Love or Fear

Why does fear arise? It appears when love is lacking and when we do not trust life.

To live in love or to live in fear are the only two possibilities. These are the states from which all other emotions flow.

If we dive beneath anger, hatred, insecurity, feelings of inadequacy, envy, guilt, or depression, we will always find fear at the base. If we dive beneath joy, generosity, lightness of heart, peace, compassion, or being in love with someone or something, we will always find love.

Why do we sometimes see fear, and at other times see love?

Because we look from a limited sense of self. Because we still do not truly know ourselves, nor understand who we are, how vast and wondrous we can be. Because we have not lived in a world of unconditional love, a world we have yet to discover. Although it is ever present, it becomes real for us only to the extent that we grow in love and in awareness of life. In truth, we do not know exactly what love is; we simply hold ideas about it and gradually, through life, we come to know its many forms. How can you truly know a mother’s love without the experience of motherhood? You can know motherly love as a child who receives it, though not yet as the one who gives it. There are endlessly many expressions of love; a child’s love, love for parents, partners, lovers, and friends, love for trees, the sun, mountains, raindrops, poetry, sunsets, the scent of cherry blossom, even for strangers. Its forms have no end.

All of this is always present, yet depending on how much we open our hearts and how our inner love grows, so do we see and love the world. When we begin to love ourselves, including all our "flaws", we can truly love others, forgive, and stop resenting the world around us. We then understand that other people often act from fear, for they have not known love and therefore attack or defend themselves. Yet this will no longer throw us out of the love within.

Why does fear arise? It appears when love is lacking and when we do not trust life. It appears because we define love through our limited life experiences.

Imagine that your former husband had been unfaithful, and whenever he had been with another woman he would bring you flowers. At first you were delighted by his "attention". Yet when you realized that he brought flowers only to conceal his involvement with someone else, you grew to resent both him and the flowers.

After the divorce you enter a new relationship with a man you truly like. In time he too brings you flowers. What now? Because of your previous painful experience, will you become suspicious and afraid that he is also being unfaithful? Will you show him and the bouquet the door without pausing even for a moment to reflect, or will you choose love and accept the fragrant flowers with trust? Everything depends on our experience, on our perception. The choice is love or fear. The choice is trust in life, or the fear that we are not good enough or respected, that someone wishes to use or deceive us, that we are not loved and must therefore defend and protect ourselves.

Whenever we make decisions, each one arises either from love or from fear. If we hold the belief that the world is a dangerous place, we will act from fear. If we believe the world is filled with love, we will act with far more freedom, openness, and courage. When we look at the world through loving eyes, it becomes a place of love. For the world to become a loving place, we ourselves must become lovers of life.

How do we become lovers of life? Explore the unknown, do not expect others to be "this way or that", live and feel the present moment, never judge anyone, be unflinchingly honest, be brave enough to love, and be brave enough to be who you are and to live fully what you long to live. Then you will live in love with yourself, with others, in love with life. Fear is life in the dark; love is life in the light.

The path of love carries no expectations, no rules, no limits. Love is boundless and exists everywhere around us when it exists within us. Be a lover of life.