The Pressure of Fear: explores how fear distracts attention to the future where personal action is unnecessarily hampered and restrained.
Fear is worry about the future.
In Fear, you leave the powerful point of this moment and freeze yourself in some imagined moment in the future where you have no room for anything but the fear.
Fear is also a bodily sensation. Your gut clenches, your shoulders stiffen, your breathing is interrupted. Your worry that your worst fears will materialize — especially if you don’t do something, now.
One of the most insidious aspects of Fear is that it pushes us to do exactly the opposite of what will bring us relief and a perspective for powerful action.
In other words, fear pushes us to act out of fear, to act because we are afraid.
Fear wants us to blindly accept the terror of an only imagined future.
Fear hopes to dupe us into acting against our best interests.
Fear goads us into acting from aversion. Concluding you think you know what will and will not happen is the problem.
As human beings we have a limited view of all the infinite possibility which exists in this moment and expands ever wider in the next moment. We can often intuit the next possible moment.
However we also must consider that part of the problem is that when we act in fear we contribute to our future the stomach-clenching energy of aversion, terror and fear.
When you act from fear your contribution to All That Is is your fear. Thinking to avoid fear by contributing your fear only generates more fear, creating a circle of fear within you and within your world.
You choose one to avoid the other and instead of getting relief, you only get more fear which tempts you once again to continue the vicious circle of unending fear.
Instead of reacting in fear, there is an alternative: Choice.
Can you stand in a place where you acknowledge that you do not know it ALL?
Instead, can you stand in a place where you allow the best expression of all to exist?
Can you allow for possibility that you can not see?
Can you choose to move from a peaceful or joyful inner sense where you feel the excitement of a future unfolding beyond the limits of fear?
Fear is not an arcane discussion reserved only for the spiritually adept.
Fear is a real issue that pokes at all of us everyday.
Economics, the weather, our health and more all bring us face to face with fear and the possibility of choice all day long.
Consider our current political climate: how have you made your choice about who to vote for? Have you chosen one side over the other because of worry, anxiety, and fear raised within you by the other side?
I know that there is much for me personally that makes it very difficult to not choose out of fear. I can almost get myself hyperventilating over what that “crazy guy” proposes as solutions to political, social, cultural, economic, and spiritual upheaval. I could very easily go to bed each night bathed in a cloak of worry.
But life lived always because of fear is a life lived always in fear.
I reject a fearful life. I know that my life can be richer and fuller without the doom of fear.
More importantly, fear is not what I want to contribute to myself and others.
If I live in fear then all I have to offer is fear.
Instead, I believe that I always have a choice — in any situation.
I always get to decide how I will react and act in any situation.
I choose, here and now, to live my life experiencing the joy of choice.
I will make my decisions based on the excitement raised within me about the possibilities of my life.
I will allow the infinite possibility of the amazing universe to bring toward me more than I could ever imagine.
And in doing so, I will live by the intention of contributing possibility, opportunity, and choice to the world around me.
A life lived in joy is a life lived always in joy.
As you contemplate the choices you have before you in this political season, I urge you to support your candidates out of the excitement raised in you by them as the amazing individuals that they are.
The future will be what the future will be and in this moment you have the powerful option to decide what you will contribute.
Consider carefully the many downsides of choosing one candidate because of the worry, anxiety, and fear raised within you by their opponent.
Instead, release the tension in your shoulders, take a breath, unclench those aching muscles. Breathe in and exhale.
Now … Claim your freedom to live free of fear.
Affirm:
I no longer live my life in fear.
I choose to live my life in joy, excitement, wonder, and peace.
All my actions begin with my choice!
P. S. If somehow this seems rather naive, that nothing can overcome the realities of our dire situation, then know that this is the choice that you have made and that for you fear has won. Peace begins at home, within you. Peace, joy, excitement, wonder, and balance are all choices we make about what goes on inside our minds, bodies, and hearts.
The Pressure of Fear shows a process of engaging with life through spiritual practice. For more articles, checkout this part of my site where I explore various aspects: What is Spiritual Practice?
