|
Between Fear and Love is the Living.
Fear has many faces and most of those faces
are in disguise. Fear can be so deceptive that we rarely recognize
or define it, and therefore fail to challenge it when it sneaks
up upon us in such an insidious way that it can paralyse,
erode, control and ultimately destroy us. Fear is the most
lethal weapon and the most toxic poison known to man. Fear
is highly contagious and self destructive. Fear can be spread
by word, suggestion, imagery, innuendo or intimidation.
Fear
is a chameleon and will most often show up as something completely
different which makes it very difficult to recognize or unmask.
Almost all destructive behavioural and emotional responses
can be tracked back to fear when we peel away the layers of
our feelings and actions. Fear is the core issue behind violence,
jealousy, bigotry, anger, depression, greed, hatred, lies,
insecurity or obsessive worry, just to name a few.
When fear is appropriate it is a vital, effective life saving
response which is critical to self preservation. Staying alive
and protecting ourselves from harm is our most primal and
instinctual priority. Appropriate fear, will prevent and protect
us from danger; it will instantly ignite super alertness and
superhuman strength. This is commonly referred to as the fight
or flight response. Most of us will have experienced this
super state of reaction if we have been involved in a potential
car accident. In something like a nanosecond we are capable
of processing an extraordinary amount of information and physically
manoeuvre the car to avoid the collision.
Appropriate
fear is also an effective decision making factor. Most, if
not all, of our choices are based on predicting pleasure or
pain. We are predominately motivated by pleasure and pain,
that is, gaining pleasure or avoiding pain. We all like to
kid ourselves that we operate from intellect, and that we
make decisions by using knowledge, logic and experience. If
we just scratch the surface a little we will almost always
find that our motivations are emotionally based. Pleasure
is easy to comprehend; we choose and maintain our careers,
relationships, homes, hobbies and possessions because they
please us. Choices of pleasure may encompass comfort, self
esteem, love, respect, acceptance, approval, security, safety
and prosperity.
Decisions
based on avoiding pain may include any or all of the above,
but from the flip side. Avoiding pain is extremely motivating
and many of our decisions and reactions have a fear base.
Pain avoidance is what fear is. Fear of physical or emotional
harm, poverty, abandonment, violence, humiliation, loneliness,
disapproval, disease and ultimately – death.
It
is vitally important to discern what appropriate and inappropriate
fear is, as appropriate fear can and will protect us, and
inappropriate fear can destroy us. Most of the time we don’t
recognize it at all, so, it’s impossible to name it,
let alone challenge it.
The
human condition has a huge emotional range and can appear
quite fluid in its ability to change; we can be carried away
or bounced around in a little cesspool of negative influences
one minute, and then find ourselves lifted up and flying high
the next . Emotions can be quite unpredictable, indefinable
and often uncontrollable, and yet emotions can dominate, create
or destroy us. Some people believe hate is the base emotion
and love is the highest. Indifference is often considered
to be the opposite of love, but it is my belief that both
hate and indifference are by products of fear.
The
ultimate fear must be fear of death; being inevitable, we
really should make peace with this and find it within ourselves
to accept it. When we place fear in the realm of death, then
we must place love in the realm of life.
We
are living anywhere between these polarities, and might view
life as rhythms, vibrations and frequencies between polarities.
We understand night and day, light and dark, coarse and fine,
heavy and light, negative and positive, hate and love, thick
and light and good and evil. When we consider all of life
is energy, then we can place ourselves within the frequencies
of these polarities.
When
fear is positioned at the darkest side of the polarity, we
can include all of fears associates; hate greed, jealousy,
anger, violence and poverty etc. The ‘dark side’
is also represented by death, decay, destruction, war, evil
and disease. Negative frequencies are coarse, slow or stagnant,
heavy, thick, lethargic, black and isolated. The dark side
is asleep, lifeless and baron. Likewise, love represents all
that is light, alive, creative, healing, joyful, energizing
and fertile.
As
energetic bodies, within an energetic realm, we synchronize
with similar energies. This is really huge, and may be hard
to get your head around, but it’s also very simple.
Thoughts and emotions are energies, which align themselves
with compatible energies.
The
greatest minds, all religions, the sages and prophets and
philosophers and Bob Dylan and John Lennon and every other
person who ever had a quality thought, all said this:
LOVE
IS THE ANSWER.
Love
is light, Love is God, Love is the creative force, Love is
freedom - because love aligns us with all that light represents.
