what is your deepest fear?

from Lohbado's notebook

Lohbado sat in the park for a while and felt a wave of anxiety. He asked himself: "What is your deepest fear?" The answer doesn't particularly matter. Fear = X. What interested him was the faculty of continuously generating anxiety. He could be in the middle of nowhere and suddenly fear would hit in the pit of the stomach. It happened independently of his will. He appeared to have no control over it.


In such situations, he resorted to contemplation. Sit quietly and experience whatever is happening in body and mind. Notice the knot in the stomach, the pressure in the head, the dizzy, floating sensation, the dry throat. Gazing at seagulls gliding in a clear sky had a calming effect. He felt like a primitive organism, like some sort of amoeba, or worm. Poke an organism with a stick and it recoils.

His fear was related to a sense of self. Maybe his sense of self felt threatened. What exactly is self anyway? Everyone has a sense of self. A sense of self is the focal point of one's experience. It's a kind of unified consciousness. Consciousness or intellect unites perception, thought and experience into a coherent representation of reality. Self is also one's identity or social credentials: date of birth, weight, height, address and so on.

Maybe self is set up to worry all the time about survival. Like a mechanical device, it continuously scans the environment for potential threat. He could turn down the volume; stop thinking about himself. Focus outwards. The more he gazed into the sky, or towards the horizon and watched others, the less the anxiety. To focus outwards diminished the power of being obsessed with himself and his fears. He thought of the anxiety other people experience. Many people live in extremely difficult circumstances.

He told himself to stop worrying about himself. View self as a recoil mechanism, similar to that of a worm. See self for what it is, then move on. Let thoughts of self go. Let go. Pay attention to what's going on all around. Listen and try to understand others. In this way, anxiety diminishes. One can relax and feel connected to others.