– I don't want to live in fear! – the woman said brokenly. She was bowed down in penance, afraid even of her own shadow, so it was no wonder she wished to be free of this cross.
– I understand you – replied her superior, a lean man of ascetic build, with a gaze that searched the heart, yet a kindly presence. – Even so, many live in dread. But you, be better than they are!
– How am I to do it? Since childhood I have been tormented by fears, anxieties, shadows, my own smallness. I was afraid in the dark and terrified in the light, I was alone a great deal, but when I was forced into company, that roused fears of another kind. It was terrible…
– Never mind, you are past it now…
– Past the terror of childhood, perhaps. I felt overlooked, I did not understand the way grown-ups behaved – today, of course, I understand a good deal more, and I accept that they could not have behaved otherwise, and yet it hurt. Then I realised that what one dislikes in others can in time work its way into one's own personality, and now I see that I am repeating the very patterns I wanted to avoid. I vowed I would not live as my mother did, but my life grows more and more like hers… Is there no liberation?
– Liberation? How long do you mean to carry your burdens? Has it not been enough? You are grown up, after all.
– Grown-up life?! Next to my fears today, the terror of my childhood is nothing… Then it was only shadows, fright and timidity that tormented me, now… the burden of my sins – I know now what I should not have done. I fear it is too late.
– You fear that too? Fear not, it is never too late. A single moment is enough for liberation. Faults, like straw, float on the surface of the water, but in the depths lies the true pearl.
– But how deep? How much longer? Before, I had only my sins, now I struggle with demons…
– Very well, but what do you expect? You know the saying: youth is folly, adulthood struggle, old age regret… take care not to forge such a life for yourself. Do not let your complexes defeat you. Anxiety is only a frame of mind.
– I don't see it as that, but as a real fear.
– Don't worry, you are not so bad that you could fall from grace for good. Could it not be that these obsessions took root in you through subjection or deprivation?
– Beyond all my faults and sins I have a still more painful trouble: I do not love living. The existential terror of my existence torments me.
– Then this is no inferiority complex after all, rather a sense of superiority, isn't it?
– Are you now holding that against me as yet another sin?
– No, but great suffering is no privilege, just as feeling neglected does not diminish you. Everything settles in consciousness.
– If you only knew how much I have rummaged in my subconscious!
– And where did it get you? From the subconscious you can dig up at most shadows, secrets, fears and filth. Things best left undisturbed. Why not explore the superconscious instead?
– The superconscious? – the woman's eyes lit up.
– From below you set loose your weaker, if not your worse, self; from above you set free your better self! That is the self you can meet. I can see you went through a hard school: experience gives the lesson first and the explanation afterwards.
– But I don't want to live in fear! – the woman repeated.
– You have said so already, but are you also willing to act on it? If you recognise that life is one great, divine dream, then it is easier to get past your fears. The soul is not fearful; it is soulful. The one you are seeking is seeking you too.