Facing the Demon — Working with Fear, Gratitude, and Presence

Fear contracts our awareness around imagined loss. In this episode, Jake explores how financial uncertainty, self-doubt, and the pressure to perform are showing up in his life right now—and more importantly, how turning toward these inner demons, rather than running from them, is what actually wakes us up.

Drawing on Buddhist, Christian, and Taoist wisdom, he discusses the practice of grounding in the present moment, the power of gratitude even in difficulty, and what it means to show up faithfully without clinging to outcomes. You'll hear about facing demons in dreams, the C.S. Lewis insight on anxiety, and why the Buddha needed Mara.

Whether you're wrestling with financial fear, self-doubt, or uncertainty about the future, this episode invites you to pause, let your fear breathe, and discover what happens when you turn toward it instead.

Topics covered:

• Fear as contraction; self-doubt as fear with a voice
• Grounding in the present moment as a practice
• Gratitude in difficulty (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)
• Facing demons vs. running from them
• The Bhagavad Gita on right action without attachment to results
• Thich Nhat Hanh on Mara as companion and guide
• Dream work and what our demons reveal
• The faithful swing: showing up without controlling outcomes

A vulnerable, practical exploration of how spiritual practice meets real life.

Chapters

• 0:15 The Honesty of Fear
• 7:42 A Demon Named Distraction
• 10:05 Facing the Chair (A Dream)
• 11:31 The Anatomy of Fear & The Practice of Trust
• 16:32 Mara's Gift & The Faithful Swing
• 22:59 I Shall Not Fear (A Closing Blessing)

