2.9 What to do with our fears?

Fears are often the underlying lead in our life choices; too often misleading guides.

We all know fears in our personal life: fear for physical pain or for losing a friend for example. So many today fear Muslims, politicians fear they won't be re-elected, farmers fear bad harvests, students fear failure with exams, Potential fear is all around.

How to cope with fear? One regularly used and regularly failing method is denial. Another method is accepting the fear and thinking it totally through. Our experience is that this last method really helps; not to prevent something happening, but to make it bearable, and even to turn the happening (anticipated as very negative) into a blessing.

In human history there are many examples of individuals who gave brave examples in this. They took the risk to be jailed, lose all their friends, be banned from family, tortured, even killed; all for causes they thought worthwhile. Better to suffer oneself than allow it to be done to others.

Fear often arises because of the body's vulnerability and our identification with the body. We do not want to be hurt, mutilated, annhilated. If we identify with Spirit, our true nature, undivided and unbroken, immutable and ever existing, our fear will fade with our expanded consciousness. We are not the body. We are Spirit.

The saying is, look fear in the face and it disappears.