FEAR IS NOT YOUR ENEMY!
An open letter to a reluctant prisoner...

So many people tell me that they want to bring about positive change in their lives, yet are afraid to bring about change, because that would involve facing various situations and buried feelings that would cause discomfort or in various ways seem intimidating. Indeed, even more ubiquitous is people actually living in denial of that fear so that they simply fail to recognise that their lives and awareness are severely limited by their fears and could open out so much.

Here is my basic reply to any number of people who have asked me or would ask me in the future how they could start breaking out of their perceived prison of fear or limiting beliefs that are covertly based in fear.

I reckon, this is a clear case where receiving and learning Reiki or a similar healing method - or, first and foremost, taking up The Work - would really help. The 'problem' that is trapping you, as with so many other people, is in fact not the fear itself but an aversion to that fear - you could describe it as fear of the fear. Fear itself is not the obstacle that so many people imagine.

Fear - not hate - is the direct antithesis of love. Hate, anger and other negative emotions are all various manifestations of fear. Our fears reside in those very parts of our experience and consciousness where we are or have been unloved. So, we each sure need to clear fear from our system. As we do so we become more open and flexible in outlook, more able to accept new ideas, and actually safer in all seemingly threatening situations. A mountaineer who releases fear becomes actually safer because (s)he can appraise situations with a greater degree of flexible rationality, replacing tense and rigid fear-based responses with a more informed and calculated caution.

Fear in itself we can face and release through the natural healing processes of trembling and laughter, and also by projecting love and healing energy into every present and past situation of ours where there was not love and consequently the memories had got laced with fear. Receiving healing, such as Reiki, and practising it upon yourself, you would make it progressively easier to let go of your attachments and aversions, and so become better able to embrace and release all the fear and "I can't..." perceptions that seem to stand in your way.

Therefore, despite all your current anguished or confused feelings the truth is that what currently appears to block your spiritual opening up and realization is not a problem at all but simply work to be done. And most of that work is a process of learning to stop doing what you are currently compulsively doing in your mind that obscures your true, sublime nature.

Some pointers to possible ways of bringing about positive change in your life can be found in my other spirituality texts on this site.

For me a good way of starting to open myself up to releasing a particular chunk of fear can be to face one of the relevant memories and say aloud, in a light-hearted manner, "Ooooo! Mummy! Brrrrr!", "Oooooo! This is scary!" and so forth, putting on a big act of shivering. If this is done well (i.e. really camped up), laughter immediately comes out, and some genuine (not simulated) trembling can start working its way out. In your case, 'Mummy' might or might not seem to be the right one to invoke, but actually because the whole thing is done light-heartedly, as a sort of joke, it really doesn't matter. Rather than rationalize about what is supposed to be appropriate, just try it and variants thereof, and see what actually produces the goods and gets you laughing and shaking! It's not about saying the 'right' or politically correct things but of finding the precise skillful means to release your emotional baggage. If it gets to sound or feel serious, then you've got off-track and need to restore your focus on the light-hearted, jokey approach. If you were working directly with me it would be much simpler because I could be somewhat directive if appropriate to help keep you there confronting your material instead of backing off. I can't be a very effective emotional counsellor by online communication!

Be aware too that other emotional releases will very likely come out as well as the fear. Crying may occur, and that is also to be rejoiced in as part of the healing-and-freeing process.

A very effective way of speeding up the release of fear and indeed any painful emotion is use of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), though a much more powerful way, if you can focus your mind in the right way for it to work, is 3D Mind. However, the most powerful and accessible method for people generally is The Work, which has taken me forward in leaps and bounds in my own self realization process.

Once you've started getting the experience of facing and releasing fear, then you would find the prospect of feeling fear much less menacing, so that the process becomes progressively easier, and you become free much more quickly than you actually clear the fear - if that makes sense! In other words, you can become pretty free long before you've cleared out all your old fear. What is crucial is how you view and respond to the fear that you are still carrying.

