The We're Not Afraid site, created by London web designer Alfie Dennan, had four million hits on Monday alone from as far afield as Italy and Africa.

The idea came from a picture of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Mr Dennan's own weblog.

Someone else added the words "We're Not Afraid" sparking a huge response.

Another blog site, thesharpener.net, is also running a defiant message, pledging a public demonstration to show solidarity with Londoners and defiance to the bombers.

And St George flags have been put up outside shops around Liverpool Street - scene of one of the underground bombings - while union flags have gone up outside some houses.

In the past few days about 3,500 photos - from holiday snaps to doctored pictures of London buses & Tube stations - have been sent in to Mr Dennan's website, all containing the "We are not afraid" message.

Mr Dennan said the site had become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London & say they will not be cowed by the bombings.

"It is very unusual for Londoners to be afraid. They're showing that they aren't going to react to this by fear.

"I set up the website to give people a voice online, to show their distaste for this tragedy & have received a huge response - I've been amazed."

We've been convinced by natural experience that if we “buy into” fear, negative things will happen to us. And no one wants to suffer negative experiences; no one wants to feel bad all of the time.

Since dictionary definitions reflect the way we use words, this definition means that we users of Modern English view fear as an almost totally negative human reaction.  Nowhere in this definition do we easily notice any positive qualities, unless we think about reverence toward a deity, the quality of being God-fearing. 

But even that idea doesn't come thru as clearly positive because it's clearly overwhelmed by a sea of what appear to be negatively charged words:

• anxiety
• agitation
• danger
• pain
• evil
• unpleasant
• uneasiness
• disquiet
• apprehension
• concern
• dread
• timidity
• terror
• fright
• alarm

Can it get any more negative than this, Dear Reader?

Nowhere do we read that fear is:

 “a positive feeling of anxiety & agitation reflected in the human experiences of beauty, wonder, courage, care, love, joy, respect & happiness.” 

Why is this so? 

The vast majority of us have been conditioned to think that fear is a totally negative aspect of life. We've been conditioned to think that we don’t like being afraid.  But this is simply not true, for it doesn't even measure up against how fear really operates in our lives.

Fearful self-deception

We don’t like to admit that we're feeling fear even when we know we're feeling it. So, you, Dear Reader, aren't about to accept the refrain of this book yet:

Fear is what life is all about. 

If others think of us as fearful, we'll fearfully deny our fearful feelings - even to ourselves! 

We practice this self-deception as a way of protecting ourselves from the overwhelming power of our terrifying universe. We deceive ourselves as a way of dealing with a reality that terrifies us too much.

Sometimes, we go as far as to self-deceptively convince ourselves that we're not afraid of anything or anyone. I know, for I've been there & done that, but thanks to the inspiring Amazing Grace, I've learned that fear can be positively enjoyed.  One step in learning how to do this is to understand how we first learn to deceive ourselves about fear.

Think of an experience you may have had or may have been a witness to when you were a young child, Dear Reader. Something really terrified you & you showed it by your facial expressions & bodily movements. Along came an insensitive older child or a confused adult with one of the most misleading & intimidating questions any human being can ask another:

“You’re not afraid, are you?”  You knew by the tone of voice that you were expected to answer, “No.”  This or a similar situation may be where we first began to lie to ourselves about being afraid.  Fear itself promotes self-deception & repression of reality.

However, our self-deception doesn't need a specific triggering event.  Life or existence itself is so terrifying for us as young human beings that we'll generally deny its fearful reality all by ourselves -w/out any help. Life itself teaches us to repress our fears deep within our minds. Life itself teaches us to lie - to others & to ourselves.

This explains why children can slide so easily into the act of lying. 

Life truly terrifies us as children & fear is the only reason we lie. 

Fear is also the only reason we adults lie to children when we make catch-22 statements to them such as “Don’t be afraid” after some truly terrifying event has occurred such as the recent terrorist acts here in the United States. How can children not be afraid about something that truly terrifies them?

What we need to say to children (& to ourselves) is:

 “It’s all right to be afraid when something really scares you.”

& then we need to find positive ways to help children deal w/ their negative fears - deal w/ them, not get rid of them. 

This means that we need to teach children how to be positively afraid.  But we can't do this as long as we think that we're not supposed to be afraid - all of the time. 

We can't do this if we think fear is exclusively negative & something that we need to get rid of. We can't do this until we ourselves recognize one vital truth about fear:

if we're ever to positively enjoy being afraid, we must have a concept of positive fear in our minds.

I'm reminded of a situation that often occurs in middle school where I've been teaching for the past 21 years. Two students are getting ready to fight. A crowd of students encircles them, inciting them to get the fight started.  But the 2 would-be fighters usually engage in pure self-deception before they fight by making statements such as “I ain’t ‘fraid o’ you!” 

Of course, the response is, “I ain’t ‘fraid o’ you neither!”  Truthfully, the upcoming fight terrifies both of the would-be combatants & it terrifies the crowd of other students surrounding them too, delightfully so.

The crowd can barely contain its excitement at being witness to this deliciously dangerous situation, so it forms that circle partly to prevent the would-be fighters from escaping the fight; that is, it forms the circle to prevent the loss of its enjoyment in experiencing a dangerous & thrilling situation. 

Do the would be fighters actually believe that each isn't scared of fighting the other?  Of course, they do. They'll tell us so if we ask, for by middle school young human beings have learned to lie about their feelings of fear no matter how strongly they feel them. 

When it comes to understanding fear, Dear Reader, too many of us adults are like middle school students getting ready to fight.  We're stuck in a kind of adolescent mentality of self-deception & denial. 

We simply lie about how we feel.

During the past 15 years of doing motivational workshops, I've had participants who state, as I once believed, that they're afraid of nothing or no one.  So, I've developed what I call my “key” test.  I take my keys out of my pocket & ask, “Do you have any of these?” 

I almost always hear a “Yes,” so I ask, “Why don’t you throw your keys away & leave your home &/or car unlocked?”  You can imagine the looks I have received.  I then suggest that the person probably has insurance on the car &/or on the home also.  Insurance? 

What could she or he be afraid of?  Furthermore, I suggest that the person probably not only locks his or her car & house or apartment when he or she is away from them, but probably locks them also when she or he is inside of them - especially at night.  They've all gotten the “key” message.

But I don’t stop there. I ask participants if they pay taxes of any kind.  I then ask them if they realize that taxes are protection payments made because we're terrified.  In the US we pay taxes for police protection 24 hours of it every day. 

We pay taxes for sanitation departments, fire departments, “correction” departments, etc.  We pay taxes for our armed forces.  Do our armed forces protect us from lions, tigers & snakes?  No, they protect us from the most dangerous animals on earth: us human beings 24 hours a day. 

And still some of us believe that we're afraid of no one.  As one of my friends jokingly suggested, this is known as the “river in Egypt” problem or “the Nile.”

We're naturally terrified of each other & I emphasize “naturally.”  We need to know this consciously if we desire to positively enjoy being afraid.  Our natural fear of each other is a fact that we can't change no matter how hard we try. 

We especially can't change it by denying it. As I will show later, our natural fear of each other is built into existence itself, which is why it must be natural, hey, Dear Reader?

We could deal w/our fear of each other in a more positive manner if we recognized that fear comes w/existence. To be alive is to be afraid.  If we had a better understanding of what fear is all about, we would recognize that our fear of each other isn't just negative. It's positive too - more positive than negative.

Th