Don't Fear Love-1

Smiles and kisses speak a language of their own that transcends cultural boundaries, but it's really the feelings behind them that are universal. But often we are superficially unified (or divided) by the things we fear, too, especially in our relationships with others.

We often hear it said that sex sells, but I say what really pays real dividends are our "love cells". What I mean is that we need to see love at a cellular level. Something which is completely fundamental to our way of being; part of the will of life not just to procreate, but to appreciate and be the drive to bond and interact with all species of life, to afford life the dignity and sacredness it deserves just for being alive.

Only then can we really call ourselves enlightened, because this presents a path that brings dignity, confidence, and wisdom to every facet of life. Some believe that an enlightened society can in fact be actualised in our lifetime. But what is stopping us? Very often it is fear. Author and coach Dawn Gluskin says that this fear has us living well below our full potential:

Is there something that you are really passionate about and just know you're supposed to move forward with in your life? But does your brain step in and have you second-guessing your ability to do so, or questioning if you deserve it? It sounds crazy, but it happens to the best of us and on a regular basis! It's the classic ego mind at work, and it pits us against the intuitive calling of our hearts and inner-guide. Our ego is designed to keep us "safe", and it does so by leading us from a place of fear. Fear of change, rejection, failure -- you name it. But this "safe" place doesn't really serve us at all. In fact, it can force us to dwell in negative behaviours that have us living unhappily, unfulfilled, and well below our pure potential.

We want something more than what our environs offer, but we fear doing anything about it. We are unable to make changes in their life, and do not understand why we keep sabotaging our efforts. Our lives feel like failures, and we fear to think we deserve better than our lot in life. This type of fear is not only debilitating, it can make us out-of-touch drifters in our own lives, never really knowing we are alive. Living with fear is living just in half. It is a waste of a precious gift.

Read how to discover your passion.

You can alter the power of fear through life experiences. Fears can lessen or take different form over time, from subsequent life events, experiences, and - especially - self-examination. A step in the right direction is to shine a light on your fears, and be like a child before we knew such evils existed. Because often this fear, which exists inside all of us, is deep and remote. It conjures our earliest experiences and the dread that we feel when we are exposed reminds us of our most harrowing questions of childhood. But try and imagine the child you were before then.

The world can be fantastic and beautiful, and our young know this better than most. I have always been enamoured of that child-like innocence and in-awe view of the world, and as adults we have to regain this "childish" enthusiasm for living. This is neither unrealistic, nor impractical; rather it is very practical. It is great motivation to remind us that the very best of ourselves is the child inside of us.

Sacrificing our inner child on the altar of "getting real" to pay homage to some mean dark world we think we inhabit is what really kills us. The fear that we must do this is what makes our life feel like a cage, in which we slowly starve ourselves from the nourishing energies the universe has to offer.

For example here in England, although studies show that the vast majority of new arrivals from different countries to the United Kingdom enhance and enrich our society, both economically and culturally, we are in fear of the "other" because of the global economic woes the banks have placed us in, and treat "immigrants" with underhand - if not wholly open - discrimination. But speaking out against a community that acts unified in such fear is never easy.

Bravery doesn't always feel good. I've heard it said that "courage is being afraid, and doing it anyway". And when one blogger decided to speak up against a small American community in Steubenville, Ohio, appearing to protect two rapists because they were the epitome of the Hollywood teen sporting hero, it was no small Herculean task. The crime blogger Alexandria Goddard first exposed crucial evidence in the rape case of a 16-year-old girl at a party by taking screen shots of incriminating social media posts, photographs and videos, before they could be deleted. The hacker group Anonymous picked up on Goddard's posts and released shocking video from the night of the assault - illustrating how quickly we lose our childish innocence.

This led to the two high school football players being found guilty, but how many of the young men at that party in Steubenville knew in their hearts that what was happening was wrong, but still they remained silent? They were afraid to ruin their own hard-earned reputations, afraid of what their peers would think of them. They were afraid of getting in trouble, afraid they wouldn't know what to say.

