Fear Not

Swimming With Angels

Chapter 51

December 27

Nehemiah 9:27

"So you delivered them into the hands of their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies."

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Preface

Einstein observed that we can't get out of a problem using the same thinking that got us into it in the first place.

But don't tell the ego this. It believes so blindly, at times with such vehemence, that if it's thinking it, then the thinking must be right and any resulting consequences, if unwanted, can only be wrong. To the ego, the unwanted consequences of its actions aren't the result of its actions, but instead are the result of the world having the nerve to not bow to ego's wishes.

The ego will always choose its singular preference over the preference of the mass majority. Its operating philosophy is: "They're wrong, I'm right," though it won't necessarily use these words. And it extends this philosophy to strangers, friends, family, government and God. To ego, there is no authority on earth or in heaven that's above its personal preference and wishes.

Given the choice between ego and God, ego uses fear to make sure that ego's chosen.

But, so there's no misunderstanding, the ego is never trying to, say, disrupt an industry, by resisting the status quo with something new and improved; something that'll make life better for others. We don't want to confuse ego with Spirit.

No, the ego is only out for itself at the expense of others. That's the key component of ego: Someone else loses with no chance of them winning. The ego is the drug dealer. The sex trafficker. It's the totalitarian, despot, or tyrant. It's the abusive partner, parent or guardian. It's the addict that spends the food money for the kids on drugs instead.

Spirit fights against ego to advance conditions and edify people. Though the use of the old may die out to make room for the new, like the use of horses gave way to cars, or candles gave way to electricity, the benefits of the new far outweighed those of the old. The new made the switch worth it. The Spirit clearly recognizes the new opportunities provided, ones that were unavailable before. In other words, Spirit will never take without replacing with something better that the majority will want instead.

Faith is proactive, solution oriented. Spirit solves problems.

People of faith who made the old way of doing things their comfort zone will be the people who immediately see the benefit of the new and shift into it. Faith adapts. But those people who live in fear who made, say, a living by the old way of doing things will resist change at the cost of anything, everyone around them. Fear digs in, refusing to adapt and make life better for themselves, their families and their community at large.

Fear is reactive, problem oriented. Ego creates problems where there doesn't need to be any.

And the people being controlled by this form of fear--the refusal to admit error or to allow for change--will use mistaken, faulty beliefs as a shovel. They'll dig and dig at the terrible consequences that accumulate and build up atop of them, not realizing that they're only digging themselves deeper into the problem, making it worse.

Ego always ends up digging its own grave.

The grave they dig eventually becomes too oppressive, more than the real person behind the ego has the emotional fortitude to bear. The weight of oppression eventually builds until the ego shatters, like a clay shell encapsulating the soul of the person, freeing the person within to finally try something, anything new and different than they've been doing before (and has clearly not been working).