ANDREA THIEL CONNELL: Week after week we are inundated with news to fear and worry about. The news media has launched a relentless attack on our good senses and optimism. On a daily basis we hear about the threat of pandemic viruses and their dubious vaccination programs, ongoing war and terrorism, widespread unemployment and personal financial losses, a worldwide failing economy, global warming, growing risks of cancer, heart disease and other life threatening diseases and it goes on and on. And it doesn’t stop when we turn off the TV; fear is coming at us from every direction. We are literally being frightened to death.
It is vital that we learn quickly to cultivate a positive state of mind and stay optimistic. We need to come to understand ourselves as light beings. As the light around us diminishes we must learn strategies to develop our natural power of being bearers of good tidings, light and love. This is not a time for white washing everything or for putting on our rose coloured glasses; this is a fight for survival, make no mistake about it. We must become Warriors of Love right now! So dust off your Shield of Light and pull out your Sword of Truth – we have work to do! We have to love our fears to death!
The Battle Zone
We are facing a serious pandemic, it threatens our existence and our viability as a race, but it isn’t the flu, or any other contagious disease; it is the quiet stealthy invasion of fear into our mass consciousness. The real pandemic of our time relies on our inability to make good choices when left to our own free will. It will surely bring us to ruination. Fear is a very powerful persuader and is decidedly stronger when we are not prepared to invest the time, resources or energy to find the truth. Fear determines the paradigm of our lives. Our level of fear determines the degree of freedom we live with. Like a heavy invisible fabric weighing down over everything we think and everything we do. It is fear that discolours everything with an ugly shade of grey; that casts the shadow over every bright thought and adds a weight of burden to our already overtaxed lives. It is fear that makes us think irrationally and often opposite to what we would normally consider. Fear shrink-wraps our perceived world. When faced with fear we try to control our environments, so the smaller that environment is the better. With fewer options there are fewer decisions that need to be made. But life isn’t meant to be lived small. Life is dynamic, creative and expansive. We need to learn to be brave in the face of fear, to train ourselves to not give in, give up or play dead.
Facing fear is not the same as “making lemonade when life gives you lemons”. Understand that we are getting truckloads of lemons dumped on our doorsteps everyday now, making lemonade is just going to leave us drowning with a sour taste in our mouths. What we need to do now is make the lemons disappear. Sounds a little trickier, doesn’t it. So let’s start by understanding the nature of fear.
The Enemy Lurks Within
The nature of fear is to be insidious, even when our conscious mind shuts down the babbling it continues to lurk in the shadows and coercively threatens our choices, then, once in a while it screams at us with a voice of reason to stuff us back into our comfort zone. Fear is sneaky, pervasive and persuasive. It hides within the tiniest shimmer of doubt and it festers. Its voice is often so quiet we can hardly hear it yet we heed its every suggestion. We listen to what our fear tells us to do and we obey usually without question. We think we make choices but really it is our fear that chooses for us. But no matter how deep, and real, and scary fear is it can’t come out into the light of day. Fear needs the darkness to survive, the shadows to hide in and the mystery of the unknown to stay powerful. When fear is exposed to the light we see the holes and inconsistency of its story. To turn on the light we need to face our fears, let go of our need to judge everything, get informed, be willing to grow without knowing how and laugh. You will literally lighten and brighten up!
The Strategic Plan
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Face your fears: We need to relearn how to be brave like children, exhibiting a joyful willingness to experience more of life. Start with small adventures, inconsequential things to which you normally say no to without even thinking about it. Once you find yourself saying yes to more and more things you will realize yourself to be more willing to find more experiences. Each and every being has been gifted with an independent mind and heart and has the duty to experience life in a unique fashion. By facing your fears – risking just a little bit you learn more of yourself and your surrounding environment. Learning, experiencing and conquering your fears allows you to feel stronger, smarter and better equipped, hence safer than living with fear.
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Let go the need to judge each experience as good or bad. Develop a broader more open mind. Understand that all opposites are gradients of each other. Within all darkness is light, within all bad is good and within all fear is love. As we soften the edges of one reality over another we come to see that there is less to fear and more to enjoy, less to doubt and more to trust. When fear loses its edge we can see that it gently flows into excitement and very often into a new sense of freedom. Freedom flows naturally toward Love.
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Get informed. Fear flourishes in the unknown. Fear always projects negative past events into the future to predict probable outcomes. The mind accepts these outcomes as rational and proceeds to expect them as reality. It doesn’t take long for the mind to feel the futility of moving forward if the outcomes are always going to be the same and so fear wins another round. All that is needed to change the mind's hold on negative outcomes is to introduce new information. By becoming informed of other possibilities the mind can start to build new pathways to a different future. Growth and expansion are natural phenomena of our reality and the mind will eagerly seize the opportunity to do what it naturally does. Give the mind the substance it needs to expand safely and fear will be transmuted bit by bit.
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Resolve to disobey fear. Fear governs the gateway leading to growth. Fear can be so persuasive that the individual forgets in his right to choose. He believes that fear must be respected, after all fear comes with great credentials, experience and for many ‘Mom’s stamp of approval’. In reality fear is based in weakness and must be cast out. Its only power is what you give it. Fear is hungry and over time will demand more and more of your life to stay convincing. Giving fear your power will result in your world becoming smaller and smaller with less and less opportunity. Every new opportunity, every new acquaintance threatens the viability of fear. When fear is faced with rational thought and new experience it will instantly spin into old tapes of warnings. Follow the thoughts, acknowledge the fear, take a deep breath and move on. Fear will fade into nothingness. Stay ever willing to choose to walk through the gateways of opportunity and knowledge.
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Laugh at your fears as often as possible. Fear and Love cannot co-exist in the same space and time. It has been scientifically proven that worry and anger suppress the immune system and living in a state of fear puts strain on the kidneys and adrenal glands. Laughter truly is the best medicine for simply and effectively reducing stress and anxiety. Consider that life is a game that we play for 80 years or so – and that it is not a sentence to death! So remind yourself often that life is a game, laugh at the follies and enjoy even the setbacks. Avoid bitter thoughts and fear mongering. Aggressively choose to be part of the solution and not the problem. Turn your thoughts around on a dime and look for something to laugh at. Children laugh an average of 145 times a day; adults only 4 – 5 times a day. Laughter lightens any space every time.
To counter the effects of fear of in our lives we need to turn to the light. Consider light and dark to be the same as knowledge and ignorance. To turn on the light we need to turn up our knowledge of a given situation. Fear thrives on illusion, past experiences, ignorance and negativity. Truth, knowledge and optimism defeat fear every time. Viruses can’t survive in a strong immune system. Just as darkness disappears with the coming of the light so will fear dissipate with the introduction of new knowledge and skills.
We need to develop skills of courage and inner strength, intuitive skills, and rebuild our natural immunities. We need to laugh often and love each other. Harbouring old grievances and brooding over perceived injustices uses up all that vital energy and further depletes our energy stores. Remember that anger and worry suppress our immune systems leaving us vulnerable to attack. The pandemic at hand is not about the current strain of influenza but the negative frame of mind that currently presides over humanity that creates a perfect host environment for infection and disease in each body. Vaccinate or not, it’s really your choice – but change your personal environment to one of Light – body, mind and soul and let’s end the real threat to our survival.
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Biography
