“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me, and around me, and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
— Frank Herbert, “Dune”
~
Why do the jackals of self-loathing and doubt dog our footsteps? It’s all we can do to stay ahead of them, lest we be devoured by our own ravening inadequacy. We drive onward, ever outward through the shimmering waves of mirage, in search for something to fill the absence of vision we have created in our souls. Many of us are unaware of the completeness and satisfaction that lie at the core of our being. Many more are ignorant of any such possibility. Others have glimpsed the truth within as a mirror, and turned away from it in shame or disbelief.
For lack of spiritual insight, I felt that I needed a significant Man Fire to mark my place in the world, and broadcast my invincibility to any night marauders. I wove gently between the trees, trying to make no sound as I gathered firewood, wanting to hear all the shifting nuances of the vibrations that permeated the forest. Stealthily stalking my prey, each sneakered foot nestled in the dry autumn pine needles and gloved hands grasped the dead branches gently. In this trancelike state, log after log floated serenely back to my modest campfire ring until I had enough wood for a funeral pyre. Then, in a flurry of activity intended to get all the noise out of the way at once, I broke the sticks and cracked the logs with the bustle and fury of a slaughterhouse. Once the fire was safely roaring – although there was still an hour of daylight left – I settled down again to listen.
Small bird friends hopped through the bushes and politely rustled dead leaves in the underbrush. Chipmunk claws scratched and scrabbled on rough granite. A butterfly drifted by, softly whipping the currents of air into froth. The fire popped and hissed loudly as the pitchy parts exploded with burning oxygen, and the sharp sounds ricocheted off the granite walls nearby. Smoke curled, wafted, and sifted audibly through the pine branches. The lake occasionally slapped a distant wave on a rock, or gurgled like a baby to remind me it was there. Every sound had a distinct and separate quality, like the instruments in an orchestra tuning up before a concert.
We cannot recognize the origin of the goodness within us because we obliterate the mental picture with smudges of our past mistakes and failures. We are told to seek within for the truth, and grope around stupidly for the light switch with eyes tightly shut, forgetting that we are continuously bathed in light. If we don’t like what we see inside, we try desperately to compensate by accumulating as many outside things as possible. Experiences, shoes, lovers, stamps, power, wealth… we jealously hoard the things that help us to feel a shred of momentary security, and leave the doors of our soul wide open to the scavengers of the night.
The alpine darkness crept in steadily from all corners of the forest, sidling up to my Man Fire as closely as possible, and gradually shutting off the outside world. Only I and my fire existed in the universe, and the ghostly reflections of its orange light flickered on the trunks of shrouded trees and the undersides of branches. Most times I am happily entranced by the magic of a Trinity Alps campfire, but tonight I deliberately looked away out of irrational concern that my vision might be compromised when I needed it most to defend my physical being. The thousands of spirits that inhabited this region in its rocks, trees, and creatures became vaguely malicious in my imagination, and writhed in ghastly patterns of deceit in my shrouded peripheral vision. Every chipmunk scampering through a bush sounded like a saber-toothed tiger bearing down on my campsite. I put more wood on the fire, thanking my foresight to lay in a couple of cords to stave off the night demons.
As the darkness advanced in gloom, gradually overpowering the light of my Man Fire, I became entangled in my present dilemma, interwoven as it was with strands of past paranoia. Should I go to bed and pass the night soundly, not knowing what dangers were lurking outside? Or stay awake and battle the shadows writhing inside my soul? I thought about the bear scat I found pointing ominously towards this very mountain lake like a compass needle, and the certainty that the hungry depositor of that fecal oracle was somewhere nearby, watching, waiting for me to go to sleep so it could devour every scrap of food I had brought up the trail… including me. The late summer temperature dropped precipitously, as the crescent moon rose high in the sky, and I put on another layer of clothes for protection. The fire rippled in ember waves of crimson and orange, and trail fatigue smothered my senses like a sleeping bag.
