Positive Health Online

Republished from: activehealthcare.co.uk

https://www.activehealthcare.co.uk/literature/mind-spirit/228-our-prime-enemy-is-fear

It strikes me that humanity is the first part in the entire creation of living organisms that live life in perpetual fear. All other plants and animals lead a basic life of accepting their environment in peace and tranquillity. They concern themselves, intuitively, with survival. This, of course, includes overcoming danger. What is obvious is that they do not worry about it. They all have specific tools in order to combat certain dangers from within their environment, both in terms of immediate defences when confronted with such dangers as well as capabilities to escape potential dangers. However, when no danger is apparent they are at peace with their world. They accept their world as it is. They accept their life as it is and they have no fear about it ending at some point and no fear of not having enough to survive. Although there is an innate sense of survival, there is no fear of not surviving. It is very much a life built on ‘it is what it is’.

Credit: Wokandapix on Pixabay

 https://pixabay.com/photos/fear-anxiety-emotion-worry-scared-2019930/

Contrast that with human lives. Right from the beginning, as far as we can tell, humans have been afraid of the world they live in and the dangers within it, as well as being afraid of one another. Or at least that is what historians make us believe. This fear is driven by a sense of possibly losing something, of being short of something, of ‘potentially’ not having enough. This lack of something they feel they require leads them to believe that they may not be able to live without it. Hence, they will not only protect that possession, but they will also go out and search for it, even try and conquer it. They will try and take it away from somewhere else in order to guard it and keep it for themselves. The higher evolved animals also have this tendency but only for food. They may store it, hide it away for later use. And although it is quite likely that this originally was also the case for human beings, gradually it has started to involve a lot more than just food. Our lives seem to have become ‘dependent’ upon more and more things and situations that we need to keep close by and defend. We cannot, so it seems, afford to lose it, if we want to continue living.

The more fear we exhibit the more our lives will be ruled by it. Preventing one thing from losing it, such as food, is one thing. Protecting hundreds of items from being stolen, forgotten about or simply disappearing means that we need to constantly be on the alert. We need to keep running from one to another to make sure it is still there and safely locked up. We invent protection measures such as locks and keys, alarm systems and soldiers. And history shows us that, no matter how high the protection is we provide ourselves with, at some point we will lose our precious possession to somebody or to something else. It may be taken by other humans or by animals, or it may simply decay and vanish or it may weaken and alter itself, in the way that life does in spite of all our efforts to preserve it. It cannot be kept forever or unchanged. We will lose human beings that we feel we need in our lives, human beings we cannot live without, or so we have come to believe.

Losing the things that are essential to life actually means exactly that: you can’t live without it. It literally means that your life ends from the moment it is taken away from you. One example of that is air – oxygen. Here we can see the immediate effect of the change in environment. Remove the oxygen from the air that surrounds us and we will die within minutes. On a longer term basis we can see similar effects from the lack of water, and further down the line, from the lack of food. However, human beings; like all other animals, are capable of continuing to live for a long time without food. So the lack of food should not be in the highest ‘fear priority’ bracket. If lacking food we have time to find some. So finding ourselves without food at any point in our life does not equal ‘can’t live without it’.

Put in terms of immediate living priorities it turns out that there are not that many. Lots of things we are afraid of losing because we fear we can’t live without, are actually not as essential to life as we have come to believe. But once you believe it, your system will be desperate to keep hold of the item as it believes your life will end the moment you lose it. Interestingly enough, this belief does not change when we have the experience of losing that item and life, in spite of that dreadful event, still continues. Somehow we are able to ignore our own experience in favour of a narrative, a belief, of which nature proves to us it is false. How do we do that? And more to the point, why do we do that?

But before we get on to that, none of this would be important unless living in fear all the time is not a good idea. Let’s take a look at what impact fear has on our lives.

At the 2017 Neuroscience Education Institute (NEI) Congress, a Friday session focused on the physiology of fear and its impact on wellness. They listed very specific effects on the different aspects of our lives. Here are the conclusions presented by Mary D Molle PhD DNP ARNP PMHCNS-BC CPRP FAAN Associate Professor, Pacific Lutheran University School of Nursing, and director of Psychiatric Services, Northwest Center for Integrated Health.

“Moller then outlined the potential consequences of fear on overall, physical, emotional, environmental, and spiritual health. The potential effects of chronic fear on overall health include:

• • Immune system dysfunction
  • Endocrine system dysfunction
  • Autonomic nervous system alterations
  • Sleep/wake cycle disruption
  • Eating disorders
  • Alterations in hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis

The potential effects of chronic fear on physical health include headaches turning into migraines, muscle aches turning into fibromyalgia, body aches turning into chronic pain, and difficulty breathing turning into asthma, said Moller.

