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karlbaba
Jul 7, 2007, 6:29 PM
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Climbers are always in relationship to fear.
Fear is one of the most powerful ruling emotions humans experience and mastering it is one of the greatest lifelong accomplishments.
There are two basic categories of fear.
1. Instinctual protective fear (fear of burning your hand around fire, falling off a cliff)
This fear should never be eliminated, but can be managed, acted in the face of, and channeled.
2. Psychological fear.
Often of the future, conditioned by the past. There's this in climbing as well. Fears of failure, inadequacy, and many, many other things. There can be a physical component related to instinctual fear as well, fear of permanent injury and it's consequences and so on.
There are many faces to fear. Men like to think they are brave, and may even risk death, but would do anything to avoid facing their emotions and talking about them.
So it's a broad topic. Talk about your fears and braveries, your walk and struggles with fear. Where you're going with it.
In the Castaneda books, the Shaman calls Fear the first enemy of a man of knowledge.
Peace
Karl
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richardvg03
Jul 7, 2007, 6:57 PM
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One of the main reasons I started climbing was because I had a fear of heights... I asked myself what I could do to over come the fear... and climbing up cliffs and rappelling down has helped me a lot!!
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summerprophet
Jul 7, 2007, 7:15 PM
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A brief story that may enlighten you while we are on the topic.
When my partner and I were doing our first hard aid wall, he was on lead and it was pretty heady for C3+ (certainly for us at the time). Like anyone who has faced the high stress level attached to aiding at your limit knows, the brain is on a roller coaster ride of fear and emotion.
At one point I looked up at him from the comfort of the ledge and saw that he was in silent tears. I thought it was purely from the stress of being above a series of ten moves of hooks and micronuts. "Hey man I got you" I replied, thinking that a little reassurance was all that was needed. He looked over at me and said "Man. I really love my girlfriend, Well I think I really love my girlfriend, but I am not sure if it is just this wall making me say that"
You see, the heightened level of stress and fear mixed up his emotions to such a point that it brought out intense feelings. Those feeling were directed at the quickest escape from his current situation.
Like a champ, he pulled himself together and some twenty hours later we finished the route.
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karlbaba
Jul 7, 2007, 7:44 PM
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Great story! Hard aid has always inspired a constant prolonged fear and anxiety which is hardly matched anywhere. You never know when the other shoe (and you with it) will drop.
There's a lot of hard aid climbers escaping from the pain of ordinary life using the pain of wall life.
Peace
Karl
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macblaze
Jul 7, 2007, 10:44 PM
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Total cliff hanger man... did he marry his girlfriend or not?
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karlbaba
Jul 8, 2007, 2:35 AM
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The root of Psychological Fear is the essential fear that nags every human:
The vulnerability of our identity/ego which, for most of us, is an imaginary concatenation of our perceived personal history and self concept.
If we base our idea of ourselves on an evanescent sand castle, it's natural that we're always threatened with fear within.
The alternative, give up investing in the ego. Just BE and see how you feel and where it leads
peace
Karl
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karlbaba
Jul 10, 2007, 5:22 AM
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The basic way to manage fear on lead climbing (or following for that matter) is to let go (mentally) and let the fear energy flow through you and not get tensed up in your body/mind. Relax, make a rational decision based on the circumstances and abandon yourself to the action intended.
Peace
Karl
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dreday3000
Jul 11, 2007, 12:44 AM
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Castaneda is a bloody windbag.
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karlbaba
Jul 11, 2007, 2:41 AM
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dreday3000 wrote: Castaneda is a bloody windbag.
you, however, communicate rather succinctly.
BTW, Castaneda is dead.
Peace
Karl
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dreday3000
Jul 11, 2007, 3:20 AM
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Alright then, I'll give a shot at being more specific.
I got turned on to Castenada while I was on a long term roadie. Smart and beautiful German girl passes me a weather beaten copy of "The Mask of Don Juan" and says it'll change my life. I am semi literate, had been on the road for six months, and pretty open to 'new thingsl so you gotta figure I'd be pretty open to something like Castenada.
Oh yeah, and I had just finished collecting - and ingesting - 50 buttons of peyote in the dessert outside Potrero chico. And no, I didn't eat them all at once.
I open the book and am unbelieveably dissapointed. There were some glimmers of insight, but by and large, i found most of the text to be metaphysical bs shrouded in a pretty fantastical world. Castenada lost me when he started talking about cutting out the eyes of lizards, releasing them into the desert, and following them to kindgom come. WTF.
I know there is a huge subculture behind Castenada but I just don't get it. If you care to explain, I'd be interested.
For the record, I DO believe that conquring ones fears is the mark on an enlightening being. Nothing so satisfying as pushing through ones personal fears on the rock. Sadly that doesn't necesarily transfer into the bigger picture.
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karlbaba
Jul 11, 2007, 3:30 AM
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Thanks for the story, cool
I think myself and many folks think that the first book, 'Teachings of Don Juan, a Yaqui way of Knowledge" had less wisdom and insight versus just trippiness than they hoped. The next book, "Journey to Ixlan" was much more cogent and substantial in my opinion. Having a different perspective on the metaphysical and even worldly wisdom than the other world traditions offered was very thought provoking.
A lot of folks could benefit from things like
Acting Impeccably
Consulting Death as an Advisor
Losing Self Importance
dealing with petty tyrants
and a variety Castaneda written ideas
Peace
Karl
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8flood8
Jul 11, 2007, 4:08 AM
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karlbaba wrote: dreday3000 wrote: Castaneda is a bloody windbag. you, however, communicate rather succinctly. BTW, Castaneda is dead. Peace Karl
right... he died of cancer.
he did NOT escape through the crack between the worlds.
i was really into him in high school, too bad it was all a lie
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karlbaba
Jul 11, 2007, 5:07 AM
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All knowledge is tainted. We have to find the sort the wheat from the chaff in all writings. That doesn't mean there's nothing to gain from those books. You have to weight each bit of knowledge against your own experience and intuition.
Castaneda was a wonderful writer in many ways, but perhaps not so good a shaman. Of course he plainly wrote in his book that Don Juan considered him lacking in many ways and he professed as much himself.
Perhaps we should have believed him!
Peace
Karl
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happiegrrrl
Jul 11, 2007, 1:21 PM
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I, too, felt like a gfailure of the '70's, for not being able to fall head first into the depths of the Castenada experience.... Didn't get the big deal behind "The Hobbit" either.
But, I did follow the writings of T. Lobsang Rampa, a man purported to have been a Buddhist monk, born to a welathy Tibetan family who, at 6 years, got his horoscope don(like a sacramnetal rite of passage,, supposedly this was the custom), and was told he was to be a monk living in poverty. And, off to the Potola palace(or some other, I forget), little Lobsamg was shipped.
The stories(17 books, or so) tell of his life, from an operation to open his 3rd eye, to herb gathering trips in the himalaya where he was shown vast caves that contained technical equipmnet far surpassing anything we have today(like an anti-gravity device that was sort of a suitcase handle you'd touch to an object and - voila! - it became weightless), to discussions on transmigration, auras, astral projection, and pretty much the gamut of all those things that became the farthest fringe of New Age stuff.
It was more practical and down-to-earth, funny as that may seem to some, and for me that was the right thing. Fantastical thinking, such as the Castenada chronicles has always bugged me. Maybe because I'm a Taurus, or maybe because I have had experiences where playing in an alternate reality, in the face of an ugly real reality, was akin to being on an x-rated section of a climb 2 grades higher than your comfort zone....
As for climbing - fear has been there almost since I started climbing. It WASN'T at the very beginning. Of course, I was TR'ing, with people who really DID know what they were doing(as opposed to people who only think they know what they are doing....an example of that fantastical thinking, right there, hahaha).
But then I had alittle fall, when following a guy on a route. The fall was longer that it should have been, and I experienced a sensation of slipping through a void. I could feel my butt become the center of gravity, and had plenty of time to think(although it was probably less than a second! Rampa would have explained how time could be so fluid; Einstein he wasn't, but at least he didn't say "Here take these!" to get you in the frame of mind. He'd just say "Stop. And BE." And when one does that...everything is available.).
Anyway, I finally stopped, got back on the route, and topped out to some stuttering apology from the leader. The 3rd in our party, who was the one who actually knew what he was doing, said "God are you lucky. Another few inches and your ass would have hit a ledge."
And I was introduced, at that moment, to fear.
I had to start over from scratch, and though I am fine when following someone who "really does" know what they are doing, I am a big chicken when it comes to even the thought of getting roped in with someone who I feel might be of the "Only thinks they know" persuation.
I turn down a lot of opportunities to climb because of it, but although it irks me a little, I have the feeling it's not a bad way to be.
One area where it messes me up though, is in my leading. I don't lead hard, ans so it's tough to find partners. I want someone who has more experience than I do, but those people aren't so interested in partnering with me anymore(I've run the gamut of east coast single guys, I have the feeling.... hahaha, joking but not really).
It's come time that I am supposed to take the sharp end, I suppose. Now, there's the sharp end, and then there's the sharp end, and who's tied to the other side is what makes the difference. My fear stops me from taking that step.
Only once have I taken out a party where I was leading less experienced partners. It was 2 others, one who was fairly new. I did a fine job, on a route that meandered with a traverse section on thin holds. My second and the 3rd were protected too, they didn't fear that traverse. I felt good that I'd taken care of them.
That's one type of fear for me. The on-the-lead "oh shit, this is a do-not-fall opportunity" I have had only twice. Once for the entire pitch(religious experinece), and once on a section where I spend some moments in actual fantastical thinking("The fall is unacceptable, and I can't guarantee success on this sequence. There's no way I see to bail, either. Oh, I wish I could have a helicopter rescue...."). Then, I did what I had to do. I climbed up, and MADE the success in the sequence. If I fell, it was going to be because of something beyond me. I was not going to be carted off to the hosptial or morgue, thinking "I could have tried harder."
(This post was edited by happiegrrrl on Jul 11, 2007, 1:25 PM)
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8flood8
Jul 11, 2007, 1:24 PM
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i did!
and when he died, i realized it was so childish to believe in his fantastical world.
why do humans always want to have superhuman powers?
(myself included)
i agree there are many points of his philosophy that were beautiful in "practice," but the most awesome was the idea of changing the position of the assemblage point. The ideas about expanding the consciousness to explore the knowable were so intriguing. Of course there was the lucid dreaming as well...
(i still try to see my hands in my dreams)
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karlbaba
Jul 11, 2007, 1:45 PM
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If you ask me, climbing 5.14 is a nearly Castaneda level of magic.
All of us have more potential that we are now using and I know plenty of folks who have expanded themselves in various significant ways. Better to work on making yourself stronger, smarter, happier, wiser and more intuitive rather than just richer.
I hate to sound wacko but indeed, it is possible to change consciousness to explore ourselves. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention to their experience that we have different states of mind and that insight can be had from that.
I've seen miraculous things and people in my travels, particularly in India. I ain't talking about it here, but just can't deny it for the sake of those who feel a push to explore themselves.
Because it drop dead obvious that out happiness and satisfaction in life is a state dependent on the mind, so the idea of controlling and mastering the mind is the most practical thing in the world
Peace
Karl
8flood8 wrote: i did! and when he died, i realized it was so childish to believe in his fantastical world. why do humans always want to have superhuman powers? (myself included) i agree there are many points of his philosophy that were beautiful in "practice," but the most awesome was the idea of changing the position of the assemblage point. The ideas about expanding the consciousness to explore the knowable were so intriguing. Of course there was the lucid dreaming as well... (i still try to see my hands in my dreams) |
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jedasmith
Jul 11, 2007, 1:58 PM
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Karlbaba--
Which book do you recommend someone unfamilar with Castaneda begin with?
Thanks,
Jen
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8flood8
Jul 11, 2007, 2:28 PM
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start with the first one.
i read all of the books (up to 10) out of order and then i read them in order.
reading them in order is the best way to get a feel for what he was doing, but i never picked up the books past 1995... when he died.
***edit the first book is The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
(This post was edited by 8flood8 on Jul 11, 2007, 2:30 PM)
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karlbaba
Jul 11, 2007, 2:51 PM
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jedasmith wrote: Karlbaba-- Which book do you recommend someone unfamilar with Castaneda begin with? Thanks, Jen
I'd be tempted to read Journey to Ixlan (second book0 first. If you like it, then you could think about reading the series from the beginning. The first book is by far the worst in my mind.
Peace
Karl
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zealotnoob
Jul 11, 2007, 3:33 PM
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Ah yes. Here it all comes together. Meta-exploration, pushing the fear frontier, and our common keyhole to pure existence in the moment: climbing.
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8flood8
Jul 11, 2007, 4:06 PM
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By far the first is the least interesting, but if you don't like it, i dare say you won't like the others.
On another note... the first book is actually Castaneda's doctoral thesis for his phd in anthropology from UCLA.
The second half of the book is a bunch of garbage i'm sure he "had" to write in order to get his degree
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justthemaid
Jul 11, 2007, 4:13 PM
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dreday3000 wrote: ...I open the book and am unbelieveably dissapointed. There were some glimmers of insight, but by and large, i found most of the text to be metaphysical bs shrouded in a pretty fantastical world. Castenada lost me when he started talking about cutting out the eyes of lizards, releasing them into the desert, and following them to kindgom come. WTF. I know there is a huge subculture behind Castenada but I just don't get it. If you care to explain, I'd be interested. "
Amen- I'm with ya brother.
My confusion with Casteneda deepened when I had the dis-pleasure of having lunch with him back in college.
Never met such a pompous self-centered jerk in my whole life. Made everyone feel like spiritual cockroaches that needed to be squashed under his metaphysically superior heel.
In my opinion he was fraud, but hey- for those who get something out of his books- good for you.
End rant
On the fear issue...
I'm always interested in how different people mange it.
I have a great amount of difficulty with fear issues. Sometimes I work through it. Sometimes I can't.
Fear of injury is my prevailing fear. I've had a few that have had long recovery times and I am often overwhelmed with the desire to prevent new injuries at all costs. My lead climbing has actually really suffered but I'm slowly working my confidence back up.
*(sigh)* Really slowly.
(This post was edited by justthemaid on Jul 11, 2007, 4:28 PM)
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fmd
Jul 11, 2007, 4:57 PM
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summerprophet wrote: A brief story that may enlighten you while we are on the topic. When my partner and I were doing our first hard aid wall, he was on lead and it was pretty heady for C3+ (certainly for us at the time). Like anyone who has faced the high stress level attached to aiding at your limit knows, the brain is on a roller coaster ride of fear and emotion. At one point I looked up at him from the comfort of the ledge and saw that he was in silent tears. I thought it was purely from the stress of being above a series of ten moves of hooks and micronuts. "Hey man I got you" I replied, thinking that a little reassurance was all that was needed. He looked over at me and said "Man. I really love my girlfriend, Well I think I really love my girlfriend, but I am not sure if it is just this wall making me say that" You see, the heightened level of stress and fear mixed up his emotions to such a point that it brought out intense feelings. Those feeling were directed at the quickest escape from his current situation. Like a champ, he pulled himself together and some twenty hours later we finished the route.
Love overcomes fear.
Fear is in many forms such as healthy and unhealthy fears. Are they founded, unfounded and at times a real self preservation.
Fear is a natural thing for it creates safeguards for us. Fear is what teaches us to be cautious for self preservtion is a primal thing (the fight or flight). As humans we are able to learn to control our minds, our responses and our conduct and there for are able to liberate ourselfs from fear. Hence the proverb "Fear is only as deep as the mind allows".
Now. once the fear turns to panic, you lost control of your rational thought processes and you then become a danger to yourself or others.
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8flood8
Jul 11, 2007, 5:21 PM
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i postulate that emotions are only based on love or fear
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fmd
Jul 11, 2007, 6:13 PM
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8flood8 wrote: i postulate that emotions are only based on love or fear
Fear and love could be the same feelings for some people. I love my wife, but I DO fear her.
Emotions are formed by our beliefs for the most part.
Four basic emotions are fear, anger, sadness and enjoyment. Emotions arise form memories and reactions from past and current events.
However, some people experiance fear for no apprarent reasons, which is called a panic attack.
Read Dr. Daniel Goleman book, emotional intelligence. He distingueshes the ability to understand and mange our emotions (fear for the sake of this thread) from a general intelligence. Emotions (fear or joy) does influence how we react to our daily lives and it can be learned to be controlled.
(This post was edited by fmd on Jul 11, 2007, 6:19 PM)
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