What scares you is what has the power to hold you, to trap you, to keep you locked down.

Because fear is so powerful (and because we’re not very good at moderating our reactions), we tend to swing wildly away from whatever we fear, or from our idea of it. We have to approximate, because much of what we fear is stuff that’s big and out of our control. So we do our best to build some kind of harbor that feels like the opposite of our fear.

Then the only way we feel safe is to stay in that harbor. Can’t leave.

So the harbor is now a prison. Self-imposed, sure. Same result. You’re stuck in there.

All the laws are the same — inner laws and outer laws. The same principles drive everything in this world. If you pull a pendulum out one way, it will swing back just that far the other way. If you’ve been starving for days, and somebody puts food in front of you, you won’t be polite while you’re eating. You will shove the food into your mouth like an animal. The degree to which you will act like an animal is the exact degree to which you were starved enough to bring up your animal instincts.

…When you spend your energy trying to maintain the extremes, nothing goes forward. You get stuck in a rut. The more extreme you are, the less forward movement there is. You carve a groove and you get stuck in it. Then there’s no energy moving you in the Tao; it’s all being spent serving the extremes.”

from The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

The cage that fear creates might not feel like a cage. It might feel like safety, familiarity, comfort. But if it keeps you from doing, being, saying, growing the way you want to, it’s effect is the same.