It’s Just Fear
We have been conditioned to view the world through a lens of fear. Most of our fear is made up of conditioned beliefs that we took on when we were very young. I like to call these beliefs “spells.” The first spell is “I am separate from life. I am a separate being. There is life and there’s me. I am no longer at one with it.” The next spell is “Life is not safe”. When you are in the flow, you know that life is safe. When you are caught in a spell, you no longer feel safe because you believe that life is not safe. That leads to the three operating spells, “I must control life, I must do it right, and I am not doing it right enough.” The operating spells are where most people live. And because I am not doing it right, “I am wrong. I am unlovable, and I am alone”. These hidden spells of feeling unlovable and alone are among the greatest heartaches of all human beings, and many people hide these beliefs, even from themselves. If you watch very carefully, you will see that all of them are born from fear.
Most people guard against their fear and will do anything to get away from it. Fear can be very subtle; it can be a chronic unsettled feeling or it can totally take over our lives. We all have fear. Even when our lives are going well, it is still there, concealed in the core of our inner story that is running us from underneath our everyday awareness. We fear the unknown. We fear the dark side within us. We fear death. We fear life. We fear it all. When fear in our minds really gets going and we are lost in it, the sympathetic nervous system gets stronger and more receptive to the fear, which feeds the fight or flight response, and we get caught in this painful world of fear.
I really like the acronym for FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. There is maybe 1% of fear that is essential for life. For example, when you step off a curb and all of a sudden you hear a loud honk and you jump back because there is a bus ready to hit you. That is essential fear. It is the fight or flight response that occurs for protection. The other 99% is our psychological fear. For example, when you are at a stop light and you are late for an important meeting at work, your heart starts racing, beads of sweat build up on your forehead, and you say “Hurry up, hurry up, turn, turn…my boss is going to kill me. I can’t believe it. What an idiot I am. I’ll probably get fired today.” That’s psychological fear.
Getting to know fear is a powerful part of awakening. It is one of the core teachers for waking up to life. Notice how fear talks in our heads all day long. It is powerful when you begin to notice it and say “Oh, that’s fear.” We can get to know fear, without trying to fix or change it. This is where the healing is. If you think about it, 99.99% of the fear-based stories that we tell ourselves never happen. Look back on your life and you will see that they just don’t come to pass. If you can allow a little bit of space around the fear and see it for what it is, even for just a moment, you will realize that it’s just fear. It’s just a story. That is a moment of consciousness. Eventually, you will come to be with the fear and you won’t be run by it anymore. It will just pass through. This is the ease and peace that we all long for in our lives.
Think of a time when you were in deep fear about something happening in your life. How did you deal with the fear? Did what you were afraid of actually happen?