Under Attack

Continued from yesterday…

Fear is separation from what is present. Fear essentially refuses to live in union with what is. Love experiences life because it’s one with life. Fear avoids life because it cannot be at peace with it.

In this preoccupied fearful state, our thoughts are consumed with our successes and failures. We relive the triumphs of yesterday because what is present does not satisfy us. We recall our failures because they provide a pretext for the apparent lack in the present. These memories then become the compass of our future. Projecting our past onto our future, we are unable to come to terms with experiencing life in the now.

The success of the past turns to greed, compulsiveness, possessiveness, and an unhealthy need for power, pushing us further away from awareness of our oneness. Our sense of identity is no longer attached to love’s all-embrace, but instead to our accomplishments and our victories. We think that losing what we achieved in the past would diminish our value.

The threat we feel inside that we are not enough anymore, therefore, turns into a compulsive pursuit of fame, money, power, and sex. When our misguided identity and false self comes under attack, we lash out in anger, hypocrisy, and intolerance of what we perceive as other from us.

The failures of the past, on the other hand, turn to guilt, anger, regrets, and feelings of rejection. As we identify with our disappointments and letdowns, we become victims in our minds. To avoid or alleviate some of the emotional pain of not feeling good enough, we complain about how unfairly we have been treated, and how misunderstood we are.

In this world of us versus them, we assign blame and fault to our enemies—anything to silence the nagging doubts inside that we are not enough. The doubts, of course, can never be stopped entirely—no matter how many new toys we buy in the mall—so we unconsciously punish ourselves with anxiety, worry, depression, and even sickness.

Fear has gained control of our minds. Oneness with the Source has been forgotten. We are trapped alone with our thoughts, left wondering how we can be free from the torment of loneliness and the despair we feel. It begins by returning to love.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from Section 1 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren