Fears and Phobias — Spotify from the CEC Library

Today I will talk about phobias. Phobias have everything to do with emotional chakras. If a person says, "Well, I am working at the crown chakra," it is good for them to reconsider that. Why is it good to reconsider? Because someone working at the crown chakra has no conflicts, no emotional difficulties, and no kind of problem. If you leave a person who is working at the crown chakra alone on top of a mountain, they are complete because they are working with all the energies of the crown chakra and all the energies of the body. This person will hardly experience any kind of difficulty.

How is a phobia born? Some people who suffer from this problem apparently experienced no trauma in this life. Could it be something from another life? Let me explain how a phobia is born. When you are born, you begin your physical life at the base chakra, which is the sex chakra, the high-acceleration chakra, the chakra that brings contact with neediness and provides everything a human being requires to relate to the physical world. You begin your life this way; after seven, eight, or nine years, you move to the spleen chakra. After another seven to nine years, you move to the navel chakra, when you begin developing your identity.

During the first two periods of life, disharmony in the home can influence your development—for example, if the father argues with the mother, if the parents do not speak with each other, if the father is shy or passive, if the mother is shy or passive, or if the child witnesses domestic violence. If you lived in great poverty, that has everything to do with it. You had no TV, or you walked barefoot, things that are common in Brazil. These are basic needs. When you go to school, you see people who have more than you; the other child's father has a car, while yours does not. All of this can create a highly unbalanced emotional condition, even if you do not perceive it. When someone states that they have had no trauma in life, that is not how it works.

It does not work that way because, imagine the following: once, at school, I witnessed a very interesting situation. A very well-dressed boy was playing at a public school when another boy suddenly charged forward and punched him in the face. The boy did not know why he was being attacked and fell to the ground with his face covered in blood. I, who was also a child at the time, went over to him to break up the fight. When the matter reached the principal's office, the attacker did not know why he had hit him; I knew that he had done it out of anger and envy. The boy then took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood from his nose.

The principal suspended both of them. The one who had been beaten was also suspended; imagine that. It makes no sense at all. But because she did not know what had happened and did not go find out and investigate, perhaps because she lacked the patience to do so, both of them ended up being suspended. I said, "But are you suspending him?" She replied, "I did not ask for your opinion." I answered, "All right." Then I excused myself and left. I was a little boy, probably nine or ten years old.

If you are saying that there is no trauma, that apparently there was none in this life, this boy was deeply hurt and resentful at seeing the other person in a better condition. Because he was a child, he did not know how to deal with it. He certainly did not know how. He only knew that he was not well and that there was something unbalanced inside him. He did not attack because he was evil; he attacked because he was not well. He must have been very upset by that situation.

The result is that you state that you apparently experienced no trauma in this life, but we do not perceive what is happening inside other people. We see a person well dressed, with neatly combed hair, but we do not know exactly what is going on in their heart or the inner movements they make in relation to life. This can be traumatic. Moreover, any kind of emotional disturbance you experience can lead you to develop a phobia at a certain point. You gradually accumulate dissatisfaction, disagreements, hurt, and resentment. At a particular moment in your life, something happens and you end up causing a fear to be born.

Fears are connected to the emotional issues we carry in the lower chakras. When you seek a psychologist or psychoanalyst, they are unaware of these issues; they know only that they must access the unconscious to resolve the problem through conversation. What they do not perceive is that by doing this, they are interfering with the energies of the chakras. Thus, you resolve these issues unconsciously by discharging the energies that accumulated because you did not understand how they worked, energies that did not flow and became stuck.

The same situation could be entirely calm for another person. Yes, nothing may happen. At that moment, the person may allow their energies to flow and experience no trauma at all. Imagine the following: a person is going to have sex, a man, for example, and suddenly he fails and cannot stay aroused. To him, this may be a failure as a man. He may even joke with his partner, and she may also say, "Hey, that is what happened, you failed. Let us stay together, and that is that." We know that the same situations can represent different things to different people. So it is obvious that a highly frightening and threatening situation can represent many things to one person and nothing to another. This is real.

An eight-year-old child is terrified of ants. Her parents had already noticed her fear, but they did not know it was so serious. Once, at school, the teacher took the children to an outdoor class, and suddenly, when the girl saw several ants climbing a tree, she froze in terror. Her father had to go to the school to pick her up; it was a very difficult situation for her and for him, because he felt helpless in the face of it. He would like to know whether therapy could help her.

She is not afraid of the ant; she is afraid of what the ant represents to her. We are not afraid of things that are outside us. For example, you are not afraid of a weapon, but of what it represents, because it is a threat of death. You are not afraid of your father; you are afraid of what he represents. If you are a little boy, your father is almost twice your size; when you look at him, he represents destruction. Therefore, we need to discover what the ant represents to the child. She was probably bitten by an ant or saw a scene that frightened her, and the ant came to represent something very serious to her.

About two months ago, someone told me about a situation: a little girl was afraid of spiders. I spoke with her and asked what had happened; she began to recount, "I was beside a wall and saw a very large spider. When I saw it, my father came over and said, 'Get away from there!'" On hearing this, she imagined that the spider was very dangerous and could kill or bite her. I asked whether she had told her father this, and she said no. In fact, she feared what the spider represented to her.

I spoke with her, picked up a little jumping spider, placed it on the table, and said, "Put your hand there." For anyone who does not know, the little jumping spider is that very small spider that catches flies on the wall, hops around, and is very funny. Then I said, "Keep your hand there; it will climb onto your hand and will not do anything." Before she could become frightened, I let the little spider climb onto my hand; it hopped from one hand to the other, which was very funny, and she began to laugh. I then said, "Now put out your hand."

She put out her hand, and the little spider stayed there. I said, "A spider, that is all. Were you afraid?" She replied, "No, it tickled." I asked, "Then shall we get a slightly larger spider?" We found another spider, and it walked over her hand without frightening her. So what does the ant represent to your daughter? That is what we need to discover, because she is not afraid of the ant. In fact, an ant is not frightening; it is not something terrible. If you are bitten by an ant, the most you will feel is a momentary discomfort with no significance at all.

These fears and phobias can lead to panic. From what she said, the girl was paralyzed. When this happens, what we need to do is place a hand on the person to bring them back to reality and begin speaking with them very calmly, asking them to look around so they can emerge from what is inside them—an inner world filled with confusion and, above all, highly conflicting representations.

You could take her to therapy. Any phobia—fear of presenting or speaking in public, fear of rats or cockroaches, fear of approaching a person of the opposite sex or beginning a conversation with them—can be treated. If you have difficulties in sexual relationships or hugging someone, or believe that physical contact contaminates you, these fears and phobias make up a universe of their own. Imagine someone who leaves a war carrying a thousand and one problems. Fear of crowds, called social phobia, is a very serious condition; someone who has it truly has difficulty speaking in public.