Why Fear is the Root of all Suffering in Your Life and the World as a Whole

If you have read my blog post “Why love is the only way to save the world” you would have heard me talk about fear and how it relates to the current state of the world and our own personal suffering. I would now like to expand a little here on that and outline how people’s personal fears can combine to give a cumulative effect that we see on a national or worldwide scale.

How fear creates personal suffering...
This is something that became starkly clear to me on my own healing/spiritual journey, as I became increasingly aware of my own thoughts and emotions, and how they were affecting my happiness and my health. When you begin to closely examine your negative thoughts, emotions, beliefs and your ego, you realize that there is an individual fear at the root of all of them. For example, disappointment from a missed promotion comes from a fear of inadequacy, or jealousy of a happy couple comes from a fear of loneliness, or your ego not being able to admit that you are wrong about something comes from a fear of not being accepted/good enough.

These fears are not always overtly obvious, but if you ask yourself enough questions and answer them honestly you will get down to that root fear driving that negative aspect of you. As it is these fears that are causing the negative aspects of our lives, then facing and overcoming them is the only way to improve our life situation.

How our collective personal fears affect the harmony of the world on a broader scale
Given that fears are what are driving everybody’s ego’s, dogmatic beliefs and negative thoughts and emotions, then it is ultimately fear on a personal level that leads to disharmony in families, or amongst friends or at school and in communities, then nationally, in social, political and economic disagreements, and then the same thing on the international stage between countries. For example:

Family: Sisters arguing about who gets to wear a particular dress to a party they are both attending, comes from a mutual fear of not looking “attractive/good enough” which comes from a fear of inadequacy.
Community: Or a disagreement between a union and an employer over a proposed pay rise comes from a fear of the employees getting short changed and the company not making as much profit.
National: Or two nations arguing over who has the rights to mine recently discovered oil reserves under the sea neighboring both territories, comes from a fear of them losing out on a potential profit.

You will see if you examine the few example I just gave, that all of these fears are totally self motivated. They are all interested in gaining a result that only benefits them. All started with our individual fears and then extrapolated out to produce negative impacts on all different levels.

Is there any hope?
I apologise if I’m sounding rather gloomy, but the important point to take from this is that if all of the pain and suffering and misery in the world is a product of our ourselves and our own fears, then we are the ones who have the power to change all of that, because we are each in control of our own choices.
It just needs a concerted, consistent effort and intent towards this end, and change on firstly individual levels and then an international one is completely possible. We just have to begin to move away from the inherently selfish attitudes like in the above examples and begin to make choices that best benefit the whole rather than the individual or group or country.
For example if the protagonists in the examples asked themselves some of the questions I am proposing, and began to face their fears and make choices based on what’s best for everyone and not just themselves, then we could expect changes like these:

Family: The sisters decide to face their fear of not looking/being good enough and no longer feel the need to look a particular way to support this fear or meet the expectation of others.
Community: The company directors make public the financial state of the company and a fair wage level for all workers is agreed upon by all parties.
National: The two countries agree to equally mine the oil, and share the profits with each other and less financially well-off countries

I understand these may seem unrealistic results to expect given how things are at the moment, but they are really all just choices; and choices can be changed in second. Choose this or choose that. It is really all in our hands.
We are increasingly becoming a truly global society due to technological advances in communication and transport, so cooperation and compassion and humility are more important now than ever, and you can help make that happen by looking at your own choices and asking yourself what your real motivation is for them.

I hope that this gives those of you who get down about global affairs a little ray of optimism for the future.

Best Wishes

Jack