When Fear is Good
A view of Childhood home of author from afar. |
In some spiritual discussion with friends, some mentioned
that they do not like the idea of fear being used in the scriptures and that
god should be all about love. But dear friends, there is a time and place for
everything under the sun and there is a time when fear has a role to play.
Some female cats frequently roam around my home and every
some months a male cat from an adjoining block, when he is in heat, moves in
and produces the most irritating of mournful sounds to attract the females. It
goes on day and night and if shooed away he is back at it after a bit.
Yesterday I threw some large pebbles at him and that has scared him away for
now. Fear has worked.
Humans too when blinded by things like excessive lust, greed
and anger often need fear to knock them out of it. What happens when ego
becomes excessive? Well the guy becomes such a megalomaniac that even fear may
not work then. Dictators frequently get into this state such as the dictators
of Rumania, Libya, Iraq,
Syria and most recently Ukraine. Such
is their megalomania that they keep screaming that they are the President until
the noose chokes them out.
It is true that aside from this positive role that fear can
play in protecting us from evil and harm it is a negative thing and excessive
amounts of it can produce paranoia and psychosis. It is not the fear of the
Lord but his love and a trust that can protect us from the greatest of fears
including the fear of death and moving on to a brilliant new life all in fresh
new clothes of a new birth, in a place more beautiful than before where the
water from the spring is sweeter, songs of birds more delightful and the
scent of blooms exhilarating so that things sponsored by ego, lust, greed and anger is like a crappy street side fast food when a multi-course gourmet meal awaits in the lovely dining hall beyond, all served to the music of harps and songs of sweet damsels dressed in white and the colors of a dream :)
Comments
Because I've been reading your blog for a long time, I can understand why you wrote this, but I don't think it's good to throw stones at cats.
You can probably find other fixes such as shaking your door or window to let cats know you want him to go away. I'm sure cats are like humans that they dislike disturbances during their private moments.
I say this from the stand point of all kinds of fear, such as humans to appear savage or immature, to receive a slight chance of becoming a cat in your next life because you had written in the past that you believe that people, might become dogs in next life (maybe only Hindu, but I feel equal opportunity to dogs and cats), and to force cats to become scary so that they might scratch you or other humans in next occasion. I heard being scratch by cats is not healthy.
I'll let you know if I think more about negative effects, but as a Japanese proverb says, I think it's "Hundred poisons, and not one benefit."
So, from the standpoint of fear, I think this post is a good start for discussion.