Fear and Fearlessness

You have two fundamental aspects to your nature. You have a personal mind, which is associated with your body, a mind that has been conditioned by your cultures, your society, your families and by nature itself. This mind is driven by the need for survival. It is driven by the need for security and for resources. It is fundamentally fearful because it is so very aware of the risks and the prospect of loss in the future. It is haunted by this prospect of loss, and it is governed by the need to offset these risks.

There is the fear of social alienation. There is the fear of political oppression. There is the fear of abject poverty. There is the fear of illness in all of its manifestations. There is the fear of being attacked by others. There is the fear of losing your loved ones, losing your home and losing your source of income. There is the fear of nature and the power of nature, and what it can do to devastate one’s life. There is the fear of other peoples and their intentions. There is the fear of war. There is the fear of pestilence. There is the fear of death. There is the fear of death for those you care about and love.

The list could go on and on specifically, but you can see here that if one is not falsely insulated by assurances and wealth that the risks and the hazards of life are quite considerable. And if one is being honest with oneself, one would have to face these risks and consider them, and to learn how to navigate the hazards and the uncertainties of life with as much skill and awareness as one could muster.

People seek relief, of course, from all of this concern and anxiety. They believe in groups and nations. They identify with causes and political persuasions. They identify with religions and religious prejudices. They condemn others to strengthen themselves. They belittle other races of people or nations of people to give themselves a greater sense of power and assurance. They lose themselves in fantasies.

If they live in wealthy nations, perhaps they lose themselves in hobbies or obsessions. Unwilling or unable to face the realities of life, they seek escape. And they seek various forms of reinforcement for themselves.

This is the condition of your personal mind, a mind that is concerned with survival, security and gratification. This is not evil in any sense. It is simply the [province] of the personal mind. Because the personal mind is so very insecure, it seeks for escape in its indulgences, its pleasures, its ideas or its activities.

These of course become quite aberrant, even self-destructive to the individual. So it would be accurate to say that fundamentally your personal mind is fear based because it is given the challenge and the difficult task of navigating a hazardous and uncertain world.

But there is a greater Intelligence within you that is not the product of your biological or social nature. This Intelligence was created by God, and God has given you this Intelligence to guide you, to protect you and to lead you to your greater work and service in the world.

It is a very different kind of Intelligence than your personal mind. It has not been conditioned by your family, your culture or your friends. It is not subject to political beliefs or persuasions or religious ideology. It is not threatened by the world. It is only limited in its expression by the world.

Its purpose here is a higher purpose, a purpose aimed at service and contribution in the world. This greater Intelligence is called Knowledge because it is related to your ability to inexplicably know things that are beyond the abilities and the capacity of the intellect.

The fact that humanity has not developed its connection to this greater Intelligence to any significant degree is a measure of humanity’s evolution overall and the kind of skills, wisdom and ability that humanity has yet to garner for itself, for its own survival and protection.

Knowledge is here to guide the intellect. It is not merely a resource for the intellect. It is a far wiser guide, regarding your survival and well-being, than your ideas or the ideas of others. Knowledge is guided by love, but it is a love focused on service and on responsibilities.

It is essentially fearless. Yet even being fearless, it has concerns. It has concerns for your well-being, your survival, your state of mind and your circumstances.

For your greater purpose in life will not emerge under any circumstances [but] must have the proper attitude and motivation within you for this emergence to take place. Giving you the right motivation, the right approach, the right attitude and the right circumstances is the concern of Knowledge.

Knowledge must guide you and put you in a position with a clarity of mind where you can see clearly and experience directly the greater life you are here to live and give you clues as to the greater service you are here to perform.

Clearly, it would be wise for that which is fearful to follow that which is fearless. But your personal mind has its own domain of responsibilities. It must feed and care for the needs of the body. It must establish you as a functioning member of society. It must cultivate communication skills and survival abilities. It must give you healthy and responsible tasks to fulfill. It must give you a vocation of some kind in the world so that you can support yourself and other people.

Here you do not abandon your personal mind because you cannot communicate in the world effectively without it. It is a vehicle of communication, as is your body. Yet it must be focused and oriented correctly, and its responsibilities must be recognized and attended to.

Here you cannot neglect your responsibilities as a member of society, or if you are a parent, your responsibility to your children, because you are seeking a spiritual path. Some people try to use spirituality as a kind of escape from all things that are weighing upon them. They seek bliss, happiness and peace. They try to run away from their life. And of course this cannot be successful, for even if you were to attain these things, Knowledge would bring you back into the world with all of its hazards and difficulties.

You are not here to find an escape from the world. You are here to serve the world in a specific way, in specific places, with certain people.

