The key to becoming who we truly are is this: We must overcome our fear of ourselves. This is the fundamental prerequisite for being all that we can be. In fact, in the final analysis, every kind of fear amounts to a fear of the self. For if we had no fear of our innermost selves, we couldn’t possibly fear anything in life. We wouldn’t even fear death.

But when we start to make our way along a path of self-confrontation, we don’t know that what we really fear is what lurks in our own unplumbed depths. And so it is that we so often project this very real fear of self onto all kinds of other miscellaneous fears. Then we deny we have those fears, and we set about covering them up.

Until one day we wake up and realize we have some enormous fear of some particular aspect of life upon which this tsunami of fear of our self has landed. Or maybe we just end up fearing life itself and so endeavor to avoid living it altogether. We do this in the same way we avoid knowing the self, to whatever extent we fear it.

To go one further, we’ll sometimes project our fear of life onto the fear of death. Since really life and death are two sides of the same coin. So actually, if we fear one we’re going to also fear the other. Fear of life and death, then, are a package deal.

Only when our search for self-knowing has gained a little traction do we become aware that what we’re really most afraid of is ourselves. We can recognize this by the backpedaling we do when it comes to seeing our part in our problems; when we resist, in all the more or less obvious ways we do so; when we won’t face our terror of letting go of our defenses, which would allow us to experience our natural feelings.

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Read: The Mother of All Fears: Fear of Self

As we’ve probably heard by now, love is the greatest power there is. Every spiritual teaching or philosophy, along with every religious scholar and psychology professor, proclaims this truth: Love is the one and only power. If you’ve got it, you are mighty, strong and safe. Without it, you are separate, scared and poor. Sounds simple enough. Yet this knowledge doesn’t really help us unless we’ve discovered where—deep down inside—we can’t love or won’t love. Why is it that we resist loving? Why do we have fear of loving? Unless we sort out the answer to this question, no eternal truth about love can possibly help us.

If we’ve already made some progress on our search for inner knowing, we’ve probably already run headlong—after considerable digging and exploring—into our fear of loving. Becoming aware of such a fear is quintessential for taking further steps. It’s not enough to have a theoretical understanding that such a fear of loving exists; we have to actually experience this fear. For people who don’t yet wish to know themselves, such an awareness will not yet exist.

But even for those of us who have become aware of this inner conflict, we may not yet fully comprehend the why of it. Why am I so afraid of loving? Let’s explore some of the facets of this perplexing phenomenon, a topic we’ll return to in future teachings when we illuminate this very basic problem from other angles.

Let’s start with this: Those who cannot love are immature. And when we are immature, we are not living in reality. To live a life based on unreality, then, must lead to conflict and unhappiness, for where there is untruth there is ignorance and darkness.

Maturity, as such, means essentially having the ability to love.

Alas, we all hold fragmented aspects within ourselves that are trapped in childhood states. And these child parts require an unlimited amount of love. For these child fragments are one-sided, unreasonable, demanding, and lacking in understanding, as all immature creatures are. Its laundry list of impossible wants includes: to be loved by everyone, to be loved 100%, to be instantly satisfied, and to be loved in spite of our selfish, unreasonable ways. This, in a nutshell, is why we are afraid of loving.

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Read: Fully Facing our Fear of Loving

Life is a trap, of a kind, stuck as we are in this struggle to overcome the duality between life and death. From this fundamental predicament stem all our other problems, fears and tensions. It shows up in our fear of death, of course, as well as in our fear of aging and our fear of the unknown. What’s the common root of all these fears? The passage of time.

In an effort to deal with these basic fears, humanity has devised various philosophies and spiritual or religious concepts. But even if these concepts are true, evolving perhaps from someone’s attempts to pass on a true experience, they’re not going to do the trick in relieving our tension. Truth be told, the only way to truly overcome our fears—to reconcile the great divide of this giant duality—is to dive deep into the mega-unknown we all fear so much: our own psyche.

Well, how hard could that be? Turns out, it sounds simpler than it is. For to explore the hidden corners of our own minds, we have to do more than resolve dualities. We’re going to need to discover all the facets of our innermost selves, without glibly explaining away any tensions and disturbances we encounter along the way.

Our incentive is this: To the degree we are in the dark about what is going on inside, to that degree we will fear the passing of time; we will fear the great unknown. When we’re young, it’s easy to brush these things aside. But sooner or later, if we won’t face ourselves, we’ll come face-to-face with our fear of death. To the extent, however, that we know ourselves, we will feel fulfilled in life. And to that same degree death will not be feared. Instead, it will occur as an organic development, and the unknown will no longer seem like a threat.

