It seems that as much as love is a blissful state, fear is a state of despair and terror.  Fear usually stems from both attachment to outcomes (i.e. the need to control the outcome of earthly situations), and ego-based thinking.  Bruce has commented on this board that it is difficult to hold the emotion of fear while love is flowing, and others here have recognized that if you focus on love, in an image in your mind, that you will banish fear, at least for a time. 

Recently, I have found that fear is a mental state, a state of our choosing, even if we believe that it is imposed on us by an outside force or my the whims of fate.  If we carefully contemplate what it is that we are afraid of, we can trace the connections to an active belief system, usually ego-driven and ego-based deep within ourselves.   

As much as we are meant to understand what real love is, we are meant, I believe while here in the physical world to release our fears.  I believe it is more important than retrieving aspects of ourselves, and such.  Because fear based thinking is usually based on an ego-based belief system which needs to be dismantled.  Love is within us, and can be channeled out, in any situation, even if the situation appears desperate.   We simply choose to allow the fear to be part of us, as if we can make use of it for our protection.  Yet it eats away at us, and is really the result of an ego which kicks and screams like a little child that it wants its own fulfillment. 

I believe that we are meant to detach ourselves from ego-based thinking which is where fear takes hold.  I do not believe that this implies dissolving into a big void of nothingness; quite the opposite, to me it appears as if our unique personalities remain intact.  But we are not bound by the ego anymore, but free to express love without the need to control love.  To allow for life's tragedies, with acceptance and forgiveness, without worrying if our ego-masks become battered or bruised in the process.  This is a very difficult level of spiritual awareness for most of us to achieve.  Yet I am mindful of it now.  Thanks to several friends on the board and another (you know who you are), I feel that it is one of the greatest personal improvement/realization projects we could undertake. 

Some on this board have called fear "false evidence appearing real."  I agree in part.  Because we hold onto this destructive emotion to serve an ego that we cling to, when it is an illusion/obstacle to the love we have withi ourselves.


Matthew

Perhaps some aspects of self are fears which need to be absorbed and worked through?

Fear seems to be a holding onto...an inability to let go...a way to control the present...a lack of trust in the future...an inability to believe that the grace of goodness will be forthcoming...a temporary tension...sometimes wise, if not pleasant...can be unnecessary, often is unnecessary.

What we fear most often does not ever happen. If we trust that we are enough to meet every occasion, even if we are not what some might consider strong or brave, we have less fear. Thus, we do not have to fear our own weakness, which can even be a strength, to bend with the forces which seem to try to shape us into someone different, and must do so.

Fear is a lack of trust in the process of life's changes. We can be changed, and we can change. Nothing truly to fear.

If I am changed so that I am nothing, there will be no one from my point of view to suffer. If I am changed so that I am all greatness, there is no fear. So, nothing truly to fear, except process, or pain. Even pain is limited. Therefore, nothing truly to fear.