LOVE and FEAR
By Brian Germain
When we love something, we
fear losing it. This is why love is the root of all fear. We fear poverty
because we love the feeling of abundance. We fear sickness and injury because
we love being well. We love our families and friends, and so we fear for their
safety. We love being alive, and so we fear death. Since love is the source of
all fear, the more we love, the more we fear. Knowing this gives us the power
to work through the fear, because powerful love is the antidote for
powerful fear.
All objects of attention have two possible directions of
thought: the desirable and the undesirable evolution of the situation. In other
words, when we think about something that we truly love, we can focus on how
terrible it would be to never again experience this thing, or we can focus on
the positive attributes of this experience, and how it makes us feel. The root
of fear is also the remedy because all we need to do is focus on the love, and
the fear is eclipsed. This is because we cannot feel both fear and love at the
same time, just as we cannot inhale and exhale at the same time.
When we make ourselves afraid, we do it by repeating
thoughts about losing what we love. We loop the negative visualizations in our
minds, like a newsreel of a tragedy. We chew the cud of these mental
projections, and the worse we feel, the more we are able to expand on the
specific nature of the negative possibilities. We clarify what it is that we do
not want, and so the energy grows. When the expansion of this mental
clarification reaches a critical level, we reach a tipping point that results
in one of two possibilities. The first is, our worse fears come true: what we
do not want actualizes in physical circumstances. This happens in ways that we
can never fully understand, but we all have witnessed the "self-fulfilling
prophesy" enough to validate this possibility. The second direction that our
negative visualizations and negative emotions can take us is the recognition
that this is not where we want to go, and so we go the other way. We look down
into the darkness long enough to realize that it is not the light. There is no
love in fear, no matter how hard you look.
Unpleasant experiences are essential turning points. They
lead us in the direction of what we most love by showing us what we don't. In
order to recognize, reach for, attain and ultimately appreciate what we truly
love in life, we must first experience its opposite. This establishes the
springboard off of which we launch into our preferred realities. We discover
who we are through the extremes of love and fear, and although these
experiences may lead us through the full spectrum of emotion in life, they also
are the only way to truly know what is what in this world of complexity and
contrast. This is how we expand our sense of self, and the whole of
human consciousness. This is how we compost our life experiences into something even more beautiful.
If you ask 
anyone on this planet what matters most, the
vast majority will tell you that love is what matters more than anything else.
This is one of the crossroads of truth that transcends all cultural
differences. It is also true, however, that love is a path that leads us
through our least favorite emotion, the realm of fear. Sure, lots of
adventure junkies like myself appear to be living the antithesis of this
principle, as we have led our lives seemingly in pursuit of danger and fear. We
have found our greatest moments of joy as a direct result of fear. But it was
never the fear that we were after of course, it was always the love of the moment
that drew us in. We are joy junkies. We do not seek fear, we seek its opposites.
Fear
alone is not a pleasant feeling. It feels terrible. This is because fear is an alarm, letting us know that we in a charged situation that is profoundly meaningful to
us, and the way we are looking at the situation, this path of visualization, is
not to our liking. There is no love in that particular direction of thought. We
need to shift our way of looking at the circumstances, and possibly alter our
game plan, so that we can look upon this ordeal as an opportunity. This terrifying
situation can yield a higher level of love and joy than the mundane will
ever bring us. We must take a deep breath, and move forward, slowly and
carefully, with a new perspective. This is the only way ahead. Knowing this,
even a retreat is just a conscious advance in a new direction.
There is no way to get this life thing wrong, as long as
you are reaching for more love in every situation. For example, you might fear your boss, and consequently limit your expansion at work. You can choose to focus on what it is that scares you about him or her, or you
can choose to love your boss by reaching for their positive aspects, appreciating their most admirable characteristics.
You choose to be the one to shine light on the parts of this person that
often go overlooked, and so the intimidating aspects dissolve in the absence of
your attention. Your boss inevitably becomes nicer in every way, but even if they didn't,
their demeanor and view of you become far less important, because by
walking on this higher ground, you simply feel better. In the end, that is all
that ever mattered. The ultimate goal has already been achieved: You are
feeling fear less often, and love more often. Your boss is now just another
place for you to reach for love within yourself. How
they respond is up to them.
The
ones that provoke our fear the most are our children. We worry about 
every aspect of
their safety, and the fear is so intense at times that it feels almost unmanageable. Our fear and anger spikes higher around the subject of our children than any other. We must remember that this emotion has come out of our love. All loving
relationships are charged with both love and fear. How we allow the balance of power
of these two component emotions defines how we effective we are as a parent or
caregiver.
We must remember that we expand whatever we are emotionally focusing upon. This is because our
children learn more from how we are feeling than what we are saying. The
problem with focusing on the fear side of the equation is, we are not emotionally congruent with our true intentions. Even though the fear has its roots in love, when we feel fear,
we are not feeling love. We are not radiating love. We are not teaching love.
We are only sharing the feeling of fear. This is why fear is a counterfeit
replacement for real love.
We must focus back on the source of the fear, not
the object of it. The source is always the love, but the object of our fear is
just a specific visualization of how we may lose it. Many of us have discovered that focusing on what we don't want does nothing to avoid it, and in fact
our worry somehow draws us closer to it in more ways than we can realize. In
other words, fear causes danger. We must focus our attention on the direction
of motion that we most desire: safety through education about the risks, not
overprotective paranoia that brings about a negative self-fulfilling prophesy.
We
want to demonstrate our love for them by protecting them, that was always our goal. Our first and most
powerful tool of protection, beyond any car seat or perfectly child-proofed home, is to
demonstrate love in the face of fear. Rather than snapping aggressively when
our "parent alarms" go off, we breathe and communicate the danger slowly and
rationally. This way, we do not teach our own fears. When we feel panic when
they are in a high place, they learn, through our demonstrated emotions, that
heights are a place to be afraid. Although we do not want them to be frivolous
in such situations, we must also realize that fear puts us in further danger.
It robs us of our balance and our grace, and we are far more likely to fall,
get stung by a bee, or bucked off a horse, simply due to our fear. We must
teach respect, but we must not teach fear. We must focus on our love for them,
and let that guide us to being the brave, loving parents and caretakers that our
children require.
This
is a dangerous world. There are plenty of reasons to feel fear. Nevertheless,
fear is not the answer, because it is not the same thing as caution. In fact,
it is usually the opposite of true caution. More importantly, fear is not love. In fact, it is
usually the opposite of love. The more you allow yourself to feel and express fear, the
less you are being loving. The more profound your feeling of fear, the more you
must let yourself feel the love that is the source of the fear. It will always
guide you in the right direction. It is always the right answer. It is, as you
already know, exactly what we all have been looking for. Love is the source of everything good, the reason for it all. Let it shine.
BSG
