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The Virus of Fear

By Mary O'Malley  |  March 9, 2020

There is a virus that is spreading like wildfire across our planet and it isn’t the coronavirus. It is the virus of fear that the coronavirus is bringing up inside of so many people. And that virus is spreading a lot faster than the coronavirus.

What is happening inside of you around the coronavirus? If you watch the news or the stock market, it can generate a lot of fear. Some of the fears I have heard are – “What happens if I get it, I can’t afford to be off work or What will happen to my loved one who has a compromised immune system? How would I live if I lost all my retirement savings? I can’t find any hand sanitizer because the shelves are empty at my local stores.”

It’s so easy to be seduced into fear. But what would happen if, rather than seeing this as a time to be afraid, it is really a time of great healing on our planet?

What do I mean by that? If you could step back and watch the stream of thought that moves through you all day long, you would see it’s based on fear – fear of not getting what you want, or getting what you don’t want, or never getting what you deeply want. There is also the fear of being rejected, fear of not being enough, and fear of being all alone and on and on. We all experience these fears.

But 98% of our fears never come to pass. Samuel Clemens, author of Mark Twain once said, “I’ve had so many tragedies in my life and a few of them have actually happened!” Most of our fears are just stories in our head, which are not grounded in reality and yet we scare ourselves with our imaginings of what is going to happen.

Yes, there is a place for fear in our lives. You step off the curb and you hear the blaring honk of a bus and you instantly react by stepping back. But that kind of fear doesn’t go through your mind. It is a purely a primal reaction. That is the 2 % of fear that is necessary for survival. But we have been almost completely trained to believe the fear stories in our mind, so our minds have permission to paint horrible outcomes from even the smallest of challenges.

What would happen if you understood that the coronavirus is engendering a virus of fear, not to entrap us, but help us to discover how to not be run by fear? Pema Chodron, the insightful Buddhist nun wrote, “Do I choose to grow up and relate to life directly or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

She is inviting all of us to get to know how fear talks inside of us – to show up for fear when it shows up inside of us. Pres. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” What I’m saying is you don’t need to be afraid of fear. There is no accident that the acronym for fear is F E A R, False Evidence Appearing as Real.

In order to be able to unhook from our stories of fear, we need to know that life is for us. That is why I love the Eckhart Tolle quote, “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

In other words, your life is for you – no matter what is happening! When we have explored this before, it has always been in relationship to your individual life. But this quote can also be applied to our collective mind. As the virus of fear is exploding across our planet, we are being given this experience not because we’ve taken a left turn when we should’ve taken a right, but because life is inviting us to no longer be run by fear.

How do we unhook from fear? By becoming a tightness detective. Fear always tightens you while truth opens you. Fear feels heavy while truth feels light and spacious. Become fascinated when you are holding your breath or clenching your jaw or raising your shoulders or there is a knot in your stomach. Know that when you are tightening like this, there is some level of fear that is moving through your mind at that time. And while it may not seem very powerful to you at this point, just acknowledging that fear is present is deeply healing.

The next step is to welcome. This is what the most popular poem in the world, The Guest House by Rumi, is all about. And it is that popular because we are ready to learn how to respond to life rather than react. We are ready to no longer be run by fear.

Eckart Tolle speaks eloquently about welcoming when he said, “To welcome whatever arises in this moment is the ultimate spiritual practice. If you practice just this one thing you won’t need to read any more books or learn any other meditation techniques. To welcome whatever arises in this moment outside or inside of you brings freedom.  The conditioned mind will tell you don’t do this because it believes that by resisting, it will become free. The opposite is true! By resisting you become even more stuck. When you no longer believe what the mind is saying, you realize the quickest way for transformation to happen is to welcome what is. In that moment life is free to move through you. The conditioned mind is no longer obstructing life.”

If you get the coronavirus or are close to someone who has, can you welcome the experience? Rather than an enemy, see it as a great teacher?  And can you welcome whatever is arising inside of you when you just think about the virus?

