January/February 2003 Spirituality
The Many Faces of Fear

by Matt Guest

It is the day-to-day and seemingly insignificant fears that interfere with lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, other ‘psychic’ or energetic abilities and joy. These fears stop the dreaming body from moving spontaneously and fluidly, and can eventually stop its growth, movement and abilities altogether.

Fear comes in all shapes and sizes, from worries over self-image to the fear of death. But the size of fear is not the issue – the issue is fear itself. Fear can keep you from saying what’s on your mind, it can keep you from expressing your Truth and joy out loud, and it can keep you from meeting new people or taking on new challenges that will help you to grow. Fear often camouflages itself as logic. If you feel an impulse to drive a different way to work, your logic may tell you that this will take extra time and will make you late. But your dreaming body may have a very valid reason for choosing this alternate route. Perhaps it wants to show you a new place to live or play, or guide you towards an out-of-the-ordinary energetic animal messenger, or maybe by taking this alternate route and arriving a few minutes later you will be just in time to meet somebody new. Or perhaps you will be driving over a particular place in the earth that holds a beneficial boost of energy for you. It makes no difference. If you are not following the impulses of your dreaming body, then fear has taken something from you and from everyone else who might have benefited from the Unknown flowing through you. This is not acceptable, and it is the reason why there is so much unhappiness and confusion in our world today.

Any fear that has gained the upper hand in your past will still have a piece of your energy imprisoned. Emotional injuries are a prime example of this – we prefer to forget about them; we don’t feel like talking about them. It is easier to repress them. Do you realize that past events such as these prevent you from completely experiencing the present moment? A part of your energy, along with some of your focus and thoughts, is still tied to that past event. Think about it: there was an incident a while back; it caused you pain; you never fully recovered or allowed yourself to be vulnerable around that person or in that situation again; that situation remains unresolved. If a piece of your energy is still entangled there, imprisoned and agitated, that means that it is not available for you to use in this present moment. If you were to accumulate many more events like this over the course of your life, what energy would be left for you to experience the present? This is insensitivity! In order to fully experience this moment in time in all of its fullness and with all of its energetic subtleties, you must bring all of yourself to this point in time and stop carrying around all of that emotional baggage. Sensitivity to energy and to life is about having all of your life force energy present and in motion, here and now. Without sensitivity you will never fully experience lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, or be able to read auras or understand psychic information, or anything else that involves the ability to sense the delicate flow of energy and find fulfillment. This is the bottom line.

The only way to disengage energy from the past is to finally face the energy of that past event without flinching or running away. You don’t have to go and find that person physically, but you must sit quietly and allow your dreaming body to carry you back to that moment and submerge you in the feeling of that event so that you can finally feel the fear that created the pain. You may have been fearing the loss of that person or of their affection for you, or you may have been afraid that a less than glamorous piece of yourself was about to be exposed, or perhaps you exploded with anger when what you truly felt was sadness. This type of recapitulation is not about judgment, but about allowing the feeling to finally emerge completely and show you what is lacking in yourself. I’ll say it again: In order to disengage your energy from the past you must face the fears that you avoided and feel the feelings that you repressed or tried to run away from. It is only by resolving the past that the present becomes more alive.

Fear will always be in your life. It will never be eliminated. And the more dedicated you become to following the impulses of your dreaming body, the stronger and more diverse those fears will become. But the choice to engage or disengage the fear will always be yours to make. Remember that your dreaming body fears nothing – it is the Unknown! Fear is nothing more than your little brain trying desperately to control the infinite and unpredictable spontaneity of your dreaming body.

The decision to seek out and live the best of yourself will continually create stronger challenges for you in order to help you grow each and every moment of your existence. This is the way of energy. This is the process of energetic maturation. Your dreaming body will continue to bring greater fears and challenges into your life until the moment that you chicken out. Once you are trapped in a fear, the fear will multiply in a myriad of ways in order to keep you locked down and under its control. But the moment that you decide to allow your dreaming body to continue its journey, the fear will be disengaged and you will move ahead on your path.

The Unknown wants us to be fulfilled. We are the ones who choose to live in lack. We are the ones who allow our fears to lessen the quality and magnitude of our existence. So why be afraid? We’ve got nothing to lose but our fear. May you find your highest fulfillment.

Matt Guest is the author of The Face of Power (www.thefaceofpower.com). He lives in Oregon.