Posted by Roberta Grimes • June 19, 2021 • 32 Comments
Book News, Human Nature, Understanding Reality
Love is but a song we sing. Fear’s the way we die.
You can make the mountains ring, or make the angels cry.
Though the bird is on the wing, and you may not know why,
Come on people now. Smile on your brother!
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.
– Chet Powers (1937-1994), From “Get Together” (1967)
THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF
Those words are more than a political slogan. In truth, they are the one absolutely fundamental fact of human existence. We should recite them daily. Perhaps use them instead of just saying “hello” to greet our friends, and cross-stitch and hang them on our bedroom wall so they are the first words we will see each morning and the last we’ll see at night. “You are a powerful, eternal being. You never began, and you never will end.” My variation on those most important words is part of the signoff from my Seek Reality podcast each week. And once you have internalized the encouragement of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and its correlate truth that I share with you, the day will come when you have grown past your human tendency to manufacture fears. You will be fearless. And you will be empowered!
The fact that our egos easily manufacture fears was at one point essential to human survival. We have talked here about the fact that the ego is not part of our eternal minds, but rather it is an artifact of our material bodies whose primary purpose is to preserve our bodies’ lives. The ego is a literal furnace of fear! We were prey animals for most of the two hundred thousand years of our existence, so our ability to react with instant terror to anything that was at all unusual was crucial. We are alpha predators now, but still ghost stories and horror movies can produce in us a thrill of fight-or-flight terror. Even though there is no actual threat. And in just the same way, every fear in our lives – from financial worries through supernatural terrors – is ego-manufactured and utterly bogus. Our task now is not to fight our fears, but rather it is to teach our minds to stop reacting to the ego’s alarms. As is true of anger, fear is an ego-manufactured reaction that can be short-circuited to the point where your ego will no longer react with fear to any kind of threat. And simply avoiding being afraid is a whole lot easier than it is to keep reacting to irrational fears the same way primitive people reacted to real dangers.
Jesus told us this, although what we have preserved in the Gospels is somewhat obscure. Of course, we cannot now know all of what He said in His more than three years of public teaching, and it may well be that those who heard Him speak considered fear to be such a normal reaction that they ignored some of what He said about it. But as we read His words now, we can see that He was impatient with the people around Him who reacted with fear to anything. For example, when a storm rocked their little boat and His terrified disciples awakened Him, He said, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and sea, and everything became perfectly peaceful (MT 8:25-27).
He also tried to help us understand that we really have nothing to fear, since we are infinitely precious to God. He said, “Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows (LK 12:6-7). And he told us not to worry about a lack of basic things, like having clothing or enough to eat. He said, “But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom (LK 12:31-32). When we understand that fear is the opposite of love, and that it was therefore the Lord’s intention to move us away from fear so we will be empowered to love more perfectly, we can see His efforts in His Gospel words.
The Lord speaks about fear more definitively in His Introduction to A Course in Miracles. The Course was channeled in the late nineteen-sixties by a team of advanced beings that reportedly Jesus led. Thomas tells me that since humankind had been ignoring His Gospel teachings in favor of man-made Christian dogmas, it was the Lord’s intention to give us the same message at a more advanced level. And the Course is advanced, all right! It flies so far over our heads that few people can grasp all that it has to offer unless we read it as part of a study group. Here are its profound introductory words that came to us directly from Jesus:
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
(ACIM, T-in.1:1-2:4)
Those italicized words are as profound as anything Jesus ever says in the Gospels. It has taken me until now to realize that! A Course in Miracles is essentially a course in unwinding the ego’s power. In fact, when you do the Course with a study group you are warned that you will get to a point where your ego starts to fight back, hard! My study group called getting past that point “the extinction of the ego.” It does feel as if you have fought your ego and won; but rather than extinction, it is only the moment when you teach your ego that you are its boss.
Many students consider the Course’s central “miracle” to be forgiveness, but I realize only now that – just as is true of the Lord’s Gospel words – the entire subtext of the Course is freedom from fear. Whenever Jesus talks about love, that is really what He is saying. When He talks about forgiveness, that also is what He is saying! As He says just above in the Introduction to His entire Course in Miracles, “what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”
Once you are only love, you will never again in your life be angry or fearful or in any way negative about anything!
