This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
In the Presence of Fear – Rev. Linda Jackson
DESCRIPTION
Fear is often seen as a threat to peace—but what if it’s a teacher? This week we explore what it means to stay present when fear arises — not as something to defeat, but as something to understand. What if fear isn’t the enemy — but a guidepost toward deeper understanding?
SUMMARY
This talk explores how fear functions both personally and collectively, reframing it not as an enemy to be fixed or fled, but as a guidepost toward deeper understanding and a call back to love. Drawing on Ernest Holmes, Pema Chödrön, Brené Brown, Joseph Campbell, and others, Rev. Linda Jackson presents fear as the “negative use of faith” and a root experience often tied to the fear of death and non-existence, while also suggesting that darkness and fear can be generative, akin to the womb or the “dark night of the soul.” She introduces the “above the line/below the line” model, equating above the line with love and openness and below the line with fear, defensiveness, and drama roles of victim, villain, and hero, emphasizing that awareness of where we are allows more conscious, loving choices in relationships and leadership. Addressing collective fear, she describes how unnamed fear in communities can harden into scarcity, perfectionism, and self-protection that ultimately erodes connection, and contrasts this with spiritually grounded communities that cultivate “grounded confidence,” vulnerability, and belonging by tuning to love and meeting fear with curiosity, compassion, and courage. Through personal narrative about fear of the dark and “divine homesickness,” she illustrates how leaning into fear can reveal a longing for return to wholeness and an unbroken connection to source, transforming fear into compassion, strength, and spiritual maturity. The message culminates in a practical invitation: to notice collective fears in one’s circles, intentionally tune to love, and practice responding with grounded confidence and open-hearted presence, building communities that hold one another through fear rather than attempting to eliminate it.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson:
Hello. Welcome. Thank you, online friends too. And as always, thank you to our amazing music team. I mean, yes, one more round. Their ability, the breadth and the depth, the range of talent there is just so appreciative. I’m so appreciative. So that line in Count on Me, we find out what we’re made of when we’re called… (puts glasses on) these will help… when we’re called to help our friends in need. This week we’re moving from what do I do with fear to what do we do with fear together? And we see a lot of fear driving a lot of crazy behaviors in the world right now. And it can feel contagious. So exploring what we do with fear together feels like a worthy explanation.
Jackie, Rev. Jackie started off the month showing us honoring anger and returning to love. And Aimee shared fear as a personal compass. And I really invite you, if you weren’t here for those or if you didn’t listen online yet, we do have these all recorded. You can go to our website and listen. And today we’re looking at what happens when we carry fear collectively in communities, in families, maybe even in this room and in the world. And one of the questions we’re asking is what if fear isn’t an enemy, but a guidepost toward deeper understanding? In the reading, Pema Chodron tells us to stay. Stay with our restlessness, stay in our discomfort, and that that’s how we develop steadfastness. And it’s that practice, practicing when we’re in the peace and quiet of our own home that allows us to have that same steadfastness when something erupts in front of us.
Fear isn’t something to fix or flee. It’s something to be present with. So Ernest Holmes, and for anyone new, Ernest Holmes wrote The Science of Mind, which is the foundational teaching for Centers for Spiritual Living, the parent organization that we are part of. Ernest Holmes wrote, “But what is fear? Nothing more nor less than the negative use of faith. Faith misplaced.” So where are you placing your faith? Not to deny fear, but to check where our faith has been placed, where our attention is going. You’ve heard the saying worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.
Where are we putting our attention? Not to say we shouldn’t have fear, but that we should honor it. Get curious about it. Allow it to guide us. As Aimee suggested last week, to use fear as a personal compass. We’re being invited to meet fear with curiosity, compassion, and courage. So I’m going to invite you to say this affirmation with me. Okay, I’ll say it. I meet fear with curiosity, compassion, and courage. Now maybe you can repeat it with me. I meet fear with curiosity, compassion, and courage. And this is what we’re working with today. And in that song, which is quite perky, I have to say, but there’s some great lyrics in there. “If you ever find yourself lost in the dark and you can’t see, I’ll be the light to guide you.” And as a kid, I would have loved to hear that. What I usually heard was scaredy cat.