Isn’t it ironic that we display such lusty courage and conviction when conquering the wild beasts and lands outside us, but quail at the slightest glimpse of the challenges within? Ultimately, death wins the battle for the physical realms, and we are left with scant spoils of our imagined victories. If we could but muster the fortitude to vanquish the demons deep inside the shadows of our own souls, we could win a metaphysical victory that would stay with us for eternity.
Human beings can tame whole continents, greedily consume the last shred of natural resources, and claim dominion over every creature of the air, sea, and land, but who among us has authority over the beasts within, that follow us everywhere we go? Our egos, so quick to assure us of our own certainty and righteousness, are useless cowards in the face of the only real dangers: the blights on our eternal souls. We know our inadequacies as intimately as a one-legged man, and lash out emotionally in every outward direction in a vain effort to compensate for our inner impotence.
I awoke to near darkness. The fire had burned down to a feeble glow, allowing the pernicious black shadows to almost completely engulf the campsite, with me dozing invitingly; warm and delicious like a sausage on a hot plate. I jerked awake, and nearly extinguished the fire with a hastily constructed teepee of sticks. Coughing and blowing in the smoke this produced, I nursed my fire, my idol and protector, slowly back to life. The black shapes grudgingly retreated, but remained alert and menacing. Once I got over the shock of leaving myself vulnerable; out in the open, I hastily prepared my tent for what remained of the endless night. It felt as if 12 hours had passed, but the moon had only nudged a few degrees to the south. As an afterthought, I opened my Buck knife and fixed it to the end of my walking stick with duct tape like a spear, and crawled miserably backwards into my flimsy nylon cocoon for a meager margin of safety.
I don’t know why we feel secure in a tent. It’s not going to stop anything really dangerous, like a hungry grizzly bear, for example. Mr. Bruin would simply shred and cast off the packaging in mild impatience, in the same way a child discards the wrapper of a candy bar. Perhaps we feel safer because we can’t see the enormity of the surrounding wilderness with all its stimuli, and are comforted by the sameness of walls. The apt analogy of a puny Homo sapiens, hiding behind veils of synthetic material, shivering in fear with his little spear and trying to act like everything was normal, was completely lost on my higher sensibilities. My nobler faculties had receded to the wings in embarrassment while my limbic system hogged the stage. Raging rivers of adrenaline made it impossible to sleep, but I dozed off and on in a profound confusion of consciousness for what seemed like many days. Finally, my overworked muscles and nerves could stand no more, and went on a general strike. My hands would no longer cooperate in gripping the haft of my walking-stick-spear. My mind went numb with the constriction of its own thoughts.
My awareness flared open like a searchlight. “Holy shit – was that just a large, heavy animal galloping past my tent?” In truth, I had never seen any mammal larger than a chipmunk anywhere around the lakes. I desperately tried to distinguish dreams from reality, and fell silent with instinctual restraint, reviewing the astonishing sequence in my mind. I recalled hearing bushes faintly crackling far down by the outlet creek, and then loud hoof beats approached, pounding drum-like into the forest floor, getting louder as they galloped past my tent – right next to my head – then behind me and up the slope to the main forest. “Hoof beats!” I snorted aloud with relief, knowing of course that bears don’t have hooves, and relaxing back into a reprieved sense of peace and relaxation. “It was just a deer!”
“Wait a minute!” I bolted upright with a sudden realization so blazing that it set off fireworks in my head. “Why was the deer running?!!”
Man is forlorn and alone in the universe, huddled inconsolably next to his little fire of unconsciousness, nursing its flames with the meager twigs and sticks of his ego in a futile attempt to stave off the emptiness of space. Of all the animals, only he is self-aware enough to harbor the shame of separation from all that is. In retribution for his perceived shortcomings, he scorns the natural, unifying embrace of unconditional love, and dwells on his own dark limitations and transgressions, until he paradoxically feels persecuted by the very light of which he is composed.
