Why men should seek fear

I’d like to admit something to you about all this.

I find this excruciatingly painful.

It gets to me, grinds at me, exhausts me. Sometimes I want to write to you, make that connection, allow us a space to find a deeper meaning to life.
Sometimes I just want to lay down and hide.

When I started this, I felt that it was because I wanted catharsis for this burning inside. It worked for a while. The words came furiously and ferociously and I felt on a roll.

But this week was different. The pain felt the same, but it was telling me to pause, to dig in and reflect, and be still. the same pain, the same burning, but emerging differently. This week I wanted to write about fear, and indeed that fear sits inside me. But I could not write.

Instead, I went back to an older piece on the same topic. If I had to guess this was written around 2019. In those days I would write, my then-partner present. I would use her face as a muse, her eyes like knives. I’ve decided to share that piece with you, stream-of-conscious style, with some light editing. I suppose it demonstrates how much I’ve changed, yet my ideas have returned to me in a circular fashion. And yet still, My Body Speaks.

David, 2019

Let us talk about fear, sitting in it, and moving towards it. No, not moving towards, be sitting in it. Fear, is always sitting with me, always on my mind, the centre of me, burning in me. Fear, my tool and my ally. That is the cost of being vulnerable.

I know I will never be away from it, be rid of it. To be rid of it means to run. Never ought I run, but I will be wary. Not to avoid it, but to always face it. That beacon that tells me what I ought to go. Fear is good, in that it shows me where I want to go. It tells me what I want. Everything worth a damn lies on the other side of fear: love, work, growth, and myself.

So, fear tells me what I want, and where I need to go. Fear lies in the unknown, my shortcomings, and my potential. It is a strange fate that in order to progress, I have to at once move towards what I want to avoid, and what I want to attain. They are both one and the same. Such is the cost of being vulnerable.

To work with fear means conditioning to regularly confront it. In work, and relationship, I will nudge my partner quietly and consistently towards what they fear. Should I be with them, i will see them, and acknowledge them. There is nothing that strikes fear into my heart more than intimacy with another soul. Nothing will burn closer, feel more threatening, then the reflection I have in myself. By being closer to somebody, my heart feels more volatile.

I am ready to embrace energies and desires that most people wouldn’t know what to do with. I welcome pain as a means for growth. All of this, I have found, is the beauty expression, to be vulnerable. Sometimes the light will burn.

I look for something that will challenge me, reflect me, and task me with finding a deeper place for myself. If I can help my partner find a deeper place in herself, I will gently caress them towards it. She will often resist, and refuse. This is good, so long as I maintain that it is herself that she sees, herself that she is afraid of. Let her touch a piece of herself. The fear I have of her soul, and the fear she has of mine, that can come later, when we are ready.

To be alive means to be afraid. Life is stressful to the soul. Love is calming. Life pushes us to make a choice. Love gives us peace. Life is meant to be a labour of love, striving through the world, messed up, confusing, to find peace in love. So, confronting fear prepares us for love. The fact that relationships are some of the most confusing, confronting parts of our lives clues us into it. Don’t make the mistake of pursuing a loving life devoid of pain. Love is not a narcotic.

Let us be gentle with one another, let’s have compassion, and let’s have permission to be cruel. To be confronting. Present the truth to one another, and that truth is always myself. To love, we must do so fearlessly, and face the face that lies within us.

Here are the facts:
In a woman, there is a beautiful, ethereal, soulful, loving woman who will do anything to nourish my heart and body. In a woman, there is a stormy, vengeful, spiteful, poisonous medusa that will bite me to the bone.

And then, everything in between.

That is the cost of crazy beauty, the thorn on the rose, the sting in the nectar. It is in my nature to explore the depth of light and darkness, because the fear gives rise to fascination.

In me, there is a grounded, present, resilient, vigilant protector who strives to keep his woman safe, til the end of time. In me, there is a brutal, psychopathic, cruel, vengeful beast that will not forget a slight.

That would be the depth of my love, and the power that arises from myself. With all that I bring to love, because love means to be naked. A love to break hearts and bones. A love to break open and hold.

What do I do? If I write for women who know me, then these words are already known, and they are repeated, and so become redundant. If I write for women who are not ready to receive, they will be intrigued, but they will hide for fear of it. Either way, my efforts can sometimes appear fruitless and useless.

My solution, thus far, is to provide gentleness. Or at least, to craft and channel and transmute my energy into subtler means. This writing is thus. Sometimes in verse. Sometimes in touch, and patience. Raw desire that transcribes to presence. Being still for me means to sit in tension. The desire is for the feminine to receive, so as the motion to cycle once more.

The truth is we are poorly educated in this part of the soul, and poorly prepared for the reality of the heart. To give them motion. To watch the motion in its full and ugly beauty. Perhaps it is blinding. Maybe the closer we go the sooner it is we might burn in the sun. The motion is dangerous and must stay in orbit. Orbit.

Still to find the balance in movement? Never in perfect orbit,but approaching it? Never stand still, or fall towards the sun. Never move blindly, or live without discipline.

Rather, there is an elegance and skill that arises when we are on course, and longevity is the key to skill. A quiet, peaceful movement that maintains its power.