HEALING FEAR          

          Life's two strongest motivators are love and fear.  The catalyst of love -- for a person, an activity, or for life itself -- engenders openness, strength, energy, confidence and a sense of letting go and relaxation.  The catalyst of fear generates anger, resentment, frustration, criticism, defensiveness and a feeling of constriction of energy.  In the body, fear causes muscle tension, rapid heartbeat and erosion of the immune system.  Quite obviously, learning to take control of our lives must include learning to understand and minimize fear.  We can learn to be propelled by love.

          As you work with affirmation feedback exercises, you may touch on some of your fears.  Be glad that they've come to the surface.  When we can identify our fears, we reduce their impact on our lives.  Facing our fears, understanding and exploring them, will release them. 

          You are only as safe as you allow yourself to feel. We can reinforce a sense of security and peace just as easily as we reinforce a sense of fear.  First we need to understand what fear really is.

          Fear is a lack of understanding that we have created, and are currently creating, our lives.  Fear is a negative prayer, a negative affirmation.  Fear is a belief that a bad thing is more likely to happen than a good one.  We justify our fears by pointing to the ugly stories we read in newspapers or see on television. 

          Certainly, bad things happen in the world.  But ask yourself a few questions.  Do you have to talk about them, worry about them and inhale them into the cells of your body?  Do you want to waste mental time and energy worrying about something that never happens?  Can you lock your car or home simply out of habit or prudence rather than fear?  Will feelings of fear help you to deal with a bad situation if it happens to you?  And most important, are you willing to understand that your thoughts are powerful magnets that can potentially draw what you fear right to your own back door?

          To live life in its highest form, we need to free ourselves from fear.  We can take practical precautions and feel no fear.  We can live from moment to moment with joyous expectation of wonderful things coming into our lives.  To live in such a way is not naive.  It's a powerful affirmation. 

          Is it so very sophisticated to spend energy worrying about something that never happens?  Or is it a better use of intelligence to mentally experiment with the broadest range of possibilities and solutions?  Is it wise to focus your concentration on a fear and thereby, actually bring it into your life?  Many people pour over medical books that catalog the symptoms of diseases, and then develop the very disease they worried about.  The mind is so incredibly powerful that it will, indeed, produce that which you focus your thoughts upon.

          Now is the time to begin to trust yourself and your world.  Trust is a gift of relief and peace that you give to yourself.