We all know the feelings involved with fear - they may include a kind of freezing, an acceleration of thinking and an uncertainty as to what to do or where to go. They may also include a more subtle and undercurrent sense of impending catastrophe... Today I asked the question with a strong intent 'What is fear?' and immediately I got an answer from beyond my conscious understandings that I would like to share with you.
I am not an academic expert in psychology or any of the 'ologies' - however, I know that since we all experience emotions and are all capable of questioning, learning and direct experience - I know that we are all capable of understanding ourselves without the need for academic input as these are ultimately the methods used in academia anyway - albeit with the benefit of organised, formal studies that reinforce what is learned in a repeatable and shareable way/format.
A common and heavily denied thread in academia and society in general
I know from experience that one of the main topics that is most needing to be addressed and yet is also one that is most commonly avoided in education is that of LOSS OF PERSONAL POWER. This is not an accident, since if we all understand the ways in which we lose personal power, we will all understand that academia and organised governmental systems have long ago been designed to operate on our own loss of power, to attempt to artificially promote those involved to elevated statuses that they do not rightly hold. That is not to say that academia cannot help us, because it can - but balance has been missing for a very long time.
With this in mind, when we look through the wikipedia page for fear, we can see that there are lots of good bits of information presented about chemical mechanisms of fear in the body and other related issues, but I want to point out now that the section on 'Causes' is deeply lacking in the needed depth. The page states (currently) that:
People develop specific fears as a result of learning
Well, that's not really accurate. We can learn and not develop a fear. Equally, we can have experiences that are not even noticed by the conscious self and yet which we develop unconscious fears about. It is true that learning has a role to play in some fears, but is it not true to concretely state that all fears are the result of learning.
Although many fears are learned, the capacity to fear is part of human nature.
The page goes on to infer that not all fears are learned (which contradicts the previous statement - which may just be the result of poor wording of the previous statement). The page goes on to explain, to some extent, the way that we can be conditioned to hold onto fear - but it does not really explain WHAT FEAR IS.
What is fear? really? It's simple.
Fear is denial of your own power.
That's it.
The denial will typically occur through your own belief system and thought process - such as by thinking "I'm not strong enough to survive this" and thus denying your own strength and capacity for survival (which your thoughts may not have an accurate understanding of). Our decision making process can be a kind of tree-like structure that spans many years of our lives and therapists are well aware of the need to be able to travel through our 'mental forest' to be able to pinpoint the moments where we made key decisions and created key belief systems - it is therefore the case that our denials might be spread across thoughts that have evolved over decades. Alternatively, the thoughts might be created in the blink of an eye too.
As long as you assess/judge/think/believe that you are not powerful enough to do what you need to do - possibly to survive at all - then you are causing fear. If you are thinking that you are mentally strong enough to stand in the face of total destruction and not experience any fear - then I propose that you are simply disconnected from your real feelings more than you are actually a master of emotion and fear. If you stand in the face of total destruction, have the power to change the situation and therefore not be destroyed then you may not experience fear - which is the ideal situation and is entirely possible.
The common acronym 'False Evidence Appearing Real' for F.E.A.R. is appropriate in some cases, but not in all. We may have lost so much of our power through self denial already that we actually are underpowered to ensure our own survival, so in that case the evidence is not false at all - there may in fact be real evidence that we are in a terrible situation.
The upside here is that I have lived through experiences I thought I could not possibly survive and have a strong and felt understanding that because we are one with 'all that is' - there is technically absolutely no need for us to be in a situation where we don't have the power we need to survive just about anything. While I am not about to dive into a nuclear reactor to test that theory out - I have already survived experiences that I previously thought could not be survived - so I am open to the possibility that through creating the correct state of being, even a nuclear explosion could possibly be survived. Obviously, this is 'cutting edge' survival and not easy to test - but I remain open none the less. ;)
Note: 'Power' only means 'The ability to act' - it does NOT mean 'controlling other people'. I wrote about this at length here.
Regardless of whether such extreme survival and power are possible - the reality remains for me that fear is a result of self denial.
How then to stop fearing?
The obvious answer is to 'stop denying your own power and strength'. This basically means to leave open our definitions of how strong we are and how much potential we have. Instead of defining that 'I am a weak person', we simply define that 'I have access to power and strength which I acknowledge may be much greater than I currently am aware of' - this means we are making space for growth and change, instead of closing the door on our own evolution.
Instead of defining that 'I am strong, but I cannot survive x because y' - we again simply leave the situation open to something more like: 'I am strong and I may be able to survive x and admit that since I don't know everything, I don't know for sure if I can survive x or not'. The removal of the 'impossibility factor' can make a huge difference to the outcomes we experience in physical reality.
These changes are at a mental level but will be felt when they are made. The other part of the process is to find and accept all of our parts that are currently fearing specific things - of which there are typically many in each of us. By ending self denial, we are making a fundamental shift in our state of being and now we need to repair and heal our aspects that have been injured while we were continuing to deny who we are and our potential for greater strength than we had previously allowed to be possible.
The source of great power
There are many examples in life of people demonstrating strength that we might typically assume was impossible for them. You may have heard stories of mothers lifting heavy cars off of their child in order to save their life or similar events where the expected limits were smashed in an instant. The passion involved is key here. Desire is effectively the origin of great power - the stronger our desire to act, the more we can draw strength and capacity to unexpected levels to meet the needs of the moment.
Are you a fleshy machine walking around a rock in space? Or are you an infinite soul that is god experiencing itself?
The difference between the two is the difference between fear and success!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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