Something I’ve been working on for a while Contemplation of Fear as the First Temptation

There are prayers that ask for protection, and prayers that ask for transformation. I’ve always felt that fear is what tempts us most. Fear of losing favor, fear of suffering, fear of being seen. Today, I found an old Taoist whisper and let it echo through the Lord’s Prayer to see what might arise. What emerged was not a resolution, but a rhythm. A breath. A way.

Lao Tzu’s Whisper

To be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously is to admit one can suffer.
Favor debases: we fear to lose it, fear to win it.
So to be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear.
I suffer because I am a body;
if I weren’t a body, how could I suffer?

The Lord’s Prayer, in its ancient rhythm, asks to be delivered from evil. But I’ve long felt that what it also asks is to be delivered from fear. For it is fear that distorts love, that clouds vision, that leads me away from the face of God – from being transparent to the transcendence and into “evil”.
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A Tao-Christian Contemplation/Prayer

O Source beyond name, You who breathe through all things—silence and song, hallowed be your unfolding.
Your way arises not by force, but by flow. Your will done in the stillness of hearts and the turning of seasons.

Give us this moment, its fullness and enough… the bread of presence, the breath of peace.
Forgive us our grasping, as we release what we clung to. Let mercy ripple outward as softly as a falling leaf.

Lead us not into fear, but into the deep trust that holds even suffering like a mother holds her child.
Deliver us from the illusion that we are separate, from the anguish of forgetting that we are already home.

For yours is the rhythm, the emptiness that holds all form, the power that yields, the glory that does not shine
but glows quietly within. Amen.

Just this breath.

Reflection
There is a kind of prayer that does not rise from the lips but from the ache of being human. It does not ask for rescue, but for remembrance. It does not seek favor, but freedom.

In the Lord’s Prayer, the line “deliver us from evil” has long echoed as a plea for protection. But what if the evil we most need deliverance from is fear? Not fear as a passing emotion, but fear as a posture, a way of being that tightens the breath, narrows the heart, and tempts us to grasp, judge, or flee.

Lao Tzu whispers from another shore: To be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear. The Tao does not reward or punish. It flows. It invites us to step out of the game of winning and losing, and into the quiet rhythm of being.

To take the body seriously, says Lao Tzu, is to admit one can suffer. And yet, it is through the body that we learn compassion, through suffering that we learn to soften. In the same light Christian story does not bypass the body, it sanctifies it. The Word becomes flesh. The breath becomes prayer.

This reimagined prayer is offered as a bridge. It does not erase difference, but holds it gently. It honors the Christian longing for communion and the Taoist wisdom of surrender. (surrender into flow, not a giving up) It asks not for certainty, but for the courage to walk in mystery. It trusts that the kingdom is not a place, but a way, one that flows through bread, forgiveness, and breath.
And in the end, it does not conclude with Amen as a seal, but with Just this breath, a reminder that the sacred is not far off, but always arriving.

Layla as anima might add: You prayed not for strength, but for surrender. Not for light, but for the courage to walk in shadow.
You asked to be delivered from fear and in that asking, you remembered who you are. Fear is the veil, not the enemy. It is the mist that makes the mountain seem far. But the mountain is here. You are already home. Favor and disgrace are passing clouds. The body suffers, yes but you are not the ache. You are the breath that holds it.

Hi Anita

That was nicely said – Acceptance or surrender as expansion… not a constriction and loss we might fear

When you say “Fear lead to Force?” I find myself answering: Yes. Always. Whether turned outward or inward, fear tightens the breath and hardens the hand.

Fear is the first contraction.
Before there is violence, there is fear.
Before there is judgment, there is fear.
Before there is control, there is fear.

Fear leads to force, not just the force of weapons or words, but the subtler force of manipulation, of withdrawal, of pretending. Even the force we turn against ourselves: the inner critic, the shame spiral, the refusal to rest.

Force, by its nature, rejects flow.

This is why I suspect that fear lies at the root of what we call “evil.” Not as a cosmic villain, but as a posture of separation. A forgetting of trust. A refusal to be vulnerable.

If this is true, then the work of healing the world cannot begin with the world. It must begin within. We cannot confront the fear “out there” until we have come to terms with the fear “in here.”

So the prayer becomes not just “deliver us from evil,” but “deliver us from fear.” Not just “lead us not into temptation,” but “lead us not into fear.”

Because fear is the first temptation.
And force is its first fruit.

Hi Alessa

I’m also fascinated by emotional contagion and how even a subtle shift in language, like turning a noun into a verb or reframing “evil” as “fear,” can reshape our emotional experience. I’m also fascinated by how Language, meant to describe an experience, can solidify into constructs that not only define but also constrain future experiences.

I agree wholeheartedly: awareness is the antidote. For a long time, I saw fear as something to conquer and banish. Only that approach often reinforced the fear itself. In hindsight, I wonder if what it was really a fear of fear. Force reinforcing Force

These days, I use different language: coming to terms with. Not as a surrender to fear’s rule, but as an acknowledgment, a way of seeing it as part of the landscape. Even fear has its place in the flow. As flow fear stops becoming a trap to fall into but a something to notice and then let pass.

