Why fear is a gift we give to ourselves.
Everybody gets frightened.
It’s as simple as that.
There’s no getting away from it, and actually, there’s no need to try to get away from it.
Fear is actually the key to our freedom.
In this modern world, there is so much to be frightened of, so many ‘things’ out there that could potentially cause us harm or damage.
But, they are never what we are truly frightened of. We think they are because doing so distracts us, temporarily, from a deeper truth.
That deeper truth is that we are really scared of what is inside of us.
And that deep inner fear is that we are scared of our own power.
We are truly powerful, and we know it, we really do; it’s just that we also don’t know how to control that power and more often than not use it do ourselves harm and not good.
We use our power and manifest all kinds of anxieties and worries. We worry about our health, our loved ones, our livelihoods, the state of the planet, politics. It’s an exhaustible list.
And, of course, we blame everything else for the world we live in. We pretend we are victims of our circumstances and that alleviates us from facing the real truth - that we created our own suffering.
I imagine an immediate rejection of that statement from many people and an abundance of angry questions - How do we create world poverty? How are we responsible for world wars?
There’s a great deal we aren’t responsible for or in control of, but we are always responsible for our response to it and that’s where suffering comes in to the picture.
We only suffer when we reject or fight reality, or if it doesn’t match our expectations.
Suffering is an internal experience, not an external one.
Shit happens, we suffer only in our response to that.
It’s scary then to realise that we are in control of our experience of life, and nobody else is to blame and nobody else is coming along to save us.
We have to live in our own heads, and for many people that is a very unpleasant scenario (although nothing that endless, worthless and often destructive distractions and vices can’t attempt to eradicate).
So now there is nowhere left to run and hide. We are stuck inside our own heads and we’re the only ones responsible for our experience of life, be that positive or negative.
And, even when we grow and evolve and begin to find our joy and purpose, fear still rears its little head and tries to derail you.
You see, the ego or the persona doesn’t like that kind of growth, it threatens its very existence and so it will throw up all kinds of sneaky stuff at you to try and derail your efforts.
It will tell you that you are going crazy, that you will lose everything you have that’s good in your life, that you will be left alone, that the path ahead is dark and scary.
It will do this relentlessly, desperately.
And so, as with every step of the journey, we must be vigilant to not fall for the traps fear sets for us, and to gently sidestep around them. In the very stepping aside of these ‘mine/mind fields’ we are lead in our truest direction. The mines that lay in our way are actually beautiful little road signs pointing us back onto the right path; the path of love, of light, of truth, of honesty, of real and divine purpose.
At times it does feel scary, we lose our footing and wobble precariously.
At other times we might feel exhausted, the path feels heavier and harder than perhaps we had anticipated.
That’s okay. It’s just part of the human journey.
We have to remember to honour our bodies and be kind and loving to ourselves while we walk our path.
Often we walk alone, and, even when we are blessed with sweet company, we still have to take each step for ourselves. Nobody else’s map is right for us.
So, allow fear to be a welcome accomplice on the journey. Hold his hand for balance when you feel a little unsteady on your feet and thank him dearly for his assistance in helping you find your truer self in his absolute opposite - love.
Fear is just love in disguise; a perfectly executed trojan horse we send to ourselves to remind us to always choose love.
Love can’t just solve all our problems for us, otherwise we wouldn’t have free will and we wouldn’t learn to choose who we really are.
So fear is loves clever gift to us; it prods us and provokes us to remember who we really are and so that we can decide to choose love for ourselves.