Endigar 385 ~ Love and Fear as Opposites
From Today’s Daily Reflections;
All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 49)
“Fear knocked at the door; faith answered; no one was there.” I don’t know to whom this quote should be attributed, but it certainly indicates very clearly that fear is an illusion. I create the illusion myself.
I experienced fear early in my life and I mistakenly thought that the mere presence of it made me a coward. I didn’t know that one of the definitions of “courage” is “the willingness to do the right thing in spite of fear.” Courage, then, is not necessarily the absence of fear.
During the times I didn’t have love in my life I most assuredly had fear. To fear God is to be afraid of joy. In looking back, I realize that, during the times I feared God most, there was no joy in my life. As I learned not to fear God, I also learned to experience joy.
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I am better with recognizing the illusions that are fear produced. Something in my gut still gurgles up raw anxiety and I have to remove the atuopilot of fulfilling tasks and remind myself that this is not real or that it is being exaggerated. Maybe I will develop an automatic response over time that will cause me to process all fear more quickly. At times, it competes to become my Higher Power. Thanks to this program, that void is already filled and fear no longer has an easy time of it when confronting me.
Daily Reprieve 
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