I’m currently reading the Conversations With God Trilogy, and came upon a definition of FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. I usually find acronyms pretty cheesy but I thought that this perfectly describes that unnecessary torment that we put ourselves through. If we can just remind ourselves of this everytime that fear rears its ugly head, in whatever form, we can return to a place of peace. Some people say that fear is a necessary emotion to tell us when something is wrong, but I don’t buy into that. If anything it can teach us that our THINKING is “wrong”, in that it doesn’t provide us with the complete joy and freedom that we are entitled to. We are all holy. We deserve nothing less than complete freedom from fear, anxiety, and all destructive emotions.
The trickiest part is catching ourselves when the mind starts spiraling into insanity and we feel our bodies begin to tense up. It doesn’t take much, maybe a memory or a comment from somebody else, and our mind is catapulted out of the peaceful state it once was in, racing further from the present moment as the thoughts feed and build on eachother. Somewhere in this process of madness we need to say to ourselves:
“Don’t believe this insanity. The ego thrives on fear, and wants to keep my perception distorted. I don’t have to solve the problems that are swimming around in my head, I only have to remind myself that they do not exist”
The worst thing that we can do is get caught up in it and believe that we have to “solve” all the issues that are coming up in our head. It would be nice if this is possible but there are ALWAYS issues that can come up and stress us out. Life is too full of different people and events for there not to be a single thought you can think of that will be unpleasant. I don’t care how important something is to you – the best solution can’t come from a place of fear. We are not seeing truth when we are in such a state.
Instead of believing the illusion, move beyond it. Laugh at it. See the absurdity. I think we need a sense of humor in order to laugh at the rubbish we fill our minds with. We are spirit, experiencing reality from a limited perspective. It’s all a big game, we can get caught up in its rules or see it for what it is and make it enjoyable. I choose to live in perfect peace and joy, nothing less. We are the makers of our reality, so lets start acting like it.
Mind chatter or our ‘darkside’ telling us what we can’t do, or lack, or will never have, is definitely an aspect of fear…
Stopping that illusion, or thought process in our heads as soon as we realize we are doing it is very important.
It is a practice that can save you from beating yourself up unnecessarily…
The ego is a creation of our physical selves. Every fear that the ego creates in order to preserve itself is also therefore a creation, but a false creation.
Loving Annie,
Yes thats exactly what it becomes -beating yourself up! It’s amazing how many negative thoughts we can have about ourselve once the mind gets on a roll. Imagine all those thoughts were replaced with positive ones, we would feel on top of the world.
Puzzled woman,
It’s amazing how real it seems though, isn’t it?
I also liked the idea of viewing the word “fear” as an acronym when I read “Conversations With God.” Thanks for reminding me of it here. Fear, in the sense meant here, tends to give birth to more fear, and then more, until there is little room inside our heads for something positive and useful.
knightofswords,
Yes it does seem to have a life of its own once it starts going. It is comforting when I see that other people go through the same thing because sometimes on top of the fear I’ll add more negativity by beating myself up for feeling it in the first place.
Yes, you have some really good points here. The moment you start to believe that the threat you perceive is real, it becomes real for you.
Perception is Reality!
So just as well try to visualize the situation without the FEAR factor and make it nice – and you’ll start to be a lot more confident!
You speak so much truth. I’ve believed for some time that fear is “the root of all evil”. It brings us nothing but distress.
For some time I’ve been slowly seeing how we manifest things in our lives but have been struggling with how to deal with fear. It does seem so real and it can be so hard to shake. But it only creates what we don’t want. Your statement that fear can teach us that our thinking is wrong… that really moved me. For now on when I become fearful of something, I’ll just know that my thinking is wrong.