F.E.A.R.

All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all.
-ACIM : Chapter 1:VI:5:1

FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real

Hmmm!  I really do not know who created this acronym for fear.  I have heard Wayne Dyer use it so many times I cannot cite it here but it is a definition of fear that makes sense to me.

False Evidence Appearing Real: As much as that sounds like an oxymoron...it does make sense.  It is just saying that what seems to be so real...as evidence to our minds' based on information provided by the five senses is false.  It isn't real. What we think is real isn't. It is an illusion, a distorted perception. 

In other words, what we seem to be afraid of is only an illusion.. We have somehow created this image of the world and it scares us because it seems so real and we have somehow come to believe it is. The fear becomes an overpowering entity.

You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear and you believe in what you made.
Chapter 1: VI: 4: 2

So let's look at the situation I am dealing with to better understand fear.  A bodily change has showed up in my life.  This body change is not false evidence...I feel the physical pain and the mass.  Other people, who try to, can feel it too.  It is there.

It in itself is just a bodily change, neither good or bad, right or wrong...it just is what it is.

The false evidence comes in when I think about this mass...I build story around it. I focus on what it could be. I selectively collect and cling to all pieces of information that supports my story. I gather socially and culturally enforced beliefs. I dig into history related to such changes.  I soak up the story of "cancer" that is all around me.  I begin to believe in this evidence even though the only real evidence is a  change in the body. I build it all up so this "just a bodily change" becomes a potential life threatening disease. I created a scary story around the bodily change and I begin to worry.  (Worry is just one of the many faces of fear). I have fear...F.E.A.R.

It is all just false evidence appearing real...it is just a story in my head.

So even if I were to have a diagnosis of cancer...it is still just a story  I would use it to label, explain and narrate myself through an experience of having a bodily change.  In reality it is nothing more than a few mutating and extra cells...that is all.  The fear...comes from believing in that story I created...the false evidence...not from the bodily change itself.

Get that?

The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind.
ACIM: Chapter 2: VI:1:6

Fear is a belief in something that isn't true...a belief in a story that we created in our minds.  It is false evidence that isn't real even though it appears to be.

There is a way to sort out the false evidence from the real:

Perfect love casts out fear.

If fear exists;

Then there is not perfect love.

 

But:

 

Only perfect love exists.

If there is fear,

It produces a state that does not exist.

 

ACIM: Chapter 1: VI: 5:3

 

 

All is well! 

 

ACIM ( 2007) A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Foundations for Inner Peace.