Similarly, the silence spoke volumes when a British woman jumped from a hotel balcony in India fearing a sexual assault, when she shouted for help for more than an hour and no one came to her aid. In a BBC report she condemned as "disgusting" fellow hotel residents who had not helped. In an interview with Indian television, two Belgian tourists staying in the hotel said they had heard shouts and banging noises for over an hour.

Courage can be demanded of you at the most inopportune times. And we must teach our children - and ourselves - that bravery can be terrifying, but that we must have expectations that are brave enough to rise to the occasion. Love can show us how. At the end of the day, we need the world to be inherited by kinder generations. We all want our tiny, fragile, helpless baby boys and girls to grow up to be kind. In a world where men are honoured for killing other men but dishonoured for loving one, teaching empathy, compassion and awareness needs to begin as early as possible; a toddler can learn how to use words of kindness, and be brave in showing kindness, when no one else has the courage to take a stand.

We must give our children the tools they need to protect themselves and each other. We must also use them ourselves in all our relationships. Case in point: Can your loved one call you in the middle of the night, no questions asked? Can they tell you the truth, without you flipping out and getting angry? Do they trust that you are on their team, that you will sit down and talk things through with them, making a calm plan together? Every relationship needs to be given a framework, to promote understanding of the issues and challenges that need to be met in life.

Fear in relationships linger for many reasons. In parent-child relationships, for instance, we feel indebted to those who took care of us in our infancy; we feel we have to put up with our parents even if we feel they can be annoying, and children will blame themselves, if not their parents, most their lives when things go wrong. Children are vessels of youth optimism and hope, but when we are younger we are programmed not to show weakness through a misguided belief that it's for our own protection. Somehow we think people will think less of us, so we never show it. We keep things bottled up inside, and never let them out. But that isn't who we are - we are a caring, sensitive species at heart.

As we get older, and yearn to open up, we realise we are afraid to do it, because we are not comfortable with who we are. Until we accept who we truly are, we will not be able to finally open up and just be ourselves. In your life, if you're able to do that, to truly operate as yourself, really good things start to happen. You start connecting with people who are operating on that same level. You also inspire them with your passion, to be comfortable with just being themselves.

This is certainly true on the subject of sex. In twin flame relationships, I talk of cultivating the special energies from this connection via the practice of tantric sex - and in the higher stages of Tibetan Buddhist tantra, for instance, sexual relations (especially with twin flames) are a means of enhancing spiritual insights. It breaks inhibitions, and old taboos and allows us to release our fears, but it needs to be cultivated in a trusting relationship.

Dating can often be fraught with uncertainty and self-consciousness, and sexuality is a powerful thing, one fort which we are solely responsible. The framework and buttress of a healthy relationship can give us an understanding that sex carries an enormous responsibility, not just to ourselves, but to our partners. Sex on its own can trick you into thinking that you are receiving what you need (physical satisfaction, comfort, companionship, love, respect) because it taps into our core energies, but it is an adult power that can be used irresponsibly, and needs to be taught - especially to children, because without instilling in them an adult sense of responsibility and ethics there will be many more cases like Steubenville.

Parents are hugely responsible for the values they instil in children, and the labels we're given as infants has a bearing on the person we will become. Yet it requires more. Kids are hugely influenced by their environment, so what should our society portray? Young people are under tremendous pressure to have or maintain often unrealistic, over-sexed body images portrayed in the media, fearing criticism of their own bodies. And if the world is showcasing a sorry state for us all - where we abuse and trample over one another to get at fleeting self gratification - then it's no surprise people think it is correct to take advantage of someone at a disadvantage, if this is what we are constantly and consistently shown by the media.

If we want a different society, we must be more unified and proactive as parents and in general as members of society, and rewards should not be based on being the pretties, the trendiest, or even the best at kicking a ball. Rather, rewards should be based on how much someone has contributed to creating a mutually responsible society - by example and by result.

