Fear and Loathing in the Dark of Night

As a child I was scared of the dark.  In some of the bedrooms that I inhabited growing up, I had a night light on the wall that glowed in the darkness so I could get my bearings, and when that wasn't possible, I would always open the door a crack to let light from the rooms beyond reach me.  There have been times when I have had to adjust to lying there in total darkness, and believe me, it has been very difficult.  There was a time in Bhutan when the village we were staying over in lost all its power just as we were eating our dinner.  Makeshift flashlights were produced and I soon navigated my way to my room, but I remember feeling a sense of dread that soon I would lie down in bed and disappear in the darkness.  It was blacker than black outside in Punakha, tucked away in the towering Himalayas, and I suddenly felt fear where it had not existed before.  There is also isolation that comes in the dark... I felt farther away from my homeland and my people than I had ever felt, and I lay in bed and longed for night to pass quickly.  Recently on retreat at Spirit Rock, I lay in my little bed in my very quiet room in the darkness and unfortunately recalled a time long ago where terror, a fear of dying in my sleep, took me over.  This old memory began to possess me, for no clear reason.  I tried deep breathing and "noting" the fear, I used all that I had in my toolkit then for coping with fear, and it didn't work.  My body seemed to vibrate with anxiety.  I even imagined staying awake until it became light, when I was sure the fear would drift away...

I have been thinking a lot since then about fear and where it comes from.  Is this debilitating fear of mine rooted in childhood trauma, perhaps?  And if so, must I find that, understand it, see it for what it is in order to become free of it?  This is entirely possible.  Like so many others, I had a childhood of instability and essential loneliness.  Ignored by my alcoholic mother most of the time, I created a cocoon of other-ness in self defense.  My opinions, my feelings were rarely attended to, and so I pulled into myself.  And became used to loneliness, and the weird irrational feelings that come with it.

There is another possible root to this irrational fear that visits.  It is part of my response to the darkness of the world we live in.  I confess I spend a great deal of time reading the news and thinking about what is going on, and in the last several years my heart has felt more and more beat up, and there has been more and more anger at the greed, hatred, and ignorance of those who take guns into their hands and murder others.  Along with the hurt and the anger comes the horrible feeling of helplessness.  A classroom of children assaulted and young lives snuffed out, people in a movie theater, just living their lives, gunned down by a madman, so many black men attacked in many of our cities because they are black, and now a congregation of black people in an historic sanctuary in Charleston shot down by a frightening young man with racist intentions....  The fabric of our country's high moral, egalitarian values is now shredded to bits, as lawmakers in Washington sit in trepidation of the NRA and our supposed right to bear arms.  There aren't words to describe this state of helplessness and anger and deep despair.  So, I (we) sit with this horrible, sick feeling that our world doesn't work anymore, that we are all lost without anchors because no one seems to have the guts to stand up for victims of terrorism and violence here at home.  And it is a dark place we sit in.  And it is scarier than any of my nighttime dances with fear.

Where are we going as a country?  How are those who are disadvantaged, poor, hurt, sick and dying, invisible ... how are those people going to be cared for?  When will the system recover its conscience and courage, and fulfill the vision of this being a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"?

I worry for my precious grandchildren and the world they are becoming adults in, but then I guess that's the prerogative of all elders.  I remember my own grandmother expressing her distress at the way our world was becoming more violent and chaotic and cruel, and that was over thirty years ago.  So the wheel of my life is turning, and it is my turn to stand at the edge and look out into the great sprawling, uncertainty that death offers, and feel fear in my heart for the landscape my beloved family have to travel.

The Buddhist teachings tell us fear is just a feeling that comes and then passes, like all sensations, thoughts, and phenomena.  Yes, I understand.  I saw that when night ended and it became light, and the fear of being dead moved on.  My job apparently is to hold this fear as best I can when it appears, and to try to love my fragile self in the process.  We are all vulnerable, and we also know there are those who are exceedingly more vulnerable than we are.  We humans have a shared frailty and uncertainty and we must feel it and speak about it, and somehow we must endure through the dark times.  Gandhi once said of India's relationship to the British something like, "we will not fight, but we will wear them down with our capacity to suffer."  I'm thinking that we must suffer through this inexplicable and violent time without giving up, even as we are visited by the dark fears, the sleepless nights, and outburst of rage and tears.

I guess I will continue my practice of making sure there is some light shining in the darkness when I am trying to sleep...