Anyone else ever have a fear of the dark? Fear of the dark is a real thing for me, not just a metaphor. In my training work in spiritual psychology through hypnotherapy and other modalities, it became very clear to me that fear was driving me. And the fear of the dark worked its way out in my sessions. Not just fear of the dark. And I can’t help but acknowledge that Pam is sitting here because she was there for a lot of this. The fear of the dark worked its way out in my sessions. And it was not just fear of the dark, it was fear of pitch blackness, fear of emptiness, meaninglessness, and the idea that I couldn’t help ask, “what if none of this really means anything?” That’s a little existential crisis there, wouldn’t you say?
Anyone else? Anyone else? All I can say is there have been many teachers that have written on this. Excuse me. So playwright, David Mamet wrote, “All fears are one fear. Just the fear of death. And when we accept it, then we are at peace.” And Buddhist monk and teacher Pema children, the same one who wrote that reading, “All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all of the reasons for hoping that our experience could just be different. They’re all rooted in our fear of death.”
So many philosophers and teachers have pointed to the same root across faith traditions, across many disciplines, not just religion.
Beneath our everyday fears lives a deeper one, the fear of non-existence, of being erased. So fear of the dark, fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of not being worthy. They may all be expressions of that one fear, the original fear. If you think about the womb before we took our first breath, before we knew light or sound or color, we were held in complete darkness. And that darkness wasn’t empty. In fact, it was generative. It was the very condition that made life possible. We weren’t afraid of it then. We were formed by it.
And maybe what we call fear of the dark is actually something older. A memory of leaving the original wholeness, the original separation, if you will. The ache of remembering, beneath conscious thought, what it felt like to be fully held.
So leaning into my fear, specifically fear of the darkness, I took it into so many of my sessions and I trusted there was something there for me. I had to get curious, not fight it, not ignore it or avoid it. And I discovered that my fear of darkness and nothingness was not just a fear of death, but a longing for return.
My teachers called it divine homesickness. My healing wasn’t about conquering the darkness. It was about stepping into it. And this supported me to remember I was never separate from the light. Never separate from source. Never separate from love. That’s love with a capital L. I was always held. And in this remembering, my fear softened. Every great spiritual tradition has had something to say about this. The mystics called it the dark night of the soul. Not a punishment, but a passage. The womb before birth, the seed in the ground before it breaks open. Darkness isn’t the enemy. Fear isn’t the enemy. It’s an invitation into our growth.
It’s funny because I’m on a thread with some old friends in Northwest Indiana and all of them have had power outages and trees down and major things. And half of them are grateful for the trees landing in the yard and not on the house. And the other half are just frustrated and tired of being without power. And this idea of it’s an invitation into our growth. One of them posted something about “we have to keep growing.” And the other one said, “I’m tired of growing!” And I just got a chuckle out of that since I was actually saying here today, it’s an invitation into our growth. And we’re human. We’re human, right? We have to find the balance between feeling our feelings, being in the presence of the fear, dealing with it however we need to, and then we can lean into it.
Leaning into the fear is the answer to the fear. It’s an invitation into our spiritual practice. So if you were here last week or listened, Aimee talked about the concept of above the line, below the line. It has been developed by several teachers. And in the book Strong Ground, Brown applies it specifically to fear. The way I know this model and the way many of you might notice from the Conscious Leadership Group, the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is their book. And this concept, it’s all about locating yourself. If I’m above the line, I’m open, available to learning and growth. And if I’m below the line, I’m closed, defensive, committed to being right.
I like to think above the line as love, below the line as fear. So we’re developing the awareness to recognize where am I in this moment? Not to make it wrong, whichever location we’re in, but just to have the awareness to know, which can inform us of what to do next. I shouldn’t have a major conversation if I’m below the line. I should wait until I can resource myself to bring myself neutral or above the line. You can do anything from above or below the line. We just need to know that it drastically changes the impact and the outcome.
