Spiritual work is pictured as 
studying a textbook, looking at a picture of a guru, and 
singing songs. Then an acute catastrophe occurs, and 
the spiritual work is bypassed. It then resumes after all 
the various emergencies and tasks in one's life have 
been handled. It is as though we do not really see the essence of 
spiritual work. We do not see that the spiritual work 
brings up these acute crises, brings us into them, and 
that they are an opportimity. This is where the spiritual 
work is happening. The other was preparation, gathering 
of information and experience, deciding on direction, 
and accumulating spiritual knowledge. Then suddenly 250 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
comes the moment of truth, the time to do it. There are people who have been in spiritual work 
and around metaphysical circles for many years, and 
nothing changes in their lives. They have the same ill­
nesses and problems; their personal life is the same. They have not had any of the experiences of inner 
truth that they hear about, and why is that? When life 
brings the golden opportunity to them, that is the time 
to make the spiritual knowledge real. It is the time for 
transformation, the time to take that leap in conscious­
ness.These are golden moments. Acute catastrophes are the times when we make 
great leaps,when we face them directly and ftxedly say, 
"I will not veer from this spiritual work." Now we are 
really confronted with truly spiritual work. It is not 
reading some pleasant-sounding phrases in a book or 
looking at some happy picture. Instead, we are right in 
the thick of it, in the teeth of it. The teeth of spiritual 
work occur when we are confronted with that which 
we cannot avoid. It is the direct confrontation that 
requires a leap in consciousness. These are the golden opportunities that are price­
less ifwe see themthatway,ifwe arewilling to bewith 
them and say,"Okay. "The willingness to go with them, 
no matter how painful it may be, enables a giant leap in 
consciousness, a real advance in wisdom, knowledge, 
and awareness.That which we read about in the books 
then becomes our own inner experience. There is something below the emotionality that is 
experiencing this energy out for a person. It is literally 
being handled by something far greater than one's 
personal self. If only the small personal self were HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 251 
present, one would be totally swamped and obliterated 
by the energy released during these experiences. One survives the experiences because there is some­
thing greater than the personal self that is more than 
capable of handling them. The trick of the mind is to not see that. It tries to 
change what goes on 'out there', tries to figure it out, 
and then falls back on the intellect and fmds that the 
intellect is not going to resolve this kind of problem. When we have dropped a big oak log on our foot and 
broken all the bones across the front of the foot, what 
is needed at that moment is our readiness and willing­
ness to handle what life presents. Having the tools and 
the willingness brings about very rapid healing. There is the awareness in acute overwhelm that we 
really can handle the experiences. Part of the panic 
comes from the realization that what we think we 
are-our powerless, limited self-is no match for the 
power of this experience. That is precisely what is 
going on-the limited, individual, personal self cannot 
handle the overwhelm. This is the precise spiritual 
value of it.What do we really want to change about the 
experience? We will see that what we want to do is 
change how we feel about it.What we can know is that 
the feeling will come and go.The event is not going to 
bother us after the feeling state. All that we have to 
experience through is the acute upsurge and energy of 
the emotion. The events will take care of themselves. The desire to change what occurred and how we 
feel about it have to be surrendered. The confrontation 
is there, and all we can do is say yes to experiencing it 
through, no matter what the nature is, such as the 252 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
death of a loved one, divorce, separation, an acute 
emergency, or a catastrophic injury. All bring about a 
state of shock that is the same, no matter what is the 
precipitating event.The shock is the sudden realization 
of our powerlessness, the fact that the will has met a 
brick wall, that we are stoppable and have been 
stopped, and that the personal will cannot have its way. Therefore, the shock and realization of all this is the 
same in all the experiences, along with the fact that it 
is unchangeable and permanent. That is the shock. It is 
as though we come up full speed against a brick wall, 
and every time in life when we do this, it releases the 
same energy field. If you have been through more than one of these 
experiences in your life, you can look back and realize 
that this is so, and that each time the state ofshock was 
the same. The experience and sequence were the 
same.There was the experience with the feeling of sud­
den numbness, the state of disbelief, and then the 
unleashing of all the negative feelings. When we look at the negative feelings precisely 
and at some of the experiences we have had, we real­
ize thatwe experienced all ofthis.We experienced the 
totality of that negative energy field. In the morning it 
would be present, and in the afternoon it would still be 
present. In fact, within a minute's time, we fluctuated 
back and forth. It is like a scintillating energy field in 
which the form of the emotionality is flickering from 
anger to resentment, to self-pity, to jealousy, to getting 
even, to revenge, to hate, to hating God, to hating one­
self, to blaming the family and society, to blaming the 
government and laws.The mind wildly races around in HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 253 
this negative energy field. We can see the diffuseness 
and formlessness of it. It is like a basketful of negative 
energy, and we only have to handle the basket, not all 
the little things that are flickering around in it.We only 
have to handle the 'all' of it. When we see that it is 
decompressing the 'all' of it, it moves us rapidly 
through it and out the other side. We see that it is an 
inescapable experience,·and we must have the willing­
ness to surrender to the work that has to be done now. How can we tell when that work is finished? When we 
suddenly come out into that inner state of peace. We know that years later people continue to have 
resentment and anger and are still caught in some 
aspect ofthat negative energy field because the events 
were not handled in the first place. The person was 
unwilling to sit down and handle them until completed. People are unwilling to do this because of the pain 
involved and because they do not know the techniques 
to use. Every time they go at it, they again start trying 
to change the events in the world and handle the 
thoughts. The intellect and the mind try to figure it out, 
and the person runs into the same impasse. By not hav­
ing an effective tool with which to handle the events, 
the work remains incomplete. What happens with the incomplete work and the 
emotions that were not released? That which is left 
undone begins to express itself in emotional attitudes 
and in the body inthe form ofillness.The unconscious 
guilt that was not let go of over the catastrophe that 
happened many' years ago comes forth through the 
autonomic nervous system and the acupuncture energy 
system and connects with something from the mind. 254 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
The energy field of the intellect of thinkingness is in 
the 400s. The energy field of guilt, fear, or anger then 
couples with some belief system in the mind about a 
particular illness that results in a physical illness. In psy­
choanalysis, it would be called psychosomatic, and in 
this case, the contribution of the psychological ele­
ment is on the surface and quite visible.The end result 
of the unresolved emotional handling of a catastrophic 
experience is often an illness that may occur many 
years later.The grief that was left undone at the time of 
the death of some family member twenty years earlier, 
for example, may now express itself as a heart attack. A thing has been handled when we feel at peace 
and complete with it. It no longer recurs or brings up 
pain when we think about it; we feel satisfied. There 
may be regret about having to live through it, but some­
how we come out on the other side of it as a different 
kind of person, and with that knowledge, there is a 
certain sense of peace that lets us know it has been 
handled now. Catastrophic experiences are the seeds, the very 
essence, of the ultimate spiritual experience. Within 
it and following it to its very center core, totally walk­
ing off the cliff in complete abandonment, the full 
surrender to the experience is the very seed and 
core of that which the spiritual seeker has been 
searching for all along. With many catastrophic situations in ordinary life, 
there is an incomplete resolution of the experiences, 
along with a lack of awareness of the jewel-like qualities 
and opportunities within the events. We are over­
whelmed by the 'whatness' of them and look in the HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 255 
wrong direction. The mind also gets a secret payoff 
from negative emotions (e.g., attention, self-pity, drama) 
plus indulgence in martyrdom, etc. Many times when drugs are introduced, altered 
states of consciousness occur, and the person is taken 
to the emergency room. What could be a crucial 
spiritual discovery is covered over with a band-aid, 
and the family tries to distract the person from the 
spiritual work. The essential aspect of the spiritual benefit comes 
from running directly into the experience. There is a 
saying in Zen to "Walk straight ahead, no matter 
what," so when this catastrophic experience comes, it 
is beneficial to center oneself right into'the core of it, 
say "yes" to it and experience it through. There have been catastrophic experiences in my 
life when band-aids were available, and I refused to 
accept them because by then I had learned the value 
of experiencing them through. The band-aids really 
prevent the experiencing through of what might be 
called 'hitting bottom'. The concept of hitting bottom, 
which is well known in handling many serious prob­
lems, such as alcoholism, means to let go completely. In an acute catastrophic situation, the mind tries to 
cling to that which is familiar. It tries escapism, distrac­
tions, tranquilizers, drugs and alcohol, and various 
other ways of trying to ameliorate the situation rather 
than face it directly and work through it. The essence of a catastrophic situation is total 
surrender to the discovery of that which is greater than 
the personal self.The experiencing through completely 
of a catastrophe brings us into a connection and a real­HEALING AND RECOVERY 256 
ization that there is something within ourself that has 
the power to sustain, no matter how catastrophic the 
experience appears to be.As a result, we come out on 
the other side of it as a greater person with the aware­
ness that there is something within, that there is a 
Presence, a quality, or an aspect of life within that has 
the power to sustain us through the most seemingly 
impossible situations. If the catastrophic experience is not worked 
through completely; there are certain residuals. It is like 
we have only halfway fallen off the cliff. Some people 
think they have walked off the cliff,but actually we 
find that they were secretly crossing their fingers and 
hanging onto some little outcropping or lifeline. The 
abandonment to God was not really total, so a doubt 
remains, and out of that doubt is the residual of, for 
example, grief or fear of the experience. Ifwe do not 
experience something greater than the personal self 
when going through the experience, we may end up 
with a limitation, a certain crippling, the inability to go 
beyond a certain point, and the willingness to partici­
pate becomes limited.The person says, "I would rather 
live a limited life than face that kind of experience 
again. I would rather never love again than to love and 
10se. "The saying is, "'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
.than never to have loved at all:' The experiencing of 
lOVingness puts us in touch with our Self, that which is 
greater than our own limited, small self. The complete resolution brings us into conscious 
contact with something that is greater than the personal 
self. Many people who have tried this attest to the fact 
that when they surrendered the small self to some­HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 257 
thing greater than themselves, they came into contact 
with that which they considered to be 'real'.That per­
sonal inner experience of spiritual reality takes one 
from book learning to a profound inner conviction. Out of this inner conviction comes the willingness to 
re-enter life again, to participate in it, and to take the 
risks and chances. What is the inner experience of hitting bottom? It 
comes out of the feelings of hopelessness and despair; 
the person's small self is saying,"I, of my own self, can­
not handle this." The person surrenders out of the 
hopelessness, and from that comes the willingness to 
let go, to surrender to something greater than oneself. At the very bottom, in the pits, one realizes and accepts 
the truth that "I, of myself, my own individual personal 
self, my own ego-self, am unable to handle this. I am 
unable to resolve it." It is out of this defeat that victory 
and success arise.The phoenix rises out ofthe ashes of 
despair and hopelessness. It is not the despair and 
hopelessness that are of value but the letting go and 
the realization of the limitation of the small self. In the 
middle of the catastrophe, the person says,"I give up. I 
cannot handle this," and then may consciously or 
unconsciously ask God for help. Due to the law of free will and the nature of con­
sciousness being what it is, it is said that the great 
beings that are willing to help all of us are waiting for 
us to say"yes:' It is the sudden turning from the bottom 
of the barrel to the willingness to accept that there is 
something greater than ourselves that we can turn to. When the person says, "If there is a God, I ask him to 
help me," then the great transformative experiences 258 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
happen that have been recorded throughout history 
from the very beginning. The beginning of the great worldwide organization 
of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) came out of such an 
experience. Bill W, the famous founder of AA, had hit 
bottom. He was in a state of total despair and hope­
lessness and gave up the personal self.At the time, he 
was a nonbeliever, but he said,"If there is a God, I ask 
him to help me." At that moment came a great trans­
formative experience, the spiritual power ofwhich is 
evidenced by the millions oflives that have been affected 
by the energy that flowed out into the world as the 
result of this man's sharing his spiritual experience. Obviously, letting go and hitting bottom are crucial. It is out of the awareness that we cannot change things 
and are limited and powerless that we discover what 
does have the power in the universe. That power 
comes in and handles the experience, and we know 
when that happens because of the profound state of 
peace. Where there was agony, there is now a state of 
infInite peace and an ineffable awareness of an InfInite 
Presence. Historically, it has been a speCial occasion when a 
realization of the truth has arisen, but that is not at all 
necessary; it is only one type of experience. Actually, 
this is the nature of spiritual work all the time.The per­
son who is involved in spiritual work is always looking 
at what is occurring in life, seeing it as the teacher, as 
the grist for the mill.What is happening represents that 
which is being worked on, so an acute catastrophe 
would just be a continuation of the process that is 
going on anyway.As a result, the person who is intensely HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 259 
involved in spiritual work would then see it as a golden 
opportunity, painful and regretful perhaps, but one of 
great benefit.The essential nature ofspiritual work is to 
