It was a humid summer morning when I ventured outside to begin my day. The sun was still on its rise to make its full ascension to brighten the day even further. It smelled of summer. The birds were singing. Squirrels were scurrying about playfully. It was a most memorable and beautiful morning.
As I took this snap shot of this glorious dawning, I suddenly noticed something else quite amazing. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. It briefly interrupted my thoughts and broke my stride towards my car. I knew it hadn’t been in its place the night before. It was a spider’s web.
I reacted frantically to remove the web from my face. It’s a most unpleasant sensation! I knew full well I’d not be on the spider’s menu. There was really no need for this exaggerated reaction, but I just felt like I had to get this stuff off my face.
I couldn’t see it, although it was clear and bright out. I walked into this snare unaware.
After clearing the strands of the sticky substance from my face I looked around to see if there was any more of the web still intact. As I looked to my left, over my shoulder, I noticed a wonderful construction. I figured I must have only caught a part of the web that was anchoring it on one side.
In the web, I noticed a singular, desperate fly. I imagine it was newly entangled because it was still buzzing with fight. It couldn’t move much. There was no progress being made in its struggle for its life. It was amazing to behold this thing of beauty in its utility. This world wonder, magnificent in its detail, and beautiful to me, was nothing more than a trap—a sticky, powerful, inescapable trap.
As I sit here reflecting upon that most memorable event in a day of my life, something hit me regarding that web. A spider’s web is dangerous to insects. It can scarcely be detected. It’s comparatively as strong as steel. And, most importantly, it’s constructed with a deadly purpose by its architect, the spider. Things end badly for any creature unfortunate enough to end up in its clutches.
Everything about that moment now raises thoughts of something we can’t see, it’s incredibly strong, and once in its grip there’s slim chance of escape. I’m thinking of fear and what a tangled web fear can be.
According to Webster’s dictionary fear is to be frightened, to have a reverential awe of, to be afraid of, or to expect with alarm. It is an unpleasant emotion caused by the anticipation or awareness of danger. It can be an instance of this emotion or a state marked by this emotion. It is anxious concern or reason for alarm.
Therefore, we can deduce from its definition, fear is quite presumptuous. Fear is primitive, it’s instinctive. Fear is always responsive and reactionary to some threat of danger or peril. I am not attempting to insinuate fear is unnecessary. Healthy fear literally saves lives! However, this reveals that fear can be unprecedented and frequently subjective.
Fear is sticky and powerful in its grasp because it torments. Whoever finds themselves caught in the web of fear, if not careful, could be devoured by the pending danger of the architect of the web. Fear provokes tension, anxiety, worry, struggle, stress, unrest or uneasiness. Fear convinces its prey that destruction is inevitable. It invokes our most terrifying imaginations rendering us emotionally and sometimes physically paralyzed.
Just like the spider’s web, we can’t see fear, but when trapped we feel it all about us. It seems to constrict our breathing, and our hope dims as we ponder our eminent doom.
It would actually seem manageable if fear but clouded our thoughts. But, fear can overwhelm our thinking faculties and pervade the entirety of our thought life. It begins to influence our actions and/or inaction. When fearful we can become disorganized, disoriented, unproductive, lethargic, slothful, uninterested, distracted, indecisive, unfocused and irrational. This state is a horrible place from which to make critical decisions but fear causes speedy resolution to seem necessary.
Interestingly, webs are systems of interconnected, intertwining, and interdependent strands of the spider’s silk. Some of its branches are sticky, yet some are not, making it possible for the spider to navigate the web without being ensnared in its own trap. They construct the web this way because of their keen sensitivity to vibrations on the web. The spider can actually locate its prey via the vibes in its web system.
The web of fear is similar in that it spreads to multiple areas of our lives with its tentacles of interconnectivity and interdependence. Fear wouldn’t be all bad if it didn’t have this far reaching feature. If we could totally isolate it to a single context of our lives or living it might not be so debilitating. But, we cannot, so fear alters our vibrations bringing them low, dictating the vibe people pick up from us.
Unfortunately, because this is the case, fear builds up momentum. It can begin as a faint feeling or idea of discomfort and mature into hysterical paranoia. In it building momentum, we find ourselves falling into emotional unrest and, at times, depression until we’re sometimes emotionally bankrupt. And it’s ironic, but that which we fear is totally separate from the web that has us in our emotional death struggle.
Fear is not cause—it is effect. Fear is the result of our perceptions, our beliefs, our misunderstandings, and sometimes our ignorance. That which we fear sits free of the struggle of the web. It figuratively watches us as we struggle in futility to escape. Fear is instantaneously constructed the moment we focus on some belief we hold, and it’s our certainty of this belief that manifests as fear.
Fear isn’t complex—it’s simple. For example, we grow afraid when we learn there is the threat of layoff on our jobs. It’s not the lost of our job that provokes a fear response; it’s the fundamental fear of poverty and its effects that we struggle with. Our mind begins to imagine us being homeless, starving, naked and desperate. With this movie footage running repeatedly, we have sufficient proof that this is inevitable, so we have flown into the tangled web of fear.