From below the line, fear is driving. We’re reactive, defensive, closed, contracted. In relationship, this shows up as that drama triangle, the villain victim hero. And you can do the victim, villain, hero triangle all by yourself, by the way. We’ve all seen this. We’ve all been in it. And we could spend hours on this model. I love this model. I use it in all my sessions with all my clients.
Above the line, we may still have fear, but we feel the fear. We acknowledge the fear. We’re aware of the fear. So we’re driving with awareness and choosing to come from love. We stay curious instead of certain. We stay open instead of armored.
Aimee shared last week, armor covers the authentic self. When we forget our wholeness, the fear that never got named gets performed instead. And I think of it as our coping strategies and our personas or our personality traits that we take on. Sometimes it looks like acting tough. Villain. Sometimes it looks like playing small. Victim. And sometimes it looks like saving the day or just smoothing everything over. That’s my jam. Hero. So working with this idea of collective fear, and our world is in a state of collective fear. So working with this idea of collective fear, Brown describes collective fear as a thin film of terror that settles over communities and quietly converts into scarcity, perfectionism, and the pervasive feeling of not enough.
I experienced this in a previous spiritual community. For those who were there, scarcity, perfectionism, the pervasive feeling of not enough was a lived experience. When fear goes unnamed and unexamined in a group, we don’t come together. We armor up. We default to self-protection. And the armor, control, cynicism, righteousness, it takes on many forms. Many coping strategies. Our victim, villain, hero modes are what actually block the connection that we need most. And this is true individually and collectively. And that once beautiful, thriving community eventually disbanded. Everyone was so armored up in self-protection that any attempts at connection had nowhere to land.
And we see it around us in the world. People are armored up. We see the control, the cynicism, the self-protection. And the invitation is to choose something different. Brown suggests being awkward, brave, and kind together requires some vulnerability. Are you all willing to let down the armor and be awkward, brave and kind together? How might that look? Instead of needing to be right, being willing to be awkward, brave, kind, open and curious, available to learning something. If we stay curious, fear in community is information. It tells us what we collectively care about. It tells us what wounds haven’t healed.
It tells us what belonging hasn’t been fully established. So what sometimes looks like collective conflict, maybe collective fear underneath. Fear of not mattering, fear of not belonging, fear of not being safe, fear of the dark. But if we tune to love, our own individual experience of connecting with divine, however that looks for you in whatever name you call it, tune to love, align with God, dial into spirit. When we tune to love and get curious together, something shifts. We’ve seen it in countless tragedies, right? Nine eleven, the way too frequent earthquakes, floods and fires that we’re seeing in the world, people come together.
And people often find those disasters to be some of the most profound experiences of community because people come together. In the lyrics to the song Bruno Mars wrote, “We find out what we’re made of when we are called to help our friends in need. We get to choose what we’re made of. And in the book, Strong Ground is framed as a leadership book. It is. Brown makes clear from the start that leadership isn’t a title or a position. You are the leader of your own life. And in any relationship, any family, any community, you are leading something.” So when she talks about what fear does to leaders, she’s talking about all of us. And the question isn’t whether you’re a leader. The question is whether fear is leading you. I’m going to say that again. The question is not whether you are a leader. The question is whether fear is leading you.
And one of Brown’s essential insights, the book title says it. You cannot build on a dysfunctional foundation. You have to find the strong ground first. You need to have your footing. And that circles back to Pema Chodron in meditation. Stay. Develop that steadfastness. Develop that ability to be in the discomfort. The antidote to fear-based leadership isn’t fearlessness. It’s what Brown calls grounded confidence. The core stability that allows you to withstand force without being toppled by it. Not fearless, grounded. That’s the shift. And for us in this teaching, strong ground is a state of consciousness. It’s developed in our spiritual practice. It’s where science of mind lives actually. Ernest Holmes said there is one mind free from all fear. This is the one mind that operates in as and through each of us.
The infinite intelligence and back of all life. The generative creative nature that creates universes. There is one mind and we are individual expressions of it. When we tune into that intelligence, God, spirit, love, whatever your word is, when we tune into that, we find the strong ground. We establish grounded confidence. And we’ve all heard everything is either love or a call for love. Fear is just calling us back to love. So grounded confidence, being tuned to love is what a spiritually grounded community looks like. Not fearless, present to fear. Not armored, staying open, staying curious, and choosing belonging over fitting in.
