“Love does not want or fear anything”
Eckhart Tolle
We usually say that hate is the opposite of love, or war. But the truth is that fear is the opposite of love. Wars get created out of fear. You can hate someone and still love them, but love can not flow if fear is present. It is physiologically and psychologically impossible. Our system will be busy with survival. With flight, fight or freeze. The higher potentials and spiritual dimensions are not accessible if our basic need for our physical survival is triggered and the strategies of perseverance come into place. Because of our human conditionings we feel survival fears that are irrational to the truth of our situation. Through the mind and nervous system we project primal responses that are long gone to every day situations. Such that our survival mode kicks in when we are rejected by a loved person, or by something we see on the news, or by worst-case scenarios in our heads. Things that are part of life on this planet but are not actual, real time life threats, and yet our nervous system may respond to them like we are in mortal danger. That´s when love seizes to prevail. That’s when we begin to look out for out personal agendas, and perhaps those closest to us. That’s when we forget that we are part of a bigger human family that survives through the shared love and care of each other.
In Meslows Hierarchy of needs diagram we see that our physiological needs and our safety needs have to be met before we can turn to our need of belonging, or need for self-esteem and contribution and our need for self-realization and self-actualization. But because, as human beings, we easily default back to the illusion of actual physical threat through psychological stress, we tend to function on the lower spectrum of what is possible to us, specially in times like these, where the unknown is our daily reality and the perceived threat of it keeps us functioning on more primitive impulses.
Having said that, I feel it is imperative to become aware of these reflexes in our psyche that perceive, exaggerate and perpetuate threats that are not proportionate to the reality of the situation. And acknowledging that this misconception hinders us from allowing the Love to flow that might be the most profound and healing antidote to the shakiness of our time.
I realize that this is easier said then done in a world where we are fed fear by the media all day long, where security is the highest value and where the ego runs rampant with thoughts of dread. It is our job, in the name of life and humanness and solidarity, to recognize this misconception for merely what it is: the fearful mind. And to recognize that in every given moment the choice is a simple one: between the fearful mind and Love.
Together they cannot exist. And as counter-intuitive as it might feel to a nervous system that is on red alert, looking at it from a bigger perspective, we must agree that if we are going to survive as a healthy species, we have to nurture love over fear. Every time. Love is the nurturing of the sun that allows the seeds buried deep in the darkness of the soil to emerge and thrive. We cannot live without it. We have to choose.
On the long run, will it be fear or Love? And in order to make that hope a reality in the long run we have to start here, now, choosing for life, choosing for the light of our hearts rather then the darkness of our thoughts. We have to prioritize love over fear by making conscious our unconscious inadvertent tendency to be drawn in by worry and panic. That consciousness will allow us to see that right here, right now, these anxieties are rarely real, are projections of a future that is not our current state. Then we get to choose. We get to turn toward the light. We get to feed the wolf that will support our survival and wellbeing as human family, in the long run. We get to say yes to the Love that is all prevailing in every given moment of our experience. We just have to choose for it.
With LOVE,
Kanika Frings
Co-Founder of DIMA Mallorca, Center for Conscious Living
Holistic Counsellor
Enneagram Coach
www.dimamallorca.com
www.kanikafrings.com
