IS FEAR JUST DOUBT OF SELF?

Want to scare yourself silly? Just say to yourself, "Fear is a lack of faith," or "You can't have fear if you have faith,” or any variation on that theme really. Which, to me, immediately translates into, "There is no God in your life because you fear, and it's all your fault and shame on you into the bargain."

Personally, I have learned to substitute the word "doubt" for "fear" which is closer to my reality. I think of doubt as seeping into my consciousness, settling in, then directing my feelings...not coming in a flash and leaving devastation behind. Fear does...that's exactly how my fear operates. The devastation left behind is anxiety.

I wonder if doubt isn't born in the ego and is actually doubt of self. Doubt is probably the mother of most fear, beginning as the smallest of niggles in our mind, ignored (or stuffed) until it grows legs, feet and a mind of its own...steps right on out and tramples rational thought.

Those little niggles are the ones we learn to pull up, look right in the eyeball and mentally allow them to be as bad as we don't want them to be. For we also learn that the more we try to mentally make them go away or change them to pretty, the uglier they become, the tighter they cling. 

This is when our "Thank you" grows its legs and feet...for, of sheer necessity, we turn our own idea of our needs over to God. We allow ourselves to believe that this...this fearsome ugly that is living in our mind...this, too, is of God, is God's personal gift to us, and we don't need to know how. 

From my own experience with an incurable, progressive disease, I have learned there is nothing so ugly to my reasoning mind that cannot be God's gold to me, his beloved. And I am grateful.

Thank you.