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You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God's lesson, and not your own.
A Course in Miracles,
Chapter 14, The Test of Truth
Is this possible? To be wholly free of fear? The Veda would say yes. Fear is of our animal nature. It is our response to threat. It was great for our species when our ancestors were hunting and gathering amid the packs of dire wolves and the sabertooth tigers. The fear response kept early humans alive in numbers large enough to bring us to the here and now, surviving far beyond the predators who once stalked our kind. But no one I know ever has been hunted by a predator. And yet this same fight or flight response still exists within us, still fires off with regularity; only now, most of the time, it's because we're afraid of what our boss is going to think of us--or our neighbor, our lover, our children, our parents. We're afraid we're too fat or too old. Afraid we're different than everyone else we know, and one day they'll all find out. Afraid we're not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough. Afraid God hates us. And with these fears comes the same download of stress chemistry that helped our ancestors survive in the wilds of the savannah for tens of thousands of years. The problem is, though, that with these common fears of today there rarely is anything to flight or anything from which to flee.
As we meditate, letting go of the stress responses that have been stored in the cells of our body, we become more and more present to our environment and less present to our speculations about what is wrong. We stop seeing death and destruction around every corner, stop speculating about what horrible thing is going to happen next. We stop having the fight or flight response to non-life threatening situations. We become ever more capable of responding to the demands of our life, rather than reacting to the fears our speculating mind throws at us. We begin to have the experience referenced above, the experience of "perfect peace" that we share with others by our very presence. This is the way God would have us be. This is how the Veda would have us live, the way life is meant to be.
Today I will do my twice daily meditation, and in between, I will remind myself there is nothing to fear.
Butler, Attack Animal, Studio City
All material copyright Jeff Kober (except book jacket image)
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