Exchanging Fear for Peace

Imagine if you were offered the opportunity to live a life of peace, would you take it?

More information? Okay, imagine if you were offered a life of peace in exchange for all your fears, would you take it? Sound too good to be true? Well, the truth is that there is a standing offer available to us everyday to drop our fears and live a life of peace. It’s not the offer that is unbelievable, it’s the fact that so few of us take up the offer that is amazing.

Lets qualify peace and fear before we go any further. The peace I’m talking about it not the dreamy “love, peace and brown rice” kind of peace that is sold to us in it’s many forms daily. Nor is it the impermanent peace of ‘I had a good day today’ out of a week of misery. No, the peace I’m referring to is a deep seated knowing of who you are. Its about being present and conscious. Its about here and now and being detached from the daily dramas. Finding peace isn’t about changing our life’s circumstances but rather, our view and reaction to life’s circumstances. It is about having absolute faith that tomorrow is just another day that will unfold without effort.

The fear I refer to is the deeply rooted sense of non existence, of being inconsequential, not worthy, of being no one! It’s so deeply rooted that most of us don’t even realise our deepest fears. Most of us live our life in pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain so it is no surprise really that we don’t know them, we just don’t go there.

If we did explore our fears we’d be shocked to find our attachment to the many emotions that make up our fears. Unconsciously, our fears represent elements of who we think we are. It is therefore not surprising that we confront difficulties in giving them up - after all we identify with them.

So how do we exchange the nagging feelings of inadequacy, insufficiency and lack for the secure knowledge that we are okay, sufficient onto ourself and lacking nothing? The initial answer lies in our congruent and heart felt desire to know ourself. It is a prayer we offer when we have had enough of seeking but not finding, when the pain of living in a random world outstrips our desire for safety.

The key to commencing the process is allowing whatever needs to happen to enter our lives, or depart our lives as the case may be. It is critical that we allow the means to present itself rather than us trying to fabricate it.

The means for undoing fear and discovering peace will find you. You need do nothing except allow and be willing to accept what ever means are presented. Most of us want peace but when presented with the means by which to achieve this, we falter. Our ego wants to control the means and dictate the outcome and will put up the battle of our lives to persuade us that whatever is presented is wrong and dangerous and that we should choose again!

The ego perceives death in the process and it’s right of course. But it is only relinquishment of the ego, and dose not effect us at all! This is the secret that our ego guards with all it’s might. It continues to keep us in fear and distraction so that we never discover the truth that it (ego) is only an illusion of who we are.

Truth is peace because it is undeniable and incontestable. Unlike the acquisition of knowledge, the discovery of Truth is a an undoing process. Simple yet difficult because we have been trained into believing that learning requires investment and effort. Truth demands the opposite - allowing and detachment. Allowing is one of the hardest things we can do. Again, our training has set us up to try and fix situations when ever they are not running smoothly. There is a feeling of emptiness and fear whenever there is a shift within situations and relationships and our first reaction is to jump in and fix it! In most cases, this desire to fix is of the ego and the appropriate action is in fact to allow. Our ego will not voluntarily let this happen because it doesn’t want us to discover faith in anything else but it. If we were to glimpse our peace just once, the ego would be inevitably be undone because it would set in motion the entire undoing of the ego. Herein lies the challenge and the doorway to peace. Yes, allowing and detachment is uncomfortable and downright scary at times but do we want to be free or not? Do we want to exchange our fears for peace or not? The pathway is there for us all to take.

By Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira, authors of the soon to be released book,‘Take Me to Truth’.

Contact Nouk and Tom at: info@takemetotruth.com