The Bene Gesserit litany has been with me since undergrad. It has stayed with me through library school, my first job as an academic librarian, and many professional spaces and situations.
Through the years, it functioned as a psychic shield. As an undergrad at SFSU, I carried the words with me on a notebook binder. Touching the page or glancing at the words steadied me, almost like a small meditation before exams or before walking into spaces that made my chest tighten.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
It helped me move through moments when anxiety threatened to obliterate me.
For years I understood the litany primarily as protection. Something that helped me withstand fear.
But the line that lingers with me now is different.
I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Back then, I don’t think I really understood what that sentence meant. I thought the goal was simply to endure fear until it passed. Now, I read that line differently. It isn’t just about surviving fear. It is about studying it, staying with it.
Where did it come from?
What shape did it take as it moved through me?
What did it distort while it was there?
What is it gesturing towards?
Once fear passes, something remains — the possibility of clearer sight.
When the rush of anxiety subsides, I can look back and see the path it traveled, through institutions, through expectations, through the quiet signals of belonging and exclusion that shape so many spaces. Hidden. Unnoticed. Yet powerful all the same.
The litany still steadies me. But it no longer feels only like a shield.
It feels like instruction.
Fear will come. Let it pass through. And afterward, turn the inner eye and see where it went.
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