remain focused on what arises from instant to instant 
and become aware of'what'is experiencing andwhere 
it is being experienced. There is a meditative and contemplative technique 
that can be use to bring about the same result. It is the 
process of constantly letting go of wanting to control 
the experiencing as well as experiencing itself. There 
then occurs the sudden realization that awareness is 
being handled by some infinite aspect of conscious­
ness (the Self); this may have been suspected previously 
but not actually realized. After this realization, the 
.awareness of the Presence occurs more frequently. Out of this experience comes an ever greater will­
ingness to rely on that inner Presence, with less and 
less reliance on the small self. Less frequently, then, 
does the person look to the small self to handle life's 
problems, as there is a progressive willingness to 
surrender to one's higher Self.The progressive loss of 
identification with the small self and the increasing 
identification with the Presence, along with the will­
ingness to surrender life and all ofits aspects to the will 
of God, become the very core of the person's spiritual 
exercise and experience. The acute catastrophic experience is a key learn­
ing opportunity that teaches us to go to the very core, 
to the very essence of the experience, to see what it 
is and handle it at the level ofexperiencing within the 
energy field of consciousness itself. There is the will­
ingness to surrender and to let go of wanting to 260 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
change what happened 'out there'.There is the letting 
go of wanting to control by thinking about it and try­
ing to handle it with the intellect and the emotions. There is the willingness to surrender to the essence 
of the experience without calling it anything, or label­
ing it, or putting names on it.There is the willingness 
to handle the energy field of it and go directly to the 
inner experience. The surrender to the inner experi­
ence is the open doorway to the experience of some­
thing greater than the small personal self. Each catastrophe, therefore, is a repeat a!ld repre­
sentation of another opportunity for this great spiritual 
learning experience; therefore, people who have been 
through great catastrophic experiences express their 
gratitude. Often people say, "Although I wouldn't 
want to live though it again, I am very grateful for 
that experience." How could a person be grateful for what the world 
considers a terrible catastrophe or a dreadful, progres­
sive illness? What they learned out of the catastrophe 
was of such a great dimension that the price was worth 
it because, through the realization of truth, they discov­
ered the reconnection with the essential core of their 
beingness. As we grow spiritually and become spiritually edu­
cated, it takes less and less to bring about the willing­
ness to face this inner experience. It could be said that 
a person's 'bottom of the barrel' gets progressively 
raised.The person does not have to go through agoniz­
ing pain before they are willing to let go and surrender. More and more there arises a willingness to do it on a 
daily basis so that it becomes part and parcel of one's HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 261 
life, with the constant looking at how one is trying to 
control things, or trying to change God's will, or how 
one is going to try to change and control God. More 
often there is the willingness to totally surrender at 
great depth, and then one sees that surrender occurs at 
different depths. In ordinary life, we surrender a little bit. Under 
greater pressure, we are willing to surrender more 
and realize that we do not have to put ourselves 
under catastrophic pressure in order to be willing to 
surrender at great depth. The transformation of per­
sonality, the whole shift in one's spiritual position, tra­
ditionally comes from surrendering at great depth. What does it mean to surrender at great depth? How 
can we surrender at great depth without having to 
put ourselves through a terrible emotional catastro­
phe in order to accomplish the same spiritual work? By seeing the essential nature of the process, we 
become educated. Our positions shift and we are dif­
ferent in the way we are.We are willing to be with life 
in all its expressions. The willingness is then experi­
enced as an inner state of aliveness. Arising from that 
is the willingness to take the chance because we now 
know that we are accompanied by something greater 
than the personal self. It is not the personal self that 
has to handle what comes up in life. The Infinite 
Presence that is always with us is more powerful than 
the human will and ego. The self brings pain and 
suffering; the Self radiates healing and peace. CHAPTER 9 
Worry, Fear, and Anxiety 
As discussed previously, holistic health uses the phrase 
"body, mind, and spirit" frequently, so it will be helpful 
to understand more about it.What does it really mean? Is it just a catch phrase or a slogan? Is 'spirit' a meta­
physical abstraction or a religious dictum? Is it a fantasy 
of people who are not very well connected with the 
real world? Defining this relationship again will help us 
to speed up our work through greater understanding. Again, we want to review how human experience 
comes about and also look within ourselves to see 
where this phenomenon actually occurs. In looking at 
the relationship of body, mind, and spirit from the 
viewpoint of experience, some things may sound 
somewhat startling, such as the fact that the body can­
not experience itself.That may be a surprising thought 
because all ofus tend to think ofourselves as being the 
body and to think, "I am the body." However, this is not 
true because the body is unable to experience itself. For example, my left arm cannot experience its own 
left armness. There are sensations coming from the 
body, but I am not experiencing the body. Instead, I am 
experiencing the sensations of the body, but curiously 
enough, they cannot experience themselves either.The 
sensations coming from the arm have to be experi­
enced somewhere, however, which is in the mind. Ifwe have an incision in the brain that deletes part 
ofthe operating mind, or at least the way it operates on 
the physical plane, we fail to experience the opposite 
side of the body. This is very common after a stroke 
where the patient is unable to experience in mind 
263 264 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
even the existence of a portion of their body.Thus, the 
body cannot be experienced without the sensation, 
and the sensation can only be experienced in mind. Interestingly, the mind cannot experience itself. A 
thought cannot experience its ow~ thoughtness, a 
memory cannot experience its own memoryness, and 
a fantasy cannot experience its own fantasyness. That 
which goes on in mind actually has to be experienced 
in an energy field that is greater than mind itself, which 
is called 'consciousness'. Consciousness enables one to be aware of what 
goes on within mind and is the basic reason for anes­
thesia.With anesthesia, consciousness is deleted, which 
results in there being no awareness ofwhat is going on 
in mind.With no consciousness, there is no awareness 
of mind or body; with no mind, there is no awareness 
of sensations or the body. Consequently, we will notice 
by watching ourself throughout the day that all of our 
experiences are being experienced in a more general 
way than realized and in a more general field of expe­
rience that is almost diffuse. It is almost as though it is 
everywhere in space, and this is within consciousness 
itself. It is an interesting experiment to find out where we 
think we really experience a thought. Most people 
think it is in their heads, but that is the thought about 
a thought. If we ask them to now let go of any belief 
about where they think they are 'experiencing a 
thought and instead point to exactly where a thought 
is being experienced-the radical truth of where the 
phenomenon is occurring-they learn that there is no 
particular place that thoughtness occurs. All they can WO RRY, FEAR, AN D ANXIE TY 265 
say is that thoughtness is occurring, and they have an 
awareness of the thoughtness, but they cannot put 
their finger on where it could possibly be-no partic­
ular place where it is being eXPfrienced in a general, 
overall way. It is very necessary for us to know this because 
some of the techniques we will use cancel a lot of the 
belief systems that are at the basis of human suffering. Consciousness itself is like a movie screen upon 
which what is chariging is experienced. Ifwe look at 
it, we will see that all experience is experience of 
change.The movement we experience is the coming 
and going, the ebbing and waning, and the flux. The 
reason we can experience that which changes is 
because it is being experienced from a background 
that is unchanging. It is because the movie screen is 
standing still that we can see the movement of the 
movie. Therefore, what changes is what is experi­
enced, and it is experienced in consciousness itself, 
which has no exact location. The Functional Hypoglycemic 
Before explaining fear and anxiety as an emotional 
level of consciousness (the major source), it is impor­
tant to identify a frequent source of those emotions, 
which has a physical basis.A frequent source of anger 
and other negative emotions is the physiological 
problem of 'functional hypoglycemia' Oow blood 
sugar), which is associated with an overreaction to 
dietary sugar input.This is also termed 'hyperinsulin­
ism,' which is an overreaction to glucose and sucrose. The sudden drop in blood sugar can precipitate emo­266 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
tional reactions of anger, rage, fear, shakiness, panic, or 
even·violence. The diagnosis can be made clinically by simply 
stopping all sugar intake and noticing the disappear­
ance of the negative symptoms. It can be verified by a 
five-hour glucose tolerance test. In a normal person, 
glucose levels first rise rapidly and then slowly subside. The hypoglycemic pattern, however, shows a rapid 
drop in blood glucose level, and the sudden drop may 
then precipitate mild to quite severe negative emo­
tions or physical shaking, weakness, or even fainting. It 
may also result in a craving for alcohol or sedative 
drugs. The disorder is well known in recovery pro­
grams, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. A famous book 
about the disorder is Sugar Blues by William Duffy 
(1986). When prospective patients called my office, I told 
them to stop ingesting all sugar (and alcohol) until I 
saw them for their appointment. Over the years, twenty­
five percent of the patients were 'cured' (asympto­
matic) by the time I saw them. Because of the high 
prevalence of this clinical disorder and its various 
forms of expression, it is worth investigating as a con­
tributory element in all emotional disorders. It can 
even be the trigger for psychotic episodes as well as 
physical violence. Some undiagnosed persons even 
end up in jail or prison for assault and other crimes of 
violence. It is a frequent cause of marital or other social 
disputes, family friction, and behavioral disorders. In the clinic, we had a diagnostic laboratory and 
often did the five-hour glucose tolerance tests. By the 
third or fourth hour, many patients developed negative WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 267 
emotional reactions. One woman suddenly disrobed 
and ran down the sidewalk stark naked with the labo­
ratory director in his long white coat running after her, 
yelling "Stop!" She kept on running wildly for several 
blocks. (Traffic came to a halt at the wild, frantic 
scene.) Fear is a level of consciousness to be addressed 
where it is, not in its expression and extension into 
the world-fear of this, fear ofthat-and not trying to 
handle it on the level of the particular but handling it 
instead as a level of consciousness. This is done by 
becoming aware of that which we are, which is 
greater than the fear, and learning to disidentify with 
the emotion so we are not that.We are an overall field 
in which fear is being experienced. It becomes a small 
thing occurring within the greater context in which 
we become aware of ourselves as that which we 
really are. One of the biggest obstacles to handling and letting 
go of fear is the fear of fear itself. We will describe a 
technique that disappears the fear of fear. Once we 
are no longer afraid of fear, it becomes a very simple 
matter. Is it not the fear of fear that is the problem? A 
person is afraid of the fear, just as the person going to 
the dentist is afraid of the pain; it is that initial fear. When we begin to look at the nature of fear, we can 
see that the number offears is endless; therefore, peo­
ple become victims and convinced that the source of 
fear is outside themselves. If people think the origination or source of fear is 
outside themselves, then there would be very little 
they could do about it. In fact, there really is nothing 268 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
they could do about it. So long as the belief continues 
that the source is outside themselves, they will always 
be the victims of fear until they begin to realize that it 
is a present condition within themselves, and that they 
are the source of the fear they project onto the world. Of course, they are sure to see it 'out there' because 
they have just projected it out there. When we look at fear, we see how all pervasive it 
can be. Ifwe realize that fear is a level of conscious­
ness, then we realize that from that level ofconscious­
ness, fear can be attached to everything. Trying to 
overcome particular fears may have a certain limited 
value, but it does not change one as a fearful person, 
personality, or human being.The fear of a specific fear 
may be clinically valuable, and it may be of practical 
use in one's life, but it does not alter who one is.The 
conditions of fear can be changed so that one no 
longer feels like a small self that is powerless and at 
the effect of being the victim of fear itself. Fear can be like a preftx that gets attached to any­
thing.We can see from the Map of Consciousness that 
Fear is at consciousness level 100, indicating that it is 
a negative emotion, as shown by the direction of the 
arrow. We see its relative power in this mathematical 
model that shows the calibrated energies ofthe differ­
ent ftelds.As we go up from the negative emotions of 
30,50, and 75 into the positive emotions beginning at 
200, we see that their power, from the viewpoint of 
physics, actually increases. As we address the energy fteld of Fear, we begin to 
realize that being fearful can attach to anything and 
everything in our lives. There is nothing in our total 269 WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 
experience as a human being to which fear cannot be 
attached. We love our mother, and up comes the fear 
of "What if we lose her?" We love our body and up 
comes the fear of death or sickness. We love money 
and up comes the fear of loss or of being accused of 
being greedy. No matter what we think of, fear can be 
attached to it. We love our automobile and up comes 
the fear of an accident. A fearful person attaches fear 
to everything; therefore, everything that comes into 
the mind is coming into an energy field of fear and 
thus gets colored with fear. There is even a fear of life 
itself, as shown by the song,'''Fraid of living and 'fraid 
of dying." In other words, this energy field has now 
contaminated everything. Ifwe are the source of that energy field, then all 
our experience comes into the field of fear, and every­
thing in our lives can become fearful. The future is 
fearful: old age, getting older, what is going to happen 
to the body, what is going to happen to my finances, 
what is going to happen to my relationships, what is 
going to happen to my family, what is going to hap­
pen to my bank account, what is going to happen to 
my country, and what is going to happen to the 
world? People who develop global fear will tell you about 
their fear of nuclear annihilation, or intergalactic 
wars, or meteors, or cataclysmic 'end times'. The 
expansion of the fear does not change the fact that it 
is still just fear. Glamorizing it and making it sound 
dramatic does not change that it is just fear. The fears 
of intergalactic war, human demolition, and the expi­
