Contentious to my Fearlessness Psychology (and viewpoint) [1] is the way many people and groups construct the dichotomy of "Love" vs. "Fear" (especially in the esoteric religous traditions and 'new agey' spiritualities)--and, so for e.g., I offer you to take up this debate with serious study and discernment. I have many publications on this Love and Fear issue [2]... and, for the purpose of this blog I'll offer one excerpt from a typical writer in this (unsatisfactory) dichotomous (binary) discourse (note: also Marianne Williamson running for US Presidency for 2020 follows a similar logic to this author below):
The Two Emotions: Love vs. Fear
by Michael Braunstein
The human mind has a tendency to isolate, divide, extract and reduce. We look at Nature, our planet, ourselves and begin to analyze and separate. The base, human, data-driven mind resolutely weaves a tale of “better living through figuring out.” Meanwhile the higher, Divine mind that each of us is born connected with, simply absorbs and includes. The Divine mind sees things holistically without sense of division or separation.
Of course, that concept of reality is frightening to the human mind. We are convinced to a person that person is all we are and individual identity is what we must protect at all costs. Yet our very experience in this classroom of life demonstrates that we deeply long for the oneness that only joining can bring. We embrace the feeling that 90,000 people can conjure when rooting for the home team at an autumn football game. Idiosyncrasies, political divides, racial barriers, ethnicity all cave when sitting next to another human who shares the oneness of cheering a home team touchdown. We crave personal connectivity and oneness in a relationship with a special person. We even lust for physical oneness in the sexual sense. We cannot stray too far from the Garden to abandon those core realities. Yet we are frightened to death of giving up our individual personhood and becoming part of the bigger energy that is the universe.
And so we fear. Out of this mistaken value we place on separateness, individual personality, ego we have enlisted an emotion to protect it. We energize our belief in separateness with fear. We even rationalize and fall into the trap of claiming “some fears are healthy.” We hear some people claim healthy fear of some things help keep us alive. Learn this if you will: There is no such thing as “healthy” fear. You may imagine something along lines like, “Fear of getting hit by a car is what keeps me from walking in the street!” I will end any debate like that with this simple retort: “Love is what keeps me walking on the sidewalk.” No, there is no healthy fear.
[more on the Internet]...
End Note:
1. See e.g., https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/110441
2. E.g, of one of my latest publications https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/109975
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