Fear—Faith—Courage

There Are Two Types of Fear

To understand courage it is necessary
to comprehend the emotion called
fear. There are two types of fear.
The first is genuine fear, natural fear
felt because of some genuine threat.
Fear is a necessary ingredient for
survival in all animals.
It allows the animal to respond to
danger through a chemical smack of
adrenaline to jolt the body into instant
action. When you pass a dark alley
late at night, the fear you feel that
someone might jump out at you helps
make you faster, more focused, and
stronger. The fear helps you to get
away from danger immediately.
This is commonly known as the fight-
flight syndrome. However, fear that
was designed eons ago to prepare a
person for a physical act in the forest
is not necessarily appropriate in the
workplace.
An executive, say, learns in a meeting
that he or she may soon be fired. The
thought of losing a job would create
fear in most of us.
But what kind of physical act or
reaction is proper in this situation?
What should be done in response to a
nagging worry that could last for
weeks before it is resolved?
Obviously, there is nothing on the
physical level that can appropriately
be done. Yet the physical component
of fear, a residue of our prehistoric
past, still persists: adrenaline flows,
circulation is redirected within the
body, and so on.
Prolonged fear (creating unremitting
stress) can actually damage the body.
Although the fear itself may be valid,
the instinctive response it elicits is all
to often out of proportion to the
threat.
It is impossible to program out that
response, since it is one of our
strongest instincts. We can only deal,
on a practical level, with its longer-
term effects.
Before we get into that, however,
let’s take a look at the second
category;
illusory, or imaginary fears.

Illusory Fears
Though just as genuinely felt, illusory
fears are based upon misperceptions
—false commands emanating from a
person’s inner conscious.
Many people spend their lives in a
constant state of anxiety and have no
idea where it originates.
Others suffer from phobias—greatly
exaggerated, distorted responses to
something perceived as a hazard.
Illusory fears are the bane of their
existence. Illusory fears often stem
directly (and occasionally indirectly)
from an inadequate self-image.
The ego, or sense of self-esteem, may
not be up to coping with the complex
problems of modern living, and the
natural reaction to this is stress
caused by anxiety.
If the self perceives itself as
inadequate to cope, anxiety, always
waiting in the wings, is all too ready
to pounce and take over. An
inadequate sense of self generally, if
not always, stems from childhood
programming by authority figures.
Illusory fears are often based on
misperceptions. Say you open your
door one day to find a snarling dog
ready to leap and bite. You back up
so quickly that you trip over your
own feet and fall down.
But the dog doesn’t jump. You take a
second look and discover that the dog
is a mop you had left on your front
porch the night before.
Because it was not what you expected
to see (the usual clear porch), your
mind did not recognize the mop but
startled you into a self-protective
mode just in case there was danger.
There’s no danger from a bit of dark
wet cotton, but a dog, yes; let’s
see a dog, says the imagination, just
in case we need protection.
And when you see the dog instead of
a mop, all the defensive reactions of
the body spring into place and back
you go.
The misperception was quickly
cleared up. That was easy. Many
misperceptions, however, are buried
deep in the subconscious, and in most
cases they’ve been programmed by
well-meaning parents or other
authority
figures.
Beliefs, attitudes, and the ways we
see things are our perceptive
resources, some of which work to our
advantage and some of which do not.
What we as individuals accept as
truth, (our perception of things),
belong to our overall belief system.
Some of these belief systems can be
quite resistant to change. No one ever
remembers something that happened
in its actuality, but only what
happened as perceived by that
individual.
That perception is affected by mood,
emotion, age, company, environment,
and even the weather. The same
experience that two people may
undergo
will later affect each in a totally
different manner.
Reprogramming illusory fears to
convert them to positive expectations
enhances one’s awareness and self-
esteem.
As the self-esteem improves, one in
turn becomes less and less prone to
react to illusory fears.

