How To Overcome Fear

One of the biggest questions I’ve had in this lifetime is how to overcome fear. Also, in working with people in WellBeing Alignment Sessions this subject comes up again and again. Recently, during a week of absolute terror, Life gave me an up-close and personal "tutorial" in what causes fear and what our deepest fear comes from.

Most Fear Is Not Caused
By Outer Circumstances

One of the things that challenges us as we begin to learn how to overcome fear, is the fact that we are conditioned to think that we are victims of circumstances. We must realize that this is simply not true. The only real outer cause for fear that we experience is when the body produces a cellular fear, like when you hear a loud noise, are in danger of falling, or a locomotive is rushing its way toward you.

Our Deepest Fear Is Caused
By The Thoughts We Think

If we are facing fear and it isn’t the cellular fear described above, we are holding a judgment, opinion or a label about someone else, ourselves, or a situation. We are holding a fixed thought in mind about a subject that we accept as reality and then react to. And this we can change! Stay with me here and we’ll talk about how to do that.

When We Hold Onto Opinions Or
Judgments We Edge God Out

When we have a judgmental thought and believe it, we become the “god” of our universe. We are “right” and decide the “truth” of how things are or should be. Consequently, we’ve edged God / Source out of the picture. "Ego" is an acronym for “edging God out.” In effect, we have seemingly separated ourselves from God. It is actually impossible to separate from God, but ego has been convincing us to believe we are a separate ego for eons.

What is the natural result of edging God out? Fear. Terror. Suspicion. Resentment. Vengeance. The ego thinks it has messed with God, big time, and is terrified it’s going to be punished. Then it mobilizes its defenses and prepares to defend itself against attack, which is only happening within the illusion of ego mind.

The result is that we are flooded with emotional and physical negativity. Until we decide to learn how to overcome fear, we usually don’t connect the cause (our judgments and opinions) with the effects (fear and negative emotions) in our conscious mind; it is all happening beneath our conscious awareness.

As Long As We Think We Are
A Body, We Suffer

In the process of learning how to overcome fear, if we believe that our reality is that we are a separate body, interacting with other separate bodies, and that this dream we all seem to be living in is our one true reality, we will still be facing fear and the whole gamut of negative emotions. This is because we’ve chosen to live our lives as a separate ego, “edging God out.”

Ego is just an illusion that believes it is real, but separate from God, and is therefore miserable! Consequently, when the ego continues to run unchecked by our conscious awareness, it fosters negative energies that range anywhere from suspicious to vicious.

To Learn How To Overcome Fear, Switch Allegiance
From The Problem To The Solution

Not only fear, but any negative emotion, is caused by holding judgments, opinions, grievances, resentments, expectations and the like. The uncomfortable emotion we feel is a signal to us that our thinking is out of alignment with Source and wellbeing. It is actually helping us to learn how to overcome fear. If we continue to stay out of alignment, the emotional distress trickles down into our physical body and eventually becomes physical dis-ease and suffering. All thought produces form, either as outer circumstances or as physical ailments.

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of what you think, and everything you do, Is for your self, and there isn’t one.” Wu Wei Wu

As we’re learning how to overcome fear, at those times when negative emotions come up so strongly and so uncontrollably, we need to be willing to stop the train of thought. Yes, decide to just stop it. At the first thought, before the thought train builds, You can declare to yourself: “Stop! I’m not interested in my opinions, judgments and labels anymore. I’m much more interested in peace and harmony.”

We need to decide that our peace is more important to us than being “right.” We need to turn our attention back to love and remember that we are with God / Source, right now, in this very moment, and have never been separate from God. We are a thought within our Source and therefore we live IN Source, now and forever.

Source Can’t Remove Fear From Us
Until We Release The Cause

When we choose to live life from ego, “edging God out,” we are locked into its thought system of separation and pain. Since there is a cause and effect relationship (judgments being the cause and fear being the effect), unless we release our judgments, and thereby leave the world of ego and enter consciously into our true Reality with Source, we just keep creating more fear whether we realize it or not.

So even though we may be praying to God to show us how to overcome fear, if we’re holding onto any kind of a judgment, label or negative opinion about a situation, we keep ourselves locked in fear.

Most Of Our Judgments And Resistance
Are In Our Subconscious Mind

As we learn how to overcome fear, on the surface we may be aware of feeling “off” or at odds with ourselves or the world, but without a clear sense of why that is. This is because most of the beliefs and thoughts that seem to separate us from love and Source exist within our subconscious mind. It is the subconscious mind that projects all of its un-healed energies out into the dream of the world, which creates the circumstances of our lives.

As Gary Renard (A Course In Miracles Teacher) said in a recent talk: “The whole universe isn’t being done TO you, it’s being done BY you.”

If The Cause Of Most Fear Is
Unconscious, How Can We Heal It?

During my week of terror, I was highly motivated to learn how to overcome fear and get back into alignment with Source and wellbeing. I focused my attention on searching out opinions, judgments, expectations, and labels about myself, others and circumstances. And wow, was I ever amazed at how much there was!

