Key # 4 Fear: The downside of rational thought

" ....and objects of great pith and movement are sicklied over with the pale cast of thought and lose the name of action." The Great Bard in one phrase identified the singular cause of fear. The general consensus is that fear basically comes from ignorance or lack of understanding,but this fails to hold up when you realize that you dont know the gross national product India and it still does not give you any anxiety. Fear in general ( and even in some cases of other psychological disorders) stems from thinking of a situation before it has actually occured. There are two types of fear: fear of death, and fear of emotional/physical pain. Somewhere down the road of psychological developement we learn about the concept of cause and effect. This lesson teaches us the foundation of fear, and upon that foundation we use hypersensitivity to make us acutely aware of the things in our life that we should be afraid of, then follows the perpetuator of fear..........rational thought. Take the simplistic fears of a child for example. He fears the dark, his mind races to make assumptions as to what danger lies waiting in the darkness, he is specifically aware of his vulnerability of the situation so his rational thought stops there and begins to loop and reinforce itself. As he lies awake pondering his situation, he starts to come up with thousands of possibilities to fear while he lies awake in the dark. We see the details of the problem and it would seem to have a complicated solution. When we take away the particulars of this problem and deal only with that it becomes simplistic in its answer yet herculean in its actualization. The problem boils down to fear of death or fear of pain (emotional or physical). Ironic isn't it that the two eventualities that we obsess over with plans of prevention are the ones that no one can ultimately avoid. To borrow and alter a phrase of Francis Bacon's " A little reasoning inlineth a man to fear..a lot of reasoning inclineth a man to fearlessness."