Voice of the Spirit

So many of today’s spiritual teachings tell us how we should work through and let go of fear – to ultimately have no fear whatsoever – that must be the goal.  Be afraid of nothing and nothing can hurt or imprison you any longer…  Face your insecurities, walk up to what scares you, and eradicate panic – all the way down to your subconscious mind — in every cell of your body you are cleansed of the stranglehold of panic and its terrorizing grip!  This is the pathway that helps us to become more spiritually evolved and God like. 

What if a child thought the same thing when his mother scolded him or her for running out in the street?  What if that child felt fearless and completely unafraid?  What if he or she thought that they should show no fear, feel no apprehension and have no worry — of anything?  They would boldly run out into the street over and over again till they’d probably face serious bodily harm – even death… 

When we were children, most of us were probably afraid of the dark?  Is there a boogieman, a monster, something frightening and ghoulish lurking in the dark basement?  In our adult lives, we tend to laugh at such a notion, even consider it cute and whimsical; we have outgrown such an unrealistic premise.  But what if I proposed to you the idea that sometimes, more often than we may think, we should indeed be afraid of the dark so to speak, or perhaps to state it in more adult terms; be afraid of the darkness, the boomerangs of our actions and the repercussions for negative choices? 

I would like to then start by distinguishing between what I refer to as “Negative” fear which can be defined as: Any fears that prevent us, restrict us, inhibit us from living a positive, productive, fulfilling and happy life and ”Positive” fear, which could be stated as:  Fear of thoughts, actions and choices which lead to negative repercussions, a fear based on intuition designed to keep us out of harms way, danger, even death. 

Here are some examples of “Negative” fear:  Being afraid to fail in our careers not based on anything real or tangible.  This fear could be based on our personal insecurity, negative reinforcement of our abilities from others and self doubt.  Validating this negativity would restrict us from going for it, trying to advance, which requires taking chances, having a vision and living it out.  In this instance, we would live like we’re on the sidelines of a sports event just watching the game as opposed to being on the playing field and participating where we would have a legitimate chance of winning.  This type of fear strangulates our dreams and visions of offering the world our special unique one of a kind gifts and making the contribution to the collective that only we can make. 

Being afraid to love is another example.  If the scare is based on past hurt, disappointment and rejection, it’s clear that the apprehension needs to be let go of and healed as it serves no valid purpose expect to hold us back from possible happiness.  Releasing this panic may be absolutely necessary for someone new and potentially wonderful to enter our journeys.  To validate holding onto this fear someone may state, “There’s no guarantee that love will ever work out for me!”  I would respond with the concept that there never is a guarantee with anything we do in life - there is no guarantee we’ll be alive tomorrow; but if someone is treating us lovingly and with dignity, it is probably worth giving such a person a legitimate chance to be in our lives. 

What about internal fear triggered by experiences that have no direct relation to the fear itself? Almost all of us have ridden in elevators and some of us like them while some of us don’t.  But for certain people, it can be a terrifying experience.  The door closes.  The walls start caving in; it seems harder to breathe.  Other people are crowding you, and it’s taking forever – stopping at each floor for what seems like an absolute eternity and you can’t get out. Your heart starts racing and you break out in a sweat – all in a matter of a few minutes.   

But wait — is the fear really of the elevator?  Probably not.  The elevator simply serves as a trigger, activating a fear that is not directly related to the elevator ride.  This fear could really be from a part of your journey where you felt trapped or out of control, say as in being in a marriage where you felt imprisoned for several years.  The fear of this experience is under the surface but still within our consciousness; it takes an event such as the elevator ride where we feel once again trapped and out of control to activate this fear and bring it into conscious awareness.  Since fear is about survival, the energy you feel puts you in a mode of life or death survival.  It is all-emotional, but feels primal.  Yet this feeling is completely inappropriate to the actual reality of what is going on, where everyone is uneventfully standing there for a brief time getting from one floor of a building to another.  Presumably, the elevator ride isn’t going to hurt us (unless the elevator gets stuck which is highly unlikely, thank God!).  Here we need to understand what we’re really feeling, and work toward cleansing, releasing and coming to terms with this old archaic fear, which no longer serves any purpose for us today. 

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom - The Bible 

The great metaphysical master Florence Shinn would frequently offer metaphysical interpretations of Bible passages, which she did to help clarify these passages and make them relevant to those of us on a more metaphysical path.  She translated the above passage to say, “Fear of the karmic law is the beginning of wisdom.” This means that we need to be afraid of our own boomerangs, as what we do does indeed ricochet and come back to us and that when we are afraid of our own boomerangs, it is the beginning of wisdom.  She also added that if one changes the word Lord in the Bible to Karmic Law, many passages in the Bible will become much more clear from a metaphysical point of view.  

So let’s begin illustrating examples of “Positive” fear to show why and when we need to be afraid of our own boomerangs and choices.  One easy example to start with is the fear of risky and dangerous psychical behavior and how seriously life threatening it can be.  If you were in a hurry to get home from work, driving much too fast and aggressively, weaving in and out of traffic and riding other drivers bumpers, would you continue to do so if you had the intuitive flash  “Slow this car down immediately?”  The obvious answer is that some drivers would indeed take heed and slow down the vehicle, while others would discard this message, ultimately putting themselves and others in potentially grave danger.  Just think how important this one moment could be to anyone’s entire lifetime.  For the drivers that listened to their inner voice and simply slowed down, they may never see or know what could have happened and how horrible it might have been.  They may just get home and proceed with their day-to-day life.  But for the driver who didn’t listen to this guidance, they may cause a terrible accident, one that could have seriously injured, maimed or killed themselves as well as others. 