I had such a habit of letting negative thoughts creep in and take root, that I realized I needed to make a daily commitment to peace. And then I discovered that that wasn’t enough. I need to commit to releasing negative thoughts all day long, literally hundreds of times. Learning how to overcome fear is an ongoing process.

And, it works! I began to feel relief the first day I got serious about coming back into alignment with Source and wellbeing. Not only that, the first day I devoted myself to taking responsibility for my thoughts and letting go of judgment, the outer circumstances that I THOUGHT were creating my terror changed. Form always follows thought. Peaceful thoughts bring peaceful circumstances.

As I continue to do this practice, I’m experiencing a greater expansion of light than I ever have before. Now, when fear arises, I search to see what judgment or opinion I’m hanging onto and I stop “edging God out” and release the judgment. The fear is released right along with it.

I highly recommend this practice!

Daily Commitment Is Essential For
Overcoming Fear And Negative Emotions

To learn how to overcome fear, every day we can make a commitment to…

“At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.” Thich Nhat Hanh

… be a loving, compassionate Presence. Even if we don’t know how to do this, we can commit to it, which opens up a channel to the Divine Mind we share with God and each other, enabling us to access the infinite light and love that is here.

… be willing to take responsibility for all of our thoughts. The key here is willingness. After lifetimes of unconscious habits of negative thinking, we won’t do this perfectly, especially at first. But our willingness aligns our energy with the Divine and IT does the healing for us. When we experience the resulting love and light, our willingness to continue taking responsibility for our thoughts automatically increases.

… release all our judgments, opinions, resentments, grievances, expectations, and labels, and offer them to Spirit for healing. Let them go. Choose peace for yourself and everyone else. Remember, we all share the same mind. If I’m indulging a negative thought storm, it will affect ALL of us.

… say “Stop! I’m not interested in my opinions any more. I’m much more interested in peace,” at the first sight of a thought whose goal is separation rather than peace and unity. This way we can catch it before the negative thoughts multiply and drench us with negativity.

… take a few moments each hour of the day to look inside for a negative judgment or opinion about someone or something and offer it up to Spirit for healing.

… be compassionate with ourselves and each other when we fail to do these things. We can just keep coming back to our willingness and let Source do the rest. Every moment is a new opportunity!

Willingness Is Really
All It Takes

When we’ve “edged God out” and ego has set up shop as the authority in our lives, anything that busts open the illusion of ego and brings the truth and light in can be met with a lot of resistance from ego. As we're learning to overcome fear, there really are only two choices that we have in every moment. We can choose fear, which is the realm of the ego, or we can choose love, which is our true Reality with Source.

Deciding what we really want – fear or love – is the first step in dealing with our egoic resistance. Then once we’ve chosen, we need to keep reaffirming our willingness to end suffering once and for all. We need to devote ourselves to peace to develop a new habit of becoming aware of our thoughts and aligning them with Source.

When we are willing to change our thinking, the infinite power of Source joins us with It’s love and strength, and corrects our thinking for us, bringing us closer to our Reality, our True Home in love and light.

We All Share Mind

There is another really cool thing about learning how to overcome fear and negative emotion. As each of us is willing to choose love and let go of our resentments, judgments, expectations and opinions, thereby allowing Source to heal our unconscious stuff, the easier and faster it is for EVERYONE to do it!

Here is the reason. From the perspective of this dream life, we operate with a split mind – God Mind and ego mind, although ego mind is actually an illusion. God Mind is our Reality, where we are joined with God and each other in love, peace and harmony. This is our true Reality which has always been and will always be. We have never been separate from Source.

And, interestingly, even in the illusory ego mind, we are still joined in one mind. There is actually only one ego, which appears to be split off into many separate egos that appear to live in many separate bodies.

Consequently, we all share the same “stuff” in the illusion of ego mind and we all share the same love, compassion, harmony and unity within God Mind. The more we all focus on our shared God Mind, the easier it is for EVERYONE to focus there. One “in-light-ened” thought uplifts our whole shared mind.

As more and more light-filled thoughts fill our shared mind, a tipping point occurs. At that point the light increases exponentially and we ALL are uplifted into a higher state of light and love. So any love-filled thought that you focus on makes it easier and faster for ALL of us to learn how to overcome fear and find our way back to the realization that we’re living within Source, and have never left Source. We’ve only dreamed (nightmared!) that we did.

Put Your Future In
Source’s Hands

I’ll finish here with one more way to learn how to overcome fear. At the beginning of every day and all through the day you can affirm “I place this day and my future in the hands of God / Source.” If you focus sincerely on this thought for a few minutes, you will immediately feel a burden being lifted for you. Then, while God is taking care of the future (and believe me He’ll do a much better job than ego!), He also heals the past and present, because they all exist simultaneously.

Together we can learn how to overcome fear, and together we can heal ALL of us and go Home!

From "How To Overcome Fear"
continue on to
"Personal Accountability – Reclaiming Our Judgments,
Projections And Ourselves"

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