Banish All Fear

It is on such considerations, written here, that I have come to hold that all real fear-feeling should and may be banished from our life, and that what we call "normal fear" should be substituted in our language by "instinct" or by "reason," the element of fear being dropped altogether.

"Everyone can testify that the psychical state called fear consists of mental representations of certain painful results" (James).

The mental representations may be very faint as such, but the idea of hurt to self is surely present.

If, then, it can be profoundly believed that the real self cannot be hurt; if the reason can be brought to consider vividly and believingly all quieting considerations; if the self can be held consciously in the assurance that the White Life surrounds the true self, and is surely within that self, and will suffer "no evil to come nigh," while all the instincts of self preservation may be perfectly active, fear itself must be removed "as far as the east is from the west."

These are the ways, then, in which any occasion for fear may be divided:

As a warning and as a maker of panic.

But let us say that the warning should be understood as given to reason, that fear need not appear at all, and that the panic is perfectly useless pain.

With these discrimination in mind, we may now go on to a preliminary study of fear.

preliminary study of fear.              

Fear is (a) an impulse, (b) a habit, (c) a disease.

Fear, as it exists in man, is a make-believe of sanity, a creature of the imagination, a state of insanity.

Furthermore, fear is, now of the nerves, now of the mind, now of the moral consciousness.

The division depends upon the point of view. What is commonly called normal fear should give place to reason, using the word to cover instinct as well as thought.

From the correct point of view all fear is an evil so long as entertained.

Whatever its manifestations, wherever its apparent location, fear is a psychic state, of course, reacting upon the individual in several ways: as, in the nerves, in mental moods, in a single impulse, in a chronic habit, in a totally unbalanced condition.

The reaction has always a good intention, meaning, in each case, "Take care! Danger!"

You will see that this is so if you will look for a moment at three comprehensive kinds of fear fear of self, fear for self, fear for others. Fear of self is indirectly fear for self danger.

Fear for others signifies fore-sensed or fore-pictured distress to self because of anticipated misfortune to others.

I often wonder whether, when we fear for others, it is distress to self or hurt to them that is most emphatically in our thought.

Fear, then, is usually regarded as the soul's danger signal.

But the true signal is instinctive and thoughtful reason.

Even instinct and reason, acting as warning, may perform their duty abnormally, or assume abnormal proportions.

And then we have the feeling of fear.

The normal warning is induced by actual danger apprehended by mind in a state of balance and self-control.

Normal mind is always capable of such warning.

There are but two ways in which so-called normal fear, acting in the guise of reason, may be annihilated: by the substitution of reason for fear, and by the assurance of the white life.

Let it be understood, now, that by normal fear is here meant normal reason real fear being denied place and function altogether.

Then we may say that such action of reason is a benefactor to man. It is, with pain and weariness, the philanthropy of the nature of things within us.

One person said: "Tired? No such word in my house!"

Now this cannot be a sound and healthy attitude.

Weariness, at a certain stage of effort, is a signal to stop work.

When one becomes so absorbed in labor as to lose consciousness of the feeling of weariness, he has issued a "hurry call" on death.

I do not deny that the soul may cultivate a sublime sense of buoyancy and power; rather do I urge you to seek that beautiful condition; but I hold that when a belief or a hallucination refuses to permit you to hear the warning of nerves and muscles, Nature will work disaster inevitably.

Let us stand for the larger liberty which is joyously free to take advantage of everything Nature may offer for true well-being.

There is a partial liberty which tries to realize itself by denying various realities as real; there is a higher liberty which really realizes itself by conceding such realities as real and by using or disusing them as occasion may require in the interest of the self at its best.

I hold this to be true wisdom: to take advantage of everything which evidently promises good to the self, without regard to this or that theory, and freely to use all things, material or immaterial, reasonable or spiritual.

I embrace your science or your method; but I beg to ignore your bondage to philosophy or to consistency.

So I say that to normal health the weary-sense is a rational command to replenish exhausted nerves and muscles.

It is not liberty, it is not healthful, to declare, "There is no pain!"

Pain does exist, whatever you affirm, and your affirmation that it does not is proof that it does exist, for why (and how) declare the non-existence of that which actually is non-existent?

But if you say, "As a matter of fact I have pain, but I am earnestly striving to ignore it, and to cultivate thought-health so that the cause of pain may be removed," that is sane and beautiful.

This is the commendable attitude of the Bible character who cried: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

To undertake swamping pain with a cloud of psychological fog that is to turn anarchist against the good government of Nature.

By pain Nature informs the individual that he is somewhere out of order. This warning is normal.

The feeling becomes abnormal in the mind when imagination twangs the nerves with reiterated irritation, and Will, confused by the discord and the psychic chaos, cowers and shivers with fear.

I do not say there is no such thing as fear. Fear does exist. But it exists in your life by your permission only, not because it is needful as a warning against "evil."

Fear is induced by unduly magnifying actual danger, or by conjuring up fictitious dangers through excessive and misdirected psychical reactions.

This also may be taken as a signal of danger, but it is a falsely intentioned witness, for it is not needed, is hostile to the individual because it threatens self-control and it absorbs life's forces in useless and destructive work when they ought to be engaged in creating values.

Love And Faith In Relatioships And Then In Marriage

No woman is worthy to be a wife who on the day of her marriage is not lost absolutely and entirely in an atmosphere of love and perfect trust; the supreme sacredness of the relation is the only thing which, at the time, should possess her soul.

Women should "obey" the men as the men should also obey women.

There are important requisites in every happy marriage; the first is Faith, and the remaining is Confidence.

Nothing so compliments a man as for a woman to believe in him nothing, so pleases a woman as for a man to place confidence in her.
 

Obey? God help me! Yes, if I loved a woman, my whole heart's desire would be to obey her slightest wish.

And how could I love her unless I had perfect confidence that she would only aspire to what was beautiful, true and right?

And to enable her to realize this ideal, her wish would be to me a sacred command; and her attitude of mind toward me I know would be the same.

And the only rivalry between us would be as to who could love the most; and the desire to obey would be the one controlling impulse of our lives.

We gain freedom by giving it, and he who bestows faith gets it back with interest.

To bargain and stipulate in love is to lose.

Perfect faith implies perfect love; and perfect love casteth out fear.

It is always the fear of imposition, and a lurking intent to rule, that causes the woman to haggle over a word it is absence of love, a limitation, an incapacity.

The price of a perfect love is an absolute and complete surrender.

To give a man something for nothing tends to make the individual dissatisfied with himself.

Your enemies are the ones you have helped.

And when an individual is dissatisfied with himself he is dissatisfied with the whole world and with you.

A man's quarrel with the world is only a quarrel with himself.

But so strong is this inclination to lay blame elsewhere and take credit to ourselves, that when we are unhappy we say it is the fault of this woman or that man.

Especially do women attribute their misery to That Man.

And often the trouble is he has given her too much for nothing.

This truth is a reversible, back-action one, well lubricated by use, working both ways as the case may be.

That form of affection which drives sharp bargains and makes demands, gets a check on the bank in which there is no balance.

There is nothing so costly as something you get for nothing.