When we have knowledge of something, we can deal with it. When we don’t have the knowledge we seek, the answers to questions are fleeting – just beyond our grasp, and the truth that something is wrong becomes a part of our everyday reality, the realm of the unknown and all the fears of the past and present will present themselves. Our human egos have difficulty functioning without a road map and instructions.
The breakdown of my body was no coincidence with the realization that I’d be writing a book about fear. It was the perfect synchronicity. I don’t believe in coincidence. But I do know that the Universe speaks to us. By the time I had published my first book in October of 2004, I was accurately diagnosed with Lyme disease on my birthday in February of 2005 when my body had completely crashed and the fight for my life had stepped up its game. The full title of the book had become, The Fear Standard – A Guide and Personal Journey to Regain Our Intuitive Spirit. With the help of my Spirit Guides, I created my own guide and instruction book on how to identity fear and the steps we can take to heal from a spiritual, emotional, and physical perspective. All fear is a spiritual matter. And well, love always has the last word! I know this to be true.
There are three types of fear: Original Fear, Evolved Fear, and Negative Evolved Fear.
Original Fear is the basic emotion which is an instinctual survival mechanism found in all living things. This instinctive emotion response is commonly known as the fight or flight response. The significant characteristic of original fear is that it is in the moment or in our present experience, whether the actual occurrence of it is brief or extends for a period of time. The true or real situation is being played out now. A few examples of original fear are: a heart attack, a serious disease diagnosis, a car accident, a physical/emotional attack, a tornado, a fire, a flood, a terrorist attack, etc.
Evolved Fear is the second category. The distinction to remember about evolved fear is that it is future oriented. The experience of evolved fear is not based on an actual event happening to us now. Evolved fear happens as a result of a past experience with someone or something. The past experience does not have to always be personally experienced, as in an original fear.
Evolved fear also the result of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and other information passed down from others. Participating in evolved fear requires us to hold information, thoughts, or beliefs from which we may create a potential fear or worry about something at any time. It will be information that prompts us to remove ourselves from harm’s way when we see something coming, if we know what to do. Whether we act quickly or we take action later depends on the degree we perceive and have faith in that danger. Evolved fear enters into a part of our personal identity and beliefs, our attitudes and views of our world, our liberty and freedom, and how others perceive us. It can be our greatest friend. It can also become our greatest enemy, where we live in an illusion of ongoing fears in a false dream.
The positive aspect of evolved fear: We remember an original fear experience, whether it was our own experience, or information we received from someone else’s experience. The remembered or learned experience helps us to attempt to not repeat the experience or avoid harm altogether. The knowledge we gained helps prepare us for the best possible outcome, should we encounter the same type of experience down the road.
A few examples of positive evolved fear are: Moving away from a hurricane or fire, harmful addiction/emotional/physical behaviors, disease prevention such as healthy eating, exercise, checkups and lifestyle, to prevent diabetes and heart disease for example, balancing stress from not overworking, etc.
The Negative aspects of evolved fear is what I call The Great Illusion. Aside from the positive aspects of evolved fear one may experience, the remainder of all evolved fear is pure negativity and illusion. It is the consummation of all dark side possibilities. And it is through negative evolved fear that we have the majority of our fear experiences. This is a place so many of us live much of the time – a non-reality that keeps us bottled up where we can’t live in the present moment and truly discover and be who we really are. This is the place where we give up our joy, love, beauty, spontaneity, personal power, and individuality in life because of what we think about and believe.
Negative evolved fear is the place where we can go as far as giving up parts of our personal identity and basic needs out of imagined fears of what if mind games where we also tell ourselves that we are powerless and unlovable, that we aren’t smart or good enough. And the truth is that at some time in our lives, someone else has or is telling us that same thing. Most of the time, that is exactly how illusions of fear come to us. Conditioning from outside forces can be very powerful where we surrender our power and our loving heart to something or someone else, believing all kinds of useless and horrible things about ourselves, individually and collectively as human beings. A few examples of negative evolved fear: Coming from a family or guardian who cannot give unconditional love, race and gender prejudices, harsh judgments and negative comparisons, over-protection conditioning, frequent personal criticisms/judgments conditioning, materialism and class competition, religious/political extremism, etc.
When we identify the root cause of any fear, we can look at it and learn to embrace it as our experience that has all the potential to strengthen and teach us. We can recognize that there is purpose in it. We can seek help if needed because none of us ever really does anything alone. We can learn that wherever the fear originated, it isn’t WHO we are, that people are human beings and make errors – even horrible ones, and we can even go beyond ourselves to gain a level of understanding where we’re able to give the great gift of forgiveness to ourselves and to others. We will replace the fear with love and compassion. We don’t forget. But we forgive and free ourselves from the heavy burden of fear. We become free. We become light. We can freely give and receive love, knowing how much we’ve learned and how much we’ve grown. And that, dear friends, is beautiful spiritual evolution in action…
©Triza Schultz, 2023
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