October 30: Reflections from ‘Along the Path to Enlightenment’
By: Along The Path To Enlightenment
Tags: David R Hawkins, Spirituality, Consciousness Research, Enlightenment, Levels Of Consciousness

With Additional Context:

From “I: Reality and Subjectivity” (2003), Chapter 12: The Emotions — Fear, pp. 199–200:

Therefore, the schemes and efforts to ensure survival or success take up the time and energy of most people. The ego identifies with all these elaborations, and the fears and defenses become innumerable and unending.

The ego’s investments take the form of pride and identification with belief systems; therefore, these also have to be defended. This results in a hyperalertness to danger, like that of the animal in the wild. All that is valued has to be defended; therefore, danger lurks everywhere. The ego is ever watchful of every slight, slur, or encroachment on its turf. The mind is paranoid, and collective paranoia can dominate whole countries, such as Russia during the long Cold War.

Because of the ego’s investments, innumerable positionalities, and false identifications, its fears are endless and continuously propagate. They subside only when the identification of ‘me’ with the positionalities is withdrawn, and the fears relating to physical survival and being separate diminish as a result of total surrender of one’s life and survival to God.

The endless everyday fears are subsumed under the common human conditions called worry and anxiety. This is so prevalent that it is accepted as part of being ‘normal.’ Numerous activities are motivated by the desire to escape fear, and often the majority of life’s activities become unconsciously fear motivated. Jesus Christ said that fear was the last, final negativity to be surrendered.

The Buddha enumerated the basic fears 2,500 years ago as those of “sickness, poverty, old age, and death.” Thus, they are all the fears of loss that become pervasive and color all activities: loss of privilege, position, title, reputation, relationships, youth, possessions, influence, power, love, money, strength, skills, sexual attractiveness, status, comfort, opportunity, mental faculties, and more.

The general trend of fear is that of the loss of assets, which, in turn, means the loss of pleasure and satisfaction or the means of survival. Self-confidence is the normal safeguard against multiple fears, and that capacity is enhanced by the often-painful learning of life skills in the course of events.

The common element of most fears is that they are based on the illusion that happiness is dependent on externals and therefore vulnerable. To overcome the illusion of vulnerability brings great relief and the correction of being run by fear so that life becomes benign and filled with satisfaction and an easy-going, confident attitude instead of constant guardedness.

Cessation of fear is the result of learning that the source of happiness and joy is from within. It stems from recognizing that its source is the joy of one’s own existence, which is continuous and not dependent on externals. This results from surrendering expectations and demands on oneself, the world, and others. The thought “I can only be happy if I win or get what I want” is a guarantee of worry, anxiety, and unhappiness.