To be healthy, happy, creative, secure, energized, serene
and loved requires saying in the light. Staying in the light
obviously also means staying out of fear.
I
have already explained appropriate fear, but I now wish to
put that aside and expose inappropriate fear for what it really
is. To me, fear is Satan; an evil, destructive, paralysing
force. I would suspect that every atrocity ever carried out
was done so, on the motivation of fear. What motivates violence,
wars, murders and suicides or evil, anger, hatred or prejudices?
Peel away the layers again, and you will keep coming back
to the same core – fear.
Fear
is imagination predicting the worst possible outcome. When
the imagination is engaged in repetition and emotion, it becomes
a belief. Our beliefs determine our actions and as the old
saying goes, what you conceive and believe, you will achieve.
For right or wrong, good or bad, this is the creative force
within us all.
We
may feel sad and helpless when we look at the world, and many
of the events taking place around us. We can become overwhelmed,
to the point of depression, some feel rage and want to fight,
and others feel paralysed and implode. There is so much injustice,
poverty, waste, pollution and destruction. There are social
and environmental issues and greedy, incompetent and spineless
governments. Even when we bring ourselves away from the world
stage, and just focus on our own little realities, we still
find so much to analyse, consider, protect and fight for.
Sure, we worry about aging, our health, finances, families
and jobs. We worry about the quality and quantity of our food,
pollution of our rivers and air, crime and the decline of
communities. We argue that an intelligent and responsible
person needs to be concerned about such things, and I agree;
apathy and indifference or prancing around like Pollyanna
in her “happy place” won’t make the world
a better place.
There
are problems, big and important problems, and those problems
do need solutions. Problems are solved by intelligent application
of ideas and actions, not by obsessive worry, and not by imagined
fears. Herein lies the crux of the issue:
Worry
and fear are impotent they serve no purpose, other than to
use up creative intelligence, and destroy creative energies
or attract destructive energies.
All
problems have two possible applications and they are: Fix
it or accept it.
1.
Find a solution to change, improve or eliminate the problem.
2.
Or accept that, what is – is.
That
is F.F F. Find it, Fix it or Forget it.
The
third and most popular application seems to be, ‘Worry
about it until it disappears’ and this does not and
will never work.
Worry,
by the way, is fear’s little brother, the same genetic
code if you like. Fear is big and powerful and jumps around
like a trampolinist in our solar plexus, whereas worry is
a silent and sneaky, tenacious little character, that you
will hardly notice until the damage is done.
Symbology
In
previous chapters, I have symbolized fear and worry, by giving
them identities, so, I will just bring them back now for another
look. They are the Chattering Monkey, the Barking Dog and
the Witch.
The
chattering monkey symbolized the constant dialogue which goes
on and on in our heads, when we are obsessively worrying.
He engages us in a prolonged and exaggerated drama and reinforces
our victim status. The chattering monkey, as a symbol for
fear, demonstrates how we take a reasonably small fear, compare
it to everything that ever happened before, and clump it all
together and exaggerate it. Words like, nobody, everyone,
always, never and forever, have this one problem sweeping
across your past, present and future and gathering everyone
and everything that ever hurt or offended us. The chattering
monkey is a master at making big out of little.
The
barking dog, I have now decided, is a toothless, barking dog.
Dogs are trained to bark, they are hardly ever trained to
bite. Barking dogs will scare you away or stop you in your
tracks by the implication that they may bite. We don’t
even need to see the dog, it could be a miniature poodle for
all we know, but if it barks we will give it power and control,
and accept that we must back away. Symbolically, the barking
dog is the reason we don’t do things that we do want
to do or the reason we do things which we don’t want
to do. Peer pressure can be a barking dog, shyness or insecurity,
fear of being rejected or abandoned, are all barking dog fears.
The
witch is a complete fabrication, she never existed at all.
For some unknown reason, when we are insecure, scared or threatened
in any way, be that real or imagined, we justify our fear
by inventing a greater threat than the one at hand. I guess
we feel humiliated, small, afraid, powerless and weak for
not being able to conquer our fear or problem, so we somehow
excuse, justify or forgive ourselves, by inventing a greater
threat. The problem with the witch is that we convince ourselves
and others, that she exists, and we actively involve ourselves
in focusing all of our energies in dealing with her, just
burning ourselves out and sabotaging our lives. Symbolically,
jealousy can be a witch, imagining your partner is cheating
on you when there is absolutely no reason other than your
own insecurity, is how a relationship can be destroyed by
a witch. Hearing a noise outside your window at night can
also be a witch, as you freeze with fear and convince yourself
it is a psycho rapist. Some people convince themselves that
entire races of people, people they have never even met, are
all criminals or terrorists – that’s a lot of
witches!