Another easy to illustrate example is the value in being afraid of negative habits that can harm or destroy our health such as: overeating, consuming a fast food high fat diet, drinking, smoking, and takings drugs.  Even though all of these things harm, even kill people everyday, most of us don’t look at these lifestyle choices with the same fear we associate with someone accosting us and stealing our money, but perhaps we should.  We should never dismiss the negative, potentially life threatening consequences of these habits simply because they are somewhat socially acceptable or at least tolerated.  

Fear of negative and destructive relationships can be an absolute lifesaver.  I have seen so many of us get caught up in a relationship that is primarily or strongly self-destructive for us.  We become bold, defiant and self-righteous proclaiming “You don’t know him like I do!” But the reality is that our friends and family do know him and exactly what is happening — as a figure of speech, the whole world knows it!  The only one who doesn’t see it is the person who is entangled in the negative relationship.  This is an instance where the old adage of “Love is blind” easily illustrates this point.   By not being gun shy of the potentially long term damage, one could continue to destroy their lives: financial ruin, depression, hopelessness, aging unnecessarily, health problems and a long period of time lost are all possible manifestations of this type of relationship choice.   Think for just a minute how valuable and helpful fear would be here – for the person involved to be afraid, to see and feel just how negative this relationship is could motivate them to set themselves free by simply walking away and directing their lives in a positive direction. 

Gut level intuitive fear is one of our strongest guiding lights, to me, like a guardian angel for each and every one of us.  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard clients say to me, “Jim, I had a feeling not to do this, but I didn’t listen to my gut and I did it anyway.”  Usually in these instances, the client is speaking of a terrible situation that they’ve gotten themselves into by simply not listening to their gut – that inner alarm, that confidential warning bell.  What can be done now after the fact?  Often, it is terribly problematic to fix such choices.  

It’s important to note that in the below mentioned examples, I’m referring to gut level intuition that applies to situations and instances where one is open to and / or wanting something.  In these types of experiences, what we intuitively feel takes on a very strong meaning, because it is there in spite of what we are open to and desire.  It is not as if we are closed to something and don’t want it anyway and have a gut level feeling opposing it.  To actually be open to and want something, yet the gut is fighting it all the way, speaks volumes to the power of this type of intuition.  In short, when we want something, we need to be that much more mindful of our choices, as our subjectivity can often cloud and mask the real truth. 

If we loved to fly, had a flight booked to go on a trip we were looking forward to, but had a persisting feeling to not get on that plane, what would we do?  The feeling doesn’t stop; it keeps nagging us, yet without rational explanation.  For the spiritually aware person, they would probably not get on the plane. Remember, we love to fly and want to take this trip – yet something feels terribly wrong.  This intuition may be based on the actual flight itself or something potentially dangerous with the actual vacation, yet the plane and its flight become the focus of the intuition; it could be something other than the flight later in the trip that poses the problem, though.  Intuition is the exact opposite of logic, and cannot be expected to explain itself in literal step-by-step terms, like a manual to assemble an entertainment center. 

Most us have met someone who categorically was everything we could want, potentially even more.  If you’re a woman, the man brings you flowers, takes you to a lovely restaurant, doesn’t make a presumptuous sexual advance and you even find him to be extremely sexually attractive.  It all seems perfect!  But something feels wrong.  It really feels wrong, and the instinct won’t go away.  What should you do?  There is absolutely no evidence of even the slightest thing negative plus you really want to be in a relationship.  What comes into play here is the difference between logic and intuition.  Never forget that intuition should always win, as it is higher than logic.  Logic in synonymous with what our physical eyes see and what our conscious minds perceive with all of its limits.  Intuition is what the higher universe sees, far beyond the physical world and all of its limitations could ever grasp or envision.  With intuition, things just are and it is our job to listen!

I like the concept of “The universe wouldn’t give us something unless we might need it from time to time.”  Here I’m referring to fear.  For so long, we’ve all struggled and fought with fear.  How do I get rid of fear, terror, panic, insecurity and self-doubt once and for all?  Certain fears must be gotten rid of, absolutely: fear of love, fear of success, fear of living life, fear of letting go of old negative emotions etc., just to name a few.   But in reflecting on the many dimensions of fear, here we see just how valuable certain aspects of fear are.  God is indeed watching out for us and protecting us! 

Just like a bee has a stinger as it is necessary for them to survive, we are given fear to know when to back off from danger, how to be cautious when moving through this potentially very unpredictable world and gut level intuition that warns us of many aspects of danger, most of which we could never see with our naked eyes. Moreover, as we spiritually evolve, fear becomes wisdom through giving us the deep and clear awareness of the boomerangs of our choices, so that we hopefully stop the cycle of hurting ourselves and harming others to end the pattern of self created negative repercussions.  This allows us to move toward a life that opens the door to infinitely more blessings, integrity, character and a much stronger likelihood of long lasting happiness!