Love opposite of fear?

holyknight · Joined: 30 Aug 2007 Posts: 20

Hi,

I've always considered that the opposite of fear is courage or faith and that the opposite of love being hatred. However, as I began reading spiritual books (and from other sources too) I often started encountering the statement that the opposite of fear is love...it surprised me a lot at first. Now, even though I have an idea of why this is being said, I am still not sure about it.

Could anyone explain to me the reason behind that statement? Why is it that the opposite of fear is love?
_________________
Any wish, if truthful can become reality

SL · Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Posts: 191

Hi holyknight,
I think this is an excellent question!
I will be thinking about it today.
Off the top of my head, what occurs to me is that people do not question themselves enough about the words used or meaning behind the words used.... Too often we say, "to me, 'x' means this!" when, the dictionary definition for 'x' is completely different.
So the fact that you are asking this question indicates to me you are someone who is not willing to go along with popular assumptions, and I genuinely appreciate that.
I'm currently on a road trip but when I settle in for the evening I will hopefully have some suggestions for you to consider.
Thanks again for a great question!
Peace
Steve

eaglesoul · Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 5:04 pm Post subject: Faith , Fear and Love

Great question! tks ...fellow CVs lets answer this...
The way I get it is that being in Love , the Universal kind , as a dear friend remarks so well, the ,by standing up on Love ....one trusts completely the Higuer Realms, the Higuer nature in us too, and that dispells fear, that Trust is the root of Faith, without trust it is not possible to even imagine faith.
Fear on the other hand is directly related to distrust.
Hate to me , as Gandhiji teached with his life is only a result of Fear.
it is also expressed syncronically in this mail I got today...when one trusts.miracles happen... Smile

Guidance from Eileen Caddy
You Can Do It And You Are Doing It
There is no stress or strain in nature: a seed goes through its full cycle, it does not have to do anything, it just allows it all to happen. When a snake changes its skin, it slowly wiggles out of its old one. A bird cracks open its shell and emerges completely transformed, it grows wings and can fly - it is free, free, free! That is what is waiting to happen to you. A new freedom, a new joy, a whole new world is waiting to open for you when you are willing to move out of those restrictive ways, thoughts and ideas and be transformed. You can do it and you are doing it. It is all beginning to take place.

8 January 2010
May you have a great year!
Namaste
P

bardictiger · Joined: 17 Oct 2009 Posts: 52 Location: Fort Washington, MD

eaglesoul · Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 4:57 am Post subject: mmm, on questions and answers

Well tiger....i had not answered to let others share their view...the fact that there is at least three of us ...being three a number of positivity in numerology,mmm, says something...
I am not familiar with Course in Miracles...but i have witnessed a few...
having said that , I can share that for me Universal Love is as you seem to say too, unconditional by definition.
Therefore from that feeeling of Universal LV that remember YOU LET COME THROUGH U, is not a personal thing...it is an openness to let that Higuer vibration run through you into the world....from there i was saying , a total trust permeates your being...has been my experience.
when you say:
love means you see and believe in the beauty of everything and you believe in that goodness.
To me, there is an step inbetween that is the one I point to...Trust...
cause to believe is a choice, to trust is to open...
then the rest happens
If i am relating to someone for example
when I stand in love from unconditional LV I trust the other one to share with me his/her particular version of truth, and I accept that could be very different than mine....
Then one needs to free oneself of opposites or to integrate is a better term....right and wrong, for example...leaves something rejected, if something is right, or if i am right...then the other one must be wrong...and that is not unconditional LV
there could be the origin of misunderstandings from the family level to the big planetary challenges we face now....
what if -I do not know if this is right...it is just my experience and as a result of my experience i trust the signs the Universe is sending my way....and choose to believe a certain info I get....and I walk the direction given...
that leaves me and anyone that stands in front of me room to experience...no right or wrong...just different experiences to different people...and sometimes, similar experiences...resonate.
In any case we evolve.
Here each of us shares its piece of the cosmic puzzle...
So instead of :I think they're both right
I can say -it is my experience that this works for me...
I have experienced goodness...
by opening up to Universal LV
then trust keeps building up....from experience...
u say: Am I making sense to anyone else?
I say :
sometimes it is a GREAT THING NOT TO MAKE SENSE !
permits folks like me to write long posts... Smile

naaa
keep sharing your thoughts here and that will clear them up...to u.Sometimes with the help of others in this path...sharing...resonating...or playing a different drum (giggle).
Has been my experience on this forum.
Now I have no idea how to quote here...the quote comand does not work...is this evolutionary intended?
Namaste
P

bardictiger · Joined: 17 Oct 2009 Posts: 52 Location: Fort Washington, MD

SL · Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Posts: 191

Hi holyknight, eaglesoul, tiger,

I've been waiting for time to get into this question you posed last week holyknight. As I said in my first response to your post, I feel it is an excellent question and one that deserves some thought.

