Year of Balance - Fear Holds Us Back

“Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing.” - Unknown

I want to move past the fear that our political climate is using to try to manipulate us and control us. I think if we can look to our root fears and work on erasing them, we can limit the power that fear wields over us and that others will use to try to control our thoughts and feelings.
When we think about fear, the very first fears we most likely encountered had to deal with survival. As newborns we were always looking for our mothers. When they weren't around, we would feel the fear of abandonment well up and we would respond by crying until we were once again in our mothers arms. As we grew other things started to affect us. If there was a lot of angry voices in the house, we could feel the tension, and learn to fear loud noises. Maybe as a young one, we were crawling on the floor when the family dog came over and started licking us or barking at us and this first encounter could cause us to grow up fearing dogs. Over time, we accumulate these events that trigger fear.
I have also heard/read that we may also carry fears from prior lives. Maybe in a prior life we were convicted of being a witch and burned at the steak. In this life, that manifests as a deep fear of fire. Maybe we were a whaler and had been thrown overboard by a rogue wave and now we were fearful of water. Of course, the opposite could be true as we could have had a good experience that we now find we are drawn to for unknown reasons.
Throughout history, the powers that be, whether government or religion, have used fear as a great tool to get people to comply with their vision of how the world should be. It could have been the fire and brimstone preacher who proclaims that if we don't listen to them and comply with their vision of what God wants, we are doomed to burn for eternity in hell. Governments push the vision that ours is the best country and others that are different are evil and we need to beware of them. They push the idea that theses evil hoards will come in the night and steal our children. Look at the fear that was stirred up in the cold war. Children were indoctrinated into this realm of fear by having them get under their desks in air raid drills. Of course, if the Russians did indeed drop the bomb, that desk was not going to do them a bit of good. Some of the nonsense is so blatant that anyone with any sense should see it, like the Iranian cleric who is blaming women for the earthquakes around the world. Yet, there will be many who will listen to him and want to punish the women into complying with the cleric's vision of how women should act.
If we want to free ourselves from being manipulated by fear, I believe that first we have to sit down with ourselves and write down all the things that we are fearful of. What scares us. Is there anything that petrifies us to the point that we are unable to function? Is this fear "legitimate" like facing an uncaged lion who hasn't eaten in four weeks? Or can it be something that many call irrational, like the fear of a bubble or balloon. Yet, in each fear, they have a root cause. Maybe as a baby we were exposed to loud noises and associated them with the popping of balloons. So maybe that fear is not really of the balloon itself, but rather the expectation of it blowing up.
That brings us to one of the things that if we can begin to realize, we might be able to overcome, expectation. How much fear is based on the expectation real or imagined? Do we become paralyzed by these expectations of bad things?
If we want to stop religions and governments from controlling us, we must learn to recognize those fear triggers and find a way to overcome them. The first thing to do is to recognize those things that scare us, whether physical such as a dog or snake, or environmental like loss of job, loved one, or home.
Try creating a journal, if you don't all ready do it. Over the next month, each day, right down some of the things that caused you fear or discomfort through the day. Don't stop to analyze them at this time, just jot them all down. Once you are done, read back through them. Ask yourself of each one, when was the first time you felt this? Can you think back through your history to an event that may have triggered this? Write it down. I believe that as we do this, we are recognizing the root cause of our fear and then we might exorcise these demons from ourselves. Of course, if it is true that we carry some from life to life, that could be difficult unless you can do a past life regression to go back through your stored memories of previous lives.
Even if we could eliminate just one fear in doing this exercise, I believe it is a huge step. If we can just overcome one fear in our life, we teach ourselves that all fears can be overcome. That doesn't mean that overcoming your fear of hungry tigers will allow you to stand there in front of a hungry tiger smacking his lips. I think survival kicks in there, which is a more natural and protective rather than learned fear.
If we can learn to face and overcome our fear, then those who use fear to manipulate and control us will lose their power. We will learn to stop listening to the fear-mongering and use the plethora of tools, the library, the Internet, and even the media to learn for ourselves the truth, or rather our truth. We will no longer single source our news, but rather search out opposing viewpoints so that we can get a balanced view and make our own opinions. Of course, we can remain lazy and just get spoon-fed our opinions and allow fear to continue to be used as a tool to shape our views and control us.
I pray that you can overcome whatever fear has held you back. Sometimes it is that very fear that prevents us from reaching the fulfillment of our human potential. Open your heart, open your mind, and become.
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

Year of Balance - Conguering Fear

Probably one of the greatest impediments to finding balance is facing the multitude of fear in our life. What we are inherently fearful of because of our own history is enough to prevent anyone from reaching the fulfillment of who we could be. What makes matters worse is the nonsense that we are besieged with, like the current political climate, where fear is used as a tool to get people riled up and ignoring truth in order to "win". All of this nonsense lately has been really turning my stomach. What is worse is the misinformation being used to rile people up is then passed on and on getting even more riled up. Fear spreading fear.