Transcript

Jacob: 0:15

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Standing Nowhere podcast. This is a place where we explore life and spirituality across various traditions, not as abstract ideas, but as something we actually live through on a day-to-day basis. My name's Jake, and it is a pleasure to be back. And today I wanted to talk about fear. Because I'm going to be honest with you guys, I can't, I can't be fake about this. I've been experiencing some fear over the last two weeks. In a nutshell, a lot of the fear has centered on the quality of this podcast, making sure that I put my best effort into each and every episode for you guys, as well as balancing my life. Because right now I feel a little out of balance and a little fearful. And I wanted to talk about how I'm dealing with that fear in hopes that it might help some of you listening who are also experiencing with some fear. I mean, even this episode, I've this is my third take. I've started it, recorded about five minutes, and then stopped because even just trying to record this episode, I'm so afraid that I'm not being honest and genuine with you guys. I don't like being fake. I value authenticity above all. And I'm working a lot of hours. I've I've mentioned this before, and I don't like to talk about it too much because I'm always afraid that I'm going to sound like a woe is me person. I I want to have more interviews with people. And one of the things that has blocked me from doing that is my insane work hours. My insane work hours block me from not just doing interviews, but all sorts of things in life. You know, two weeks ago I worked 63 freaking hours. Last week I took a little more time off, and I ended up only working 35 hours. But I do experience a little bit of fear about interview episodes. I've done two so far, one with my mom and one with an old friend of mine, Kate Majot. And she was releasing a book, so we got to talk about it. But behind the curtain on those episodes, I was I was very fearful. I was very nervous going into my mom's episode and Kate's episode, especially. You know, she's an author now. She's a dear old friend of mine who went through a crazy traumatic experience. And I feel I feel that fear for upcoming episodes because the original idea that I had for this podcast was to give an open space for people to talk about their life experiences and the challenges that they're going through and the things that they've done to get through them and overcome them so that people listening could be inspired. And when I don't have guests on, the only thing I have to talk about are my own experiences in the current moment. And right now, that's what I'm doing with you. You know, I'm I'm expressing to you guys my fear, my self-doubt. I'm very self-critical. I mean, the voice will appear in my head, and it doesn't make things easy. And I'm balancing a lot of financial, chronic financial pressure. And I have to also figure out some way to balance my time with my work hours, my family being present for my son and my kids and my wife, apply for jobs. I've I've got my resume touched up and I've been shooting out applications now. And the fear that goes into finding a job. You know, anyone listening, if you've applied for jobs, which I'm sure many of you have, and you know what that process is like. It's stressful. You don't know who you're going to be working for, what they expect of you, prepping for the interview. And I'm trying to get my foot in the door for IT because I'm pretty decent with computers, but I'm nervous. You know, there's that fear. And I wanted to talk about fear in this episode and how I deal with it because maybe it'll help somebody else out there. Some of these spiritual practices I've been partaking in have really helped me handle my fear. And I have a lot of pressure to perform for you guys, these weekly episodes, the upcoming guests. Is the podcast good enough? How do I manage my time between all this? And then at the end of the day, my sleep management, letting the podcast kind of be enough and going to sleep. But I try to have gratitude in spite of all this. I think gratitude is a very important thing in dealing with many aspects in life, but especially fear. I think it was episode eight where I uh it was called Reverence to Be, where I talked about being grateful for in spite of all my circumstances. And um, you know, I'm driving with my air conditioner out now and I'm sweating bullets, and I have to shower when I get home on my lunch break, and then again when I get home after my shift is over, after 12 hours of driving. But it's like, how do you be grateful in that situation? How do you be grateful when the world is charging you double in rent than it used to four or five, six years ago? You know, and it seems like there's so many terrible things that are happening in the world. You know, there's the fear of nuclear war, there's the fear of climate change and the crazy people that are doing nothing to stop it, or at least prepare for it. They're just arguing about the cause. And it's like, well, what about me? You know, what do I do with all this fear? How do I be grateful in all of it? And there's um, there's that verse from 1 Thessalonians from Paul where he says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. But how do you apply that? Well, when he says rejoice always, he's literally saying just take part in the activity you're doing and be grateful that you're able to be doing the thing you're doing. And it sounds crazy, but I've been trying to apply that when I've been driving and I'm sweating ass in the car. Excuse my language. Like I'm actually practicing that. Like, wow, thank you, thank you for this. You know, it it kind of wakes me up a little bit. Um, yeah, it it sounds counterintuitive, but I encourage you guys to try it. Just look on the grateful side of things when you can, and not in a sarcastic way, but legitimately, just being grateful for the things that you have. Like, yeah, my air conditioner is out, but I still have my car. I'm still able to earn money, even though the gig apps have cut my pay by over 35% in the last two years. At least I still have a way of earning money. At least I still have a house. At least I still have a family. And I don't know where I'm gonna get the money to pay for my air conditioner. I don't know how I'm gonna pay for my utility bills that are backed up and about to get shut off. I don't know, but I'm grateful that I my utilities