As I have related in other posts, I was raised in a conservative Christian household, so I am familiar with the Bible. A friend read to me recently a passage from 1 John, chapter 4. I will type in a few verses so that the context for what I feel is the main statement, is understood.

It goes like this, from verse 15: "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgement: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. If a man say, 'I love God' and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

That passage reminded me of Ephesians 4, verses 4-6. "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

As I indicated in my first short response to your question holyknight, the fact that you asked the question suggests you look at things from more than one perspective. In my experience, this one quality was what made it possible for me to grow at all.

Your question is very specific. I originally wanted to pull that core verse in the middle of the first passage to illustrate how old the idea is that within love there can be no fear, and thus the fairly commonly expressed thought in modern spirituality, that fear and love are opposites, that you refer to.

However, I feel like suggesting to you a larger connotation to the question of love and fear.

As a teenager growing up listening several times a week to hard-core King James bible-based teaching and preaching, I did pay attention. Over the years I began to notice a pattern, and an accumulation, of stuff I was hearing and accepting on faith, without fully understanding how it might, or might not, be true.

In the verses from 1 John, as well as many different passages in the bible, we are told of our brotherhood with Christ. We are encouraged to understand that God is Love, and that "There is no fear in love". Further, that there is one God, "who is above all, and through all, and in you all".

Passages from the Bible that tell us to fear God and to be afraid of judgement by God are too numerous to quote.

Examples such as the ones I just provided were common among the things I did not understand growing up. The dichotomy, the paradox, of saying on the one hand that God is everything, and yet if we are afraid, we are not a part of God... Why would that be? Christ is our brother and we are as he is in this world, why do we have to go through him to get to God who is all and in all?

Around the time I was forty, I took the idea used in the popular media when discussing corruption of any kind, "follow the money", and applied it to the concept of fear. I began to "follow the fear" in myself as well as in different faiths and in society.

Oddly enough, in society, it turned up a lot of the same groups of people and organizations one would come across in investigations of financial corruptions. Organized religions have maintained an amazing amount of influence over the majority of humanity since the Dark Ages by offering Love with one hand, and fear with the other hand.

In myself, following the fear always led me back to me... I created the fears in my life. Always, always always... as I looked upon the events of my life, and my feelings about them, everything I feared or had feared, I had created in my mind and then had done everything to prove them, which of course, I did....

To me, one could sum up our collective modern history by saying that political groups as well as economic groups have joined conceptually, if not in true partnership, with religious groups in applying this group psychology upon the world as a whole. Reviewing the policies carried out, and the marketing of those policies to the American people by the American government in the last decade, one can clearly see how effective it is to speak of love and freedom and democracy while at the same time giving substance to fears and a reduction of liberty for all people in the name of safety. You can kill at will and rob people blind and count on their continued support with the application of these principles in people management.

Why does a relatively small percentage of the Earth's population go to such efforts to control the rest of the Earth's population? And why in this manner?

Control freaks? Energy vampires? Evil-doers? How do we want to think about them? Every time I get pissy because someone used the kitchen and then didn't clean up after themselves, I see my own control-freakyness... Am I so different from George Bush? For a control freak, a dictatorship IS a good idea, as long as you are the dictator.

This is why I commend you on questioning the common perception holyknight, and this is why I feel your question, "why is it that the opposite of love is fear?", is an important one.
Because in truly examining that question within our own lives and our own individual experience of the world we share with so many others, we can begin to be responsible.
We can start to acknowledge our fears as baseless and created from our own warped assumptions, selfish desires and relativistic perceptions.
We can begin to see that when we allow ourselves to take actions based upon our fears, we inevitably take that step that leads towards pain and death, literally as well as spiritually, personally as well as in our culture.
We can begin to apply that dictionary-based antonym of fear, bravery, in our own individual lives and live in fact and in the act, fearlessly.
We can begin to see how to live in a way that is in harmony, not just with one another, but the rest of the universe as well.
Living in that awareness of the power of our own thought, our own breath, our own identity as an integral part of the Whole...

Namaste
Steve

P.S. - in response to the posts from eaglesoul and bardictiger: tiger - I also learned much about fear, as well as ego, from A Course in Miracles. It provided a useful context for considering these questions. Regarding the discussion between you and eaglesoul about trust - somewhere along my path I came across the idea that, from a perspective of all things being One, trust has foreseeable consequences when applied to the physical world or to one another. Far better to trust the process and see what we all end up experiencing. This would be living in a state of fearlessness, i.e. - a state of Love...

bardictiger · Joined: 17 Oct 2009 Posts: 52 Location: Fort Washington, MD

SL · Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Posts: 191

Hi tiger,

yeah that is a nice point you make and one I have also noticed in my life.
The last time I got married I wanted to trust my wife because she was also spiritually aware. This was not that difficult for me, as my parents had provided myself and my siblings a fairly happy and loving environment as we'd grown up.

