The Fear Consciousness

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One of the first things you come across when you go seeking spiritual development or self-awareness is about the consciousness of fear. Religious texts, new age wisdom writers, philosophers of the past and present all talk about the fear-consciousness. The basic premise is that where fear-consciousness resides, love cannot – or is at least diminished – Where fear-consciousness is present, faith is not. And I see this all the time in my day-to-day Coaching practice. What I witness is that the reason people are not reaching their life goals – is NOT because they don’t have the right recipe, information, or instruction. They are failing to accomplish and accomplishing failure because they live within the prison walls of fear-consciousness and they just don’t see it. Now, you may think, “but Scott, I’m not afraid of anything per se, I’m just really stressed and have a lot on my plate right now.” Well, that my friend “is” the fear-consciousness: Stress, anxiety, nerves, depression, angst, doubt, indecision, even apathy – these are all merely the different clothes worn by fear-consciousness. None of these states of mind exist, if fear-consciousness is not present and operating beneath the surface. Real freedom is freedom from fear-consciousness. Real freedom has nothing to do with living without responsibility: Real freedom is an ability to live without psychic fear. OR, to look at it from its own source, as stated in my book “Your Truth is Calling – Connecting the Dots to Self-Awareness” – “is not dread of thirst when your well is full, a thirst that can never be satisfied?”

Even the bible instructs to “rejoice in your troubles.” It doesn’t say, fear them, worry over them, stress over them. It says – “rejoice over them.” Why? Why would any sane person rejoice over his troubles? Because that is what builds strength – That is what builds character. Worry and stressing over your “well” whether full or empty, weakens you; weakens your resolve. That is what the fear-consciousness does – it strengthens itself as it weakens you. And I deal with it, day after day after day – in clients who just don’t get it. This is the reason they don’t get what they want in life. It’s not the other ten thousand reasons and excuses they come up with. So let me explain it to you all here below. And I think what I am about to share is vital stuff. You should pass it along to anyone you know who struggles with anything – big or small. It all starts (and ends) here.

Call it stress, worry or anxiety, or by any other name – this is the fear-consciousness in action. Fear paralyses your rationality; and by doing so it attacks, insults and reduces your imagination. Fear mortally wounds your sense of self-reliance and within all of this, fear strengthens itself. As it becomes stronger fear undermines your enthusiasm, steals your initiative, causes you to waffle over your true purpose or over your confidence in decision-making – and once again in doing so – fear strengthens itself.

At this point fear leads to procrastination and it obliterates your youthful eagerness. Fear puts its foot over the neck of your sense of self-control – leading you to act out of emotional impulse, which often becomes a habit. And in all of this fear once again strengthens itself. Becoming impulsive causes you to lose your connection to the unique charms of your own personality, and you know this is true, you’ve just never considered impulsive behavior that way before. Once you become impulsive you add unpredictable emotionality to your thoughts and therefore your ability to concentrate becomes suspect – often resulting in your best efforts being less than your best without you even knowing it. And yet again, in all of this, fear strengthens itself.
From here, fear crushes your efforts of persistence and it empties the power of your own will and will-power, beyond mere appearances to the contrary. It reduces to shambles your own ambitions. It even influences your memory to also focus on past events that produce fear, tension and anxiety. And once again in all of this, fear strengthens itself.

At this point, fear just takes over, from a state of mind to a state of being. It becomes your default operating system, with power either subtle and unrecognizable or so easily recognizably powerful where you can say, “yep, that’s me.” Now, fear invites failure in all manners and means, from considering failure and worrying about failure and just an overall preoccupation with the possibility of failure - which of course weakens the vision for accomplishment.
Worse, fear crushes love – not the emotion of love – but what is meant in scripture and philosophy about “spiritual love” – which is the operating default position when fear-consciousness is not present. The worse part of fear crushing love is that it crushes self-love first and foremost. . And from here it is free to commit assault and battery and vicious bullying on all the left-over finer emotions of the heart and soul.

Fear invites disaster like its throwing a party for it. You know it’s true. \

And in the end, clothed in stress, nerves, anxiety, doubt, indecision, tension and general angst (or whatever other labels you want to call it) – fear has physical consequences as well - sleeplessness, fatigue, misery. It leads to a void of all purposes beyond mere personal responsibilities of getting by. And what purpose or goal there used to be, with the consciousness of fear in place, that purpose now becomes an obsession. Purpose is based in strength and belief – obsession is based in fear and control. And within all of this, once again, fear strengthens itself.

And when you think about it, this all has a tremendous irony – and an almost Shakespearian tragedy built into it. We live in a world of indescribable over-abundance, ultra-convenience, and ultra-comforts. These are all the things our ancestors worked to provide us: Their lives much more difficult than our own. The debris of psychic fear should have been cleared away in this life of ease and convenience. Our modern world should be a place where fear-consciousness withers and dies. And yet it thrives. What a paradox of modern life.
Nothing can stand in the way of you having all you want in this modern era – nothing except the fear-consciousness.

And yet for most of you, what is fear-consciousness? It just starts out as a simple state of mind – and then it becomes its own monster. Fear-consciousness, no matter what words you use to describe it to yourself (worry, stress, anxiety, doubt, etc) is a state of mind that you yourself create. It is a state of mind that you yourself feed and reinforce, until it swallows the potential of who you ‘could be’ – and lost in all of that – is who you allow yourself to become. And again, fear strengthens itself. Fear – fear-consciousness – a creation of your own mind – a creation of modern times – and more is the pity in that – for all of us!