ration of the human race are no different from the 270 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
child's fear of the dark or his fear that a dog might 
bite him. Experientially, fear is always just the same 
emotion. Characteristic of all of this is the energy field 
calledFear.Fear of'what'is reallyimmaterial. We have 
to learn to look away from the thoughts and look 
instead at the feeling. We actually have to look below 
the feeling to the energy field out of which the feel­
ing is originating and then learn how to handle this 
energyfield.Whenwe do this,we lose ourfear offear, 
and as that happens, we begin to learn how to handle 
fear directly. It is an extremely simple thing to handle 
once we are familiar with some rather easy tech­
niques. The world pretty much runs people with fear 
because their personal lives are also predominantly 
run by fear. But once we have learned a way to avoid 
getting cornered by fear, we begin to transcend the 
world as well as transcend being a victim because the 
world can threaten us only by fear. Ifthey cut off our 
bank account, conduct an audit, run· away from us, 
leave us, or fife us, the gun at our head is always the 
same gun-the gun of fear. There can be the fear of 
losing a part of the body-there is no end to the num­
ber of fears, but there is an end to fearfulness and of 
being a victim of fear. We will learn how to lose our fear of fear, how to 
enjoy the process, and how to really start feeling good 
about ourselves when we realize that we are no 
longer the victim, the worm that is at the effect ofthis 
all-pervasive fearfulness. The problem is not fear itself 
but the energy field of fearfulness. We can begin to WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 271 
see that we are in control of it because we are the 
source of it. We start with admitting the truth that "I 
am the source of my fearfulness." We know that in a 
different mood, a fearful thing is no longer fearful. We 
might say about the thing we fear, "I'm afraid of that," 
but when we are accompanied by someone else, or in 
a different mood, such as a humorous one, and we are 
having a good time laughing, then the thing no longer 
engenders fear, so the source of fear is not out in 
the world. There is no way of overcoming one's fear of the 
world because there is no way the world can be con­
trolled to end one's fears, nor can fears be overcome 
by changing society, by changing the law, or by 
changing the rules.The source of fearfulness is with­
in oneself. Picture a big event.There are two aspects-one is 
the event itself, and the second is how we feel about 
it. Having more police at the event might make us 
feel better, but, in fact, where are the police going to 
be while our apartment is being robbed? At the other 
end of town, naturally. Therefore, our handling of 
fear is really up to ourself. It comes out of our will­
ingness to own that we are the source of that fear, 
which is occurring within our own consciousness. Therefore, we want to address it where it is actually 
being experienced. Most people experience fear in a somewhat phys­
ical way, so the first thing to do about a fearful expe­
rience is eliminate paying any attention to thought. A 
fearful feeling will engender literally millions of 
thoughts. There is no end to fearful thoughts because 272 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
they are coming out of the energy field of fear itself, 
which generates an endless series of thoughts. Clinically speaking, handling the specific thoughts 
themselves has a limited value, and the fearfulness 
merely generates more thoughts later on, so we want 
to use a technique that will handle fear itself. A person might just picture something fearful in 
their life, or something fearful that they expect to 
happen or has happened, or they can just fantasize a 
fearful experience, such as being tied to the railroad 
track with a locomotive bearing down on them. As 
they look at what is being experienced, they will see 
when they look past the thought, it is being experi­
enced first in the body. They may notice a tenseness 
in the stomach muscles, a queasy feeling in the stom­
ach, shakiness in the arms and legs, or a dryness in the 
mouth. Some people have intestinal cramps or diffi­
culty breathing. Whatever it is, they look within them­
selves to see what is actually being experienced. Radical truth means what is being experienced, not 
what one is actually thinking about it or the concepts 
that one is projecting onto the experience; it is not 
the labeling of it but what one is literally experienc­
ing within oneself. The technique is to let go of resisting the experi­
encing of what is literally being experienced. Let go 
of resisting the dryness of the mouth. Let it be there 
and welcome it. Let go of resisting the flip-flop feeling 
in the stomach and the trembling in the arms and 
legs. When we do this, we are focused away from 
thought about what is being experienced. We fully let 
go and surrender being those sensations. The letting WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 273 
go is like being the willow tree in the wind. The ancient wisdom ofTaoism states that the oak 
tree, which resists the wind, is susceptible to break­
ing, and the willow tree, which bends with the wind, 
survives. Like the willow tree, we bend with the 
incoming experience. We let it be, blend with it, and 
welcome it. We say, "Let's have more of it." As we do 
that, we will discover, much to our surprise, that there 
is a limited amount of that sensation. It is as though 
the amount offear we have is limited in quantity. How 
can this be? It is as though this fear is like a pressure 
tank that contains all the suppressed fear we have had 
throughout our lifetime, starting in our childhood. There is all the fear that we could not allow ourselves 
to experience or express, or were not allowed to 
express. We were not allowed to have that emotion. For example, a man in military service was not 
allowed to express the fearfulness because it was 
thought to be unmanly or showed cowardice, so the 
fear got suppressed, repressed, and pushed down out 
of awareness. Fears we were not aware of have come up by the 
thousands in our lifetime. The fear comes up and we 
unwittingly brace our back. The fear is just pushed 
out of awareness, or we drum our fmgers on the desk. The fear is so qUickly suppressed that we do not even 
realize it was there.As the years go by, we have accu­
mulated energy of this fear. The energy behind this 
fear increases in pressure, and when it reaches a cer­
tain point, it is as though a needle has reached a red 
line on the dial, and the pressure of this fearfulness 
now begins to express itself. It spills out and over into 274 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
our experience and begins to color it. If we do not 
examine it, we think that this fear is coming from the 
world, and we blame the world for it.We think that it 
is a fearful experience happening out there. Little do 
we realize that it is merely our own fearfulness that is 
being projected out into the world. Then we own this source of the fear, which is our 
own accumulated fearfulness. We start to welcome it 
and look forward to the opportunity to allow this 
fearfulness to run out.The basic release from fear is by 
surrender at great depth.The sensations and the inner 
experience of fear itself remain the same, no matter 
what we think we fear. If somebody holds a shotgun 
to our heart and says, "Give me all your money," what 
are we going to experience? We are going to experi­
ence the dry mouth, weakness in the knees, and that 
old, familiar flip-floppy feeling in the stomach. If an 
enemy tank rolls up to our house, knocks it over, 
rotates the gun barrel, and points it right at our fore­
head, what are we going to experience? The same 
thing happens if somebody holds a mouse over our 
head.We are going to experience a dry mouth, queasi­
ness in our stomach, cramps in our intestines, and that 
shaky feeling in our muscles. All we ever have to handle is those sensations, and 
with experiencing this technique, we will learn that 
all we ever have to handle is what we are experienc­
ing within consciousness itself, whether it is localized 
within the body or elsewhere. After meditation and 
working with this technique, we will notice that this 
experience is actually happening in a general and dif­
fuse everywhereness. The phenomena of the queasy WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 275 
muscles, the flip-flop in the stomach, and the dry 
mouth are being experienced in a vague, diffuse 
everywhereness. We just allow the experience to be 
present without resisting it. Because we are focused 
on that, the fear begins to diminish because we are no 
longer paying attention to the thoughts. The thoughts 
themselves are engendering further fear. Ifwe are very busy with this technique of just let­
ting go of resisting the fear, we are now focused on 
the energy field itself. Behind this fearfulness is an 
energy, and we are letting go of resisting the progres­
sive release and discharge of that energy. By doing 
this, we lose the fear of fear. It is no longer an awe­
some terror that awakens us in the middle of the 
night. It is nothing but an inner emotional experi­
ence, the sensations of which can be easily handled. We can ask ourselves, "Truly, can I handle a dry 
mouth? Of course, I can." Another technique to eliminate the negative emo­
tions is to let go oftheir associated mental images that 
attract and amplify associated emotions. Just refuse 
the image and cancel the temptation to indulge in it. While doing research and experimenting with this 
particular technique, I had an experience that demon­
strates one of the principles being described. I had 
had a lifetime fear ofheights which was so severe that 
when I went to visit the Grand Canyon for the first 
time, I literally could not walk within one hundred 
feet of the edge. It created that panicky feeling even 
when I saw somebody else get near the edge. I was 
using this technique whenever I could and enjoying 
the progress I was making with it, but I had never got­276 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
ten around to working on my fear of heights. I had 
been working on fear from all its other origins within 
my experience. The next time I went back to the 
Grand Canyon about two years later, much to my 
amazement, I could walk up to within about twenty 
feet of the edge before the tight feeling occurred in 
the stomach again. I continued to utilize this tech­
nique over the next year or two and again went back 
to revisit the Canyon. Much to my surprise, I could 
walk right up to the very edge. Subsequently, I later 
went up in a hot air balloon without any anxiety. I was 
so pleased at this demonstration of the principle that 
what I had been releasing was the accumulated pres­
sure and energy of all that fear from a lifetime. Similar 
to a pressure tank, as it released itself, there was less 
and less to spill over into life experiences. The letting go of resisting is so effective because 
resistance traps us into a certain state of conscious­
ness; resistance is within. Fear is a negative energy 
that calibrates at 100, and traps us in the field.We can­
not get beyond it so we become the victim of our 
own fears unless we own that we are the source of 
them.As long as we rationalize and say that the source 
of fear is 'out there', we cannot overcome it. Once we 
begin to own that we are the experiencer, that we are 
the one who sets up the way in which we experience 
things, then we become the one who is master of the 
situation. Our self-esteem becomes affected. We are 
no longer the one who is the victim or subject to fear. We are something other than the fear. Fear is nothing 
but an experience in consciousness, and we no longer 
have to give it reality by labeling it as a fear of some­WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 277 
thing, which can be an endless process. Fearfulness is attached to everything in the world 
by fearful people. Changing the world will not handle 
it.A person can be terribly afraid in a very safe situa­
tion and not at all afraid in a situation that is hypothet­
ically very dangerous. For example, a person is being 
mugged, which is one thing, and then there is the fear 
of being mugged, which is something else.The fear of 
being mugged is not the same as actually being 
mugged. It is quite possible to have very unfortunate 
circumstances occur in one's life and not experience 
fear at all. In fact, one might even experience that one 
is merely the witness of the phenomenon. Such a thing happened to me when I came face to 
face with a very large rattlesnake on top of a nearby 
mountain. As I was about to step into a cabin, a giant 
rattlesnake was coiled up right in front of the door­
way, and as I lifted my foot to step over him, his head 
snapped back, his tongue flickered out, and he was 
poised to strike me. In that instant, there was a flash 
of fearful thought, and then the thought that I could 
get a club and hit it, or I could run, or I could yell for 
help. I did not have a gun, but somebody might shoot 
it. All the self-protective thoughts that social con­
sciousness had programmed me with were present. Happily, and luckily for me or I would not be 
telling about this, I had learned this technique. I 
instantly realized that my life frankly depended on my 
utilization of it, so I automatically went into this exact 
technique. I automatically let go of wanting to do any­
thing about the fear, of wanting to handle or change 
anything about it. Instead, I went into my inner Self 278 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
and just allowed the inner experience to release itself 
without any resistance. I welcomed even more of it 
because somehow, when we really get into the expe­
rience of our own inner consciousness, we see that 
our survival depends on this and has all along. I saw 
that my survival really depended on the excellence 
with which I let go, surrendered to God, and released 
and let go of resisting the experience. As I did, the 
fearful thoughts. instantly disappeared, and I felt a pro­
found state of peace settle on both the snake and me. It was as ifI had become the witness-not the wit­
ness confined to this body, but the witness in con­
sciousness, which seemed to have no dimension. This 
formless dimension was then the experiencer of the 
presence of a state of peacefulness. This profound 
state was of such power that it prevailed over the 
consciousness of both the snake and the personality 
of this person telling you about this.The snake looked 
at me with interest, probably not having seen a 
human being in his whole life, much less a foot away, 
and I looked at the rattlesnake with great curiosity 
and thought of him as a brother.The two of us were 
included in the oneness of this space of our own 
beingness together in a state of extreme intimacy. Out 
of it came a sort of inner joyfulness, and I felt love for 
the snake arise out of the field from which fear had 
been removed. In looking at the Map of Consciousness, we can 
track what happened. The snake would have instantly 
sensed the fear, which has a negative energy field, 
along with my anger and desire to strike at it. However, his responses through his energy system WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 279 
were so fast that the strike would have happened 
before I could have moved my shin out of the way. Instead, because of the severe threat of the circum­
stances, I really, really let go. Did I ever! I moved right 
through the willingness to let go, right through the 
acceptance, love, and joy, and right into a state of pro­
. found peace. If we calibrate the energy field of that 
experience, it started out at 100, but almost instantly, 
it moved up to 600. Then a Presence prevailed-an 
Infinite, profoundly still Presence whose essential 
nature is one of peace, whose power is infmite-that 
controlled the whole experience. Thus, both the 
snake and I transcended fear, and we moved to a time­
less silence. The snake was as though enchanted. We 
looked at each for minutes~ and I was reluctant to 
break the spell by leaving. The snake then slithered 
away and never rattled its tail. This is valuable because it illustrates the falsity of 
another one of the mind's belief systems that we have 
to learn to release, which is the idea that fear is the 
