Madness and Spiritual Development: Reflections on One's Fear

One of the most complex tests to face, at a certain point in spiritual development, is having to face different reflections on one's own fear .

Talking about this topic is a difficult task, because it is like jumping into a stormy sea. One of the most powerful weapons of fear is to catch you unprepared. In this, in my opinion, lies its greatest strength and its greatest teaching.

In fact, when faced with fear, whatever the external shock that produces it, we are all unprepared and this produces two types of reaction: total block or push.

The first reaction, the most natural and human, is anger. In fact, to face fear, we must first have faced our inner anger. In that, everyone is free to choose the method they prefer; it goes from exorcisms - in cases of anger that explodes blindly and therefore dangerously, because it is unpredictable in its manifestations - to protections and finally to prayer and various spiritual paths or inner growth. The ultimate goal of spiritual development, however, is inner pacification and the process should happen as quickly as possible, in these times.

Once the cure for anger has been obtained, one can devote oneself to the study of the phenomenon of fear .

The latter is an emotion and not a feeling. In fact, it pertains to a more gross sphere of feeling, a sphere linked to our animal part. In the face of death , the first reaction is in fact fear . Those who say they do not fear death simply do not face it. Death terrifies because it is the end of everything we believe to be real .

To overcome the fear of death, which is the most all-encompassing of fears, as it is the most ancestral and therefore archetypal and therefore lies behind all other manifestations, one must experience death itself and thus discover that it may not exist. How? First of all, by being afraid of it.

It seems like a mind game - and indeed it is - and it remains so until you manage to unravel it.

Having reached this point of speculation, all that remains is to bear witness directly. Life, in fact, is nothing other than the testimony of life itself. If I am alive, I am, in spite of myself, a messenger of some message that I carry.

What message would I like to convey with my existence?

This is a useful question to begin to deal with the fear of death, one's spiritual development which, remember, concerns everyone, not just those who think about it!

Paola Marchi