Fear and Panic as Teachers

Lately I have been going through a strange passage - one characterized by high anxiety, a sense of dread and tendencies toward panic. I have had claustraphobic nightmares, images on TV of people or animals with anything covering their faces scare me big time and I often have a sense of forboding. Of course, the latter scares me more as I wonder"Is this is a sense of knowing!?" When panicky I feel like I'm not getting enough air and my heart palpitates. Not a fun time!

As I tend to this medically I have learned much about my life. Medicine has provided an anti-anxiety drug which seems to be helping; it's takes a long time to work and then very gradually. I have gone through several boy-I-would-rather-be-somewhere-else!-tests at hospitals, which have ruled out ailments I have scared myself with when panicking. One thing was discovered: I have a severe case of sleep apnea - I stop breathing while sleeping - apparently alot. Eventually I will have a machine to be hooked up to at night which will attach to my nose and force air so that I won't stop breathing. Sounds attractive, doesn't it? Luckily I sleep/live alone; no one has to sleep with elephant girl! I can see that the sleep apnea could cause at least some of my clautraphobia and anxiety. Nonetheless, it has been what I have learned non-medically which impels me to write.

This seige of anxiety started almost 2 months ago to the day. I wonder if this suffiecient time to provide a wise prospective - yet I feel I have learned so much. As I have been seeing doctors and the medicine is building up to theraputic levels, time and life go on. Life provides these opportunities to learn. In some recovery circles there's an expression: an AFGO [Another F-king Growth Oppportunity]. And here I am in the midst of one.

Fear can be one hell of a teacher! I guess there are many fears but my bet is they pretty much wind up as one - fear of death - the unknown. That is my experience anyway. Death and its fear seem to cut through the crap of life so that you decide and face what is important to you. For me it meant going back to a process of resting in the hands of a loving force. I believe in God but not in the way that many of us have heard of God. I believe in a God that is beyond our ken; I believe that most people and often religions underestimate God. I trust in a spirit that links all of humanity and living things; a spirit that is the epitome of all virtue: love, truth, beauty... ad infintium.

So, fear and anxiety have taught me to constantly let go to the divine loving presence - a presence that is like the water for a fish. It can be a wonderful thing to trust that if I do what I can I will be buoyed up by the grace of that spirit. I'm old enough to look back and see how things work out while we are unaware of it. It makes me grateful for my 61 years. I lament the 20-somethings who take their own lives because they don't have this vantage point.

So, as I let go to love, my vision also improved. It was a rather rude kind of insight when I realized how in the passed year or two I had become so passive. I accepted my increasing physical limitations nonchalantly. So what if I have to drive the 2 blocks down the street to the stores! I have the wonderful companionship of 2 delightful dogs; but how much do I play with them? My friends are dear to me; how active has my kindness to them been. How many friends have I not been in contact lately? When was I going to get back into doing my fabric artwork? As I progress with this insight I wonder if some of the anxiety is related to the fact that I was letting life slip away - at least at some level or in some way. That's scary and I believe it is only as I get some distance on it that I realize how scary.

So those damn teachers of Fear and Panic have set me on my way again. I'm working out for the first time in my life! I seem to be eating less - naturally. I've completed one fabric collage and almost finished another. I went out to a concert out of town and stayed overnight for the first time in years. I carry on with my little dogs and entertain their friends.

Yet, there is still something more wonderful about all of this. I'm not sure I can articulate it well yet. I'm a person who is generally on a quest - something to make me a better me - following it with a passion. That passion, I'm beginning to realize, had gotten lost. As an artist - at least at heart - I had longed for the elusive "Flow" - to be connected to the creative source. The letting go and being connected to the creative source is where it all comes together for me. In my searching about anxiety I found a reference to flow as "self-forgetful spontaneity". If that isn't the opposite of anxiety I don't know what is! So, F & P have set me on a quest - hear the strains of The Impossible Dream in the background - a quest to lose myself in art, in the moment, in life!