Critics say that our negligence has led to this world where crisis upon crisis reveals the level of greed and corruption we have allowed because we've been led to believe it is correct to do so, as long as "no one knows". From sporting heroes to high-earning bankers, we've allowed corruption to foster and spread in most of our traditional institutions. It's time an inner change of heart leads to a mutually responsible society - where we challenge and openly face our fears.

The institutions of fear

Our human history is scarred by violence; we are still very much territorial, towards our planet and other people, and the torture and mistreatment of those we perceive as "weaker" than us is still very prevalent in even the most democratic societies. Europe still displays a fascination with Nazi Germany - its paraphernalia and culture is still very heavily present. There is the popular culture, the films - the symbolism is still represented, and it has been picked up by a younger generation who did not live through the horrors it wrought on human beings.

It seems to be a world where historically the strong has dominated the weak, and the rich have looked down on the poor - but how far have we come from that? Religion teaches us that compassion is a god-given gift instilled in all of us, and scientific studies have shown that kindness is as inherent in our genes as violence - yet far too often it feels like we choose the latter over the former.

Is war an innate part of human nature?

Arguably, we have done the same with religion - rather than use it as an expression of our faith, we have used it to express the dominance of our faith. Religious fervour has had us destroy, knock down, forcibly convert, and become intolerant of other people's beliefs. But religion was once an manifestation of the childlike awe the world inspired in us; it was about questioning and seeking answers to how the world worked. Regarding religion, influential music artist David Bowie has commented that questioning his spiritual life had always been germane to what he was writing. Describing his stance as being "not quite an atheist", in a 2004 interview "What I've Learned" for Esquire he stated:

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Bowie talks of a fluidity that many major religions lack today, and some believe it is this rigidity that invokes religious fervour and fear. But the relationship we have with religion has constantly been redefining itself. In his book God: A Story of revelation, New York Times best-selling author Deepak Chopra takes his readers on a journey to discover the evolution of God. He focuses on the lives of historical prophets, saints, mystics and martyrs whom he believes were touched by a higher power, and how humans have a constantly changing perspective on divinity and God. The book reveals some the defining moments of some of the world's most influential sages and attempts to uncover the universal lessons of the true nature of God.

The development of our spiritual landscape is rich and diverse, and religion, like society, can tell a lot about the people that practice in worship. Britain is home to some of the most beautiful holy places in the world, and some say our religious heritage and architecture is more varied than virtually anywhere else on Earth. Our horizons are dotted with religious ruins, such as the fading grandeur of ruined abbeys, which we painstakingly preserve long after their purpose is over.

The British fascination with ruins is said to be part of the fascination with our past; our passion for the fading architecture of the past fulfils a nostalgic warning by human sites left to be reclaimed by nature. In medieval times people were haunted by the ruins left by ancient Roman settlers, while the medieval Gothic of the Saxon times - as different religious practices were becoming unified - was itself revived in the 18th Century to react against the prevalent thinking of humanity's dominance over nature. The focus was on spiritual development and contemplation, but it also harked back to ancient fears of strange elements that filled us with awe, because it was felt to be more powerful.

This feeds itself very much into the Gothic novel, which began to take root in the 19th Century. This perspective of awe over the past and the secrets it guards against later generations - a past holds a kind of terror simply because it is so strange - inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. The impact of his creation cannot be understated; Halloween has become a major secular festival with Dracula and vampires as one of its cornerstones, while the Twilight series is merely a reworking of 19th Century Gothic.

This blend of sex, death and beautiful domed youth are now one of the mainstays of popular culture - and it goes deeper than nostalgia. We seem to have attached ourselves to what proves enduringly unsettling. In one sense, we have become fans of fear. We celebrate fear. And although this celebrated taste for the Gothic and romanticising ruins might have felt like a radical idea in the 18th Century, nothing is ever really new. Fear is an old "friend" - and fear makes us either historical jackdaws or vultures.

