Waves, Bears, and the Tar-like Man-eating Ooze

My father sits in a room inside me, quietly.  He is there with his head slightly bowed and he is waiting patiently; I know not what for.  His presence is soothing to me and sometimes, in meditation, I press myself up against the door of his room and hear him breathing.

Sometimes the sun sends a white light through the trees and hits me right between the eyes.  I feel holy then, and found.

Last night I dreamed of waves, forty footers, curling over and welling up.  I saw them through a picture window of a living room in a house I did not own.  Also, there was a bear at the front door.  When I opened the door to secure the lock, the bear had left his skin.  The waves soaked the fur, sloshed it from side to side.  I shut the door.

In my imagination, there is God, there is my father, there are books and poems and there is also the Great Fear.  The Great Fear is formless.  The Great Fear reminds me of the tar-like man-eating black ooze from a horror movie I watched when I was about nine years old.  My grandparents had it on while they were babysitting my brother, sister and me.  (Not exactly a movie children should be watching before bed).  That night, we slept in the basement, of all places, and I remember staring anxiously at plastic flowers in a vase on a shelf but seeing the tar-like man-eating black ooze seep like magma into an island hut; it filled a bird cage and engulfed a parrot, ate the flesh and spit out the bones.  This is how the Great Fear can affect me- it can eat through every hopeful thought I have and spit out its bones.

The Great Fear is the first cousin of existential angst.  It is the second cousin of stress, and the third cousin of ego.  It is the waves crashing outside the window and the bear knocking at the door.  If I say the Great Fear is a part of my imagination, then where does that leave my father and his room?  Is he only my imagination as well?  I can't seem to let go of one without letting go of the other.  And what about God, did I invent him too? 

Or could it be that the imagination is a medium, just as water or air are mediums for sound and light.  My imagination could be a medium for the other worldly.  It's wired to the soul part of me. 

But fear, who drives that?  I drive fear and I know it.  It is my imagination on overdrive, a creative response to stress; it is also the byproduct of sensitivity.  I need to demote the Great Fear to just fear.  Little ol' everyday fear that is a very human thing and not something that is going to one day hunt me down and kill me, or force me to become an agoraphobic. 

Ha!  Easier said than done.