When I told you I am only now realizing that the teaching of Jesus about love which is the basis of both the Gospels and A Course in Miracles is in fact not just one miracle, but two – it is both forgiveness and an absolute freedom from fear – I meant that literally. I first saw it only this past Friday. Thomas had taught me to stop being afraid without my ever realizing that our need to vanquish fear is in itself a central part of the Lord’s miraculous message!
What my guide did to prepare me to vanquish fear forevermore was something that you ought to begin to do for yourself. And right away:
Once you have taken these four steps, and as you work on learning complete forgiveness, your personal consciousness vibration will begin to rise naturally away from fear and toward more perfect love. And to answer the question that we asked last week, raising your personal vibration is the only way to really protect yourself against negative entities! Even if you are not yet at an above-average level of spiritual development, no non-material being can affect you unless you allow that being to make you afraid. It will feed on your fear, which will make it stronger; and meanwhile, the fear it has inspired in you will in itself make you vulnerable to negative influences. It’s a vicious and malevolent cycle, and the only way to break it is to retrain your mind to ignore the frantic efforts of your ego to make you angry and to make you afraid. When you have learned to short-circuit your automatic reaction to all your ego’s shrieking, you can get to the point where you never will feel fear or anger, ever again in your life.
And living your life in that beautiful place will feel wonderful! The reduction in stress, the increase in joy, and the freedom to love every other human being in the selfless and abundant way that is the natural impulse that lies beneath our hatreds and fears is what all of us came to earth to find! We aren’t there quite yet. But next week we will talk about how we will recognize the moment when perfect love has at last crowded out all of its illusory opposites….
Come on people now, smile on your brother.
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.
Come on people now, smile on your brother.
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.
– Chet Powers (1937-1994), From “Get Together” (1967)
Roberta, Your message here is true for the existence of our immortal soul.
Our mortal life depends for its sustainment on fear, and to an extent on legitimate anxiety over possible threats. I just had a very painful bout from a staph infection, and, after several rounds of pain, the fear of the next round drove my into the ER where the infection was diagnosed and the right antibiotic was administered. The current forceful indoctrination of Critical Race Theory into our DoD and schools is a moral disaster by teaching children that they are condemned at birth to suffer an awful life because of their skin color, White, Black or Brown, and must fight against each other; it also acts to destroy civility and preaches the opposite of the Golden Rule–so, it needs to be resisted, and not resisting would be sinful.
Just watched a good movie today, A call to Spy, and the ever constant fear of getting caught was critical to mission and personal survival. Mortal life involves managing fear, but also averting what is authentically feared.
Dear Jack, having sensible concerns about the symptoms of an illness, or about harmful lessons being taught to children, or about being careful not to break laws against committing felonies, or about avoiding walking alone in questionable neighborhoods, is not the “fear” that we are talking about this week. Far from it! Think of legitimate, self-protective concerns as useful. But none of those concerns triggers fight-or-flight panic. Of course you can see the difference!
The fear that can come from horror movies, panic-driven news blasts, or listening to preaching about a fiery hell is absolutely of no value to us whatsoever, but rather it is spiritual poison. I have lived for twenty years now without ever coming near feeling those sorts of fears (although I do remember them very well). My life has been gloriously peaceful. And somehow, I have survived!
Roberta, this might just be your “Finest Work Ever”. A home run with the bases loaded.
Oh my dear friend, thank you for saying that! I’m sending you a big hug!!
“Where have you been all my life?” That’s an old pick-up line, for those of you who never heard it. It came to mind this morning, Roberta, as I read your wisdom about fear. I have come to the realization that the manifestation of my greatest fear, having the love of my life seemingly vanish without a trace, started me on the path to the greatest gift he could have given me, the exploration and discovery of The Big Picture. It began with an interview I saw of you on television, talking about your book with an incongruous title, The Fun of Dying. Today, as I am reading your thoughts, I thanked my beloved (out loud) for having the courage to carry out our pre-birth plan, knowing it would force me to confront my biggest fears of abandonment and loss. Now I find myself still in the throes of grief, but I have learned that this is a normal and physical reaction to a loss of this magnitude. I learned this because of this path of discovery that I took because of my loss and desperate search for answers about why–why–why. So now I want to thank you for your part in this journey, beginning with an instant feeling of “I like this lady!” when I saw your interview, and for your book with a catchy title .
