"Three things that come without asking: fear, jealousy,
and love." ____ Scots Gaelic triad
When fear grips us, our ability to act quickly or think clearly evaporates; we may become completely petrified and powerless. Fear often skims along just below the surface of perception, ready to appear when given opportunity. Its appeasing can lead to avoidance: we can be thrown out of the house of our soul by extreme fear. Fear cannot be evicted or overcome as such, though it can be transformed. Fear holds the key to lock away our abilities. It gain access to them again, we have to grasp the key and transform fear into power, recognizing that one becomes the other, just as water becomes ice.
Jealousy brings with it a fierce twisting of our perceptions so that everything concerning the object of our jealousy is distorted. When Cuchulainn fell in love with another woman, his wife Emer, was consumed by a terrible jealousy that changed her perceptions utterly: "What's red is beautiful, what's new is bright, what's tall is fair, what's familiar is stale. The unknown is honored, the known is neglected." The only cure for Cuchulainn's enchantment and Emer's jealousy was for the God of the Otherworld, Manannan, to shake his cloak between them to bring them both forgetfulness. By all account, this is the only socially acceptable antidote to this particular guest.
Love is not altogether a welcome guest either. Its coming is often accompanied by disorientation and upheaval. It is frequently confounded with illness, as when King Ailell took to his bed with an unspecified disorder: his doctors finally proclaimed that he was suffering from "the two deadly pangs which no doctor can cure: love and jealousy." The only remedy for love is reciprocated love; this and nothing else can ease the pangs.
"Which was the last of these uninvited guests to visit you? How did you cope? What did you learn from its visit?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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