Chapter - 8

There Are No Fears Beyond Your Control

Master plan for overcoming ail fears . . . your future is in your hands . . . thought habits can make or break you . . . the most important thing to remember.

Story From Life:

The Man Who Lived with Monsters
With God nothing shall be impossible.-ST. LUKE 1:37

A few years ago a young man just out of the Army and home from his stint in Germany came to see me at the request of his mother.

"He is so discouraged, has such a gloomy outlook on life," she said, "that his father and I fear he will get sick or lose his mind." She wanted me to pray for him and, "if possible to cheer him up, and get a better viewpoint on life." He once had belonged to the church, but he had lost interest and no longer attended.

I like to think of that young man as George West. George, because he, too, had a dragon to slay; West, be-132 cause he had a heart and mind that belongs to the Western world of our day. He talked easily and to the point. But his face and voice were expressionless; his attitude was one of calm, hopeless resignation.

"I came," he explained, "to please mother. It's little enough to do for her. But I don't expect you or anyone else to help me. Mother lives in a world of unreality. She goes to church, joins her friends in doing good works to save the world. This keeps her happy, for which I am grateful. But they are not going to save the world. Nothing can save it."

"What makes you so sure that nothing can save the world? And to what is it to be lost?" I asked.

"Statistics are against us," he replied. "There aren't enough people worth saving or who even want to be saved. It is one vast Sodom and Gomorrah. Once, men became so evil that they brought on the flood as a cleansing measure. Next time, it will be fire and the quicker the better. Human beings have become monsters. I know. I had to live with them for years and now I read about them and see them everywhere." He then reeled off statistics about the "wickedness and stupidity" of our day. "Look at the picture in the United States today, wealthiest country in the world. Right now two thirds of the world still go hungry. But as soon as other nations get education and money they do the same destructive things. These spell doom for humanity," he said with an air of conviction.

"You may be absolutely right," I said, which surprised him. "If everything does end that way, I wonder how God will feel about His Project, Man? It surely would be heartbreaking when you consider the millions of years and the billions of human beings that have gone into His noble experiment."

George sat glooming but made no comment so I picked it up again:

"Do you suppose that if among all the worthless trash of humanity—the monsters you've described—God found just one person alive in the world today who measured up to His expectation that God would then not feel so badly about His experiment? I mean, if God found even one created being a success, wouldn't it prove to God that His idea had been sound; the pattern perfect? Do you suppose it would encourage God to try another few millions of years and throw another few billions of beings into the test tube? And do you personally think it would be worth the trying?"

"Well," said George thoughtfully, "if one turned out perfect it would prove the idea was sound. But even God can't go on wasting millions of years and billions of people in an effort to create a perfect man."

"What better has God got to do with His time?" I asked. "Should He go back to creating prehistoric creatures, more suns and blazing stars? Or is His creature man, with all his faults, His highest and best and most satisfying effort so far?"

"God could better put His time to creating something more worth while than man who has let Him down," said George. "There must be a creature higher than man."

"Could be," I agreed. "Scientists are now telling us that there are billions of planets and suns like ours and that doubtless some of them have intelligent beings on them. But as yet, we earth people have not proved that they exist. So perhaps Project Earth Man is important to God. In what way do you think God failed in setting up His plan? Was it because He gave man free will which he uses to get himself into trouble? Would the Project have worked out better if God had made man a puppet, pulled by strings?"

At the question of free-will man vs. puppet pulled by strings, George exploded. He talked for three solid hours, almost without pause. I served as the sandpaper against which he struck his matches of ideas, one after the other. When they flared up he saw a new light, and saw it for himself, which he used to examine his own beliefs and fears. He took up events of history, time and the march of man, the futility of acts outside the law of love and what he felt was wrong with the half-practice of the Christian religion. He ended up with, "Hell, it's never been tried!"

When he had about talked himself out I felt he was ready for the question I had been holding back. I put it to him: "What is there," I asked, "to keep you from being that one person God can count on?"

After a great deal more talk on his part, while I again ministered by listening, George finally said, "Nothing. Nothing but myself, I guess. My own mistakes; my own free-will acts. Perhaps I'm a monster, too—of a different breed, maybe, but a monster."

It was some time before George realized that in his statement he had solved the problem which he had thought was beyond solution. After talking about it at length we were ready to examine his fears and what had given rise to them.

"You are afraid that God's millions of years of work will be wasted; that the experiment, man, will fail through a fault of man himself, and that humankind will be annihilated," I said. "And further, that it ought to be so annihilated."

