked their footsteps on History:

1st. Hitler was afraid of being ridiculed, taken prisoner by the Russians and paraded through the city in a cage before the crowd. In his bunker of Berlin, he shot himself in the middle of fires and explosions, besieged by Soviet armies. The Germans fought to the end with machine guns, rockets and hand grenades. Hanna Reitsch, a Colonel and Test Pilot in the Luftwaffe, landed aboard an aircraft on Unter der Linden Avenue, and in front of the Führer she was ready to defend him, but moved, Hitler ordered her to flee. Hanna ran away by plane from the explosions, and it was not known of her. She knew no fear.

2nd. Marilyn Monroe, a lover of the President of the United States and of politicians and singers too, and an international famous artist, was afraid of old age and committed suicide with barbiturates at a motel in California. Her fame grew with her death, as Phryne, a model of the sculptor Praxiteles and a beautiful woman in Athens, who preferred to die at the stake to those wrinkles that come as the years pass by.

3rd. Howard Hughes, a millionaire from Texas, was afraid of infections and diseases. He was a loner and his guards were Mormons. Being an old man, secluded in a building he owned in Mexico, and surrounded by quacks and physicians, U. S. policemen found him dead, forsaken by his guards and eaten by lice. Then, in an attempt to restore his reputation, a company produced the film “The Aviator”, which fell into oblivion.

4th. Pious XII, an Italian Pope, was afraid of death. Accused by the Jews of cooperation with Nazis during the Second World War, such charge could not be proved. Being very old, he was given dubious cures by means of neonate injections.

5th. Carlos Saul Menem, former President of Argentina. Though cunning, he is a frivolous man without temper, who ruled the country for periods in a decadent age in which he practiced excesses of all kind, with lovers from the opposite parties, sales of State companies, corruption on all levels, slums, poverty, and illicit enrichment. Accompanied by physicians and hair stylists, he is afraid of aging such as television artists do, lays himself open to ridicule, and for the sake of appearances he spends dirty money on cosmetic surgery.

6th. Barack Hussein Obama. The slavery karma of the United States’ history weighs on his political career as President of his country. He lacks the temper of Lincoln. He is afraid of the public-opinion polls, and even of losing popularity.

7th. Joseph Alois Ratzinger and his red shoes. It was so hard to compete as to popularity with the Pope John Paul II, a great political communicator who was fond of spectacular travels, and miraculously saved from a bullet wound in the gut through the intercession of the Virgin of Fatima. Ratzinger is not sympathetic to Muslims or Jews, and in this TV age, his red shoes custom-made by a craftsman in the Alps draw the attention of tourists.

8th. The Jews and their Wailing Wall. This is a racial fear that comes from the bottom of history when the Romans destroyed the Temple, sacked Jerusalem, took the Seven-Branched Candelabrum, and dispersed the people. In the Diaspora, Jews from all over the world are coming to the Wall to mourn their fears.

We could enlarge ad infinitum this account of fears because everyone has his/her own personal intimate fear, –any fears still undiscovered but that come up any time, before hazards, dreams, or unusual situations. There are general fears that are known to all –a plane trip, epidemics and disease, some unexpected death, enemies, to be fired from job, and so on. The range of fears is so vast that many persons have several fears, or rather, they ever fear of anything unknown to them –of crossing the street, leaning out of a balcony, or crashing their car.

