Time for another poll! What kind of clothes did Erik like wearing next. Entries are accepted until midnight tonight. The prize: a signed copy of My Son and the Afterlife. Email me your answer at emedhus@gmail.com. Good luck, people!

Me: How do fear-based emotions affect our lives? That’s another question.

Jamie: How do fear-cased emotions help our lives?

Me: Or affect us, help us. I don’t know. You tell me.

(Long pause)

Jamie: [unintelligible] It’s really not silent, cuz he’s talking things out, but I’m not going to repeat them because it’s just like, um, you know how when you look at a kaleidoscope, and all of the colors are turning, and you’re just calling out, “Oh, look at that red! Look at that blue! Look at that green! Look at the white!” and it’s moving, and you say, “I don’t see which color you’re talking about.” That’s what Erik’s doing today! He’s not as simple minded and direct as he normally is.

Simple minded? Really? I think he might object to that comment! She means just plain ol’ “simple.”

Me: Okay. He needs his ADD medicine.

Erik: Uh uh. No. Fear-based emotions. You have to look at why you’re defining it as fear. Is it a physical fear, a mental fear, a phobia, an emotional fear? You know, because some of these traits we have as human beings, when they’re physically afraid of something, that’s actually coming from the cellular reaction from your ancestral lineage. There might be a reason for you to be afraid of the snake and the spider because, you know, way back when, when we weren’t afraid of them, we didn’t know they could kill us, and now we know that they can. Our hair stood on end. It was like a defense mechanism. We knew to stay away. Back off.

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: Okay, so we can look at that fear. You know, let’s say that you’re—

(Pause)

Jamie: He’s going, “I don’t know. I don’t know, afraid of death.” And he starts laughing, and he goes, “That’s stupid. No one needs to be afraid of death.”

Erik: If you’re afraid of suffering, like let’s say that you’re afraid of getting cancer and suffering, and you think you might get cancer because it runs in your family, so you’re focused on it. That’s like a mental fear. It’s not really a phobia because there is a possibility of it happening to you since it’s been in your family lineage. How can it help you? Well, that fear of having the cancer can actually get you to the doctor more often. It can trigger you to run some more tests to look at your body, to look at your health, to see if you have the cancer, and, if you do, detect the cancer early and save your life. That’s helpful!

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: But mostly, people take the emotion, fear, in whatever form it’s coming in, and they allow it to paralyze them, shut them down, freeze ‘em up, lock ‘em down—

Jamie (smiling and shaking her head): He’s just saying different words.

Erik: That’s no good, because how can you participate in your own life if you’re completely trapped by this one fear that you probably just created yourself?

(Pause)

Jamie (shaking her head): I don’t know; he just stopped talking.

Me: Okay, so how to conquer it. Did you already cover that, how to conquer it?

Erik: We’ve talked about this several times. I always tell people if they’re afraid of something it’s because there’s not enough light on it, and you have to step closer to it. If you can get more information, if you can see it clearly, if you can define it better for yourself—and when I’m talking “define,” I don’t just mean words, logically. I mean through an experience emotionally, so forth. It’s amazing. Fear gets bigger when you walk away from it. If you walk closer to it, it goes away.

Me: That makes sense.

Erik: I always try to tell people to get closer to it. That’s how you can conquer it.

Face your fears!

Me: All right, so let’s use the example of snakes. Say you’re afraid of snakes. You don’t want to get too close!

Jamie: Yes, and he goes, “Are you afraid of snakes?” I said, ‘No.’

Me: Me neither.

Like this poll matters? He’s derailing us!

Jamie: I think he was going to show me images. I can’t tell if he was trying to be nice or really pull a prank on me!

She giggles.

Me: Well, you never know about that boy!

Jamie (to Erik): All right. Afraid of snakes. How do you conquer it?

Me: Yes.

(Pause)

Jamie: Oh, he is showing me pictures.

I figured. Sigh.

Erik: Well, first I would learn about snake behavior and which snakes are dangerous and deadly and which aren’t. I would learn how they react, how they live in their environment, and, then, I would go and talk to someone who handles snakes, and I would be around the snake. Commonly, through the information and seeing the beauty of how that snake lives its life, the respect that your gain for the creature diminishes the fear that you have for it. It turns into a respect, not a fear.

Me: I was just thinking the same thing a while ago! Yeah, learn to respect, which is a form of love. Turn fear into love. You can love the snake. Everybody go hug a snake!

Jamie (laughing): It’s “Hug a Snake Day”!

Jamie and I laugh.

Me: All right. Well, that’s very illuminating.