Fear is the movement of thought, a friend explains: “When we are in deep sleep, there are no thoughts and we experience no fear even if a snake glides close to us. But when we are awake, the sight of even a coiled piece of rope can fill us with fear, because our mind thinks that the coiled rope is a snake.”
The devil sits on the shoulder and whispers, in man’s ear, different types of fears. The fear of criticism is his most powerful weapon in his hands. He plants in the mind these thoughts: – “—what people will say?” Or, the judgement, “– you can’t do it; or the dread, “—you will fail, rejected and ridiculed.”
Fear of poverty — He puts the fear of losing material wealth, in a person’s mind and pushes him to cheat and eat any individual with weaker brain, not physically but financially. The demon softly s says, “— behind every successful cheat there is a fool waiting to be cheated.”
Fear of discovery — Some are tempted by a cruel person to cook blames with lies and throw the stone of one’s own fault on others. But the dubious waves nag the mind that their untruth will be detected, tomorrow, this month or years later.
Mischievous spirit puts the fear of ill health horror and the old age shudder of solitude in the mind of many persons. Growing old is a biological tragedy. But old folks at home hear the whispers of fear of being deserted in the house like Robinson Crusoe who was abandoned on an unknown island.
The effect of fear brings about fatigue, depression; and long-term fear can even accelerate ageing. These negative thoughts of fear have a powerful effect as seen in the experiment of a medical man, Harvey C Roys, who once took a cat into the x-ray room and fed it with a special meal and by means of a fluoroscope he studied the action of the cat’s stomach. He saw that the muscle waves mixed the food which carried on the digestive process. When he brought a dog into the room, the muscle waves in the cat‘s stomach stopped, its digestive process ceased and the cat suffered from indigestion due to fear.
In order to triumph over fear, we should have self-confidence. I quote a poem which expresses this truth: “If you think you are beaten, you are; If you think you dare not, you don’t; If you like to win, but you think you can’t; It is almost certain you won’t. If you think you’ll lose you’ve lost; For out of the world we find success begins with a fellow’s will. It’s all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are. You’ve got to think high to rise. You’ve got to be sure of yourself before you can ever win a prize. Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; But soon or late the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”
The journey of a hundred miles, of living free of fear, begins with the first step of total surrender to God, Psalm 91: 5 says — You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day.
