I will use my snake story: There are a lot of snakes around where I live, and one particularly is perhaps the deadliest in the world - normally considered so not due to its potency of poison, which is none the less way up there with the best, but due to its volatile nature... no sleepy fellow this one.
Some people would come to visit me and we would go for a walk in the hot summer day, through the long grass etc.
Most visitors would not even think much about snakes, and when I dutifully would warn them, they were often frozen with the horror at the prospect. (I like that 'horror at the prospect' - good name for something.)
One of my friends used to prance off gaily into the bush saying, "I never think about snakes, and they don't appear."
Good luck with that one, I used to think to myself - there was no point in telling her as she didn't like being told anything.
Myself, born of a sunny disposition, was never troubled, but I do recall when I changed my own view.
It was reading of Rolling Thunder who had the same problem when taking people through the scrub. He used to say, "With any luck we will see a snake... I really like snakes." And when he did, he was delighted, as not only did he have no fear of snakes, but he loved to dance with them. What he did have for snakes was respect.
The existence of a lurking danger ... death in any of its many forms ... is a boon beyond measure, as it brings us many gifts. The gift of respect, awareness, plus the opportunity to realise our fears and transform them. Fears unacknowledged are like beacons to the feared.
Rolling Thunder showed me many years ago, that the real posture is edge. If we have not edge, we are sitting ducks.
Everything I have tried to do in Soma, can be reduced to convincing members of the profound power and beauty of edge, and how to gain it!
As they say, "Edge is a woman alone."