Because when we say times are changing, sometimes they're merely changing back again. History forever repeats itself; although we may suffer from generational amnesia, it feels like we genetically remember to instinctively act out the replays of things gone before. For instance, the ancient Egyptians used mouldy bread as a form of medicine applying to heal wounds, but why it worked wouldn't be understood for thousands of years. Mould contains penicillin, which we in the West think we discovered, and yet the ancient Egyptians fully appreciated its benefits over 3,000 years ago.

In the same vein, enjoying sex was as important to ancient Egyptians as it is now. As further proof that we are hard-wired to be interested in and find joy in that very fundamental part of our existence, the Turin Erotic Papyrus - a kind of sex magazine - seems to make it clear that people thousands of years ago were as enamoured with sex as most of us are in contemporary times.

The papyrus shows a couple actively having sex - a man with an enormous phallus pleasuring a nubile, and very agile, female. Some academics suggest it indicates a desire to tap into the erotic, with the drawings translated as showing women actively engaged in acts of love, rather than simply as objects for male pleasure. Thus some believe this ancient erotica was a way to provide sexual inspiration for couples to use sex as a kind of leisure or a way to entertain each other. It portrayed sex as more than just a bodily function to do, but as a way for loving couples to come together.

Looking back at widely differing ancient civilisations, we can see how as a species we are unified in central themes. Sex is a basic human need, common to all people at all times, but so, too, is family, love - and fear. But when we instinctively incorporate the masonry of the past with which to build our own lives, we either try to appropriate some of the spiritual prestige and keep a continuity with the past, or else we try to consume and eradicate it, thinking we are replacing it with something wholly new or better. Medieval Christianity itself came under attack, after King Henry VIII decided to break with the Church of Rome and suppressed the monasteries in Britain, taking the land and riches it in turn had taken from the public. With the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, such estates reverted to the Crown; religious orders were evicted from their homes, which were plundered to use in the construction of new buildings.

What had been done in the name of Christ to pagans, was being done to monks in the name of Crown, and surviving 12th Century monasteries are very rare in the UK because most of them are now ruins. This reformation in 16th Century Britain, forming the Protestant revolution, effected a call for a complete break with the medieval past and an end to the reverence for relics. This did the opposite, however, creating hundreds of architectural ones with the looting of the monasteries and abbeys and the like. Such abandoned holy places lost their resonance, but retained the power to awe and inspire as relics. Some say this is because they mark seismic shifts within a country - from the fall of the Roman Empire to the transition from Celtic Christianity to Roman Catholicism, to the shift to Protestantism from Catholicism 1,000 years later - as signposts to what people can do in times of fear.

No period of Britain's deep history has left a greater legacy than the centuries of Roman rule. Right from the moment of their violent invasion, the Romans left their mark on this island, leaving cities that prospered from medieval into modern times, shaping who we are today - even giving us our name, Britannia (way before Angle Land was coined to become the England we use for part of Britain today). What often doesn't spring to mind is late Roman Britain in the 4th Century, straddled on the edge of a dying empire when Rome had started to decline, heading for extinction after embracing Christianity and heralding in what is known as the Dark Ages.

Read about the myth of the Dark Ages.

Likewise when Greeks converted to orthodoxy, and ransacked and destroyed the greatest architectures of their ancient forefathers with religious fervour, or when Muslim strongholds in Afghanistan destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas decrying them as "idols", such shifts in ideologies irrespective of the century leave scars on nature's landscape. Again, a Catholic theology was replaced with a Protestant one in 16th Century Britain, it was fear that left a far deeper scar.

Monks were murdered, abbeys were made redundant - cathedrals too in Scotland - and they were looted for their riches. History shows that in times of great fear and fervour, no amount of religious pedigree is a shield from the mob. Fiery sermons based on fear roused congregations all across the country to rip down the rich trappings of the previous churches, a stark testimony to the destructive zeal of protestant reformers, as zealous as the Catholic Conquistadors that had brought so much violence to the American continent centuries before.

