What’s Wrong With Being Afraid?

The End of Fear?
Is there anything good about fear?

Look at new age, spiritual, and self-improvement blogs, books, CDs, and seminars.
Fear is bad for your health, your relationships, your personal growth, and your spiritual development.

Fear tells us to avoid and hide from every difficulty in our lives.
Fear tells us to do nothing when we should take action.
Fear tells us to attack when we should listen.

We want to get rid of all the little fears that hold us back.
In fact, we want to get rid of fear altogether.

Do you think that will ever happen?
Will fear disappear someday from the vocabulary of human emotions?

I hope not.
Let me explain.

Many desires or feelings that are called negative, have a related, positive, aspect.

Fear is one of these two-sided feelings.

Ordinary fear is a great poison that weakens us, and leads us to live tiny lives.
It takes away our power to fly, and leaves us crawling on the ground.

That’s not the kind of fear that I want in my life.

Fear and Danger

Where does fear come from, anyway?
It starts when I sense danger.
It starts when I sense a threat to me, or to something or someone that’s precious to me.

Most of our everyday fears are triggered by psychological threats.
If you’re not physically threatened, but you feel afraid, the threat is psychological . You can feel threatened by a person, place, thing, or even an idea.

A Sense of Danger

Anyone ever heard of Spider Man?
One of his more interesting abilities is a Spider sense that warns him of danger.

We each have a sense that tells us when things are dangerous.
But our sense of danger is often out of touch with reality.

My sense of danger is colored and twisted by the stories that I tell myself about my past experiences.

The mind takes one real danger, one bad experience, and uses it as evidence that something is dangerous forever.

We’re masters at exaggerating danger.

And, we’re quick to tell ourselves what we can’t do.
How often do we whisper to ourselves that an action is just too hard, or even impossible?

Why am I so afraid to face a challenge, and do something unfamiliar and difficult?
In a somewhat misguided way, I’m trying to protect myself.

If I don’t succeed, or even if it takes me a few times to succeed, I might damage some image, some story that I tell about how perfect I am, and that’s dangerous.

The Guardian
Still, having a sense of danger, and acting on it, is a vital skill.
We need a sense of danger, a sense that listens for threats to what is truly precious.

Follow me for a moment.
I don’t want a sense of danger that results in debilitating fear, or anger, or hatred.
I don’t want my beliefs about what’s precious to lead me to deny anyone’s humanity.

I can love others that I disagree with.
But sometimes, in accepting others, my mind takes that acceptance and exaggerates it.
I slip into a mindset that says that it doesn’t really matter what I believe.
I start to become indifferent to things that used to matter to me.

And if I don’t care, if something isn’t important to me, will I stand up and take action when it’s unpopular?

We may deny it, but many of our actions are motivated by a blind desire to be accepted. And where does my desire to accept other people come from? Does it arise from a deep-felt recognition of each person’s humanity or do I accept others so they will accept me?

Of course I want to get along with others. I want others to like me.
But if that’s the basis for my principles, if that’s the basis for deciding what’s important, then I’m in big trouble.

And the world will suffer as a result.
I don’t believe that much good comes from blindly following any belief in a half-hearted way.

I want to be passionate about my beliefs, so I have the energy and courage to do the right thing, even when it’s hard.

I want to protect what’s precious in this world.
I want to be a guardian of this wonderful garden that we live in,

I don’t want to be judge and jury of others.
I don’t want to condemn anyone.

But I will stand up, gently and strongly, for what is precious.

Transformation
Let’s get rid of the ordinary sort of fear, and cultivate its other side: a sense of danger.
Let’s develop a sense of danger that comes together with the feeling of being a calm, powerful, loving guardian of the world’s treasures.

Exercise: Fear into Action
The next time you feel afraid of some danger:

1. Ask yourself if there really is a danger to something precious.
2. If so, switch gears inside and let that feeling of fear change into a feeling of danger without fear, and without anger – a powerful awareness of what’s important.
3. Then connect that awareness to the feeling of being a calm, energetic guardian, and find a way to take action.