Overcoming Timidity
One of our greatest difficulties is the timidity that has been installed on us. That we must submit to intimidation, that we don’t have any power, is probably, in a sense, the greatest lie laid upon us.
It takes a great deal of mistreatment to make this stick. A child has to be whacked down thousands of times before he or she agrees to become a timid adult. The powerful child has to be terribly mistreated before he or she agrees to grow up into a powerless adult.
We are often timid about communicating our insights about reality. Sometimes it makes sense to be cautious. There is no use asking a person to feel all their fear all at once without some theoretical understanding first. They will look at you like you are a threat and back off because at that point they can’t tell* the feeling of the fear that is contradicted from actual danger. It feels to them like you are threatening their life now, instead of pointing them in a direction that will allow them to feel and discharge all their old fears.
Over time such timidity works against us. There is a real point to the agreements that we make with each other not to be timid. This is part of our regaining our power—the agreements to remind each other of what we tend to forget alone, the agreement to remember that your fear is not my fear.
Harvey Jackins
From pages 144 to 145 of “The Uncovering
of Reality,” in The Benign Reality
*“Tell” means differentiate.