Yesterday I took a break from blogging in order to totally revamp our readings page. We’ve now got a ton more options available; check ‘em out!
Today I’m back… WITH A VENGEANCE! And a question. What would you do or be if you could be free from all fear? Fear is the number one obstacle standing between you and the life of your dreams. In the next three posts I’ll be exploring what it is, where it comes from and several techniques and shifts in thinking to help you set yourself free from its influence.
When we were still living in the wild tens of thousands of years ago (or ten minutes ago for you creationists out there 
) fear alerted us to genuine threats to our survival, and flooded the body with adrenaline so we could more effectively fight or flee. Back then, it was an essential defense mechanism. Today, when that same response often shoots through us in response to situations that aren’t threatening to our survival, not so much. That kind of fear only holds us back; keeps us from taking risks that could very well pay off; from enjoying our full potential.
The universe itself is pushing us to overcome our fears, mainly in two ways. Much like our beliefs create our experiences, so too do fearful aspects of ourselves reflect themselves in our lives. In other words, at some point the universe is probably going to force you to face the subject of your fear in order to overcome it, though if you don’t, the fear will only be reinforced. The downside is that a stronger fear requires a more in-your-face display from the universe – meaning your experience will get increasingly harsh until you do something about it. This has to do with the way life lessons are taught.
Alternately, we insulate ourselves from our fears. We avoid situations where they might come into play, and it eventually starts to affect our quality of life. Again the universe is nudging us toward freedom from fear, because if this goes on long enough the aspect of your life that’s controlled by it will eventually become more unbearabe than the fear itself. This is the nature of the human spirit: it needs to be free, and one way or another, it will. So what should we do in light of this?
Beat the universe to the punch, and set up the playing field on your terms.
You recognize that you’re going to have to face the fear one way or another, so you deliberately set up a situation where you will confront it – but on your own terms, in a way that’s relatively low-risk and that you can even have fun with. Once you experience the good outcome, fear dimishes, courage is reinforced and you’re either free or well on your way. Gehenna recently set a good example of this when she acted on the insight from her early February reading.
Florence Scovel Shinn touches on this with the concept of “the lion on the path.” Once you confront the lion, more often than not it transforms into something either benign or beneficial before your eyes, or otherwise you find that there IS no lion and never was. By not only confronting the lion but scripting the encounter on your own terms, rather than waiting for it to find you, you empower yourself even further!
Examples of how I did this in my own life tie into my next post, where I’ll explore one of the two biggest sources of fear and how I conquered it.
Further Reading
The Urban Monk has written a very thourough and helpful article on Fear and Anxiety Cures from a more psychological perspective. I’ve been reading a lot of the material there lately, and he’s also the one who gave me the idea to start including a few external links in my posts, so he gets to be the first. 
–Palehorse
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February 17th, 2008 - 2:47 am
Thank you for the great article and the link
July 24th, 2008 - 2:51 am
The first step in overcoming fear is acknowledging that it is causing a problem.. Too many people deny the problem exists