The potential effects of chronic fear on emotional health include:

• • Dissociation from self
  • Unable to have loving feelings
  • Learned helplessness
  • Phobic anxiety
  • Mood swings
  • Obsessive-compulsive thoughts

The potential consequences of chronic fear on environmental health include:

• • Continued living in fear-generating situations due to uncertainty of moving out and unknown associated dangers
  • Not able to find safe housing
  • Afraid to leave home because of paranoia

“The potential consequences of chronic fear on spiritual health:

• • Bitterness/fear towards God or others
  • Confusion/disgust with God or religion
  • Loss of trust in God and/or clergy
  • Waiting for God to fix it
  • Despair related to perceived loss of spirituality

Lastly, Moller explained that fear affects the ability to learn.

“The brain’s capacity to retrieve previous learning is dependent on specific chemical states,” said Moller. “Chemical alterations can distort perception of sensory information thus distorting storage.”

“When the brain is hyper aroused, storage may be incomplete and new information will be stored in nonverbal memory, said Moller. This distorts the storage of sensory input and the retrieval of information will be affected.”

It seems to me that all important parts of life are being seriously impacted by living in fear! My goodness, why do we do it? If it does this much damage and distorts the basic functioning of our lives in such a serious fashion, why hasn’t mankind put a stop to it yet? There must be something that keeps it going. There must be something that keeps us going, preventing us from deviating from this path of living in fear.

The storage of sensory input and the retrieval of information will be affected. In other words, living in fear results in us not seeing the reality anymore and not being able to connect things we remember in a proper and logical way. So we are confused without actually being able to recognize our confusion. Even when we are being confronted with the truth we won’t be able to see it anymore. We are unable to even recognize we live in fear. Living in fear is now being recorded and remembered as being normal. We literally have entered a world of make-belief.

And here is the other interesting thing about living in fear. We will continue to live in fear due to uncertainty of moving out. We are even afraid of leaving the fear situation! How good is that! And we are not even aware of the fact that we are afraid to leave. Once you have people living in fear for long enough they themselves will refuse to move out of that situation, because they are afraid of what might happen when they do. Bingo! That is why we keep doing it.

At this point one can open the prison door but the human being will not leave the cell. Holding on to the devil we know, seems to be the motto. The question is: How well do we really know the devil? Our mind is now so fearful it considers the possibility that it could be worse when we make a change. It never contemplates the possibility that it could be better. We decide to stick with what we’ve got, even ‘if it is not perfect’, even though nobody ever pretended that life somehow was to be perfect. And yes, we are hoping that someone, God, the Pope, the president or whomever, will make it go away, will solve the problem for us. And we will blame him for not doing a good job.

If you imprison people for long enough and tell them it is for their own good and safety, they will not want to leave the prison anymore. They no longer are aware of the fact that they are in prison. You can then, safely, unlock the doors, tell them they are free, and you know they won’t leave the premises. Tell them they have the right to make up their own mind and they will beg you for guidance. Tell them there no longer is any danger outside and they will beg you to close the doors. Tell them they can now choose their own leaders and they will beg you to stay on and tell them what to do.

The stallion has been broken. The powerful feisty stallion becomes a sheep in his behaviour. The life he was meant to live is over and cannot be regained as his mental powers have left the building. He is no longer present in the body shape in front of us. And he is not even aware that he has changed.

So now we know how we have ended up ignoring our own experiences and attaching ourselves to an outside narrative. By keeping human beings living in fear, by feeding them potential danger all the time, you break their identities, their individualities. People are no longer aware of being manipulated. People are willing, voluntarily, to follow the lead of whomever is ‘warning’ them of danger. People are no longer aware of the reality they live in. People only know, only remember, the virtual world the people have been told about. People are no longer aware of themselves and of their own innate power. People have been broken as human beings. It would even be appropriate to call them robots, as in many senses people simply follow instructions. People are no longer aware they are following instructions. People no longer can see that their ‘free’ reaction and ‘free’ choices are nothing more than predictable reaction patterns from a preprogramed robotic system.

