Fear vs. Love?

The polarization of fear and love is one of the most toxic spiritual thought-viruses I know of.

Fear is not the opposite of love. It’s the inception of love.

If love has an opposite, it is the absence of connection — any impulse that closes itself from life. People often do this when they are afraid, so it’s understandable that we have made a story that polarizes love and fear… but it’s the behaviors that turn away — the hatred, the armor, the judgement — that act in opposition of love, not the fear itself.

But… you say, “fear sucks. It sucks to feel afraid, so isn’t that the opposite of love???”

No. Not exactly.

As a healer of 30 years… I have watched literally thousand of people create toxic patterns of dissociation, justification, armor and identity artifice within themselves on the basis of their judgement and fear of fear.

Anyone who has ever really cared about anything, loved anyone, been a parent, founded a business, lost a loved one or taken any real risk to do something you care about or that’s outside of your comfort zone knows that these things can be really scary.

I mean… let’s talk about choosing to have a child, choosing to change a job, choosing to share your real truth in public…

If those things aren’t scary, you’re probably not being honest with yourself.

That flicker of fear in your body is telling you that you’re moving towards something new, an unknown… something that will change your life.

If you aren’t able to be with your fear, you won’t be able to make courageous and loving choices. If you judge and push away your fear, you are likely to dissociate, to make cold, calculating or unconscious choices, or to freeze and not act, not connect, not care. Or, you will hide it somewhere else in your body as self-judgement or self-loathing.

Fear is a sacred thing.

What we fear most is often in the zone of our greatest love, purpose, joy and opportunity.

Fear is an organismic impulse. It’s life loving life — holding to life, caring for life, measuring risk and change.

Yes — fear can be toxic. It can get in the way. It can inhibit clear choice making. But, it can also be a guide and a friend.

We need to better understand the way fear operates in our complex mammalian brains.

Our pre-frontal cortex is designed to project possible negative futures in order to keep us safe. When this is unconscious, fear of imagined futures can paralyze, terrorize and leave us anxious, depressed and stuck. This kind of fear is “false evidence appearing real.” However, when you understand the mechanism, you can begin to work with its wisdom. Gently, with self-awareness and restraint, the pre-frontal cortex can be re-trained as your friend for risk management, good choices and courageous action.

When the amygdala is triggered, we simply can’t think clearly. We received all incoming information through the lens of freeze, fight, flight or faun and loose all capacity for rational thinking.

It’s important to be able to discern when your amygdala is triggered. It generally feels like heat and freeze and passion and defense all at the same time. The practice here is taking a pause and clearing your space — honoring what triggered you but not seeking to respond until you can restore calm. Again — this is the survival genius in the human organism at work. Best to embrace it and work with it. Whatever was triggered is showing you something you really care about, so if you honor the trigger, then restore calm, you are then empowered to actually face whatever triggered you in the first place from a more integrated place in yourself. You can’t do this if you’re busy judging the fear itself.

And, when your body and hind brain recoils… it usually means that something is actually not good for you — like putting your hand in a fire or getting too close to an oncoming car, or instinctively knowing that another person is unsafe or violent. The loving thing to do is move in the other direction.

Courage does not mean being without fear, it means acting in integrity with fear.

Chogyam Trungpa wrote about “the Tender Heart of Fearlessness.” In Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, he describes the tender heart of fearlessness like the emerging, fuzzy buds of a deer’s antlers. The heart of fearlessness begins with immense vulnerability. It is soft and easily scratched. Then, with maturity and use, it gradually strengthens to become a proud rack of antlers.

It takes vulnerability to fully live love. And, this vulnerability must embrace your fear.

The kinds of risks we must take to FULLY LIVE are scary.

Spirituality without embrace of fear is just an adult-child’s fantasy of a “somewhere over the rainbow” refuge the ego designed to to mask our fear of the real risks of meeting life.

So…

Please welcome your fear. Please honor it. Please work with your fear with wisdom, tenderness and respect.