"Exactly," George admitted, greatly relieved.

We looked up the word annihilate. Webster says it means "To reduce to nothing; as to be utterly annihilated. To destroy the form or essential character of, so that the thing as such no longer exists. To destroy the force of; to make void."

We studied the meaning of the word annihilate at length.

"But how could God annihilate the force in man?" I asked. "The life force in man is God. As Jesus taught, God is within you. Can God annihilate Himself even to the degree that He is invested in man?"

"Well, no," said George, reaching out for firm ground for his groping desires for answers that would comfort and sustain.
"Then man cannot annihilate himself either. To do so would be to annihilate a part of God. Can man—the created—go above God his Creator?" I asked.

George worked the idea up and down and around. In a burst of enthusiasm he said, "I guess man just has to continue to exist no matter how damned foolish he may be."

"I think so," I agreed.

After a long silence George said, "Looks like God is stuck with us. Having given us free will there is no way to get rid of us. And what's more, we are stuck with ourselves, too."

I nodded in agreement.

Much later George added: "It may be that we, God and man, are bound together for eternity. There probably is no way of separation."

So began our studies together. George left my home that day with a goal in life; with a tremendous dream in his heart, perhaps the most important dream a man ever can have. For he had made a holy promise to God, himself, and without his recognizing the fact at the time, a promise to humanity. It was this:

"From here on God can count on me."

Looking a bit farther at George's fears will help us to overcome all fear. His fear was this: God will be defeated because man will fail. Man will fail because he does not sufficiently care to try to discipline himself thoroughly for success.

In George's mind, that evil power, that something greater than God was man's baser, animal nature, his spiritual immaturity, weakness and ignorance. The very fact that George was so concerned that he wanted God to succeed was a kind of proof that God's plan would not fail. George began to heal from the moment he saw that truth. Always it is the truth that sets us free from fear.

He went from that point to researching the story of man on earth; to watch in awe the steady growth through the ages of this being God created. He convinced himself that man often is down but never out, that he can right himself after every mistake, every deluge. As George raised the level of his own consciousness because of the new determination in his heart, he left the old level of fear and went up higher. There he soon drew to himself facts, truth, new friends who were not monsters but fearless, happy and busy people. He began to feel and to say, "There are no fears beyond man's control."

George wanted some facts to share with others. Here are some that helped him:

1. Until a man can be led by the spirit of love he is driven by fears.

Primitive man thought "These things are bigger than I am" and so was afraid. Dangers around him forced him to think. His desires—and threats to their fulfillment— led him to try, inquire, acquire, experiment, dare and so, to grow. It was not the mind nor the body strength that kept man marching onward and upward. Many modern scientists today agree with religionists on this point. Lecomte du Noüy in his monumental book, Human Destiny makes this clear. Man's free will to choose—for moral, spiritual growth—is the power that led him forward and this same power wrongly used holds him back. We still face the choice: love or perish. Ever it is his spirit, feeling, intent, purpose, deep desire which have directed man's mind and body and brought him from earliest beginnings to now.

2. Perfection is possible.

The following (from Du Noüy's book just mentioned) helped George greatly:

Human progress, therefore, no longer depends solely on God but on the effort made by each man individually. By giving man liberty and conscience God abdicated a part of his omnipotence in favor of his creature, and this represents the spark of God in man . . . Liberty is real, for God Himself refused to trammel it. It is necessary, for without it man cannot progress, cannot evolve.

The animal struggle against nature, against the elements, and against the enemy, the "struggle for Life," from which the human form finally emerged after ten million centuries, is transformed into a struggle of Man against the remains of the animal within him. But, from now on, because of his conscience, it is the individual alone who counts and no longer the species. He will prove that he is the forerunner of the future race, the ancestor of the spiritually perfect man, of which Christ was, in a sense, the premature example, by emerging victorious from the fight. Thus Christ can be assimilated to one of the intermediary, transitional forms, perhaps a million years in advance of evolution, Who came amongst us to keep us from despair. He in truth died for us, for had He not been crucified, we would not have been convinced.
Consequently, any restriction to liberty of conscience is contrary to the great law of evolution, that is, to the divine Will, and represents Evil.

George finally said, "So we have to let them be monsters if they still want to be, since God Himself does not force them to grow."

3. Fear always springs from ignorance.

It long has been known that the fears and phobias of primitive peoples are far more numerous and more intense than those of highly civilized people. Psychologist Marie Hackel Means directed a project at Alabama College testing and tabulating the fears of one thousand students. It was determined that the higher the IQ the less the student was subject to fear. Fear belongs to cave days. Caution is good and necessary. It belongs to the space age. Caution is seeing a danger and avoiding it. Fear is the feeling of being at the mercy of something outside of oneself.

