Fear
As spiritual beings in human form, perhaps the greatest challenge for us remembering and growing into our spiritual essence is fear. Fear could be the underlying common denominator to every challenge we face. If we look up the definition of fear in dictionary.com, we find this: “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined . . . .” A common definition circulating among spiritual seekers is “False Evidence Appearing Real.” My definition goes something like this: “a visceral response to an event, real or imagined, that puts our human well-being at risk.” By definition, fear contracts our life into survival mode. Research shows that fear reduces our perceptual field so we literally see a smaller picture of what is going on – tunnel vision.
If our spirituality practice is meant to expand our consciousness to feel that connection with all that is, the active ingredient is love: love for ourselves, love for others, love for our creator, love of life in all its forms. If fear contracts us, reduces us to a focus on our physical and emotional well-being in our physical body, then it is the opposite of love. Love expands. Fear reduces. Love takes us into the less dense realms. Fear takes us to the densest aspect of our being.
Deeper Inquiry
Let’s examine fear from two vantage points: one as a human being and one as a spiritual being. First, as a human being, we all have experiences that help us categorize fear into the categories of “reasonable” and “unreasonable.” If I have a fear response to the pen sitting on my desk as I type this, we could all see that fear as “unreasonable.” If, as I type this, there is a person standing beside me with a loaded gun pointed at my head, we could all agree a fear response would be “reasonable,” fearing that my life might end at any moment. From a human perspective, that would be the worst thing that could happen, absent extraordinary circumstances. So most of us are able to do a calculation of circumstances outside ourselves of whether a particular fear is “real” or “imagined.” The gun is a “real” danger, the pen is an “imagined” danger. The other aspect of viewing fear from the human vantage point is whether we are aware of the danger. Most of us would like our body to work well enough to be aware of dangerous situations so that we can steer clear. If we are unaware, we cannot take corrective or protective action. If I am walking in the wild, I want my ears to hear the rattle of a rattlesnake. If my ears don’t register that, I could walk right into a dangerous situation without the adaptive response of fear. So whether or not we perceive the danger is a critical factor for survival. Here is a chart to break it out:
As a human being, Box 1 is adaptive and necessary to keep us alive in our physical form. Box 4 is where we thrive and expand into our spiritual potential. Box 3 is a “false negative” that could end our life if the danger is life-threatening. Box 2 is a “false positive” where we do much of our work as spiritual beings. And Box 2 is where we find the battleground for our life and peace of mind with the way we have constructed our current culture.
When we see ourselves as primarily human, we allow fear to be generalized from physical danger of loss of life to danger of all sorts, social, mental and emotional. Any perceived loss of well-being becomes a perceived danger to guard against. We create fear in response to social danger – loss of face, loss of reputation, loss of status, loss of influence. We create fear in response to mental and emotional danger – loss of mental capacity, loss of connection, loss feeling valued or loved. All of these fears reduce our functioning to survival, perhaps not physical survival, but social, mental and emotional survival. We jettison our spiritual growth to tend to more dense concrete needs in the physical plane.
Now let’s turn to examining fear from the vantage point of a spiritual being. Taking the “long view,” our existence transcends our physical life, stretching out before we were born and continuing after we shed the physical body we currently embody. All “danger” – whether physical or social or mental or emotional – cannot touch the essence of who we are as spiritual beings. Our consciousness knows no danger because no matter what happens to us on the physical plane, we will continue to exist without diminishment on the spiritual plane.
For those of you have religious trauma, you are welcome to skip this paragraph. For those of you who have a Christian background, this is what Paul said in Romans 8:37-39:
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So from a spiritual being vantage point, all fear is an illusion. Even with Box 1 events, where the physical danger is real and we perceive it as such, we can respond to the danger to protect and preserve our life or we can take a risk knowing that our essence, our consciousness, will transcend anything that happens to our physical body. We can train ourselves to stand fearless in the world and make choices for the highest good of all. Choosing Love in all things.
Creating breakthroughs
In closing, here are some statements that I know to be true for me. Test them out in your heart to see if they ring true to you:
- Fear is a human response for our physical survival.
- We have expanded fear in our culture to include all sorts of non-life-threatening dangers to our human existence.
- Fear diminishes us. Love expands us.
- From a spiritual being perspective, fear is an illusion.
- We are never separate from the Love that created us. It is an illusion we create in our mind.
Thank you for hanging in there for this longer writing. I hope it made sense to you and resonated with the deepest part of your being. If you would like a preview of my upcoming second book, here is a link to a draft of chapter 2, entitled “Feeding at the Trough of Fear.”
This is part 6 of a 12-part series. I would love to hear from you at challenges@thomascapshew.com I have not yet selected my topic for the next installment, so if you have suggestions, please email me with your ideas or questions. May your path be filled with health, joy, clarity and Love! Tom