Stairways to Heaven and Hell

I caught up with an old friend yesterday who also works on self-empowerment themes and she introduced me to a fascinating psychological framework. When I listened to her, it sounded a bit like a stairways to either heaven and hell. Imagine a triangle which has fear on the top, blame and escape on the right and pain on the left. The way one would descend into deeper and deeper problems and struggle if one is afraid of life, that one projects all problems onto others (blame) or tries with the help of medication, alcohol or other addictive measures to avoid life. In life's negative feed-back loops one would experience increased pain and the fear of life would go up even more and down one goes until one day one needs help from others to be lifted out of the hole again.

The polar opposite is a triangle that has love as its top, has learning on the right of the triangle and thrill on the left. You start out with the assumption that you are loved by life, you experience life as a thrilling experience but every little mishap along the way you use as a learning experience to adjust and will thus be able to cooperate with life with an ever increased level of intensity. Life and you become friends, you realize that everything that comes your way is in fact nothing to be afraid of, but instead another opportunity to choose love and to say yes to life.

I liked that way of thinking very much because it describes the Tao. Along the Tao, life hollers at you day in, day out, 'hey, don't be afraid, the monsters that you see are not real. We are your friends and we are here to help you and love you.' You can experience the Tao for yourself and it doesn't really matter whether you face fear in many areas of your life or not. When you move upwards on this stairways you will experience a tremendous gain in energy and happiness for the removal of fear is the gain of love. As the Course in Miracle states, there are only two emotions, love or fear. And yes, love is always yours to choose.