My dear Janelle, I am so glad that we connected, and that you have found my words helpful! You very accurately realize that you are on an exciting Spirit-inspired journey of discovery, as are so many of us. And you are embracing that journey so beautifully! I have read your comment a number of times today, just loving the exultant energy in it. Godspeed and God bless, dear beautiful Janelle!
Thank you so very much. I am beginning to realize that in this incarnation my primary goal is to be free of egos fears. Looking back at my life it seems to be constituted of one set of fears after another. A big fear was religion and church. It took me to become an ordained pastor, a master of divinity degree, and 11 years as a pastor to be able to speak truth to my congregation and to walk away free of fear of religion and god.
Your advice about TV, politics, religion, and realization of eternal life is spot on and I am doing better nowadays. The next great challenge for me is the fear of fear itself (thanks Winston). I find myself cowering in anticipation of the next ego generated fear. A form of this is fear of conflict which I fearfully avoid. Any advise Roberta?
My dear Mike, you very well describe the problem that letting ego-driven fears take too much of a hold on us can create in our lives. The fear can become a problem in itself, an unpleasant experience that we recoil from, and that “fear of fear” can become a handicap in our lives. I am so sorry!
My suggestions are these:
1) Double down on the four fear-defeating measures listed in the post above, and especially the first and also the fourth. Once you truly no longer fear death, you won’t ever again suffer much fear at all! If you are rigorous about this you should begin within weeks to have better control and feel more peaceful.
2) Work on short-circuiting your anger reflex as well, since it is first cousin to fear and also ego-based. Learning prevenient forgiveness should help a great deal.
If you will send me an email through the green contact block, I will send you PDFs of The Fun of Dying and The Fun of Growing Forever, both of which should help you conquer your ego-based fears. And please let me know how you are doing!
Dearest Roberta,
This is a beautiful blog post. It is a very important one.
Is fear not the chief obstacle to love? And isn’t feeling the Love of God what we yearn to feel at core, as much as we can? I mean, consciously or unconsciously people just seem to have this deep need for love.
Sometimes the yearning for love expresses as a constant need to be accepted by others. The fear of rejection is at base the fear of losing love. Perhaps conforming to group norms in terms of behavior, dress and belief is part of this. Who knows, even the desire to have a thousand social media ‘friends’ may simply be a cry to be loved! Perhaps seeking fame is basically a desire for ‘mass love.’ Finding a life partner certainly involves the deep need to give and receive love, as is sharing life with family and friends.
So as a species we might safely be able to say, that we human beings are predisposed to love.
What if the desire for Oneness with God is in fact deep yearning for the ultimate state of Love; eternal and all-encompassing?
If love is so important, wouldn’t we do whatever it takes to clear away the obstacles it to its fulfillment? Is it not wise then, to do those four things you mention here, Roberta. I’ve been attempting them already and it is amazing how my daily happiness ‘vibe’ has lifted, now I’m no longer bound to the ugly news cycle, or to watching gruesome crimes on forensic based police dramas. (Believe me, politics in Australia is so boring, and our politicians are so underwhelming, that this stuff is easy to put aside.)
And I’m learning one incredible thing: the more I forgive, live fearlessly and express love to others – the more I can feel that God does love me. So should we eschew fear and become ever more loving, we can actually feel the love the Divine has for us. It becomes becomes clearer; easier to actually experience. It becomes palpable. In the end you don’t believe God loves you – you KNOW.
…. Sometimes this knowing just happens to you, even when you are not thinking of anything in particular. You realize that Love is just there for you. ❣️
Efrem: You’re so right. We seem to be wired to want love, and even those with twisted minds do things in a desperate attempt to find love. Of course, they aren’t aware of this, but people like yourself who ARE aware of it find it much easier to make this work for them.
Dear Lola, yes, I agree that there are some ways that we search for “love” which are utterly not loving. One example is the search for enduring fame that is behind many mass shootings, bombings, etc., as if being infamous is the only kind of “love” that some people can find.
Hi Lola 👋
True, as you say: ‘even those with twisted minds do things in a desperate attempt to find love.’