But for my ex it was very difficult to do, as she had grown up in an environment where trust was hazardous to her mental health. In the experience, I found my 'trust' in her to be a mirage and something that made me unhappy as well as her. Conversely, her inability to trust me was (as long as personal trust in one another was important to me) quite painful.

When I let go of my need to trust people, and allowed myself to trust the larger process I could observe myself and everyone else going through, I began to experience a heightened intuitive sense in one situation after another, whereas before, it was pretty hit or miss. Synchronicity also became less of a gee-whiz! experience and more of a recognition of something on-going all of the time.

I've also found, like you apparently, that as the books say, we live in not only a responsive universe, but a reflective one. Our openness to the answers the universe provides us for our questions is key, as well as our ability to accept the answers...

To do so is to truly be without an opinion or expectation of what 'should be' and to pro-actively accept what is.

Thank you tiger!
Smile

Namaste...

Grahame · Joined: 09 Jan 2009 Posts: 52

I have a slightly different view with regards to the love and fear question. And it is a similar view to the one I have in regards to health and illness...

I understand the 'truth' behind what many of us in this community call Universal love, a term many use interchangeably with love. And I agree with what SL was saying with regards to how we use words with conciousness. However, many don't seem to recognise a deeper 'truth', that is, when we think in terms of love and of healing there is an underlying consciousness that is thinking in terms of fear and disease.

For one to think of love as a cure (or opposite) to fear they are really dwelling in fear. And for one to think of healing as important to them they are really dwelling in dis-ease. Until one can exist outside of love and fear and outside of healing and disease, they will be dwelling in both realms, divided. In this I see as love and fear as the very same thing, just observed differently. Similarly I see health and disease as the same thing observed from different perspectives.

Health and illness rely on each other. Fear and love are bed partners. I personally think the distinction is what divides us

If what you truly seek is to be free of fear and disease then you must also allow yourself to become free from love and health.

Whilst this translation of the Tao Te Ching still uses words it can offer a window into the thoughts I have on this topic, this psychology.

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

and perhaps more so this...

When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn't laugh,
it wouldn't be the Tao.

Thus it is said:
The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest are seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.
Yet it nourishes and completes all things.
_________________
"Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created them" - Einstien

SL · Joined: 16 Jul 2009 Posts: 191

some quotes from Bruce Lee in response to you Grahame...

Grahame · Joined: 09 Jan 2009 Posts: 52

Steve you are both a beautiful friend and a loving adversary, which one I value more I cannot say.

Perhaps I might say that 'Love' is not visible, or cannot be experienced thoroughly, through the veil that is personal fear. Fear can then remain as part of All That Is, part of the divine everything. If we do not identify ourselves with fear we can embrace it, we can embrace all things? In this then I would not say that fear is the opposite of Love, but a distraction from it. Fear is OK unless it is the only part of the picture we view.

What do you think?

Indeed Steve, I think you are always authentic and consistent in your responses - something I aspire to.
_________________
"Problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created them" - Einstien

eaglesoul · Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 4:41 am Post subject:

Hi to all
I use the wording Love the Universal kind, cause the word Love has been too much used and abused...can be confusing to some , so I prefer UL .
Yes , the integration of opposites is where wholeness inhabits.
Perhaps we can speak of polarities instead.
As Steve says :
Letting go of our ingrained beliefs and rationalizations for ideas such as good and evil, trust and treachery, is what allows one to actually see what is.
too much rationalization lead us away from experience...
what the Tao is in essence to me is to experience the flow...and that is always in present time.
remember that Love the Universal kind is something one opens to...and let flow though oneself...Redfield says:You open yourself to the beauty of a tree...
quoting again what SL posted :
[quote]Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo[/quote].
That would be the only thing I can tell u Grazie...trust it arrives at the perfect moment for u and helps...
Namaste
P

littlebird · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 349 Location: Florida

Hello you all,

Steve, thank you for writing that! The question that is arising for me is then, why is it THAT WE FEAR LOVE?
_________________
God is Love

holyknight · Joined: 30 Aug 2007 Posts: 20

Thanks for your great ideas everyone!

I think that the reason we fear love is due to attachment. When for example we withdraw from doing the things we trully love, it seems to me it is in order to avoid experiencing strong dissapointment in case something happens to bring us down...
Isn't that why it is said that it takes courage to follow our dreams?
_________________
Any wish, if truthful can become reality