Chapter - 1

If You Can Analyze Your Fears You Can Overcome Them

Fear is the world's number one problem . . . most of our fears are hidden . . . take a constructive and fearless look at fear . . . you can't have fear and good health too.

Story From Life:

The Woman Who Lived with a Ghost

"Fear is the painful emotion caused by a sense of impending danger, or evil; dread."-Webster

Working with people with problems for more than twenty-five years has convinced me that fear gives rise to more trouble in the life and affairs of the individual than all other causes put together. And yet:

The hardest part of my job as a religious counselor in helping others to help themselves is to get them to face their hidden fears. For fear often is the real trouble, the underlying cause and not the problem they have come to talk about, which actually is the outgrowth or effect that the hidden, unrecognized fear has produced.

Therefore, the first step in overcoming fear is to analyze the problem we face to uncover possible hidden fears. When found, we handle them in the same way that we handle the open or recognized fears. But most of our fears are hidden. For example:

Let me tell you about the woman who lived with a ghost.

This lady, whom we can call Mrs. Pollard, obviously ill and suffering, came to me saying her doctor had told her frankly he could find nothing organically wrong with her, and suggested that she see a psychiatrist. But Mrs. Pollard had heard me lecture and had read several of my books. She came to ask if I would pray with her about her health and what she was sure was a threat of loss of her eyesight.

I explained to her that it is almost useless to pray concerning a problem until we have analyzed it and know for sure what it is we need to pray for and about. Since fear is the root of so much physical and mental illness, I asked her, "What is it that makes you afraid?"

At first she repeated there was nothing except fear of losing her health and eyesight. But when we got into her life story I discovered the fact that about a year earlier she had been afraid she was losing her husband's love to another woman. She tried many ways to hold his love but all of them failed. She then decided that if she could not have love she would settle for sympathy and pity in order to hold him by her side. She began to fake illness and failing eyesight. "Will you please drive me today, dear," she would say. "I'm afraid I'm losing my sight. I will be driving along, and suddenly, I just can't see."

Her husband was greatly concerned and became unusually attentive. Mrs. Pollard liked all that new concern and so she added an imaginary heart trouble to her illness list. Before very long she was convinced her husband had given up the other woman but she felt it necessary to continue her pretenses. In the meantime, the power of her word had started to deliver to her the conditions which she had described, pretended and talked about so vividly. She was not aware of the fact that she actually was asking for those conditions. She was daily and sometimes hourly using the creative power of her word in the form of saying, "It is so." This method of using our creative power can be far more effective when accompanied by deep feeling than the formal procedure of asking or commanding "Let there be!" Her fears had aroused deep feelings which were gaining control of her health.

This had gone on until now she had all the symptoms, and pains of the sicknesses she had pretended. The first tests showed her eyesight was good; that she had not outgrown her glasses. But now, for stretches at a time she could not see to read the newspaper, and she no longer drove her car.

Again, the first tests showed that she had no organic heart trouble. But now there were times when her heart skipped beats, pounded and "fluttered so that she felt faint." At other times severe pains "tore through her heart and raced down her arm until she was certain she was having a heart attack." She said she no longer feared losing her husband; that they had come to a new and good understanding which she felt would last. But she was afraid of losing her health and while she could not admit it at first, she was afraid of dying. For all ill health is a degree of walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Ill health is a taste of death.

Now, the underlying cause of her trouble was this:
Mrs. Pollard felt guilty for having deceived her husband, who was still very much concerned about her health. When her first doctor told him, "I have found nothing wrong with your wife," Mr. Pollard was angry, called the doctor incompetent and demanded that they find one who knew his business.

But Mrs. Pollard, feeling certain a second doctor would find the illnesses real, told her husband she did not want to trust another doctor; that she would rather try spiritual therapy. He was willing for her to come to me.

"I need an awful lot of prayer," the suffering woman sighed. "I know I have done wrong. I was living a lie in my deceit," she confessed.

But she could not bring herself to admit that she was afraid of displeasing God. She was unconsciously trying to punish herself in order to expiate her sense of guilt. Feelings are deeper than reason and do not stop to consult reason unless forced to do so. Mrs. Pollard actually felt that she was being made ill by God, as punishment. Subconsciously she felt she deserved punishment.

But in her conscious, reasoning mind, she wanted to be forgiven and restored to health, hence her requests for prayer.