Doing this work of self-discovery is no picnic, friends. Plus, there are escape hatches everywhere. If we look for them, we’ll even find them within the framework of this particular path of growth and healing. The only way then to succeed in unifying ourselves is by ruthlessly searching to see, evaluate and understand ourselves.

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Read: Finding Freedom and Peace by Overcoming Fear of the Unknown

If we boil it down, there are essentially two philosophies about this thing we call life, and they are apparent contradictions. One imparts the perspective that if we are truly mature, spiritually and emotionally, we need to learn to accept life on life’s terms. And often those terms are hard to take. Our best approach will be to accept what we can’t change. When we won’t accept life, this theory says, we breed anxiety and disharmony. Then our peace of mind will be destroyed by the tension this creates, and we make our situation worse. So the gauge of a mature, well-rounded personality, from this perspective, is how well we are able to accept the inevitable. Are we OK with our destiny? And how cool are we with, say, death? What’s there to fear?

The other school of thought postulates we don’t need to accept any of this unpleasantness. All this stuff about accepting hardship, including death, is totally unnecessary. Our only destiny is the one we create for ourselves. And whenever we decide, we can mold ourselves a new destiny. A better destiny. One in which we no longer suffer. Real spiritual awakening, this side says, comes with the awareness that we don’t need to accept suffering. That unfathomable abundance can be had, right here, right now.

Talk about two sides of the street! How confusing is that? But if we search for both of these perspectives, we’re likely to find them in just about any great spiritual teaching, including these from the Pathwork Guide.

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Full Access Members read: Finding True Abundance by Going Through Our Fear

Our greatest joy in life comes from giving, to whatever extent we are able. It comes from reaching our potential, we might say. On the flip side, our greatest pain is derived from not meeting our full potential in giving to others and to life. Every other pain and frustration cascades from this pain of not offering up what we have to give. Turning this around, all pleasure and satisfaction flows from giving freely, no ifs, ands or buts.

Why then are we so stingy? Why do we refuse to give freely of ourselves? This stems from our fear of the parts of ourselves we don’t yet see and know, which creates patterns that keep chunking out pain.

And for as long as we keep those parts hidden, we won’t be free. We’ll become a pretender who is always on guard. This means that wherever we are harboring distortions inside, we are living a lie. And none of this needs to happen. It’s a needless lie we’re living based on a false fear of own selves. 

Some people, when they start doing this work of self-knowing, meet their private, hidden parts quite quickly. They dial them up, agree to have a chat, and directly go on to overcome their fears, walking out into the world a free person. But others, even some who have the best outer intentions to find themselves, skirt around the issue and get nowhere. They have this vague hope they can get all the way home without having to expose and clean up every last bit of inner dirty laundry. 

The question is, are we ready to stop living the “big lie?” Are we ready to let go of all this pretense? It’s a tough choice. It’s a battle really, and it matters a lot if we win this one. To this end, let’s look at where this illusory fear of the self comes from, and just as importantly, let’s find out what happens if, instead of overcoming it, we coddle it.

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Read: Giving up our Fear-Filled Struggle to Guard our Secrets

Our biggest struggle in life is the push and pull we face between our desire to overcome our loneliness and isolation, and our simultaneous fear of having close, intimate contact with another person. Often these are equally strong, tearing us apart from the inside and creating a tremendous strain.

The pain of feeling isolated always pushes us to try to escape from it by becoming more close with someone. Should such attempts appear to be getting somewhere, our fear of closeness will erupt and cause us to pull back again, and push the other away. And so the cycle goes with people, first erecting uncrossable barriers between ourselves and others, and then knocking them back down.

If we’re walking on a spiritual path of self-realization, sooner or later we’ll see the predicament we’re in. For every disharmony, disturbance and shred of suffering we uncover has the same simple common denominator: our struggle between desiring and fearing closeness. And it’s our insistence to holding onto both of these feelings that creates the barriers that keep us in separation.

Our relationships with other people will only go well when we are motivated by our innermost selves. For our intellect and will alone can’t navigate the delicate balance of allowing our own self-expression while also receiving the self-expression of others. There isn’t any rule we can make to manage the rhythm of mutual exchange. And our outer brains are out of their league here.