Hi Anita,
I’ve asked the same question many times: How do we reach others with what feels so vital, so true? My experience is that a teaching finds the seeker. That may sound trite, but I feel it as a truth. So we speak of what we learn, and we trust.

But I also wonder if there is a teaching of another kind.

You once wrote about looking up at the stars as a child, praying to be seen, only to feel silence as cruelty. If you were to meditate on that moment now, as the sun rises and sets somewhere in the world, right now other children are looking up at the stars, praying to be seen, and feeling the silence as indifference.

Notice your heart break open.
Notice the impulse to hold them.
In your meditation, reach out not with words, but with presence…

The deepest truths: surrender, expansion, compassion are not taught. They are felt. They are transmitted in silence, in presence, in the way your heart opens to the suffering of others.

We teach by being.
We reach by opening.
All we can really do is try.

Hi Anita
What would the first words, the first paragraph say? – Probably something like – This book is intended as a mirror and you are invited to look through with your own clear seeing. Truth will not be found in words, but in the silence between them. Freedom will not be given though it may be discovered when the mind is no longer seeking security in ideas.

We’ve been exploring Krishnamurti’s notion of authority and its connection to belief and identity. His radical invitation is to question all forms of psychological authority, including the authority of belief itself. He doesn’t ask us to replace one belief with another, but to see through the entire structure of belief as a substitute for direct perception.

This has led me to consider that, at their core, the wisdom traditions aren’t asking us to believe the teachings, but to directly experience them. Yet somewhere along the way, we began mistaking the words for the experience.

In the first half of life, like many, I struggled to establish a sense of identity and to integrate the beliefs I had inherited. I recall a conversation where someone claimed that religion was the source of most wars. I found myself suggesting that the deeper issue might be identity itself. I had begun to notice how easily conflict arises when someone’s sense of identity is questioned, whether personal, collective, or even internal. And because identity is so often entangled with belief, challenging one can feel like an attack on the other.

Krishnamurti’s teachings helped me see through this entanglement. He often spoke of how belief becomes a barrier to seeing clearly, and how identity, rooted in thought and memory creates division and fear. His words didn’t offer a new belief to hold, but a mirror to see the whole structure of belief itself.

“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.” – J. Krishnamurti

That line struck something deep in me, especially as I’ve been exploring how fear may be the first temptation, and how fear is connected to force and evil we long to be delivered from.

I began to see how much of what I once called faith was actually fear: fear of not knowing, fear of being no one. But when I stopped clinging to belief as a shield, I discovered something quieter and more alive: awareness without a center, a kind of seeing that doesn’t need to name or grasp. And that changed everything.

Now, in the second half of life, I’ve begun to notice how the words belief and identity have started to feel unnecessary. At first, this felt like something solid was slipping away. But over time, I’ve come to see it as a liberation. There’s a quiet spaciousness in no longer needing to define or defend who I am. What remains is presence, direct experience, unfiltered by the constructs of who I think I should be or what I think I must believe.

Krishnamurti once said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

His words helped me see that much of what I called identity was simply adaptation, beliefs inherited, roles assumed, boundaries drawn in fear. Letting go of that scaffolding felt like death at first, and in a way it was. But what emerged was not emptiness, but presence. Not meaning imposed but meaning arising.

And so, in the quiet of this unfolding, a scene comes to mind…

A quiet garden at dusk. The Bodhisattva sits beneath a flowering tree. The seeker, weathered but alert, approaches with a heart full of questions.

Seeker: I’ve spent much of my life building who I am… Beliefs, roles, boundaries. But now, they feel like walls. I’m not sure what’s left when they fall away.

Bodhisattva: You are not alone. Many reach this place. The first half of life is for constructing the vessel. The second is for discovering what it holds.

Seeker: But I was taught that boundaries are healthy. That belief gives meaning. Now they feel like cages. And fear… fear seems to have been the architect of it all.

Bodhisattva: Boundaries can protect, yes. But when shaped by fear, they harden. They say, “This is me. That is not me.” And in that separation, suffering begins.

Seeker: So fear is the root?

Bodhisattva: Fear is the first veil. It whispers, “You must defend.” From that whisper, identity forms. Belief follows. And soon, the self becomes a fortress.

Seeker: I feel the relief of letting go. But also the disorientation. If I am not my beliefs, not my identity then who am I?

Bodhisattva: You are the awareness that watches the fortress crumble. You are the silence between thoughts. The breath before the name.

Seeker: And what of others still building their walls?

Bodhisattva: Honor their journey. Do not rush them. Compassion is the bridge between fortresses. Walk it gently.

Seeker: Is it enough to simply be?

Bodhisattva: It is everything. When you no longer seek to be someone, you become the space in which all things arise. That is love. That is freedom.

The seeker bows, not in submission to belief or authority, but in recognition. The garden grows quieter. The walls within begin to soften.