"The answer to prayer depends upon faith," I explained and with this she could agree, having had Christian training. But she was not yet ready, able or willing to see that she first had to resolve her conflict before she could have much faith that her prayers could and would be answered.

My objective was to get her to see that she had to come to a firm decision: "I want to be sick and be punished and get rid of my sense of guilt"; or, "I want to get well and stay well." To do that she would have to recognize her basic fear, analyze it and then overcome it.

She wanted to continue talking about being afraid she might become an invalid and be confined to her room or to a hospital bed, or face the world without sight. To have permitted her to keep on talking in that way would have been to allow her to go around in a circle wearing her fear patterns into a deep rut.

I find that many people who have gone to psychiatrists, psychologists and other helpers have come to grief for that very reason: going around in a circle, failing to take a step out and up, and so wearing their rut into a deep ditch from which they then cannot climb out alone. This often is the result of failing to analyze the problem until the fear is found. Until it is found there is no basis for work. A great many earnest Christians whose health has not been restored through prayer become frustrated and give up prayer therapy. They either become resigned to ill health and say it is the will of God, or conclude there is no healing power in prayer. Mrs. Pollard was one of such people.

I finally got Mrs. Pollard to see she needed to face facts about her hidden and open fears. To do that, she would have to see clearly the false beliefs about life, the nature of God and man and their relationship, which had given rise to those fears. Since this is part of the method used in analyzing and overcoming all fear, it will help us to look into it thoroughly at this point.

My objective with Mrs. Pollard was to help her do the following:

1. Analyze her problem until the fear was uncovered.

Not all problems arise from fear. Sometimes a problem is the result of laziness, indifference, lack of accurate information or any one of many other causes. Problems of life are normal. They present opportunities for growth. Some problems present a happy challenge and contain no fear whatever. But Mrs. Pollard was definitely suffering from fear. So we needed to take all the steps.

2. Analyze her fears until we uncovered the false belief that gave rise to them. Because we never can get around this fact: all fear arises from a false belief.

3. Find new information, facts which she could accept and which together would give her a new belief and attitude toward herself, her problem and all life. This is a process of learning the truth which will set the sufferer free from fear.

We studied together the four basic false beliefs which give rise to fear. They are:

1. Belief that there are two powers in the Universe, and that one of them is evil; for example, the belief that there is a God and a Devil. This belief gives rise to the fear that evil can and may overcome good.

2. Belief that there are two sides to God's nature: love and hate, and that the hate side can and may demand vengeance and give out punishment of an angry or jealous God. This gives rise to the fear of having displeased God, or that we will be punished or that we never can know the Will of God and so are doomed to suffer.

3. Belief that there is no God. This gives rise to the fear of final defeat of every desire of the heart; that all through life each man is at the mercy of all other men.

Here the evil power resides in other men and in the natural world around us, and death ends all. This is the recognized Communist belief.

4. Belief that God or "some great power" does exist, but man never can contact Him or know Him. This is the belief known as separation. It gives rise to the fear of being inadequate to the problems of life, of competition with others and of loneliness. It often is the cause of deep melancholy, mental illness and crime and in instances leads to suicide. Here the evil power resides in others, circumstances, nature, with no help to be had from God.

But regardless of which of the four basic false beliefs is held consciously or unconsciously, the net belief is the same: that evil can overcome good. This belief gives rise to fear, the "painful emotion caused by a sense of impending danger or evil."

After much discussion of the four basic false beliefs, I asked Mrs. Pollard whether she believed in a personal devil.

"No," she protested impatiently. "I don't believe in the devil or hell or anything like that. I got over that superstition years ago. It belongs to the dark ages."

"But you believe you deserve punishment?"

"Yes. All wrongdoing should be punished. We punish our children when they are disobedient or bad. We must, if we are to train them."

"Who or what is to do the punishing in your case?" I asked.

"God," she answered unhesitatingly.

"Then you believe there are two sides to God's nature, one of love and one of hate or vengeance?"

We discussed that point at great length. We consulted the New Testament, statements of modern science and our own common sense. We even tested our belief about God and man's relationship to Him in comparison with our belief about the ideal relationship between earth parents and children.

As Mrs. Pollard accepted idea after idea the expression on her face and in her eyes began to change from confusion and suffering to that of intense curiosity and hope. After a while she said:

"Yes, but if God does not punish us for wrongdoing how can the world be kept a safe, fit place to live in? We couldn't do without police and laws and jails," she argued.