In many ways the 16th Century Reformation, and the bitterness and division it represents, reminds us of the worst aspects of our religious instincts. Thus, when cultural identity is bound up by deeply held convictions based on fear, it can carry historical divisions through to modern times, to stand stronger than any relic. Such fear has carried the Protestant-Catholic divide and its fervour to their 21st Century incarnations. A prime example, if any were needed, that fear divides us into sides - a "them" against us" mentality that closes our minds to acceptance. When this happens, ruins enshrine not only religious difference, but religious division, too - standing as symbols to humanity at its worst.

However, ruins can also become symbols of how we overcome our fear to show us at our best. The cathedral in Coventry is one such relic. The English city's cathedral was destroyed in November in 1940, during a night of destruction that rained upon Coventry in the Second World War when over five hundred German bombers attacked the city. Four thousand homes destroyed, over five hundred civilians were killed, with the cathedral left a burnt out shell. The Nazis hailed it as a success - going so far as to coin a new term for the near destruction of an enemy town as having been "coventried".

It would be understandable, after suffering such a terrible act of violence, if the city had adopted its shattered cathedral as a symbol of defiance, or triumphalism when the Allies beat the Nazis, but courageously the people of Coventry chose a different route - almost immediately after their night of destruction. They preferred to focus was on reconciliation and forgiveness, as well as remembrance.

We are often fearful of forgiveness, because we mistakenly believe it equates with forgetting - but we never forget, so that we may remember to forgive. It was in this spirit, the city of Coventry fashioned gestures of reconciliation from the rubble, and sent them to German cities that had also suffered during the war. Some would say it is such acts that lend religion its real sense of purpose, rather than those ideals based on fear.

The institutions of faith

Fear has power, but love is what makes spiritual practice personal. We are drawn to the ruins in our lives because of the things we have lost - whether it is part of our history, or those that we have loved. The reason could be that implicit in every ruin is a scattering, a breaking apart, as time opens up our decaying religions to the elements, but the spiritual essence remains to draw us back, suggesting it is something deeper than nostalgia that pulls us to holy ruins long after their religious use is over.

Older than the pyramids, Stonehenge is one such monument in England, that still draws people from far and wide ever since it was built some 4,500 years ago. A henge is a sacred enclosure - designed to mark out a sacred space, which many believe was a refuge for the faithful of those times. The specific activity of a henge, however, still guards its mysteries - some have stone circles like Stonehenge, some hold ritual burials, while others are curiously empty in their centre, thought to be observatories, but no one knows for sure.

What we see of Stonehenge today is not quite what was there some time ago. Before its importance was realised stones were used by locals for a variety of building purposes; some of the stones have also fallen down. It was quite possibly twice as big as it is now, but Stonehenge is a place of religious significance and pilgrimage in paganism in Wiltshire. And over the county border in Somerset is the small town of Glastonbury, at the heart of which lies an ancient battle between paganism and Christianity that has rumbled on for 2,000 years because of fear.

Paganism is believed to offer different spiritual paths that traditional religions fail to provide, and such older beliefs that existed in Britain before the arrival of Christianity was at the heart of a spiritual history spanning different beliefs and thousands of years. But between the 4th and 7th Century these beliefs were ejected by the fervour caused by Christianity. Academics say we can view it as one culture or religion imposing itself on another, or we can look at it as a sort of evolution or development - where it starts life as one type of spirituality and religion, and changes to another one - part of a natural order of things, like extinction has been throughout Earth's history. But one caused out of human fear, not evolution, to create seismic shifts that scarred its landscape and left ruins in its wake.

As a collision of beliefs, paganism and Christianity have been rubbing up against each other for the best part of 2,000 years, and the relationship between pagans and Christians has always been an uneasy one; the tensions between them have been based on fear. By building churches on ancient pagan sites and henges, the dominating religion saw this a spiritual continuity, but also as a way to stamp out any rival, idolatry practices; the medieval Christians were making an emphatic statement about their cultural dominance - it was part of a deliberate policy.

