Losing the Fear ...

Fear ... it's an insidious thing ... creeping unawares into the crevices of our hearts, spreading into the folds of our brains, spreading like a cancer into every aspect of our lives.

It quite often likes to masquerade as "wisdom".

It prefers to hide behind thoughts like "should," "ought," "rules," "can't," "unsafe," "concerns," "warning."

Now, it's not that I'm against wisdom, prudence, discernment and choices ... it's just that I think more of us are motivated by fear, than are we trusting in love.

Notice that I said "us". I'm in the thick of this, too.

I recently shared about a healing/mind-renewal tool called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) ... and this morning, I received a question from a person who is interested, but is concerned that it could be venturing into dangerous (my word, not theirs) "new age" territory. They seemed to basically be asking, "is this thing to which I am drawn *safe*? Is it ok for me to do this? Will God be mad?" How WELL I understand that feeling!

They asked me for my opinion ... and I ended up sharing quite a bit. :) (I know, hard to believe!) As I was writing, it occurred to me to share it here, as well ... so here goes:

My journey has been a long one, step by step ... of being led by God to question all things ... wanting to know what's of man, and what's of God. I would never advise anyone to follow me, but I would encourage others to question the roots of their own beliefs, to see if they truly line up with the Mind of Christ ...

For myself, I came to see that all truth is God's truth -- that there is only one Source of all life and all truth ... and that it's entirely too vast, too big, too wonderful for any of us humans to grasp it, much less define it and limit it, to our currently finite understandings. Jesus spoke against this, to the religious rulers of His day. He also said that He had "much more" to show His followers, but that they could not bear it. I see that many of us, who follow Him now, in the religion of our day, also cannot bear to think of more than what has been handed down to us. And yet, I see that Jesus says that the Spirit will lead us into all truth (not the traditions of man, not the scriptures -- but the living relationship with the Spirit).

I had to ask myself (which was hard to do! fearful even!), what traditions of man am I clinging to, out of "safety", out of fear, that are keeping me from following the Spirit into the "much more" that God has for me?

I think the answer to that inquiry will be different for each one, and the journey for each one will look quite unique, even as the Source and the Goal are one and the same ... for in God we live and move and have our being.

I have discovered, as you say you have, that truth is "outside the camp" of the religion we are each familiar with. He is the "savior of all, especially those who believe" ... and He told us that He has "many outside this fold." I believe that God has lavishly spread God's truth, of God, of our relationship to God ("you are all God's offspring"), far and wide, in various languages, cultures, and images ... all of us, I believe, hold a mixture of truth and error, for we are both Spirit and ego (carnal) ... and we tend to think that our perspective is the ONLY perspective ... rather than trusting that it is indeed only the Spirit who can lead each of us into all truth, and that each of us will indeed shed a great many things which we sincerely *thought* was the "truth of God", but which actually turns out to be merely the "assumptions of the ego." And I notice that fear is often the force that keeps us within the confines of those assumptions ...

So, on this journey, I choose to live in, and demonstrate, grace to all the other groping humans on the planet ... to all the "bumbling beloved" who may indeed know/see things that are more true than the things I think I know to be true. I can learn from all, trusting the Spirit within to show me what's what (& that may change, as I find I can bear more tomorrow than I can bear today --- for God meets me where I am - how gracious and loving!).

I choose to love God with all my being, and to love all other humans as myself ... much harm is done when we think we know good from evil, when we think we are called up on to judge from our limited perspective ... when we think in terms of "us vs. them" as if we are the exclusively-enlightened-ones ...

As for the term "new age" ... I find that it's often used in Christian circles as a means of dismissing a new and frightening thought ... that which challenges status quo ... as if God had said, "thou shalt be right" ... as if He told us to defend "all truth" (when we don't even grasp it yet, and can't). Many things that the Church has declared to be "absolute truth" have been reversed ... thinking of geocentricity (earth the center of the universe - it was once a doctrine punishable by death) ... thinking of the many who have been called "heretics", only to have it reversed years later ... and I notice that every now-accepted truth was once declared to be a "blasphemy" by those who held the control of status quo (including the teachings of Jesus Himself).

I find myself wondering ... isn't the notion of a "new age" the very point of all of scripture? Didn't all of the prophets of the old testament foretell a new age to come..? Didn't Jesus say that the old age was soon to end, and a new age was being ushered in (also called the new covenant, which the prophets said was one and the same with the new heavens and new earth).

What if we misconstrued what He was speaking of ...? What if we have largely continued living the old covenant, while merely speaking about the new covenant? What if our traditions continue to nullify the truth of God?

What if perfect love is really meant to cast out all fear, including (especially!) the fear of God? I see that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but that we are not meant to live in fear ... we are meant to mature into responding in love. It seems to me that we don't trust love ... we think that fear is more "useful" for keeping folks in line ... but it really keeps us in enslavement.

Ahhh, I see that I have gone and sermonized on you! You merely asked a simple question ... but I find that the unpacking of this concept really can't be done with a simple "yes" or "no".

I guess, to sum it up, I have slowly lost my fear of the things that are unfamiliar to me, and are outside of the religious framework I'm comfortable with. But I no longer believe that God, or even Christ, are limited to Christianity. I see Christianity as largely manmade ... and that God can never be confined. My own sense is that the Spirit has led me to go forth and to truly trust that leading ... rather than being tethered to the dock in the shallows of safety. I find God in all things, mixed, of course, with the traditions of man. I don't fear those ... I find that love is more powerful than fear, and that I intuitively know what to swallow, and what to taste, and what to spit out.

I do not find that others worship "another god" ... for I find that there is no other God ... there is only one Source of all Life, though He may, and does, manifest in ways too innumerable to count -- including each of us. He is, after all, All in All. All things come from Him, through Him, and return to Him. Even if many journeys are circuitous ... as mine has been. I have found that even if I go "off the deep end", God is indeed out there...!

If you go with how you are being drawn, what you will find, if your experience is anything like mine, is that there will be a wide variety of people ... from different backgrounds ... but a welcoming attitude ... everyone respecting all others ... finding common ground, without anyone mandating what others "should" believe. This is about discovering how God has wired our bodies/minds/souls to work ... rather than being "victims" of circumstances, realizing that we really CAN "take every thought captive", and that we can participate fully in "renewing our minds" ... this is the explanation of one very practical tool, to enable us to do what we are instructed to do. Without blame, shame, and fault-finding ... just owning up to responsibility and recognizing the amazing choices we really do have in this adventure of life.

As for comfort ... I find that God isn't as interested in my comfort as I am, LOL! God is always and forever stretching me out of the limitations of my own comfort zone, into the wildness of all He has to show me (& even using the term "He" is a limitation - for how could All in All be only part of that All?).

It's always UNcomfortable at first, to entertain a new idea ... even frightening at times ... but I've decided that I no longer want the stagnancy of a comfortable life ... I want the full adventure of a life richly experienced ... the former is based on fear ... the latter is based on trust in the One who is ever-drawing me to All that God is ... asking me to let go of all I *think* I know, so that I can be shown, and I can experience, the wondrously mind-blowing "much more" that is meant to delight me to the core...!

Hope this helps, and hope it's neither too wordy, nor too intrusive ... I wrote from my heart, which contains both Spirit promptings, and egoic rantings, LOL! May God show you which is which (and God will)!

Shalom, Dena