Fear: The Blanket and the Game

Let’s talk about fear, what it is, how it works, and what it does. First off, I want to say that everything you learn growing up is basically not only embedded with it but beholden to it for its very existence. Without fear, the animation of life basically slows to a crawl and you just bask in the glow of awareness but that’s not very exciting or eventful, so fear enters to spice things up. Unfortunately, taken to an extreme, it also robs you of vital energy that you might have used for something else had you known that life is basically a mental dream, and so there’s nothing to actually fear. It’s just a motivating force to get you up and running. Many want to believe it’s an evil force but nothing is actually evil so let’s clear that up since a little fear might go a long way in crafting up your life in the ways that you want it to go if understood properly.

So before we throw fear out the window, it helps to understand its role — not as an enemy, but as an instrument that got hijacked.

All characters are tainted with fear, just not the good kind, no it’s more of an insidious kind of fear that gets them into so many conflicts not only with other people but with themselves. This is actually pretty laughable. The cosmic joke here is quite huge. If you pay attention, you’ll start to see the same pattern repeating — fear drives protection, protection drives separation, and separation drives madness. So there you are, in life, you’ve got this body vehicle that comes with this show, and now because of fear, you think you need to protect it. Everything you do comes out of the idea that you’re vulnerable and weak, and the only way to survive is by building up this mental outer layer that keeps bad things out and only lets good things in. The problem with this layer is pretty simple, it’s a layer, and all layers have but one function, to insulate what’s under it. A layer doesn’t think or act, it’s just there and acts like what it is, an obfuscation.

And once you see that, it’s almost comical how literal the whole thing becomes.

Imagine that you put a blanket over your head, if it’s a thick wool blanket now you’re in the dark, you can’t see anything, everything is pitch black, you’ve got zero visibility so zero vision. If the blanket is thin, let’s say it’s crocheted, there are little gaps, little spaces in it where the light gets in. Your eyes and subsequently your mind are able to see out to a limited degree, but you can’t run with it on your head because it throws off your equilibrium. You can walk around if you’re careful of how you’re walking and mindful of what the path is, but going down a long staircase or climbing a mountain with it on your head is not a good idea, you’ll be prone to falls and you won’t see the depth and ledges that sometimes quickly come upon you. I see a headache coming.

So that’s the situation most people are in — trying to run marathons with a blanket over their heads, calling it wisdom.

So fear can be a problem, it can limit what you do and where you go but now at this late stage in the game, it’s usually worse than that. Let’s say you’ve had the blanket on your head since you were two. Ever since that age you’ve been looking out, and seeing the world through this blanket of fear, the world is a bad place, people are horribly corrupted, the country is going to hell, there could be a war, robbers and murderers lurk in the shadows, well you get the picture. You now believe that what you’re seeing is just the way things are and you no longer even notice that anything is covering your head, the covering is actually more like a part of you now. It’s been there so long it’s actually adhered to the skin below it, the two are now one, so if you tried to remove the blanket you’d be forced to remove a layer of your skin right along with it, you can’t just slip it off anymore. Whatever you think is real, is now a part of your makeup. Everyone you know has a blanket over their head, so for as long as you’ve been here, anyone you talk to talks as if the blanket reality is real, and now everyone is like this but there you are, you got a glimpse of how you had this covering. Maybe you saw it hanging down to your knees and you were like what’s this? This shouldn’t be here, should it? What the hell is this? Does this belong to me or was I mugged and suffocated way back when?

That’s the first real moment of awakening — not bliss, not light, but confusion. You don’t wake up clean; you wake up tangled.

Yes, unless you’ve gotten a head’s up in some way, you don’t even know it’s there. It’s as normal to wear this artificial cape of fear as it is to wake up and grab your morning cup of joe. That’s how familiar it is to you but now you’re like, wait a minute here, is my head working right? What’s this fuzzy shit all over me, this emotion, this stifling sense of confinement and terror? There’s a little rebel part of you that wants to scream, “Get off of me! Scram!” You’re like a person who’s just walked through a spider’s web, your arms start flailing to shake it off and you hope to hell the spider wasn’t in it. This doesn’t feel good, you know that. Usually it’s tied to death in some way, you might die. Well, you will, that’s a given so why should this one idea terrify you so? You don’t even know, you think it’s better not to think about such things, just put that thought away for as long as possible. It’s not normal to think of such things, is it? Yeah, try talking to your family about that and you’ll see how fast they shut you down, and look at you like you might be losing it. You’re on your own with this one.