You can try to run away from yourself, but you really cannot divorce yourself from Knowledge, for it goes everywhere with you, being the greater part of you. Here you cannot say, “Well, I will just live in a state of Knowledge all the time,” because you still have responsibilities. You still have to provide for yourself and others. Ultimately, you have a greater service to others, which may bring to you even more worldly responsibilities.

So that which is fearful cannot be abandoned, but it must be wisely guided. That is why God has given you the power of Knowledge. God is not going to guide you. The Lord of all the universes is not going to become preoccupied with your affairs and daily experiences. That is why God has put Knowledge within you, to guide you, to protect you and to lead you to your greater accomplishments.

That which is fearless must guide that which is fearful. That which is great must guide that which is small. That which is strong and wise must guide that which is weak and fallible.

This is what brings together all aspects of yourself into a working and harmonious whole. This is what establishes your fundamental integrity and your deeper experience of yourself. This is what restores to you self-confidence, self-love and the ability to experience affinity with others. This is the antidote to hatred, to malice, to greed, to obsession, to addiction and the need for revenge.

In this way, God has placed a perfect guiding Intelligence within you. But for you to find this guidance and to receive its redemption, you must learn to gain access to Knowledge, to take the Steps to Knowledge and to learn how to follow Knowledge within the real circumstances of your life.

Here instead of abdicating your responsibility, you find yourself having to take on greater responsibilities. Now you must manage not only your affairs, but your emotions, your relationships with others, your attitudes, your perception—everything. Here there is no giving over your responsibilities so you can be happy, careless and irresponsible.

Indeed, Knowledge requires you to be captain of your ship. For Knowledge will not govern your daily affairs. Knowledge is not here to manage you every moment of the day. Knowledge is not there to help you choose from the menu of life what you will consume, unless these decisions have great consequence.

Knowledge sets the direction, the goal and gives you the strength to follow this direction and to recognize and experience the goal. It is like Knowledge is the monarch and your mind is the civil servant. The monarch is not going to give up its greater responsibilities to come down and take care of fundamental matters on the ground. That is the role of the civil servant, you see.

So this approach requires a clear understanding of what your body needs, what your mind needs, and what your soul needs—the hierarchy of needs within you and within other people. This of course takes time to develop because when you begin this great journey towards Knowledge, your whole sense of proportion is incorrect.

Most people begin thinking Spirit is a kind of resource for the mind and the mind is a slave to the body. They have the whole relationship confused and out of order. So it takes time to bring things into a correct and functioning understanding.

Of course, along the way people make wild and ridiculous assumptions and conclusions. That is because the personal mind is trying to understand the universe, trying to understand God, trying to understand destiny, purpose and meaning—all things that only can be realized at the level of Knowledge, which exists beyond the realm and the reach of the intellect. The intellect can be a major participant in the discovery of these greater things, but the realization happens beyond the realm of your ideas.

So day to day, you have a great responsibility to manage your awareness, your emotions, your attitudes, your affairs, your engagement with other people, your financial responsibilities, your health responsibilities, your relationship responsibilities and your responsibility to develop your spiritual awareness—which means fundamentally your connection with Knowledge.

Here you have Four Pillars to your life: the Pillar of Health; the Pillar of Work and Providership; you have the Pillar of Relationships; and you have the Pillar of your Spiritual Development. Like the four legs of a table, they uphold your life, and your life is only as strong and stable as the weakest of your Pillars. So building your Pillars is a fundamental and necessary development. It represents the foundation of your life.

If your mind is really being guided by Knowledge, and you understand what your responsibilities are and the boundaries to your own personal awareness, then you will see the essential importance of developing these Pillars and maintaining them, not forfeiting the others to support one alone.

Many people become obsessed in one area of their life because they have neglected their other Pillars. Perhaps they are obsessed with relationships, with love and companionship. Perhaps they are obsessed with their health and the needs of the body. Perhaps they are obsessed with their work and their desire for wealth and financial power. Perhaps they are obsessed with their spiritual study or spiritual practice. Whatever the case, it is still the same problem.

Obsession means that your life is out of balance and you are neglecting the Pillars of your life. Because if you were attending to all Four Pillars of your life, you would not have time to become obsessed. While it is true that at any given moment one Pillar may require more attention than the others, you will, in essence, have to maintain them all.

This is the perfect antidote to obsession and addiction because it takes a lot of time to develop and maintain the Pillars of your life and your worldly responsibilities. You do not have the luxury of falling into fantasy or obsession, or obsessive relationships, or obsessive work, or obsessive emphasis on your health and beauty, or dealing with illness itself. You do not have time.

Here time becomes precious, not to be wasted for anyone or anything. Here you see that your time is precious and you do not want to waste it. This makes you strong and responsible and builds character. Here you must dig deep within yourself to find the strength and the discipline to maintain the Four Pillars of your life. Here you understand that if you fail to do this, then any one of your Pillars can undermine your entire life.

