A friend and I recently spoke about her teenage daughter’s fear of the dark and the frustration that she feels in trying to cope with it. Funny how memories can be triggered. Immediately, I flashed back to lonesome nights in the dark and the countless terrors that menace childhood. Been there. It really is kind of a delicate thing to handle. One cannot pooh-pooh the fear as if it doesn’t exist – it does! This only causes a breech between the comforter and the sufferer. And its hard to just explain away since ‘reason’ rarely enters into it. However, in the cool light of day this can be explored and replaced with new ways to combat fear with personal power; to replace the old way of seeing which isn’t ’seeing’ at all, but rather falling prey to victimizing beliefs or “what ifs.” Often these beliefs are based on imagination or something one has heard from another source. We can find illumination and diffuse the murky confusion in the shadows.
FDR once told a desperate nation which had crumbled to its knees “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”. He gave hope to the hopeless and then backed it up with action appropriate to the circumstances. This great man who bore the burdens of our country (1933 to his death before WW2’s end in 1945) never knew the extent to which he changed his nation or how he endeared himself to the people. America’s economic climate looked insurmountable during the great depression – joblessness, poverty, starvation and worst of all – hopelessness. People need hope and a way to handle what burdens them. And so does a teenage person.
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It helps very much to understand what happens to us – our bodies, mind, emotions as we think different thoughts. Sadness is much like a rock, heavy, dull, pulls us down, drains our energy, saps our resources to the point that we often can’t help ourselves. This is radically different from the thoughts and feelings one has in thinking about the person or persons one loves greatly. In this, there is comfort, easy flow of energy from one to the other, safety, security and freedom. Same with a great friend; the sharing of personal intimacies and the happiness of understanding the same things. Good stuff, all easy to do. These positive and not so positive (or negative) feelings and thoughts are tied together (where the mind goes, energy will follow). So here we have touched on positive (up-beat, happy, wonderful and exciting) thoughts and feelings. And the not so good stuff (painful, heavy, sad, frightening, horrible, ugly) negative thoughts and emotions. I cannot alter your thoughts or think them for you. You cannot think my thoughts for me. Your thoughts are yours and mine are mine. No one can get in our heads and do anything – only I in mine and you in yours. In this sense, we are the creators of our own destinies (remember – “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”) – where the mind goes, energy will follow. It is up to us to be choosy about our thoughts; what we allow ourselves to dwell upon is very important. We can’t help it if heavy or frightening thoughts come into our minds, but we can choose to over-rule them by deliberately thinking better thoughts, happier thoughts. This is a learning process. So how can we tell which thoughts are which? Simple. How do we FEEL? Good thoughts make us feel good, normal, even happy (depending on your nature and orientation). While scary, ugly or heavy thoughts make us feel sad or angry, or anxious or hateful. We can feel down, heavy, helpless and there is hurt somewhere in the body. Just sense it. Feel it. Stomach,….head, something is off, not right.
All these thought processes and range of feelings is like our inner climate (some people refer to this as vibration). For some people, its raining pretty much all the time. Other people awake in the morning, glad to face a new day, bounce out of bed ready for almost anything and for them, the sun is usually shinning (no matter what the sky looks like). Those with the heavier thoughts (and I don’t mean perceptive and deep, I mean down, sad and knowing that nothing good is going to happen this day for them) must struggle to get through their days. It is sad because their lives could be happier too. Good things can happen to them and for them, but they must attract them, allow them into their lives – by changing how and what they think. The Universe is full of laws (‘m told), but one of the most important ones to know about is the “Law of Attraction”. And that simply means that “like attracts like” If we put out all these worrisome thoughts and heavy feelings, we in effect, are saturating the field around us with negativity, which in turn, attracts or pulls toward us, that which we are dwelling on which in this case, is not a good thing. Usually, one learns from pain. We put our hand into the fire and quickly withdraw it because it hurts so bad. We have learned not to do that again. But some how many people are not realizing that they are creating the lives they are living by the thoughts (focus) of what they are thinking about. The Universe is abundant, and we are heirs to this, but we must let it in by dreaming of the life we want (not settling for what seems to be), thinking of the things which give us joy AND putting our “focus” on these things. Its not only Okay to dream and want better – but our very life depends on it. Go for broke! Be happy. You are so worth it. I know I am.
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Back to “fear.” With the preface of general thinking in the above outline coming from my understanding, I wish now to refer to a source that I very often defer to, that of “Abraham” with the Esther and Jerry Hicks foundation who have devoted a blissful 25 years to the telling of their wonderful message. So I shall now quote from one of their ‘Journals’:
Vibration of Fear, a feeling of Powerlessness
Question: What causes my fear?
Abraham: Fear is the feeling sensation that is present within you when you have both a desire and a belief that contradicts it. Fear is a response to the state of your vibration. You are a vibrational being, and every moment offering a signal. Your vibration could be called thought, it could be called memory, it could be called fantasy, it could be called imagination, it could be called Energy. In other words, your vibration could be called, “As I stand in my now, and I think about the present, or I think about the future, or I think about the past — all of that is thought. Whatever it is I’m perceiving is causing me to offer a vibration, and that vibration is being answered or matched by All-That-Is.