source of our safety. We will notice that the mind 
seems to worship fear as though it is some kind of a 
demigod. The mind has a program that says, "The rea­
son I'm alive is due to my fears. I am alive because I 
allow fear to decide what I am going to do." A little 
introspection will show that this belief system is 
going on. A person says, "Well, if I wasn't afraid of 
being poor in myoId age, I wouldn't get insurance. If 
I wasn't afraid of an automobile accident, I wouldn't 
drive safely." So the person begins to ascribe the 
source of their aliveness, the source of their life, to 
fear, which is the god of their life.They really begin to 280 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
worship fear. We can see from the above example that just the 
opposite is true. What insures our survival is the 
absence of fear and its replacement by caution and 
realistic common sense.We have managed to survive in 
spite of our fears, not because of them. We can make 
decisions based on rational choice, on our knowledge, 
and on value coming from the beingness of that which 
we really are without fear entering the picture at all.All 
day long we make decisions based just on our aware­
ness ofreality, with no fear particularly involved. Fear is 
not necessary. There is the idea that fear is good for us, 
that it is beneficial and has all kinds of hidden, mysteri­
ous values. People will look back and rationalize how 
fear got them to do this and do that, and all I can say is, 
"Too bad." Too bad they did not do it out of love for 
themselves or for their fellow human beings. Too bad 
that they did not do it out of love for life itself, love for 
their own aliveness, and love for their body.Why not do 
things for our body out of love for it instead of out of 
fear of the consequences? Why not keep it healthy and 
happy because we love and value it, not because we 
are afraid of a heart attack or something else? There is another technique for letting go of more 
of this fear, which I call "the worst-case scenario." If 
we follow fears and ask, "Why am I afraid of that?" we 
will see that it leads to another fear. Why are we afraid 
of driving a car? We might have an accident. Why are 
we afraid of an accident? Because we might get 
injured. What if we get injured? Then we might suffer 
pain, and so on.We will find that every fear ultimately 
leads to the fear of death, the fear of the body's dying. W 0 RR Y, FEAR, AND ANX lETY 281 
It will lead to the fear of whether other people like us 
or agree with us. Ifwe look at fear and keep asking our­
selves what fear does that bring up, and what fear is the 
basis of that, we fmally get to the worst-case scenario. For example, let us say that our fmancial fears are 
that we will totally run out of money, have no place to 
live, no money for food or clothing, and that we will 
end up semi-naked somewhere on a street corner in 
the cold with no place to go, and no medical help. What we do is constantly let go of resisting the feeling 
of this and picture the worst possible thing that can 
happen to us, such as ending up in the poor farm or 
sitting on the street corner as a bag lady or a bagman. We then allow ourselves to picture the worst possible 
scenario- there we are with our bag next to us, sitting 
on the cold street corner at midnight, friendless. We imagine whatever the worst possible fear 
could be and continue the practice. If we will go 
within ourselves and keep letting go of resisting the 
inner experience of what is coming up, pretty soon 
the fear of the worst scenario will run out. Ifwe con­
tinue this practice long enough, eventually we will 
finally sit down and handle 'the biggie', which is piC­
turing ourself in the casket with everybody walking 
by it.That is the worst scenario that most people can 
visualize-physical death. There is the belief that we are the material body, 
and that is all there is to us. Sooner or later we come to 
that fear, and when we do, we sit with it in the same 
way as we sit with any other fear. We let go of death, 
which is a label, a thought, and a concept. We have no 
experience of the truth of that, only our fantasies, 282 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
thoughts, and beliefs; therefore, we have to label it as 
only a fantasy in our mind.What people actually expe­
rience as they picture that and let go of resisting those 
feelings and sensations is a very surprising thing.When 
they have gone through the process and become that 
which is greater than the entire experience, they real­
ize that they have survived the worst possible scenario. First, I imagined being abag person. By the time the 
fear ran out, I enjoyed i~. I thought it would actually be 
fun to just do what I wanted to do-hang out with the 
people' I wanted to talk: with, not have to go to work or 
pay any bills, and have no health or automobile insur­
ance premiums to pay. It would be okay because it 
would be from choice and not from victimhood. It 
would just be a different experience that is in great 
contrast to the rest of my life. From choice, there is no fear; the fear disappears. The worst thing that can happen is to end up on a 
street corner and live that kind of life, but the fear 
about it is gone. I may not choose that kind of life, but 
if it should happen, it is not filled with fear. I am no 
longer run by the fear of that, so I do not have to lie in 
bed at night worrying about what would happen if I 
run out of money some day. No matter how much 
money one has, that fear is present.The thought that 
we can earn more and more money and pile it up in 
the bank is futile. I know somebody who was worth 
sixty million dollars, ended up bankrupt, and had to sell 
off his personal possession to pay his bills. Could sixty million dollars protect us from that 
which we fear? Of course not. Money will not protect 
us at all, nor will barricades, putting six locks on our WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 283 
doors, or hiring more police. The only protection is 
owning that wt: are the source of our own experience, 
that we are the master of it, that we can handle it, and 
that we are greater than it. The mind always tries to justify our fear, of course. It says, "Well, there are a lot of muggings; therefore, my 
fear is justified." Why is there such a thing as justified 
fear? Who needs it? Why not walk home out of choice 
in a way that we know is not going to bring on such an 
attack? Why not out of loving oneself enough? Why not 
out of just enjoying life and valuing it to the point that 
we do not want to risk it, out of choice? Survival does not depend on the fear of being 
mugged or robbed. It depends on pre-choice, which is 
made by a mind that is not fearful. Because of the 'not 
fearfulness' ,I am alive today.Itwas not being afraid that 
held back the rattlesnake from striking me when it was 
really only inches away. It was due to the loss of the 
fear and the letting go of it. It is possible to be in very 
severe,dangerous situations (suchasWorldWarII, etc.) and experience only joy, happiness, and trust in those 
circumstances. I have walked through a crowd of cut­
throats who would have readily attacked a person who 
was holding·fear and done it with happy, gleeful smiles 
on t1}eir faces. They 'got off on it' when a guy like me 
walked right through them while they were holding 
their intimidating guns, chains, and knives. Had I come 
from fear, they would have challenged that boldness 
and attacked me. Safety came from letting go of the 
fear. Without fear or bravado, there was nothing for 
them to playoff of emotionally. Letting go of the worst-case scenario is extremely 284 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
beneficial. As we do this, we will become aware that 
something has been setting up the fear within us. Now 
that we have lost our fear offear, when it arises, we just 
walk around with it. One time I walked around with 
fear for two solid weeks. With that trembling electric 
feeling running through the body, I went about my 
business and just kept letting the fear run because I 
realized it would run out. However, as we do that, we 
may realize that there is another source underlying the 
original fear to begin with, which is guilt. Now we begin to see the value of the work that 
the world calls spiritual consciousness or something 
similar.We can see the benefit of techniques such as 
concentrating on the value of forgiving. In forgiving 
ourselves and other human beings and turning over 
any judgment to God, we begin to find that-by letting 
go of condemning ourselves and others, the uncon­
scious guilt begins to alleviate fear since fear was 
held in mind because we unconsciously expected 
retaliatory return of our attacks. We expect revenge 
and counterattack. Every negative or hostile thought 
that we hold about others engenders our own fear­
fulness because on the psychic or mental plane, 
which is invisible to the naked eye, it is as though 
we are building up for ourselves that which threat­
ens to come back to us. We learn that fearfulness 
begins to diminish as we let go of our anger, hostility, 
criticisms, and thoughts that condemn others. We 
learn the value of letting go of the thoughts that 
make other people wrong. We begin to value and 
love them for their beingness, for what they are. We 
begin to see ourselves as different, and, therefore, we WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 285 
begin to see others as different. We become willing 
to forgive, forget, and overlook. As a result, we start to see that all the things we 
condemned in others are really just expressions of 
their humanness. What we have been condemning in 
ourselves and in everybody else is the humanness, 
the innocence of the little child within that believed 
everything it heard while growing up.The conscious­
ness of the child is innocent, is it not? It loves and 
trusts its parents. It loves its mother. Therefore, the 
innocence of the child gets programmed. It is the 
innocent child that believes everything it is told by 
the parents, teachers, and the political/social pro­
gramming that occurs via television and the belief 
systems of the country. Who or what bought all the belief systems in our 
mind? Who bought what we believe? It was the mind 
of the innocent within because that innocent child's 
mind, the nature of consciousness itself, has not 
changed since we were born.That which is reading this 
right now is the innocent consciousness of the child 
saying, "I believe this. I take it within myself. "The inno­
cent child never dies; that innocence is still present.We 
see in today's world the actions ofignorant, susceptible 
young men who are being programmed to hate (para­
doxically by religion). They then believe hate and 
killing the innocent are 'good' or even 'holy'. We begin to see that intrinsic innocence and realize 
that all the things we have ever learned which ended 
up being wrong were bought out of the intrinsic state 
of not knowing the truth and also from learning that 
which was not the truth. Therefore, we are willing to 286 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
let go ofourcondemnation ofothers and ourselves. We 
are beginning to own our own innocence and that of 
others. It is misfortunate and perhaps regretful that the 
misinformation came into the innocent mind. We might look at the mind as the hardware of the 
computer and its belief systems as the software. Can 
the five-year-old child question the political system he 
hears described in his kindergarten from his fellow stu­
dents, his parents, or his grandparents? We can see that 
it is from his 'not knowingness'. It is out of the inno­
cence of his 'not knowingness' that he believes what 
he believes.As a result, we are willing to forgive others, 
and instead ofcondemning them,we understand them. From this understanding develops a certain com­
passion.A compassionate person has no fears. What is 
there to fear in a compassionate world inasmuch as we 
are the source ofour own experience and our compas­
sion when we own it back within ourselves? We see 
our own innocence and the innocence of other beings 
and have the experience of a compassionate, loving 
world. No longer do we walk around fearfully because 
we are no longer creating it within ourselves. We see 
that we were the source of our fears. The world was 
never the source of our fear; we were. Having let go of 
creating fear and propagating it through endless guilt, 
which comes about through endless judgments that 
social conditioning has thrust upon us, the uncon­
scious guilt diminishes. The letting go of unconscious 
guilt progresses outside of our awareness. Every time we decide to stop condemning a person 
and instead try to understand him, our own store of 
unconscious guilt goes down. In the unconscious, it is W 0 RR Y, FEAR, AND AN X lETY 287 
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If we wish 
that somebody would drop dead, what do you suppose 
its equal is in our unconscious mind? That we should 
drop dead.We do not think that our thought about "If 
only so-and-so would drop dead" has anything to do 
with our fears of a heart attack, but, of course, they do. As we let go of wishing for other people to drop dead, 
we will find, curiously enough, that our fear and obses­
sion that we might or will get a coronary and all the 
dietary precautions that go with that, will diminish. Instead, we are very peaceful about the whole thing. When we go, we go. Ifwe stay, we stay. Big deal! What we value is life, and we no longer focus on the 
potential ending of that life; therefore, we come into a 
different experience of the experiencing of life and 
who we are.We are that in which this experiencing is 
happening. Then, as the classic ox-herding pictures 
depict, instead of being dragged about with bleeding 
knees and rumpled clothes against our will by the ox 
of fear, we can now tie this ox to a tree because we 
have located the culprit. Having let go ofour fear of the 
ox, we now become the master. We get on top of the 
ox, and the ox becomes tame; we are the master. We 
have identified with that which we really are and are 
no longer the victim. Victimhood comes out of unconsciousness. It 
means being unaware of this game setup that has been 
going on within our minds. Merely becoming aware of 
this means that we are already out ofit. By the time you 
have finished reading this, you have gotten up from 
being the victim; you are already tying this ox to the 
tree. As we practice these techniques that have been 288 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
described, we will soon be sitting on top of the ox. When fear comes along, we welcome it and say, 
"Great! What an opportunity to let go of more of that," 
because by now, we are feeling the benefit of the 
decrease in the fears we have had our whole lifetime. Little do people realize the extent of the fears they are 
holding until they begin to disappear, and then it is 
mind-boggling. We say, "I never realized 1 was such a 
fearful human being:' This is perhaps more easily 
understood by referring to the Map of Consciousness 
so we can see how the energy fields relate to the way 
we experience the world. Mind is so powerful that the way it holds our expe­
rience literally determines our experience. Fearfulness 
creates a certain view of the world and tends to 
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent university 
research, as well as our own research, shows that what 
one holds in mind tends to manifest within one's expe­
rience of the world.The world of our own experience 
then becomes the external representation of what we 
have been holding in mind, so our life is really a world 
of mirrors.What we are actually seeing and experienc­
ing is a projection of our own level of consciousness. This is difficult to believe and fully grasp, but to give us 
a glimpse ofit is a whole field ofstudy in itself.The sage 
Ramana Maharshi taught that the world you see (per­
ception) does not even exist and is illusory (the 
Buddha's "Maya"). On the Map of Consciousness, let us compare the 
level of consciousness with its emotion, our view of 
the world, and how this would give us a view of God. At the bottom of the Map is a negative energy field WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 289 
called Guilt that calibrates at a power of 30. It is the 
world of self-hatred, self-destruction, and a person 
who is guilt-ridden.
