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Title: Managing Fear Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 1168 Category: Emotional Healing

MANAGING FEAR By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Our society is challenged as never before. Anxiety fills the air so thick we can feel it around us. Our sense of safety has been undermined, and along with it our sense of control.

We lived under the illusion of control for so long that we may have come to believe in it. We may have believed we were, for the most part, in charge of our external safety - if only we drove carefully or didn’t walk in dangerous areas, and so on.

That illusion of control has been pulled out from under us and many of us are left with knots of anxiety. How do we feel safe in such an unsafe world when death could come out of nowhere?

In reality, our external safety is never assured because we are mortal beings whose bodies can be harmed. To think otherwise is to maintain a belief in controlling others and external events that does not exist, and never has existed.

The anxiety will continue until we can tap into our personal spiritual guidance, our source of love, wisdom and compassion that is always available to all of us. While we cannot move beyond caring about the safety of our bodies, we need to move more into caring about the safety of our souls.

Now, more than ever, we need to be able to turn to a reliable spiritual process for our sense of safety.

Would you feel scared of you were able to tap into a reliable source of spiritual wisdom to guide you in your decisions regarding when to get on a plane, when to stay away from a public place? If you knew that this guidance was available each and every moment, would you be so anxious?

The guidance is here, always. The challenge is to access it.

Spiritual guidance vibrates at a higher frequency than we do, so the challenge is to raise our own frequency. The secret to raising our frequency lies in our intent. In the Inner Bonding process that I teach, there are only two possible intents: to protect against responsibility for our own feelings and behavior through some form of controlling behavior, or to learn about loving ourselves and others.

Positive feelings such as love, compassion, acceptance, joy and peace raise the frequency, while negative feelings such as anger, anxiety, depression, judgment, and shame lower it. Processed, greasy, sugary and pesticide-laden foods also lower our frequency. There are many experiences that can assist us in raising our frequency, such as meditating, praying, being in nature, practicing yoga and other breathing techniques, or listening to beautiful music. However, none of these will raise your frequency high enough to access spiritual guidance unless your deepest desire in the moment - your intent - is to learn about loving yourself. Loving yourself does not mean being selfish. It means learning to take full responsibility for your own health and well-being. Learning to love yourself means learning to take those actions that support your joy, peace, and health.

When you ask your guidance (which can be your experience of God, or a light, a presence, a guardian angel, a mentor or teacher in spirit, or the highest part of yourself), "What is most loving to me in this moment? What is in my highest good?" you automatically raise your frequency and open the door to your personal spiritual guidance. Once your intention is to learn about loving yourself and you are willing to take the loving action you are guided to do, then all the other ways of raising the frequency may be of help to you.

It is when you can access your personal spiritual guidance that you are then able to take loving care of yourself. You will create an inner sense of safety and serenity when you are willing to learn to take 100 percent responsibility for all your own feelings of both pain and joy.

Learning to hear, see and feel the messages from your spiritual guidance takes practice. The more you practice, the more you t rust that you are never alone and that you really are being guided toward your highest good. This is what will create your sense of safety.

It may be difficult to practice opening to spiritual guidance if you believe it doesn’t exist, or that it will not show up for you personally. The only way you will know for sure whether or not this guidance is here is to practice moving into the intent to learn about loving yourself with your guidance and see what happens. It takes a leap of faith to open to learning with something that you are not sure even exists.

Years ago I read the Carlos Castenada’s books. Carlos was being mentored by a teacher named Don Juan. At one point, Don Juan stated that he would choose the time of his own death. Carlos asked him (I am paraphrasing the question since I no longer have the book) "What if you were walking through the desert one day and someone was hiding behind a rock ready to shoot you?" Don Juan’s answer was one I never forgot: "I wouldn’t be there." He wouldn’t be there because he would have tuned into his guidance and would have been told not to go there.

This is what we all need in these difficult times. We each need to do all we can to keep our frequency high, for this is how we can each help our planet. The attack on our country has made all of us vulnerable to the darkness of fear, anger, anxiety and depression. We cannot afford to give in to this darkness.

We can each stay in love, peace and joy, rather than in fear, anxiety and depression, only when our intent is to learn about loving ourselves and we stay tapped into our guidance throughout the day.

Our very way of life is at stake here. Most of us cannot go out and directly deal with the darkness that destroyed that killed so many innocent people on September 11, 2001, or the darkness or current threats. What we can do is stay in the light - in love, peace and joy through our intent to learn and our connection with Spirit. Darkness cannot exist in the face of light. The more of us that stay in the light, the more power we have to overcome darkness. We each have the responsibility to move out of our intent to control and into the intent to learn about loving ourselves and others. We all have the responsibility to raise our frequency and stay in connection with the God/Goddess energy of love and compassion. We each need to become spiritual warriors, taking loving action even when it is hard to do so. Through our own loving action, perhaps then our country will be guided toward taking whatever action that is in our highest good and the highest good of all.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com