Choosing Love Over Fear
The world is so full of fear. The churches teach fear, our communities have become fearful places, entertainment is fear based, even our families are often unsupportive and judgmental. Where there is fear, there is not love. I cannot feel love if I am awash in fear. We are not listening to the message Jesus came to deliver. I want to change that, but how can I change the direction humanity has taken. I am just one person. I think though, that Jesus would not have brought us a message that was not realistic. What, after all, would be the point.
If Jesus told us to love then that must be possible, though at times I have thought otherwise. And while I cannot change the world (I cannot even change one single other person in the world) I can change myself. If I change myself, perhaps someone else will see that and want it for themselves. How many people might I influence? How many will they influence? Think of the strong chain of forgiveness we are forging! Jesus speaks of the mind of Christ of which we are all a part. I cannot do or think anything that does not affect every one else.
It seems a pretty big job, doesn’t it? But Jesus assured us that he would be with us always. He meant that literally. He also assured me he would send me a guide. In John 14:26-27, Jesus says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
That is how I am going to achieve unconditional love. I am not going to wake up tomorrow and cause world peace. I am not even going to wake up tomorrow and find that I have achieved Myron peace! But, I can teach myself unconditional love through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I will do it one thought at a time. Each thought of fear, whatever form that fear takes, (anger, frustration, guilt, hate, distate, unkindness) I will take to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to look at it with me and then to heal it. It will take some courage to do this. I don’t like to look at the darkness in my heart. I would prefer to pretend that it is not in me. I would prefer
to think that my unhappiness is caused by someone else. But, by looking at it with the Holy Spirit as Jesus intended me to do, I find that it is not evil. It is just a mistake which I now allow the Holy Spirit to correct.
To paraphrase something Rev. Robert Stoelting said, “Here is the answer to every perceived problem. I will open my mind so that the healing voice of the Holy Spirit can be heard. I will be still and listen. He will teach me that attack thoughts are just foolish ideas. I begin to understand that I do not want to keep them. They do not protect me. To feel His blessing we just need to bring each fearful thought to Him. With loving compassion, He looks upon our ideas of limitation and to each one He gently says, “It is not so.” Where we perceive lack of love, He shows us the Love that shines upon us beyond the imaginary barriers we have built.”
And so, that is what I am doing in my life now. I am, with the help of the Holy Spirit, removing the barriers to love. I think of them as stones that form a dam which blocks the flow of love God created me to be. Each dark thought is a stone that I remove as I ask the Holy Spirit to heal it. When I thought of the teacher who told a child that gay is a dirty word, I felt angry and outraged. That emotion was the result of thinking that her words were harmful and would ultimately make my world a more dangerous and ugly place. Those thoughts were a stone placed in the path of love and I felt cut off from the peace of God. When I took those thoughts to the Holy Spirit and asked Him for another way to see it, He told me that the teacher involved was full of fear and doesn’t know what to do with it, so in her misery, she looks for someplace to put it. She only wants to be free of it and mistakenly thinks that seeing it outside of herself will free her from it. She doesn’t understand that giving it away is how she keeps it. Everytime she expresses her hate, she makes it more real for herself. She places one more stone in the dam that keeps her from feeling God’s love for her. Suddenly, I did not want to add to her pain. I saw that blaming her and hating her would only hurt myself, and ultimately hurt all of us.
So it is in this way, one mistaken thought at a time, that I am dismanteling the dam of fear I have constructed. And as I do this, God’s Love rushes in to fill me. I am not in any way learning the meaning of love, for as the Course says, that is beyond what can be taught. I am only removing the blocks to love and allowing myself to experience it. It is in this way that I am learning to live in unconditional love as Jesus came here to teach.
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