_OceanofPDF.com_Healing_and_Recovery_-_David_R_Hawkins.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Spiritual work is pictured as 
studying a textbook, looking at a picture of a guru, and 
singing songs. Then an acute catastrophe occurs, and 
the spiritual work is bypassed. It then resumes after all 
the various emergencies and tasks in one's life have 
been handled. It is as though we do not really see the essence of 
spiritual work. We do not see that the spiritual work 
brings up these acute crises, brings us into them, and 
that they are an opportimity. This is where the spiritual 
work is happening. The other was preparation, gathering 
of information and experience, deciding on direction, 
and accumulating spiritual knowledge. Then suddenly 250 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
comes the moment of truth, the time to do it. There are people who have been in spiritual work 
and around metaphysical circles for many years, and 
nothing changes in their lives. They have the same ill­
nesses and problems; their personal life is the same. They have not had any of the experiences of inner 
truth that they hear about, and why is that. When life 
brings the golden opportunity to them, that is the time 
to make the spiritual knowledge real. It is the time for 
transformation, the time to take that leap in conscious­
ness. These are golden moments. Acute catastrophes are the times when we make 
great leaps,when we face them directly and ftxedly say, 
"I will not veer from this spiritual work. " Now we are 
really confronted with truly spiritual work. It is not 
reading some pleasant-sounding phrases in a book or 
looking at some happy picture. Instead, we are right in 
the thick of it, in the teeth of it. The teeth of spiritual 
work occur when we are confronted with that which 
we cannot avoid. It is the direct confrontation that 
requires a leap in consciousness. These are the golden opportunities that are price­
less ifwe see themthatway,ifwe arewilling to bewith 
them and say,"Okay. "The willingness to go with them, 
no matter how painful it may be, enables a giant leap in 
consciousness, a real advance in wisdom, knowledge, 
and awareness. That which we read about in the books 
then becomes our own inner experience. There is something below the emotionality that is 
experiencing this energy out for a person. It is literally 
being handled by something far greater than one's 
personal self. If only the small personal self were HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 251 
present, one would be totally swamped and obliterated 
by the energy released during these experiences. One survives the experiences because there is some­
thing greater than the personal self that is more than 
capable of handling them. The trick of the mind is to not see that. It tries to 
change what goes on 'out there', tries to figure it out, 
and then falls back on the intellect and fmds that the 
intellect is not going to resolve this kind of problem. When we have dropped a big oak log on our foot and 
broken all the bones across the front of the foot, what 
is needed at that moment is our readiness and willing­
ness to handle what life presents. Having the tools and 
the willingness brings about very rapid healing. There is the awareness in acute overwhelm that we 
really can handle the experiences. Part of the panic 
comes from the realization that what we think we 
are-our powerless, limited self-is no match for the 
power of this experience. That is precisely what is 
going on-the limited, individual, personal self cannot 
handle the overwhelm. This is the precise spiritual 
value of it. What do we really want to change about the 
experience. We will see that what we want to do is 
change how we feel about it. What we can know is that 
the feeling will come and go. The event is not going to 
bother us after the feeling state. All that we have to 
experience through is the acute upsurge and energy of 
the emotion. The events will take care of themselves. The desire to change what occurred and how we 
feel about it have to be surrendered. The confrontation 
is there, and all we can do is say yes to experiencing it 
through, no matter what the nature is, such as the 252 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
death of a loved one, divorce, separation, an acute 
emergency, or a catastrophic injury. All bring about a 
state of shock that is the same, no matter what is the 
precipitating event. The shock is the sudden realization 
of our powerlessness, the fact that the will has met a 
brick wall, that we are stoppable and have been 
stopped, and that the personal will cannot have its way. Therefore, the shock and realization of all this is the 
same in all the experiences, along with the fact that it 
is unchangeable and permanent. That is the shock. It is 
as though we come up full speed against a brick wall, 
and every time in life when we do this, it releases the 
same energy field. If you have been through more than one of these 
experiences in your life, you can look back and realize 
that this is so, and that each time the state ofshock was 
the same. The experience and sequence were the 
same. There was the experience with the feeling of sud­
den numbness, the state of disbelief, and then the 
unleashing of all the negative feelings. When we look at the negative feelings precisely 
and at some of the experiences we have had, we real­
ize thatwe experienced all ofthis. We experienced the 
totality of that negative energy field. In the morning it 
would be present, and in the afternoon it would still be 
present. In fact, within a minute's time, we fluctuated 
back and forth. It is like a scintillating energy field in 
which the form of the emotionality is flickering from 
anger to resentment, to self-pity, to jealousy, to getting 
even, to revenge, to hate, to hating God, to hating one­
self, to blaming the family and society, to blaming the 
government and laws. The mind wildly races around in HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 253 
this negative energy field. We can see the diffuseness 
and formlessness of it. It is like a basketful of negative 
energy, and we only have to handle the basket, not all 
the little things that are flickering around in it. We only 
have to handle the 'all' of it. When we see that it is 
decompressing the 'all' of it, it moves us rapidly 
through it and out the other side. We see that it is an 
inescapable experience,·and we must have the willing­
ness to surrender to the work that has to be done now. How can we tell when that work is finished. When we 
suddenly come out into that inner state of peace. We know that years later people continue to have 
resentment and anger and are still caught in some 
aspect ofthat negative energy field because the events 
were not handled in the first place. The person was 
unwilling to sit down and handle them until completed. People are unwilling to do this because of the pain 
involved and because they do not know the techniques 
to use. Every time they go at it, they again start trying 
to change the events in the world and handle the 
thoughts. The intellect and the mind try to figure it out, 
and the person runs into the same impasse. By not hav­
ing an effective tool with which to handle the events, 
the work remains incomplete. What happens with the incomplete work and the 
emotions that were not released. That which is left 
undone begins to express itself in emotional attitudes 
and in the body inthe form ofillness. The unconscious 
guilt that was not let go of over the catastrophe that 
happened many' years ago comes forth through the 
autonomic nervous system and the acupuncture energy 
system and connects with something from the mind. 254 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
The energy field of the intellect of thinkingness is in 
the 400s. The energy field of guilt, fear, or anger then 
couples with some belief system in the mind about a 
particular illness that results in a physical illness. In psy­
choanalysis, it would be called psychosomatic, and in 
this case, the contribution of the psychological ele­
ment is on the surface and quite visible. The end result 
of the unresolved emotional handling of a catastrophic 
experience is often an illness that may occur many 
years later. The grief that was left undone at the time of 
the death of some family member twenty years earlier, 
for example, may now express itself as a heart attack. A thing has been handled when we feel at peace 
and complete with it. It no longer recurs or brings up 
pain when we think about it; we feel satisfied. There 
may be regret about having to live through it, but some­
how we come out on the other side of it as a different 
kind of person, and with that knowledge, there is a 
certain sense of peace that lets us know it has been 
handled now. Catastrophic experiences are the seeds, the very 
essence, of the ultimate spiritual experience. Within 
it and following it to its very center core, totally walk­
ing off the cliff in complete abandonment, the full 
surrender to the experience is the very seed and 
core of that which the spiritual seeker has been 
searching for all along. With many catastrophic situations in ordinary life, 
there is an incomplete resolution of the experiences, 
along with a lack of awareness of the jewel-like qualities 
and opportunities within the events. We are over­
whelmed by the 'whatness' of them and look in the HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 255 
wrong direction. The mind also gets a secret payoff 
from negative emotions (e. g. , attention, self-pity, drama) 
plus indulgence in martyrdom, etc. Many times when drugs are introduced, altered 
states of consciousness occur, and the person is taken 
to the emergency room. What could be a crucial 
spiritual discovery is covered over with a band-aid, 
and the family tries to distract the person from the 
spiritual work. The essential aspect of the spiritual benefit comes 
from running directly into the experience. There is a 
saying in Zen to "Walk straight ahead, no matter 
what," so when this catastrophic experience comes, it 
is beneficial to center oneself right into'the core of it, 
say "yes" to it and experience it through. There have been catastrophic experiences in my 
life when band-aids were available, and I refused to 
accept them because by then I had learned the value 
of experiencing them through. The band-aids really 
prevent the experiencing through of what might be 
called 'hitting bottom'. The concept of hitting bottom, 
which is well known in handling many serious prob­
lems, such as alcoholism, means to let go completely. In an acute catastrophic situation, the mind tries to 
cling to that which is familiar. It tries escapism, distrac­
tions, tranquilizers, drugs and alcohol, and various 
other ways of trying to ameliorate the situation rather 
than face it directly and work through it. The essence of a catastrophic situation is total 
surrender to the discovery of that which is greater than 
the personal self. The experiencing through completely 
of a catastrophe brings us into a connection and a real­HEALING AND RECOVERY 256 
ization that there is something within ourself that has 
the power to sustain, no matter how catastrophic the 
experience appears to be. As a result, we come out on 
the other side of it as a greater person with the aware­
ness that there is something within, that there is a 
Presence, a quality, or an aspect of life within that has 
the power to sustain us through the most seemingly 
impossible situations. If the catastrophic experience is not worked 
through completely; there are certain residuals. It is like 
we have only halfway fallen off the cliff. Some people 
think they have walked off the cliff,but actually we 
find that they were secretly crossing their fingers and 
hanging onto some little outcropping or lifeline. The 
abandonment to God was not really total, so a doubt 
remains, and out of that doubt is the residual of, for 
example, grief or fear of the experience. Ifwe do not 
experience something greater than the personal self 
when going through the experience, we may end up 
with a limitation, a certain crippling, the inability to go 
beyond a certain point, and the willingness to partici­
pate becomes limited. The person says, "I would rather 
live a limited life than face that kind of experience 
again. I would rather never love again than to love and 
10se. "The saying is, "'Tis better to have loved and lost,. than never to have loved at all:' The experiencing of 
lOVingness puts us in touch with our Self, that which is 
greater than our own limited, small self. The complete resolution brings us into conscious 
contact with something that is greater than the personal 
self. Many people who have tried this attest to the fact 
that when they surrendered the small self to some­HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 257 
thing greater than themselves, they came into contact 
with that which they considered to be'real'. That per­
sonal inner experience of spiritual reality takes one 
from book learning to a profound inner conviction. Out of this inner conviction comes the willingness to 
re-enter life again, to participate in it, and to take the 
risks and chances. What is the inner experience of hitting bottom. It 
comes out of the feelings of hopelessness and despair; 
the person's small self is saying,"I, of my own self, can­
not handle this. " The person surrenders out of the 
hopelessness, and from that comes the willingness to 
let go, to surrender to something greater than oneself. At the very bottom, in the pits, one realizes and accepts 
the truth that "I, of myself, my own individual personal 
self, my own ego-self, am unable to handle this. I am 
unable to resolve it. " It is out of this defeat that victory 
and success arise. The phoenix rises out ofthe ashes of 
despair and hopelessness. It is not the despair and 
hopelessness that are of value but the letting go and 
the realization of the limitation of the small self. In the 
middle of the catastrophe, the person says,"I give up. I 
cannot handle this," and then may consciously or 
unconsciously ask God for help. Due to the law of free will and the nature of con­
sciousness being what it is, it is said that the great 
beings that are willing to help all of us are waiting for 
us to say"yes:' It is the sudden turning from the bottom 
of the barrel to the willingness to accept that there is 
something greater than ourselves that we can turn to. When the person says, "If there is a God, I ask him to 
help me," then the great transformative experiences 258 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
happen that have been recorded throughout history 
from the very beginning. The beginning of the great worldwide organization 
of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) came out of such an 
experience. Bill W, the famous founder of AA, had hit 
bottom. He was in a state of total despair and hope­
lessness and gave up the personal self. At the time, he 
was a nonbeliever, but he said,"If there is a God, I ask 
him to help me. " At that moment came a great trans­
formative experience, the spiritual power ofwhich is 
evidenced by the millions oflives that have been affected 
by the energy that flowed out into the world as the 
result of this man's sharing his spiritual experience. Obviously, letting go and hitting bottom are crucial. It is out of the awareness that we cannot change things 
and are limited and powerless that we discover what 
does have the power in the universe. That power 
comes in and handles the experience, and we know 
when that happens because of the profound state of 
peace. Where there was agony, there is now a state of 
infInite peace and an ineffable awareness of an InfInite 
Presence. Historically, it has been a speCial occasion when a 
realization of the truth has arisen, but that is not at all 
necessary; it is only one type of experience. Actually, 
this is the nature of spiritual work all the time. The per­
son who is involved in spiritual work is always looking 
at what is occurring in life, seeing it as the teacher, as 
the grist for the mill. What is happening represents that 
which is being worked on, so an acute catastrophe 
would just be a continuation of the process that is 
going on anyway. As a result, the person who is intensely HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 259 
involved in spiritual work would then see it as a golden 
opportunity, painful and regretful perhaps, but one of 
great benefit. The essential nature ofspiritual work is to 
remain focused on what arises from instant to instant 
and become aware of'what'is experiencing andwhere 
it is being experienced. There is a meditative and contemplative technique 
that can be use to bring about the same result. It is the 
process of constantly letting go of wanting to control 
the experiencing as well as experiencing itself. There 
then occurs the sudden realization that awareness is 
being handled by some infinite aspect of conscious­