Very often quoted, but rarely in full, is a letter sent by Pope Gregory to Abbot Mellitus, who was about to join Augustine in England, in the year 601; we know of it only through Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, written in 731 (book 1, chapter 30). Those who wish to demonstrate the origins of traditional customs and lore in pagan times take it to mean that the Church in England initially adopted a general policy of appropriation rather than direct confrontation. On the matter of the English people, Pope Gregory had said:

The temples of the idols in that nation ought not to destroyed; but let the idols in them be destroyed; let water be consecrated and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed there.

For if those temples are well built it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed.

As the appeal of Christianity has declined in the 21st Century, these alternative belief systems have reoccupied the hearts of many in Britain - and at the heart of paganism is a deep felt connection with the Earth. Being the case, to pagans all trees are religiously significant, tying ribbons and totems on their branches to give thanks, or as a request symbolic of their wish to be healed or achieve a particular goal. Such symbols, grown out of the resurgence of pagan practices, involves trees as living beings that have lived through the pre-Christian and Christian eras, and signify a link between the earth and the air - two of the central elements in pagan belief - representing the physical bridge between them, as do hills, mountains and rivers.

And as Christianity spread across Britain, it had to confront its fear of paganism in the old religion's holy places, and adopt its spiritual pedigree. In time, the pre-Christian sense of sacredness melded together with the medieval Christian sense of the sacred, with both deeply connected to the landscape, and where people intuitively or instinctively saw trees as a gateway between the two worlds of life and death, the temporal and spiritual.

Trees are a very profound symbol that have captivated us for centuries. Even on sites with a spiritual heritage heritage stretching back thousands of years, one of the most enduring things are trees. On some sites Christianity may have come and gone, but earth magic never truly goes away. In earlier times, when Christianity was the dominant intellectual force, pagan explanations or interpretations for the mysteries of the world were replaced with their new interpretations - and the Book of Genesis, the earliest book of the Bible, contains numerous references to sacred trees. In the middle of the Garden of Eden we find the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge, with its forbidden fruit. Further on in the text, Abraham encounters God next to trees, so is it too fanciful to see these references as remnants of an earlier system of nature worship?

Academics say when the Judeo-Christian scriptures were first written they needed to acknowledge trees in nature, because they were the dominant ideas in older religions - they needed to find ways of acknowledging and then incorporating them. As time has gone by, mainstream Christianity has moved away from the power of nature as a central part of its philosophy, but nature still appeals to many people emotionally. It allows for a multiplicity of interpretations, some based on superstition, some based on religion - but perhaps at root they're not that different.

Superstition and religion are both forms of belief rooted in fear, it's just that religion holds a much higher status or level in society. A fear of death (or Christian hell-fire) is one such obsession; many of us find the idea of communicating with the dead so tantalising, so appealing, and yet so elusive that it's easy to see how normal psychological mechanisms can be co-opted into making us believe in the unbelievable. Some believe that deep down fearing the reaper is why everyone is so messed up in the head; they know the end is nigh, but there is nothing they can do about it, and it drives people nuts living with one eye on the clock. Not all religions were fused with this fear; the ancient Egyptians' relationship with death was very different than ours. For them, life was a dress rehearsal for the perfect afterlife they were trying to reach.

Death was the most important moment of life, and the ancient Egyptians invested heavily in it. They spent much of their life preparing to live on after their death - tombs, chapels, amulets, books of the dead describing how they wanted to spend eternity - it was a huge industry that every ancient Egyptian invested in, from kings to commoners alike. But although they didn't fear earthly death, seeing it as simply a passing from one plane of existence to another, they did fear spiritual death - for them, all evil souls betrayed by a heavy heart were consumed and blocked from an eternal afterlife.

The ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the seat of all learning and intelligence, and when their spirit was in the presence of the gods in the next world, they had to account for their actions in life. In the modern West, it is all too easy to see these elaborate preparations for death as completely pointless - death is death, and that is that - and yet these ancients had universal themes that link us all. In the BBC documentary two-parter "Ancient Egypt - Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings", Dr Joann Fletcher investigates what everyday life was like in ancient Egypt for an ordinary person, and the second episode on death reveals how many would want to spend their afterlife with their loved ones. And while the ancient Egyptians revered death over life, paganism, too, was undaunted by death in its own way - by seeing it as a natural process of life.

Our fear of death was given a new voice - one of rebirth - when Britain's pagan landscape was overwritten with a Christian narrative. Entry into the religion was with a ritual central to the Christian tradition. Full immersion baptism provided a psychological route into this new way of living, as the old life was metaphorically washed away. Because they used water to symbolically purify their converts by baptising them with it, water became central to this new narrative of being born again.

Many converts professed to a profound change, or even found it uplifting to suffer the cold water of a holy pool - some even claimed miracle cures from the water's healing properties. There are many that still visit such holy sites today to be healed. Holy water, we believe, can make us healthy, be that spiritually or physically, holy and wholesome are two words that share the same root, so holiness and healthiness are not that far removed from each other.

Water has shaped and defined our spiritual history in Britain in another way, too, as the sea was a gateway from which this new belief system came to change our society forever. But the sea has always been a powerful metaphor within the Christian tradition, its turbulence and unpredictability mirror our own lives, and the sea's appeal is timeless and universal like water. It crops up constantly as an essential element in some of our holiest places, and the primal powers of water appeal to something very deep within us. Nothing is more fundamental to life than water, and historians say water springs became holy because they were life-giving in the most literal sense.

Read about the mysteries of water.

It could also be argued that pagan traditions infiltrated the Christian way of doing things in other ways, for instance, they influenced the sites of the first Christian churches because it was thought that would stop pagan ceremonies on the site taking place covertly, while taking on the value and sacred nature of the site itself at the same time. Islam also adopted the Christian approach of consecrating previous religious places to their own belief during its initial genesis, and rather than destroying buildings, as Pope Gregory suggested, they destroyed the idols instead and turned the buildings - churches and temples - into mosques.

In a sense, Rather than destroying the old symbols of paganism, Christianity merely subsumed them. The first actions of medieval Christians grafted Christianity onto paganism, rather than doing away with it entirely. This wasn't just on physical holy sites, or in the usage of religious symbols, but by adopting their holy days, too. Today, many pagans argue that Christian celebrations like Christmas and Easter are really derived from pagan celebrations of the cycles of nature, or gods and goddesses ascribed the powers of nature through folklore.

Thus Christianity set up camp on pagan beliefs in a fearful attempt to stop its practice of the old religion, and across the country this led to many churches being built on top of many hills and mountains, literally staking out the moral high ground. In Britain, to emphasise this policy, such hill top churches were dedicated to the archangel Michael - in the Book of Revelations Saint Michael is depicted as the leader of God's army who drove the satanic forces from the heavens. The iconic church tower on top of the hill at Glastonbury is dedicated to him, so, too, is St. Michael's mount in Cornwall.

This portrayal of a warrior angel leading the forces of light against the forces of darkness has arguably imbued Christianity with a "crusade" like mentality to go after different views and beliefs as being "evil". This fear has always kept Christianity in conflict, because it has never quite able to embrace the natural landscape it is faced with without bumping into earlier belief systems. This has been melded into Western society, combined with the ancient Greek's creation of xenophobia - fear of hatred of the "other", showing them as barbarians - to have us today divided into camps, looking across our borders in fear of people that are just as human as we are.

