Beyond the Power of Your Subconscious Mind (22 page)

4. Counteract the fear suggestions with the opposite, such as “I sing beautifully; I am poised, serene, and calm.” It will pay fabulous dividends.

5. Fear is behind amnesia at oral and written examination time. You can overcome this by affirming frequently, “I have a perfect memory for everything I need to know,” or you can imagine a friend congratulating you on your brilliant success on the examination. Persevere and you will win.

6. You were born with only two fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All your other fears were acquired. Get rid of them.

7. Normal fear is good. Abnormal fear is very bad and destructive. To constantly indulge in fear thoughts results in abnormal fear, obsessions, and complexes. To fear something persistently causes a sense of panic and terror.

8. You can overcome abnormal fear when you know the power of your subconscious mind can change conditions and bring to pass the cherished desires of your heart. Give your immediate attention and devotion to your desire which is the opposite of your fear. This is the love that casts out fear.

9. If you are afraid of failure, give attention to success. If you are afraid of sickness, dwell on your perfect health. If you are afraid of an accident, dwell on the guidance of the Universal Mind.

10. The great law of substitution is the answer to fear. Whatever you fear has its solution in the form of your desire. If you are sick, you desire health. If you are in the prison of fear, you desire freedom. Expect the good. Mentally concentrate on the good, and know that your subconscious mind answers you always. It never fails.

11. The things you fear do not really exist except as thoughts in your mind. Thoughts are creative. Think good and good follows.

12. Look at your fears; hold them up to the light of reason. Learn to laugh at your fears. That is the best medicine.

13. Nothing can disturb you but your own thought. The suggestions, statements, or threats of other persons have no power. The power is within you. There is only one Creative Power, and It moves as harmony. There are no divisions of quarrels in it. Its source is Love.

22

Some Additional Thoughts About Fear and Its Correlation to Anger

I love Dr. Murphy’s analogy in Chapter 14 of the difference in one’s mental thoughts and imagination of walking across a plank on the ground and then walking across that same plank if it were raised 20 feet above the ground. Now, let’s move that tension further up the fear scale and place that same plank between the rooftops of two 50-story buildings.

Ironically, walking across the plank suspended between two buildings or walking across that same plank lying on the surface of the ground require the same motor skills. But the perception of the difference in the difficulty varies substantially. On the ground level, you could skip, walk backwards and simultaneously tell a few jokes to your friends walking on the ground side by side with you.

At 50 stories above the ground, most people would probably be flat on their stomachs, carefully crawling one inch at a time. They would be equipped with a helmet, parachute, and the insistence of a safety net 50 stories below!

If we let fear overwhelm us, it can become very debilitating and a great obstacle in the accomplishment of our goals and desires.

Here are some additional thoughts following Dr. Murphy’s previous chapter on “How to Use Your Subconscious Mind to Remove Fear.”

I can think of few things that are more debilitating to one’s progress and growth than fear. Deep fears have the capacity to totally immobilize us. So, what do we need to learn about fear, that we can better overcome it?

The first thing is the realization and understanding that fear is
not
a real condition but rather a combination of the thoughts and feelings we have
about
a condition. And since we do have the ability to control our thoughts, we have a built-in tool kit to deal with our feelings of fear. But, like any other tool kit it will not be of value to us unless we know how to use it.

Before we get to the “how to” part of this discussion, let’s expand our thinking of what fear is all about. We want to examine this with a realistic, not idealistic, perspective. So, for a moment let’s accept that fear is part of the human condition although from time to time we may encounter individuals who
appe
ar
to be fear-less.

In looking at the word itself, consider F E A R as an acronym for,

F
alse
E
xpectations
A
ppearing
R
eal

Let’s further break down the notion of fear into life threatening situations, which for the sake of this discussion we will call “real fear” and imaginary situations (all in the mind) which we will call “illusionary fear.”

Most people have very few encounters with truly life threatening situations. I am talking about hiking along a trail and suddenly finding yourself between Mama bear and Baby bear. Pay attention! When confronted with a real fear situation, people tend to perform at a peak level, almost superhuman. We have heard stories of how a 120-pound mother finds her small child trapped under a car and without a moment’s thought, lifts the car off the ground while someone else pulls the child to safety. The mother could have exercised and lifted weights her entire life and never have been able to lift a car without the extra adrenalin provided in this life threatening situation.

