In this time of economic stress and global upheaval, I would like to offer a positive way forward out of the darkness: become a beacon of light to yourself and the world around you.
The only true antidote to fear is faith--and faith is much stronger than anything you might fear in your life, whether it is within your own personal life situation or the larger world context.
Faith is your path out of stress--which is only fear wrapped in modern language.
I am sure that I don't need to spend time listing all the stressful things that are occurring in our world today--we are all too well aware of what is happening in our economy, our social institutions, and global politics. It leaves us--all too often--feeling hopeless and helpless to positively affect what is occurring in our own lives let alone what is occurring in the world around us.
But I know better, and that is what has motivated me to write this piece. It would be very unloving to know a path to peace and not share it with others. So I offer some thoughts on my own journey that has allowed me to learn how to face fear, see it for the boogie man that it is, and move past it into a life of peace and joy.
You may remember FDR's famous saying, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That sentiment is as true today as it was when he uttered it in the context of WW II.
His point was that when we focus our thinking and attention on what we are afraid of, we give it power over us. Our thoughts generate our emotions which then, all too often, determine our actions.
When we allow fear to rule our thoughts, it generates all sorts of negative emotions, and we tend to make life choices that have negative consequences. That is the path of fear.
On the other hand, when we learn to rise above letting fear rule our thoughts, we give our minds the opportunity to be creative and discover solutions to our life situations that we otherwise would probably never be able to conceive. That is the path of faith.
I use the word faith to mean an acceptance and appreciation of a power greater than ourselves--call it the divine universe, God, Buddha, Allah, Mother Nature or whatever you choose.
Faith is that feeling of awe that you have when you stare up into a star-studded sky and realize just how small we humans really are in the grand scheme of things. Awe puts our lives into perspective.
That acceptance and appreciation of a power greater than ourselves is key to moderating and even removing fear from your life. Fear resides in the trenches of life--it can never exist or be maintained when you feel a sense of awe. Faith pulls us up and out of the reach of fear.
So how does one make the transition from a fear-driven life to one guided by faith?
The first step is to recognize and accept that you have a choice in the matter. Too often we live our lives in a sense of powerlessness, when, ironically, we have all the power in the world to create peace and joy in our lives. But first you do have to understand that you do indeed have that fundamental choice.
And the choice is very simple: do I choose to allow fear to control my life with all sorts of negative projections of the future or regrets and guilt over the past? Or do I learn to control my thoughts and release these fearful thoughts to faith? And to know that every experience that I have ever had has given me a positive lesson and my task is to receive it, learn from it, and move on?
