Jafree Ozwald | April 28 2012
“Nothing matters so much that we should throw ourselves into a state of panic about it. No happening is so important that we should let ourselves be exiled from inner peace and mental calm for its sake.” ~ Paul Brunton
If there’s one thing in life that we are all scared of… it’s fear. Yet is fear really something we need to run away from like a coward and avoid? What would happen if we opened up, embraced fear and gave fear a big cozy hug! It probably needs one by now, don’t you think? The moment you turn inside and embrace whatever you’re afraid of, something magical happens. You find the willingness to make anything happen! When you can move into fear, through fear, and out the other side, then become fearless. Fear becomes as frightening as a shadow, an imaginary obstacle blocking the light of your own radiant being.
The truth is that all fear is illusory. F.E.A.R. = False Evidence Appearing Real. Your fears in life are simply negative thought about your future wrapped up with contracted body sensations. Fear is a mental fabrication created by emotional needs that haven’t been met. When you know yourself as the source of love itself, then fear doesn’t stand a chance in your life. When fear rises it becomes something you get to deal with. I say “get to” because you see these feelings as opportunities to push you deeper inside, into the source of love. Fear forces you to feel what’s at the innermost core of your being. This is the only place in the Universe where you’ll find true everlasting love, peace, safety, security and the highest spiritual growth you could possibly ask for. Everywhere else you look you’ll find life to be quite illusory and always changing on you.
It’s good to know that fear is the hidden key to one of the greatest mysteries of life. This is the mystery of mastering your existence. Once you’ve discovered how to overcome fear, you know what real trust and faith is. This deeper level of trust is what gives you complete mastery over your life. Embracing fear requires that you step into your power and rediscover that deeper connection to the source of trust, love and sweet gratitude you have inside. Letting in the fear is the one thing we all need to push us deeper inside, past our comfort zones, so we uncover the spiritual being living within us. It’s exactly what we need to transcend the limiting human condition we are all facing.
Once you start embracing fear you’ll know how to make decisions. Making the right decision in life takes being willing to make the wrong decision. It requires that you are truly fearless and willing to be wrong about anything, so that life becomes a massive cosmic learning adventure! If you want to be confident about every decision you make, simply step back and see your life from the grand scope of things. On a soul level, there truly is no such thing as a “wrong” decision. It just might take you a little bit longer to reach your final destination if you choose left instead of right. When you remember that you’re an eternal being on an infinite journey through life, it doesn’t matter. You won’t break a sweat on the small stuff because you’ll realize it’s all small stuff. When all decisions come from this fearless place that knows you’re on an infinite journey, you will ultimately initiate choices that only result in playful positive enjoyable outcomes.
To begin your own personal fear conquering adventure you first need to practice knowing that you are separate from the voice of fear. That frightful scary voice that goes off in your head is not you, you are the awareness who is aware of that voice. You are the listener who is listening, the watcher watching. If that voice causes a feeling of panic, terror or anxiety in you, its because you’re buying into the dramatic story of this imaginary voice. You are allowing it to feed you a frightful experience. As you come to get to know and listen for this special voice, you’ll see it is separate from you. Then, you can start knowing yourself as the soul or awareness who is untouched by it. The more you realize that you are this pure awareness, that is watching and listening from a far to the voice of fear, the easier it becomes to not get so involved in its drama. You then discover the power to make a clear decision about what you want to create in your future and have just taken your first step to overcoming fear.
The next step is to get into the habit of taking one long deep breath into your body anytime you feel fear. Hold this deep breath as long as you can and allow all the scary thoughts in your mind and fearful body sensations to burn through you. Give yourself permission for any fearful sensations to enter your body completely. This allowing experience becomes like a great fire that cleanses your fear channels, and awakens your ego from its slumber. Let fear serve its purpose in keeping you from falling asleep at the wheel of your life! Allow your heart to pound, your blood rise to a boil, and your gut get wrenched because your mind believes something horrible is going to happen. The more you can allow fear to come in, the more alive you’ll feel and the faster fear leaves you. After the fire has burned through you a great aliveness takes over. This is where tremendous clarity occurs and becomes an avenue where big life decisions can become effortless, fun and easy.
