Overcoming negative emotions – including fear, anger and anxiety

The human spirit flows.

The human spirit flows, unless it is impeded, or blocked or distorted. Where, when and how it is generated is a metaphysical matter – unless you are an out an out materialist. But it flows through us and changes through the day into physical energy, mental energy, social energy, sexual energy etc.

It gets impeded not by circumstances but by what and how we think. If we think,“I am in a prison, I have no control over my life, I am powerless and so,” and if you repeat such thoughts time and time again, guess what – that will be your reality. We make our reality by what we (choose to) think. Thinking negatively like this, without seeking to reverse our thinking is of course ‘victim consciousness’. We are then the prisoner of our own (willful?) negative thought patterns.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to victim consciousness there are heroic examples. I will mention four Terry Waite, John McCarthy, and in an earlier times the Baha’i leader Abdu’l-Baha These heroic souls remained free men under the most cruel of imprisonments. Speaking of the Baha’is, Baha’i youth, and their older co-religionists, are even now being imprisoned and denied education in Iran for no other reason than the ‘universalism’ of their Faith, which narrow-minded fundamentalists somehow see as a threat.

Fear is both rational and irrational. Fear at bottom is fear of insufficient, of annihilation and hence death. For ‘true believers’ the ultimate truth here is that I have no fear because I like everything and everyone else am an emanation of God. God is eternal so that even if my form is radically altered I continue to exist in another form. For humanists and atheists there is at least the quasi-theology that can be stitched together from our spirit lives in the influences we have on others, and ‘all matter is energy and is simpled re-formed’ etc.

Rationally of course we can say that we all are subject to levels of risk that vary with particular circumstances – driving a car, flying, being home alone and so on. But

Perhaps the most profound essay on fear is Jampolsky’s ‘Love is Letting go of Fear’. The more powerfully love flows through us the less is the negative pull of ‘death-fascination’. If you feel the love, progressively you don’t feel the fear.

There is no prison except the prison of self – especially if you have the kind of courage they possessed. But its not just courage it is about clarity of mind, and depth in our sense of self, identity and purpose

As to anxiety – it can be crippling but the great Baha’i educator Professor Dan Jordan said something amazingly insightful about anxiety. He said that ‘anxiety is energy without a goal‘. What a wonderfully positive way to look at negative emotion that we all experience. Since this ‘unwelcome guest’, or self-defeating trait, is actually energy our next step must be to find an appropriate goal to which to direct that energy. Where do you go to find one? Answer – to your own heart, or heart-mind as I prefer. That;s another way of saying your values, those things, people, creatures, principles that you care about more than any other. List them now – 1, 2 3 or however many come to mind. Working in a spirit of service for one or more of these is the way to learn a goal for that energy that was previously goal-less. Learning – in the Ancient Greek sense of ‘Know thyself’- is always healing, providing we ‘let go the negatives, and accentuate the positives’ as the old song says. Sing it – altogether now……

This is draft 1.0 and I will return to this to deepen, polish and expand it.

Overcoming negative emotions, including fear, anger, anxiety, mental block, heart-mind, negative emotions,