Freeing the Soul from Fear

Rating:
Summary: One for the bookshelf, one to lend
Review: (c) 20000 Sheridan Hill

Sardello's new book is the kind you must buy two of: one to keep safely on the bookshelf for your own pleasure, and one to lend your friends.

In Freeing the Soul From Fear, Sardello carefully explores the fragmenting effects of fear and describes how we might meet it with its only antidote -- love. Sardello, whose perspective grows from a 20-year practice as a depth psychologist, maintains that the real power of fear lives in our wish to avoid it. By repressing our fear, we give it power to take hold.

There is a gentle quality about the book, as the author takes a fresh look at love; introduces a strange, fear-based behavior called "doubling"; and weaves in the unearthly ideas of anthroposophist Rudolph Steiner.

Sardello's premise is that the soul is not an entity but a capacity, and freeing it involves participating in fear, not naively, but with the greatest intensity of consciousness and attention we are able to muster.

The ability to raise good questions is also one of Sardello's gifts. In his previous book, Love and the Soul, one question he asks is, How can I love you in a way that frees you? In this book, he explores questions that range from interesting (How do we love the unpleasant aspects of another person?), to difficult (What does consciousness consist of?), and those that are nearly unanswerable (Why are we here?).

A chapter on artistic living reminds readers that bringing the arts into our lives integrates the physical with soul and spirit. Musicians, writers, and artists, who work toward truth in a bodily way, show us that our feelings are not our possessions: the colors and sounds of an average day are loaded with feeling. Poets show us how to "jump into the abyss of not knowing, and there let language come to us and speak through us."

Sardello chaired the psychology department at the University of Dallas and co-founded the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, where he worked closely with James Hillman and Thomas Moore in the 1980s.

In 1993, Sardello co-founded the School of Spiritual Psychology, which offers courses throughout the U.S., Canada, and England, and can be reached at [e-mail].

Sheridan Hill, a freelance writer in North Carolina, can be reached at [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Fear as an Agent of Love
Review: As I read this book, I began to feel several difficult feelings. The first arose from Dr. Sardello's report of a prediction made by Rudolph Steiner (p.155) in 1917. He predicted that children of the future would increasingly experience a kind of invisible companion who would urge them to do destructive things. I read this at the time of a trial of a boy in Detroit who is charged with murder. Immediately after I read this a teenage friend approached me about an uncanny experience she had lying down in her apartment and feeling the presence of "someone." She had the unnerving feeling of someone coming up behind her as she lay paralyzed in bed and lying next to her back. By a huge effort of will she wrenched herself upright and it went away.

Sardello calls this presence "the double" following the lead from literature. We are being told that a new presence is in the world that is not reducible to external "causes" but is nonetheless very real and influencing the actions of our children. The only way to perceive this presence of Fear is through the organ of the soul and everything Sardello says in his book can only be understood if the reader accepts an "epistemology of the soul" that is to say, the imagination as a legitimate way of knowing the world. By the way, this way of knowing reigned supreme until the Age of Science which systematically seeks to excise any shred of imagination from observation on the false grounds that imagination is merely subjective.

If the reader can accept the reality of the soul as a way of knowing the world objectively-once the method of observation has been learned of course, as in science-then the problems facing us today in our lives yield to astonishing and fresh insight in this book.

This book is about Fear in the world and the organ of the soul teaches us that this Fear is an autonomous presence in the world, invisibly influencing even determining events in the world. Sardello's approach, rooted in his Spiritual Psychology concludes that modern therapies search fruitlessly for psychological causes to this fear, as rooted in experiences in the past (p.151ff). Instead we need to perceive Fear as an actual presence in the world which can enter us and affect our body and senses, as he describes in great detail in the first chapters of the book. The way to deal with Fear according to Sardello is to become conscious of how it affects us now, rather than to seek causes in the past. We can become so conscious if we can exercise and develop the capacities of the human soul.

This book is concerned with fear and Sardello does not shrink from giving us the facts about fear according to the epistemology of the soul. This also makes difficult and yet necessary reading. Yet, none of this "facing reality" is intended merely to frighten or to sensationalize. On the contrary, I understand the whole premise of the book to be that Fear is in the world is a necessary agent to wake us up to the profound absence of Love in the world today. Once woken up, we no longer need to continually feed our fears. Instead Sardello gives throughout the book, systematic meditative exercises designed to strengthen the capacity of the soul to love. As Sardello says Love casts out Fear.

