When we see something looming ahead of us that looks too hard to handle, what is it at work within us that feels like it has reached the “end” of what it is capable of doing? What is it that reaches this closed-in conclusion? Here is the surprising answer: The limit of this captive self is the length of the leash of what it knows.

What does this mean? The boundary of its reality is the extent of what it has been through, so that the active circumference of its level of consciousness is restricted to the content of its past experience. And this explains why any condition that beckons it to go beyond this psychological point is viewed as either being unattainable or even as a danger.

For this nature it could be as simple as wanting to, but being unable to, say (to another) what one wishes to say for fear of being misunderstood, as once occurred (painfully) in an earlier relationship. Maybe we wish to study some new discipline, but won’t attempt it because “stupid” people — as we may have been called in days gone by — cannot possibly succeed at such tasks.

These findings should allow us to see that at least one of the pillars at the base of our limitations — if not the whole foundation itself — is some form of fear. Fear makes its unwanted appearance in us whenever life asks us for an answer that we don’t have, or that we don’t think we can find. In other words, when we don’t know what we need (and want) to know in the moment of challenge, our fearful perception of this same moment before us tells us that we are not up to the task and will, most likely, find ourselves overcome by it.

In the face of any limitation, standing before what frightens us, we must come awake and remember the Best in us by recollecting and then embracing the will of the Living Light. Then, from within this higher awareness, we must choose what we know is the fearless truth of ourselves as opposed to allowing the little will of the fear-filled self to tell us what is true about the moment and ourselves.

Here is what such conscious actions make possible: The Best in us knows that when we will act as though it is impossible to fail, it will be. This does not mean that we will not feel fear. Do not make this mistake. It means that standing there, in these moments, we understand that these fears and doubts coursing through us — that darken the way ahead — do not belong to us. These negative and limiting psychological forces are the vestigial visions of a self that we must no longer mistake as being our own.

There are two kinds of people in this world whose quality of life, like all of us, is determined by their outlook. There are those who feel chained to life by their own unrelenting doubts, and then there are those who doubt that such chains exist at all. The first group of people are held hopeless captives of vague fears that they may lose something of value should they strive for freedom and fail, while the second group know that the only antidote to such clinging doubts is through conscious deeds!

If we would but dare to attempt those things that frighten us, and persist upon this course for only a short while, we would soon discover that our efforts themselves have cleansed and cured us of our fear.