Pachad, Yirah

Tara Mohr talks about two types of fear:  pachad & yirah. 

Pachad is the "over-reactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen, about the worst-case scenarios we imagine."

On the other hand, yirah is the feeling that sweeps over us when we find ourselves in an more expanded mental/emotional/spiritual place than is our norm.  It's what we experience when we feel a whoosh of unexpected, empowering energies.  It is how we feel finding ourselves in the face of the Divine.

Oh my gosh.  Yes.  

I've identified yirah as negative fear.  It stopped me instead of kicking my butt, it shifted my gears down instead of up.  It did feel scary discovering something divine in ME. 

And, for me, it also felt WRONG.  Although it never made sense to me, I was taught that the Divine is found OUTSIDE of me, that anything that seems to emanate from within is from the hells.  seems divinely inspired & fueled.  Trusting my intuition was similarly demonized.  Literally.  

I offer up thanks for Tara's insights in Playing Big:   "Experiences of sharing one's true voice, honoring one's soulful longings, speaking up for yourself, exposing one's creative self all brings yirah... When we label what we feel in those moments mere 'fear,' we can scare ourselves further, retreat, or go into a patterned reaction to fear (flight or flight).  We can think we have to get away from the uncomfortable, heightened sensation of yirah.  But if in those moments we can say, 'This is yirah,' then we can welcome the gift as what it is:  a sacred gift.  We don't have to do anything about it.  We can appreciate it, feel it.  Most important, we can know it means we are connecting to the divine within and stepping into playing bigger."

I love Erin Geesaman Rabke's comment:  It's so helpful to have that distinction between life-giving awe-fear and lizard-brain fear. I deeply relate to the quaking sort of energy that comes with inhabiting a larger space.  I like renaming it yirah rather than fear - and now I know to follow that thread.  Now, I soothe myself when the pachad is up, to step on it when it's yirah."

Again, from Tara:  "We feel pachad when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego's fragile self-concept in some way.  We feel yirah when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego."

That's as far as I've gotten - page 71, sixteen pages from chapter's end - yet I had to share this morning's reading.  Two types of fear - pachad protects, yirah expands.  Am blessed ith a new-found power to attach clarifying enlightening empowering language to feelings that well up every day.  To be filled with holy fear that transcends, enlightens & to fear not.