  Spiritual
This week: Edited by: Sophy  
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Hi, I'm Sophy ~ your editor for this edition of the Spiritual Newsletter. This week we'll talk about fear.
The Rev. Scotty McLennan, author of the book Finding Your Religion, compares humanity's innate need for spiritual searching to climbing a mountain. In his view, we are all endeavoring to climb the same figurative mountain in our search for the divine, we just may take different ways to get there. In other words, there is one "God," but many paths. I honor whatever path or paths you have chosen to climb that mountain in your quest for the Sacred.  |
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Facing Your Fears
Dorothy Thompson: Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Eleanor Roosevelt: You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
German Proverb: Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
Wayne Muller: When we are in fear, we focus all our attention on the point of danger and lose our capacity to find any courage, sanity, or peace within ourselves. We become so obsessed with what threatens us that the inner strengths of the heart become inaudible. Perhaps this is why, in the Christian New Testament, the phrase "be not afraid" is found so often.
It's usually in the middle of the night that fear steals into my house and finds me most vulnerable. Some small concern, barely noticed during daylight hours, takes on monstrous proportions in that still, quiet time just before dawn. A worry about a possible medical issue, a concern about a task left undone, fear about money, a careless word or action that may have hurt a friend. Fear does not confine itself to the middle of the night, of course. In fact, it tends to control much of what we humans do, much of the time. For instance, fear about financial security prompts career choices or constricts our reactions to the needs of others. Fear about our relationships moves some of us to cling and others to flee. Fear that our labors may amount to nothing produces an obsession that robs vocation of its pleasure. And on a larger scale, unresolved fear of those who are different than we are ultimately leads to destruction and war.
Fear, as wisdom traditions teach us, constricts our souls, strangles us and keeps us from drinking deeply from the well of life. It bears down on us like a heavy weight, making us less able to creatively and fluidly respond to everyday challenges and live our lives more fully, to their greatest extent. Fear plays upon our natural feelings of vulnerability and turns them into unnatural expectations that something terrible could happen to us. Fear tends to hold us back, filters our perceptions inaccurately, and defeats our personal faith by paralyzing us from being able to do anything constructive. It holds us prisoner. And fear is addictive; once we get going down that path, we notice even more reasons to be afraid.
Dealing with fear and anxiety lies at the core of a healthy human and spiritual journey, because fear is the hidden slave-driver that often controls us and robs us of living in freedom as our authentic selves. A few years ago the New York Times had an editorial about this glitch in human nature, titled, “Scaring Us Senseless” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb said that the great fallacy of Western thought from Aristotle through the Enlightenment is that we are always rational beings. But neurobiologists accurately show that our risk avoidance behavior is governed by our emotional system, not our intellect. Taleb writes, “This emotional system can be an extremely naive statistician, because it was built for a primitive environment with simple dangers. That might work for you the next time you run into a snake or a tiger. But because the emotional system is impressionable and prefers shallow, social and anecdotal information to abstract data, it hinders our ability to cope with the more sophisticated risks that afflict modern life.” Meaning that once upon a time, our natural fear instinct was very helpful in keeping us alive when dangers in the primitive, pre-modern world threatened our safety. But most of us living in the modern Western part of the world don’t live with those kinds of dangers anymore, we don’t have to rely on fight or flight quite as often in order to survive, and as such, fear has become a very powerful, and rather unhealthy, irrational motivator.
So what can we do about this? I'd love to hear some of the ideas and practices you have utilized to help conquer your fears, to live your life out from under the shadow of fear. But first I’ll offer a general impression that I have about fear: facing our fears is the best way to conquer them. Because the fact of the matter is, most of the things that we are afraid of end up not being as bad as we feared once we do summon the courage to confront them head on. That may not always be the case, I realize, but I think it's true more often than not.
What fears bother you the most? What spiritual resources have you found to be most helpful when you are overcome by this emotion? What have you done to successfully overcome those fears and move out of their shadow? Send me a comment and I'll share it in my February newsletter.
Sophy |
Below you'll find some offerings from other WDC members about fear. Please let the folks know if you read their piece by leaving a thoughtful comment or review.
| |  | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#1509419 by Not Available. |
| |  | Steam (E)
When cold toes have the courage to jump in a hot tub.
#1503064 by SWPoet  |
| | | This Fear (ASR)
Fear-the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Who really has a finger on the button?
#1500890 by SWPoet |
| | | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#1496868 by Not Available. |
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Now for a few comments about my last newsletter on alternative holiday gift giving:
From dkdoulos
Thank you for the links! I've been looking for unique places where I can give, and your links are perfect! Blessings to you and yours.
Glad I could help! 
  
From Lauriemariepea 
hi, sophie--
i commend you on this week's newsletter. i've asked my family and friends to contribute to either heifer.org or kiva.org in lieu of christmas presents the past few years, and it's a great feeling, knowing other families benefit from their generosity. thanks so much for highlighting this wonderful alternative to the standard holiday gift shopping. this also works for birthday gifts! 
You are most welcome, glad you liked it, and thanks for your kind words!
From spidey 
A great idea! Last year, my most treasured gift I received for Christmas was a special note from my husband. This year I returned the gesture with a poem - "Gift of magic" [ASR]
They really are the most treasured aren't they? I save all of the notes and cards my husband gives to me. Thanks for sharing the poem you gave him in return!
From Katya the Poet 
Love your ideas here!
Thanks!
Please keep your comments and suggestions coming, they are greatly appreciated! And on behalf of myself and the other regular Spiritual Newsletter Editors larryp and kittiara -- thanks for reading!
Until next time! Sophy
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Spiritual: January 14, 2009 Issue [#2824]
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