Imagine you could live your life
without fear!
I
recently published an e-book on Amazon, which I announced on this blog. I have
since slightly changed the title of the book, though the slight change makes a
huge difference. It is now, A Literary Suite: Stories on Beauty, Love,
& Happiness. I have put a link to the book on Amazon at the end of
this post.
Today,
I want to provide a little context for the stories, which goes to the heart of
living a life without fear. Let me begin with an observation of great
importance that we all know, even though we pay little attention to it. It’s
the fact that we’re constantly talking to ourselves. Almost non-stop, there is
this interior monologue where we, in each moment, interpret to ourself our
experience of reality. We are continuously labeling our experience of people,
events, and things as either threats or opportunities to achieving what we
believe we need to be happy – things like security, respect, and meaningful
freedom.
Even
as you read this blog, your mind is engaged in this mental chatter, as you tell
yourself you agree or disagree with what you’re reading. Maybe your mind is
somewhere else entirely as it talks to you about some future or past event, telling
you how to perceive it as either helpful or harmful to your wellbeing. Maybe it
is something as simple as your inner monologue is going over your plans for
lunch and how this will be very enjoyable; or your inner monologue is telling
yourself that some afternoon meeting you must attend will be very unpleasant.
When
our inner self-talk labels something or someone as a threat or unpleasant, we
begin to feel fearful and even angry. When our inner self-talk labels something
or someone as an opportunity or pleasing, we begin to feel desire and even craving.
So
when Buddha, and, in the West, certain stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius,
say it is our thinking that determines our experience of reality, what they
mean is that it is how we talk to ourselves, our inner mind chatter, or how we interpret
our experience in each moment as either threats or opportunities to our
wellbeing that determines our reality. And whenever we label anything outside
ourselves as either a threat or an opportunity we awaken fear from deep within
ourselves.
Obviously
the perception of a threat awakens fear, but so does the perception of an opportunity.
The desire for opportunities reveals a lack that we believe we suffer and the
desire to fill that lack awakens a fear that we will be unsuccessful in filling
it. It is a fear that many experience repeatedly throughout the day.
Fear
distorts our experience of reality; we lose touch with its essential goodness.
Fear is the root cause of most of our problems in how we relate to others,
community, the world, and ourselves. The fear that arises from our perception
of threats and opportunities in our environment, whether people or events,
produces in us feelings of self-doubt, a sense of our own inadequacy, and
dissatisfaction, which in turn make us angry and unkind to others or merely
indifferent to their welfare. Such anger or indifference leads to injustice in
our communities and the exploitation of our environment.
We
often believe it is what happens to us that causes our mental states of fear,
anxiety, and insecurity, but in reality it is our inner voice, which causes us
to feel fearful, anxious, and insecure.
We
can train our inner voice to speak with the speech of compassion, acceptance,
wisdom, courage, moderation, and integrity. When our self-talk speaks with the
voice of these virtues, we no longer perceive anything outside ourselves as a
threat or an opportunity to our security, respect, or meaningful freedom, because
the source, origin, and locus of the satisfaction of these existential needs is
within ourselves in the exercise of these virtues.
Guess
what? When you no longer perceive what happens to you as either a threat or
opportunity, you lose the fear. When the fear is gone, you are open to experience
how wonderful, beautiful, good, and joyful each moment is and can be. You lose
all desire to criticize, condemn, or judge others as well.
When
you no longer see people or events outside yourself as either threats or opportunities
you can love others, yourself, and the world, with a fearless love. You love
without requirements or expectations, and so each moment of the day is blessed
by goodness, beauty, joy, and happiness. It is this experience of fearless
love, which I’m hoping to recommend to myself and to my readers in my Literary
Suite of short stories.
It is possible to live your life with a
fearless love!