This approach, of concentrating on dissolving the aversion to fear, is also directly effective for the types of fear-based patterns that we call phobias. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the fear that is the enemy, but again the fear of or aversion to that fear. The panic message is not the fear but something like "Oh my God, I'm going to be frightened and something desperately awful will happen...", or indeed, "Oh my God, I'm frightened and something desperately awful will happen...". In both cases the troublesome message comes from the aversion to the fear, so, that is what needs addressing first.

I myself still (in my 60s) feel a little fear every time a thunderstorm comes over - but I love them, fear and all! Perhaps the nearest thing I have to a phobia is my feelings of horror at certain parasitic insects - particularly the parastitic wasps known as ichneumons. But, despite the squirming feelings in my gut I watch them with joy, for so many of them are incredibly beautiful, and their behaviour is tremendously fascinating. If a horse fly comes around me, despite the initial 'swat that horse fly quickly!' urge and often to the bewilderment of any human company I may have, I greatly enjoy looking closely at the beastie, for most of these have impressively beautiful eyes with wonderful patterns of colours.

I also have some degree of fear of heights. This does constrain me to the extent that I'm not one of the most confident people when scrambling in really exposed situations on mountains, but all that means in practice is that I take things a little more slowly and cautiously than some on the most exposed moves. In fact this is partly because I have a lazy eye which results in my not being able to judge distances (e.g. of the next holds that I want to reach to) very well. In any case I have a simple means of handling the most exposed moves: simply to concentrate on my moves and rejoice in the security of the rock holds, and then, when I'm more securely situated, to look down and marvel at the exposure of the move that I've just made. Many a time on an exposed scramble, I'd look down the chasm at my feet and jokingly exclaim "Ooooo, Mummy! I don't wanna die!", laughing and acting out exaggerated trembling, then joyfully but cautiously carrying out the exposed move. To embrace fear and allow it to release is a joyful affirmation of life, and not the dark and heavy process which the aversion to fear portrays it as.

Addendum, November 2002

Uh-uh! In the above paragraphs I'd myself slipped into a little minor denial of the fear that I'm still carrying - which all goes to show how pervasive is the urge to tiptoe away from taking that bull by the horns. I'd conveniently forgotton to say that my #1 phobia is of the dark - or rather, of what unthinkable entities might be lurking in the darkness, waiting to 'get' me - even though I also know that this is nonsense. This has been, in most of my adult life, quite a minor thing and probably doesn't constrain my life at all, but I still feel something of that terror about the darkness in certain situations. Alone in a house at night, I've had to consciously focus my mind on the safe, supportive present-time reality in order not to get drawn into the terror, and this terror could be instantly and strongly awakened in such a situation, albeit briefly, by even the slightest unexpected and not-immediately-explicable sound.

Now, in 2006, I know the cause of that terror within me, and why it was not noticeably clearing despite my intensive self healing path. Further details in Night Terrors and Hearing Voices.

I greatly like the idea of one of the Vajrajyana Buddhism practices - of spending a night alone meditating or/and sleeping in a graveyard! Yes, the notion seems terrifying, but it would be a great way of learning more fully through experience that as I am the 'light', I cannot be harmed by the darkness or whatever non-physical entities it appears to harbour. However, in these parts there are straightforward physical and practical reasons why it would be none too clever to spend a night in a graveyard. They tend to attract the local glue-sniffers and other people with shady intent, so I'd stand a quite good chance of getting roughed up by some of those or alternatively picked up by the police for suspicious behaviour. But some night - a remote country graveyard might be a sensible possibility... :-)

But, having mentioned such a practice, I must warn that it is suitable only for people who are very open spiritually and not just on the psychic level, and thus have a fair grasp of the ultimate invulnerability of their true nature. If you are still controlled largely by the ego you would be in some danger by doing this.

Fear can be your friend! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!