Implanted Fear and Children

A quick example of how powerful fear can be when administered to a child:

When I was around five years old, my cousins attempted to get me to drink urine from a cup by telling me it was lemonade. They thought it would be really funny. I knew something was suspicious, and then another cousin told me it was pee. Well, I immediately told my Aunt that my cousins were trying to get me to drink pee and they got in big trouble. Of course, they were mad at me for telling, so in an effort to retaliate, they told me that the next time I sat on a toilet, a hand would come out of the hole and pull me in, even illustrating it with their hands, and saying it in a creepy way. Even my older brother was in on it, and I trusted him. Surely this news had to be true because I just knew my brother wouldn’t lie to me. Needless to say, because I was young and didn’t know where that mysterious black hole at the bottom of the toilet really went, I believed them.

For years I wouldn’t go near a toilet with high water. I especially wouldn’t go near toilets with water that I couldn’t see through. That fear eventually morphed into any body of water that looked creepy or cloudy. These days, as a grown-up, I am fully aware that the hole story was false, but even knowing that, I still hate toilets with high water, toilets with cloudy water, and more than anything, toilets that run over the top when clogged. That fear sure had its affect on me. That is because it was implanted into me when I was so young. I didn’t know any better and I had no frame of reference to compare the data to. Then, add the scary and believable way that they told the story to me to the mix and I had no choice but to believe it. I asked my Aunt if what they said was true and she said no, and yelled at them to stop scaring me. But it didn’t matter – the damage had already been done to my psyche. When I went into the bathroom and stared at that hole at the bottom of the calm toilet water, I became afraid. All I could see was the hand coming to get me.

The same is true of devilish tales of demons and Hell. If you fill a little child’s mind with all of that fear, it will definitely hold power over them; even when there is absolutely no basis to the stories except what was read out of a book. And when something is believed wholeheartedly, we make it real in our own minds. Putting images like those into a mind that is still developing its consciousness causes almost irreparable damage; and it is nearly impossible to reverse. Add on top of that, the story coming from a loved and trusted parent, or the trusted pastor of the church that you would never expect to lie, or tell a tale that wasn’t true. After all, the pastor is viewed as someone with a direct link to God in the minds of the parishioners. However, once society stops injecting those fears into its offspring, life will suddenly improve.

Since the base of all fear, religion, will have been removed, children will no longer grow up afraid of their own shadows. They will not believe that they have to get things while the getting is good. They will not believe that a choice with an unfavorable outcome will end in punishment from God. They will understand that to change their prospects, they merely need to make a new choice. Fear will no longer be the driving force of society. And fear is the root cause of:

Greed, jealousy, anger, murder, lack, hatred, lying, racism, and etcetera – I think you get the picture.

People won’t be able to comprehend it at first.  People will wonder what made the change. Then, the wise sages among us will reveal that it was our own change of beliefs that did it. That’s why I say, change the way you believe, and the change will be unbelievable.

- JB Lewis
(from Living In Consciousness)
Coming July 2013