We are now in the Bet Halevi (ArtScroll edition, page 3-4). The Bet Halevi introduced the concept that fear itself can cause a person to get into trouble, and he quotes a pasuk
חרדת אדם יתן מוקש
A man’s fear can be a trap…
Today he quotes two more pesukim. One is a pasuk in Yirmiyah, in which Hashem tells Yirmiyah,
אל תחת מפניהם פן איתך לפניהם
Do not be frightened of them, lest I cause you to be broken in front of them.
There was a war. The enemy was surrounding Yerushalayim and Hashem was giving Yirmiyah a heads up. If you want to be successful, don't be afraid.
The Gemara in Masechet Berachot tells the story of two rabbis that were walking together. One of the rabbis groaned because he was worried or anxious about something. The rabbi walking with him said, “Do you want to bring suffering upon yourself?”
Groaning is a cause of problems. He also quotes a pasuk from Iyov, the one who suffered more than anybody else. And he describes, possibly, a background to this. He says,
פיד פחדתי ויאתינ
I feared a fear, and it has come upon me.
How exactly does this work?
What does it mean you fear a fear and it comes upon you?
The Maharal explains this concept with a mashal. Imagine a very deep ravine or valley, and you put a rope or two by four across, from one end to the other, to walk across it.
Of course, that is something that definitely evokes fear. Only professional people can do that and be successful. Yet if you take that same two-by-four and put it on the floor, most of us are capable of walking from one end to the other. Why is that?
The answer is quite obvious. The fear causes the problem to occur. It's the fear of falling that will the cause the poor person to fall. But there's something even physical about it. Allow me to add a little physiology: When a person becomes afraid of something and feels anxiety, there is a God given gift where part of our body, known as the amygdala, secretes a certain chemical that causes a person to go into the flight or fight mode.
It's a very necessary chemical. For example, if a person's walking and they hear a bus screeching, what does he do? You see the bus and suddenly you run. How does that happen? This is Hashem's great gift, whereby that chemical that is released into the body suddenly gives you extra energy and it gives you the ability to run. Your oxygen goes to your muscles and you run.
It also does another thing. It shuts down your frontal cortex- the thinking part of your brain. Because if you're start thinking, Should I run? Shouldn't I run… you're going to end up getting hit by a bus has v’shalom. So therefore, the body doesn't think- and this is a God-given gift.
But it also causes a problem, when it's unnecessary. A lot of our fear and anxiety is unnecessary, but that same chemical is there, that shuts our brain down. And when your brain's not working, you're not making good decisions and you're going to fail. So fear causes failure in a very simple way.
Before we get to the sin of lack of bitachon, the Maharal says we have to understand that fear itself causes problems even on a simple level. If there are two two by fours, one on the floor, and one spread between your house and the house across the street, it’s just as easy to walk across them when they’re on the floor and spread across the street. Yet your anxiety takes away your ability to slowly walk across and get to the other side. This occurs in all fear-evoking situations.
It’s better to calm down, stop groaning, use your bitachon and be successful.