Interesting evening last night.  I stopped in one room and there was a fellow on mic asking about other people’s experiences – an innocent inquiry.  The responses from the room owners though were surprising – very cautious, almost to the point of paranoia – ‘I’ll tell you my experiences if you’ll tell us yours first’.  It was as if the owners thought they were being baited and were just waiting for this guy to set the hook and reel them in. 

So the visitor shared a couple of his experiences, and then got grilled about them.  I had to leave the room soon after, so don’t know if he ever got to hear anyone else’s stories or not in that room.

A little later though, I went into another room and here he was again, asking the same questions, trying to get some responses and again, the room owners seemed to be leery of answering him, and the longer it went on, the more pronounced that wariness became.  Again he was challenged – you show me yours and I’ll show you mine – and again he complied but it wasn’t reciprocated. 

Of course, I’m sitting there puzzled, wondering what’s going on, what is there about this guy that causes people to throw up their defenses – and I’m not seeing it – even today after reflecting on it through the night.

Unable to find a rational explanation, I turned my thoughts to a spiritual one (Spirit isn’t rational??? lol – maybe we’ll look at that another time). 

Fear has many faces – or so it’s been said (director Nicolas Roeg is credited with coining the phrase, but I imagine it has been around a lot longer), but our greatest fears seem to be fear of physical harm and fear of ridicule and our most frequent fears are of what might happen, not what is actually happening.  Some people are afraid of spiders because they might get bit – some people are afraid of speaking in public because someone might make fun of them. 

[I am no doubt splitting hairs, but in my opinion, being averse to suffering physical harm (assuming the threat is immediate and real) isn’t a matter of fear, but of discernment – self-preservation.   (Isn’t it amazing though, how many people, when actually faced with inevitable death – and yet somehow managing to survive – report becoming very calm in the face of it.)]

Since imminent physical harm wasn’t an issue last night – let’s focus on the fear of ridicule, which many say is even greater than the fear of bodily injury or death. 

Obviously, if ridicule (being seen as a fool) is a threat, then our sense of self-worth is based on the opinions of others.  And what that says is that we lack the courage of our convictions – in other words, hardly convicted at all.

Last time I spoke of darkworkers being lightworkers in disguise, but isn’t that true of any person or situation that challenges our beliefs? That makes us take another look within, sort out our thoughts and hopefully draw on our inner strength and that of our higher power to see us through? 

Fear doesn’t really have many faces, it only has masks.  And we put those masks on it, depending on what particular ideal, virtue or value we need to cultivate and strengthen at any given time.    

In the end, fears really are ‘false expressions appearing real’ – or as real as we allow them to be.

Blessings