The Tiniest of Lights

Facing Fear, Rekindling Hope

“Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” - Rumi

It was Diwali last week, the South Asian festival of lights. Celebrated across the subcontinent and around the world by people of many faiths and traditions, it is typically replete with new clothes, sweet treats, and way too many fireworks. Yet, for me, this year, with all that is happening in the world, all I could feel connected to was the simplest meaning of Diwali: to face the darkness with the tiniest of lights.

I can offer this light on my own, and/or we can do it together, to illuminate our personal and collective places of fear, ignorance, brokenness, loneliness, emptiness, and more. In a dark room, even one lit match will shift the scene from hard nothingness into soft possibility. So this year, perhaps more than it ever has before, each of Diwali’s lights signified to me a new beginning, a touch of hope, a previously unimagined path, for my/your/our new year.

This light arrived at the right time. After my last article on Rage, Grieve, Love, a dear reader asked me to write about fear. Fear is ubiquitous and ever-present, he said. It governs so many behaviors, words, actions, so often unconsciously — like an invisible puppet holder manipulating the strings of our lives. The fear of our own vulnerability. The fear of the other. The fear of the unknown, of the future. The fear of change. And, as my friend reminded me, the big F fear — the fear of death. I imagine there are many gates of fear, not unlike and perhaps parallel to the gates of grief outlined by Francis Weller. I see fear interwoven in the realms of the personal, interpersonal and systemic, and in the spirit of Diwali, it’s where I want to bring my tiniest light today.

What does it look like to face the fear in ourselves? How is fear embedded in our relationships and our communities? How do we support others with their fears, and how does community support us with ours? How can we recognize the fear that permeates our systems of education, healthcare, economy, politics, justice, security, and how can we transform it? As James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Like the proverbial monsters under our beds, fear can consume us. It can swallow our minds, freeze our bodies, crush our hearts, choke our spirits. Fear can power the hamster wheel of ‘hurt people hurt people’. It’s a force, a barrier, an instigator, a supplicant. To me, fear is like conflict: it grows exponentially. When one unaddressed fear meets another, it doesn’t add up to two in intensity; it jumps to four. Add another fear, and we hit level 10. One more and suddenly, we’re at 25, and terrified. Our vision has fully constricted; there are no options, no imagination, no ways out. The exponential grows even faster when external voices are reiterating the fear. It’s what all successful war-mongers and dictators know how to do: catch a fear and use media to spread it like wildfire.

But maybe instead of thinking that we need millions of gallons of water to face our fears, we could envision it differently. More like sticking a toothpick in the hamster wheel, or just lighting the smallest of candles in a dark room. (I’m on a roll with my metaphors, forgive me, please.) As with conflict, trauma, and many other challenges in our world and lives, perhaps facing our fears doesn’t take much more than slowing down, asking for and receiving support, letting it come out, and then watching it transform itself. Maybe it’s more like the courage you need to turn on the flashlight and look under the bed. (My last metaphor, I promise.)

I’ve been reflecting on my own experiences with fear. I had nightmares as a child, recurring terrors of murderous violence. I would wake up frozen, and then somehow, pluck myself out of bed and walk the eight steps down the hall to my parents’ room, to snuggle up next to my mom. At age six, I told my 15-year-older cousin who was visiting us from India about it. She taught me the Namokar Mantra (a Jain prayer in the ancient language of Prakrit that focuses on reverence) and said that if I recited it before I slept, I wouldn’t have the nightmares. I did, and she was right. Every single time I remembered to do it, I slept nightmare-free.

I remember being gripped by fear in other moments — that someone was going to physically hurt me, that I was going to make a decision that would ruin my life, that I would be abandoned and alone… These fears were usually future-oriented figments constructed by my amygdala based on something of my past (and/or stories that I had imbibed from other people or media). This last month and year, I had to face the fear that my eye surgeries would not go well, and I might lose vision in one or both eyes. In each moment, the way out was through. As long as the fear was rattling around in my own head, gaining momentum, I was paralyzed. But as soon as I found friends, shared my fears in the light of day, I was able to release them, and then move forward with support.