The ego-mind is also not equipped to negotiate the fine balance needed between asserting ourselves and allowing another to assert themselves, between giving and receiving, between being active and being passive. And there are no pat formulas we can lean on. This doesn’t mean our outer intellect has no value. It’s an instrument that thinks mechanically, makes decisions, and determines rules and laws. But by itself, it doesn’t have the intuitive sense or flexibility needed to meet each moment as it comes. It doesn’t have the capacity to respond adequately. For that, we need to tap into the core of our being and activate our inner command center that’s dynamically responsive. Then and only then can our relationship with someone else be spontaneous and satisfying for both of us.

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Read: The Painful Predicament of Both Desiring and Fearing Closeness

Underneath our ordinary, neurotic, unconscious wrong thinking lies a difficult conflict embedded in all of humanity: We have a deeply ingrained longing to be happy and, at the same time, we fear happiness. And this fear is directly related to our fear of letting go. By the same token, our longing to be happy must also be a longing to be released from the clutches of our little ego. The two are linked. Let’s now dive into a deeper level of this topic so we can come to a new understanding.

Everything exists in both a right understanding and in distortion. Letting go of the outer ego is no exception. It’s possible then to let go in an unbalanced, distorted manner, which is unhealthy. Now first, what are we talking about when we say “let go of the ego?” These are the faculties we have direct access to: our volitional thinking and our will that we have the power to direct.

Here’s a simple example of the difference between direct will and indirect will on the level of the physical body. With our direct will, we can decide to move our hand, directing how it will move and what we’re going to pick up with it. But for our heartbeat or circulation, we have no direct control. We can however regulate our heartbeat and circulation by controlling the movement of our body.

Our will also works the same way on the mental and emotional levels. We do have the ability to change unpleasant feelings, but it’s futile to try to do this directly or quickly. What’s more, when we direct our will in the wrong way, we can throw our psyche into a state of disarray.

When we overexert our will, then, by trying to exert it in areas it can’t directly control, we waste energy and debilitate ourselves. It’s the equivalent of throwing all our might into changing our heartrate using our sheer outer will. If this works at all, it only worsens our condition. In truth, we have lots of way to improve our circulation, but forcing—by using our outer will—isn’t one of them.

We human beings do this a lot: We use the wrong approach. We force our will where it doesn’t belong and then neglect using it where it could be doing a lot of good in our personal development. When we don’t use enough will in the right way, our ego becomes weak. When we use too much, our ego becomes so exhausted it will try to escape from itself. Letting go like this, though—from weak motives instead of from a place of inner strength—is an escape that can become quite dangerous to the self.

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Read: How Fear of Releasing the Little Ego Spoils Happiness

To have self-fulfillment, we need to be in harmony with ourselves and with life. There are three topics that form the basis for achieving this harmony:

1) Having a positive concept of life that sees the universe as safe.

2) Being free and fearless to love.

3) Holding a healthy balance between the forces of activity and passivity.

Let’s weave these together to see how they create one comprehensive whole. For they all depend on awakening our innermost self and activating the core that we can call the Real Self. Without that, it’s our ego running the show. And as long as our ego is our sole motivator in life, it will be impossible to have confidence that life is safe. This will make it impossible to be fearless about loving. It will also make it impossible to find that delicate balance between being active and being passive. Let’s take a closer look.

To have a healthy concept of life is to have a truthful concept of life, which is that life is utterly benign. Life is safe. When we stray from knowing this truth, we’ll experience life as hostile and we’ll feel the need to defend ourselves against it. On our spiritual path, as we dig through the layers of our psyche in an effort to untangle any disharmony, somehow we always find that we’re sitting on a negative concept of life.

A negative concept of life is not a benign thing, because it interacts directly with our faults. And this interaction is a two-way street. First, we’re driven by the destructive forces caused by our negative concept of life. This expands our negative beliefs, even if we’re hardly aware of them. Second, our negative beliefs cause us to take a defensive posture toward life, and that perpetuates our destructiveness.

By examining our faults, we can begin to unwind all this. The first step, as is so often the case, will be to become aware of our faults. While not easy, this isn’t that difficult if we approach the task in the right way. Once we have a list of our faults, the second step is to understand why they exist. Why do we cling to them? If we look closely, we’ll see they are intended to ward off something bad we feared would happen to us. So they sit on the fixed foundation of a negative assumption we take for granted.

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Read: Three Things that Underpin Self-Fulfillment