Fear, Its Cause and Its Cure
By Brett A. Fernau

What is it that we fear? Nothing. No, I don’t mean that there isn’t anything that we fear. I mean that what we fear is nothing, the absence of anything. In the case of a living thing, what we fear is the absence of life. More precisely, we living things fear the absence of the awareness of the state of being alive. We fear death. Death of what? Death of our own identity, death of our personality. We fear becoming nothing, we fear the loss of our personal identity. This is true of all living things. We fear that we will not survive. That fear is what gives someone or something else power over us. If that someone or something can put an end to our existence, then we are subject to fear. If you can be killed, you can be controlled. If you fear death, then a threat of death can influence your behavior.

How you react to force or a threat of force depends upon how much you fear death. The magnitude of your fear depends upon how much you have agreed that you can be killed. If you have agreed that you are a biochemical machine with no ability beyond those inherent in the machine itself, your level of fear will be the controlling factor in how you live your life. In other words, if you are convinced that you are born, live and die just this once, that this life which you are currently experiencing is a completely unique experience, then you can be made to be afraid of dying. You can be made to behave in any number of ways because you fear death. You can be convinced to act against your own self-interests and those of your fellow living creatures because anything is better that nothing. That is the key to the whole subject of control of behavior. Anything is better than nothing.

Fear is based upon agreements which you have made. You have agreed that being nothing is bad. You have agreed that you have an identity; that you have a personality. You have agreed that you are dependent upon your body for your identity and your personality. You have agreed that you are your body and that when the life of your body ends, so does your identity and your personality. You have agreed that you can die and you fear death because death is nothingness and nothing is bad. You are surrounded by these agreements; everywhere you look you see them. Everything around you is fighting desperately to survive, you, your family, your friends and neighbors, mankind, plants and animals; all the living things you see are seeking survival in one way or another, either as a species or as individuals. This is the reality we all agree upon. Survival is something one does, an activity, the most important of activities. We are controlled by those things which threaten our survival.

Every day on television, radio, the internet, in newspapers and magazines you are bombarded with reports of events and eventualities that seem to be a threat to your survival; floods, fires, disease, famine, climate change, crime, financial collapse, societal breakdown, terrorism, and more. Every day you are asked to agree that in order for you to live you ought to let someone who knows more than you do tell you what to do. You think, perhaps, that if you give up a little of your freedom to make your own decisions you will be more secure, more likely to survive. You shift responsibility for your own survival onto other things; the police, your doctor, the fire department, city, state and federal government.

How much of your life or your freedom are you willing to surrender in order to survive?

There is something you should know. You are you, no matter what happens to you. And nothing can happen to you unless you agree to it. To you. Not to your body. Because you are you. You are an identity. You are a personality. You are your soul. You can only be controlled by threat of force. What if force can’t affect you? What if you will still be you, even if your body is destroyed? What if survival is your defining characteristic? Imagine yourself without form or substance and yet possessing your present identity and personality. Imagine, too, that you have been so for a very, very long time. Imagine that survival in inherent in your very nature, as is creativity. If this is you, what could make you afraid? Nothing. Nothing but your own agreements that you are something other then what you actually are.

Look around you. Examine your agreements. Change your mind. Know yourself. Know that you are inherently good, inherently creative, inherently helpful, curious, playful, loving, moral, faithful, truthful and be yourself. You have nothing to lose but your fear.