"The spiritual laws under which we live on earth were all set up before man's time here began," I said. "These laws are self-executing. Wherever we find power we find laws under which it operates. You used the creative power of your word to bring sickness upon yourself under the law of cause and effect. You spoke the word for sickness. You acted it out. You pictured it. You declared it to be so. It had to become manifest."

"You mean I am punishing myself instead of God punishing me?"

"Yes, on two counts," I replied. "First, through wrong use of the creative power and second because you really want to be punished. We all need status with God because we all want eternal life. How can we achieve our heart's desire if God does not love us? There is a deeper cause back of your desire to be punished. You have developed spiritually to the place of wanting to cooperate with God's Project, Man. Your desire for punishment is a form of saying you are sorry for your wrongdoing and want God to accept your love and include you in His plans. You want to pay for your misdeeds so that you can feel free again."

To that, Mrs. Pollard finally could agree. But she also asked, "How can I stop punishing myself?" Once again she wanted to talk about her fears of loss of health and eyesight and of being confined to a sick bed. After again warning her she must stop picturing the conditions she did not want, and to stop accepting into her mind any condition she did not want in her body, and to start to picture those conditions she did deserve, we went back to our work.

"The Bible tells us that to resolve such problems as yours we must confess, repent and seek salvation," I said. I explained to Mrs. Pollard that the original meaning of those words was not what theology has built up around them, but simply to talk over the problem with God and another person, to make a sober turning of the mind and then to go back in thought and feeling to that place of peace and happiness which the belief in a God of love gives us.

Mrs. Pollard needed to feel that God already had forgiven her before she had asked, even before she had disobeyed God by breaking the law of love. She had to see that the only change necessary was within her own mind, to come to an understanding with God, to know that all was right between her and God her Father Creator. Such understanding would dissolve her fears, because it is psychologically impossible to be at one with the good we desire and at the same time to know fear. The great rule in overcoming fear is to remember:

If we had no desires we would have no fears.

Therefore:
 
To feel absolutely certain that we will receive the good we desire is to dissolve fear.

In this first chapter we are laying the groundwork for analyzing and overcoming all our fears. It is advisable to take another look at the principle involved before going on with Mrs. Pollard's story.

In the final analysis fear is a feeling we will not get the good we desire, or that something bad is going to happen that we do not want to happen but are powerless to prevent. As soon as we know how to obtain the good, or to prevent the bad from happening, the fear is transformed into hope which then sets up some form of action —physical, mental or spiritual and generally all three. The more action that takes place the higher faith rises, for the flow of energy has been reversed with the reversal of belief. This continues until the problem is solved. We then move along on a plateau until some other situation arises which threatens our good. This starts another circle of fear to faith to accomplishment and peace. Or so it has been for generations but here we are going to learn how to handle it briefly, fully and so repeatedly that overcoming fear becomes an automatic habit for us.

It took considerable time and effort but Mrs. Pollard finally was ready for the prayers for which she had come. We read again:

"If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1:9)

Our prayer was a simple, childlike confession and asking of forgiveness. We also expressed our love, joy and gratitude for the love of God which is beyond our human understanding and for our gratitude for Mrs. Pollard's having become aware of truth that had set her free from fear and would continue to do so.

After our prayers Mrs. Pollard "felt much better." But she still was troubled in spirit. She had accepted the fact that she must sin no more lest a worse thing come upon her; that once we have been healed through a knowledge and use of spiritual laws we no longer can plead ignorance of the law. To attempt to do so is to set up more sense of guilt and fears. All this she understood so I asked her what was still troubling her.

"Will the ghost I have been living with all these months continue to haunt me?" she asked. "I am afraid my husband might find out the truth and that he would think ill of me the rest of my life. That would hurt more than giving him up to another woman."

"The thing to do with a troublesome ghost," I said, "is to dissolve it. Fears do create ghosts of things and conditions in our minds which we do not want in our lives. These can all be dissolved by vibrations of high faith and love. Not to do so is to run the danger of putting life into them. The Bible warns us that the power to do this rests in our own mouth, in our own word. This is the power by which the word becomes flesh. It is a good power, given to every man who has reached the status of free will. It is part of man's dominion given to him by God. We cannot turn the power off. So we must learn to use it to create good or suffer the consequences of creating unwanted things and conditions."