And this is where fear really shows its teeth — not when it attacks you, but when it convinces you that no one else could ever understand, because I can assure you, they won’t. They aren’t there like that anyway.

To be true, the drama of the world couldn’t even be performed without fear. You need fear to make both enemies and friends. Friends are good because there’s strength in numbers, as long as someone else agrees with your fears, you’ll continue to think you are perfectly sane and my blanket theory is insane. Enemies are just those with other ideas. Fear makes you want everyone and everything to be the same, everyone should follow the same rules and think the same thoughts. You think there’s some understanding going on then but there’s not. Basically all that’s happening is you are reinforcing the idea that walking around without clear vision is exactly how it is supposed to be. Those that are opposed to your faulty vision should be jailed or somehow relegated to the sidelines so they can’t bother you but only after your sense of competition has proven they are wrong and you are right. People who can’t see always want to be right because they don’t actually know what they are looking at and this helps make the murkiness of their vision a little less murky. They think there’s some meaning in there like might makes right or good people are those that do as they are told for the good of the planet. No person is an island. That’s a novel idea, maybe you should give up trying to take off the blanket because then no one will understand a word you say even if then you finally understand yourself.

That’s how fear maintains its empire — not by brute force, but by consensus. It turns blindness into a social contract.

Of course, you have your doubts. What are doubts? Doubt is when you can’t even trust yourself to know what you actually already really know. When you were a child, you didn’t have doubts. That’s how if someone grabbed the toy out of your hands you went fucking ballistic. There you were in your own world just amusing yourself when someone usually your parent had to go and upset the natural order of just doing what you wanted to do right then. Your instinct to fight away this disturbance was immediate and without fear even if they’d spanked you a hundred times by then already.

That instinct — that flash of “no” before thought — is the trace of your unconditioned mind. It never went anywhere. It just got buried under repetition.

Doubt is an extended version of the blanket theory. It arises from the layers beneath the blanket that have been compromised because of it, now you’re not sure. In the beginning of life, we constantly shirk this blanket of fear that our parents are trying to hold over our heads. We know on some level what it’s going to do, that it’s going to not only rob us of our true livelihood but drag us down into a swamp that we may never escape from so we fight. We fight as long as we can but everyone eventually gets exhausted and succumbs. All the threats, the anger, the spankings, the isolated corners of the room we are forced to sit in build up and apathy sets in, the world was too much for us so we conformed and found our own groups to belong to.

And that’s how it happens: the first surrender. The child stops fighting the blanket and starts decorating it.

Basically, we went along to get along, I mean it’s understandable, who wouldn’t? You might be born awake but if you want to live through your childhood you’ll quickly learn what it means to hide your true emotions and act like everyone else does. You learn to pretend first and then this pretending becomes real. What are you pretending? You are pretending that you’re small, you need others to approve of you and what you do. From then on, you’ll look to see what everyone else is doing and just follow along with that, much easier. This way you don’t have to think because knowing what you really know is too much now, no one would believe you anyway, not that anyone’s listening. A child learns that very early. That’s how the blanket character is born like a type of shadow self that functions within the madness as if it was all perfectly sane and normal.

And from there the pattern hardens: follow, repeat, belong, forget.

Honestly, by the time you reach ten years old you will have learned that what you think is not only wrong but useless about 99% of the time anyway, so why bother doing it anymore? It’s easier just to blend in and when in Rome do as the Romans do so stupidity is in and true self knowing is out. There are people called experts who know and from now on if you want to know something you ask them, self knowing on your own isn’t a thing anymore. Welcome to society, where those who don’t know, know everything. Be good and don’t question it, that never ends well, the numbers are against you there.

That’s how fear wins: not with terror, but with numbers. The comfort of being wrong together feels safer than the risk of being right alone.

