Fear is the energy of survival. Fear is a reaction to a crumbling foundation. Your foundation forms your sense of safety and security. Fear arises naturally when pain makes is seem as though the foundation of your life is cracking and falling apart. Fear is primal, basic. When the structure of your life looks to be in jeopardy, your ground is shaken. When cracks appear in your safety and security, worry arises and trust is shaken. This is the basis of fear and that is naturally triggered by pain. Pain triggers in you the small child’s sense of insecurity. Mistrust arises as your safety is threatened.
The first aspect of fear that you experience is a need for survival and the grasping for safety and security. This reaction shows up as a resistance to what is happening. The resistance is made up of attachment and aversion. You become attached to a different outcome, a painless outcome. You grasp for relief. When you exist in a resistance to ‘what is’ that resistance causes your ego to move into a dominant position to defend and protect. Fear expands form a survival reaction to a resistance to life; attachment and aversion. You become attached to what you believe will make you happy and keep pain away, and you become averse to what you think will make you unhappy and cause pain.
Fear is a natural reaction. In itself, fear is manageable and not harmful when dealt with consciously. But when entered into unconsciously fear starts a snowball effect that creates suffering.
Fear, experienced consciously, can be held with understanding and the energy of fear can dissipate and be resolved. Fear unresolved, suppressed or distracted from, becomes a dissonant energy that survives in your unconscious energy field and creates separation.
Held unconsciously, fear moves you into protective mode, shutting you down, shutting off people and moving you into Self separation.
Resolution of suffering unfolds when you understand that fear is your reactivity to pain and, if fear is held unconsciously, becomes the start of suffering. Fear is a natural, energetic reaction to pain. Humans and animals all feel fear. Seeing deeply into the fear is the only way resolution is possible. The fear can be ignored and you can distract yourself from it for a lifetime, but to achieve resolution, peace, fulfillment and happiness, that fear requires seeing deeply. Seeing deeply requires you become conscious of the fear. Accept that the fear is there and turn toward it. Acceptance doesn’t mean it was OK that you had to experience pain or what was done was OK. Acceptance means you accept it exists, as it is, now. But do not become the pain or the fear. Witness it, watch it, observe it and do not allow it to overwhelm you. No judgment. No resistance. It takes real courage to see it deeply, in neutrality.
Resolution begins with becoming aware, with mindfulness, of what happened. Resolution requires understanding – deeply seeing. Deeply seeing is experiencing and understanding how and why you suffer. It isn’t a comfortable process because deeply seeing requires you to become aware, to understand and experience it all. Becoming aware of your fear means you stop turning away from the fear and look at it, bring it into the light of awareness and mindfully, in the present moment, without judgment, see your fear.
Understanding your fear is not about a deep psychoanalysis of the causes of your pain and fear. Resolution is not about others and what they did to you. Understanding means you understand what you have done as a result of the pain; understanding the process of fear, separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and patterns you created. Experiencing the fear does not mean you wallow in the emotions or recreate the fearful and painful experiences. It means you feel what is inside you and hold your energy, emotions and thoughts in compassionate, neutral acceptance.
Because you are dealing with pain and fear, you would rather distract yourself than try to understand and feel it. It’s much easier to eat a gallon of ice cream, have sex, drink or binge watch a show on TV. Resolution requires courage. Resolution requires awareness, understanding, experience and acceptance.
Pain creates fear. Fear creates separation. Separation creates personalization. Personalization creates stories. Stories create beliefs. Beliefs create reactive patterns. Together they constitute suffering.
Physical pain can leave a physical scar. Mental and emotional pain can leave an energetic scar. They all can leave unconscious fear embedded within you. Understand all that has grown up around your pain; the scar tissue of fear, separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and patterns. They do not serve you. They separate you from your true Self which, in turn, separates you from others.
When the fear is revealed, when you accept that it is there, when you understand the fear that has arisen around the pain, and when you become conscious of the energy and emotion of fear associated with the pain, you can allow that energy to dissipate. When you hold the energy of fear with neutral, non-judgmental conscious awareness, that conscious awareness has the power to dissolve the fear. It is bringing light to the darkness.
This process is completely about you and your fear. You don’t have to forgive anyone else. It’s not about another person. You are resolving it in you. You don’t have to say it was the best thing for your expansion or that there is a perfection in it. You don’t have to make it different or change it. You don’t have to love it or hate it. It is pain. It is real and it causes you to hurt and feel fear. When your fear is unconscious, rejected or ignored, it is empowered. When you bring it into awareness, remain neutral and accept it is there, you begin the process of disempowering it.
Love and fear are always in a balancing act to see which one will dominate. Love forms a foundation of security and safety. Fear arises when pain shakes your foundation of security and safety. When you feel pain the natural tendency is to remove love from the cause of the pain, generally another person. Resolution is not about loving or forgiving the other person. It is about loving yourself. Resolution arises out of the experience of Self-love, Self-respect, Self-honor, Self-recognition and Self-acceptance. They restore the security and safety to your foundation. Fear abates and love dominates. Compassion arises from that basis.
Resolution only requires that you become aware, conscious. You don’t have to fix, reject or change. When you resolve the fear, then the separation, personalization, stories, beliefs and reactive patterns will no longer be necessary or required to protect you. They will only be a habit that you can, with awareness, discard. Your mind will calm down because it no longer needs to create the stories and live in separation. When fear is resolved you become peaceful, happy and fulfilled naturally because that is your essential nature and resolution allows you to reveal your essential nature.
Your fear is a composite of the need for survival, safety and security, the rise of an ego that is always defending and protecting, and a mind locked in a state of attachment and aversion. Fear, with all its aspects, leads you into separation.