Can Fear and Love Coexist?

"The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe the universe is friendly." Albert Einstein

Can love and fear coexist? The answer is a big, fat NO! Fear is darkness, it exists in our lower-selves, (our ego-selves) and it originates from a sense of not being in control. For a recovering control-freak like myself, working to live outside of fear and in pure love has always been a struggle for me. Throw in a "progressive" disease with no known cause, cure, or real course, and you can imagine fear of the unknown is a staple in the daily emotional diet. Most likely, the main course.

 Fear serves a very real purpose. It saved primative man's life by triggering the fight or flight response in order to run and escape an acutely dangerous situation. After success, the fight or flight response subsided, but unfortunately, in our fear based, high stress society, the fight or flight response is constantly activated in a more subtle way (think anger, frustration, anxiety, jealousy, etc.), exhausting organ systems and coping abilities and creating illness, mental and physical.

Love exists in our higher selves, the spirit, that oneness with God/Source/Creator and all living things. It is unconditional and encompasses peace, joy, serenity, etc. SO many of us live from a place of constant but subtle fear (something you may not even recognize as fear), whether it is anxiety about the unknown future or a lack of total self-love, closing out the beauty and insight of the higher self, pure love. 

I was inspired to write this rambling post out of two recent experiences that had me pondering fear and love, particularly whether or not they could coexist. Remember, there is a lesson in every difficult experience if you open yourself up and look at yourself with honest eyes. Watching others live from a place of fear has allowed me to look within and discover myself falling back into that fear-based living because of the treatment I am in right now for the RSD/CRPS. The straight-up fear of the unknown, the anxiety before and after the treatments, the need for self-preservation above all else has been recently blocking out my oneness with God/Source/Creator, and therefore, all living things. I could feel it happening, but I couldn't pin point exactly what the problem was.

Self-exploration rocks! It is difficult to face the darkest spaces inside of yourself, but beyond worth it.

I hope my ramblings have been beneficial to some of you facing the same demons.

Happy Healing!