The nature of Fear

[octopusrex]

Fear is the great motivator.

Make someone afraid, and they will stand on their head. Fear is the fuel of wars, deficits, and Latin American Dictators.

[Anders Lindman]

According to Bruce Lipton, on a biological level fear causes:

1. The blood flow into the viscera is squeezed so that the blood instead flows into the skeletal muscles such as in arms and legs, as a flight-or-fight response. This means that the inner organs responsible for maintenance growth in the body are shut down. When chased by a lion for example, a temporary shut-down of the inner organs is a good thing, but a similar effect happens in chronic fear/stress and that leads to disease.

2. The immune system is shut down. When facing an outside threat the inside defense, which is energetically a very costly system to run, is temporary shut down, such as when being chased by a lion. It's more important to get away from the lion than fighting viruses and bacterias in the body in that moment. But when we have chronic fear/stress the immune system is impaired all the time which leads to disease.

3. The blood to the forebrain is squeezed shut which impairs logic and reasoning and makes the person run more on the hindbrain with its reflex behaviors. When chased by a lion, logic and reasoning is not of much use, but in a chronic fear/stress in ordinary life, a diminished ability to think clearly is detrimental.

When we look at it from a biological level, it looks like chronic fear causes exactly the same thing as aging. Is aging caused by a chronic fear? My guess is yes.

[turquoisefyre]

Fear is the great motivator.

Make someone afraid, and they will stand on their head. Fear is the fuel of wars, deficits, and Latin American Dictators.

we are driven by either inspiration or desperation, is another way of looking at it.

[synergy777]

fear is sometimes your ally and foe. fear of losing something or someone can make you change for the better. fear can also make your doubt, lose faith, and stop you from fulfilling your potential.

[Anders Lindman]

I think fear is a good and needed thing, that prevents us from moving in a wrong direction. But fear is a very low form of intelligence, and the purpose of life is to transform the fear into higher levels of understanding and skills.

[dmt head]

fear is sometimes your ally and foe. fear of losing something or someone can make you change for the better. fear can also make your doubt, lose faith, and stop you from fulfilling your potential.

Cool post this is true, but generally fear is the mind killer

[Anders Lindman]

The fact of the matter is that you can only be afraid of something in the future, and since the future is never here, you cannot be afraid. You cannot ACTUALLY be afraid. You can THINK that you are afraid, and that fear is your own ideas about the future you are afraid of, not the ACTUAL future because you can never experience the actual future. So fear is nothing but a self-delusion. :D

[Anders Lindman]

The problem is that the human mind thinks there is an actual future. So enormously stupid is the human mind that it actually believes there is an actual future. There is no such thing as an actual future. So stop pretend there is.

[Anders Lindman]

The future is only a mental projection. Of course that projection is important for us to navigate through life. The future is like a mental map. It's useful to have a map. But it's a self-delusion to be afraid of the map. My fear is only fear about my own mental map which I call the future. By learning how to look at the map as a map instead of mistaking the map for being the actual territory, I can remove my fears. At least in theory. And hopefully also in practice. :confused::)

[rossus]

you can only be a victim of fear,
when you keep your eyes closed... because you are afraid of the monster in front of you.

but when you open your eyes and look the monster in the eye...
you see, that it's not really a monster... but a shadow that needed some light :)

[Anders Lindman]

you can only be a victim of fear,
when you keep your eyes closed... because you are afraid of the monster in front of you.

but when you open your eyes and look the monster in the eye...
you see, that it's not really a monster... but a shadow that needed some light :)

Fear is the monsters in the mind, not about monsters in the outside world. If I swim in the ocean and a shark comes to attack me, I'm not afraid of the shark in the moment, I am afraid of the FUTURE shark, and that future shark is always only a mental construct in my mind, never a real shark. It's very obvious, but it's also very, very tricky to grok that.

[misscpb]

Fear is just the opposite of Love

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o99/misscpb/Love.gif

[challand]

I was just listening to this song when I clicked this thread...

"Paranoia strikes deep... Into your life it will creep... It starts when your always afraid... step out of line the man come and take you away..." -Buffalo Springfield - For What it's Worth

Have a listen, a classic from the 60's... http://www.myspace.com/challand

[dmt head]

Cant beleive that was that song, every time its late on after a night out my mate always wants to listen to that song ! :D

[octopusrex]

Jack Sparrow knows well that the right amount of rum in the blood will make the fear go away.. at least until you get past the octopus fella.

[lizzy]

For me fear is not the opposite of love, hate is.
Fear is a mechanism that induces the fight or flight response and right now we need to fight the NWO.

[lemonique]

The opposite of Love is indifference.

Lem.