But, this is not the kind of fear that most of us experience daily, which can keep us awake at night, often resulting in some form of dis-easeness. Illusionary fear is the anticipation of something bad we think is going to happen to us, which more often than not does not occur unless we impregnate such fear thoughts so deeply in our subconscious that the fear becomes a self fulfilling prophesy. If the “bad thing” doesn’t happen, it is because the person experiencing the fear discovers new data or the
TRUTH
of the situation, which causes their illusionary fear to dissipate. The false premise which was the basis for the thoughts and feelings of the fear become replaced with factual data, which may be completely opposite the original thoughts that first manifested in fear.

So, how is all of this going to help you deal with your own fears?

I used to think the opposite of love was hate. I then read,
Love is Letting Go of Fear,*
by Gerald Jampolsky, M.D. Jampolsky helped me to see things in a different light. I began to realize that hate, anger, and other such feelings all have their origin in fear. Often what is really making us angry is the
fear
of losing something. The “something” could be losing our job, losing our partner, losing the love of our children, losing our health, etc.

A profound presentation of the relationship between love and fear is written in Neale Donald Walsch’s book,
Conversations with God (Book 1)
* I believe Walsch is right on the mark. Let me share some excerpts from his book on the subject of love and fear.

Walsch writes,

All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions—fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions—only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity. . . .

Walsch continues,

“These are the two points—the Alpha and the Omega—which allow the system you call “relativity” to be.

Without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist. Every human thought and every human action is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear, not simply those dealing with relationships. Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choices involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide—every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.

Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.

Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.”

Thank you, Neale Walsch.

When I first read these words, I had the following picture in my mind:

Like many people, I am a visual thinker. Words create pictures in my mind. With this illustration, I saw clearly that love and fear are at the opposite ends of a pole. And at any given time we are either experiencing love, experiencing fear, or we are moving from one pole to the other. With this realization, when I now experience feelings of fear, I know where I am in relationship to these circles. I also know where I want to be and if where I am is not where I want to be, I can make a conscious choice to take corrective action (in my thinking) and replenish my thoughts with thoughts of love and gratitude that start moving me back toward the foundation of love.

Remember the Basic Operating Principle which states, “Any thought, positive or negative, held on a continuing basis in the conscious mind,
must
be brought into reality by the supraconscious mind.”

As we better understand that we create our own realities and that how we create those realities is by our thinking, the need and value of controlling our thoughts is imperative. If we
cling
to a fear and we keep repeating it over and over in our minds (i.e., “My business is failing,” “My partner doesn’t love me anymore,” etc.) it
must
be brought into reality by the supraconscious mind.

So when we become aware of our fear(s) and how we are talking to ourselves about that fear (self talk), we have the ability to
restructure
, in our minds, what we are saying about the situation we believe to be causing the fear. We need to visualize a positive rather than negative picture of what we want and create a new stream of self talk that supports the end result we desire. For example, “I have all the ability in the world to build a successful business. Every day my business gets better and better,” or, “I have unconditional love for my partner and every day our love for each other grows stronger and stronger.”

This does not mean that businesses don’t fail and people don’t get divorced. As the bumper sticker reads, “Stuff Happens!”

But, people whose lives seem to continuously keep working in successful ways have either consciously or subconsciously learned the value of self talk and the reality that thought is creative.

The relevant thing about self talk in dealing with fear is the realization that we all have the power to control our thoughts. When we exert greater discipline to keep our thoughts in alignment with our values and goals, we have much greater influence over our actions and their corresponding outcomes.

If 99% of all our fears originate in thought, and we learn how to more effectively control our thoughts, then we can eradicate the compulsive fears that so often want to dominate our lives.

Now let’s examine the correlation between fear and anger.

As was written earlier in this chapter, “Often what is really making us angry is the fear of losing something. The ‘something’ could be losing our job, losing our partner, losing the love of our children, losing our health, etc.”

Consider the possibility that most anger is self directed. By that I mean most often when we experience anger, we are responding to something incomplete within us which is triggered when something or someone acts or behaves differently than how we believe it should be. For example, a child in one family might behave a certain way which angers the parent. The same behavior by a child in another family may not anger the parent at all. Or in the workplace, you might say to a fellow worker, “Doesn’t it anger you when the boss keeps raising his voice?” And your fellow worker responds, “No, I find it quite amusing.”

My point here is that when we are experiencing or feeling anger, we can more effectively deal with it if we understand (intellectually) that our feelings are something we have chosen rather than the result of what someone else is doing. If we accept accountability for our feelings of anger (rather than being the
victim
) we have the opportunity to consider a different response to the same situation which may exclude anger. A self analysis of response(s) might be, “Why do I always get so upset when my kid leaves the front door open? Do I really want to always blow up when that happens? Is it possible that I act that way because my own father used to get so angry when I left the door open? Is there a better way I can deal with this without becoming so upset”?