Dealing with Fear

There are ways to deal with illusory
fear. First, let’s define the word itself
using the principle of polarity.
When you examine the opposite
meaning of a word, the concept that
you are attempting to understand is
unlocked, leading to more awareness.
To define the word fear, we go to our
polarity gauge and lay it out with a
negative pole on the left end and a
positive pole on the right. We would
call fear a negative, and under the
word negative put expectation.
On the right end of the polarization
gauge would be the words positive
expectation. It might also be termed
faith.
Fear and faith, then are the same,
differing only by degree.
Fear is a negative expectation.
When you are fearful, you are
expecting something bad to happen.
Once you are aware of this, it
becomes easier to deal with the fear.
You simply change the negative
expectation to a positive expectation.
It is not difficult to do this; however it
does require practice.
To eliminate a fear, polarize it: switch
to a positive result of the thing you
fear.
Take, for instance, our example of the
executive who is about to be fired.
The first reaction might be to
visualize the difficulties of a reduced
income and the lessened prestige that
would likely accompany the
dismissal.
But what are the positive aspects of
losing the job?
Our executive might think of a period
beyond the immediate difficulties and
start to see this as an opportunity to
do what he or she really wants to do
—say move to another area, switch
fields, or explore any number of
attractive possibilities not
previously available.
Another benefit of changing your
viewpoint is that it helps you identify
and develop your desires.
When you hold a positive desire, the
result is usually a positive
expectation. And, as we’ve just seen,
a positive expectation—faith—serves
to diminish a fear.
You might initially think courage, not
faith, is the opposite of fear. But
consider that courage exists only
where there is fear to be overcome.
Without fear there can be no courage;
you would just act.
To ask yourself why you are fearful
leads nowhere because fear is an
abstraction.
Better to ask yourself what you
expect of a negative nature to happen;
then you begin to close in on a useful
answer.
An even more fruitful question would
be: what would you be doing if you
did not expect this negative thing to
happen?
Suddenly all kinds of positive
answers come into view.
Fear is imaginary just as faith is
imaginary—and both being
imaginary, they are subject to your
mental control. You can control fear
by changing it to faith.
That is the technique that we use for
eliminating fear—to transmute, or
change, the fear.
In considering your debilitating fears,
ask yourself the question, “What
would I be doing, and what would my
life be like if I did not expect this bad
thing to happen?”
Now you are transmuting, for your
imagination brings into play all of the
positive possibilities, and at last you
have a weapon to fight the fear.
Fear is a necessary part of the systems
nature has installed in us.If we were
to wipe out fear from a person’s
environment, we would be doing an
injustice, for the trigger of fear is
often necessary to remove you from
harm’s way, should danger arise.
However, illusory fear, illogical fear,
fear in which the fight-or-flight
response is not required can only
hamper one’s growth.
So identify your fear. Is it necessary?
Is fighting indicated? Is running
involved? If not, in all probability it’s
a fear that you do not need.
To deal with it, go to your meditative
level. Polarize the fear; visualize
the positive expectations.
What would you be doing if you did
not have the fear? Go over this again
and again. Use the Golden Images
techniques to enhance the positive
image and weaken the negative.
Symbolically smash or erase the
negative image and do not concern
yourself with it again. Whenever you
consider the thing, visualize only the
positive, beneficial results.
If flying is your fear, visualize the
positive aspects of the trip you’re
taking.
Visualize yourself sitting comfortably
on the plane. Picture a safe, smooth
landing and the successful outcome of
the trip. Imagine the things that you
would be doing happily if you did not
have this fear.

Dominating Fear
To dominate your fear, you change
the negative expectation to a positive
expectation.
You do this with your viewpoint, at
Alpha, through meditation.
You do this with that part of your
own mind that rules the world, your
imagination.
Fear is imaginary; courage is
imaginary.
The source of courage is in the
imagination—your image-making
creative ability.
Therein lies the ultimate wellspring
and true source of courage.

The Three Faces of Fear

Ivan Pavlov, in 1904, discovered that
the stimulus produced by the sight of
food as well as the aroma of food,
two separate representational systems
—the visual and the olfactory—
traveled along different nerve
pathways.
They do however meet in a common
path that stimulates the salivary
glands to secrete mucus to help pre-
digest the food.
His conclusion was that the final
pathway can also be activated by
associated nerve tracts that are not
directly connected with the response.
It was a simple reflex.
He called it a ‘conditioned reflex.’
Pavlov discovered that by ringing a
bell when a dog was involved with
the smell and sight of food about to
be eaten the sound of the bell meshed
with the visual and olfactory along
the same nerve pathways.
The saliva flow persisted when the
bell alone was sounded, even though
there was no food in sight.
The nerve pathway had been
established. This is regarded to this
day by psychologists and
physiologists as a fundimental reason
for both voluntary and involuntary
behaviors.
Fear is an involuntary behavior. A
person who is fearful of flying,
knows, on an intellectual level, that
flying is safer than taking a bath, and
much safer than driving, but fear has
nothing to do with fact.
Some event in the past had set the
negative exectation whenever that
event is forthcoming.
The fear sits waiting along the nerve
pathways of the brain. When a like
event comes along, the pathways fire
off and one of the three faces of fear
comes about—anxiety, fear, or panic.

Intervention To Eliminate the Fear

of Flying
To eliminate the fear it simply
requires another force to travel along
the common nerve pathway that had
been established by the fear. We have
a simple method of accomplishing
this.
As fear is a state of the imagination
you must use the imagination to
intervene.

Technique to Eliminate Fear

Here is the technique. Build a golden
image of yourself very comfortable.
Keep that image and create either a
sound or a touch that is not a usual
sound or touch. Say that you pinch
your left earlobe with the first two
fingers of your right hand while
humming the musical scale.
If you did all that while you were
thinking about yourself being very
comfortable then the pinch, the hum,
and the mental image of comfort are
on the same nerve pathway. That
should be set and ready to fire off
whenever you require a state of
comfort.
The key is that you cannot be fearful
and comfortable at the same time, you
are either one or the other.
Now think of the thing that causes
you to fear.
If it’s flying create an image in your
mind of being on a plane.
When the fear image is established,
squeeze the lobe of your left ear with
the first two fingers of your right
hand while humming the musical
scale.
That will trigger the thought of
comfort which will overide the fear.
Result: You no longer fear flying.
That is behavior modification with
regards to fear.