The show must go on and those who try to shore up some undramatic narrative are easily put out. In some strange way, that’s exactly as it should be. The universe should be amusing not silent, if you’d have developed naturally your true intelligence and creativity would have soared like the eagles do, but never mind that now, as long as there’s plenty of movement/drama that’s all that really matters. A good show that gets applause is not only comic but tragic. And here we are, never a dull moment. Honestly, if you tune in to the news, you’ll be led to believe it’s getting more exciting by the day. Hurray, we’ve maybe started to slip the chains a little, the bloody life long desk jobs are becoming obsolete, there’s chaos in the streets, everyone is fighting everyone else. Yeah, I think it was about time for a change. Don’t despair too much my friends, I assure you it’s all in good fun.

Fear can’t help itself — it loves spectacle. And what better show than humanity convinced it’s free while still clutching the blanket?

It’s better than watching paint dry, right? Watch how well they play their parts, and marvel at how the masses never suspect it’s just a game the universe plays with itself. That’s some feat for sure. Incredible! Astounding! Endless excitement! One day a standing ovation will be in order for how all the participants believed it so well. I’d say it’s going on and off without a hitch. The universe got bored with all our false knowing, it’s back to basics time, fight or flight will mark the next era maybe, just like in the days of old. A spectacle indeed. The shofar has sounded. Krishna has signaled the war. No more hiding, one by one, the mirrors are being activated. Behold, something is enjoying this, soaking it up, why not you?

Because you’re afraid, the blanket is darkness. It’s despair now, the mind twirls its other thoughts under the weight of the blanket, dark thoughts, maybe annihilation is near, oh the dread it cries. The end is surely near and “they did it.” Everyone points their fingers, it’s that one, and no one knows what’s really up or down anymore. The human sensibilities are completely missing. All the pain of these years of suppression and faking, the pressure is being released but the gig is up too. The smart ones can’t pull it off and are starting to look not just stupid but incompetent and silly. Well, don’t be too hard on them, they’re still just children after all.

You see, the blanket doesn’t only cover the frightened — it also dresses up the confident. That’s why even the “smart ones” look lost when it starts to slip.

You see you can’t grow up with this covering, no you can only pretend to be an adult. Your true abilities, your strengths and intuitions, the faculty of dreaming itself is stunted under seriousness and all the shades of grey. Don’t fool yourself that someone can fix this. If only my candidate would have won I hear you say, but no, and let it be.

That’s the pivot point — when you finally stop bargaining with fear and start walking without its permission.

Once you take off the blinders, you’re not where you used to be anymore because your ears can finally hear again, and your eyes can see. Your feelings will go back to the way they were when you were just in your room, maybe playing with dolls or toy soldiers. You’re back to playing again, but now you know you are.

And knowing you’re playing changes everything.

I don’t think you can take this blanket off your head. I wouldn’t even try if I were you, it’s not that easy. Remember Frodo in the Lord of the Rings? There he is a little hobbit, living in the magical land of the Shire, and then the darkness comes passed off to him, from who else, his ancestor. It’s not so different with you. The ring of power/the world and its games are hypnotizing and he’ll never be the same after carrying it so far. His journey is really what it’s like. That’s the weird ten years, a blind journey through all the terrors within you, with barely a map, just some insane desire to rid yourself of this burden, this weight you’ve always lived with. Yes, you might have helpers or not. Samwise Gamgee is really just Frodo’s conscience, not another hobbit. No one is who you think they are, not really.

It’s all interior — every friend, every foe, every landscape a reflection inside the same awareness.

I guess it really all depends on this: what do you fear the most? Do you fear dying or do you fear not ever having really lived? In some strange, but fantastic way, those are the only two choices. It doesn’t matter one bit which you choose. If you don’t choose, it will choose for you. You take your chances there. Roll the dice, all numbers come up to the same. There are no winners. We all fall down in the end but it’s not that you fall, it’s only ever a matter of whether there’s a smile on your face when you do, or maybe you’re crying tears of joy. You’ve been touched and you know it.

That’s where language ends and life begins — not when the fear is gone, but when it finally starts telling the truth.