2015-04-16-Why Is Fear
Marin #233
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Why Is Fear Associated with Loving
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Why Is Fear Associated with Loving
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, we treasure these times we have together. They help us keep your presence in our awareness. We can feel you here with us and then, through you, the whole spiritual community that you are connected with. So are we, with you. It helps us be aware of your presence as the Spirit of Truth, the guiding light within us that keeps us oriented in the right way. Mother Spirit, we treasure your Holy Spirit as life itself.
Tonight I have a specific question from one of your really and truly faithful. She wonders why there is so much fear associated with love. From her standpoint there is so much more energy in love, rather than in hatred. The whole question is: why is there so much fear associated with love since the rewards of it–the spiritual blessings of love–are so great? So could you please answer her question? Thank you, amen.
Lesson
MICHAEL: Good evening everyone, my dear and faithful children. Mother Spirit and I thank you for being here with us this way. And we invite you to talk with us right in your own mind. Soon you will be able to detect our presence, if you can’t already. We are more or less the background of your consciousness itself, within which you think and reason. You have Mother Spirit boosting your intuition and all your knowledge and understanding; and also, with respect to what I have been invited to talk on tonight, she augments your whole notion of what courage is. Courage is your raw ability to extend yourself into the unknown, especially when you have been kind-of thumped on the nose before in your attempts to touch another, and be touched.
Why is fear associated with loving someone?
So let’s get right to it, as to why so many people find so much fear associated with love. It’s why are there not more people who are capable of loving, for fear is certainly the major reason. And let’s call true love the spiritual generosity of extending yourself out there, sometimes with an awfully naked feeling for all the clothes you are wearing. You’re extending yourself out there to touch another and enjoy God’s primary quality of sharing. You’re offering to share your life with another, just as he shares all of his with us. Why is there so much fear in someone’s intention to share?
Let’s start when folks are children and have a generosity of spirit to join in with their playmates. This can be a genuine feeling of love, maybe even falling in love with the other little girl or boy in the sandbox. But then they get rejected with an undeniable thump right on their tender little emotional nose. Someone else, for their own ego glorification at a young age, enjoys rejecting them.
If it’s you, suddenly someone is emotionally standing above you with this awful ability you have just given them by your very reaching out to them. You have put them in this position of power, and they’re delighting in making you feel powerless by putting you down. This is a real experience, and becomes part of your soul.
Then think of all the youngsters who, from a very early age, have never known love given to them. Perhaps their parents were just intrinsically mean, or stubborn, or cruel. Maybe children were unwelcome in the first place, and represent to their parents nothing but a bothersome burden they would rather not have. Sometimes too the parents haven’t enough inner knowledge or understanding of the situation to realize what they are doing to a smaller person they are responsible for. Even with some knowledge of what they are doing, they may not have the inner discipline to deny themselves lording it over a smaller, weaker person.
Cynical notions of trading love
Instead of having an irreplaceable connection with a generously loving mother and a father, some children have no example of it. Often then they get into copying a cynical way of thinking that love is only a matter of trading. I will give someone else just so much attention and affection–on a very short loan–so I can make sure I get at least that much back.
This cynicism can go so deep it is largely unconscious. Folks can go their entire lives with this notion of love being simply emotional trading, so much for so much. Unfortunately, and tragically, because this is not really love, they almost universally end up feeling cheated, that they gave more than they got. Think of all the hundreds of pop-songs that have come and gone with this same theme in mind of being cheated on, being made a fool of, and disrespected. Yet these are genuine human experiences.
With so much fear of rejection and being deliberately put down, or with a deep cynicism that creeps in, this is where courage is necessary. It’s the courage to start again, fresh in your own mind with the understanding that these previous experiences of yours, real as they were, need to be put in the past. They need to be encapsulated in understanding and forgiveness, if you will, so you are not constantly being tied down by the past.
It’s like trying to look into the future, or even be in the present, by looking in a rear view mirror. Think of how some folks are constantly relating what is happening to them now, in terms of something that happened in the past. They really have no sense of the eternal now they actually exist in, full of possibility, because it takes courage to set aside all their mere re-actions and, with a real inner strength, a real sense of spiritual generosity, just beam love.
Beaming love and good wishes
Mother Spirit and I have often challenged and teased you with the notion of going through your life beaming love and good will towards everyone—even, as I once taught as a human being myself–even to those who spitefully regard you. These are the small people who are trying to feel larger by making you smaller than they.
But to be able to set all of them aside and, as you say, let the dead bury the dead? Let the past be past, through your meditation and your actively projecting love, striving to be here-and-now in this eternal present that holds all future possibility?