I can’t help but wonder what would happen if many more people who aren’t aware that they do so many different things to find love, would understand that the inner motivation is, in fact, the core need.
Imagine if people who were not conscious of the fact that the need for love is the prime motivator were taught about this. Of course, as Roberts points out, this also speaks to the deep desire to be rid of fear that we humans feel at core. Hence love and forgiveness are fear’s antidote.
Could you imagine how society would change if love awareness was taught to students and discussed widely by adults, even in mass media? Instead of a huge swathe of talk shows, movies and series being devoted to the horrors of psychopathy, love awareness would become the popular subject of the day. One can only imagine how society would change for the better. 😉🌅
To Lola: Correction, paragraph three: ‘Roberts’ should read ‘Roberta’. Apologies. 😣
Dear Efrem, in fact we are told that fear is love’s direct opposite. Not hatred, in other words, although hatred is fear’s cousin. And I think your observation that the search for approval and acceptance is a search for love is an important one!
As is your point that the more we follow the four bullet-points above, the happier we are. When I first gave up television, I thought vaguely for a year or two that I had to be missing something important. I mean, no more “Just Breaking!” or “This Just In!” bombshells, ever again? But it turns out that either it’s important so you’ll know about it, or it isn’t and you won’t. TV is absolutely, utterly useless and a waste of the precious minutes of your life. And, YES! Forgiving and rising above all ego-based fears does make you feel closer to God! And you know that is happening – you can feel it. The old-style religion’s praise of “God-fearing” people is so ironic, when fear like that is an active barrier between us and the genuine Godhead!
Thanks Efrem for sharing your thoughts about our built in need for love and our earthly striving to cultivate and find love. I enjoyed reading your thoughts about how we, consciously or unconsciously, are seeking love. Finding and realizing God’s Love reminds me of the Buddha saying seeking God (Love) is like riding on an ox looking for an Ox.
Hi Mike N 👋,
Thank you for you kind words 🙏🏼and encouragement. I feel for you and your struggle with fears, which are a product of ego. It’s the small ‘pseudo-self’ of ego that furiously tries to stay alive by making us feel afraid and powerless. As you know, we are actually the true self of Spirit. We are consciousness eternal; we are beings of light and are one with each other in God.
I too have had to set aside religion based, divine rejection fears. These fears are stubborn – until they are not. Please don’t believe that they are all but too hard to expel. They cave in after a time, and you realize that such perceived stubbornness was yet another trick of the ego! 😉
You are receiving Roberta’s books: One I have found particularly effective in depicting how wonderful our Afterlife truly is! It is our birthright from God who loves us too perfectly to be put off by our human imperfections. The second contains an (unexpectedly) clear and targeted way to raise your own vibration and grow in Spirit. It is great for moving beyond fear! (The author has used herself as the subject for the experiment on spiritual growth within the book.) I think you will love these unique and outstanding books.
Godspeed and may your path be the joy of discovery. 🌅
Dear Efrem, “These fears are stubborn… until they are not” is so completely true! My ego fought so fiercely, it inspired such deep fears in me that I was about to be extinguished forever, that the morning I woke up to the realization that it is just a feeble little gremlin and wrong about everything was such an amazing event that nearly 20 years later I still remember it the way you remember what you were doing when Kennedy was shot or the Challenger space craft exploded or the twin towers fell, or whatever was the formative event of your own youth. The ego really is so puny and weak! But you can’t see that until you have defeated it for good.
My dear Mike, this is a lovely point! I think of the search for God as something like a fish’s search for water: since God’s love is the water in which we swim, and nothing ever really is not-God, we can have some trouble recognizing just how completely we are divinely loved.
Hi Roberta, hi everybody!
Thank you for this insightful look at what in a modern world must be the weirdest motivation ever. Fear and anger are negative emotions, and they both separate us from our social ties as well as our natural state, which we now realize is cooperative not competitive—at least not competitive with our social group.
Yet think of how many “self help” books tell us to “use our fear and anger” as a tool. No wonder it is fear itself we have to fear.
Dear Mike, you make a great point. To many people, aggressive-feeling negative emotions seem more powerful than do emotions like love and compassion, but in fact fear and anger are the weakest emotions of all! Their fury is turned inward. They harm us, but they have no power against the highest vibrating emotions. It seems to be true, though, that while our culture remains so negative, we don’t see love very accurately either. I think that’s what we will be talking about next week. (This early in the week, I get just hints; I have learned to wait until Thursday before I write anything much down.)