In her fears, Mrs. Pollard had mentally been seeing the look of revulsion on her husband's face, should he learn of her deceit. She had been hearing his words of condemnation. She had been thinking and picturing how she would fare in the world without him. All this was the body of her ghost. She had to start picturing her husband's great joy at her complete healing, to hear his words of gratitude for the power of prayer. She was to plan happy times with her husband, to think, see, feel, hear and know that all was well between them, just as all was now well between herself and God. Since God had forgiven her and she had forgiven herself, she had to believe her husband's love was bigger than her mistake. To believe he would not forgive her was to harm him and herself. This would be breaking the law of love.

Her final question was: Should she confess all to her husband?

"No," I replied. "Not now. Wait until you both have grown. Some day you will sit down and talk and laugh together about the mistakes you both made. By that time all the pain will have gone from the experience and only the lessons remain."

So before she left that final day, Mrs. Pollard had been completely restored to health. She was happy and grateful. This was the beginning of her serious study of spiritual laws, in which her husband joined her. For, he confessed to me, he held himself responsible for his wife's broken health. He had a good many fears of his own to overcome and especially the one fear that had sent him out seeking the admiration and approval of a younger woman. Together they learned to obey that highest of the spiritual laws—love. Eventually they achieved that status of well being which I tell my students is to "join the happy throng."

It will help us to look a bit further into Mrs. Pollard's case. First, we see that she was suffering from a three-phase fear.

1. Fear of what would happen to her physical body, and to her life itself.

2. Fear of loss of Divine love, loss of respect of her husband and loss of her own self-respect.

3. Fear of loss of liberty or freedom, by being blind and helpless in sickness.

That is quite a load of fear for it includes the three basic fears of man. Out of these fears of threats to the body, mind and spirit, grow thousands of lesser, everyday fears, worries, tensions and anxieties. Small wonder that Mrs. Pollard was sick with fear.

"But that was a most unusual case," someone may say.

"Not at all," I must reply.

For example:

Arnold A. Hutschnecker, M.D., in his book, The Will to Live, says that the doctors do not know what is wrong with fully thirty to fifty per cent of the people who come to them. He says that even so the patient is really sick and he gives cases to prove his point. His book was published about ten years ago. Have conditions changed since then? Yes. They have grown worse. For at a recent meeting of medical men it was announced that seventy per cent of those who go to doctors have "no known organic trouble, no sickness at all which medical science can find, but nevertheless these patients are truly sick. Medically, little or nothing can be done for them. . . . The best the doctor can do is to help them understand the cause and source of their problems."

That is what Mrs. Pollard finally understood—the cause and source of her problem and, having neutralized all her fears, she was healed.

A surgeon who takes care of patients in a Veterans hospital recently reported at a medical meeting that "a very large percentage of those admitted for surgery were found to be suffering only from fear."

Here in Pasadena, Dr. John F. Thie, D.C., who is known for outstanding success in manipulation, told me fear if unchecked can result in heart troubles. The fear, he explained, can bring on muscle spasms which first register as heart trouble. He told me of instances where anxiety, prolonged worry and tensions, all of which are forms of fear, affected the very bones of the patient. And I once worked with a young woman who said she knew the very hour the trouble with her leg bones began— because of a fear which was accompanied by revulsion where once there had been respect and love.

The findings of modern science—especially in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine—show us the tragic results of fear as it takes toll of the body, mind and spirit of man. These findings lately include the fact that "Fear is even more contagious than the most communicable disease," and that we often are victims of the "fears of others around us." But science does not tell us much about how those fears of others around us originated, and less still of how to protect ourselves from them. For such understanding and help, we must turn to religion. That is where the Pollards began.

As we proceed with our work here together we shall learn many things the Pollards learned. But here, we can present a few points:

1. God does not punish us for our sins. We are pu- ished by them.

2. God is a God of all love, all wisdom and all power.

3. Fear is the result of a false belief that evil can overcome good.

4. By learning to work with the spiritual laws we learn to control the conditions in our lives. We thus prevent fear before it can arise.

If your problem is ill health I respectfully suggest that you wait until you have read through this book before you start to analyze your problem and so overcome fears that may be giving rise to the trouble. There are nine steps to be taken in overcoming fear. We have studied only the first three. We shall take up the fourth in another chapter.

We can take a quick review of those first three steps:

1. Analyze your problem for possible hidden fears.

2. Analyze the fear you find, or already know you have until you uncover the false belief that gave rise to it. The four are listed in this chapter.

3. Find new information, facts which you understand and accept that will set you free from fear.

This we shall be doing throughout the book. Material will be found in our next chapter.

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