This tiniest light can be asking a question and listening for the answer: What are my fears, and what support do I need, internally and externally, to face and move through them? Maybe it’s because fear is elemental. Like rage (fire) and grief (water), fear also longs to be heard and seen — not to be dismissed or ignored or ‘fixed’. But like air, fear wants to breathe. Once it is made visible to others, then, on the wind, it can fly and leave behind the fifth element — space.

Many years ago, at a YES! Jam in Egypt, I witnessed fear’s transformation in this way. I remember Ahmed* in the last all-group circle. He was so afraid when he shared that he was gay. He was certain that he would be attacked, particularly by participants in the Jam who identified as religious. He literally trembled as he spoke, tears streaming down his face. At the same time, Ahmed said he couldn’t hide anymore. That the pain of not being true to himself was bigger than the fear of the judgement from others. The whole circle listened deeply and made space for his fear. And, then, when he was complete with his sharing, he looked into the eyes of those he feared. And they asked if they could hug him. It was a moment of healing and divine connection that will stay with me forever. I saw the fear alchemize into love.

Facing fear makes me think about the light shining through safer and braver spaces. Now that’s become common lingo for movement- and community-building efforts, because such spaces are shorthand for calling forth a plethora of activity: they invite vulnerability, build bridges across differences, transform conflicts, remember human wholeness, restore justice, heal trauma, and expand love. These spaces are also where we can personally and collectively face fear and move through it to love — for ourselves, for each other, for the wider world. Indeed, I see that particular combination of safety and bravery as central to this powerful alchemy.

Safety and bravery are both rooted in practices of inner and collective consciousness. Internally, I can become more aware about when and where I feel safe and unsafe, brave and un-brave, and do my best to communicate about those openings and boundaries as I notice and understand them. Then, collectively, we can co-create conscious containers that synthesize these personal awarenesses. In my understanding, such containers rely on particular elements: purposeful and clear invitations; free will to accept (or not) those invitations and participate accordingly; centering and grounding; welcoming of whole selves; shared agreements; and visible intentions (instead of assumed expectations). The articulation and practice of these elements are what foster safer and braver spaces.

One thing I have come to recognize is that there are containers everywhere. Most places function within the dominant container — of scarcity, speed, compulsion, control, inequality, competition, divisive binaries of right-wrong, good-bad, etc. I am guessing you all are familiar with the mindsets, skillsets and structures of this dominant container. Most of us have been educated in it, and through it, and it forms the foundation of most political, economic, and social and familial systems. This container cultivates fear, separation, violence and destruction, instead of transforming or healing them.

Conscious containers, however, engage mindsets, skillsets, and structures of a different kind — of enough-ness, choice, slowness, equality, humanity, cooperation, multiple truths, self-organizing, connection, etc. In a conscious container, we are agreeing to practice more conscious ways of being, working, living together. And, even more importantly, we are agreeing to practice more conscious ways of navigating and forgiving unconsciousness— which is bound to happen in any human community.

I believe that without dedicated and ongoing effort to build a conscious container, we will default to the dominant container. It is a cornerstone in our world, and therefore, always right around the corner. The moment that fear, or rage, or conflict, or grief, or any other challenging energy appears, so does that dominant container. So, understanding it, and being vigilant about it, is essential for those co-creating conscious containers.

Here’s the key: If I am the one in fear, I can't be maintaining the container in that moment. I need to be held by others as I move through my fears. Later, when I have released, I can return to supporting the conscious container. This means that a conscious container recognizes dynamism — that at any given moment, any of us will be in our comfort zones, stretch zones, or panic zones, and that these are fluid and changing. Therefore, we can and will continuously shift roles: from container-maker, to fear-speaker, to supportive-listener, to personally-impacted, to tangentially-impacted, to present-witness, and so on, again and again, depending on the moment. It is through this dynamism of roles that personal and collective fears, conflicts, and challenges are transformed. No one is frozen, no one is stuck.

