Fear, Death and Living

Weaving Wisdom Path: The Five Books of Moses, Our Emotional Brain and Our Lives.

Seeking Wisdom: FEAR, DEATH and LIVING

Fear often stops me cold.  What can I do?

I’m afraid of heights!  While I did go to the top of the Seattle Space Needle, I stood briefly, my back pressed against the farthest wall until I scurried down in the next elevator.  My fear also kept us from the top platform of the Eiffel Tower missing the full Paris panorama.  Not rooted in reason, fear takes over my body and limits my life.  Yet fear is natural, an ancient part of our brain that has helped humans survive for millennia. Part of the social engagement system, fear helps us “regulate each other’s biological and emotional states.”¹ In the Five Books, when tribal leaders (also called spies) report to the Israelites all they experienced in Canaan, we witness two stories in the Israelites– the story that stops us and the go story that urges us forward. These stories are in our heads also and in alliance with our emotional brain, the Five Books can coach us to wisely manage our fears.

We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them. An example of a stop story, ten of the twelve tribal leaders said that the Canaanites thought them small because that’s how they saw themselves.  Since The immediate reaction to stress is vital for short-term survival, it would seem that the leaders were helping both themselves and the Israelites avoid death.  However, this stop story is dangerous because no evidence can possibly disprove it or the fear it induces.  If I believe I’m a grasshopper, then I think all others see a grasshopper.  What else could they see?  I don’t want to be squashed so what else can I feel but fear?  The Israelites ingested this fear.  Consider the words that were imbedded in your early upbringing, way your caretakers described you – smart or stupid, pretty or just so-so, strong or weak, fun or shy, and the list goes on.  Children absorb those words, believing that is how all people will see them.  In spite of the miraculous gifts at Mount Sinai, the Israelites slipped back into an embedded slave mindset. As grasshoppers they could not survive battling the Canaanites. As grasshoppers they stood quaking in their tents.

Let us by all means go up . . . for we shall surely overcome . . . The Joshua and Caleb, other two Israelite leaders, articulated the go story, but it failed to move the Israelites.  Telling myself that I should enjoy the view from the highest platform, that it’s completely safe behind the metal railing, doesn’t diminish the fear churning in my gut.  The Israelites wept and railed against Moses and Aaron. They cried out, If only we had died in the land of Egypt . . . or if only we might die in this wilderness! [14:2] A fear story may evoke words that you may soon regret.

Advocates of the go story, Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and Joshua and Caleb rent their clothes.  Joshua tried again –  the land was good and worth the effort, don’t rebel against the Lord and finally have no fear.  As with parents, frustration filled these leaders who, seeing forward in time, could understand both the reality of the present fear and its limits. The Israelites remained unmoved and unmoving, stuck in their stop story and their fear.  Leaders and people, all were stuck.  Something stronger was needed to crack things loose.

God’s intervention was sharp and powerful.  Angered by the Israelites’ continuing intransigence, God threatened to destroy all the people, a disaster that was prevented only by Moses’ intercession.  God’s next – and more judicious – response is to condemn those whose brains were stuck in a slavery attitude to die before reaching Canaan.  Be careful what you wish for.  Only their children would inherit the land, insuring that those who were to enter Canaan would be free of that fear story.  Clean up done, God takes several amazing steps to help the Israelites manage their fear.

When you enter the land . . . The next line in the Five Books abruptly shifts focus to 38 years into the future, forcing the Israelites attention forward, instructing them on to how they were to behave in Canaan.  Why this?  Why now?  No longer addressing the grasshopper minds, God’s words hopefully penetrated Canaan’s future inhabitants.  Fears become manageable when we shift our attention forward, when we engage our power and pay attention to benefiting our loved ones. I got to the top of the Space Needle and to the middle platform of the Eiffel Tower by focusing on my breathing and the loving hand that held mine.

The rapid return to normalization after the threat has passed is essential for long-term survival. Breathing and connecting help return our fear physiology back to normal states.  It’s OK to be scared – for a while.  Perhaps the grasshopper story forced God to conclude that there was no way to tone down the fear-habituated brains of the recently freed Israelites slaves.  Those who entered Canaan needed the ability to regulate their fear, for only when we access a sense of safety can we connect with others and with God.  “A secure attachment indicates that we have learned to successfully utilize our relationships with others to quell our fears and modulate our arousal.”²

Living into my 70’s has taught me that we can revise those original stop stories that are stuck in our heads.  My fear limited me at times but it does not stop me. I rappelled off a 50-foot rock in Wyoming and zip lined across forested canyons in Costa Rica.  I did ascend the Eiffel Tower to the middle level and recently looked over the edge into the canyon from Hoover Dam. To help the Israelites change their fear responses, God instructed them how to do repair if they broke a commandment, how to deal with sins they might commit and how to remember all this with a symbolic fringe on their garments.  These were to be done when they were in Canaan.

Fear happens, yet as we train ourselves to look forward, to focus and connect, we moderate our fear, returning to a place where we can feel connected.  Our brains are built both to fear and to inhibit fear.  Managing our fears, asking for and receiving help, we create connection.

1. Solomon, Marion and Tatkin, Stan, Love and War in Intimate Relationships, 2011, 134.
2. Cozolino, Louis. The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, 2^nd ed., 2010, p. 233.

Quotes from the Five Books of Moses are from Etz Hayim, 1999.