What Happens When You’re Not Afraid

Last updated on: June 28, 2015 at 12:11 pm by Annie Mueller

What Happens When You’re Not Afraid 2015-06-28T12:11:14-05:00 Annie Mueller

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When you’re not afraid, you don’t have to be ashamed. You don’t have to defend. You don’t have to control.

Fear involves internal torment: the anticipation of failing, of not meeting the standard, of incurring wrath, of receiving punishment, of being rejected, of experiencing pain. Torment comes from the unknown, the uncontrollable, the anticipation of pain in one way or another.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning

Edward Carpenter

The immense force and domination of Fear in the first self-conscious stages of the human mind is a thing which can hardly be exaggerated, and which is even difficult for some of us moderns to realize. But naturally as soon as Man began to think about himself—a frail phantom and waif in the midst of tremendous forces of whose nature and mode of operation he was entirely ignorant—he was BESET with terrors; dangers loomed upon him on all sides.
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But when you’re not afraid, you’re no longer condemned. Rejecting fear is the end of anyone else’s ability to judge or hurt you. If there is no fear, then what is there to be ashamed of? And if there is no shame, then there is no guilt, and therefore can be no condemnation.

If there is no condemnation, you don’t have to be defensive. You don’t have to defend what can’t be taken away from you. And if you’re not defensive, you don’t have to be anxious, because there’s no danger. There’s nothing that needs to be protected.

A Course in Miracles

Helen Schucman

You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart because this is what he is.
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If you’re not anxious, you don’t have to be careful or critical of others who might endanger you or what belongs to you.

You don’t have to draw lines, dividing into groups, separating yourself. If you’re not defensive, you don’t have a need to be critical. You don’t have to be judgmental. Judgment starts with a critique, a rejection based on some invented order or standard, a discerning of something off the mark as you’ve defined it, something not acceptable to your understanding or way of life. But when you’re not being critical, no judgment arises.

There’s no need for it. There’s no threat. There’s no danger. Because there’s no fear.

Practical Mysticism

Evelyn Underhill

Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply do not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that symbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great emotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain, lifts us to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a moment of the difference between the neat collection of discrete objects and experiences which we call the world, and the height, the depth, the breadth of that living, growing, changing Fact, of which thought, life, and energy are parts, and in which we “live and move and have our being.” Then we realise that our whole life is enmeshed in great and living forces; terrible because unknown.
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And when there’s no judgment, there is no need to differentiate, to separate, to divide, to categorize, to sort out based on us vs them, to find a group and bury yourself in it. Instead, you can accept. You can be open. You can embrace all, equally.

And when there’s no separating, there is no rejecting. Separating requires rejecting: no, you belong here/not there. But without the need to separate, to set up lines and barriers, there is no need to rejecting. And with no need to reject, there is no need to feel left out, no need to be less than, there’s no concept of inequal or inferior; all are the same, of the same, from the same, accepted in the same open way.

When you don’t fear, you’re not striving to love, anymore; you’re simply doing it. You’re not trying to overcome your selfishness, your shame, your defensiveness, your sense of rejection or unworthiness, your guilt, your criticism. You simply find that you don’t need those things anymore, and you let them go.

When you’re not afraid, you’re full of love. It’s the natural way to see and think and act and be. Absence of fear is freedom to love. Accepting without judgment or fear. Living in unity. Feeling connected instead of defensive.

It’s not striving to love or trying to get love, but just living in love.

Love is reckless

Rumi

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.

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