Fear Is a Loop. Here's the Exit.

Last night in our circle, we sat with something most of us don’t like to admit: we’re often running a background program of fear, certainty-seeking, and control. It hums along beneath our daily lives, our spiritual practices, and our relationship with the wider world. It’s so familiar we barely notice it.

Until we do.

It Even Shows Up in Meditation

Thoughts arise in the mind. It’s what they do. Even in meditation. Especially as we begin our practice. In this week’s meditation, I oriented us specifically toward noticing thoughts around fear, certainty, and control. Did they arise? And if so, how did we respond to them?

Attention is a form of touch. Notice its quality. Is it nurturing? Or corrosive?

I used to struggle with thoughts around fear, certainty, and control, specifically around visualization meditations, similar to what I offered this week. I can still remember the quiet grip of it: Am I seeing the right thing? Is this image correct I’d try to force the perception, manipulate the image rather than hold it lightly in awareness and let it arrive. Fear of doing it wrong. The need for certainty that I was getting it right. And the attempt to control the experience to get there.

The instruction is simple; notice that thoughts are arising, sensations in the mind, and allow them to be – not push them away, not analyze them, not fix them. Just let them exist without feeding them. And then the return, to consciously choose to relocate your attention — to the breath, to the sensations in your body, to coherence.

Notice and allow.

The World Stage Is Running the Same Program

Fear, certainty, and control don’t just show up on the cushion. They play out on the world stage the same way they play out in our inner lives. Fear of others. Fear of limited resources. Fear of the unknown. Fear of standing up. Fear of being persecuted. Fear of losing control.

We close our hearts and our minds in favor of a limited perspective. We restrict the number data points we use to construct our moral and ethics codes. When we don’t include the breadth of the human experience, it’s easier to be certain of what’s “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad.” And it becomes easier to fear the unknown and increase the demand for control. All in the name of safety.

And the entertainment and media industries know it. Horror films, suspense thrillers, doom-scrolling, news cycles engineered to activate the amygdala — fear is a product. Some of us mainline it. Our nervous systems get hooked. What begins as a need to “stay informed” becomes an addiction to certainty. And when certainty isn’t available — which is always — we loop back into fear.

I Used to Be a Control Freak

The morning of my commitment ceremony, twenty-five years ago, I drove up to the venue and watched everyone scurry away before I even got out of the car. My maid of honor stood there taking deep breaths as I approached.

There were no chairs for 100+ guests.

I had a good relationship with the vendor, and it got resolved with ease. But that scurrying hit me hard. The man I was about to marry had given me a book called “Learn to Relax” shortly after we met — he was right to. But I wouldn’t admit that then. I used to follow him around, cleaning every surface he just cleaned, in an effort to control my environment. My need for certainty that things were done “right” meant the only way to guarantee it was to do everything myself.

Sound familiar?

The anxiety attacks that followed eventually led me to therapy, and from there to yoga, meditation, and a deeper relationship with my inner world. Slowly, I began to see it clearly: fear, certainty-seeking, and control were never the enemy. They were trying to keep me safe. We don’t need to suffer to grow.

Compassion Doesn’t Aim for Whiplash

Like Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., there’s some return on fear and suffering. But there is so much greater return on joy. On love.

The invitation isn’t to flip a switch. Things are sticky. We live in an energy soup. Just because we intend to move in a new direction doesn’t mean everything around us immediately shifts. The old current still flows.

Compassion allows for a gentle release. It holds the old pattern with appreciation — “Thank you for trying to keep me safe” — and then, without judgment, begins choosing something different. It takes practice. It takes patience. It takes intention, moment by moment.

The Future Is Built with What We Practice Today

In the circle, we did an exercise: write down 3–5 scenarios where fear, certainty-seeking, or control keep showing up. Then take one and reframe it into an easier-feeling thought.

What arose was beautiful. Presence. Trust. And a useful reframe on the Law of Attraction: when we try to control something, what we’re really chasing is a feeling — the safety, peace, or ease we imagine we’ll have once everything goes according to plan. Name that feeling directly. Then start choosing the small actions today that orient you toward it. Not controlling the destination, but practicing the frequency.

Love Flows Best in a Present Vessel

Love flows best in a vessel that is present with itself.

When we catch ourselves mid-loop — “Oh, I’m fearing a future event,” “Oh, I’m managing myself to control someone else’s reaction” — we step out of the prediction machine. We come back to now. And from here, we can choose.

Growth happens through presence. And we build the future with what we practice today.

So here’s the invitation: notice the loop. Don’t fight it, don’t judge it. Notice and allow — let it float by like an inner tube on a lazy river — and gently choose again. Choose breath. Choose ease. Choose presence.

And then take it out into the world. Be present with the actual people in your life and see how the love flows. Consider this: in reality, you have physically met and genuinely experienced less than 0.0001% of humanity*. The world on your screen is not the world you actually live in. Don’t let a curated feed of fear define your understanding of people. Trust that there is good out there — and give your love, your gratitude, your hugs to the decent human beings already in your life.

Go ahead. Make it weird.

* if you experienced 50 "new" people/day, 365 days/year for 80 years.