There is no way that I can adequately deal with such a vast subject in 1000 words or so. It was fired up by my listening to Trans World Radio this morning; the preacher was talking about the consequences of fear and the topic of fearing God.

Is fearing God counter-productive?

I’m not quite sure why we should fear God except if there’s been a mistranslation and it should perhaps be ‘have a respect for God’ or ‘have a respect for the word of God’.  If as we are told perfect love casts out fear then if we have a perfect love for God we should not have to fear him. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Anyway the focus on today’s contemplation is about fear in ordinary everyday life. I want to look at the way that the word fear is used in my own case to see what I can learn and by the way I have no assumptions about what is going to turn out of this article, I’m just thinking as I write and writing as I think.

A ‘common or garden’ definition is

a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain etc. It applies whether the the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid

However, if you add the spiritual dimension we get a slightly different idea of fear

fear often represents a lack of trust or faith in a higher power, signifying a disconnect from the divine, and can be interpreted as a signal to examine your belief system and deepen your connection to something greater than yourself; depending on the spiritual tradition, “fear” can also be viewed as a form of reverence or awe when directed towards a divine being, prompting humility and respect. 

I have to be honest, well I don’t have to really, but I choose to be honest and say that most of the things I am or was afraid about never actually happened,  so right from the get go I have shot myself in the foot by admitting that I was wasting my energy.

So here is a confession list of some of the things that I had been afraid of

# In the long term looking back I suppose I’ve been afraid of just being myself without being rejected by others. It took me a long time to figure out what acceptable behavior was and how to live within the self-imposed prison when I essentially took an acting part and bit my tongue when I wanted to say something controversial.

Looking at it, I would say that this was a main source of psychological damage that I sustained. I was trying to conform to stereotypes that had unwittingly by me being set by societies norms and since I knew nothing else, I had no margin of safety or safe refuge.

# I was afraid of being mocked or ridiculed for being a Christian and standing up for those particular set of virtues

Most of my fears were groundless.

# For example when I change my service provider for my mobile SIM I thought that I would stand a risk of losing my number that I had for 10 years and the thought of that was more than I could contemplate so I actually made things worse for myself if I had taken on board that hundreds if not thousands of people change their service providers every day so it is a well-established routine.

The companies have made it simple and foolproof not because they love us but because they don’t want the hassle of dealing with endless complaints and these days people do complain to sites such as TrustPilot.

# Another example of groundless fear has got better recently, it’s my hospital interventions where people do weird stuff like pushing a camera up my private parts and having a look at my bladder. If they have done it a hundred times a week they know what they are doing and also with the National Health Service you can sue if you feel someone has been incompetent so you can be sure they are very careful about what they do.

# I remember being fearful when I first had an injection in my eye for wet macular disease and that was back in 2016. I envisioned  someone with an enormous big syringe attacking me and half-blinding me in the process. This was completely erroneous.

For those of you that have not had the experience of your eye being injected,  the needle is absolutely tiny, you get an anesthetic medicine before they start and before you know it the procedure has been done. I am now on injection number 59 and I don’t think anything of it because I’ve had 59 good experiences.

Guilty as charged?

# In situations that I have not come across before I suppose it’s a lack of familiarity rather than actual fear that makes me anxious which perhaps is a normal human attribute. Going into an unknown situation with complete confidence does take some doing.

# In my younger years I particularly remember the trauma when realising that I had to admit that I had done something wrong for example taking something that was not mine or doing a task less than perfectly but seldom have the results been as dire as I thought they would have been

# I can think of when I was in my younger days I used to go on blind dates via a dating agency and the fear was that they wouldn’t turn up or would be unsuitable. The answer to the first fear was that the yes they did turn up and the answer to the second was they were definitely unsuitable, some close to clinical madness. They may have thought the same of me. Ha ha

# in my garden work I was afraid that I had taken on a job that was bigger than I could cope with but funnily enough when I started, I proceeded in a step by step fashion and before I knew it the worst was over and I was able to complete to the satisfaction of the customer

I’ve always thought that such Bureaux worked in spite of but not because of the system, mainly because people like to decorate their self-description. For example when they say good sense of humour you probably means they laugh at anything and everything in a hysterical and inane way.

I’ve yet to see someone describe themselves as a damaged introvert but I would probably go out with them if I was still in the market just to see what it’s like to describe yourself honestly.

# I’ve had a fear of turbulence all my life even when I know that aircraft seldom go down because of turbulence and that they are built to withstand many more times the force than the average passenger would experience.

# I’ve been afraid of people not turning up to my dinner party or social occasion but this has diminished recently because my friends and contacts do in fact turn up, it could go back to a fear of abandonment.

# I find that the greatest fear coincides  when my connection with the universe is fractured or incomplete which is normally because of my orientation. It’s not a question of feeling loved, it’s a feeling of being a part of something infinite that is the ultimate way of removing any vestige of fear.

# I can be temporarily frightened or being run over when I cross a road and indeed I find that with age, my peripheral vision has diminished somewhat so the sensible thing is to cross the road at the crossings and not try to run faster than the cars.

# I used to have a fear of poverty but now I live well within my limits so that’s that one sorted.

# I’m afraid of missing trains and connections so to make up for this I always arrive extra early and spend the time having coffee, twiddling my thumbs, chatting to the  people around me and touch wood I have not missed a train or connection for some years now.

# I do have a concern about being robbed so in the street I don’t flaunt my possessions such as they are and do not think that I would be a top target for people wanting to swipe mobile phones and watches. Basically, thieves want only easy passage so my body language tells them they should not even bother.

What I am NOT afraid of

# for some years I had a fear of becoming lonely but I have turned this on its head and decided to see everyone as a brother or sister that I have not yet had the pleasure of getting to know, and this is transformative on a 24/7 basis.

# the fear of failure used to be quite key in my psychology but now I’ve decided that if I do something with goodwill and a higher purpose in mind than at the very least I will learn something from this.

I tried to start a social group in Frome and advertised a meeting but only three people responded. Funnily enough this directed me to focus on another area and that was helping people with their writing skills and this is still ongoing so in the long term it was just a stepping stone on life’s path.

One thing I’m not afraid of is getting COVID, which was in its presentation  probably one of the biggest con jobs ever perpetrated on mankind. I have an immune system that is quite capable of dealing with most of the viruses and infections that are around and so long as I live I will never have a vaccination

I have also lost my fear of death. I have watched so many near death experience videos including those who temporarily died and then came back to life. Our physical body is just a suit of clothes that we use for one particular existence on this Earth and our glorious self continues elsewhere eternally as part of the great unconscious so what’s there to be afraid of

I also feel my Christian faith has become stronger paradoxically as things get worse and worse in the world, I find myself drawn to this eternal strength or energy source outside space and time which keeps me going and fulfilled from day-to-day

# this diary that I’m writing, believe it or not, helps me in that I know I’m not just living for myself but putting unbridled self out there into the world to those that  that chance upon my site ( I do not market it or advertise it) but occasionally someone will say they’ve read it and they enjoyed it and that’s reward enough for me.