The only thing that is left is the fear itself, the feeling of being threatened. Everybody and everything becomes a potential danger to us. We are told to be kind, empathetic towards others, not to make any distinctions, and to allow others the space so they can do whatever they need to. At the same time, we are shown that others pose a lethal threat to our existence. But as we need to be nice and as we are told we don’t actually know what is potentially dangerous to us, we are told to leave it up to the authorities to deal with. That is the best way for everybody as most danger is invisible to the individual. And once again, we are no longer aware of the fact that we feel threatened because the authorities are pointing out to us what the invisible threats are. Pointing out, only in words as there is no physical reality to invisible danger. We have no way of evaluating real danger to our person anymore. We just need to believe authorities on the matter. If we no longer are able to make out what is really dangerous to our own lives then, for our own safety, we are dependent upon the guidance of others, the ones that call themselves ‘the authority’. And we are no longer aware of the fact that those ‘others’ are the prison guards themselves, are the same people who have kept us locked up and instilled a perpetual fear into us. The same people, organizations, that provide us with invisible enemies are the ones that are going to keep us safe. The fear is one generated by an invisible threat, which we are told about, and the protection consists of following the advice and guidance of the people, the organisations, that generate the threat of the invisible danger. It must be obvious to everybody that they are the only ones who know something about this threat, as they are the only ones that are “aware’ of it. So you better listen, or else …

Fear as a sense of immediate danger in our environment has been taken out of our own hands. What you personally feel threatened by, if you are still able to recognize your own fear in a real situation, is, by the authorities, dismissed as being irrational, unfair to others, racists, extremists, phobic of some sort. Your personally felt natural fear has been devalued in favour of an idea of threat that is generated far away from your personal daily life. We are locked into a belief system that tells us that the opinion of another, a self-proclaimed authority, is more trustworthy than our own sensory experience.

Have you had enough of this now? Are you done with living in fear without knowing you are artificially kept in a heightened anxiety state? Do you want to free yourself from such tyranny? Then the main question is: Are you prepared to enter a time of confusion and doubt?

As we no longer feel the perpetual fear we are living under, our awareness is unable to recognize it. So, you can’t ‘deal’ with it in this way. The most direct route out of this situation is to hang on to the idea that everything in our environment has been created to install fear in the population. You don’t need to prove this, you simply need to believe it. Distrust the world you are living in and fear everything that is in it, in the sense that you understand you need to move away from it. You can still connect with it and interact with it, but do this against a background of knowing that nothing in your outside world is as it seems.

Once you have made this your priority awareness, you can begin making alterations to the way you act within that world. Approach life, not in fear, but trusting your own ability. Rely on your own thoughts and feelings and refuse to engage in anything that you do not experience yourself. It doesn’t matter what happens in another country. If you are living in the countryside it doesn’t even matter what happens in the capital city. Your neighbours matter. The village matters. Your own garden matters. Bit by bit you need to become your own authority again. I say ’again’ because humans used to be like that, long before they became bombarded with potential dangers they didn’t experience. Historically, it was in the first place about your land and livelihood being taken away from you by a foreign power, one you have never come across but need to be very afraid of. Now the foreign power has become invisible dangers, hidden amongst your neighbours, friends and family. Retake possession of your own power of judgement, your own power of choice and your own personal way to deal with real threats to your life and livelihood.

First, a firm belief that everything on the outside is meant to keep you enslaved.

Second, only deal with the reality of the life you personally observe and experience.

Thirdly, it is necessary that you endeavour to seek your own solutions to your own problems. If and when you still need advice be aware of the fact that ‘expert advice’ is nothing more than one person’s opinion. How well do you know this person? How did this person come by his knowledge? Be aware that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Evaluate the advice you are being given and trust your own judgement on it above any other authority. If you do use an expert make sure you decide what is right for you, not the expert. This is your life, and there can only be one authority in your life and that is you.

This is the path of freeing yourself from the imprisonment of fear. We have been lured inside the fortress walls under the pretext we would be safe from all the dangers outside of the walls. We live in cramped and unbearable conditions but at least we are safe. We haven’t actually encountered the dangers we are being warned against but because we don’t want to take the risk, we decide to remain inside the walls. Now we are starving, poisoned by our own waste mountain, fighting amongst ourselves because we are irritated, frustrated and bored. And very very scared! But we still don’t go outside. Most of us have even forgotten there is a living world outside. And it is not aliens that live there, it’s nature. It is our natural world. It doesn’t consist of concrete walls, of learned rules of engagement, of punishable offences. It consists of natural cycles of life and death. It consists of everything our own nature can naturally relate to.

• You too can live in a world where you only need to be afraid at very specific moments in life.
• You too can live in a world where you are in control of your own life, your own small piece of life within the entire creation of life.
• You too can live in a world where you can sleep peacefully at night without any walls and locks to protect you.
• You too can live in a world where you can wake up without having to be afraid something dreadful may have happened overnight.

When you reach out to nature as your travel mate you can rest assured your journey will not take a wrong turn. The natural roadmap will lead to where your life needs to be. Trust to find truth in nature.

Acknowledgement Citation

Republished from: activehealthcare.co.uk

https://www.activehealthcare.co.uk/literature/mind-spirit/228-our-prime-enemy-is-fear