Fears of the mind versus fears of the self, and choices rooted in fear, judgment and guilt

Frederic recalls an old distinction between the fear of the mind and the fear of the self and says he cannot tell which fears come from the self.

The Wonders assure him that all the fears he has explored so far belong to his mind and consequently his ego; the fears of the self are so broad that the mind cannot observe them on its own and the mind must be suspended to see them.

Their suggestion is to expand his self-awareness and realize how limited the mind is: it does not observe its own energetic component, seeing only the judgment, justification, fear and guilt attached to its choices, and judging from those same perspectives, so that every choice and thought it makes stands in relation to fear, judgment and guilt.

Realizing this allows him to help the mind move past choosing from that basis to choosing out of love, appreciation, expansion and awareness, which opens him to the energetic component of each choice - unreachable until he sees there is more than fear, judgment and guilt.

They warn that he may hold this as a mental concept while his actual choices are still made from fear, judgment and guilt, and that until he suspends that attachment, recognizes it as contracting his exploration of existence, and chooses from something else, he will continue to think in those terms and will be unable to conceive of transcending physicality, entering another's body or moving through time and space except as nice constructs requiring machinery.

When Frederic claims to have sometimes chosen from love and offers the example of the original choice to come to Earth and go through these experiences, they accept that first original choice - noting Catholics call it original sin - but ask what other choice he has made from love.

His answer, choosing to expand in spite of fear, they identify as still fear-driven: it was the fear of not being able to expand that propelled the choice.

They clarify that love is not absent from his choices, but the motivator or originator of the choice still lies in the mind, where all choices must originate from fear, judgment or guilt - the decision to expand his mind began with judgment, carried a fear component ('if I don't change I won't get where I want to go') and a guilt component ('I've been giving in to my fear all this time, I have to do something else').