So this book, which does not flinch from describing the reality of a fear-filled world is after all primarily a book of Love, teaching us how to develop the capacity of love for the sake of a world bereft of love. Fear then becomes a strange and disturbing visitor who brings us the important news that we must bend to the task of creating Love for the sake of our future on this earth.

Rating:
Summary: The book is right on
Review: In his most recent book, Freeing the Soul From Fear, Robert Sardello describes how the soul can meet and transform fear. We can not avoid or escape from fear, although the modern tendency is to mask it or cover it over. Fear is not merely a personal reaction to various social conditions, difficulties, or anticipated events. It is an imaginal reality that, although not part of individual psychic life itself, constricts us by its presence.

Sardello states that the "most central spiritual task of our time is working with fear". This is not only because stress and anxiety and the feeling of being overwhelmed are almost universal. It is because fear must be transformed, or it will diminish us. Fear thrives on uncertainty, dread, and self-interest. Spiritual inspiration, however, increases our capacity for feeling-knowing, a living thinking which can cut through fear. Spiritual currents can work through us when we are inwardly free and open. Their support can enlarge our capacity for soul and for conscious imagination.

Though this inspiration has an affinity with religion, this work is not about ideological quick fixes or self-satisfying sentiments. In the chapter, "Ecology of Fear", he describes the need to cultivate the inner freedom and moral force out of which love can be born.

"Grasping, wanting, and needing are so strong that patience, waiting, and allowing can hardly be felt unless consciously cultivated. Such balance can be gradually achieved, however, through developing an inner silence while observing the world. This kind of observation is not a scientific, detached observation, but warmth-filled interest(page 142)."

Sardello states that the "secret of fear" is that it can "teach us to love in entirely new ways"... "When we don't run from fear, or try to eradicate it, we discover ourselves anew. We discover ourselves as beings of love."

"Soul capacities first have to be activated by locating the creative power of love within each of us. The task now is to create this factor from within, out of an effort of pure will. The will-to-love resides in the deepest recesses of the soul. This power of the soul can be discovered by each and every individual; it often comes to light only at our darkest moments, when all else has been stripped away. This desire is not a love for this or a love for that; it is without content and without object, a pure effulgence in the heart of darkness (page 129)."

Though such statements are powerful, the tone of the book seems subdued compared to many other writings that promote unconditional love. He does not seem to be recommending that we make our love so strong that it will protect us from fear in all its forms. It is rather that when we meet the world in an way that is open and unconditional, we can become aware of the presence of love in the world.

"Daily life itself can become the place to practice the development of moral perception. All we need to do is to be more receptive and let the things of the world completely fill our consciousness, holding in abeyance the wilful encroachment of our thinking into our surroundings. Gradually, a soul mood of holiness comes through strongly, along with whatever we are perceiving. Seeing the world through the developed capacities of soul not only reveals more of what is there but also invites back the spiritual presences that have receded because of the literal-minded way we have come to view the world (page 128-129)."

I regret that the work Sardello advocates in Freeing The Soul From Fear seems hard to comprehend and difficult to do. Yet the practice of radical receptivity that he guides us to undertake gradually opens the soul, making spiritual experience more accessible and transparent.

Rating:
Summary: A great exposition on Spiritual Psychology
Review: Robert Sardello engages us to release our souls to the world. Here he discusses the power of fear to prevent us from being truely attentive to the universe. In exercises and presentations on how to open our souls to engagement with the world arround us, his insights disminish the hold of fear on our being. The language and imagery is breathtaking. Along with James Hillman and Thomas Moore, Sardello is extending our existance to its soulfull conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Freeing the Soul from Fear
Review: Sardello brings enlightenment and time- tried exercises, to the root of possibly all of mankinds discontent..fear. The author allows each reader to lift the veil and discover for himself/herself the way to a life, filled not with fear but with love and freedom. Our study group finds this book to be remarkably transforming.

Rating:
Summary: The book is right on
Review: This book tell us how our fear distorts the soul and offers suggestions to free the soul from fear. I believe what the book says and I have tried some of the suggestions which seem to be working. I would also highly recommend the book An Encounter With a Prophet and the suggestions given in that book to overcome fear and resentment.