A different perspective on fear : extract from “When Love Meets Fear.”

Fear is a signal by which we notice what we have not yet integrated. For example, you integrate a lake by learning to swim in it! Not integrating it would be standing at the edge an fearing you might drown if you enter it. To be foolhardy and throw yourself off the bridge to make yourself swim will not work either. But if you take lessons and gradually learn to swim you become able to integrate the challenging reality of water, and you no longer fear it. We fear something that we do not allow into our experience. In this sense, fear is a form of alienation.

A ‘problem’ in life means that something has not yet been integrated. Integration happens when we address, process and resolve the problem. If you marry, and as soon as things get rough you have an affair, drink, or leave, the commitment has not been integrated.

Our personality has been made up of a combination of opposites. Our challenge is to achieve synthesis, order from chaos, unity from diversity. If there is fear in us, there must be fearlessness too. If there is violence, there is non violence. Every characteristic in you has an opposing side, potentially accessible… If you are extremely vengeful in your conscious choices, then in your positive, hidden side there is the same amount of compassion. ..The more you fear, the more love lies hiding.

“The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Your true self is where your fearlessness lives. As long as we are trying to do what other people want, as long as we are afraid of what other people think, we will fear. The fearlessness comes when you make a commitment to become fully who you are. I may abandon myself, to prevent others from alienating themselves from me. Instead of saying, “I do not want others to know that I am this way because then they will not like me,” I say, “I want them to know exactly who I am because my commitment is to becoming myself rather than having them like me. I want people to know who I really am, so I drop all the poses I have adopted to look good.” A wonderful pose develops : fearlessness.

“True love casts out fear.” We can see that love and fear are opposites, so fearlessness is another name for love. As fear represents what we have not integrated, love is that which integrates everything. It is an unconditional responsiveness to what is rather than a conditioned response to what we have learned. Love is total yes. Fear is no. Love gives us access to the unconditional being with is our endless potential. Since our spiritual destiny is to release the riches of Self – unconditional/universal love, perennial wisdom, and healing power through our healthy personality, full potential is crucial.

Fearlessness brings with it the belief that everything in our lives is part of our destiny, exactly what we need in order to become who we truly are. Not only is it alright to be myself, it is even all right to let events be themselves. This means entering into a wholehearted engagement with our circumstances rather than arguing with them. Fear argues with circumstances. “No I do not want that. Do not let that in.” Love says, “Let it all happen as it needs to… the unconditional yes to that which is, without subjective protest.”

Only now does it become clear that to be loving, is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable means to let pain in, not by choice, but because it is real in the moment. What kind of pain? The ordinary, normal pain that happens in any relationship when people betray you, do things to hurt you, lie to you, ask too much, or give too little. All this brings pain. Love brings vulnerability – liability to all of this. “Yes, I can integrate all of this because it is a human experience that every adult has to have an inlet for.”

David Richo