ness (the Self); this may have been suspected previously 
but not actually realized. After this realization, the. awareness of the Presence occurs more frequently. Out of this experience comes an ever greater will­
ingness to rely on that inner Presence, with less and 
less reliance on the small self. Less frequently, then, 
does the person look to the small self to handle life's 
problems, as there is a progressive willingness to 
surrender to one's higher Self. The progressive loss of 
identification with the small self and the increasing 
identification with the Presence, along with the will­
ingness to surrender life and all ofits aspects to the will 
of God, become the very core of the person's spiritual 
exercise and experience. The acute catastrophic experience is a key learn­
ing opportunity that teaches us to go to the very core, 
to the very essence of the experience, to see what it 
is and handle it at the level ofexperiencing within the 
energy field of consciousness itself. There is the will­
ingness to surrender and to let go of wanting to 260 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
change what happened 'out there'. There is the letting 
go of wanting to control by thinking about it and try­
ing to handle it with the intellect and the emotions. There is the willingness to surrender to the essence 
of the experience without calling it anything, or label­
ing it, or putting names on it. There is the willingness 
to handle the energy field of it and go directly to the 
inner experience. The surrender to the inner experi­
ence is the open doorway to the experience of some­
thing greater than the small personal self. Each catastrophe, therefore, is a repeat a. ld repre­
sentation of another opportunity for this great spiritual 
learning experience; therefore, people who have been 
through great catastrophic experiences express their 
gratitude. Often people say, "Although I wouldn't 
want to live though it again, I am very grateful for 
that experience. " How could a person be grateful for what the world 
considers a terrible catastrophe or a dreadful, progres­
sive illness. What they learned out of the catastrophe 
was of such a great dimension that the price was worth 
it because, through the realization of truth, they discov­
ered the reconnection with the essential core of their 
beingness. As we grow spiritually and become spiritually edu­
cated, it takes less and less to bring about the willing­
ness to face this inner experience. It could be said that 
a person's 'bottom of the barrel' gets progressively 
raised. The person does not have to go through agoniz­
ing pain before they are willing to let go and surrender. More and more there arises a willingness to do it on a 
daily basis so that it becomes part and parcel of one's HANDLING MAJOR CRISES 261 
life, with the constant looking at how one is trying to 
control things, or trying to change God's will, or how 
one is going to try to change and control God. More 
often there is the willingness to totally surrender at 
great depth, and then one sees that surrender occurs at 
different depths. In ordinary life, we surrender a little bit. Under 
greater pressure, we are willing to surrender more 
and realize that we do not have to put ourselves 
under catastrophic pressure in order to be willing to 
surrender at great depth. The transformation of per­
sonality, the whole shift in one's spiritual position, tra­
ditionally comes from surrendering at great depth. What does it mean to surrender at great depth. How 
can we surrender at great depth without having to 
put ourselves through a terrible emotional catastro­
phe in order to accomplish the same spiritual work. By seeing the essential nature of the process, we 
become educated. Our positions shift and we are dif­
ferent in the way we are. We are willing to be with life 
in all its expressions. The willingness is then experi­
enced as an inner state of aliveness. Arising from that 
is the willingness to take the chance because we now 
know that we are accompanied by something greater 
than the personal self. It is not the personal self that 
has to handle what comes up in life. The Infinite 
Presence that is always with us is more powerful than 
the human will and ego. The self brings pain and 
suffering; the Self radiates healing and peace. CHAPTER 9 
Worry, Fear, and Anxiety 
As discussed previously, holistic health uses the phrase 
"body, mind, and spirit" frequently, so it will be helpful 
to understand more about it. What does it really mean. Is it just a catch phrase or a slogan. Is'spirit' a meta­
physical abstraction or a religious dictum. Is it a fantasy 
of people who are not very well connected with the 
real world. Defining this relationship again will help us 
to speed up our work through greater understanding. Again, we want to review how human experience 
comes about and also look within ourselves to see 
where this phenomenon actually occurs. In looking at 
the relationship of body, mind, and spirit from the 
viewpoint of experience, some things may sound 
somewhat startling, such as the fact that the body can­
not experience itself. That may be a surprising thought 
because all ofus tend to think ofourselves as being the 
body and to think, "I am the body. " However, this is not 
true because the body is unable to experience itself. For example, my left arm cannot experience its own 
left armness. There are sensations coming from the 
body, but I am not experiencing the body. Instead, I am 
experiencing the sensations of the body, but curiously 
enough, they cannot experience themselves either. The 
sensations coming from the arm have to be experi­
enced somewhere, however, which is in the mind. Ifwe have an incision in the brain that deletes part 
ofthe operating mind, or at least the way it operates on 
the physical plane, we fail to experience the opposite 
side of the body. This is very common after a stroke 
where the patient is unable to experience in mind 
263 264 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
even the existence of a portion of their body. Thus, the 
body cannot be experienced without the sensation, 
and the sensation can only be experienced in mind. Interestingly, the mind cannot experience itself. A 
thought cannot experience its ow~ thoughtness, a 
memory cannot experience its own memoryness, and 
a fantasy cannot experience its own fantasyness. That 
which goes on in mind actually has to be experienced 
in an energy field that is greater than mind itself, which 
is called 'consciousness'. Consciousness enables one to be aware of what 
goes on within mind and is the basic reason for anes­
thesia. With anesthesia, consciousness is deleted, which 
results in there being no awareness ofwhat is going on 
in mind. With no consciousness, there is no awareness 
of mind or body; with no mind, there is no awareness 
of sensations or the body. Consequently, we will notice 
by watching ourself throughout the day that all of our 
experiences are being experienced in a more general 
way than realized and in a more general field of expe­
rience that is almost diffuse. It is almost as though it is 
everywhere in space, and this is within consciousness 
itself. It is an interesting experiment to find out where we 
think we really experience a thought. Most people 
think it is in their heads, but that is the thought about 
a thought. If we ask them to now let go of any belief 
about where they think they are 'experiencing a 
thought and instead point to exactly where a thought 
is being experienced-the radical truth of where the 
phenomenon is occurring-they learn that there is no 
particular place that thoughtness occurs. All they can WO RRY, FEAR, AN D ANXIE TY 265 
say is that thoughtness is occurring, and they have an 
awareness of the thoughtness, but they cannot put 
their finger on where it could possibly be-no partic­
ular place where it is being eXPfrienced in a general, 
overall way. It is very necessary for us to know this because 
some of the techniques we will use cancel a lot of the 
belief systems that are at the basis of human suffering. Consciousness itself is like a movie screen upon 
which what is chariging is experienced. Ifwe look at 
it, we will see that all experience is experience of 
change. The movement we experience is the coming 
and going, the ebbing and waning, and the flux. The 
reason we can experience that which changes is 
because it is being experienced from a background 
that is unchanging. It is because the movie screen is 
standing still that we can see the movement of the 
movie. Therefore, what changes is what is experi­
enced, and it is experienced in consciousness itself, 
which has no exact location. The Functional Hypoglycemic 
Before explaining fear and anxiety as an emotional 
level of consciousness (the major source), it is impor­
tant to identify a frequent source of those emotions, 
which has a physical basis. A frequent source of anger 
and other negative emotions is the physiological 
problem of 'functional hypoglycemia' Oow blood 
sugar), which is associated with an overreaction to 
dietary sugar input. This is also termed 'hyperinsulin­
ism,' which is an overreaction to glucose and sucrose. The sudden drop in blood sugar can precipitate emo­266 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
tional reactions of anger, rage, fear, shakiness, panic, or 
even·violence. The diagnosis can be made clinically by simply 
stopping all sugar intake and noticing the disappear­
ance of the negative symptoms. It can be verified by a 
five-hour glucose tolerance test. In a normal person, 
glucose levels first rise rapidly and then slowly subside. The hypoglycemic pattern, however, shows a rapid 
drop in blood glucose level, and the sudden drop may 
then precipitate mild to quite severe negative emo­
tions or physical shaking, weakness, or even fainting. It 
may also result in a craving for alcohol or sedative 
drugs. The disorder is well known in recovery pro­
grams, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. A famous book 
about the disorder is Sugar Blues by William Duffy 
(1986). When prospective patients called my office, I told 
them to stop ingesting all sugar (and alcohol) until I 
saw them for their appointment. Over the years, twenty­
five percent of the patients were 'cured' (asympto­
matic) by the time I saw them. Because of the high 
prevalence of this clinical disorder and its various 
forms of expression, it is worth investigating as a con­
tributory element in all emotional disorders. It can 
even be the trigger for psychotic episodes as well as 
physical violence. Some undiagnosed persons even 
end up in jail or prison for assault and other crimes of 
violence. It is a frequent cause of marital or other social 
disputes, family friction, and behavioral disorders. In the clinic, we had a diagnostic laboratory and 
often did the five-hour glucose tolerance tests. By the 
third or fourth hour, many patients developed negative WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 267 
emotional reactions. One woman suddenly disrobed 
and ran down the sidewalk stark naked with the labo­
ratory director in his long white coat running after her, 
yelling "Stop. " She kept on running wildly for several 
blocks. (Traffic came to a halt at the wild, frantic 
scene. ) Fear is a level of consciousness to be addressed 
where it is, not in its expression and extension into 
the world-fear of this, fear ofthat-and not trying to 
handle it on the level of the particular but handling it 
instead as a level of consciousness. This is done by 
becoming aware of that which we are, which is 
greater than the fear, and learning to disidentify with 
the emotion so we are not that. We are an overall field 
in which fear is being experienced. It becomes a small 
thing occurring within the greater context in which 
we become aware of ourselves as that which we 
really are. One of the biggest obstacles to handling and letting 
go of fear is the fear of fear itself. We will describe a 
technique that disappears the fear of fear. Once we 
are no longer afraid of fear, it becomes a very simple 
matter. Is it not the fear of fear that is the problem. A 
person is afraid of the fear, just as the person going to 
the dentist is afraid of the pain; it is that initial fear. When we begin to look at the nature of fear, we can 
see that the number offears is endless; therefore, peo­
ple become victims and convinced that the source of 
fear is outside themselves. If people think the origination or source of fear is 
outside themselves, then there would be very little 
they could do about it. In fact, there really is nothing 268 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
they could do about it. So long as the belief continues 
that the source is outside themselves, they will always 
be the victims of fear until they begin to realize that it 
is a present condition within themselves, and that they 
are the source of the fear they project onto the world. Of course, they are sure to see it 'out there' because 
they have just projected it out there. When we look at fear, we see how all pervasive it 
can be. Ifwe realize that fear is a level of conscious­
ness, then we realize that from that level ofconscious­
ness, fear can be attached to everything. Trying to 
overcome particular fears may have a certain limited 
value, but it does not change one as a fearful person, 
personality, or human being. The fear of a specific fear 
may be clinically valuable, and it may be of practical 
use in one's life, but it does not alter who one is. The 
conditions of fear can be changed so that one no 
longer feels like a small self that is powerless and at 
the effect of being the victim of fear itself. Fear can be like a preftx that gets attached to any­
thing. We can see from the Map of Consciousness that 
Fear is at consciousness level 100, indicating that it is 
a negative emotion, as shown by the direction of the 
arrow. We see its relative power in this mathematical 
model that shows the calibrated energies ofthe differ­
ent ftelds. As we go up from the negative emotions of 
30,50, and 75 into the positive emotions beginning at 
200, we see that their power, from the viewpoint of 
physics, actually increases. As we address the energy fteld of Fear, we begin to 
realize that being fearful can attach to anything and 
everything in our lives. There is nothing in our total 269 WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 
experience as a human being to which fear cannot be 
attached. We love our mother, and up comes the fear 
of "What if we lose her. " We love our body and up 
comes the fear of death or sickness. We love money 
and up comes the fear of loss or of being accused of 
being greedy. No matter what we think of, fear can be 
attached to it. We love our automobile and up comes 
the fear of an accident. A fearful person attaches fear 
to everything; therefore, everything that comes into 
the mind is coming into an energy field of fear and 
thus gets colored with fear. There is even a fear of life 
itself, as shown by the song,'''Fraid of living and 'fraid 
of dying. " In other words, this energy field has now 
contaminated everything. Ifwe are the source of that energy field, then all 
our experience comes into the field of fear, and every­
thing in our lives can become fearful. The future is 
fearful: old age, getting older, what is going to happen 
to the body, what is going to happen to my finances, 
what is going to happen to my relationships, what is 
going to happen to my family, what is going to hap­
pen to my bank account, what is going to happen to 
my country, and what is going to happen to the 
world. People who develop global fear will tell you about 
their fear of nuclear annihilation, or intergalactic 
wars, or meteors, or cataclysmic 'end times'. The 
expansion of the fear does not change the fact that it 
is still just fear. Glamorizing it and making it sound 
dramatic does not change that it is just fear. The fears 
of intergalactic war, human demolition, and the expi­
ration of the human race are no different from the 270 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
child's fear of the dark or his fear that a dog might 
bite him. Experientially, fear is always just the same 
emotion. Characteristic of all of this is the energy field 
calledFear. Fear of'what'is reallyimmaterial. We have 
to learn to look away from the thoughts and look 
instead at the feeling. We actually have to look below 
the feeling to the energy field out of which the feel­
ing is originating and then learn how to handle this 
energyfield. Whenwe do this,we lose ourfear offear, 
and as that happens, we begin to learn how to handle 
fear directly. It is an extremely simple thing to handle 
once we are familiar with some rather easy tech­
niques. The world pretty much runs people with fear 
because their personal lives are also predominantly 
run by fear. But once we have learned a way to avoid 
getting cornered by fear, we begin to transcend the 
world as well as transcend being a victim because the 
world can threaten us only by fear. Ifthey cut off our 
