I have fearless aspects to my personality.
But I know how fear is only one step into the darkness, away.
My wife and I arrived in upstate New York a week ago. Forget images of clogged, congested, urban jungle NYC. Upstate is virtually one huge forest with a few decent-sized cities worked in.
We sit beside a pristine forest. Until tonight, I had not stepped outside during evening hours.
I walked out to the front porch and closed the door. Goodness I forget what pitch black really looks like. I did see bright stars in the sky but not much else in this semi-rural hamlet with no street lights and only a few houses around.
I admit it; fear surged into my being the moment I stepped into the dark. Ideas of bears, coyotes and even Sasquatch entered my mind as the forest behind the house reaches back for at least a mile.
Invite Fear into Your Life
Step into the darkness. Wade into fear.
Invite this feeling into your life.
Fear enslaves you. Stepping into fear frees you. But one only triggers deeply buried fears by stepping into the darkness.
If no pitch black forest awaits outside of your front door at midnight simply do what you fear doing, nudging into those dark areas you have avoided exploring for years. Everybody knows their fears. Edge into these feelings even if doing so genuinely scares you.
Invite fear into your life to liberate yourself from these energies. Step into fear to defeat fear.
Suffering Follows Fear Aversion
All manners of horrific suffering follows people who try to avoid their fears. Not stepping into the dark seems to be a safe, comfortable, good-feeling decision. But repressed fears manifest as mental and physical illness.
Stepping into darkness feels terrifying but liberates you from horrible problems suffered by people who avoid facing, feeling and releasing their fears.
Before you look for a pill, drink or mindless distraction to avoid facing your fears, know how fear always finds an outlet. Face it now or suffer through some mental or physical illness later.
You may as well pay the fear piper now to live a happy, healthy, wealthy, inspired life.
Edge Gently into Fear
Edge gently into fear to avoid fear overload. Make your goal to slowly but surely conquer various fears, not to suffer a heart attack or mental breakdown.
I hop into an icy cold shower daily here; well water sits a few hundred feet below the surface. But I only face this intense fear because I did the icy cold shower bit for years.
I gradually turned the dial to introduce my body to colder temperatures. Imagine if I tried to take an icy cold shower for the first time in 2015 with the dial turned all the way over during a -10 F cold spell in New Jersey? Forget passing out from the intensity of the cold water; I could have suffered a heart attack for the shock to my body.
Test fear one inch at a time versus torturing yourself.
One only needs to edge into darkness an inch at a time to see what fears await them.
