Fear is a bad advisor

How do you react when someone you meet tells you that he comes from Iraq. Last year I got to know an Iraqi. A friendly man with charisma, black hair, dark brown eyes.

"People are afraid if they meet Iraqis," he said. I found myself in the process that I very briefly asked myself whether this Iraqi before me was pro-Western or anti-Western. And, although I have given up, to watch news, because I don't want to be drowned in bad news in order to generate the broadcasters more viewers. News, in which the media keep alive the image of the Arab perpetrators since the 9/11. We came to talk and I enjoyed the entertainment. If I had given in to my fear, I would have missed an interesting conversation.


When people are unemployed, they often find that friends and acquaintances leave them alone. A well-known ritual in the summer holidays are the thoughts of parliamentary backbenchers how the social welfare expenses might be cut down. Unemployed are under suspicion, in a position to blame, and friends and acquaintances turn away, as if unemployment were contagious and the people would fear to find themselves on the dole too. Are the Germans exercising some sort of everyday magic?

The economical recovery and the reduction of unemployment, have shown that unemployment is not caused by the willingness of the people to work. Happy have many millions of working people exchanged a job against unemployment. Unemployed people have skills and forces, the national economy wastes. If we avoid out of for fear the unemployed, we will get poorer - who knows what solutions to our problems other person knows. And the unemployed get more depressed, they feel alone. To that extent, the fear is a bad counsellor, it leads to waste.

Fear is often claimed to protect the people. This holds true in elementary threatening situations, such as meeting with earthquakes, accidents or disaster. I fight or run away, to prevent myself from enemies.


But fear has long been a physical threat only. There is the fear of the invisible, the irrational. There is the fear of the boss, the father, neighbors, roused by ideas and thoughts. And this fear will lead us to avoid conflict in everyday life - with the unseen, the irrational, the chief's, father, the neighbors, because fear maker send a message - you will lose. The fear stems from the expectation of a defeat and the associated negative consequences.


What, if I would be invincible if there is no defeat, and hence there would be no negative consequences, then I would be free from fear. Free from fear, I could be at ease and unconcerned.

And here, the meditation exercises. I prepare myself to the meditation.

The exercise is called Trust in Earth: I imagine myself to be the globe and to turn around my axis, I feel the oceans, the mountains, the polar caps. Everything is meshed, where deficiency arises, arises elsewhere abundance. The earth does not know mine and yours. Everything in the world is alive and moving. I am moving from lacking to abundance. The exercise will be completed with the image of the practitioners, rising from the water.

After the exercise the practitioners realize that fear is transmitted through the images of other people. From these pictures, the practitioner can let go and turn to the image of earth.

The earth shows me, that on her abundance is there for everyone, indeed, even more so - every human being is part of the abundance. We need not fear our fellow men. They make us presents if we do not fear them.