Anything that is not Love.

I was asked to contribute a chapter to an anthology book entitled The Fear Factor: Beyond limiting beliefs.

I am going to share this chapter with you here because it touches on something that I have found everyone on a personal-growth and self-development journey bumps into at some point. The ancient question "Why am I here?"

This also touches on some aspects of my Shamanic Work, which I promote only selectively. If either element calls to you it is certainly a conversation that we can delve into.

'We live in a world that is shaped by thousands of years of religious influence, regardless of our own personal lapses in religious observation.

If you are getting ready to disagree then please wait one moment. This is not a diatribe on organised religion, in fact, what I want to share with you is a fundamental tenet of every mainstream belief system in some form or another.

Simply, anything that is not Love, is a form of fear.

There are three or four loves depending on your reference source and there have been many essays, articles and books written about them.

However, to recap and offer a starting point for this chapter, there is Storge, which in his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes as 'liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance.'

Philia is the love between friends as close as siblings in strength and duration. Friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common values, interests or activities. Lewis immediately differentiates friendship love from other loves. He describes friendship as "the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary...the least natural of loves"

Eros, Lewis tells us, is love in the sense of "being in love" or "loving" someone, as opposed to the raw sexuality of what he called Venus: the illustration Lewis used was the distinction between "wanting a woman" (any would do) and wanting one particular woman – something that matched his view of man as a rational animal that is a composite 'both of reasoning angel and instinctual alley-cat.'

Finally and seen as the greatest of loves is Agape or unconditional "God" love which is the love that exists regardless of changing circumstances. Lewis recognizes this as selfless love. (Source, Wikipedia.)

Whilst I am citing this as the fourth and grandest love I want to be clear that in my own opinion, Agape or its synonym of your choice is 'the love' (capital T capital L) that allows any and all other forms of love, compassion, empathy etc (please use your thesaurus of choice to find additional descriptors.)

Why I hear you ask, are you speaking to us of Love in a book about conquering Fears?

Because if we stand in a place of selfless Love in which we can consider any other energy of emotion there is nothing, nothing at all, that can withstand the power of Love.

For many years, towards the end of my career in the emergency services, I was crippled by complex trauma reactions. I had been through every aspect of the Western medical model in terms of treatment and I was heavily medicated. Every type of therapy had been used, measured, weighed and found wanting. I was eventually retired due to ill-health grounds and told that I would spend the rest of my life managing my symptoms day-to-day.

I can testify that an absence of hope is a surefire way to find your own super-max place of personal suffering.

Then I discovered a few things about myself.

I am an empath (no, I didn't know what that was outside of a really naff character in Star Trek, named Counsellor Troi)

I am sensitive to energy (I discovered Reiki while I was desperately trying to find something to do with mindfulness or meditation) and I am told by people whom I have shared reiki with that it is palpable for them, too.

I am a death-doula (I am engaged in a Shamanic apprenticeship where I have been working with the conducting of soul energy, soul part retrievals and reintegration, as well as transmutation of energy from toxic relationships and for our planet amongst other Core Shamanic traditions.)

I also discovered Soul Contracts, and it was this more than anything that changed my life.

When I was introduced to the theory that I had volunteered to incarnate on Earth and to live the events of my professional life out of service to other souls, everything changed.

Take a moment and consider this, bring to mind something that in the past has or still causes a strong emotion within you and from a place of safety and grounding envision yourself as an eternal part of ALL THAT IS and see yourself agreeing to come here now and live this experience out of a pure and selfless act of service to yourself or another.

Agreeing with the same Love that has guided all the ascended masters throughout history, the saints and prophets and deities major and minor.

Now, how does that fear, anger, sadness, disgust or shock seem? Look at it with the Loving eyes of a spark of the divine.

A good friend of mine said recently that they sometimes think of our Souls moving through an ethereal hall akin to a college course selection process. Signing up to experience loss, rejection, humiliation and yes good old fear. Maybe we decide to fit in as many experiences as possible so that we have nice full schedules and make the most of our oh-so-short-time here. We had better make the most of it, hadn't we?

Can you see yourself now laughing with your soul tribe? your soul family?

'Wow, I am going to marry young and experience infidelity, loss of trust, narcissistic tendencies and spousal abuse! Isn't that great?' because let's face it there's a huge amount of learning experience of the human condition in that!

Could you picture me there 'Oh, I am going to be sensitive to energy and emotions and I am going to offer to put myself in the path of all these Souls that want to experience sudden traumatic loss, disfigurement or defilement. Ah, a birth family that will pre-dispose me to hyper-vigilance, threat arousal, scarcity, violence and abandonment? Sure. I think I can get a lot out of that.'

I have. I really have learned a lot of lessons from my 'course choices.'

Now lean in close readers, I don't want you to miss this bit.

With my eyes of Love and Service would I change anything?

No, No I would not. Love allows me to look at every experience I have shared in this crazy-helter-skelter-life and the only question I ask myself is 'Did I do my part to the best of my ability?'

For years I would read the words of 'Invictus' and see myself engaged in this hero's journey through adversity now I read it through the eyes of Love and with a heart in Service and I see how very different the picture that it paints is.

Invictus - W. E. Henley

'Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.'

I do not believe that there is horror in the shade, I believe that there is beauty and understanding in these shared experiences. I believe that everything will make absolute sense in divine order and timing. I am unafraid because the scroll and the contract were written by my own hand with the Loving guidance of my Mentor.

When I look at the title that we chose for this first book I find that the limiting belief that held me in fear was in fact a spiritual one. Life does not happen to us, it provides opportunities for us all to fulfil our sacred contracts to, with, and for others. The decisions we make with our free will lend and lead us to certain junctures. It is then up to us how we face the situation. We can do that from a place of fear and separation or with love and connection.

I choose Love, how about you?'