Fear Less - Love More

What is the opposite of love? Is it hate? Indifference? What if it was fear?

 Think about it for a second: If you fear someone, is it easy to love them? I mean really fear- in a tangible, physical way that threatens your safety, comfort or wellbeing? An article at  Exploring Your Mind (https://exploringyourmind.com/opposite-love-not-hate-fear/) describes what happens when we fear: We basically regress to a primal state where reason & decision making processes are overridden with basic "fight or flight" reactions. The more we drink up fear, the more become cavemen & women again. We become hard, whereas love is gentle. We become aggressive, defensive, angry, frustrated, and hateful. All of this rooted in the manifestation of fear in us.

So how can I fear less? Do I just cast my fears off by sheer willpower? Well that hasn't worked for me personally. I forget who gave me one of the most precious pieces of advice: You can either pull out all the weeds or plant more flowers :) In this case, it would mean that by loving more, I am able to shrink fears. So I reduce fear by practicing love..

For me, one way of doing this is to forgive. Fast and completely. I try to forgive those who wrong me as fast as possible, and I try not to leave little roots of unforgiveness in my heart.

What does this look like practically for you? In day-to-day life?  How can you practice love to drive out fear?

Fear Less (not Fearless).

I am always fascinated when reading about how, during the World Wars, Nations used military aircraft to drop propaganda leaflets over their intended targets to incite fear in the target before attacking. The PsyWarrior website has an amazing collection of such leaflets (http://www.psywarrior.com/B52leaflets.html). Often these stories end with the advancing forces overthrowing the towns or villages with minimum force as the inhabitants have been paralyzed by fear of their seemingly mighty opponents.

There's a good article on Fear and Control on the Under One Roof website (http://www.under-one-roof.net/spiritual/fear-control.html) and you can find many more resources on how fear makes us behave if you simply Google it.

The bottom line of it all, and my motivation for creating this blog, is to encourage myself, but also you, the reader, to consider what role fear is playing in the way you live out your life:

• What is "good" and "bad" fear? Is there a difference?
• What is negative fear making you do, or not do?
• How is negative fear affecting your interactions with others? 
• What is negative fear holding you back from? 

And most importantly: How can I limit the damaging impact of irrational or negative fear in my life?

You will notice the blog is called Fear Less, and not Fearless. I do not think all fear is bad or unreasonable, but certainly the way you and I are bombarded by the Fearmongers cannot be healthy for us? But I'm getting ahead of myself...

What do you consider rational, or irrational fear? Is there such thing as "good" and "bad" fear?