I leave you with a quote from Gerald Jampolsky, who wrote the phenomenally successful book Love is Letting Go of Fear. He says, “The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To see the world differently we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip way, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

The belief system of fear is what causes so much insanity on our planet. Are you ready to see through the illusion of most fears?  Are you ready to accept the invitation from Pema – “Do I choose to grow up and relate to life directly or do I choose to live and die in fear?” And are you ready to experience life without the filter of fear, which cuts you off from the nourishment of being fully present for life?

If this blog has touched you, we invite you to listen to a fuller exploration of unhooking from the virus of fear by listening to Mary’s radio show called The Virus of Fear. It will be aired Thursday, March 12th & 19th at 5 AM & 5 PM PT on DreamVision7Radio or you can listen by CLICKING HERE. It will also be available from the link above in Previous Episodes On Demand where you can download and listen to it at any time after March 20th.

Also, we invite you to become a part of Mary’s online course What’s in Your Way IS the Way, beginning on April 8th. Click the link above for more info.

  1. I have a brother who is the executor for my elderly mother’s will. She passed away last year. And the lawyer who drew up the will is related to brother’s daughter. This brother colluded to cut me out of the will by priming the negativity pump with my elderly mother, especially during the last two years of her life, and unduly influencing my other two brothers. Brother denies it and simply says to me: “What the will says is the last word. She’s dead and gone. Don’t be angry, just get over it.” He would not meet with me face to face “because it would only cause a scene” and would only discuss dollar amounts that he and the lawyer determined the estate was worth over the phone. When I tried to talk briefly with him over the phone, I knew he was lying. He has no fear and has always not had much of a conscience. Letting go of this is something I have to do, but it is very hard. This Trumpian age has emboldened sick behavior in people like my brother. They feel they can’t be touched by any consequences.

  2. Thank you Mary for sharing your insightful thoughts on this newest addition of living fearfully to the collective state of our planet! I had a (perhaps a bit gross to some) experience a couple of days ago when a little first grade passenger on my school bus wanted to share a few words with me. Missing a tooth or two, her conversation with me included a bit of her saliva on my face as well (yet another undisclosed hazard of the job)! With all of the warnings of containing our own micro-organisms during this coronavirus outbreak, the phrase please “keep your spit to yourself” seemed extremely relevant at that moment! p.s. that type of hazard is one I will gladly embrace if it means that a child on my bus feels “heard and important”.

  3. Thank you, Mary, for another wonderful message. It always seems like your messages are right on point with what I’m experiencing. This year I really started to notice my body reactions and am able to respond very quickly to the tightening from fear. It’s heartening to see progress on my journey. Thank you so very much for all you do, and I’m looking forward to your radio show on Thursday.

  4. Thank you for the radio link! I will put it on my calendar.

    Wow! Your post really brought to life the negatives of living, or rather not living, with a conditioned mind of fear. As you describe so well, seeing, accepting, loving, and moving on is the reward to living in the moment, rather than dying.

    Fear of medical issues is one of my greatest fears. I have been aware of it for some years now. I know where it comes from, and I know the damage it can do. Thank you for the reassurance and reminder to know that this virus is just one more road to healing, to strength, to standing strong and upright in my world. Godspeed always, Sky Ann

    1. Thank you so much for your continued support of my posts. It’s very appreciated.

  5. I really hope that what is happening with the corona virus will at best go some way to helping non human animals and the natural world to begin to recover from the dreadful harm and destruction inflicted upon it by humans over thousands of years.
    “As the virus of fear is exploding across our planet, we are being given this experience not because we’ve taken a left turn when we should’ve taken a right, but because life is inviting us to no longer be run by fear.”
    Perhaps it is necessary for us to be afraid. Those humans who survive may then work towards redressing the balance and live in future with greater respect for each other, other species and the natural environment.