One example is the untruth that is constantly being spoken about how Obama gave away money to the financial institutions and they took it and had a good time. Yet, what is not told is that while it was George Bush who initiated TARP and gave out the first round with no strings, Obama put strings on the second round. It was because of those strings that much of that second round of TARP funds were paid back. Huh? What? It was paid back. Eyyuup. Didn't seem to make the nightly news because of all the Tea Party talk.

Now, let me ask a question. After all that hullabaloo, what has really changed in your life? Let me point out what could have changed if the financial system collapsed because we just let these institutions get what they deserved. I worked for a company back in the 80's that manufactured heavy equipment. The company really took care of its employees. We had a good medical plan. We were paid good wages. The economy was in a slow down. The inventory was stacking up. We cut production to keep from getting too deep in debt. Then the worst thing that could possibly happen happened. Bank of New England collapsed. We are only talking one bank here, but the affect was horrible. The government at the time took over the bank and set up RECOLL who's soul purpose was to recall all the outstanding loans. With the economy down, the inventory up, and nothing in the pipe, the company couldn't get new financing. The owner of the company called everyone into the main factory and with tear filled eyes, told the workers that he was going to have to have the first layoff in company history. He was hoping that in doing so, he could stave off the hounds at the door and keep the company from being shut down. Eventually, I was called into the CFOs office and told to go sign up for unemployment because RECOLL was asking for more money than the company could come up with and they weren't sure if they could pay us much longer. Fortunately, for me, I got a phone call for a job interview just as I went back into my office to grab my jacket. However, while I was fortunate, the company was not. It eventually was sold to a group and most of the people either moved on or were let go. It is still there, but it is no longer that company that really took care of its employees. Other companies were not as fortunate and had to shut down. That was just because of one bank. Can you imagine the impact on an all ready faltering economy had they allowed many of those banks to shut down? The ripple affect?

I really wanted to talk about personal fears and demons, but I just wanted to point out how our current political environment works on our fears to try to direct public opinion. If they can obfuscate the truth enough, they can get the populous on their side and prevent any real change from happening. How do we fight this? We arm ourselves with truth. In the tech world, we have a saying, Google is your friend. Well Google, Bing, Yahoo, whatever is your favorite or all of them, you can search out something and try to verify it yourself. Stop eating up the fear. Stop feeding the fear. Learn the truth and it will set you free.

Now for a moment, let us talk about personal fear. We all carry fear with us throughout our lives. We learn fear at a very young age. Some of us are exposed to more than others. Some have parents who love and protect them and make them feel safe so that fear has less of a touch. I was talking to a psychologist who had done some work with the child abuse victims of the Catholic Church. He told me that you could see a distinct difference in the reactions between the kids whose parents got angry with them for daring to accuse the priest and the kids whose parents went after the priest or called in the cops. As he put it, the latter kids were made to feel safe despite the horrendous thing that happened to them. All you parents should take heed to that wisdom.

The point is that over the years we are exposed to things that frighten us. Some of us are able to get over these fears. Some of us carry these fears with us through the years. And yet still others, bury the fear and find it resurfaces later in life. Or it remains latent, but can be tapped by those who know how to manipulate people. When we learn to free ourselves from fear, we take away a huge weapon from those who wish to manipulate and control us. We just have to learn not to give in to the fear.

Speaking of those who would use the fear to manipulate us, there was a recent news report regarding a Powerpoint presentation that had been forgotten in a hotel room. It was reported that there was a seminar for Republican fund raisers and this presentation was part of the presentation on how to get people to donate. Now for the richer donors it said to simply play to their vanity. Offer them gifts, coffee mugs, tickets, etc. For the rest, put the fear of God into them that any change brought by the Dems is going to destroy the country and ruin their lives. If you watched the discourse during the Health Care debate, it appeared to have worked. So much misinformation was passed around as truth that many got caught up in it and just started passing the same crap around to others. Our fears were played with and we took it.

So how do we change ourselves? How do we overcome fears, real or perceived? First off, take a breath. Really, for some it is as simple as that. Take a breath and then turn on your bullshit meter. Start asking questions. Does this seem real? Use your favorite search engine, Google, Yahoo, Bing, or whatever and do the research. Stop taking things at face value, especially in this political climate, but do the research. Take the time to arm yourself with the truth. Ask questions about the source. What do they have to gain? Is there a method to their madness? Try to find balance in news reports. If you hear something from Fox News, balance it with something from Huffington Post.

We have enough to deal with all the fears that we carry on our own. We should not allow other people to try to use our inherent fears to control and manipulate us. We need to work to overcome our fears. Go see a counselor, a psychologist, or yeah, even a parent. Work to overcome the fears we carry. Then work on educating ourselves rather than take the easy road of being fed what we should believe by people with agendas. Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Let us all work to move beyond the fear and manipulation.

I pray you strength and courage on your journey.
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.