When Fear Tries to Recruit Us
A practice for staying human when everything is escalating
This week felt like another round of escalation. The kind of week where the nervous system tightens and the mind goes looking for a clean enemy and a clean story.
I do not want to live there. I do not want to be shaped there.
So I want to offer something practical. A way to come back to center that does not require agreement, and does not ask you to pretend nothing is happening.
I want to start with a short video from Rev. Rob Schenck.
If you only knew his earlier public life, you might assume he would be greeted with suspicion or contempt. Instead, what comes through is humility. A caring for others. An acknowledgment of grace he is receiving from people he once assumed were clearly Them.
He says,
“This is redemption, this is redemption, in the big picture and in my tiny little small personal picture.”
That sentence matters because fear blocks awareness. It blocks awareness of external events and it blocks awareness of our internal response. When fear takes the wheel, we lose perception and call it certainty. We lose sensitivity and call it strength.
Listen to him. His voice is slower. Softer. Not righteous. Not brittle. There is humility and gentle compassion for himself. We get to see who he is without the layers of fear. He is a gentle man who still loves his faith. What’s different is that he now knows how to leverage that faith for life, not fear. If you pay attention, you can hear the love in his voice.
One reason I’m staying with the unity arc after Lincoln is that I keep seeing the same pattern. When someone stops treating the other side as Them, something unexpected becomes possible. Unity isn’t a slogan. Unity is a practice, and part of the practice is discovering the surprising healing that only shows up when we cross the old lines.
Now the deeper point.
Fear recruits.
Fear recruits us into blame. Fear recruits us into certainty. Fear recruits us into force. Fear recruits us into us and them.
Fear doesn’t just recruit us into stories. It recruits us into obedience. It whispers: just do what you’re told, just follow the script, don’t think, don’t feel, don’t notice the human in front of you. But fear doesn’t force us to harm others. It only tries to make harm feel like duty. The moment we return to awareness, conscience comes back online.
That is why I’m sharing an Alignment Movie Process session built around the documentary The Armor of Light (2015).
This film lets you watch Schenck’s longer journey of awareness, the inner arc that brought him to where he is today. It follows an Evangelical leader who helped build a powerful political movement, as he begins to question the moral contradiction of calling ourselves pro life while blessing a culture of guns. The film pairs him with Lucy McBath, a Christian mother whose son was killed, and it becomes something rarer than debate.
It becomes conscience. It becomes courage. It becomes coherence.
I think this is a session worth doing right now for 5 reasons.
1) It helps you release fear instead of obeying it.
This session names fear as a trance and trains the pivot out of it.
2) It helps you step out of the script machine.
Fear keeps the script machine running, the manipulating, distorting machine that turns everything into a storyline: heroes and villains, certainty and suspicion, us and them. You can feel how different it is when the script machine is not running. Watch Schenck’s video again. There’s no manipulation there. No angle. No tightening of the frame. Just an open heart. And that is what it looks and feels like when fear is no longer in the way. There’s warmth coming off that screen in subfreezing temperature.
3) It breaks the chain: fear becomes blame, blame becomes Them, Them becomes justification for force.
When fear runs the show, blame and demonizing feel justified. This session interrupts that.
4) It resets the nervous system so you can stay human under stress.
This is not just insight. It is regulation. Breath, body, presence, a return to the still spot.
5) It restores moral strength without righteousness and reopens “us.”
You can be clear and brave without becoming cruel. You can care without hardening. You can cross old lines without surrendering your values, and sometimes discover unexpected healing there.
If you watch this week, consider leaving a single observation in the comments. Not what you believe, just what you notice. Where is fear manipulating and distorting, and what helps you come back to yourself.
Those are the benefits.
Intention Session
Before the statements, a reminder of why The Intention Session is the first step.
AMP is on your terms, not mine. You only receive what is right for you, in your timing, with grace and ease. I am simply putting up the resonance for anyone who wants it. People process in their time. It is meant to be graceful. So do this first, and you will get the resonance benefits listed below - on your terms and timing
Step one: The Intention Session
You only need to do this once before you watch the film The Armour of Light. If you have already completed an Intention Session, it carries over for all of the AMP movies I talk about, so you do not need to repeat it.
Speak these aloud:
I allow the changes in my timing and only integrate what I am ready to.
I have faith that I will receive the benefits I desire.
I am patient with myself as I make my changes.
I let go of feeling I am too busy to take the time for this.
I let go of needing to understand how AMP works and allow myself to receive the full benefits in my own timing.
Engage three simple modalities:
Nod your head yes.
Drink some water.
Take several slow, rhythmic breaths through your nose.
Then watch The Armour of Light all the way through.
There are over 500 intentions included in the Armour of Light AMP session. Below is a short summary of what you can expect if you choose to do this AMP session. For now, I’m making these intentions available to everyone.
Below are selected statements from the session.
Let Go
I try to gain control by assigning blame.
When I get stuck in fear, I blame others for their religion or politics and try to demonize them.
When I get stuck in fear, I have to buy a gun so nobody can take me out.
I have to control fear by force and I become capable of violence.
I let fear-based media cycles hijack my peace.
I let go of trying to gain control by assigning blame.
I let go of demonizing Them when I am afraid.
I let go of believing I need guns and force to feel safe.
I let go of the trance that turns fear into righteousness.
I let go of letting fear-based media cycles hijack my peace.
Allow
I evolve and shift from the trance of reactive fear to attend and befriend what is scaring me.
I no longer run from fear, I discern what it is and allow it to leave me.
I remember what I am connected to and what I love and what loves me.
When I am afraid, I remember that love is available.
I bring a strong presence to my fears and they leave with grace and ease.
I no longer need to cling to guns and violence for protection.
When I slow my breath down, it reduces stress. When I put my hand on my heart, I calm down.
Don’t get recruited by fear. Practice steadiness. Unity is a practice.
I want to end where I began.
I do not want to live there. I do not want to be shaped there.
When fear loosens its grip, something else comes forward. We become more fully ourselves. And that authenticity has a way of touching people we may never meet.
That’s what happened to me this week watching Rev. Rob Schenck. I don’t think he knows how much his simple warmth and humility reached across the screen. I don’t think he knows the difference he made by letting fear get out of the way.
This is how the world changes more often than we admit.
Not only through power. Through presence.
And maybe this is what redemption looks like.
David, I just read this and it did really hit me. I am so watching the movie.