The Lessons of Rona. Part 6: Fear

False Evidence Appearing Real, that’s what some people call fear. But the evidence isn’t false if there really is something to be worried about.

Wearing a seat belt in your car isn’t fear, it’s safety.

Checking that your dinner is cooked before you eat it isn’t fear, it’s common sense.

In the right dose fear can be of tremendous benefit, keeping us away from things that would hurt us, or we are not ready for. Fear is an essential part of life and there is no-one who lives entirely without it.

But now we have too much of it! There is so much fear in society now, fear of Rona, fear of death, fear of social isolation, fear of not accomplishing anything during lockdown, fear of the economic consequences and for some fear that things might just go back to normal afterwards! Right now, fear rules, and it’s not fearful to say that!

But what is it that people are really fearful of? Many would describe external threats (like Rona) as the things which generate fear, but perhaps the real fear is of something internal? Perhaps what we are most scared of is ourselves and our own power? Or perhaps we are scared of the unresolved, unhealed parts of us which we have refused to look at for years. I think this is why lockdown has been so challenging for so many. They have been forced to look in the mirror and they don’t like what they see. The fact that some celebrities have been having meltdowns tells you all that you need to know. If you are completely dependent on others for your sense of self-worth then lockdown is going to be a hard lesson...

The point here is that the real fear, of the positive and negative power of oneself, is easily denied and replaced by a fear of other people and situations. And that is what has happened with Rona. Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives all seems harmless enough, and maybe it does some good. But it’s also a triple shot of fear which chips away at people’s ability to make decisions about their own lives and establishes an incredibly flawed man-made institution as almost a national religion. We now have a medical priesthood whose judgements are treated like holy writ…

It’s not just the Corona Panic though. Fear is used left, right and centre in our society. Our society increasingly promotes the perfectibility of humans, that people, usually through the limitation of personal choice and the denial of uniqueness, can somehow have all their rough edges knocked off so as to be made shiny and new in a world where everyone is equal, everyone is nice and no one ever gets hurt. But that is Disney, not reality. Humans will always be flawed and broken, incomplete works in progress. Certainly, human life can be made better (I would not be doing this work if it couldn’t), but the only place that Utopia exists is in a dream. And it is like this for an incredibly good reason – karma.

Each of us is a spiritual being (a Soul) having a human experience. But your Soul did not come here to have a pleasant holiday, it came for trials and tests by entering into a unique arena of conflict and drama with tears and woe and joy and pain. Your Soul came to enjoy, to marvel and to wonder, to connect, to love and laugh, but it also came to fight and struggle and regret and mourn. It came for the full range of human experiences, not just the nice ones. And your Soul did this because it knows that hardship and difficulty teach far more than comfort and joy. It knows that even pain brings the gift of learning. To live is to suffer, because to suffer is to LEARN, but if you reframe all your suffering as LEARNING then the sting goes right out of it.

Your Soul has no fear, either of living or dying. Your Soul is not scared of getting out of bed in the morning nor of looking in the mirror. It is not scared of failing or succeeding, of suffering or of hard work. Your Soul is not scared of anything or anyone because it lives forever!

The change that is occurring right now across the planet is akin to an awakening, but it’s not an awakening to nice things, but to all things. We have been, I think, in a decades long dream where we have increasingly conspired together to try to rub out hardship wherever we could find it. And the result of that is going to be hardship on an unprecedented scale because none of us can run from the natural laws of the universe. The more we deny that life is for learning – all things, not just nice things – the more that learning will come for us, at a time not of our choosing.

The best strategy in the face of all this is to willingly offer ourselves up for WHATEVER the universe wishes to teach us. Say it loud and say it clear “UNIVERSE! ALL YOUR LESSONS ARE WELCOMED HERE!” This is strong, I know that, but no-one can hide from the lessons that the Universe wishes to teach…

When we lead with the Soul – the spiritual part of us that lives forever, that has no fear and sees that there is a bigger picture – then all earthbound hardships can be endured. And when we co-operate with the Universe by becoming its willing student we will be helped along every step of the way. But when we swim in the illusion of the imminent arrival of a New Golden Age of light, love and equality then we find ourselves woefully unprepared for this crisis, and the next. Most people aren’t going to change track after Rona, they are far too in love with the Disney version of life. But you can change, and you can start right now. Remind yourself that you are a Soul, a Soul who lives forever…