Janese Johnson

Are we a culture big on change or a culture based on fear? It seems in recent times we can see that the more a candidate uses fear and hate tactics to scare people in voting for them, the more people voted for the candidate that was promoting fear and hate.

This not only says a lot about the candidate, but also how we as a collective relate to fear more than we relate to change. Today I read something from someone who lives abroad, but is paying particular attention to this race, saying that he could not understand why Americans were having a hard time choosing until the Texas and Ohio primaries. He then realized that Americans are afraid of change.

I don’t know if it is just Americans that are afraid of change. How many people that you know have changed their life because they wanted to? If you look around, you can see that a majority of changes that you or others that you know have made, were made from a place of lack or struggle, not a place of ease and desire for more ease.

Research has shown that people fear change when they project a negative outcome onto it, but when they can project a positive outcome onto the situation, they are much more likely to welcome that change into their life.

If our safety and security feels threatened, as in the case of these recent political advertisements, then we are more likely to want to keep a familiar candidate, someone we think will work OK. But if people feel that without change, our safety is in jeopardy, then it is more likely they will allow change in, such as the Patriot Act, which ended quite a few of our freedoms.

Abraham Maslow, a leading psychologist in the 1940’s, said that humans have a hierarchical system of needs. He arranged them in a pyramid, with physiological and security needs as the two bottom layers. The middle is love/belonging; then comes self-esteem; and at the top is self-actualization. According to Maslow, humans do not move up into the higher level of needs until the bottom levels are met first.
Critics argue that we do not live life by a stepping-stone from one need to another — we are not that simple — and that all areas merge more together than Maslow has them set up.

However, if you talk to someone who does not have the physiological or safety needs met, such as food, housing, and a safe environment, it can be commonly seen that they are not sounding as altruistic as someone whose basic needs are getting met.

So when a political candidate tells people who are having a hard time economically and feeling unsafe because of the changes that have already occurred in their life that another person will bring in negative change, people get scared, and disconnect from their “gut” feeling of voting for any other person, even if another person would be for the higher good for all.

This is not just about politics; this is about how fear can stop us from doing the things in life that we might feel guided inwardly to do. Fear prevents us from feeling our own intuition, leaving us to “follow” the dictates of someone who speaks to our fears.

In order for us to move beyond the fear, and truly be free to follow our hearts, it seems important that we become familiar with ourselves enough to know what we are afraid of. If we truly know ourselves, then we can’t get hooked by someone else’s projection of fear and negativity as easily.

The Bible has a verse that I feel can apply to our inner world and our outer world. Jesus said, “The truth shall set us free,” in John 8:32. I am sure this verse can be interpreted in quite a few ways, and on many levels of being. But one of the ways that I see it is, when we know our true self, our deep inner self on all levels, we are free of the bondage that holds us prisoners in the world because we can no longer live our life out of reaction. I also believe this verse has many levels of truth to it. I am sharing only one of those.

Socrates said,“An unexamined life is not worth living.” Is this because when we do not examine our inner self, we become prisoners of other’s ideas on how our life should be lived, and we have lost our true sense of who we are? But when we do know our true self, we are freer to live by the dictates of our “true” self, and not the dictates of those who use fear and hate to guide us.

On a practical level this can seen as not reacting to the fear, guilt and anger that a situation or person might want us to react from, but to respond from our heart and Soul’s direction, even if it means that it is the small and narrow path that leads us to a greater self-awareness and freedom.

I have experienced that when I have followed my heart in spite of my fear; I have moved in directions and experienced experiences that I would not have had if I had allowed fear to keep me stuck. Our hearts and Souls know a lot more than our limited minds can even imagine.
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Janese Johnson has been doing intuitive counseling nationally for more than 20 years. She may be contacted at janesej-at-buncombe.main.nc.us.