It's just life

The Path of Love involves following the natural flow of life, of heeding the call of our heart and allowing ourselves to grow and rediscover our true nature. The Path of Fear involves doing anything and everything that isn't an act of Love: Resisting the flow of life, not listening to our heart, running from our own dreams and responsibilities, actively building illusions to hide in.

When perceived from the outside, determining whether a person is on the Path of Love or on the Path of Fear is practically impossible. That's because what could be the Path of Love for one person could be the Path of Fear for another. The only person who really has the answer to these question is you. Let's look at some simple examples to make this concept easier to grasp:

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The Path of Fear and ways to transform it

Sample 1, the business man
A business man is building a tremendous career for himself. He earns loads of money and ensures that his family is well fed and the investors happy. People, generally men, respect him and look up to him. But his heart is starving and he is unhappy. Under layers of high-performance business mentality is a deep longing for more heart fulfillment, for spending more time with his wife and children. He knows that his friendships are superficial and self-serving and that few of his friends would be there, TRULY there, in times of need. Deep down, he is only pursuing his career because he's afraid of not being respected for who he is. His father used to tell him that his worth as a human being is determined by the extent to which other people respect and admire him. His heart is telling a different story, however. It is telling him that he's not living his life's purpose, but the voice of the heart is different to those of his father and his peers, voices he finds much more reliable. So he distrusts his heart and ignores it. He stays numb and confused, lost in the pursuit of money and success, mere expressions of his Path of Fear. He has this weird idea in his head you see, that only when he makes two million dollars a year is he truly successful, deserving of happiness and love.

The transformation process
His heart wants him to realize that being respected and admired and creating great economic wealth for himself and others, is not what he's TRULY looking for. He wants to be loved. Mainly by himself. And his career is not providing much love at all. His heart wants him to increase the time he spends with his family, wants him to nurture his real longings and his interpersonal relationships. It's likely that it will call him to shorten his working week dramatically. If he lets down his shields enough, giving his heart the chance to speak of its longing to him, he may change his career entirely. As a consequence, his kids will know their father again and his increased energy will allow him to yet again please his wife sexually (something which hasn't happened for years, a fact which made him work even longer hours for fear that he had to perform sexually when returning home) and strengthen their communication.

Sample 2, the family man
A soft family man spends lots of time with his family. He's totally dependable in relationships and is widely considered a very nice person. He makes a decent living as a teacher and is admired, particularly by women, for his soft and gentle nature. But his heart is longing to rebel. He always did the right thing. He feels claustrophobic and while he Loves his family and friends dearly, he has a primal man inside of him that he has not found a way to express. And now his frustration is building all the while paying too much attention to the needs of his wife and kids and too little to his own. He once dreamed of riding a motorcycle through the countryside, of stopping at random diners, pubs and bars to have brief sexual encounters with hot women and have the muscle to fight of any would-be competitor. But he's spending his days teaching kids to be nice and gentle, changing diapers and cooking dinner for his wife, a successful business woman and the dominating force in the relationship. His heart knows that any day now, the bubble will burst and he will have to face the consequences. Unless he pauses and listens.

Transforming it
This guy has probably spent too much time listening to the women in his life. It's time for him to grow his masculinity. He could pick up a martial art or buy that motorcycle he always dreamt of. He could go to classes teaching masculinity or sexuality. He could go into the woods and scream, go on trips with his mates. Maybe get wasted out on town a couple of times. He needs to break boundaries in whatever way he can, but not overstretching above and beyond his personal morals so much that the process backlashes. The main work is to be done in relationship to his wife, however. He could tell his wife his heart's longing and that things are going to change a little. His wife will probably resist this, as she has come to appreciate the control filling the masculine role of the relationship has given her. But he must be fearless, putting his heart's longing above and beyond the needs of his wife. Because he's not currently loving his wife, he's fearing her.

Workshops may help him rediscover his masculine power and understand how his wife actually WANTS him to reclaim the power, she just doesn't understand it. And if all else fails, after doing his damndest through communication and self-emancipation work, if she doesn't yield, he has two choices: Leave her and start seeing other women, or start seeing other women while they're still together. This depends on what their history is like and who they are as individuals. His goal, if he really does love her, is to follow his heart's direction while breaking through her shields to love and surrender. Loving her will therefore be painful for her. If that proves impossible, leaving her is probably the most loving thing to do - for the both of them. Their relationship was nothing more than an expression of his own lack of love while walking on the Path of Fear.

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These are two examples that exemplify this dynamic. Note that the business man need more qualities from the family man and the family man more from the business man. This is often how the Path of Fear manifests - as extremes. The Path of Love is always the middle way. The heart is not looking for extremes, it's looking for joyful balance. And only in the middle may these men rediscover their genuine masculinity and purpose in life.

The examples are very simplified, however. The Paths of Love and Fear are not only the big overarching direction in life, they're also minute by minute decisions.* And only we ourselves know how our Path of Love and our Path of Fear must manifest in our life. My Path of Love can be your Path of Fear. Let this be your guideline, however - in the Now, the Path of Fear always seems easier than the Path of Love as the Path of Fear is generally habitual and the Path of Love a breaking free from. Follow your heart. And be honest with yourself; statistics indicate that more than 95% of people spend most of their time on the Path of Fear, not the Path of Love.

Choosing the Path of Fear is always easy. Learn to make difficult choices, choices of breaking free, and find your life bathed in Love.

* Minute by minute decisions require awareness. A perfect example is how we relate to TV. The act of turning on the TV with the purpose of watching something that will grow ourselves is on the Path of Love. For some people, a little bit of random entertainment grows them. Others are grown by documentaries. Almost everyone is grown by the occasional good film. The act of turning on the TV just to make time pass, however, is on the Path of Fear. It's an irresponsible action and an escape from life itself. Whichever path you're on when watching TV is for you to determine. But it's unlikely (but not impossible) that spending hours watching TV every day is on the Path of Love. How to find out? If you have to debate youself for ages over the pros and cons of watching, you're on the Path of Fear. On the Path of Love, letting go and moving on is effortless.