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dfr1973 I'm going to pull a discussion from JMG's Magic Monday yesterday and bring it to here, as I have been debating how to bring this up myself. Syfen writes: "I'm having real trouble understanding part of Atkinson's and Charles Godfrey Leland's works on will power. Both authors repeatedly admonish their readers to reject fear because it inhibits the designs of the mage. I have a different experience with fear, for me fear has always been a force that drives me to greater accomplishment. It is a part of me, but both authors say that it is a bad thing. The same goes with doubt. I would never have been able to accomplish the various amazing things that I have, without fear and doubt. What do I do with this contradiction?" JMG replies: "Leland and Atkinson are writing for the masses, and there will always be people for whom some of their details don't apply. If you have something that works, use it. If you aren't getting the results you want from your methods, though, consider giving theirs a try."
Atkinson's attempt to set up fear as the opposite of courage has irked me from the first time I read it. Subsequent reading and audiobooks have made me realize Atkinson was not military, and also very much a city man through and through. He had no real, personal experience with real courage, IMO.
Courage is not the opposite of fear. It is a reaction to fear, with its opposite reaction being cowardice. Courage and cowardice aren't the only two options, nor do they form the the end brackets for potential reactions to fear. Off the top of my head, I can name off anger, denial, and a sense of duty as being other reactions that don't exactly fall in between the courage-cowardice line.
The big thing to keep in mind is neither Atkinson nor Leland nor anyone else in the New Thought movement is infallible. Sometimes they will talk about something they don't actually understand, but may think they do. I spent most of 2003 in Iraq as part of the invasion force, so I have more of an idea of what fear is and what reactions tend to be ... but I was never in a firefight, so leave that aspect to combat arms to discuss. We were just targets for first the scud launchers, then for any hajji with a mortar tube, some rounds, and cylinders of ice six nights a week. When you can't shoot back, and SOP* is to hunker in the bunkers, neither courage nor cowardice are available options to react to fear. Most of the time, my reaction was anger. Do that for more than six months, and things get rewired that way. One of the reasons I am into this project is I would like to undo that and get back to some semblance of normal.
What I have been struggling with was how to bring this up without rambling (HA! and in a group discussing Leland's Mystic Will!) or without dragging a piece of my personal baggage out, but it looks like the best way is to just do it, and then revise, expand, or further elucidate on the fly. So, here it is.
*SOP in army context is Standard Operating Procedure, not Sphere of Protection ... though that may have helped at the time.
Atkinson's attempt to set up fear as the opposite of courage has irked me from the first time I read it. Subsequent reading and audiobooks have made me realize Atkinson was not military, and also very much a city man through and through. He had no real, personal experience with real courage, IMO.
Courage is not the opposite of fear. It is a reaction to fear, with its opposite reaction being cowardice. Courage and cowardice aren't the only two options, nor do they form the the end brackets for potential reactions to fear. Off the top of my head, I can name off anger, denial, and a sense of duty as being other reactions that don't exactly fall in between the courage-cowardice line.
The big thing to keep in mind is neither Atkinson nor Leland nor anyone else in the New Thought movement is infallible. Sometimes they will talk about something they don't actually understand, but may think they do. I spent most of 2003 in Iraq as part of the invasion force, so I have more of an idea of what fear is and what reactions tend to be ... but I was never in a firefight, so leave that aspect to combat arms to discuss. We were just targets for first the scud launchers, then for any hajji with a mortar tube, some rounds, and cylinders of ice six nights a week. When you can't shoot back, and SOP* is to hunker in the bunkers, neither courage nor cowardice are available options to react to fear. Most of the time, my reaction was anger. Do that for more than six months, and things get rewired that way. One of the reasons I am into this project is I would like to undo that and get back to some semblance of normal.
What I have been struggling with was how to bring this up without rambling (HA! and in a group discussing Leland's Mystic Will!) or without dragging a piece of my personal baggage out, but it looks like the best way is to just do it, and then revise, expand, or further elucidate on the fly. So, here it is.
*SOP in army context is Standard Operating Procedure, not Sphere of Protection ... though that may have helped at the time.