The
secret to controlling fear is in first exposing it for what
it is. Too often, we focus on other people or the events themselves
or else we convert fear into other emotions like self righteousness,
anger, insecurity, greed or any number of deceptive responses.
If
you are feeling despondent, indifferent, isolated, fatigued,
depressed or any emotion that is dark, you need to name it
and then claim it. You will be amazed at how many emotions
mask fear, but once you can see it, you can begin to challenge
or dismantle it.
The
reason I have bought in the chattering monkey, the barking
dog and the witch is to save you from hours of verbal ping
pong. Long drawn out analytical dialogue will drive you crazy,
and is really a little self indulgent and mostly unproductive.
Imagined fears and exaggerated fears need to be stopped and
dismissed, as soon as they are exposed. The subconscious mind
grabs an image and all of the interpretation that that image
represents. When you catch a fear you name it, you then ask
yourself, is this fear real or is it a monkey, dog or a witch?
By creating a habit of applying these images to fears, the
mind will soon learn to challenge and stop the interplay or
the indulgence.
White
Light
White
light is the minds symbol of all things great and creative.
Light, is the source of life, it creates life and maintains
life. White light is a symbolic interpretation of God and
love. It represents purity and healing. It is viewed as the
highest and finest vibration or frequency. Imagining white
light within us, radiating out from us, and being connected
to us, will instruct the mind to align us with love, life,
healing and creation. By being still and visualizing white
light, we are able to activate our own emotions to generate
love and lightness. This again gets back to, what we think
and feel, attracts us to what is compatible or similar.
The
same is true for fear; consciously or unconsciously indulging
in fearful thoughts and emotions will also align us with similar
energies. Repetitious fear creates a negative belief system,
and attracts that type of behaviour and those compatible energies.
It
could be so simple to master this game of life, so easy to
view life as a wonderful adventure, filled with extraordinary
beauty and possibilities. There is so much good, infinite
love, abundance and joy, if we choose to connect into it.
Love and happiness are not just random acts or accidents which
come along, sweep us up and then toss us out. Love and happiness
are self generated and contagious; they align to everything
within a similar frequency and will expand and grow.
I
am talking here about making conscious decisions, to create
and maintain thoughts and emotions, which are creative in
nature. And no, it’s not always easy, and no, you won’t
be able to control all things, all of the time. But, consider
this, if you went back over your life and took an inventory
of every worry and fear you ever had, and then tossed out
every monkey, dog and witch, then, how many fears would be
left? And if you dissected all the real fears, and noted the
outcomes, how many were as bad as you imagined at the time?
If you listed the really bad outcomes; the things which almost
destroyed you and or dramatically changed you, then you might
also wonder what of these events shaped the person you are
today. The big question here of course, is that, if everything
that went before made you who your are today, then how many
regrets will you carry?
You
might find as much as eighty percent of your life has been
wasted on imagined dangers, and if this is so, then, imagine
this, what if you had that eighty percent back again? What
would you be capable of creating, being, experiencing or feeling
if you used your useless worry and imagined fear energies,
in creating and choosing thoughts, emotions and actions, what
could life be?
It
must be obvious that we do choose our thoughts, we can change
them by will or we can allow them to rattle around in our
heads unsupervised and out of control. It is also obvious
that our emotions are reactions to those thoughts. How we
react or respond is also a choice. We may be anywhere between
fear and love at any given time – The choice is ours.
There
is a little story about Buddha which goes like this:
Buddha
was famous for being able to maintain his serenity and it
was said, that he could not be provoked. One man, decided
that this could not be true, and so set out to prove that
he could provoke Buddha. Day after day, he teased and taunted
and tried to provoke Buddha to become angry or at least annoyed.
When
Buddha failed to respond, he finally said to Buddha, “How
can it be that you have not become angry or annoyed with me?”
Buddha
replied “If someone offered you a gift, and you chose
to not accept that gift, who would the gift belong to?”
Well,
said the man, the gift would remain the property of the giver.
Exactly,
said Buddha.
(Fear)
(Fear
and Relationships)
(True
Love)
(Overcoming
Fear & Fear of Death) |
