Fear gives us life. Being afraid of the right things kept our ancestors alive. It makes sense to be afraid of heights or hungry tigers, but what about fear when there is no clear and obvious  danger? What is fear?

According to most recent study, there are things that scare us most and those are: suffocation, falling a test, injury of a loved one, death of a loved one, your own death, being self-conscious, not being a success, snakes, nuclear war, speaking in front of a group, looking foolish, terrorist attack, spiders, war, making mistakes, the future, being alone and criminal or gang violence.

Things that scare us most can, and do, stimulate threat or danger, when there is no particular threat. For example, seeing a snake or a big spider, even from a safe distance, can cause a flow of chemicals that induce anxiety. If there is no real threat facing our life, what is the difference between fear and danger?

Fear philosophy

An unrealistic perception of life is the bases of fear. People are not willing to live; people are not willing to die. The fear is simply because we don’t live in a realistic life, but we are living in our mind. Fear is always about what is going to happen next. That means fear is about things that do not exist.

If fear is about nonexistent, our fear is 100% imaginative. If we suffer the non-existential, we call that insanity. People may have socially accepted levels of insanity, but if we are afraid or if we suffer something which does not exist we are suffering insanity? It makes sense after all.

People are always afraid of what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow, so fear is about thing that doesn’t exist. Simply because we are not by conquered reality, we are always conquered by our mind.

One part of the mind is memory and another part is imagination. Both of them are imagination because both of them do not exist right now. We are lost in our imagination, and that is basis of fear. If we are present in reality, there would be no fear.

It is actually an acronym of:

F – false
E – evidence (expectations)
A – appearing
R – real

Everything that happens, even to you at this moment reading this text, your unconscious mind is recording everything that’s going on around you. You are not paying attention to everything that’s going on, but your unconscious is recording it. It is taking in the words your reading, its taking in what specifically you are looking at and it’s taking in sounds around you.

It’s also taking in subtle things such as room temperature, lighting, the pressure of the clothing against our skin, the pressure on our body when its leaning on a piece of furniture and our foot on the floor. All of these things are imprinted in our unconscious mind.

Now, when we have a bad experience, let’s say a relationship, when we have a breakup, our unconscious doesn’t filter these things, but it connects all of them to that experience.

Next time when you come in to a similar situation and fear kicks up, what your unconscious is doing is bringing up all those past associations, the false evidence, meaning that “this present moment is not the same as the past”, but the evidence that’s been brought up to help you deal with that situation are from your past experience.

We don’t consciously think about it when the fear shows up. All we know is that we feel scared and that fear is real.

Danger philosophy

On the other side, the realistic things such as energy and matter, danger is very real.

When we compare danger and fear we compare reality versus something nonexistent, or something made up by our past and our momentum consciousness.

We can conceive that fear is pretty real by upcoming fist to our face, or by car coming straight in our way. Then we have realistic threat of hurt, broken nose and even death. This is pretty real, while the fear by car coming in our way, or fist coming to our face, by no real threat just by imagining these things, is stated as nonexistent or fear.

Danger is materialistic. It’s what gives, as a fact, a way that we need to activate our brain and think in particular direction. A robber pointing a gun at our face is pretty good example of danger.

While the philosophy about danger is not pretty vast, because its real thing combined from a real thread, we can compare both, fear and danger, to a dot connecting both philosophies.

Both, Fear and Danger

Fear of what might happen, connects our consciousness to a level that visualizes our mind towards that thing as a real thread.

We can control both fear and danger, by staying in present time. All the meditation, yoga and exercises are nourishing our mind chemicals, or endorphins, to clear the threat of something that might or might never happen.

The opposite of fear are assurance, calmness, confidence, ease, faith, joy and happiness. The exact things achieved by endorphins (the feel good chemicals) and dopamine (brain chemical that gives reward-motivated behavior) are on the other side of fear.

While danger cannot be predicted, we can prepare for it.

Fifteen or twenty years ago there was a survey what people are afraid of. Number two was death and (believe it or not) number one was public speaking.

So what’s the danger of public speaking? The danger of public speaking is that one might flub every word he is supposed to say.

Fear of anything, even the number one in the world “public speaking”, can be overcome and practiced. Overcoming the world’s most fearing thing can be a great boost of dopamine and endorphins for each individual.

But as I mentioned in my first paragraph, fear gives us life and being afraid of the right things kept our ancestors alive which proves that fear is omnipresent (as our imagination). What can really help is to control ourselves while it’s present and while it still hasn’t formed realistic danger. We shouldn’t let nonexistent stress kidnap our well-being.

One example for overcoming both (Number one and number two) would be preparing and practicing for public speaking (if needed) and living life to the fullest and overcome the fear of death.

“Being afraid of the right things kept our ancestors alive.”