A certain fearlessness has developed in me. For those of you familiar with English grammar, you may have noticed that I used the passive voice in the previous sentence. Passive seems appropriate because I have not intentionally sought out this fearlessness to which I refer now. In other words, it has not been an active process.
What am I talking about? I ask myself this everyday. What does it mean to suggest that I have become fearless? Simply stated, I no longer fear the end. Have I ever feared the end? I'm not sure, but I think maybe the end to me means something not quite so obvious. I mean to say, the end to me means the relinquishment of beliefs in external mythologies, i.e. religions, faiths, new ageisms, etc.
When I was a kid, I feared the devil. I used to pray every night before bed and ask God to send his army of angels to protect me from Satan and his minions. I feared being taken to some kind of fiery hell; I feared death because I was immersed in the mythology of religion, caught up in it's vast whirlwind of control.
I no longer believe. I have wiped my lenses clean of the shit bespeckled upon them by millennia of the inculcation of a myth. There is no god.
And hence, there is no heaven, nor is there a hell. There is no Satan, nor are there any evil demons doing his bidding, though I'm sure some wild-eyed Christians out there would suggest that my hand is being guided by the Evil One himself. That I have chosen to not believe, to not fall in line with those who claim they know a thing that cannot be proven, is the reason for my fearlessness.
There is freedom in giving up faith, in the religious sense of that word. For the longest time, even as a child, I struggled to believe. I tried to bend my mind around concepts that seemed ludicrous even to a 12 year old. I lived in fear for my soul, carefully monitoring my every move.
It's a wonderful feeling to be free. Free from the fear of judgement, of what lies beyond. There will be no supreme being waiting to judge me when I pass away. I am free now to die without worry of where I am headed - I am headed nowhere. I have never been afraid of going nowhere. Just as no-thing can hurt me, nor can no-where do me harm.
My mood has been lifted. I relax more. I'm no longer afraid to speak my truth. I do not monitor my words so as not to upset those around me who differ in opinion. I'm not afraid to walk to the store at night for a beer thinking I may be mugged or jumped. Those things can of course happen and may indeed happen, but I do not fear them and thus maybe I do not attract that sort of negativity. Fear is a magnet for negativity. People who live in fear become targets more often than those who don't. People who show confidence or lack of fear pose more of a threat to potential assailants. Confident victims tend not to allow themselves to become victimized as often as those who succumb to fear. Robbers want to control their victims through the overt application of fear - one who doesn't fear death, fears no thing, fears no where, fears no one.