As man stares morosely into the fire of his own delusions, he is blinded to the splendor that is all around him. By focusing on his limitations, he has pulled a veil of inadequacy and sadness over his eyes that can only be lifted by reunion with all that is. Only when the fire dies, does he see, too late, that there was nothing to fear but his own shadow.
The attentive reader can deduce several obvious points about my situation. Number one: I wasn’t going to get any sleep, but I wasn’t devoured by ravenous carnivores either, since I’m obviously writing this story. I spent the rest of the night in abject paranoid misery, muscles locked in spasm, brain squirming with the wretched terrors of a primitive nerve system run amok. Without the catalyst of any drugs whatsoever, I had allowed my psyche to completely melt down in a nuclear reaction of fear and loathing. I was a Cro-Magnon patsy, separated from his tribe, assaulted and terrorized by the higher links in the food chain. As soon as the grayness of the tardy dawn restored the first vestiges of color to my tent walls, I extricated myself clumsily from the rip-stop nylon torture chamber, and stumbled crazily into the dim, flat landscape, clutching my spear and ready to fight to the last heartbeat. The residue of my physical fight-or-flight stresses dissipated in a few hours, but freeing my emotional ego from the ensnarement of self-abhorrence would take decades.
I was the hapless victim of multiple tragedies and catastrophes that night, and absolutely none of them ever happened. It felt as though I had been ravaged and violated by every nightmarish demon that ever tormented a human soul. It would take a very long time for me to understand that the only real enemy was the one inside the tent.
I built my fire back up to protective mode as soon as I could, and waited for the feeble grayness to become a recognizable morning. As soon as there was enough light, I tracked the hoof prints right through the middle of the campsite, past the fire ring, and a few feet from my tent, disappearing where the forest floor merged with granite. So it wasn’t a dream, or my imagination, and now I had a decision to make. I had planned to stay 2 nights to detoxify and heal myself from stresses and self-reproach, but after the hellish night wrought of my own devices, I felt worse than I had before I came up here. The beloved lake landscape that I had anticipated would be soothing and forgiving looked stark and abrasive in the pitiless gloom of an uncertain dawn. A foggy overcast pressed down heavily on the colorless scenery and further dampened my outlook.
You who come to seek solace in the primal, wild bosom of the mountains must come with a pure spirit. The energy of the wilderness is a reflection of the soul, and the quality of light therein. You make your own suffering who come without contrition; without sincere repentance for the distortions and obfuscations of the ego. There is healing in the wild places and salvation too, for the worthy receptive heart. But the vast, unexplored territories are not outside you; they are at the center of your being. The paragon of irony is to look outside one’s self to discover what is within.
I descended more brazenly, made reckless and bold by the false luster of my audacity. There were no “hut-huts” or clacking of sticks to warn the multitudinous beasties I was coming. I figured if I saw a bear at this point, I would just wave jauntily as I legged past, and be out of sight before he knew what happened. My feet developed horrible blisters as the constant downhill pounding mashed my sweaty flesh into the toes of my sneakers, but I didn’t stop. I was too fixated on my retreat to civilization, where my pathetic constructs were better camouflaged. Plop, plop! My feet dumbly sensed the next open spot on which to place themselves all the way down the trail. With every step I lost a little bit more divine connectedness and reverted to the torpor of mundane solitude.
As I got lower in elevation and closer to the trailhead, the faint echoes of the cosmic vibration completely died out, and were replaced by the familiar clatter of the counterfeit gears in my mind. I settled back into the molded comforts of my disabilities the way an invalid fits into the impressions of a wheelchair cushion. The sight of my car was all the catalytic conversion to civilization I needed. The lever clicked, my soul shifted back into neutral, the ego revved up its domestic engine, and purred with selfish satisfaction all the way home. The grand illusion had regained control.
“The land of healing lies within, radiant
with the happiness that is blindly
sought after in a thousand
outer directions.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda