Time to Freak Out?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Fear has taken over the planet like a black plague. It's harder to know what's healthy fear (of something that could put you in harm's way) or the fear that feeds the insatiable beast. Remember how the wise old guy said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself?" This past week, a report of a possible avian flu pandemic came into my orbit, putting my personal homeland security alert in the high red-orange range. A freak-out ensued, but luckily some discernment kicked in, and I was able to keep the plague of fear from spreading to everyone around me.

In an exchange today on the intensity swirling now, Jessica Murray of Mothersky wrote (via email): "Global scenarios both real (mass suffering in impoverished parts of the world) and imagined (terrorists on every street corner) will elicit in the years ahead no lack of collective worry and fear; and Americans of conscience must consider carefully how to deal with it. Just after the autumnal equinox (September 22nd) Saturn and Uranus will begin opposing each other in the sky, the most important aspect of the rest of this calendar year. This past week we had a preview of it, when Mars opposed Uranus: many of my clients were skittish and sleepless; paranoia was racing through the mass mind like tumbleweed. When unmoored from spiritual grounding, fretful Virgo and reality-challenged Pisces threaten to pitch us into overwhelm -- a state that will not help us deal conscientiously with the intense times ahead."

So, how do we deal with our inner Chicken Little on speed? Writes Jessica, "The higher meaning of the Saturn-Uranus transit is to instill within each of us a sense of responsibility (Saturn) for the explosive information (Uranus) coming to light in our world. This kind of spiritually maturity entails cultivating a viewpoint that goes beyond fear. In this context I am defining “fear” as an acute awareness of the seriousness of the situation but without the requisite understanding."

The silver lining is that we're likely seeing the death throes of a civilization, with the birth convulsions of the new. Again with some perspective, Jessica writes, "It is time to understand. None of the global challenges being heatedly discussed right now -- by ecologists, by international social justice groups, by concerned citizens amongst themselves -- is new or surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. We are seeing conditions long in the making rendered obvious for the sake of wrenching the collective into a new consciousness."

Mark Twain once said, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." If we learn to tell the difference between real and imagined threats, we can stop the spread of this paralyzing dis-ease. Then we can know and face what truly endangers us.