One important and significant thing you should do before we could go into the detailed discussion of this topic is now stop reading, close your eyes for some minutes, and then freely write a list of your fears of your own. I would dare to bet that you will have a long list of fears: fear of death, fear of joblessness, fear of being neglected, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of illness, fear of accidents, fear of being killed, fear of darkness, fear of gosh, and fear of responsibilities… in general fear of everything that we can not list down here.
With the above list of our fears, I dare say that now we are dragging our feet to all corners of life with a big and heavy bag of all types of fears at all levels. We drag our feet because we have accidentally or intentionally allowed fears go into our life and then become a burden of ourselves. And from that time, naturally the fear become a vital part of our life as if we can not without it. And perhaps because of this harsh reality, there are a lot of books of fears management which have been written and millions sold out around the world. This shows that fears are something or illnesses needed omitting so that we could fly up and enjoy this life. And now I believe that you really want to leave out all fears having been allowed to be with you in life. To completely do this, we need to know where they are from, why we are so fearful, and how they affect our life.
According to Krishnamurti, fears are originated from two powerful sources which are education of your society and family you live and finally our thoughts.
From the family and the society we live: When we were born, we were not asked to choose our family and county we wanted, it is a harsh true reality that everyone has to accept as a fate of life. In this living environment and condition, surely we are influenced by many factors that shape our characteristics, behaviors, viewpoints, believes, sense of values, directions of life and even fears. In the family life, from the beginning to the time we are regarded as a real mature, we have had to suffer a lot of fears begun from our parents’ ways of education in which there are more curses than motivations, more tears than joys, more bans and regulations than permissions and freedom etc. All are existed on behalf of their love for us. Let’s get back to the childhood to find out what they have done for us. When we had a big dream that we thought we could turn it into reality, we joyfully came by their side and told them about it, and immediately they smiled and told us “My beloved son, a dream is a dream, it never comes true. At your age, I also had a lot of dreams but you could see that now I’m old, there is none of my dreams come true.”; or at home they told us a lot of don’ts and cants with heavy punishments if you try to not obey the set law; or just to force us do something that we resisted or did not want to do or not ready to do, we were threatened by being left alone in the dark, by some ghosts, by some bugs or animals, being put on the top of the roof without ladder or put into a dark room with a lock outside… In the social life, at the very first time we went to school, we were taught to be afraid of failure in examinations, we were advised to be fearful of the strongest in the class, we were taught death is something fierce and ended, we were educated that money was everything,… and from that time on we are afraid of failure, of death, of difficulties, of barriers, of illnesses…
From our thoughts: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” – (Genesis 1, 1:2). This verse shows that everything invisible becoming visible from God’s will or thoughts, so we are created like him and be shared the same ways of creating this world. Nowadays, a lot of self-help books related to the power of thoughts are available on bookstores in all over the world to prove that thoughts are very important to us in creating ourselves, our future, destiny, and even our world. If you take a look at the world around, you could see that everything visible to us now is originated from the invisibility – our thoughts: a car, a home, a TV set, an airplane, a ship, and the likes. From this point, I can tell you that fears are nothing but thoughts which can create and destroy as well. The more positive thoughts build the more negative ones destroy. When you search the word “fear” on the Bible software, you will get totally 260 verses related. It means, as I have mentioned above, “fears become a vital part of our life”. And the result of fear is that you are not loved and you will be punished as Sain John Apostle indicates in his first letter “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drive out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” – (1John 4, 18).
Now we can certainly know that there are two doors that fears can go in our life: family and social education, and our thoughts. But thoughts play a key role in forming our fears. As you know, because of fears, we will hide ourselves in a box instead of open to the world, we close our heart and mind in the relation with our brothers and sisters, we become selfish and cruel in alternative of generous and kind. Fears can turn us into losers, murderers, betrayers, burglars, cheaters, addicts etc. who we actually do not want to become, I am sure of this. So, to drive out fears we need to accumulate love and positive thinking which can bring you peace, love, joys, happiness, prosperity, and freedom.
You should know that you are a magnet of the universe, so you can attract everything in this universe to you depending on your ways of thinking positive or negative. If you always think about love and happiness, you will be loved and happy in life, and vice versa, if you think about fears you will be an image and a victim of your fears like we have discussed above. We have just one life to live and God wants us surely to be happy and enjoy this life with his favors. So, our responsibility is to choose ways of living: happy or unhappy, loved or hated, faithful or betrayal, rich or poor, successful or failed, free or dependent. And you should remember that fears are nothing but our thoughts and they are surely coming to our life whenever we think about them. That’s why at the beginning of his mission as The Holy Father, John Paul The Second says to the world “Don’t be afraid!”. This phrase should be a maxim of our life if we want to live our life fully and significantly.
The Salt & The Light 