I have had a very interesting relationship with fear…

I was a pretty fearful child. It may have begun when I was nearly killed as an infant and the terror I felt then. It may have been a carry-over from being persecuted and murdered for being Who I Am in a past life… It may have been due to being a prophetic seer as a child and dealing with those types of gifts in a conservative Christian household was not always… easy.

Regardless fear was a common fixture. Fear of failure. Fear of God. Fear of the Devil. Fear of doing something wrong. Fear of spankings. Fear of moving. Fear of disapproval. And as I got older – fear for my family members, my husband at the time and on and on.

Having fear as a part of my life for so long, I learned how to cope. I knew every verse of the Bible that talked about how to stop fear by the age of 8. I learned how to do things even if I was afraid…

At some point – I decided I didn’t want to just do things in SPITE of being afraid – I wanted to get rid of it. In this process, I found out the most interesting thing.

The ONLY true cure for Fear – is love.

You See my love – fear typically shows up in our lives INITIALLY as a by-product of a less than desirable/unpleasant outcome to an experience. We are laughed at while standing in front of the class – so we are afraid of public speaking. Someone we know was killed – so we are afraid of whatever we attribute the death to. We were cheated on – and so we are afraid of our partner’s autonomy.

After the initial experience, fear becomes an expression of our imagination and our desire to NOT experience that again. It’s driven by a desire to avoid pain.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense.

And yet – in today’s first world – the vast majority of our fears are UNFOUNDED.

Unfortunately – in a great part due to the internet – we do not have the ability to know they are unfounded. By repetition, we can be inundated with “facts” and statistics that our brain processes in a certain way due to the sheer VOLUME. Our lovely gray matter will then defend that which it perceives as reasons to fear in spite of evidence to the contrary.

We do this interpersonally, societally and politically.

Consider this- whenever someone says “Thee’s nothing to fear” or “Don’t be afraid” how often do you feel compelled to DEFEND your FEAR?

Sit with that for a moment.

Typically this defense of Fear takes the form of discussing a previous situation that happened to ourselves or someone else – but it RARELY if ever is based ONLY on what we are really experiencing NOW.

It is a future projection based on the past at BEST. At worse it is a present and future projection based on simple imagination.

We don’t like to hear that. I get it. It makes us sound silly and foolish. It snatches from us our perception of ourselves as intellectually astute, civilized, logical being and returns us to basically cave people terrified of our own shadows.

And it’s not that far off.

In spite of our technology – we’re still just as prone to these behaviors and beliefs.

And they don’t go away by themselves.

Yes, I know we’re told to give ourselves time to feel our fears and then to turn our faces towards doing whatever work is at hand anyway.

As someone who has worked with and walked with fear for a very long time – let me say…

It doesn’t work.

Because the fear is STILL there. Under the surface. Waiting to strike.

Because FEAR is not BENIGN.

It doesn’t just sit around being still. It buries deep into the psyche, malignant, cancerous… silently infecting EVERYTHING. Fear can not be bargained with or processed through to a nice neat logical place.

Because in the realm of fear, logic doesn’t really matter.

Which brings us back to love.

I’m not going to attempt to make this logical because it’s not. But it is true. LOVE – casts out Fear. Like the most potent spell – Love is the only way to get rid of it. When you turn your face entirely towards love – without quarter to anything else…

Fear goes away.

And it is possible.

If you truly listen – you can hear this as the reason behind any truly sustainable transformation. And if you observe carefully – you can see how it is missing whenever change is NOT sustainable.

One you understand that the only cure for Fear IS love – you understand where the place of lack of understanding is. Yes, my love, I guarantee you that there is a barrier to love somewhere. You can begin to find your own barriers to love. The way you view love that keeps you from really embodying it. The limiting beliefs about love. The FEARS you’ve been confusing WITH love.

See it…. and you can not UNsee it. Cultivate a thirst for it – for knowing and understanding Love, for being the embodiment of it and you’ll never be satiated. THIS leaves no room for fear. Your heart becomes full. Fear has no place to hide.

You go from fear management to making your LIFE a hostile environment for FEAR by its supersaturation with LOVE.

And it works…

I love your face.