bank account, conduct an audit, run· away from us, 
leave us, or fife us, the gun at our head is always the 
same gun-the gun of fear. There can be the fear of 
losing a part of the body-there is no end to the num­
ber of fears, but there is an end to fearfulness and of 
being a victim of fear. We will learn how to lose our fear of fear, how to 
enjoy the process, and how to really start feeling good 
about ourselves when we realize that we are no 
longer the victim, the worm that is at the effect ofthis 
all-pervasive fearfulness. The problem is not fear itself 
but the energy field of fearfulness. We can begin to WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 271 
see that we are in control of it because we are the 
source of it. We start with admitting the truth that "I 
am the source of my fearfulness. " We know that in a 
different mood, a fearful thing is no longer fearful. We 
might say about the thing we fear, "I'm afraid of that," 
but when we are accompanied by someone else, or in 
a different mood, such as a humorous one, and we are 
having a good time laughing, then the thing no longer 
engenders fear, so the source of fear is not out in 
the world. There is no way of overcoming one's fear of the 
world because there is no way the world can be con­
trolled to end one's fears, nor can fears be overcome 
by changing society, by changing the law, or by 
changing the rules. The source of fearfulness is with­
in oneself. Picture a big event. There are two aspects-one is 
the event itself, and the second is how we feel about 
it. Having more police at the event might make us 
feel better, but, in fact, where are the police going to 
be while our apartment is being robbed. At the other 
end of town, naturally. Therefore, our handling of 
fear is really up to ourself. It comes out of our will­
ingness to own that we are the source of that fear, 
which is occurring within our own consciousness. Therefore, we want to address it where it is actually 
being experienced. Most people experience fear in a somewhat phys­
ical way, so the first thing to do about a fearful expe­
rience is eliminate paying any attention to thought. A 
fearful feeling will engender literally millions of 
thoughts. There is no end to fearful thoughts because 272 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
they are coming out of the energy field of fear itself, 
which generates an endless series of thoughts. Clinically speaking, handling the specific thoughts 
themselves has a limited value, and the fearfulness 
merely generates more thoughts later on, so we want 
to use a technique that will handle fear itself. A person might just picture something fearful in 
their life, or something fearful that they expect to 
happen or has happened, or they can just fantasize a 
fearful experience, such as being tied to the railroad 
track with a locomotive bearing down on them. As 
they look at what is being experienced, they will see 
when they look past the thought, it is being experi­
enced first in the body. They may notice a tenseness 
in the stomach muscles, a queasy feeling in the stom­
ach, shakiness in the arms and legs, or a dryness in the 
mouth. Some people have intestinal cramps or diffi­
culty breathing. Whatever it is, they look within them­
selves to see what is actually being experienced. Radical truth means what is being experienced, not 
what one is actually thinking about it or the concepts 
that one is projecting onto the experience; it is not 
the labeling of it but what one is literally experienc­
ing within oneself. The technique is to let go of resisting the experi­
encing of what is literally being experienced. Let go 
of resisting the dryness of the mouth. Let it be there 
and welcome it. Let go of resisting the flip-flop feeling 
in the stomach and the trembling in the arms and 
legs. When we do this, we are focused away from 
thought about what is being experienced. We fully let 
go and surrender being those sensations. The letting WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 273 
go is like being the willow tree in the wind. The ancient wisdom ofTaoism states that the oak 
tree, which resists the wind, is susceptible to break­
ing, and the willow tree, which bends with the wind, 
survives. Like the willow tree, we bend with the 
incoming experience. We let it be, blend with it, and 
welcome it. We say, "Let's have more of it. " As we do 
that, we will discover, much to our surprise, that there 
is a limited amount of that sensation. It is as though 
the amount offear we have is limited in quantity. How 
can this be. It is as though this fear is like a pressure 
tank that contains all the suppressed fear we have had 
throughout our lifetime, starting in our childhood. There is all the fear that we could not allow ourselves 
to experience or express, or were not allowed to 
express. We were not allowed to have that emotion. For example, a man in military service was not 
allowed to express the fearfulness because it was 
thought to be unmanly or showed cowardice, so the 
fear got suppressed, repressed, and pushed down out 
of awareness. Fears we were not aware of have come up by the 
thousands in our lifetime. The fear comes up and we 
unwittingly brace our back. The fear is just pushed 
out of awareness, or we drum our fmgers on the desk. The fear is so qUickly suppressed that we do not even 
realize it was there. As the years go by, we have accu­
mulated energy of this fear. The energy behind this 
fear increases in pressure, and when it reaches a cer­
tain point, it is as though a needle has reached a red 
line on the dial, and the pressure of this fearfulness 
now begins to express itself. It spills out and over into 274 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
our experience and begins to color it. If we do not 
examine it, we think that this fear is coming from the 
world, and we blame the world for it. We think that it 
is a fearful experience happening out there. Little do 
we realize that it is merely our own fearfulness that is 
being projected out into the world. Then we own this source of the fear, which is our 
own accumulated fearfulness. We start to welcome it 
and look forward to the opportunity to allow this 
fearfulness to run out. The basic release from fear is by 
surrender at great depth. The sensations and the inner 
experience of fear itself remain the same, no matter 
what we think we fear. If somebody holds a shotgun 
to our heart and says, "Give me all your money," what 
are we going to experience. We are going to experi­
ence the dry mouth, weakness in the knees, and that 
old, familiar flip-floppy feeling in the stomach. If an 
enemy tank rolls up to our house, knocks it over, 
rotates the gun barrel, and points it right at our fore­
head, what are we going to experience. The same 
thing happens if somebody holds a mouse over our 
head. We are going to experience a dry mouth, queasi­
ness in our stomach, cramps in our intestines, and that 
shaky feeling in our muscles. All we ever have to handle is those sensations, and 
with experiencing this technique, we will learn that 
all we ever have to handle is what we are experienc­
ing within consciousness itself, whether it is localized 
within the body or elsewhere. After meditation and 
working with this technique, we will notice that this 
experience is actually happening in a general and dif­
fuse everywhereness. The phenomena of the queasy WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 275 
muscles, the flip-flop in the stomach, and the dry 
mouth are being experienced in a vague, diffuse 
everywhereness. We just allow the experience to be 
present without resisting it. Because we are focused 
on that, the fear begins to diminish because we are no 
longer paying attention to the thoughts. The thoughts 
themselves are engendering further fear. Ifwe are very busy with this technique of just let­
ting go of resisting the fear, we are now focused on 
the energy field itself. Behind this fearfulness is an 
energy, and we are letting go of resisting the progres­
sive release and discharge of that energy. By doing 
this, we lose the fear of fear. It is no longer an awe­
some terror that awakens us in the middle of the 
night. It is nothing but an inner emotional experi­
ence, the sensations of which can be easily handled. We can ask ourselves, "Truly, can I handle a dry 
mouth. Of course, I can. " Another technique to eliminate the negative emo­
tions is to let go oftheir associated mental images that 
attract and amplify associated emotions. Just refuse 
the image and cancel the temptation to indulge in it. While doing research and experimenting with this 
particular technique, I had an experience that demon­
strates one of the principles being described. I had 
had a lifetime fear ofheights which was so severe that 
when I went to visit the Grand Canyon for the first 
time, I literally could not walk within one hundred 
feet of the edge. It created that panicky feeling even 
when I saw somebody else get near the edge. I was 
using this technique whenever I could and enjoying 
the progress I was making with it, but I had never got­276 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
ten around to working on my fear of heights. I had 
been working on fear from all its other origins within 
my experience. The next time I went back to the 
Grand Canyon about two years later, much to my 
amazement, I could walk up to within about twenty 
feet of the edge before the tight feeling occurred in 
the stomach again. I continued to utilize this tech­
nique over the next year or two and again went back 
to revisit the Canyon. Much to my surprise, I could 
walk right up to the very edge. Subsequently, I later 
went up in a hot air balloon without any anxiety. I was 
so pleased at this demonstration of the principle that 
what I had been releasing was the accumulated pres­
sure and energy of all that fear from a lifetime. Similar 
to a pressure tank, as it released itself, there was less 
and less to spill over into life experiences. The letting go of resisting is so effective because 
resistance traps us into a certain state of conscious­
ness; resistance is within. Fear is a negative energy 
that calibrates at 100, and traps us in the field. We can­
not get beyond it so we become the victim of our 
own fears unless we own that we are the source of 
them. As long as we rationalize and say that the source 
of fear is 'out there', we cannot overcome it. Once we 
begin to own that we are the experiencer, that we are 
the one who sets up the way in which we experience 
things, then we become the one who is master of the 
situation. Our self-esteem becomes affected. We are 
no longer the one who is the victim or subject to fear. We are something other than the fear. Fear is nothing 
but an experience in consciousness, and we no longer 
have to give it reality by labeling it as a fear of some­WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 277 
thing, which can be an endless process. Fearfulness is attached to everything in the world 
by fearful people. Changing the world will not handle 
it. A person can be terribly afraid in a very safe situa­
tion and not at all afraid in a situation that is hypothet­
ically very dangerous. For example, a person is being 
mugged, which is one thing, and then there is the fear 
of being mugged, which is something else. The fear of 
being mugged is not the same as actually being 
mugged. It is quite possible to have very unfortunate 
circumstances occur in one's life and not experience 
fear at all. In fact, one might even experience that one 
is merely the witness of the phenomenon. Such a thing happened to me when I came face to 
face with a very large rattlesnake on top of a nearby 
mountain. As I was about to step into a cabin, a giant 
rattlesnake was coiled up right in front of the door­
way, and as I lifted my foot to step over him, his head 
snapped back, his tongue flickered out, and he was 
poised to strike me. In that instant, there was a flash 
of fearful thought, and then the thought that I could 
get a club and hit it, or I could run, or I could yell for 
help. I did not have a gun, but somebody might shoot 
it. All the self-protective thoughts that social con­
sciousness had programmed me with were present. Happily, and luckily for me or I would not be 
telling about this, I had learned this technique. I 
instantly realized that my life frankly depended on my 
utilization of it, so I automatically went into this exact 
technique. I automatically let go of wanting to do any­
thing about the fear, of wanting to handle or change 
anything about it. Instead, I went into my inner Self 278 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
and just allowed the inner experience to release itself 
without any resistance. I welcomed even more of it 
because somehow, when we really get into the expe­
rience of our own inner consciousness, we see that 
our survival depends on this and has all along. I saw 
that my survival really depended on the excellence 
with which I let go, surrendered to God, and released 
and let go of resisting the experience. As I did, the 
fearful thoughts. instantly disappeared, and I felt a pro­
found state of peace settle on both the snake and me. It was as ifI had become the witness-not the wit­
ness confined to this body, but the witness in con­
sciousness, which seemed to have no dimension. This 
formless dimension was then the experiencer of the 
presence of a state of peacefulness. This profound 
state was of such power that it prevailed over the 
consciousness of both the snake and the personality 
of this person telling you about this. The snake looked 
at me with interest, probably not having seen a 
human being in his whole life, much less a foot away, 
and I looked at the rattlesnake with great curiosity 
and thought of him as a brother. The two of us were 
included in the oneness of this space of our own 
beingness together in a state of extreme intimacy. Out 
of it came a sort of inner joyfulness, and I felt love for 
the snake arise out of the field from which fear had 
been removed. In looking at the Map of Consciousness, we can 
track what happened. The snake would have instantly 
sensed the fear, which has a negative energy field, 
along with my anger and desire to strike at it. However, his responses through his energy system WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 279 
were so fast that the strike would have happened 
before I could have moved my shin out of the way. Instead, because of the severe threat of the circum­
stances, I really, really let go. Did I ever. I moved right 
through the willingness to let go, right through the 
acceptance, love, and joy, and right into a state of pro­. found peace. If we calibrate the energy field of that 
experience, it started out at 100, but almost instantly, 
it moved up to 600. Then a Presence prevailed-an 
Infinite, profoundly still Presence whose essential 
nature is one of peace, whose power is infmite-that 
controlled the whole experience. Thus, both the 
snake and I transcended fear, and we moved to a time­
less silence. The snake was as though enchanted. We 
looked at each for minutes~ and I was reluctant to 
break the spell by leaving. The snake then slithered 
away and never rattled its tail. This is valuable because it illustrates the falsity of 
another one of the mind's belief systems that we have 
to learn to release, which is the idea that fear is the 
source of our safety. We will notice that the mind 
seems to worship fear as though it is some kind of a 
demigod. The mind has a program that says, "The rea­
son I'm alive is due to my fears. I am alive because I 
allow fear to decide what I am going to do. " A little 
introspection will show that this belief system is 
going on. A person says, "Well, if I wasn't afraid of 
being poor in myoId age, I wouldn't get insurance. If 
I wasn't afraid of an automobile accident, I wouldn't 
drive safely. " So the person begins to ascribe the 
source of their aliveness, the source of their life, to 
fear, which is the god of their life. They really begin to 280 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
worship fear. We can see from the above example that just the 
opposite is true. What insures our survival is the 
absence of fear and its replacement by caution and 
realistic common sense. We have managed to survive in 
spite of our fears, not because of them. We can make 
decisions based on rational choice, on our knowledge, 
and on value coming from the beingness of that which 
we really are without fear entering the picture at all. All 
day long we make decisions based just on our aware­
ness ofreality, with no fear particularly involved. Fear is 
not necessary. There is the idea that fear is good for us, 
that it is beneficial and has all kinds of hidden, mysteri­
ous values. People will look back and rationalize how 
fear got them to do this and do that, and all I can say is, 
"Too bad. " Too bad they did not do it out of love for 
themselves or for their fellow human beings. Too bad 
that they did not do it out of love for life itself, love for 