are still on for the moment. I'm grateful that I still can earn money and provide for my family right now. So I'm rejoicing in that. It could be worse. There's a quote from a C.S. Lewis book that I wanted to read to you on this topic. Um, it's called The Screw Tape Letters. It's a short story, short novel. Uh, this is the guy who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, and this uh book, Screwtape Letters, is about a demon who is writing to his nephew, Wormwood, and they refer to God and you know good things as the enemy. So he's he writes this letter, I think it's in the sixth letter, and I'll just give you a little quote from it. He says, There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the enemy, you know, God. He wants men to be concerned with what they do. Our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them. It's an interesting letter because he's highlighting how these demons, quote unquote, want you to be distracted worrying about what's going to happen to you in the future instead of exactly what you are doing in the moment, in the present moment. And it's funny because I my daughter, she's at the end of her, or she she was at the end of her uh fall break, and I wanted to do something fun with her, just like a daddy-daughter type thing. And um, I said, let's go to the movies, and she's like, All right, and we were trying to figure out what movie to see, and she suggested the conjuring, uh, The Last Rites, the new one. Good movie, by the way, if you guys haven't seen it, but I was like, Are you sure? You know, it's not gonna give you nightmares. It ended up giving me a nightmare, which I'll talk about in a sec, but she was like, Yeah, I'm sure. And the resolution of the film, without spoiling it, was to face the demons, to face the demon. And I thought that was like so poetic because we all have those quote unquote inner demons. For me, right now, it's it's financial fear, uh, uns financial uncertainty. I mean, even if you're not in a precarious financial position, you are probably worried about the future of you know the stock market or the economy. It's scary, but facing it is really the only way through it. It's like Dante's Inferno. The only way out of hell is to go through the center of it. And like I mentioned um a moment ago, I did have a dream because I saw this movie with my daughter, and then I um I was dreaming that night. And in my dream, there was like something wrong with the microwave in the kitchen, and we had a lot of people over, and the microwave, I was worried, was gonna give out these rays that would hurt the family. So I said, everyone's got, you know, it was like I had to control the situation, and I went to go get a tool or something to fix it, and when I came back, it was like everybody was gone, just like in the film. And I was like, Oh, that's weird. And then a chair started to levitate into the air. And I don't know what came over me, but I was like, okay, we're doing this. It started to connect with me. It almost became lucid at that point. I walked up to the chair and I said, Okay, take me. And I started to float up in the air, and I started getting nervous, but I was like, take me. Go ahead and swallow me up, you know? And I woke up and my heart was pounding and stuff. But the cool thing about that dream for me, and I'm not a Carl Jungian, but I don't try to interpret dreams too much, but just facing the demon woke me up. And I feel like that's that's what happens in life. When we face our demons, it really wakes us up to the thing that we need to face. It's not trying to scare us away from the thing, but kind of point us to it. If we just turn towards it, we wake up. And um, you know, in in terms of like fear and self-doubt, if we think about like what is fear? What is fear? If you really look at it and self-doubt, you know, um, I found this definition that I really liked where it says fear is a contraction around imagined loss. It's like your awareness, instead of being with the moment and having all your energy free, it contracts and it just forms around this idea in your head of what if? What if the job I get is shit and they they don't treat me well there and I don't like my work? What if this podcast episode is terrible? What if this podcast, you know, on and on and on and on. And instead of having all my energy to deal with the present moment, it's contracted and conforms to this imaginary fear in the future. And self-doubt is just that fear with a voice, you know, speaking to you. You're not a good podcaster. No one's commented on your stuff yet because they don't find it interesting or it's you know, whatever. Your inner critic is always going to be so terrible. I don't need to tell you guys that. You've heard it. But it's turning towards it, I think, and maintaining that trust when things are not going our way with work, money, our time management. Maintaining trust. Can you trust it? Can you trust the fear as well? You know, there's a there's a verse that I pulled on this topic from um Proverbs chapter three, verse five and six. It says, Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Trust in your being with all your heart. Trust in the moment. And if I if I was to convert that into a like an actionable thing, instead of like when you hear that Proverbs verse, it's real easy to nod your head and say, Yeah, that's cool, that makes sense. But on a day-to-day basis, what that looks like for me, just to give you guys an example, I will actively, especially when I'm experiencing fear about these podcast episodes or the podcast in general or applying for a job or whatever, what I do is I ground myself in the present moment. And I know it sounds like a broken record, but I ground myself in the moment with whatever I'm doing, sweating in the car or, you know, driving the car in general, or whatever I'm doing. If I'm walking, I'm just walking. And what happens is my mind will overwhelmingly want to think. I have to think. I have to plan this episode. I don't have time right now to focus on my breath or to just focus on driving the car. I can't just do that. But what I've learned is that the more you come back to the present, the more space you create in yourself and the thoughts that are really useful and will really help me with that next episode, or you know, balancing my time, or whatever it is, applying for jobs, your mind becomes a hundred times more effective at what it needs to do when you let go of control and