Here is the book review I just posted on amazon books:
"Huge Circle of Fear": How Shadow Walks With Us For Liberation By R. Michael Fisher on December 5, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
I have known this author, founder of philosophy of fearism, and his work for two years. This novel, his first in English translation from Nepalese, is much better than other things in English translation that he has written. As a short novelette it works with an intensity of both simplicity and profoundness. I like the teaching about fear and the finding of the way to fearless. How the protagonist moves across landscapes and in and through forest primal cultures to the town's and villages is unexpected and filled with surprises. Many kinds of teachers appear, and there is a sense the protagonist, on 'the edge' of sanity, and insanity, throughout, is like a part of you. At least I felt that.
It is a book about 'shadow' in an interesting way. It resonates with Carl Jung's version but there is something more Eastern and mysterious and primal that by the end of the book, I was still asking many questions about what is this shadow that operates in the book. One scholar the protagonist meets says, "The shadow can be ignored considering it to be just a mental disorder. But no matter, to what extent you ignore it, it tends to play inside your body" (p. 50).
The particular shadow that weaves in and out of the narrative of this book, more or less turns out to be the signifier, if not the driver, if not the effect of what the protagonist realizes, like a moment of enlighenment, a "huge circle of fear"... and, as the story unfolds, the experience of "fearless" is unveiled for us to both admire and yet query. Is this a journey we would ever take? The risks are always there, for the reward, if one is listening deeply, primally with a whole other part of our being that we usually don't listen with in the everyday world. Sure, readers will taste the shamanic, magical, and presence of spirit in this soul's journey.
Knowing the author's major philosophical project, the philosophy of fearism, I think this book would be a good text for the teaching of ideas behind what he and I call "feariatry" --a new sub-discipline of psychiatry that focuses on the "huge circle of fear" and the 'shadow' related to it --and, how they impact our mental health all the time.
It is a book about 'shadow' in an interesting way. It resonates with Carl Jung's version but there is something more Eastern and mysterious and primal that by the end of the book, I was still asking many questions about what is this shadow that operates in the book. One scholar the protagonist meets says, "The shadow can be ignored considering it to be just a mental disorder. But no matter, to what extent you ignore it, it tends to play inside your body" (p. 50).
The particular shadow that weaves in and out of the narrative of this book, more or less turns out to be the signifier, if not the driver, if not the effect of what the protagonist realizes, like a moment of enlighenment, a "huge circle of fear"... and, as the story unfolds, the experience of "fearless" is unveiled for us to both admire and yet query. Is this a journey we would ever take? The risks are always there, for the reward, if one is listening deeply, primally with a whole other part of our being that we usually don't listen with in the everyday world. Sure, readers will taste the shamanic, magical, and presence of spirit in this soul's journey.
Knowing the author's major philosophical project, the philosophy of fearism, I think this book would be a good text for the teaching of ideas behind what he and I call "feariatry" --a new sub-discipline of psychiatry that focuses on the "huge circle of fear" and the 'shadow' related to it --and, how they impact our mental health all the time.