Anytime you allow fear to take over your entire body, watch what games your mind tends to play. It may try doing back flips to avoid feeling what you’re really afraid will happen. Get to know yourself intimately, that is another divine purpose of fear. Watch the mind very closely and notice if there’s one particular scene or movie frame from its magnificent horror story that it clings to more than the others. Then take this movie clip out and view the entire scene from beginning to end. Watch it with wonder and let a simple soft pure awareness penetrate through it. Notice the bodily sensations that arise in every segment of your scary scene. You can allow room for excitement to enter by knowing yourself to be an eternal being who has watched millions of these types of movies. After you’ve played the scene through and felt the core of your fear has completely moved through your body, release the breath and let it all go. You may need several deep breaths to do this exercise depending on the size of your fear. After the fire of fear has cleansed you, you’ll find its easy to see this imaginary illusion with a positive productive perspective.
“Feel the fear and jump, dive, leap into it with wild abandon.” ~Shayna Zweben
The final step on this terrifying journey is befriending the voice of fear. After the fire has left, approach your fear as if it was an old friend who was trying to teach you something very important about yourself or your life. Come to know and understand this voice of fear is the path to freedom itself. Any experience which causes you to feel contracted, time bound, hurried, rushed or unable to relax means you have something to learn about true freedom. Once you truly know yourself as a spiritual being, these experiences won’t touch you. As you get to know yourself, understand your habitual fear patterns and negative ideas your inner gremlin’s addicted to, then you can approach them with a very conscious loving embrace. You can have compassion upon yourself and take that one baby step towards embracing your fear. That’s really all you need, one baby step towards your fear instead of away from it. Do this and you’ve just discovered you have nothing to fear. In a single moment you can find freedom by merging with fear. With just one baby step you can transform your inner world into a state of harmony and peace with what is.
To truly understand something is to find peace with it. When you know and understand that fear is necessary to know love, you will start moving towards embracing it. You simply cannot know what real love is unless you have known great fear. Fear is the polar opposite of love, and love is what propels you to move beyond your fear. We live in a Universe that is filled with polarities, so without fear, love could not even exist. We need fear to know love and we know love through embracing fear. Once you embrace all your deepest and darkest fears, only then does peace prevail. Through this deep complete surrender can you know that who and what you truly are is fearless and cannot die. Once your heart has accepted the fact that love and fear come together as one package deal, you’ll find tremendous peace as you flow in and out of them both. This peace is all you need to make your life decisions based in love and not from any fear.
I invite you now to do a little work on yourself and stop and think about what you’re truly afraid of in your life right now. Just pick the worst thing you can think of and get it over with. Notice how this fear shows up in your body. Now, dig a little deeper and see exactly what is causing you to be afraid. Why are you afraid of this one particular thing and not something else? Look at how and when this fear shows up in your life. When you stop to look at the roots of your fear, you’ll start to unravel the pattern. You’ll see how it has been with you weaving in and out of your entire life! Yes, fear is a gift from the Universe, a great teacher, and once you stop running from it you’ll start learning how to master it.
All fear is excitement in disguise. Once you reprogram your brain to flip the negative thinking into positive thinking, the possibilities are endless! Fear is the most awesome awakening force in our lives, and is that one force that is teaching you how to be unstoppable and fearless. If you’d like to reprogram your brain with fearless thinking, I’ve created a powerful mind altering meditation that will dramatically help you to eliminate fear. I’ll be your personal guide into a deep personal state of peace and bliss. Just listening to this guided meditation one time will help you experience a deep peaceful feeling in your body that will help you to easily move through any fearful challenges you’re facing. This enlightening experience will awaken that “sleeping” being and ignite the fearless loving master in your life!