The fact that we have lost the connection with our deeper self, makes it pretty obvious how fearful we are. For the simple reason, if your were in contact with yourself, your wouldn't crave so much to surround yourself with people, filling up your time with useless interactions. The contact with yourself, leads inexorably to the confirmation of who your are. And when you know who you are, you don't have any need for external approval, you just got it from inside.

It is rather particular besides, considering human beings as social creatures, and the activation of our natural scanning and screening utilities in a new encounter, that we somehow created the habit or behavior of keeping the encounter, the meeting or interaction going for the sake of the encounter itself. As we have somehow, besides the superficial, "how are you", "how is work" daily stories, the mental obligation to keep the conversation going. Even if we have nothing more to say, or when we feel like their is no natural spontaneous need to share on a deeper level. 

But notice how often you keep adding, even if you really don't feel up to it,lines and stories in order to keep a conversation going. Like budgies chattering for the sake of chattering, covering up the very vivid feeling on the background, called "fear", in your inability to express yourself that you actually don't have to talk or share anything.

Very often this behavior is grafted on the conditioning of the individual. Most likely under the toxic assumption we have to talk to each other (because otherwise we would feel uncomfortable with ourselves), they taught us to be polite and we have taken that conditioning to heart, or a more evil one, we don't want to offend nor harm the other by being honest with ourselves.

Not noticing that we are creating a situation that is dishonest with ourselves (we just don't want to admit we actually don't want this conversation or encounter) and are thus equally dishonest with the other. Don't you think your opponent doesn't feel your cover-up strategy? That is very often what we are thinking. We'll continue in the assumption the other doesn't know or notice our dishonesty of our none-connected communication. As if this is not offensive enough, we add some other tactics to spice up the flavor of our presumingly "there-is-nothing-going-on-play" like, "we have to be polite", "we have to politically correct" or "have to be  nice" to people. As if these cover up behaviors are to a higher value than being honest with ourselves!!! As if being honest with the other.

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It is keeping up appearances, which eventually all have to come down and evaporate in a distaste of dishonesty, missing out on every natural honest flow of spontaneity. A false constructions of values, the fear of not being forthcoming to oneself and the other. In every way possible, it is felt that our input, our presence, is not sincere.

One of the most remarkable behaviors we encounter in society is the anxiety for eye contact. Just walking in the streets, randomly looking at people passing by has become more of frightened necessity in downing the eyes into the ground than an intriguing encounter of another human being.

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"Being able to look someone in the eyes without feeling awkward has become a exception that only displays the very discomfort people are experiencing within themselves. It takes contact with the deeper dimension in yourself, where you have lived through so much life experiences that no single aspect of it, whether it's in the realm of materials things, your own body, your own feelings and emotions, your status and importance you cling onto, are forming a threat for you. You can stay open to every encounter possible. There is no taboo anymore, of anything. It's all accepted within yourself and creates the openness to look at everything with open eyes.

The extent you are able to keep your eyes open with people, (not avoiding eye-contact) is a direct indication of the contact you established with your inner being. In that regard it's very clear that people who find themselves offended by an honest look of you, still have a way to go.

This is probably the most susceptible and most direct forms of experiencing fear. It is tremendous how people find it unbearable. As long as the conversation is ongoing, there is no problem with this form of intimacy. Cos that's ultimately what's it coming down to. Silence brings you immediately to the tangible border of sharing. And most of the time, when observing people's communications, they very often fall back into repeating what has already been said, maybe just in other words or tainted a bit differently, but still the same content. When we draw their attention to it, it often goes to the offensive. (where their repetition is rather offensive as they have this behavior which would impose questioning my understanding). They should be glad I make them the remark, as proof of the fact that I'm really understanding and listening to their discourse.

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The ability to sit in silence with someone determines the depth of your intimacy with that person. Yet, the majority of the people have a problem (resolving it by bringing up another story) when there's a 3 second break in a conversation. Referring to the unease they feel in themselves. The sudden discomfort of not knowing what to say anymore (as if silence is a space that needs to be filled constantly with words), not knowing how to behave (trying to bring up another memory or story that has nothing to do with this moment), distance themselves or even flee away to safer noisy grounds.

Another field in which we are fearful (literally FULL of fear). Depending on your upbringing, the generational gap, your personal need to live through them, determines whether you are either conditioned to an extend your are able or unable to express them. The more you were able to get along with them, the easier you will have your expression. And proportionally so when you were unable. Equally so is the amount of fear that is involved with it.

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I only have encountered an handful of people who were so synchronized with the expression of there emotions that it was like a work of art. It requires an immense openness and vulnerability to express exactly what your feel or who you are, regardless the bystanders or relation they had.

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The rest of the people have learned meticulously to tap, cover or suppress them. In this case they are very often layered in the subconscious as ticking time bombs. Knowing that everything we are is build up of energy, so are emotions. When not lived through, they remain in the body and become dense. When not addressed blockages are starting to form and our immunology comes under pressure, resulting in symptoms, illnesses and ultimately disease.

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Depending on the seriousness of the impact the blocked emotion had in the past, an equally residing fear remains within us. As the blocked emotion is a direct cause of something that we didn't want to live or accept, facing and resolving them always go hand in hand with living through them, living and experiencing pain. Only after living through it, one is healing (becoming more whole again), pain and discomfort are subsiding.

This last feature is, although considered the most craved among people, the hardest to experience. Intimacy requires besides presence, trust. Trust embodies being trustworthy. And being trustworthy requires to be responsible. Now, in this society, where we are waving our responsibility faster than we can pronounce the word, it's very unlikely that we are trustworthy. It is even so unlikely that men, AND women take this responsibility all the way. As soon as the clapper swings the other way and we are becoming disadvantaged by a situation, we renounce our responsibility. That is no responsibility at all, nor represents it any trustworthiness. And yet, we claim to possess this value. But our society tends to incline more and more to divorces, failing parenting, relationships and humanity for the very reason that we drop our vows, our responsibility and shift it over to our individual advantages. We don't want to loose for what we have given our word. We don't want to bound in at our own preferences, ambitions and dreams when we have chosen a partner, a relationship, a parental responsibility. We place ourselves above our common choices, vows and agreements. How can that be trusted?

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It is to no avail that our intimacy fails equally so. When men and women are not trustworthy to themselves, they certainly aren't towards each other. So there is not deepening and we stay in the superficial, which is anything from what we so crave as humans among each other. We fuck around and prioritize lust above the intimate connection, failing at large to the deepening of oneself and the other. The bond we are looking for, that guaranties the progress of our relating due to the mutual value we experience with the other, fades and finds itself in endless projections and arguments. While it is only this value that gives us the trust and the chance to open more, going deeper into the experience with the other and oneself.