4. Look forward to something better in your own life.

Every experience in life, all events of history should teach us plainly that we are being prepared for a higher form of life or beingness. Every new discovery of science opens the doors to vast new areas of facts that exist but have not yet been touched. It is a chain reaction. Expanding knowledge creates new desires to know. Man is being taken upward and forward as rapidly as his willing cooperation will permit. The individual's progress is not held back to the level of the group. For growth is a matter of morals and fearlessness. It is an individual matter.

5. Look for constant improvement of the human race.

All people desire to be better. We carry around a blueprint of perfection in our heart, as great men of all ages have told us. Plato says that perfection exists, for if it did not, we could not think of it. He and other philosophers and religionists say that the seed of perfection is in God; that our desire for good and for perfection is God seeking to awaken our consciousness and draw us to Him. This is why prayer works, and why we want to pray.

6. Respect your longings and yearnings.

Our longings for good for ourselves and others are the voice of God inviting us to come up higher. All the roads of yearning lead home. Home is first cause, God, where our desires come from, and where fulfillment is to be found. Good moves in a circle.

7. Your future is in your hands.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," says the Bible. If we will control our thinking we can control our future and eliminate fear from our lives.

In Chapter 7 we learned that the people with the dream that makes men great and fearless and free had taken step eight to overcome fear which is: Trust God to take you through. Knowing that you can count on God is faith of the highest order.

In this chapter we saw how George West took step nine in overcoming fear by being the kind of person God can count on. This is a three-level love of God, neighbor and self, which casts out fear. It is love in action. We cannot long hold that dream in our heart, without changing for the better. We cannot entertain the idea that God can count on us, and not begin to realize we can count on God. We come to know beyond doubt there is meaning to life, with help and protection to be had for the asking and accepting. When we come to that we are safe and secure forever.

"But I am not perfect," someone may say. "I cannot take that last step. It is too high for me to reach. What am I to do?"

You can pray: "Father, please help me to be a better person."

That is a most powerful prayer. "Better" includes everything you want to improve—body, mind and spirit. Your affairs will improve automatically. "Person" includes all that you are. It is confession, repentance, and seeking salvation. It can be a prayer of utter faith reaching the believe-receive intensity that produces results. I can testify to the changing of many lives through this one simple prayer.

So, think it through. Perhaps you'll discover the fact that God can depend upon you! If so, you will be able to take all the other steps and completely overcome all fear.

We explained the working of the first five steps in the previous chapters. We named steps six and seven. But we still must look at how they work out in order to complete our master plan for overcoming all fear.

Step six: when a fear arises face the worst that could happen.

Step seven: After you face the worst that could happen be willing for it—the worst—to happen or be so, or continue.

For example:

Let us consider the problem of ill health in old age. This is the way the steps are taken.
1. Look at the problem and name it: sickness, or ill health.

2. Look at the fear: threat to life.

3. Face the worst that could happen: death.

4. Now, be willing for it to be so. This is done by meditation and prayer that lead to higher realization. On this problem we can say:

God is responsible for my life after the transition called death. That is out of my hands. It is God's business and I can be very sure that He has taken care of it before I was born. Father, you gave me life and sent me into the world. I will trust you to take care of me now and take me on into a new life in the next experience you have prepared for me. If it is time for me to die then I die happily, in peace, with songs of praise and thanksgiving.

5. Having faced the worst and been willing for it to be so, you now proceed to ask yourself this question:

Then what? You are willing to die. Then what? Then where is life itself that was in you? Continue to question and you will be forced back to the beginning: God. Then you will see that it is not death that is the worst enemy or threat, but the annihilation of the Self, the personality, the You of you. That is the final fear. That is the worst that could happen. Because that is the threat to the greatest of all our urges, or desires—eternal life with our individual Self intact. So we come to the rock bottom of the matter. We face it. We say, "I shall not only die, but shall cease to be, forever." Face it. Accept it. Be willing for it to be so.

6. But continue to ask yourself, Then what? Your soul will begin to give you the answers that will wipe out your last fear. Because finally, all fears are folded in the fear of death and the beyond death. Persist: Then what? Until you get the answer. It will come. Finally you will see and can say, "/ was made to last forever." You will have reached through to truth.

The chronological steps of overcoming fear—from step one through step nine—will be found in the last chapter, on "How to Get the Most Out of This Book."

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