Joseph Campbell, the writer and professor who introduced the concept of hero’s journey, said the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. This was certainly true for me in my exploration of the pitch blackness. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Collectively, relationally, the conversations we’re most afraid to have are often the ones that build the deepest trust. In the presence of fear, if we do the work, we discover who we are individually and together. And in the song, count on me. You can count on me. I’ll spare you the like one, two, three. Although one of these days I might surprise you. You can count on me and I know if I need it, I can count on you. We found out what we’re made of when we’re called to help our friends in need. That’s the community we’re building.
Not one without fear, but one that holds each other through the fear. Being present with fear deepens our capacity for compassion. Compassion, while gentle, is a form of strength. When we meet our fear with compassion, we find it can be transformed into strength. When we allow fear to soften rather than harden us, we create communities where safety, empathy and listening are the norm. Fear is a normal human response. But sitting with the discomfort, not fighting it or avoiding it, not rushing to fix it, fear can sometimes point us to deeper understanding. So that’s my invitation for you this week. Folks online too. I’m going to take this into practice in a moment, but I just want you to see what’s rising up and we’ll practice together. But notice a collective fear in your circles. Maybe here or your family, your friends, your workplace, your neighborhood.
Instead of reacting or joining in, see if you can intentionally tune to love. Meet the fear with compassion. Get curious about it. Ask what deeper understanding it might be pointing to. What’s here for me, for us. So let’s say our affirmation together again. I meet fear with curiosity, compassion and courage. Let’s do that once more. I meet fear with curiosity, compassion, and courage. So can you commit to practicing that this week? Yeah? Being in the presence of fear is not spiritual failure. It’s part of the path. As students of science of mine, we don’t run from fear or fight fear. We stand in it. We find our ground with open hearts, seeking the truth. Honoring fear’s presence deepens our awareness, awakens our compassion, and we develop spiritual maturity.
And ultimately, being present to fear redirects us back to our wholeness, back to our divine nature. I’m going to take us into practice and I’ll close us with prayer. So if you’re willing, bring your attention within and bring to mind a time when you found that grounded confidence. When you tuned to love in spite of fear. When you trusted God in the midst of fear. And if you don’t know or if you don’t remember, just practice anyway. Tune to love in spite of fear. Trust the divine in the midst of fear. Feel that expansion, that opening when we stop bracing, stop contracting.
Take a breath. Imagine finding your footing on strong ground. Breathe into that and remember it. We can use this as a resource. We can wire our brains to recall this anchoring in love. Anchoring in grounded confidence. Open, curious, available. Now grounded there, bring to mind a collective fear that’s running in your circles, whether it’s your family, your friends, your workplace, maybe even here, your spiritual community, or your neighboring community, your online community. When you feel into that fear, see if you can simultaneously tune further into love. Meet that fear with compassion. You might feel it soften.
Get curious about the fear and ask what deeper understanding might it be pointing to? What’s here for me? What’s here for us? What’s being called in? And how might it look to bring love, to express love, to show love instead of needing to be right? Am I willing to be awkward, brave and kind? As we commit to this being our practice this week, I will close with prayer. We are already recognizing love, and I know God is love. As we are aligned with love, we know our oneness with it. We know we are individual expressions of it. It expresses in as and through each of us to the degree that we are available to it. So we intentionally open ourselves to it here now. We are one with the infinite of intelligence of life, with the love presence. I affirm this community’s capacity to find strong ground, to practice it individually and together.
I affirm each one deepening in remembering their connection to love, to the God of their being, and to bringing that into every conversation, into every interaction, into every situation, expanding the world around us with love, anchoring on strong ground, dissolving relationships emotional patterns, dissolving tendencies to armor up, dissolving the need to be right, returning to love, remembering love, whatever the question, love is the answer. And I am grateful for this. I’m grateful for this community. I’m grateful for this practice. I am grateful to the yes to being love, to bringing love, to being the love that the world so needs. I release this into the law knowing it is so. I let it be so. And together we say, and so it is. Thank you.