Fear - The Enemy Within

It's taken me until fairly recently to recognise that which holds me back. The Universe is full of infinite possibilities - I know this - I believe this, so what's stopping me from harnessing this? The same thing that stops so many others: fear. You see, fear is the stealth enemy within us, disguised as our caring friend "don't do that", "watch out", "that could be a bad idea", handing out protective warnings here and there, for our own good...or is it?

To put my level of fear into perspective, after years of being raped, my fear of it happening again was so intense that I wouldn't eat out at a cafe incase I needed the loo, I was frightened that someone might follow me and attack me. Ridiculous, right? Fear breeds fear.

Upon telling my talking therapist about this, I was told that fear is innate and helpful as it stops us from doing bad things such as putting our hand in the fire. So there I had it - a one-way ticket to Fearsville where I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted. Something inside me told me this was wrong and besides I didn't want to stay, I wanted to leave but I was totally lost as to how.

Along the way I had many diagnoses of anxiety and stress, but all they really are is fear manifesting physically. If you are suffering from any of these, please don't take this post as a reason not to follow your Drs. advice, but do use it to examine for yourself what is happening to you. If I'd only known back then that all I really needed to do to get better was to face fear eye-to-eye and watch it wither and die. Again, this is very personal to my journey so please continue to seek professional medical help if you need it.

There are but two true human emotions in this life - one is love (our natural state) and the other is fear (our learnt state). You can always trace your emotions back to one of these two. For example, suspicion, anger, blame can all be traced back to fear. While, trust, kindness and forgiveness can all be traced back to love.

To be truly happy we need to be in our natural state of love but the world around us wants us to be in a state of fear. Fear makes us follow rules, comply and buy stuff. Love makes us free, creative and we don't feel the need to fill our lives with material or superficial things. I prefer the natural state of love - call me a hippy - I don't care.

I'm currently fighting a hard battle with fear. One I'm going to win. I'm undoing years of belief systems and years of attracting more reasons to be fearful to me. Like all things, there is a balance to be struck. 

Like yin-yang, love and fear can co-exist, but really if you think about it, love is light and fear is dark, we know of the light because we can compare to the dark and vice-versa. However, let light in to a dark space and light takes over. Love can save the day!

To help in my battle with fear, I now trace all my emotions and actions back and if I'm not acting from love, I don't allow the action at all. I ask myself "what would love do here?" and that's what I do instead.

I wonder how many people could improve their lives every day using that simple method? I wonder how many depressed, anxious and stressed people are being held captive by fear? 

I'm getting out there, I'm living life fuller than ever and giving fear the cold shoulder. I hope one day that we can all do this, it would see the end to war and the world will live as one (as a great song-writer once wrote!). 

This post is dedicated to everyone who has lived in fear or is still living in fear for whatever reason. May it give you hope and a helping hand in our battle against the dark. 

Have a fabulous weekend full of love and free from fear, my lovely blog-readers!

Light piercing through the dark clouds.