Fear is the Only Darkness
Master Po (Kung Fo series)

I must not fear, Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration, I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye and see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing, Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit: Litany Against Fear, Dune

In the beginning there was there was the Divine. Then the Divine wanted to reflect on itself, and projected a part of itself outwards into the Darkness. Doing this It broke into numerous sparks, divine light particles, each of them eventually becoming a living being. As the divine particles entered the Darkness, an action and reaction occurred between the two. The divine sparks acquired the action of being radiant and expansive, the substance of Darkness acquired the reaction of being absorbent and contracting. Those two functions, expansion and contraction, are the basis of everything that exists in the universe. How do they translate in the human experience? Well, expansion is love or light, contraction is fear or darkness. Fear wraps around and suffocates, fear closes down, draws in. Think about it, when you experience fear what happens? Breathing gets shallow or stops, arteries narrow, muscles contract. When you experience love, you live in complete trust, breathing is deep and relaxed, muscles are completely relaxed and arteries widen providing for optimum blood flow. Love expands, opens up, sends out. People who are afraid, limit their actions, trying to avoid what they fear. In extreme cases they are unable to move or speak, or they hide. People who trust move about freely, speak fluently and show themselves wherever they want to go.
We all grow up with fears, it is part of the human experience. As children we have been taught to not do this or that or we get punished. Or we have had traumatic experiences we do not want to repeat. Our basic fear is survival. It is programmed into our body. When we get overwhelmed by an energy, event or circumstance, the body (but also the soul) reacts to it with fear in an effort to shut it out or to evade it. All our action are based on this primal duality of love and fear. We all want to be loved and experience love, but we block ourselves from it by fear. Our very existence here is based on fear. We are afraid of so many things: death, disapproval, punishment, exclusion, war and so on.

Manifestation of Fear in the Body

Is there something we can do about it? Yes! Fear, like anything else, is an energy, a contracting energy. In the body fear manifests itself clearly in the muscles. Fear and traumas get "stored" in the muscles. That is, the energy of the experience of the fear will settle itself in a muscle, creating a permanent contraction or tension in that muscle. The body will stop sending pain messages after a while. We carry that with us the rest of our lives, often unaware, unless we do something about it, like for example rolfing. Rolfing is a deep massage technique that can release the stored fear energy in muscles. Sometimes the patient will briefly re-experience the trauma again as it is being released. Other healing techniques have similar results. Basically it starts with deep relaxation initiated by a healer or by yourself.
You can also look at it this way. In the human experience whatever we do eventually becomes a habit. A habit is an energy that has been repeated over and over again. The more is has been repeated the more that energy has cut a channel in our being (soul or body). The deeper the channel the stronger the energy current is, and the more likely our energy is going to flow in that channel. Fear is a habit too, one that we did not want. In the history of mankind the fear for survival has become a very strong habit because it is necessary for man’s existence. The fears that we have created by ourselves in this lifetime are more easily changed. More easily, but it still can be difficult or it can take a long time.
We mentioned that fear manifest itself in the muscles, but it can lodge in any place of the body. Acupuncture has become well known in the West. Meridians are a system of subtle energy channels in the body, also called nadis. Nadis are like little brooks and rivers flowing through our entire body providing every organ and cell with the necessary life energy. The experience of fear in our life will create contractions in those nadis. Different fears will create contractions in different places of the body. Where a nadi is contracted and stays like that, the energy flow though that nadi becomes less than what it should be, thus limiting the amount of energy to the cells or organs where the life energy was flowing to. Those cells and organs then become weak and susceptible to microbes. Ailments and disease follow. One can take medicine to kill the microbes, one can take vitamins, herbs and the like to provide for optimum nutrition and strength, but the organs and cell will stay weak. Acupuncture can harmonize the energy flow through the nadis again, but one needs to go to the root of the contraction. Why did it happen in the first place? Otherwise, after a while, contraction will set in again, because the root, the cause, the fear energy is still there. So, healing methods are fine, but they are only temporary, unless one also tackles the basic cause of the problem, and that is always fear. Any physical, emotional or mental problem that we have created in this life is based on fear.

Give up that Fear

You always attract what you fear. Fear is an emotion, and as this emotion is sent out, it will attract its like. Like attracts like. Thus you will attract more fear and that to which the fear is connected.

How can we get to the root of it? We have to change our negative habits. Many techniques exists, but the basis is expansion. Visualize expansive light in the areas of your body that need it. When you are afraid of something, or do not dare to do something, create trust in yourself, overcome that negative emotion by intellectual reasoning, accompanied by seeing yourself as a radiant being. Radiant beings do not fear anything. They believe in themselves, they believe in the divine power within themselves. Remember that fear is a contracting energy. It you pay attention you can feel that. Make that feeling expand, fill it up with radiant light. It takes concentration, determination, patience, and time. A strong habit is not easily redirected, but patience pays off. We experience fear because of "the law of least resistance". It takes no energy to let your energy flow in a precut channel (habit), but it can take a lot of energy to prevent it from going that way. We are all such lazy beings, that we let our lives being lived by our habits. Habits can be changed, and we sometimes do it when it is necessary. But who wants to confront their fears? No one normally does on a voluntary basis, that is why we avoid what we fear. So it is up to you to decide to take your life in your own hands and change it for the better. It is our fears that mess up our lives and prevent us from enjoying our lives to the fullest. The easiest and weakest way is to feel sorry for ourselves. Do not be like that but change your fear-habits. The way to do that is by the principle of expansion. You can use this in every circumstance or situation in life. The way to apply expansion can vary, but expansive energy will always liberate and make life so much better.
Basically, fear is the only thing, the only darkness, that prevents us from experiencing love. Love is the very essence of our being. We are talking here about unconditional love, not ‘I love you if you love me back’ which is again based on the fear that you will not get what you want. Fear created the ego, and the ego is always afraid. Thus it will constantly look around to blame its fear on something in the outer world. It prevents us from seeing that the source of fear is deep inside ourselves, and that fear is a wall that prevents us from experiencing our true self, which is love. Therefore it is necessary to look inside ourselves and take down that protective wall, take down those defenses. We need to get back in touch with our true self, our all powerful divine self that radiates unlimited, unconditional love. Giving up and releasing fear demands surrender and trust. How hard is it nowadays to trust each other. Our society, the entire world, is based on fear and mistrust. Wouldn’t we better of if we were able to trust each other? Fear leads to more fear and we become destructive. Trust leads to more trust and we become constructive. We would also become a lot healthier, as sickness has its roots in fears, and there is tendency to attract or create what you fear.
It is time that we not only learn but also practice surrendering to the Divine and trust, as we have been taught to live in fear for so many eons. It is time to give up the idea that we have to be the best, the strongest, the fittest or else we are not going to make it. It is time to give up that we must believe and do what other people tell us, or else we get excluded from ‘the group’. It is time to give up all those fears and put our trust in the divine self, the divine love, we all share deep inside ourselves, actually that is what we really are because all those fears are just illusions in the mind and they do not have any actual substance of fundamental existence. There is only our divine self, that is the only true reality, and we have to learn to put our trust in it. This source of divine love is the same for everyone, so then there will be no reason anymore to mistrust or fear anybody before they have done anything to actually hurt or threaten us. If we approach another person with fear and mistrust they will feel it and respond to us with the same. Negative actions and reactions are more likely to follow, and so the downward cycle begins. If we can have the courage to treat our fellow man as innocent unless proven guilty, if we can approach another person with love in our heart and respect for all life remembering that the divine spark is in us all, then we can really live our lives as true divine beings, sharing boundless love and light, in harmony and peace, in happiness and joy.