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Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors, said near the end of his life, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

John Cali

If you pay even scant attention to the mainstream news media, you know the world is riddled with fear today. Fear of high oil prices, fear of earthquakes and other natural disasters, fear of faltering national economies, fear of terrorists, and so forth.

Some days it seems everyone is running scared, anticipating only more gloom and doom in the days and years ahead. The world is indeed a scary, dangerous place if you look at it through the eyes of fear.

Mark Twain’s wise words were never more timely than today. Most of the troubles we’ve had in our lives never happened. Fear magnifies the problems we really do have all out of proportion. Sometimes they become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is the power of fear. But the power of love is greater.

Most often, the worst-case scenario depicted by fear never comes to pass. If you really trust in an all-loving divine presence in our lives, no matter what you call it, you cannot live in fear. Sure, our planet has problems. But there are far more acts of kindness and love than there are acts of violence and hatred.

Let’s put our focus on all the good in the world instead of imagining troubles that never happen. See through the eyes of love, not the eyes of fear.

Here’s Chief Joseph.

Chief Joseph

As many of you know, we are fond of saying you create your own realities. Sometimes that concept gets "beaten to death" in its overuse. Other times it’s used as a "weapon" to beat up on someone for creating a negative experience.

We use the concept only to explain how it is you get what you get in life. There is no blame, no guilt, no judgement here. It simply is. It’s how the Universe works.

Yes, there are plenty of problems "out there" in your world today. That’s what many of you focus on many of your waking hours.

But, as John said, there are also many acts of kindness and love -- millions more, in fact, than acts of violence and destruction.

You can spend endless hours debating with one another as to why certain people have such negative, disaster-ridden lives, and why others live seemingly charmed lives with good fortune meeting them almost everywhere they turn.

That debate is, in our opinion, an exercise in futility.

It doesn’t really matter if you believe you create your own reality. And you don’t have to explain how you, or anyone else, have the life experiences you or they have.

The fact is, friends, you have whatever experiences you’re having. Period! Can you change those experiences? Absolutely!

Let’s take this discussion out of the realm of spirituality for a moment, and just focus on some practical aspects of your everyday lives.

You have many choices available to you every waking moment. You can’t possibly choose all of them at once. But you can choose one. For example, you can choose whether to take the bus or drive your car to work or to visit a friend.

The end result is you get where you want to go. What brought you there? Your choice to go to work or see your friend. Your focus, as manifested in your choice, is what brought you there.

Focus is the key word here. Your ability to focus is a powerful tool. The direction of your focus is what determines your life experiences.

Let’s say all the "gloom-and-doomers" out there are wailing about the price of oil -- or global warming -- or terrorists -- or on and on ad nauseam.

They obviously are focusing on all the potential disasters looming over your world. But there are still many who choose to focus on all the good, the beauty, the joy that’s equally available to you in your world today.

If you spend most of your waking hours worried about oil prices, you’re probably going to create financial challenges for yourselves. If, on the other hand, you focus on all the abundance you already have in your lives, knowing the price of oil has nothing to do with your abundance -- only your focus does -- you’re probably going to feel joyful, even if everyone around you is depressed.

Looking at your lives through the eyes of fear creates a vibration of fear which only grows stronger with time. Looking at your lives through the eyes of love will make that vibration grow stronger.

It all depends on what you choose to focus on most of the time. Do you focus on what you want? Or on what you don’t want?

Certainly you can see your focus, what you think about mostly, is the primary determiner of your experiences. You could be walking down a street in a "bad" neighborhood where others are scared and worried, and you would be totally safe. Your focus, and the vibration of your focus, keeps you safe. You simply don’t have vibrational access to anything or anyone that could harm you.

As has been said, there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Fear is a choice. Love is a choice. Choose wisely.

P.S. from John: Last week, one of our Chief Joseph forum members started a discussion on this very subject. There were lots of insightful comments and questions. Joseph and I picked the subject for this article before that discussion started. An interesting "coincidence."

Chief Joseph talks about related subjects here:
Winds of Change
Change, Fear, and Futility
Fear of Flying
Eve of Destruction
You Are Never Alone
Your Power Is Now