Making Friends With Fear

The fact is, we can’t get rid of fear. Why? Because the earth dimension is marvelously designed as the perfect classroom in which to learn about fear.  Our purpose in signing up for this class is to understand fear and take our power back from fear. Spirit Guide Spotted Eagle likes to say fear is the 500 lb. gorilla that is always sitting next to us. We can’t get rid of it, so we might as well make friends with it. And that means that we don’t let it drag us around by the throat. We don’t give fear our power and let it dictate our choices.

Take a look around at this classroom. Nowhere in the physical universe will you encounter such a rich and diverse array of physical forms, both natural and made by human hands. Everywhere you look there is physical form: the paper you are reading, your computer, the chair you are sitting on, the clothes you are wearing, the food you eat, the house you live in, the trees outside your door, the river that rushes by in the woods, the birds in the sky, the bugs under your feet. All is form on planet Earth.

One thing we know about form is that it does not last. Whether it is a piece of chocolate, our physical bodies, the Sangre de Cristo mountains, or the Earth planet itself, all physical form eventually dissolves, dies, disappears.  That is the nature of the physical universe, and this causes fear. The impermanence of earthly life and the uncertainty of life cause survival fears in all humans.

Part of our challenge, then, is this: can we learn to accept the impermanence of life? Can we learn to allow the uncertainty which is present in every moment? As we journey through this dimension in a human body that has a fairly short “shelf life”, can we overcome our individual  fears?

A look at our past shows us how difficult this assignment has been and the very slow progress we have made as a species in this area. Under the pressure of fear we’ve made poor choices. We continue to spend our energies trying to control and dominate our lives and each other, caught in the illusion that this is the way out of having to deal with the earth lessons of impermanence and uncertainty. We give up the direction our hearts would take us for the illusion of security in a dimension that by its very nature is insecure. Around and around like squirrels in a cage we go, century after century, hedging the very thing we came here to learn.  Our evolution depends upon our willingness to do the inner work required to respond to fear consciously.Taking our power back from fear is the journey.