So when I feel fear, what it always means is, I am offering a thought that you might call desire and a thought that you might call belief that are contradictory. The presence of fear always means the presence of resistance. The presence of resistance always means not allowing the Energy of desire to flow through me–always, without exception. Same with confusion; same with vulnerability; same with anger; same with unworthiness; same with guilt. All negative emotions mean the same thing. You just call them different things because they play out differently in your experience — but they all mean the same thing.
The vibration of fear is usually a very strong vibration, which usually means there is the presence of a very strong desire within you. Often, when you feel fear, it is because you have a belief that contradicts basic elements that are natural to you. Your natural instinct, from your broadest Nonphysical perspective, is to know your power. Fear is a vibration when you feel powerless. Your natural instinctual Nonphysical vibration is to know your worthiness, know your rightness, know your value. And the feeling of fear is always when you are contradicting that thought.
We would want you to say, “Quite a bit of the time I feel fearful or vulnerable or limited, and what that feeling means is: I’m in that moment holding a desire that contradicts my past thought, or my beliefs…” Remember that a belief is just a thought you keep thinking, it’s just a habit of thought. It’s just sort of the way you’ve always thought it, and so it is the way you are now thinking it.
And so, as you are feeling fear, all it means is, “I’ve got a desire that my belief is not agreeing with. Now, what thought feels better about this? I’ve got hold of this stick, where my desire is here, my belief is here. What thought feels better?” And as you just softly talk to yourself about that subject, reaching for the thought that feels better, what happens is you shift the Energy.
It’s like the teeter-totter on the fulcrum, and it’s clearly down here, and you would like it to be up here. And so, you reach for the thought that feels better, and you reach for the thought that feels better, and you reach for the thought that feels better…and it doesn’t look like anything’s happening. And then, all of a sudden, one more time, you reach for the thought that feels better, and there it goes! The fear is gone without even knowing it, just by reaching for the thought that feels better. There is so much reward in just feeling better in your “now”. Because, so often, you’re wanting to reach for the thought that feels better because, “Whoop-de-doo, this is big time good fun!” In other words, “I want to get there! I would like every effort to take me there. I would like every thought that I think, and every time I go to a workshop, and every time I make a little bit of effort, I would like it to take me there!” And it’s irritating that it doesn’t take you there, to that manifestation.
We want you to not get so hung up on the manifestation, and start taking pleasure in the incremental relief. Pleasure in the fact that this feels a little better. Pleasure in the fact that you can actually, with your own will power and your own determination, choose a thought that feels better.
It is Unnatural to Not Feel Good
We offer an analogy, about the cork bobbing on the body of water. It’s up here floating, floating, floating. And in our analogy this cork is bobbing in the place of Pure Positive Energy. When you take hold of the cork and hold it under the water, that’s what negative emotion is. You’re not allowing the natural quality of the cork, you’re doing something that does not allow the cork to do what it usually would do. You’re holding it in an unnatural place with your attention to this thought of something that you do not want.
But when you withdraw your attention from it, and you let go of the cork, it bobs right back up there. It is natural for you to be in this pure positive place. It is unnatural for you not to feel good. But what happens in your physical environment where you’ve been trained by other humans who didn’t feel so good either, is that you’ve come to accept the way you feel as being the natural way that you feel.
And now, through meditation, or through consciously reaching for the better feeling, you set higher standards. Until then it becomes consciously uncomfortable for you to dip into the lower Energies. You will never be at a place where you won’t feel negative emotion. Nor would we ever want you to be at that place, because that would be like shooting Novocaine into your fingers so that you don’t feel anything hot or sharp. You say, “Well, it sure is a lot better now that I can bang my hands on things. You know, I can shut my hands in car doors and it doesn’t even bother me any more. I feel no pain.” But it’s not good for your fingers. Pretty soon you have flat, little flabby hands flapping around. You’ve destroyed your hands, even though it was painless.
And so, that’s what that fear is. It’s sort of an acquiescence. It’s submission to a vibration that’s not natural to who you really are. And you’re awakening now to those higher standards.
Take mood checks and ask yourself, what is my mood? Well, I’m feeling fearful. And then ask yourself, well overall, do I have reason to fear? And as you reach for the more general statement, you recognize, you don’t have anything to be fearful about.
We think what you’re doing is sort of very specifically, channeling the worries of a larger mass consciousness. You are susceptible to Energy. And so, for example, if you were living in a retirement community where there were many people who were feeling vulnerable about their money, or feeling worried about what their future would provide, and you are sensitive to Energy, you could very well be picking up on the consensus of the group around you, even though it has nothing to do with who you are.
But you must have a little spattering of that within you, or you could not be finding harmony with that greater consensus. Every thought that has ever been thought exists. And then, by Law of Attraction, those thoughts coalesce, so that there are pockets of Thought Forms. And so, very often, just driving from city to city, if you are sensitive to vibration, you can feel different Energies in different cities. Well, what we are wanting you to do, is get so good at setting your own Tone, that it doesn’t matter what the fluctuations of Energies are around you, you are always holding a steady course.
Excerpted from the workshop in El Paso TX on Saturday, February 12th, 2000