You see the evidence of this all around you. People’s health collapses, and everything collapses with it. People have a history of failed relationships with a spouse or their children, and their whole life is spoiled by this lack of love, companionship and affinity. People never establish their Work Pillar, and so they are always facing financial hardship and immense stress. People lose themselves in their spiritual practice, and do not understand why they are suffering all the time, suffering because their other Pillars have not been established.

The evidence of this is everywhere. If you look at people without condemnation, they will teach you through demonstration the importance of Knowledge and the importance of building the Four Pillars of your life. With strong Pillars you become more secure in a changing world.

You have to spend less time shoring yourself up or fighting fires within your circumstances. You can weather storms and difficulties. You have the emotional strength to face and endure loss or misfortune. You have a solid anchor being in the world and cannot easily be swept away by the Great Waves of change.

While people are idling away their time in casual pursuits or personal hobbies, they are missing this opportunity to build a real foundation for themselves. They will need this foundation because you are facing a future where the Great Waves of change will alter the landscape of the world and where great upheaval and uncertainty will prevail.

Those who are reckless with their time, those who do not see the importance and the value of their life, will not fare well under these circumstances and there will be nothing there to rescue them. For they failed to prepare. They failed to build a real foundation for their lives.

They never built the strength to do this. They never developed the discipline to do this. They never developed the courage to do this. And now they are lacking in strength and discipline and courage. They may pray to God for deliverance, but God has already given them the answer, an answer they have not heeded, an answer they have not followed.

This will be the plight of many people. This is the result of not responding to Knowledge and not building a real foundation for oneself. It is not enough to simply follow Knowledge at the level of inspiration alone. You must follow Knowledge in what it guides you to do and to establish and to build for yourself and for others.

This, of course, requires a tremendous amount of work. While many people in the wealthy nations are trying to have ever greater leisure time, there is so much work to be done. To face the Great Waves of change that are coming to the world, you must build your ark. And it must be built strongly and wisely.

Otherwise, you will be overtaken by the changing circumstances of the world, and your life will be indeed very fearful, and that which is fearless will not be strong enough or evident enough in your awareness to counteract the immense fear and aggravation that your circumstances will produce.

All living creatures in the world live for the moment, but also prepare for the future. That is why people build houses. That is why creatures build shelters and prepare for the seasons of life. To neglect this is to neglect such a fundamental responsibility, and spiritual practice and study cannot replace this responsibility. That is because you have Four Pillars to your life, and not just one.

Knowledge will lead you to develop a greater inner security and a greater outer security. It will lead you away from divisive relationships. It will lead you away from an unhealthy lifestyle. It will lead you away from people who are not responding to Knowledge and who are not building a real foundation for their life. It will bring into your life greater relationships, people who are strong and inspiring. And it will bring into your life circumstances that will demand of you a greater responsibility and self-discipline. It will strengthen you by requiring things of you and from you. It will engage your personal mind and all of its strengths and capabilities for a greater purpose—to establish a greater security and stability.

Without this, so many people will fall into idleness and give themselves to things that have little or no meaning or value. They will commit themselves to the pursuit of beauty and wealth and leisure at the great expense of their own integrity, stability and security in life.

They will follow fear and its endless desire for possessions and for assurances and for recognition. Their life will be built upon weakness and avoidance and false assumptions.

It is not your responsibility to judge or condemn people, but to learn from their experiences, from the demonstration of both their strengths and their weaknesses. This will convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt of the central importance of Knowledge, and the necessity of building a real foundation for your life.

This will show you that judgment and condemnation are a waste of your time and energy and are harmful to others. This will show you that you came to the world to work, and that you must build a real foundation to provide a greater service in the world.

Here you cannot be a victim of the world or a victim of change, for you were designed and meant to be a contributor—a person who gives into life situations and who is not overtaken or destroyed by them.

In your heart, you want this strength. You want this integrity. You want this stability. You want a strong foundation. But you will have to overcome your beliefs, your low self-esteem and many of your tendencies that prevent you from building this foundation and from being able to follow the directions that Knowledge will give you.

It is like you are redoing your whole life. You are tearing it down to its essential elements and rebuilding it based upon real strength and the real wisdom that lives within you that are provided by Knowledge.

Here your personal mind will exert its real responsibilities and exercise its greater Intelligence and capabilities, to serve you and to be of service to others. It will not be self-destructive. It will not be self-hating. It will not be a tool of governments or religious institutions. It will not be used as a weapon of war or as a tool of the state.

But for you this means a tremendous amount of work. For you have to reclaim what has been lost. You have to build what has not been built. You have to re-establish your integrity through experience, through practice and through demonstration. You have to reconsider your commitments, your obligations to others, the value of your relationships and where you stand currently regarding the Four Pillars of your life.

