Fear... Not

By Karen Wright

Are you afraid? Oh, you might call it anxiety or jealousy or sadness or any number of other pseudonyms, but peel away the socially correct terms and it's all fear. Afraid of losing someone; afraid of being unworthy; afraid of rejection; afraid of looking ridiculous. We could go on - but why bother. It's all the same stuff.

I decided some time back that life made most sense when I recognized that the simple and the profound are usually one and the same. I saw that there were only two realities we live in life - Love or Fear. This unfussy notion gave me huge insight into our all-too human journey of bewildering emotions.

Imagine someone standing before you right now livid with anger...at you. How might you respond? Perhaps duck and cover? Maybe fight back? Both are primitive reactions of our age old fight-or-flight response instincts. But, there's something beyond the duality of fight back or run. It's to recognize anger, even rage, for what it truly is - fear.

Sure, it wears a scary face and has a loud voice. It doesn't look like scared at all, does it? If you disengage your own personal emotions from the moment and step back you'd see a different picture. You'd see someone afraid of not getting their way or losing control. But, in most societies, fear means weak and weakness is not an accepted position for adults.

This reluctance to show fear is instinctively shared by most animals – fear/weakness attracts predators. Fearful/weak animals are easy targets by predators and are quickly abandoned by their pack to preserve the safety of the group. Deep in our unthinking primitive instincts, we sense that to show fear is to risk being abandoned. So, we disguise our fear as anger, or some other socially acceptable emotion, and the world never knows our secret. Besides, fear makes us feel inferior and anger feels so much stronger.

Reconsider the person angry at you again. Is it possible for you to understand how their display of fury and hostility could be fear? When seen as anger you may get angry back. But, how do you tend to react when you know someone is afraid? With compassion; with gentleness, with empathy? With a desire to comfort or support? Notice how differently you feel inside when faced with that situation. You aren't fighting or fleeing - you want to help.

Whether the one before you is conscious enough to realize that their anger is really fear in disguise - you can know it. And your energy shift and non-confrontational response can diffuse their emotions like water on fire. They won't even know why they suddenly feel calmer. But, they will.

At the invisible energetic level, you've told them, "I'm not your enemy. I'm not here to hurt you. I understand." They'll begin to surface from their unconscious emotions and perceive the situation more clearly.

We get emotionally hijacked and insane with fear when we lose track of love's eternal truth. There is only love... and the fearful madness comes from forgetting who we really are and what is truth. Just as darkness is merely the absence of light, fear is the absence of love. But, not truly absence, since love never disappears. More correctly, fear is our absence from love. When we forget or turn away. When we feel unworthy or guilty. When we close our eyes and refuse to see.

Like the light illuminates darkness, love dispels fear. Love is our natural state - we only wander when we've forgotten the truth. Be compassionate with those who have forgotten - they are not themselves. They've been blinded by a lie. You can be the one who holds the light that illuminates their path home.