Text: Subject: [acim-l] Re: FEARLESSNESS Date: 19 Sep 1998 11:13:34 -0000 From: Reply-To: A Course in Miracles List To: A Course in Miracles List On 19 Sep 1998, Doug Nelson wrote: > Then I read further and understood what you asked. Or did I? > Our greatest fear is not that we are........ M.W. or N.M. > That which is not love is fear or that which is not fear is love. I believe it says in ACIM "Everything is either love or a cry for love." I'm currently reading "Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety" by Robert Gerzon. In the first chapter he offers an interesting etymological analysis of the English word "fear" whose meaning and uses have shifted a lot in the past 800 years. He suggests that much of what we are wont to call "fear" is more aptly named "anxiety." He also suggests that much of what we are apt to call "stress" is also really anxiety. I found the exercise quite intriguing. We do tend to use the word "fear" to cover everything from jumping out of the way of a speeding car to the nervousness associated with a tense professional challenge, for instance. Personally it occurs to me that "fear" of traffic dangers and grizly bears that leads us to be cautious and steer clear of dangers to life and limb which has clear and positive survival value is in fact love - love of life (our own) and entails our fully participating in the evolutionary process of life (a process which also, Suzuki notes, necessarily requires "death"). [As an aside, in his lifetime Jesus appeared to be able to surmount even such "natural fears" as when he calmed the storm threatening to drown his disciples and walked on water, etc. This suggests that love mastered and ego reined in has authority over the physical universe.] Gerzon calls that fear "natural" and healthy. Anxiety relates more to the anticipation of "something bad" in the future based largely on memories of past (and probably unforgiven) hurts. The "fear" in this sense is a "now" experience in the presence of an imminent threat to life and limb. Anxiety is an imagined experience that we "fear" (or anticipate) might happen in the future. ACIM says a lot about "God only knows you now" and warns against judging the future based on the past and the kind of belief systems (or illusions) that come from that. Our problem here as I understand ACIM is that our sense of time, past, present and future is really an illusion. Bertrand Russell comments that of all fears, the fear of love is the most useless and misplaced. I would add that love can never be a danger to anything "real." St. Paul suggests love "burns away the chaff" and in ACIM terms I understand this to mean that love is a threat to the dominance of the ego, for in real love the ego cannot be master. This would mean that "fear of love" is pure ego, and is ego recognizing that love does in fact threaten it's "insane" view of things. So if everything is either love or a cry for love, then the "fear of love" or ego-anxiety about the loss of ego in love, is in fact a cry for love. I think we can extend that to all fears and anxieties - they are "cries for love" to which the ego responds by establishing defences and borders to stave off "external threats" and to which God or love or the Holy Spirit or our "true self" responds in a radically different way. This leads right into the ACIM concept of "attack thoughts" which can often be traced to a fear or anxiety. The ego, when it senses danger to its own world of illusion, gets scared and will often attack the perceived source of danger to itself. This makes an "attack thought" a "cry for love." I find this useful whenever I am tempted to think someone else has "attacked" me or will "attack" me. If I think "ah, that is really just a cry for love" I find my thoughts and feelings and responses are a lot different than if I think "that person has or is going to hurt me." ACIM also says true praise for God is for us to be "helpful and harmless." No one is likely to fear or attack that which is perceived as "harmless." Yet any of us still might "fear love" if we hold in our hearts unhealed pain from unforgiven "hurts" we understand to have been caused by "love" in the past. So you can stand, as Jesus did in his life, "helpful and harmless" and still be "feared" by others whose unforgiveness is generating anxiety illusions for them and blocking their perception of love while strengthening their egos' illusions. Now I have a lot of questions about what this means "in practice." It would seem that "natural fear" is required for physical survival. ACIM repeatedly warns us against the illusion that we are bodies. So even there, fear is working in service of illusion to some extent. So what attitude should we take to "natural dangers." Again I think of Jesus sleeping in the boat as the disciples feared the storm would drown them all. It's a very natural fear that most of us would probably have shared in that situation. Yet Jesus doesn't share it, he just rebukes the storm, the sea calms. In another storm at sea a few years later, St. Paul prays as the crew prepare for disaster in great anxiety. Paul assures the ship's company that though the ship will be lost, no lives will be lost. Paul inspires belief in the captain and crew and sure enough, the ship founders on a beach and all make it shore safely where the locals are hospitable and take care of their needs. Well there is more that could be said about this but the clock tells me that I need to go to work now and I "fear" what might happen if I don't :). All the best, Doug A Course in Miracles List : 254 members (public) http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/acim-l.html Archive-password: jesus List-Operator: Doug Thompson

See Also:

Source: