SPIRITUAL: IT ALL ABOUT FEAR............

the fear of letting go
the fear of no control
the fear of self

The fear of love, of losing one’s self and letting one’s gurad down…

I have the fear of stepping outside and giving love a chance. That is the only fear that I have

I have been around love that never lasted my entire life…

so the first question that pops up when I am on a date with someone that I really like “How will it end?...” which leaves me in heeartbreak and makes me feel that the time spent together would just be pointless so I give up on the guy and continue to live my single live with no hope for love because I associate love with hate.

Fear was overwhelming me, and making it difficult to make important life decisions. I finally realized that although I can't stop bad things from happening, that is no reason to surrender my life!! I'm starting to think less about what could happen (in a bad way) and more about what IS happening (in a good way).

The book, The Science of Fear, is a very well thought-out book on why fear things we shouldn’t and in the process put ourselves in greater danger. Example of this taken from the Prolog which discusses how fear caused the death of 1,595 Americans who out of fear chose to drive rather then fly for up to a year after the September 11 attacks.

The book goes on to explain how we as humans look at situations and judge them to be dangerous or not based on how our conscious and subconscious minds are wired. The author, Daniel Gardner, then breaks down how corporations, the media, government & so called leaders exploit fear in the forms of crime, terrorism, health issues and all the other scary things under the bed for their own benefit.

The underlining theme of the book is that, we live in one of the safest times of all of human history, yet we worry more about things we really shouldn’t and don’t pay attention to those things we really should be concerned about. For a comparison of what he is talking about is: In the United States roughly 14% of Americans do not have health insurance, that’s 41 million people. According to the Institute of Medicine (one of the National Academies of Science) the lack of health insurance contributes to the death of about 18,000 Americans; that is equal to six September 11 terrorist attacks- EVERY YEAR. If you compare what the government (whos job it is to protect all citizens) spends fighting terror compared to helping uninsured Americans, fighting terror wins. Why? FEAR. And Fear wins elections.

The book is full of facts, which is its one down side. While the research is well presented all of the numbers can make reading tedious at times. However that aside, I recommend this book to anyone who wants a good understanding of what causes fear and how we are constantly under siege by those who want to exploit us thru fear. On the upside, knowing all this helps fight the exploitation

Do you live with the constant threat of loss? If you are normal, you do.

In emergencies, fear can be beneficial. That's not the kind of fear involved here.

The kind of fear involved here is the fear of loss that is constantly in the back of your mind. Perhaps you've given up dreams of getting much more from life, but you are genuinely afraid of losing what you have now.

It's normal to fear losing lots of things, including:

family, friends, and other loved ones;

good health;

your home;

your good looks and sex appeal;

your job or other source of income;

family heirlooms;

your vitality;

your athletic prowess;

your status in the community; and

freedom.

When we fear losing something, it's normal to try to attach ourselves more tightly to it. Often, the more tightly we cling to something, the more likely we are to lose it. If you have ever felt a relationship with a lover slipping away, you know from experience that it's a sickening feeling in your stomach. Trying to have success hanging on to something by attaching more tightly to it is like trying to stop a sunset.

Even if we don't lose something we fear losing, the mere fear of losing it often ruins our enjoyment of having it!

What we are doing is unnecessarily creating the terror that is incessantly undermining our enjoyment of life. Why not stop?

It's not easy to stop. The reason it's difficult is that stopping means letting go of the strategy for living we have been using. Still, it's better to change strategies.

Clinging to that strategy, which is known as "the way of the world", doesn't work. It's a strategy based on the assumption that, for each of us, I am over here and the rest of the world is over there. The rest of the world contains good things and bad things. My life is devoted to gaining as many of the good things as possible and avoiding as many of the bad things as possible.

One problem with the way of the world strategy is that I lack enough power to carry it out well. For example, sickness, old age, and death are bad things, and I lack the power to avoid them. Everyone else is as weak as I am when it comes to avoiding them.

An even more fundamental problem with the way of the world strategy is that it is based on a separation between me and everything else.

This separation is always the cause of suffering (dissatisfaction, distress, off-centeredness). If a beloved parent dies, I am stricken with grief because I don't like the new, permanent separation and there's nothing that can be done about it. If I am diagnosed with cancer, it's because I am separated from the health I crave. Separation causes suffering.

Fortunately, separation is a delusion! There is no separation between me and everything else. It's just that I am deluded in thinking that there is. (The delusion comes from the fact that I misuse my ability to conceptualize [sort, classify, classify] things.)

If this is so, there may be a way to let go of that critical delusion. If so, there could be a reunion between myself and the rest of reality. That would mean the end of suffering! Suffering is optional. So there is no need to live in perpetual fear.

Even if this is true, however, merely thinking it won't help. I have to realize it in my gut.

Still, please give yourself permission to hope. Letting go of the delusion is very difficult, but it's possible. Many, many people have done it, and we all have the ability to do it