One may have a strong or weak fear, or a deep or surface fear, and ultimately it is one self that remains unknown and not other person; to know and analyze this fear means to start unraveling the mystery of life, which is acting in oneself, in this life, in previous lives, perhaps in many previous incarnations, because karma does not forgive, incarnations pass by, and one unexpected day that frightening fear comes up.
A person following the Renunciation Path should pay attention to his/her fears and differentiate them because though they may bother and affect on a higher or lower level, there are differences among them. To be afraid of an abyss becomes a healthy and important protective warning that should be considered; but in case of being afraid of losing possessions, houses, properties, money, et cetera, one should differentiate what is the cause of such fear –a chaotic social situation, personal attachment, unsuitable deals, or death. On the Renunciation Path, one should gradually get rid of stones blocking our steps –they are stones that come up and stop us. Many times, a suitable deal, to buy a property, or to be heir to something becomes a serious impediment to a soul that is in quest of liberation through Renunciation. The biggest is what one gets, the hardest shall be our own detachment. Some few can say no. A soul should pay attention to ups and downs of daily life, to take and give and to benefits received, even those that are spiritual, because if one is not prepared, what looks like an achievement becomes our enemy after a while. All those things received become potentially hazardous when the Renunciation spirit is not enough.

We receive something that is material or spiritual but with no fears, because we like it and perhaps the hazard lies on such pleasure. All things received become hazardous and all those things left behind are good because the latter bring us closer to liberation. In Saint John of the Cross’ words, a bird tied by a silk string is not free, and those strings that are tying persons are silk strings that sometimes are very thin and cannot be seen. Other times such strings are adorned by so-called attractive charming jewels, and the individual loves to be in bondage. Our modern society is full of artificial paradises, from drugs to magazine covers, from antinatural affairs to plenty of money, cruises and vogues. Every one of these objects, no matter how their dimension or quality may be, becomes a shadow that accompanies man all the time. Many persons have no money, are poor, and live on their job, but play the pools every week. Their shadow becomes their invisible desire to possess things and, along with it, their fear of being unable to get those things. Material and psychological possessions –even those potentially belonging to the mind and dreams– come together in company of a fear of losing them or never getting them. That happiness that men rarely reach lies on using material or spiritual things that are offered by life, but without being attached to them, with inner detachment and spontaneous Renunciation that induces the individual to enjoy them intensely because he shall be able to leave them behind any time and when he wants.

We should learn how children are free and detached from things –they use them, live with them for a while, and later leave them behind and forget. Why do men live attached to things they love –money, objects, or persons? Do not they realize that a selfish possession is against the natural law and creates a lot of suffering? Perhaps they do not know they should die and leave everything behind, no matter who may be wailing? Saint Paul of the Cross called Mystical Death to an integral state of detachment from life, or if you wish, to that vital superiority leading an individual to set himself over daily miseries by means of Renunciation –such state shall give wisdom to perform those things you wish, not remaining tied. It is to live with no fears, like those children who, after playing all day, sleep peacefully after dusk. In the morning, they wake up like the first day in their lives, –a fresh and creative day with no bad memories. Jesus said: “Unless you change and become again like children, you will never enter the kingdom of God”.

Any person, of whatever social state, particularly when he/she leaves irresponsible adolescence years behind and starts forging a profession, or a place in society, should begin knowing his/her fears no matter how shameful they may be because those fears and prohibitions become signs of his/her personality, destiny, and actual possibilities. To dream of fancy achievements out of a mental/psychological frame becomes a self-sentence to failure, especially in this age that is full of promotional offers, dreams of fast success, and money just round the corner. Thousands of girls wish to get success by TV and advertising as models. Thousands of boys aim at playing on a sport stadium and traveling and earning much money. Months and years pass by, and groups of cartoneros (carton recyclers), beggars and drug addicts are populating the slums. They never leave after they fall into the pit.

The subject on fears is not only of Argentina but even of the world, in all societies,– in those that are living a prosperous economy like Brazil or India, or those that are sinking in a financial crisis like Europe or the United States. Humanity has reached the summit of an age, has made all those things it had to make, and now it disappears amid a fire of destruction that is social and individual, material and spiritual, economic and planetary. The reader should meditate on his/her fears, and on that inquiry he/she shall find survival paths. Corporation offers, advertising, reveries about luminous cities, and all those things that are easy and fast have come to an end. The reader should discover his/her path that is full of fears, and start walking toward the survival.

José González Muñoz
January 2011