This takes courage and faith, initially, to realize there is such a thing as love. There is a spiritual generosity that doesn’t look to merely trade at all.
It is a gift you give away. You’re strong enough to keep offering it, irrespective—and this is the hard part–irrespective of what comes back! You offer it even walking down a busy sidewalk in a large city and seeing all those folks coming your way. It’s meeting their eyes and accepting their feedback, for in these instantaneous exchanges you can receive and exchange the most wonderful, wonderful touch.
Encountering yourself in others
As we have taught several times before, you tend to encounter yourself in others. If you are down in the dumps, gloomy and feeling spiteful, or mean, or angry, yourself, then–on a totally unconscious level, just in everybody’s peripheral vision–you tend to encounter yourself. If you are cynical at heart, your cynicism will be self-validating. Here come all these mean people glaring at me. Without realizing it, you’re actually initiating this kind of response.
But if you’re strong and beaming love and good will towards everyone, even total strangers, you’ll find–again, in an instantaneous peripheral realm—they’ll be looking to catch your eye and exchange their own precious acknowledgment of you, perhaps share a little mutual delight.
It’s that look in another’s eyes that can make your whole day. It lets you know there is instantaneous feedback, if you have the courage and the open-mindedness to accept it. You can know where you are by reflection, because it is so unconscious and instantaneous.
Yet the fear of love can also have a similar origin like this in the unconscious way people are treated by unloving folks. They haven’t known their own selves by way of someone else’s loving reflection. They haven’t experienced it from their parents or brothers and sisters.
Love, anger, and hatred
About the relationship of love to hate: Mother Spirit and I see hate as a clinging on to anger, itself an impulse of self-defense. Anger can be an immediate self defense mechanism designed to protect you physically, mentally, or even spiritually in terms of value. Anger can arise immediately like this. If it finds an object in someone’s deliberately trying to hurt you in some way, this is a very natural action.
But when it becomes hatred, then this is someone’s over-re-action. This is their own focused design to obliterate the object of their anger. Where this goes so terribly wrong is that, past the instantaneous moment when their anger arouses enough energy for them to defend themselves, their cynical orientation towards other folks wants to hang onto and enjoy this arousing of energy, this sudden flush. On a very subtle level people begin to enjoy all the power of intimidation that anger and hatred gives them.
Yet a little reflection tells most folks that they rightfully have expressions like “eat your own liver.” In other words, someone maintaining and enjoying the feeling of hatred and anger is what actually ends up stunting their life and killing them.
These destructive energies designed purely for self-defense, if they are held onto and enjoyed, do fulfill their purpose of wiping out others. The emotions become a general attitude and orientation. Contact with other folks is wiped out because the person has become a hateful one.
It’s a self-fulfilling attitude. Becoming a hateful person, with a cynical notion of other folks, means they’re not realizing—they don’t even want to realize—just how sensitive, intelligent, and understanding folks generally are. Being hateful, they don’t realize why everybody is avoiding them. Other folks are, seemingly, becoming hateful themselves, just to keep them away.
It takes courage and faith
This is where it takes some courage and faith to break out of this attitude and literally extend by trying to project love towards everyone they see. This way other individuals can start to emerge—as individuals!–for them–out of their own amorphous background of stereotypes and prejudices. Perhaps, for some, for the first time in their life they can start relating to real individuals, and not just to some automatic, knee-jerk, categorizing and hateful notions of their own. This is a way out, but it requires a person become an individual themselves, and not remain a mere stereotype of hatred.
The vicious circle can be broken, sometimes by a super-loving person coming along and giving this hateful person a big hug in spite of themselves. Someone else’s spiritual generosity can turn the trick and give this poor, cynical person their first experience of genuine love. I know all the laughter and delight that can come to this poor soul. Tease them out of their cynicism because they’ll now have a loving person in their soul. They’ll have actually shared something.
Giving of oneself—a true sign of maturity
This giving is the true sign of maturity. As Mother Spirit once taught, those who cannot love, who cannot suspend themselves in order to give themselves over to a relationship, are living in an un-transformed, immature world. They have not yet experienced how loving another is a sharing with another, soul to soul. One of your great songs says, “Bobbie shared the secrets of my soul.” Without this, folks haven’t actually experienced how the whole world changes once they are sharing love with another. As Mother Spirit further said, “You have expressions such as ‘Love is blind.’ But is it? Or is it only that our lovers are momentarily bedazzled? Their whole world has just changed because they are both standing in it side by side with another.”
So look at the question from the position of the little baby, and then the child, growing up without love, or being horribly mistreated. Think of how their poor little spirit, just in trying to survive, becomes cynical and develops a calloused shell. They tell themselves that everybody would be like them if they could be. Sadly, in the meantime, life goes on all around them.
