One thing to say about love is that it’s often a missed opportunity. Anohter thing to say about love is that very few people know what it is, or even want it. They just think they do.

Many will live a whole life never knowing what love is. Many people will feel the longing but not know what it is. They will translate the longing into wants and desires – things or states that can be fulfilled through calculated effort and action.

Or they put up obstacles for themselves.

Or there will be seemingly dangerous corners to turn around.

Fear takes over.

Fear is a fantasy. Love is real.

Then there is the mistaken belief that we need to protect ourselves against being hurt. (Oh, how many times I have done this in the past!)

But this protection also protects against love. It’s a fool proof covering and you are the one caught in the net. When the other also is doing this you are both stuck.

Then there is the mistaken belief that vulnerability is weak or painful. It’s not. Vulnerability is power and strength. It’s uncompromisingly being who you are.

The only thing that gets hurt in love is the ego. (Ego here = the person you have become, the cherished personality that we so often mistake for ourselves and that the whole society encourages us to build from birth to death. The picture we have of ourselves.)

Love is found beyond the person. Love is where YOU are. It’s a mystery why this is so clouded and laced with fear when it’s so simple.

YOU can never get hurt. 

Free from the dictates of memories, I am not the past. Free from the dictates of anticipation, I am not the future. Grounded in beingness, I am now.  Inside all, outside all, beyond all.

This has nothing to do with perfection or achievement. It is the opposite of perfection and achievement. God knows I’m imperfect. I have failed many times. Made many mistakes. All the same I am beyond my failures.

There is nothing here really. Everything is of the mind and it’s not there, not here. It’s only my creation. Everything is what the mind imagines it to be. In reality nothing is there. There are no mysteries. Yet everything is deeply mysterious. There is no unknown power inside me. This is everything there is and I am it.

Living on two planes I try to do what is expected of me on the earthly plane. I do laundry, cook, I deal with problems. I even worry sometimes. But I have stopped escaping. I don’t prop myself up. I allow myself to fall, to fail. I deal with others, that are just as imperfect as myself. I don’t over-act. I let things take time. By waiting I find myself doing things at the right moment, with no wasted energy and fewer mistakes.

At the same time, on another plane, I am constantly flowing in freedom and joy. The meeting points of the eartly and the heavenly are accessible and I make room for them. They are beauty, appreciation and love. Those are the connection points, the pointers to truth and harmony.

In the earthly experience I never step out of my center anymore. I don’t get lost–or even if I’m lost, I’m not lost. It is so extremely simple but the mind is always looking for the complicated, and for the drama. The mind craves drama. It's an endless cycle until you break it. 

Love is simple. It’s the easiest thing in the world. How simple and natural to love. Yet people go out of their way to make it complicated and impossible.

You just have to want freedom more than anything else but so often the world gets in the way. Wants and fears obscure the path. Beyond them–freedom. 

I don't know if anybody asked this question but here is my reply. 

If you have a deep fear around something in your life, it will most likely appear again and again. You will most likely try to fix it in any way you can. It works temporarily. Usually, the fear is around one or two areas but most likely you will find that it’s the same fear expressed in different ways.

This deep kind of fear most often shows up in and around your closest relationships. I'm talking about a deep inner fear, often nameless because it has gotten so alienated from you. There are also other fears around situations and people further away from you but those fears are more conscious and easier to overcome. Of course, your conscious mind wants to do something, anything, to get rid of this highly uncomfortable and painful fear. So why is it so hard to do that?

Most likely it’s because a part of you is unconsciously holding on to it. Of course there is no one in the world who wants to have fear or bad things happen to them. But over the years the subconscious has become a guard dog, protecting you from the terror so that you won’t suffer from it. But in doing that you have also become alienated from your fear and very often another type of fear has been created: the fear of the fear.

Unfortunately, this is a disservice because now it’s very difficult to take the fear back from the subconscious. Also, the ego (= the person we have been shaped into) assists the subconscious by consciously repeating things like (depending on what the fear is about): “It’s their fault, they ruined me, I can’t do it,” OR: “It’s my fault, I’m ruining everything and everyone.” Etc, etc. It can be anything really.

However there are a few things you can do to take back the fear from the subconscious. The subconscious is a little bit like a dog. You can train it but it takes time. It learns by repetition. Once it has learned the lesson it’s very easy. But you have to train it in small steps or it will be overwhelmed and not cooperate.

This text is for your intellectual mind. It won’t reach the subconscious at all. But it might help you to not be afraid of the fear and to have a greater understanding for its mechanisms. It might help you to get the courage to face it and the hope that you don’t have to live by it.

Some people are not even be fully aware that they are carrying a fear. It might just lurk in the background. Then it will either be very annoying to read this text (if you are not ready to acknowledge it) or intriguing (if you are ready).

The following are things you can do, from the easiest to the most difficult:

You can make a decision that you don’t want this fear to control you anymore.
You can pray about it.
You can change the conscious thoughts that control you.
You can face situations that you know will bring up the fear.
You can allow yourself to feel it thoroughly.
You can refuse to act on its command. (If you fear tells you to run away: stay. If your fear tells you to play happy: stop playing happy, etc.)
You may surrender.

It’s fairly easy to make a decision to not be ruled by fear anymore but it can be a powerful step. It’s fairly easy to pray about it, too. To change your thoughts take more work and patience. You can choose one self-limiting thought that you have and change it into a more positive (and probably more realistic) one.

To face a situation that evokes the fear takes courage. Every time a situation arises, take what happens inside and stop any knee jerk reactions. Sit with it. Feel it. Releasing, feeling, just a little of it will give you tremendous energy and freedom. Usually, life will repeatedly put you in a position where it’s impossible to disregard it. That way life is a great teacher. Instead of being angry at the situations you could potentially see them as something to learn from.

Most likely you will not be able to feel it through in one go. It is so strong and powerful. It can literally make you feel like you are going to die. But you can do a little at a time, as much as you can handle.

As long as you placate the fear by either acting on its behalf or avoiding it, you strengthen it and it will continue to fester and rule your life. You placate the fear when you beg, manipulate or barter (pay a price to get something ). You placate the fear when you numb yourself with addictions (we have the capacity to make virtually anything into an addiction, some more destructive than others).

In addition to the list above, you can also surrender, give it over, but this is not really anything that you “do”. It’s something that happens. You can ask for it and maybe it will happen, maybe not. Usually surrender happens to people who have been suffering for a long time and can’t bear it any longer. They lose the ability to hold on subconsciously. The wall between the subconscious and the conscious crumble and the fear just leaves them as it’s exposed for the fake it really is. 

Another way to approach this is to see that you are not the body. The body’s history is not your history. There is nothing to understand. Nothing needs to change. There is nowhere to get to and no need to change. You have nothing to do with the body and the fear has nothing to do with you either. By then you are on a spiritual path. 

As you noticed jumping off a plane is not on the list! So can you overcome fear by jumping off a plane? Potentially, yes. You may be shocked out of it and realize that it's completely irrelevant to you now. But it can also be another way of avoiding the actual fear by becoming addicted to thrills. The mind is very cunning.