Here you must face your life squarely and courageously. For many people that will be very difficult because they will see the deficits and the weakness of their foundation. But it is better to start now than to sink back into denial and avoidance for any reason.

You start from where you are, not from where you want to be. You are not where you need to be in life, and that is why you are suffering. People around you are not where they need to be in life, and that is why they are suffering. Many people are in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, and they cannot find peace in that.

So this deep evaluation must occur, and it requires great courage. This is where you find your courage and exercise it. If you do not exercise it, you will not have it. It will not be there for you in the future when you will really need it. The same holds true with self-discipline, self-determination and the ability to change your circumstances and your priorities.

Here you are not governed by expectations as much as by a deeper inner certainty. Here you will feel inner restraint regarding those things that you are currently doing that are wasting your time, your energy and your life. If you are ambivalent about being in a relationship, then that ambivalence has to be examined. It may be a sign telling you that this is not the place to commit yourself.

Everything you do is important. Even your leisure time, your time of rest, is important, for that is building your Health Pillar. It is supporting good mental and physical health. Nothing you do exists outside these Pillars, and everything you do is either strengthening them or weakening them. Every relationship you have with other people is either strengthening or weakening your connection to Knowledge.

Here that which seems confusing and subjective becomes very clear. Here you can discern what is correct for you to do without endless speculation or inner debate. That which is fearful must follow that which is fearless.

Knowledge is fearless. Your personal mind is fearful. It is okay that it is fearful because that is its condition, but it must be employed for a greater purpose and be given a greater incentive and greater wisdom to function constructively and to be the great asset and vehicle of communication that it really is.

How do you begin? You begin by taking the Steps to Knowledge, by learning what Knowledge is in your experience and how to distinguish it from your own compulsions, your own beliefs and your own fantasies.

Here when you see the evidence of Knowledge and follow Knowledge, you learn how to discern it, and you see how utterly distinct it is from your personal mind. Here you see that who you are is not your personal mind and that your personal mind is just a vehicle.

It is as if you were flying a craft in space, and your Being is the pilot, the instrument panel is your mind and the ship is your body. If the pilot ceases to function as the pilot, you cannot expect the ship to guide itself, not for very long. You cannot expect the ship to make all the decisions that it must make facing changing circumstances and unforeseen events. The pilot has to be there, guiding the ship, working the control panel.

It is like this in your life. If Knowledge is not there guiding you, then you are helplessly and hopelessly trying to guide yourself—appealing to other people, appealing to fantastic beliefs, appealing to mythology, appealing to the worst kind of authorities to guide you and to give you a sense of security and direction.

Here you become obsessed. Here you fall into obsessive behavior. Here you become disappointed and disillusioned, and your sense of certainty and strength diminishes because you are following things that have no power and no real wisdom.

At every moment you are either becoming stronger or weaker. You are building a foundation or losing a foundation. You are finding your purpose or you are not finding your purpose.

At this level, things become much more clear, and you become much more certain about what you are doing and how to make the right decisions in accordance with your deeper nature.

Here self-confidence grows. Here your sense of well-being grows. Here you are able to stand away from fearful imagination and to look at things objectively and clearly, even in the face of danger, even in the face of great uncertainty.

Here you must find the power of Knowledge. Learn how it expresses itself in your life. Learn how it feels. Feel when it is restraining you. Feel when it is guiding you or motivating you. Learn to penetrate the surface of your mind, to see the great well of silence that exists beneath this surface, the great well of silence where Knowledge exists.

You will need a study to do this. You will need a preparation not of your own making. You cannot follow an eclectic approach that is based on personal preference, for this will take you nowhere. You must follow a pathway that was not created by you or manipulated by you.

God has sent a New Message into the world to teach about spirituality at the level of Knowledge, to teach about the reality of the Four Pillars of life. You have a pathway. You can find this pathway even through your existing religious traditions if you have someone wise enough to guide you and to help you to understand how to proceed. Yet most people do not have a guide of this nature, and that is why the New Message will be very essential for many people.

If you think the world is difficult now, you do not yet realize how difficult the times to come will be, and how strong you must be to weather these storms and to navigate the uncertain and difficult times ahead.

This is part of the warning that God’s New Message presents. And that is why building your foundation in Knowledge, and learning how to see yourself and to discern your needs at the level of the body, the mind and the soul is so fundamental to your success and your ability not only to survive in a difficult future, but to be of great service to the world. It is this service that will give you satisfaction and fulfillment in this life as nothing else can.

It is this where you must place your faith, but not your faith alone—your committed activity. For you cannot merely hope that God will preserve you. You must diligently follow what God has placed within you to guide you, to protect you, and to lead you forward.

This is the blessing, and this is your responsibility. Do not neglect it. For everything you value and want for yourself that is true and authentic will be found by following what God has given you to follow, to do what God has given you to do, and to be what God has given you to be.