What stops you realising your dreams, living the life you really want or sustaining great relationships? What causes debilitating illnesses and diseases?
The simple answer is the presence of FEAR, whether it is at your conscious level of awareness of not. Fear causes us to elicit the 'Fight or Flight' response and construct barriers to PROTECT ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Fear is not a truth, fear is a PERCEPTION. What is fearful to one person may not be to another. Therefore our mind has to perceive danger and recognise fear in order to activate the emotional and physical responses that we experience in our body.
Our perceived notion of danger comes from our thoughts and beliefs, both programmed and instinctual, conscious and unconscious. (A belief is a thought that we keep thinking.)
Certain fears are hardwired and part of our instinctual brain such as if we were confronted by a dangerous animal out in the wild. This is part of our survival mechanism and is not advisable to deactivate.
Other fears come from our experiences and our interpretation of our experiences. Many fears are programmed from the beliefs of others ie parents, teachers, religious leaders, friends etc. Other fears are created before we have the ability to rationalise and we may not be aware they are even there. Some feaful beliefs are subliminally programmed through constant repetition. This is how propoganda and advertising work.
Some fears are in our conscious awareness, others hide in our subconscious and are subtly activated without us knowing that that is what is happening.
Most fears are irrational and not based on an absolute truth. All learned irrational fears can be unlearned and all barriers removed when we learn how to change our thoughts and beliefs!
I used to be terrified of spiders due to a childhood experience. Although my fear response was real, I realised that it was not rational thinking. One day I decided I didn't want that fear anymore and I let it go during a meditation. Since that day I am no longer irrationally afraid of harmless spiders. However, if I was put in a room and told that I was sharing it with an aggressive man eating spider, I am sure that my fear response would be activated.
Next time we will look at the Anatomy of Fear, that is how fear affects our physical body both consciously and unconsciously and at the macro and micro levels.
In the meantime, think about what stops you?
What barriers exist in your life?
How do you protect yourself?
From the Heart
Lynne
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