We want to investigate the question what kind of fear we have to deal with in our lives. There is the most obvious fear, the one of physical harm. The scale for this fear is very wide, it starts at the little fears of cutting yourself with a sharp knife and reached to the ultimate death threat - cancer!

Because of the apparent helplessness when dealing with cancer, this seems to the the one fear that actually kills many people a year. Have you ever seen a case, where somebody might not feel quite right, but is not too much bothered by. Eventually he visits his doctor and the C-word is thrown at him. Most people in such a situation go into fear overdrive, seeing doctors over doctors and are getting read for chemo or radiation-therapy, maybe surgery. Notice the decline in well being during the treatment!

Exposing the body to such harsh poisons, combined with the fear of dying is usually enough to kill within a few short month. I remember Dennis, a very positive and happy person, still young, in his early forties,  was gone within three month after the diagnosis. I still remember him showing his ambulant chemo-machine on his belt he showed off with. It was very evident that his fear actually killed him, probably with a little help from all this poison.

Then there is my dad. He had dug himself out of some nasty sickness by taking charge of his own life instead of out-sourcing it to physicians or other gurus - and he did great. He had started a full new part of his life, leading dance groups for senior citizens throughout the whole of Germany. But then there was this bit of tiredness which finally prompted him to go see his physician. After a blood test the word leukemia was only hinted, not really diagnosed, only hinted - and that was enough to throw out all the positive change that had been accomplished before and deliver himself into the care of the physicians, giving up all of his self-determination. It took him quite a while to die, but the dying part was not the bad thing, most of us do that anyways sooner or later, no, the sad part was that he finally went whimpering and not proud for all he had accomplished.

Nasty this kind of fear, isn't it? 

And then there is the fear of being exposed, for example to be embarrassed, to be found about for some mis-deeds, to be exposed to be dumb, etc. There is no direct physical harm or death that threatens the direct existence of the body, but it is actually a fear that has a bigger effect on the life of a person. Examine for example all the things a person does in order not to appear poorer than his neighbor. He puts himself into huge debts to buy a car better than the neighbor, get a bigger house that the neighbor, at least get a bigger pool, even though he does not like to swim, and even go through all the trouble of getting a prettier wife.

Crazy stuff, but most of us play that game, all out of an unbased fear.

As we looked a the body and the mind, we certainly now also have to look at the spiritual side of us. And here we find the most damaging fear - the fear of God. Wars have been fought and untold numbers of people have died because of the fear to please ones god.

In order to attain universal serenity we will have to investigate all these kinds of fear. We will have to get more data about the subject that appears to be the reason for the fear first. This will defuse the reason for the fear in the present time, then we will have to do training and exercise to remove the reason why we started to consider fear a good thing.

You don't think we consider fear a good thing? If you don't then just stop having it - - - not that self evident how to do this, right? That's because we really think that fear is good for us and that can only be change by removing the decision that fear is good.