Then, in this state of fear we unknowingly and often unconsciously begin creating the dynamics of this poverty reality. Therefore, fear is also procreative. Fear spawns supporting ideas that result in creative acts, and these acts are many times negative in nature. These acts are the seeds from which our results and outcomes are born.
For instance; when one fears rejection they act in such a way that would insulate them from the pain of that feared rejection. Ironically, in doing so they create the disposition that is unpleasant and off putting, and in this weak and repulsive state they emit the vibrations necessary to be rejected. Frequently, these persons do the rejecting first in the desperate attempt to avoid the sting of rejection, and they inadvertently create the resulting feeling or actuality of isolation and loneliness.
Adding insult to injury, the process deteriorates into feelings of guilt and shame. The culmination of their fear syntheses leave them emotionally depleted due to the constant nagging of their subsequent guilt over being fearful. The guilt dynamics often spiral downward into shame in almost disbelief that one finds themselves in their present condition. There are few that find comfort in having to admit they are fearful of someone or something. This is especially true where the fear issues surround personal identity, ability, capacity, or self-worth.
Sensitivities are heightened at this stage, and then the fearful become creative in a most self-deprecating way. We begin to drift into the practice of justifying our fears and making unreasonable and sometimes illogical excuses for ourselves. The development of this habit relegates us to a season of cyclical dysfunction.
Persons drifting into this state of hypocrisy and inauthentic behavior tend to grow ever more creative, constructing the scenarios they will have to defend, justify, make excuses over, and at times flat-out lie about.
The tangled web of fear effortlessly draws its unfortunate prisoner more securely into its sticky hold by way of its victim’s relentless struggle. The struggle can ensue for only so long before the prey is exhausted and without any fight remaining within them.
Now, the victim of the web has been transformed from a free flying creature, going about its life or routine, to a helpless, horrified, stationary meal for the architect of the web.
All of this, while seemingly complex, is actually quite simple. I’m not trying to insult anyone here by oversimplifying the matter of fear, so I’m not trying to say dealing with our fears is an easy proposition at all. However, I am saying fear is a matter of great simplicity.
Many of our fears are learned, adopted and shared. Some of our fears we learned because they were taught to us; others we learned because we observed them in others very close to us. Some fears are social norms being programmed into our psyches by the many forms of media pervasive in society today. Even deeper are the fears we share through our corporate social consciousness.
Many live unconsciously. Therefore, there are many fears influencing our lives that we aren’t even aware are at work and in control of our actions and thoughts. Some of us never give any thought to what we’re thinking about. Some of us never really think at all. Life is happening to us. We are merely existing; waiting for the next good or bad thing to take place.
We must awaken to our fears if we would have any chance of reversing them, of breaking free from the web we find ourselves in. It’s a violent prospect! Admitting we bear fear is painful to our fragile or superimposed egos. But, it is essential to the possibility of freedom.
Ownership of our fears can be a beautiful revelation, a virtual resurrection from the dead. Upon recognition we can come clear on the source of our fears. We can work at uprooting the causes of our fears. We can earnestly determine if what we fear is real. We can embrace and realize an irreversible emancipation.
We must simply let go of our justifications. We must let go of our guilt and shame. We must harness, refocus and guide our imaginations. We must let go of our presumptions of failure, rejection, disappointment, conflict, injury, etc.
We must realistically address the influences our fears have on our actions, thoughts and responses. We must recalibrate our belief systems about who we are, what we’re capable of, our boundless power, and our perceptions of personal worthiness. We must thoroughly examine that of which we’re certain. This is true because we become what we think about.
We must think, think for ourselves, and think clearly about what we want, what we want to do, where we want to be, what we intend to have, etc. We must let go of the idea of scarcity and lack which puts us in unavoidable competition with others fighting for the scraps.
We must let go of the sense of desperation regarding love and our hopes for meaningful relationship. We must reckon with our phantasms of loneliness and disconnection; for we are never alone. We are a singular part of an interconnected and interdependent whole.
We must let go of our ideas that evil could triumph over good, that darkness could overwhelm light, that injustice could eradicate justice, that inequality could diffuse the constant power of equality.
We must let go of our “shoulds” for the world around us, our presumptions that we know what’s best for others’ lives. We must consider the possibility we don’t know it all, that we could be wrong or limited in some things. We must consider the possibility there’s a better way than ours.
We must understand and embrace the power of humility, gentleness, kindness, patience, long-suffering, faith, peace, joy, equality, and self-discipline.
Simply put, we must create and allow the perfection of love in us; for perfect love casts out fear.
You want to be free from the tangled web of fear? Love yourself, because you are created from Divine spirit, I know as God. Then, love others, because they are come out from the same source and are therefore great, just as you. This equality is the source of all freedom including freedom from fear.
So, let webs apply to insects. We are not insects! We are much more! And we have no business tangled in the web of fear.
