Revisiting my old friend, "Fear".

It's amazing to me that in retrospect, I can see in so many ways how fear interweaves itself so solidly into our lives. It makes many of our personal boundaries, stops us from making personal boundaries. Fear stops us from moving forward at times and then again can push us ahead blindly.

Fear makes us avoid relationships or jump into them. Fear is with us when we wake up and when we close our eyes. And any fear based anxieties we have not faced openly while awake will come to confront us in our dreams.

Each of us experience fear in our own way but in different manners and means.
I can see some of the impact and influence that fear has in my own life. I can see how it affects people as groups, organizations, civilizations. It is the moving factor in our own countries experience right now. It has always been.

There is no cure for this. Fear is not a disease. It is not intrinsically "bad". It has motivated man since his/her entrance into this world to survive.

I don't see fear as a detriment to mankind at all. What is a detriment is how we react to it. How I (and most humans I am sure) react to it, how I refuse to look at fear for what it is, causes it to work through my subconscious. I believe that in myself this has caused fear to have way more influence on me and my life than it should.

I believe fear to be a motivator for many other emotions that are tied to man's survival and existence. Greed, jealousy, anxiety, desperation are just a few.
It causes me to look at the illusions of the financial and political world in our country and world differently.

Instead of disdain and disgust, I can now view this with empathy. Greed is fear based and goes hand in hand with jealousy. Which is the fear that someone else is receiving more of some type of reward, either emotionally or materially.

The factors that cause wars are fear based. The fear that someone else will have more power.

The things that have caused our economy to teeter on the edge of disaster were born of fear. it causes me to look at the machinations of the human psyche with more interest and empathy.

We live in an age and atmosphere of fear that has escalated right along with the human population. All over the world this is happening.

What can be done?

Each of us human beings have the potential to stand back and observe what we are feeling , what triggers us, what is behind our anxieties and thoughts. By doing this we become aware of our guiding motivations. This can bring our reflexive reactions to the surface. Observing these patterns and reactions causes awareness. Once we are aware, the reflexive subconscious reactions to our triggers are lessened. We do not stop experiencing fear but through awareness we have more control of how we utilize it in our own life. Instead of blindly reacting to it.

The most amazing aspect of this powerful force, fear, is that it connects us all because it is part of the human experience yet it can separate and isolate us by it's very nature.