FROM BILL: Fear is how you alert yourself that there is danger. It is a useful emotion. If you associate certain things with danger, even though they aren’t really dangerous, you will make yourself feel afraid when it isn’t useful. You do this by making internal representations of what you don’t want.

FROM BILL: This is because you aren’t clear about how you create the fear. You need to learn to observe your mind so you can see how you do it.

FROM BILL: Everything in this world is impermanent, and yes, most explanations of what being human is all about are attempts to deal with that. However, while the individual things and processes are impermanent, the entire whatever-it-is that makes up the whole isn’t impermanent. If it “ended”. where would it go? If it had a beginning, where did it come from? What existed before? What would exist after?

Since you are the entire interrelationship of the whole thing–which will go on in some way or other–realizing that (not intellectually, but experientially) frees you from fear of the impermanence of the relative world. If someone is seeking that realization to escape impermanence for the same reason humans do all the other things they do to try to escape, then the spiritual seeking is no different than anything else. Once realized, though, whatever the original motive, you see things the way they really are (and, more important, who you really are).

No further comments to prevent misunderstoods

Comment: You can only become affected by those things you have identified yourself with one way or other. My viewpoint, when you cease to excist as an Identity this game is ended for you, left only the state of awareness free from effects as there is nothing to reflect upon.
But I don’t think it is possible to escape from awareness.

FROM BILL: MY comment about being caught in the web of cause and effect, with no escape, is no different than if I said that you are subject to gravity, and there is no escape, or that you must eat or you will die, and there is no escape from that. All events have or create consequences, and as a human you are subject to these consequences. The sun shines, and you are subject to the effects of that sunshine. People take actions, and you are subject to the effects of those actions. Apathy has nothing to do with it. If you hit a nail with a hammer, there are consequences to the nail. The nail’s attitude about it has nothing to do with it.

FROM BILL: I would stop speculating. How do you know that cause and effect ends when you stop identifying with matter, energy, space and time? Sounds like a speculation to me.

FROM BILL: Huh? It’s true for everyone, Tony. Cause and effect exists for everyone and everything in the universe. Check out Newton’s laws of motion. I am not suggesting apathy at all. Where in the world would you get that idea? I’m suggesting AWARENESS and action. It’s just that there’s little or nothing you can do about how you’re affected by gravity, the sun, cosmic rays, the weather, the earth’s magnetic field, and all the other physical happenings in the universe, and there’s little you can do about the actions of the billions of other people on earth. That doesn’t mean you should be apathetic about it, though. If you’re aware, you’ll be able to do what can be done, whatever that is. In many cases, though, there’s nothing you can do. If there is an earthquake, the earth will move no matter what you do. If there is a war, there will be bullets and bombs, no matter what you do. To think that you are going to control everything is delusion. There is no escape from cause and effect. You can escape from certain effects, but not from all effects.