you keep coming back. The fear will keep trying to poke you and say, you've got to think about this, you've got to, you've got to handle this, you've got to do this. Yes, there are things that you have to plan and do, but what I'm saying is they they plan and think themselves. You don't have to be the worrier or the thinker. You just have to keep remembering to come back, to come back. And you'll notice the more you do this, there is literally more space in your head, and the thoughts that will start to appear, A, they'll be quieter, and B, they're going to be way more effective, like I was just saying. So I just wanted to kind of give you, you know, in words the best I could, the way that I put that Proverbs verse in action. Trust in my being. Can I trust that I can just focus on what I'm doing and the thoughts that I need to think will think themselves? Because spoiler alert, that thoughts think themselves anyways. It's just a letting go of the fear. And on this note, we always like to personify things when we tell stories. I mean life itself is a story that we tell ourselves. There is uh a verse that exemplifies this uh in the Buddhist tradition. In in Buddhism, they don't personify the devil like they do in modern interpretations of Christianity. What they do is they have a uh Deva named Mara who embodies like temptation, fear, self-doubt as a person, but they don't look at him as an evil adversary. They look at him as a companion who guides you back to wholeness through the temptations. And Tiknot Han, who I've quoted before many times on this podcast, he's an old Zen master, passed on, unfortunately, in recent years, but he has a quote on Mara where he says, if you were there with, and this is um kind of a quote uh illustrating a part of the Buddha's life, he says, if you were there with Ananda, and if you were very mindful, you would have had the feeling that Buddha and Mara were a couple of friends who need each other like day and night, like flowers and garbage. The Buddha needs Mara because thanks to Mara, he has become a Buddha. It is thanks to the difficulties, thanks to the temptations that the Buddha has overcome his suffering and his ignorance and become a fully enlightened being. So there's a different way we can look at the demons, the inner demons in us. They're like a threshold, an entryway or a beginning point into separation or back to divine union. Facing them is how we wake up, not running from them. So I thought maybe one thing that we could do, if you're listening, is to take just a moment and go inside yourself and just find one of the fears that's really been gnawing at you. Maybe the most prominent one. Maybe it's financial pressure, like me. Maybe it's fear of a coworker or whatever it is. Just find one fear inside of yourself. And don't do anything. Don't try to fix it. Don't worry about it. Just find the fear and let it be. Let it sit in your awareness for a moment. Release the outcome. Don't try to fix it. Is this episode going to be a dog turd? All these fears are kind of swirling around in me right now as a tornado. And I'm aware of them. I've got a little frame of awareness around it. And I'm just watching it. And I'm letting go of me trying to solve it right now. Because I know that the solution will eventually present itself. I've survived 42 years. I think I'm gonna be okay. I don't know how I'm gonna resolve these things. But I'm allowing them to breathe. I'm allowing them to be. Take your fear and allow it to be for a moment. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaking to Arjuna says, You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities. And never be attached to not doing your duty. So I have to let go of figuring out and knowing how my outcome will be with my finances of the podcast. I don't know. I have to let that go. And I can't walk away from my work hours, my work weeks, I can't walk away from the podcast. Not that I want to, but I have to show up. And I have to show up unconcerned with the results. Not that I don't care about the result, but that's not my place. I don't get to decide what happens, how this will turn out. That is not up to me. I will show up to the plate and I will take a swing with faith, with trust. So I want you guys listening to ask yourself what is the next faithful swing I can take today? What can I do to show up and do it, but also release the results? We're coming up on the finish line here because that's really what I wanted to get off my chest to you guys. I'm gonna be putting in a lot of effort to find that job, to put in the hours, and also get more guests on this podcast. You know, part of the fear of the reason I haven't is because I'm afraid of the stories they're gonna tell and the emotional weight that that brings because I feel deeply with each person that I speak with. I have a guest coming up who's gonna be talking about some incredibly painful loss that he's experienced. But I think I think we'll get a lot of wisdom out of his stories. So to close out here, I had a couple of read just a couple of quick readings here. We've all heard Psalm 23, but I thought it would be so perfect for this episode. I want you guys to just clear a space in your head and let these writings really sink in. This first one is from David. He was a new king, surrounded by all kinds of problems. Imagine the stress of being a king. He says, Yahweh is my shepherd. I shall not want. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. Before I close out, I have one last thing I wanted to read you guys from Thomas Merton, an old Christian mystic who's very similar to me and in that he really tried to show people the the way that Zen Buddhism and Taoism and Eastern thought weaves beautifully with the original meaning and understanding of uh the Hebrew tradition, uh particularly Jesus. But before I read his his uh prayer of unknowing, as it's often called from his book Thoughts in the Solitude, if you if you enjoyed this show and it shifted something for you, you know, please take a moment to follow it in your favorite app, share it maybe with a friend who might need it. If you really want to blow my mind, you can support us at patreon.com slash standing nowhere podcast. He says, My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have the desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road. Though I may not know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Blessings, and have a wonderful rest of your day.