In Britain, later Christians thought the country's conversion from paganism was unfinished business, and in the 17th Century the puritans decided to finish the job once and for all. Religious symbols can be divisive; trees once seen as holy were hacked down, women practising herbal medicine were branded as witches and were put on trial and executed, druids were hounded and murdered. The obsession of pagan idolatry spread fear, and as today we have demonised people from the Islamic faith, in the past pagans were demons Christianity pursued with religious fervour.

If we let our fear overtake our actions, we are likely to overstep the mark - fear makes us lash out disproportionately, even when done in retaliation to a corrupt establishment, or for a ideology we passionately believe in. Sadly, not many have taken up a this non-violent way to redress wrongs, although Mahatma Gandhi, the pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India, is arguably a good example of how to go against the establishment of the day without resorting to violence.

Another peaceful following are the Quakers, or Friends, members of a family of religious movements which collectively are known as the Friends Church or the Religious Society of Friends. Some of the early Quaker ministers were women, and the Friends are known for their historical refusal to participate in war and opposition to slavery, and their philanthropic efforts, including abolition, prison reform, and social justice projects. Interestingly, such a well-meaning religious institution was founded out of the puritanical fervour of 17th Century Britain; in 1652 George Fox wanted to rid his Christian faith of its lingering superstitions, and thus founded the most stripped down Christian movement of all time.

Following the belief that there is something of God in everybody, the Quaker movement did away with all the rituals and sacraments that marked out other churches, because Fox was "moved by the Lord" as he put it, after he had a vision on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, like Jesus giving a sermon on the mount, "of human souls ripe for harvest". Again interestingly, while putting such importance on inner transformation and avoidance of all outer rituals, the founder of the Quaker movement was still impelled, as many others before him, to come up a mount in order to receive a vision - as though instinctively the pagan sacredness of hills was inbred in the human animal.

According to Fox's beliefs, his followers rejected all the trappings of religion - there are no ceremonies of baptism, their meeting houses have no altars, and their services are not conducted by priests. Quakers set out to rid themselves of pagan idolatry, and it's even said Fox wouldn't use the months or names of the week derived from pagan gods, but the very place that inspired the leader of the movement is one that would be equally powerful to a pagan or a Christian. It could be said that in the following years, the Quakers replaced one form of idolatry with another; some Quakers have founded banks and financial institutions including Barclays, Lloyds, and Friends Provident; manufacturing companies including Clarks, Cadbury, Rowntree, and Fry's (which introduced the legendary confectionery of Turkish Delight to chocolate).

But looking back in its history, the Quaker movement is a clear illustration of how the British landscape has been a battleground between the early history of Christianity and paganism - a battle of how human fear can corrupt even the most well intentioned individual or idea. It's also a battle we've had with Nature, ever since religion has promoted us to exert our dominance over her, and the deep fear that nature - even our true nature - is far stronger than any religious idea.

And indeed nature features in many faiths; its greatness lies in the fact that it belongs to no one. Nature, like true love, is non-denominational - trees and mountains are beyond dogma; they inspire within us feelings that are mystical, of being one in a large family of life, where we come closest to the divine. Family is not always those in closest proximity to you. Family is found anywhere you are loved and cared for, and perhaps the secret guarded in the mists of history is this: we need not fear those things that appear alien to us, because we are all members of the same family.

If we have faith in this idea, then although there will be times we fail, the idea of our struggle for co-existence will remain intact. Just as family members will come and go but the institution of family remains, in the same way, although we might be fearful of the future, the idea for a better future remains when faced with love - and like all stories of hope, ideas never die. We need to put our trust in that, and in the idea that fear - like anger - can be either constructive or destructive, too.

Because if we fear the truth that nature is greater than we are, and try to dominate it as a result, then in our destruction of it we will also destroy ourselves - and we won't have learned a thing about existing in harmony with each other. But if we trust to approach our fears with love and understanding - instead of acting out of fear - then we'll have learned a valuable lesson. That there is nothing really to fear about the "other" at all, because we are all one with love.

Read more in this series: -2 -3

Yours in love,