This blog is more than an account of Near Death Experiences. It ponders in detail the tough questions of life. Who are you, and why are you here in this physical world? What happens when you die, and is there a judgment? However, most anything could appear here. This is not a news blog, archived posts are just as relevant as new posts. Check the boxes at the top of the page for the Contents, Contact, Forum and other links.
My early thoughts on writing were paralyzing. English classes on grammar, parts of speech, sentence construction, dangling participles, etc., had left me thoroughly confused and afraid to write anything. I managed term papers by extensively quoting other authors. Surprisingly, I got some good grades on them. My goal was to consistently dodge putting words to paper. Then I decided to go to college. No escape from writing in college.
I enrolled in a class called “Communications” and that’s where I met Lloyd. Lloyd was a student teacher. He was completing his master’s degree in teaching. I will paraphrase from memory the speech he gave to the class on the first day of school. It changed my thoughts, inspiring me to write.
Lloyd paraphrased:
Welcome to communications. In this class we will write something every day. It can be a sentence, a paragraph, or a full page, but nothing more than one page. I will take up the writings and randomly choose a few to read to the class. We will then discuss how well the author communicated. You will not be graded on grammar, sentence structure, language rules or even a misspelt word. You will be graded on how well you have communicated your thoughts.
Writing is easy, if you can talk, you can write. Writing is putting talk to paper. When you pause put a comma, when you stop put a period. Colons say “look ahead for something important.” Semi-colons allow you to group items larger than a word, but smaller than a sentence. When asking a question use a question mark. When you get excited about something use an exclamation point. Writing is as natural as talking.
When you come to class there will be a topic on the blackboard. If you want, it is OK to write on a topic of your choosing. Finally, if you don’t want to participate in this class you can earn a “D” by having perfect attendance. Good writing.
I was stunned and heartened by Lloyd’s words and began in earnest to put my talk into writing. I gained confidence as the semester continued. I even began to enjoy writing. Today I have a large web site and blog, and surprisingly I have authored three books. You meet a teacher like Lloyd rarely in life and they are so welcome. Thanks forever, Lloyd.
t’s hard to find someone that admits they are afraid of death. It’s even harder to find someone admitting they are afraid of life. But worry, anxiety, depression, and suicides are becoming all to common events in our society.
George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, is a spiritual person, he used his spiritual knowledge to create the “Force.” The Jedi knight could not possess any trace of fear. Fear would lead to the dark side. Lucas has Yoda saying: “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.” This saying is spiritually correct.
Only a new-born child is free of fear. As we grow up we learn to fear. We learn to fear by “catching” the emotion from our parents and peers, as well as being taught to fear directly in the acculturation process as we reach adulthood.
Fear is the source of all negative emotions. It is not essential for us to fear anything in our universe, fear is a learned behavior. As a learned behavior it can be managed, coped with, and/or discarded.
Great fear can cause one to “freeze” both physically and/or mentally in any emergency situation, and great fear can also lead to mental disturbances.
When I was nine, the soldiers began returning from WWII. Many of them were adversely affected by the war. They couldn’t handle loud noises, and some came back “shell shocked,” a term used, at that time, for a mental disorder caused by the extreme stress and fear of war.
Other returning veterans less affected by the fighting still needed time to merge back into civilian habits. I was walking downtown on my way to a movie, when an car backfired on the street beside me. An ex-serviceman walking in front of me threw himself face down on the concrete sidewalk. I know that had to hurt. He then looked around sheepishly, and got up muttering, “Damn, I did it again.”
Still other vets seemed untouched by the action of war. Down the street from me lived a former Ranger that us kids loved to play ball with. He was a veteran of Guadalcanal and other fierce battles of the war. My mother didn’t want us kids to play with him for fear he might hurt us. However, he never was anything but fun for us kids. He played ball, and hide and seek with us. He was so strong, Once I saw him grab a rain spout and swing himself upon the roof of his house, run across it and jump to the ground on the other side. He was not reluctant to talk about the war either. Among other wounds, He had been shot through the mouth, in one cheek and out the other. He laughed saying, “If I had kept my mouth open I wouldn’t have lost my teeth.” He seemed totally unaffected by the war, remaining warm and loving, I hated it when he moved to a better neighborhood. As I got older I learned he was a deeply spiritual person.
Fear does not keep you safe. Knowledge of the world keeps your safe. You don’t stick your hand into a fire because you know you will get burned. Spiders, snakes, demons, and other “scary” things lose their frightfulness when understood. You can lessen and alleviate many fears by simply reading, learning, and understanding them.
Now, there are times when one feels jittery, anxious, and fearful, where there appears to be no recognizable cause for the emotion. For lack of a better name, I call this “free-floating fear.” I know there is a reason for everything, but the “reason” for these f-f fears may be buried in the past, come from multiple sources, or just impossible to determine. It is these f-f fears and their concomitant affect upon us that cause most of the trouble in the world.
These fears cause us to be afraid of strangers, authority, the future, our own ability, and a host of other things that keep us from enjoying life as well as we could. We are held back by these free-floating fears not knowing we are capable of defeating them, and worthy of having the desirable things in life others are enjoying everyday.
If you are one that sometimes feel anxious, jittery, inadequate, unworthy, unsuccessful, unintelligent, with no self-confidence, and/or don’t like yourself very much, then you may be troubled with free-floating fear.
Since the cause of this fear can’t be precisely determined, the remedy has to be broad to cover many possibilities. A shotgun approach. That means something that will address all kinds of fear, and that something is affirmations. With affirmations you will be replacing negative thoughts with positive ones through daily practice.
I have seen many people helped by doing affirmations on a regular basis. If you decide to try affirmations you can find them here.
I hope you do try them. They have been helping people overcome fear ever since they were invented.
Dr Emile Coue (1857 – 1926), was a French pharmacist who at the beginning of the last century opened a free clinic. He offered his clients an affirmation (or as he called it back then a “conscious autosuggestion”) in conjunction with their medical treatment.
Coue believed that dysfunctional thinking patterns could worsen an illness. The Coue method offered a very specific ritual as part of his mind/body belief. His clients were to repeat 20 times in the morning and 20 times in the evening the following affirmation:
“Every day in every way, I am getting better and better”
You could use this affirmation also, or in conjunction with the ones provided on this site. I wish you the best of everything.