There are self help books that describe how to use fear and anger as a tool? I can’t imagine how that would work, especially anger, as that completely clouds someone’s rational thought processes. Unfortunately, getting rid of anger is very hard to do in some cases. Maybe our egos “keep the ball rolling” as without an ego, I don’t think anger could exist for very long.
Fear and anger can only disempower us. They make it impossible for us to think clearly. Fear triggers the overwhelming need for us to flee whatever is the situation at hand, while anger blinds us. No, I don’t think such deeply negative emotions can be useful tools for much of anything!
I wish I could think of some specific examples. I know I have come across then at various times throughout my life—not to mention quasi-inspirational messages that advise people to channel their anger. I think this idea is based on the idea that there is adrenaline that gives people the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. It has never worked for me.
Dear Mike, I can recall reading this sort of advice as well in my travels. It seems to be a product of Western culture, with its history of wars and subjugation, that the physical agitation that is part of being very angry is sometimes seen as a kind of power. But of course, it really isn’t power – rather, anger is an insuperable burden that weakens and exhausts us.
Dearest Roberta,
I am somewhat puzzled about MT 8:26, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”. If the disciples should have faith in Jesus’ ability to calm the winds and the sea, what would be the source of that faith. Up to this point, the disciples had seen Jesus’ ability to heal and to exorcise, but nothing like controlling physical phenomena like wind. I wonder if this isn’t one of those red-letter verses that were edited a bit.
If I were a disciple in those circumstances, having been scared out of my wits thinking my boat was about to be swamped, the last thing I would want is criticism for not doing something about the situation.
Am I reading this correctly?
Cookie
Dear Cookie, I think the translation is accurate. Whatever Aramaic word Jesus used that after translation through Greek into English was rendered as “faith” seems to have been not “belief” in the power of Jesus, or of God, but rather something like “confidence” in the power of their own minds. Recall that Jesus said, “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you” (MT 17:20). Here, I think He is telling them that they each have the power to calm the storm themselves, and by now they should have learned enough from Him to realize that!
Dearest Roberta,
This, “They should have learned enough from Him” clarifies things. Being a member of the Godhead apparently does not mean that Jesus could not get impatient with his disciples now and then.
Cookie
Oh my goodness, dear Cookie, Jesus was so often frustrated and even exasperated by the thickness and dullness of those around Him! He would say things like, “How long will I have to put up with this?” (But in ancient idiom.) Then in the Temple courtyard, nearing His departure from this world and seeing the people selling birds to be sacrificed idiotically and to no purpose, knowing that was going to continue to go on even after He had gone through that earth-life in an effort to end all the garbage and bring humankind to a new level of oneness with God, He finally lost it and threw His magnificent divine tantrum. It was a gloriously human reaction!
Roberta, I’m making a permanent copy of the 4 steps and putting it on my wall.
Oh my dear friend, you make me smile! I wish you Godspeed on this beautiful journey into ever more serene freedom and perfect peace!
Dearest Roberta and fervent bloggers .. having lived a fear based life triggered by pursuing to be perfect so that I could be loved which was instilled by my dads insecurities fears . I am so encouraged by this weeks blog snd conversations .. because of the above I feared from an early age that when anyone died around me I would never see them because they were not good enough for heaven which then instilled s morbid fear of death .. you have no idea how much I look forward to the weekly conversations from all of you and how albeit minuscule the progress I am making towards letting this fear go .. however it is progress .. thankyou Roberta for the wonderful work you have done and are doing .. my next goal is too listen to a podcast on a walk everyday .. that too is taking control of my fear and starting to “wallow “in all the conversations to boot this ego based fear ..
thank you all again c u next week
Oh my dear Louise, I am so glad that you find our efforts here to be helpful! You can indeed vanquish all fears, completely and eternally, because there is nothing whatsoever that ever can touch God’s best-beloved child. We are going to talk about this fact over the next couple of weeks, and try to fathom the infinite depth of God’s love for you in particular. Meanwhile, I’m sending you the biggest hug, dear beautiful friend!