From my experience with YES! Jams and with organizations, companies, and families, I want to emphasize this key understanding. The person in distress needs time and support to become present, to find and grow their capacity to listen, and thus engage from their stretch zone. If the fear hasn’t metastasized into exponential dimensions, this could happen fairly quickly, once they begin to co-build the conscious container. Otherwise, the distressed person needs support to build the conscious container within, before they can contribute to the conscious container of the community. Meanwhile, safer and braver space can be nurtured with those who feel present and have capacity. They can repair the cracks where the dominant container has seeped through, by re-engaging the mindsets, skillsets, and structures of the conscious container. In doing so, they strengthen the capacity of the whole system. It is then better prepared to receive the distressed person and alchemize the fear.

That’s why, for me, any kind of change work is brave work. Resistance to change is so understandable. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, after all. So, just the willingness to enter a space, where we are calling forth change in ourselves, in each other, and in our systems, is so damn brave. And then, on top of that, to recognize that each one of us is part of co-creating safety and bravery — that we have that power and accept it — that’s brave. What I find most amazing is that the same practices that cultivate courage also build the sense of safety. That conscious container is what enables us to stretch, to risk, to face our fears, rage, grief, conflict, and to find our way through to love.

Maybe on a personal, and even an interpersonal level, this co-creation of safer and braver spaces feels doable. But, how do we do this when the fear feels gigantic and intractable? When it is rooted in an ‘irrefutable’ story of difference and division, with the justification that ‘might makes right’ and ‘good must triumph over evil’?

The fears behind this war on Gaza — and behind many other wars — has been heavy on my mind and heart. One of the roots of the violence is the constructed fear of the other. The dominant container of separation bolsters this fear. It spreads like wildfire through systems and institutions, just as it has been done in every context of unspeakable violence against a religious/ethnic/identity group. The more people are kept away from each other, the less they can see themselves in each other.

Another, maybe more complex, fear comes from unprocessed grief and loss, which, I think, manifests as a kind of humiliation. I felt this after 9/11 in the US, and connect it to what happened after WWI in Germany and in India and Pakistan after partition. This fear can give rise to chauvinism and the need to have power over someone else. The death of the other is justified because it demonstrates ‘bravery’ and promises to bring ‘safety’. Unfortunately, none of this violence actually addresses the fear — it just outsources it by making someone else afraid instead.

Maybe facing these fears also starts with the tiniest of lights. I feel grateful to all those who spoke up then, at those times, and those who are speaking up now. Instead of allowing the darkness to eclipse all possibility, we can shine a light. Any of us who are not in immediate distress can be co-creating conscious containers. We can invite the slowing down and ask the question: What are your fears, and what support do you need, internally and externally, to face them and move through? I relate this to the global calls for cease-fire. Once the violence stops, there is the chance to cultivate possibilities, rooted in collective awareness, and make safer and braver spaces for all.

It takes a lot to face fear in times of tragedy, and even more to rekindle hope. To me, hope is an active verb, not a passive token; it takes effort, faith, community, vision, and love. Maybe that’s why my soul asked me to re-visit The 40 Rules of Love this week. I re-read the novel by Elif Shafak that I first encountered about 12 years ago. It’s where I learned about the spiritual connection between Shams of Tabriz and Rumi, and how I fell even more in love with Sufi values and practices. As I took it the words, I needed to watch sema (Sufi whirling dances) online, and remember when I saw the dervishes whirling live in a garden in Tehran, in celebration of 800 years of Rumi’s birth. I needed to see, both literally and in my mind’s eye, this surrender, this devotion, this faith in the biggest conscious container. I needed to remember Shams’s proclamation: “My religion is love.” I needed to remember Rumi’s framing: “You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.”

With 40 days left until the end of the year, the timing couldn’t be better; one rule to meditate on and embody each day (feel free to join me if you like). I will remind myself that when I open up space in myself, the universe responds with more space. When I move towards love, so does the whole. I can offer the tiniest of lights in any moment and remember that’s all it takes to transform the darkness.

I would love to hear about the tiniest light you are shining on your fears. Please leave a comment if you are willing.

ps. If you need a song to face the fear and rekindle the light of hope, check out my beloved Austin’s latest release, Better Days Are Gonna Come: “I know the light at the end of the tunnel gonna shine on me.”

*All names changed to protect confidentiality.