Life without Unnecessary Fear

Is your life free of fear? And by fear, I mean that unpleasant, and sometimes disabling, emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is going to cause you discomfort or pain. I think most people want to feel good, and they want to avoid distress. Of course, the person or thing causing the fear may not be a real threat. Nevertheless, if you think it is a threat, that thought may be enough to induce a sense of fear. The mind and body will respond to imagined threats as well as real threats.

I think few of us will claim that we have never been afraid. Sometimes fear is a good thing because it causes the body to marshal its reserves to thwart the threat in the best way possible. If your life is in danger from another person, flight may be the proper response.

But how do you stop the fear that is a result of all of the imagined threats. In this, I include the fear of failure, rejection, loneliness, poverty, sickness, old age, criticism, and a host of other things that you may worry about. How can you live free of this type of fear?

I think that much of the fear comes from one’s not knowing what tomorrow will bring. An optimist may expect tomorrow to bring the best and that life will only improve. However, many people reflect on all the bad things that might happen, and they fear the unknown—the future that they think is not yet written. Only, the future is written, and you can see your future if you look. And if the future is undesirable, you can change that probable future into the future you want.

The answer to seeing the future you are building is found in your dreams. Your dreams will show you where your path leads. And threats will not come out of nowhere, completely unexpected; you will be forewarned, giving you an opportunity to avoid many of them. And for those you cannot avoid or change, you will have time to prepare yourself psychologically for the coming event.

I am not suggesting that it is easy to eradicate unnecessary fears. It requires effort on your part, but there is a definite comfort in knowing that a presence is watching out for you and constantly advising you about the proper course of action. This presence is within you and speaks to you through flashes of insight or intuition, and speaks to you nightly through your dreams. That presence never leaves you because it is part of you—it is a deeper layer of consciousness that is not normally accessible to your conscious awareness.

Some will say, “I would rather not know.” To me, that is like trying to navigate the world without sight. Blind people do it with the help of guide dogs and other resources, but life is much more difficult without the sense of vision. However, even with sight, the things you think you see are blurred by your prejudices and beliefs. You don’t see reality; you only see your own version of reality. The external world is a world of energy. Signals are generated by the retina of the eye from light photons impinging on it, from the external energy that is the world. The picture of what you see is created in your brain from the electrical signals flowing along the optic nerve to the brain. Your brain creates what you accept as the real world.

When it comes to judging another’s motives or intentions, your own conditioning and beliefs will determine what you see. The conscious mind is limited in what it can determine and “see” as reality because you cannot see without some degree of bias and filtering. But with the help of unconscious portions of the mind, a greater reality can be seen. And many of the biases and inhibiting beliefs can be recognized and corrected before they seriously limit the quality of your life.

If you want to be free from unnecessary fear, unite the conscious and unconscious aspects of your mind. And the way to do this is to understand your dreams. The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung said that we couldn’t be whole without that integration or joining of the conscious and unconscious, which he called individuation.

Fighting the Current

Going with the flow is not always the best advice, especially if the flow is moving in a way that is destructive or immoral. The majority is not always right, as we saw in Germany leading up to and during World War II. Adolph Hitler enjoyed the broad support of the German people, but they were misguided. It often requires great courage to take a position that is counter to the flow of events and in opposition to the majority. Some courageous individuals in Germany paid for their opposition to Hitler with their lives.

However, the flow, especially as it pertains to your individual life, may be a different matter. Many people spend their lives bucking the current that is trying to take them in the right direction. They develop a perspective on what they want or expect to happen and refuse to adapt to actual circumstances. Any signals that run counter to what they want are ignored, filtered out without any real consideration. They don’t see reality: they only see their personal desires and cannot relate to anything that conflicts with them. If their personal agendas are in harmony with their souls’ desire, their lives will benefit. However, if they are not, they will seem to be in continuous conflict.

When I managed people in my corporate life, I often encountered those individuals who always tried to swim against the current and make things difficult for themselves and others. Their careers suffered, and they would blame everything and everyone except themselves for their lack of success. Those individuals always chose to fight the current and saw themselves as taking a stand as individualists, even when there was no cause or inequity to oppose.

So how do we know if we are fighting the current when we should be letting it move us in its direction? My answer is that our dreams offer the best counsel available. And they are free of charge. Our nightly dreams provide feedback on how we are doing. They provide encouragement to continue on a certain path if it is right for us, and they provide warnings if we are on the wrong path. Dreams also help us expand our capabilities and grow as individuals. We may be on a path that is positive, but not one that best utilizes our talents and abilities. Dreams will help us open up our potential and encourage us to expand our horizon.

Many may not want to acknowledge it, but we create our own lives. Although some people enter this life with serious challenges, even those people can decide how they will respond to their circumstances. If you don’t believe this, read the story of Helen Keller. Most of us do not have challenges that great. However, we make decisions each day that place us on a path that will inexorably take us to experience life in a certain way, a way determined by our thoughts and beliefs.

There are many reasons that people have for not paying attention to their dreams, which are reviewed in my books. For the purpose of this post, I point out that one of the main reasons is the tendency of people to take the path of least resistance. It is just easier to ignore them. It is much like diet and exercise. I think few people are unaware of the importance of diet and exercise for maintaining a healthy body. Yet, evidence is overwhelming that the majority of Americans are largely ignoring the advice of nutritionists and health experts. It is just easier to stop at the fast food restaurant or flop in front of the TV and tell yourself you will go to the gym or health club another day.

Dreams will jar you out of that sense of complacency. You will see the results of your lifestyle, sometimes in a very vivid and shocking way. But shock may be what your subconscious is trying to achieve to get your attention. Now, if you are OK with cutting yourself off from that information, then don’t complain later in life that some disease occurred without warning, and if you had only known you would have made some lifestyle changes.

The deeper levels of consciousness are always trying to bring our lives into balance and steer us onto a path that is beneficial for our body and mind. But we must learn to listen by interpreting our dreams and then act upon the guidance we receive. The help that so many seek is right there in plain sight. No one separates us from our internal wisdom except ourselves.