Fear
Fear is the Heart of Individuality.
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At the base of all uncomfortable emotions is fear. The fear of what might happen to us.
When we see life through the lens of individuality, we are primed to fear. The uncomfortable emotion creeps in subtly before blazing a trail of pain and hurt. Life becomes a competition with everyone and everything.
We play games from home board games to stadium filled sporting events. Each competitor has a list of guidelines to assure there is an even playing field. This way, nobody cheats and its a true indicator of a victor. And we do this primarily for entertainment purposes. We enjoy it.
Some cultures created games to vent stress. Some games were designed to strengthen a necessary or useful skill. Regardless, at the base of nearly every game is competition. Everyone is striving to win.
The biggest issue to a game is cheating. A game becomes irrelevant if there is cheating by one or all contestants. There can be guidelines, rules, penalties, and referees to help assure there is no cheating but it still occurs.
On the grand scale, our society is set up like a game. Those who make more money can buy more things. Those who make less money, buy less. We have governments that oversee this game, much like referees. There are laws and restrictions to the game.
Because most are seeing themselves as individuals, most are cheating.
What if those wealthy competitors used some of their wealth to alter some of the laws or buy off a referee? If we take a look around, we can see that many of our governments have lost some integrity and we can see that many of the contestants are exceptionally wealthy. Did they truly earn their wealth?
No, they stole it!
We are playing a game that we made up. People are forced into the game like slaves in a gladiator match. With so much cheating, the game is no longer fun and no longer serves a purpose. The game has become harmful instead of helpful. 'It's a dog eat dog world.'
If there is an opportunity to cheat and get away with it, most are taking advantage of it.
In Oneness, we don't need competition to build a skill, community, camaraderie, or have fun. This can all be done by following a sense of 'Rightness.' Every moment of our life holds everything we need if we can accept it unconditionally. There are no winners and losers, just people having fun and enjoying the company of others.
Life in Oneness is passive and doesn't require us to do or out-do anyone or anything. This message is the opposite for those who have been training for this money making game all their lives. They've gone to school, maybe even college, they worked hard at their jobs, they advanced in the business, maybe they even opened there own business. Long hours at the office to generate that big income. They have been refining their skills in this game all their lives. So much so, that they have lost out on time spent with family and friends. There is no lasting joy in the game.
The idea of engaging life in a more passive way doesn't assure that we will play the money making game well. Putting our trust in something besides our self, seems ludicrous.
The money making game is important to the spiritual world because it is here and being played. However, who wins or loses is not important to the spiritual world. We didn't come to this world to make more money and buy more things. We came here to find our Oneness with the appearance of individuality all around us. We've come to live in Oneness.
The money making game is eroding and collapsing from so much continuous cheating.
Unconditional love is something that we are. When we are One, we know this unconditional love and we share it freely. It is in infinite supply. Our life path is guided by 'Rightness' bringing us to everything we need at the perfect moment. We stop seeing everyone and everything as a source of potential danger that will out-do us in the games we are playing. We begin to see things for what or who they are.
If we encounter someone cheating, we know it because we can feel it. We may not have the physical evidence to prove it but we know something is amiss. This is someone we can't trust, so we respond from a place of 'Rightness.' We're not trying to seek revenge. Instead we offer them an opportunity to see their Oneness. There is no fear for someone in Oneness.
Fear says, we're on our own. Fear says, that others might do something to take advantage of us. Fear can motivate us to take advantage of others. Fear is insidious and lurks in unexpected places in our life. Fear creates unstable chaotic messes in life. Fear is the result of our belief that we are individuals that must out-do others to survive.
Fear cannot exist in Oneness.
The game changes in Oneness. No longer is it a competition of winners and losers. Folks in Oneness, apply their ventures in life to reflect a sharing and giving approach. Imagine everyone working to shower others with gifts, acceptance, and unconditional love. The abundance of wealth around the world would be shared and far more massive. If everyone easily had what they needed, they could generate more to share and give. No longer are we subject to working a lot to make a lot, primarily for ourself.
A world of giving and sharing may sound naive to someone looking at the world from the lens of individuality. "It won't work." We must look at our current game that is broken and failing. It isn't working. Indigenous communities around the world lived off an economy based on giving and sharing. Those communities that haven't been infiltrated by the money making game, still live by this type of economy. It has worked and it has worked well.
If we see someone as separate from ourselves, we will fear them. An individual perspective will generate a constant stream of fear in our lives. It's only a matter of time before we start to act from this place of fear. We justify our ugly actions by suggesting that we are protecting ourself and our family. We spread more fear and uncertainty around us and in our lives. Fear increases and we have more to fear.
Treating each other as if we were One, is a good start. Experience of our Oneness builds faith and our fears diminish. We can approach life with a sense of certainty, clarity, and 'Rightness.'
*Clair grew up in Royan, France. Her parents started attending a church when she was eight. After a few years, her parents stopped going to the church and Clair was forced to do the same. The church seemed more interested in their money rather than their faith. However, Clair loved church and she got angry when her parents pulled her out. More importantly, Clair lost respect for her parents and second guessed every decision they made; for the rest of her life. As a result, she didn't learn much from her parents. Whatever they taught her, she determined there was always better way.
When Clair grew up, she got married and had kids. Faced with the sudden responsibility of raising kids and a family, she felt inept. A massive fear grew inside her because she didn't know these things. Her childhood had been mostly spent trying to prove her parents wrong. She suddenly feared that her children too, wouldn't respect her and ignore her.
This fear was massive for Clair as she suddenly realized she knew nearly nothing about parenting. Clair began to sabotage her kids as they trusted and looked to her to learn. She criticized them incessantly to prove to them that they were inferior. All her kids wanted was to be taught and empowered. Instead she acted from her fear and disempowered them, manipulated them, and gave them a skewed perspective on life. Her parenting was abusive and it created subservient children with several neuroticisms. Except for one child named Jade.
Jade had a tenacious will and pressed through the abuse to persevere. It wasn't until Jade became a parent, that she too ran into the same issue as her mom. She had no idea how to be a parent. She didn't learn much from her mom other than how to be a psychologically abusive parent. Jade carried that same fear as her mom but Jade was a different person.
Jade got psychological treatment for anxiety for several years. She anticipated things to always fall apart. Unbeknownst to Jade, these catastrophes were her mom's doing. As a child, Clair would sabotage Jade's ventures to keep her subservient and respecting her mom. Jade learned to anticipate catastrophes since she was little. As an adult, this looked like stress and anxiety. The anxiety pressed Jade to do thorough work paying attention to every little detail, in hopes that she would avoid some cataclysmic collapse.
It wasn't until Jade began to look at her anxiety and fear that she realized something. All her life, her mom was trying to assure her failure, particularly at her duties as a parent. This realization galvanized Jade in her parenting. She used her anxiety as a motivator to learn everything she could about parenting. She read the developmental psychology books, the parenting self-help books, and she surrounded herself with healthy parents. She watched other parents carefully, picking up tips and pointers along the way. Jade used her fear against itself. She used the motivating aspects of fear to face her fear. She learned and healed from it. More importantly, Jade did not pass on this fear to her kids. Instead, Jade taught her kids how to face fear, to heal, and to learn.
Jade learned the skills in 'Commitment' and 'Rightness' to tenaciously face her fear. She ended up estranging herself from her mother because she was continuing to sabotage her ventures, particularly as a parent. Jade's strong sense of 'Rightness' gave her direction in the often confusing world of parenting. Free of her mom's sabotage and her fear, Jade was able to confidently and efficiently raise several wonderfully happy children.
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*Names, places, and gender have been altered to respect, protect identity, and confidentiality.