It begins with honesty. One thing Jesus came to do was make people honest with themselves, and that is why they hated him because everything he was saying was true. As annoying as it was, you brood of vipers, you are killers, your words poison people, and you bring them to a spiritual grave. You are liars and thieves, and you don’t care for anybody.

It was true! But, you see, those people were not honest with themselves. “Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.”.

For people who were so self-righteous that they were ready to kill a woman, even though they themselves had their skeletons in their cupboard, it was something annoying for them. You see, if they were people who were truly reflective, introspective, and honest with themselves, all those things would not come as a surprise.

There is a point where we begin to question ourselves: Why am I nicer to that guy and meaner to the other? Why is it that when this girl talks to me, I have to hold my breath and stammer, but with the other girl, I am so confident? We need to ask "why." What is it about this person that makes me so free and the other that makes me so uptight? We have to observe ourselves in our interactions with people. You can’t just sit down and say it is what is in my subconscious. NO! The subconscious is a responder (it responds to experiences).

So you enter a place, and you, who are normally very bold, become very timid. You begin to question what it is about the room that triggers timidity in you. I thought I dealt with this 10 years ago. Why is my confident girl or boy  now afraid here? There is a place for observation of oneself, honesty, and sincerity. No matter how it makes us feel, like “this person makes me feel like I am so dumb, and the dumbness makes me feel like I don’t have anything smart to say," you have to be honest in observing yourself. That’s the first step.

In dealing with fears, the only remedy to fear is confrontation, because fear is the product of ignorance (when you don’t know the outcome of a certain thing). That lack of knowledge that makes one exclaim, “Mehn! ” “Oh my God! ” “Ahh, I am going to die... I don’t know what is beyond there,"  “This thing is going to hurt me; I don't know how I am going to survive this pain,” and so on.

That is why athletes are not so afraid of pain like that because they’ve had it so much that it does not even scare them anymore. They’ve broken their hip, toe, nose, etc. Someone like Shaquille O’Neal, if you find out how many surgeries he’s had, you will be amazed.

One of the strengths of fear is ignorance (when you don’t know what’s on the other side), and sometimes there is a need to face it. But face it in small doses. Are you afraid of talking to people? You have to start talking to people. Even if there are five people in a room, then twenty, then a hundred, then ten thousand, you can only deal with fear through confrontation. Are you afraid of heights? Try and jump from some places (don’t do something that will kill you, but in a controlled environment). That is the only way to deal with fear. It is not about reading books or saying you want to meditate. Meditation must lift your action if the circuit is going to be completed. So, out of fear, you have to confront it in doses. Then gradually, you can face more until the fear is quenched.

Crazy story…

Back then, when I was in the world, I had a friend from the Dominican Republic; his name was Carlos. Carlos was a ladies' man. The way he would approach girls without fear, I couldn’t understand it. You know, I used to talk to girls and all, but he could talk to just anybody. In the morning, he will block girls, “Hey!” and I will be like, Carlos, How can you do this? and he will respond, “What’s the big deal? If they tell you no, no problem, you move on." But for me, the fear of rejection will stop me from talking. I will talk to a girl if I know that I have an upper hand or have a high chance. But he didn’t care, and even if she said “no” to him, so what? What’s the big deal? And he moves on. I am sure it came about as a result of facing it to the point where it doesn’t disturb him anymore.

So, fear is conquered through confrontation.

God bless you.

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