For each of you: if you recognize this attitude in another, muster your own courage to reach out and give them a hug and a smile. Lovingly tease them out of themselves. Offer yourself. This is what it takes, person to person. This is where love exists, and flowers, and blossoms, and comes alive. Now if you have any questions or comments, we always enjoy doing those.
Dialogue
Student #1: Thank you very much for that lesson. I’m facing a situation where literally the person is dying of hate and anger towards me. I do pray for him, for his comfort and to know he is loved. But I’m not allowed near him. Is this a case where you could try to talk Father Fragment-to-Father Fragment?
MICHAEL: Yes, my dear. This is truly where, within yourself, you can beam love toward someone. If you have been terribly abused–physically, mentally, or even spiritually and soulfully–this is your courage to forgive and beam your good wishes toward them. With genuine love this is irrespective of whether or not they can accept this. You are doing your share. You are offering yourself this way.
To forgive and forget?
You have the expression “To forgive and forget,” but you needn’t forget anything. Whatever has been a genuine experience of yours, and has spiritual value, is now part of your soul. Rather, I think that expression means to forgive so thoroughly it’s as if it never happened–in an affective sense. But it can still be part of your memory. Especially remember that you have forgiven! Don’t let that slip by.
This is having the courage to offer an opening, a sharing; but then be wise. Even as you are offering, do so with your eyes wide open. Continue to assess the reality of the relationship, however it goes. This way you are not loving blindly. You are not casting your pearls before swine, as I once used that expression, nor are you forcing your love on another for selfish reasons. Stay real. Stay with the reality of what keeps occurring. It requires you to continue beaming your love at someone, but then too, accepting them as they are. Is this something you would be interested in?
Student #1: Oh yes, totally. It’s my daughter’s father. He’s in the process of passing, and she’s been by his side; yet his hatred of me is literally eating him alive. I just want a peaceful passing for him, and for him to know that his daughter does love him. I want the best for both of them. It’s really hard on my daughter.
Keep staying open
MICHAEL: Well, hateful people are truly pitiful; and I don’t mean that in any condescending way. Whatever you do, stay open to the real effect that comes next. Otherwise projecting or giving love can actually be a kind of putdown if your overt expression of it actually makes them miserable—hopefully not your design. They may be so wrapped up in their own cynicism that even a genuine expression of love on your part is seen as a way of putting them down.
Then that is their reality. It’s a good part of love to recognize, as you say, “where people are at”–what their attitude is. An overt expression of love on your part—say, going up to someone and hanging onto them in spite of themselves–can be the most unloving thing if it cannot be received as it is meant. So you have to stay open. Stay away from any notion that you know what is best for someone else. Just keep loving them.
Student #1: Understood. Thank you so much.
MICHAEL: You are welcome, my dear. You are blessed to see the situation as clearly as you do. Be in my peace.
Well, my dear ones, if there are no more questions or comments this evening, I want to reiterate what Mother Spirit and I have mentioned a number of times. From our point of view, being in everyone and having a sense of the World Soul on Urantia here, the amount of love in the world, the amount of good sharing between folks, far overwhelms the anger, even when built up to be an active part of hatred—the very opposite of sharing.
A sense of proportion—love V.S. hatred
Hatred is the desire of annihilation, even to the point of physically killing someone, or perhaps mentally torturing someone over years, indulging in a perverted and obscene self-indulgence. In the spiritual realm it’s denying the value of another human being, especially in terms of sexism or racism; or now, religion and culture, past any need for self-protection. Anger may flare up, but should die away when there is no good cause for it.
We see the amount of love so totally overwhelming the amount of hatred. It’s the sheer amount of sharing, and concern, care and support, the taking care of one another. It’s knowing the way the world transforms, right down to the last little molecule, when people are able to love–in all their thousand and one ways. Is a changed world possible? You have to ask our lovers. It’s their generosity of caring for one another that so totally outweighs all the anger and hatred.
Sharing the secrets of your soul
Ironically, it takes a loving soul to see this; to know the reality of love; to know another, and then, hopefully, wonderfully, another; and then another and another. It’s to have your soul filled with all these others, all these “little walking infinities” as we like to call you. It’s to touch another, and share, for all the unfathomable uniqueness of each one of you. As you say in that sweet song of yours, you “share the secrets of your souls.” This is definition enough of what’s divine, is it not?
Closing
Good evening, my dear ones. Mother Spirit and I love you very much. We invite you to be still enough–settle down out of your busy lives long enough–to feel our love. Feel our presence within you and, if you are so inclined, say hello. Be in my Peace. Good Evening.
