The conquest of fear
Excerpt:
When I say that during most of my conscious life I have been a prey to fears I take it for granted that I am expressing the case of the majority of people. I cannot remember the time when a dread of one kind or another was not in the air.
In childhood, it was the fear of going to bed, of that mysterious time when regular life was still going on downstairs, while I was buried alive under sheets and blankets. Later it was the fear of school, the first contact of the tender little soul with life's crudeness.
Later still there was the experience which all of us know of waking in the morning with a feeling of dismay at what we have to do on getting up; the obvious duties in which perhaps we have grown stale; the things we have neglected; those in which we have made mistakes; those as to which we have wilfully done wrong; those which weary or bore or annoy or discourage us.
Sometimes there are more serious things still: bereavements, frightfully adverse conditions, or hardships we never expected brought on us by someone else. It is unnecessary to catalogue these situations since we all at times in our lives have to face them daily. Fear dogs one of us in one way and another in another, but everyone in some way.
Look at the people you run up against in the course of a few hours. Everyone is living or working in fear. The mother is afraid for her children. The father is afraid for his business. The clerk is afraid for his job. The worker is afraid of his boss or his competitor. There is hardly a man who is not afraid that some other man will do him a bad turn.
There is hardly a woman who is not afraid that things she craves may be denied her, or that what she loves may be snatched away. There is not a home or an office or a factory or a school or a church in which some hang-dog apprehension is not eaten- ing at the hearts of the men, women, and children who go in and out. I am ready to guess that all the miseries wrought by sin and sickness put together would not equal those we bring on ourselves by the means which perhaps we do least to counteract. We are not sick all the time; we are not sinning all the time, but all the time all of us — or practically all of us — are afraid of someone or something. If therefore, one has the feeblest contribution to make to the defeat of such a foe it becomes difficult to withhold it.
Contents:
I. Fear and the Life-Principle.
11. The Life-Principle and God
IIL God and His Self-Expression.
IV. God's Self-Expression and the Mind of Today...
V. The Mind of Today and the World as It Is.
VI. The World as It Is and the False God of Fear 182
VII. The False God of Fear and the Fear of Death
VIII. The Fear of Death and Abundance of Life
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