Meditation for June 12th, 2016
What Is The Opposite of Fear?
I awoke today to the tragedy at the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida with a sense of awe and sadness. While the events on 9/11 was of a grander scale in death and just pure villainy, this is what scares me to no end, someone who has a legal firearm walking into a crowded place and open firing.
There are already a lot of people trying to answer who and why. Spenser Ackerman smartly tweeted,
“A reminder that thinkpiecing before reporting is a recipe for spreading misinformation.”
The point is I can sum up why in a very quick sentence. Fear is killing people and Love is not being taught or nurture.
No matter if it is anti-sexual preference, religious extremism or jealousy, people kill others out of fear. Fear that they will have what they have taken away from them or the fear that they won’t get what they need or want. People revert to the fight and flight animalistic part of their brain and react and sometimes that reaction is violent and hateful.
If you look at our society, you will see that most of what we preach is fear. We join up in protective tribes around a fire and hate what we fear. In the way society is made right now, love can barely survive much less thrive.
Religion
Anytime you say that you believe in the one true God, you must live in constant fear because anything outside of that faith is trying to take that belief away from you.
Religion comes from the very origin of fear. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What happens to me and all my loved ones after I die? Religion answers these questions easily – until we arrived at the age of reason. Now the whole world outside of your religion is a threat and you must live in constant fear in the guise of hate and self-righteousness.
Religion is a cult of control. Keep the people in fear and they will serve the church and its interests. In a time where the books of religions match the science of man less and less, we have powerful men in fear. We are taking away their power and control.
Politics
Especially in America where we only have two major parties and a system that only allows two systems to operate, we are in constant fear. Like Cripps and Bloods, Republicans and Democrats use fear and hate to stir up emotional fearful responses to go out and vote.
Politics have always been dirty and shameful in American history, but with the addition of social media and the no regulation journalism of the blogosphere where people spin anything in their political favor and there is no oversite to say that it is all a lie. Especially the social media, you are forcing political discourse in real time and people are typing up comments out of fear.
Some of your favorite political blogs are just springboard for fear based hate and may have lead to the pain or death of others.
Things (Capitalism)
If you have things, then you do not want to lose those things. You may even insured them to make sure you can get more things if the old things get destroyed or stolen. Things cost things and you need to make things to get things.
You might also not have anything, so you covet others’ things because you feel you deserve more things then the things you have to get things.
People put a fearful amount of sentimental value into things. It takes a lot to make someone give up on some things and hold a yard sale. People will protect their things with alarms and guns.
Guns are a thing that people spend millions of dollars a year on the government to make sure we get to have them. It doesn’t matter that guns are an instrument of fear and the faster it shoots, the more bullets it carries and the longer it can shoot with accuracy and the bigger the bullets are, the more people fear losing.
Culture
Because of religion, politics and things, our country had nearly divided up. Looking at social media, if you didn’t fearfully cull all the people you disagree with, you will see the different cultural camps.
We fear the way others live their lives. We fear that those other groups want to erase our way of life. The more religious certainly do, and other groups are just so feared that no one knows what they actually want, so we make it up to make ourselves feel better.
We confuse identifying with groups for love, but it isn’t. One is just trying to protect oneself by being in the middle of a herd. The weak and sick will be picked off.
Love
In every aspect of our upbringing and life from school, work and even family, love is not the ruling ideal. Love takes second fiddle to fear. We even talk about wanting love on Internet dating sites, in therapy and religious rituals.
If we want to make this a better place, then we have to turn to love. I know, that doesn’t have the same ring to it as gun legislation, kicking Muslims out of America, or whatever else people are yelling on Facebook and Twitter right now. Love also sounds woo woo and some kind of hippy utopia that can never exist, but actually, if you have ever been loved by someone, you would know how much better the world would be if love guided our decisions and not fear.
Love is action, love is spirituality, love is love. Love is self-sacrafice and wanting to support others to be better. Love is selfless while fear is selfish.
“Love is a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. I found that a lot of people just felt really confused about what love is, so I said, here, take these six ingredients and as you go about your life, you can ask: the action I’m taking, does it have these six ingredients?
One point that I would emphasize to people is that it’s the combination of the six ingredients that make love, because so many of us have one of the ingredients in our life – like we may be deeply cared for, but we may not be in a situation of trust. To me what’s great about these definitions is that they’re just very helpful for people in daily life trying to engage in a practice of love.”
-bell hooks
Love is he opposite of fear. If you are religious, look at the parts of your scriptures that preach love and ignore the moral judgements that preach fear. If you are a politician, stop deciding on laws that are reactions to fear and pass laws that nurture love. If you love you don’t necessarily need things. If you loved, guns would be for hunters and hobbyists and not for people living in fear. If you loved and felt loved, you would no longer live in fear.