IF we did not want anything from life there would be no fear. Simple as that! The only reason that we are afraid is that we want someone or something that we don’t have – or have and don’t want to lose. This includes the desire to continue to have our self – the person we think we are – our body, our mind, our individuality and personality and the resulting fear that we might lose this precious commodity.

There are people in our life that love us and we love them. Sounds great, but underneath, we are always afraid of losing that love. We are afraid that they might stop loving us, so we compromise. We act and react in their company in such ways so as to ensure that their love for us will continue tomorrow.

We are not being strictly honest with ourselves or them, because if we were, we believe we might jeopardize the relationship and lose them. Even if everything is hunky dory, there is always the fear that they are going to die on us and we’ll lose them that way. This causes us even more fear because we are helpless to do anything about it.

We want to live forever because we are afraid of the uncertainty of death, or to be more precise, the loneliness of not being anymore. Loneliness is entirely different than being alone, which is really contentment with oneself, a quiet satisfaction with our own company, a state of desiring nothing from life, of being our own best friend.

To suffer from loneliness means we continually want the company of someone or something. We always need to be in a crowd, or to be occupied, to take our mind away from our selves. The more we fear loneliness – of being alone with our self – the more people and things we will endeavour to cram around us to stymie that fear.

We believe that by having that something or someone, our mind would be preoccupied with people and things so we could ignore the fact that in reality, we are always alone within ourselves. To consciously accept that, is another forward step in our learning process…

Dan’s Quote: “There is no one there to let go of anyone. Your realization that there
_____________is no one there to let go is what letting go is.”- Vernon Howard

Ideas for this chapter came from ‘A Passionate Mind’ by Joel Kramer.