What is the spiritual root of fear? All fear originates from you disconnecting from your true spiritual nature. You are a Divine being and that Divinity which is your Life Force can never be harmed in any way.
What part of you can never experience fear or apprehension or anxiety of any kind?
Your Soul or your Spirit is that Divine part that is who you really are!
It can never die and exists in all of Eternity.
Your body will perish. Your mind will fade away. Your emotions will fluctuate.
Your Soul is fearless, deathless and never changes.
It is that part of you that comes directly from God (or Creator) and it is your eternal connection to Divinity and Infinite Intelligence.
It is this part of you that can never experience fear because it can never be harmed. It can never die. It can never be removed from its true essence which is nothing but pure unconditional love.
What Is Fear Really?
There are many definitions for fear but for the most part all fear is made up in your mind. Your imagination is one of your most magnificent faculties and it can conjure up some of the most magnificent dreams.
It can also conjure up fears beyond your wildest dreams.
Almost every fear you have exists in you mind only. It gets constructed in your mind and lives in your mind.
Regardless of whether a fear is real or imagined, your experience of that fear will seem REAL to you.
Eleven though your fears may be completely irrational, they will still create your reality and your experience of reality.
What is the spiritual root of fear if all fear has one single originating factor?
The reality is that there are a number of different types of fear and not all of it has a single root cause.
1. Primal Fears
Certain fears are ‘born into’ us primarily as a defense mechanism. When a tiger appreaches you in the middle of the jungle you immediately sense fear.
This fear serves you well because it is essential in keeping you alive.
Most primal fears served us well in times when we faced numerous natural threats for our survival.
2. Learned Fears
From the moment you are born you learn how to be a human being. You come into this life with no fear.
As a baby you might learn the hard way that crawling off the sofa means ‘ouch!’. Most of what we fear, we learn either through experiences or through what we are taught to fear.
Our parents and authority figures teach us on a subconscious level what we should fear.
Before the age of 10 you learn most of your fears through subconscious observation.
3. Imposed Fears
What is the spiritual root of fear? Most of us learn certain spiritual connotations to fear through religion.
In almost all religions, God is portrayed as someone you should fear. Some supreme being who demands certain behaviors from you…or else!
These imposed fears are incredibly powerful.
The thought that God can punish you for all of eternity has the power to control and conform large percentages of the population.
The early Christian churches realized this and used it to good effect by controlling people for hundreds of years and dictating their behaviors through fear.
4. Imagined Fears
Scientists claim that we are born with only 2 fears. The fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.
Every other fear in your life is only a construct of your imagination.
Most fears are made up in your own mind.
There are many sources for your imagination to draw from as it conjures up images and thoughts of things you should fear.
Everything you see in real life, on TV or that you can remember from your past becomes part of this rich palette that your imagination uses to ‘create’ your fears.
This is both a scary thought and a liberating fact.
If all your fears are imagined then what is holding you back in your life is really only an invisible thread.
The best acronym for fear is F.E.A.R:
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
Keep this in mind and start to pay attention to your own fears. Realize that NONE of it is real. Most of it is irrational and almost all of it exists only in your imagination.
The Root Cause of All Fear
What is the spiritual root of fear? Is there a single cause of all fear and is there ‘one thing’ that we can unearth to uproot all other fears?
I do believe there is one big overriding cause of all fear and it is spiritual in nature.
It transcends the ego, the mind and the body.
As I have already alluded to in the intro, your spiritual truth is that you ARE your Soul or your Spirit.
Everything else – your mind, your body, your thoughts etc. are all ideas of who you think you are. Who you REALLY are is that Divine formless Soul.
When you are conscious and aware of this truth you can not experience fear of any kind.
You are a spiritual being.
You are eternal and nothing and no one or no thing can harm you ( who you REALLY) are.
The great Nelson Mandela who endured years of mental, physical and emotional abuse while wrongfully imprisoned had a poem stuck to his prison cell for 27 years.
This poem speaks exactly to what we are talking about here.
There is a part of you that can never be harmed and over which ONLY you have complete control.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
– WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
We tend to ‘forget’ who we really are. Life and life experiences jolt us into a belief that we are what we do, what we look like, where we come from or what we believe.
None of that is really true though.
When you really stop and ask yourself ‘who am I’ and you do this long enough to unpeel the superficial layers of who you’ve been told you are then you discover your true nature.
You are LOVE and you are a Divine part of God and most of all you will discover that we are all ONE because we all originate from the same SOURCE and it is that spark of the creator within each of us that is who we really are.
Fear: The Opposite of Love
Your true nature is love. In almost every spiritual text God is equated to love. The idea of God can best be described and experienced as love.
When you are in a state of love and experience love there can be no fear.
Just like light and dark are not really opposites, so are fear and love. Darkness is simply the absence of light.
Fear is simply the absence of love.
When you ‘shine’ love into your life, all fear will banish. Not because you ‘chase it away’ but simply because no darkness can exist in the absence of light.
This is a really important analogy to use in your own life.
When you experience fear, you have ‘chosen’ to remove love from your life. When I talk about love I do not refer to romantic love – which is what most people equate l;ove to be.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
– 1 Corinthians 13:4-5
Love in the spiritual sense is so much more than the emotion that most people connect to love.
So, what is love then?
Beyond the emotional experiences that we associate with love, on a spiritual level it is a consciousness or an awareness of God within you as the REAL you.
It is an awareness that transcends the physical, emotional and intellectual understandings of life.
Defining this kind of love is not easy. Unconditional love where you recognize the Divinity in all of creation, where you have reverence for all of life and where you can find meaning and purpose beyond your own needs comes close to this ‘experience’ that is truly love.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
– 1 John 4:16
What is the spiritual root of fear if we consider the fact that fear is the opposite of love? If God is synonymous with love and love is the opposite of fear then we can easily see how unconditional love is the anecdote to all fear.
Love is a spiritual concept and the absence of this love in your life is the true root cause of all fear.