their own aliveness, and love for their body. Why not do 
things for our body out of love for it instead of out of 
fear of the consequences. Why not keep it healthy and 
happy because we love and value it, not because we 
are afraid of a heart attack or something else. There is another technique for letting go of more 
of this fear, which I call "the worst-case scenario. " If 
we follow fears and ask, "Why am I afraid of that. " we 
will see that it leads to another fear. Why are we afraid 
of driving a car. We might have an accident. Why are 
we afraid of an accident. Because we might get 
injured. What if we get injured. Then we might suffer 
pain, and so on. We will find that every fear ultimately 
leads to the fear of death, the fear of the body's dying. W 0 RR Y, FEAR, AND ANX lETY 281 
It will lead to the fear of whether other people like us 
or agree with us. Ifwe look at fear and keep asking our­
selves what fear does that bring up, and what fear is the 
basis of that, we fmally get to the worst-case scenario. For example, let us say that our fmancial fears are 
that we will totally run out of money, have no place to 
live, no money for food or clothing, and that we will 
end up semi-naked somewhere on a street corner in 
the cold with no place to go, and no medical help. What we do is constantly let go of resisting the feeling 
of this and picture the worst possible thing that can 
happen to us, such as ending up in the poor farm or 
sitting on the street corner as a bag lady or a bagman. We then allow ourselves to picture the worst possible 
scenario- there we are with our bag next to us, sitting 
on the cold street corner at midnight, friendless. We imagine whatever the worst possible fear 
could be and continue the practice. If we will go 
within ourselves and keep letting go of resisting the 
inner experience of what is coming up, pretty soon 
the fear of the worst scenario will run out. Ifwe con­
tinue this practice long enough, eventually we will 
finally sit down and handle 'the biggie', which is piC­
turing ourself in the casket with everybody walking 
by it. That is the worst scenario that most people can 
visualize-physical death. There is the belief that we are the material body, 
and that is all there is to us. Sooner or later we come to 
that fear, and when we do, we sit with it in the same 
way as we sit with any other fear. We let go of death, 
which is a label, a thought, and a concept. We have no 
experience of the truth of that, only our fantasies, 282 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
thoughts, and beliefs; therefore, we have to label it as 
only a fantasy in our mind. What people actually expe­
rience as they picture that and let go of resisting those 
feelings and sensations is a very surprising thing. When 
they have gone through the process and become that 
which is greater than the entire experience, they real­
ize that they have survived the worst possible scenario. First, I imagined being abag person. By the time the 
fear ran out, I enjoyed i~. I thought it would actually be 
fun to just do what I wanted to do-hang out with the 
people' I wanted to talk: with, not have to go to work or 
pay any bills, and have no health or automobile insur­
ance premiums to pay. It would be okay because it 
would be from choice and not from victimhood. It 
would just be a different experience that is in great 
contrast to the rest of my life. From choice, there is no fear; the fear disappears. The worst thing that can happen is to end up on a 
street corner and live that kind of life, but the fear 
about it is gone. I may not choose that kind of life, but 
if it should happen, it is not filled with fear. I am no 
longer run by the fear of that, so I do not have to lie in 
bed at night worrying about what would happen if I 
run out of money some day. No matter how much 
money one has, that fear is present. The thought that 
we can earn more and more money and pile it up in 
the bank is futile. I know somebody who was worth 
sixty million dollars, ended up bankrupt, and had to sell 
off his personal possession to pay his bills. Could sixty million dollars protect us from that 
which we fear. Of course not. Money will not protect 
us at all, nor will barricades, putting six locks on our WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 283 
doors, or hiring more police. The only protection is 
owning that wt: are the source of our own experience, 
that we are the master of it, that we can handle it, and 
that we are greater than it. The mind always tries to justify our fear, of course. It says, "Well, there are a lot of muggings; therefore, my 
fear is justified. " Why is there such a thing as justified 
fear. Who needs it. Why not walk home out of choice 
in a way that we know is not going to bring on such an 
attack. Why not out of loving oneself enough. Why not 
out of just enjoying life and valuing it to the point that 
we do not want to risk it, out of choice. Survival does not depend on the fear of being 
mugged or robbed. It depends on pre-choice, which is 
made by a mind that is not fearful. Because of the 'not 
fearfulness',I am alive today. Itwas not being afraid that 
held back the rattlesnake from striking me when it was 
really only inches away. It was due to the loss of the 
fear and the letting go of it. It is possible to be in very 
severe,dangerous situations (suchasWorldWarII, etc. ) and experience only joy, happiness, and trust in those 
circumstances. I have walked through a crowd of cut­
throats who would have readily attacked a person who 
was holding·fear and done it with happy, gleeful smiles 
on t1}eir faces. They 'got off on it' when a guy like me 
walked right through them while they were holding 
their intimidating guns, chains, and knives. Had I come 
from fear, they would have challenged that boldness 
and attacked me. Safety came from letting go of the 
fear. Without fear or bravado, there was nothing for 
them to playoff of emotionally. Letting go of the worst-case scenario is extremely 284 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
beneficial. As we do this, we will become aware that 
something has been setting up the fear within us. Now 
that we have lost our fear offear, when it arises, we just 
walk around with it. One time I walked around with 
fear for two solid weeks. With that trembling electric 
feeling running through the body, I went about my 
business and just kept letting the fear run because I 
realized it would run out. However, as we do that, we 
may realize that there is another source underlying the 
original fear to begin with, which is guilt. Now we begin to see the value of the work that 
the world calls spiritual consciousness or something 
similar. We can see the benefit of techniques such as 
concentrating on the value of forgiving. In forgiving 
ourselves and other human beings and turning over 
any judgment to God, we begin to find that-by letting 
go of condemning ourselves and others, the uncon­
scious guilt begins to alleviate fear since fear was 
held in mind because we unconsciously expected 
retaliatory return of our attacks. We expect revenge 
and counterattack. Every negative or hostile thought 
that we hold about others engenders our own fear­
fulness because on the psychic or mental plane, 
which is invisible to the naked eye, it is as though 
we are building up for ourselves that which threat­
ens to come back to us. We learn that fearfulness 
begins to diminish as we let go of our anger, hostility, 
criticisms, and thoughts that condemn others. We 
learn the value of letting go of the thoughts that 
make other people wrong. We begin to value and 
love them for their beingness, for what they are. We 
begin to see ourselves as different, and, therefore, we WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 285 
begin to see others as different. We become willing 
to forgive, forget, and overlook. As a result, we start to see that all the things we 
condemned in others are really just expressions of 
their humanness. What we have been condemning in 
ourselves and in everybody else is the humanness, 
the innocence of the little child within that believed 
everything it heard while growing up. The conscious­
ness of the child is innocent, is it not. It loves and 
trusts its parents. It loves its mother. Therefore, the 
innocence of the child gets programmed. It is the 
innocent child that believes everything it is told by 
the parents, teachers, and the political/social pro­
gramming that occurs via television and the belief 
systems of the country. Who or what bought all the belief systems in our 
mind. Who bought what we believe. It was the mind 
of the innocent within because that innocent child's 
mind, the nature of consciousness itself, has not 
changed since we were born. That which is reading this 
right now is the innocent consciousness of the child 
saying, "I believe this. I take it within myself. "The inno­
cent child never dies; that innocence is still present. We 
see in today's world the actions ofignorant, susceptible 
young men who are being programmed to hate (para­
doxically by religion). They then believe hate and 
killing the innocent are 'good' or even 'holy'. We begin to see that intrinsic innocence and realize 
that all the things we have ever learned which ended 
up being wrong were bought out of the intrinsic state 
of not knowing the truth and also from learning that 
which was not the truth. Therefore, we are willing to 286 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
let go ofourcondemnation ofothers and ourselves. We 
are beginning to own our own innocence and that of 
others. It is misfortunate and perhaps regretful that the 
misinformation came into the innocent mind. We might look at the mind as the hardware of the 
computer and its belief systems as the software. Can 
the five-year-old child question the political system he 
hears described in his kindergarten from his fellow stu­
dents, his parents, or his grandparents. We can see that 
it is from his 'not knowingness'. It is out of the inno­
cence of his 'not knowingness' that he believes what 
he believes. As a result, we are willing to forgive others, 
and instead ofcondemning them,we understand them. From this understanding develops a certain com­
passion. A compassionate person has no fears. What is 
there to fear in a compassionate world inasmuch as we 
are the source ofour own experience and our compas­
sion when we own it back within ourselves. We see 
our own innocence and the innocence of other beings 
and have the experience of a compassionate, loving 
world. No longer do we walk around fearfully because 
we are no longer creating it within ourselves. We see 
that we were the source of our fears. The world was 
never the source of our fear; we were. Having let go of 
creating fear and propagating it through endless guilt, 
which comes about through endless judgments that 
social conditioning has thrust upon us, the uncon­
scious guilt diminishes. The letting go of unconscious 
guilt progresses outside of our awareness. Every time we decide to stop condemning a person 
and instead try to understand him, our own store of 
unconscious guilt goes down. In the unconscious, it is W 0 RR Y, FEAR, AND AN X lETY 287 
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If we wish 
that somebody would drop dead, what do you suppose 
its equal is in our unconscious mind. That we should 
drop dead. We do not think that our thought about "If 
only so-and-so would drop dead" has anything to do 
with our fears of a heart attack, but, of course, they do. As we let go of wishing for other people to drop dead, 
we will find, curiously enough, that our fear and obses­
sion that we might or will get a coronary and all the 
dietary precautions that go with that, will diminish. Instead, we are very peaceful about the whole thing. When we go, we go. Ifwe stay, we stay. Big deal. What we value is life, and we no longer focus on the 
potential ending of that life; therefore, we come into a 
different experience of the experiencing of life and 
who we are. We are that in which this experiencing is 
happening. Then, as the classic ox-herding pictures 
depict, instead of being dragged about with bleeding 
knees and rumpled clothes against our will by the ox 
of fear, we can now tie this ox to a tree because we 
have located the culprit. Having let go ofour fear of the 
ox, we now become the master. We get on top of the 
ox, and the ox becomes tame; we are the master. We 
have identified with that which we really are and are 
no longer the victim. Victimhood comes out of unconsciousness. It 
means being unaware of this game setup that has been 
going on within our minds. Merely becoming aware of 
this means that we are already out ofit. By the time you 
have finished reading this, you have gotten up from 
being the victim; you are already tying this ox to the 
tree. As we practice these techniques that have been 288 HEALING AND RECOVERY 
described, we will soon be sitting on top of the ox. When fear comes along, we welcome it and say, 
"Great. What an opportunity to let go of more of that," 
because by now, we are feeling the benefit of the 
decrease in the fears we have had our whole lifetime. Little do people realize the extent of the fears they are 
holding until they begin to disappear, and then it is 
mind-boggling. We say, "I never realized 1 was such a 
fearful human being:' This is perhaps more easily 
understood by referring to the Map of Consciousness 
so we can see how the energy fields relate to the way 
we experience the world. Mind is so powerful that the way it holds our expe­
rience literally determines our experience. Fearfulness 
creates a certain view of the world and tends to 
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent university 
research, as well as our own research, shows that what 
one holds in mind tends to manifest within one's expe­
rience of the world. The world of our own experience 
then becomes the external representation of what we 
have been holding in mind, so our life is really a world 
of mirrors. What we are actually seeing and experienc­
ing is a projection of our own level of consciousness. This is difficult to believe and fully grasp, but to give us 
a glimpse ofit is a whole field ofstudy in itself. The sage 
Ramana Maharshi taught that the world you see (per­
ception) does not even exist and is illusory (the 
Buddha's "Maya"). On the Map of Consciousness, let us compare the 
level of consciousness with its emotion, our view of 
the world, and how this would give us a view of God. At the bottom of the Map is a negative energy field WORRY, FEAR, AND ANXIETY 289 
called Guilt that calibrates at a power of 30. It is the 
world of self-hatred, self-destruction, and a person 
who is guilt-ridden. Section summary: 

This passage discusses spirituality and crisis management strategies. Key ideas include:
* During intense disasters/catastrophe (~25% mortality rate among survivors)
   * Surrender/complete acceptance ~vs~
     intellectual analysis;
       -    Avoid attempting to fix/chgane circumstances;

Note : Summaries require concise language,
specific detail retention & avoidance repetition. Here’s rewritten version according to guidelines

Summary :

Spirituality involves embracing challenges/head-on vs analytical approaches. Crisis periods offer growth potential, yet individuals typically sidestep genuine engagement ("avoid fixing/taming") towards solutions rooted solely in the divine realm ('Soul'). Emphasis lies on acknowledging limitations (‘’ego-death’) versus avoiding responsibility/facing the unknown/unwanted outcome. ''

For accurate comprehension,

Key Takeaways:

• Accept chaos/drama/hardships—direct facing/solution. We've overlooked fundamental insights. Please provide feedback regarding clarity/concreteness
& suggest improvements

Thank You.
Spiritual work is not just about studying a textbook, looking at a picture of a guru, and singing songs, but rather about facing and confronting the crisis head-on, and making a leap in consciousness.
What is the true nature of spiritual work?
Catastrophic experiences are opportunities for spiritual growth and transformation, and they can bring about a profound inner realization and connection with something greater than the personal self.
What is the purpose of catastrophic experiences?
The key to overcoming fear is not to try to change the external situation, but to let go of resisting the inner experience of the fear and focus on the sensations in the body, rather than the thought about it.
What is the key to overcoming fear?
The relationship between fear and the body is that the body is not the source of fear, but rather the energy field of fearfulness that is being experienced in consciousness.
What is the relationship between fear and the body?
The ultimate goal of spiritual work is not to change the world or the situation, but to realize that we are the source of our own fear and guilt, and to let go of our resistance to the experience, allowing us to transcend fear and become a master of our own life.
What is the ultimate goal of spiritual work?